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Oct. 7, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:08:16
Joe Rogan Experience #1716 - Steven Rinella
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Main voices
j
joe rogan
01:31:22
s
steven rinella
01:27:47
Appearances
j
jamie vernon
02:58
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unidentified
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
joe rogan
You ate meat tobacco?
We're up and going.
unidentified
Oh.
joe rogan
Tell me about this.
steven rinella
Well, I was just telling this story the other day.
Are you swallowing?
I was just telling this story.
Because we had a bunch of the guys I work with, and this other dude, Jared Outlaw, who were all...
Big Dip guys.
We were having a conversation about Dip.
joe rogan
Is Jared the flip-flop flesher?
steven rinella
No, no, no.
joe rogan
No, that's Seth.
steven rinella
That's a guy named Seth.
A lot of the guys I used to work with, or not, a lot of the guys I work with did and do, you know, they're horrible tobacco addicts.
unidentified
Dip.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Because they're all workers, so they don't smoke because it keeps their hands free.
Um...
But I was explaining to them my version, and I feel like it traces to when I was in fifth grade, we had to make agricultural maps of the United States of America, and you had to glue the product, so you get to South Dakota and you glue a little corn kernel.
joe rogan
Right, I remember those.
steven rinella
Yeah, and put some wheat, you know?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
And for whatever reason, for Virginia, we had tobacco, and someone had brought in, I can't even remember what it was, it must have been loose leaf or plug, and Me and my buddy, I don't even know if this dude remembers, me and my buddy Stanley Johnson ate.
We took it out the playground and ate something.
Dude, I was, I was, I hallucinated twice as a child.
Once on, once when I had to get a root canal.
And once when we ate that tobacco.
I mean, I was, I was, I was hallucinating.
joe rogan
What were you saying?
steven rinella
I can't remember.
My mom had to come get me.
She had to come fetch me from school.
joe rogan
How old were you?
steven rinella
Fifth grade.
Oh wow.
Unbelievably sick.
joe rogan
When I was in, I guess it was 7th grade, 6th or 7th grade, I really got into Tom Sawyer.
Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
I read all his books.
And they were always chewing tobacco, so I bought some.
And I tried it and I got very sick.
Just like drool pouring out of my mouth.
You know, like you get that drooling.
That set me off from chewing tobacco.
steven rinella
So you were a Mark Twain fan?
joe rogan
Oh yeah.
steven rinella
Have you had your kids read Mark Twain?
joe rogan
No, I haven't.
No, I would, though.
steven rinella
It's a conversation starter.
joe rogan
It certainly is.
When you find out about...
I don't know how into history they are, but when you just get into the history of people and the history of people in the United States, those books are fascinating books in that regard.
Mark Twain is widely regarded as the first stand-up comedian.
steven rinella
Oh, I'd buy that.
joe rogan
Yeah, because he used to read his books that were humorous in front of people.
steven rinella
Oh.
joe rogan
And people think that that kind of started out the idea of stand-up comedy.
steven rinella
Yeah, he was quick-witted, too.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
That's good.
joe rogan
And then there's the name, Mark Twain, which I learned from you.
What it meant.
steven rinella
Yeah, we covered this all the time.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Should I share?
joe rogan
Yeah, sure, share.
steven rinella
So, well, recently there's been some controversy introduced into this, but Mark Twain had worked as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, so he had a very informed perspective for all of his characters.
A riverboat required 12 feet of water.
You know the big paddle wheel riverboats?
Required 12 feet of water for safe passage.
So, there would be a guy up on the front of the boat who'd have a rope with a weight on the end and every fathom, a fathom is a nautical term for six feet, he'd have a knot tied in the rope every fathom.
And he'd throw the weight out, the weight hits the bottom, and you see how deep the water is.
So, Mark Twain is second Mark.
joe rogan
Which is 12 feet.
steven rinella
12 feet.
So, he describes like you're going through the fog or in the dark and there's some guy up front going, Mark Twain...
Some other guy, we recently, someone sent in to us, because we were discussing this on our podcast, and a guy sent us in this book.
I can't remember who the hell wrote the book, but he was saying the real thing is, Mark Twain, when he was out, I think when he was out visiting one of the silver mines in Nevada, maybe, he took to go into a bar, and the bar would log how many drinks you had on a chalkboard.
Okay?
So it's like your tab.
In this book, this guy was saying what happened was Twain, whose birth name was Samuel Clemens, Twain would come in and order two drinks by saying...
Mark Twain.
Meaning, put me down for two marks.
joe rogan
So Twain means two?
steven rinella
Two.
I'm going to start throwing that around.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've never heard that used as two.
Have you ever heard anybody use it as two?
Is that like a forgotten terminology?
steven rinella
I don't know, but I bet Jamie's looking it up right now.
unidentified
Here it goes.
steven rinella
I've been on the show before.
jamie vernon
That second one came out.
That rumor came out.
I guess he was still alive, so I guess he responded to it according to this article.
What did he say?
It's the nom de plume of Captain Isaiah Sellers, who used to write river news for the New Orleans McCain, and he died in 1963, and he no longer needed that signature.
steven rinella
1863. So Twain sold it from Twain, from Captain Isaiah Sellers.
joe rogan
He said, I laid violent hands upon it without asking permission of the proprietor's remains.
That is the history of the nom de plure I bear.
So he stole it.
Interesting.
He no longer needed it, because the guy was dead.
So he took it from a dead guy.
steven rinella
If you die, I'm going to be like, my name is Joe Rogan.
joe rogan
Interesting.
Interesting.
So I wanted to tell you, I had a legitimate real-life mountain lion encounter.
A big one.
A huge one.
I saw a real huge mountain lion up close.
It was about 30 yards away.
We were in a truck, and we were driving.
It was right by a creek, and on the other side of the creek, there was a tree, and underneath that tree was a fucking giant car.
Yeah, the guy I was with, my friend Colton, he saw it first.
He goes, holy shit!
unidentified
Shit!
joe rogan
Look at that cat!
Look at the size of that mountain lion!
We stop the truck and I see the eyes glowing because it's about 7 p.m.
It's just starting to get dark and I get the binos out and I got them like close up, big ol' pumpkin head, giant paws, terrifying, staring at us.
Well, just staring at the truck.
He knew that there was things inside the truck, I'm sure, moving.
Enormous.
steven rinella
That's cool.
joe rogan
Enormous.
Because I told you I'd seen one before, but it was small.
The one I'd seen before was like 60, 70 pounds, like a dog size.
This thing was fucking giant.
steven rinella
That's great.
joe rogan
It was terrifying.
steven rinella
See, if you've had two sightings, that's a lot.
joe rogan
That's a lot.
steven rinella
They're few and far between, man.
joe rogan
Yeah.
This was the first time I saw one.
Clearly.
Like, not moving, stationary, looking right at us.
The whole encounter lasted 30 seconds.
It was like a real view of one.
Like, holy shit.
It was so big, man.
steven rinella
That's good.
joe rogan
Enormous forearms.
That was the crazy...
I was looking at its arms.
It's standing there, like, big-ass paws and this giant fucking head.
Ooh, all I was thinking is, like, if I wasn't in this truck, if I was out on the road, if I was out walking, and I saw that thing from that close...
steven rinella
It scared the shit out of you a little bit.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
In Utah, you can get a tag for them, over-the-counter, spot-and-stock, for 50 bucks.
steven rinella
Yeah?
joe rogan
Yeah, it's hard to get a tag with hounds.
steven rinella
Oh, it is?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a draw.
unidentified
It takes a while.
steven rinella
Yeah, I think they...
Even the states that...
The states that, like Washington, used to have a hound season, and they lost it to the animal rights activists, but they still maintain their regular hunting season.
joe rogan
Texas treats them like coyotes.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
You just whack them.
steven rinella
There's a happy middle ground.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
I think that I think the states that manage them as a big game animal are on the right track.
joe rogan
Yeah, the states that don't do anything about them, like California, then you get a case like a couple weeks ago, a five-year-old kid got bitten by a mountain lion in Calabasas.
His mom had to punch the thing in the face.
And, you know, the kids in the hospital, the thing bit his fucking head.
steven rinella
Yeah, it was weird.
joe rogan
90-pound cat.
steven rinella
Two summers ago, you and I might have talked about this, two summers ago, Oregon, Washington had its first mountain lion fatality in state history in the same summer.
Oregon had its first mountain lion fatality in like 98 years in the same summer.
joe rogan
And how were they managed up there?
steven rinella
Like I said, Washington used to have, they had a hound season, but you can still just get a tag.
I was communicating with a guy who was developing a mountain lion hunting strategy that's pretty ingenious.
He goes out the same way a hound hunter will go out.
When there's fresh snow, he'll go out and drive roads, drive logging roads, whatever, and cut a track.
But instead of setting his dogs out on the track, he'll just start tracking the lion.
joe rogan
Just walking.
steven rinella
Yep.
And every time he gets to a good piece of bedding cover, like a grown-up clear-cut or a canyon, he gets to a good piece of bedding cover, he stops and turns his predator collar on.
unidentified
Oh, Jesus.
steven rinella
And calls.
And he was writing us in saying how he's been trying.
I'm like, that's a pretty genius idea, right?
joe rogan
Explain to people what a predator collar is.
steven rinella
Oh, so you can...
A predator collar is a pretty broad term.
It just...
You can do a mouth-blown predator call, which mimics the sound, typically, of a dying animal.
So, if you just went into a sporting goods store and walked up to a shelf and bought a mouth-blown predator call, it would probably mimic the sound of a dying rabbit.
You can get, like, jackrabbit, cottontail rabbit, and it's just a horrific sound.
It's like, whee!
unidentified
Whee!
Whee!
steven rinella
Then they have electronic callers that have these massive libraries.
So I have an electronic caller.
I have a Lucky Duck electronic caller.
And it's got a library of dozens and dozens of sounds.
So it's like you can have it play woodpeckers in distress.
I mean, anything.
Oh, yeah.
It's like house cat noises, which is attractive to urban coyotes.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, a vast library of sounds.
So he would go and turn a predator call around.
And a lot of times, like fawn distress calls, it's just like loud, excitable noises that are attractive to predators.
Yeah.
And eventually he wrote in that he said he sat down.
Turned his collar on.
And, you know, I actually say he turned his collar on.
I don't know if he was using an electronic, like a battery-powered collar, or a mouth-blown collar, but either way, he said, you know, within a minute, there's the lion.
And he got him.
joe rogan
Did you see the guy who was trying to scare a mountain lion off?
He's telling him, get the fuck out of here, fuck you.
He's got a Glock pointed at it, and then he shoots it?
steven rinella
Uh-uh.
joe rogan
You didn't see that?
steven rinella
No.
Nor did I see something that's floating around of a dude...
With a machete killing one off his dog.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
I haven't seen that one.
steven rinella
Well, we were gonna publish it.
We were gonna publish it on our website because it hadn't been widely distributed.
joe rogan
Is it brutal?
steven rinella
I guess it's just too much.
I never saw it.
I was away.
I just came back and heard that we had decided not to do it because it's...
joe rogan
And you didn't immediately watch it?
steven rinella
I still haven't gotten around to watching it.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Your willpower is better than mine.
steven rinella
Yeah, so...
Well, I just...
So, one of my colleagues, Spencer, he's got a...
He and I share an appreciation for those kind of sordid videos, and...
Yeah, I gotta ask him for it.
joe rogan
Watch this, because this is pretty crazy.
steven rinella
Oh.
joe rogan
Look at it.
I mean...
unidentified
You get back.
Back.
steven rinella
He's practicing a lot of restraint.
joe rogan
Yeah.
No.
steven rinella
Oh.
unidentified
Mother.
I just had to shoot this mountain lion.
They pounced at me and I popped it in the face.
Holy.
joe rogan
That's wild.
unidentified
Holy.
joe rogan
I mean, that is close.
What do you think that is?
10 yards?
If that?
steven rinella
It was close.
unidentified
Oh, my God.
steven rinella
Yeah.
See, he'll report himself probably and he'll do like an investigation.
unidentified
Holy s***.
steven rinella
And he'll definitely...
joe rogan
Oh, he'll get off for sure.
Look how close...
Go back to that.
Look how close that is.
steven rinella
That's amazing, man.
joe rogan
That's not even ten yards.
I mean, that might be fucking five yards.
steven rinella
No, it's feet.
You know Yanni had a...
unidentified
That's a big one, too.
joe rogan
Look how big that thing is.
steven rinella
See, I disagree.
joe rogan
You don't think that's 90 pounds?
100 pounds?
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
steven rinella
Okay, yeah.
joe rogan
It's not big.
The one I saw was like $1.60.
steven rinella
Giannis had several of them come into his turkey call this year.
unidentified
Ooh.
steven rinella
Yeah, had a three-pack come in.
joe rogan
Jesus.
steven rinella
A female, two of her kits came into the turkey call.
joe rogan
What did he do?
steven rinella
I don't know what he did.
He didn't freak out.
I think he shooed him off or started talking to him.
joe rogan
Oh, Jesus.
steven rinella
Yeah.
Because he was calling to a turkey...
And the Lions were kind of coming from behind off to his right side, and he's not certain whether they were going to pass by his right shoulder on the way to the real turkey, or if they were going to him.
What else is funny that just happened this spring, he has this on video.
He shoots a turkey.
Well, he has the Lions on video, too.
He's got them on his Instagram, but he shoots a turkey, and And all of a sudden, I mean, no soon does that turkey get hit that a coyote has it and is running away.
Trying to grab it.
joe rogan
Wow.
steven rinella
Or since they run away, trying to like wrassle the turkey.
joe rogan
So did he shoot the coyote?
steven rinella
No.
But he's just standing there.
And the coyote was, because, you know, they'll come into the turkey sounds.
So, shoots the turkey, the coyote comes out, and then the coyote doesn't run off until he kind of goes at it to spook it.
But it stayed right there while he shot the turkey.
joe rogan
They are so fucking bold, those things.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
They're so clever, too.
steven rinella
They come in...
One of my buddies, Seth, I think they called in three coyotes turkey hunting in one day this spring.
I've had black bears, bobcats...
Sorry, a black bear, a bobcat, many coyotes come in to turkey calls, but I have never had the lion thing, but I got a few friends that have done lions, and I feel that that is the greatest.
That's a good achievement.
joe rogan
Were you the one who told me the story about turkey hunting where you heard something behind you and it was a bear?
Was that you?
steven rinella
Yeah, I heard an exhale.
I didn't know it was there until it exhaled in my ear.
joe rogan
How far away?
Inches.
unidentified
Inches.
steven rinella
Me to you.
joe rogan
Oh, Jesus.
steven rinella
No, I'm not joking, man.
Like, exhaled in my ear.
It was like he got there and couldn't figure out what was going on.
I all of a sudden heard him go.
And I turned and just, yeah.
joe rogan
How big was he?
unidentified
I don't know.
steven rinella
I don't know.
I honestly didn't.
It was so, like, disconcerting and he was gone so fast.
But, yeah, I wouldn't be able to say.
joe rogan
I think that all these people that vote against mountain lion hunting and have this perception of mountain lions need to be around one.
They need to experience that just to understand that those things need to be managed or they will kill your kids.
Like you really need to see it.
steven rinella
I don't know that they...
unidentified
I mean, it's so seldom that they do...
joe rogan
No, it's not going to happen.
steven rinella
No.
joe rogan
It's not a realistic adventure.
steven rinella
I just think, in my view, if they're well-managed, in my view, they need to be managed as a renewable resource.
joe rogan
Right, but see that term?
steven rinella
What's with the shooting star?
joe rogan
This guy, it just came with the setup.
Well, we bought these star panels.
They have the option for a shooting star.
We thought it'd be cool.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
One shot over the deck.
But the look that people get when they're not sure what's going on.
steven rinella
You know, Twain was born in the year of Halley's Comet and died when Halley's Comet came back, and he predicted that he would die?
joe rogan
Whoa.
steven rinella
He came with the comet and left with the comet.
joe rogan
Wow.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's pretty intense.
steven rinella
Back to Mount...
joe rogan
That term, renewable resources, like, that's a good term.
Like, you use that term as a hunter and as a conservationist, but...
Most people...
The problem is like the people that vote, right?
Like a good example is British Columbia, right?
Because British Columbia bans grizzly hunting because they think grizzly hunting is trophy hunting.
Meanwhile, they're like overrun with grizzlies.
They have a lot of grizzlies and they would manage them by controlling their population and would...
You know, it would keep people from getting attacked, it would keep livestock from getting attacked, and the encounters were frequent.
Like, my friend Mike lives up there, and he's like, there is no shortage of grizzly bears.
Like, they're all over the place up here.
He goes, and now what they've done is they've stopped people from managing them because the people in the cities, who never have any encounters with them whatsoever, think that it's unsightly to hunt them.
But they allow black bear hunting.
Because black bear seems to be something that people actually do eat.
But then you can't gut them.
Because if you gut them, they're worried that people are shooting them just for their gallbladders.
steven rinella
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
So it's wild.
steven rinella
Yeah, for a long time you couldn't have a gallbladder in your possession.
joe rogan
Isn't that crazy?
steven rinella
You couldn't even use your own bear's gallbladder.
But here's the problem that I see.
Okay, ducks don't kill people, generally.
Oh, you know what I was reading the other day?
This state has more animal deaths, by far and away, Texas has more people killed by animals than any other state.
joe rogan
Well, there's more tigers in captivity in Texas than in all the wild of the world.
steven rinella
You know, it winds up being dogs.
joe rogan
Dogs kill people here?
steven rinella
Are the number one.
unidentified
Really?
steven rinella
What kind of dogs?
Feral dogs, domestic dogs.
joe rogan
Feral dogs?
steven rinella
Yeah, dogs kill...
So, Texas...
North Dakota and Rhode Island had zero animal deaths.
Very low populations.
One's small and one has a very low population density of humans.
And one's just small enough to not have that many citizens.
But yeah, Texas is number one.
California is a distant second.
Wild pigs, dogs, rattlesnakes.
But here's the thing.
Ducks don't kill people.
Generally.
unidentified
Generally.
steven rinella
If you're going to go around and determine what we should be allowed to hunt based on what might kill you if we don't hunt it, I would be worried about the future of duck hunting.
joe rogan
Well, no, I wouldn't say that.
steven rinella
I'm more inclined to be like, in my desire to sort of bracket things...
I would say if you have sustainable, harvestable populations of wildlife, and you have a public interest in exploiting that wildlife, and it can be exploited without long-term detriment to the species, that should be allowed.
joe rogan
That's very reasonable.
But ducks are on menus in restaurants.
Grizzly bears are not.
The difference is people don't think of grizzly bears as something that you would eat.
That's correct.
Peking duck.
It's a common dish.
Ducks are in a lot of restaurants.
steven rinella
No, I was very sad.
I was very sad to see what happened in BC, and I think it's emotionally charged.
I think you're seeing the same thing.
You see routinely the same thing around wolves.
Just this morning, someone shared an article.
Montana just rewrote some of their wolf hunting rules and expanded some areas.
And they used to have, outside of Yellowstone National Park, they had hunting districts that had these very strict quotas.
They liberalized wolf hunting in Montana because we have a lot of wolves.
And there's a pack in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley, there's a pack of 24 wolves.
And three of those wolves this year have been killed outside the park.
So now you can expect renewed calls for the park's jurisdiction to extend further away from the edges of the park in order to protect that because people will routinely call them Yellowstone's wolves rather than Montana's wolves.
joe rogan
Yeah, that is an interesting situation, right?
