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Jan. 16, 2025 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:47:38
Joe Rogan Experience #2258 - Steven Rinella
Participants
Main voices
j
joe rogan
54:00
s
steven rinella
01:48:21
Appearances
Clips
g
gavin newsom
00:15
j
jamie vernon
00:04
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
the Joe Rogan experience train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day Steve Vanilla that was a long exhale I needed one.
steven rinella
Is this Trump's chair?
joe rogan
He sat in that chair, yeah.
steven rinella
I want to soak up some of the tenacity, man.
joe rogan
He's got a lot of that.
steven rinella
It took me a long time, man.
It took me a long time to...
To see it.
Like, I remember people would talk, you know, there was this thing when he emerged on the scene, it was this thing about, like, toughness.
And I'd always defined, like, in my mind, toughness was being able to go through some, like, alder-choked hellhole real fast.
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
Or hike up a hill.
unidentified
Right.
steven rinella
So I was like, that's not tough.
And then later I was like, oh.
Yeah.
unidentified
Mental toughness.
steven rinella
That kind of tough, man.
joe rogan
Think about what that guy went through.
I mean, he had the entire media, the entire justice system.
He had the Deep State, the Central Intelligence Agency.
He had all these people conspiring to take him out.
Literally an assassination attempt, and then another one.
In and out of the news in no time.
Nobody cared.
No grace period.
They waited about a day, and then they started talking shit about him again.
steven rinella
That's the thing.
When I looked at it, now that I've come to understand it better, I'm like, the fact that most people would crawl into A hole.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
You know, I got a buddy, I don't want to say who it is, but he had sold his business and he told me, he goes, when I sell my business, I'm going to crawl into a deep, dark hole.
And later he's kind of back out and bought another business.
And I said, what about crawling into the deep, dark hole?
And he said, well, I did, but my wife was in there.
I'm not ready yet.
I gotta get back out.
joe rogan
People...
I think that's like these sort of fictional depictions of the future.
That, you know, everybody wants this future where, you know, you're just holding hands and walking off into the sunset, the golden years.
It's all bullshit.
If you're alive, you're going to want to do the same things you're doing right now.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
You're not going to have some point in your life where you're going to want to do nothing and be happy that you don't have to do anything.
You're going to get depressed.
steven rinella
Yeah, I think about it.
But my wife's smart enough to worry about what had happened to us if we didn't have dragons to slay.
Yeah.
She feels that it might be essential.
joe rogan
It's essential for life.
You need at least some sort of a very involving hobby.
You need something.
I mean, you can retire from, if you have a lot of money, you could retire from your financial pursuits.
But you need something that you enjoy doing.
Human beings need tasks.
If you don't have something, you get very dull, and that's how people get Alzheimer's.
They just fucking get dementia.
They just, like, sit around the house, and their brain atrophies, and then they just die.
steven rinella
Yeah.
I look at people like that, and, you know, part of looking at, well, Biden and Trump would be...
At that age, like I plan on at that age to be like really kicking it.
Just screwing around outside.
joe rogan
Yeah, just having fun.
steven rinella
But that just thing, like to perform to the bitter end, man.
joe rogan
Well, Biden is not performing.
steven rinella
Trying to perform to the bitter end.
joe rogan
Whatever he's doing is strange.
steven rinella
Yeah, trying to keep at it.
joe rogan
I think he's getting propped up.
I think there's other people that are, like, pushing him towards the, get out there!
Come on!
I think Jill's got her hands on his lower back.
steven rinella
Just giving a push.
joe rogan
Get out there!
Come on!
You can win again!
unidentified
I think I could've beaten Trump!
joe rogan
Yeah, it's...
But it's that thing, too, where people, oh, one day you'll get to a certain age and you'll, like, you know...
I'm 57, and I used to think, oh, when I'm 57, I'll be done.
If I have some money, I'm just gonna relax.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's nonsense.
I don't want to relax.
steven rinella
How long do you think, if you had guests, how long would you do this podcast?
joe rogan
This is the easiest thing I'd do.
steven rinella
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, I'll do this forever.
unidentified
Really?
joe rogan
It's so easy to do.
Yeah, as long as I'm actually interested in talking to the people.
How hard is that?
steven rinella
Actually interested?
joe rogan
Yeah, but that's the only reason why I do it anyway.
Like, I only talk to people I want to talk to.
So, no one ever tells me, you know, have this person on your show.
There's literally zero input from anyone else.
So everybody I talk to, I look and I go, do I want to talk to that guy?
That might be cool.
That'd be interesting.
I want to find out what makes him tick.
I want to find out why she writes those books like that.
I want to find out what keeps him going.
That's like the whole reason why I do it is because I enjoy it.
steven rinella
Do you picture walking away from stand-up before you'd walk away from podcasts?
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
Why would I do that too?
I have my own club now.
steven rinella
I'm 50 years old, man.
I'm starting to have all these questions.
joe rogan
I think you just stay healthy.
Stay healthy and do what you enjoy doing.
I think live in the moment.
I think this idea of planning for the future is silly.
I really do.
I think you should have goals.
If you enjoy doing things and you're like, I would like to get to this point.
I would like to do this.
Something to strive towards.
unidentified
That's good.
joe rogan
But this idea that one day you're just going to stop doing stuff.
Why?
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
Are you alive?
Are you enjoying doing it?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Shut the fuck up.
Like, you could be so much worse off.
There's so many things to dwell on other than whether or not I want to stop doing something that I enjoy.
Why would I ever even think about that?
steven rinella
That's a good point, man.
That's a good point.
These are all questions I had never really thought about, but I'd be more interested in them.
After I crossed that threshold, you know?
joe rogan
But I could conceive a time where I don't want to do it anymore.
I don't want to be a public person anymore.
The public aspect of it is the weirdest part.
The people constantly wanting your time and everybody thinking that if I can connect with this guy, that I can make a lot of money.
I can set up a business with him.
I can do this with him.
I can do that with him.
He can introduce me to this.
I can, you know, work with him.
There's a lot of that.
A lot of that that's exhausting.
A lot of these, like, opportunists and weirdos.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, those are exhausting.
steven rinella
I remember years ago, three, four years ago, you told me that you wished you were, we were eating barbecue, and you told me you wished you were 10% less famous.
But I feel like then you got 20% more famous.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, I fucked up.
Well, I thought doing the Spotify thing.
steven rinella
I was like, his direction isn't going the right way.
joe rogan
That was the whole reason why I took the Spotify deal.
I was like, good, they're going to give me a lot of money, and it'll only be on Spotify, so I'll be about 10% less famous.
Good.
Let me slide off into obscurity.
Because, I mean, as long as I'm making money, I was like, I just enjoy doing it.
I don't care how many people, like, the people that like it will still listen, so maybe I'll have less casual fans.
Like, who cares?
Who cares?
You know?
There's a certain level of fame, though, that's a little unmanageable, and I'm in that level.
It's very unmanageable.
steven rinella
You know what it is?
Well, if you'll allow me to tell you what it is.
joe rogan
Okay, please do.
steven rinella
And I observed this.
My wife, who's traveling with me right now, I observed this after we'd had dinner with you one time, and certain individuals, you included, would be that it's not just people that don't like you, right?
There's people that like you too much.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
The people that don't like you just avoid you.
steven rinella
I know.
So it's like, at a certain point, you've got to worry about the people that like you.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Oh, believe me, I know.
steven rinella
Because they like you a lot.
joe rogan
Oh, I know.
Yeah, and they also...
steven rinella
They're like, I'd like to kidnap that Joe Rogan and bring him home with me.
joe rogan
They want me to come to their house.
steven rinella
And keep him in my basement.
joe rogan
Yeah, I get letters.
People want me to come to their house.
I get it, you know, especially if you don't know anyone famous.
And the thing about podcasts, too, is, like, you're so intimately connected to that person because you hear that person talk all the time.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
I do four of these a week, so it's like they're hearing me, you know, it's fucking 12 hours a week of me talking to you.
steven rinella
It's a lot.
Yeah, that thing, I mean, it comes up, it's over-observed.
Tim Ferriss mentioned it to me.
He's like, people think, like, they think they know you, but he's like, But they do.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
steven rinella
They do.
joe rogan
They do, and you don't know them.
steven rinella
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Which is real weird.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
They know what you think about stuff.
They know what you think about current events.
They know about your background, right?
joe rogan
The good thing about that, though, is if someone tries to pretend you're something other than you are, if there's a smear campaign against you, people are like, no, I know that guy.
steven rinella
Oh.
joe rogan
They actually know you.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
They really know you.
People have listened to me like 100 hours.
There's no confusion.
There's no guesswork.
This is who I am.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
Not that complicated.
steven rinella
It's a long charade.
joe rogan
Yeah.
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steven rinella
That'd be a long charade that you've played.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Imagine.
Imagine you bullshitted people for that long.
That would be amazing.
steven rinella
Like a 100,000-hour charade.
unidentified
15 years of bullshitting people.
joe rogan
Yeah.
But, you know, there's always that suspicion when you see someone on television that they're not really that way because there's been, like, Ellen.
Like the Ellen situation.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, people found out that Ellen was mean and all these people came out and said, Ellen's actually a fucking bitch.
And they were like, whoa.
I can't believe it.
And she lost everything.
She fell apart, disappeared.
Because people found out that this character that she was portraying in a half an hour on a television show was not really who she was.
But I hadn't already known that, because I had a buddy who worked for her.
And he was like, she's a fucking monster.
steven rinella
I didn't really have a lot of awareness.
You probably did just from being in the business.
joe rogan
I only did because of my buddy.
My buddy, Greg, who was one of her writers, was like, she's a piece of shit.
steven rinella
I didn't know enough to be surprised.
joe rogan
It's just people that get in those positions of power.
And if their whole life they've been fucked with and picked on or, you know, they've been marginalized and then all of a sudden they're in control, like, oh, now it's payback.
There's a lot of those folks.
steven rinella
That's what happened to Castro.
joe rogan
Is that it?
Is that what happened to Castro?
steven rinella
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, I mean, it's like the, in fact, I would talk about that a little bit in some, you know, I've discussed that in, like, various conversations around when you watch, like, certain political fortunes rise as it becomes.
Things become vindictive.
joe rogan
I don't even go to Canada anymore.
I won't go to Canada for a UFC. I don't go over there.
steven rinella
Man, I've spent my whole life in the northern tier states, but I've remained somewhat oblivious to political movements in Canada.
joe rogan
Well, they don't have free speech up there.
They don't have a First Amendment.
They have different laws.
They have hate speech laws, which are very dangerous, because who defines hate speech?
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, like, so hate speech laws in Canada, they refer to gender pronouns now.
So, like, not just male, female.
Like, if a guy, like, if Caitlyn Jenner decides that she's a girl, like, Bruce Jenner decides he's a girl, now you have to call him Caitlyn.
If you don't, that's hate speech.
Like, okay, maybe that's debatable.
Maybe you're being an asshole.
But no, they want, like, all 78 fake genders.
Like, Zzer and all these fucking crazy fake ones and they-thems.
steven rinella
Well, that's where, like, that's, I mean, isn't that conversation what, Spawned kind of the ascendancy of Jordan Peterson coming out of Canada.
joe rogan
Well, that's how Jordan and I became friends in 2015. And then Jordan did my podcast and then Jordan became a famous guy for speaking out against this.
He's going through some sort of bizarre re-education process in Canada and he's going to publicize it because it's so ludicrous.
So they want to educate him on what he talks about on social media if he wants to keep his clinical license to practice as a psychotherapist.
steven rinella
Oh, is that right?
joe rogan
But he doesn't want to practice anyway.
He makes far more money doing what he...
They've essentially made a monster.
They made him way more famous than he ever would have been before.
steven rinella
Sure, yeah.
joe rogan
They highlighted all of Canada's problems way more than would ever get highlighted without this persecution of this guy.
It's kind of crazy, though.
So he's going through it.
He's like, fuck you.
I'll go through it, and I'll go through it publicly.
You guys are idiots.
Also, you're going to have to talk to me.
steven rinella
Knowing what the outcome will be.
joe rogan
Well, knowing he's going to trounce them.
Like, good luck debating that guy.
Good fucking luck.
Like, good luck.
Like, who do you got on your side that's going to go up against that guy?
Like, shut the fuck up.
Who on your creepy, authoritarian, totalitarian regime is going to stand up and make sense?
Competing against Jordan Peterson.
Good fucking luck.
steven rinella
I wouldn't want the job.
joe rogan
Yeah, good luck.
Good luck debating that guy.
It's just the whole situation up there is just like so fucked.
And I don't know too much about that Pierre Polivet guy, but I hope that, you know, there's some sort of meaningful change up there.
I used to love Canada.
I used to say Canada is like America with like 20% less douchebags.
They were so friendly.
They're so nice.
I used to love going to Montreal.
I used to love going to Vancouver.
I loved it up there.
But the woke shit hit there so hard because they don't have freedom of speech.
They don't have a First Amendment.
So when they start clamping down on your ability to express yourself, there's really disastrous implications.
steven rinella
Yeah.
But there will probably be a course correction now, which seems like just generally on free speech issues, there's a radical course correction right now.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
Or you become Iran.
steven rinella
Oh, yeah.
You can roll that way.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, course correction doesn't always work.
Like, you know, we think it works because it works in America.
And it works in America because we have the First Amendment and we have the Second Amendment.
And those two things work together.
And if we didn't have those things, we would be genuinely fucked.
Because every government wants to eventually completely and totally control its population because it's way easier for them to make money.
And that's what they like to do.
They like to make money, they like to be in bed with the lobbyists and the military-industrial complex and the pharmaceutical-industrial complex, and they like to fucking impose their will on people.
And if you can't express yourself and say, hey, this is fucked up, this is crazy, why am I doing this?
Like, these studies show that you're not correct.
Like, if you can't say all those things, which right now you can't do in Canada, it's not the same.
Like, their ability to express themselves on the internet has been severely limited.
It's real weird, man.
It's real weird and it's happening right- you could walk there.
If you wanted to, you could walk there.
And it's fucked.
It's like it's on the same patch of land as us and it's fucked.
It just shows you what can happen here if you don't have the right laws.
Because people like that fuckhead, Justin, They pretend...
steven rinella
You guys are on first name basis.
joe rogan
Yeah, that cocksucker.
They pretend that they're...
And I don't talk this way about anybody.
steven rinella
No, I'm really surprised.
joe rogan
I genuinely despise people like that.
I think it's good to say it publicly because people need to understand what these people are doing.
These people are leading you on the road to legitimate communism.
He's leading that country on a road to legitimate communism.
It's very dangerous.
And I think most Canadians are fed up with it at this point.
It's just like the party up there has so much control.
And he's been forced to resign.
So he's got to step down.
And just hopefully they don't get some new slick talker to con them into the same old bullshit.
Hopefully someone comes along that has like real meaningful change.
Which is what I'm hoping is going to happen in America too.
If that Tim Walsh cocksucker, if that guy got into power, like if Kamala died and...
Tim Walsh, Tampon Tim, was our fucking president.
You know how crazy this country would be?
That weirdo puts tampons in the boys' room.
What about our joy?
He's a complete pathological liar.
A complete liar.
Lied about being in Tiananmen Square.
Lied about being a fucking head coach of a football team.
steven rinella
Yeah, I thought some of that was...
Just weird in how avoidable it was.
joe rogan
100% avoidable, but pathological liars.
People that are habitual liars, they just lie all the time about everything.
steven rinella
But there's a way you can do it where it's sort of like no one's ever going to know.
And there's things you can fib about that you find out in five seconds.
So you wonder about making the call to embellish something that a person could answer on their phone.
joe rogan
Right, right.
steven rinella
Instantly.
Like, almost as you're saying it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
That's not true.
No, this was your rank in the military.
Oh, you didn't deploy for war.
You didn't.
Why are you saying you deployed at war?
The weapons you used in war?
No, no, no.
You weren't in war.
Like, oh, you were a head...
No, you weren't a head coach.
You were the water boy.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
The fuck are you talking about?
steven rinella
I thought some of that was weird.
joe rogan
Well, he's just a liar.
But that's what a lot of these people are.
They're just actors who are ugly.
And they're like, well, I can't really...
Making it show business.
I want a lot of attention.
I want to be a special person.
So I'll do politics.
I'm good at bullshitting.
And most people, you know, they're trusting.
They're like, oh, he's saying the right things.
If you say the right things...
You know?
Abracadabra.
And the next thing you know, you're a fucking governor.
steven rinella
Yeah.
You ever going to run for governor of Texas?
joe rogan
No!
No!
I'm not running for nothing.
I don't want to do nothing.
I don't want to do a goddamn thing.
steven rinella
I can picture down the road, man, you might be like, I want to be governor of Texas.
joe rogan
Fuck that.
Why would I do that?
I have the best job in the world.
I get to talk shit with zero responsibilities.
If I get something wrong, I go, listen, I'm a moron.
Why are you listening to me in the first place?
No, I have no desire in any way, shape, or form to have anything to do with anything involving politics.
I don't want to be in control of it.
I don't even like having employees.
Jamie's awesome.
But I mean, I don't like having employees.
steven rinella
He nodded.
joe rogan
But he's just great.
He's just great.
He's easy.
That's why there's so few of us here.
I have a friend who has a podcast, a big podcast, and there's like fucking 13 people working for him.
People running around with clipboards.
I'm like, what do these people do?
Why do you have so many people working for you?
This is a freaky ride.
He's always got inter-office conflicts and people are getting fired because people are fighting with each other and people are fighting over promotions and trying to get to backstabbing each other.
steven rinella
Yeah, maybe you wouldn't like being governor.
joe rogan
Fuck that.
I would hate it.
I don't want to be a mayor.
I don't want to be nothing.
I don't want to be nothing.
But I did get some sort of...
steven rinella
Not even a mayor?
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
I don't want to be a city councilman.
I don't want to be shit.
I don't like...
The whole thing about it, it's just, it's not a good gig.
It's just a creepy business.
It's a very creepy and prostitutional business.
It's just, I don't like it.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Part of the impetus that pushes people into it is that they want to reverse that, but I think that then there's a...
joe rogan
Good luck.
steven rinella
There's a magnetic pull that takes you in the direction of...
