Joe Rogan Experience #1341 - Steven Rinella

Steven Rinella is an outdoorsman, author, and television host. He currently hosts “MeatEater” on the Sportsman Channel & Netflix, and a podcast also called “MeatEater” available on iTunes & Stitcher.

Steven RinellaguestJoe Roganhost

Aug 27, 20192h 16mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

150 min read · 30,027 words

0:00 – 0:24
Blunts, elk shank bourbon, and why hunters ignore the best cuts
1. SRSteven Rinella
  What's going on with all the cigars?
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Uh, which cigars? Those are not cigars. Those are marijuana.
3. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh, okay. I figured it might be something like that.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) It's marijuana on the outside.
5. SRSteven Rinella
  (laughs)
6. JRJoe Rogan
  It's called a blunt. That's what the youngins call it. It's tobacco, you know.
7. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh, no, I know the term blunt, but that looks like a leg- I thought it was, like, some kind of-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, you're younger than me. Of course, you, you know what you're talking about.
9. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. I'm not as schooled as you.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
11. SRSteven Rinella
  I'm not as schooled as you in the illicit. Even though that's not a... It, it's not an illicit now.
0:24 – 2:33
Adult drinking habits, disposable income, and ‘grownup’ liquor cabinets
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Speaking of illicit, we got some Meateater Bourbon, some Elk Shank Bourbon.
2. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah, it pairs with-
3. JRJoe Rogan
  It's a good name for it, because-
4. SRSteven Rinella
  ... it pairs with beaver tail.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  ... it pairs with beaver tail.
6. SRSteven Rinella
  (laughs) Elk shank, elk shank.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  I've, I've had both of those things thanks to you.
8. SRSteven Rinella
  (laughs)
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Elk shank's a great name for it, because that is, like, one of the rare foods. Like, if you talk to most hunters, like I said, "Have you ever had elk shank, ossobuco?"
10. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  They'd be like, "What?" Most, most hunters have never eaten that.
12. SRSteven Rinella
  No, but it... And it was revelatory to find out about it, and then, it's the thing that, uh, I became... I started to proselytize, you know. I found out about eating it 'cause my brother found out about eating it, because he has this old cookbook called the L.L.Bean. It's like the L.L.Bean Wild Game Cookbook, um, by a guy named Angus, first name Angus, if I remember right. And he's got a shank, like, he's got a shank recipe in his book for antelope shank, and so we started making it. That, that's the funny thing about wild game cooking that you've probably picked up on, is that you could, um, you could have a thing where you could say like, "Hey, here's a recipe for a white-tailed deer heart," right? And someone would be like, "But do you have one for a mule deer heart?" Have I explained this to you before?
13. JRJoe Rogan
  No. Well, they're interchangeable, aren't they?
14. SRSteven Rinella
  Well, that's... Yeah, that's the thing, so.
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Obviously.
16. SRSteven Rinella
  Like, when we did our cookbook, I tried really hard to steer away from things that would be elk recipes, deer recipes, and just take it from a cut basis.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Your cookbook is excellent, by the way.
18. SRSteven Rinella
  Have you messed around with it?
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Many times, many times.
20. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh, that's good. That's great.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  I've cooked quite a few things from it. It's really great.
22. SRSteven Rinella
  Um, we got away from saying that, like, "Here's an antelope recipe," or, or whatever, because it's just, like, the cut is more important, especially with all these ungulates, like horned and antlered game. What it is, is more important than what it came from. So, by putting elk shank on that bottle, I'm kinda, like, going against my own advice. But if I just put shank, people might not know what you're talking about.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, it could be, like, lamb shank, but it's just a cool name.
24. SRSteven Rinella
  We're gonna do a limited run of those where we write all kinds of weird stuff in there that it pairs well with.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Is it good? Is this good stuff? Should we try it?
26. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah, man. It's five years old.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Should we get a taste?
28. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, let's get a, get, get some ice in some glasses.
30. SRSteven Rinella
  'Cause, you know, I took a long-
2:33 – 4:07
Behind the curtain: how Joe develops comedy (and the North Sentinel missionary setup)
1. SRSteven Rinella
  ... I took a long break from drinking.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Ooh, how long?
3. SRSteven Rinella
  Uh, well, I just slowed way down on it when my kids were born, started to be born. And then gradually, me and my wife have gotten back into it.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) Together?
5. SRSteven Rinella
  Gradually. You know, if she-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Clink. (laughs)
7. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. Well, you know, we haven't toast-
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, you guys are working together.
9. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Right? Which is really crazy.
11. SRSteven Rinella
  I know. We haven't toasted. Giannis took a year off booze.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow.
13. SRSteven Rinella
  For no... just for, like, whatever Giannis, uh-
14. JRJoe Rogan
  Reasons?
15. SRSteven Rinella
  Whatever Giannis... I, I can't remember. He had some reason for it. Uh, he had a birthday once and took a month off, then he had a birthday and took a year off. He's got four months to go.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  For the end of the year, and then he's gonna drink?
17. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah, but he says his family... I, I think his wife was explaining to me, um, there's a lot more disposable income around the house now 'cause she's like, "I never realized-" (laughs)
18. JRJoe Rogan
  How much boozing it takes up? Yeah.
19. SRSteven Rinella
  How much all those fancy beers adds, what all this fancy beer adds up to.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  That's an interesting thing, yeah. People don't think about that. When you run your tab at the end of the week, and then add that times four, and then add that times 12, that's real money.
21. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. And I don't know if you remember, uh, you probably liked this when you were younger, where, like it was, it was just, uh, it was impossible that you would have leftover booze in your house, you know, 'cause everybody just drank so much.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Right, right, right. Yeah.
23. SRSteven Rinella
  You know, like now we're like such grownups. In our pantry, we have, like, a little liquor section.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
25. SRSteven Rinella
  And you have like, "Oh, there's, you know..."
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I have a wine fridge.
27. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  ... in my bathroom.
29. SRSteven Rinella
  But in the old days, it w- you couldn't, because you just drank it, and it was gone.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Right.
4:07 – 6:16
Colonial weirdness and the ‘Portman’ rabbit hole on North Sentinel
1. SRSteven Rinella
  I wanna interview you. I wanna interview you for a minute.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Okay. Go ahead.
3. SRSteven Rinella
  How comfortable... Do you ever tell your listeners about, um, about the comedy stuff you're working on?
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
5. SRSteven Rinella
  Or do you like to keep it big secret?
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I, I tell them some things. I don't like to give up premises. Cheers, sir.
7. SRSteven Rinella
  You don't like to give up premises?
8. JRJoe Rogan
  I mean, uh, punchlines and-
9. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  ... you know, I'll say, like, a subject I'm working on, you know.
11. SRSteven Rinella
  You do or don't give up subjects?
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, I will-
13. SRSteven Rinella
  I wanna engage you-
14. JRJoe Rogan
  I just don't-
15. SRSteven Rinella
  ... about a subject that we were texting about.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, about the, uh-
17. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  ... the missionary?
19. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, yeah. Cool. Sure.
21. SRSteven Rinella
  I just don't understand.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  This is good.
23. SRSteven Rinella
  I know that you will.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  I like it.
25. SRSteven Rinella
  I know that you will have, uh... I... Knowing you and how good you are at what you do, I know you'll have done it, but I don't understand how you could have had a novel thought about the missionary-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes, he-
27. SRSteven Rinella
  ... who got killed.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  This-
29. SRSteven Rinella
  Just to, just to refresh people's mem-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  The only-
6:16 – 8:34
The lure of uncontacted cultures—and Rinella’s time with semi-traditional tribes
1. JRJoe Rogan
  It's a fascinating subject. You know the guy, uh, Commander Maurice Vidal Portman? You know who that guy is?
2. SRSteven Rinella
  No.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  He was the, uh, the pervert that traveled around from island to island, uh, measuring guys and taking weird photos with them-
4. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh, yeah.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  ... dressing them up like Roman soldiers.
6. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. I read the... I read a big piece about this, which I actually sent to you to see if you'd read it too.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I'd read, uh, uh, this-
8. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. And you said you read everything about it.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I'd read quite a few things about it because there was a guy on Twitter, his name is Respectable Law, @respectablelaw, and he posted a whole series of things, 'cause he, uh, he'd actually been studying this case or this, this place before-
10. SRSteven Rinella
  Mm-hmm.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  ... because of this pervert guy. And so when this man, uh, this missionary showed up on that island and got murdered-
12. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  ... like, he knew all about the history of this island, so he made, like, a chain of posts on Twitter which were really interesting, informative, and then I started going deep into it and I read the guy's journals. (laughs) The journals were hilarious, man, like, real-
14. SRSteven Rinella
  The kid, the kid that got killed?
15. JRJoe Rogan
  No, the guy-
16. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh, the guy.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  ... who was the, the pervert, the English ex- The, the English pervert in the 1800s probably wrecked, like, that whole area for those people, because they had this idea of what white men are. Now, these people don't have a written language and they, they just have stories, so they probably still have stories of these white men that come carrying diseases and want to touch your dick and measure them.
18. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah, so this is a guy, he was into...
19. JRJoe Rogan
  (coughs)
20. SRSteven Rinella
  I just want to make sure I remember this right. He was into, like, skull morphology but with sexual organs.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, he was... I- It's hard to tell what he was into, but it was... I- It's so obviously perverted. Like, it s- it seems like he was doing sexual stuff with these people.
22. SRSteven Rinella
  Trying to legitimize it by...
23. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, just measuring them and, and, and d- doing detailed descriptions of their sex organs and-
24. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  ... he was really into that. That seemed very important to him. (laughs)
26. SRSteven Rinella
  And he sur- he sur- he survived the island.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
28. SRSteven Rinella
  I can't decide which to go with, my new, uh, my new Laird Hamilton turmeric coffee-
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Or the whiskey.
30. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
8:34 – 15:46
Peccaries/javelina: anatomy, behavior, and why they’re a bowhunter’s animal
1. SRSteven Rinella
  ... are you drawn to that, uh... Are you drawn to that idea? I certainly am.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  The... Which idea?
3. SRSteven Rinella
  That you would get to... That you'd go and hang out and spend time with-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes.
5. SRSteven Rinella
  ... with uncontacted people.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, you've done it in, um... What, what part of South America were you at? Were you-
7. SRSteven Rinella
  Well, yeah, I...
8. JRJoe Rogan
  They're not uncontacted, but they're semi.
9. SRSteven Rinella
  Not... Definitely not uncontacted, but, uh, l- yeah. So some tribes like the Tsimane and the Macushi and Wapishan, um, are all tribes in northern South America who have a long, long history of, of contact and engagement with the outside world, but, uh, individuals who can still very much... Like, hanging out with individuals who aren't that old, who, in their youth, were, uh, very much, like, living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle with a, with a mix of native materials and also some Western materials.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  And this was Guyana?
11. SRSteven Rinella
  Guyana and Bolivia.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
13. SRSteven Rinella
  Um, people that... You know, people that would still make their bows from native materials, people that, uh, grew up using canoes that were made, like, hand... you know, hand-dug dugouts, using, uh, plant toxins to kill fish. But also, like, you know, also other very modern stuff. Like, one of these guys that I really appreciate hanging out with, I mean, the guy's got an email address. But-
14. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
15. SRSteven Rinella
  ... I might've told you this story before, he's got an email address, but he also told us about, um... We interviewed him on our show, on our podcast, and, and he's telling me about how their peccaries, their white-lipped peccaries, aren't around right now because there's a shaman in another village who's jealous of their village for being so prosperous and has locked their peccaries up inside of a mountain, and that they're training their own shaman to free the peccaries from the mountain. And you can shoot this dude an email.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
17. SRSteven Rinella
  So... Right?
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Explain a peccary to people.
19. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh, uh, people here are familiar with the javelina.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
21. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. A javelina is a collared peccary. And then there's a... And they'll run in little troops of... Now, you might see anywhere from one to 13 or 14. White-lipped peccaries are a bit bigger, and they'll run in groups of 200.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow.
23. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. They'll ravage... Like, like, these, uh... These people have a somewhat agrarian lifestyle. They, they hunt and fish and also have farms scattered throughout the, the jungle. And they'll just come in and ravage farms in groups of, you know, like I said, groups of 100, 200. I should be honest here and say I've never laid eyes on a white-lipped peccary. There's a third peccary, a, uh, chacoan or chacoan, uh, peccary that is much more rare than the collared and white-lipped.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  You got a picture of this, Jamie? There is.
25. SRSteven Rinella
  The white-lipped-
