Joe Rogan Experience #765 — Tovar Cerulli Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Eeeeee... really wanted to talk to you. I've read some of your stuff and I've seen some interviews with you online. Obviously a very intelligent, very thoughtful guy. You started out a vegan and So I spent basically 20 to 30 as vegetarian, mostly vegan that whole time. And then it became other issues, environmental, you know, all kinds of things. Yeah.

3:06 nutritional needs in the long term. And once I started eating some yogurt, which is a big Wow. Well, eggs are an easy one because nobody has to get hurt. by a rooster. They clean your garden. started hunting to, and I was learning through email to my uncle and reading articles and poking around in the woods. Back in the 60s and 70s, we had all this young growth forest, you know, all these farm fields that were coming back into forest.

6:24 So I was trying to hunt, but unsuccessful for several years. But a deer is a different experience. Did you take courses? I was totally clueless about firearms, about deer, about everything. and, you know, there's a lot of practice involved. About the woods, about firearms, about all kinds of things. long time before you actually shoot a deer it's probably the way to go i got a crazy crash course

10:12 I easily could have wounded an animal. Wisconsin, Minnesota have really good programs, adult learn-to-hunt programs, I mean, there's weekend workshops being offered by folks I know not associated with Yeah. I mean, just that hands-on experience, that direct experience is really different from sitting in a cubicle, getting paid, and then going and buying food at the grocery store.

12:45 ends and realistically that life was probably on its way out anyway if you're shooting a mature deer So to get something that's five years old, you're essentially stepping in just before nature did. to feed every country in the world. know like saying is it possible to write a book yes it is guess how few fucking people write books experience other vegetarians who became hunters and there's a there's a logic to it like if you

15:58 and these sorts of issues seriously, And when their diet changed, they decided they're going to raise their own animals instead of hunt. So they wanted to confront it directly. I mean, for me, it was that my health was iffy. And so when I started to add in some eggs, yogurt, some local chicken, that kind of thing, Possibly. I'm like, boy, that's controversial.

19:16 And, you know, there's a huge difference nutritionally, as I understand it, between a vegan diet and a vegetarian diet. and I really wish I had read a little bit more of the arguments against what they were saying before I had them on. One exception to that is Rich Roll. But for a lot of them, they just don't want to admit the difficulty in getting complete sources of protein.

21:19 But, like, vegan bodybuilding is fraught. Fucking scientists have made your body, man. Got in a plane crash and was burned really badly. Their immune system was floundering. Like, what's going on? I mean, I think part of it is probably that we have, you know, our bodies are different. Because you're suddenly eating, in general, healthier, cleaner food. Um, after 10, 20 years for many people, I think

24:15 I live here. I'm not separate from that. And why am I so fixated, Right. And it was strange. Yeah. They kill everything. Right. And you say, you know, hey, I can remove myself from any cruelty, any ethical concerns by just oh, plants eat animals, animals eat animals, then animals die and plants eat And there's an environmental philosopher who's now passed on,

29:01 that's one of the things what we do to our bodies when we embalm them. We sort of remove ourselves permanently from the cycle. i'm like this is a shell this is not my grandpa he's gone like this is some strange thing and yeah deer eat birds yeah it's just probably a bizarre uh i've seen a No, they've always done this. canada where you get into mostly forested areas and you get overpopulations of deer they wipe out

32:04 Yeah, and deer, it's really interesting how they're set up. It's a bad design. And as soon as the air starts getting crisp around the fall, they'll fatten up, they look great, their antlers grow, and as soon as the air So they'll go from being like a stud, prime of their life deer, Well, it's just nature almost has these fail-safe systems set up to make sure that these mature bucks only have their time in the sun for so long.

34:28 the ethic of the clean kill, the idea that you should only shoot once and it should be virtually Marine Land, exactly. And so there are people who do get it across those, you know, those camps. those things and i think they're basically like water people i really do i just think they don't I won't work it. And that's what it feels like. And yet they're hunting cultures.

37:53 death she's awesome but she loves animals she's vegetarian she loves animals but she doesn't There's very few people give a fuck if you kill a fish. it is weird and moving. And they had this lake there called Jamaica Pond. they had bass and trout and I loved it. I'd go there every day and I'd But when I was 20, I had been thinking a lot about what kind of life I wanted to lead, what my values.

39:35 Right. I just never got back into the habit of buying beef. to me. To someone who hasn't experienced it, it's very, very difficult to even imagine what it's like. And I think human beings have created them out of convenience and it's wonderful and it's allowed us to gather information and to create these incredible places where you And it's not just food, obviously.

43:03 very little is being produced, a combination of like a bunch of different places where he lived for 10 years here in Argentina for When you have a pouring rain and it comes down that L.A. river and it just goes right into the ocean. Yeah, backcountry, public land in Montana, off the Missouri River, camping, like the this that i think that there's some things that that we don't know that we have a requirement for in our minds or in our bodies or maybe perhaps in our DNA.

