This Past Weekend - Theo Von - #610 - Steven Rinella

Sept. 15, 2025 - This Past Weekend - Theo Von

01:52:47

#610 - Steven Rinella

Steven Rinella is an outdoorsman, conservationist, and writer. Check out the new season of his show “MeatEater” on Netflix, as well as “The MeatEater Podcast” available on all platforms. Steven joins Theo to talk about how humans have coexisted with animals throughout history, what goes into doing the craziest bird calls, and why hunters are doing more than anyone to promote conservation in America. Steven Rinella: https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/ ------------------------------------------------ Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Blue Chew: Go to http://bluechew.com to get your first month of BlueChew FREE with promo code THEO! Rocket Money: Go to http://rocketmoney.com/theo to cancel your unwanted subscriptions. Oracle: Head to https://www.oracle.com/theo to try OCI for free with zero commitment. Tecovas: Go to http://tecovas.com/theo to get 10% off when you sign up for email and texts. Perplexity AI: Ask anything at https://pplx.ai/theo and download their new web browser Comet at https://comet.perplexity.ai/ ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: tpwproducer@gmail.com Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Send mail to: This Past Weekend 1906 Glen Echo Rd PO Box #159359 Nashville, TN 37215 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend Twitter: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time	Text
	Today's guest is a renowned outdoorsman.
	He's a hunter.
	He's a survivalist.
	He has his own show, Meat Eater on Netflix, as well as his podcast.
	I had a great time learning about some of the beautiful and brutal aspects of our world.
	Today's guest is Mr. Steve Ranella.
	Oh, you're having a little, huh?
	You having a little bit of that?
	I'm familiar with that product.
	Oh, hell yeah, brother.
	We just gave some to an Amish kid the other day.
	Never had it, huh?
	Did you like it?
	What, Celsius?
	I mean, when you gave it to him, did he dig it?
	I mean, he definitely he couldn't, he couldn't bend his arms for a couple minutes.
	It hit him right.
	Because why?
	I mean, brother.
	Just unfamiliar.
	I think, yeah.
	Something like something, you know.
	You put that brain petrol that is Celsius into a damn Amish.
	You know?
	He might want to plug in something in.
	I mean, he might.
	I thought he's gonna get it.
	He's gonna put his finger in that.
	He wants to find out what it's all about.
	He's gonna put his finger in that socket.
	Yeah, oh, I uh I thought he did, I thought he's gonna get court-martialed right there or something.
	I don't know what was gonna happen.
	What was the circumstances you were hanging out with the Amish guy?
	We finally got a hold of the woodwork.
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah, no, no, no.
	Yeah, we finally got a hold of one.
	We've been trying to not capture an Amish or whatever.
	I don't know what the terminology is, but we've been trying to um wrangle one, I guess.
	Because you can't get a hold of them.
	You know, you can put messages out there, you can do message in a bottle or shit.
	They don't reply to a lot of that.
	And so finally we had a guy who was on Rumspringer.
	Yep.
	He was on their kind of like um, it's like spring break for the Amish, and uh, and he came to a comedy show.
	There he is, right there.
	And um while on Rumspringer, he looks young for Rumspringer.
	He's young.
	He got out there and he brought me this hat, too.
	And he came.
	Great, great kid though.
	We learned so much about it, but he'd never seen so many things.
	It was unbelievable.
	But he never had a hit of Celsius when we got it in him.
	Hmm.
	So we'll see.
	Now he's got his rum springer documented.
	Oh, yeah.
	But it might make it difficult for him to integrate back in.
	Oh, I'm sure, dude.
	Yeah, because people, well, maybe they won't, maybe his community won't know.
	Yeah, I don't, I mean, yeah, that's a good point.
	I don't even know if it'd be a good, it'd be a good honesty test.
	If they know you'll know they violated.
	How do they know?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	It's a good point, actually.
	So we're helping out.
	Yeah, but it was just interesting to get to talk somebody who'd lived like uh, you know, just a total different life than the average American, probably.
	Are you making a show right now or is this pre- are we pre-making the show?
	Oh, this can be the show.
	Yeah, I mean, we can start into it.
	Sorry.
	Oh, no, I don't care.
	And so that's one type of person who kind of has their own like way of living.
	Yep.
	And you're another type of person who has had a unique life and has like good, good, good transition.
	Was it?
	Yeah.
	Oh, damn.
	Um, I thought it was gonna be.
	I think I don't know what's gonna happen.
	But um, no, you have a show on Netflix called Meat Eater.
	And you guys are in your you guys are we made a lot.
	We meant we we got I got a 13th season of the show coming out.
	We made many, many, many episodes over the years.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And they they appear in a lot of different places.
	Yep, we've seen some of them on YouTube.
	Um, I've gotten to enjoy some of them.
	So thank you so much, man.
	It's definitely exciting to watch.
	It's really beautifully shot to you guys' show.
	You went turkey hunting with Mike Waddell, I heard.
	Oh, yeah, I did.
	Yeah, I went down there, and it was fun, but it's like I don't know, some of the tur, it's like they just seem like an unwell bird.
	What do you mean?
	Turkeys.
	Unwell in what way?
	They just don't seem like they're like a top, like I don't want to say like they on it, like I don't want to say uneducated.
	They just seem like they like they got picked last for gym, kinda.
	Dude, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
	Really?
	Oh, yeah.
	About a turkey?
	Yeah, if you look at a turkey, it doesn't seem like they like they can't do they just are yeah, they just I don't know, they weren't doing a lot.
	Dude, it's a big ass bird.
	His head changes colors from red to white to blue.
	He tastes good.
	Yeah, he's basically the toe that's a big thing.
	He's just walk around the woods making insane noises.
	Yeah, which is But I mean, like he the it's an omnivore.
	It can eat all kinds of it could eat all kinds of stuff.
	Okay.
	Well, now you're selling me on it.
	Yeah, why elderly?
	Name a better Name a better bird.
	It's like you could be, oh, a bald eagle.
	He eats a bunch of rotten fish from the side, like a turkey, that's America's bird, dude.
	I are you familiar with a gentleman named Ben Franklin?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Do you know that Franklin didn't like the bald eagle as a national bird because it was a scavenger?
	And he threw out some it's debated how honest you it's bait is debated if he was trying to be a smart ass or not.
	Ben Franklin said America ought to go with the wild turkey, because at least it's a vein bird.
	What is vein bird mean?
	It's beautiful.
	He puffs his feathers.
	The male puffs his feathers all out.
	Yeah.
	He's got a snood.
	He's got like a imagine like a pecker on your laid across your face.
	Okay.
	That changes all the time.
	It gets erect.
	Wait, it goes limp.
	Turkey has that?
	Yeah, dude.
	It's like I to just to like come in and like start disparaging the turkey right off the top of the bat.
	You don't know me.
	I'm just okay.
	I'm just it's like very it's like uh it's disrespectful.
	That that is a that is a that is the the best that's the best bird in our in our country.
	Okay.
	Well, look, I didn't no one's ever first of all lobbied for this animal in front of me.
	Well, Franklin.
	Well, not in front of you, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Right.
	I didn't know I didn't I didn't know him personally.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	And you don't know how old I am.
	Maybe I would say.
	But no, uh, Waddell did not.
	Waddell was just like, we're killing these MFs, and he used some slurs.
	I'll say that straight up.
	He used a couple of slurs, and I was like, I don't think those are for birds or an a malia even.
	But he was like, I think I uh I think I just had a unique um angle into it.
	Tell me more about that nose weaner that they got or that nose.
	It's called a snood.
	Okay.
	Bring it up.
	They got see, you get into turkey anatomy, man.
	They got a lot going on for him.
	They got a snood.
	There's not many birds that have like basically a uh so they have a cloaca.
	Like birds have a cloaca like called a like a uni hole.
	All their actions defecating, taking a leak.
	Well, when they defane take a leak, it's kind of a single deal.
	Okay.
	I'll do that.
	They have sex through the uni hole.
	When they shit, you can tell a male from a female by the shape of its shit.
	Wow.
	A male throws a J-shaped hooked shit.
	So there's not many birds you can sex his shit.
	Yeah.
	He's got a snood, they got spurs, sometimes an inch and a quarter long for fighting.
	Oh, yeah.
	You ever been to a cock fight?
	Mm-hmm.
	Okay.
	They got spurs.
	Look at that.
	Some of those spurs are so big you can hang the turkey by the spur on a branch.
	That's called a limb hanger.
	That means he's huge.
	Some got a they got like pull up the beard.
	Pull up the beard.
	Pull up the beard.
	They got a beard, which is actually a feather.
	But look at that.
	Hold on, let me see it.
	When he's big, when that when that gets so big that it drags on the ground, you know what you call him?
	Rope dragger.
	Oh, yeah.
	So you got limb hangers, rope draggers.
	Yeah.
	It's just you kind of I could, you know, I could walk out of this room right now.
	Okay.
	And it'd be like, you know what I mean?
	Yeah.
	But I'm not gonna do that.
	Well, first of all.
	Yeah, because you talk bad about the America's bird.
	I appreciate that.
	And look, I'm glad that I'm not gonna get up and storm out, dude.
	Uh, you might.
	Yeah.
	But look, you won't storm out without teaching me something, I'll say that.
	And I didn't know any of that.
	Turkeys are great.
	Yeah.
	Your head changes from red, white to blue.
	It's kind of like they knew that they were gonna be America's bird.
	Oh, yeah, they're the fucking Trace Atkins of birds.
	When they get real excited, like when you see when he's coming in and his head gets that whitish color to it, uh-huh.
	He is fired up.
	Okay, so what does that mean when their head changes to different colors?
	You want to look at this guy.
	He's blue and white, like blue and white.
	He's torn between some feelings.
	Yeah, blue and white, he's he's in.
	He's like blue and white, he's coming in.
	You hunt him in the spring during the breeding season.
	Okay.
	Blue and white, he's coming in and he's he's he's thinking he's thinking about ass.
	Okay, so he's looking for sex.
	But yeah, Wattell had us, we were in the off season.
	They were in the locker room when we went to chase him.
	They were not even on the field.
	They were fucking back there getting uh physical therapy.
	I mean, we were in some.
	I was like, should we even?
	Yeah, some of them had their towels around their necks, they were sitting there texting their wives.
	Like it was there was the offseason.
	If he's coming in, like he's coming in, you see a blue head.
	Okay.
	And then all of a sudden, you know what?
	And he's coming in, he's all puffed out.
	And they did another thing.
	So I know, I'm sorry.
	Well, they got so they got the big, you heard the big gobble.
	Yes.
	Right.
	If you're if you're telling a turkey hunting story, and you get to the part of the story where like picture you're telling a story that has a gun in it.
	Okay.
	And we get to the part of the story where the gun goes off, you go like, and I heard bang.
	Right.
	It's not what it sounds like.
	Right.
	But you go bang.
	And then poo.
	Yeah.
	A friend of mine's Latvian, and when they hear when they get to a part of a story where the gun goes off, they say, blouch.
	Okay.
	So if you're telling a turkey story and he gobbles, it's hard to make the gobble noise.
	So in the story, you'd go, pow.
	Pow.
	Yeah.
	But it's like but if if you when he's coming in, like if he's coming in and he thinks he's coming into a hen, you're making a hen noise.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So the noise that the man that that um like Michael Waddell was making, and he makes that noise really well.
	Oh, yeah, he's he's the best of the best.
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, he was calling a couple of fucking buttons I mean, even some busty chicks from the gas station was like he was so he's making a hen noise.
	And what's what's oh dude, people were dudes were coming out of the closet when he was doing it.
	I mean, he'll fucking he'll call he'll he'll get you, he'll get people going.
	No, he's very good.
	And what what like what would have happened and what would have happened in the natural setting there is the gobbler is just cruising.
	Okay, and the gobbler is that big male turkey.
	He's a big male turkey, he's cruising, and chicks are supposed to hear him, and like he doesn't he he's kind of got his little route, and they're supposed to kind of come into him.
	So he's on the highway, going down the highway, and they're kind of coming on the ramps.
	Okay, the on ramps to catch him.
	Oh, oh, so there's what you're trying to do is you're trying to get him to be like, Well, I'm gonna go over there and have a C. Like it would that's not normally what I would do, right?
	But what is going on over there?
	I need to go out of my way now to go have a C. Ah.
	What's happening?
	If when he's coming, you see like a blue head and he's coming, and he's going like this.
	You can't hear it.
	Like, if you hear it, he's in range.
	He's going here's what it sounds like.
	He's okay.
	He's doing two things.
	He's spitting.
	Okay, he's making a noise.
	We always goof on it and go like but he's it's like he's making a noise with his mouth.
	Okay, and he's taking his wings and on the ground.
	Okay.
	And that is the that is a like extremely exciting noise to hear.