Being perhaps what you wanted to get rid of.
joe rogan
Seems like it happens to a lot of the really idealistic young people that get involved in it.
And then all of a sudden they start doing really well in the stock market.
Yeah.
steven rinella
They make some good bets.
joe rogan
Yeah.
They used to be making $28,000 a year.
Now all of a sudden they're worth $12 million.
Now they're worth $20 million.
And they're hanging out with a bunch of other people that are going on yachts on vacations.
I'm like, I'm going to go on a yacht on vacation.
Next thing you know.
You know, I want a Mercedes.
Like, they get you.
They slowly get you, you know?
You know Evan Hafer.
Evan Hafer had a great saying.
I've been repeating it a lot, too much lately for people to listen to this podcast, but he said, psychology is more contagious than the flu.
I was like, ooh, that's so true.
steven rinella
Oh.
I mean like ideas in psychology.
joe rogan
Well, being around people.
steven rinella
Yeah, I'm with you.
Absorb the way they think.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah.
If you're around people that are just trying to have a good time, that are nice people, genuinely you lean in that direction.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, like I try to spread that.
I want everybody to have fun.
Let's have a good time.
If you're around a bunch of creeps that are just trying to climb the ladder and claw their way into power, how do you maintain your sovereignty?
steven rinella
Yeah, that kind of psychological infection.
joe rogan
Yeah, good luck.
Good luck battling it out with 460 other creeps who show up in D.C. and lie.
Yuck.
Although I did get a bizarre I did enjoy affecting the election.
steven rinella
Oh, dude, imagine.
I can imagine.
joe rogan
I did enjoy because I didn't want to.
I did not want to get involved in any way, shape, or form.
But it got so weird.
It got so crazy.
steven rinella
You'd expressed that publicly in the past.
joe rogan
I was like, I don't want to have anything to do with it in the future.
I don't.
I didn't want to.
I just felt sucked into it.
I'm like, we can't do this again.
We can't do it with these same people that fucked us for four years.
And then they're like, we're going to do it differently now.
Like, what's going on?
Did you see what's going on?
Obviously, you've seen what's going on in California.
But the governor gave this creepy fucking speech where he was talking about speculators coming in and talking about what to do with the land of all these homes that have been burnt down.
While it's still only 6% contained.
And he did this little dance.
Like, I've been talking with the governor of Hawaii about what to do.
We've got some ideas.
We're speculating.
We're going to have some meetings.
unidentified
Really?
joe rogan
Oh, show it to him, Jamie.
It's so creepy because it's happening while these people are...
Their houses have been burned, all their childhood memorabilia, all their stuff for their kids, the photos, the fucking everything they have.
Everything they have is gone.
Heirlooms, you know, their mother's wedding ring, that kind of shit.
Everything's burnt to the ground.
And this guy's, like, standing in front of all this stuff, and he's got a smile on his face, and he's talking about land use.
steven rinella
The development plan.
joe rogan
Watch this.
Play this.
unidentified
I was just talking to Josh Green, the governor down in Hawaii.
gavin newsom
You had some ideas about some land use concerns he has around speculators coming in, buying up properties and the like.
So we're already working with our legal teams to move those things forward, and we'll be presenting those in a matter of days, not just weeks.
joe rogan
A smile on his face.
Look at the little wiggle he does with his shoulders.
Speculator, watch this.
Look at this.
Look at this little wiggle.
It's excited about the possibilities of speculators coming in.
And he's saying, move forward.
We're going to move forward on that.
These people lost their homes.
A lot of those people don't even have fire insurance because the fire insurance pulled out of California.
I think like 69% of...
Fire insurance pulled out of California because they're like, this is too crazy.
You guys aren't doing jack shit to manage this.
You're not clearing the brush.
The amount of money they could have saved by just clearing brush, by filling the reservoir, that 11 million gallon reservoir was completely empty during the time of full fire season.
Why didn't you fix that?
It's all insanely mismanaged.
And then this guy is on...
Television, talking about...
Doing a dance.
Doing a dance in front of the burned-down home that people used to sleep in, where their children would sleep in.
Like, this is so disgusting.
steven rinella
You know...
joe rogan
That's why I don't want to be governor.
steven rinella
Oh, you know what's funny?
I was going to tell you about...
On the way down here, I happened to be sitting across from one of our senators from Montana.
unidentified
And after...
steven rinella
When the flight was getting off, you know what's hilarious?
This...
This old-timer comes by him and legitimately, I'm not joking, legitimately brings up to him potholes on the road.
joe rogan
Really?
steven rinella
Like, on the airplane.
unidentified
He's like, you gotta do something about these potholes.
I'm outside of Belgrade and these potholes are terrible.
He's like, okay, yep, got it, got it.
joe rogan
Well, I mean, the senator can't do much about the office.
steven rinella
No, I know, but it's almost like a cliche.
But, you know, the thing with their night...
Guys that I grew up with, you know, like a fish that was very central to our upbringing was a fish called smelt.
It was different kinds of smelt.
So we had a rainbow smelt, and they live in the Great Lakes.
And so in the spring, when the smelt run, you know, it was a big deal to go smelt dipping.
And we would smelt dip them with drop nets and dip nets.
It was a huge thing.
And when smelt numbers were really high, you know, it was just like...
It kind of brought everybody together.
joe rogan
A lot of my buddies used to do that in Massachusetts.
steven rinella
The smelt run.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
So the other night, someone had taken out a clip where someone had taken out a chunk of an article in my friend's circle and had sent me a thing where Trump had called the Delta smelt like a basically useless fish.
And I was like, man, I feel like there needs to be like an article in the Constitution that the president cannot shit-talk smelt, you know?
But then I realized it was a different smelt, so I cooled off once I realized it was the Delta smelt, not our beloved Rainbow smelt.
joe rogan
Well, you can have...
There's a balance, right, in terms of being environmentally conscious, but also recognizing the needs of the human population.
And I think that's been distorted in California significantly.
steven rinella
Yeah, but I do get...
My hackles get up about...
Disparaging fishes and birds.
joe rogan
Of course.
Yeah, no, I get it.
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unidentified
Gambling problem?
joe rogan
I get it.
That's your world.
That's your world.
Yeah, there's a balance.
A balance to be held, for sure.
You know, I'm not real thrilled with this idea of, like, continuing to drill for oil in the Gulf and drill for oil everywhere and knowing that occasionally these things blow up and you have massive pollution.
unidentified
But...
joe rogan
Also, I don't think we should be dependent on Saudi Arabia for all our oil.
steven rinella
It's a mix.
You know, one of the kind of contradictions you encounter with stuff like this, and I've been a little bit involved in this the last few years, is I started going down to the Gulf of Mexico to spearfish on the oil rigs.
And so, the oil rigs are, imagine like a vertical coral reef, you know?
I don't want to call it, by no means I don't want to call the Gulf a desert, but I mean, you could, if you're away from the rigs, you could swim along the surface for miles, potentially.
Right?
If you're just swimming with a snorkel and mask, you can swim along the surface for miles and not encounter fish.
I mean, it's countering where you're seeing them in front of your face.
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
And you pull up to a rig, and it's hung in fish.
I mean, they're draped in thousands of fish.
Okay?
You know, you grow up with this idea, if you just have a passive understanding of all this stuff, you grow up with this idea that, like, oil exploration equals a diminishing of natural life, a diminishing of wildlife.
And you go in, and there there's this big debate where certain people want to pull the abandoned rigs out.
But you have fishermen who are like, they're here now, leave them.
Because that's where all the fish are.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
And it's this very spirited debate, and different administrations will have different plans.
They had a program like Idle Iron, which was to pull them out.
There was a program called Rigs to Reefs, which is to tip them over so they're not navigational hazards.
The shrimpers don't like them because they cause navigational obstructions.
You can hang your gear up on them.
But all the rod and reel fishermen and all the spear fishermen want the rigs there.
So you wind up in a situation like that where it's this real complexity, and you can picture, you know, it puts people in a situation, and viewing it, it puts you in a situation where it's not that clean.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
You know?
Like, you're creating, I mean, they, you almost hate to say it, because you're supposed to, you know, you're supposed to be, you know, most people from the environmental movement are anti-oil exploration, but then you go and look and be like, they created, like, Accidentally created an unbelievable fishery.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
In the Gulf.
And there's dudes now, like, I got buddies that spearfish there and fish there.
And it's like, remember in Star Wars, the original Star Wars, where they go to that fucking planet and the planet's gone?
Hey, shouldn't the planet be here, you know?
That scene.
I've been with buddies of mine and they got GPS marks for rigs.
And you show up and it's like Star Wars.
It's like, you show up and the rig's not there anymore.
Because there's these ships out there called Rig Reapers that are out plucking the rigs.
And they're plucking them faster than they can put them in.
But it's got all the fishermen pissed off.
joe rogan
That's an interesting situation.
steven rinella
Yeah, they want them there now, man.
joe rogan
Lake Austin has a similar situation.
So Lake Austin used to be this...
It's still very good for bass fishing.
They have big bass on Lake Austin.
And the people that live on the lake, the highfalutin folks, didn't like all the weeds.
So they brought in carp.
And the carp ate everything.
So now the place looks like the bottom of a swimming pool.
It's like all the vegetation is fucked.
And so the bass don't have a lot of places to go.
Like, you know, where I live, people go to the docks.
Like, they cast to the docks.
You know, and they fish near people's docks.
Because that's, like, the only cover that these fish have.
And so there's talk of, like, submerging, like, trees or, you know, dropping things down.
steven rinella
Sure, creating structures.
joe rogan
Yeah, creating structures.
And then there's people that are opposed to that.
Because, like, you know, you have your, you know, the wakeboarders and all the people that like the, like, recreation on the water.
They don't want anything that could possibly fuck up their boat.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, but, like, they already fucked it up by bringing in the carp.
Like, and you can't get the carp out.
Like, how are you going to kill the carp?
steven rinella
You know, Tom, you remember the writer Tom, was it Tom Robbins or Tim?
No, Tim Robbins is the actor, right?
joe rogan
Right, right.
steven rinella
Tom Robbins, skinny, skinny, skinny legs and all.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
steven rinella
Jitterbug perfume.
He had a line where, you know, like in Hawaii they had this famous thing where they had a rat problem.
And then they brought in mongooses to kill the rats.
And then now they got a mongoose problem.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
He had some line that like, we used to have a crime problem, then we brought in cops.
But it's like my first, you're talking about political involvement.
My first time I ever approached anything remotely political was on the lake I grew up on.
We had an invasive seaweed, an invasive aquatic plant called Eurasian milfoil, and it grew in our lake, but it made unbelievable fish habitat.
And at the time, I was not hip enough to understand the deleterious effects of non-native vegetation.
I just knew that when you wanted to catch a fish, you went to the milfoil bed, because all the fish were hiding in the milfoil.
And they had this proposal to come in and kill all the milfoil in all the lakes.
And I went down, and I remember I was in high school.
I went down, and I remember I was the sole person there to represent the milfoil side of the argument.
And then they did it.
They went in and poisoned all the milfoil out of the lakes in hopes of bringing in native seaweeds would take hold.
But it absolutely transformed the lake.
And from a fishery perspective, not a perspective of native habitat, but from a pounds of fish perspective, the pounds of fish, like the biomass of fish declined by pulling out the weeds.
Of course.
On one hand, you look like, well, why would you mess up with this?
There's fish everywhere.
And some people would be like, well, it's not a native plant.
And we need to value native wildlife at the expense of what a high schooler would look at as like...
That's where the fish are.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
You know?
joe rogan
They didn't do what they did to Lake Austin.
They didn't do it to Lady Bird Lake.
So if you go to Lady Bird Lake, it's just hopping with bass.
steven rinella
Remained a good fishery.
joe rogan
Yeah.
There's seaweed and all kinds of...
Not seaweed, but, you know, lily pads and all kinds of shit over there that you don't have on Lake Austin.
They didn't bring in the carp.
steven rinella
Yeah.
The other enormously destructive thing that they've done around the lakes where I grew up on is all that...
So much of that...
The lake life relies on what you call the littoral zone, the shoreline zone.
Most of these fish species, they like it to be dirty, meaning weeds, falling over trees.
It creates all kinds of habitat for little stuff to hide.
On these lakes where I grew up in Michigan, there's been a tendency over the years to put roundup on your shoreline and then haul in beach sand.
You just watch over the years.
Over the course of my lifetime, You just watch this, like, really, like, verdant, kind of, like, vibrant environment become increasingly like a swimming pool in a lot of those lakes, man.
And it's just been depressing to watch happen.
joe rogan
Yeah, we were talking the other day about eating freshwater fish and how much toxic chemicals are in freshwater fish.
It's fucking bananas.
steven rinella
Well, they have state advisories, which I've always ignored.
I've always ignored.
joe rogan
Have you ever get your blood tested?
steven rinella
No.
But you want to know, I might have told you this story, man.
Did I ever tell you a story about this?
joe rogan
Which one?
steven rinella
Well, I'll tell it real quick.
So I grew up with a guy who, a guy named Ron Spring.
Yes.
I'll tell you the Ron Spring story?
joe rogan
Okay, never mind.
Please do.
steven rinella
Oh, if I tell the story too many people.
joe rogan
I don't think you told it on here.
steven rinella
Okay.
I grew up with this guy, Ron Spring, and for a living, he was a commercial bait fisherman.
He would catch wigglers, minnows.
He'd dig crawlers, catch leeches, and he would supply bait and tackle shops with live bait.
And he had spring sporting goods where he sold his own live bait.
And he would even hire women to sow what's called a spawn sack, where he'd take little pieces of salmon eggs and sew them into a little mesh bag for steelhead bait.
He was just in the bait business, but also was a fishing fanatic and lived off fish his whole life.
So he was living off Great Lakes fish his whole life.
And the University of Montana started trying to track down old-timers who'd eaten, like, enormous quantities of Great Lakes fish to test them for heavy metals exposure, okay, and other toxic things in the environment.
And he'd lived his whole life, like me, with, like, complete defiance of health advisory suggestions about fish consumption.
And he goes down there, and he would go in every month or two for these little batteries of tests.
And one of the things they would do with him is they would tell him, they'd give him a grocery list.
And they'd be like, hey, you've got to go to the store and buy, like, bread, eggs, cheese, butter, whatever.
And then he'd wait a minute, and they'd say, what were you supposed to buy at the store?
You know, and he's telling me this story.
And he told me, I always laugh because he said, Steve.
I wouldn't have remembered that list if I never ate a piece of fish in my life.
joe rogan
So they were trying to gauge his memory based on the amount of heavy metal inspired?
steven rinella
Yeah, presumably they tested his blood and found something of interest, and so they were trying to figure out what happens to a guy.
But I lived in Seattle, right on Lake Washington, and we would catch a lot of yellow perch.
People, they're full of yellow perch, which are non-native, and everyone in that area in the Pacific Northwest is like a trout and salmon snob.
So I had the whole fishery to myself.
You could go out and catch easily 100-plus yellow perch out of Lake Washington, but they had a health advisory on them, and you weren't supposed to.
They would tell you that perch over 12 inches, you're only supposed to eat one meal a month or some shit like that.
But we just wouldn't keep them over 12 inches.
Because there weren't that many over 12 inches anyways.
And we'd just eat them all the time.
I would have fish fries.
And when you fried fish in the Great Lakes, there's no person in the Great Lakes region that I was aware of.
Like in Michigan, there's no person that would even kind of give a shit about these restrictions.
They would be surprised to hear that there were any kind of restrictions.
But like the way the different sentiments and different mentalities run.
In Seattle, you'd have people that like, they're like, you caught it where?
Lake Washington?
No way.
Right?
Just like a level of awareness from an urban environment about those kind of toxins.
And growing up, where I grew up, it was just not a thing that people discussed.
Even though they're right in the fishing rigs.
joe rogan
When did it start happening?
Like, when did freshwater fish become toxic?
That would be something I'd be interested in.
steven rinella
Man, I think it's mercury, it's certain industrial solvents.
joe rogan
It's BPAs, too.
It's forever chemicals.
steven rinella
And I think that with Lake Washington, there was a lot...
Correct me, maybe I'm wrong.
As I say this, I might be wrong.
I think there was things around bowing plants and old solvents and stuff that went in the water.
But mercury, which comes from...
You know, different ways.
They have ways of scrubbing it now and greatly reducing the amount of mercury when you burn coal.
But for a long time, mercury would come from the combustion of coal, and it would be distributed globally, evenly everywhere.
So it didn't necessarily matter if you were, it didn't matter if you're eating a pelagic fish.
I mean, if you're eating like a passivorous pelagic fish, it would seem to be the worst.
joe rogan
What does pelagic mean?
steven rinella
Fish that live their life up at the surface.
And then ones that eat fish, that eat fish, that eat fish are the worst.
So picture you got like a marlin, right?
He's eating tuna.
Tuna are eating fish that are eating fish, and so they magnify and accumulate all this stuff in their fat.
That's like globally distributed in the oceans.
And they've slowed down mercury.
They've slowed down how much mercury is going out because of the ways they scrub when they burn coal now.
But it's just stagnant in the environment.
joe rogan
Did I ever tell you my arsenic story?
steven rinella
No.
joe rogan
I got my blood work done.
You know, I get my blood work done pretty regularly.
And I went once a few years back, quite a few years back, 15 years ago at least.
And my doctor said, do you have a lot of arsenic in your blood?
And I go, like, someone's poisoning me?
He's like, no.
Do you eat a lot of fish?
steven rinella
Oh, really?
joe rogan
And I said, I eat a lot of sardines.
He goes, how much?
I go, four or five cans a night.
And he was like, what?
He's like, what the fuck are you doing?
I go, what are you doing?
Well, I love sardines.
And if I come home from the comedy club and I'm hungry, it's easy to have what I thought was healthy food.
It's just sardines and olive oil.
What could be bad about that?
And so he said, take a few months off and then come back and let's do this again.
And I took a few months off and I came back, no arsenic.
I was like, oh man.
He goes, it's not enough to be concerned.
