The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 008

Episode Date: May 1, 2015

Prince of Wales Island, Alaska: Weathering a rainstorm during a Sitka Blacktail Hunt, Steven Rinella talks with guests Joe Rogan, Bryan Callen, Janis Putelis, and Dan Doty. Subjects discussed: the highly flammable nature of Frito Lay corn chips; staying warm with fleece sleeping bag liners; getting stranded by bad weather when doing fly-in hunts; why suffering is fun; how everything in life is a reaction to whatever happened last; overlooked DIY big game hunts; how bald eagles salute Bryan Callen when he takes his shirt off; infanticide among bear populations; evolution and coincidence; Steve's animal scat collection; Hunter S. Thompson; Mormon apostate James Jesse Strang; moose droppings as incense; the anxiety of influence; and why it's bad if women think you're "nice" but it's good if women think you're "funny."  Notes and misc links: Steven Rinella's coffee table scat collection: http://themeateater.com/2012/scat-collection/ Matt Rinella on the joys of moose scat incense: http://themeateater.com/2012/scat-and-sniff/ Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meat. This is the Meat Eater podcast recording in hell.

If they had decided to go and they should have, if you really wanted to scare sinners, you would have had it be cold and wet rather than hot and fiery yeah i think hell should have been cold and wet there'd be less people in it uh the hell we're in right now is southern prince of wales island it's a very big island it's like the by some definitions the third largest island in the U.S. It's about half the size of Hawaii Island. Has about four times the coastline.

160 inches of rain, a significant proportion which we're logging right now. We're on a black-tailed deer hunt. We've had one chunk of about five or six hours, which I would call productive hunting out of three days uh we're stuck right now in a seek outside teepee tent we call it personally like the teehee teepee for reasons i'm not gonna get into but you know we're just waiting for the wind and rain to clear up and it's just awful we're here with uh brian the kid callen yeah joe rogan hi yeah i'm thinking actually the only thing i'm thinking about is um when they're going to be able to get

the seaplane in here to get me the hell out of here you know what i was thinking that until i got that fleece liner from my sleeping bag i'm a new man i'm good to go dude we started a fire last night the fire was a huge morale boost i steve and i dried out my sleeping bag my sleeping bag was wet from that and the fleece liner and the fact that for about two seconds i had a scope on a buck yesterday yeah for two seconds i saw that sucker in the scope it's amazing how rejuvenative that is, actually. That means that if anything had gone differently, if he had stayed there, if the cameras were on him, if he didn't get spooked, he got spooked and he took off. We don't even know what spooked him,

but we could have shot a deer last night. Yeah. And then we could have cooked him over that fire. You know, I later realized it would have been very difficult to get down and get that deer. But possible. Oh, no, listen, I would have, if I had just made a flight suit out of my rainwear, I would have gone down there and got that deer. possible no listen i would have if i had just made a flight suit out

of my rainwear i would have gone down there and got that we would have figured it out but we were on a cliff too that was one thing that was kind of scary you know it was reminiscent of your it was reminiscent of your first deer yeah kind of we shot off a canyon rim yeah yeah so we're at we're at we landed on a lake here at 1300 feet above sea level and this this area we're gonna get a tremendous amount of snow and uh in may still it's these mountains are snow capped they start to melt off in june and july and when that happens there's a lot of new growth new plant growth and black-tailed deer will migrate up into the high stuff and they'll come up 2,000 feet, 3,000 feet where they can get at it and live up there until things start to turn and the weather

starts to turn at which point they'll migrate back down and they rut down more a little closer to the water. We're later, we came up here later than than we should have ideally we would have come up here you know around august 15th um you still got good weather the deer are still very high up probably been good i've come up here as late as september 20 and had pretty good hunting we're into early october and it's it seems like there's a ton of sign where deer have been in here but I just get the feeling like some of the animals you know significant portion animals have moved out but yesterday we had like great weather we like up from here maybe 500 feet we wound up seeing uh six deer saw one buck i was super optimistic

and then it just the weather just collapsed on us again it's just been it's just uh it's kind of tough and a little bit miserable but i'm like fleece liners are nice because they don't when your bag gets wet the fleece liner still feels fresh and nice. Yeah. Fleece liner's huge. Changes the game. Fires change the game, too.

Yeah, fires are a morale booster. Yeah. Yeah, that had a huge impact. You know, I was determined yesterday to get a fire going. So I started gathering up little tiny twigs. And then Mike and I started sawing Little pieces that looked like they might be able to be cooking and then Dodie figured out that you could light Fritos on fire and they light on fire really good. And so Dodie really actually started the fire off

He got a little we found a piece of cardboard box and he put the Fritos in the box Is that right? Yeah And then we lit that on fire and then we stacked some little twigs on fire before you know a piece of cardboard box, and he put the Fritos in the box. Is that right? Yeah. And then we lit that on fire, and then we stacked some little twigs on fire. Before you know it, we had an actual fire. You should sell fire kits, Doty, where it's just like a box full of Fritos. Well, they hold their flame.

They hold their flame. It was fun, man. Last night was great. Just having that was gigantic. So we got, it's Sunday? We're supposed to fly out of here on Tuesday? Honestly, we wouldn't have a chance to really get out of here until tuesday because the weather there's no way you get a plane in here right now we got gale force winds monday is supposed to be frequent showers but sounds like it'll be huntable tomorrow could be huntable tonight um tuesday we'll see we might have a lot more hunting days in store if the

plane can't get in here i will never ever uh ever come back here i don't think i don't think what i don't think i'll ever come back to this spot nah Nah, this place sucks. I definitely won't come back. 100% I won't. I'd come back in August. Yeah, I'd come back in August. But I won't come back in early October. And the problem is, so we're doing obviously a film hunt

for Meteor, the TV show. And this is the third time we've been graced with the presence of brian the kid callen and joe rogan and uh the first time we hunted together we went and hunted mule during the missouri breaks and that was cold but we were seeing deer you know we knew we were gonna get a deer then we were going to get a deer. Then we went whitetail deer hunting. And that was ridiculously cold. But we were seeing deer.

Lots of them. And this isn't nearly as cold. But it's just wet. But it's just like. Sick of blacktail deer hunting. Is this. It's just a wet game. I don't know if people aren't into it where they're not into it because of the the conditions or because they don't have giant big sexy rats

you know well sick of black tail aren't really into it either because we haven't seen it so when it rains they're like i'm gonna hang out woods. Yeah, even the deer aren't into it. Yeah, even the deer are like, oh, this place sucks. Let's go lower. Dan Doherty knew. Dan, tell us a little bit about what you knew. We should explain why we're in this teepee. Did you explain exactly what's going on outside and why we're not out hunting? Yeah, right now we have gale.

Well, there's three problems right now. Problem one is we have gale. Well, there's three problems right now. Problem one is we have gale force winds. Everything's moving and shaking, and the rain is moving horizontal. Problem two is the rain. It's very wet out. Problem three is we're in a cloud. We're actually in a cloud, so you can't see anything anyways. Any appreciable distance.

To go out and hunt right now, if you could remove either the wind or remove, yeah, either the wind or the clouds, I think you could probably go out and hunt. But right now, I think you're not thing. Right now, you're wasting your time and you're just burning up dry clothes. What do you say?

How many day supplies until we have to start eating each other if we do get stranded out here? If things get that bad, we would walk out to my cabin. How long would that take? With you guys? Yeah. I have what's called... Hold on, I have a tireless swagger. Because you remember your friend Joel was explaining how you have a hard time moving from point A to point B.

Because he's a liar. Listen to me. I move with the woods. I move with the land. You just don't move good. No, no, no. That's a mistake what you're seeing is you're seeing i move through space with minimum waste if i didn't know better i would say

you have a neurological issue no no no no see this is this is where you're wrong what i'm doing is i'm i'm i'm shucking and driving and you have to do that to get through the vegetation it looks like there's a hitch in your step that's what it looks like like, but I'm ducking, I'm up, I'm down, I'm moving around. I practice my boxing. But your legs, they don't make, like, you don't have, like, a long stride. No, no, no. That's weird. That's true.

I have a long torso, and I have short Italian peasant legs. They're built to squat and dig, and I'm built. They're built for poverty. Yes, yeah, I'm built for poverty and to carry sticks on my back and to be oppressed. But I get there. I, yeah, I'm built for poverty and to carry sticks on my back and to be oppressed. But I get there. I get there. I get there. So, yeah, with you guys, with you stepping and jiving, whatever you're doing.

