#1559 - Steven Rinella

[0] Check it out.

[1] The Joe Rogan experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night all day.

[3] Just telling me about your friend that was a bit collection.

[4] I wish he was my friend still.

[5] It was when I was younger, I don't know how I came into his orbit, but there was a fur buyer and taxidermist and muskrat trapper in Muskegon County, where I grew up in Michigan, and he had amassed and very impressive collection of bacculums and you brought this up because Frank von Hippel had given us this fossilized walrus, ancient walrus dick bone.

[6] Peckerbone swizzle stick.

[7] Yeah a friend of mine Clay Newcomb he uh...

[8] he uses them for very like the, he saves the black bear ones and people use them as drinksters and stuff.

[9] The first deer ever killed You gave me one, and I was using it as a coffee stir for a while.

[10] Oh, like, no, it's not like an actual bone bone in there.

[11] Isn't there a bone bone in there?

[12] No. Well, you gave me one.

[13] You might not have given me one from that.

[14] You gave me one from something else.

[15] Maybe a raccoon or a bear or something.

[16] I have to look at it.

[17] I don't know, but you gave me a dick bone, and I had it in my backpack for a long time.

[18] Oh, huh.

[19] Yeah, so.

[20] How often you give away dick bones?

[21] You don't even remember that.

[22] Well, I wish I had more to share.

[23] This guy, this Bob Ferris guy, we used to laugh because he looked like.

[24] Bob Ferris looked exactly like Bob Dylan.

[25] And he's got to be around still.

[26] I remember being over his house one day and him advising someone over the phone within earshot of me. I remember this guy was going out to set muskrat traps.

[27] And I remember Bob Ferris advising him, if anybody fucks with you, shoot him.

[28] And I was young enough that I didn't like get that that was a humor thing.

[29] You know, whatever, just like a thing you'd say to your body.

[30] did have a laugh.

[31] And I remember being like, man, these guys are serious about muskrats.

[32] I was like, I hope I don't run into that dude in the marsh.

[33] And now I'm like, oh, yeah, I could totally see saying that to somebody and then we'd have a laugh and get off the phone.

[34] How many animals have that bone?

[35] Man, I, you know, I wish I knew.

[36] And I don't even know what, yeah.

[37] It's not universal.

[38] No, no. It'd be interesting to look up.

[39] I never, until right now, I never gave it any thought to like what classification of things has, like what classification of things has like an actual baculum, an actual pecker bone.

[40] You know, all the weasels have it.

[41] I think chimps have it.

[42] We don't.

[43] Weasels do.

[44] Here it goes.

[45] It's absent human, ungulates, elephants, what is that?

[46] Monotremis?

[47] What is that word?

[48] Monotry.

[49] Oh, the platypus.

[50] Oh, okay.

[51] And echidna.

[52] Barsupials, lagomorphs, hyenas, binotaurongs, cyrenians, and cetaceans, among others.

[53] Evidence suggests that the baculum was independently evolved nine times and lost in ten separate lineages.

[54] God, it just keeps coming up, man. Yeah.

[55] It just keeps coming up.

[56] Yeah.

[57] The need to have one of those.

[58] Do you need to, yeah, a built -in hard on.

[59] uh that's a really nice one i like that one um there are some that are big enough i don't know what they're off there's some that are big enough to be used as a cane really yeah what animal is that i thought it was like certain walrus ones people used to use them as canes well that's not small that one right there and it's interesting because because of the fact that it's fossilized it's so heavy um imagine carrying that between your legs i wish i had uh i feel like i want to challenge you on i feel like i want to challenge you on that being you um i feel like i want to challenge you on that and fossilized?

[60] Well, he said it was fossilized.

[61] You don't think it is?

[62] You think by the appearance because it's so light?

[63] But doesn't it feel heavy?

[64] Yeah, I don't want to get in over my waiters here, but I want to challenge that.

[65] But I would need to scrape into it with a pocket knife and I don't want to do that to your baculum.

[66] That's okay.

[67] You could do that.

[68] Here.

[69] But see, even that, don't do it because who am I to tell?

[70] I mean, you might scrape into it and I don't.

[71] Would they curve that?

[72] God damn, dude, this is so heavy.

[73] No, there are, that I don't know.

[74] They might, but there are some that have a hook in them.

[75] It keeps your mate from getting away.

[76] Jamie, that would be a hell of a Pimp stick.

[77] You walking around with one of those?

[78] Lil Pimp should have one of those.

[79] Lil Pimp!

[80] Did you hear that?

[81] The thing with Trump, he called Lil Pump.

[82] There's a rapper named Lil Pump, and he called him Little Pimp.

[83] No, I didn't.

[84] Yeah.

[85] Yeah, he did it the other day at a rally, and everybody was upset.

[86] Tim's new character I was going for.

[87] Yeah.

[88] Yeah.

[89] This has got to be fossilized, man. How else can it be that heavy?

[90] What kind of bone would be that heavy, Steve?

[91] That's so heavy.

[92] Here, come on, man. You want me to put a little...

[93] Yeah, get in there.

[94] You know what?

[95] I'm going to give a little scraper down here on the end.

[96] Scrape it.

[97] Tell me what's up.

[98] God, that does...

[99] It is.

[100] It's fossilized.

[101] Well, now I want to say that just like we were talking a minute ago about how betters are betting, like, it's Trump.

[102] It's Biden.

[103] Yeah.

[104] I'm like, back to...

[105] It's fossilized.

[106] but it's so heavy i'm a flim flopper when i picked it up my convictions my convictions are weakly held but no poking it with your knife makes me think that it's a um poking it with your knife but this is way outside of my area of expertise poking with your knife makes me a believer i think von hipple is a biologist right he's a man you got a really good fact checker over here it's like having it's like having doug durn around yeah it is very similar yeah Doug's a very good fact checker That's all he does He doesn't he doesn't he only Like when you're talking to him He just looks at his phone Because he's like No matter what you say He's like no uh uh uh uh oh Yeah Yeah yeah yeah yeah Biology ecology Yeah okay Yeah so there you go There's another one that's a physicist When it comes to The reason I have become interested Things being fossilized Is you know if you're out on National Forest Land Not notice I'm not saying national parks, but if you're out of national forest land or BLM land, various land designations, uh, you know, if you find like an antler or deer antler, you can keep it, right?

[107] Or if you find a chunk of bone, you can keep it.

[108] Um, but not a, not an arrowhead, right?

[109] No. No, because that's an artifact.

[110] What do?

[111] But that's weird that you're supposed to leave it there.

[112] Dude.

[113] Does anybody?

[114] That's an interesting I'd like talk about because no. No, they do.

[115] I remember, so, let me, let me finish.

[116] I think about fossilized real quick just because it'll the reason I start to think about it is if like you're allowed to pick up a bone okay if you're just out on it depends on a land designation let's say you're on a national forest and you find a piece of bone you can keep it if it's fossilized you can't keep it okay so you could find a like I found a few buffalo skulls that are old but still bone so here you have this thing that could be like 300 years old eroding out of a riverbed and if it's not fossilized you can have it and keep it if it's just bone the thing is if that thing has cultural markings on it then it becomes an artifact so say you found a a friend of mine I don't know where they might have got it off I don't know where they got it they had like the grandfather found it they had a buffalo skull that had been axed open and it was so clearly hit open with a tool to get the brain out which was make it an artifact and then you can't touch it or if it's fossilized you can't touch it the private land is totally different but um yeah it would be that uh so now when i like look at stuff i'm always picking it up i'm always like wishing i had a better sense because i don't want to grab i don't want to like find something to bring home and then be in violation because i brought home a fossilized thing are you under any obligation to report it like say if you found a skull that it obviously been opened up by like uh ancient native americans are you under any obligation if you can't take it to like point archaeologists like you know drop a pen point archaeologist to the spot where you found it i don't i i can't imagine no i i want i'm virtually certainly not under any obligation i did one time find a bison skull on national forest land and did a site report where i cooperated with the forest the administrative unit of that national Forest because I had gone and did some work on and had a radio carbon date.

[117] So I was able to supply them of a piece of information they didn't have and so we cooperated and did a site report and I had also kind of like called a little bit to make sure I wasn't in the wrong.

[118] And this is in your book.

[119] Yeah, that I wrote like really years ago.

[120] I listened to the audio version.

[121] It's so nice to hear your voice that you got a chance to do it because I know the first version of it, they hired some actor to do it.

[122] Yeah, it was, it was it's kind of a funny thing about the book business is you know audio as you know because you've kind of like in some ways help be at the vanguard of pioneering this but audio was more and more important it's more and more valuable now when I sold that my first couple books a publisher would you know buy your book and they would buy it they buy just kind of like all rights to it right and they would then go sell the audio off for sometimes next to nothing and someone would buy the audio rights for a certain specified amount of time.

[123] So my first couple books, my publisher buys my book, and then my publisher basically turns around.

[124] Publisher then, in this case, Random House, turned around and sold the audio rights to, I think, brilliance audio, whatever it is.

[125] And they got it for 10 years.

[126] And at first I thought that they didn't invite me to read it because I didn't think I was like up to it, right?

[127] But I just wasn't invited to read my own book.

[128] book they hired a soap opera actor of some sort to read it i now think it's just an efficiency thing like they have sort of a stable this company was based in michigan my home state just totally coincidentally but happen to be based there they have like a stable of talent that comes in and they're clean they do clean work they do fast work um and they produce an audio book like working with an author it might take four or five days to record an audiobook but they can just get a guy that comes in nails it hammers it whatever i get the i get the product and i turn it on and he starts talking and I couldn't get across the room fast enough to turn it off it was like it was like watching it was like watching my wife have sex with another man is like to see to hear I'm like that is not what that book sounds like you know and oh my God was a defensive and then 10 years goes by because I wrote that book a decade ago 10 years goes by and we get the right of back so then not random house has them back and I got to go in and record my own thing and I got to update some of the science and stuff you know it was it was kind of like one of those little it was one of those career uh like a little career highlight for me like like something looking from the outside I didn't wouldn't see um wouldn't like see it as anything but to me it was like it was richly symbolic that that I had whatever got to like be in a position to be like, I want to do it.

[129] I go in and record my book.

[130] It's how it wants to be.

[131] And that some thing could still kind of have life after a decade.

[132] Yeah, my friend God Saad, who is a, he's a professor out of Montreal.

[133] He wrote a book.

[134] He's an evolutionary biologist and he wrote a book on, called The Parasitic Mind about just very bizarre behaviors in the way people are, the weird thought virus.

[135] that people are falling into today, like woke culture and all that kind of shit.

[136] Can you give me another example?

[137] Another example of a thought virus.

[138] Well, thought virus is probably not even, I mean, he's used that term before, but it's basically woke thinking.

[139] Okay.

[140] Like what's problematic about it, now it's not very objective and not rational and that people are expected to think and behave a certain way because the gatekeepers of social media and all these people are the ones that are forcing this on, folks.

[141] Anyway, he's got a very popular podcast, and yet they still hired somebody else to read his book.

[142] And I was like, this is so crazy.

[143] Like, you have such a distinct voice.

[144] Like, why would you, what the fuck are they doing?

[145] Like, why would they do that?

[146] I think that it leads to a lot of listener disappointment.

[147] Yes.

[148] At the time I did this, though, I was just a writer.

[149] Right.

[150] So there wasn't that.

[151] And maybe we're moving away from that.

[152] When you're working on something, and I'm sure, oh, no, you'll know intimately well what I'm talking about.

[153] Imagine your stand -up if you had to, like, turn in a word, doc.

[154] I've had to do that before.

[155] For someone else to do your stand -up.

[156] I had to do that before.

[157] Oh, not for someone else to do it, but for them to decide whether or not the things that I was saying were approvable.

[158] Oh, I gotcha.

[159] I went up with all the delivery I mean like I don't want to I'm not trying to conflate that like writing a book and stand up because delivery is vastly more important in what you do but you do get a sense of like the cadence of how something goes yeah and it feels important to you but it's kind of like a goofy way to think about it because people that everyone that read it everyone that reads it is on their own trip they don't know your cadence but somehow it's just offensive to hear them read it aloud yeah I don't know if this makes any sense.

[160] This is like peculiar.

[161] This is like particular to virtually nobody.

[162] No, I think it makes a lot of sense.

[163] I mean, particularly now, because your podcast becomes so popular, and people are used to the way you talk, you have a very unique way of describing and discussing things.

[164] And I could imagine how offensive it would be if someone just sort of actored it.

[165] Yeah.

[166] You know?

[167] Yeah, it is.

[168] And that was, so like that book, I was at the height of my writing powers, because.

[169] Because I hadn't had, I was just a writer.

[170] I wasn't married.

[171] I didn't have kids.

[172] You were free.

[173] I could spend a couple years just like focused on something, you know?

[174] And so I do, like, the fact that that thing still, the fact that that book still works and people still read it, like, I'm happy about that, you know, because I look and be like, yeah, man. I feel like that was a reasonable book.

[175] That's an interesting way.

[176] It's a very good book.

[177] I really enjoyed it.

[178] But it's an interesting way of talking about it, that you were at the height of your writing powers because you were free, because you really could just concentrate on that.

[179] I think about that a lot with anything.

[180] You know, like that's the case with stand -up comedians.

[181] It's the case with fighters, for sure.

[182] When fighters have families, then they start getting distracted by a bunch of other businesses and other things that they're doing, it almost always signifies a downslide in their skills.

[183] Yeah, almost always.

[184] For sure, man. I'm watching right now, on Netflix, I'm watching The Last Dance, the Jordan documentary.

[185] And I'm not a basketball fan at all.

[186] And most of the stuff's new information to me, but in watching it and like that study of focus and discipline.

[187] And I wonder, like, in looking at him, I couldn't help but think, let's say there was an undecided election.

[188] you know it was like a contested undecided election and there's a global pandemic that guy would still go on that field or on the court sorry and probably be just as good as he always is and i think that a decade ago uh whatever like at that point in life when you're just like maybe more self -absorbed or something i could be sitting right now in this current climate like i'd be sitting right now just like singularly focused on this thing instead of um the school board is voting like whether or not kids are going back to school full time and and like i need to pay attention to that because i have kids i need to pay attention like you know i feel obligated to pay attention politically and i have other mediums that i work in now and it's just yeah you just get like spread out um doing stuff i feel like maybe that doesn't happen to you no it does yeah it does i mean remember you tell me you have three jobs yeah i do jump from one to the other uh they connect yeah fortunately they help each other the the thing about uh well you know obviously i haven't been doing much stand up during the pandemic i only did one weekend did one weekend in houston and then i got real weirded out thinking like what if i caught covid and then i gave it to somebody particularly if i gave it to a guest but um stand -up comedy for sure helps podcasting podcasting for sure helps stand -up comedy.

[189] You get more comfortable doing each one of them because the fact that stand -up comedy is live and then podcasting is also live, right?

[190] There's no net.

[191] There's no script.

[192] And you get more comfortable expressing yourself.

[193] In stand -up comedy, the fear of doing it in front of live audiences, you get accustomed to people paying attention to you and watching you.

[194] That makes UFC commentary easier because when the cameras are on the UFC, I never think, oh shit, all these people are watching now.

[195] I never think that because people are always watching.

[196] I don't care.

[197] It doesn't, I can just express myself.

[198] So all that they feed into each other.

[199] What do you, because you get increasingly, at least from my perspective, increasingly you get scrutinized and over scrutinized in the media.

[200] Is it hard to tune it out?

[201] It's easier than ever.

[202] Really?

[203] Yeah.

[204] It's interesting.

[205] Because it's so common.

[206] I could just shut it off.

[207] Yeah.

[208] No, it's just, it's one of the things it happens.

[209] You get too big.

[210] You get too big.

[211] it gets you popular.

[212] Look, if there's 300 million people in this country and you have 1 % of them are critics, you get a million critics, you know?

[213] Yeah, and you're being, you're being conservative with that number.

[214] If you're really lucky, you only have a million critics.

[215] You really have 3 million critics.

[216] Three million critics, that's a crazy number.

[217] That's such a nutty number.

[218] If there's 300 million people and 1 % of them don't like you, you have 3 million people that don't like you, yeah that's insane like if you really stopped and thought about that that'll fuck with your head if you have uh you know people in the media if you have a hundred thousand professional journalists that are focused on comedy and what are the numbers that are not going to enjoy you it's going to be high it's going to be a few thousand when i'm reading about you um and what you think and how you are and i'm sitting there thinking like nobody's not it makes me it makes me question like it makes me question like it makes me question everything I read.

[219] I'll say it to someone the other day that there's one thing Americans like, there's like two stories Americans like in this order.

[220] They like a story about what an asshole a celebrity is.

[221] And the second thing they like most, but not as much as that thing, is how great a celebrity is.

[222] But they like the first one better.

[223] Yeah, it's way better.

[224] Well, it's more sellable, right?

[225] I mean, that's why this Ellen is mean thing has gotten so much traction.

[226] You know, Ellen's mean to her guests and she's mean.

[227] People are like, ooh, tell me more.

[228] Exactly.

[229] It's exciting.

[230] When you find how much, and you, when you find out Ellen has like a half a billion dollars, you're like, oh my God, tell me more about how mean she is.

[231] Like, I need to know the dirt.

[232] That's a, it's just a common thing with people.

[233] Someone becomes successful.

[234] You're, you're going to, you're going to get scrutinized.

[235] And it's also like different perspectives.

[236] Like for some people, the way I think and the way I talk is offensive to them.

[237] They don't, You know, they have a very clear -cut idea of the way people should think and behave.

[238] You know, it's particularly on the left, which is, you know, it's become more and more weird because it would be much easier for people on the left to label me if I wasn't left -wing.

[239] That's what's confusing.

[240] It's because, like, I do support basically every left -wing position other than Second Amendment.

[241] And increasingly, the way they attack the First Amendment's weird.

[242] like they seem to think that censorship is okay as long as you're censoring someone who disagrees with the way you think which is a new thing in the left the acceptance of the First Amendment I mean like I brought this up before but the ACLU the ACLU was founded by people that were literally supporting Nazis like supporting actual neo Nazi groups and saying it like no oh in litigation like free speech issues yeah yeah this is important like even though their views are abhorrent You have to support these, you have to support their ability to express themselves.

[243] Like, this is what the foundation of this country is about.

[244] Like, free expression is the only way you find out what's right and what's wrong.

[245] Shutting people down and stopping people from communicating is a silly, short -sighted approach to debating an issue.

[246] And this is more and more common than ever on the left.

[247] Because of deep platforming, because they have the ability with social media, because social media is not really protected by the First Amendment, social media, whether it's Twitter or YouTube or whatever, they're private companies, and they can decide, hey, we don't want this guy on because his views don't align with ours.

[248] And they have silenced people and kick people off their platforms that really aren't doing anything wrong.

[249] They're saying things that the people that own and run the social media companies don't agree with.

[250] That to me is the weirdest aspect of the left today.

[251] But other than that, like gay rights, women's rights civil rights women's right to choose i'm i'm with all that i'm with all of them i'm with universal basic income i'm with uh i'm with uh i'm with uh medicare for all yeah yeah i'm not going to argue about that but this is why i am this is why i am i think that it's not a bad idea to have a certain amount of money where you you you give it to people in times like this COVID pandemic.

