Joe Rogan Experience #1341 - Steven Rinella

Steven Rinella 0:00 What's going on with all the cigars?

Joe Rogan 0:02 Uh, which cigars? Those are not cigars. Those are marijuana.

Steven Rinella 0:07 Oh, okay. I figured it might be something like that.

Joe Rogan 0:09 (laughs) It's marijuana on the outside.

Steven Rinella 0:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:11 It's called a blunt. That's what the youngins call it. It's tobacco, you know.

Steven Rinella 0:14 Oh, no, I know the term blunt, but that looks like a leg- I thought it was, like, some kind of-

Joe Rogan 0:17 Well, you're younger than me. Of course, you, you know what you're talking about.

Steven Rinella 0:18 Yeah. I'm not as schooled as you.

Joe Rogan 0:20 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 0:20 I'm not as schooled as you in the illicit. Even though that's not a... It, it's not an illicit now.

Joe Rogan 0:24 Speaking of illicit, we got some Meateater Bourbon, some Elk Shank Bourbon.

Steven Rinella 0:29 Yeah, it pairs with-

Joe Rogan 0:31 It's a good name for it, because-

Steven Rinella 0:31 ... it pairs with beaver tail.

Joe Rogan 0:33 ... it pairs with beaver tail.

Steven Rinella 0:34 (laughs) Elk shank, elk shank.

Joe Rogan 0:36 I've, I've had both of those things thanks to you.

Steven Rinella 0:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:38 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?"

Steven Rinella 0:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:47 They'd be like, "What?" Most, most hunters have never eaten that.

Steven Rinella 0:50 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?

Joe Rogan 1:41 No. Well, they're interchangeable, aren't they?

Steven Rinella 1:43 Well, that's... Yeah, that's the thing, so.

Joe Rogan 1:44 Obviously.

Steven Rinella 1:45 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.

Joe Rogan 1:51 Your cookbook is excellent, by the way.

Steven Rinella 1:52 Have you messed around with it?

Joe Rogan 1:53 Many times, many times.

Steven Rinella 1:54 Oh, that's good. That's great.

Joe Rogan 1:55 I've cooked quite a few things from it. It's really great.

Steven Rinella 1:56 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.

Joe Rogan 2:19 Well, it could be, like, lamb shank, but it's just a cool name.

Steven Rinella 2:22 We're gonna do a limited run of those where we write all kinds of weird stuff in there that it pairs well with.

Joe Rogan 2:26 Is it good? Is this good stuff? Should we try it?

Steven Rinella 2:28 Yeah, man. It's five years old.

Joe Rogan 2:29 Should we get a taste?

Steven Rinella 2:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:30 Well, let's get a, get, get some ice in some glasses.

Steven Rinella 2:32 'Cause, you know, I took a long-

Joe Rogan 2:33 We'll get a little taste.

Steven Rinella 2:33 ... I took a long break from drinking.

Joe Rogan 2:35 Ooh, how long?

Steven Rinella 2:36 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.

Joe Rogan 2:43 (laughs) Together?

Steven Rinella 2:44 Gradually. You know, if she-

Joe Rogan 2:45 Clink. (laughs)

Steven Rinella 2:46 Yeah. Well, you know, we haven't toast-

Joe Rogan 2:48 Well, you guys are working together.

Steven Rinella 2:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:49 Right? Which is really crazy.

Steven Rinella 2:51 I know. We haven't toasted. Giannis took a year off booze.

Joe Rogan 2:54 Wow.

Steven Rinella 2:55 For no... just for, like, whatever Giannis, uh-

Joe Rogan 2:59 Reasons?

Steven Rinella 3:00 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.

Joe Rogan 3:11 For the end of the year, and then he's gonna drink?

Steven Rinella 3:12 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)

Joe Rogan 3:21 How much boozing it takes up? Yeah.

Steven Rinella 3:22 How much all those fancy beers adds, what all this fancy beer adds up to.

Joe Rogan 3:26 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.

Steven Rinella 3:36 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.

Joe Rogan 3:48 Right, right, right. Yeah.

Steven Rinella 3:49 You know, like now we're like such grownups. In our pantry, we have, like, a little liquor section.

Joe Rogan 3:54 Right.

Steven Rinella 3:55 And you have like, "Oh, there's, you know..."

Joe Rogan 3:57 Yeah, I have a wine fridge.

Steven Rinella 3:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:59 ... in my bathroom.

Steven Rinella 3:59 But in the old days, it w- you couldn't, because you just drank it, and it was gone.

Joe Rogan 4:02 Right.

Steven Rinella 4:02 You know, it's...

Joe Rogan 4:06 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 4:07 Uh, can I-

Joe Rogan 4:07 We're, we're grownups.

Steven Rinella 4:07 I wanna interview you. I wanna interview you for a minute.

Joe Rogan 4:09 Okay. Go ahead.

Steven Rinella 4:12 How comfortable... Do you ever tell your listeners about, um, about the comedy stuff you're working on?

Joe Rogan 4:17 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 4:17 Or do you like to keep it big secret?

Joe Rogan 4:18 Yeah, I, I tell them some things. I don't like to give up premises. Cheers, sir.

Steven Rinella 4:22 You don't like to give up premises?

Joe Rogan 4:23 I mean, uh, punchlines and-

Steven Rinella 4:25 Oh.

Joe Rogan 4:26 ... you know, I'll say, like, a subject I'm working on, you know.

Steven Rinella 4:28 You do or don't give up subjects?

Joe Rogan 4:30 Well, I will-

Steven Rinella 4:30 I wanna engage you-

Joe Rogan 4:31 I just don't-

Steven Rinella 4:31 ... about a subject that we were texting about.

Joe Rogan 4:33 Oh, about the, uh-

Steven Rinella 4:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:34 ... the missionary?

Steven Rinella 4:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:35 Yeah, yeah. Cool. Sure.

Steven Rinella 4:37 I just don't understand.

Joe Rogan 4:39 This is good.

Steven Rinella 4:40 I know that you will.

Joe Rogan 4:42 I like it.

Steven Rinella 4:43 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-

Joe Rogan 4:55 Yes, he-

Steven Rinella 4:55 ... who got killed.

Joe Rogan 4:56 This-

Steven Rinella 4:56 Just to, just to refresh people's mem-

Joe Rogan 4:58 The only-

Steven Rinella 4:58 There's a, there's an island, East Sentinel. What's funny, by my fish shack, there's an island called Sentinel Island.

Joe Rogan 5:03 Really?

Steven Rinella 5:04 Yeah. No one lives on it. Um, I've been past it many times, and have yet to been shot at.

Joe Rogan 5:08 It's North Sentinel Island.

Steven Rinella 5:10 Oh, it's Nor- Sorry.

Joe Rogan 5:11 North Sentinel Island. It's in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Steven Rinella 5:12 And my, and my, and my shack is East Sentinel. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:14 East Sentinel.

Steven Rinella 5:14 Sorry. North Sentinel Island.

Joe Rogan 5:16 I wanna go to your shack.

Steven Rinella 5:16 You know it better, so you should tell people what it is.

Joe Rogan 5:18 I wanna go to your shack.

Steven Rinella 5:19 I would love to have you there.

Joe Rogan 5:20 I wanna catch some halibut.

Steven Rinella 5:20 Really?

Joe Rogan 5:21 Let's... Yeah, let's, let's... Uh, next one, instead of a hunting trip, let's do a fishing trip.

Steven Rinella 5:24 I would love to have you up there.

Joe Rogan 5:25 We'll have Calen come out there, and we'll catch some halibut.

Steven Rinella 5:27 So you would... You're not interested in bringing your family?

Joe Rogan 5:29 Yeah, we could do that, too.

Steven Rinella 5:30 We kinda take a family approach up there-

Joe Rogan 5:31 Okay.

Steven Rinella 5:31 ... more and more now.

Joe Rogan 5:32 Well, uh, are you done for the s-

Steven Rinella 5:33 Your kids like flipping over ro- Your kids like flipping rocks and seeing what's under the rock?

Joe Rogan 5:36 My youngest, my youngest loves fishing.

Steven Rinella 5:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:38 Loves it. She go-

Steven Rinella 5:39 Rock flipping?

Joe Rogan 5:39 She loves everything.

Steven Rinella 5:40 Okay.

Joe Rogan 5:40 She's, she's really big into outdoors.

Steven Rinella 5:41 How young's the youngest?

Joe Rogan 5:42 Nine.

Steven Rinella 5:43 Oh. Yeah, perfect. But, uh, no, I wanna get, like, I just can't... I can't... I've, I, I s- I've thought about it and thought about it, and I can't think... Not that I don't have faith in you. I just can't think of what the take would be.

Joe Rogan 5:55 Yeah, we... The, the problem is, if I explained it, what the take is, it would fuck up the bit for people that haven't seen the bit. I'll show it to you tonight. Tonight, you'll see.

Steven Rinella 6:03 No, I'm going tonight. I can't wait to go see.

Joe Rogan 6:05 You'll see it.

Steven Rinella 6:05 But I just wanted to-

Joe Rogan 6:06 I'll explain off-air. I'll explain off-air.

Steven Rinella 6:09 Okay.

Joe Rogan 6:10 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 6:10 Are you feeling good about the bit?

