This Past Weekend - #610 - Steven Rinella

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. Today's guest is a renowned outdoorsman. He's a hunter. He's a survivalist. He has his own show Meat Eater on Netflix as well as his podcast. I had a great time learning about some of the beautiful and brutal aspects of our world. Today's guest is Mr. Steve Rinella. Oh, you're having a little, huh?

Starting point is 00:01:10 You having a little bit of that? I'm familiar with that product. Oh, hell yeah, brother. We just gave something to an honor. Amish kid the other day. Never had it. Did you like it? What, Celsius?

Starting point is 00:01:23 I mean, when you gave it to him, did he dig it? I mean, he definitely, he couldn't, he couldn't bend his arms for a couple minutes. It hit him hard. Because why? I mean, brother. Just unfamiliar. I think, yeah, something like something, you know, you put that brain petrol that is Celsius into a damn Amish, you know?

Starting point is 00:01:41 He might want to plugging something in. I mean, he might, I thought he's going to get down. He's going to put his finger in that. He wants to find out what it's all about. he's going to put his finger in that sock. Yeah, oh, I thought he did, I thought he's going to get court-martialed right there or something. I don't know what was going to happen. What was the circumstances that you were hanging out with the Amish guy?

Starting point is 00:01:56 We finally got a hold of one. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, we finally got a hold of one. We've been trying to, not capture an Amish or whatever. I don't know what the terminology is, but we've been trying to wrangle one, I guess, because you can't get a hold of them. You know, you can put messages out there.

Starting point is 00:02:11 You can do message in a bottle or shit. They don't reply to a lot of that. And so finally, we had a guy who was on rum spray. He was on their kind of like, it's like spring break for the Amish. And he came to a comedy show. There he is right there. Well, on Rumspringer. He looks young from Rumspringer.

Starting point is 00:02:30 He's young. He got out there and he brought me this hat too. And he came. Great kid, though. We learned so much about it. But he'd never seen so many things. It was unbelievable. But he'd never had to hit a Celsius when we got it in him.

Starting point is 00:02:44 So we'll see. Now he's got his Rumspringer document. Oh, yeah. But it might make it difficult for him to integrate back in. Oh, I'm sure, dude. Yeah, because people, well, maybe his community won't know. Yeah, I don't, I mean, yeah, that's a good point. I don't even know.

Starting point is 00:03:01 It'd be a good honesty test. If they know, you'll know they violated. How do they know? Yeah. It's a good point, actually. So we're helping out. Yeah, but it was just interesting to get to talk somebody who'd lived like, you know, it's a total different life than the average American probably.

Starting point is 00:03:17 Are you making a show right now, or is this? pre-are we pre-making the show. Oh, this can be the show. Yeah, I mean, we can start into it. Sorry. Oh, no, I don't care. And so that's one type of person who kind of has their own, like, way of living. And you're another type of person who has had a unique life and has, like... Good, good, good transition. Was it? Yeah. Oh, damn. Um, I thought it was going to be, I think, I don't know what's going to happen. But, um, no, you have a show on Netflix called Meat Eater. And you guys are in your, you guys are... We made a lot. We, we, but we, we, we I got a 13th season of the show coming out. We made many, many, many, many episodes over the years.

Starting point is 00:03:53 Yeah. And they appear in a lot of different places. Mm-hmm. Yep, we've seen some of them on YouTube. I've gotten to enjoy some of them. So thank you so much, man. It's definitely exciting to watch. It's really beautifully shot, too, you guys' show.

Starting point is 00:04:05 You went turkey hunting with Mike Waddell, I heard. Oh, yeah, I did. Yeah, I went down there. And it was fun, but it's like, I don't know. Some of the turrets, it's like, they just seem like an unwell bird. what do you mean turkeys unwell in what way

Starting point is 00:04:22 they just don't seem like they're like a top like I don't want to say like they on it like I don't want to say uneducated they just seem like they like they got picked last

Starting point is 00:04:35 for gym kind of dude that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard really oh yeah about a turkey yeah if you look at a turkey it just seem like they like they can't do

Starting point is 00:04:44 they just are yeah they just I don't know they weren't doing a lot Dude, it's a big-ass bird. His head changes colors from red to white to blue. He tastes good. Yeah, he's basically the to be the to be of turkeys.

Starting point is 00:04:56 They fucking walk around the woods making insane noises. Yeah. But I mean, like, it's an omnivore. It can eat all kinds of, it can eat all kinds of stuff. Okay. Well, now you're selling me on it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:10 What else? I mean, like, what else? Name a better bird. It's like, you could be, oh, a bald eagle. He eats a bunch of rotten fish from the side, like a turkey, that's America's bird, dude. Are you familiar with a gentleman named Ben Franklin? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:26 Okay. Do you know that Franklin didn't like the bald eagle as a national bird? Because it was a scavenger. And he threw out some, it's debated how honest you, it's debated if he was trying to be a smart ass or not. Ben Franklin said America ought to go with the wild turkey because at least it's a vain bird. What does vein bird mean? It's beautiful.

Starting point is 00:05:50 He puffs his feather. The male puffs his feathers all out. Yeah. He's got a snood. He's got like a, imagine like a packer on your, laid across your face. Okay. That changes all the time. It gets erect.

Starting point is 00:06:05 Wait. It goes limp. Turkey has that? Yeah, dude. It's like to just like come in and like start disparaging a turkey right off the top of the bat. You don't know me. I'm just, okay. I'm just saying. It's like very, it's like, it's disrespectful. That is a, that is the, that is the best, that's the best bird in our, in our country. Okay. Well, look, I didn't, no one's ever, first of all, lobbied for this animal in front of me.

Starting point is 00:06:29 Well, Franklin. Well, not front of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know how old I am. Maybe I would say her.

Starting point is 00:06:37 But no, Waddell did not. Waddell was just like, we're killing these M-Affers and he used some slurs. I'll say that straight up. He used a couple slurs and I was like, I don't think those are for birds or am Amelia even. But he was like, I think I just had a unique angle into it. Tell me more about that nose weaner that they got or that nose. It's called a snood. Okay.

Starting point is 00:06:59 Bring it up. They got, see, you get into Turkey anatomy, man, they got a lot going on for them. They got a snood.

Starting point is 00:07:06 There's not many birds that have like basically a, uh, so they have a cloaca. Like birds have a cloaca like called a, like a unihole.

Starting point is 00:07:14 Mm-hmm. All their actions. Deficating, taking a leak. Well, when they defecating, take a leak is kind of a single deal. Okay.

Starting point is 00:07:22 I'll do that. They have sex through the unyhole. Mm. When they shit, you can tell a male from a female, by the shape of its shit. Wow.

Starting point is 00:07:31 A male throws a j-shaped, hooked shit. So there's not many birds you can sex his shit. Yeah. He's got a snood. They got spurs. Sometimes an inch and a quarter long for fighting. You ever been to a cockfight? Okay.

Starting point is 00:07:48 They got spurs. Look at that. Some of those spurs are so big you can hang the turkey by the spur on a branch. That's called a limb hanger. That means he's huge. Some got a, they got, like, pull up the beard. Pull up the beard. Pull up the beard.

Starting point is 00:08:04 They got a beard, which is actually a feather. Look at that. Hold on. Let me see it. When he's big, when that, when that gets so big that it drags on the ground, you know what you call him? Rope dragger. Oh, yeah. So you got limb hangers, rope draggers.

Starting point is 00:08:19 Yeah. Like, it's just, you kind of. Okay. I could, you know, I could walk out of this room right now. Okay. And it'd be like, you know what I mean? Yeah. But I'm not going to do that.

Starting point is 00:08:31 Well, first of all. Yeah, because you talk bad about the America's bird. I appreciate that. And look, I'm glad that I know. I'm not going to get up and storm out, dude. You might. Yeah. But look, you won't storm out without teaching me something.

Starting point is 00:08:45 I'll say that. And I didn't know any of that. Turkey's are great. Yeah. Their head changes from red, white, to blue. It's kind of like they knew that they were going to be America's bird. Oh, yeah. They're the fucking Trace Atkins of birds.

Starting point is 00:08:57 When they get real excited. Like when you see, when he's coming in and his head gets that whitish color to it, uh-huh. He is fired up. Okay, so what does that mean when their head changes to different colors? God, look at this guy. Blue and white, like blue and white. He's torn between some feelings.

Starting point is 00:09:13 Yeah, blue and white, he's in. He's like, blue and white, he's coming in. You hunt him in the spring during the breeding season. Okay. Blue and white, he's coming in and he's, he's, he's, he's, things. thinking he's thinking about ass. Okay, so he's looking for sex. But, oh, Waddell had us.

Starting point is 00:09:32 We were in the offseat. They were in the locker room and we went to chase him. They were not even on the field. They were fucking back there, you know, getting physical there. I mean, we were in some, I was like,

Starting point is 00:09:41 should we even, yeah, some of them had their towels around their necks. They were sitting there texting their wives. Like, there was the off season. If he's coming in, like,

Starting point is 00:09:49 he's coming in, you see a blue head. Okay. And then all of a sudden, you know what? And he's coming in, he's all puffed out. And they did another thing.

Starting point is 00:09:59 So. I know. I'm sorry. Well, they got the big, you heard the big gobble. Yes. All right. If you're, if you're telling a turkey hunting story. Mm-hmm.

Starting point is 00:10:08 And you get to the part of the story where, like, picture you're telling the story that has a gun in it. Okay. And we get to the part of the story where the gun goes off. You go like, and I heard bang. Right. Some of it sounds like. Right. But you go bang.

Starting point is 00:10:20 And then, pooh. Yeah. A friend of mine's Latvian. And when they hear, when they get to a part of a story where the gun goes off, they say, Blouch. Okay. So if you're telling a turkey story and he gobbles, it's hard to make the gobble noise.

Starting point is 00:10:32 So in a story, you'd go, but it's like, but if you, when he's coming in, like if he's coming in and he thinks he's coming into a hen, you're making a hen noise. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:10:47 So the noise that the man that, that, like Michael Waddell was making, and he makes that noise really well. Oh, yeah. He's the best of the best. Oh,

Starting point is 00:10:54 yeah. I mean, he was calling a couple of fucking, I mean, even some busty. chicks from the gas station. He was like a competitive. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:01 So he's making a hen noise. And what's, oh, dude, people, dudes were, dudes were coming out of the closet when he was doing it. I mean, he'll bucking,

Starting point is 00:11:06 he'll call, he'll get you, he'll get people go. Oh, he's very good. And what, like, what would happen in,

Starting point is 00:11:11 what would happen in the natural setting there is the gobbler is just cruising. Okay. And the gobbler is that big male turkey. He's a big male turkey. He's cruising. And chicks are supposed to hear him. Mm-hmm.

Starting point is 00:11:22 And like, he doesn't, he's kind of got his little route and they're supposed to kind of come into him. So he's on the highway, going down the highway, and they're kind of coming on the ramps. Okay, the on ramps. To catch him. Oh, so what you're trying to do is you're trying to get him to be like, well, I'm going to go over there and have a sea. Like, that's not normally what I would do. Right. But what is going on over there? I need to go out of my way now to go have a sea. Ah. What's happening? When he's coming, you see like a blue head. And he's coming.

Starting point is 00:11:53 And he's going like this. You can't hear it. Like, if you hear it, he's in rain. He's going, here's what it sounds like. He's going, he's doing two things. He's spitting. He's making a noise. We always goof on it and go like, but it's like, he's making a noise with his mouth. Okay. And he's taking his wings and on the ground.

Starting point is 00:12:16 Okay. And that is the, that is like extremely exciting noise to hear. So the first part is with their actual, they do it with their mouth and the second part they do it with their wings on the ground. And he's drumming. Wow. So it's a real mating call. Yeah, like, you'll hear him like, you'll hear him. He's kind of like making, he's like doing a vocalization.

Starting point is 00:12:34 He's doing a vocalization, but like he's got his wings. You hear on the ground. Okay. And you'll even see, you'll sometimes be going down a sandy trail or something. You'll see the wing drags and you can tell that one's been cutting it out there. And they do this little dance. Oh, wow. Yeah, dude, it's the best thing in the world.

Starting point is 00:12:50 But if he's coming in and all of a sudden his head turns red, his head turns red. His head turns red and lifts up. and if he goes B. Games up. Oh, he knows that he knows that he knows that it's not good.

Starting point is 00:13:03 Like when you hear that noise, he's on his way out. Okay. But what's the problem? Wait, when you hear what noise is on the way up when he putts.

Starting point is 00:13:09 Oh, when he puts. His head goes, boom, red, lifts up and puts, he's gone. But they don't do anything too quick.