[252] When you look at this pandemic, if people had a certain amount of money that came to them every month and they didn't have to worry about food and they didn't have to worry about housing, like they were taken care of, you could see how it would be easier to get back on track.

[253] Like, the way people are today where more than 30 plus percent can't pay their rent, they're on the verge of eviction, and all the protections against eviction are about to run out.

[254] Yeah.

[255] Like that, this is a great example of where you do need big guys.

[256] government.

[257] This pandemic is the best example ever, or at least some sort of organized charitable, you know, some sort of charitable organization where they really know how to take care of people that run into hard times, especially hard times like this where it's through no fault of your own.

[258] The real argument against universal basic income is the same argument against a lot of people who use against welfare, that like you remove incentive, you give people free, money and you remove their incentive, you remove their motivation, and then you develop a whole class of people that relies on this and they've become accustomed to it.

[259] It's actually terrible for them.

[260] It's terrible for everybody else.

[261] I see that argument too.

[262] That's what, when I look at that issue, that's one of the things I think about is, you know, I don't even want to pretend that I don't view things through my own lens, but when I look at myself at pivotal points in my life, and trying to get going the fact that I was intensely motivated by just trying to find a way to pay my rent and my cell phone bill like intensely motivated by that and I do wonder like if you had alleviated me from that the the what path I might have gone down and I don't think of myself as being like a weird or that different so I wonder but in terms of when you're talking about the censorship and woke culture is this guy I work with Byron and he was kind of I feel like I'm sort of capturing his sentiment he was pondering how if you think about the in the in the 60s right that it was like the right you know the right they were the squares you know they were the ones like tis disk like the disapproving you know what are they doing now And he was kind of, he was noticing that the how the left has sort of taken over this, like, air of disapproval.

[263] Mm -hmm.

[264] Like, oh, my goodness.

[265] How could that young man say that?

[266] Yeah, it's a lack of tolerance to alternative perspectives.

[267] He, someone should tell that young man to stop that.

[268] You know what happened?

[269] Social media.

[270] That's what happened.

[271] People got the ability to complain where other people are going to listen.

[272] where there's just there's so much signal out there there's so much noise so many people have the opportunity to complain about things and they're also formulating their complaints in a way they hope will resonate with people that really have no dog in the fight so they just want to say something that people go how that guy's got a good point click I'll give them a little heartbeat for that you know you know I wanted to ask you about man I know that you uh you've said this for as long as I've known you um that you don't like you don't you don't pay attention to social media comments on a recent episode of years I heard you put it that uh you post something and run away yeah um but do you ever like late at night like sneak a peek like do you break you so you really don't break your own rule never at night imagine if you see something at night they go fuck that guy and then it rolls around your head it's terrible no at night I don't if I watch anything on my phone at night it's super innocuous like I like watching pool I like watching pool games gotcha I like watching like maybe a science video or something like that something very uncontroversial and innocuous I don't allow myself to get into conflict at night yeah I think that's very bad for your sleep bad for your head if something bothers you you know even something that is even if I agree with them like even if someone says something like oh he was kind of a you know ignorant when he said that or this is a stupid thing this is a bad perspective i'm even if i agree with the person that's saying that i don't want to i don't want to read that at night i don't mind reading it in the morning and then thinking yeah good point yeah i could have handled that better or yeah maybe i should have looked at it this way yeah i'm not without fault but i don't think it's good to read that shit at night but reading that shit at any time look i'm my worst fucking critic i hate everything i do so if if if someone is like just agreeing with the that I already have about things that I should have said differently.

[273] And the other thing is, like, most of the things I'm criticized on, it's like thinking on the fly, like this, like doing this.

[274] Like, I don't have any idea what I'm about to say, right?

[275] Like, you don't either.

[276] We're just talking.

[277] So words pop in your head, ideas pop when you try to express them.

[278] It doesn't always work out.

[279] And sometimes you're tired.

[280] Sometimes you're hungover.

[281] Sometimes you're not feeling so good.

[282] Like your brain doesn't always fire at the exact same way.

[283] Like, my car is remarkably consistent, right?

[284] you get in your car as long as it's tuned up you hit the gas it responds in a way that's very consistent yeah that's a good point man my brain's not that consistent my brain sometimes like a six cylinder and sometimes it's like a fucking supercharged v8 it's it varies a lot you know and it and also sometimes subjects come up that i didn't anticipate like occasionally i'll talk about something where i'm deeply studied on it and and like it'll come up and i'll go oh no no no is why that is.

[285] And I get very excited and I have a very clear idea of everything that's nuanced about that particular subject.

[286] But sometimes things come up and I'm like, oh, yeah, hmm.

[287] And I'm in the process of talking, I'm kind of working it out in my own head.

[288] And I'm not exactly sure how I think about it.

[289] And I have to kind of formulate opinions on the fly or formulate a descriptive on the fly or try to tell a story that maybe I haven't really worked out of my head.

[290] I'm trying to tell it while I'm thinking about it.

[291] I'm also talking.

[292] It doesn't always work out that good.

[293] Yeah.

[294] There's a thing I think about that's very similar to this.

[295] That, never mind.

[296] I was going to tell you an example of a thing that someone said to me that struck me is really funny.

[297] And then I wanted to go and tell people what they said.

[298] But then I'm like, shit, I don't know if I can tell people that they said that.

[299] That's a weird one.

[300] I get it.

[301] Are you enjoying doing podcast?

[302] is it?

[303] Man, yeah.

[304] It has, it's my, so of all of the things I do, okay, of the various things I do for, you know, a living.

[305] It's the thing I enjoy most actually doing it.

[306] Right?

[307] Like having a guest on, for instance, there's a guest we have, I bring him up because I was thinking of him.

[308] This guy Jim Helflefinger from Arizona.

[309] I bring him up because we're talking about criticism.

[310] I'll always read criticism that he sends.

[311] If he listens to something or right, and he's like, that's just not right.

[312] It's not coming from a mean place.

[313] It's coming from a place where he's trying to be additive to a conversation.

[314] And he'll send me some things to be like, hey, man, you might, this is a thing you should think about and maybe want to clarify.

[315] Like, I'll open that email every single time.

[316] And he gives me a lot of them.

[317] Yeah, that's different.

[318] It's a beautiful relationship, you know.

[319] And it's like, but all criticism doesn't go that way because people like to, people want to see people bleed, right?

[320] But here's this guy like doesn't want to see people bleed.

[321] He just wants to advance the conversation.

[322] But having, you know, to have the time I had him on, I had him, we're having a conversation about biology, wildlife management.

[323] And I'm just like, the whole time, I'm like, thrilled by what I'm hearing.

[324] Yeah.

[325] Like thrilled by the presentation.

[326] thrilled by what I'm hearing it's great information is delivered well that if you had a joy meter in your head like of all the things that you actually do that to me is is that interaction to me is great yeah because you're getting something out of it you're living whereas writing um yeah it's almost trite to say like like like I don't I kind of hate the actual act of doing it not enjoyable like actually doing it is not enjoyable Everything that comes out of it, I love, doing it is not enjoyable.

[327] It's such a common thing to say.

[328] I mean, Hunter S. Thompson, you know, famously hated writing.

[329] Yeah.

[330] That was a torturous thing to do.

[331] Didn't like doing it.

[332] I remember the writer Ian Frazier saying to me that when he was young and wanted to be a writer, he imagined himself sitting at his typewriter chuckling to himself, which he's like, isn't the reality.

[333] Even like when I get a, you know, when we're working on an episode, a show episode, and I get a rough cut.

[334] I don't get a um when I open it I open it with a sense of dread not with like oh boy it's here is that I got that's not how I feel I open I'm like that's how I feel when I edit my stand -up specials even if I know they were killer even if I know I killed I know I was there standing ovation everybody cheered everybody laughed fuck sit down like Jesus and I have to go over it you know and try to find what's the best camera angle and how to you know Yeah, but I do, I do like it a great deal.

[335] It's funny that you're running, it changes conversation a little bit when you're talking to someone like, if I have someone really good on, I'll sometimes, or someone that is laying a lot of stuff on me that I wish I retained, I'll have to go back and re -listen to it because it's kind of amazing.

[336] I've always prided myself on being really good at remembering what people said.

[337] like if I'm fighting with my wife and later we're fighting about the fight and she's like well you said I said no no no it's not what I said quote and you said quote and I'll go to the grave with that right like I'm very good at remembering what people said and I'm shocked when I re -listened to a guest that I'm really excited to have on and they're like it's an information heavy episode I'm shocked at all the stuff I missed let me see one or like just the fact that there's a microphone and headphones like somehow I lose my ability to be a person who just like locks info up well it's also because you're in the process of not just listening to what they're saying but you're steering the conversation you're trying to figure out how to respond when to step in when to not step in you have questions you don't know when to ask them should I hold up what I let this guy continue this thought I have to stop here because there's something weird but I don't want to make this uncomfortable and I want to miss anything out so there's all this shit going on that you're sort of managing the conversation like it's not a simple as you just sit in there talking to somebody.

[338] You're talking to someone and you know that other people are going to listen.

[339] And it doesn't seem like it's an art form, but it's definitely an art form.

[340] You get better at it and you also develop a way of expressing yourself that's entertaining for people to hear.

[341] It's not just that you're talking.

[342] You're talking in a way where it smoothly and comfortably enters other people's brains.

[343] Yes.

[344] One of the ways I've noticed that And I even had that problem, excuse me, I even had that problem when we were having our little preamble chit chat here, the presence of a microphone changes my thought patterns.

[345] Oh yeah, for sure.

[346] For sure.

[347] You get, you do get used to it, though.

[348] Yeah, like, I feel like, I feel like, I feel way less inclined to say something really indefensible.

[349] Oh, yeah.

[350] Well, that's just the problem with the early days of my podcast is that we didn't have any thought that people were actually listening.

[351] Like when I did the earliest versions of the podcast, like, you know, 10 years ago, nine years ago, we would just get barbecued and we would just talk shit as if no one was in the room.

[352] Yeah.

[353] We would talk, like, if I sat down with Joey Diaz or Ari Sheffir or one of my comedian friends, we would just say the most ridiculous, preposterous shit because that's how we talk to each other when there's no one around, because that's the things that we find funny.

[354] Like, when you're talking to a comedian, and like regular things aren't as funny.

[355] It's like we've seen, it's like if you're, if you're going to show a boo -boo to a guy who's an ER doctor, and you've got a cut on your finger, like, that's not impressive.

[356] I just saw a guy get shot in the head.

[357] Yeah.

[358] Like, he needs more.

[359] I need more.

[360] I want to see an amputation.

[361] Like, show me, you want to freak me out?

[362] You know, show me something that's like a real injury.

[363] And that's how comedians are.

[364] It's like there's an unfortunate aspect to those conversations.

[365] If you take those conversations and you edit them, out of context and then show it to people oh my god these guys are horrible human beings like no we're comedians and we're just talking shit you'd have to preface if you went around saying wouldn't it be funny if someone thought right but even then they would cut that part out that's what the conversation's like when you're just goofing on stuff with your friends but you just leave out the part where you say like wouldn't it be funny if someone thought yeah and you just say it as though it's coming from you but everyone it's understood that you mean like wouldn't it be funny if right yes exactly yeah it's uh it's a it's a weird medium podcasts are because it's never really existed before right this is a new thing like my friend adam curry is the original podcaster he he's the pod father he was the first guy to ever have a podcast and he was an mtv DJ host he actually lives here in austin oh you remember adam i never put it together that was the same person that's adam curry yeah beautiful handsome man he had those flowing locks oh yeah no i've known this but i never like yeah he runs the never put it together as the same person the no agenda podcast he's actually one of the reasons i moved to austin he was saying austin's praises and i had been here many many times he's kind of like that michael jackson leather jacket yeah with the foldover flaps you're a handsome bastard look at that yeah oh look at that hair that's the same dude yeah that's the same dude now show a picture of him today uh up right there bam that's him today damn yeah he's the original he's the OG so he oh yeah but I never like you know I'm I can't think of a parallel here but no I'm like I'm aware of these two yeah right but you hadn't put them to get oh that's the same guy oh no yeah yeah yeah he's awesome I love that guy he's um he's got a great podcast called no agenda it's his podcast and um he he really had the very first one and I don't think that was any earlier than 2000 Jimmy who was at 2005 maybe somewhere around that so his podcast his original podcast was four years before my first podcast which is 2009 so 2007 okay so two years before mine so you're talking about a guy a thing rather that's only been around for 13 years like there was never a thing where you could just put something out there sit down talk to people and there's there's no middle like people think like because i have this deal with spotify that there's a bunch of people sitting on my shoulder you come in here you see what it's like there's no one here like it's a skeleton crew there's actually a sensor standing right next me with a gun it's exactly the same it's it's such a skeleton crew and in to have something like we did an election show last night that seven million people saw to have something that has a total skeleton crew doesn't make any sense that it could reach those those kind of numbers so this this new form of communication it hasn't been figured out yet like no one exactly knows its potential no one knows exactly what the influence of it is there's a lot of mainstream media people that are really upset by it's also one of the reasons why I get so criticized people get so mad they don't like the fact that I have this much influence they don't like the fact that so many people are paying attention that it doesn't seem right you know that this is a this is not from the New York Times this is not from NBC this is not from whatever but all of a sudden all these people are watching it but this is a new thing So people haven't figured this out yet, even though it's been around for 13 plus years, they're still going, but what the fuck is this?

[366] Like, four years ago, no one took podcast seriously.

[367] Four years ago, Howard Stern had an episode where he was mocking podcasts and saying, why don't you just yell out the window?

[368] No one's listening.

[369] It was like, you're wasting your time.

[370] And he was making fun of Adam Carolla for doing it.

[371] Oh, is that right?

[372] Yeah, yeah, making fun of people for doing it.

[373] And now I think part of that was also, he's a smart guy.

[374] And he was also in the middle of his renegotiation with Sirius Satellite Radio.

[375] And he was probably mocking comparisons to what he does with this huge organization, Sirius XM.

[376] Yeah, he used to be like the lap dog of FM and then became like the lap dog of satellite.

[377] Yeah.

[378] Yeah.

[379] But it's, I don't remember what my original point was.

[380] But no one.

[381] Brand new.

[382] Brand new.

[383] This is a fucking really new thing.

[384] Yeah.

[385] I mean.

[386] I think I'll tell you this every time I come on your show.

[387] But the first time I ever heard.

[388] heard the word podcast.

[389] I'm not joking.

[390] I had never heard the word until Helen Cho told me about going on Joe Robbins' podcast.

[391] And I was like, well, what?

[392] I could go and show you where I was sitting when I heard it.

[393] I remember you telling me that.

[394] And she's like, you just need to go.

[395] She's right.

[396] And I was like, it's a what?

[397] A what?

[398] Helen Cho.

[399] That's, that'll never work.

[400] Well, that was a lot of people's attitude.

[401] my even like people that I was really close with like there's a comedy store documentary that just came out was a five part documentary oh one of the episodes my friend tom sagura was uh who was on like episode two or some shit like he was he was on early early he's been on a fucking hundred plus times i have no idea how many times he's been on but he was there uh in the early days and he's in the the documentary he was talking to uh brian redband and he was saying like what is he doing like why is he doing this And Rad Bam was like, I don't know, some people are listening.

[402] And he's like, can you go to the list?

[403] And it's like 2 ,000 people?

[404] Like 2 ,000 people were watching this?

[405] That's it?

[406] And you're spending three hours doing this fucking stupid show for 2 ,000 people for no money?

[407] Like, why are you doing this?

[408] Yeah, but would you imagine yourself being a visionary?

[409] Or do you imagine yourself being that, um, that, you know, it was lucky.

[410] Lucky.

[411] Yeah.

[412] No vision.

[413] No, I've expected it to be the way it was for.

[414] forever like someday they'll make a if they make a movie like the social network not the social dilemma but they make a movie like the social network which is about like Zuckerberg and those guys like coming up facebook they'll make like when they do the story of you um i wonder if they'll do it that right that you had a vision well let me put that to bed right now i thought it was going to be the way it was back then forever no one paying attention very small amount of people but fun it was a great way for look i loved doing morning radio i used to love doing it i hated getting up oh like the call -ins to promote your shows well not collins i'd go there like if i say if i was going to phoenix you like those things loved it was fun i'd get up in the morning smoke a joint go in there with my friends and we'd talk shit and if it was and they'd be like the zany guy and then you'd have his his yeah yeah yeah yeah female counterpart who put him in his place exactly you had to go in there and do it exactly it's seven in the morning.

[415] Yeah, exactly.

[416] I used to love it.

[417] I used to love it because I would go in with Ari or Joey or someone like that and we would go and we'd have some fun and we'd say, hey, we're going to be the improv this weekend.

[418] And then they would say, so, uh, you know, what's been going on?

[419] What are you into?

[420] And then you have a story about this and about that is fun.

[421] That's fun.

[422] You leave there and you have a good time with them.

[423] You know, like eight out of 10 of them were a good time.

[424] Two out of 10, we're like, this guy's gross.

[425] Like this show sucks.

[426] Some people were clunky.

[427] They just, they're not good at it.

[428] And, you know, they're not good at it.

[429] they just oh dude like when i used to have to do that for books it was i just thought that was the worst thing that could possibly happen to a person but when you're high and it's early in the morning and you went to bed like three hours ago and you just get up it at least you deal in comedy to go and be like well you know if you go back to the lewis clark expedition you'll find nothing was expected of me right i was just like this silly person who hosted fear factor or was on a sitcom and i would uh come in and i would be in town to tell jokes and like that was what it was so i always thought like particularly when I did uh if I did like the opine Anthony show in New York that was a really fun one because those guys were on by well I first started doing it it was on the regular radio too but they were on XM and when they were on XM you could swear I was like this is amazing oh yeah you could swear you could just go and and it was a hang like you'd have like four or five comedians in the room we'd all just be shit on each other and laughing and and you'd get out of there like God it felt so good it was so fun then you go get some breakfast take a nap and go do your shows.

[430] Did you used to do Stern ever?

[431] Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

[432] But that was a different thing because Stern was like at the helm.

[433] It was never a hang.

[434] You know, it was the Howard Stern shows.

[435] Howard Stern asking questions.

[436] You were responding to those questions.

[437] And, you know, it was very historic that show.

[438] Like, he was the, he's the first guy.

[439] He, like, if it wasn't for him, there would be none of this.

[440] Like, there was guys before, you know, there was like, I guess I'mis was one of those guys.

[441] I was never an IMS guy But he was the guy who's nationally known as the man Who had this outrageous radio show Yeah You know so and that sort of helped the Opie and Anthony show Come to fruition And then that I think the Opie and Anthony show was the in a lot of ways the nexus It was a lot of ways it was the idea that led to podcasts But when I was doing it There was no thought in my head like this is gonna be just like the Opean Anthony show or this is going to be just like Howard Stern Just you wait Just you wait There was none of that Just keep showing up And then one day I was at the Chicago theater I did this gig at the Chicago theaters 3 ,700 people right Sold out show And I go I had a story I was going to tell I go how many people listen to the podcast Yeah Oh is that right And I went Oh shit I'm putting that into my movie man And I remember thinking It's gonna call My movie's gonna be called The Joe Rogan Experience But I remember very clearly being, oh, no, like almost a sense of dread.

[442] Like, shit.

[443] Like, this has gotten to a place where I didn't know where it was, and it's already there.

