00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it's episode nine Hunting Collective. Thanks for joining us this week. Phil and Iron Bozeman, Montana. I am back, better than ever, best year ever, Hunting Collective. My son was born four days ago as August O'Brien, So I'm back in the saddle man. I'm inspired. You'll hear that soon before we get into that. Uh, there's a lot going on in this episode. We got James Swan, PhD. We're gonna talk to him about a lot of things. We talked about his acting career, his book Hunting Is a Sacred Art, his book The Defense of Hunting, his documentaries, his book A War in the Woods, they wrote with John Norris about their time um together fighting the cartel in America's public lands and their marijuana grows. So this guy has done a lot. Uh, I've done a lot, a lot lives one of the more interesting guys. Kind of reminds me of a more theatrical um maybe Valarious Geist or something like that. I mean, he's done done a ton and just in the media realm within hunting. So you're gonna enjoy James Swan coming up. We also have Miles Nolte and Joe Fernado's back to talk about the two teenagers that were charged animal cruel Team p A. We talk maybe talk about a lot in this talk about lab based meats. It's a long intro, but it's not really no, I know it's not. It's like a whole podcast first half of the episode, the whole podcast. We did a full podcast, then another fool pod stuffed stuffed with content, stuff with content. So we got a lot there for you. We just got a lot build up after all this time, and so we're gonna talk to you about a lot of things. Also, a guy killed a coyote in New Hampshire with his bare hands. He may or may not be a Bond villain. Yeah, my commentary, Anger's Phil. Phil gets angry. I do. He's still angry. He's just look at his eyes, get a certain anger and his But before all of that comes to you, you want to go to New Zealand. You want to hunt tar. You want to do it maybe with me, maybe you don't want to do with me, but you would probably take it anyway. But but you have no choice, I really have no choice. You have to pay for otherwise this one is free. First Light, go to First light that and go to their homepage. Scrolled down, you'll find the Wind Hunt in New Zealand with Ben O'Brien from the Hunting Collective. Um, we're gonna go with Southern Lakes and Farti's our friends over there on the South Island, New Zealand. And if you win this hunt, you're gonna get a price package full first like kit, a weather Remark five, weather Mark LT and a bench made altitude knife, among probably other things. And I haven't told first like this, but I'm doing it anyway. If you win and you're well spoken, which I'm sure you will be, we're gonna have you on the podcast. We're going to start talking about your experience, You're how you're getting ready. We're gonna have to to get in shape, Phil. This is a rough hunt, done a couple of times. It's up and down, a lot of elevation, gain a lot of long shots. We're gonna have to practice with our riffles. We're gonna get sighted in with our weather be rifles and be ready to go take on New Zealand. It's great hunt. It's one of my favorite hunts that I've done around the world. I'm excited to do it again this may with one of you. So if you go first light dot com an enter, you'll have a chance to do all that with me. I'm very much looking forward to. As I said last time, I'm honored. Last time I gave out a link that I don't think worked. Let's just go to the website first light dot com and scroll down you'll find it. It's a picture a guy looking like he's in New Zealand's right there, and it says when a tar hunt. Yeah. I was looking at that. I was like, oh, is that picture of you? No, No, it's not. No, No, that guy's looking just a guy having a great time in New Zealand. That guy is looking at me maybe across the way. Oh that's good. Maybe I'm lost. Yeah, he's trying to help you out. We should give the listeners a lot of confidence in hunting with you. I'm gonna saying we're not gonna get lost, We'll have it. Well, I'm pretty talkative. That's about the only thing I'd really bring to it. Amateur hunter better brand. All right, Well, we got a long one. This one is packful of stuff. It goes all over the place. But I think it's a good one, So strap in for episode. Here we go. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode. Joe is saying that we I never remember the number or or people's names. I mispronounced their names. Okay, this is very self aware podcast, Miles. We're self aware. We know what our faults on. Listen. Everybody makes mistakes. You must own them, must tell them. So this is episode. We're pretty sure and uh, I'm back. They're welcome. Cut that. Well, I'm back and I have a child or a second child. We did it. Thank you for all the support out there and listener land Um, I am off social media. Did delete Instagram from my phone. Um, but I'm not gonna lie. I went on the website one time to check, let's see what was going on, to make sure the world hadn't ended. Yeah, I don't know about it. I didn't know, you know, Instagram, so why you may have see that I've been on there. But I'm supposed to be in a blackout period to spend more time with my family and you guys, So no, don't win with us. That's a terrible idea. Just just the family. Well, everybody, and here's father we've had Joe Fernado you're the only non father. Miles Nolte is a father. Phil Taylor father father. That's what they tell me, Phil Taylor father. But then the children they have to remind me. They're like, you're my dad. Does anybody I felt when when you have the kid? Right, I'm very reflective individual. I think a lot about things, as you guys made near listening, and so when the when the kid came, I was just really struck. I was like the beauty of life and I was, you know, just reflecting on what life means and life and death and looking at this little baby baby open his eyes. I look at the baby that we have a moment, and I start feeling super emotional and I started writing in my computer. I wrote like five thousand words about life, and I felt like do other people do that? Phil? Did you ever? Did you feel that emotional and reflective at the time of the birth of your children? I did, but apparently not not enough, because I didn't write a manifesto about how incredibly precious, uh there are experiences on this planet heartless. I definitely did did amount. In the hospital, for sure. I wrote one. I remember reading one complete essay that was sort of like it seemed to make sense in my sleep deprived brain. I should go back and see if it makes any sense. But you know, I'll be honest what I do. And I started doing this as soon as Amy knew she was pregnant. I've been writing letters to my kid in the future, and I have like a whole store of letters to him that like are really more about my experience, Like I don't really care he won't get any of it anyway, but it's more like my journal of fatherhood. But but having him as sort of the muse for it. Yeah, and you know, if if looking bad, if he's able to read that when he becomes filed one day, if that is to happen, like, yeah, there'll be some value in there maybe or maybe it'll hate me by this more like I don't want to listen to your ships. Burned this book very possible. Yeah, that's true. I did the same thing. I got a little leather journal when I was traveling a lot, going on hunts all over the place, and I would just write in it at night, laying at tend or whatever. Right, And I still do that now. Um, I think it's important. And if you're not gonna be Joe, you'll experience this one day. So you're getting married soon, Joe. So kids, does Calvin want to have kids? She does, She does soon enough, she has an exact number. Wait till you get you don't want to be outnumbered. I'm just gonna tell you that, right, That's what I said. That's what I said, unless unless you're gonna get you know, another husband or wife in the mix, which you know, no judgment, but I wouldn't suggest no. I just didn't see it going no. Sure, yeah, I just didn't see that. I didn't see that going that way. But that's fine. I'm not judging any buddy for their choices. You gotta move to Utah. But as long as everybody is a willing participant in the situation, I'm fine with it. I'm into as long as you're all happy. So anyway that's gonna when that happens to you, I think that's the appropriate time to be inspired about life, to reflect on life, and to be I think that's appropriate. But I think I maybe took a little bit overboard. I also think that that level of exhaustion for me anyway, puts me in a space where I'm I'm hyper nostalgic and and everything feels really important right, And I think that the thoughts that I'm having are monumental, and writing them down just really poses an opportunity for future me to look back and go, what God's name were? Utah. The first three months are just it's kind of like a hallucinatory haze for many reasons. People say you should take d m T. I'm like, I'm not on it, but I'm on it, like I'm feeling way. I just hold on because whose contact you going? You know? What you should do d MT like no one, No one is reached out. Sure, there's a guy who might listen to this. I can't remember his name. I think it's a Mansell is doing a psychedelics and hunting documentary, so he's often invited me to go on Aawaska Vision journeys throughout Central America. Uh so, yeah, people that might happen. Maybe I'll do that one day. But it's a recurring theme on your podcast. I ask it in d m T, so it has to I'm interested in it, but I figured I have a similar imagine. What I'm feeling now is very similar to I've never done d MT, so I can't. Last night, I got about two hours of sleep in twenty minute increments, and so Miles knows what you know what that's like? Phil, Yes, can you hear it in my voice? I can't, Honestly, I I can hear it in your voice a little bit, But you don't know you You look great, You're pretty well put together, look like you don't look like a new dad. And take that as a compliment, you know. Thanks guys, All right, let's get to the show. Thanks everybody for the well which is just seriously is helpful. It means a lot in these times. Um as I sit here and reflect on everything I've got and how lucky I am. And again, let's just just thank a nurse, specifically nurses in this case, but also doctors. Um I was very struck by. I won't go the whole story. They're doing a C section on my wife while talking about their favorite shows on TV, and I thought I was standing there having an emotional breakdown. My wife is in the and the doctors like this is We've done this four times today and it it that alone put me in the mindset of what they do is amazing. But that's their everyday life. They go and do amazing work a lot of times life saving work, definitely life giving work, every single day, multiple times a day. UM, and I podcast. I told every nurse that came in, I'm like, I don't know how you do what you do. I have a podcast, And some one of them said podcasts are hard. No one's going to die. Don't say that, you promise there's nothing. But I was interested in their Netflix commentary during the C section. They're all into that documentary Don't Funk with Cats, which we're going to talk about in a second. Actually, that's a good transition to what we're gonna talk about next, and that is UM too. You'll find out to last week, Miles, you were here. But last week we talked about the two teenagers in Pennsylvania who are being charged with animal cruelty, among other things, based on a video they posted on Snapchat. Now, we got a lot of, as you can imagine, a lot of reaction to our conversation. UM. A couple of people called me out for not getting it, and I think that was because everybody in the room felt Lakada, Anthiokata, Phil and Joe felt that UM harsh punishers were necessary. I feel like that too. I was just a little bit worried and still am worried about the vitriol and social media is that it gets to be hyperbolic, it gets to be very intense. People are calling these teenagers monsters, which they're very well maybe monsters, But it was just worries me that that language just turned around all to come alto commonly within this stuff. People are are rushing to demonize these folks, and as we found out Joe from doing a little research, there's not a whole lot of redeeming qualities in these two young men. No, there's a lot more too the videos than what a lot of the general public saw. Yeah, so I got an email, I got I said a couple of messages. People are saying that I didn't get it, that I will, that I didn't want to just string these kids up in the in the town square, and I didn't want to run out the normal anger outrage on social media and use all that language that everyone likes to use, calling the monsters talent, saying they should get the maximum punishments. The court of public opinion and outrage, it was pretty pretty clear on this one. They kind of have some good evidence to go to go on that, but it worries me so. But we I got a email for someone who wishes to beIN anonymous and he said that he signed the petition we talked about and that he regretted UM. Among other things, he said the maximum punishment, which was what thirty seven years? Joe Adham all up? Thirty seven years for the eighteen year old, Yeah, he said, he said that that now seems pretty extreme to him. UM, but he was one of those emailers that just felt they needed to be punished. But that thirty seven years the maximum penalty. Now we're not saying that they're going to get the maximum penalty. It's very rare. Do that, Um, that that judging these kids that harshly this quickly could be a mistake. Let's let the judicial system do it's do its work. So that's some of the reaction that we had. I take this very seriously. I'm not being flippant about what I say about the internet reaction. UM, Joe, you can tell us what you found out, but first tell us what UM the official you talked to? Who was it again, Travis Low? What's Travis to Pennsylvania Game Commission? He's there? Media contact. So so we reached out to Travis or Joe did and Joe you found out a little bit about how how Internet outrage and folks sending in stuff to the Game Commission fueled the investigation. Yeah, that really brought it to the Game Commission's attention. Like, without the outrage on social media and everything, they probably wouldn't have known about it. But that was the driving factor. It's like people were posting to their Facebook page and really pushing for the Game Commission to investigate it. So of course they took it upon themselves to do so. Um, the Game Commission did, although they conducted a really thorough investigation. Lots of people were getting really mad at them that didn't just come out with charges and go charge these kids. Um. But Travis explained to me that it was really important that they went through their investigation, which I think took about seven weeks. They did through investigations, making sure that these kids were in Pennsylvania, went out there, I went to their stands, uh, took their phones, went through their phones, saw all the videos, took phones of their friends, took phones from friends, anyone who got texted the video that they were at least willing to get from the two kids. One of them were we got Joe got the Affidavid yep. That that detailed the interviews of both both the minor, the seventeen year old and the eighteen year old. I read them. Um, there's a lot there. They