The Joe Rogan Experience - #442 - Steven Rinella

Episode Date: January 17, 2014

Steven Rinella is an outdoorsman, author, and television host. He currently hosts MeatEater on the Sportsman Channel.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Some pigs are going to die this weekend, Steve Rinella. That's right. I'm 90 shots in, my shoulder's made out of fucking hamburger right now from all the impacts. Unless someone thinks we're talking about policemen, We're talking about Seuss scroffa. Yeah, I thought about posting a photo of the targets that I shot

saying some pigs are going to die, but I didn't think that that would be. No. That could be problematic. Yep, Seuss scroffa. I'm glad you're here this week. The Eurasian wild boar. You know what's interesting, man? You know, it's interesting, man.

All pigs in North America, so domestic, the kind you're baking, feral ones, wild ones, it's all one species. Yeah, you told me that. As much as they're different, they recognize them all as one species. There's some old world, like in Africa, there's some other members of the pig family. And javelina or not, javelina are a peccary. So, like, when you hear javelina or people talk about pigs in Arizona, they're often talking about a peccary. But, yeah, all the pigs.

So, Charlotte. No, that was the spider. Wilbur. From Wilbur to Hogzilla is Seuss Scroffa. That's so strange. I didn't know that until you told me when we were in Wisconsinisconsin it it doesn't seem right no there's all these varieties you know it's like well you know but all that they roll all the dogs under i mean you think that pigs look you think that wilbur or like you know like a like a the classic well they don't really exist the class like pink

hairless farm pig i mean he doesn't look as look as different from what we'd call a Russian boar, which is a variety. He doesn't look as different as a chihuahua does from a mastiff. Yeah. But they would discuss those as being what? Canis domestic? Canis domestic? What is it?

I don't know. The common dog. What's weird about the common dog is that they all emanate from wolves. All of them. Yeah. That's so strange. That's wild. That you take a wolf

and turn it into an English bulldog? Like, how the fuck did that take place? But I don't know, those boys in, you might have read this, those boys in Russia

that were taking silver foxes and just, like, selecting for behavior and stuff, they could move those things so fast. Really? Yeah.

They moved the traits, you mean? Yeah. They were just, yeah, I can't remember the details and and if i did tell you the details you'd look it up and then call me and tell me where i was wrong but so i learned not to get too detailed with you but they could move dogs really fast selecting for color behavioral characteristics it was amazing just in a few

generations you know wow so they're they're very malleable. I've always wondered how, I mean, I think it's a massive mystery, isn't it, how dogs were initially created out of wolves? I mean, it's just a long process. You hear so much contradictory stuff. Like at a point in time, because I've always kind of followed this a little bit, and I've written about, I learned a lot about dogs. I probably mentioned this to you before.

I wrote a piece about eating dogs in vietnam and so i had this kind of little summation in this article about the history of dogs and it went through the fact checking process at outside magazine which is very rigorous like if you say my mom is my mom they'll call your mom and like make sure it's your mom and um i had all these things that i kind of like assumed were just true you know and this fact checker's like that's in fact not true so i had to relearn my understanding of dogs at the time they were saying oh you know it seems that dogs originated in china and you know like the oldest trace of dogs is there since then i feel like i've read that you know they definitely the first americans definitely brought we're traveling with dogs brought them down in the new world but here there seems to

have been some intro aggression from the gray wolf so they picked up some other characteristics from other things along the way even though the guys that came through the bering land bridge were not packing with them a dog that looked wolf-like they're probably packing with them a dog that looked wolf-like they were probably packing with them a dog that was decidedly domestic dog-like wow so they had already gone it had already gone through some you know it had already gone through some transformations they weren't just traveling with wolf dogs they were traveling with a dog that had been under selective pressure for you know 15 000 years i mean because i remember one time saying oh the domestic dog seems to go back 30 000 years the domestic dog seems to go back 50 000 years but people arrived here you know it's debated but sometime between maybe 15 20 000 years ago and when they showed up they had a dog that

was not a wolf wow but it but then there was intro aggression from wolves but this seems to be like a really hot topic and people are always digging into this because genetics is changing everything we understand like things that we used to think were related are not related. Things we think were not related are in fact related. You know, we talked that I like the whole mule deer thing, like that mule deer seem to be a very new species, you know, since the Pleistocene. Really? Yeah, there's not a, they haven't been around long. It was like a hybridization

event between black-tailed deer and white-tailed deer created the mule deer it's like our newest big game species and it's probably will be one that doesn't last long you know it'll be like in in the long term you might look at mule deer and see them as this this blip really yeah just like i mean they're so susceptible to being out-competed. Their very habitat fragmentation is hard on them. And they haven't been here long. I mean, on the other hand, whitetail deer have been here millions of years.

They thrive. They're super adaptable. They can eat anything, live anywhere. They're amazingly capable of surviving on this continent. And mule deer are like this new thing. It's a bummer. Like, my favorite animal... I like the sun, you know? The sun's only going to last for a billion new thing. It's a bummer. Like my favorite animal, I like the sun, you know,

and the sun's only going to last for a billion more years. It's going to burn out. I like the sun. I like mule deer a lot too. And it seems like, I mean, despite a lot of people's best efforts to prevent it from happening, it seems like mule deer are vulnerable. It seems like they're slowly starting to die off too. There was an article about the numbers dropping and their habitat dropping and being diminished and they're being pushed out. Yeah, and some things are hard to explain, you know.

But whitetails, they've always lived in the southeast. And whitetails seem to periodically expand out and then for climatic reasons retract. But they kind of keep that ancestral homeland. I'm talking in very long term, that ancestral homeland in the southeast. southeast but at one time whitetails made it all the way across the country and some climatic conditions or something happened the population retracted but it left this remnant population in california on the pacific coast and then there was a massive genetic barrier you know like if you took a bunch of dogs and separate them and put you know some dogs in south america and some dogs in north america and came back and checked on them in a long time they're going to have gone in a little different direction and that became the

black tail and then at a time the black tail seems to have extended its range eastward the white tail deer extended its range back westward and there was a hybridization event where male blacktails were breeding with female whitetails and producing this hybrid mule deer. There was a habitat retraction again, and blacktails retracted back to the coast, and whitetails retracted back the other way, and you had to spawn this thing we call mule deer. How do they follow that? How do they know that it was all this guy valerius geist who's like the most interesting biologist he's a guy out of calgary and valerius geist has kind of like done so much work on big game he's kind of like the mule he's like people like oh he's the mule deer guy he's the elk guy he's the buffalo guy he came

up with a lot of interesting theories like some some stuff we talked about in the past where valerius geist came up with this idea that what happens to species when they colonize land had been vacated by glaciers you know there's like certain things that go on and he got he was into founder effect you know where imagine like one way we got different as people is imagine that just like four people struck off, you know, across the oceans in a homemade craft and landed there and you had a male and a female. And they spawn a new, you know, they successfully breed and create a new population. But let's say they both just happen to be six, seven, you know, and 300 pounds. six, seven, you know, and 300 pounds, you have like this thing like the founder effect where a small little population can carry traits and characteristics

that are maybe not totally, not a complete example of where they came from. And so you have like a radical deviation when they spread out. Wow. So he got into this stuff with animals and like, and why do animals seem to change? Like when the bison arrived in North America, why did it all of a sudden have a six foot horn span? Wow. So he got into this stuff with animals and why do animals seem to change? Like when the bison arrived in North America, why did it all of a sudden have a six-foot horn span?

And then shrank very rapidly. So he got into a lot of these ideas, and he also did a lot of genetic work. You have mitochondrial DNA so they can track female descent. You should have him on sometime. Yeah. You know, he'd be the coolest guy To have on in the world Actually Valerius Geist Yeah Where does he live?

Could I come listen? Yeah you can come in I would just listen at home Like most people right Well you could just come in You could come in I'm sure you'd have questions Yeah

You could just sit there And drink coffee Okay And I'll be like Sounds perfect I'll be like Now explain this to me Mr. Geist Yeah he's a great guy

So anyways he got into A lot of stuff with deer. And I bring it all up because we're looking at your fine specimen, your fine 4x4 muley sitting here in the vest. Would have never happened if it wasn't for you. Boom, boom. I was watching this thing that was talking about deer on television. They were talking about the difference in the size of the bodies of deer from the far north like alberta in canada to the far south like in mexico and that as you the further you go south the animals tend to be smaller and they tend to be smaller bodied yeah it's the

prince maybe you got can you it's the print alan burt is the burger principle it's got a name damn there's a name for that principle and it would be that if you look like take the extreme like whitetails like the biggest like guys dream of going to alberta to hunt whitetails because whitetails are huge meanwhile 400 pounds right they're enormous big yeah you know that's crazy that's an elk i mean 400 is huge but you know you get deer to push it up then you go down the florida keys that's a whitetail you know those things are 70 80 pounds wow so there's this principle the burger bergman it's got a name my brother he told me what the name of it is and but some species seem to be a little bit exempt they say that mule deer don't do that

quite as much you know you get some really big mule deer in other areas they're not they're not as tied to it which is like a general principle. And what they speculate it has to do with is heat retention. So you have more, like you way more than me. I have more surface area per unit of mass than you have. So if you're a really big deer and if you're in the north the thing you're trying to do is retain body heat and the animals like people shed body heat by just exposing parts like when deer lay down they lay down with their legs tucked in them because you look on the inside of a deer's leg very thin hair very thin hair under the tail right and when they're laying

down they protect if it's cold they're protecting those areas that have thin hair. So a big animal has less surface area. So he's less capable of shedding heat and more capable of retaining heat. A small, wiry animal has greater surface area and he's able to shed heat. So one of the things you look at mule deer, like mule deer further south will have tend to have bigger ears because a very a great way to shed heat is through your ears so they'll have thinner hair on their ears bigger ears if you think about a radical version of it just imagine like the the woolly mammoth okay the woolly mammoth the woolly mammoth is more closely related to the african elephant than he is to the mastodon.

So you had, in North America, at the tail end of the Pleistocene, you had mammoths and mastodons. And mammoths were not very closely related to mastodons. They're pretty closely related to African elephants. Mammoths live in the north. They have, like, essentially no ear. They have just a very small ear. You look at African elephants, they have those giant freaking ears because they can funnel a lot of blood through those ears

and shed a lot of heat. It's like you shed a lot of blood through those ears and shed a lot of heat. It's like you shed a lot of heat through your fingers, you know, and your ears, how they get so cold so fast because you're able to, you know, you push a lot of blood into those areas and it's cooling off in the air. So that's one reason that that's like a theory of if it is, I think it might be the Bergman principle. Bergman's rule. Nice work. Bergman's rule has one explanation for it. I don't know if you'd ever really

know the absolute truth, but the explanation for it is heat retention and heat dissipation. That's fascinating. So the stuff that's on the northern extreme of its range, where it's butting up against the thing that puts the throttle on its existence is cold. He will tend to get bigger.

In mammals, he'll tend to get bigger. mammals you know he'll tend to get bigger but then there's all these other deviations like why do uh you know like how you get these huge reptiles on islands you know i mean yeah and then on islands you tend to have dwarfing like that wrangle island off siberia had these little mini mammoths you know yeah so there's all these other factors i don't even know i don't even know why it's like that with islands but i know with latitude that you get that. And I've also read, I think I even read from, maybe it was Valerius Geist, was writing about how mule deer seem to not be quite as,

they seem to defy Bergman's rule a little bit more than some other species do. Probably because they're a hybrid? I have no idea. That's fascinating. The island dwarfism is a weird thing. It's bizarre. How it doesn't apply to lizards, those Komodo get like yeah like those things get huge and other things get small you don't know anything about weird thing about mule deer and this kind of fits here because we're

in california you know you know i've obviously i-5 so for black-tailed deer are very very similar to mule deer columbia blacktail so in california you have columbia blacktail washington oregon you have columbia blacktail eventually you get up to the north of just nor on the coast you get to the bc alaska border and you start calling them sick of blacktail sick of blacktails man you look at them it's like they almost look like a white tail but they're a blacktail deer the columbia blacktail resembles much more a mule deer for record keeping purposes the divider between the range of the columbia mule deer or i'm sorry the divider between the range of the columbian blacktail and the mule deer is i5 really so if that son of a bitch jumps the road he is for for record keeping purposes

he becomes he goes from being a columbia blacktail to a mule deer. So you look like all the record book Columbia blacktails, you know, are shot along the left side of I-5 on a northward direction because they're just like so, you know, they're much bigger than anywhere else. But they've got to divide it somewhere, so they divide it like that. So in one thing's life, he could jump back and forth. They're not even recognized as distinct. If you look at the Latin name for them, you know, the scientific name for them, like taxonomists don't recognize the difference, but we all do. as distinct. If you look at the Latin name form, the scientific name form,

taxonomists don't recognize the difference, but we all do. You look at it, that's not a freaking mule deer, man. I can tell by looking, but it's just these morphological differences, these things you see, but they're not really betrayed in the genetics. That's fascinating, man. It's so interesting

trying to track the history of these animals and that somebody actually did that and figured out. Yeah, and it changes all the time. That's funny. My old man, he used to reject so much this stuff because it would change. He'd be like, well, they used to say this. So don't believe any of it.

Well, they were saying the best understanding and now this is the, you know, it's not static, subject to change, but it's frustrating for people. I'm glad you're on this week, because this is a week that's pretty controversial in the news, this story about this black rhino that they auctioned off a hunt for. This is some fascinating shit to me, because- Fill me in.

Do you know the story? I only know, I know no more than what you said. I've been at a thing all week. This is some fascinating shit to me Fill me in Do you know the story? I know no more than what you said I've been at a thing all week Oh you were at the SHOT show Yeah so I haven't even They auctioned off A hunt for a black rhino The winner paid $350,000

To shoot this rhino There's only like X amount of thousand of them left in the world and people are going fucking bananas can i guess that they're using that 350 000 to put up enforcement yes they can for conservation they generated over a million dollars in the auction really allegedly yeah and um what what they're saying is that this rhino had to go anyway because this rhino was an old non-breeder and he was very aggressive and he was trying to kill the younger males. And because it's an extinct or because it's an endangered species, this was an animal that they were going to have to do something about anyway.

Really? Yeah. They would have either had to, I guess, put him in animal prison or they were going to have to fucking shoot him. So they decided to auction off. They have this very specific animal that they've targeted this old non-breeding male and uh the guy who auctioned who won the auction is now in fear of his life i mean really the press has he gone and done it yet no not yet he lives in dallas or just outside of dallas and i don't know if i was going to pick what town he lived in well i was going to ask you about that too because texas is a fucking strange place man

um you know it's a way different wildlife model yes since being introduced to uh hunting by you i've uh become pretty obsessed and uh i read about it all the time and i'm trying to sort out all the different philosophies and try to figure out why people think what they think. But what I'm most fascinated by in Texas is these wild game farms. This is a really weird thing they do. I saw some online that were like fucking 70 acres and they have a high fence

and people are pretending that they're hunting in these things yeah they'll sometimes set the animal out on the day it's it's crazy i mean it's but it's something of but let's come back around that but i want to talk for me about the i had the the rhino thing there are versions of that here and we can talk about i can talk in a much more educated way or you're in a much more knowledgeable fashion about versions of that that occur here in the U.S. But I've never been to Africa. I haven't hunted in Africa. I have ill-informed opinions about what goes on in Africa.

But I recognize when it comes to stuff like this, there are so many contradictions that are hard to deal with and it's really difficult for people to get their heads wrapped around why a guy you know i don't know not knowing the person i can't say that the person is saying who's like oh i would just as happily give you the money to help save rhinos but if this one has to go anyways i suppose suppose I'll come and get it. You know, I don't really know what his motivations are. His motivations are not that. He's a part of a big game trophy hunting group. Yeah. He's never going to, he's not gonna be able to bring it back into the U.S. probably. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I don't

know what he was trying to do. I don't know what he's planning to do. I don't know. But I know I've been reading all these articles. They interviewed the guy. He's afraid of his life. I mean, they're talking about skinning reading all these articles. They interviewed the guy. He's afraid of his life. I mean, they're talking about skinning his children alive. Is that right? It's fucking, you know, animal rights people get pretty crazy. Can I tell you about a parallel thing that goes on in the U.S.? Because I just can't speak to it there.

Like, I don't even know who owns it. Is it owned? The rhino? I mean, is it on a... It's on a conservation. It's on a concession. Well, what they're doing is they have like X amount of thousands of them. And they need money in order to maintain the property and enforce it.

That's a good question. I don't know. Yeah. Let me tell you about a parallel thing that happens in the U.S. If you're interested. Yes. Okay. In the U.S., we abide by the basic notion. This is like generally true in the U.S. That wildlife belongs to people. Okay. In the U.S., we abide by the basic notion.

This is generally true in the U.S., that wildlife belongs to people. So if you have, let's take an imaginary elk, and this imaginary elk is on Yeltsin National Park. And one day, the elk jumps a fence and lands on National Forest in Montana. And he jumps another fence, and he's on national forest in montana he jumps another fence and he's on state forest in montana and he jumps another fence and he's on a big ranch in montana throughout that animal's day he has always been u.s he's always belonged to the people okay when he's in montana he's belonged to like the state of montana is in charge for his management so we have this idea in a rough sense we have this idea that we maintain here that

wildlife is held in the public trust an individual can control access to his lands for hunting but the animal belongs to the state you don't get to make decisions necessarily about the things that are on your property. And that's been something that Americans and particularly American hunters have always been proud of. We have this North American model of wildlife conservation we always talk about, which is this idea of public trust wildlife, and that we manage it in long-term things because people have a vested interest in having more and more animals around for whatever purpose viewing hunting etc one of the things they do though and so you take an animal like like the bighorn sheep and the bighorn sheep at a time was pretty nearly wiped out i mean they

were hurt and they were never hurting as bad as black rhinos are but they were hurting really bad and as we got them restored we started having limited numbers of tags so you might have a mountain range and every year they determine that we can kill one sheep out of that range and people will and i do this every year people will apply for a lottery that's conducted by the state and you put your name in the hat you pay a fee they you know put all the names and they're drawing out and be like dave draws a tag and this generates a whole bunch of money they use it for tranquilizing sheep that you can helicopter them to new areas and restore the species. And all the funding comes from this kind of stuff. One thing they realized, a great way to make money is if you can get that up,

let's say you can kill five out of that mountain range, they might wind up going, we'll do four through the lottery, which is for everyone, like the common man's pool. But we're going to take one and auction it off. Every year, the Bighorn She, but we're going to take one and auction it off. Every year, the one, the bighorn sheep tag they auction in Montana, it goes for $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 every year. I think recently it went for $380,000 or $400,000. I mean, it's always up there. Holy shit.

