00:00:00 Speaker 1: Oh hey, everybody, episode coming right at you. This is a good one. That's the end of the year, right Phil, Yep, it is. It's the end of the year. It's the end of the year. And so we're gonna go quick right through this one. And you're gonna hear about Game of Thrones. You canna hear about The Bachelor, you canna hear from Cam Haynes and Steve Ronella. You're gonna go to Berkeley with me all in TACs. Best of Volume two. We stay goodbye. Possibly, we don't know. So the Work Sharp announces of Sharp Moments and we'll say hello to another poop story. Yes, you're gonna love it. But before we get to any of that, we have to say thank you to all our sponsors from this year, Yeddie, First Light, Federal Premium, Work Sharp, everybody that put time and energy into our program. We thank you very much. I hope to see you next year. Thank you everybody else. It was a good one, and enjoy Best of Volume two coming at you right now. I guess I grew up on an older road, a pedal to the medals. I always did what I told until I found out that my brand new close the game se can hand from the rich kids next door. And I grew up fast. I guess I grew up me. There are a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen, and now I just wanted through a real bad dream or being in like I'm coming apart of the scenes. But thank you Jack Daniel seven. Hey, everybody, welcome to the final episode of the twenty nineteen year for the Hunting Collectors. Who Wow, Wow, I'm not gonna kiss you. Phil, Please don't stop looking at me like that. For down the Champagne volume to the best of th a c ald lang zign. Tonight you will sing this to someone, I think, Ben, do we know what old lang sign is? It's crazy that you ask Phil? Okay, because I know this without reading it. Good. That's that's crazy that I know. I know. What? Do you think that old lang sign translates roughly to old lobster sandwich? Perfect? That was it, and then it gets smelly. No, rough it roughly translates to times gone by? Yeah, which is nice. Did you know that Robert Burns, the great eighteenth century Scottish poet, transformed this old song, this old Scottish song for publication. And when he did that, Phil, he turned old lang sign into very popul song around the world. No, I didn't. And I'm incredibly impressed that you just knew that off the top of your head. Yeah. And I just it's something that I've been learning about for years. You did your dissertation about this topic when I was a doctor. I'm a doctor now, yep, since last week I got my doctorate. Uh. This song is first print in se Si. That's a long time ago, Uh for sure. And he of course lent some artistry to an old, old traditional song. Uh. And the next question might have phils. Why is it so significant he took the word to ride out of my Yeah, why why do we sing it? Uh? Well, here's a here's a brief uh story that I read years ago, many years ago about the significance of all things. You know. In World War One, it was a tough time and this the this is pointly illustrated. The power of this song was during the Christmas Truths at the beginning World War One. For a brief moment, the guns fell silent, and troops from both sides left the trenches to swap souvenirs and sing songs. Yeah, this is like that did Was there really a truth during World War Yeah? This could all be. They put down their guns and they passed the bottle around and sang songs. According to a lead a letter from Sir Edward Holtz, okay, he's a Scottish guard, the British and German soldiers joined together to sing Old Lang's Eye during the Truth Powerful fending off wolves as they sang yeah, shooting, just shooting wolves as they sang uh. The next question you have, you have any other questions? Phil? Why do we sing it on New Year's Eve? Is that maybe the question you were thinking of you didn't have, You didn't want, You don't wonder, well, who do we have to thank for that? You might ask? Inine Guy Lombardo his band took the stage age at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. I've heard of it, you heard of it, and they actually did that on New Year's Eve, which is a coincidence. I think maybe um it was broadcast on the radio because there's there's no television, and then by CBS NBC on radio at midnight as a transition between these two broadcast CBS NBC the song. They chose to play. Was that that old folk song that we've been talking about, old Lang sign and it stuck and in our culture. Wow. Yeah. From that moment we decided that's what we would saying on the New Year's Eve. It's not really as a as exciting as I thought it would be. Phil. Phil is sleeping, Phil, Phil has gone to sleep. No, I'm just being an asshole. Feel it? Phil is now putting a chap stick. Stay away from me, Phil, God, it gives you all the feels. All right, I hear. We have another best of episode of volume volume to volume two, Happy New Year, Volume two. All right, welcome back to the actual show, Volume two. You like Did you like that? Phil? Yes? I love New Year's. Do you ever drink champagne for New Year's Phil? No? Sometimes look at this the Martinelli's sparkling cider for the kiddos. Kiddos um I. I rarely buy shampa. That's why I like living in Montana, because we can celebrate. The ball drops at like ten, and then you go to bed and at midnight you're soundly sleeping. It's nice in the bed with your wife. Not your wife, my wife. So what stay away from my wife? Don't stay away from her. Um. So yeah, Happy New Year to everybody out there, thanks for spending with us, and we got volume two coming to you straight from Bosman, Montana. I hope all those facts stuck in your head because I've known them for quite some time. Um. It's that in no way that I just google it and read to you from there. It is. Every episode of th HC has an email notification from my laptop and you're now. I'll meet it for everybody. So if you want to go back and listen to the best of th HC, try to find all the moments or my emails started. Anyone wants to put together a montage of all these, I'm not gonna do it. If you do, we'll send you all kinds of free stuff. If anybody out there can send us a compilation of the email notification dings from all episodes. People shower you with gifts. I will shower you with all the gifts that I have to give this holiday season. But this is volume two, and before we get to all the cool stuff that's in volume two, we have to wind down not so sharp moments. It's kind of a sad, it's a little sad it's the end of an era. It's the end of an era on THHC. Now, let me just say this, Like every good idea, it could be resurrected at any time. It can come back at any time. So why we'll say goodbye to it briefly now? Uh, it could come back, and we hope it comes back because we sure do like work Sharp, and we thank them for all they've done with this podcast and being a part of your listening experience out there and listener Land, and so we're gonna try. There's no way really to close this out, Phil, I mean, there's just no there's no story that can encapsulate all the dumb things that you have done out there, the audience I'm talking to now too, and Phil Um and me, I've done a lot of dumb stuff this year, Like some of the dumbest things I've ever done happened. It's been a real stinker, Um. But we're gonna try, So, Phil, play the jingle not so sharp moment so you don't have me. Okay, this is kind of an international not a Sharp moment because Henrik Henrik is originally from Finland and he wrote he put it in his name. H E n R I K. And then he just said pronounced like it's spelled. Well, that doesn't help me at all. Henri. Yeah, that's I think that's what he means, Henrik, Henri. If he would have if it would have been like hen r E K when Henri Henric. So we also have to say say goodbye to me mispronouncing your names during this segment. All right, here we go from Henrik Henri hi beginner adult hunter. Here, Oh, welcome to the club. He started last year bow hunting because as a chef, I started to feel like I wanted better and more sustainable meat to feed my family. And after watching lots of meat eater wired to hunt, I would just put he didn't put this, but I'll put. And listening to the hunting collective and buying equipment I could afford, spending lots of time practicing archery, I felt I was ready to get on with my newfound hobby of trying to get some delicious, dear meat. Being a city boy, I lived in work mostly in big cities like Stockholm, Sweden, and then moved to Philadelphia to be with my American wife and start a life closer to her family and start one of our own. I had not been in a rural setting for the last twenty years since a kid growing up in the archipelago near Finland. Fast forward, my wife took a job in Charlottesville, Virginia. We really relocated our family there. I thought, awesome, lots of public land, more tags, I'm gonna be hunting until I shipped camouflage, and we're going to be eating year meet every day. So a couple of weeks ago, I got out early from work. It was beautiful weather outside, truly a wonderful, wonderful day. I drove to a spot I had been looking up on Onyx maps of public land, a place I wanted to try. As I got there, no cars in the parking lot. It was quiet and peaceful, and I thought to myself, this is the day I kill a deer. After speaking a big eight on my way in, I was super stoked to have seen a dear mid gun season that was that big. After it started getting darker, I decided it's not going to happen today, so I started making my way back to the car. I noticed that people leave trash in the woods. I'll usually pick it up and throw it out When I get home. Pretty common philms. He seems like a pretty nice fella that don't want anything bad to happen to him, that's for sure. As I get to the parking lot, I see some tissue paper spread out like a trail, and I'm thinking, why does one not just blow their nose and not put in their pocket? Why would you drop that tissue paper on the ground. As I get closer to the paper, I noticed there are brown spots on that paper. And just then, just in that moment, I feel something squishy under my boot. It's probably just like a mushroom. What do you think it is? Something? My brain put two and two together and I realized I successfully tracked and identified human dropping. Oh no, yep, stepped and ship. After throwing away my boots in a plastic bag and driving home, my brain started to sing the Not So Sharp Moment song and I started laughing at this shitty hunt. Yes, the end play the jingle Phil, not so sharp Moment you don't have? All right, that's a pretty good way to end it. Yeah, even though we talked about the last episode, you specifically asked people to not send anymore. I guess I guess you. You said shark specifically. Yeah, this is already this is a little different, a little different. I've already told people that have a child's mind and anything like any nudity or pp you poopoo. Yes, I find it be it makes me giggle and inside, and so I like to put it on the show. And this is the only place I have power in my life. So like so like hansl and Gretel following a trail of candy a chair into a witch's house. Yeah, Henrick followed a trail of toilet paper and they had increasingly brown, bigger brown spots, followed it right into uh so, congratulations, Henric. Hopefully we can't send you new boots, but we can said you a work sharp field sharpener thanks to our friends at work Sharp and we'll hopefully sending a lot more of these out in the future. Um so we'll just put a little bow on that. We'll put a little bow in, put a little bow on not so sharp moments. Thankful for all of your participation. Now, Phil, volume two of Best Off. I hope you guys like last week's best stuff. I enjoyed it. This week we're gonna get into some more contemporary THHC moments moments that have happened a little more recently the last couple of months of the year. But I still love them. Um, they're all I think they're all. Yeah, they're all. So you should be familiar with all these phil Oh, this was nervous. This was b P. Yeah, this was BP. Like these episodes they're still are some of them are still be Stephen Ronella talking about games, that's still that's Jes talking about that. THAT'SP. I feel like you've been around for years. Yeah, when do you start working here? June June mid June. Wow, yeah, so long ago you were but a but a babe when you walked in the door. Someone says, still, yeah, this is prior to Skimpy Mickweek's staff. Yeah, Mango, Hey, did you see there was a news story where police dog named Mango, just like rip the ship out of a child or something. No, I didn't see that. No, yeah, that seems yeah, that seems like an accurate way retelling of it. So yeah, look that up. Okay, rip the ship out of a child something I'll google. Maybe it wasn't a child, like, it's something like that. So yeah, that was the TC news minute, do a little sound effect TC news minute. That was it, So go look that up. All right, We're gonna get to the best of TC volume two and now that there's moments. Volume one was a little serious. It was kind of I was trying to be poignant. Hopefully I achieved it. Put it up, And in volume two, we're just going to kind of move through some the moments that I enjoyed the most. We're gonna start with maybe the quintessential THHC moment explaining Game of Thrones to Steve or No. I have a couple of emails here. That's the one most emailed in moment that people have requested. And I think as we go into the new year, Phil, it's important to understand just the differences we have culturally, maybe physically, I don't know. Some people are bigger than others, some people are smaller than others. Yes, some people like episodic dramas, some people don't. Some people like fantasies. You love a nice elf or some ship that has a sword. We love a good elf, love a good troll. Yeah, like a good like a laser gun. Laser guns, top notch, top top tier entertainment. There you like it all. I I don't. I can't say I don't enjoy a nice superhero from time to time. But you know who doesn't, Steve yep doesn't like it. Uh. And so if you haven't heard it, you're about to hear any Racer are VP of production here, a big time Game of Thrones fan and myself trying to explain the ins and outs of the show Game of Thrones to Steve Ernellan. And if you've ever tried this is right around when the season was was last season was ending earlier this year. If you ever tried to explain something like that that someone who's never is not aware of any part of it, it's impossible and you end up sounding like a weirdo. And so I won't. I won't go any further into it. That's what happens here, and hilarity ensues, at least in my opinion, So enjoy a little. Steve gave it her. I guess I grew up on an older row. I'm joined by one Stephen Ronnella, which is in the future. Yeah, it's in the future. Let's be clear, we're not recording it as you're listening to it. That's not how it works. We had I had some someone right in and asked me that are you recording it live? Like no, I'm just saying the date that's going to get out. We're here in the uh Meat Eater offices and Boson Montana, and um, we're gonna run a sneak attack on Steve real quick here. Uh. We're also joined by Annie Razor Racer like racer, Yeah, like car racer. Is this your any is? This is your the VP of production here? You're behind the scenes a lot. Uh like films like Stars in the Sky and other than the Meat Eater behind the scenes, you're behind the scenes. This is your Is it your first foray into into actually being out front? Um, I've been on one other podcast, but uh the other Meat Eaters before and um some maybe some cameos and some digital content. Yeah, well we're you're here as an expert. You were a child actor. Uh yeah, what child acting? Oh tell us about that before we get into some commercials and things like what commercials, car commercials? What kind of car? You're driving a car? Yeah? I was driving the car no just uh yeah, I don't know Toyota, those are those are car companies? Um, you're here because you're an expert on something, and you're the office expert, I believe on on a show called Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones, it's probably the best television program ever to air ever. Ever. I know this is a hunting podcast, but here's me not giving a ship, and we're going to have a segment what we call Game of Thrones recap and Steve, if you ever you're aware of what the Game of Thrones is, certainly, certainly, but you've never watched, never watched. No desire is that on principle, it's because I don't. I watched, and I watched, and I watch a lot of movies. I don't like serial I don't like I don't like any serial drama, any serial drama, because it cuts into my ability to watch the number of movies that I want and need to watch, because once you get into a serial drama, it takes up hours and hours and hours. And I'm very deliberate about how I spend all of my time. I do not waste time. I don't vege out. And so for me to commit to watching dozens of hours of a single thing in that time, I could have taken in some succinct things, some substinct, succinct, free standing pieces of art or whatever. Um and and and and and I'm not gonna like go give some individual that much of my attention, is it. It's so it's not that it's dragons and sorcery and things of that nature. Definitely not like that. That's not. Yeah, I'm not I'm not seduced by that. I'm not like, Oh, if it's about zombies, I like it, or if it's about dragons, I like it. Like, no, I would tend to count I would that would count that as a mark against it. But in and of itself, no, that wouldn't prevent me from watching something we're hoping to seduce you in the Game of Thrones at this point. Ok Yeah, like what if it had zombies and dragons, then I would then I would actually not watch it. Okay, Well it's a good it's a good way to start this segment and to know that Steve, I'll never watch a game with us because it is what's at eight seasons? Any Yeah, this