The Joe Rogan Experience - #971 - Steven Rinella

Episode Date: June 6, 2017

Steven Rinella is an outdoorsman, author, and television host. He currently hosts "MeatEater" on the Sportsman Channel & Netflix, and a podcast also called "MeatEater" available on Spotify.

vacation though with your family yeah we're going to lanai oh that'll be fun yeah boom and we're live speaking of vacations tell me about guyana yeah that's a good segue you've been there a bunch you know how many times i thought it was three no i was in no i i've been to guyana twice but between there i went to bolivia oh and did like very similar very similar kind of trip. Like doing a river trip with Amerindians. Are those people weirded out by Americans because of the Jonestown massacre thing? Dude, it's so funny you bring up Jonestown because there's a couple things I've been surprised.

So the main group I was with in Guyana, um, is the, the, the Makushi. And I was surprised one day when I was, they make a dish, they make a dish with, uh, cassava,

which is a root, like manioc. Um, they make a dish with that. They make a flower from it and make a dish. And I was one day saying that, Hey, that's a,

that looks like pizza. Right? No, right. No comprehension, but like no thought of what pizza is. And I remember thinking like, right? No, right? No comprehension, but no thought of what pizza is. I remember thinking, wow, man,

something you take like such a, you know, you just consider such a part of everyday life is pizza. They didn't know what it was. Yeah, and they don't know about Georgetown.

Whoa. Even though it was in their own country. They don't know about it at all? No, it's just not. But you gotta, we'll get into this we got to like realize sort of how insular you know and the Amerindian communities are who live in the in

the jungle in Guyana yeah did they have communication on any yeah they do yeah more and more now and there's a lot a lot changed the two times I went there were through five or six years apart. They discovered sunglasses. And I remember the first time I was down there trying to turn them on because, you know, they bow hunt for fish, right? Which is one of the main ways they get fish is bow hunting for fish. And when you're looking into the water, polarized lenses are invaluable. I feel lost without them. They're amazing.

Trying to spot fish underwater. And I kept saying, man, you've got to get on board with polarized sunglasses. And I'd hand them to him. He didn't like it. This guy, Roven, he didn't like anything about having them on his face. He just couldn't do it. But then I go down there five years later, and every one of those boys is rocking polarized glasses. So you see changes.

But, yeah, that's the thing with like i've brought up jonestown a number of times because in the u.s if you say hey i'm going to guyana all anybody says is don't drink the kool-aid right you know it wasn't really kool-aid it was some like kool-aid no it was a kool-aid type drink no no so when people look at when we had this conversation because there's a couple of things that are important here what the poison was right so we had this conversation, because there's a couple of things that are important here, what the poison was. So we had a conversation. Let me back up. The root.

I mentioned earlier they make a root. Cassava. Yeah, so there's a root cassava. Is that the poisonous stuff? Yeah. So it's the root that gives all life. That's what they call it? No.

But, I mean, they eat fish and game, okay, river fish and wild game, and then that's like a staple that they eat every day. And the other thing they eat every day is a half dozen things all produced from cassava, which is kind of like a yam, and it's cultivated with slash and burn agriculture. And they cultivate these yams, and from it they make a flour. They make a type of grain that's like couscous. They make a syrup that's used as a coloring agent and a flavoring agent. They make a non-alcoholic drink.

They make a somewhat alcoholic drink that would be like an equivalent to beer. And then they make a much more alcoholic drink, which would be an equivalent to beer and then they make a much more alcoholic drink which would be an equivalent to like fortified wine. Wow. They make all this stuff from this root that they grow. In its raw form, when you shred the root and squeeze the

shredding, so it'd be like, imagine you took a yam and shredded a yam and then squeezed the yam between your hands and dripped out a liquid. That liquid is deadly poisonous. dogs chickens people anything that drinks that liquid dies jesus and it's cyanide so the jones town massacre that it was Kool-Aid, Flavor-Aid, Valium, and Potassium Cyanide. My question coming home from Ghana was, was the cyanide from the root? Were they like doing homemade cyanide? And so when I got home, I looked this and it's and it seems as a that

that commune jonestown commune had been ordering actual potassium cyanide which is used in a number of mining practices and other stuff so it's an available it's an available compound and that's they laced the kool-aid with i'd heard about this cassava stuff. Do they know what the process is? Do they know how people figured out how to make it non-poisonous? Wow, it's just been done so long. Yeah, and the same stuff with different poisons they use to poison

that people use to poison fish. What strikes me about it is how in the village, the Makushi village I was in is mostly Makushi, but there's also like Wapashana, which is another tribe. Carib is another tribe, but it's predominantly a Makushi village. And there's about 300 people that live in this village. And how careless they are with the liquid.

And how careless they are with the liquid. Like if you nowadays, like picture like you're like the type of person that like you and me are married to and raise kids with, right? If you had that type of mom and you had a big bowl of a liquid that would kill you if you drank a bit, how that bowl would be monitored in your household. Jesus Christ. There'd be like barbed wire around it, electrical fence. How do they do it? This shit just lays out. They just lay it out? And I said, I was asking this guy, Rovan, I'm like, hey man, I kept returning to this.

There's certain things I would always ask him, just like things that he struggled to understand my fixation on it. But I kept saying to this Makushi guy, Rovan, who... I should back up, too. I got on communication. So Guyana, it's the only English-speaking country in South America. Everyone speaks English. No, no. The government functions are English.

So if you picture South America, it's northeast corner opening out onto the southern Caribbean. That's Guyana. It's bordered on the east by Suriname, on the west by Venezuela, to the south by Brazil. It's 90% virgin rainforest. And within that 90% of virgin rainforest is only 10% of the population. So the coastal peoples are like Creole cultures, people mostly descended from slave trade, Europeans. In the interior are the Amerindian groups.

And the government functions, sort of the power in Guyana is the coastal peoples. And there's not a ton of interplay, and there used to be barely any interplay, between the Amerindian communities and the government. The government's English-speaking. So you'll find that there's a lot of English mixed in in the Amerindian communities. And some people, like

this guy Rovin, because he's sort of upping, he's like a he has a leadership role in his community. And he's learned a he has a leadership role in his community and he's learned just standard English very well he's had a fascinating life just how much stuff has changed for him so you can

just like converse in a way that you can converse in the type of English we're talking right now almost which creates this weird tension between the things that you're discussing and how you're discussing them. For instance, to have a guy just in conversational English talking about problems they're having with neighboring shamans and their own shaman, putting curses on each other. There's a strange tension between how it's being conveyed to you.

You know? Like how so? Like, okay, if you're talking conversational English, I guess like a life, it's almost like you'd want it to be, when he's telling you this, you'd almost want to be reading it

in like closed caption. And he'd be saying it in the indigenous language. Because it sounds weird to have to have an idea that's so foreign to us which would be like a battle of shamans battling over access to wild animals okay um to have that delivered in conversational english just struck me as unusual and because like usually when you're traveling you're getting all of your information like traveling in bolivia a guy would tell a story and he'd tell a story in um simshian no what am i saying not simshian chamane okay he'd tell a story in chamane to a person who spoke spanish the person who speaks spanish would tell it to a person.

No, no, no. A Chimane guy telling someone who speaks Chimane in Spanish. Then that person telling it to a person who speaks Spanish and English. And then that person giving you the information. Whoa. When you get it through that, it takes on a mystical quality. Like you're crossing some space-time thing. Right? You're seeing these ideas discussed in their ancestral tongue.

Okay? Yeah. Do you remember I sent you a video of a guy talking about killing a jaguar? Yes. Right? The language, you've never, like, when he's speaking, you're like, I've never, in all my travels, I've never heard a language that sounds anything like that. Is the video online? Can we play it?

Yeah, it's online. Do you know the title of it? I think if you type in, like, Chimane T-S-I, Chimane Jaguar Attack. See if Jamie can find it. You'll pull it up. It's very cool. The language is really amazing. It seems so ancient.

Yes. It's not, not like has nothing to do with like the latin languages it just sounds so it's it's very unique so i guess what i'm getting at is to hear someone talking about something in conversational english that seems so far removed from just our understanding of things it takes on a weird quality but what's nice about it is you can go to a place where life is so vastly different than anything we understand and just get like the straight dope right from the source. Right. It's why I love, it's kind of like what's so cool about Guyana because you can go and converse with people who are very much a hunter-gatherer culture today, but just shoot the shit with them without ever feeling like you're missing something.

Wow. It's like everything's not lost in translation and all weird and garbled and painstaking to wade through. But you can just ask, like, hey, what's up with the local shaman? I'll give you the dope on the local shaman. And so they trade spells? Yeah, we'll talk about that. But I feel like I was laying the groundwork for the Jim Jones poison. Did you find the video?

No, I lost the word that you were spelling. T-S-I-M-A-N-E. T-S-I-M-A-N-E. What does that mean? Chimane. That's how they spell it? With a T? I could be screwed up.

You know how you spell a lot worse when you're not actually writing it out? Yeah, I'm terrible. I don't know how anybody wins a spelling bee ever. Chimane is T-S-I? Yeah, so if you type in Chimane Jaguar, T-S-I-M-A-N-E Jaguar. Wow. The whole thing is an Amerindian hunter remembers his best dog lost to a jaguar in the

jungles of Bolivia. Alright, here we go. Let's play this because it's fucking awesome. Here we go. Following is an interview with a member of the Chimani tribe of Bolivia due to their inherent difficulties of translating indigenous languages, subtitles are at times approximate.

Wow. So he's explaining where he's from. He's saying he hunts for food. I always share the meat I get with my family. I'm a good provider of meat. He's cutting up the meat in this video. I also enjoy the adventure. I love trekking through the jungle.

Once I was hunting with my favorite dog and a couple other dogs. They ran ahead barking. They were going after something. All of a sudden my favorite dog just went completely silent. ran ahead barking, they were going after something. All of a sudden, my favorite dog just went completely silent. They were about 50 meters ahead of me. When I got there, the other dogs had gone ahead after something. Saying my favorite dog was lying there dead, there was a big hole in his right side.

It almost looked like it had been arrowed. First thing I did was pick up my dog and set him where the ants wouldn't get to his body. That dog was the bravest one I had. I'm not going to translate anymore. You guys should just watch the video if you're interested. But you get a sense of how cool it is. So did we fully cover the poison thing?

No, not really. So I got home. So it wasn't the same poison. But Jim Jones, he was involved in a Pentecostal church. He was involved in the Methodist church. Then he kind of became a healer and started his own cult. It was funny, I was reading about him when I was trying to figure out the poison.

I was reading about how he was kind of ahead of his time because the Jim Jones massacre was 1979. 78 or 79. One thing that got him sideways with his church was that he wanted to have interracial service. That caused friction in his church at the time wanted to have an interracial service wow and that caused friction in his church at the time earlier in his career and he moved out to the bay area and started this church and

then he got like kind of paranoid and thought that his congregants shouldn't be engaging in sexual activities but he had he was siring illegitimate children left and right they go down to guyana go out to the jungle. There's a thousand of them down there. People in the U.S. from the Bay Area are kind of like wondering what happened to their loved ones. They send a congressman down there to try to figure out what's going on. He shows up with a bunch of cameras. The congressman says, you know, he's like, I'm going to help anyone who wants to go back to the Bay Area,

go back to the Bay Area. He goes to the airstrip. There's a shootout the congress the u.s congressman gets killed in the shootout and then they just all start killing themselves with the poison and firearms and other shit 270 some kids over 900 people yeah i remember it's like the defining thing but then yeah when you talk to these boys i'm like you, you know, Georgetown, like the Jonestown or, you know, the Jim Jones, Jonestown Massacre, never drink the Kool-Aid. They're like, no. See, I'd heard it was budget Kool-Aid. No, that's a debate.

Some of it was. And that's a debate. And in trying to find, like in trying to like dig around and find the source of the cyanide, which became very important to me to learn for some reason. No, and I think Kool-Aid even tried to distance himself from it. That's probably was Kool-Aid. But there's like some archival stuff. And I guess in this archival stuff, images like footage taken around and photographs around, people have found out that they had both Flavor Aid and Kool-Aid on hand.

That's hilarious. What if it was Kool-Aid propaganda that was trying to pass the buck on the Flavor Aid? So, yeah, no thing there. So if you go up, the main river that drains Guyana is the Essequibo. And if you go way up the Essequibo, you'll get to a stream that comes in from there called the Rupanuni. And you go up the Rupanuni, and then you get to the Rewa. And at the mouth of the Rewa

in Rupanuni is Rewa Village. And in Rewa Village, you're isolated enough where you don't know about 900 Americans and some other people from other areas dying in a mass suicide. Wow.

That's fascinating. Around the time you were born. That's fascinating. It makes sense, though. They're just so removed from it. Yeah. Do they use agriculture? How are they getting this cassava?

They grow peppers, and then they grow the cassava. And the cassava, like, it's kind of amazing. You know, we always hear about slash and burn agriculture. So they'll go into a slash and burn in a spot out in the jungle. But it's like a recycled sort of slash and burn agriculture. And I'll break down what that means. So they'll go into an area and slash everything and burn it just to clear the just so sunlight can make it through to the ground so they chop the jungle down and burn everything then the cassava like i said looks

like big yams when you grow it you just take a stalk of an existing plant and just bury that stock in the ground and it'll sprout up a new crop and so you know you're close to the equator so you don't have seasons as much there's some seasonal variation they do have times they do have like they are wet season and dry season but it's like you always get about the same amount of darkness as daylight and they don't have the wild fluctuations that we have in the temperate zone. So they can grow year round. And they stage it. So you have a crop that's coming in, you have a crop that'll be coming in three months, you have a crop that'll be coming in six months, you have a crop that'll be coming in nine months. And once you get a certain number of cycles, I can't remember how many cycles you get off a piece of ground, you let the ground go

feral, give it a few years, and then come in and burn it again. Also, intermittently, every time you plant cassava, before you replant, you make a little fire and burn some debris in that same spot. No irrigation. You're not watering it at all. And that's the only fertilizer you're giving it, is you're burning some of the surrounding just detritus scraped up from the jungle floor that you burn there and grow it.

And it is a staple of life. That and a river fish and game. It's just such a wild thing that it's such a poisonous plant. I don't get it. I don't get it. There's other stuff. There's other poisons that are extracted. I don't get it.

There's other stuff. There's other poisons that are extracted. People in South America, in the jungles, people that use blow darts, so people that hunt with blow guns, it's generally understood. Even talking to the Makushi who hunt with bows and arrows, I asked him, like, why don't you guys hunt with blow darts, blow guns? And he explained to me, we don't need to, because we have arrow plant, which gives arrows. Now, if you were in this other area, you know, more up in the mountains, and there's no arrow plant, then you'd hunt with a blow dart.

So is arrow plant just a plant that makes like a shaft-like? Makes the arrow. What is it? What is the actual- It's a type, it's like a cane. Wow. what is it? It's like a cane. You know what it looks like? It looks like a palm and the palm leaf

puts out these long pieces and when one of those is ready, you cut it green and then they can make an arrow in no time. So you go out in the jungle find this piece and you know like one of the theories on how we domesticated plant species would be that it was a very gradual, unintentional domestication where you would go out.

I'm going to just take something simple. Let's say you eat a lot of raspberries. You go out and you gather raspberries and you bring them home and you eat them near home. And then people are eating these seeds and shitting these seeds out. you eat them near home and then people are eating these seeds and shitting these seeds out and pretty soon there's a lot more grass berries growing around your home village just for the simple fact that you're always bringing the seeds home and discarding them around and creating it so they have except for maniac which people don't even really i don't think it's really well understood what it came from.

It's been domesticated for a long time. All the plants they use are widely available in the jungle, but tend to also have some around home too, that they've brought home and planted nearby, or they just grow up there now because they've been bringing the stuff into their village for so long. So arrow plant is readily available. They cut the arrow shaft green, and it looks like just a green dowel but it has some curvature to it then they'll come home and

they start a fire and they heat the green thing just by twirling it over the over the embers or over the flame twirling it and getting it, and it'll let off a little steam, and then you bend it. And then you twirl it and get it hot and bend it, and you'll eventually make it, well, arrow straight. Then they make four different kinds of arrows depending on what they're hunting for. So let's say you were making an arrow to...

