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Joe Rogan Experience #1925 - Sonny, from Best Ever Food Review Show

Sonny Side is the host of the "Best Ever Food Review Show" on YouTube, a series devoted to exploring and appreciating the world's unique culinary offerings. www.besteverfoodreviewshow.com

Joe RoganhostSonny Sideguest
Jun 27, 20242h 56mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 0:52

    Sonny’s unlikely path: from “white trash Minnesota” to top travel creator

    1. JR

      (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

    2. NA

      The Joe Rogan Experience. (metal music)

    3. JR

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (metal music) What's happening, Sonny? How are you?

    4. SS

      I'm good. I'm great. Um, I'm happy to be here. I gotta say, to start off, I wanna say thank you so much for having me here, uh, in the first place. By all accounts, I should not be here right now.

    5. JR

      Why is that?

    6. SS

      And I say that because, not to be too grand- grandiose from the start, but the way I grew up, I grew up white trash from central Minnesota, super poor family, one of six, failed college three times, and now, somehow years later, I have the most viewed, most followed travel show online or otherwise, and I'm on the motherfucking Joe Rogan Experience. So-

    7. JR

      How did this all happen?

    8. SS

      ... thank you.

    9. JR

      How did ... Y- you're welcome. How did you get on this, uh, journey of food exploration?

    10. SS

      Um, gosh.

    11. JR

      You have a really fun show.

    12. SS

      Thank you.

    13. JR

      It's really fun to watch.

  2. 0:52 – 7:34

    Minnesota → Korea: teaching English under the table and adapting to a new culture

    1. SS

      I, yes, I was very stoked. You know, when you reached out to me for the first time, I was in Egypt with COVID. I was going through one of my worst travel experiences ever. And, uh, God, how did it start? (sighs) I mean, everything starts, obviously, where I come from in Minnesota. Growing up, um, I, I was quite directionless. I didn't know where I wanted to ... I didn't know what I wanted to study. Uh, I didn't really have any guidance. I didn't really have any mentorship. And so, hence the reason I failed outta school so many times. Um, in high school, I was really into filmmaking because we had a- fortunately, we had a filmmaking course there. But it's just not something I, I pursued afterwards. And so around the age of 24, I felt like I was pretty rudderless. I tried doing a couple things. You know, I did radio for a while. I was at 104.7 KCLD, the, I think the hundredth market in the country, not bad, doing 11:00 PM to 5:00 AM, uh, making minimum wage. And so I tried getting-

    2. JR

      Minimum wage on the radio?

    3. SS

      Yeah.

    4. JR

      They really pay you minimum wage?

    5. SS

      (laughs) Yeah, well, if they would've paid less, they probably would've.

    6. JR

      (laughs) They could've.

    7. SS

      Are you surprised? I, I mean, radio's kinda infamous for not paying any money.

    8. JR

      Yeah, but minimum wage sounds crazy.

    9. SS

      I, I guess they saw it as like they're doing me a favor by teaching me a, a trade or a skill.

    10. JR

      Hm, okay. Maybe.

    11. SS

      Yeah. And so, um, I, I, I tried to get a j- uh, getting a job doing that. That didn't work out. And so I was at a point in my life where I, I just thought, "I need to do something." I'm still youngish. I was 24, and, uh, I, I wanna travel. I wanna see the world. I wanna figure out something before I actually develop a long-term career, uh, 'cause at that point I had nothing. And so I had a friend. My, my brother had a friend who lived in Korea. And at the age of 24, I moved to Korea to teach English. And to me, it made sense because, uh, I could go there. I could travel. I could, I could see the world. I thought it would maybe last an hour and then I would come back. But I ended up staying there for eight years. And so I ... Maybe I'm giving too long of an answer.

    12. JR

      No, it's okay.

    13. SS

      Is this too long of an answer?

    14. JR

      N- no, don't worry about it.

    15. SS

      All right, I gotta take a deep breath.

    16. JR

      (laughs)

    17. SS

      (sighs) Let me reset a little bit.

    18. JR

      (yawns)

    19. SS

      I gotta calm down. (smacks lips) So I went to Korea. Korea was really challenging because it was my first time in a different country, and I'd really only been in central Minnesota at that point.

    20. JR

      Oh, wow.