Joe Rogan 6:12 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. (laughs)

Steven Rinella 6:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 6:16 It's a fascinating subject. You know the guy, uh, Commander Maurice Vidal Portman? You know who that guy is?

Steven Rinella 6:21 No.

Joe Rogan 6:22 He was the, uh, the pervert that traveled around from island to island, uh, measuring guys and taking weird photos with them-

Steven Rinella 6:28 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:29 ... dressing them up like Roman soldiers.

Steven Rinella 6:30 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.

Joe Rogan 6:34 Yeah, I'd read, uh, uh, this-

Steven Rinella 6:35 Yeah. And you said you read everything about it.

Joe Rogan 6:37 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-

Steven Rinella 6:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 6:49 ... because of this pervert guy. And so when this man, uh, this missionary showed up on that island and got murdered-

Steven Rinella 6:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:54 ... 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-

Steven Rinella 7:06 The kid, the kid that got killed?

Joe Rogan 7:07 No, the guy-

Steven Rinella 7:08 Oh, the guy.

Joe Rogan 7:08 ... 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.

Steven Rinella 7:30 Yeah, so this is a guy, he was into...

Joe Rogan 7:32 (coughs)

Steven Rinella 7:33 I just want to make sure I remember this right. He was into, like, skull morphology but with sexual organs.

Joe Rogan 7:38 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.

Steven Rinella 7:50 Trying to legitimize it by...

Joe Rogan 7:52 Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, just measuring them and, and, and d- doing detailed descriptions of their sex organs and-

Steven Rinella 8:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:00 ... he was really into that. That seemed very important to him. (laughs)

Steven Rinella 8:03 And he sur- he sur- he survived the island.

Joe Rogan 8:06 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 8:06 I can't decide which to go with, my new, uh, my new Laird Hamilton turmeric coffee-

Joe Rogan 8:10 Or the whiskey.

Steven Rinella 8:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:11 Mix it up, back and forth, back and forth.

Steven Rinella 8:12 Yeah. It's really interesting. It's like, it's like soup-

Joe Rogan 8:15 Yes. Yes.

Steven Rinella 8:15 ... with coffee in it.

Joe Rogan 8:16 It's very good for you too, like I said, that turmeric, you know. People think of it as curry 'cause, uh, it's a great spice for food, but it's a, it's a, a potent antiinflammatory. Very, very good for you.

Steven Rinella 8:25 Oh, it's good. Uh, so I'll have to wait and see what your take on it is.

Joe Rogan 8:28 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steven Rinella 8:29 Are you... I- I'm almost done interviewing you. Um-

Joe Rogan 8:33 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 8:34 ... are you drawn to that, uh... Are you drawn to that idea? I certainly am.

Joe Rogan 8:39 The... Which idea?

Steven Rinella 8:40 That you would get to... That you'd go and hang out and spend time with-

Joe Rogan 8:43 Yes.

Steven Rinella 8:43 ... with uncontacted people.

Joe Rogan 8:44 Well, you've done it in, um... What, what part of South America were you at? Were you-

Steven Rinella 8:49 Well, yeah, I...

Joe Rogan 8:51 They're not uncontacted, but they're semi.

Steven Rinella 8:53 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.

Joe Rogan 9:33 And this was Guyana?

Steven Rinella 9:34 Guyana and Bolivia.

Joe Rogan 9:35 Mm-hmm.

Steven Rinella 9:36 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-

Joe Rogan 9:59 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 10:01 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 10:40 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 10:41 So... Right?

Joe Rogan 10:43 Explain a peccary to people.

Steven Rinella 10:45 Oh, uh, people here are familiar with the javelina.

Joe Rogan 10:47 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 10:47 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.

Joe Rogan 11:03 Wow.

Steven Rinella 11:03 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.

Joe Rogan 11:30 You got a picture of this, Jamie? There is.

Steven Rinella 11:31 The white-lipped-

Joe Rogan 11:32 Oh, look at these fuckers.

Steven Rinella 11:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:33 Wow.

Steven Rinella 11:33 Those supposed... Those supposedly taste a lot better than collared peccaries.

Joe Rogan 11:36 And-

Steven Rinella 11:36 I've hunted collared peccaries in, uh, in West Texas and in Sonora, Mexico.

Joe Rogan 11:44 W- are they native to West Texas, or did someone bring them in?

Steven Rinella 11:47 No, no, no. Collared peccaries are native.

Joe Rogan 11:49 Oh, okay.

Steven Rinella 11:49 Po- like, portions of New Mexico, Arizona, and West Texas.

Joe Rogan 11:55 So they look similar to a javelina?

Steven Rinella 11:56 Oh, that's a javelin. No.

Joe Rogan 11:57 Oh, it is a javelina.

Steven Rinella 11:58 A javelin and a collared peccary are the same damn thing.

Joe Rogan 12:00 Oh, okay.

Steven Rinella 12:01 They got... You'd, you'd appreciate this because, uh... just knowing your tastes, they have a large breast with a nipple on the top of their back.

Joe Rogan 12:12 Oh.

Steven Rinella 12:13 Like, what would be the neck of your ass has a-... nipple.

Joe Rogan 12:17 Whoa.

Steven Rinella 12:18 That's their scent gland.

Joe Rogan 12:20 So, it's an actual nipple that someone nurses from?

Steven Rinella 12:22 No. It's just a scent gland.

Joe Rogan 12:24 Oh.

Steven Rinella 12:24 I'm sure your, your trusty, um-

Joe Rogan 12:27 Jamie? (laughs)

Steven Rinella 12:28 ... Jamie. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 12:30 Could find a nipple on the back of a pig.

Steven Rinella 12:31 Yeah, he'll find a picture. Uh-

Joe Rogan 12:33 Are they somehow related to pigs?

Steven Rinella 12:35 No.

Joe Rogan 12:36 Not at all?

Steven Rinella 12:36 People like, people like to think that they are, but they're not.

Joe Rogan 12:38 Wow. Oh, there it is.

Steven Rinella 12:40 Yep. See that?

Joe Rogan 12:41 Yeah. Javelina tits.

Steven Rinella 12:43 When you clean them, you need to cut that away, um-

Joe Rogan 12:45 Oh, it oozes.

Steven Rinella 12:45 ... because it really, like, stinks to high heaven.

Joe Rogan 12:47 Is it like a tarso gland?

Steven Rinella 12:49 Yep.

Joe Rogan 12:49 Like the same sort of-

Steven Rinella 12:49 It's a scent gland, very powerful smell, and you usually smell them well ahead of seeing them. And they're really, um, they're, they're pugnacious, you know. You can call t- at them with a ... And mimic the sound of a distressed young one, and they come in ready to kick your ass.

Joe Rogan 13:07 I saw that on your show-

Steven Rinella 13:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:08 ... when you and Remy went bow hunting with them.

Steven Rinella 13:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:09 They run at you.

Steven Rinella 13:10 Remy's got a lot of experience messing around with these things. Um, it, it's funny, 'cause they're pretty popular, like, you know, they're good to eat, but they're, they're much more popular south of the border in Mexico. It's much more common to eat javelina.

Joe Rogan 13:23 They'd make sausage out of them and stuff like that?

Steven Rinella 13:25 Yeah. Yeah, they grind them up and make sausage out ... And cook just various things. Like, you know, I don't know anybody, maybe there's someones that's out there that, that like actually takes like a back strap off of a javelin and throws it on the grill, but you generally do, like, preparations with them, where you, where you cook them a fair bit.

Joe Rogan 13:41 Yeah, you'd have to break down ... They've got to be tough, right? Not very fatty.

Steven Rinella 13:47 They are. You couldn't just grill one.

Joe Rogan 13:49 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 13:49 You couldn't just grill one. They're lean, you gotta cook them down. But you can see how, uh, you can see why they'd be popular though, because, I mean, it's a pretty like, it's a nice little bundle, like, of meat, right? And, and I think that in some areas, like especially, you know, in Sonora and elsewhere, um, people aren't likely to like turn their nose up at good protein sources.

Joe Rogan 14:08 Mm. Yeah.

Steven Rinella 14:10 It's one thing that's like, it's one thing that's like made for bow hunting, because I think that, uh, with rifle hunting, and people do hunt with rifles and I've shot them with rifles, but it's a l- i- it's, it's a little bit ... It can be kind of, feel like a little bit of a gimme.

Joe Rogan 14:24 Mm.

Steven Rinella 14:25 Because they're not ... You have to get very close to them before they're concerned about your presence.

Joe Rogan 14:31 Mm.

Steven Rinella 14:31 They're tough, they got tusks, you know, they can, they can kill stuff and rip stuff. And they have like a, they're almost ... You know, you think of the most, like, I would imagine of all the creatures, like, a snapping turtle is least concerned with things that ... Like, a snapping turtle doesn't care about anything until it's within six inches of its face. And javelin is kind- ... It's not that exaggerated, but kind of have this like, their world sort of seems to end at 60 yards. Like, they don't care what's going on outside of that buffer. And so, um-

Joe Rogan 15:03 So, you can kind of creep up to them?

Steven Rinella 15:05 Kind of walk up to them.

Joe Rogan 15:06 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 15:07 When you see them.

Joe Rogan 15:07 Do they see bad? Are they like pigs? Do they have poor eyesight?

Steven Rinella 15:09 They seem to have very poor eyesight. They seem to have poor eyesight. And have an a- an amazingly varied diet, um, you know, they'll eat like ... I mean, if you lay there long enough, they would come up and eat you.