Chucking and jiving. Chucking and jiving your way through the woods. Not stepping and jiving. It would probably turn into an overnighter. I feel like I could probably leave at daybreak and get there by dark. Jeez. It's six miles. Six miles is a bitch.

I ran, I walked four. I don't know how long it would take me to get there. Six miles seems like nothing. We'd do it. Like six miles seems like. It's a matter of cliffs. Yeah. It's a matter of cliffs. Maybe we'd get to the water and have Ron come pick us up and go. Oh, I forgot we got a satellite phone. Yeah, we'd be all right. We'd walk down and have Ron come get us. Yeah? Yeah. How far is that?

Anyways, what's that? How far would that be? For him to make a run? Walk to where Ron would come get us. Oh, it would be a couple miles, a few miles. Oh, so easy. Maybe. Maybe.

It'd be a bad few miles. It'd be like the worst few miles you've ever walked, but it's doable. Cutting's doable cutting through huh so this might be a real issue like we might really get stuck here because this wasn't supposed to be today was not supposed to be like this tuesday tuesday is going to clear up though and you know how you know how predictable the alaska forecast is tuesday is supposed to be some rain light light wind. My suggestion is that the next break we get, we get a plane in here. Yeah. Yeah. You smart. Oh, without a doubt. Yeah. I got the phone in my pocket. We can make

a phone call right now to Chromeback and see what their availability is. As long as we're doing this, I want to touch on real quick. I don't know. I was going to say some stuff about flying and hunting in Alaska, how tenuous it is. Because you can get stuck places for days.

A friend of mine just went, you know, Brant was on a caribou hunt. They were supposed to just go in for a couple days. They went in a couple days, shot five caribou, and then sat there for five days, waiting for a plane to be able to come get them. Wow. What's interesting is after, you know, the 9-11 terrorist attacks, there was a lot of guys. They grounded all the flights.

There was a lot of people. That was like prime hunting season, you know. There was a lot of people sitting out in the flights there's a lot of people that was like prime hunting season you know there's a lot of people sitting out in the woods who had flights scheduled to come get them and then one day there's like no sound of aircraft they have no idea what happened there's no aircraft in the air no one comes and gets them kind of weird few days in the bush man how many days was it before they get two wow yeah i was reading about a guy who shot a buffalo on the 10th supposed to get picked up on the 11th and he said it was like not only did his plane not come he said just dead quiet you know there's always

aircraft noise in alaska you know in places there's always aircraft noise so that's the problem the other problem is this is like a you you know, a constant debate we always have because Joe Roden really wants to go on an elk hunt real bad. And the constant debate we always have or discussion we have is like, what type of hunt do you want? And Joe, on an elk hunt, it sounds like you just want to get elk. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to get an elk. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't want to suffer. So there's like... Steve, like, he throws this weird element into the equation. No, a do-it-yourself hunt, you're really open to having

like, bad stuff like this happen. Like this? Yeah, I would say. This could happen on a guided hunt perfectly well too but it just seems to me like a do it yourself classic do it yourself

public land hunt conundrum yeah if you don't listen to Dan Doty you're definitely going to get yourself in trouble Dan Doty is the voice of caution what do you do about this episode now? this episode is largely unsuccessful. Yeah, we've been through it before. We'll make something out of it. This happens to us all the time.

But listen, the last two hunts we were on, we were out hunting black bears, and it was just like a done deal. It was a skunkery. And then, bam, got something. We just spent eight days looking for a done deal. It was a skunkery. And then, bam, got something. We just spent eight days looking for a moose. Killed one on day nine. It's just a thing.

I'm not saying that's going to happen this time, but it's just a thing that happens all the time. You have to wait it out and bear it out. Someone in the tent right now is messing with a jet boil and he's getting a lot of strange looks. You guys are so distracted. He couldn't figure out how to shut it off. Oh. He's dead behind the plastic. Anyway. I'm glad to hear you say that you'll never come here again because I actually won't ever come back here again. Really? I promise you that. Like to what degree won't ever come back here again really i promise you that like to what degree won't you come back here to this island probably the whole island yeah

probably unless it's july yeah never well so what happened to our what about this spring when we go up with barb up by juno that's not. Oh, sorry. I probably won't go anyway. Really? All right, so we just lost. Not only did we have a bad hunt, we just lost a producer. I do think there's something immensely satisfying about suffering in comparison to an easy hunt where, you know, you're in a cabin and you go out and you wait and you shoot a deer I actually what are you doing with that oatmeal I'm keeping the sugar out I don't need sugar that's why they call me

the kid let me seeen just so you know brian callen is has a sorry jill just sorry you know the little oatmeal packets first i want to give you a hunting trick when you're hunting you can just eat your oatmeal out of your oatmeal packet by just pouring water into the envelope and eating it out of there you don't need a bowl we learned that from one of the greatest men I've ever met Marty Scheidemann wherever he is today and Brian is digging around through one of these packets right now individually selecting out the oats and the belief that he is leaving the sugar

behind and just getting the oats. Yeah I think I did it. No. No? No, you left a bunch of oats in the bag. No. Sorry Joe, go ahead. Anyway, it's all fun to suffer and everything like that, but it is 2014, and we do know a lot about where it sucks and where it doesn't suck. In the future, we would love to go hunting with you again. Let's go somewhere that doesn't suck. Let's go somewhere that has a lot of animals and doesn't suck. Everything I've done, and a lot of things I do in my life,

is a reaction to whatever happened last to me okay so you learned from this mistake so we went here as a reaction like reacting against what happened last time we went hunting which is like we were stand hunting for whitetails okay so i'm like okay considering that i wanted to go we didn't go on another stand whitetail hunt I wanted to go do something totally different So now there's no way I would leave here and do something like this again The next thing would be that we'd go to the desert Desert what can you shoot in the desert? Lots of you hunt elk, coos deer, halibut. Elk are in the desert? Yeah there's a lot of desert hunts for elk. Really?

I mean depends on how you define desert it might not be like the mojave but i'm saying like an area that has less than 13 inches of precipitation a year wow so yeah it would be we would do something totally different next time and uh and the reason i came back here is because it was it ended up the last time i was here it was so beautiful on the last day that I just wanted to come back and experience more of that. But I screwed up. It is really beautiful when the weather breaks. I just hope you guys will give me another chance. Do the planes fly at night?

No. Of course we'll give you another chance. I'm worried I'm not going to be able to get back in time this weekend. I have a lot of stuff I have to do next weekend. It would be a huge issue if I can't get back. We'll get back. I'll get my map out, and I'll see what it would involve to what kind of hell we're looking at to get down to the water. And then Ron Laytonton come around and get us

you still got to get across the thing but we can figure that out too yeah across clarence straight which is tough to get across well we got to call and get a a for like we've been running off with something called a marine forecast and the marine forecast is a little bit hard to translate into what it means for you up in the where we're at what's the latest forecast for today wind diminishing rain turning to showers it's 10 20 can they fly when there's showers yes okay no the showers don't matter just the the ceiling matters right there's a wind and ceiling so is it possible that we can get out of here today? Mm-mm.

No. No way. Come on. Maybe. Usually they're not going to cross. I'm sure if you call them, they'll know. They're not going to cross Clarence. They're not going to cross Clarence straight with much more than 25 mile an hour winds.

All right, you cheapskates. I know you cannot afford to listen to the Meat Eater podcast if it wasn't free, so you got to pay your dues and listen to the following word from our sponsors. Please listen. If you want to go on an elk hunt where there's like guaranteed success um that can be done but i don't know what i would do next i would probably want to take you either to hunt in the desert or i'd want to go up and hunt caribou on the north slope caribou in the north slope sounds like a great time that sounds like a lot of fun i watched that episode you get stuck but also you can get where you're probably gonna have hundreds of animals walk by every day because that would be my reaction you know i said like i'm always reacting i'd be like hey not many animals

now we're gonna go see some animals right hundreds right walking by well that sounds like a lot of fun so that's what we'll go do next that's a future hunt but i would say i do want to return to one thing uh about blacktail deer hunt just in general on the subject of hunting there are a couple under underutilized hunts in this country and i'll say a lot of times people contact me like i really want to go do a do-it-yourself hunt you know i don't have a ton of money to spend like what should i do as much as this sucks i think that on these like in blacktail sick of blacktail deer areas there are many areas that just simply that go years and years and years that never get hunted you know like if a guy is looking to go on a on a hunt and they want to do like a do-it-yourself

public land hunt i think that this is something that just doesn't get a lot of attention a lot of guys when they go on they want to go on a hunt out west they're focused on a handful of things like a handful of glamorous things but i feel like people should pay more attention to doing this i feel feel like mule deer hunting is a big thing that a fella can just go and do. But there's areas out here that will never, not in our lifetimes, there's areas out here that will go years and years and years

and no one's ever going to walk in them to hunt. But you've got to be just a little hardier than the average do-it-yourselfer that's looking at that mule deer or elk hunt out west versus coming up and hunting sickleback to a deer island on some rainy island. You've got to want that next level adventure, next level of experience. You've got to really want that. Yeah.