Let's say you're making a arrow to uh it gets even more let's say you're making a big game arrow all right um in the big game they hunt would be red brocket deer white lip peccary which is a favorite um collared peccary which we call javelina and sometimes tape here the the arrow they use for that so they would take that so let's say they're going to build which we call javelina, and sometimes tape here. The arrow they use for that, so they would take that. So let's say they're going to build one of those. So they take that green shaft and straighten it. The next step is they find a wood called bullet wood, and they cut what would be like what's going to form the base of your tip, the base of your spear. And that bullet wood, they fit into the base of your tip, the base of your spear and that bullet would,

they fit into the end of the green shaft, which is almost like a, it's a picture of having the consistency of bamboo and they shove that bullet wooden there and it causes, it forms like a base. And to that, they take an old machete blade that they cut out and file down to be about a four inch steel knife.

that they cut out and file down to be about a four-inch steel knife. And that goes into the bullet wood that forms the junction between the arrow shaft and the steel piece. That's the only man-made material they use in their arrows. Then they take a plant that looks like yucca, and they make their own string, and they got little bits of rubber from rubber trees that they wax the string with, and they put a bullet wood knock in, the part that your bow string actually pushes on, and that gets tied in to the arrow shaft, and then they fletch the arrow with feathers from guan or black curacao or crestless curacao, and that's what they fletch their arrows with because they're very water resistant.

So their broadheads are made out of machete blades. Yeah. And is this a recent innovation for them? Yeah, they used to use wood. And how long have they been doing it with machete blades? In his lifetime, it's always been, they don't call them machete, they call them cutlasses. In Roven's lifetime, Roven's 32. He's kind of my main friend down there that hung out with both times i was down there in his lifetime he remembers people using

he remembers people using wood blades which is made from like a bamboo like material so it'd be like a convex spear point cut out of bamboo and sharpened. He remembers people using those, but he had always used cutlass blades. Hmm. Wow. Now, in Bolivia, you'd see people who have, who are just using the old form. Their other arrows, when they make arrows for hunting birds and they make arrows for hunting fish,

the only man-made material on those arrows is hog wire fencing. So basically wire fencing, they snip out the hunks of wire smash it down till it's flat and then they can cut barbs in there to hunt birds and hunt fish wow the bow is it's not a laminate bow so they make a bow by just cutting a tree single piece a single stem tree shaving it down to what they're after and then take that same yucca plant pull out the fibers out of the yucca strands and make bow strings that goes very quickly as well like we made a bow string one day wow yeah you just they they you take the strands and twist them like imagine like you're rubbing your hands to warm them up you got all those

strands in your hands and and you roll them, and it makes strands that are comprised of a dozen fibers. Then you start braiding up from there until you braid up a big, long bowstring. And that's how you string your bow. So when they're shooting their bow, what's a long shot for them, like 15, 20 yards? 20 yards is a long shot. Long shot. And the length of shot you're going to take sort of depends on, kind of depends on, well, they don't really think,

like the idea that you're going to wound it and it's going to get away doesn't weigh on them very heavily. Right? Like in our culture, in our hunting culture here, we've come to really... The wound loss is something we do a lot to avoid. There's a lot of talk. We're always talking about you shouldn't be surprised to get a good hit.

You should know what's going to happen. Don't take shots that are too far away. We really put a strong value on when you let the arrow go or when you let the bullet go, you damn sure know that you're going to have a quick, clean kill. At least we put a lot of value on that. In practice, sometimes that stuff goes out the window, but anyone would say that that's your goal. Not on their mind.

You just need to take some Hail Marys, right? And they can shoot. If you're trying to shoot a bird, all they're trying to do is get a wire point. So one of those arrows I described fitted with a long wire on the end, cut out of a piece of steel fence with a barb, with a couple of barbs filed into it. And that head is joined by string to the arrow shaft so that once the head makes contact, the arrow shaft can fall away. But there's a string connecting the arrow head, the wire barb, to the arrow shaft, and that allows it to tangle up up in the trees.

So when they shoot, all they really need to do is prick that thing with that wire barb, knowing that the bird, or they hunt for a large aquatic rodents, knowing that the bird is going to get tangled up in the trees overhead and that they can then climb up to go get it. Even then, I think even shooting like that kind of thing, where you're just trying to prick the thing, 30 yards would be very long. Shooting fish, you're not shooting that. I mean, shooting shooting fish you're not really like bow fishing which i've done a lot of in my life a 10 yard bow fishing shot is very far yeah you're right above them right yeah because you're shooting down in the water

now do they have you have to judge when you're shooting into the water you have to judge differently right way diffraction unless that thing unless that fish is sunning um unless that fish is sunning and its back is at the surface or breaking the surface, you need to account for refraction. So you're aiming way low. Now, if you've got a fish that's two feet below the water surface, it's extremely hard to hit. Because it's so deep. You're aiming at your boot. Really?

Well, I mean, it feels like that. You're aiming so low. There's an equation for it. It's always low? You're aiming way below the fish because of refraction. Like anyone who's ever taken a fishing pole and stuck it in the water, right? Right. You see the...

Yeah. It hooks. So that's like the trick of bow fishing. But where they bow fish, for some of the stuff, my favorite thing to bow fish down there is also dealing with current. And again, they're shooting a hollow arrow that doesn't weigh shit. It doesn't cut through the water at all. So they're holding way low for refraction and holding way upstream because their arrow is so buoyant.

Oh, wow. Now, an American bowfishing rig, which I shoot, has a fiberglass arrow. Now, an American bow fishing rig, which I shoot, has a fiberglass arrow. So the current isn't as much of an issue because that arrow is so heavy that it can cut through the water. But refraction is the same. So that's why a point-blank shot bow fishing is still very difficult. And then you've got to factor that you still need to hit the thing pretty good in a place where the arrow's not going to pop out. There's a fish they bowhunt for that they use to bowhunt for for salted fish called the arapaima.

And arapaima is the biggest freshwater fish in the world. Bigger than a sturgeon? Yeah, the largest freshwater fish. The largest, okay, the largest scaled, yeah. And arapaima is the largest scaled freshwater fish. How big is it? Oh, I mean, they'll get them up into the hundreds of pounds. I've never even heard of it. It looks like it's scale-

A-R-A-P-A-I-M-A. Oh my God. Yeah, that's an arapaima. Jesus Christ. That looks completely prehistoric. They have a bizarre relationship with these fish. The Makushi do in Guyana. That's amazing.

What an amazing looking critter. They used to hunt them to export the salted meat. They used to hunt them to sell salted meat to markets. Okay. Now, one of those is worth $7,000 to them alive. Holy shit. Because that's how much a white guy will pay to catch one and let it go. Oh, my God.

Yeah. Oh, so it's all about guides. A guy will pay more. The Makushi will make more to take a guy out to catch an arapaima and let it go than what you'd pay to hunt for elk in the U.S. on a guided trip. Holy shit. They get $7,000 to catch an arapaima and let it go than what you'd pay to hunt for elk in the U.S. on a guided trip. Holy shit. They get seven grand to catch an arapaima. And when Rovan was a kid, they would go on two-week hunting trips where they're gone for two weeks with their father.

They would go for two weeks to hunt saltfish. So they were operating out of dugout canoes that they would have to paddle. And they would make a dugout canoe themselves, paddle the dugout canoe upriver for a week to get to the good hunting and fishing grounds. Then they would hunt and fish for one week until they would get 100 pounds of salted fish. Then you'd go back downriver, which would take a day or two days,

and then get to the mouth of the Rupanuni River and paddle up the Rupanuni River for two days to another town. And then they would haul the saltfish, including arapaima flesh, and sell that 100 pounds of salted fish for $75. So two weeks plus work for a family for $75. And now, they will

not touch those fish because they make a handful of people every year go down and give them $7,000 to catch one and let it go. So $7,000 to them must be just an enormous fortune. It's changed everything. When I was talking about people every year go down and give them seven grand to catch one and let it go so seven grand to them must be just an enormous it's changed everything when i was talking about like that they discovered sunglasses and shit there's been a lot like they were already on to this arapaima thing the first thing i went down and it's changed everything about it's changed that village the

arapaima fishery the way they used to hunt arapaima is they would hunt them out of trees they would so you're familiar like when a river you know a river flows in a s pattern like repeating s's now and then um during high water a river will jump one of the s's you've pictured i'm saying yes so the river jumps an s and it abandons in the main channel abandons the curves of the s okay those curves become what's called oxbow lakes where during high water during a flood those oxbow lakes are connected to the main river system when the water goes low the oxbow lakes become isolated arapaimas live in those oxbow lakes and they feed on peacock bass and other stuff so when the water got low and the arapaimas were all kind of restricted to very small little spots in the river,

they would climb up in trees overlooking these places and wait for the arapaima to come up near the surface and shoot it with an arrow. There was a detachable, basically a harpoon head arrow and shoot it with the arrow. The harpoon head would detach from the arrow, and the arrow would float on the surface connected by string to the arrow shaft. You would then go take a hand line with a hook and follow that fish in

your dugout canoe until you could cast your hook out and catch your arrow. And then you're connected by your fishing line to your arrow. And your arrow is connected by the tether to the harpoon head. And you would hand line in and slaughter the arapaima. Jesus. And then dry the arapaima with salt. And they still salt fish today. When we're out fishing, they're salting fish all the time. They would salt that fish and then sell it.

And then that became an indaint... That became a very threatened species under that thing. And the other thing they would hunt for is they would hunt for giant river turtles and sell the meat. And greatly depleted because their whole lives occur on this one river.

And once those market influences came in and they had moved beyond subsistence hunting and fishing and they moved into market hunting and fishing, they did the same thing that we did to our own country in the late 1800s and early 1900s, is they were on course to entirely deplete the resource through market demands because their village gets more and more people all the time it grew considerably in the five or six years between my two visits and um their environment just couldn't support that level of market hunting so this arapaima thing kind is giving gives them a way to make money to buy staples and run a school and stuff like that it gives them kind of out and it's funny because like uh i'm a lot more interested

like personally i'm a lot more interested in a guy shooting fish out of a tree and salting the meat than i am a dude like me going down to catch an arapaima and let it go. So in some ways it's sad. Yeah. It's sad just because like, it's not sad. It's great that they're saving the fishery, but you see like just, it's just sad to see shit change, man.

And why did they let it go? Why don't they give it to the people that live there so they can use it for the meat? Do they let it go so they can catch it again? Because they want to make sure that the population stays healthy? Here's the thing, the reason they have it. One of those Oxbow lakes got lower

and lower and lower and someone, one of their guys, one of these Makushi guys realized there's 26 arapaima stranded in an Oxbow lake. And the arapaima is running out of water. And when the water goes down, the arapaima will excavate oxbow lake and the arapaima is running out of water and when the water goes down the arapaima will excavate he'll keep excavating in the bottom to even just save a little spot for himself okay and a guy found him and they're all in there but there's not enough water to cover them up they can sip air is the thing that makes them peculiar so you can always

find arapaima because they come up to gulp air. Jesus. So they can breathe air and they can also breathe with their gills. They have a very loud noise they make when they come up to gulp air. So they can live in low oxygen environments. Like if you took most fish and threw them in a stagnant oxbow that's got six inches of water in it, I mean, they're dead as shit, right? But these arapaimas, they can just keep excavating a little spot in the bottom and just wait, praying, or their equivalent of praying, that the water level comes back up and liberates them from the oxbow they're stuck in. And these are huge fish.

Yeah, giants. So they found 26 that were out of the water, and their backs were all messed up from birds and other predators trying to grab the arapaimas. Wow. And then they went and spent four days. These are 26 arapaimas between 50 inches and upper 80s in length. They spent four days moving these 26 arapaimas into the river in a canoe full of water. Jesus Christ. That's how valuable those fish are to them now.

Wow. in the old days they'd have been dead as shit right you've been like you just sold them yeah so they realize it's just like a finite they have like on their river the river that they call home the river they kind of control there's like a finite resource but the thing is other groups so they're mostly makushi and my friend rovin's Makushi. His wife is Wapashana. And there are other Wapashanas in other places who will come down to hunt their area. And they have very different, like these other groups that come in have different hunting practices. Like Roven was telling me one time that he was going up, so like the largest snake in the world is a green anaconda.

me one time that he was going up so like the largest snake in the world is a green anaconda. Their river has the largest thing in the alligator family which is a black caiman. Some people say oh it's not a true alligator but the largest member of that familia black caiman. They get big you know.

They get bigger. Like American alligator big? Like 15 feet? Yeah they get giants. Some black caimans do. There used to be a market for those. They used to market hunt those for the hides. For bags, boots, and shit. So they have the giant river otter, which is a river otter, like,

river otters get up to 100 pounds. They have the biggest snake, the green anaconda. They have the largest aquatic rodent in the world. The largest freshwater scaled fish. By some definitions, the largest eagle, which in the world the largest freshwater scaled fish by some definitions the largest eagle which is the harpy eagle the philippine eagle has a bigger wingspan but some like when you measure them by weight the harpy from there and then there's another harpy that's a

giant like the popo in the papua new guinea harpy the harpy is that one that eats sloths and monkeys monkeys and shit, yeah. That thing's fucking crazy. Eats sloths and monkeys. We saw one. Really? So I'd been down in harpy country three times and finally saw my first harpy. Wow.

Yeah, just like. Majestic? Just piercing, kind of unforgettable. Just the face on it. The male face. You're looking at it. It just is like. so it reminded me the first time i saw lynx where you're just looking at it and it's just so freakishly different than anything you'd looked at like that harpy's face so they have that um oh so he's going up the river he's telling me this story how the wapashana will come down and

hunting a hunt different than the makushi like the makushi aren't that big on killing tape here's but the wapashana will come down in their area and he says they come down with arrows that got 12 inch steel tips on them he's like you know those boys are hunting tape here's but he said one time he was going up river and he sees a green anaconda and he goes to look and it's got a arrowhead stuck into it and he said and i told my companion the wapashana are here and they go up the river a little bit of course they come to a wapashana camp because the wapashana he said he's like talking about this particular this wapashana is a lord but he's like this particular group of wapashanas that travel ahead of Christmas. They have animist mystical systems, but it's also infused with a certain level of Christianity.

So ahead of Christmas, the Wapashana will go on a couple-month-long hunting trip to get food for Christmas celebrations. Whoa. And they'll travel overland and by river to come down and hunt the Makushi River. And when they come down, they're there. They're playing for keeps. So they come down. They're hunting arapaima, which the Rewa Makushi do not. They're hunting anacondas. They hunt not. They're hunting anacondas.

They hunt everything. They eat the anacondas? Yeah, they dry all that shit. And the fat, they like to render the fat down because they feel that it's helpful for arthritis. We pulled up on an anaconda one time that was 13 or 14 feet long. Just sitting on the bank. You can walk right up to it. Rovan was telling me, again, a type of mysticism.

I mean, we have our own beliefs that would seem absurd, right, to an outside perspective. But he was telling me, if I were to touch that anaconda with my bow, it would die a very painful death. If I just laid my bow limb on it. And I'm like, how long? He thought about it and told me in about 45 minutes. Just a belief they have. If you touch it with a hunting bow, it will die in 45 minutes, but it's painful. How bizarre.

No, I asked about that a thousand times. Never got any more clarity on it than that. I say, can you touch it with a stick? Oh, that doesn't matter. Go ahead. Touch it with a bow, it will die. So, but yeah, they don't eat them. But he was telling me, if you're really hard up and have really bad arthritis, you can take the fat from an anaconda and help cure the arthritis.

How much fat does an anaconda have? I don't know. Aren't they incredible? I never cut into one. I've seen a rattlesnake skinned. They seem like they don't have any fat. You've got to understand how big these things are, though. They're so big.

I mean, way bigger than your leg. Yeah. It's 14 feet long. 14 feet long. It probably weighs hundreds of pounds, right? Oh, yeah. No, hundreds of pounds. Have you eaten rattlesnake?

Yeah. It's not bad, right? It's not bad, but- Look at the size of that sucker. Yeah, there's a good one. Jesus. Yeah, that's a heavy fucker. Yeah.

Look at those guys struggling. Four dudes struggling. Oh, that's out of Guyana. Did you ever see that movie with Jennifer Lopez? Nope. Anaconda. It's a giant one, like 100 a giant one like yeah so that's the biggest snake and uh they'll eat caimans anaconda as well yeah yeah and then caimans eat them when they're younger yeah you know it's a vicious amount of everything eating everything um so these these gentlemen the makushi come down no the w Makushi, come down.