46:19 there's this amazing feeling, like the exuberation, this weird exhilaration feeling when you're eating food that you grew yourself. Having someone think you're attractive, your own meat from an animal or from a fish or something that you've gotten and have a wide range of experiences and views and values and attitudes toward it. Talk about being sort of spiritually connected

48:38 that's so alien, And this was pre Cecil the lion. Jones. Yeah. Sure. We're having fun. Right. Right. That's understood as wrong. And there are many traditional hunting prayers from hunting cultures where it's, you know, I took your life because I needed the food, the hide, You don't do that. No, I'm just saying that there are these values about respect for life and about animal welfare

53:20 but just to, in all fairness, a lot of people go to New Zealand So they import elk from there. So if you've ever been over there or if you ever, I watched a video about it last night. There's no predators there. I'm not even hunting. I don't, But, got really weird Donald Trump Jr. or one of the Trump sons was several years back. It has some sort of totemic or symbolic power.

56:47 I mean, that's why I don't have anything that's been taken care of. And I mean, I wouldn't ever shoot an animal just for its skull or just for its antlers, what's meaningful about the meat, as you've spoken about a bit, what's meaningful about a skull or something. forceful like every everything about it was like like it must be done you must stop this is oh

59:26 Like, to this day, like, I'll put this podcast up and people go, oh, great, another hunting podcast. I think this conversation, the conversation about where does your food come from, what There's a blind spot there. He grew the vegetables. sandwich and you're eating it. and being aware of where things come from and how they're connected, One of the first reviews of my book that was written was by a vegetarian.

1:02:49 And you decide what you're going to do in your personal life, you know? And the fact that she we got to get back to the garden, right? Um, if it, if it was what they think it is, Pull this video up that I tweeted yesterday, I probably should have thought of them as carnivores. You don't have to look behind you. I don't know where these people are, It is the size of the rabbit, which is what's really crazy.

1:05:49 this horrible shriek, and there's a They're intense. Plants getting eaten, animals eating animals. You don't see it. territory and be coming back for that and there's a 600 pound fucking bear who It happens all the time Oh, here's one right here. This one's dead. they have companion animals. We have this moral compass of some kind. Even though you don't literally mean that Martin's evil, but we think in those moral

1:09:40 Right. Away from slavery. because they've outlawed lion hunting. and the people that are on the outside I don't have any desire to kill anything like a lion I like looking at videos of them. Yeah, I mean, predators are really complicated all over the world. They will ebb and flow. Or do you have to eat it? You're talking about a country like Zimbabwe, which is incredibly poor, which could have benefited from $1 million in money that would aid conservation if they allowed these hunts to continue.

1:14:45 When you think of Africa, you hear, well, lions are in danger. they've got so many of them. neighborhoods. Not only that, they're giving people Lyme disease. Fact check, fact check. It can get into your nervous system, do all sorts of things to you. They're doing these fenced-in establishments where you go and hunt, and you're hunting these animals that have been grown just for their enormous antlers. We covered it a couple of days ago with my friend Doug Duren,

1:17:43 Yeah. You're going to have people that are race car drivers that are using just stronger engines than they're supposed to use or they're cheating somehow or another on this or on that. It's a different question. And he was just like this super wealthy guy who hunts all over the world. How small is it? But again, it's a small number. and bad drivers, people who get into road rage and people who are polite. We can distinguish

1:21:02 Boom. Yeah, and I think that's great. Did you ever see the movie Wolverine? It ain't lentils. and then cooking it. you don't have to do that because you can just go to the supermarket why would you want to do it you Even if it's an animal you're going to eat, you know, you're smiling with the picture, you know, as like, Well, yeah. You know, and I've never been terribly comfortable.

1:25:11 I find hunting meaningful. It was just this is an important. I mean, you are in the woods. difficult to do it doesn't take away from the reverence that i have for the animal you know With a bow. maybe, months. Yeah. that animal because it's not just about look if, if I took that photo just for me, that's perfect. That's for everybody else too. what a difficult pursuit it is. And just to keep your nerves together when this thousand pound

1:30:00 and I had a mule deer tag for a few days at the end of that. That's a big animal. I'd heard tape of it, but I never actually heard one bugle. and the fact that this is going on in the american wilderness and the vast majority of people that Well, that's a big issue with a lot of Republican politicians. down. And then you had you know not everything is going to be public

1:32:52 I always fuck those two up. With black bears. Even a smaller black bear, you just can't believe how strong those things are. I mean, where we are. black bear hunt but while they were sleeping was attacked by a 500 pound black bear in his tent um big melee ensues everybody's screaming Yeah. right that's meat you know going back to the idea of, you know, animal people and spirituality, I'm thinking

1:36:16 They're your equals. as a sort of Western civilization, But the ones that are equal to us or higher or better, maybe there's nothing higher or better than us in Western civilization in our imagination. If you want to be all spiritually connected to your food. Well, you know, there's something that we appreciate about these Native American cultures felt like i had taken a drug because i felt like there's some strange connection or some strange frequency that I had tuned into that I'd never been a part of before.