	So the first part is with their actual, they do it with their mouth, and the second part they do it with their wings on the ground.
	He's drumming.
	Wow.
	So it's a real mating call.
	Yeah, like he'll you'll hear him, like, you'll hear him.
	He's kind of like making, he's like doing a vocalization.
	He's doing a vocalization, but it like he's got his his wings.
	You'll you hear on the ground.
	Okay.
	And you'll even see, you'll sometimes be going down a sandy trail or something, you'll see the wing drags, and you can tell that one's been cutting it out there.
	And they do this little dose.
	Wow.
	Oh yes, dude, it's the best thing in the world.
	But if he's coming in and all of a sudden his head turns red, his head turns red and lifts up, and if he goes, game's up.
	Oh, he knows.
	He knows that you he knows that he knows that it's not good.
	Like when you hear that noise, he's on his way out.
	Okay, what's the prop what wait when you hear what noise is on the way up the when he putts.
	Oh, when he puts his head goes boom, red lifts up and putts, he's gone.
	But they don't do anything too quick, but that's his way of saying, like, I don't like it.
	Wow.
	This isn't about ladies anymore.
	Oh, it's about dudes being secretive, pretending they're women.
	No, they're like an absolutely fascinating bird.
	You know, I took uh Wow, yeah, I didn't know.
	Like you better not, you you know, you know Rogan.
	I turkey hunting with him years ago, and he wound up being kind of underwhelmed by turkeys.
	There might be something like uh like some kind of like offshoot of being a comedian, is it you can't appreciate turkeys?
	Well, I think there's you think that there might be something to that?
	That's a good question.
	I think um oh, I remember watching this, he had Brian Callan too, which was that's hilarious.
	Oh, yeah, they didn't appreciate turkeys.
	Drove me uh yeah.
	I know Turkey people do not like it if you do not like turkey uh talking and being a thinking about turkeys.
	No, if you just said something bad about my three kids, I'd be like, Yeah, I see that that's fair.
	But like with the turkey deal, no.
	Right.
	It's baked.
	Yeah.
	Turkey's baked into American history.
	I didn't know that much about turkeys.
	I think if I knew some of this, and maybe I didn't even I didn't ask enough stuff, you know.
	I think if I'd have asked more stuff and I'd have known a little bit more of like the lower, I think I probably would have been more hyped about it.
	Yeah, with the one more lore bit.
	Yeah, sure.
	So uh when at the time of like when Europeans arrived in North America, uh there were turkeys, they they think there may be turkeys in like 34 states, and then they were extirpated from many of those states because they were good to eat, everybody wanted to eat them.
	People to hunt them at night, shoot them out of the trees at night.
	It was a popular food item.
	Yeah.
	And they nearly wiped them out and it got to where there's only turkeys hiding out in like the deepest patches of swamps, yeah, up in the highest mountain woods, you know, hiding out here and there.
	And it got bad, right?
	There's only a couple states where you're allowed to hunt them anymore.
	And then they started putting them back out there.
	You can hunt turkeys and uh you can hunt turkeys now in 49 states.
	Wow.
	You can hunt turkeys now in more states than had turkeys.
	A cost to that of the bird is that people now take the bird for granted.
	Like from a PR standpoint, I was talking about eagles earlier.
	From a PR standpoint, eagles are kind of everywhere now.
	There's still people who'll see an eagle and they'll be like, oh my god, an eagle.
	They're like, well, dude, you know, we have a little shack in Alaska, and you might see 13 eagles in one tree.
	Yeah.
	So from a PR standpoint, they have a little bit of they they like you risk overexposure as a bird.
	Turkeys are so everywhere now that now we have like town turkeys.
	But there's wandering around like stray animals.
	So the mystique, it like it costs them some of their mystique.
	Ah.
	And then people will get a sense from town turkeys, which aren't hunted.
	They'll get a sense of that a turkey is whatever, that he's not cautious, that he's not careful, right?
	Right, that'll just use any crosswalk or whatever.
	Yeah.
	So a lot of times when people disparage the turkey, they're referring to some town turkey, but they don't know what a turkey he's out there busting ass in the woods with people trying to kill them and coyotes trying to kill them, and bobcats trying to kill them, and red fox trying to kill them, and possums eating their eggs and skunks eating their eggs and raccoons eating their eggs, great horned owls blasting them out of trees, and they survived through all that.
	So when I think of a turkey, I'm thinking of a persecuted turkey.
	Some people are thinking of a town turkey.
	Yeah.
	It's just different.
	Yeah, I think I was probably thinking of like, yeah, I mean, there's a turkey right there who's almost town turkey.
	Yeah, catching a bus to work or whatever.
	I mean, that's fucking unbelievable that that's what's going on.
	But no, I didn't, I didn't know.
	I mean, I think that gives me like definitely a different appreciation for them.
	I didn't know they had so much baked in, like they're there's such a thermometer of like sexual activity and so many uh like little ratings are relevant right on them and the way that they operate and the sounds that they make.
	They're a dynamic bird.
	When that I'll agree to 100%, man.
	So all like here's another thing about them.
	Can I even one more?
	Yeah.
	Most of the domestic animals that we utilize, okay.
	When you when you go when you go into a store and and you see what's for sale down there for domestic needs, you know, whether you buy you buy weird shit, like you buy lamb, goat, uh, pork, uh, beef, okay.
	That's all that all winds up being like Eurasian species of Eurasian origin that became domesticated.
	And when you say Eurasian, what are you talking about?
	You're talking about animals.
	Animals that are indigenous, animals that are endemic to Europe and Asia became like the domestics that we know today.
	Wow.
	So when you see like a horse, that's a Eurasian creature.
	Um cattle came from a thing called the oryx, okay.
	Goats came from other continents, sheep, other continents.
	The turkey is uniquely North American.
	Really?
	Okay, so when the Spanish came, they took turkeys.
	They drew turkeys from Mesoamerica, brought them back to Europe and turned them into like the white looking butterball turkeys through selective breeding, and then brought those turkeys back to the new world.
	But it's like the new world's contribution.
	It's North America's contribution to The domesticated species that we know and love today.
	Got it.
	So if you go into a meat market and you're like they got all the normal shit laid out, Turkey is one that you're like, that that's origin is here.
	It's a it's a new world creature.
	Because the new world didn't produce the new world didn't produce domestics.
	Like they didn't the people we haven't like effectively domesticated new world animals, but the turkey's an exception.
	Wow, so that really is kind of our national animal, huh?
	Oh, yeah, dude.
	Do you think it's our most national animal, not just bird?
	I can't answer that.
	I haven't thought about that before.
	Yeah.
	Damn, dude.
	No, thanks, bro.
	Yeah, I think it's interesting, like yeah, to learn about that kind of stuff.
	I when I was growing up and stuff, I didn't have like a lot of influence, like in that kind of world, you know.
	Like wild the wildlife world.
	Yeah, I think hunting or something.
	I mean, the first thing.
	I mean, I saw a buddy of mine get shot by a couple brothers at Mardi Gras once.
	That was like the my intro to hunting, you know.
	Like, and I was like, oh shit.
	Did you live or die?
	Huh?
	He lived.
	Yeah.
	Where did he get hit?
	He got hit in the back, kind of right here.
	Just a stray bullet.
	Um, yeah, look like a like aimed at him, or he just caught a bullet.
	Aimed at him.
	Oh, I got it.
	Yeah.
	Or like semi-aimed, I guess, yeah.
	I mean, the guy looked like he didn't know what he was doing that much, but he was shooting.
	Yeah.
	Um that's you know, I said I wanted to ask you a question.
	I wanted to add like how many years did you spend growing up in Louisiana?
	When I was I was reading up on your background a little bit, and you had spent time in Illinois, but also in Louisiana.
	Yeah, I spent time in Louisiana until I think I was maybe 21 or 22.
	And um, but yeah, we go up to Illinois in the in the uh in the summers and fish.
	We did a ton of fishing, and we would do a good bit of fishing in Louisiana, but um I just never really got into hunting.
	The first time I ever went hunting was with Michael Waddell.
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah.
	What I want with Louisiana, have you that was the last state I ever went to?
	And I mean, like went to went to was Louisiana.
	Have you did you switch?
	Did you switch to Gulf of America?
	No.
	You didn't switch.
	No, I would be willing, I want to see how it pans out first.
	Because Mexico, bring it up.
	Let's get a look at that big puddle, brother.
	Because what I'm trying to see is where is most of the land around it.
	Well, shit all over the place.
	Northern South America.
	I think you do a year for each area, like maybe you do like everybody gets a year, and then you look back and see how good that year was.
	You do like, and then they get it.
	You know what I'm saying?
	You get one year to operate that MF or and then you see who really owns that bitch.
	That's to me, that's like a fair way to do it.
	Um yeah, the reason I was asked about it is we once I found out about Louisiana, we filmed a couple, we filmed a number of episodes down there.
	I started going there with friends because we spearfish the oil rigs.
	And uh, and so right when all that shit was heating up, okay, we're like cutting an episode about that was filmed out in the Gulf.
	And between the time I wrote the VO and the time we recorded the VO, it didn't change all this shit hit the fan.
	Okay.
	So I'm sitting there and in my in my script, it's Gulf of Mexico.
	But then it switches.
	So we're in the studio and I'm talking to my colleagues, and we're trying to decide what way we roll on it.
	We tried doing like a joke.
	We tried doing like the Gulf of uh, you know, but then we thought that's like a dated joke.
	And in the end, after careful contemplation, I was like, I I can't switch.
	Yeah.
	Like I'm old, you know, I'm I'm half a century old.
	Yeah.
	It's just it's maybe I'll leave it to the youngers.
	But um for me, I I I I can't like I can't do it.
	I can't switch.
	Yeah, it just seemed kind of like I I think you gotta figure out who's gonna earn it.
	I think you gotta find some way.
	Maybe there's a competition each year, and then between Mexico and America and some of the other countries, those are smaller countries that are touching it.
	I think like Cuba.
	Um it ain't gonna be the Gulf of Cuba, though.
	Yeah, they're probably yeah, they're they probably wouldn't let that happen.
	But I think you have a competition each year, and whoever wins it, they get to name it.
	Maybe it's a soccer game or something, and whoever wins it, they get it for the year.
	Yeah, that's kind of fucking dope, actually.
	Like a soccer tournament isn't really applicable.
	Well, I think it's applicable, Steven.
	And what I'm gonna tell you is this, brother.
	That's as far as I got with that.
	But um, I think it's um I think the soccer would be fun because a lot of people love soccer.
	That's what I'm thinking, you know.
	But yeah, maybe it's a fishing rodeo.
	But I think then they're uh aren't they automatically gonna kick our ass?
	I don't know.
	I was trying to think something we'd win better.
	Maybe it's a and this would actually be this is actually a great idea, I think.
	It's 10 events.
	It's Mexico and America, yes, look of all the shit, man.
	Yeah.
	Swimming in there.
	Hunting on the edge of it.
	I wonder if we could get spearfish in it.
	Spear fishing and just fucking somebody singing near the edge and seeing if officials swim up.
	That's fishing.
	Um, you know, I was gonna tell you about these.
	I told your producer this.
	Uh guys I work with were buying these Celsiuses.
	And I didn't know that I didn't hadn't I didn't really read the what was on there.
	So I was drinking them all damn time.
	Like they were I was drinking them like like uh like seltzers, and I was having a hard time sleeping.
	Someone pointed out, it's like, well, shit, you've been drinking those stupid things all day.
	And I was I was like, I thought I was drinking LaCroise or something.
	But it is good.
	I know that.
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	Um dude, let's listen to real quick to Michael White L play that.
	Let's let's let's listen to him.
	He's gonna make some turkey noises.
	I think that's a good idea.
	I like him, man.
	He's a fun guy.
	Oh, he's so great, dude.
	I get to spend, we go to a summer camp together every year with him and his family and it's fucking hilarious.
	It's hilarious.
	It's hilarious.
	I would say volume control and going from soft to aggressive, if that's what you want to call it, or louder, it's important to find in a diaphragm.
	If you get those tones and you can control that, it don't have to sound perfect.
	Um, my opinion on turkey calling rhythm is more important than specifically the sound of it.
	That's what I've been saying.
	Some people that's what I've been saying.
	Dude, I think one thing that would be cool.
	Wonder if he could put together almost like a animal call orchestra where it was like you had this sort of like like an orchestra pit and he and somebody was like the conductor and they had all the animal calls.
	That's good idea.
	It'd be kind of neat.
	We got I was hip on this idea for a while.
	We didn't take as far as I wanted to, but what I wanted to do is I got a directional.
	We bought a directional mic.
	And I wanted to build a catalog of I didn't know what I was, I never thought about what I was gonna do with it.
	We actually bought the damn thing.
	I wanted to build a catalog of animal noises.
	Yeah.