[444] Because that I've been just doing it, you know, I think by that time we were doing it at the Ice House.

[445] We had this little room off the comedy club at the Ice House.

[446] We'd show up there and do it there.

[447] And it was just bizarre.

[448] I was like, what happened?

[449] Because you're just doing it like this.

[450] right yeah but you know what you could say if you wanted to twist this and make i think i think you could say in your own defense is maybe i'm wrong here but maybe you knew something maybe you knew more than you thought because you probably weren't doing 10 goofy things how's that what do you mean meaning like let's say i um went out and started 20 business 20 goofy little businesses right right and then at some point like holy shit like one of them took off yeah yeah turns out my business of selling old um ranch worn leather gloves to people who like you know wish they had that look uh took off and made a but a little money and then later i'm like yeah you know i always knew but people would be like dude you were always like you did all kinds of stupid everything nothing ever worked out for you then all of a sudden like this thing takes off and you want to now act like you like saw it coming so I think that probably in the you know probably in the back it's good that you don't act this way but probably in the back of your head you probably recognize you run like maybe you recognize you around to something nope definitely not I'm trying to help you out I'm telling you don't help me out I'm telling you it's not the case it's just dumb luck I I have a certain amount of brain damage I don't know how much I have but definitely have a little and I think from getting hit the head or not pharmaceuticals just getting punched for sure there's a certain amount.

[451] It's inevitable.

[452] From the time I was 15 until I was 21, I got hit a lot.

[453] There's must be some.

[454] And because of, I think, there's a certain amount of not give a fuck that comes with that.

[455] Yeah.

[456] Like literally, like, literally, like, you think that was kicked into your head.

[457] This is, I'm not joking.

[458] Sam Kinnison and Roseanne Barr are the perfect examples that I use.

[459] Both of them were normal people.

[460] And then they got hit by cars.

[461] Sam Kinnison got hit by a truck and his brother who talks about it in his book called Brother Sam, his brother Bill wrote a book about it.

[462] It's like there was one Sam and then Sam got hit by a car and became a totally different person because they had trauma and then became wild and impulsive and just became a maniac.

[463] That was the Sam Kinnison that we all knew and loved.

[464] Same thing with Roseanne.

[465] One of the things when I was defending Roseanne when she got in big trouble and she came on the podcast to talk about it, I wanted people to understand what I knew about Roseanne.

[466] Roseanne was in a mental health Institute she was in she was institutionalized for nine months after a car accident she was hit by a car walking across the street when she was 15 years old and just fucking wrecked like massive brain trauma like really never the same again couldn't count she was great at mathematics she was a really an excellent student and then hit by a car and then just wild and impulsive and they locked her in a mental institution for nine months she was crazy she's like like certifiably crazy medicated on a whole bunch of different things.

[467] And my take was like to make her responsible for things she said when she's been rewarded her whole life for saying outrageous shit and she's on Xanax and she's smoking pot and she's drunk.

[468] And you just want to label her as this awful horrible person when America's loved her for her whole life for being the same same way for being wild and impulsive.

[469] But my point is that those two people were created that way from brain trauma.

[470] It made them wilder.

[471] There has There's no doubt I have some brain damage.

[472] There's no doubt.

[473] And when people say, like, why aren't you worried about criticism or why don't you?

[474] I think there's some of that there.

[475] There's got to be some of it where I've had enough trauma just to the right amount, just enough of these where it doesn't bother me that much.

[476] God, I'm going to have you just full out, whop me on the head.

[477] You think about the things that hold people back.

[478] The things that hold people back.

[479] One of the big things that hold people back is fear, right?

[480] They're worried.

[481] They're worried about the repercussions.

[482] They're worried about other people's reactions.

[483] They're worried about how you'll be viewed.

[484] They're worried about all these things.

[485] I don't have a lot of that for whatever reason.

[486] I mean, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings.

[487] I'm a genuinely nice person.

[488] But if someone doesn't like me, I'm like, what the fuck am I going to do?

[489] Just keep moving.

[490] I think what, what, happened with me with podcast is that all these people were telling me you're wasting your time all these people were telling me not to do it like why are you wasting your time doing this and all this thing is eh i like doing it i'm just going to keep doing it like agents one had nothing to do agents to this day that i have that could have gotten in on the podcast could have gotten a piece didn't want it do they double back around now oh yeah imagine they had a chance like i need help with ads like ads like what fuck are you doing we're wasting your time we're here doing real things we don't have time for this like they didn't want to have anything to do with it this is just but i didn't i didn't have some fucking grand vision i just know what i like to do and when i like to do something i go oh i like to do that i'm just going to keep doing that like this is the same thing with martial arts the same thing with bow hunting like the amount of time that i spend practicing archery is fucking preposterous it's ridiculous for a person who is as busy as i am but That's what I like.

[491] I like doing that.

[492] So I do that.

[493] You know, like I take weeks off every year to go in the mountains and hunt because it's, I like doing that.

[494] I'm just going to keep doing that.

[495] That's what I like doing.

[496] You know, when you, earlier we were reading up on Baculums, and it was saying how Baculums had been invented.

[497] Multiple times.

[498] Multiple times, right, and all these dead -end lineages.

[499] And you look at something, you know, flight, right?

[500] Someone could be excused for coming and seeing things.

[501] know, dragon, flying a bird, right?

[502] And imagining that there was, like, an event that spawned these things, right?

[503] But in fact, they arrived at this, like, same place.

[504] They arrived at the same sort of place with, like, winged flight through completely unrelated channels, you know?

[505] They just got there, like, on their own.

[506] What's funny about podcasting is, as podcasting takes itself more seriously, it's like, of convergent you know the term like divergent evolution and convergent evolution there's a convergent evolution with like news and podcasting it started out as a maybe like a somewhat of a revolt you know it was uncontrolled it was irresponsible it was goofy it was like a response to but as it's become becoming become formalized with scrutiny with ideas of responsibility with with ideas of like making a um you know usable practical respected product there's kind of a convergent evolution of driving it um back into the the thing that maybe it was a response against in the first place exactly that's where the brain damage comes in because i go get the fuck out of here that's where i go get the fuck out of here I'm not doing that when people say like you can't have people like Alex Jones on the podcast.

[507] You can't get drunk on a podcast that 10 million people are going to watch.

[508] You can't smoke pot all the time.

[509] You can't deal.

[510] I'm like, yes, I can.

[511] I've done it the whole time.

[512] Like, why am I stopping now?

[513] Well, now it's a big business.

[514] Now you have this big deal.

[515] Now, you know, they're writing articles about you in the New York Times.

[516] Like, now you have to stop.

[517] But that's the way it got there in the first place.

[518] The way it got there in the first place is people are tired of seeing these prepackaged.

[519] Like, if you see, like, here's the best example, good evening hi i'm skip fuck face you know these guys with this fake voice doing this like super overproduced thing where they're talking about subjects the banter in between stories on fake news is or on news rather news broadcast is the most fake communication known to man like the woman will say something the guy will go well that's certainly a crazy story in other words we're going to go to bob outside and then they go to this and that, and I find that's a terrible thing, a terrible tragedy.

[520] Amazing, terrible.

[521] Like, you could see, really inspiring.

[522] They have these, like, weird little fake interactions.

[523] That is the opposite of podcast.

[524] Podcast is real.

[525] Like, if that was me and you played some video about some guy who decided he was going to try to do a backflip over a Lamborghini and landed on his head.

[526] And I was like, I would be like, how the fuck does that happen?

[527] Like, you have a baby, like, You have kids, you have a baby, like, look at my little baby.

[528] And then your baby starts growing up, and you're like, God, I'm so proud of him.

[529] He's a little drawing you made.

[530] And then it gets to the point where he's on YouTube doing backflips over Lamborghinis and landing on his head.

[531] Like, what went wrong?

[532] Yeah.

[533] Like, that's how a normal human being would talk.

[534] But you don't have that when you have a massively overproduced program, when you have all these people that have a vested interest in that being successful.

[535] So you have executives, you have producers, you have writers, you have all these people that have a piece of the pie.

[536] So you, instead of having a Jamie and a couple of their folks that are security guys out there, instead of that, I have, what, a hundred people?

[537] Like a normal show that reaches the amount of people that this show does, there would be a staff of a hundred people.

[538] And those people would all.

[539] Oh, absolutely, man. They'd have an enormous system of gatekeepers and legal.

[540] Exactly.

[541] Exactly.

[542] And then the things that you were going to talk about would be heavily vetted.

[543] You would have people come in with pieces of paper and they would talk about, okay, in the first segment, you're going to discuss whether Pennsylvania's vote is coming in.

[544] And let's be real clear that, you know, here's the information that you have to go over.

[545] And there's none of that here.

[546] So whether I'm good or bad, whether I'm right or wrong, at least you know it's just me. This is the thing they were worried about when it goes to Spotify.

[547] Like people are worried, oh my God, they're going to have sensors in the room is going to be people telling them what to do what people are worried about is it becoming overproduced it becoming something other than what it is because they know that's the natural course of progression somebody gets a hold of something that's wild and untamed and they go we got to harness that and make a lot of money off of it but the way to make a lot of money off of podcasting is the opposite way is to leave it wild but how are you going to leave it wild though when all these people are paying attention to it and all these people are criticizing it you know as we talked about there's like if a million people know about your show or a hundred million people know about your show and just one percent of them are mad at you one percent of a hundred million is a million fucking people are mad at you even if 99 percent think you're awesome yeah that one million could make a big dent in your head can't pay attention to it i think a way that they might invite you to look at it i'm not suggesting you do this but i think the way they might invite you to look at it could be uh captured um by this article I read many, many years ago called the Radioactive Boy Scout and it was about a kid who was working on some project where he needed to find some Amerisium or something for some Boy Scout project he was doing.

[548] What's Amerisium?

[549] It's a radioactive substance.

[550] In smoke alarms when you have a smoke detector there's like a radioactive substance in there and smoke inhibits the ability of the substance to hit a sensor really so he started buying up any and all smoke detectors that he could ever get his hands on right and then got into that he could find i can't remember what it was like in old types of clocks he was finding some radioactive substance and he got himself a geiger counter would drive around with a geiger counter on the front seat of his car past antique shops and shit right okay is this a novel No, it was a story in Harper's Magazine called The Radioactive Boy Scout He winds up accumulating so much of this shit in the shed That not only like eventually when it all breaks Like not only that they haul away the shed They hauled away like his yard How many did he have?

[551] In barrels How many did he have?

[552] I read it a long time ago Wow Okay, just doing his thing Collect the smoke Oh my God, look at his face Jesus Christ Yeah, hauled away his yard.

[553] Look at his face.

[554] Like, he's got radiation poisoning on his face.

[555] People might regard you as the radioactive Boy Scout.

[556] Yeah.

[557] Like, at a time, you were just out getting some smoke detectors because you want.

[558] And then over time, you, like, accumulated something where people had to take notice.

[559] There's a little bit of that.

[560] And they would be like, dude, I understand, but you just can't put that many of those things in one spot.

[561] but what's the argument against it the argument against it would tell me you tell me i don't hold that viewpoint i'm just saying i like to um i like to imagine um my brother has emerged as someone who's highly critical of my occupation and i like to hear him out about it danny or matt no matthew why um what's he critical of he he is well give me the counter argument no what's he critical of you say oh why doesn't he like what i do for a living because um he feels that me and other individuals and lots of people that by talking about and celebrating um the act an activity in my case hunting fishing um that it creates that my enthusiasms become infectious and it increases the number of people and diminishes the quality of the experience that that people who've always hunted will have because of competition.

[562] Very valid argument, right?

[563] So I like to, no, I like to hear him out on it.

[564] I like to hear him out on it because he's smart.

[565] Yeah.

[566] You know, he's smart.

[567] So I like to hear him out on, like, what he's thinking.

[568] I'm only doing the same thing with you by, by, I don't hold your opinion.

[569] I don't hold the opinion of someone, but I'm just saying, like, it is.

[570] Someone might say, I get it, Joe.

[571] It was all fun.

[572] it wasn't supposed to happen but they would say like but here you are like here you are you now have a level of power that is that could be dangerous but what could be dangerous about it picture that picture that you picture that you said something like it's over now and everybody was always worried about it happening during the election but picture that you said like man i think that um if you're in that county you should go down to the polling place and do x well okay a lot of dudes right yeah so you um wield like a level of influence and i think that you probably uh now and then bite your tongue well i definitely don't tell people how to vote no no i don't mean i don't mean how to vote i mean like I was just, I was doing a poor example of that.

[573] But that's a good example because that would be where it could get dangerous.

[574] Like, what if I had an idea that was really not well thought out and not good for the general public and I was.

[575] And you threw it out because it was funny.

[576] Yeah.

[577] And then I told people to go do it.

[578] I thought it would be a fun stunt.

[579] Let's see how many people we can get to.

[580] Or you're just musing.

[581] Yeah.

[582] I could see that.

[583] But that alarms people because people would do it.

[584] Yeah.

[585] But I don't do that.

[586] Most of what I do is talk about ideas and talk shit.

[587] and talk about things that are happening already.

[588] Yeah.

[589] I implored people in Missoula County, Montana to go vote for my sister -in -law, Juanita Viro, and she won by a landslide.

[590] But I think she was going to win anyway.

[591] Well, that's awesome.

[592] That's a good thing.

[593] She's a county commissioner.

[594] There you go.

[595] I got tangled up in politics there for a minute.

[596] There's a real problem with the gatekeepers.

[597] It's a real problem with these heavily produced television shows, heavily produced radio shows.

[598] and even now internet shows there's a real problem with them is that there's inauthentic voices they don't resonate with people I know that's not a real person that's not a person that's unfiltered that's a person that's getting scripts they're wearing makeup they have a team of people that are attending to them and telling them what to do and how to say it and there's a lot of other people again behind the scenes that are all like paying attention to everything you do and they'll come in in between takes and scenes you know there's a there's an interview with Donald Trump with this woman from CBS, very contentious interview, and he wound up putting the whole interview online.

[599] Are you aware of that?

[600] No. This woman was criticizing him and asking him questions, and he was like, you know, the way you talk to me, you would never talk to Joe Biden like this.

[601] And 60 minutes wound up using a very small percentage.

[602] Was it 60 minutes, Jamie?

[603] Yeah, they wound up using a very small piece of it.

[604] But during the full one that Donald Trump put out, They interrupt the conversation because one of the producers is like, the American flag is blowing in the background because of the air conditioning and it's kind of distracting.

[605] And he's like, well, huh?

[606] And so the guy like stops everything because he thinks that the flag is distracting.

[607] Like, no one can see the fucking flag.

[608] It doesn't matter.

[609] Like, what are you talking about?

[610] But this is what happens when you get a whole crew of people.

[611] You get so many chefs in the kitchen and some guy just decides that he's going to stop the conversation between the fucking president of the United States who's getting grilled by this lady because he doesn't like the way a flag is moving.

[612] That, to me, symbolize everything that's wrong with heavily produced and overly produced television.

[613] Or one of the things that's wrong, right?

[614] What's really wrong is they push the agenda, they push what you're going to talk about, they'll decide who your guests are.

[615] No one has any say in who my guests are.

[616] I choose all of them.

[617] I choose the day they come in.

[618] I choose what we're going to talk about.

[619] The conversations are only what I'm interested in, things I'm interested in.

[620] so I don't have to fake anything like I love talking to you I was excited to talk to you today I got excited woke up this morning alright Steve Ronell is going to be here there's no like oh who do we have to talk to today that shit never happens yeah that's why it resonates all these shows where it's heavily produced and and you know you're just trying to get the biggest celebrities in and like there's a really disturbing video from Howard Stern from like 2013 that somebody leaked and it's him giving some speech in front of all of his employees talking about getting the show to become more popular this is what we have to do and we have to get you know x amount of celebrity need two a list and two b list a week and i was like wow oh really yeah i was like whewf damn and they're telling people to make fake twitter profiles and tweet to celebrities and you watch this like yeah that's too yeah exactly that was my feeling too as a person who's a gigantic fan of him growing up it's like I didn't, I never thought he thought like that.

[621] I never thought anybody would do that.

[622] This is one of the best things about podcasting, at least with the way some people do it, it's just authentic.

[623] It's just raw.

[624] So when people hear it, stumbles in all, they know this is just two guys talking.

[625] This is two girls talking.

[626] It's what, like that show, what does that call her daddy?

[627] Yeah.

[628] Yeah, that became real popular because it's obviously just, the way these chicks are talking.

[629] They just talk.

[630] that way.

[631] And people are like, oh my God, like, this is how we talk when we're with our friends.

[632] And people, it resonates with them.

[633] You can't get that on the view.

[634] You can't get that on these heavily produced bullshit shows that are on television when you have a million producers and everybody cuts in between commercials and fixes people's hair and you're super self -aware.

[635] That's what happens on those goddamn things.

[636] It's weird.

[637] And then people come in with notes and the producers, like, maybe we can bring up this in this episode.

[638] I know you like to talk about this, but let's be aware that people think that and you think this and this is a and we've got it shows that whenever you talk about this people tune out so we got to stop talking about that so they show all this research and all these metrics and like they fuck it it gets all fucked up what what resonates with people is authentic authentic conversations and you don't get authenticity when you have overly produced things with a hundred people's ideas all shoved into one person's mouth.

[639] It doesn't work that way.

[640] So the more these podcasts get bigger and bigger, the more they fall apart because too many people get involved.

[641] You have too many people shift them and mold them and change them and then they become just like everything else.

[642] All these other overproduced things.

[643] And look, there's some overproduced things that are really good.

[644] You know, like the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, you could watch it to this day.

[645] You're like, wow, that's a fucking really good show.

[646] But it wouldn't work today.

[647] It wouldn't because now it's like you have water in your ears and you don't know you have water in your ear and then it comes out you're like oh that's what hearing is like i can hear better if someone put that water back in here you'd be like what the fuck's that water doing in there i know what it's like to have no water in my ear now yeah that's a bad analogy but you get what i'm saying i'm getting what you're they're accustomed to this thing now where you you know that's just there's no filter between you and that person you're in the room like that's how i feel when i listen to your show.

[648] Like, it's you and whoever's in there with you.

[649] That's it.

[650] There's no, like, one show that I really liked, uh, I've liked a lot of your shows, but one show that I really liked was the one we talking to the author whose book got turned into the Revenant.

[651] Yeah.

[652] Yeah.

[653] Michael Punk.

[654] That's a great one.

[655] Spelled P -U -N -K -E.

[656] Yeah.

[657] That's a great one.

[658] I can't remember.

[659] No, I think it's, I think he doesn't pronounce the E. Shit.

[660] I don't think it's Michael Ponkey.

[661] I think it's punk.

[662] Yeah.

[663] Damn.

[664] Sorry, Michael.

[665] but you because you have such a great knowledge of that subject and you know he he does as well and you're you're asking what is this and what is that what was it like for you when they instead of doing it on the plains they decided doing it a rainforest in the Pacific Northwest like what the fuck was that like and you're talking to him like it's real clear there's this is just you and that guy and you know Janus and whoever else is there there's no agenda there's no filters there's no producers so it's it's it's intriguing to a person because it resonates it gets in the head easy it slides right in there that that story though is a little bit um in some ways might have a little bit to do with uh a sense of responsibility or something because i had taken so many swipes over the years at my swipes at the movie, the Revenant.