1:39:21 and what's ethical and what's not ethical. They were free from those burdens. in the large scale, how we've dealt with warfare. There is still a similar, you know, moral ambiguity about this. had to make whether it's to defend your life against other humans that want to take your 60s? for a long time, in other parts of the world The first modern-day vegans in November 1944, Donald Watson, called a meeting with five

1:42:33 Yeah. Yeah, they do not do well. They go blind. Yeah, it's not. They're obligate carnivores. They must eat owners. Yeah. That's tricky. They go blind. Like, they're brutal. They catch something outside. North America, is cats. Here it goes. 1.4 billion to as many as So your kitty cat and that bird feeder, bad combination. They're just these little killers that allow us to take care of them.

1:45:09 Yeah. What is this? that is insane. fuck them. And yet we as a species, you know, we're very tribal. They don't want pets. Separate them? So he wanted to stop any sort of cruelty even in nature. Her own baby. They've been around some animals and wildlife their whole life, and each side doesn't really want to acknowledge too much that there might be some validity to either the argument on the other side or just to the reality of the world.

1:50:16 You're just projecting human. But at least acknowledge there's a, for you hunting, there's a valuable experience and an ethical impulse to confront you know, confront what it means to eat meat, if its child got killed. I mean, we will call it emotions. Companionship is bullshit every movie that shows an awesome relationship is just a ridiculous biological trick

1:52:57 because I think there's beauty in all of it. But the old word awe, you know, the power of that. Oh, my God. I mean, what a crazy animal. So because of that, we could develop iPhones. But in doing so, we've somehow or another forgotten that we're a part of this wild world. Sure. But four or five hours of hunting and gathering is exhausting, and you really don't have enough

1:57:11 but clearly not a frigid area around the corner. that you understand and value too. You know, the pavement, you know, beyond the pavement into nature. Well, you know, have you read Richard Louvre's work at all? First, he focused on kids, and then he moved it to focusing on 2005, I guess, was the We certainly evolved in the real world in nature not in cities

2:01:33 What's health? You know, I mean, I think they're crazy. Oh, we should go back to the garden. or a whole society that has no connection right it's all supermarket it's all drive-through oh, we have to go back to the woods and live in the woods to be real humans. some experiences of connection with the, you know, the earth, right. In LA. Yeah. You know,

2:03:49 what are we doing as a race, better devices, new and better things. And it works all day in order to obtain the latest and Yeah, we longed towards a simple past. And it's very primally enriching because we do reward our system. and how my sense, as you were describing it, I mean, it was shocking I finally succeeded. you know the for me it was a sense of grief that this beautiful animal is dead.

2:07:34 I was doing this, the knife and the, you know, skinning and then in the kitchen with a leg, you know, and taking apart this amazing animal, all these layers of muscle and bone. Really? What a conflicted guy. And I think it's valuable for people, even if we live in a high-tech world, to have some connection to that. check out this part like you don't even get in here without doing this and it was like oh this

2:10:29 The sorrow never really came. Shit that was filled with hair because these animals were just jacking deer and whatever This is intense. meat and you're gonna provide this meat to your family you know like my friend bond feeling with your friend where you give him meat, Yeah. I haven't. I have a friend who's been trying to get me out to Colorado. So your hunting is almost like you're doing it almost entirely for food.

2:15:16 And the problem with that is that, one, for most of us, they're not separate. And that's probably why it's enjoyable, because it provides food. But it's the experience of it. and i do find that disturbing when i see people talking about or acting about hunting or anything else that way. It's not that. I'm really confused about. I don't understand that one.

2:19:42 Aberrant behavior or motive or desire with sex. And there's a, you can sort of see the logic and the sort of cultural roots of all of that. And women are not inherently nurturing always. They can life takers they can be hunters you know they can provide for their okay, why do you think people hunt? I think it is. And it's just some picture of some guy with some zebra or, you know.

2:24:52 And I can understand why someone would even come up with that sort of bizarre theory. else does either. But before I just, I feel like this is one of those things that will not be solved. She's got a bunch of fucking cats and she's a vegan. take a few hundred years. And in that few hundred years or so, we're going to evolve to be something He was happier for it.

2:27:33 I've done seminars for hunter education instructors and I've talked to rooms full of non-hunters, including some vegetarians. Like, oh my God, how am I going to preach to them? But it went well. And as soon as I opened it up So they say all these hunter education instructors were actually joking about Boulder. Right. And the hunters. Hunter Education Instructors and Gaiam TV.

2:30:32 Those two conversations were really similar. granted because they're not in motion because they're stationary and they slowly grow and we with each other, how this network of intertwined life forms, similar plant life forms that exists on the planet is utterly dependent on plants yes yeah all of them none of us are none of us are and you you we all i think i don't think there's a person that looks at those factory farm videos

2:33:58 because if that stuff gets out, I think what you're doing or what your friends are doing when you're talking about these people that we have stuffed in these cities how else and my people we have stuff on the globe You can't feed all those people the real way. No, it's been great. Appreciate it, man.