	Um so we picked up different noises and then kind of abandoned it.
	I think because I didn't know what we didn't hadn't really decided what we're gonna do with them.
	I could think of something.
	I just wanted them.
	Oh yeah.
	Like a great catalog of animal noises that people wouldn't know.
	You could do a couple things with them that come into my mind.
	One of them is you could the orchestra.
	Yeah, create to have that.
	A second one is people that are deceased, put a special headset on them.
	It guarantees it'll play for 30 years or whatever.
	They get to have that, all the best animals of the world on the way out.
	A third idea, I think it could be neat would be if you created, oh, this would be cool.
	You create one of those things.
	I shouldn't say it'd be cool.
	Who knows?
	Might be horrible.
	I don't think it's that great.
	I'm gonna say it.
	What it is is it's like one of those white noise machines, but it's all the fucking animals, dude.
	And then Steve Ronell is fucking come sleep with Steve, it's called.
	That sounds a great thing, man.
	I gotta check my wife on that shit.
	Oh no, every now and then, every now and then in the distance of the animals, you hear Steve's wife be like, it better just be you in there.
	But that's what it is a special machine, and it's all and then every now and then you can go to different regions of the world and hear them.
	You go to Africa.
	You go to like sleep with me in Africa.
	Yeah, sleep.
	Sleep with me in Asia or whatever.
	Yeah, sleep with me in Alabama, and every now and then there's just some country dude, and he's like, oh, something's I'm gonna go fuck one of these things or whatever.
	You're like, whoa, whoa, buddy.
	But it's just like a unique way to fall asleep at night.
	Are you hip to the are you hip to the app Merlin?
	I've not even heard of it.
	Yeah, you should check it out.
	Um I've had people that design the app on uh on your podcast?
	Yeah.
	So you can't call Meat Eaters too.
	It's called the Meet Eater Podcast.
	Meteor Podcast.
	So when you're out in your art, your yard and you hear birds off in the distance, anywhere, and you open it up, it just listens and tells you what birds tells you what it is a phenomenal app.
	The reason I bring that up is it's what's what is harmful to people's uh self-esteem is when you're turkey hunting and you're making you're mimicking the noises.
	So we'll open up Merlin and be like, oh, is it picking you up or not, bro?
	Is it is it throwing is it saying there's a turkey over there?
	Is there is it not saying there's a turkey over there?
	Yeah.
	Like I got friends that are very that put a enormous amounts of energy into learning how to mimic the call of a barred owl.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Like you mean those what is it?
	Yeah, they go like a roll.
	Yeah, but you do it loud as shit.
	Okay, hold on, just anyways, give me a shit.
	Yeah, I'm not good at it.
	Southerners are good at it.
	It's a very southern thing.
	Like there's like Yankees that can do it, but they're not gonna do it like a southerner.
	The barred owl, pull it up.
	I just want to get a gander at it.
	Sorry, you had it up.
	Yeah, pull up Clay Newcomb.
	Say Clay Nuke and Bard Owl.
	Or unless you want to hear the real thing.
	No, I want to start with this man.
	Well, he's a southerner.
	Oh, yeah, he is.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, this is me and Clay.
	Oh, that shit.
	You see Clay and the birds, right?
	Anyhow.
	Definitely, dude.
	You gotta stay in school, brother.
	Well, it's the what is fun is to open up Merlin and see who's got it.
	And then get off a ways.
	Yeah.
	And so one of my buddies who is a Yankee, he's a northerner, buddy Seth, like he's a real good owl caller.
	Yeah.
	And it started realize when he realized that Merlin, like when he realized that Merlin wasn't picking him up, wasn't putting him down as a bard owl.
	He like had like an emotional crisis and started redoing his shit and working on his shit until Merlin, he had to change his stuff until you could figure out why Merlin wasn't grabbing him.
	Look, all I'm telling you is that motherfucker ain't registering on Merlin.
	That's all look.
	I'm gonna shoot you straight.
	That's crazy.
	It's also crazy to be.
	I actually now this I really understand, wanting to be this animal.
	And my my being owl.
	Yeah.
	Wanting to really get into their head.
	And we had I've had a little bit of owl, actually.
	My sister's husband cooked two owls during Thanksgiving.
	Well, he might want to keep he might want to keep that more secret.
	Yeah, I don't know if he did it.
	He I mean, if there were I haven't seen him in a long time.
	That's what I'll tell you.
	But he uh it's not a lot of meat, I'll tell you that.
	It's kind of like the like you see those women in Little House on the Prairie, a lot of skirts, not a lot of meat under there, you know?
	Yeah, nothing.
	That's a good way to put it.
	You'd think it's gonna be Philadelphia under there, but it's a little more Arizona when you get under there.
	Yeah, see, I'd tell you good story my father told me, but I don't mean he's dead, so they're not gonna do anything bad.
	I will tell it.
	I don't know why my father did this.
	Okay.
	I don't know why my father did this.
	But and talks about that like a lot of skirt, not much meat, yeah.
	So obviously, my my father was from another time.
	My dad was born in 19.
	He had me when he's old.
	He's born in the Great Depression.
	Oh, wow, like 1910?
	No, not that late.
	He he uh he was a World War II veteran.
	Oh, wow.
	Anyhow, thank you, Mr. Ranella, for your service.
	He tells a story about sitting deer hunting with his bow and some oh, there he is on the right there.
	Um he tells a story about sitting deer hunting with his bow and uh deciding to shoot an owl with his bow, and he says he doesn't he like feels like he hits the owl.
	I can't account for why he would decide to do this, it's not something I would do.
	I don't condone it.
	Shoots the owl and like hits it dead center.
	But he said the owl doesn't even change tune.
	Wow, because he realized just it's all feathers, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, it's all brasier, baby.
	No tip.
	That was his only owl hunting story.
	And he didn't well, the owl escaped unharmed.
	Yeah.
	Motherfucker, bro.
	What are we doing?
	What are we doing, bro?
	Oh, yeah, there, yeah, there you go.
	If you don't think all of the the world is a psyop, look at this MF or homie.
	Look at this thing right here.
	You know, uh, you want to know a current controversy about the barred owl?
	Mm-hmm.
	I'd love to.
	The noise that Clay was just making there and the owls are making.
	Okay, do you remember back to do you remember back to the kind of culture war issue around spotted owls?
	Like logging in the Pacific Northwest and the spotted owl.
	Well, I think they were tearing down their habitats, right?
	Exactly.
	And then the spotted owl became this happens to animals now and then, where a spotted owl stopped being an owl and kind of became like a cultural emblem.
	Oh, yeah, like when they put him on frontier airlines, like on their wing.
	Yeah, sure.
	It'd be like like wolves occupy this now.
	Like there's wolves as flesh and blood creatures, and then there's sort of the the symbolism of the wolf.
	Right.
	So the spotted owl became a symbolism of land use, you know, like land use controversy.
	Okay.
	Meaning that you have loggers in the Pacific Northwest trying to produce harvest, you know, harvest timber products.
	But um, there's this owl they're trying, this endangered species, this owl that they're trying to protect.
	So the owl becomes this kind of like proxy symbol for whether we should cut trees or not.
	I remember even in Dumb and Dumber, they had the Ben went to the banquet where they were raising money for the spotted owl, you know.
	Exactly.
	Okay, so it became like a cultural thing.
	Bard owls are one of those species like Canada geese, white-tailed deer, crows that do really well that they benefit off people, right?
	Like the more people there are and more places, the more beneficial it is to that owl.
	That owl does well in disturbed ecosystems.
	There, they they like people, they'll hang out above your house, they'll hunt in your yard.
	Like, we don't bother them.
	Other things hate people.
	But this thing that's gradually happening is barred owls, which were historically more in the eastern U.S., yeah, are colonizing the the spotted owls range and displacing spotted owls.
	So there's this big push, and there was even federal money.
	I don't know where it stands right now.
	I think the current administration was rolling it back.
	There was a push where they were going to go kill right there.
	They were going to cull 470,000 barred owls in the Pacific Northwest.
	To keep them from migrating?
	The spotted owl.
	The spotted owl.
	Fuck.
	And I think they might have pulled that money.
	I'm not sure.
	Oh.
	But just a little like, you know, like wildlife politics.
	Like there's always wildlife politics brewing, you know?
	Yeah.
	And so there's this kind of thing like, does it make sense?
	You know, that you ask the question.
	And it's not like people are moving them in trucks.
	They're moving on their own.
	So if like if this bird is getting there on his own.
	It's nature.
	Yeah, he's getting there on his own, uh, under his own wing, spreading across.
	Is that can you really call it that that's like colonization?
	Or is it just that this natural?
	Like throughout your 45 years of life, raccoons have gone north and west throughout your 45 years of life, opossums have gone north and west.
	Barred owls have gone west, all on their own.
	It's human in that they're sort of like our crop fields, our clearings, our developments don't bother them.
	They're beneficial to them.
	Right.
	So we don't have an effect really on it.
	Yeah.
	So like it's happening, and they're talking about you know, dusting off that many, uh, you know, dusting off that many owls, and um, I don't know.
	I mean, that's interesting.
	Yeah, it's like how much do you want to mess up with what Mother Nature is doing, you know?
	It says right here, yes, funding for the barred owl removal initiative was recently pulled in July 2025.
	The Trump administration terminated three critical federal grants totaling about 1.1 million, which were essential for launching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services planet, coal barred owls across California, Oregon, and Washington.
	Who was gonna do that?
	Were they just gonna send some?
	How would they go about that?
	Do you think I applied for one of those gigs one time?
	They were doing uh I just thought it was kind of interesting.
	There's another animal that lives that is in more places than it was historically, the mountain goat.
	And there was this project one time to to they were trying to get mountain goats out of Olympic um was it out of no, no, no, not of Olympic National Park.
	I can't remember.
	Pull up a mountain goat.
	It's a great animal.
	Now you do not see a lot of these around here.
	No, no, no, no.
	But they were looking for teams of people to go do this uh mountain goat coal.
	Yeah, of course they were.
	And so we made a we made like a professional wrestlers, dude.
	We made a team to we made a team to do the mountain goat coal, and our team was not selected because a part of the thing was you they wanted you to keep your mouth shut.
	And I think that they looked and they're like, this guy's not gonna keep his mouth shut about that shit.
	He's like a fucking writer.
	So they're like, I think they saw through me.
	And I and I had a I had a crack commando team put together, yeah, but didn't get the nod.
	Oh, because I think that they could see that like let's say you're a writer and you're trying to get in the military.
	They're like, yeah, I got a feeling.
	This guy's gonna be.
	This ain't patriotism.
	Yeah, do you know what I'm saying?
	So I didn't get the I didn't get the job.
	It's almost like Armageddon, where that team gets chosen to go save the world or whatever.
	You guys should have got the chance, brother.
	That'd be a great movie.
	I had a crack commando team put together.
	Really?
	Who'd you get on it?
	You get any diversity on it?
	How do you attack it?
	No, I didn't do no.
	This was before DEI.
	No, this is the same.
	You didn't do all that.
	No, you know, now that I review it in my mind, it was decidedly, it was decidedly uh it was a it was a uh group of guys that you could mistake for me.
	Yeah, okay.
	That was my mountain goat team.
	Yeah, yeah.
	They're gonna do the same, like they're fixing to do the same thing in uh Grand Teton.
	In the Grand Teton National Park, yeah, because mountain goats are co mountain goats are largely in the coastal ranges historically.
	God, they're beautiful, aren't they?
	Well, yeah.
	So you got like like Idaho, Colorado, Utah, um, they all have non-native mountain goat populations.
	Oh, yeah.
	South Dakota has a non-native mountain goat population.
	And when you say non-native, that means that they just ended up there, they weren't.
	They were drove in.
	Ah.
	They were drove in.
	They were brought in.
	You wouldn't believe, like, if you're interested in animals, man, you wouldn't believe how much humans have reshuffled the deck.
	Of how animals exist.
	Of where they're like of distribution of animals in the world or in mostly in America.
	World too.
	Yeah.
	We have a lot, like our country hosts African species in certain places.
	I mean, totally wild feral animals.
	We have African species running around in our country.
	We have Asiatic species running around in our country.
	Um we've just completely reshuffled the deck.
	Like I was saying, like at you know, historically there was turkeys in 34 states.
	You can hunt turkeys in every state, but Alaska now.
	Wow.
	Like we're always we like we've been very good at moving it around.
	And we used to have the ambition of moving it all around.
	Now we have the ambition of trying to put it back the way we found it.
	Yeah.
	But for a while, the ambition was to like, I want more the merrier.
	Spread it everywhere.
	They just cut shit loose just to see what would happen.
	Fuck.
	Yeah.
	All the time, man.
	Just move it around, see what happens.
	That's bonkers, man.
	Where is Grand Teton National Park?