Starting point is 00:13:15 But that's his way of saying like, I don't like it. Wow. This isn't about ladies anymore. Oh, it's about dudes being secretive pretending they're women.

Starting point is 00:13:24 No, like an absolutely fascinating bird. You know, I took... Wow. Yeah, I didn't know, man. You know, you know, Rogan. I took turkey hunting with him years ago. And he wanted to be kind of underwhelmed by turkeys.

Starting point is 00:13:38 There might be something like, like some kind of like offshoot of being a comedian. Is that you can't appreciate turkeys? Well, I think there's... Do you think that there might be something to that? That's a good question. I think, oh, I remember watching this. seen at Brian Callan too, which was, that's hilarious.

Starting point is 00:13:56 Oh, yeah. They didn't appreciate turkeys. Drove me, yeah. I know. Turkey people do not like it. If you do not like Turk, talking, being, thinking about Turkey. No, if you just says something bad about my three kids, I've been like, yeah, I see that. I'm like, yeah, that's fair.

Starting point is 00:14:13 But like with the turkey deal, no. Right. It's baked. Yeah. Turkey's baked into American history. I didn't know that much about turkeys. I think if I knew some of this, and maybe I didn't even, I didn't ask enough stuff, you know.

Starting point is 00:14:24 I think if I'd have asked more stuff and I'd have known a little bit more of like the lower, I think I probably would have been more hyped about it. Yeah. Can I hear you with one more lower bit? Yeah, sure. So when at the time of like when Europeans arrived in North America, Mm-hmm. There were turkeys.

Starting point is 00:14:44 They think there may be turkeys in like 34 states. And then they were extirpated from many of those states because they were good to eat. Everybody wanted to eat them. People to hunt them at night. Shoot them out of the trees. night. It was a popular food item. Yeah. And they nearly wiped the mountain. It got to where there's only turkeys hiding out in like the deepest patches of swamps up in the highest mountain woods, you know, hiding out

Starting point is 00:15:05 here and there. And it got bad, right? There was only a couple states where you're allowed to hunt them anymore. And then they started putting them back out there. You can hunt turkeys in, you can hunt turkeys now in 49 states. Wow. You can hunt turkeys now in more states than had turkeys. A cost to that, the bird is that people now take the bird for granted. Like from a PR standpoint, I was talking about eagles earlier. From a PR standpoint, eagles are kind of everywhere now. There's still people who'll see an eagle and they'll be like,

Starting point is 00:15:36 oh my God, an eagle. But dude, you know, we have a little shack in Alaska and you might see 13 eagles in one tree. Yeah. So from a PR standpoint, they have a little bit of, they like, you risk over exposure as a bird. Turkeys are so everywhere now that now we have like town turkeys. But there's wandering around like stray animals. And so the mystique, it like, it costs them some of their mystique.

Starting point is 00:16:00 Ah. And then people would get a sense from town turkeys, which aren't hunted. They'll get a sense of that a turkey is whatever, that he's not cautious, that he's not careful, right? Right. That'll just use any crosswalk or whatever. Yeah. So a lot of times when people disparage the turkey, they're referring to some town turkey. But they don't know what a turkey he's out there busting ass in the woods.

Starting point is 00:16:22 Yeah. with people trying to kill them. And coyotes trying to kill them. And bobcat's trying to kill them. And Red Fox's trying to kill them. And possums eating their eggs and skunks eating their eggs. And raccoons eating their eggs. Great horned owls blasting them out of trees.

Starting point is 00:16:34 And they survive through all that. So when I think of a turkey, I'm thinking of a persecuted turkey. Some people are thinking of a town turkey. Yeah. It's just different. Yeah. I think I was probably thinking of like, yeah, I mean, there's a turkey right there. It's almost.

Starting point is 00:16:46 Town turkey. Yeah, catching a bus to work or whatever. I mean, that's fucking unbelievable. That's what's going on. But no, I didn't know. I mean, I think that gives me, like, definitely a different appreciation for them. I didn't know they had so much baked in. Like, they're such a thermometer of, like, sexual activity.

Starting point is 00:17:02 And so many, like, little ratings are relevant right on them and the way that they operate and the sounds that they make. They're a dynamic bird. And that I'll agree to 100%, man. So all, like, here's an earth thing about them. Can I eat with one more? Yeah. Most of the domestic animals that we utilize, okay?

Starting point is 00:17:20 When you go into a store and you see what's for sale down there for domestic meats, you know, whether you buy, you buy weird shit like you buy lamb, goat, pork, pork, beef, okay? That's all, that all winds up being like Eurasian, species of Eurasian origin that became domesticated. And when you say Eurasian, what are you talking about? You're talking about animals. Animals that are indigenous, animals that are endemic to Europe and Asia became like. the domestics that we know today. Wow. So when you see like a horse, that's a Eurasian creature.

Starting point is 00:17:56 Cattle came from a thing called the oryx. Okay. Goats came from other continents. Sheep, other continents. The turkey is uniquely North American. Really? Okay, so when the Spanish came, they took turkeys. They drew turkeys from Mesoamerica,

Starting point is 00:18:16 brought them back to Europe and turned them into like the white-looking butterball turkeys through selective breeding and then brought those turkeys back to the new world but it's like the new world's contribution it's north america's contribution to the domesticated species that we know and love today got it so if you go into a meat market and you're like they got all the normal shit laid out turkey is one you're like that that's origin is here it's a it's a new world creature because the new world didn't produce the new world didn't produce domestics. Like, they didn't, we haven't, like, effectively domesticated new world animals, but the turkey's an exception.

Starting point is 00:18:58 Wow. So that really is kind of our national animal, huh? Oh, yeah, dude. You think it's our most national animal, not just bird? I can't answer that. I haven't thought out about that before. Yeah. Damn, dude.

Starting point is 00:19:11 No, thanks, bro. Yeah, I think it's interesting. Like, yeah, I'll learn about that kind of stuff. When I was growing up and stuff, I didn't have, like, a lot of influence, like, in that kind of world, you know? Like, the wildlife world. Yeah, I think hunting or something. something. I mean, the first thing, I mean, I saw a buddy of mine get shot by a couple brothers at Marty Groh once. I was like my intro to hunting, you know, like, and I was like, oh, shit.

Starting point is 00:19:29 Did you live or die? Huh? He lived. Yeah. Where did he get hit? He got hit in the back kind of right here. Just a stray bullet. Um, yeah, looked at him or he just caught a bullet? Aimed at him. Oh, I got it. Yeah. Or like semi-aimed, I guess, yeah. I mean, the guy looked like he didn't know what he was doing that much, but he was shooting. Yeah. Um, you know, I said I wanted to ask you a question. I wanted to ask, like, how many years did you spend growing up in Louisiana? When I was reading up on your background a little bit, and you spent time in Illinois, but also in Louisiana. Yeah, I spent time in Louisiana until I think I was maybe 21 or 22.

Starting point is 00:20:00 And, but yeah, we'd go up to Illinois in the summers in fish. We did a ton of fishing, and we would do a good bit of fishing in Louisiana. But I just never really got into hunting. The first time I ever went hunting was with Michael Waddell. Oh, okay. Yeah. What I wanted with Louisiana, have you, that was the last state I ever went to. And I mean, like, went to, went to, was Louisiana.

Starting point is 00:20:21 Have you, did you switch, did you switch to Gulf of America? No. You didn't switch. No, I would be, well, I want to see how it pans out first. Because Mexico, bring it up. Let's get a look at that big puddle, brother. Because what I'm trying to see is where is most of the land around it? Well, shit all over the place.

Starting point is 00:20:44 Northern, South America. I think you do a year for each area, like maybe you do like everybody gets a year. and then you look back and see how good that year was. You do like, and then they get it. You know what I'm saying? You get one year to operate that MF and then you see who really owns that bitch. To me, that's like a fair way to do it. Yeah, the reason I was asked about it is we, once I found out about Louisiana,

Starting point is 00:21:10 we filmed a couple. We filmed a number of episodes down there. I started going there with friends because we spearfish the oil rigs. And so right when all that shit was here, heating up. Okay. We're like cutting an episode about that was filmed out in

Starting point is 00:21:27 the Gulf. And between the time I wrote the VO and the time we recorded the VO, all this shit hit the fan. Okay. So I'm sitting there and in my script, it's Gulf of Mexico.

Starting point is 00:21:44 But then it switches. So we're in the studio and I'm talking to my colleagues and we're trying to decide what way we roll on it. We tried doing like a joke. We tried doing like the Gulf of, you know, but then we thought that's like a dated joke.

Starting point is 00:21:59 And in the end, after careful contemplation, I was like, I can't switch. Yeah. Like I'm old, you know, I'm half a century old. Yeah. It's just, it's maybe I'll leave it to the younger's. But for me, I can't like, I can't do it. I can't switch.

Starting point is 00:22:16 Yeah, it just seemed kind of like, I think you got to figure out who's going to earn it. I think you got to find some way. Maybe there's a competition each year and then between Mexico and America and some of the other countries, those are smaller countries that are touching it. I think like Cuba. They ain't going to be the Gulf of Cuba though. Yeah, they probably wouldn't let that happen. But I think you have a competition each year and whoever wins it, they get to name it. Maybe it's a soccer game or something and whoever wins it, they get it for the eight years. Fishing contest.

Starting point is 00:22:43 Yeah, that's kind of fucking dope, actually. Like a soccer term, it isn't really applicable. Well, I think it's applicable, Stephen. And what I'm going to tell you is this, brother, that's as far as out with that. But I think the soccer would be fun because a lot of people love soccer. That's what I'm thinking, you know. But yeah, maybe it's a fishing rodeo or something. But I think then there aren't they automatically going to kick our ass? I don't know.

Starting point is 00:23:03 I was trying to think it's something we'd win better. Maybe it's a, and this would actually be, this is actually a great idea. I think it's 10 events. It's Mexico and America. Yes. Look of all the shit, man. Yeah. Swimming in there.

Starting point is 00:23:17 Hunting on the edge of it. I wonder if we could get spear fishing it. beer fishing and just fucking somebody singing near the edge and seeing if official swim up, that's fishing. You know, I was going to tell you about these, I told you producer this. Guys

Starting point is 00:23:33 that work with were buying these Celsius and I didn't know that I didn't really read what was on there. So I was drinking them all the damn time. I was drinking them like celtzers and I was having a hard time sleeping. And someone pointed out they're like, well shit, you've been drinking

Starting point is 00:23:49 those stupid things all day. And I was like, I was like, I thought I was drinking the croys or something. It is good. I know that. I'll say this straight up, baby a bear. Anywhere worth going is worth going in a boot. Mmm. I put my feet in some boots and I say, yeah, baby girl.

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Starting point is 00:26:29 Yeah, he's good. Let's listen to him. He's going to make some turkey noises. Yeah. I think that's a good idea. I like him, man. He's a fun guy. Oh, he's so great, dude.

Starting point is 00:26:36 I get to spend, we go to a summer camp together every year with him and his family, and it's fucking hilarious. I would say volume control and going from soft to a great, if that's where you want to call it or louder, is important to find a diaphragm. If you get those tones and you can control that, it don't have to sound perfect. My opinion on turkey calling,

Starting point is 00:27:08 rhythm is more important than specifically the sound of it. That's what I've been saying. That's what I've been saying. Dude, I think one thing that would be cool, wonder if he could put together almost like an animal call orchestra where it was like you had this sort of

Starting point is 00:27:26 like an orchestra pit and somebody was like the conductor and they had all the animal calls. That's a good idea. It'd be kind of neat. We got, I was hip on this idea for a while. We didn't take as far as I wanted to you, but what I wanted to do is I got a directional,

Starting point is 00:27:41 we bought a directional mic. And I wanted to build a catalog of, I didn't know what I was, I never thought about what I was going to do with it. We actually bought the damn thing. I wanted to build a catalog of animal noises. Yeah. And so we picked up different,

Starting point is 00:27:56 noises and then kind of abandoned it. I think because I didn't know what we didn't, I hadn't really decided what we're going to do with them. I could think I just wanted them. Oh yeah. Like a great catalog of animal noises that people wouldn't know. You could do a couple things with them that come into my mind. One of them is you could

Starting point is 00:28:12 The orchestra. Yeah, create, have that. A second one is people that are deceased put a special headset on them. It guarantees it'll play for 30 years or whatever. They get to have that. All the best animals of the world. on the way out.

Starting point is 00:28:27 A third idea, I think it could be neat, would be if you create it, oh, this would be cool. You create one of those things, I shouldn't say it'd be cool. Who knows? Might be horrible.