Because it is the next level. You can't drive here in your pickup truck towing a trailer with, you know, basically the kitchen sink behind you. No, but you would take a ferry up. You could take a ferry up to Prince of Wales Island. Take a car ferry up to Prince of Wales Island. Have your truck on the road system. Same way guys do.

Tons of guys do for Black Bear in the Spring. Get your truck on the road system. Drive in and hike up into the Alpine Zone. Yeah, it's's miserable but it's like if you want to do let me put it this way if you want to do a hunt where you won't see any other people which is my favorite kind of hunt i like to be that i'm the only guy in the area and i'm hunting deer that are doing or hunting game that's acting like game and not that's acting like in response to people. It's a real sport. It's just a different experience. You can do that all day long here, all year long.

Yeah. In the long season, August 15th to January 1, four bucks per year. It's a good deal. I mean, we're not experiencing it right now, but this is the only real bad sick of blacktail hunt i've ever had you can see that if the weather broke this would be a paradise because some of those places yesterday when we come across like some lake like little pond it's like shangri-la it really is it really is like a paradise like you can't believe something this

beautiful exists you, we filled our canteens up this waterfall and it was just, I don't know, it was incredible. And it was warm. And you came back and had a nude bath. I had a nude bath. And when I was on the mountain, I had my shirt off. And I wish you'd seen that because a bald eagle circled me, I think in reverence. I'm not trying to... But it did go, Go! Go! And I was like, What?

Which is Native American for, Go with God! But it saluted me. I swear to God, it saluted me. I think. I don't have proof, but... He tipped his wing up. Well, my wing...

I'll vouch. I'll vouch. He's not making this up. He was standing there, half buff, and a bald eagle soared by him. You sure it wasn't a raven? No, it was a bald eagle. It was a beautiful sight.

The bald eagle was a beautiful sight. Part of that's because I'm so authentically American, but also because my back, my back is so V'd out that they look like wings. They call me the eagle. When you see me from behind. What? Why'd you make that noise?

Oh, and you guys You guys saw a blackberry yesterday A sow with a cub I wonder if she's not up here Trying to not get her cub killed neat And she just kind of Steers clear of other bears maybe Damn Because male bears will kill a cub

Wow Yeah yeah they do and they like do a lot of infanticide man they say that um on kodiak when the boars come out one of the primary things they eat is cubs brown bear cubs that's like a that's like they come out and that's what they're doing is they're eating brown bear cubs before they start eating sandwich isn't a big reason they do that is to actually make the female come back into estrus or is that a myth i think a like a a person who's i think a scientist will tell you you don't really know why they do that i mean they probably do that for food but a result of doing that is that the female will then come into estrus more quickly so you run the risk of killing your own offspring but the result is you have a if you're around and

it's in and she's in your area she's going to come back into estrus you have a chance to breed her but i don't know if the bear i doubt the bear is making these calculations so the brown bear will actually eat its own uh offspring i think they run the risk of that they don't know okay because i mean lions lead you'll kill the you know but but they don't kill their own offspring you don't like what like you guys ever hear the the geneticist uh stephen gould he had this thing where he wrote about where when we look at like we look at the natural world and everything we see we go like oh it does that for this reason right it does that for this reason so you might say like what's the selective or what's the adaptive advantage of having brown bark like oh the brown the bark's brown because whatever he's

like maybe there is no advantage at all to having brown bark there's the brown the bark's brown because whatever he's like maybe there is no advantage at all to having brown bark there's an advantage to having really thick bark because it can withstand forest fires let's say and as a result of becoming thick it takes on a color that isn't a detriment but it's not an asset either it just happens to be brown you know and you look at and you go like oh i want to be it to be that way for that reason but yeah a bear i bet he's probably just eating it because he wants to eat it he wants to get food and an advantage like a hidden advantage of that is that she comes into asterisk he breeds so maybe a boar that's more likely to to devour a lot of cubs gets a lot more chances in his area to breed a lot more females.

So I don't know how it rules out that he's not just killing his own offspring. Maybe he don't care. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated.

Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement.

You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing

on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer,

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I one time found a black bear that had shit out. It was a black bear shit. It had shit out a black bear cub's claw. No way. Yeah. I have a coyote shit that shit out a deer's hoof.

Wow. A fawn hoof. They have a coyote ship that shit out a deer's hoof. Wow. A fawn hoof. They found bear DNA in those wolves in Siberia, right? They were eating bear? What do you mean? Do you know what I mean about that? There was a special on wolves in Siberia, these giant wolves, and they... Yeah, they'll eat bear cubs.

Yeah. Oh, they must have been eating cubs, not full grown. The whole story was that they were taking down grizzlies, but... That doesn't make sense. I'm sure they kill the cubs all the time cubs maybe yeah i doubt a bear a pack maybe but i don't know nonsense yeah that when i found when i found that coyote the coyote that shit out the hook i started a whole animal shit collection the guy why do you keep this in your house i would dry it on screens i had a big coffee table made up of a glass top. I took a big, giant coffee table and painted it yellow like a National Geographic magazine binder.

And I built a three-inch high lip around it. And then bought a big, heavy chunk of glass and laid it on. So you'd be like drinking or whatever. Looking down at Al's shit. On a glass top table. And it was recessed where I had many. big heavy chunk of glass and laid it on so you'd be like drinking or whatever looking down on the glass top table and it was recessed where i had many and so we wound up having we had the me and my brother i mean we both collected so we had like grizzly bear that had been eating grass we had grizzly bear that had been eating white bark pine nuts we had grizzly bear that had been out. I had like cottontail rabbit, snowshoe hare, jackrabbit. I had like summertime deer, winter deer.

I mean, I had mink, muskrat. I had dozens and dozens of specimens. We'd rotate in and out, but I would dry it on screens. Then I would lacquer it. And absolutely odorless and just and when laid out i'm telling you i'm not i'm not telling you just to sound like uh like it wasn't like a thing like you're just doing it for the sake of being weird it was a beautiful display of animal scat but it's hard to maintain like the stuff just

you know it still kind of falls it gets too dry and falls apart. I eventually just got sick of it. But I had an amazing collection of animal scat. You got too much free time, son. No. How many piles of animal scat have we seen walking around? A lot. I left them all. Didn't have desire to even touch them. Never thought once about picking them up. Definitely wouldn't take them

home. Without a doubt, wouldn't lacquer them and have fucking breakfast looking down at animal shit it wasn't on the glass there's certain things in life the scat collection being one there's certain things life for everyone like if you tell someone about the scat collection they'd be like ew but everyone who ever laid eyes on it would always say i get it that's an amazing collection everyone who ever never had someone was being nice to you no no they're all crazy fuckers who are over your house going look at this dude collecting animal shit from all over the world let's just be nice to him

and get the fuck out of here and talk mad shit about his shit collection as soon as we get out i guarantee your friends are driving home this motherfucker's got three different kinds of rabbit shit in his kitchen and they're just driving home laughing their dicks off going fucking reno this here's grizzly bear that's got grass in it like this fucking guy's collecting it packing it in his luggage carefully he's got like bubble wrap around some shit and puts it in a box. What the fuck is wrong with him? The one joke that everyone made, and I can tell you're a professional comedian because you skipped it, was everyone would come look and they'd always have to say, like, oh, I'll take a shit in there.

Everyone would make that joke. Yeah. The joke is something like a... But if you did have human shit in there, that would completely... The human shit mounted on a special, like, a crystal orb. So, and an extra layer of shellac with nuts in it. Nuts! With nuts!

And then I would have a sign underneath it that said, Snickers, to be funny. Snickers! This funny. Snickers. This is a human that was eating McDonald's. That's right. That's human shit is what it is. That's American human shit. Yeah, what?

