Joe Rogan Experience #1395 - Glenn Villeneuve

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Boom, here we go.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:03

      Boom, here we go. What's up, Glenn? How are you, man?

   2. GVGlenn Villeneuve0:05

      Hey, Joe.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:05

      Nice to meet you in person.

   4. GVGlenn Villeneuve0:07

      Good to come down here.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:08

      (laughs)

   6. GVGlenn Villeneuve0:08

      Good to meet you.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:09

      Dude, you, uh, you're one of my favorite characters on that show. It was, uh, it was always weird watching you. For p- people who don't know what you're ... Life Below Zero, it's, um, this crazy show where people live, you know, in this very rugged terrain. And you, you had, you had the most interesting life 'cause you, when you lived up at the cabin, you would live by yourself. Just you in a very small room, just, uh, hunting all your food, and, and, and hiking around. You didn't use any vehicles, and you just kinda had a rifle and a frying pan and a pot and a place to sleep, and you seemed really happy up there.

   8. GVGlenn Villeneuve0:48

      Oh, yeah. I'm having a good time. I just wanted to strip everything away that I could dispense with, you know. Um, I got the idea I wanted to go back to living like a hunter-gatherer. Back in '97, I just got this idea. I was actually living in a tent in the woods down in Vermont and having such a good time, I thought, "Where could I go with this? What could I do with this kinda lifestyle?" And I decided to move to the Brooks Range of Alaska.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:10

      What was it, like so, you ... What made you go live in a tent in the first place?

   10. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:15

       I just always liked the outdoors. I just love nature. And, you know, I was doing other things too, but there was this, this one summer when I was in my 20s when I found this really cool spot in the woods, and I thought, "Hey, I'll set up a teepee over there, and I'll just hang out there this summer as much as I can." And I just had a great time, so I started thinking more about, you know, instead of just living in the woods kind of as a recreational thing, I started thinking about, "Hey how could you actually make a life living like this?" You know, get up every morning with the animals around, the sky, the water. Um, I started thinking about it. I started reading anthropological stuff about hunter-gatherers that summer, and I started getting ideas. And, uh, it took me seven years to make it to the Brooks Range and to get out to that lake that you've seen on TV and to actually start living that way. It took me a few years just to organize my life enough to move up to Alaska. And then once I got to Alaska, I was kinda in Fairbanks for about four years before I could really spend long periods of time in the wilderness. But once I got it all arranged, I just drove up the Hall Road, which is this industrial road that goes up to the North Slope Oil Fields. It's very, very, uh, unimproved in areas. Just gravel road for hundreds of miles. I drove about 300 miles north of Fairbanks. I parked my van, and I walked 60 miles off of that road by myself out into the wilderness and started figuring out how to live off the land.

   11. JRJoe Rogan2:39

       How did you know where to go?

   12. GVGlenn Villeneuve2:41

       Oh, I had found the spot a few years before. I had actually found that lake flying around in a little bush plane. 'Cause part of my plan originally, when I formulated this idea back in Vermont, I thought, "I'll become a bush pilot. That'll be a thing I can do in Alaska," you know?

   13. JRJoe Rogan2:57

       Mm-hmm.

   14. GVGlenn Villeneuve2:58

       Um, so I was thinking about starting an air taxi service. I had been studying flying for a few years. As soon as I got my private license, I jumped in the plane and flew to Alaska. But then when I got up there, I was getting my commercial and all that. And in the meantime, as much as I could, I'd go out and explore, look around. And I discovered this lake one day when I was flying across part of the Brooks Range, and I set up a little tent camp there that summer, 2000. But it took me another four years before I could actually walk out there and start living.

   15. JRJoe Rogan3:26

       60 miles walking?

   16. GVGlenn Villeneuve3:28

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan3:28

       That's a long fucking way. (laughs)

   18. GVGlenn Villeneuve3:31

       Hey, I walked the length of Vermont when I was 13 years old. I walked, you know, from-

   19. JRJoe Rogan3:34

       Did you really?