Because you have this park that everyone visits.
And, you know, I went there and I took a selfie with the elk.
They're hanging out in front of a Pepsi machine because it's so bizarre.
steven rinella
Did you get a bunch of social media backlash?
joe rogan
No, I didn't put it up.
No, I just took the picture because I just thought it was so strange that we're all just standing there and there's elk just lying down on the ground.
steven rinella
Yeah, completely habituated humans.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
They've done a great job of restoring...
Natural predators to the landscape, but they overlooked one, which is the human predator.
So, you had 9,000 years at a minimum.
This is just based on direct...
Archaeological evidence.
We have 9,000 years of human hunters on the landscape in Yellowstone National Park, the last hundred years notwithstanding.
We've gone through great effort to restore natural predators in that ecosystem.
joe rogan
Not humans.
steven rinella
Not that we don't have a very heavy hand in Yellowstone.
Humans have an enormously heavy hand in Yellowstone.
What I wanted to do when I retired...
I used to want to campaign.
This is not going to make a hell of a lot of sense to people, but I wanted to campaign to make Hunter's Orange laws standardized around the country.
Not with a federal law, but just get all states on board.
Yeah, because...
Like, in some states you have to have 400 inches of blaze orange when you're hunting with a firearm.
Some states it's like 500 inches of blaze orange.
Some states it's no blaze orange.
Wyoming, you gotta have an orange hat.
I was gonna be like, I was gonna dedicate my life to making it be that all states adopted the Wyoming rule.
joe rogan
Only hat.
steven rinella
Orange hat.
joe rogan
You think that's enough?
steven rinella
Yeah, I do.
If you want to wear more, wear more.
joe rogan
Is all orange, does that work if you have colorblindness?
steven rinella
I have no idea.
joe rogan
It's interesting, right?
I wonder what that means.
I don't even know what they see.
steven rinella
But let me tell you what I'm going to do now when I retire.
unidentified
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
Go ahead.
steven rinella
No, I'll get back.
joe rogan
Are you going to retire?
You're not going to retire.
steven rinella
No, but when I do retire, I'm going to campaign, I'm going to make it my life's work to have Yellowstone National Park turned into a wilderness area.
joe rogan
Really?
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
All the infrastructure.
I'm going to fight hard.
I need a slogan for it that's as catchy as Make America Great Again.
joe rogan
But isn't the problem that those animals are so habituated?
They're so used to humans that it's almost like it would take a long time.
steven rinella
You remember when- It'd take about a year.
joe rogan
Yeah?
unidentified
About one year?
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then they'd figure it out?
steven rinella
Yeah.
I don't want to mess up travel.
So the highways that cut through there would stay open, but most of the infrastructure would go.
Wildlife management would go to the states of Wyoming and Montana, and it would become a wilderness area.
That's a great designation, because in a wilderness area, it would enjoy greater protections.
Than it has as a national park.
How so?
Federally designated wilderness is non-motorized.
joe rogan
Oh, I see.
But wouldn't that cut down on tourist dollars?
steven rinella
Oh, yeah.
We'd have to figure something else out.
Listen, weed's going legal in Montana.
joe rogan
Is it?
steven rinella
Yeah.
unidentified
So that's where all the money is?
steven rinella
I'll figure that out.
When I retire, I'll get all the details sorted out, but I just think it's time to restore the human predator.
It's time to do what's right on that landscape and protect it.
joe rogan
That's an interesting way of looking at it.
So protect it from vehicles, too, because that is an issue in that area, right?
steven rinella
Yeah, just quiet, just mellow things out, quiet things down, and restore the human predator.
I just gotta think of a sweet slogan.
joe rogan
It's such a massive place for tourist dollars.
I mean, so many people visit Yellowstone every year just to look at the animals and occasionally get knocked through the air by a buffalo.
Those bison videos where people get too close, those are fucking hilarious because they happen every year.
People go flying through the air and flip and land on their head.
steven rinella
To return to Hunter's Orange.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
You had a question about Hunter's Orange, about being colorblind?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
I don't know, but the whitetail hunter...
joe rogan
Oh, here it is.
Can deer see an orange...
Well, that's deer.
steven rinella
Yeah, listen, here's the thing.
God bless you, Jamie.
Lots been written about what deer see.
It's just speculation.
joe rogan
Because their eyeballs function very differently.
steven rinella
Yeah, it's just different.
So what they see and how they respond to it.
But interestingly, Mark Canyon, who's a very avid whitetail hunter, he can't blood trail.
joe rogan
Because he can't see blood?
steven rinella
Yeah, because of colorblind issues.
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
What if he uses a black light?
steven rinella
Maybe it's his dad.
No, I think it is him that can't.
No, he's got to use various tricks or bring someone in, but he can't clearly pick up blood.
And blood trailing, for me, now that my eyeballs are going bad, short range.
joe rogan
Do you use glasses?
steven rinella
Reading glasses.
joe rogan
But when you blood trail?
steven rinella
I hadn't thought of it.
Why not?
My eyes get worse every day now.
Not every day, but it's noticeable.
With this year, blood trailing, I had a younger person with me, the flip-flop flasher, Seth.
And he was spotting 10 drops to my one, and I realized it's like I'm used to looking for blood up close too much.
And I gotta back up or get my damn glasses on because it's getting harder to blood trail.
joe rogan
Have you taken any supplements for your eyes?
steven rinella
No, because it's only right now.
No, I'm ready to do anything, man.
It's only right now becoming a thing for me where it's starting to...
joe rogan
But we've been talking about it for a couple years.
steven rinella
I know, but now...
joe rogan
Now it's a real issue.
steven rinella
Listen, you see this?
joe rogan
Yeah.
What's that?
Oh, you got glasses in the back of your fucking case for your phone.
It's not bad.
Let me see them glasses.
steven rinella
I hit a point where I couldn't order in a dark restaurant.
And my friend lent me those so I could order.
joe rogan
These are hilarious.
steven rinella
Dude, those are great.
You look cool in those, too.
joe rogan
Do it?
steven rinella
And I had to use his to order, and then I used his to order a set of those.
joe rogan
These look like you've had Vaseline on your fingers and you've just been, like, trying to polish them.
steven rinella
I haven't cleaned them yet.
Oh, yeah, but anyways, blood trailing's getting hard.
Hunter's, yeah, Hunter's Orange, I think, is...
You know, I think it's a good idea.
Some states don't require it at all.
The state we're sitting in right now doesn't have a hunter's orange law.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Did you hear about that?
The guy who got shot, Archie Hunter, got shot by a muzzleloader hunter in Colorado this year?
steven rinella
This year?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
I haven't heard that.
I know it happens every year.
I hadn't heard that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I mean, you just got to wonder, how the fuck does a person think a person is an animal?
I mean, how does that ever happen?
steven rinella
Not only that, He thought he was an animal, and he thought he was aiming at its lungs.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's crazy.
Yeah, I mean, I think the archery hunter was in full camo, and this guy, you know.
steven rinella
My friend Robert Abernathy got shot turkey hunting, and Really?
Yeah.
I know a handful of people have all been shot turkey hunting.
I know one guy's been shot turkey hunting twice.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
steven rinella
In the same spot.
joe rogan
Did he have, like, was he using some fan in front of him or something like that?
steven rinella
He was doing something that's pretty taboo, which is he was mimicking the sound of a gobbler.
He was mimicking...
So, when you're hunting turkeys in the spring, you have to kill males.
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
And you usually make a sound of a female to draw a male in.
Well, he...
You can really...
It can be effective to mimic the sound of a male.
joe rogan
It's like a challenge.
steven rinella
A challenge, right?
unidentified
So...
steven rinella
You'll appreciate, like, cow calling at an elk, but a little bugling at an elk can get his blood boiling.
unidentified
He was...
steven rinella
Had pulled all of the stops and started mimicking the sound of a male and got shot.
Then he's hunting the same spot years later, mimics the sound of a male, gets shot by a different guy.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
steven rinella
And very different attitudes to these two different people.
The one guy that shot him wanted to fight with him and blame it on him.
The other guy that shot him felt so bad that he quit hunting and he had to befriend him And make him comfortable to go hunting again.
So one person took an adversarial approach to the man he shot and one person was deeply repentant to the point where he gave up the discipline.
joe rogan
I was watching a video yesterday of a woman who rear-ended this guy in a Lamborghini and then got out and started screaming and yelling at him that he hit her car and the guy was laughing.
Did you see that video?
They show the video from the gas station.
The guy's like, what the fuck are you talking?
And then she gets mad at him for being white.
But she's white.
Isn't she white?
Kind of white?
I don't know.
She looked white.
But I mean, it's like a literal crazy person.
Like maybe just trying to make up an excuse for why she was in a car accident.
But she clearly takes a turn, slams into this guy's car.
The guy pulls over to the gas station.
She gets out and knocks on his door.
You hit my fucking car!
And screaming and yelling at him.
People are nuts.
Like, you shoot a person?
You should definitely fucking apologize.
Because you didn't even...
You didn't even look.
I mean, did you think that guy was a turkey?
steven rinella
The guy that got shot twice, his name is Preston Pittman.
joe rogan
What was the story with the first one?
steven rinella
So that was a good friend of mine, Robert.
joe rogan
Who shot him?
steven rinella
No, no, no, no.
Oh, the guy that got shot twice?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Who shot him the first time they wanted to fight him?
steven rinella
I don't know a lot of details about the guy that wanted to fight him.
joe rogan
But that's a crazy person, right?
steven rinella
Yeah, the guy shot him and then got mad at him for making a gobble.
joe rogan
But he didn't even look.
That's what's so crazy.
steven rinella
It's all movement.
Listen, man.
You know...
joe rogan
How bad did he get shot?
20 gauge?
steven rinella
I can't remember.
But yeah, he got bad.
Penetrated his skin.
He got bad.
Like, in his skin.
My friend Robert got shot.
We're talking about what size shotgun pellets you use to hunt turkeys.
Robert Abernathy was saying to me how he's like, man, I can't remember what size it was.
There's like a large pellet.
Maybe twos or something.
And he said, you shouldn't be able to use those.
Those things hurt.
I'm like, what do you mean those things hurt?
He goes, that's what I got shot with.
He was hunting, and he was sitting there listening for a gobbler, and there was a stump in front of him.
And he said that he lifted his foot up and put his foot on the stump.
joe rogan
And all of a sudden, BAM! Someone shoot him in the foot?
steven rinella
Yeah, and in conversation with the man that shot his leg, the man said to him, when you lifted your foot up on that stump, it looked like a gobbler going into full strut.
joe rogan
Oh my god, that guy's blinder than you.
steven rinella
No, listen man, I'm only blind up close.
It's just, yeah, so...
joe rogan
God, it's just so crazy that people just pull the trigger on a movement.
steven rinella
Yeah.
You know, I can't...
unidentified
Listen, I definitely can't condone it, but you kind of get it.
steven rinella
I don't condone it.
I don't condone it.
When I hear something like that, though, to be honest with you, one of my first—I have twin feelings— One of condemnation of the individual and one of like some level of, you know, like a level of sympathy.
joe rogan
Didn't one of your friends get shot through the backpack by a rifle hunter?
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
What happened there?
steven rinella
He was deer hunting in Washington.
Got shot through his backpack.
That guy got in trouble.
The guy that shot him through his backpack got in trouble.
joe rogan
He fucking should.
steven rinella
Um...
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
steven rinella
Yeah, I probably told him.
My dad got shot in the foot.
He just got shot in the foot rabbit hunting.
joe rogan
But that was an accident, right?
steven rinella
That wasn't a mistaken identity.
That was just a guy thumbing with a hammer on his shotgun and shot him in the foot.
You know what you and I were talking about?
But you said you wanted to talk about it now.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Is the COVID in deer.
joe rogan
Yeah, the deer are testing positive for COVID. And they don't really understand why, right?
Isn't that correct?
steven rinella
No.
I mean, they've done...
Hundreds of deer in multiple states.
I think it was Michigan had the highest.
Like 68% of the deer they checked.
And they checked over 100 of them.
joe rogan
Isn't that incredible?
Because that's more than any population of humans.
At any point in time, what's the population of humans that test positive for COVID? I mean, it can't be more than a few percent.
steven rinella
They're positive for the antibodies.
joe rogan
No, I mean, oh, positive for the antibodies.
Oh, but not positive for COVID. Not positive.
steven rinella
And they don't know that it has any...
They don't know that it has...
Any effect on them.
So when I first heard that, a wildlife biologist in Arizona named James Heffelfinger sent me some information about that.
When I first heard it, I was like, yeah man, but maybe it's something that was always there, but you weren't looking for it, or there's a false marker.
And he wrote back with a bunch of information on it, and they had all these serums That they've banked from over the years.
joe rogan
Serums meaning like blood samples?
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
They have banked blood samples from deer.
Probably just for this sort of thing, right?
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
And when they go back pre-COVID and look at all these deer samples, it's not there.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
And now it's there.
joe rogan
That's so fascinating.
steven rinella
We're laughing that it all comes...
I was joking that it's either like a really good hunter who gets very close to deer...
That's one theory.
Probably not right.
I had a theory that it comes from Doug Dern's urine.
Did he have COVID? Buckman juice.
I don't think he's had it, but I know that his urine is very attractive to deer.
joe rogan
But he hasn't had COVID, so that doesn't work.
steven rinella
Yeah, and I thought maybe it came from Doug.
My whole family got COVID. He's like a deer man.
He's around deer all the time.
But I don't really get it.
Another thing I could picture...
I don't know that this is true.
If I was in charge of examining this, a thing that I would be curious to look at would be captive cervids, which are in very close proximity to people.
unidentified
Which is also how they spread CWD. Yeah, CWD can be spread that way.
steven rinella
They just had another deer farm that had shipped 100 and some CWD positive deer around the country.
you could see that that would be a case where you had captive deer in very close proximity to humans, and then those deer are rubbing noses through the fence with wild deer.
That would be a thing I would look at.
I have no idea.
joe rogan
Yeah, that makes sense.
steven rinella
Or just...
I don't know, man, you walk out to your, you know, you're in the suburbs somewhere where you got deer hanging out in your yard, like deer hang out in my yard.
Yeah.
And you walk out to your car in the morning and sneeze and some fricking deer walks by, I don't know.
joe rogan
Yeah, but that's highly unlikely.
steven rinella
It sure seems like it.
joe rogan
Because outside contamination of people, people getting COVID outside is almost unheard of.
Yeah.
steven rinella
And it shows up in, like, zoo animals, close proximity to humans.
unidentified
Does it?
steven rinella
It shows up in, like, fur farms, like all the mink they had to destroy in Norway, close proximity to humans.
joe rogan
I heard tigers, like, in the zoo.
They've caught tigers in the zoo.
My whole family got COVID, and I was curious to see how my dog would react.
Like, whether he would get it.
Because, you know, I didn't, like, shy away from him.
Like, a lot of times I watch TV, and he, like, on the couch, he likes to hop up on the couch and cuddle.
So, like, while I was home all day sick with COVID, he just hopped up with me and hung out with me.
So I'm like, should I be fucking petting him like this?
steven rinella
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
I'm like, he seems all right.
steven rinella
We had that argument where, when I had COVID, I was out in our guest house quarantining.
I was gone when I got it and got home.
And before I went in to see my family, we have a little guest house.
I went out there and eventually got my test back and had COVID. And I let the dog in.
joe rogan
Oh, and then into the house, too.
steven rinella
And then we had to do all the...
My wife's like, I don't know, what happens now?
Is the dog supposed to quarantine?
joe rogan
I think the dog should quarantine, probably.
steven rinella
We didn't quarantine the dog.
joe rogan
I was the last one in my family to get it, so I wasn't worried about them getting it, because they already had antibodies.
But I'm like, what about the dog?
But I'm like, I think he's probably already had it.
I don't want to test him, because I don't want to put him through a fucking blood test.
steven rinella
No, it's funny about dogs.
The weirdest thing about quarantining with it...
At first, man, my kids are upset.
They're crying, you know, like, very confused.
joe rogan
Oh, because you can't come in the house?
steven rinella
Oh, yeah, I'm out in the garage, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, you know?
unidentified
Oh, wow.
steven rinella
Because then, you know, if you come up to me, then you're not supposed to go to school, and, like, I'm going to go out there, and they're, like, upset, and they're making artwork for me and bringing me food.
And after a few days, they're just like, the fuck's that guy?
joe rogan
They got used to it?
steven rinella
It was like I ceased to exist after a few days.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Kids adapt.
That's funny.
That's funny.
steven rinella
Oh, yeah, man.
It was like they forgot all about me.
unidentified
I was out there, you know...
steven rinella
Taking naps and stuff like that.
joe rogan
It is interesting about the zoo animals, because the zoo animals may be close proximity, but all of it outside, and then also no real physical contact with zoo animals.
steven rinella
What are you talking about no physical contact with zoo animals?
joe rogan
Like tigers?
I've read that tigers had gotten it.
Like, big cat.
See if you can find that.
I'm pretty sure that's what I read, that these tigers have gotten to the zoo, unless maybe they had to handle the tiger.
steven rinella
If you're talking about 15, if the new...
Not the new.
There's this sort of, like, weird rule of thumb that, you know...
You know the rule of thumb, like, 15 minutes, 6 feet?
joe rogan
Yeah, it's nonsense.
Nine lions and tigers at the National Zoo are being treated for COVID. So through the fence or cage or whatever.
Wow, that's a couple weeks ago.
steven rinella
Of course they're spending that amount of time.
You know what, at my kids' school, you know what they do that's really interesting?
You know the whole, like, 15 minutes, 6 feet thing?
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
steven rinella
They limit their, my boy, my older boy, they limit his lunchtime to 15 minutes.
joe rogan
Oh, well that doesn't make any sense.
unidentified
Because then they're like, yeah, no one's gonna, how can they?
joe rogan
But that's, with the Delta variant, which is the predominant variant now, that's not real.
Because now it's like 30 seconds.
steven rinella
Yeah, he likes to shoot the breeze with his bodies too, so it's hard for him to get his lunch eaten.
joe rogan
That's silly.
Remember when we were kids who had chicken pox?
You'd go over your friend's house so you could get chicken pox.
If you had chicken pox, everybody would go and get chicken pox.
Let's get it over with.
Now we're scared of something that doesn't even harm kids.
Zookeepers first noticed last week that the animals were displaying symptoms including decreased energy and appetite and coughing and sneezing.
The animals are now being treated with anti-inflammatories, anti-nausea medication, antibiotics, the latter of which is intended to address a likely secondary bacterial pneumonia.
steven rinella
God, I didn't even do any of that stuff.
joe rogan
No, that's pretty crazy, though, that it's...
jamie vernon
Presumptive positive?
joe rogan
Oh, interesting.
jamie vernon
A tested presumptive?
Interesting.
Maybe they don't have an actual animal COVID test or something?
I don't know what that means.
joe rogan
That's a good point.
Good catch, Jamie.
steven rinella
You know, when the pandemic started, When shit really hit the fan, I was in Baja with my family.
And I got back and I called my friend, Chester Floyd.
And I said, this is the most prophetic thing anybody said about COVID to me.
I said, Chester, man, what do you think about all this that's going on?
And Chester said, man, I think a lot of people got a lot of opinions.
And holy shit.
joe rogan
Holy shit, was he right?
steven rinella
Dude, he was on to something.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
You know, I wonder how much, like, if you could get a gauge of the overall anxiety of the world, how much it decreased yesterday when Facebook was down.
unidentified
Mmm!
joe rogan
You know how you go by those trails and it has like, here's your fire warning for the day.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
You see the green?