	It's basic, it's not shouldn't say it's basically Yellowstone National Park.
	Do you have a place in America that you feel um has the strongest connection to nature, kind of to just pivot a little bit?
	Like, do you like where you feel like the most like innately connected?
	Is that a weird question, Kerner?
	No, it's not a weird question.
	Cause I know that like some of the natives had like the black hills and stuff like that in the Dakotas, like they had places where they felt like extremely collect connected to it.
	Oh, yeah.
	You mean like like places that had uh that that had a spiritual like an aura or something to them?
	Yeah, sure.
	I just wondered if it was uh Yeah, I can't pretend uh I can't pretend like I I don't know what that felt like.
	I don't know what that looked like.
	Um I have things that mean a lot.
	I have places that mean a lot to me.
	Um I have places that mean a lot to me from a standpoint of personal experiences that have happened in certain places.
	I had a place for a long time I told, like I told my kids, I was like, man, if I die, like I had originally said if I die, I want um I was like, this is gonna be hard to pull off, but like in a perfect world, I would have my body like dumped there.
	Oh yeah.
	Just hidden away somewhere to be eaten and my bones strewn about by bears.
	Yeah.
	Like I thought that seemed like a cool idea.
	It is kind of neat.
	Yeah.
	There's there's a number, um, there's a number of people that um crazy horse, his friends took his body and put it somewhere they don't they don't know where it is.
	Really?
	Uh has anybody gone look for?
	Edward Abbey, the writer.
	Edward Abbey.
	So Crazy Horse, they hid his body?
	His friends took his body.
	He was killed in Nebraska.
	They took his body and put it in a crevice somewhere.
	They don't know where it is.
	And no one's found it yet?
	Ed Abbey's body was out.
	Ed Abbey from uh You know, you ever hear Monkey Ranch Gang?
	He wrote Monkey Ranch Gang.
	Not from uh Desert Solitaire.
	He was an he was an environmental odd couple, huh?
	No, no, no.
	He was an environmental warrior.
	You should read up on Ed Abbey.
	Yeah.
	He's a he's like a bit, he's a big figure in defending the desert.
	Um in a novelist.
	Anyways, his friends took them and they dumped them.
	And they don't tell anybody where?
	Uh-uh, I won't tell anybody where.
	That's cool.
	That sounds like the way to go.
	So I wanted to have that kind of I wanted to have a program like that.
	And that where I wanted it was a spot that had was a place that had like that I had a deep uh what to me passes as a sort of spiritual connection to that place.
	Then there's places I just like because uh there's there's like I like I love being in Alaska.
	I spent a month or so in Alaska, it's kind of throughout different times of the year.
	I spent a month or so in Alaska every year.
	I love Alaska.
	What I like about Alaska is it's uh um, you know, it it's a big place, but there's a lot of places where you can just kind of picture what time was a long, like you can kind of picture what things were a long time ago.
	Got it.
	Yeah, so it's like because uh a thing that if you've as a as an outdoorsman, as someone that likes nature, um oftentimes you find yourself trying to imagine, like trying to imagine a long time ago.
	Right.
	There's there's something like there's some kind of the continuity thing.
	Um, you know, people have been out on the landscape living hunting and fishing and living off the land for since the beginning of human time.
	And so naturally your mind goes to like what how did other people experience this?
	Like, how did uh what what was the experience of other people doing these activities in these places throughout time?
	Yeah.
	So I like spots where you can kind of picture it.
	Right?
	It's still you can picture it.
	And there's a lot of places in Alaska you can go there and be like, you can feel it.
	Oh, yeah.
	Do you know what I mean?
	You can feel it.
	Yeah.
	Um like it feels so untouched by so many, like a just a lot of other bullshit energy and stuff.
	Yeah, and it winds up being that like you can imagine, like you could go, there's places you go and you can imagine, like, man, some dude standing here 10 not 10, let's some do whatever.
	Some dude standing here 7,000 years ago.
	Be held like however he perceived it, whatever his ideas of God were, you know, what whatever his allegiances were, he this is kind of what it looked like.
	Right.
	You know, it's what it looked like.
	And those places mean a lot to me to be able to be like, man, like you could still stand here, you know, at all these points in time and be like, it's just you can just imagine it.
	It makes this continuity similar because a thing that I'm very interested in is uh and professionally and personally, very interested in like the experiences of of other people who who l had aspects of a lifestyle that that I live today.
	Like I've always fascinated by that.
	That's why I could give a shit about Antarctica because there's no human history there, right?
	So that's a cool thing about Alaska.
	My brother's a fisheries biologist in Alaska, and he had a really interesting point that he made to me.
	He's like, if you think about the conservation, like conservation efforts, environmental efforts in the lower 48.
	We are in like someday what we're doing might be regarded as a recovery phase.
	We're we're trying to like fix things.
	We broke a lot of things in late 1800s, early 1900s for decades, you know, we broke stuff.
	And so for the most part, now when someone talks about conservation, oftentimes it's like fixing broken shit, bringing the turkey back, fixing broken shit.
	Right.
	Right.
	Cleaning up rivers, cleaning up, yeah, it's a lot of people.
	Yeah, like we're like, we we broke a bunch of shit.
	Like we built a bunch of dams in the Pacific Northwest and killed all these salmon runs.
	Now we're trying to fix all the shit we broke.
	Yeah.
	And so for most of like most conservation work is oftentimes like fixing shit that we fucked up.
	He was saying his work in Alaska, he's been in Alaska forever.
	His work in Alaska at times is like they're still doing they're still trying to describe what's there.
	Meaning there are salmon runs, they'll go look at salmon runs.
	People know there's salmon there, they've been fishing it for thousands of years.
	But no one's ever gone and sort of like scientifically described the salmon run.
	There are rivers where no one's gone and scientifically described what lives in the river.
	Got it.
	Right?
	So they're still in a they're still in a phase of just trying to like write down what's there.
	Yeah.
	And we're in a phase of just trying to fix all of our broken shit.
	Right.
	So in that way, Alaska's cool.
	Right.
	Because it's still like it in such an early process of being affected by humans.
	Yeah, and then if we play our cards right.
	Then we'll that what we learn here, we won't have to go through the same thing.
	Yeah, if we play our cards right, uh, when someone talks about building a big dam, you know, on the Yukon or whatever, you you might look and be like, Man, uh we we're spending a lot of it down down in the what they call in Alaska what they call the outside, and the outside, we're spending a lot of time and energy trying to fix all the shit we broke by doing that, just so heads up as you think about your plans.
	Just hey guys.
	Do you have a part of um I know you've traveled extensively?
	Do you have a place that you feel like is like is the most dangerous for people to go?
	Is that really a fair question?
	I mean, I guess every place is dangerous depending on what your behaviors are.
	Yeah, there's it's this is something I think about and talk about a fair bit.
	There's a lot of like there's places where there's a high level of perceived danger.
	Okay.
	The thing I always try to point out, if my wife thinks I'm doing like my wife often thinks I'm putting a lot of risk on my kids or doing too much too risky a shit with my kids.
	Because they're gonna try to do it, or you're gonna be able to do it.
	Then I'm gonna hurt them or drown them or whatever, you know.
	Oh, yeah.
	Like she's always afraid I'm gonna something like that that I my recklessness will lead to my kids getting messed up.
	Right.
	Why do they need safety gear for a Christmas every year if you're not trying to do something bad to them, Steve?
	Oh, there's one of my little kids.
	No, that's not my little kid, that's my friend's kid.
	Yeah, if you don't even know whose kid it is.
	That's my kid.
	Okay.
	Well, she's 12 now.
	Daddy's future hunting buddy.
	She has much, she has much more hair now.
	I believe that.
	I'm just saying the shirt is lobbying for a certain type of behavior in the future.
	She is my hunting buddy now, dude.
	Oh, that's awesome.
	We don't yeah, we don't show pictures of our kids much anymore.
	But uh, really, except my older one.
	Anyhow, what the hell is I talking about?
	Oh, she's always afraid I'm gonna drown them or whatever.
	Oh, yeah.
	Reasonably so.
	But but I'm always like, man, the most important, like, or the most dangerous thing.
	This is me, like, you're my wife, not me.
	All right.
	The most dangerous thing that's gonna happen is Us driving to the airport.
	Sure, Steve.
	Look, sign the papers.
	Okay.
	Sign the papers and you can do whatever you want.
	Okay.
	That's what my attorney said.
	It's uh sorry, I was trying to roleplay a little, but um that was good role play.
	But you you'd have to have more time with her, you know.
	Yeah, I should have also went into it a little bit more.
	All right, let's try it again.
	She just didn't meet her.
	Let's try it again.
	But she breaks she brings up so there's like high levels of perceived danger, but like but then there's like reality, meaning driving down driving down a highway is hazardous.
	Yeah.
	Like highway travel is hazardous.
	Flying in single engine, we do a lot of flying in single engine aircraft.
	That's hazardous.
	Flying in single-engine aircraft is like a legitimate occupational hazard.
	But where people's minds go, people's minds go to getting attacked by wild animals.
	Right.
	Because you're the people don't want to, like, they're not thinking about that.
	You're gonna go in like when you go into a remote environment, um exposure.
	Yeah, exposure is like far more dangerous than wild animals, but it's not falling in one pole.
	Sure.
	It's not fun to think about, right?
	Right.
	It doesn't, it doesn't occupy any, there's no intellectual energy.
	You can't put like intellectual or emotional energy into you thinking about exposure.
	It doesn't have the same PR.
	Instead, you're like, well, shit, there's wild animals lurking in the bushes.
	Right.
	And so people are afraid of things.
	Um I seem like I'm hacking out my my wife.
	I love her.
	My wife carries pepper spray.
	My wife will sometimes carry pepper spray.
	Of course.
	Because there's black bears around.
	Oh, yeah.
	I've been in some neighborhoods.
	But you anyone in this country, most people in the major cities of this country, they're all within a 40 to hour drive of a black bear.
	Right.
	You're much closer to black bears right now.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	But you're not sitting here with pepper spray.
	Oh, I see we're so why would you go walk?
	Like, why when you why does she feel I'm like, you know, like you have black bears that come into the outskirts of New York, right?
	New Jersey has the densest black bear population in the country.
	Yes.
	And the densest human population in the country.
	Yeah, so like they don't all when they're golfing, they don't carry pepper spray.
	Right.
	It's not like you see Trump out there with pepper spray and a fucking pocket full of.
	Why does my wife want to have pepper spray?
	Yeah.
	For black bears.
	Like, black bears don't matter.
	They're not dangerous, but they're perceived as dangerous, and certain environments make people feel like now they're in danger.
	But golfers in New Jersey aren't were carrying pepper spray.
	Right.
	Though they have probably have bears.
	If you're golfing in in some semi-rural New Jersey environment, you're within hundreds of yards of bears.
	Right.
	But they're not giving their energy to thinking about bears.
	But you put someone uh at like a trailhead in the woods, and all of a sudden they got bears on their mind.
	Yeah.
	So dangerous would be like I I spent uh I spent a month in Africa this summer, and we saw a black mamba.
	A snake called a you know, that's the most that's the deadliest snake.
	Like they just kill you when they get you.
	The guy we were with, like, you'll never see one.
	Then we saw one.
	So all we talked about was black mambus.
	Yeah, he didn't bite anybody, right?
	But all of a sudden, like anytime I sat down, once I saw that son of a bitch, I saw a puff adder, a black mamba, and a cobra.
	Damn.
	Okay.
	What is a puff adder?
	Oh, he's a bad mother licker, man.
	A puff adder.
	Pull up how he gets around.
	Pull up how he gets around.
	A puff adder?
	Yeah, watch how he gets around.
	You think of a snake doing a serpentine movement.
	For sure.
	Well, check his ass out.
	Pull up, pull up him getting around.
	Oh shit.
	He just wiggles along like a like a centipede.
	Shodi Bay got that fucking.
	He's not even look at that.
	No, he don't need to do a footprint.
	He don't need to.
	So that's what you call cutting corners right there.
	That's the kind of employee that I need.
	Dude, that dude just he's got little, his scales just walked, man.
	Yeah.
	That's crazy.
	I don't know if this is true.
	You want to hear something they told me about that thing.
	This Kenyan dude told me.
	He told me that.
	I don't know if this is true, but it's just a great, it's a wonderful detail.
	He told me that puff adder so he strikes so fast.
	We just caught one crossing a road and got out mess with a little bit, not up close, but distant mess with it.
	That puff adder strike so fast.
	This guy was telling me this could be total lore.
	Don't even look it up because I don't want you to refute it because it's too cool.
	He says that he can hit a balloon twice.
	He can hit a balloon twice before it pops.
	Which I don't even know what that means, but that's it sound cool.
	It sounds you know, like you can fight before the balloon deflates.
	I don't know.
	Oh, yeah.