   20. GVGlenn Villeneuve3:34

       ... Massachusetts to Canada. But, um, the difference is when you're-

   21. JRJoe Rogan3:37

       When you were 13?

   22. GVGlenn Villeneuve3:38

       Yeah. I actually started when I was 12, gave up. (laughs) And the next ... I was with my uncle. We went for about a week, and then the next summer, I convinced my mom to drive me back down and drop me off alone where we had given up the year before. But, uh, that's-

   23. JRJoe Rogan3:51

       Just, uh, just you by yourself?

   24. GVGlenn Villeneuve3:53

       Yeah. When I was 13, I was alone. But that's a trail. That's called the Long Trail, and it's marked. There's a little paint mark, you know, on the trees up ahead of you telling you-

   25. JRJoe Rogan4:01

       Mm-hmm.

   26. GVGlenn Villeneuve4:01

       ... where to go.

   27. JRJoe Rogan4:02

       Yeah, but still-

   28. GVGlenn Villeneuve4:03

       The Brooks Range is-

   29. JRJoe Rogan4:04

       ... you were 13.

   30. GVGlenn Villeneuve4:05

       Yeah.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   So you had no…

   1. GVGlenn Villeneuve15:00

      They said, "You should write to this person. They're looking for people like you." They told me it was a filmmaker. I didn't know what it was. I sent off an email. I said, "Hi," you know, "I live in the wilderness. I'd like to talk to you about if you're interested in making a documentary." And a few days later, I started walking from the road again to get back to my camp. So I left them a satellite phone number and I said, "This is my only means of communication. It's a satellite phone. I don't keep it turned on, because it runs on a battery. You can send a message to it. I check it once in a while. It's basically for emergencies only, but you can communicate with me this way." And I put that in the email how to do it. Well, that whole winter went by, eight months went by, I hadn't heard from them, and I had forgotten about that person. I'd sent emails to a lot of people. And then one day, I turn on my phone, there's this message there. They wanted to talk to me. So I called them up and we start talking, and they tell me it's a reality TV show. And I had literally never seen a reality TV show in my life. I hadn't watched TV for many, many years. And, uh-

   2. JRJoe Rogan16:04

      So you had no idea what that even meant?

   3. GVGlenn Villeneuve16:06

      Not really. I talked to them about that, but they mostly didn't... they mostly wanted to talk about me, not about them. And I kept trying to get information out-

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:13

      (laughs)

   5. GVGlenn Villeneuve16:14

      ... like, "What is this?" (laughs) Exactly.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:17

      Right.

   7. GVGlenn Villeneuve16:18

      You know? And, uh, 'cause I kept... I remember, I kept saying, "What I really wanna do, I wanna talk about nature out here." And they're like, "Well, we don't wanna make a show about nature. We wanna make a show about you." But, in any case, I learned what reality TV was over the next few months. Because after we talked for two weeks, the executive producer flew all the way up from LA. He flew from Fairbanks on a little ski plane out there to meet me, and he landed and met me to make sure that I wasn't the biggest bullshitter they'd ever talked to. They had no idea. I mean, they were just talking to me on a satellite phone, and I was telling them, "Okay, you know, right now I'm living off these two caribou I killed last month," and, and they came out there and they saw that it was real, and they were like, "Yeah, we want you on the show."

   8. JRJoe Rogan17:01

      Wow.

   9. GVGlenn Villeneuve17:01

      And a few weeks later, we were making TV.

   10. JRJoe Rogan17:04

       So they had to come out just to check to see if your story was legit?

   11. GVGlenn Villeneuve17:07

       Yeah. I mean, I couldn't give 'em-

   12. JRJoe Rogan17:09

       So they had to come out to the actually lake-

   13. GVGlenn Villeneuve17:10

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan17:10

       Yeah, yeah, the actual lake where you're living.