[666] And voice my dissatisfaction with that movie so much that I believe it went like this.

[667] I believe the author then reached out, or a friend of the author reached out to say he's really aware of how much fun you guys have with the movie.

[668] And I was like, I should probably have the guy on.

[669] But it was because of historical inaccuracies, right?

[670] And it wasn't no fault of his.

[671] And that's why I tried to make it clear.

[672] I think what it is, I don't even think he listened.

[673] I think he heard that we're always hacking on him.

[674] He thought we were hacking on him.

[675] On him.

[676] And I was like, I'm not hacking on him?

[677] We're hacking on the movie.

[678] And then I wanted to get with them to be cool.

[679] Isn't it always a problem when someone takes a movie that's based on a real historical event and they distort that historical event?

[680] just for film just for like an example that I always use is uh that movie was it dream was it was the was the movie fox catcher fotch catcher oh yeah yeah the wrestling yes the Olympic wrestling team movie based on a real wrestler mark shultz who fought in the UFC and in the movie um a lot of things take place that I don't know whether or not they took place because I'm not intimately connected to the movie but I'm mentally connected with the UFC.

[681] And when Mark fought in the UFC, he fought a famous fighter.

[682] It's a famous fight.

[683] It's a historical fight.

[684] He fought as a wrestler against a guy named Big Daddy Goodrich.

[685] Gary Goodrich was a famous fighter.

[686] He was a famous pioneer of the sport.

[687] In the movie, the only fight that Mark has ever had his entire career, the MMA fight in the UFC, in the movie, he fights a Russian guy, a white guy.

[688] Like they change it.

[689] Instead of Big Day...

[690] Wasn't the same dude that Rocky had to fight.

[691] No, but it's...

[692] It wasn't the same dude.

[693] But they took a historical event, and they distorted it for no reason.

[694] Like, you could have had him fighting Big Daddy Goodrich.

[695] You could have had Big Daddy, because Big Daddy also wore a ghee.

[696] He famously would go into the octagon with a karate outfit on.

[697] So he had his ghee on, and in the movie, you know, there's a guy with a fucking bear shirt, a white guy, or a bare chested.

[698] It didn't make any sense.

[699] It's like, why would you change reality?

[700] As an MMA fan, I know what happened.

[701] like it's a historic fight it would be like when Muhammad Ali fought Sunny Liston if instead of Sunny Liston you had him fight some fat white guy Why would you do that When everybody knows what happened So that's a historic movie Where someone Exactly what we were talking about With podcast with anything else Overproduced Someone got their greasy little fucking fingers on it And they decided to change reality I think that It comes from a couple places and I've been witnessed to it a little bit.

[702] I think it comes from people wanting to exert creative influence.

[703] Yeah.

[704] And also people, three things.

[705] Why do exert creative influence?

[706] Wishing that the truth had been different.

[707] That doesn't make any sense in this case.

[708] Yeah.

[709] And a third one has kind of like two combined with the second one.

[710] But to tell you which things have been different would be, like I remember.

[711] actually having a conversation like this with a producer one time about you know filming hunting things uh we're like well how do you do it you know like how do you like cut this thing up they'd be like man you would do it with us you know you could do with a scalpel right it's like very precise i use a very small knife to do it and no joke being like could you do it with a machete because in their mind there's not the respect there's not the respect for how how things are done.

[712] It's so show business that you're viewing, you're not in love with how someone did something.

[713] You're in love with like what the end product could be visualized as, meaning it's more arresting in their mind to see someone cut something up with a machete.

[714] Like they can picture it.

[715] Right.

[716] So why be inhibited?

[717] Why be inhibited by the reality?

[718] And I think a lot of people would other would look and be like, oh, no shit.

[719] You could do that with a scale.

[720] elbow.

[721] Right.

[722] And they love that fact.

[723] Yeah.

[724] But some people don't love that fact.

[725] Well, we're talking about those little havalon type knives.

[726] When I first saw that, I go, oh, that's genius.

[727] And then I thought, oh, of course, it makes sense.

[728] Like, you're surgically cutting up parts of an animal.

[729] It does make sense.

[730] But the difference between that is, like, this is a physical act that hasn't taken place yet.

[731] You're about to do it and you're going to film it.

[732] What we're talking about is a historical event.

[733] Yeah.

[734] And that's where it's a real problem.

[735] especially for someone who's a, I mean, I'm kind of a martial arts historian.

[736] You ask me about the UFC.

[737] I know a lot.

[738] Like, you can't lie to me. You can't say that Mark Schultz fought some Russian guy.

[739] Like, that's nonsense.

[740] It doesn't make any sense.

[741] That is just a producer who thinks, ah, people won't know.

[742] People won't know.

[743] Just do it anyway.

[744] That's some guy's ego.

[745] Won't know and don't guy.

[746] Greasy -fingered motherfucker wants to come in and ruin something because he has his own ideas of how to, you know, had to put his little touch in it.

[747] He put it, I turned it into the white guy.

[748] Like, he's sitting in the movie theater.

[749] This was my idea.

[750] They wanted to give it a black guy from Canada wearing a ghee.

[751] That's who he was.

[752] Big Daddy Goodrich is from Toronto.

[753] I mean, Big Daddy Goodrich is famous.

[754] That's why this is crazy.

[755] Yeah.

[756] Like, Mark Schultz was famous, too.

[757] Like, this was the first time an Olympic gold medalist in wrestling, competed in the UFC.

[758] We got to see this insanely dominant wrestling, like where he just took him down anytime we wanted to and just completely controlled the fight.

[759] It was really fascinating.

[760] And because he was a coach for Brigham Young, I believe it was Brigham Young University, they told me he can't keep fighting.

[761] Like, if you're going to coach wrestling, you can't do this cage fighting thing.

[762] Because this is early UFC, no gloves, you can wear shoes.

[763] The rules were like real squirly.

[764] It was a totally different thing than it is now.

[765] It was one weight, maybe two weight classes back then?

[766] One or two weight classes.

[767] That's it.

[768] And so for them, it was like distasteful.

[769] whereas now maybe they would look at that as an opportunity to get amazing publicity for the college.

[770] Look, our head guy is a UFC champion because Mark Schultz could have been a UFC champion, no doubt about it.

[771] No one was going to stop that guy from taking him down.

[772] I mean, he was like one of the best wrestlers to ever wrestle.

[773] He was the one played by not Mark Ruffalo.

[774] Mark Ruffalo is the older brother.

[775] Yeah, that's right.

[776] Mark Ruffalo is the older brother.

[777] And the older brother, Dave Schultz, had got murdered by this DuPont Con. Yeah.

[778] It's a crazy story.

[779] Are you familiar with the Charlton Heston movie, I believe it was from 1980 called The Mountain Men?

[780] No. It's a period piece about free trappers, like beaver trappers.

[781] Based on real humans?

[782] Just informed from a hodgepodge of events.

[783] Informed by a hodgepodge of actual events.

[784] So there's an element in there, very detailed elements stolen from John Colter's, life with an event called this come to be known as Colter's run there's some characters that are these amalgams of different people who kind of drifted in and out of that time in the 1830s and 1840s they do a great job with costumes but the beaver trappers the trapping scenes are in like laughably bad and you wonder why they didn't just bring someone in to have them like it would have been so it would have been less effort to have the beaver sets they're making make sense but they're like someone out there just doesn't care they don't care I had a conversation and it's also one of those movies where all the Native Americans are well except for the heroin like the Native Americans are blundering idiots it's oh god yeah what year was this i believe it was made in 1980 yeah there it is yeah um i had a conversation once when i was uh just starting to get into acting um i had uh i think maybe i'd just been cast in the news radio and i've got brought maybe not even i'd been brought in to meet with these producers because they knew i had a martial arts background they wanted to talk about me doing a martial arts movie and the interview did not go very well because because they were talking about things in movies like all these wild scenes and they were asking me what I like and I go well I like things that are realistic I want I want to see something that I know would work like if a guy you know jumps up and split kicks two people and knocks them across the room like that doesn't I don't I go I want to see like realistic scenarios where where a person who knows martial arts can go all that that's pretty badass like it like just like Chuck Norris, give him all the shit you want, but there's a lot of Chuck Norris movies where we had, like, real, realistic fight scenes.

[785] Yeah.

[786] Like, what was the cop movie?

[787] Chuck Norris did?

[788] Lone Wolf McQuaid?

[789] No, no, that was the one we fought, David Carradine.

[790] There was a...

[791] Is that how he fights, name?

[792] Yeah.

[793] Like, no matter...

[794] Like, they killed his dog, and then he got pissed.

[795] That was pushing it too far.

[796] There was one movie with it where Chuck Norris did...

[797] God, it's not the thin blue line, is it?

[798] What is it?

[799] code of silence that's right that was a movie where it was a real movie like it wasn't it wasn't just like a karate movie it was like a real movie it was a good it was like critically a it was probably 1980 as well like what year was that movie here isn't a bar next to this speaks to you jokes he's by a pool table getting ready to karate fight 85 yeah it was got everything you like it wasn't too outrageous it was like he was really fighting like it made it made sense like you could see that happening.

[800] Maybe that's not the best example.

[801] You know who's a good example?

[802] As weird as it sounds.

[803] Stephen Seagall's early movie.

[804] Mm -hmm.

[805] Above the law.

[806] And a lot of people hate saying that.

[807] I fucking loved above the law.

[808] That's Stephen Seagall movie.

[809] When he fucked people up in a bar, like you believed it.

[810] Yeah.

[811] I'm like, he's not doing jumping, spinning, wheel kicks or anything like that.

[812] He's cracking people over the head with pool cues and breaking their arms.

[813] It's like all that stuff, like, okay, I buy that.

[814] I buy that.

[815] I would someday like you to do a lie, like an analysis, a sort of director's cut style analysis of the fight scene at the end of cannonball run.

[816] This is Steven Seagall walking in.

[817] Dude, this was back when he was lean.

[818] I met him in a catfish joint in Oxford, Mississippi.

[819] A catfish place?

[820] Yeah, they're getting fried catfish.

[821] Really?

[822] Do you remember when he was a real cop on a television show?

[823] People got mouthy with him in this movie and this is not a good move.

[824] Bang, he starts fucking people up.

[825] See that?

[826] Look at that elbow.

[827] That upward elbow.

[828] 100 % legit.

[829] 100 % real move that you see in Muay Thai all the time.

[830] That's real.

[831] Kevin Ross could be doing that right now.

[832] Right there.

[833] Bam!

[834] That's 100 % legit.

[835] Knee to the face.

[836] All legit.

[837] That stuff makes sense.

[838] Look, this guy's going to swing.

[839] Boom.

[840] All this shit.

[841] This is real.

[842] This is Stephen Seagal at his best.

[843] These are like legit, believable fight.

[844] scenes.

[845] Oh, now he's going to get...

[846] But watch this.

[847] Even the way you...

[848] Like, Stephen Seagall, people talk a lot of shit about him, but Stephen Seagal was a legit Akito master.

[849] Like, he was one of the first, if not the first American to teach at a dojo in Japan.

[850] He taught Akito.

[851] He was 100 % legit.

[852] When I met him, he was wearing some kind of robe.

[853] He lost the script somewhere along the line.

[854] But back then, during this movie, man, I fucking love that guy.

[855] and I remember bringing him up in the meeting and I'm bringing this scene up and I'm like that's what I want to see I don't want to see shit that I know won't work and they weren't into it and they were like people don't know that I go but I know that and he goes yeah but how many people are you like you were out there you know I go but that movie's a successful movie and the guy got upset at me yeah you just didn't want to hear me criticizing his perspective on something that I was an actual expert in Has GQ asked you to do one of those breakdowns would you?

[856] What?

[857] Of a karate scene in a movie?

[858] Well no they like I've done the breakdown where you watch all the hunting scenes.

[859] Oh, have you doing that?

[860] Yeah.

[861] It's fun.

[862] I'd probably do that without GQ.

[863] I don't want them in the mix.

[864] You don't need them in there.

[865] Why would I want anybody else in there?

[866] Then you have a producer.

[867] Then you have a big organization behind you.

[868] When you could just do it here, you could just spark up a joint and go, yeah, all right.

[869] Yeah, if you got a lone wolf McQueen.

[870] They kind of like pull the, I don't know why.

[871] Like I didn't, I had fun.

[872] They get the rights to things maybe?

[873] Well, it's just like they kind of like put it out.

[874] I don't know.

[875] It was like, they played, they pulled all, and I actually pointed out a bunch of hunting scenes and movies for them.

[876] And then they did their homework and found a bunch more.

[877] And they just play hunting scenes for movies.

[878] Cameron Haynes did that with archery and movies.

[879] That's correct.

[880] And you know what he said to me?

[881] He said, the best is that movie Brave, that animated movie Brave.

[882] He's like, the girl's form is excellent.

[883] Is that right?

[884] Yeah.

[885] Like, she does everything perfect.

[886] Like, because it's animated, you don't have to teach an actor to do it.

[887] You could just mimic, like, a person.

[888] professional archer doing it like see if you can find like a scene the archery scene in in brave well whether you do with them or not i feel like um a good fight scene breakdown would like would would uh be like a gift to society uh maybe but that like that scene in uh above the law that's all legit like maybe not the the fliping the guy on the ground that was holding the gun let me see if we could see the girl pull the bow would it be a good parody look at this watch this watch her her technique.

[889] I mean, even the way she's holding the bow, it looks like a real human.

[890] Oh, she's got some corset that's holding her back.

[891] She's got to get that.

[892] Look at that.

[893] I mean, her technique looks perfect.

[894] Oh, they must have.

[895] Look.

[896] I mean, that looks perfect.

[897] Yeah, you're right.

[898] Looks good.

[899] What I wanted to do, so this franchise, this GQ franchise, it's called The Breakdown.

[900] I wanted to do a parody of the breakdown where an expert comes in and analyzes diarrhea scenes for movies.

[901] well that would never actually happen because like the scene from what was the movie yeah dumb and dumber was a good one you know that that volume of excrement would never actually be generated by a human of that size you'd be dead you'd be dead yeah but it there's something about people when you get too many people too many minds too many too much influence you know just that it was the thing that that point was the thing that oh the toilet scene.

[902] So that was the thing that shocked me originally about doing books is I remember to this is not to discredit my agent, but I remember having a conversation with my publisher.

[903] And we kind of like over lunch one time hit on an idea for a book.

[904] And she seemed to like agree with the idea.

[905] And there's just two of us in a room.

[906] And she had, she had an imprint and could make that call at random house.

[907] and we're like talking and I'm like you know I think it'd be really cool and I left the lunch and called my agent and said like I think I maybe just kind of sold the book you know you should call and double check and to think that like a thing of that level of impact would come about with just that I remember being really inspired by that that's what should happen right Yeah, but that's like the amount of people that are going to go read a book.

[908] So there you put a thing out that you feel is of influence.

[909] Yeah.

[910] A fraction of a fraction of what is going to hear you talk.

[911] Yeah.

[912] And there's not even two people in the conversation about who you're going to talk to.

[913] Yeah, it's weird.

[914] You've reduced it.

[915] You've reduced it down to a single point.

[916] But people know what to expect.

[917] Like people that listen to the show, like I'm, my ideas evolve.

[918] I get interested in new things, but I'm always me. You know, it's not, I'm not a product.

[919] I'm not a thing that someone has concocted.

[920] I'm not a thing that someone, like when there's certain people that are on like late night television where you hear him talk, you know, man, I want to get that guy drunk.

[921] Yeah.

[922] I want to know what that guy's really like.

[923] I don't buy it.

[924] I don't buy it.

[925] With me, if you like me or don't like me, you know exactly what I am.

[926] And also, it's not a lot of men that are allowed to just be like a regular man on TV anymore.

[927] or on anything.

[928] What are they supposed to be like?

[929] You've got to be some fucking half -neutered thing.

[930] Oh.

[931] You know, you have to, all evidence of toxic masculinity must be removed from the way you think and behave.

[932] You can't be like a guy would be if he's just hanging out with his friends.

[933] Like, that's problematic.

[934] It's problematic to distribute mainstream.

[935] Like, there's so many men out there that feel like they don't have anybody that represents the way they think so one of the things i think that resonates with this show is because there's no filter because there's no there's no executives that tell you what to do i could just be myself yeah there's a lot of people like me out there to your credit uh i i think that you're very very open about the i the the evolution of your thought and you're very open about ideas that you're not trying on but you're open about your thought process meaning that you'll voice something and do a good job of voicing that you're aware that there's probably more to the story.

[936] Yeah, you have to, well, I'm not married to my ideas.

[937] I think that's important too.

[938] I think there's like a subtext there.

[939] And I think that someone could even look at transcripts of what, like could look at transcripts of what you say and not, and get a false idea of it where if they listen to you, It would carry with it the lack of, like, the lack of certainty as you hear a new piece of information and discuss it.

[940] Right.

[941] I see what you're saying.

[942] Which is a little bit important.

[943] When people are always mad about something Trump said, like, you go to the New York Times, you read like, Trump said this horrible thing.

[944] And then you go and find the video.

[945] Exactly.

[946] Like, for instance, I remember when everybody's all worked up because Trump referred to Pompeo why you know as the secretary of the deep state which i thought was funny okay yeah everybody's all angry about it um well you know this magnitude then you go watch the video i'm like the dude's making it's like he's just making a joke like he's funny yeah it was like everything about the interaction was a joke that was in the interview with cbs the same sort of thing the interview with cbs the woman brought up a thing and he's like that's not what i said what i said was a joke i was joking i said it like this this is i'm joking i'm being sarcastic i'm being silly that's what i do yeah like he was saying that explaining to her like you're saying it in a different way than i said it that's not how i said it like she was trying to say a thing in her words like you said and and she says it this way he's like that's not what i said i said it like and he says it the way he said it and you go oh he's fucking around yeah but they're trying to distort what he said because it makes a better narrative the narrative that he's an asshole i could go on all well i don't want to get into too much but I could go on all day about legitimate complaints someone might have with like the administration but the thing about him like the thing about him saying funny things and that making people mad like I really don't I kind of a little bit appreciate the humor sometimes he's an awesome troll I mean that's one of the ways he got so much attention during the 2016 election he would say outrageous shit knowing that the media was going to complain about it and they were just giving him free advertising because he was saying things you're not supposed to say when you're running for president And when he was saying, they're like, this is outrageous.

[947] And they thought they were sinking him.

[948] They're like, we're going to show what a bad person he is.

[949] And people would watch him say it.

[950] He played him for fools, man. They gave him free advertising.

[951] And, you know, it's a we're in a weird place for people that might listen to this someday.

[952] No one knows who the president is right now.

[953] The election has been, went on last night, but it hasn't been decided.

[954] And it might not be decided for three or four days.

[955] They think that Pennsylvania is the big one.

[956] And they don't know who's going to win Pennsylvania.

[957] And if he wins Pennsylvania, apparently he wins.

[958] Maybe if he wins one other state in Pennsylvania, he wins.

[959] But if he loses Pennsylvania, Biden wins.

[960] And it could be real weird.

[961] Do you think you'll launch you?

[962] Do you think you'll run for president someday?

[963] Me?

[964] No fucking chance.

[965] That's a terrible job.

[966] It seems like they just distort who you are.

[967] They push a narrative.

