The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 279: Controlled Rot with Brad Leone

Episode Date: June 28, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Brad Leone, Senator Martin Heinrich, Ryan Callaghan, Spencer Neuharth, Chester Floyd, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.Topics discussed: Vinny's bluefin; using the word "untoward'; Brad's show, "It's Alive!"; fermentation and umami; challenging the FDA; the abundance of deer in New Jersey; fish tails vs. fish bodies; pedicles and peduncles; more on Spencer's rockhounding hobby, loving agates, and a petrified tree chimney; Chester the Investor becomes Chester the Tester thanks to the Classic Sweet; Steve's invented fight moves that would injure your teeth and balls; when you need to switch over to catch and keep; river access endangered in New Mexico and defining what navigable means; mean ass Mrs. Angelo's prohibited fishing dock; yay or nay for the baby name Hunter Fischer?; circumcision; Brad's tattoo origin story and ancient turkey bone tattoo kits; how it all started by dropping kombucha on the floor; the global chicken wing shortage; feedlots and the industrialized food system; the value of dumpster diving; and more.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.

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Go farther, stay longer. All right, everybody, join today. Brad Leone's here. Explain what's in front of you, Brad. Yeah, so brought a little bluefin tuna from back east that a buddy of mine, Vinny, bought. He caught it out in the canyon. His name was Vinny. His name's Vinny, yeah, Vinny Dilletta. Good guy, good fishing buddy of mine, hunting buddy of mine.

And just really dialed in on the saltwater. And I told him I was coming out here, and you know, he has a little walk-in and stuff that he had one of these bluefin hanging in there. Smaller one, you know, like 70 pounds or something. At times, that's the most expensive fish in the world. Oh, yeah, yeah. So they also catch some pretty big ones, you know, some giant ones, 600, 700 pounders that, you know, he's got a commercial license and they'll head out.

I'm pretty sure they just go to Japan. Don't they go, like you can catch a go to japan don't they go like you can catch a bluefin you don't really know when you catch it if you got gold or not oh and they take a little don't they take like a little core sample yeah yeah out of the fish we've seen it on the on the show right it wasn't them uh wicked wicked wicked tuna right they they bring it to the dock and they have it's almost like yeah it's almost like what you'd see like an old Italian guy like taking a core of Parmesan cheese with, like just like this little cylinder hollowed.

I'm sure it has a name. It's probably from the cheese world. But they would go in there and they would take a core sample, like you would of the earth, and see the quality of the meat, the marbleization of the fat. And then they declare it like this fish is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Or this fish is worth 200 bucks. I think it's just by pound.

So it's like either it's like this is a $10 or a $16 fish or whatever per pound. And, you know. Is that good stuff laid out in front of you or don't you know? Yeah. I mean, I'm not Mr. Bluefin, but it's certainly good eating fish. You know, it was just caught a few days ago, and I froze it to bring it out here. Slab, too, man. Yeah, good old loin there.

I wish we could have brought the belly, but old Vinny wasn't feeling that. Vinny's a tight ass. No, yeah, I mean, listen. I don't want to say, no, no, Vinny's a generous. Oh, he was a tight ass. He wouldn't have given you anything. That's very true. Would you just real quick rank him, like, scale of one to ten amongst your other good friends?

Like, where is he lying? Yeah, no, Vinny's up there, man. You don't want to put a number to it, though. It's a dangerous game, you know? I haven't known him long enough to give him a 10. But he's Cat 8, Cat 9. We're going to get into ranking because that's why Chester's sitting here right now. Because just some brutal ranking Chester was doing while we were fishing, I thought was like very untoward it was a little harsh on you

Steve I'm just gonna say has anybody ever said that word on this show untoward am I using it right yeah nope don't I have don't don't have the slightest I'm not even sure what it means but it felt untoward like when I struggle for a word to describe it but uh while we got you Brad then we'll introduce some other folks. Talk about who you are. Yeah, so my name's Brad Leone. I grew up in northern New Jersey, and I got a YouTube show with Bon Appetit magazine, a publication out of New York where we do all this.

The show's called It's Alive. And I started off doing a lot of fermentation and in-kitchen projects. And then really, for me, I never really liked just- Oh, that's the, it's alive. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It started with the bubble. Phil probably knew about that a long time ago. Yeah.

He probably caught that a long time ago. Phil gets it. And, you know, it started with like, you know, the gut health and microbiology and just old world applications of food, you know, it's like pre-refrigeration, you know, pre-FDA and all the BS they bring to the table. You're just going to come and trash a whole federal agency. I'm done with the FDA. They can come at me.

I don't care. And I get it. I get it. It's a blanket. You're going to send a hitman out. I've always felt, and maybe this is, that's fine. Bring it. And I probably shoot better.

And maybe it's the narcissism in me, but like, I've never felt like, this is horrible. I was like, I fell under the umbrella of blanketed regulation. You know, like, oh, no turning on red at this stop sign. Well, that's just kind of for everybody else. Like, you know, I'm squared away. I know how to do this. Yeah. And I kind of feel that way with food.

You know, those regulations are, they're probably smart. And for the general population, I'm sure it is with good intention. We don't want to – but at the same time, I disagree with a lot of it. It's just that blanketed security of just like, oh, you got to put your whatever in the fridge as soon as you pick it from the – and it's just really, they've been doing this for thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, you know, and the idea of getting back to the fermentation, the idea of controlled rot as a food and as really like the base of umami and how like our bodies are just kind of designed to like, we,

I feel like we need them. You need, like our bodies need that, our gut biome and our like more than we really kind of modern society, especially in America, allow it, you know, like everything's so like buy it now, buy it super fresh, keep it in the fridge. You know, if it got, if it gets a little mold, it's going to kill you and your whole family. And it's just not really the case for the, I mean, not to belittle real, real food health things, you know, like there's major, you know, foodborne illnesses are a very serious thing and not to underplay that, but just like things like raw fish or, or salted meat, you know, there's a couple of guidelines that if you stay within, it seems like people have been getting away with it for a long time. You know, what's your, um, professional food background.

Like you'd done like commercial work and all that commercial kitchen stuff. Yeah. So, I mean, the way it all started was I just really liked eating, you know, and like my mom and my dad, they were both good cooks, never really had good ingredients other than what we bought. I mean, other than what we grew.

Speaking of eating, I want you to act like you're eating that mic. Just right in it. Usually I get loud. I talk too loud. on a ice cream cone. Oh, it's disgusting.

And yeah, so like other than what my parents would grow we always had like a nice garden good tomatoes like zucchinis like so many zucchinis we had a like a fond memory growing up is like my dad would walk around to the neighborhood back when community mattered you know and um and just give away all of our like bumper crop you know if we just had like a you know a radio flyer full of zucchini and eggplant, you know, like, come on, Brad, we're going up to Donna and Mike's and, you know, the Mugnos, and we're just going to start giving away all the produce. And so like we cooked with that. And then my dad, he's, he's just great,

man. He got me into like hunting and fishing and being in New Jersey. It's not something people really think of, you know, like, oh, you're from New Jersey. No, it's one of the lowest participation states. Is it really? I think California and New Jersey are sub 1%. And it's probably gotten more deer than most states. You know, like it's a problem. Hence the low, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. And like just growing up. And they all complain about the damn deer. Oh yeah, man. And they're always complaining about the turkeys. Just living in, people complain about the turkeys. I'll tell you one surefire way to get rid of turkeys. What's that?

You go hunting for them. Yeah. Well, they're tricky little dino chickens. No, but then people downtown are like in these suburban areas, they're like, they live in fear of the turkeys. Yeah that you'd go hunting for them yeah well they're tricky little dino chickens people downtown are like in these suburban areas they're like they live in fear of the turkeys yeah oh yeah i couldn't get in my car because the turkey was gobbling people get freaked out from nature you know and uh and there's a lot of them new jersey like there is there's a lot of deer a lot of turkeys where i grew up in northern new jersey ton of black bears and uh you know to answer your question back on the call how to get in i want a dog on new jersey no oh no man a lot of coyotes all right there's there's big cats there too you know the state

doesn't really uh recognize it but oh they're there and uh home and now yeah talking about mountain lions mountain lions okay well i'm gonna leave that one hanging yeah we can come back to that but yeah so you know growing up in new jersey i was luckily my dad you know he's like the most un-new jersey guy like we would go gigging for frogs and catch snapping turtles and make soup. And then he got me in. He didn't really like freshwater fishing too much. He didn't really care for the small lines and tiny knots and shit. It wasn't the small fish that turned him off.

It was the small lines. Yeah, he ain't eating nothing out of the lake. Everything tastes like mud kind of deal, you know, except for- Oh, yeah. I mean, if you were to have ocean in front of you and freshwater behind you, I would have a pretty difficult time turning around. Ah, but you know, I mean, you're from Michigan, right? There's something peaceful about the freshwater. Oh, listen, it's great.

I love it. I'm saying in that environment where you have that, right? And then fresh, I would probably be more ocean focused for sure and that was my dad i mean you know he he was immediate i want to catch shit i can eat you know and like that was his thing i'm gonna spend a hundred dollars i want to come home with two hundred dollars worth of fish you know otherwise you know he saved up you know he was a mailman he would save up to go fishing you know he didn't have a boat we'd go out on party boats or or a friend's boat you know that he had or something. But being exposed to that world

and saltwater just being so much more aggressive and fast, it's just a different beast. Certainly wasn't getting me into fly fishing. I picked that up in the past two, three years, just kind of self-taught with some buddies. But being exposed to hunting, fishing, going out and catching bluefish and sea robins and striped bass and mostly just kind of inshore stuff, blue claw crabs. Do bluefish and sea robins and striped bass and mostly

just kind of inshore stuff, blue claw crabs. Do you cook those sea robins up? Oh, one of my favorites. Really? Such an underrated fish. Man, they are a maligned fish. Dude, a dinosaur, right? Looks like it belongs somewhere down in the coral reef or something.

Yeah, he's got, I don't know, man, like a 12-inch fish. He's got pectoral fins that look like dinner plates. Yeah, and they're beautiful, right? I mean, things like a piece of art, like the wings. What do you do with those? What do you do with them? How do you prepare them? Oh, they're great.

So it's kind of just like. Man, people hate those fish. People hate them, and they're ugly, and they got these heads on them, like a giant grunt at you and shit, and they got these big old wings for pectoral fins. But the tail, you know, we were talking about this yesterday, Callahan. I think it was with you. Where it's like, oh, some of these fish, you got to cut the tail off.

You got to soak it in milk for two days. Otherwise, it's like inedible. And it's just not the case, you know. Like same thing with any fish. As soon as I catch it, if I plan to consume it or kill it, I kill it instantly, bleed it out the same way i would with your trophy fish you know like i'm just completely over the whole junk fish thing it's only junk if you treat it like junk you know what i mean and the robins or the sea robins you know you cut the tail off

and uh from there it's just like vomit you do or don't cut the tail off you do so that's okay sorry so like like any fish as soon as you kill it bleed it out get it on ice but why are you getting rid of his tail that's the part you eat so, bleed it out, get it on ice. But why are you getting rid of his tail? That's the part you eat. So you cut it off to eat it. Yeah. To prepare the tail. You ditch the head. You don't mean his tail.

Yeah, like its body. Oh. Not like its little, like, you know, not the little fin. Not the caudal fin. Yeah, not the fin, but like the, its body. It's all tail. Because you, yeah, to understand why he's saying tail, you'd have to wander over to your computer and look up what the hell a sea robin looks like.

Yeah, look up sea robin. And they're amazing. I still don't like what you're saying. Oh. It's cone and a tail. You got to come out and cook it with us. No, no, no. Listen, I'm all for eating them.

Yeah. Just saying, if you said cut its tail off, because here's where my head's going. My kind of like halibut, shrimp, and crab mentor, he was a commercial halibut fisherman. All right. And he would bleed his halibut shrimp and crab mentor. He was a commercial halibut fisherman. All right. And he would bleed his halibut. And somehow he thought that they had like a pressure lock. A valve. So he would cut the gill.

Yep. And then he would go and cut the tail. Oh, like open the circuit. What's that called on a fish? Is it the pedicle? Pedicle. The pedicle, like the base, the thin part, the base of the tail. What's that called on a fish? Is it the pedicle? The pedicle. The pedicle, like the base, the thin part, the base of the tail?

Right. He'd cut there as though he had to do like a pressure release thing. Instead of like a full loop, he would open the circuit up. Yeah, so that the blood, like somehow there's like a vacuum sort of quality in the fish.

Yeah. And you'd cut its gill, but then to allow the blood to like come out you had to like release the vacuum by cutting it back by its tail we had a lot of laughs about this sure but when you're coming out cutting the tail that's what i thought you're talking about i thought you'd been hanging out with him no it sounds like i should but uh yeah for i mean it's kind of like what would you call a monkfish like the part that you eat of a monkfish. The monkfish tail. Right?

So it's basically just like a lot of head. What part do you eat on a snake? You would eat the... You're going to call that the tail? Snake don't have parts. Snakes are just snakes. No, but like, yeah. So this fish is just like a lot of head, fins.

I'm looking at something. Yeah, a lot of head, fins. And then it's just like a big meaty tail and the tail or sure the body we can call it so you gut it cut the head off and then it's just like a big you know it's got the big it's got a spine going spine bone going through it and then it's just got a nice white flesh kind of firm meaty body tail kind of like a blowfish ever have like a you know the blowfish where it's just like the bone through the middle and just like amazing meat around it.

Yeah. I'm ready to move on, but I'm just saying, I would say this next time you're on a podcast. Yeah. Tom, I'll see Robbins. I'd be like, and then you cut the body off. Okay. We cut the body off and you eat them. They're great.

They're great in stews or soups or even just pan fried. Is it good? It is good just to fry it? Oh yeah. It's sweet as candy. Why is it, um, why does it have a bad reputation? Uh, kind of like bluegills or, or whitefish that we were fishing for, you know. Mountain whitefish.

Yeah. Mountain whitefish. You know, there's just an abundance of them and they're usually, you know, you're, it's when you're going for black sea bass or you're going for flounder. It's not what people are targeting. So it's more like the, it's like, oh my god yeah i got a fluke and it comes up you're like god son of a bitch it's another sea robin a peduncle peduncle not pedicle peduncle pedicle the definition is eerily similar um the caudal peduncle that sounds right which is basically i'm reading here fish handle is the

narrow region of a fish's body anterior to the caudal fin you know what yeah i think they're illegal now but maybe once upon a time they weren't you ever see those uh tail zippers for landing fish tail zippers my old man had one and they would make their own like it was a rod with a cable snare on the end of it. Oh, a little slip cable? Dude, and you went, instead of like landing netting the fish, put that, pull it tight. But here's the thing. If you saw a salmon like in a river hiding under a log, whatever, and you see his tail sticking out, you can just put that thing down in there and jack him right up on the bank. I like it. It's kind of like how they did.

You know what? Chester's nodding knowingly. Yeah, I've seen them. I haven't used them, but. Deadly apparatus. Yeah. Still common for paddlefish anglers. Oh, it is.

See them use them. I don't know that it's legal. Really? But I still see them use them a lot. I saw people jack a lot of fish up out of a river that weren't, nothing to do with a hook. Right. Because you could come in behind it

when he's holding the current and just in one fluid motion, that fish is up on the bank. Whoa. I'd be surprised if it was illegal. It doesn't seem like it's like super. No, it was, I think that there was,

it was or became or, I don't know, should be. Some banded out. Could you think it should be illegal? Well, I don't want to just come in and say it should be. I don't think you should be going.

But you spearfish you listen when i say that i mean this based on traditional use practices and things i could see where an agency a state agency based on their management objectives would say that this is a piece of equipment that is just too likely to be misused in our particular thing, in our particular situation, is too likely to be misused. Meaning, let's say you're walking down a creek with a pitchfork, okay, in Michigan. As you do.

And here comes a game warden, and he's like, what's up with the pitchfork? And you're like, oh, I'm thinking about making a garden out here in the National Forest. He's probably going to be like, I think you're thinking about pitchforking some fish out of the river. Illegal? Oh, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I'd have never known. You can't, yeah. But you could go in. Can't pitchfork salmon out of the river. But could you dive with your, you know, what's that?

No. Like the Hawaiian sling? No. No. Hard no. Hard no. Not on a game fish. Okay.

Not on a sport fish. Not on a sport fish. All right. Fair enough. Not on a game fish. Okay. Not on a sport fish. Not on a sport fish. All right. Fair enough. Joined also by Spencer Newhart. Spencer, we're going to talk about something that has deep relevance to you. Okay.

As a rock picker, we're going to talk about, sorry, rock hound. That's better. What's a rock hound? Oh, well, a rock picker. Get ready to live, Brad. A rock picker, if you ask Doug Duren, a rock picker is a kid that you send out into the field, an agricultural field, to gather up all the rocks and throw them out of the field. All right. So you don't bust your hay teeth on them. Yeah.

