The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 352: Bizarre Guests with Andrew Zimmern

Episode Date: July 25, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Andrew Zimmern, Kevin Gillespie, Ryan Callaghan, Sean Weaver, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: Andrew's new show, "Wild Game Kitchen"; all the bizzare foods and a kid's book; an early love of WWF and Mean Jean; Duck Lore, Season 2 is out!; Typha, FirstLite's new waterfowl line is finally here; casting stripes; ninja throwin' stars; how looking at pictures captured by the James Webb Space Telescope ruins your day; mountain lion deniers and mountain lion truthers; the first case of homosexual necrophilia in mallards; Kevin dispelling brining myths and explaining the difference between brines and marinades from a scientific perspective; Martha Stewart's thin chopsticks and how she blazes with Snoop Dog; foraging for rosehips and crabbing in Long Island, NY; a free and loose 60s housewife; skipping meals; Andrew's experiences living with protected tribes; staking 5-step snakes on the crucifixion bush; literally chasing kudu; the "I'm not here" mode and the Makushi code of silence; trying to be useful; the lessons nature teaches you about yourself; judging Iron Chef; and more.    Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Presented by First Light, creating proven, versatile hunting apparel from merino base layers to technical outerwear for every hunt.

First Light. Go farther, stay longer. Joined today by very special guest Andrew Zimmer. Host of more damn shows than you can shake a stick at. Shake a set of tongs at. Not all great though. Still. Yeah, you know. Just a stack. Quantity over quality. Hey, one of the guys that works for us, Garrett Long,

he's been on the show. He texted me this morning. Bummed that he couldn't come meet you. He said, we watched Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods like some people go to church. We'll say hi to him. That was a good show. That was not one of the ones I'm talking about. I think he even mentioned that you'd get your special clothes on and the family would gather around. It brought the Longs together.

It brought the longs together. It brought the longs together. Creator, executive producer, and host of shows including Bizarre Foods franchise, a travel channel driven by food, Emmy-winning The Zimmern List, Family Dinner, What's Eating America from MSNBC, and this year, it's the premiere of his newest show, Wild Game Kitchen on the Outdoor Channel. Hitting the airwaves. People still say that?

Is it still airwaves? I'd go with it. Why not? I don't know what I'm talking about. It's like when I call my phone, my telephone, and people are like, why do you say that?

It's your phone. Hitting the airwaves, September 19th. Also four books. The Bizarre Truth, Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre World of Food, Andrew Zimmern's Field Guide to Exceptionally Weird, Wild, and Wonderful Food. And here's an unexpected one. Alliance of World Travelers, Volume 1, AZ and the Lost City of Ophir.

Hit me with that real quick. I used to make up stories to put my kids to sleep. Okay. How many kids? Well, at the time, one. real quick uh i used to make up stories to put my kids to sleep okay and i finally kids what well at the time one and i i just finally said there's nothing in the 8 to 12 year old space for kids there's really good cardboard books i mean for any dads or moms out there you know kids yeah i mean you know inky stinky caterpillar and you know, inky, stinky caterpillar and, you know, yucky. There's just a whole bunch of great possum for little kids.

And there's really good stuff for 12, 13 and up, but there's, there's a missing chunk. I think that was underestimating what eight to 12, eight to 13 year olds could read. So I made a kid's book and it's the, to this, I mean, it won a lot of awards and then you can't sell the second one because that age group fell out, somehow fell out of favor because they're all reading stuff on their computers or their telephones. So you, did you intend to go many volumes? I wanted to, I still want to, I will. I'll force my way into something. I'll figure it out. Yeah.

That's cool though. I'm going to get a copy of that. I have two right way into something. I'll figure it out. Yeah. That's cool though. I'm going to get a copy of that. I'll send you one. I have two right now that land right in that zone. Oh my God. They'd love it. It's an adventure time traveling tale with the greatest premise ever. There's a strange Uncle Arthur who works at the British Museum in London and yet lives in this old Victorian mansion in St. Paul, Minnesota.

And he has his near-do-well kid, who's basically me, who can't do anything right, doesn't have a lot of self-esteem. He's a total mess. Jeez, you're painting a grim picture of yourself. In the first dark kid's book. Yeah, exactly.

Maybe we shouldn't have one. Well, no, but I wanted kids. Here was the thing. I wanted kids. That was the whole point, to relate to it, because that's how the kids are feeling. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Right? So I wanted to put in real kids with real feelings and real kid characters. sneaks his way on board his uncle's plane, unbeknownst to the uncle,

and sneaks with him, just kind of creeps behind and gets into the British Museum. And he's found out, and his uncle banishes him to the office that he has. And the kid pulls out one of those old picture viewers where you slide the picture into the tube and hold it up to the light and it's a time traveling device and the uncle is trying to hide it in plain sight and he goes back to ancient egypt but as the time traveling thing is happening a whole bunch of people rush into the office and he is sent back to ancient egypt with three or four other kids he doesn't know. And then the evil villains also make their way back there. And it's like Indiana Jones, just cliffhanger every chapter as they hurtle their way to the exciting finish where they save the world. Great, man.

Yeah, it's good. Is it still for sale? Yes. I guarantee. I'll sell you one right now. Put it this way. I will sell you one right now Put it this way I will send you one Perfect Oh I got one more question for you right quick

Two questions for you That t-shirt Peace in America Thank you Second question is Are you super scared? I think you'll do pretty good at trivia You know you're playing trivia with us I heard about that afterwards um i'm i don't think you'll win

but i think you'll do good but see here's here's the great thing i think you'll do good no here's here's here's the great thing i was talking about this with someone else the other day on a different subject at a certain point in your life if you you have lived – if you have subscribed to whatever you believe right living is and you've started to live by a certain set of principles, I mean really live by them. You make mistakes all the time because you're a human being. We all make mistakes. We all have a lot of messy issues in our lives. We all have a lot of things that are private that we're not good at. But if you live by a certain set of principles, you develop enough self-esteem that you're not scared of anything. So if you fail at something, it's unimportant.

It doesn't matter to me if I didn't answer any of them. You don't give a shit if you win or not. It's not just win. I don't care if I embarrass myself anymore, but you have a professional amount of pride and expertise on the line if we are playing an outdoors-based trivia game. Is that a nice way of saying Steve has a fragile ego? No. It's a nice way of saying there's more pressure on you guys in that game. Let's say I was to go. Let's say Andrew has a show.

Yep. And they have a culinary, world culinary trivia show. You might do pretty good. Well, I go on the show. He would probably say to me, I think you'll do okay. I don't think you'll win. I think you'll get a three or four. I don't know that Andrew would say that. He's

nicer than you, Steve. All I'm trying to do here, man, I'm just trying to drum up Lister. I'm trying to drum up Lister enthusiasm. Set expectations low. I'm trying to drum up Lister. You know how in world wrestling, pro wrestling, they take

Hulk Hogan and the other guy and they have the meeting before to promote the thing? That's all I'm trying to do. That's fantastic. Let me tell you, Mean Gene. That's what I'm trying to do. Mean Gene is no longer with us. I grew up watching him

through the years. Through the years. I loved wrestling when I was a little, little, little kid. You had to buy the magazines and then wait all week till Saturday and watch pro wrestling. Wrestling. Do you remember having honest to God debates with kids when I was in elementary school about whether it was real or not? Like, I'm not buying it what do you mean what do you mean it was very real to me for a very long time until I started to see

you know like the the the and me no disrespect to little people but the minute they they put in like at the time they called them midgets right right and Right. And, you know, Skylo Lo and Little Beaver. And I realized, OK, this is not only disrespectful to little people. It just struck me as being wrong, but it's also disrespectful to native people. Like the whole thing kind of struck me as not right. And then I started to sniff things out. And then I was like, no. And it started to dawn on me at age like 11, 12, that my love of the sport needed to change a little bit. And it did, but it still didn't mean that I wasn't obsessed with Mil Mascaris coming off the top rope.

Well, maybe after the trivia thing, you'll be a pro wrestler. I love it. I'll get a folding chair. I've done it. Have you done it? I'll get a folding chair. I've done it. Have you done it? I'll get a folding chair and wallop the upside of the head over it. Have you done it before? Have you in your travels?

No, I've never pro wrestled. Oh, my God. The most fun I've ever had. Once in a while, there's a wrestling match on a video shoot. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I like doing that. Here's a thinker for you guys, all you listeners out there.

Hacksaw jim duggan he got to bring a two by four into the arena because he incorporated wood into his name basically that's all it took that's all i could figure out let me try that tsa that's why they call me stevie blade yeah. They call me Brody the Taser. Yeah, for a reason. Well, if you're the meat eater, you could bring like a big tomahawk steak probably. Yeah, that's right. Duck Lore Season 2 is out now. Tell them, Sean.

Yep. Duck Lore Season 2, which was kind of the back half of last Waterfowl season. First episode out right now is on the Great Salt Lake, which is pretty wild. Yeah. Duck lore's out. And along with that, the new First Light Waterfowl gear. Yeah. Which is tight.

Yeah. Well, it's tight, but it's Typha. Typha. Typha. Which is a genus for cattails. Yeah. It's a great name, man. So First Light Typha has launched no no this is the first of two

waterfowl like two collections of waterfowl material that'll be coming out from first light um meaning like the entire collection right off the top comes out in two batches so right now only certain styles are out for purchase but you'll see a lot of that stuff if you watch duck lore yep you'll see a lot of that stuff if you watch Duck Lore. Yep. You'll see a lot of gear. Phenomenal, phenomenal stuff. I love it. Certain styles are available for purchase right now. Other styles becoming available at a later time.

Here's what you got now. The Landing Zone Jacket, the Tundra Neck Gaiter, which is sweet, three new beanies, and the Colab Collection with Tangle Free. Yeah, that's of the new styles right and then we've got a bunch of the you know existing product like the catalyst and all the wool and all that out in typhus now so there's yeah there's obviously all kinds of crossover stuff other kinds of first light apparel that crosses over real well so um you know there's a bunch of merino there's the origin

hoodie which i have in typh and i've had that for a long time catalyst vest catalyst jacket catalyst pant leafy jacket uncle pagre 2.0 all out now in the typh pattern and then more of the first light waterfowl line which is like a great collection. They've got their, I mean, just keep getting better and better stuff coming all the time. And so check all that stuff out now. And hopefully by, by Waterfowl, the rest will be dropped, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, and in Duck Lure, along with the Duck Lure launch, we'll have some videos and stuff

on the Meteor website, like getting into the, like the conditions I'm wearing each piece in and kind of talking about some of the features of these jackets there's some like ridiculous thinking that went into these even like one specific feature right is the casting stripe on the underside of the arms for casting your dog little things like that we break down why all these pieces are the way they are. What's a casting stripe? Yeah, I was going to say, man, tell people what you're talking about. Sorry, casting stripe is for casting your dog

on hand signals, right? For directing your dog to a down bird. So, underside of your arm is a visible bar so when you're telling your dog, like Cal's super dog, you can point, snort, yell, like, what are you yelling? You can tell him a direction.

Over. And that son of a bitch dog stops. Or that dog will run out and he'll be kind of lost for a minute. And he's like stops and stares at cow. Cow does a hand signal, points his arm what way it goes. And that son of a bitch goes in that direction. Which happens to be like the best feeling ever. It's the best tool.

What color is that? I mean, is it like. Just so they can see it ever. It's the best tool. What color is that? I mean, is it like something that- Just so they can see it good. Oh, okay. Yeah, because you know that type? I mean, it's kind of funny when you think about it. The whole point of the jacket is to be camo. Right, yeah.

And then you're standing against the entire environment. And the dog's like, where the hell is he? Yeah. Well, so under the arm there's black. Oh, wow. Hold your arm out and you got like a directional bar. Got it. Oh, neat.

