Transcript of #610 - Steven Rinella

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 Ranell. 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.

Do 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 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 wind up plugging something in. I mean, he might. I thought he's gonna get.

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, 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 Amish guy.

We finally got a hold of one Woodwork.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. 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 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 Rum Springer.

Yep.

He was on their. Kind of like. It's like SP break for the Amish. And. And he came to a comedy show. There he is right there. And well, on Rome Springer.

He looks young for Rome Springer.

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. So we'll see.

Now he's got his Realm 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.

It'd be a good honesty test if they know.

Right.

You'll know. They violated.

How do they know? Yeah, you know, 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, you know, it's a total different life than. 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. I thought it was going to be. I think. I don't know what's going to happen. But. No. You have a show on Netflix called Meat Eater and you guys are in your. You guys are.

We made a lot. We. We got. I got a 13th season of the show coming out. We've made many, many, many episodes over the years. Yeah.

Yeah.

And they appear in a lot of different places.

Yep. We've seen some of them on YouTube. 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 hunt 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 want to say uneducated. They just seem like they. Like they got picked last for Jim kind of.

Dude, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Really.

Oh yeah. About a turkey.

Yeah. If you look at a turkey to 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 Toby walk around the.

Woods making insane noises.

Yeah.

But I mean like he. 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, I mean, like.

Like 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. Like a turkey. That's America's bird, dude. 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. It's 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 vain bird.

What does vain bird mean?

It's beautiful. He puffs his feather. The male puffs his feathers all out. Yeah, he's got a snood. He's got, like, a. Imagine, like, a packer 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, to just, like, come in and, like, start disparaging a 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. It's disrespectful. 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, right. I didn't know. I. I didn't know him personally.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you don't know how old I am. Maybe I was there.

I'm with you.

But no, Waddell did not. Waddell was just like, we're killing these mfers. And he used some slurs. I'll say that straight up. He used a couple slurs. And I was like, I don't think those are for birds or animalia, even. But he was like, I think I. I think I just had a unique angle into it. Tell me more about that nose wiener that they got. Or that nose called a snood. Okay, bring it up.

They got. See, you get into turkey anatomy, man. They got a lot going on for them. They got a snood. There's not many birds that have, like, basically a. So they have a cloaca, like, birds Have a cloaca, like, called like a uni hole. All their actions, defecating, taking a leak. Well, when they defecate and take a leak is kind of a single deal.

Okay, I'll do that.

They have sex through the uni hole. When they. You can tell a male from a female by the shape of its.

Wow.

A male throws a J shaped hooked. 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 fight? 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 gotta. They got, like, pull up the beard. Pull up the beard.

Pull up the beard.

They got a beard, which is actually a feather. 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 them? Rope dragger. Oh, so you got limb hangers? Rope draggers. Yeah. Like, it's just. You kind of.

Okay.

I could, you know, I could walk out of this room right now 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, you might. No, 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.

Their head changes from red, white, to blue. It's kind of like they knew that they were going to be America's bird.

Oh, yeah. They're the 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.

Huh.

He is fired up.

Okay, so what does that mean when their head changes to different colors? Look at this guy.

He's 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, Waddell had Us, we were in the offseat. They were in the locker room, and we went. Them. They were not even on the field. They were back there, yo, getting physical there. 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, there was the off season.

If he's coming in, like, he's coming in, you see a blue head.

Okay.

And then all of a sudden, you know, and he's coming in, he's all puffed out. And another thing, so.

I know. I'm sorry.

Well, they got. So they got the big. You heard the big gobble?

Yes.

All 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 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. Some of it sounds like.

Right.

But you go back and then. 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 a store, you'd go, yeah, but it's like. But 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, 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. But I mean, even some busty chicks from the gas station.

He was, like. He was competitive. Yeah. So he's making a hand noise. And what's. What's.

Oh, dude, people were. Dudes were coming out of the closet when he was doing. I mean, he'll. He'll call. He'll. He'll get you. He'll get people going.

Oh, he's very good. And what. What, like, what would happen and what would happen 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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, like, he's got his. His wings. 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 dance.

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 games up.

Oh, he knows.

He knows that. He knows that. He knows that it's not good. Like, when you hear that noise, he's on his way out.

But what's the problem when you hear what noise is on the way at that.

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.

Wow. Yeah, I didn't.

Years ago. Like, you've been out, you know. You know, Rogan, I turkey hunted with him years ago and he wound up being kind of underwhelmed by turkeys. There might be something like. Like some kind of, like, offshoot of being a comedian, is that you can't appreciate turkeys.

Well, I think there's.

Think that there might be something to that.

That's a good question. I think. Oh, I remember watching this. He had Brian Callan too, which was. That's hilarious.

Oh, yeah. They didn't appreciate turkeys. Drove me.

Yeah, I know turkey people do not like it if you do not like Turk talking to. Being a. Thinking about turkey.

No, you just said something bad about my three kids. I've been 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 lore, I think I probably would have been more hyped about it.

Yeah. With one more lore bit.

Yeah, sure.

So when, at the time of, like, when Europeans arrived in North America, there were turkeys. 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 and like the deepest patches of swamps 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 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 will see an eagle and they'll be like, oh, my God, an Eagle. Really, 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, 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 who's out there busting ass in the woods.

Yeah.

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 survive 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. It's almost town turkey. Yeah. Catching a bus to work or whatever. I mean, that's fudgeing. Unbelievable. 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, there's such a thermometer of, like, sexual activity. And so many, 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.

And that I'll agree to 100%, man.

So all like, here's another thing about them. One more.

Yeah.

Most of the domestic animals that we utilize. Okay. When you go. When you go into a store and you see what's for sale down there for domestic meats, you know, whether you buy, you buy weird. Like, you buy lamb. Go pork, 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. 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. 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. 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.

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, wow, 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 my intro to hunting, you know, like. And I was like, oh, did he 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?

Yeah.

It looked 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, that's, you know, I said I wanted to ask you a question. I wanted to, 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 spent time in Illinois, but also in Louisiana?

Yeah, I spent time in Louisiana until I think I was maybe 21 or 22. And but, yeah, we'd go up to Illinois in the. In the. In the summers and fish. We did a ton of fishing, and we would do a good bit of fishing in Louisiana, But 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. 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. Will. 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, 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 m effort, and then you see who really owns that. That's. To me, that's, like, a fair way to do it.

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 spearfished the oil rigs. And. And so right when all that was heating up. Okay. We're like, cutting the episode about that was filmed out in the Gulf. And between the time I wrote the VO and the time we recorded the vo, all this hit the fan. Okay. So I'm sitting there, and in my. In my script, it's Gulf of Mexico, but then it switches.

Yeah.