    21. SS

      And, and so it was something completely different. And this is Korea in 2008. Like, there, uh, aren't really smartphones. Maybe the iPhone 1 had just dropped. YouTube still sucked. I mean, it existed, but it was barely usable. It was just, uh, cat videos and Charlie Bit Me at that point. And so there, there's very little guidance online. Um, I went there to teach English. You might be asking, "How did you teach English after failing out of university three times?" Well, uh, (laughs) you can do, uh, some underground, under-the-table English teaching in Korea. Uh-

    22. JR

      Did you have to learn how to speak Korean?

    23. SS

      No, eventually I did, but no. Um, so people, k- k- Korean ... Folks in Korea are very desperate to learn English, and, um, as you may know, people there study their asses off. They're, they're, they're very hard workers, and they're very hard studiers, maybe to a detriment. Like, kids go to school so much. They study so much. They get tutors and things like that. And so when I went to Korea, (clears throat) I, I was gonna be a tutor. And to tutor people, I had to ... Sorry, give me one second to take a sip.

    24. JR

      (laughs)

    25. SS

      I'm freaking out a little bit still. Have ... Is this the first podcast you've done? Uh, it's like, you know, I did a couple practice podcasts.

    26. JR

      (laughs)

    27. SS

      I just feel like it's so-

    28. JR

      What's a practice podcast?

    29. SS

      I feel like it's so quiet in here. I'm like, "I can hear my voice so well." Um, in, in Korea, um, I wanted to get a, uh, a gig teaching. A- and so to teach, you would think like, oh, it's gonna be difficult to teach people if you don't have any experience, uh, or any credentials teaching English. And that wasn't the case at all, because when you speak to people, you know, they'll say something like, "Oh, today I go to store." And you go, "Oh, I know how to solve that." You s- no. "Today I went to the store." And so I'm teaching people conversational English. And, um, I'm doing that for maybe 40 or 50 bucks an hour, which seems pretty good, especially in 2008, except for it takes, uh ... And maybe you can do two or three lessons in a day because you need to take the subway. You need to go around the city. And you need to, to go where the people are. You do the lesson. You come back. And so eventually, I learned how to get a full-time job in Korea, which was what was really necessary. I, (smacks lips) I reached out to a school, and I find out the code word is, um, "Can you pay cash?" So with many schools, you need to have the right kind of visa. They wanna see that you have a, a, a proper degree, which is understandable. Um, and so if you just asked, uh, "Can you pay cash?" some would get your point. They would say no, or they would say, "Oh, yeah. Cash is fine. We'll do cash." And so eventually, after being there for about maybe six months, I finally figured out how to make a full-time income teaching English in Korea at a kindergarten.Um, and, uh, I know some people might judge that and say that's not okay to do because I don't have a proper degree in teaching English, but really, to teach English in Korea, all you need is a four-year degree in anything. I could have had a four-year degree in interior design and also taught kids English. And so living in Korea was... Uh, the, the show I do now, there's no way I could have done it if I didn't have all that time living abroad for so long. And living in Korea was the first taste of living in a society and a culture completely different from the USA. Uh, in the USA, um, you know, we have a very individualistic society here, and Korea is much more of a communal society. People care a lot more what other people think. You know, I, I tried dating a Korean woman one time. Challenging, because she's not just looking at what do I think about the dynamic of this relationship? She's looking at, um, "What are my parents gonna think? What are my friends gonna think? What are my coworkers gonna think?" And so on. That's just one random example, but being steeped and immersed in this different culture gave me enough experience to... Uh, it gave me perspective, and it's perspective that if I didn't have that, I, I couldn't make the show that I make today, because the show would be a much more judgmental show, i- if I wasn't so used, used to and, and, uh, accustomed to being among other cultures. So, after a number of years in Korea, I, I switched to filmmaking, uh, my interest to filmmaking,

  3. 7:34 – 9:50

    Building filmmaking skills in Seoul: deliberate practice, expat networks, and corporate work

    1. SS

      and I, I started making my own content. Uh, I didn't really have anywhere to publish it. The idea-

    2. JR

      Like what kind of content? What'd you start doing?

    3. SS

      So, I, uh, I... Back then, I would read all these self-help books, and I was really obsessed with this idea of just improving myself, uh, getting better. I, I felt really unaccomplished because three of my siblings had four-year degrees. One was... uh, had a PhD, one was in law school, and for me, uh, I'm, I'm the loser in Korea who doesn't have a degree, doesn't have a job, doesn't have a skill. And so I, I wanted to build up a, a skill in filmmaking. This is what I was really interested in high school. I was like, "I can do it again now." Maybe I'm 20-

    4. JR

      Filmmaking like making movies, documentaries? Like, what kind of stuff?