Joe Rogan 15:21 Yeah, they ate my friend's dog.

Steven Rinella 15:23 Oh.

Joe Rogan 15:23 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 15:24 Huh.

Joe Rogan 15:24 Well, my friend's friend. Doug Stanhope, my buddy, he lives in, uh, he lives in Arizona, and-

Steven Rinella 15:29 Was he pretty tore up about it?

Joe Rogan 15:30 Yeah. Well, they were, you know, they, they hate those fucking things. They, they s- they just, uh, piled on this dog, and ate the neighbor's dog, and apparently it's not too uncommon.

Steven Rinella 15:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:40 It happens.

Steven Rinella 15:41 Flesh eaters.

Joe Rogan 15:42 Yeah. They'll, they'll fuck up a dog. They're weird.

Steven Rinella 15:46 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.

Joe Rogan 16:05 Mm. I see what you're saying. You're like, well, that's part of the, part of the game.

Steven Rinella 16:10 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-

Joe Rogan 16:24 Mm-hmm.

Steven Rinella 16:25 ... 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-

Joe Rogan 16:38 Yep.

Steven Rinella 16:39 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 16:47 By a bison?

Steven Rinella 16:48 Yeah. Did you see that?

Joe Rogan 16:48 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 16:49 In Yellowstone?

Joe Rogan 16:49 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 16:51 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)

Joe Rogan 17:02 (laughs) Yeah, you can't, you can't just close in on a bison.

Steven Rinella 17:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:05 They apparently got within 15 yards of that thing-

Steven Rinella 17:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:07 ... which is just ridiculous.

Steven Rinella 17:08 Yeah. I think, I keep thinking about making a shirt that says, um, "Yellowstone National Park, uh, habituating wildlife since 1877." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:16 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.

Steven Rinella 17:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:26 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.

Steven Rinella 17:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:34 So, I'm getting a Diet Coke, and there's an elk like-

Steven Rinella 17:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:38 ... 30 yards away from me. It's so strange.

Steven Rinella 17:41 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.

Joe Rogan 17:50 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 17:52 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-

Joe Rogan 18:46 Old timey, old timey.

Steven Rinella 18:47 Dude, I'm real sorry, man.

Joe Rogan 18:48 Steve Rinella. (laughs)

Steven Rinella 18:50 (laughs) That's a good dude. Joe Farinato called him, he's a good guy. Uh, people see w- i- in, like, a Yellowstone Park atmosphere, you see where wildlife becomes habituated to humans, and they feel like they're seeing something more natural, right? Because outside of human hunting, they all of a sudden don't have that feeling anymore. I look at that and I see that it's like, um, to me, it feels like something's been subverted and something's wrong with that situation.

Joe Rogan 19:17 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 19:18 Because it sort of depends on how fresh your perspective is, because, I mean, people have been hunting, uh, you know, people have been hunting in that area, I mean, at least 10,000 years. So then we take, like, a 100-year break and the animals become very accustomed to people. It's- it's shocking how quickly they can get it back and- and oftentimes, those same elk that live, like, the same elk that will spend their summer in that park will migrate out of there and go into a national forest and on ranch land where-

Joe Rogan 19:48 And then they'll be aware of people.

Steven Rinella 19:49 ... where they can be hunted and they know.

Joe Rogan 19:51 Wow.

Steven Rinella 19:51 They cross that line. So the same elk that some dude could basically walk up and touch there will, just something in his head switches and he enters and they enter into a new mind space when they leave and they're still exposed to human predation.

Joe Rogan 20:05 And if they wind you, they'll bolt.

Steven Rinella 20:06 Oh, yeah. It- it's- it's- it's shocking how, it's shocking the degree to which they, the degree to which they can keep this together in their heads, and it's also pretty surprising how- how quickly they adapt. Like, I would imagine if you were to open up... This would be a pretty controversial idea, but I'll throw it out there. Let's say you were to open up hunting in Yellowstone National Park. I think that it would probably be less than a year. I think, like, a season, a fall hunting season would have them right back into the same mindset that all the other animals that- that live with human predation, their sort of attitude toward people.

Joe Rogan 20:45 Mmm.

Steven Rinella 20:45 I think they'll very quickly get it back.

Joe Rogan 20:48 That makes sense.

Steven Rinella 20:49 But, yeah, people going up and petting stuff. Um, again, like, referring to Cal, his idea is that, like, people have gotten to where they confuse national parks with amusement parks, and they feel that the animals are, like, on rails. (laughs) You know? They're on tracks.

Joe Rogan 21:08 They have to stay.

Steven Rinella 21:08 Yeah, they just... And it's like they're programmed to do a certain thing.

Joe Rogan 21:11 Well-

Steven Rinella 21:11 But it's still wild.

Joe Rogan 21:12 It's... One thing that I've discovered over the last seven years, thanks to you and thanks to you getting me hunting, is that most people have no idea what it's like to be around actual wildlife, to sneak up to them. N- most people have no idea about their sense of smell, like, to see-

Steven Rinella 21:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:30 ... an animal wind you and then just fucking bounce. To- to see that and to know that, like, you're dealing with some superhuman ability, some, like, impossible to imagine with the confines of your own biology what these animals can do and when you're, when you're out amongst them and there's no cellphone service and there's... It's just footprints and trekking your way through mountains, it's amazing.

Steven Rinella 21:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:57 I mean, it's- it's not Yellowstone. What Yellowstone is and what anything like that... And zoos is the worst example, right? But when we think of animals, like, people always tell me, like, like, 'cause, you know, I have a famous dog, I run with him all the time and he's on my Instagram (laughs) and it's like everybody loves him.

Steven Rinella 22:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:16 He's the sweetest dog in the world. And they- they're like-

Steven Rinella 22:17 I know that dog.

Joe Rogan 22:18 ... "If you love dogs, how could you, how could you hunt animals?" And I'm like-

Steven Rinella 22:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:22 ... "Well, that's, that's not... He's not an animal. He's a dog. He's a pet." He- he's n- uh, is a science project. An- an animal is a wolf. An animal is a deer. That's an animal. What a dog is, they don't survive outside of us. If you don't take care of them, they won't know what to do, they'll hope that the dog catcher comes and gets them and then somebody rescues them. They're not wild animals. It's not. And it has, it almost has less to do with how they're raised and more to do with their ancestors. Like, their- their biology has changed. They've literally been bred to something different. They're a fucking science project.

Steven Rinella 23:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:00 You know? When you see my dog, he's got floppy ears, he's a sweetheart. Everybody who meets him, he drops to his back and he wants you to rub his belly. He's just the sweetest dog in the world. That is not a dog. I mean, it's not an animal. There's not an animal like that that would ever exist out in the wild. 'Cause if he sees another dog, he's like, "Hello, are you my friend?" He's not, like, checking to see if that thing is gonna steal his food or- or rob him of his mates or- or- or kill his babies.

Steven Rinella 23:22 Yeah, he's a, it- it's the result of a 20,000 or whatever year-

Joe Rogan 23:27 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 23:27 ... experimentation with the domestication of an animal.

Joe Rogan 23:30 Yeah. So most people, when they say they love animals, they don't even fucking know any. They don't even know what they are. They see the caged animals at the zoo, they see the animals on a rope that they- they take to the dog park. They think they know what an animal is. They don't even have any experience with it. We've been so domesticated and so isolated in cities, most people, especially most people that have opinions on this shit. You know, people that live in rural areas, I mean, you know that. You live in Bozeman, and Bozeman is, you know, surrounded by these areas that are just fucking completely wild. I mean, if you're in Bozeman, you can drive an hour from your house and then you're around bears and deer-

Steven Rinella 24:11 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:12 ... and eagles. I mean, it's a completely wild place. But people that are in those areas, people around Boise, Idaho, for example, they have a totally different idea. People in Wyoming, they have a totally different idea of what wildlife is versus somebody who lives in Santa Monica. Like, there's a video that just, somebody sent me today (clears throat) of, um-... a guy in Thousand Oaks, uh, is, uh, on his street, and he's filming a fucking enormous mountain lion. I mean, it is huge. It's a big boy. It's like 150 pounds. And, uh, they're in the car and they're looking at it through the window. And him and his son, it seems like, are, are filming this thing going, "Holy shit. Look at this thing."

Steven Rinella 24:49 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:49 And it's right there in the street, a big ass cat. And he was saying that like somebody was film-... Somebody was feeding it apparently, and they're, they're trying to figure out what... You want me to send it to you? Uh- I'll send it to you. Yeah, send it to me. But this, uh... You know, that's, that's super rare. I mean, that's a real wild animal. It's super, super rare that, that anybody would have any kind of experience with one of these things. And most people that are talking about animals, they just really don't know what that even means. They're just saying it.

Steven Rinella 25:16 Yeah, I think that there, there's developed a, (clears throat) like a, a pretty big cultural division between people who, um... a pretty big cultural division between people who kinda like live around and work around and deal with animals, and people who view them or think of them as very other. Uh, a friend of mine who's a biologist-

Joe Rogan 25:36 I got it.

Steven Rinella 25:37 Th- this... Oh, there you go.

Joe Rogan 25:38 Yeah. Nope, nope. I'm sending you another one. I sent it to you. It's, it's, uh, from Thousand Oaks. I just sent it to you. (clears throat) That's one though.