The further the dog gets away, the bigger you need to become typically if you got to do the hand signals. Cool. Yeah.

Dude, there's nothing worse than most dogs, but like, nothing worse than most dogs, but the dogs that are dialed are just cool, man.

We're going to have a bunch of dialed dogs here. Ruby's kicking butt. Oh, yeah. How's your dog doing Sean? Case is doing well I don't want to jinx it right Because a guy that talks up his dog

Is the guy that ends up with a bad dog That's why I'm talking up Kel's dog for him If you got a dog Shut your mouth Never talk up your own dog I'm considering training my first dog Talk to him. Consistency.

If you got it. That's the whole thing. I think I have the time now, and I think I finally have the dog, and I'm super, super excited about it. What kind of dog do you have? It's a Legata Romagnolo. It's an Italian water dog. Do those have like the white? No. Peas?

No. Peas. Very good. It's either the peas or the deadlocks. Very good. Wow, you are good at trivia. Oh, yeah, dude. Or I had a Jewish girlfriend.

Believe me, as the only 61-year-old New York City Jew at the table, I figured it had to be something like that. Hey, you got a half Jew right here. Right on. But I finally have the dog that as a, she's five months old, but she's kind of a natural. So just slowly doing stuff with her at the house. I broke my leg and fractured my ankle in April.

So I've had a lot of time. And it was the day she arrived. She was actually the cause of me slipping, falling and was chasing her. fractured my ankle in april so i i've had a lot of time and it was the day she arrived she was actually the cause of me slipping falling and was chasing her pleasure to meet you out the house and so there's a bond between us and get shot and well this is what i think is the spiritual pay i think the universe is like i saved her uh which is how i see it. And then did my suffering, my 40 years in the desert for her. Yeah. And now.

It's downright biblical. Exactly. And now she is going to pay is unbelievable to me where her older brother same parents uh a year apart is completely inefficient fantastic couch dog but that's where it ends with luca yeah clemmy the exact opposite oh love it yeah you know like pro trainers that are that them, a lot of dogs under, under their watch. A lot of times it averages out to like 20 minutes a day of, of, of real training. And then there's a lot of fundamentals that other folks will jump in there on. So, I mean, 20 minutes a day and then the constant reinforcement of just the normal good behavior, set, stay, come.

Yep. I mean, it's not asking that much of your time. No. And she wants, when I say natural, I mean, I've never done this before, but I'm starting to study it and, and she will go anything that moves in the back or she doesn't go right after it right away, but she kind of stays and watches it. And if you see her watching something, it's an animal. And we live way out in the country in Minnesota. And so there's tons of stuff out there for her.

And the only thing that she's obsessed right now with actually going after that we've taught her very quickly not to eat are frogs. Because they come up out of the lake. And they're breeding. And she sees these little things in the grass, especially at night when it's hot. And they come out. And she's just like going nuts. It's like, stop eating the frogs. But she's, she's got that down.

So I'm like, I have, I have faith in her. Yeah. I'm excited for you. I just need her. I do. You know, we, my life there in terms of local, you know, hunting is, you know, duck, geese, pheasant and grouse. That's it.

And. Well, you know, if that's all you have. That's all we have. That's it. Well, you know, if that's all you have. That's all we have. That's it. It's birds. Just all the main birds people like to hunt. Just the things I love. Just, yeah, the things I love, too. That's amazing. That's awesome.

Hopefully I can, because to share that with a dog is the, I was getting back to your point about that moment where in the field, and it's an important moment, and it happens and it works out is an unbelievable symbiotic relationship yeah anyway i'll shut up no very fulfilling keeps us going uh i got a hot tip for parents you know brody we should have put this in the outdoor kids in an inside world book you know i was going to mention that book when he was talking about

eight to twelve year olds yeah so we're writing a book for those kids too. We wrote a book about kids and now we're writing a book for kids. The book about kids is Outdoor Kids in an Inside World. Which is great. I wish we had... I redecked my snowmobile trailer, so I took the old rotten plywood off and put new plywood down.

Oh, you found some good material. I leaned them up against the garden fence. And that inspired me to go dig out the ninja throwing stars, which we hadn't used in a while. Man, if you got kids, get them some ninja throwing stars, man. What are those? Teach them how to make them. How did you not know what a ninja throwing... Throwing stars?

Yeah, we grew up calling them Chinese throwing stars. I have no idea why. They must have said China stamped in it. Flea markets. You get them at flea markets. Flea markets. But let me give you a tip when you go to buy. One, I was showing my kid how a real ninja holds it last night.

I was always told it's hard to throw. A real ninja. He's like, are there real ninjas? I'm like, yeah, dude. There were like assassins and burglars 1,300 years ago. Starting to really doubt Corrine's martial arts credentials here. I thought he said something. I didn't understand that he said throwing stars.

Ninja throwing stars. My wife calls it that multi-pronged throwing knife. So, oh, they're fun. But don't like Amazon doesn't sell them. I think they're like safety concerns. We used to make them in shop class. Oh, I know, but they're no good. What happened to Longdart?

That's what I was like. That's what's up next for him. The gasoline-powered sharp thing. Good for your kids. These, dude, they love throwing stars. But there's a couple of things. You gotta go to ninja supply houses. You can't get them. Go to a ninja supply

house. Ninja clearing house. Ninja supply house. Don't get suckered Go to a ninja supply house. Ninja clearing house. Ninja supply house. Don't get suckered into the four prongs. Yeah, that's for chumps. Are you going to the five prongs? No, you need like a six prong. A seven prong. As many prongs as you can find.

I took an angle grinder and finally honed the prongs on those throwing stars. And then I took blaze orange paint because they go yeah off never never land so i blaze orange painted them honed them up with an angle grinder and then you those old rotten sheets of plywood dude hours of fun oh my god hours of fun actually sounds pretty good oh i'll throw it out there i remember from a ninja movie they did like a to train the ninjas they take like a string and tie like a washer on it and let it swing in front of the target and you got to get so good that you can flop and pin the string to the board you know what i never bought in those movies even as a kid was

like a ninja would he would throw oh and it'd pierce your brain pan well no it's like hit you in the chest and the guy would just fall over dead. Yeah, stone cold. It'd be more like, down! Jesus! What the hell is that for? It'd be kind of more what you would say if you got hit in the chest by a ninja throwing a star.

Are you nuts? So much fun. Oh, the James Webb, this stuff is like, i can't be looking at james webb telescope phil put that on my radar the other day i can't we looked this morning at the one it's crazy it ruins your whole day so well those those first deep space ones from hubble however many years ago the first time i saw that i had like my first real existential moment where i got like dizzy and almost passed out just like thinking of the vastness of the

universe i woke up being proud that i remembered it was my anniversary so i'm just laying there my wife's asleep and i was laying there being like i am gonna razzle her by saying happy anniversary then i'm like god i hope you don't forget if she sleeps much longer you're like i'm just gonna but i missed her birthday twice which just still haunts me uh so i don't know if i've ever forgotten that anniversary one day we got the day wrong went out to dinner didn't realize until later that was the wrong day uh but i remembered anyways and then when she woke up we're looking at the james webb space telescope things and there's that like deep field photo thousands of galaxies okay so that like some of them being like

the sun's light takes is it 8 or 13 minutes to get here the sun's light takes, is it eight or 13 minutes to get here? The sun's light takes eight minutes to get here. Galaxies that are 290 light years away. So if you turned on a flashlight on one of them planets, the light would get here in 290 years. If you turned on the light at the sun, it would be here in eight minutes. I'm not saying there's dudes sitting around

writing books and whatnot. There are definitely things. More planets than there are grains of sand on Earth. And then what is all that shit doing out there? That's what I don't like to think about. It's just too much stuff. Gasoline's expensive, and then you see that picture it doesn't matter shit yeah there are many different types of uh measuring contests in this world and the uh headline that made me laugh

thinking about this measuring contest that we've put ourselves in is uh first pictures with web telescope like deepest uh view of space ever recorded like very first ones and i just imagined that there was somebody sitting around being like told you so i told no way, no way that we are an aimless rock hurtling nowhere, doing nothing, circling an average. Our sun is a G2 star, right? The most average of all types of stars. So to think that of all these billions, trillions of, we just don't, the vastness is unbelievable, right? Because that's, those are just the ones that we can see. More planets than grains of sand.

Than grains of sand. That we're the only one that is supporting life is ludicrous. Yeah, you're right. It's ludicrous. I think I've summed this up before and I don't want to take too much time on it, but you know the physiologist Jared Diamond? Mm-hmm. He's kind of a white whale for this podcast

never did get him on do we no i should circle back i just bought a bunch of his books the new white whale is ron i haven't tried to go i haven't tried to go through high level high level contacts and can't get a call back from ron desantis and then jared jared diamond so in his book about human history he in the end he talks about what about other people coming and hanging out and he gets to this interesting idea uh that like if you imagine the earth's the way he describes it if you imagine the earth's timeline as your arms spread out okay so the earth's timeline is fingertip to fingertip you could remove human history with one stroke of a nail file that's actually a john mcphee observation but that's what human history is so as long as the earth's been here human history is a stroke

of a nail file and then you can take that off the the timeline so what he gets into is this idea that like if you have a four billion year old planet okay and you have a human history that's the stroke of a nail file and then those people can transmit electronic signals for a couple hundred years you're talking about a tremendous coincidence for other planets to sort of like launch a life form. Correct. That becomes where it has aspirations similar to ours and then its particular timeline and its aspirations and its technological capabilities somehow coincide with ours. It's not like, is it out there?

But it's like, where is it? In their timeline. Like, where is it? And does timeline. Like, where is it? And does all things go in this direction? Well, that's where it becomes even more fascinating. That's where it starts to narrow itself down a little bit. But in so many zillions, quadrillions of opportunities, right? But just the idea of life on another planet, even a life form that may not be able to communicate with us because of their timeline. Because it's like the most advanced thing

is the earthworm or whatever. There's stuff out there. There is stuff out there. Well, and then also going back to your original point, like consider that maybe there does come the day that we do finally get that transmission, but it came from so far away that that civilization, they don't exist anymore. That's right. They're long since gone. So they sent it and then long since gone. They sent it at their height. And then we're like, sweet! And we go over there and they're like, ah, they're gone! Yep, shit! Knew we were going to be late.

And we think so highly of ourselves that transmission will come in with a word misspelled and we'll be like, is this even worth our time? That might be a... That's a future show for you, man, bizarre planets. We're still trying to figure out – All of them.

Bizarre planets. We're still trying to figure out how to feed our populations, whether it's four people, four astronauts or, you know, a hundred. Feeding people for deep space exploration is now the really big question mark. And it's fascinating being around scientists down in Houston or Florida at our space centers, California, at the different jet propulsion laboratory facilities. And I've had the opportunity to be with some of these food scientists who are so insanely smart and just, just the, the engineering to feed people for a deep space trip, nutritive food that stays nutritive, right? Because the current way we feed our astronauts, it becomes non-nutritive. And so, you know, how do you grow, sustain

our own life on these deep space voyages is, is something that my brain just starts to fizzle out on but it's fascinating to me have they watched that matt damon movie well that's the whole thing figured out that's the big joke right i that was the problem i walked in the door i just saw it and it was like you know it was like yeah we've all heard that all our kids tell us that or All our friends tell us that. I was, I can't remember who was with us. Oh,

you were, yeah, Corinne was there. When? When we went, a few months ago, we went to, we had dinner with Rogan and we went to watch his,

like, I hope I'm not like blowing something for him because he's like developing a new. His comedy show because it was fucking hilarious. But anyways, he's talking about, someone was,

he's with someone who's explaining like the intricacies of getting people to Mars and like all this shit and he says but the whole time the person's explaining

the math he's just thinking how there's three people and he's like what if one of those guys brings a pistol and shoots the other two how hairy

lover is mine it was like one of one has a pistol and shoots one of them and then himself Oh. How hairy. Love where his mind went. It was like one of one has a pistol and shoots one of them and then himself. And then you're like, no! After they launch. So he's like, so no matter what you do, he says, check them for guns. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater podcast.

Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet.

Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Oh, here's a good one. We've covered this a bunch, but I want to talk about it again. Mountain lions in Connecticut. Speaking of mysteries, this is as mysterious as you think other planets are mysterious it's a good transition this guy's riled up so he he's got he's got people broken into two kinds of people it's it's it's actually not a dude it's a it's a gal who's maybe one of our like 10 audience members yeah so one of the 10 women yeah who listens to the show wrote wrote in, and she is talking about there's two kinds of people on this planet.

I used to think there's two kinds of people. There's people that divide people into two kinds of people. She's got it that there's two distinct camps. There's mountain lion believers and mountain lion deniers. Two kinds of Connecticutans. That's it. There's no one in the middle who's like, I don't know. Not in that state. I think it's like

that everywhere east of the Mississippi. There's a lot of people who do not know what a mountain lion is. What about people who don't give a shit? What category do they fall in? There's mountain lion truthers. Those that believe mountain lions have an established breeding population statewide.

Listen to the terminology because I want the listener to listen to the terminology that she is using. Okay. Those that believe mountain lions have an established breeding population statewide in Connecticut. I think that, like, I'm going to get into the primary question, but I'm asking her to listen to what she's saying. Established breeding population statewide. And mountain lion deniers. Those that believe there is no established breeding population. And the annual lion sightings are a result of people's inability to distinguish a bobcat from a lion.

It goes on to say there was a recent high-profile sighting in a Facebook post made by the Woodbridge PD acknowledging the sighting. So that's the police department. It hasn't happened in a while. It's caused quite a stir. Based on the fact, I'm quoting and summarizing in a mix of quotes and summarizations. Based on the fact that these sightings have never been substantiated by any photos or tracks, our wildlife division insists that there is no

established breeding population. With so many sightings and so many locals with all kinds of lion stories, you'd think that in the age of the smartphone, aided by thousands of trail... This is more from the non-people saying smartphones trail cams you'd catch one um every hunting and agriculture facebook page is talking about this new sighting one look through the comments section

will show how divided we are on this issue goes on to say my main question for the lion truthers is if lions really are breeding here why does the department of energy and environmental protection deny their presence what kind of secret hidden agenda does our underfunded understaffed and disorganized little wildlife division have? She's saying, maybe they just want to keep all the lions to themselves. Maybe they respond to sightings by going out at night, trapping the lions, and

bringing them to their secret underground lion facility for secret testing. Would love to hear your discussion. I love how that took a hard turn into conspiracy theory no no i think she's saying like what if it's a common thing you'll commonly like in all these states where this happens you'll commonly hear that like like all the time oh fishing game knows

they're here yeah they just don't want to admit it there's a like i want to tackle that for a minute because there is a little bit of a validity to – there are issues at play for states to deny they have populations because – and this is not a conspiracy. It's just like a thing. There's a chance where – remember recently there was a bill to try to declare um it was it was an esa deal it was like it would be that if there was a eastern cougar if there was an eastern cougar um it would be a it would be a dead ringer for endangered species act protection okay so there is a little like not quite conspiracy theory that for state agencies to come out and say, yes, we have a very small at-risk breeding population of a native large cat. There would probably be a conversation about, well, what are you going to do to protect that naturally recovered naturally occurring population and that has it would have all kinds of implications that has how you manage land and

other animals they're going to be like what's your management plan right right what's your recovery plan okay so there is a foot there is a understandable foot dragging on the part of people just to come out and a mountain lion gets hit on the side of the road and for them to be like, okay, we're going to have a management plan and a recovery plan. And they're naturally right. Because that eats up dollars and resources and all the rest of that. So they'd rather just sweep it under the rug. Is that the point? You'd rather just look the other direction or not. Or it's what I, here's my take on it. My take on it is that, yeah, man, there are mountain lions running around, but you have to ask yourself, what does it mean to say that you have an established breeding population?

When lions turn up in crazy places, they're often able to be, you know, through genetic testing, they'll be like, it's from a South Dakota Black Hills population. Which is what happened, what, several years ago. Yeah, four years ago. One got hit on the road. One struck out and did some crazy shit, just like in Missouri. You know, I remember that high profile, somewhat high profile case. A guy came home from bow hunting and there was a coyote trying to get into his chicken coop. He shoots the coyote.

Nope. He shot a wolf from Michigan's UP. They wander around. In Missouri. So then does the state of Missouri then say, oh, well, let's have a management plan for gray wolves. And then five years goes by and no one ever lays eyes on another gray wolf. We had a case of a black bear that hopped on a grain barge.

Yep. And ended up in some place that does not have a black bear population yeah which apparently is like not totally uncommon was bruno the bear right yeah a lot of that's fantastic yeah i mean they're notorious for wanting to catch a free ride somewhere yeah well then that bear i mean they're bears yeah bear i saw paddington yeah exactly that bear gradually almost made his way he wound up getting hit right yeah but almost made his way to like almost shit lucked into a population of black bears in arkansas which would have been cool so it's like no one i don't know of any serious individual who looks at like

wildlife politics and wildlife trends i don't know any serious individual who doesn't think that legitimate wild-born mountain lions are making their way into the eastern u.s and showing up in unexpected places and i remember one there was one that was hit that had been uh she had lactated and had like there was evidence that she had reproduced. She hadn't been declawed. Right. And no doubt in places, two of these things are coming together and reproducing.

But, um, that isn't the same thing as an established breeding population that a state would then go in and have a management plan for. I want to, uh, said, uh, on behalf of the folks at, at deep over there in Connecticut, I got to work with, with these folks, uh, tagging, um, or replacing

radio callers on, on black bears through, uh, the NSF one year, and that was super awesome. And these are just like you find I would say the majority of in wildlife agencies in the majority of states they're very dedicated in caring people my observation is in the state of Connecticut your wildlife agency people get very little time to deal with wildlife because you people that have over people, the state of Connecticut just keep calling it for random crap. And they just, they don't have any time to deal with the animals, but that's what they want to do. So, but they're dedicated wildlife folks. And to Steve's point, you know, we had last year, the year before,

a grizz sighting on the Clearwater River drainage in Idaho. Now, we know for a fact there's grizz that traipsed through the panhandle of Idaho often, but there is no evidence of an established grizzly population in that area. We know there's established grizzly bears in Southern Idaho on the, you know, the GYE population, greater Yellowstone ecosystem population. And I remember Idaho fish and game was getting some,

some crap because they said, yes, we're, we're acknowledging that there was a sighting of like what is believed to be a grizzly bear in this drainage happened to be the second year in a row they were able to find tracks that definitely looked like grizzly tracks and they were able to find hair and then they were not going to say this is a grizzly bear until they did a dna analysis on that hair yo because. Because as Steve just said,

there's implement, there's larger implications for a state agency to say, yep, you're right. Because then they have to change their management to say that this does exist here. And it has implications on a bunch of stuff that, you know, you're,

uh, John Q. Fisher folk don't have to worry about when they say, yeah, I saw Grizz the other day. Like almost guaranteed immediate lawsuits too. To be like suits like, why is it not listed? Why have you not fulfilled your management plan? You know? Yep. There should be no bear hunting here because there's a chance that a black bear is going

to get, or a Grizz is going to get mistaken for a black bear which does happen so i want to tell this connecticut and what do they call people from connecticut not connecticutans i think they should from now on yeah can we can we push for that i got a message for the connecticut person though here's a this is the last thing i'll say on the subject uh clay had an interesting observation with mountain lions showing up in arkansas okay where it got to be like more trail cam pictures more stuff event arkansas used to have a black bear biologist one day one day that biologist became the large the state's large carnivore biologist or some such thing like that it It was like a very subtle, like his purview, suddenly his purview expanded, right?

And it was sort of a, and Clay took it to be a subtle acknowledgement. Clay probably took it to be a subtle acknowledgement of the existence of Black Panthers. Yes. He did. Like not just mountain lions, but Black Panthers too.

Sean, marching along toward our, getting back to our conversation with our esteemed guest, Andrew Zimmern. Sean, hit us with the first case of homosexual necrophilia in Mallards. That'd be a great title for a movie. Wow, that was a transition. Or a band. Oh, that would be a good band name. I think that is the name of one of Carl's bands.

Yeah, exactly. It will be by the end of the day. First case of homosexual necrophilia in Mallards, which is an actual paper in the... What journal was it, Sean? Okay, well, I don't even know what journal it was in. I'll tell you. So this guy, C.W. Molliker back in like 1995 recorded a Drake Mallard running into the glass of the, what must be like the Natural History Museum. Oh, he's even got pictures over here.

Oh, yeah. He did full-fledged documentation taking pictures of- Cornelius Molliker. Yeah, he's got a heck of a name. It's a fake name. Drake Mallard collides into the glass, being chased by another Drake Mallard, falls dead, and proceeds to get bred, practically, for 75 minutes. Goo.

And the dude documents the whole thing, takes pictures pictures collects the carcasses the whole bit that's an interesting type of academic journal um and there's like a there's like people will get journal journal articles off just like a crazy observation yeah you know and you'll publish like people will publish an observation and he took six years to publish it because he was like, I don't know if this is something I really want to deal with. And he ended up winning like a satirical science award. It's called the IG Nobel Prize. That's for weird science. The Ig Nobel.

Oh, you know who won that? Metten as well. That's right. For his poop knife. Yep. It seems to me to add a new definition to the term screwed the life out of you. I mean, that's a horrific tale.

Now, there's a speculation that when it collided with the glass, it was engaged in an attempted rape flight that resulted in the collision. That sounds reasonable. Yeah, because it was running away from this other Drake is what he supposed. This all adds up. Yeah.

Anybody who's watched prison movies knows that this all makes sense. Well, prison movies lack barbed penises. Yeah, that's true. True. The Ballard does not. Oh, go ahead. What I like is now that it's become like a holiday. It's Dead Duck Day on June 5th. And him and a bunch of people go back to the Natural History Museum.

To host a vigil? Yes. Yes. And then they pretty much host a vigil and then walk to a local Chinese restaurant for a six-course duck dinner. That's some dark shit. Wow. Yeah, that is interesting. I don't know where I'm going with that.

I'd want to get in on the meal part, but I might sit the vigil out. Yeah. Depends on the restaurant. Yeah. He even has like a, there's pictures of him like giving a speech with a podium, the whole bit. He's wearing a gimp mask. Leave your clothes at the door. We're going to have the vigil now. Yeah.

Fellow named Cody wrote in, on my way home from work, you'll see that we're closing in on your terrain. Pay attention. Get ready. We start wide. Not that the Necro feel, I don't know. I felt super dialed in when that story popped up. And it's really catered to your Minneapolis audience.

When we started talking about the necrophilia mallard, he thought we were like, started the interview. What happened here? Oh, a guy named Cody writes in. On my way home from work, I was listening to podcast episode 328, Test My Meat, and part of the conversation raised a question for me in your conversation about brining you guys discuss how adding other ingredients into a brine will not make the cut of meat take on those flavors what i was just saying is when you're mixing up a brine and you get into just like

things you're like come on be like three peppercorns just put the pepper on it later like it's not you're not no one on. Be like, three peppercorns. I was like, just put the pepper on it later. Like it's not, you're not, no one's going to taste the one and be like, is there a hint of peppercorn? It's just like, is that a chili cherry peppercorn? Yeah. Like it looks cool in the brine. The brine looks cool with stuff floating in it. But I'm just like at a point, there's some things that like, there's no way on planet earth that even the most finest palate on the world would taste that there were

peppercorns in that brine the example this is cody talking the example in the podcast was including a bay leaf in the brine my question is how is an old dried one my question is how is marinating meat different unless i'm mistaken soaking meat in a marinade will make that meat soak up the flavors of the marinade, not the leaf. But based on the brining discussion, I'm now wondering if my outlook on marinating meat is wrong. Can meat actually soak up a marinade? He is wrong. Yeah, because it's just, explain it. We're talking about two very different things.