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. 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 for me, I can't, like, I can't do it. I can't switch.

Yeah. It just seemed kind of like. I think you got to figure out who's going to earn it. I think you got to 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.

They ain't going to be the goal for Cuba though.

They're probably. Yeah, 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 contest. Yeah, that's kind of fucking dope actually.

Like a soccer tournament isn't really applicable.

Well, I think it's applicable Stephen. And what I'm going to tell you is this brother. That's as far as I got with that. But I think it's. 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.

I think then, then there. Aren't they automatically going to kick our ass?

I don't know.

I 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. Mexico and America. Yes.

Look of all the man.

Yeah.

Swimming in there, hunting on the edge of it.

I wonder if we could get spear fish in it. Spear fishing and just somebody singing near the edge and seeing if officials swim up. That's fishing.

You know. I was gonna tell you about these. I told your producer this guys I work with for Bionies Celsiuses and I didn't know that. I didn't had. 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, like seltzers and I was having a hard time sleeping and someone pointed out they're like well you've been drinking those stupid things all day. And I was, I was like. I thought I was drinking Lacroix or something.

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Yeah, he's good.

Let's listen to him.

He's gonna make some turkey noises. Yeah, 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.

I would say volume control and going from soft to aggressive, if that's what you want to call it, or louder is important to find a diaphragm. If you get those tones and you can control that, it don't have to sound perfect. My opinion on turkey calling rhythm is more important than specifically the sound of it.

That's what I've been saying. 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 animals. 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 going to do with it. We actually bought the damn thing. I wanted to build a catalog of animal noises.

Yeah.

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 going to 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 to 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 it's Steve Rinella's fucking Come Sleep With Steve.

It's called a great thing, man. I gotta check with my wife on that shit.

Oh, no. Every now and then. Every now and then in the distance of the. You hear Steve's wife be like, it better just be you in there. But that's what. It's 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 sleep with me in Africa.

Yeah, sleep.

Sleep with me in Asia.

Whatever. 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 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. I've had People that design the app on.

On your podcast.

Yeah.

So is your podcast called Meat Eaters too?

It's called the Meat 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. It's a phenomenal app. The reason I bring that up is it's what's. What is harmful to people's 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 it not saying there's a turkey over there? Yeah, Like, I got friends that are very. That put enormous amounts of energy into learning how to mimic the call of a barred owl.

Really?

Yeah.

Like, you mean those. What is it?

They go like. They got a roll. Yeah, you do it loud as.

Okay, hold on. Just give me a second.

Give me. They. Yeah, like, yeah, I'm not good at it. Southerners are good at it. It's a very Southern thing. Like, yeah, 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 Newcomb, barred 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, this is me and Clay. You see Clay and the birds, right?

Anyhow, definitely. Dude, you got to stay in school, brother.

What's.

What's the.

What is fun is to open up.

Maryland 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 realizing when he realized that Merlin, like, when he realized that Merlin wasn't picking him up, wasn't putting him down as a barred owl, he, like, had, like, an emotional crisis and started redoing his and working on his until Merlin, he had to change his stuff until he could figure out why Merlin wasn't grabbing him.

Look, all I'm telling you is that 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 being an owl. Yeah. Wanting to really get into their head. And we had. I've had a little bit of owl, actually. My sister's husband cooked two owls during Thanksgiving.

Well, he might want to keep. He might want to keep that more secret.

Yeah. I don't know if he did it. He. I mean, if there. I haven't seen him in a long time. That's what I'll tell you. But he. It's not a lot of meat, I'll tell you that. It's kind of like. Like you see those women in Little House on the Prairie. A lot of skirts, not a lot of meat under there. You know, that's. You think it's going to be Philadelphia under there, but it's a little more Arizona when you get on.

See, I'd tell you a good story my father told me, but I don't mean he's dead, so they're not going to do anything bad. I will tell it. I don't know why my father did this.

Okay.

I don't know why my father did this, but it talks about that like a lot of skirt. Not much.

Not much meat. Yeah.

So obviously my father was from another time. My dad was born in 19. He had me. And he's old. He was born in the Great Depression.

Oh, wow. Like 1910.

No, not that late. He. He. He was a World War II veteran.

Oh, wow. Anyhow, thank you, Mr. Rinella, for your service.

He tells a story about sitting deer hunting with his bow and some. Oh, there he is on the right there. He tells the story about sitting deer hunting with his bow and deciding to shoot owl with his bow. And he says he doesn't. And he, like, feels like he hits the owl. I can't account for why he would decide to do this. Is not something I would do. I don't condone it. Shoots the owl and, like, hits it dead center. But he said the owl doesn't even change tune.

Wow.

Because he realized just. It's all feathers.

Yeah. It's all brazier, baby. No tit.

That was his only owl hunt story, and he didn't. The owl escaped unharmed.

Yeah. Look at these. What are we doing?

What are we doing? Oh, yeah, yeah. There you go.

If you don't think all of the. The world is a psyop. Look at this. Mf her, homie. Look at this thing right here.

You know? You want to know a current controversy about the barred owl. 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 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 them on Frontier Airlines, like on their wing.

Yeah, sure. It'd be like, like wolves occup. 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 yet loggers in the Pacific Northwest trying to produce, harvest, you know, harvest timber products. But 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 cut trees or not.

I remember even in Dumb and Dumber, they had the Ben went to 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, whitetail deer crows that do really well that, that, that they benefit off people. Right. Like the more people there are in more places, the more beneficial it is to that owl. That owl does well in disturbed ecosystems. They, 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 is gradually happening is barred owls, which were historically more in the eastern U.S. yeah. Are colonizing the spotted owls range and displacing spotted owls. So there's this big push and there was even federal money. I don't know where it stands right now. I think the current administration was rolling it back. There was a push where they were going to go kill right there. They were going to cull 470,000 barred owls in the Pacific Northwest to keep.

Them from migrating to try to save the spotted owl, the spotted owl.

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 nature. Yeah. He's getting there on his own, under his own wing, spreading across. Is that. Can you really call it that?

That's like colonization bad? Or.

Or is it just that it's natural? Like, throughout your 45 years of life, raccoons have gone north and West. Throughout your 45 years of life, opossums have gone north and west. Barred owls have gone west all on their own. It's human in that they're sort of like our crop fields, our clearings, our developments don't bother them. They're beneficial to them.

Right. So we don't have an effect really on it.

Yeah. So, like, it's happening and they're talking about, you know, dusting off that many. You know, dusting off that many owls and. 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 Plan a coal. Barred owls across California, Oregon and Washington. Who was going to do that? Were they just going to send some. How would they go about that, do you think?

I applied for one of those gigs one time they were doing. 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 ghosts out of Olympic. Was it. No, no, no. Not of Olympic National Park. I can't remember.