   15. GVGlenn Villeneuve17:12

       I couldn't give 'em references. I mean, I was all alone out there. (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:15

       (laughs) Wow. That must've been very surreal for you. A guy lands out there, some Hollywood jackoff (laughs) -

   17. GVGlenn Villeneuve17:22

       Well-

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:22

       ... comes out to visit you.

   19. GVGlenn Villeneuve17:23

       ... it was great. It was like getting out of solitary. I hadn't seen anybody in four and a half months. That's a long time.

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:28

       When I say jackoff-

   21. GVGlenn Villeneuve17:29

       (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:29

       ... I mean it with all due respect. I just mean a, a Hollywood person, you know, like a, a, an LA television producer flies out to me- to meet you when you're doing your wilderness thing. Like, what a convergence of worlds.

   23. GVGlenn Villeneuve17:40

       Well-

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:40

       There's no world that's more removed from the world of living by yourself in the woods than Hollywood. That's, like, the most opposite of it.

   25. GVGlenn Villeneuve17:51

       In some ways, but we're all human.

   26. JRJoe Rogan17:53

       Yes, we're all human.

   27. GVGlenn Villeneuve17:54

       And we had a great afternoon together. We had an awesome afternoon together.

   28. JRJoe Rogan17:58

       So did you take him and show him your routes and all the places where you go?

   29. GVGlenn Villeneuve18:02

       It was in April. I had a packed trail on the snow. That's still winter where I am. And I took him out for a walk up onto a mountainside so he could get a view of the whole country there. And it just happened that the first grizzly track I had seen that spring that had come out of hibernation was right there in front of us. The, the bear had hit my trail and was walking down my packed trail right in front of us. It was that day, totally fresh tracks.

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:30

       Whoa.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Really? You eat it…

   1. GVGlenn Villeneuve30:00

      just, it's got the consistency of a pickle. They're great.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:02

      Really? You eat it raw?

   3. GVGlenn Villeneuve30:03

      Yeah. I eat a lot of animals raw. I eat a l- a lot of parts of a caribou raw. But, uh, anyway, you get a lot of variety 'cause you eat all the organs. You eat the eyes. You eat the brain. You eat the liver, the-

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:13

      You eat the brain?

   5. GVGlenn Villeneuve30:13

      Oh, yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:14

      Really?

   7. GVGlenn Villeneuve30:14

      Spinal cord.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:16

      Whoa.

   9. GVGlenn Villeneuve30:16

      Like I said, I've eaten everything except the poop out of a caribou, literally. I mean, you can even... the cartilage. Y- you can get all kinds of variety, and it's nutritious. It's good for you. I mean, I learned about all this from the old people that used to eat this way. I wouldn't have... I would've been reluctant to eat certain things if I, I hadn't been-... uh, educated by other people that you can do this. I was talking to this 90-year-old woman in Fairbanks, you know, and I asked her, "So do you eat the brains?" 'Cause I'm thinking, you know, mad cow disease-

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:43

       Right.

   11. GVGlenn Villeneuve30:43

       ... prions.

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:44

       Yeah.

   13. GVGlenn Villeneuve30:44

       She's like, "Oh, yeah, the brains are great." And then I did a little research. They've never found prionic disease in Alaska in any of the animals up there.

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:50

       Hmm.

   15. GVGlenn Villeneuve30:50

       So I was like, "Okay, I can start eating the brain."

   16. JRJoe Rogan30:52

       That's an issue that's happening more and more, uh, here in the lower 48. You're, uh, getting a lot of CWD, which is another-

   17. GVGlenn Villeneuve30:59

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JRJoe Rogan30:59

       ... prion disease. Very scary stuff. You know, it's, uh, there's parts of Wisconsin where my friend Doug Duran lives, where, you know, 50% of the deer they, they test, test positive for CWD.

   19. GVGlenn Villeneuve31:12

       Yeah.

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:13

       Which is a real fatal disease, and hasn't made the jump to humans yet, but they're very concerned.

   21. GVGlenn Villeneuve31:19

       And, you know, this is, um, coming from the deer.