But you're getting arsenic in your blood from these sardines.
steven rinella
I work with a guy, Seth, and he kind of had this perfect storm where we had been in Hawaii, so we had wahoo and yellowfin tuna.
And he fishes in Alaska, so he had all his halibut.
And then he's got a bunch of walleye that he catches.
He's a big walleye fisherman that he catches locally.
And he wound up...
There's kind of like a long-term mercury deal and a short-term mercury deal, but he had mercury poisoning.
His hands went numb and stuff.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
steven rinella
And then I got to read about it, and there's various cases where there's this other case that's kind of interesting.
This guy gets on a cruise ship, doesn't eat fish.
This guy doesn't have fish in his diet.
It was a thing that was covered in the news.
And he gets on a cruise, and they have an all-you-can-eat sushi thing.
So he wants to get his money's worth, and so he's gorging himself on this all-you-can-eat sushi.
During the course of his cruise and generates mercury poisoning.
Like a short-term version.
And dudes I hang out with in Hawaii that have access to a lot of big pacivorous fish, they'll sort of deliberately pace themselves.
They could live off tuna, but they'll deliberately pace themselves keeping in mind the amount of that stuff you're getting in.
And RFK Jr., I had RFK Jr. on the show, on our podcast, and he had had He had had mercury poisoning.
Really?
joe rogan
From what?
steven rinella
Canned tuna.
Was eating too much canned tuna.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
Yeah.
So maybe I've had it.
I don't know.
Well, no, I've had my blood tested.
I don't know.
But I can't picture...
The sentiment I have about it is a friend of mine who fishes flathead catfish, which have...
They accumulate a lot of bio...
Not biotoxins.
They accumulate a lot of heavy metals.
And he said, and we were talking about eating this stuff, and he said, if I can eat, if I can catch and eat so many big flatheads that it kills me, I win.
joe rogan
Well, there's no cases of CWD getting into humans yet, right?
steven rinella
Nope.
joe rogan
No, but that's the big fear.
Like, you and I are on a text chain with Ted Nugent, and he's always like trying to...
steven rinella
I met Ted's kid last night.
joe rogan
Which one?
Rocco?
Yeah, good kid.
You know, Ted is always trying to dismiss the concerns of CWD. He doesn't believe in it.
He thinks it's overhyped.
steven rinella
Well, yeah.
joe rogan
It scares the fuck out of me.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because it's a prion disease, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
So if it jumps to people, and it has jumped to certain rodent species, isn't that correct?
steven rinella
No, right now it's cervids.
joe rogan
Oh, just cervids?
unidentified
Cervids, yeah.
joe rogan
There hasn't been a case of it jumping to like a mole or something like that?
steven rinella
Well, they did.
You know when you do, I don't want to get in over my waiters here, but I'd love to talk about CWD at length, but sometimes you can do a, if someone does medical research and they'll have a finding, there's a term for it.
Let's say you have a finding that's alarming, but you haven't done peer review yet.
But let's say I just all of a sudden made some discovery that had huge implications, and people would need to become immediately aware of what I might have found out.
There's a term for it where you would release these preliminary findings, even though it hasn't been held up to academic rigor, because it's of such importance.
A lot of times you don't get to skip that step, but in cases of medical, you get to skip a step and say, hey, hang tight.
We're not all the way there yet, but look, this is kind of alarming.
They had a case, and it all corroded, but these guys had a case where they were able to infect a rhesus monkey with CWD. But then it wasn't replicable, didn't hold up.
But when things like that happen, they tend to get a ton of media.
But then down the road, the media doesn't follow suit.
There's been cases where there was one not long ago where they were looking at people that had this rare form of dementia, and they found that of these people that had this rare form of dementia, a couple of them were deer hunters who lived in CWD areas.
So they come out with a, hey everybody, check this out.
But then it winds up being that when you do a statistical analysis on it, it was...
No different than anything else.
There was no reason that it wasn't like they scored higher, that deer hunters scored higher, or nothing.
joe rogan
It's just a certain percentage of people get dementia.
steven rinella
Yeah, and so it's like a certain number of people eat dementia, a certain number of people eat venison, and statistically you're going to have some overlap if you survey enough people.
So even though they gave like a big heads up, it won't be a nothing there.
But yeah, CWD, it's a highly infectious.
It was first identified in Colorado on a research facility, not a game farm.
It was first identified on a cervid research facility in Colorado, I believe in the early 70s.
And then there's been a debate, like some people feel that it was always there and wasn't detected, right?
And that it wasn't like we found it the minute it came out.
It was just that it would perhaps had been there and then we discovered that it was always there.
But it does expand its range all the time, right?
Even in the last few years, we've had our first cases in Montana.
We keep every year we add, like, without fail, every year we find CWD in states where it didn't previously exist.
Or within states that have CWD, we find CWD in counties.
That didn't have it.
Oftentimes you can look and it makes sense because it flows, but now and then you get these weird jumps, right?
Where something jumps a big moat of inactivity and then all of a sudden you get like a new hot spot and you look and be like, well, how did, if it's an infectious disease and deer aren't flying in airplanes, how did it jump?
Some of the jumps, people tie it to transporting.
There's a theory that is well accepted in a lot of circles would be that Moving cervids, moving deer and elk to penned operations has facilitated the movement of CWD. What it used to mean to be, if someone was a CWD denier before, it would be that they denied that it was a thing.
Like, there is no disease called CWD. It's generally accepted now that there's a disease called CWD, but now the debate is sort of, does it matter or not?
Right?
Our mutual friend Doug Dern is like heavily involved in CWD, combating CWD, trying to get more money spent to understand CWD. And they look at, you're looking at, there's two risks with CWD. One risk is that ultimately it's going to lead to like destruction of deer herds.
Meaning if you get like, it's always fatal.
And if infection rates get to a certain point, we're going to lose deer.
If it's always fatal and you have infection rates of 50 or 60% and it takes a couple years to kill them, you're going to run out of big bucks because nothing can live long enough.
The other fear is that it jumps the barrier and becomes a human pathogen.
All the hunters I know, the question we always talk about is, would you eat CWD-positive meat?
You know?
unidentified
Right.
Even if it doesn't jump currently, would you take that risk?
steven rinella
So, Yanni was recently with a guy, and he's like, he's eaten, him and his family have eaten four CWD-positive deer.
Man, I couldn't, I can't, like, I couldn't serve it to my kids.
joe rogan
No.
I wouldn't eat it myself, either.
steven rinella
I can't serve it to my kids.
No, I wouldn't serve it to my kids.
I have annoyingly eat it, but here's the thing.
Here's the rub.
I've said this number before and people are like, that's not true.
But it's true.
I'm telling you.
Hundreds of thousands of people have eaten CWD positive.
Hundreds of thousands of people have eaten CWD positive meat.
joe rogan
I would imagine that's true.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
Over many decades.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Right?
So, at what point do you get comfortable?
joe rogan
I don't know.
steven rinella
Dude, it's a tough one.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's a tough one.
steven rinella
It's a tough one.
joe rogan
It can jump.
It hasn't.
steven rinella
It hasn't.
joe rogan
But when you look at the history of these types of diseases, especially prion diseases like mad cow, prion disease, jumped people.
steven rinella
You know the debate between prion and prion?
No.
joe rogan
I used to say prion, but then I heard scientists say prion and I wanted to sound smart.
steven rinella
Well, the biologist Jim Heffelfinger, that'd be a very good guy for you to have on your show someday.
The biologist Jim Heffelfinger sent me a Thing where the guy that named it, the guy that coined the term, spelled out phonetically how it's supposed to be pronounced.
So then I was like, okay, I'm going to stick with Pryon now.
It's the guy that came up with it says Pryon.
joe rogan
Oh, so that's what it is?
steven rinella
And not Pryon.
He's like said, he's like, we'll call it this and we'll pronounce it this way.
joe rogan
Okay.
So it's pre-on.
steven rinella
Now I always try to remember which one it is.
Yeah, it's pre-on.
It's scary, dude.
It's scary.
And Doug, I've said this a hundred times before, if I say, man, the main thing I'm worried about is people getting it, that pisses Doug off.
Because Doug's worried about that we're going to lose big bucks.
And people.
He likes healthy deer.
He doesn't want a disease running through his deer herd.
joe rogan
It hasn't jumped to cows or anything else.
steven rinella
No, and that's the...
See, that's one area where...
I'm going to get myself in trouble with Doug in all kinds of ways, because that's the thing I think about.
It's not that they're...
I'm not saying the ag world is complacent.
Right.
I'm not saying they're complacent.
Like, there's a lot of interest in the agricultural community to understand CWD better.
But if you look and be like, dude, a cow looks a hell of a lot more like a deer than I do.
unidentified
Right.
steven rinella
I'm just going to watch the cow.
And all of a sudden, these cows start getting sick.
Then my ass is going to get nervous.
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
But I'm like, they're rubbing noses with these deer.
joe rogan
Yeah.
And it gets on the grass.
It gets on the vegetation.
steven rinella
And you can't kill that shit.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
I remember some politician was like, well, I'll just cook your deer meat longer.
And I was like, well, I can't remember what it is.
You can't cook deer meat to 1,400 degrees.
joe rogan
Yeah, you have to incinerate it.
steven rinella
Or whatever else it becomes.
But yeah, cooking it isn't the thing.
It can survive.
That's why if you hunt, there's a lot of restrictions now on moving carcasses around.
Right?
So more and more states are implementing that when you go home, they don't want you bringing the head home.
They don't want you bringing the bones home.
I also fear for a time, and it'd just be terrible, fear for a time where you couldn't bring anything.
Like, they really restrict movement, you know?
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
Like, it's easy to, like, it's very easy to comply with not moving bones.
It's easy to comply with not moving brain matter.
Like, that's easy, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
But picture that this gets out of hand and all of a sudden it's like, you can't move venison.
Across county lines.
I don't know.
No one's thrown this out there, but as they look at further and further restrictions, it's scary.
And so from a guy, I don't want to speak for Nugent, but from his idea of being overblown, his idea would be, like I said, I hate speaking for the guy.
It would be that...
Here we are making policy changes, making game management changes, making rule changes, adjusting what you can and can't do in the woods based off a thing that most people would be like, but we haven't proven there's a problem.
That would be his perspective on it.
My perspective is it's scary as shit, and as much as our government right now is trying to find a way to stop spending so much money, I support any money that can get spent on finding out if this can be a real problem or not.
I'll find other places to get the money, but I'd like to channel taxpayer dollars, billions of them, into making sure deer meat stays safe.
That's my kind of pork barrel spending.
joe rogan
There's no way to eradicate it, right?
There's no way to identify the deer that haven't exhibited symptoms, and they're spreading it.
steven rinella
Yeah, they're looking at ways to test live animals.
Then there's other cockamamie ideas that one would be that some deer seem to be resilient.
Yeah, and so that you'd move these resilient deer.
Into other populations to try to breed in some kind of resiliency, which, you know, it's a wild animal.
joe rogan
But is it ultimately resilient?
Because, like, mad cow disease has, there's an incubation period, right?
This is the concern.
Like, I remember...
steven rinella
That's the other thing, is that we're all, like, me, everybody, because I guarantee I've eaten CWD-infected meat.
The other concern is we all got it.
We just don't know it yet because it takes 10 years.
But they've been tracking these dudes that went to a fire department fundraiser.
They had 100-some people that ate a bunch of CWD-infected meat at a fire department.
those people and they haven't got it but that's the other thing is this it was over a decade ago so that's the other thing is that we all got it like all these hunters you know i don't think this is true but some people are like all these hunters they don't know it yet but it could be that all of a sudden in 10 years they all start dropping like flies or get developed dementia oh i don't it's such a i really think that um i don't like to see any kind of wildlife disease right Of course.
I do believe if you look at prevalency rates and you look at the fact that it's always fatal, whether or not removing the human question to it, I do think that you will find that it'll become harder to produce big deer.
unidentified
Hmm.
steven rinella
I worry about that.
And it'd be easy to track.
Just go and look at Boone and Crockett entries over time from all these counties.
So go to Buffalo County, Wisconsin, a famous giant whitetail producing place.
They get high rates of CWD prevalency.
If you put a line on CWD prevalency and you put a line on Boone and Crockett entries...
And you're able to track this over many years because we have all this data.
Does it correlate?
Does CWD prevalently drive down big bucks?
I'm sure some mathematician out there has started to try to look at if it's true, but a lot of people on the ground say that you do see population-level impact from CWD. And I'm guessing there's no way it doesn't affect participation, meaning that people that would like to hunt, And the whole promise of wild meat is, you know, you're getting, like, really healthy meat.
You're able to control the food chain.
But then all of a sudden you throw in this question of, like, well, but it could give you a prion disease, hypothetically.
That's going to dampen people's enthusiasm about deer.
And I'd hate to see we get to a point where when I look at a deer, I look at a deer with, like, great enthusiasm and love.
What happens when we look at deer and we look at them like a disease vector?
unidentified
Ooh.
steven rinella
Right.
Does it become, like, do you view it like a rat?
Or you see a rat and you, like, recoil?
unidentified
Ooh.
steven rinella
Like, I don't want that shit in my yard.
joe rogan
Right, right.
steven rinella
They carry disease, don't they?
joe rogan
What if your dog could get it?
steven rinella
Yeah, like, picture down the road that, like, deer, which are this, like, universally loved, praised animal, this kind of, like, symbol of the American outdoorsman, becomes like a, yeah, that shit out of my yard.
joe rogan
Oof.
steven rinella
You know?
joe rogan
When Doug talks about, you know, they do a lot of testing in Wisconsin.
steven rinella
A lot of testing, yeah.
joe rogan
What's the percentage that come up positive?
steven rinella
Man, they have...
I think that on Doug's place, I think that like last year, I don't know if they got all the results from this year, but I think last year they had close to 50% of bucks.
unidentified
Whoa.
steven rinella
Yeah.
Wow.
It's hovering.
It's like...
Very high.
joe rogan
And this is fairly recent, like a decade ago they started appearing, right?
steven rinella
Yeah, I think that CWD goes back maybe about a decade in his area.
He's in Richland County.
Is he Richland County?
Yeah, Richland County, Wisconsin.
Somewhere in that ballpark.
And it's changed.
When you were at Doug's place, remember at Doug's place, these have this...
They used to have this slogan, like, nice buck next year, meaning, you know, let deer grow, let deer grow.
And Doug has really changed over the years.
He's changed his tune, and they really want to try to...
The idea, generally, with wildlife managers, is that by lowering...
You'll slow spread by lowering numbers.
Right?
That if you have, you know, 40 deer per square mile, you're going to have increased spread.
And if it was 20 deer per square mile, 30 deer per square mile, you might slow the spread.
But no one's demonstrated a lot of success in slowing the spread of CWD, so other hunters will look at it and be like, yeah, you're out there lowering deer numbers, and so there's half as many deer on the landscape, and CWD still spreads, right?
So you wind up with this question of how do you justify...
Trying to suppress deer numbers when you're not demonstrating a lot of success and slowing prevalency.
And the whole thing you're afraid of is lowering deer numbers, but you're lowering deer numbers.
Right?
But it's like a controlled, it's a controlled lowering to slow the spread.
But there hasn't been, no one has an area, to your point, you can't go to a county.
I don't think, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong by maybe one county, but I'm pretty positive I'm not wrong.
And this is generally absolutely true.
You can't go to a county that had infected deer that no longer has infected deer.
No one's gone into a population of deer and eradicated CWD. Wow.
No one's gotten rid of it.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
Has it jumped to moose?
steven rinella
Yeah, I think that cervids, so primarily white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, they've had it transmit to caribou.
I should know that.
It's gouty because it's a cervid, so there's no way it doesn't...
joe rogan
Lower numbers, like, you know...
steven rinella
Not from that.
joe rogan
Right, but I'm saying, like, the thing about moose is there's lower numbers and they don't exist in, like, packs.
steven rinella
Yeah, yeah.
But since it is a cervid disease, I should know this since it is.
I'm assuming they've found it in there.
I can't think of examples.
I can think of mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk, caribou, but I can't think of whether or not there's been a positive case of moose.
And moose have a whole host of problems.
Right now in some areas, particularly in the lower 48, the northern states of the lower 48, between wolf depredation and a tick.
Like a tick is really hammering those moose right now.
joe rogan
Yeah, someone told me they went hunting and they got a moose and it was just covered in ticks.
steven rinella
Yeah, there's a problem with, in this long series of mild winters, that these...
Extreme colds that would lower these tick numbers down.
It hasn't been happening.
So you're having animals literally dying.
A lot of moose literally dying from tick infestations.
And then Colorado's becoming a great...
joe rogan
It is found in moose in many state provinces.
Alberta, Saskatchewan, Colorado, and Texas has moose?
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
Texas has moose?
steven rinella
No, no, no.
joe rogan
Relatively small areas in the panhandle in West Texas.
CWD. Yeah, that's CWD. Do they have moose in Texas?
steven rinella
No, no.
I think it's mixing up two things.
joe rogan
But it says it there.
steven rinella
CWD has been found in Texas.
joe rogan
Right, so they're not saying moose in Texas.
Just Google, are there moose in Texas?
steven rinella
There are not.
I mean, everything's in Texas in some...
Form of capacity, but no, you're way outside.
joe rogan
No moose in Texas.
steven rinella
You're way outside of the native range of moose.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Colorado is becoming like an unexpected, it's blowing up for moose.
joe rogan
Really?
steven rinella
Yeah, yeah.
Colorado becomes better.
I mean, they've always said moose, but like Colorado is becoming like a premier moose state.
joe rogan
When did that happen?
steven rinella
They've just been kicking ass there, you know, up in the high country.
They have more and more moose.
It's becoming like a great moose state.
And meanwhile, like Maine is really suffering as a moose state.
joe rogan
Really?
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
So, you know, like Maine's whole brand promise, you know, is like around moose and then Colorado's going to steal it.
joe rogan
Well, it's difficult to get a tag in Maine, right?
steven rinella
That's very hard.
unidentified
It's very hard.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
It's very non-resident especially.