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, look at these fuckers.
27. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Wow.
29. SRSteven Rinella
  Those supposed... Those supposedly taste a lot better than collared peccaries.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  And-
15:46 – 27:52
When pets meet wild predators: habitat conflict and Yellowstone ‘amusement park’ behavior
1. SRSteven Rinella
  I ... You know, it's like one of the things, like, I think it points to a certain amount of, uh, sociopathy that I have, but when I hear about someone losing a cat or dog to wild creatures, I don't, like, my initial instinct isn't to be sad.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm. I see what you're saying. You're like, well, that's part of the, part of the game.
3. SRSteven Rinella
  Because you kind of view, you sort of ... I have this view that ... Yeah, I have this view of that, that, that sort of like settlement and development v. wildlife-
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
5. SRSteven Rinella
  ... i- is, is a global problem, right? And one always wins. Like, the destruction of wildlife habitat always wins. And then when you see it, it, when you see it play out like that, in some ways you kind of like hope ... Like, Brian Callaghan, who you know-
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Yep.
7. SRSteven Rinella
  ... recently, uh, you know, that kid got a, a, a young kid, it was like a nine or 10-year-old girl got thrown up in the air.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  By a bison?
9. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. Did you see that?
10. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
11. SRSteven Rinella
  In Yellowstone?
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
13. SRSteven Rinella
  And by no means does Cal hope to see someone, uh, you know, especially, particularly a child get hurt, but he's like, "You know, they still got it." (laughs)
14. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs) Yeah, you can't, you can't just close in on a bison.
15. SRSteven Rinella
  (laughs)
16. JRJoe Rogan
  They apparently got within 15 yards of that thing-
17. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  ... which is just ridiculous.
19. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. I think, I keep thinking about making a shirt that says, um, "Yellowstone National Park, uh, habituating wildlife since 1877." (laughs)
20. JRJoe Rogan
  They do. It is weird. Uh, I've only been once. Well, I, I went once when I was a kid, but I went once recently with my family, and it was, uh, very weird that you could take selfies with elk.
21. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  That these big herds of elk are so confident that people won't shoot them when they're in like the public tourism area that they just go and hang out near the vending machine.
23. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  So, I'm getting a Diet Coke, and there's an elk like-
25. SRSteven Rinella
  (laughs)
26. JRJoe Rogan
  ... 30 yards away from me. It's so strange.
27. SRSteven Rinella
  That's, that's a little bit in line with what ... That's a little bit in line with what I'm talking about when I talk about like the, when I hear someone's dog got killed by a coyote.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
29. SRSteven Rinella
  You know? And again, man, I know like, like my brother l- has this little dog that he just loves and they're inseparable. Um, if that dog got carried off by a great horned owl, and a healthy great horned owl could carry this dog off, it's like a little shittin' dog, I would feel real bad for him. Uh, so with that said, I, I do have this thing where you kind of root, and I do feel sad when I see, like, in a place like Yellowstone ... This is where it gets a little bit weird-When I see an- wild animals, especially animals that people hunt for, when I see that they've lost their fear of humans, some people would look and be like, "Oh, this is, like, what naturally they should be like." Okay? So this is animals where they've had to give up their human, th- where they've lost their human fear because we've given them this wild place. I see-
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Old timey, old timey.
27:52 – 35:43
Collars vs duck bands: why some tracking feels ‘cool’ and other tracking feels ‘tainted’
1. JRJoe Rogan
  You got that video? Yeah, yeah. Look at this fat boy. (clears throat) Play this thing. That's a collar, isn't it?
2. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah, it's got a collar on it.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, it's interesting. I could see that better. There's a lot of them out here that have collars. We got a photo that we just had, uh, commissioned, and, uh, it should get here soon, right? Yeah, yeah. It's huge, of, uh, the, the big cat that they photographed near the Hollywood sign.
4. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  It looks like it's staged. I mean, the cat is walking right by the trail camera in the Hollywood sign in the background.
6. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh, it's that dude that sets up those famous, uh... Yeah.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
8. SRSteven Rinella
  It was in National Geographic.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
10. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah, that's a good picture.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, we got one, uh, printed on st- that, that picture right there. I mean, come on, man.
12. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  That's crazy. That is a goddamn crazy picture. It's a giant cat. Like look at the forearms on that motherfucker.
14. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah, it's got that-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Woo.
16. SRSteven Rinella
  ... saggy stomach.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  But it bums me out looking at that collar. There was a conversation that you had on your podcast-
18. SRSteven Rinella
  (laughs) It's-
19. JRJoe Rogan
  ... about, uh, shooting a deer-
20. SRSteven Rinella
  It's our favorite subject, yeah. (laughs)
21. JRJoe Rogan
  ... about shooting a deer that's wearing a collar, and I'm with you. I'm with you 100%. I don't wanna shoot a deer that's wearing a collar. I don't care if it's wild as fuck. If they caught it when it was a baby, and they just weighed it and measured it and then let it go, and it didn't have a collar, and, uh, I saw that deer, I wouldn't think twice about shooting it. But if I saw it and it was wearing a collar, I'm like, "I'm out."
22. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh, totally.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  "I'm out."
24. SRSteven Rinella
  But there's a really funny thing, and you might- you probably caught wind of this, uh, or, or know about this, is that it's a big deal-
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Duck bands?
26. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
28. SRSteven Rinella
  To shoot a duck with a band on it, everybody knows is cool as shit. Like I know that.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  That's weird.
30. SRSteven Rinella
  Everybody wants to shoot a banded-
35:43 – 44:00
Axis deer in Hawaii: invasive overabundance, eradication politics, and ‘who is native?’
1. JRJoe Rogan
  Have you hunted axis deer yet?
2. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Axis deer in Hawaii is the, the most perverse, strange, but necessary hunting that I've ever experienced.
4. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. And you know what, and they don't have nat- like, on Hawaii, they're not dealing with natural predators.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  Zero.
6. SRSteven Rinella
  It's all pe-
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Just people.
8. SRSteven Rinella
  It's all, they're just, like, s- they're just very in tuned to, like-
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
10. SRSteven Rinella
  ... their predator being people.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
12. SRSteven Rinella
  I imagine that they probably, um, ca- th- the same way that we carry with us, uh, a, a sort of natural abhorrence of snakes, you know, a natural abhorrence of spiders, I would imagine that they come from a, that, that... You probably know a little bit better than me, 'cause you spent more time with axis deer. They probably come from a very predator-rich environment.... I'm guessing.
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, originally.
14. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. And, and so like-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  India.
16. SRSteven Rinella
  ... and, and carry with them a real high strung sense from having dealt with, like, very efficient predators.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  Tigers.
18. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah, they evolved to get, get away from tigers. They're the-
20. SRSteven Rinella
  Like, they've gotta be high strung.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  They are the fastest things I've ever seen in my life. I have videos of one where I shot at this one from 55 yards. 15 yards away, he sees the arrow coming, 15 yards away from him, and he's like, zoop.
22. SRSteven Rinella
  Ducks it.
23. JRJoe Rogan
  He's outta there. It's crazy. It's like they kind of understand that things coming towards them kill them.
24. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Because they're hunted 365 days a year. Because they have to. They're so overrun. There's some- somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 to 30,000 deer on this one island with 3,000 people. And you, you've never seen herds like this before. It's crazy. I wanna bring you-
26. SRSteven Rinella
  It was ... When I hu- I hunted 'em years ago, um, and I remember the, the area I had been, had been hunted very, very heavily. Uh, do they call 'em, do they call 'em does or hinds?
27. JRJoe Rogan
  Hinds.
28. SRSteven Rinella
  They'd been hunted very heavily.
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Stags. Stags and hinds.
30. SRSteven Rinella
  And my God, was the ... It ... From my, from my l- very limited perspective, from, uh, just a small set of experiences that happened over a couple days, it seemed like, um, the, the pressure on the males had been extraordinary, where it seemed like you would see 100 hinds per stag. And I don't know if that's common there or not.
44:00 – 56:09
Hard eradications: Santa Rosa Island, ‘Judas goats,’ and how values collide
1. JRJoe Rogan
  It's supposed to be amazing fishing. The Catalina, apparently, is like the greatest mako shark fishing in the world, which is a... Here, here's a weird one. Shark fishing, all of a sudden you're an asshole. It used to be with Jaws, like you caught a shark, "Hey, good. Get that fucking thing out of here. They're gonna kill people."
2. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
3. JRJoe Rogan
  Now it's like, "You monster. Sharks fin soup."
4. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
5. JRJoe Rogan
  "Don't you care about the... Don't you know there's global warming?" Like, everything is conflated. It's all, like, piled on together, like, "You, what are you doing with a shark?" Used to be able to buy mako shark in a restaurant.
6. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh, you still see it.
7. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
8. SRSteven Rinella
  But there, there is a, there is... I saw a thresher shark the other day on a menu. I did a sto- I did a magazine story about this long, long ago. It was like, it was... Right when I got out of school and I... It was the first, like, assignment I had to go write a article. And I was writing for Out- Outside Magazine. And, um, this is 19 years ago, man. And there's a thing called Mako Madness, and it was this thing in Montauk. Uh, you know what's funny about doing this? This is in 2000, and I got sent out there and had never ever been to New York. And I didn't even go into the city, I just flew into wherever the hell I flew into and got a car and stupidly took a cab to... I didn't understand the... I was just very young. I didn't understand, like, I took a cab from, like, the airport out to Montauk.
9. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh my God.
10. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
11. JRJoe Rogan
  How much did that cost?
12. SRSteven Rinella
  I don't even remember. But I remember, like, when I had to turn in my expenses, people were like, "Hold on, what?" And I'm like... I just, I didn't remem- Like, I didn't know. But anyways, it was funny 'cause, uh, I remember driving along and seeing the... It was like the summer before and seeing the Twin... It was like a year before and seeing the Twin Towers, you know?
13. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh, yeah.
14. SRSteven Rinella
  And that was like my first ever view and I never saw that place again. I never saw it again till after. But there's this thing called, uh, Mako Madness and it was like a shark tournament. And traditionally, it had been like a contest to get the biggest shark and they would bet money on it. And there was like the general registration fee. So all these captains who had charter boats would join Mako Madness and they would book clients on their boats for Mako Madness. And when you had to... You had to pay some amount of money to... This probably still goes on. You had to pay some amount of money to register your boat to be in the contest. But the real money was in all these side bets called Calcuttas. And so you could... There was enough side betting going on around all the various captains that the biggest mako could win 100,000, couple $100,000-
15. JRJoe Rogan
  Whoa.
16. SRSteven Rinella
  ... to catch the biggest mako. But the, sort of the fatal flaw in this tournament from a public perception standpoint would be that there was a category for just biggest shark and there was a category for, like, biggest mako. So people going out, like at a time... This is when, at... This is when shark populations were still... You know, and, and globally they're still on a decline. But there was still a lot of shark bycatch from swordfish long lining and other things. And there was... People were getting very worried about shark stocks and shark numbers. Um, and at one time, Mako Madness, there was a lot more makos, like people would be registering makos. But there had been some years where Mako Madness had no makos. People weren't bringing in a mako. So everyone would go out and just like make damn sure that like, "I don't want to come back empty." So they would catch a blue shark, 'cause if no one caught a mako, you still might get biggest shark from catching a blue shark. And at the end of this thing, man, they had dumpsters. They would... Not dumpsters, they had... They would fill a dumpster with blue sharks.
17. JRJoe Rogan
  And no one would eat it?
18. SRSteven Rinella
  Dude, it would... No, it would go into a dumpster.
19. JRJoe Rogan
  But you can eat blue shark.
20. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. Well, you can. They're high in urea and there's, you know.
21. JRJoe Rogan
  Oh.
22. SRSteven Rinella
  It's like everything else, like yes you can, but-
23. JRJoe Rogan
  So mako is the most edible?
24. SRSteven Rinella
  Mako, thresher, um-
25. JRJoe Rogan
  Can you eat a great white?
26. SRSteven Rinella
  You know what's funny about great whites is there's a guy, is a writer I love and he does all these fisheries guidebooks named Vic Dunaway. I don't know if he's dead or alive, but I got all of his books. He's got like Gulf Coast, Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Coast. Um, he does these books like it's like all the fish that you're likely to catch, kind of like how to catch them. Then he... What I like about it, he's got like a qua- food quality section. And his food quality sections are really funny and like the, the highest praise is he can give something like excellent or one of the best, right? So if you look up snook, it'll be like one of the best. Um, his, his headline for great, uh, I looked in great white shark, it says, "Don't even ask." (laughs) But people feel that they'd be good because salmon shark are good. They used to call them porbeagles. Like salmon shark have a very good reputation and makos have a good reputation and threshers have market value. And there's other sharks in other areas that have-... market value, but those ones are like, are, are ones that are popular table fare. Um, the assumption is that white, that great white sharks would probably be good.
27. JRJoe Rogan
  There must be somebody who's eaten one.
28. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh, I'm sure there's plenty of people that have eaten them. But at this Mako Madness thing, I can't remember the point I was getting at. What the hell was I driving at by talking about Mako Madness? Oh, in this article, I got into like the history of where like shark hunting and killing sharks came from, is, you're familiar with Jaws, right?
29. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
30. SRSteven Rinella