is the eighth season. Do you know what I'm saying about? Like my like I don't like to do mindless activities. Yeah, this is roughly ten hours times eight. This is almost it'll be almost a hundred hours of television serial dramas. You can smell them trying to stretch it out. You can smell them adding new characters and smell them keeping it going, and that, to me is very irritating. I feel like you might be surprised if you watch this show. It's I just rewatched all of the hundred hours in the last days and if you know what you know now and you watch rewatch the beginning, it's everything is intentional. From the first season. They're probably it's probably not, but they're probably good at making it seem like that, which is nice. I appreciate that sixteen point five million people tuned into the well, seventeen point four million people turned into the episode to this last episode of game Game of Thrones. That's good for TV show. That's a good one. Yeah, it's millions of dollars. They spent millions, probably billion dollars they spent on the production of these dudes. I bet they spent like ten million dollars on the new intro. Did you notice that the new intro was was was always called dope. That's what word I would use where's this headed? Uh, mostly just because I see like Dragon aggravated. That's really what I wanted to get to. I just don't know, like I don't know, like, uh, go on, We're gonna go on now. As a hunting podcast, we're not probably not supposed to talk about Game of Thrones, but I love the show and it's my podcast. That's what we're gonna do. And Annie's here as the expert because she just got finished watching how many hours eighty hours over the last forty five days. She's been inundated with Game of Thrones content over the last months or so, and so how many hours have you spent watching TV at night? I mean I go home and I like turn on like do some stuff, like do more work, and I'm like, I've seen all of them already, So I'm just like catching up. Are you the kind of person who leaves the TV on in their house just to have it on? I'm just just like trying to catch up, Like is there anything I missed here? Yeah, the subtleties of this one, and there were things now and set us up where we are right now in the series. We're entering the final season Throne, which I'm very excited about. Yeah, so it's the final season. Everyone is still basically at war for the Iron Throne, and meanwhile the White Walkers are ascending. Yes, yeah, but they're like snow zombies and they yea anyway, UM don't know, Steve needs to know this stuff there. I don't. I don't know how detailed I can get here. The easiest way to describe it as, yeah, there's snow zombies. But if you want me to tell you they've become one, Yeah, you get like bit or like stabbed by one, or you have a little transformation and you're like the open your eyes. Yeah, your eyes are blue. So they did a little twist down the zombie thing, like this infectious problem. And the zombies live north of the Wall, which is a giant ice wall that was constructed by the humans to keep out the zombies. Built it out ice. They took hoses and turned it on there until they froze. There's also some magic. It's a magical wall. Yeah, it's a bit of there's some magic in the wall at the wall. How they build the wall, I don't know. Brand the builder built. I don't think guys just melt a hole through it. Well, that's actually what happened. So what happened is change now the ice. This is the most entertaining that anythody has ever been. The The the de Naia stargarian who is the Dragon Queen came came over from the other side of the world to fight basically the Chines in the Middle East or Africa most of the series, and then she comes over to like Europe and she she little on fire in a in a funeral fire, and when the fire like an accident on purpose purpose, and when the fire burns out, she's left with She's completely nude, but she has baby dragons because in the fire were dragon eggs, so she has these baby dragons, which were the only three dragons that exists on on in West funeral Yep gets lit on fire, her husband dies off, and then there she's standing with three dragons they hatched in the fire, naked. So these are like ponderosa pine where they need to burn to totally to incubate, but she's they need to burn in order to become viable. Yeah, so she becomes she gets very powerful and builds these armies to go and take back the throne which is in West ROAs, which is where she's from. She was driven out of West Ros into excellent. She's bad or good, She's she's we don't know, it's questionable. She's mostly but she shows some signs of maybe not skipping ahead, Like seventy hours, SI had seventy hours of content. You get to the point where she her and John Snow, who was a bastard of winter Fowl when we found out in this last episode, using bastard as in like he sired a child. He yes, any children are illegitimate in this world. They are like if you're not like a child born to two people that were married, you're considered a bastard and you're given a different name. Kind of an antiquated idea. So like he was how Stark, but since his he lived his whole life thinking he was a bastard. He wasn't John Stark, he was John Snow. Snow is like the name they use for Harry Potter. No, that's dumb, No, that's dumb. This is what we're talking about, Harry step off for Nella. This is the greatest show. Someone told me there was like a fire and some dragon eggs came out of Harry Potter. That's true, that's true. But I don't know anything about Harry Potter like all that stuff. Yeah, I read one of my kids. Sounds exactly like exactly what you're talking about. All right, So John Snow he comes in as the King of the North. Now because you like him, you'd like him. You're kind of guy, he'd be your favorite character. He gets. He gets he got stabbed in the heart by his his nights wats brothers, but was brought back to life by a red priestess. She's basically a witch. She brings him back to life and by cutting his hair. She cuts his hair and then she cuts his hair and then trims his beard and then she like it goes like this on his chest, right in the heart. It was not good and he was dead and she brought him back to life. It comes back to life. He meets the Dragon Queen. They get together. They fall in love. They need he needs to prove to her love. Yeah, they fall in love kind of. They're still working on the love thing. He starts getting a crush on her, develops into love. Yeah, it's quick. It's like like magical people two episodes. He's more of a she's a little magical he's more just magic was applied to him. Yeah, more more of a deal. They get together. He needs to prove to her that the ice zombies exist because she doesn't believe him. So they have to fly north of the wall just check it out. He goes, want to drag it. He gets he gets up there with some other dudes. They're trying to capture one of these zombies to bring it back to show him that it exists. And that's how he's got to do it. Yeah, it was very I didn't agree with This doesn't sound well. Yeah, yeah, no, they had to bring it back to Searcy. Yeah, it's like in the old days when they would come from Europe and bring Native Americans back to show off. Right, they had to like go up there and get this thing, bring it back and be like this exists because everybody's out of war for the throne. They got to convince. But he's like, hey, you know up north, Yeah, let's not do the war anymore for a while, Like who cares about this iron throw And they're like bullshit, and he's like, no, I'm gonna fly my dragon up yes, because you know we have dragons like that, you believe, But you don't believe that there's a guy out there. So he flies up to kidnap a snow zombie and bringing back and be like I told you, Yeah, here's one right here. And there's like a hundred thousands these snow zombies all marching towards the ice wall. And so why is the ice ball there if they don't believe in the snow zombies. Well, they believe it was a legend that is no longer true. It's been so long since they built the wall that that people kind of like forgot. Okay, yeah, so John snow out of blocks of ice. Yeah, yeah, big ones. It's a big walls kind of welded together with like welded it with water. Sure. Yeah, I think it was like kind of how you would build a snowman. They just kind of kept very cold climate. Cold climate. It's cold. Winners last for decades forever. Winter is coming coming. I mean it's here now. Um Am I getting this good? So I don't know Steve's retaining any It's easy. I'm following it, very easy to get it. And then so Johnstows is going to find he's trying to get that white walker to bring back to prove to everyone that did exist. They get stuck amongst hundreds of thousands of them, and then they send a pigeon a raven, a raven. They put a note on a raven and they get it back to Um the Dragon Queen, who reads the note and says, holy shit, I've got to get up there and save john snow because they're you know, they've been they haven't gotten it on. But she's skeptical about the existence. So how does this if how does this prove? Like? She still hasn't seen one. So the fact that someone says, hey, I'm stuck in a bunch of them, she would say, but they don't exist. She kind of believes it. At this point, he didn't even need to bring it back. Him telling her that they exist than enough for her. So she's like, I don't believe. You have to go get one. He goes to get one, and then he sends a raven with a note saying I'm sorry, I'm not able to bring one back because I'm stuck with them, at which point she now believes in them and is going to rescue. That's this We might have told him this round. Another woman who we haven't talked about introduced. Her name is Cercy and she is the worst and she is currently the queen in King's Landing, which is like their capital. Her both her sons were kings and they both died and now she's just like taken over and she has no kids left. Anyway, she doesn't believe she's the one that's refusing to like band together and like go fight this enemy from the north. She's like, I don't believe you guys, you're all crazy, and they're like, the only way she's gonna believe us is if we bring one to her and show her she's the actual queen. She's the one wants to see the carcass. So then John goes up to get it, and then while he's up there, they're like, oh crap, we're getting surrounded by these things. This dude Gendre runs back to the wall, the ice Wall, to where the ravens are, and they send a raven to the Dragon Queen who's down south still and it says like basically send help. She gets on her dragon to go rescue them, and three dragons, all three dragons go together to rescue John Snow and his crew of people that were trying to get the White walker There's another character called the Night King who was the leader of the White Walkers. He's like used to be a man. They stabbed him in the heart with dragon glass. Then he became a zombie. Um. He has a spear and throws this ice spear at a dragon, kills the dragon, and then he has powers to bring the dragon back to life, so becomes an ice dragon. He then gets on the dragon, flies it to the wall and uses blue fire to to bring down the wall. Like the dragon breathes it out, breathes out the blue fire got it, and everybody down. The wall comes crashing down. Then everyone goes down down, and then all of the little gap it's a gap, it's a big gap. It's a gap like hundreds thousands of people. Then not people, there's zombies. They walk through it and seen the World War Z or whatever that was called. Yeah, like when they when they break the Wall of Jericho or whatever, the wall surrounding that wall of Jericho, but the wall surrounding the zombies. They kind of stole that from the zombies are trying to get through the wall that surrounds Israel. Similar, there's a lot of similar They draw yeah, they they probably stole some stuff like that. They just marched through it. They also have a slow also have a zombie giant that's in there too, Goliath. They stole that from the Old Testament, mag the Mighty and Um. So that's what's happening right now. And um what do you think of this last episode there? Annie, Um, I feel like it was a little tame. It was setting the groundwork for all the the stuff we're in the final season, so there's a lot of It was a lot of reunions. It was like fifty minutes of people because everyone's been all over the place, which I think is important for what's going to happen. Um. But I'm exciting now they're all really like they're reunited, the team coming back together. They still left from a team, but there's there's fantastic there's one. There's like a dwarf who used to be married to the lady of winter Fell. They were forced to be married by the door's father, so they got back together. There was a magical face changing girl who used to live at winter Fell. She got reunited with the hound who had her as a captive for a long time. Um, I didn't get what I needed out of that unity. They needed to hug it out some real bull um. So yeah, we're gonna continue this segment. Steve's probably gonna come back for it. Look, I learned two kinds of people in this world, me and Ben and you the kind of people. I think you can lump everybody into two categories, two kinds of people in the world from what you guys are telling me. Like, if I was gonna put two kinds of not two guys people with two kinds of people who likes like like film and television, I think there's the David Lynch people in the in the Dragon people. I'm a David Lynch guy. See, I would consider myself sounds entirely incompatible with a mind. I think a mind that appreciates David Lynch. This sounds like incompatible materials. Talking about in intellectual cinema and more fantasy based less intellectual. I would say that Game of Thrones has has has done for fantasies what no other fantasy has done. It's like made a lot of people that don't like this kind of stuff interested in because of the character building in the writing. Yeah, Like I'm not in that into fantasy. It's not either. I don't. I've never seen more of the Rings. Hate it, hate it, Harry Potter, the books or the movie. I took a class in high school that all we do is read Lord of the Rings and we looked at it the lens of World War two in the nazis. That sounds interesting. It's really unbelievable and it was heart wrenching to see some of the films that came out. The films were real bad, and so yeah, I'm into it. I would not say it's my genre. It's like the only thing that I watch. It's definitely not. There's nothing hunting related, but it's something they do did a little bit of hunting. It's a big part of my life right now or not Lord of the Rings, but big part of my life. You know. I'm glad you guys are I'm glad you guys have found something you enjoy. But I mean, no, no, I used to be honestly as you're describing, and it sounds really silly. I accept that there's so much more complexity to it that it's probably not silly, but it sounds silly. Yeah, I can see that les and dragons and whatnot, and yeah, having a fire and getting the eggs out of it, the queen and flying in a dragon. The rest that part is a little much for everybody. Well, but then this last episode, John Snow actually flew on a dragon with you remember the scene in Tombstone. You know a guy named John Snow? You do, Yeah, he lives here in town. That's what I thought I got messing with. Yeah, we're always whenever we hear, whenever we like. But so you remember the scene in Tombstone where Wider rides with his lady uh interest. They ride horses together and they're like off into the distance and their horses are kind of in heat and playing with each other. It's like a nice Hollywood trope of like we're in love or we shouldn't be that this happened. This happened in the last episode with John Snow and the Nares start gearing the dragon Queen. They rode dragons together and the dragons were playfully like it was a lot too much, and then they and then they landed in like a like a ice waterfall scenario, and then they kissed. It was the worst, And then they panned to the dragon. The dragon was like the dragons like looking at the John's it was the dragon was kind of getting off on looking at the drag. The dragon was like flapping his wings and it was like I think I read online somewhere someone said it was like I saw a meme where it was that scene and it said like when she kisses you in front of her dad. Yeah, that's like what it was like like that, but it was very terrible that it was one of the worst scenes. You feel. It was like made me crch. It was bad. It was bad. It was kind of like if she fell off, I wouldn't care. Yeah, I was hoping that the ice hobbies were just coming get him right there. I was like, aren't they getting close to them? Now? They just keep going north. They're flying around and dragons. There's been great. Uh No, I'm glad. I really had no idea what it's about. So this is a great Okay, I can talk about it intelligently though. All right, any thank you for your service. Welcome podcast back to our normal schedule program. Thank you for coming. Hopefully right now you need to come, you're to stay, but thanks for your expertise. Thanks for your expertise. Well, when we get back to the regular scheduled program. Really because I'm glad because people bring it up. I'll be like, yeah, I don't know about that. I like the part where he throws the icicle at the dragon kissing part. I like it too. If you want to come over Sunday, like sometimes I thought I'd be gone, we'll be gone. There's a thing where the people in Flea Bottom, which is like the very poor area, they make bowls of brown, which is like what the poor people eat there, and then the King's landing. You're gonna make it. We're gonna make bowls of brown this Sunday. Dude, this is exactly you guys aren't really this is a Harry Potter thing too. People make the food to eat on Harry Potter. Yeah, and watch