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Joe Rogan Experience #2258 - Steven Rinella

Steven Rinella is an outdoorsman, conservationist, writer, and host of "MeatEater." Look for his new audio original "MeatEater's American History: The Mountain Men (1806-1840)" on February 11, 2025. His new show "Hunting History With Steven Rinella" on HISTORY begins on January 28. http://www.themeateater.com This episode is brought to you by Visible. New members can get the Visible plan for just $20/mo for 25 months. Switch by 1/31/2025 at http://Visible.com/ROGAN with promo code ROGAN. Terms apply. Don’t miss out on all the action this week at DraftKings! Download the DraftKings app today! Sign-up using http://dkng.co/rogan or through my promo code ROGAN. GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER, (800) 327-5050 or visit http://gamblinghelplinema.org (MA). Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Please Gamble Responsibly. 888-789-7777/visit ccpg.org (CT) or visit http://www.mdgamblinghelp.org (MD).21+ and present in most states. (18+ DC/KY/NH/WY). Void in ONT/OR/NH. Eligibility restrictions apply. On behalf of Boot Hill Casino & Resort (KS). 1 per new customer. Min. $5 deposit. Min. $5 bet. Max. $200 issued as non-withdrawable Bonus Bets that expire in 7 days (168 hours). Stake removed from payout. Terms: http://dkng.co/dk-offer-terms. Ends 2/9/25 at 11:59 PM ET. Sponsored by DK.

Steven RinellaguestJoe Roganhost
Jan 16, 20252h 47mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:0015:00

    (drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast,…

    1. SR

      (drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

    2. NA

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music)

    3. JR

      Steve Rinella.

    4. SR

      (laughs) That was a long exhale.

    5. JR

      (laughs) I needed one.

    6. SR

      I- is this Trump's chair?

    7. JR

      Uh, he sat in that chair, yeah.

    8. SR

      Oh.

    9. JR

      (laughs)

    10. SR

      I wanna soak up some of the tenacity, man.

    11. JR

      (laughs) He's got a lot of that.

    12. SR

      That, it took me a long time, man. Um, it took me a long time to, to, to see it. Like, I remember when people would talk, you know, th- th- there was this thing when he, when he emerged on the scene, it was a thing about, like, toughness.

    13. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    14. SR

      And I'd always defined, like in my mind, toughness was being able to go through some, like, alder-choked hellhole real fast.

    15. JR

      Right.

    16. SR

      Or hike up a hill.

    17. JR

      Right.

    18. SR

      So I was like, "That's not tough." And then later I was like, "Oh." (laughs)

    19. JR

      Yeah.

    20. SR

      Like that kind of-

    21. JR

      Mental toughness.

    22. SR

      That kind of tough, man.

    23. JR

      I mean, think about what that guy went through. I mean, he had the entire media, the entire justice system. He had, uh, the, the deep state, the Central Intelligence Agency. He had all these people, like, conspiring to take him out. Literally an assassination attempt and then another one. In and out of the news in no time, nobody cared, no grace period.

    24. SR

      No.

    25. JR

      They, they, they went, they went, waited about a day, and then they started talking shit about him again.

    26. SR

      That's the thing is I would've, uh, when I looked at like now that I've come to understand it better, I'm like, m- like, the fact that, uh, most people would've crawled into a hole.

    27. JR

      Yeah.

    28. SR

      You know, after a while. I got, I, I got a buddy, I don't wanna say who it is, but he, uh, he had sold his business and he told me, he goes, "Well, I'm gonna, when I sell my business, I'm gonna crawl into a deep, dark hole." And, um, later he's kinda back out and bought another business. And I said, "What about crawling into the deep, dark hole?" And he said, "Well, I did, but my wife was in there." (laughs)

    29. JR

      (laughs)

    30. SR

      He goes, "I have to get back. I'm not ready yet. I gotta get back out." (laughs)

  2. 15:0030:00

    Yeah. …

    1. JR

      'cause it's way easier for them to make money. And that's what they like to do.

    2. SR

      Yeah.

    3. JR

      They like to make money. They like to be in bed with the lobbyists and the military-industrial complex and the pharmaceutical industrial complex, and they like to fucking impor- impose their will on people. And if you can't express yourself and say, "Hey, this is fucked up. This is crazy. Why am I doing this?" Like, "These studies show that you're not correct." Like, if you can't say all those things, which right now you can't do in Canada. It's not the same. Like, their ability to express themself on the internet has been severely limited. It's real weird, man. It's real weird, and it's happening right... You could walk there. If you wanted to, you could walk there. And it's fucked. It's like it's on the same patch of land as us, and it's fucked.

