The guest
Steven Rinella: Outdoorsman, hunter, and writer who hosts the MeatEater podcast and TV show.
What this episode covers
Steven Rinella joins Joe Rogan for a wide-ranging conversation that opens on scammers, organized retail theft, and a sense that institutions have broken down over the prior three years. They dig into media outrage culture, the firing of an Apple executive over a joke, censorship and government collusion with social media, the Griner-for-Bout prisoner swap, and shared skepticism of pharmaceutical companies and COVID mandates. The second half turns to Rinella's world: hunting psychology, animal individuality and perception, mule deer versus whitetail, and the bizarre, high-money culture of trophy whitetail hunting. They close on performance anxiety in hunting, comedy, and fighting, plus Rinella's life in Montana.
Recommended on this episode
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O.J.: Made in America
ESPN
“made in America is phenomenal; it's unbelievable; I feel like you'd like it the most”
“if you want to greatly enhance your understanding of money celebrity Justice in America made in America is phenomenal it's good I feel like you'd like it the most”— Joe Rogan
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Shot IQ
Joel Turner
“he has a very comprehensive system on his website that's designed to inform your mind... it's very very beneficial”
“Joel Turner has a website called shot IQ and Joel Turner was a um he was a SWOT instructor and so he's very aware aware of high pressure situations”— Joe Rogan
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The Kill Chain
Christian Brose
“I'm reading a terrible book about this too what is in the middle of this book called The Kill chain it's all about”— Joe Rogan
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Rising Wolf: The White Blackfoot
James Willard Schultz
“more depression no it sounds like I'm reading a book called um Rising Wolf the white Blackfoot what is that”— Steven Rinella
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Wild New World
Dan Flores
“so his new book Wild new world is a history of human animal interactions and it basically begins with the chick's Lube strike”— Steven Rinella
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The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood
“you know the writer Margaret Atwood I've heard the name okay she has a book called The handmaid's Tale yes this dystopian”— Steven Rinella
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If I Did It
O.J. Simpson
“somebody gave me I forget who some comic gave me a signed copy of OJ's if I did it really yeah I never even cracked the book”— Joe Rogan
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The Social Dilemma
Netflix
“I don't know if you ever watched that documentary uh the social dilemma oh yeah terrifying”— Joe Rogan
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The Social Network
“I didn't watch that I watched the one uh social networks a couple decades... I still have that actor like whenever I hear the Mark Zuckerberg I always think of the actor”— Steven Rinella
MediaReferenced
Arthur
“he decides to quote a movie... which is the movie Arthur which is like a comedy about a drunk who's that Dudley Moore okay 1981”— Steven Rinella
MediaReferenced
StarCraft 2
Blizzard Entertainment
“also Starcraft 2 which is a very complicated game and now computers are just wiping out the best players in the world”— Joe Rogan
ProductReferenced
Muzzy Broadhead
Muzzy
“showed you my elk vertebrae that has that's encased it's got a Muzzy Broadhead grown into it wow yeah built like it just grew around it”— Steven Rinella
ProductReferenced
Slack
Slack
“I think with corporations they tend to do things on slack you know that they have an internal messaging slack”— Joe Rogan
Big reveals from this episode
- Joe describes an AI-generated podcast pairing him with Steve Jobs, a man he never met, that sounds convincingly real.
- An Apple executive was fired after 22 years for quoting the 1981 movie Arthur to a TikToker while standing next to his laughing wife.
- Joe says Elon told him neural implants will eventually let people communicate without using words.
- The Mitch Rompala buck, an alleged 1998 Michigan world-record whitetail, may be a fabricated rack; the hunter refused to let it be x-rayed, leaving the case unsolved.
- Joe notes the biggest record-book animals are almost always found dead or roadkill, not actually hunted.
- A small-town cop friend said becoming an officer revealed hidden spousal abuse, child abuse, and addiction he never knew existed in his 9,000-person town.
Worth remembering
- Target reportedly lost around $400 million to organized retail crime in a single year.
- Rinella watched a buck hold a completely motionless, frozen stance for 22 minutes after something caught its attention.
- Milo Hanson's world-record typical whitetail was reportedly valued at up to a million dollars.
- The 'Hole in the Horn' buck, a famous non-typical found dead by railroad workers, scored 328 2/8.
- Animals can survive embedded broadheads as bone grows around them; Rinella has an elk vertebra that encased a Muzzy broadhead.
- Russian state TV openly mocked the Griner-for-Bout swap, framing Marine Paul Whelan as the better trade who was passed over.
- Vitamin D, crucial to immune function, is hard to get without sun exposure or supplements, and many COVID ICU patients were deficient.
- Frontiersman Jim Bridger reportedly carried an arrowhead in his shoulder for two years before an early Western surgery removed it.
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