seem not to really understand the still when they're being interviewed by the game severity, the severity of it. The way that it described their reaction is they're kind of excusing it. I mean, I've never said, I've never seen someone put the evidence out there in the public and then try to explain it away like a seventeen year old would if they got caught breaking, you know, piste up open weed by their mom or something. That's this is the way that it looks there. So they it's clear even reading those aff David's and having the recounting of the initial interviews with both the individuals, that they don't get it. Um. I think it's safe to say from what's there, that's what I cleaned at least. Yeah, definitely, Um that there was a lot a lot that went on there. It seemed like they didn't get it. I mean they didn't. They obviously weren't in the field prepared. Yeah. Um, and supposedly they were just trying to dispatch the animal because they were out of animal and didn't have a knife. This is the excuse that they're using in the video. They're laughing while kicking it in the face, and they did this. Details that we have here do no favors to these two teenagers. No favors makes them look so much worse than the even the actual video does because there it doesn't cover contrition, but it doesn't seem like there was much. Yeah. Travis informed me too that that that deer got up and ran away after the whole are deal. Yeah, they never found the deer. They never found it was five. He shot it with the seventeen year old minor shot it with him, wasn't it. I can't remember it? Says the caliber I know that savage bush Master. Yeah, so's shooting with the air fifteen modern sporting rifle. Um. So he does that and then he drops. He has three rounds, three rounds, shoots it once, wounds it, and he drops ejects a live round, live cartridge on the ground out of the tree sto and then misses with that third cartridge that they had and he only had three cartridges and no knife. No knife, And so then their version of the story goes that then they were going to dispatch it here by crushing its wind rushing it's windpipe, which somehow includes kicking it in the face and laughing. Yeah. Like I'm just telling you, like once, once you get into this stuff, the details here and read the Affidavid. If you were pissed before, good luck, because it is. It's sick. Yeah. Well, and one of the main pieces of evidence for um aggravated uh cruelty to an animal the one of the felony charges. You have to have physical evidence that an animal sustained serious bodily injury. And the bit of evidence that the game commission has from that is the antler from the deer with a chunk of skull plate. Yeah, from the deer. Yeah, the deer got away after they That takes a substantial amount of force. Substantial and that's I don't know why you would be kicking a deer in the face and mess some of his antlers if you're trying to dispatch it. Les. Have you seen this video? I have intentionally not seen this video. You really don't want to. I don't, And I'm fully aware that I don't want to see this video and I still don't. Um. I'm I'm obviously aware of the situation because we're covering it. Um. And you know, I think my initial response is similar to your has been in that Find me a teenager who hasn't done monstrous things, and I will show you a liar. But I also think that there has to be a level of accountability for the horrible things we do as teenagers that allow us to grow into more mature adults. So I mean, I don't know that thirty seven years in prison is going to facilitate that shift for either one of those, but absurd, uh. But the having said that, something needs to happen in order to engender a recognition of how awful and wrong this is and why. And it seems like something you know, beyond the torching on the internet. Oh yeah, beyond that that you know, the book is being thrown at them, and there's you know, I know Travis was talking to you about there's more to the video then what was on social media what we've seen, not that there needs to be anymore to it. That doesn't really matter. UM. Where this comes to the documentary on Netflix called Don't Funk with Cats. Anybody seeing this thing? It's real, it's of it. I was going to watch it this weekend because so here's here is this when the cats eat people? No, No, that would be a good documentary. I'll get to that later. Continue that's Batman. No, No, there's a new study out. We gotta get to that. I at all of stuff to get too. Um So, after thinking about this, one of the things I thought about is it's it's often. I mean, if you read the nine Signs of a serial killer, animal abuse is normally one to three. It's in the top top indicators if someone's gonna be serial I thought about that after we recorded. So, you know, though there is the danger to society aspect of punishing these people that are doing this. I think this falls under that kind of material, like that kind of evidence that someone is sick and has an issue and is disassociated a lot of ways. Um, sociopathic tendencies are there too, So I start to think about that. Um, I just stumbled on this documentary. So I don't even documentary is a good word for it. But whatever it's about. Uh. A man who posted online anonymous videos of him killing cats. The first one is two kittens in a vacuum seer vacuum seal bag. The second one was drowning a kitten in a bathtub. The third one, I can't remember the exact abuse, but it doesn't matter. Well, there was a a large snake and a kitten. So there was a bunch of Internet researchers, will call them Internet detectives who got ahold of this stuff. They started a Facebook page. They all got together. They started doing their own research on who this person was trying to catch them. The person was maniacal enough to kind of leave breadcrumbs for these folks. He understood the game. Um, it becomes very much a a mystery thriller at some point. But then it takes a huge turn because the fourth or fifth video this person and uploads is him murdering someone Jesus stabbing someone to death. Um, and then the whole thing turns right. So, as I'm watching this, I'm thinking of these kids apples apples, maybe not, but it they covered in the documentary. The story really is that that the reason it's titled don't Funk with Cats, because that's one of the rules of the Internet. But in rules in general, it's a sign of that statistic behavior is a sign of things to come. This is just one of those cases where it made for a I don't know riveting is a good way, but it made for an interesting documentary about the whole case. They eventually, UM, I won't give it away, but that's that's the general premise. As I'm watching that, I'm thinking of this and in those two things are tied in because if someone's willing to do this, willing to laugh while they're abusing an animal, wild animal like that, any animal, there's something there. Um, So it's worth watching. And I think that's what when we talk last time about the federal legislation that that Donald Trump signed back in November, it addresses that specifically, um as a reason why there should there's a federal there's federal legislation to punish people who upload animal cruelty cruelty videos on the internet. Now, um, which to be you can correct if I'm wrong, Joe. This that is not included in the charges against these two individuals, not inclusively. The charges are coming directly from Title eighteen from Pennsylvania statutes, So it's not federals all states stuff from my understanding, which I'm not sure if it is correct, but a federal agent would have to bring the charges forward. Certainly unfits it certainly fits. Yeah, it certainly, I think something that's unsaid so far. Maybe you guys covered this last time. I'm not sure, but um, this is particularly problematic. This is the number one reason why this is problematic is because it's just awful to see, for me, human beings intentionally harming and getting joy from harming an animal. But we've also got a problem here of how this reflects on the broader hunting community we with with the exception of Phil, I mean, Phil Fiel feels a little bit of an animal killer, I think, but not really, not not really something that he has explored to its fullest extent. The three of us have have have killed things, a decent number of things, right, And I think from an outside perspective, it is easier than we would like to admit for someone who is a non hunter and doesn't have any any connection to hunting culture to say, well, how are you guys any different? You love to kill deer, And we have to continually fight to draw a line of nuance where no and I don't speak for all hunters, but I will say I don't love to kill deer. I really love to hunt deer, and I really love to eat deer. The killing part is inherent in that whole process, and it doesn't for me personally bring me a lot of joy. I get joy upon being successful, but the actual death part doesn't tickle any any happy emotions for me. I've been thinking about this this This was another thing. We did talk about this in general last time, but I think about it a lot. I think about there's like there's an inevitability around regret in terms of like how many things I've killed, And you know, people might say, oh, I'm a proud hunter. I'll continue to be for my entire life, I'm sure. But if anybody listen to the first volume of the Best of We Had, Wyman Men's are on. He's an older gentleman who did a lot of trapping in the seventies and eighties, trapped hundreds of coyotes and furbears, sold their pelts to pay for his college loans and his pick up and pay for his food. So he has, you know, very literally a lot of blood on his hands. He talked about I asked him flat out, do you ever regret any of that? Do you ever have any moments to regret? And he said absolutely. Um, he's during that time in his life when he was killing a lot for personal gain, personal profit. Right. He talks about having a kould the trap and seeing this kuyd of give up and no, it was coming like no, his life was up. And then he talks about going back to his truck and crying. And then similar story another kuy out who knew as the time was up, who did nothing but fight and was in this trap snarling and took a picture of it, which he still has and he's shown me and he talked just reflecting on that there's regret, he's he has regret and then and then there was doubt in the moment, right, so there's there should be. One of the beautiful things about hunting is it does it pushes that into the fore of your mind. You got to think about the inevitability of death, what it means to be inflict death on some other being. That's one of the things I think helps me one know that there is going to be regret at some point in my life. But boy, I'm pretty sure I'll look back on some of the things I've done, I could do it now. Any hunter or angler really should should be honest themselves. Like there's some stuff I regret. Oh, absolutely, there's some stuff I regret. I mean, this was a very rough late season for me because this is the first time in my whole hunting career that I wounded an animal and didn't recover it. It's never happened me before. And I think there's some level of disassociation that we all have to undergo to be able to do what we do right. And so we're we're drawing lines in the sand between what is acceptable dissociation what isn't right. But you know I would be lying it would I wouldn't be sleeping at night if I were constantly thinking about I wounded that dear. I'm sure it died. I did everything that I personally think I could have done to recover it, but it doesn't matter. The bottom line is I was unable to do so. And so last time we had James Tantillo on Dr James Tantillo when he talked about the tragic knowledge right tragic wisdom, which is the philosophy that hunting thrusts upon you this life and death scenario often, and it allows you to if you're willing to. In this case, like you said, you can disassociate from it and act like it's a normal activity. Well, or you can associate with it and let it teach you something, because as he said and other others have written, that deer you kill is not so different than you, That life you've taken is not so different than your own life. And that's that's a powerful thing that you can accept and let inform the way you go through hunting. Like, I don't know a lot of people are doing that because it's a hard thing to do. Maybe it's and we talked about there. I said this about having a kid. There's reflective people and unreflective people. That's okay, But if you're gonna reflect on it, that's a pretty powerful thing to think, sit and think about. And for me, it's why hunting is compelling and why I think it makes me a better person in a lot of ways. Um. And so there is that the general thought. These these um teenagers haven't gotten that. I didn't have that when I was seventeen or eighteen. I can tell you that, Um, it's always a complicated one. Now when it comes to what's happening. From a legal standpoint, these kids are screwed. They very well should be screwed. I mean, the the extra investigating we did, Joe did a lot of it just put them man even more intensely in the crosshairs of They deserve to be punished and punished harshly because the affid David is pretty damning. Yeah, yeah, definitely is damning. There's there's no part of it that that isn't um. It's hard. It's hard, I would say, like to me, the best case scenarios this is that that folks on the Internet were able to alert the Game Commission, alert authorities, make sure they understood it. This is very serious. We wanted taken seriously, and they did. They did it what from all accounts, a great investigation. Investigation. They listened two folks that were trying to alert them to what happened. They didn't seem like they were listening to the vitriol. They didn't seem like they were allowing that outrage to drive them, which I think is where I get off the bus, Like put the evidence in their hands and and and let them do their job. You know, if these kids both gotta slap on the wrist, then you can then you can drive the outrage where it's where it's intended to the authorities. But in this case, it looks like, um, they're gonna get some harsh penalties. Yeah, definitely, um more so over the eighteen year old than the seventeen year old. But which just silly. That's the that's a that's another can of worms. So I feel like that's all we're really gonna say on that. I mean it, like we said last week, it does go on a lot of directions that this conversation leads to a lot of things. Um Myles brings up a great point about people that don't agree with hunting can look at this and see something sinister that they feel is going on in our heads anyway. They might feel like this is just a manifestation of what we all are thinking. Um, that's not true, but there it is. That's the Internet. That's how it goes. So we can't really fight fight that. So you know, continue righting in with your thoughts about this. I appreciate those that wrote in for or against my stamp point. It seemed like that what I said got some people fired up. That's fine, that's what this is all about. But again, we'll we'll have something on the Meteria dot com soon. Just kind of go through this whole thing and give people, um as many details as we can. And I don't think we'll have any opinions in that piece, just gonna be facts as we see it, just a nice linear accounting of how this happened. Because