I don't think it's broken a half million, but it goes up because if you go in Montana and you go hunt six, if you go hunt the Missouri breaks, all the record book, big horns come out of there. Okay. Like the biggest, big horns, the biggest Rocky mountain, big horns come out of the break. So guys will pay a ton for the gut, what they call the governor's tag in Montana. And it raises a ton of money and it does a ton of good, but some people feel, I see both sides of this argument. Some people feel like that bit of money is not worth the damage you're doing by upsetting this idea of democratically owned and administered wildlife. Like most guys will put in their entire life for a bighorn sheep tag and they'll pay the fee every year and they have no chance. I've been putting in for that tag for 14 years.

I've accumulated, they started a bonus point system 12 years ago. And a bonus point system means that every year you put in the next year, you get a, you get a, every year you put in without being successful, you get a point and they square your points. So next year, my name will go on the hat 144 times. If you did it for your first year, your name will go on the hat 144 times if you did it for your first year your name will go on the hat one time even with my name in the hat 144 times i don't think i'm even up to having a one percent chance of drawing a bighorn sheep tag wow so meanwhile a guy can come in and he makes a bunch of money one guy that buys lately made a lot of money selling sandwiches he comes in and he's like i'll be buying one of those and i'll buy it next year and people are

like all that money is so useful and it is other people are like dude this is not the country we live in because we're still we're still kind of hurting from the idea of where we came from in europe which is like the robin hood model you gotta be rich to hunt a lot of people don't know that the robin hood was actually based on hunting. It wasn't based on stealing money from the rich and giving to the poor. It was based on the poor weren't allowed to hunt. Yeah, he would go out and hunt the king's animals. And he used to, I mean, even at the time when our ancestors were, like,

first coming over, you know, they could kill you for hunting. They could kill you for hunting. You had to be rich to hunt. So when guys, like, you think of, of like the story of Daniel Boone, man, he came out and he's like, geez, this whole, you know, his relatives came from England. He comes over here, he's like, man, this whole freaking country, I go hunt wherever I want.

So people really fell in love with that idea of freedom and, you know, and that you could kind of roam around and the animals were there, free for the taking. And now we're a little bit upsetting this model, but other people who are on the other side of this say, yeah, but the money's so helpful. And if it wasn't for big chunks of money like that, we wouldn't have recovered the bighorn sheep as effectively

as we've recovered the bighorn sheep. And it's not cheap. Three or $400,000 for a tag is incredible. Yeah, type in Montana Governor's Tag. You'll see what it went for last time. And do they sometimes fail? I mean, they must. They must.

I heard a story where the guys that buy it, once you spend that kind of money, you want to rule out uncertainty. And you know that you can picture the area, right? Yes. You know all that stuff we floated through. Yeah, we saw a lot of big countries. When a guy will buy the governor's tag, he'll usually hire some guys. He'll hire some guys to go spend a couple months they'll put together a dossier on the animals that are in the area yeah man oh my god that's ridiculous they scout when they find

one they stay on it there's guys that just specialize in this business look at that 480 000 bid the record yeah for 2013 oh my480,000 somebody paid for the tag. Look at those dudes going to war. Yeah, his sack is kind of tucked up to the left. He can't really appreciate it. Yeah, we showed that video the other day of you talking about wanting to eat it. So it's valuable to people. It's a ton of money.

Not the sack. No, no, not the sack, no. But it really makes people mad. Yes. There's a story, and I don't even know if it's true. I heard it from enough people that I tend to think it's a ton of money not the sack no no not the sack no but it really makes people mad yes there's a story and i don't even know this true i heard it from enough people that tend to think it's true so these guys will go out and they'll get a guy they'll get guys out there they find a tanker you know they're they want a ram that scored that's got over 200 inches of horn or more and they find one they don't let it out of their eyes right they stay on it stay on it stay on it and eventually the guy comes out and they go there he is that's the one you want a few there's a rumor a few years ago this guy had done

this and he'd spent all this money i can't i heard i'm just telling you unsubstantiated stuff i'm not even telling you i'm not telling you what year or his name because i don't because i don't want to say that and be wrong about what a high roller buys this thing pays a figure rumored to be around 30 grand to have some guy check this out. It comes down to it, and the guy's like, third one from the front, third one from the front. They go down on the gully, get mixed around, and he shoots, and it goes over to the wrong one. Oh, no. Yeah, but rumor has it that this gentleman later bought another one and went out and got a big fatty.

So he might have spent 500, 600 grand. Yeah. God. And, man, it tears me up because everything in life is so complicated. I see both sides of it. I love our system. I love the idea that wildlife is public trust. I love the idea that wildlife is public trust. And I think that there's no other way to explain the success of the richness of animals and the richness of wilderness habitats we have in this country.

When you look at how many people live here, how wealthy we are, all the technology. Some of the other countries that would be sitting where we're at have destroyed their wildlife. But we have a very intact place like a very intact system and we've done a fantastic job and i think that one of the ways to explain the fantastic job we've done is that we've really held true to this idea that wildlife belongs to us and when you do damage to it you're doing damage to this idea of you you know, an American treasure. You're damaging other people's interests. So yeah, man, it's complicated. So that's my long way of answering

the rhino thing. I bet you anything it is extremely complicated and that there is emotion battling logic. I'm amazed that it's cheaper to kill a fucking rhino

than it is a bighorn sheep. That is mine. It is amazing. That's by 100 grand plus. That's crazy. That's amazing. What's the ivory worth? Not worth that.

I don't think they have ivory. They have horns. Their horn is made out of hair. A rhino has a... No, a black rhino's got a... No. Oh, a rhino horn's not ivory but it's valuable yeah but it's not ivory no it's valuable because they're idiots because people think that

it makes your dick hard like i guess they haven't heard about viagra whatever the fuck they're trying out rhino horn but i went to i went the other day i mean just like three days ago i saw the act the current head of the u.s i went to see the current head of the u.s fish and wildlife service speak about some issues that we'll be facing this year. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is getting really involved in the rhino trade. When they talk about all the money they're spending, they're spending money on enforcement. They're spending money on trying to battle the source. You might somehow convince people that they don't want it.

All the things you would do. I remember thinking about the millions and millions of dollars they're talking about throwing around. I remember being like, too bad you can't just go find any guy who wants to go get one. You'd give him more money than he's ever going to make hunting them. Yeah. But the world doesn't work that way

because some other dude would be like, but I remember thinking you would make every rhino poacher really wealthy and they'd just be like, okay, cool, I'll quit. Yeah, but it wouldn't work. Then other people would come along, well, I'm going to be a rhino poacher too. No, they just be like okay cool i'll quit yeah but it wouldn't work and other people come on well i'm gonna be a rhino poacher too no i know but i remember i remember just thinking if those guys could only know the amount because you know they're not like no matter what like that business i don't like the guys that are actually out there with firearms you can imagine the guy that's out on the ground hunting rhinos being chased by people who have

pretty much a license to in in some cases, kill them. I don't think that guy is a rich man. He's making someone wealthy, but there's no way that guy is rich. Not only that, it's just such a bizarre thing, the idea of shooting this giant, majestic, endangered animal just for its horn. They're not eating them them they're not doing anything else with them they're just shooting them and taking their horns and there's no real medicinal value it's not like the rhino maybe one thing with the rhino horn had this incredible anti-aging

property and it turned you into a young person again well you know they'd probably fucking kill every rhino they could find but it doesn't do anything it doesn't really do anything but yeah but it's just but it's just it's probably i mean it's an issue of poverty yeah and not that that justifies what i'm saying like i don't even know the guys that are out poaching rhinos they might not even have any idea who it is that they might have like some vague awareness about the properties but i don't know if they believe in the properties as well yeah i'm a little bit ignorant about who's actually wanting these rhino horns. What I've heard, it's an Asian thing. Yeah.

But it seems to be one of the most bizarre misunderstandings and miscommunications ever. In this day and age, with all the information that's available, especially because it's always about penises. It's always about guys getting erect penises. Well, it's a phallus. It is a phallus. It's got to be just that it's a nice phallus. But they grind it up for medicine, apparently.

It's so strange. I mean, it's an amazing animal. When you look at a rhino, to me, I mean, it's one of the closest things. I mean, look like a triceratops or a stegosaurus or something like that, and then you look at a rhino. It's like one of the closest things to that ancient time you look at this big fucking giant armored animal it's a strange strange animal you know and the idea that people are killing it to make their dick hard it's just so bizarre and and it's but no they're killing it to make money and people are buying it to get to make the dick

hard yeah and it's not even working you know it's just so strange we should have we should make a public service announcement right now we'll have them drop leaflets over china just it doesn't work just bags full of viagra drop them with parachutes just just launch them you know yeah isn't it amazing like in that way that that there's stuff now they'd be like no, dude, this really does work. I mean, to the point where it could cause trouble for you. Like, try this. We have to go to a doctor because your dick won't go down.

It works on everybody, too. It works on dying people. You chew up a Viagra and you have a zombie dick in your pants scratching at your zipper. No, it's amazing. You think that the pharmaceutical industry would... What's the word? Like the aphrodisiac? Yeah, I guess.

What is the term? No, I'm saying what is the term for like... You want to eat Asian horn... I guess an aphrodisiac. That the aphrodisiac market for men would, you know, the dick-hardening market for men would evaporate now that there are pharmaceuticals that are specifically tailored for that and are clinically proven to work. Well, that's how the American troops get information about the Taliban from the Afghani warlords is Viagra.

It's the number one method of payment. Really? Yeah, because these guys, a lot of these warlords, they're living the same way they lived back when Alexander the Great was running Afghanistan. Afghanistan has Kabul and then mountains, and mountains filled with villages and extremely primitive locations. And they're living old school. And sometimes there's a guy who's a warlord who's got 20 wives, and they're living old school.

And sometimes there's a guy who's a warlord who's got 20 wives, and his dick doesn't work anymore. And they come along, and they go, look, we got guns. He's like, I got guns. Look, we got women. I got 20 wives, and I can't even fuck them. Oh, listen, check this out. You give them this bottle of pills, and this guy's like, listen,

these Taliban fucks, I never liked them. They're hiding over there. Those guys are over there. How many more pills you got, man? They fucking give these guys cases of Viagra. They tell them everything. They can't stop talking. Yeah, you've heard of Big Mac diplomacy. That's the way. Viagra diplomacy. That actually works.

I'm 40 years old in a month. You ready to get in on the Viagra? Is that what you're trying to tell me? No, I'm just saying. What are you trying to say? You ready to get in on the Viagra? Is that what you're trying to tell me? No, I'm just saying. What are you trying to say? Back to this rhino thing, talking about... Yeah, I just can't.

I just, my head wants to blow up because I see all sides of it. I do, but that's beautiful. I think that's important to see all sides of it. The part I do not see, though, for me, is I don't, like, I would never, like part i don't see the part i do not see though for me is i don't like i would never like i don't have that desire to hunt one of those but so much of that kind of thing is and it's hard for people that don't understand so much that kind of stuff comes from context you know like you develop over time a deep context with an animal and for me that familiarity and the hours you spend the hours you log watching, watching it, understanding it, reading about it, studying it, for me, develops into something, like, produces a great desire to hunt the animal once I get to know it.

An animal that I don't know well, I don't have any desire, I don't have that much desire to hunt for it. But when I watch them and watch them and watch them like, like bighorn sheep, when I'm, when I moved to Montana, when I was born in Michigan, I moved to Montana. I didn't go out there being like, man, I cannot wait to hunt bighorn sheep. But after spending years and years and years out, you know, glassing for deer, glassing for elk, glassing for bears and like bighorn, bighorn, bighorn. And I really got to where I love to watch bighorns. I liked everything about bighorns. And in time, I was like, man, I would someday love to have an opportunity to go hunt a bighorn, and it was born from that.

So when I say that I have no desire to hunt a rhino, it would be to me like hunting martians. I just don't have any familiarity with it. It just doesn't culturally, I haven't read about it my whole life. When I go and look at calendars, like hunters love love wildlife calendars and it's like all the stuff we like to hunt you know you don't grow up looking at like the rhino page on a while on a hunting calendar it's just i just have no context with it and this gentleman that that bought this thing i don't know i don't know i just don't know anything about him i'd love to talk to him he probably doesn't want

to come on your podcast yeah um I don't think he wants to. But his name is Corey Knowlton, and he's got a private security detail following around all the time now. He's giving this interview with CNN. He's talking about the people who have threatened his kids because he has people threatening to kill him right now that I have to talk to the FBI and have my private security keep my children from being skinned alive and shot at. A little hyperbole. A lot of people are just talking shit.

I'm not going to kill your fucking kids, man. They're not murderers. But people get angry when they hear about someone hunting something as a trophy. Absolutely. I think that there's a big distinction between you wanting to hunt a bighorn sheep because you you follow it and you study it and because because but you eat the fucking sheep yeah that's that's a difference man there's something creepy about wanting to shoot something just so you could stuff it and put it in your room

yeah it's complicated it's complicated it's complicated It is That, that It's like It would feel very If I did shoot the rhino I would eat them There's no way I wouldn't eat them Are they edible? They must be Oh yeah, I'm sure

They eat elephants I know that you shoot an elephant In the villagers They like that Friends of mine that have hunted in Friends of mine that have hunted in Alaska Or, sorry Friends of mine that have hunted in Africa kind of marvel at the rapidity with which, like how quickly the animals get hauled off and consumed.

They said it's like not a lot of waste. Then there's some animals that you look at and you think they'd be really good and they're not very popular. And other animals that you'd look at and you wouldn't think would be that great and they're really popular as table fare. I don't know what the reputation of rhino is. But elephant's popular as table fare. People like the elephant a lot. My problem with elephants is they're intelligent.

That bothers me. Yeah? Yeah. Intelligent animals, it bothers me. I have no desire to hunt one. But again, I have no context. Yeah, exactly. And I don't really understand.

desire to hunt one but again i have no context you know and i don't and i don't really understand for me to go like for me to go hunt something i also have to know that it's sound that it that it's in a safe position and one nice thing about living in the u.s i mean there's some exceptions to this but generally in the u.s like if you want to be if you want to be ethical about your hunting practices in the u.s you can generally look to the guidance of your state fish and game agency i mean a state fish and game agency can't get away with i mean theoretically can't get away with and practically can't get away with running a species into the ground you know it would be big trouble for them so generally if you if you're looking and you realize that there's a you know there's a population of bighorns and there's a hunting season for them right now, it's okay.

I mean, it really is okay. If they're finding a decline in that thing, they're going to curb it or cut it out altogether and wait until it's growing again. And then you can also look at their long-term goal of where they want animals, how many animals they think the area can support. So it's easy in the U.Ss because this stuff is watched so much obviously again coming from a guy doesn't spend any time in africa i know that in africa like money talks in a way that it doesn't necessarily hear when it comes to small issues like like wildlife like you can buy your way into things that maybe you don't have any real ethical business doing you know and in the u.s it's just easier to kind of, there's

a lot more information at our fingertips. So for me, when I, when I go hunting, I can really kind of read up and understand a lot about what I'm going after, where it's at, what the management goals are, what risks the animal has is hunting it, you know, productive and helpful right now. Is it potentially detrimental to the species and you can make your decisions. right now is it is it potentially detrimental to the species and you can make your decisions it is amazing how good a job the department of fish and game or what is the actual group what are they called well there's the state so you have u.s fish and wildlife service which is a which is a federal thing and so they have a hand in they have a hand in managing migratory waterfowl but most things are managed by so every state has a you know you kind of like

just in general terms you call them fishing game but it's like in michigan it's the michigan department of natural resources in montana's montana um department of fish wildlife and parks but just as a euphemism versus fishing game so you know every state the d is department of environmental conservation in new york so every state has a different name, but it's a state department that sets hunting and fishing regulations. And on these state departments would be big boards, and the people that set it will be biologists, various figures, different stakeholders. So you'd have, like, representatives from the hunting community, representatives who are outside of the hunting community. representatives from the hunting community, representatives who are outside of the hunting community,

will all come together and come to some level of cohesion and some level of, you know, they'll find a happy middle ground when they set their quotas. And they often, I mean, they meet every year to determine what can be done and not done. And they can control harvest a number of ways by issuing tags, shortening seasons, lengthening seasons. You can, if you want to slow down a harvest, you might move the season away from the rut. If you want to pick up a harvest, kill females.

If you want to bring a population down because of various factors like agricultural interests, auto insurers generally want deer numbers lower. Agricultural interests generally want deer numbers lower. Landscape people often want deer numbers lower. Agricultural interests generally want deer numbers lower. Landscape people often want deer numbers lower. So to kind of factor their concerns, and you've got the concerns of people who want, hunters want more deer, they want to see more deer around. And you figure all this out, and there's all these management tools to try to find a way to tweak things. Another thing is predator control.

If you have a population that's really hurting, you go in there and do predator control in that area and sometimes you can bring you know you can bring some animals back from the brink it's possible to lose isolated populations like it's possible to have a mountain range and you get a you spend a few hundred thousand dollars a million dollars whatever moving some bighorns in there and you find that you're just getting hammered by lions and you're going to lose all the sheep and lose your whole investment you might go in there and hit those lions a little bit you know save them so there's so many tools at their disposal but i you know in general in general there are exceptions in general i think that i'm always amazed how well the state fish and game agencies do yeah that's what i was going to say

it's probably one of the most efficient government agencies ever. They're good. And you know what the other thing about them is they don't get a lot of hard funding. There's not many agencies that get so much of their funding from license sales. So firearms taxes. That's why there's a lot of conservation money out there right now because the gun businesses have been blowing up. As people feel that their

gun rights are under attack, they've been buying so many firearms, it puts money in the Pittman-Robertson fund, I think it's called. That goes to conservation stuff. There's excise taxes on firearms, excise taxes on ammunition, excise taxes on sporting goods, all your license

fees. Every guy who ever hunts ducks or migratory birds has to buy a federal waterfowl stamp, state waterfowl stamp. All this money plows in and creates money for conservation work, research. And so these agencies are, in large measure, some more than others, are self-sustaining, you know. That's one of the funny things. I know that you get annoyed by pita as much as i do it's like they're not spending the money on doing the stuff that hunters are like hunters are are

bankrolling so much of wildlife research and wildlife conservation and it's not just stuff that benefits the animals we're after you know my my problem with groups like pito or the animal liberation organization the people that want to fucking save lobsters and rescue them from restaurants and throw them back into the ocean, there's a lot of knee-jerk reactionary nonsense that's not based on the actual science of understanding the population of these animals. That's what drives me crazy. When people start getting angry at people hunting wolves, like this is a perfect example. They've opened up wolf season now in a bunch of different places. And the reason being is that people's livestock are getting decimated. Elk populations are getting destroyed.