Pull up a mountain goat.

It's a great animal.

Now, you do not see a lot of these around here.

No, no, no, no. But they were looking for teams of people to go do this mountain goat cold.

Of course they were.

And so we made it.

We made, like, professional wrestlers, dude.

We made a team to. We made a team to do the mountain goat. Cole. 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 going to 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 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. 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. 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? You get any diversity on it? How do you attack?

No, I didn't do. No, this was before dei. No, you didn't do all that. Now that I review it in my mind, it was decidedly. It was decidedly. It was a. It was a group of guys that you could mistake for me.

Okay.

That was my mountain goat team.

Yeah.

They're going to do the same. Like, they're fixing to do the same thing in Grand Teton.

In the Grand Teton National Park.

Yeah. Because mountain goats are. Mountain goats are largely in the coastal ranges, historically.

God, they're beautiful, aren't they?

Oh, yeah. So you got like, like Idaho, Colorado, Utah. They all have non native mountain goat populations.

Oh, yeah.

South Dakota has a non native mountain goat population.

And when you say non native, that means that they just ended up there. They weren't.

They were, 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, like our country hosts African species in certain, I mean, totally wild feral animals. We have African species running around in our country. We have Asiatic species running around in our country. We've just completely reshuffled the deck. Like I was saying, 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 loose just to see what would happen. Yeah, all the time, man. Just move it around, see what happens.

That's bonkers, man. Where is Grand Teton National Park.

It's bas. It's. I shouldn't say. It's basically Yellowstone National Park.

Do you have a place in America that you feel has the strongest connection to nature? Kind of to just pivot a little bit? Like, do you like, where you feel, like, the most, like, innately connected? Is that a weird question? Kind of.

No, it's not a weird question.

Because I know that, like, some of the natives had, like, the Black Hills and stuff like that in the Dakotas. Like, they had places where they felt, like, extremely connected.

Oh, yeah? You mean like. Like places that had that. That had a spiritual, like an aura.

Or something to them?

Yeah, sure.

I just wonder if it was.

Yeah, I can't pretend I can't. Like, I don't know what that felt like. I don't know what that looked like. I have things that mean a lot. I have places that mean a lot to me. 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. 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. There's a number of people that. Crazy Horse. His friends took his body and put it somewhere. They know. They don't know where it is, really.

Has anybody gone?

Edward Abbey, the writer.

Edward Abulous. 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. I don't know where it is.

And no one's found it yet.

At. Abby's body was out.

Ed Abby from.

You know. You ever hear Monkey Wrench Gang? He wrote Monkey Ranch Gang. Not from Desert Solitaire. He was an. He was an environmental odd couple, huh? No, no, he was an environmental warrior. You should read up on Ed Abby. Yeah, he's a. He's like a bit. He's a big figure in Defending the desert in a novelist. Anyways, his friends took him and they dumped him.

And they don't tell anybody where.

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. What to me passes as a sort of spiritual connection to that place. Then there's places I just like because there's, like. I like. I love being in Alaska. I spend a month or so in Alaska. It's kind of throughout different times of the year. I spent a month or so in Alaska every year. I love Alaska. What I like about Alaska is it's, you know, it's a big place, but there's a lot of places where you can just kind of picture what time was along. Like, you can kind of picture what things were a long time ago.

Got it.

Yeah. So it's like. Because I think if you've. As a. As an outdoorsman, as someone that likes nature, 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 continuity thing. You know, people have been out on the landscape living, hunting and fishing and living off the land for. Since the beginning of human time. And so naturally your mind goes to, like, what. How did other people experience this? Like, how did. What. 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.

You know, I mean, you can feel it.

Yeah. Like, it feels so untouched by so many, like, just a lot of other energy and stuff.

Yeah. And it winds up being like. You can imagine, like, you could go. There's places you go and you can imagine, like, man, some dude standing here. 10, not 10, let's do whatever. Some dude standing here 7,000 years ago beheld, like, however he perceived it, whatever his ideas of God were, you know, whatever his allegiances were, he. This is kind of what it looked like.

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 stand here, you know, at all these points in time and be like.

It just.

You can just imagine. It makes this continuity similar. Because a thing that I'm very interested in is and professionally and personally very interested in, like, the experiences of. Of. Of. Of other people who. Who had aspects of a lifestyle that I live today. Like, I'm always fascinated by that. That's why I could Give a 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 trying to, like, fix things. We broke a lot of things. Late 1800s, early 1900s, for decades, you know, we broke stuff. And so for the most part now, when someone talks about conservation, oftentimes it's like fixing broken. Bringing the turkey back. Fixing broken. Right, right.

Cleaning up rivers. Cleaning up. Yeah.

Like, we're like, we broke a bunch of. 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. We broke.

Yeah.

And so for most of, like, most conservation work is oftentimes like, fixing that we up. He was saying his work in a lot. He's been in Alaska forever. His work in Alaska at times is like, they're still doing. They're still trying to describe what's there. Meaning there are salmon runs. They'll go look at salmon runs. People know there's salmon there. They've been fishing for thousands of years, but no one's ever went and sort of like, scientifically described the salmon run. There are rivers where no one's gone and scientifically described what lives in the river.

Got it.

Right. So they're still in. They're still in a phase of just trying to like, write down what's there.

Yeah.

And we're in a phase of just trying to fix all of our broken shit.

Right.

So in that way, Alaska is cool.

Right. Because it's still like, in such an early process of being affected by humans.

Yeah. And if we play our cards right, then we'll.

What we learn here, we want it to go through the same.

Yeah. If we play our cards right, when someone talks about building a big dam, you know, on the Yukon or whatever, you might look and be like, man, we're spending a lot of it down in what they call in Alaska what they call the outside. And the outside. We're spending a lot of time and energy trying to fix all the. We broke by doing that. Just so heads up as you think about.

Right.

Your plans.

Just. Hey, guys, do you have a part of. 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 guess every place is dangerous, depending on what your behaviors are.

Yeah, there's. It's. This is something I think about. 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, as.

With my kids, because they're gonna try to do it, or you're taking them.

With you, 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. 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, you don't even know whose kid.

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 this shirt is lobbying for a certain type of behavior in the future.

She is my hunting buddy now.

That's awesome.

Yeah. We don't show pictures of our kids much anymore, but at all, 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, 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.

Sorry. I was trying to role play a.

Little, but that was good rope. You'd have to have more time with her.

You know, I should have also went.

Into it a little bit more at all.

All right, let's try it again.

She just didn't meet her.

Let's try it.