You only collect wild animal shit? Why don't you pick up some dog shit from your fucking neighbor's yard while you're at it? Look, this is cat shit. I got it out of the litter box. You can see the litter crumb stuck to it. It's authentic. I'll tell you why I did it,

because I wasn't interested in that stuff. This is from a parakeet. This pigeon shit on my car. Now I'm eating my breakfast over it. What the fuck is wrong with you? Collecting shit. It's the most beautiful. I can understand collecting bones.

I can understand a lot of things. I do not understand collecting shit. It's the most beautiful collection of scat. I can understand a lot of things. I do not understand collecting shit. Well, you don't belong to my club. We're having our first meeting. Yeah,

you're a little too deep in the animal world, my friend. Well, here's the thing too, though. It really, if one wants to learn

how to read sign, it was a great way to study sign reading while you enjoy your coffee in the morning. Okay. Or during commercial breaks, if you're watching Tube, you could be like, oh, this guy talked about detergent, and I'm going to brush up on my mousquet. It's like that you call it Tube. You don't say it when you're watching the TV. You go, in commercial's like that you call it tube. You don't say when you're watching the TV you go in commercial break when you're watching tube. They don't have tubes anymore. They haven't had tubes since the fucking 70s. I have a flat screen.

People still call it tube don't they? Not in America. In Russia. 1930s technology. Yeah they call it the tube. They still have cabinets that they watch their TV in. Do you have turntables too?

Are you shopping for a needle? What's your fucking... What's your Super 8 collection look like? Yeah. You hear about this new thing? You got some reel-to-reels? You hear about this new thing called antibiotics? All this crazy stuff.

They even have internal combustion engines get with the times get with the fucking times tube when you're watching tube and I'm drinking pop tube when I'm drinking pop

and watching tube staring at my shit collection there it is and I'm smoking my jerky for the winter and then I'm churning butter well my girl's churning butter and it looks like we're gonna make

it through the winter this time look some crow shit yep i'm going without getting sick had to fight off jardia for the 10th time i think my trichinosis killed the jardia you hear about this new thing called toilets no more shitting in a pot for me me. We're saving up for a toilet. Apparently it's got water in it. Wait a minute. Y'all don't light your toilet paper on fire? Uh-huh. Anyway, thank you for signing in.

What was I talking about? Shit. Oh, man. I was thinking about talking about something different. That's so funny By the way That is a ridiculous Thing

The same vanilla Is an original On the shit note We often had More than once Had clients Who came from the east Whitetail deer hunters

Came out to do an elk hunt And they would Bust out a Ziploc bag On you And you'd see them Collecting elk shit Not because they were Going to place it

Inside their coffee tables But because Incense. Not incense either. I think, Dandy, you tried elk and it wasn't good, right? Your brother lights it on fire? My brother uses incense, moose shit for incense. Willow. What?

Smells amazing, man. What? Because think of all they eat is willows, mostly. It's like a dense packed willow thing that just smolders wow but dan tried it and it wasn't good elk made me sick it smells like sweet gray you ever had someone burn a sweet grass smudge no moosh it's good anyways you're saying these guys bring home they want to eat it what do they want to do with it no what they would do it was for a practical joke on their buddies so they would collect elk droppings or, what, four or five times the size of an average white-toed droppings.

So they would sneak into their buddy's deer stand and then drop this, you know, Ziploc bag full of elk shit, you know, and then wait for the phone call from his buddy going, dude, you won't believe it. There is a monster buck, man. A monster sphincter. Roll him to my area. That's hilarious. A monster sphincter buck. Rolling through my area. That's hilarious. A giant sphincter buck. This is a common sight.

I wouldn't say it wasn't common, but in 10 years of guiding, I probably saw it a half a dozen times. You know, I wasn't telling them to do it. They would just all of a sudden finish their Gatorade and start packing their Gatorade bottle full of elk turds. Just to play pay practical joke. That's hilarious. Maybe.

Maybe. My friend one time was on a bunk bed. They were touring. He was in a group. And his buddy was hungry. And my friend took a shit on top of the bunk bed in a plate and then put a plastic fork and knife in it

and then handed it down to his buddy and said are you hungry now? and I think that at 47 the fact that I still think that's hilarious is you know, proof positive that I really haven't evolved just so I'm clear on this he like did it just to be like

silly to dissuade his hunger yeah he just took a he was like oh there's a paper plate and a fork who hasn't done that I'm gonna shit in that paper plate

and I'm gonna I haven't done that but you know I'll say this man as much as I like animal I would say that as much as I like animal scat I hate human excrement

more than the average person well now you're talking crazy this is not like an excat, I hate human excrement more than the average person. Well, now you're talking crazy. This is not like an excrement thing. I've never heard that before. I don't do, I never played, like, I don't like, like. You're not into shit, in other words. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't like it. You're not into German shit videos, et cetera. No. I just, I don't want, I want to clear that up. I'm just interested in Animal scat just as trade crap. As trade crap. One thing I want to say about Steve Rinella, Steve Rinella has never said anything probably,

I haven't spent that much time, but he's never said anything, I don't think he's ever said anything really that I didn't find somewhat interesting in one way or another. You have a lot of interesting things to say. Oh, thanks, Brian. That's real sweet of you. You do.

Smart guy. All right, everyone. I know you're enjoying the meat eater podcast and you're especially enjoying it because it's free and to keep it that way we got to take a quick break to thank our sponsors steve do you feel sometimes like a little alienated in the world of hunting you're a very well-read guy you're very articulate and the show that you have is very different than a lot of the other hunting shows, you know, not to put anybody down specifically or in particular, but a lot of what hunting television is, is very low, low vibration, it's very dull, it's very obvious, it's like there's a lot of dim-witted people out there making hunting shows,

and, you know, I can, I've watched them, just because I enjoy watching hunting, for whatever reason, but there's not a lot of shows like yours, you know, there's not a lot of shows where you have interesting narration, you're obviously well-read, you're, you know, you're very thoughtful in your approach not just to hunting but in creating a hunting show but that's you know you're like an island in a sea of mediocrity yeah that's a little bit hard to speak to but i don't i haven't watched i honestly haven't watched a lot of hunting shows you know and um so i never like to do a hunting show i wasn't thinking that i was i never thought of it as a reaction

against hunting shows and the other thing is the people that i work with who you know i bring like a small like i have influence on the show there's a handful of people that have a ton of influence on the show and they never watched hunting shows so i think that it's not that it's not that anyone ever said like oh yeah we're gonna do a different type of hunting show i think it just really came from scratch that people just said like what would be a good show what would be entertaining and it happened that way now i'm afraid of watching hunting shows a little bit because i have this thing you hear about you know i think it's the the express the term doesn't make sense to me but anxiety of influence is something people say where i have a hard time reading contemporary writers writing about the subjects that i'm interested in because

i'm so worried about losing track of what was my... I'm worried about losing track of my worldview and having to be overly influenced by other people's worldviews. I do have a stand-up. I'm really careful about listening to a lot of stand-up because stuff can creep in. Yeah, there's a lot of people that do that.

It creeps in a huge way, man. Norton won't watch any stand-up. Yeah, I understand that. I'm the same way. I very rarely watch even Friends. I feel like everybody's influenced. We're all influenced by the people that came before us.

I'm not worried about losing my authenticity. Do you feel like all you did all day was like, let's say, you're very successful. Let's say, all you did all day was like, let's say, okay, you're very successful. Like just the main thing, let's say all you did all day was watch other commentators comment on UFC. Do you feel like comment on fighting, and you're like, I want to learn how to comment on fighting,

so I should study all the fighting commentators? No. Or do you feel like that would open you up to mimicry, which would fail? No. See, it's a different sort of a situation because there wasn't really that many people that did it before me. So my style of commentary is very different than any other sport because I didn't really have it. I mean, there was a couple guys that had done it before me, but not much. And, you know, they didn't have the amount of time in it that i do so i've been

doing it for so long and i've been doing commentary for the ufc since 2002 not to mention stand-up yeah yeah i started that's when i started doing the commentary but i started doing post-fight interviews for the ufc in 97 so the sport was in its infancy and i got you. And I came along when... There's a lot of guys that imitate me, for sure. They sound exactly like me. But I don't mind. I consider it like a form of flattery, I guess. But it's also, you know, I'm doing it the right... I don't know, I guess the right way?