Harry Potter. Yeah. I mean it's not like specific to just one like enter like I think it happens a lot of times, so into it that I would dress up, like I'll be doing a little thing called hunting on Sunday. What do you do Sunday when it gets dark? You're gonna come over a little called I made a poll for the whole office, which only like and people participated in. There's twenty of us. That's pretty good. And it's like who it's everyone that's still left remaining their name obviously if they live, if they die, If they die, who killed them? And if they turn into a white walker? And there's like three different questions at the bottom. Did you get my form? Yes? And then right here's made me really upset by the way, because you said all the Starks die but brand barf and then you said something else. I was like, what, I there's a strategy there. I don't want to let it out right. It was deeply upsetting to me. I think I'm gonna win. I guess I grew up on an older row. All right, cool, cool, yeah, yeah, alright. This shows we're only on volume two, Ben and it's already it's already completely I'm gonna say, aft, you don't know what my life is thanks to Steve, you know, for all the things uh Mary Mary Christmas to him and his family. Christmas already passed. I forgot to tell him, um. And now we're gonna move on to another another time. This was you know, Phil, you weren't here for this either, but I wish you were. This is bp um Cam Haynes. But it's really not. This is really bad camyness. This This was the episode. This Cam Haynes episode was when we we launched the new format of THHC New Music, New Segments. It was a big deal. UM, but a lot of you didn't like this, the new song we have at the outset. He thought it was hipster trash something's hipster crack trash music, hipster trash music. But we launched that new song all kinds of new UH segments and just fun stuff for you to enjoy. Some of you loved it, some of you didn't like it. UM, but we we launched it with a man named Cameron Haynes. Do you are you familiar with Cameron Haynes. Yeah, I am. I love Camon Haynes. I love the dude as you, as you hopefully can tell from our podcast you're gonna hear. But I went to his house in Oregon, hung out with him, hung out with his family. He was nice enough to let me into his UH, into his abode, and we got to see behind the scenes of the man so many people love on the social media's um I. I absolutely and positively think um Cam is badass and UH. I grew up with a father that ran ultra marathon. So here's a man who runs fifty miles at the drop of a hat. Uh, and so he's superhuman in that way, at least in my mind. And so this little clip as we kind of dig into the pop culture part of THHC was it packed up? We did with Cam Hagnes, which is cool. You get to find out all the crazy ship. He's got a giant knife in his pack. He's trying to show me how to kind of stab a bear with it. Ridiculous. And then we get into the Bachelor, and so this is really like pop culture beat. We got into Game of Thrones, now we're gonna get into the Bachelor. These are important, important cultural touchpoints that we care about here at t j C. We care about you, We care about your knowledge of pop culture. And so this is kind of a short one, but a fun one. Cam Hayes, I guess I grew up on in All the Road, Dude. We're in your layer. We're in like thet We've transported from the inside of the house into like your upper hunting layer room. At some point down here below us is going to be a trophy room. Oh, because I'm a trophy hunter. But right now, this is just kind of where I want to pick up. We're filming this too, so I'm gonna pick up the cameras so everybody could see what's going down. Yeah, so we could see all the you're trophy room on the floor. Yeah. Yeah, we got the wall space cleared out and it's all I'm taking up floor space. All right, We're gonna do a quick like this is a segment I'm trying out, trying to all these newsments where trying to make things interesting. So this is called what's in your Pack. It's generally where you just pulls it out of your pack and then you tell me what's what's really going on in there? So this is what it looks like here, right, So this is what I would take on a hunt if I'm traveling out of state and there's just random stuff in here, Like if I if I just pull something out, Well, here's some This used to be a full set of wrenches. Oh, now there's one because they're probably in the bottom of this bag. That's we all have that Alan Rent set hot hands. Hot hands. Yeah, everyone needs those broad heads. There's Muzzy, what's up. Let's see what else we got here underpants underwhere I'm assuming clean, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna judge you. I don't want to quiver extra quiver. It's like a half of a quiver. Yeah. I always worry about breaking, Like if you break your quiver on a hunt. Yeah, that's you gotta have. There's some you can't just put arrows in your pocket. Okay, So I got always taking picture about that quiver parts. Um, oh, oh what's this mine bullet? Are these vitamins pre workout? Yeah? Some kind of a little here's the other part of the quiver. Okay, half the quiver? Oh? A bear knife? So when I go bear hunting, this is what this would be sticking in the tree. Is that got some fat on it? Like a little tallow? This Usually my knives are usually like this until I go hunting again. So yeah, see everybody, you're normal too. I guarantee you still have guts when your knife from the last hunt. Yeah, let's see here cam does the same thing. See what else we got? Um chapstick yep yep? Is that lip zips? What kind of chapstick is that? We get a shout out? The shout out to see if we can't get a sponsor, says under Arm, under arm chaps sick. Yeah, you've gone too far, under gone too far. Of course, everybody knows that these are wet wipes. The Biday of the Woods I call it, Yeah, the Bidday of the Woods. That's important, that's important. We got these are from John Dudley. These are from Lena. I John Dudley de pads. Yeah, And I was crawling around so much, and he had killed like twenty deer already, so I said, hey, k barrows neat pads, crawled around, killed a couple of bucks. And the thing about one I you'll find is that every damn thing you have from a lie is red from red dirt. Yeah, not like you remember that always. It's nothing you can do. Gotta arrange finding yep. Yeah, I gotta know how far things are. And in here we've got some Swarovski's. They've been through a little bit. Yeah, they've seen this swash. Those are some nice buy knows um is a camel back, Oh, drinking apparatus. I like it? What else we god? Oh, we got a quivalizer part right here. I guess we've got another spare quiver. You never know because this something you can just zip this bag up and be gone if you two quivers and you're really screwed. Um, I feel like something really good is going to come out of eventually. I feel like we got some good stuff. Let's see what this is exactly how I pictured it. It really is working well. We got oh Astuley, I didn't know I had this the sponsor alert spot hog, keep hammering, keep paying my trigger release, probably end up giving that away to somebody, and and oh, this is what we're gonna end with this. We're gonna have with this? What is this? What is one of my friends in the Marines gave me this keep hammering k bar. We gonna get a little zume that right there with my name on the side, and that's for that's from the street fights or bear attacks. What this is gonna be my bear hunting knife. I'm gona look at that. So you got the explain how you do this on the podcast. But this the left arm in the bear's mouth, this under the pit into the heart to do it on you. No, no, no, I'm good, I'm good. Bear attack. Yeah, so we've all seen anchor man bear fight. You know what's up becoming d Yeah. I think that's a good one to end somebody hopefully. Yeah. That thanks James. He gave me this night. That's the first time we've done What's in Your Pack? And that ship was fantastic. Well done. Okay to end this out, like, we gotta finish this up. We've talked about some serious stuff. But now your wife was showing me that you guys watch a television program called The Bachelor. Is that true? Okay, what you're saying it's okay? Is this working? Yeah? Yeah it is? This is real. You have to come clean. Bachelor? Is that it's a show that I saw that your wife was watching. She admitted to me, Now, would you watch it every Monday? And then that's just every Monday season finale, which has been like the last three nights. Who you who you're rooting for? I always tell her I'm going to put an application in because I always feel like those guys are kind of like big pussies, and I'm like, they should have a hunter on there. Yeah, they should. I am married, So I don't know if that's gonna screw up the concept of the show. He might throw a wrench in there, but it's TV, they'll tag yourself would be a nice twist. Your wife would come in halfway through what the fund camp all these like honey, we're making a show. Yeah, what are you doing? I'm gonna be famous. Yeah. So you don't have any like uh the Bachelor's where a dude has lots of ladies. You don't have any like a lady you're rooting for in this this go around. Um, I don't know. I kind of like this one because the Bachelor at the end he had to switch around on him because normally he picks the ladies. They're all crying because the ones don't get picked. Well the one he wanted to pick, uh, So he that how it showed. Then she he's supposed to ask one of them to marry him, like they get married, right, they're like a fantasy, serious stuff. Well, he was gonna ask her to marry him, and she I was gonna say she wanted to go home. She wasn't sold on him anymore. And so then he was like tables are turned. And so then he was like pulling out all the stops trying to he was shaking. He was so upset, and she's like, are you shaking? So I feel like he's sort of lost his man card there on that one. If a dude so upset he's shaking on a show where he could pick from bassal Bassal of beauties. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's uh, it sounds like it sounds like a very stressful show. But anyway, that wasn't the season fally that he was shaking on. That's what's on right now till we go. We gotta get our footy jamas, hot cocoa. Yeah yeah, so that's the next stop. All right, brother, Well, thanks for having me and I can't wait for our slumber party. I guess I grew there. He is Cameron haynes Man, the myth, the legend straight out of Oregon. Now this all ties together. I didn't even intended to tie together, but all ties together. Phil. Do you know how Well after we were done recording with Cam, I went, I drove up to Portland. I want to say it was, yeah, I think it was. We did a Mediate Life podcast in Portland and they were like some protesters and some animal rights protesters hanging around that show. And I got to we got to talking to him a little bit, and I realized, like I think I might want to explore this mindset a little bit more. I've written it off for my entire life, thinking that's these are crazy people. But it's not like this mindset, this ideology is going away. It's in our face all the time, and it's and it certainly has its threads. And as we're talking about pop culture, so I experienced this through some quote unquote protests of our live show and the turn it was determined to kind of go back to the belly of the beast, which I feel like it's Berkeley, California, and explore these ideas and maybe come face to face with why my own ideas are right or wrong and at least hear people out and why they think this stuff. When it turned when it comes to animal rights, and so I I went to Berkeley, California. Is this this is pp yep, Yeah, you're here for this. This is about when I got I started. Oh so you were introduced to th HD with a little bit of this. What do you think I it's it's like jumping into the deep end. It really is. Yeah for me it was too. So what we're gonna hear now is kind of a wrap up a little complation of my time in Berkeley, California, and then that includes a little chat with Cal about going to a vegan delic tessant called the Butcher's Son and the confusing ship that happened to me there, and then a little interview, a little bit of the interview with Matt Johnson from Direct Action Everywhere they called d X eight. I went to the Dingo Den to Animal Rights Den. I don't know why they called it den. Seems weird with a lot of dogs there, though, I'll give them that. And then um I talked to Robert C. Jones, vegan philosopher and professor. That all happened it. I think it probably changed the course of this podcast because it was so well received and everybody. It was so impactful to everybody that wrote in and commented wherever that ended up. And one it just just challenged me to do more, do more, to go and find different perspectives, especially perspectives that were divergent from my own. And so not that that didn't that I did didn't spring from this these couple of episodes, but it certainly did codify a bit became maybe bill are cemented in my own mind. I really enjoyed it. It was confusing, it was I was angry at some parts of it. Uh, but at the end I took a lot from it. So I think that's probably what would happen to everybody in a situation where they chanting their own ideas and perspectives and ideologies are being challenged by someone sitting across from you. So hopefully you felt that, and if you haven't heard it, get ready for it. This is my Berkeley trip. Enjoy I guess I grew up on an older row. Well, we're here on an interesting day. This is the day where where you're going to hear the much discussed interview that I did with a fella named Matt Johnson. And Matt Johnson is the UM Press coordinator and also spokesman for a group called Direct Direct a Action Everywhere, and it's best described as an animal rights organization. They're best known for their investigative work in the factory farms and disrupting UM talks by Jeff Bezos and getting felony charges. In fact, the first time I met with Matt and his friend Priya, who was one of the founders of Direct Action Everywhere, one of the first things that came up in conversation was that Priya was facing several different felony charges for her activism. One of those was when she jumped up on stage with Amazon's Jeff Bezos to protest factory farming conditions, and then she was charged for interrupting the talk. And she faces now felony charges that could put her in jail for up to ten years. And so one of the things Kalin I what first struck Jeff Bezos on a factory farm? Seems that a way or many farms. He apparently the there's a California poultry farm that supplies Amazon that she was very upset about. She said, I have been inside of Amazon's chicken farms where animals are criminally abused. She said, Jeff, please, you're the richest man on the planet. You can help the animals. That's what she said. I'm assuming that's on stage. Did he say I didn't get to be the richest man on the planet by helping animals? How do you get to be rich these days? You abuse animals by helping very few animals? Um, yeah, no, that's not yeah. Chickens and chickens are gross, man, They're little little dinosaurs. Evil, evil little dinosaurs. Yeah, chicken chicken farms aren't aren't pretty things. There's definitely some work that can be done there. Yeah, And I would say that Priya and Matt are part of this organization that would call themselves whistleblowers. Often, very often their invest investigations are pointed towards factory farms, which we can start off by saying, you and I both aren't big fans back factory farms. Least, that's my guess. Oh yeah, man, No, I think there's there's a better way out there for sure. For sure. I mean again, it's not gonna flip light switch, right because you're getting this argument of like, well, this is how much it takes to efficiently feed people, and this is the only way to do that. I think we're all smart folks. You can figure out a better way. I would agree, um and pri and Matt and their group feel like they've they've found a better way. But just as is a way to color my experiences. I was in Berkeley sunny day in Berkeley, and I met pre and Matt at a restaurant called the Butcher's Son that's located there in Berkeley. It is what they call at least these folks call a vegan delicatessent, but they also call it a vegan butcher shop, which could fused me from the outset. What do you feel, does that confuse you? Cal a vegan butcher shop? I guess yeah, butcher and butcher ring is a word that we've reserved for meat. Yes, so they have things like fried chicken, bagel, witch steak, and egg HOGI uh, the original chicken grinder, which is what I had, chicken palm, buffalo, bacon, ranch, fried chicken, barbecue, pulled pork, b lt lemon chicken can go on, lemon, chicken, pesto. These are all this has chicken. None of this has meat. Yeah, none of this has meat at all. I had this really bad joke. I actually my cousin used to be a lot of stand up comedy, um, you know, open my Mike Knight stuff back in his college day. I gave him this joke on you know things like that, where I just don't feel so like if if that part of not eating meat, if it was set up to like, listen, I desperately want to eat meat, but my convictions are such that I have to get as close to it as possible without eating meat. And that was like the mantra the public message, I can make room for that type of establishment. However, that that is not the messenging that I hear the most um by far and away. It's like, no, eating meat is wrong, then why do you go through great lengths and effort to transform what you do want to eat into something that resembles I don't want to eat the thing that you don't want to eat. So and this terrible joke that involved um, you know, like sexual preference. I ought to be good and uh it was like, no, no, no, that's not what I'm into at all. But excuse me while