It has all these different colors.
If there was like an anxiety meter and you could go by and see like, what was it like with no Facebook?
And Instagram, both.
I bet that shit would be pretty light.
Twitter's still up, which is probably like 50% of the anxiety is Twitter, but 50% of it might be Facebook.
steven rinella
It might, yeah.
It's probably good, and it's funny that...
joe rogan
All social media anxiety?
steven rinella
You know, I use social media as a...
I use it for work and have fun with it, but...
Yeah, it blows my mind that for a long time, it would be that you were supposed to regard those individuals responsible for social media platforms, we were supposed to regard them as these heroes.
It's like, oh, the Arab Spring!
You know what I mean?
Oh, right.
Bringing the world together.
It's like, holy shit, dude.
joe rogan
Well, the algorithms.
What changed is algorithms.
If you watch the Social Dilemma, the documentary, The Social Dilemma.
That guy, Tristan Harris, has been on the podcast and sort of explained a lot of it to us.
He's going to come back on again and we're going to talk to him some more about it because it's...
It's very disturbing because what they've done with these algorithms and they knew what was happening while they were doing it is they've accentuated arguments.
They've accentuated all the division between people and that it's kind of like an unstoppable domino effect.
It seems like at this point in time there's a clear division in our country that didn't exist in 2007. If you go back to the invention of the first iPhone and when social media started coming about, if you go from there to now, the change is palpable.
It's very, very real.
And then when you add in the anxiety of a pandemic and real adversity, which is what people have encountered over the last 18 months, now it's through the roof.
Now people are literally fucking insane.
They're unrecognizable.
steven rinella
I hear that, but I know YouTube's not a social media platform, but I had a rare moment of just nothing going on this morning because I woke up in a hotel and I wasn't at work or messing with my kids.
And so I was just dicking around on YouTube.
And I was kind of pleasantly surprised to be like that YouTube understands that I like to watch Norm MacDonald videos and I like to watch stuff about catching bobcats.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's true.
unidentified
They weren't trying to serve me something that's going to make me mad.
joe rogan
But see, that's because you're healthy.
See, this is the thing about it.
People think that they do it because they want to make you mad.
It's not.
They do whatever you're interested in.
Like my friend Ari, he did this experiment where he went on YouTube and only looked at puppy videos.
And all it would show him was videos of puppies.
Like every time he went on YouTube, it's puppies.
But when you get into the comments...
That's when you find out that YouTube is a social media platform.
Not just that, but creeps have used comments.
They've gone to certain websites, and this is how they've caught people for sex trafficking.
And there was a bunch of these weird fucking kid videos.
I don't know if you're aware of these.
They don't understand what was going on.
They don't know how these things were made or why they were made, but there was a bunch of kid-friendly looking videos.
So it'd be like Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse, but then they would get drunk.
And, like, fall down and bust their head open.
It was really weird.
But these videos would show up in, like, if a kid was looking at cartoons, and if you're one of those parents that just, like, gives your kid an iPad, just go ahead.
Your kid would watch normal cartoon videos, and then all of a sudden, in the feed, because of the algorithm, these, uh, it was, like, Spider-Man was a bunch of them.
jamie vernon
Here's a, for instance, screenshot.
unidentified
Oh, jeez!
jamie vernon
This was, like, Elsa-gate stuff.
I'm not showing this online.
It's just for you guys to see.
joe rogan
Yeah, Elsagate was one where Elsa from Frozen, there was a ton of these videos where kids were looking up Elsa videos.
So because they were looking up Elsa videos, all these other videos that were also Elsa videos showed up in them.
And apparently what was going on was like inside the comments.
Am I wrong about this?
Inside the comments, there was like people who got arrested for doing...
jamie vernon
Yeah, that's where I don't know.
I'm not going to say that didn't happen.
I don't know.
Yeah, there are FBI investigation.
Yeah, it got crossed over into like the pedophile genre.
They were using code words and stuff.
joe rogan
Yeah, they were using these comments like they would meet up on certain videos and they would communicate inside the comments of those videos with code.
And that's how they got away with communicating publicly about certain things.
And I don't know if they were child porn or what they were involved with, but I remember there was a lot of people that got in trouble for that.
And then YouTube's trying to figure out, like, what are these videos?
And who the fuck is making these?
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
What was the motivation?
joe rogan
They don't know.
The theme was weird.
We watched a bunch of them one day.
The theme was weird.
It was always the same thing.
They seemed kind of normal, and then the cartoon characters would get drunk, and they would always wind up getting busted in the head with a bottle and blood everywhere, and you're like, what the fuck?
So it goes from being like, yeah, weird shit.
steven rinella
You don't let your kid just cut loose on YouTube, do you?
joe rogan
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Luckily, one of my kids, all she likes to watch on YouTube is like, there's a girl named Sniperwolf, who's very funny.
And she does like these reaction videos to stuff, but it's very G-rated.
And she loves watching her.
But I keep an eye on what they're doing, and I don't allow them to just start going crazy.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because it's just...
You know, you never know.
I mean, one day, you just stumble upon an ISIS beheading video.
And now you have your kids fucking waking you up in the middle of the night crying and screaming because they can't get this image out of their head.
steven rinella
It's terrifying.
joe rogan
It is.
steven rinella
To be on the other side of it, too, because when you're young, all you want to do is...
Throw off the chains.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
steven rinella
And then all of a sudden you're in the position of putting the chains on.
joe rogan
Yeah, you gotta.
It's like, how much freedom do you give them?
How much do you talk to them about stuff?
How much do you let them figure this stuff out on their own?
It's tricky.
And it's a weird world because it didn't exist previously.
It's not like we're dealing with something that we went through when we were children.
There was no Google when we were children.
There was no LiveLeak.
You ever go on LiveLeak?
steven rinella
No.
I know about it, but yeah.
joe rogan
Horrible videos.
You can watch a lot of car accidents and animal attacks and just wild shit.
That's not...
steven rinella
Oh, no, I have been on that.
Yeah, I have stumbled into that.
joe rogan
But that didn't exist.
When I was a kid, if you wanted to watch something fucked up, you had a plan for it.
Like, when we wanted to watch Faces of Death, somebody had to get the video.
One of our friends had to watch the door, you know?
So, like, we were in the basement.
One of the friends had to watch the door, make sure the parents didn't come down.
And then we put it on the VCR, and we were ready.
Like, if someone came down, you'd pop that fucking tape out and hide it.
These kids today, all they have to do is just have a phone.
And a lot of times kids are 11 and 12, they have phones.
And 12-year-olds with a phone, they're going to start Googling people fucking, people getting killed.
They're going to see the most crazy shit.
Have you seen this?
Your friends are going to say, have you seen that?
And then you're going to look on your phone.
There's no way to stop it.
There's no way to stop it.
Kids have wild fucking workarounds for little restrictions.
My sneaky little fucking kid, you know what she did?
She screen recorded my wife when my wife went and put in a password for her screen time.
jamie vernon
Nice move.
joe rogan
Very nice move.
She handed her phone over to my wife.
My wife goes in and puts a password in for her screen time so she can only get an hour's worth of screen time a day.
And then my wife checks and she's like, how the fuck do you have four hours of screen time?
What's going on here?
And then she figured out that the little monster...
unidentified
Did you guys have public access when you were growing up?
jamie vernon
My public access TV. I used to see some of that shit.
My first exposure to Faces of Death was after 10 o'clock.
They could show whatever the fuck they wanted for whatever reason.
joe rogan
Really?
jamie vernon
Not blatant porn, but porn.
Really?
That's the Bud Dwyer video of him shooting himself in the face.
You saw that on TV? To the 21 Guns salute when I was going to bed when I was like 10 years old.
unidentified
What?
jamie vernon
Yeah.
unidentified
Huh.
joe rogan
No way!
jamie vernon
And then this guy ended up, I was talking with some of my friends when I was back at home in my reunion.
This guy was, we all knew about him when we were like 12, 13 years old.
Had a show.
Painted up like an insane clown posse type character.
And would have like blood, girls, vaginas, lips, all sorts of wild shit.
joe rogan
Really?
jamie vernon
Wild.
And it was just like, the government was putting it on technically because of public access.
joe rogan
So in public access, there's no restrictions like there are with the FCC? That's what I was asking.
jamie vernon
You guys didn't have?
That's like what Wayne's World was.
That's my only thing I knew growing up was like Wayne's World on the SNL was a public access show, but then we actually had public access, and that's where wild shit was happening after 10 o'clock.
joe rogan
I had a friend of mine who had a public access show.
My friend Larry Rapucci.
He was a stand-up comic in...
I think it was Larry's show.
But he was a stand-up comic in Boston.
We all did a public access show when we were struggling comedians.
You did it too?
Yeah, I wore a dress.
I wore a dress and a wig and we had a dating show.
jamie vernon
This is the wild guy that I would...
This is from the 90s, I think.
I found it on YouTube.
It still exists.
steven rinella
It's like very David Lynchian, man.
jamie vernon
It's just so weird to watch now.
joe rogan
Damon Zex.
Oh, so he would...
That's him on the right and him on TV? Oh, so he really planned this out.
jamie vernon
This was some weird shit.
joe rogan
Wow.
This is 96?
unidentified
He's doing coke.
jamie vernon
The tampons.
It's all...
Again, I was a kid when I was seeing this stuff.
joe rogan
Wow.
jamie vernon
To me, it's not that strange.
steven rinella
Looks like Robert Smith from The Cure, man.
jamie vernon
Someone found him.
I don't know.
I'm sure he's on Facebook or probably doing this stuff still.
joe rogan
Let's find him.
jamie vernon
Well, he's going to find out now.
joe rogan
Oh, Jesus Christ.
steven rinella
Wow, yeah.
joe rogan
So he got away with this?
This was all on...
jamie vernon
Yeah, but he wasn't even the only one.
There was a clown called Angsto the Clown.
I'm sure Red Band knows about this stuff because he was a little bit older than me in the same area.
That's probably why he was probably watching the same show.
Where were you brought up?
This is why it might make sense now.
steven rinella
Where were you brought up?
jamie vernon
In Columbus, Ohio.
Huh.
joe rogan
Wow.
jamie vernon
And then looking back into some of the stuff that was happening there, it kind of makes a little bit of sense.
But if this wasn't going on everywhere, that's sort of strange to me.
joe rogan
I never saw it in Boston, but I might have been out of the loop.
It might have existed.
I just wasn't aware of it.
But I thought the regulations were across the board if you were broadcasting.
I didn't think that public access was different.
Is it because it's local?
jamie vernon
Maybe, and then there's like...
Free speech laws that we're getting into.
Again, I was a kid, so I have no idea.
I was excited to see it.
steven rinella
It won't be available until spring, but for the last couple of years, I've been working on a book.
This is the thing I thought I'd never do.
I used to be annoyed by people who thought about their kids before I had kids, but...
I have a book that I just finished called Outdoor Kids Inside World.
It's about, you know, kids in nature, raising kids.
And yeah, man, if you'd asked me, dude, like 10 years ago, I'd have been like, no way I would do something like that.
But it's harrowing, man.
It's like scary.
joe rogan
What is scary?
steven rinella
Having kids!
joe rogan
Oh.
Okay, yeah.
Worried about them and the danger.
steven rinella
Yeah, and trying to guide their experience.
For me, I've found that exposure to nature, experiences in nature, understanding nature winds up being an avenue of approach that I have with them.
It's like a common language, you know?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
But yeah, man, it's it's it's terrifying.
And then the feeling of hypocrisy that you get of things that meant that when you were young, things that meant a lot to you and felt very authentic to you, like freedom, freedom to consume what media you wanted.
Freedom to talk to who you wanted to talk to.
Freedom to go where you wanted to go.
That later you're in a position where you're denying...
Denying someone something that you really wanted in an honest way when you were young.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I had a conversation with Jonathan.
steven rinella
It's a push and pull, man.
joe rogan
Jonathan Haidt about that.
He talks about the concept of free-range kids.
He lets his children wander.
It was Jonathan Haidt, right?
It was, right?
The coddling of the American mind.
He lets his kids wander around New York City.
Like, he lets his kids walk home from New York City.
And, you know, he was talking about one time his kid got a little lost and they were really, really scared.
You know, it was like they were trying to find him and it's like a terrifying feeling.
But that ultimately the development that the child receives from Being able to navigate the world on their own is very valuable, but there's a risk.
And so you have to weigh this risk versus reward.
And the opposite of that is people who helicopter parent, and we know how that turns out, right?
That's not good when you overly coddle your kid and your kid is not exposed to any sort of adversity.
Or any sort of danger or any sort of adventure or any sort of independence that it could be stifling.
And then it takes a long time for the child to develop outside of that parental environment once they become free.
There's different kinds of kids, right?
There's kids that grow up in bad neighborhoods with very little parental guidance and they're 18. And then there's kids who grow up completely coddled and completely protected and insulated and they're 18. And then they run into each other.
Totally different life experiences.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
And I was the former.
I was the kid that didn't have a lot of guidance when I was a kid, and I was kind of a latchkey kid.
steven rinella
I'm glad you just used that word.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a common word, right?
Common phrase.
steven rinella
Apparently it's not.
joe rogan
No?
steven rinella
I grew up with that word.
joe rogan
Yeah, latchkey.
steven rinella
I was commenting on how my wife in her early years was a latchkey kid, and she's like, I haven't heard that word in a long time.
I'm like, that used to be a word, dude, like latchkey kid.
joe rogan
Yeah, you got a key.
You got a key, and you came home and no one was home, you know, when I was 12 years old.
steven rinella
I mean, it wasn't like five days ago someone was pointing out to me that that word doesn't get used anymore.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, kids don't...
I mean, it's kind of a different thing.
You don't really see 12-year-old kids walking home with a key and opening up their front door anymore.
I mean, I think about my children and how young they are, and I can't imagine them doing that.
But I did that.
And I think that the independence that comes from...
Being a kid who walks home from school by yourself and opens your door by yourself.
My parents didn't come home until whatever it was.
They worked until 5 and then they were home.
I was out.
I would go places.
No one knew where the fuck I was.
There was no phones.
There was no cell phones.
I could leave a little post-it note or something like that.
steven rinella
It's been interesting to watch as a parent the way that different parents find what dangerous things they're comfortable with.
Friends of mine, like my friend Kelly lives in New York, and she'll talk about And we have similar mindsets about exposing kids to risk.
And her kids will take the subway, right, or whatever, home.
And to me, where I live and have not had kids that age in the city, like, I can't picture what she's getting at.
You know what I mean?
I go like, wow, that seems just kind of like crazy.
Yeah.
How old are the kids?
Irresponsible.
I'm trying to think, how, 14 and 9 or 10, somewhere in there.
And I don't know if they've been at it for a while.
But either way, things that some people would regard, things that people from the outside would regard as hard to picture.
But at the same time, I expose my kids to danger that I have decided is an okay danger to court.
I'll expose them to being...
They can be around grizzly bears.
They can be unescorted in areas that have a lot of mountain lions and bears.
We take small boats out in the very big water.
We do all kinds of things, but it's things that I've decided are...
Good risk.
Healthy risk.
joe rogan
Have you been around a grizzly with your kid?
steven rinella
Yeah.
My boy I have.
joe rogan
Yeah?
Where at?
steven rinella
In Alaska.
joe rogan
Yeah?
steven rinella
Yeah.
And then a lot of very up close exposure to black bears.
Very up close.
joe rogan
Yeah, and living in Montana.
steven rinella
And I see that, like at our fish shack in Alaska, it's like a daily occurrence.
But I see that and I'm thinking, man, I love being able to expose my kids to this and to have them be not jumpy people.
But then I hear that they were at their friends on YouTube.
Like, unfettered YouTube access, and I'm like, oh my god!
Oh my god!
joe rogan
Right, they're gonna believe in Kuanan.
steven rinella
You know, yeah, it's just like, we all find our ways to be, you know, we all find our ways to, like, try to find some way to be comfortable and try to find some way to not be overdoing something or underdoing something.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, I think kids for sure need some form of adversity to work through.
And I think sports are really great for that for kids.
You need to learn how to lose.
steven rinella
But man, I know some stunted people that played a lot of sports.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's not a 100% guarantee.
But it is a guarantee that if you've never encountered any loss at all, you're fucked.
steven rinella
Any challenge.
joe rogan
Yeah, no challenge at all, no adversity at all.
And then dependent upon the kind of parenting that you received.
It's not that it is a deal breaker, like you have to have sports in your life or you'll never be good at things.
I think you have to have difficult things that you're attempting to do.
You know, I think that's really beneficial for kids and for adults.
I mean, I think that's a key part of my life is lessons learned through adversity and trying new things is a very important part of that because it forces you to really be a beginner.
One of the things I found in martial arts, like when you would get guys who are world champion kickboxers and they start entering into MMA, they're really good at one aspect of fighting, which is kickboxing.
And then they would have to learn wrestling and jiu-jitsu.
They didn't like it because the wrestling and jiu-jitsu, the problem was they were getting fucked up a lot.
steven rinella
Oh, yeah, I could see that.
joe rogan
They were losing.
So they're used to being dominant, and then all of a sudden they're losing.
unidentified
Right.
steven rinella
Before they've been for years good at something.
Now they suck at some part of it.
joe rogan
Exactly.
So they would avoid that aspect of it.
So their development as a mixed martial artist was always limited.
They always get to a certain level and they could never pass that because they never really developed the skills required to excel in the overall thing.
There was always like this hole in their game.
steven rinella
They'd never go live in that.
They'd never allow themselves to go live in that.
Loser space, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, but that's where all the lessons are.
The bad feelings, where all the lessons are.
It's like someone who's never experienced heartache, right?
And then they experience, and like, oh!
It's like death.
It's like you lose a part of your life.
And, you know, I remember the first time I got my heart broken when I was like, I guess I was like 17 or 18. I couldn't believe how bad I felt.
I was like, God, this is the worst feeling ever.
steven rinella
Did you ever go look her up on Facebook or anything?
joe rogan
No.
unidentified
Oh.
joe rogan
But if I did, I don't know.
But, you know, I'm sure I'd be over it.
But the point is, like, you have to experience that to know.
And then I think, like, how am I going to live without this girl in my life?
And then, you know, years later, I'm like, how would I have lived if I kept that girl in my life?
Oh, my God, it would have been horrendous.
steven rinella
I have such a hard time picturing you being heartbroken.
joe rogan
I was heartbroken.
Yeah, when I was 18. Yeah.
steven rinella
I know this isn't a parenting show, but a friend of mine- It's a show.
A friend of mine who's an attorney, and he deals a lot with, what do you call it, custody, child custody stuff.
We were talking about all these theories about- What kids need and how to do it.
And he said, man, I only know one thing that really fucks up kids.
He says, it's when they know that no one gives a shit about them.
He's like, that's the thing that, that's in my view, that's what does it.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's the hardest.
When you see foster kids that don't have love, they don't have a family, they don't have real parents, or maybe even worse, they know their parents are out there, but their parents don't give a fuck about them and someone else is raising them.
steven rinella
Oh, it's damaging.
joe rogan
Oh, it's so devastating.
And it's like, how do you fix that ever?
I think once a child has gone through a really bad emotional development and childhood development, it's like so difficult.
To somehow or another get out of that space and become like a normal person, become a person who's balanced and who just gets their shit together.
It's so fucking hard.
I mean, you can't imagine the emotional pain that some of these children go through.
It's so fucking devastating.
And we do this thing.
We...
