#610 - Steven Rinella

31:13You see Clay and the birds, right? Anyhow. definitely do you got to stay in school brother what's what's the what is fun is to open up merlin and see who's got it and then get off a ways yeah and so one of my buddies who is a yankee he's a northerner buddy seth like he's a real good owl caller yeah and it started realize when he realized that merlin like when he realized that merlin wasn't picking him up wasn't putting him down as a barred owl. He like had like an emotional crisis and started redoing his shit and working on his shit until Merlin, he had to change his stuff until he could figure out why Merlin wasn't grabbing him.

31:52Look, all I'm telling you is that motherfucker ain't registering on Merlin. That's all. Look, I'm going to shoot you straight. That's crazy. It's also crazy to be, I actually, now this, I really understand wanting to be this animal and my, my. Being an owl. Yeah. Wanting to really get into their head. And we had, I've had a little bit of owl actually. my sister's husband cooked two owls during thanksgiving well he might want to keep he might want to keep that more secret yeah i don't know if he did it he'd i mean if there were i haven't seen him in a long time that's what i'll tell you but he uh it's not a lot of meat i'll tell you that it's kind of like that like you see those women in little house on the prairie a lot of skirts not a lot of meat under there you know yeah that's a good way to put it you think it's Philadelphia under there, but it's a little more Arizona when you get under there.

32:43Yeah, see, I'd tell you a good story my father told me, but I don't, and he's dead, so they're not going to do anything bad. I will tell it. I don't know why my father did this. Okay. I don't know why my father did this, but it talks about that, like, a lot of skirt, not much. Not much meat, yeah. So, obviously, my father was from another time. My dad was born in 19, he had me when he was old. He was born in the Great Depression. Oh, wow, like 1910? No, not that late. He was a World War II veteran. Oh, wow. Anyhow. Thank you, Mr. Rinella, for your service. He tells a story about sitting deer hunting with his bow.

33:18And somehow, oh, there he is on the right there. He tells a story about sitting deer hunting with his bow and deciding to shoot an owl with his bow. And he says he doesn't, and he feels like he hits the owl. I can't account for why he would decide to do this. is not something I would do. I don't condone it. Shoots the owl and like hits it dead center. But he said the owl doesn't even change tune. Wow. Because he realized just it's all feathers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all brassiere, baby. No tit. That was his only owl hunting story. God. And he didn't, the owl escaped unharmed. Yeah. I mean, look at these motherfuckers.

33:59What are we doing? What are we doing, dude? Oh, yeah, there you go. If you don't think all of the world is a psyop, look at this MF-er, homie. Look at this thing right here. You want to know a current controversy about the barred owl? Mm-hmm. I'd love to. The noise that Clay was just making there and the owls were making? Okay. Do you remember back to the kind of culture war issue around spotted owls, like logging in the Pacific Northwest and the spotted owl? Well, I think they were tearing down their habitats, right? Exactly. And the spotted owl became, this happens to animals now and then, where a spotted owl stopped being an owl and kind of became like a cultural emblem.

34:45Oh, yeah, like when they put them on frontier airlines, like on their wing? Yeah, sure. It'd be like wolves occupy this now. Like there's wolves as flesh and blood creatures, and then there's sort of the symbolism of the wolf. Right. So the spotted owl became a symbolism of land use, you know, like land use controversy. Okay. Meaning you got loggers in the Pacific Northwest trying to produce, you know, harvest timber products. But there's this owl, this endangered species, this owl that they're trying to protect. So the owl becomes this kind of like proxy symbol for whether we should cut trees or not.

35:20I remember even in Dumb and Dumber, they went to the banquet where they were raising money for the spotted owl. Yeah, exactly. So it became like a cultural thing. So barred owls are one of those species like Canada geese, white-tailed deer, crows that do really well, that they benefit off people. Right. Like the more people there are in more places, the more beneficial it is to that owl. That owl does well in disturbed ecosystems. They like people. They'll hang out above your house. They'll hunt in your yard. Like we don't bother them. Other things hate people. but this thing that's gradually happening is barred owls which were historically more in the eastern u.s yeah are colonizing the the spotted owls range and displacing spotted owls so there's this big push and there was even federal money i don't know where it stands right now i think the current administration was rolling it back there was a push where they were going to go kill right there they were going to cull 470 ,000 barred owls in the pacific northwest to keep them from migrating to to try to save the spotted owl the spotted owl fuck and i think they might have pulled that money i'm not sure oh but um just a little like you know like wildlife politics like there's always wildlife politics brewing you know yeah and so there's this kind of thing like does it make sense you know that you ask the question and it's not like people are moving them in trucks They're moving on their own.

36:50So if this bird is getting there on his own. It's nature. Yeah, he's getting there under his own wing, spreading across. Can you really call it that that's bad? Colonization. Or is it just that it's natural? Like throughout your 45 years of life, raccoons have gone north and west. Throughout your 45 years of life, opossums have gone north and west. barred owls have gone west all on their own it's human in that they're sort of like our crop fields our clearings our developments don't bother them they're beneficial to them right so we don't have an effect really on it yeah so like it's happening and they're talking about you know dusting off that many uh you know dusting off that many owls and um i don't know i mean that's interesting yeah it's like how much do you want to mess up with what mother nature is doing you know it says right here yes funding for the barred owl removal initiative was recently pulled in july 2025 the trump administration terminated three critical federal grants totaling about 1.1 million which were essential for launching the u.s fish and wildlife services planet coal barred owls across california oregon and washington who was going to do that were they just going to send some how would they go about that do you i applied for one of those gigs one time they were doing uh i just thought it was kind of interesting there's another animal that lives that is in more places than it was historically the mountain goat and there was this project one time to to they were trying to get mountain goats out of olympic um was it no no no not of olympic national park i can't remember pull up a mountain goat it's a great animal now you do not see a lot of these around no no no but they were looking for teams of people to go do this uh mountain goat coal and so we made a we made like a team professional wrestlers dude we made a team to we made a team to do the mountain gold coal and our team was not selected because a part of the thing was you they wanted you to keep your mouth shut and i think that they looked and they were like this guy's not gonna keep his mouth shut about that shit he's like a fucking writer so they're like i think they saw through me and i and i had i had a crack commando team put together but didn't get the nod because I think that they could see that like let's say you're a writer and you're trying to get in the military they're like yeah I got a feeling this ain't patriotism do you know what I'm saying so I didn't get the I didn't get the job it's almost like Armageddon where that team gets chosen to go save the world or whatever you guys should have got the chance brother that'd be a great move I had a crack commando team put together really who'd you get on it you get any diversity on it how do you attack no this was before that DEI?

39:31No, this was before that. Now that I review it in my mind, it was decidedly a group of guys that you could mistake for me. Okay. That was my mountain goat team. They're fixing to do the same thing in Grand Teton. In the Grand Teton National Park? Yeah, because mountain goats are largely in the coastal ranges historically. God, they're beautiful, aren't they? Oh, yeah. So you got like Idaho, Colorado, Utah. They all have non-native mountain goat populations. Oh, yeah. South Dakota has a non-native mountain goat population. And when you say non-native, that means that they just ended up there? They weren't naturally from there?

40:11They were drove in. Ah. They were drove in. They were brought in. You wouldn't believe, like if you're interested in animals, man, you wouldn't believe how much humans have reshuffled the deck. Of how animals exist? Of distribution of animals. In the world or mostly in America? World too. Yeah. Our country hosts African species in certain places. I mean, totally wild, feral animals. We have African species running around in our country. We have Asiatic species running around in our country. We've just completely reshuffled the deck. Like I was saying, historically, there was turkeys in 34 states.

