Joe Rogan Experience #1341 - Steven Rinella

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   What's going on with…

   1. SRSteven Rinella0:00

      What's going on with all the cigars?

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      Uh, which cigars? Those are not cigars. Those are marijuana.

   3. SRSteven Rinella0:07

      Oh, okay. I figured it might be something like that.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:09

      (laughs) It's marijuana on the outside.

   5. SRSteven Rinella0:11

      (laughs)

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:11

      It's called a blunt. That's what the youngins call it. It's tobacco, you know.

   7. SRSteven Rinella0:14

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

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      Well, you're younger than me. Of course, you, you know what you're talking about.

   9. SRSteven Rinella0:18

      Yeah. I'm not as schooled as you.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:20

       (laughs)

   11. SRSteven Rinella0:20

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

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:24

       Speaking of illicit, we got some Meateater Bourbon, some Elk Shank Bourbon.

   13. SRSteven Rinella0:29

       Yeah, it pairs with-

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:31

       It's a good name for it, because-

   15. SRSteven Rinella0:31

       ... it pairs with beaver tail.

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:33

       ... it pairs with beaver tail.

   17. SRSteven Rinella0:34

       (laughs) Elk shank, elk shank.

   18. JRJoe Rogan0:36

       I've, I've had both of those things thanks to you.

   19. SRSteven Rinella0:38

       (laughs)

   20. JRJoe Rogan0:38

       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?"

   21. SRSteven Rinella0:47

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan0:47

       They'd be like, "What?" Most, most hunters have never eaten that.

   23. SRSteven Rinella0:50

       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?

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:41

       No. Well, they're interchangeable, aren't they?

   25. SRSteven Rinella1:43

       Well, that's... Yeah, that's the thing, so.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:44

       Obviously.

   27. SRSteven Rinella1:45

       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.

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:51

       Your cookbook is excellent, by the way.

   29. SRSteven Rinella1:52

       Have you messed around with it?

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:53

       Many times, many times.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   So, you can kind…

   1. SRSteven Rinella15:00

      that buffer. And so, um-

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:03

      So, you can kind of creep up to them?

   3. SRSteven Rinella15:05

      Kind of walk up to them.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:06

      (laughs)

   5. SRSteven Rinella15:07

      When you see them.

   6. JRJoe Rogan15:07

      Do they see bad? Are they like pigs? Do they have poor eyesight?

   7. SRSteven Rinella15:09

      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.

   8. JRJoe Rogan15:21

      Yeah, they ate my friend's dog.

   9. SRSteven Rinella15:23

      Oh.

   10. JRJoe Rogan15:23

       Yeah.

   11. SRSteven Rinella15:24

       Huh.

   12. JRJoe Rogan15:24

       Well, my friend's friend. Doug Stanhope, my buddy, he lives in, uh, he lives in Arizona, and-

   13. SRSteven Rinella15:29

       Was he pretty tore up about it?

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:30

       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.

   15. SRSteven Rinella15:40

       Yeah.

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:40

       It happens.

   17. SRSteven Rinella15:41

       Flesh eaters.

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:42

       Yeah. They'll, they'll fuck up a dog. They're weird.

   19. SRSteven Rinella15:46

       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.

   20. JRJoe Rogan16:05

       Mm. I see what you're saying. You're like, well, that's part of the, part of the game.

   21. SRSteven Rinella16:10

       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-

   22. JRJoe Rogan16:24

       Mm-hmm.

   23. SRSteven Rinella16:25

       ... 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-

   24. JRJoe Rogan16:38

       Yep.

   25. SRSteven Rinella16:39

       ... 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.

   26. JRJoe Rogan16:47

       By a bison?

   27. SRSteven Rinella16:48

       Yeah. Did you see that?

   28. JRJoe Rogan16:48

       Yeah.

   29. SRSteven Rinella16:49

       In Yellowstone?

   30. JRJoe Rogan16:49

       Yeah.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Hmm. …

   1. SRSteven Rinella30:00

      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."

   2. JRJoe Rogan32:16

      Hmm.

   3. SRSteven Rinella32:17

      They think that it, that it remains more pure to... Dude, I, I don't know.

   4. JRJoe Rogan32:24

      That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard.

   5. SRSteven Rinella32:25

      It's the dumbest shit. I wish you guys did, like, call-

   6. JRJoe Rogan32:27

      Why wouldn't anybody wanna contribute to all this-

   7. SRSteven Rinella32:29

      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-

   8. JRJoe Rogan32:34

      (laughs)

   9. SRSteven Rinella32:34

      ... 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.

   10. JRJoe Rogan32:39

       I don't think you'd wanna talk to that guy on the air.

   11. SRSteven Rinella32:41

       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.