    5. SS

      So, I guess in the beginning, I wanted to be good at whatever I could be good. I wanted to be good at everything.

    6. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    7. SS

      And I didn't have a direction quite yet. So I created... Uh, I read this book called Talent is Overrated, and in that book, they talk about the 10,000 hour rule. I'm sure you've heard about it-

    8. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    9. SS

      ... in Malcolm Gladwell's book. And the, the 10,000 hour rule is just essentially you need 10,000 hours of practice, deliberate practice, to get to become master class at something. Even people talk about this with comedians too, or, um, I think Louis C.K. has talked about people needing at least 10 years-

    10. JR

      Yeah.

    11. SS

      ... to, to get good or even decent. And so I, I broke it down. I, I looked at filmmak- filmmaking systematically. Like, how can I week by week, day by day... week by week, day by day improve at this and get better at this? Um, I created something called The Soul Filmmakers Workshop, which was a place where I could bring my films. Maybe they were little comedy sketches, short documentaries, stuff I did for clients, corporate work. And people could come and tear apart my content, and then that would help me to improve and get better over time. And so, over a number of years in Korea, I was able to transition from teaching English to doing filmmaking full-time, uh, for clients. And so at, at this point, I don't have any really artistic, uh, goals in mind. It's just I wanna figure out if I ever get, uh, deported from this country, am I gonna be able to go back to the USA and have a skill, or a job, or a trade I can fall back on? And eventually that answer was yes. Luckily,

  4. 9:50 – 15:10

    Eight years on visa runs: anxiety, improvisation, and living on the edge

    1. SS

      I never got deported. But living in Korea for eight years was one of the most nerve-wracking things I'd ever done, because I was there on a tourist visa. And it's not something I've talked about a lot, but a tourist visa means you get to stay here for 90 days. As an American, you don't need any visa ahead of time, but you land. On the spot, they give you a visa for 90 days, and then within 90 days you need to leave the country, but you can come back right away. But I did that for eight years straight.

    2. JR

      So you just kept leaving and coming back?

    3. SS

      Right.

    4. JR

      So where would you go?

    5. SS

      So I, I really got it perfected, and I, and I could do it for the least amount of money possible. I went from Seoul, uh, in the north of South Korea, all the way down to Busan in the south to an island called Tsushima in Japan. And so I could do... I could wake up at 5:00 AM, go all the way to Japan, and come back by evening. The nerve-wracking part wasn't the trip itself or the amount of money it cost, although that was a burden too 'cause I didn't make that much money. But at immigration, on both sides, they would always ask, "Hey, you're teaching. You're a teacher, right? You teach." Even in Japan, going into Jap- into Japan, they would say, "What do you do?" And I'd... and I would have, like, a whole list of stories and answers lined up in my mind 'cause it was so anxiety-inducing, um, especially coming back to Korea, 'cause this is the stamp I really need. I need 90 days more of freedom when I land in Korea. Um, I shouldn't say land. When I pull up at the port 'cause I would take a ferry. If I get the stamp, I get 90 more days to figure out my life, to move forward, uh, and to, to, to, to have freedom. And standing in line for immigration, I'm looking, okay, there's an older guy over here. This lady looks nice. This young, young guy looks like he's got something to prove. And I would rehearse my story. "What are you doing here?" "Oh, I'm, uh, I love Korea. I love Korean, uh, I love Korean food." Try to get them on my side. Uh, "I, I plan to go to university soon, uh, in Korea. I hope to study here." And then eventually would get through. But sometimes-

    6. JR

      Were you speaking to them in Korean?

    7. SS

      No, in English. So everybody... I would say in most places you go around the world, at immigration, they're gonna speak English. And a couple of times, they, they took me into the side room, and that's really terrifying. Especially 'cause... It wouldn't be as terrifying now 'cause now I have resources, but back then, I'm completely broke. And so-... one time they took me to the side room, they go, "What are you, what are you really doing here? You're teaching. You're teaching, right? Just tell us where you're teaching."

    8. JR

      Why did they think you were teaching?

    9. SS

      Because a lot of people do what I was doing.

    10. JR

      Hmm.