again, go watch that documentary. Don't funk with cats. Don't know how watching that, I'm like, it's kind of like work to dude's I'm investigated, but that it's it's funny how these things come up. It's an entertaining documentary, but it it goes to what we're talking about here, So do it, Joe. I'll go watch it all right, as long as does all my spare time going straight to Netflix. Dude. It's dude, it's a it's a four part documentary and I was like flipping through them quick because I wasn't sleeping, Um, Joe. Then a man in New Hampshire strangle to kyote to death. He did, and you were you report that. There's a lot. This is another one where it's not just you could just write the news story. But there's some other stuff in here that reading your article that I discovered that I thought was pretty crazy, namely that this man was out on a hike. Is that correct, Joe, a little hike, the hikers family, wife, make kids, three three kids, and you said three numbered, out numbered, out numbered, and that's when the rabidet That's exactly they're picking off the Darwin. Thanks Charles Son of any Wow. That's sorry about that anyhow, UM tells the story. Joe at least get a started. So yeah, so ian o'reiley out hiking with his family and a coyote UM believe to be your dabod hasn't been tested yet, hasn't come back positive from the testing yet. Uh attacked his young son, grabbed him by his snow jacket and pulled him to the ground. Mom was able to separate the two and dad put him in between and was victim of some aggressive attacks from that ky of multiple He was bitten, bitten in the arm. Yeah, and then he put him to the ground, showed him in the snow, and he was able to strangle him, put his knee up on his rib cage and stuff, and hand around his his windpipe, and strangle him. It took about ten minutes. That's some intimate violence, right, ten minutes. And if the video of the guy, he looks like he might be in the mafia or something. He looks you think so, I don't know. He's from New Hampshire. He seemed like suburban look at the video like a nice guy. He looked like he might have he might have done some violets in his life. Look at him. He's got like slick back hair. He's the way. He's a badass. Um, he is, phil What do you do on it? That's you have two young children? Are you choking that card out? Okay? In the in this picture on CNN, Yes, he does. Look at that he looks like a James Bond villain. Oh, he does. Very handsome. Handsome, Yeah, like a stubble like a He looks like if Ryan Reynolds was a bad guy on a there he is. Look at him, kind of looks like Liam Neeson a little bit, a little bit good. Yeah, that guy has an experience with fighting animals in this now he showed his hands like that. He's like, these are registered the registered in the day of your Hampshire. No, he definitely has that like, oh, what what are the what's the movie series with where Liam Neeson is avenging his daughter? There's a taking thing going on here. Yeah, I will find you very much talks like a mom and you guy does he You missed the second part of that quote he said, but so we're he has his hands a registered baby. He is a badass. Good for you, Ian, O'Reilly you look like maybe you were just come. You were like on the set of twenty four and you don't. I'm mildly offended that you. You asked me that I would defend my small children if they were So what do you do? You take it out quickly? Here, take the kid, don't touch me, just like Oriley even sent his family away, Like while he was dealing with the coyote, he was like, get out of here and say yourselves. You know, you know right, he knew what to do. Time slowed down for Ian. I'm just saying what time slow done for? You? Would It's sord to say unless say we're in that situation, but I would try. My best is strong enough, I would hope. So yeah, okay, I feel confident as you offended him, then are you mad? Oh man? I can see that anger. If you get if your son gets attacked by Beard, remember this moment. This will use this as fuel, got it. It's a motivational talk. I would beat the ship out of that kite. This dude, you know Riley, the bad guy from twenty four. He punts this thing in the face. He kicks it in his face multiple times. Then it comes back at him, grabs him by the snout and I'm just looking at you, Joe, for so I'm not telling grabs him by stop, push his face in the snow, and then put his other hand on his windpipe and proceeds to choke it to death. That right, And here's a detail. His other kid, Do you say this? His other kid was attacked by a rabid raccoon last year, last year in Get out of New Hampshire. Deal with rabies. But he didn't kill the raccoon with his bare hands. He did, but he could have. He probably could have. That's the point. Probably would have been easier than the guy. All right, Joe, reach out to Ian. We're gonna have him on. He'll probably say a lot of like very ominous things. Sometimes had some experience in this field. Sometimes, you know, I'm a sanitation worker. Yeah, I paint houses. People call me the cleaner sometimes. I got a lot of concrete blocks, but rope in my garage. I have to point out a slight irony in this conversation thread, just just just I think it's worthy of attention that we absolutely crucified two people for beating up on one particular animal, and now we just lionized another guy for in a very similar way, brutalizing animal. I recognized there's context, but I just have to point out a little bit of irony to the way that that's gone. This is one of those things, you know, like one of those uh the less the listener can decide absolutely, are we being hypocritical? Psible you decide. It's kind of like one of those choose on adventure things. Um, we'll record two different endings. You tell us which one, which one you want us to put in. But you're you're not wrong. Violence against animal, violence against animal, Yeah, the context being the important part. Context matters. I am not arguing against context. I just felt like that had to be addressed, like we had to call out the fact that I know it's worth bringing up, but I would like to think that if Mr Riley had the option to kill this coyote in an ethical quick way, he probably would have done so. I would like to strangling him in the snow for Takeing said he didn't want to kill it, like he yeah, felt remorse. He said it in a very Bond villainesque way. But he said, I'm sorry you made me like you did this to you. He clearly wanted to live, but so did I. It's incredible ship. Just like what when I watched that and he's wearing all black. He's like a black trench coat. He's got a five o'clock shadow, like the bag under his eyes are just like he's been thinking about some ship all night long. Yes, he's a little bit tired, all right, A man, I had so many things I want to talk about. Oh we said last week, Phil and I don't want to leave people hanging. Uh that we talked about lab grown meats. But I feel like that's that could go. We could have like a three hour opening segment at this point. We talked about this like as as you were working on that piece. We we had some some good conversation. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. Uh, your call, it's your podcast. Man, do you get to make that choice. We're gonna talk about we're gonna do lab grown meats. We're gonna get to um James Swan, PhD. In a minute. James Swan is awesome thespian, first first SPI, and we found in the show field. I haven't had any thespians on. He's one. He had told told a story about Walter math Al, which I thought was great, renowned, nice angling actor. So that that fits into what we're up here right now. He talks about he dressed up one time as a recycle man and went around. He sent me pictures. It's areas. I'll try to post them. But James Swan has done everything. Um, so you're gonna enjoy that conversation before you get to that. We we we got to talk about lab grown meats. I wrote a piece for the medior dot com. Why you might ask, I was into the subject for the moment. It is the meat eater and it also is that so it seems pretty on the nose. Yeah with words uh and the Association awards. So we're there. It's called lab grown meat is here to stay and it might change everything. Um, yes, I believe it is, so go read that piece. But in that piece we talk about a lot of things. The major thing is this thing is coming. It's i would say, it's just about to the point where you're gonna see it in stores. There's a lot of things happening in a positive way for what they're now calling cultured meat industry. There's a big debate about what to call this, what you could call it, how you could sell it, how you can name it um, But there's momentum in in the technology and the production, in the funding. There's a lot of new funny guys like Bill Gates involved in this, Richard Brent Bronson involved in this, Some of the major players in Silicon Valley are involved in this. They feel like it's the future. Oh yeah, on that. On that note, my best friend from high school who's way smarter than me and has graduate degrees from Yale and this kind of thing. It's his job, the kind of like nurture startup companies and how they should invest their money and grow. And the thing he is most excited about is this is yes, this and so they just back in August, five companies started the alliance from Meat, Poultry and Seafood innovation. They're lobbying now for this stuff. They said they're a coalition of food companies dedicated producing meat, poultry, seafood directly from animal cells. And I guess before we go too much further, we should say, what the hell? What the hell is lab grown meat? Miles made a good point, Tell him Miles about the misunderstanding. Good points all the time. Okay, Okay, I got a narrow You're talking to a genius. Much of my moments of brilliance? Do you want me to lebrate? So? I think what you're referring to is I have had a few conversations around this topic with folks who seem to conflate the lab grown meat idea with what we're seeing in a lot of different places right now, with the plant based meats, the beyond burger, the impossible burger, uh, and the saucage varieties right those those have just recently kind of hit the mainstream market in a way that they never had before plant based meat, which I think is a misnomer. But whatever um is. But I still want to know what jackfruit is. It's a semantic argument. I'm not gonna get there. Everything's made a jack But I do want to very clearly line out that there's a difference between these fake meat or plant based meat products and the cultured meat. Those are two totally different technologies. They're too total of different products. They're not the same thing. The cultured meat is grown from lab or from from animal cells in a lab, so it has never been attached to an animal that has a nervous system and all the other things that we associate with an organism. It's just cells reproducing in a closed environment that are animal muscle cells. Yeah, they put they put in a little petri dish, they take they do a little biopsy on whatever animal we're speaking up here. Obviously they intend to do this for fish as well. That's what they say. But this is not when you see the impossible Burger, the beyond is not the same thing. This is totally those two things confused. And I think that the key difference in the eyes of the folks that are manufacturing this stuff is that the beyond Burger and the impossible. While they would eliminate animal agriculture if adopted on a mass scale, there still is environmental impacts of the ingredients that go the plant based ingredients that go into these products. So the difference here is are other than removing the cell from the animal and having the manufacturer facilities and all those things, there's to me a really logical thread that says that this could could eliminate a lot of the issues with animal agriculture and and plant past agriculture as well monocultures and things like that. So this this is it. There's a logical thread that you can trace this to, like, hey, here's a nice solution for those things. And that's what these companies. These companies are largely ideological. They're not out there to saying that things are possible beyond burgers and things like that. They're not out there to make you healthy. Um, they want to make sure that that happens. I would imagine the FDA will will not approve them unless they do. But that's a big part of it. So that that's what it is, right I said. The article that the first taste test was back in in London. Was it aired on BBC. You watch it, there's links to it, there's in the article, you can watch it. It's weird. There's food critics like chewing on this stuff and then talking about like how it tastes. It feels very sci fi to me. I feel it feels just weird. And most of the people that have comments i'd read are just like, no, no, we're not doing this, Like I'm not, I'm I'm not. I don't even want to read about it. I don't. That's what we are doing it. That was my point, Like we're doing it, We're doing it. It's happening. And as as Phil said and as as I wrote in the article, um, a lot of very smart people, a lot of progressive people that kind of sit worship at the altar of technology and progress, are this is the future. That's what they say. I mean, it's a future, and I think that you I don't necessarily share your same level of skepticism about this. Now that's not to say that I'm fully on board and I think this is a pantasy it's going to solve our problems. I don't. But I also am very much of the opinion that our current animal agriculture practices are not real sustainable and as we continue to grow in population, and as more and more of that population wants to consume animal protein, we're gonna have to come up with some solutions for how we're gonna pull that off. And and I don't think that clearing forest land to raise more industrial cattle is the answer. I'm not a fan of that. I know that's what's going on. I don't personally consume very much um industrial meat. That's just I'm lucky, right I can hunt my friends who hunt in my fashion. I'm in a very privileged position in that I get to harvest the vast majority of the meat that I eat, my family eats. But not everybody can do that, and so it's I think it's easy for us as hunters right now to sit and say, oh, well, you know, big agriculture meats bad. But I don't support that. We can't scale hunting to the point where it's going to solve all the problems that we have this. I don't know. There's there's a lot more information that needs to come out about this practice. There are certainly going to be by products and issues that come around as this technology continues to develop. But I'm also not immediately throwing it out is like it's got to be bad, This is not gonna work. It's fake meat. I don't know. I'm the jury is still out for me. I'm curious to see the direction that it goes. And I think that the point of what I wrote and that article was to address that, like it could be a solution. Maybe it's one of many possible solutions to what man, You would be incredibly shortsighted not to see the issue here we have will have was it ten billion people by estimation, can't feed them the way we're feeding them now? Um, and if you start to and that's why people also asked me, why are you so concerned or you're doing a hunting podcast, why aren't you talking about Why are you talking about veganism and plant based meats and why are you getting into the lab lab based meats