I mean, is there a right way? I don't know if there's a right way. But... Well, you take yourself completely out of it. There's not like a lot of guys doing it. It's not like basketball where there's like 20 guys doing commentary. Like, there's only like... There's a guy named Jimmy Smith who does Bellator.

There's a couple other guys out there that do commentary. There's very few. Boss Rootin'. Very few guys are doing it. So I don't have to worry about that. You know, I had a thing happen to me, like, when... As a writer. When I when as a writer when i was studying writing when i was in graduate school i read what i consider to be the greats you know

the great non-fiction writers the great narrative non-fiction writers and then i got where i understood how that kind of how those stories worked and how you put a book together and then i just really turned my attention to my own projects that I wanted to write about and just read source material, primary source material. So reading scientific journals, academic stuff, historical accounts, historical journals, and just pulling from that things that hadn't been interpreted by anybody yet or they've been interpreted by many people but i wasn't reading it through the lens of another person like me and i and the first book i wanted to write i wanted to write a book about the great lakes okay where i grew up so i spent about a year i moved from montana back to the great lakes my

dad had just died i took his truck rigged it up for camping and just drove around camping all around the great lakes and reading source material and i wasn't going to read anything that any contemporary person wrote about the great lakes and i built up a bunch of things that i that i found out about the great lakes that i had never heard anybody say i'd never read it and i was like this will be this could be a great book one of the things i found out was that this guy one time bought a bunch of animals from a zoo that was closing down loaded them on a barge and charged hundreds of people a dollar a piece to watch him send the barge of animals over niagara falls whoa yeah to their death okay whoa

so i was like that's interesting another interesting thing i found out about that i read about the great lakes is that when after joseph smith was killed in illinois the great you know the mormon founder he was killed in illinois and there was a power struggle between brigham young who wanted to go out to Salt Lake City, took his followers out to Salt Lake City, and a guy named James Strange, who had just a handful of followers and took his followers up to an island in Lake Michigan called Beaver Island, declared it an independent state, and started to resort to piracy which he felt was him collecting taxation owed to his sovereign nation for people transporting goods around lake michigan and then he was later

shot to death by his own followers so i'm like i'm gonna write a book that's gonna have all this stuff that no one knows about and then one day this book comes out called under the banner of heaven no this book comes out called uh the great Banner of Heaven? No, this book comes out called The Great Lakes. And the author's first name was a guy named Jerry. And I read the book, and it had in there the handful of things that I thought I held on to. Okay? With all due respect to this guy, i don't think it was a great book i called a friend of mine and was complaining about it and he said you know i can't think of

one good book ever written by a guy named jerry but which is a little bit funny so anyways the book i i quit my project i i i stopped doing it i didn't write the book i moved back to montana completely depressed as a writer, completely defeated, because I allowed myself to go like, oh, someone else found these things out. Even though he didn't handle it the way I would have handled it, it was like I couldn't do it anymore.

Right. And from then on, I've been much more careful about much more careful about what I allow to come into my head you know because it's for me just as a person who likes to create material um i have like uh certain sensitivities man you know and and so that's one thing like i i try not to i watch a lot of tv but I don't watch any TV that would have anything to do with anything I would ever be involved with. Which makes me, in a lot of ways, really behind the times.

But it's just like a defense mechanism. You know, Hunter Thompson, when he was learning how to write, would write The Great Gatsby. He would literally write it word for word to get the rhythm, the music of the language. Like, he would, like, rewrite the entire book. I've read that and thought about doing it many times because there's some passages that you just can't imagine that someone ever wrote. And I can see that it would be almost therapeutic to do it.

But I don't think of that... They're 20th century writers. I don't think of it as a contemporary writer. For me, it'd be... I guess stuff that's been written in the last 10, 20 years is very difficult for me to read unless it's... If it has something to do with what I'm talking about. Unless it's by an anthropologist or something. Someone who's not a professional at translating information. And turning it into entertainment. And turning it into entertainment.

And turning it into... Yeah. People who are skilled at taking technical information and making it entertaining, I'm very afraid of. Hmm. It's probably... People who are... Say that again? People who are what?

People who are... Technical information and turning it into entertainment. Right. Like, I'm afraid of them. It's almost like historical novelists. You're not going to get the real history necessarily, even though they can touch on the history of a subject. Like, if you read Leon Uris or someone like that, great writer.

But if you want to read the history of, like, say, the founding of Israel, which he wrote, which is what Exodus is about, you don't want to draw your historical knowledge from that book. Yeah, but that's not what he's saying. He's worried about his influence. You checked out.

You weren't even paying attention. No, I was. I was listening. I know what he does. He gets ADD on you and he vanishes. No, no, no. I was listening. He comes back in and he wants to tell you about a book that he read

so he can name drop the title and the author. No, no, no. I hear what he's saying. I hear what he's saying. But he said it's based on some ancient knowledge. Naturally. No, but he said technical information into... I just told you and you forgot.

You weren't paying attention, you fuck. I caught you. I know what the fuck happened. I've been following the conversation. No, no, no, no, no. You were not listening to what he was saying. You were totally taking that out of context. You know exactly what you were just doing.

I wasn't, I wasn't. I busted you. I swear I was. What was he saying? What was he talking about just before that? He's very careful about what you were just doing. I wasn't. I busted you. I swear I was. What was he saying? What was he talking about just before that? He's very careful about what gets into his head. Right, right, right, right. In other words, after the experience of the Great Lakes and writing that book.

I never wrote the book. No, I'm saying when you read the book that wasn't that good by the guy and you came back, you were all depressed. He's scrambling right now. Look at him churning water. No, but I actually was following it. I was following it because it's kind of relevant to the struggle you have when you try to be a writer or a stand-up comic or whatever. It's the same issue. Where you have to become very guarded about influence

and also, in a way, what you think about. That's why I thought it was really interesting. That's why I thought what you said was really interesting. Because I think it's very relevant. He pulled through. Sort of. No, relevant He pulled through Sort of You can tell I'm listening when I'm not saying anything He pulled through because I

He pulled through because I said something No no no You're usually right but this time I was actually following Do you feel in stand up Do you watch a lot of stand up I love stand up comedy Do you ever find yourself saying Or not Do you ever catch yourself adopting someone else's methods no no no no because

i've been doing it so long but when i first started out yeah definitely when i was uh when i was young i was an open mic or i would catch myself sounding exactly like certain comedians i remember one time i was on stage and I heard myself sounding exactly like this guy Richard Jenny who was a very funny comic that a lot of people don't know about committed suicide a few years back and uh she just was very depressed for a bunch of different reasons but I think one of his reasons for besides clinical depression was that he just was never recognized for the great comic that he was. Like in the 1980s, he was one of the best comics alive for like a few years. Really funny guy.

And I caught him then when I was first starting out, like 88, like around that. I started out in 88, and he was just a monster back then. And for whatever reason, history didn't recognize him as great as he was. So much of comedy is rhythm, too. I have to be careful if I'm going to perform and somebody has a rhythm I really like. Yeah, there's a few guys that have really... Like, Doug Dabroth has a specific rhythm I really like, so I can't watch him because I'll fall into that rhythm.

I know famous comedians who I won't say who have been directly influenced by you, or really well known comedians do really well, and they do like, they'll do the girl, when you do a girl, like, exactly like you. It's not so much their fault. They obviously were looking up to you when they were younger,

and now they're doing it, and it's just an interesting... You've got to kind of... You've got to be aware of that. What I get paranoid about is being so influenced by a bit that it'll find its way into my stuff, so... I don't think you have to worry about that. You're pretty original. Yeah, but I did a thing about bees in cars.

When a bee gets in your car. Yeah, and Justin Kinney had done something really funny once. And I came and said, hey, dude, just so you know, I'm doing a thing on bees in cars, but it's different. And I went through what I was doing, and I realized I had been way more influenced than I thought. And I said, I've got to stop doing that. It's weird when you take a guy on the road with you

and then they open up for you and then they start doing you. That's strange. I've had to stop taking guys with me. I've had to stop working with guys because they're basically doing me before I do me. That's weird. Because young guys when they're starting out, especially they're super easily influenced,

and they want to be successful, and so they're kind of struggling a little bit, and they see you go on and kill it. And then they're like, fuck, I've got to do what he's doing. And so they start doing what you're doing, and then they start adopting subject matter. And that's when it becomes problematic, because they start stepping on some of your material.