I eat this thing that resembles that thing. But just so there's no confusion, I'm not into that. Cousin on the college circuit did well with that. Yeah, And it's just like the righteous indignation right of like, no, it's wrong to eat chicken. What are you eating? I'm eating a chicken parmesan sandwich. And here's the thing that maybe was the most worrisome to me, because there are some ingredients in these dishes or sandwiches that are unlisted. Not only are they unlistened from the title of the sandwich. They're listed within when you look at the description on the menu, and this is all I have to go on. I've never met the owner of this place. Like usually when you go to a place, it has all the ingredients listed of the of the meal you're about to eat. So they have a steak bond me. It says served on a soft hogi with seasoned steak, sarata, mayo, cilantro, garlic, fish sauce, fresh alpino, shredded savoy, cabbage, and carrots and cucumber. It says seasoned steak in the ingredients list, right next to things like cilantro, which are actual things. It is the the most confusing. Now, I asked another guy that you're here on the podcast next week. His name is Robert C. Jones. He's a vegan philosopher, and you'll hear his kind of I don't want to spoil it, but you'll hear his reasoning for why someone might do this just as a just to boil it down. He feels like you're changing what the word chicken means if you're using it to describe things that aren't actually what we wait today understand his chicken. You are functionally changing what chicken is. Everyone eats chicken, but if chicken isn't just chicken, then that that opens up the definition of the term what people might accept as chicken. It's interesting chickens the most consumed protein in the US, and so that was his explation, is the most consumed protein worldwide. I think that's what Kyl brings these conversations nowadays. Now that Cow's weaken review is going You're interjections of like really hot facts is going up. I'm gonna say tenfold, maybe twentyfold. It's impressive. Yeah, I'm gonna start hiring myself out as like a ringer for pub trivia, like you cover all my cocktails and or you just come over to people if if somebody's having a boring family member over, or like having a boring family get together, Cow will come to your house, sit at the dinner table and just say, did you know every once in a while in the in the conversation, you don't have I know at all, uncle, I can be that know at all uncle? He can a little price a hundred bucks an hour. It's easy anyways that that that this is how I was first introduced to these folks. Nice people. Let me just say Matt Johnson and Priya, I don't know her last name. We had a nice lunch, like they I ate the chicken grind your sandwich. It tasted like a sandwich with stuff on it that looked like meat. And the biggest thing I thought as I was eating this, and regular listeners to the Old Show will know this, that my wife and I had this thing where she was asking for more white meat. And so then I made this mission killed ten turkeys a year because I felt like, after some calculations, that that would be enough white meat for us to to carry on through the year without having to buy some other white meat at the store, because I'm pretty um dedicated to not buying meat from the store were store bought meat of any kind. And so I just thought, well, I would rather eat this foede chicken that was in this chicken grinder than some factory farms produce meat. I would much I would eat this before that because I would feel better about it. So the point I made to them, and I made it to Robert Jones as well, and you're here next week, is that I would rather you just call this what it is, so then I could better understand it, and it could be better useful in my life because I would rather eat fode chicken wheat filler or whatever this was, because it doesn't say on the menu what it was say there was. It says there's soy and wheat in it and tree nut treat nut. I would rather have that than some factory from chicken. Yeah, but it's very confusing it. Yeah. Man, that's kind of been the you know, burer under my saddle on this stuff is like, if you're real proud of your life choices, why are they masked in things that you apparently despise? And I'm telling you that Burger King's getting a chicken sandwich, he knows it, and a Chick fil A. There's a picture of a chicken on the bag, so there's no way you can miss that in this. I looked on their website. I looked at all the information I could find about a Butcher's the Butcher's Vegan sun dot com. I went all over that thing, and I'm trying to find where they list what the actual chicken is made of. It's not there. It lists grinder meat one time, and a list of the allergens being soy wheat and tree nut, like I said earlier there, but it doesn't say what's what the chicken is. So I feel like I thought going to Berkeley would be strange because this is just not It's kind of the epicenter of a of what I of a worldview I don't know intimately that maybe I don't agree with, but at the very least it seems strange to me. This was one of the first interactions I had kind of with this core ideology, and it threw me for a loop straight off. Didn't really understand what I was looking at, what I was eating, or whether I was missing something at the core of this that they were seeing that I was not. But I never did get much of an answer. Is it all right if I play a minor devil's advocate here? Please a second? Please Phil? I think, I mean, I think it's clearly like a like a tongue in cheek kind of clever way to bridge that gap for people who might look at a cube of tofu and kind of I don't think. I don't want to put that in my body. I don't know, you know, it looks, it looks funky. Okay, So we have this other this other quote un meat products and we're going to call them chicken and steak or whatever. And I think if you put that on your menu and that's the name of the item, okay, I think that's funny. But I think that you should be able to, like you said, when you tried to dig a little deeper to look into what these products actually were. Then I think it should be crystal clear up front. They should be like, Okay, this thing that we're calling chicken parm this is what's actually gonna I thought for sure I was missing something. For sure I was missing the point because there is this you know I've had. We used to get these giant puffball mushrooms. Um during uh UM branding. We had this least property and we grew these huge, like pumpkin sized, puffball mushrooms and we'd cut those into steaks and you'd have like a mushroom steak. And so there's kind of a bridge to that gap. But you're not like, but what is the mushroom steak. It's it's a mushroom. That's that's that's what it is, right, And if you have you know they have like the Portobello burger right places, Yeah, I get behind that. No problem. Yet, take those portobellos, fill them with a bunch of stuff on the grill, you know, and make make little um. You can make Paramesan out of that. Yeah. Yeah, but nobody's gonna be like, but what is the mushroom part. It's a mushroom, right, Well maybe that's what you do, but that's what I thought to fill. This is a mushroom sandwich. Yeah. To Phil's point, I'm looking at this thing and this has to be This is like tongue in cheek because this is like highlighting what the great alternatives to the things you really love are, which I would find value in that. And the slternative is a bunch of smoking mirrors. Yeah, why the smoking mirrors? I don't understand. I don't get it either, Like I mean, that is so confusing to me. So that that was the first part of our meeting, and when we talked about I learned what was most shocking to me is I learned the commitment that these folks have too their worldview, in their ideologies, and the commitment is such that they're willing, like Priya, to face failing the charges. And it seems like a bit of a badge of honor in the community that they're in, which ye, by point of fact, is a very small is when I have people over and people are like, man, this is really good. What is it, I'm like, well, this is exactly what it is. Yeah, and I'm super excited about it. Like this mountain lion, I did this to it, and then I did this to it, and now it's on your plate. Well, that's glad you enjoyed it to that point. To the point you just made we as hunters are like are used to celebrating the closeness to our food, celebrating the story behind our food, celebrating the reality of what it is, the interaction with the natural world that led to this food being where it is, knowing point to point contact how where it was and how it got to where it is. I'm sitting in a place with people that are are espousing like a similar belief in the consumption and how their consumption affects the world. And they're pulling the wool over people's eyes. And this is a very nice establishment and it was packed. What was the name the name of it again, it's called the Butcher's See. I think a better way they could have done. It would be to have their own names of the items, just flat out and tell you what they are or what their names for the items are, and then have something like they could still go get like a legend, and they could still go with the whole butcher's theme. If you like chicken palm, then maybe you'll like our blobbity blue. Like I said, I would love to have some blob but he blew at home with my wife rather than having to go by the produce chicken that I know was raised in a crap. If you like an Italian sub than those similar flavors and textures you could find in our whatever. Yes, well, yes exactly. There's another thing you'll hear into the podcast with Robert C. Jones, where we talk about reasoning in and arguing in and debating in good faith. The good faith is the point of these very twisted up ideological arguments. Always be talking in good faith. Don't be trying to trick, pull the wool over, or push into a corner. The person that you're debating with her, talking with her, exchange and ideas with I feel like this is a pretty bad faith. Well it's interesting too, because man, if you're gonna feed masses of people, Like it doesn't matter what like if if Soy is the base of that that's coming out of cost, you know, I mean, it just it is. And we're seeing it. Like there's a lot of cases right now where it's like, oh yeah, Soy productions up, So we're gonna you know, slash and burn a bunch of rainforest. Um you know that that's an example. I'm sure it's being done elsewhere very very well. You know obviously, like isn't udon noodles are soyer? Right? And Japanese been doing that for thousands and thousands of years. Uh um. Yeah. I mean this is when we go into this again in some of these conversations while I was in Berkeley. But you look at avocados in Mexico, you look at keenwa in the Andes. There's all these these really really specific, uh examples of what you're talking about, especially with Keenwa and the Andies like that the market there, they deforcedd a ton of land to plant keenewa and then the market went bust. There's a bunch of people that were poor. So, like what you said, we're consuming something regardless of whether we feel good about it or not, and we are affecting someone or something regardless of whether we feel good about it or not. And that's when you know the next step. For me. In this trip, I went to the a animal rights activist house, which is basically like a six bedroom house in the middle of this pretty quaint neighborhood in Berkeley. And in in this house lived oh I want to I want to say eight to ten, and writes activists that were working for direct action everywhere. They introduced me to a couple of dogs. One of the dogs was rescued from a dog meat factory in China. The other one was rescued from a dog fighting ring. And so there's a bunch of animals. There's a bunch of people pretty stuffed into this house and not in decent conditions but not great. But they're all they're they're all sacrificing, you know, they're living conditions a lot of times their freedom, as we've discussed already, two to fight this fight. And these are not um, baseless, stupid individuals. These are intelligent, well meaning people, at least from what I could see. They're not crazy. They just have this worldview that is so different from ours, that it's driving them to do things that we would never do and to think things that we have never you know, conceived of thinking, and being in that does it kind of diving into their space. I sat in their house when we did an I don't have podcasts, which you'll hear after we're done this conversation, and then they streamed it live on there um Facebook page, and it was a fine conversation. I would say that there are certainly some stumbling blocks from me in the way that their logic works. And one of the things I believe that they do is they have a cascading form of logic that as long as you you can continue to back them into a corner with counter logic and kind of get them, you know, prove disproved some of the points they make, but there's always a fallback piece of logic that one is shocking and two is difficult to wrangle for most regular folks. And one of those, be interested to get your thoughts on this cow one of those which I am actively going to cut out of the conversation you're about to hear. I want to address it here just just to let people know why I cut it out. It is in the discussion of dominion over animals. Animal personal animal personhood is what they're arguing for. The animals should have the same rights as people. In fact, the constitutional Amendment would be passed to give animals those rights, right to live being the major factor, the right to not be murdered, things like that. We're talking about dominion. I said that the animal. You could not articulate those rights to the animal, and it could not articulate those rights back to you. You couldn't explain to a bear, I'm going to give you rights. That means you have to act differently. I'm gonna give you rights, so you have the right to live, so don't kill any more bear cups. Like so, we're having a discussion on dominion over animals. The fallback point when that gets tough, the fallback point was just simply this. There are disabled humans who can't speak for themselves, and we give them rights. They have the right to live, basic human rights is what they have. And the question then is why if we give disabled humans these basic rights, will we not give to extend them to animals. Neither of the two can speak for themselves, and so I'm cutting that out. I cut that out because I feel like this's a very very offensive line to walk. As soon as I as soon as I'm starting to counter reason why disabled people are like animals or vice versa, it gets it gets into an almost impossible line of conversation, and like I said earlier, I think that's how it's set up. It's set up too slowly back into a corner logically a person that's not expecting, and then throw that at him. And that's just not something I want to acknowledge the idea, but I don't. I'm not going to include that discussion. Right, So it's like, so bad you think that disabled people should be eaten? And they're like, well no, but you said what you said, right, These are logical traps that are designed, because that's really all this is. Animal personhood is just a lot jical construct. It's like, can you logically argue against what I'm saying? And so all I have to do is build in some fail safe, some trapdoors in the conversation. I pull this lever, you're gonna fall through it one way or the other. So I felt like that's what that was, and I very much left the conversation upset by that you know, and I felt like that was a bad faith move. And I don't think there was an intentionally bad faith move. I just think because that logic is so connected to their worldview, they don't see it the way I saw it. And for me to have to stumble through the idea of animals versus disabled people, I felt it was an impossible task. And it's not respectful to to those folks that are disabled, or maybe um parents of folks that are, to say, it's just it's as weird to me. It's as weird as eating a chicken grinder that has no chicken in it. It's just weird. I do, I do, I do get hung up on some of this. And in the fact that, you know, I definitely think that there's a lot of folks out there that like to think much higher of humans, then we probably should be thinking of ourselves, you know, like the example of Homo erectus. Uh. You know, people, it's odd, like the evolution of man. Uh, It's like we really like to have like these placeholders, right and be like, well, Homo erectus it was like this, and man, we've come so far, but it's almost daily that we're learning so much more about home erect us that we have an insane amount in common, right, and as well, what about this, this and this. It's like oh no, no, no that you know, look at the evolutionary steps here. Okay, that's that's way back then. Yeah, well a lot of what was happening way back then is still happening right now. We just came up with fancier names for it. Yeah, well, you're right, And I think there's the other constructor that I agree with a little bit, but them to your point, I diverge from that agreement is like, the history is progressive, there are there's always these ideas that were held is either sacred or at least held in in the communal sense, is okay that when we look back, or like, that's insane? Why did people ever do that? And so that's kind of how they feel about this idea. They feel as if they would be akin to someone that was, for example, against slavery, when our entire culture was for it. In fact, our entire country was built on the idea of enslaving other human beings. So I feel like that's how they feel that their place in history is their revolutionary the revolutionaries in a way that we can't understand because we're we're akin to the slavers