Starting point is 00:28:38 I don't think it's that great. I'm going to say it. What it is is, it's like one of those white noise machines, but it's all the fucking animals, dude. And it's Steve Ronella's fucking, come sleep with Steve, it's called. That's a great thing, man.

Starting point is 00:28:52 I check my wife on that shit. I know. Every now and then, every now and then in the distance of the animals, you hear Steve's wife be like, it better just be you in there. But that's what, it's a special machine and it's all. And then every now and then you can go to different regions of the world and hear them. You go to Africa. You go to like. You sleep with me in Africa.

Starting point is 00:29:12 Yeah, sleep with me in Asia or whatever. Yeah. Sleep with me in Alabama. And every now and then there's just some country dude. And he's like, oh, something's, I'm going to go, fuck one of these things or whatever. You're like, whoa, whoa, buddy. But it's just like a unique. week way to fall asleep at night.

Starting point is 00:29:28 Are you hip to the, are you hip to the app, Merlin? I've not even heard of it. Yeah, you should check it out. I've had people that design the app on, on your podcast? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:43 Is your podcast called Meat Eaters too? It's called The Meat Eater podcast. So when you're out in your yard, and you hear birds off in the distance anywhere, and you open it up, it just listens and tells you what birds tells you what it is a phenomenal app the reason I bring that up

Starting point is 00:30:05 is it's what's what is harmful to people's self-esteem is when you're turkey hunting and you're making you're mimicking the noises so we'll open up Merlin and be like is it picking you up or not bro is it throwing

Starting point is 00:30:27 is it saying there's a turkey over there is there not saying there's a turkey over there yeah like I got friends that are very that put enormous amounts of energy into learning how to mimic the call of a barred owl really? Yeah like you mean those

Starting point is 00:30:42 what is it? They go like I got a roll but you do it loud as shit okay well just give me a second they yeah like Yeah, I'm not good at it. Southerners are good at it.

Starting point is 00:31:00 It's a very southern thing. There's like Yankees that can do it, but they're not going to do it like a southerner. The bard owl. Pull it up. I just want to get a gander at it. Sorry, you had it up. Yeah, pull up Clay Newcomb.

Starting point is 00:31:10 Say Clay Newcomb, Bard owl. Or unless you want to hear the real thing. No, I want to start with this man. Well, he's a southerner. Oh, yeah, he is. Oh, this is me and Clay. You see Clay and the birds, right? Anyhow, definitely, dude, you got to stay in school, brother.

Starting point is 00:31:49 What is fun is to open up Merlin and see who's got it. And then get off of ways. Yeah. And so one of my buddies, who is a Yankee, he's an ordinary, buddy Seth, like, he's a real good owl caller. Yeah. And it started realizing, when he realized that Merlin, like when he realized that Merlin wasn't picking him up,

Starting point is 00:32:09 wasn't putting him down as a bard owl, he had like an emotional crisis. and started redoing his shit and working on his shit until Merlin, he had to change his stuff until you can figure out why Merlin wasn't grabbing him. Look, all I'm telling you is that motherfucker grain registering on Merlin. That's all, look, I'm going to shoot you straight. That's crazy. It's also crazy to be, I actually, now this, I really understand wanting to be this animal.

Starting point is 00:32:34 And my, might be an owl. Yeah, wanting to really get into their head. And we had, I've had a little bit of owl, actually. My sister's husband cooked two owls during Thanksgiving. Well, he might want to keep that more secret. Yeah, I don't know if he did it. I mean, I haven't seen him in a long time. That's what I'll tell you.

Starting point is 00:32:58 But he, it's not a lot of meat, I'll tell you that. It's kind of like you see those women in Little House on the Prairie, a lot of skirts, not a lot of meat under there, you know? Yeah, that's a good way to put it. You think it's going to be Philadelphia under there, but it's a little more Arizona when you get under there. See, I'd tell you a good story. My father told me. I don't, and he's dead, so they're not going to do anything bad. I will tell it.

Starting point is 00:33:18 I don't know why my father did this. Okay. I don't know why my father did this. But it talks about that, like, a lot of skirt, not much. Not much meat, yeah. So, obviously, my father was from another time. My dad was born in 19. He had me when he's old.

Starting point is 00:33:33 He was born in the Great Depression. Oh, wow. Like 1910? No, not that late. He was a World War II veteran. Oh, wow. Anyhow. Thank you, Mr. Rinella for your service.

Starting point is 00:33:43 He tells a story about sitting, deer hunting with his bow and somehow oh there he is on the right there oh he tells the story about sitting deer hunting with his bow and uh deciding to shoot an owl with his bow and he says he doesn't and he like it feels like he hits the owl i can't account for why he would decide to do this is not something i would do i don't condone it shoots the owl and like hits it dead center but he said the owl doesn't even change tune. Wow. Because you realize it's all feathers.

Starting point is 00:34:19 Yeah, yeah. It's all brazier, baby. No tit. That was his only owl hunting story. God. And he didn't, the owl escaped unharmed. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:34:28 Look at these motherfuckering. What are we doing? What are we doing, dude? Yeah, there you go. If you don't think all of the, the world is a sci-op, look at this MF for,

Starting point is 00:34:38 homie. Look at this thing right here. You know, do you want to know a current controversy about the barred owl? Mm-hmm. I love to. So the noise that Clay was just making there and the owls are making. Okay. Do you remember back to, do you remember back to the kind of culture war issue around spotted owls?

Starting point is 00:34:58 Like logging in the Pacific Northwest and the spotted owl? Well, I think they were tearing down their habitats, right? Exactly. And the spotted owl became, this happens to animals now and then, where a spotted owl stopped being an owl. Mm-hmm. And kind of became like a cultural. emblem. Oh yeah, like when they put them on frontier airlines, like on their wing. Yeah, sure. It'd be like like wolves occupy this now. Like there's wolves as flesh and blood creatures. And then there's sort of the symbolism of the wolf. So the spotted owl became a

Starting point is 00:35:29 symbolism of land use, you know, like land use controversy. Okay. Meaning there you got loggers in the Pacific Northwest trying to produce harvest timber products. But there's this owl they're trying, this endangered species, this owl that they're trying to protect. So the owl becomes this kind of like proxy symbol for whether we should cut trees or not. I remember even in dumb and dumber, they had the Ben went to the banquet where they were raising money for the spotted owl. Yeah, exactly. So it became like a cultural thing. Bard owls are one of those species like Canada geese, white-tailed deer, crows that do really well, that they benefit off people.

Starting point is 00:36:08 Right. Like the more people there are and more places, the more beneficial it is to that owl. That owl does well in disturbed ecosystems. They like people. They'll hang out above your house. They'll hunt in your yard. Like, we don't bother them. Other things hate people.

Starting point is 00:36:25 But this thing that's gradually happening is barred owls, which were historically more in the eastern U.S., are colonizing the spotted owls range and displacing spotted owls. So there's this big push. And there was even federal money. I don't know where it stands right now. I think the current administration was rolling it back. There was a push where they were going to go kill right there. They were going to coal 470,000 barred owls in the Pacific Northwest.

Starting point is 00:36:55 To keep them from migrating? To try to save the spotted owl. The spotted owl. Fuck. And I think they might have pulled that money. I'm not sure. Oh. But just a little like, you know, like wildlife.

Starting point is 00:37:09 politics. Like, there's always wildlife politics brewing, you know? Yeah. And so there's this kind of thing like, does it make sense, you know, that you ask the question. And it's not like people are moving them in trucks. They're moving on their own. So if, like, if this bird is getting there on his own. It's nature. Yeah, he's getting there on his own, under his own wing, spreading across is that, can you really call it that that's like, colonization? Or is it just that it's natural? Like throughout your 45 years of life, Raccoons have gone north and west throughout your 45 years of life. Apossoms have gone north and west.

Starting point is 00:37:47 Bard owls have gone west, all on their own. It's human in that they're sort of like our crop fields, our clearings, our developments, don't bother them, but they're beneficial to them. Right. So we don't have an effect really on it. Yeah. So it's happening and they're talking about dusting off that many, you know, dusting off that many owls. and I don't know. I mean, that's interesting.

Starting point is 00:38:11 Yeah, it's like how much do you want to mess up with what Mother Nature is doing? You know, it says right here, yes, funding for the Bard Owl Removal Initiative was recently pulled in July 2025. The Trump administration terminated three critical federal grants totaling about 1.1 million, which were essential for launching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Planet Coal Bard Owls across California, Oregon, and Washington. Who was going to do that? Were they just going to send some, how would they go about that, do you think? I applied for one of those gigs one time. They were doing, I just thought it was kind of interesting.

Starting point is 00:38:41 There's another animal that lives that is in more places than it was historically, the mountain goat. And there was this project one time to, they were trying to get mountain ghosts out of Olympic. Was it? No, no, no, not of Olympic National Park. I can't remember. Pull up a mountain goat. It's a great animal. Now, you do not see a lot of these around here.

Starting point is 00:39:03 No, no, no, no. But they were looking for teams of people to go do this mountain goat. Oh, yeah, of course it were. And so we made a, we made like a team. Get professional wrestlers, dude. We made a team to do the mountain gold coal. And our team was not selected because a part of the thing was they wanted you to keep your mouth shut. And I think that they looked and they're like, this guy's not going to keep his mouth shut about that shit.

Starting point is 00:39:25 He's like a fucking writer. So they're like, I think they saw through me. And I had a crack commando team put together. Yeah. But didn't get the nod. Oh. Because I think that they could see that like, like, let's. say you're a writer and you're trying to get in the military.

Starting point is 00:39:39 They're like, yeah, I got a feeling. This guy's going to know. I'm saying? So I didn't get the, I didn't get the job. It's almost like Armageddon where that team gets chosen to go save the world or whatever. You guys should have got the chance, brother. That'd be a great movie. I had a crack commando team put together. Really? Who'd you get on? You get into diversity on it? How do you attack? No, I didn't do, no, this was before that. No, this was before that. You didn't do all that. Now that I review it in my mind, it was decidedly, it was

Starting point is 00:40:06 decidedly, it was a group of guys that you could mistake for me. Okay. That was my mountain goat team. They're going to do the same, like, they're fixing to do the same thing in Grand Teton. In the Grand Teton National Park? Yeah, because mountain goats are, mountain goats are largely in the coastal ranges historically.

Starting point is 00:40:26 God, they're beautiful, aren't they? Oh, yeah. So you got like, like Idaho, Colorado, Utah. They all have non-native mountain goat populations. Oh, yeah. South Dakota has a non-native mountain goat. goat population. And when you say non-native, that means that they just ended up there? They weren't naturally from there? They were drove in. They were drove in. They were brought in.

Starting point is 00:40:46 You wouldn't believe, like, if you're interested in animals, man, you wouldn't believe how much humans have reshuffled the deck. Of how animals exist? Of where they're, like, of distribution of animals. In the world or mostly in America? World too. Yeah. We have a, like our country hosts African species in certain, I mean, totally wild, animals. We have African species run around our country. We have Asiatic species run around our country. We've just completely reshuffled the deck.

Starting point is 00:41:16 Like I was saying, like, you know, historically there was turkeys in 34 states. You can hunt turkeys in every state, but Alaska now. Wow. Like, we're always, like, we've been very good at moving it around, and we used to have the ambition of moving it all around. Now we have the ambition of trying to put it back the way we found it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:32 But for a while, the ambition was to, like, oh, more the merrier. Spread it everywhere. They just cut shit loose just to see what would happen. Fuck. Yeah. All the time, man. Just move it around. See what happens.

Starting point is 00:41:43 That's bonkers, man. Where is Grand Teton National Park? It's basically Yellowstone National Park. Do you have a place in America that you feel has the strongest connection to nature, kind of to just pivot a little bit? Like, do you, like, where you feel like the most, like, innately connected? Is that a weird question, kind of? No, it's not a weird question.

Starting point is 00:42:05 Because I know that, like, some of the, natives had like the black hills and stuff like that in the Dakota. It's like they had places where they felt like extremely connected. Oh yeah. You mean like like places that had a, that had a spiritual. Like an aura or something to them? Yeah, sure. I just wondered if it was.

Starting point is 00:42:19 Yeah, I can't pretend. I can't pretend like I don't know what that felt like. I don't know what that looked like. I have things that mean a lot. I have places that mean a lot to me. I have places that mean a lot to me from a standpoint of personal experiences that have happened in certain places. I had a place for a long time.

