Joe Rogan Experience #971 — Steven Rinella Transcript

Transcript

0:00 vacation though with your family yeah we're going to lanai oh that'll be fun yeah boom and we're So the main group I was with in Guyana, um, which is a root, that looks like pizza. something you take Whoa. the jungle in Guyana yeah did they have communication on any yeah they do yeah more and more now and Trying to spot fish underwater. But, yeah, that's the thing with like i've brought up jonestown a number of times because in the u.s if you say hey i'm going to

2:51 I mentioned earlier they make a root. But, I mean, they eat fish and game, okay, river fish and wild game, They make a somewhat alcoholic drink that would be like an equivalent to beer. shredding, so it'd be like, imagine you took a yam that commune jonestown commune had been ordering actual potassium cyanide which is used in a number that people use to poison

5:42 And how careless they are with the liquid. There's certain things I would always ask him, just like things that he struggled to understand my fixation on it. So if you picture South America, it's northeast corner opening out onto the southern Caribbean. And the government functions, sort of the power in Guyana is the coastal peoples. this guy Rovin, because he's sort of

7:54 just like converse You know? in like closed caption. No, no, no. A Chimane guy telling someone who speaks Chimane in Spanish. Okay? Yeah, it's online. Yes. Wow. No, I lost the word that you were spelling. You know how you spell a lot worse when you're not actually writing it out? jungles of Bolivia. Alright, here we go. Wow. Once I was hunting with my favorite dog and a couple other dogs.

13:25 It almost looked like it had been arrowed. No, not really. I was reading about how he was kind of ahead of his time then he got like kind of paranoid and thought that his congregants shouldn't be engaging in go back to the Bay Area. He goes to the airstrip. There's a shootout the congress the u.s congressman gets killed in the Some of it was. That's hilarious.

16:32 in Rupanuni is That's fascinating. They grow peppers, and then they grow the cassava. like big yams when you grow it you just take a stalk of an existing plant and just bury that stock in the ground and it'll sprout up a new crop feral, give it a few years, and then come in and And it is a staple of life. There's other stuff. So is arrow plant just a plant that makes like a shaft-like?

19:49 puts out these long pieces I'm going to just take something simple. It's been domesticated for a long time. they start a fire and they heat the green thing just by twirling it over the over the embers or Let's say you're making a arrow to uh it gets even more let's say you're making a big game arrow all right um in the big game they hunt would be red brocket deer white lip peccary which is a

22:26 they fit into the end of the green shaft, that they cut out and file down to be about a four-inch steel knife. So their broadheads are made out of machete blades. he remembers people using wood blades which is made from like a bamboo like material so it'd be the only man-made material on those arrows is hog wire fencing. strands in your hands and and you roll them,

25:31 like the idea that you're going to wound it and it's going to get away You should know what's going to happen. You just need to take some Hail Marys, right? So when they shoot, all they really need to do is prick that thing with that wire barb, now do they have you have to judge when you're shooting into the water you have to Well, I mean, it feels like that.

28:13 Yeah. Oh, wow. And arapaima is the biggest freshwater fish in the world. A-R-A-P-A-I-M-A. What an amazing looking critter. Yeah. They would go for two weeks to hunt saltfish. and then get to the mouth of the Rupanuni River and paddle up the Rupanuni River for two days to another town. not touch those fish because arapaima fishery the way they used to hunt arapaima is they would hunt them out of trees

32:50 they would climb up in trees your dugout canoe until you could cast your hook out and catch your arrow. And then that became And once those market influences came in and they had moved beyond subsistence hunting and fishing like personally i'm a lot more interested in a guy shooting fish out of a tree and salting the And why did they let it go? and lower and lower and someone, one of their

36:00 find arapaima because they come up to gulp air. Jesus. So they can breathe air and they can also breathe with their gills. Yeah, giants. Wow. in the old me one time that he was going up so like the largest snake in the world is a green They get bigger. Like American river otters get up to 100 pounds. giant like the popo in the papua new guinea harpy the harpy is that one that eats sloths and monkeys

38:53 Yeah, just like. hunting a hunt different than the makushi like the makushi aren't that big on killing tape here's but So ahead of Christmas, the Wapashana will go on a couple-month-long hunting trip to get food for Christmas celebrations. They hunt everything. I mean, we have our own beliefs that would seem absurd, right, to an outside perspective.

41:47 No, I asked about that a thousand times. How much fat does an anaconda have? I mean, way bigger than your leg. Yeah. Look at those guys struggling. No, the Wapashana. The Wapashana come down. this group of wapashana that come down to rape and pillage on the rewa uh yeah rovan explained And they're on a pretty aggressive program about sustainability.