All right. So without going into the minutia of this, because I know I'm the one who threw out the whole Bayleaf thing. Kevin Gillespie here. Yeah, hey. Hello, everyone. I know you thought I was Randy Savage earlier, but I'm Kevin Gillespie the whole time.

Macho man. You're going nowhere. Listen here, brother. That Bayleaf isn't going to work. Kids, stay off drugs. Let me tell you something, E nowhere. Listen here, brother. That bay leaf isn't going to work. Kids, stay off drugs. Let me tell you something, MeG. These bad muscles are going to work better. This is excellent.

I'm doing the rest of the podcast in my pseudo-Randy Savage voice. I won't be able to talk later. That just grinds your vocal cords. Hey there, Hulkamaniacs. Okay, so we talked about this. Brining is a water-based solution. A lot of the things that people throw in brines are not water-soluble,

so they won't ever break down in a water-based solution. That's a good way of looking at it. Onions and garlic are, so that's one of the times when it actually will work. If you puree up an onion and you add it into your brine, you will get an onion flavor that penetrates into the meat. Because it can piggyback on the water. Because it's water soluble. So you travel with the water in the osmotic reaction.

You ever looked up water in a dictionary? No, I have not. It describes it. One of the parts of the description is it describes it as an almost universal solvent. Ooh. Which is great. Corinne an almost universal solvent. Ooh. Ooh. Which is great. Corinne, grab a dictionary. Stat.

So here's the deal with the marinating and brining. They're two different things. In modern parlance, marinades imply an acidic liquid, whereas brine implies a water-based liquid. I had no idea. That's good. That's good. Nice and clean.

That's the clean answer for you. Until you start to put acids into there. Right. And there's a lot of fine subtlety. Keep it what you're doing. Marinate, acid based, brine, water based. Brines are very

effective because scientifically, because the way the chemistry of it works, they work. Marinades, on the other hand, don't really work. Now, it's not to say they won't make things taste like something. That's a whole different subjective conversation. Because it's coating it. Well, right.

Because shit gets on the outside and you cook it. And of course, it's still going to be there. But they did a test a few years ago. Cooks Illustrated actually did this, which is a great magazine for folks who don't subscribe to it. And they marinated meat for 18 hours. And then they tested to see what the penetration level of the marinade was. And it's a fraction. It's millimeters.

Well, not if you took a fork and stabbed a million times. Well, so what they did. Right. So there's mechanical ways that you can, of course, inject something into something. But if you just drop it into a liquid, which is what 90% of people do. Right. So there's mechanical ways that you can, of course, inject something into something. But if you just drop it into a liquid, which is what 90% of people do,

they then took it and shaved off like down to the level that they could see that the marinade penetrated, cooked them, and then blind tasted and people could absolutely

not taste the difference between something marinated and something not marinated. Okay, so here's where I'm calling a little bit of bullshit. Okay, here we go. Steve likes to call bullshit a cooking sign. No, no, no, not bullshit. Okay, so here's where I'm calling a little bit of bullshit. Okay, here we go. Steve likes to call bullshit a cooking sign. No, no, no, not bullshit.

Okay, not bullshit, but I think you should factor this in. Okay. Making ceviche, by your definition, you're marinating little teensy pieces of fish. Yeah, we haven't gotten there yet, though. Okay. There's more to this. Go on.

There's levels. Right. So, marinades and brines with enough concentration and time will both transition into curing and pickling. The same liquid. And that's a whole different thing. And pressure. Exactly. Right. Because you can do it under pressure in a vacuum sealed bag. So when you take something like ceviche at a high enough acid level, you do in fact cause the denaturing of protein.

It sat long enough. You've manually made it small enough so that the absorption level will break. So that little one eighth inch of penetration coming from four sides is meeting in the middle. Correct. There you go. Especially on a small cut of fish or a bay scallop. Again, you have to consider that the protein structure of fish is different than land mammals, than meat. It's different than vegetables. Marinating vegetables is very effective because the cellular structure of a vegetable is very different than a piece of protein.

And so when you go in and you say it works versus it doesn't work, that's where you get into the slippery slope because they all work. It's just are they doing what you think they are doing? And so most people marinate for two reasons, either to make something more tender or to make something taste different. And if you're talking tenderness, it doesn't really work because the acid really just denatures the protein on the outside. It makes it mushy, but it doesn't really make it more tender. Like in the objective using the Werner Bratzler machine, we wouldn't have a more tender piece of meat. If you're talking taste, of course it can, but does it get to the center of the meat? Does it penetrate all the way down? Absolutely not. It does coat the outside with

something. And if that something is viscous enough that it'll stay put on the outside, then of course it can affect. And let me just jump in here and say what confuses a lot of people is the fact that then after those processes happen, what the the cook does with it then also affects the outcome. And I'll give the most simple explanation in the whole world. When you talk, when you talk about actually changing texture and flavor, uh, live culture yogurt marinades on tandoori chicken, if you're eating it in India or somewhere where someone actually has the expertise to have done this. I have friends who have come back and said, I have experienced the taste and texture, uh,

breakdown. And that is the, because of the way they butcher, for example, their poultry. They will butterfly chicken legs, right? Cut down to the bone on one end, flap the pieces open, thereby making it a half inch thick piece of meat instead of a three or four inch in circumference

piece of meat, right? You're with me. And therefore that yogurt and those spices will, because they do it for 24, 36 hours, will penetrate it. And the turmeric that's in there will change the color and on and on and on. And then they fire roast it. But because it's a smaller width of chicken, it's only in that 900 degree tandoor for seven, eight minutes.

So consequently, a lot of that yogurt marinade is left behind. But the yogurt actually does its job denaturing that protein. And so there are outliers like that that confuse the piss out of people. Like something like the one that I always use for people, though they might not know this dish, is shashlik. Like the Eastern European kebab. You see it in Russia, Ukraine, places like that. What? There are people that don't know shashlik? But it's a perfect example of where –

Tell me the word again. Shashlik. It's where marinade and brine kind of cross over because you end up with a watery onion-based – like you blend up onions to make the liquid. Then you add some sort of dairy. It's usually what we would call sour cream. It's not exactly sour cream, but a dairy based liquid that has then acid in it. But it does actually affect it because you will get that osmotic water transfer. So to pull the onion into it while simultaneously getting a little bit of tenderizing

effect from that lactic acid on the outside. And again, the meat is cut very small. It's not only cut small, it's cut in a manner that exposes that internal muscle structure. So it's taking away some of the effort that the marinade would actually have to go through. Ain't kosher either. No, no, it's not. I don't think that's ever been factored in particularly heavily based on my historical knowledge of the region. Well, rabbinical tradition states. So to answer that dude's question, and actually, you know what? We are filming tomorrow.

We are filming a Brining 101 video for the Meat Eater website. Nice. Because of how many people write in with these questions, we're not going to go ultra deep. If people watch it and we get good response, I'll do a 102. We'll keep going down it, but we're going to help people understand

why you would do it, how you do it. And really in this one, it's just generalized to meat and fish. And what parts are silly. Yeah. And what doesn't make any sense and stop wasting your time and money, frankly, because I've watched people make elaborate turkey brines for Thanksgiving that include ingredients like I brined mine with a little bit of shaved truffle. money frankly because i've watched people make elaborate turkey brines for thanksgiving that include ingredients like i brined mine with a little bit of shaved truffle you're like

we could have just taken it outside and thrown it in on the ground martha stewart one of her popular recipes is the 20 turkey brine yeah that has a you know 15 bottle of uh garwurst demeanor you know yeah and it's just like people are wasting their time and money if you want those flavors you can accomplish it but as you said your point martha i know you're listening the three malabar peppercorns are not gonna make their way in after martha stewart got in trouble for insider trading um she was profiled in the new yorker and there's always something that broke my heart in the end the writer is there was you know people like really jumped on martha stewart she went like just people were always kind of looking for like a chink in the armor right so all of a sudden

everybody like hated martha stewart and she's eating lunch she cooked a chicken dish she's eating lunch with the journalist and they're eating it with chopsticks. And the journalist comments on the chopstick. And Martha Stewart said, I read somewhere that thinner chopsticks, the thinner the chopstick, the more elegant the chopstick is. Right? So I'm going to use like silverware for us to demonstrate elegance. So she said, so I went out and bought the thinnest chopsticks I could find. And I think that's why people hate me. Yeah. Wow. I'm still depressed about it. That was a long time ago.

It's an incredible comment on her. And I've, I've had the, I've known her since I was a teenager. And the phases of her life are incredible. The thing that impresses me the most about Martha, all the food stuff aside, is to be a single mom, to realize that you are not going to get any support from your ex, the father of your child. You are going to then establish a catering company out of your home. And then that morphs into everything that she had built up into the point of the insider trading situation.

She is then removed as the head of her company, right? Still owns a piece of it, blah, blah. I mean, you know, don't cry for me, Argentina, right? I mean, she, but essentially removed, does her time in the stir without saying anything about anyone, like does the time. And I do not care if it's a country club prison or not.

You were in a prison environment. You don't want to be there. I'm sorry. Nobody wants to, having been in those places, nobody wants to be there. And then she comes out and over the course of the last 23 years since that happened, 20 years since that happened, has now come back bigger, stronger, and better than ever. The woman is an incredible force. And at 80 years old, the most recent interview that I just saw with her is still complaining about

what did she say most recently? The men that I want to date who are the most attractive to me are usually already taken and they're the husbands of my friends. Is it bad to wish them dead? Oh, I love it. And I think she was trying

to make a joke about it, but I mean, this woman, I have a lot of... That's a funny line, actually. It is. I have a lot of respect for Martha Stewart. Chopstick comments aside, because that is why people came. There was a time in her life

where she was creating tablescapes that no one in the world would ever consider reasonable or have the time to do except her three or four friends. And my stepmom. Correct. You know, and that was, that was her audience. Yep.

And there was nothing appealing. It was aspirational. It was an aspirational time in the world. But it was so tiny. Post prison Martha Stewart is like universal. Oh yeah. And, and giant age range and she's roasting. She hangs out with Snoop Dogg.

Yeah. She hangs out with Snoop Dogg. She smokes weed with Snoop Dogg. Oh, I'm a Martha Stewart. She has her own CBD line now. It's impressive. It is. And Kevin will back me up on this.

When, when, when people come to me and say, what are the first, I'm just learning to cook, but I, the how-to books bore me. I want something that's simple recipes that are tested and retested 5,000 times and are guaranteed to work. And I refer them to a line of small magazine booklets that you can still get online and find on her website. And it's Martha Stewart Every Day. And it's those recipes for a first time cook.

Not only are delicious and contemporary and use good ingredients, they're simple, efficient. They take 45 minutes to get on the table. It is. I've recommended those to more people with more success because she has them tested and retested. And I don't know. And tested also like just the method that she uses, tested by people who could make mistakes. Yes, that's right.

They've already done all the work for you. They wouldn't have published if they hadn't been foolproof. Yep. She's a baller. You paying attention, Corinne? She's a baller. So, Martha Stewart, as a guest. Oh, man. Ron DeSantis.

On the same show, preferably. We're going to tackle it. Jared Diamond. Mike Cunz. The pandemic Mike is winding down. No, Mike and I are talking. Yeah, it's going to happen. Can we bring Snoop Dogg along with Mark?