Starting point is 00:42:36 I told, like I told my kids, I was like, man, if I die, like, I had originally said if I die, I want, I was like, this is going to be hard to pull off, but like in a perfect world, I would have my body, like, dumped there. Oh, yeah. Just hidden away somewhere to be eaten and my bones strewn about by bears. Yeah. Like, I thought that seemed like a cool idea. It is kind of neat. Yeah. There's a number of people that Crazy Horse, his friends took his body and put it somewhere.

Starting point is 00:43:14 They don't know where it is. Really? Has anybody gone to look for it? Edward Abby. Edward Abby. So Crazy Horse, they hid his body? His friends took his body. He was killed Nebraska.

Starting point is 00:43:25 They took his body and put it in a crevice somewhere. They don't know where it is. And no one's found it yet? Ed Abby's body was out. Ed Abby from... You know, you ever hear Monkey Ranch gang? He wrote Monkey Ranch Gang. Not from...

Starting point is 00:43:37 Desert Solitaire. He was an environmental... Not the odd couple, huh? No, no, no. He was an environmental warrior. You should read up on... Ed Abbey? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:43:46 He's a big figure in defending the desert. In a novelist. Anyways, his friends took them and they dumped them. And they don't tell anybody where? I won't tell anybody where. That's cool. That sounds like the way to go. So I wanted to have that kind of...

Starting point is 00:44:02 I wanted to have a program like that. And that where I wanted to have a program like that. wanted it was a spot that had was a place that had like that I had a deep uh what to me passes as a sort of spiritual connection to that place then there's places I just like because uh there's like I like I love being in Alaska I spend a month or so in Alaska it's kind of throughout different times of year I spend a month or so in Alaska every year I love Alaska I like about Alaska is it's uh you know it's a big place but there's a lot of of places where you can just kind of picture what time was along like you can kind of picture what

Starting point is 00:44:40 things were a long time ago got it yeah so it's like because a thing that if you've as a as an outdoorsman as someone that likes nature um oftentimes you find yourself trying to imagine like trying to imagine a long time ago right there's there's something like there's some kind of continuity thing um you know people have been out on the landscape living hunting and fishing and fishing and living off the land for since the beginning of human time. And so naturally your mind goes to like what, how did other people experience this? Like how did,

Starting point is 00:45:15 what was the experience of other people doing these activities in these places throughout time? Yeah. So I like spots where you can kind of picture it. Mm-hmm. Right? You can picture it. And there's a lot of places in Alaska,

Starting point is 00:45:26 you can go there and be like, you can feel it. Oh, yeah. Do you know what I mean? You can feel it. Yeah. Like it feels so untouched by someone, like just a lot of other bulls.

Starting point is 00:45:35 shit energy and stuff. Yeah, and it minds it being like you can imagine. Like, you could go, there's places you go and you can imagine like, man, some dude's staying in here 10, not 10, let's do whatever. Some dude staying in here 7,000 years ago, be held, like, however he perceived it, whatever his ideas of God were, you know, whatever his allegiances were, this is kind of what it looked like. Right.

Starting point is 00:45:56 You know, it's what it looked like. And those places mean a lot to me to be able to be like, man, like, you could stand here, you know. at all these points in time and be like, you can just imagine it. It makes this continuity similar because a thing that I'm very interested in is professionally and personally,

Starting point is 00:46:14 very interested in like the experiences of other people who had aspects of a lifestyle that I live today. Like I'm always fascinated by that. That's why I could give a shit about Antarctica because there's no human history there. Right? So that's a cool thing about Alaska.

Starting point is 00:46:30 My brother's a fisheries biologist in Alaska. He had a really interesting. interesting point that he made to me. He's like if you think about the conservation efforts, environmental efforts in the lower 48, we are in like someday what we're doing might be regarded as a recovery phase. We're trying to like fix things. We broke a lot of things late 1800s, early 1900s for decades. You know, we broke stuff. And so for the most part now when someone talks about conservation, oftentimes it's like fixing broken shit.

Starting point is 00:47:03 Bringing the turkey back, fixing broken shit. Right. Right. Cleaning up rivers, cleaning out. Yeah, it's a lot. We broke a bunch of shit. Like, we built a bunch of dams in the Pacific Northwest and killed all these salmon runs. Now we're trying to fix all the shit we broke. And so for most, like, most conservation work is oftentimes like fixing shit that we fucked up.

Starting point is 00:47:21 He was saying, his work in Alaska, he's been in Alaska forever. His work in Alaska at times is like they're still doing, they're still trying to describe what's there. Meaning there are salmon runs. They'll go look at salmon runs. People know there's salmon there. They've been fishing for thousands of years.

Starting point is 00:47:39 But no one's ever went and sort of like scientifically described the salmon run. There are rivers where no one's gone and scientifically described what lives in the river. Got it. Right. So they're still in a, they're still in a phase of just trying to like write down what's there. Yeah. And we're in a phase of just trying to fix all of our. broken shit. Right. So that way Alaska's cool. Right. Because it's still like in such an early

Starting point is 00:48:03 process of being affected by humans. Yeah. And if we play our cards right, then we'll, what we learn here, we want to go through the same thing there. Yeah, if we play our cards right. When someone talks about building a big dam, you know, on the Yukon or whatever, you might look and be like, man, we're spending a lot of it down in what they call in Alaska, what they call the outside. And the outside, we're spending a lot of time and energy trying to fix all the shit we broke by doing that just so heads up. as you think about your plans. Just, hey, guys.

Starting point is 00:48:32 Do you have a part of, I know you've traveled extensively, do you have a place that you feel like is the most dangerous for people to go? Is that really a fair question? I guess every place is dangerous depending on what your behaviors are. Yeah, there's, it's, this is something I think about, talk about a fair bit. There's a lot of, like, there's places where there's a high level of perceived danger. Okay.

Starting point is 00:48:55 I think I always try to point out, if my wife thinks I'm doing it, Like my wife often thinks I'm putting a lot of risk on my kids or doing too much too risky as shit with my kids. Because they're going to try to do it or you're taking them with you. That I'm going to hurt them or drown them or whatever, you know. Oh, yeah. Like she's always afraid I'm going to something like that I, my recklessness will lead to my kids getting messed up.

Starting point is 00:49:15 Right. Why do they need safety gear for Christmas every year if you're not trying to do something bad to them, Steve? Oh, there's one of my little kids. No, that's not my little kid. That's my friend's kid. Yeah. These pictures are all wrong. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:49:27 That's my kid. Okay. Well, she's 12 now. Daddy's future hunting buddy. She has much more hair now. I believe that. I'm just saying this shirt is lobbying for a certain type of behavior in the future. She is my hunting buddy now, dude.

Starting point is 00:49:40 Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, we don't show pictures of our kids much anymore. But at all really, except my older one. Anyhow, what the hell is I talking about? Oh, she's always afraid I'm going to drown them or whatever. Oh, yeah. Reasonably so. But I'm always like, man, the most important, the most dangerous thing, this is me, like, you're my wife and not me.

Starting point is 00:49:57 All right. dangerous thing that's going to happen is us driving to the airport. Sure, Steve. Look, sign the papers. Okay? Sign the papers and you can do whatever you want. Okay, that's what my attorney said. It's, uh... Sorry, I was trying to roll play a little.

Starting point is 00:50:12 But, um... That was good rope. You'd have to have more time with her, you know? Yeah, I should have also went into it a little bit more. You didn't hit it at all, dude. But I understand she just didn't meet her. Let's try it again. But she brings up, so there's like high levels of perceived danger, but like, but then

Starting point is 00:50:25 there's like reality, meaning driving down... Driving down a highway is hazardous. Yeah. Like highway travels hazardous. Flying in single engine, we do a lot of flying and single engine aircraft. That's hazardous. Flying and single engine aircraft is like a legitimate occupational hazard.

Starting point is 00:50:43 But where people's minds go, people's minds go to getting attacked by wild animals. Right. Because people don't want to, like they're not thinking about that you're going to go in, like when you go into a remote environment, exposure. Yeah,

Starting point is 00:51:04 exposure is like far more dangerous than wild animals, but it's not falling into a hole. Sure, it's not fun to think about. Right, right. It doesn't occupy any, there's no intellectual energy. You can't put like intellectual or emotional energy

Starting point is 00:51:17 into you thinking about exposure. It doesn't have the same PR. Instead, you're like, well, shit, there's wild animals lurking in the bushes. Right. And so people are afraid of things, see, I feel like I'm not, I seem like I'm hacking out my wife. I love her.

Starting point is 00:51:33 My wife carries pepper spray. My wife will sometimes carry pepper spray. Of course. Because there's black bears around. Oh, yeah. I've been in some neighborhoods. But you, anyone in this country, most people in the major cities of this country, they're all within a 40 to hour drive of a black bear.

Starting point is 00:51:51 You're much closer to black bears right now. Yeah. Okay. But you're not sitting here with pepper spray. Oh, I see what you're saying. So why when you go walk, like, why does she feel? I'm like, you know, like, you have black bears that come into the outskirts of New York, right? New Jersey has the densest black bear population in the country.

Starting point is 00:52:12 Yes. And the densest human population in the country. New Jersey does? Yeah. So, like, they don't all, when they're golfing, they don't carry pepper spray. Right. It's not like you see Trump out there with pepper spray and a fucking pocketful of it. Why does she, why does my wife want to have pepper spray?

Starting point is 00:52:24 Yeah. For black bears. Like, black bears, like, black bears don't. They don't matter. They're not dangerous, but they're perceived as dangerous. And certain environments make people feel like now they're in danger. But golfers in New Jersey aren't we're carrying pepper spray. though they have probably have bears if you're golfing in some semi-rural New Jersey environment you're within hundreds of yards

Starting point is 00:52:43 of bears but they're not giving their energy to thinking about bears but you put someone at like a trailhead in the woods and all of a sudden they got bears on their mind so dangerous to be like I spent a month in Africa this summer and we saw a black mamba a snake

Starting point is 00:53:01 called you know that's the most that's the deadliest snake like they just kill you when they get you. The guy we were with, so you'll never see one. Then we saw one. So all we talked about was black mambas. Yeah. He didn't bite anybody. Right. But all of a sudden, like, anytime I sat down, once I saw that son of a bitch, I saw a puff adder, a black mamba, and a cobra.

Starting point is 00:53:19 Damn. Okay. What is a puff adder? Oh, he's a bad mother liquor, man. A puff adder sounds like how he gets around. Pull up how he gets around. A puff adder? Yeah, watch how he gets around. You think of a snake doing a serpentine movement? For sure. Well, check his ass out. Pull up him getting around. Oh shit.

Starting point is 00:53:37 He just wiggles along like a like a centipede. Shottie Bay got that fucking he not even. Look at that. No, he don't need to do. He doesn't even lead of a footprint. He don't need to. Oh. So that's what you call cutting corners right there.

Starting point is 00:53:48 That's the kind of employee that I need. Dude, that dude just he's got little. His scales just walk, man. Yeah. That's crazy. I don't know if this is true. You want to hear something they told me about that thing? This Kenyon dude told me.

Starting point is 00:53:59 He told me that. I don't know if it's true, but it's just a great. It's a wonderful detail. He told me that puff adder, so he strikes so fast. We just caught one cross in the road and got out and messed with a little bit, not up close, but distant mess with it. That puff adder strikes so fast, this guy was telling me this could be total lore. Don't even look it out because I don't want you to refute it because it's too cool.

Starting point is 00:54:19 He says that he can hit a balloon twice. He can hit a balloon twice for it pops, which I don't even know what that means, but doesn't sound cool. It sounds, fop, you know, like he can fight, fat, five, before the balloon deflates. I don't know. Oh, yeah. So he's got a bad venom. So anyways, we see one of these.

Starting point is 00:54:35 We see a black mamba who can cruise around with half of his length up in the air. If he's seven foot, his head, when he's cruising through the woods when he's pissed, his head's at your navel. Damn. He's a bad, bad, bad dude. Well, he's got some calves on him. That's what's amazing to me. You know, why do Indian people love fucking with these things? Kill Bill, it's a black mama that kills Michael Madsen's character.

Starting point is 00:55:08 Is it really? Yeah, it's a black mom. Anyhow, so we see these different critters running around. And then, like, you're not going to get killed by a snake. It's just like it doesn't happen. Right. But it feels like it's going to happen. But all of a sudden, instead of me thinking like, oh, I might get like some amoeba from drinking the water.

Starting point is 00:55:24 Or like, who knows? Or a mosquito-borne pathogen. All that's out the window. Instead, everywhere I look, all of us, me and my other guys I was with, we're We didn't take a step due without being like. Because all of a sudden in our head was the perceived danger. Meanwhile, you're with all these people that are born and raised there. None of them's dead.