I mean, they have to move in to control it. But to a lot of animal rights people, all they see is bloodthirsty maniacs that want to kill beautiful wolves. And they don't understand that, first of all, A, these wolves have been reintroduced to a lot of these areas. And then B, like, we're supposed to be the stewards of the land. We're supposed to be the intelligent people that understand the numbers. And there, something has to be done about it. This isn't something that people have decided, I'd like to kill a wolf. Yeah, let's make it legal. No, they're going, hey, we've got an issue. What are you going to do? Let's all

meet. Let's compare data. Let's see what we got and see what we're going to do here yeah you get this idea like oh they've just one day decided to go and do it and it's a i'm sure you have on one level you have individuals who absolutely like a guy opens up his regulation book he's like well i can buy a wolf tag this year that individual does not really need here that individual does not really need to understand. It's nice if he does, but he doesn't need to understand the full picture because that individual is a tool being used by managing agencies. They're like, we need to get rid of some wolves. We could bring back the days where we have government agents going out and gunning for them, or we could open it up and have people actually pay money to go out and have the opportunity to try to do what we need to do anyways. So the guy that goes out, I can't always speak to every guy that goes out and hunts wolves. I can't speak to his motivations.

I don't know. But they're servicing a greater good in that they're being used as a tool that winds up being an economic driver, which kind of points to the efficiency of wildlife management. You could hire the job out, which in some cases it does because there are you know we do have government trappers to do some wolf control but it's kind of nice that you can wind up turn like rather than you're paying someone to go out and do it you can have people pay for the opportunity to go out and do what we know needs to be done and in in these cases we're gonna have to get we're gonna have to lower wolf numbers no one's arguing Not that no one is.

No one's arguing for a new extirpation of the wolf. That would be in the worst interest of the managing agencies. The last thing Wyoming would want now, they get the wolf delisted. People are suing to stop the delisting. Wyoming gets the wolf delisted. They go into control. No one in Wyoming in the government would like to see wolves wiped out and put back on the endangered species list it'd be the worst thing that could possibly happen for them there's no interest to like extirpate them you know no one's arguing for extirpation it's just bringing them into control

because we are puppeteers you know i mean there's a lot of people living here and you're back you're you're like really balancing a lot of interests you know and so again it's like like so much in life you really have to take before jumping into the stuff the emotional stuff you really have to take the time to look at this stuff it's a long complicated issue it's long there's a lot of factors and we haven't even gotten into ballistics ballistics no i was trying to explain i was trying to explain to you all the different calibers oh jesus christ no i'm saying like it's like uh the whole world of yeah it's that's kind of why i love all this stuff man yeah it's like it's like chess or something well there's new things to learn

that's for sure i you know before long before before I ever even thought about hunting, I would see a beautiful deer and I'd be like, why would anybody kill that? It's so cool to look at. And then you see a few people hit them with cars. And one time I was driving home, I was doing a gig in upstate New York, and I had to drive home like 30 miles an hour at the most because fucking deer were everywhere. It was madness. It was in the middle of the summer, and I've never seen more. I don't think I'd ever seen more than, like, two deer in my whole life until this day. And then I'm driving home from this gig, and it was fucking madness.

It was upstate New York. Was it November? I want to say it was the summer, but it was so long ago. I don't really know. They were out and about. Fucking madness. Just jumping in front of the car left and right. You see them on the side of the highway. was the summer but i it was so long ago i don't know they were out and about fucking madness just jumping in front of the car left and right you see him on the side of the highway and you see one get plastered by a truck and it opens up you're like that thing's made of meat i had no idea they

were exploding i mean i saw at least four of them that had exploded and wrecked cars and it was one of the craziest things i'd ever seen in my life i don't know why there's so many of them in this one particular area of upstate new york but it was a really an infestation yeah people are so whacked out too like in some of those areas in the northeast or you know there's so many deer and they're kind of like well maybe we can hire snipers to go out at night and shoot them or we'll give them uh you know we'll put the deer on birth control yeah meanwhile i got all these dudes being like i got a great i know the perfect way open up you know suburban urban bow hunt people pay to come out and do it's like no we'd rather pay i think i remember reading this one thing that come out i don't know what it was like by the time they

did this deer this town wanted to lower its deer population was all said and done they had like a thousand or more dollars into each deer they got rid of. Well, it's going on right now, you know, in the Hamptons. Do you know what's going on in the Hamptons? Massive overpopulation of deer. So they're hiring snipers. They're going to put suppressors on these guns and go in the middle of the night. They're going to hunt at night so that people don't have to experience it or freak out.

And they're going to shoot these fucking deer because there's so many of them. And then the other argument was, let's get them on birth control. They're going to spend $350,000 to give fucking deer birth control. Like, what are you talking about? There was a TV show about this. Well, it's all to prevent the harrowing experience

that might happen to someone should they wake up in the morning and realize and see a deer run into their yard and tip over because it had a arrow in it and as much as upsetting as that would be it's so much better to go out and just at night quietly snipe them off you know there was a clean it all up there's a video of uh this happening in some other country of uh they showed these um that was a joke that video lions released to deal with the deer population that was that was like the onion jamie's googling shit yeah it's the onion you fuck it was one of those

fake onions there's a bunch of onions now fake onion you know the onion if you don't know is a parody website there's a bunch of fake ones that aren't nearly as good at like being obvious but they're so fake do they say the onion on them no no no okay no they're just like national blah blah blah report but they're bullshit they're bullshit like one of them had a report of the day that uh colorado legalized marijuana 37 people died of an overdose oh yeah fucking i can't tell you how many people sent me that i'm like marijuana is not toxic you dummies like you you'd literally have to,500 pounds of marijuana in 30 minutes to die. It's not killing anybody. Stop.

But these people, they read this online and they think it's true. There's been a gang of those. Yeah, has anyone ever died? Have you ever heard no one ever dies from marijuana? It's not possible. You physically wouldn't be able to smoke enough to kill yourself.

The LD50, we actually were talking about LD50s. That means lethal dose at 50%, lethal dose at 50%. Oh, I got you. I've heard that term. You know, because my brother works in – his work involves a little bit, not the use of, but the understanding of herbicides and pesticides. I feel like he talks about LD50s on pesticides. Yeah.

Marijuana's so high it's insane. But there's a lot of things that have really low LD50s. Ecstasy, for instance. Like if you take, I think it's 10 or 15 times the effective dose of MDMA, you're dead. Yeah. If you eat 10 ounces of salt, if you're a 200-pound man, you eat 10 ounces of salt, you're a goner. Is that right?

Yeah. That's not much. But think of how upset your body gets when you're snorkeling or something, and you get a couple gulps. Oh, yeah. Just you start retching. Oh, man. That's salt water.

That's a miserable feeling. Well, it's also, if you have some sort of a bowel issue and you want to clean out the old pipes, a little bit of, take some Epsom salts and some water, just a couple of tablespoons, gargle it and shove it down the pipe and it'll be like a broken fire. Is that right? Oh my goodness. It's unbelievable.

It's very effective. I used to wash when I was, I got this job when I was 13, washing dishes at a summer camp. I was washing dishes for campers that were older than I was 13, washing dishes at a summer camp. I was washing dishes for campers that were older than I was. And there's a cook there, David S., I'll say. And one day he drank iced tea, and I put a bunch of salt in his iced tea to mess with him. So he'd sip it, and it'd be like salt, and he'd spit it out. As retribution, he comes up behind me and kind of puts me in a lock and

grabs my forehead and tips my head back and fills my mouth with poured salt yeah wow gave me some sores made me throw up that's dangerous yeah he probably didn't know that you could die david s that fuck where are you dave dave s I'll tell you the name of the camp. Camp Penduluan. Oh, where's that at? West Michigan. Is it still open? I have no idea.

I don't know why it wouldn't be. Camps are fucking little, they're little like breeding grounds for criminals. When I was a kid, I went to Boy Scout camp for two weeks. It was just a bunch of inner city kids from Boston alone in the woods with very little, very little guidance. Like Lord of the Flies? It was dangerous, man. It was bad.

By three days in, I was there for two weeks. By three days in, I realized, like, this is fucking dangerous. You have to keep your eyes open in the middle of the night because it was dark as shit. And kids were getting up in the middle of the night and tying kids to their beds and then leaving them in the woods, like dragging them out while they were sleeping. You know, they would wake up screaming alone in the middle of the night and tying kids to their beds and then leaving them in the woods, like dragging them out while they were sleeping. You know, they would wake up screaming alone in the dark, like in the woods.

There's no predators or anything in New Hampshire, but it was fucking... No, it still brings out the ruthlessness of youngsters. Yeah. So there was all these activities. I just hid and went fishing every day. So you were in the Boy Scouts? Yeah. I got up in the morning and just said,

fuck all your fucking plans. I'm going fishing. I just took my fishing rod and vanished. And they didn't care. As long as I was back at the end of the day, they didn't even know I was gone. Like no one knew. I did the archery things and then I went and fished.

And that's it. I remember, you know, I work at, I'm on the mass edit outside of magazine and they were telling me that the most letter-generating article they ever ran was an article that was deemed to be critical of the Boy Scouts. Because there had been a number of catastrophes that had happened to Boy Scouts at scout camp. Like a handful of things. There was a lightning strike. There was a drowning incident.

There's more things in there. It kind of ran this article like, is your kid safe at Boy Scout camp? And it really riled the organization up. I think they were telling me it wound up being the number one letter generating thing ever. Well, they don't want to face the reality of the situation it's not 100 safe if you're going camping it's not 100 safe most likely you're going to be fine statistically you're probably going to be fine but when you've got a bunch of inner city kids and they have fucking bows and arrows and pocket knives and they're wandering through the woods and there's

only like three counselors there was like 30 fucking kids and three people watching us. There was a lot of shit going on, man. You know, they tried to wake, they grabbed me in the middle of the night, but I woke up and I screamed and I jumped out of bed and they let me go. And then, you know, there's just a bunch of little inner city thugs. And I was young.

I was probably like at the time, maybe 12, maybe 13, somewhere along, but there was other kids that were like 16 and 17 and they were the ones that were doing shit and they were you know they were the Eagle Scouts

the older fucking weirdos that had done this many times they had been camping three or four years in a row and they were like

they were looking forward to it they were the warlords man they covered your clothes with toothpaste toothpaste doesn't come out of your clothes

try washing toothpaste out of your fucking clothes I dribble I dribble I I dribble. I got my, like, you know, vertical toothpaste. They would fucking squirt it all over people's clothes and mash them together and throw it back. And you pull your clothes out and they're covered with toothpaste. It was brutal.

Just a bunch of little criminals alone in the woods with very little supervision. My old man was involved, was real heavily involved in Boy Scouts for a while. And I think he'd become an eagle scout and i joined cub scouts as a kid but the problem the way it was is like my dad was always doing such interesting stuff it would take us to do such interesting stuff it'd be like you know whatever wednesday and there's a cub scout meeting you could go do like nice things you know like if you didn't have a dad it'd be great stuff you know but on one hand like i could go over and we could do like knot tying and stuff like that or i could go out deer hunting my dad and so like he always like would kind of trump you know you could do like the way

cool stuff so i never got involved in it but it was it was great for him because he was born like an inner city kid you know and didn't like that he was born inner city kid and wanted to somehow be out in the woods and for him it was a perfect avenue into it. But then for me, it was like, you know, you couldn't do as cool stuff doing that as I could hang out with my dad and his friends and his kids. So I never got really involved in it. When I was in high school, I don't remember the kid's name, but someone wrote a really cool article. One of the kids in my school about Boy Scouts, about the problem with the whole in my school, about Boy Scouts, about the problem with the whole code of the Boy Scouts.

Because one of them was keeping your thoughts clean. Was that right? Yeah. I forget the exact. Let's put up Boy Scout code. So you get to thinking about something, and you're like, man, I shouldn't be thinking about that. That never works.

Well, this guy was the guy who wrote this, I remember reading this as I was a high school student going, this guy's got a really good fucking point. The point was like, what do you give a fuck what I think? Like, why are you trying to control my thoughts? Like, I'm not hurting anybody. I might think something crazy and deviant, but I'm not doing it. As long as I'm not doing it, why am I supposed to keep my thoughts pure? Maybe it's fun for me to entertain ridiculous

thoughts. I know, because that's kind of what self-control is. Self-control doesn't speak to the ideas you entertain. Self-control speaks to or it's like you get an email and you're like, I'm going to write a really mean email back. It's so fun

to imagine what you're saying to me in the email. I'm going to put it off then tomorrow you write a regular email and that is like supposed to be like adult behavior exactly yeah

control yeah well you know someone's an asshole controlling your actions you see someone who's an asshole in the car

and you want to pull him out of the car and beat him to death but you don't you don't do anything you just go yeah and then you drive down

and you're like yeah I would I would pull his fingernails out I would sew his eyes open and throw salt on them and make him stare at the sun i never go there i just go to bone breaking right away snap someone's arm they don't want to fight back um yeah trustworthy loyal helpful friendly courteous kind obedient cheerful thrifty brave clean reverent a scout is reverent towards God.

He is faithful in his religious duties. He respects the belief of others. Yeah, here's the big one. Clean. A scout keeps his body and mind fit and clean. That was the one that this guy had a problem with. I remember reading that and going, yeah, the fucking Boy Scouts are silly. This kid's right.

But that's not what the fucking Scouts were. It wasn't when I was in the Scouts. When you were in there. I went to, my branch was in Jamaica Plain, which is not a very nice part of Boston. It's become more gentrified now. Yeah. But in the early, late 70s, 19, I guess it was 80, 1979 or 80 when I was in it. It was fucking creeps. What pushed you to get involved in it?

What was your, like, you wanted to get out? No. I mean, I liked fishing, and I liked outdoor stuff. I was always into doing stuff in the outdoors, and I did a lot of fishing. I was always fishing. So it was like a good avenue, perceived as a good avenue to get out and explore. I just thought it would be fun, something to do. I'd love to be an Eagle Scout.

I thought it would be a cool thing To be an Eagle Scout You know But then once I got in I was cool with the Scouts Until we went camping And then I was like Get the fuck out of here And then I was done You got terrorized

I was so sad too I miss my parents so bad I remember First time I'd ever been away For like two weeks By myself A bunch of fucking criminals In the woods

I came home I was so happy I used to get I can't even imagine now I used to get homesick When I was a kid Yeah I get the opposite of homesick now You know what I mean But yeah I used to get homesick when I was a kid. I get the opposite of homesick

now, you know what I mean? I used to get homesick as a kid. Well, do you find, I find, I travel so much that when I'm home for a couple weeks, I'm like, okay, already. What's next? I try not to be that, you know, I try not to, but yeah, you do, you get used to a certain momentum, you know, when you get home for a while.

My wife will sometimes point out, she's like, you haven't even been home a week, and can tell you you know well i don't get i the one way i don't get that way is with my kids like i never want to leave my kids and whenever i go like anywhere like on vacation the thing that or uh on a trip to work the thing that always gets me is i i hate leaving my kids i don't i don't like leaving them but my wife i'm fucking i don't mind leaving her at all i love her but i think it's good i think it's good to get the fuck away from people but just not little kids but if it was just me and my wife i'd be fucking vacationing i mean i would i'd be working i'd say vacation this is the wrong term it's going

places it makes me appreciate her more it makes me appreciate my friends more, too. I think there's a balance. And I think when you're around someone all the time, you don't appreciate them as much as when you go away, you miss them, and then you come back. I feel that's true for me. Yeah. I got to watch what I say because I can't imagine. I'm trying to picture my wife's going to listen. She's busy all the time, you know, but I never know when she might get a free minute.

Someone might tell her about it. That's the real problem. Yeah, I'm going to show her. The little fucking tattletales, one of those little bitches she goes to the gym with. I just want to say, though, I love my wife. I love my wife, too. So much. If my wife's listening, you're my favorite person ever.

Yeah, but just, like, I think that, you know, know like there's a balance you know and part of the balance is appreciating things when you're not there you know when you're gone you appreciate them like you know what you know my wife was annoyed with me recently i discovered this whaling jennings song called freedom to stay and it's like this dude the narrator whaling you know begins where he's got his backpack and he ties his bandana on, you know, and he goes to the door and this woman's sleeping and he's going to go off and roam around, you know, and be a vagrant.

And he realizes that everything he wants is here. And the refrain is kind of like, you gave me the freedom to go my own way, which gave me the freedom to stay. Where he's like... And she got annoyed at you? No, because I keep singing it to her and telling her how it's our song, you know. But she liberated me from my desire to be a wanderer.

Oh, that's funny. Well, you know, you live a very strange life for someone to be married to you. I mean, you're constantly gone away hunting. Yeah, I'm gone a lot. And you also are gone in places where you don't get any cell phone service. You're in the fucking mountains. You're off in Alaska.

You're in New Zealand. You're in these places where you're gone and you come back with this dead animal in a cooler. Yeah. My wife always asks, where were you? Who had gone? Who was with you? Did you get anything?

And she just likes to ask after I get back. It's like she often doesn't ask when I'm going. When I get back, she likes to know those things. My three-year-old wants to know what I kapowed. Kapowed. And if we're going to eat it now. He always wants to know that. Right.

Yeah, yeah. I have, I mean, I have, like, a very nice existence. You know, I get to spend a lot of time going to fantastic places and doing cool stuff. It's a very unusual life for a hunter that you've managed to figure out how to make a living doing that. I know, because I used to think I would make a living, like, I thought I'd make a living doing, that I was going to make a living. I knew I was going to make, I knew I wanted to make a living hunting. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional hunter. So I tried, I trapped for a long time and got, you know, sold fur.

Got really involved, like really heavily involved in trapping and, you know, took lessons in trapping, read everything about trapping. I was going to be a professional trapper. The fur prices were so low when I quit trapping that was just like wasn't gonna happen and then i hit on this idea that i would write about um that i'd write about that kind of stuff instead and so i was like writing was kind of my plan b but yeah i thought that i would just live out you know like when i was a kid i had this this dream or this fantasy that i would just live out in the woods and never talk to anybody and hunt, you know, and not kind of like make my living like communicating. It was supposed to be the thing.