Please. Is Macho Man still around? No, he's not, but we could exhume his remains and bring him in for the podcast. He's probably still pretty swole. Yeah. 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.

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to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. If you go back in time, what was the first moment you became aware of the disciplines of hunting and fishing?

With my father, we didn't call it foraging, but we went out and- Looked around in the woods. Well, the woods, the beaches, the ponds that I mean, we gathered rose. My mom would gather rose hips with me in the in the morning. You had to do it at the at the very earliest hours of the day when they were still moist with the dew before they dried out. This is so when you're a little kid, you do a little, little kid. And where is this taking place? Long Island. We we we, a little kid, you do that. Little, little kid. And where is this taking place? Long Island. Okay.

We, you know, we went clamming. We fish for striped bass every night on the beach. We took old rotted chicken legs and threw them out on a string in the water and pulled slowly and would gather.

I'm looking at a bushel basket of blue crabs here in the studio and we'd pull that up and do a crab boil. Chicken necks right there. Fantastic. Exactly. We would hand line for eels in the harbor

and nail them to trees, run a little pen knife around their neck and strip them out of their skin and just put them on the grill, which is, people underestimate. Did your folks identify as outdoors men and women? Not at all. It was just life. Absolutely.

And this is what's fantastic. They didn't like read like. If you had said to them. Sports of the oldest of them. If you had said to them, oh, you're living an outdoors lifestyle, they would look at you and say, you're ridiculous. We're just living a lifestyle. Now this is in the sixties.

And you know, both of them grew up in the depression a little bit, but they weren't super crunchy. They weren is in the 60s. Were they hippies? Both of them grew up in the Depression. A little bit, but they weren't super crunchy. They weren't back to Landers. My dad ran a big advertising agency. My mom was a free and loose 60s housewife. What is a free and loose 60s housewife? A free and loose 60s housewife means that she would... my father did well enough that in her apartment – I don't know how many of you have read some of the Tom Wolfe books about New York City in the 60s when Park Avenue housewives were raising money for the Black Panther Party in there. You would – I mean Huey Lewis would – some of those people would show up to raise money in living rooms where wealthy, free and loose Park Avenue housewives would write checks. She had ruined to be a countercultural 60s housewife.

Super utopian socialist and all the rest of that. Gotcha. But at the same time, enjoying the privileges that came with a booming one percenter class that has kept growing. Going forward, don't use the word loose about your own ma. Well, that's different because one of the things that I loved the most about her was that, and I mean this in the most respectful way possible, when she divorced my father because of certain things within our family, she went on a run for like eight or nine years.

We're looking back at it. I would joke with her. I was like, way to go. Way to go, mom. I need to get that time machine fired up. Way to go, mom. And it included, I mean, some pretty well- I was like-

Really? Like, way to go, mom. That's really interesting. Your parents sound like it was fun to be a kid. Oh, the best. Because my father would take me traveling all around the world. And it's interesting that you caught on to that right away. He actually took me places and taught me shit and said, you will need to know this later in life.

And it was an incredible education. And some of my friends who, when I got to college, were into hunting and fishing, I already had experience, a lot of experience fishing. I'd raised a gun to my shoulder once. By the time you hit college. By the time I hit college. And then one of my very close friends, his family had thousands of acres near O'Sable Falls in, uh, Northwestern New York. And he said, you got to come up deer hunting sometime. And I went up, we had a fantastic time, uh, harvested two animals and I was hooked because I was already cooking at the time and I was eating all these things with my dad. So when I was traveling with my father and Kevin, I were talking before we, we, uh, started recording about how much game meat is eaten overseas.

Because it's a, you can bring it into restaurants, right? It's a different situation than we have here. I was eating wild foods that were hunted and I was thrilled. Come back home. Why can't we have this? It tastes better than beef. For example, there's certain animals that I tasted and have gone back and hunted and tasted and continue to go back and taste, especially African, uh, hoofed animal species that I would eat instead of beef every day of the week. Um, and, and there are species of, of hoofed animal in, in Italy, like donkey and horse

that are eaten regularly, not hunted, uh, but, but, uh, but sustainably farmed that, you know, I mean, look, I'm the person who stood up loud and clear and said, we need to diversify our food resources and made a show for 13 years that sort of preached that out the wazoo. Right. I mean, so, I mean, you know what stance I come from, but that's, that's kind of how I got hooked. And then the pleasure of all of the learning that took place, because for me, it was new. I grew up in an apartment in New York City, right? So through my television work and through some experiences with friends before that, I was able to go places and do things that very few people are actually able to do. And as everyone is at this table knows, because I'm preaching to the converted, once you experience that, you never go back. it or gone out duck hunting or goose hunting and then experienced what it's like to actually eat the food that you've taken and to do it in a responsible way and to learn about what

our ancestors did with bones and feathers and to start to get into the fun part of it, which is not necessarily pulling your trigger or letting an arrow fly but is actually being in tune with nature we're so out of tune with nature it's why i love that book uh that you wrote uh the outside outdoor kids yeah uh because it's it's so it's it's of such vital importance and it changed my life changed changed my perspective on things, and gave me respect for other cultures and other people that we desperately need today. We desperately need it. We have become a nation so divided we can't even talk to one another about civic issues that are for our national betterment, for everyone, right? And I'm not talking about left,

right, or red or blue. I'm just about forward as a, as a society and to go back and to look at my life and say, Hey, where did I learn that? Where did I become more accepting of other people and other traditions and things like that? It's all,

it all goes back to how I've, I'll just call it gathered food. And, and I think that's a, I think it's a vital importance today. Do you, do you feel that the difference there, like, do you feel it's beneficial? Like, I'm trying to think how you put this.

Do you advise people to be like, you know what you ought to do for your own betterment is go out and like. Yes. Eat a hand secured meal. Yes. And not just, okay. Tell me about that.

Well, there's two sides to this point. So let's, let's talk about diminishing, uh, resources in our human created finite world. Um, if everybody took, uh, uh, a meal replacement, meal in a can once a week, and everybody took a meal from the wild once a week, which, by the way, could be vegetarian. I'm just saying a meal from the wild. Right. And we skipped one meal a week. And I'm not talking about children or seniors or people with health issues issues so don't at me with a million you know ridiculous comments on twitter yeah

right i mean we all know what i'm talking about a meal not a day but a meal a meal just a meal so one meal in a can yep one meal from the wild and skip one okay one meal a day we eliminate one seventh of our reliance on factory farms and factory produced food and big ag produced food etc etc right it radically reshapes our dependence on these places and will help us decentralize our food system i still believe in a world it's we can do it everywhere, but I visited enough places where people still hunt at night for their breakfast and hunt during the day for their dinner. And the connection to the natural world that I take from those experiences is to me of vital importance. And if human beings can – I mean, look, it's coming out next, when does this air? This podcast?

The 25th. The 25th of July. Okay. So by this time, it will have been announced that I'm a co-founder of a sustainable seafood alliance. I'm obviously a very active social justice proponent. And I work with a lot of different food groups across the country and across the world in trying to provide help for those who need it. For those who are able to, the wisdom that comes with taking, and it's not just about how to harvest an animal.

I'm talking about spiritual wisdom. I'm talking about personal growth. I'm talking about a connection to other people and the world around you. Even casually being in the outdoors and harvesting meals from there to me are the most in the majority, the most open minded, forward thinking. I mean, just the bullshitting we were doing before the microphones, you know, went on all I was I was listening all have to do that would really with making the world a better place. Right. You have to understand the world if you're going to do anything about it. I famously said in, well, I shouldn't say, well, sure, I'll say it because it was quoted everywhere. But in What's Eating America, one of our episodes, I was sitting on a John Deere tractor and I looked into the camera and I said, you know, if you want to understand what's happening on American farms,

I suggest you visit one. People who are talking about the outdoors with never having spent time in it, you know, how about fuck you? If you're talking about, you know, farming in America and you've never spent time on a farm, big or small, you know, I get outraged at it. Where do you learn that? Scrabble dictionary? I mean, get out there and live it just for a day. Experience it so you can develop because everyone is entitled to opinion unless you're pulling it out of your ass. It absolutely drives me crazy. And by the way, you know, my personal stance, my civic stance, my political stance is vastly, vastly one-sided.

But I still learned all of that in the outdoors. You take what you want from it, develop your opinions by actually being there, right? Regardless of where they may fall. But if you do not get out there, how do you... I'll give you a really great example. I believe everybody has to have a relationship with a power greater than themselves. If you think you're the be-all and end-all and you're living totally in ego, you will not be successful in life.

I don't want to bore people with two hours of stories about it. But, you know, flat out, you have to believe in something. I don't care what it is. But believe in something bigger than yourself. It can be nature. It could be family. It could be other human beings. It could be the galaxy.

Whatever it is. James Webb telescope. Believe in something bigger than yourself. Right. So I'm hunting elk out with the leaders of the Taos Pueblo when we go up to one of their sacred mountains. We heard elk. We called elk. We saw elk.

It got too dark and we were too far away. Never put the gun to my shoulder. Still one of the greatest nights of my life. And then we sat around a fire for five hours with their war were on and about the history of their people. And they just told stories because that's how they communicate and pass on traditions, by telling stories. And we put it in the show as best we can. We got 44 minutes with commercials. But it was afterwards when one of them said to me, come here. And we walked around about, I don't know, a quarter mile down this hill to this place that was just like two acres of six-inch deep moss. That's all it was, was moss, this huge field of moss. But it happened to – they called it a very sacred ground because it faced a certain constellation of stars. And I lay down there and he started to talk to me about, you know,

some of their spiritual practice and what other people might call godly belief and wisdom. And it absolutely, I've never forgotten that moment. I remember every word that was spoken to me. And it was really all about what we do for other people and being in service to other people, that that's our purpose with being here on planet Earth, that they believe that we are meant to love each other and be of service to other human beings. Full stop, which was identical to what the shaman of the Gentwazi in Botswana had said to me after a trance dance where he pulled me out of myself and we floated above my body and shared an out of body experience.

And we documented in the show, I burst into tears. I sat outside his, his hut after he passed out and slept for 12 hours. I wouldn't leave. I wouldn't shoot because I needed to be the first one to talk to him with the translator to say, to make sure what he experienced was what I experienced. And, um, if, if it hadn't happened to me, I w I would call bullshit on it, but I, I had the same transcendent experience with him and not to be, I'm not making a Bill Murray joke here, but I knew I was in the presence of someone very special and I asked him what's our purpose on life here on this planet.

And he laughed at me. He laughed at me because I was a modern Western person. And he started to walk away and I insisted and the tribal management folks – Like he felt you're not going to want to hear about it. It was so simple. He laughed at me because he thought I would just ignore it. But I, it stuck with me forever.

The, the tribal management, uh, officer that was with us, who was the grandson of one of the other, uh, shamans asked him to please answer. If he would answer the question,

I didn't want to push too much. And he turned around and basically said in his language, you're an idiot. It's to love each other and take care of each other, which is exactly what the tribal elder of the Taos Pueblo people said. These are spiritual truths that go back to the very beginning of time of how we're supposed to treat each other and our planet. And I have yet to learn any of that from a book. I've yet to learn any of that from other experiences other than being out in the world with people who are living in harmony with nature, which means taking food from their natural surroundings. So I believe very strongly,

to get back to your question, that taking food from our natural surroundings is a very, very, very important part of what should be an everyday lifestyle for everyone. And that includes – I mean, look, I'm preaching to the converter. Your listeners understand this. That includes conservation. That includes how we care for each other, how we feed each other. It includes how we make laws. It includes how we think about our ecosystems.

