Joe Rogan Experience #1925 - Sonny, from Best Ever Food Review Show

Sonny (real name Bill) recounts going from a poor, college-dropout childhood in central Minnesota to building the most-followed travel-food show online, by way of eight years teaching English in Korea on a tourist visa and later relocating to Vietnam. The bulk of the conversation digs into extreme and exotic eating around the world: stinky tofu in Taiwan, blood and organs with Tanzanian tribes, pilot whale in the Faroe Islands, vervet monkey with the Hadza hunter-gatherers, and dried yak and whale meat he brings to the studio. They explore game-reserve hunting and how making animals valuable funds conservation, sample mad honey from Nepal live on air, and compare Wagyu grading. The episode closes on Sonny's nightmare Egypt shoot, ancient-civilization theories, and Muay Thai culture.

• Sonny grew up poor in central Minnesota, failed college three times, and his real name is Bill.
  00:00:32
• He lived in Korea for eight years on a tourist visa, ferrying to Japan and back every 90 days to stay legal.
  00:09:55
• Trophy hunting funds conservation: Cory Knowlton paid about $250,000 to hunt an aggressive rhino, with the money going to anti-poaching and habitat.
  00:39:29
• His brother took six spoons of mad honey and spent the night dry-heaving, vomiting, and unable to walk.
  01:40:43
• Egypt was their worst production ever: police seized their cameras, lights and hard drives and later forced them to delete food footage.
  02:22:27
• After Sonny's critical Egypt videos went viral, Egypt changed the law so tourists no longer need a permit to film on the sidewalk.
  02:36:23
• He spent three days with the Hadza hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, eating vervet monkey and joining a brutal eight-mile bow hunt.
  01:11:10

• Inspired by Andrew Zimmern eating stinky tofu in Taipei, Sonny ate the same dish at the same restaurant and sent Zimmern the video.
  00:18:43
• The Maasai drain blood from a live cow's neck with an arrow, then seal the wound with dung before drinking it mixed with milk.
  00:31:11
• Among the Datoga tribe, women get first dibs on organs and the liver always goes to the older men.
  00:31:42
• In the Faroe Islands people leave work or church when whales arrive, and the share of meat depends on how much you help.
  01:00:19
• The Hadza make poison arrows from tree pulp, bend arrows straight with their teeth, and use different arrow tips for birds and rodents.
  01:20:28
• Japanese Wagyu is graded by a machine that scans the tissue; A5 is the top grade, and it's about DNA, not beer or massages.
  01:57:33
• The younger Dryas impact theory holds Earth was hit by comet debris around 11,000 years ago, evidenced by iridium and nano-diamonds.
  02:37:58
• In Muay Thai the first round is for gambling, and fighters coast in the final round to preserve themselves for next week's bout.
  02:48:46
• Mad honey's trippy, blood-pressure-lowering effect comes from grayanotoxin in rhododendron nectar collected by bees in Nepal and Turkey.
  01:46:01