  Well, sort of the shark fisherman character in Jaws is based on this like very real dude, Frank Mundus. And Frank Mundus used to fish out of Montauk. And at the time, Montauk was this premier destination for people catching swordfish and big bluefin tuna. And as those big pelagic fisheries had collapsed from overfishing in the '70s, Frank Mundus, he'd go out, and he'd just go out and, and find a, you know, he'd go out, famously, he'd go out and find a beached whale. Or not a beached whale, but a floating dead whale. And he'd anchor up on that whale and catch big ass great whites. And then come in and hang the bloody carcass up on the docks, and he made necklaces with tooth sharks and shit, and he became like the monster man or something, or the monster hunter. And started booking all these crazy trips where tourists would come and be like, "Holy shit, I wanna go kill a big monster." And he's credited with having created this like culture of like going out and getting... Yeah, that's-
56:09 – 1:07:36
Shark culture whiplash: from ‘Jaws’ fear to fin-soup outrage and tournament waste
1. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah, it seems like a bad term. But you didn't, you d- you didn't have occasion to travel a lot?
2. JRJoe Rogan
  No.
3. SRSteven Rinella
  When you were young.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Well, I traveled a lot from fighting-
5. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  ... all around the country when I was young, and then I traveled a lot for comedy inside the country, the same thing. So there was a lot of traveling. But, like, traveling to another country was like, ugh. "What am I doing? What am I going over there for?"
7. SRSteven Rinella
  Oh, really?
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. It's just more, more travel.
9. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah.
10. JRJoe Rogan
  You know? That's the... It took me a while to get used to the idea of traveling for a vacation. Like, it w- p- when, you know... The idea of vacations, like, going on vacation somewhere in Europe, I'm like, "Get the fuck out of here. I'm not traveling for fun." I don't like traveling. I wanna sit, sit still.
11. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah, I got you.
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Whenever I get a vacation, I just wanna stay put. And then I'd realize, ah, you just swallow it, just deal with the flight, and then next thing you know, you're in this really cool place. It took a while for me to sort of adjust my, my, my view on that.
13. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah. Like, you have a hard time taking leisure.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  I used to. I used to have a hard time taking leisure. Now, um, I look at it like, like sleep. Like, you need sleep, and I think you need leisure. And I think particularly for a creative person, for a person who writes and comes up with things, you need downtime. I got, I just had a buddy of mine, we were having this conversation about that, where he was saying that, um, he feels like he's just working too much, just doing too much comedy. He's not taking in enough. Just putting too much out, not taking in enough.
15. SRSteven Rinella
  Yeah, man. That's a pretty good point.
16. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah. You have to... It's almost like you have to think of it as a diet. Like, what is your mental diet? You know, your physical diet is obviously very important if you're an athlete, but if you're a creative person, you have to have an awareness of your mental diet. If you're just taking in sugar all the time, just nonsense and junk food and bullshit, like, your, your brain is filled with uninteresting, uninspiring thoughts and, you know, the same sort of typical narrative over and over and over again. Whereas if you can figure out a way to go to Thailand or something like that, you go, "Whoa, these people are living a totally different life. This is a totally different way to live." And it just, you just, even if it's ever so slightly, it broadens your perspective.
17. SRSteven Rinella
  I can only really relax when there's nothing I could possibly be doing.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
19. SRSteven Rinella
  And my kids aren't fighting.
20. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
21. SRSteven Rinella
  I was laying... I had to do this insurance policy thing. I've told this story a thousand times, but I haven't told you. I had to do this insurance policy thing, and, and, uh, I had to, like, lay on my couch. This, this d- this dude comes over my house to take my heart rate and do a bunch of, I don't know, health tests. Anyways, I'm laying on my couch, and he's got this monitor hooked up to me. He's gotta do it for a long time. I can't remember how many minutes, but it's, like, a long... It's not like going to the doctor for a checkup where they just, like, take your pulse from it. Like, he's really, like, checking your shit out. And I can hear my kids now and then, like, a little fight flare up upstairs.
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
23. SRSteven Rinella
  And I asked the dude, I'm like, "Can you see that?" He goes, "Oh, I can see that."
24. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
25. SRSteven Rinella
  Me hearing it, me hearing that, like, "No!"
26. JRJoe Rogan
  Right. They start screaming. They start, "Dad! Dad!"
27. SRSteven Rinella
  Or "Matthew!" Right? (laughs) Like your heart.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
29. SRSteven Rinella