Steven Rinella 25:45 A friend of mine-

Joe Rogan 25:45 That's a, that's a recent one too.

Steven Rinella 25:47 A buddy of mine who's a biologist with the Forest Service, a guy named Carl Malcolm, who you might've heard on our, our show. Uh, he just sent me a, a paper that was about kids' attitudes to wildlife, and it was comparing rural people's attitude and knowledge of wildlife, the kids, with urban and, and suburban attitudes about wildlife. And you, you can see the input of media when you look at this thing because people who live in a urban or suburban environment, when they tell you the top of mind wildlife that they know about, it's nonnative stuff.

Joe Rogan 26:28 Like lions?

Steven Rinella 26:29 Yeah, they're likely to know like what's, what's an animal, right? And an animal would be like... Oh, it'd be like a giraffe, right?

Joe Rogan 26:35 Mm-hmm.

Steven Rinella 26:36 And, (laughs) and, and people who have a more, um, rural or remote viewpoint would be m-... are, are much more likely to like, when they think of wildlife, to think of things that they interact with.

Joe Rogan 26:48 Mm-hmm.

Steven Rinella 26:49 You know? And not like the things that are on your mobile above your crib-

Joe Rogan 26:53 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 26:53 ... when you're a little baby.

Joe Rogan 26:55 Right.

Steven Rinella 26:55 And it sort of points... A- and also, there, there's a slight tendency... I gotta look at this more carefully, but there's a slight tendency to have, uh, negative feelings or think things are dangerous or bad the more urban you are in terms of native wildlife, to more recognize it as like a negative or bad thing. And what they're pointing to is, um... Again, I wanna look at this much more carefully, and pardon me to the authors of... authors if I'm messing this up. I was just looking at it this morning. Um, what they're pointing to is the, the, the stirrings of there being a, a, a greater acceptance of decreased biodiversity.

Joe Rogan 27:33 Hmm.

Steven Rinella 27:34 Meaning that you're kinda like okay with the bad things having gone, and we're focused on like what are animals. Well, animals would be like a giraffe, an hippopotamus, and the things that, that Disney tells me about, and not like possums and raccoons, which are kinda gross.

Joe Rogan 27:50 Hmm.

Steven Rinella 27:50 You know?

Joe Rogan 27:52 You got that video? Yeah, yeah. Look at this fat boy. (clears throat) Play this thing. That's a collar, isn't it?

Steven Rinella 28:00 Yeah, it's got a collar on it.

Joe Rogan 28:01 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.

Steven Rinella 28:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:16 It looks like it's staged. I mean, the cat is walking right by the trail camera in the Hollywood sign in the background.

Steven Rinella 28:20 Oh, it's that dude that sets up those famous, uh... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:23 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 28:23 It was in National Geographic.

Joe Rogan 28:25 Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steven Rinella 28:25 Yeah, that's a good picture.

Joe Rogan 28:26 Yeah, we got one, uh, printed on st- that, that picture right there. I mean, come on, man.

Steven Rinella 28:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:30 That's crazy. That is a goddamn crazy picture. It's a giant cat. Like look at the forearms on that motherfucker.

Steven Rinella 28:36 Yeah, it's got that-

Joe Rogan 28:37 Woo.

Steven Rinella 28:37 ... saggy stomach.

Joe Rogan 28:38 But it bums me out looking at that collar. There was a conversation that you had on your podcast-

Steven Rinella 28:43 (laughs) It's-

Joe Rogan 28:43 ... about, uh, shooting a deer-

Steven Rinella 28:44 It's our favorite subject, yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 28:45 ... 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."

Steven Rinella 29:04 Oh, totally.

Joe Rogan 29:05 "I'm out."

Steven Rinella 29:05 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-

Joe Rogan 29:11 Duck bands?

Steven Rinella 29:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:12 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 29:12 To shoot a duck with a band on it, everybody knows is cool as shit. Like I know that.

Joe Rogan 29:16 That's weird.

Steven Rinella 29:16 Everybody wants to shoot a banded-

Joe Rogan 29:18 Most people listening to this don't know that.

Steven Rinella 29:20 It's cool as shit if you get a banded duck.

Joe Rogan 29:23 Why is that?

Steven Rinella 29:23 Well, it's a little bit social science, because (laughs) long ago, like we used to not understand... This is kinda a little bit tricky to explain. We used to not understand how migrations worked, because everyone only knew what they saw, okay? And there wasn't someone who was sort of like coalescing all of this information. People would know very well, like, you know, wherever. You, you live along the Mississippi River. Okay? Um, and you might know very well that, like in November, shitloads of ducks that you haven't seen... they haven't been here all year, are coming from the north and going to the south, and you knew that very well. You knew that ducks moved. You knew that they moved through here, but you didn't put all of the... You had no way to put all the pieces together. Over time, what... we wanted to understand like animal migrations better, and one of the ear-... This is way pre-collars, like GPS collars, and, and pit tags and shit. Uh, we started this banding system where you could go and catch a duck-... in, in its, where, in its nesting area. There's, like, times a year when it's really easy to catch ducks. One, you can catch them when they're young and you can catch them when they molt. So people would go out and put a band on a duck. And you'd go, you could go up in, in the Arctic or the upper Midwest, anywhere, and throw a band on a baby duck. And that band would have a phone number on it. And you were encouraged to, when you got a banded duck, it was like they made it be that it was a good thing. And you were encouraged to call that 1-800 number, or whatever the hell they were before 1-800 numbers, and give them the n- the, the, the band, the band number. And then we started to really with, like, great detail, map out flyways, how ducks migrated. Like, the, the ducks in, on, on the Arctic slope in Alaska tend to follow along this path, and they tend to end up here at this date. And they're, they're down in, you know, whatever, they're down in Texas all of a sudden, or they're down in Southern California. And they're, they're, they're hanging out in rice fields around Sacramento, whatever the hell it is. We started to put together this whole detailed picture. And it was one of the great achievements in wildlife biology, was what we ear- learned from the duck banding system. So I think that over time, it became, li- like I said, it was sort of like social engineering where people were taught to think it was cool, and you would wear a, a band, you would... If you had a lanyard where you kee- you keep your duck calls on, this still goes on, if you got a lanyard that you have your duck calls on, any banded bird you get, you put that band on your lanyard. I even met these knuckleheads from North Dakota who have a lot of bands on their lanyards from banded birds they've shot. And you'd be like, "Dude, that's a lot of bands." And he goes, "Yeah, not one of them is reported."

Joe Rogan 32:16 Hmm.

Steven Rinella 32:17 They think that it, that it remains more pure to... Dude, I, I don't know.

Joe Rogan 32:24 That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

Steven Rinella 32:25 It's the dumbest shit. I wish you guys did, like, call-

Joe Rogan 32:27 Why wouldn't anybody wanna contribute to all this-

Steven Rinella 32:29 I, I don't know. You'd have to have, like, a calling component to your show, and we would call one of these dudes-

Joe Rogan 32:34 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 32:34 ... and have him explain in greater detail. But I remember thinking like, "That's the most, the, that's the most fucked up thing I've ever heard." But, yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:39 I don't think you'd wanna talk to that guy on the air.

Steven Rinella 32:41 It was like, he's like, "Yeah, and they're all unreported." Anyways, I don't know if it's like an anti-science thing.

Joe Rogan 32:45 Did you... But, but you love to argue. Did you talk to that guy about this?

Steven Rinella 32:47 You know, it was long ago. I could tell you where I was standing. I was in my brother's kitchen in Miles City, Montana, um, beneath this crazy chandelier he bought online. And I remember everything about it, but I don't remember when I, if I challenged him on the sense of, of being proud of having not contributed to our scientific understanding of waterfowl migrations and why... Maybe it was like, like a sort of anti-government sentiment.

Joe Rogan 33:10 Oh.

Steven Rinella 33:10 Like some black helicopter stuff.

Joe Rogan 33:13 Okay.

Steven Rinella 33:13 Regardless.

Joe Rogan 33:14 Yeah. Some militia shit.

Steven Rinella 33:16 It's cool to have bands. And I have, like, in my sort of, I have, like, a box where I put important stuff to me.

Joe Rogan 33:22 But imagine if you had a box of deer collars.

Steven Rinella 33:25 Dude, there's no way. If I had... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:27 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 33:27 I wouldn't put a deer collar. That's what I'm getting at is, like, those are cool, but collars are not. And we had a friend, there's a, there's a friend of mine who's a, she's a, does a lot of carnivore research and other research projects named Carmen, uh, VanBianki, which is a cool name. But she says that, you know, "I'm someone that collars animals." And I even think that she's like, "When you get one with a collar on it," she said, it was a quote, we talked about this the other day, where she's like, "Someone has already got the best of them, that they become tainted when they've been held by someone else."

Joe Rogan 34:00 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 34:00 And that's a little bit how I view it, where, like, a wild animal, you wanna imagine it being like the wildest wild animal.

Joe Rogan 34:07 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 34:07 And once it has a collar, it's like someone... It's, it's all sloppy seconds, man.

Joe Rogan 34:12 Yeah. Well, isn't that why the allure of Alaska is so interesting? 'Cause it's one of the rare places where, like, if you run into a caribou in Alaska, there's a high probability that that motherfucker-

Steven Rinella 34:23 Never encountered a person.