Starting point is 00:55:43 Right. Yeah, they're doing fine. Some of them have some emotional issues or whatever, but they're doing overall. They're well. They're not all dead from snakes. It's just that's where as humans. Oh, that's where the head goes. Your head goes to like.

Starting point is 00:55:58 Whatever's had the best advertising and probably whatever's most recently been seen, those sorts of things. So when you say like, the most dangerous place. To an outsider, the Tanzanian bush felt dangerous for a reason that's probably not true. Right. It felt dangerous because one day

Starting point is 00:56:15 we saw a black mama. Or the Tasmanian devil too. Well, he doesn't live there, but sure. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. Tasmanian tiger. Yeah. Tasmanian devils, yeah.

Starting point is 00:56:26 I'm thinking of Tanzania, I think, or something. I don't know what I'm thinking. Oh, no, no, no, no, you're right. Yeah. But no, um, Tanzania and, uh, The Tasmanian, that's the island of Tasmania. Tanzania comes from Zanzibar, combining with Tanganyika.

Starting point is 00:56:46 Oh, yeah. When those two countries came together, they were called Tanzania. So Tanganyika doesn't exist anymore. It's now Tanzania. Tanzab does. Zanzibar does. But the Zanzibar Archipelago was rolled into Tanzania to become Tanzania.

Starting point is 00:56:59 I'm a subject matter expert. I spent a month there. Did you really? A lot of women will go to Zanzibar does. a bar to meet men, kind of African men, a lot of women in their 40s and 50s. Is that true? Yeah. That's what I know about the migration or whatever it's called.

Starting point is 00:57:13 But I, or it's for, I don't want to say it's for sex, but I think people say it is. I don't think that you're going there for that. It's pretty buttoned up there. Is it? It's pretty buttoned up. No, I don't think it's like illegal. I think it's, they go there and it's sort of a popular space for a courting of those, of African men and women who are kind of divorced.

Starting point is 00:57:33 says. Really? Yeah. Yeah, because my buddy went there and he was like, dude, it's not for me. It wasn't for him. See, my subject matter expertise is crumbling, but I'll point out I was only there one week. Yeah. So I only absorb so much. And you don't fit either one of the parties that were that are mating there. So I think I brought my own mate with me, man. Oh, there you go then. Look, we know that a lot of fellas enter the room, weiner first, baby. Weiner first, baby. that shark fin baby that's how I am baby and blue chew

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Starting point is 01:00:21 we're walking. I was with my grandparents. We're walking, and suddenly I just kind of felt something on my, like I had some just boots where they're fishing. And something wrapped around my leg like that. And it was a snake. Really? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:00:36 And I was like, oh my God, I couldn't move. I was so scared. I'd never seen a snake outside. You know, you'd heard about snakes. And, I mean, it had just fucking wrapped around. Just like it was like my leg was a stripper pole and this thing. It just came to just fucking grind on you.

Starting point is 01:00:52 Just straight out of hell to grind on me, you know? And my grandmother looked at it and she's like, she goes, I remember she's like, did you summon that? She asked me. Because my grandmother was out of her fucking mind. And that's when I knew that it was just going to be a long life right there. I was like, you think, and I looked in her eyes and she thinks I fucking, a child that she barely ever even welcomes in the town. She finally takes you to catch some bullheads in the fucking spoon river out here.

Starting point is 01:01:23 And she, and you summon the serpent. She thinks I'm the fucking Jimmy Baker of fucking, a fanged lizard. Do you remember what kind of snake it was? I want to say it was a water moccasin, but that may have just been the lure of me growing up in Louisiana. Because I don't know if they had those in Illinois or not, you know? No, I don't believe they do. But I worked on a farm in Louisiana,

Starting point is 01:01:43 and at lunch break, we would always just walk around. If they had a boat that was turned over, we'd flip it over, and there'd be a water moxon under it every single time, dude. Yeah, that's a cool snake. There is a... They were scary, though. There's like an idea and I kind of buy it that, from like an evolutionary standpoint

Starting point is 01:02:04 or we carry this sort of like this I want to preface this by saying I'm not a geneticist. Okay. We care despite despite your impressions. I'm not a geneticist, but that we carry with us this innate

Starting point is 01:02:21 let's say this sort of genetic marker or whatever, this innate fear of serpents. Yes. Do you know what I'm saying? Like it like it does. does you well, it does you well to be like, standoff. You follow me? A hundred percent.

Starting point is 01:02:38 Yeah. Oh, dude, I think anybody would be creeped out. There's nothing. Yeah, there's something so. Why are we so scared of snakes? Do you know? I want to look, let's look that up a little bit. There's a, but it feels, dude, when you see.

Starting point is 01:02:51 Oh, they're not right, man. And it feels so foreign. Oh, I will say this. We interviewed this blind girl one time, right? and we're just learning about what it's like to be blind and some of like the different stuff. And she talked a lot about animals and like getting to spend time with the animals

Starting point is 01:03:06 and the feelings you get. And she says that she doesn't get any feeling from a snake. Like there's no energy that she gets. Really? And that's when I was like, dude, if a snake, yeah, Tanya Milojavik. That's when I knew if a blind don't even like a snake, I don't like a snake.

Starting point is 01:03:24 Yeah. That's a great idea to interview someone where you can just get right in. because then you can ask all the questions, you'd ask all the questions. Do you remember Howard Stern? Mm-hmm. He used to have a show where he'd have a panel of black guys

Starting point is 01:03:36 that white dudes could ask questions to. Oh, that's great. You know, all like, like, it was like, I can't remember what he called. It was like, ask a black man. Yeah, yeah. And now that, yeah, it was called ask a black guy? I can't remember what the stick was,

Starting point is 01:03:50 but you just have dudes volunteer to come in. No, that's what we need. And then, like, idiotic white guys could be like, hey, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Hey. So it's an interesting interview format

Starting point is 01:04:00 To be able to have a person come and say like I will now entertain all your dumb ass questions That you wonder but don't ask Yeah And that are like that I get sick of But I'm gonna sit here and indulge you For an hour and you can be like Well what do you see?

Starting point is 01:04:14 Yeah You know Yeah she said that a lot of it was like Memorizing patterns like when you're going somewhere Like the more you go there The easier it is like She said a lot of times It felt like she was playing like a video game in her head

Starting point is 01:04:26 Like just remembering like almost as if you're like controlling somebody through a video game that that's kind of how she would like guide herself. I thought it was pretty interesting. I should do it again soon. That's a really good interview deal because because she probably like generally going about her life probably can't stand people, you know, people staring at her, wondering shit, ask her the same dumb shit over. Yeah. So it'd be like how I'm just going to sit here and just do it. Yeah, it was great. Hit me with it.

Starting point is 01:04:52 Have you ever had taken a blind person on one of your hunts before? No, man. but it's the thing. It's the thing. And I've had, I had a blind hunter on my podcast one time. Wow. To talk about what the experience was. And, uh, yeah, I had a blind person on. And what is that? Because they're just, I mean, they got to feel like there's no chance when they shoot, right? You know, they had people help. We, we had a, uh, you know what I'm, you know what I'm dicking up? I actually just told you something that's not true. Because we were gonna, we one time had a paralyzed. We had a paralyzed. We had a

Starting point is 01:05:26 paralyzed. We were going to have a blind hunter. We didn't. I don't think we did. We had a fully paralyzed hunter who had to hunt with like an automation thing. Wow. Took a lot of assistance from his friends. But he had been a hunter. Had an accident. And then paralyzed from the neck down developed a way that he could continue hunting with the help of his friends. Wow. That's pretty cool. With a mouth control apparatus. But it took a ton of assistance. That's who we had on. But a point I was going to make about that innate fear of snakes is if you could do time machine shit. Okay. And you talking time travel? I'm going to. Okay.

Starting point is 01:06:07 This would be like a really good question to have. Okay. The good use of, if you had like one pass, one time pass, here's a thing that would be on my list of shit I would be curious about. When human, like, after the. sort of African diaspora and humans started colonizing the whole world, right? The people that came, the people that became the first Americans and came in from Alaska. You always hear about the Bering Land Bridge, right?

Starting point is 01:06:43 But the land bridge is the size of Texas. It wasn't like a bridge. It was like a landmass. Like people colonizing the new world would have been born and died on the Bering Land Bridge without thinking that they were going anywhere. They were just living their lives. Got it. And slowly spread down.

Starting point is 01:06:58 And those were like Inuits, like kind of natives? They became native. Right. The people that became the Inuits, by our understanding, the people that became the Inuits came much later. Got it. Okay. They came from the Japan and the Aleutians and whatnot.

Starting point is 01:07:10 But these like Siberians came into the new world. So by this point, you have hundreds of generations, hundreds of generations of people had lived in a snake-free environment because they'd lived in the Arctic. hundreds of generations. And then they're, they're, they slowly, generation to generation to generation, they slowly move down the North American continent.

Starting point is 01:07:38 There's two theories that, like Alaska, you know, they don't have a snake, right? There's two theories. There's one that they came through the mid-continent and maybe emerged down around Edmonton, Alberta, onto the Great Plains. That was a fashionable idea for a long time. The currently fashionable ideas

Starting point is 01:07:53 they came down the coast. Okay. So now you've had, you have hundreds of generations of people that would never have seen or experienced a snake. Yeah. And you got snakes down there just waiting. But all of a sudden they spread southward.

Starting point is 01:08:07 Yeah. And at some point, one of those sons of bitches is out just, right? Fuck. He's out cruising around, doing his deal. Yeah. And there's one laying there.

Starting point is 01:08:17 That happened. That happened. If you could take your time machine. Mm-hmm. And go see that guy. see that snake? Did he go, fuck? Or did he jump down and grab it?

Starting point is 01:08:33 That was some good time machine shit right there. Well, say this, if he was with someone else when it happened, you have to cut that person's throat immediately, I think, because you would think they have something to do with this. Like, they're in on it. Like, that's what I would do. You're like, who the fuck? Who summoned this?

Starting point is 01:08:50 Yes. Yeah. Like, yeah. You're distant ancestor. Yeah. Summon that snake. Yeah, you would think it was like other, I don't know, but you'd probably seen fish, but I don't know. Do you just get that energy? Yeah, like then you would be able to answer the question. That's the way, the one way to be able to answer the question, do humans have some baked in shit?

Starting point is 01:09:10 Mm-hmm. Or is it not that? Right. Yeah, you'd have to go all the way back. There's probably another way, too. You could take a child at birth, buy one, sequester it somewhere. Well, they do that all the time. There's Indian babies playing with snakes. Yeah, but take one and sequester it so it doesn't get any information from any human beings. Oh, yeah. Let it become an old person and throw a snake in that room.

Starting point is 01:09:33 Do they jump back? That'd be easier and less expensive than time travel, but it wouldn't be as authentic. And you'd run into like, you'd run into legal problems. If they've been alive so long, are they going to not care anymore? Like, I don't get them. You damaged them psychologically and stuff by locking them up in that room and shit, you know? Yeah, they're like, I don't give a fucking something to snake. And the detractors would be like, yeah, but he was so destroyed psychologically that this is not telling us anything.

Starting point is 01:10:03 Right. Yeah, I think you're just fucking with a with a with a with a person you victimized. Yes. Of this whimsical scientific study. Oh, yeah. I think at that point, you're really looking at the Elizabeth Smart of Reptiles kind of vibes, you know? And I don't think that's what we want. No, it is going to be a time travel problem.

Starting point is 01:10:21 Yeah, we'll go time travel. Let's talk about a topic that some people think is kind of controversial. Like, you see a lot of people who will post photos with like big game, right? They go and kill like a woolly, not a woolly mammoth or whatever, but like a... A big huge deer. Big old turkey. Yeah, huge turkey. Roep dragon limb hanger.

Starting point is 01:10:41 Yes, rope dragon limb hanger, you know, one that's just singing, you know, one in an Alan Iverson jersey. You know what I'm saying, like a real fucking boss out there. I'm following. Now, I'm getting excited. But they put a picture of it up. Right. Are they, or some of the... Let's say it's a deer, some with eyelashes.

Starting point is 01:10:57 Okay, okay, okay. Because that's what, that's what... Or lions and stuff like that. Yeah, it's got an eyelash. It's going to, it's emotional for people. Okay, so that's fair. So yeah, I think I just want to know about some of that, but then also you hear that people put up these, like,

Starting point is 01:11:11 that some of these animals, they're going to die in the places that they're in. And so for conservation that they kind of sell off kind of tags or lottery for... So anyway, take me in a... some of that world kind of if if if if you don't mind i thought you're going to get into the ethics of that you of you pose them with a dead animal in a picture but you're talking about like the sort of the conservation fund like the kind of there's a perceived conflict or like a um incongruity um around the notion that how can you help a species yeah by hunting it right how do you help a species by hunting it.