40:49You can hunt turkeys in every state, but Alaska now. Wow. Like, we've been very good at moving it around, and we used to have the ambition of moving it all around. Now we have the ambition of trying to put it back the way we found it. Yeah. But for a while, the ambition was to, like, I don't know, more the merrier. Spread it everywhere. And they just cut shit loose just to see what would happen. Fuck. Yeah. All the time, man. Just move it around. See what happens. That's bonkers, man. Where is Grand Teton National Park? I shouldn't say it. It's basically Yellowstone National Park. Do you have a place in America that you feel has the strongest connection to nature, kind of to just pivot a little bit?

41:26Like, do you, like, where you feel like the most, like, innately connected? Is that a weird question, kind of? No, it's not a weird question. Because I know that, like, some of the natives had, like, the Black Hills and stuff like that in the Dakotas. Like, they had places where they felt, like, extremely connected to nature. Oh, yeah. You mean, like, places that had a spiritual. Like an aura or something to them? Yeah, sure. I just wondered if it was, yeah, I can't pretend to, I can't, like, I don't know what that felt like. I don't know what that looked like. Um, I have things that mean a lot.

41:58I have places that mean a lot to me. Um, I have places that mean a lot to me from a standpoint of personal experiences that have happened in certain places. I had a place for a long time. I told, like I told my kids that I was like, man, if I die, like I had originally said, if I die, I want, um, I was like, this is going to be hard to pull off, but like in a perfect world, I would have my body like dumped there. Oh, yeah. Just hidden away somewhere to be eaten and my bones strewn about by bears. Yeah. Like I thought that seemed like a cool idea. It is kind of neat. Yeah. There's a number of people that Crazy Horse, his friends took his body and put it somewhere they don't know where it is.

42:45Really? Has anybody gone to look for it? Edward Abbey, the writer. Edward Abbey. So Crazy Horse, they hid his body? His friends took his body. He was killed in Nebraska. They took his body and put it in a crevice somewhere they don't know where it is. And no one's found it yet? Ed Abbey's body was out. Ed Abbey from? you ever hear monkey wrench gang he wrote monkey wrench gang desert solitaire he was an environmental not the odd couple huh he was an environmental warrior you should read up on he's a big figure in defending the desert in a novelist anyways his friends took him and they dumped him and they didn't tell anybody where that's cool that sounds like the way to go So I wanted to have that kind of, I wanted to have a program like that.

43:34And that where I wanted it was a spot that had, was a place that had like, that I had a deep, what to me passes as a sort of spiritual connection to that place. Then there's places I just like because there's like, I like, I love being in Alaska. I spend a month or so in Alaska. It's kind of throughout different times of the year. I spend a month or so in Alaska every year. I love Alaska. What I like about Alaska is it's a big place, but there's a lot of places where you can just kind of picture what time was. You can kind of picture what things were a long time ago. Got it. Because as an outdoorsman, as someone that likes nature, oftentimes you find yourself trying to imagine a long time ago.

44:26Right. Right. There's there's something like there's some kind of continuity thing. You know, people have been out on the landscape, living, hunting and fishing and living off the land for since the beginning of human time. And so naturally, your mind goes to. Like, what how did other people experience this? Like, how did what was the experience of other people doing these activities in these places throughout time? Yeah. So I like spots where you can kind of picture it. right it's still you can picture it and there's a lot of places in alaska you can go there and be like you can feel it oh yeah do you know i mean you can feel it yeah um like it feels so untouched by some like just a lot of other bullshit energy and stuff yeah and why is it being like you can imagine like you could go there's places you go and you can imagine like man some dude standing here 10 not 10 let's do whatever some dude standing here 7 000 years ago be held like however he perceived it, whatever his ideas of God were, you know, whatever his allegiances were, he, this is kind of what it looked like.

45:26Right. You know, it's what it looked like. And those places mean a lot to me to be able to be like, man, like you could stand here, you know, at all these points in time and be like, it's just, you can just imagine it and it makes this continuity similar because a thing that I'm very interested in is professionally and personally very interested and like the experiences of other people who had aspects of a lifestyle that I live today. Like I'm always fascinated by that. That's why I could give a shit about Antarctica because there's no human history there. Right. So that's the cool thing about Alaska.

46:00My brother's a fisheries biologist in Alaska. He had a really interesting point that he made to me. He's like, if you think about the conservation efforts, environmental efforts in the lower 48, we are in like someday what we're doing might be regarded as a recovery phase where we're trying to like fix things we broke a lot of things late 1800s early 1900s for decades you know we broke stuff and so for the most part now when someone talks about conservation oftentimes it's like fixing broken shit bringing the turkey back fixing broken shit right right cleaning up rivers cleaning out yeah it's a lot like we're like we broke a bunch of shit like we built a bunch of dams in the pacific northwest and killed all these salmon runs now we're trying to fix all the shit we broke yeah and so for most of like most conservation work is oftentimes like fixing shit that we fucked up he was saying his work in alaska he's been in alaska forever his work in alaska at times is like they're still doing they're still trying to describe what's there meaning there are salmon runs they'll go look at salmon runs people know there's salmon there They've been fishing for thousands of years, but no one's ever went and sort of like scientifically described the salmon run.

47:14There are rivers where no one's gone and scientifically described what lives in the river. Got it. Right. So they're still in a phase of just trying to like write down what's there. Yeah. And we're in a phase of just trying to fix all of our broken shit. Right. So in that way, Alaska is cool. Right. Because it's still like in such an early process of being affected by humans. Yeah. And if we play our cards right. Then what we learned here, we won't have to go through the same thing. Yeah, if we play our cards right, when someone talks about building a big dam on the Yukon or whatever, you might look and be like, man, we're spending a lot of it down in what they call in Alaska, what they call the outside.

47:52In the outside, we're spending a lot of time and energy trying to fix all the shit we broke by doing that, just so heads up as you think about your plans. Hey, guys. Do you have a part of – I know you've traveled extensively. Do you have a place that you feel like is the most dangerous for people to go? Is that really a fair question? I mean, I guess every place is dangerous depending on what your behaviors are. Yeah. This is something I think about and talk about a fair bit. There's places where there's a high level of perceived danger. Okay. The thing I always try to point out, if my wife often thinks I'm putting a lot of risk on my kids or doing too risky a shit with my kids.

48:34Because they're going to try to do it? Or you're taking them with you? No, that I'm going to hurt them or drown them or whatever, you know? Oh, yeah. Like, she's always afraid I'm going to do something. That my recklessness will lead to my kids getting messed up. Right. Why do they need safety gear for Christmas every year if you're not trying to do something bad to them, Steve? Oh, there's one of my little kids. No, that's not my little kid. That's my friend's kid. Yeah, if you don't even know whose kid it is. That's my kid. Okay. Well, she's 12 now. Daddy's future hunting buddy. She has much more hair now.

49:04I believe that. I'm just saying this shirt is lobbying for a certain type of behavior in the future. She is my hunting buddy now, dude. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, we don't show pictures of our kids much anymore. But there it all, really, except my older one. Anyhow, what the hell was I talking about? Oh, she's always afraid I'm going to drown them or whatever. Oh, yeah. Reasonably so. But I'm always like, man, the most important or the most dangerous thing. This is me. Like, you're my wife and I'm me. All right. The most dangerous thing that's going to happen is us driving to the airport. Sure, Steve.