But she. She brings up. So there's, like, high levels of perceived danger, but, like. But then there's, like, reality. Meaning driving down. Driving down a highway is hazardous. Yeah, like, highway travels hazardous. Flying in single engine. We do a lot of flying in.

Single engine aircraft that's hazardous.

Flying in single engine aircraft is like a legitimate occupational hazard. But where people's minds go, people's minds go to getting attacked by wild animals.

Right.

Because you people don't want it. Like they're not thinking about that. You're going to go in like when you go into a remote environment, exposure. Yeah. Exposure is like far more dangerous than wild animals. But it's not falling into a hole. Sure. It's not fun to think about.

Right, right.

It doesn't, it doesn't occupy any. There's no intellectual energy. You can't put like intellectual or emotional energy into you exposure.

It doesn't have the same pr.

Instead you're like, well, there's wild animals lurking in the bushes.

Right.

And so people are afraid of things. See, I feel like I'm, I'm, I've seen like I'm hacking out my, my wife, I love her. My wife carries. 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.

So why, when you go walk, like why, when you, why does she feel I'm like, you know, like you have black bears that come into the outskirts of New York. Right. New Jersey has the densest black bear population in the country.

Yes.

And the densest human population in New Jersey does. Yeah. So like they don't all, when they're golfing, they don't carry pepper spray.

Right. It's not like you see Trump out there with pepper spray 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. We're 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 at like a trailhead in the woods and all of a sudden they got bears on their mind.

Yeah.

So dangerous would be like, I spent, I spent a month in Africa this summer and we saw a black mamba A snake called. 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, so you'll never see one then. We saw one. So all we talked about was black mambas.

Yeah.

He didn't bite anybody, Right. But all of a sudden, like, anytime I sat down once, I saw that son of a. I saw a puff adder, a black mamba and a cobra.

Damn.

Okay.

What is a puff adder?

Oh, he's a bad mother liquor man. Pull up how he gets around. Pull up how he gets around.

A puff adder.

Yeah. Watch how he gets around. You think of a snake doing a serpentine movement, for sure. Well, check his ass out. Pull up. Pull up. Him getting around. Oh, he just wiggles along like a. Like a centipede.

Shorty bay. Got that? He not even.

Look at that. No, he don't need to do.

He doesn't even leave a footprint.

You don't need to.

Oh, 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 walk, man.

Yeah, that's crazy.

I don't know if this is true. You want to hear something? They told me about that thing. This Kenyan dude told me. He told me that. I don't know if it's true, but it's just a great. It's a wonderful detail. He told me that puff adder. So he strikes so fast. We just caught one crossing the road and got out and messed with a little bit. Not up close with distant. Mess with it. That puff adder strikes so fast. This guy was telling me. This could be total lore. Don't even look it up, because I don't want you to refute it because it's too cool. 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 doesn't it sound cool? It sounds, you know, like you can 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 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 with these.

Things and kill Bill, It's a black mamba that kills. That kills Michael Madsen's character.

Is it really?

Yeah, it's a black mom. Anyhow, so we see this, we see these different critters running around and they're like, you're not gonna get killed by a snake. It's just like. Like it doesn't happen.

Right. But it feels like it's gonna happen.

But all of a sudden, instead of me thinking like, oh I might get like a. Some amoeba from drinking the water or like, who knows? Or a mosquito born pathogen, all that's out the window. Instead everywhere I look, all of us, me and my other guys I was with, we didn't take a step do without being like. Because all of a sudden in our head was the perceived danger. Meanwhile you're with all these people that are born and raised there. None of them's dead, right?

Yeah, they're doing fine. Some of them have some emotional issues or whatever, but they're do. Overall, they're.

Well, they're not all dead from snakes. It's just that's where as humans. Oh like that's where the head. Your head goes to like whatever said.

The best advertising and probably whatever's most recently been seen, those sorts of things.

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 mamba and then, you.

Know, the Tasmanian devil too.

Well, he doesn't live there for sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Tasmanian tiger, right?

Yeah.

Devils. Yep.

I'm thinking of Tanzania, I think or something. I don't know what I'm.

Oh no, no, you're right. Yeah. But no. Tanzania and the Tasmanian. That's the name. The island of Tasmania.

Yeah.

You know, Tanzania comes from 10 comes from Zanzibar, combining with Tanzanica.

Oh yeah.

When those two countries came together, they were called Tanzania.

So Tanzanica doesn't exist anymore. It's now Tanzania.

Tanzanica doesn't. But Zan. The Zanzibar archipelago was rolled into Tanganyika 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. Or it's first. 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.

But 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 recording of those of African men and women who are kind of divorcees. Really? Yeah, yeah. Because my buddy went there and he was like, dude, it's not for me. It wasn't for him.

See, my subject matter expertise is crumbling. But I'll point out, I was only there one week.

Yeah.

So I only absorbed so much.

And you don't fit either one of the parties that were. That are mating there. So I think I brought my own.

Mate with me, man.

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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 wrapped around just like. It was like. Like my leg was a stripper pole. And this thing had just came to.

Just fucking grind on you.

Just straight out of hell to grind on me, you know? And my grandmother looked at it, and she's like. She goes, I remember. She's like, did you summon that? She asked me. Because my grandmother was out of her mind. And that's when I knew that it was just going to be a long life right there. I was like, you think? And I looked in her eyes, and she thinks I fucking. A child that she barely ever even welcomes into town. She finally takes you to catch some bullheads in the spoon river out here.

And you summoned a serpent.

Jimmy Baker of. Of fang lizards.

What kind of snake it was.

I want to say it was. I want to say it was a water moccasin. But that may have just been the lure of me growing up in Louisiana, because I don't know if they have those in Illinois or not, you know?

No, I don't believe they do.

But I worked on a farm in Louisiana, and at lunch break, we would always just walk around. If they had a boat that was turned over, we'd flip it over and there'd be a water moccasin under it. Every. Every single time, dude.

Yeah, that. That's. That's a cool snake. There is a.

They were scary, though.

There's like a. There's an idea, and I kind of buy it. That from. From like a 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. Despite. Despite your impressions, I'm not a geneticist, but 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 does you well to be, like, standoff.

You follow me a hundred percent.

Yeah.

Oh, dude, I think anybody would be creeped out. There's nothing. Us. Yeah, there's something. So why are we so scared of snakes? Do you know? I want to look.

Let's look at venomous snakes. There's a.

But it 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 she doesn't get any feeling from a snake. Like, there's no energy that she gets.

Really.

And that's when I was like, dude, if a snake. Yeah. Tanya. Milo. Milo. Vic. 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, because then you can ask all the questions. You would be not. You'd ask all the questions. You remember. Remember Howard Stern? 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. Like, it was like. It was. I can't remember what he called. It was like, Ask a Black man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And now that. Yeah. It was called Ask a Black.

