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

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

00:00:12.000 What's happening, Sonny?

00:00:13.000 How are you?

00:00:14.000 I'm good.

00:00:14.000 I'm great.

00:00:15.000 I'm happy to be here.

00:00:16.000 I gotta say, to start off, I want to say thank you so much for having me here in the first place.

00:00:21.000 By all accounts, I should not be here right now.

00:00:23.000 Why's that?

00:00:24.000 And I say that because, not to be too grandiose from the start, but the way I grew up, I grew up white trash from central Minnesota, super poor family, one of six, failed college three times, and now, somehow years later, I have the most viewed, most followed travel show Online or otherwise, 0.97

00:00:40.000 and I'm on the motherfucking Joe Rogan experience. 0.97

00:00:43.000 How did this all happen? 0.98

00:00:44.000 You're welcome.

00:00:45.000 How did you get on this journey of food exploration?

00:00:49.000 You have a really fun show.

00:00:50.000 Thank you.

00:00:51.000 It's really fun to watch.

00:00:52.000 Yes, I was very stoked.

00:00:53.000 You know, when you reached out to me for the first time, I was in Egypt with COVID. I was going through one of my worst travel experiences ever.

00:01:01.000 And...

00:01:02.000 How did it start?

00:01:03.000 I mean, everything starts, obviously, where I come from in Minnesota.

00:01:07.000 Growing up, I was quite directionless.

00:01:11.000 I didn't know what I wanted to study.

00:01:14.000 I didn't really have any guidance.

00:01:15.000 I didn't really have any mentorship.

00:01:17.000 And so, hence the reason I failed out of school so many times.

00:01:22.000 In high school, I was really into filmmaking, because fortunately we had a filmmaking course there, but it's just not something I pursued afterwards.

00:01:31.000 And so around the age of 24, I felt like I was pretty rudderless.

00:01:35.000 I tried doing a couple things.

00:01:37.000 You know, I did radio for a while.

00:01:38.000 I was at 104.7 KCLD, I think the 100th market in the country, not bad, doing 11 p.m.

00:01:45.000 to 5 a.m., Making minimum wage.

00:01:48.000 And so I tried getting...

00:01:49.000 Minimum wage on the radio?

00:01:50.000 Yeah.

00:01:51.000 They really pay you minimum wage?

00:01:52.000 Yeah, well, if they would have paid less, they probably would have.

00:01:55.000 Are you surprised?

00:01:56.000 I mean, radio is kind of infamous for not paying any money.

00:01:59.000 Yeah, but minimum wage sounds crazy.

00:02:01.000 I guess they saw it as like they're doing me a favor by teaching me a trade or a skill.

00:02:07.000 Hmm, okay.

00:02:09.000 Yeah.

00:02:09.000 And so I tried getting a job doing that.

00:02:14.000 That didn't work out.

00:02:15.000 And so I was at a point in my life where I just thought, I need to do something.

00:02:19.000 I'm still youngish.

00:02:21.000 I was 24. And I want to travel.

00:02:24.000 I want to see the world.

00:02:25.000 I want to figure out something before I actually develop a long-term career.

00:02:29.000 Because at that point, I had nothing.

00:02:31.000 And so I had a friend.

00:02:33.000 My brother had a friend who lived in Korea.

00:02:35.000 And at the age of 24, I moved to Korea.

00:02:38.000 To teach English.

00:02:40.000 And to me it made sense, because I could go there, I could travel, I could see the world, I thought it would maybe last an hour, and then I would come back.

00:02:48.000 But I ended up staying there for eight years.

00:02:50.000 And so, maybe I'm giving too long of an answer.

00:02:52.000 No, don't worry about it.

00:02:54.000 I gotta take a deep breath.

00:02:56.000 Let me reset a little bit.

00:02:58.000 I gotta calm down.

00:03:02.000 I went to Korea.

00:03:03.000 Korea was really challenging because it was my first time in a different country, and I'd really only been in central Minnesota at that point.

00:03:09.000 Oh, wow.

00:03:10.000 And so it was something completely different.

00:03:12.000 And this is Korea in 2008. Like, there aren't really smartphones.

00:03:15.000 Maybe the iPhone 1 had just dropped. 0.97

00:03:17.000 YouTube still sucked.

00:03:19.000 I mean, it existed, but it was barely usable. 0.52

00:03:21.000 It was just cat videos and Charlie bit me at that point.

00:03:24.000 And so there's very little guidance online.

00:03:28.000 I went there to teach English.

00:03:30.000 You might be asking, how did you teach English after failing out of university three times?

00:03:34.000 Well, you can do some underground, under-the-table English teaching in Korea.

00:03:40.000 Did you have to learn how to speak Korean?

00:03:42.000 Eventually I did, but no.

00:03:45.000 So people, Korean, folks in Korea are very desperate to learn English, and as you may know, people, they study their asses off, they're very hard workers, and they're very hard studiers, maybe to a detriment. 0.99

00:03:59.000 Like, kids go to school so much, they study so much, they get tutors, and things like that.

00:04:06.000 And so, when I went to Korea, I was gonna be a tutor.

00:04:15.000 And to tutor people, I had to...

00:04:17.000 Sorry, give me one second.

00:04:24.000 I'm freaking out a little bit still.

00:04:25.000 Is this the first podcast you've done?

00:04:27.000 It's like, you know, I did a couple practice podcasts.

00:04:31.000 What's a practice podcast?

00:04:32.000 I feel like it's so quiet in here.

00:04:34.000 I'm like, I can hear my voice so well.

00:04:38.000 In Korea...

00:04:40.000 I wanted to get a gig teaching.

00:04:43.000 And so to teach, you would think like, oh, it's going to be difficult to teach people if you don't have any experience or any credentials teaching English.

00:04:51.000 And that wasn't the case at all.

00:04:54.000 Because when you speak to people, you know, they'll say something like, oh, today I go to store.

00:04:58.000 And you go, oh...

00:04:59.000 I know how to solve that.

00:05:00.000 You know, today I went to the store.

00:05:02.000 And so I'm teaching people conversational English and I'm doing that for maybe 40 or 50 bucks an hour, which seems pretty good, especially in 2008, except for it takes maybe you can do two or three lessons.

00:05:31.000 I think?

00:05:39.000 So, with many schools, you need to have the right kind of visa.

00:05:42.000 They want to see that you have a proper degree, which is understandable.

00:05:47.000 And so, if you just asked, can you pay cash?

00:05:50.000 Some would get your point.

00:05:51.000 They would say no, or they would say, oh, yeah, cash is fine.

00:05:54.000 We'll do cash.

00:05:55.000 And so, eventually, after being there for maybe six months, I finally figured out how to make a full-time income decision.

00:06:02.000 Teaching English in Korea at a kindergarten.

00:06:05.000 And I know some people might judge that and say that's not okay to do because I don't have a proper degree in teaching English.

00:06:10.000 But really, to teach English in Korea, all you need is a four-year degree in anything.

00:06:14.000 I could have had a four-year degree in interior design and also taught kids English.

00:06:20.000 And so, living in Korea was the show I do now.

00:06:25.000 There's no way I could have done it if I didn't have all that time living abroad for so long.

00:06:30.000 Living in Korea was the first taste of living in a society and a culture completely different from the USA. In the USA, we have a very individualistic society here, and Korea is much more of a communal society.

00:06:45.000 People care a lot more what other people think.

00:06:47.000 I tried dating a Korean woman one time.

00:06:50.000 Challenging.

00:06:52.000 Because she's not just looking at, what do I think about the dynamic of this relationship?

00:06:55.000 She's looking at, what are my parents going to think?

00:06:58.000 What are my friends going to think?

00:06:59.000 What are my coworkers going to think?

00:07:00.000 And so on.

00:07:01.000 That's just one random example.

00:07:03.000 But being steeped and immersed in this different culture gave me enough experience to...

00:07:09.000 It gave me perspective.

00:07:11.000 And it's perspective that if I didn't have that, I couldn't make the show that I make today.

00:07:16.000 Because...

00:07:18.000 The show would be a much more judgmental show if I wasn't so used to and accustomed to being among other cultures.

00:07:28.000 So, after a number of years in Korea, I switched to filmmaking.

00:07:32.000 My interest to filmmaking.

00:07:34.000 And I started making my own content.

00:07:37.000 I didn't really have anywhere to publish it.

00:07:39.000 What kind of content?

00:07:40.000 What did you start doing?

00:07:40.000 So, back then I would read all these self-help books.

00:07:44.000 And I was really obsessed with this idea of just improving myself, getting better.

00:07:50.000 I felt really...

00:07:53.000 Unaccomplished.

00:07:53.000 Because three of my siblings had four-year degrees.

00:07:55.000 One had a PhD.

00:07:58.000 One was in law school.

00:07:59.000 And for me, I'm the loser in Korea who doesn't have a degree, doesn't have a job, doesn't have a skill.

00:08:06.000 And so I... I wanted to build up a skill in filmmaking.

00:08:11.000 This is what I was really interested in in high school.

00:08:12.000 I was like, I can do it again now.

00:08:14.000 Filmmaking like making movies, documentaries, whatever kind of stuff.

00:08:17.000 So I guess in the beginning I wanted to be good at whatever I could be good.

00:08:21.000 I wanted to be good at everything.

00:08:22.000 And I didn't have a direction quite yet.

00:08:24.000 So I read this book called Talent is Overrated.

00:08:28.000 And in that book they talk about the 10,000 hour rule.

00:08:32.000 I'm sure you've heard about it in Malcolm Gladwell's book.

00:08:35.000 And the 10,000-hour rule is just essentially you need 10,000 hours of practice, deliberate practice to become masterclass at something.

00:08:42.000 Even people talk about this with comedians, too.

00:08:45.000 I think Louis C.K. has talked about people needing at least 10 years to get good or even decent.

00:08:51.000 And so I broke it down.

00:08:53.000 I looked at filmmaking systematically.

00:08:56.000 Like, how can I... Week by week, day by day, improve at this and get better at this.

00:09:04.000 I created something called the Soul Filmmakers Workshop, which was a place where I could bring my films.

00:09:11.000 Maybe there were little comedy sketches, short documentaries, stuff I did for clients, corporate work, and people could come and tear apart my content and then that would help me to improve and get better over time.

00:09:22.000 And so Over a number of years in Korea, I was able to transition from teaching English to doing filmmaking full-time for clients.

00:09:30.000 And so at this point, I don't have any really artistic goals in mind.

00:09:37.000 It's just I want to figure out if I ever get deported from this country.

00:09:42.000 Am I going to be able to go back to the USA and have a skill or a job or a trade I can fall back on?

00:09:47.000 And eventually that answer was yes.

00:09:49.000 Luckily, I never got deported.

00:09:51.000 But living in Korea for eight years was one of the most nerve-wracking things I had ever done. 0.99

00:09:57.000 Because I was there on a tourist visa.

00:10:01.000 And it's not something I've talked about a lot, but a tourist visa means you get to stay here for 90 days.

00:10:06.000 As an American, you don't need any visa ahead of time, but you land on the spot, they give you a visa for 90 days, and then within 90 days you need to leave the country, but you can come back right away.

00:10:16.000 But I did that for eight years straight.

00:10:19.000 So you just kept leaving and coming back?

00:10:20.000 Right.

00:10:21.000 So where would you go?

00:10:22.000 So I really got it perfected and I could do it for the least amount of money possible.

00:10:26.000 I went from Seoul in the north of South Korea all the way down to Busan in the south to an island called Tsushima in Japan.

00:10:36.000 And so I could wake up at 5 a.m., go all the way to Japan, and come back by evening.

00:10:42.000 The nerve-wracking part wasn't the trip itself or the amount of money it cost, although that was a burden, too, because I didn't make that much money.

00:10:48.000 But at immigration, on both sides, they would always ask, Hey, you're teaching.

00:10:54.000 You're a teacher, right?

00:10:55.000 You teach.

00:10:56.000 Even in Japan, going into Japan, they would say, what do you do?

00:10:59.000 And I would have like a whole list of stories and answers lined up in my mind because it was so anxiety-inducing, especially coming back to Korea because this is the stamp I really need.

00:11:10.000 I need 90 days more of freedom when I land in Korea.

00:11:14.000 I shouldn't say land, but I pull up at the port because I would take a ferry.

00:11:18.000 If I get this stamp, I get 90 more days to figure out my life, to move forward, and to have freedom.

00:11:26.000 And standing in line for immigration, I'm looking, okay, there's an older guy over here.

00:11:30.000 This lady looks nice. 1.00

00:11:30.000 This young guy looks like he's got something to prove. 1.00

00:11:33.000 And I would rehearse my story.

00:11:35.000 What are you doing here?

00:11:36.000 Oh, I love Korea.

00:11:37.000 I love Korean.

00:11:38.000 I love Korean food.

00:11:40.000 Try to get him on my side.

00:11:42.000 I plan to go to university soon.

00:11:44.000 In Korea, I hope to study here.

00:11:46.000 And then eventually, Were you speaking to them in Korean?

00:11:51.000 No, in English.

00:11:52.000 So everybody, I would say in most places you go around the world at immigration, they're going to speak English.

00:11:57.000 And a couple of times they took me to the side room.

00:12:01.000 And that's really terrifying.

00:12:02.000 Especially because it wouldn't be as terrifying now because now I have resources.

00:12:06.000 But back then I'm completely broke.

00:12:08.000 And so one time they took me to the side room.

00:12:11.000 They go, what are you really doing here?

00:12:12.000 You're teaching.

00:12:13.000 You're teaching, right?

00:12:14.000 Just tell us where you're teaching.

00:12:15.000 Why did they think you were teaching?

00:12:16.000 Because a lot of people do what I was doing.

00:12:19.000 They go there.

00:12:19.000 They teach under the table.

00:12:21.000 They don't have to pay any taxes.

00:12:22.000 They just get paid cash.

00:12:23.000 They leave every 90 days.

00:12:25.000 They come back.

00:12:25.000 Like I rented an apartment in Korea.

00:12:28.000 You just needed a passport.

00:12:29.000 They weren't like, show me your labor contract, show me your visa.

00:12:32.000 They're like, all right, you got key money, you got the deposit, you're good to go.

00:12:38.000 And so I lived doing that for eight years.

00:12:42.000 While I'm doing that, I'm building up these film skills, this ability to do filmmaking.

00:12:54.000 Eventually, I go from making corporate videos to wanting to make content for myself.

00:12:58.000 So this is where YouTube comes in.

00:13:00.000 Making corporate videos sucks because clients have no idea what they want.

00:13:05.000 When you make a corporate video, Most companies, especially at that time in Korea, they'll say, we want a video. 0.61

00:13:11.000 We want a video introduction.

00:13:12.000 We've got to interview everybody.

00:13:14.000 How do you even get in contact with these people?

00:13:15.000 Because you speak English.

00:13:17.000 Yeah.

00:13:17.000 I would imagine most of them speak Korean.

00:13:20.000 So, there's a fascinating...

00:13:24.000 Expat culture in most countries around the world, I'd say. 0.86

00:13:26.000 Really?