[968] They say things about you that are horrible.

[969] They do ads.

[970] where they're just trying to break down your character.

[971] Yeah.

[972] And it depends on who the establishment is for or against.

[973] I mean, what they're doing with Biden has been extraordinarily weird, where they're ignoring all of his gaffs.

[974] They're ignoring all of these, like, real legitimate...

[975] I don't think you can say that they're ignoring his gaffes.

[976] I mean, you can go watch gaff compilations.

[977] Yeah, but not on CBS.

[978] Oh, no. Not his allies.

[979] Look, anybody who is in the news is not in the news.

[980] You're in the news.

[981] You're in the business.

[982] of distributing the news that you want people to see.

[983] You don't want people to see him thinking he's running for Senate.

[984] He's like, well, the reason why I'm running for senator, you know, like, you don't want to hear that, so they don't show it.

[985] They take away all the times he forgets what he's talking about.

[986] They don't say, they don't, there's no thing that they've ever had on CNN is where they have a legitimate conversation and whether or not he can hang in there for four years.

[987] Forget about eight.

[988] Like how much cognitive decline has this man experienced?

[989] You don't feel that they discussed that?

[990] Not on CNN.

[991] No, no, they haven't.

[992] They avoided it like the plague.

[993] They avoided the Hunter Biden emails.

[994] They avoided all that.

[995] They avoid so much.

[996] They avoid so many different things that would be detrimental to him because, in large part, because they believe they covered that stuff too much in 2016 with Hillary when it came to the emails and deleting the 30 ,000 emails and then the FBI reopening the investigation right before the election.

[997] and that could have cost her and they've decided their approach this time they've decided that Trump is bad and he's a danger to democracy and so they're only going to cover the news that they think is important.

[998] Well, the problem with that is then you open up the door to Fox News being able to say, why aren't these other people covering this?

[999] They're not covering this because they're biased and it's fake news.

[1000] And these people are criminals.

[1001] This is all legit.

[1002] This is all happening right now.

[1003] This is real stuff.

[1004] Here's Joe Biden stumbling.

[1005] Here's Joe Biden saying things that don't make any sense.

[1006] here's Joe by over and over and over again you know you don't vote for me you ain't black all that crazy stuff then they're not they're not highlighting all that super Thursday yeah it's he's a madman yeah it's like it's weird but it shows you that the news is not just the news it's the news for the left and the news for the right you don't just get some unbiased source I think that it's a little I think that people who aren't on that are are either feigning ignorance like people who don't think that there is an inherent bias within news organizations within long -term legacy news organizations they're either like feigning interest feigning ignorance because it benefits them or they're just flat out like naive but there's never been this obvious where they're just ignoring really hard you don't want someone to be president if they can't think right right someone's showing a real clear sign of cognitive decline you don't you're supposed to highlight that like this is part of the news but they had already picked him to be the the guy running for the democratic party and they just decided to just ignore all that shit yeah but like i read the new york times so i go to jamie yeah i just go after what you were saying that uh i'm reading updates now they've as of now they've called uh Wisconsin for Biden Arizona has not officially been called but i'm seeing that it's called.

[1007] And if he just wins Nevada and Michigan, which he's currently up in, that's enough to give him 270.

[1008] And it doesn't matter about PA.

[1009] It doesn't matter about Pennsylvania at that moment.

[1010] Oh, so Biden's going to win?

[1011] That I don't know.

[1012] That's the part of like, I heard last night, I think it was Carl Rove, actually, that was saying on Fox News that this reporting number is not accurate because they have no idea how many people voted right now and how many mail -in ballots or early ballots are sitting out there.

[1013] So saying that like 99 % or 95 % is in that might not be a good accurate number to go off of.

[1014] And this is for which state?

[1015] Any of the states.

[1016] Yeah, so the closest ones right now are Nevada, Michigan, Georgia.

[1017] Wow, just look how close they are.

[1018] Oh, dude, they're down to reporting like chunks of 3 ,000 votes.

[1019] It's fucking nuts, man. And Trump administration, I think, has said they're already filed a lawsuit to stop the counting in Michigan.

[1020] What does that mean?

[1021] I don't know.

[1022] What?

[1023] I don't say how you're saying.

[1024] I don't say how you're Why would you want to stop counting?

[1025] I don't know how can you justify the argument that you want to stop counting?

[1026] Yeah.

[1027] But they want to keep counting in Arizona.

[1028] But what's the argument?

[1029] Like, I wish I understood.

[1030] What is, um, what do they mean stop counting?

[1031] I don't know.

[1032] So it looks like Arizona's lost.

[1033] 51 % to 47%.

[1034] That's a big gap.

[1035] A hundred thousand gap.

[1036] Yeah.

[1037] With 80, well, it's only 84.

[1038] So they have 16 % of the possible vote out there.

[1039] Yeah, but what's pissing off Trump?

[1040] though is what's pissing off his team is that what they're counting are mail -ins and mail -ins are Democrats are way more likely to vote mail -in.

[1041] Yeah, right.

[1042] So that's like, I'm sure, I'm telling something you already know, yeah.

[1043] Yeah.

[1044] That's his gripe about these things that are laying around and I think that he thinks they're just going to start making them up.

[1045] He tweeted earlier, like, they keep finding Biden votes in all these states.

[1046] Yeah, he's like, someone's going to find 4 ,000 Biden votes somewhere.

[1047] Which I don't know.

[1048] Sure.

[1049] They also made weird rules in some states where the signature on the envelope does not have to match the actual person's signature Like when you sign the envelope for a mail -in ballot Really?

[1050] I know my midterm ballot got thrown away Because it didn't look like your signature I got a note I was out of town, I got a call There was a problem with my ballot By the time I got back, it was over And I didn't get counted And did they say why?

[1051] Yeah, it was like I didn't sign in date it right or didn't sign and date where I was supposed to sign and date.

[1052] Oh.

[1053] And he, well, I thought I was, like, quite pleased with democracy.

[1054] The fact that they tried to call me to rectify the situation, I would have had to, like, do a bunch of stuff.

[1055] There'd be no way, I think they probably knew there's no way I had enough time to do everything I need to do.

[1056] But the fact that some dude would, like, place a call to be like, bro, your vote's not counting.

[1057] Wow.

[1058] You call back or do, you got to do X, Y, and Z in a hurry to get your vote in.

[1059] And I missed.

[1060] Biden wins Wisconsin.

[1061] Fox News Projects limiting Trump's chances of reaching 270.

[1062] electoral votes.

[1063] So if Biden won Wisconsin, Wisconsin's in, so it's kind of over, right?

[1064] Hmm.

[1065] Man, I just lost 300 bucks.

[1066] It's interesting that Arizona went blue.

[1067] That's interesting.

[1068] I mean, California always goes blue.

[1069] Oregon always goes blue.

[1070] That all makes sense.

[1071] Washington, that makes sense.

[1072] You know what's funny that what's not happening yet is when we set this date, Joe, we sat here and talked about that America would be on fire as we recorded this.

[1073] I think they're waiting to find out what the results are and then then they light the fuse they can't start the fire yet they might have won like both sides yeah you know like the trump people they're like oh i'm not sure if i'm mad yet and then you know the biden people oh is he won what's happening here no one knows once it's decided once it goes to court that's going to be a shit show isn't it funny like the different way the different camps if there is like a court and a dispute the different camps like that the one impulse is to mount a giant flag on your truck and get other dudes and trucks to roar around.

[1074] But that's only the Trump people.

[1075] I know what else is the same.

[1076] That's one camp.

[1077] Okay.

[1078] One camp would be, I have a friend who has a student who has a husband in the military, and he described these rolling motorcades as vanilla ISIS.

[1079] Why vanilla ISIS?

[1080] Because he served, and it reminded him of the ISIS flags in the back of truck.

[1081] Vanilla Isis, that's hilarious That was his depiction of it But the other camp is that you In the other camp when you're mad Like you go to Like you go to you march downtown You know It's like the two sort of like playbooks You know are just very different Yeah one's in a car One's marching Yeah One's like a display Yeah like I don't think that any No one that will get If no one that's going to get mad about the buy Like no Biden person Will put a big Biden flag on their truck and drive aggressively on a highway No, here's my take on the...

[1082] And Trump people aren't going to go downtown No, they're not going to march it, not without their cars I wonder what, like, who's, what side is in worse shape to march?

[1083] The Biden people, the Trump people, like, who would have like worse backs and fucked up knees?

[1084] Oh, that's impossible to say.

[1085] You know, I, like, right now, talking about that responsibility thing, man. I write, like, I don't know if you, I feel like you probably don't feel this.

[1086] I right now I'm kind of like grieving for America a little bit.

[1087] Not about how the election might twist, but I'm grieving for America about if the polarization is true.

[1088] And I sometimes question whether it's true or not.

[1089] Because when I go out, I just have like, I've been talking about this all the time lately.

[1090] When I go out about in my community and elsewhere sitting here right now, whatever, I have like very positive interactions with my fellow Americans when I go to the gas station and going to buy some shit it's like I come away happy that's most people yeah when I go talk to my neighbors who I've like I legitimately my neighbors around me I have no idea who they're voting for I really don't know I kind of actually don't care when I go and talk to my neighbors um there's like a love right but then all I hear about is the ripping apart and I'm like either I'm in the dark and it's ripping apart and I'm like too stupid to notice it.

[1091] But I do like I do, um, like I'm a little scared.

[1092] I'm a little scared as well.

[1093] Um, did you watch the social dilemma on Netflix?

[1094] We've been in our old people with kids way, uh, watching it in 15 minute increments.

[1095] It's like we have a TV in our bedroom, but now and then like when I'm home, we like watch 15 minutes of it on a cell phone.

[1096] I have no idea why.

[1097] My 12 -year -old daughter's.

[1098] This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

[1099] She hated it.

[1100] We tried to make her watch it because I just wanted her to understand the dangers and the dilemmas of social media.

[1101] But to her, social media is awesome.

[1102] I like TikTok.

[1103] She's TikTok -in -and -shut and hanging out with her friends.

[1104] She only sees the positive sides of it.

[1105] What I was trying to get her to see is, like, obviously, she has no interest at all in politics.

[1106] She doesn't understand the division that's happening.

[1107] in this country because people live in these echo chambers and they argue ideas and the way social media exacerbates this with their algorithms that point you towards things that are outrageous, point you towards things that piss you off and keep you in this sort of ideological bubble and that people are dividing further and further away from each other and you look at this shift in the way people view the other side whereas there were so many more people that were sort of centrists or, you know, had, you know, a little bit of ideas from the left, a little bit of ideas from the right.

[1108] Now, it's very divided, very divided.

[1109] And it's directly correlating with the invention of social media.

[1110] Yeah.

[1111] But if, if the division and hatred is only digital.

[1112] But it spills out, obviously.

[1113] It does spill out into the real world.

[1114] No, you're correct.

[1115] You look at Portland.

[1116] You look at Seattle.

[1117] You lived in Seattle for a while.

[1118] Could you ever have imagined that they would take over a six -block area of Seattle?

[1119] Yes.

[1120] You really did?

[1121] You thought they could have done?

[1122] Well, I felt, I could definitely see it because when I was there, there was an enormous amount of tension around the homeless crisis in Seattle, that loitering laws, camping laws were just suspended.

[1123] and they would go into an encampment like in a whatever I don't know what you call I wish I knew the proper term from it they'd go into an illegal encampment or whatever and move everybody out actually scrape the top soil away because of needles and stuff whatever scrape the top soil away pull out and then people would just move back in and there was a lot of tension about this and it was that some people were like why why don't we why can't we enforce like why don't enforce the law and people be like well you know it's it's like inhumane to people who are in need and there was like an emerging tension there so to have it later be that you saw that kind like blow up on this grand national scale doesn't surprise me after seeing like that level of of just consternation from people who'd been there a long time about why do I have this feeling that there's like laws that I'm held to but some people are just not held to a law and this is pre -COVID when you were living there oh yeah yeah yeah so like being witnessed to that and hearing the amount of of griping about that um and then seeing it no i'm not like wow that's no it felt very like almost not like not at all surprising that that it happened yeah i think there's Places in this country that have, like, legitimate, almost unfixable issues with homeless people.

[1124] Sure.

[1125] Los Angeles is not one of them.

[1126] Los Angeles, when I first moved there in 94, was nothing like this.

[1127] Nothing.

[1128] There was no tents ever.

[1129] There was no, you never saw tents.

[1130] Now, my friend sent me a video where she was driving down in Venice, and she held her phone up out the window.

[1131] And it is a mile plus of tents, just nothing but tense.

[1132] it's crazy like you look at it you're looking at thousands of tents like this is insane how do you put the lid on that how do you get those people out of there where do you put them how do you clean that area up i mean it's disgusting and you're talking about venice which is like a very wealthy area there's a lot of money in venice a lot of beautiful houses you're on the beach and they're fucked it's fucked i was going to a restaurant there with my wife and we stopped at a red light and there was this beautiful house to the left probably like millions of dollars right to the right 10 tents right across the street from their fucking house like a small road and then homeless encamp and cross the street from this beautiful house like what the fuck and i talk to people that are there and like no we have ring those little ring doorbell things with the videos constantly seeing people stealing shit constantly seeing people breaking into their yard trying to get into their house wandering in their backyard trying to get into their garage it's like and they there there's no solutions the government doesn't do a goddamn thing about it.

[1133] Yeah, I've got input on all kinds of things, but I'm like low on input on that.

[1134] I have zero.

[1135] We did a, uh, uh, our company, we did a river, uh, like a river access park cleanup, went and picked up all kinds of garbage at a river access near our, near where we work.

[1136] And, uh, there was a homeless encampment there at, in the woods at the river access.

[1137] I remember being like very, uh, I was kind of scared because I was like, it's super rude.

[1138] to go and, like, pick up garbage and sort of, like, act like there aren't people camp there?

[1139] Right.

[1140] And not acknowledge these human beings, like you wouldn't, you know, if there was people there were fishing or people that are having a picnic, you would engage.

[1141] Right, right.

[1142] So I'm like, why do I feel like chicken shit about engaging?

[1143] So then I go up and guys, I know it's going to seem like we're kind of like up in your business.

[1144] We're doing a cleanup project, just bagging up.

[1145] garbage and hauling away.

[1146] Dude's like, hey, give us a couple of bags.

[1147] So they take some bags, flow some garbage, set it on the trail, we hauled away.

[1148] And like, for a week, I'd been like plotting how I'm going to.

[1149] And it was easy.

[1150] It's just like, it was just, yeah, we have this.

[1151] It was like, it was like he, I heard this writer, Jeff, Jeff Dyer, he wrote this book Yoga for people who can't be bothered to do it.

[1152] Jeff Dyer, he was a humorist.

[1153] I remember he had this essay, he wrote about, um, struggling with his, desire to witness great poverty when he would travel he's a professional traveler you know and you'd go to India and he would he struggled with why do I want to go like is it bad like what is it that I want to go witness behold the spectacle of poverty you know instead of like most people don't put that in their travel itinerary.

[1154] So he would specifically do that on purpose?

[1155] Yeah.

[1156] He talks about his book.

[1157] Why do I like that?

[1158] Why do I like that?

[1159] It's definitely a perspective changer, right?

[1160] You start thinking you have problems and you go see people with real problems.

[1161] You're like, whoa, okay.

[1162] Yeah.

[1163] Yeah.

[1164] But homeless people in this country, it used to be a different thing, you know.

[1165] It used to be all people that were drug addicts or all people that were mentally ill. But I think with COVID, you've got people that just had nowhere else to go.

[1166] There's a lot of people that they might be homeless right now, but they don't want to be.

[1167] They just don't know what to do.

[1168] I think that number is bigger than it's ever been before.

[1169] And that's what makes it even scarier.

[1170] And that's one of the reasons why something like universal basic income is interesting to me. you know I'm not interested in letting the government take our taxes and and do things to like you don't get a receipt for where your taxes go right you don't know how much your taxes are going to frivolous things or things that don't make any sense or things you don't agree with but if I knew that my taxes were going to very specific things that I agree with I wouldn't have a problem paying more taxes you remember Ross pro he used to make those little charts showing where your money went scared the shit out of everybody.

[1171] He's the reason why Bush didn't win a second term.

[1172] Herbert Walker Bush.

[1173] That was the first time, unless Trump loses, in modern history, where a president didn't win a second term.

[1174] The first time, well, Carter, and then Herbert Walker Bush.

[1175] Because they saw that Ross Perot thing, he bought a half hour of regular television.

[1176] Back when there was no internet.

[1177] He was like, I'm going to show you what's going on here.

[1178] Here, look at this chart.

[1179] This is where your goddamn money goes.

[1180] And he was telling, and people, like what the fuck like he opened of a lot of people's eyes to what the IRS is and where your money goes and why it's dirty yeah scare the shit out of people it's a weird time to be alive Steve I'm not uh I don't I'm worried about the future of this country too um I'm worried about in a way that I've never been worried before yeah I like I just like like America so much.

[1181] I was having a conversation with some recently where they were kind of like challenging, like challenging why, um, challenging why you could be, why you could feel proud about being, um, in a, like a citizen of a country where you just were born there and you just live there because you're born there.

[1182] It's like, how can you be proud of that?

[1183] You're just born there.

[1184] Right.

[1185] And I'm like, man, I can't really suss it out.

[1186] But I feel like a, like, I have like a sort of, uh, like a, uh, a, uh, a, uh, a, uh, a, uh, a, uh, sense of pride and patriotism and to and so I like worry about the country in a way like what it feels like for people like I worry about like what it feels like for people to be American and knowing that there are people at a point that are even challenging the idea of taking pride in that like that's a sign of something bad and also people who conversely are taking their deep sense of pride and love and using it to leverage and diminish other people.

[1187] It's sort of like I love it more or I have more of a right to love it.

[1188] And even like the fact that to either lack patriotism or conversely to weaponize patriotism, it all makes me feel like a little like I'm a little skittish right now, man. Right.

[1189] I know what you're saying.

[1190] I want to know if there's this is true because someone's saying that Google and Facebook both removed the ability to have an American flag emoji.

[1191] That cannot be true.

[1192] I don't know.

[1193] I just read it.

[1194] Just Google that.

[1195] That's not.

[1196] I don't know.

[1197] Just Google and Facebook.

[1198] If you want to leave a comment.

[1199] To have an American flag emoji.

[1200] Maybe it was Twitter.

[1201] Like you put a series of American flags and thumbs up.

[1202] Yeah, exactly.

[1203] Come on.

[1204] Can't do that anymore.

[1205] I don't do emojis.

[1206] I made a decision a long time ago.

[1207] I literally don't know if it's true.

[1208] I read it and I was like what I was running out the door I was like what um look I get where people would say you had no say and being American why would you be proud of that you should be proud of things you've accomplished you should be proud of things you worked hard towards but what America stands for I feel super lucky to be an American I think America stands for an incredible amount of innovation incredible contribution to music and art and comedy And just the overall impact that it's had on the culture of the world for a country that's just a little over 200 years old is phenomenal.

[1209] It's insane.

[1210] I mean, I think this is the greatest experiment in self -government and then getting a bunch of people to live together and then what kind of impact it has on the rest of the world ever.

[1211] Yeah.

[1212] I mean, it's an amazing place to be.

[1213] I had a conversation.

[1214] Oh, sorry.