I can't remember what this stick was. But you just have dudes volunteer to come.

That's what we do.

Like, idiotic white guys could be like, hey, you know. Yeah. 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. 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, like, guide herself. I thought it was pretty interesting. I should do it again soon.

No, that's a really good. That's a really good interview. Deal. Because. Because she probably, like, generally going about her life. Probably can't stand people, you know, people staring at her, wondering, asking her the same dumb over. So to be like, I'm just gonna sit here and just do it.

Yeah, it was great.

Hit me with it. Hit me with it.

Have you ever had taken a blind person on one of your hunts before?

I know, 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.

To talk about what the experience was. And yeah. I had a blind person on.

And what do that. Because they're just. I mean, they got to feel like there's no chance when they shoot. Right.

You know, they had people help. We. We had a. You know what?

I'm.

You know what? I'm 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 good.

With a mouth control apparatus. But it took a ton of assistance that. That's who he had on point. I was going to make about that innate fear of snakes is if you could do time machine. Okay.

And you talking time travel.

I'm gonna. Okay, this would be like, a really good question to. To have.

Okay.

The good use of. If you had, like, one pass. One time pass. Here's a thing that would be on my list of. I would be curious about when human. Like after the sort of African diaspora and humans started colonizing the whole world, right? The people that came. The people that became the first Americans and came in from Alaska. You always hear about the Bering Land bridge, right? But the land bridge is the size of Texas. It wasn't like a bridge. It was like a landmass. Like people. People colonizing the new world would have been born and died on the Bering land bridge without thinking that they were going anywhere. They were just living their lives. Got it and slowly spread down and.

Those were like Inuits, like a, like kind of natives.

They became native, right? Who? The people that became the Inuits. By our understanding, the people that became the Inuits came much later.

Got it. Okay.

They came from the Japan and the Aleutians and whatnot. But these like Siberians came into the new world. 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. 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.

But all of a sudden they spread southward.

Yeah.

And at some point one of those sons of bitches is out just right. He's out cruising around doing his deal 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 or did he jump down and grab it? That was some good time machine right there.

Wow. Say this. If he was with someone else when it happened, you have to cut that person's throat immediately, I think, because you would think they have something to do with this. Like they're in on it. Like that's what I would do.

You're like, who the fuck summoned this?

Yes.

Yeah. Like, yeah, you're distant ancestor summon that snake.

Yeah. You would think it was like other. I don't know. But you'd probably seen fish. But I don't know. Do you just get that energy?

Yeah. Like then you would be able to answer the question. That's the way. The one way to be able to answer the question, do humans have some baked in or is it not that?

Right. Yeah. You'd have to go all the way back.

There's probably another way too. You could take a child at birth, buy one, sequester it somewhere.

Well, they do that all the time. There's Indian babies playing with snake.

Yeah. But take one and sequester it so it doesn't get any information from any human beings. Oh yeah, let it Become an old person and throw a snake in that room. Do they jump back? That'd be easier and less expensive than time travel, but it wouldn't be as authentic. And you'd run into, like. You'd run into legal.

And if problems. If they've been alive so long, are they going to not care anymore? Like, I don't.

You damaged them psychologically and stuff by locking them up in that room. And you know.

Yeah. They're like, I don't give a something.

Because then the detractors would be like, yeah, but he was so destroyed psychologically that this is not telling us anything.

Right. Yeah.

I think you're with a. With a.

With a. With a. Yeah.

A person you victimized.

Yeah.

Of this whimsical scientific study.

Oh, yeah. I think at that point you're really looking at the 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. 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 wooly. Not a wooly mammoth or whatever, but like a.

A deer.

A big, huge deer.

Big old turkey.

Yeah. Yes.

Rope.

Dragon limb hanger. You know, one that's just singing, you know, one in an Allen Iverson jersey. You know what I'm saying? Like a real boss.

Now I'm getting excited. But they put a picture of it up, Right.

Are there.

Or some say 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 going to. 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 kind of tags or lottery for. So anyway, take me into some of that world kind of. If, If. If you don't mind.

I thought you were going to get into the ethics of that.

You.

Of you posing with a dead animal in a picture. But you're talking about like the sort of. The conservation fund, like the kind of. There's a perceived conflict or like a incongruity around the notion that how can you help a species.

Yeah.

By hunting it.

Right.

How do you help a species by hunting it? Wouldn't that be like that? That. See, 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. It's a phenomenal question. I can see why it puzzles people. But you can point to case after case after case of ways in which it has worked. We began our conversation around turkeys. Okay? There's a. There's a saying that I like quite a bit. It's not mine, but it's success has many fathers, but failure is a bastard's child. Okay. The success in restoring the wild turkey, many people claim parentage of that success and there was many people that attributed efforts to that success. All these different. Like whoever state you live in, your state has a fish and game agency, okay? I'll point out that your state's fishing game agency gets the bulk of its funding from people buying hunting and fishing licenses. That's how we fund the agencies that take care of wildlife in the states. So does that. But when they were restoring the wild turkey from nearly being wiped off the continent, okay, the, 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, physical effort into restoring the wild turkey to where they exceed historic levels, is it fair to go like you just did that so you could hunt turkeys? You'd be like, guilty as charged, right?

Guilty is charged, right?

There are other. Because like, turkeys are so widely available now.

But is that a bad thing? It's not a bad thing.

It's not. But it's not always even that way. Because for instance, if you look at, there's. There's an organization called the Wild Sheep Foundation. It's an American based conservation organization that works to restore, recovery, protect wild sheep species, okay? Desert bighorns, Rocky Mountain bighorns, Dall 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.

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. Not talking about lobbying.

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 comes from hunters, that comes from hunting based organizations.

So you're saying that 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, this isn't like, this is like this is settled science. I mean, this is me giving you some spin. I'm not giving you like a, a novel way to look at something. It's just like the, it's just the reality. Well, yeah, I, I mean, you're a fishing game agency. What city do you rep? It doesn't matter what the hell you answer me. You're resident in Tennessee. You're fishing 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. 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 tracks 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 big amount of money to hunt there warrants them being able to set aside large chunks of ground the government and monetize it and monitor it and then pay for anti poaching efforts and other things that protect it. 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 going to argue that perspective. So you might look at it and be like it sucks that that has to be true. And I'll be like okay, it's fine. Maybe in your opinion it sucks that that has to be true. But what I can't debate with you is does it have to be true? It's just true. Yeah, you know, you might hate that that's the way, but that's the way it is.

But that's the way it is. Did humans always eat animals do you think?

Yeah, since they could 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 me, he's been, you have to go back some far ass, you'd have to go back, that's fine.

We can go back that far.