00:13:26.000 So you ran into a lot of Americans over there?

00:13:28.000 There's a place called Itaewon.

00:13:31.000 You might have heard of this tragedy recently in Korea where a bunch of people got crushed during Halloween.

00:13:36.000 So Itaewon is known as the foreigner neighborhood and all the foreign restaurants from around the world are there.

00:13:42.000 Tons of foreigners live in the neighborhoods around there.

00:13:45.000 So there's a huge expat community there in Itaewon.

00:13:50.000 And so much so that you see what I had.

00:13:52.000 I had the Soul Filmmakers Workshop.

00:13:54.000 People had the stand-up soul.

00:13:58.000 So people did comedy locally.

00:14:00.000 And in fact, they would invite some comedians from here.

00:14:02.000 I think Kyle Kinane came once.

00:14:04.000 James Adomian came once.

00:14:05.000 And so they would fly over comedians.

00:14:08.000 And the audience is, of course, all people who speak English.

00:14:10.000 Some of them might be Korean who speak English.

00:14:13.000 But there is between Yongsan.

00:14:16.000 Yongsan is where there's a huge military base next to Itaewon.

00:14:25.000 Hmm.

00:14:28.000 Hmm.

00:14:40.000 Yeah.

00:14:41.000 Pretty cool.

00:14:42.000 It's pretty cool.

00:14:43.000 So you're finding your way.

00:14:43.000 Well, and so I was able to find my way in...

00:14:47.000 It's like that was my film school.

00:14:49.000 Like, I didn't go to a proper film school.

00:14:51.000 I wouldn't have had the opportunities here.

00:14:54.000 You know, for example, doing corporate videos, doing Red Bull videos.

00:14:57.000 I did videos for Red Bull in Korea.

00:14:59.000 At my level, I wouldn't have been able to do that here in the USA. And so I got to take part in things and jobs and experiences that I wouldn't have been able to otherwise.

00:15:10.000 And so along the way you say, I want to make some food videos.

00:15:13.000 Yes.

00:15:14.000 So I'm getting sick of doing the client work.

00:15:16.000 I want to make content for myself.

00:15:19.000 I've read Gary Vee's first book, Crush It, and I want to crush it.

00:15:25.000 And I love the book, and it taught me about content marketing, and that's something I started doing.

00:15:30.000 Hey, instead of a corporate video, let's make you weekly videos or monthly videos.

00:15:34.000 And from there, you can offer value to the people watching, and then you can have a call to action.

00:15:40.000 And I just thought, well, I could do this for myself.

00:15:44.000 And I had a couple of different ideas, but the idea that stuck was doing food.

00:15:48.000 And at the time, I had a couple of channels that really inspired me.

00:15:52.000 I listened to H3H3, who did comedy at the time, and then I listened to...

00:15:58.000 I watched a channel called Jack's Gap, and he had this very wanderlusty travel videos that he did.

00:16:05.000 It's a young kid from the UK who would go to India, who would go to these interesting countries, and it felt so remote.

00:16:10.000 And at that time, maybe this is 2014, 2014, 2013, there's almost no travel content on YouTube, and if there is any, people are just trying to emulate what already exists on the travel channel, which is what I didn't understand at the time, 0.86

00:16:26.000 because all the shit on the travel channel was so dry. 0.88

00:16:29.000 It's just like, today we walk in Cairo, a city thousands of years old, rich with history, and I was like, this is so fucking boring. 0.96

00:16:37.000 Why not mix something more spontaneous, a little bit more humor, the pacing, the pacing of YouTube, faster pacing, And make a completely new travel format that people hadn't seen before.

00:16:49.000 Now, it took me a few years to get it right, but that was the initial idea.

00:16:52.000 That was the inspiration at the time.

00:16:55.000 So where was your first video?

00:16:56.000 Where'd you go?

00:16:58.000 Oh, that's a good question.

00:16:59.000 So I've made a few different pivots since I started.

00:17:01.000 If you look at my first six, eight videos, they're still online.

00:17:04.000 I mean, my first video is just about a grilled cheese.

00:17:06.000 My first few videos were in Korea, but I was just covering international food.

00:17:11.000 I was doing nachos and burgers and a juicy loosey.

00:17:15.000 And at some point, I mean, I guess that was just the practice.

00:17:17.000 It was like, can I do this?

00:17:18.000 Can I edit a video?

00:17:19.000 Can I be in front of camera?

00:17:21.000 And I just thought, nobody's going to watch about, is a cheeseburger good in Korea?

00:17:25.000 That is not international content.

00:17:27.000 So early on, I decided, and I wasn't shy about it.

00:17:30.000 I said, I really liked Andrew Zimmern's show growing up.

00:17:33.000 Before I moved to Korea, I worked at this job.

00:17:36.000 I'm bouncing around a little bit, but I worked at this job at a home.

00:17:40.000 And I would have to stay overnight at the home.

00:17:43.000 I didn't have cable in my apartment, but at this home, four guys lived there.

00:17:46.000 They're assisted living folks.

00:17:48.000 And one guy would have seizures at night, potentially, maybe once out of every four times.

00:17:53.000 He would scream.

00:17:54.000 He'd grab a magnet from the fridge, rub it on his chest.

00:17:56.000 Somehow that made the seizure go away.

00:17:59.000 When that wasn't happening, I was watching Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods and Bourdain's No Reservations back-to-back on the Travel Channel. 0.99

00:18:07.000 And this shit was so inspiring to me. 0.89

00:18:10.000 As someone living in central Minnesota who just had very few experiences, it's not like there were a lot of international restaurants. 0.99

00:18:18.000 Maybe there's one sushi place that was also a Thai place and an Indian place.

00:18:24.000 All the Asian stuff just gets mixed over here.

00:18:28.000 And so I took inspiration from those shows, and that's another thing that helped me want to move abroad in the first place.

00:18:36.000 And so...

00:18:37.000 I forgot your question.

00:18:41.000 I was on a roll, though.

00:18:42.000 You were on a roll.

00:18:43.000 It's just, how did you get started?

00:18:44.000 Like, what was the inspiration to start making food?

00:18:48.000 Were you always, like, a food enthusiast, or is this just...

00:18:51.000 Well, so I loved watching that show.

00:18:54.000 I remember watching Andrew Zimmern when he was in Taipei, Taiwan, and he was eating something called stinky tofu, and he ate something that was so smelly, so intense that he couldn't even handle it, and he had to spit it out.

00:19:04.000 And to me, that was just fascinating, and the story behind that.

00:19:07.000 And so I made this pivot early on in the channel.

00:19:10.000 I said, I want to go explore more bizarre foods, exotic foods, foods that seem way out there.

00:19:15.000 And for me, the reason is that...

00:19:18.000 Those types of foods just have an intrinsic story attached to them.

00:19:21.000 If you're eating something strange, bizarre, exotic, however you want to term it, there's naturally a story of why are people doing this attached to it?

00:19:32.000 Recently, I was in the Faroe Islands.

00:19:34.000 Why were they eating a stinky tofu?

00:19:36.000 So, stinky tofu is...

00:19:39.000 I think?

00:19:48.000 Yeah.

00:20:00.000 And it's hard to say why, but I guess there's...

00:20:03.000 Did you try it?

00:20:04.000 Oh, yeah.

00:20:04.000 No, I went to...

00:20:05.000 I made a point of going to the same restaurant that Andrew Zimmern went to, ordering the same food and showing like, yeah, I got it.

00:20:11.000 I can eat this.

00:20:12.000 The same food that he spit out.

00:20:13.000 And I sent him that video on Twitter and he laughed.

00:20:16.000 He thought it was funny.

00:20:17.000 It was all, you know, in good spirits.

00:20:21.000 And so...

00:20:22.000 What is it like? 0.97

00:20:23.000 Oh, it's really stinky. 0.90

00:20:26.000 Yeah.

00:20:27.000 I mean, it's tough.

00:20:28.000 Compare it to something.

00:20:30.000 Yeah, everybody wants to compare stuff to like, oh, it's like cheese.

00:20:33.000 It's like a stinky cheese.

00:20:35.000 It's kind of like that, but it's also like rotten mushrooms. 0.80

00:20:38.000 Really intense, putrid.

00:20:42.000 It's like you taste it up through your nose.

00:20:46.000 I think it gave me PTSD. Really?

00:20:48.000 And I don't want to make light of PTSD. It was that rough?

00:20:50.000 But it was pretty bad.

00:20:52.000 Did you finish the bowl?

00:20:53.000 I... I ate the whole thing.

00:20:56.000 You know, I made a decision at that moment that really helped me.

00:20:59.000 I literally had anxiety before eating this.

00:21:02.000 So it's tofu, but they make it into a sandwich.

00:21:05.000 So you've got a tofu bun on top and on bottom.

00:21:10.000 Oh, I was so cute back then.

00:21:12.000 Wearing my little muscle man shirt with no muscles.

00:21:14.000 And there's tomato and there's some vegetables inside and a bunch of sauce.

00:21:19.000 And when you eat it, yeah, it just has...

00:21:23.000 It's good to see the different iterations of the bandana, too.

00:21:26.000 You started off with a headband.

00:21:28.000 Yes.

00:21:29.000 No, that's also a bandana.

00:21:30.000 What's the story of the bandana?

00:21:32.000 It's not that good of a story.

00:21:34.000 I sweat a lot.

00:21:36.000 Yeah.

00:21:37.000 That's the shortest version of the story.

00:21:40.000 I live in Southeast Asia.

00:21:42.000 I live in Saigon, so Vietnam is my home.

00:21:45.000 It's real humid over there, so it'll get 90% humidity, 100 degrees.

00:21:50.000 So you just got accustomed to keeping sweat out of your eyes?

00:21:52.000 Yeah, what do you do?

00:21:53.000 When you work out...

00:21:54.000 I sweat my eyes.

00:21:56.000 Well, that's one of the options.

00:21:57.000 Otherwise, you can wear a basketball headband, which isn't that good of an option.

00:22:00.000 You can wear a baseball cap, I guess.

00:22:03.000 But bandana just worked for me.

00:22:04.000 And then I was so intent on it not becoming a symbol of the show. 0.56

00:22:08.000 I didn't want to be called a douchebag.

00:22:10.000 But it's your thing. 0.98

00:22:10.000 Well, you're not a douchebag. 0.98

00:22:11.000 You're a nice guy. 0.65

00:22:12.000 Oh, thank you.

00:22:13.000 Don't listen to those people. 1.00

00:22:15.000 Just because you have a bandana, you become a douchebag. 0.98

00:22:17.000 Well, yeah, because it's like, who's this guy with his... 0.98

00:22:19.000 What do you got this fabric around your head for?

00:22:21.000 When one guy wrote like, what do you got to tie that around your head to keep your brains in?

00:22:25.000 It's like, alright, fair enough.

00:22:27.000 And eventually I just gave in.

00:22:29.000 And the point I knew I gave in is we went to Japan and it was actually cold.

00:22:33.000 And I'm like, I'm still wearing the bandana.

00:22:35.000 I'm not sweating at all.

00:22:37.000 But I got to wear it now.

00:22:38.000 It's just your thing?

00:22:40.000 Yeah, so it's just become...

00:22:42.000 Now, so listen, when I'm outside of here, when I'm on the streets, I don't wear it.

00:22:46.000 I'm not desperate for attention.

00:22:47.000 I wear it for the show.

00:22:48.000 Oh, interesting.

00:22:50.000 Or if I work out.

00:22:51.000 Actually, when I work out, I do wear it.

00:22:52.000 I wear a different color, though.

00:22:54.000 Okay, so red is only when you're working.

00:22:57.000 I save the red ones for work.

00:22:59.000 I got the whole rainbow pack.

00:23:00.000 So back to this stinky tofu sandwich. 0.80

00:23:03.000 What kind of diarrhea does that produce? 0.99

00:23:06.000 You know, people always ask about diarrhea.

00:23:08.000 It must be phenomenal.

00:23:10.000 And here's the secret.

00:23:11.000 In the Avengers, there's this scene with the Hulk where they're asking, like, oh, you can control your anger now.

00:23:19.000 And he goes, that's my secret.

00:23:21.000 I'm always angry.

00:23:22.000 Right.

00:23:23.000 Right.

00:23:23.000 So I always have diarrhea.

00:23:26.000 And I don't remember the last time.

00:23:27.000 It was just like a nice, really solid one.

00:23:31.000 So back to the tofu.

00:23:31.000 Have you ever gone to a doctor?

00:23:34.000 It might be an issue.

00:23:35.000 It might be.

00:23:36.000 But then what?

00:23:37.000 You know, I got a brother allergic to milk.

00:23:38.000 I got a brother allergic to gluten.

00:23:40.000 That's pretty normal.

00:23:41.000 He's going to say, stop eating this stuff?

00:23:43.000 I'm not going to stop.

00:23:44.000 This is my job.

00:23:45.000 The thing about the tofu, this is what I was going to say.

00:23:47.000 And this was a pivotal moment for me, a realization, which is I literally had anxiety before walking in there.

00:23:55.000 I was like, oh my god, what if I eat this and I throw up?

00:23:57.000 It's going to look disrespectful.

00:23:59.000 Then I didn't show up, Andrew Zimmern.

00:24:01.000 And I looked at it this way.

00:24:03.000 I said, I need to eat this food, I need to put my mouth around this sandwich, and I need to have the perspective and the mindset of a local person.

00:24:10.000 I shouldn't be like someone on Fear Factor trying to get it down and just...

00:24:15.000 I need to accept it.

00:24:17.000 I need to try to enjoy it.

00:24:19.000 And I need to think about what would local people enjoy about this.

00:24:23.000 And that worked.

00:24:24.000 And that's what I do anytime I'm eating something pretty unusual around the world.

00:24:28.000 It's not always something I'm pumped to eat. 0.96

00:24:30.000 But when I was with the Datoga tribe in Tanzania, and they've just ripped open this cow, they've got blood in one gourd and then gastric acid from the small intestine, essentially liquid green shit. 1.00

00:24:42.000 And they're tearing off pieces of raw liver.

00:24:46.000 This wasn't in the outline.

00:24:48.000 It's just happening.

00:24:49.000 And they're like, we gotta roll.

00:24:52.000 They're doing it.

00:24:52.000 We gotta roll now.

00:24:53.000 So they dip the liver into the gastric acid? 0.89

00:24:57.000 Into both.

00:24:58.000 That is so wild.

00:24:59.000 And let me tell you, they double dip.

00:25:01.000 So they go blood, gastric acid, they toss it down, and it's one of the most strange experiences I'd ever had, but I loved it because I loved how the people there were so into it.

00:25:13.000 And for them too, you know, people talk about, you never want to be overtly disrespectful on camera, but oftentimes people are aware within their own culture if they're eating something strange.

00:25:24.000 So here is you doing this.

00:25:26.000 Oh yeah, that's a different one.

00:25:28.000 But that's right.

00:25:29.000 So this is also, I mean, we're watching a video here with the Maasai, also in Tanzania.

00:25:33.000 In Tanzania, they have a very interesting way to kill the goat.