saying slavery is just a part of our country, this is how it was built. Why would we get rid of it? And so that that's another logical constrict that they've built that kind of eliminates a lot of Hey, let's argue, what's happened in the past two million years of evolution has led to where we are today. Why would we throw that away? So they're, like I said, there's there's arguments that they've built that kind of you know, work their way around some of these things. But to your point, I think two million years of evolution is a lot different than slavery. There's a lot less human of that human condition than there is of the hunting or eating meat human condition. So it's those things that's not apples to apples, but it is a way to kind of get around that comparison that they've used. Yeah, yeah, and you definitely hear that right. Well, we used to think right and there was a time when and they're not wrong about that, No, they're right about And I would make the point that history is progressive, but like comparatively, the space and time where we enslaved humans, even though it was a very very very long time in our history, is much shorter than the amount of time that are even you know, you're talking Homo erectus to Homo sapien and even before that even you know, lower hominids that were I mean it, it is like, you know, I'm sorry, but you just can't. There's there was no period in time where everybody was for one thing, slavery cuneaform writing how to chisel a freaking rock, like all of society wasn't ever on the same page at one point in time, just never never was, especially if you want to talk about slavery, right because the enslaved, we're probably like, you know what, I'm starting to have second thoughts about this whole slavery thing. Turns out not that great, Yes, and I and they're able to do that right. Um there. There's there's a thing that happens to with this argument, and it twists me. Another thing that twists me up a little bit is these folks. The the ideology is so powerful that these folks, I'm not saying they may or may not be willing to die for it. I don't know, but they're certainly willing to go to prison and ruin their lives over it. And so the feeling that they have when they wake up in the morning, whether it's a misguided feeling or not. And I went to Berkeley in hopes to kind of understand it better. And I left this particular conversation you're about to hear more confused than ever. But it certainly did help me. Um, you know, go to the gym with my ideas and make sure they were strong enough to hold up. But and another thing I will say is I went into this interview with no I didn't prep I didn't rename books or have any quotes or stats. I just wanted to see what that conversation would be like with what I currently knew and what this person currently knew, you know, and just in weigh those things with each other without having without me, with no cards, with like here's a statue ought to consider. I didn't want that. I wanted to be natural flow of conversation, at least on my end. So you got to know that. But you also got to know that these people believe this so mind alteringly that they're willing to do just about anything because they feel like they're saving lives that are being to do anything other than call a sandwich what it is outside of that, willing to go to prison. Okay, but this is chicken, but my Phillies cheese steak contains some things, yeah that we shan't talk about. We shan't. No, we shan't not. Yeah, And I so like I said this, this is there's two parts of of my trip to Berkeley specifically to pursue these ideas. The first one you're about to hear, and the second one you're here next week on part of a vegan philosopher named Robert C. Jones. I came out of both these conversations better equipped to handle these conversations in the future. I learned a lot. I feel like I got twisted up a lot with some of this stuff. Um, I think as anybody probably would if I was saying wins and losses. I think there were a lot of winds logically and some losses. But um, I'm glad I did it because I'm now better. One. I understand what it's like to be, just for a brief moment, what it's like to be these people, and what it's like to feel that way, and to devote your life to saving the lives of things you think are being murdered on mass scale. Um, what it must feel like for them to grab run into a factory farm and grab a chicken and run out, they must feel it. I think that there, you know, heroes saving lives, and so I have better understanding of that. But I don't know that I came out of there with a better appreciation. But it's kind of like like the you know, they're they're the argument isn't against factory farming, right, It's it's against animals being cultivated and eaten, you know, and and and they but they like to boil it down to like, well, this is what we're against. Yeah, but you know you and I talked to those uh animal rights folks and Sacramento and uh Anonymous for the Voiceless. Yeah, and you know it's like, I mean, it's just so funny, like my mom's little farm there and outside of Billings, you know, half of those freaking animals would walk up to We're looking to get their ears scratched, you know, like they were not living in a stressed environment at all. And uh, you know a lot of those things turned into meat. Those creatures turned into meat. So um, it's like yeah, man, it is. And it's really interesting thing as far as like you know, those animals don't have super long lifespans. This is like people need to be fed. This is how they're currently being fed. Yeah. They they're talking about a sea change to our humanity. You know, they're talking about a shift in how we interact with the natural world and the world around us. It's in and of itself that's going to have a cascading negative effect to our our entire world if we were to go the way that they want us to go. And I think maybe they partly understand the means of production there against the consumption. Imagine, imagine if a world where next year, for the next presidency, the first thing they do is try to get a constitutional amendment past that's talking about animal for personhood and saying you if you kill an animal, you're a murderer. You go to jail. That's that's that's the idea, and so that's what that's the strength of that idea, at least for the people that hold it is is ridiculously strong. I mean it is it's in their minds infallible and so at least I got to understand that from their perspective, And hopefully if you listen to the interview coming up here in a minute, you'll you'll get that too. But it's certainly if you would a race, if you call, if you and I and even you feel would relay a race what you currently believe and kind of approach the world with a blank slate. At the very least, what they what they're saying would be compelling because they believe it's evan strongly. You know it could. Could I make as compelling a case for hunting as they do for murdering animals? I don't know if I could, because they I mean, they're willing to go to their felony charges, multiple felony charges for multiple members. In fact, the founder, the true founder of d x c's React Action everywhere, he's going to go to jail for a long time. He's just awaiting sentencing and awaiting a trial. So it's that's a person going to jail over the over this idea. So it's that's pretty strong. I don't think of any examples in hunting where people are going to jail for this. I wouldn't want to go to the clank like comparing stories. What are you in for? Interrupted Jeff Bezo? He uh, pretty good. Minutes in I jumped up on stage. All right, Well, um, any final words there child before we transport to Berkeley. No, take us away, Phil, Are you good? Yeah, I'm I'm doing good. I don't know if he wanted to put throw down some some Simon gar Funkle to set the scene or something while we transport to Berkeley. I guess it. It weighs heavy on your ideologies that there's millions of years of doing these activities now removing just just talking about hunting and removing factory farming because that's industrial evolution onward. Um, there's I just think you have a lot to explain, Like you have to to make the jump from racism to species is M seems like such a gigantic gap to me, you know, from from understanding an African Americans right to eat at the same counter to say a pig's right not to be slaughtered. There's a huge gap. And there's all there's no human history too to back it up, right, So I'll set that up for you. Take it away? Oh yeah, I mean yeah, I think we should explore you know it might you know, I can understand it. It feels like a huge gap. Uh, and so you should just like explore exactly what that is. And I think, you know, just just you take like discrimination by the book. I think it it fits. It's it's just group A, it's group B. You're not saying, you know, you know, like the activists will always say, like name the traite, Like what is the trait? Don't not the group, but what is the trait by which we you know, respect right, the right to life, the right to bodily autonomy, the right to freedom. And there really is nothing but we haven't touched that term bodily autonomy. What's Yeah, I mean, it's just it's just like I nobody can do anything with my body that I don't consent to. You can't you know, you know, from cutting the tail off of a pig or you know, or you know obviously just killing animals like that sort of a thing. Um, So that goes down to like just consent basically. Yeah, And and we wouldn't you know, you would you would never dream in a million years of saying, you know, because a human is you know, you name, it doesn't doesn't communicate the same way you do, or isn't as smart as you, or has some sort of disability, or is less intelligent. However, you know how we measure intelligence, less intelligent than a pig. You know, never in a million years will we dream of saying like okay, forgot him, you know, and in fact, we'll go through a great expense to to enrich the life of that human, you know, great expense to to make sure that they, you know, have have a meaningful life and have these rights. Um, and so yeah, I mean I think that uh, you know, it probably sounded like a big jump for for white people to say, wait a second, these these these slaves, like we're gonna give them rights Like that feels like such a jump, Like I can't how they wrap my head around it. And it's a very strange concept. And it takes time, and it takes a lot of these kind of conversations, and it takes activism and eventually, um, you know, society shifts when we look back and it all seems so obvious. Um, Like I said, I don't I'm not blind to that that that that's happened. What I am what I don't understand is how we get from from A to B there and it seems circular, and it's and it's logic. Um we circular can if so if if an animal is a person and a person is an animal, where it seems circular to me is that animals kill other animals, right Like if if if I was to say, like, it's more natural for me if I am, if I'm the same thing as a deer, the deer is the same thing for me. It's more natural for me to act as in the predator prey you know, relationship that's been around for as long as we've been around, as long as we've been cohabitating with these creatures. It seems to me more logical that I would fall into. And I don't. I don't usually use this argument, but if you were to level the playing field and there's one species, right, every everything is the same and it's rights in the way that it's treated, I then feel that I fall into what a grizzly bear feels about. You know, like if you asked a grizzly bear about an elk, it would say delicious, yeah so so so with human beings, you know, to take to take the analogy. So you know, I think you and I would hold it value that all humans, you know, deserve this right to personhood. And the fact that maybe there are humans on the other side of the planet who, because they don't know any better or for the sake of survival, are killing one another, that doesn't change our view that that all humans should have basic personhood. Yeah. But but a grizzly bear, it's innate and a grizzly bear to kill like. I've been around grizzly bears, have been around wolves, have been around mountain lions, apex predators, in in their totality, it is in their being to kill like that's what they do. They don't reason it, they don't feel it emotionally. A grizzly bear is a grizzly bear, and part of its being is to part of it's it's grizzly barness, if you will, is to kill things like it that you can't remove. You would, you would. You can never sit down with the grizzly bear and reason it out of eating a fawn from a pregnant deer, or killing killing the cubs of a sal eating I'm you know, I've seen this, and I have a lot of friends have seen this. A grizzly bear or a you know, brown bear will kill cubs of a stal to make that stile go back and heat. You can't. You couldn't remove that. You couldn't remove that from the grizzly bears. You can't. So my argument would be, if we're the same as a grizzly bear, you wouldn't be able to rumin that from us. And if if you can remove that from us, are we are we? Then not? We're then we're different. If I'm able to remove my predatory instinct that's been built over hundreds of thousands, millions of years, if I can remove it from me, that makes me different than the bear. Well so, so um, we could again take take the same conversation and you'd say, well what about you know, how how did how did I get here today? Well, you know, in addition to consumption of animals and hunting of animals, I got here today by a product of all sorts you know, the winners of wars, you know, by through through all sorts of violence, all sorts of rape on down the line. This is how I became who I am. And so this you could argue that this is innate in all humans do is extreme violence towards other humans and we but we don't fall back on that and say exactly that's my point. My point is we can innately change. We have the ability to innately change that predatory instinct. We've changed it through technology, the advancement our civilizations. How we think about and relate towards animals has changed over time because we have changed over time. I haven't seen a grizzly bear or been around a grizzly bear from a hundred thousand years ago, but I imagine that it's the same thing like grizzly bears, aren't. I promise you you'll never find a grizzly bear that you're gonna be able to convince over time, through technology, through advancement, through through even better sentience, not to kill a need. And so I think what you're saying kind of makes the point. If if, if humans are able to change the way we feel about animals in the way that you would like to that that just by the ability to do that makes us different than animals. Yeah, against like uh, I think you could again make the human comparison like there are just like there are some animals named you know, bears in this example, who you're not gonna be able to change. There are some humans who you're not gonna be able to change. So some so you do take the the animal kingdom, and and you subdivide and say some can, some can't. Take the human species will some can, some can't. Some some humans are you don't have a mental disorder or whatever. And that doesn't change what's income in upon us, you know, individuals with moral agency to say like, hey, like you know this, how what's the right way for us to live? And and and the question of you know, what do we do with with these individuals who have you know, whether it's humans who have violent tendencies or not our animals who have have it in aid in them to be violent. That's an extremely complicated question. But I think that where where I think many people fall short is that they say, well, it's complicated, so therefore we throw our hands in there. We say it's fine, or even say it's beautiful frankly, you know, and there's funny things about nature of seeing the non beautiful parts. Yeah, yeah, I think I struggle with in that idea is a grizzly bear must have it, must have it's it's a carnivore. It must have that dear to live. It can't it's digestive system, the way that it functions. It can't remove that from the way it is. It can't just all of a sudden decide well, I don't want to eat these things anymore. It is program. It is in its DNA, it's in its genetics. Now I'm not I'm not saying I agree with the bears feelings, but but the bear is the bear, right, And so I see it more pragmatically, and I gotta look and I would encourage you to look at the animal, you know, not compared. Can I keep comparing the animals to the human, the animals to the human. Look at the animal like that. The animal they are what it are, They are what they are, they function, how they function. And being close to nature in the natural world, and understanding that predator prey and understanding the mating habits and where they sleep and what they eat and kind of how all that comes together, which Honey has done for me. It's allowed me to kind of understand these things. And I'm happy for that, you know, I'm not necessarily happy for having killed dozens, hundreds of animals. That's not where I get my happiness. I get my happiness been able to. It's changed the way I value animals. It's changed the way that I see them and I feel about them. It's changed the way that I understand their role in my role in the in the natural world. I see them. I think we said we differ here for sure. It's like I see them as a resource, you know, I see them as if I take one and there's a thousand healthy ones, that that makes me happy, and I feel like I've I've taken part in and this dance that that is valuable to our world, and it has been shown to be valuable to our world. So that's I think that's you know, that's part of where we come up at odds. But I think you have to think about the animal, like even if you've removed humans from