There's an idea that 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, 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, like the biblical confines and going into like purely scientific world. Some people think that you could have grabbed a dude 75000 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, wouldn't think anything of it.

Yeah, be a pie cap or whatever.

Absolutely, absolutely. That was a hunting, that was a hunting consumer of large quantities of animal flesh. That was. Yeah, so.

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.

For sure.

There's this other idea that the great. In, in a scientific understanding that, that when we had, when humans had this kind of renaissance, like, like we seem to have suddenly kind of figured a bunch of out and some people correlate that to us becoming predominantly to eating huge amounts of animal flesh. It's so efficient and so full of energy. That was our intellectual renaissance like that. That's when humans became bright and developed like religion and organizational structure and language and all that is when we discovered meat eating.

Right. Because we had enough energy not only to satiate our bodies, but then also for the rest of us to maybe flourish some because we finally had a new source that was really replenishing us constantly.

Yeah. 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 a truly strict schedule of like eating a bunch of low grade food, sitting, ruminating, eating, you know, so deer's always. So there's this idea. Yeah, that's the idea that like, and, and of course I like it because it reinforces like that. That's what I, I like to eat deer meat and stuff. So when I hear that, I'm like, yeah, bro, that's right.

That's the truth.

Because we just like the stuff that.

Oh yeah. We want to support our own ideas and causes, our own truths. What about pull up like a Neanderthal? What was that called? Like a man. That was 75, 000 years ago. Was that Neanderthals?

Well, it would have been, it would have been Homo sapien.

Oh God, that must have been.

Well, no, I've been like. They would have been. Oh, did you, have you ever had your, have you ever done like a, you know, the late 23andMe organization?

I've done 23andMe. Yeah, they sold all my information. Oh yeah.

Just the other day my.

I'm getting.

You still delete your.

Really? Yeah, I'm getting a bunch.

Because I would go, I would say like hey, I want to buy his. See what he's got going on. And I, you know, so I had mine deleted. You never deleted.

I'm getting emails from like you're related to this guy, you know, and it's like a Japanese guy. I'm like this.

Hey, they recently. They're lying where I live. They recently solved a 30 year old murder case from. Because so many people doing 23andMe filling up these. These filling up databases. And so all of a sudden now also now they're like. Also now they're like, hey, we got a little ping. A little ping on the map.

Yeah.

Of like a family that seems because they had a biological specimen.

We're gonna solve all those old crimes.

They had a biological specimen. Right. And so just from people willfully going and doing this kind of work, all of a sudden you start popping all these like markers and then you gotta, you gotta buy 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 think. 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?

No, I wasn't surprised. I just don't like. I don't have that vibe, you know. I remember, I feel like, I feel like Joe was telling me Rogan was telling me that he was high up.

I could see that.

Kind of average.

I could definitely see.

I swear, I hope I'm not making that up. I swear he told me.

I don't think he would deny that at all. He's definitely like in the end of all guy that got struck by some cool ass lightning.

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, an understanding is that, you know, they were. Here's a weird deal. I. I wrote this one time and one. I wrote this in the. In a forward in one of my cookbooks. I was writing it. You could have been like at a certain time. You could have been in Spain.

Okay.

Okay. You could have been in Spain. You could have been 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. Had to be like, what race or class or something like that.

What kind. What species of human?

Oh, like, is that somebody who's like, kind of like Neanderthal dudes? Somebody's a little more monkey?

Yeah. Is it like Neanderthal dudes? Is it like. Like the same way that we talk.

About somebody eating a. Somebody eating a banana, somebody who has a. Sandals at least on eating one of me? Yeah.

Like, the same way you got like whitetail deer and me. Like, where I live, we have whitetail deer and mural. They're so similar. Like, it takes. I don't want to say a trained eye to tell them apart, but, you know, someone from another country would look and it might take them a few days for like, oh, they're different. Yeah, they're just gonna see and be like, whatever, you know, deer, deer. But at a time, it'd be that. At a time, it'd be that you'd be like, oh, no, there's the one kind of human and there's these other kinds of humans.

Like, that guy's about 2, 000 years back.

Yeah. And they don't. They don't mix together or they kidnap each other, whatever.

They still have bad breath, all that.

Yeah. But when you see that, you're like Joe having that, like, as high as 57% more Neanderthals because it's. It's like, it's. It's, you know, we under duress. I thought it 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?

You think they're separate beings? Do you think there's one more advanced in the Neanderthals?

Neanderthals were a 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, like Homo sapien.

Yeah.

Okay. It seems like at times they were able to have viable offspring. That at times, Neanderthal. Neanderthal people that were in Europe far longer. They were in Europe long, long hundreds of thousands of years before modern Humans made the scene.

Got it.

And because of everyone having a little bit of introgression from Neanderthals, this is not my field of study. No, I'm just a curious onlooker.

Let's take a look right here. Ancient human species, including Homo sapiens. Neanderthals.

Yeah. Denisovans.

Denisovans and others did interbreed as they encountered one another during the middle and upper Paleolithic periods. Living 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 a deceptive chart.

He has a briefcase and then he has Nikes on or whatever.

That's a deceptive chart, dude.

That's. I can't even believe that this is.

One of the main things I talk about my kids.

Wow.

Trying to explain, like. Like, what do you mean? We came from monkeys. I'm like, don't. 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 what 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. You know what I'm saying?

What happened to them all?

The dude who's just scratching under one arm, wrench in the other, just. They don't know how work to register because he's just like, you know, but he can change a tire in a. 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 away somewhere.

Yeah, but, dude, I never thought that you'd be sitting there and you'd be like, oh, oh, yeah.

You'd be like, oh, you and your.

Buddy, like, dog, let's go, let's go. Let's go do a lab.

You better go figure out what kind of dudes it is. But the fact that they. The fact that they enter, the fact.

That they tell us this.

Well, I think that. Well, you might have missed that part.

Oh, I wouldn't know that.

Let me get to my point, though. The fact that they interbred unreal Leads to this question of, was it a Roman. Was it a romantic 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 conquerors choice kind of.

Yeah. It was like, when, I mean, that.

They would like me in, in over, like, like the Capulets and, you know, from like Romeo and Juliet's family.

Stephen. It was not me.

And come together despite the family condemnations and no 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 right there.

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 tried, like, oh, here's just a Neanderthal, let's get a little bit of love, you know?

But they're easy to trick, right?

But they're not easy to fudge pin down and make love to.

I bet you you gotta trick them. But even if you trick shells and stuff, right?

Even if you trick them with a little wind chime or something, get their attention. I bet you can't. You're gonna have to. How quick can you make love and still enjoy it and get away from them? I, I, I wouldn't. That's not a risk I'm taking.

No, it's time machine questions.