[1215] I was going to say, I just think right now people are concentrating only on the negative.

[1216] aspects on.

[1217] I had a conversation recently with someone who'd built over the course of their life, they'd built a billion -dollar business and highly critical of the government, highly critical of the government while simultaneously building a billion -dollar business, telling me he feels no patriotism.

[1218] I'm like, fucking you don't feel any patriotism.

[1219] Dude, you can't really do it anywhere else.

[1220] You've hacked on the government the whole time and built a successful business.

[1221] You don't think there's a little magic in that to be in a place where that can go down?

[1222] that's pretty cool the government's not ideal no but it's pretty cool to be able to like I just feel like you'd be like man this place is so great I hacked on the government my whole career and made a bunch of money and no one shows up to beat me up did that in China you'd be dead yeah damn it there's places in the world right now or if you did the exact same thing they'd literally come for you and kill you you know we were talking yesterday on the podcast about this a wrestler in Iran that is a world champion wrestler who they executed because he participated in a peaceful protest and the ufc uh tried to uh plea make a plea to the uh iranian government to to not kill him and they fucking killed them anyway they wanted to send a nice message this guy was a national sports hero and they wanted to send a nice message we don't give a fuck what you are you are uh you are under us yeah we are a powerful theocracy and we'll fucking kill you and they did Hmm.

[1223] Yeah.

[1224] Yeah, that's happening right now.

[1225] That's 2020 somewhere else.

[1226] You know, as bad as it is here.

[1227] And it is, it's not ideal.

[1228] Government's not ideal.

[1229] This is not perfect.

[1230] We can get an old man who can't talk and another guy is full of shit and they're the only people that we have to choose from.

[1231] No, that's not good.

[1232] That's not good.

[1233] You know, and then there are other choices.

[1234] I voted for Joe Jorgensen.

[1235] I voted for the libertarian candidate, even though I knew she wasn't going to win.

[1236] I mean, I voted for her in, uh, California where it had no chances.

[1237] Yeah, I think that that's a very, I'm interested to hear you did that.

[1238] I had an astonishingly similar thought process as I filled out my ballot is to live in, like, in a state where there's not any question about where it's going to go and to try to support, not necessarily like the liberal, party, but to try to support the idea that you'd have a viable third party of some sort.

[1239] We need multiple parties.

[1240] That it doesn't just happen.

[1241] It doesn't have to fall into this crazy system of like this collection of thoughts and this other collection of thoughts.

[1242] And you pick between those two.

[1243] That's it.

[1244] That's all you got.

[1245] So any, I thought that like any effort you could lend to the idea of a third seat at the table would, however, you know, you're pissing into the wind.

[1246] But still, man. Yeah, you have those two schools of thought, and these two schools of thought are both funded by the same fucking people.

[1247] I mean, that's what's hilarious about it all.

[1248] They're all funded by gigantic businesses.

[1249] It's not ideal.

[1250] It's not good.

[1251] And the idea of a third -party candidate gets mocked.

[1252] I mean, all the way back to Ross Perrault.

[1253] Just no one, I mean, he's about as close as anyways come.

[1254] You know, he at least took some votes away from, I mean, I don't think Gary Johnson.

[1255] I voted for him, too.

[1256] Gary Johnson didn't put a dent in it.

[1257] He, you know, he barely had a chance.

[1258] And I don't think Joe did either, but it's one of those things where you got to look at it and go, do you agree with this system?

[1259] No. Do you just keep going?

[1260] Keep going with it every four years?

[1261] Well, you know, four years is eight and then 12 and then next thing you know, you're dead.

[1262] It's over.

[1263] You only get 100, right, if you're real lucky.

[1264] And you're not even voting for most of those.

[1265] like when you get to the end like what is when do you step up yeah when do you say i don't want to participate in this ridiculous duopoly anymore because that's what it is i mean and they're both in cahoots with some branch of the media like it's it's gross and then there's so much money involved and so many people are saddling up to the table and influencing them whisper in their ear and they're making all these compromising deals and i like to you think about how long you have on the planet.

[1266] I think you should.

[1267] Yeah.

[1268] I wake up.

[1269] I try to think about that every day.

[1270] You know, I'll like politicians, they'll enter office and I'll make a clock set for like four years or whatever and it counts down.

[1271] I need to get one of those.

[1272] For life?

[1273] For like roughly my life expectancy and it counts down backwards.

[1274] Well, don't you think that your life expectancy?

[1275] I mean, you are one of the few people that I know that has almost been killed by a grizzly bear.

[1276] Well, yeah, that's, well.

[1277] You had a real shot.

[1278] In a situation, like in a brush, yeah.

[1279] A real shot.

[1280] Something enough where it was scary enough that I now, now that I've studied it a fair bit, that I now know I had a mental, I had a, I had a, I had like a near -death experience mental, a near -death experience mental experience, even though I was unharmed.

[1281] But it jarred my brain.

[1282] So hard.

[1283] It jarred my, the, the minute, or the seconds that occurred.

[1284] jarred my brain so hard that as I studied as I've tried to be curious about and study about what happened in my brain its parallels are all found and it's discussed by people who discuss near -death experiences, which might just mean I'm not like, I'm mentally not that, I'm not as tenacious mentally as I'd like to be, but my brain got juggled.

[1285] But don't you think that...

[1286] Is joggle the word?

[1287] It is no. Don't you think that when you're in contact with an animal that's that large?

[1288] I mean, a predatory animal that's, how big was it, 10 feet?

[1289] how big was like grizzly?

[1290] Easily?

[1291] Yeah, I don't want to.

[1292] Enormous.

[1293] Like it was like struck all of us and we've looked at a lot of bears as being like, you know, a mature brown bear.

[1294] Okay.

[1295] Mature Codiac brown bear.

[1296] Yeah.

[1297] That's what we wanted to talk about.

[1298] Talk about where you were at a Fognac Island, which is a place that has enormous bears.

[1299] That whole part of the world is known for some of the largest brown bears on earth.

[1300] Yeah.

[1301] I mean, it's separated from Codiac by a narrow straight.

[1302] It's like, so like the Codiac brown bear being like the world's biggest bear was a neighboring island, but that specific specimen, you know, I don't know, a mature animal.

[1303] Just huge.

[1304] Just huge.

[1305] Yeah.

[1306] When you're around something like that where there can be no doubt that you can't get out of the way, you can't, you can't fight it off, you can't, you're helpless.

[1307] Like, it must trigger something in your mind where you, you come to grips with the reality of predator and prey that you almost were on the menu.

[1308] Yeah.

[1309] Like, there's just no way around.

[1310] that you can't there's no there's no rationalizations you can play in your mind when you're confronted with such absolute superiority are you familiar with the term playing opossum yes obviously so uh our understanding of opossums now is that they're not playing they conk out right yeah yeah stress he's not playing dead he hits such an like he hit such an a stress level that he shuts off um i'm like embarrassed to admit but i think it's instructive to point out that uh i was playing possum in that moment and i don't mean playing yeah it like it possum to me out let's tell everybody who doesn't know the story oh yeah so real quick um foggnak island yeah the reason we've been yapping a long time but we had uh we were hunting it had hung an elk up in a tree and left it for a day and a half all the meat hanging in a tree um then were camped a few miles away from there and went back to retrieve went back with a few guys to retrieve the meat out of the tree and a bear had found it um and we were very very aware that this might occur and went up and investigated the area around the tree and determined that the bear hadn't found it yet in fact that the carcass of the animals laying not far away It was untouched.

[1311] In hindsight, there was a pile of bear shit that had been smeared on the ground.

[1312] And I remember looking at that pile of bear shit and I'm wondering if it had been smeared by a bear's foot or smeared by a boot.

[1313] And I determined that it looked like it had been smeared by a boot, which would have been we smeared the shit when we were hanging the thing in the tree.

[1314] And then stupidly we sat down to eat lunch.

[1315] And within a couple of minutes to sit down and eat lunch, it came in, you know, the bear came in.

[1316] and it's open mouth past just 18 inches from my head and I was facing away so I was the last one to see it Jan is who you know but he had a pistol he had bear spray but he hit it in the head with a pair of black diamond trekking poles he had sat down he's got spray and set his pistol on his pack but then when the when I talk about like playing possum and all the shit that happens, do you?

[1317] His instinct is to smack it with a track and pull.

[1318] Wow.

[1319] Everything.

[1320] You spend all your, you know, you spend all your time thinking about how you're going to handle this, that, and the other thing.

[1321] And sometimes it's disappointing that you don't handle stress that well.

[1322] You know, I just, I don't know.

[1323] I don't know where I went.

[1324] One of our guys, like, got ran over by a bear, rode it down the hill.

[1325] at that moment I snapped out of whatever I was in but it shut me down bad I even notice there's a thing that happens of people when they get really cold they enter a sort of a self -fulfilling prophecy mentality when you start to get cold you lose as you start to get really cold like where you get like where you could be in a hypothermic situation people stop doing the obvious things that you would do to get warm and I is aware of that as I am and as many times as I've experienced that I still see it happen to me I still have to snap myself out of it like you're just like you're getting cold you're getting lethargic you're getting cold more lethargic the cold's getting worse and I have to be like you can stop you can step in right now and stop this and I have to remind it's still it's like it still doesn't come naturally you know what you talk to people who train like um you talk to people who train for this kind of stuff that you they have to train in a very realistic environment they have to like keep your head you know and just like make good decisions if you walk into like a active car crash scene or whatever and there's a severed hand laying on the ground right some people are just going to see that hand and they're not going to see anything else some people are just going to see chaos and they're not going to focus on any particular thing but it's like the person to come in see the hands see everything around them like assess all that it's like it's just from exposure to that super traumatic stuff not to getting colds traumatic but i do when i look at how i respond to things i do catch that there's like a a mentality to practice and learn yeah it's it's understandable that something like a bear attack would trigger senses and trigger response that you're just not conditioned for you're not i don't know how you'd ever get conditioned to a bear attack i don't know i don't know i mean i don't know on that same island these dudes at the same island there was some guys some uh the same island i think it was later that same year of some operative some military guys happened to be hunting there they got attack by a bear and killed it really got one of them got messed up bad but he killed it I'm like, why did he kill it and I didn't?

[1326] Well, maybe they had their gun out, right?

[1327] You were in a weird situation too because if you guys were relaxed eating lunch your guards down, you're sitting there chewing on a sandwich.

[1328] I always laughed because you know I was in the middle of saying.

[1329] What?

[1330] Like, I was in the middle of a sentence.

[1331] I'll never forget because someone was laughing about why we were putting some sandwiches together and someone was laughing about why my sandwich looked so much nicer than someone else's sandwich.

[1332] And I said, if you want, I was in the middle of saying if you want a sandwich like this get your own fucking TV show but I was never able to finish the sentence but I know I was in the middle of saying that when all of a sudden the people around me erupted off the ground as though like a landmine had gone off underneath us because they saw it and I didn't see it I was looking the other way and it came in running oh just yeah that was scary man And I've had like, you know, a fair bit of exposure.

[1333] And I'm, yeah, like, I mean, relative to most, a ton of exposure to those things.

[1334] I got to expose my 10 -year -old kid to him this year a couple times, you know, hunting caribou and Alaska.

[1335] And it was, it was, like, cool to kind of see his thought process.

[1336] You, yeah, you've been exposed to them more than 99 .999 % of the population.

[1337] Yeah.

[1338] and for it to rattle you like that it was disappointing man because we're always talking about i'm gonna do this and i'll do that and we're always like yeah you know i actually prefer the 44 over to three because you know if i can't get it done with this 13 you know i got 13 reasons he doesn't want to charge me with this semi -auto it's like all this like bullshit you know and all of a sudden it like hits and like you know swat it with a trek and pull I've only seen one grizzly ever in the wild up close and it wasn't a big one it was like a six foot bear but it looked at me in a way that another bear has never looked at me before I've seen black bears black bears look at you like what are you who are you what's going on can I walk by you like black bears look at people at a weird way yeah they're like denizens of the underbrush man The grizzly looked at me like this.

[1339] Just locked on me. And I was like, oh, shit.

[1340] Like, that is just a different thing.

[1341] Like, it looked at me like, am I eating you?

[1342] Am I going to eat you?

[1343] Yeah, there's a mindset probably that comes from, there's a mindset that probably comes from just not being challenged.

[1344] Yeah.

[1345] And where I was at in Alberta, you can't hunt them.

[1346] So no one hunts them.

[1347] So they're bigger, they're more fierce, and they have no pressure.

[1348] You can still in Alberta.

[1349] Can you?

[1350] Yeah.

[1351] B .C. you can't anymore.

[1352] B .C. you can't, but you can hunt grizzlies in Alberta.

[1353] Yeah, I think I'm not saying everywhere, but I know that they still, I believe that Alberta still has.

[1354] B .C. lost.

[1355] It's, B .C. lost its grizzly hunts.

[1356] This is my friends John and Jen Rivet.

[1357] They were talking about how they're trying to get them to open up some sort of a season because they have a lot of them up there now.

[1358] Oh, okay.

[1359] And because the woods are so dense, they don't really know how many of them there are, but there are in so many encounters with people.

[1360] Yeah.

[1361] The BEC shutdown was very, it was political, right?

[1362] It was very, yeah.

[1363] It was like a referendum issue.

[1364] Yeah, that's a weird one, right?

[1365] Because the people that are making that decision, they've never had any experience with bears, but you talk to the people that actually live in the bush, and they'll tell you, there's a lot of Grizzlies up there.

[1366] And then there was also a thriving business and industry of people that were guiding up there.

[1367] and they're constantly in contact with them and they're like this is not an endangered animal yeah people that live in proximity to like people that live in proximity to things that are regarded as endangered tend to have a different perspective on the abundance than people who look at it from far away this is a good time to find this out what happened in Colorado with the wolves oh I mean they had to have did it pass oh Jamie could pull it up it had to have passed overwhelmingly we.

[1368] I know it's on track to.

[1369] I know that Utah's right to hunt and fish passed by a landslide, constitutional right to hunt and fish.

[1370] What does that mean?

[1371] 30 -some states have it now.

[1372] They're just like codifying that you have a right to hunt and fish.

[1373] It doesn't usually have teeth but it might in the future just give a way to challenge laws.

[1374] It's being used right now in Montana has a right to hunt and fish.

[1375] You have a constitutional right to hunt and fish.

[1376] Meaning that that a state has to recognize that renewable resources can be like should be allocated to hunters and anglers.

[1377] And it's, and one might ask like, well, how does it ever come into fruition?

[1378] There are, there's a lawsuit right now in, in Montana.

[1379] There's a lawsuit against the governor and the state who they put a cap, they put a quota on the wolf harvest and they're being sued by a conservation group who's worried about the steep decline in elk numbers.

[1380] They're being sued by that conservation.

[1381] group that their right to hunt is being infringed upon by a reticence to control wolf numbers to the detriment of big game herds people are usually i think people are supposed to act like apologetic for the fact that they want wild game resources like it's like oh you know um we talked about this one individual that you were curious about who is very instrumental in wolf reintroductions and he refers to hunters as the recreational big game -killing industry.

[1382] And it's kind of like a swipe at people who sort of acting like it's not a legitimate perspective to want there to be deer, elk, moose, caribou to eat and use.

[1383] I'm like very unapologetic about my view that I want there to be a lot of deer, elk, whatever, game.

[1384] What's most of your food, right?

[1385] Yeah, I want that to be on the landscape.

[1386] I want there to be abundant amounts of that.

[1387] And I don't, I'm not bashful about the fact that my desires there influence my feelings about predator management.

[1388] Like I don't view it as that bad.

[1389] Wolves kill coyotes.

[1390] Competition.

[1391] Yeah.

[1392] Let's see here.

[1393] Pass.

[1394] It says it's too close to call.

[1395] It's up $10 ,000.

[1396] No, shit.

[1397] Wow.

[1398] To that, wow, man. They were, I think they were predicting it was a done deal.

[1399] Holy shit.

[1400] Now that, to be clear, That is just, that proposition 114 in Colorado is, is, they're saying restore gravels.

[1401] What it is is making that the state fishing game agency will need to craft a plan.

[1402] There's still a lot.

[1403] It's not like that passes and all of a sudden here comes a helicopter full of wolves.

[1404] It doesn't go that way.

[1405] They have to craft a plan.

[1406] Then that plan has to be approved.

[1407] Yeah.

[1408] It'll be, and it'll be like, you can imagine, it'll be like all kinds of lawsuits, all kinds of issues, a lot to be sussed out.

[1409] but it's forcing the state game agency to craft a plan and take seriously what it would look like.

[1410] Because the argument is like, oh, you're making it a popular vote, you're taking science out of the hands of scientists and putting it into the hands of the public.

[1411] But in all fairness, I hope it doesn't pass because wolves are showing up in Colorado on their own.

[1412] I think that's a better way to go.

[1413] But I think less social tensions, it'll happen slower.

[1414] It'll be like a, you'll kind of, of like generate a sort of different sort of wolf that way.

[1415] So I hope it doesn't pass.

[1416] What do you mean by that?

[1417] Generate a different sort of wolf?

[1418] I mean that wolves that, this is a little bit, it's a little bit fuzzy, but it's like when wolves, when we establish wolf seasons in Montana, wolf hunting seasons and trapping seasons in Montana and Wyoming and Idaho, after a long period where there were no wolf season.

[1419] So it had a really dramatic impact on how the wolves behaved.

[1420] It made them much more secretive, moved them into different areas, kind of pushed them out of some of the bigger riparian zones.

[1421] It just sort of changed their attitude, changed the way they interact with the landscape.

[1422] So that you're getting, it might be true that by having wolves that have this instinct of, they're already coming out of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, you know, passing down through southern Wyoming and going to Colorado, they might have developed a finer -tune instinct about avoiding trouble with people.

[1423] Because there's like a lot of selective pressure against wolves and against grizzlies, a lot of selective pressure against those that are too ready to engage with man. It's like a good way to end up dead when you engage with man and spend too much time around livestock, spend too many time around developments.

[1424] It's like it doesn't work out for those ones.

[1425] the ones that shy away from and avoid habitations, avoid livestock.

[1426] Like that's the, that mentality and a wolf gets rewarded.

[1427] So it could be that if we're headed down a path where it's, it's just going to happen that Colorado's going to have wolves.

[1428] And I'll say like absolutely it's going to happen because it happened.

[1429] They showed up on their own.

[1430] How many?

[1431] Do they know what the numbers are right now?

[1432] But they think they're having pubs.

[1433] So the people who, the people, the architects of this plan in Colorado, would say it's just not going to happen fast enough.

[1434] They want to happen real fast.

[1435] And do they have a specific reason why they wanted to happen faster?

[1436] They would say that wolves are gone because of human manipulation, because of a very intentional plan to shoot them and poison them off the face of the earth.

[1437] This was in the 1800s?

[1438] Yeah, 1800s, 1900s, 1900s.

[1439] And that is wrong.

[1440] That's a sin against nature and that we have an obligation to rectify that crime, that sin, and bring this animal back.

[1441] Their enthusiasms don't extend to all sorts of imperiled wildlife, but this is a highly, to them, a very symbolic one.

[1442] It's very symbolic.

[1443] People, you know, the black, like, why they don't have those passions around the black -footed ferret?