The one thing that wasn't in my plan was I wasn't going to communicate. Well, that's really funny because you're good at it, you know, and the fact that the writing is, there was a sort of, you know, it came about in order to make it so that you can make a living hunting. Yeah. You're a really good writer, man. Meat Eater is a great book. Yeah, I enjoy it. I enjoy it. know it came about in order to make it so that you can make a living hunting yeah you're really good writer man meat eater is a great book yeah i enjoy like i enjoy it i remember when i was in 10th grade i just english teacher mr heaton and i had written an essay i'd written like a comparison

contrast paper about melville and faulkner or something i can't remember what and for the english class and he said i'm gonna submit your essay to a writing contest. And I forbade him from doing it. I can't even imagine why, but I told him I wasn't going to do that. I didn't want to be in the contest. But he sent it anyways, and I won second place. And when I got this letter that I had to go to this awards ceremony, it mentioned a cash prize.

And I was super excited. It was supposed to be $250 or something. And we go down there, and the gal that won, the event was at this place called the Froenthal Center in Muskegon, Michigan. 250 bucks or something. And we go down there and the gal that won, the event was at this place called the Frohenthal Center in Muskegon, Michigan. The gal that won goes up and gets a check. And then I go up and they give me a thesaurus. And I was just like bummed.

So I thought I got 250 bucks. And I was like visibly bummed. And Mr. Heaton had come to the awards ceremony with me and he said, he said something i'll never forget he's like you know there's far more than 250 dollars worth of words in that book you know so that was kind of my genesis as a writer was the idea that the book is worth 250 bucks no he meant like that if you can capture no no not his point i mean like you thought you were going

to get 250 bucks, they just changed. Their budget wasn't what it was. I mean, I never had a satisfactory answer to why I didn't get $250. But I went there wanting my check and come out with this book. I still have that thesaurus, you know. Do you really? Yeah. Oh, that's funny.

Yeah, I keep it in my box of, like, special stuff. How did you wind up doing The Wild Within? That was how I found out about you. You were on a show on the Travel Channel. It was called The Wild Within. It was an interesting show. The first episode I ever watched you were going to take the same route

that Lewis and Clark took and you shot a moose and turned it into a boat. Made a bull boat out of a buffalo. It was a buffalo? That's what it was. You shot it with a musket too, right? Do you want the show business story about how I did What made you decide To be on TV

Like what did I would periodically Like as a writer I would periodically Get called by Producers and developers About stuff I had written Or they would kind of

Summon you you know Like you might get a phone call Or you get an email Not a phone call An email through a magazine or whatever realize that some guy at history channel wants you to come down and and what they do is they're desk bound individuals and they're obligated to go into these meetings you know and have like some ideas and so when they're putting together their portfolio of ideas they would like to go contact

writers or people who are out doing interesting stuff in the hinterlands you know and come in and kind of report about what's exciting at the time and i'd gone to a number of these meetings over the years about stories i had written and and every time you get the email you're like oh my god i'm gonna be on tv and it would never work out but eventually i signed a development agreement after I wrote my first book, Scavenger's Guide to Oak Cuisine, which I just got the rights back to. That book sells like, there's so few of those books out there, they sell on Amazon for like $130. Really? And they just, like Miramax, their wine scene company, just gave me my rights back. Wow.

In a move that would benefit them in no way whatsoever, just like out of the goodness of their hearts, like gave me the rights to my book back. in in a move that would benefit them in no way whatsoever just like out of the goodness of their hearts like gave me the rights to my book back why'd they do that like the only as much as people like to talk about harvey weinstein being like the worst guy on the planet i don't know that i know that his company just gave me my book's rights back didn't even try to get money out of me just gave him to me i've never heard he's the worst guy on the planet people tell like horror stories you know i've never heard he's the worst guy on the planet. People tell horror stories, you know. I've never heard any horror stories. No.

I don't have any. There's a great book or a great documentary detailing a horror story that he dealt with. Oh, is that right? Yeah, it's called Overnight. Oh. Have you seen that? That's a great movie. It's a fucking great movie.

Yeah, and that guy was to blame in that thing. Oh, fuck yeah. Yeah, that guy. Like, the cover of it is him holding the camera to his head. That's a phenomenal movie. Folks who don't know, if you haven't seen it, it's about the producer, writer, whatever, of... What's that fucking... Boondock Saints.

Yeah, Boondock Saints. Yep. Terrible fucking movie, by the way. Don't you dare tell me that's good. No, I won't. Not you. I mean, whoever you are out there, you fucking freaks that like that. People have

told me that's good, and then I watched it, and I was like, I made it 20 minutes in. I was like, this is a piece of shit. This is a terrible movie. I didn't know anything about the history. I watched it after the documentary. I was like, I watched it, and I'm like, man, I gotta go see this movie. But it only validates the movie. You know what it came out of?

It came out of Pulp Fiction. There's this whole breed of this genre that came out of Pulp Fiction. What they don't understand, Pulp Fiction is a fucking genius movie from a genius movie maker. I mean, Quentin Tarantino

is a bad motherfucker. Dude, when I went to see that movie, it felt like like something came down from the heavens and touched my forehead. I had never seen anything like it. I didn't know anything about cool movies, man. I was blown away.

But it's so complex, and there's so many layers to it, and the timeline switched around. I mean, it's a genius work of film. And then this fucking dummy came along and decided to make this shoot-em-up. And there's going to be wild, fuck you, fucking, fucking, fuck, fuck, fucking, bang, bang, bang. And it's just an assault on your intelligence. It's shit.

And I just thought it was a piece of shit. And then I watched this documentary on the guy who made it. I was like, oh. And being out here. It's a great job. I don't even know anything about the guy that made that movie. It's a great job on that movie. Yeah.

Well, I mean, the people who made it. Like the guy who ever made Overnight. Yes. It was just a phenomenal job. Well, the guys who made it were the guys who were involved with him in the beginning. Oh, really? Yeah. They were documenting this rise to fame.

They were supposed to be documenting this guy who worked at a bar. Harvey Weinstein signs him to this gigantic deal and buys the bar, and they're going to own the bar together and make giant movies together. They just were convinced that this guy was brilliant. And meanwhile, he's saying anti-Semitic stuff. It's just ego. The documentary is about ego. And if you're a person who's planning on any sort of a career in show business, I think

it's a must watch. Because I've seen those people. I've never met him, but I've seen a hundred guys like him that didn't make it. I've met a hundred of those guys that were convinced that they're the baddest motherfuckers. This fucking town's never seen anybody like us before. We're going to fucking run this town.

I've met those guys. I've met so many of them. And acting and the film business breeds them it somehow or another the the idea of acting first of all is responsible for a lot of disproportionate egos egos that are not based on anything realistic that is based on your ability to pretend and then not even based on you being really good at pretending sometimes but you being famous for pretending and these people just because the camera's on them and the and people pay attention to them And then not even based on you being really good at pretending sometimes, but you being famous for pretending. And these people, just because the camera's on them and people pay attention to them, have these enormous, insane egos.

I've seen it on sitcom sets. I've seen it in movies. I've seen the actors. I've seen the madness. Like the reality of life escapes them. They are insulated from it completely. And they live in this world where the camera's on them and they have this idea

that because the camera's on them, they must be special. So because they're special, but there's no ego check. Yeah, I understand. To put it in honey terms, please, please. Please, okay. if you're going to go after a very difficult animal to track, say if you're going to go after a Himalayan tar, you're going to fucking climb through the mountains. It's an incredibly difficult task.

It takes a long time to get there. You might not see one for days. When you finally do see one like this mule deer that this skull that's on the table is a perfect example you and i hiked around for days we walked seven hours we worked our asses off man it's a haul so when that thing actually when i actually shot it and it dropped and then we brought it back it was like wow like we did it we did something yeah whereas if if that thing was in a a pen and I walked up and shot it in the face, I would have zero feeling of accomplishment. Well, acting is a lot like shooting an animal in the face.

It's a lot like shooting a penned up animal in the face. You're not really some special person. You're just someone who's crazy so you're good at pretending Because you don't really have a self identity So your self identity can be manipulated Or your personality can be manipulated In a role What you're saying has validity Because you act

I have, I have acted I avoid it for that very reason Because I feel like those people are sick I feel like there's something about that occupation Where you pretend to be like You know how many people I've met those people are sick. I feel like there's something about that occupation where you pretend to be like, you know how many people I've met that play tough guys in movies so they think they're tough guys?

They're fucking crazy. I've met so many of them. It's a sick way to make a living. Some people pull it off and they become really sensitive people like Henry Winkler. The Fonz. One of the nicest fucking guys I've ever met. I'll tell you, I've heard that from people pull it off and they become really sensitive people like henry winkler the the fawns yeah one of the nicest fucking guys i've ever met i'll tell you i've heard i've heard that from multiple

people he's a sweetheart fly fisherman by the way i've heard that from multiple people wrote a book about it i've never met an idiot on the river that was his book yeah yeah and i heard it but i've heard from multiple people what like a like like how surprised people are what a great guy you talk to him you would have no idea. And he played a tough guy. Yeah. He could turn on and turn off electric appliances by punching the wall. Well, he's a tiny little guy too, which is really, I mean, I'm a short guy, but he's tiny.

I mean, it's weird. You know, like this guy was like this tough guy on this show. Like how did that ever work? Yeah. He would walk into a bathroom and bang the wall and run out of the bathroom and he would talk to pinky tuscadero and he was good at it he was good at it too i mean but you know i've met my point is i've met a lot of really nice actors it's not a broad sweeping generalization but i think that the occupation itself is it's so unchecked like stand-up comedy for instance

is very checked like if you're a funny comedian the very checked like if you're a funny comedian the you the reason why you're a funny comedian you have to write the committee you have to write the comedy you have to perform it you bomb you reassess you go back to the drawing board you have to figure out how to do it once you actually get to doing it there's a certain amount of humility like after 10 years of doing that almost all comedians possess when you talk to them about comedy even if they're really good at it they'll never tell you like i'm i'm a bad motherfucker i'm the baddest motherfucker that ever got on stage they never you live a flop in such an immediate way man yeah you die you fucking you eat shit up there it happens so often you

crushes your ego i can imagine it's like you just watching it happen. It's like a movie. You make it. There's all this excitement and stuff. And later, it doesn't do well. You're up there going, this is not going well. I've never done it, but I can just imagine how humiliating it must be. The way I describe it is like sucking 1,000 dicks in front of your mother. It's actually probably worse than that because there's somewhere out there,

there's someone that would like to suck 1,000 dicks in front of his mother. Nobody wants to bomb on stage. it's just a horrible crushing him but along the way one of the things you learn is to be really good at comedy you you you you have to lose all of your sense of self-importance you have to lose all of that the pretending you're something special like you're not something but you're just a person and the best way to do comedy is almost to be non-existent like you you're you're when you write and when you perform there's almost no you in there unless it's a self-deprecating aspect of it like you're you're pointing out things that are silly about you or pointing out ridiculous ideas that you might have had in your

head at one point in time but other than that like when you're performing you're never thinking man i'm up here and i'm killing you don't think of that at all. Like in fact, you're almost like a passenger in this weird ride that you've put together. Yeah, I got it. And you, all you know is that you kind of know how to do it. And all you know is that you kind of have to keep at it in order to continue doing it. And it's really fun to do, but the moment you start taking it serious or attributing it, all of the success of it to you being super special and amazing and unique you fucking suck but we're your comedy suffers oh it goes terribly wrong yeah because people know that they don't want to laugh at you part of laughing

at you is like you have to be like in the moment of what you're doing and if you're in the moment of what you're doing the last thing you're going to be thinking about is how awesome you are. That doesn't come up. Whereas an actor, you can pretend that there's something really special about you. Like when that, ready, action. And then you do this role and you play this guy. It's all pretend. It's all bullshit.

So there's the checking aspect, the ego check, and the creative process, the tuning in, it's non-existent. You're treated probably around you, you're treated with a certain amount of deference too that you're not going to get doing stand-up. Exactly. They're treated like, we're treated like shit. The comedians are like, well, you know, people like you if you're good and they appreciate the, but no one takes it seriously as an art form, which is one of the reasons why plagiarism

was always so a huge problem with comedy, whereas it was treated with, you know, if you think about plagiarism in literature, there's lawsuits and people's careers are ruined. Oh, yeah, like you'll be disrespected. Music, massive lawsuits. I mean, people have lost millions of dollars just for a riff. Like, one of my favorite examples is

there's a great song by The Verb, Bittersweet Symphony. I know that song. But that riff is stolen from the Rolling Stones. So because of that, those guys made nothing. They didn't make anything off that song. I didn't know that. They had to give it all away. I still like that song. It's a great song. The lyrics are great. It's interesting. But there's no doubt about

it, that riff comes from the Rolling Stones. What Stones tune? I don't remember. You know this a little bit, I think. Maybe you forgot. I'm going to see you on January 31st. Oh, yeah. Oh, cool. Is it sold out yet? Should we talk about it? Yeah. No, it's sold out. It's been sold out for months. It's called The Last Time. What is it?

The Last Time by the Rolling Stones. That's the song, The Last Time? After I saw you last time, when I went to see you in New Jersey, we were driving home and my wife was saying to me she's like my face hurts from laughing at heart oh that's and I wanted to write a thing I wanted to write a thing like the I wanted to write I envisioned writing something called like the only happy

comedian because you seem like like I don't understand comedy at all but you gotta think you come at it from a position of strength in some way. Like, so much stuff is funny because it's, like, from a place of self-loathing. Like, so many comedians do, like, a self-loathing thing. And it might not be real, but it's, like, it's kind of, like, it's just where it spawns from is, like, self-hatred and I'm so pathetic, you know what I mean? It's, like, funny that you build a whole act. You can build a whole act and, like, come, like, you're at a position of strength. I don't know if you ever think of it that way but like you're up there like you seem like when you're

up there you seem somehow like in control and and you know like a word you like in control and powerful but still funny and it's a weird contradiction because we get from stand up we get to thinking like it's just like yo my wife don't like me no no one likes me, I'm awful, I can't do anything. Well, people have always said that, you know, you have to be nebbishy or fat or weird to be a comedian. Like, I was told that so much that I was insecure about my body when I first started doing comedy. That's kind of what I'm saying. You could be like, no, I'm fine. Like, if I wasn't doing this, I'd be fine.

I'd be doing something else. The thing about comedy is that there's no rules. There's no rules. I mean, there's sort of laws to it, but there's no rules. You know, there's laws. Some of the laws are that it has to be funny to you and that you have to learn it and that everybody's different. Like, there's Mitch Hedberg, who is like, you familiar with Mitch Hedberg? Oh, yeah, man. I got a good Mitch Hedberg story.

Really? Yeah. We'll get into that. One of my all-time favorites. But then there's also Sam Kinison, two completely different styles of comedy, two of my all-time favorite comedians. It's all based on what is the world through your eyes.

What I find funny, it's funny coming out of me. It's coming out of my mind. But if you gave my act to Demetri Martin, he probably wouldn't be able to pull it off. The more violent, physical, aggressive aspects of my act, it just wouldn't work. It works because it's funny to me. It's obviously funny to me.

And I'm being honest. When I talk about the things that I think are funny, it's because I've thought about it. These are things that I honestly find amusing. I'm not lying. So you don't sit around and think like, what would be something funny I could say? Never. What I do is.

It jumps in your head. Yeah. And you're like, I will convert this now into my comedy. Well, it's taken a long time. I would say there's stages of comedy. The first stage is you're absolutely terrified and all you're trying to do is get a laugh in any way, shape, or form. And I think of jokes in that stage as tools. All you're trying to do is get a laugh in any way shape or form and i think of jokes in that stage as tools all you're trying to do is get by you do like usually in the beginning like when you're an open mic comedian you got five minutes on stage and

those five minutes are fucking harrowing a ride through hell and when it's over like whoo i got a couple laughs all right good you know i didn't i didn't die and then occasionally you will die and then you'll think about quitting. And many, many times I thought about quitting. I was like, fuck, I can't do this anymore. It's too devastating. You just can't handle getting beat up like that. The punishment that your self-esteem takes when you bomb on stage is almost overwhelming.

Like for some people, I've seen guys bomb and never recover. I've seen them, like their act diminishes like they had some potential there was something there and then i've seen like one night where the fucking wheels come off and then they never they never recover is that right it's almost like a beating that a fighter takes i've seen fighters take beatings and uh not even just the physical punishment of it but the confidence destruction of it yeah just never are the same guy again. They never become that carefree, cocky guy again. It just goes away.

And with that, so does their fighting career. I've seen that happen with comedians as well. So the beginning is just tools. And then once you do that, then somewhere along the line, you go, okay, I'm pretty confident that I have some tools. Now what do I think is funny? What would I laugh at? This is what's funny to me me and then you come up with stuff that's funny to you and then there's a stage three that comedians may or may not ever even get into and that is how do you make

your ideas funny ideas like philosophy like how do you have a point of view and figure out a way to impart that point of view on people like for for me, there's a thing I'm doing. And just so, just so I'm clear, when you're talking about, you're talking about moving away from just like jokes. Yes. Like what does this do? It's this. Ha ha.

Mm-hmm. Like taking like, like, uh, philosophies or. Trying to figure out a way to get an idea and to turn that idea into comedy. Trying to, maybe, Maybe a controversial idea, maybe an idea that you think is important, maybe just a thought. Because there's a way to introduce an idea into someone's brain. Give me an example of an idea.

Can you throw one out? It's hard to do. This is what I was going to say. If you go on stage and say if you're a Republican and you're on stage and you start going off about gay marriage or this or that and you're on stage and you start going off about, you know, gay marriage or this or that, and you just give a speech. If I'm in the audience and I have an opposing point of view, I go, well, fuck you.

I don't like your opinion. I think that's wrong. And I think people should be able to do this. But if you go on stage and say something that makes me laugh, even if I don't agree with you, even if I don't agree with you, if you make me laugh, I have to at least consider your idea. I have to at least, you've introduced, like, here's a perfect example. I had

a guy who came up to me who was a Christian, and I used to do this bit about Noah's Ark, that if you told Noah and the Ark to an eight-year-old retarded boy, he's gonna have some questions. So I had this whole bit about, you know, someone sitting down with this young retarded boy telling him the story of noah's ark yeah yeah and it was just it was a really long

bit it was like and this guy came up to me and goes i gotta tell you man look i'm a christian and you started talking about noah's ark and i started getting offended and he goes but two or three minutes into that fucking bit i was laughing laughing so goddamn hard. I started thinking, what the fuck? How is that a real story? And he started laughing. He goes, I just want to say congratulations. You made me laugh at something that's completely opposed to my own beliefs. Yeah, yeah.