Starting point is 01:11:51 Wouldn't that be like that that see let that would appear to people to be quite illogical, right? How does killing it help it? Right. Is that, is that? Yeah, I think that's fair.

Starting point is 01:12:00 That really kind of boils it down. Yeah. It's a phenomenal question. I can see why it puzzles people. Um, but you can point to case after case after case of ways in which it, it has worked. We began our conversation around turkeys. Okay.

Starting point is 01:12:17 Um, there's a, there's a saying that I like quite a bit. It's not mine, but it's a success has many fathers, but failure is a bastard's child. Okay. The success in restoring the wild turkey, many people claim parentage of that success.

Starting point is 01:12:43 And there was many people that attributed efforts to that success. All these different, like, wherever state you live in your state has a fishing game agency, okay? I'll point out that your state's fishing game agency gets the bulk of its funding from people buying hunting and fishing licenses. That's how we fund the agencies that take care of wildlife and the states. So does that. But when they were restoring the wild turkey from nearly being wiped off the continent, the main player, the main player that was involved in that nationally is an organization that happens to have their annual convention.

Starting point is 01:13:20 in Nashville called the National Wild Turkey Federation. The National Wild Turkey Federation was kind of a through line of the efforts to restore turkeys to North America, to recover the wild turkey, to put the wild turkey back on the ground and all the places where it had been wiped out. The National Wild Turkey Federation is a hunting organization. Okay.

Starting point is 01:13:44 So if you went and looked and you said, here's these guys that put enormous amounts of expertise, scientific expertise, enormous amounts of funding, enormous amounts of physical effort into restoring the wild turkey to where they exceed historic levels. Is it fair to go like, you just did that so you could hunt turkeys?

Starting point is 01:14:07 Like, guilty is charged, right? Guilty is charged. Right. There are other, because like, turkeys are so widely available now. But is that a bad thing? It's not a bad thing. It's not. I'm not always even that way because for instance,

Starting point is 01:14:21 if you look at, there's an organization called the Wild Sheep Foundation. It's an American-based conservation organization that works to restore, recover, protect wild sheep species.

Starting point is 01:14:35 Desert big horns, Rocky Mountain Big Horns, doll sheep, stone sheep, okay? They work on behalf of wild sheep. I have been hunting my whole life. I apply every year to get a Big Horn sheep tag in a half dozen states every year I have never drawn a big horn sheep tag I have

Starting point is 01:14:57 never hunted big horn sheep it is likely it is likely that I will die okay right there's a likelihood I will die and have never had the opportunity to hunt a big horn sheep yet on occasion I do things to support the wild sheep foundation So what am I guilty of? Like I aspire to hunt a big horn sheep. Yeah. I recognize them as like an integral part of the Western landscape. I want to see more of them around.

Starting point is 01:15:34 I'm a hunter. I would hunt one if I could. I probably can't. But I want to see them back in their place. There are many, many conservation organizations. The most impactful like wildlife conservation organizations that do real work on the ground. I'm not talking about lobbying bullshit.

Starting point is 01:15:49 Okay. not talking about like, you know, I'm talking about like the kind of work where you're like putting effort on the ground. You're putting animals on the ground. You're proving habitat on the ground. Right. You're helping migratory animals. Whatever. That shit comes from hunters. That shit comes from hunting based organizations. You're saying that most of this country. Most of the wildlife and the preservation of wildlife here comes from hunters. That's like we fund it. We do the groundwork. People that come out of that world of hunting move into conservation. There are like environmental orgs. There are lobbying orgs.

Starting point is 01:16:20 There are orgs that work in all these different ways that aren't. But like they're really effective on the ground stuff comes from hunters and anglers. Wow. It's just like this is like this is settled science. I mean, this is me giving you some spin. I'm not giving you like a novel way to look at something. It's just like the,

Starting point is 01:16:37 it's just the reality. Well, yeah. I mean, your fishing game agency. What state do you, it doesn't matter what you tell you answer me. You're resident in Tennessee. Your fishing game agency gets the bulk of its funding.

Starting point is 01:16:48 So your fishing game agency handles like disease work, access work, enforcement of game laws. They get their money from hunting and fishing licenses, the bulk of it. Or they get money from excise taxes on sporting goods equipment, guns, ammo, whatever. It's just like, we pay for it. You know, there's guys that are, there's people that want to deny that reality. But like I said, it's like it's settled science. You can't debate the nuts and bolts of it. So this plays out in other ways that draw a lot of.

Starting point is 01:17:18 of attention, like something like, let's talk about Tanzania for a minute, totally different system than what we have in America. But in Tanzania, the most effective way that they're able to, the most effective way that they're able to protect large tracks of wilderness habitat is drawing revenue from them by allowing hunting to occur on those places. Got it. It's like productive for them. It's either that or it's slash and burn agriculture.

Starting point is 01:17:47 So it's like you're able to go into an area and by having people like Westerners, Europeans, Americans, whatever, come there to have an experience of going there and hunting and paying a big amount of money to hunt there, warrants them being able to set aside large chunks of ground, the government, and monetize it and monitor it and then pay for anti-poaching efforts and other things that protect it. You might look at it and hate it. you might look at it and be like, I don't think that humans have a right to harm animals. And like, I'm not going to argue that perspective. So you might look at it and be like, it sucks that that has to be true.

Starting point is 01:18:25 And I'll be like, okay, it's fine. Maybe in your opinion, it sucks that that has to be true. But what I can't debate with you is, does it have to be true? It's just true.

Starting point is 01:18:33 Yeah. You know, you might hate that that's the way, but that's the way it is. Did humans always eat animals, do you think? Yeah, since they could.

Starting point is 01:18:43 It'd be hard not to, I think if you saw. I'm trying to think if I went back in time, that would be cool too. You go back some guy. The first dude to eat me. He'd have to go back some far ass. You'd have to go back. That's fine.

Starting point is 01:18:57 We can go back that bar. There's an idea that like there's an anthropology there's a debate about what time, at what point in time did you have behaviorally and anatomically modern humans. This is not, we're getting way outside of biblical understanding. But we're talking about like from the non-biblical, science world. Okay. Okay. So a stepping outside of like

Starting point is 01:19:20 the biblical confines and going into like purely scientific world some people think that you could have grabbed a dude 75,000 years ago. Put him in, grabbed him at birth and he could have he could learn to fly an airplane. He could

Starting point is 01:19:36 go to college. Do well, blend in. You'd see him going down the street and wouldn't think anything of it. Yeah. Be a pie cap or whatever. Absolutely. Absolutely. That was a hunting. That was a hunting consumer of large quantities of animal flesh. That was. Yeah. So there's no doubt at that time period that people were really snacking on animals. Oh, yeah. And then there's this other idea. And you know how you wind up liking the ideas that confirm your own. For sure. There's this other idea that the great, in a scientific understanding,

Starting point is 01:20:13 that when we had, when humans had this kind of renaissance, like, like, um, we seem to have suddenly kind of figured a bunch of shit out. And some people correlate that to us becoming predominantly, uh, to eating huge amounts of animal flesh. So efficient and so full of energy.

Starting point is 01:20:33 That was our intellectual renaissance. Like that, that's when humans became bright and developed like religion and organizational structure and language and all that as when we discuss. covered meat eating. Right, because we had enough energy not only to satiate our bodies, but then also for the rest of us to maybe flourish some because we finally had a new source that was really replenishing us constantly. Yeah, we were broken from, we were broken from a cycle of needing to eat low grade, low, low, low, low grade, low calorie food all the time. Yeah. Right. So then you're

Starting point is 01:21:04 constantly just sitting there snack and whereas otherwise you can have a nice meal, then you can sit back and kick it and think of something creative. Like a deer is on this really strict schedule of like eating a bunch of low-grade food sitting, ruminating, eating little bit, you know, so. Dears always look like. So there's this idea. Yeah, that's the idea that like, and of course I like it because it reinforces, like, that's what I like to eat deer meat and stuff.

Starting point is 01:21:25 So when I hear that, I'm like, fuck yeah, bro. That's right. That's the truth. Because we just like the stuff that. Oh, yeah. We want to support our own ideas and causes our own truths. What about pull up like a Neanderthal. What was that called, like a man that was 75,000 years ago? Was that Neanderthals?

Starting point is 01:21:41 Well, it would have been. It would have been homo sapien. Oh, God. That must have been... Well, no, I've been like they would have been... Oh. Have you ever had your... Have you ever done like a...

Starting point is 01:21:54 Yeah. You know, the late 23-Meet organization? I've done 23-Meet. Yeah, they sold all my fucking information in this Japanese company. Oh, yeah. Just the other day. My shit. You can still delete your shit.

Starting point is 01:22:05 Really? Yeah. I'm getting a bunch of... Because I would go... I would say, like, hey, I want to buy his shit and see what he's got going on. And I, you know, so I had mine deleted. You can have deleted. I'm getting emails from like, you're related to this guy, you know?

Starting point is 01:22:16 And it's like a fucking Japanese guy. I'm like this motherfucker. Hey, they recently solved. They're lying. Where I live, they recently solved a 30-year-old murder case. Uh-uh. Because so many people doing 23 and me filling up these these filling up databases. And so all of a sudden now, all of a sudden now they're like, also now they're like, hey, we got a little ping.

Starting point is 01:22:38 A little ping on the map. Yeah. of like a family that seems, because they had a biological specimen. We're going to solve all those old crimes. They had a biological specimen, right? And so just from people willfully going and doing this kind of work, all of a sudden you start popping all these like markers.

Starting point is 01:22:58 And then you got a, you got a hair, a sperm or whatever. Oh, yeah. And all of a sudden you're able to be like, well, it's not him, but there's some dudes a lot like him that live in this town. I'd be, let's go have a look around that town. When you do it, they tell you what percent

Starting point is 01:23:13 Neanderthal you are. Yeah? Yeah. I was lower than average Neanderthal. Huh. Did it upset you? Uh,

Starting point is 01:23:21 no, I wasn't surprised. I just don't, like, I don't have that vibe, you know? I remember, uh,

Starting point is 01:23:27 I feel like, I feel like Joe was telling me, Rogan was telling me that he was high up. I could see that kind of. He was higher than average. I could definitely see that. I swear, I hope I'm not making that up.

Starting point is 01:23:38 I swear he told me that he was higher there. Totally. I don't think he would deny that at all. He's definitely like a Neanderthal guy that got struck by some fucking cool-ass lightning. I could be. I swear that's what he was saying. But anyways, I was lower than normal. But the point being,

Starting point is 01:23:51 oh, yeah, there he goes, more than regular people. 57% more than Neanderthal. Yeah. That's classic, dude.

Starting point is 01:23:59 So, you know, an understanding is that, you know, they were, here's a weird deal. I wrote this one time and I wrote this in the, in a forward to one of my cookbooks.

Starting point is 01:24:09 I was writing it. you could have been like at a certain time you could have been in Spain okay okay you could have been in Spain you could have been the Iberian Peninsula you could have been in northern Israel and see a campfire often burning in the distance and you would have had to have asked yourself what kind of what kind of human is that do you follow me like you mean you would have had to be like what race or class or something like that what kind what species of human oh like is that a somebody who's like kind of like is it neanderthal dudes somebody's a little more monkey yeah is it like like the same way that we we're talking about somebody eating a man somebody eating a banana somebody who has a sandals at least on eating one of me

Starting point is 01:24:58 yeah like the same way you got like white tail deer and me like where i love we have white tail deer I'm you're so similar. Like it takes, I don't want to say a trained eye to tell them apart, but someone from another country would look and it might take them a few days for like, oh, they're different. Yeah. They just can see him like, whatever, you know, dear, dear. But at a time, it'd be that at a time it'd be that you'd be like, oh, no, there's the one

Starting point is 01:25:21 kind of human. And there's these other kinds of humans. Like, fuck, that guy's about 2,000 years. Yeah, and they don't mix or they get together or they kidnap each other. They still have bad breath. all that. Yeah, but when you see that, you're like Joe having that,

Starting point is 01:25:36 like, as high as 57% more Neanderthals, because it's like, it's, you know, we under duress, I don't know, was it like an act of passion?

Starting point is 01:25:47 That made you evolve? No, I'm saying that drove humans and Neanderthals to interbreed. Was it coercion? Are you think there are separate beings? Or you think there's one more advance in the... Neanderthals were, Neanderthals were far more successful

Starting point is 01:26:02 species than we are. Like, Neanderthals were in Europe far longer than our ancestors were in Europe. But aren't Neanderthals our ancestors, though? No, I wouldn't, you can't really, I wouldn't really, yes, and that it seems like direct human ancestors, like Homo sapien. Yeah. Okay. It seems like at times, they were able to have viable offspring. That at times, Neanderthal people that were in Europe far longer, they were in Europe long, hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans made the scene. Got it. And because of everyone having a little bit of introgression from Neanderthals, this is not my field of study. I'm just a curious onlooker.