00:25:39.000 What you see here is that the blood has pooled inside, and I'm scooping out the blood with my hands.

00:25:44.000 It's still warm, and they slurp it up.

00:25:47.000 And you've got to try to get it all before it coagulates too much.

00:25:50.000 And if you wait, if you hesitate, like, oh, I need to get in the right headspace, it's going to be gone.

00:25:55.000 They're going to eat it all.

00:25:56.000 Jeez.

00:25:57.000 There's a lot of Native American tribes that would take raw liver and squirt bile on it. 1.00

00:26:03.000 Yeah, they would squirt gallbladder juice on it. 0.99

00:26:06.000 Have you had bile?

00:26:07.000 No.

00:26:08.000 It's the most bitter thing you'll ever taste.

00:26:11.000 All I can compare it to is if, you know, when you are a young man, if you dry heave to the point of just throwing up stomach acid, it's that.

00:26:18.000 So why would they want that on their food?

00:26:22.000 Remarkably, cultures around the world develop a taste for the extremes in different directions.

00:26:27.000 I mean, there's the four main tastes that people talk about, whether it's like sour, savory, sweet, places like stuff that's really salty or bitter in the case of bile.

00:26:37.000 In Northern Thailand, they will take the buffalo bile and drip it over their rice, their sticky rice, over raw buffalo meat.

00:26:45.000 It's just been a taste that they've acquired over time.

00:26:48.000 And they look forward to it.

00:26:50.000 Oh, yeah.

00:26:50.000 Have you ever talked to a doctor or a nutritionist?

00:26:54.000 Is there some sort of a reason to do that?

00:26:57.000 Is there some nutritional benefits to putting that stuff on your food?

00:27:02.000 Bitter, sorry, bile in particular?

00:27:04.000 I've not talked to a doctor.

00:27:05.000 I don't know that many doctors.

00:27:07.000 That would be an interesting question to ask.

00:27:09.000 Like, why would tribes do that?

00:27:11.000 Like, maybe there's some sort of a secondary, not just a taste thing.

00:27:15.000 Maybe there's some sort of a benefit.

00:27:17.000 Yeah, I've seen it in a few different places around the world.

00:27:20.000 In Vietnam, I experienced it too.

00:27:22.000 Mostly in Southeast Asia, but yeah, some folks just really love the intensely bitter flavor.

00:27:28.000 Hmm.

00:27:30.000 Yeah, it's an interesting question because I guess if you're looking at the lens of evolution, like, what do you call it?

00:27:40.000 Through evolution, looking at societies and cultures through evolutionary biology, you might assume like, well, people ate things because they were the right things to eat, but sometimes they ate things because they were available.

00:27:51.000 Right.

00:27:52.000 And with that one, I couldn't tell you.

00:27:55.000 But do they ever eat the liver without all the other nasty stuff connected to it? 0.95

00:28:01.000 Just raw liver?

00:28:01.000 Because raw liver itself is difficult.

00:28:04.000 Yes.

00:28:05.000 Agreed.

00:28:05.000 Yeah, so it was nice to be distracted by the green poop juice on there.

00:28:11.000 No.

00:28:12.000 So at that time, they ate...

00:28:13.000 You know, so to back up a little bit, this Datoga tribe was super interesting.

00:28:18.000 We're way out in the middle of nowhere in Tanzania.

00:28:20.000 They have these beautiful huts with a flat roof, grass growing off the top of it.

00:28:24.000 And in this tribe specifically, it was a woman's job to dispatch the animal and to butcher up the animal. 1.00

00:28:31.000 And so the way they kill it is...

00:28:33.000 Because this is a whole different topic we could get into, but the way people dispatch animals around the world...

00:28:38.000 It varies greatly.

00:28:39.000 And here, they would take the cow, they would tip it on its side or on its back, and then they would essentially suffocate it.

00:28:46.000 They would put different logs, like wood, long pieces of wood or branches into its throat. 0.75

00:28:52.000 It would take about 10 minutes, and eventually it would pass away.

00:28:56.000 Then these same women cut it open, they get to butchering, they have their first initial feast, They get dibs, which you don't see in most cultures, especially in Africa. 1.00

00:29:07.000 Usually stuff is going to go to the guys first.

00:29:09.000 They take what they want, then they mix the rest of the bile, blood, and organs all together and present it to the men.

00:29:16.000 Why do they kill the cows that way? 0.99

00:29:20.000 This is something you may have seen in my videos.

00:29:23.000 I don't really shy away from how the animals are dispatched or how they're killed.

00:29:27.000 And I think it reveals something about the culture and about people.

00:29:30.000 I just find it fascinating because it's different every place you go.

00:29:36.000 With the goat that you just showed.

00:29:39.000 With the Maasai, they killed a goat and they suffocated it.

00:29:42.000 So they put their hands on his nose and mouth and they held it there for three, four minutes until it stopped moving.

00:29:48.000 And I asked the guy in the interview, why are you doing this?

00:29:51.000 Doesn't that seem cruel?

00:29:53.000 And he said it would be far more cruel to slash the animal's throat, to make it suffer from that, and then to have it also suffer from dying afterwards.

00:30:03.000 So it's kind of like two points of suffering compared to one.

00:30:07.000 Hmm.

00:30:08.000 I mean, it's a tough question. 1.00

00:30:10.000 Would you rather have your throat slashed or have someone suffocate you to death? 1.00

00:30:14.000 Well, throat slash would be quicker. 1.00

00:30:16.000 It'd be quicker, but it would feel so traumatic and insane.

00:30:19.000 You don't think it's traumatic to get suffocated to death?

00:30:21.000 Well, I do think that they're both pretty bad.

00:30:23.000 Yeah, they're both pretty bad.

00:30:24.000 Yeah.

00:30:25.000 Yeah, so they just have come up with some sort of a moral reason.

00:30:29.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:30:30.000 And it's also about blood collection.

00:30:33.000 So they want the blood to pool within the body.

00:30:36.000 So I think it's more, but I think it's practical too, because then they can cut the body open, the blood's pooled in there, and they can scoop it out.

00:30:43.000 They don't waste any of the blood because they eat the blood. 0.67

00:30:45.000 Now, when the women get first dibs, what do they choose? 1.00

00:30:49.000 Organs.

00:30:50.000 Organs.

00:30:51.000 All over the world, organs.

00:30:53.000 Really?

00:30:53.000 Organs are always eaten first.

00:30:55.000 And liver is one of the most valued any place you go.

00:30:58.000 Also, with the Maasai, the Maasai are really interesting.

00:31:00.000 So I've heard you talk about the Maasai before.

00:31:02.000 The Maasai are really famous for eating milk, Blood and meat, almost exclusively.

00:31:07.000 At least it used to be that way, and now, you know, corn flour, and people mix corn flour with water.

00:31:15.000 It's called ugali, at least in some countries.

00:31:17.000 But that's eaten all over Africa.

00:31:21.000 And so that's more pervasive now.

00:31:23.000 But it used to be just those three things.

00:31:25.000 And the blood, you might think, oh, so to collect blood, when they kill the animal, they eat the blood.

00:31:31.000 No, the Maasai will take an arrow... 0.98

00:31:33.000 Put it into a live cow's neck, drain some of the blood, then seal it up with some shit, and then drink that blood or mix that blood with milk. 1.00

00:31:41.000 Why would they seal it up with shit? 1.00

00:31:43.000 Yeah, so to me that seemed not like the cleanest choice, but maybe the shit's saturated with piss, which helps to keep it clean. 1.00

00:31:53.000 I don't know. 0.99

00:31:53.000 I was kind of shocked. 0.99

00:31:54.000 I was shocked when I saw it.

00:31:57.000 I'm not sure. 1.00

00:31:58.000 They're using animal shit. 1.00

00:31:59.000 They're using animal shit. 1.00

00:32:01.000 Or the cow's own shit. 1.00

00:32:03.000 And so that did stop the bleeding. 1.00

00:32:05.000 And so they have this really peculiar diet.

00:32:08.000 So here they're doing it here.

00:32:09.000 Yeah, so this got demonetized, that's for sure.

00:32:12.000 You two doesn't love when you show arrows going into a cow's neck. 1.00

00:32:15.000 A strange looking arrow, too.

00:32:17.000 What's on the head of it?

00:32:18.000 It's got basically like a little razor blade. 0.99

00:32:20.000 The worst part about shooting this is that they were fucking bad at it. 0.97

00:32:24.000 I was like, do you guys still do this all the time? 0.98

00:32:26.000 Because why is it taking you 20 times?

00:32:29.000 At least be good at it.

00:32:32.000 Yeah, so they're just trying to get into that vein.

00:32:35.000 Yeah, and they tie it off like a heroin chunky so the vein gets all big.

00:32:40.000 And the point I wanted to make, getting back to the liver, is that the way they section up meat is really interesting among the Maasai tribe and many other tribes are like this too.

00:32:49.000 So how they separate the meat is that each quarter, each piece goes to a different group.

00:32:54.000 And so they have ribs, they have front quarters, they have hind quarters.

00:32:58.000 Some might go to pregnant women, some goes to young women.

00:33:02.000 But the liver, the liver always goes to the older men. 1.00

00:33:07.000 How interesting.

00:33:08.000 It's so interesting that we don't eat liver over here, or very rarely.

00:33:12.000 It's unusual for people over here to eat liver.

00:33:15.000 That is looked down on, too.

00:33:16.000 Like, ew, liver.

00:33:17.000 It's like a hacky joke from, like, 80s or 90s TV. Like, oh, liver and onions.

00:33:22.000 Gross.

00:33:24.000 Liver's great.

00:33:25.000 I find there's a lot of food in the U.S. that people just don't know how to cook well.

00:33:32.000 And it's just not part of our...

00:33:35.000 Right.

00:33:45.000 Whether it's entrepreneurship or extreme sports or fighting, we're so extreme with everything.

00:33:50.000 But then when it comes to food, that's a little bit outside of like salads, wraps, burgers, sandwiches.

00:33:55.000 People are like, oh, I would never eat that.

00:33:57.000 I would never eat that. 1.00

00:33:58.000 And it's said with pride, not like I wouldn't eat that because I'm a pussy. 1.00

00:34:01.000 They're like, oh, I would never eat that. 1.00

00:34:03.000 And that's something I don't really understand.

00:34:06.000 When it comes to how many Americans look at food from around the world.

00:34:10.000 And so, I mean, part of my show, really the point isn't to be like, ew, look at this icky, weird food.

00:34:16.000 It's to try to create some understanding and empathy for people around the world and understanding as to why are people eating this way.

00:34:24.000 And so when these cultures, it seems like they all go to the organs first.

00:34:32.000 And you see that in animals too, you know, and you see that in lions, you see that in wolves, like wolves, the alpha male always gets to eat the liver.

00:34:42.000 And did they have any sort of explanation as to why they do this?

00:34:47.000 Did you ask them?

00:34:49.000 So I've seen this dozens of times at this point.

00:34:52.000 I've not asked, and I have my own assumptions.

00:34:57.000 My assumptions would be meat is easier to preserve, period.

00:35:01.000 So people have tons of different ways of preserving meat.

00:35:06.000 Mostly, you know, drying, turning it into some kind of a jerky.

00:35:10.000 But I don't think it's as easy to take a liver or a heart or something like that and preserve it.

00:35:16.000 I also think it probably has the most flavor because people love getting in on the stomach too, the intestines, and this is really powerful, potent, gamey parts of the animal.

00:35:27.000 And again, I think people...

00:35:30.000 In many places, they've developed a taste for those really intense, gamey flavors.

00:35:36.000 Have you had beef tripe or beef intestine?

00:35:39.000 Yeah, I like menudo.

00:35:41.000 The Mexican dish is filled with tripe and all kinds of stuff.

00:35:45.000 I eat a lot of liver.

00:35:46.000 I eat liver pretty often.

00:35:48.000 Yeah.

00:35:48.000 And so menudo can have a lot of gamey flavor to it.

00:35:53.000 Yeah, for sure.

00:35:54.000 Yeah, sometimes it smells like a barn.

00:35:56.000 Yes, exactly.

00:35:57.000 Because I know it's good.

00:35:57.000 I ate zebra.

00:36:00.000 I ate zebra liver and kidney when I was in South Africa recently.

00:36:03.000 Yeah, I saw that video where you shot a zebra.

00:36:05.000 Yeah, I shot a zebra.

00:36:06.000 That was heavy.

00:36:08.000 Well, I wanted to see if I could pull it off.

00:36:11.000 But the liver, it tasted like a horse barn.

00:36:16.000 And so I don't know if that's like manure or like sometimes it can taste, something can taste like the animal's fur.

00:36:21.000 Like if you scratch the animal and smelled it, sometimes it'll have that kind of a flavor to it.

00:36:25.000 Yeah.

00:36:26.000 Yeah.

00:36:26.000 So you watched that video.

00:36:27.000 What'd you think?

00:36:28.000 Well, I've always wanted to know what zebra tastes like too, because I know people that have hunted zebra and eaten them and they said it's very good.

00:36:35.000 And it makes sense.

00:36:36.000 I've had horse before in Montreal.

00:36:38.000 Yeah.

00:36:39.000 There's a great restaurant called Joe Beef in Montreal.

00:36:41.000 It's one of my favorite restaurants.

00:36:43.000 And the first time I went there, they served us horse meat.

00:36:47.000 They served us like it was a horse tenderloin.

00:36:50.000 And it was a little weird.

00:36:51.000 I was like, whoa.

00:36:52.000 But in Canada, horse is normal to eat.

00:36:55.000 In a lot of parts of Europe, horse is normal.

00:36:58.000 It's a normal food to eat.

00:36:59.000 Yeah.

00:36:59.000 Yeah, I think they're trying to make it illegal here if it's not illegal already.

00:37:04.000 But, I mean...

00:37:05.000 I'm sure you could get it in Texas.

00:37:07.000 It seems like you can get every type of exotic meat here in Texas.

00:37:10.000 You definitely can get zebra.

00:37:11.000 Yeah.

00:37:12.000 Really?

00:37:13.000 Yeah, you can get zebra.

00:37:13.000 You can hunt a zebra here.

00:37:15.000 A friend of mine asked me to shoot a zebra on his property because he has an evil zebra that's killing the younger zebras.

00:37:20.000 See? 0.96

00:37:21.000 They must be culled, some of them.

00:37:22.000 Yeah, that's the thing when you talk about animal preservation and wildlife management.

00:37:40.000 I think? 0.98

00:37:50.000 Is to kill this very aggressive older male. 0.99

00:37:54.000 They actually had to do that with rhinos sometimes. 0.93

00:37:57.000 Even though rhinos are in danger.

00:37:58.000 Like that was the story of, I don't know if you remember that story, but there was a big deal.

00:38:03.000 It was on CNN many years ago where there was an endangered rhino and there was an auction to shoot this rhino because they had to kill it.

00:38:13.000 Because this one large rhino who was no longer viable was killing younger rhinos.

00:38:18.000 And he had already killed at least two.

00:38:20.000 And they were very concerned that, you know, they have a small population already.