    4. SR

      Mm-hmm.

    5. JR

      It just shows you what can happen here if you don't have the right laws. Because people like that fuckhead Justin, they pretend that they're-

    6. SR

      You guys are on first name basis? (laughs)

    7. JR

      Yeah, that cocksucker. They pretend that they're... And I don't talk this way about anybody.

    8. SR

      No, I'm really surprised.

    9. JR

      I, I, I genuinely despise people like that. I think it's good to say it publicly because people need to understand, like, what these people are doing. These people are leading you on the road to legitimate communism. Like, he's l- he's leading that country on a road to legitimate communism. It's very dangerous. And I think most Canadians are fed up with it. At this point, it's just like the party, the party up there has so much control. And he's been forced to resign, so he's gotta step down.

    10. SR

      Yeah.

    11. JR

      And just hopefully they don't get some new slick talker to con them into the same old bullshit. Hopefully someone comes along that has, like, real, meaningful change.

    12. SR

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      Which is what I'm hoping is gonna happen in America too. If that Tim Walz cocksucker, if that guy got into d- into power, like if Kamala died and T- Tim Walz, Tampon Tim was our fucking president-

    14. SR

      (laughs)

    15. JR

      ... you know how crazy this country would be? That weirdo who puts tampons in the boys' room and, "What about our joy?" Like, he's a complete pathological liar, like a c- complete liar. Lied about being in Tiananmen Square, lied about being a fucking f- uh, head coach of a football team when he-

    16. SR

      Yeah, I thought some of that was, uh, i- just weird in how avoidable it was.

    17. JR

      100% avoidable, but pathological liars.

    18. SR

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      People that are habitual liars, they just lie all the time about everything.

    20. SR

      But there's a way, uh... There's a way he can do it where it's sort of like no one's ever gonna know, and there's things you can fib about that are just fi- that you find out in five seconds.

    21. JR

      Sure.

    22. SR

      So you wonder about making the call to embellish something that a person could answer on their phone.

    23. JR

      (laughs) Right, right. Instantly.

    24. SR

      Like, almost as you're saying it.

    25. JR

      Yeah. Um, that's not true.

    26. SR

      You know?

    27. JR

      No, this was your rank in the military.

    28. SR

      Yeah.

    29. JR

      Oh, you didn't deploy, uh, for m- for war. You didn't.

    30. SR

      Yeah, I know.

  3. 30:0045:00

    Yeah. …

    1. SR

      called Rigs to Reefs, which is to tip them over so they're not navigational hazards. The, uh, shrimpers don't like them 'cause they, they are, they're a ... You know, they cause like navigational obstructions and you can hang your gear up on them. But all the rod and reel fishermen and all the spear fishermen want the rigs there. So, you wind up in this situation like that where it's this real complexity. And y- you can picture, um ... You know, it puts people in a situation, uh, in viewing it, it puts you in a situation where it's not that clean.

    2. NA

      Yeah.

    3. SR

      You know?

    4. NA

      Yeah.

    5. SR

      Like, you're creating ... I mean, you ... They ... You almost hate to say it, 'cause you're supposed to, you know ... Y- you know, you're, you're supposed to be, uh, an- ... You know, most people from the environmental movement are anti oli- oil exploration, but then you go and look and be like, they created like an unb- ... Accidentally created an unbelievable fishery-

    6. NA

      Yeah.

    7. SR

      ... in the Gulf. And there's dudes now, like I got buddies that spearfish there and fish there.And it's like, you remember in Star Wars, the original Star Wars, where they go to that fucking planet and the planet's gone?

    8. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    9. SR

      They're like, "Hey, shouldn't the planet be here?" You know, that scene? I've been with buddies of mine and they got, they got GPS marks for rigs, and you show up and it's like Star Wars. It's like you show up and the rig's not there anymore.

    10. JR

      Ah.

    11. SR

      'Cause there's these ships out there called rig reapers (laughs) that are out plucking the rigs, and they're plucking them faster than they can put them in. But it's got all the fishermen pissed off.

    12. JR

      That's an interesting situation.

    13. SR

      Yeah, they want them there now, man.

    14. JR

      Lake Austin has a similar situation. So Lake Austin used to be this am- it's still very good for bass fishing.

    15. SR

      Mm-hmm.

    16. JR

      They have big bass on Lake Austin. And, um, the people that live on the lake, you know, the high-falutin' folks didn't like all the weeds.