   22. JRJoe Rogan31:24

       Yeah.

   23. GVGlenn Villeneuve31:24

       Like you said, there's a lot of deer. And where deer and moose live together, the moose get it. We don't have any deer. So other than moose and caribou, that's why we don't have the prionic disease up there.

   24. JRJoe Rogan31:31

       You have no deer up there?

   25. GVGlenn Villeneuve31:32

       Mm-mm.

   26. JRJoe Rogan31:32

       At all?

   27. GVGlenn Villeneuve31:34

       Well, moose are a deer.

   28. JRJoe Rogan31:35

       A type of deer.

   29. GVGlenn Villeneuve31:36

       Caribou or a deer.

   30. JRJoe Rogan31:36

       Right.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Right. …

   1. GVGlenn Villeneuve45:00

      before, they're right there in my front yard. I look out and they're 50 yards away, they're all milling around, 20 wolves. I'm like, "Jesus Christ, this is amazing. I've never seen anything like this." So, but I'm safe and sound in the cabin. So I just collect my thoughts. I'm like, "Man, it's time to teach these wolves a lesson. If I let those wolves leave now, they're gonna think I'm just food, I run away when they see me."

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:24

      Right.

   3. GVGlenn Villeneuve45:24

      You know, that, I mean, I could be out there in the night, in the dark, and not even know wolves are around-

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:28

      Yeah.

   5. GVGlenn Villeneuve45:28

      ... and get ambushed by 'em or something, so I, I had to shoot some of those wolves. So I, I loaded up the gun, made sure everything was perfectly right, (laughs) you know. Um, put some extra ammunition in my pocket, checked everything out. Okay, I'm set to go out there with this gun and, and talk to these wolves about the situation. (laughs) And, uh, I go back out and they were back at the moose. It, it turned out to be a moose they'd killed. They were back over there at the kill. So I thought, "Well, it'd be a lot safer if I shot from close to the cabin," you know, "rather than go out there on the open ice. So I'll just see if I can lure 'em back over here." And I started running back and forth right in front of my cabin on the, on the, uh, ice just to get their attention, and sure enough, it worked. That whole pack of 20 wolves started racing across that lake at a full gallop straight toward me. I couldn't believe it. I was right in front of my cabin, I'd just run back and forth, like, 50 yards out to my little water hole in the ice and back to the cabin a few times, and they just started running right at me. So I sat right down th- there on the bank, on the shore, right, you know, 15 feet in front of my porch, and started shooting. I think if I remember right, the first one I hit was 264 yards. I measured it all off the next day, it was kinda interesting just checking out the tracks and seeing what had happened. I hit three of 'em. Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan46:44

      What happened when one got hit?

   7. GVGlenn Villeneuve46:46

      Um, they stopped at, th- the closest tracks to me were about 40 yards, you know. I, uh-

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:53

      That's way far out.

   9. GVGlenn Villeneuve46:53

      When it was happening-

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:55

       That's so close. (laughs)

   11. GVGlenn Villeneuve46:55

       ... it was, it was happening so fast. I was just sitting down, you know, braced, shooting. I remember reloading after I shot five times. It all happened so fast, but then the next day when I had time, I went out there and looked at all the tracks and measured everything and sized up the situation, figured out where I had hit different wolves and stuff. And, and I wrote that all down, that's what I was mentioning in the notes section there on my Facebook page, that story, because I wanted, when it was fresh in my mind, to really have the details 'cause I knew right then that something happened to me that doesn't really happen to people. I mean, to get, have a pack of wolves come after you is a- (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan47:30

       Yeah.

   13. GVGlenn Villeneuve47:31

       ... a very unusual occurrence.

   14. JRJoe Rogan47:33

       Very unusual.

   15. GVGlenn Villeneuve47:33

       Y- you can read, you can read all over the place that wolves don't attack humans, you know. I've, I've read that many times.

   16. JRJoe Rogan47:39

       But they have.