Starting point is 01:26:48 Let's take a look right here. Ancient human species, including Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans. Denisovans and others did interbreed as they encountered one another during the middle and upper Paleolithic periods, leaving detectable genetic legacies in modern populations. Dude, I didn't even know this. I thought, have you seen that chart where it's one man like that?

Starting point is 01:27:10 That's a deceptive chart. He has a briefcase. And then he has Nike's on or whatever. That's a deceptive chart. Dude, that's fucking, I can't even believe that. This is one of the main things I talk about with my kids. Wow. Trying to explain.

Starting point is 01:27:21 They're like, what do you mean we came from monkeys? I'm like, don't you, that's not, don't look at it that way. Yeah. So. Oh, what I want to start talking about my next hour company is about the middle monkeys like why don't you ever see that middle monkey like you know what I'm saying like you'll see a monkey and then you'll see a dude you know who's a mechanic right but you never see that middle motherfucker you know

Starting point is 01:27:40 what happened to them all the dude who's just scratching under one arm wrenching the other fucking just they don't know how to work to register because he's just like whoo-who you know but he can change a tire and a fucking just with his lips you know what I'm saying you don't see that chimp that chimp man that middle man so I'm just amazed away somewhere yeah but dude I need to never thought that you'd be sitting there and you'd be like oh yeah you'd be like oh oh yeah you and your buddy like do let's go let's go let's go let's go do a lap right we better go figure out who what kind of dudes it is but the fact that they the fact that they enter the fact that they enter bred why didn't they tell us this well i think that well you might have missed that part oh i wouldn't know that

Starting point is 01:28:19 let me get to my point though the fact that they interbred unreal leads to this question of was it a romantic bonding. Was it like a romantic, right? Was it something that was like under coercion? It was coercion. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like was it like a like a sort of like conquerors choice kind of shit?

Starting point is 01:28:42 Yeah. It was like when those guys that were. That they would like meet and in over like the Capulets and you know from like Romeo and Juliet's family. No, Stephen. It was not like that. They meet and come together despite family. condemnations and produce offspring.

Starting point is 01:28:58 No, it was like when those nurses that don't treat people well at those hospitals take advantage of them. That's what I think it was. I do wonder. That'd be another good time machine burner up right there. You just go back. And it's a, but here's a tough thing. If a person who was more mentally advanced, hypothetically a homo sapian, if they tried to, if they

Starting point is 01:29:18 tried to like, oh, here's just a Neanderthal, let's get a little bit of love, you know. Because they're easy to trick. Right. but they're not easy to fucking just pin down and make love to, I bet. You got trick them. But even if you trick... Shells and stuff. Right.

Starting point is 01:29:31 Even if you trick them with a little wind chime or something, get their attention. I bet you can't... You're going to have to... How quick can you make love and still enjoy it and get away from them? I wouldn't... That's not a risk I'm taking. No, it's time machine questions. I'm not.

Starting point is 01:29:45 That's not a risk. I'm someone that hasn't brushed their hair in 70,000 years. I'm going to try to fuck them. I'm out. You know what I want to put out a call to? You don't mind me doing a call. for a guest I've been trying to find I'm a churchy call or whatever.

Starting point is 01:29:58 So it's like I'm like using your I'm using like your audience to find someone that I might not find on my own. Okay. What I've been trying to do for years is I've been trying to find a really, really good a really good Neanderthal.

Starting point is 01:30:17 You can say Neanderthal or tall. You sound a little bit smarter. I understand. My understanding is you sound a little better to see a Neanderthal. It's a very good. Valley in Germany. It is?

Starting point is 01:30:26 Yeah. It's a valley in Germany. Yeah. And you sound a little more, like, I'm more likely to get a good guest by saying Neanderthal because they're like, this dude knows the shit. Yeah. I want to find a really good Neanderthal behavioralist. Hard are in that Neanderthal, too. A Neanderthal researcher.

Starting point is 01:30:42 Okay. To come on the show and talk about what they know. But it can't be just like a writer who spent a month researching. It's because our audience doesn't like those kinds. Right. It's got to be someone that, like. it's got to be someone that lives and breathes. It can't be like an interloper.

Starting point is 01:30:58 Yeah. Like I need like a legit, a verbose, animated Neanderthal research. I don't want some halfway house. I want a fucking trap house that people have been shooting up in for 50 years with information.

Starting point is 01:31:09 Yeah. About motherfuckers who would just like who could digest a stone if they need to. Yeah. Like that, like a really good Neanderthal person to come on the show and you just reach out to us. I want to interview you.

Starting point is 01:31:22 Okay. There you go, guys. Steve, they would like that. And here's what I would have. Do you have a lot of Neanderthal researchers on that listen to the show? I mean, I bet we have some consumers who would rank high on a Neander scale or whatever. But I'll say this. I want somebody who has a high amount on their 23M.

Starting point is 01:31:40 An extreme. They don't need to have that. Oh, you want. This is what I want. The highest. I want somebody who's 80% 80% Neanderthal. Yeah, but find the highest guy. And when I get them, I'm just going to send them over to you too, Steve, because I think

Starting point is 01:31:54 you would do well and because you might be able to notice some patterns that they have or behaviors that's yeah who if whatever i had low who is the highest who's the highest somebody has to have the highest neanderthal amount i know that there is a i was reading a book um i read a lot of anthropology books i can't remember if it was the seven daughters of eve i was reading a book about human history and in it they were pointing to some controversy around this question. Okay.

Starting point is 01:32:29 It's not always, people don't always look upon this. This is not something that everybody likes to talk about. Really? Where you see, like as much as I'd be, whatever, proud of it or whatever.

Starting point is 01:32:43 There are places, there are places in the world where these geneticists see. More intals? Yeah, more Neanderthal in certain areas. And it's a sensitive subject. it winds up being a sensitive subject.

Starting point is 01:32:56 So you might wind up having not only a fascinating show, but you might have a show that courts a certain level of controversy. I like that. Yeah. But what I've found, because I am interested in this subject,

Starting point is 01:33:07 I've found that there's a sort of trend in academics to, there's a trend in academics of being that were like rebranding Neanderthals. So it winds to be like, oh, they had art. Oh, they like, wore jewelry.

Starting point is 01:33:25 Oh, they were free divers. Right. They, do you know, I mean, like, every, like, why do you think we're doing that?

Starting point is 01:33:31 Do you think that? I don't know why. It's like, there's used to be this idea that there were these like thuggish brutes. Right. You know, but there's like when you look,

Starting point is 01:33:39 when you, if you kind of follow a Neanderthal news, like I do, there's a theme. Yeah, there's like a theme of, of this kind of like,

Starting point is 01:33:49 this delight, like this kind of delighted, realization about how complex their culture was, how complex their society was. It'd be like, like, you don't find like, man, it turns out they were dumber and we thought. Right. That's not like a news story. It would be like, oh, they appreciated the finer things in life. Well, it's like the branding.

Starting point is 01:34:09 It's like even when it goes back to like you were talking about the bald eagle, it's like just that PR, that spin. I wonder if they're- They have a very, very good PR agency. Neanderthals right now or I have a good one on retainer. And they're getting a lot of good ink about that they liked art and movies, you know. And it's like they're just getting cooler movies. They're getting cooler cool. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 01:34:30 They love stand by me. You're like, that's insane, dude. I'm telling you, dude. Start paying attention to Neanderthal news and you'll see what I'm talking about. When I get my guest on, he'll tell you all about it. Oh, I'll send you the episode. I love that you're going to have that, man. Dude, what would be better?

Starting point is 01:34:47 Yeah, of course, I could talk about humans all day long, bro. But listening to two Neanderthals talk about themselves, they wouldn't know a lot. But they would try pretty hard. That could be us, dude. That's awesome. That's really awesome, dude. People tell you look like Harry Connick Jr. sometimes? No, I've gotten, I used to get Kevin Bacon.

Starting point is 01:35:09 That's who it is, dude. I used to get a dude from a dude from, remember the show where they would, like, do all the crazy stunts to each other? Oh, uh, Johnny Knoxville. Oh, yeah. Johnny Knoxville, I could see that, Tom. I'll get that. What else do I get? Those are good.

Starting point is 01:35:27 Those are good ones. Yeah, I don't see that one too clear. Because I don't never get, I never do clever shit with my hair. Yeah, yeah. Johnny's hair is always kind of stylish and stuff. Yeah. So I think that Kevin Bacon, like, he doesn't get too clever with his hair. I saw that.

Starting point is 01:35:42 He was kicking ass when I was a kid in the movie making business, man, you know? Oh, he's such a talented guy. I saw the guy who was in fight club the other night. Brad Pitt? No. I saw Edward Norton the other night. Oh. With some friends.

Starting point is 01:35:57 It was like at her little restaurant. And I was like, is it Edward Norton? And it was him. I don't look like him. No, you don't. I'd love to look like him, Edward Norton. I'm trying to think. If you had to look like a woman, who do you think he'd look like?

Starting point is 01:36:13 That's a great question. I don't know. It sure does one out there. No. I'm sure, but look, if we get to pick, that's why we're in this conversation, dude. I didn't want to talk about it. But let's talk about it. What I'm saying is, if you got to look like a woman, who would you look like?

Starting point is 01:36:25 It's kind of a good question. Trying to think who I could see you as. I'm not even like equipped, man. I can't really think of what you're getting. I mean, if I was a woman, what woman would I want to look like? Or if I had to be a dude that looked like a woman? No, no, dude. What are you talking about?

Starting point is 01:36:41 I don't know. I'm not talking about some fucking chop shop, aftermarket woman. I'm talking about some, I'm talking about a certified bone-in woman, like you're a woman from the jump. Yeah, but what I'm getting at is there's two ways of looking at it. You're saying that I remain a dude, I remain a guy. No. Oh, I become a woman. No.

Starting point is 01:37:02 What, what do you have? You're a woman from the start. Say somebody. Oh, like going back, I was born a woman. Yes. And then I wanted to pick which of these women I wanted to look like. Right. Like, which woman would you be good at which one would you be, I wonder?

Starting point is 01:37:15 It's a great question, actually. I'm trying to think who you would be. Let me think about it for a second. I'm trying to think, man. For some reason, the name Naomi Watts keeps coming to my head, but I don't know why. It's just popping in my head. Little pervert.

Starting point is 01:37:26 I know, it's just popping in my head. I don't mean it to. Bring her up. Oh, yeah. It just popped in my head. I don't want to be held to it. It popped in my head. Dude, it's not a bad choice.

Starting point is 01:37:37 She's great. Naomi Watts, huh? I like that. It just popped in my head. A thousand watts. I look exactly like that anyway. I'm in, dude. Oh.

Starting point is 01:37:46 Look, that's what I look like. Yeah, that's why I do. There were some cuties in our neighborhood, and that's why people started doing peep and Tom. I'll tell you this. If you grew up around busted women, nobody's getting that step stool out. You know that shit.

Starting point is 01:38:00 Oh, there we are right there. There's you and Joe right there. No. No, that's not. I'd be more like, if you'd have to be one of those dudes and Naomi Watts. Oh, yeah. Neither one of those is us.

Starting point is 01:38:13 I saw, what were you talking about? but I saw something you were talking about going on a safari in Africa. Oh, did you notice this. I did do that. But yeah, but either way. I noticed that like. That's what I was talking about the snakes and shit. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:38:26 When I went to Africa, right? So I went there like a couple times for some different safaris and stuff like that. I felt like some of the people, when you look in their eyes there, it goes further back in time. Does that make any sense to you at all? I think that it may have, but I believe that that would be your perception of that. That would be your perception. Right. dude i talked to this one guy and i was like this guy

Starting point is 01:38:50 he's just got damn just just back through i mean it just felt like it went back to the like just to where the fingers of existence first snapped right there at the damn sound you've gone hunting in africa i did for the first time ever this summer you did did you enjoy it were you well i i i i were you life changing experience like in what way I hadn't been to that.

Starting point is 01:39:17 I hadn't been to that continent. It wasn't like the going hunting there was life-changing, but one of the things I like about hunting is it immerses you, and it immerses you in a situation and immerses you in an environment in a deeper way than you would be immersed otherwise. Because you're doing something very, like, very ancient and base, you know? So it wasn't the experience of being there hunting, but just I hadn't been, that was like I hadn't visited that continent.