    17. SR

      Yeah.

    18. JR

      So they brought in carp.

    19. SR

      Oh.

    20. JR

      And the carp ate everything.

    21. SR

      Yeah.

    22. JR

      So now the, the place looks like the bottom of a swimming pool.

    23. SR

      Yup.

    24. JR

      It's like all the vegetation is fucked, and so the bass don't have a lot of places to go. Like, you know, where, where I live, people go to the docks. Like they, they cast to the docks, you know, and they, they fish near people's docks, 'cause that's-

    25. SR

      Yeah.

    26. JR

      ... like the only cover th- these fish have. And so there's talk of, like, submerging, like, trees or, you know, dropping things down.

    27. SR

      Sure, creating structures, yeah.

    28. JR

      Yeah, creating structures. And then there's people that are opposed to that, 'cause like, you know, you have your w- you know, the wakeboarders and all the people that like to, like recreation on the water, they don't want anything that could possibly fuck up their boat.

    29. SR

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      You know, but like, if... They already fucked it up by bringing in the carp. Like and you can't get the carp out.

  4. 45:001:00:00

    Mm-hmm. …

    1. SR

      I just all of a sudden made some discovery that had huge implications, and people would need to become immediately aware of what I might have found out, right?

    2. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    3. SR

      Um, there's a term for it, where you would release these... You would release these like preliminary findings, even though it hasn't been held up to academic rigor, because it's of such importance. Like a lot of times you don't get to skip that step, but in cases of medical, you get to skip a step and say like, "Hey, hang tight. We're not all the way there yet, but look, this is kind of alarming."

    4. JR

      Mm-hmm.

    5. SR

      They had a case and it, and it all corroded, but these guys had a case where they were able to in, in fact, a rhesus monkey with CWD.

    6. JR

      Oh.

    7. SR

      Um, but then it, you know, it didn't, wasn't replicable, didn't hold up. But, think, when things like that happen, they tend to get a ton of media. But then down the road, the media doesn't follow suit. Like there, there's been cases where, um... There was one not long ago where they were looking at people that had this rare form of dementia, and they were kind of... They found that of these people that had this rare form of dementia, um, a couple of them had... Were deer hunters who lived in CWD areas, right? So they come out with a, "Hey everybody, check this out." But then it winds up being that when you do a statistical analysis on it, it w- it was no different than anything else. There was no reason that, that... It wasn't like they scored higher, that deer hunters scored higher, or nothing.

    8. JR

      It's just a certain percentage of people get dementia.

    9. SR

      Yeah, and so it's like a certain number of people eat dementia, a certain number of re- people eat venison, and statistically you're gonna have some overlap if you survey enough people. So even though they gave like a big heads up, it wound up being nothing there. Uh, but yeah, CWD, um, it's an in- it's a highly infectious disease. It was first identified in Colorado on a game, on a, on a research facility, not a game farm. It was first identified on a cervid research facility in Colorado, I believe in the early '70s. And then there's been a, there's been a, a debate, like s- some, some people feel that it was always there and wasn't detected, right? And that we, that it wasn't like we found it the minute it came out, it was just that it would, perhaps had been there, and then we discovered that it was always there. Um, but it does, it does expand its range all the time, right? Um, even in the last few years, we've had our first cases in Montana. And you, we keep, every year we add, like... Without fail, every year, we find CWD in states where it didn't previously exist, or within states that have CWD, we find CWD in counties that didn't have it. Oftentimes you can look and it makes sense because it flows. But now and then you get these weird jumps, right? Where, where, um, something jumps a big moat of inactivity and then all of a sudden you get like a new hotspot, and you look and be like, "Well how did... If it's an infectious disease, and deer aren't flying in airplanes, how did it jump?" Some of the jumps people tie it to transporting, uh, there's a theory that is well accepted in a lot of circles would be that moving cervids, moving deer and elk, um, to penned operations has facilitated the movement of CWD. Uh, what, what it used to mean to be a C... If someone was a CWD denier before, it would be that they, they, they denied that it was a thing. Like there is no disease called CWD. There's generally, it's generally accepted now that there's a disease called CWD but, but now the debate is like, is, sort of does it matter or not? Right? Uh, our mutual friend Doug Dern is like heavily involved in, in, in CWD, combating CWD, trying to get more money spent to understand CWD. Um, and they look at, you're looking at, there's two risks with CWD. One risk is that ultimately it's gonna lead to like destruction of deer herds. Meaning if you get like, it's always fatal, and if infection rates get to a certain point, we're gonna lose deer. Right? Like i- if it's always fatal, and you have infection rates of 50 or 60%, and it takes a couple years to kill them, like you're gonna run out of big bucks, 'cause nothing can live long enough. The other fear is that it...... jumps the barrier and becomes a human pathogen.

