Joe Rogan Experience #1975 - Dan Flores
Narrator, Joe Rogan (host), Dan Flores (guest), Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Narrator and Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience #1975 - Dan Flores explores how Humans Reshaped Wild America: Coyotes, Ravens, Bison, Extinction, Belief Joe Rogan and historian Dan Flores explore the deep history of animals and people in North America, from Pleistocene megafauna and early human hunters to modern urban coyotes and conservation. Flores explains how indigenous peoples coexisted with wildlife for millennia, how European beliefs and market hunting drove massive animal declines, and why we’re likely living through a slow-motion sixth extinction. They discuss animal intelligence and culture—coyotes, ravens, rats, owls, dolphins—and how new science is challenging human exceptionalism. The conversation closes by contrasting scientific consensus on extinctions with alternative impact theories, and by stressing that America’s future can diverge from Europe’s if we learn from ecological history.
How Humans Reshaped Wild America: Coyotes, Ravens, Bison, Extinction, Belief
Joe Rogan and historian Dan Flores explore the deep history of animals and people in North America, from Pleistocene megafauna and early human hunters to modern urban coyotes and conservation. Flores explains how indigenous peoples coexisted with wildlife for millennia, how European beliefs and market hunting drove massive animal declines, and why we’re likely living through a slow-motion sixth extinction. They discuss animal intelligence and culture—coyotes, ravens, rats, owls, dolphins—and how new science is challenging human exceptionalism. The conversation closes by contrasting scientific consensus on extinctions with alternative impact theories, and by stressing that America’s future can diverge from Europe’s if we learn from ecological history.
Key Takeaways
Coyotes survive human persecution by shifting behavior and reproduction.
Under heavy hunting and poisoning, coyotes switch from pack (fusion) to scattered individuals (fission), expand into new territories, and even increase litter size when howls reveal fewer neighbors—ensuring they rebound to the land’s carrying capacity.
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Many animals possess culture, problem-solving, and communication once thought uniquely human.
Flores cites ravens using tools and social learning, rats tripping traps with sticks, wolves teaching poison avoidance, and research on dolphins and orcas with dialects—supporting Darwin’s idea that differences are of degree, not kind.
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The first Americans were expert big-game hunters whose tools and tactics reshaped ecosystems.
Clovis and Folsom peoples invented fluted spear points, used atlatls, and coordinated sophisticated mammoth and giant bison hunts; their arrival coincides with selective losses of large mammals, suggesting humans were a major driver of Pleistocene extinctions.
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Indigenous societies maintained rich biodiversity for ~10,000 years through restraint and worldview.
North of the Rio Grande, populations stayed under ~5 million via birth spacing, herbal abortion, and tight feedback with local resources, while spiritual kinship with animals and predators contrasted sharply with Europe’s dominion-and-herding religion.
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European beliefs plus market capitalism rapidly turned animals into commodities.
Judeo‑Christian ideas of human exceptionalism and ‘animals for our use,’ combined with the lack of aristocratic hunting restrictions, fueled continent‑wide fur and meat trades that obliterated beavers, bison, passenger pigeons, predators, and more in centuries.
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Some iconic animals are living fossils of deeper ecological histories.
Modern bison are dwarf descendants shaped by human hunting, pronghorns still run at cheetah-level speeds because of extinct American cheetahs, and their twin-fawn strategy reflects ancient predation pressures that no longer exist.
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Conservation is a late, fragile correction to centuries of ecological damage.
Only in the 20th century—through game laws, public lands, ecological science, and laws like the 1973 Endangered Species Act—did Americans begin to reject Europe’s model and attempt to restore wolves, bison, and other species to create a genuinely “American” wild future.
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Notable Quotes
“Animals, just like us, have culture, and they teach one another things.”
— Dan Flores
“We think that the ability to talk and transmit culture makes us exceptional, and yet what we're discovering is that all these animals we've set aside as expendable actually have many of the same capabilities we do.”
— Dan Flores
“It's like looking up at the stars at night and realizing that some demigod has come before you and plucked all the best constellations out of the sky.”
— Dan Flores (paraphrasing Henry David Thoreau)
“North America is really old. It's had all these animals for a really long time, and all these ideas out of Europe aren't based on science—they're based on old folk traditions out of a herding culture.”
— Dan Flores
“You coexist with brutality. You’re just not completely aware of it. This is real nature…it’s happening right where you are.”
— Joe Rogan
Questions Answered in This Episode
If animals have culture and consciousness, how should that change the way we manage, hunt, or farm them today?
Joe Rogan and historian Dan Flores explore the deep history of animals and people in North America, from Pleistocene megafauna and early human hunters to modern urban coyotes and conservation. ...
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What practical lessons can modern societies take from indigenous population control and resource management without repeating their harsher methods?
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How different might North American wildlife look now if Europeans had arrived with a kinship-based rather than dominion-based worldview?
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To what extent can late-stage conservation laws—like the Endangered Species Act—actually reverse centuries of ecological damage versus only slow further loss?
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How should scientists, historians, and popularizers handle conflicts between established peer‑reviewed extinction theories and heterodox ideas like the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis?
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Transcript Preview
(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) Yeehaw, and we're up. How are you, Dan? Great to see you.
Great to see you, too, Joe.
Um, listen, man. I know I've talked to you since, uh, I read Coyote America, but Goddamn, that's a good book. It's such a good book, so I'm very excited about this. I'm sure this is gonna be awesome too, Wild New World: The Epic Story of Animals and People in America. I've told so many people about coyotes because of you, and I seem so smart.
(laughs)
(laughs)
Well, I appreciate that, then.
It's, it's such a crazy animal. You know, one of the things that's interesting about coyotes in, uh, our area is they don't howl. I think they've learned.
Oh, yeah. That's, uh, that, that's happening in LA too. They've learned not to howl.
Really?
Yeah, yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah. Attracts attention to them.
Well, I used to hear it a lot where I lived. I lived in Ventura County, and we had real problems with them. Like, they killed all my chickens. It was like, they were everywhere.
Yeah.
But also, fucking cool.
(laughs)
You know? I, uh, it's such a conflicted thing 'cause I hated-
Yeah.
... them 'cause they killed my chickens. And, um, I, but, and they also honey-potted my dog into killing my chickens. Did I tell you that story?
No, you didn't tell me that.
Oh, boy. Listen to this. This is how smart these motherfuckers are. I had this dog, I- i- rest in peace. His name was Johnny Cash. He was the best dog. I'll get sad. (sniffs) (exhales) But, uh, let me catch my breath here 'cause I really loved that dog.
No, I understand this. I just lost a dog last May.
(exhales) Uh, this dog was just, he was just such a sweetheart, but he was a big dog. He was a Mastiff, a Regency Mastiff. His father was actually on Fear Factor, and his father was this, we, we put people in these big bite suits and they had to run, and we did it with Belgian Malinois. And the problem was, for like, really super athletic l- guys, like, we had some, like, uh, real high-end athletes on the show. Uh, occasionally. We'd got, like, amateur football players. Guys who were just stacked and strong as hell. And a Malinois, no matter what, it's still only 60, 70 pounds. And so, we brought in these Regency Mastiffs 'cause they wanted to figure out a dog that could do bite work, but was way stronger. And this dog was like, a buck 60 and built like a brick shithouse.
(laughs)
His dad, my dog's dad, was actually in the movie, The Hulk. If you ever saw the movie, The Hulk, with Eric Bana.
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