Starting point is 01:39:44 And so I got to go to a couple places. And it was just, it just scrambled up my head about, you know, when you see different ways of living, you know. So in that way, it was, it was profound. To me, it was profound. Did you guys visit some, like, innate cultures there and stuff like that? Yeah, like some very, yeah, like some really ancient cultures. I spent a little bit of time in this place called Maasai land. And met dudes, met Maasai dudes that are herders, you know.

Starting point is 01:40:10 They'll live in structures they make themselves from native material and herd cattle and been herding. cattle since, you know, from our perspective, since the beginning of time on this place. Did it feel like traveling back in time a little bit? Yeah, it did for me for sure. Just, just like those glimpses into like, those glimpses into cultures that have, those glimpses into cultures that have, have remained relative to our own that have remained very constant. Mm. Okay.

Starting point is 01:40:38 So like that was, that was, yeah, here's some photos of Messiah folks. That was very eye-opening. The dark Amish right there. Being out, they're herders, you know. They're like... Beautiful. Oh, dude, stunning. Stunning.

Starting point is 01:40:55 Do you think they have such a different relationship with existence than we do? Yes. Yeah, me too. Oh, 100%. Yeah, like, they send their, they send, like, the kids bust their ass. They'll send little kids out. Like, when they'll send their kids out to watch the goat herds, man, those kids don't drink water and eat until they come home at night.

Starting point is 01:41:13 they raise them to be tough, tough, tough. You kick it more as a grown-up. Like, kids will work real hard, you know. And as you get older, you get, you kind of get more of like, you get to kick it a little bit more. But when you're a kid, you bust ass. That was fascinating. A lot about it was fascinating.

Starting point is 01:41:29 And I also liked, like, like, the animals. A thing that I've been, there's a thing that I've, like, lamented in conversations with my friends, and my writing and all kinds of things. I often, I spent a lot of time thinking about studying, talking about writing about Ice Age America. So our continent, what it was like in the, the Pleistocene, whole the scene transition. So like humans that were here during the tail end of the Ice Age, the first people that came here, what were their lives like?

Starting point is 01:42:03 And they lived amongst this great abundance and diversity of wildlife that we don't have now. Yeah. Mammis, Massadon, short-faced bears, right? all this kind of shit. They had a, they had a giant, like a beaver that was the size of a black bear. There was an American lion. Fuck, man. There was like a bunch of shit.

Starting point is 01:42:23 We don't have shit. So going there, like that was the one continent. That was the one continent where all the big shit did advantage. We got fucking Bishans. Yeah. That's the, Africa is the one continent where humans and all this megafauna. Never changed. they, for whatever reason,

Starting point is 01:42:45 it's the one continent where all the big shit didn't vanish. So you still have that great diversity of wildlife. So you can sit in the U.S., like if you're a guy like me, who's a really interesting history, you can sit in the U.S. and lament that our elephants are gone. Like we don't have like 9, 10, 11, 12, 20 species of ungulates running around at any given time. Antelopes.

Starting point is 01:43:10 Yeah, like whatever. But you go to Africa, like, oh, that's what they were talking about. Like the ice age. Yeah, like the ice age is alive and well. Like there is an elephant. There's a hippo. There's stuff that weighs thousands of pounds.

Starting point is 01:43:23 Like thousands of pounds. There's stuff that weighs tons, you know. And so it didn't, what happened everywhere else didn't happen there. So that was to go like, oh, it's not gone. It's somewhere else. But you can go and be like, this is what it would be like. I wrote down a list.

Starting point is 01:43:40 I kept a list on my notes function, in my phone, I kept a list of like large mammals, large mammals species that we encountered. And I can't matter, man. By the time we were done, we had like 27, I, I could pull up my phone and show you. Maybe I have it. Anyways, I had like 27 large mammal species that I personally laid eyes on. Wow. That's cool. And that would be like, that's the shit we're talking about like in Ice Age America. And so life changing in those kind of ways. Yeah. I wonder if you had a brain scan whenever you see those types of things, right? As a human, I wonder.

Starting point is 01:44:12 if there's a different reaction that happens in your brain as opposed to when you see different animals like does it take us back to a part of us that like knew those animals well or knew that they existed like I wonder a theory about that like why do that that you know when you take babies and make a mobile the animal things there's this kind of it seems to me to kind of a cockamamie theory but there's this idea that and this is kind of like ancestral africa thing that uh that those animals resonate with babies because it's drawing back to some deep deep

Starting point is 01:44:45 memory. Oh, the animals that are on a mobile. Mega fauna. Oh, yeah. It's always a giraffe. I don't buy that shit. But like I think it's like I said, I think it's a little goofy, but there is that idea. You think bluey resonates to a, you know what I'm saying? That's crazy. You think Thomas the train resonates

Starting point is 01:45:02 like from prehistoria or whatever? Well, it's just, it's just an idea. But there is a thing that is that I do think about when I think about animals in deep history. and shit that's gone is um as bummed as you can get as bummed as you can get about animals

Starting point is 01:45:15 that used to be around the art anymore like the way little kids trip out about dinosaurs being gone as bummed as you might get about all that the biggest animal to ever live the largest animal to ever live on the face of the earth is here right now

Starting point is 01:45:30 and it is a blue whale yeah biggest animal ever live on the face of the earth so when little kids are like golly those dinosaurs it's like the big boss is still here. The biggest animal to ever live is here. Yeah, that's the DMX. If you put your effort into it,

Starting point is 01:45:45 you go see the biggest animal that ever lived on the face of the earth. Dude, that is crazy. And it gives you hope that that, that if he wants, he'll bring those other ones back. That they can do it with science if they can do it.

Starting point is 01:45:56 Dude, it's going to happen soon. Yeah, I disagree, but that's a different time. Really? We'll talk about that another time, though. But dude, one thing, I will say this, I went on a safari and were there, right? So the guy, it was like an ambassist.

Starting point is 01:46:08 Selly or somewhere. I think we were in, maybe in Kenya. Mm-hmm. And the guy took... But you're on a photo safari. Yeah, we were just like in, yeah, we didn't get...

Starting point is 01:46:16 We got out, but only near the place we were staying. Got it. Otherwise, we were just kind of in... Cruising in trucks. Cruising in trucks, yeah. Oh, there was a pride alliance that kind of came around us at one point, and they were just laying down. Like, they weren't bothering us or anything.

Starting point is 01:46:32 And the guy is like, do not stand up in here. Everybody just stay. I'm going to start the engine up in a little bit I'm just going to back out of here And they were like someone like six or seven feet away Like it was definitely pretty gnarly There's probably like seven or eight of them And this one woman's fucking phone

Starting point is 01:46:51 Goes off right It was a like a It was like an I Carly ringtone or something It was like some It was some TV Some children's in world It was just like Fuck we're gonna die

Starting point is 01:47:05 And she immediately kind of It's just like, I don't know. It's just funny that... But you thought it would have startled the cat and the cat might have done something. Oh, for sure. The guy just said, do not make any sharp moves. Do not stand up.

Starting point is 01:47:17 And this lady's camera, like, phone went off and she kind of went like that. And then God just turned around. But it's just like, in a moment's notice, like you can be wiped out because of human ignorance. You know, human error. So... Again, it takes up psychological space, big old cats.

Starting point is 01:47:36 Yeah. Yeah. But man, yeah, I appreciate you coming and talking, man. This is a lot of fun. Oh, I enjoyed it. Yeah, it was a lot of fun, man. I got to come over there and go on one of your journey sometimes if you guys... Well, I'll take you out to do something.

Starting point is 01:47:49 Yeah, do you guys go in Montana? Yeah, that's where I live, yeah. It is? Yeah. Dude, I love to fish. What do you like to catch? Catfish. You like catfish?

Starting point is 01:47:59 I like catfish, but I'm willing to catch other fish as well. What's the kind of fish you'd most like to catch? I would like to catch probably one of those big, long... long trout. Big long trout. Like the ones you see that Brad Pitt and his brother caught, remember? Sure. Those.

Starting point is 01:48:15 Those are awesome, dude. We can arrange that, man. I would be honored to take yel fishing. I'm going to be in Montana at the beginning of, I think the first week of October. I don't know if you're going to be over there or not. Yeah, I might be. What are you doing there? I'm supposed to go to some like seminar kind of thing or something?

Starting point is 01:48:31 Seminar. Yeah. I don't know what it's more. On New And I endertals? I wish. So, dude, if it is. And I can bring somebody. You, yeah, please, ask around.

Starting point is 01:48:39 I'm gonna be like, I'll be like, hey, look. If it is, I'll make sure to do some recon for you. Yeah, I'd appreciate it. No, yeah, that'll be fun. It'd be fun. It'd be fun, dude, to go fish. You know, I think, yeah, like, do you ever do?

Starting point is 01:48:50 Have you ever done a float? Like, you want to float down a river and catch trout? I've never done that before. Oh, yeah. I've done, I've done, uh, whatever the one. Not the fucking, like, uh, I've done fly fishing. Oh. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:49:03 I've done fly fishing. Yeah. You've done fly fishing. You like that? I did like it. It was cool, man. I only got to do it one time. But I think...

Starting point is 01:49:11 Do you like the water? Have you ever... You never spearfished? I've never spearfished. I love to fish, though. Well, I would be honored to take you fishing, man. That'd be fun. Cool.

Starting point is 01:49:23 All right, we'll do it. Yeah. That'd be great. It'd be awesome, man. Thanks for all your contributions to just helping people learn about the outdoors and the history of the outdoors. I know you have a book out that's... It might be your newest book about when people are looking for... for beaver pellets and stuff across North America.

Starting point is 01:49:39 Yeah, so it's about mountain men, right? Yeah, I have a new, there's a new meat eater season coming out. And then we have, I've been working on these things, these meat eaters American history series. We did one on the long hunters. So like Daniel Boone was a fan. He used to hunt this country. Daniel, and the deer skin trade,

Starting point is 01:50:00 so the late colonial deerskin trade, did one on the mountain men, the beaver trade. And then our new one coming out now is, called the hide hunters and it's about the people that wiped out the last 15 million buffalo off the great plains at the end of the civil war. Fuck. So it's these things about the market, it's about market hunting history.

Starting point is 01:50:21 That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's pre-sale. It's not, that's available, that's available for pre-sale right now. But we just finished that, the hide hunters. So the meat eaters American history series. That, that's a lot of the shit we taught, like, like what you and I have been talking about. It's a lot of, that's kind of a home for a lot of that information. Cool. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:50:44 Like a lot of, like human history. Yeah. Like how resources get exploited, over exploited, recovered. Those, those series, they're audio originals, right? I do print books too, but those are like audio, they're audio stories. Like me and a researcher, we like put them together, I narrate them. And they kind of tell that story of America. through like American history,

Starting point is 01:51:10 American movement, through these kind of like keystone wildlife species that supported a lot of industry and economic activity at different times. Because for a long time, that's what American economies were driven by was leather. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:51:24 Fur and leather. Wow. Yeah. Is it interesting to see that like hunting has like taken away species? Like, I mean, it's kind of... Take some way and put some back. I know. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:51:35 Dude, we've done, we like speaking collectively hunters um as much as i hesitate to speak collectively like the practice of hunting has done a lot of damage and has done a lot of recovery we've righted like we collectively right historically hunters have done a lot in the last century done an extraordinary amount in the last century to write the wrongs of our fathers yeah well i think it does feel like in the end like the general feeling of a lot of hunters. It's not just about going out and killing something. It's about having a relationship

Starting point is 01:52:12 with nature. Yeah. Anyone who's serious about it, that's what drives it. That desire, like if you just have a desire to go out and kill something, it doesn't last long. Yeah, you can fucking do that in Memphis. It doesn't mind. Thank you, man.

Starting point is 01:52:26 Steve Ronella, thank you so much, dude, and thanks for putting up with me today. I appreciate, I appreciate the opportunity. I look forward to us going fishing together. That'll be great time. It was fun. I got a bunch of friends going to be jealous. Really?

Starting point is 01:52:36 Shit, I might bring one. him. Very good friend of mine, Seth. He's a huge fan of yours. He was shit in his pants and I told him I was coming out on your show. Oh, that's cool, dude, yeah. Maybe he'll fish with us.

Starting point is 01:52:46 Oh, yeah, if he wants to come. He doesn't, he won't say anything weird. He probably won't say much at all. It already seems weird. But it's okay, man. It would be an honor, man. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Steve.

Starting point is 01:52:58 Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. I'll share this piece of mind I found I can feel it.

This Past Weekend - #610 - Steven Rinella

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