This is a video where a guy came up to me after a show in Georgia. Play this because this is kind of funny. This guy told me he found Noah's Ark on a mountain. So an archaeologist will actually look for a documenter that will check it out and say, okay. And we actually fund expeditions to back up what somebody claimed. I'm going to tell you, the shots I'll show you will kind of blow your mind. But our job is not to say what it is. Our job is just to confirm what they found.

So I think you... So you really believe... I'm confused, though. Do you really believe that it's Noah's Ark? All right, well, let me tell you what I'm talking about. I mean, first of all, they did find a boat-shaped object in the mountains of Ararat that's 515 feet long. That should be enough for all the animals. About 515 feet? For about 100 million species? That seems about right.

Well, I don't know. As long as they keep the hippos off. Can you even get some hippos on a 550? Anyway, if you saw the shots, just the things that were found, it's a cool thing. At the very least you might be able to use some more material. Isn't it possible that maybe it's just a boat? Yeah, it could be. Well, why would anybody assume that that boat would make any, there would be any connection in history to a crazy story

about a dude who got all the animals to come on his boat because God talked to him, told him it was going to rain, and he was going to drown everybody because everybody wasn't paying attention. We can just think about all that stuff. Oh, I think it makes sense. How could that be Noah's Ark? It's just wood. No, no, no. You don't actually have wood there anymore. Well, whatever it is, even if it's a boat, even if it was a solid boat, it's still just a boat.

Unless you found like camel shit right next to rhino shit. Well, actually, we do have samples of that. You have camel shit right next to rhino shit. Well actually we do have samples of that. You have camel shit? We've taken core samples and found different species of animals of remains. We've got 12... No they didn't. 12 anchors again should be about enough for hundreds of millions of species of animals. There was probably more than that.

What do you do when you find this on a 6,000 foot peak in the hills? But at the very least, I can just show you what they found. Well, without a doubt, this earth has, over the last thousands of thousands of years, has gone through some pretty huge cataclysmic events. They know for a fact that at one point in time, where Montana is right now, that's where all the megalodons were. They find megalodon fossils, that gigantic shark, those huge teeth, they find them in the mountains of Montana.

And that's 600 million years ago. So they know that no matter what, there's some crazy shit that's happened to this planet. Without a doubt. So it's very conceivable that at one point in time there was a huge flood in that region, and that's why there's a boat stuck up there. It's very possible. It is pretty possible, but I can confirm

we do have something that matches dead Nuts to what the story is. I love that. I use that term, Dead Nuts. I think Gilgamesh is the original one. Yeah, it's one of the oldest ones that we know of, but it's a coincidence. Yeah, well, I think, seriously, I think what the story of Noah's Ark is, what it really is all about, is that at one point in time, I think there was a huge disaster. And I think it's probably happened more than once where like meteors head or you know shifting the four ice caps or something huge where it's just like it kills like 90% of people and the people that

are remaining they have a story the story of a great disaster and some people got away and those stories the story of the great disaster and some person got away over time that person becomes the great hero the Savior and they talk about around the campfire and his person got away, over time that person becomes the great hero, the savior, and they talk about him around the campfire. And his legend grows. And when you have a story that's told in oral tradition for over a thousand years before it's ever written in ancient Hebrew, and to this day they only know three out of four words in ancient Hebrew. To this day, 25% of all the words are totally, they have no idea what it means. And in ancient Hebrew there was no numbers. So letters also doubled as numbers. So you lose all the numeric value that's important in the text, like the word God and the word love.

They have the same numeric value, and that's very important for sentencing. Now when that was translated into Latin, it was translated into Greek, they lost all of that shit. And that's all these stories that are distorted. Thousands of years of people bullshitting around a campfire, to the original text being indecipherable to what they have today. How could anybody think that's real you would have to be fucking crazy to think that that really happened that God talked to one guy and got all the animals from all over the world and put him on a boat that makes zero sense when you know people are liars you know people are weak you know even most

religious people are completely full of shit. And if after all that, you think that that story's real, that's insane. When you actually see the evidence about a vote. Well, that guy obviously didn't listen. Or, you know, the ideas didn't get into his head. But he was so kind about it. Kind? He never threatened you?

He didn't want to kill you or anything? Well, he can. Well, I don't think he was religious. He was a documentarian. Is that right? He believed that he had found Noah's Ark. Yeah, that was probably not the best example. One thing, the bones, they better not be there. They didn't find you.

Because they only had two of each. So if they died, well, that could have been the unicorn's bone. Yeah, they better not be there. They didn't find you. Because they only had two of each, so if they died, well, that could have been the unicorn's bone. Yeah, if that's true,

right? If they died, then what the fuck? Unless they bred before they died. That could have been. It was a long time. But I'll tell you one thing,

though, you were kind of getting at this, like, the way the guy came up to you and he said, like,

you were offending me, but it was funny. The thing I struggle with is, like, you talk to really liberal people and you're like you were offending me but it was funny the thing i struggle with like you talk to really liberal people and you're like yeah rush you know russ limbaugh is funny sometimes it's funny it's that makes him so mad every time a really conservative people would be like you know john stewart he's you know he can be pretty funny get mad they get real mad at you like they can't imagine but i remember like when you were doing part of your act you're talking about when people get really mad at comedians for saying something controversial.

You mentioned, how come no one's mad at Johnny Cash for shooting a man just to watch him die? Yeah, that didn't really happen. That's an important thing. Johnny Cash didn't really shoot a man in Reno. That didn't really happen. The thing about comedy is it's an easy target. For people that are looking to be offended,

which is like a lot of bloggers and people looking to find something to be outraged about, they'll point to comedy because comedy is a soft target. You know, a lot of comedians will say, fuck that. There's an art form. Yeah, no one's always wanting to kill novelists. No. Unless you're Salman Rushdie a long time ago. People aren't always going to kill novelists.

There's the cartoonist that got stabbed in Holland. Yeah. Muslims. People go after Muslims. That guy was killedist that got stabbed in Holland. Yeah. Muslims. People go after Muslims. That guy was killed, right? Yeah, yeah. He was murdered, yeah. He's just a cartoonist, you know?

Yeah, it's like the soft target of comedy is the idea that there's like this real subtlety to language and there's a subtlety to sarcasm and being facetious and you know when someone's being sarcastic but if you just see it written down on paper you can for just for purposes of being morally outraged you can pretend that you don't know that it's sarcastic yeah and you can pretend that this is just a horrible statement and people have got in trouble for that many many many times especially when you take something like on twitter like in a text form. Yeah. And you try to pretend that that's a statement.

And you try to pretend that, oh, this is just someone who's, you know, this is an asshole. This is a person who's just a really evil, mean person. No, no. This is a person who's fucking around. Like there's an art form to saying fucked up things that you don't really mean. Yeah. Like you could say something fucked up and I know that you're not serious, so I'll start laughing, and then we'll go,

that's so wrong. But we know it's funny because it's not a statement. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. But there's like this PC police thing going on now where a bunch of people who... And most of the time, when you pay attention to those people,

because I find it fascinating, and I try to consider myself to be a student of human nature. And one of the things that I find about these people that complain so much about all these different things and then they find this moral outrage or find one thing to harp on over and over again is they're usually extremely troubled personally. They usually like, it's usually like they have overwhelming issues, like they're morbidly obese or they're, you know, socially inept or there's something wrong with them that's causing them to find this soft target and lash out constantly at this soft target.

And then also if you look at what they do, a lot of people, what they do is like they'll – what they're trying to do is stop someone from hurting someone's feelings. And they're trying to say that what you're doing is mean and you're hurting someone's feelings. So what I'm going to do is hurt your feelings in the most vicious and cruel way possible with these blogs and the writing. And I'm going to do to you what you're somehow or another doing. So I'm going to be a complete total hypocrite. Yeah. But I have a license. I have this license of moral outrage.

I have this moral high ground that I'm going to stand on, so I'm going to attack. And I'm going to write this vicious, snarky column about a comedian. And the idea is that they're trying to right the wrongs and trying to be the savior of what's good in the world. But that's not the case. What they're doing is just being an asshole because they feel like they have a license to be an asshole because they can take what you said and put it on paper and say, look, in quotes, Tracy Morgan said if his son was gay, he'd stab him, in quotes. So fuck Tracy Morgan.acy morgan's a

ridiculous person like his whole act is a bunch of shit that he doesn't mean yeah it's a bunch of crazy things that have never happened and he says a bunch of crazy things because that's that's his style of comedy like mitch hedberg's style of comedy is to say really preposterous things that other people wouldn't like my my favorite Mitch Hedberg joke is somebody asked me if I wanted a frozen banana. I said no, but I want a regular banana later.

So yes. Yeah. You know, anybody else says that, it's a terrible joke. But if he says it, it's really funny. That's his style.

Tracy Morgan's style is, my son was gay, I stabbed that little nigga. He doesn't really mean that. That's not a statement. He's not writing that down. He didn't carve it in stone and bring it down from the top of a hill. It's his art form.

But what's more upsetting than the people who are so volatile and do get so mad about stuff is the thing that politicians do, which is to feign that response. Yes. Like you get politicians, you know, you look at their career, they vacillate a wildly between all these positions, but they love to get up and act like, to act like the morally outraged guy. Yes. By something that would, you know, like when you look in his eye, like you don't care at all about that, but you're like feigning the guy who is that way.

And that's more of saying that someone who really is mad about something. Well, sometimes people are mad about something and it's just a perspective issue. They just lack perspective or they lacked a lot of, there's a lack of social intelligence, you know,

and there's also a lack of having nuanced friends, having friends that have good senses of humor, people that joke around about things or say mean things. Like some of my favorite people, like Jim Norton is one of my favorite comedians and is my favorite guy on the radio because he says ridiculous, evil, mean shit all the time, but he doesn't mean it.

He'll laugh after he says it, but he's really smart about how he does it. And he takes a tremendous amount of grief because of it because people will try to point out some of the things that he says and then, you know, and accuse him of being, you know, homophobic or this. One of the least homophobic guys you'll ever meet. In fact, he will talk openly about how many experiences he's had with trannies. He's had like all these transsexual experiences. He's a pervert, complete total pervert. But he's like, he owns it.

And I'm with you. And, you know, he takes grief because he's like he owns it in and i'm with you and he you know he takes grief because he's a soft target because the you know you can point to look they're looking for someone to say outrageous shit so they can be angry so who more likely to say outrageous shit than someone says outrageous shit for a living and some of the times they say outrageous shit and it doesn't work. You know, it's not funny. But Patrice O'Neill had a great point about that, the late, great Patrice O'Neill. Who's that? He's a really funny comedian who died. He's one of my favorite guys to talk about controversial points because he always had a unique way of looking at it.

But his point was always that, like, when someone says something and they're trying to be funny and it misses and it's fucked up, that comes from the same place as someone trying to say something funny and it hits and it's really funny and you laugh. Just because they miss with this attempt doesn't mean they're an evil, mean person. They just failed. Yeah, that's a good point. They're not trying to hurt someone's feelings. They're trying to get a laugh. And that's what comedy is. There's a good point. You know, it's not they're not trying to hurt someone's feelings They're trying to get a laugh and that's what what comedy is. There's a there's a real art to that but but Yeah, you're right, I mean that's a cop that's that's a complicated idea. Mm-hmm. It's very complicated Well, you know my friend Joey Diaz did he will open up for me? Yeah. Yeah love that fucking no man funny

He's hilarious the funniest guy I've ever met in my life. But he has this joke about transvestites. He goes, I love transvestites. They cook. They clean. You can beat on them every once in a while. The cops come. Who's going to believe? Me or some dude with a wig and a black eye.

Okay, look. Joey Diaz has never punched a transvestite. He's never had a transvestite over his house with a wig and had him cooking and cleaning. It's not true it's it's a joke like you can say that's a violence against transsexuals joke or violence against transvestites joke but it's not it's not promoting violence against anybody it's a joke it's a fucked up thing that he's saying and you know it's it's you gotta it's a good joke you gotta it's a great joke it's my favorite one of my favorite jokes of all time. But you've got to understand what it actually is.

What it actually is, it's just like Johnny Cash pretending he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. It's exactly the same thing. But I wish, is it Patrice O'Neal? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is he? Yes. I wish he was here. You've been in a situation where someone said something that they wanted to be funny.

Yes. Let's say someone makes a crack about gays. And it flops. A way that it can flop is if they're so transparent that you see into them for a minute. And you're like, like wow that really comes yes from a place of deep hatred yes yes yes and it's not funny because in that i got a glimpse into that you know yes if you make a gay joke i know from i don't know why from your demeanor whatever it is i know that you're not at home you know wishing

you could go out and kill gay people right how do i know that it allows you to explore like a funny idea you know but sometimes someone will say something like man this person really has a problem with black people who are in a power of position. It's like you see it. It's intent. The intent becomes transparent. When someone is a kind person and someone's just pointing out hypocrisy. Like I have this bit making fun of Morrissey. Morrissey is the lead singer of the Smiths. Dude, but How Soon Is Now is a rock solid song.

But I know you're Morrissey, but I laughed at it. Yeah. I was like the Noah guy because I could have come up to you and said you know what i like how soon as now with that shit about morris he was funny he makes good he makes good music he does make good music but his idea that you know all you know war is created by heterosexuals yeah it's not only not supported by history but it's ridiculous but the point is like when i when i talk about that on stage, I make a big point out of the fact that I want to make sure that I don't want anybody to think that I have any problem with gay people. But I also don't want any gay people to just take random jabs at the giant mass of straight people and say we're responsible for all the wars. It's fucking, it's all ridiculous. all the wars it's fucking it's all ridiculous and if you can't make it prove that 10 of the wars were the response were came at you know were the gays responsible for 10 of the wars and it

would upset the theory well all you'd have to do is look at history like the spartans all the the gay athenians the romans all the gay sex they had i think for a long time fighting bastards yeah alexander the greats one of the greatest conquerors ever. He's gay as fuck. I think that one of the things about people that are in a group is they always want to assume that this is the good group to be in. And the idea that all gay people are cool is ridiculous because people are people. There's a huge range of how people can behave, whether it's gay people or straight people like there's a there's a bit i'm i do about uh i used to work out at this gay gym and these gay dudes used to hit on me all the time at this i used to work out at gold's gym on cole street and because

it was so gay that because you were there it was assumed you must be gay well they would just you're a man it's like if you're a guy and you go to a gym and there's a hot lesbian working out there, you know, are you gonna just, dudes are gonna take a shot. Yeah.

They're gonna try to find out how lesbian is she. Yeah, I got you. You know? And the idea that gay guys are immune from sexual harassment, they're not gonna

sexually harass you because they're from this marginalized group. So they would be different. They're not going to sexually harass you because they're from this marginalized group. So they would be different. They would be kinder and sweeter and more and more. Bullshit! They're dudes with dicks. They'll spike your drink just like a straight guy

will spike your drink. A gay guy will spike your drink. Of course, there's got to be gay guys out there that will spike your drink. Fuck yeah. Gay guys would roof you just like a straight guy would roof you. The idea that someone

is really super cool just because they're gay is ridiculous it's just like the idea of someone being super cool because they're black you know like marginalized groups have a little bit of leeway with a lot of like knee-jerk reactionary uh bleeding heart liberals which is why a guy like al sharpton is allowed to be on television al Sharpton is a con man and an idiot, but yet he represents black people on television because no one wants to say anything about him because he's black. Because if you pick on Al Sharpton, you're picking on marginalized people and you are therefore a racist

because he represents brown people. Look at his skin. He's a brown guy. He's allowed to say. But meanwhile, if you follow his career, the guy made his living off of the Tawana Brawley thing where there was a fake rape where he, you know, he came out and had this gigantic protest. And it turns out that this woman, Tawana Brawley, was never really raped in the first place. She made it all up. Yeah.

And he was the champion of all this. It was, you know, attacking white people and attacking white America and the racist establishment that has allowed this to happen. Actually, not really. You're kind of a con man. And what you're doing is you're taking advantage of a weakness in the system. I just had occasion. I'm not going to go into how it happened. I had occasion where I just read the first and last chapter of Al Sharpton's most recent book.

No, like the second or third chapter and the last chapter. I read the second or third chapter, and it kind of changed. It really changed my opinion about him for a minute. And for a minute, I was like, that's really like he made an interesting point about something and expressed it really well. And he kind of talked about an evolution he went through on an idea. Like a flip. He explained what would be in politics a flip-flop.

He did a big flip-flop and kind of walked through how a public figure does a flip-flop. He did a big flip-flop and kind of went, walked through how a public figure does a flip-flop and it was good. Then I read the last chapter and I just went back to being like, oh, you are,

I'm reading, it was funny because I'm reading that book. Oh, never mind, I was, never mind. No, no, never mind,

go ahead, tell it. I'm sitting there reading that book and a guy comes up to me and this guy looks like a yachtsman, like a guy that owns a and a guy comes up to me and this guy looks like a yachtsman. Like a guy that owns a yacht.

And he comes up to me and he goes, Sharpton, I had a meeting with Al Sharpton one time. He came in in a chauffeured car and he was wearing a gold Rolex presidential watch. And he was wearing a gold Rolex presidential watch. And the first thing he tells me is how he survives on a $10,000 salary. And then the guy left, walked down the street, and that was the end of his story. That was his Sharpton story. He's what they call a race pimp. I think that's the best way to describe him. Him and, you know, Jesse Jackson has made a lucrative business out of going to businesses and saying, you don't have enough diversity in your businesses. Hire me as a consultant. He steps in as a consultant and gets an exorbitant amount of money to try to teach them how to hire black people in their businesses. If they don't do it, he's going to protest them. And that's the insinuation behind all of it. And the only reason why it exists is because there has been racism.

The only reason why it exists is because black people have been marginalized. The evil things have taken place. And then 200 years ago, black people were slaves. All those things are absolutely true. So there's this reality to what they're saying, that there is racism. There is inequality. So someone who's coming along's capitalizing on that problem. But it's not, there's no Martin Luther King's level. I was like, at my house the other day, my wife was playing a Martin Luther King speech

because Martin Luther King Day is Monday, and my daughter was like, who's Martin Luther King? So my wife was playing this speech for our five-year-old. Was it the Promised Land speech? Yes, yes, yes. My God. What a speech. Goddamn, what a speech.