the equation, which would probably be the best thing we could do for any of these animals, because we eat up their habitat and we plant roads, We are we pay a row as we build houses like this one and destroy their habitat. So in thinking about the animal, like remove if if you can, and then tell me if you can't, like remove the comparison to humans. If if we were to then say, these things are gonna live and thrive, how would they do it without killing each other? How would they do it without without the predator prayer relationship and the food chain? And so I think it, Yeah, like you rightfully point out that it is. It's very complex, like to just just wrap your head around, like how is such a thing even possible? And I think that you know, um, you know, you you use the term pragmatic, and I think that, you know, again, I just think it's just apt. So like you know, if you like, well, what are we gonna do if we if we free the slaves, and so it's not pragmatic. These people, like how are they gonna get jobs? They're not educated, Like it's just such a huge problem and it was just this this rationale to just try to stay in trenched and what we're doing right now. And so you're you're right. So I think that you know, prag you know, to do what you might call pragmatic, a pragmatic solution, it really dismisses, you know, what's possible and the fact that we can do so much more. And as far as like what do we actually do about these animals to stop them from eating one another. Extremely complex. I mean there are like you know, we have some hints of some solutions of things like you can do like um, you know, like you can do like highway over passes, or like like uh, wildlife can can crawl, you know, walk underneath roads, or you can have there's like high pitched sound emitters that you can do on on machinery so that animals run away. But frankly we're not even like scratching the surface of that. So so my perspective is that if we can move from a place where we look at animals as just it means to to our ends, and then we can shift the whole narrative, the whole game around that, and we say animals are individual persons and they have a right to to bodily autonomy and so on. That's when we bring in the experts. We bring in the the animal behaviorists, the biologists that you know, the Silicon Valley techie people, and and we we look at all these solutions. Is there a way to to control their breeding, Is there a way to maybe change their genetics? Maybe maybe animals can be bred away from from some of these hatits and that that sounds like some sci fi stuff right now. But you know, like we we we've we made it to the moon, and we we got the Internet and we got airplanes, and so you know, as much as as you rightfully point out also that humans are so destructive towards animals, I think we have the capacity to do great good if we were to you know, prioritize, prioritize doing it. The way that I look at the natural world is like it would be sad for me to change the grizzly bear or I keep saying that that's not the only animal out there. It's like some reason I have a fixation in this conversation on grizzly bears. Um, it would be sad for me to to take that, to change an elk from being an elk, or change a deer for being a deer, or a songbird from being a somber. It would be sad for me because I like, like, I want to preserve the way that they are right um, and I don't want to adjust them in any way to kind of meet any feelings of of of what they should be. And so you see this when you remove apex predators from an environment, right, you see what it does to the prey the prey. Part of an elk being an elk is that it has these forces that are fighting against it. Winter kill, we say, And in the wildlife management there's winter kill, there's predation, there's all these things that that affect animals. But they also make those animals what they are now. You may argue through history animals are changing based on additioning different conditions and different influences on those animals. But the animals the way that they are now, I kind of feel I would like to preserve that way. Like if I can kill one or two or be a part of the man has been of one herd of elk, and that allows those elk to be elk forever, I would be happy with that. I wouldn't want to just for the sake of not killing them, change what they are, or change their breathing, or force them to be like that. That seems it seems counterintuitive. I think it's I mean, I I don't see that there's not like a rationale behind it. It seems that seems sentimental. Frankly, and just to say like I I like, I like to appreciate the elk, and I want the elk to stay the way the elk is. It's like it isn't wouldn't there be their right to kind of their naturally. I haven't. Again, I don't. I don't want to just like hone in on only species of hunt. But that's that's my perspective. I don't when I see that, when I see elk, I'm almost a preventionist in the way that I look at wildlife. When I see an elk, or I see a bear, or I see a mountain lion, I don't want to go I don't want to change that. I want to preserve its relationship to other animals and to me and my my hunting is a better way to understand all that and be involved in that. And again going back to the value system, you know, admit a value on that animal that's more than just it being there. Like when I kill it, I hang it on my wall, so I so it can be a part of my life, it can be a part of my story. Um I eat, I eat it's flesh, so it can be a part of feeding my family. And I see that, and I can see how you guys see that as like a barbaric act. I get that, and I understand that that's you know, something something that I'll have to and probably the rest of my life. Even explained to my son, Hey, look, this is what I've I've done and been doing my basically my whole life. My dad did it, my granddad before him did it. It is as much part of me as anything. But I still that still doesn't give me the right not to rationalize it, not to think it through, not to understand what it means. And so in that way, I'm with you, you know, I just like I want to just distinguished between you know, caring about the individual elk or the individual animal and and you know, the continuance of the you know, the elk, the elk that's that's before us today. Isn't thinking about, you know, the continuance of species. It isn't you know, I mean, the scientific the definition of the word species is all the individuals who can uh copulate and reproduce viable offspring, like the elk has no no, no, no notion of how many elk live in the world. The continuance of of the continued life of future elk like the elk isn't thinking about that. So the elk doesn't care or have any consciousness or even thought about the future elk or non elk or other animals or whatever. So the you know, so focusing on that elks existence. And I just I think that to just have an attachment to particular species, like I think there's not any species that really matters. The existence or not exists of any species only matters to the extent in my view, that it affects the individual, you know, other individuals, so they're sentient life, like the principles of I think you're talking about, like the principles of bide over see, like the natural world needs all types of species working in in concert, even if they don't know it with each other. When in Honey we talk about biodiversity all the time, and that's something that I think the hunting community has gotten better at understanding, but still needs, still has some ways to go as understanding. Not only do we care about the things that feed our families and the things we go out and take out of the herd and bring home, but all the other things in the these ecosystems that we go out and we removed things from. And I feel very strongly that you know, we were talking earlier about harvesting versus killing. We are going out into a landscape and removing something that we didn't put there, right, So there there is a relationship to that that differs from just going out and looking at through a pair of binoculators, are looking at through any other device. So there's a closeness that I have with with animals that I would posit that most people just don't have. Um. I feel that's a that's an additive to my life, an added it's a way I think about animals. Um. And that's something that hunters always argues, like, guys in your position, there may not be a way for you to kind of understand these animals in the way that I might understand them. And I mean, I just want to get your what's your reaction? I mean, I uh so, so for one thing, UM, I just I would I don't want to conflate. I don't know if you are, but I think people might interpret like a conflation with you know, whatever fulfillment you get out of animals, like that's that's great, And like I get, you know, fulfillment out of my relationship with the dogs downstairs, and that sort of a thing. But what's what's important is like, is that an exploitative relationship or is that not? So you know, I mean humans who work in a facility for for disabled people, they might draw some fulfillment out of that, and you know, that might be a fulfilling thing for them due to help those individuals. But but that's not where that conversation starts. You didn't like build a facility and say, okay, let's have this facility for people to help them, and you know, have that be the purpose of it was for the betterment of those those humans. So I think that, like, it's great that it makes you feel good and that gives you these the sense of fulfillment in this closeness that you refer to. But I don't think that in and of itself is a no, no, no, not at all. And I think that I think all that really, all that relationship does is make me feel way more intensely that I've got us. I've got to earn that, Like I can't just go out and frivously kill animals. I've got to understand the ecosystem. I've got to understand Um, I've got to understand our society and our culture. I've got to understand cohabitation. I've got to understand how an animals body works and what parts of his flesh I can eat and what I can't. I've got to understand conservation, how to make sure that there are the proper amounts of land for the proper amounts of animals. I gotta understand how how many elk do there need to be, how many uh songbirds don't need to be I feel pressure as a hunter to understand those things. So, yes, you're right to conflate like to to continue to say like hunting and enriches my life, that's my relationship with this animal. I feel like it's deeper than other people. That's not an inflation of or justification of hunting. That's that's the my honest take on the result of my hunting if and that's just my personal experience. I can't speak for all hunters in that way. My personal experiences I've gone hunting. The killing of the animal is not a fun part for me. I don't I don't jump up and down. In fact, people that know me, I get get really calm when it happens, and I sit over the animal and I think about it. And I say thank you, and I go about my business, and so I do that. Um, but yes, completely agree that I would never conflate anything that happens to me through hunting is some justification for doing it. I'm also trying to think of this thing enriches me, but it does it also do good for the animal, for society, and I think society in the way that you guys challenge hunting. It's it's the question is like, is this good for society? Is this good for our collective group? You know, is this killing of animals good for everyone? And to the point where we could say the point where like you or someone else might say no to that, I disagree, but I think is that the question? Well, so I think I think that you are you know, I think we're both trying to answer the same question, you know, as you alluded to, and I think there are certain circumstances in a very very immediate term type of sense where it's you know, I think, and I know you've made the point that people who hunt care more about animals and people who don't hunch. I think reverencing referencing people who eat. Yeah, I don't want to put it that I don't want to put it that way. I think I know it. Yeah, I was gonna clarify. I think you mean like people who eat factory farm animals and don't don't like you said we were saying earlier at lunch, And I think this is a good point to be made that if I were one questions like, I'm not gonna get you to go hunt with me, and I probably are. I'm probably not going to go to an animal rights right, actually I might do that. Who knows, UM, we're not going to get there. But one thing I would ask of you, and I'm asking this of you. I'm not telling you just said you should feel I'm saying, like, if if someone was gonna eat me, do you feel that hunting is a better way than all the other ways. I that's a tricky question because I think, like all the concerns that you raise, you know, it probably is pretty pretty pretty certainly actually causes less immediate term suffering. There are some complicated questions around, um, when you kind of normalize animal use, so so you know, in another context, you have these companies like Whole Foods that that to out everything is humane and make people feel really good about consuming animals and in some ways like maybe their farms are a tiny bit and I do mean a tiny bit better. Um, But at the same time, it's it's kind of I think there is a harm done in terms of making people feel good about you know, an idea, ideology that that you know abottom line, at the end of the day, we want to see overthrown. And so I mean, I think you're certainly correct, You're certainly more thoughtful than the average person, and you're certainly causing less harm less suffering towards animals than the average person on the street. So um, you know, it's it's a complicated, it's a complicated thing. But I mean, you know, we're in turn of opposing factory farm you know where you know A long ways When I when I see let's see the documentars on factory farms, and you see something even in some of the videos I've seen that you guys have produced, you just don't I don't feel I feel cheated, man. I feel like society wants to to cheat me and trick me, like it wants to present this reality that isn't true. I feel I don't know where it began. I haven't looked. But I don't feel as though the drive through with Chick fil A wants to present me with the reality. I feel like it wants to just sell me. It's wears, And we were talking about it earlier. So it seems silly to me to put a cartoon chicken on a bag with a dead chicken in it. I mean, it doesn't It seems silly. So I I just feel as you feel. I'm sure that is this a disingenuous nature to the way that our industries, factory farms and others present the reality of these situations? And and how could you be in that situation conveniently forget to make sure everyone understood that there's a dead chicken in that bag, you know, And so what's what's the rationale for that? I feel? I feel the rationale is more people will buy the chicken sandwich if they're not connecting it to a dead chicken. Yeah, it's I mean, you you just look at kind of like what's what's normalized around people? And they, you know, the same people if they saw what was going on inside of chickil A Farms, they they'd be totally put off by it. And then you know, maybe that caused them to change, or maybe they kind of forget about it a few hours later, and the whole the rest of the world is continues to to normalize it. So you end up with a lot of good people participating in some some bad stuff. Yeah, and there's there there, there's a self destructive nature, I think, to humanity. And and we we have taken over the last part four decades, we've taken cigarettes and made them, you know, and out at them and said, look look at what this is. Cigarettes is not good for you. They are not good for you. The the the tobacco industry has been deceiving you intentionally for decades. But even then, even after all that, even after forcing them to put pictures of decaying lungs on their product, people are still hitting the hitting the East sick in twenty nine. And so there's something about there's something about that intentional deception of the of of like an industry or industrial nature that is always going to work on on some people enough to make it worth it for that industry to see you. It seems, um you go to the line that you can see the line of Chick fil A's out the door, you know. Um, And so Yeah, I mean that we agree on that all day. I my my values around animals are always shifting and changing, and I'm always having to go back and think about why am I killing this thing, what am I doing with it? How can I do that better? So I guess for for folks that are that are there and watching them watched this whole time, I would say that that part of why this podcast exists. And I think part of the new generation of hunters that I've seen part of what we're trying to do is understand ethically and morally what we're doing. We're in generation generations before us that wasn't there as much. Honey was a thing we always did and it was accepted. I think now we're starting to question more. I think that leads to this conversation. Yeah, it's certainly good that those questions are being raised, and I think that, you know, I mean, to me, there's so there's this question there that it's you know, what what what what? What is this this trait of that that you know, we wouldn't we would never justify, you know, humans are overpopulated, and so we're going to you know, we're we're gonna we're just gonna just gonna shoot him down, like hey, this is all this is the best we can do whereby you know, that is what we say with animals and even look at um, you know, even people who who are who are putting a lot more thought into it than than than than most you know, most of the rest of the world is um. You know, there is this species is