49:32Look, sign the papers. okay sign the papers and you can do whatever you want okay that's what my attorney said it's uh sorry i was trying to role play a little but um that was good rope but you you'd have to have more time with her you know yeah i should have also went into it a little bit at all all right let's try it again she just didn't meet her let's try it but she brings she brings up so there's like high levels of perceived danger but like but then there's like reality meaning driving down driving down a highway is hazardous yeah like highway travels hazardous flying in single engine we do a lot of flying in single engine aircraft that's hazardous flying in single engine aircraft is like a legitimate occupational hazard but where people's minds go people's minds go to getting attacked by wild animals right because you people don't want it like they're not thinking about that you're going to go in like when you go into a remote environment um uh exposure dehydration yeah exposure is like far more dangerous than wild animals but it's not falling into a hole sure it's not fun to think about right right it doesn't it doesn't occupy any there's no intellectual energy you can't put like intellectual or emotional energy into you thinking about exposure it doesn't have the same pr instead you're like well shit there's wild animals lurking in the bushes right and so people are afraid of things um um let's see i feel like i'm i seem like i'm hacking out my my wife i love her my wife carries pepper spray my wife will sometimes carry pepper spray of course because there's black bears around oh yeah i've been in some neighborhoods but you anyone in this country most people in the major cities of this country they're all within a 40 to hour drive of a black bear right you're much closer to black bears right now yeah okay but you're not sitting here with pepper spray so why when you go walk like why when you why does she feel i'm like you know like you have black bears that come into the outskirts of new york right new jersey has the densest black bear population in the country yes and the densest human population new jersey does yeah so like they don't all when they're golfing they don't carry pepper spray right it's not like you see trump out there with pepper spray why does she why does my wife want to have pepper spray yeah For black bears, like black bears don't matter.

51:56They're not dangerous, but they're perceived as dangerous. And certain environments make people feel like now they're in danger. But golfers in New Jersey aren't carrying pepper spray. Right. Though they probably have bears. If you're golfing in some semi-rural New Jersey environment, you're within hundreds of yards of bears. Right. But they're not giving their energy to thinking about bears. But you put someone at like a trailhead in the woods and all of a sudden they got bears on their mind. Yeah. So dangerous would be like, I spent a month in Africa this summer, and we saw a black mamba, a snake called, you know, that's the deadliest snake.

52:34Like, they just kill you when they get you. The guy we were with said, you'll never see one. Then we saw one. So all we talked about was black mambas. Yeah. He didn't bite anybody. Right. But all of a sudden, like, anytime I sat down, once I saw that son of a bitch, I saw a puff adder, a black mamba, and a cobra. Damn. Okay. What is a puff adder? oh he's a bad mother licker man pull up how he gets around pull up how he gets around a puff adder yeah watch how he gets around you think of a snake doing a serpentine movement for sure well check his ass out pull up pull up him getting around oh shit he just wiggles along like a like a centipede shorty bay got that fucking he not even look at that no he don't need to do he doesn't even leave a footprint he don't need to oh so that's what you call cutting corners right there.

53:18That's the kind of employee that I need. Dude, that dude just, he's got little, his scales just walk, man, yeah. That's crazy. I don't know if this is true. You want to hear something they told me about that thing? This Kenyan dude told me? He told me that, I don't know if it's true, but it's just great. It's a wonderful detail. He told me that Puff Adder, he strikes so fast. We just caught one crossing the road and got out and messed with it a little bit. Not up close, but distant messed with it. That Puff Adder strikes so fast, this guy was telling me this could be total lore. Don't even look it up because I don't want you to refute it because it's too cool.

53:49He says that he can hit a balloon twice. He can hit a balloon twice before it pops. Which I don't even know what that means, but doesn't it sound cool? It sounds... Before the balloon deflates. I don't know. Oh, yeah. So he's got a bad venom. So anyways, we see one of these. We see a black mamba who can cruise around with half of his length up in the air. If he's seven foot, his head, when he's cruising through the woods when he's pissed his head's at your navel damn he's a bad bad bad dude well he's got some calves on him that's what's amazing to me you know why do indian people love fucking with these things it's a black mamba that kills uh that kills uh michael madsen's character is it really yeah it's black mom anyhow so we see this we see these different critters running around and then like you're not gonna get killed by a snake it's just like like it doesn't happen right but it feels like it's gonna happen but all of a sudden instead of me thinking like oh i might get like a some amoeba from drinking the water or like who knows or a mosquito-borne pathogen all that's out the window instead everywhere i look all of us me and my other guys i was with we didn't take a step do without being like because all of a sudden in our head was the perceived danger meanwhile you're with all these people that are born and raised there none of them's dead right yeah they're doing fine some of them have some emotional issues or whatever but they're doing overall they're well they're not all dead from snakes it's just that's where as humans oh like that's where the head your head goes to like whatever's had the best advertising and probably whatever's most recently been seen those sorts of things yeah really so when you say like the most dangerous place to an outsider the Tanzanian bush felt dangerous for a reason that's probably not true it felt dangerous because one day we saw a black mamba or the Tasmanian devil too well he doesn't live there but sure yeah Tasmanian tiger Tasmanian devils I'm thinking of Tanzania I think or something oh no no no you're right yeah but no Tanzania and the Tasmanian, that's the island of Tasmania.

56:08Tanzania comes from Zanzibar combining with Tanganyika. When those two countries came together, they were called Tanzania. So Tanganyika doesn't exist anymore. It's now Tanzania. Tanganyika doesn't. Zanzibar does. But the Zanzibar archipelago was rolled into Tanganyika to become Tanzania. I'm a subject matter expert. I spent a month there. Did you really? A lot of women will go to Zanzibar to meet men, kind of African men, a lot of women in their 40s and 50s. Is that true? Yeah. That's what I know about the migration or whatever it's called. But I – or it's for – I don't want to say it's for sex, but I think people say it is.

56:48I don't think that you're going there for that. It's pretty buttoned up there. Is it? It's pretty buttoned up. No, I don't think it's like illegal. I think it's they go there and it's sort of a popular space for courting of those of African men and women who are kind of divorcees. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Because my buddy went there and he was like, dude, it's not for me. It wasn't for him. See, my subject matter expertise is crumbling, but I'll point out I was only there one week. Yeah. So I only absorb so much. And you don't fit either one of the parties that were that are mating there. So I think I brought my own mate with me, man.

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1:00:11You know, you'd heard about snakes. And, I mean, it had just fucking wrapped around. Just like it was like my leg was a stripper pole and this thing had just came to just fucking. Grind on you. Just straight out of hell to grind on me, you know. And my grandmother looked at it and she's like, she goes, I remember she's like, did you summon that? She asked me. Because my grandmother was out of her fucking mind. And that's when I knew that it was just going to be a long life right there. I was like, you think, and I looked in her eyes, and she thinks I fucking, a child that she barely ever even welcomes into town.

1:00:48She finally takes you to catch some bullheads in the fucking Spoon River out here. And you summoned a serpent. She thinks I'm the fucking Jimmy Baker of fucking fanged lizards. Do you remember what kind of snake it was? I want to say it was a water moccasin, but that may have just been the lure of me growing up in Louisiana. Because I don't know if they had those in Illinois or not. you know no i don't believe they do but i worked on a farm in louisiana and at lunch break we would always just walk around if they had a boat that was turned over we'd flip it over and there'd be a water mox and under it every single time dude yeah that that's that's a cool snake there is a they were scary though there's like a there's an idea and i kind of buy it that um ricsgiving.

1:01:29That sounds nice to do. from like an evolutionary standpoint, we carry this sort of like this i want to preface this by saying i'm not a geneticist okay we care uh despite despite your impressions i'm not a geneticist but uh that we carry with us this innate let's say this sort of genetic marker whatever this innate fear of serpents yes do you know i'm saying like it like it does you well it it's it does you well to be like standoff you follow me a hundred percent yeah oh dude i think anybody would be creeped out there's nothing yeah there's something so why are we so scared of snakes do you know i want to look let's look that up a little bit snakes there's a but it feels dude when you see oh they're not right man and it feels so foreign oh i will say this we interviewed this blind girl one time right and we're just learning about what it's like to be blind and some of like the different stuff and she talked a lot about animals and like getting to spend time with animals and the feelings you get and she says that she doesn't get any feeling from a snake like there's no energy that she gets really and that's when i was like dude if a snake yeah tanya milo milo milojevic that's when i knew if the if a blind don't even like a snake i don't like a snake Yeah, that's a great idea to interview someone where you can just get right in.