00:38:24.000 And so the only way to solve this was to either, A, move this animal somewhere else or shoot it.

00:38:32.000 And so they decided to auction it off.

00:38:34.000 And I think...

00:38:36.000 What's the gentleman's name?

00:38:38.000 Corey Knowlton.

00:38:39.000 Corey Knowlton, who had been on the podcast before.

00:38:41.000 I actually had him on and talked to him about this.

00:38:44.000 I think he wound up paying a quarter million dollars to go over there, and CNN followed him around.

00:38:52.000 But what was really interesting was their perspective was...

00:38:55.000 Educated.

00:38:56.000 They learned along the way. 1.00

00:38:58.000 They're like, okay, we had this idea that people are going over there and they're just shooting a rhino because they're an asshole and they want to take a poster with it or a photo with it rather and put the head on their wall. 0.99

00:39:07.000 But there's a lot more to it. 0.97

00:39:09.000 And then that money is the $250,000 is the money that goes to wildlife conservation over there.

00:39:16.000 It goes to protect against poaching.

00:39:18.000 It goes to protect habitat and Keep them maintained, you know, the structures and the fences and all sorts of different things they use to keep these animals healthy.

00:39:27.000 But they have higher numbers of all these animals that were at one point in time endangered.

00:39:34.000 They're much higher than they've ever been before specifically because they're valuable.

00:39:40.000 It can be very conflicting to a lot of people because you think of Wildlife conservation is what we need to do is protect their habitat, give them more food, keep people away from them.

00:39:51.000 But that's not really profitable.

00:39:54.000 And the way to make sure that their numbers are high is actually to make them valuable.

00:39:58.000 And the best way to make them valuable is people pay a lot of money to go over there and hunt them, which sounds so counterintuitive.

00:40:06.000 Yes, so we had the opportunity to do a different story about three years ago in Africa, and I just didn't think I was ready for it.

00:40:13.000 I wasn't ready for it then.

00:40:15.000 And at this point, I wanted to take on the challenge.

00:40:18.000 I wanted to see, can I Do a video that some people are going to hate and can I try to educate people along the way and educate myself along the way?

00:40:29.000 Because there's a lot about game reserve hunting that I didn't know.

00:40:33.000 And so specifically what we did in that video is going to a game reserve.

00:40:37.000 So somebody privately owns all this property In South Africa, it was maybe five miles by three miles.

00:40:44.000 And they have a certain...

00:40:45.000 So I'm so naive in the beginning, and I'm like, oh, so if you don't shoot the zebra, then will a lion get it? 0.99

00:40:50.000 And it's like, there's no fucking lions in the fence, dummy. 0.99

00:40:53.000 How big is this preserve? 1.00

00:40:56.000 It's three by five miles.

00:40:57.000 What is that in acres?

00:40:58.000 Do you know?

00:40:59.000 Oh, no, I'm so bad at acres.

00:41:01.000 I've been abroad too long.

00:41:02.000 And I've never bought land here, so I'm not sure.

00:41:04.000 Got it.

00:41:07.000 So, they have a certain number of animals on the property.

00:41:10.000 You tell them ahead of time what you want to shoot.

00:41:12.000 I mean, they literally have, it's like a menu.

00:41:14.000 They're like, here's the animal list, and here's the price for each animal.

00:41:17.000 They even have baboons.

00:41:20.000 They have vervet monkeys, which are these tiny little, I don't know, seven-pound monkeys.

00:41:25.000 People hunt monkeys? 0.51

00:41:25.000 I don't know that people set out to do it, but if some cynical bastard on his way to get some other creature, if he saw the vervet monkey, he could be like, how much is that again? 0.51

00:41:36.000 Let me check the menu. 0.93

00:41:37.000 Oh, 40 bucks.

00:41:37.000 It's 40 bucks, by the way.

00:41:39.000 $40 to shoot a monkey? 1.00

00:41:41.000 To shoot a monkey. 0.99

00:41:41.000 That's weird. 0.99

00:41:43.000 And so they have this menu, and to me, I looked over the animals.

00:41:48.000 I didn't want to shoot something that just...

00:41:51.000 I was going to sound bad.

00:41:53.000 It's tough because I am still a YouTuber.

00:41:56.000 So I didn't want to shoot an animal that was just brown that blended in with everything. 0.99

00:42:00.000 I also went to safari recently in Tanzania and I saw zebras and they look juicy.

00:42:06.000 Have you seen a zebra's like hindquarter?

00:42:08.000 I did on your show.

00:42:10.000 Oh, see?

00:42:10.000 When you guys smoked it.

00:42:12.000 Juicy.

00:42:12.000 Yeah.

00:42:13.000 And I thought, okay, this will be interesting.

00:42:16.000 On the menu, that's a thousand bucks, by the way.

00:42:19.000 A zebra's a thousand dollars to shoot? 0.77

00:42:21.000 Yeah.

00:42:21.000 The most expensive one is the buffalo, the Cape buffalo, $10,000.

00:42:26.000 And what surprised me is after you shoot it, you don't get the meat.

00:42:30.000 You can mount it if you want.

00:42:31.000 You can get the mount or rug or whatever would be made from the animal, but you don't get to keep the meat.

00:42:38.000 What do they do with the meat?

00:42:39.000 It's their property still.

00:42:41.000 What?

00:42:42.000 Yeah, I know.

00:42:43.000 I paid $10,000.

00:42:45.000 I don't believe you can bring meat from Africa back to the United States.

00:42:50.000 No, you can't anymore.

00:42:51.000 And especially ever since the Cecil the lion debacle years ago.

00:42:55.000 Yeah.

00:42:56.000 So somebody, I think it was a dentist in Minnesota, actually, where I'm from.

00:43:00.000 He went there, he shot a lion, he posted the picture, it got on the wrong websites, and then this guy, I think, had to shut down his dental practice.

00:43:07.000 They changed laws from that point.

00:43:09.000 And so they wouldn't let you bring any lion mounts and perhaps maybe not certain types of meat or maybe not any meat at all.

00:43:16.000 And so what's interesting is I talked to the game reserve guys when I got there and I thought some questions would be layup questions or even dumb questions.

00:43:23.000 And I said, what kind of animals are not okay to hunt?

00:43:27.000 And these two brothers look at each other like, oh, people, this is a tough one.

00:43:32.000 Yeah, and basically people, because I thought for sure they would say lions are not okay, but they said there's every type of hunting basically you can imagine in South Africa.

00:43:45.000 Well, there was an issue after the Cecil of the Lion thing where they no longer had lion hunters going over there because they didn't want to get attacked, and even people that wanted to hunt lions wouldn't go over there.

00:43:57.000 Some large number of lions, because if you don't do that, then it decimates the antelope and all the different game species that the lions eat and kill.

00:44:09.000 Well, okay, so that's tough, because I know that they had too much supply, and the demand was no longer there, and so that was a problem.

00:44:17.000 For sure that those lions are mixed in with other live valuable creatures.

00:44:22.000 I think they do it differently in different game parks.

00:44:25.000 For sure.

00:44:25.000 And some of them would have been private.

00:44:28.000 And maybe when it's time to hunt, they relocate the lion.

00:44:31.000 I believe that does happen.

00:44:33.000 So what I found was there's a lot of gray area.

00:44:37.000 I brought my friend Greg out there.

00:44:39.000 He's an avid hunter in Minnesota.

00:44:41.000 He's been to Montana to hunt.

00:44:43.000 What do you hunt in Montana?

00:44:44.000 Elk.

00:44:44.000 Deer?

00:44:45.000 Mule deer?

00:44:46.000 Mule deer.

00:44:47.000 And it's like, so is this hunting?

00:44:50.000 Is it not hunting?

00:44:51.000 He's like, it's not really hunting.

00:44:53.000 Take him.

00:44:54.000 Right.

00:44:54.000 And so there's a lot of gray area, too, because the zebra populations, even the zebra I hunted, they said that was nearly extinct years ago.

00:45:02.000 But because of this, you know, this personal interest people have in the animals being around, they'll help try to breed them and make sure they're healthy, make sure they have enough water so that people can come and shoot them.

00:45:14.000 Yeah, exactly what we were talking about before.

00:45:17.000 This is, like again, it's a very, very controversial topic.

00:45:22.000 Yeah, and that's why I wanted to go for it.

00:45:25.000 And I think we did a good job of presenting their case and their point of view and just logistically how it works.

00:45:33.000 And I think it's a fascinating topic and I probably wouldn't do it again.

00:45:38.000 Well, I mean, it's a food source for those people.

00:45:42.000 I mean, zebra is something that's traditionally eaten over there.

00:45:45.000 And it's, according to you and according to people that I know that have eaten it, it's very delicious.

00:45:50.000 Oh, the zebra was fantastic.

00:45:52.000 Except for the organs.

00:45:54.000 The organs were weird because, yes, it was like a horse barn, but I still kind of liked it.

00:45:58.000 Have you ever seen Louis Theroux's piece on African hunting?

00:46:03.000 No.

00:46:03.000 It's very interesting.

00:46:04.000 Do you know Louis Theroux, the documentarian from England?

00:46:09.000 Maybe if I saw it.

00:46:10.000 Really interesting guy.

00:46:11.000 He was a great podcast guest, too.

00:46:14.000 But he did this whole thing where he stayed over there for several weeks and really annoyed them.

00:46:21.000 And, you know, like really just constant questions, constant this, constant that.

00:46:26.000 This guy who was running this game park basically laid it out to him, like, the only way these animals survive is if they're worth something.

00:46:33.000 And even then, you have to spend so much money to keep them from getting poached.

00:46:37.000 Because while they were over there, they're constantly finding animals that had been snared.

00:46:41.000 And then the meat had gone to waste because they didn't get to the animal before, you know, it died early and then was rotten.

00:46:47.000 And it's very conflicting because we like to think of Africa as this just wild, amazing Narnia place where all these animals are running free and you can go there in a Jeep and they won't kill you.

00:47:00.000 Right.

00:47:00.000 But the reality is a lot of those animals are there because they're valuable to people to go over and hunt.

00:47:07.000 Yeah, or to look at.

00:47:08.000 Yes, but much more to hunt.

00:47:10.000 It's much more valuable.

00:47:12.000 That's why a Cape buffalo is $10,000 to hunt.

00:47:14.000 How much does it cost to take a picture of one?

00:47:16.000 Right.

00:47:17.000 Yeah.

00:47:17.000 And so do they eat the Cape buffalo?

00:47:21.000 Because one of the things about buffaloes is my good friend Adam Greentree, he hunts them up in Australia.

00:47:29.000 They're invasive.

00:47:30.000 It's an Asian water buffalo.

00:47:32.000 It's enormous.

00:47:34.000 Very scary buffalo.

00:47:36.000 And they're so tough, you could barely eat them.

00:47:40.000 My friend Cam went over there to hunt, and he said he was chewing on one piece of meat for 30 minutes.

00:47:45.000 Well, I think it's all about preparation, then.

00:47:47.000 I'm sure you have to—but they're in the woods.

00:47:50.000 They're out there in the field, so there's not like a smoker.

00:47:54.000 No pressure cookers.

00:47:55.000 There's no brining.

00:47:55.000 Yeah, there's no pressure cookers, no electricity.

00:47:58.000 I didn't find it to be exceptionally tough.

00:48:01.000 I find it to be just very similar to beef, typical beef.

00:48:04.000 In fact, even buffalo meat is also called beef.

00:48:06.000 How do they prepare it?

00:48:10.000 What's interesting is we did the zebra on the game reserve, and so it's a couple of...

00:48:15.000 Afrikaner dudes cooking that stuff up. 0.99

00:48:17.000 And then with the buffalo, the idea was to take the meat from there and donate it all to a nearby village.

00:48:22.000 And so this was cooked up by Khoisan people. 1.00

00:48:25.000 Khoisan are these legendary trackers from the southern part of Africa. 0.99

00:48:31.000 These are the folks that...

00:48:32.000 I don't know if you've ever heard of these stories, but...

00:48:35.000 Yeah.

00:48:37.000 Yeah.

00:48:57.000 And they grill it until it's like black.

00:48:59.000 And this is something you'll find pretty much in all of Africa.

00:49:02.000 No one's eating medium rare steaks in most of Africa.

00:49:06.000 Do you think they do that because they're worried about contaminants or parasites?

00:49:09.000 Yeah.

00:49:10.000 I think the idea is like don't get sick.

00:49:12.000 Cook everything all the way through all the time.

00:49:14.000 Did you try to cook one medium rare?

00:49:17.000 No, but like I said, the zebra, we experienced like that.

00:49:21.000 But even that really well-done buffalo wasn't that tough.

00:49:26.000 Not like I was chewing on it for 10 minutes.

00:49:29.000 But it's similar to a well-done steak.

00:49:31.000 Yes.

00:49:32.000 So when they have a buffalo, I mean, that must be able to feed an enormous amount of people.

00:49:39.000 It's a huge animal.

00:49:40.000 Yeah.

00:49:40.000 So, I mean, a lot of it we just put into a freezer for them to use later for people.

00:49:45.000 I mean, there's one freezer in the community.

00:49:47.000 It was a village of about 60 people.

00:49:49.000 So they'll be eating that for a while.

00:49:52.000 And so when you hunted the zebra, this is...

00:49:56.000 What kind of zebra is this again?

00:49:59.000 It's called a...

00:50:00.000 Mountain zebra?

00:50:01.000 Mountain zebra.

00:50:01.000 And the mountain zebra was at one point in time protected?

00:50:05.000 My understanding is that it was at least nearing being a vulnerable species.

00:50:10.000 The numbers were quite low.

00:50:11.000 And I believe they weren't allowed to hunt it for some period of time until the numbers came back up.

00:50:17.000 And when you hunted them, did they have a specific zebra they wanted you to target?

00:50:21.000 No.

00:50:22.000 So they have a group.

00:50:25.000 So for me, it was exciting.

00:50:27.000 And maybe it's like...

00:50:30.000 I mean, it sounds too cold, but I don't know.

00:50:31.000 It's like paintball, but on another level.

00:50:33.000 Because you kind of know you're going to get an animal.

00:50:37.000 And you go through a couple of fences, you get into the reserve, and you have a tracker.

00:50:43.000 And so I'm guided the whole time, which is what I would prefer.

00:50:46.000 I hunt maybe once a year, and I do it for the show.

00:50:49.000 And so eventually they triangulate, you know, they send out the Khoisan guy to rustle up some zebras and maybe three came by and they were basically like, whichever one you can get is fine. 0.92

00:51:01.000 They all looked about the same size.

00:51:02.000 So it didn't seem like they were pushing me to shoot a specific one.

00:51:05.000 It wasn't like they had an outlier that was creating trouble for them.

00:51:09.000 And what does the terrain look like?

00:51:11.000 Are the zebra aware that you're there or are you hidden?

00:51:14.000 Do you have to follow general principles of hunting, like stay downwind of them?

00:51:19.000 Yes.

00:51:20.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:51:20.000 And we had to...

00:51:21.000 They ran away from us several times.