I'm not. That's not a risk. I'm someone that hasn't brushed their hair in 70,000 years. I'm gonna try to them. I'm out.

You know what? I want to put out a call to you. Don't mind me doing a call for a guest. I'm trying, I've been trying to find. No, like a shortcut, but 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.

Yeah.

Is I've been trying to find a really, really good. 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.

Yeah.

It's a valley in Germany.

And you sound a little more like. I'm more likely to get a good guest by saying Neanderthal. Because they're like, this dude knows his. Yeah, I want to find a really good Neanderthal behavioralist. Hard R. 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 breathes. It can't be like an interloper.

Yeah.

Like, I need like a legit, a verbose, animated.

Yeah.

Neanderthal research.

I don't want some halfway house. I want a trap house that people have been shooting up in for 50 years with information.

Yeah.

About who would just like, who could digest a stone if they need to.

Yeah. Like that. Like a really good Neanderthal person to come on the show. And you just reach out to us and I want to interview you.

Okay. There you go, guys. For Steve. They would like that. And here's what.

You have a lot of Neanderthal researchers that listen to the show.

I mean, I bet we have some 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 23andMe.

An extreme. I don't want. They don't need to have that.

I know you want what?

I want the highest.

I want somebody who's 80 good ideas. 80% Neanderthal.

Yeah. But find the highest guy.

And when I get them, I'm just going to send them over to you too, Steve, because I think you would do well and because you might be able to notice some patterns that they have or behaviors.

Yeah.

Who.

If. Whatever I had low. Who. 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. 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.

It's not always. People don't always look upon this. 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 intels. 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. Because I Am interested in this subject. I've 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 wants to be like, oh, they had art. Oh, they, like, wore jewelry. Oh, they were free divers.

Right?

They. I mean, like, every.

Like, why do you think we're doing that, do you think?

I don't know why. It's like, because there's this side. There's used to be this idea that they. These, like, thuggish brutes.

Right.

You know, but there's, like, when you look. When you. If you kind of follow Neanderthal news, like I do, there's a theme. Twitter. Yeah, there's like, a theme of. Of this kind of. Like, this delight. Like, this kind of delighted realization about how com. Like, how complex their culture was, how complex their society was. It'd be like. 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. Like, oh, they appreciated the finer things in life.

Well, it's like the branding. It's like, even when it goes back to, like, you were talking about the bald eagle. It's like just that pr. That spin.

I wonder if they have a very, very good PR agency. Wow, Neanderthals right now. Or. I have a good one on retainer, and they're getting a lot of good ink about that. They liked art and movies, you know, and it's like, they're just getting cooler. They're getting cooler.

Oh, yeah. These they love Stand By Me. You're like, that's insane, dude.

I'm telling you, dude. Start paying attention, 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, at the end of the episode.

I love that you're gonna have that, man. Dude. Listening to. Dude, what would be better? Listening.

Of course. I could talk about humans all day long, bro. But, you know.

So listening to two Neanderthals talk about themselves, they wouldn't know a lot, but they would try pretty hard, you know? That could be us, dude. That's awesome. That's really awesome, dude. People say you look like Harry Connick Jr. Sometimes.

No, I've gotten. I used to get Kevin Bacon.

That's who it is.

I used to get a dude from the. A dude from. Remember the show where they would, like, do all the crazy stunts to Each other. Oh, Johnny Knoxville.

Oh, yeah, Johnny Knoxville. I could see that song, get that.

What else do I get?

Those are good. Those are good ones.

Yeah. I don't see that one too clear. Because I don't never get. I never do clever with my hair.

Yeah, yeah. Johnny's hair is always kind of stylish and stuff.

Yeah. So I think that Kevin Bacon, like, he doesn't get too clever with his hair.

I saw that he was kicking ass.

When I was a kid in the movie making business, man, you know?

Oh, he's such a talented guy. 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 our little restaurant. And I was like, is that Edward Norton? Man? 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 he'd look like?

That's a great question. I don't know. She was one out there.

No, I'm sure. But look, if 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, like equipped, man. I can't really think of what you're getting. I mean, like, I'm not getting 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?

What are you talking about?

I don't know.

I'm not talking about some chop shop, aftermarket woman. I'm talking about some. I'm talking about a certified bone in woman. Like, you're woman from the jump.

Yeah, but what I'm getting at is there's two ways of looking at it. You're saying that I remain a dude, I remain a guy.

No.

Oh, I become a woman.

No.

What? What woman do I want?

You're a woman from the start. Say somebody.

Oh, like going back. I was born a woman.

Yes.

And then I wanted to pick which of these women I wanted to look like.

Which woman would you be good at? Which one would you be, I wonder? It's a great question, actually. I'm trying to think who you would be.

Let me think about it for just a big man. For some reason, the name Naomi Watts keeps coming to my head. But I don't know why. It's just popping in my head.

Little pervert.

I know it's just popping in my head. 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 it just popped in my head. Thousand one.

I look exactly acting 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, if you grew up around busted women, nobody's getting that step stool out. You know that.

Oh, there we are right there.

There's you and Joe right there.

No, no, that's something I'd be more like if you'd have to be one of those dudes and Naomi Watts.

Yeah, neither one of those is us. 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 I was talking about the. The snakes and. 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 perception of that. That'd be your perception, right?

Dude, I talked to this one guy and I was like, this guy, he just got damn. Just back through. I mean it just felt like it went back to the. Like just to where the fingers of existence first snapped right there at the damn sound. You've gone hunting in Africa?

I did. For the first time ever this summer.

You did? Did you enjoy it? Were you?

I, I, I, I, I. Were you 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 environment in a deeper way than you would be immersed otherwise. Because you're doing something very like very ancient and base, you know, so it wasn't the experience of being there hunting, but just the. I hadn't been. That was like I hadn't visited that continent and so I got to go to a couple places and it was just, it was, 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 Masai dudes that are herders. You know, they'll live in. They'll live in structures they make themselves from native material and herd cattle and been herding cattle since, you know, from our perspective, since the beginning of time on this place.

Did it feel like traveling back in time?

Yeah, it did for me for sure. Just, just like those glimpses into like, like those glimpses into. Into cultures that have. Those glimpses into cultures that have, have remained relative to our own, that have remained very constant. Okay, so like that was, that was. Yeah, here's some photos of Maasai folks. That was very eye opening.

The dark Amish right there being out.