Joe Rogan 34:24 Never. It doesn't even know what you are. Like, have you seen videos of hunters walking towards caribou with, like, their bow on their head?

Steven Rinella 34:32 Yep.

Joe Rogan 34:32 And the caribou is like, "What in the fuck is this?"

Steven Rinella 34:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:35 They don't even know. They think that bow is a rack.

Steven Rinella 34:38 Their assumption (laughs) i- in areas where I've been, um, particularly like, like up on the Arctic slope, uh... No, that, that's not true, 'cause I've seen a lot of it, uh, in the mountain ranges too in Southcentral Alaska. When they see your movement, their assumption is that you're a caribou. That's like, it seems, I, I can't, you, you can't get in their head. But their assumption is that, like, "Oh, I better go check it out. And then I'll circle down when and make sure it's not a, uh, make sure it's not a grizzly or a wolf or whatever." But they're like, you know, a h- a, a, uh, something that weighs a few hundred pounds, couple hundred pounds, whatever, walking around, probably a caribou. And they just like, "Come on over."

Joe Rogan 35:20 They come to you.

Steven Rinella 35:20 Until they can rule it out. But they're gregarious, and they wanna find each other.

Joe Rogan 35:25 Ah.

Steven Rinella 35:26 And it, it, it, that sort of thing, like, winds up in, giving you a little bit of a sense of, uh, it makes you feel a little bit bad for them.

Joe Rogan 35:33 Right. They're, they're, they're not tuned in like a mule deer is.

Steven Rinella 35:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:36 They-

Steven Rinella 35:37 And then you realize it's just, like, living like that... I mean, these things are, these are things that could migrate. You know, they migrate hundreds and hundreds of miles.

Joe Rogan 35:43 Have you hunted axis deer yet?

Steven Rinella 35:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:45 Axis deer in Hawaii is the, the most perverse, strange, but necessary hunting that I've ever experienced.

Steven Rinella 35:54 Yeah. And you know what, and they don't have nat- like, on Hawaii, they're not dealing with natural predators.

Joe Rogan 35:58 Zero.

Steven Rinella 35:58 It's all pe-

Joe Rogan 35:59 Just people.

Steven Rinella 35:59 It's all, they're just, like, s- they're just very in tuned to, like-

Joe Rogan 36:02 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 36:02 ... their predator being people.

Joe Rogan 36:03 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 36:04 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.

Joe Rogan 36:29 Oh, originally.

Steven Rinella 36:30 Yeah. And, and so like-

Joe Rogan 36:32 India.

Steven Rinella 36:32 ... and, and carry with them a real high strung sense from having dealt with, like, very efficient predators.

Joe Rogan 36:37 Tigers.

Steven Rinella 36:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:38 Yeah, they evolved to get, get away from tigers. They're the-

Steven Rinella 36:40 Like, they've gotta be high strung.

Joe Rogan 36:41 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.

Steven Rinella 36:54 Ducks it.

Joe Rogan 36:54 He's outta there. It's crazy. It's like they kind of understand that things coming towards them kill them.

Steven Rinella 37:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 37:00 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-

Steven Rinella 37:15 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?

Joe Rogan 37:28 Hinds.

Steven Rinella 37:29 They'd been hunted very heavily.

Joe Rogan 37:31 Stags. Stags and hinds.

Steven Rinella 37:31 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.

Joe Rogan 37:55 No, it's not. It's almost 50/50.

Steven Rinella 37:57 I remember being, like, very surprised by that.

Joe Rogan 37:59 It's almost 50/50 when you go to these areas, uh, that are, you know, in Lanai, and apparently the same thing with Maui. They're everywhere. There's so many of them. Maui has a real, uh, eradication, uh, sort of, uh, program underway, but they're-

Steven Rinella 38:13 Which is controversial, right?

Joe Rogan 38:15 Very controversial, but they're also selling it. There's, uh, they're selling, uh, venison sticks and venison jerky, and there, there's companies that are establishing these c- they're, they're establishing these, uh, conservation efforts where they're going out and they're shooting X amount per year, like 6,000 per year, which is, like, doesn't even put a dent on it.

Steven Rinella 38:34 Yeah. Is the goal eradication or is the goal-

Joe Rogan 38:36 No.

Steven Rinella 38:36 ... just to limit?

Joe Rogan 38:37 Limit them. But they eradicated them from the big island. Somebody had put them on the big island. Somebody had taken 'em from one of the other islands and put 'em on the big island. And they had spent millions of dollars to eradicate them.

Steven Rinella 38:47 Forgive me if, uh, stop me if we spoke about this before, but there's, uh, kind of an interesting perspective that someone gave to me about Hawaii, where we, we have this l- you know, Hawaii's just dominated by non-natives, okay? Um, I might be wrong about some of these, but I don't think I am. Breadfruit, coconut, um, all these, like, uh, all the major fruiting trees are non-native. And so much of the wildlife is non-native. I mean, they have, like, like, surprising shit. They have wild turkeys, there's wild cattle, pigs, axis deer. I think there's, like, black buck antelope running around.

Joe Rogan 39:25 Wild horses.

Steven Rinella 39:26 Chukars, pheasants, just-

Joe Rogan 39:28 They hunt horses.

Steven Rinella 39:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 39:30 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 39:31 I, I was talking to a guy one time that snares cattle.

Joe Rogan 39:35 Wow.

Steven Rinella 39:36 I don't know if he does it illegally or not, but he snares cattle. My mom's, uh, um, I guess I would call it, you know, technically he'd be my stepfather, though that feels funny. My mom, my, my stepfather, my mom's husband, who, who she married after my dad passed away, he grew up snaring white-tailed deer with garage door cable. But they s- they were like, they were farmers and they just ate. And that was sort of his relationship with his deer is setting snare- setting garage cable snares.

Joe Rogan 40:05 Wow.

Steven Rinella 40:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:06 And just using that as a source of food.

Steven Rinella 40:07 They were just hungry, you know?

Joe Rogan 40:09 Wow.

Steven Rinella 40:09 Poor. Um, but, uh, anyways, in Hawaii, right, those were col- those islands were colonized by humans like 1100 years ago. And those h- a- a- and so now we have, like, native Hawaiians, or Hawaiians, right? Um, and I've spoke with, with some native Hawaiians who feel that there's this uneasy relationship between w- what we're regarding and describing as non-native wildlife, even down to pigs, even though that their ancestors, you know, 1100 years ago, brought the pig to the island. And someone expressed to me very simply, he's like, "How can I be Hawaiian? Like, I'm native Hawaiian. I damn sure am Hawaiian. Why is the thing that I hunt regarded as a non-native and needs to be eradicated?" He's like, "If we really wanna talk about non-natives, I feel like that would be you."

Joe Rogan 41:05 Right. Yeah.

Steven Rinella 41:07 And he was, like, a- and he was kinda pissed about this, this attitude towards ... 'Cause these are guys that like to hunt and eat a lot of wild game. About this attitude to axis deer and this attitude to pigs. And you hear the same thing out of Australia. You hear the same thing out of New Zealand, which is guys who have this, this difficult relationship with the things that they've come to hunt and the things that have sort of been culturally accepted, culturally accepted as, as wildlife, right? Um, where people, you know ... I don't, I don't wanna use, I don't wanna use environmentalists here in a way that makes it be that the, that the hunters aren't necessarily environmentalists, but in ways where some people with what they would describe as an environmental agenda wanna see species eradicated, the people have been interacting with for 100 years, in some cases, like, like in Hawaii, in some cases, perhaps 1,000 years, they've been interacting with it on the landscape. But then someone wants to come and say, "We wanna get rid of it 'cause it's not native." And it causes, like, a, uh, a ton of tension.

Joe Rogan 42:06 Mm-hmm.

Steven Rinella 42:07 Where it creates a parti- a w- weird situation for people in, in, in, in some of these places is that hunters have long justified their actions to the public as being that we're controlling, right? We're, like, controlling non-natives, so we're doing a good thing. But then someone says like, "Oh, you know, I got a n- a better idea. Let's just kill all of them."And then the hunter's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa."

Joe Rogan 42:32 We know they did that off-

Steven Rinella 42:33 I don't mean like that m-

Joe Rogan 42:34 There's an island off the California coast that was filled with elk and deer.

Steven Rinella 42:38 Oh, what was it called?

Joe Rogan 42:38 Ah, I forget. See if you can find it. It was in... They eradicated all of them. They, they just machine gunned them.

Steven Rinella 42:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:44 Just helicopters and just eradicated all of them, 'cause-

Steven Rinella 42:47 Are you familiar with the practice in those cases where they could have a Judas animal?

Joe Rogan 42:50 Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Steven Rinella 42:51 Yeah, that's good shit.

Joe Rogan 42:51 There's a great, uh, article about, or a podcast about that from Radiolab-

Steven Rinella 42:56 Mm.

Joe Rogan 42:56 ... where they kept, uh, sending this, uh, Judas goat to like the Galapagos. And, uh, he'd find the other goats, and like that, that, that, that, that, that, that. They'd gun them all down. This Judas goat would be like, "Where are my friends? Fuck." And just keep, keep wandering off and, you know, he's sterile, so he can't breed.

Steven Rinella 43:10 Oh, is that right?