We get Christmas gifts for these foster kids.
And the thing about it is, though, you get this sheet of paper where you get a rundown of these kids and their life.
And you're like, oh, fucking Christ.
It's so hard.
steven rinella
Oh, then you make a selection of gifts?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
That's nice to see you do that.
joe rogan
It's nice, but it's so hard because you want to just adopt them all.
You want to just go...
And, you know, my wife's not having that.
But, I mean, I'm that way with dogs.
I can't go to the pound.
If I go to the pound, I'll have 100 dogs.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I can't do it.
I'm that guy.
I fucking love dogs.
I wouldn't be able to go home.
steven rinella
I like that you call it the pound.
I still call it the pound.
joe rogan
Isn't it still the pound?
steven rinella
No one knows.
Like latchkey kids, there's a whole generation of people that don't use that word.
joe rogan
No, no, it's the dog pound, man.
That's what Snoop Dogg calls it.
unidentified
I hate it.
joe rogan
I don't know, man.
It's not fair.
Life's not fair.
That's an important lesson, too.
People want fair in this world.
That's not a real thing.
There's not fair in looks.
There's not fair in intelligence.
There's not fair in the way you were raised.
And sometimes not fair is beneficial.
Because sometimes when you get a shitty hand of cards, you develop adversity and determination that a person who's been coddled doesn't have and that allows you to excel wildly beyond anything that you're capable of.
Which is a hard thing for me as a parent because all of my favorite friends are fucked up.
Like they all had fucked up childhoods and it made for the most interesting people.
But, you know, they're horrific.
Like my friend Joey Diaz, one of my favorite people that's ever lived, found his mom dead on the floor of the kitchen when he was 13 high on acid.
unidentified
Hmm.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I don't want that to happen to my kid.
You know, no one wants that to happen to their kid.
But that was his existence.
steven rinella
That's who you gravitate toward.
joe rogan
Always.
Always gravitate toward people.
steven rinella
Yeah, I gravitate toward people who had, like, pretty scrappy upbringing.
joe rogan
Yeah, they're more fun.
unidentified
Reliable.
joe rogan
Yes.
Reliable.
Also, they have a thing that you like to use, a term.
They have a lot of gurr.
steven rinella
Yeah.
But I bet you'd look and you'd find that they were deeply loved, but scrappy.
joe rogan
Yes.
And, well, Joey's a perfect example of that because he's a deeply loving person.
He's like, if you're in his inner circle, you know you're loved.
Like, he calls you.
He tells you he loves you.
He's very affectionate, very loving.
Because it's valuable to him.
He knows what it means to not be there, to not have someone there for you.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's a tricky thing, man.
It's like with all things in life, there's a balance that can be achieved.
But sometimes through imbalance, you develop spectacular abilities.
You know, like some of the greatest fighters, like Mike Tyson is a great example, right?
Literally didn't experience any love in his life until he was like 13 years old and he was adopted by this guy, Cus D'Amato, who just happened to be one of the great boxing trainers in history.
And through this guy's mentoring and also through hypnosis, the guy hypnotized him to be this assassin inside the ring, he got his love through destroying people.
And obviously that worked out really well.
I mean, you don't have a Mike Tyson.
You don't make a Mike Tyson if birthdays are all on time and everyone's buying you a nice Christmas gift and you never run into bullies at school.
You don't get a Mike Tyson.
Everybody worshipped Mike Tyson.
When we were kids and Mike Tyson fought, Jesus, that was a big deal.
I guess I was in my early 20s when Mike Tyson was in his prime, holy shit, was that a big deal.
When you watch a Tyson fight, I mean, everybody knew when Tyson was fighting.
It was like you were going to see a public execution.
You don't create a person like that unless things go badly.
steven rinella
My kids have to pack their own lunches and their own snacks, you know, so they be self-sufficient.
But then every morning, my wife basically makes them dissemble it in her presence so she can check.
joe rogan
Oh, that's funny.
What do they try to smuggle in?
steven rinella
No, it's just like, you're talking about, you know, being like, I don't know, just, you know, that's how you make a Mike Tyson.
Like, I don't know.
I don't know if we're going to wind up with any Mike Tysons.
joe rogan
You don't really want to raise a Mike Tyson, really.
Not that Mike's a bad guy.
He's a great guy.
But he's a great guy because he figured his way through all that shit and became this guy.
steven rinella
Yeah, there are definitely celebrated individuals who adversity now and then creates these spectacular Yeah.
People.
joe rogan
You can also break them, though.
steven rinella
Yeah, and I think that to go into it planning on, if you went into it thinking you were going to manipulate that system to produce a spectacular child, it would be, like, ripe for backfiring.
joe rogan
It's Johnny Cash, A Boy Named Sue.
steven rinella
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, there's a whole damn song about it.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, it's like, I knew I wasn't going to be around, so I named you Sue.
unidentified
That's right.
steven rinella
I'm trying to get all like, yeah, Johnny Cash already thought all that.
joe rogan
Yeah, he figured it out.
I mean, it's a fucking hilarious song.
But it's very tricky.
It's very difficult.
But I think your friend that pointed out that the worst thing that can happen is a kid that doesn't feel loved.
That's true.
I think that's probably where, you know, a lot of psychopaths come from, unfortunately.
You know, that's old expression, hurt people hurt people.
unidentified
Hmm.
joe rogan
You know?
steven rinella
I hadn't heard that.
joe rogan
You never heard that one?
steven rinella
No.
joe rogan
Really?
Hurt people hurt people?
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
That's pretty common.
That's more common than latchkey kid, I thought.
What is it like raising kids in Montana?
I mean, it's really cool because you're in this super rural environment a lot.
You're in this area where you're in a nice town, but you're also surrounded by this gorgeous landscape of mountains and wildlife.
It's a pretty fucking cool place.
steven rinella
I think it works well.
Having that level of immediacy to be able to take them out to experience things that we care about.
We did a family walk on Sunday and we went and caught grasshoppers so we could throw them in the creek.
joe rogan
Watch fish get them?
steven rinella
Watch fish get them.
Stuff like that.
And fish a lot and hunt mushrooms and we camp a lot in the summer.
I like it, man.
I'm gone a lot for work.
unidentified
So...
steven rinella
I try to have it I travel a lot, so I try to have like very, when I'm home, I try to keep it impactful.
joe rogan
That's cool.
steven rinella
And try not to be lazy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
And I'm not lazy, but I make sure to not be lazy and I make sure to like really, that we're just out doing stuff, doing stuff, doing stuff.
joe rogan
Right, right.
And make that a thing for them so they get accustomed to it.
steven rinella
Yeah, like there's always a plan.
Always going, doing something, always a plan.
I mean, it can be relentless for people around and I've had, and I've Had people lobby complaints about that system of living.
But that's how I like to run the program.
joe rogan
Well, for what you do and, you know, for the company Meat Eater and for First Light, like, there's no better place for you to live.
I mean, Montana's just an amazing place to live and run a company like your company, you know, that makes Netflix shows and videos and writes books and, you know, it's like, it couldn't be better.
steven rinella
Yeah, it's a good—and then we have a very good network of folks there.
Yeah, it's great, man.
And then Bozeman, you know, where I live, it's— It's big.
You know, it's bigger than where I grew up, right?
joe rogan
How many people is Bozeman?
Like 300,000?
400,000?
steven rinella
No, it's not.
I mean, because there's like the town and there's the sort of like greater valley area.
I don't know where it's at.
Jamie, find out on the lickety-split.
For like in the town, 70 or something like that in the town?
joe rogan
70,000 in the town?
steven rinella
Yeah, maybe I'm way off.
But then the greater area.
I'd have to look up.
I could be totally wrong.
joe rogan
What's the greater area?
Like two?
All told?
200,000?
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
Well, I don't know.
joe rogan
Let's find out.
steven rinella
Yeah, find out for me, will you?
Either way, it's...
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Yeah.
114,000.
unidentified
Hmm.
steven rinella
It's a beautiful area.
Much bigger than where I grew up.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
But still very small, you know?
Like, people kind of know you.
There's a story I haven't had a couple times where...
unidentified
Well, it's so small.
steven rinella
You feel observed.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
You're observed.
joe rogan
Well, I feel like that in Austin.
steven rinella
You feel observed here?
I fucking bet you do.
joe rogan
Much different than Los Angeles.
There's also...
They're much more accustomed to famous people in Los Angeles.
It's not a big deal.
Here it's more of like, hey!
There's that fucking guy.
They make a thing about it.
Where it's like in LA, it's just normal to see Ben Affleck or whatever the fuck.
steven rinella
Yeah, you feel observed.
Years ago, I got this...
I did some ads for Subaru and got this car for free.
The way it worked, for some reason, it was these branded history things, okay?
So I got to pick 13 things around the country that I thought were interesting.
And one was like, I did this thing about this guy that there's this mountain range and a town and a path and a national forest all named after this dude.
And all that's really known about him is he got killed by a grizzly bear.
joe rogan
Is that Bridger?
steven rinella
No, his name is Lulu or Lolo.
joe rogan
Oh.
steven rinella
So there's the town of Lolo, there's Lolo Creek, there's Lolo Pass, there's Lolo National Forest, and all they know is there's like a dude that lived on a tributary to that creek, and he got killed by a grizzly.
That's like really all I know about the guy.
Anyways, they did a thing about where they think he might have been buried.
I did all these other things.
It was like this thing, it appeared on, it was like these ads that were on History Channel.
And I would go and check out whatever, something that was interesting, but there'd be like these driving shots, right?
Where you like drive there in a Subaru.
So the way that stuff works is you have to buy the car just for insurance purposes.
Like you buy the car from them and like invoice them for the car purchase.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
steven rinella
I don't know how common this is.
But anyways, when it was all said and done, I got the car.
So we were going to sell it, but my wife started to drive it, and now we've had this car since 2009. They're bulletproof.
Yeah, my wife drives it.
Those fucking things.
And my wife's very, when it comes to vehicles and stuff, she's very pragmatic.
joe rogan
Joey Diaz drives nothing but Subarus.
steven rinella
Yeah.
She'd be like, why would you buy a car if you got a car for free?
joe rogan
Is this your little ads?
Oh, yeah.
Young, fresh-faced Steve Rinella.
steven rinella
Dude, I was about like four years old.
joe rogan
Look at you.
steven rinella
It was like four.
joe rogan
Who's the guy with the hat?
steven rinella
He was the guy I wrote a magazine profile on that he hunts for old denim.
joe rogan
So this is 2007?
Look how young you are.
steven rinella
No, no, no.
2009, maybe.
unidentified
Fine.
joe rogan
I saw some old homestead cabins down here.
I can't leave any stone unturned.
I have to check it out.
steven rinella
So, yeah, that dude would...
I did that one because I wrote a piece about that guy.
He would go...
I want to get back to this thing about this car, but this is interesting.
So, you know the earthquake in San Francisco and the big fire?
Whatever the hell year that happened.
Late 1800s.
What was that earthquake that destroyed San Francisco?
Levi's?
Levi's lost their own catalog.
They lost their own library of their clothes they made.
So, like, Levi's denim...
joe rogan
1906?
steven rinella
They made...
In that fire, Levi's lost their sort of history.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
So Levi's knows they made clothing that they know from advertisements that they have no physical representation of.
joe rogan
Wow.
steven rinella
So I wrote a piece about these dudes that would start, they would go hunting around in mine shafts and stuff and find old ass denim.
And the coolest thing to find was you would find a very old pre-1906 pair of Levi's.
And these things that sell for like $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 to collectors.
They're all these like buckle back jeans.
They had buckles in the back, a couple buckles in the back, and that's how you cinch them up.
In the back?
Yeah.
So collectors would call them buckle backs.
Yeah, there you go.
unidentified
So this dude- So was this before they figured out belts?
steven rinella
Yeah, just how they used to tie them, man, like buckle backs.
unidentified
Huh.
steven rinella
So- This dude, he got into that vintage denim stuff, but he also would find old, old clothes and sell them to collectors, sell them to people making films, looking for period clothing.
And I drove around with him in Nevada and wrote a profile on him.
I think it was called the Brotherhood of the Very Expensive Pants.
It was when I was a writer for Outside.
joe rogan
Wow, look at that.
steven rinella
Yeah.
You know, the coolest thing I found in the week I spent with him was a pair plugging up a...
There was an old cabin on a ranch, and it had two chimneys.
And at some point in time, someone had moved his wood stove from one end of the cabin to the other and plugged...
The old chimney hole with a pair of jeans.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
And we go in there.
So he'll go in and he'd strike a deal with ranchers.
He'd be like, listen, man, I'm going to...
And a lot of times he'd be like, I'm going to look around in your old buildings and stuff and I find something, I'll buy it for me.
They'd be like, bullshit, get out of here.
And just to turn them on, he would all of a sudden look and whatever he could see, he would look and give them an insane price for nonsense.
Just to butter him up.
joe rogan
Really?
steven rinella
Oh yeah.
It's like we went to this guy and this guy had just junk everywhere and it was like he had a lot of junk and also be like there's the old cabin where grandpa lived.
There's the old rundown house where my mom and dad lived and here's my house and everything was exactly they just would move across the property and build a new structure and leave the old ones in place so he's dying to get in here and look around.
And this guy had a t-shirt.
This guy had an outdoor spigot that was dripping.
For whatever reason, he tied a t-shirt around it to deflect the drip or whatever to prevent erosion underneath there.
I have no idea.
But a t-shirt tied around a drippy thing.
And he goes, like that t-shirt, for instance.
And gave him like $25 for the t-shirt.
No desire to have the t-shirt.
But he just had to point to something.
joe rogan
To let the guy know that he's got a real possible windfall here.
steven rinella
Yeah, and then the guy's like, well, damn, son.
Let's have a look.
And he'd be in there buying saddle blankets and boots, hats, anything.
joe rogan
The jeans that plugged up the hole.
steven rinella
So we're on this place, and I was with him, man.
He went through all the channels and talked to the ranch manager, got a hold of the ranch, or the rancher's like, have a look, let me know what you find.
Goes in there and pulls out.
This had to be a very old, I can't remember what kind.
It was like some other kind of jean.
It wasn't old Levi.
Pulled out a set of pants that had been plugging that chimney up.
Since the early 1900s.
unidentified
Whoa.
steven rinella
And you know the sun?
Like, how often does the sun shine down a chimney?
joe rogan
Straight.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
Like, not very often.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Okay?
So, I don't know, there's like three feet of pipe above these pans.
And it looked like tie-dye because that part that was up, just being exposed to the rain and whatever limited amount of sunshine ever shined straight down that chimney.
He'd like bleach those pants white.
But he pulled those pants out and there they were.
And they find stuff like, people used to make log homes and chink, you know, chinking between the logs.
Shirts and pants and shit.
unidentified
Really?
steven rinella
Oh yeah, he's got a whole damn place full of that stuff.
Had, I haven't talked to him in a long time.
joe rogan
And all that stuff is very valuable?
steven rinella
Because his place was called Carpe Denim.
And people knew to go to him.
So he would have designers, like clothing designers, would want to go to his warehouse full of all this crazy old shit he found to get inspiration.
joe rogan
Wow, look at all that stuff.
steven rinella
To get inspiration for, you know, like whatever, like Dickies, Carhartt, whatever, like different designers would go and look around his stuff to get inspiration for it.
joe rogan
Jamie, send me this guy's Instagram page.
It's OriginalIndianJeans.
Yeah, that's him.
OriginalIndianaJeans, sorry.
BrittEaton.
I think all those old jeans were made out of hemp.
I think before the 1930s, before hemp became a problem when they made marijuana illegal, then you have like a stamp to grow hemp, and then it become phased out with the cotton gin.
You know, well, the decorticator actually was what brought it back.
I think that was in the 1930s.
But all before that, canvas itself Came from cannabis.
Like canvas was actually made with hemp.
Like even like the Mona Lisa was painted on hemp.
It's a far more durable fabric.
And if we had hemp jeans, they'd be so much more durable.
It's a weird cloth.
Have you ever fucked around with hemp as a cloth?
unidentified
No, I haven't.
steven rinella
I bet he'd be able to tell you a lot about it.
joe rogan
I bet he would.
The fibers are really insane.
I had a friend of mine, my friend Todd McCormick, used to grow marijuana.
He was one of the first guys ever to be arrested for it when they had medical marijuana, but they were still charging people federally because it was medical in California.
But when you would go to jail, you would realize once you went to court that you couldn't bring up medical marijuana because you were in a federal trial.
And the federal trials, they wouldn't even recognize it.
You were just a drug dealer to them.
And he was like, oh my god, this is a crazy racket.
I'm getting railroaded here.
Because you couldn't even say, no, I was growing it for medical purposes in the state where it's legal medically.
So he had a stalk of this stuff.
And you would pick it up, and it would be hard like oak, but light like balsa wood.
It was the wildest shit.
You'd realize there's nothing like that fiber on earth.
And when you take that fiber and break it down, the paper, they would make hemp paper, and it's crazy.
You can't tear it, but it feels like paper.
It's so superior.
Hemp clothing is insanely durable.
It's so much more durable than cotton.
steven rinella
Yeah, and all the hemp rope.
I'm familiar with, in the Pioneer and Frontier days, they used to use the hemp for rope and other fabrics.
joe rogan
Parachutes.
Yeah, like the parachute that George Herbert Walker Bush parachuted to safety with in World War II. That was made out of hemp.
They used to make all the parachutes made out of hemp.
This is far more durable than cotton.
steven rinella
Let's look at this car.
joe rogan
Subaru.
steven rinella
Yeah, and all of a sudden one day...
Where our office is, like, my wife drives a car, and all of a sudden where our office is, there's all these bumper stickers that say, like, Ronella drives a Subaru on people's cars, but not my car.
And so it's like someone, like, observing, you know, someone in this area, like, observing what my wife drives and, like, printing a bumper sticker.
Just, like, weird.
joe rogan
That's weird.
steven rinella
Yeah, like, small town stuff, you know?
And I had a choir around.
It was some dude that worked at, it was some event, like, it was, like, these dudes that worked at Sitka, and then I eventually found out which one of them did it, and he, like, tried to get a job with us, and that was, like, his, like, vengeance thing, which is, like, bizarre, man.
You feel just observed.
joe rogan
He tried to get a job with you, and he couldn't get a job, so then he made a bumper sticker that said the kind of car you drive?
steven rinella
Yeah, and pasted it on people's cars in our parking lot, but not my car.
joe rogan
Whoa.
Thank God you didn't hire that guy.
steven rinella
Well, it just winds up, it's just weird, man.
joe rogan
Well, that is a problem with hiring people, right?
Like, you never know.
steven rinella
No, just like, so there is like an observed quality, but I, you know, I mean, I hate to be negative about it.
I mean, I have so many wonderful, wonderful friends, and it's a great, beautiful, great place to live, but there's, yeah, there's like a...
joe rogan
The good with the bad.
steven rinella
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're gonna get both.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's just, yeah.
And when people get rejected, I mean, imagine being a woman, you know, experiencing, like, some guy tries to hit on you, and you reject him, and then this guy's stalking you.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Social media, sending you evil letters, and that's a very common thing.
I'm sure for guys, too.
steven rinella
Yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
It's horrible.
joe rogan
People are fucking crazy.
A good percentage of them.
One out of a hundred.
Out of their fucking mind.
You run into them.
You zig when you should have zagged.
Boom.
You got a problem.
And you got to be real careful.
Got to have a good filtering system to keep those people out of your life.
And I would imagine when you have an organization like yours where you have a lot of employees.