and what is this like? Why this is why? Because it's convenient for me to say, I'm gonna kill that elkin. That's all I'm gonna eat. That's it's convenient. It's nice for me. But as you said, Miles, and as I wrote in the piece, it's not scalable. No, it's not going to fix everything. And we can't go out into the public and say this can fix your problem. It's not a very personal level anecdote to all these issues with animal agriculture. In the production of foods, so kind of garden in your backyard. Um, all these things can be solutions to to those problems, but they're very personal solutions and not necessarily scalable in the way that we've set this stuff up, just not then the way that we need them to be scalable if we actually want to come up with long term solutions for the challenges that we're going to face, and so even that we are facing. Here's the point that the one point I'll make, and I'll just try to make it brief, but if we've talked about this forever, the point that I make in the piece and the point I'll make now is that I think that we can hunt better, far and better. Um, we can grow better, we can do all the things that we're currently doing better right and still associate with the natural world, not totally disconnected. If I eat the perfect cellular piece of meat, my feeling is kind of giving up. It's giving up and saying like there's enough of us within this ten billion people that will never step back and look at their consumption. We have totally over the last one ten tho years since we started to cultivate the earth to grow things. Over those last ten thousand years, we have evolved so much. There's enough of us now that are unwilling to look back at how they consume and do it better that we have to come up with this idea like this is it's I said in the piece, it's orwelling in some ways, like to grow this is is is giving up in my mind. So my argument is like, look, this is again, like it's like a strange it's strangely robotic as a solution, Like it's just strangely like we couldn't reason with people anymore, so we had to just say, screw it, We'll grow in the lab. Like, there's no way that all tend abillity, these people are going to sit down and say we are screwing this up and then all come together and fix it. That's not gonna happen. There's no way. So we'll reverse engineer what we've already created and just do it all on a lab. That's that's my feeling and my cynical ass It feels like we've already passed that tipping point, right, That's the point you made to me while as I was writing it, Like, dude, we're already there. We've we've already created completely synthetic food culture for just about everything we consume. And so to me, this is just one more step in that evolution and that tipping point where we lost all the connection to giving up on coming together with a consensus of how we do the sustainably that that ship is sailed. Man, we're way past that happening. I agree with you. I'm very cynical to like, so that's an impressing idea. And and and and to watch this go down this is common. I mean it's how like, the question is how big is it going to be? Yeah, the question isn't and how effective is it going to be? Yeah? And so look, I would probably eat one of these things happily. No. And I said this about plant based meat in the past and veganism in the past, like I would prefer to act in that way outside of my wild game meat that I consume. I would prefer to act in that way as a philosophical ideo logical like way of being. Yeah, I don't want to consume things that I don't know where they come from. But as as you guys both said, if I'm being cynical, I'm like, well, where my clothes come from the store, Like where did my car come from the lot where I bought it from? And so it would be hypocritical for me to say, like, oh, I have a garden and I kill animals, so I'm cool, I've done it. Don't worry about me, guys, worry about the other ten billion folks at that that aren't his h and producing my own wool. Point taken, I mean, I think if you really want to look at what has what we've had to do to support the population that we currently have, it is all lab based, right. There is no feasible way that we even come close to where we are now or even the population that we had post World War One, unless we figured out a way to synthetically create fertilizer. We had to find a way to separate nitrogen out as a molecule, which we didn't have before because guess what, we were running out of guano because we'd harvested it all over the world, and we didn't have enough fertilizer. We didn't have enough nutrients in the soil to feed our population back in. Like, so, my my point in all this is, I think you have to look at it in context. Every time a new technology pops up, it's very easy to look and be like, this guy's falling. We're all screwed. That's gonna kill us. And maybe it will. But there have been a lot of times, very professor Oreole, Yeah, but there have been a lot of times in the industry where this has happened and it's and then we're like, get past it and it works out, and everybody was, oh, yeah, that was a great idea, So glad we did that. Yeah, yeah, I could see that. I just think this is different. I think this is a leap. It's quite the leap. Um. Maybe if we said, hey man, we've industrialized all this other stuff, let's keep how we interact with the natural world and how we consume it, at least from our from a dietary standpoint, let's keep that separate. But again we've already we don't I know, we don't I know, and we can't really if we want. If you want to run the numbers, that's what these folks have done. And then like they've probably there. They have a prophecy and it says that this is the way. Um, And I'm not totally against it. I'm just worried about how quickly we might jump into it, and like how quickly will embrace that technology, and how quickly it will change us at our core, how quickly it will change our humanity, like how we think about the world, how we move around it. And so that's a worry that I have you read the piece, you'll read kind of it's addressed briefly there, but I I says in a title, it's here, and it's probably gonna change a lot um, and we'll have to deal with that. I just would like to there be a firm warning that, like, while we're dealing with this, let's be mindful of what it can do to us and what it probably will do to us over time. Um, because it's important to know what are we We've already talked about tragic wisdom and all the things like life and death, and when we removed that from this process, Boy, that is it's worrisome to me, if if if you want me to probably not scape the thing that I'm actually most worried about in the success of this, which is not something we've covered, But I want to know what happens when we lose grazing leases as something that we want for federal and state lands, right if if if we we, if we supplant, there's a long way down the road and a lot of hypotheticals, and I get it. But if we really do supplant the beef industry to the point where it declines, all of a sudden, there's a whole lot of public land that's no longer being monetized in the way that it once was, and a far fewer defenders of that those lands. And I like those places. I don't love seeing catalog all the time. But that's just just to throw another thing for you to worry about with all this into the my poor children. Uh. One thing I mentioned in here and there was a a group called rethink X. They're independent think tank at a London, which a lot of this stuff seems to be coming from London, but San Francisco has picked up on lab based meats cultured meats as well. But they throize that by demand for cow products will have follow that includes chicken, pig, fish, and other things. Either. I went and did a bunch of research as to how close some of these things are. There is a company called just Meets at of San Francisco that thinks that they might be able to get a chicken nugget. Why the first lab base thing has to be a fucking chicken nugget? I don't know. Why couldn't it be like something not processed. I guess I know you do. That's why I can't uh um. But they also said this is maybe where it gets um the scariest for me, or just the most sci fi um that they said that there will be molecular chefs that are creating food, much like current folks create an app, software based chefs, so they'll be able to look at certain molecules, put them all together, and create something in a lab that can taste however we desire to taste. That makes me nervous. That's freaky. That's a good way to put it. It's freaky. That's why it's interesting. And so we'll continue to cover stuff like this on the show. In fact, next week, next week, we're gonna yeah, next one, I would tell you what we're gonna do that's not gonna be surprised. Next week, we're gonna do a Pepsi challenge on plant based meats and wild game. We're gonna put a blindfold on some people and we're gonna ask them to taste each one and see if they can pick out the wild game. I don't think I'm invited, but I'm just gonna crash that one. Please come, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna hang out and eat. The rumor is Steven Ronnell is gonna be here for that. We got a bunch of people from the office I want to take part. Um lots to cover there. James Swan is uh, pretty interesting man. He is written books, he has written treatments for TV. He's been on TV, He's been in movies. He's written documentaries, he's co produced documentaries. Um. He co wrote a book with John Norris called War in the Woods about uh fighting. You'all probably know him if you listen to Mediator podcast where if you listen to Joe Rogan podcast, he was in on the first publishing of that. It was did a lot of ride alongs with John during that time, and so as I dug into this guy, I realized he's done a lot of stuff, and um, I think at one point during the podcast, I just he talked for like twenty minutes straight and then my my only response was can we be friends? That was it? Uh, because he's got a lot of stories. So imagine sitting around having a whiskey with James Swan would be quite interesting. So hopefully over the next hour or so you feel that way. So now you're gonna listen to James A. Swan, pH d. On All Things Hunting, all Things philosophy. He's also one time Recycleman superhero. Enjoy Dr Swan. How are you just fine? Thank you, sir. I'm I couldn't be any better. As I was just telling you before we hit record. I'm a newly minted father. Um, so I'm feeling pretty good about life right now. That sounds great. I can I cannot complain, but I'm excited to talk to you. I been doing a lot of research about your life and times and your work, and um, you have your your work is varied. I'll just say that there's a lot you can say about it. But you you were just telling me you acted up in twenty one UM films and different things. You've You've written books, you have UM directed and written documentaries. You have on and on you go. So there's a million things to talk about. And that's my favorite type of guest on the show. So thanks thanks for doing all that. Appreciate it well, thank you, thank you. Um, we should start out with I was reading a couple of things and I came across that you grew up in Michigan. Our our founder, Steven Ronnella, grew up in Michigan, and a bunch of our crew here. I grew up in that part of the world. So we might as well start where you started, and a little bit about how you first came to to to love the outdoors and being outside and wanting to do it for a living. Well. I was born and raised on an island at the mouth of the Detroit River as it empties into Lake Gary. Gross Seal is the name of it. And um, you know, fifty feet out the front door of the house, you could be in in a canal, and uh you could be fishing, and you know, you go another hundred yards and you could have a duck line. So from a you know, very early age, I learned about hunting and fishing. But I will remember that the first fish I ever caught from that canal, it was a big pumpkin seed sunfish, and we brought it back with great ceremony to have for dinner. And I took one bite out of this thing and it just tasted horrible, tasted like oil, at which point my father's kind of said, oh, well, um, the Naval Air station and you know, some other things dump a lot of stuff into the water around here. So that was my initiation into one, you know, loving nature and at the same time being acutely aware of pollution. And you know, I grew up there and and hunted and fished a lot, but we really the the Detroit side, the American side of the river was a public health hazard, so you know, I mean, if we wanted to go fishing, we always bought Canadian licenses because the you know, the only thing that dumped really a lot of stuff into the river over there was the was a whiskey factory. So um. But you know, and then I also had bronchitis. And so when I went to school at the University of Michigan, um, you know, other than playing some football, what I was really interested in is what in the world can be done to deal with the the air and water pollution back in the Detroit area. And I started out as a wildlife management major, and then sophomore year I was assigned to read aldo Leopold Sand County Almanac that yeah, Leopold basically says, you know that the you know, environmental problems really are not political. Ultimately, they're in the mind of man. And suddenly, just you know, that just struck me and I changed my major from wildlife management initially too conservation education. Then I got a master's degree and resource planning, where I went back to the river and uh interviewed about fifty different people there trying to find out why, you know, what did they think about pollution And basically what I learned was people adapt and so that ultimately moved me to create a PhD degree in environmental psychology. It was the first one that they had ever had at the University of Michigan. And you know, and I went back and studied the people living back there trying to find out how it was that they developed they're, um, you know, their feelings about about the pollution and conservation. And what came back was basically that the way that people really started to care, I mean, they could adapt to living around air and water problems even though that it was causing a health hazard. But that um, the kids, especially in the group that I did research with at a high school. The ones that we cared most about conservation and pollution had gotten out of the city and they'd spend time where all the air and water were clean, and so, you know, I mean I got involved at that point in teaching a little bit about that class and environmental psychology, but I also taught the first class on environmental communications because I felt like that was important in this age. And then I was there for a couple of years and worked down the first teaching you know, the that we had in nineteen seventy and that was, uh, you know, it's the biggest in the country. We had, we had fifty thousand people there. And I then got offered a job to move out to the West Coast, and I decided to take it. And it was suddenly like, you know, I was put in a place in Washington where there wasn't any air and water pollution, and so, you know, I was still interested in studying what got people excited about conservation. And what happened to me then was I was in Bellingham at Western Washington, and I met some of the lummy Indians and they