Joe Rogan 43:10 And he'd go to find these other goats and they'd follow the collar, the GPS on the collar, and find the new g- group of goats and they'd gun them down too.

Steven Rinella 43:19 That would begin to wear on a human. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:23 (laughs) Yeah, I don't think goats entirely know what's going on.

Steven Rinella 43:26 Th- The other day we had a meeting with our kids-

Joe Rogan 43:27 There it is. Okay.

Steven Rinella 43:28 We had a meeting with our kids... Oh.

Joe Rogan 43:30 Oh, Santa Rosa Island.

Steven Rinella 43:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:31 So Santa Rosa Island-

Steven Rinella 43:32 Oh, dude. I was just... I was there not long ago.

Joe Rogan 43:34 It used to be filled with elk and deer, and people had sort of set it up, Santa Rosa Island elk. They had set it up. Pro hunters hit Santa Rosa Island.

Steven Rinella 43:46 I think they mean professional.

Joe Rogan 43:48 Hunters were used for amuse and main meal.

Steven Rinella 43:48 In that case, I would have used professional, not pro.

Joe Rogan 43:50 Murderers, deer murderers. This is in 2011, so it was a fairly-

Steven Rinella 43:54 Mule deer.

Joe Rogan 43:54 ... fairly recent thing where they eradicated all these animals.

Steven Rinella 43:57 Yeah, I was just... I just not long ago fished off there.

Joe Rogan 44:00 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."

Steven Rinella 44:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:15 Now it's like, "You monster. Sharks fin soup."

Steven Rinella 44:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:18 "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.

Steven Rinella 44:29 Oh, you still see it.

Joe Rogan 44:30 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 44:30 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.

Joe Rogan 45:14 Oh my God.

Steven Rinella 45:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:15 How much did that cost?

Steven Rinella 45:16 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?

Joe Rogan 45:30 Oh, yeah.

Steven Rinella 45:31 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-

Joe Rogan 46:19 Whoa.

Steven Rinella 46:19 ... 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.

Joe Rogan 47:27 And no one would eat it?

Steven Rinella 47:28 Dude, it would... No, it would go into a dumpster.

Joe Rogan 47:31 But you can eat blue shark.

Steven Rinella 47:32 Yeah. Well, you can. They're high in urea and there's, you know.

Joe Rogan 47:35 Oh.

Steven Rinella 47:35 It's like everything else, like yes you can, but-

Joe Rogan 47:37 So mako is the most edible?

Steven Rinella 47:39 Mako, thresher, um-

Joe Rogan 47:41 Can you eat a great white?

Steven Rinella 47:43 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.

Joe Rogan 48:41 There must be somebody who's eaten one.

Steven Rinella 48:43 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?

Joe Rogan 49:00 Mm-hmm.

Steven Rinella 49:00 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-

Joe Rogan 49:56 Is that him?

Steven Rinella 49:57 That's, that's Frank Mundus.

Joe Rogan 49:58 Let me see that picture upper left.

Steven Rinella 49:59 Dude. So-

Joe Rogan 50:01 There he is.

Steven Rinella 50:01 Yeah. He kinda like built this idea of like shark hunting and buil- and like-

Joe Rogan 50:06 Does he have a shark bite on his forearm? Go back to that-

Steven Rinella 50:08 That'd be interesting if Frank Mundus did it.

Joe Rogan 50:10 ... what the fuck's going on with his left forearm.

Steven Rinella 50:11 Oh.

Joe Rogan 50:11 Some- something took a bite out of that motherfucker.

Steven Rinella 50:13 Pr- yes, he's got the necklace.

Joe Rogan 50:15 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 50:15 The dead shark. And Frank Mundus kinda like gr- like spawned this sort of thing where you'd wanna go out and catch a big shark and hang it up and then throw it in the dumpster.

Joe Rogan 50:26 Wow.

Steven Rinella 50:27 And people look at, like when people look at that history, they look at it being is like, it's like in some ways Mundus and shark hunting was symptomatic of declining fisheries.

Joe Rogan 50:39 Look at that picture of him and the dude with, from the movie. They're so similar. Look at that, the black and white and the color next to each other, look at that.

Steven Rinella 50:45 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:47 What was that guy's name? The guy in the movie?

Steven Rinella 50:49 Can't remember.

Joe Rogan 50:49 What was the actor's name? That guy was fucking awesome. What a great scene.

Steven Rinella 50:54 You know Mo Fallon?

Joe Rogan 50:56 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 50:57 That's still his favorite movie, I think.

Joe Rogan 50:59 It's a great movie.

Steven Rinella 51:00 (laughs) Dude, he loves Jaws.

Joe Rogan 51:01 It's a great movie. It's interesting that the narrative-

Steven Rinella 51:03 He could, he could convi- next time you see him, have him convince you that Jaws is the greatest movie ever. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 51:07 It's a great movie. It's a great movie. Richard Dreyfuss, I mean, come on. Um, the narrative of, uh, shark's fin soup and sharks being, you know, something that we need to protect, that sort of, th- it's a new thing. It's something that-

Steven Rinella 51:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:20 ... only existed over the last decade or so.

Steven Rinella 51:22 I think so.

Joe Rogan 51:23 Yeah, it used to be if you caught a shark, like good for you. Y- you're keeping it from killing someone who's swimming or someone who's surfing.

Steven Rinella 51:30 The, the, the idea of shark's fin soup and, and its allure was driven home to me one time when we were in Berkeley and we were at a boat launch. We'd come off fishing, and we'd been out fishing for leopard sharks. Um, remember, uh, The Life Aquatic?

Joe Rogan 51:44 Mm-hmm.

Steven Rinella 51:44 That's a good movie.

Joe Rogan 51:45 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 51:45 Is it, do you like his stuff or no?

Joe Rogan 51:46 Bill Murray? Love him.

Steven Rinella 51:48 No, I mean like the director, Anderson. Wes Anderson.

Joe Rogan 51:49 Oh, what has he done besides that?

Steven Rinella 51:51 Fucking, uh, World's Hand in Gloves.

Joe Rogan 51:54 Oh, okay. Yeah, I like that.

Steven Rinella 51:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:57 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 51:57 I think his masterpiece was The Life Aquatic.

Joe Rogan 51:59 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 51:59 But, uh, in there they got, you know, the, the famous shark, and there's the jaguar shark, which is a good idea for a shark. I don't think it exists. But there are leopard sharks, and we're fishing for leopard sharks, and we came back to the boat launch and there's a dumpster there. And everybody cleans their fish and throws the fish guts in the dumpster. And I remember there's a gentleman digging through the dumpster, getting out leopard shark fins, and, and heads and stuff. And I took pity on him. I thought that he was out, acting out of some sort of desperation. And I said, uh, "Hey, man, do you want like a nice filet? I'd be happy to give you a filet." He's like, "No." (laughs) He just wanted just the fins.

Joe Rogan 52:43 Just to make soup?

Steven Rinella 52:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:45 Yeah. Have you ever had it?

Steven Rinella 52:46 No.

Joe Rogan 52:47 I've had it.

Steven Rinella 52:48 Shark fin soup?

Joe Rogan 52:48 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 52:49 Did you enjoy it?

Joe Rogan 52:50 It was weird. It was weird. It was like, it's okay. It's okay. It's definitely not worth eradicating a fucking entire species for it.

Steven Rinella 52:58 No, it's a little disgusting. Uh, it's a little disgusting. And, and you know, I'm always reluctant, like, uh, I'm always reluctant to... I'm a little bit reluctant to sort of, uh, oversimplify things around, around harvest and, and animals and stuff, because, uh, I, I think people can take it too far. But if you've seen footage of people cutting fins...

Joe Rogan 53:27 And dumping the sharks in the water?

Steven Rinella 53:28 And kicking the sharks off the deck into the water.

Joe Rogan 53:31 Yeah. It's dark.

Steven Rinella 53:31 And I think it, but it speaks to something, I, I think that seeing like live finless sharks going into the water speaks to something about just your level of care. Do you know what I mean? Like, whether you view something as, as sacred-

Joe Rogan 53:45 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 53:45 ... or not. It's hard to see that the individual engaging in that is viewing it as, uh, uh, a- as sacred. And there's like-

Joe Rogan 53:51 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 53:51 ... uh, you know, there's a lot of stories about even like swordfish captains, uh, you know, burning blue sharks and stuff in effigy 'cause they lose so much of their swordfish catch to blue sharks. But to see people kicking them off, it speaks to something about animal suffering, it speaks to something about like what is that person's view of the resource, like-

Joe Rogan 54:10 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 54:10 ... to what, how do they respect it. But it also just speaks to like a general thing where you, you don't like to see things wasted.

Joe Rogan 54:16 Yeah. I-

Steven Rinella 54:17 And, and my, my understanding about like one of the things that slowed in US waters, one of the things that slowed finning was just you used to be able to go out and you could fill your hold full of just shark parts. If you were a, a fishing captain, you could just be like, "I'm just gonna keep the fins." And eventually they made it, um, I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong here. Uh, I don't think I am. They eventually made it that whatever you have for shark-... materials in your boat on a commercial operation, a s- only a certain percentage can be comprised of fins. And since when you're on a commercial vessel, your hold, like, y- your, the r- where you keep iced fish is finite, it's limited, um, it wound up being not worth it. Because if, let's say, only, like, 30% of your shark parts could be shark fins and you had to keep the rest, it wasn't worth it to fill your hold full of, like, shark meat. And so it sort of de-incentivized people to go out and fin in US waters.