m where you're looking at them as an object, as a means of entertainment. I mean, you look at something like bow hunting in general, Like even if we said like okay, let's just you know grant, okay, they the best thing to do is to kill off these animals, you know, this animal right here, like you know why you do this bow hunting thing where you have like blood tracking and in many instances where you're like chasing down for days and it just seems like you're trying to like make this like fun little human game out of it, this human centered thing game out of it, instead of just saying like, Okay, if you've come to that place, which is a huge if that you have to kill these animals, you need to do it, and it is this most efficient way possible. Yeah, we talk about that a lot of the time we talk about an argument, we talk about fair chase right. And I'm been open on this podcast in past episodes of talking about fair chase right, is fair to fair to what? Like? We you know, there's there's there's a lot of oxymoronic things that go on with this this topic in general. And I will say before I get to that, we have archery seasons, so so more people can go hunting, they can hunt longer. Right with with archery tackle, your efficiency is going to be lower. And that's how state game agencies, state governments, and even the federal government get into how do we have an archery season than a muzzle other season, which is which is a less efficient firearm than a high powered center fire rifle. So we have different levels of hunting to allow for us to say, the state game agencies and the and the state governments will go in and say, okay, Colorado, you can kill this many elk? Can this unit? This many el can this unit? They do that through population surveys and other things, harvest surveys from hunters as well. So they do those things, they identify how many elk they can kill, and then they allot those elk per season. Right, so that's human center. It's not it's all No. I would say it's most definitely human center, but it's also animal centered. It's centered around We're not doing that because we like bows and we like guns. We're doing that because we do want the most hunting opportunity. We don't like. Hunters don't see it the way that that you guys see it, So we don't see it as a bad thing. So we think more hunting opportunity the better, right, But there is I mean, and I've said this on this podcast in recent weeks, there is an issue with the hypothesis saying, hey, I want the meat. Well, if you want to me, why don't you just go get in the most efficient way possible. So I'm not I'm really probably not in a place just just totally disagree with you there. But at the same time, we have there's a million things you can do as as a hunter in the experience of hunting before you get to the killing that doesn't seem to make sense or that doesn't seem to to get up to the killing part. And so what I argue generally is not fair. Chase, I'm not trying to be fair to the animal in my pursuit of the animal. I want to kill it as efficiently as humanly possible. In the pursuit of the animal, which is oftentimes a very hard thing to do. I'm thinking in different terms than when I get to the actual killing of it. I'm thinking of if I just wanted to kill animals, I'd find animals on the side of the road and to shoot him and put them back in my truck, cut them up and eat him, if that's all I was there to do. There's other benefits that I tell that mean a lot to me, And as I said, that's humans. Those are human centered things. But at the end of the day, I can sit back and go, Okay, that question is is this thing I'm doing good? Right? It's good for me? Yes, Personally, it's good for me. It's great for me, and it has done things in my life that no one could understand. I imagine that that isn't that hasn't been with me for those experiences. So you have that part it has. It has been good for me. It's not good for my family. It's fed him a lot than they love it. Um, has it done good for the animal? Yeah? I mean there's more wild turkeys, there's more elk, there's more deer, there's more Mallard ducks than than a hundred years. But I think that the whole like notion of like the further who was species is also human centered because they think, again, the Mallard duck doesn't think how many more Mallard ducks? I mean, why wouldn't they think how many more ducks? Why don't they think how many more animals? Why wouldn't they you know, like the Mallard duck, The individual Mallard duck doesn't well yeah, yeah, the individual Mallard duck doesn't. But that individual Mallard duck also doesn't understand that it needs other Mallard ducks. It needs nests, it needs wetlands, it needs the prairie pothole region. And we as humans, because we are different than the duck, can go and say, hey, what does that duck? We have organizations the Duck's Unlimited Um and Rocky Mount Nulk Foundation that are there to say, okay, what does that Even though I'm a hunter and I'm I'm out to when i'm hunting kill them, what can I do to make sure that we maintain this? Not just that individual duck. And again, I think this is where we will continue kind of bounce off each other. Not that individual duck. That individual duck matters, but it only matters as part of that whole because that because those species matter to the ecosystem, that ecosystem matters to the greater ecosystem. And if we can take care of those individual species and those individual habitats in a way that we'll make a whole lot of sense, then we're gonna be will we just find these animals will be just fine, and we'll have taken the thing that enriches us. The human center part will have participated in that. But only if, if, and only if the human center part also benefits the greater population of animals. And that's that's that's I think the concept of hunting and we'll I think we know where we just don't line up there. Yeah, So so I think like that that's moving us in a good direction. Though, so it's not you know, the greatest goods. So basically like kind of this net sum of maximum kind of well being in happiness and minimum kind of suffering, whether that means zero mallards or a billion mallards, like whatever, that net sum is like, that's what we're kind of after and to me, um, you know again, it's just it's always been the case that when you elevate the a class of individuals, you know, the rights of the individual within that that that the entire class of an individuals on the whole has been better off. So I don't see you know, an argument I mean, number one, an argument where it's not logically consistent to did you know, to do we deny rights to humans that we don't give to other animals? And number two like why if we did do that, why it wouldn't follow the same results that we've seen with all these movements throughout history were like you know, nobody's saying like, oh, we should go back and you know, remove rights from X, y Z individual. Like I don't see a world where we have animal personhood, where where there's just not a massive improvement in the overall well being of life on earth. Like I said in the very beginning, like it's weighty for for any movement to change. I mean, this is a would be if twenty years from now we're animal personhood is a thing that would be a huge, huge sea change in our culture and society and our humanity. Uh, it would be, it would be monumental, will be probably one of the biggest changes in our species ever. Um. And so that's I mean, you know, I can said, actually be like prove that, but I don't want to do that. I don't I want to give the idea of the credence that I think it deserves, which is that that that there's a lot of people that believe it. There's a lot of people that that fight for it. And and to Joe's point, Joe and I talked about this all the time, and I talked about with all a lot of other people. I believe I truly leave the humans are consumption engines, Like most beings on this earth are consumption set of ends. We were born into this world to consume things. There's nothing we can do about it, like if we if we stop consuming, we die, And so we know that and we know that's the same for animals. We know that's the same for for most beings on this planet that they consume. And so I give all vegans respect and I would give you respect to the thing that like if if we're all looking at how we consume and we're being critical of it, and then I think that's that's that's being progressively good, like just saying I really got to figure out this consumption thing because I can't get around it. I can't stop consuming, but I could maybe better consume, you know, And I think generationally I want my kid to think like that. I went in to think, how can I better consume? How can I better treat animals? How can I better understand what animals are, what I am, my balance with them, like scept my argument where where we differ? My argument is hunting has helped me do that, But could see how people would would wonder why that is? Um, And so I think my podcast and these conversations are just like a journey to be able to better articulate that. I think you're challenging me in ways, and me challenging you in ways will help us better articulate our beliefs later on. And um, if if, if this, and only if that and only that is what comes to this podcast. I think that's great, But I think probably more came from with than that. Yeah, absolutely cool. Well, I think, um, you know, I really want to elevate I think for your audience for ours, like I mean in alignment in opposition to factory farming is is something that that you know, I'd encourage people to get involved with. I think there's it's just undeniable that it's you know, frankly about it is unethical industry is could possibly exist animal agriculture. I mean, what's happening to animals, what it's doing the environment, even even to human health. Um So I think that'd be a you know, I think for people to look into. Um yeah, I think that. I think that is is big of an impact as that has on our world and who we are. You better damn we'll be looking at do it. You can't turn a blind eye to it, even if you don't agree with what Matt's saying. If you're like, yeah, but and you have a you have a bunch of retorts, and you think factory farming is useful and there's there's humane ways to do it. Yeah, I'm with you, okay, But you gotta look into it, man, You have to. You cannot turn away from it. You can't eat that bag of chicken and not be thinking about You can't. And and we all we all have our things. Man, Like I said, I'll rip out a nice chicken sandwich. In the airport like as good as anybody. But I'm always understanding of of I gotta get better. There's there's ways that I can consume that they're better than this, and hunting has been one of hopefully the many vehicles for me to do that. But but but yeah, looking like you know, direct action everywhere, Like there's I watched all the videos, you know, I all the ones that we're on there. I watched them all because I just wanted to see, you know what in two and I will admit to having like me, you guys and putting a face to your organization and putting a conversation and ideas to it has helped me not to like see those videos and we're gonna look at those extremists run around with chickens. It's like, it's not it's not that, man, it's not that. So those who are listening to this podcast that that may want to label Matt or or you know, those that are listening on d x c s the thing you want to label me, I would just encourage you to listen to the conversation's totality takes someone away from it. You go about your freaking day like you can learn something from this, I promise you. Robert. How's it going, Hey man, it's good to see it, good to be here. Yeah, it's good to meet you too. I have been reading a lot about you and watching some of your videos and and going deep into the category of veganism. And we were just talking about four we hit record. I'm I'm fresh off the heels of an interview with Matt Johnson from Direct Action Everywhere learning about species is um and learning about um animal personhood, things of that nature. So my my mind is let's forgive me, my mind is spinning right now. UM. But I do, as we were saying before, I do very much want to learn about these things that I have an open curiosity. There's absolutely nothing about me being a hunter in a met eater that makes me want to know less about this or fight against it. I'm I have a legitimate, open curiosity about what you do and what Matt does. So before we get going, give us a quick rundown of of your background, UM, in both philosophy and then also veganism as it were. Well, I can tell you, and the short version of the story is that I no, I grew up in a basic, basic American household meet three times a day. And um, my mother, she would always tease me because after I became vegan, she would say to me, I remember when you were a teenager and I didn't serve meat at a at a meal and you would say. I would say to her, mom, this isn't a real meal. You're supposed to have meat at a meal. So I so, now, of course she would now she looks at me, but um, yeah. So I grew up in that, you know, a basic American lifestyle, grow growing up on the East Coast in Philly, and then I moved to um To l A. And I had a friend who worked at a natural food store. And the first thing that happened was he showed me a little brochure of a veal crate. You and I eat a lot of veal because that was somewhat part of my food deal cut lants, veal scalapini called. My mother was Italian, so um, so I was like, oh, I had no idea they put these little things in little crates, and so that sort of planted a seat in my head and I was like, oh, man, I kind of feel bad, like I don't know if I could eat veal anymore. So that was the first exposure. And then I read a book called Diet for a New America written by John Robbins. I don't know if you know John Robins. John Robbins, he was the heir to the Baskin Robbins ice cream throne. His father and his uncle started basking Robbins. And at some point in his development he decided to be a vegan and animal rights person. And he he actually renounced, He turned down the family business and moved to Hawaiian and grew plants. But anyway, he wrote a book called Diet for New America, and and really I had one of those like Road to Damascus moments, like the scales fell from my eyes. I read this book in like two days. It just laid out like here's the animal rights argument, here's the environmental argument, here's the health argument. And I just I was it. I was just like, this makes perfect sense. I don't want to cause unnecessary suffering. I want to decrease it. And I just on the spot kind of became a vegan. How old were you then, It's in my twenties, the early twenties. Yeah, and I think we're talking about again before we recorded that there is there is this idea that that that I want to fight against that all. You know, like you kind of fringe. You assigned that fringe motive to all the thing you don't agree with. And I think it's good to hear your story and other stories about how you came to this to one, you know what it's like to eat, mean, you understand what it tastes like. You didn't. You didn't grow up in a liberal incubator in l A and Jane and Jane Fonda was not your your mother, so like she did sit in our tank a few times outside the house. Well well you know, let's see thats reaffirms at all vegans, no Jane Fonda. But yeah, I mean for us, I wanted to set that up. You know who you are and how you came to what you believe because I feel very strongly that my path came to my passion a certain way and you you came in your own You got to your passion in your own way. Um, and your in your studies in your own way. So I mean it's it's it's critical to that to that understanding your story is critical. I think for hunters to understand. Well, I have hunted too as a teenager. As a teenager, I hunted just locally in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania, obviously, hold on a seconds. Oh yeah yeah, let me take a drink of water. Believe it in me, Like the vegan guy can't he's unhealthy, throw his drive because he doesn't. So you know, as you know, Pennsylvania's a hunting state, and I grew up, Um, you know, people would go up to like Scranton and they would go hunting, and deer hunting is a big, big deal. And um, so I did. I've actually killed animals with a gun. So, I mean, I do feel bad about it now when I think about it as a little innocent I just they were just lit. They were like sitting ducks. They had no idea that I was ready to kill them. And so but I was doing it as a teenager where I was like it was fun, like I got I got a certain kind of gratification from it. So I do have that in my background as far as what happened with me, Like how did I end up, say, being a professor who's writing you know, professional philosophy on animal rights after I did that whole kind of vegan thing. I read that book. Then I started to Then I discovered that there was, actually there were there were philosophical arguments that would undergird these beliefs. So rather than saying something like, you know, animals are like you and they have rights and stuff, when I started to dig deep into it, and I started to read sort of the classics, which would be Peter Singer Animal Liberation and Tom Reagan The Case for Animal Rights. Then I started to get into like the nitty gritty because I've always kind of been analytical. And so then I went to graduate school and I, um, I just wanted to get a master's. But my professors, they they encouraged me to do the PhD thing. And you know, I'm a blue collar guy. I applied to a bunch of schools and I got a phone call one day from Stanford saying, you're in, you know, the PhD program. And I was like, I was like, wait, I know there's a lot of Robert Jones, isn't maybe there's another Robert Jones. No, there was no way I did it. So that was like they