1:02:57Because then you can ask all the questions you would be not. You'd ask all the questions. Do you remember Howard Stern? Mm-hmm. He used to have a show where he'd have a panel of black guys that white dudes could ask questions to. Oh, that's great. You know, like it was like, I can't remember what he called it. It was like, ask a black man. Yeah. And now that, yeah, it was called Ask a Black Guy. I can't remember what the shtick was, but he would just have dudes volunteer to come in. No, that's what we mean. And then you're like idiotic white guys to be like, Hey, you know, so it's an interesting interview format to be able to have a person come and say like, I will now entertain all your dumb ass questions that you wonder, but don't ask.

1:03:36Yeah. And that, that are like, that I get sick of, but I'm going to sit here and indulge you for an hour. And you can be like, well, what do you see? Yeah. You know? Yeah. She said that a lot of it was like memorizing patterns. Like when you're going somewhere, like the more you go there, the easier it is. Like, um, she said a lot of times it felt like she was playing like a video game in her head. Like just remembering, like almost as if you're like controlling somebody through a video game, that that's kind of how she would, um, like guide herself. I thought it was pretty interesting. I should do it again soon.

1:04:07That's a really good, that's a really good interview deal because, because she probably like generally going about her life probably can't stand people, you know, people staring at her, wondering shit, asking her the same dumb shit over. So to be like, I'm just going to sit here and just do it. Yeah, it was great. Hit me with it. Hit me with it. Have you ever taken a blind person on one of your hunts before? No, man, but it's a thing. It's a thing. And I've had a blind hunter on my podcast one time. Wow. To talk about what the experience was. And, yeah, I had a blind person on. And what is that?

1:04:38Because they're just, I mean, they got to feel like there's no chance when they shoot, right? You know, they had people help. We had a, you know what I'm dicking up? I actually just told you something that's not true. Because we were going to, we one time had a paralyzed, we had a paralyzed, we were going to have a blind hunter. We didn't, or I don't think we did. We had a fully paralyzed hunter who had to hunt with like an automation thing. Wow. Took a lot of assistance from his friends. But he had been a hunter, had an accident, and then paralyzed from the neck down, developed a way that he could continue hunting with the help of his friends.

1:05:19Wow. That's pretty cool. With a mouth control apparatus, but it took a ton of assistance. That's who we had on. Well, a point I was going to make about that innate fear of snakes is if you could do time machine shit. Okay. And you talking time travel? I'm going to. Okay. This would be like a really good question to have. Okay. The good use of if you had like one pass, one time pass. Here's a thing that would be on my list of shit I would be curious about. when human, like after the sort of African diaspora and humans started colonizing the whole world, right. Um, the people that came, the people that became the first Americans and came in from Alaska.

1:06:11You always hear about the Bering land bridge, right? The land bridge is the size of Texas. It wasn't like a bridge. It was like a landmass. Like people, people colonizing the new world would have been born and died on the Bering Land Bridge without thinking that they were going anywhere they were just living their lives got it and slowly spread down and those like Inuits like a like kind of natives they became native right who the people that became the Inuits by our understanding the people that became the Inuits came much later got it okay they came from the Japan and the Aleutians and whatnot but these like Siberians came into the new world.

1:06:44So by this point, you have hundreds of generations, hundreds of generations of people had lived in a snake-free environment because they'd lived in the Arctic. Hundreds of generations. And then they slowly, generation to generation to generation, they slowly moved down the North American continent. There's two theories that, like Alaska, they don't have a snake, right? There's two theories. There's one that they came through the mid-continent and maybe emerged down around Edmonton, Alberta, onto the Great Plains. That was a fashionable idea for a long time. The currently fashionable idea is they came down the coast.

1:07:25Okay? So now you have hundreds of generations of people that would never have seen or experienced a snake. Yeah. And you got snakes down there just waiting. But all of a sudden they spread southward. Yeah. And at some point, one of those sons of bitches is out just, right? fuck he's out cruising around doing his deal yeah there's one laying there that happened like that happened that happened if you could take your time machine and go see that guy see that snake did he go fuck or did he jump down and grab it that was some good time machine shit right there wow say this if he was with someone else when it happened you have to cut that person's throat immediately i think because you would think they have something to do with this like they're in on it like that's what i would do you're like who the fuck summoned this yes yeah like yeah your distant ancestor summon that snake yeah you would think it was like other i don't know but you'd probably seen fish but i don't know do you just get that energy yeah like then you would be able to answer the question that's the way the one way to be able to answer the question do humans have some baked in shit or is it not that right yeah you'd have to go all the way back there's probably another way too you could take a child at birth buy one sequester it somewhere well they do that all the time there's indian babies playing with snake yeah but take one and sequester it so it doesn't get any information from any human beings oh yeah let it become an old person and throw a snake in that room do they jump back that'd be easier and less expensive than time travel but it wouldn't be as authentic and you'd run into like uh you'd run into legal and if they've been alive so long are they going to not care anymore like i don't get damaged them psychologically and stuff by locking them up in that room and shit you know yeah they're like i don't give a fuck the detractors would be like yeah but he was so destroyed psychologically that this is not telling us anything right yeah i think you're just fucking with a with a with a with a um yeah a person you victimized yeah of this whimsical scientific study oh yeah i think at that point you're really looking at the uh elizabeth smart of reptiles kind of vibes you know and i don't think that's what we want no it is gonna be a time travel problem yeah we'll go time travel um well let's talk about a topic that some people think is kind of controversial like um you see a lot of people who will post photos with like big game right they go and kill like a a woolly not a woolly mammoth or whatever but like a a deer a big huge deer old turkey yeah huge dragon limb hanger yes rope dragon limb hanger you know one that's just singing you know one in an alan iverson jersey you know i'm saying like a real fucking boss i'm following i'm following now i'm getting excited but they put a picture of it up right are they or some say it's a deer some with eyelashes okay Okay.

1:10:27Okay. Because that's what, that's what. Or lions and stuff like that. It's got an eyelash. It's going to, it's, it's, it's emotional for people. Okay. So that's fair. So yeah, I think I just want to know about some of that, but then also you hear that people put up these, like that some of these animals, they're going to die in the places that they're in. And so for conservation that they kind of sell off, um, kind of tags or lottery for, so anyway, take me into some of that world kind of, if, if, if you don't mind, I thought you're going to get into the ethics of that you of you posing with a dead animal in a picture but you're talking about like the sort of the conservation font like the kind of there's a perceived conflict or like a um incongruity um around the notion that how can you help a species yeah by hunting it right how do you help a species by hunting it um wouldn't that be like that that would appear to people to be quite illogical.

1:11:26How does killing it help it? Is that? Yeah, I think that's fair. That really kind of boils it down. Yeah. It's a phenomenal question. I can see why it puzzles people, but you can point to case after case after case of ways in which it has worked. We began our conversation around turkeys. There's a saying that I like quite a bit. but it's not mine, but it's success has many fathers, but failure is a bastard's child, okay? The success in restoring the wild turkey, many people claim parentage of that success, and there was many people that attributed efforts to that success, all these different, like, whatever state you live in, your state has a fish and game agency, okay?

1:12:20I'll point out that your state's Fish and Game Agency gets the bulk of its funding from people buying hunting and fishing licenses. That's how we fund the agencies that take care of wildlife in the states. So does that. When they were restoring the wild turkey from nearly being wiped off the continent the main player that was involved in that nationally is an organization that happens to have their annual convention in Nashville called the National Wild Turkey Federation. Okay. The National Wild Turkey Federation was kind of a through line of the efforts to restore turkeys to North America, to recover the wild turkey, to put the wild turkey back on the ground and all the places where it had been wiped out.