There's a lot of people there.
steven rinella
Yeah, Meat Eater, man.
We have a hundred people that work for us.
Because we have an apparel company.
joe rogan
So First Light is underneath Meat Eater.
It's in Meat Eater.
So you keep it in Ketchum.
steven rinella
They stay there in Ketchum.
We have a ton of overlap, but no, they have a person in Ketchum that...
That runs that program, and they have a bunch of people.
Phelps Game Calls.
They're in Washington.
unidentified
Oh, that's right.
joe rogan
You guys are a part of that, too.
steven rinella
Yeah.
So Jason, he's been on our podcast a bunch.
We just were filming with him.
joe rogan
He sent me one of his new Bugle Tubes that has the built-in...
steven rinella
The built-in thing, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, pretty nice.
steven rinella
Dude, I'm telling you what, man.
I have never, he wants to go with you real bad.
You'd love that dude.
He's like, his whole family's been loggers for a million years.
He's the first one to not be a logger in western Washington, you know.
And he started out, he's like trained as an engineer, but started out making game calls.
And he's just an incredible guy.
But I hunted with him this year and I've never seen, you know, I've been, like I used to think Yanni was like, I used to think Yanni was like God when it came to elk calling.
And Yanni hunts with Phelps and Yanni's like, dude, I'm like, I felt like an idiot, like a child.
joe rogan
Well, he is a real wizard.
I mean, I've heard videos of him online.
steven rinella
Oh my God, that guy's amazing.
He'd be like, no, that bull's going to come and look over right here.
joe rogan
That thing that he made is so good that I had my daughter, my 11-year-old, make a bugle call.
It was pretty fucking good.
Let me see if I can find it.
Because I filmed it because I just thought it'd be hilarious.
steven rinella
Oh, her ripping on it?
joe rogan
See her first ever attempt.
steven rinella
Yeah, Phelps is great.
He's a good dude.
He lives there, and then we have another company that's with us called FHF. They make the vinyl harnesses and all kinds of...
joe rogan
Oh, you guys are with them, too?
steven rinella
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jesus.
What are they?
They're in Belgrade, Montana.
joe rogan
You guys are like the Facebook of the outdoor.
You just keep gobbling up all the competitors.
steven rinella
Well...
No.
joe rogan
Yeah, the government needs to step in and break you guys up.
steven rinella
FHF Gear was built by a police officer, Paul Lewis.
Still runs FHF Gear.
They do this all-American-made.
He's still in there.
joe rogan
I have one of those.
They're very good.
steven rinella
His wife, Jen Lewis, they work together.
Phelps is still at Phelps Game Calls.
Me and him are doing a project where we've been filming this.
We went to Kansas and we cut down a black walnut tree.
And there's probably a thousand turkey calls hiding in that black walnut.
And we're doing a thing about turning that black walnut tree into a thousand turkey calls.
joe rogan
Oh, that's pretty cool.
steven rinella
That'll be cool.
joe rogan
I'm trying to find this video and I'm not going to.
steven rinella
Oh, your daughter ripping on the metal bugle tube?
joe rogan
Yeah, because it's funny.
Because it's not bad for like a first ever attempt at blowing a bugle tube for a child.
steven rinella
Yeah.
Phelps, he holds the patent on aluminum bugle tubes.
joe rogan
Yeah, it sounds great.
It's interesting that everybody else was making them out of plastic, and then he figured out there's a different sound.
steven rinella
Oh, it's different.
So yeah, he's there, and then we have our...
Media, you know, kind of like the media end of our business is based out of Bozeman.
We have content contributors like, you know, you've had Clay Newcomb on.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
He's in Arkansas.
joe rogan
He's a fucking interesting guy.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
steven rinella
Danielle Pruitt is here and she's in Texas.
Mark Kenyon is one of our- What is that?
joe rogan
What does she do?
steven rinella
She's just a content contributor with us.
She has a brand that she built up called Wild and Whole.
joe rogan
Is that a podcast as well?
steven rinella
No, she doesn't do a podcast, but she does a lot of hunting and fishing stuff, a lot of culinary stuff.
That's her particular area of interest.
So she's there, and she works with us.
We work very closely.
She's in Houston.
Mark Kenyon's out in Michigan.
So we have people all over, content contributors, but we're based there in Montana.
joe rogan
Do you ever feel like you get spread thin with all that stuff?
I know you have a lot of podcasts under the media umbrella, and there's just a lot of stuff.
Do I feel spread thin?
Does it feel the company?
Do you ever feel like it's difficult to keep track of everything and make sure that the quality is up to standard?
steven rinella
I haven't felt that because I feel that primarily it's been able to sort of like Let me speak to it in the way of what I'm involved with.
I'm involved in everything and I have awareness of what goes on, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that I have a team of people that I work with on producing things that are my primary day-to-day responsibility, being that we just launched just a week ago, I think.
We launched five new episodes on Netflix, right?
Season nine?
Season ten, part A. Just went live on Netflix.
So I'm heavily involved in making that.
We do a lot of books.
I'm heavily involved in our book projects.
I'm heavily involved in certain stuff.
By having a team of people around that I work really closely with, you're able to greatly amplify what you put out.
I'm able to do more.
And that means a lot to me because I had spent my life Up until we started a company, I'd spent my life, a lot of it just as one writer.
And it takes a couple years to write a book.
And so my output was constrained by just what was one person capable of doing.
When I wrote my Buffalo book, I researched it for two years and then spent nine months writing the book.
And I wasn't doing much else then.
Now I'm able to We're good to go.
In terms of getting into working with brands that we love, so far it's been people that...
The companies we work with are people that...
First Light, for instance, was one of the first sponsors we ever had for our show.
Vortex Optics and First Light were the first two people that ever got behind our show.
I knew Phelps for a long time.
I've been wearing an FHF vinyl harness.
I remember my late friend Eric Kern turned me on to FHF stuff a bazillion years ago when Paul was just stitching away in his basement or whatever.
So to have it be that those relationships matured and we kind of came together under one company, it all seems very natural to me.
It all seems like just things growing and getting better.
So I have never felt too spread thin.
And then, like I said, we have a lot of people that kind of know what they're doing.
I have to be pretty careful.
I've had to learn to know what I don't know.
You know?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
To learn what I don't know, you know?
I had to learn what I don't know.
And to give people, like, faith to do the things they do.
joe rogan
Right, so your roles shifted and become like a manager.
steven rinella
Yeah, man, I'm such a bad manager, man.
That became clear through the pandemic and stuff.
But no, I can't manage.
I can't really manage people.
I mean, I can...
joe rogan
Why is that?
steven rinella
Why can't I manage people?
Because...
That's kind of hard to explain.
I only have one way of...
That's a good question.
I don't...
I don't think I have developed multiple ways to interact with people.
joe rogan
Huh.
steven rinella
I sort of have one way in which I can interact with people.
joe rogan
In what way?
What do you mean by that?
Obviously you have a different way you interact with your kids than you do with your wife.
steven rinella
Okay, that's fair.
When dealing with people in my age bracket, I can't step into a role—I can't step into a position of being able to not have it be very close and very personal.
joe rogan
Mm-hmm.
steven rinella
I think a large thing is that you've met some of the people I work with.
We spend an enormous amount of time together.
We travel together.
We sleep in tents together.
We're together all the time.
It's that I can only interact in the way that I've learned to interact with my peers since I was a kid.
And in that proximity, I can't be that I'm going down to work and I need to put my work way on.
I think that I probably share too much information.
I probably don't conceal my annoyance.
I probably have high expectations.
Yeah, I don't know.
And when I see people who are actual people managers, they have a more calculated approach.
And my approach, I guess, is very emotional.
joe rogan
Or more authentic.
The problem with those calculated people managers is they probably cut loose somewhere.
They probably put on a dress and get a bunch of hookers or do something nutty.
That's the thing about CEOs, right?
They're the ones who always like to go to dominatrix and get kicked in the balls.
steven rinella
Because they're being so calculated all the time.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's like they're so wrapped up in this thing that they're doing.
If you're a person and you're running a company, you're essentially performing all day long, right?
Because you can only be a certain amount of yourself.
Most people like to tell jokes that are maybe inappropriate or use language that's maybe inappropriate or say things that everybody's thinking but you really shouldn't say.
They like to do that occasionally.
Well, if you're a CEO of some major company, that would come with enormous financial consequences.
As some of them have found on this very show.
Yes.
Well, that was nothing.
He just smoked a little weed.
He made the money back the next day.
The company went down like 6% and went up 9% the next day.
But everybody wants to talk about the 6% and went down the first day.
steven rinella
Everyone wants to talk about the 9%.
joe rogan
Yeah, 9%.
Everybody's like, look, it's a fucking giant company.
It's going to go great.
But, like, I was reading about someone from Bezos' Blue Origin company, right, just got fired for something.
It's like the way you're allowed to behave if you're a bigwig in some sort of a large corporation is very narrow.
There's a very narrow, acceptable way that you're allowed to behave and you're scrutinized like extremely closely.
So if you want to be that guy that makes all this money and gets all this stock and has all this responsibility, you also have to behave in a way that's kind of unnatural.
It's not just that you're not allowed to do anything inappropriate, but you have to have a very measured and unemotional tone.
You have to be very conscious of how people are going to perceive or even distort what you're saying.
Look at it and take it out of context.
I mean, it's got to be an incredibly pressure-filled thing to do when you're doing that every day, eight plus.
I mean, no CEO really works eight hours a day, right?
You're working nine, ten, twelve, whatever the fuck it is.
They gotta do that every day.
I mean, that's...
How many of them die of heart attacks?
How many of them die of cancer?
How many of them, like, the pressure gets to be too much and they can't take it?
Probably better the way you behave.
steven rinella
Maybe some of my terminology's not wrong.
I'm interested in...
I'm interested in...
To me, the word leadership feels a lot different than the word management.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, leadership through example is always an interesting thing because it's like there's certain people that you admire and the way they live their life, like Jocko Willink is a great example, right?
He shows leadership through example, the way he lives his life.
Very disciplined, very fair, very smart, very open-minded and objective.
Doesn't have any weaknesses in his social game, but also just a real prime example of discipline.
And through that, you go, well, that's a leader.
steven rinella
Yeah, I got you.
I wind up...
In working with people, I wind up having a lot of love for people that will shovel shit, that grew up and know what that's all about.
That probably more than any other thing means a lot to me.
Like someone who will jump in and shovel shit when it needs to happen.
I like people who will take a bullet for what they're working on.
Who can articulate their perspective on something, but know when to give in.
But can fight just to the right moment, right?
And they're not doing it for the fun of it.
But then in the end, it's like, okay, now we gotta move.
We gotta go.
joe rogan
Well, having been on your show a few times, I've always admired the amount of work that's involved, like, for the cameraman and the folks that are running the show behind the scenes, sound, all that stuff, because those guys are there 24 hours a day.
Like, if you're on a trip, and that trip is a seven-day trip in the backcountry, Yeah.
And your responsibilities, obviously, work-wise are from the time you start hunting to the time you're done hunting.
And that is like from dark until dusk.
You get up when it's dark and you don't end hunting until it's...
Unless you're successful.
Until it's dusk.
You're filming the entire time.
So these folks are working long hours.
And then there's no hotel to go to.
The hotel is a fucking thin foam thing that's over rocks.
And then you lay your sleeping bag over that.
And you're sleeping.
And oftentimes you're freezing your dick off.
Like when we were in Montana the first time...
First time I ever went with you, I was like, wow, this is a job.
Imagine this job where your job is all day.
There's no like, I'm punching in, I'm punching out.
There's none of that.
The job is constant.
It's all day.
It's a very unusual job.
Because if you looked at the hours that those guys work, it's hard to quantify.
Because you're kind of working when you're fucking sleeping on a rock.
unidentified
That's not normal.
steven rinella
It's all the time.
And I... In that management thing, I guess, I have to remind myself to think, like, they're at work.
Because I'm more like, we're just in it.
We're in it, and you have to be in it, but then I'm like, holy shit, these dudes are at work.
joe rogan
Why in the world would they do that?
It's not like any other jobs.
Say if you're filming a television show, an adventure show, and you're filming an adventure show, and you're looking at mushroom specimens in the woods, You know, you're going to have a shooting schedule.
Like at 8 a.m., we're going to have breakfast at 9.30.
You know, Paul's going to go out and examine all these different mushrooms and show everybody.
And then we're going to have dinner at 6 p.m., you know, and then, you know, we're going to wrap it up for the day.
And then we're going to start up.
There's none of that with you guys.
You guys are out there.
Plus, you might be seven, eight miles from camp.
And then you gotta huff all the way back with fucking headlights on in the middle of the night, and then you're looking at your watch like, Jesus Christ, we gotta be awake in seven hours, you know, and you haven't even eaten yet, and then you eat, and then you crash, and then it's like, alright, everybody up, it's five, like, fuck!
steven rinella
Yeah, we have a lot of what we would call death marches.
And one day we were trying to define what a death march is, and Yanni feels that it's not a death march until there's a fight that breaks out.
joe rogan
People are arguing?
steven rinella
About what way to go.
joe rogan
Oh, that's funny.
steven rinella
Yeah, no, I love it, man.
You develop...
Very, you know, intimate relationships with people, man.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
You develop intimate relationships with people.
And it's hard.
And for that professionalism and all that, it's doing that, you know, months for months, being together all the time in whatever, like in tents or in a rental house and in cars and just like, ugh!
Right?
You...
You can't stay buttoned up quite like maybe how you're supposed to.
joe rogan
Right, like if you were a CEO. Yeah, it's a different kind of experience.
And it's also an experience that I think is really lost in translation in all of hunting media.
I think you do the very best at...
First of all, your show is fantastic because of your narration and because you have a very clear love of the wilderness and of animals and of the experience of hunting.
It's hard to encapsulate a seven-day, really rigorous experience into an hour-long show.
And it's lost.
To people that don't experience, like to me who's done it with you, I can watch one of your shows and I can go, man, I wish I was there the whole time.
Where I would really get a sense of how hard it was to find the bulls, and then you hear them in the distance, and then you've got to walk three miles through this valley and try to get to this other ridge, and then you glass them up, and then they're already gone because they caught your wind.
There's so much the seesaw ride of the experience of trying to navigate your way through the woods and hunt, and then the wild thrill of it being successful or the failure.
All those things are...
The worst thing that's ever happened to hunting, I think, is hunting shows.
And that, not yours, but a lot of them, there's shitty music and bad writing, and it's all about the kill.
And to people that...
I don't have any experience doing that.
They're watching and it's sort of encapsulated into this very brief moment of people laughing and hooting and hollering because they shot a deer.
Why are you happy?
People don't understand it.
What is happening here?
Why are you happy?
steven rinella
Yeah, you feel the experience hasn't teed that up.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're missing everything.
It's like if all of romance was boiled down to an orgasm.
It's like, Jesus, there's so much more to human experiences and relationships.
There's so much more to hunting.
It's like everything else.
There's so much more to...
If you see a fight...
And you know that this guy punches that guy and that guy falls down.
If that's all you see, if you're just like a highlight of a knockout, you're missing And the struggle and the people that are in the camp with them, they're the only ones that really know.
If someone is in a camp with Roy Jones Jr. in his prime, they see all the training leading up to the fight and then the fight.
Those are the people that get the real experience.
And I feel like no one gets the real experience of hunting.
Until you do it.
And it's one of the reasons why it's so misrepresented and misunderstood in the general public.
In the people that don't hunt, in our culture, hunting has gotten this very bizarre bad rap And even amongst people who eat meat.
And I think a lot of it is because of that.
I think your organization and what you've done with Meat Eater, with your writing, particularly with your show, is the best thing that's ever happened to hunting in the modern era because it explains it and displays it.
In a well-thought-out, intelligent way that's filled with emotion and it's filled with introspective thought and articulate discussion and in a way that people get a chance to see, oh, maybe I had the wrong impression of what this is.
steven rinella
We made many of our episodes that were 22 minutes long.
And we still, on Sportsman Channel, Outdoor Channel, 22 minutes.
When you watch a half-hour show, you're watching 22 minutes of stuff.
And traditionally, we would produce it in a four-act structure.
So you have an enormous amount of constraint on how you put this thing together.
Premiering episodes on Netflix, you're not held to that.
You're not held to the act structure.
You can kind of make them their own natural length.
We had a lot of training early on in making that happen.
And that's where the skill of the editors is how do you take hours – How do you take maybe, I don't know, 100 hours of stuff and compress it down in 22 minutes in some way that was true to the experience?
There's stuff you don't show, there's stuff you do show, but yeah, it's tight.
It's 22 minutes.
It's hard to capture it.
I think the key in doing it is that I'd made the show with A lot of people who are very key, and you know Moe, right?
You know Moe, you know Nick Brigden.
People early on that were very involved in making the show that I was making.
These people, these weren't hunters.
They were people who were very interested in story.
They were very interested in sort of like the rhythm of the story, how a story got captured, how a story got laid out.
And so they weren't coming from a lifetime of watching hunting media.
They were coming from a lifetime of how do you do this thing, which is take people on an emotional, like create an emotional journey for someone doing something.
And they applied that skill set.
With me, who had a level of subject matter expertise and had my own understanding of narrative that I developed as a writer, but come in and apply that universal storytelling principles to this thing that other people might have felt was beneath them.
But they had the generosity of spirit in those early days.
They had the generosity of a spirit to take this thing and see some kind of beauty in it.
And help develop it into a thing where they were like applying their expertise to it.
joe rogan
Then kind of the only time has ever been done before.
I don't think before you, anybody had ever done it that way.
I mean, for context, like Mo Fallon went on to direct Parts Unknown with Bourdain.
steven rinella
He was an assistant to the film director, Michael Mann.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
I mean, the dude went, you know, he was like...
joe rogan
And he's a brilliant, brilliant guy.
steven rinella
Like making, you know, he went to Africa and worked on Ali.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Right?
Like, he...
joe rogan
Yeah, incredibly interesting person in his own right.
And for him to...
And then eventually became a hunter, which is interesting too, right?
Through doing your show.
steven rinella
What's funny about some of the guys that come on to work on the show is they wind up having...
They might not have hunted, but they wind up having quite an education.
And they get where they have well-earned opinions.
And they're good at spotting stuff.
Mo's modest, right?
So he'd be the last guy that would ever be like, he wouldn't call himself a thing, but Mo's been exposed to during those years that he worked with us.
Moe was exposed to more action than most people that hunt are ever going to be exposed to.
He just exposed an enormous amount and processed it in an interesting way.
joe rogan
When you see the landscape of hunting media, have you seen the level of it come up since Meat Eater?
It was like 2012 you came around?
It's been about nine years?
steven rinella
Yeah, this is our 10th year, our 10th season.
I've seen enormous changes, and it's hard to untangle the impacts of digital media.
Right?
Because during that time, we were undergoing all this stuff with distribution channels changed so much.
And you had sort of the gatekeepers melted away.
You have people producing a lot of stuff.
Like our company, we do a lot of direct-to-YouTube series.
So you're able to put material out.
So people that wanted to make good material might before, they hadn't fallen into...
They didn't line up with what people felt should be broadcast.
And now they're able to put out what they want to make.
So it's hard to untangle what might have happened in outdoor media from what is just happening in media.
With the ability of creative individuals to come out, make a thing, and then have the thing be seen by other people without it needing to be something that someone decided on.
And you're seeing that in all aspects of everything.
So have I seen big changes in hunting media?
Absolutely, because even in our own ability to put out material, I've seen enormous changes.