00:51:24.000 And even when I shot it, maybe the first...

00:51:26.000 Oh, you said you watched that one, right?

00:51:28.000 Yeah.

00:51:28.000 Yeah, I mean, I hit it.

00:51:28.000 I got a lot of shit for that.

00:51:30.000 I hit it in the leg. 1.00

00:51:31.000 But I was about 250 yards away.

00:51:33.000 It's rocky.

00:51:34.000 The terrain is rocky.

00:51:35.000 There's a lot of shrubs.

00:51:36.000 And so there are things to hide behind.

00:51:38.000 But yes, if they catch your scent, then that's going to be an issue and they'll bolt.

00:51:42.000 Yeah, so you had to do a follow-up shot.

00:51:44.000 Yes, and luckily I was able to do that quickly, but again, it's like buck fever.

00:51:50.000 I'm doing my best.

00:51:51.000 It's like I don't feel nervous, but my body doesn't care.

00:51:54.000 My heart's beating like crazy, and if you're off by one millimeter, by one hair, it's like that second shot, they could have told me, oh, you missed by like 15 feet, and I would have believed them, but it was like dead nuts on.

00:52:06.000 Yeah.

00:52:07.000 And so I'm happy about that because you can't predict how a hunt is going to go, and you just don't want the animal to suffer too much.

00:52:15.000 Was that the first time you'd killed a large animal like that?

00:52:17.000 Yes.

00:52:18.000 It's a weird feeling, right?

00:52:20.000 Yeah.

00:52:21.000 Yeah, and I did hog hunting in Alabama once.

00:52:25.000 And I scoped myself and I had to get four stitches.

00:52:29.000 It's funny.

00:52:30.000 I scoped myself.

00:52:32.000 Let me just explain what scope yourself is.

00:52:34.000 When you're looking too close to the scope, as the rifle goes off, it kicks.

00:52:38.000 Right. 0.62

00:52:38.000 And the scope comes back and slams you in the forehead. 0.62

00:52:41.000 Yeah.

00:52:41.000 So ideally you should have your, I don't know, maybe three inches back from the scope to have the full view.

00:52:47.000 And I didn't realize that at the time. 0.96

00:52:49.000 I was like, I'm going to get right up on this fucking scope. 0.99

00:52:52.000 And then it kicked... 0.99

00:52:53.000 What's funny is I got two practice shots that day, and then I had to go to the hospital, and then my head was swollen, and I had to wake up the next day at 5 a.m.

00:53:02.000 And, yeah.

00:53:03.000 Oh, man.

00:53:03.000 I started bleeding immediately.

00:53:05.000 You scoped yourself hard. 1.00

00:53:05.000 And I point to my forehead, and I go, bro, what the fuck? 1.00

00:53:11.000 Yeah, you can see it happen here. 0.99

00:53:13.000 And so the next morning...

00:53:15.000 This is a lot of pressure.

00:53:17.000 I'm like, I have a permanent scar in my head now. 0.99

00:53:19.000 I have to get a freaking hog. 1.00

00:53:21.000 I can't leave this place without shooting an animal. 0.99

00:53:23.000 And so luckily I got two the next day. 0.94

00:53:26.000 But that also was this type of exhilaration.

00:53:31.000 And it's a weird feeling.

00:53:32.000 It was even a stranger feeling with the zebra because it's a mix of accomplishment and And duty, I would say.

00:53:40.000 Because when I just injured the animal, I was like, it's my duty, it's my obligation to put it down as quickly and efficiently as possible.

00:53:46.000 But I can't just go crazy and just start shooting like crazy.

00:53:50.000 Yeah.

00:53:52.000 Is it a different feeling?

00:53:53.000 I mean, what does it feel like to eat an animal that you just shot?

00:53:58.000 It is a different feeling than just eating meat.

00:54:00.000 Like, you have this connection to that meat now.

00:54:02.000 Oh, yeah.

00:54:03.000 Yeah, so I know you're more versed in this than me.

00:54:05.000 And I guess...

00:54:06.000 I do feel like, you know, tracking down an elk or going hunting for days would be...

00:54:13.000 You'd feel much more...

00:54:15.000 Accomplished.

00:54:16.000 Accomplished.

00:54:16.000 So this is more like shopping with a rifle.

00:54:20.000 It's something in between.

00:54:21.000 Yeah.

00:54:21.000 Shopping with a rifle.

00:54:22.000 It's something in between.

00:54:24.000 It's still...

00:54:25.000 It felt like a sense of accomplishment for sure, and the meat was incredible.

00:54:28.000 I guess I was most taken aback by eating this type of meat that I'll never probably eat again in my life and just having the privilege of trying that.

00:54:36.000 And is that like a common cuisine amongst the people that work in that ranch that you went to?

00:54:41.000 No, not at all.

00:54:42.000 No.

00:54:43.000 So, you know what's interesting in South Africa is the...

00:54:48.000 Oh no, what is the animal?

00:54:50.000 The animal with the spiral horns.

00:54:54.000 It's not that one.

00:54:55.000 Oh, there's a ton of them.

00:54:56.000 I know.

00:54:57.000 Yeah.

00:54:58.000 It's not coming to me now.

00:55:01.000 There is some game meat that's widely available, even in grocery stores in South Africa.

00:55:09.000 Kudu! 0.82

00:55:10.000 Kudu is supposed to be very good.

00:55:12.000 Thanks, Jamie.

00:55:13.000 And Eland.

00:55:14.000 Yeah, it was incredible.

00:55:15.000 But you'll find kudu in the grocery store.

00:55:17.000 So it's really all over the place.

00:55:19.000 And so people might be eating kudu, but not the more like rare game meats, especially people in the villages.

00:55:30.000 So these people that you hunted with, this is the first time they had eaten zebra as well?

00:55:35.000 Oh, that's a good question.

00:55:37.000 You know, I didn't ask him.

00:55:39.000 I'm assuming not because they have zebras there and people hunt the zebras.

00:55:44.000 And, you know, if you're going to have a game reserve, you need to be good at cooking and at hunting.

00:55:50.000 You can't just be one or the other.

00:55:51.000 The people that I know that have gone over to Africa say that the meat stays there, but you eat it the entire time you're there.

00:55:58.000 Yeah.

00:55:58.000 So the meat does go to these villages, but also you get to eat as much meat as you can while you're there.

00:56:05.000 I just think legally you're not allowed to leave Africa with meat.

00:56:09.000 That sounds correct.

00:56:10.000 By the way, I brought you meat.

00:56:11.000 Oh, what'd you bring?

00:56:12.000 Speaking of, but you might want to throw this away immediately.

00:56:16.000 Really?

00:56:16.000 Well, hold on.

00:56:17.000 Okay, this still might be good.

00:56:18.000 I was going to put it in a Ziploc bag from Target yesterday.

00:56:22.000 Is it phantom smells or am I smelling something?

00:56:23.000 You might be smelling something.

00:56:25.000 This is yak meat from Nepal.

00:56:29.000 This has been dried.

00:56:30.000 If you want to chuck that in the trash right after I leave, that's fine.

00:56:33.000 Dried yak meat from Nepal.

00:56:35.000 So we took out a whole yak when we were in the mountains, in the Himalayan mountains.

00:56:39.000 This is just a few weeks ago.

00:56:42.000 And so, one of the ways they preserve the meat, it's interesting, because they dry it, but how they dry it is they have a big hearth or fireplace in their home, and then above that, they'll hang the raw meat.

00:56:55.000 And they don't do anything special, the meat just gets dried out over time because of the fireplace.

00:57:00.000 And so, I have that one, and then I have one more that you're probably going to want to throw away, because I looked at it this morning, and it's a little bit moldy.

00:57:08.000 Isn't it?

00:57:08.000 This, you want to take a guess?

00:57:11.000 Okay.

00:57:12.000 And you can give it a sniff too.

00:57:13.000 This is going to really confound you.

00:57:15.000 I think you're going to be confused by this.

00:57:17.000 Yeah, it seems like...

00:57:18.000 It's a little bit off, but it's not going to hurt to smell it.

00:57:20.000 But the smell is going to help you figure out what that is.

00:57:27.000 I don't know.

00:57:28.000 Does it smell more like land or sea?

00:57:32.000 Smells more like land.

00:57:33.000 Really?

00:57:34.000 Okay, so, well...

00:57:35.000 I think?

00:57:36.000 That is whale meat.

00:57:38.000 Oh, Jesus, dude.

00:57:39.000 Yeah, I'm not sure if that's allowed in the U.S. Whale meat?

00:57:43.000 Let me explain.

00:57:44.000 I went to the Faroe Islands about two months ago.

00:57:46.000 They dry the whale meat, but again, it's been in my suitcase for a while.

00:57:50.000 You can probably chuck that.

00:57:52.000 But whale meat is fascinating.

00:57:57.000 They also eat dolphin there, too, which I wasn't aware that you could do legally anywhere.

00:58:01.000 Is there a little knife over there?

00:58:04.000 Where's that little knife?

00:58:05.000 Yeah, but where's the little knife that Santino had yesterday?

00:58:09.000 I pushed it back over towards you.

00:58:13.000 There it is.

00:58:13.000 Thank you.

00:58:14.000 There you go.

00:58:15.000 So you were saying that they dry this out.

00:58:19.000 And what kind of whale?

00:58:21.000 It's called a pilot whale.

00:58:22.000 So this is a very controversial food on the Faroe Islands.

00:58:26.000 And in fact, if you go there...

00:58:29.000 You know, I was going there to film, obviously...

00:58:31.000 If you...

00:58:32.000 Yeah.

00:58:33.000 Alright, he's slicing it up now.

00:58:35.000 And you just eat it, like this?

00:58:37.000 Yeah.

00:58:38.000 It might leave a little taste in your mouth.

00:58:40.000 I'm gonna put that aside.

00:58:41.000 Yeah, okay.

00:58:42.000 I'm gonna think about it.

00:58:43.000 You know, I would say to, like, get the bark off, get the outer layer off, and maybe take a piece from the inside, or not at all.

00:58:49.000 Okay.

00:58:50.000 So it's very controversial food because people like whales.

00:58:53.000 Yeah.

00:58:54.000 Whales are smart.

00:58:54.000 They're cute.

00:58:56.000 This is something that they've been doing in the Faroe Islands for hundreds of years.

00:58:59.000 In fact, it's one of the oldest records of any country.

00:59:02.000 They keep these, they've kept these insane records going back hundreds of years of these, it's called like Grintabap, something like that.

00:59:11.000 It's like they get the whales and they bring them to shore.

00:59:15.000 Have you heard about this?

00:59:17.000 No.

00:59:18.000 Fantastic.

00:59:18.000 So I was just there.

00:59:19.000 I was hoping to see one in action.

00:59:21.000 I was told if you see one and you approach them and you film, they will destroy your camera because they've had so many issues with protesters there, among them Sea Shepherd, who's trying to put an end to the wailing.

00:59:32.000 Yeah.

00:59:33.000 So the whaling they do there is far different from the whaling that you're going to see in a place like Japan.

00:59:38.000 Japan, I think they're hunting blue whales.

00:59:40.000 They're hunting whales that are actually vulnerable species, and they're doing it under the guise of research, and they put research on their boat.

00:59:47.000 Right, but then they're selling the animal.

00:59:49.000 Yeah, and then they sell it, oh my gosh, and some people there.

00:59:51.000 I mean, somebody took me on a...

01:00:04.000 What they're doing in the Faroe Islands because they're not going out to sea.

01:00:10.000 And so their method of getting the whales is never going to lead to their extinction.

01:00:15.000 The whales populate the Atlantic and the Faroe Islands is just a tiny small collection of 18 islands in the middle of the Atlantic between like Scotland and Iceland and they've got 50,000 people.

01:00:27.000 So when a pod of whales comes by and somebody spots them, they kind of sound the alarm.

01:00:32.000 First of all, they'll get some boats together and try to guide them to one of the bays.

01:00:36.000 At this point, this is what I love, this idea that everybody is so into the grint, this event that happens, that you could be in your corporate job in a room talking about quarter or four sales,

01:00:54.000 doing your report, pitching to your team, and then you could get a phone call, hey, the whales are here, let's go.

01:00:59.000 Everybody, when the alarm goes off, if you've got to leave church, if you've got to leave work, you do it, it's understood, yeah, go get the whales.

01:01:06.000 Really?

01:01:07.000 Yes.

01:01:07.000 Even today?

01:01:08.000 Even today.

01:01:09.000 Corporate jobs.

01:01:10.000 I went to the most normal family's home ever, and I did a fridge tour on Men's Health on YouTube.

01:01:16.000 And it was all like, here's a whale that we got from earlier this year.

01:01:20.000 We got about 300 pounds.

01:01:22.000 It was so interesting.

01:01:23.000 And this is like the most normal corporate white-collar guy ever.

01:01:27.000 And so they all get the call.

01:01:29.000 They go down there because the amount of meat you get depends on how much you help out.

01:01:33.000 They have a very detailed system for how to allocate the meat.

01:01:36.000 The process of actually getting the whales though, they steer the whales towards the shore.

01:01:42.000 Then once they get close to the bay, they start clanging on the boats and making noise and trying to throw off their sonar.

01:01:49.000 Eventually the whales get close enough to the shore where people can run out from the beach and hook the whales in their blowhole and start pulling them up.

01:01:58.000 What?

01:01:59.000 This is our video that's going to be coming up.

01:02:00.000 Oh my god, this is horrific.

01:02:03.000 Well, yeah. 1.00

01:02:04.000 Holy shit. 0.97

01:02:05.000 That's why it's controversial. 0.98

01:02:07.000 So all of these people, and these people wearing like modern clothes, and I mean, these do not look like tribal people. 0.98

01:02:16.000 They look like anybody that could be in fucking New Hampshire. 0.98

01:02:20.000 Yeah, exactly. 1.00

01:02:21.000 And they're just slaughtering these whales.

01:02:23.000 And they're slicing their necks.

01:02:24.000 Oh my god, this is horrible.

01:02:27.000 So what makes it horrible to you?

01:02:29.000 That they're whales.

01:02:30.000 I mean, just whales to me, it's almost like killing a golden retriever.

01:02:35.000 And I'm not saying you're wrong or right, but I think it's interesting to explore where that ethics exists for each person.

01:02:43.000 So for you, what is the line for okay to eat and not okay to eat?

01:02:46.000 I mean, I have eaten dog, but I wouldn't probably eat it again.

01:02:51.000 And I'm not that into it.

01:02:52.000 But we all have these lines that we create.

01:02:55.000 For ourselves.

01:02:56.000 So where's the line for you?

01:02:58.000 It's a good question.

01:02:58.000 My friend Steve Rinella, he went to Guyana, and the tribespeople there were eating monkeys.

01:03:05.000 And they cooked, I think it was Guyana.

01:03:08.000 I ate monkey this year.

01:03:09.000 And he said it was like smoked turkey, like the way they do it.

01:03:13.000 Like, that's what it tasted like.

01:03:15.000 Oh, wow.

01:03:15.000 And he said it was just...