1:13:08The National Wild Turkey Federation is a hunting organization. Okay. So if you went and looked and you said, here's these guys that put enormous amounts of scientific expertise, enormous amounts of funding, enormous amounts of physical effort into restoring the wild turkey to where they exceed historic levels. Is it fair to go like, you just did that so you could hunt turkeys? You'd be like, guilty as charged. Right? Guilty as charged. Right. um there are other because like turkeys are so widely available but is that a bad thing it's not a bad thing it's not but it's not always even that way because for instance if you look at there's there's an organization called the wild sheep foundation it's an american-based conservation organization that works to restore recover protect wild sheep species okay desert bighorns rocky mountain bighorns doll sheep stone sheep okay they work on behalf of wild sheep I have been hunting my whole life.

1:14:15I apply every year to get a bighorn sheep tag in a half dozen states every year. I have never drawn a bighorn sheep tag. I have never hunted bighorn sheep. It is likely, it is likely that I will die. Okay. Right. There's a likelihood I will die and have never had the opportunity to hunt a bighorn sheep. Yet, on occasion, I do things to support the Wild Sheep Foundation. So what am I guilty of? I aspire to hunt a bighorn sheep. I recognize them as an integral part of the Western landscape. I want to see more of them around. I'm a hunter. I would hunt one if I could. I probably can't. but I want to see them back in their place.

1:15:10There are many, many conservation organizations, the most impactful wildlife conservation organizations that do real work on the ground. I'm not talking about lobbying bullshit. I'm not talking about the kind of work where you're putting effort on the ground. You're putting animals on the ground. You're proving habitat on the ground. You're helping migratory animals, whatever. That shit comes from hunters. That shit comes from hunting-based organizations. So you're saying that most of the wildlife and the preservation of wildlife here comes from hunters? That's like we fund it. We do the groundwork.

1:15:44People that come out of that world of hunting move into conservation. There are like environmental orgs. There are lobbying orgs. There are orgs that work in all these different ways that aren't. But like they're really effective on the ground stuff comes from hunters and anglers. Wow. It's just like this isn't like this is like this is settled science. I mean, this is me giving you some spin. And I'm not giving you like a novel way to look at something. It's just like it's just the reality. Well, yeah, I mean, you're a fish and game agency. What state do you? It doesn't matter what you answer me.

1:16:14You're a resident of Tennessee. You're a fish and game agency gets the bulk of its funding. So you're a fish and game agency handles like disease work, access work, enforcement of game laws. They get their money from hunting and fishing licenses, the bulk of it. Or they get money from excise taxes on sporting goods, equipment, guns, ammo, whatever. It's just like we pay for it. You know, there's guys that are there's people that want to deny that reality. But like I said, it's like it's settled science. You can't debate the nuts and bolts of it. So this plays out in other ways that draw a lot of attention, like something like let's let's talk about Tanzania for a minute.

1:16:53Totally different system than what we have in America. But in Tanzania, the most effective way that they're able to protect large tracts of wilderness habitat is drawing revenue from them by allowing hunting to occur on those places. Got it. It's like productive for them. It's either that or it's slash and burn agriculture. So it's like you're able to go into an area and by having people like Westerners, Europeans, Americans, whatever, come there to have an experience of going there and hunting and paying a big amount of money to hunt there warrants them being able to set aside large chunks of ground, the government and monetize it and monitor it and then pay for anti-poaching efforts and other things that protect it.

1:17:42You might, you might look at it and hate it. You might look at it and be like, I don't think that humans have a right to harm animals. And like, I'm not going to argue that perspective. So you might look at it and be like, it sucks that that has to be true. And I'll be like, okay, it's fine. Maybe in your opinion, it sucks that that has to be true. But what I can't debate with you is, does it have to be true? It's just true. Yeah. You know, you might hate that that's the way, but that's the way it is. But that's the way it is. Did humans always eat animals, do you think? Yeah, since they could.

1:18:13It would be hard not to, I think. I'm trying to think if I went back in time. That would be cool, too. You go back, some guy. The first dude to eat meat. You'd have to go back some far ass. You'd have to go back. That's fine. We can go back that far. There's an idea that in anthropology there's a debate about at what point in time did you have behaviorally and anatomically modern humans. We're getting way outside of biblical understanding. But we're talking about like from the non-biblical science world. Okay. So, so a stepping outside of like, like the biblical confines and going into like purely scientific world.

1:18:55Some people think that you could have grabbed a dude 75 ,000 years ago, put him in, grabbed him at birth and he could have, he could learn to fly an airplane. He could go to college, do well, blend in. and you'd see them going down the street and wouldn't think anything of it. Yeah, be a pie cap or whatever. Absolutely. Absolutely. That was a hunting consumer of large quantities of animal flesh. That was. Yeah. So there's no doubt at that time period that people were really snacking on animals. Oh, yeah. And then there's this other idea. And you know how you wind up liking the ideas that confirm your own factor?

1:19:36For sure. There's this other idea that the great, in a scientific understanding that when we had, when humans had this kind of renaissance, like we seem to have suddenly kind of figured a bunch of shit out. And some people correlate that to us becoming predominantly to eating huge amounts of animal flesh. It's so efficient and so full of energy. That was our intellectual renaissance. Like that, that's when humans became bright and developed like religion and organizational structure and language and all that is when we discovered meat eating. Right. Because we had enough energy, not only to satiate our bodies, but then also for the rest of us to maybe flourish some because we finally had a new source that was really replenishing us constantly.

1:20:24Yeah. We were broken from, we were broken from a cycle of needing to eat low grade, low, low, low, low grade, low calorie food all the time. Yeah. Right. So then you're constantly just spending their snack. And whereas otherwise you can have a nice meal, then you sit back and kick it and think of something creative. Like a deer is on a really strict schedule of like eating a bunch of low grade food, sitting, ruminating, eating, you know, so deer is always this idea. Yeah, that's the idea that like and of course I like it because it reinforces like that. That's what I like to eat. Deer meat and stuff.

1:20:55So when I hear that, I'm like, fuck, yeah, bro. That's right. That's the truth. Because we just like the stuff that. Oh, yeah. We want to support our own ideas and causes, our own truths. What about, pull up like a Neanderthal. What was that called? Like a man that was 75 ,000 years ago. Was that Neanderthals? Well, it would have been homo sapien. Oh, God. That must have been. Well, no, it would have been like, they would have been. Have you ever had your, have you ever done like a, you know, the late 23andMe organization? I've done 23andMe. Yeah, they sold all my fucking information to this Japanese company.

1:21:30I went and deleted mine. Oh, yeah. Just the other day. My shit. You can still delete your shit. Really? Yeah. I'm getting a bunch of it. Because I would say, like, hey, I want to buy his shit and see what he's got going on. And so I had mine deleted. You can have it deleted. I'm getting emails from, like, you're related to this guy, you know? And it's, like, a fucking Japanese guy. I'm like, this motherfucker? Hey, they recently solved. They're lying. Where I live, they recently solved a 30-year-old murder case. Nuh-uh. from because so many people doing 23andMe filling up these these filling up databases and so all of a sudden now also now they're like also now they're like hey we got a little ping a little ping on the map yeah of like a family that seems because they had a biological specimen we're gonna solve all those old crimes they had a biological specimen right and so just from people willfully going and doing this kind of work, all of a sudden you start popping all these like markers and then you got to, you got to buy a hair, a sperm or whatever.

1:22:32Oh yeah. And all of a sudden you're able to be like, well, it's not him, but there's some, some dudes a lot like him that live in this town. Let's go have a look around that town. When you do it, they tell you what percent Neanderthal you are. Yeah. Yeah. I was lower than average Neanderthal. Huh. Did it upset you? uh no I wasn't surprised I just don't like I don't have that vibe you know I remember I feel like I feel like Joe was telling me Rogan was telling me that he was high up I could see that kind of I could definitely see that I swear I hope I'm not making that up I swear he told me I don't think he would deny that at all he's definitely like a Neanderthal guy that got struck by some fucking cool ass lightning I swear that's what he was saying But anyways, I was lower than normal.