44:32 They use a, there's a root and a leaf that are both poisons. Well, some people, it's like different people in different areas. So you get into one of these oxbow lakes, apply the poison, kick back 20 minutes, It somehow impairs some other aspect of their body. they were telling me that So they might go in and build a temporary dam to block whatever inlet.

47:00 But, yeah, if they said of livestock, dogs, people, drink that water, it can kill that thing. I remember we were sitting in Roven's friend's house hurt they don't really fuck you up like a black widow or something along those lines yeah before I think the Air Force came in with a helicopter. me but it's like you don't even know what happening. You're in the water and all of a sudden you're kind of getting

49:00 can generate that kind of electrical charge. So you just did it But I reached in and grabbed it. Oh, really? Yes. I've seen a bunch of them. That's solid shit right there. Because you seen the video of the jaguar killing the caiman? Yes. Yeah. Wow. No, that's not... Oh, you But still, boy, what a crazy animal. We missed the sighting. and caracaras are on the sandbars feeding on turtle eggs and jaguar tracks all over because

51:56 So, things that ban international wildlife traffic. there's two things that will, there's two, like, sites that will forever be stuck in my mind. donated clothes, like, cast off clothes wind up you know getting bundled so you see people with like crazy american t-shirts and They don't traffic in them. But they will eat Do you see them, like, recognizing, like, hey, there's some stuff that we have to leave alone.

54:36 because the village was a handful of families, right? Wow. So he watched those get depleted from hide hunting. You know, I'm not sure. to take people out to fish arapaima. resources because they still like they still hunt several days a week right rovin like they live off fishing game everyone in that village all their protein is hunting and fishing protein and some

57:18 I brought my bow fishing bow and I brought a regular bow. His house burnt down and he lost his recurve anyways. absolutely would it be too effective like would they run into problems with, you know, here's why it's a little bit tricky because i think that you would also be reducing demand Now, other people will have shotguns, but the limiting factor there is how expensive

59:59 jaguar and that it would be a firearm issue they would have to figure out a solution for with a firearm. Because the shots are so close. compound bows would be a real game changer you have this luxury of being able to have, like, how many days out of the year would you another thing is if like how much do you like like do you like hunting or fishing more isn't something that's thought about

1:02:37 And we talked about this for forever. Like that most? Right. He's not like, oh, silly, we don't eat monkeys because it's just like we just don't eat monkeys. The main difference from a human perspective looking on the two what you would what what you would jump at is the gregarious So it's essentially the same thing as a javelina? Whoa. Now, can they eat the cassava, the root?

1:05:25 So the white-lipped peccaries will come into the village and raise holy hell. Yeah, looks like pork has a very strong off-putting. remember rewa village has had a group of white-lipped peccaries that would come through the area he would say on average we would get, actually Village is now so wealthy through fishing for arapaima and through all the good hunting and fishing that they have

1:08:46 did they have a bad shaman yeah they have a shaman in training his his he's a young shaman Got the sense that that wasn't the best idea. just got the sense that it wasn't the greatest idea Like, Robin was telling me, and I want to say, man, I do not, like, if I'm here, okay, It's just like, it's so inappropriate. here's some things that were explained to me if you're having a problem where your

1:11:39 it's also helpful just even with kids and other things it's also helpful, just even with kids and other things, it's also helpful to be hit by a bullet ant, for instance. Wow. that I wouldn't want to say that would dispel that idea And there's probably some sort of a placebo They'll probably say the shaman has relaxed his grip. Here's the other thing.

1:13:50 He's a war correspondent, writes in troubled spots around the world, John Lee Anderson. peoples into sort of a constructive engagement with the outside world um a trick there is some Wasn't there also the romance of running into these uncontacted tribes and wanting to cherish that? or this battle I have in my own mind. raw material out in the jungle

1:16:46 to just know that that's going on. In the handful of years to see that just, like, practices are different. and I came to the U.S. in the post-internet days, from a hunting perspective because i tend to view the world through a hunting and fishing perspective, but when you talk about bringing as it's changing you know as much as you know about the american west as much as you told me

1:19:31 you know but yeah so it's like um but you know it's it's makes it's complicated in the internet I think that was like a name from, I don't even know it and have no idea what it meant. american west now yeah i remember the last the last free roaming the last like non-confined plains indians didn't get rounded up till depending on your definition 1876 1877

1:21:56 letting them go so there's that in the internet era but it's like there's that thing i always And in the end, I wound up the first time I went like, there's a thing that happens fish this bow. It's like, well, kind of of and kind of not, because if you spent 27 years doing something, I had no idea. He was a hide hunter. And the fact that he could do it makes him seem