took me fishing, and I started to get a feeling for them and how they connected to nature and it was very different, um and very deep and powerful and ultimately I I then took a job down at the University of Oregon, um, you know, and where I was actually teaching psychology, and UM, what I really started to get into more and more was just what is this thing that Leopold talked about? How do you get into the mine the land? And um, you know. I ended up after three years down and there, I ended up then running a holistic health center and being a counselor for athletes primarily. And in the process of running this center, I met Joseph Campbell, the mythologist. And Joe had been, you know, an athlete in college also and loved to hunt and fish. Um. The biggest fish heat he ever caught was a huge musculune. He had pictures of a show, and UM. One evening at a French restaurant, we were sitting around eating and talking and Joe sort of takes a sip of his French wine and says, you know, I'm going to make a prediction. I think you're going to evolve into working in mainstream media. And you know, at the time of a lot, you know, I mean, I've been a psychologist, a college professor. He said, no, you just apply that to the media. Just wait and see. Well, about eight months later, my family and I moved to the San Francisco area, and that's where I really started to get into doing things that would apply for some of the stuff that I've done, because I've been studying how traditional cultures came to develop their feelings about conservation, both in you know, in Alaska and in the lummies up in Washington. And then I spent some time in Japan as well, and you know, and and so I, my wife and I started producing simpose hims about traditional culture and the idea of special places of power and whatever. And that led me ultimately to write a book about sacred places, and that got me on television. I ended up work working with sightings and ancient mysteries and um and that was sort of my baptism. And then one day my and I started writing. And one of one day, my wife comes up to me and says, look, there's this cattle call coming up for a movie from Francis Ford. Couple of you've been wanting to do something like that. Go go, So, you know, I went to this thing and Jesus. There were three or four hundred people there the audience. Each one had to come up on stage and um, get your picture taken and that sort of stuff. Well, Francis connected with me, that liked me. So I ended up getting a part in Tucker the Man in His Dream, which distingly enough was set in back in Detroit, and um, in the process of that I got I was put in a scene with Martin Landau, who turned out to be one of the nicest people I have ever met. And one day, you know, I worked for almost for over a week with Martin and got to know him. And one day we were sitting there and you know, waiting for the next shoot to take place, and he starts smoking and I noticed deep and smoking a lot. He was really a chain smoker. And I finally said, look, Martin, you don't want to do that. You're going to kill yourself and ruin your voice for acting. For God's sakes, how would you like me to teach you how to how to stop smoking? What I said, well, look, I used to teach. I used to work with athletes and I taught them how to do relaxation visualization. I'll teach you how to do that. Well I did. He got it and he stopped smoking. And at that point Martin says, looks Wan, I'm running a an acting school. How would you like a short course on how to act? So here I am, you know, between shots, where Martin says, now, look, think of this. This is how you remember, this is how you recall all that kind of stuff, and you know, and at the end of it, Martin went off and he got not He got an Oscar for his part in Tucker, and I started to get work as an actor, and I broke into Screen Actors Guild. In Angels in the outfield, we're having been a football player, I got, well, yeah, I'm the third base coach of the Ronald Blue Jays and the first the first, the first based judge. Um was a former linebacker for the l A. Rams, and so you know, whenever they get into a fight out there on the mound, we'd have to go out and tackle these guys and break up the fights. And so that's how I got into Screen Actors Guild. And you know, since then that I just kind of went along with a follow and Joe has been right, you know, I mean, ultimately I was ten years with ESPN Outdoors working on some of their shows outdoors and then, uh, during which time I was also doing acting work, and um, during the recession, everything shut up back in in the Bay Area and so we ended up selling our house and moving to New Mexico, which is supposed to be Hollywood in the desert. And so that's where I am today. And you know that I'm working on writing and producing and I you know, I produced before I left. I produced Wild Justice on National Geographic, which is all about game wardens in California, and um, you know, and now I'm working on actually a feature film about the life of Aldo Leopold. Yeah, the Leopold Foundation asked me to do this, and actually one of Aldo's children, Nina, got me up there for you know, to start this thing off. And so you know, I'm I'm working on developing that right now. Wow. That that's uh interesting to me for for many reasons. We've we've talked a lot about Auto on this show and with all of our brands. He seems to be seminal in in all of our lives. It's kind of strange crossroads through that guy. How would you tell a story? How do you intend to tell his story in that way. Well, god, okay, just describe the whole work for me. Well, you know, the basic you know. And I've got an option on this, by the way, so on his life story and the support of the foundation, so I guess I can tell you a little bit about it. We'll support your good well, you know, I mean, and frankly, one of the reasons that I really liked and wanted to do this is because what we don't have enough of these days are conservation heroes that appear that appear in you know, I mean, I applaud Stephen taking meat eating for God's sakes into mainstream media. That's great, um, And you know, we need more things like that because we live in the information age, you know, and so where the average person sits around for six or seven hours a day looking at electronic screens. And the thing that I just learned and I'm learned from I just produced of Hollywood Celebrity Archery shoot, which was a benefit for National Archery in the in the school's program. And in the process I got into really studying archery and discovered that back in there were four million archers in the United States. You know, how many there are today twenty four million archers that I don't know about bow hunters, but it leaves people who shoot archer archery and there and there are two reasons primarily why this is happening. One of the recruitment programs like archery in the schools. There's two million kids that are enrolled on that right now. And the other though, is that when, first of all, when Gina Davis almost made the Olympic team, there was a huge pump in women archers, and then along came Jennifer Lawrence every and and the Archery Trade Association says, my god, you know, the number of people coming and joining archery picking it up, especially women, just exploded, and you know, and so that's and look, you know, the other thing that I can say is an example of all this is that and we have programs out there to recruit people to hunt and fish and shoot. You know, there are three program and all that, but um, a river runs through it put a hundred thousand more fly fishermen and the streams within a year, you know. And so it's like if we have feature films that have a good soul to them, that show outdoor sportsmen as heroes rather than villains and bad people. People will respond. So you know that's what That's what I'm trying to do. Well, people forget that that um so many ways to go with this my next question, but I think people do forget. You know, I have a young toddler and we watched Beauty and the Beast and there's a hundred the Disney archetype hunter manly man character, and there is the bad guy. Uh So there's a there's a lot of things like that. Not to mention Bamby, but there's a lot of things not to mention that that's kind of their archetype for the manly man. He's a he's an egotist and hunter. I mean, we've had a couple of things recently that have come out where he has really been bad guys. You know. One is a was a movie called Walking Out, which which was you know, father and son go hunting up in Montana and they go out and the kid was reluctant to go out, but he went with his father and then they were going to shoot a most climbed up and found the moose was dead, had been poached. So there's poachers and then a Grizzly bears there on the moose and charges them, and the kid climbs up in a tree and the father hands him his gun. Gun goes off, and the kid shoots his father and the walking walking out. You know, it's like, well, you know, trying to get his father out before he died. Um, you know. And then there was another one about hunting in um father. It was a TV show I think or a TV film where father and son reluctantly go. Father is like, somebody who's got a hunting show? Yeah, the legacy of a white tailed deer hunter? You got it. That's right. That was pretty funny, But you're right in the end, it was it was not flattering. Shoots shoots the cameraman accidentally, So you've got to feature, you know, productions where the kid is shooting somebody. Yeah, you know, and it's like, I mean, there are there are so much more that could have been done with that, you know, with both of those. But but um, what do you think that? What do you think that is? You think that's you know, you've kind of been you know, you're hung out with water, math out for God's sake, you're kind of in the sag the Hollywood community. What what is that is it the the political leanings, is just the culture of the place where these movies are coming from. Why does it always end up that way or more seemingly end up the way more than more than not, they're they're more people who hunt and do sports shooting there than you might think. Um, but the you know what, but there is a very strong element of animal rights in Hollywood when you look at I know a lot of celebrities. I don't know a lot of celebrities, but I know a lot of actors who hunt and don't talk about it. Can't talk about it, their agents won't let them talk about it. They can't even post on social media wearing camoufl um. Yeah, and that's that's unfortunate because it doesn't because that that shows that those those through lines of of hunting is not the right thing to do. It's not good for public relations. Therefore it's taboo. Um has sunken in in that culture. It just has. Yeah, it is. And you know one of the things that is I've gotten into I you know, I write for a couple of different publications and stuff, and so I've continued to try to look at the psychology some of the psychological aspects of hunting. And in the process I ran across a guy, Harold her Sad, who is at UM. How her Sad at West Carolina University is a psychologist who's been studying vegetarianism. Do you know what percentage of the of the of Americans are vegetary? According to how two and you know, and UM and the and even the the vegetarian media admits street three point five and esper vegans who get all kinds of publicity half of a percent, that's it. And yet you know what those folks have done, is they really knew how to get two mainstream media and use it. Oh well, I was watching. My wife forced me to watch the screen. I was both the Screen Actors Guild Awards you got on this thing and the Golden Globes, and I watched them for the first time ever I've never even had been interested in. And they announced during the Golden Globes that the UM Screen Actor Guild in Hollywood foreign press had both gone vegan, meaning these are both dinner These are both dinner parties and atheist televised dinner parties with all the most famous stars in Hollywood. They're serving vegan meals and celebrating it, um. And so that's how deep it goes the things that her song came up with. Also that even more incredible is that he says of vegetarians returned to eating some meat, and se of vegans do also and the reason for their health, you know. And so it's like that's a story that just isn't getting told. And I've read a lot about, you know, the reasons that people get into these they're they're making a dietary choice for ideological reasons, um. And I've read several studies that that say, up the sixties, people that go vegan or vegetarian are doing it for the ideology to save the planet, um, rather than for dietary reasons. So there's no wonder that there's that that number are more that are are turning back to me because of you know, B twelve deficiencies or lack of hem iron or different things that they need in their diet. I mean, it's it's it's yeah, it's obvious once you look at that, you know, and you know, and so it's I think we just need to be able to find ways to creatively talk about those things and put them out there. So that people will understand what in the world is going on. And um, you know, it's like in reviewing some psychologists who really have put a lot of work into this, and you know, I mean I haven't been a been an academic full time for god three five years or so, but um that you know, there's stuff that has been done that points out hunting is there's nothing wrong with it, and that all these concerns about labeling hunters as being evil, bad, you know, all those other things are really they're not substantiated. And there's a couple of quotes that I found that I thought i'd share with you, one of which is, are you familiar with the with the book the paleoti Thic Prescription? I am. I am in the Paleo Diet. Well. Melvin Conner, who's one of the three people who wrote that, is a psychiatrist as well as he has a PhD also in anthropology, and he got his his PhD in anthropology by living in Africa with a bushman can know, and so he had to hunt and he comes back and they've got a quote there are hunting instinct has gone awry in civilized society, where the thrill of the chase and the kill are no longer part of that experience, and there are no clear avenues of expression, except perhaps to our peril in the streets and subways of today's urban jungles. You know, and it's like, okay, but if you look around own you know. I did a search a few years ago when I was writing my book in Defense of Hunting, and I tried to interview either either psychologists or look at people what people had said, and uh, you know, and ran into stuff. I mean, Eric from the Anatomy of Human Destructiveness says, in the act of hunting, a man becomes, however briefly, part of nature again. He returns to the natural state, becomes one with the animal, is freed from the burden of his existential split, to be part of nature and into transcended by virtue of his consciousness. In stalking the animal, he and the animal become equals, even though the man eventually shows his superiority by the use of weapons, and you know, and other stuff like on weapons. Again, Melvin Connor rights, there is little or no evidence, physiological or behavioral, to suggest that predatory aggression hunting as much in common with intraspecies aggression. Okay, so you know, it's like what we're dealing with is that in the American Psychological Association when I used