No, the Wapashana. The Wapashana come down. And have different hunting practices and different things that are acceptable to eat. And this is like a group of Wapashana. So is this where the shamans are going after each other? No, that was a different story. Okay. Now, it's a different piss match with someone else so um so they're not i don't want to do what's that their hunting area sucks

this group of wapashana that come down to rape and pillage on the rewa uh yeah rovan explained to me their hunting area is a piss poor hunting area. So why do they stay there? I don't know. I don't know why they stay there. Hmm. And I asked him, like, does it make you guys mad that they come down? Because now, like, the people in Rewa Village, the predominantly Makushi Rewa Village, is on to a, they're on to, like, a pretty progressive conservation program. Like, they can just, they, through their market hunting practices, they got a glimpse into the future and didn't like what they saw.

And they're on a pretty aggressive program about sustainability. Their eyes toward the future. The Wapashana, this group of Wapashana are not. And when I asked them, does it piss you off that the Wapashana come down here? Oh, they also, the Wapashana fish with poison. The Makushi don't fish with poison. Do they use the poison from the cassava? No, they use a poison.

They use a, there's a root and a leaf that are both poisons. The root, it's a thing used here in the United States when they have to do a fish kill. Like if you get a big population of invasive fish in a waterway and you just need to wipe the whole thing clean. Snake heads, stuff like that. Yeah, shit like that. When you're trying to do a fish kill, we in the U.S. use a thing called rotenon. It's derived from a South American plant. And then there's another plant called barbasco.

Well, some people, it's like different people in different areas. In the Amazon drainage, there's a thing they call barbasco. And that is a leaf that you just pulp and it would look like you're just like taking if you just imagine if you took a bunch of thyme or rosemary and put it in a mortar and pestle and pulped it and then you take and spread that in the water that'll kill fish both of the i think they kind of they act in two separate ways there's's two types of fish poison. One inhibits the fish's ability to pull oxygen from the water. So I watched them apply this poison. And you need to get an area where there's not much current because it'll just wash the poison away.

So you get into one of these oxbow lakes, apply the poison, kick back 20 minutes, and pretty soon all the fish are up gulping at the surface. And then you shoot them with bows and arrows. Wow. And what's the other way of doing it? And rotenon, and I can't remember which category rotenon falls in, but there's another one that has some kind of neuro effect. It has some kind of brain.

It somehow impairs some other aspect of their body. But these fish poisons are classed in two categories. I'm sorry I'm not more clear on what the two are. But I know that the ones that just prevent it from being able to get air. And the other ones that poison them, the ones that don't suffocate them, does that come up when they eat it? No, but

they were telling me that you need to watch your, if you're poisoning a pond, you need to watch it and make sure dogs or any livestock don't come down. It doesn't last long. And they were telling me, usually, the fish you don't shoot will recover if there's some amount of water flowing through it.

So they might go in and build a temporary dam to block whatever inlet. Let's just say it's an isolated channel off to the side of a river. They'll go in pretty carefully with rocks and logs, block the flow coming into it, poison it, and then once they've gotten whatever they want, they unblock it and let the clean water come in, and it'll resuscitate the fish. Whoa.

But, yeah, if they said of livestock, dogs, people, drink that water, it can kill that thing. How many, do they lose people every year to that cassava water? Man, in talking to me, you realize they lose, there's like a handful of things that people get lost to. They had mentioned people dying from anacondas. They had mentioned people dying from black caimans. I know that injuries from piranhas are common snake bite, snakes are everywhere and one of these

I remember we were sitting in Roven's friend's house his outdoor like a palapa kind of house you know with hammocks strung in it and there just being a giant tarantula like a two and a half inch diameter tarantula and um not even doing anything to it well tarantulas they just hurt yeah they

hurt they don't really fuck you up like a black widow or something along those lines yeah before we found a kid who'd been hit by a scorpion young kid and some scorpions can be fatal he was vomiting he was very sick but just a fact of life so when they get bit by snakes uh they getting bit by poisonous snakes yeah there's one. I think the deadliest snake in the Western Hemisphere, the coral they have. Yeah. They have other ones. He mentioned their chief getting hit by a venomous snake and them having to call a medevac.

I think the Air Force came in with a helicopter. Oh, wow. And got him out of there and he was fine. Wow. Just a fact. That shit's everywhere, man. But they got an eye of there and he was fine wow just a fact a lot that shit's everywhere man but they got an eye for it and you don't like like you're like you guys you know the non-local is always the one getting stung and bit and shit yeah i can only imagine like the first time i was down there i got hit by an electric eel a couple times right that scared the shit out of

me but it's like you don't even know what happening. You're in the water and all of a sudden you're kind of getting electrocuted. There's more in tune with all that stuff. That's a strong blast, too. Yeah, it hurts. We had those on Fear Factor. Oh, you did? People had to grab them. It's like grabbing a barbed wire. It's like grabbing a hot wire. It's crazy. It's amazing that an animal or a living thing

can generate that kind of electrical charge. So you just did it voluntarily? For a joke, just to see what it's like. Yeah. It's not fun. No. I was shocked. I was like, this is probably just annoying.

But I reached in and grabbed it. I was like, whoa. Yeah. That's legit. Yeah. It's like grabbing a hot wire fence with cattle in it. Yeah. I watched, there was some sort of a nature documentary where something tried to eat it and the electrical eel zapped it and you see this animal just lock up and fall over sideways.

Oh, really? Yeah. Repelled it. Yeah, just completely electrocuted it. Yeah. Got it to the point where it just couldn't stand up. I know you pull off some stuff. Have you seen the video of the jaguar killing the caiman?

Yes. I've seen a bunch of them. That's solid shit right there. Because you seen the video of the jaguar killing the caiman? Yes. I've seen a bunch of them. That's solid shit right there. Amazing. Because you can sense he's done that a thousand times, man. There's quite a few of them online. And here's what's fascinating. What is this? A caiman with an electric eel? An alligator ate an electric eel. Oh, wow. And it starts just frying. Yeah, it's just cooking them. Oh, really?

Yeah. Wow. No, that's not... Oh, you asked about eating snakes. Electric eel meat is not good. That's one of the many things that the, that's one of the many things the makushi, like, do not eat. Look at his body just twitching. God. That's amazing. Obviously, that's a little alligator.

But still, boy, what a crazy animal. Yeah, it's brutal. I never saw anything about jaguars killing caimans until about three or four years ago. And then there's like a whole slew of these videos coming out. This makes you wonder. I guess maybe the advent of GoPros and all these different video cameras that people take down there. They finally started catching it on film. Yep.

We missed the sighting. We narrowly missed the sighting when we were down there. Tracks are everywhere. by we missed the sighting you know narrowly missed the sighting when we're down there tracks are everywhere so particularly because the time i was just down there now um the giant river turtles are nesting so they just like how we have you know just how you picture sea turtles crawl up onto a sandy beach and dig a hole that night and lay their eggs and then retreat back into the ocean um giant river turtles lay like that but so the sandbars are covered in busted turtle shells and there are vultures so like black vultures and king vultures

and caracaras are on the sandbars feeding on turtle eggs and jaguar tracks all over because the jaguars come down to wait for the turtles to come up wow so you've seen a lot of that and one of the more surreal that's a perspective shot but i bet they're pretty big right big but that's that's the oceanic that's not a job look at that sucker so how old is that fucker i have no idea god. God, they live hundreds of years, right? Yeah, they're ancient. That thing might have been around when Columbus was around. You know, are you familiar with the Cites Treaty?

So, things that ban international wildlife traffic. There's a couple turtles that the Makushi eat. They traditionally ate giant river turtles, and many people still do. But they call that one the Cites turtle. Oh, wow. Because they now know they can't traffic in this turtle anymore. So they got, like, the eating turtle and the Cites turtle. But an image that will be forever burned in my mind,

there's two things that will, there's two, like, sites that will forever be stuck in my mind. And one of them is a Wapashana woman in a DKNY t-shirt up to her armpit in a riverbank digging out 150 turtle eggs, giant river turtle eggs, putting them in a handmade woven basket. Wow. Because you know, like,

donated clothes, like, cast off clothes wind up you know getting bundled so you see people with like crazy american t-shirts and stuff on where like i have like a bob's pizza santa cruz california or whatever you know and it's just like something sent down there through Goodwill Donation Centers or whatever. So they'll have like brands, you know, like famous brands that you see like people, you know, in our culture wearing, but they'll be like hunting monkeys in them. And like the language thing, it creates that kind of tension, you know. So do they recognize the CITES like regulations? Do they not eat those turtles? Yeah, so you gather that it's kind of loose.

They don't traffic in them. But they will eat them. But they will eat them. So they will collect the eggs, but they won't kill the turtles to sell. So as they become more aware of conservation, like with this giant fish, what's the fish called again? The arapaima. As they become more aware of conservation, like with this giant fish. What's the fish called again? The arapaima. They become more aware of conservation.

Do you see them, like, recognizing, like, hey, there's some stuff that we have to leave alone. We've got to let it recover. I mean, obviously they're aware of the cycle of life when it comes to their slash and burn agriculture and leaving spots alone. Like, are they becoming more aware of, like, what animals they've kind of pushed to the brink of extinction yeah and it's like i don't even know how much is coming from the younger generation because talking to guys talking to guys i'm 43 this guy just a couple years older than i am and talking to him um and he was a market hunter he's glad to see what's happened because he, in his own lifetime, saw how much they had depleted everything. So he, in his lifetime, saw it from market hunting, not just from subsistence stuff, but as that village grew,

because the village was a handful of families, right? Now it's 305 people. As that village grew, he watched the giant river otters. They were hunting giant river otters to sell the hides into Brazil. And they would smoke them out of their dens. So he watched their numbers go down. That is a 100-pound otter. Yeah.

Wow. Freaking giants, just as the name would let you know. And very vocal. A large vocabulary of crazy sounds the giant river otters make they get when they see you they're pissed and they start making crazy noise you see them oh yeah you see them all the time they're squawking at you yeah like what does it sound like it's like a like a wow but a lot better than that look at that sucker oh there he's eating some kind of snake or eel wow yeah they make they have an alarm noise and a number of barks and crazy sounds.

So he watched those get depleted from hide hunting. Giant river turtles from hunting eggs. He said he could see that the arapaimas were disappearing. And so he was really glad. This guy was really glad that they'd gotten on to some other way to bring some cash into the village. Wow. And the arapaima fishing, how did they find out about this? Like people from the United States or like where are they coming from?

You know, I'm not sure. You know, I know that there's been a number of companies, Costa, you know, the sunglasses company, Costa invested pretty heavily through a conservation program. invested pretty heavily through a conservation program they have. Costa Sunglasses invested pretty heavily in helping them establish a guiding system down there

to take people out to fish arapaima. So these people that come down... And trained some of the Makushi on how to just deal with Westerners. Like, for instance, in the time... And we were out... We were out... When I'm with them on the river, we're out, I'm with them participating in the hunting and fishing activities that they do year round on the things that they identify to be sustainable resources. Because they still hunt several days a week.

resources because they still like they still hunt several days a week right rovin like they live off fishing game everyone in that village all their protein is hunting and fishing protein and some chickens that they raise but that's all their protein so they're engaged in a daily sense like rovin says he spends about two days a week. He spends two or three days a week hunting and fishing. And then he has other obligations he has to take care of. But he hunts and fishes constantly year round. And if he kills a white-lipped peccary, he says that's good for a week. Did you bring your bow? Yeah.

I brought my bow fishing bow and I brought a regular bow. Now, when they saw your bow, were they like, Jesus, can you get us some of these? You know, surprisingly not that excited about it because I think that they know they would run up against sourcing problems. With the arrows and broadheads. Roven got a, at one point in time, Roven had a recurve, but he lost it.

His house burnt down and he lost his recurve anyways. So just for the simple fact that you can make them and make arrows very quickly, they don't need to worry about how you'd ever source parts. Right, but they have all this other stuff like machete blades and all these different things it seems like they would I mean if you get a good compound bow Jesus Christ I think if you brought one down and left it there I think you brought one down left there would get a lot of use yeah well and I

absolutely would it be too effective like would they run into problems with, you know, like they have kind of a sustainability issue, right? I'll say, yeah. I think that if you went down, this is speculation. I would think if you went down and gave, if you went down with a dozen of these things and left them there, I think that along that river corridor you would see a diminishment of a handful of bird species for sure yeah i would think because the birds but here's the thing

here's why it's a little bit tricky because i think that you would also be reducing demand because one of the things about the birds the guans and curacao, is that they want them to fletch arrows, but they're hard to get. So they really want them because they classify them under this broad category that you hear in other places called poes. And basically it's like a term. Some people say poes refers to a specific curacao, some people use poes like like uh like turkey like bird like a turkey meaning a good edible bird so the birds that they fletch arrows with are also coveted food items all right i would i feel that yeah if you were to bring conventional archery tackle in you you would see that diminish.

Now, other people will have shotguns, but the limiting factor there is how expensive the ammunition is. So they'll have like the shotgun shell, or they might have a handful of shotgun shells that would last them a long time because they would only use one absolutely necessary. Like the Villa David, they've been having a Jaguar problem. When we were there, they had over the previous two months lost 24 dogs including a dog while we were there to a jaguar who comes in at night and kills dogs and chickens he was speculating that at some point in time they will probably have to get rid of that

jaguar and that it would be a firearm issue they would have to figure out a solution for with a firearm. So even people that might have a firearm have limited ammunition, and it's sort of a tricky spot in a legal situation for them to have a firearm. But bows, I think that they would knock the shit out of Curacao's and Guan's if they had good bows. But they might not hunt them as heavily because they didn't need the fletching. For fishing, I think their tackle is superior. Close to superior for bow fishing. Why is that?

Because the shots are so close. It just isn't really necessary. Like, it's just not necessary to have that kind of investment. And you just tend to lose arrows bow fishing. So it wouldn't make sense to have very expensive fiberglass arrows when you can make an arrow in 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Yeah, that makes sense. And then you're still limited to very close range shots. When I was in Bolivia where they hunt for a bigger variety of stuff, including monkeys,

compound bows would be a real game changer on monkey hunting. So they're not monkey hunting and... They won't touch them. Really? Here's, there's a couple, there's a couple of things that are really hard to talk. Earlier I was saying, like,

you have this luxury of being able to have, like, good conversations in English and get your questions answered. Right. Some things you really you hit a wall. Now one of the things you hit a wall on is if you say to someone like

how many days out of the year would you guess you do X? It's just like you never get there. You never get there. Do they not understand years? No they do but it's just like because we speak in that way it's hard for me to understand why that's such a hard question but you it would be very hard to get satisfactory answers about how often do you do something

another thing is if like how much do you like like do you like hunting or fishing more isn't something that's thought about because it'd be like i'd be like do you like to hunt more or farm more you have to do both so it's not like the luxury that we have but what do you like but i don't you have to do both you can't just do one but but he was telling you he hunts two days a week, he farms two days a week, so you've got seven days a week. Yeah, but that was after me asking the same question a thousand times and finally kind of getting to a spot. Because they contradict. Because one time I pushed him and pushed him and pushed him. How many days a year do you hunt and fish?

And we talked about this for forever. And he came up with the figure maybe 200 or 250. Then later, I'm like, how many days a week do you hunt and fish? And I asked him that a thousand times and got two. Now, if you do the math, one of those numbers is wrong. It's just not. And also like what you like most. Do you like this most?

Like that most? Another thing is why don't you eat X? Right. But if I think about it, imagine someone came from another country to here, and you're driving them around, and every single thing they see that's alive, if they said to you, why don't you eat that? Right. Why don't you eat that spider?

Right. I don't know, bro. We just don't eat those spiders. Why don't you eat that cat? That's a really complicated question. Like, we don't eat house cats. Let me count the reasons why we don't eat house cats. So when I'm like, why don't you eat monkeys?

He's not like, oh, silly, we don't eat monkeys because it's just like we just don't eat monkeys. But they don't have any weird relationship with monkeys, right? No, and the more I press him on it, it wound up being, he would say, because we have so many fish and they're so easy to get. But you hunt white-lipped peccary. Now, white-lipped peccary, for folks who don't know, does that look like a javelina as well? Yeah. So it's a little bit bigger than a javelina.

The main difference from a human perspective looking on the two what you would what what you would jump at is the gregarious nature of the white lip peccary so there's three peccaries there's like the chacoan i think the chacoan peccary which i've never laid eyes on white lips and and collared and the collared peccary a dozen is a giant group of collared peccary. That's like a big-ass group of collared peccary. And that's what we have. Look at that sucker. Yeah, and that's what we have in West Texas, Arizona, parts of New Mexico, right?