1:24:39 but also for fertilizer. Oh, no. involved in picking up the bones. I thought China was always like some sort of ceramic. one of a handful of states that never had buffalo in the history in the history there's no buffalo In my book about Buffalo, I'm describing that picture, on the wrath of the Khans on Genghis Khan, As they got closer, they realized

1:27:25 Jonestown wouldn't even have been a blip. Cooking fires. and they despised people that lived in homes. And he's done World War I. Yeah. Just reads popular works? Yes, I what I call a podcast is just so pales in comparison because we're just sitting here talking Maybe. Yeah, I think I told you, And they're riding up the valley and they're looking off in the distance and they see all these sort of white, bloodish things and all these dark brown things.

1:31:19 big horn you know whatever event wasn't he one of the guys who toured with Wild Bill? No. Yeah. equivalent of 60 minutes to do interviews. quick that you can become a media personality. See if you can find that. He said it lasted about as long as it takes a hungry man to eat his dinner. He did selfies? Selfies with them. Wow. He did selfies? little bighorn could have gone down and got their photo taken with and paid to watch and interacted

1:34:31 but that's from his show. but yeah, You're shooting people with muskets. mile from my house holy shit yeah and then um and then uh commercial plane or like one of those but I lived on a lake called Middle Lake, which we were forbidden from doing by our dad. But Mr. Rupert would eat these freshwater clams. Would he he go raw or would he cook them i'm sure he would cook them

1:37:56 and the signal was picked up by some other country even. and eventually a news helicopter into the woods and there was a guy there that tried to block my mom and me from going in there Wow. just like, you know, Those are very non-war related things, right? and saw who knows what so yeah i when people talk about how now we're so violent shit there's

1:40:50 But they were combatants too. Omaha beach for paying and bought a barge He got denied from doing the show outside of the World's Fair. That's how. That's incredible. Custer. He rode in with about 200 people. Wow. They were planning on attack at daybreak. To what extent did he, like, that there was just one prong of a three-prong attack or two-prong attack.

1:46:13 at the time. So Here Fell Custer. I think that was the one you had pulled up. Now, the Native American version of it. He's like, you know, in a different position. Insanely. Yeah. thousand years ago or two thousand years ago you know yeah how distorted insanely yeah but the he famously said, Well, I mean, when we were kids, we were taught Minister or someone who was some religious person who came with them at the time?

1:49:32 of right whether this continent existed yeah and and and yeah and just had it was like a leap consensus is that uh no one cares about that meaning what they mean is you're like saying like i uphold the idea of western civilizations annexation what he specifically did Because I think it's pretty much been established that Columbus is a really bad guy.

1:51:40 Happy West Indies Day. It just seems pretty incredible that just 500 years ago, here it goes, the war against Columbus Day in the Washington Post. We'll take it. soul searching on that day. Yeah, you'd be bummed. You know, it's major upheaval. Yeah. The nuclear era. Here's the? Yeah. The nuclear era. And then in 1945, they dropped an atomic bomb that's crazy

1:55:26 affect me but with that's like that's now how you get around yeah you know that you like at a time when you wanted to cross the country you would lose a large percentage of your party to death That's true. It's a big thing, but one of the helpful things, I guess one of the helpful things, just to bring it full circle, Yeah, I think it's very good for you.

1:58:14 So yeah, he flew on a commercial aircraft. with him physically uncomfortable with the heat with everything biting me all the time Now, what is it like to them when it comes to bugs? You're just getting bit. And so to do this, I want him to come up and ice fish. so yeah lawyer burbot freshwater ling poor man's lobster is another word for it it's a northern

2:01:14 Very good. They're all over. Yeah. They fish for Great Lakes whitefish. Freshwater link. I don't know what he has. Yep, he has done it. I want to have him up so bad. Yeah, see, it's like you've been all over the place, right? To what level you understand your spot. everything i'm interested in what they notice and, and, uh, what they never What are the other things?

2:05:56 many thousands and thousands of different varieties of plants and animals you know at various times now are they like the people in bolivia where they're barefoot most of the time Barefoot. I don't know. Everything's in bloom, right? apocalypse now when kurtz when captain willard finally catches up with kurtz and kurtz asks him You got some feet? yeah no no i saw i saw i saw like a number like not yeah quite a few people that had feet that

2:10:11 Because they're just photographing the feet, I guess. to the point where it looks like a hand. It makes you wonder. Yeah, like they're just like selected for what you'd have. That's North America. But it really does show you. What is one of the hallmarks of civilization that shows, like, the really poor choice in footwear? to the side. lock on to polarized sunglasses as being the shit,

2:13:16 Of course. look what those people could do their bodies the human body is pretty bizarre in its ability to But see if you can find the Inca skulls. It's perfectly preserved children. But then you can see that toward the end of their lives, Wow. And they took them up to a high peak. And then, you know, we use now like backpacking food is freeze dried food.