Because you don't want to, the rock ain't growing anything. Sure. And then it's in the way of, it's in the on them. Yeah. Because you don't want to, the rock ain't growing anything. Sure. And then it's in the way of, it's in the, Agriculture. Yeah. And so picking rocks is like what you do

when you get in trouble. Yeah. And you make, and they're like, you're going to pick rocks. And you make a stone wall, right? Now, if you asked our beloved Tracy Crane

what rock picking meant, she would think it meant walking around out in the field picking rocks so then you could make a chimney out of it. Oh, that's fun. Which she did.

Beautiful. Different types of rock pickers. I i'm a rock picker she over picked she over harvested that's okay one of the pallets full of damn rocks good money in that uh or you could be a rock hound i'm a rock hound which is when you walk around trying to pick up uh semi-precious gemstones yeah i see mine aren't even valuable i just find like everywhere i go i already you know i've been here for three days i've got two rocks already really yeah everywhere i go i bring home a rock i bring them home to my kids i don't know what they are just find ones that got like unique characteristics pretty something that kind of like captures time you know like i love a rock that has like a really weird say you find like an orange or a red rock or something and it has like a really weird or just a one white sediment line.

Something happened, a million, some shit went down, and this is capturing it. I dig that. I give them to my kids. Would it mean less to you if I gave you a rock, or do you need to find it yourself? I would take a rock gift. Okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I'll set you up. All right. Thanks, man. Reason that what we're going to talk about has relevance to Spencer is he, as a rock hound, the rock he likes to target is a rock that's associated with riparian areas. Excuse me? River, the edges of rivers.

Okay. The edges of rivers and streams. And so he's walking along and takes advantage of stream access law yeah which allows a person to go down a river corridor um and maybe not even be in the water but be in below the average high water mark okay and it allows you to it's what allows you to take your canoe down a river or walk down the river sure and he takes advantage of that to go rock hunting. I was just explaining to somebody last week that we are currently in the rock hunting pre-rut for the Yellowstone because.

Because the water's coming down. The river peaked and it's coming down, but it's not all the way down. So there's some like good rocks to be found, some good areas that have fresh rocks, but we're in the pre-rut stage. Rut will probably be a week or two from now. This is fascinating, by the way. What kind of rocks are you finding? Well, my question for him is this. How many rocks do you need?

Well, the one that's still out there. That's right. 200-incher. I'm thinking of a Tracy Crane move where... Oh, you make a whole chimney out of those rocks. That's... An agate chimney? Yeah, I don't have any real plans, but sure.

Yeah. You know, my grandma, her house outside of Lockwood, um, agate chimney. Yeah. I don't have any real plans, but sure. Yeah. You know, my grandma, her house and out, outside of Lockwood, Montana on old Hardin road, the, the chimney is constructed with three chunks of a petrified tree that, um, are, you know, as, as they're 30 inches across. Wow. And three feet long each section. That's awesome. That's pretty cool. Just completely mineralized. Yeah, it is. It's pretty darn cool. Probably not for everybody, but it's pretty darn cool.

I wouldn't mind finding something like that. She used to climb up that chimney in, you know, in it's all interior chimney. So it's all like living room 360 around it. Yeah. But she used to climb up that thing and plant orchids in the cracks in the rocks. Really? And then have to

occasionally climb back up there and mist them down. No kidding. What was the name of the road she lived on? Hardened. Old Harden. Not hardened like it got hard. Oh, Harden like the name. Yeah, like the town. Okay.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Spencer. The rock Spencer likes, and I've found more than a few I'll point out. I believe it forms like this. I look down on occasion. I believe it forms like this. A volcano erupts, engulfs a tree, hardens around the tree, but the tree burns away, leaving a cavity. Water precipitates through that and, or no, water comes through that and the particulate matter, whatever, in the water that is left behind through this process turns into an agate. You got it.

Is that right? Yeah. And if the process, like, doesn't finish, you get petrified wood. And if it, like, completes, you get a Montana moss agate. And you'll find some rocks that are both. They were, like, caught in purgatory between agate and petrified wood. Those are some of the specialist pieces. That's fascinating.

I used to know a guy named Ray the Rockman Baker. And he was a professional agate hunter. All right. He had a five-gallon bucket full of mammoth teeth. Whoa. Because bycatch. And he would pile up these agates. And then if he had a good feeling about one, and Spencer's going to get into this and then if he had a good feeling about one and

spencer's gonna get into this too if he had a good feeling about one he would cut it with a bandsaw right and then he and then you'd be like holy cow like here's a gem grade tells the story a gem grade agate what's that it tells the story once you cut it no you don't want it all cracked up yeah you're just like exposing what might be a cooler aesthetic on the inside rather than the outside. Have you taken the cutting years in half yet? Oh yeah, I probably cut, I don't know, 20 rocks or so. We've made like

bookends with them. Really? Yeah. What do you got, a wet saw or something? Yeah, it's a tile saw. So the same thing you'd use if you were going to like put a backsplash on your kitchen. Just less productive. Do you feel like you might, do you feel like you, is it kind of in your mind that you're going to like uh put a backsplash on your your kitchen just less productive do you feel like you might do you feel like you uh is it kind of in your mind that you're gonna craft me up a book some bookends or something is it now yes that's on your mind like you're saying your wife like

you're laying in bed at night you're like you know what i might do that's cool i just haven't found the right uh steve rock yet i look forward to pre-rut maybe the time yeah it's coming it's coming man what's nice about the yellowstone too is that it's cold water and so those rocks aren't growing a bunch of algae as that water comes down and so you get you get a you get a better look at what that rock is you got trail cams out for those rocks no but chester chester used to guide on the yellowstone said that every lunch break with clients, they would look for rocks. Yeah. Pass the time and just to get away from the folks if you didn't really.

To get away from your clients. Is that what you were doing yesterday? No. No, we should have. No, he was enjoying himself. But we should have went rock hounding. I was going to say that. But yeah, if you want to get get some rocks just talk to a few

fishing guides and you'd be set for life just most of the time at lunch clients are sitting there eating lunch and fishing guides off either picking rocks or smoking something in the bushes both sound great smoking fish no Smoking fish? No. Chester, we found out you got a new nickname now. Uncle Chesty. Uncle Chesty, there you go. From rowing that boat, what it does to a man's pectoral muscles. You were looking good, Uncle Chesty, on that boat.

I never really thought about it, but if you do that every damn day i'm getting a little soft i imagine now that you quit yeah yeah like if every day you said you had to spend like six hours on a rowing machine six days a week yeah i had you get pretty chesty pretty good triangle going you know from my shoulders down to the waist and Oh, because I was massaging Chester as he rode, acting like I was massaging him. But actually, I was like, holy shit. He wasn't acting. Muscly little shoulders from rowing that boat all over the damn place. Yeah, that was nice.

I appreciate that. Yeah, you thought I was massaging you. I was more like probing. A little shoulder probe. Because it occurred to me all of a sudden what that would do to a fella. Yeah. That much rowing. Yep.

That's not a workplace environment you get just anywhere, Brad. No, sir. We're on hell of a boat, I'll tell you that. It's a lot of trust. So we were talking about sea robins, speaking of trash fish, and we'll return to this in a minute after we talk about a few things. We were out targeting the mountain whitefish. And Chester was taking us down to Stretcher River.

He knows real well because he guided it professionally for years and has floated it enough times where he's like, up ahead, you'll notice a rock. Yeah, yeah. And gave us a rating. Oh, but I want to, can you explain your old nickname, how you became to be not Chester the investor, but Chester the tester? Sure. Yeah, Brad.

I have too many, I don't know, not too many nicknames, but a lot of them. When I was a young kid, I would sit on the table of my parents' kitchen and I I'm going back here, actually. My dad grew mushrooms for a living in Wisconsin. White button, shiitake, portabella. And he sold that business to his brothers and started pickling the mushrooms. And I would sit on that table. So he sold, I know this,

but I just want you to explain this better. He sold it to his brother it but then he sold to his brother but then became a client of his brother correct yes they weren't business partners in pickling we're not business partners in pickling they did use their mushrooms for a while but um they stopped using them not because of bad blood or anything because they didn't grow because of bad mushrooms they they harvested them too late. You want really small white button mushrooms for when you're pickling. And he was pursuing a different.

Just a smaller white button. Like that Italian marinated pickled. He was growing for a non-pickling market. Igaricus by Sporus. That's the white button. And anyways, they would test all these recipes in the kitchen. They were originally going to do like a jam company, and then they started pickling the mushrooms. And I would sit on that table as a little kid and pop these pickled mushrooms in my mouth, and I really liked the classic sweet, which is one of their top sellers now.

I love it. the classic sweet which is one of their top sellers now so i was deemed the chester the tester back then that's incredible so yeah but i gotta send some pickled mushrooms to you yeah please do man i love a good pick like a marinated kind of pickled mushroom or just straight up pickled they're they do different ones some classic classic sweet, which is just sugar, vinegar, and then they do some Bergamo spice ones. You know what Chester's family produces as well? No. You can buy

cocktail sets. Oh, like little bitters and stuff? Yeah, but it's all this pickled stuff and this and that. So you get a box, like a giftters and stuff? Yeah, but it's all this pickle stuff and this and that. And so you get a box, like a gift box, and it comes and it's everything you need to make crazy-ass cocktails for the holiday. Can I throw a plug in for them? Oh, please, yeah. I was getting there.

Forest Floor Foods. Forest Floor Foods. Out of Eden, Wisconsin. Good name. So you could get like a Manhattan kit. No, sorry, an old-fashioned kit wisconsin old-fashioned yeah sugar cubes pickled this pickled that candied this pickled that all in a box well family and entrepreneurs over there chester yeah chester the tester

one of the reasons you got a lot of nicknames is because a lot of shit rhymes with chester yeah that's true definitely when you're likable you know like it'sester. Yeah, that's true. Definitely. And you're likable. I feel like that's a compliment. No one gives nicknames to people that they don't like, really. At least in person. Never had a nickname. No one gives me a nickname either, Steve. The best you can do is Brad the Dad. Yeah, I blame

my parents. My name sucks. Steve. Barblest Brad. That's right. It's the first one ever. There's no good rhymes for Steve. It's alrightbaless Brad. Barbaless Brad. That's right. It's the first one ever. I think I might even. There's no good rhymes for Steve. It's all right. No, you got to make it longer.

It's like Steve-erino. Yeah, you can do that. But that's not fun. No. Unless you shorten it to Reno. I invented two fight moves called the Steve-erino. Oh, really? Mm-hmm.

I hope I never see them. No, you don't want to see them. One involves your teeth. Oh, God. And one involves your gonads. Yeah, you don't want to see them. One involves your teeth. Oh, God. And one involves your gonads. Yeah, huh? I put that together. Chester, you gave us a rating on the boat.

Yes. That's what I'd like to explore. That's why I've invited you here today. I don't know how we ever came to that because they don't give ratings. So maybe I wasn't very good at the ratings. But my thought process when you guys were fishing is 10 is as good as you can get. You can't get any better than 10, right? Would you be a 10?

No. Oh. When he went to rate me, he goes, and I'm going to do how he did it. You hurt his feelings, Chester. He goes Seven Like as though As though he's gonna come in at like a seven nine Right? Seven

Just seven So he's like, he's being so precise He's gonna like give me like a decimal Right? But then like thinks about it and changes his mind So that was total bullshit it ruined my whole day i'm sorry about that seven and he's weighing all the subcategories to come to his conclusion he's like yeah i feel like he's actually thinking about it and rates me

you're fishing mountain whitefish at a seven and it turns around and gives brad like not much worse than me i did have a lot of coffee with Birdness. He was tangled. He missed half the day being tangled up. Maybe not half the day. Maybe one tenth. All right, a couple good primo spots. But Chester was crowding the water anyway. I'm sure there's a lot of subcategories in there, and he's doing the tallies,

and perhaps the Birdness, like, don't rank as significantly as, let's say, just a good attitude. Yeah, you know what? Yeah, he's like, just a good attitude. Yeah, you know what? Yeah, he's like, no, it's a hit, but it's not a big hit to Bird Nest. So what was Brad's rating? Like a 6.9 or something like that. I think it was like 6.5. I took it with a smile.

I thought it was great. You felt hyped up after that? But the difference between a 6.5 and 7. It's not much. It's big. No, it's big. In my mind, it's big. It's big, Steve.

In your mind, it's not. But if you were to pop into my mind, you'd probably be like, oh, yeah, I'm happy with the seven right now. Well, I did two things. At first, I retaliated. And I said, well, I'm going to rate Chester as a rower. And then I gave him a super low rating as a rower just to just to hurt his feelings later in the day i turned around and thought i would demonstrate generosity and i rated him as a 10 and left it at that which of those two approaches of mine was more effective chester

hurting you or demonstrating to you how to be generous um probably hurting me a little bit so that stung yeah no i'm it actually didn't at all i remember i when you when you did the 10 rating i bumped you up to 7.25 so what could they improve on yeah i mean we all can improve on stuff right like so like i go into it but just we everything right like we can all into it, but just we, everything, right? Like we can all get better at casting. We can all get better at reading the water. We can all get better at setting the hook.

Let's get one specific thing that Brad can take home. Brad's casting was pretty darn good for not doing it much. Just being a little more patient on the back cast. Yeah. Letting that rod do the work. Less of, you know, human force. That's what the fly rod is like a spring, right? So if you're patient on that cast and let that line roll out all the way behind you before you bring it forward.

So you feel it give you a little tug. A little tug back. So I wasn't letting it load up all the way. I was coming back a little premature. And I think, yeah, and I think that was because, like, it's exciting when you're out there. You want to, like, get it back in the water. Yeah.

Maybe that's not true. Especially with that bank flying past you. Yeah. And we were moving. Him crowding the water. Him crowding the primo whitefish water. No, I'm just joshing. You put the boat over some whitefish holes?

Here's the thing. It's like, here's Chester's problem, and I identified it for him. That's generous. Chester was, for a long time, was a trout guide. Okay? And he was money focused. And he knew that if he took a client out and the client catches a big trout chester gets a big tip and that worked its way deep into his psyche okay so even if you say to

chester we're fishing whitefish something deep in his like reptilian brain want he he can't help himself but position that boat for trout i got a little and a lot of times just couldn't help himself but position that boat for trout. I got a little reading. And a lot of times, just couldn't help himself. And you know that that whitefish is laying like where he's going to lay. And that's kind of like under the gunnel. Because he wants you up where he thinks those big browns are lurking. What I did there was I could tell Brad had a little itch to catch some, a few trout.

And I could tell Steve really just wanted to catch whitefish. So I tried to play this little happy medium game away from the bank. I think we did all right. Yeah. Sometimes there's a big difference in the water between the back of the boat and the front of

the boat too. So you can definitely, yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Chester, real quick, after you guided fishermen for how long? Since 2012. I think somewhere right around in there. What's the biggest, just in very general terms,

what is the biggest mistake or flaw you come to see with anglers? Like if you could give one piece of universal advice to fishermen, it would be what? This is going to sound like, yeah, well, of course, but it's so true. It's spend your time with your bait, your flies or whatever in the water. Because a lot of people get out there they're messing around with their rods they're trying to get to the spot and if you actually think about it their lines were only in the water for an hour and a half out of a six hour day because they spend so much time messing around so having your stuff dialed and ready to go is key because you'll just have it in the water in front of the fish's face.

Like the less false casting when you're fly fishing, the better. Just pick it up, get it in there and try and keep it in there as long as you can. And it just ups your odds like you wouldn't believe. I'll tell you a story about that, about lines in the water. When Cal and I were fishing in Hawaii this year, we were doing something pretty close to the harbor. It just got like end of the day. Just going to zip into the harbor, be done for the day.

Set that line back, didn't you? Wahoo. On the way in? Just not. You know what I mean? Just like an afterthought almost. Throw a line out. They ain't going to catch anything in the boat.

Yeah. Boom! That was in, you said Hawaii, right? Yeah, that was great. Yeah, it happened so fast that the first thing that came to my brain

was like, ah, I screwed up the reel. Like, how did I do that? That's amazing. No, it was great, man. And that's like a significant fish. You know, like the click reels?

Yeah. Oh, the first thing I thought was I thought he somehow broke something. Right. Because, like, there's no other way to explain why that reel's going. And you guys landed that fish? Oh, yeah.

It was awesome. Yeah, right out in front of the marina. Yeah, you had some of that fish last night. It was delicious. Yeah. And Chester, in your defense, bud, you got us on the fish, man. We went out there to catch a lot of whitefish, and we did. At some point, we even said, hey, listen, we don't need to catch anymore.