I used to apply over there, but I don't apply anymore.
joe rogan
Now, what's causing the moose decline in Maine?
steven rinella
Ticks.
joe rogan
Oh, God.
steven rinella
Yeah, ticks.
joe rogan
Dirty little fucking things.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Have you ever heard the conspiracy theory about Lyme disease?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's a weird one, right?
steven rinella
Yeah.
It is.
joe rogan
Seems like there's some legitimate concern there, that it might have been a bioweapon that got out of hand.
steven rinella
Well, I think after the pandemic we just went through, I think people are more open to that idea.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was widely dismissed by people that are a little bit more skeptical about conspiracies.
But RFJ Jr., he believes it.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's very scary this idea of these fucking eggheads experimenting with diseases and making them more infectious for whatever reason without also developing a cure.
steven rinella
Yeah, it is.
joe rogan
It's very strange.
steven rinella
I guess the one justification you'd have is you'd be like, well by tinkering with it we'll better understand it and if it ever happens naturally we'd be able to combat it.
joe rogan
Yeah, how'd that work out?
That didn't really work out, did it?
steven rinella
That has to be the story you tell to yourself.
joe rogan
I think they just make money doing research.
I think if you're a researcher, you know, like if you're a carpenter, you want to build houses.
They say, there's too many houses.
Like, ah, come on.
We fucking need houses.
You know, I'm a carpenter.
I make houses.
If you're a researcher and your field of study is diseases and viruses, you want to study them.
And if the money is involved in some sort of...
Bizarre engineering of these things, which is what they're doing.
This fucking strange gain-of-function shit that they're doing.
You do it.
And if you can't do it in America, you're like, China?
Okay.
We'll do it over there.
steven rinella
There was a famous buffalo hide hunter, and he had talked about, during the great slaughter of the buffalo, he had talked about now and then he'd commit himself to stop.
But instead he'd wake up in the morning and off in the distance.
And he's like, someone else is doing it.
So, I think that probably with the, you know, I'm no pathologist, but as long as someone's tinkering with that shit, everybody wants to tinker with that shit.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Because you're like, well, I don't know, what are they doing over there that I, what am I missing out on?
unidentified
Right.
You know?
Yeah.
steven rinella
If they're doing it, I want to do it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
I don't want to be the one that looks like a fool.
joe rogan
And there's research money.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
That's how you get grants.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
And you know what?
I bet you in some ways the pandemic spawned more of that type of research.
joe rogan
You think so?
steven rinella
Yeah, because I mean like also now you can make the case of how important it is to understand this stuff.
joe rogan
Yeah, but you would also make the case like, hey, how about you fuckheads come up with a cure first?
steven rinella
Yeah, start with that.
joe rogan
Yeah, start with figuring out how to cure it.
steven rinella
Yeah, I can see that.
joe rogan
It's just like there's just not a lot of trust in the medical research institutions now.
steven rinella
No.
There's been an erosion of that for sure.
joe rogan
For a good reason.
I mean, it was a real wake-up call for people.
I think they're like, oh, there's not someone with real objective oversight of all this, like doing a really good job of maintaining everything.
It's not a really well-maintained situation.
steven rinella
Yeah, I used to be a dude that, prior to that, I was a dude that accepted a lot of, I don't know, I accepted a lot of assurances.
And then there was a definite, like many people, I mean, I'm speaking for most people in the country, man, I feel like.
Like many people, I gained a new skepticism.
joe rogan
Yeah, me too.
steven rinella
During the pandemic.
joe rogan
Yeah, I joked about it in my special.
steven rinella
About government authority, a new skepticism about some types of government authority and a new skepticism about the way health information is spread.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's just one of those things where anything involving money.
Whenever there's an enormous amount of money involved and then there's a centralized control of information, like where there's people that have a distribution of information.
And then there's also the problem of exonerating people from any responsibility, which is what happened in the 1990s or was it the 80s?
Whenever they gave them because the vaccine manufacturers were saying, listen, we can't manufacture vaccines because too many people are getting injured by them.
And we're going to have so much liability that we're not going to be able to make manufacture vaccines anymore unless you give us immunity to prosecute it.
And so they gave it to them.
And then all of a sudden, you're getting 72 vaccines.
You're giving children hepatitis B. Hepatitis B for babies, which is just fucking crazy.
A sexually transmitted disease for babies.
Like, what are you doing?
Like, why are you doing that?
Well, you're doing it because you can.
And because the more vaccines you give kids, the more money you make.
And you're not responsible.
You don't have to pay off anything.
You don't get sued.
Which is just, you can't do that with these fucking corporations.
They're just too evil.
They're sociopaths.
They act like sociopaths.
They lie about studies.
They lie about side effects.
They minimize their responsibility.
And they profit immensely.
And they continue to do so as long as they're not punished.
And that's the business that they're in.
steven rinella
Yeah, I get the frustration.
But at the same time, I've been the recipient of remedies offered by Western medicine.
joe rogan
Remedies offered by Western medicine for diseases caused by science.
Yeah, you are.
steven rinella
Possibly.
joe rogan
You are.
Yeah, you are a Lyme disease.
steven rinella
Yeah, some things.
Well, no, take a natural thing like Giardia.
I don't think anyone's arguing about that, but you get sick as shit.
Then all of a sudden you take a pill and you're quick.
joe rogan
No one's arguing that medicine isn't amazing.
I mean, medicine's amazing.
But the problem with medicine is...
You got your scientists and your medical researchers, and then you got your money people, right?
And the money people, they don't even know how to make any of this medicine.
They just know to sell it.
And how do I sell it?
I sell it by, you know, like, that's like remdesivir, where they were selling remdesivir during the COVID crisis.
Remdesivir is fucking horrible.
steven rinella
What is that?
I don't know that one.
joe rogan
Kidney failure.
They stopped prescribing it.
steven rinella
Oh, no, I remember that one.
joe rogan
Fauci was selling it to everybody.
You need to take remdesivir.
And everybody was dying.
That's your impersonation?
That's fucking horrible kidney failure.
Yeah, that fucking creep.
Read that book, The Real Anthony Fauci, by RFK Jr. It's a crazy book.
steven rinella
Yeah, you know, my buddy Seth was reading that book when we were out moose hunting, but I haven't read it.
joe rogan
That book will change your opinion on a lot of shit.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's a crazy book.
And if it's not true, he would be sued.
It's a good point.
steven rinella
You get a cease and desist.
joe rogan
Well, it's all documented.
I mean, it's all backed up by, like, rock-solid information.
It's all, like, very well documented.
What actually happened during the AIDS crisis, what actually happened during the COVID crisis, it's all legitimate.
It's all easy to research.
It's just scary that these people that you...
You don't want to have to think about that stuff all the time.
You want to just live your life and trust these...
Oh, this is the medical institution.
They're here to help us.
They're here to make us feel better.
Yeah.
But no.
A lot of them are just there to make money.
steven rinella
But I held that sentiment.
joe rogan
Me too.
Me too.
Until four years ago.
steven rinella
A lot changed, dude.
joe rogan
I'm fucking super skeptical now.
Yeah, I'm also super skeptical of the herd mindset that people fall into.
Whenever there's some sort of a pandemic, when there's a high level of anxiety, a lot of people fall into this herd mindset.
And that scares the shit out of me too.
Because there's just a lot of people that are...
They're cowards.
And they're afraid of public humiliation, public criticism.
They're afraid of getting ostracized from the community if they don't follow suit like everybody else is doing.
And so then they start to try to enforce it on everybody else.
It's like the people that were yelling at everybody else, where's your mask?
Put your mask on.
I went to a restaurant the other night.
The fucking guy served me had a mask on.
I would fire this guy.
I would not...
Like, you can't...
This is nonsense.
You can't be wearing a fucking mask.
This is crazy.
steven rinella
I read an op-ed in the Free Press the other day.
You know, Barry Weiss's publication.
And it was about when they had rolled back...
They had rolled back on masking laws.
I kind of forgot about this.
Like, you used to not be able to run around with a mask on?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Because of, like, criminal activity?
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
So one of these dudes that pushed a person in front of a subway...
It must have been premeditated to some degree because hood and mask, right?
So you can't identify them on security footage.
And the dude that shot that healthcare insurance CEO masked.
But you don't think anything of it.
So this person was arguing in some capacity.
They were arguing that we need to move back to anti-masking rules.
To fight crime, which I, you know, I get the sentiment, but I also thought, like, if you had, at a time prior to the pandemic, if you had told me that there was restrictions on wearing a mask, you know, I would have thought, I would have been surprised about that.
Because it seems like, how can you dictate to someone that you have, like, a little stagecoach robber bandana on your face?
You know what I mean?
It's like a weird thing.
It's like, can you really tell people that they can't wear a mask?
But this person's saying, you could.
We did.
And now you've granted criminals some level of anonymity that you can just kind of like, you're cool just to walk around totally obscured.
joe rogan
Well, it's also, you're dealing with people that have severe anxiety if they think that that mask is actually going to protect them.
It doesn't do jack shit.
steven rinella
Sure.
joe rogan
Especially if you're wearing the bandana.
The bandana is just ridiculous.
steven rinella
Sure, but I'm not looking to have a rational argument with them.
It's just like something I hadn't considered that you could make a law telling people about wearing masks or not.
I just forgot all about that shit.
But it would be if you went back six years ago and you saw a dude with a mask and a hood on.
You might be like, the hell is his problem?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Now you're like, oh, he's real scared of COVID. Real scared still to this day.
joe rogan
I mean, someone sent me a video of this guy who wears a mask every day and he's been pushing for masking.
He's like severely mentally ill.
steven rinella
Yeah, well, that is.
joe rogan
Overrun with anxiety.
Just like advocating for masking.
We shall be masking and double masking.
steven rinella
If you had a mask on and a hood on all the time, you wouldn't be just 10% less famous.
You'd be 70% less famous.
joe rogan
I got spotted a lot when I had a mask on.
steven rinella
With your mask on?
joe rogan
Yeah, with a mask on.
Yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, I'm short and wide.
You know, I have an odd shape.
You know, I think people...
Is that Joe?
steven rinella
That burly little man.
joe rogan
That little fucking chimpanzee looking dude.
steven rinella
Bald head.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I wear a baseball hat, sunglasses, mask, and they're like, is that Joe Rogan?
Even without seeing my tattoos, I just was getting busted.
steven rinella
You know what it might be?
Because you are known sitting in that seat and that posture.
And so maybe when you're in the airport, you should try a different pose.
Lean back.
They might be just picking you off by your seating position.
joe rogan
I was just walking down the street.
I was getting called out.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
With sunglasses on and a baseball hat.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
You'd be 10% less famous.
joe rogan
Yeah.
That's too late.
That fucking chicken is flowing the coop.
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
Yeah.
That's over.
steven rinella
No one doing it now.
joe rogan
I think you should stop masking.
I think it should be illegal.
I think it's ridiculous.
In New York, they made it so that if you go into a store, you have to pull your mask down so that the facial recognition will work.
steven rinella
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, because they were getting so many people getting robbed.
So many stores are getting...
Robbed and you could never catch the guys.
steven rinella
Yeah, there is a movement back to that.
joe rogan
I think it was the mayor was proposing that.
But they should just make it illegal to wear a fucking mask.
You're a psychopath.
It doesn't work.
It doesn't work and it's not protecting you.
So what are we doing?
You're just covering your face.
Well, you can't cover your face because we live in polite society.
We want to make sure that people can't commit crimes wearing a fucking bank robber mask.
This is nuts.
steven rinella
A little bit, you being a very libertarian dude.
I don't know if you describe yourself that way.
Pretty much, yeah.
I'm a little surprised.
I remember you were having a conversation with J.D. Vance, and J.D. Vance made a comment about, just not a serious comment, but made a comment like, you know, dudes shouldn't wear skirts or some shit like that.
And you're like, they should totally be able to wear skirts.
Women get to wear them, why can't men?
It was all said with levity, but I was a little surprised.
I could picture you as well.
I could picture you as well really feeling like, how could you legislate?
joe rogan
It's a public safety thing.
steven rinella
Obscuring your face.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
There's no public safety in skirts.
joe rogan
The guy's got weird knees.
I recognize those knees anywhere.
No, I mean, skirts is just a choice.
I mean, if you wear shorts, why can't you wear skirts?
steven rinella
It's crazy.
joe rogan
If a guy wants to wear a dress, what do I give a shit?
If a woman wants to wear a business suit, am I mad at Ellen for wearing a business suit?
Am I going to be pissed off at Hannah Gadsby for dressing up like a man?
Come on.
You should be able to wear whatever you want to wear.
I don't care about that.
But I care about public safety.
You shouldn't be able to cover your face where you can't be identified if you commit a crime.
We've all agreed to that.
That's just ridiculous.
It used to be a thing that you couldn't do.
You couldn't walk into a store with a bank robber mask on.
It used to be, if you walked to a bank with a mask on, people would freak out.
And now, during the pandemic, you walk into a bank without a mask, people would get angry.
Put your mask on.
It's like, we lost our mind.
But the thing is, they should have realized it very early on, that there's no science to it.
And there was a doctor who pointed this out very early on in the pandemic, and we highlighted it, and people were very upset at us.
This doctor was talking, he was a virologist, and he was saying, do you know how ridiculous this is?
Let me show you.
And he used a vape.
So he took a big hit of a vape, he put a mask on, and he blew vape smoke through, and he's like, the particles in vape are so much larger.
Then these virus particles.
If you're breathing through this mask, if this mask allows you to take in air, you're taking the virus.
If it allows you to blow out air, you're blowing out the virus.
Shut the fuck up.
This is just stupid.
This is just pretending.
And in the beginning, I was like, OK, everybody just wants you to be a good person.
You wear the mask.
But it's it's so weird because during the crisis, we all we did UFC fights and the UFC fights.
The corner men used to have to wear masks.
So, like, I'll see, like, highlights from, like, 2021, and you see, like, the corner man with the mask, like, God, I forgot about this.
It's so ridiculous.
And their nose is hanging out.
It's like, cover your nose.
Oh, yeah, okay.
Like, as if it mattered.
Like, okay, this really works.
And you couldn't walk into a store like this.
People go, that's not good enough.
This is not good enough.
I forgot my mask.
What do you want me to do?
This is the same goddamn thing.
Like, what are we doing?
Can I just...
Buy toothpaste like this?
No, you can't.
You have to have an actual mask.
Well, what is the difference between this and a fucking bandana?
Zero.
There's no difference.
It's so stupid.
steven rinella
I went through two years needing to yell at my kids all the time because you travel with your kids and they never got the stupid things on.
But then you're not even yelling at them about if they're going to prevent them from...
You're not saving them from a disease.
You're saving them from being ostracized or yelled at by the flight attendants.
You spent two years being like, put your damn masks on!
Put your masks on!
I don't think it works.
It's not about whether it works.
You just got to do it to not get in trouble.
joe rogan
I had a conversation with my kids.
I'm like, this does not work.
Just want you to know.
It's not going to make you safer.
They both had COVID early on.
They got over it quick, so they weren't nervous about COVID at all.
I go, this is just for other crazy people that are riddled with anxiety.
You put this on, they feel okay.
It's not going to be forever.
And we're going to look back on this, and we're all going to laugh.
Every now and then I'll go through my closet and I'll put a jacket on that I haven't worn forever and I reach into a pocket and I pull out a fucking stupid surgical mask.
I'm like, Jesus Christ.
I can't believe we went through this.
steven rinella
We've kind of found them all and got rid of them.
But I would be surprised there's one hiding somewhere.
joe rogan
It was one of the things that Sanjay Gupta brought up when I did that podcast with him.
Like, you sell masks on your website.
I go, what?
You think I sell them because they're real?
I sell them because people have to wear them.
So if you want to wear them, wear a little JRE mask.
Like, I don't sell them because I think they're good.
Like, shut the fuck up.
I wish they were illegal to sell.
How about that?
Would I make a dollar off those fucking masks?
steven rinella
You'd forego the profits.
joe rogan
I would pay to have them illegal.
I'll give the government $10,000 a year to make masks illegal.
Fuck you.
You guys are fucking crazy.
The whole thing was crazy.
It was really weird.
It was like a psychology experiment.
It was a good experiment to see how many people around you are bitches who would just fall in line the moment things got weird.
And it's a lot.
A lot of people just have no ability to tolerate any discomfort, any weirdness, any uncertainty, any anxiety.
They just immediately...
There's so many people out there.
That have always had parents, and then bosses, and then supervisors, and they were always like following rules, always following rules, and assuming somebody has your best interest in mind.
And they don't.
They don't.
It's just humans.
Just a bunch of humans out there and a bunch of people that don't want to take responsibility for this fuck up that they've created.
And they want to lie and distort things and gaslight the whole population.
And then somehow or another, these people that are doing that are allowed to spend hundreds of millions and billions of dollars on advertising.
On television.
And so now the television networks will never criticize them.
Because they get all this fucking...
You know, this is like the argument about advertising for pharmaceutical drugs.
You know, we're the only country other than New Zealand, in the whole world, that allows pharmaceutical drugs to advertise.
steven rinella
Oh, is that right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's just us and New Zealand.
And New Zealand's far more restrictive than us.
But...
The way our system is set up, all these television networks, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, they all rely on a giant percentage of their advertising budget.
It comes from pharmaceutical drugs.
steven rinella
And don't you just love those ads?
joe rogan
But it's not.
But here's the thing.
It's not to sell more drugs.
It's so that those people will never criticize those drugs.
steven rinella
Yeah, I'm familiar with the argument.
joe rogan
Yeah, the ads are great.
steven rinella
Yeah, it's like it'll always be some dude just kicking ass.
joe rogan
Yeah, having a great time.
steven rinella
Wakes up, jogs with his buddies, kicks ass all day.
At night, he's like out with his lady, you know, and he's like getting ready and it kind of ends at the end of the night.
You're like, that's something that's just getting lucky, you know?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
And it's like, ask your doctor if such and such.
And you're like, shit, I want to kick ass like that old guy.
joe rogan
And then they read off the side effects.
The side effects at the end.
Suicidal thoughts.
Powerful diarrhea.
Like, oh, God.
Anal bleeding.
Oh, Christ.
We live in a weird world, man.
It's a weird world.