01:03:16.000 There was a part of you that's like, what the fuck? 1.00

01:03:19.000 Like, we're eating a primate? 1.00

01:03:20.000 Right.

01:03:21.000 Like, this is intense.

01:03:22.000 I'd probably eat a whale before I'd eat a primate.

01:03:24.000 Yeah.

01:03:25.000 I mean, I did something similar this year with the headzabe. 0.87

01:03:29.000 But just to finish about the whales...

01:03:32.000 Yeah, Bolivian Jungle with Tsunami Hunters.

01:03:37.000 How do you say that?

01:03:39.000 Cimane, maybe?

01:03:41.000 Cimane Hunters and We Ate Monkey. 0.96

01:03:44.000 Only got 35 likes.

01:03:46.000 2014. What if he shadow banned?

01:03:52.000 After...

01:03:53.000 Yeah, so, I mean...

01:03:55.000 No wonder people...

01:03:56.000 No wonder it's controversial.

01:03:58.000 No wonder people get upset.

01:03:59.000 Yeah.

01:04:00.000 Because it's in your face.

01:04:01.000 It's not like a slaughterhouse.

01:04:02.000 It also looks like so many whales.

01:04:04.000 It's not like a couple.

01:04:05.000 However many whales they can get is how many they kill.

01:04:08.000 And so once they bring them onto the beach, they have this tool they use to kind of go into their spine quickly.

01:04:16.000 And that severs the spine and it kills them pretty much instantly.

01:04:19.000 And then from there, it's just about moving them around, cutting them up, portioning up the meat, and then...

01:04:24.000 You get a portion of the meat depending on how you helped.

01:04:28.000 If you had a boat, you might get more.

01:04:30.000 If you're just cutting stuff up, you might get less.

01:04:33.000 It's a fascinating system.

01:04:35.000 I understand why it upsets people, but it was interesting.

01:04:38.000 There's so many documentaries like this, the footage you just pulled up.

01:04:42.000 The difference is nobody ever goes to their home.

01:04:45.000 They just end it there.

01:04:47.000 Isn't this terrible?

01:04:47.000 Look at the whales.

01:04:48.000 And so I actually got to go into someone's home, look in their freezer and eat a whale meal that they prepared and experience that with them.

01:04:57.000 And I guess my biggest takeaway was it's so different from any other animal.

01:05:02.000 It's got a big layer of blubber on the outside.

01:05:04.000 There's skin, which is about a quarter of an inch thick.

01:05:07.000 And then the blubber must be, I don't know, three, four inches thick.

01:05:10.000 And then it's just protein, this dark red protein after that.

01:05:14.000 And there's no taste you could compare it to.

01:05:18.000 And so it's not like, well, you know, just eat chicken instead.

01:05:21.000 Just eat beef instead.

01:05:22.000 You cannot replace whale meat.

01:05:24.000 You can only take it away.

01:05:25.000 And it's a tradition that they've had for hundreds of years at this point.

01:05:28.000 So I understand why they...

01:05:30.000 I don't really want people's opinions or points of view when it comes to this.

01:05:34.000 And my biggest thing in going there was finding out, is this sustainable?

01:05:39.000 And from everything I could see, it seems this is sustainable.

01:05:43.000 It's something that they could keep doing long term because they're not going out into the ocean to seek out whales.

01:05:48.000 And so I kind of get why they do it and why they're going to keep doing it.

01:05:54.000 Well, I get why they're doing it if you think of the fact that these people have lived in this island for who knows how long, probably thousands of years, right?

01:06:01.000 Right.

01:06:01.000 How long have they been there?

01:06:02.000 And that was probably a main food source to keep them alive for a long time.

01:06:09.000 Yes, and the weather you see there, I mean, it's very rainy, not a lot of sun.

01:06:16.000 They're not growing a lot of crops.

01:06:18.000 They're growing basically potatoes, they got sheep on land, and then they just have very rich seawaters.

01:06:22.000 Right.

01:06:23.000 There it is.

01:06:23.000 Oh yeah, really in the middle of nowhere.

01:06:26.000 So it's between Norway and Iceland, right in the center.

01:06:29.000 Wow.

01:06:31.000 And you said there's thousands of people live there?

01:06:33.000 How many thousands?

01:06:34.000 50,000.

01:06:36.000 And, you know, cities there?

01:06:37.000 Is there a city?

01:06:38.000 A village?

01:06:39.000 Yeah, I mean, they have a capital.

01:06:40.000 About half the population is in the capital.

01:06:42.000 I mean, but it just looks like a cute little village.

01:06:45.000 It doesn't look like...

01:06:46.000 It's no metropolis.

01:06:48.000 And how do they prepare whale?

01:06:50.000 Do you have a video of you eating whale?

01:06:52.000 Oh, sorry.

01:06:52.000 It's coming out this Sunday.

01:06:53.000 Oh, okay.

01:06:55.000 There you go.

01:06:56.000 Sneak peek, folks.

01:06:57.000 So, when you ate it, what was your thought when you were eating this?

01:07:02.000 Um...

01:07:02.000 I... I guess I wanted to try to identify how it tastes so I could convey that to the audience.

01:07:09.000 It tastes very beefy.

01:07:14.000 I didn't really have...

01:07:15.000 Beefy?

01:07:17.000 Yeah.

01:07:18.000 Interesting.

01:07:19.000 Well, it is a mammal.

01:07:20.000 It is a mammal.

01:07:21.000 And it breeds air.

01:07:24.000 It just happens to eat a lot of fish. 0.89

01:07:26.000 And so how do they prepare it?

01:07:29.000 You know, it's so funny.

01:07:30.000 They had a couple different preparations.

01:07:32.000 I'm trying to remember now.

01:07:34.000 They had a way of almost like they put it...

01:07:37.000 It's almost like a chicken fried steak where they were simmering it in oil and they created this like thick gravy around it.

01:07:46.000 I think they maybe even put some beef bouillon or beef like flavoring on it.

01:07:50.000 And it just came out looking like a big flat steak.

01:07:55.000 And yeah, I wonder if you tried it, you wouldn't be like this.

01:07:57.000 You would say there's something unusual about this steak, but it looked like a beefsteak.

01:08:02.000 And the meat is really remarkable because it's almost black.

01:08:05.000 I mean, you can see it right there.

01:08:06.000 Yeah.

01:08:07.000 While I was there- Let's pull it up to the camera so people can see what it looks like.

01:08:11.000 So this is a pilot whale?

01:08:12.000 Pilot whale.

01:08:13.000 While I was there, I also tried dolphin meat too.

01:08:16.000 So what is that?

01:08:17.000 That's pilot whale with blubber?

01:08:19.000 Yeah.

01:08:20.000 Yep.

01:08:20.000 Okay.

01:08:20.000 So if you look at the plate here, this is like a typical plate that they would have.

01:08:23.000 And it's interesting because it's like all your macros.

01:08:25.000 It's like potatoes for carbs.

01:08:27.000 The black part is the protein.

01:08:29.000 And then in the middle, that part right there is all the blubber.

01:08:32.000 It's very thinly sliced blubber.

01:08:34.000 It's very rich, oily, but it's not oily like pork would be.

01:08:39.000 It's almost like a more thin oiliness that can dissipate or dilute more quickly in your mouth.

01:08:47.000 And do they eat it raw?

01:08:48.000 Yeah.

01:08:49.000 Yes, they have a few different ways of eating it.

01:08:51.000 I mean, this isn't technically raw, but it's dried, so it's not cooked.

01:08:56.000 So they have dried, but then of course they cook it too.

01:09:00.000 And then the blubber you can eat raw.

01:09:02.000 They slice it, but just like you saw there, they slice it very, very thin.

01:09:05.000 And so that's just how they get their source of fat because this meat looks very lean.

01:09:10.000 Yeah.

01:09:11.000 But, you know, it's something that they don't eat every day.

01:09:14.000 And maybe they eat it once a week.

01:09:15.000 And they're also very aware of the mercury levels that are in the seafood.

01:09:19.000 And they want to be careful about that.

01:09:23.000 And so people like it.

01:09:25.000 They want to have the right to do it.

01:09:26.000 The other tricky thing is it's not like...

01:09:29.000 It happens every day.

01:09:30.000 It might not even happen once in a year because it depends on if the whales come to the island or not or come near the islands and if they're spotted and if they're able to corral them and bring them into the bay.

01:09:41.000 So it's just a normal part of their culture.

01:09:43.000 Absolutely.

01:09:45.000 What is the food that you've eaten that conflicted you the most?

01:09:51.000 Monkey was challenging.

01:09:53.000 Yeah, so you brought up monkey earlier.

01:09:56.000 I went to hang out with the Hidzabe tribe earlier this year in Tanzania.

01:10:02.000 I think you've heard about the Hidzabe, right?

01:10:04.000 Yes.

01:10:05.000 Just for the people listening, the Hizabe are, I think they're known as the last hunter-gatherers in Africa. 1.00

01:10:13.000 Tanzania, the government there, has an amazing program to help them keep living the lifestyle that they're living.

01:10:18.000 There's maybe, I don't know, 3,000 to 5,000 still living the traditional way out there.

01:10:23.000 They're usually in tribes of, let's say, 5 to 10. And they are obsessed with hunting.

01:10:29.000 Everything is about hunting.

01:10:30.000 And even when I asked, like, who's the chief here?

01:10:33.000 Why is the chief the chief?

01:10:34.000 They say, because he's the best hunter.

01:10:35.000 And I'm like, really?

01:10:36.000 Does anybody want to contest that?

01:10:38.000 No.

01:10:39.000 They're like, he's the best hunter.

01:10:40.000 He's the chief.

01:10:41.000 He makes the decisions.

01:10:43.000 But, of course, as I've seen with many tribes in Africa, they're very cooperative and they have ways of eating and working together that Ensures that there are no fights or conflicts or reduces the amount that there might be.

01:10:57.000 So when I was with them, I planned to go there for three days.

01:11:00.000 I didn't even bring my crew.

01:11:01.000 We had just shot three different countries back to back.

01:11:03.000 We got COVID in the middle of it.

01:11:05.000 And I told them to leave.

01:11:07.000 I shot it on a phone and a camera and I basically just shot it by myself.

01:11:13.000 Usually we try to plan our videos a lot, as much as we can, to be efficient with our time.

01:11:17.000 But in this case, I can't say like, hey, let's go hunting, then you guys will shoot a baboon with your arrow.

01:11:22.000 I don't know what's going to happen.

01:11:24.000 And when I show up at their camp, it's so far from anything.

01:11:27.000 We were in a tiny town, we drove a couple of hours to the base of a mountain, and we hiked for another hour and a half to get to where they were.

01:11:35.000 I get there.

01:11:36.000 They bring out a vervet monkey.

01:11:37.000 So it's this white monkey. 1.00

01:11:39.000 It's the monkey I was talking about earlier that you could shoot for 40 bucks. 0.57

01:11:43.000 It's that right there.

01:11:44.000 So this guy...

01:11:45.000 And how do they hunt these?

01:11:47.000 By bow and arrow.

01:11:48.000 Wow.

01:11:49.000 And these guys are incredible because their hunting prowess is on a different level. 1.00

01:11:53.000 And I joined them for a hunt one day and it kicked my ass. 0.99

01:11:56.000 I couldn't keep up. 0.99

01:11:57.000 And so on this day...

01:11:59.000 It's tough because I'm out of my element.

01:12:02.000 I'm in a very new place.

01:12:03.000 I'm trying to figure out how to broadcast my emotions to the camera.

01:12:08.000 I don't want to be judgmental, but I'm not going to be like, oh, monkey, this is normal and cool.

01:12:14.000 Yeah, so right here, I've just arrived.

01:12:16.000 We've switched hats.

01:12:17.000 What are you wearing?

01:12:18.000 He handed me his hat.

01:12:19.000 I gave him my hat.

01:12:21.000 And he presented the monkey to me.

01:12:24.000 And then soon after this, they get to work.

01:12:26.000 Is that their primary game species that they hunt?

01:12:30.000 No.

01:12:31.000 The pinnacle for them is a baboon. 0.96

01:12:34.000 They love baboon.

01:12:35.000 Really?

01:12:36.000 And I was hoping to see that.

01:12:37.000 One night they were like, tonight we're going for baboon.

01:12:39.000 And we did the reconnaissance, like we did the scouting, rather.

01:12:43.000 And that night they all got high and went to sleep.

01:12:46.000 What do they get high on?

01:12:47.000 Yeah, I think they get weed from different villages.

01:12:49.000 They try to trade with other tribes that are out there.

01:12:53.000 Really?

01:12:55.000 They get high over there.

01:12:56.000 So I've seen...

01:12:57.000 This is what I love about doing this show is I've seen so many different tribes, stories, cultures around the world, and I just want to dig into that really specific food part.

01:13:08.000 And so I've heard...

01:13:10.000 Oh, who's that really cool artist...

01:13:14.000 David Cho?

01:13:14.000 Yes, David Cho.

01:13:16.000 He came here and he talked about the hijabé.

01:13:18.000 I heard about it from someone else too.

01:13:20.000 A friend of mine, Mike, who has a YouTube channel called Fearless and Far, he went there before me and I was like, this is incredible.

01:13:25.000 He went there during the pandemic and I was stuck in Vietnam for a year and I was like, this is incredible.

01:13:29.000 I want to do what you're doing.

01:13:32.000 But I want to just do it through the food lens.

01:13:34.000 What are you eating from day to night?

01:13:36.000 How are you getting the food?

01:13:37.000 How are you cooking it?

01:13:38.000 The way they prepare it is...

01:13:41.000 It's just, it's nothing about flavor.

01:13:42.000 It is insane. 0.77

01:13:43.000 So that monkey, let's break it down. 1.00

01:13:45.000 They'll cut his stomach open, gut it, throw the guts in a tree. 0.99

01:13:48.000 Then they throw the whole rest of the monkey in the fire. 0.99

01:13:51.000 Just the whole thing.

01:13:53.000 Then they scrape a bit of the hair off, but not really.

01:13:56.000 From there, they cut the arms and legs off.

01:13:58.000 They throw that in the fire.

01:13:59.000 Not on a stick or a grill, just throw it in the fire.

01:14:02.000 The guts, eventually that gets fed to the dogs.

01:14:05.000 Some of the bones, ribs, and stuff like that will get put in a pot and boiled, and that will make kind of a juice that they can soak up the ugali with, that kind of cornmeal and water.

01:14:14.000 Yeah, that one right there.

01:14:16.000 And from there, different people are given different parts of the animal.

01:14:20.000 So some people are going to eat the arms.

01:14:22.000 So I ate basically like a wrist and a hand.

01:14:26.000 These people are going ham.

01:14:28.000 I saw this guy break open the skull, pour out the brain. 0.78

01:14:31.000 And I guess this is when I was the most conflicted in a long time.

01:14:35.000 Because I was like, right now I could eat monkey brain, which is so Indiana Jones, which is such a wild thing to do.

01:14:41.000 And I just said, Sonny, this moment's not about you.

01:14:44.000 You need to observe.