to belong to it, they told me that they do not have any research articles reporting ethical hunters as wrong or evil. Yeah, so you know, it's basically what what we've created is a kind of discriminatory consciousness that is um that that really doesn't give a full picture of mankind. And James Hillman, who was one of Young's students, I knew him and actually I taught some classes at at his pacifica um College, which which is a PhD program for for grad students in psychology, and he said that he had found a number of his clients having dreams about angry animals chasing them, and some said that they thought it was because we should stop killing animals for food and support. However, what Hillman said is no, When we dug into it even further, we found out the reason was that the dreams of angry animals chasing people was that the animals symbolized instincts of the soul and they were being denied. And so that's what, you know, what that was all about. Yeah, there's no there's no argument out there. Well, there's there's no argue within within any intellectual community that I've ever read that's that doesn't back up the statement that veganism, to some extent vegetarianism, but more veganism, especially as more of a religious practice as it is now, he is so new to our humanity that that we can't really judge its impact. It has no real history in in our society, not long enough, not nearly as long as hunting or any other gathering would would be would be noted. Well, one of the things that I've looked at I wrote a book called The Sacred Art of Hunting where I tried to look at religions all around the world and what do they relate to hunting? And I found there's only one religion, major religion, jain Ism, that um says you can't eat meat, okay, and that's it. Otherwise, every other religion allows people to eat some meat if they feel it's appropriate. The Dalai Lama, for example, eats me and he's willing to talk about it. And a few years ago I helped produce a constant. But the guy you do monks, you know, the ones that do that UM kind of a groaning growl kind of uh singing and vocalization and uh. And I, you know, about an hour and a half or two hours before they were to appear, I went backstage and says, well, what do you guy in there? Two dozen of them back there. I said, what do you guys want for for dinner? You know? And I was expecting to go to a vegetarian restaurant. They said, no, big knacks, you know, you know, and so um. And if you look at like in India, the reason that there are some Hindu sex brahma Ism, which which says you're not supposed to eat meat, but at least sixty five or seventy of the Hindus eat some meat and uh, you know, and there's not hunting over there because there's too many people and and it would cause extinctions. But the only way that they allow people to hunt is if they have animals like wild boars and stuff that are destroying crops. Oh, then you can do that. And by the way, you can eat you know. So there's a lot of misinformation out there about this stuff. And look, if if someone wants to be a vegetarian, I don't have any problem with that. Is you know, as long as you know you say, look, is this good for my health or not? If it is Mick Jaggers a vegetarian, he seems to be doing pretty well. So great man. You know Nick has abused his body in too many ways to count. But yeah, I would, I would say that. Yeah. I mean, there's a part of this conversation. And again we've taught you've touched on a lot of your books in defense of hunting being one that's just to me. But hunting is a sacred art being even more interesting to me because when you start to think about, you know, the philosophies around what hunting is, what it is in different cultures, what it is to us, um, the connection between hunting and religion, you know, starts to trace you back through through different cultures, through different times, through different ways to express what hunting means to a collective group. And that that, to me is what's interesting. And when I, um, it's been some years since I read your book, but when I read it, that's what struck me. Is that this connective tissue that you know that's almost invisible to us unless we investigated, um from anywhere from you know, the Native American side, of grounds point to you. You talk about, um, the Yoruba religion and West Africa, all this stuff, Scandinavian and nor Norway, Um, the different gods in the different prayers and things they said to hunting. So there's all this if you start to trace it, Um, there is a through line there that's worth what, that's worth discovering. And you did it well in that book. And then some of your recent works. Can you tell people you know you've you've already touched us a little bit. But I want to return back to why for you is this so important the connection between religion and hunting and these these indigenous cultures to this continent and others. Can you really just put a fine point on that? Well? You know what? What comes back to me again, growing up on an island in Lake Erie subject to air and water pollution got me into basically asking the question why is this happening? Why are we letting this happen? And when it's causing damage two people and their health as well as you know fish and wildlife and um, what what really you know came through was I wanted to study what it was that made people conservationists like Aldo Leopold and you know, and that's what what kind of you know, that has been a theme through my work that's consistent and even though I've you know, done a variety of different things that we tend to and this is like, you know, I was one of the people that helped write the first definition of what is environmental education. It would write before Earth Day, and I published the first article in a you know, in a in a major magazine about this and ended up consulting with American National Association as school administrators, I think it was and you know, on having to write their policy. And what to me comes back now today is that our educational system is something that needs some help, especially when it gets into how do we develop people who have a real feeling for nature and conservation and botham and we do a lot of information, you know, expression. But there's a guy at Harvard University, Howard Gardner, professor of a psychology, who came up with studying there that what is what is intelligence? And he basically said, i Q is only one thing. They're actually seven or eight different kinds of intelligences, one of which is naturalistic intelligence. And this is the ability to perceive nature and to see different kinds of animals and plants and fish and whatever, to organize them and to understand how they all relate to each other and to be and like Keddy Roosevelt wasn't it was kind of like an Einstein in this as Aldo Leopold. We don't do enough education to give people the ability to develop that now actualistic intelligence. And it's really what has been very clear is that Well, and here this goes back again. Abraham Maslow was one of the people that that was a real pioneer in modern psychology. I met him and asked him, you know, what did he think about conservation and appreciation in the environment. He said, well, you know, I've studied self actualized people, ones who really are kind of are able to tap into who they really are and what they want to do in their life. And the ones that I have interviewed, they all have a deep love for nature. Okay, so look, man, how do you do that? Well, the research is very clear on this too. That and I've done some of this, but there are a bunch of other people that have done this. You look for people who have had profound experiences and nature that really touched them, and that's what made them become conservationists. Yeah, and when that connection is made right, like whether it's at a young age or an older age, it was made in me at a young age through hunting, and that blooms into all kinds of different things. It blooms into who knows what, but it it blooms in in and grows into you know, anthropology as you have we've already talked about in zoology and biology and all these these fields of study that can can just lead to that appreciation. I think it's great. Yeah, and you get to the point where you know you're out of loophole. Talked about the abra the Abrahmatic concept of land right where we abuse the land because it's a it's a commodity, it belongs to us. But if it's if we see it as a community, if we all share in it, then we have this innate value. And as I'm tracking all the things we've already covered, especially when you're talking about your your upbringing in in philosophy and in your studies and your teachings, it just seems like there's like if we can instill a deep value you of the natural world and people, then it's endless that it's boundless after that, you know, And what it does basically is that it gets you back in touch with that unconscious in each one of us that we don't do enough to really explore, you know, I mean to me, there there is a real need in our schools today to help people get in touch with who they really are. And you know, I mean, if I look back at myself, one of the things early on which I like to do but I didn't develop for the longest time, was I like to be a performer, you know, now, you know, I mean, it just it was something there and I got it all kind of you know, involved in these other things. And then Joe Campbell was the one again that just said, hey, you know, you're going to get back into mainstream media and entertainment stuff. And you know, I was a musician for a while. I had a comedy rock band for what it was. It was what what we did was this was back back in the Bay Area, was it was, and Earth Day was coming, and so I had this idea about how about having a contest for kids in this area to design a costume for a a character who is a promotes recycling and you know, and so we got a several hundred kids that submitted these things and worked it out so they get a free trip to Disneyland for their family. And one that one was this one kid who drew a picture It looked like one of the Hopie Kachinas, but he was made out of garbage and his name was recycled Man, you know. And so we had this award for everything, and somebody says, um, you know, when we're fishing, well, James, you know, what are you gonna do with Recyclement? I don't know, you know. He says, well, look, the person actually who was bringing this up was one of the people working for George Lucas in Industrial Light Magic, and he said, well, look, um, you know, I think this this guy, recycle Man, could be a real character. We'll make the costume. Because so Industrial Light and Magic made the costume and nobody wanted to wear and I said, well, hell, I'll give it a try. And so I ended up writing a song and I opened for Jesse Colin Young and literally had at one of the Earth Day things. Please tell me I could find us on YouTube somewhere, you know, And and it's like what happened was people kept saying, well, recycled Man, come here, recycled Man. Well that well, I knew some musicians James Gurley from Big Brother, you know him, ruga booker who were from who's a drummer, his wife who had been it was a drummer also, you know, and h and another guy who played bass. And so we created Recycled Man in the No Trash band and we played for about three years before the band broke up, and you know, got on television and performed stuff and whatever. And it's just things like that that people could do that instead of yes we should, don't you know, know all the statistics about recycling and everything else, but hey, you know, also find a way to get across the same message where it's fun, you know, yeah, and you're you're addressing what you're talking about there and a lot of what you've already talked about. It's kind of this weird micro macro issue. Like on one level, you could get in a classroom as you did and teach people about environmental psychology and and and how to appreciate nature. That's one thing you can do. You kind of plant the seed there. But then on a broad level, on a larger level, how do you address these increasingly complex topics and simplify them and make them fun, make them easy, list to make them uh for for lack of a better term, entertaining. And I think that's maybe the failure of of hunting and conservation in the mainstream, because certainly the vegan ideology is pretty easy to boil down. Don't eat meat because things, so things won't die, that's super easy. Well it's not easy, is hey. The natural world works like this, and this is how hunting and fishing and conservation push it forward. And I've grown to kind of believe that that's our greatest challenge is taking that really complex thing and somehow making compelling in an increasing in the world that increasingly just wants to be anecdotal and be pandered too. Yeah. Yeah, And you know, in the media, to me is just just sad what's happened with the media. Jesus ten to seventeen time more negative and sensational news than objective growth. It's awful. Sixty eight of the people do not trust the news because there's no objective truth. There's everybody's got an agenda or an ego or some something they want to sell you. I mean it's to the point. Yeah, you know, crises. You know, it's like, um God, there's a guy, Stephen Pinker who's at Harvard also, you know, and and he's got a Ted Talks thing about this, about how to show what what are the realities? You know, he said, look, you know, people will get news that reports sensational, horrible things happening as if the whole world's going to hell in a handbasket, said in reality, like for crime, Actually, since nine the amount of crime in the United States has been going down dramatically, you know, and no one seems to celebrate that. No, this is there's never been a safer, more productive time to live in this country, never And if you if you turn on Fox News or MSNBC, we're we're always uh, we're always right next to the next breaking controversy that that you need to be angry about or scared about, because those are the motions that lead action, and action leads to money and views and ratings and all those things. It's it's a sick kind of cycle that we're in and I'm not sure how we break it. Do you do you have any do you have any idea how to break that? You know one thing that that to me, you know, when you brought up Fox, I mean, for better or for worse. Fox is the only news at least online that even has a section about the outdoors, you know, in their in their daily news. Now all of it, some of it is crisis oriented stuff, but there's some other stuff which is pretty good. But you know, I remember growing up how all the major newspapers used to have an outdoor page at least once a week and stuff like that. And how many nd you have Now, well you said, did you worked at ESPN ESPN Outdoors? I when I first broke into the the industry. I remember the day that they cut the outdoor programming from ESPN. I remember that day. I grew up on that stuff and I was very sad. I was that sad. I'm like the end of an era. It's yeah, I know, and it's me happy to sell my house for you that it was for me. But yeah, I mean I remember coming up watching that was a Sunday thing that we did at my house as we watched those those programs, and for that to be over, and I remember reading and and thinking at the time, this was pretty shocking that the you know, it was gonna be all everything was gonna be