1:23:20But the point being, oh, yeah, there he goes. More than regular people. 57 % more than Neanderthal. Yeah. That's classic, dude. So, you know, an understanding is that, you know, they were – here's a weird deal. I wrote this one time. I wrote this in a forward to one of my cookbooks. I was writing it. You could have been, like, at a certain time, you could have been in Spain. Okay. Okay. You could have been in Spain. You could have been in the Iberian Peninsula. You could have been in northern Israel and see a campfire. Often burning in the distance. And you would have had to have asked yourself.

1:24:01What kind of what kind of human is that? Do you follow me? Like you mean you would have had to be like what race or class or something like that? What kind? What species of human? Oh, like is that somebody who's like kind of like Neanderthal dudes? Somebody's a little more monkey. Yeah. Is it like Neanderthal dudes? Yeah. Is it like, like the same way that we were talking about deer. Somebody eating a banana. Somebody who has a sandals at least on. Somebody eating one of me. Yeah. Like the same way you got like white-tailed deer and mule deer. Like where I live, we have white-tailed deer and mule deer.

1:24:32They're so similar. Like it takes, I don't want to say a trained eye to tell them apart, but you know, someone from another country would look and it might take them a few days for like, oh, they're different. Yeah. They're just going to see and be like, whatever, you know, deer, deer. but at a time it'd be that at a time it'd be that you'd be like oh no there's the one kind of human and there's these other kinds of humans like fuck that guy's about 2 000 years back and they don't they don't mix or they get together or they kidnap each other whatever they still have bad breath all that yeah but uh when you see that you're like joe having that like as high as 57 percent more neanderthals because it's it's like it's it's you know we under dearest?

1:25:14Was it like an act of passion? That made you evolve? No, I'm saying that drove humans and Neanderthals to interbreed. Was it coercion? You think they're separate beings? You think there's one more advance? Neanderthals were a far more successful species than we are. Neanderthals were in Europe far longer than our ancestors were in Europe. But aren't Neanderthals our ancestors though no i wouldn't you can't really i wouldn't really yes and that it seems like direct human ancestors yeah like homo sapien yeah okay it seems like at times they were able to have viable offspring that at times neander neanderthal people that were in europe far longer they were in europe long long hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans made the scene got it and because of everyone having a little bit of introgression from neanderthals this is not my field of study i'm just saying no i'm just a curious onlook let's take a look right here ancient human species including homo sapiens neanderthals denisovans denisovans and others did interbreed as they encountered one another during the middle and upper paleolithic periods leaving detectable genetic legacies in modern populations dude i didn't even know this i thought But have you seen that chart where it's one man like that?

1:26:40And then he has a deceptive chart. He has a briefcase and then he has Nikes on or whatever. That's a deceptive chart. Dude, that's fucking, I can't even believe that. This is one of the main things I talk about with my kids. Wow. Trying to explain. They're like, what do you mean we came from monkeys? I'm like, don't look at it that way. Yeah. Oh, and I want to start talking about my next hour comedy is about the middle monkeys. Like, why don't you ever see that middle monkey? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like you'll see a monkey and then you'll see a dude, you know, who's a mechanic. Right.

1:27:08But you never see that middle motherfucker. You know what I'm saying? What happened to them all? The dude who's just scratching under one arm, wrenching the other. Fucking just, they don't know how much work to register. Cause he's just like, you know, but he can change a tire and a fucking just with his lips. You know what I'm saying? You don't see that chimp, that chimp man, that middle man. So I'm just amazed. Yeah. But dude, I never thought that you'd be sitting there and you'd be like, Oh, Oh, yeah. You'd be like, oh, you and your buddy like, dog, let's go. Let's go. Let's go do a lab. We better go figure out what kind of dudes it is.

1:27:39But the fact that they the fact that they enter the fact that they enter this. Well, I think that, well, you might have missed that part. Oh, I wouldn't know that. Let me get to my point, though. The fact that they interbred on real leads to this question of was it a was it a romantic bonding? responding was it like a romantic right was it something that was like under coercion it was coercion do you know i mean yeah like was it like a like a sort of like conqueror's choice kind of shit yeah it was like when i mean it wasn't that they would that they would like meet and and and over like like the capulets and you know from like uh romeo and juliet's family steven it was not like and come together despite family condemnations and produce offspring?

1:28:28No, it was like when those nurses that don't treat people well at those hospitals take advantage of them. That's what I think it was. I do wonder. That'd be another good time machine burner up right there. You just go back. But here's the tough thing. If a person who was more mentally advanced, hypothetically a homo sapien, if they tried to like, oh, here's just a Neanderthal, let's get a little bit of love. you know but they're easy to trick right yeah but they're not easy to fucking just pin down and make love to i bet you gotta trick them but even if you trick shells and stuff right even if you trick them with a little wind chime or something get their attention i bet you can't you're gonna have to how quick can you make love and still enjoy it and get away from them i i wouldn't that's not a risk i'm taking no it's time machine questions i'm not that's not a risk i'm someone that hasn't brushed their hair in 70 000 years i'm gonna try to fuck them i'm out you know what I want to put out a call to you don't mind me doing a call for a guest I'm trying I've been trying to find no like a turkey call or whatever so it's like I'm like using your I'm using like your audience to find someone that I might not find on my own okay what I've been trying to do for years yeah is I've been trying to find a really really good um a really good Neanderthal you can say neanderthal or tall you sound a little bit smarter i understand my understanding is you sound a little better to say neanderthal it's a valley in germany it is yeah it's a valley in germany and you sound a little more like i'm more likely to get a good guest by saying neanderthal because they're like this dude knows the shit i want to find a really good neanderthal behavioralist hard r in that neanderthal researcher okay come on the show and talk about what they know but it can't be just like a writer who spent a month researching it's because our audience doesn't like those kinds right it's got to be someone that like it's got to be someone that lives and breathes it can't be like an interloper yeah like i need like a legit a verbose animated yeah neanderthal research i don't want some halfway house i want a fucking trap house that people have been shooting up in for 50 years with information yeah about motherfuckers who would just like who could digest a stone if they need to yeah like that like a really good neanderthal person okay to come on the show and and and you just reach out to us and i want to interview you okay there you go guys for steve they would like that and here's what do you have a lot of neanderthal researchers on that listen to the show i mean i bet we have some uh consumers who would rank high on a neander scale or whatever but i'll say this i want somebody who has a high amount on their 23and me an extreme i don't want they don't need to have that i know you want this is what i want the highest i want somebody who's 80 good idea 80 neanderthal yeah the find the highest guy and when i get them i'm just going to send them over to you too steve because i think you would do well and because you might be able to notice some patterns that they have or behaviors that yeah who if whatever i had low who's the highest who's the highest somebody has to have the highest neanderthal amount i know that there is a i was reading a book um i read a lot of anthropology books i can't remember if it was the seven daughters of eve i was reading a book about human history and in it they were pointing to some controversy around this question okay um It's not always, people don't always look upon this.

1:32:04This is not something that everybody likes to talk about. Really? Where you see, like as much as I'd be, whatever, proud of it or whatever, there are places, there are places in the world where these geneticists see. More N-tals? Yeah, more Neanderthal in certain areas. And it's a sensitive subject. It winds up being a sensitive subject. So you might wind up having not only a fascinating show, but you might have to show the courts a certain level of controversy. I like that. Yeah. But what I've found, cause I, cause I am interested in this subject. I've found that there's a sort of trend in academics to that were, there's a trend in academics of being that were like rebranding Neanderthals.