	So he's got he's got a bad venom.
	So, anyways, we see one of these.
	We see a uh a uh um black mamba who can cruise around with half of his length up in the air.
	If he's seven foot, his head when he's cruising through the woods when he's pissed, his head's at your navel.
	Damn.
	He's a bad bad bad dude.
	Well, he's got some calves on him.
	That's what's amazing to me.
	You know, why do Indian people love fucking with these kids?
	You kill Bill, it's a black mama that kills uh that kills uh Michael Madsen's character.
	Is it really?
	Yeah, it's black mama.
	Anyhow, so we see this, we see these different critters running around.
	And then you're not gonna get killed by a snake.
	It's just like it doesn't happen.
	Right.
	But it feels like it's gonna happen.
	But all of a sudden, instead of me thinking, like, oh, I might get like a some amoeba from drinking the water or like who knows, or a uh mosquito-born pathogen.
	All that's out the window.
	Instead, everywhere I look, all of us.
	Me and my other guys I was with, uh, we didn't take a step, dude, without being like all of a sudden in our head was the perceived danger.
	Meanwhile, you're with all these people that are born and raised there, and none of them's dead.
	Right.
	Yeah, they're doing fine.
	Some of them have some emotional issues or whatever, but they're doing overall they're well.
	We're not all dead from snakes.
	Yeah.
	It's just that's where, as humans.
	Oh, well.
	That's where the head goes.
	Your head goes to like whatever's had the best advertising and probably whatever's most recently been seen, those sorts of things really.
	So when you say like the most dangerous place, like to an outsider, the Tanzanian bush felt dangerous for a reason that's probably not true.
	Right.
	It felt dangerous because one day we saw a black mama.
	And then you know the Tasmanian devil, too.
	Well, he doesn't live there for sure.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's true.
	Tasmanian tiger.
	Right, yeah, yeah.
	Tasmanian devils, yeah.
	I'm thinking of Tanzania, I think, or something.
	I don't know what I'm thinking about.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	You're right.
	Yeah.
	But no, um Tanzania and uh the Tasmanian, that's the name the island of Tasmania.
	Yeah.
	Tanzania comes from Tan uh comes from Zanzabar combining with Tanganika.
	Oh, yeah.
	When those two countries came together, they were called Tanzania.
	So Tanganica doesn't exist anymore, it's now Tanzania.
	Tanganika doesn't.
	But Zan the Zanzibar archipelago was rolled into Tanganica to become Tanzania.
	I'm subject matter expert.
	I spent a month there.
	Did you really?
	A lot of women will go to Zanzibar to meet men, kind of African men, a lot of women in their 40s and 50s.
	Is that true?
	Yeah.
	That's what I know about the migration or whatever it's called.
	But I uh, or it's for I don't want to say it's for sex, but I think it people say it is.
	I don't think that you're going there for that.
	It's pretty buttoned up there.
	Is it?
	It's pretty buttoned up.
	No, I don't think it's like illegal.
	I think it's they go there and it's sort of a popular space for a courting of those of um African men and women who are kind of divorcees.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, because my buddy went there and he was like, dude, uh, it's not for me.
	It wasn't for him.
	See, my subject matter expertise is crumbling, but I'll point out I was only there one week.
	Yeah.
	So I only absorb so much.
	And you don't fit either one of the parties that were that are mating there.
	So I think I'd brought my own mate with me, man.
	Oh, there you go then.
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	Um I'll say this, dude.
	Um I remember the first time that I saw a snake.
	It makes me think of what like my perception and everything was.
	Like we're walking, I was with my grandparents or walking, and suddenly I just kind of felt something on my like I had some just boots.
	We're just fishing, um, and something wrapped around my leg like that.
	And it was a snake.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	And I was like, oh my God, I couldn't move.
	I was so scared.
	I'd never seen a snake outside.
	You know, you'd heard about snakes, and I mean, it had just fucking wrapped around, just like it was like my like my leg was a stripper pole, and this thing had just came to just fucking grind on me.
	Just straight out of hell to grind on me, you know.
	And my grandmother looked at it and she's like, she goes, I remember she's like, Did you summon that?
	She asked me.
	Because my grandmother was out of her fucking mind.
	And that's when I knew that it was just gonna be a long life right there.
	I was like, you think, and I looked in her eyes and I was like, she thinks I fucking a child that she barely ever even welcomes into town.
	She finally takes you to catch some bullheads in the fucking Spoon River out here.
	And she and you summoned a serpent.
	She thinks I'm a fucking wish.
	Jimmy Baker of fucking uh of Fanged Lizard.
	Um, I want to say it was I want to say it was a water moccasin, but that may have just been the lore of me growing up in Louisiana.
	Because I don't know if they had those in Illinois or not.
	You know?
	No, I don't believe they do.
	But I worked on a farm in Louisiana and uh at lunch break, we would always just walk around.
	If they had a boat that was turned over, we'd flip it over and there'd be a water moxin under it every single time, dude.
	Yeah, that that's that's a cool snake.
	There is a scary though.
	There's like a there's an idea, and I kind of buy it that um from like an evolutionary standpoint, or we we carry this sort of like this.
	I want to preface this by saying I'm not a geneticist.
	Okay, we care uh despite your impressions.
	I'm not a geneticist, but uh that we carry with us this innate, let's say this sort of genetic marker or whatever, this innate fear of serpents.
	Yes.
	Do you know what I'm saying?
	Like it like it does you well.
	It it's it does you well to be like stand off.
	You follow me?
	100%.
	Yeah.
	Oh, dude, I think anybody would be creeped out.
	There's nothing, yeah.
	There's something so why are we so scared of snakes?
	Do you know?
	I want to look, let's look that up too much.
	But the feels, dude.
	When you see they're not right, man.
	And it feels so foreign.
	Oh, I will say this.
	We interviewed this blind girl one time, right?
	And we're just learning about what it's like to be blind and some of like the different stuff.
	And she talked a lot about animals and like getting to spend time with animals and the feelings you get.
	And she says that you she doesn't get any feeling from a snake.
	Like there's no energy that she gets.
	Really?
	And that's when I was like, dude, if a snake, yeah, Tanya Milov Milojovic.
	That's when I knew if the if a blind don't even like a snake, I don't like a snake.
	Yeah.
	That's a great idea to interview someone where you can just get right in.
	Cause then you can ask all the questions.
	You would be not you you'd ask all the questions.
	Remember, remember Howard Stern?
	Mm-hmm.
	He used to have a show where he'd have a panel of black guys that white dudes could ask questions to.
	Oh, that's great.
	You know, all like it was like it was, I can't remember what he called it.
	It was like ask a black man.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah.
	And now they, yeah.
	It was called Ask a Black Man.
	I can't remember what the shtick was, but you just have dudes volunteer to come in.
	That's what we need like idiotic white guys could be like, hey, you know, it's so it's an interesting interview format to be able to have a person come and say, like, I will now entertain all your dumbass questions that you wonder but don't ask.
	Yeah.
	And that are like that I get sick of, but I'm gonna sit here and indulge you for an hour, and you can be like, Well, what do you see?
	Yeah, you know.
	Yeah, she said that a lot of it was like memorizing patterns, like when you're going somewhere, like the more you go there, the easier it is.
	Like she said a lot of times it felt like she was playing like a video game in her head, like just remembering like almost as if you're like controlling somebody through a video game, that that's kind of how she would um hmm, like god herself.
	I thought it was pretty interesting.
	I should do it again soon.
	Well, that's a really good, that's a really good interview deal because she probably like generally going about her life, probably can't stand you know, people staring at her, wondering shit, asking her the same dumb shit over, so to be like, yeah, I'm just gonna sit here and just do it.
	Yeah, it was great.
	Hit me with it, hit me with it.
	You know, have you ever had taken a blind person on one of your hunts before?
	I know you No, man, but it's a thing.
	It's a thing, and I've and I've had I had a blind hunter on my podcast one time.
	Wow.
	Um, to talk about what the experience was, and uh yeah, had a blind person on.
	And what do they because they're just I mean, they gotta feel like there's no chance when they shoot, right?
	You know, they had people help we we had a uh, you know what I'm you know what I'm dicking up?
	I actually just told you something that's not true.
	Because we were gonna, we one time had a paralyzed, we had a paralyzed, we were gonna have a blind hunter.
	We had a we didn't, or I don't think we did.
	We had a fully paralyzed hunter who had to hunt with like an automation thing.
	Wow.
	Took a lot of assistance from his friends.
	But he had been a hunter, had an accident, and then paralyzed from the neck down, developed a way that he could continue hunting with the help of his friends.
	Wow.
	That's pretty with a mouth control apparatus, but it took a ton of assistance.
	That that's who he had on.
	Well, point I was gonna make about that innate fear of snakes is if you could do time machine shit, okay?
	And you talking time travel?
	I'm gonna.
	Okay.
	This would be like a really good question to have.
	Okay.
	The good use of if you had like one pass, one time pass, um, here's a thing that would be on my list of shit I would be curious about.
	When hum like after the sort of African diaspora and humans started colonizing the whole world, right?
	Um, the people that came, the people that became the first Americans came in from Alaska.
	You always hear about the Bering Land Bridge, right?
	The land bridge is the size of Texas.
	It wasn't like a bridge, it was like a landmass.
	Like people colonizing the new world would have been born and died on the Bering Land Bridge without thinking that they were going anywhere.
	They were just living their lives.
	Got it.
	And slowly spread down.
	And those are like Inuits, like uh like kind of natives.
	They became native.
	Well, who the people that became the Inuits, by our understanding, the people that became the Inuits came much later.
	Got it.
	Okay.
	They came from the Japan and the Aleutians and whatnot.
	But these like Siberians came into the new world.
	So by this point, you have hundreds of generations, hundreds of generations of people had lived in a snake-free environment.
	Because they'd lived in the Arctic.
	Ooh.
	Hundreds of generations.
	And then they're they're they slowly, generation to generation to generation, they slowly move down the North American continent.
	There's two theories that like Alaska, you know, they don't have a snake, right?
	There's two theories.
	There's one that they came through the mid-continent and maybe emerged down around Edmonton, Alberta, onto the Great Plains.
	That was a fashionable idea for a long time.
	The currently fashionable ideas, they came down the coast.
	Okay.
	So now you've had you have hundreds of generations of people that would never have seen or experienced a snake.
	Yeah.
	And you got snakes down there just.
	all of a sudden they spread southward.
	Yeah.
	And at some point, one of those sons of bitches is out just right.
	Fuck.
	He's out cruising around, doing his deal.
	Yeah.
	And there's one laying there.
	That happened.
	Like that happened.
	That happened.
	If you could take your time machine and go see that guy see that snake.
	Did he go fuck?
	Or did he jump down and grab it?
	That was some good time machine shit right there.
	Wow.
	Say this.
	If he was with someone else when it happened, you have to cut that person's throat immediately, I think.
	Because you would think they have something to do with this.
	Like they're in on it.
	Like that's what I would do.
	You're like, who the fuck you summoned this?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Like it, yeah, that's your distant ancestor to summon that snake.
	Yeah, you would think it was like other world.
	I don't know, but you'd probably seen fish, but I don't know.
	Do you just get that energy?
	Yeah, like then you would be able to answer the question.
	That's the way the one way you'd be able to answer the question.
	Do humans have some baked-in shit?
	Or is it not that?
	Right.
	Yeah, you'd have to go all the way back.
	There's probably another way too.
	You could take a child at birth, buy one, sequester it somewhere.
	Well, they do that all the time.
	There's Indian babies playing with snake.
	Yeah, but take one and sequester it so it doesn't get any information from any human beings.
	Oh, yeah.
	Let it become an old person and then throw a snake in that room.
	Do they jump back?
	That'd be easier and less expensive than time travel, but it wouldn't be as authentic, and you'd run into like uh you'd run into legal thing problems.
	If they've been alive so long, are they going to not care anymore?
	Like, I don't get you damaged them psychologically and stuff by locking them up in that room and shit, you know.
	Yeah, they're like, I don't give a fuck if something snakes.
	The detractors would be like, yeah, but he was so destroyed psychologically that this is not telling us anything.
	Right.
	Yeah, I think with a uh with a with a with a um yeah, a person you victimized out of this whimsical scientific study.
	Oh, yeah.
	I think at that point you're really looking at the uh Elizabeth Smart of Reptiles kind of vibes, you know, and I don't think that's what we want.
	No, it is gonna be a time travel problem.
	Yeah, we'll go time travel.
	Um let's talk about a topic that some people think is kind of controversial, like you see a lot of people who will post photos with like big game, right?
	They go and kill like a woolly, not a woolly mammoth or whatever, but like a deer, a big huge deer, or big old turkey.
	Yeah, dragon limb hanger.
	Yes, rope dragon limb hanger, you know, one that's just singing, you know, one in an Alan Iverson jersey, you know what I'm saying?