We switched over, tried to catch a couple troutfish and we did at some point we even said hey listen we don't need to catch anymore let's try this we switched over tried to catch a couple a couple trout which we did so if i had to rate you because i don't think i did yesterday and i don't have a lot of experience that was my first river fly fishing uh drift but 10 being this like thing that you know this unicorn that maybe doesn't exist i'd throw you in there you know i'd give you a good 8.2. Thank you. In general angling, I've fished a lot of circumstances. I would put Chester higher. Just general angling, very high. Wow.

I don't want to put a number to it. Pick the hell of a time to quit guiding, Chester. It was a blast, though. I mean, having bobbers go down and catching whitefish, like a lot of people do not like that for some odd reason. They don't like catching whitefish, but, man, it's fun just putting fish in the boat. And I'm glad you brought that up, Chester, because it kind of reminded me of something a friend of mine told me, and it just really resonates.

It's like that first fish, that bobber goes goes down and before the client or the person fishing, you know, knows they still hoping it's this big brown trout or rainbow. And then when this white fish comes up, you know, how many times you hear like, oh, you know, like a little disappointment, but as you were fighting it, you feel you had this grin on ear to ear, like you were a kid, you know, catching your first fish. And I just hate that when it's like, you get disappointed when it's not like the, the Instagram picture fish that you wanted, you know, and, and the whitefish, I mean, that was just, they don't come, they weren't jumping out of the water doing these crazy aerials, but

they were a ton of fun to catch. And then we ended up cooking a bunch of them and they were just phenomenal. I just give me whitefish any day. It was so much better than I thought they were going to be. My favorite thing about that kind of fishing is, and we're drifting down a river in a drift boat, fishing nymphs under the water with a float bobber. And inevitably you hook some bottom, you hook logs, you hit some rocks.

But it's like when you tighten up on a hit and you feel the resistance, but you also realize that it moved. Right. In a familiar way. Sure. A good head tug. That moment is what I like. Oh, it's the best. When you know it's a fish. It's there, but then it's like, it does something.

Yeah. And you're like, ah, ha. Doesn't get old. Another. Oh, go ahead. Another former fishing guide that we work with was saying that this is a dang good year to not be guiding on the Yellowstone because of uh the hoot owl restriction restrictions that are sure to come and uh like the the heat wave we have coming up do you share that sentiment low water chester yeah i mean for people that don't

know these rivers out here once they hit i think it's around 70 degree water temps um you you want to shut the rivers down because with all this pressure shut the rivers down to fishing at a certain time they call it a hoot owl so at two o'clock wait a hoot owl a hoot owl yep yeah they need to rebrand it yeah so you just can't you can fish in the mornings um but they don't want you fishing when that water gets above that certain temperature, just because it's really hard on the fish and it can kill them. And it's a really low water year. So, I mean, usually the Yellowstone's the last river out here to kind of be put in a hoot owl, but, um, the way things are going, it's probably going to be a pretty warm year for these fish. And I would say if, if you fancy yourself a angler and you want to keep fishing during those times, you should really switch over from catch and release to catch and keep like.

Oh, instead of going and letting 30 of them go? Yeah. You're going to be killing a high percentage of fish. I mean, even when those temps are in the sixties. Yeah. And I think if you are fishing, then it's like, if you're going to release, fight them fast. Like a lot of people like to keep them on and it's just like, get them in the boat and

in the mornings when it's still cool, you can release them. If you're fighting them fast, fight them fast, unhook them, get them back. You're still killing fish. If you go on, you're feeling all good about yourself. You let it's warm out and you let 20 trout go that day you killed a bunch of trout you just did so what they just can't recover from the stress of the of the catch exactly when it's hot it's worse and trout are sensitive right i mean like you know they've done these like mortality things with largemouth bass i mean you still gotta know, you should handle them gently and all that, but they're

not nearly as susceptible. Sure. They're not nearly as susceptible as trout are. Trout are like, are very fragile in hot temperatures. Cold water, high oxygen or death, right? I mean, for the most part. They don't do well, but I, you know, you talk

to bass guys and they'll look at them afterward and it's just hard to, not trying to say you should go stick your finger over their gills and all that, but they're tougher. Sure. But you're glad you're out of the guiding game for this summer, Chester. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's really busy out there, and I've kind of had my time.

I'm happy where I'm at. But, yeah, it's going to be a rough year. I think. I feel like there are, is it kind of a young man's game or young person's game for that matter? You know, uh, like I'm sure there's some, some older folks that just, you know, go for, you know, 40, 50 years or something, but you know, just being on the boat with you for a day, doing that every day. I'm sure it's like when it's, when it's go time, it's like guys are probably out there as much as possible. right? Like making hay when it shines. I could see that, you know, being taxing.

It's not an easy job. It's fun, right? But you're working. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I do know some guys that are really old and they've done it for a long time. And I'm surprised that they keep on going. But young man's game for sure. Because you get bitter.

Yeah, bitter and kind of lazy a lot of those old guys they kind of just went through the motions after a while and they'd still catch fish but um definitely a young man's game uh you know what chester told me too um is that after lunch time people get sluggish starts to get warm eat their lunch. They always think the fishing got worse. They don't realize that they're comatose from lunch. You got lazy. And they're hot. Sure, slow down.

Yeah, that's universal. Because they're not. They're just kind of like, ugh. I think that's why it's smart to really have kind of a light lunch, right? You go bring some big Italian sub and a bag of chips. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's going to put you down, you know? I feel like you need something just lean, like sushi.

I know it's not like the best boat thing to bring around. Oh, shit, I forgot about our sushi. Oh, I got it. And I'm plugging it. And, you know, something that can keep you kind of like, you know, protein, a little carbohydrate, you know, but not like fill you up. Oh, yeah.

Bread's kind of the enemy, I think, when you're fishing. Yeah, that's when you should break out those open-faced sandwiches. You don't want to do the closed face at lunch. That's a mistake. That's a good point, man. That'd be a good fishing guide trick. Too much. Too many carbs.

Reduce the bread by a half, you catch a hell of a lot more fish. You'd catch 25% more fish. There you go. I solved it. Okay, I want everybody to remember that what precipitated that long conversation was me pointing out about uh spencer being titillated no doubt how he will become titillated when we turn to stream access because of the implications for his rock hounding and i have a feeling as well that when we're talking about low water and all the the bad things about that when it comes to agricultural irrigation that hurts that,

hurts fish, he's over there licking his lips, thinking about all those rocks, previously unexposed rocks that he's going to pick through during the global end times of low water. So here's another river access issue. A lot of people, I shouldn't say a lot, a handful of people wrote in about this. Years ago, I wrote a book and a big part of the book, the book is called American Buffalo and it had kind of like two things that made it happen. I found a skull. I found a buffalo skull at a high elevation. It was like a really nice skull and I explore this skull a lot.

And I explore the history of the species and all that. But another big part of the book is I drew a permit to, I drew a limited draw permit to hunt for a buffalo in an area of the Wrangell, St. Elias in Alaska. And we got a lot of people writing in about this because when you have this, this permit, I think the permit number is called DI-454. If you were to be, if you were to draw DI-454, you, and you get to looking at a map, you realize there's a real problem.

You have to access the hunt area along a river and and most things along the river is native corporations so in alaska like tribes are formed into corporations and these corporations have shareholders which is tribal members and they're into all manner of businesses they could be logging mining um tourism things you know they have investments all over the world uh a lot of extraction industry and other stuff. And they're managed on the lands are managed on behalf of these shareholders. At the time that I drew the permit and wrote the book, um, there was no way you could go on Ahtna land to hunt, right? You had to find, and if you look at a map, they own the Ahtna land, the native corporation land is like a corridor on each bank of the river.

And it's hard to find little avenues to get up into the Wrangell St. Elias to hunt without trespassing on Ahtna land. You kind of got to walk up creek bottoms and stuff like that to get in there. Then for years, Otna started this program. After I had the permit, Otna started this program where they would sell trespassing rights. And they sold for a lot of money, but I think a lot of guys bought it. It was like a thousand bucks. So if you drew DI 454,

you could write a check to the native corporation for a thousand bucks and it would allow you to trespass and hunt Otna land. and it became like a lot of people's avenue to hunt atna just now here's another thing i'll point out um i used to run ads in like the anchorage daily news they would run ads basically saying like hey hunters don't go on our land. Like reminding you not to go on their land to hunt. They just issued a press release saying they're not allowing access on their lands anymore. They're not selling hunting access. And a lot of people wrote in like, oh, the world's coming to an end. I feel like they have short memories.

Because for a super long time you couldn't either then you could for a short period of time and now you can't again i don't think the world's coming to an end i think it's kind of like it's just where it was now that they should people been hunting that damn people been people been hunting that hunt success i mean it's it's the success rates are very low but a lot of people don't even show up like the year i had they gave out 24 permits and four of us got one low success rate i don't think it's low because of that now do you think they shut it down because sure they had say the 20 folks that had permission but then some folks just saw that as like well the frigate you know they're doing it so we can just kind of tail into it. I have no idea why.

It might be that shareholders felt that the interruption wasn't worth the money. I don't know. Sure. I have no idea why. It'd be interesting to know. I don't know. I'm not like curious enough to really find out. I don't know that they don't have any obligation to explain why.

It's private land. They don't want to sell the permits anymore, but I just think that I don't think you can look at that and say that it's indicative of anything because it's private property, right? It's not like a closure of, cause in Alaska, they're also right now facing like very serious closures of federally managed public lands to hunting. That's something to get in our open arms about but you just don't have any control over what they want it's their property it's their land they're going

to do it or not do it but i don't think it's emblematic of some broader thing but it brings up this stream access stuff because you can to get through this narrow buffer and in some places this buffer is like a couple hundred yards on either side to get through it. You get into a stream and you put waders on and wade up that stream to get across the buffer and then you can go wherever the hell you want. Think about that. Where's my interest meter?

I'll turn it. Oh, I mean, I think that is the thing with stream access, right? Like that's why it's such an important rule to fight for. Why, in my opinion, the folks in New Mexico need that those waterways are a vital mode of transportation and always have been. And if you're like to hunt and fish, they remain vital modes of transportation. Even beyond that, if you're a savvy like bird watcher, mushroom picker or whatever, Like it is a means, it's a road. Yeah, it's the highway.

Yeah, exactly. If you're sitting there wondering, why the hell is Cal talking about New Mexico all of a sudden? Well, because we're going to be joined right now real quick. This is all going to become relevant. We're going to be joined right now real quick by Senator Martin Heinrich, who's been on the show before. He's a Senator.

He likes to hunt and fish. You go into his office. You been in his office in DC? I have. Yep. All kinds of skulls and hides and stuff hanging around. Oh yeah. Some cool stuff.

No doubt. It has cost him. He's probably gained from it. It's probably cost him. Yeah. I imagine it. If you were a truly savvy politician, you would not lay any cards out on the table.

No. You'd be like, I am a blank sheet of paper. But he lays them out hard. Yeah, he's got horns and antlers, and it's great. We're going to talk about a stream access issue in new mexico right now but um he's gonna explain what's going on there and then we're gonna tell you uh as well about why it matters to you 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

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Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Okay, we're joined here right now by Senator Martin Heinrich from New Mexico, longtime friend of the show. I've hunted with the senator. First off, first question, we're going to talk about river access, stream access rules. Picture this for a minute, just to set the stage. You, the listener, picture this. Picture that you go down to a boat launch on a river, or on a lake, let's say. And you launch your boat. So you go to the boat

launch, you launch your boat, and then you float down the river or you cruise along the shoreline. And all of a sudden you're not out in front of the river access anymore. You're out in front of some dude's house, or you're out in front of a business, or you're floating down the river and you're going down the river. And on the right right hand side is private property, it's homes. And on the left hand side, it's private property, it's homes. How is it that you're allowed to be in the river, even though one could argue that you're floating through private land? Many of us grow up, live our lives doing this without ever stopping to ask the question,

hey, why is it I'm allowed to float down a river? Some people know in certain states, they know that that's a hell of a lot more complicated than it is in most states. And we're going to look at a microcosm of some rules and potential rule changes in New Mexico, which remains relevant to whether you live in new mexico or not because we're going to talk about how those rules exist challenges to those rules and so it's not like so much new mexico news it's kind of american news but we're

looking at a case in new mexico but first uh senator Heinrich, did you draw any sweet hunting tags for New Mexico this year? One. I've got a bull elk tag in Unit 50, which is the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument. So I'm looking forward to that. One of my favorite things about Senator Heinrich is that as a U.S. Senator, he, I mean, among many other hunts, one hunt, as a U.S. Senator, he drew a muzzleloader tag on national forest land. And so if you're walking down the trailhead, you would like pass a guy packing out a bull which he got packing out a bull with his muzzle loader and probably wouldn't be like i bet that guy's a u.s senator um just out knocking around on national forest land which is kind of i don't know tickles me so senator heinrich walk us through kind of like how stream access has been defined in New Mexico and how could it be that they still are in 2022 or 21, sorry, are asking questions about what it means? because that was the basis for how stream access actually got codified in supreme law in the New Mexico constitution. There was a long history in New Mexico of both Indian tradition,

tribal tradition, and then Spanish law of people being able to access streams, including for fishing. So including wading, because unlike a lot of places in New Mexico, navigability is not a standard. You know, our streams are, they're not perennial in some cases, even the Rio Grande goes dry in stretches. So New Mexico has a little bit of a different tradition of what is considered a public stream than you might have in a riparian state or a prior appropriation state, which means that the beneficial use of water, which includes fishing, is something that is held by the public. And so in our state constitution, that's protected. And I think what has changed is that we've had folks move to New Mexico who were used to laws in other places, used to traditions in other places used to riparian law and there has been an effort which

a previous governor supported uh to use the law to sort of supersede the constitution and change the standard for what is a public stream that you can fish in and wade in senator do you mind explain to people what you mean when you say navigable? Like how it works in some states around whether it's navigable or not? So in many states, the standard by which you can access a stream or not access a stream, in many states that's based on whether the stream is navigable. Because New Mexico has a different history and a different geography, that has never been a legal standard in our state. It's not a word that comes up in

the Constitution. It's actually not the standard that the Supreme Court, when they ruled on whether or not people had this right to be able to wade and fish in our streams, never has the word navigable come up until the last few years in trying to sort of set a new standard and a new way of doing things. You know, we have a standard in our constitution and we have a Supreme Court ruling in our state that says New Mexico streams and waters have always been public. And that includes accessibility specifically for fishing, even if private lands abut those streams on either side. So say someone, you mentioned people moving to New Mexico and not having a, perhaps a, a, a deep reverence for the way things have been managed in New Mexico for perhaps hundreds of years. What would they look at if they, they move in on a stream and they own both sides of the stream and they see people waiting around fishing and they want to put an end to that.

How do you, like, what is the argument you come out and make? Clearly, you just want to have it be that it's for you and not for other people, but you can't frame it that way, right? You have to probably try to frame it around some kind of logic. Yeah, and typically what you will hear from some of the people who are trying to, you know, string barbed wire across streams that have never been off limits to the public is that, you know, there are people who will abuse that resource. And I think that's, you know, it's an issue that appeals to all of us. I mean, if somebody is going to litter, if somebody is is gonna be behaving

in a way that's not respectful of the fishing resource or of the stream itself you can regulate all those things and you can throw the book at somebody who doesn't respect the the legal principle that the land the private land on the sides of those streams, uh, is private land and you can't trespass on it. So there are a whole bunch of ways to get at the primary argument, which is if you let people do this, there are going to be beer cans in the streams and there's going to be, you know, those fishermen there, they, they don't respect, um, anything. And, and we're going to have a mess on our hands. So I think even if you buy that argument, the way to fix that is to set really strict rules.

And, you know, in my experience, anybody who can read a fishing proclamation is usually pretty good at following the rules. And I think that's the appropriate way to resolve some of these conflicts and still respect the property right that every New Mexican has to those streams. Have you guys in New Mexico, have you seen a gradual reduction in how many streams the public is able to access? Have people who are opposed to open stream access, have they made progress? Yes. who did not agree with the Supreme Court ruling and the history, signed a law that allowed people to apply to Game and Fish

to certify that their streams are non-navigable. And the problem with that is navigable is not the standard that our Constitution uses. It's not the standard that our Supreme Court used when they ruled on this issue all the way back in 1947. So we're now trying, there's a court case to overturn that new law because you can't overturn the Constitution with a new law. And we have seen people stringing barbed wire across streams that people used to float, that people used to wade, that people fished in for hundreds of years. And that's something that has a real cultural resonance in our state. So you have, or the state of New Mexico rather, has a pending list of requests coming in from landowners to close off.