    11. SS

      They go there, they teach under the table, they don't have to pay any taxes, they just get paid cash. They leave every 90 days, they come back. Like, I've rented a- an apartment in Korea w- you just needed a passport. They weren't like, "Show me your labor contract. Show me your visa." They're like, "All right, you got key money, you got the m- the deposit? You're good to go." (sniffs) And so I lived, I lived doing that for eight years. While I'm doing that, I'm building up this, uh, the- these film skills, this, uh, this ability, uh, to do filmmaking. And eventually, I go from making corporate videos to wanting to make content for myself. So this is where YouTube comes in. Making corporate videos sucks, because clients have no idea what they want. When you make a corporate video, most companies, especially at that time in Korea, they'll say, "We want a video. We want a video introduction. We gotta interview everybody." If you have-

    12. JR

      How do you even get in contact with these people? Like, 'cause you speak English.

    13. SS

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      I would imagine most of them speak Korean.

    15. SS

      So there's a fascinating, a fa- a fascinating expat culture in most countries around the world, I'd say.

    16. JR

      Really? So you ran into a lot of Americans over there?

    17. SS

      There was a ... There's a, a place called Itaewon. Um, you, you might have heard of this tragedy recently in Korea where a bunch of people got crushed during Halloween.

    18. JR

      Yeah.

    19. SS

      Uh, so Itaewon is known as like the foreigner neighborhood. And, and people, the, uh ... All the foreign restaurants from around the world are there. Um, tons of foreigners live in the neighborhoods around there. So there's a, a huge expat community, um, there in Itaewon. And, and so much so that you see, like what I had, I had the Seoul Filmmakers Workshop, people had the Seoul, um, Stand-up Seoul. So people did comedy locally. And in fact, they would invite some comedians from here. I think Kyle Kinane came once. Uh, James Adomian came once. And so they would fly over comedians, and the audience is, of course, all people who speak English. Some of them might be Korean who speak English. But there is between Yongsan, Yongsan, uh, is where there's a huge military base next to Itaewon, and then there's all the expats and teachers who are there too. So there is a gigantic community of foreigners there. And for whatever reason, uh, Korean folks, some of the business owners there, especially in media, are interested in working with filmmakers, with voiceover artists, actors who are from outside of Korea.

    20. JR

      Hmm.

    21. SS

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      Pretty cool.

    23. SS

      It was pretty cool.

    24. JR

      So you were finding your way.

    25. SS

      Well, and so I, I was able to find my way in i- i- it's like that was my film school. Like, I didn't go to a proper film school. I wouldn't have had opportunities here, um, you know, for example, doing corporate videos, doing Red Bull video. I did videos for Red Bull in Korea. I ... At my level, I wouldn't have been able to do that here in the USA. And so I got to take part in, in things and, and jobs and experiences that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

  5. 15:10 – 19:32

    Inventing a YouTube travel/food format: faster pacing, humor, and ‘bizarre foods’ storytelling

    1. JR

      And so along the way you say, "I wanna make some food videos."

    2. SS

      Yes. So I'm, I'm getting sick of doing the client work. I wanna make content for myself. I've, I've read Gary Vee's first book, Crush It! (laughs)

    3. JR

      (laughs)

    4. SS

      And I wanna, and I wanna crush it. And, uh, I loved the book, and it's, it taught me about content marketing, and that's something I started doing. "Hey, instead of a corporate video, let's make you m- weekly videos or monthly videos. And from there, you can, uh, offer value to the people watching, and then you can have a call to action." And, um, I- I just t- I just thought, "Well, I could do this for myself." And I had a couple of different ideas, but the idea that stuck was doing food. And at the time, I had a couple of channels that really inspired me. I, I listened to h3h3, who did comedy at the time, and then I listened to ... I watched a channel called jacksgap, and he had these very wander-lusty travel- th- travel videos that he did as a young kid from the UK who would go to India, who would go to these interesting countries, and it felt so remote. And at that time, um, maybe this is 2014, 2013, there's almost no travel content on YouTube. And if there is any, people are just trying to emulate what already exists on the Travel Channel, which is what I didn't understand at the time 'cause all the shit on the Travel Channel was so dry. It's just like, "Today, we walk in Cairo, a city thousands of years old, rich with history." And I was like, "This is so fucking boring." Why not mix something more spon- spontaneous, a little bit more humor, um, the pacing, the pacing of YouTube, faster pacing, um, and, and make a completely new travel format that people hadn't seen before. Now, it took me a few years to get it right, but that was the initial idea, that was the inspiration at the time.