1:32:48So it wants to be like, Oh, they had art. Oh, they like wore jewelry. Oh, they were free divers. Right. They, oh do you mean like every like why do you think we're doing that do you think i don't know why it's like because there's this i there used to be this idea that there are these like thuggish brutes right you know but there's like when you look when you if you kind of follow neanderthal news like i do there's a theme twitter yeah there's like a theme of of this kind of like this delight like this kind of delighted realization about how come like how complex their culture was how complex their society was it'd be like like you don't find like man it turns out they were dumber than we thought right that's not like a news story it would be like oh they appreciated the finer things in life well it's like the branding it's like even when it goes back to like you were talking about the bald eagle it's like just that pr that spin i wonder if they have a very very good pr agency neanderthals right now or i have a good one on retainer and they're getting a lot of good ink about that they liked art and movies, you know, and it's like, they're just getting cooler.

1:33:58They're getting cooler. Oh yeah. They love stand by me. You're like, that's insane, dude. I'm telling you, dude, start paying attention to Neanderthal news and you'll see what I'm talking about. When I get my guest on, he'll tell you all about it. Oh, I love that. I'll send you the episode. I love that. You're going to have that man. Dude, listening to dude, what would be better? Listen, of course I could talk about humans all day long, bro. but listening to two neanderthals talk about themselves they wouldn't know a lot but they would try pretty hard you know that could be us dude that's awesome point that's really awesome dude um people tell you look like harry connick jr sometimes no i've gotten uh i used to get kevin bacon that's who it is i used to get a dude from the a dude from remember the show where they would like do all the crazy stunts to each other oh uh johnny knoxville oh yeah johnny knoxville i could see that i'll get that what else do i get those are good those are good ones yeah i don't see that one too clear because i don't never get i never do clever shit with my hair yeah yeah johnny's hair is always kind of stylish and stuff yeah so i think that kevin bacon like he doesn't get too clever with his hair i saw that he was kicking ass when i was a kid in the movie making business man you know Oh, he's such a talented guy.

1:35:17I saw the guy who was in Fight Club the other night. Brad Pitt? No. I saw Edward Norton the other night. Oh. With some friends. It was like at a little restaurant. And I was like, is that Edward Norton? And it was him. I don't look like him. No, you don't. I'd love to look like him, Edward Norton. I'm trying to think. If you had to look like a woman, who do you think you'd look like? That's a great question. I don't know. There's one out there. No, I'm sure. But look, if we get to pick, that's why we're in this conversation, dude. I didn't want to talk about it, but let's talk about it. What I'm saying is if you got to look like a woman, who would you look like?

1:35:55It's kind of a good question. Trying to think who I could see you as. I'm not even like equipped, man. I can't really think of what you're getting. I'm not getting at anything. If I was a woman, what woman would I want to look like? Or if I had to be a dude that looked like a woman? No, no, dude. What are you talking about? I don't know. I'm not talking about some fucking chop shop aftermarket woman. I'm talking about some, I'm talking about a certified bone in woman. Like you're a woman from the jump. Yeah. But what I'm getting at is there's two ways of looking at it. You're saying that I remain a dude.

1:36:28I remain a guy. No. Oh, I become a woman. No. What, what, what, what? You're a woman from the start. Say somebody. Oh, like going back. I was born a woman. Yes. And then I wanted to pick which of these women I wanted to look. Right, like which woman would you be good at? Which woman would you be, I wonder? It's a great question, actually. I'm trying to think who you would be. Let me think about it for just a second. I'm trying to think, man. For some reason, the name Naomi Watts keeps coming to my head, but I don't know why. It's just popping in my head. Little pervert. I know. It's just popping in my head.

1:36:57I don't mean it to. Bring her up. Oh, yeah. It just popped in my head. I don't want to be held to it. It popped in my head. Dude, it's not a bad choice. She's great. Naomi Watts. I like that. It just popped in my head. A thousand Watts. Yeah, I look exactly like that anyway. I'm in, dude. That's what I look like. Yeah, that's why, dude, there were some cuties in our neighborhood, and that's why people started doing peep and timing. I'll tell you this. If you grew up around busted women, nobody's getting that step stool out. You know that shit. There we are right there. There's you and Joe right there.

1:37:34No. No, that's not. I'd be more like Naomi Watts. That's my nose. It'd have to be one of those dudes in Naomi Watts. yeah neither one of those is us um i saw what were you talking about i saw something you were talking about going on a safari in africa oh did you notice this so i did do that but yeah but either way i noticed that i was talking about the the snakes and shit yeah when i went to africa right so i went there like a couple times for some different safaris and stuff like that i felt like some of the people when you look in their eyes there it goes further back in time does Does that make any sense to you at all?

1:38:08I think that it may have, but I believe that that would be your perception of that. That would be your perception. Right. Dude, I talked to this one guy and I was like, this guy, he's just got damn just, just back through. I mean, it just felt like it went back to the, like, just to where the fingers of existence first snapped right there at the damn sound. You've gone hunting in Africa? I did for the first time ever this summer. You did? Did you enjoy it? Were you? Life-changing experience. Like in what way? I hadn't been to that continent. It wasn't like going hunting there was life-changing, but one of the things I like about hunting is it immerses you and it immerses you in a situation and immerses you in an environment in a deeper way than you would be immersed otherwise because you're doing something very like very ancient and base you know so it wasn't the experience of being there hunting but just the i hadn't been that was like i hadn't visited that continent and so i got to go to a couple places um and it was just it just scrambled up my head about you know when you see different ways of living you know so in that way it was it was profound to me it was profound did you guys visit some like innate cultures there and stuff like that like some very yeah like some really ancient cultures i spent a little bit of time in this place called maasai land and met dudes met maasai dudes that are herders you know um they'll live in they'll live in structures they make themselves from native material and herd cattle and been herding cattle since you know from our perspective since the beginning of time on this place did it feel like traveling back in time a little bit yeah it did for me for sure just just like those glimpses into like those glimpses into into cultures that have those glimpses into cultures that have have remained relative to our own that have remained very constant okay so like that was that was yeah here's some photos of messiah folks uh that was very eye-opening the dark amish right there being out they're herders you know they're like um beautiful oh it's dude Dude, stunning.

1:40:25Stunning. Do you think they have such a different relationship with existence than we do? Yes. Yeah, me too. Yeah, like they send their – like the kids bust their ass. They'll send little kids out. Like when they'll send their kids out to watch the goat herds, man, those kids don't drink water and eat until they come home at night. They raise them to be tough, tough, tough. You kick it more as a grown-up. Like kids will work real hard, you know, and as you get older, you get you kind of get more of like you get to kick it a little bit more but when you're a kid you bust ass um that was fascinating a lot about it was fascinating and i also liked like the animals a thing that i've been there's a thing that i've like lamented in in in conversations with my friends in my writing and all kinds of things i've i often i spend a lot of time thinking about studying talking about writing about uh ice age america so our continent what it was like in the at the the pleistocene holocene trans transition so like humans that were here during the tail end of the ice age the first people that came here what was their what were their lives like um and they lived amongst this this great abundance and diversity of wildlife that we don't have now yeah Mammoths, Mastodon, short-faced bears, right?

1:41:42All this kind of shit. They had a giant, like a beaver that was the size of a black bear. There was an American lion. Fuck, man. We got a bunch of shit. Multiple. Aftermarket shit. Oh, we don't have shit. So going there, like that was the one continent. That was the one continent where all the big shit didn't vanish. We got fucking Bichons. Yeah. Africa is the one continent where humans and all this megafauna never changed they for whatever reason it's the one continent where all the big shit didn't vanish so you still have that great diversity of wildlife so you can sit in the US like if you're a guy like me who's really interested in history you can sit in the US and lament that our elephants are gone like we don't have like 9, 10, 11, 12 1220 species of ungulates running around at any given time antelopes yeah like whatever but you go to after you're like oh that that's what they were talking about like the ice age yeah like the ice age is alive and well like right there is an elephant there's a hippo there's stuff that weighs thousands of pounds like thousands of pounds there's stuff that weighs tons you know And so it didn't, what happened everywhere else didn't happen there.