How many are we talking about? It's a handful, but if they continue to approve these, it's going to be, in my view, death by a thousand cuts because it'll happen over and over and over again. We've seen a previous game commission approve some. I wrote to the current game commission and said, you don't get to make a ruling that's in conflict with the constitution. So hold off and see what the Supreme Court says on this. So that's your request, is to stop, is while it's pending and while it's being litigated, to stop acting on a ruling that could be unconstitutional and stop granting closures. Yeah, and I think they have the full authority, to be clear, to deny these applications outright, given that we have a number of attorney generals'

opinions that says that the Constitution does not allow excluding the public from public water, even if it's running through private property. In a case like this, where the Game Commission receives the inquiry or the request, can you comment on, or is it safe to say, what their attitude about it is? Are they just trying to be compliant? Or does the state Game Commission, do they have a stated opinion about this? So the current Game Commission has not acted on this. It's a different commission makeup than when that law was passed. And so this will potentially set the die for their position on this going forward.

And so we don't know for sure what the game commission is going to do. What do you feel is going to happen in New Mexico when the Supreme Court weighs in on it? Do you have a prediction? I feel cautiously optimistic about the Supreme Court because the facts of the law haven't changed. And there are so many facts that sort of stack up against the admissibility of the current law. We have three different attorney generals over the years just flat out saying that this is the standard. You can't exclude people from public waters. You have the underlying language in the New Mexico Constitution. And then you have case law.

So in 1947, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled in a case called the State v. Red River Valley Company that expressly rejected the idea that public water could be rendered inaccessible because it's surrounded by private land. I got a question for you that you got to give people a little physics, or not physics. What do they call it when you study government in high school? Civics, not physics. Man, I'd be lost.

I prefer physics, but I'll try with civics. You prefer, yeah. Senator Heinrich was trained as an engineer so i understand that but yeah we're gonna do we're gonna do civics how okay you as a as a u.s senator you're elected by the people of new mexico correct me if i'm wrong here you're you're elected by the people of new mexico to represent their interests in what at a federal level in washington dc is it normal and is it considered um is it kind of like okay and normal for you to then come around and kind of communicate to state agencies at a state level? Are you like carpetbagging or how does that work? No, I'm simply standing up for my constituents and for the rights and privileges and property

privileges that they've always had. And, you know, I think there's a long history of, you know, Senator Udall, who just retired, was also was an advocate for these same rights, both when he was attorney general at the state level. And then once he became a sitting senator, in fact, the two of us wrote an amicus brief to the New Mexico Supreme Court case that's in front of the court right now. And, you know, I think if people don't step up and protect the historic rights of the hunting and fishing community, and in this case, fishing, traditional wading, we will lose that resource and we'll never get it back. Do you mind helping people who don't live in New Mexico understand a little bit about why this subject is real for them? And I think you're qualified to do that because the position you hold, you're made aware of how these issues have ramifications across the whole country. And no doubt you have colleagues who deal with similar problems. So can you kind of sketch out how people might look at what's happening here and then better understand risks to their own hunting and fishing rights where they live? particular, we have seen all across the country a lot of streams where there is a clear easement

of some sort, a property right that belongs either to individuals or in many cases to the public. And it's true on streams, it's often true on beaches where people have said, I don't want to recognize that property right. And I'm going to chase you off this because I have property next door. And that private property right conveys both ways. You get to make decisions about your property, but you can't take away a long established private property right from somebody else. And we've seen too many episodes of people getting chased off of gravel bars and beaches on streams that are clearly according to the law. And you're someone who, having read your books, I know how you accessed your bison hunt in Alaska. That is a property right to be able to use the stream to get to

where you need to go. And there are more and more efforts now to either change that outright or make it so hard and so unpleasant to use that stream resource for travel that people will just quit doing it. And I think that's a very dangerous, for lack of a better term, slippery slope. All right. Senator Heinrich, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for explaining this issue. Hope you have a lot of good luck on it. If there's any last final thoughts you want to add in and you have time, go ahead. If not, look forward to having you in our studio sometime soon. No, it's always an honor to join your listeners. I'm really just grateful for what you all have done to really create a picture of the sporting community that is complex and nuanced and really food focused.

And I'm really grateful for that because it helps me explain why I'm so passionate about hunting and fishing, uh, to constituents and friends who, who aren't part of that community. Oh, well, thank you very much. And, uh, best of luck to you. Enjoy the weather there in Washington, DC, and we will talk to you soon. Thanks again. Where do they make all that Callahan? Boy, very similar, right? Like it's, uh, an issue that I think will keep popping up, uh, amongst the, the changing landscape of the West, right? Like recreation versus private property rights when it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Um, in regards to New Mexico specifically, if you would like to weigh in on this issue,

I believe the best place to go is the New Mexico Fish and Game Commission. Very easy to access information. You'll be able to email, I believe, the commission as an entity and then individual commissioners. You can also track down letters that you can sign on to at New Mexico Wildlife Federation, New Mexico Wildlife Federation and New Mexico Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. And then you whitewater folks, American Whitewater, I believe, is involved in this one as well. Thank you, Cal. Call to action, Cal.

Call to action. Yeah, I'm trying to think of a better rhyme. I'll work on it, Cal. Gotta have it. Call to action, Cal. Let's call it a Cal to action. Oh! Damn it!

Damn it, he nailed it! A Cal to action! God, man. You can't be slow around Phil. He just sits there sometimes. You just wonder if he's like, you know, but he's just stewing away, man. He's coming up with the zingers. He's not wasting a bunch of time talking about stupid shit.

He's just waiting to get in there with something good. God. It's the cow to action. Did you think about that last night laying in bed? No, man. Just hit you right now. Just came to me. I don't know what to say.

My goodness. You can't contain it. My goodness. Boondock Saints, they have an analogy on 7-Eleven. It says, we're not always doing business, but we're always open. That's Phil right there. Man, that was really, really deeply impressive when i was growing up um i lived on a lake and like the you know michigan walk around the lake right you just walk along

the shoreline and uh you don't go in people's yards we just walk along the beach and the thinking had always been when you put a when you put your dock okay, you're like putting a dock out out over public property, right? So everybody put a dock out, but you could go along the beach and go out and cast off everybody's dock. Nice. Virtually everyone is on board with this. Virtually everyone's on board with this. Virtually everyone's on board with this. But there's certain people around the lake, when you were a kid, you knew that when you went out on their dock, someone was going to come yell at you. Yeah, I don't know how I feel about that. Like, if I had a dock.

Don't put your dock out in my water. And then, but then all of a sudden, what happens if, you know, if little Tommy comes on the dock and breaks his leg? Oh, come on. I hate to go there, but that's the world we're in. I'm just telling you this. There were certain people. Curmudgeons. Oh, I guess I'm one of them.

The worst offender died off. They all do. The worst offender died off. I'll even, you know, it was, I don't know how long ago. You know what? Hey, it was her decision. Mrs. Angelo was... And we were Italians too. So she didn't even give us the old Italian to Italian deal.

Very un-Italian of her. Very un-Italian to not let another Italian. What kind? We stick together with the old world people. That's right. So Miss Angelo somehow got away with it. My entire childhood, no one went and challenged her. Yeah.

She was nasty, huh? She would not let you on her dock. She wouldn't let, she wouldn't, you could like go along her beach, but she didn't even like you to loiter for a minute. Yeah. Totally illegal. But no one challenged her. Oh, okay.

So legally you were allowed to go. You're allowed to walk along the beach. You're allowed to, you can't, you can't, you putting a platform out over the water doesn't mean you own, it's like you're borrowing the space. Right. But no one would stick up to Miss Angelo. Yeah. I wouldn't.

As a young kid. Oh, she was mean. They gave you the, there's a lot of other docs. She was mean. Type of thing. Right. Yeah. I guess I was, yeah. She was like, yeah, I don't mean. They gave you the, there's a lot of other docs. She was mean. Type of thing. Yeah, I guess that was, yeah, she was like, yeah, just, you know,

30 docs. She's going to a different doc. Is Miss Angela's doc the best doc? Or? Well, let me tell you, she was right on the channel. Ooh.

So she was like, there's a channel that connected our lake, Middle Lake, with West Lake. And so. She had the spot. It was an interesting little area. Yeah.

And that channel was a big lily pad thing, and bluegills would come up there because the water would warm up in there. So, yeah, you wanted to be around there. Oh, plus not being able to go there makes it an even better spot, especially as a kid. Grass is greener, man. Oh, yeah. What's she hiding? Yeah.

She had a flat roof. I feel like my old man once said that there was a bunch of water on there and he saw a duck land up there. I don't know. I feel like that sticks in my head. You know how bass anglers like to pull bass out of the shadows of people's personal docks? They get real intimate with personal docks. Yeah. I saw on a fishing group yesterday.

It was like fishing, open water fishing, Minnesota. Somebody posted a picture of a dock that they were rolling up on to pull bass out of the shadows from. And a motion activated sprinkler turned on. And started spraying their boat. That's like an evolution that I don't know if we ever saw. That's dirty. Yeah. In Lake Washington, which is that big ass lake in Seattle, there's apartment buildings

built like on piers and you can fish the shadows of apartment buildings. And you're basically like looking into people's bathrooms and stuff out of your boat, you know, but still then no, like no one would come out and holler at you. And what are you pulling out of there? You'd find bluegills and smallmouth in there. In the shadows. In the shadows. And the bluegills, weirdly, would come up,

even if it's 10, 12 feet of water, they'd come up and lay. Sun. Well, no, shading. But weirdly, they'd come up to the surface to lay in the shade. Huh. You'd look and they'd just be everywhere.

You think it's because the water was just a little warmer on the top liked about it yeah i don't know i don't know what they're like you catch them out of there though uh brad yes sir um with that taken care of i gotta cover off i'm gonna talk about some stuff but i would i would appreciate it if you would begin serving your bluefin tuna i hope i you'd never ask. I got it sliced up. We got some bluefin. I got a little bit of shoyu with some friends that I make out in coastal Connecticut. Oh, you make that? Yeah.

Tell people what shoyu is. Yeah, so it's just a Japanese name for soy sauce, which is kind of- If you want to be pretentious, you can say shoyu. Well, I mean, no. I mean, if it's a Japanese style, I guess, right? So I don't think all soy sauces are, and that's kind of a blanket term. You can say it without being pretentious. He's being precise.

Because this is your world. It's your business. He's being precise. Sure. And it's just, it's a respect thing too, you know? And like my, and the folks that I make it with, we were highly influenced by Japanese cuisine. So I think it was just, it's a nice thing to, and it was a major conversation we had.

Do we call it soy sauce or shoyu on the bottle? And I, you know, given that most of the, you know, the people that are going to be buying this are from America. It was like, you know, I, and we all voted, let's keep it, show you. Listen, that was a horrible thing I said. What? No, no, it wasn't. When I said about the pretentious thing. No, it was perfect. And anyway, we're going to

drizzle that and this is something we make. It's, it's aged. It's like a, it's like a year old process and it's just koji, soybeans, water, and it ferments back to old fermentation. And this is just a nice little umami liquid that comes off it. And you got a bag of cooked rice. Yeah.

A little jalapeno. Cal brought that for us. A little wasabi. I brought the tuna and a little shoyu. I'll just do a little drizzle and then anyone who wants it. Yeah. Go that direction because I'm going to talk about something. Yeah.

And listen, it's not fishy. It's as fresh as it gets. It was frozen with the skin wants it. Yeah, go that direction because I'm going to talk about something. Yeah. And listen, it's not fishy. It's as fresh as it gets. It was frozen with the skin on it. And when we defrosted it, the skin had a little bit of a fishiness. In case anyone was wondering. Listen, I'm very excited. This is going to taste better knowing that a buddy of yours named Vinny from New Jersey. Seriously, thanks Vinny.

No, Connecticut. Thank you, Vinny. Connecticut. It'd be different if it was a guy named Steve. Like, that would mean less. Yeah, because Vinny is just so like, it's just stupid.

Yeah. Vinny makes this even better. No, like a guy named Steve is like my interest meter. I just turn it down. What's a guy named Steve going to bring to this? Vinny might be,

today may be the first time we've uttered the name Vinny on this show. You think? Yeah, I think so. This is the inaugural appearance of a man named Vinny. Well, we'll see how this tuna goes.

If you guys invite me out here next time, I'll bring old Vincenzo and we'll talk a tune. Speaking of names, Guy wrote in. His last name's Fisher. So his name, this fella's name is Austin Fisher. And he and his wife are expecting

a child in December, their first child. He wants to name, he doesn't care if it's a boy or a girl. He wants to name it Hunter. Yeah, I love it. Thinking that, what better name than Hunter Fisher? His wife is not too hip to it. She's not completely right at all, but she said after some serious discussion,

his wife said that if Giannis or Steve says Hunter Fisher is a good name on the podcast, we can name our child Hunter. Hmm. Do I want to do that? Take a poll. Do I want to do that? A lot of pressure on you.

Now, I generally, generally would advise against naming him Hunter because I think it can backfire. Popular name these days. Yeah, but I think it can backfire. A lot of hunters name their kid Hunter thinking they're going to be a hunter. Kid's going to get made fun of. I named my kid James. He's a big time hunter. If I'd have named him Hunter, maybe he'd have been like, I don't know.

It's just so much pressure. It's too much. Kid doesn't need that. But his last name is Fisher. Hunter Fisher? No. I mean, the kid's going to get made fun of. Dude, I love it.

No, you can't do it. Can't do it. Yeah, you can. What do you think, Cal? Legally, you can. Cal's thinking hard. I think you go by your last name, right? So I had a dog named Fisher, and I called her

the Big Fish. If somebody just goes around and says, Hey Fish, come over here. That's a catchy name. That's a good name. I would say, go with whatever first name you want, and the kid's going to go by Fish. I'm going to bring this back to a conversation I had with my wife

when we were trying to name... Ah, that's good. It is very good. Thanks, Vinny and Brad. That is amazing. Yeah, this is freaking incredible. I want to have Vinny on the show, man. God, it's so good. We were contemplating calling our second son Porter, which is a name I like.

Like a guy that carries things? Yeah, sure. But our last name is Taylor. Porter Taylor? That sounds like a clothing store. Exactly. I don't like the last syllable matching with, you know, Porter, Taylor, Hunter, Fisher.

That's where I draw some beef, too. So Phil's saying no. I'm saying no. Spencer? I don't love it. Chester? Whatever floats their boat. I guess it's the one thing.

If you have a kid, you get to name it. That's like, you got that. You earned that one. So go ahead and name it whatever you want, but think about the child. And I bring that up. This has nothing to do with that kind of naming, but I have two kids, and my wife she our first son she had this idea my last name's leonie and she had this like family name this guy

one great great uncle's name was caesar you know like his french guy or something and uh she was like why don't we name our kids caesar leonie and i'm like are you out of your mind caesar leonie and we're from new jersey just shut that right down we know is he gonna make black and white yeah he's gonna be in jail what's he gonna do but nothing good but i but here's can i point out a hypocrisy in you brad go right ahead you yesterday guy doesn't miss anything you yesterday were telling me something that uh that a that a food biologist or something told you rosemary trout shout out to rosemary you said you pointed out that you especially

believed her because her name was rosemary trout yeah oh it's a good one steve you're right i i didn't name her so i'm glad her parents did but you're like how could you argue with someone named rosemary trout so now about a food issue and i'm like sure man i'm not gonna argue a woman named rosemary trout about food and i named my daughter rosemary so hunter fisher should he become so inclined he better be good at it steve you're like if if i'm talking to a guy and i'm like uh i'm at a wedding you know and you're bored out of your mind you always find the person likes to talk to them guy and i'm like uh i'm at a wedding you know and you're bored out of your mind you always find the person likes to talk to them so and i get they're like oh you know you should talk to that guy he likes to hunt fish and i go over and hey what's your name i heard like to hunt fish

is that my name is hunter fisher dude i'm in i'm in great bar i'm in i'm open to what they have to say i think it's a great idea. It's great bar talk. If you're going to name your kid Hunter Fisher, you've got a lot riding on that. They better be into it. What if he's a rock hound? Or what if he turns out to be a librarian? Oh, Hunter Fisher the librarian?

I guess it works. Maybe the compromise here is middle name. Hunter. Bob Hunter Fisher. No. Joe Hunter Fisher. Compromise here is middle name, Hunter. Bob Hunter Fisher. No, Joe Hunter Fisher. Ecologist Hunter Fisher. Joe Hunter.

Don't. Oh, he thinks he's Joe Hunter Fisher. No, he is Joe Hunter Fisher. It's his name. He doesn't think he's Joe Hunter Fisher. Yeah. If your name's Hunter Fisher or Rosemary Trout, you got to go doctor. You got to go straight, go all the way.

Go first name as doctor. First name as doctor. Did we talk about this on this show? This reminds me of there's a doctor who performs circumcisions, and his first name is Richard, is Dick. And his last name is Chop. No. No. Yes, he is.

Shut it down. Dr. Dick Chop. Oh, that was like on What's His Name's Late Night Show. Man, they really cut back on naming people Dick. Yeah. They all went Rick. They all went Rick. Richard's all just bailed on it and became Rick.