So it's essentially the same thing as a javelina? The collared peccary is the javelina. Same exact thing. The white-lipped peccary. Now, remember I said like a dozen is a bunch of collards. Javelina. I've hunted those in the U.S. and I've hunted those in Mexico. White-lipped peccary will run in a group of 100 to 200.

Whoa. And white-lipped peccaries, when I was mentioning cassava, white-lipped peccaries are hell on cassava patches. They eat them. They come and eat the stalks. Not the root. They are hell on cassava patches. They eat them. They come and eat the stalks. Not the root. They'll destroy the cassava patch. And they'll dig, but they particularly like to eat the young shoots growing up.

Now, can they eat the cassava, the root? Or is it poisonous to them as well? Don't know. I don't know. Huh. That's a good question, though. I wish I would have asked that. If I had a week, I would get a satisfactory answer out of that.

So the white-lipped peccaries will come into the village and raise holy hell. Everyone run and grabs their bows, and then they start shooting, and then they'll chase them into the jungle and maybe even track them for a day, trying to whittle away at them because it's a great meat. It's like the favorite game meat is white lip peccary. They like it better than collard peccary because they're bigger. But is it like a pork or something like that? Well, yeah, but they have that scent gland.

Yeah, looks like pork has a very strong off-putting. The animal has a very strong off-putting smell. But the meat doesn't. No. If you handle it properly and keep it clean, smell but the meat doesn't no if you handle it properly and keep it clean it's never it would never be regarded like as as good as pork to the american palate but to the makushi palate it's the best so their whole thing like we don't hunt all these animals various animals because we have so many fish flies out the window with white lip pecc peccary but a lot of the white-lipped peccary hunting is also related to the protecting of crops now as long as roving can

remember rewa village has had a group of white-lipped peccaries that would come through the area trying to raid the gardens and when it came through the area raiding the gardens they would kill some number of them and then they would track them into the jungle and stick with them and kill a handful and it was when that happened was a very good thing they liked the peccaries there's been a number of years where no peccaries or something happened to this group of one or two hundred no peccaries, or something happened to this group of one or two hundred peccaries. For years they have not been through the village. It's not attrition, because he was saying at the most, when they come through and get us,

he would say on average we would get, actually kill between one and four when they come in and hit the crops. If we stick with them and a group of guys goes after me we might kill between one and four and there's 200 of them so it's like it's not like they like slowly whittled away at them right they just would never account for that but they vanished robo never wanted to explain to me why they vanished. I kept pestering about it and eventually he told me, here's the deal. Since Rewa

Village is now so wealthy and we have so much food, other groups and other villages have grown very jealous of us. And he told me that a shaman in another village got so insanely jealous of rewa's prosperity

through fishing for arapaima and through all the good hunting and fishing that they have there that he got so jealous that he um locked up that this shaman locked up their peccaries. He doesn't know where. Perhaps in the mountains. They're locked up. Now, getting them out is, getting them unlocked is difficult because at the time that this shaman locked up their peccaries, they happened to be without a good shaman in their village. Did they have a bad shaman locked up their peccaries they happen to be without a good shaman in their village

did they have a bad shaman yeah they have a shaman in training his his he's a young shaman in training and his powers are slow to develop so what happened the old guy don't know this guy's powers have been slow to develop. He's getting there. And soon he will hopefully be in a position to unlock the peccaries. Now, what's a young shaman? Is it like a young president? I didn't meet him. He doesn't really like... We brought up wanting to go talk to him.

Got the sense that that wasn't the best idea. To go visit with him. Really? Yeah, got that sense. There's like 300 best idea to go visit with him. Really? Yeah, got that sense. There's like 300 people in the village? 305. Wow. And I brought up a number of times,

just got the sense that it wasn't the greatest idea to go talk to him. So is there theatrics involved? This guy living on the outskirts of town and putting war paint on. I know that he lives in town. But he just claims mystery? Yeah, so here's a handful of things that was said.

Like, Robin was telling me, and I want to say, man, I do not, like, if I'm here, okay, if you told me something that I thought was outlandish, I would fucking jump on you, right? And I'd be like, that's ridiculous. Right. Now, that desire to, like, be right and to dispel wrongness, like, I don't have a lick of that shit when I'm talking to these guys. Right? Right. I'm never like, wow, I don't buy that. Right.

It's just like, it's so inappropriate. Right. Feeling. Right. And it's so interesting to me and also gives such an interesting glimpse into how most cultures and societies were structured long time in pre-christian times right that it's just like it's just educational so i'm not in any way i'm never saying like well i don't buy that i'm just saying like oh okay right that's great thanks for sharing so magic yeah so i'm not in any way i'm never like but

here's some things that were explained to me if you're having a problem where your your archery skills go downhill like you have a few misses the way to correct that would be to go up and take the hand that holds the bowstring and punch a beehive. And then hold your hand up to that hive because they don't miss. And they will demonstrate their accuracy when they bombard you. And Roven was saying that most of them even know to hit you between your fingers where it really hurts. was saying that most of them even know to hit you between your fingers where it really hurts you will then absorb that accuracy in your hand and you will do a lot better shooting huh and the more you can do this throughout your life the stronger it will make you

it's also helpful just even with kids and other things it's also helpful, just even with kids and other things, it's also helpful to be hit by a bullet ant, for instance. I had that happen to me before and it's awful, but to get hit by a bullet ant to absorb some of that ant strength. But this shaman that fucked up their peccaries could also just be jealous of you and strip your ability to shoot accurately. I want to point out that Rovan has an email address. Wow. Yeah. You can email. I email with him.

Wow. And he's firm in his beliefs. Yeah, but also, also, yeah. But he's also rational. He seems fairly rational outside of this. Listen, it's like... I'm torn even talking about it. I'm torn talking about it because I have such a love for him as a person

that I wouldn't want to say that would dispel that idea that he's not perfectly rational. I would go anywhere with this guy. Extremely capable. But you're talking about just some long-held belief system. So their cultural belief systems are just deeply ingrained.

And there's probably some sort of a placebo effect attached to all this where they've seen it in effect. Where someone has cast... Some point in time sort of a placebo effect attached to all this. I'm sure. Where they've seen it in effect. Yeah. Where someone has cast, what is a, there's a. Some point in time, those peccaries are going to come back into town. Yeah. And then what? Where will credit fall?

They'll probably say the shaman has relaxed his grip. Awesome. Or maybe the new shaman. Yeah. Or someone won out. Is going to take credit. It's just a way of explaining the volatility. Here's the other thing.

Here's the other thing. Like, you know, you could go. Well, let me give you an example. It's just a way of explaining the volatility. Here's the other thing. You could go... Let me give you an example. I'm going to make a point about the way to sort of see a culture in transition. Because it's always so relative. There's a staff writer at the New Yorker, one of my favorite journalists of all time, John Lee Anderson. You might be familiar with his book, Che. He wrote sort of the definitive Che Guevara book, Che.

He's a war correspondent, writes in troubled spots around the world, John Lee Anderson. He wrote a piece not long ago in The New Yorker about a group of people that were making first contact with the outside world just recently, 2015. They were initially regarded as an uncontacted group that lived in the border between Peru and Brazil in the jungle. And for whatever reason, they started coming out to a main river where they were having some contact with other groups and they killed a couple people with bows so the government was in a situation of when dealing with a first contact group you can't go in and just start putting people on trial and shit like it only leads to more problems so they were trying to it's an article about the difficulties of leading of of introducing a first contact

peoples into sort of a constructive engagement with the outside world um a trick there is some people look and and they have some countries have a policy of isolation for uncontacted people and try to enforce isolation other theorists on this or other anthropologists think that's completely unfair that it's the most human of tendencies is to find other humans and swap ideas with them right it's like it's you it would be laughable that i would come to you and say joe i'd like to prevent you from meeting the french lest some aspect of frenchness rub off on you right now they're worried about other things too but they're worried about like disease and stuff but also a tendency to the alcohol can be destructive being lured into prostitution all forms of exploitation trying to protect people from this.

Wasn't there also the romance of running into these uncontacted tribes and wanting to cherish that? Some people, yeah. You've seen those photos that they took from the helicopter where they see these people that are covered in war paint and they're pointing arrows at the helicopters? Yeah. It's amazing. And that's the shit that I'm guilty of. Right. Because even though, that's how I was going to lead up this thing

or this battle I have in my own mind. That even though they are far, far away. They're far, far removed from my first contact people. Like I said, the guy's got an email address. I'm not trying to paint this as something it's not. But at the same time, they make their bows from

raw material out in the jungle and hunting fish for all their protein. I love that shit so much. And I like laying in bed. Even if you told me you can never go back, I want to lay in bed thinking about that occurring. Right? I want to lay in bed thinking about a guy having a problem with his shaman. Because it's just so refreshing and mentally exhilarating

to just know that that's going on. So you get caught in this kind of, it's almost like the opposite of colonialism or something where you get caught in this thing of wanting to be like, oh, these precious, cute people, if I could just keep them like how i like them where they stir my imagination yeah you know i just want them to stay like how they are because that's how i like them like when i come down to visit i like to know that they're all doing the shit that's interesting to me but they're in no way are they perceiving their experience in that way. But you go down and see, like, in the handful of years, as much as they've changed all the time, right?

In the handful of years to see that just, like, practices are different. Dress is different. Clothing, very different. So you're just seeing it happen. You're seeing it happen in real time. It happened in a fast way. Now you might come up and be like, oh, I was in the U.S. in the pre-internet days,

and I came to the U.S. in the post-internet days, and man, is that place different. But you're watching it like wherever you live, you're also seeing that happen too. So you're living that transition. But to go to there and then come back five years later uh and see things different it really um yeah man it fucking like as much as i hate to admit it and it's wrong as it is but just be like absolutely up front like it kind of bummed me out so when you talk about when you talk about

from a hunting perspective because i tend to view the world through a hunting and fishing perspective, but when you talk about bringing bows down, my first thought is, oh, that's no fun. They shouldn't do that because I like watching them hunt with the homemade bows. Right. No, it's, it's totally rational and it completely makes sense. Yeah. It's just, it's a thing. It's a thing for nostalgia and then you find it, you find it as it's just it's longing for nostalgia and then you find it you find it

as it's changing you know as much as you know about the american west as much as you told me about the the history of the american west and the native americans to see these people that are essentially like in some ways like the native americans before the colonial people arrived. Yeah. Or like, I guess it would be, this is a bold statement. If there's an anthropologist or a historian listening, they're going to pull their hair out. But it would maybe would be like, I'm so hesitant to even throw this out. It's extremely approximate and full of holes and full of contradictions. But some kind of post-contact scenario and i don't know like let's say it was the 1890s or something right here the firearm was very much a part of stuff

you know but yeah so it's like um but you know it's it's makes it's complicated in the internet age but at that time you definitely we had definitely established a form of tourism in the american west right there yeah by the you know i mean well before the francis parkman um so francis parkman was this figure he wrote the definitive history of the french and indian war but in 1842 he was a historian he out on to the great plains he met some fur trappers some mountain men he traveled with the aglala sioux uh crazy horse who probably wasn't crazy horse yet he was his name curly as a kid crazy he was in crazy like the three stoooges? Yeah.

I think that was like a name from, I don't even know it and have no idea what it meant. Huh. Before he adopted the name Crazy Horse. He would have been 13 years old. And Francis Parkman traveled with them as a tourist and they went into the Black Hills of South Dakota. They went in there to get lodge poles because it was the time of year when they would going to fit out their lodge poles for their teepees to replace broken lodge poles they went up in the black hills killed some bighorn sheep by throwing rocks down on them off a cliff went shot a bunch of buffalo and he was out there like as a tourist okay so tourism in the American West now yeah I remember

american west now yeah i remember the last the last free roaming the last like non-confined plains indians didn't get rounded up till depending on your definition 1876 1877 so he was out there way before that there were still like what they described at the time as hostile wild indians were running around and he was traveling with them as a tourist. So I just bring that up to bring this idea that here's this group of people who are very much engaged in tourism. Like I was down there, I was down there because I wanted to go on a river trip. And it's something I've done a handful of times i wanted to go on a river trip and and and participate in their hunting and fishing and food gathering activities as they engage in them if the same way they might engage in if i wasn't there that's why we weren't fishing that's why we weren't catching arapaimas and

letting them go so there's that in the internet era but it's like there's that thing i always return to it's like you're still you're still hunting and fishing all your own food or growing it in your yard. Now, when you guys went down there, did you participate in the hunting and fishing or did you just observe? No, participate in it. You participated with their traditional tackle or did you use your own stuff? I've done both. I've hunted fish with my own bow and I've hunted fish with their bow. with my own bow and I've hunted fish with their bow.

And in the end, I wound up the first time I went down, I hunted fish. The second time too, I hunted four fish, so bow fished with their gear. But then it always felt like somehow funny too. Because

like, there's a thing that happens when you're watching like goofy survival shows and shit. There's always the part where the host grapples with how difficult it is to master ancient technologies. But you're trying to just pick it up and do it from scratch. Roven has been shooting that bow at fish for, he's 32 years old. He's been shooting that bow at fish for, let's say 27 years. It is not an unusual thing to him. All right. So when you go pick it up and you're like, man, you got to give props to these guys for being able to kill

fish this bow. It's like, well, kind of of and kind of not, because if you spent 27 years doing something, you're damn sure going to be good at it. The same way is if you took someone, like one of these first contact peoples from between Peru and Brazil, and handed them my laptop and said, hey, pull up my Gmail contacts from scratch, he might be like, man, I got to give props to you guys.

I had no idea. Right. It's just like absurd. Yeah. So I was having this conversation with someone the other day where, you know, the first time Daniel Boone in 1760, Daniel Boone went through the Cumberland Gap for the first time and dropped down into what's now Tennessee and Kentucky. And he stayed there hunting hides.

He was a hide hunter. Stayed there hunting hides for two years. Ran out of gunpowder, made his own gunpowder. And made it out of bat guano, your own piss, potash, right? You can cook this shit up, right? And make your own gunpowder. Wow. And I always look at that as being the epitome of woodsmanship.

And the fact that he could do it makes him seem otherworldly. What kind of formula do they have for how much piss? How much bat guano? Do you know that bat guano used to be something that was so cherished people would go to war for it? Yeah, for explosives. That's fucking incredible. Not just for explosive,

but also for fertilizer. Oh, no. Yeah, the term bat shit crazy. People would fight for bat shit. Yeah, they would go nuts like it was so valuable That's where all the Buffalo bones went after the near extermination of the Buffalo really But the really good shit was bone China China tableware and everything else is fertilizer Wow Yeah You could make the same some of the same characters that were involved in the slaughter

involved in picking up the bones. They were called bone pickers, picked up the fertilizer. But no, I didn't know that about bat guano. I had no idea that bone China. Yeah. There's still bone China. No kidding. Yeah.

I thought China was always like some sort of ceramic. There's a place in Detroit, on the Rogue River in Detroit, that the Rouge River, Rogue River, depending on what dude in Michigan you're talking to. There's a place there called the Detroit Carbon Works that used to... When you're watching movies, including The Revenant, you know that giant pyramid pile of buffalo skulls that turns up in everywhere every book every movie that photo was taken at the detroit carbon works and what they were producing was bone fertilizer wow is there more than one of those photos whoa i mean it's everywhere wow you can't escape that picture that's an incredible picture that's that's taken in detroit michigan where i'll point out was

one of a handful of states that never had buffalo in the history in the history there's no buffalo in michigan so they were not extirpated out of michigan they just those were picked up those bones were picked up in the american west shipped by rail to minneapolis chicago detroit turned into bone fertilizer and then shipped back out for people tilling up the Great Plains. Go back to that photo again. That photo is so disturbing. Dude, it's wild. How many skulls is that?

In my book about Buffalo, I'm describing that picture, and I say that the man standing on top is like an exclamation point at the end of a long sentence about death and destruction. Because I can look at him. It's like he somehow realizes the weirdness of what he's involved in, but that was post-extermination. There's a crazy podcast from Dan Carlin

on the wrath of the Khans on Genghis Khan, and they describe how the Khryzmian Shah sends a group to check out Jin China, and they got there like about a year after Genghis Khan had killed everyone in the entire city, over a million people, and they thought what they saw in the distance, they thought was a snow-capped mountain.

As they got closer, they realized it was a pile of human bones. Really? Yeah. Man, those guys were hardcore back then. Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo. Shit to have as it gets. Yeah.

Jonestown wouldn't even have been a blip. It would have been nothing. It would have been like a car crash. He changed the carbon footprint of the human race. Him during his time. They don't know how many people. Through depopulation. Through depopulation.