streaming and and live programming, live sports was gonna be huge because it was in the moment. And then these outdoor shows they're they're not in the moment, so they weren't as valuable, and and I just remember thinking how how shortsighted that was and is to this day that there's nothing about the outdoors on those those types of mainstream channels and it and it's just, you know, I mean, we're dealing with this stuff right now with the number of hunters has been declining, and you know, I've been talking with some folks back in California about all this, and Jesus, you know, we need to find ways to help people get back in touch with the natural world and its power and presence. And there's a lot of good research that supports that. But it's like, you know, our school should be teaching that to get kids out and you know, it doesn't mean that they have to remember all all the names of everything. We just to go out and have a good time. I mean, I remember one thing where this first introduced me to this is that back um in ann Arbor during grad school, I paid for my way through school by running the environmental education program in the ann Arbor schools where you took kids out on field trips. And I took this one group of kids out to the play out there was west of town. It was actually a hunting preserve. And we got there and got out of the bus and we were to look at look at different habitats and concepts, you know, like ecological things. And I could hear off in the distance sand hill cranes calling, and I said, Jesus, kids, do you want to have a real experience. We're going to go stalking and see how close we can get to sand hill cranes. So I got them down and I showed them how to walk quietly, and we started going and it was about a quarter of a mile away, down in a swamp, and we ended up crawling the last hundred yards or so to get up within about fifty yards of a dozen or so sandhill cranes that were down there, and they were all calling, and finally the cranes took off, and the kids were just mesberized by this and what happened after at and these were kids for you know, who lived in downtown Anne Arbor. This particular launch. A lot of them had never really gone out to any place like this, and so I let him just roam around for a while. And finally this girl comes up and she's got a feather. What what's this is a feather? Feeling she'd never seen a large feather, let alone one from a sound teal crane. And she got that thing and took it back to the bus, carried all the way back to ann Arbor and the last nice offer she was running off to go home to show her family the feather that's in us, that's in us can natural curiosities in US. It's it's bread into people. And if we can create things like that. I know of some research which has been done in down in the l A area where they took a school in in the you know, right in the middle of Los Angeles, and they put a garden in there and suddenly school attendants got better and better, you know, and it's like and that they were studying the garden, how does it grow? Well, you know, it's just simple things like that that provide firsthand contact, that develop other access, you know, points of our own soul. And that's to me, what really is, you know, what we need to be doing at this point. I mean, yeah, there might be climate change, you know, and stuff like that, but there's a lot of data that questions some of that, and some of pink pinker stuff is quite quite good at that. But you know, the reality simply here is that you can try to influence people by throwing crises and catastrophes at them all the time, and what it ends up with is it becomes one of the reasons why we've got some pretty high levels of anxiety disorder today, you know, and you know, get people outside for God's sakes and to enjoy the world and and experience it. Yeah, one of the major problems I've I've I've talked to a lot of people that that have turned turned to activism, from vegans to environmentalists that have turned to act activism. And I understand feeling need to to be a proponent for whatever uh solution you think is out there for whatever ills are in the world. I get get that. I feel that myself a lot. But what I what has been concerning to me, and I don't know if you've seen this, is how quickly we go from hearing what the problem is or or someone positing well here's our issue with our environment or a climate, or issue with animal agriculture. How quickly we turn to activism. Whether rather than turning to activism, we would turn back to the natural world, learn more about it, study it, fall into that um, more intellectual side of it, rather than turn to activism, which I think is more sensational in in a lot of ways easier. UM. I've seen that a lot, and it concerns because my personal feeling, I'd be interested in how you feel, is that exactly what you're just describing is the best way for me personally. If I was to go learn about ecosystems and the different ecosystem services of different wildlife and how the natural world works, I'd be better equipped to deal with any problems that I'm I face on a small or large level. And I just don't see that as much as I'd like to. I see a lot of people turning to that activism. They go shout um without really having done the work. Now I know it. It's I think part of it is is the media itself, and people can get attention, you know, and if they are upset about things on some level that um, if in something that you can use to express your your feelings about whether what they're talking about is what it's really what's upsetting them, or not is something to look at. It's like with a Helman thing. You know, if the animals chasing you, you know that that could be a very scary dream and it could you know, move you to want to go out and do things. But the reality is is that the animals are trying to do is to get you to get back in touch with who you are. And look, you know, if people ask about about how could you be well meet eat or God, will you guys in meet eat or all you have to do is say, look, go look in a mirror. Where are your eyes? Are they on the front of your face or on the sides? Well, of course they're on the front of your face. Okay, what animals have eyes on the front of their face? Omnivores and carnivores her before us. Where are their eyes or they're on the side so they can better see look for something coming after them. So the reality is is that you want to see if if our nature involves the the idea of being a carnivore. Okay, well there it is right in your face. Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's there's so much of that. That's what part of this show. People ask me why do we Why do you like to talk about this and this and that. We talked about anthropology a lot. I recently traveled to the Smithsonian to talk to a paleo anthropologist. It was it was a really interesting conversation to me. Might have been boring to some other people, but that was the crux of the conversation. Is when I think about what I think about my own humanity and kind of trace this thing back. Instead of trying to trace paleoanthropology to to prove to people that hunting is the way to go or not the way to go, I'm doing it because I'm curious and i want to know those things so I'm better equipped to handle that question when it comes up. Um And I see that too. People are trying to reverse engineer of their own ideas. They're trying to start with, well, the world is the world is falling apart, or the world is this way. Hunting is the best, Hunting is terrible, and people trying to reverse engineer on the world to see it with something they've already decided, and that that to me has always just been it's just rings untrue. It just doesn't seem like, um, the way that we should walk through the world. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, it's just being close to nature. You know. Again this is comes to my own stuff that I got into thanks to the lummies got me involved with it. Actually, where you know, you begin to say, well, look, you know, there are there are kind of subtle qualities about places and nature and whatever. How does it make you feel? Well, it makes you feel pretty good. Good, then why don't you honor it? You know? I mean that that's literally the kind of thing and and that's such a more cultures around the world view places as special than not. And you know, aside from what Indians do in the United States, we don't do much of that sort of thing. But I'll tell you in Japan, most of the national parks over there are tied into Shintoism and uh you know, and they have um ceremonies to honor the animals and um, you know, and stuff like that. Oh. There is a funny thing here though with the Japanese that um, I mean, I went over I've been over there twice on different things. And some of my books are are republished over there. But um, what what has happened was is that they've had very strong controls over firearms. They are only about two hundred thousand um hunters in all of Japan with twice seven million people, So what is this the consequence? Yes, there aren't many people shooting each other because there aren't that many guns. But do you know what's happening with deer and wild boar. They are destroying a lot of agriculture. So right now there's a big push going on in Japan to get people to be bull hunters they can go out and help control the deer and wild boar. Yeah, and that and that gives all the way back to that. There's threads in that story to all the things we've talked about a lot of them. There's there's the moral absolutism that some people like to put on the world. That just means like an ethical view that that says everything is right or wrong intrinsically more. That's that more absolutism, and that is often that often comes to be true with secular In the secular context and within religion, people say that this is right and wrong based on my religion. Um, yeah, and that's that's again, if you go out in the natural world, you know that's not true. That there's objectivism and there's consequentialism, and there's other things out there that can help you learn, but it's it's hard to go. It's hard in those situations where even in Japan, where you know you're gonna have to kill some of these things, you're gonna have to if you if you want to get the balance that's required. Um. So it all those things tied together for me, Yeah, they do. And the and that in the sacred art of hunting. Um, you know what I've done, and that m is that I looked at all the different major religions of the world and to see what did they think about hunting. And it's very clear, you know that they have procedures. And when I was growing up back on on the island grows Seal, I mean, it was the common thing that the Episcopal Church every year on the eve of deer season would have a special inner that we're blessings were given to the hunters, and that at the end of dear season that hunters would bring in some of some of their venison and share it with people, you know, and so St. Hubert for God's sake is this is the is the patron saint of hunting. I mean, and he's honored more in Europe than he is here. But it Christianity has some real strong things like this. And there are many different sects of Buddhism that they live with a notion that they are not supposed to kill things, but they but somebody else can do it. They can eat them. Yeah, you wrote about you was issued write about the Muslim Code of Conduct for ethical hunting. I thought that was the interesting one. Take people through your knowledge of that. Well, it's basically there there are prayers, certain prayers that are to be said when one goes hunting and one is about to shoot something. There are definite sets of prayers that go with that that fit into the Muslim tradition. And you know when we bring that up in that part of the world. Also the same for for Jewish um that there are they don't eat cloven hoofed animals, but otherwise you know, they're they're happy, they eat eat other stuff that they hunt. I mean, I've got some good friends I've gone turkey hunting with their Jewish So one of the things that I love in that in that book. And by the way, if there's a publisher out there and I want to do a second edition the plays, I want to do it. But in every year, around St. Hubert's Day, which is in the beginning of November, in this one, St Ignace, I believe, is the is the town, they have a special ceremony to honor St. Hubert. And what it starts out with is hunters dressed in camel go into the church and they form an archway, and some of them bring their dogs too, and they form an archway with their guns over which then the priests and some members of the choir and the Mounties will march into the church with them where they will celebrate St. Hubert and they bring the hunting dogs in to be blessed as well. I mean, that's powerful stuff, and you know, and it and it and it I think it ends up reinforcing people wanting to be ethical and honor. Wildlife is a source of very important food for us. Yeah. Yeah, And then when you start to then that goes back to the value conversation. You know, religion really sets values and structure around values in a lot of ways, and that's you know, one of the one of its main one of its main advantages for people that that believe that you have the structure, the set of beliefs that's instilled in you, and you have faith that those are true and those are good, and then you move through the world like that. And when you could put when I read that book originally, and when I think about religion and hunting, I think about that, I'm like, wow, Man, if my religion says hunting is sacred, animals are sacred. Hunting dogs in this case are sacred, I'm going to treat them with a lot more respect than reverence. And I'm gonna pass those traditions down in a way that that will last. My father taught me actually a prayer that basically, when you're out hunting and you see something that you you you might shoot at, you know, you you essentially have to say to yourself, God, please, you know, if this is all legal in everything like that, please let me if I shoot at this animal, let me kill it quick and clean or miss it completely, you know, and itself just develops a sense of reverence for that um. And I think that's one thing that it would be that should be important to me is in part of hunter education is to teach some of that, let people be aware of that and feel comfortable with that kind of thing. Yeah yeah, and and teach them like I know that. You know, you're never going to teach moral OBJECTIVI adjectivism say that word right um in in these pins. But there is an idea that you can say is like the natural world, there isn't just right or wrong, especially when we talk about our own cohabitation and the way that we, you know, affect the natural world, that there's no there's no one right or one wrong. Killing an animal in one case can be different. I mean, the factory matter does not. It doesn't depend solely on the social customer, individual acceptance for look at look at it this way too. You know about you know, people, there's this stuff that's been coming on about extinction, you know, and birds going extinct and things like that. Well, yeah, we did lose passenger vision and that was several billion birds that disappeared. But look right now, we've kept at least thirty million deer white tailed deer running around and c w D is developing. I mean the way you stop it or or discourage it spreading