I went in to watch my boys get circumcised, and it's like now a lot of people are opting to not do that. You know? Like, a buddy of mine didn't do it with his kid. He's like, I don't know, man. Like, first thing that happens to him when he's born, first thing that happens to him is he gets, like, sexually mutilated. It was intense.

I don't know. It was like, welcome to the earth, you know? It's intense. But we did it because people do it. And we're just like very, you know, pure pressure. Yeah. So I was like, I don't know. And then I've also heard people do it and not do it because they were like afraid that

they wanted their genitalia to look like their kids because they thought it would cause confusion for their kids. That's where my brain went. Really? I was like, yeah, I just want the boys looking different than dad. It was very selfish. I felt bad afterwards. I was like, oh my God, these poor children.

I'm guessing there's other significant differences when they're a little boy. I'd hope so, Steve. So I went in to watch it happen. I went in with the person, which I think is common to go in. And she was doing it, cutting it off. And I said something to the effect of, wow. And the person doing it says, oh, it's brutal. Yeah, while doing it.

Here's something interesting for you, Spencer. My interest meter is already way up. I could talk for oddly. I was very into talking about where are those meters they're they're back here we can plug them in come on next time i'd like to have them plugged in we'll do it they'll be ready do you feel that falls under your responsibilities oh yeah absolutely because i thought maybe you were like dude last i need another thing rolled in under my uh under under my like uh bailiwick well i've told Corinne I thought the interest me. Listen,

craftsmanship incredible. Thanks to the guy who made them. I think it's a terrible idea. I didn't know. Man, right out in the public. He says that. Yeah. Where's the other half of that sandwich? Yes. Oh, yeah. Can you round it off and make it a compliment

sandwich? Great shoes. Oh, yeah. Can you round it off and make it a compliment sandwich? Great shoes. Oh, no, no, no. To the guy. You said beautiful craftsmanship. Oh. Horrible idea. Well, it was your idea. Here's one for you, Spencer, you'll like.

About your new tattoo. Brad, you look like a tattooed fella. No. No tattoos? I have one. I saw a tattoo on you. It's the worst. Let me see it again.

What is it? It's on my ankle. Hold on. I got to step away from the microphone. It's on my ankle, and it's my initials in a license plate kind of thing. But it's not my initials. We got it from this guy, Joe Buds,

when we were like 15. Your friends have great names. Joe Buds, criminal. Joe Buds, I don't know. I probably shouldn't say his name. He's going to kill me. But Joe Buds, we were like 15. He tattooed a bunch of kids.

And we all... You went right to Joe Buds' house. They're not fucking around you guys curse on here, I'm sorry people sure complain about it yeah, I'll avoid that, I'm sorry guys I do appreciate a good family show well, you know, that's the thing, a lot of people

it just happens on then, and people get upset and they're like, oh, you know, what about the kids, man, I'm all about the kids I just feel like I got bad mouth I just feel like, it's just, feel like it's just they're gonna find out they're gonna find out that there's naughty words they're gonna be watching uh you know like a mel gibson movie eventually they're gonna leave mel out of this whatever poor mel no they're gonna

be whatever you know they're gonna be watching an adventure movie yeah and there's gonna be a naughty word in it and are they then gonna turn off an adventure movie and there's gonna be a naughty word in it. And are they then going to turn off the adventure movie? Right. I'm kind of with you. They're gonna be watching adventures. I was watching adventures and babysitting with my kids. There's the F word. No kid.

No kid. No, I'm not gonna be like, okay, kids, we'll never find out what happens to these protagonists. Shutting her down. After this episode, if somebody's like, how dare you cuss in front of a child? You can be like, may I remind you that I contracted someone to brutally remove their foreskin. Tell how much I care about them.

I'm with you, Steve. I'm not anti-curse. No, I'm not anti-curse. In this platform that you have, and as a guest, I know it's the outdoors, we're talking about fish and a lot of really cool and important stuff. I want to keep it classy, personally. I think you should. I think you should. Yeah.

I think you should. I'm saying now, and then it happens. People get upset. Right. I, my advice to them is just like, uh,

water under the fridge. It's this, it's this, there's a lot that goes in. This is my personal viewpoint. There's a lot that goes into parenting. Okay. There's a lot that goes into parenting.

We want to make our kids compassionate resilient tough um to have empathy i think that you can achieve all those things whether they know about dirty words or not right agreed i don't think that them finding out about a naughty word is going to derail the whole plan right i don't and i have three of them and tony and suzy at school they're already hearing it you know it's just not going to be what make they're not going to wind up in jail the internet forget it we ain't the problem okay go ahead what are we talking about you were swearing about something oh i'm gonna get a cursing again but my tattoo yeah so it's it's bl on my ankle it's the only one i have but it stands for uh brad leone that's right no but it doesn't stand

for brad leone it does but like there's like 10 other kids that I went to school with that I grew up with. And we grew up in a lake community called Barry Lakes. And we all thought it was like this, like, yeah, no one really messes with it. It was like our little gang. Like no one would mess with a Barry Lake guy. No one messed with it. We were the mountain kids, you know? So like Vernon, New Jersey is right where the Appalachian Trail kind of runs through.

And that's where I grew up. And there was valley kids. And then there was mountain kids. And mountain kids, I mean, I don't know. Mountain kids, that's where it was at. They'll slash your tires. You don't know. Well, I don't know.

Valley kids were kind of criminals. Oh, okay. But we were like, we did all like the hunting. And I don't know. It was just very like tribal. Very like, you know, I feel like. So that's what that stands for. For Barry Lakes.

And you didn't think that it might not be a good idea because that's your initials no i no not really i was more like you're like oh you idiots got my initials on your ankles like that was like the first like kid thing that i thought of but uh yeah that went away and it was more like oh god you have to tell everyone now that like oh would you forget your name brad like you know it's like what people say all the time and just kind of explaining that but it could it could be worse you know you know i can't stop watching um it's alive yeah uh i'm watching an italian you have to read the whole damn thing but gamora years ago gamora was a movie about the neapolitan crime syndicate in Italy. Oh, yeah. Napoli, brutal.

So then they did a series, Gamora. Really? I usually avoid series because I don't like getting that. It takes too much time. Oh, I love it, man. Airplane. Airplane. You get ready to move on, but you can't. You want to go on to living your life, but you can't because you got to watch 5,000 episodes

of something. Well, you fly a lot. What do you do on the planes? I just can can't quit though but it's called gamora anyways in it there's a crime boss and he gets a new messenger he's in hiding and he has a new messenger and she's in a garbage removal business they're into a lot mostly narcotics okay they do a variety of things he has a messenger and she has a tattoo of a lioness on her arm and he asked her why do you have that tattoo and she said well i got it when my father died you have to read all this because it's an italian so i got it when my father died that's what he called me this means leone

well he says to her he says if you were a real lioness you wouldn't need that tattoo oh and she burned it off burned it with a hot spoon yes she did and then said who's the lioness now dude i'm just pointing that out she'd kill you and eat a pizza and feel fine about it she pointed out you could get a propane torch and a hot in a spoon so saying burn that thing off right on this show. Tell me I won't. We'll have him back on when he's ready to do it. That's what a real Barry Lake kid would do.

Get the boys in here so they can watch Dab. Oh my god. Reason I bring this up, Spencer's got that brand new tattoo on his arm. Next appointment is in August. To get it off? No, no, no. Get a second one.

Another tree? No. Well, what is it there, bud? It's a state tree or something like that. Oh, this one is a Black Hill Spruce. Grows in the Black Hills found in South Dakota and Wyoming. He's all proud of being from South Dakota. Very proud of it.

Yep. Check this out, Spencer. Mm-hmm. So these archaeologists have been looking at these sharpened turkey leg bones that they discovered. Are you hip to this? Yes. They found in Tennessee? Tell us about it. Sharpened leg bone of a turkey. Spencer will tell you. The needles date back

to 5,500 years ago to 3,600 years ago. The age, the tools were used by Native Americans and it brings back when they thought tattooing first occurred in North America more than a thousand years. You haven't established that they were used for tattooing. Go ahead.

You got this. No, I'm going to hand it back over to you. In 1985, they unearthed these mysterious sharpened turkey bones. They have come to determine that they believe they were used as tattooing tools. Take it away, Spencer. Interest meters way up, Spencer. Phil won't get them out. I know. That was good.

That was a good insert, Steve. Now they think that tattooing is a thousand years older than what they previously thought. Here in the u.s in north america you remember that ice man from the the italian alps oh i thought he was a killer no otzi remember him oh yeah they found him like yeah he had boot he was frozen he was thawing out of a uh thawing out of a glacier and he had like his boots are made of three different leathers. Right. Right.

Very like detailed. He was heavily tattooed 7,000 years old. Whoa. In Italy. Now, do you think they used avian or, you know, bird bones because they're hollow,

right? And they would pipe a little ink down there and just do little dots. Yeah. Cause the other thing that they found were, uh, I think some shells that had some like ochre residue in there so that that was like your your pigment your dye what's ochre red ochre is was like a very major kind of like trade item you still find it around but what is

it it's ox iron oxide okay yeah It's a naturally occurring pigment. Okay. Um, but pretty much limited, uh, to reds and blues, right? Reds and yellows. Reds and yellows. Like orange, orange, red, yellow. Uh, yeah, it's like a pigment. It was funny.

My kids found some one time turkey hunting and they didn't know about it, but they did with it what you're supposed to do. I come up and all their faces are yellow. And they found it and independently arrived at the idea that you would paint your skin with it. Amazing. Yeah, I still got the hunk they found. It's kind of cool. Oh, it's pretty soft. It's like something. Yeah, and another thing you do is you can

pulverize it and mix it with water and use it as a paint. Hmm. And these turkey bones look sharp as hell. Like you would earn that tattoo. Oh, I bet. Do you want to come on the show and have me tattoo you with a turkey bone? Your tattoo needle is sharp too. This show is going to take a very Jackassian.

If you guys broke out. It's going to take on Jackassian elements. When he burns his off and he gets a new one. Maybe that's a new video series idea. Let me tell you what. If you guys all of a sudden broke out this weird wooden box filled with turkey bone needles and some native pigments, I would get one right now with you.

There you go. I would do it, Steve. So the bones are pigment stained. Two turkey wing bones from the grave also bear microscopic wear and pigment residues but lack sharpened tips. While pigment-stained seashells are thought to have held inky solutions. So the whole kit, a shell to put it in, a mechanism to deliver it. Now, do you think there was, like, everyone did their own? Or was there, like, the tat artist back in the day who had his little

leather satchel full of stuff and, like, you know, you called Tony the tat guy? Or I guess you went and he was just, I don't know. You know, they probably did it to themselves. Or, like, just a little small inner tribal. The neighborhood artist. Yeah. And then, another question, since you guys are researching this a little bit, I wonder how much,

like, infection, I guess I don't know how you would know this, but like how much infection was prone when they were just like, oh, this stuff's green. Let's put it in a bird bone and start jabbing myself with it. Like, seems like a good way to get an infection. They're more rugged. And probably more infected. And there's probably, they were probably more dialed in, right? They probably had, I'm just assuming like they knew there was a type of leaf that they could put over it that like stopped infections.

I mean, I'm romanticizing it. Yeah, I'm with you. I'd like to believe. I think getting this tattoo was like a seven out of 10 on the pain scale, but this turkey bone, that looks like a 10 out of 10. Where are you getting your next one? I'm going to fill up my arm. I'm going to do a whole sleeve.

Really? Really. That's wild. So you're going to do your neck? Yeah, go neck. No, no, no. Not neck. Your face?

No. Just the arm. Just this one arm. Because your little goal. I don't know. It's a goal. Do you have a budget in mind? No.

No. I used to. I used to. Is your wife supportive? Yeah. Yeah. She wants you to look tougher. Sure. Nobody will wife supportive? Yeah. She wants you to look tougher. Sure.

Nobody will mess with me then. I used to like the idea of getting a tattoo, but I could never commit to something. And now, recently, the pendulum has swung so far the other way that any idea I have, I'm like, oh, I'm going to get that tattooed. I'm going to get that thing tattooed. Oh, you get rocks tattooed on your arm? I thought about a Fairburn agate, which has some real pretty distinct lines that you could actually tattoo. But the stuff that I collect, there's nothing there that would make for a good one-dimensional or two-dimensional piece of art.

Let's say you found that COVID had been worse and it killed everybody but you. You're the only human on earth. Would you get a tattoo? Great question. I wouldn't make this podcast. okay you're the only human on earth would you get a tattoo? great question I wouldn't make this podcast yeah right I don't know you'd have to do it yourself

sure but let's say there's one other guy a tattoo artist but you can't hang out with him you can go in there and get it but then that's it you can't talk to him ever again would you get a tattoo? yeah I think it's still satisfying you'd go get a tattoo and get it, but then that's it. You can't talk to them ever again. Would you get a tattoo? Yeah, I think it's still satisfying to me. You go get a tattoo. Sure. No one could see it. Yeah, that's fine. That's what he's trying to gauge, right?

Yeah, just you with you. How deep does that desire go? Yeah, I like it. So you're not just doing it because you want people to see it. I also, like, I'll sit here, I'll just look at it sometimes. So I like that part of it. It's entertaining to me. You didn't ask me, but

I feel like if there was no if I was the only person left, I'd be like tattooing the shit out of myself. I'd be like my like Wilson like ball. All of a sudden I'd be like tattooing new friends on my thigh. Sure, yeah. Spencer, would you ever get that BL tattoo on you?

No. Come on, you ain't in a gang anyway, pal. Here's my question. You ain't tough enough. Okay, so your arm is almost sleeved, but the designs you've chosen have left a gap of a certain size, right? So it's not filled in. Yep. At that point, could we do like a meat eater office type of fun thing where everybody puts in a legit drawing, like into a bowl that fits those dimensions.

Yep. And then you just randomly pick a designer. Oh, that'd be fun. I don't know. That'd be super fun. What do we get out of that? I feel like the better move is like having Steve get a tattoo. I'm very close to wanting a tattoo.

Really? My wife's like, you missed that boat. No, don't listen to her. She's like, it's just too late. This could be a money raising situation if something's wrong. Placement, where would it be? I want to get a map of the country with a turkey footprint everywhere I've gotten my Royal Slam. Because this next winter, I'm going to go get an oscillated or try, and then I'll be

a world slam holder, and then I'm going to have tattooed Central America on there. I'm with your wife. I take that. She thinks this is the stupidest idea. It is. I wouldn't do it. She's untattooed. She's not tattooed.

That sounds like a really cool poster or something you put in the office. Also, it's the tattoo idea you have a problem with not the act of him getting a tattoo no i for me i guess like i can't help but be selfish about it like i just always felt like man like six months i'm not gonna want to look at this anymore or like it's gonna piss me off or like you know there was a lot of things i really wanted to tattoo it onto myself over the years and like i'm just really glad i didn't there was a a guy that there was a, when I was in college, there was a professor and I remember overhearing him say to somebody, nothing looks better than a new tattoo and nothing looks worse than an old one.

My wife has, I think seven or eight tattoos. She has eight. Yeah. I asked her to rank them recently and the order goes from her most recent to her oldest. So there's, there's some of that at play for sure. Does she have one on her, on her ass neck, like her lower back? No.

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slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Brad, you like to eat a lot of stuff and you're big into the food world. But I noticed you're not, yesterday I noticed fishing, or two days ago when we were fishing, you're not shticky. You don't have a shtick because someone proposed to you, you know, you can eat a salmon fly i'm not big you didn't know you didn't

feel like you got to be the guy who eats crazy stuff oh no shut it right down i have no problem saying like being comfortable you're like why would i eat a salmon fly yeah that's a terrible idea you know if we were if we were lost in the in the montana mountains and like things were getting real sketchy and brad's getting real hungry, I'm gorging. My stomach would look like those whitefish we cleaned. But just for fun, just for novelty, you got the wrong guy. So you don't feel compelled to – someone would be like, look at this. This thing's so old.

It's rotten. You'd be like, well, I'll eat it because I eat crazy stuff. No, that was never my thing. Never your thing. It probably. How did you carve it? Like, what is your thing? How did you carve your own path?

You know, it's been a hell of a ride, Steve. You know, it's like I didn't get into the food business kind of in this scope as far as like other than just like delis or small restaurants growing up and stuff like that until I was about 27 or 28. Um, when I jumped from being a carpenter and a union glazer and just an overall, just, I've had a lot of different jobs mostly in construction and stuff like that. Uh, until I was 27, I was living with these dudes out in this farmhouse in Northern New Jersey, closer to Delaware water gap and just absolutely beautiful, but just didn't want to end up. I didn't want to go down that road. You know,

I saw a lot of fight. It was very easy, man, like another year I would have had a kid. I would have bought some stupid house and like, I would be commuting an hour each way to the job. You know, it's a very common story and it's a fine story, but like, this sounds, sounds corny or whatever you want to label it. But I always felt like, I always felt like I wanted to do something a little bigger, a little more. I always felt like there was something you know i don't know i just wasn't gonna do that and like not to belittle that because you go to college and everything no i went well i went for um uh uh semesters three semesters um to become a cop and then i was just like yeah this ain't gonna work out i had a hard time in school. You know, very interested in things, but just struggled with sitting there and just like the dumb repetition of just like, I don't know.