Man, it's like, I remember a teacher played that for us once. It's amazing, especially when you hear what happened before he was assassinated. Yeah. And so powerful. He predicts it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, he knew it was coming. That was an incredible speech, man.

Unbelievable. Well, not just incredibly written, incredibly performed. And while we were watching, I was like, there's no one like this anymore. Where's this guy? Where's this guy that represents the black community? A guy who is making these incredible points and is saying something that's so moving. And then you look in the audience, and's so mixed there's white people next to black people and such an incredible time in in our in our culture where people

realize that there there was these inequalities and there was this this groundswell of movement to try to make the world equal and behind it or the the the figurehead of it is this incredibly powerful incredibly intelligent guy who's probably one of the greatest public speakers of all time yeah and an orator yeah just i have a dream and you see him say it and you're just like god damn it just gives you goosebumps and then you see jesse jackson you can't understand a fucking word he says he's mumbling through shit eating shrimp cocktails flying in private jets he's mumbling through shit, eating shrimp cocktails, flying in private jets. He's like, this is what's left. This is what's left of these guys. There's no guy like that. You know, I, I'm not a fan of Obama. Um, I'm, I'm, you know, I was a fan of Obama, the candidate of the idea of

Obama, but Obama in office, I'm not, I'm not a fan of, I'm not a fan of most of what he's done. I'm not a fan of the whole NSA thing, the spying on people, the use of drones, just so many things. It's almost too much to mention. But one of the things that makes me so disappointed in him is his lack of anything that he's ever said. That's inspirational though. The speech that he could have given,

like the speeches that Kennedy gave, you know, Kennedy gave some fucking speeches that made you change your idea of what's possible for the future of this country. But I don't get any of that from Obama. I get these nonsense. But it's funny because being a performer is really, I mean, like being a performer is what launched him to where he is.

Sure. Exactly. Yeah. It was because of that speech at the convention. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, that and just the idea of who he was. I mean, we were coming from yeah it's an amazing narrative you know but the but one of the earliest criticisms was it's

performance it's performance you know well i mean but all speeches are i mean they're performances it's hard not like when you go look like if you look at like hitler giving a speech it's hard not even fathom how it would ever be that that he's not just a lunatic you know i mean you look go how would it not be just like transparently lun? But at the time, it was like, he would give these amazing performances that would get people stirred up. It's hard to grasp the context of Hitler because I don't speak German.

If I spoke German, maybe I could understand. Oh, like all the maniacal everything. He doesn't matter to us. Yeah, it's so intense and so crazy, but the Obama speech is like, there's nothing. Hold on, can we back up? Please don't think I was doing the old Hitler-Obama thing. No, I didn't think you were doing that at all.

I just thought you were talking about powerful orators. Yeah, no, it made me nervous for a minute. Yeah, that's a touchy subject, right? You're a Nazi. Steve Rinell, a Nazi. Front cover of whatever magazine. Yeah, I think we have a serious lack of these powerful, inspirational characters, these people that go on TV or give speeches that really have vision to them.

I mean, Obama had some of that as a candidate, but as a president, it's almost like he looks so tired when I see him on TV. He looks so goddamn tired. And I remember when he was running, we had Bush and Cheney and we were in war and we were in a war that most people didn't support and it was very confusing and it was coming out

that the pretense of this war was incorrect and there wasn't really any weapons of mass destruction and all these lives and devastation. And people were looking into Halliburton, the connection to Cheney. It felt evil. It felt like we were trapped with these evil old white dudes. And here comes along this guy who's single mother. He comes from a single mother and he's half black and he's so intelligent so well well read and so so well spoken and we thought this was going to be the change this is going to be

the big shift yeah and it didn't turn out to be that at all it turned out to be just kind of more of the same but no no more inspiration all that inspiration shit's gone i mean he was so vibrant as a candidate and as a president i can't remember a single time that he's ever addressed the nation where I was like, that's a bad motherfucker. Like, there's something there. Yeah. He's saying something that really gets people excited. It's been so divisive. But I always think, like, when I look at things that happen to – there's things that happens to candidates.

And I think it has so much to do with money like we get these figures you know going into the primaries you get you know you get these figures that have these you know they buck the trends and mavericks when i say mavericks i'm not like trying i'm not referring strictly to mccain but you get these people that come in and they're going to like upset the status quo but then you have to play the politics game and you owe so much stuff for money and then you pay those debts and it's like corrupting and i think a similar thing happens to people often in office i think that like i can't imagine what it must be to be present i say and i say this talking about george w bush and obama i can't imagine what's be when you're present and someone

comes in every morning and runs through the list of threats. And you hear it and hear it and hear it, and it's like threats, threats, threats, threats. The paranoia that must exist, you know, I think it has to be really taxing on people. No doubt. And every decision you make. And it's like, yeah, it's going to be, it will be your legacy. And you're like, it's got to be wrenching to just have to make those decisions all the time.

I mean, guys come out of office looking so rough. Yeah, it's probably. But then no one wants, you never have a guy do one term, real popular. And he's like, you know what? Fuck this. I'm not doing it yeah there's something like

it's so intoxicating to be president do you think that's it I think they you know probably don't let him you know they probably

look man we have a fucking deal we got you into this mess wouldn't it be funny though well since George Washington they say he could have won again and he left

he only had one term no but he was gonna people were like, do three. They wanted him to keep rolling. And he stepped down, and I think he might have been the last guy that wouldn't have been like, I'll take another one. Bloomberg took another one.

Jimmy Carter is one of the few guys that was president that I would really love to sit down with and have a private conversation because he seems to be like a true humanitarian. And he seems to be, out true humanitarian and he seems to be at all the people that were ever president the guy who caused probably the least amount of loss of lives and the least amount of war and heartbreak seems to be jimmy carter you know he seemed like a truly like a kind man who wound up in this weird situation where he was the president united states and he's like he wound up in a weird situation out in the desert. Oh, the hostage situation?

Yeah, I mean, yeah. Oh, well, that's a crazy situation where the fucking hostages were released as soon as Reagan got into office. I'm like, what kind of fucking weird deal did you guys make? Did you guys keep those people hostage for political gain? I mean, that's one of the most disgusting possibilities in the history of power in the presidency. That doesn't make any sense. No, I understand what you're getting at.

You know what I mean? It's like the idea that that's a possibility, that they might have kept those people and used them as a political ploy is pretty gross. It's bad. But probably did happen. I don't know, man. Like you said, who the fuck knows what it's like once you get into office? Who has any idea? I just don't think there should be a president.

I think the idea of having this one alpha chimp running the whole show is so fucking archaic. It probably works when there's 50 of us. You want to go parliament? I don't know what I want to go. I want to go internet. I think we need to go hive mind. It should be like those shows where people vote from home.

Every issue is always up on this thing. Everybody at home is constantly voting on every issue. It's not a bad idea. The president should attack, not attack. Well, I just think the idea of having one person or a figurehead that pretends to be the one person that runs a show is just so archaic. Well, yeah, but we have a system of checks and balances, man. Allegedly. Well, yeah, but we have a system of checks and balances, man.

Allegedly. If you look at the wild vacillations that some countries go through, okay, Venezuela, I mean, you rattle them off all day long. People get frustrated with how slowly things happen in the U.S. That's the story. The gridlock, nothing gets gets done it's all idiots if you look at the gradual way one might argue that all that gridlock and all that mayhem and things being so stagnant somehow works to our benefit from like from preventing wild swings oh we're this over that right you know we get like you We get a really serious communist,

then we go from that to a real serious anarchist, then we realize that doesn't work, so we go to some wild-ass dictator. I feel that these mild undulations, when you view it from a historic perspective, I think these mild undulations that we go through in politics are to our benefit. I'm a little bit pro-gridlock. That's interesting.

Because if it was just so fast, I feel like we'd have more stumbles than we have. I'm kind of generally an optimist. I'm a general optimist, too. I just think there's too many people. I think there's too many people, too many interests too much money too much too many different directions the money thing is really true like like this this dude that just got the mayor of new york i want to go back to my show business story too at some point and i want to tell my mitch hadberg story but and i want to talk about hunting pigs tomorrow how are we on time we're fine okay so man lost my oh yeah so the guy the

guy just got elected mayor of new york i mean he's not in there a day and he's like okay no more we're not gonna have any more horses pulling carriages around in central park really yeah right off the bat it's like are you telling me you you're now running the biggest You're now running the biggest city, the one that, like, terrorists drool about, you know, the one that's, like, balancing all these, like, ethnic groups and tensions. And the one thing that's on your mind when you come in is that horses are pulling carriages in Central Park and it's mean. How could that possibly? It has to be that some dude wrote that guy a check, know and he's like here's the deal i'm gonna give you this check but i don't want them damn horses in that park because there's no other way to explain it and it's like and it

shows kind of this like weird ignorance and arrogance where if you talk to anyone who's involved in livestock theft and livestock issues we have like a we don't have a horse theft we don't have a not enough horse problem. There's too many horses. Since the closure of horse slaughter plants, people are dumping horses. Farmers will wake up and be like, wow, there's a bunch of horses out in that place

because there's just no way to get rid of excess horses. You have all these horses that are unwanted, horses that are starving, horses that aren't being treated properly, and you've got these gainfully employed horses that are fed, stabled, cared for, veterinarian treatment. And the guy would be like, the one thing we need is unemployed horses. It has to be about some weird money thing. Or it could be he's just a bleeding heart liberal.

No. He doesn't look at it. You think so? You think it's just a money thing? I mean, I don't know. Tell me what the fuck happened with the large drink thing. How did that ever't look at it. You think so? You think it's just a money thing? I mean, I don't know. Tell me what the fuck happened with the large drink thing. How did that ever take place?

That was Bloomberg, right? Yeah, but it wound up not happening. Did it really? Thank God. That's ridiculous. No, they never banned Big Pop. Jesus Christ, that drove me nuts. The idea that you couldn't get a Big Gulp

or a giant drink I remember one of those comedians. Some comedian was doing something. He was doing a thing where he was like, you're supposed to complete the sentence. It's so hot, you know? And to complete the sentence. It's so hot. And one of them was, it's so hot, Bloomberg had to go over to Jersey to get a big gulp or something like that.

But the nanny state stuff, I hate it. I hate all the telling people what to do and not to do for your health. I hate it, but I could also picture how frustrating. Because you'd be like, it's like, you know, it's like if you look at, like, a guy who smokes a ton of cigarettes. And one hand, like, it's not, you know, like, why? Right.

And you kind of go, you got to, like, be big, you got to be big enough of a man to walk away and be like, okay. You know, or ride a motorcycle without a helmet. I'm kind of like, why? But then I'd send, like, you got to be, like, a big enough person in some weird way to be like,

okay, you go ahead And push on And I'm gonna try to not Want to like control your life Well there's gonna be people Who look at you and go Dude you can't talk about cigarettes Or motorcycles

You got charged by a fucking moose Yep Alright I saw it I saw you get hit by a moose I watched it five times Nah That was

You describing it was harrowing But watching it was way crazier. When that fucking thing got up and started running towards you, even though I knew you were okay, I met you after the fact. I was like, oh, he's dead. He's fucking dead. No, we met. Yeah, we met well before, but that's, that was, you know,

you don't know if you've seen enough TV. Like, that was, what I did was so stupid that you'd want on one hand, it was so dumb what I did. And I'll tell, I'll tell what I did in a minute. But what I did was so stupid that you'd want to then hide how stupid you were

and not have it be on TV. Right. But on the other hand, like, but it's compelling TV. Like a guy getting run over by a moose is interesting, you know?

So it's your thing of like your ego where, and I'll tell what happened. We were calling, you know, Ryan Callahan.ahan yeah i love ryan what a great guy we were calling moose and when you call moose that's excellent but pinch your go like pinch your nostrils that's the cow yeah that's a cow saying, I am coming into estrus. Woo! And calling is effective. Moose calling is effective right before the rut,

right before the breeding season, because bulls know what's going to happen. The cows are going to want to be bred, and I'm going to breed them. But the cows haven't really got rolling yet, so it's just all anticipation. If they were actually all doing it and the cows are really in estrus and the bull's with a cow that's in estrus,

he's going to be less likely to come to one calling. So it's all a timing issue. You've got to catch him right before he's late. Yeah, he wants it. You're the first. He's like, there she is, first cow to come into estrus. I'm going to go get her. So we're out.

Ryan's mimicking the noise of a bull. out ryan's mimicking the noise of a bull or i'm sorry mimicking the noise of a cow and what inspired him to begin doing that is we heard a bull makes a noise like this a bull will go so that's all you heard it's like a suggestion you don't even hear it you feel it it's a suggestion of a noise it's like you kind of it was like what was that but it just it's it's very hard to determine where it was, not where, it's hard to determine how far away. And we heard that, and then we debated for a long time whether we had heard it or not. We're like, no, I know I heard a bull, I heard a bull. Then it actually started to thunder a little bit off in the distance, which made it even more confusing,

because it was like, was it thunder or was it that, mm, you know, noise? So Ryan starts trying to lure the bull to us this is up in british columbia he starts trying to lure the bull to us by roaming around making cow calls and he goes away from the bull and i stay put hoping that the bull will come and he's gonna want to see her before he gets too close so by ryan staying about 75 yards further away the bull might hang up in the vicinity where i'm at you know while he's trying to get a visual lock on the cow to make sure everything looks safe and we keep calling and calling and then i'm starting to think i was going crazy i never heard the bull in the first place

so we start going in the direction eventually we start moving in the direction where we think the bull is. And sure enough, I see some brush clashing. And he's in there rubbing his antlers on some brush. And Ryan starts calling. And now we're in a zone enough where he's coming to investigate. And he's coming in. And he kind of comes at me.

And I do like a really stupid thing where I take what you call a brisket shot. And a brisket shot on a deer or a wild pig is devastating. You know, you're coming in like the like the sternum and you it you know there's it is devastating to the animal a small animal but on moose there's just so much you know it's like like layers of bricks and stuff or like basically what the front of them made of and he goes down and i go running over there and sure enough he gets up and starts running and i'm worried like the last thing i do is chase a moose but i'm worried that maybe he's not bleeding enough so i start running after him and i get up there and and and he's i catch up to him when he's laying down again

and i go to shoot him in the neck and uh click like i had messed up my rifle and hadn't chambered around. So it clicks. And that bull got up and just turned and, like, came and, boom, knocked me over. Like, coming at you, like, you know, head down, horns down like a bull, you know. Head down, horns. And he punched me in the ass with one of his antler tines. And I thought it punctured me. So I ran away, and callahan shoots the moose down and i keep reaching around to feel where he had popped me so hard in the ass and knocked me over

and my hand keeps coming back bloody so i'm trying to feel where he put a hole in me and i'm thinking they like he'd like punch the hole through my waders and into my into my ass tissue and um but then i realized that like I got blood all over, because I'd hit him in the brisket, so when he ran me over, he smeared a lot of that blood on the back of my clothes. So that was the blood I was feeling. Scared the hell out of me. And you saw that it wasn't a few days before that I got charged by a grizzly bear.

Yeah. It was a harrowing trip. And you're talking about people smoking cigarettes and riding motorcycles with no helmets. That moose deal was probably the closest. You fantasize about bad stuff happening to you from big animals. You're going to get mauled by a bear or whatever.

And what really gets you is little teeny things. My hospital stuff has been serious issues like serious issues been giardia so drinking bad water and lyme disease by getting you know bit by little teeny bugs that are infected with bacteria and that's like my real source of trouble but when i'm laying in bed and i'm not thinking about microbes i'm thinking about big giant animals coming to get me you know and that one came and knocked me in the minute like it's mixed emotions as soon as it happens i'm like that was the stupidest thing i ever did i can't believe that i'm so dumb and then and concurrent with that is a thought of

like i am so happy that that happened that was an amazing thing you know and now dude as stupid as it was now sitting there i'm like i love that that happened because you're okay yeah yeah it's it's pretty actually terrifying looking at it now i wouldn't even be disappointed had he punched a hole in my butt as long as you lived yeah but what if he hit your sack what if a horn i mean think about that i already got two kids you're cool with a hole in the sack from i keep telling half the days My wife is like Go down and get a bass sack To me

Half the days She's like No wait Because we want another one I'll just You know what It's a dead issue now Moose

Crushed my Moose killed my sack Crushed my sack I'm a eunuch Wow That would be harsh It was fun man I mean

I love that Like you know You'll appreciate this Because I was reading this book About Human history Called Lone Survivor. Not Lone Survivor. That's the seal story.

It's something like Lone Survivors. It's by a geneticist, a British geneticist. What the hell's his name? Anyways, something like that. Soul Survivors? I don't know. He talks about the suite of injuries that are common to Neanderthal skeletons. I told you about this?

No. So, like, every time they dig up a Neanderthal skeleton in the mouths of caves and stuff, like, one, you find that they've been cut, like, their bone, they've been butchered. So they die and their bodies would, presumably their bodies or Cro-Magnon would have a tendency to go eat them. And they also find all these, like, fractured bones, like like busted bones, fractured skulls, fractured vertebrae. Little survivors. Yeah. And he's talking about this in this book,

and these guys kind of got wondering, why do they have this type of injury? And eventually some doctor looks at the injuries that are common in Neanderthals, and he says, you know where I see that is rodeo riders. And it's like the things that happen to people who are mixing it up with big critters. And the theory that this guy puts forward,

not Sykes, not the guy that rode it, pull that up again, what was his name again? Chris Stringer. Yeah, so I don't think Chris Stringer floats this idea, but he talks about a guy who floats this idea that they had a confrontational hunting style that Neanderthals did, that they were in there tearing it up. And Cro-Magnons had a little bit more of a,

let's stay back. We'll stay back and get them at a better time. Well, Neanderthals are way closer to the rest of the animals than we are. I mean, they were five feet tall, 200-plus pounds, big, thick fucking bones. You know what else he says? They didn't have a lot of sexual dimorphism. The males and females were much more similar. Really?