Joe Rogan 55:12 Mm. That makes sense. I had it a long time ago. I had it back in probably the '90s at a Chinese restaurant.

Steven Rinella 55:20 In the US or overseas?

Joe Rogan 55:21 In the US. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure it was the US. Yeah, I don't think I'd ever traveled overseas in the 1990s. I barely remember it.

Steven Rinella 55:31 How old were you when you first went overseas?

Joe Rogan 55:34 (sighs)

Steven Rinella 55:35 Overseas. You sound like-

Joe Rogan 55:37 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 55:38 ... like old sailors.

Joe Rogan 55:39 I'm trying to r-... I think I was in my 30s.

Steven Rinella 55:43 So Canada doesn't count as overseas?

Joe Rogan 55:45 No. You can walk there.

Steven Rinella 55:47 Nor, because of, like, the Darien, you know, Gap in, in Central America, like, when you go to Argentine, is it overseas?

Joe Rogan 55:57 It can be.

Steven Rinella 55:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:59 (laughs) Depending on w- if you come from Florida, right?

Steven Rinella 56:02 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:03 It depends on how you go. You can go the dumb way.

Steven Rinella 56:04 If they flew dead nuts over Central America-

Joe Rogan 56:07 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 56:07 ... did you go overseas?

Joe Rogan 56:08 It seems like it's kinda overseas.

Steven Rinella 56:09 Yeah, it seems like a bad term. But you didn't, you d- you didn't have occasion to travel a lot?

Joe Rogan 56:13 No.

Steven Rinella 56:13 When you were young.

Joe Rogan 56:14 Well, I traveled a lot from fighting-

Steven Rinella 56:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:16 ... 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?"

Steven Rinella 56:29 Oh, really?

Joe Rogan 56:29 Yeah. It's just more, more travel.

Steven Rinella 56:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:32 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.

Steven Rinella 56:49 Yeah, I got you.

Joe Rogan 56:49 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.

Steven Rinella 57:01 Yeah. Like, you have a hard time taking leisure.

Joe Rogan 57:03 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.

Steven Rinella 57:29 Yeah, man. That's a pretty good point.

Joe Rogan 57:32 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.

Steven Rinella 58:11 I can only really relax when there's nothing I could possibly be doing.

Joe Rogan 58:16 Mm.

Steven Rinella 58:17 And my kids aren't fighting.

Joe Rogan 58:18 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 58:19 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.

Joe Rogan 58:52 Mm.

Steven Rinella 58:53 And I asked the dude, I'm like, "Can you see that?" He goes, "Oh, I can see that."

Joe Rogan 58:57 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 58:57 Me hearing it, me hearing that, like, "No!"

Joe Rogan 59:01 Right. They start screaming. They start, "Dad! Dad!"

Steven Rinella 59:03 Or "Matthew!" Right? (laughs) Like your heart.

Joe Rogan 59:05 Mm-hmm.

Steven Rinella 59:05 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."

Joe Rogan 59:39 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.

Steven Rinella 1:00:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:20 Got fucking Alzheimer's. Like, it's- it's really common with people that have, uh, a very small amount of sleep, and they take pride in the fact they're always pushing the needle. Those people eventually, the, the fucking, the bearings start going.

Steven Rinella 1:00:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:32 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:00:33 Do you take caution to sleep?

Joe Rogan 1:00:35 I sleep a lot. I get good sleep. I'm very lucky. One of the things about... Because I exercise so much-... is that I'm always tired.

Steven Rinella 1:00:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:43 Like, when, when I hit the hay at night and I get home from the comedy store, I fucking crash. I go down hard. I get a good, solid eight hours sleep almost every night.

Steven Rinella 1:00:52 That's good. When I'm, when I'm in a groove of, like, like being careful about taking care of myself and, and, uh, yeah, doing, like, a lot of regular exercise, how much your appetite for food-

Joe Rogan 1:01:04 Hmm.

Steven Rinella 1:01:04 ... and your appetite for sleep.

Joe Rogan 1:01:05 The appetite for meat, that's the big one, man.

Steven Rinella 1:01:07 Increases greatly.

Joe Rogan 1:01:08 Yeah. Well, my wife, uh, started lifting weights, and one of the first things she said is like, "Goddamn, I want meat, like all the time."

Steven Rinella 1:01:14 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:14 She's doing squats and shit. She's got this, uh, crazy Russian lady who's her trainer. This lady's a fucking savage, and they're, they're just doing all these crazy squats and box jumps and that kind of shit and just-

Steven Rinella 1:01:24 She's like that Russian-

Joe Rogan 1:01:25 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:01:25 ... in the Rocky movie.

Joe Rogan 1:01:26 (laughs) But it's just-

Steven Rinella 1:01:28 That dude was on to, like-

Joe Rogan 1:01:29 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:01:29 ... that dude was on to, what's it called, where the people go to, like, the clubhouse and roll rocks and shit?

Joe Rogan 1:01:34 Oh, like, uh, CrossFit type of shit?

Steven Rinella 1:01:35 Yeah, shoot-

Joe Rogan 1:01:36 Yeah, yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:01:36 ... that dude was on to CrossFit before.

Joe Rogan 1:01:37 Oh, yeah, man. He's got-

Steven Rinella 1:01:38 His trainer in Russia.

Joe Rogan 1:01:39 There's machines in Rocky that I have out there.

Steven Rinella 1:01:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:42 The fuckin' VersaClimber. The fir- I found out about VersaClimbers watching that Rocky movie.

Steven Rinella 1:01:47 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:47 When Drago was on that thing, I was like, "Man, he looks like he's working hard." That fucking VersaClimber's a m- but that's a bitch, man. You ever do that thing?

Steven Rinella 1:01:55 No, I haven't-

Joe Rogan 1:01:55 Woo!

Steven Rinella 1:01:55 ... but I'd like to.

Joe Rogan 1:01:56 You do 30-second sprints in this, like, ah!

Steven Rinella 1:01:59 With your legs and your arms.

Joe Rogan 1:02:00 Yeah. You're just pedaling, and, and it's like you're climbing, and you can increase the resistance, so it's like, uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! For grappling, there's nothing like it. It's amazing.

Steven Rinella 1:02:10 How do you picture it?

Joe Rogan 1:02:11 Everybody hates it though. Y- b- m- most people, they'll, they'll, they'll gravitate towards the treadmill, the elliptical machine or other thing. They look at that thing like, "No, no, no, no."

Steven Rinella 1:02:18 Yeah, 'cause it's not fun. You don't get lost-

Joe Rogan 1:02:20 It's horrible.

Steven Rinella 1:02:20 Yeah, you don't get lost in it.

Joe Rogan 1:02:22 It's horrible. It's horrible, but it's amazing.

Steven Rinella 1:02:25 When you refer to, like, how you fill your head up, like, what you fill your head up, if it's just, like, junk and sugar and how much time you have to process stuff, one of the things I've noticed, and it's kinda started, it's begun to startle me a little bit, is I used to find, in social situations, that I would be very interested in letting people know what I thought about stuff.

Joe Rogan 1:02:46 Hmm.

Steven Rinella 1:02:47 Even shit that I had no business talking about it.

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 1:02:51 And I think that you see people, like, when you see, like, someone who's older, and we have this idea that, like, all the older, wiser person, and they're just taking in everything, and they've learned to be quiet.

Joe Rogan 1:03:03 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:03:04 People don't really think about the fact that maybe they're just, like, sick of hearing themselves talk.

Joe Rogan 1:03:08 That too. You know, the saddest thing is though as an old moron.

Steven Rinella 1:03:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:14 Right?

Steven Rinella 1:03:15 I, I wanna say yeah, but, I mean, I think I, you need to explain a little bit. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:18 Like an old racist.

Steven Rinella 1:03:20 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:03:21 An old dummy.

Steven Rinella 1:03:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:22 An old person who has, like, ridiculous archaic views of women or ridiculous archaic views of society and culture and immigration and all these different things. Like, a person without nuance. An old person who's not learned from the humbling experiences of life and who's, who's not looked at himself in his own folly and, and has a humorous take on it. A person-

Steven Rinella 1:03:43 That's a good description.

Joe Rogan 1:03:43 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:03:44 You're painting a flattering portrait. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:46 Yeah, man, I, I think about it a lot. I don't wanna be that guy, you know?

Steven Rinella 1:03:49 I, I encountered a dude like that not long ago, where we, we decided that we were gonna take our kids, like, we're gonna take our kids out to eat, and I don't wanna have to deal with any kinda, like, added noise. And I was, uh, trying to con- I wanted to go... There's, like, this, like, truck that sells tacos. It's called, like, El Rodeo or something. Like, "Let's go to that taco truck and eat 'cause I'm not gonna talk to anybody and deal with anybody." My wife convinced me to go to a, this brew pub. So we go down to the brew pub, and I'm kinda, like, into... I'm, I'm already pissed off 'cause I'm, like, kinda half mad at my wife for making us be in a potentially social situation. And I'm sitting there, and this old man walks past me on his way out of the restaurant, and he's got a do not resuscitate bracelet.

Joe Rogan 1:04:28 Whoo.

Steven Rinella 1:04:29 Okay? He's like, he's got a little wa- you know those four pegged canes?