	Like a real fucking boss on the phone.
	I'm following, I'm following.
	Now I'm getting excited, but they put a picture of it up, right?
	Are they or something like that?
	Somebody it's a deer, some with eyelashes.
	Okay, okay, okay.
	Because that's what that's what or lions and stuff like that.
	It's got an eyelash, it's gonna it it it it's it's emotional for people.
	Okay, so that's fair.
	So yeah, I think I just want to know about some of that, but then also you hear that people put up these like that some of these animals they're going to die in the places that they're in, and so for conservation that they kind of sell off um kind of tags or lottery for so anyway, it take me into some of that world, kind of, if if if you don't mind.
	Well, I thought you were gonna get into the ethics of that you of you posing with a dead animal in a picture, but you're talking about like the sort of the conservation fund, like the kind of there's a perceived conflict or like a um incongruity um around the notion that how can you help a species by hunting it, right?
	How do you help a species by hunting it?
	Um, wouldn't that be like that that's that would appear to people to be quite illogical, right?
	How does killing it help it?
	Right.
	Is that is that yeah, I think that's fair.
	That really kind of boils it down, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Uh it's a phenomenal question.
	I can see why it puzzles people.
	Um, but you can point to case after case after case of ways in which it it has worked.
	We began our conversation around turkeys, okay.
	Um there's a there's a saying that I like quite a bit.
	Oh, it's not mine, but it's uh success has many fathers, but failure is a bastard's child.
	Okay.
	The success in restoring the wild turkey, many people claim parentage of that success.
	And there was many people that attributed efforts to that success.
	All these different like wherever state you live in, your state has a fish and game agency.
	Okay.
	I'll point out that your state's fish and game agency gets the bulk of its funding from people buying hunting and fishing licenses.
	That's how we fund the agencies that take care of wildlife and the states.
	So there's that.
	But when they were restoring the wild turkey from nearly being wiped off the continent, okay, the main player, the main player that was involved in that nationally is an organization that happens to have their annual convention in Nashville called the National Wild Turkey Federation.
	Okay.
	The National Wild Turkey Federation was kind of a through line of the efforts to restore turkeys to North America to recover the wild turkey, to put the wild turkey back on the ground and all the places where it had been wiped out.
	The National Wild Turkey Federation is a hunting organization.
	Okay.
	So if you went and looked and you said, here's these guys that put enormous amounts of expertise, scientific expertise, enormous amounts of funding, enormous amounts of physical, ex uh physical effort into restoring the wild turkey to where they exceed historic levels.
	Is it fair to go like you just did that so you could hunt turkeys?
	You'd be like, guilty is charged, right?
	Guilty as charged.
	Right.
	Um there are other because like turkeys are so widely available now.
	But is that a bad thing?
	It's not a bad thing.
	But it's not always even that way.
	Because for instance, if you look at there's there's an organization called the Wild Sheep Foundation.
	It's an American-based conservation organization that works to restore, recover, protect wild sheep species.
	Okay.
	Desert bighorns, Rocky Mountain bighorns, doll sheep, stone sheep, okay?
	They work on behalf of wild sheep.
	I have been hunting my whole life.
	I apply every year to get a bighorn sheep tag in a half dozen states every year.
	I have never drawn a bighorn sheep tag.
	I have never hunted bighorn sheep.
	It is likely, it is likely that I will die.
	Okay.
	Right.
	There's a likelihood I will die and have never had the opportunity to hunt a bighorn sheep.
	Yet, on occasion, I do things to support the Wild Sheep Foundation.
	So what am I guilty of?
	Like I aspire to hunt a bighorn sheep.
	Yeah.
	Um, I recognize them as like an integral part of the Western landscape.
	I want to see more of them around.
	I'm a hunter.
	I would hunt one if I could.
	I probably can't, but I want to see them back in their place.
	There are many, many conservation organizations.
	The most impactful like wildlife conservation organizations that do real work on the ground.
	I'm not talking about lobbying bullshit.
	Okay.
	I'm not talking about like, you know, I'm talking about like the kind of work where you're like putting effort on the ground, you're putting animals on the ground, you're proving habitat on the ground, right?
	You're helping migratory animals, whatever.
	That shit comes from hunters.
	That shit comes from hunting-based organizations.
	So you're saying that most in this country.
	Most of the wildlife and the preservation of wildlife here comes from hunters.
	That's like we fund it, we do the groundwork.
	People that come out of that world of hunting move into conservation.
	There are like environmental orgs, there are lobbying orgs, there are orgs that work in all these different ways that aren't, but like they're really effective on the ground stuff comes from hunters and anglers.
	Wow.
	It's just like this isn't like this is like this is settled science.
	I mean, this isn't me giving you some spin.
	I'm not giving you like a novel way to look at something.
	It's just like the it's just the reality.
	Well, yeah, I mean your fish and game agency.
	What state do you re it doesn't matter until you answer me?
	Your resident of Tennessee, your fish and game agency gets the bulk of its funding.
	So your fish and game agency handles like disease work, access work, enforcement of game laws.
	They get their money from hunting and fishing licenses, the bulk of it.
	Or they get money from excise taxes on sporting goods equipment, guns, ammo, whatever.
	It's just like we pay for it.
	You know, there's guys that are there's people that want to deny that reality, but like I said, it's like it's settled science.
	It's you can't debate the nuts and bolts of it.
	So this plays out in other ways that draw a lot of attention.
	Like something like let's let's talk about Tanzania for a minute.
	Totally different system than what we have in America.
	But in Tanzania, the most effective way that they're able to the most effective way that they're able to protect large tracts of wilderness habitat is drawing revenue from them by allowing hunting to occur on those places.
	Got it.
	It's like productive for them.
	It's either that or it's slash and burn agriculture.
	So it's like you're able to go into an area and and by having people like Westerners, Europeans, Americans, whatever, come there to have an experience of going there and hunting and paying a bit big amount of money to hunt there.
	Warrants them being able to set aside large chunks of ground, the government and monetize it and monitor it and then pay for uh anti-poaching efforts and other things that that protect it.
	You might you might look at it and hate it.
	You might look at it and be like, I don't think that humans have a right to harm animals.
	And like I'm not gonna argue that perspective.
	So you might look at it and be like, it sucks that that has to be true.
	And I'll be like, okay, it's fine.
	Maybe in your opinion, it sucks that that has to be true.
	But what I can't debate with you is does it have to be true?
	It's just true.
	Yeah.
	You know, you might hate that that's the way, but that's the way it is.
	But that's the way it is.
	Did humans always eat animals, do you think?
	Yeah, since they could.
	It'd be hard not to, I think, if you saw I'm trying to think if I went back in time.
	That would be cool too.
	You go back, some guy.
	The first dude to eat meat.
	He's been have to go back some far ass.
	You'd have to go back.
	That's fine.
	We can go back that way.
	There's an idea that like there's there's a in in anthropology, there's a debate about what time at what point in time did you have behaviorally and anatomically modern humans.
	This is um, this is not we're getting way outside of biblical understanding, but we're talking about like from the non-biblical science world.
	Okay.
	Okay, so so a stepping outside of like a like the biblical confines and going into like purely scientific world.
	Some people think that you could have grabbed a dude 75,000 years ago, put him in, grabbed him at birth, and he could have he could learn to fly an airplane, he could go to college, do well, blend in, you'd see him going down the street and wouldn't think anything of it.
	Yeah, be a pie cap or whatever.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	That was a hunting, that was a hunting um consumer of large quantities of animal flesh.
	That was yeah.
	So there's no doubt at that time period that people were really snacking on animals.
	Oh, yeah.
	And then there's this other idea.
	And you know how you you wind up liking the ideas that that confirm your own perspective.
	There's this other idea that the great um in a scientific understanding that that when we had when humans had this kind of uh renaissance, like um, we seem to have suddenly kind of figured a bunch of shit out.
	And some people correlate that to us becoming predominantly uh to eating huge amounts of animal flesh.
	It's so efficient and so full of energy.
	That was our intellectual renaissance.
	Like that that's when humans became bright and developed like religion and organizational structure and language and all that is when we discovered meat eating.
	Right, because we had enough energy not only to satiate our bodies, but then also for the rest of us to maybe flourish some because we finally had uh a new source that was really uh replenishing us constantly being a very good thing.
	We were broken from we were broken from a cycle of needing to eat low grade, low, low, low, low grade, low calorie food all the time.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So then you're constantly just sitting there snacking, whereas otherwise you can have a nice meal, then you sit back and kick it and think of something creative.
	Like a deer is on this really strict stretch schedule of like eating a bunch of low-grade food, sitting, ruminating, eating lower, you know.
	So deer's always so there's this idea that yeah, that's the idea that like, and and of course I like it because it reinforces like that.
	That's what I like to eat deer meat and stuff.
	So when I hear that, I'm like, fuck yeah, bro.
	That's right.
	That's the truth.
	Because we just like the stuff that oh, yeah.
	We want to support our own ideas and causes our own truths.
	Yeah.
	What about uh pull up like a Neanderthal?
	What was that called?
	Like a man that was 75,000 years ago.
	Was that Neanderthals?
	Well, it would have been it would have been Homo sapien.
	Oh God.
	That must have been.
	Well no, it'd been like they would have been.
	Oh did you have you ever had your have you ever done like a um you know the late 23andMe organization?
	I've done 23andMe.
	Yeah, they sold all my fucking information to these Japanese companies.
	Just the other day.
	My shit.
	I'm getting.
	You still delete your shit.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	I'm getting a bunch.
	Because I would go, I would say, like, hey, I want to buy his shit and see what he's got going on.
	And I, you know, so I had mine deleted.
	You can have deleted.
	I'm getting emails from like you're related to this guy, you know, and it's like a fucking Japanese kind of like this motherfucker.
	Hey, they recently started.
	Where I live, they recently solved uh 30-year-old murder case.
	Uh-uh.
	From because so many people doing 23andMe, filling up these, these filling up databases.
	And so all of a sudden now, also now they're like, uh, also now they're like, hey, we got a little ping, a little ping on the map.
	Yeah.
	Of like a family that seems because they had a biological specimen.
	Fuck, we're gonna solve all those old crimes.
	They had a biological specimen, right?
	And so just from people willfully going and doing this kind of work, all of a sudden you start popping all these like markers.
	And then you gotta, you got a by a hair, a sperm or whatever.
	Oh, yeah.
	And all of a sudden you're able to be like, well, it's not him, but there's some some dudes a lot like him that live in this town.
	I'd be let's go have a look around that town.
	When you do it, they tell you what percent Neanderthal you are.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I was lower than average Neanderthal.
	Huh.
	Did it upset you?
	Uh no, I wasn't surprised.
	I just don't like I don't have that vibe, you know.
	I remember uh I feel like I feel like Joe was telling me, Rogan was telling me that he was high up.
	I could see that kind of average.
	I could definitely see it.
	I swear.
	I hope I'm not making that up.
	I swear he told me that you're not sure.
	No, I think it's totally, I don't think he would deny that at all.
	He's definitely like a Neanderthal guy that got struck by some fucking cool ass lightning.
	I I swear that's what he was saying.
	But anyways, I was lower than normal.
	But the point being, oh yeah, there he goes, more than regular people.
	57% more Neanderthal.
	Yeah.
	That's classic, dude.
	So you know, uh an understanding is that um, you know, they were here's a weird deal.
	I I I wrote this one time and one I wrote this in the the in a foreword to one of my cookbooks.
	I was writing that you could have been like at a certain time you could have been in Spain.
	Okay, okay.
	You could have been in in Spain, you could have been the Iberian Peninsula, you could have been in northern Israel, and see a campfire often burning in the distance.
	And you would have had to have asked yourself, what kind of what kind of human is that?
	Do you follow me?
	Like you you mean you would have had to been like what race or class or something like that?
	What kind?
	What species of humanity?
	Oh, like is that a somebody who's like kind of like Is it Neanderthal dudes?
	Somebody's a little more monkey.
	Yeah, is it like Neanderthal dudes?
	Is it like the same way that we we talk about somebody eating a monk, somebody eating a banana, somebody who has a sandals at least, so eating one of me?
	Yeah, like the same way you got like white tailed deer and mute like where I live, yeah, white tailed deer and mule.
	They're so similar.
	Like it takes, I don't want to say a train die to tell them apart, but you know, someone from another country would look and it might take them a few days for like, oh, they're different.
	Yeah.
	Chris can see and be like, whatever, you know, dear dear.
	But at a time, it'd be that at a time it'd be that you'd be like, oh no, there's the one kind of human and there's these other kinds of humans.
	Like, fuck, that guy's about two thousand years.
	Yeah, and they don't they don't mix, together, they kidnap each other, whatever they're doing.
	They still have bad breath, all that.