Well, they probably had to be. Yeah, females were in there hunting more. Probably had to be survived. Possibly. Yeah, they weren't, like, just structurally the females were in there hunting more probably had to be possibly yeah they weren't like just structurally the females were similar and um so having that little run-in with that moose was kind of i felt like a little bit in a positive way i felt a little bit like maybe like it was like a neanderthal experience but the neanderthal thing is weird man because

they find out like all these things that we used to think they didn't do it's like evidence that they that once they came into contact with crow magnet it was like they started picking up some of the things that they were into like there's evidence to suggest that like at the that they had been around for you know hundreds thousand years and all of a sudden dudes show up like we show up and all of a sudden they kind of got interested in decoration a little bit got interested in art a little bit i mean it's a theory you know that they had seen they were somehow interacting with us and were kind of like stealing our. Makes sense. Stealing our groove a little bit.

Well, I mean, you think about all the things that we use, guns, computers, this table. We didn't build any of this shit. Oh, yeah, yeah. We figured it out from other really smart humans. Yeah, you adopt. And so they were kind of like came into somehow it was going on and there was some introgression he talks a lot about that in that book that there was there were he argues and other people argue that this isn't the case the argument there is that there was certainly some introgression yeah i've heard that and i've

also heard that it's it's it's it's a confusion and that what it really is is common ancestry yeah yeah i've heard all that. So I'm not, like, I'm not definitely, you know, when it comes to that kind of stuff, I'm not the guy, like, you do the same. Like, I'm saying what some people say. Right. Do you know what I mean? And some people say that, and it's an interesting idea, and all that stuff changes so fast.

I always hate to be like, this is what it was, you know, but. You're talking about, you know, what is the most recent version of Neanderthals? 100,000 years? No, they went out 30, 35. How the fuck could anybody know what the hell exactly happened 35,000 years ago? It's too far. He explains how... He explains... What they

know so far. Well, yeah. He explains how the people that have an opinion on it came to form their opinion. Right. That makes sense. You know. Yeah. For sure, look, I know men and i know that if men live with the anathals somebody would have fucked well yeah i know dudes yeah they would do it even if it was sort of like an act of aggression like you look at conquering forces you know yeah on one hand they're coming into congress people they despise them but like dudes conquering dudes will often find themselves, you know, like history's full of those examples. Like a conquering army that's coming out to get like the worst people on the planet.

All they want to do is annihilate them. But they also kind of want to have sex with them. Did you ever see, there's a one, I think he was an Australian anthropologist, very fringe guy but he had this really funny uh take on neanderthals that they were the super predators and that we uh we hunted them into uh extinction yeah because the and he uh no poses that they didn't look like people at all they look like gorillas that crow magnet hunted them yes yes did you ever see that uh no but but i've i don't know if i've seen that guy's ideas but i've seen the idea that that's the case. And what people point to is that they always find butcher marks.

Not always, but it's very common to find butcher marks on those bones and also find where they crack the heads open, presumably to get the brain out. Yeah, I wish I could remember killing Neanderthals. I forget what the... It'd be like if you shot a Yeti now. Or not a Yeti, if you shot Sasquatch. People would be pissed. Oh, yeah. You know?

Yeah. But I bet you that Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal weren't as different. There might not have been as many differences between those two as there would be between us and a Sasquatch, if you happen to run into one. Pull up Them and Us. Pull up some images. The book's called Them and Us, and his proposal was the eye sockets were much larger the the features more simian the bone structure is much closer to lower primates than ours and that we're just assuming we anthropomorphize these animals and

assume they had white skin like us and hair like us but he gives them like black skin like a gorilla and you know decides that they were these really intelligent predators that hunted us down. We hunted. It's widely discredited. Yeah. But this is, look at this, this is the images. Oh, that's what you think they look like?

Yeah. That looks like something you'd have in your studio. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like a Yeti or something. This is his crazy idea. I mean, most likely horse shit, but really kind of fascinating. Fun horse shit, though. Yeah, we don't have any soft tissue from these fucking guys.

We don't really know what the hell was going on. We don't have their skin. We can't compare the color and texture. We don't really know. I think the picture will become more clear. Eventually. I mean, because they get such sophisticated ways of looking at stuff. Well, there was that one misinterpreted idea

that I think a Harvard geneticist was saying that one day it could be possible and there may be an ethical consideration that we would have to ask a woman if she'd be willing to give birth to a Neanderthal baby. And then it became distributed.

Harvard geneticist wants women to give birth to a Neanderthal looking for volunteers. And they're going to place a Neanderthal baby in your body That's not exactly what they're saying You would get so many women that would do it Fuck yeah

For sure, just to become famous Look at what they think things might have looked like There's some footage of one Yeah Well the idea is that we think that they looked Like people He kind of goes out of his way to give them a real sinister appearance, though. Well, look at the bone structure, the differences in the bone structure.

Nah, yeah. Thicker. Yeah, he makes them look like monsters in a movie with little tiny dicks. Interesting. How come they have little dicks? I would think that thing would have a giant dick. Whatever. Why am I thinking about Neanderthal dicks?

Tell me about your Mitch Hedberg story. You know, the more I think about it, I'm going to try to tell it real quick because it's not that great of a story, but I had this girlfriend who had this fellowship she got in San Jose, California. And so I was back and forth between Montana and San Jose all the time.

And there's always this marquee above this comedy house. Oh, you told me this story. Oh, I did? I don't think you told it on the podcast, though, so go ahead. There's this marquee above the comedy house and it kept saying like mitch headberg you know march or mitch headberg whatever and it's always in the back of my head like man i'll get my ticket gotta get my ticket and then one day it says like we'll miss you mitch

i'm like son of a bitch i thought it was coming up you know and i thought i like that it meant like he came and performed and went home you know and i ran out to the window being like but why'd you guys have it on your marquee that he's coming to march when he's when he's already I thought that it meant he came and performed and went home. And I ran up to the window being like, why did you guys have it on your marquee that he's coming to march when he's already? And she said, no, man, he died this morning. It's kind of weird. It's not a great story. It feels that way to me.

There's the thing right there. That was all over the country. Oh, it was? Yeah, they did those everywhere. I think they did one at the Laugh Factory. The marquee of the Laugh Factory as well. Yeah, man, it was funny. One of my all-time favorites. And clean, too.

Clean comedian. Yeah, isn't that funny? Yeah. Have you gone on to listen to the comedian, the storyteller, Jerry Clower, that I'm always asking you to listen to? Yes, yeah, I've listened to him. You don't like it? It's funny.

It's all about putting it in the context. He's a funny guy. Yeah, no, in the context. I don't know why I thought that. Oh, I about putting it in the context He's a funny guy Yeah No, in the context I don't know why I thought Oh, I thought of that Just because, yeah Mitch Hedberg Like, you could actually listen to Mitch Hedberg

With your kid and your grandma Yeah, yeah He swears in the last one The most recent one He says quite a few fucks Yeah, but I mean It's not sexual Yeah, but yeah

He's just using them, you know Stoner humor Yeah, he's a He was a brilliant guy A really unique comedian But to bring it all around I want want you to bring it i want you to bring around the pigs well that's what we're doing this weekend man i'm fired up like i told you i shot uh 30 rounds today 60 yesterday and then 300 fucking arrows the day before my right arm is so useless right now my i can't remember the last time my right shoulder was a sore it's good that you're shooting them i mean that's a lot of

shooting yeah i mean it's not it's not a lot of shooting for like guys that are really into shooting but it's a lot of shooting for a three it's good to get no i mean to like to like get that level of proficiency because i mean just from repetition yeah you learn how to do stuff through repetition i'm not you know i'm a big believer in preparation. I don't believe in, like, one of the things that I learned when I was young, when I was competing, when I was fighting, when I wasn't in that good of shape, I was really fucking nervous. But when I was in really good shape and I was really well trained, my nerves were considerably less.

Yeah. And I think that's with everything. You've got to be fully prepared. Yeah, guys that I know i know like the guys i know the best the hunting that i saw but you go out and you like have to it has to be you know you're gonna you know because if things get hard and things get bad and things aren't going your way if you've already been going into like you didn't know what was going to happen it allows you to more quickly jump into that it didn't happen right like if you go into like it has to happen it will

happen it has to happen then when will happen, it has to happen. Then when things are like sucky, you're still pursuing that narrative, you know, that it will happen. When we were in Montana, you kept saying we're going to get one. You kept saying that. Yeah. We're going to get a deer. You kept saying that we're going to get a deer. You said that many times.

I feel like what we're doing this weekend isn't going to be, you know, like hunting wild pigs. I mean, there's going to be, I think there's going to be a lot of pigs. I mean, this place, Tejon, Tejon, Tejon, T-E-J-O-N, Tejon Ranch. Yeah. I think has, I gather they have like quite a bit of a pig population, enough to the point where, you out there and you can go out there and do a guided pig hunt and they do this throughout the year. And if there was none there, it wouldn't be that way. Right. And oftentimes, when I've hunted pigs, I've found that there's so much more fecund.

Like a deer will go and a deer will go. I've never used that word in my life. What does that word mean? Fecund? They have a lot of babies Oh So like You take another animal

Native animal around here And be like You know Black-tailed deer Does it have to do with The premise Is it fuck? Does it start with fuck?

No Fecundity F-E-C-U-N-D Hmm So like fecundity is You know Good at making babies Yeah

It seems like The root is fuck. Deer. Someone's lying. Deer's going to have one or two a year. Right. A female pig's going to keep kicking off litters of six, ten, several times a year. What a powerful animal too if they're i mean they're really they're really something i mean they've

gotten they've through our you know through i'm trying to put together an idea it's not actually that complicated thanks to us and in spite of us at the same time they've managed to get everywhere you know like oftentimes we just do it like we thought it was a good idea for a long time to go put pigs everywhere now we're like maybe it wasn't such a good idea to put pigs everywhere and and you know there's not a lot we're doing to stop them that's not the case here like in california they're treated more like a game animal you know the number like when people travel more people travel to california to hunt wild pigs than hunt anything else. Really? And they just don't seem to really cause the level of damage and hysteria that they do in some other areas. Like in certain areas in the southeast and the Gulf Coast area. I mean, there's pigs to the point where it's just really hard on agricultural interests.

And it's kind of inexplicable how they seem to be there for so long and explode into some level but in california it's just been it's just been there's some pigs around and people generally appreciate them i used to hunt pigs at not used to i still do but i have a friend who's got some her family has some cattle ranches up around sacramento and he's kind of got this a little bit like yeah you know sometimes i get too many and i need to get rid of some, but then we'll get a dry year and they'll all go away anyway. And I'd like it if he went out and shot some.

If you see one, shoot one for me. And they kind of are causing me a little bit of problems. And you can tell he has this conflicted relationship about him. But I put it to him one day. I said, Glenn, if you could shake a magic wand and all the wild pigs would be gone would you shake it no you know so he even admitted like they're a hassle he doesn't want a lot of them around but he would never want to see them all gone you know and it feels kind of like the relay

it's a great general it's a huge generalization but i feel like that's kind of been the relationship here's a lot of hunters i get all kinds of emails from guys who live in California, and they're like, they went out pig hunting six times, never even saw a pig, hunting on public ground. And these guys are wishing there was more of them. And in other parts of the country, you got government agencies paying real money to try to wipe them out because they cause such a problem with native species and agricultural interests and you know but here it's just a it's a different

vibe in california have you seen the uh pigman ted dugit footage i've seen clips of it i haven't seen it i mean i know everything i mean i know so much about it i mean i have a show on that network you know yeah they shoot for folks who are just listening don't know what we're talking about they they have uh pigman has a couple of episodes called Aporkalypse where they shoot pigs out of helicopters. Lots of them. He shot one with a bow and arrow out of a helicopter. Did he kill it? Yeah.

I saw that. I knew that it happened, but I didn't know if it came to be that he got it and got it. He had to aim way high because the downdraft of the blades shoved the arrow down, so he had to judge it. Recently I heard that they're in a situation where they're going to be paying people by the hour to kill pigs. Yeah, I would imagine. I mean, they have millions of pigs in Texas apparently.

Well, they have a lot of farmland in Texas too. Yeah. But they're... It's a weird thing about it the endangered like not the endangered species a weird thing about stuff like pigs and how you know just so i don't know i'm sure your viewers are somewhat up to speed on this but wild pigs are not from north we don't have wild pigs are not native to north america People brought wild pigs to North America early on in the pioneer days or during the contact years. They brought pigs to North America from their native in Eurasia,

brought them here as a food source. And they would keep some in pens and other people would have a practice where you'd go into an area and you'd just kind of turn pigs out. They wouldn't scatter too far. They'd fatten themselves on acorns and masts and grubs and various things. And when you wanted one, you could take your rifle out and find a couple and shoot them. And it was a way to produce meat where you weren't needing to provide it with all of its feed. It was just a very sturdy animal that could fatten itself on land. And inevitably, these pigs would get away. So we've had wild pigs here about

as long as we have have had europeans here another version happened later where people brought them in as a game species when they would bring them as a game species they would bring them in from you know like siberia and other areas where you still had the original stock. So the original sous-scrapha was like what we call the Eurasian wild boar. They had been bringing in domestic versions that had been bred off the Eurasian wild boar, and then people brought directly in the wild boar. Now, if you look for a parallel with cattle, like the ancestral cattle was an animal we now call the oryx, but the oryx went extinct, so we lost the wild version but retained the domestic version. With pigs, we had the domestic version that we humans created over long, long, tens of thousands of years coexisting with the wild version.

So people brought wild ones. They brought some to New Hampshire in the late 1800s, early 1900s. They brought some to California around that time and kind of put them out on the land as a thing to hunt. California around that time and kind of put them out on the land as a thing to hunt. And in time, we now have populations that are of domestic stock. We have populations that are of Eurasian stock, so they look like a real souped-up European wild boar. And we have populations that are various hybrids, so they demonstrate different degrees of it.

And they've been around a long time, and in some areas there's way too many. The trouble with some, like, one troublesome thing that happens to me and again it's as complicated as shooting rhinos to save rhinos is that we've always had we've had over the last you know 150 years we've been developing like this this set of ethics like what's an acceptable what are acceptable practices to use when hunting and we made a general determination that certain things aren't acceptable like you know we don't jack light deer like you can't use spotlights to go out and shoot deer at night and we've built up these rules because we have ideas about what's sporting okay what's the elements of fair chase also what leads to too much harvest so if you make it too easy to go get animals and you're going

to have shorter seasons, you're going to have fewer available tags, you know? And so they kind of balance technology to sort of make it that you're going to have whatever success rate, like a lot of elk hunts, only 10% of the hunters that participate in the elk hunt are successful. 90% are unsuccessful because we have rules in place that make it difficult to do, to hunt. There's so many pigs now in some places that we're like discarding a lot of the, we're have to, in dealing with that species, we're discarding a lot of the notions that we've held deer. Like you would never go out in a helicopter and shoot deer.

It just would never be legal. It would be frowned on by everybody in the hunting community. deer like you would never go out in a helicopter and shoot deer just would never be legal it would be frowned on by everybody in the hunting community but with pigs it's like an exception because it's a non-native animal that we want to get rid of and so it really is like uh it becomes kind of a cloudy issue like we're doing these like big game hunting practices that we worked hard to get rid of in order to save north american wildlife from the pits where we had driven it in the early 1900s and now like all these like ethical practices are not really applicable to this animal so you see some things and see some things happen and like your initial reaction is to be like oh

man it's just like ugly you know it's ugly but then you go like but it's a really complicated situation there's a ton of pigs causing a ton of economic damage. And it's really putting a hurt on people. And it's putting a hurt on native species too. You know, like we lose, like Hawaii lost ground nesting birds. Many species of ground nesting birds because of pigs and rats introduced species. They just ate the eggs. Yeah.

And pigs are really hard. There's like, you know, rare bird preserves in Florida where the number one problem they have in those preserves is pigs eat all the eggs. Wow. Because these are ground nesting birds and the pigs just vacuum them up. So you bring like kind of these like practices that strike someone who grew up in the American hunting tradition and it's like, oh, man. You know, I've even engaged in some things like I've done to pigs. I've done to pigs i've done things to wild pigs that i wouldn't do to any other animal like what i mean like running you

know running with dogs and killing knives and digging them out of holes and chasing them into little fenced enclosures and killing them in there and you know it's like it's they're a legitimate honest problem your your last show that i watched last night, actually, you had a pig. It was a whole head-to-hoof pig cooking, wild pig cooking special. It was a really fun special, very interesting and very educational. You want to hear the story of that pig? Yeah, the pig had his balls removed. Yeah, so this is crazy.

I'd gone down to Florida hunting turkeys, and we have the American, there's like multiple subspecies of the American turkey. So we have, it's all one species, but there's subspecies or varieties. You have like the eastern wild turkey in most of the east. The Osceola turkey, which lives in the south half of the Florida peninsula. Then you have the Rio Grande turkey, the Miriam's turkey the ghouls turkey in northern mexico southern arizona and if you're like a turkey geek you might want to try to eventually get all have the experience of hunting all turkey subspecies i had kind of accidentally got four of them and i realized that i wanted to go to south florida and have a chance to hunt osceola

so went down to hunt osceola down in the swamps down there. And we're down there. We run into these guys who hunt pigs with hounds. What their setup is, this guy has a big cattle ranch. And it borders a rare bird preserve. And the preserve, you can't even walk around in the preserve. Most of the preserve is closed to any human visitation at all. You can't even take a walk through there. But they have a guy who's like a full-time pig hunter in there. He goes around

and kills pigs as a way to try to protect these rare bird species and give them nesting opportunities. The rancher who likes to hunt wild hogs goes and he usually kind of hunts along his border with the preserve because the pigs will come out of the swamps in the preserve and come up and hunt

and root around on his land in the cover of night and then retreat back into the preserve where they're and hunt on his and root around on his land in the cover of night and then retreat back into the preserve where they're relatively safe and hide out so what he realized is he went through and put this fence in and put trap doors one-way doors in his fence so that pigs could leave the preserve and enter his fence but then they couldn't get back out it was like it was like a fish trap door. So now and then if he gets the itching to go pig hunting, he'll go out at 4 in the morning and make sure all the doors are shut,

like closes the doors up so the pigs can't get back through the other way. And then he knows they're probably somewhere on his ranch, and when he starts chasing with his hounds, they won't be able to make it back into their safety in the preserve. And when he goes out, if he gets a boar, like an old boar that's got his nuts intact, he knows it's not going to be

a great eating boar. Because they run themselves, they don't have a lot of fat, they're full of hormones, they're certainly edible, but not as good at eating. So what he'll do is he'll do something that benefits everyone. He will castrate that hog and turn it out.