It's a world, you know, whenever you involve money and things, money, profit, and the ability to lie, you know, you get a lot of real shady things.
steven rinella
What frustrates me already is it's going to be impossible to explain it.
Like, now I can't.
It's very hard to explain the 9-11 terror attacks to my kids.
And I want to be, when they make, in 10 years, 20 years, whatever, when they make a docu-series on the COVID-19 pandemic and the social response and the government response, I really want to be in the room on the edit.
I want to be like, don't forget about, you know what I mean?
The telling of how it happened.
Like, I would like to go into a time machine and go forward and see how it is told later.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
You know, like, we'll watch now, you know, we'll watch a documentary now, you know, you watch something about the Cuban Missile Crisis, right?
But you can just picture dudes that were active during the Cuban Missile Crisis are like, no.
Right?
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
There's even a term, there's a term, it's called gel syndrome syndrome.
Maybe Jamie can look it up for us.
joe rogan
What's the term about?
steven rinella
It's the alpha...
No, not alpha gel syndrome.
joe rogan
Alpha gal is the...
steven rinella
No, it's not alpha gal.
It's something gel.
The syndrome is this.
No, amnesia.
Something gel...
Type in gel amnesia, if you know mine.
It's killing me.
Gel man amnesia.
It's that...
Let's say you're seeing something you have a lot of subject matter expertise in.
So let's say you're reading, you, Joe, are reading someone's analysis explaining, like, here's what's up with mixed martial arts.
An outsider, an outside journalist who's assigned to do a piece, and they do a piece like, what's up with mixed martial arts?
And you read it, and what's probably the main thing you're going to be thinking the whole time?
joe rogan
Does this guy know what he's talking about?
steven rinella
Yeah, and you're going to be like, that's totally not.
That's not the conversation.
That's not what that is.
You missed the point.
Do you notice that everything you read where you know a lot about it, let's say you read a piece of reporting and it's a reporting about the podcast industry, where it came from, how it's monetized.
Mostly what you're going to feel is that's not what that is.
That's incorrect.
Well, this form of amnesia is that you forget that.
So then later you're reading an article about a thing you don't know well.
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
And you're like, you feel like you're getting the straight dope.
joe rogan
Right, right, right, right.
steven rinella
But someone somewhere who knows the world well is reading it, and they're having the same feeling you have every time you read about something you know well, which is this person has no idea what they're talking about.
unidentified
Right.
steven rinella
So you fall on the trap, the amnesias you forget.
And you take things you're not aware of, and when you get the dope on them from someone, you're forgetting how fucked up everything is when you do know about it.
joe rogan
Well, the hope is...
That with AI in these large language models is that AI will be able to distribute information objectively without that.
And that is the case in a lot of situations where they haven't been corrected yet.
Like, AI is subject to human influence, obviously.
I'm sure you're aware of the Google Gemini situation.
The Google Gemini situation is the best one because they said, you know, create images of Nazis.
And they had multicultural Nazis.
But if it has to analyze information about specific things just based on just what's actually available, oftentimes it will give you a very Accurate assessment that you wouldn't get from a newspaper because the newspaper would be more interested in adhering to whatever particular ideology they subscribe to.
So they would flavor things through an ideology and probably gaslight you a little bit about the other side's perspective.
The hope is that in the future, with large language models, and especially as they become more and more sophisticated, you're going to be able to get an accurate, objective assessment of things that doesn't have any human influence.
steven rinella
Oh, man, I don't...
Dude, come on.
joe rogan
Isn't it possible?
unidentified
Oh.
joe rogan
It's possible with some things.
steven rinella
Yeah, the hope or it's possible, but no, I don't have, like...
Sure, possible.
I don't picture that being the case.
unidentified
Well...
joe rogan
There are some large language models that aren't fucked with, especially open source ones.
The problem is they're essentially drawing from the entire internet, right?
So you would have to assess, like, where these large language models are getting their information from.
steven rinella
Sure.
joe rogan
And making sure that they're...
So this is a thing you could kind of game that system.
By rigging these large language models to accentuate information that comes from more biased sources.
You know, you could distort the information that people would get.
steven rinella
Yeah, and someone would be motivated to do it.
joe rogan
Yeah, until they get so sophisticated that they would be able to discern that.
And they would be able to base it entirely on objective analysis of statistics and facts and understand what these statistics are.
steven rinella
I did this little event last night at this place here in town called Arena Hall.
And the moderator of the event, it was like a Q&A or a chat.
And he was asking me, as a writer, as an author, what are your fears about AI? And I'm like, in the very short term, AI is coming for certain types of writing.
Certain types of writing are going to be made obsolete by AI. The reason I don't worry about it as of now, as a writer, is it's always going to be representative of input.
The input has to come in from people who are out digesting real experience.
It'll get faster.
The point I use is if you earlier alluded to the assassination on...
asked AI about details about it it doesn't exist right like the whole thing gets fed in so if you if you remain on some level of cutting edge about thought or cutting edge about analysis or cutting edge about what's going on in the world you'll have to start being more careful about being like that your work remains at the vanguard of feeding into the system of newness right yeah and that's gonna be like A big challenge.
Like a big challenge as a writer.
But I remember coming up as a writer too in the old days and being super scared of the internet in general.
Right?
And I was like, man, this ain't gonna be good.
For a writer.
joe rogan
Well, you know, they thought about that with the printing press.
steven rinella
I'm sure.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Do you know what the early books, do you know what most of the early books were about?
steven rinella
No, it was monks transcribing them, but I don't know.
joe rogan
No, when the printing press was produced.
steven rinella
Mathematics maybe?
joe rogan
Nope.
How to spot witches.
steven rinella
Oh, really?
That was a hot topic?
joe rogan
Yeah, it was all about witches and witchcraft.
Yeah, how to spot sorcery.
steven rinella
No, I didn't know that.
joe rogan
Yeah, it was a lot of bullshit.
You would think, oh, it's just knowledge and information.
Finally, the world's going to know the truth.
No, no, no, no.
steven rinella
I had no idea.
joe rogan
It was a lot of how to spot witches.
They were the most popular books.
steven rinella
Yeah, but I think that creators, from a creator perspective, You got ones that run away from new, right?
And you got ones that run toward it.
I used to be the run away from.
Something came out and I was like, this ain't good.
joe rogan
What are you now?
steven rinella
I guess I've survived through enough changes in the media landscape that I'm not as terrified as I once was.
Right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Like, you know, I always said, like, the first time I heard the word podcast was in the context of your name, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, I remember the first podcast we did.
You're like, what is this?
steven rinella
I don't know what the hell it was.
joe rogan
We were at the Ice House.
The whole setup was ridiculous.
steven rinella
Yeah, you had a delayed flight.
joe rogan
I had a delayed flight?
steven rinella
Yeah, we started real late.
You were coming back from something.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
steven rinella
But anyhow, yeah, I used to be, like, I used to be scared of incoming.
joe rogan
Well, most people were, especially podcasts, it seemed so ridiculous.
Most people thought it was stupid.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
And you even said that you were doing them and thought it was stupid.
joe rogan
Well, I did it because I thought it was fun.
steven rinella
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
And then after a while, I was like, oh, this is actually like a business.
I remember having a conversation with you about it.
I was like, you should do a podcast.
Like, there's a lot of money in this.
Like, it's real now.
steven rinella
Yeah, and I wouldn't have done it had you said it.
joe rogan
Well, it seemed...
steven rinella
Or I'd have been late to the game, maybe.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, you got on early.
Well, you were such a good guest.
I was like, this is, like, something you have to do.
Like, you have so many opinions on things, and you're so well-read.
It's, like, a perfect place for you where there's no interruption.
You can just have conversations about things.
That's, like, right up your alley.
steven rinella
I'm glad I did.
And then the other thing is it just infuses you with...
It infuses you with so much knowledge.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Because like you said, you get to corner people you want to corner.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
That's the best part.
Yeah.
The best part is the unintended education.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
You just have conversations with so many people.
And when else would you get an expert to sit down with you for three hours and put their phone aside and just look me in the eye?
Tell me how this started.
Tell me, how do you figure that out?
What is that?
How'd you get involved in this?
What's the beginning of this?
And then, you know, it's beneficial to everybody who listens, too.
It's a weird new thing.
steven rinella
You know what I want to tell you about?
Because it's like this thing I'm trying to hunt down.
I recently had a guy on my podcast whose name is Randy Brown.
And my brother Danny recommended him, too, because he's a fisheries biologist in Alaska.
So he came on the show, and what he did is in the 70s, he grew up in New Mexico and always wanted to live in the woods.
Just grew up camping in the mountains and stuff.
And in the 70s, he goes up to Alaska and just goes to live in the bush along the Yukon.
And then did it.
I mean, for 15 years.
For 15 years, he lived in the bush in Alaska, just building little cabins, and lived off the land.
I mean, like, wasn't buying groceries.
Like, lived off the land trap in Alaska.
He tells me this story, and I've been trying to put the word out about this.
He tells me a story where, I'll have to go check, I think it was in 78. In 1978, he's on the Yukon River, just downstream.
Downstream of the Yukon from Canada.
He's between Circle, Alaska, and Eagle, Alaska, on the Yukon.
And him and his friends are living their lives in all these, like, line cabins.
They got strung up and down the river, okay?
Two guys come down the river out of Canada.
So again, this is 1978. Two guys come down the river out of Canada on a homemade log raft.
This guy in Randy's circle, one of his buddies, he tells this whole story on the podcast, but one of his buddies has a cabin down on the river and these two guys pull in, in this homemade raft, they pull in for the night at this cabin.
One of these individuals identifies himself as John the Baptist.
joe rogan
Oh boy.
steven rinella
Okay.
In the middle of the night, his companion, John the Baptist's companion, gets back on his raft and scoots.
joe rogan
Oh boy.
steven rinella
And abandons the dude.
Abandons this guy in 1978 who came out of Canada who identifies himself as John the Baptist.
John the Baptist becomes this incredible leech.
On these guys that are living in the bush, eating their food, using their stuff, taking their ammunition.
He lingers long enough that he can't really get out of that area because it frees up on the river.
And they keep telling him, you've got to go somewhere else.
And they say, you've got to leave here.
You can go stay at one of our other cabins.
Don't touch our shit.
He goes up to the other cabin.
When they eventually go up to the other cabin, he had taken a bunch of their stuff.
He'd taken some of their furs and made his own clothes.
They boot him out and they tell him what you got to do is you got to go down to the river and go up or down, wait for a boat and go up or down.
But he comes up with this cockamamie plan where he's going to go to this area.
They're like, no way can you walk to that area.
He takes off into the woods.
Now, when he does, he steals this guy we had on the podcast, Randy Brown.
He steals Randy Brown's snowshoes and takes off.
Randy Brown gives chase.
It was a real bad snow year.
He tracked him for about five miles and just said, never mind, it's not worth it.
The next year, he takes a different route and goes into the headwaters of this river where this guy had taken off with his snowshoes, and he's canoeing down the river and sees his snowshoes hanging in a tree.
Okay?
And there's a little cabin there, a little line cabin they had out, and he goes in and here's the guy, stone dead, starved to death, in a sleeping bag.
unidentified
Whoa.
steven rinella
Snowshoes are hanging outside.
Starved to death.
He said he's nothing but skin and bones.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
Nothing but skin and bones.
They take him out, and they're way out in the bush.
They have no money.
They just live off land.
He literally has no money.
He's got no way to transport a body in the summertime to Eagle or Circle Alaska.
joe rogan
Does he have a responsibility to do that?
steven rinella
This is in the 70s, man.
He explains himself and did...
Well, he didn't.
They took the body out of the sleeping bag.
They wanted to check it out.
He said it was just skin on bone.
And it brought up something, because I'm going to talk about cannibalism in a minute, but it was skin on bone.
And he doesn't know what to do.
And he's not bashful about what he did.
He lays out why he had to do what he did.
They kept the sleeping bag to use it because it was their sleeping bag.
And they laid this body out on the tundra.
Told a few people, but didn't really know what to tell them.
They never caught the guy's name.
Told it to a few people.
A while later, he goes back and the body was gone.
Presumably been eaten by something.
So, after we do this interview, I can't stop thinking about this dude.
And I'm like, how can it not be that someone out in the world, like someone that has a kid or a brother, Or an uncle.
Do you know what I mean?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
And they never know what happened to them?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
There's no...
joe rogan
He's from Canada.
It's the 1970s.
steven rinella
70s, calling himself John the Baptist.
Yeah, they do.
But I kind of felt like doing...
I kind of felt...
I put it out on social media.
We talk on the podcast.
I'm bringing it up here.
Dude, I would love to know that someone said, oh, I used to party with a dude named John the Baptist.
joe rogan
In Canada, right.
steven rinella
Who is this guy?
joe rogan
Maybe this will do it.
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
Maybe you talking about it, like someone will reach out.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
But then you've got to wonder if someone's just fabricating it because they want information.
steven rinella
No, for sure.
joe rogan
Or they want attention, rather.
steven rinella
For sure.
It kind of sticks in my head.
And I said to him, to Randy, you know, it was crazy.
He wound up getting an honorary doctorate.
And like once he and his wife had kids, he became like a world's expert on whitefish species of the Yukon River and got like an honorary doctorate.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
steven rinella
Yeah, he's like a leading authority on certain whitefish species in the Yukon.
This dude lived in the bush like that all that time.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
But I told him, he says, man, I thought about it a lot.
You know, I thought because maybe you'll figure it out.
I thought about it all the time for a while.
What happened?
I asked my brother Danny, I'm like, when I had this guy on the podcast, what should I ask him about?
And he goes, ask him about the guy he found.
So he gives me this book.
He gives me this book.
And it's called Death in the Barren Grounds.
And it was this, he's got a, Randy used the term starved out.
And you could tell that all the time he spent living in the bush, like starving to death is very much on his mind.
Like him and his buddies even made a sort of pact.
unidentified
Right.
steven rinella
To like, hey man, like if it comes down to it, don't hesitate to eat my body.
You know, which you should.
He gives you this book, Death in the Barren Ground.
It's about these guys in the 20s, these three dudes in the 20s that go up on this Thelon River, which flows into the Hudson Bay.
And they go up in the, they're kind of north of the tree line, but they're in a timbered grove.
And they go up there to trap for the winter, and their whole plan is to live off caribou, but the caribou never come through.
And the youngest one keeps this meticulous journal in this book.
He keeps this meticulous journal, and he documents with painstaking detail the two people he's with starving to death and himself eventually starving to death.
He lets off at a point.
It's unclear when he died.
He had the wherewithal to put the journal in the stove.
And to make a sign that said, look in the stove.
And when they found him a couple years later, they were able to find this journal.
But it got so bad that they're, like, crushing animal bone, which is a thing.
That's not going to talk about this Donner Party deal I was working on.
These guys are crushing animal bone and boiling it to get some kind of nutritive value out of crushed animal bone.
And they're eating animal hide.
Like, you scrape away the hair, and you can boil animal skins and eat them.
I've done that.
It just makes, like, a gelatin-y, kind of tasteless, like, leather noodle, basically.
And what he's documenting, as they're dying from this, is the horrible bowel obstruction.
And they're trying to make, like, in his journal, he's describing this, of trying to make these enema devices.
And even for a while on each other, trying to perform an operation on each other, because that bone fragment, they're boiling that bone fragment and drinking it, but that bone fragment in their bowel is reforming into bone plugs.
And even when they find these guys...
Years later, a guy from the Canadian Mounted Police is doing this very...
Basically a crime scene description of what went on in here.
And still laying there a couple years later is a plate full of solidified excrement.
unidentified
Oh, God.
steven rinella
Everything else rotted away.
These guys are just skeletons, but that bone shit.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
And you look at...
And I just finished this book the other day.
So, you look and be like, oh, they're starving to death, starving to death, but when you starve to death, all this stuff is actually going on, and that had to have been fatal.
And we were working on, you know, Mo, who's been on the show, we've been working on this project, which I'm, you know, wanting to plug, but we did an episode on the Donner Party, who died up in the mountains in California, and the Donner Party, in addition to the cannibalism they're famous for, it was so crazy, because before I read that book, We're hearing all about that the members of the Donna Party were eating the crushed bone and eating the boiled hides.
Oh, and the other thing is all those hair follicles would form into dense balls that would, like, plug your rectum.
And he's just describing all this as they die.
It's horrible.
But that dude, Randy Brown, gave me that book because you could tell that in his mind, man, like, starving out.
Like, it stuck with him.
You know, and he's walking around handing out a book about starving to death in the Arctic, you know?
Because he'd do it well.
But that was like in that same thing, like Donner Party being like known for the cannibalism and all that, is all those people die and probably like a lot of the same thing.
unidentified
Eating that hide and hair and crushed bone.
steven rinella
Just miserable.
joe rogan
People have a very delusional perspective when it comes to like surviving and living off the land.
unidentified
Oh.
joe rogan
How difficult it would be.
steven rinella
Oh.
In talking to him, when he talked about that guy that struck off, like, this is after a long time he spent in the bush.
He talked about the guy that struck off, and the guy struck off with a.22 pistol.
And Randy's like, you cannot, in that environment, you cannot survive with a.22 pistol.
Like, he just knows that categorically you cannot survive with a.22 pistol.
And the dude didn't.
joe rogan
Yeah, how could you?
steven rinella
Well, people would probably think that they're such a badass, they would.
joe rogan
How many bullets do you have?
steven rinella
I don't know.
I don't know how many he had.
But he said, you won't.
You won't make it.
And he made a point.
That.22 pistol, when they found that body, that.22 pistol's hanging on a peg inside the cabin where he found them.
joe rogan
I mean, there's no way you'd have enough ammunition.
Even with a pistol, you're limited in your range.
You're limited in your accuracy.
steven rinella
No.
They did everything with.243s in those years that he did that.
And they would load, like, variable loads.
joe rogan
Why variable loads?
steven rinella
He'd make light loads and heavy loads.
joe rogan
Oh, okay, for different animals?
steven rinella
Yeah, they'd make little grouse loads and shit, and they'd load their big game bullets, you know?
All the.243.
Hunting moose for the.243, caribou for the.243.
joe rogan
Where's he getting all the gunpowder?
steven rinella
They were loading their own stuff.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
So you'd have to go somewhere to get resupply.
steven rinella
Yeah, they had a camp.