    10. JR

      Hmm.

    11. SR

      You know? So people, you know, all the hunters I know, like the, the question we always talk about is like, "Do you, uh, do you ... would you eat CWD positive meat?" You know?

    12. JR

      Right. Even if it doesn't jump currently-

    13. SR

      Yeah.

    14. JR

      ... would you take that risk to be patient zero?

    15. SR

      So, Yanni, Yanni was recently with a guy and he's like, he's eaten, him and his family have eaten four CWD positive deer.

    16. JR

      Oh.

    17. SR

      Um, man, uh, I couldn't s- I, I, I can't, I, I like, I couldn't serve it to my kids.

    18. JR

      No. I wouldn't eat it myself either.

    19. SR

      I can't serve it to my kids.

    20. JR

      No, I wouldn't serve it to my kids.

    21. SR

      I, I, I don't, I haven't knowingly eaten it, but here's the thing, here's the rub. Um, I've said this to number of people before, and people are like, "That's not true," but it's true. I'm telling you. Hundreds of thousands of people have eaten CWD positive. Hundreds of thousands of people have eaten CWD positive meat.

    22. JR

      I would imagine that's true.

    23. SR

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      Yeah.

    25. SR

      Over many decades.

    26. JR

      Yeah.

    27. SR

      Right? So, at what point do you, at what point do you get comfortable?

    28. JR

      I don't know.

    29. SR

      (laughs) It's a, it's a ... Dude, it's a tough one.

    30. JR

      Yeah. It's a tough one because-

  5. 1:00:001:11:48

    Wow. (gasps) …

    1. SR

      I don't think... I- if I'm wrong, I'm wrong by maybe one county, but I'm- I'm pretty positive I'm not wrong, and this is generally absolutely true. Um, you can't go to a county that had infected deer that no longer has infected deer. No one's gone into a population of deer and eradicated CWD.

    2. JR

      Wow. (gasps)

    3. SR

      No one's got rid, no one's gotten rid of it.

    4. JR

      That's crazy.

    5. SR

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      Has it jumped to moose?

    7. SR

      Yeah, I think that, uh, um, cervids though, so the primarily whittailed deer, mule deer, elk, they found it in, they've had it transmit to caribou. Um... God, I should know that.

    8. JR

      'Cause moose-

    9. SR

      It- it's gotta be 'cause it's a cervid, so there's no other, there's no way it doesn't-

    10. JR

      Lower numbers, like, you know.

    11. SR

      That, from, not from that.

    12. JR

      Right, but I'm saying like the thing about moose is there's lower numbers and they don't, they don't exist in like packs.

    13. SR

      Yeah, yeah. But since it is a cervid disease, I should know this. Since it is, I'm assuming they've, they've found it in there.

    14. JR

      Hmm.

    15. SR

      I can't think of examples. I can think of, uh, mule deer, whitetail deer, elk, caribou-

    16. JR

      Yeah.

    17. SR

      ... but I can't think of whether or not there's been a positive case of, of moose. And moose have a whole host of problems, um, right now in some areas, particularly in the lower 48. The northern, the northern states of the lower 48, between wolf depredation and, uh, and then, uh, a tick.

    18. JR

      Ooh.

    19. SR

      Like a tick is really hammering those moose right now.

    20. JR

      Yeah. Someone told me they went hunting and they got a moose and it was just covered in ticks.

    21. SR

      Yeah, yeah. There's a problem with... In this long series of mild winters-... um, that that's, that these extreme colds that would lower these tick numbers down hasn't been happening, so you're, you're, you're having animals literally dying. Like, a l- a lot of moose literally dying from tick infestations.

    22. JR

      Ugh.

    23. SR

      Yeah. And then Colorado's becoming like a great ... Oh, here's all the-

    24. JR

      There it is, found in moose in many state provinces of the-

    25. SR

      There you go.

    26. JR

      ... Alberta, Saskatchewan, Colorado, and Te- Texas has moose?

    27. SR

      Oh.

    28. JR

      What? Texas has moose?

    29. SR

      No, no, no. He's l- um ... well, that's not-

    30. JR

      Relatively small areas in the panhandle of west Texas.

Episode duration: 2:47:53

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