  But my, my br- older brother, Matt, who's, who's a very thoughtful, um, somewhat eccentric person, he's- he's now says that he needs, he's gonna sleep nine hours a night, which seems like an extravagance, but he's, like, done the math on it, and he says, "If you're gonna measure me in terms of productivity, I'll actually do more on nine than, let's say, six, and you give me all those extra hours, but those extra hours aren't as productive anyways."
30. JRJoe Rogan
  I had a podcast with a guy named Dr. Matthew Walker, who's a sleep expert, written books on sleeping, and he talks about the, uh, vast amount of Americans that are under-rested, and, uh, and what an impact it has on your hormonal production, on your body's ability to recover, on your happiness, on your, your, your body's ability to produce endorphins and all these different variables that are extremely important to happiness and to productivity. And he's like, "The vast majority of people are fucking themselves over." Vast majority. In, in great ways. It in- increases, uh, your p- the possibility of dementia and Alzheimer's and all these different factors. If you go, if you look at guys like, uh, like Ronald Reagan, like, famously slept, like, four hours a night.
1:07:36 – 1:20:04
Aging, injuries, and mind-body feedback loops (sleep, anxiety, and pain)
1. SRSteven Rinella
  I don't view it that way. Uh, Giannis had meniscus surgery, Giannis Boutelas had meniscus surgery on his knee. And what's crazy, you'll, you'll have something to say about this, 'cause this is kinda in your, in your world a little bit, uh, I developed a knee ache that I had for months. Left knee.
2. JRJoe Rogan
  Because of him?
3. SRSteven Rinella
  No, I don't know. Well, now I don't know.
4. JRJoe Rogan
  Because of ... pregnancy, weight gain things?
5. SRSteven Rinella
  ... at the time, I would've told you. No, after this. At the time, I would've told you that my knee absolutely hurt.
6. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
7. SRSteven Rinella
  And my knee hurt. Um, and the pain drifted around and it hurt all the time, and I was acutely aware of the pain in my knee.
8. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
9. SRSteven Rinella
  And I had it built up. And then I had made the mistake of having, like, a passing conversation with an orthopedic surgeon who was like, "Oh, you know, it's probably this or that. It's, you can fix it." But then it, then it got worse and worse and worse. And I finally go down to a doctor to do all the scans and shit. He's like, "You know, you have some arthritis. You could probably solve the problem with some physical therapy. There's like a band that runs down from your hip, and I think that's, like, flaring up and that's why the pain bounces around." And dude, it wasn't too later, two days later that pain was gone. I said to Giannis, I'm like, "Man, I feel, like, psychologically frail." I feel there's a very ...
10. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
11. SRSteven Rinella
  I was like, "I feel there's a very thin membrane that separates my brain from my body."
12. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm.
13. SRSteven Rinella
  And Giannis said, "There is no membrane that separates your brain from your body." And I, I don't, I can't rule out now that, um, I can't rule out now that I'm, like, mentally pretty weak. Because the minute someone told me there's not actually a problem where I need to get a surgery, I, like, I, uh, I, like, I, I now try to feel the pain, but I can't find it.
14. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
15. SRSteven Rinella
  So it's this-
16. JRJoe Rogan
  And there's no corresponding, like, hiking or anything that has, that contributed to it where you weren't doing it once it felt better?
17. SRSteven Rinella
  Well, one day, um, in the spring, uh, me and my buddy, Pete Munich, went out looking for black bears during black bear season. And this was when I was really, like, thought I had a knee problem. And we went out, and we didn't hike a long ways, we hiked maybe six miles. And, um, and I came back, and noticed, it feels real muckye. You know when you're walking and your feet keep sticking in the muck and it w- and then your feet build up a layer of muck on your boot bottom.
18. JRJoe Rogan
  Mm-hmm.
19. SRSteven Rinella
  And then it comes off, and then you're walking cockeyed, 'cause your other boot has shed-
20. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
21. SRSteven Rinella
  ... its boot, mud layer?
22. JRJoe Rogan
  Yeah.
23. SRSteven Rinella
  We had one of those walks. And after that walk, the pain went away for two days.
24. JRJoe Rogan
  (laughs)
25. SRSteven Rinella
  But yeah, man. I don't know.
26. JRJoe Rogan
  It can be a lot of things.
27. SRSteven Rinella
  It's just like a deep fear of being old and shit.
28. JRJoe Rogan
  That's real.
29. SRSteven Rinella
  My eyesight's going bad.
30. JRJoe Rogan
  Mine too.

Episode duration: 2:16:58

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Blunts, elk shank bourbon, and why hunters ignore the best cuts

Adult drinking habits, disposable income, and ‘grownup’ liquor cabinets

Behind the curtain: how Joe develops comedy (and the North Sentinel missionary setup)

Colonial weirdness and the ‘Portman’ rabbit hole on North Sentinel

The lure of uncontacted cultures—and Rinella’s time with semi-traditional tribes

Peccaries/javelina: anatomy, behavior, and why they’re a bowhunter’s animal

When pets meet wild predators: habitat conflict and Yellowstone ‘amusement park’ behavior

Collars vs duck bands: why some tracking feels ‘cool’ and other tracking feels ‘tainted’

Axis deer in Hawaii: invasive overabundance, eradication politics, and ‘who is native?’

Hard eradications: Santa Rosa Island, ‘Judas goats,’ and how values collide

Shark culture whiplash: from ‘Jaws’ fear to fin-soup outrage and tournament waste

Aging, injuries, and mind-body feedback loops (sleep, anxiety, and pain)

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