Joe Rogan 1:04:34 Mm-hmm.

Steven Rinella 1:04:34 He's got a four pegged cane. There's probably a n- name for that. And a do not resuscitate bracelet.

Joe Rogan 1:04:40 Phew.

Steven Rinella 1:04:40 And he walks out with his wife, girlfriend, whatever, and she wanders off, and he's just standing outside the restaurant, and it's just killing me to know what that's all about. So I grab my older boy, and we walk out, and, I'm like, "You know, I couldn't help but notice you have a bracelet that says, do not resuscitate." Uh, "What's that all about?" You know? And I said, "Do you just feel that if it's your time, it's your time, and you shouldn't... and you don't want modern shit to, like, interfere in sorta what you imagine to be, like, the way things go?" And he explains to me. He's like, "No." He goes... (laughs) He's like, he's pissed. He's already pissed. He was probably pissed before I talked to him. He's like, "I don't want oxygen. I don't want CPR. (laughs) I want nothing." And he goes, "'Cause I was having a heart attack, and they resuscitated me and broke two of my ribs. Therefore, I don't want to be resuscitated." And I remember thinking, like, "But, but you were having a heart attack." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:41 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 1:05:41 Like, the tradeoff seems minor.

Joe Rogan 1:05:44 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:05:45 But just, like, he was e- he was so kind of just pissed-

Joe Rogan 1:05:49 That they broke his ribs.

Steven Rinella 1:05:51 ... that he couldn't even see... I'm like, "Another way of looking at it would be that they saved your life."

Joe Rogan 1:05:59 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 1:05:59 (laughs) But he's like, he just wanted to suffer his heart attack with ribs intact, and at this point, would just rather die than have broken ribs.

Joe Rogan 1:06:09 That's the-

Steven Rinella 1:06:09 Or, or something like... I don't even- I couldn't even begin... And all of a sudden, I thought he was interesting, and all of a sudden, I didn't think he was interesting anymore.

Joe Rogan 1:06:14 (laughs) That's such an unfortunate-

Steven Rinella 1:06:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:16 ... perspective because if he said, like, look-

Steven Rinella 1:06:18 It's not a great story, but do you see what I'm saying?

Joe Rogan 1:06:20 Yeah. No, it is a great story because it's like if he, if he said, "Hey, I had a good time."

Steven Rinella 1:06:25 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:26 It's, you know-

Steven Rinella 1:06:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:06:27 There's only enough room for so many people.

Steven Rinella 1:06:29 That's what I thought I was gonna get.

Joe Rogan 1:06:30 Uh, uh, uh, you know-

Steven Rinella 1:06:31 That's what I thought I was gonna get.

Joe Rogan 1:06:32 ... I'm looking forward to meeting Jesus. (laughs)

Steven Rinella 1:06:34 Yeah. I thought I was gonna get that. So much so that I brought my boy with me.

Joe Rogan 1:06:38 Oh, boy.

Steven Rinella 1:06:39 Because when I was a little kid, my dad would go out of his way to have weird people over to the house.

Joe Rogan 1:06:43 (clicks tongue) Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:06:44 I keep... It was important to him...... to expose his kids to weirdos. So I was like, "Come on, son, we're gonna (laughs) talk to this crazy old man with a 'do not resuscitate' bracelet and you'll, like, learn something about life."

Joe Rogan 1:06:55 That's cra- ... How-

Steven Rinella 1:06:56 And I said, "Oh, nevermind, (laughs) nevermind. Forget that guy." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:58 How hilarious is that, like, to trade off of broken ribs for life. Broken ribs, it takes like a couple of months and you're fine.

Steven Rinella 1:07:05 Yeah, you might be like, "Dude, you're at a brew pub with your girlfriend-

Joe Rogan 1:07:07 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:07:07 ... and she's going to get the car. You don't wanna continue this far?"

Joe Rogan 1:07:10 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 1:07:10 Like, (laughs) that's not bad.

Joe Rogan 1:07:12 Not bad.

Steven Rinella 1:07:12 That's not bad. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:13 It's not bad. You just suffer for a little bit. One of the things about growing up with martial arts is you're always injured. So you don't look at injuries the way some people look at injuries. You look at injuries like, "Ah, I gotta go get this fixed."

Steven Rinella 1:07:25 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:07:25 You gotta get it fixed. I've had both my knees reconstructed, I've had a bunch of shit, my-

Steven Rinella 1:07:29 Have you?

Joe Rogan 1:07:29 ... nose reconstructed. I've had a bunch of shit fixed. You just get it fixed. It's like, "Ah, I fucking tore this thing, I'm gonna go get it fixed."

Steven Rinella 1:07:36 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.

Joe Rogan 1:07:53 Because of him?

Steven Rinella 1:07:54 No, I don't know. Well, now I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:07:56 Because of ... pregnancy, weight gain things?

Steven Rinella 1:07:57 ... at the time, I would've told you. No, after this. At the time, I would've told you that my knee absolutely hurt.

Joe Rogan 1:08:02 Mm-hmm.

Steven Rinella 1:08:02 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.

Joe Rogan 1:08:10 Mm.

Steven Rinella 1:08:11 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 ...

Joe Rogan 1:08:48 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 1:08:48 I was like, "I feel there's a very thin membrane that separates my brain from my body."

Joe Rogan 1:08:54 Mm.

Steven Rinella 1:08:55 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.

Joe Rogan 1:09:15 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 1:09:16 So it's this-

Joe Rogan 1:09:17 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?

Steven Rinella 1:09:23 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.

Joe Rogan 1:09:50 Mm-hmm.

Steven Rinella 1:09:50 And then it comes off, and then you're walking cockeyed, 'cause your other boot has shed-

Joe Rogan 1:09:53 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:09:53 ... its boot, mud layer?

Joe Rogan 1:09:55 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:09:55 We had one of those walks. And after that walk, the pain went away for two days.

Joe Rogan 1:10:00 (laughs)

Steven Rinella 1:10:03 But yeah, man. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:10:05 It can be a lot of things.

Steven Rinella 1:10:06 It's just like a deep fear of being old and shit.

Joe Rogan 1:10:08 That's real.

Steven Rinella 1:10:09 My eyesight's going bad.

Joe Rogan 1:10:10 Mine too.

Steven Rinella 1:10:11 I see you wearing those little glasses.

Joe Rogan 1:10:12 All the time.

Steven Rinella 1:10:13 And I saw you a minute ago, you didn't have them, and you couldn't barely look at your phone.

Joe Rogan 1:10:16 No, I can read that.

Steven Rinella 1:10:17 You had to-

Joe Rogan 1:10:18 I can read that.

Steven Rinella 1:10:18 You had to, like, hold it unusually far away, I felt.

Joe Rogan 1:10:21 What was I reading?

Steven Rinella 1:10:22 You-

Joe Rogan 1:10:22 Like that, like, like that I can read. I can read that. That's not a problem.

Steven Rinella 1:10:25 Now, you had a thing where you-

Joe Rogan 1:10:27 No, I'm gonna be honest with you.

Steven Rinella 1:10:27 ... you tipped your head up, and tipped your eyes down, and held it far away, I felt.

Joe Rogan 1:10:34 I do do that.

Steven Rinella 1:10:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:35 I do do that sometimes, but mostly with my phone, that's not an issue. Like, I can read emails and shit. The real, the real problem is, uh, laptops. Like, a laptop but with small text, or reading that, like, that piece of paper in front of you. That's fucked. Like, if I had to read that. I mean, I could do it, but I gotta do this, "Talking Monkey Incorporated," or call this, mm, podcast, call to Joe. Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:10:56 Joe's reading my release.

Joe Rogan 1:10:57 Yeah. It's, uh, it's just reality, you know. Your body starts to deteriorate, there's nothing you can do about it.

Steven Rinella 1:11:04 Yeah. Giannis-

Joe Rogan 1:11:04 You gotta get outta.

Steven Rinella 1:11:04 Giannis views it as, like, oh, this, like, journey of life shit, right?

Joe Rogan 1:11:07 Yeah, but he's all into, like, weird ... Giannis is into strange stuff. Like, he thinks you can kinda, like, you, you, you can kinda, like, uh-

Steven Rinella 1:11:15 Conjure.

Joe Rogan 1:11:16 ... manifest things.

Steven Rinella 1:11:16 Manifest.

Joe Rogan 1:11:17 Yeah.

Steven Rinella 1:11:17 He just believes that ... He believes ... I don't wanna put words in his mouth, but I feel that, uh, this is a, this is a long debate we have about psychological states. I feel that you can have pessimistic thoughts. But as long as you behave like an optimist, you'll, you'll get the same outcome. Meaning, let's say you go hunting, and you have feelings that, like, "It's never gonna work out, we're never gonna get one," but you do everything right. It doesn't matter what's in your head because your actions are such.

Joe Rogan 1:11:57 The only thing that's different is your level of enjoyment.

Steven Rinella 1:11:57 He doesn't like to entertain the negativity. He doesn't like to entertain the negativity 'cause-

Joe Rogan 1:12:01 Mm.

Steven Rinella 1:12:02 ... he feels that ... But I'm like, "But what does it matter if we still hunt hard? What does it matter if I feel like it won't work? As long as we hunt hard, it doesn't matter." And I think that he feels, he would argue that that mental state affects outcomes, and so he applies