   17. GVGlenn Villeneuve47:40

       They have. Uh, at least-

   18. JRJoe Rogan47:42

       Well, particularly-

   19. GVGlenn Villeneuve47:42

       ... a couple times.

   20. JRJoe Rogan47:42

       ... historically.

   21. GVGlenn Villeneuve47:43

       Historically, yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan47:44

       I mean, the whole Little Red Riding Hood-

   23. GVGlenn Villeneuve47:46

       (laughs)

   24. JRJoe Rogan47:46

       ... that's all because they were trying to warn children about wolves.

   25. GVGlenn Villeneuve47:50

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan47:50

       Do you know the story about World War I and the wolves? The, the Germans and the Russians had a ceasefire in World War I because so many of them were getting killed by wolves.

   27. GVGlenn Villeneuve48:02

       Mm-hmm.

   28. JRJoe Rogan48:02

       They decided to stop killing each other and kill the wolves 'cause they were losing so many guys, and then, you know, if guys got shot on the battlefield, the wolves would find out and the wolves would tear the guys alive.

   29. GVGlenn Villeneuve48:14

       Wow.

   30. JRJoe Rogan48:15

       Yeah, it's, it's a crazy story. If you go to themeateater.com, this was a story that I had told before, and, you know, uh, Steve Rinella, my friend who runs the Media, th- those guys were, like, a little skeptical of it, so they historically researched it. Turns out to actually be accurate-
5. 1:00:00 – 1:10:51

   The only way that…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

   2. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:00:00

      The only way that I like to eat a wolf is to boil it for a good long time 'Cause wolves too will have parasites. They'll have trichinosis, you know.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:07

      Right.

   4. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:00:07

      They're meat eaters. Anything that eats meat, you wanna make sure it's thoroughly cooked. I like to boil it.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:12

      Boiled wolf.

   6. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:00:13

      Yeah. I- I haven't eaten-

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:14

      You make like wolf soup?

   8. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:00:14

      ... a lot of wolf. I've eaten wolf, you know, three or four times when I didn't have much else and I figured, "Hey, I better take advantage of this food I got here rather than give it to something else to eat."

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:23

      Do you feed it to your family?

   10. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:00:25

       Um, they've probably eaten wolf, like, uh, my- my kids when they were little, maybe once or something. I can't remember for sure.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:30

       That is hilarious. How many people could you ask that to? And they go, "Yeah, my kids have probably eaten wolf." (laughs)

   12. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:00:36

       I don't know. Like, I met these Mongolians once and they were like, "Oh, you shoot some wolves? We want wolf meat. We love wolf meat." You know, Mongolians, they're all into it.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:00:44

       Yeah, a lot of Native Americans were into wolf meat.

   14. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:00:47

       I don't like it. It's ... It's got-

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:00:48

       A lot of trappers were into wolf meat.

   16. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:00:49

       Well, that's what they had to eat, but, uh ...

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:00:51

       Yeah. But some of them actually preferred it.

   18. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:00:53

       Really?

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:00:53

       Yeah, there was something from the Lewis and Clark exhibition.

   20. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:00:55

       Oh, yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:00:56

       There's another thing that, um ... Expedition. It was something from, um, Rinella was telling me about. Some guys actually preferred wolf meat. It was like their favorite, favorite meat.

   22. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:01:04

       Well, domestic dog ... Lewis and Clark expedition, they would buy dogs from the Indians and eat them because-

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:01:09

       Yeah.

   24. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:01:09

       ... they didn't want to eat salmon.They had s- they had fish, is what I heard. They could have eaten, but they'd rather eat dog 'cause they wanted red meat.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:01:17

       Oh, Jesus.

   26. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:01:18

       Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:01:19

       Wow.

   28. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:01:20

       When they got way out, like the Columbia River area.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:25

       So did you eat these wolves that you shot?

   30. GVGlenn Villeneuve1:01:27

       I ate a little bit of it, 'cause I was short on food that, at that time, that winter.

Episode duration: 3:12:46