01:14:46.000 You need to show people what they're doing.

01:14:47.000 And this isn't your experience to have right now.

01:14:50.000 So it looks like they're cooking in a bunch of different ways.

01:14:52.000 They took some of the meat and they chopped it up and put it into water in a bowl?

01:14:56.000 Yeah, in a pot.

01:14:57.000 So they have a steel pot.

01:14:58.000 And you'll recognize they do have certain modern things there.

01:15:01.000 You know, the ugali that they get. 1.00

01:15:02.000 It comes in big bags.

01:15:06.000 Sometimes they have jeans.

01:15:07.000 And it's because the government gives them some support.

01:15:10.000 Oh, that's what you're eating?

01:15:12.000 Yeah.

01:15:12.000 So that is the arm and wrist of the monkey.

01:15:15.000 You can see my face.

01:15:16.000 I'm trying to process it.

01:15:17.000 I'm trying to figure it out.

01:15:19.000 And right here, I'm speculating as to whether or not that's what human tastes like, because that's what I was trying to figure out. 0.98

01:15:26.000 Probably pretty fucking similar. 0.84

01:15:28.000 And so were they adding salt to that? 0.98

01:15:30.000 Is that what they're doing?

01:15:30.000 Yeah.

01:15:31.000 So salt is the only thing that they cook with that would actually give anything flavor.

01:15:35.000 But for them, it's not about flavor at all.

01:15:38.000 It felt like everything with this tribe had to do with hunting and hunting stories.

01:15:43.000 You could really tell these were the original storytellers.

01:15:47.000 What I loved about going here is you hear people say, oh man, if I had a time machine, it'd be cool to see how people lived thousands of years ago.

01:15:53.000 That's it.

01:15:54.000 Yeah.

01:15:57.000 Everywhere they walked, they could find food.

01:15:59.000 They would see honey in a tree.

01:16:01.000 They would pick berries.

01:16:02.000 They would see sticks that they liked and cut them off.

01:16:05.000 And they would, when they hang out by the fire in the morning or night, they smoke cigarettes nonstop and they bend the arrows with their teeth to get them straight because they look so perfect.

01:16:13.000 It looks like, where'd you buy that from?

01:16:15.000 No, I made it from a piece of wood.

01:16:17.000 I know how to spot the wood.

01:16:18.000 And they have different types of arrows too.

01:16:22.000 So they have an arrow with poison on it that's meant for piercing a bigger animal.

01:16:25.000 And I saw how they make the poison.

01:16:27.000 They make it from a tree.

01:16:29.000 They have this type of tree.

01:16:31.000 They squeeze, they kind of dig into it, get the pulp from the inside and squeeze it and then cook that down.

01:16:40.000 And then that, once it pierces an animal, will help kill it faster.

01:16:43.000 They put it behind the head of the arrow.

01:16:45.000 But then they also have arrows where it'll look like a wine cork at the end of the arrow.

01:16:50.000 And that's for shooting little birds, because you're not going to use the same tool.

01:16:53.000 Then they'll have a little arrow with a hook at the end. 0.96

01:16:56.000 So that would be for some kind of a rodent that likes to go on rocks.

01:17:00.000 So you hook it, and now you can pull it out when it tries to get away.

01:17:03.000 So they have a whole arsenal of different arrows in their pack.

01:17:08.000 And this is all these guys are about.

01:17:10.000 It's just hunting, day and night hunting.

01:17:13.000 And they just must get such an incredible...

01:17:22.000 The first day I get there in the afternoon, I eat the vervet monkey with them.

01:17:27.000 The second day, it's time to go out hunting.

01:17:30.000 At the time, I'm in pretty good shape.

01:17:33.000 It's a bit post-COVID, so that maybe affected me, but we went for eight miles.

01:17:40.000 I mean, there's no paths.

01:17:41.000 It's just rocks.

01:17:43.000 It's trees.

01:17:44.000 And they know how to dodge.

01:17:45.000 There's so many sticky trees and bushes.

01:17:47.000 And these guys, they move like Neo and the Matrix through everything.

01:17:51.000 And they have no issues.

01:17:52.000 They're not wearing shirts.

01:17:53.000 And I'm just getting stuck on everything.

01:17:56.000 I'm getting poked.

01:17:57.000 I'm getting stabbed. 0.93

01:17:58.000 I made it...

01:17:58.000 Before we ran out of water and energy...

01:18:01.000 I made it about five, six hours, and they didn't get anything in that time except for one small bird.

01:18:06.000 I had to go back because I lost them.

01:18:08.000 These guys would be a tiny opening in some shrubs, and they would just go in. 0.90

01:18:13.000 At some point, I was like, I can't fucking do it. 0.92

01:18:15.000 They're so fast. 0.98

01:18:17.000 I go back to camp.

01:18:18.000 I wait a couple hours.

01:18:19.000 They show up with something called a clip springer.

01:18:23.000 It looks like a little fuzzy, cute mountain goat with two horns that go straight out like this.

01:18:29.000 And what's amazing is they're not like, check it out, look what I did.

01:18:34.000 They're like, here's dinner.

01:18:35.000 There was no bravado, at least that I could see, among the men there.

01:18:39.000 And so that's why we had dinner for dinner that night.

01:18:42.000 Well, I guess it's because they do it every day.

01:18:44.000 I mean, that's how they live.

01:18:45.000 I guess so.

01:18:46.000 And maybe the bravado would come out if they got a baboon and The baboon. 0.89

01:18:50.000 So why is the baboon the prized species?

01:18:53.000 I think they like the taste.

01:18:54.000 Really?

01:18:57.000 I think that's literally it.

01:18:58.000 I think they just like the taste of the meat.

01:19:00.000 Do they talk about that?

01:19:01.000 Oh, they talk about— They speak English?

01:19:03.000 You had a translator?

01:19:04.000 No, no, no.

01:19:04.000 So we had a translator.

01:19:06.000 What's interesting is they speak a clicking language.

01:19:08.000 Like, the main guy I spoke to, his name was Chaba, and there's another guy called, like, Gufufu.

01:19:16.000 And they speak in this amazing clique language, and they do a lot of impersonating, and they'll talk about the arrow, and when they talk about the arrow, they'll go like this with their elbow, point their elbow out like a bow, and so it's kind of half sign language, or just very, there's a lot of gesticulations and speaking going on at the same time,

01:19:33.000 and I had a translator, this is...

01:19:34.000 Can I hear what they sound like?

01:19:38.000 And then they ambush, and then they go to hunting.

01:19:45.000 Wow!

01:19:47.000 Their favourite is the baboon.

01:19:51.000 It's traditional for them.

01:19:53.000 If maybe they go to hunting, they hear the sound of the baboon.

01:19:58.000 And they ambush.

01:20:02.000 Wow.

01:20:03.000 Yeah.

01:20:05.000 What's that, James?

01:20:05.000 It was two voices.

01:20:06.000 You could hear the translator.

01:20:07.000 Yeah.

01:20:08.000 What's funny about the translator is his English felt limited sometimes, so I was like, hey, man, are you better at English or at the click language? 0.53

01:20:15.000 Oh, way better at the click language.

01:20:17.000 Wow.

01:20:18.000 I was like, really?

01:20:18.000 He's like, yeah, I grew up next to these guys.

01:20:20.000 He didn't say it like that.

01:20:21.000 But, um...

01:20:22.000 And so this is their homemade bow and arrow that they have?

01:20:25.000 Yes.

01:20:26.000 Yeah, and so obviously the pots, the steel, that stuff's given to them, but most everything else is homemade or of their own making.

01:20:35.000 Wow.

01:20:36.000 How many days were you there with these folks?

01:20:38.000 Three.

01:20:38.000 And how often do they get a baboon?

01:20:41.000 So maybe once a week or every couple weeks, which was astonishing to me because it's like, are there really that many baboons out there to get? 1.00

01:20:50.000 So it seems like their primary food source is primates.

01:20:55.000 So it's a number of things.

01:20:56.000 Yeah, it's monkeys.

01:20:57.000 It can be birds.

01:20:58.000 It can be rodents.

01:21:00.000 The cliff springer you can see in a different episode.

01:21:04.000 On the third one, on the right, you can see the cliff springer.

01:21:08.000 And so they can get antelope, small antelope.

01:21:11.000 There's a number of different creatures that they can get.

01:21:13.000 Yeah, that's a cliff springer right there.

01:21:15.000 So that's, I mean, that's a pretty impressive size.

01:21:17.000 And, you know, they don't have refrigerators, so...

01:21:19.000 Right there, she's tasting the poison.

01:21:21.000 The poison is bitter and if she can taste it, she spits it out and cuts that part out.

01:21:26.000 So they've used the poison there, and it's her job as kind of the granny of the group to make sure she gets the poison parts taken out. 1.00

01:21:34.000 And do they form their own arrowheads?

01:21:37.000 I see these homemade arrowhead-looking things.

01:21:39.000 So my understanding is that there's a tribe next to them who's not Hidzabe. 0.99

01:21:44.000 The Datoga tribe was near them.

01:21:46.000 That's where the ladies kill and eat the liver, sorry, the cow and eat the liver and blood. 1.00

01:21:52.000 They will trade with that village.

01:21:54.000 I'm not sure exactly what they're trading, but they will trade arrows for something else, maybe for meat or for something else.

01:22:03.000 How often do they come in contact with Westerners?

01:22:07.000 So that's a good question.

01:22:08.000 It would be hard for me to say.

01:22:10.000 They seem super comfortable just letting you hang out and eat with them and share their food.

01:22:15.000 It's not the first time that they've done this.

01:22:17.000 And that's something I revealed in our final episode because I didn't want to make it seem like, oh, I've had this cool experience and no one else has done this before.

01:22:25.000 Of course, it's part of a package that's available in Tanzania.

01:22:28.000 So people can pay...

01:22:30.000 I mean, I paid about $5,000 for the experience total, and that included having a tent and the guides and stuff like that.

01:22:38.000 Oh, wow.

01:22:39.000 You have the option.

01:22:40.000 If you want to sleep on the ground with them, you can.

01:22:41.000 I was like, I'll take a tent.

01:22:43.000 I'm good with that.

01:22:44.000 And so I'm guessing they probably have a dozen or maybe a couple dozen a year, but...

01:22:50.000 And so the people that are just listening, these people are wearing animal skins. 0.85

01:22:54.000 I mean, these are skins from animals that they've hunted.

01:22:57.000 They really are living like people lived tens of thousands of years ago. 0.98

01:23:01.000 Yeah, this is no bullshit.

01:23:02.000 And I filmed a lot of stuff in Africa.

01:23:04.000 The thing with shooting in Africa, not to generalize too much, but with some countries, if you're dead set on shooting something, someone's going to convince you that you can shoot it, and they're going to tell you that you can, and they're going to try to set something up, whether it's authentic or not. 0.97

01:23:18.000 This is the real fucking deal. 0.94

01:23:20.000 And these guys are just incredible. 0.99

01:23:23.000 They're badass.

01:23:24.000 And it was...

01:23:25.000 Did you ask them how they make their clothes?

01:23:28.000 How they make these animal skin clothes? 0.99

01:23:30.000 No, I didn't.

01:23:32.000 Because they're all...

01:23:33.000 I mean, this is so wild.

01:23:34.000 Because they're really wearing what you would have expected people to live pre-history.

01:23:41.000 Right.

01:23:43.000 What they would expect it to wear.

01:23:45.000 Except for the pants.

01:23:46.000 And how do they get the dogs?

01:23:48.000 They have so many dogs.

01:23:49.000 Right.

01:23:49.000 So that's another big part of their hunting is that they have about 12 different dogs there.

01:23:55.000 Of course, the dogs really come in handy because they can help rustle up rodents.

01:23:59.000 They can go after animals.

01:24:01.000 They can try...

01:24:02.000 Oh, warthogs is another thing they can get. 0.99

01:24:04.000 They can get...

01:24:04.000 Or wild boars out there, too.

01:24:06.000 So, the dogs...

01:24:08.000 It's interesting because the night before hunting, they don't feed the dogs.

01:24:11.000 The dogs are watching them eat this monkey and they're like, come on, dude, how about a little bit of monkey for me?

01:24:15.000 They're like, no.

01:24:16.000 They need to be hungry.

01:24:17.000 They need to be eager for the next day.

01:24:19.000 And then, that night, they got food.

01:24:22.000 And so they get some meat, they usually just get the intestines, and they get a lot of that ugali. 1.00

01:24:28.000 The dogs eat the ugali as well?

01:24:30.000 Yeah.

01:24:31.000 And so what are they hunting here?

01:24:33.000 So right here they just saw some kind of a rodent crawl into the rocks, and they're trying to pin it down, but it's escaped at this point.

01:24:43.000 Now, is there an over-hunting problem in these areas?

01:24:47.000 Like, do they have a lack of certain game species because people have killed too many of them?

01:24:52.000 So, that's a great question.

01:24:54.000 I think, and that's what I wondered when I was going there, too, because...

01:24:56.000 Because that's what David Cho had said about one of the reasons why they hunted primates so much.

01:25:01.000 Well, I know that they like primates, and I'm not sure if that taste has been shaped by what's available.

01:25:08.000 The government has been instrumental in preserving this way of life.

01:25:13.000 And if you went to a thousand years ago, the difference would be that they would be nomadic and they would be able to follow the animals.

01:25:23.000 Now, they're still nomadic to a point, but they still have a small designated region within which they can hunt.

01:25:29.000 So that is the issue.

01:25:32.000 Now there's fences, there's roads, there's all these obstructions within the country.

01:25:37.000 And so when the dry season comes, the animals will naturally move to where there's more water, where there's more grass to graze.

01:25:44.000 And these guys can't follow the animals.

01:25:47.000 They have to stay within a big space, but still, it's drought time now.

01:25:51.000 And so the government, what they do is they might go shoot a...

01:25:56.000 Wildebeest, something like that, they'll drop off more grain and say, here's an animal, here's some food to hold you over until the rainy season or until the animals come back again.

01:26:07.000 And so I think part of that deal is, like, you guys hang out with tourists with their bandanas once in a while, and then we'll help you out.

01:26:15.000 We'll give you some food and some game meat when times are tough.

01:26:19.000 So it seems like that's the deal that's been struck between the two.

01:26:23.000 And so that's why they take Westerners on these little adventures. 0.93

01:26:25.000 Yeah.

01:26:26.000 I mean, it could be anybody.

01:26:27.000 But it seems like they're accustomed to having people around them.

01:26:30.000 Certainly, yeah.

01:26:30.000 That are from other countries.

01:26:32.000 Yes.

01:26:33.000 And so when you're around them, how many different things did you eat?

01:26:37.000 You ate the monkey, you had some of that mountain goat?

01:26:41.000 Yeah, the Clipspringer, I had some of that.

01:26:43.000 There wasn't, let's see, they had a little bit of a, they had a tiny bird, and they had a, some kind of a rodent, I forgot what it was called.

01:26:51.000 So it's tough living.

01:26:52.000 Yeah.

01:26:52.000 It's touch and go.

01:26:53.000 They don't always seem like they get enough food.