They're herders, you know, they're like beautiful. Oh, 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 send like the kids bust their ass. They'll spend, they'll send little kids out. Like when they'll send their kids out to watch goat herds. Man, those kids don't drink water and eat until they come home at night. They, 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. That was fascinating. A lot about. It was fascinating. And I also liked like the animals a thing that I've been. There's a thing that I've like lamented in, in, in conversations with my friends, in my writing and all kinds of things. I've. I often, I spend a lot of time thinking about, studying, talking about writing about Ice Age America. So our continent, what it was like in the, at the, the Pleistocene Holocene trans transition. So like humans that were here during the tail end of the Ice Age, the first people that came here.

What was their, what were their lives like? And they lived amongst this, this great abundance and diversity of wildlife that we don't have now. Yeah, mammoths, mastodon, short faced bears. Right. All this kind of. 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.

Man, there was like multiple market.

But we don't have. So going there like that was the one continent, that was the one continent where all the big did we got Bichons. Yeah, that's the. Africa is the one continent where humans and all this megafauna never changed. They for whatever reason is the one continent where all the big didn't vanish. So you still have that great diversity of wildlife. So you can sit in the US like, if you're a guy like me who's really interested in history, you can sit in the US and lament that our elephants are gone. Like we don't have like 9, 10, 11, 12, 20 species of ungulates running around at any given time.

Antelopes.

Yeah, like whatever. But you go to after 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 right.

There is an elephant, there's a hippo. There's stuff that weighs thousands of pounds. Like thousands of pounds. There's stuff that weighs tons, you know. And so it, it didn't, what happened everywhere else didn't happen there. So that was to, to go like, oh, it's not gone, it's somewhere else. But you can go and be like, this is what it would be like. I wrote down a list, I kept a list on my notes function in my phone. I kept a list of like large mammals. Large mammals, species that we encountered. And I came there, man, by the time we were done, we had like 27. 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. We're talking about like an ice age America and so life changing 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 there's 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 Theory about that. That, like, why do you. That. That, you know, when you take babies and make a mobile, the animal things. There's this kind of. Seems to be a kind of a cockamamie theory, but there's this idea that. And this is kind of like ancestral Africa thing that. That those animals resonate with babies because it's drawing back to some deep, deep memory. Oh, the animals that are on a mobile megafauna. Oh, I don't buy.

It's always a giraffe.

I don't buy that. But, like, I. I think it's. Think it's. Like I said, I think it's a little goofy, but there is that.

I think bluey resonates with. You know what I'm saying? That's crazy. You think Thomas the train resonates, like, from prehistoria or whatever?

Well, it's just. 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 that's gone. Is. Is 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, 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, like.

The big ball system.

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. 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, really.

We'll talk about that another time, though. But, dude, one thing. I will say this. I went on a safari, and were they all right? So the guy. It was like an Amboseli or somewhere. I think we were in. Maybe in Kenya, and the guy.

You're on a photo safari?

Yeah, we were just like, in. Yeah, we didn't get. We got out, but only near the place we were staying. Otherwise, we were just kind of in.

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 phone goes off, right? And it was a. Like a. It was like an icarly ringtone or something. It was like some.

I don't know what that means.

It was some tv, some children in world. It was just like, we were gonna die. And she immediately kind of just like. I don't know. It's just funny.

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 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. 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 come over there and go on one of your journeys sometimes. If you guys.

I'll take you out to do something.

Yeah. Do you guys go in Montana?

Yeah, that's where I live.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

Dude, I love to fish.

What do you like to catch?

Catfish.

You like catfishing?

I like catfish, but I would be. Well, 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. 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'm going to be in Montana in the beginning of. At the. I think the first week of October. I don't know if you're going to be over there or not.

I'm proud. 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 called.

Neanderthals?

I wish. Dude, if it is. And I. And I can bring somebody.

Can You. Yeah, please ask around.

I'm gonna be like. I'll be like, hey, look, if it is. I'll make sure to do some recon for you.

Yeah, I'd appreciate it. No, yeah, that'll be fun.

That'd be fun, dude. To go fish, you know, I think. Yeah. Like, do 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. Yeah, I've done. Whatever the one, not the cr. Like, I've done. Oh, yeah, I've done fly fishing.

Yeah, you've done fly fishing. Do you like that?

I did like it. It was cool, man. I'd only. I only got to do it one time, but I think you like.

Did you like. Do you like the water? Have you ever. You never spearfished?

I've never spear fished, but I love to fish, though.

Well, I would. I would be honored to take you fishing, man. That'd be fun.

Cool.

All right, we'll do it. Yeah, that'd be great.

It'd be awesome, man. Thanks for all your contributions to just helping people learn about the outdoors and the history of the outdoors. I know you have a book out that's. Or it might be your newest book about when people are looking for beaver pellets and stuff across North America.

Yeah, so I.

It's about mountain man, right?

Yeah. I have a new. There's a new meat eater season coming out. And then we have. I've been working on these things, these meat eaters American history series. We did one on the long hunters. So like, Daniel Boone was a family. He used to hunt this country. Daniel in the 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, you know, so it's these things about the mark. It's about market hunting history. That's. That's. That's. That's pre sale. It's not. That's available. That's available for pre sale right now, but we just finished that. The Hide Hunters. So the Meat eaters American history series. That. That's a lot of the. We taught like. 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, like, human history.

Yeah.

Wildlife like how resources get exploited. Over exploited. Recovered those. Those. Those series, their audio originals. Right. I do print books, too, but those are, like, audio. They're audio stories. Like, I. That. Me and a researcher, we, like, put them together. I narrate them, 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.

Yeah. Dude. We've done. We like speaking collectively, hunters, as much as I hesitate to speak collectively, like, the practice of hunting has done a lot of damage and has done a lot of recovery. We've righted. Like, we collectively, historically, hunters, have done a lot in the last century, done an extraordinary amount in the last century to right the wrongs of our fathers. 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 with nature. Yeah.

Anyone who's serious about it, that's what drives it.

Yeah.

That desire. Like, if you just have a desire to go out and kill something, it doesn't last long.

Yeah. You can do that in Memphis. Steve Rolla, thank you so much, dude. And thanks for putting up with me today. And I appreciate.

I appreciate the opportunity. Opportunity. I look forward to us going fishing together. That'll be a great time.

It was fun.

I got a bunch of friends gonna be jealous.

Really?

Well, I might bring one of them. Bring very good friend of mine, Seth. He's a huge fan of yours. Oh, really? In his pants when I told him I was coming on your show.

Oh, that's cool, dude. Yeah, dude. Yeah.

Maybe he'll fish with us.

Oh, yeah. If he wants to come there, he doesn't.

He won't say anything weird. He probably won't say much at all.

It already seems weird, but it's okay, man. It would be an honor, man. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Steve. Now I'm just floating on the breeze.

And I feel I'm falling like these.

Leaves I must be cornerstone.

Oh but.

When I reach that ground I'll share this piece of my life out I can feel it in my bones but it's gonna take.