is to harvest deer. We didn't until not that many years ago there were no wild boar running around. Well, good god, they were brought over here and released in Texas. They're somewhere between six and nine billion of them running around. This is horrible damage to agricultural crops. You do you have Eurasian collar doves up there. Not that I were a giant, been in Montana long enough, but I've seen him around Texas. Boy, we got them here. They're all over the place. How about Asian carp For God's sakes, they get into the Great Lake, they will destroy. I used to live in the Illinois River. They're destroying that place. They're destroying. Yeah. No, that so that that that goes back to that the whole animal rights idea that there's a right and wrong, don't kill, don't you know, no abject suffering, all those things that that just doesn't it's not support. In California, there are new tria there like beaver sized delicious. Yeah, like literally beaver size muskrats. They are very prolific and they are now found in forty nine states. And you know, if if you want to make sure you're going to get your vegetables, you sure as hell, don't want to have neutria hanging around there, especially rice. So you know, now what's happened in California because they've banned trapping and for down in in at least in the l A. But the reality now is how are you going to control the neutria? Well, it's gonna cost three million dollars. Yeah, Now you build them. What you do is you build a giant boat and then you can't you you know, you net them and then throw them on the boat. That's that's what's what you do. You don't kill them because that's because that's wrong. Yeah, you know. So it's like it's just well, what couldn't you say? I mean, I don't you know, that's just part of the food chain. Yeah, And it's a good it's a it's a good conversation. This whole thing marries up to the reason I do this show, and I think a lot of the reasons that you've you've said that you do what you do, and that's that's because these these really complicated topics need to be explored, and they need to be explored in a way that more people can can think about and talk about and understand. Um, Because we're up against it with with folks that don't believe what we believe, and they believe that, like I said, there is a there is a right and or wrong when it comes to killing animals. Um, and all these examples just say that's not true. It's just just isn't true. There's not one right or wrong with all of this, especially when it comes to us humans. Yeah, Um, I want to I want to let you go without covering a few things that you've done, because I just we've I think we may have touched on this, We've bounced around. I love it. Um, But you you worked with John Norris Jr. I'm not mistaken on War in the Woods, Combating the Marijuana cart tells America's public lands. Um. That's become a little famous in the mediator world because because um, John was on the Media podcast and then also in Joe Rogan. But talk about that like you're working with him, and and you know what strikes me about that briefly is this that if you want to teach someone about public lands that doesn't care about conservation, a nice way to get them to interested in what public lands are is by writing a book like this and getting them into a war on drugs. I had I and involved Jesus since you know, for years sometimes in working with law enforcement in various capacities, going back to the seventies, for God's sakes, and you know, as applying my psychologists to this stuff. And in two thousand and seven, two game wardens came up to my son and I and said, um, we'd like you to make a documentary about the shorties of game wardens in California at that at that point there were hundred and ninety two for thirty eight million people. So, you know, my son I said sure, okay, we'll do it. So we started and for two years we went riding along with game wardens all over the place. And you know, and my website look up snow Goose Productions and and you'll see, um the link to projects where you'll find endangered species. Uh, you know, the the documentary we did, which was an hour long documentary which led to wild Justice. But in the process, John came up to me one day and said, you've been at a lot of different you know, patrols. How would you like to go on one with me? Okay, So we drive down and and meet him down and just around Stanford, for God's sakes, and drive up there early in the morning and suddenly there are about a dozen people from all different aspects of law enforcement, from National Guard down to local police to the you know, two D e A and stuff like that, and a couple of game wardens. And so we drive up into the hills into a regional park above Stanford and it's only five ten miles. For Christ's sakes. You can see Stanford Stadium from up at there and the thing. But it's a nice regional park. Pull over and suddenly, you know, and all these guys get out and they're fully armed for combat, and um helicopter comes in the National Garden okay, and said, well, what are you doing. Well, we're going to going after marijuana grows, okay. But they had this line that hangs out from underneath and two game boardings, Norris another guy climb into this thing and it's and it hangs down like fift below the helicopter and so they fly off. I said, what what's you know? Said, look, this is how we get in there quickly. And I said, aren't you targets? Yeah, I said, but we pray a lot. So they dropped them down, you know, about a mile away. And then the helicopter comes back and brings in three or four more loads of the of them, and they finally said, okay, it's clear. You and your son get in with your cameras. So we fly over a helicopter on me end up hovering over this place, and it said, Jesus yah, just I don't see anything down there. Pilot says, just watch. He starts to get lower and lower, and suddenly, when the wash comes down, the manzanita trees separate and underneath is this bright green carpet and it's all over the place, you know, and it's like, he says, fat is marijuana. And what there was was a grow there. Well, so you know, when we filmed the whole thing, and you know, and and then so he takes you know, I don't know how many pounds, several hundred pounds of marijuana that's attached now to the rope and we start to go back. He said, I want to just go across the road here, and he goes over there. He says, there's another one. So we go back, ultimately have lunch, and they go back into this second one. Okay, And so again they fly John on the others in you know, by helicopter, and they say, okay, that's Claire. You and your son drive over, park your car next to the road, and said, well, okay, and Jesus we only it was you know, there's John. He says, well, look, it's only a hundred yards in here to this one. And we start to walk in, and he says, oh, by the way, you have to walk in every step exactly that I take because they put in trip wires, bungee pits and and other things where you could fall and break your neck or get shot. Okay, and let me take it if it comes, so we follow it in. Are you retreading this experience? Are probably should have stay back, you know, only about like I couldn't. It couldn't have been more than fifty five or sixty yards here. And we start to come into this place and there's chicken wire up, rat poison all over the place, marijuana plants about three or four feet high, and I you know, and and they're all over and there's a camp in there, and there's ammunition, you know, from guns. These guys were all armed, but when the helicopters came, they fled, thank god, And so you know, I said, well, Jesus John, I mean, these plants looked pretty good, but how in the world do they wanted? Him said, huh, watch this. So we went over and he found about eight or eight or nine fifty gallon barrels, metal barrels, and those barrels all had water. And where the world they get that? There's no stream here? Watch follow walking in on this little trail. They had been sneaking into the houses of Silicon Valley millionaires at night and stealing their lawn water and bringing it back, you know. And so it's like here and we were looking at a place where all these guys were armed, and you know, and so you know, we started north started to introduce me to this stuff, and just as scary as hell. I can remember going into one up in the Mendocino County area. And we were going in actually on a vehicle, a one of those not a jeep, but you know, uh that you would you would ride to go back in as an open vehicle, and all of a sudden, backfires when the thing came, I thought, ship, we're gonna get shot. No, But we went in there to this this grow and oh there were twenty thousand plants that in the one down in in uh in palle Aldo and up here, and there were you know, I don't know how many thousands that there were, but there were thirty six sleeping bags in this place. Now, looking how many of these gatherings, you know, are out in the wood. They're all armed and um scarcely hell out of you? Yeah? When yeah? When? So when when? John and I you know, and John says, well, look, I've been keeping my stories, and so I edited them for him and wrote, you know, an afterword for him and stuff like that. And the book came out and it uh was number one in crime on on Amazon Books for I don't know three or four months. And it first was picked up by um one of the producers of and It's All about Raids on These on these Growths, and one of the producers of Friday Night Lights optioned the book first and wanted to make a feature film and got it as far as Warner Brothers, and then Warners said, now we don't want them feature film, we want a TV series, and he didn't want to do it, so then he dropped the option. And then Noble Media Group picked it up and they have hired the writer of the movie film a Logan, and they've written a bible and a pilot script and so with with luck, they'll start shooting this uh this year. It's an amazing story. Uh, absolutely amazing. Like I said, I mean, there's there's so many threads to that story. So if you haven't read that book or listen to the podcast with John, go and do that, because it's the book I think is probably the best, the best accounting of it. Well, of all the things that you've you've done here, I mean I was I was going to try to list off before we end all the things you can check out from from James. You got War in the Woods, John Norris, you have In Defense of Hunting, The Sacred Art of Hunting. You have that documentary um Out of Mongolia. Man, there's there's a million things you've worked on. Um. I can only hope to have a career that that has a singular event is as big as any of these things I just listed. So um Man, it was a real pleasure to talk to you and learn about your life and times. And I imagine we could probably talk for another hour and a half and we wouldn't have any trouble topics to come up with. Uh yeah, well look, I want to just congratulate you guys. You and Stephen, I'm you know, on the Meat Eater is just taking it right out there to mainstream media and God bless you. Thanks. We're getting up and doing it every day. Man. We're committed to just having good conversations just like this one that who knows who the hell knows where they're going to go. But there's so much out there to learn and so much out there for us to kind of discover with everybody listening, especially in the form of podcast. That's why I love it. So thanks for having you on, and I guarantee you we're gonna be calling you and bothering you to come back on sometime real soon. All right, Thanks James. Thanks, that's it. That's all. That's ninety eight in the books. Were are slowly and surely coming up on episode one. Me and Philip are really we've been playing it hard for it. We've been in some secrets in store for you. No, you don't know. This is a great show. Thanks to Dr Swan for coming on. Thanks for Miles and nolte Is always are probably our most well spoken in articulate member of the media crew, big fan of Miles than all that he does. So anything mediator fishing is the branch out of that man. And we got our community manager Joe Fernado doing a lot of research for us, checking in on some of these interesting topics. So thanks to those, all three of those folks for coming on board. I know this show kind of went in a bunch of different places, some intended, some not, but that's natured podcast, so we enjoy it. Make sure you go to first Light to Colm, first Light dot com first to come. There's like dot com could have first Light dot Com and then go down look for win a tar Hunt, click on it and enter and enter. There's a picture of a guy that's not me on there. That's fine, Phil pointing out. Think he looks better than he looks, like a better version of you. That's something you should aspire to. I'd like to look that good. Like look that good. We'll find out who that is. We'll call him. I have him on the show. So first, like dot Com, you can win to hunt with me in New Zealand. I think that's pretty cool, So you should do it now. Before we go, we'll tell you about what you're gonna see in the next show. You're not gonna see it, you're gonna hear it. So we will probably film some of it so you may see it. But but what we're gonna do, We're gonna do a little Pepsi challenge. Uh. We're gonna set down with the likes of Mr Steven Ronnella, a bunch of people from the office Kylie Archer. We're gonna get Korean. Our producer in here, Phil of course, is gonna take part. We just roped in one of our fabulous Wild Foods contributors, Rick Matten. He's gonna come in and cook for us. Phil and I are gonna go to some fruit fru grocery store and we're gonna buy some plant based meats. We're gonna match those up was similar flavor profiled wild meats, and we're gonna blindfold people and we're gonna do a little taste test, taste and feel, lets them feel it as well, and they're gonna have to pick out what's wild game and what ain't. I'll see if they can do it, and if they can't do it, it'll be hilarious. And if they can do it, you may never hear it, so just trash it. So we're gonna give it a shot. And that's next week when the Honey Collective. We're also joined next week by Rachel carry from the UK. We get a lot of emails from the listeners out there in the United Kingdom, a lot of them. It seems like there there's relatively few of you that are listening to here, but you're all very vocal about the situation you're in. So I figured, while we have read some of your emails in past episodes, I wanted to kind of travel over there to take the temperature. What's happening over in the UK with with hunting, the meeting, and culture, veganism, all the things we talked about on this show. Seems to be pretty intense over there. So we're gonna get Rachel Carrey, who is a hunter, an Instagram personality and has written a book about wild game um and so we're gonna have her on. We're do that. We're gonna do a little Pepsi challenge. We'll come up with a good name for it soon. Phil will will work shop the Meet Mega Show. I don't think, I think, I don't think so, all right, Bye. The Hunting Collective with Ben O'Brien is a part of the meat Eater podcast network. It is produced by Cringe Schneider and engineered by Phil Taylor. You can find it on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, the meat eater dot com, or anywhere podcasts are downloadable. Wherever you listen, leave a five star review and subscribe.

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