I think it's vitally important. I can't imagine. I feel sorry for the people that don't get to experience that. And you're, and you're wondering, uh, what culture or indigenous group or tribal group, um,

kind of had the, the lifestyle, the wild foods pattern where you thought like these guys got it figured out? Well, it's all the protected tribes. I mean, I've been very lucky. I think we're up to now 57 tribal groups that are the governments of those countries don't allow contact outsiders with them. I've lived with, I think, 14 of them. That's impressive. Yeah, it's an incredible experience. And I didn't realize it at the time.

I went to a teaching university, University of India, big school. And the anthropology department there was – they teach a course on using bizarre foods and they wanted me to come down and give a talk. And I found myself with the anthropology department at night at a little private meet and greet at the dean's home. And I was introduced to other people as an anthropologist and I laughed at him. I said, I'm a TV – I'm a fat white guy that goes around the world and eats bugs. This was – If by anthropologists you mean 13 years ago and uh he said oh no no no he says we have we have tenured professors here that have maybe spent time with two tribes of the type that you have spent weeks and weeks and weeks with many and made the first inkling I got about how special the experience was.

And and now they don't really make TV like that anymore. And the one thing that I found is all those protected groups live in in concert with their natural surroundings. So the ones in Amazonia, right, in the deepest parts of Amazonia where there are no seasons, where it's give or take a degree or two, the same temperature every day, the same weather system every day, they constantly are hunting and fishing the same animals, gathering the same fruits, gathering the same vegetables. That's much different, say, than the Jeune Toisie who live in a place that has seasons. Even though it's the high desert in Botswana outside, about four or five hours outside the Ahia Hills, they have seasons.

So when we got there, they were eating beetles roasted and mashed with marula nuts because marula fruit was fall. They'd eat the fruit. They'd roast the nuts, mash them with these bugs that they roasted, and they would make this paste and dry it. And it reminded me of those old tiger's milk power bars. Talk about the old wrestling days.

I mean, the world's first power bar. Those ones, they stank and they were chewy. They're just like bad taffy. And that's what that food was. But they ate that for eight, nine days until those bugs were gone and the marula fruit had fallen from the trees and was all gone. Right. And then they moved on to kudu. Right.

Blew my mind. Absolutely blew my mind. Absolutely blew my mind. And I was like, oh, okay. And they're like, no, because now usually after the season and the younger animals are old enough. So it's at that point that they're pushing older males out of the herd. And that's what we harvest is the older males that are pushed out of the herd. And we only do it and just every week had a different, you know, food or two or three to it. And I think those are the places that I was most impressed with. Any other group has access to things all the time and is trading with people in towns or cities and modernism has crept in and it's more of a convenience lifestyle um

i think i would be okay with with living the the pure seasonal structure that i viewed with a with a couple of other tribes it really is it really is absolutely unbelievable that it's really it's an interesting observation that you made i hadn't really thought of that equatorial hunter-gatherers are, they're not dealing with that. Correct. Right? Like you probably have trees, like if you have an array of date trees. All the time. Yeah, there's probably some date tree at any given time is probably fruiting.

Anytime. Yeah. Anytime. And the fish that they like are always there. The animals that they like are always there. I mean, the skill set of those people, wild chickens, kind of like a grouse, popping up out of the ferns in a forest. So there's trees in your way.

I'm talking about a dense rainforest, okay? You're talking about hard shots. And they take off moving, let's say, from right to left. And they have – these people are hunting with tiny flightless arrows. And they don't miss. Featherless arrows. Yeah. They don't miss. With the jeun toisie, a black mamba, you know, the five-step snake that bites you, you're dead in five steps, came into the camp while we were there, an actual rare occurrence.

But those animals hunt and they will come back for the same scent and the same smell. So the entire tribe drops – I mean drops everything. One person – and they have an emergency protocol system for this. One person kicks out the fire. Everyone else gathers the belongings, which, by the way, are group-owned, not individual-owned. And they all, 30 of them, little kids, grandpas, everyone in between, starts chasing the snake. But they all gather sticks and stones as they're running, and they keep throwing it. The idea is they want to chase the snake up a tree. And so eventually after about a mile of this, by the way, our instincts, because it's been

drilled into us, you see a five-step snake, you run the other way. So we all took like eight steps back and then your TV sense kicks in. You're like, oh no, no, no, we have to document this. And then we start running behind them. And we put it in our show. We got the snake shot of it climbing up the tree. And, you know, a 12-year-old kid literally comes running up with a slingshot. By the way, not the kind that, you know, has a fork and a rubber band. I'm talking about a sling with a rock in it.

And from 30 feet out from the tree, because you can't be, you have to be out from the tree to get it. He waited for the snake to come to an edge and look out at everyone, spins his thing. I mean, no, he didn't take time to tee it up. He didn't, you know, like the traditional, you know, like take your time, get your breathing down. He just hucked this thing, bang, hits it on the head and it starts to drop. And he throws three more times, total of four, hit it three times, missed once. Snake is almost dead on the ground. And then everyone in the tribe takes turns stomping it.

And then they throw it into a crucifixion bush, which is a Bush that has so many big thorns on it. That's the Western name for it. That's where they, they throw it because if you step on the bones, it can kill you even a year later. So they want it to rot and die in the heat and bleach out into it in that. And no one's going to bump into it. If it's on the top of a crucifixion bush um the most incredible thing i've ever seen but you you start to get the protocol an appreciation for that those seasonal uh tribal

people are absolutely unbelievable with with skill sets by the way and i know that there's people here at this table who've experienced this with skill sets that far outweigh anything. I mean, the Juntoise, this was the funny part, the Kudus, they have these little arrows. They have this poison that there's no antidote for and they keep the poison. They make it a couple of times a year. We put it in the show and they keep it in a shell inside a leather bag on this tree hanging so that no one touches it. And, uh, I, you know, they don't have a concept of certain things about when to use it because

everything that, um, well, the kudu, for example, I'm like, Oh, are you going to use the poison arrows?

Or are you going to use your little flightless arrows with no poison on it? Or how do you hunt the kudu? Cause they said, we're going kudu hunting tomorrow. And they said, Oh, you're not going kudu hunting tomorrow. And they said, oh, you're not going to be able to go. And this is through our translator. And it's like, well,

no, we'll be stealthy and quiet and just send Andrew in one camera. I mean, the usual conversation we have with everyone about this. And they're like, no, you won't be able to keep up running with us and you'll die of exhaustion and you'll get lost.

And we're like, it won't be any fun. We're like, you'll die. What do you mean running? And it's like, well, and they don't have a term that we have for sporting, but it was essentially,

the idea was, they run and throw rocks and sticks until the animal is exhausted and they get it to a place where it's in a canyon against a wall and then they walk up to it and strangle it. And then bleed it out.

That's how they hunt kudu. Right. Okay. They don't- A notoriously athletic animal. They run after it until it's exhausted. Right. So think about that.

Right? We were not allowed to, our insurance company, we weren't allowed to leave camp with less than six liters of water on our bodies. Had to carry six for each person. Someone has to have the medical. I mean, just I mean, the precautions were insane. And these people are just walking out. They eat these little berries that helps their body retain moisture. They drink in the morning.

Then they come back and drink a lot at night. But they're fine during the day, including run. You know, it's 120 degrees, you know, in the middle of the desert, in the hot sun, and they're chasing kudu. Chasing kudu. Okay. That's new for me. Yeah. I just sat there and I was, you know, and everyone in these, the one thing all of those protected tribes have in common, and you, you, you, you know, you hit on one of the differences with where they are in the world. But all of them are doctors, lawyers, engineers, farmers, hunters, soldiers, right?

Builders. I mean, we have lost so much skill set. You've got cross-training. It's insane. Yeah. It's insane. And the young people in these tribes are taught all this starting at a very early age. I mean they're all pharmacists.

I mean someone gets – I mean here's the thing. You look at – I'm sitting there at one point and I only come back to the Jintuazi because it was one of the first, second protected tribe I was ever with. And I'm like, God, there's a lot of old people here. Don't they get sick and the the the uh the folks who were with us uh from the their parks department uh and tribal management office were like sure they get sick all the time they take medicine they looked at me like i'm an idiot like of course they get sick they have their diseases one of the reasons we keep them away from you people is we don't want other diseases brought in right but i i was like oh yeah they get sick and then they use their own uh you know medicines yeah to heal themselves and

people break bones and they they splint them and they know and they rehab them. And there's all these 80-year-olds walking around. They live a healthy, happy, long life. And I'm like, we're doing something wrong. Or there's maybe not only are we doing something wrong, but the biggest mistake we make is not learning from these people. Somehow minimizing their experience and saying to ourselves, they have less to offer me than this book, this school, this other thinker, philosopher, whatever. It's like, no, go spend some time with some of those people. Study those people and you will learn.

Number one, it's extremely emasculating. I mean, as a modern man with some skill set, you hang out with these folks and it is, you know. I'm useless. I'm a useless person. I am an appendage. Um, and, uh, their lifestyle is, is not boring. The, the, the happiness quotient is very high. We saw what's called a honeybird. If they see it, this bird has a lawn bill and it eats the,

the honey, uh, the bee larva. So whenever they see the bird, which is rare, it only happens two or three times a year, they all run and follow it. The whole tribe just gets up and moves camp. And they leave markers. To get wild honey. They leave markers because eventually the bird will leave them to a natural hive. Now, these are wild African bees,

the worst of the worst. They can make fire faster than any. I mean, I'm talking, I mean, two sticks, a thong, you know, from an old, uh, from a deer, uh, tendon and they're making fire. I mean, three seconds, four seconds is nothing. Uh, they whip up the fire, they grow a bigger fire and they hold it in this piece of hide, smoke them out. So they're all just asleep.

Then they reach in, grab all the honey, put it into this bigger hide and then carry it home. And then they gorge on it. And they, the way some people have the meat sweats and eat too much at a steakhouse and pass out, they all pass out from this sugar high. The honey sweats. There was another tribe I was with on the other side of Africa. That's southwestern Africa.

In central eastern Africa, the Chaga, they make beer. Well, they make a mead beer thing with it and they get hammered. They find it two or three times a year and do the same thing. But they do a different thing with it. It's incredible what we learn from the if you're open-minded so what did it teach me it taught me that regardless i mean there's how many of us at this table 14 it's just un-fucking-believable um but what it taught me was there's no one out there who can't teach me something right so to think that i that I know, it taught me to be a better, like people say, well, how did that

trip transform you? It's like, well, I became an instant recycler. I listened to people more. That trip to visit the Gentwazi in Botswana changed my life irrevocably. I mean, I'm talking about immediate, immediate, because it was so humbling to see how these people operated for two weeks. And, you know, every night at midnight, cause the time zone thing, I took the satellite phone and walked to a clearing out of this jungle with like three guides, three tribes, people around me with spears, because they're like, you won't see the animal coming that's going to kill you. And I'm like, come on, you know, I'll call bullshit on that one. Right. I mean, you're a tribe, you're making lots of noise and they're just shaking their head at me

and they're all standing around me. And I would talk to my wife and kid and, you know, spend my five minutes on the sat phone. And then I'd walk back, I'd go to sleep. Second morning, I wake up and the guy who was with me when I called the first night is still standing outside my tent door. And he takes a spear. He didn't speak my language. I didn't speak his. And he points at his eyes. He takes a spear and he just starts pointing out all the different tracks of animals, some of which were massive.

Right. And then he's showing me the slithering of snakes and all the like the activity outside. And I asked the conservation officer, I said, so what does he do? How does he deal with those animals and why aren't they eating him? It's like, well, he hides. He he's spiritually and mentally tries to make himself disappear. He slows his breathing. He does all of these things that you learn to do to make yourself as small as possible in that environment. He's like a spear fisherman. Not only. He's like, I'm not here. I'm not here.