Cooking fires. They believe they killed more than 10% of the population. Like Genghis Khan and his people, through his orders, killed more than 10% of the population. Like Genghis Khan and his people, through his orders, killed more than 10% of the population of the world. And wasn't he the number one land conqueror, but just never held on to anything? Well, they lived in tents. But conquered more than Napoleon, conquered more than Hitler, but just didn't hold it. I'm not sure about that. I don't know about that, but I know that they always lived in tents,

and they despised people that lived in homes. They thought they were pussies. They probably thought that after their life, they probably thought they were vulnerable, too. Yeah, probably, right? Yeah, I mean, anybody listening, Wrath of the Khans, it's a five-part series, and I think Dan Carlin, he charges for them. You can buy it on iTunes. But I think it's only a dollar per and is the best dollar you'll ever spend in your life.

And he's done World War I. Yes. Yeah. And I'm not sure what else he's done. He's done a lot of – I mean, his podcast is just absolutely amazing. He's incredible and a super humble guy. Won't call himself an historian. But meanwhile, has the best history educational series you can get.

Yeah. It's a buck. A buck a piece. And they're like an hour and a half long. And they're fucking incredible. Yeah. He's a real treasure, that guy. Doesn't call himself an historian because he doesn't use primary source material or something?

Just reads popular works? I don't know why. I mean, I know he... Because who owns the name? Yeah. Who owns the definition? He's just really humble. Yeah, I got it. You know why I mean I know he who owns the name yeah, who owns the definition He's just really humble. Yeah, I mean, but his main focus of study his Entire life has been history you know and when he does these things well It's like if he calls what he does a podcast I need to change what I do

Yes, I what I call a podcast is just so pales in comparison because we're just sitting here talking right what he does is he prepares for these things for months and Cites different sources and references and then essentially does an educational entertainment piece. Yeah. Yeah Maybe that's why he doesn't like the term historian is because he's not He's not contributing He's not contributing to the body of knowledge. He's interpreting the body of knowledge. Right.

Maybe. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, maybe. I think he's just super humble, too. He just wouldn't say that no matter what. But somehow, I don't know why, more disturbing to see a pile of human bodies than it is to see a pile of the buffalo bones.

Yeah, I think I told you, and I've talked about this a thousand times, what after the Custer Massacre, the guys that were following the other soldiers who were coming in after the Custer Massacre, they didn't know what had happened. They hadn't got word yet that Custer and his entire command had been wiped out by the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne.

And they're riding up the valley and they're looking off in the distance and they see all these sort of white, bloodish things and all these dark brown things. And one of the guys wrote that their initial impression looking at it was that Custer must have caught the Indians in the middle of a buffalo hunt. And what they were seeing was, it was summertime, and they were seeing fatty buffalo carcasses that had been skinned, and that the brown things were the buffalo hides laid out next to the carcass. But when, on closer inspection it was the brown things were horses cavalry horses and the white things were stripped and mutilated soldiers it's a good image wasn't one of the guys one of the native americans that was in the little

big horn you know whatever event wasn't he one of the guys who toured with Wild Bill? Many of them. So they had killed American soldiers, and then they went on this entertainment tour. Yeah. It would be as though, it would be like, this is a fucking risky comparison. No, I'm not even going to do it. It's too risky. Are you going to say Nazi?

No. No, I definitely wasn't going to say that, because's too risky. Are you going to say Nazi? No. No, I definitely wasn't going to say that because it's way different. It would be like, shit. I'm not going to say it. I don't want to make the comparison. It'll come back to haunt me. I'm trying to think of something that would work. It would be like a people that we now fought against later became a media celebrity.

Yeah. Oh, I guess they're kind of dealing with it right now in Columbia, where the FARC, right? Now that Columbia has struck a peace accord with the FARC, and the FARC are entering into politics, entering into media. FARC commanders who spent their entire life fighting against the Columbia government. Many atrocities were traded back and forth. life fighting against the Columbia government. Many atrocities were traded back and forth. They now come on the Columbia

equivalent of 60 minutes to do interviews. Wow. Okay, so it's like where you have an adversary that hostilities end and the reconciliation is so complete and so

quick that you can become a media personality. And this guy was a touring media personality, right? So Gall, quite a number of them. That's the big giant guy, right? Yeah, Gall, who the historian Evan S. Connell, he's a G-A-L-L. And there's some photos of this guy, right? Yeah, there are photos of him.

See if you can find that. Evan S. Connell, he was huge. Yeah. And the novelist who wrote sort of my favorite Custer history, he says that Gaul went through Custer's men like a wolf through sheep. And, yeah. That's a hard-looking man. Someone asked him how long it took, how long that fight lasted.

He said it lasted about as long as it takes a hungry man to eat his dinner. Wow. That is a hard-looking gentleman right there. Yeah. That face, man. So he toured all over the country. People would pay to see him, pay to get their photos taken with him. Wow.

He did selfies? Selfies with them. Wow. He did selfies? Selfies with people. Wow, what a crazy thing that must have been. Isn't it wild? So they had some mock war that they would do? Yeah, they would come out and reenact the battle. Wow. Yeah, so you could go down, and this would have been in your own lifetime. The people who, the families of the men killed at the battle

little bighorn could have gone down and got their photo taken with and paid to watch and interacted with the gentleman who likely clovered their father's head in with a tomahawk jesus christ we're not as like we always want to think about how much worse we are now, right? Is that Buffalo Bill up there? I don't know if that's Hickok. Yeah. I don't think that's him,

but that's from his show. Wow. I'm sorry, what were you going to say? We're not that far removed? Oh no, I was just saying like, we now think we've gotten to such a weird spot,

but yeah, you want to point out that people must've been a tad more forgiving at the time. Well, there must have been much more use to death and murder. Yeah. Because it was so common. And it was so personal. Because you're doing it with hatchets and axes and guns that don't fire very well. So you're doing it at close range.

You're shooting people with muskets. And there was so much more violence then yeah yeah so much more death the fact that you can grow up and be so old now I'll never see a dead person it's like just a new idea it is pretty crazy you know I got people my age that never seen a dead guy yeah well it's a real eye-opener when you see one there's a lot of people that haven't even seen a dead animal dude I could sit rattle off the dead people i've seen it's burned in my mind how many dead people have i seen yeah not 10 what have you seen dead people from i saw two people that were not just dead but in bits after a plane crash i saw where was that probably not even a

mile from my house holy shit yeah and then um and then uh commercial plane or like one of those little private 57 year old man and a 13 year old kid i i tried i tried recently briefly to find to go back and find the article but the way way I, here's how the story went down. The way I remember it, a detail that I remember very clearly is that this guy, it was his neighbor kid. And he had told this kid's parents, they were going down to wash the airplane and look at the airplane. And he decided to take the kid up for a flight. I don't know if that's true or not. I was trying to find that article to confirm that aspect of it,

but I lived on a lake called Middle Lake, and everybody remembers this. For whatever reason, this guy buzzed our lake a couple times really low. There was a guy down on the east end of the lake named Mr. Rupert, and I remember what was unusual about Mr. Rupert was he would eat freshwater clams,

which we were forbidden from doing by our dad. Why is that? You know, it's just not, people don't regard it as a good practice at all to eat freshwater clams because of toxins. You know, that's another thing I haven't looked into why that doesn't happen. People just generally don't eat freshwater clams. But we would go get them and clean them. And I remember we cleaned a whole shitload once. My dad's like, no.

But Mr. Rupert would eat these freshwater clams. Would he he go raw or would he cook them i'm sure he would cook them he said man i saw that plane when it dove down over the lake it went up but then dove down again and never came back up uh and he even told some neighbors this. The next day when we wake up, the sheriff's posse, the mounted, like our area had a mounted, like a bunch of volunteers who had horses. And they were like the mounted sheriff's posse, right? Like deputized individuals during emergencies such as this. They were all loading up their horses to head out into the woods to look for some plane. And another detail that was told to me that I wanted to verify, I just need to go back and go through the microfiche where I grew up and find the article, because it was something like it had a signal on it,

and the signal was picked up by some other country even. But they knew that a plane had gone down. And that was a matter of fact. Everyone at this point knew that this plane had gone down and that was a matter of fact everyone at this point knew that this plane had gone down and we were riding around on our bikes out in the woods just kind of following these sheriff's posse guys as they were sort of combing through the woods

and eventually a news helicopter was hovering over a spot like right at where right where the end of White Lake Drive and it was a news helicopter hovering over there my two brothers went directly there on their bikes and i was younger and for some reason i went and got my mom and then we drove over and we got to the end of white lake road we had to walk

into the woods and there was a guy there that tried to block my mom and me from going in there and i always remember he said, if you're going there, you better have a strong stomach. And she's like, well, my kids are in there. And so we go in there and Matt and Danny are just standing at the edge of the hole there. And they're trying to sort out, they're trying to sort out who was who inside this plane.

Wow. Into bags. I'm not shitting you, man. Like, and yeah, I have like some visual details. I remember from that,

just like, uh, yeah. And then it's kind of macabre, but yeah, I'd like, like, and then that was,

you know, that, and then I remember we were at our neighbor, Mrs. Musselman. Um, I remember we were at her birthday party and the caterer just fell over dead in front of everybody. So, like, stuff like that.

Those are very non-war related things, right? That's what's interesting. I'm just saying, like, but you can see that these are just, like, half-enchanced things. But, yeah, you can go through life. We just have it sort of set up now or you can be hidden from it but then you talk to previous generations just like just it was just a part of stuff yeah you know my old man talked about walking he grew up in chicago he talked about walking out of a party one time there's a dead guy at the bottom of the stairs that had been beaten to death just like day just like then went off to world war ii

and saw who knows what so yeah i when people talk about how now we're so violent shit there's nothing to support that nothing no it's the safest time safest time to live ever you used to be able to hang people from trees and not get in trouble for it if they were the right color yeah not that long ago no that's what's crazy about this wild bill hickok shit we're talking about what 1870 1880 when was it and what's funny is he was one of the combatants so some of those guys like wild bill cody and wild bill hickok hickok actually had like a dispute over who got to have the name Buffalo Bill Cody Wild Bill Hickok. There were some other wild bills I guess. It was like a popular name.

But they were combatants too. So they engaged in these wars. And the fact that you would later get both sides of the war. It'd be like if you went and got a bunch of Germans who were defending the Normandy beach. Omaha beach. And you got a bunch of Germans who were defending the Normandy beach

Omaha beach and you got a bunch of the Americans who were storming Omaha beach and you had a traveling road show in which they would pretend to inflict mass casualties on one another

for paying adoring crowds how bizarre who came up with the idea for that i don't know that had been done ever in history before i don't know my guess would be you know there's a guy there's a thing that i've told people a bunch of times no one ever believes me that's true but it's fucking true it's true there was a guy one time you know niagara falls right you've been to niagara falls no big damn waterfall uh you know the saint laurence drains the great lakes and on its way out to the atlantic it was a big-ass waterfall niagara falls um a guy one time bought there was like a zoo was liquidating its holdings, and a man bought the zoo

and bought a barge and put all of the zoo animals on the barge and charged a dollar to watch him send his barge full of animals over the falls. Yeah. Wow. So, right? Yeah. not that long ago now what happens if you now nowadays nowadays now the jays they'll put you in a cage yeah so it's just yeah we've traveled what is this jamie this is uh like from when the when the show started in the World's Fair.

He got denied from doing the show outside of the World's Fair. Who's he? Wild Bill Hickok. You're not talking about him? Sorry, William F. Cody. So I don't know which one is which. But he found a 14-acre swath of land where he set up stands for 18,000 people to watch each show. And over 2 million people saw it during the World's Fair that year.

That's how. I don't know if he was the first one. And there weren't even, there were 2 million saw it, but there were less, well under, probably way less than 75 million people in the country. Wow. On what year was it? In World War II, there were 150 million.

That's incredible. 18,000 spectators, 74 Indians from the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota. Wow. 18,000 spectators. It must have been amazing back then. Yeah, but think about the numbers at that battle. Historians feel that at that battle, that was the largest gathering of Plains Indians to have ever occurred. An encampment of maybe 10,000 individuals. And how many people were there from, what's his face?

Custer. Custer. He rode into one end of the camp. That's why it's not well understood. There were other engagements going on at the same time. When you say Custer, his command was annihilated, there were other prongs to the attack that were repelled and beaten. But it was only one prong of the attack that was annihilated. And how many people did Custer have with him?

He rode in with about 200 people. And ran into... An encampment of 10,000 individuals. And later some of these individuals like Gall and others in interviews said that even at the time, our understanding is that these people were all hopelessly drunk. Oh my God. Because it did not make sense what they were doing.

Wow. They just didn't know. It's no one understood. That's, that's why Custer, that's why there's still all these Custer people who just debate and argue. And it's like some of his Crow Scouts, okay, he had some Cree or Ree Scouts and Crow Scouts who came and told him, do not, you cannot go down there in the morning.

They were planning on attack at daybreak. And they said, you cannot do that. That makes no sense. He said, we're going. They did their death songs. Some of his scouts sang their death songs because they knew they would be dying in the morning. And it's debated still today.

To what extent did he, like, did he believe what his scouts were telling him? So was it suicidal or was it hubris? No one thinks it was suicidal. It was either that he just didn't really comprehend what they were telling him or he was a decorated Civil War figure and probably was a very ardent believer in the superiority of his army, and that they were trained soldiers with discipline,

that there was just one prong of a three-prong attack or two-prong attack. He was riding in the one end of the village. But he just rode into the village, and they were just killed. And in popular depictions, they always show Custer like the last guy standing. There's a mountain of his dead guys around him and he's still firing his revolver with long hair. In fact, he had short hair

at the time. Some people think that in looking at it, he probably... The great one is Here Fell Custer. The great image? Yeah. Jamie just pulled up a crazy picture.

So Here Fell Custer. Is that a contemporary picture? Did it say what? No, no, that's the old classic. There's one that was on the Anheuser-Busch. I meant contemporary to the time. Yeah, Here Fell Custer was a little bit later. But then the one that was the Anheuser-Busch one was by a German guy.

I think that was the one you had pulled up. Anheuser-Busch had a Custer photo? It was like their poster. Oh, my God. That's Herefell Custer. Wow. Which is considered to be a very accurate, which is considered to be a pretty accurate depiction of what was going on.

Now, the Native American version of it. Custer died, I think he died earlier in the skirmish. In movies, he's got the flowing blonde hair. Everyone's dead and he's still firing away. Of course. He was probably killed earlier rather than later in the skirmish. It's so funny because... See, right there.

He's like, you know, in a different position. It's so funny that we've done that. You know, that people have taken what they know most likely were historically inaccurate accounts, and they pass them down generation to generation. And it makes you wonder, like, this is what we know now because this is only 100 and so years ago. Yeah. Like, what are we getting when we're getting some version of something that happened 1,000 years ago or 2,000 years ago, you know? Yeah. How distorted.

Insanely. Yeah. thousand years ago or two thousand years ago you know yeah how distorted insanely yeah but the problem we have as a culture i think is when someone goes to fix when someone goes to challenge our popular perceptions um it's it's branded as revisionist and somehow like loses, right? It becomes almost like its credentials are tarnished. Do you remember the guy? I can't remember what politician, Jamie Beal pulled up. There was a politician who said,

he famously said, after we realized that Paul Revere, the ride of Paul Revere was- Didn't really happen. Yeah, like fabricated from whole cloth, right? Right. There was a politician who said, I love Paul Revere whether... Didn't really happen. Yeah, like fabricated from whole cloth, right? Right. There was a politician who said, I love Paul Revere whether he wrote or not.