I just always bouncing off the walls, always was looking outside, couldn't wait to the bell rung kind of thing. But like when I liked something, I got into it, but I just had a trouble with, with organized school and just, just the whole like schooling factory that this country became where it was just like, all right, you're out of high school. Life's been crazy. You don't even know who you are. You got to go to college. What do you want to be? What do you want to be for the rest of your life? And it's just like, do you know, you know, like whoever, I don't know. So like it just became this, you know, man. Yeah. So I got into just doing construction, you know,

parents kind of probably being disappointed and, you know, some pit in their stomach, like, Oh, I'm really worried, you know oh man yeah so i got into just doing construction you know parents kind of probably being disappointed and you know some pit in their stomach like i'm really worried you know like kind of just hanging out with you know good kids but a lot of losers a lot of drug addicts and stuff like that and um you know always gardening and always cooking on the side and then some drug addicts were no me oh okay uh you know like know, I dabbled with the best of them, but like never always wanted to do something else, you know. And then always gardening and cooking no matter where I lived, you know, whether it was on some little weird rooftop or when we had that farmhouse. I turned this guy's old dog kennel into a beautiful garden, you know. Always growing the vegetables and was exposed to hunting and fishing. So I always had that like kind of in me, but then got out of it for a while,

living in this farmhouse, doing construction, and then took a loan out and just found an apartment on Craigslist in Brooklyn with about seven roommates. And I rented, I had this room, it was 700 bucks. You took a loan out to rent an apartment? Well, to go to culinary school. So I left that out.

Oh, okay. So there was a little culinary school program, a little six-month program in Manhattan. Yeah. And so I got an apartment? Well, I go to culinary school. Sorry, I left that out. Oh, okay. So there was a little culinary school program, a little six-month program in Manhattan. Yeah. And so I got an apartment, and my girlfriend, my wife now, she was living in the city and had a really cool job and had her own apartment and stuff. How long have you guys been together? About nine years. Okay.

Life? I thought you said practically. Well, yeah. I say wife. Sure. Semantics. We haven't had the wedding yet. But you're engaged.

We got kids. You've been engaged for how many years? A bunch. Probably five. But that's okay, you know. Yeah, so we went to that culinary school, took a loan out, got at that apartment, rented a room in this house with a bunch of strangers, you know, very New York, very whatever. And everyone ended up being friends and, you know, still being house with a bunch of strangers, you know, very New York, very whatever. And everyone ended up being friends and, you know,

still being friends with a bunch of the folks. But it was a- How long was the culinary school program? Like seven, six months. Quick turn and burn. I'm not going to name names, but I didn't really learn shit. But the goal is they're going to place you in a restaurant. You know what it was?

I mean, it's like most culinary, it's just like colleges. It was like, you know, TV, food network and all these things. Everyone thought they wanted to go be a chef, but like working in a restaurant, man, is nothing like that. I mean, it's, it's hard work. It's nights and weekends. It's low pay. It's it's, you're getting yelled at. You're usually in the weeds all night cooking. And it's just, it's never really been my way of cooking, even though I really enjoy food. So I took, I went to this culinary school to kind of get into the food space and the food world outside of restaurants because it is like such a big – I was kind of naive and like I was like, oh, you know,

maybe I'll just like work for some company developing flavors. And I'm like, no, Brad, they're like food scientists and shit. Like they do like, you know, people that are doctors. Like you to come up with like Cool Ranch. Yeah, I don't know. You know, but like that kind of just those risk and ambition kind of blind ambition made me take those chances. And, you know, it was, it's crazy. I don't know how it, I don't really stop to think on why, but it just like, I did an internship.

You had to, and it was at a restaurant or, you know, a media place if you could. And for, so I just applied to Bon Appetit magazine and I was like, just, you know, that's how you wound up there. Yeah. And, uh, intern. Well, yeah. And it got, and then, so then I need to get some interns over here. And then, yeah.

So, I mean, they, they, back when they did internships and, um, so it was, you know, they had a bunch of people before me and I came in, I was just like lunatic, you know, who's been roofing houses before this. And like, I was just like, I was like, this is great. Like, oh my God, I want to do this. At age what were you the intern? 28. Were you the oldest intern?

Yeah. Yeah, dude. You know, like borderline, but I didn't care. Just like get me. You were a non-trad intern. People were like 19, you know, like intern stuff, you know, or 20, whatever people are when they get out of college. Did you try like, you just arm wrestle them all and stuff like that?

No, I had like, I had a crazy haircut. I like shaved the sides and my hair was like down to my back and shit. I look like a maniac. But it was a blast. And like, I liked working. I liked food. And I was curious, you know, I like to, they were like, I was basically a gopher. You know, I did all the shopping and dishes.

But it was New York. I got to go around, go to all different markets, meet up, learn all these different cuisines. And keyword, just learning. And then when my stint as an intern was up, I'll never forget this. I heard the boss at the time and some other Bob. And they were like, we need to hire someone for Bradspot. And I was just like, should we get some like young kid who's just like really fired up or like someone who's like a little more like seasoned and experienced in like

media that we can writing and stuff that we could hire. And I was like, guys, hire me. You can pay me whatever, just get me a foot in. And that's what happened. And then I just, you know, I just between my personality and work ethic. And, you know, at that time there was no video. I was hired as a test kitchen assistant, which was really just a glorified dishwasher for, I think it was like $35,000 is what I started at in New York. So I was working at night at restaurants and stuff. And eventually like food, I started, it was test kitchen assistant. Then it became test kitchen manager, kind of like running the whole, you know, like all the sourcing, all the budget, doing recipe development and testing and stuff like that. And it was great, you know. And then, you know, this is about 60 years ago.

And then there was no video platform, like at all, really. There was a little bit of like overhead hands and pans, 20 seconds. No one's watching anything long, you know. I'm like, all right, whatever. And we were always, you know i'm like all right whatever and we were always you know we being bon appetit i felt like they were always just trying to do catch up to like what everyone else was already doing yeah like what's buzzfeed's doing this formula it's kind of just ride on that and sure it worked and eventually they started like we were all about chasing these facebook numbers it was all about facebook they had this like new platform i forget

what it was but they were trying to do like this video thing and that's all we were doing we were getting like 100 000 views on facebook and it was like man it was like awesome like they were gonna fire me and now like we're doing this and uh and then youtube started to happen and you know and they started doing a little bit longer uh format kind of stuff like they wanted to get into more like personality driven kind of uh videos and they sent us to a few folks that were working in the test kitchen at the time to this lady on the Upper West Side who like, she was a little older, just like very like from a movie, just like, I feel like she was like, she must've been like 60 or something. And like, she was like,

she was like training us to be like news anchors, you know what I mean? Like this like presence and like the way. Over to you, Dave. Yeah. She was just like very like LA,ors you know what i mean like this like presence and like the way and i'm over to you dave yeah she was just like very like la new york like she was like she was a nut right and um we got back to that and they did like these mock-up videos and i remember the creative they were training you to be a media personality yeah yeah exactly media training and it was their biggest just out of curiosity what was the biggest piece of advice they had oh i don't even remember a word she said. Yeah, like, I smile with your eyes or some shit.

I don't know. Can I tell you? Do you mind if I tell you an interesting story? Please do. Mine's not. I met my wife. No, no. It's fascinating.

It's fascinating. I'm just trying to dovetail. I'm trying to dovetail on it. Please, I'm joking. I'm trying to dovetail on to it. I met my wife through work. All right. Nothing wrong with that.

No, no. But when I sold my first book, I sold my first book work alright nothing wrong with that so no no but when I sold my first book I sold my first book to Miramax and she worked for um she used to work for Bob and Harvey Weinstein

okay they made the news a little bit oh yeah Harvey has uh and they bought my first book long before

sure sure any scandals oh yeah um and I went there to and i went to meet the team there all right publication at miramax where she worked and it was the first time that's how we met okay this is you in a business meeting okay we met in a business meeting amazing and she later said because people were talking about pitching me for TV segments.

All right. She left the meeting and said to people, way too rough around the edges. No way. Yep. Yep. That's it. And that was kind of me, you know, just like super, you know, like raw, not like this is it.

It's got one gear and it's Brad. And like, I'm going to put it into Brad. That's amazing. That's how you met your wife. So how'd that turn into like a date? Oh, we knew each other for quite a while. Oh, you did? Okay, cool.

Yeah. And then I went to a different publisher. I went to Random House. All right. And then I emailed her to ask her if I could ask her out. Good move. Or if it would be like untoward. Sure, sure.

And it worked out. Happily married for more, longer than most. Oh yeah, we've been married a long time. That's amazing, man. And yeah, so I mean, that's kind of like with the media training, that's where it was left. It was like, I remember the creative director at the time, he was just like, I don't know what that is, but like, it's not Brad. Just like, that sucks. Did they tell you like, be more?

They didn't really tell me much. They didn't have any advice. So that kind of, like, stopped. And then. That's got to be a. Is that profession still around? Media training? Oh, God, probably.

I'm sure someone's scamming someone. But, I mean, I shouldn't belittle that. You know when you watch some goofy news show where they send someone out to do a piece about how there's a hurricane happening somewhere? Someone's teaching. And they got their hands, like, in that way. And they do their piece about how there's a hurricane happening somewhere. Someone's teaching. And they got their hands like in that way and they do their gestures and it's very controlled like, cause, cause they know that it's head and shoulder shot. Right.

So how can I hand gesture to keep it in frame? Right, right. Stuff like that. And like, over to you, Dave. Like they got, like someone taught them all that. Oh, big time. And like, I'm, I'm sure there is a lot of really good things like that and I'm just kind of a nut,. But what started the work

for me was just a creative director was like, Brad's always in the test kitchen. Down there, he's always got some projects. He's fermenting stuff. And there was this guy, Vinny, who we started the show with. Oh, same Vinny. A different Vinny. How do you know all the Vinnys? He's coasting, man. My cousin Vinny,

everything. Dude, if you sent me out right now to go bring a Vinny back, you had to be gone two weeks. There's no Vinny's in Montana. Are they still making Vinny's? Like, is that still like a baby name? Yeah, they're still making Vinny's. His name's Vincent, right? Yeah, Vincent. Vincenzo.

I call him all types of silly stuff. But yeah, so they were like, just go follow him around with a camera. And like, that's what I loved. It was just me, no sound guy. You learned how to film. I guess. And I learned about editing. And they just filmed it around.

We put out this 20 or 15-minute video about kombucha. And it sat on a hard drive for a year. They're like, this is horse shit. We can't put this on the internet. This guy can't even speak English. It's his only language. And he mumbles. And he dropped the kombucha on the internet you know like this guy can't even speak english it's his only language and he mumbles and you know he dropped the kombucha on the floor and they were like yeah let's give it a shot and like thank god because it kind of that's how it all started and it just became like but it worked not only did it work it kind of like you know reformatted how like they

did video like all of a sudden it was just like let people be people and they just became like it's very and like for me i always wanted to make it like listen guys i can't i'm not an actor like i can do this i can just do me and like it turns out that's like really valuable yeah instead of being like we're here in memphis to discover the great barbecue world here in memphis yeah and they walk and fast forward into the barbecue place and they i guess like well yeah what becomes like when they not to like toot my own horn, but if you have like people, I mean, all you guys the same, like where you have some skill in a bunch of categories, but then you can also just be like good on camera. Like camera freaks a lot of people out.

I'm sure you've seen it. Like the one that sticks out to me the most, we were shooting a video in Hawaii about poke and we went into this one supermarket that all the locals got. Like, that was the spot, you know? Yeah. And the lady, she was amazing. Off camera, I mean, she was, you know, chatting and busting jokes. I think she was punching me.

And then as soon as that red light turned on, man, she just clammed up. Yeah. It was just like, we gotta get someone else. Yeah, I don't think, when I point this out, it's not a comment on anyone, because I don't think more of people who can be on camera. I don't think less of people who can't be on camera.

I don't view it as an admirable. No, you're a psycho. If you're good on camera, you're a psycho. Well, I don't view it as an admirable quality. And I don't view not wanting to do it as a negative it's just like to me it's like it's like whether you like uh it'd be the same to me like whether you like bananas like i don't give a shit what do you like bananas or not like i'm not gonna hang out with you more or less or whatever depending your feelings on bananas sure but i found that

um there's people that they have their personality in normal life and you put a camera on them, it goes away, which is not good on camera. Right. Or another one shows up. Right.

All of a sudden, there's a different personality shows up. Right. And that's no good. I don't think so. It's like, it's the people that you do it

and nothing happened. Yeah. They didn't, a new one didn't think so. It's like, it's the, the people that you do it and nothing happened. Yeah. They didn't, a new one didn't show up. The normal one didn't go away. Right. But somehow they just continue right on. And like,

and they're not going to teach people that. No. And like for acting, you know, I go to Daniel Day-Lewis or whatever his name is. Like, yeah, I'm not doing that kind of stuff,

but like for what we're doing, I feel like you, you really need that like authenticity when it's more like journalism in a sense or documentary style kind of storytelling. Yeah. One thing I like about, I mean, what you were talking about, kind of set the template for what's been going on with food shows on the internet for a while now, which is not only to not shave off the rough edges but accentuate them. Like what's charming about this person? What's imperfect about them? I love how like your show or Maddie Matheson, you call attention to the fact when you screw up or you stutter or you pronounce something in like an odd way. And it's, it's charming and it's fun to watch.

And yeah, it's that human element. Right. And I think that's, what's missing in, in, or has been missing for a long time in food, you know, or in, in even like, I guess you can even tie that into like food and hunting and fishing, you know, it was always just like a very like stereotyped image and like to be able to just kind of, you know, everyone and all types of people are into it, you know. I'm buying it. Yeah.

All right. Good. So talk about it's alive. Like what, tell people about the show. Yeah. So, I mean, it started with just in the kitchen fermentation, you know, in the test kitchen back when we shot video there. And,

um, and you know, and it was just, you know, the things that I was into sauerkraut. That's where I, but what I mean is someone had to, at some point time,

at some point they said, okay, now you be the person. What do you mean? Like, it's not Vinnie. It's you. It was always me.

There was, it was always just me talking to the camera. No, but I'm saying when you went out and made the thing about, I thought you were saying you with a camera followed Vinny to drink kombucha. No, Vinny followed me. Vinny was the camera guy. Sorry. Yeah, Vinny was the camera guy. Did you understand that?

Yeah. I'm very confusing. No, I got that, but I also read about this. Chaz, did you understand that? I did, yeah. Yeah, these guys did. Did you really? Spencer, I got that. But I also read about this. Chaz, did you understand that? I did, yeah. Yeah, these guys did. Did you really? Spencer, you understood that?

Yeah, everyone. Well, then how come when I said, you know how to use a camera, no one said, that's not what he said? I didn't hear that. Because I actually, I made a mental note to take that out. Amazing. God, am I that fragile? You can't, like, am I considered to be like that? No, because I didn't need to...

Because it would be an easier thing to just let... You finish your sentence, and then I'm like, I'm cutting this out, and then we're going to glue it back together. But were you worried about how I didn't understand the story?

No, because it was just like a two-second mention, then we moved on. Oh, man. Chester, how would you rate Steve's hosting ability right now? These are the rough edges we're going to keep in this podcast.

I'm telling you what, man. If I've cultivated an atmosphere that I love it when people screw up so I can point it out. Do you have to thrive on that? Chester, that's not right. What this was is a result of people more interested in the story,

so it wasn't going to be conducive to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Steve. Yeah, you could have said what you just said was really stupid because... It's like this stuff will buff out. Okay. Sorry, man. In your defense, Steve, I don't know how I'm a video host. I'm not a very good talker. Yeah, but you might at least be able to track a story.

I struggle myself. 10 out of 10 producing by Corinne. She's over there being like, well, I'll take that out so he doesn't look stupid. The amazing Corinne.

I'm not going to interrupt Brad. We all need a Corinne. Let me tell you. Okay. I thought you were filming Vinny. No. So then I was like,

well, how did it get to be that Vinny's filming you? Okay. I see where you're coming from. But you said with the camera and that can also be like, you're good with the camera as in you're good in front of the camera.

In proximity to the camera. So you could have left it in and people might have, 3% of people would have thought I meant that. Maybe. Three is generous, but. I'm really sorry, man. No, don't be at all. I have zero.