Like if you're doing, even obscure jokes, you know, doing a joke about a jet boil fucking canister they'll start talking about jet boils oh really oh it's a real problem and sometimes they do it on purpose sometimes guys do it especially guys who are like spiteful they do it because they want to sort of mess up your punch line so they take out the surprise element of your subject matter they'll type it's called stepping on your material. That's what everybody calls it. So, like, say if you have a joke about King Kong, they'll talk about King Kong before you do your joke about King Kong purposely to try to tank your material.

Knowing that you're going to know that that's what he's doing. They're doing it on purpose. They're doing it on purpose. That's such a weird thing about comics. But how is that not just like... Sabotage. But how is it not like cutting off your dick

to spite your balls, man? Well, they're just being... They're just sabotaging you. They're sabotaging themselves because they're opening for you. Yeah, it doesn't matter. They're not that... They're in the moment. When they're in the moment on stage, all they care about is trying to mess up your set.

There's some guys that are influenced and there's some guys that are doing it on purpose. The influence guys, it's a problem, but it's not as big of a problem as the saboteurs, the guys who are trying to sabotage your sets. That's one of the reasons why I always take people on the road with me because if you show up at a town and there's local acts, local acts are the worst. You're in Pittsburgh, for instance, and some fucking guy is opening for you,

and he goes on the first night, he does his material, and then you do your material, and then the next night he does a bunch of subjects that are the same subjects as you and you can tell these are like loosely pieced together bits that he probably constructed last night just to try to fuck with your act cow man yeah because yeah because they're fucking jealous you know they're like that's one thing that you'll see all the time in young comics young comics there's some comics who will have like reverence for comics that have been around a while and there's one thing that you'll see all the time in young comics. There's some comics who have reverence for comics that have been around a while, and there's some comics that are the opposite.

They're like, that guy's not even that good, that guy sucks, and those are the guys you have to watch out for because those guys a lot of times are delusional, and they'll try to sabotage your act. You know, mimicry is tough because there's only so many things. You know what like mimicry is tough because it's probably ones i mean there's only like so many things you know i mean yeah like you said like a jet boil is pretty specific but i imagine it's you can always claim if it's like a joke about a guy and a girl getting in a fight in a car right you'd always claim like how can you claim to own that exactly i remember when we started out

when we started making Wild Within, right away we had this guy who was really pushy and very aggressive for a while that he had had his ideas stolen. Because he had done this thing where he goes down to a riverbank and they catch a fish. And he's got a table and a white tablecloth and stemware and stuff on it. And then he proceeds to cook this fish and serve it like fine dining style on a gravel bar and was just adamant that somehow we had stole his idea that's hilarious it's like hold on a minute you had the i you patented so

to speak the idea of catching something and eating it? Well, apparently you get scripts. Somebody sent me a script, and then another guy sent me a treatment. And both of them, with it, became a form. I had to sign an anti-plagiarism form. I've had people do that. First thing I said to them, I go, guys, number one, here are a couple things. One is, ideas are a dime a dozen.

Any idea you thought of, people have thought of, it's a question of the execution of the idea, which is a whole other thing. And second of all, that's very amateurish. The idea that, you know, I'm protecting it with this document and stuff like that. Well, that's, but first of all, before you say any further, I know dudes who've been ripped off. I know guys, I know a guy who fucking sent a script

to Sylvester Stallone's company. They, edit that out. No, go ahead. Because the guy eventually had to get credited for it. He sued and won. They made the movie, and then after they made the movie, he won the case, so they had to put him in as the writer. Did he get good money?

I don't know. I mean, it's something that happens on a regular basis. They would rather you fight them in court. They take your idea. And if they win, they don't have to pay you. And if they lose, it's common. It's common. It's common that you would bring a script to a production company or a big actor, and it's a part of the business.

Or you pitch a show. They'll just steal your premise, and they just rework it. It happens all the time. You can pitch a show to a network, too. Yeah, you can show premises yeah you can pitch a show to a network and then they're just they're coming up with their own version of it and ideas move so much from the point of intent to what you actually wind up with oh yeah that it probably after a while you probably feel like if you're the stealer you probably get the feeling

like we've taken it so far now right that it has nothing to do with the original idea but then one could turn around and say yeah but that was the foundation man like yeah that set you into an act of building on and creating so in some way you still owe me even though your stuff i made a you wound up with i but you wouldn't have gotten to i without my a one of the biggest things that that lawyers in hollywood deal with is exactly that where somebody will have an idea then they they get together with somebody else as a producer then they hire a writer who has a that lawyers in Hollywood deal with is exactly that, where somebody will have an idea, then they get together with somebody else who's a producer, then they hire a writer who has a track record.

Now the writer and the producer take it, and it becomes a completely different animal, but the guy who originated not only the connection between the two and the whole idea is left out because he's not really that relevant anymore. And then they change the title of it, and then he gets cut out completely. You know, there's always that possibility. It's a big possibility in Hollywood. I was involved in a movie like that, and I don't know what to say, but warrior. Yeah.

And what happened was the original writer, when I put the writer and director, my friend and the director together, they just took it and went completely different. I mean, there's not a word that was originally written about it in there really besides maybe i think the character names or something but he got credit it went to arbitration and zag the screenwriters guild gave him uh credit yeah it does happen i mean it does happen you know it's uh it, it's tricky. You know, plagiarism is dirty business, man. And it's common. But also influence, like just accidental influence is common as well. You know, that does happen. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

And boy, my goodness, do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high-end titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps Great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.

The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. You know, there's a point I wanted to make when you were talking about stand-up. It really has nothing to do with people stealing people's ideas.

But I think one thing that really sets your comedy apart from a lot of comedians I've seen is, and I tried to explain this to a couple people at various times, that so many comics have a thing where their position is self-loathing like that their humor is based on sort of a self-loathing right they turn self-loathing into humor and one thing that's kind of remarkable about your stuff is that like somehow you have comedy that comes from a position of strength which is difficult probably like you don't you're not up there putting yourself like here i am this miserable sad sack right you know which is great funny stuff and a lot of the comedians i like like i think like like louis ck there's a lot of like i loathe myself right right right you know norm mcdonald like a lot of his funny stuff is like i loathe myself i'm the punchline but you have like you're you're able to like make comedy from

a like a from a person like as a person who obviously doesn't loathe themselves you're still able to be funny when it seems like that's a very quick avenue to humor yeah but there's a lot of avenues to humor there's so many avenues to humor humor is just here's the world through my eyes if you really think things are funny you could figure out a way to translate that to an audience and when someone is sitting there watching you what comedy really is is like a form of mass hypnosis it's like you tune those people into what you think is funny and if it, everyone's laughing along with you. But if you lose the script at all, if you lose the feeling or if you're saying things that you don't have any attachment to, they fucking smell it, man.

They're animals. They're like, there's something wrong. The words are coming out correctly. The punchlines are delivered with the right amount of pause. But I'm not buying it. And they don't buy it. But it's what you think is funny. If you genuinely think something's funny and you can figure out a way to concoct the words and articulate the ideas,

there's no real pattern that every comic has to follow. But a lot of comedy comes from a point of of real serious insecurity that's where a lot of comedians come from like my trouble with girls my trouble my wife yeah my trouble with my physical appearance yeah my yeah and then people can relate to that because also people like the person on stage who's demanding all their attention and time they like that person to kind of be a loser so that they don't feel bad about them not being the person that's getting all the attention, especially men on dates.

Men on dates do not like a handsome, good-looking guy delivering, like a Chris D'Elia-type character on stage, or what was his name? Brian Callen? No, not that guy I don't know What was the guy who went on stage? The guy that's almost too good looking

He went on stage with Dane Cook all the time The Tourgasm Gary Goldman Gary Goldman Gary Goldman's like 6'2", 6'3", 6'6"? 6'6", he's huge Is he 6'6"? 6'6", exactly

Okay, handsome as fuck Perfect sculptured features And, you know, nobody wants to see that man that's a good point man i never thought of that yeah you take your uh you take your lady out and she's like wow this guy's amazing yeah beautiful fucking giant handsome man yeah it's better like a guy up there big fat guy out there talking about how he can't get a hard bald fucking shitty sneakers on that's what i want to see some loser that my wife has no interest in fucking you know if you are going to make like like if you're if you're going to talk about being good looking

you better you got to kind of be like every man like me where like i'll pick up a stool you were just telling us yesterday how objectively you're the best looking man i am i am but i'm talking about i perform with a shirt on so in this party this group right here you're saying i think i'm probably if you had like nasa come in I think I'm probably the best looking guy. If you had like, NASA come in and say like, who's the best looking man

that has the best physical harmony and everything, he thinks that it's him. I don't know. But he thinks that Giannis would, that more women,

he's smoldering. More women would want to breed with Giannis. I'm resting my face. More women would want to breed with Giannis. Even though Giannis isn't the best Harmony person.