At one of their camps, they had a reloading station.
The various guys living in the bush would kind of come in there and use that reloading station.
And that John the Baptist dude looted that reloading station.
joe rogan
Yeah, you got to kill those guys.
Those guys would cause you to starve to death.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
If you're in that kind of an environment and someone's a mooch?
steven rinella
No.
But you know what's weird is about it, that someone pointed out to me later, I think John the Baptist, like John the Baptist from the Bible, I think John the Baptist starved to death.
joe rogan
Really?
steven rinella
So, that's like a little bit of a confusion, is, yeah, how would that be?
joe rogan
Is that real?
steven rinella
Yeah, there's this dude, there's this kid, I might tell you about him, this French kid, Etienne Brulee, that the French brought over.
And, like, he's known as Etienne Brule, and the French brought him over during the colonial era and gave him to the tribes so he'd learn their language.
And eventually he gets crossways with the Huron Indians, and the Huron Indians killed him and allegedly ate him.
So everybody knows him as Etienne Brule, which is burnt, right?
But did he get the name after or before?
joe rogan
Was it a self-fulfilling prophecy?
steven rinella
Yeah, like, so you're like, well, hold on a minute.
Did he just happen?
Like, he presumably got burned to death, or boiled, or whatever, you know?
So it's like, is he Etienne Brulee because of what happened to him, or was he running around with that moniker, and then, like, lo and behold?
So the John the Baptist thing is baffling to me.
joe rogan
Did John the Baptist in the Bible, I'm not familiar.
Did he definitely starve?
steven rinella
No, people keep telling me that.
joe rogan
Beheaded.
steven rinella
Oh, he didn't starve.
jamie vernon
The word on the streets is beheaded in prison.
joe rogan
The word on the streets.
steven rinella
Someone sent me this big passage talking about his emaciated state.
joe rogan
Maybe he was emaciated before they cut his head off.
Maybe they were saving him from a fate worse than death.
steven rinella
Can I talk about my project?
joe rogan
Sure, please do.
steven rinella
Well, I'm working out with Mo, who's been on the show before.
Mo and I... We did the very early Meat Eaters together.
You probably met him that way, right, originally?
joe rogan
Yes, I met him that way, and then when he did Bourdain's show.
steven rinella
So we did very early Meat Eaters together, and we've always kept in touch, and he went on and did all that crazy stuff with Bourdain and got heavily involved in that.
And then after Bourdain's death, there was this kind of, I don't know, man, almost like this exodus of talent, like all these people that worked on that great show.
And they went on to do other stuff, and then Mo and I got joined up on this, and we've worked on it.
Mo's a showrunner on it, and we've worked on it together.
And it's coming out January 28th, and it's a show on History Channel where we look at outdoor mysteries.
So I brought up, we did an episode on Donner Party.
And you might ask, well, what's the mystery about the Donner Party?
But it's kind of like, what happened...
Could it have gone differently?
Like, what mistakes were made?
And most of these mysteries that we do are things that I have that most people have some awareness around, right?
Like, you've at least heard of it.
And I think that people think about the Donner Party, for instance, just to take an example.
When they're making a joke about cannibalism, you'd be like, oh, the Donner Party.
You know what I mean?
Like, people don't realize what happened there.
And going to that place, I think I never realized about it.
There was 90 people that got stranded in the Sierra Nevada that winter, 1846 to 1847. A thing that you never, ever realize and that changes everything I've ever thought about, half of those, more than half of those were kids.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
steven rinella
Yeah, you don't think about it that way, right?
It's mostly children.
And you get into all this wild stuff about it, like, you're trying to keep your kids alive.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Right?
So there's this sort of like, earlier I said, I'll touch on cannibalism.
I was talking about Randy Brown making that cannibalism pact.
You try to keep your kids alive.
And the kids, by and large, the kids survived.
The kids survived at a much higher rate than adults.
And out of adults that survived, parents did better.
Parents were more likely to survive.
When they sent a little subgroup off to try to go get help, a lot of the people died on the way of trying to get help.
Parents lived.
Parents who had kids back at the main camp survived.
So it's this whole weird thing about the psychology of why keep going on.
You know what I mean?
And then you think about it from that angle.
If your kids were faced with starving to death, you would absolutely feed your kids human meat.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
100%.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Right?
So, you look at it like this American horror story, but in the end, like, of those 90 people, like, half lived.
You know?
Half of them survived.
And they just, they did, they always did just, like, what they needed to to live.
You know?
But then there's, like, those families still carried a stigma.
joe rogan
Of course.
unidentified
You know?
steven rinella
Like, it's terrible stigma.
But, like, getting into that, like, getting into that story and starting to...
Realize that, and then following that up with reading that book about the pain and anguish of starving to death, you wind up having just more...
I wind up with a lot more empathy, and just, you know, you almost kind of want to honor those people, rather than condemn them as these...
Like I said, it's like an American horror story.
joe rogan
You can't condemn them.
We would all have done the exact same thing.
To condemn them is just so...
It's a horrible way.
To look at it.
It's a survival story.
I mean, human beings, it's like those soccer players that got in the plane crash.
Do you know the story of the two boats that tried to make their way across the Arctic?
It was like, was it the terror in another boat?
There's a Netflix.
steven rinella
Yeah, I do know what you're talking about, yeah.
joe rogan
But the Netflix series is like a horror series.
They bring in like a mystical monster and stuff.
steven rinella
Got it.
joe rogan
And the people all resort to cannibalism.
But they tried to make it across this path and they got frozen in in their boats and they were waiting in the spring for the ice to thaw and it never thawed.
And they got stuck there and they tried to walk out and make it to the ocean and they never made it.
Yeah.
steven rinella
And they wound up having to do cannibalism.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
steven rinella
In the Donner Party, they would, at times, in some of these cases, they had a little system where you would keep the carcasses separate so that people didn't have to eat their own kin, eat their own relatives.
They mostly ate people that died of natural causes, but at the time, there was no legal prohibition on killing Indians.
They had two Indian guides with them, and a guy murdered them.
joe rogan
Wow.
steven rinella
They murdered them to eat them.
And never faced any repercussions for it.
It was more illegal.
It was more illegal to kill someone's cow than it was to kill two Native Americans.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
Yeah, he just walked.
Everybody knew he did it.
Never faced any repercussions for it.
Murdered two people to eat them.
Other than that, they were eating people that were already there.
joe rogan
Jesus.
steven rinella
When we were up there filming in Donner Pass.
We met these people and they were saying that these guys were doing this thing about places with Christmas names.
And they had thought Donner...
joe rogan
Like Donner and Blitzen?
Oh, God.
steven rinella
That's the funniest, man.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
steven rinella
So I spent two months traveling with Moe.
Maybe a little over two months traveling with Moe working on this whole thing.
It's been fun, my man.
joe rogan
So what is the name of the show?
steven rinella
It's called Hunting History.
joe rogan
Oh.
steven rinella
Yeah.
It's not a hunting show.
Hunting History.
unidentified
There it is.
steven rinella
Me on a Arrow.
Me on a Arrow plane.
That one, that episode, oh, it's like a whole little trailer.
joe rogan
So what is the idea of the show?
steven rinella
It's like outdoor, wilderness mysteries, outdoor mysteries.
And we do some things that are decades old.
We do some things that are centuries old.
When I was, for instance, when I was growing up in the Great Lakes region, there's a...
The first ship they ever built on the Great Lakes is called the Griffin, and no one's ever found that ship.
That ship went missing in the Great Lakes, and people are still trying to hunt for that ship.
It's regarded as the holy grail of Great Lakes shipwrecks.
There's still people actively searching for it.
We do one on Donner Party.
joe rogan
What's in the ship that they're trying to get?
steven rinella
It would be gone now.
It was full of beaver pelts.
It was full of about six tons of beaver pelts.
And there's all these different theories about the crew, mutineed, whatever.
But there's a guy, this dude named Steve Libert, who came out of naval intelligence, the naval intelligence world.
And this guy named Steve Libert has the latest claim of having found the griffin.
So I went and dove that site to check out his claim of having identified this ship.
Yeah, I don't think he's got it.
unidentified
No?
No.
joe rogan
What do you think it is?
What do you think you found?
steven rinella
There are...
It kind of blows your mind when you think about the Great Lakes.
There are literally thousands of missing ships, and then there are many, many ships that are there, but no one knows what they are.
And I think he's found a very old ship, but I don't think he's found the Griffin.
joe rogan
6,000 and 10,000 shipwrecks.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Wow.
steven rinella
The burden of proof on finding the griffin is hard.
You've heard of the guy LaSalle?
joe rogan
No.
steven rinella
He wound up dying down in this neck of the woods.
He built the first ship and he got above Niagara Falls and built a big ship.
And built the first ship that ever sailed the Upper Great Lakes.
So he went all through the Upper Great Lakes, went to Green Bay, filled it full of beaver hides to get himself out of debt.
Sends all those beaver hides back down to Niagara.
But they go missing along the way.
He makes his way down.
He winds up being the first European to descend the Mississippi to the mouth.
And then later he gets into like a mutiny of sorts down in the lower Mississippi.
Gets in a mutiny of sorts and one of his guys shoots and kills him.
Just kind of this whole run of shitty luck.
But he lost his ship.
There's all this different evidence of pointing to where this ship might lie.
But it's almost certainly like it's somewhere.
It's somewhere.
Because stuff lasts so long.
Like in that fresh water, stuff lasts so long.
You'll go dive down and look at ships that are 100 years old, 200 years old.
It looks like you could refurbish things.
joe rogan
Really?
steven rinella
Except for the ones that get broke up by ice.
So that ship's laying around.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
I'd like to tell you we found it.
I hung out with a bunch of dudes that were looking for it.
joe rogan
The lakes are so big.
steven rinella
Yeah, I hung out with dudes that were looking for it.
And now people are getting really good at it because of all the sophisticated sonar.
That's why they're finding all this crazy shit.
joe rogan
I don't think people understand how big the Great Lakes are.
steven rinella
No.
joe rogan
They're literally like oceans.
They're so big.
steven rinella
Especially when you add them all together, you know?
And the place is pretty deep.
But yeah, they're littered with stuff, man.
And dudes, like, there's just common dudes now that can buy really sophisticated sonar and underwater cameras.
And people are just finding stuff, like, mad.
joe rogan
Oh, now there's more sophisticated technology.
steven rinella
Yeah, because you can just cruise around.
You can just cut grids on sonar.
So you got dudes that are out there just identifying wreck after wreck after wreck right now.
That's why there's a lot of enthusiasm that someone's going to turn this boat up.
But it has these big cannons.
It should have these big French-built cannons.
And until someone finds the cannons, no one's going to buy what you're saying.
joe rogan
Cannons?
steven rinella
Yeah, LaSalle brought cannons from Europe and mounted them on the boat.
joe rogan
So, like, in case someone was trying to have pirates?
Did they have pirates back then?
steven rinella
They did, but also they just would, you know, try to intimidate Native American tribes, and, you know, they'd get them into the fur trade, but also there's, like, rogue people, and you're also, at that time, the French are duking it out with English had a big toehold up in Hudson Bay.
So you got the English there.
You got the Spanish to the south.
Just a ton of conflict.
And people still trying to duke it out over who's going to control the Great Lakes.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
So there's this argument, too, which is crazy.
Picture if we had a naval vessel that sank off France right now.
It's not France's boat.
unidentified
Right.
steven rinella
Because we have all these agreements in place.
It's like our boat.
So they would have to hand it over to us.
It's flying under our flag.
It remains our vessel.
There's this argument that LaSalle's ship was flying under a French flag.
Whoever finds that ship, there's an argument that the French would be able to claim that ship.
So even if some dude, like some freelancer, was to find it and find those cannons and shit and finds this ship, there's an argument that the French could say, we'll take it from here, son.
joe rogan
Whoa.
steven rinella
Yeah.
It's flying under our flag, and our international treaties mean that that's our boat.
unidentified
Hmm.
steven rinella
Which would de-centivize me in wanting to find it.
joe rogan
Yeah, like, fuck that.
Imagine you go through all that work.
steven rinella
Yeah, they do it for glory.
joe rogan
Gold wrecks, like, shipwrecks and people, like, hunting for those things, that's a fascinating world.
steven rinella
It is, man.
joe rogan
Because if you get lucky, and if you find one that's filled with, like, Roman coins...
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, you...
We were talking about...
Billions of dollars.
steven rinella
A lot of money to be made.
We were going to do our last episode when we went and did the Donner Party.
What we were supposed to be doing is we were supposed to be hanging out with guys that are still this whole fleet of Spanish vessels that went down off the east coast of Florida.
So the Atlantic side of Florida.
We were going to go down with these guys that are still fighting over and finding all this stuff from all these sunken ships.
But then the hurricane passed right over it.
So we didn't get to go do that.
We didn't go do that show.
We did one about that wanted to become mostly a story that centered around in the 70s.
There's this aircraft that was carrying the Speaker of the House.
Do you remember...
Is it Nina?
No.
Hey, Jamie, I hate to be treating you like a research assistant here.
Cokie Roberts.
You know the journalist Cokie Roberts from NPR and shit?
joe rogan
Okay, yes.
steven rinella
Cokie Roberts' father was this guy Hale Boggs.
Hale Boggs was a Democrat and he was a Speaker of the House in the 70s.
And Alaska had, at that time, only one.
Alaska had a sole congressman.
There was an airplane that had Begich, their sole congressman, the Speaker of the House, an assistant and a pilot that went down in Alaska in the 70s.
Still no one's found that plane.
Speaker of the House.
Like, imagine that happened now.
You know what I mean?
joe rogan
Yeah, 1972. Yeah, but it makes sense in the last one.
steven rinella
Oh, it does, but then you get into the huge number of all these missing aircraft and, like, all that search centered around this glacier that it would have been swallowed by a glacier.
And we went to this other site where this military transport plane years ago did go down in a glacier, and the glacier swallowed it, and I think it was, I don't know, 20-some years later, that glacier started to spit that plane out at the toe of the glacier.
Like, it carried it, I don't know, what it is, 13 miles under the ice and then started to spit out human remains and plane parts.
Every spring, the military goes to the foot of that glacier.
Every spring, they go there.
Or, sorry, every summer.
They go to the top of that glacier, and they're still identifying human remains that are moving out of that thing miles away from where that plane burrowed into that glacier.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
Yeah, we went right there.
joe rogan
1952. Yeah.
Wow, look at that wheel.
steven rinella
Yep.
And on top of that glacier, we had got there after that.
We flew over it in a helicopter.
They don't want you landing there.
But on top of that glacier is all this orange paint.
Orange paint spots.
They weren't working there anymore, but you can tell they were in there marking everything that you could see coming out of that as that glacier recedes.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
And they're marking all those pieces.
So this other glacier where most of that search focused, for that Begich Boggs flight, focused on this one glacier.
But if you do the math on that glacier...
Had it gone into that glacier, where they had spent a ton of time looking into a crevasse in that glacier, had it gone into that glacier, the glacier would have spit it out by now.
Because you can kind of track how much a glacier moves every year.
So now the idea that it was in that glacier has been kind of put to rest.
Well, here's dude searching that one.
joe rogan
Well, you could see as you move how far it travels.
Wow.
steven rinella
Yeah.
Yeah, so we went there.
We went down into some of those crevasses like that, too.
joe rogan
Do you climb down into one of those things?
steven rinella
Yeah, which is scary as shit.
joe rogan
Fuck that.
steven rinella
Because that stuff is alive, man.
joe rogan
It's moving.
steven rinella
I mean, not like literally alive, but it's like groaning and moving.
Yeah, we went back down into one of those.
joe rogan
What does it sound like?
steven rinella
You know, it was pretty quiet that day.
It was actually more peaceful there because you know how much all that cold air from that ice generates so much wind?
We land this helicopter there.
And the wind's howling, and I don't know much about aviation.
I mean, I use it a lot, but the wind's so bad, I was asking the guy, at what point do you risk that your helicopter's gonna blow off the glacier?
And a couple minutes later, he's a very experienced pilot, but a couple minutes later, he winds up tethering down his helicopter, because he's like, now you're like, fuck it with my head.
So he tethers down his helicopter on these ice screws, you know, to make sure the helicopter doesn't slide and go down into a crevasse.
And then you, you know, I was with a very experienced ice climber, but harness up and pick your way down.
But anyways, it's like so loud, and you hear a lot of the, you know, the noise of all that ice moving, because it's moving all those rocks and everything.
It just pulverizes stuff, as you see with that aircraft.
But when you drop down in that, When you drop down on that crevasse and go down that sucker, it gets, like, unbelievably calm.
Real calm.
joe rogan
How far did you go down?
steven rinella
Oh, shit, not that far.
Probably 30 feet.
joe rogan
That's far enough.
steven rinella
Oh, it's far enough for sure.
It's unnerving.
It's unnerving for me just hearing you talk about it.
I remember you telling me about that chamber you like to go into?
joe rogan
Yeah.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
It's not quite like that, but it's like you just all of a sudden are like...
But you're also in there just thinking how you could get...
joe rogan
Smushed?
steven rinella
Oh, just obliterated.
There's stories.
I was talking with this dude years ago, and he used to be involved with Outward Bound, and they were doing a glacier hike.
A guide was doing a glacier hike, and they had a kid, like a student.
I think it was Outward Bound.
They had a student go off to take a piss into one of those things.
Never found.
Because there's big rivers flowing underneath that stuff.
unidentified
Oh, God.
steven rinella
Right?
So picture you, like, you go down.
So you're down there, you can hear water running everywhere.
You can hear rivers underneath you, inside that.
But you're roped up, you know?
But even the rope you're on, you're just screwing screws into the ice.
And then, at a certain air temperature, right, like, the screw conducts heat, you know?
So at a certain air temperature...
If you drive that screw in and that screw is pushing heat, it'll melt the ice around the threads.
So you'll actually drill these big holes into the glacier like a V. Picture you're coming in like a V and the two upper parts of the V are like 30 inches apart.
And you drill at a 45 degree angle until those holes meet.
Then you snake a rope down one hole.