So that was the birth. Yeah, and it just kind of became, and it started to organically. It was great. Like on paper, I should not, it. I have zero. So that was the birth. Yeah. And it just kind of became, they get started organically. It was great. Like on paper, I should not, it shouldn't have worked. You know,

like every one of the bobs was like, nope, this is fucking stupid. Pardon my French kids. I'm sorry. What's a, what's a, I get it,

but what is a bob? Cause their name's not Bob. No, that's just what I call the boss. Hunter. I call it the boss's bobs. I think it was from like office space or something right the bobs you know so all the all the all the bobs i just call them the bobs

keeps it keeps them impersonal i can make fun of them without making fun of them because you're not hurting your friends feelings yeah they can't fire me quite you know so then all of a sudden like wow this guy this guy of all people yeah so what's great is that it's just kind of for me anyway and i guess for everyone is that it was just organic and it just kind of grew its own thing it was never like a it wasn't developed you know like like con day like whatever they got like you know a group of folks that come up with ideas and strategies and what we name it and what you know the the formulas of shows and this one was just like all right well let, well, it's continuing to grow. Like, let's just, why try to fix it if it's like, it just happened organic, which was beautiful.

And like, really, I'm fortunate because it allowed me to get into things very untraditional to the magazine and brand. Like, I am definitely the first person to ever shoot, kill, clean, and cook something for Gun In-Ass. Well, I'm bummed because that was my next question. Yeah, beat ya. I mean, I was the first video talent I think they ever hired. Was it awkward? Did you have to go in one day and be like, so listen.

Oh, yeah. There's this thing. Well, I mean, they knew what it was. Yeah, I mean, it was, yeah, fishing's like the easy one. Like, we went and shot some birds, you know, and like, and did a... Did that turn into a big old conversation? No, and I was like, listen like listen guys let's just take a risk and trust me like outside of this manhattan bubble it's a big thing and we all know someone who does do it and you know what the way resistance or no like concerted it took a room full of lawyers and i'm sure every some of

the bobs were like this is terrible but like you know we ended up they let me do it and it was all i was like it's all about how we package it then like the way i said it was like listen if this bothers you and you and maybe you shouldn't eat meat you know but if you do eat meat and it bothers you like that's a problem because like this it doesn't happen any better cleaner you know when you go and buy your pork chop with no face in a plastic wrap pat you know and like and that's fine i'm okay that you do you know and like but like realize like me doing, and like, and that's fine. I'm okay that you do, you know, and like, but like, realize like me doing it and cleaning it and showing the process. If that bothers you that much, then again, maybe you shouldn't probably eat meat.

You know, like why, like, you gotta be okay with the dirty work, you know? And at the end of the day, you know, and we've got a great response from, you know, the vegan and vegetarian fans. And it was all about like, listen, no one wants – no one except for the bobs making the money off it. No one wants factory farms. No one wants poorly treated and farmed animals and slaughtered. You go drive by some of them big feedlots. It's disgusting.

Like that's not food anymore. That's just the industrialization of the food chain is where it all kind of started to crumble and that's where you know i honestly don't recall getting any negative like there was a couple like stupid comic people just like trolling but like 99.9 of the stuff that i've done has just been super positive you know and it's just the packaging you know it's just how you word it and we should get a fee i want to get a good feedlot person on yeah i would interest level up yeah people like to take cracks feedlots but i mean i but and you know i get it but i feel like there's a you know systems come about in certain ways well man this i've only i don't want to we don't need to start debating feedlots but i'd like to get a good feedlot person yeah and you should because i'm not. I have the reference that I gave you out of – I got you covered.

You know what I mean? It's like – I just want to understand. For sure. Well, I mean, I think it comes down to what? It's just a matter of me personally. I'm not into cows just being – from what I've been taught is that they are fed a bunch of grain, and it's super unhealthy for them. And people don't like the looks of it.

And it gets really, no, I don't like the looks of it. And I don't know, is the, is the cattle super healthy? I don't know. I would love to learn more about that. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, you know, if you're driving

your kids down the road and they see any, um, anything around like an industrialized meat production, they don't warm up. Well, they're assaulted with a real serious smell, which doesn't like set their minds in a spot where they're like, I'm super interested in what's happening out here. Yeah.

That and the visual, you know, the optics of it. You know, the ones that I've gone past, I think it was in Nebraska or something when I was little, was it was just like mountains of cow manure. Manure, thank you. And just mountains of just miserable looking animals on top of them. Just, you know, waiting in line that I guess go get, just run through the, you know, the, and I get it, you know, people,

that's how they feed the world. And, you know, my parents growing up, were they buying, you know, farmer's how they feed the world and you know my parents growing up were they buying you know farmer's market amazing whatever uh meat no man my mom was buying tyson buy one get one free you know manager's special you know yeah that's what you're telling me like if it didn't have the orange sticker yeah man like this is gonna go bad in three days yeah when i was just i was just home visiting my mom and she wanted me to grill some chicken one night and she pulls out this like never ending tray. Starry fun. No, no, she's not into that.

She's not into that to her credit. She's into drummies. Oh yeah. But it was like 30 chickens drumsticks all lined up, you know, but it's just, yeah, they're not coming off of, you know, uncle Bob's farm. Right. Right. That's why there's a shortage right now.

Is that right? I mean, Wingstop has like changed their whole marketing around now they're serving thighs because like everything else during COVID, there's a shortage of wings in the world. Oh, that's good to know. Yeah, only two on a bird, right? You know?

Yeah, that's right. It's really. That is hilarious. Really appreciate it. In Wisconsin, a good example of the big feedlot cows like kind of a negative look is when i was growing up there used to be a ton of small little dairy farms you know like 200 300 acre farms they got 40 head of cows they got this little dairy barn they're actually out in the pastures they bring them in morning and night to milk making their kids get up at 2 in the morning and milk those cows before they go to the bus stop.

Oh, yeah, you don't want to be a dairy kid. They practice good crop techniques like strip cropping for erosion. But now you rarely see a mom and pop dairy farm anymore except a couple of small organic ones. And it's all these huge, massive barns packed full of cattle. They rarely get outside. They're not practicing good strip cropping techniques, which in that I mean like on all the little rolling hills in Wisconsin, it's good to mix up your crop from like corn to alfalfa, back to corn, to beans,

because you get a different root system in there. For fighting erosion. Yep. And soil health. What you're saying is, I'm glad you brought that up, man, because it's a major problem, you know, across the country. Yeah, and it's just a little sad to see in that area, because it's nice to see the mom and pop farms making it. And now you go and you see a 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 head of cattle farm. And all these old little red, white barns are just, you know, rotting away. Yeah.

I was at a livestock auction with some cattle ranchers one time like cow calf operation guys and i remember where they were selling they were selling animals at the auction i remember someone was unloading a load of cows and they expressed like disgust about the cows that were getting offloaded and these are not like soft men, but they kind of had like a, how could you do that? And you know, I'm not trained to look at that kind of stuff that well.

I'm like, what? What? And they're like milked out dairy cows. And they were kind of like offended by the condition of these animals coming off. And these are people who are in animal husbandry. So there's more to it.

I think it's easy for people not in animal husbandry, not in farm and ranch, to come in and, you know, like come in like a dilettante and condemn this and condemn that. But, I mean, I was sitting there with people who'd been in production their whole lives who had a very strong condemnation about animal husbandry practices of people now it's an interesting subject man were these beat-up cows coming from a small farm or a big farm no they were they were coming from a big mill. We were close to, it was where a lot of milked out dairy cows go from big production places and they go into fast food burger. That's what they're saying. That's where all those animals are destined for.

But they were commenting on just how like the broken down quality of the animals, which to them was indicative of, um, indicative of like, kind of like the, the, the cycling practice. And it just became, you know, and it's like, do you need tomatoes every day of the year? Do you need, do I need, there's nothing special anymore. Like you asked my six-year-old, he would say no. Well, fine. Strawberries, you know, like whatever, you know, you know, of course, you know, but like, there's something to be said about like waiting for things to be like happen naturally right or again season you know and i think that can that applies to that too as well you know like do you need and like sure listen

to me i guess right but like do you need to have beef i don't need to have a i don't eat it every day but like there's something nice to be able like all right yeah it's this is the time of the month when like beef's around here and like, it's, or something like that, you know what I mean? Like just everything. Well, that recipe I made last night for the, the agua chile, like it's cucumbers, right? And there's like no good cucumbers around here. Like, I don't care where you buy them.

I'm not against technology. Nothing on my garden. I'm not against technology. And those things, those cucumbers were probably grown in a greenhouse in Mexico. Right. And I like, grown in a greenhouse in Mexico. Right. I wanted to make that recipe, so I bought those cucumbers. All I could think is, this is good. Can't wait to try

this again. If the practice makes sense, I can get behind it. I saw a tomato farm outside of Detroit one time. We did a video. I'm talking square acreage of indoor tomatoes. They was just all organic and just dialed in.

And as far as like, you know, it was all solar panels. And like, sure, I mean, if you're making a good product and I'm not against technology, it's the only chance we have, you know. But like localizing a little bit and just that whole massive, just like the big bobs running the, you know, big food game. And just kind of that industrial, treating it like it was cars. Like we did everything else in this country, you know, faster, more, cheaper. And we just stripped that down, you know, and not everyone's hunting and, you know, isn't going to solve world hunger, you know, but like, I think just localizing. No, I'd like to point out if every American killed a deer next year,

we'd be 200 million deer in the hole. Yeah. That's insane. Well, how many? This ain't going to happen. be 200 million deer in the hole. Yeah. That's insane. Well, how many? This ain't going to happen. What is the deer? Of course. What is the deer population?

I'd say it's like 100 million of them or something. Is there? Well. Isn't there? Right. I was saying 60, but I don't know. You'd be in a bigger hole. Yeah.

You'd never climb out of it. Yeah. Oh, you know, I was recently doing an interview for a documentary about, I was doing an interview for a documentary about um i was doing an interview for a documentary about buffalo not the town but bison the animal oh yeah and i was kind of like thinking about the extermination near near annihilation of the herds oh yeah and the fashionable number nowadays is there was maybe about 32 million bison at the time of European contact.

Yep. And I kind of got to trying to find a way to find, to put that in perspective. This country, we slaughter more cattle every year than there were buffalo on the landscape at the time of European contact. Oh, I believe that. I think they're killing about 39 million a year in this country. Look how much. So then it puts in perspective, like, people are like, how could they have, you know? Yeah.

The U.S. population is 328 million. The U.S. deer population is 38 million. So it would be 300 million short. Since we're pulling up little fun facts, look up how many pigs are slaughtered in the US Not as many as cows In the world it's like a billion Or even in the US I bet you it is more than cow

130 million hogs Jeez It looks like Global Don't give me no global numbers. That's not global. In 2019 in the United States. How many?

130 million. Yeah. Global will make you throw up. It doesn't make me throw up. No, but I mean, it's a lot of animals. Like I should be the only guy that gets a slice of bacon? Oh, yeah. You get China in the game and other big countries that are just cranking them out. I mean, sure, I'm not against people eating it, right?

Who are we to just eat them? But like, you know, everywhere across the world, we're not the worst. You know what I mean? No, we're not the worst, but we're among the richest. So I think like to come in and be like, I, you know, I don't like your people's numbers. I'm talking about practice.

I think bad practice happens everywhere. Sure as hell happens'm sure, you know, I think bad practice happens everywhere. Sure. Sure as hell happens here. Uh, but you know, that must, it happens globally. Yeah.

We can afford, and it's not a bad thing. We can afford to be very finicky about what we eat. And, and I think it's important to keep in mind. A lot of people do not have that luxury, but it doesn't have to be that way. You know,

a lot of people don't have good foods too expensive. And that's our, that's our government's fault. I think, you know, the way it's all been systemized, you know, it doesn't have to be that way. You know, a lot of people don't have, good food's too expensive. And that's our, that's our government's fault. I think, you know, the way it's all been systemized, you know, it doesn't, I don't think it needs, food, food is expensive and it's only getting more expensive. But like, like my mom and like most people's growing up, they could only afford the, what the, the big system made available. Yeah. Because the bobs are making money, Steve. Yeah. You know, and like, I think that's the big change. Not to get all crazy on you guys, but I think that's

how that's the big change. Oh, I don't think you're getting crazy. I mean, I think it's a rich field of inquiry. Yeah. I don't think we need to, I don't think we need to sit here and exactly have the same opinion on it. No, of course. I'm not that committed to my vision. Well, that's a beautiful point. Because I don't understand it as thoroughly as I'd like to

listen and as long as we all have an open mind because as soon as some person this is it and that's when we have problems that's when I go like I don't really care what this guy says well Brad our next guest but have an open conversation that's what this country should be

that's what this country what makes it great is that we should be able to have conversations that we don't necessarily agree on. That's how we get somewhere. And I could be hypocritical real fast because I sure like hunting turkeys around feedlots, and I sure like hunting deer in farmers' cattle pastures. Duck is a real good one Listen man It's like You can get You can get

So afraid of hypocrisy that it shuts you down I don't know You hunting by your feedlot That's great man you get to shoot your turkey And there's a lot of them The bigger picture like all the runoff But the water waste that's coming off of those things At that point I'm like, fuck you, Turkey.

What do you think of that? Yep. Yep. Yeah. That's all right. I could find a Turkey someplace else. Listen, I'm going to change the subject right now, but not because I'm, not because I'm uncomfortable.

Good. Me neither. When someone, when you think of an idea, how do you know what fits into your, uh, like what is, how do you know what fits into your uh like what is how do you know when something's right for you because you're talking about going to a tomato place what do you mean if something's right okay like like visiting a tomato place that's interesting to me no like catching mountain whitefish that's interesting to me what's not interesting to you oh i don't know hatred and negativity i mean like as far as uh food ideas nothing man i don't

mean like i'm not i'm not necessarily traveling to come you know eat you know the biggest bug but like just like normal i shouldn't say normal but like that you know adventures and food and like what you know the people behind food that's kind of like what really gets me going could you see a path toward doing a thing i I'm not trying to plug his place, but would you be like, oh, they grow mushrooms and make pickled mushrooms? I'm going to do an episode about that. Oh, 100%. I'm not pitching Chester.

I would love to go. Chester the Tester's coming with. Are you kidding me? I just got to get the Bob's a sign off. And you got to recreate that Chester the Tester scene. Oh, like a flashback? It'll be a black and white flashback of a little kid. Can Chester play himself? He's got a sippy cup in one hand and a mushroom in the other.

Make it a little Scorsese-like so he's got, like, Bobby socks on. If Condé won't produce it for It's Alive, we need to do it for a meat-eater thing. Oh, I would do it, yeah. That's amazing i have a question for you about kind of like your own or maybe more like the mainstream industries red lines around uh preparation of of food that's not you know it's like pig pig and cow aside and kind of our idea about like what is okay to eat and what's weird and what's gross to eat you cooked spencer you cooked up crow last year and badger as well. I unfortunately missed those days.

All about it. Yeah. Do you have thoughts about that and where you think we may push the limits? Biodiversity. I'm all about it. Because it's funny. Pigs, we can kill 200 million of them. No, no, no problem.

Keep it going. Right. But like, you talk about like cooking a dog or something and it's just like, cancel that guy. You know, like no one wants, nobody wants you eating dogs or house cats. No, they do not. Or robins. Like, I kind of want to eat a robin, you know? And like, I heard, I would, I would try dog too, I guess.

And I love dogs, you know? Like it's one of my spirit try dog too i guess and i love dogs you know like it's one of my spirit animals but like it is it's funny the things we like this is food and that's not eating a horse big no-no here let's say you went let's say you thought this uh let's say you thought man i want to go to i want to do an episode of it's alive and go hear them out i'm going to talk to you a veterinarian i'm going to go to a industrial feedlot yeah would someone tell you not to i'm sure uh someone from like the bobs yeah the bobs i mean maybe i mean i the problem with me is like i could find that to me 100 That's an amazing topic. There isn't many things I can't get into.

Whether or not I fundamentally think it's, like, let's expose it and kind of, like, see, you know, more of, like, a journalistic aspect or something I'm obviously into, like, going tuna fishing, right? But within that, the fun is also, like, the education, you know? And sorry, what was the question? Well, I was just trying to figure out, like, of all the things in the the world how do you decide what fits you like what's interesting to you what you what do you want to make content about what do you want to shine a light on the people behind food for the longest time it was always just you know i feel like for the past decade probably even more right it was always just been the chef you know so you think about the people the folks that's what it's all about i mean for me it's a it's just a universal language like music you know food it's a if the food's great

it's delicious i freaking love eating but it's just as much as you know going and catching the fish with you and smoking them at your house and stuff like that you know i mean as it is to just just eat them it's for it's it's got to be it's got to have that human element and like i can find the creative the ideas are never the problem i think there's it's kind of endless we could probably i could probably come up with 10 000 you know if we're going global it's kind of endless yeah it's more just like who's gonna pay for it what's your favorite episode of it's live ah you know i hate favorites you know when in in every in every category you know like it's like my least favorite. What's your 10 out of 10?