Giannis is the best looking guy. Look at his legs. He's got legs for days. He's got beautiful hair. It's graying slightly, but it's mostly blonde. See, that's Callan's thing is that he will actually think about that. Am I the guy in this room that a woman who wandered in would want to fuck? Like, he really wonders.

That's ridiculous. He really does wonder. That's a ridiculous thing to say. Do you think that you've, like, concocted your humor as a response to trying to make women as happy as possible with you? 100%. 100%. I mean, I thank God sometimes.

I really spend an inordinate amount of time, even at 47, it's funny, wishing I looked different. That's the difference between me and you. Me and you, my humor is, once the one guy works so hard to get the girl and then they go off, I make fun of those fucks. Yeah. I get everybody else together and go, check this shit out.

Look at this fucking dummy. Yeah. Good luck with the rest of your life with her. You've been fucking Painting an act together Right Slopping together Some bullshit Fucking premise To your own personality

For me it's more than Women though For me it's more Like the idea To everybody Like I've been thinking About the fact You know

Just bone density Or just like Wanting to I want to be built What does that mean? Your bone would sink faster Than like a person With high bone density It just means you have More scaffolding for muscle And i want to be built like a simoleon but that's not what

that means part of me dies every day but i'm not bone density means it would sink faster than a non what actually means the thickness of the bones the bones like that how much marrow there is to how how thick the bones are themselves you can actually change your bone density with heavy weight lifting so like but some people actually have more like a person with high bone density a gram of their bone weighs is heavier than but so it doesn't mean like how big it is just how density here's where the misconception comes from the variables it's very slight it's very slight human bones don't weigh much at all they weigh like your entire yeah your entire skeleton your entire skeleton is like, you know, between like six and eight pounds. Once it's dried out.

Yes, and the variation between a full-grown woman and a full-grown man, not that much. Most of it is muscle and tendons and organs and all that stuff. That's where most of your weight comes from. But there is a difference in bone density and, more importantly, in bone structure. Because, like, bone density is one thing, but a narrow guy like Callan will never be a wide guy. He'll never be thick. Like, there's no way you could change it. You can't change the structure of the body. Yeah.

But you can change the density. Like, I could never be a thick neck. Right. I could maybe be a hot head, but never a thick neck. Well, you could get, your neck could definitely get thicker, but you'd never get broad shoulders. Yeah. The only way you would do that is, you Well, you could get, your neck could definitely get thicker, but you never get broad shoulders. The only way you would do that is, you know, you'd have to change your genetics somehow or another. Which is not outside the realm of possibility, and it's something they're working on on a daily basis. They're constantly fucking with the human body and trying to figure out new ways that they can, you know, influence genes and change this and alter that.

And without a doubt, within our lifetimes, we're going to see genetically modified human beings that all look like fucking Hercules. I mean, it's going to happen. If we stay alive for another 50, 60 years, I am 100% convinced. You mean we as a species? Or we as individuals?

Okay, yeah. If we stay alive until we're like in our 90s, we'll probably see some fucking freak human beings that look like the Hulk. Yeah, like those never existed before.

Seven foot tall people that are 500 pounds that can jump over buildings. It's on the way. They've already figured out a thing called myostatin inhibitors. They figured out how to alter these in mice. They happen naturally when they breed whippets. It's a type of dog. Cows. It happens in cows too.

Yeah, but there's a lot of legal hurdles to this stuff. Nah. I guess in other countries you go ahead though. No, it's going to happen. It's going type of dog. Cows. It happens in cows, too. Yeah, but there's a lot of legal hurdles to this stuff. Nah. I guess in other countries, you go ahead, though. Not for sports, buddy. Not for sports. It's going to happen. People are fucking with it. I mean, there will be legal hurdles as far as, like, competition in the Olympics and things along those lines.

But as far as, like, human beings altering their body for a positive benefit. You mean post-birth. Myostatin inhibitors, when they get these mice, the mice have twice as much muscle and live longer. They live longer. They can fucking run for days. They can do all kinds of crazy shit that other mice can't. They're super mice.

And they've figured out how to do this. They've altered the genes in the mice to make them do that. It's a matter of time before they start doing that with humans. A matter of a decade, two decades, whatever it is, before they figure out how to really tap into that. But the people that you see today, natural people who just exist because Bob and Sally got together and had a kid, those are gone. They won't be here 100 years from now or 200 years from now. There will be, you know, we will live in a world of superheroes yeah and it'll be just like cell phones where when cell phones first came out it was only the wealthy

that could afford them it was like on wall street you see michael douglas got that stupid brick to his head and he's walking around it's like it's a status symbol and rap videos well now you can go to the jungle and you'll see people with little tiny-ass cell phones. Everybody has a fucking phone now. It's because as technology grows, as it exponentially gets more and more complex, and as innovation continues, you're seeing access to this technology slowly start to trickle down to the average everyday folks. You're going to see that with genetic engineering.

It's just going to be a thing. You wonder what it'll do to artistic expression. Sit the fuck down. I'm just stretching. Nobody can hear you. You wonder what it'll do to artistic expression. Sit the fuck down. We're doing a podcast. I'm just stretching. Nobody can hear you up there. But you wonder what it does to artistic expression because I was going to say that, thank God,

I do have those longings to be somebody else because all my humor comes from the fact that I am compensating for, you know, yeah, I got a great jawline and my eyes are hypnotic. I'm going to stretch. My brother once observed that if a woman says oh he's funny she likes it yeah she's attracted to him if she says he's nice you know yeah it's true it's pretty true man like who is that guy he's funny that means she wants to go

out with him women have a hard time creating humor for the most part. There's obviously some very funny women comedians, but Christopher Hitchens had this really interesting take on it, and he wrote an article, I think it was in GQ? What was that article in? One of the magazines, Esquire

maybe? He wrote an article, Vanity Fair? I think it was Vanity Fair. He wrote an article about women aren't funny. And women freak the fuck out. I can imagine that would go over real well. But his take was that it's not that there aren't certain examples. Don't let him hold the mic. Jesus Christ.

It wasn't that there aren't the rare aberrations of very funny women, but for the most part, the funny women were very butchy, very dykey, very large and big, and their humor was mostly male. It was male-oriented humor. He wrote this? Yes, yes. Not only did he write it, but he defended it when criticized in this video. It was brilliant. It was amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he because he was saying like it's not that

there aren't sarah silverman's or or was she on the cover was she sort of like the cover for this piece yeah i believe so like they're trying to run around the criticism by uh-huh yeah by coming up with the one aberration no i remember this now i remember this now but a lot of women also that that are funny or they're funny on a curve. They're judged on a curve. It's like, compare them to, like, Kinison. There's no woman that's ever been as funny as Kinison. It's like Roseanne Barr is, in my opinion, one of the all-time great comedians. And I put her up there in the top ten all-time greats, male and female.

But she was fat and loud and, Fuck him! Shut up. Sit the fuck down. That was her thing, man. She wasn't feminine in any way, shape, or form. There was nothing dainty. And in his analysis or his take on it, it was like, no, she's doing male humor. She's not behaving like your stereotypical female. She's behaving like a man.

She's doing a man's version of humor. Dude, that was a bold thing to write man he's a he was a bold motherfucker there's a book uh a fantastic book about human genetics and human evolution called uh lone survivors so it came out as weirdly it came out just before the book lone survivor but lone survivors about why are you why are we the only humans on earth so like what happened to all the other... Because at times you had many human forms all running around at the same time,

sometimes on the same continent. Like when Neanderthals and humans were coexisting in Europe. So anyways, lone survivors. And there's a couple points in his book when he's talking about human migrations and other things. There's a couple points in his book he would say basically,

there are a lot more interesting things i could tell you about but it's career suicide to discuss these things yeah that's right he just won't say it wow he won't say things about like when he's talking about what forms like just like distribution of certain gene types and stuff he's like it's career suicide to discuss it i won't discuss it. That's what Steven Pinker writes about in The Blank Slate. I mean, if you as an academic come up with ideas

that suggest that people are born differently, physiologically and especially mentally, good luck. He was just talking physiology and he was afraid to say it. Exactly. And there are people now that are tackling that because the science is so overwhelming on the other side. I mean, David Epstein's book, The Sports Gene, he makes a clear case that if you are not sprinting,

and you could never have said this before, but the evidence that you're not sprinting in the World Championships or the Olympics in 100 or 200 meters, or at least 100, if you are not, I'm sorry, you're not sprinting in the World Championships or the Olympics in 100 or 200 meters, or at least 100, if you are not meddling, if you look at the past 20 years, unless you are of West African descent and a specific area of West Africa. Isn't it funny that that could be considered racist? Not only that, but you're talking about a good thing. Right. It's crazy. You say all black guys have big dicks. You're a racist.