    5. JR

      So where was your first video? Where'd you do ... Where'd you go?

    6. SS

      Oh, that's a good question. So I've, I've made a few different pivots since I started. If you look at my first six, eight videos, they're still online. I mean, my first video's just about a grilled cheese. My, my first few videos were in Korea, but I was just covering international food. I was, uh, doing nachos, and burgers, and a Jucy Lucy. And at some point, I mean, that ... I guess that was just a practice. It was like, "Can I do this? Can I edit a video?"

    7. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    8. SS

      "Can I be in front of camera?" And I just thought, "Nobody's gonna watch about a ... Is a cheeseburger good in Korea?" That is not international content. So early on I decided, and, and I wasn't shy about it, I said, "I'm ... I really liked Andrew Zimmern's show growing up." Before I moved to Korea, I, I worked at this job. I'm bouncing around a little bit, but I worked at this job at, at a home, and I would have to stay overnight at the home. I didn't have cable in my apartment, but at this home, four guys lived there. They're assisted living folks. And one guy would have seizures at night, potentially. Maybe once out of every four times, he would scream. You'd grab a magnet from the fridge, rub it on his chest. Somehow that made the seizure go away. When that wasn't happening, I was watching Andrew Zimmern, uh, Bizarre Foods and Bourdain's No Reservations back to back on the Travel Channel. And this shit was so inspiring to me. As someone living in central Minnesota who just had very few experiences ... It's not like there were a lot of international restaurants. Maybe there's one sushi place that was also like a Thai place and an Indian place. Like, all the Asian stuff just gets mixed over here.Um, and... So I... I took inspiration from those shows and that's another thing that helped me want to move abroad in the first place. And so... I forgot your question. (laughs)

    9. JR

      (laughs)

    10. SS

      I was on a roll there.

    11. JR

      It's... It's basically... You were on a roll. It's just, how did you get started? Like, what... what was-

    12. SS

      Hmm.

    13. JR

      What was the inspiration to start making food v-

    14. SS

      Sorry.

    15. JR

      Were you always, like, a food enthusiast or is this just-

    16. SS

      Yes. Well, so I... Oh, so I love that... I loved watching that show. I remember watching Andrew Zimmern when he was in Taipei, Taiwan and he was eating something called Stinky Tofu. And he ate something that was so smelly, so intense that he couldn't even handle it, and he had to spit it out. And, uh, to me, that was just fascinating and the story behind that. And so, I made this pivot early on in the channel. I said, "I wanna go explore more bizarre foods, exotic foods, foods that seem way out there." And for me, the reason is that those types of foods just have an intrinsic story attached to them.

    17. JR

      (sniffs)

    18. SS

      If you're eating something strange, bizarre, exotic, um, however you wanna term it, um, uh, there's, uh, naturally a story of, "Why are people doing this?"

    19. JR

      Right.

  6. 19:32 – 24:10

    Stinky tofu, the bandana origin, and the realities of ‘always diarrhea’ travel eating

    1. SS

      Attached to it. Recently, I was in the Faroe Islands.

    2. JR

      Why were they eating a Stinky Tofu?

    3. SS

      So, Stinky Tofu is... Uh, there's a lot of cultures around the world that like to ferment food. And for some reason that... that fermentation process, they... I mean, they have almost like this goo or a batter that they put the tofu in, and they'll let the live bacteria saturate the tofu over time and it just gets incredibly putrid, uh, and smelly over time. And I... I think people developed a taste for it, um, and it's... it's hard to say why, but I guess there's-

    4. JR

      Did you try it?

    5. SS

      Oh, yeah. No, I went to... I made a point of going to the same restaurant that Andrew Zimmern went to, ordering the same food and showing like, "Yeah, I got it. I could eat this." The same food that he spit out. And I... I sent him that video on Twitter and he laughed, he thought it was funny. It was all, you know, in... in good, uh, spirits. And so-

    6. JR

      What is it like?

    7. SS

      Oh, it's really stinky.

    8. JR

      (laughs)

    9. SS

      I mean, it's... it's tough. It's like-

    10. JR

      Like what? Co- compare it to something.

    11. SS

      (sighs) Ev- yeah, everybody wants to compare stuff to like, "Oh, it's like cheese. It's like a... a stinky cheese." It's kinda like that, but it's also like rotten mushrooms. Really intense, putrid... Uh, it's like you taste it up through your nose. I... I think it... it gave me PTSD.