[1444] I don't know I would love blackfooted ferrets They don't feel that way about blackfooted ferrets But with wolves it's like It means a lot to them I think also that is Bringing wolves in It's like also No one's ever going to tell you this I have a suspicion that I have a personal theory That it's a kind of a way to sort of stick it to It's kind of a way to to stick it to cattle producers.

[1445] It's a kind of way to stick it to hunters.

[1446] There's a little bit of that that infuses it, a little bit of a cultural antagonism.

[1447] That that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, to, like it is with wolves.

[1448] It's just symbolic.

[1449] So, you think they, so are they, like, vegetarians?

[1450] They want to stick it to cattle producers because they don't want people growing cattle.

[1451] Well, I mean, to, to speak in very, very general terms the cattle industry has been historically quite hostile to environmental groups no hostile to predators right hostile to wolves um i'm kind of like you know if you if you could work into my brain on it um and sort of like just accept that what i'm telling you it's kind of a true thing like i do like wolves to be on the landscape um i i i recognize that there are real problems that come like real problems for real people that come with wolves i don't think we should i don't think we can justifiably play god and eliminate species from the planet like like that feels very deeply wrong to me i want wolves to be on the landscape but if they're going to be on the landscape we're going to have to set what that looks like and then open up like pressure release valves and pressure release valves will take the form of hunting and trapping like state management there should be a stable population of wolves we should agree what that population looks like and they should be managed by the state as a renewable resource it's like what i want is pretty clear um i'm not like an anti wolf person what i am is an anti um abuse of the endangered species act person um so i'm not anti predator at all man i enjoy seeing them i enjoy cutting the tracks do you see them in montana a lot you know i got friends to see them a lot i see them only very rarely and glimpses of them um but you can go find them quite easily in certain areas like in yellowstone national park you can go find them they were people would run like even before the hunting season started you'd run into them more i was with ben o 'brien in bc the first time i met ben and uh we we found a carcass of a moose calf that had been torn apart by wolves it was wild yeah it was pretty recent it was cool to see the other day we were looking at a brand new um it was funny because we're looking at a brand new track and a big burn area a brand new track and brand new powder snow and in a big burn area and then looking around you felt like you could see everything and the snow is still falling those brand is like why can i see that thing um and then i talked to a friend of a friend and he had he was in that same area on that same day and had a couple passed than 40 yards of them so you know it happens and it doesn't yeah there's such a iconic animal for the West.

[1452] I'm glad they're around.

[1453] I'm glad they exist.

[1454] I've only seen one in the wild once and that was in Alberta and it was just, it was at dusk, barely see it, run across the road.

[1455] I was like, is that a fucking dog.

[1456] What is that?

[1457] It was one of those things.

[1458] Yeah, I saw a black one this year and all the time I saw it, I was wondering if that's what I was seeing.

[1459] Like the whole time I actually spent looking at it, I was like, is that what I'm seeing?

[1460] And then it was gone.

[1461] And I was like, oh, that's what I saw.

[1462] So I never even appreciated, it was so fleeting.

[1463] I never appreciated the moment.

[1464] I spent the whole moment in wondering what I was looking at.

[1465] I had that happen in the other day where I was like, I saw like, oh, my God, there's a mountain line.

[1466] I'm like, oh, no, it's not.

[1467] It's the back of a big horn sheep.

[1468] I don't know why.

[1469] My head went mountain line.

[1470] I saw a squirrel once in Alberta, and I thought for a whole second that it was a wolf.

[1471] Yeah.

[1472] I was that a wolf?

[1473] It's a fucking squirrel.

[1474] I was like, what is wrong with you?

[1475] but it was just like in between trees and you know dense forest i couldn't tell what the fuck i was looking at the arctic explorer um villjalmer steffinson describes sneaking up on a grizzly bear that was a marmot and he describes seeing a walrus's head sticking out of the water and then realizing it was a hill on the land with two water white snow chutes coming down these troughs in the hillside.

[1476] It's weird how the mine plays tricks on you like that.

[1477] Yeah.

[1478] That's why I don't trust you.

[1479] Oh, it's a walrus.

[1480] Oh, no, it's not.

[1481] It's the earth.

[1482] When people talk about seeing Bigfoot, you know, I ran into one lady when I was doing this Bigfoot show up in Mount Rainier, and she was very adamant that she saw a gorilla.

[1483] She saw a big gorilla walking through the woods.

[1484] She's like, I'm looking at it.

[1485] I'm like, that's a gorilla.

[1486] And I remember, like, wow, this lady's so sincere.

[1487] I wonder what she really saw.

[1488] But now I'm convinced she saw a black bear that was standing on two feet.

[1489] But I bet in her mind, and I'm thinking about me seeing that stupid squirrel, thinking it's a wolf.

[1490] People, your brain plays little tricks on you and then your imagination fills in the blanks.

[1491] There are these online forums.

[1492] People have found three big foots on our TV show.

[1493] Because they don't realize that people are always like ducking to get out of a shot.

[1494] Oh, that's hilarious.

[1495] So someone might like, whatever, someone might be doing something and like realize, oh, you know.

[1496] And they duck into a brush and lay down and people are like, oh, yeah, if you go to this moment and this second, you'll see it.

[1497] They don't even know it's there.

[1498] The guys don't even know it's there, but you can see it in the bushes.

[1499] People love to find missing things, things that aren't real.

[1500] You know, I've always said this, that like if Bigfoot was 100 % real, if everybody knew there was Bigfoot, it wouldn't be nearly as interesting as Orcas.

[1501] like if orcas weren't real like if people if orcas were a legend like the people have seen this thing it's in the water it's intelligent and it's enormous and they can sing and they have different languages and dialects and they might be aliens they might be from another planet apparently they don't even hurt people they help people fall off boats and they actually rescue them and these are all things that people have said about killer whales but because we know killer whales are really you seem like oh look you can put it in a fucking swimming pool and stick them in a parking lot in San Diego and people come to see them and they think it's cool.

[1502] My kids, they have a lot of, we get them a lot of animal books and they like the dinosaur books, especially the ones where there's like always a picture of a dinosaur than a person.

[1503] Relative, right?

[1504] So you get a relative size sense.

[1505] I find myself, I probably have a hundred times to my children said, that's all, that dinosaur book is great.

[1506] Dinosaurs are great.

[1507] the biggest thing to ever live on the face of the earth is alive right now the biggest thing ever is alive right now and they're just like yeah T -Rax man that's a I'm like are you listening to me the biggest creature ever is now no no they're like man if I could only visit the dyes like a shark imagine if a shark wasn't real you know but then you know You could see one, or they thought a shark was extinct.

[1508] Like, everyone cares about Megalodon.

[1509] Oh, my God, they think they might have found a Megalodon.

[1510] Megadons might still be alive.

[1511] But nobody cares about a great white.

[1512] Like, that's alive for sure.

[1513] There's a lot of them.

[1514] Yeah.

[1515] You can go, they fucking breed up in San Francisco.

[1516] You can go in the water.

[1517] They find them.

[1518] There's a video, there's an amazing video of drone footage off of Malibu, and these guys are surfing, and you follow the drone footage.

[1519] It's a couple hundred yards from the servers, and you see a great white swimming through the water.

[1520] Yeah.

[1521] Just right past these people.

[1522] people it's like jesus christ i was looking at this radio tracking shit of a great white on the east coast and he'd be like hanging around the coast you know and also like bee lines for bermuda hangs around there be lines back where it came from just like yeah i think i'll go over a thousand miles over this away yeah they're incredible man yeah they're amazing and they're real and no one gives you shit they care if they see it if you see it like whoa But it's, where animals are native and non -native, it's such a, such a strange conversation.

[1523] I really enjoyed your, your episode that you did with Jesse Griffith, where you were a hunting nil guy, which is Texas, where we are now is a weird place.

[1524] Yeah.

[1525] My wife saw an Axis deer the other day.

[1526] She's like, near her house.

[1527] She's like, I saw this deer.

[1528] He was like a full -sized deer, but it had spots like a fawn.

[1529] And I go up as an Axis deer.

[1530] She's like, they have those here?

[1531] I'm like, they must.

[1532] They have everything.

[1533] They have.

[1534] We're laughing, driving on the road.

[1535] Like, oh, a zebra.

[1536] It can easily be a zebra.

[1537] No, I'm not kidding.

[1538] Like, we're like, oh, a zebra.

[1539] Yeah, you saw a zebra.

[1540] And not only that, but a free range zebra, wild zebra.

[1541] Like, low, like.

[1542] Yeah, I don't know that.

[1543] The one I'm talking about, I don't know.

[1544] I would imagine that happens at some amount of them, like, get away here and there.

[1545] Where, us, it was just wide open, like, woods in between.

[1546] between houses there was an axis deer yeah the zebra i'm talking about was like someone's zebra but it's still just funny like the climate supports it oh yeah so these nilga i mean you know they're from india is that what it's an antelope from you know indian subcontinent an antelope species a cool looking animal yeah that's strange looking jesse's restaurant here in austin man i mean he serves it yeah shout out to die duet it's a great place you know the dog on him about the name of that all the time it's um but it like comes from like this you'll have to explain to you but it's Italian for something yeah it's like to eat from the both the kingdoms it's something it's some he kind of regrets name in his place that but uh because everybody's like you know no knows how to pronounce it but it's like um eat from the kingdom of the land and kingdom it's some portion of this sort of like proverby thing saying like eat from the land eat from the sea which isn't bad advice is he fully open now because when I went there I don't believe so he just had the patio you can eat outside I believe it's some kind of limited situation yeah Austin's interesting like some places are just open yeah just like wear a mask come on in and then other places like his place is a little bit more protective he um like yourself he's a exceedingly generous person Jesse is good remember we're talking all that shit about America mm -hmm good American yeah he seems like a real nice guy I've only met him once, but his restaurant's amazing.

[1547] What does Neil Guy taste like?

[1548] You know, it's kind of funny the way describing wild game goes.

[1549] I think that it was described to me by people who are down there.

[1550] We were on a ranch, a famous ranch called Eteria.

[1551] It's very limited access, but just through social connections and things we're able to hunt on this property that doesn't get hunted very heavily.

[1552] and the people there that have grown up on that property growing up in cattle ranching they view it as they view it as superior to beef meaning like Neil Guy are for eating cattle or for selling is the way someone explained me I mean because there's like a great monetary value there's like a market for cattle there's a market for Neil Guy too but it's different and more complicated but it was like it was like this is what we eat we eat the Neil Guy we sell the cattle mean like so it's it's approachable mild reminiscent of beef you know it's very very popular it's very popular there's a handful of things in the u .s where uh we we have filmed and talked about seek a deer a lot in the in merrill or delmarva peninsula um people in those areas as popular as white tail deer are it's like america's meat um people in those areas like screw that man i'm eating seek a deer and with people that have exposure to access deer feel that way and people have exposure to a kneel guy are like that's my animal so it's it's in that it's in that collection of yeah they're insane man I got that hide tanned by a guy here a guy here in Austin ran the process for me got it tanned and and my daughter wanted it for her bedroom and there was some kind of custody battle it wound up in my boy's bedroom look at that picture that looks like something from a dr. Seuss book that doesn't look like a real animal.

[1553] The one on the right, the big picture?

[1554] That's amazing.

[1555] Crazy, man. And aren't there vitals in a weird place, too?

[1556] Very far, very far forward.

[1557] So you almost...

[1558] Low and forward.

[1559] And how far do the lungs go back?

[1560] Ooh.

[1561] What do you mean the limbs go back?

[1562] Lungs?

[1563] Oh, lungs.

[1564] Oh, I'm sorry.

[1565] Not as far as if you're accustomed to...

[1566] Not as far back as if you're accustomed to deer.

[1567] Yeah.

[1568] You actually, you've got to aim.

[1569] like weirdly forward and weirdly low i shot one shot top of the heart off it but i was aiming like i was under instruction from a person a guide that we were with um and he was like imploring me like you have to listen to me like that has to go this way or you'll lose that thing in the brush wow yeah he said when they make it into the brush man you get a sinking feeling they like don't go down easy i shot it twice he's like shoot it again shoot again like really i feel like i and i shot it again but they're worried about losing the strong strong animals um but yeah man they run most of them around private land there are public hunting options opportunities for them is that an animal that gets hunted by tigers in its natural environment i believe so i believe so but i have no i have zero expertise on that that's the thing about access deer apparently was explained to me that they they do they in their natural habitat they do get hunted by tigers so they're so fucking fast.

[1570] They're equipped to deal with it.

[1571] Have you hunted Axis?

[1572] Yeah, I have, yeah.

[1573] How fast are they?

[1574] Fast.

[1575] They're so fast.

[1576] But I didn't, I haven't hunted them with a bowl where it really comes to haunt you.

[1577] Leopards play on you.

[1578] Yeah, leopards prey.

[1579] There's another thing like, you know, with American pronghorn or what we popularly call antelope, they're ridiculously fast for anything they have to deal with.

[1580] And it was like they, you know, the theory is they co -evolve with the American Cheetah.

[1581] Yeah.

[1582] And now you look, like, why does he need to be that?

[1583] Like, he doesn't have any reason to be that fast.

[1584] Yeah, I got to get a hold to Dan Flores again.

[1585] Yeah.

[1586] I had him on years ago to talk about his book, American Coyote, and lost contact with him.

[1587] Are you still talking to him?

[1588] Man, I haven't, but I feel as though if I reached out to him, he would be as warm and inviting as he always is.

[1589] He's a great guy.

[1590] He's an intellect, man. Very, very interesting person.

[1591] When I was in graduate school, I had to take, like, an out -of -discipline seminar or something like that, and I took his history writing, Western history, whatever the hell class, I took of his.

[1592] And he kicked my ass.

[1593] You know, it kicked my ass.

[1594] It was a very hard class to take.

[1595] And I learned a tremendous amount from that guy.

[1596] He was a good professor.

[1597] I want to get him together with someone like Randall Carlson, who's an expert in the Younger Dryas Impact Theory.

[1598] Yeah.

[1599] Because the two of them coincide.

[1600] like the mass extinction of North American mammals coincide timeline -wise with the Younger Dryness Impact Theory.

[1601] So, you know, Randall Carlson spent his entire life focusing on this impact theory and how it ended the Ice Age.

[1602] People taught about it being like the idea that never dies.

[1603] Yeah.

[1604] I was at the Lindenmeyer site in Colorado, a famous Folsom site, Ice Age encampment.

[1605] And I was, it was funny because I was, I happened.

[1606] to be at that site that there was a guy there working in these certain sediment levels to find these little micro crystals these like these things that were created during the impact because you had all this radio carbon dating that had been done around Lindenmeyer so we knew all these ages and he was in there looking for these things and the anthropologists that I was with were very dismissive of him it was like ah you know but they're less and less so now well yeah well they're very invested they're like we I did an interview with the guy not too long ago when we were talking about scientists oh it was a entomologist Justin Schmidt I think it was we're talking about um like why do young scientists always make all the discoveries not all but you know the good idea like some of the good ideas come from young scientists he said because people my age all we do is defend our old shit it seems kind of true like we're so busy like we're so busy defending our old theories well so many people and the anthropology side want to employ the Blitzkrieg theory, right?

[1607] No, at this point, it's deader and dead.

[1608] Really?

[1609] Remember when I talked about I got an opportunity to revise my book after 10 years?

[1610] Yeah.

[1611] Yeah, I put some language in there around the Blitzkrieg hypothesis.

[1612] So what's the replacement theory?

[1613] Well, let's explain the Blitzkrieg theory.

[1614] Yeah, the Blitzkrieg hypothesis held that that it was the arrival of humans that led to the extra -pays, and extinction of a lot of the Ice Age megafauna.

[1615] So you'd look and it would be that why did mammoths go extinct in Europe, you know, 30 ,000 ,000 years ago, but they went extinct here 10 ,000 years ago.

[1616] And you'd map like human migrations and you found this kind of like compelling pattern of the fact that people show up and shit goes extinct.

[1617] We did a podcast about this with the guy you should talk to sometime named David Meltzer, who knows this world better than anybody.

[1618] And it's really elegant.

[1619] It's a very elegant theory.

[1620] It explains a lot very quickly.

[1621] It's seductive because I think it's seductive from a cultural perspective because it allows you to fantasize that past cultures were as destructive as our own, which makes you feel good that they were hunting these things to extinction back then, so we can't be that bad for driving things to extinction now.

[1622] Everything about it was very packaged up and had a nice bow on it.

[1623] What started to eat away at the Blitz Creek hypothesis, is that more DNA work on extinct, on remains, like more DNA work on bones and a greater picture of effective population size of these past populations.

[1624] And you realize that things were in steep decline anyways, things were changing rapidly anyways.

[1625] Maybe people came in and kind of like did the accudea gra on some of these things, but it wasn't that they blinked out.

[1626] They faded out for a long time.

[1627] But everything, our old perspective of how we used to look at it made everything seem very compressed and very immediate.

[1628] And so it's just gotten like more complicated.

[1629] It's just gotten more complicated as we understand more.

[1630] That you had the mammoth populations were perhaps collapsing long before people showed up.

[1631] And also there's the problem.

[1632] Yes, that was the idea, too, that you could, like, people coming into a valley and you would kill some females and could have, like, for pack of germs, you know, these things are like very low fecundity that you could come in and kill some females and have this impact on it.

[1633] There's also the problem that, I remember criticism of people that used to feel this way.

[1634] The criticism used to be that they called them the bison boys, where they're They had this fantasy of these, like, roving, highly effective big game hunters.

[1635] And then people point now to, why is there not more evidence of, like, why is there such limited evidence of humans killing Mastodons and mammoths?

[1636] Most of, I mean, stuff is just gone, right?

[1637] It's been a long time ago.

[1638] But that's another thing.

[1639] When we used to do archaeology, they would throw everything away except for the big bones.

[1640] they would look for projectile points look for big bones everything else would just get washed away in sluice boxes or through sieves and we weren't looking at the finer picture of what people ate, what was there they thought that any association of human artifacts and mammoth remains meant that well it could only mean one thing these people killed those mammoths you know sites that are described as kill sites that now people investigate and like we have no reason to believe this is a kill site.

[1641] There's a thing that came out of Mexico not long ago where they're like, oh, there's a big kill site, they even flipped the bones over in order to do this and that to them.

[1642] Oh, yeah, remember that.

[1643] Yeah, and then these analysts come look at, like, there is no compelling reason to think that this is a kill site.

[1644] Because now, like, you take a elephant, a dead elephant dump it on the ground, look at it a month, look at it a month later, look at it a month later, look at it a month later.

[1645] What happens to the bone?

[1646] you know and things that we used to think where kill sites are just not it's a long time something dies time goes by someone goes in camps there later it all gets jumbled up you find a projectile point in a mammoth bone oh my god he killed it and then other people are like well no now that we've analyzed it the 3 ,000 years separated these two occurrences there's only so much place on the planet shit happens in the same place time and time and time again so it's just it's falling apart for for reasons he Meltzer would describe more eloquently to me. It is fascinating when they're trying to piece together what happened based on some bones and some fossils and based on tools and just whatever evidence that they find in the ground and that they're trying to put together a comprehensive portrait of history through this.

[1647] What a lot of anthropologists laugh thought is that everything unexplained is always of religious significance.

[1648] How so?

[1649] Like let's say you find a couple buffalo skulls in a circle.