Isn't that a good thing to have a big dick like what am I if I if I was saying all black dicks tastes like? Fucking turpentine. Yeah, then that would probably be racist right right. You know what I mean, but I'm saying it's a good thing Yeah, but I think I was a Nebraska coach or whoever who said we we don't have enough speed in our team And he said we got to start getting some black backs on this team. Black guys. Yeah, and there was a huge uproar. Well, they asked him, what do you need to change? He goes, well, you need to get some more black players.

Right, and guess what? Who is this? They looked at all the top running backs and defensive backs in the NFL and in D1 ball. Guess what they were? They were primarily black. Right, now how is that racist when you're talking about something good? Right, the same way that the majority

of world champion marathoners... Well, I think it's because it reinforces like an impression. I think it reinforces an impression. No, the idea that there's... They're better athletes. Well, more importantly... I think some people aren't comfortable about that

because it trivializes other attributes. No, because it's more important than that. I'm trying to tell you what I think people would say. It goes against the Marxist ideology, the term that we all start as equal, that some people are born different and with advantages. What it does is it highlights the fact that inequality exists in nature even among people that is a very touchy subject because it was used by the nazis and other people to justify the destruction subjugation enslavement etc of people uh you're jewish therefore you are

of inferior blood it goes back to kings and queens you were you were only allowed to breed with a note with someone of noble blood right but why when you're talking about superior attributes is it racist it's not let's say you're in a board meeting for your company right and you're like let's name the 10 greatest inventions of the last 100 years and then people rattle off like what they from their perspective what they regard to be the 10 greatest inventions so they got like the computer you know the microchip or whatever you got car who came up with all that white guys what this company needs i can't help it it's just true this company needs some white guys well why why would that be racist where i can tell you what but why well why would it be racist? I can tell you why. Why would it be racist if it was a fact?

But it's not a fact. It's not a fact. In other words, that's different. You're talking about one very specific thing. I don't know who's created what or invented what, but if you're talking about some specific facts, and you're talking about... Here's a perfect example.

How many European Jews have won Nobel Prizes? A fucking shit ton. I'll tell you how many. Half. A fucking shit ton. Half of all Nobel Prizes. So if you said, you know, hey, our university wants to win a Nobel Prize, want to get one of our professors, what do we need to do?

We need to get some European Jews on staff. Is that stereotypical or is that, what is that that stereotypical or is that is that what is that well yes because i think that it would imply it would the implication is that other people's ability to contribute is limited based on that and we sort of we and in some way that's right and i'm not telling you that i'm not i'm not saying i'm offended by this because i know you're just you're just voicing concerns i'm saying i think that people would feel that you're saying that that others ability is limited and by focusing on what traditionally is produced you're creating sort of a static environment where that thing will continue to happen and you're not opening it up for other people to have new opportunities right but how can you say that when you're talking about

something like sprinting where the fucking numbers are so overwhelming what is it a we're going to have like affirmative action for sprinters and only have a bunch of white sprinters because black guys are doing too well we're going to lower the times we know that we're going to give them a hundred yard head start like white guys just suck at running so what we're going to do is we're going to make it really easy for white runners it's racist if you don't otherwise you're going to have all black people winning sprinting and you know you really could turn it in that direction but How come these European Jews are doing so well? Well, it's because we haven't given these other people a better chance. They need affirmative action with inventions.

And if you come up with an invention, you've got to fucking hand it over to some Yugoslavian guy with a fucking head wound because there's none of those who've ever come up with shit. We've got a statistic. The delineation, though, the distinction is two. One is genetic, which you can prove, evolutionary biologists can prove

with the amount of fast-twitch muscle and things like that. The other is cultural. And so when you talk about, for example, I believe half of, almost half of all Nobel Prize winners were Jewish,

have been Jewish, which is an incredible number. But then you have to look at the culture. Then there are so many different factors in that aspect. So, you know, have to look at the culture then you have to then then there's so many different factors in that aspect so so you know you you would look at uh what is esteemed in the culture uh education being original having to be original otherwise you're kicked out of the country hard work all those i think it was jared diamond looked at yes i think it was it doesn't look at like selective pressure what the selective pressures against ashkenazi jews were you know

jared diamond did an amazing job of, first of all, saying that the reason, he looked at why, when he was in Papua New Guinea, one of his, the guys he was working with said, why do you white people have everything and us black people have nothing? And that sent him on a 20-year odyssey to figure out why it was that some nations excelled, others didn't. It's primarily Northern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. Why didn't Sub-Saharan Africa? Not not so much of it had to do with geography so much it had to do with whether

you had access to domesticated animals uh edible grasses and the environment uh what disease did to you uh all those kinds of things i mean and he does a masterful job of of proving that that it had to do more with also your access to other people. We borrow from other people. Any tribe that was isolated, like the Highlanders of New Guinea who were isolated for 40,000 years, stayed primitive because they didn't have access to other people's ideas. Human beings share ideas, and that's why they grow.

And we share ideas, more importantly, from completely different environments, different cultures. Yes. You live in an area where you have a lot of people, where you have long latitudinal lines, where you have people with a similar climate can share material. You advance faster than people on a thing where it's oriented longitudinally where when i figure out something here down in the south of our land it doesn't really apply to you up there so like a landmass that has on a map appears horizontal advances faster than a landmass that appears vertical look at africa because you're figuring

shit out in the amazon that some dude up in the great plains could give a shit about right right there's no bearing on africa africa and the middle east what they call the fertile crescent the north africa and the middle east where so much where writing came you know a lot of writing uh domesticated animals barley wheat all those things and there was a thriving population what you had the reason it didn't come down to the sahara to you know africa equatorial africa is because you had the the desert the sahara desert and then impenetrable jungle then you get down to south africa and that was that was temperate so so wherever there was trade and people were able to go and not you know and share ideas about dying of yellow fever and stuff like that it was totally different but what's fascinating about jared diamond's work was that you take a highlander

from new guinea who's been isolated for 40 000 years and there's no tradition of writing reading or arithmetic you take that they took a kid who had had came from none of that none of that and he went to a regular you you know, Western schooling. And by the time he was, whatever, 14, 15, he was reading and writing and doing arithmetic on the same level as any Northern European. That's very interesting because what that says is the malleability of the human brain

and the fact that the Highlanders may not be sharing the same intellectual tradition, but they are having to use their brain. They are having to figure out what grasses are edible, what the weather's going to do tomorrow uh how they're going to hunt so they're still using their brain that that that I gotta step out and take a shit first time ever on a podcast yeah why don't we actually wrap this up this is almost 80 minutes is there any uh toilet paper left just wrap it up um you don't have any toilet paper.

We do. Thanks for tuning in to this podcast. I was holding it as long as possible. I'm coming out with you. He held it as long as he could. He has to leave

to go out under the rain. He's got the kit, you know. One thing that Brian, I want to close on one note. Brian was talking about fast twitch and slow twitch muscle. It reminds me of something my brother was telling me.

He's an ecologist. He deals a lot with fish. When you cut a salmon fillet in half, and you see how you got all that pink flesh on the salmon fillet, and then you have that little bit of brown. It's kind of like people sometimes call the bloodline but a little bit of brown flesh in the center of the flay up against the skin what you're looking at is that little bit of brown stuff is slow twitch muscle and all of that pink is fast twitch

muscle and when that salmon's just swimming through the ocean, he's just using that little bit of brown stuff. And all that pink stuff is for his holy shit moments of when he splits. That's like the ratio of, like, if you look at a turkey, how he's got the dark meat, you know, wing and leg dark meat, and then he's got that white flesh. That's what you're looking at on a salmon. Isn't that interesting? Thanks for tuning in we're gonna just hope that the weather gets better. Let's go hunting. It might not get better. Let's just go hunt.