Well, I mean, when we were kids, we were taught Columbus discovered the United States. I mean, we didn't figure that out until... It's still amazing. That it wasn't like the West Indies. Yeah. And to this day, it's still amazing that they celebrate that guy when you find out that he was a fucking monster. I mean, was it a a I believe it was a

Minister or someone who was some religious person who came with them at the time? Left a journal about the atrocities committed directly by Columbus and his men When they you know hacked off arms for people couldn't bring them back gold And I mean just horrific shit smashed babies on rocks did it right in front of them and this guy was a first-hand account of what and we're supposed to believe i mean who knows how much of what he's saying is accurate but if any of it is accurate columbus was a fucking monster yeah i think that what it stems from is that from the perspective in europe at the time he had he had solidified and put some shit together that people had been kind of pecking around the edges

of right whether this continent existed yeah and and and yeah and just had it was like a leap forward at the time yeah how crazy is that but the fact that it becomes that all right that he like you know that in some people's minds he like somehow established america yeah and that we take a day off of school because of it that's really crazy it's bizarre columbus day i mean we still to this day it's 2017 kids get columbus day off don't? But now it's like here's the thing now that no one now that sort of the consensus right the popular

consensus is that he was a one of many players involved in sort of putting together what was here and sort of outlining where it was and how to get here um he's one of a bunch of players you know almost certainly not the first

uh no one cares about that meaning what they mean is you're like saying like i uphold the idea of western civilizations annexation of the new world as being a good thing so when someone says when someone gets pissed at the revisionists for questioning the legitimacy of Columbus they're not actually talking about

what he specifically did it's become a proxy for the cultural annexation of the New World. And to say, oh, I hate Columbus, he's an asshole, they take it to mean you're saying that you're questioning our claim on the Western Hemisphere and that it was a bad thing. I think that's why people are annoyed by it. I don't think people are too much annoyed by it anymore. Because I think it's pretty much been established that Columbus is a a bad thing. I think that's why people are annoyed by it. I don't think people are too much annoyed by it anymore.

Because I think it's pretty much been established that Columbus is a really bad guy. But no one's gone in and undid the day? I don't think they have. Have they? Is there any movement? No, they kind of change them around, don't they? Well, they should probably come up with another name for it. You know?

Happy West Indies Day. No, it's still a day, right? I think so. Pretty sure. Yeah. It is kind of crazy, though. I'm not here to defend the day, but I do understand kind of how that shit came to be. Yeah, I understand it.

It just seems pretty incredible that just 500 years ago, here it goes, the war against Columbus Day in the Washington Post. Yeah, so it's waged by the same people who were waging a war against Christmas. Is it really? That's crazy. Indigenous People's Day. In favor of Indigenous People's Day. Makes sense. Just give us a day off.

We'll take it. I'm generally like little movements, like little cultural movements like that, I'm generally not... Receptive to? No, I don't try to read too much into them. If I woke up tomorrow and told me that we had decided, you know, that people had gotten together and decided against Columbus Day, I wouldn't do a lot of

soul searching on that day. No, I wouldn't either. Well, you know, you don't work a traditional job anyway, or go to school where you take that day off. Oh yeah, I think people that lost a day, they're like, dude, that's my day, man. Yeah, it's just hard to imagine. I hit walleyes with my buddy Doug every year.'s my day, man. Yeah, it's just hard to imagine. That's how I hit walleyes with my buddy Doug every year.

Yeah, you'd be bummed. It's just hard to imagine that 500 plus years ago, they really didn't know in Europe about the continental United States. That's amazing. Yeah. Earlier, we were talking about violence, right? Violent, more violent than. I think that we're so tripped up by the upheaval caused by the digital age, right? And everything, like, you know, I just changed our sleep practices and just everything.

You know, it's major upheaval. Yeah. major upheaval yeah but picture that picture that in your lifetime they all like you become aware that the the earth that's that there are you know three times as many or whatever as many civilizations on earth is as you thought there were. Yeah. I mean, that's a huge thing to grapple with. A huge thing to grapple with. People that had history, people that had boats, they were seafaring. Had more history than you.

Yeah. Crazy. Or to think that one day, and this is not too long ago, some of our grandparents remember this, to think that one day we had devised a contraption that was capable of ending life on Earth and that these contraptions could be initiated by the distant actions of a handful of people. That that's a change, right? Yeah.

The nuclear era. Here's the? Yeah. The nuclear era. Here's the craziest change in the nuclear era. From the invention of an airplane to someone dropping a nuclear bomb from an airplane is less than 50 years. Yeah. I think Wright Brothers, 1903, right? 1906, 1903. Early 1900s. First sustained flight with a heavier than air vehicle.

And then in 1945, they dropped an atomic bomb that's crazy that's inside my life someone's like i knew this airplane shit was going to take off but that is probably one of the biggest changes ever in terms of like the amount of in 50 years in the world to go from no air travel at all to dropping a nuclear bomb out of an airplane in less than 50 years. Yeah, and to then have it be that it's a staple of American life. Not just where other people, like space travel, you're like, okay, it's this flood of information, but it's not affecting me. But with that, that's now how you get around. Yeah.

affect me but with that's like that's now how you get around yeah you know that you like at a time when you wanted to cross the country you would lose a large percentage of your party to death right you had to plan ahead it would take many many months to being just a thing you just do on a whim now i do believe like i accept that we are in a state of upheaval right now and i think that we're probably impacting ourselves in ways we don't fully understand how so digital devices oh for sure yeah just how you run your day yeah no doubt how you spend your time how you run your day well ever go to a restaurant you see a whole group of people just staring at their phone yeah yeah we're laughing today if you're staying at the baggage claim not looking at your phone people are gonna think you're nuts that's baggage claim, not looking at your phone, people are going to think you're nuts.

That's true. My friend. You're just looking around, trying to make conversation with people. My friend wrote a song about a conversation his wife was having with someone where someone was in Starbucks drinking a coffee, just sitting there staring at the wall like a fucking lunatic. Yeah, you'd be single now. People are like, what's wrong with that person? What are they up to? Are they going to start killing people? They're not doing anything with their phone.

It's a big thing, but one of the helpful things, I guess one of the helpful things, just to bring it full circle, one of the helpful things about traveling or about just reading about history is you stop, you lose some of that sense of specialness about thinking that the life you're living in the moment you're living it is this great test of humanity or some like super peculiar thing going on he realized that people have always been involved with and struggle with cataclysmic upheaval you know and then to go and then to and to go witness some other people in some version of that transition is pretty healthy, man. Maybe in the long term, like just traveling, going to see how other people do stuff. It's unsettling, but probably ultimately pretty good for you.

Yeah, I think it's very good for you. Just anything that enhances perspective, it gives you like another layer that you could consider when you think about life on earth. We're so used to our own environment, our own ways. It's like you were talking about talking to these people and asking them like, why don't you eat monkeys? And they're like, oh, we just don't eat monkeys. Has he ever been to a supermarket? That's a good question. A couple of years ago, when I was mentioning that, I'd mentioned to you that a couple American companies that have some conservation spending, they were training some guys from Rewa Village. just how to interface with Westerners. And as part of that, he went up to, he might have even gone up to the Bahamas to go for a couple days to a fly fishing lodge.

So yeah, he flew on a commercial aircraft. Oh, wow. Yeah. Just what we love to see. But he's peculiar in that way. Now, I've brought up to him, I'm trying to talk him into coming up and going, I want to take him on an ice fishing trip so i want to take him to alaska the fish of the ice because what i want him to understand is um i'm so uncomfortable

with him physically uncomfortable with the heat with everything biting me all the time just everything it's just extremely uncomfortable and to him it's standard with the heat, with everything biting me all the time. Just everything. It's just extremely uncomfortable. And to him, it's standard. Yeah, it's comfortable. But he's never, like, if he hadn't done that trip, or just all of his siblings and most other people in those villages, they never experienced 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now, what is it like to them when it comes to bugs? Do they have any sort of resistance to mosquitoes or anything along those lines? They don't care about it nearly as much as we care about it do they get the same amount of bites though do they get chewed up like we do yeah they complain about tick bites and stuff but doesn't generally it doesn't seem to bother me like we do because it's just a part of everyday life like you got to get used to you know and like hanging out in bolivia you get bit by bees and wasps at about the same rate that you'd get bit by mosquitoes if you were at some Fourth of July thing out at your uncle's pond, shooting fireworks off at night on the edge of a cattail marsh. Really?

You're just getting bit. You just wake up and you start getting bit by bees and wasps. So they just get kind of used to it. And then you'd say, I remember when I got stung by a bullet ant asking like, Hey, how many times have you been stung by bullet ants? And a lot of them would be like, I couldn't even begin to guess how many times I've been stung by bullet ants, but it's like, but they just suffered. So what I want to do is I want him to experience suffering while watching me not suffer. So like, I want him to look at me with awe. Okay?

And so to do this, I want him to come up and ice fish. I'm going to take him up. I got a friend who likes to go on, he likes to get on snow machines in February or March out of Fairbanks, and they go overnight camping on snow machines fishing through the ice for burbot sounds like burbot oh they call them freshwaterlings or you know why they call them lawyers is when you gut a burbot his uh his heart's way back next to his asshole so they call them lawyers or vent you know fish have a like a like a cloaca they have a uni hole you know we have like a bird yeah we have a couple outlets and they have a single outlet for waste and sexual exchange um

so yeah lawyer burbot freshwater ling poor man's lobster is another word for it it's a northern fish uh looks like if you combined a snake and a bullfrog, kind of. Yeah, I want to take them out to camp in a tent in 40-degree below weather. That's it right there? Yeah. Wow, what a cool-looking fish. Burbot. Very good to eat. Yeah?

Very good. Wow. Now, are they commonly caught through the ice, or do people catch them on the street? That's a northern pike. That's a northie, yeah. Oh, yeah, no, it's kind of a burbot or not. But they catch them? They're in the Great Lakes. They're all over there in Alaska. Yeah, there's a burbot everywhere., yeah. No, it's kind of... Burbot or not. They're in the Great Lakes.

They're all over. They're in Alaska. Yeah, there's a Burbot everywhere. So does it taste like lobster? Is that why they call it a poor man's... No, the reason they call it poor man's lobster doesn't really taste like lobster, but it's suitable for boiling it and dipping it in butter and cocktail sauce and eating. Really?

Yeah. But you also make fish sandwiches with it. Huh. They even sell that shit commercially. Burbot. Burbot. Guys that have, like, guys that, like, Native American, like, so in the northern Great Lakes, you have Ojibwe. The Ojibwe Indians still carry on White Lake.

They fish for Great Lakes whitefish. They trap net Great Lakes whitefish. They're able to sell bycatch of burbot. And they have restaurants. Like in the UP, I got some friends that do it. And they have restaurants in the UP that they sell their burbot into, and they make burbot sandwiches. Huh.

Freshwater link. That's interesting. So I want to take him on an ice fishing trip. But for him to leave, like he doesn't go into Georgetown, which is the capital of his country. He'd have to go into Georgetown and start like trying to figure out some kind of a visa situation and a passport. Does he have a birth certificate?

I don't know what he has. I told him that I would try to help him with all that, but he said, it's like a very daunting idea that you would like go and leave the country or that you'd go in and stay in Georgetown. But he has been on a commercial flight. He did that trip. Yeah. Yeah. So he has the country. Wow. Or you'd go in and stay in Georgetown. But he has been on a commercial flight. He did that trip, yeah. Yeah, so he has done it.

Yep, he has done it. But he said he had to get a passport in order to do it. His passport didn't last long, and now he has no passport anymore is what he's telling me. When I was asking him about the feasibility of this. And then you don't need a visa for there, but he needed a visa to come here. But I'm going to figure it out.

I want to have him up so bad. Wow. Him and his brother Dennis. One of the things that surprised, like one of the things you get is, you know, you're from, what state were you born in? New Jersey.

Yeah, see, it's like you've been all over the place, right? Yeah. Imagine that, imagine that you hunted and fished and farmed that's all you did so you're always on the land yeah and you've done it all within a 25 mile a 20 mile radius of your home so you're outside hunting and fishing or farming or gathering in the jungle every day and you're in your 30s or 40s and you've done it in a radius of 20 miles. Wow.

To what level you understand your spot. And without the distractions of the digital shit. And without the distractions of an occupation. Oh, he doesn't work at all. I mean, now he guides a little bit every year. For the fish. He guides a little bit every year for the fish he guides a little bit but typically not like most days he's not engaged in that activity so the spatial awareness is a thing that's most striking to me in in spending time with with these individuals is um

everything i'm interested in what they notice and, and, uh, what they never miss. It's like, you realize that all of the bits of information that you're able to contain in your head that allow you to function and carry on, right? You're like a comedian and you do shit with MMA and you have a very successful podcast and you have a family and you're like a comedian and you do shit with MMA and you have a very successful podcast and you have a family and you're digitally very astute and you have opinions about fucking coffee, right? All this shit, you're widely read, right? That's like all, you sort of fill up your brain with as much as it can hold. But for them, it's like, it seems to be from my perspective, it seems to be, from my perspective, it's like all of that breadth of knowledge, but crammed into the natural world. To where every plant, every tree, what are its uses?

What are the other things? And it's like they know as much. Like, they know as much as we know. But it's just focused in a way that our breadth of knowledge, which would probably be astounding to them if they realized all the shit we knew about. But all those bits of information are just applied in a different way down to like a granular understanding of the jungle. It would probably be very bizarre for them to see us like walk like out to this parking lot, little patches of like plants we don't have a fucking clue as to what they are we pass through them like they they're just peripheral there is no like oh i don't know what that is yeah wow no they know everything and there's toxicity how

many thousands and thousands of different varieties of plants and animals you know at various times there's 1500 species of birds listen i like there was never a moment when I heard a bird call. There was a, I never said, hey, what's that bird? That everyone there didn't say what the bird was. Bird sounds. Just from sounds. It's like you can't, like, and the like yeah it defies it's almost just something you have to go see is um the ability to just like move through the jungle and notice everything

now are they like the people in bolivia where they're barefoot most of the time yeah but you know it's another bummer is getting more into shoes man uh robin still likes to take his shoes off when he goes into the jungle like we went into the jungle after some curacao and uh and he he pulled his shoes off to be extra quiet but yeah so he'll now and then put flip-flops on now and before there's no way wow do they still have the weird feet that are all just calloused and toes are spread out yeah it's very strange the way their feet look real strange i was you know in the Philippines one time in the highlands where people are just hiking mountain trails, like severe topography on rocky ground, and the feet there, I've never seen anything like it.

Barefoot. Yeah, but it's almost unrecognizable as a human foot. Really? From your perspective of a human foot. What does it look like? Have your man here. Is there photos of their feet? Type on Luzon Island Highlands Kalinga, K-A-L-I-N-G-A feet.

I don't know. Try that. There's probably some high resolution national geographic if this if he's any good at his job you will be seeing some crazy feet in a moment you know another thing i wanted to uh share with you i mentioned a sort of a surreal image is uh you know watching a woman in a dkny shirt shirt digging turtle eggs for food. There's flowers.

Everything's in bloom, right? It was just the beginning of the rainy season so there was some rain. Everything was in bloom. And these flowers, flowers of all variety, hang out over the river. And sometimes you'll pass through and it just has this like warm floral smell that's just it's astounding um it reminded me of you know in in the end of

apocalypse now when kurtz when captain willard finally catches up with kurtz and kurtz asks him where he's from and he mentions ohio and kurtz tells him about a river trip he took with his father on the Ohio River when the gardenias were in bloom, you know, and he talks about the smell and the end of apocalypse. Now, these flowers, they smell like that. But when the rain would come, what's going on? I can't even see what. I got something.

You got some feet? Oh, you'll find some feet, boy. Yeah, I was trying to find something better. Here's a. some feet oh you'll find some feet boy one i was trying to find something better here's uh um so it would rain it would knock the all the flowers into the river oh wow and you know like the way yeah that's what i'm talking about so from grasping wow they're like almost like a gorilla's feet yeah from grab like from wrapping your like wrapping your feet around things rocks and stuff while you climb that one in the middle

yeah no no i saw i saw i saw like a number like not yeah quite a few people that had feet that resembled that from just from from from because like you know down in the amazon and other areas you're just walking on soft ground. But imagine if you're just walking on slippery rocks and you're using your feet in a way. That's not even uncommon. So what we're looking at for people that are just listening to this, it's like at the middle of their foot, especially that one foot in the middle to the right, it's taking a turn, like a hard turn, like a 15-degree-plus turn. Why do those seem like disembodied feet?

Because they're just photographing the feet, I guess. Real old. This is like a big article about some people from the Philippines, I think, from the same area. Oh. So go back to it for a second, Jamie, because what we're seeing in this is this massive spacing between the big toe and then the first toe

to the point where it looks like a hand. It's an opposable toe. Yeah, it's crazy. Seems like. Almost like an opposable toe, yeah. Almost like a thumb. No, I'm sure what's at play there, too. It's really fucked.

It makes you wonder. At one point in time, was it like that? That's the thing you wonder, and I don't what's at play there, too. That's what's really fucked. Like, it makes you wonder. Like, at one point in time, was it like that? That's the thing you wonder, and I don't know the answer to this, but my guess would be that over time, you know, they're not starting out with your foot. Like, over time, that's just been something that's been selected for in a population of people. Like height or like, you know, some people.