[1650] Like they're doing a dig and they find some buffalo skulls facing the same way in the circle.

[1651] Oh, I see what you're saying.

[1652] It was like a ritual.

[1653] Yeah, it was ritualistic.

[1654] Or just they just died there.

[1655] Yeah.

[1656] I mean, you know, I might be cutting up deer and my kids come in and do something, line the hooves up in some way, stick them in the snow.

[1657] Right.

[1658] Or whatever, things just like freakish.

[1659] But yeah, like unexplained things are always like ritualistic, symbolic.

[1660] We reread stuff into stuff.

[1661] But yeah, the Blitzkrieg hypothesis, I'm sure there's probably some hangar on.

[1662] but um it's it's it's it's it's as dead as the mammoths i used to love it because it was so beautiful especially because there's stuff like this like wrangle island that's where the the woolly mammoths were survivors they lived there till three four thousand years ago and then why and then you'd be like but no one ever showed up there they didn't get colonized by humans yeah why did all this big shit go extinct in australia 40 ,000 years ago when people showed up it's you got to have that melzer dude on what's his name david j melzer he's at southern methodist university well i went to visit him you know what he showed me is the the the the fulsome type site where they first excavated fulsome bones i got to hold them and you can see on the skulls this is no joke this isn't like us making believe something's true these are you know 12 13000 year old Weiss and Skulls.

[1663] And you can see all the cut marks where they cut the tongues out.

[1664] Wow.

[1665] Yeah, the knife, you can see the knife work on the bones.

[1666] Wow.

[1667] Yeah, he's, that dude is, that dude is, he's sharp, man. He's written a bunch of books about this stuff.

[1668] He'd kind of blow your mind a little bit.

[1669] When we were in Nevada, when we went on that mule deer hunt for your show, I found an arrowhead.

[1670] And I lost it.

[1671] I don't know what the fuck happened.

[1672] Someone cleaned my office and it disappeared.

[1673] we were going to talk about putting yeah you're supposed to I'm supposed to leave it there put it back yeah I didn't I was with some anthropologist one time and they were finding sweet shit up in the Brooks range in Alaska and you had to leave it there man they'd photograph it and sketch it and stuff and tuck it back into the tuck it back into the that seems so crazy tuck it back into the tundra what did you find oh old stuff old stuff these guys are like what kind of stuff projectile points Big projectile points.

[1674] Like how old?

[1675] Well, the guy I was with, he's retired now, a guy named Mike Cunz, he had found a thing called the Mesa site, and he had identified, like, you know, this is that kind of area, it's like mathematically the most remote area in North America.

[1676] If you factor in distance from roads and settlements, he had found this very prominent Mesa where it wasn't a campsite, but it was just a place that people would sit and wait for game to come by and found hundreds of projectile points up there.

[1677] You know, and these things are like ice age projectile points because they had all kinds of radiocarbon dates because they built all these fires up there.

[1678] And so he did this whole book type thing about it.

[1679] It's the academic community accepts it.

[1680] The academic consensus is that he's right.

[1681] During the ice age, whatever it was, 12 -7 year, 12 ,000 some odd years ago, whatever the hell it was, 10 ,700, like some ice age days.

[1682] people camped up here made shit loads of projectile points this guy found them um we were doing it kind of a continuation of that work of mapping out campsites and we would find like unbelievable points unbelievable points it just seems so fucked up to leave it hasn't been picked over yet i know but it seems so fucked up to leave dude tony man it was like against every bit of like michigan elbow grease i've ever had laid up in me i i would fantasize I would be like, you know, you might be leaving that there, but someday I'm going to get me a helicopter.

[1683] It will be mine.

[1684] Well, just the idea of holding on to one of those, just put it in your hand and just imagine what it was like when that guy used tendons to lace it to a stick.

[1685] Yeah.

[1686] Bad dudes.

[1687] Yeah.

[1688] To get their food.

[1689] A lot of know -how.

[1690] They didn't know they were bad.

[1691] They thought they had cool stuff.

[1692] they're showing each other new shit new techniques and strategies they're like check this out and they're like oh you young guys you know they're yeah they thought it was sweet yeah there's a lot of that out here there's a lot of arrowheads apparently out here on ranches people find them all the time my friend Gary Clark Jr. had a picture on his Instagram page you probably find Jamie of a perfect arrowhead he found on this ranch I mean it's just perfect and you just look at that arrowhead and you think god damn sent that through the lungs of a white -tailed deer probably hundreds of years ago look at that that's sweet that's so awesome look at that thing it's perfect and it looks like someone just made it oh man time travel i know could you imagine if there was any ever a time or you could just go to view just to be a fly on the wall of history do you know when you think you'd 20 000 years ago mile city Montana you're so specific why I just because I just want to see how I'd want to see maybe not 20 whatever the hell it is I'd want to see how woolly mammoths interacted with that landscape wow like I just seen woolly mammoths in that in their habitat there at sort of the arrival of the first humans there's a guy I'm friends with online I don't know him in real world but he's contacted me and he's actually sent me some stuff from his site but he's the Instagram handle is the Bone Yard in Alaska do you know this guy here let me know let me see if I could find it you found it already there you go the Bone Yard Alaska they have this site that they found something there once many many years ago and since then they've been pulling all these there's an ice age caribou horn they've been pulling all these incredible pieces out i mean just over and over and over you see that one picture you had a bear track look at that right next to his foot that's is that a black bear or a small grizzly bear was that well i'd want to see the front foot better but the my the front foot's back behind his heel and i'm like it looks like a grizzly now if you scroll back to the page jamie you go down they've had a bunch of like look at the one the upper right upper right end corner oh there's uh forest galant on the podcast talking about it no but that um yeah all the tusks they keep finding there i mean they've had it's a treasure trove in this one area and it's not an enormous area i mean i think it's only a few acres that they've been excavating and finding all this shit but it's just a massive amount of dead bones and and skulls and tusks and in this one area on my first date with my wife i took her to the lebray of tarpitz or at least she knew what she was getting into yeah man yeah my old stomping grounds i've never been uh but uh that's uh oh you really no she tells the story where they had like a little miniature bronze of a mammoth and she said um oh look a baby man they must have found a baby mannith and i um i was like well no actually you know that's she's like yeah no shit you know she's like i was like well little lady let me set you straight that's a specific time so you would want to see that more than anything else yeah if i could do a second if i could take a second whack at it i would go like a second setting like back to the future part two yeah i would go to join daniel boone on his first trip over the cumberland gap oh that ought to be wild that'd be my second trip didn't they eat wolves i don't know i know he's got a great story about a wolf coming into their camp and biting a guy.

[1693] And what surprised these hunters was that the wolf seemed very intent on one individual and bit this individual.

[1694] He then later developed hydrophobia.

[1695] And they were out jacklighting for deer where they'd burn pine knots in the front of a boat and drift down rivers to shoot deer.

[1696] And he had a bout of what they called like hydrophobia and went berserkers.

[1697] he was he had uh rabies yeah he had rabies so hydrophobia is like that fear of water like i don't know what it is but people you know freak out um had about had to be restrained took him home and he died wow yeah and that was in his that was in his social circle so the wolf had given him rabies when it bit him came into a camp seemed very in what alarmed them was how it seemed so intent on a person and eventually bit that person and killed that guy Jesus and then there's another thing that happened to Boone where Boone's kid was tortured and killed by Indians and he was hastily buried and Boone went back to Boone went back to find the bones of his son and the wolves had torn at the body and Boone it was a rainstorm and Boone later described how he had lifted his boy out and held him you know, sobbing and then heard some sounds in the distance and it was some Indians coming and slipped off into the night.

[1698] Wow.

[1699] And you think about like that moment for that guy.

[1700] Jesus Christ.

[1701] Later in life, he would go on these long hunting trips, just him and his slave together.

[1702] We'd go on like, like they were like old men, old buddies, or whatever.

[1703] I don't mean to, I don't mean to say like buddies because it was like, but they were like, they would, like him and a slave would go on these long journeys on together, which I think it would be like a great play.

[1704] Right?

[1705] It kind of would be.

[1706] Oh, dude, when I retire, I'm going to work on that.

[1707] Just imagine being those people not knowing what was out there, making their way across the country.

[1708] that's just a type of mindset it's a rare individual that i just don't think we grow people like that anymore no it's over -observed it's over -observed but lewis and clark were supposed to keep their eyes out for mammoths really wow it's like oh while you're out there man there was some consideration was there any stories of mammoths people who had all the bones all the bones had come out of stuff.

[1709] Jefferson got really interested in some of these mammoth and mastodon bones that had come out of some of those licks and was like, hey man, you know, in addition to all the other shit like keep your eyes out for a big elephant.

[1710] It must have been fascinating to see what the wildlife was like before it was molested by modern humans.

[1711] You know, back in the 16, 1700s.

[1712] Dude, read Russell Osborne's Journal of a Trapper.

[1713] What year was that from?

[1714] He was in the late 30s, early 40s.

[1715] He was a meticulous journal keeper.

[1716] One of the few people that wrote a journal who wasn't full of shit.

[1717] Yeah.

[1718] It's a great depiction of what it was like.

[1719] And he was like 30 years after contact in those areas.

[1720] I think I mentioned this to you before, but our idea of like pre -contact contact, contact, there's this Elliot West, is this historian?

[1721] And he describes how, when Lewis and Clark hit the Great Plains, somebody told you this when Lewis and Clark hit the Great Plains there were Indians living on the Great Plains so here's Lewis and Clark discovering the Great Plains right there were Indians on the Great Plains who had been to Europe met the king of France and returned at that time he's like it is he has this essay it's like I can't remember what it's called but it's like it's a muddled history it is like you want to put it you want to put it into like this neat chronology and shit there were hundreds of years of just touch and go of interaction touch and go interactions hundreds you know we we get this like linear idea about like you know that that all of a sudden we sort of like in this organized fashion went and found these areas but there's like crazy interplay I had no idea that anybody from back then from a Native American tribe had gone to France like that sounds insane like how did they even get over there you remember Jim Jarmouche's dead man yes kind of similar to that like people would be brought like as like like you know delegations you know like we'd be trying to manipulate the governments France Spain England you know would be trying to manipulate tribes to participate in form alliances and you know that you would that the you know let's say the the French might ally with with a group and that group would stop the bleed of of English colonists pushing into the, you know, Appalachians.

[1722] And there was all these just, and it was, you know, it wasn't, a lot of it was self -serving, too.

[1723] Like, you know, the tribes absolutely, it was not like they weren't capable of making these decisions for themselves.

[1724] They got on board with these plans.

[1725] But yeah, they were whining and dining, man. To be like, you know, we're happy to join forces with you.

[1726] Why?

[1727] Come to see my palace.

[1728] It's funny, because we're in such a historic time right now, but we're right in the middle of it.

[1729] You know, one day they're going to look back on these days.

[1730] post this crazy election when people are jockeing for position who's going to be able to control oh they'll be like fucking podcasts joe rogan i'm sure that's going to have a weird that joe rogan had to ruin it all yeah or not or not but they're going to be looking back at this time about what a chaotic time it is i mean this is this is a history time like when when people in the future are going over the 21st century and all the different turns and trials and tribulations, this is going to be a pivotal moment.

[1731] We, um...

[1732] What's this, Jamie?

[1733] Oh, there you go.

[1734] 1725, group of Indians, including one...

[1735] How do you say that?

[1736] Atoe?

[1737] An Osage.

[1738] Osage.

[1739] Osage.

[1740] One Missouri chief.

[1741] One Missouri young woman, one Illinois.

[1742] One Chicago.

[1743] How do you say that?

[1744] Chicago, you?

[1745] Oh, Chicago.

[1746] I have no idea.

[1747] I don't know the pronunciation.

[1748] And one, uh, Mechigamias were sent to Paris, France.

[1749] There they met with the director of the company of the Indies and the Duke and the Duchess of De Bourbon.

[1750] Chiefs were given a complete French outfit, which included a blue dress coat, silver ornaments, and a plumed hat trimmed in silver.

[1751] They were presented to King Louis XIV, and they performed a dance at the opera.

[1752] The French king gave each of the chief.

[1753] a royal medallion, a rifle, a sword, and a watch.

[1754] Wow.

[1755] Then it goes on and name Moore Group.

[1756] So that's 1725, Lewis and Clark were 1804.

[1757] But those weren't, those were like, you know, not Western, not extreme Western.

[1758] One of the books that I read, I was listening to, I should say, on audiobook about Native Americans, maybe it was Black Elk.

[1759] Black Elk Speaks?

[1760] Yeah.

[1761] Well, they talked about him going over to Europe and taking part of those.

[1762] wild bill shows that they did over there that that is one of the more fascinating things about the wild west was that these people that were involved in these historical battles then recreated them it would be as though this isn't the participants in the battle a little bighorn where they defeated the 7th cavalry under custer and annihilated his command participants of that battle would later get together uh they would get to Yeah, because, you know, there's other, there was other, like, campaigns going on at the same time.

[1763] So, like, we think about getting killed, but not too far away.

[1764] It was more soldiers that didn't.

[1765] But anyways, participants of that would later get together and play it out.

[1766] It's hard to picture that we would have al -Qaeda fighters.

[1767] Right.

[1768] It's reenacting.

[1769] Come and be like, oh, yeah, I survived the global war on terror and shit.

[1770] Now we're going to show you, like, no, I was sitting here when they kicked in the door.

[1771] Like, how?

[1772] how that happened actual people from like Gettysburg would get together right yeah and pretend to yeah I don't know yeah look at I feel like if you went like my old man fought in World War II I feel like if had you gone I don't know man maybe when he's older in life and they said like hey do you want to get together with some of the you know what you like to call krauts who were in the war and you show what happened when your buddy got killed I feel like he might be like yeah no no that still feels a little fresh.

[1773] Yeah, real fresh.

[1774] Yeah, I mean, and these guys were doing this not long after.

[1775] Dude, they weren't even old men yet.

[1776] No. Yeah, like half a decade.

[1777] It's so.

[1778] And we're talking about the level of animosity that these people would kill each other on both sides and mutilate the bodies.

[1779] Deep, deep, deep hatred.

[1780] The likes of which is hard for us to comprehend.

[1781] Like, the impulse to desecrate the corpse of your enemy and then get together and have a Wild West show about it.

[1782] Mutilating bodies.

[1783] You recommended a Son of the Morning Star.

[1784] Have you read it?

[1785] Yeah.

[1786] Yeah, it's heavy.

[1787] It's heavy shit.

[1788] The things that they did to each other.

[1789] Yeah.

[1790] Yeah.

[1791] And the crazy thing was that the Native Americans had no sense of, there was no quitting there was no sense of turning themselves in there was no sense of like if you were captured you were murdered and mutilated so they would fight to the bitter end like they knew there was no surrender because if you surrendered you would be tortured and killed like some of the depictions of the tortures from that and empires of the summer moon some of the things they did to the bodies just like Jesus Christ like when did they develop such insane cruelty and is this always been a part of being a human being or was this exacerbated by the hard conditions of the of the planes like what what led them to be so vicious it's a great question man there's things about like things that these great the great lakes tribes of like um making people eat parts of themselves you know uh but a lot of it had you know there's like things about how you if you could handle that um and not crack it was respected it was like a testing you know but i don't know what it was like to live i can't even begin to imagine was like to live with that level of stuff there's a i recently read a book called plainsman the yellowstone and it was a history of the yellowstone basin and um this guy takes that whole it's sort of like an antidote to son of the morning star because he takes that that custer fight which has become so emblematic of the west and like this regarded as this big turning point in the history of the indian wars and he treats it like just like a little kind of like inconsequential thing that happened one day just didn't really matter the the book was written man i mean you know what i mean it was like everyone knows how this story's going to end and that day didn't have any bearing on how it was going to end a guy did something stupid got some people killed the war ground on it'd be like if it would be like if we're like imagining d day right it'd be like let's say we're imagining d day and then we heard about some peripheral story that happened on d day where like a weird thing happened and some soldiers got killed and some guy made a mistake and got some people killed and our telling of d day um and let's say that incident was called the whatever the baculum incident okay um now when we conceptualized D -Day.

[1792] When we talk about Custer, it's like, this isn't his analogy, but I'm presenting it this way.

[1793] When we talk about Custer, we're sort of talking about D -Day as the baculum incident.

[1794] And we've lost sight of D -Day.

[1795] You know, it was like just a little blip.

[1796] It was like a thing that happened that didn't matter.

[1797] The war ground on.

[1798] Like, they beat them.

[1799] They knew they were going to beat him.

[1800] No one wondered who was going to win.

[1801] Right.

[1802] The war is like they, they, they, they, they, some guy screwed up, got some people killed.

[1803] We subjugated the tribes.

[1804] and then it became bigger over history over time it became that we like that that story got infused with all this folklore importance and symbol and it's like deeply symbolic i'm a sucker for it yeah i am a deeply symbolic yeah um just war was intimate then it was uh there was no other way you had to be close had to be close to each other to kill each other yeah it's a different world right and with the plains indians even more intimate because you're just dealing with bows and arrows yeah lances on horses it's a different kind of uh different kind of life and death yeah then flying a drone over the middle east from texas and then going home at night and having dinner with your family yeah yeah it's uh it's interesting how we're more and more separated from that and also interesting that the uh the plains indians seemed to take delight in it like it was uh It was fun.

[1805] There was fun sport.

[1806] There was ever -increasing ways to be more cruel and vicious.

[1807] And it seemed to be, there was entertainment involved in it.

[1808] Some kind of honor code that I can't even begin to try to, like, guess at and explain.

[1809] But things that would land you in jail today for war crimes.

[1810] Yeah.

[1811] We're a matter, of course.

[1812] Yeah, expected.

[1813] I forgot to talk about your book.

[1814] Oh, no. we don't need to talk about it length i'd love if you mentioned it i'm very proud of it mediator guide to wilderness skills and survival um this is your how many you guys have written you had the the two books on wild game yeah we had the guide book yeah guide books like complete guide to hunting butchering and cooking wild game volumes one and two which is big game and small game then did a wild game book wild game cookbook and uh yeah this is a a very pragmatic practical it's kind of almost a response to the sort of fantasy land that the survival genre has become um it's a lot more there's a lot it's for people who actually spend time outdoors um avoiding avoiding trouble managing trouble conducting risk assessment and then also just like how to think how to behave what to do uh what things matter what things don't what risks live in your head what risks are real um yeah and it's it's yeah it comes out december one is there going to be pre -order now oh i got a copy of it right here baby is there going to be an audio version of this man i don't know we haven't talked about it it's illustrated yeah that would be a problem right yeah and it'd be it's more meant to be like a usable manual yeah yeah like a usable manual but i'm i'm quite happy with it thanks for bringing it up my pleasure thanks for being here man it was fun always always always is i'll come back in a year or two years whatever please still come back anytime um your podcast is the meat eater podcast it's available everywhere um and then the show is on netflix and sometimes it's on the sportsman's channel too right yeah that's right but how does that work uh you know it has this complex thing of like first window second window stuff so our episodes currently premiere on Netflix and then um go to you know you can find them on sportsman channel outdoor channel um past episodes but new stuff goes up in Netflix and winds up there and then we have we just recently put our seasons one and two just on YouTube you just go check them out on YouTube all right we'll be adding to that YouTube stash as well all right yeah beautiful thanks for being here thanks a lot bye everybody