    12. JR

      Really?

    13. SS

      And that... And I don't wanna make light of PTSD.

    14. JR

      It was that rough?

    15. SS

      But it was... It was pretty bad.

    16. JR

      Did you finish the bowl?

    17. SS

      I... I... I ate the whole thing. Yeah. You know, I made a decision at that moment that really helped me. I literally had anxiety before eating this. So, it's tofu, but they make it into a sandwich and it's... So you've got a Tofu bun-

    18. JR

      This is it right here.

    19. SS

      Yeah, okay. So you've got a To- Tofu bun on top and on bottom. Oh, I was so cute back then-

    20. JR

      (laughs)

    21. SS

      Wearing my little Muscle Man shirt with no muscles. And there's tomato and there's some vegetables inside and a bunch of sauce, and when you eat it, um, yeah, it just has-

    22. JR

      It's good to see the different iterations of the bandana too.

    23. SS

      (laughs)

    24. JR

      You sh- you started off with a headband.

    25. SS

      Yes.

    26. JR

      What's the story of the-

    27. SS

      No, that's also a bandana.

    28. JR

      What's the story with the bandana?

    29. SS

      Um, it's not that good of a story. I sweat a lot.

    30. JR

      (laughs)

  7. 24:10 – 37:13

    Blood, bile, and organs: tribal eating practices and how animals are killed

    1. SS

      I shouldn't be like someone on Fear Factor, trying to get it down and just, ugh. I... I need to accept it, I need to try to enjoy it, and I want... I need to think about what would local people enjoy about this, and that worked. And that's what I do anytime I'm eating something pretty unusual around the world. It's not always something I'm pumped to eat, but when I was in... with the Datoga tribe in Tanzania and they've just ripped open this cow, they've got blood in one cord and then gastric acid from the small intestine, essentially liquid green shit, and they're tearing... tearing off pieces of raw liver.... I wasn't, this wasn't in the outline. The, it's just happening, and they're like, "Uh, w- we, we gotta roll." They're doing it. "We gotta roll now."

    2. JR

      So, they dip-

    3. SS

      I, I do it.

    4. JR

      ... the liver into the gastric acid?

    5. SS

      Into both, yeah.

    6. JR

      That is wild.

    7. SS

      They, they double d- And let me tell you, they double dip. So, they go blood, gastric acid. They toss it down, and i- it's one of the most strange experiences I'd ever had, but I loved it, because I loved how the people there were so into it.

    8. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    9. SS

      And, and for them, too. You know, people talk about y- you never wanna be overtly disrespectful on camera, but oftentimes, people are aware within their own culture if you're, they're eating something strange.

    10. JR

      So here is you doing this.

    11. SS

      Oh, yeah. That's a different one.

    12. JR

      Oh, that's different, okay.

    13. SS

      So-

    14. JR

      But similar.

    15. SS

      But that's right. So, this is also, I mean, we're watching a video here with the Maasai, also in Tanzania. In, in Tanzania, they have a very interesting way to kill the goat. What you see here is that the blood has pooled inside, and I'm scooping out the blood with my hands. It's still warm, and they s-

    16. JR

      It's coagulating, too.

    17. SS

      They slurp it up. Well, and they, you gotta try to get it all before it coagulates too much.

    18. JR

      (laughs)

    19. SS

      And if you wait, if you hesitate, like, "Oh, I need to get in the right head space," it's gonna be gone. They're gonna eat it all.

    20. JR

      Geez. There's a l- a lot of Native American tribes that would take raw liver and, and squirt bile on it.

    21. SS

      Mm.

    22. JR

      Yeah, they would squirt, like, gallbladder juice on it, and...

    23. SS

      Have you had bile?

    24. JR

      No.

    25. SS

      It's the most bitter thing you'll ever taste. The, all I can compare it to is if, you know, when you were a young man, if you dry heave to the point of just throwing up stomach acid-

    26. JR

      Yeah.

    27. SS

      ... it's that.

    28. JR

      So, why would they want that on their food?

    29. SS

      Remarkably, cultures around the world develop a taste for the extremes in different directions. I mean, there's the four main tastes that people talk about, whether it's like sour, savory, sweet, um, places like stuff that's really salty or, or bitter, in the case of bile. In Northern Thailand, they will take the buffalo bile and drip it over their rice, their sticky rice, over raw buffalo meat. Th- it's just a, but it's a taste that they've acquired over time.