   12. JRJoe Rogan32:45

       Did you... But, but you love to argue. Did you talk to that guy about this?

   13. SRSteven Rinella32:47

       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.

   14. JRJoe Rogan33:10

       Oh.

   15. SRSteven Rinella33:10

       Like some black helicopter stuff.

   16. JRJoe Rogan33:13

       Okay.

   17. SRSteven Rinella33:13

       Regardless.

   18. JRJoe Rogan33:14

       Yeah. Some militia shit.

   19. SRSteven Rinella33:16

       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.

   20. JRJoe Rogan33:22

       But imagine if you had a box of deer collars.

   21. SRSteven Rinella33:25

       Dude, there's no way. If I had... (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan33:27

       (laughs)

   23. SRSteven Rinella33:27

       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."

   24. JRJoe Rogan34:00

       Yeah.

   25. SRSteven Rinella34:00

       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.

   26. JRJoe Rogan34:07

       Yeah.

   27. SRSteven Rinella34:07

       And once it has a collar, it's like someone... It's, it's all sloppy seconds, man.

   28. JRJoe Rogan34:12

       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-

   29. SRSteven Rinella34:23

       Never encountered a person.

   30. JRJoe Rogan34:24

       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?
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Oh my God. …

   1. SRSteven Rinella45:00

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:14

      Oh my God.

   3. SRSteven Rinella45:15

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:15

      How much did that cost?

   5. SRSteven Rinella45:16

      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?

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:30

      Oh, yeah.

   7. SRSteven Rinella45:31

      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-

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:19

      Whoa.

   9. SRSteven Rinella46:19

      ... 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.

   10. JRJoe Rogan47:27

       And no one would eat it?

   11. SRSteven Rinella47:28

       Dude, it would... No, it would go into a dumpster.

   12. JRJoe Rogan47:31

       But you can eat blue shark.

   13. SRSteven Rinella47:32

       Yeah. Well, you can. They're high in urea and there's, you know.

   14. JRJoe Rogan47:35

       Oh.

   15. SRSteven Rinella47:35

       It's like everything else, like yes you can, but-

   16. JRJoe Rogan47:37

       So mako is the most edible?

   17. SRSteven Rinella47:39

       Mako, thresher, um-

   18. JRJoe Rogan47:41

       Can you eat a great white?

   19. SRSteven Rinella47:43

       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.

   20. JRJoe Rogan48:41

       There must be somebody who's eaten one.

   21. SRSteven Rinella48:43

       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?

   22. JRJoe Rogan49:00

       Mm-hmm.

   23. SRSteven Rinella49:00

       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-

   24. JRJoe Rogan49:56

       Is that him?

   25. SRSteven Rinella49:57

       That's, that's Frank Mundus.

   26. JRJoe Rogan49:58

       Let me see that picture upper left.

   27. SRSteven Rinella49:59

       Dude. So-

   28. JRJoe Rogan50:01

       There he is.

   29. SRSteven Rinella50:01

       Yeah. He kinda like built this idea of like shark hunting and buil- and like-

   30. JRJoe Rogan50:06

       Does he have a shark bite on his forearm? Go back to that-
5. 1:00:00 – 1:12:23

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      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.

   2. SRSteven Rinella1:00:19

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:20

      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.

   4. SRSteven Rinella1:00:32

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:32

      Yeah.

   6. SRSteven Rinella1:00:33

      Do you take caution to sleep?

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:35

      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.

   8. SRSteven Rinella1:00:43

      Yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:43

      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.

   10. SRSteven Rinella1:00:52

       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-

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:01:04

       Hmm.

   12. SRSteven Rinella1:01:04

       ... and your appetite for sleep.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:01:05

       The appetite for meat, that's the big one, man.

   14. SRSteven Rinella1:01:07

       Increases greatly.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:01:08

       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."

   16. SRSteven Rinella1:01:14

       (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:01:14

       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-

   18. SRSteven Rinella1:01:24

       She's like that Russian-

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:01:25

       Yeah.

   20. SRSteven Rinella1:01:25

       ... in the Rocky movie.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:01:26

       (laughs) But it's just-

   22. SRSteven Rinella1:01:28

       That dude was on to, like-

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:29

       Yeah.

   24. SRSteven Rinella1:01:29

       ... that dude was on to, what's it called, where the people go to, like, the clubhouse and roll rocks and shit?

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:01:34

       Oh, like, uh, CrossFit type of shit?

   26. SRSteven Rinella1:01:35

       Yeah, shoot-

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:01:36

       Yeah, yeah.

   28. SRSteven Rinella1:01:36

       ... that dude was on to CrossFit before.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:37

       Oh, yeah, man. He's got-

   30. SRSteven Rinella1:01:38

       His trainer in Russia.

Episode duration: 2:16:58