Because now that hog cannot contribute to the population. He's not a viable breeding member of the population. And if he catches them again, he'll have what's called a barred hog. Barrel. What the hell is that word? Barrel hog. Barred hog, which is a castrated hog. Barrel. What the hell is that word? Barrel hog. Bard hog, which is a castrated hog. So like a steer is a castrated, you know, a steer is a castrated male cow,

castrated bull, and a bard hog is castrated. So we went out one night and caught a big boar with his nuts intact, castrated him, and turned him out so that he could, as this guy put it, it would take his mind off ass and put it on the grass and then we stayed out caught another pig and this one had at some point in time they didn't know if they had it or another guy had done it this one had been castrated you wouldn't even known it was totally healed up but he had been castrated those guys like that'll be a good one to eat so we killed that hog and kept it for food.

Wow. And we ate that thing from, honest to God, we ate its skin as pork rinds, took its intestines out and flushed the intestines and stripped them, made our own sausage casings, liver, heart, ate his nose and head cheese, ate his feet, like ate every part of that hog. Yeah, the head cheese. I got, actually, the one thing I got left is one of the good parts. I got one back leg frozen in my, I got one ham in my freezer.

I didn't know what head cheese was. I didn't know. Barrel hog. That's the word I'm looking for. Barrel? Barrel. Barrel hog. Well, let's look it up here.

Please. Castrated hog. I've even written the word. I wrote a thing about this. Look it up. Please. Castrated hog. I've even written the word. I wrote a thing about this.

What is a castrated pig called? Barred barrel hog. B-A-R-R-O-W. Barrow hog. Barrow hog. Hmm. Okay. Barrow.

Yeah. B-A-R-R-O-W. Yeah, and these guys love to hunt, and they loved to eat pigs. It's a good little system they got. The head cheese was so weird. I'd heard that name before, word, description. I didn't know what it was. It's like a gelatin.

Yep. I made head cheese with the first wild pig I ever killed was in California. I went out to hunt wild pigs, and I had never laid eyes on a wild pig and i don't want to shoot the first wild pig i saw so i went out one day without my rifle just to see some wild pigs and the next day i went out and got one i want to make a head cheese with it where it's not it's not it doesn't make a cheese but it's like gelatinous so yeah a lot of the cuts like when you butcher an animal a lot of the cuts that are chewy or, you know, that don't really make great steak, they're not that way because they have a lot of connective tissue, you know, and fatty deposits, whatever.

They have stuff that like turns into collagen when you cook it, like turns into like a gelatin when you cook it. So a head's full of that stuff. And the bones have it. And so you simmer that head for a long, long time. Eventually you can pick off all the meat. And a lot of the gristle and connective tissue and stuff turns into like a gelatin-like substance. You can make real gelatin that way. And now we just have a packet where you pour a powder out and mix it with water and makes gelatin. But old style gelatin and natural gelatin would be just

derived from as an animal by-product. So you take all the meat that you pluck off the same way, you know, like hog jowl, if you ever had that, you take the tongue out and chop the tongue up. And there's all this other at root at when it's warm, it's liquid, but it sets up as gelatin. And it's just all bound together with natural gelatin that you've derived by slow cooking the pig's head. So it's like little bits of pig meat bound up in an aspic or bound up in gelatin. and then of course you season it and flavor it with all kinds of good stuff to eat and then when you when you when it when it sets up when it's chilled you can pour it out like a it looks almost like a fruitcake you know it pours out in a mold and then you slice it and it's it's not cheese it looked great it looked great because my buddy

yeah my buddy that makes it this this guy, Matt Weingarten, the chef I hang out with, he puts all this amazing stuff to eat in there. And you can put colorful things and citrusy flavors. It's beautiful. It looks great. One of the things I really love about your show is that you occasionally do show recipes and how to cook, but also that you butcher the animals. You quarter the animals, gut them.

You do all that on the show. You don't shy, gut them. You do all that on the show. You see wild stuff on the show that you don't see on other stuff. It's amazing how much liberty we have. How much the network lets us get away with. Is it because it's on the Sportsman's channel? Yeah, but there's another

channel that shows they won't let the people have bloody hands. What show is that? My understanding is not a show. There's a network. I've heard that, yeah, there's another hunting network. I've heard that it's protocol on other hunting networks. You're not supposed to have bloody hands.

Like, you won't see them gut animals. That's ridiculous. Because they think that it would make people turned off by hunting. It's like, how you think people get turned off by hunting by seeing people eat what they hunt is beyond me. But Sportsman Channel is really cool because they let us do stuff. I mean, and it works to the advantage because people are like, you know what, I get it, man.

It's like you're showing a thing that most people are hiding from, but it's a reality that meat goes through a metamorphosis to get there, and it's sometimes gory. So, yeah, we get to show all that, and I love it. But I don't think of it as just gratuitous. No. It's instructional, really. Yes.

Yeah, that's how I feel. I don't feel it's gratuitous at all. But I think I like watching you when you ate that moose. I like watching you guys cut it up and then eat it. Yeah. Dude, that meat was unbelievable Unbelievable man we had that marrow Crack the marrow bones open Scoop the marrow

Unbelievable Like that meat was so tender and good And you know When you're on TV You watch like morning shows And they have a cooking segment The host was like oh it's so good Oh it's so good Sometimes Oh, it's so good.

Sometimes I'll cook something on the show that's not good. And I usually try to be like, that's not good. Like coyote? Yeah, I was like, you know, it's not that great. Because I want it to be that when something is good, I feel like I want people to believe me, and that was good. It was just a phenomenal moose, man. It looked unbelievably delicious.

Elks widely regarded as, like, if you went and surveyed people who've tasted a wide variety of meats, elk is the one that people would be like, it's the best one. Where we're going, Tijan has elk on it, tule elk. Yeah. You know, you got, like, Roosevelt elk, Rocky Mountain, all these different subspecies of elk. There's a very rare one in California. Not rare, but, yeah, rare and a very small range that was almost wiped out.

And it's back now because you have like big chunks of property like that where they can find you know find some refuge and people are working to maintain and provide habitat for them so it's kind of a cool spot you'll go there and see a elk that most people haven't seen i hope i hope we run into one because it's like a the two the twoly elk you know do you you feel like uh the moose was right up there with elk it was i'm not joking it was one of the best pieces of meat i've eaten and to eat meat in Do you feel like the moose was right up there with elk? I'm not joking. It was one of the best pieces of meat I've eaten.

And to eat meat in the field, we age meat because it tenderizes. And we're eating meat. Fresh meat often tastes like iron. Well, you eat some fresh meat. There's like an iron kind of thing to it. It just doesn't quite taste like aged meat. I like that. But when we were in Wisconsin, man, you were cooking those steaks, and it was phenomenal, though.

Yeah. But sometimes it's pretty tough. Like, my brother lives in Alaska. He kills moose every year. Like, the guy, like, kills moose, eats moose all year. He's a moose snob. Like, he won't hunt a lot of stuff. He likes to hunt moose and doll sheep because moose is good.

But he puts a moose in his freezer just because he doesn't have a hanging, you know, he doesn't have a locker where he can dry age his meat, he'll kill a moose and typically because of weather and bugs and other issues he comes home and right away processes his moose and puts it in his freezer and he won't usually touch that thing for six months

because it will slowly age meat will tenderize in your freezer over time so when he calculates his year out he knows he's going to kill a moose in September he doesn't plan on having the one he killed before be gone in September. He plans on having the one he killed before be gone, you know, staggered. So the one that he kills, he lets it slowly age in his freezer and it will tenderize in your freezer over time. And then he starts in on the new one. So when he kills a moose, he's still eating the moose from the year before. That seems so weird because the way you ate that moose, it didn't seem like it needed

anything at all. Because it was an exceptional animal. Oh, so that's unusual. Yeah. Those animals, like most animals, especially males and bulls, like most animals, not most, animals benefit, like ungulates benefit from aging. You don't age wild pigs. You don't age wild pigs. You don't age black bears.

A lot of critters you do age. Deer, elk, moose, it all benefits. Those animals all benefit from aging. There's natural enzymes or whatever. The process is well understood. I don't understand it totally well, but it's well understood that you hang it and there's like a natural decay. I'll put ducks. Like if I kill a duck, I'll gut the duck.

If I have like a wife or if I have a girlfriend or whoever doesn't want it or when I had it, what am I trying to say? Forget it. I'll gut the duck and put it in the fridge. Now, I might need to put it in a paper bag because someone might not want to see the duck every time they open the fridge. But I'll roll it up in a paper bag so it can still breathe and I I'll put it in my fridge, and I'll leave it in there a long time. I might leave it in there 10 days. And that meat gets to where you could scrape it away with your thumb. The inside, the gutting, where you've gutted the bird, might start to even smell a little off.

But the meat is getting just perfect. The flavor enhances. It gets more tender. It's just like aging. So why was that move so good then? I don't know. Just what it was eating? Just good.

I mean, we had a great piece off. We were eating kind of like the most tender part of the rear leg. But it was just a great animal. There's so much variability. That's one thing about being a wild game chef. I'm a wild game cook. I think chef sounds a little more formal, but I'm a wild game cook. And one thing about being a wild game cook that's more challenging

than being a regular cook is you're dealing with so much variability. You get some great chef and he can do some amazing thing because he's got a purveyor. And when he buys a pig, it's like the pig ate this for 72 days and then we hit ate this for 14 days and then we killed it on this day and chilled it at this temperature for these many days and you know and every time he buys a pig the pig comes in his kitchen or his restaurant and he knows he just know what it's going to be like you know animals you don't know what kind of there's age issues and what kind of trip they've been on

there's all kinds of variability so you learn how to kind of control that and sort of bring the ingredients into line because some animals are good and some animals aren't I shot a mule deer one time that was just it was just disgusting to eat the thing and then you get another mule deer and it's like that is so good

that one was delicious that's what I'm saying man and then some you know it's like you don't know what they've been up to or there's just a lot of mystery with it but that moose was a phenomenal moose i've also had my buddy he was my buddy we had a falling out i used to hunt this guy he killed the moose he brought the meat over i thought he'd killed the Loch Ness Sea Monster. It was like I'd never seen anything like it. Just funky and nasty. He had a cow tag. See, one thing about shooting males on antlered game is you can get an idea of age. The antlers betray the age.

There's a growth pattern they go through. If you see a forky deer or a spikehorn deer, it's like, that's a one and a half. Your old deer is going to be great eating. When you're shooting antlerless, the clues are much more subtle. What a guy looked at the tooth. So he had a cow moose tag. He went out and got a cow moose. He later had someone look at the teeth,

and they estimated that thing to be 20 years old. Oh, my God. And it was like you couldn't really chew it. So it was an old lady. It tasted like a sea monster. Do you know what I mean? Because it's really hard to tell. There's guys that really know their business.

Like, you know, Doug Dern in Wisconsin. Doug Dern can look at a doe and tell you how old it is. Yeah. He's looked at so many damn deer. He's looked at so many deer that live on his place that he just knows, like, what their groove is, you know? Isn't it a weird sort of a symbiotic relationship that those deer have to farmers? Like, that's almost not really a wild animal. No, Canada geese, crows, white-tailed deer love people.

Yeah, when we were at Doug's place, I mean, first of all, what a fucking great guy he is. I love Doug. Man, he's one of the best. I love that guy. He's one of the best. And I love his place. Like, just like a big, I don't say this about many people. I don't throw this around lately, but I love his place. Like a big...

I don't say this about many people. I don't throw this around lately, but I was like, he's a big-hearted guy. Ah, yeah. Do you know what I mean? And it's not something I really think of when I'm describing other individuals. Yeah, no.

I'm so glad you introduced me to him. He's awesome. And it was so cool, me and Brian Callen, staying at his place, and that he let us do that and film the show there. God damn, there's a lot of deer up there, too. Jesus Christ. I mean, we didn't see a lot of big bucks, but God damn, we saw a lot of deer.

And I told you about this, I think, or he did. When he was a kid, if you saw a deer track, you ran home and told your parents. Wow. There were no freaking deer around. Well, they've fucking grown in population. We saw 16 the first day, right? We saw about 16 deer at least. But I mean, yeah, it's just, that's like a real deery spot.

But they do have, that's the perfect word, they have a symbiotic relationship. Whitetail deer have really, are one of the winners when it comes to development issues. And then our good friend, the mule deer, which is a more, to me, like it's a more romantic kind of thing. Mule deer. And some people would be like, oh yeah,

but we have mule deer in my yard all the time. And I know, but generally they have, they don't do as well. They don't do as well with, with fragmentation. They don't do as well with kind of the stress, you know,

they have some things they like to eat and they're kind of wed to those things. They like to eat. And whitetails are like, oh yeah, mow that down. I'll eat corn. You know, they have some things they like to eat and they're kind of wed to those things they like to eat. And whitetails are like, oh yeah, mow that down. I'll eat corn. You know, they're just like, they're always going to find something. And that place is just like a deer culture down there. Well, there's a lot of places like that in this country. Oh yeah.

A lot of farmlands, right? Like Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, a lot of farmland, a lot of crazy whitetail deer. Yeah. You got way, way, way more whitetail deer than you had at the time of european contact way more right yeah that's nuts but still if every dude in america went out and shot a deer we'd be running like a 200 million deer deficit really oh yeah wow so people say to me like so you think everyone should go out and shoot their own meat i'm like well we really couldn't we'd run out of critters it's like it's gonna always be like a fringe activity i think it's always going to be a fringe activity anyway,

as long as society keeps going the way it is. Oh, no, I'm not worried. I'm not worried. I don't stay up at night. One of my goals, not a goal, but a thing I'd like to see happen is rather than, I mean, we could definitely have more hunters. I think we need more just to have political clout to defend our lifestyle. But I also would like to see the people who have no interest in hunting come to record like through understanding kind of the

mechanics of wildlife start to recognize it as that hunting is legitimate useful practice and not the opposite you know i think people that pay attention do see that i think for the most part the real issue is that most people have this sort of periphery view of it they they don't really look at it they don't get in there and try to understand okay what is hunting what's going on with it i know like i said my own personal transformation from looking at deer like why would you kill that beautiful animal to oh you have to kill them okay i get it you know it's understanding what's going oh well that actually keeps the population check well if you don't do that they run out of of food. Well, then there's the massive strain on the resources. Well, there's no predators.

Yeah, wild fluctuations. I didn't get it. I had to look into it. But when you do look into it, the only people that don't get it are the people that don't want to, whether it's for moral, political, whatever reasons, whatever bias you have coming into it. If you look at it objectively i don't i don't see how you could i don't see how you could not get it no i think anyone who looks at wildlife politics in a way that's like immersive and you have to come to

understand it you go ask someone who runs a wildlife agency like a state wildlife agency or federal wildlife agency and ask them what their job would be like without having hunting as a tool and you know it gives it would make them shudder because you just you know it's so much it's going to be very difficult to maintain the kind of the portfolio of different species we have at the levels we have you're gonna have to be you'd have to be open to having really wild fluctuations, having cycles of disease, and things that aren't as pretty. And also why?

Like why deny ourselves access to a renewable resource that generates so much revenue? You know, it generates economic activity. It's self-sustaining. It helps pay for itself. And it's fun people don't want to say that for whatever reason you don't want to say killing animals is fun it seems like it's a mean thing to say yeah i love hunting man it's fun it's not that it's it's not you're not being mean it's not it's it's an exciting activity that speaks to your dna i always tell people i

wouldn't because i heart like i'll talk about the food element of it. I wouldn't hunt if it wasn't for the food. I wouldn't hunt if it wasn't for the fun. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's both. It's exciting. And you could watch The Meat Eater online now, finally. You could pay for them.

For the longest time, you could only get them on DVD. But now, if you go to meateater.vhx.tv or go to themeateater.com, you can get them. They're selling them as a bundle. And Volume 4 is the bundle that the two-part episode with me and Brian Callen in Montana. I should say Brian Callen and I. And if you use the code word Rogan. No, no, you shouldn't say that. No?

Why is that? Just picture that you're saying it without Callen. What would you say? Brian Callen and I? No, picture you're saying it. You wouldn't say it features i brian callan and me i would say brian callan and me though yeah picture what you'd say without the other guy there right right you would say me you would say me but you would say him first right

yeah but i'm talking about the me i okay okay i meant i was just saying the um i was just trying to put him oh you were worried about the sequence not the pronoun yeah not the pronoun use yeah yeah you're correct, though. Me is the right way to say it. I fuck that up all the time. I don't even pay attention to it. I know the rule, but I don't care about it. I ain't concerned with it.

You ain't. Volume four, use the code word Rogan. Get them all, though. It's a great fucking show. It's not just a great hunting show. It's a great show. I was saying that to my wife the other day while I was watching. I was like, this show, it's almost like i want more people to see it i wish more people would see it because it would

open their eyes as to your approach your it's it's more intelligent philosophy behind like you see all these hunting shows like well i'll tell you what there's a big buck came out i would i tell you what we shot him with that gun i tell you. You don't have any of that stupid shit in it. It's interesting. It's fascinating. You're a well-read, introspective guy, and I love the narration on it, too. It's a great fucking show. Thank you, man.

I like it. I would watch that show even if I wasn't in it. I would watch it. I do watch it. It's a great fucking show. You were in it sometimes. One of my favorite shows ever. In my inbox right now is the first cut of an initial pass on the Wisconsin hunt.

Really? Oh, awesome. We had a good time in Wisconsin. That was a lot of fucking fun. We'll have to talk about that someday. Yes, we'll talk about that before it comes out. MeeEater.VHX.TV. And again, use the code word ROan and you'll save five bucks and volume

four is the one with Brian Callen and me alright you nailed it audible.com thank you to audible.com go there download some cool shit go to audible.com forward slash Joe get yourself a free audio book and

30 free days of audible service and thanks also to on it.com that's O-N-N-I-T Get yourself a free audio book and 30 free days of audible service. And thanks also to Onnit.com. That's O-N-N-I-T. Use the code word ROGAN and save 10% off any supplements. We will be back. We have a very full week next week. A lot of shit going on.

Oh, boy. I got Neil Brennan, John Hackleman, and Peter Schiff, the economist, is going to be here on Wednesday. That should be interesting. What is he? Economist? Expert on the economy. John Hackleman, trainer of many, many great fighters, including one of the greatest ever in Chuck Liddell.

And Neil Brennan, our pal, stand-up comedian and co-creator of The Chappelle Show. All right, folks. We love you, and Steve Rinell and I are going to go The Chappelle Show. All right, folks. We love you. And Steve Rinell and I are going to go bring home the bacon. Literally. See you soon. Big kiss. Mwah. Thank you.