No, but I can answer the question for sure. I mean, the one to Alaska was absolutely amazing where we went up. I mean, A, it was my first time. Or no, it was my second time up there. But we went crabbing and we took a little sea plane. It was just, you know, it's Alaska. It's huge. It's beautiful.

Met some, you know, just amazing people. Ate some great food. The trip down to when I went with Guitar Chocolate out of San Francisco. We did a really cool three-part video where we went to South America and we just did the whole chocolate production, which is a fermented product. Chocolate production. Yeah, chocolate production. So we went down with these farmers who were the nicest people in the world.

Just like, you know, living in, you know, in the middle of the jungle, you know, in just a very, very simple home, you know, no windows and stuff, you know, just like, and just, I mean, would give you the shirt off their back and their farm. And I've never heard anything like it. We were down in the jungle, like collecting these cacao pods and it got quiet. We were like getting like the mics ready and stuff. And all you heard was just like this in like just surrounding the world.

It was just like this in, like just surrounding the world. It was just like this. And it was just like billions of mosquitoes everywhere. You know, we had to take malaria pills and stuff, but it was just seeing this whole process where it was this insane pod. I don't know if you know what it looks like, but it's just like this cacao fruit pod. And it's got these like alien egg seeds inside

with this like white mucus that surrounds them. And inside is just that raw, that cacao nib or that, you know, the seed. And then they ferment them in these big bins. It's just out in the temperature covered in banana leaves. And it gets so hot. You had to go and like turn them. You had to put gloves on because it was burning your hands. Cockroaches coming out of it and stuff, you know, bugs like this.

And I'm not a big bug guy, you know, I'm just like, oh, shit. And I'm stirring this stuff up with my hands. And, you know, they didn't give me gloves. They should have. But, like, there was, like, an acid reaction. My hands were, like, a little pale for the next few days. And it was, like, a burn from in that, like, heavy, heavy fermentation. And then after they ferment that, like, sweet goop off it,

then we laid them out and sun-dried them. That's when you get this, like, what becomes, like, when you crack that. Then we laid them out and sun dried. They like sun dried them. That's when you, you get this, like what becomes like a, when you crack that, it's that cacao nib. Yeah. That people put in there, you know, whatever. And, and then from there, you know, we followed the bean back into like the co-op. That's like the tradable commodity. Yeah.

Oh yeah. That's where it's all happening down there. And all these farmers bring them to the co-op. They're bags of dried cacao beans. Right. Where, so, you know, there's the nice sun dried ones. And then, uh, and then there's the ones that like, they dry in these like big diesel things and they're like not as quality. Right.

So we went with, uh, with the guy who was doing the good, the good work and we followed them to the co-op and it was like all these crazy colorful bags. And then from there they go to, we went to the San Francisco factory where they, they toast them, they grind them up, turn it into – then it becomes – start becoming familiar. You see cocoa powder, cocoa butter, and then like little chips and big blocks start coming out and stuff. And it's just an amazing, amazing process. And seeing the whole thing and just something that like – to come back and kind of answer your question, just like I love making videos that like demystifies or like shows like, like something like, like this soy sauce or the pickled ginger.

Like you, some people go in and even seltzer, you know, you go into the supermarket, you get it. But man, there's like usually generations of information and hard work and all types of stories just for this,

you know, you know, it can be applied to anything. So as long as someone still wants to make videos, I'm gonna have them, you know, one day start making them on my own or something. But like long as someone still wants to make videos, I'm going to have them, you know, one day start making them on my own or something. But like, I'll start, I'll do this for as long as I can.

I was in a remote area of the Philippines one time and there was people drying rice. But the only place to put it out to dry, it was on the road. Oh yeah. But there's so little traffic. Like on blankets. Yeah. We'd come, come around the corner now and then, and they'd be like, ah, damn it. Yeah.

And you had to stop. And they'd like very begrudgingly rake it all off the road. Oh, yeah. And then you'd drive through and then they'd. Pissing them off. Spread it back out, man. But yeah, there's like parts of food production that. It's incredible.

Yeah. In other places you just don't think about. Which you take for granted, right? And like perfect example, rice, man. I would love to go do that. And like you could make 15 different rice episodes. It's probably one of the most consumed things in the world. You know, we can go to Asia.

We can go to Minnesota and collect the wild rice. Like there's so many. Everyone eats rice. Make a show about rice. A friend of mine that I grew up with, we used to hang out in Mexico a bit together, and there was this town that had this grilled chicken we really liked. And it already just seemed very unsanitary because they would use stumps and a machete. Oh, yeah.

To cut the chicken up. No one's washing that stump. The raw and then the cooked. And he goes, and we're like, man, that chicken's good. We'd been down there a couple times. Eventually, he wants to find like how they make the chicken. And he goes in the back and this guy's got a garbage can full of like a marinade. And he drinks out of it. The marinade?

Yeah. Well, so my buddy thought it was just like where he's making the marinade. So he takes a big spoon and has. Oh, no. The guy's like urging him to taste the marinade. Sick as a dog. Oh, yeah. Well, he's drinking the marinade thinking that he's making the marinade.

And he says the guy reaches in with a bare arm, starts hauling raw chickens out of the bottom of that garbage can. Marinated marinade, man. Oh, yeah. But what's funny is like to see it, you know, you're talking about like the cockroaches coming out and stuff. To see it, he was a huge, he liked the chicken more than anybody oh yeah it's like this upton sinclair like the jungle stuff you know like people this expression like let's not see all the

sausage you just made sure burned him on the chicken oh yeah well that raw it's better sometimes people don't want to know well that cook you know he probably had an immune he had a gut like a snapping turtle you know like that guy no he's been doing that his whole life no yeah you think of chocolate you know it's like kind of like elegant you know people get sophisticated about no then you go down like you said like there's cockroaches and banana leaves yeah and guys probably getting paid a hundred dollars a week you know yeah no it's interesting to see all that man yeah it's wild man the world's wild yeah because you want to think it's like a bunch of french guys in a laboratory oh sure everything's so much everything's everything's very romanticized right marketing did a hell of a job and and it's true so like being able to kind of just shine a

little light you know off of you know five star chef guy but then also just let's let's go all the way why not and like the world needs it man because the system's in place ain't ain't really cutting it how many it's a lives have you made oh man you call them it's alive's i don't really call them anything tell you the truth uh episodes yeah it's got to be like 80 or 90 or 100 of them or something i think and then we have another show we do i do it with bone appetite called taste buds which is a lot of fun it's just more it's more of just like a kind of like an internet show where it's like a me uh we have celebrities come on and we like try just kind of like an internet show where it's like me, we have celebrities come on and we try different types

of a type of food. One we did with just a bunch of different types of smoked fish or stupid stuff, like different types of potato chips. Like high-test celebrities? Mid-level? No, we got some big players, man. We had Kimmel on and Elizabeth Olsen and Kiki Palmer

was a lot of fun. Elizabeth Olsen, like the girl with the twin? So I think there's three of them. She's the sister with the twins. She's a younger sister of the twins. Not even wrapped up in the twins. No, but she's like a huge star now. She's in a ton of movies these days.

Yeah, Steve. Yeah, she's got Wanda. And what was that other one? The one show she just had out was a big hit. She was in Ms. Maisel, but she was in WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision.

WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision.

WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision.

WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision.

WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision. WandaVision.

WandaVision. WandaVision. Yeah, yeah. Definitely more famous than me. Part of the MCU. Yes, actually. All right. Good job, Cal.

And then, yeah, we just did Wolfgang Puck. He was amazing. He had no filter. It was like, he just said, I was just like, yep, this is great. Have you had Jack Pepin on? Who? Jacques Pepin? No, but I love him, man.

I call him Jack Pepin. Makes him more approachable. He lives up by me. And he's good friends with a buddy of mine who owns a farm, Stone Acres, over in Connecticut. His book's good, man. Yeah, he's a legend, man. Such a sweetheart. I sat next to him next to dinner, and I was like, me and my wife were there,

and I was like, you sit by Jock. You guys are going to love it. He's just such a little, he's a schmoozer, you know? He's a good guy. And when you say schmoozer, you mean like in quotes? No, like schmoozer's the wrong word, I guess. I mean, not really. Because you sent your wife over to sit by him.

Yeah, he's an old guy. You know, he's a flirty old guy. And not in a creepy way. Okay, good, good, good. You know, very, very charming. I'm sorry, Chuck. Very charming. Jesus Christ.

Very charming man. See, Steve's always trying to instigate. No, no, no, man. I hope he doesn't hear this. I hope he doesn't hear this. I hope he doesn't hear this. All right, so tell people how to find you. All the platforms.

All the ways. Yeah, thanks, man. So, yeah, so Instagram is kind of the only social thing I do. It's just Brad underscore Leone. That's your own thing? Yeah, yeah, that's me. And then we have the It's Alive show and It's Alive and It's Alive Going Places, which is like the sister of that show where it's just more of the travel stuff.

They kind of bleed into the same thing. How long will it be until, what's the turnaround time? Till the one we made about whitefish? Oh, you know, they're pretty good about it. It's either a month or six months. Who knows? You know, it's just like, it'll probably. I don't want it to be like your kombucha thing that sits there for a year.

Oh, no, this is a heavy hitter, man. We're proud of this one, Steve. And I felt really good about it. So did everyone that was shooting it. and thanks again for coming on man that was that was just hey i've been a fan of your guys's work and show for a long time it was just awesome to to work with you guys and you got something in the fixings uh you got you and cal got something in the fixings too or no we talk all the time talk about all types of stuff he's gonna hopefully come over help me cut down some trees some vines i got some i got these vines growing all over some cedar trees I need to handle.

And then we got to do some spear fishing out there and some fishing and a lot of cool stuff out by me, Steve. Open door, boys. Even you, turkey guy. I got a good one for you. You know, at the, it may have been in the preamble to the show. It may not even be on here, but you said how you have a kind of perspective on food as far as like some safety things or what you can or cannot eat. Um, like you equated it to, you know, taking the

right hand turn on a red light, even if it says you shouldn't, like some things don't apply to you that, uh, um, cut up some sushi at my place last night and, uh, the board that we were laying all at my place last night. And the board that we were laying all the sushi on, I dug that out of the dumpster. Oh. That little dumpster dumpster. The same dumpster you get all your stuff out of?

The same dumpster I get all my stuff out of. We haven't hit that in a while. Yeah, folks. Folks don't know. People throw away all kinds of good stuff. It might be catching on, though, and people might just go there and put, instead of bringing it to Goodwill, that it's dumping Cal's dumpster. Knowing that Cal will find it and put it to good stuff. It might be catching on, though, and people might just go there and instead of bringing it to Goodwill,

they just dump it in Cal's dumpster. No one in Cal will find it and put it to good use. Cal's dumpster diving. That's a show I would do. Sometimes I flip the lid and it's daunting. Like, I shake my head and it's like, all I wanted to do was just throw the trash away. Now I gotta get this stuff out of there. I gotta repurpose it.

Get your sewing needle out, fix it all, find a home for it. Phil, can Phil make a home for it. Exactly. Can Phil make a jingle for Cal's dumpster diving? Like, what did Cal find today? Every time you find something? Yeah, that's good. It'll be the Cal's dumpster. No. You'll call for something better next time.

Yeah, that's like my dad. My dad loves to go dumpster diving. He finds all kinds of, like, ham radio. My dad lives in northern Jersey. Oh, good for him. So, you know, those, yeah, there's some really special electronics there. I'm a big picker. You know, not so much the dumpsters, although I'm not above it, but like a good pick, a

good, like uncurated egg antique kind of lot. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. Stop buying new stuff unless you need to. A lot of good stuff out there. My old man would, he was into that stuff and had like a big pole barn. So, he had somewhere, you know, he had a place to put it all uh and he would go like in spring springtime he'd be like oh you know spring cleaning big time and on garbage day you're like honestly like that time of year would kind of like

make little extra loops take the long way home knowing that someone was gonna throw away something good and to be out Wednesday night and he'd get in there and, you know, I found another broken fishing rod. I'll put it where I put all the broken fishing rods I found in the garbage. Absolute gems. Or like if, you know, there's an old couple and like the old man, you know, his time comes, you know, they got him in the dirt.

The old lady, a couple months, all that stuff. Gone, right? Yeah. You can find some gems. And one last personal plug, if you don't mind. The old lady, a couple months, all that stuff gone. Yeah. You can find some gems. And one last personal plug, if you don't mind. Oh, no, please go on. I got a really cool personal book that I've been making, and it's going to be coming out this November. All the pre-sales out now.

Oh, really? Yeah, it's called Field Notes for Food Adventure. Yeah, I shot it. It took a year. It was hard, but it was amazing. So it was Brad Leone's Field Notes. Field Notes I shot, it took a year. It was hard, but it was amazing. And it was just. So it was Bradley Oni's Field Notes. Field Notes for Food Adventure.

For Food Adventure. Is that pre-sale at the publisher's website or Amazon? Yeah, all of those. Okay. Yeah, it's everywhere. Okay. And, um, and it's, yeah, it's out there, you know, from New Jersey to Maine, you know, from, uh, seaweed foraging and, uh, shellfish foraging and then recipes that go with it. We do some fermentation.

We do ramping. There's a chapter called Deer Dad where we go, you know, making venison sausage and stuff like that and recipes that go with it. Some good old saltwater fishing, maple, you know, maple syrup production. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. So we went there and like shot all, kind of like the videos I kind of do, like in a book about it, you know, I can, it's got my family in it a little bit.

And, you know, that guy that I was fishing with, Vin he's in it you know awesome yeah i just did a lot of cool stuff throughout the northeast so if you're into that check it out a lot of really cool photos did you come up something good for that dumpster diving video yet phil i see you looking and thinking well yeah i well he mentioned oscar the grouch i'm trying to see if i can i'm thinking about how i can you're running on that yes are there any sesame street songs i can sample and that's how a creative man works down there i could say always turn if you want to see if I can. I'm thinking about how I can. You're running on that. Yeah. Are there any Sesame Street songs I can sample? That's how a creative man works down there. I could say always turn it. If you want to see how a creative man works, down that way.

It's that easy. I got one more favorite ask of Brad. Yeah. So I have this icebreaker that I've like endlessly annoyed people in my circle with. I bring it up often. The Hugh Glass thing? Nope. Nope.

Different. That was like college era Spencer. This is like recent. I still bug people with this question. I ask him what the U.S. state is that they think about the least. It's never like your first answer because then like three answers later they'd be like, oh, actually it's this one. I never think about this one.

It's a great question, man. I love it. I'd love to play it sometime with you guys. Anyway, the most common answer I get is Connecticut. Oh, I believe it. I'd love to play it sometime with you guys. Anyway, the most common answer I get is Connecticut. Oh, I believe that. So why should folks think of Connecticut? Do some PR work for them. Oh, I can answer you right now.

I think it's a great topic because I've felt that way for the longest time. Connecticut, just a drive-through state. I almost don't want to give it up, all right? But, like, whatever. You don't want to spot burn Connecticut? It's a gem. It was always just in the way, another two hours until you got to a cool state. whatever it's you don't want to spot burn connecticut it's a gem like it's you know like it was always just like in the way a few like another two hours till you got to a cool state

like new hampshire rhode island vermont maine i mean those are awesome everyone's going up there freaking vacation land you know and um but connecticut there's so it's just as beautiful and where i'm at it's like it's right at right on the border of Rhode Island. And it's right where it starts to become ocean. And it's just, I mean, really nice, active, small, a lot of farm, a lot of dairy, a lot of cattle, a lot of sheep, a lot of like cheese. There's seaweed farmers and just a lot of really cool things happening out there. And it's kind of like slept on a little bit. And it's not in the middle of nowhere. Mystic's a town there.

Providence is super close. International Airport's only like 35 minutes. But then I'm sitting in the middle of nowhere 10 minutes from the ocean. What do you think, Spencer? Awesome. That's a good answer. Get titillated by that?

Yeah, yeah. But it sucks. Stay away. Yeah. All right, Brad Leone. Thanks for having me man thanks for coming on what is he getting

as a fisherman 6'5 oh as a fisherman I think it was 6'5 Brad Leone a 6.5 mountain white fisherman give it up

I'll take it give it up for Brad 6'5 podcast guest I'm giving him 9.5 alright 9.5. All right. Is that a thing, or do you guys score people?

Just starting out. Chester, what do you give him? Podcast guest. You like to throw around these numbers, Chester. Guest. I'm not as probably good at rating podcasts, but I would say 9.6. Okay. Jesus Christ. Holy cow. You're going to have to have me back, boys.

Yeah, that's a phenomenal sport. Let's start doing that now. Room for improvement. Always. Always. Every category. You can always learn. That's going to be the name of my new show, Room for Improvement.

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