Yeah, like they're just like selected for what you'd have. Whoa, look at this guy's feet. Yeah. Very common. Holy shit. Holy shit. We're looking at what looks like frog feet. But that's not even Asia.

That's North America. It's like an indigenous people feat. H-U-A-O-R-A-N-I. How do you pronounce that? Harani. Harani? I'd have to check where that is. God, it's bizarre.

But it really does show you. From fucking wearing shoes your whole life. Yeah, and given the different environment, that's insane. Like what we're looking at here, they literally look like thumbs. Like they're sticking out of the side, but it's the same structure as a human foot, meaning that it's the same length of toes, and just you see that from using it that way, they've just developed this incredible... You know what's really crazy?

What is one of the hallmarks of civilization that shows, like, the really poor choice in footwear? When your feet go the other way, when they go in an ineffective direction, they get that hammer toe and they climb over each other. These people have functional feet to the point where, you know, they could probably hold something with their feet. where they could probably hold something with their feet. Yeah. When I look at my wife's feet, I feel like she's got a foot that seems very much shaped by a lifetime of office footwear. It's awful, especially with women. They get that hammer toe, that bunion thing where their toes are kind of crossed over

to the side. I know that thing well. It's so weird. are kind of crossed over to the side. I know that thing well. It's so weird. It's a weird choice that someone has decided that women should shove their toes into these pointy things. But just like with that I saw a group of individuals

lock on to polarized sunglasses as being the shit, if you went back in five years, I'm telling you, instead of everybody being barefoot, everybody's going to be wearing shoes. What if you got those women high-heeled shoes and said, this is what all the women in America... I think that's a stretch.

Of course. I think it'd take a while. Oh, that's disgusting, though. That's foot binding. That's just fucked up right there. That's just insane. I can't tell what I'm looking at. Yeah, well, it's her toes curled under. Oh, it's from binding your feet? Yeah, that's foot binding it's just fucked up right there that's just insane i can't tell what i'm looking at yeah that's her toes oh it's from binding your feet that's foot binding in china yeah it's well you know soft tissue it's very flexible oh man go uh go to cirque de soleil

look what those people could do their bodies the human body is pretty bizarre in its ability to adapt but yeah you know those groups that used to bind their children's head to that backboard to flatten their head out? Well, how about those people in, what part of the world was it where they have that, the Incas, where they have those lines, the Nazca lines, you know, and they found all these skulls from people back then where they had stretched their heads out and almost made their heads look like aliens. Yeah. There you go.

But see if you can find the Inca skulls. It's so much so that a lot of the really loony people said, look, they're trying to be like the aliens that have come down and given them knowledge. Oh, yeah, yeah. Have you ever been down to – do you remember those, they're held in Salta, Argentina. I went to see them one time. But those children that they found, they were entombed at the top of a mountain, and they were basically freeze-dried. No.

It's perfectly preserved children. What happened to them? Well, they were taken up and given as an offering. So first, it seems, based on the stuff they had with them, that they were paraded through the Incan Empire, and people lavished them with gifts. And when you look at the isotopes in their bodies, it's like their diet, their whole lives, they had just had potatoes.

But then you can see that toward the end of their lives, they were very well fed with meat and fish and all kinds of stuff, and they had just innumerable treasures uh gold pieces carved pieces so they were taken it seems as though they were taken throughout the empire and what's really funny about this speaking of columbus earlier is it was like yeah so wow it's like it's best they haven't dated exactly but it seems like i mean it seems like we're talking about you know col It's like, it's best they haven't dated it exactly, but it seems like, I mean, it seems like we're talking about, you know, Columbus 1492. It's like we're talking about 1491.

Wow. So the height of this empire at the height of the empire budding up against this dramatic and sudden collapse with European contact. But they took, yeah, I to see and um she was not the only they made a deal with the indigenous people where they only put one on display at a time but she was on display when i was there and what do they have their how do they have their encapsuled so they took them well i'll tell you how they came to be first so they were finely dressed had a lot of ornaments and things with them, had been very well fed.

And they took them up to a high peak. I can't remember how high. It might have been 14,000 or 15,000 feet above sea level. And they built a little tomb for them and sat them in the tomb. They were drunk. They had a lot of rice wine in their bodies when they died. The oldest one must have put up some kind of struggle because she was hitting the head with a hammer or an ax and they were just laid out sitting in this thing and then capped over with rocks and it's very stable environment. So they froze.

And then, you know, we use now like backpacking food is freeze dried food. Yeah. They used to do a very similar thing by just taking potatoes and storing them at high elevations, where what freeze-drying is, is you freeze something and then expel the liquid where the liquid goes from a solid to a gas without passing through its liquid state. So when you freeze dry food, you put it in the freezer and get it super cold, and then you start putting it under a vacuum to a point where all the water goes immediately to a gaseous state. It doesn't pass through a liquid state. So it holds its form, but all the water's gone. If it goes to a liquid state, then it collapses, but it just holds its form,

and the non-water parts of the cells just stay bound in their natural shape. So they were in this position and eventually just expelled tons of water without ever thawing out, and when they found them, you can even see that they had been chewing coca leaves because of the high elevation.

The kids still have dried coca leaves on their lips. Dude, it's wild. Yeah, me and my wife went there to look at them. Where is it now? It's in Salta, Argentina. Wow. Near the border, very near the border with Bolivia. I wanted to ask you something totally unrelated, but it came up because you talked about freeze-dried foods.

I know you cook a lot, but have you ever, I know you eat those mountain house things, but have you ever tried to make your own? Have you ever tried to dehydrate some of your wild game? Oh yeah, I've dehydrated. I mean, anytime you make jerky, you dehydrate and stuff. But have you ever made like chili and things like that where you could rehydrate it in the field? I don't think I've ever made dehydrated. No, I've assembled a lot of

dehydrated things, but I've never, like, at what point, how many ingredients need to be in something before it becomes like a recipe? Just a couple. Pemmican, that's a recipe. What is it? Pemmican, that's got two things in it. What's pemmican? Pulverized meat

with liquid fat poured over the top of it. Did you know what that is? No. People fuck that up all the time. What pemmican is. I've never heard of it before, I don't think. It's like the original road food. You dry meat into jerky, air dry meat into jerky.

Then you pulverize it into what looks like sawdust. And then you take and stir it into liquefied fat. I made some from a buffalo I killed when I wrote my buffalo book. I made pemmican from that. And I had it in my fridge fridge as an experiment I kept it for seven years

Survival food that can last 50 years, but that's not pemmican It's not it doesn't look like it looks like jerky sticks because it's not pulverized people just now started all of a sudden call and like Different I'm not saying everybody mess hardly everybody messes up, but it's like a thing that gets messed up, so hardly everybody messes up but it's like a thing that gets messed up so um what was i getting at what were you asking about no i was asking about no i never dehydrate i never dehydrate a bunch of different things and combine it into a recipe that i then bring with me um the reason i like the reason i use dehydrated food and a lot of backpack hunters use dehydrated food is because um if you have a a dish made up of dehydrated ingredients they have different hydration times okay so if you do beans like like a piece of meat is going to be digestible to you

piece of dehydrated meat that's then hydrated is going to be digestible to you a dehydrated bean might take 30 or 40 minutes before it's going to be in a condition that doesn't rip you apart like if you want to fuck yourself up eat straight dried beans what happens

just like rocks yeah you don't know your stomach doesn't know what to do with it man well it knows what to do with it starts producing voluminous amounts of uh gas right it's awful it's horrible but with with if you cook if you take food and cook it to a ready to eat state and then freeze dry it it it uh you can rehydrate it kind of like simultaneously if you do everything right. Now, it wouldn't work with like a hamburger. If you dehydrated a hamburger and then you add water to it,

you're going to wind up with a soggy-ass bun. So the trick is like finding things that are going to, in a hot water bath, are going to all come back to life kind of at the same time. But places that make backpack food out of just dehydrated but not freeze-dried ingredients is a recipe for disaster really some people like that shit but for day in day out consumption um i'm a freeze-dry man and it's freeze-dried something you could do at home you'd have to buy a sublimation chamber so no what is a sublimation chamber what does that look like it's a chamber in which sublimation you know what it looks like

it looks like the looks like a submarine really a small but it's very heavy duty because what you're doing is you're taking you're taking food you take ready to eat foods and freeze it right and then you put it into a sublimation chamber and pull a very strong vacuum on it. And the air pressure gets to a point where the liquid sublimates and goes directly to a gaseous state. And you condense it on another surface inside the chamber. But it's out of the food. Then you take the food out and it's like glass. You can shatter it.

That's freeze-dried food. But it rehydrates in a real nice way. I have heard we eat a lot of it because we do a lot of backcountry trips. I've heard everyone's complaints about it, but it's like from my perspective, which I will argue is a well-informed perspective,

it's like it's the lesser of two evils. It's not that bad. For day-in, day-out consumption, I think that the companies that are do freeze dry it's just better in my opinion now when i say that these children were freeze dried i think some people you know people are going to challenge that because it's not technically freeze dried but like a similar thing going on where they're keeping their form but shedding their water and you know shedding water keeping their farm and being frozen and preserved for a long time.

So, yeah, it's a trip. Because I was reading a podcast or reading a podcast, listening to a podcast, rather, where this guy was talking about how he's doing that with his own food for backpacking trips. Dehydrating it all. Sure, man. Why not? Things like chili. Yeah. Things along those lines.

Is he cooking chili and then dehydrating or just dehydrating the components? I think dehydrating the components. I think dehydrating the components. I think he was talking about dehydrating the meat and dehydrating pasta. Like something, you know, like taking some meat with sauce and putting it together with a pasta. Now, my brother one time,

he's a very frugal man. That's not the right word. He just hates to see food go to waste. He one time had a bunch of roommates and they all moved out and left a ton of rice, and he got sick of cooking rice because it'd take too long. He cooked all the rice and then spread it out on sheets and dehydrated it in his dehydrator and reverse-engineered instant rice. That's insane.

Does it take that long? What does rice take, like 20 minutes? It seems like it'd take more time to do that. You have to talk to him. So this is the same guy. Is this the same guy that found the hobo's underwear and stole it? Yep, and the same guy that one time our dear late friend was getting married, and his bride, the wedding was at his bride-to-be's house, and a neighbor was away on vacation. And the neighbor that was away on vacation said, you know, since we're out of town, if you guys want to use our home for some of your wedding guests, go ahead.

home for some of your wedding guests go ahead and so all the groomsmen were lodged up in this house of this man we didn't know who was the neighbor of his wife's parents and uh i don't know why but my brother got to snooping around in this guy's freezer and found that he had had he had a bull elk in there that had been in there for seven years and he had like this crisis this moral crisis where he's trying to figure out is it morally worse to steal or morally worse to allow this man to waste this meat how long was a bullet will bull stay good if you freeze it you're fucking pushing it at seven years seven years like what is what is like commonly agreed upon it depends who you ask if you ask me the way i trim the way i cut trim and wrap i don't even blink at two years two years is fine yeah the way i cut trim and wrap but when you start seeing four

years you get a little weird well a thing that i don't let it go i've never even done it i would have to think it's going to start to go because the texture will change. The texture will change. Seven years, there's two things going on. One, you're borderline. And two, you're starting to get the idea that this guy isn't going to eat that thing. Right. Yeah.

So he weighed it out in his head. And when he left, he had a bunch of that meat with him and took them home and ate it because he just hated to see it go to waste. How did it taste seven years in? I don get to ask him wow but his standard of good is different than your standard of good his standard of good is acceptable in cases like that so that is a weird crisis though it makes sense but he throughout his whole life he always is running into these situations like where he just like cannot um he cannot let food go to waste so he's if i talk to him right now there's probably 10 more things like that that have happened to him since i talked to him last where he's like when he found like he found in his alleyway one time and he's living

in montana and both still is montana living in bozeman found in his alleyway like a discarded cash from a homeless man and ate all that guy's food. And he was a PhD candidate at the university. You grew up with him. Yeah. So I remember the first time. Do you understand him? The first time he, here's where he kind of like, not where it came from, but he drew a bear tag when

we were in michigan and it was hard to get a bear tag at the time and he drew a bear tag and the only way to hunt bears in the up is like you know you're not you're not going to spot stalk on him because it's flat ground and you can't see shit right you know you can use dogs or you can use bait or you never you're not gonna see a bear um so he started a bait pile, and the way he was feeding his bait pile ahead of the season was just dumpster diving. So as he's dumpster diving, it's like he's living off, not only is he baiting the bear with the dumpster food, but he's living off the dumpster diving food that he found, too, because he discovered this great richness.

Oh, my God. He found, I'm not shitting you, he found this big box of boxes of expired bugles, you know, those little crackers that people, like, put cheese whiz, shoot cheese whiz into the open end of that bugle. And I even got a picture of him. He'd just walk through the woods with boxes of bugles under his arm and get out, and he'd be, like, dumping them out for the bear and then just eating the bugles, too. And then he'd walk back with a handful of bugles just hate to see wasted food his old girlfriend had a job cooking

like the brown food in the albertsons you know like the display case where they fry all those like burritos and shit and um they were she was bringing all that home and they were living off the the food that was going to the garbage and they came to her and said you can't steal this food and then she started stealing it quietly wow he can't stand to see food go to waste well that's probably noble you know what's extra nice is he works for the usda so it's good to know that a person like that is involved in um you know is at least in the room with people who are thinking about food systems. Is it good? Because it seems like he'll fucking eat anything.

Dude, he will. He's on a different level. I mean, on a different level of toughness and shit. He's the guy whose arm is shrinking because remember I was trying to hook you up with? Yes. Because he's got a muscle. Did he do anything about that? Nope. Oh that's not good no once you get that atrophy it's very tough to get it back the way his nerves regenerate takes a long time it's like a half an inch a year

he chronicles its decay by taking a he's got a 30-pound kettlebell, and he was chronicling his decay by watching how many. It's his tricep. So counting how many tricep curls he could do with that kettlebell with one arm and one with the other, and I think the last time we were talking to him, it was something like 30 on one side and 10 on the other side. Oh, Jesus. That's bad.

So that's a neck issue then. That's like a C3 or C4 or something like that. He's gone. I shouldn't say he's gone. I shouldn't say he hasn't done anything about it. He's probably, if he listens to this, he's probably cringing because he would feel that he has. Tell him

if he's listening. There's a couple things you need to do. It seems to me like it's a neck issue. Because when you start getting elbows and things where your arm starts atrophying, usually it's a cervical disc, which is somewhere up in here. What he should do is get a neck decompression device. They're inexpensive. They hook over a door.

You put it on with Velcro. You strap it in. I have one. It hangs on a thing. It's like you're hanging yourself by your chin. Making some room in there for all those nerves. Exactly. And well, same principle as these toes spreading out and then also toes smashing up, you can kind of soft tissue stretch out your neck and decompress all those areas. A lot of people have it from bad posture. A lot of people have it from bad posture. A lot of people

have it from athletics. I got it from jujitsu, um, from all this, you know, getting your neck yanked on. See that thing right there that lady has? Yeah, man. That's a shitty one. Cause that one's working on a bag of water that doesn't work with a neck like mine. You need, you need to be able to hang, hang a rhino on the other end. I had a, I have a thing where I go like this, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, and then I let myself hang from my neck. And it's just like that. Just like that.

See how that guy's just sitting there reading a book? Yeah. And you can adjust that. So there's a little cord. It's tough to see in this photo. But there's a cord you pull sort of like a plunger on one of those old school toilets. You pull that click click click click click click see how he's pulling it right there yeah and then you just relax and you just got to learn how to go with it and sort of relax and it feels weird at first because there's a lot of pressure but it's pulling your neck literally pulling your neck you can feel sometimes

when i'm really relaxed i feel like pop i feel like something pop little tissue separations in there does it have do you feel that it's gotten better long term oh yeah for sure and it feels like really relaxing like after it's over i feel like i feel like it just takes a weight off you no shit i think there's a tremendous amount i think sitting is terrible these these seats that we're in right now are exceptional because they're ergonomic chairs if you use them right if you use them right. If you use them right. Yeah. I'm pretty cautious about sitting up straight, but from back injuries, I've been very, very cautious about working out all the muscles around my back,

which I didn't really. I just worked out, and I figured those things would take care of themselves. Now I treat them just like brushing my teeth, like my spinal column and all those supporting muscles in the spine. Those are huge. They need to be exercised. And especially if you do anything like you guys pack out a lot of weight.