made me an offer I couldn't refuse. So when I went there, I you know, animal rights in the even in the in the world of philosophy, it's itself fringe. There's not a lot of philosophers who do this work. I mean, there's more now, but this was in nine nine years is yeah, this is all I got accepted to. You know, it's like twenty nineteen years ago. So so what I'm getting at is that, um is that at the time, I thought, I'm just gonna write my dissertation. My dissertation is called the Moral Significance of Animal Cognition. So I really got into like the moral the relationship between cognitive properties of non humans and how we value them. That was something I got really obsessed with. But what I decided was, I thought, there's no one whoever went to Stanford in the philosophy department who did animal rights. So I'm going to be that person, and I'm going to use the cash of you know, West Coast Ivy to kind of legitimate in a certain way aspects of animal rights. So so that's how that's so I've been doing that now for you know, I've got this job in two thousand eight, so it's been eleven years since i've been you know, quote professional philosopher and yeah, it's I mean, I I think there's a lot there. I think I think the issue of the moral sort of the moral status of non human animals, it's a really complicated issue. It's super complicated, and I think I'm drawn to those complicated issues. I think that's where the meat of our humanity and like the things that were really tugging at us, even as Ben did you have to say meat there tofu, I'm just trying to make you score tofu kill stuff too. We'll get there, get there. Um. I just think these issues are you know, I keep saying the meaty and and that's where like, that's where we can really get to the things that tug at us philosophically. I feel, at least there's a lot of things that tug at me philosophically about hunting, and I'm just unabashed at trying to explore them. Just happened to do it in the public forum. But I mean, there's really if I were to sit down and be like, what, you know, what worries me about hunting personally intrinsically? What what is it that that just just makes me ache? And it's just like, boy, man, this thing is it's my it's the industry I'm in, it's the lifestyle I've chosen. It's the thing I'm most passionate about. It is the thing I think the most about. And it involves killing things and ripping their guts out. And so is that you know, historically, if I look at the span of history in thirty years, are we gonna look back at me and be like, what was this guy doing? Um? So that talks to me, and I'm not you know, I'm open about it. I'm not ashamed of that. It's like probably should because if I'm going to do something as serious as go out into the you know, go out into the woods and find an animal to pick the animal I'd like to kill, go and kill it and then dismember and bring it home and feed to my family. That's a pretty complex and serious thing to go and do. It's not it's not a bike ride, you know. It's a pretty three dimensional kind of like way to to way to like recreate or to to to find joy in the world. So it's something that I that talks at me, and I think that's probably like we probably have this go same kind of quandaries within within our consumption within the what we're really involved in. It's just like you look at the world and like, I got some problems with this. How can I solve those problems? Um? And I think that's where most vegans, I don't know about you, most vegans and me kind of a line like we're just there's we see the issues with consumption and the human engine that we are, and we're trying to solve those things. Yeah, do you think so? I read I want to talk about it. We'll probably talk about this forever. But I read veganism as an aspiration and I was like clapping during most of it because I think, I think what I'd like to do is first set up what most hunters are, most folks might think about vegans and and and veganism. Veganism as an aspiration, you knock a lot of those right over, Like, at least in my opinion, you do. Um, So give us your like the two forms of veganism that you can see there to be there are two different ways that people can conceive of veganism. Yeah. So in that paper, and I want to say I I co authored that with Lori Gruin. Yes, she's she's uh one of the giants in the in the world of animal waits, and I owe her a lot for that, um. But actually I've I've since developed that idea a little bit more. Yeah, I was gonna say it's been a while, I should say that it's been two so I'm sure there's there's lots. Yeah, I've developed some stuff. But basically, the way I was, the way that I can see even of veganism, the way that Lori and I conceived of it, and then I've been thinking more about it is so let me ben, let me just say first of all that it's so I feel like I've kind of gone around the circle on this. I've gone around the wheel. And what I mean by that is when people say, like, do I identify as a vegan? Because of the way that the term and the concept vegan has sort of traveled through the culture, It's almost like I distanced myself these days because veganism, in many ways, and I talked about it in the paper You're talking about veganism is in some ways well, first of all, veganism, at least today in in popular culture, it's about It's about food choices, right, It's about the choices you you make when you when you go to purchase food or make food. And in many ways it's divorced from the issue of justice. And I see quote animal rights or animal ethics issues as it as a social justice issue about non human animals. And so I'm reluctant to use veganism interchangeably with animal justice or animal ethics because you know, Beyonce's a vegan, and all these people are vegan and they eat plant based foods, and so what I argue in that paper is, you know, you can think of yourself what I call like identity vegan or lifestyle vegans. So there are there are vegans. I mean, I don't know that this is not scientific by any means, but there is a stigma attached to vegans where people think that vegans are kind of zealous, self righteous kinds of people, and they think I'm holier than now, and I sort of I have clean hands because I don't consume any animal products. I don't wear leather, I don't eat honey, I don't use wool, I don't write and and and I know all this stuff because I lived it. Right, So it says in the papers as these vegans have an air of moral certitude and moral spirit art. So so there's a certain, whether it be factual or not, at least there's a certain caricature of vegans that they have a kind of moral superiority. And I was at at the butcher's son shout out to the butcher's side, how did you like it there? It was good? What did you well? I'm curious, I'm so curious. What did you What is your order? I had? Uh, hopefully you can give me some more like some more dope on what's really going on there. I had the chicken grinder, which is a is a nice sandwich with some kind of chicken facima. Suddenly they're like, whatever that was? I didn't really, I didn't have time. I was like, I gotta eat lunch, then we gotta go to coord of podcast. I don't have really time to take this menu and kind of like, but I took a picture of the menu, said go back and look at the ingredients and kind of break down what was what? But it was good it. I would eat there every day. I ain't problem with that. I just why did they We're gonna go We'll go down this rabbit hole because we should. Why do they why do they say chicken though, like I didn't anything. I understand. Why would you why would you say that it's chicken when it's not. I don't understand. And they also said, like, much like you're saying, we don't like the term vegan. When I was talking to the cashier's again, we don't really we say vegan. It's in there, but we don't really like to say it anymore. It's plant based, That's what he was saying, and much the same the much the same way you're saying it, and I think plant based, and I want to go back. I want to go back to that issue about it where they say chicken and the butcher's son, I mean, I I don't know if people who are listening to the podcast, but your son is a fully vegan deli in Berkeley, and I don't know if it was when you were there. Every time I've been there, it's it's a pretty packed, you can get a table. And in fact, the guy that the folks I was with from direct action everywhere, they were like, this is the this is the slowest we've seen it. It's good and it's it's all I care about a good food. No, it's good it's great food to me. I just was like a bit like, why we just tell me what's in it? I want to know what I'm eating. It's not chicken, I know that, So I just like to know if it's a wheat based you know, like shred or whatever it is. I just like to know that. I don't don't You're not tricking me. Yeah, but what you are doing is confusing me. I think I think we're going This is a good point. I had you brought up the the plant based thing because this touches on exactly what I was talking about, and that you know, within the vegan movement there is like the plant based. Now, when you say plant based, usually not always, but usually what that implies is that I'm a vegan for these reasons. Um, it's not so much focus, say on animal justice issues as much, and it can be they overlap, there's a lot of overlap, but it's it's it's more about perhaps maybe health reasons, or it could be something like environmental reasons and mental degradation, and and it's associated with or I should say, factory industrial produce, agriculture and environmental degradation. So plant based for me, if if you looked at my diet. If you just said, Robert, write down everything you eat for a week, it would look like a plant based person. But I personally, I feel like my cause is a political cause. It's a social justice cause. It's not about diet, right, so so so going back to our original questions, so and I really what I don't ben, what I definitely don't want to do is come on this podcast and pile on vegans and because they're already demonized enough. But what I want to say is the version of veganism that I advocate for, and I'm writing on it now. I'm actually I've been struggling with writing this book for a year, which is which is thinking about the social justice aspects of of this issue. But um, the eganism as as a liberation movement, not so much as a food movement, right, So, veganism as a political stance rejecting things like corporate consumer capitalism and environmental degradation. All these things are all tied together human health issues. So the picture is very big if you're a vegan. And I mentioned this all the time when I give these talks like let's say you're a vegan and buy vegan what you mean is that you do not consume and I mean that literally and figuratively with regard to say purchasing, You don't consume animal products. So you might think, I'm I've removed myself from the cycle of suffering, right, because I don't. I'm not causing any suffering. However, let's say you, for example, you go to Walmart and you buy a cotton T shirt because it's cheap, and that cotton. To produce the cotton is really environmentally it takes a lot of resources to produce cotton. And then there might be a young a young girl who's in Indonesia making you know, crap wages um to produce that that clothing under this kind of you know, um, global corporate capitalist economy. And so if you think that withholding your you're voting with your dollars. If you're voting, you're saying I'm gonna I'm gonna avoid suffering. Because most vegans who are ethical vegans, and I don't mean I mean non like health plant based versions, I mean of veganism. But most people who say, if I say to you, why are you a vegan, and you say, because I don't want to cause unnecessary suffering. So there's an implication that by refraining from eating animal products, I'm decreasing the suffering in the world. But all of our purchases. This is what I say, and that I think that's the paper where I say, I say we all have blood on our hands on our hands has some great quotes inherence and things like that. That's where I'm reading them. Like, look, I think I think conceptually veganism is great, like i'm I'm I think it's a if. It's it's like, it's a choice, is the thing I want to do. Conceptually, it's great because it's you are metering or limiting in some way your impact on the world, and you're doing it for altruistic reasons. But the big argument that I've always that most people, most even ford facing folks that I know, you're like listen, you can't your your hands aren't your hands aren't clean, they just aren't, you know, and you look at like, say, oh, keenwa right. Kea was mostly produced in the Andies. I mean there's when the when there's more higher demand for keena, that the price goes up for the people that are using it and eating it where they are you know, Mexican avocados was another great example of like, you know, the more demand from Exican avocados raise the prices and screws with a lot of things, right, and deforestation comes from people like I, I gotta prove more avcatos. Let's just get rid of this far us. And so there is there's just this this acknowledgement of that is a good Like when I was reading through that, I'm like, this acknowledgement helps to mitigate almost everything, almost everything we disagree on, at least the core basic issues. I think most hunters are most meat eaters have with me. It's like the moral superiority thing is just that's where I get off the bus. You know, that's where most that's I think that's where most folks get off the bus. So if you could start the conversation by saying, yeah, we get it. We had a lot a lot of things to figure out here. But this is just my way of trying to general better the world by consuming in a better way. I think that's that's understandable because That's what I'm doing. Again, I see I think that and I don't know, you know, I don't know the hunting culture then as well as you do, obviously, But I'm I would say, if I had to guess, both in the animals world and in the hunting world, the kind of thing that you and I are talking about is not the predominant view, at least from my experience. It's not like i'd say this in the population in general, most people, most consumers don't think about the interconnectedness of all these kinds of industries and human endeavors as the impacts that they have, right, So, so I think it's important for no matter where you're where you come down on this issue of hunting or um animal rights, we're all involved in this cycle of destruction. You can't get out of the cycle of destruction. You can't have seven and a half billion people, nine billion people by twenty fifty, eleven billion people by the end of the century. You can't have that many people and have the place be sustainable. I mean, you know, you may have heard the statistic if everyone on the planet lived an affluent Western lifestyle, we would need five and it Earth's as like resources, right, So we're all we're all in this together. I guess I grew up an older that's it. That's all another episode in the books, another year in the books of the Hunting Collective. Certainly in our second year, and it's our year really will be defined as BP and PP before Phil and post Phil right like right in the middle, instead of pre and post or after and before. We're doing a combination combination of the two free before and then after. Yes, that's right, it makes sense. It makes sense to us, um, and that's what we're gonna do. So the year will be defined really by by Phil. Phil brought us joy, he brought us pain with his Star Wars segment. He brought us laughter. I can't really remember when the laughter came, but it was in there. It was in there, Um, And we'll admit that we just recorded and threw away the first attempt at this ending. Yeah, we're planning on recording Peek behind the Curtain again. I like saying that it's fun because there's a curtain by the curtain. We were planning on recording all the setups and intros for all four of these best of episodes you're going to here in the next in the coming weeks. We just finished number two and we're already loopy loop. We're out. If you couldn't tell the intro of this episode, it was already it's already gone. It's yeah, it's a loop time and you know, like we've said, I've having having a child, so I'll be out for some time at January. We're just trying to get ahead God bless us, get ahead of thanks. But it's also the thing that we just threw away is also emblematic in a way of the show itself, because there's a lot of times that I just wing it. Have you haven't? Have you noticed that Phil, where I just wing it and it doesn't work. I have noticed, but we put it in anyway, and then some people are like, what the hell is why did you do that? I'm like why, I don't want it to be there either, But honest, yeah, it's honest. I think that's a virtue. It's imperfect, should be held up. We're in perfect heartus. Some of our stuff is hilarious. Other stuff like what is even going on? It's a hunting pockets? What are you talking about that? And I think that's just really me. So to close out the year, Phil is going to sing, No, Phil is not how he's shaking his head. He's not going to sing, well you, I have no idea what you're about to say, so I just started shaking my head. Phil, I just want to say thank you. What are you gonna sing? No, well, then you're ruining the end of the segment if you're not gonna sing. How can we end this year with you not singing? Come on, Phil, all right, that's it. We'll see you next year. All right, we red that again. I was so bad because I can't go a week without doing run oh with absolute run, drinking out and run absolutely wrong. Drinking in heaven, don't sit in at the possible would stop the row root. I'm being there again. Hold on out, bar rush shoes down my

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