	Yeah, but uh when you see that you're like Joe having that like as high as 50% more Neanderthals because it's it's like it's it's you know, we under DRS.
	I don't know, was it like an act of passion?
	That made you evolve?
	No, I'm saying that that drove humans and Neanderthals to interbreed.
	Was it coercion?
	Oh, you think they're separate beings?
	Or you think there's one more advanced in the Neanderthals were Neanderthals were far more successful species than we are.
	Like Neanderthals were in Europe far longer than our ancestors were in Europe.
	But aren't Neanderthals our ancestors though?
	No.
	I wouldn't, you can't really I wouldn't really yes in that it seems like direct human ancestors.
	Yeah like Homo sapiens.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	It seems like at times they were able to have viable offspring.
	That at times Neandert Neanderthal people that were in Europe far longer.
	They were in Europe long hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans made the scene.
	Got it.
	And because of everyone having a little bit of introgression from Neanderthals.
	This is not my field of study.
	I'm just saying I'm just a curious onlooker.
	Let's take a look right here.
	Ancient human species including Homo sapiens and Neanderthals Dean Denisov yeah Dennis Ovens.
	Dennisovans and others did interbreed as they encountered one another during the middle and upper Paleolithic periods leaving detectable genetic legacies in modern populations.
	Dude, I didn't even know this I thought have you seen that chart where it's one man like that and then he has he has a briefcase and then he has Nikes on or whatever.
	That's a deceptive chart.
	Dude that's fucking I can't even believe that this is one of the main things I talk about with my kids.
	Wow.
	Trying to explain they're like what do you mean we came from monkeys?
	I'm like it's the that's not don't look at it that way.
	Yeah.
	So oh what I want to start talking about my next hour comedy is about the middle monkeys like why don't you ever see that middle monkey like you know I'm saying like you'll see a monkey and then you'll see a dude you know who's a mechanic right but you never see that middle motherfucker.
	You know what I'm saying?
	What happened to them all.
	The dude who's just scratching under one arm, wrenching the other fucking just they don't allow work to register because he's just like woo who you know but he can change a tire and a fucking just with his lips.
	You know what I'm saying?
	You don't see that chimp that chimp man that middleman so I'm just amazed.
	Yeah.
	But dude I never thought that you'd be sitting there and you'd be like oh shit.
	Oh yeah you'd be like uh oh you and your buddy like dope let's go let's go let's go do a lab we better go figure out who what kind of dudes it is but the fact that they the fact that they inner the fact that they interbreed.
	Well I think that well you might have missed that part.
	Oh I wouldn't know that.
	Let me get to my point though.
	The fact that they interbred leads to this question of was it a roman was it a romantic bot bonding was it like a romantic and right was it something that was like under coercion.
	It was coercion.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Yeah like was it like a like a sort of like conqueror's choice kind of shit.
	Yeah it was like when the I mean it wasn't that they that what that they would like meet and and and over like like the capulets and you know from like uh Romeo and Juliet's family it was meet and come together despite the family condemnations and and produce offspring.
	No, it was like when those nurses that don't treat people well at those hospitals take advantage of them.
	That's what I think it was.
	I do wonder.
	That'd be another good time machine burner up there is go back and it's a but here's the tough thing.
	If a person who was more mentally advanced hypothetically a Homo sapien if they tried to if they try to like oh here's just a Neanderthal let's get a little bit of love you know but in easy to trick.
	Right.
	Yeah but they're not easy to fucking just pin down and make love to I bet.
	Yeah trick them.
	But even if you trick shells and stuff right even if you trick them with a little wind chime or something get their attention I bet you can't I'm you can have to how quick can you make love and still enjoy it and get away from them.
	I I I wouldn't that's not a risk I'm taking.
	No it's time machine questions.
	I'm not that's not a risk I'm someone that hasn't brushed their hair in 70 thousand years I'm gonna try to fuck them I'm out.
	You know what I want to put out a call to you don't mind me doing a call for a guest I'm trying I've been trying to find a shirt I want to find them so it's like I'm like using your I'm using like your audience to find someone that I might not find on my own.
	Okay.
	What I've been trying to do for years is I've been trying to find a really really good um a really good Neanderthal you can say Neanderthal or tall you sound a little bit smarter I understand my understanding is you sound a little better to see a Neanderthal it's a valley in Germany.
	It is it's a valley in Germany and you sound a little more like I'm more likely to get a good guest by saying Neanderthal because they're like this dude knows the shit.
	Yeah I want to find a really good Neanderthal behavioralist hard R in that Neanderthal researcher.
	Okay.
	To come on the show and talk about what they know, but it can't be just like a writer who spent a month researching.
	It's because our audience doesn't like those kinds.
	Right.
	It's got to be someone that like, it's got to be someone that lives and breeds it.
	It can't be like an interloper.
	Yeah.
	Like, I need like a legit a verbose animated Neanderthal researcher.
	I don't want some halfway house.
	I want a fucking trap house that people have been shooting up in for 50 years with information about motherfuckers who would just like who could digest a stone if they need to.
	Yeah, like that, like a really good Neanderthal person.
	Okay.
	To come on the show and you just reach out to us.
	I want to interview you.
	Okay.
	There you go, guys.
	For Steve, they would like that.
	And here's what I would.
	Do you have a lot of Neanderthal researchers on that listen to the show?
	I mean, I bet we have some uh consumers who would rank high on a Neander scale or whatever, but I'll say this.
	I want somebody who has a high amount on their 23MA, an extremely don't need to have that.
	I know you want the highest.
	I want somebody who's 80%.
	80% Neanderthal.
	Yeah, but find the highest guy.
	And when I get them, I'm just gonna send them over to you too, Steve, because I think you would do well in, but because you might be able to notice some patterns that they have or behaviors that they're gonna be.
	Yeah, who if whatever.
	I had low who's the highest.
	Who's the highest?
	Somebody has to have the highest Neanderthal amount.
	I know that there is a I was reading a book.
	Um I read a lot of anthropology books.
	I can't remember if it was the seven daughters of Eve.
	I was reading a book about human history.
	And in it, they were pointing to some controversy around this question.
	Okay.
	Um, it's not always uh people don't always look upon this.
	Uh this is not something that everybody likes to talk about.
	Really?
	Where you see, like, as much as I'd be whatever, proud of it or whatever.
	There are places, there are places in the world where these geneticists see more entals.
	Yeah, more Neanderthal in certain areas.
	And it's it's a sensitive subject.
	It winds up being a sensitive subject.
	So you might wind up having not only a fascinating show, but you might have a show that courts a certain level of controversy.
	I like that.
	Yeah.
	But what I've found, because I because I am interested in this subject, I found that there's a sort of trend in academics to that we're there's a trend in academics of being that we're like rebranding Neanderthals.
	So it winds up being like, oh, they had art.
	Oh, they like wore jewelry.
	Um, oh, they were freedivers.
	Right.
	Um, they mean like every every like why do you think we're doing that?
	Do you think I don't know why?
	It's like because there's this idea, there's used to be this idea that they were these like thuggish brutes.
	Right.
	You know, but there's like when you look, when you if you kind of follow Neanderthal news, like I do, there's a theme.
	Yeah, there's like a theme of of this kind of like this delight, like this kind of delighted realization about how comp like how complex their culture was, how complex their society was.
	It'd be like you don't find like, man, turns out they were dumber than we thought.
	Right.
	That's not like a news story.
	It would be like, oh, they appreciated the finer things in life.
	Well, it's like the branding.
	It's like even when it goes back to like you were talking about the bald eagle, it's like just that PR, that spin.
	I wonder if they're they have a very, very good PR agency.
	Neanderthals right now, or I have a good one on retainer, and they're getting a lot of good ink about that.
	They liked art and movies, you know, and it's like it's like they're just getting cooler views.
	They're getting cooler.
	Oh, yeah.
	They love stand by me.
	You're like, that's insane, dude.
	Neanderthals.
	I'm telling you, dude.
	Start paying attention to Neanderthal news, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
	When I get my guest on, he'll tell you all about it.
	Oh, I love it.
	I love that you're gonna have that, man.
	Dude, listening to what would be better.
	Listen in the course, I could talk about humans all day long, bro.
	You know, so so listening to two Neanderthals talk about themselves, they wouldn't know a lot, but they would try pretty hard.
	Yeah.
	That could be us, dude.
	That's awesome.
	That's really awesome, dude.
	Um, people say you look like Harry Connick Jr. sometimes.
	No, I've gotten uh I used to get Kevin Bacon.
	That's who it is.
	I used to get a dude from the a dude from remember the show where they would like do all the the crazy stunts to each other.
	Oh uh Johnny Knoxville.
	Oh yeah, Johnny Knoxville, I could see that sometime.
	What else do I get?
	Those are good, those are good ones.
	Yeah, I don't see that one too clear.
	Because I don't never get I never do clever shit with my hair.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Johnny's hair is always kind of stylish and stuff like that.
	Yeah.
	So I think that Kevin Bacon, like, he doesn't get too clever with his hair.
	I saw that on He was kicking ass when I was a kid in the movie making business, man.
	You know?
	Oh, he's such a talented guy.
	I saw the guy who was in Fight Club the other night.
	Brad Pitt.
	Nope.
	I saw Edward Norton the other night.
	Oh.
	With some friends.
	It was like at a little restaurant.
	And I was like, is that Edward Norton?
	And it was him.
	I don't look like him.
	No, you don't.
	I'd love to look like him, Edward Norton.
	I'm trying to think.
	If you had to look like a woman, who do you think you'd look like?
	That's a great question.
	I don't know.
	Sure was one out there.
	No, I'm sure, but look, if you we get to pick, that's why we're having this conversation, dude.
	I didn't want to talk about it.
	But let's talk about it.
	What I'm saying is if you got to look like a woman, who would you look like?
	It's kind of a good question.
	Trying to think who I could see you as.
	I'm not even like equipped, man.
	I can't really think of what you're getting.
	Am I getting in anything?
	If I was a woman, what woman would I want to look like?
	Or if I had to be a dude that looked like a woman.
	Oh no, dude.
	What are you talking about?
	No, I don't know.
	I'm not talking about some fucking chop shop aftermarket woman.
	I'm talking about some I'm talking about a certified bone-in woman.
	Like you're woman from the junk.
	Yeah, but what I'm getting at is there's two ways of looking at it.
	You're saying that I remain a dude, I remain a guy.
	No.
	Oh, I become a woman.
	No.
	What do what woman do I want?
	You're a woman from the start.
	Say somebody.
	Oh, like going back, I became I was born a woman.
	Yes.
	And then I wanted to pick which of these women I wanted to look like.
	Right, like which woman would you be good at which woman would you be?
	I wonder.
	It's a great question, actually.
	I'm trying to think who you would be.
	Let me think about it for a second.
	For some reason the name Naomi Watts keeps coming to my head, but I don't know why.
	It's just popping in my head.
	Little pervert.
	I know, it's just popping in my head.
	I don't mean it to.
	Bring her up.
	Oh, yeah.
	It just popped in my head.
	I don't want to be held to it.
	It popped in my head.
	Dude, it's not a bad choice.
	She's great.
	Naomi Watts.
	I like that.
	It just popped in my head.
	I don't know.
	Thousand watts.
	Yeah, I look exactly like that anyways.
	I'm in, dude.
	Oh.
	Look, I look that's what I look like.
	Yeah, that's why, dude, there were some cuties in our neighborhood, and that's why people started doing peep and Tom.
	And I'll tell you this.
	You grew up around busted women, nobody's getting that step stool out.
	You know that shit.
	Oh, there we are, right there.
	There's you and Joe right there.
	No.
	No, that's something I'd I'd be more like.
	It'd have to be one of those dudes and Naomi Watts.
	Yeah, neither one of those is us.
	Um I saw what were you talking about?
	I saw something you were talking about going on a safari in Africa.
	Oh, did you notice this?
	So I did do that, but yeah.
	But either way.
	I noticed that like That's what I was talking about the the snakes and shit.
	Yeah.
	When I went to Africa, right?
	So I went there like a couple times for some different safaris and stuff like that.
	I felt like some of the people, when you look in their eyes there, it goes further back in time.
	Does that make any sense to you at all?
	I think that it may have, but I believe that that would be your um perception of that?
	That'd be your perception.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Dude, I talked to this one guy, and I was like, this guy, he just got damn just back through.
	I mean, you could it just felt like it went back to the like just to where the fingers of of existence first snapped right there at the damn sound.
	You've gone hunting in Africa?
	I did for the first time ever this summer.
	You did.
	Did you enjoy it?
	Were you I I I I I life-changing experience.
	Like in what way?
	I hadn't been to that, I hadn't been to that continent.
	It wasn't like the going hunting there was life changing, but one of the things I like about hunting is it immerses you and it immerses you in a situation and immerses you in an environment in a deeper Way than you would be immersed otherwise because you're doing something very like very ancient and base, you know.