And get it snaked out the other hole.
And then tie a knot in that.
And that's what's holding you.
joe rogan
Oh, fuck that.
steven rinella
Because if you put that screw in there, at a certain temperature, the threads of the screw are moving like solar heat and atmospheric heat down the threads and can melt the thread out.
So you're just, you're tied in on a little like, yeah, you're like tied.
joe rogan
Hoping it holds on.
steven rinella
Onto a hunk of the ice.
You back down into those suckers, dude.
It's like, it's an ass pucker.
joe rogan
Well, that's how they found the Iceman, right?
He was in a crevasse.
steven rinella
Was he in a crevasse?
joe rogan
Wasn't he?
I think he fell into a glacial crevasse.
steven rinella
I don't remember that.
joe rogan
I think as the glacier melted, that's how they found his body.
steven rinella
Oh, I know they found him on a melted glacier, but I didn't know that it was supposed that he fell into a crevasse.
joe rogan
I'm not sure, but I think that was the story, that they feel like he fell, like he was involved in some sort of mortal combat with someone.
He got shot with an arrow.
steven rinella
Yeah, he was all tore up.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
They made a movie about his last days.
unidentified
Did they?
steven rinella
A fictional movie.
Really?
Yeah, it's a European fictional movie.
And it sort of sets up the whole circumstance.
Right.
I haven't seen it yet, but it sets up the whole circumstance.
joe rogan
This is a really dumb movie.
steven rinella
Otzi was his name.
joe rogan
Yeah, Otzi.
They named him.
I'm sure that wasn't his real name.
steven rinella
No.
He had a tattoo.
joe rogan
He had a tattoo on his shoulder.
That was his wife.
steven rinella
He had tattoos.
joe rogan
Yeah, he did have tattoos.
It was just really wild.
That was thousands of years ago, right?
There was a really dumb movie about an Iceman that, I think it was like the 1980s.
I think it's called Iceman.
steven rinella
No, I remember that.
They bring a guy back to life.
joe rogan
Yeah, and then the wife falls in love with him.
steven rinella
Oh shit, I didn't know that happened.
joe rogan
That happens in there?
So dumb.
Yeah, the Iceman takes a liking to this guy's wife.
steven rinella
Oh, that's the plot?
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
steven rinella
I thought it was more like an E.T. plot.
joe rogan
No, no, no.
steven rinella
Like they resuscitate him and then the scientists want to get at him.
joe rogan
Is this it?
Yeah.
steven rinella
That's who he starts getting with?
joe rogan
Is this the same one?
Yeah, the guy gets back to life and I think he falls in love with the lady.
He's hanging out with people.
And then, you know, the Iceman...
steven rinella
That's her?
joe rogan
Yeah, I think he winds up falling in love with her and the scientist gets real mad.
That's also the plot of Encino, man.
Yes!
unidentified
Is that what this is?
It's probably short.
joe rogan
Brennan Frazier.
Yeah, they thaw him out and he's okay, which is fucking hilarious in and of itself.
steven rinella
The other night we were watching these old movies like this.
unidentified
The other night we were watching Timothy Hutton.
steven rinella
Temple of Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom.
And, you know, the love interest, like the Indy's love interest in that movie.
I can't remember what her name is.
But anyways, we're watching it with our youngest kid who really wanted to watch an Anna Jones movie.
And my wife's like, man, you just can't have teeth like that anymore in the movies.
The love interest, you know?
Like, you forget, like, how perfect...
Like, oral processes have made everybody's teeth.
unidentified
Oh.
steven rinella
And so here's, like, this woman who's like, Job is like, you know, she's like the hot woman in the movie that everyone's gonna fall in love with.
And you look and you're like, yeah, you're right.
Like, teeth are so perfect on everybody now.
You know, and you're looking at an old movie and you're like, oh, it was before they were able to do all that.
joe rogan
Right.
That's funny.
steven rinella
We were watching that stupid show on New Year's Eve, you know, that ball dropping.
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
And just every single person, even kind of involved in that whole production, has those teeth.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, most of those teeth are fake now.
steven rinella
Oh, no, that's what I'm saying, man.
But absurdly so.
And it was just really funny to look at that and be like, you're right.
There's something that looks like you can't put your finger on it.
It's like the heroin, absent, perfect teeth.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Do you remember Lauren Hutton?
She had that gap between her teeth.
steven rinella
It was kind of hot.
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
It was like part of her charm.
She had this gap.
steven rinella
Yeah, nowadays you'd feel some pressure to go tighten that up.
joe rogan
Yeah, probably.
steven rinella
They'd put some shit on your teeth and tighten it up.
joe rogan
You want to be in the big movies, you've got to tighten that up.
steven rinella
Tighten it up.
joe rogan
It's funny you were talking about the beaver pelts.
Because you were the first person to explain to me the richest man in the world at one point in time.
His business was beaver pelts.
steven rinella
Yeah, it was America's first homegrown millionaire, John Jacob Astor.
joe rogan
That is so crazy.
steven rinella
Yeah, so he was a German.
He came over as a young kid.
He didn't have, you know, broke, penniless.
Aster comes over.
Just an immigrant, right?
Comes to the U.S. He's trying to figure out a way to make his way in America.
And in New York, he meets a guy in the fur business, like a furrier.
And the guy says, a lot of money being made in furs.
And that was, like, that was the commodity.
For North America.
When you look at all the English powers coming or all the European powers coming to establish colonies, you know, it's known like the Spanish come in and they get like all that Aztec gold, all that Incan gold.
Other European powers were like jealous about the wealth Spain was pulling out and mineral wealth and they always thought that in our area up in what's now the continent like US, you know, eventually gold did come out but they were sort of like primarily like we need our own gold fields.
But what emerged was fur.
Fur was our thing.
Fur was the thing of value.
So Aster became a fur trader and helped launch these fur trapping expeditions and became involved in what we now call the mountain man area.
When you hear the term mountain men, The Mountain Man era.
In my sort of other job outside of doing my History Channel show, we do audio originals.
We did one on the deerskin trade called The Long Hunters.
It was about Daniel Boone, 1770s in the deerskin trade.
Right now...
We're coming out with one called Meat Eaters of American History, The Mountain Men, and it covers that like John Jacob Astor era of the beaver trade.
And what all those dudes, so when you hear about Jim Bridger, John Coulter, Jed Smith, what they were producing, they were producing a material that would be used to make felt hats.
Like, that's what that was all about.
joe rogan
Wow.
steven rinella
Rather than, you'd think, when they would trap a beaver, How many fucking beavers were around back then?
A lot.
Even though we've recovered them really successfully, there were far more beavers back then than there are now.
joe rogan
What's the estimated population of beavers back then?
steven rinella
In the tens of millions.
joe rogan
What are they now?
steven rinella
I don't know.
I do know, because I looked at it the other day, but I forgot what it is.
They're very recovered across a big part of their range.
But nowhere near what it was at the time.
The whole continent was shaped by beavers.
They manipulate their landscape more than anything besides humans.
But people had always whittled away at them.
You know?
Like, earlier I mentioned Daniel Boone, like, his primary job was a deerskin, he was in the deerskin trade, and what they were using for back then.
You know when you see really old pictures of, like, kings and shit, and they got those kind of white pants on?
It's probably a buckskin pant, right?
So our whole term with, like, when we say a buck, something's worth a buck, that's about the equivalent value of a deerskin.
So, you know, that's where that term came from.
Those guys, at the same time, they would hunt deerskins in the summer, because they wanted them real thin.
And then they would switch and they would hunt beaver pelts in the winter for wool felt, to create wool felt.
But we kind of gradually extirpated, like wiped out beaver numbers.
And then when you get to 1804 and the Lewis and Clark expedition, Lewis and Clark push into the interior, into the northern Rockies and around the headwaters of the Missouri.
And when they come back to St. Louis, like one of the things they report on is like, holy shit.
Like, we found that the last great stronghold of the beaver is in the Rockies.
And that's what pushed this whole Mountain Man era.
So when you watch the Revenant, like Hugh Glass, you know, get mauled by the Grizzly, those guys were all, like, their thing was they were beaver trappers.
And earlier I mentioned the English up around Hudson Bay.
So you're familiar with this thing called the Hudson Bay Company?
From history?
joe rogan
Yes.
steven rinella
It was like a fur trading enterprise.
The Hudson Bay Company and the English always had this model of the fur trade where they would build posts and then incentivize Indians to hunt fur or trap fur.
They didn't trap.
The English weren't themselves trappers.
The English were traders.
And they would incentivize tribes to go trap and bring them the furs.
In the Rockies, that didn't work.
They couldn't get these nomadic...
Equestrian bison hunters with the program.
They thought it was, by and large, the sentiment was, it's beneath us.
We're not going to give up our whole life away.
Everything we need comes from the buffalo.
We live in big family groups.
We follow the herds.
I'm not going to go trap beaver for you.
It's of no interest to me.
So then they're like, well, shit, how are we going to get the beaver?
And so they start hiring dudes.
They start hiring orphans and people that...
That were under indentured servitude and ran away, whatever.
They hired these big groups of Americans out of the colonies, the former colonies, because at the time of the United States, they hired these guys and say, you're going to go out and live for years at a time in the Rockies and trap beaver, and here's where to meet us on such and such date every year.
So go to this valley.
Right?
Go to Jackson Hole, or go to Daniel, Wyoming, or Bear Valley, wherever, and we'll meet you in June.
And you bring all the shit you caught, and we'll give you some more equipment.
And that was the Mountain Man era.
All that stuff, when they caught those beavers, there's no need, they didn't want the meat, they could eat the meat, but there's no value in the meat.
The hide, they don't even want the leather from the hide.
That was thrown away.
They don't want the main guard hairs.
So if you look at a pelt, You got these silky long guard hairs and then there's an underwool underneath it.
They don't want the silky long guard hair.
All they're after is the under fur on the hide.
joe rogan
To line hats.
steven rinella
To make felt.
But there was so much conning and scamming of people taking shit that wasn't beaver wool and trying to pass it off as beaver wool.
You had to ship the whole hide to Europe.
So they could confirm that it was in fact a beaver hide at which they would hire people to pick the guard hair off, shave that underwool off, throw the guard hair away, throw the leather away, take that underwool and turn it into a felt to make a hat.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
Like an Ebenezer Scrooge top hat.
That's what that shit was about.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
So when this dude, when LaSalle...
You know, comes over and builds the griffin.
Like, that first ship is so crazy.
Like, he was building that ship to transport beaver hides because traditionally they'd always done it with canoes.
And he's like, I got a better idea.
I'm going to build a giant ship, fill that sucker full of beaver hides, and I'll get rich.
joe rogan
Thousands of beaver hides.
steven rinella
But, yeah, his ship vanished.
And that's what they were still up to in the Mountain Man era.
And that whole industry was born in this Mountain Man project we're doing.
Like, that whole history was born.
You can kind of say it was born with the Lewis and Clark Expedition and identifying this tremendous population of beavers in the Northern Rockies.
And it kind of ended in 1840. When the market collapsed.
joe rogan
If there's a time where you could go back in history and just observe, like they could put you in like a fucking bulletproof bubble and just like, no one knows you're there.
You could just go watch.
Where would you go?
Would you go to that time?
steven rinella
No, I just changed my time.
For a long time I knew what my time was, but I just changed my time recently.
joe rogan
What does it mean?
steven rinella
I'll be happy to explain.
joe rogan
What did it used to be?
steven rinella
There used to be an idea that's existed for much of my life about the peopling of the Americas.
And sometime, maybe around 15,000 years ago, there was so much of the Earth's water was tied up in glaciers Asia and Alaska were connected by a chunk of ground the size of Texas.
The Bering Land Bridge.
When people hear the Bering Land Bridge, you kind of picture this little like, it's like Moses crossing the part of the Red Sea.
You could have lived and died on the, you know, generations were probably born and died on the Bering Land Bridge with no idea that it was a bridge.
Like I said, it was a chunk of ground the size of Texas.
That much water was tied up in glaciers.
People crossed.
They almost certainly weren't saying like, hey, Bob, let's go to Alaska.
But they were doing their thing.
They were hunting and moving and they crossed.
And then because of all that ice, once they moved into what's now Alaska, the theory held that they were trapped there by glacial ice.
And eventually there was this thing called the Ice-Free Corridor opened up around like it would have spilled out around Edmonton, Alberta.
And the idea was the first people.
To lay eyes on the continental U.S. When that corridor opened up, when that little gap through the glaciers opened up, the first Americans spilled out onto the American Great Plains, killing mammoths with spears.
As all this new information has emerged, the dates don't line up anymore.
So we did a hunting history episode about this very question of...
How and when and who were the first people to enter the continent, right?
And now, that was called the Ice-Free Corridor hypothesis, but it's been made more and more untenable by finding these super old sites.
For a while, the oldest site we knew about in the New World was a site called Monteverde down in Chile.
So if people came in at the Bering Land Bridge, why is the oldest known site of human occupation all the way down in Chile?
joe rogan
How old is it?
Somewhere around 13, 14. What about those New Mexico footprints that are 22,000 years old?
steven rinella
Again, yeah, it's clouded in the picture.
There's a lot of the dating.
The dating on that is clouded.
But anyways, it's like antiquity in America is much older than originally thought.
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
And now currently the oldest site is on the Columbia River drainage near a place called Pittsburgh Landing.
There's a really old site there.
And it winds up being that it doesn't line up with the idea of people entering this ice-free corridor.
Because, like, when did the corridor, when was it open?
When was it possible to pass through?
But now you have all these older dates.
And then people are even starting to question the validity of the idea of, like, that this corridor opened when they thought it did.
So now the fashionable idea, it seems rock solid.
We filmed much of the episode up at our fish shack.
There's this theory now called the Kelp Highway, that you had this pretty stable environment all along the Pacific Coast, and it was defined by kelp beds.
Enormously rich in fish resources, enormously rich in shellfish, right?
And that the first Americans were a seafaring people.
And all that shit about what glaciers are melted and not melted and when this and that corridor and land bridges open was a moot point because these were people that just came down the coast.
And they knew how to survive in that marine, that kelp marine environment.
And they went south and went south and went south and things remained remarkably similar and with like great speed, with great speed all the way down the coast.
So all of a sudden there's people in Chile.
Wow.
Instead of this idea that people came into the Great Plains and then spread to the coasts, it's that people came down that route.
And, you know, that really old site, the currently oldest, the currently oldest, like, ironclad, absolutely accepted, academic consensus accepted site is that Snake River site.
Or on the Columbia drainage.
That they came down the coast and then the continent was populated by people who just followed these major rivers, these salmon runs and stuff.
Coastal fishing people migrated up these rivers following fish and then turned into, over time, became these mammoth hunters.
These interior grassland hunters.
But their genesis was in these seafaring people.
And as people came down, they kind of filled in.
So you go to the Tlingit or the Haida that live along the Alaskan coast now.
That's their ancestors, right?
They were perhaps people living that way, and those places were the first people to enter the continent.
So my time machine would be whatever the hell day that was.
joe rogan
That's what it would be.
steven rinella
To see that, man.
Because picture, like, you know, picture being the first person or the first group of people to see a continent.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
I mean, you can't even, you know what I mean?
joe rogan
Yeah.
How do we even know that that's the case, though?
steven rinella
We don't.
joe rogan
What if there's people that were before that?
steven rinella
There's an argument.
joe rogan
The thing is, like...
steven rinella
There's an argument.
joe rogan
Humans came from Africa, right?
steven rinella
Well, yeah.
The human diaspora is like anatomically, like the sort of widely accepted scientific explanation is that anatomically and behaviorally modern humans, there was many waves of hominids coming out of Africa, but sometime around 70,000 years ago.
Our current human ancestors came out.
They came into a Europe that was populated by Neanderthals, perhaps other hominids.
They kind of won, right?
And then spread around the world.
And the last continent outside of Antarctica, which was never, you know, the last continent to be occupied by humans outside of Antarctica, which arguably was never occupied by humans, would have been South America, was the last stop.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
And what's wild is there's monkeys down there.
steven rinella
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's what's wild.
steven rinella
But man, there's this theory called the Salutrian hypothesis, which is that Northern Europeans came over 10 plus thousand years ago.
There's always these different ideas that someone from somewhere else blew in on a raft.
There's always this thing, but what I'm talking about is a sort of like, again, the kind of like academically accepted idea, the sort of mainstream.
The idea remains, and it's supported by genetic, linguistic, everything, is that humans came out of the Americans, our Native Americans came out of Siberia through a Siberian pathway, probably in waves.
If you refer to now like Northern Coastal Peoples, Eskimo, Inuits.
They were a later wave.
They were different than what became the Athabascans to the south.
It was like a later wave.
So there could have been repeated waves of people coming.
But I've always been interested in the first wave.
Whoever they were, the first wave.
joe rogan
And when was that?
Are you aware of the Sage Wall in Montana?
steven rinella
No.
I'm aware of Montana.
joe rogan
You live there.
The Sage Wall is a recent discovery.
It was on private property.
These people, it was completely covered with woods and, you know, deadfalls and everything.
And they started cleaning it out and they found this thing that looks remarkably like a constructed wall.
That's the Sage Wall in Montana.
Oh, wow.
It's very strange.
It's very strange.
And it's a vertical wall.
It goes down 13 feet under the ground and it's long and straight.
And it's very confusing because it very much looks like placed stones that were cut and moved somehow in this particular way.
And there's a lot of...
unidentified
Oh, yeah, man.
steven rinella
That's a wild-looking wall.
joe rogan
Wild-looking.
See if you can find the overhead of it, Jamie, because when you look at the overhead, you're like, Jesus Christ, this looks like people put this there.
steven rinella
Yeah, the debate is, is it natural or man-made?
joe rogan
Yeah, well, there is some people that think it's man-made, and there's some people that think it's natural, but it's leaning much more towards man-made.
But it's confusing.
unidentified
Oh, you know, I am familiar with that area.
joe rogan
It's real weird.
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of...
joe rogan
A lot of natural formations.
steven rinella
Yeah, because you get fissures and rocks that are filled from volcanic activity.
Sure.
It's puzzling.
Maybe we'll do an episode on that.