But it goes back to that thing that we were talking before about, you know, human transformation. You know, you can, you were talking about the throwing stars and ninjas. The reason why I know there are people who have those, what we would call supernatural skill sets, is because I've seen it with tribal people around the world. He actually made himself so small in the middle of the night, the animals that he was worried would kill me because I don't know how to make myself small were not an issue for him. It was not an issue because he'd been practicing it since he was a baby. It was taught to him. So when people say, what's your, you know, what kind of superpower do you want? It's always flight, right?

But I've seen real people have super, I would love to be able to put a cloak around myself and make myself small where nothing would perceive me. Now, we are talking about a night in the middle of an African country, 500,000, 750 miles from the nearest anything. Right. But still, what a skill set to have to be that in touch with nature. So those are the things you learn when you embrace the outdoor lifestyle, the world that's around us, the natural world that's around us. 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. Our northern brothers get irritated.

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Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. One of the things I saw in South America traveling with an Amerindian group was that it really stuck with me.

We actually tried to do it. We called it the Makushi Code of Silence. Did you say Mapuchi? makushi code of silence but it just it doesn't mapuchi makushi code of silence but it they do not do not will not say anything at the level of volume that we're talking right now that's correct don't you don't if someone's down by the water anyone would be like hey can you grab the it doesn't happen right you walk down you walk down and say it into that person's ears that's right never ever ever make noise right by the way it's like talking about like being small yes no one for any reason makes any noise and they don't brush against shit we we were at when we came back from our first day of shooting uh with the gentoisie everyone

had burrs all over their clothes scratches all over their face uh some we looked like we'd been run over by a truck because everywhere you go even though we had walking sticks and you learn how to push thorns and all this kind of stuff, shit catches on your clothing. I mean, everything was like nicked up, torn up. I mean, we really looked like we were a mess. All of them completely unmarked. They just laughed at us. They're like, you know, because, and, and, you know, they have the, they have the same

behavioral system that you're describing. I mean, all first peoples around the world, truly first peoples, I think have the same behavioral system that you're describing. I mean, all first peoples around the world, truly first peoples, I think have the same, have that same ability. They, they, they don't,

they don't touch other shit. We just break shit. You know what I mean? It's pretty, it's pretty embarrassing. So yeah. And the food is great too. I mean,

the, the food is giant. If you've never eaten a hundred pound wild African porcupine. Are they that big? Massive. It's like rodents of an unusual size. They're as big as you pick. They're massive.

Corinne's new found one. Those are a hundred pounds. Yeah. And they pull them out. They go down in the spear. They crawl into their holes. These are giant members of the rodent family with quills that they shoot at people, which, by the way, are big enough on that animal that you can die. And they crawl face first into their burrows with a spear. Literally, they can fling the quill?

The porcupines? Yeah, because you know that our porcupines don't. Okay. Yeah. It's defensive because they must, and you'll understand why in a second. So they go down, they kill the thing with a spear, they pull it out. The first thing they do is all the women descend on the thing and they use, because the quills are so big, they're hollow and they use it for jewelry. And they cluster the tips together to make these little poking weapons and sewing needles and all this other stuff, right?

So then you're left with this bald porcupine and it's all white fat because the quills are their hair, right? And it gets cold at night in the desert. So really thick and dense with this stuff. And so basically what they are surrounded with, and Kevin, steady yourself, is a blanket of bacon is all around them. Okay. So it's like an inch and a half thick piece of what I thought was fat. Well, when they clean the animal, they throw the meat and the bones up into the trees to

let them dry. Then the first thing you eat is the blood in the skin. So the blood is beaten with animal milk or just beaten. So the clots are taken out and then you can drink the blood for health. And then you char the fat on both sides until it's blackened. And then everyone cuts it up with their knives and everyone gets a square that's like three or four inches in size. When I got my cut piece, I looked at it and it was streaked with muscles, like very thin fines. It wasn't pure fat. It was streaked with these pink lines. And, you know, I realized that very few for that animal, but there

are, it does have predators, especially in other parts of Africa, ostrich, which will eviscerate them from the belly where they don't have that. Ostrich is the only thing that kills lions. Just as a defense mechanism, they'll do it? Yeah. They'll kill the porcupines?

No, no, no. The ostrich will, if they're threatened, will. Okay. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So if one messes with it, it could kill it. Yeah. They'll kill the porcupines. No, no, no. The ostrich will, if they're threatened, will. Okay. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So if one messes with it, it can kill it. Right.

And if a lion, I mean, it's the only, ostrich are the only animals that regularly kill desert lions down in Southwestern Africa because they have that huge, we call it a dewclaw on dogs, but it's, it's massive. And they literally do like a karate move where they stop, they, they will let the lion chase it until it's tired enough and then turn and flick that leg up and just cut them open from,

it's the sharpest claw on the ostrich's body. Um, but the, the, these, these porcupines will shoot them, uh, you know, up to a foot, two feet so that it, by constricting their skin. But the point being, that's what makes the fat so delicious when it's charred. It's just. That sounds fantastic. It's fantastic.

And, you know, you just sit there and marvel at these people, their animals and how they live in, in space, you know, in their space. It's, it's quite, quite something. Yeah. Those are great experiences, man. Yeah. They're cool.

I'm a little jealous of some of that. They're cool. Your takeaway on, um, you know, the eating the bugs and the fruit that lead up to the kudu, which is only a nine day fruit and bug season that leads up to. Well for that bug and that fruit. Um, you know, my takeaway there is like a first in first out

type of like don't spite the food in front of you to get to the the food that's still going to be available next week yep what was your takeaway there same same it was frustrating as a television crew because we got there and we're like well well, you know, the producer director, you know, Chris is trying to explain to them. He had to have a big sit down meeting for three or four hours. And we're like, you're not going to convince them to throw away 40,000 years of their tradition. For your TV schedule? Because we're here. Yeah.

Well, we're just going to have to wait. Mr. Zimmern would like to do it. So the phone call, his sat call the first night, because when we went there, the iPhone just had its 15th birthday. So the iPhone had- Just now had its 15th birthday. Now had its 15th birthday. And we went there 14 years ago, 2008, 2009, 13 years ago. So the iPhone's a brand new thing. So there was no faith, all the things that are on the iPhone.

Back then it was a phone with a camera, right? And a couple of apps in an app store, right? So there was no, we're just relying on paper letters with the government to let us go in there. So there's no scouting. There's no, we're going so far away. There was no sending. We didn't have budget to send someone scouted, come back and figure out the beat sheet for our stories. We just trusted based on what we were told that we have 8 million

stories. We could make 40 hours of TV with these people, which we could have. And so we get there. And the very first thing we find out is that we're in, we've, we've arrived a week early. There are no, cause you know, and we were fine shooting the bug and, you first thing we find out is that we're in we've we've arrived a week early there are no what because you know and we were fine shooting the bug and you know we shot that that's that was a story and then we had to wait and that was actually there's only so much as a civilian was you know just a person where i learned the most because we got to go out and do other things with them we wound up shooting five days worth of B-roll, but the learning, they make snap snares to trap this one bird that they roast. And they have to walk 10 miles in one direction to grab the berries that the animal eats.

And they take it then 10 miles in the other direction, right? So a 20 mile walk right and they put them in in a place where they're the birds fly by and are around but where their favorite food doesn't grow and they scatter them all over the ground and they make eight or nine little wooden snap snares which they make in about four minutes with little uh knives that are are made out of stone. I mean, the craftsmanship and the quick time on this stuff, the skill set, and then no one like hooks up the snap snare and then it goes

and you're like, oh, we gotta be careful. There's no test and measure. They just make them and they work and they lay these nooses on the ground and then where the berries are and then we're like, okay, we'll come back in a couple days. And we walk back in a couple days and every single one of them has a bird berries are. And then we're like, okay, we'll come back in a couple of days. And we walk back in a couple of days and every single one of them has a bird in it.

And I was like, wow, every one of them worked. And they couldn't understand, through the translator, they couldn't understand the point I was making. Yeah, they were like, well, why would we do it if it wouldn't work? My point was they couldn't even process it. Well, because the question made no sense to them. We laid 10 snap snares. Of course we get 10 birds, right? And I took my-

Yeah, like going into houses and be like, all these refrigerators work. Exactly. And I pull, and I took my knife out. The key to living with these people is to be useful because they take their cues from the animal world. It's identical and vice versa, right? So the useless people, old males males are pushed out of the tribe.

They're exiled or they're just let to die or they're not healed because they have limited resources. Right. That's how they deal with these things. It's a very, very primitive system for human management. Right. So you try to be useful. You just try to carry shit. system for human management. Right. So, um, you try to be useful.

You just try to carry shit. You just, if you want them to be impressed by you, you have to do shit. Right. And so I, I took out my knife and I was like, okay,

I'll cut, I'll be useful. I'll cut the snares. And I almost got gang tackled when I took my knife out and move towards the rope. And they said to me, we make the rope and we use the rope until the rope goes back into the ground, into dust. And until such, we do not ever take a knife to the rope.

The rope is sacred. That's how we get our food. They carefully spool it up and put it in their bags and return it to the community tree where anyone can use rope for something. And several days later, we finally got them to show us how they make rope. All 30 members of the tribe sit down. They start splitting reeds into these fine hairs and they weave it using their toes and fingers so that they have more. Because instead of using your hands where you can have 10 strands at once, if you lay

in between your fingers, use your toes, you now have 20 and they make, we shot it. It's in the show. It's the most incredible thing. And then I'm like, well, how strong? I'm thinking about how strong is my third day there. The rope's not that strong, right? Sure.

It'll use whatever primitive thing. And the guy says, show them how, but my translator show them how it, so he holds on one end of it. I said, show him how – my translator, show him how – so he holds on one end of it and he literally – two guys lift me up holding on to the rope with it around my wrists. And I'm 230 pounds. At the time, I was 236. But I mean it the stuff that's out there, I guess the point being is that, yeah, I wish everyone could go spend time with them. But I've had similar experiences, not as profound, not as cool in the storytelling mode, you or on a boat or in a blind or just walking where you learn something or have a profound experience that changes your life. So if you don't get outdoors, you will never have those experiences ever, ever.

You just won't. And by the way, some of those experiences are testing yourself as a human being. I mean, I was duck hunting once people inaders, and a guy had his wader belt. He liked to wear his dad's waders, and he used a wader belt. He wasn't wearing neoprene, right? So, of course, he flipped. He's the guy who winds up in the canoe flipping in the freezing cold water of Canada in October, November, where we're duck hunting,

trying to get the last days of the season. Cause as the holes, as the ice forms, you know, you get those, you know. There's really good hunting. Really good hunting. Cause they're just looking for a little bit of water. And, um, he tipped in a canoe in a big piece of

water and we thought he died by the way, in a horrible rain and wind storm that came up out of, of nowhere and so you you start talking about testing yourself when you see a and i i'm not advocating let's all make a friend be in a dangerous place but i had never i am had to go i had never had to go save someone's life like that. Right. I mean, I pulled friends out of cars, you know, a car crash or something or, you know, drug overdose or things. But I'm talking about like you, mother nature, friend in trouble, you know, and you want to learn something about yourself or the other people around you. Go through that experience you know um and we saved him and he was okay uh because we got to him fast enough because we did the smart stuff going in to that blind where we took i mean

we didn't want to carry it but common wisdom was don't bring one canoe. Right. And thankfully we had, we had a canoe right with us that we could jump into and go after him. Right. And it's, you were tested in ways that you will never be tested any, any other way in, in your life, you know, twist your ankle and you have to get over that mountain or you have to, you know, pack that sheep up after shooting it. I mean, I almost I mean, I almost broke my ankle. I've never felt as tested as I did in Hawaii hunting wild sheep on the top of a volcano.

The ground is uneven. There's old lava. So plants, everything looks like it's flat, but it's not. There's an ankle breaking moment every step you take. So you have to proceed very slowly. And so you have to field dress the animals out there, right? Because it lowers the amount of weight that you're humping back to the camp. And, you know, I did not think I was up for that, but I – turns out I was capable of it. But I had to be pushed by someone else, right, who said you can do this. You can do this.