2:17:26 and the non-water parts of the cells The kids still have dried coca leaves on their lips. I know you cook a lot, but have you ever, I know you eat those mountain house things, dehydrated things, but I've with liquid fat poured Then you pulverize it into what looks like Survival food that can last 50 years, but that's not pemmican piece of dehydrated meat that's then hydrated is going to be digestible to you

2:20:19 just like rocks yeah you don't you're going to wind up with a soggy-ass bun. it looks like the looks like a submarine really a small but it's very heavy duty because what That's freeze-dried food. it's like it's the lesser So, yeah, it's a trip. Is he cooking chili and then dehydrating or just dehydrating the components? he's a very frugal man. Does it take that long?

2:24:29 home for some of your wedding guests go ahead and so all the groomsmen were lodged up in this house of this man we didn't know who was the neighbor of his wife's parents and uh i don't years you get a little weird well a thing that i don't let it go i've never even done it i would So he weighed it out in his head. in montana and both still is montana living in bozeman found in his alleyway like a discarded cash from a homeless man and ate all that guy's food.

2:26:46 we were in michigan and it was hard to get a bear tag at the time and he drew a bear tag and the Oh, my God. like the brown food in the albertsons you know like the display case where they fry all those Dude, he will. he chronicles its decay by taking a he's got a 30-pound kettlebell, So that's a neck issue then. if he's listening. You put it on with Velcro.

2:30:25 have it from athletics. I got it from jujitsu, um, from all this, you know, getting your neck See how that guy's just sitting there reading a book? when i'm really relaxed i feel like pop i feel like something pop little tissue separations in which I didn't really. Yeah. Yeah, that was a different thing. But he knows, he like traces that to a specific animal.

2:32:55 the leg and the ass is painful yeah what the fuck is going on here i had a similar issue with my But do you not believe in chiropractors? position. I think most of the time it's just popping your neck and it just feels good. I remember being angry because I was angry that I was being treated by someone who was a professional that really didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. And they were treating something that was a significant issue that I was experiencing.

2:34:57 the different things that can but he's got a lot of atrophy already which is a real bad thing And this is a former UFC heavyweight champion of the world. I mean, it's slowly starting to come back, but I've known Boss to have this issue for... Like the atrophy can happen pretty quick, but the way it regenerates is extremely slow. So they say, You're dealing with he said Lyme disease is this overall term

2:37:44 Like they'll get carpet fibers in their body and they'll claim these carpet fibers are coming out of their body and growing out of their skin. And then he started doing like some pretty deep investigation into what constitutes Lyme You know, you might get it from one part of the East Coast and it has, you know, 50 things. but I would get in arguments with people where like,

2:39:15 I was told that's not how it works because there's so much, Things you need to pass. And you think would sort of like have this unifying effect but people He went home to his wife and said, listen. ability to practice like you don't get cum stored up in your balls and it makes some sort of a knot this is a fucking roll of the dice, man. and most people are not sitting up straight. They're not sitting. A good thing is like one

2:42:07 There's a significant amount of doctors that are just not fucking telling you that. There's a small amount of material that separates your discs. worse and then it's going to get to a point where it just does not recover and then you're going to fuck it up worse, and then it's going to get to a point where it just does not recover, and then you're going to have to get surgery.

2:43:18 I think every time I've been here, I went away for a couple days trying to sit straighter. What's it called? Backs are the one thing. That's a good point. He packed out two elk quarters on his back. What? So it was probably only, like, 50 pounds on everybody's back. they make an Atlas trainer now. No, no, they're selling it now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. doesn't like make you stronger just makes you more inclined to like fuck something up yeah

2:46:32 Just do something to strengthen your back. it'll take 100 pound plates too i just don't know if the plate's designed for it if the pack rather fall across your legs? Right in between. But when you're doing chin-ups, it's just hanging there. Just grind out three or four. he was he wrote he's a writer so he's been writing about that a little bit There's groundwork that needs to be done to get ready for the run.

2:49:27 Yeah. I love listening to it. I was like, how the fuck does this guy not have a podcast? more we got more we got uh you know a dozen episodes that are new that we're going to be Good times.