I think we will.
joe rogan
Well, this gentleman right there, see that guy down there with the beard, Jamie?
That's the guy.
I think it's Wandering Wolf on...
I think that's his name.
On YouTube.
Yeah, Wandering Wolf.
He's been studying this for a while.
Please ignore his nose ring.
steven rinella
Oh, is that what that was?
I couldn't tell if he had a bug or if that was a nose ring.
joe rogan
But, like, this is crazy.
It's crazy because they're flat and straight and they look fairly uniform and they look like they're cut into position.
And there's also a bunch of these, you know, where they would grind things.
There's these...
Posts that sit out that look like they're carved outside that are similar to a lot of stuff they find in South America, Machu Picchu and stuff like that.
It's very, very weird stuff.
Well, because if that was made by people who and when and how Yep, yeah, my god I've I'm going natural, but we'll do a future episode on that question.
I think natural, too, until you look at some of them.
Some of those images, go back to some of those images, Jamie.
Some of those images are like, how the fuck?
They're so flat and straight, and look at that.
steven rinella
From that angle, it's insane.
From that angle, you would no doubt look and be like, that's a man-made wall.
joe rogan
It looks very stacked.
They're all cut square.
What's that, Jamie?
It does look fake, but it's real.
steven rinella
Is that a fake image, or is that the real image?
joe rogan
I can't tell.
steven rinella
You know what?
It's added to the picture.
jamie vernon
It doesn't look like the same stuff from the video.
steven rinella
Okay.
joe rogan
Well, let's see some of the images from the video.
Well, that one there is real.
That's legit.
That looks more real.
steven rinella
No, that's something different.
That's not the same sight.
Yeah, that looks like AI. That's not the same site and that's not a vegetation that grows around there.
That's some different goofing around shit.
joe rogan
Yeah, so here's a video of this guy walking around.
It's really interesting stuff because there's so much evidence of humans.
The mortal and pestle grinding holes and shit are all there.
So there was some human occupation in this area.
The question is, was this...
steven rinella
Have you followed that news that has come out about that boy, that Anzic One boy in Montana?
joe rogan
No.
steven rinella
Sounds like a Spielberg movie, don't it?
Yeah, it does.
So, there is a Clovis child that they found years ago near Wilsall, Montana.
It was from a Clovis hunter culture.
This child had been buried with projectile points and ochre.
And they've recently done work on like stable isotope work.
And it was like he had a diet of woolly mammoth.
joe rogan
Whoa.
Yeah.
steven rinella
Which people had always thought.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
Right?
But that's like this thing that gets always kicked around.
And I have a friend, David Meltzer.
I don't know if you're looking for guest suggestions, but Heffelfinger and Meltzer.
unidentified
Okay.
steven rinella
You fucking love him.
But anyway, Meltzer, he's an anthropologist.
He's always been involved in this debate about where these Clovis hunters and these Ice Age Americans, to what degree were they really these northern wild men killing mammoths with spears and shit, right?
And people have tried to, over the years, sort of emasculate these Ice Age hunters.
Being like, oh, they probably weren't really killing all these mammoths.
They probably found them and scavenged them.
And explaining away, David hate me saying this, but explaining away evidence that they were slaying mammoths.
And also explaining away the theory that they killed all the mammoths.
Right?
And they were eating a much more varied diet and using plant resources.
And they were kind of like a kinder, gentler Ice Age hunter.
So it's funny that out of this, as this debate is always waged on, it'd be like this accusation that in creating our idea of these Ice Age hunters, you create the kind you wish was there.
Right?
So a dude like me is going to be like, yeah, man, mammoth hunters.
Right, right.
And some other dude would be like, oh, no.
Berry pickers.
Yeah, berry pickers, right?
They were gentle.
But they finally just did all this work, and lo and behold, he was young, but he was drinking mother's milk.
And they were mammoth eaters.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
Which backs up this idea that those big-ass points...
Those big-ass points they made were, like, being used.
I participated in this study.
Me and some of the guys I work with participated in this study with Meltzer, this guy named Metten Aaron, who runs an experimental archaeology lab at Kent State University.
And they gave us all these stone tools.
And we had a dead bison laying there.
And we were supposed to just spend the day butchering the bison with stone flakes and also with Clovis points.
So we were supposed to butcher half with Clovis points.
And butcher half with stone blades.
They just wanted people who were expert butchers to do it.
You don't really know how anybody did anything, but just to see.
Because the problem they have in looking at the archaeological record is the only thing left is bone and stone.
Everything else is gone.
So when you find a mammoth ribcage eroding out of a riverbank, and lo and behold, there's a projectile point laying there, we had always said, oh, someone stabbed it with that point and killed it.
But do you really know that?
You'll see a mark on a rib, and you're like, oh, see, they shot it in the rib, and that's why it's got a scratch on its rib.
Well, do you really know that?
We just assume.
So we did this project to butcher this whole thing, a fresh dead bison, all the stone points, and then they went and cleaned all the bones.
This guy John Hayes from Hayes Tax Energy Studio did this way to treat the bones and clean them where you're not messing up the bones at all.
So now you have a set of bones that you know what happened to them.
And you have a set of stone tools that you know they were used for.
And the idea is that you're creating something to compare.
There's this famous Folsom site out of New Mexico.
Where all these bison skulls, these Ice Age bison skulls, they look different.
Like that skull you got out in your studio.
Big horn, you know, longer horned animal.
They all got these cut marks on the bone right here.
Inside the jaw mark.
Inside the jaw.
And people have been like, oh, it must have been from extracting the tongue.
And I even thought that.
I went to SMU and looked at those skulls and held those bones in my hand.
And I'm like, oh look, they were probably getting the tongues out and made all those cut marks inside the jawbone.
But what's funny, in going and extracting the tongue with stone tools, I didn't do shit what would have left any kind of mark like that.
And again, you don't know how they did what they did, but it creates an interesting data set so that when you do look at cut marks on bones, you can start putting together.
What might have caused it?
What he wants to work on next is they want to do an ostrich.
joe rogan
What do you think those cut marks were if they weren't extracting the tongues?
steven rinella
Dude, I got no idea.
joe rogan
Wow.
steven rinella
You're looking at them right there.
I don't know.
When I extracted the tongue with the stone, I extracted the tongue with stolen tools and I didn't have any need to go anywhere near that thing like that.
I don't know, but it just goes to show you look at stuff, you find a projectile point with a ribcage, and you're like, They stabbed it.
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
But then, well, maybe we're looking at Clovis points all wrong.
Maybe Clovis points were knives.
Maybe that big projectile point was a Clovis knife.
Or maybe it was both things.
Maybe when you find a mammoth skeleton that's got two or three broken Clovis blades, it wasn't that they had been jabbed into it, necessarily.
Maybe they were the butchering tools.
joe rogan
But then what would be the killing tools?
steven rinella
That's a great question.
Yeah.
I personally, me not being an academic who's invested my entire career into this question, I do know this.
I think that when people talk about, oh, they were finding them, I spent a lot of time outside.
You just don't find all this fresh dead shit laying around everywhere.
Right?
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
You could spend many, many, many, many, many days out wandering around the woods and you don't find fresh dead edible materials.
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
You find rotten shit, dried up shit, You find skeletons.
But I have a hard time swallowing the idea that all these mammoth kill sites were just where they happened to stumble across a fresh dead mammoth.
joe rogan
Yeah, that seems ridiculous.
steven rinella
And cut it up with a projectile point.
Or cut it up with a blade.
They were killing mammoths.
That's my take on it.
joe rogan
That makes much more sense.
And probably the mammoths weren't aware that they were even going to hunt them.
They probably weren't being hunted by anything.
steven rinella
That's this idea when we're talking about that.
filled up the North and South America, like a sort of motivational driver for that really quick spread would be that, let's say you pop out in the Great Plains and the animals have never seen a person, right?
A mammoth has never seen a person.
You just walk up and kill it.
And you do that for a couple months in some valley and then everything gets like, oh shit, it's one of them things and runs away.
Well, jump to the next valley.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
And find more of the ones that don't, you know, find more of the ones that have never seen you.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
You know, like, I've had occasion before to see, like, an elk that would have had no way to encounter a dog.
Encounter a dog.
And their attitude is kind of like, what the hell is that?
unidentified
You know what I mean?
steven rinella
They're, like, curious about it.
They're kind of looking at it.
So you can imagine, like, these early peoples could probably just walk up on a lot of shit and just kill it.
joe rogan
Probably, right?
steven rinella
Yeah, it's like, what's this thing going to do?
joe rogan
Fuck out of here.
steven rinella
And all of a sudden, like, dah!
Some bitch stabbed me.
So that was an idea that pushed how fast people spread around.
And then they weren't fighting each other, because there's no competition for resource.
They're not fighting each other, and they're enjoying very high reproductive rates.
Because they're drowning in food.
And there's no conflict.
joe rogan
I wonder what the wildlife populations were like back then, too, before humans...
Like, when humans did encounter...
When they first encountered North American wildlife, I wonder what the populations were.
steven rinella
Staggering.
joe rogan
Must have been crazy.
steven rinella
Just staggering.
Staggering.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
We'll never know.
joe rogan
We'll never know.
But if you had a time machine, that's your spot.
steven rinella
Well, they're getting closer to knowing now, because now they can do crazy shit.
Like, they can go into...
Pond sediments.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, stuff's shedding.
You know, you're shedding cells all the time.
At some point, you'll go down 10 feet into some pond and pull a little bit of sediment out and lay that sediment out and do some analysis and be like, oh, there's skin cells from six mammoths, a short-faced bear, right?
joe rogan
Right.
steven rinella
Whatever.
It's getting crazy.
You know?
It's funny, like, talking about Indiana Jones, like, that style.
Like, archaeology is becoming increasingly, anthropology, archaeology is becoming, like, the realm of the science.
Like, the lab scientist, you know what I mean?
Not the field work.
Like, it's so much more, it's such a Richard field of inquiry now to analyze stuff we already have than it is to go find new stuff.
You follow me?
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
And when you go on an archaeological dig, you know, they're always, they just...
They just dig a fraction.
There's a knowledge now.
There's a knowledge now that tomorrow we're going to know a bunch of shit we don't know.
So if we got a hundred squares, we'll just dig one now.
And the impulse used to be just to come in and destroy the whole site, right?
And wash everything away with hoses and just look for big bones and big stone points.
And you'd come away with thinking that they used big stone points to kill big bones because you just washed into the ditch.
All of that micro evidence, all of those small bones, all of the plant pollen, you just washed everything away because you kind of knew what you were looking for.
So we probably make the same mistake now.
So when you go to a dig, they just go like, we'll just check this little square and then leave.
You know, this is protocol now, knowing that in 10 years, 100 years, whatever.
Someone's gonna have a way better way.
They'll stick some little stick down there, and we'll tell them everything you need to know, you know?
joe rogan
Did I tell you about my friend John Reeves?
Did I ever tell you about the Boneyard in Alaska?
steven rinella
Oh, yeah.
No, you had him on the show.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
He comes on the show every year.
He was supposed to be the last guest this year, but he got pneumonia.
steven rinella
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
So he's coming on in February.
steven rinella
Oh, that shit's fascinating, man.
joe rogan
Yeah, that place is crazy.
You know, it's only six acres.
steven rinella
Is that right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Six acres.
Thousands and thousands of bones.
And what he thinks is it's like some sort of a natural disaster took place and probably asteroid impact.
There's a thick layer of carbon.
Thick layer of carbon.
And in the permafrost is all these bodies.
And they think that it's probably just washed all these bodies into a ditch.
And that's why there's so many of them there.
steven rinella
It's at the perfect spot.
joe rogan
Yeah, perfect spot.
They found animals that weren't even supposed to be in Alaska there.
steven rinella
It's like if you had La Brea Tar Pits to yourself.
joe rogan
Yes, exactly.
But it's all his property, so no one can go there.
So, you know, they've found them in the East River now because it turns out that – which museum was it, Jamie?
steven rinella
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
They dumped some of the bones in the East River.
So these people have actually gone down there and found them in the East River now.
They found a bunch of bison bones and all kinds of shit in the East River, which is really crazy.
steven rinella
Oh, it is.
joe rogan
Because exactly where they said that they dumped these things off, they found them now.
It's really wild.
unidentified
You should go to visit this guy's property.
steven rinella
I would like to do that.
joe rogan
That would be a great episode for your show because this whole thing is crazy.
And they may or may not have found human remains there.
They can't talk about it.
steven rinella
I imagine not.
That shit gets pretty complicated in a hurry, man.
joe rogan
It gets a little archaeological.
steven rinella
We did one on the lost Roanoke colony.
And there's archaeologists working on what happened at the Lost Roanoke Colony, and the minute you bring up, like, human remain conversations, people, it's just like...
joe rogan
Shut the fuck up.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Things get real weird.
steven rinella
Enormously complicated.
unidentified
Yeah.
steven rinella
I recently met a guy that does, he's Puebloan, so he's from one of the Pueblos in New Mexico, and his whole focus is on, he does repatriation for his Pueblo, like, you know, people not familiar with the Pueblo would be like, basically, you know, it's...
Akin to a tribe, right?
He works on repatriation for his tribe.
Mostly focuses on remains.
Getting back the remains of his ancestors from all these museums and stuff.
They want them back.
And I had said to him in this conversation, I'd said, hey, why can't there be a deal to be struck where you just say to the museum, okay, you keep one gram of that bone.
For your work.
Keep a gram of the bone and give the rest back to us.
He said that would never be acceptable to us.
It'd be like the same way if someone went and dug your...
Someone dug your grandpa's bones out of a graveyard and later you're like, hey, give me my grandpa back.
I'm like, no, we're keeping it.
joe rogan
Really?
steven rinella
We're going to do studies on him.
God, it's so complicated.
I think that it would be finding that.
What complicates a lot of that human remains stuff, too, especially with stuff that he's talking about, that stuff he has is as old as it did, is there's a little bit of a question, like, the groups that are there now, peoples that are there now, were the peoples that were there before.
unidentified
Right.
steven rinella
You know, because people move all the time, right?
You just look at, like, how the Comanche moved.
Look how the Sioux were in the upper Midwest and areas of Minnesota and wound up, you know, coming westward and all this movement.
So when you have bones, there's always a question of, well, typically it goes like this.
It's like, who was currently on the land?
But when you're talking about bones that are 10, 11, 12,000 years old, there's like a little bit of a, in my mind, there's a little bit of a question of like, well, who do you, how do you know that that person's direct descendants aren't in New Mexico?
Think about how much time passed.
Are you giving them to the wrong people?
joe rogan
Right.
That's a very good point.
steven rinella
Yeah, because people moved all over the damn place.
unidentified
God.
joe rogan
It's fascinating stuff.
steven rinella
But with the Pueblos, it is not that.
With the Pueblos, it is people that have had occupation on these places for hundreds of years, and people just came in and hauled their ancestors out to stick them in museums.
I was at a museum with my kids over Christmas break.
I was at a museum in Chicago.
And we go into this exhibit and all the walls, all the displays are papered.
So you can't see.
And there was a sign that just said, like, we're in a repatriation issue.
So they blocked it all.
Wow.
I don't even know what was behind the paper.
Whatever the display was, they're in a custody battle over their display and blocked it for view.
And years ago, I went to Salta to look at those children of the corn.
You ever hear about those children, those Incan children?
They left on that mountaintop and they kind of freeze-dried.
They have three of these children they found, but whatever the deal they made with the Incan, the contemporary Incan peoples, the deal they made is they'll only display one at a time.
And when I went, it was the child that had been struck by lightning after the fact.
You know, you just walk up and it's in a case, but you're looking at someone's baby, you know?
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
Looking at someone's young child.
It looked like the kid looked like you could stand up and walk away.
joe rogan
Really?
steven rinella
Perfectly preserved.
Even, like, the feathers are perfect.
unidentified
Wow.
steven rinella
Yeah.
Not quite stand up and walk away.
joe rogan
Yeah.
steven rinella
But, I mean, like, perfect, you know?
Perfect.
But, yeah, there's someone probably, and I haven't followed that situation, but someone is probably saying, I don't want my...
You know, I don't want my ancestor in your decorating your museum.
joe rogan
Yeah, understandably so.
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, wow.
joe rogan
What is it, man?
Oh, here's something that he found.
Look at this.
This had been sawed.
steven rinella
Oh, no shit.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So the piece that's missing...
steven rinella
He found that like that?
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
joe rogan
The piece that's missing that's cut right there, that was the piece that they made to date it.
steven rinella
Oh, I got it.
joe rogan
But the top part had been sawed.
steven rinella
Huh.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I forget how old that was.
steven rinella
No shit.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, but that's from John.
That's from the Boneyard.
I'm going to introduce you to him.
He's coming back in February.
You really need to get to know him.
He's a fascinating cat.
steven rinella
I would definitely like to.
joe rogan
He's a fun dude, too.
All right, Steve.
So your show, Hunting History, History Channel, is it available now?
Is it on now?
steven rinella
January 28th.
joe rogan
January 28th.
steven rinella
Okay.
10 p.m.
Eastern.
joe rogan
There it is.
Hunting History.
Steve Rinella.
steven rinella
There it is.
joe rogan
All right.
steven rinella
Thanks for letting me plug it, man.
joe rogan
Oh, always a good time.
steven rinella
No, I appreciate you letting me come on and plug it.
joe rogan
There's the mule deer that we shot together.
steven rinella
No, no, I like that, man.
joe rogan
12 years ago.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Time flies.
steven rinella
Yeah, it's your biggest animal to date.
joe rogan
Isn't that crazy?
It's kind of crazy.
That was 12 years ago.
steven rinella
Was it really?
joe rogan
It doesn't seem like it.
Yeah, but it was.
2012. Yeah.
steven rinella
Well, again, appreciate your generosity and especially appreciate it.
Let me come on and plug my project.
joe rogan
Anytime.
Anytime.
It's always good to talk to you.
steven rinella
And if you hung out with a dude in Canada in the 70s named John the Baptist, let me know.
joe rogan
Yeah, let him know.
steven rinella
I got to put it to rest.
I can't stop thinking about that guy.
joe rogan
All right.
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