1:43:02So that was to go like, oh, it's not gone. It's somewhere else. But you can go and be like, this is what it would be like. I wrote down a list. I kept a list on my notes function in my phone. I kept a list of like large mammals, large mammals species that we encountered. And I can't remember, man. By the time we were done, we had like 27. I could pull out my phone and show you. Maybe I have it. Anyways, I had like 27 large mammal species that I personally laid eyes on. Wow. That's cool. And that would be like, that's the shit we're talking about, like in Ice Age America. And so life changing in those kind of ways.

1:43:37Yeah. I wonder if you had a brain scan whenever you see those types of things, right? As a human, I wonder if there's a different reaction that happens in your brain as opposed to when you see different animals. Does it take us back to a part of us that knew those animals well or knew that they existed? There's a theory about that, that when you take babies and make a mobile, the animal things, it seems to be kind of a cockamamie theory, but there's this idea that, and this is kind of like ancestral Africa thing, that those animals resonate with babies. Because it's drawing back to some deep, deep memory of the African megafauna.

1:44:20Oh, yeah. I don't buy that shit. The giraffe. I don't buy that shit. But like I said, I think it's a little goofy. But there is that idea. You think Bluey resonates with – you know what I'm saying? That's crazy. You think Thomas the Train resonates like from prehistoria or whatever? Well, it's just an idea. But there is a thing that is that I do think about when I think about animals and deep history and shit that's gone. As bummed as you can get, as bummed as you can get about animals that used to be around that aren't anymore. Like the way little kids trip out about dinosaurs being gone. As bummed as you might get about all that.

1:44:51The biggest animal to ever live, the largest animal to ever live on the face of the earth is here right now. And it is a blue whale? Yeah. Biggest animal to ever live on the face of the earth. So when little kids are like, golly, those dinosaurs, it's like. The big boss is still here. Biggest animal to ever live is here. Yeah, that's the DMX of fucking animals. If you put your effort into it, you go see the biggest animal that ever lived on the face of the earth. Dude, that is crazy. And it gives you hope that if he wants, he'll bring those other ones back, that they can do it with science if they can do it.

1:45:26Dude, it's going to happen soon. Yeah, I disagree, but that's a different time. Really? We'll talk about that another time, though. But, dude, one thing. I will say this. I went on a safari, and were they all right? So the guy, it was like an ambusselli or somewhere. I think we were in maybe in Kenya. And the guy took us. But you're on a photo safari. Yeah, we were just like in. yeah we didn't get we got out but only near the um place we were staying yeah otherwise we're just kind of in uh cruising trucks cruising and trucks yeah oh there was a pride alliance that kind of came around us at one point and they were just laying down like they weren't bothering us or anything and the guy is like do not stand up in here everybody just stay i'm gonna start the engine up in a little bit i'm just gonna back out of here and they were like someone like six or seven feet away like it was definitely pretty gnarly it's probably like seven or eight of them and this one woman's fucking phone goes off right it was a like a it was like an iCarly ringtone or something it was like some i don't know what that means it was some tv some children's in world it was just like fuck we're gonna die and she immediately kind of just like i don't know it's just funny that you thought it would have startled the cat the cat might have done something oh for sure the guy just said do not make any sharp moves do not stand up and this lady's camera like phone went off and she kind of went like that and the guy just turned around but it's just like in a moment's notice like you can be wiped out because of ignorant human ignorance you know human error so again it takes up psychological space big old cats yeah yeah But, man, yeah, I appreciate you coming and talking, man.

1:47:10This was a lot of fun. Oh, I enjoyed it. Yeah, it was a lot of fun, man. I got to come over there and go on one of your journeys sometimes if you guys. Well, I'll take you out to do something. Yeah, do you guys go in Montana? Yeah, that's where I live, yeah. It is? Yeah. Dude, I love to fish. What do you like to catch? Catfish. You like catfishing? I like catfish, but I'm willing to catch other fish as well. What's the kind of fish you'd most like to catch? I would like to catch probably one of those big, long trout. Big, long trout. Like the ones you see that Brad Pitt and his brother caught, remember?

1:47:42Sure. Those. Those are awesome, dude. We can arrange that, man. I would be honored to take you out fishing. I'm going to be in Montana in the beginning of, I think, the first week of October. I don't know if you're going to be over there or not. Yeah, I might be. What are you doing there? I'm supposed to go to some seminar kind of thing or something. Seminar? Yeah, I don't know what it's for. On Neanderthals? i wish i would so dude if it is and i and i can bring somebody can you yeah please ask around i'm gonna be like hey look if there if it is i'll make sure to do some recon for you yeah i'd appreciate it um no yeah it'll be fun it'd be fun dude to go fish you know i think yeah like do you ever do have you ever done a float like you want to float down a river and catch trout i've never done that before oh yeah i've done i've done uh whatever the one not the fucking like uh i've done metronome oh yeah i've done fly fishing yeah you've done fly fishing do you like that i did like it it was cool man i'd only i only got to do it one time but i think you like do you like do you like the water do you like have you ever uh you never spearfished i've never spearfished okay i love to fish though well i would i would be honored to take you fishing man that'd be fun cool all right we'll do it yeah that'd be great it'd be awesome man thanks for all your contributions to just helping people learn about the outdoors and the history of the outdoors.

1:49:01I know you have a book out that's, it might be your newest book about when people were looking for beaver pellets and stuff across North America. Yeah. So it's about mountain men, right? Yeah. I have a new, there's a new meat eater season coming out. And then we have, I've been working on these things, these meat eaters, American history series. We did one on the long hunters so like daniel boone was a family he used to hunt this country daniel in the deerskin trade so the late colonial deerskin trade did one on the mountain men the beaver trade and then our new one coming out now is called the hide hunters and it's about the people that wiped out the last 15 million buffalo off the great plains at the end of the civil war you know so it's these things about the mark it's about market hunting history that's that's that's that's pre-sale it's not that's available that's available for pre-sale right now but we just finished that the hide hunters so the meat eaters american history series that that's a lot of the shit we taught like like what you and i've been talking about it's a lot of that's kind of a home for a lot of that information cool yeah like a lot of like human history yeah wildlife like how resources get exploited over exploited recovered those those those series they're audio originals right um i do print books too but those are like audio they're audio stories like i we that that me and a researcher we like put them together i narrate them um and they kind of tell that story of America through like American history, American movement through these kind of like keystone wildlife species that supported a lot of industry and economic activity at different times.

1:50:48Cause for a long time, that's what American economies were driven by was leather. Yeah. Fur and leather. Wow. Yeah. Is it interesting to see that like hunting has like taken away species? Like, I mean, it's kind of. Takes them away and puts them back. I know. Yeah. Dude. We've done, we, like speaking collectively, hunters, as much as I hesitate to speak collectively, like the practice of hunting has done a lot of damage and has done a lot of recovery. We've righted, like we collectively, historically, hunters have done a lot in the last century, done an extraordinary amount in the last century to right the wrongs of our fathers.

1:51:34yeah well i think it does feel like in the end like the general feeling of a lot of hunters it's not just about going out and killing something it's about having a relationship uh with nature yeah anyone who's serious about it that's what drives it yeah that desire like if you just have a desire to go out and kill something it doesn't last long yeah you can do that in memphis it doesn't matter um steve steve ranella thank you so much dude and thanks for putting up with me today and uh i appreciate it i appreciate the opportunity i look forward to us going fishing together. That'd be a great time.

1:52:03It was fun. I got a bunch of friends that's going to be jealous. Really? Shit, I might bring one of them. Bring one of them. Very good friend of mine, Seth. He's a huge fan of yours. Oh, really? He was shitting his pants when I told him I was coming on your show. Oh, that's cool, dude. Yeah, bring, dude, yeah. Maybe he'll fish with us. Oh, yeah. If he wants to come, that would be great. He won't say anything weird. He probably won't say much at all. It already seems weird. But it's okay, man. It would be an honor, man. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Steve. Now I'm just floating on the breeze And I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone Oh, but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones But it's gonna take...