We do tons more, and we're able to do stuff without having someone say that it's okay to do it.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's such an important point, because without that point, I mean, without that ability, podcasts would have never existed.
No one would have ever let you do something like this.
steven rinella
Yeah, you wouldn't have gone and pitched it and had someone say yeah.
But a lot's changed.
I think that the celebration of the culinary aspects of hunting and fishing, absolutely, they're far more represented now than they were 10 years ago.
Far more represented.
joe rogan
You never saw it.
You just saw the kill.
The first time I ever saw anybody cooking was on your show.
And the first time I ever cooked any kind of wild game myself was on your show.
When we shot that mule deer in Montana.
steven rinella
I never would...
So much has been done.
You can't come in and ever claim to have...
You can't claim to have invented anything because there's so much stuff out there.
But yeah, there's a mix.
There's a mix of things covered that...
We cover a sort of recipe or a formula of things that hadn't been covered quite the way we cover them.
joe rogan
Is there an issue now with YouTube where I know they have new guidelines for hunting where you're not allowed to show The kill you're not allowed to show like the impact of a bullet or of an arrow and I don't think you're allowed to show any kind of suffering And you may not be able to show butchering.
I'm not sure about that.
steven rinella
That has not been a thing that we've encountered.
joe rogan
This is a new thing about demonetization.
Have you seen these new rules?
See if you can Google this.
You might not even be aware of it, because I think it's very recent.
As a matter of fact, I think it came out last week.
steven rinella
Oh, well then that might be something that will come...
If that's a demonetization issue, I haven't been...
joe rogan
Yeah, well, you know, YouTube has been very heavy-handed with this concept of demonetization.
It's sort of a way of encouraging self-censorship.
steven rinella
Sure.
joe rogan
And we found that out in a weird way when we stopped doing, when we were moving from YouTube to Spotify.
All of a sudden, All of our shows that used to be demonetized were no longer demonetized.
Maybe 25% of our shows would be demonetized on YouTube.
25% of them would not be eligible for any sort of income.
That all changed as soon as we went over to Spotify.
Then 100% of the shows got monetized.
Upon closer inspection, the YouTube ad-friendly content guidelines was found that in July of 2021, the policy was updated to make it clear that footage of animals in distress induced by human intervention may not run ads.
Naturally, the hunting and killing of animals fall within the new guideline, meaning that hunting content as we know it can no longer be used to make money on YouTube.
The exact policy reads as follows.
You can turn on ads for this content.
Hunting content where there is no depiction of graphic animal injuries or prolonged suffering.
Hunting videos where the moment of kill or injury is indiscernible and no focal footage of how this dead animal is processed.
For trophy or food purposes, which is crazy.
Well, it says, while they don't go into much detail, it seems clear that any impact shots or footage of an animal after it's been shot is no longer acceptable to make ad revenue.
The thing is, like, how far...
This is from bowhunting.com.
steven rinella
Yeah, I don't know, because I was watching...
I really don't.
I can't comment on it.
I don't know how...
I can't comment on it.
I don't know how it's being interpreted.
I was watching things this morning, not our own material, but I was watching things this morning that were monetized, that would...
Not conform.
joe rogan
Here's where, they might not have put that into effect, but here's where it gets squirrely.
We've seen things that were not monetized, meaning the people who created them did not get money, but there's still ads on them.
steven rinella
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
So that's real, right?
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
Correct?
Where things were not monetized.
steven rinella
Like they're serving ads on their platform, but they're not sharing.
joe rogan
Exactly.
Whereas the creators don't get money, but there was an ad on it.
Hasn't that been a complaint that people have levied before?
I don't necessarily think that's happened to us, but I do believe that has been a complaint, that people have said, hey, my video's demonetized, but it still has an ad on it.
jamie vernon
Oh, I see what you're saying.
joe rogan
That's real, right?
jamie vernon
I'm sure it is.
joe rogan
Let's Google that just to be sure.
And in fairness to YouTube, I mean, I always say this and it's an important point.
YouTube is managing at scale in an impossible volume.
The amount of people that are uploading videos to YouTube on a daily basis and to even hire people that are supposed to watch all that shit as it's being made is impossible.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
There's no way you could do it.
steven rinella
You have hundreds of hours, hundreds and hundreds of hours of content uploaded every minute.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I mean, just imagine assigning someone to listen to this fucking show, to watch every episode, three fucking hours every day.
This motherfucker, he takes up half my day.
steven rinella
Yeah, but part of the thing of having a media company, you know, is where we put a lot of focus is, I'm very interested in a broad...
Distribution.
joe rogan
Yeah, here it is right here.
YouTube will put ads on non-partner videos but won't pay the creators.
Yeah, YouTube said an update to its terms of services this week that it has the right to monetize all content on its platform.
As such, it said it will start putting ads on videos from channels not in the YouTube Partner Program, which shares ad revenue with creators.
So yeah, that's it.
jamie vernon
That's what Facebook does, though.
I mean, it did for 15 years or whatever it was for a long time.
joe rogan
Well, that was the crazy thing about YouTube, right?
Was that YouTube, in a remarkable, fair move, decided to share revenue with the people that are creating content, encouraging people to create content.
Because I feel like if they didn't do that, people would still have created content.
Like, they really didn't have to do that.
And I remember when they first started doing it, when we first started making money, we were like, you can make money?
steven rinella
Yeah, we had a podcast episode the other day with an early YouTuber, a dude named Jared Outlaw, an early YouTuber, and he talked a lot about that being a major transition point.
As an early YouTuber, it was when monetization became possible that it just really transformed the YouTube community.
He identified as a YouTuber.
But with media, a thing that I remain very interested in is this diversification of distribution.
Because you are so vulnerable.
joe rogan
Yes.
steven rinella
All the time.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
We publish with Random House.
We produce podcasts.
We distribute as free material podcasts.
But then we just recently released a very high-grade audio original thing through Random House.
And we released a book that never had a book version.
So it's our project, Campfire Stories.
Release it with them.
Do stuff on social.
Release material through traditional, we still work with Sportsman Channel, right?
Everywhere all the time, so that you don't feel like someone's gonna, like, unplug you all of a sudden.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, we were in this situation before the Spotify deal where I was very nervous because we would have controversial discussions.
You know, discussions on controversial subjects.
And subjects that where you would get removed even if what you're saying was correct.
Like a perfect example is the lab leak theory.
Like the lab leak theory for COVID-19.
steven rinella
Oh yeah, you used to be a nut job for thinking that that was plausible.
joe rogan
Exactly.
But I had people on the podcast in April of 2020 saying that and I was labeled a dangerous conspiracy theorist by like these different left-wing media platforms that had decided that there was only one narrative despite the fact that I had evolutionary biologists that were explaining in detail why when you study these viruses it appears they've been manipulated.
steven rinella
I remember it being very naughty.
joe rogan
Very naughty.
steven rinella
Very naughty to think that a place that studies coronaviruses Would have it be that someone would catch a coronavirus.
joe rogan
It's hilarious, right?
At that place.
And the fact that it broke out in the very exact town, in the exact neighborhood where this fucking level 4 lab is.
But that was part of the problem with having a president like Trump, who is so fucking polarizing.
That anything that he agreed with, people immediately disagreed with it.
I mean, he could have agreed with some of the most amazing inventions in the history of the world, you'd be a racist if you agreed with them, because of the fact that Trump was a proponent of them, that he was promoting them.
So, I recognized...
steven rinella
I always fantasized about a quiet version...
joe rogan
Of Trump?
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, like someone who wasn't bombastic...
steven rinella
Many policies...
He could have pursued many policies.
Or let me put it this way.
Obama could have sold many of his policies.
And people have been like, oh yeah, that makes sense.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, for sure.
Well, in fact, he did.
Particularly the stuff about the border.
When people talk about how Trump was so horrific in his border.
There's speeches where Obama is talking about how we can't have porous borders.
We have to protect our borders.
steven rinella
And people are like, oh yeah, it makes total sense.
joe rogan
This is outrageous today.
steven rinella
It would have been interesting to pursue many of his policy positions in a way where he would come.
You know, I see both sides, but you have to careful consideration.
joe rogan
It's hard, right?
Because the guy's entire career, he had this one persona.
This, fuck you, pay me, I'm the man, you're fired.
He was always like, Rosie's gross.
He always had Rosie O'Donnell's disgusting person.
He would insult people openly.
And that was part of his thing.
And he did it while he was president, which was wild.
It was wild to see.
Yeah.
A president, a sitting president, talking about a woman he had sex with and calling her a horse face.
I remember seeing that on Twitter going, this is crazy.
He's not changing at all.
But that's what got him to the dance.
But that's what got people excited about him.
Oh, he's real.
He's PC. But it also really fucking...
Polarized the people that were in opposition to him.
And so because of that, everybody kind of lost their mind.
And it became where you couldn't even discuss things with actual experts that were experts in the field that you were discussing.
People that had no education in it whatsoever were deciding that these subjects were off limits and now would be demonetized.
And I saw that coming.
I was like, that's a real problem for me because I'm not going to change how I do this show.
I can't.
There's no reason.
I wouldn't do it.
I wouldn't enjoy it.
I'd hate myself.
If there was subjects that were taboo that I found profoundly interesting and I didn't discuss them because I thought I would be demonetized, I would be fucked.
I would be like, why am I doing this then?
Why don't I quit?
Because I want it to be just like if you and I were having a conversation, if we were sitting across a fucking dinner table or we're hanging out at your house and we just start talking about stuff and it's interesting, I want to just talk about it.
I just want the cameras to be on it so other people can be in on the conversation.
But I'm not going to change how I do this.
I'm never going to change how I do this.
So we were in this situation where I was like, okay, well, should we start putting stuff on?
We put stuff on Vimeo for quite a while.
I'm like, should I start expanding and looking for other online video platforms?
Would that water us down?
Would that help us?
And then I started thinking about all these other social media platforms.
Maybe I should join them and start posting them.
But a lot of them are like you get labeled a right-wing kook if you're on these.
Yeah.
All these QAnon folks on there.
It's one of those things where we're in such a strange time when it comes to media because everybody is sort of making the rules up as they go along and the amount of censorship that these companies are allowed to employ With no real regulations in terms of like, you know, the First Amendment or- Yeah, they're privately held companies.
I know they are, but they're so big that they're not really- it's not simple anymore.
Like, Twitter is responsible for an enormous portion of the world's discourse.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
And to say that that's just a private company, then these people that run this private company, who are they?
They're the arbiters of information.
They're the people that are allowed to decide based on their own policies, which is based on their own ideologies, what is and is not acceptable.
steven rinella
But you're one of the country's biggest media personalities.
joe rogan
How odd.
steven rinella
Well, I'm just telling you, I don't know if you don't know this, you are.
joe rogan
That's what I heard.
steven rinella
Okay.
Are you willing to have someone come to you and say that you need to be more fair to everyone because you have outsized influence?
joe rogan
It's the opposite.
I want other people to be able to talk freely the way I'm able to talk freely.
I wouldn't want to restrict their ability to do a podcast just because I'm doing a podcast.
Yeah, that's a good point.
If I have an opinion on things, I always think that the answer, and I've been wrong before, and if I'm wrong, I always try to correct myself if I find out that I'm wrong.
I'm not one that tries to bury an incorrect statement.
I will try to expose it and try to explain how I was incorrect.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
I don't think anybody would trust you if you don't do that, especially when you're doing something like this where, you know, we don't talk before this.
This is one subject that we did talk about before this.
What was it?
steven rinella
The deer.
joe rogan
The deer thing.
steven rinella
No, you told me not to talk about it.
joe rogan
The deer having COVID. I was like, let's not hold that.
Let's talk about it on the podcast because I knew it was interesting.
Deer having COVID. But we don't have like a set agenda.
So when you don't have a set agenda, there's oftentimes you're going to come across things, and thank God Jamie's the best one-handed Googler in the business.
I don't know what the fuck we're gonna talk about while we're talking.
That's part of the fun of the show is that it is just a conversation.
As soon as I micromanage that and change, it's like it's gonna lose whatever appeal it has to me.
Because the appeal it has to me is like to be able to have conversations.
I want everybody to be able to do that.
The problem with People that have rigid ideologies that also have the power to decide what people can and can't do is that you get situations like the lab leak hypothesis where they're wrong and they're banning people and they're censoring people and it goes on for months and months and months and it destroys people's faith in free expression.
It destroys the ability to have conversations about the subject that are important because you have to say, well, why do you believe that this leak hypothesis is probable?
When then you have an evolutionary biologist or a virologist or an epidemiologist, and they start explaining things or debating it in a way that it seems like it's not possible.
And you can't have those conversations if someone has an ideological opposition to an idea based on a person who's a proponent of that idea, like Donald Trump, saying it's the Chinese virus, and then all of a sudden everybody says, well, if you discuss it, having leaked from a lab that you're a racist.
And then, you know...
You've got to be able to figure out what's right and what's wrong.
The only way is through discussion.
The only way.
It's the only way.
You can't have a person who decides, you can no longer talk about this subject because this subject has detrimental effects on X, Y, or Z. Well, it says who?
Because some people would say it doesn't.
And some people would say, well, X, Y, and Z are problematic because you can't have that discussion.
So they're these sacred topics that you can never really get an understanding of.
And then they're like a religion.
Like, what are they now?
You're not allowed to take the Lord's name in vain.
You're not allowed to talk about the Wuhan Clinic.
Like, what are we doing?
Like, are we talking?
Or are we under this weird censorship of...
These people that really don't have any expertise in the subject at hand.
You can have expertise in every subject.
So as soon as you have people that are ideologically opposed to certain discussions, you've got a real problem with free speech.
And I think that an argument could be made with all these social media platforms that they're so fucking big now that they can influence so much of the world's discussions that That we have to figure out where we stand in terms of free expression.
Because if you say to a person, you can't talk on Twitter because you don't believe that a man can be a woman.
That's a good example, right?
Because that's one of the things that gets you banned from Twitter.
If you don't believe a man can be a woman, you know, like a trans woman.
Or if you use some...
This is the one that you get banned from...
If you decide to become Steveina Ranella, and I keep calling you Steve.
Little old Steve Rinella.
Like, I'm deadnaming you.
It's called deadnaming.
And that's a ban for life.
steven rinella
I hadn't heard that word.
joe rogan
You get banned for life.
unidentified
Really?
joe rogan
This is crazy.
Because, like, that's your name.
steven rinella
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Right?
It's been your name for 40-plus years.
Why can't I call you that anymore?
That's so offensive.
But I can call you a cunt.
I can call you a dope.
I can call you a stupid piece of shit, and that's fine.
But if I call you by your old name, I'm dead-naming you.
Well, now we're in a weird ideological thing, right?
Because we've decided this is a protected class of people, and that you can't even have this offensive discussion about this protected class of people.
So you've set up almost like this religious barricade to free expression about this one very, in your ideas, sensitive subject.
That's nonsense.
That's a crazy way to dictate how people can and can't talk.
And you develop this, you know, you're going to have these people that are going to say things behind closed doors and be terrified that other people are listening.
And that shouldn't be that way on the internet.
Especially when you're dealing with, you know, I mean, fuck most of the people on Twitter, they're not even using their name.
They have some fake name in their profile.
steven rinella
Yeah, to challenge orthodoxy, You either have to get really good.
If you're going to challenge orthodoxy, you have to be so good that you can do it in a way that you don't set off the alarms.
Certain comedians are able to do it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Comedians are probably the best trained to do it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You can wiggle your way, but it has to have an impact.
Oftentimes, people will take what you're doing out of context.
steven rinella
Oh, yeah.
For sure.
I see that happen to comedians.
I think a lot of comedians, I've brought this up, I think that you do this.
Whether you mean to or not, you build a sort of balance in it.
And what makes it okay to laugh about stuff is you're willing to laugh about yourself and you're willing to laugh about your own opinions.
joe rogan
Oh, I mean it.
steven rinella
You're willing to laugh about your own history.
Yeah.
That gives people some room to play.
But when you strip out certain portions, you can make someone look terrible.
joe rogan
Sure.
Out of context, in quotes, in an article.
I have a whole bit about it.
About some of the stuff that happened to me during the election with Bernie Sanders.
Because it was so hilarious to read these articles where they're taking jokes and they're just taking a small snippet of a bit.
steven rinella
I saw some of that material.
joe rogan
Hilarious.
This is a problem with...
A lot of discourse in today's society because people are being dishonest in doing that.
They're being dishonest and if you can't reply to that, if somehow you're banned from Twitter or you're banned from YouTube or you're banned from Facebook or something like this comes up and you have no recourse, there's no way you can defend yourself.
Like, that to me is a real issue.
Because I've seen so many people mischaracterized, misquoted, taken out of contest, or even lied about.
Like, I've had fucking CNN say I'm taking horse dewormer.
I've seen that.
When I've got ivermectin prescribed by a doctor that's meant for humans and a medication that actually won the Nobel Prize for its use in humans.
And CNN. Lies about it.
And they do it on purpose and they know what they're doing.
So it's like, if you can't defend yourself or there's nowhere you can say the truth, like, what are we doing?
Like, what are we doing?
Do we have just sanctioned bodies that are allowed to manipulate reality for their own financial benefit or to promote whatever narrative that they think is either beneficial or sanctioned?
Like, is that free speech?
That's not free speech.
So if you can't defend yourself on Twitter, if you can't defend yourself on Facebook or YouTube, if you don't have a podcast, those are your options.
And if they remove you from one of those options or all those options, like that was one of the crazy things that the White House press secretary said, is that if you get removed from any social media platform for misinformation, you should be removed from all of them.
Well, what about if you're right?
That's what she said, which is so crazy.
That's not your position.
Your position is to be saying what the president will do or won't do, what is the policy, answer the reporter's questions.
Your job is not to dictate what social media companies do or don't do in terms of misinformation.
To even think that this is your place to manipulate or suggest It's fucking chaos.
It's crazy.
It's crazy that we're in a position where a person would say something like that.
We should ban more people for misinformation.
Well define misinformation because you give a lot of it yourself.
Like the fucking White House press secretary is responsible for the occasional misinformation.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, what happens there?
Should you be banned?
Because that seems like, you know, if we're going to hold everybody to the same standard, we should be really clear about this.
Like, what does that mean when you say misinformation?
If someone fact checks you and they find you to be in error and you do not correct it publicly, what are we supposed to do about that?
Should you be banned from being a White House press secretary?
Should you be banned from being able to speak on social media because you've been proven to be incorrect, possibly willfully?
I think we need free expression.
We need free expression to sort it all out.
And it's very convenient for people to just want to silence people who say things that they don't like or say things they think are inappropriate.
It's not healthy.
The only way we figure out what's right is you let everybody talk and it's messy and it's complicated and a lot of times people say things you don't like.
But that's how you sort out What's how you feel about things takes a long time takes a long time to gather up a true opinion on a subject and one of the only real ways is to get a view of it from all sides and in history we Typically after a period of 50 years or so look back and condemn Any occasion where we have suppressed dissenting views.
steven rinella
Yeah, I think we're going to do that here, too.
Blacklisting people from the Red Scare, issues that came around, civil liberties for certain minority groups during World War II. There just winds up being a theme, and later we'll look and be like, ah, you know.
We got a little carried away there.
People after the terror, it hasn't been 50 years by any stretch, it's been 20 years, people after the terror attacks at 9-11 who question certain orthodoxy about what we should do militarily, right?
We're put in a certain place, and now it's like we're dusting off and re-looking at these early whistleblowers.