    30. JR

      And they look forward to it?

  8. 37:13 – 56:09

    Zebra hunting and conservation economics: ‘shopping with a rifle’ vs wildlife management

    1. JR

      Yeah, you can get zebra here. You can hunt a zebra here. A friend of mine asked me to shoot a zebra on his l- uh, property, 'cause he has an evil zebra that's killing the younger zebras.

    2. SS

      See? Th- they must be culled, some of them.

    3. JR

      Yeah. That's the-

    4. SS

      Some of them.

    5. JR

      ... thing when you talk about animal preservation and wildlife management. One of the things th- that people who are not in the know must take into consideration is that when you have older males that are no longer viable, so they're not breeding, but they're still dominant, and so they attack the younger males to keep the younger males from coming up and challenging them eventually, and they wind up killing all these younger males. And the only way to preserve the younger male population to keep them healthy is to kill this very aggressive older male.

    6. SS

      Right.

    7. JR

      They actually have to do that with rhinos sometimes, even though rhinos-

    8. SS

      Mm-hmm.

    9. JR

      ... are endangered. Like, that was the story of... I don't know if you remember that story, but there was a big deal, it was on CNN many years ago, uh, where there was an endangered rhino and there was an auction to shoot this rhino because they had to kill it, because this one large rhino who was no longer viable was killing younger rhinos, and he had already killed at least two. And they were very concerned that, you know, they have a small population of them already, and so the only way to solve this was to either A, move this animal somewhere else, or shoot it.

    10. SS

      Mm-hmm.

    11. JR

      And so, uh, they decided to auction it off w- and I think... What's the gentleman's name?

    12. Cory Knowlton.

    13. Cory Knowlton. Cory Knowlton, who had been on the podcast before, I actually had him on to talk to him about this.

    14. SS

      Mm-hmm.

    15. JR

      He, uh, I think he wound up paying a quarter million dollars to go over there and seeing and following him, followed him around, but what was really interesting was their perspective was educated. They learned along the way. They're like, "Okay, we had this idea that people are going over there and they're just shooting a rhino 'cause they're an asshole and they wanna take a poster with it."

    16. SS

      Right.

    17. JR

      "Or a photo with it, rather, and put the head on their wall," but there's a lot more to it and then that money is, the $250,000 is the money that goes to wildlife conservation over there.

    18. SS

      Mm-hmm.

    19. JR

      It goes to protect against poaching, it goes to protect habitat and keep the maintain, you know, the, the structures and the fences and all sorts of different things they use to keep these animals healthy. But they have higher, uh, higher numbers of all these animals that were, at one point in time, endangered. They're b- much higher than they've ever been before, specifically because they're valuable.

    20. SS

      Mm-hmm.

    21. JR

      It's, it, it, it can be very conflicting to a lot of people, 'cause you think of wildlife conservation as, "Well, what we need to do is protect their habitat, give them more food, keep people away from them." But that's not really profitable. And the way to make sure that their numbers are high is actually to make them valuable, and the best way-

    22. SS

      (clears throat)

    23. JR

      ... to make them valuable is people pay a lot of money to go over there and hunt them, which sounds so counterintuitive.

    24. SS

      Right. Yes. So, uh, we had the opportunity to do a different story about three years ago in Africa, and I just didn't think I was ready for it th- I, I wasn't ready for it then. And at this point, I wanted to take on the challenge. I wanted to see, can I do a video that's g- people are, some people are gonna hate? And can I try to educate people along the way and educate myself along the way? 'Cause there's a lot about game reserve hunting that I didn't know. And so specifically what we did in that video is, is going to a game reserve. So, somebody privately owns all this property in South Africa. It was maybe five miles by three miles. And they have a certain... Uh, so I'm so naive in the beginning, uh, and I'm like, "Oh, so, like, if you don't shoot the zebra, then will a lion get it?" And it's like, "Uh, there's no fucking lions in the fence, dummy."

    25. JR

      (laughs)

    26. SS

      It's like, they don't, they don't-

    27. JR

      How big is this preserve?

    28. SS

      It's three by five miles.

    29. JR

      What is that in acres? Do you know?

    30. SS

      Oh, no. I'm so bad at acres.