I did not think – I did not think that I could. And I would have never learned that. It was one of those times where I was like, oh, there's a lot of stuff I bet I can do that I don't think I can do. The fun hunting part of that one is that the species are so – you're shooting from so far away. The sound takes a second or two to travel. So if you're – if you can quickly reposition your rifle, you can take two animals. They only graze for a couple hours in the morning when the dew, that's all their water up at the top of this volcano during the warm weather months where it's not snowing is from the dew on the grass. So they eat all this. So you have to go to certain places where there's the grass set up far enough away.

And my guide was like, look, you know, we don't didn't come all this way to take, you know, just one animal. So when you shoot before you pull the trigger, know where your second animal is going to be. And I'm like, they're just going to bolt. He goes, they're not going to bolt because they're not going to hear the sound. And we only hunt here like two days a year. He said, so those, those sheep, those wild

mountain sheep are, trust me, just know where your second shot is going to be. And so I just waited and waited and I had two that were kind of side by side, dipping their and eating and i just went one two and you know then i'm like oh now we each have to carry one and you get down there and they're really big coming in was hard enough for me going out that's funny you mentioned that because i'm all like every sheep i'm even even in farmyards whatever i, I'm like, oh, this thing's a giant. That's a big animal. I don't know why, like get in your head that it's like whatever, like a little, like

Mary's little lamb. That's a big animal. And heavy. And of course, my first thought is you know, how am I getting this out of here? And I didn't put it together that, oh, we're going to share the carrying the meat and he's going to make a sled with the skin of one animal. And we're going to get to a certain point and then we'll carry it when we can't anymore because of the terrain. And we wound up cooking it in a, in a, well, he smoked it in a homemade smoking box that he made with sticks and green branches

to sort of seal it up with a really low fire underneath. He said, yeah, we've got to cook it for five or six hours. And I'm like, okay. And I'm like, can we take one piece of meat and kind of lower it closer to the fire and sort of grill it up?

And he's like, no, we have to smoke it all because this is the meat. We have to give half of it to the tribal people on whose land, you know, there's a thing we're doing here. And, you know, the network note is why didn't Andrew eat any of the grilled meat so that we had two different taste explanations and two different tastes. It's like because we're violating 10,000 years of their tribal history and we wouldn't do that. And the, they had a hard time understanding that.

Tell, uh, tell folks what you're working on now, because I know you got a few handful of projects going on. I do. Um, you know, I,

after years and years and years of telling stories like this at, at dinner party, well, making TV about it. But telling stories about it, I met someone in Minnesota who invited me ice fishing that was one of the people who runs Outdoor Channel. And he said, you should really – do you cook all that stuff? And I'm like, well, of course I do. And he goes, well, I said, look, I don't, I don't do stand and stir TV. Uh, and he goes, well, our viewers really like stand and stir TV. And he saw some of the stuff that my production company was making and they said, do you want to do this show? And I said, sure. So, uh, you know, wild game kitchen got birthed from that and premieres September 19th. Really excited, uh, about it. We're going to try to do some crossover

stuff with Kevin, uh, which would be fun. Cause we're full disclosure. Uh, we dated for a long time before he got married and I got, um, we go back. No, we've been friends for a while and it's great to be able to share those kind of things with people and just be a blast. But yes, that's happening. I'm working on, I've waited to do a cookbook my whole life

to sort of structure it in a certain way so that the cooking has to deal with the time periods in my life and is kind of structured a different way. So you had to wait until you got old enough to have enough chapters. That's my life. Um, and it's kind of structured different ways. So you had to wait till you got old enough to have enough chapters. That's exactly right.

That's exactly right. And I also, I, I, I'm not a cookbook guy in, in the sense that some people can, you know, have five cookbooks in them or every year they're going to come out with a cookbook. Um, that's not my thing. Right. Um, I, I tell stories in different ways, but I knew I had one great one. So let's just fire that. Let's use that powder, you know, at the best time possible.

Right. Um, and when are you releasing that so that I don't release them at that same time? Just a quick heads up would be helpful. All right. We'll, I'll let you know. Um, yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be really special. Um, and. Can I mention something that's real special that you should do?

What's that? This is also going to go on to, um, be very useful for you. Sure. Would be a compilation of, uh, compliments that you've delivered off of Iron Chef. Oh. I mean, we're talking about a skill unto itself. Oh, thank you. It is beyond, it's tertiary level deepness that you just can't get into.

I appreciate that. It's just being old and not dying and having a decent vocabulary and reading a lot and listening to people. You're going to do great in trivia. You're bringing chefs to tears. You're like, let me tell you about what you just, what I just put in my mouth. Do you know something that it, you know, I mean, Iron Chef, the ratings were fantastic. It was, it's still top 10 for kids. It was top 10, you know, past the magic mark of two weeks.

So I'm assuming Top Chef, sorry, Iron Chef will be, will be picked up again. And I'm assuming I'll be a part of it, you know, for right now, I can't imagine a world in which I'm not the, uh, that's a hard seat to give up. Well, it's not me giving up. It's,

it's, it's networks and stuff sometimes make really crazy decisions. Like, wow, that was great. Andrew's incredible, but we're going to wrote, we want to rotate people.

I mean, I'm sure there's that conversation gets had it doesn't mean that that person who says it isn't either applauded or shot down sure i don't know which and and i'd like to think that my um my being on that show helped make it in in a small way a little bit of a success and i've heard from people that they believe that so i'm going to assume i'm doing it again. But the important – I mean moments occur to me simply because it goes back to being out in the world and seeing shit. One of the chefs who was on the show, I don't want to ruin it for people, but Ye Vang, a Hmong chef from Minnesota.

His family, the Hmong are tribal people. They live in several areas where Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos all come together. They're a hill people. They're tribal. They're an ethnic group. They've never had- Seeing us back here. They've never had their own- Hey, Yao, what's up?

Hope you're listening. Yao Yang, I'm pointing out the thing you sent us, the embroidery of Hmong activities. Love it. So the largest population of mung in america are in the twin cities and so you know i've gotten to know a lot of these folks really really well uh yeah who's a chef and restaurateur and a phenomenal culinarian uh was born in a refugee camp and he came on iron chef and instead of cooking like, oh, three Hmong dishes and I'm going to show you that I can cook Italian food too, he made five Hmong

dishes. Knowing, by the way, and I could start crying thinking about it because I know he knew that that was not necessarily the way to win. In other words, okay, I'm not doing a dessert. You don't get knocked for that. But Hmong food, for anyone who's eaten it, it has a limited number of ingredients and flavors. So if you're just cooking that food and someone else is doing more things more ways, based on the judging criteria, you're at risk unless that other person makes a mistake. But he, I think, understood the moment and no one else was calling it out.

And it may be because I live in a place where the Hmong live or maybe I've just been out in the world and seen more marginalized human beings than other people have. And I brought up – I just got everyone to stop. They left it in the show, but I essentially got the room to stop and just said, this is the first time Hmong food has ever been cooked on international television. First time ever. And so what that says about inclusiveness

and what that says about how we combat those who would not want to celebrate our diversity, what that says about how we accept marginalized people and how we shouldn't be continuing to do that because the food was spectacular and what he showed was spectacular. And he, he took the, he, he used that opportunity to showcase not himself, but his culture's food. And I thought that was just the coolest thing I've seen in a competition cooking show ever to not have the ego to say, I want to win. He said, I may win because the other person makes a mistake. One of their dishes doesn't get plated. I mean, you're down 20% of your point value, right? So, I mean, there's no

coming back from that, but he said, it's more important to cook my culture's food. And I think things like that are absolutely mind bog going to be really cool. Iron Chef is going to be cool. I'm shooting another 16, 20 episodes of Family Dinner starting in a week or two on Magnolia. And probably most important for me at this point in my life because at some point, you know, TV is going to stop. Right. But the other things that I'm doing, I'm I'm a member of the International Rescue Committee, which Einstein founded in 1939. And I'm the international voice of nutrition for them. David Miliband, Tony Blair's old secretary of state, runs the IRC. And I've been able to work extensively with them and going with them to a few African countries. Next year, I was blessed enough to be honored with being a United Nations World Food Program global ambassadorship. So I'm doing a lot of work with them.

They're the largest relief organization in the world. And they have the distribution and the people power to make a really, really, really big difference. So I'm excited to be working with them. And a lot of the other social justice stuff that I'm doing around food is changing and morphing because kind of the older you get, there's that sweet spot window where I've been doing it long enough that now I can like actually talk to congressmen and senators and spend more time in D.C. lobbying and arm twisting for the issues that I think are important, like the ones we talked about, getting people to be able to spend time outdoors and preserving our natural world. So it's a cool thing. It's a great time. I'm not slowing down.

I mean, that's for sure. I'm the, you know, I just turned 61 and I'm proud of that because in my mind I'm like 30, you know, and behaviorally I'm either 13 or eight depending on, I have some close friends because I can be, I suffer from infantilism. Uh, which, you know, means I'm extremely immature, uh, for good solid couple hours every day. Um, and, uh, but as I get older, I, I've been able to challenge some of my energies away from just the, the TV book, you know, sort of me, me, me ism and, and try to do a little more us, us, us work. And I think that's, I think that's a very

natural progression for human beings. That's solid. That's great. Yeah. It's good stuff. Thanks for coming on the show. Oh, this was a, a bucket list cross off item. Oh, glad you could provide that.

Well, I mean, I've known Kevin for a long time. You and I have, have, we've met once before, but known each other for a long time and obviously have had a lot of different paths of ours cross and traverse over the years. But I'm such a huge admirer of people who do the right things with their platform no matter how big or how small. And I've publicly said that for those whom have been lucky enough to get a slightly larger platform, if they so many incredible good things. I'm such an admirer of yours. I'm such a big fan of your content, but I'm a bigger more than I like your content. because you've made a commitment to be yourself and to create that platform to inspire other people and shown folks that you can change things with what you do. You can change hearts and minds and you can educate and have fun at the same. I call it adventure learning. I'm a big proponent of adventure learning and I can't think of anyone who defines that with what they do,

not with what they say, but with what they do more than you. So this was a big bucket list that the ask came in. I don't know what about chasing down other people, but when someone mentioned to me that I had the opportunity to do this, I said, yes, right away. There was zero hesitation. Well, thank you for the very generous compliment. Well, that's what Cal was talking about. That was a perfect example of we all just witnessed it in real life. Oh, is that what you were talking about? Steve, are you crying? We'll give you that one.

No, I'm solid. I'm good, but thanks. That was very kind of you. It's the truth. All I do is tell the truth. And now he's going to be really mean to you during trivia. Yeah, now you get to watch the bloodthirst come in. I hope he does.

I think you're going to do good. No, I don't know. Depends what the questions are. I'm just here for comic relief. Steve's got this theory that being old is an advantage. That's why me and Brody dominate. Ah, okay.

Let me give you another tip. Okay. Most of the answers, you don't actually know the answer. It's a good guess. You just figure your way into it. Okay. So of the answers, you don't actually know the answer. It's a good guess. You just figure your way into it. Okay. So you got a lot of things to figure from.

Okay. Where you're like, well, it wouldn't be that. That wouldn't make sense. No, that's like any other, like the SATs that I cheated on anyway. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's go get Spencer.

Yep. Everybody that's listening, thank you. Andrew Zimmerman, thank you so much. My pleasure. Check out Outdoor Channel. What's the date again? September 19th at 9 o'clock Eastern is the premiere of Wild Game Kitchen. Go check it out.

Outdoor Channel. Andrew Zimmern, thanks again. Game On, suckers. Trivia. Dropping soon. Thank you. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now, the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land,

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