It'll be interesting to see how the history of this stuff gets written, particularly around questions about when you dare question COVID orthodoxy.
I've had it.
I got the vaccine.
I was kind of misled because I thought the government was going to try to take my brain over.
But I wanted to get in the ring with him and fight it out, but nothing happened, you know?
joe rogan
What do you mean?
steven rinella
Oh, just I'm making a joke about the different people's concerns about the vaccine, and I got the vaccine, and I felt like nothing happened to me.
joe rogan
Oh, some people thought it had mind control agents in it?
steven rinella
Yeah, I've heard all manner of things.
joe rogan
I've heard magnets.
I've seen people, there's hours and hours on YouTube, or at least there were, of people putting magnets on their injection site, and they think that somehow or another there's a chip in there.
steven rinella
Oh, to draw it back out?
joe rogan
No, no, they think there's a chip in there, like the magnet sticks.
steven rinella
Oh, no, I didn't even try that.
joe rogan
I mean, I don't know why it sticks.
I mean, I don't know if it's bullshit.
I don't know if they're making things up.
steven rinella
Yeah, I guess my primary point around that is that I have...
Through this, I have been on many sides of issues and have largely tried to just roll through it and not have people tell me what to do.
And looking at travel restrictions, I'm like, oh, I want to avoid travel restrictions, even though I already had COVID. I'm like, I'm going to go get the vaccine because I don't want to have any kind of travel restrictions.
joe rogan
Which one did you get?
steven rinella
Moderna.
joe rogan
Did you have any side effects?
Because that's the strongest one.
steven rinella
No.
Yeah, for a couple hours I felt a little weird.
joe rogan
How many months was it between your infection with COVID and then getting the shot?
steven rinella
I think I got it as soon as I could.
joe rogan
So like three months or something?
steven rinella
Yeah, whatever the hell they told you.
I was concerned about, like I said, I was concerned about travel restrictions.
And I just was kind of like going along with the program.
joe rogan
And did you get two shots or did you get one?
steven rinella
Two shots.
Whatever distance apart.
Yeah.
And nothing really happened.
I didn't really get that.
I got sleepy when I had COVID. I got achy when I had the vaccine.
But, you know, I've held all these different opinions, like deep frustration.
I went from being in it right away.
I was like, oh, it's just a thing we have to live with.
Everyone will wind up getting it.
Then I got like really hopeful that maybe it'll somehow go away and everybody get vaccinated.
It'll go away.
Then the vaccine came out and people I know that got vaccinated got COVID.
Then I was back to thinking that everybody's just going to wind up getting it.
So I have sat on so many sides.
Like I've sat on every possible side of this thing.
And at this point now, you get to a point where you throw my hands up in the air, and as I've thrown my hands up in the air about not understanding it, losing faith that anybody really understands it right now, it's been now difficult for me to see people getting punished for challenging the orthodoxy when everything has changed so much.
It's like, how could any person...
Sit right now and act like you have the authoritative view on what's going to happen.
And this is coming from someone who's played along with the program every step of the way.
And when I come out the other side of it, I have a deep skepticism.
And not that I feel that there's some grandmaster plan.
I just have a deep skepticism of anyone coming in and being so positive about something they're gonna punish someone for having some different view.
I think at this point it's like pretty fair for people to sit and hash out what they think is going on.
In terms of where you're getting at with just like the social media climate and how it has been used in that way to sort of like punish dissenting voices or exclude dissenting voices, I think that I have a perhaps an unusual perspective on it because for my entire career I've dealt with a set of ideas that are inherently controversial.
I'm a firearm owner.
I support Second Amendment rights.
All my material involves guns.
We kill animals and eat them, right?
But these things all existed.
Like this set of ideas and set of interests that I had existed pre-social media.
So as social media came to be a thing, I've always lived within the context of how do I take things that the people that hold distribution channels are probably going to have a semi-adversarial view of?
And how do I find a way to keep dealing with the ideas I want to deal with and distribute the ideas and distribute the imagery and distribute the content that I want to make in a way that conforms to their views so that I can keep doing it?
So I feel like I've always, like a little bit of been like a...
You know, like a spy kind of like living in this other world in some way.
Like I'm used to feeling like someone's going to come and take my shit away from me.
You know?
joe rogan
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
steven rinella
When we first started to run shows on Netflix, I couldn't even get excited about it.
I was like, that shit won't be there a day.
It won't be there a day.
joe rogan
I remember having this conversation with you because it was like one star.
You guys had like one star.
Because back during the star days, people were attacking your show because it was the first show that Netflix had that showed actual hunting.
I wanted to talk to you about that.
How did that come about?
What was the conversation?
Because that's a brave move for them to decide to take something that's traditionally been on the Sportsman's Channel or the Outdoor Network and then to put it on Netflix.
steven rinella
We worked with a company that handled distribution, and this is years ago now.
We worked with a company that handled international distribution, and the company that handled international distribution had some connections to Netflix, and Netflix purchased what was called a second window.
joe rogan
Were they hesitant at all?
Did you have conversations about content or anything?
steven rinella
They may have been hesitant, but they didn't tell us anything about the hesitancy.
In fact, I have never, and this is after years, I have never had a discussion over there that even alludes to it.
joe rogan
Interesting.
steven rinella
Yeah.
And you saw their response when people were getting up in arms about that cuties thing.
joe rogan
That was crazy.
unidentified
Right?
steven rinella
There's a thing like the degree to which you stand by producers and the degree to which you stand by your ideas.
It just hasn't been a thing.
But I assumed.
I used to wake up every day thinking that...
Oh, there's no way we're going to be able to stay on Instagram.
There's no way we're going to be able to be on YouTube.
There's no way we're going to be able to be on Twitter.
And then at the same time that I'm worrying about that, our material gets outward validation from a large streaming service.
We publish with Random House.
So we have certain people who are very, very intimate with our material.
Being okay with it and distributing it and allowing us to monetize it and at the same time feeling like someone at any minute is just going to drop it out because we use firearms.
The funniest thing is through all this, it's like you'd imagine we get attacked from the right more than the left.
unidentified
Really?
steven rinella
Oh, far, yeah.
I mean, we get attacked from the left and the right, but we get attacked from the right more.
Over what?
You know, I think it's kind of like, I think that a lot of what we do makes people uneasy, that there's sort of a new, like there's this kind of like new emerging thing that has maybe disrupted some traditional, that has disrupted some traditional Monopoly.
They held on certain audiences.
It would be that somehow, even though virtually everything we make has firearms in it, every show we put out has firearms in it, is that you don't love firearms enough, which is just like, it's always confusing to me.
We get attacked from the left.
We get attacked from the left some.
It'll always feel very nuanced when you're attacked from the left, but we get a lot of heat.
Most of the heat we get would be from the right.
joe rogan
Wow!
I would have never expected that.
steven rinella
Yeah, be that you do something.
It's like, you're too woke.
You're not woke enough.
You glorify guns, but then the louder voice would be like, but they don't glorify them enough!
Dude, all the time.
It's crazy.
I can't imagine.
But I think it's because it's from getting to a position where there's some people that probably feel a little left out.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's probably it.
steven rinella
You know, they feel a little left out and it's like a little bit like...
joe rogan
I had a guy explain that to me.
It was really interesting.
He said, you have to be careful because you give off the impression that you're having a party inside of a walled garden.
He said, people on the outside are like, well, fuck those people.
And that's, he goes, you're getting a lot of hate in that way, where people misconstrue you purposefully.
They do it on purpose, because they don't like the feeling that they're not invited to this thing.
And some of them might even be your peers.
unidentified
They're like, wow.
joe rogan
I never thought of it that way.
He goes, you have to reach out to those people and try to welcome them.
But I don't want to reach out when they've already been an asshole.
steven rinella
Yeah, I've looked at another thing in my life where I've seen that a Christian might be deeply troubled by a Mormon.
unidentified
Okay?
steven rinella
And they might be very fixated on the threat of Mormonism.
And you'd be like, man, I feel like you'd be worried about devil worshippers.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Like, that, to me, seems like...
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Like, I would have a...
I'd be after the devil worshippers.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
steven rinella
But they're like, no, I'm after this thing that's a little bit different than me, you know?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
And it's such a crowded, confused world, and when you kind of, like, survey the enemies, when you sort of find that, you know, you find that...
It'd be like if during World War II we had decided to go and bomb England because they weren't totally on board with our plan rather than staying focused on the freaking Germans.
And so I think that a lot of that heat is coming from people who they're looking and like, you're a lot like us, but maybe you're a little bit different.
joe rogan
Maybe.
And it also could be that you're getting all these accolades that they're not.
And so then they try to find reasons why you suck.
steven rinella
Yeah, sure.
joe rogan
There's a lot of that.
steven rinella
Yeah.
Plenty of reasons why.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's interesting.
And that's one of the more interesting things about social media, right?
It's like a lot of the things that if people have said sort of behind closed doors, now they're said in sort of an open forum, you know?
And it just shows you how petty...
Also a lack of emotional development that some intelligent people have.
They could be accomplished and intelligent and successful and they still act like fucking babies.
Why do you care?
Like, if there's a show and you don't think they glorify guns enough and you're angry at them, like, don't you have enough shit in your own life to focus on?
steven rinella
Oh, yeah, I don't know.
joe rogan
Why are you focusing on that?
It's usually because, you know, you're probably at least a little jealous.
Unless you've done something egregious, like you've actually campaigned against Second Amendment rights, which, of course, I know you would never do, but if you did...
Then they'd be like, well, this is crazy.
This fucking show, they use guns, and then they campaign against guns.
So hypocritical.
But that's not the case.
steven rinella
No.
joe rogan
No.
So for you saying that you're getting a lot of hate from the right, that means there's a lot of dummies on the right.
That's what I think.
steven rinella
Yeah, I do wonder about it.
unidentified
And again, it's...
steven rinella
You get, like, you experience this all the time.
You get in trouble for having, and talk about getting in trouble from the right and the left, you get in trouble for having conversations with certain people.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
You know, we had a Native American historian and activist named Taylor Keene in our podcast, so he said some things that people view as controversial around Like, you know, around things like picking up an arrowhead.
joe rogan
Yeah, I listened to that one.
steven rinella
Picking an arrowhead up off the ground.
Or the land back movement, right?
So, people are pissed.
They're pissed that, you know, he said the things he said.
You deal with this all the time.
Tucker Carlson came on the show and people are then...
Mad about that you talk to him.
They're mad that you...
We had...
joe rogan
You platformed him.
steven rinella
Yeah, we had a woman named Ru Map on from Outdoor Afro, okay?
So she talked about her experience as a black woman in the outdoors, right?
Great conversation.
People get really pissed.
They're just mad that she came on.
And she said, not only in talking to her, Ru pointed out to me that people are going to be mad at her for talking to me.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
After we got into recording, she's like, you know, you're going to get in trouble for talking to me.
And you know what's funny?
And you'll never...
You probably don't realize this.
I'll get a bunch of shit from coming and talking to you guys.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Meanwhile, it was an interesting conversation.
I enjoyed it a lot.
steven rinella
But the right...
They get...
As much as people on the right right now are against cancel culture, you know?
And I'm glad they are.
They seem like oftentimes representations of that perspective seem to be guilty.
They seem to be guilty of their own crime by being very eager to restrict certain voices that don't conform to them.
And I... I do try to invite a variety of voices and represent opinions that I think are interesting, and not every opinion that comes out in my material is necessarily my opinion.
But I try to do it, and it just makes people mad because people want you to be their thing.
joe rogan
Yeah, I experienced that with Evan Hafer from Black Rifle Coffee.
He was experiencing some weird cancel culture shit from the right online.
And I was like, what the fuck is going on?
I called him.
I go, come on the podcast.
I go, we got to talk about this because this is so ridiculous.
Like, these are the people that have been rallying against this for the four years that Trump was in office and rallying against this for the year that Biden's been in office or less than a year.
And now they're doing it.
They're doing it.
They're doing the same thing.
It's almost like, "Well, they get to do it.
We'll do it too." Mm-hmm.
And it didn't make any sense.
steven rinella
No, they weren't going after the devil worshipers.
joe rogan
No.
No, they were going after people that were very similar to them, but also wildly successful.
That's part of the problem.
Like, Black Rifle Coffee is a wildly successful organization.
steven rinella
I watch that with great interest.
I'm friends with Evan.
We have a hunt together coming up.
I watch with great interest.
I feel like, how...
Yeah, like the friendly fire incidents.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
How is anyone justifying that?
Yeah.
It's nonsense.
steven rinella
We're fighting people.
joe rogan
We're definitely that.
steven rinella
In this country.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, people love to talk shit, too.
And they get caught up in petty bickering.
steven rinella
Do you know what, though?
I got to say this, man.
All the divisiveness...
It's like the thing that blows my mind though is when I go about my daily existence, if I didn't know it wasn't all going on from the news and social media and stuff, when I go about my daily existence and just the interactions I have with people, fuck, I would never know what was happening.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
How is that possible?
joe rogan
Because that environment is- I just think that like, oh, you know, hey.
Because the environment of social media is a terrible environment for human communication.
The environment when you're going about your daily business is normal.
You're talking to people.
And most of the time, like sometimes people have like a weird opinion of someone and then they talk to them like, oh, he's a good guy.
Yeah.
This happened to me a couple of days ago.
Someone told me that there's this business thing that I'm doing, and this guy is a real problem.
He's very full of himself.
You're not going to enjoy it.
I'm like, wow, shit.
Okay, well, I'm just going to put my best foot forward and see what happens.
I meet the guy, and he's wonderful.
He's friendly.
He's nice.
And then I'm like, oh, maybe that other person was a fucking pain in the ass.
And they met this guy, or maybe that guy...
I had a cold that day.
I mean, I don't know.
When he met that other person, maybe...
Who the fuck knows what it is?
Like, people are different on different days for different reasons.
But I had it in my head, but then I met him, and he was great.
I had a great time.
So...
Something about human interaction when you're together with the way we're supposed to look each other in the eye have a conversation Be close to each other like physically in the room with each other That's how humans are meant to communicate when we're communicating anonymously through text messages or arguing about things on Facebook and these fucking long verbose Passages like it's not normal.
It's not a normal way where you get to just Fucking expand upon something for paragraph after paragraph where no one says well that's fucking wrong and that's not true That's not what I said and this is not what I meant and you're changing this and taking this out of context people people get more Angry with each other when you don't get to respond when someone says something and you're like you're like well,
that's not me fuck you and then they it's designed in a way That is not compatible with human emotions, with normal human interactions, with social cues, and reading each other's...
Like, Louis C.K. had a bit about this once, about kids and kids doing things online, that kids like to be mean online, because it's like fun and they don't feel anything.
Like, if some kid is in front of you and they say something mean, and then the other kid feels bad and starts crying, they go, oh, well that doesn't feel good.
But they say it online, they're like, oh, fuck him.
Hey, you fat fuck.
And they say it, and then they don't feel anything, because there's no one there.
But the impact on the other person is real.
It's a terrible way to communicate.
And this is the way that a lot of ideas get discussed.
A lot of people are communicating that way.
And as detailed by these documentaries like The Social Dilemma and, you know, these different books that have been written about this problem and that woman who just testified, which is kind of crazy, right?
The day the woman's testifying about the problems with Facebook is the day Facebook goes down.
And there's a lot of conspiracies about that, right?
But this is an issue.
It's an issue that they're aware of inside the company and that they chose profit over rectifying this issue.
They're like, well, this is what we do, though.
They're like, we're making a lot of money doing this.
And I think that in the wild, when people are just running into each other, we're still just people.
steven rinella
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but isn't the inception of that app, like what they were fixing to make, was they were fixing to make a way you vote people up and down?
joe rogan
I think it was just a dating app.
unidentified
Wasn't Facebook originally a dating app?
jamie vernon
To vote, yes, to who you wanted to be, like, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
jamie vernon
There were other apps around the same time like that where you would find someone hot and you'd click, yeah, they're hot, and they'd get, like, ranked higher.
steven rinella
So it's like, maybe it hasn't drifted too far.
joe rogan
Maybe.
Yeah.
Well, the thing about Facebook is I think when they do their prognosis on the future, it skews so old that Like, it's young people are dropping off of the use of Facebook pretty radically.
See if that's true.
Pretty sure that's true.
I read something about it today, but I was only, like, gave it a cursory examination.
But I think what they're saying is that Facebook is kind of doomed.
And so they're in this sort of desperate, even though they're making billions and billions of dollars.
steven rinella
Yeah, you can see the end in sight with your age thing.
joe rogan
Yeah, whereas TikTok is the opposite.
It scales very low.
Like, my fucking kids are into TikTok.
A lot of people, young folks, are into TikTok.
You know, Instagram is kind of like the middle ground.
Twitter is where people go to throw shit at each other.
You know?
Here it is.
Facebook misled investors about shrinking user base.
Complaint to SEC, Facebook mishandling of duplicate accounts was extensive fraud.
So what is it saying about user base?
Facebook is leading investors about shrinking teen and young adult user bases and about the actual number of Facebook users.
Former employee Francis Haugen alleged a whistleblower complaint.
Facebook stock valuation is based almost entirely on predictions of future advertising revenue.
Thank you.
And advertisers, including the amount of content produced on its platform, failed to disclose internal data showing a contraction of the user base in important demographics, including American teenagers and young adults.
The company is also hidden to the extent of which content production per user Has been in long-term decline, the complaint said, but obviously these are allegations from a whistleblower.
We don't know if they're true.
steven rinella
That was a good little bit of news thing there.
You put that in the end?
joe rogan
Yeah, you got to.
Because who the fuck knows?
She might be crazy.
And apparently she's donated a lot of money to AOC and some heavy-duty left-wing.
And she was like...
Upset that if you are a young woman, this is a very good complaint, a valid complaint, that if you're a young woman, if you have issues with anorexia, Facebook will send you anorexia content your way, which may exacerbate someone's predilection towards anorexia.
It's fucking terrifying.
They're the people that get it the worst, apparently, is young girls.
Young girls get...
Social media, they get the impact of social media worse than anybody.
According to Jonathan Haidt in The Coddling of the American Mind, he talked about that, that higher suicide rates, self-harm, all that stuff, the bullying, online bullying, young girls are the victims of that more than that.
steven rinella
Yeah, I read a statistic that of teenage girls, I can't remember, like a pretty staggering majority of teenage girls go to sleep at night with some level of anxiety about social media.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I can only imagine.
steven rinella
Our kids now, they're not on social media, and they don't read the news, so they don't know that everybody hates everybody now.
And when they see someone coming down the road, they wave.
And their head is like, this guy's probably not bad.
Let's go talk to that guy.
They're totally cool with everybody.
No one's really let them down yet.
joe rogan
The amount of things that Facebook has influence on, having owned...
They own WhatsApp, they own Instagram, they own Facebook, and this gigantic multimedia empire.
I mean, it's enormous.
There was an argument...
steven rinella
But you have to...
In some way, you have to sit and acknowledge that they made a thing.
They made a thing that's useful, and...
For me, as a content producer, me as a media personality, I'm able to use the tools they made and reach people that I otherwise wouldn't make.
I can't be unbridled in my...
Hatred when...
I didn't come up with the thing.
Someone else came up with it.
And it's very useful.
joe rogan
Yep.
Yeah.
There's a real good argument there.
But there's also an argument that it needs some sort of regulation.
Because in other countries, they've used it to have people murdered, to lie about...
To overthrow governments.
They've used it to put out...
Political rivals have put out false information completely unchecked that's led people to...