  9. 56:09 – 1:09:45

    Yak and whale meat on the table: Faroe Islands grindadráp and moral lines in food

    1. SS

      That sounds correct. By the way, I brought you meat.

    2. JR

      Oh. What'd you bring?

    3. SS

      Speaking of bu- ... You might wanna throw this away immediately. (laughs)

    4. JR

      Really?

    5. SS

      Well, hold on. Okay, this still might be good. I, I was gonna put it in a Ziploc bag from Target yesterday.

    6. JR

      Am I ... Is there phantom smells or am I smelling something?

    7. SS

      You might be smelling something. Um, this is yak meat.

    8. JR

      Yo.

    9. SS

      From Nepal. This has been dried. If you wanna chuck that in the trash right after I leave, that's fine.

    10. JR

      Dried yak meat from Nepal.

    11. SS

      Yeah. So, we took out a whole yak when we were in the mountains, in the Himalayan mountains. Um, this was just a few weeks ago. And so, one of the ways they preserve the meat ... It's interesting, 'cause they dry it, but how they dry it is they, they have a big, um, hearth or fireplace-

    12. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    13. SS

      ... in, in their home. And then above that, they'll hang the, the raw meat. And they don't do anything special. The meat just gets, uh, dried out over time because of the fireplace. And so-

    14. JR

      Oh.

    15. SS

      ... I have that one, and then I have one more that you're probably gonna wanna throw away, 'cause I looked at it this morning and-

    16. JR

      (sighs) (laughs)

    17. SS

      ... it's a little bit moldy.

    18. JR

      Is it?

    19. SS

      This ... Uh, you wanna take a guess?

    20. JR

      Okay.

    21. SS

      And you can give it a sniff too. That might ... This is gonna really confound you. I think you're gonna be confused by this.

    22. JR

      Yeah, it seems like a-

    23. SS

      It's a little bit off, but it's not gonna hurt to smell it. But the smell is gonna help you figure out what that is.

    24. JR

      I don't know.

    25. SS

      Does it smell more like land or sea?

    26. JR

      Smells more like land.

    27. SS

      Really? Okay, so ... Well-

    28. JR

      I think.

    29. SS

      That is, uh, whale meat.

    30. JR

      Oh, Jesus, dude.

  10. 1:09:45 – 1:31:03

    Hadzabe hunter-gatherers: monkey, poison arrows, dogs, and ‘time machine’ anthropology

    1. JR

      D- w- is, what is the, the food that you've eaten that conflicted you the most?

    2. SS

      Um, monkey was challenging. Yeah, so, uh, y- you brought a monkey earlier. I went to hang out with the Hadzabe tribe, um, earlier this year in, in Tanzania. And the H- I, I think you've h- you've heard about the Hadzabe, right?

    3. JR

      Yes.

    4. SS

      Eh, just for the people listening, the Hadzabe are, I think they're known as the last hunter-gatherers in Africa. They, uh, Tanzania, the government there has an amazing program to help them keep living the lifestyle that they're living. There's maybe, I don't know, 3 to 5,000 still living the traditional way out there. They're usually in tribes of, let's say, five to 10, and they are obsessed with hunting. Everything is about hunting. And even when I asked, like, "Who is the chief here?" Or "Why is the chief the chief?" They said, "'Cause he's the best hunter." And I'm like, "Really? Does anybody wanna contest that?" Uh, no. They're like, "He's the best hunter. He's the chief. He makes the, the decisions." But of course, as I've seen with many tribes in Africa, they're very cooperative, and they have ways of eating and working together that ensures that there are no fights or conflicts, or reduces the, the amount that there might be. So when I was with them, I planned to go there for three days. I didn't even bring my crew. We, we had just shot three different countries back to back, we got COVID in the middle of it, and I told them to leave. I shot it on a phone and a camera, and, and I basically just shot it by myself. And I, uh, th- usually we try to plan our videos out a lot, as much as we can, to tr- be efficient with our time, but in this case, I can't say, like, "Hey, let's go hunting. Then you guys will shoot a baboon with your arrow." I don't know what's gonna happen. And when I show up at their camp, it's so far from anything. We were in a tiny town. We drove a couple of hours to the base of a mountain, and we hiked for another hour and a half to get to where they were. I get there, they bring out a vervet monkey. So it's this white monkey. Uh, it's, uh, the money- monkey I was talking about earlier that you could shoot for 40 bucks. It's that right there.

Episode duration: 2:56:28

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