	So it wasn't the experience of being there hunting, but just the I I hadn't been I that was like I hadn't visited that continent, and so I got to go to a couple places.
	Um and it was just it would it just scrambled up my head about you know when you see different ways of living, you know.
	So in that way it was it was profound to me, it was profound.
	Did you guys visit some like innate cultures there and stuff like that?
	Yeah, like some very yeah, like some really ancient cultures.
	I spent a little bit of time in this place called Masai land, and met dudes met Maasai dudes that are herders, you know.
	Um they'll live in they'll live in structures they make themselves some native material and herd cattle and and been herding cattle since you know from our perspective since the beginning of time on this place.
	Did it feel like traveling back in time a little bit?
	Yeah, it did for me for sure.
	Just it's just like those glimpses into like those glimpses into into cultures that have those glimpses into cultures that have remained relative to our own that have remained very constant.
	Okay, so that like that was that was yeah.
	Here's some photos of Maasai folks.
	Uh that was very eye-opening.
	It's a dark Amish right there.
	Being out, they're herders, you know.
	They're like um beautiful.
	Oh, it's dude stunning.
	Stunning.
	Do you think they have such a different relationship with existence than we do?
	Yes.
	Yeah, me too.
	Oh, 100%.
	Yeah, like they send their they they send like the kids bust their ass.
	They'll spend they'll send little kids out.
	Like when when they'll send their kids out to watch the goat herds, man, those kids don't drink water and eat till they come home at night.
	They may they raise them to be tough, tough, tough.
	You kick it more as a grown-up.
	Like kids will work real hard, you know, and as you get older, you get you kind of get more of like you get to kick it a little bit more.
	But when you're a kid, you bust ass.
	Um that was fascinating.
	A lot about it was fascinating, and I also liked like the animals.
	A thing that I've been there's a thing that I've like lamented in in conversations with my friends and my writing and all kinds of things.
	I I've I often I spent a lot of time thinking about studying, talking about writing about uh ice age America.
	So our continent, what it was like in the at the the the Pleistocene, Holocene trans transition.
	So like humans that were here during the tail end of the ice age, the first people that came here, what was their what were their lives like?
	Um and they lived amongst this great abundance and diversity of wildlife that we don't have now.
	Yeah, man, it's mastodon, short faced bears, right?
	All this kind of shit.
	They had a they had a they had a giant like a beaver that was the size of a black bear.
	There was an American lion.
	Fuck, man.
	There was like multiple market shit.
	Oh, we don't have shit.
	So going there, like that was the one continent.
	That was the one continent where all the big shit didn't.
	Yeah.
	That's the Africa is the one continent where humans and all this megafauna never changed.
	They for whatever reason it's the one continent where all the big shit didn't vanish.
	So you still have that great diversity of wildlife.
	So you can sit in the US, like if if you're a guy like me, who's a really interested in history, you can sit in the US and lament that our our elephants are gone.
	Like we don't have like nine, 10, 11, 12, 20 species of ungulates running around at any given time.
	Antelopes.
	Yeah, like whatever.
	But you go to African, you're like, oh that's what they were talking about.
	Like the ice age, yeah.
	You're like the ice age is alive and well, like there is an elephant, there's a hippo, there's stuff that weighs thousands of pounds, like thousands of pounds.
	There's stuff that weighs tons, you know.
	And so it it didn't what happened everywhere else didn't happen there.
	So that was to go like, oh, it's not gone, it's somewhere else, but you can go and be like, this is what it would be like.
	I wrote down a list, I I kept a list on my notes function in my phone.
	I kept a list of like large mammals, large mammals species that we encountered.
	And I can't remember, man.
	By the time we were done, we had like 27.
	I I I could pull out my phone and show you.
	Maybe I have it.
	Anyways, I had like 27 large mammal species that I personally laid eyes on.
	Wow.
	That's cool.
	And that would be like that's the shit we're talking about, like in Ice Age America.
	Um, and so it life changing in in those kind of ways.
	Yeah, you know.
	I wonder if you had a brain scan whenever you see those types of things, right?
	As a human, I wonder if it does a different reaction that happens in your brain as opposed to when you see different animals.
	Like does it take us back to a part of us that like knew those animals well or knew that they existed?
	Like I wonder.
	There's a theory about that that like why do that that you know when you take babies and make a mobile the animal things.
	There's this kind of it seems to me kind of a cockami theory, but there's this idea that and this is kind of like ancestral Africa thing that uh that those animals resonate with babies.
	Because it's drawing back to some deep deep memory.
	Oh, the animals that are automobile.
	I don't buy that.
	It's always a giraffe.
	I don't buy that shit, but I like I I think it's like I said, I think it's a little goofy.
	But there is that.
	You know what I'm saying?
	That's crazy.
	You think Thomas the train resonates like from prehistoria or whatever?
	Well, it's just it's just an idea.
	But there is a thing that is that I do think about when I think about animals and deep history and shit that's gone.
	Is um as bummed as you can get, as bummed as you can get about animals that used to be around that aren't anymore.
	Like the way little kids trip out about dinosaurs being gone.
	As bummed as you might get about all that, the biggest animal to ever live, the largest animal to ever live on the face of the earth is here right now.
	And it is a blue whale.
	Yeah.
	Biggest animal ever live on the face of the earth.
	So when little kids are like, golly, those dinosaurs, it's like the big boss is the biggest animal to ever live is here.
	Yeah, that's the DMX.
	If you put your effort into it, you go see the biggest animal that ever lived on the face of the earth.
	Dude, that is crazy.
	And it gives you hope that that if he wants, he'll bring those other ones back.
	That they can do it with science if they can do it.
	Dude, it's gonna happen soon.
	Yeah, I don't I disagree, but that's a different time.
	That's a different one.
	We'll talk about that another time though.
	But dude, one thing I will say this, I went on a safari, and were they right?
	So the guy, it was like an ambasselli or somewhere.
	I think we were in maybe in Kenya.
	And the guy took it.
	But you're on a photo safari.
	Yeah, we were just like in, yeah, we didn't get we got out, but only near the um place we were staying.
	Got it.
	Otherwise, we were just kind of in uh cruising in trucks.
	Cruising in trucks, yeah.
	Oh, there was a pride alliance that kind of came around us at one point, and they were just laying down, like they weren't bothering us or anything.
	And the guy is like, do not stand up in here.
	Everybody just stay.
	I'm gonna start the engine up in a little bit.
	I'm just gonna back out of here.
	And they were like someone like six or seven feet away.
	Like it was definitely pretty gnarly.
	There's probably like seven or eight of them.
	And this one woman's fucking phone goes off, right?
	And it was a like uh, it was like an iCarly ringtone or something.
	It was like some I don't know what that means.
	It was some TV, some children in world.
	It was just like fuck, we were gonna die.
	And she immediately kind of just like I don't know.
	It's just funny.
	But you thought it would have startled the cat, and the cat might have done something.
	Oh, for sure.
	The guy just said, do not make any sharp moves, do not stand up.
	And this lady's ring camera, like phone went off and she kind of went like that, and then I just turned around.
	But it's just like in a moment's notice, like you can be wiped out because of ignorant human ignorance, you know, human error.
	So again, it takes up psychological space.
	Big old cats.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	But man, uh yeah, I appreciate you coming and talking, man.
	This is a lot of fun.
	No, I enjoyed it.
	Yeah.
	It was a lot of fun, man.
	I gotta um come over there and go on one of your journeys sometimes if you guys take you out and do something.
	Yeah, do you guys go in Montana?
	Yeah, that's where I live, yeah.
	It is?
	Yeah, dude.
	I love to fish.
	What do you like to catch?
	Catfish.
	You like catfishing?
	I like catfish, but I would be willing, I'm willing to catch other fish as well.
	What's the kind of fish you'd most like to catch?
	I would like to catch probably one of those big long trout.
	Big long trout.
	Like the ones you see in uh that Brad Pitt and his brother caught, remember?
	Sure.
	Those.
	Those are awesome, dude.
	We can arrange that, man.
	I would be, I would be honored to take you out fishing.
	I'll be I'm gonna be in Montana in the beginning of uh at the uh I think the first week of October.
	I don't know if you're gonna be over there or not.
	I'm probably yeah, I might be.
	What are you doing there?
	I'm supposed to go to some like seminar kind of thing or something.
	Seminar.
	Yeah, I don't know what it's like.
	Anyone tells?
	I wish if it is, and I and I can bring somebody, yeah, please ask around.
	I'm gonna be like I'll be like, hey, look.
	If there if it is, I'll make sure to do some recon.
	Yeah, I'd appreciate it.
	Um, I would yeah, that'd be fun.
	It'd be fun, dude, to go fish.
	You know, I think yeah, like you want to do you ever do, Have you ever done a float?
	Like you want to float down a river and catch trout?
	I've never done that before.
	Oh yeah.
	I've done I've done uh whatever the one.
	Not the fucking crow, like uh I've done fly fishing.
	Oh yeah.
	I've done fly fishing, yeah.
	You've done fly fishing.
	Do you like that?
	I did like it.
	It was cool, man.
	I'd only I only got to do it one time.
	But I think the you like do you like the water?
	Do you like have you ever uh you never spear fished?
	I've never spear fished.
	I love to fish though.
	Well, I would love I would be honored to take you fishing, man.
	That'd be fun.
	Cool.
	All right, we'll do it.
	Yeah, that'd be great.
	It'd be awesome, man.
	Thanks for all your uh contributions to just uh helping people learn about the outdoors and the history of the outdoors.
	I know you have a book out that's uh or it might be your newest book about um when people are looking for beaver pellets and stuff across North America.
	Yeah, so uh um it's about mountain men, right?
	Yeah, I have a new there.
	There's a new meat eater season coming out, and then we have I've been working on these things, these Meat Eaters American History series.
	We did one on the long hunters.
	So, like Daniel Boone was a famous he used to hunt this country in the deer skin trade, so the late colonial deer skin trade.
	Did one on the mountain men and the beaver trade, and then our new one coming out now is called the hide hunters, and it's about the people that wiped out the last 15 million buffalo off the Great Plains at the end of the Civil War.
	Fuck.
	So it's these things about the mark, it's about market hunting history.
	There that's that's that's that's pre-sale.
	It's not that's available that's available for pre-sale right now.
	But we just finished that the hide hunters.
	So the Meat Eaters American History series.
	That that's a lot of the shit we taught, like what you and I have been talking about.
	It's a lot of that's kind of a home for a lot of that information.
	Cool.
	Yeah, like a lot of the like human history, yeah, wildlife, like how resources get exploited, overexploited, recovered.
	Those those series, they're audio originals, right?
	Um, I do print books too, but those are like audio, they're audio stories.
	Like I we that that me and a researcher, we like put them together, I narrate them.
	Um, and they kind of tell that story of America through like American history, American movement, through these kind of like keystone wildlife species that supported a lot of industry and economic activity at different times.
	Because for a long time, that's what American economies were driven by was leather.
	Yeah, fur and leather.
	Wow, yeah.
	Is it interesting to see that like hunting has like taken away species?
	Like, I mean, it's kind of takes them away and puts them back.
	I know, huh?
	Yeah, dude.
	We've done we like speaking collectively, hunters.
	Um, as much as I hesitate to speak collectively, like the practice of hunting has done a lot of damage and it's done a lot of recovery.
	We've writed, like, we collectively, right historically, hunters have done a lot in the last century, done an extraordinary amount in the last century to right the wrongs of our fathers.
	Yeah.
	Well, I think it does feel like in the end, like the general feeling of a lot of hunters, it's not just about going out and killing something, it's about having a relationship uh with nature.
	Yeah.
	Anyone who's serious about it, that's what drives it.
	Yeah.
	That desire, like if you just have a desire to go out and kill something, it doesn't last long.
	Yeah, you can fucking do that in Memphis.
	It doesn't last.
	Um Steve.
	Steve Renola, thank you so much, dude.
	And thanks for putting up with me today.
	And uh I appreciate it.
	I appreciate the opportunity.
	I look forward to us going fishing together.
	That'd be a great time.
	It was fun.
	I got a bunch of friends gonna be jealous.
	Really?
	Well shit.
	I might bring one of them.
	Bring one very good friend of mine, Seth.
	He's a huge fan of yours.
	Oh, that's cool, dude.
	Yeah, bring, dude, yeah.
	Maybe he'll fish with us.
	Oh, yeah.
	If he wants to come, that's he doesn't he won't say anything weird.
	He'll he probably won't say much at all.
	It already seems weird.
	But it's okay, man.
	Uh it would be an honor, man.
	Thank you so much.
	I appreciate it, Steve.
	Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
	I must be calling a stone.
	Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of my found.
	I can feel it.
	In my comments.

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