Kill people and overthrow...
steven rinella
Sure, but you could make the same condemnation of our First Amendment rights.
You could say, like, these people use their First Amendment privileges and it creates riots.
They use their First Amendment privileges and it radicalizes people.
It's just gotten too far.
It's too much now.
joe rogan
It's too much influence, right?
The idea is that, first of all, Facebook comes on phones in a lot of countries.
Like, in a lot of countries, they make deals with cellular providers so that, like, if you buy a phone...
steven rinella
It was like when U2 was able to put that album on all those iPhones.
joe rogan
Yeah, remember how mad people got?
That was probably the worst thing that U2 ever did.
steven rinella
Oh, dude, that thing's still like, you can't, yeah, like, now and then, when I turn my truck on, it somehow, like, finds that album still.
Like, what?
Stop it!
joe rogan
When the Bluetooth syncs up and just randomly plays a song, yeah, you're like, that's not on my fucking playlist!
Yeah, that was a, well, boy, what a fucking bad PR move that was.
Yeah, I mean, look, these conversations are interesting, and you're right, there's no definitive yes or no, good or bad, because they're new.
They're really new discussions.
There hasn't been a hundred years of social media influence where we get to have an understanding of what kind of impact this has on our society.
steven rinella
Yeah, and I still feel like I'm like a mouse in someone's kitchen, man.
That I'm able to be in there doing my shit and haven't been found out yet and thrown out.
joe rogan
I get it, too, especially with your line of business.
And then when you see these new regulations that YouTube's putting out and you realize, like, oh, well, this might be a real fucking problem.
steven rinella
Oh, yeah.
When I look at people who their livelihood is built strictly around YouTube, it feels, oh my God, does it feel vulnerable to me.
Unless you're on there showing how to make crochet or make bead bracelets and shit, I don't know.
joe rogan
Or you're doing those videos like Sniper Wolf does where you're reacting to things.
Like, oh my god, did you see that?
Oh my god.
Like, she's funny and she's silly.
It's G-rated.
steven rinella
Yeah, so maybe you're not.
Yeah, but I think there's a lot of people that I look and I'm like, man, you being what you're into and that you're only doing it there...
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
I'd have a hard time resting at night.
I would feel like someone, like the man, was coming for you.
joe rogan
That influenced my decision to leave and go to Spotify, for sure.
I didn't trust anybody.
I didn't even trust Apple.
Because I knew that there were certain episodes, like when Alex Jones came on my podcast once, The ratings went down.
There was no update in the ratings for like a week.
When I tell you it was my biggest podcast at that point in time, I think eventually Elon Musk became bigger and a few other ones became bigger, but at that time when Alex came on for episode 9-11, it was not just the biggest, but it was the biggest by far.
steven rinella
But that wasn't reflected.
joe rogan
Not only was it not reflected, there was no ratings.
The ratings stopped.
And then when it came back, That episode was ranked like, you know, number five or six or something like that, where other episodes where I knew what the downloads were, were number two or one.
I'm like, how is that?
They're doing some shenanigans.
They didn't want that episode.
I think somebody, I don't know if it's true.
I might be wrong.
But I think somewhere, someone didn't want that episode to be number one.
Because the numbers were crazy.
It was like 16, 18 million downloads.
It was nuts.
It was because it was a wild, chaotic, you know, alcohol and marijuana-fueled conspiracy ride with a maniac.
steven rinella
Yeah, well, at a certain level of influence, you know that people do, at a certain level of influence, there are people that are able to pay detailed attention to very specific things.
I'm sure, like, I wouldn't be shocked to hear that your show drew some special level of attention, the same way that there were people at Twitter assigned to Trump's tweets.
joe rogan
For sure.
Yeah, for sure.
steven rinella
And then all the other, like, you could write insane stuff that would never get discovered.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
But at a point, you're, like, someone is forced to pay attention.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
It had gotten to the point where the show was always number one.
So the episodes were always number one.
So if it was always number one and then he came on and it was number one, that became a problem.
And then the numbers were so high.
It was an interesting moment.
But it was also like...
I mean, they were great.
They never really, they never censored me.
They never told me what to do or what not to do.
No episodes ever got taken down.
I mean, Apple is essentially, they're just an aggregator, right?
steven rinella
You're saying Apple never took your episodes down?
joe rogan
Never.
Never once.
Never censored anything.
Never gave me a hard time.
Never gave any sort of criticism or anything.
They were great.
But they did a weird thing where they never really got involved financially in podcasts.
And I think it's a tremendous business mistake.
Tremendous business mistake.
steven rinella
Well, they're trying to rectify that now in a way that won't be maybe so great for producers.
joe rogan
Yeah, what are they trying to do now?
steven rinella
Oh, just like move away from applying that it's just like a random distributor.
Like if they were to do some kind of paywall situation, what it would do to download numbers.
joe rogan
It's hard to get people to pay.
There's too much shit that's out there for free.
You know, there's so much good content today.
There's a million podcasts.
A million.
I mean, if you go back to the day where Friends was the number one show in the country or Seinfeld was the number one show in the country.
How many fucking shows were there?
Was there 20?
I mean, how many fucking shows were there?
What's like number one?
I mean, what is in prime time?
I mean, Jesus Christ, you have seven days a week, and you have three hours every night, or whatever prime time is.
And out of all those shows, that's not a lot.
You know, we got 50 shows.
And then you got, you know, cable networks, which don't, you know, really get the same kind of numbers back then.
And then you have a show that's number one.
All these things are sanctioned.
Everything is on a network.
Everything is on a network that's broadcast through the government's pipes.
Everything is all, like...
Censored, and there's advertising that's inserted, and this is a wild west of content where anyone can have something, and a lot of them are good.
So if you have a million shows, which is really what there is right now, for someone to come along and say, I want you to pay, good fucking luck.
Good fucking luck.
I mean, even if you have a really good show.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
Even if you have the best show.
Like, if this show...
If I did that with...
I'm not saying my show's the best show, but if I did...
It's very highly rated, right?
If I decided to make people pay for it, I would lose almost everybody.
steven rinella
You think so?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
Unless I was the victim of some sort of censorship and I was a martyr.
And then I put it on my website and I had everybody download it from there and make some sort of a contribution and that's the only way we can keep it alive.
Then you could get people to realize like, Fuck the man, man.
And they would probably jump in.
What is this?
There's two million.
Two million podcasts.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
I'm wrong.
I'm wrong by a million.
As of 2021, there's over two million podcasts and more than 48 million podcast episodes.
Holy shit.
This is pretty startling growth considering there was just over 500,000 active podcasts from just three years ago in 2018. That's what's nuts.
These podcast statistics are completely in line with the fact that podcasts are slowly going mainstream.
Bitch, that's mainstream.
That is mainstream.
That is not slowly going mainstream.
In fact, it's estimated that 78% of the US population is now aware of what a podcast is are from 64% in 2008. They're slow playing this.
Because the reality is 75% are listening.
There's a lot of people listening to the podcast.
We regularly get episodes of 10, 11 million downloads.
It's normal.
It's like the number of people that are tuning in to shows is crazy.
It's crazy.
But it's still just a tiny piece of the population.
You know, you're going worldwide, there's 330 whatever the fuck million people there are in this country.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then worldwide, you're dealing with 8 billion.
Really, 11 million is just like a tiny little drop in the bucket.
steven rinella
Do you imagine you'll be doing a podcast in 10 years, if you had to guess?
joe rogan
I don't think like that.
I never thought I would be doing this ten years ago.
steven rinella
Well, I'm inviting you to think like that.
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't know.
I'm wondering.
I don't know why not, because I do enjoy it.
When I stop enjoying it, you know, I mean, I don't want to mention any names, but there's certain people that do shows where people feel like they're phoning it in.
If anybody ever really feels like I'm phoning it in, I'll stop.
If I feel like I'm phoning it in, I'll definitely stop.
Or I'll stop phoning it in.
But I don't think I'm ever going to stop...
Wanting to have conversations with people.
If I can have you and you and I just talk, I always want to talk to you.
You're an interesting dude.
If we get a camera on us and other people can get in on it and they enjoy it, like there's someone out there on a treadmill right now enjoying the shit out of this.
I like that.
I like it.
You're providing something that people actually enjoy.
As long as it's enjoyable to me, I think it'll still be enjoyable to other people because enthusiasm, like genuine enthusiasm is contagious, you know?
And I find that if I watch someone that's cooking on TV or someone that's making things or someone that's talking about something they're passionate about, even have zero interest in it, if it's a genuine enthusiasm.
Which is why when I do this show, I don't do it based on famous people.
I don't try to get people that I know will get big ratings.
There's zero consideration of that.
steven rinella
I've always appreciated that about you.
joe rogan
Oh, thank you.
steven rinella
Yeah, because I'm only a little teeny bit famous, but I get to come on.
joe rogan
Well, I'm always interested in talking to you.
My interest is in my interest.
That was one of the interesting conversations in the beginning with Netflix.
Who are going to be the episodes?
Who's going to be the first week?
What are the big names for the first week?
I'm like, that's not happening.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
There's not going to be any of that.
There's not going to be any of that.
We're going to try to set it up and make...
I don't think like that.
And because I don't think like that, it stays...
I hate the word organic, but it stays organic.
Because it's just...
I like talking to people.
I like talking to interesting people.
And as long as I think they're interesting, I want to talk to them.
Whether it's a fucking author that no one's ever heard of, that has some book that's interesting, or a photographer that covers wars, or whatever.
Whatever.
A comic that no one ever heard of, but I think they're talented.
That's what I want to do.
So I'm going to keep doing it.
As long as I keep, I mean, maybe it won't be interesting to other people.
Or maybe way less people will find it interesting because the medium will have shifted and it'll have moved on.
But I didn't do it in the beginning ever thinking it would be the number one podcast in the world.
I did it thinking like, oh, it'd be good to get high with my friends and talk shit.
You know, and here we are.
Fucking, how many thousand?
What are we, 1,000 something?
steven rinella
17. 1717. I think I've told you this every time I've been on your show, but you know Helen Cho.
joe rogan
Yes, very well.
steven rinella
The first time I ever heard the word someone say podcast was Helen Cho in reference to you.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
I could take you and show you where she was sitting and where I was sitting.
joe rogan
I think that was 2011 when we met, right?
steven rinella
I was like, a what?
She's like, just listen.
Just go.
I was like, what is that?
Probably said something about how it sounds like a stupid idea.
I don't know, whatever.
Yeah, it's funny.
You were in it.
Early.
joe rogan
Early.
Yeah, 2009. Yeah.
steven rinella
And I wouldn't have gotten into it without your encouragement.
joe rogan
I knew you should get into it right away.
The first time we ever did one, I'm like, wow, that guy's interesting.
Because I enjoyed your show, The Wild Within, before you ever did Meat Eater.
I remember watching you make a fucking boat out of some moose skin and going down a river and the whole deal.
And I was like, wow, that's fucking cool.
unidentified
Well...
joe rogan
Show and interesting kind of subjects and and before you'd ever taken me hunting I'd always had this fascination with hunting I'd always watched like Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild and watch a bunch of these hunting shows because I would be like but that's probably the best way to eat like to get the meat yourself that way you really understand where it's coming from versus this weird sort of separation between you and the act of the animal dying where you don't really understand what you're doing just eating meat you know and One of the two times I thought my career was over was
steven rinella
when that Wild Within show on Travel Channel didn't take off.
joe rogan
What's the other time?
steven rinella
When my first book didn't take off.
joe rogan
The Buffalo book?
steven rinella
No, no.
My first book was called Scavenger's Guide to Oak Cuisine.
joe rogan
Oh, that's right.
steven rinella
But that book's still in print, man.
joe rogan
Yeah?
steven rinella
No, in the end.
But when it came out, I had tons of media around it.
Just no one bought the damn book, man.
I thought I was over.
I don't know if he actually said it.
There's this thing that's always attributed to Woody Allen.
Maybe he said it.
I don't know.
Something to the effect of, like, his movies are always good enough that they let him make another one.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
steven rinella
And I felt for a minute that my book hadn't done good enough to get to make another one, but then someone took a bet on me again, and I was able to make a successful book.
But, yeah, doing that Wild Within on Travel Channel, dude, we were...
They ordered eight episodes.
They ran them all.
But we were...
I mean, we just rapped.
The eighth episode.
Okay?
I mean, I was in the...
We were, like, getting in a car to go to the airport from the location where we were filming in West Texas.
And I got a call that...
It was effectively canceled, even though they ran some through.
And I thought that somehow you were done.
joe rogan
Yeah.
We could have been.
steven rinella
But in that year, too, you still had to jump through all the hoops.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
And I was just, didn't realize, like emerging into a thing where, like you said, like the Wild West or you're in the open ocean or whatever the hell, like I was just emerging into a place where like the time lined up that you didn't need to be, you could still do things.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
You could still do things.
Otherwise, like, I don't know, a decade earlier, 20 years earlier or something, you'd have to go crawl into a hole, man.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, I was a part of TV that decade earlier.
When you had to get cast on a sitcom or Fear Factor, I had to get cast on that, and that's the only way people got to know who you were.
You had to do something else.
You had to do something.
steven rinella
I could never even believe that those dudes...
I was kind of shocked when the guy bought that show.
joe rogan
How come?
steven rinella
Because he came in, he came from an unexpected background, didn't last long, bought some shows, none of them took off.
We didn't know what, we had no idea what that show was about.
It was kind of a mess.
It was fun, but it was kind of a mess.
And then when that was over and we started making Meat Eater, I was like, I had learned enough from that wild NBS to understand very well what I wanted to make.
And it was going to be extremely stripped down.
And it was going to be like, and I was going to have a very high, like, a Very high level of influence over everything that happened.
I learned enough to know that.
joe rogan
I remember a conflict that you talked to me about where they tried to release an animal so that you could shoot it.
They wanted to guarantee that you got a moose.
steven rinella
Oh, yeah.
It was a conversation where we were talking about how much time it takes.
It was early on before we started the film.
I'm not going to name who it was, but this producer said...
I was like, well, you know, you just don't know.
It takes time and all this.
And he's like, that's why there's animal wranglers.
joe rogan
And your show is the opposite of that now because some of your best episodes are unsuccessful episodes.
One of my favorite ones are the ones that you're talking about your dad.
There's no music and you're on the top of a mountain just discussing things.
steven rinella
Yeah, Sky Island Solitaire.
Some play on Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire.
Man, I used to be worried sick about those ones.
joe rogan
Those are some of the best ones.
steven rinella
Yeah, they work.
joe rogan
Some of the best ones.
steven rinella
We call them skunkers.
joe rogan
Yeah, but they're some of the most realistic, too, because that's really what happens.
It's part of the thing.
It's one of the reasons why it's so interesting, because it's difficult.
That's like I said earlier.
I think that's one of the things that's hardest to convey when you're just seeing a success, and then the success is always towards the end.
It's all like you expect it, like a movie.
You want the good guy.
The good guy's going to win.
He's James Bond.
He's going to survive.
And sometimes, no.
steven rinella
I feel like I should get all circumspect about media right now, but I don't know.
joe rogan
You know, media reflects the culture at a certain point in its ability to express itself.
And the culture has shifted its ability to express itself radically because of the internet.
This podcast is a great example of that.
Nothing could have existed like this 20 years ago.
Your podcast is another great example of that.
You found your niche in that stream.
You caught that wave and you wrote it out.
Perfect timing.
From The Wild Within to Meat Eater to podcasting.
To the meat-eater empire now.
It's all internet-based, all influenced, all of it with these different streams of distribution.
It's fascinating.
steven rinella
Oh.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
My oldest boy, my wife said the other day that he was saying that he hopes meat-eater sticks around long enough for him to get involved.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
And we had a good laugh about it.
joe rogan
It's great.
steven rinella
But I was like, oh man, I don't know, buddy.
joe rogan
I bet it will.
steven rinella
You might need to...
joe rogan
I bet it will.
steven rinella
Yeah, I keep encouraging him to join the military.
joe rogan
Really?
For discipline?
steven rinella
Just, you know, yeah, something.
I think I have a guilty count.
I was very close.
My dad served.
I was very, very close to going in the military.
And I feel like I've had...
I have a guilty conscience.
And this thing happened to me where years ago I was invited by someone to go down to give a talk at Fort Bragg.
It was the third special forces group in Fort Bragg.
And I went down to give a talk.
And it was interesting because I call them kids or not kids.
They're all guys about a decade younger than I was.
30, early 30s.
And Sitting there in front of these guys talking to them, and these are people that had come out of high school.
They came out of high school post 9-11 and went into the military, did all their training, became Green Berets, and had spent their entire adult life either training for or in Afghanistan and Iraq.
unidentified
Since they were 18. Wow.
steven rinella
And one of these guys, at one point, he opens up the Fort Bragg phone book.
Like an actual physical phone book.
We got to talking and he opens it up and he goes to the divorce attorney section in that phone book.
And just pages and pages, you know what I mean?
And you realize just the enormous cost and the enormous sacrifice.
And yeah, I've always felt like I was so close and didn't do it.
It's always bugged me.
I feel like chicken shit that I didn't do it.
And I feel like other people had to do a thing that didn't happen for me.
And so, yeah, maybe in some way, I would like him to go set the record straight for the family.
But my old man, he was one of the biggest voices against...
He didn't understand why would you enlist when there's no war?
What are you going to do?
That was his take on it.
Because he enlisted during the war.
joe rogan
Right, right.
steven rinella
He's like, well, if there's a war, you enlist.
I mean, if there's no war, I mean, what are you going to do down there?
And I just listened to him, you know?
But yeah, man.
I don't know.
I mean, he's a little kid.
I'm not going to lean on him too hard about it, but I feel like he would be setting things back right again.
joe rogan
Do you feel like you're worried that you might want him to do something that maybe he wouldn't do otherwise because you didn't do it and you feel guilty?
steven rinella
He's young.
He's of age where I could kind of say...
I mean, if he was 17, I'd probably handle this conversation differently.
If he was 17 and going for it, then...
But when he says what he's going to do or whatever, for whatever reason, my instinct is to encourage him to go into service.
joe rogan
Let's talk.
Figure it out.
Figure it out in a few years.
steven rinella
Yeah, he's got a while.
joe rogan
Maybe he'll wind up in with you.
I've got to wrap this up.
steven rinella
Yeah, for sure.
joe rogan
I've got to end this.
I've got to get out of here.
It's always a pleasure.
Tell everybody where they can find MeatEater.
It's TheMeatEater.com because you guys still haven't bought MeatEater.com?
steven rinella
Dude, it's such a long, weird story, man.
No, TheMeatEater.com is a great place to go.
I'm on Instagram at SteveMirnella.
If you go to, you know, wherever you could buy books, go to Apple Books or whatever.
joe rogan
And get the American Buffalo audio version because you finally do the voiceover for it.
steven rinella
Yeah, do that, but mainly right now go get Meat Eaters Campfire Stories close calls.
And then also we're doing a fundraiser right now.
At TheMeatEater.com where we're doing a fundraiser for our land access initiative where we raise money to improve and enhance places where you're hunting fish.
And we've got a big auction going on right now.
We've got a signed guitar from Luke Combs.
We've got all the kinds of Like a raccoon hide, antelope skull and stuff, all used on the episodes.
All up for auction.
You can buy Giannis Patelis' first pheasant tail, knives, all kinds of stuff.
And we're going to use all that for our land access initiative.
unidentified
All right.
joe rogan
Awesome.
All right.
Beautiful.
steven rinella
Thank you.
unidentified
Thank you.
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