Yeah. That's a big one. And I feel like. That's where he feels that a different. Well, he had sciatica. Right. That's lower. That's a lumbar issue.

Yeah, that was a different thing. But he knows, he like traces that to a specific animal. That he's packing out. Yeah. Makes sense. Because sciatica is, what sciatica is, is a disc that's bulging. Meaning the disc, the soft tissue in between the two hard bones is pushing out and it's pressing up against the nerve and it causes pain that shoots down your ass and your lower legs and a lot of people don't even recognize it as a lower back issue because maybe their back is not really that painful but

the leg and the ass is painful yeah what the fuck is going on here i had a similar issue with my neck where it was pushing on my ulnar nerve and I was getting this elbow pain and I was like, fuck, this really hurts. Like down my arm and in the back of my tricep. And then I started getting numbness in my fingers. That's when I started figuring out what was going on. Then I went to a doctor. I went to a chiropractor first, which is a fucking giant mistake. I spent a year.

But do you not believe in chiropractors? I don't believe in chiropractors at all. I think it's 98% horseshit. That's what I think. And I don't know. But I think chiropractors that are smart, they incorporate things that I think are beneficial. Cold laser, massage, a lot of different things. But I think that manipulation that they do, unless you have some sort of significant scoliosis or something they're attempting to slowly put back into

position. I think most of the time it's just popping your neck and it just feels good. But I just like in an immediate sense, I went to a guy that's a very nice guy and he was trying to tell me that I didn't have a bulging disc cause he was pushing down on the top of my head and it didn't hurt. I'm like, okay. So I was listening to him. I listened to this guy for like a fucking year. I had treatment with him and I listened to this guy for like a fucking year. I had treatment with him and I still have these neck problems and back problems. Then finally I got an MRI and they're like, yeah, you got a bulging disc. And I remember being angry.

I remember being angry because I was angry that I was being treated by someone who was a professional that really didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. And they were treating something that was a significant issue that I was experiencing. A real deterioration of my function, pain. I wasn't able to do jiu-jitsu correctly. There was a lot of problems that I was dealing with that I was like, well, what the fuck is this? And then I started talking to doctors about it. And when you have a bulging disc, man, they want to cut you open like you're a pinata and you got gold inside well that's a thing that my bro is talking about is the proceed he's very nervous about a procedure that he could or could not do well for some people it's not a bad move depending on whether or not your brother's willing to do all

the different things that can but he's got a lot of atrophy already which is a real bad thing it's noticeable yeah that's not good because that shit doesn't grow back. Yeah. Boss Rooten has it real bad. Boss Rooten, former UFC heavyweight champion, he fucked his neck up and went through a bunch of different treatments and then eventually wound up getting it fused. He's got, I believe, two discs and maybe more in his neck fused together where he doesn't have any disc tissue. They just screw the bones in together and remove the disc tissue and stabilize the area. But his right arm is significantly smaller than his left arm to the point where he calls it baby arm.

And this is a former UFC heavyweight champion of the world. And what's ironic is that some of it came from fighting, but the last thing came from doing a stunt on Sons of Anarchy. He was in some sort of a fight, I believe it was Sons of Anarchy, some sort of a fight scene where they were doing some thing and some guy was supposed to throw him on the ground and he landed on his head. So all that actual fighting and then you get fucked up pretend fighting. Isn't that hilarious? Dude, yeah. And it's bad, man.

I mean, it's slowly starting to come back, but I've known Boss to have this issue for... We worked together on a movie before my seven-year-old daughter was born, and he had the issue then. And so for seven years... And still now does. And it still does. Yeah. It's come back slowly. But what I'm talking about is, I think the way that your nerves regenerate is extremely slow. They can deteriorate quickly.

Like the atrophy can happen pretty quick, but the way it regenerates is extremely slow. So they say, once you have atrophy, you're fucked. Like you got to act on it right away. That's the thing they told me when I had Lyme disease is that, um, away that's the thing they told me when I had Lyme disease is that a thing that fucks you up is the nerve damage yeah and then people people a lot of people go on to think that they always have it but they're like you had a thing it's treated it's gone but it'll live with you for so long because of the damage to your nerves this is not this so slow to recuperate I talked to a doctor about Lyme disease and he said it's not just a Lyme disease

You're dealing with he said Lyme disease is this overall term He said you can get a tick that has a hundred pathogens in it when you look at that list of shit It gets scary. It's scary as fuck and they connected it to more gel ins. You know what more gel ins is No, more gel ins is a disease that a lot of times They think is psychosomatic because there's some sort of a neurotoxicity involved in Lyme disease. And all these people that have Morgellons almost without a doubt have Lyme disease as well. And what Morgellons is is they start itching at themselves and they think they have fibers growing out of their body and they start hallucinating. Well, most of the time it's treated as a psychosomatic disorder.

Like they'll get carpet fibers in their body and they'll claim these carpet fibers are coming out of their body and growing out of their skin. But I talked to this doctor who was the only lucid person that sort of explained it to me because he's a doctor and he has more gelins. And he also has Lyme disease. And he says like to a person, they all have Lyme disease that he's encountered at least. But he was saying that he was looking at himself in the mirror and he saw something moving across the surface of his eye. And he knew it was a hallucination. And he realized it was a hallucination as a doctor, as an educated man of medicine, and still was seeing it and was freaking out. And then he realized like, oh, there's some sort of an extreme neurotoxic effect that this stuff has.

And then he started doing like some pretty deep investigation into what constitutes Lyme disease. And he's like, well, it's not like, you know, you know, you have herpes, you know, no, it's not like that. He's like, you get bit by something. You got a bunch of shit in that cocktail of whatever that disgusting tick is carrying around. And it's variable.

You know, you might get it from one part of the East Coast and it has, you know, 50 things. You might get it from another, it has 13 things. Yeah. But he's saying with the people that have more jellons, what he believes is they're suffering from hallucinations brought on by Lyme disease. That's a thing about Lyme that I found was about medicine and about people and about mysterious diseases is like, I quit doing it now,

but I would get in arguments with people where like, I was trying to deal with it and finding out about it. And people were telling me like, well, here's what's happening to me. I'm like, well, no,

I was told that's not how it works because there's so much, uh, the same thing you bring up earlier about a doctor or chiropractor telling you the wrong thing. There's so much, um, subject subjectivity in the fucking medical world. It's like, on one hand, all these people are sort of going through this regimen, this educational regimen, which is, you know, there's government oversight. There's certain criteria you need to meet, right?

Things you need to pass. And you think would sort of like have this unifying effect but people come out on the other end who've gone through kind of the same educational system telling you wildly different shit yeah wildly different shit about the problems where one guy like you could walk in one guy's gonna like do a surgery and the next guy's like oh no way yeah who was it that's like it's just like in his balls who was it wasn't Steve oh right who the fuck was it I think Andrew Santino he was telling me that he went to he had a cyst in his balls and he thought he had ball cancer went to a, and one doctor told him that he has excess cum stored up in his balls. That's sperm that's stored up in his balls, and that's what's causing this knot.

He went home to his wife and said, listen. He went to another doctor. No, he wasn't married at the time. He was a young man. He went to another doctor. This shit's coming to a head. And the second doctor said, who the fuck is that doctor? That guy should lose his

ability to practice like you don't get cum stored up in your balls and it makes some sort of a knot like he's like that's insane who told you this and a fucking real practicing doctor told him that yeah i used to go into it when i was younger i'd go into it and thinking it was like going to there's like going to get an oil change, right? You could have 20 people and they're all going to change your oil like the same way. What we do is we drain it and put new shit in. I'm like, great. Now I realize

this is a fucking roll of the dice, man. Roll of the dice. Or you can mitigate that by doing some research. But it really is like, I don't know what the guy's going to tell me. He's not going to tell me the same thing the other guy's going to tell me. The big thing when it comes to health, and this is one of the things that I have a big problem with when it comes to anything dealing with the back, is preventative maintenance is like one of the most important things for back health. We're sitting in desks all day,

and most people are not sitting up straight. They're not sitting. A good thing is like one of those balls, those gym balls, those big balance balls. Those are great to sit on because they force you to kind of stabilize yourself and use your core muscles or some sort of an ergonomic chair forcing you to stabilize. But doctors are not telling you, hey man, you got to take a yoga class a couple of days a week. You got to do something to straighten out your posture. You got to do something to make sure that your spine is strong enough to be carrying your body. You can't slump forward because you're putting undue pressure on these different portions of your back.

There's a significant amount of doctors that are just not fucking telling you that. They're going like, oh yeah, your disc is bulging. We're going to have to do a disectomy. No worries. It's outpatient. It's an outpatient procedure. But they're not telling you. They're chopping off a chunk of this finite material.

There's a small amount of material that separates your discs. And when they talk about, oh, I have disc degenerative disorder. It's a disease. Stop. It's not a disease. What's going on is you're compressing your body through weightlifting, through extreme exercise. Your body is slowly getting smooshed down. You're not allowing it to recover. You're not stretching it out. You're not strengthening all those core muscles. You're not allowing it to recover. You're not stretching it out. You're not strengthening all those core muscles. You're not giving it some time off. You're probably engaging in the same damaging activity over and over again and toughing it out. If there's one thing you should never fucking tough out, it's a back issue. Anytime there's something going on with your back, don't tough it out. Don't try to work through it. Just don't because you're going to fuck it up

worse and then it's going to get to a point where it just does not recover and then you're going to fuck it up worse, and then it's going to get to a point where it just does not recover, and then you're going to have to get surgery. Yeah. Man, all this is making me super self-conscious about how I sit. I sit like Larry King, man. So bad. When I'm at a chair and a desk. I used to much more. I do try to sit up as much as I can now.

I think every time I've been here, I went away for a couple days trying to sit straighter. I was just staring at you sitting all nice for three hours. I try, man. I didn't always used to be good at it i used to slump quite a bit before i had back issues yeah i gotta catch up these chairs are called uh capisco chairs they're from ergo depot um you can go to ergodepot.com and get these fucking things they're the shit they're they're comfortable enough to sit in too i've been on some of them where your knees slide in and there's a pad against your shin. Yeah. Those are kind of gross. These seem much more like an actual chair, but they're super comfortable.

What's it called? It's called a Capisco. Sounds like a drink. I know. Ergodepot.com. No, they didn't pay me to say that. But these things are the shit. Backs, man.

Backs are the one thing. When people have these heavy packouts and everybody likes to pride themselves. And I packed out 150 pounds, seven miles. Don't. I'm prone to saying those kind of things. I tell everybody, pack, take 75 and do it twice, please. And even that's a lot, man. I have this new thing that I got.

That's a good point. Why do people? Why do they like to talk? Because they want to be badasses. Yeah, but you'd never be like, yeah, man, I jumped out in front of a truck and just jumped away right in time. Well, people love to tell their friends, too. You know Mike?

He packed out two elk quarters on his back. Dude's a fucking savage. And I go, Mike's probably going to have no legs. Hey, dude's a fucking dumbass. His fucking legs are going to stop working. He's probably got a massive bulge in his back. No, I'm guilty because I traffic in those stories, and when I hear those stories, I'm like, right on, bro.

What? Well, you know how hard it is. That's why. When you've done a packout, a real packout, you know how hard it is. I remember when we shot that mule deer right there in Montana, and we only walked, what was it, two miles, maybe? Yeah. And we had the meat split up between, like, three of us.

So it was probably only, like, 50 pounds on everybody's back. And I was like, holy shit. Once we finally got to camp, two miles, pretty flat. It wasn't that hilly. Yeah, if you're not accustomed to it, it's a lot. It's fucking exhausting. Yeah, so if you're not accustomed to getting bit by bees six times a day, it's overwhelming. So I should tell people that the Outdoorsmans, I know a company that you like their products as well,

they make an Atlas trainer now. It's a packed frame. I saw you were messing with that. It's fucking great. And you got a weight you put on it. Yeah, it's like an Olympic weight. It slides in like an Olympic post and it clamps down. I thought maybe you rigged that up yourself.

No, no, they're selling it now. It's their thing. I saw that. Yeah. I thought you had that. I thought you had gone down to the hardware store. I knew the frame, but I just didn't recognize the... I know guys do it, but usually they use sandbags.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They put sandbags in their backpack and get used to it. It makes a big difference. And it's an incredible workout. And it doesn't shift. It doesn't shift at all. And you can really lock it down in place. So you you know at the risk of like tweaking right like it's strength but it's not because when your shit's wiggling around then it like i don't know it

doesn't like make you stronger just makes you more inclined to like fuck something up yeah to twist funny yeah no i agree you know but i just implore people just please just just exercise your back treat it like it's like brushing your teeth. Just take yoga. You don't have to take it, Ethan. Just get some YouTube videos. They're free. They're available everywhere.

Just do something to strengthen your back. You will prevent. Most people don't want to listen to this, and they're not going to do it because people are lazy as fuck. But you will prevent a host of issues that people have just by exercising your back. Simple stuff. There's the atlas trainer right there yeah you could do chin-ups on if you're a fucking savage look at this guy it's an animal but um yeah you could carry up to 90 pounds that thing so it'll take two uh i bet

it'll take 100 pound plates too i just don't know if the plate's designed for it if the pack rather is designed for it that's a good idea do you pullups that son of a bitch on. Yeah. I use a weight belt. I put like a belt and I hang a kettlebell in between my legs. I put a 50 pound kettlebell on a chain and I do chin-ups like that. Really? Yeah. It's hanging where? It's right between my legs. Like it's a big leather strap. But where do the straps

fall across your legs? Right in between. The straps are on my back or on my hip like this and then there's like a chain in between my legs and the kettlebell hangs in between my legs. But it's not getting your scroll at all. No, no, no, no. It's swinging low. You got to make sure your legs are separated so it's not cracking against your knees.

But when you're doing chin-ups, it's just hanging there. No shit. Yeah. They say that that's the best way to get more reps in with your chin-ups is not to try like 19, 20. The actual best way is do less but with heavy weights. Do like put a weight vest on or hang a 70-pound kettlebell in between your legs. Yeah, I've never done that.

Just grind out three or four. But again, you run the risk of injury. Maybe that's why I've never done it. Yeah, you've got to build yourself up to it.'s what also one of the big things that happens to people when they start exercising they just try to go too hard to go to full balls it's a yes i remember uh at various times not running for a long time then be like yeah i'm gonna start running and going to five mile run i've been running now for just a little over a month i got a friend who's a runner and um like he he's wrecked you know a hobbyist but runs marathons and he never did before but he was saying uh

he was he wrote he's a writer so he's been writing about that a little bit and he was saying he just wrote a piece about um you don't run to get in shape you got to get in shape then start running yeah it's a good idea. It's a smart way to do it. He's like, there's some steps. If you're just like a slob, right, there's some things you need to get taken care of before you embark on that. Smart. Because you can do some serious damage.

There's groundwork that needs to be done to get ready for the run. I don't like to ever discourage people from doing jiu-jitsu, but I talked to a buddy of mine who just did jiu-jitsu. He's 43 years of slovenly behavior, no exercise whatsoever, other than the occasional pickup basketball game for like seven years. And then he started doing jiu-jitsu, and immediately his body's falling apart. I'm like, okay, I know this is going to be hard for you to do, but if you really want to do it, you got to get in shape first.

Yeah. Just push-ups and sit-ups. You should have started out with thumb wrestling and gone into arm wrestling. Steve Rinella, you got to get out of here. I do. It's 315. Listen, man, you got one of the best podcasts in the world. It's fucking awesome.

I love listening to it. I'm so happy you do it. And I think you got the best hunting show ever. So you got that too. I owe the podcast all to you, Joe Rogan. Well, listen, man, hanging out with you. Look, it's so easy for you. You have so many great stories and you're such a good talker.

I was like, how the fuck does this guy not have a podcast? I'm glad you steered me in that direction. Thanks for the plug. I'm glad you're still doing it. It's called the Meat Eater Podcast. It's available everywhere. And Meat Eater is available on Netflix. And right now it's only, how many seasons do you guys have five and six seasons five and six yeah five six we'll have

more we got more we got uh you know a dozen episodes that are new that we're going to be releasing so just stay tuned and then i you know months ago back in uh a couple months ago if you go to my instagram steven ranella you'll scroll back and find a bunch of pictures from you'll find a bunch of Guyana photos. Yeah, amazing stuff from Guyana. Yeah, like, we never even talked about, oh, we did talk about that. Yeah. You'll find some pictures.

Good times. Thanks for doing this, man.