01:26:56.000 Yeah, and to preserve it, so the Clipspringer lasted a couple days.

01:27:01.000 It was good and bad.

01:27:02.000 It's like I'm glad we had something big and I'm glad they had food, something big for the video.

01:27:06.000 But then like the next day is like day off.

01:27:08.000 They throw half of the Cliffspringer in the tree and they'll eat it the next day. 0.94

01:27:14.000 My first night sleeping there in the tent, I heard these crazy sounds just like, And the next day I was like, hey, what the fuck was that last night? 0.96

01:27:24.000 And they said, well, that was a hyena. 0.98

01:27:26.000 A hyena came to camp.

01:27:27.000 Have you seen a hyena in person?

01:27:29.000 No.

01:27:30.000 Yeah, they're like big, ripped, nasty, gnarly beasts.

01:27:35.000 And I've seen them because I did in Tanzania.

01:27:38.000 I also went on safari.

01:27:41.000 And you wouldn't want to be face-to-face with one. 0.99

01:27:43.000 They look disgusting and brutal and intense and strong and brutish.

01:27:47.000 And the dogs will chase them away, but you can see also the dogs have scars from hyenas, from baboons, from the different animals there that they come in contact with. 0.96

01:27:59.000 What's funny, you know, it's just such a different way of life.

01:28:03.000 I remember when I first moved to Korea and I came back to Little Minnesota and my friend's mom was like, Hey, Bill, my real name's Bill, don't tell anyone.

01:28:12.000 Hey, Bill, do you find when you go around the world that, you know, we're just a lot more alike than we are different and we're all just kind of the same?

01:28:20.000 I was like, absolutely not.

01:28:22.000 No.

01:28:23.000 Of course, we have similarities as humans, but that's what I like about visiting these different people is just seeing what's so different about them.

01:28:32.000 And so my guide there, who wasn't Hidzabe, he said, hey, you should ask them, what do they do if somebody dies in the tribe?

01:28:38.000 What do they do?

01:28:39.000 It's a dark thing.

01:28:40.000 He knows it's gonna be a dark answer.

01:28:42.000 And so I ask, and they go, yeah, just like, throw their body on the cliff or something.

01:28:47.000 Wow.

01:28:47.000 Just like, throw them to the side.

01:28:49.000 I'm like, alright, farewell.

01:28:52.000 Wow.

01:28:52.000 Yeah.

01:28:53.000 Different way of life.

01:28:54.000 What do they do if there's an injury?

01:28:58.000 So my guess is that they know which medicines to use naturally.

01:29:05.000 What about broken bones or anything like that?

01:29:08.000 Yeah.

01:29:08.000 I didn't think to ask, but I'm not sure.

01:29:11.000 I mean, these people are in this really difficult terrain and they're chasing after animals.

01:29:14.000 God, I imagine there's some injuries.

01:29:16.000 Yeah.

01:29:16.000 They look very athletic, though.

01:29:18.000 They look like these people are in great shape.

01:29:20.000 Oh, yeah.

01:29:21.000 No, I was dying.

01:29:22.000 I had my Apple watch on to track my steps.

01:29:26.000 My heart rate decided to charge it out there.

01:29:28.000 Through the roof.

01:29:29.000 Yeah, we brought batteries and stuff out there.

01:29:32.000 And these guys, they're not breaking the sweat.

01:29:34.000 They're not breathing heavy.

01:29:35.000 They just know the land.

01:29:36.000 They know how to move.

01:29:37.000 They know how to walk.

01:29:41.000 And so when they talk about baboon, that's the big thing.

01:29:44.000 That's the number one thing that they like.

01:29:46.000 And they talk about it because of the taste?

01:29:48.000 I think it's about the taste.

01:29:50.000 So that's one of the crazier things that I got to see this year.

01:29:54.000 Didn't you want to try baboon?

01:29:56.000 I did want to try it, and I would have tried it, but they didn't get it.

01:30:00.000 I can't really influence what they're doing.

01:30:02.000 That might be the only primate that I would be interested in eating, because it seems like it's...

01:30:06.000 Partly a primate and partly a dog.

01:30:08.000 Like hyenas are weird.

01:30:10.000 Or excuse me, baboons are weird.

01:30:12.000 Yeah, they got crazy teeth.

01:30:13.000 Yeah.

01:30:14.000 Like fangs.

01:30:14.000 Yeah.

01:30:15.000 Yeah, and so they either hang out in the baobao trees or in these cliffs where there's a lot of little kind of places they can hide. 0.68

01:30:22.000 And so we scouted the area and we saw like baboon shit there.

01:30:26.000 And so like they were, again, we were hoping they would go back that night, but they didn't. 0.98

01:30:31.000 So the baboons must be aware also that they're being hunted by the people.

01:30:34.000 Yeah.

01:30:35.000 That's something they also have to be careful for because they said if they overhunt, then the baboons will move their camp completely. 0.97

01:30:41.000 So they are aware of that and they won't take too much.

01:30:45.000 Interesting.

01:30:47.000 Wow.

01:30:48.000 So was that like the most intense, intensely foreign, I guess probably the best word, experience that you've had, like eating?

01:30:59.000 Maybe, although it's still not the worst food I've ever had.

01:31:02.000 I've had worse than that.

01:31:03.000 What's the worst?

01:31:04.000 Well, it doesn't sound that remarkable, but stingray liver is disgusting.

01:31:09.000 Where'd you have that?

01:31:10.000 In Vietnam.

01:31:11.000 There's a place in Vietnam on the coast called Vum Thao.

01:31:14.000 So I live in Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon.

01:31:17.000 And two hours from there, you can go to this coastal city and you can get Stingray.

01:31:21.000 And we were doing...

01:31:22.000 Oh, this is like mid-pandemic.

01:31:23.000 I was so lucky during the pandemic that we had about a year where there was no...

01:31:29.000 Like when everything was going to crap here in the USA, we had like a whole year where no one was even wearing masks because they locked it down early.

01:31:36.000 And it didn't spread, fortunately.

01:31:39.000 And so during that time...

01:31:41.000 I didn't stop shooting.

01:31:42.000 I have no reason to stop shooting.

01:31:43.000 We can still move around.

01:31:45.000 And so we did a whole series just about eating different animal organs.

01:31:49.000 Okay, today we're going to eat four different types of animal hearts.

01:31:51.000 And then eventually four different types of animal livers.

01:31:54.000 And one of the livers was the stingray liver.

01:31:57.000 It's kind of like the bile.

01:31:58.000 It's just like...

01:32:00.000 It has minerality of the ocean.

01:32:03.000 There it is.

01:32:04.000 You're so good with the cliffs.

01:32:06.000 Jamie's the best.

01:32:07.000 And it is so biley and bitter.

01:32:10.000 That dude looks very pleased, though.

01:32:12.000 Yeah.

01:32:13.000 He looks like, oh, we got the good stuff.

01:32:15.000 And so this is something that's prized by them?

01:32:19.000 I wouldn't say this is even commonly eaten in Vietnam. 0.99

01:32:22.000 What the fuck is that thing? 0.99

01:32:24.000 Oh, that was a... 1.00

01:32:26.000 Whoa! 0.71

01:32:27.000 Yeah, monkfish.

01:32:28.000 That's right.

01:32:30.000 Look at that thing. 0.92

01:32:31.000 Back up a little bit.

01:32:32.000 In contrast, the monkfish is famous for its liver.

01:32:34.000 They have one of the best livers in the world and it tastes like foie gras.

01:32:37.000 It's the foie gras of the sea.

01:32:39.000 Really?

01:32:39.000 Yes, it's incredible.

01:32:40.000 And that's something that I tried in Japan.

01:32:42.000 And so this is the stingray liver.

01:32:45.000 And how are they preparing the stingray liver?

01:32:48.000 They put it in a hot pot and then whatever this is.

01:32:52.000 I think maybe they braced it or boiled it for a while.

01:32:55.000 That dude you're eating with, he doesn't even look excited.

01:32:57.000 So that's my buddy Calvin.

01:32:59.000 And he seemed to like it a lot more than I did.

01:33:02.000 I can say that.

01:33:03.000 And so what's it with that?

01:33:05.000 Capers?

01:33:05.000 What is that with it?

01:33:06.000 Yeah, yeah, that's right.

01:33:08.000 And so what does it taste like?

01:33:09.000 Or is it pepper?

01:33:10.000 Maybe it's pepper.

01:33:11.000 I don't know.

01:33:11.000 I can't tell from here.

01:33:13.000 So it's just mushy and bile-y and it's squishy in a way where you can feel like, am I eating pieces of the ocean floor right now?

01:33:23.000 I just really didn't enjoy it.

01:33:26.000 And I didn't feel bad.

01:33:27.000 You know, usually I might feel bad, but it's like this is not the chef's fault.

01:33:31.000 This has nothing to do with the cooking, the style, the country, or the culture.

01:33:34.000 I just don't like that body part of that animal.

01:33:37.000 And is this on the menu there normally?

01:33:39.000 Yes.

01:33:40.000 Yeah, definitely.

01:33:41.000 I mean, this is a Stingray restaurant.

01:33:43.000 Stingray's delicious, and you wouldn't think so.

01:33:45.000 Oh, I've had Stingray before.

01:33:46.000 Oh, you have?

01:33:47.000 Yeah, I had an Italian restaurant before.

01:33:49.000 Skate.

01:33:50.000 It's basically the same thing, right?

01:33:51.000 Yeah.

01:33:52.000 Yeah, it was very good.

01:33:53.000 Very interesting fish.

01:33:55.000 At some point, we should talk about the Mad Honey.

01:33:58.000 Yeah.

01:33:59.000 Well, that's how you and I got in touch recently.

01:34:01.000 Right.

01:34:01.000 Yeah.

01:34:02.000 You saw us talking about mad honey on the show and you reached out and said, I'm actually right now harvesting mad honey.

01:34:08.000 Yes.

01:34:09.000 You sent me a photo of you actually doing it right there.

01:34:12.000 I'm going to grab some from my bag right now.

01:34:14.000 Okay.

01:34:14.000 And this mad honey, you were in Tibet?

01:34:18.000 Is that where you get it from?

01:34:21.000 This was in Nepal.

01:34:22.000 Nepal. 0.59

01:34:22.000 Very close to Tibet. 0.59

01:34:24.000 This is it.

01:34:24.000 Now, this looks like store-bought honey, because there's a label on there.

01:34:28.000 What that truly is, is I transferred the honey to this grocery store bottle, so if I went through customs, I wouldn't have any issues.

01:34:36.000 Good move.

01:34:36.000 But that is the same honey I showed you in the video.

01:34:39.000 So if you look at it, you can open it up.

01:34:43.000 You'll see a couple things.

01:34:44.000 You'll see it's a little bit more liquidy than typical honey.

01:34:48.000 Typical golden, you know, in the bottle shaped like a bear honey. 0.83

01:34:51.000 And this is supposed to be the honey that makes you trip balls?

01:34:54.000 Yeah.

01:34:54.000 Does it?

01:34:55.000 So I think we should try it in a moment.

01:34:58.000 In a moment?

01:34:58.000 Are you willing to try it?

01:34:59.000 Yeah, I'll try it right now.

01:35:00.000 Don't try it right now.

01:35:01.000 Okay.

01:35:02.000 Okay, hold on.

01:35:02.000 A little bit of build-up, a little bit of backstory.

01:35:05.000 Sorry, I'm very controlling.

01:35:06.000 It's okay.

01:35:08.000 So you see it's soupy.

01:35:09.000 You see it's red.

01:35:11.000 I went to Nepal.

01:35:12.000 Some people know how this works already.

01:35:16.000 I just think we should explain where the honey comes from.

01:35:18.000 The honey comes from these cliffs.

01:35:21.000 There's different places around the world.

01:35:23.000 Do you have a video of you doing it yet or is it not released yet?

01:35:25.000 Not really soon.

01:35:26.000 We can find a video of them harvesting mad honey because it's really fascinating how they have to do it.

01:35:32.000 Yeah, so it was about maybe a 12-hour drive from the capital of Kathmandu that we went to this village of maybe 500 people and we joined these guys as they collected the honey.

01:35:41.000 And they don't have like honey boxes.

01:35:42.000 The honey is on the mountain sides.

01:35:46.000 And they basically risk their lives taking these ladders.

01:35:51.000 They have these ladders, these rope ladders, and the reason they need rope ladders is because they need to be able to hike sometimes up to several hours to go to where the honey is.

01:35:59.000 Whoa.

01:36:00.000 The honey's not conveniently located.

01:36:01.000 It's located wherever the hell the bees put it.

01:36:03.000 Keep playing it, Jeremy.

01:36:05.000 And so they take these rolled up ladders and they string it on the cliff.

01:36:11.000 They climb the ladders or descend from the ladders.

01:36:13.000 And then they have to carefully use these long sticks to cut the honeycomb off of the mountainside.

01:36:19.000 Before doing that, they put some pegs into the honeycomb.

01:36:23.000 So this is like a big, flat, protruding honeycomb coming from the mountainside.

01:36:28.000 And then eventually they cut it off and they lower it down.

01:36:32.000 The people...

01:36:33.000 On the bottom, then collect the honey and they can start to process it.

01:36:37.000 So, there's a couple things that are interesting here.

01:36:40.000 One is, like, the collection process, which is dangerous and just kind of unbelievable.

01:36:45.000 I mean, one of the scariest...

01:36:46.000 You see all these bees here.

01:36:48.000 I had to wear the bee hat.

01:36:49.000 Everyone...

01:36:50.000 Nobody messes around.

01:36:51.000 Everyone wears the bee hat. 0.95

01:36:52.000 As soon as they get the smoke going, these bees go insane. 0.99

01:36:55.000 And you see...

01:36:57.000 Thousands of bees stinging the shit out of everything and everyone, trying to get through people's clothing. 0.94

01:37:04.000 And, you know, when bees sting, their stinger comes out.

01:37:06.000 So it's all just a kamikaze mission for all these different bees.

01:37:11.000 And so all these people are getting stung.

01:37:14.000 So they had the appropriate clothing.

01:37:17.000 My guide, who wasn't used to being there, got about four bees inside the hat, and that's never what you want.

01:37:22.000 And so their solution to that was to reach to his hat inside the net and pinch the bees inside.

01:37:29.000 Rather than trying to get them out, they just killed him inside.

01:37:32.000 And so when they got the honey, for example, you can see here they're dumping it out of the basket.

01:37:36.000 There's going to be tons of bees and honey mixed together. 0.99

01:37:39.000 When I flew my drone there, I landed the drone and it was wet with bee body parts. 1.00

01:37:45.000 I must have shredded a thousand bees just with my drone.

01:37:48.000 So they are on the defense.

01:37:50.000 And before you go there, before you put the smoke, the honeycomb is black because it's completely covered by the bees.

01:37:57.000 But after the smoke comes up, it reveals the actual yellow honeycomb underneath.

01:38:02.000 So that's one interesting aspect to this.

01:38:04.000 So the smoke is to try to calm down these bees, right?

01:38:08.000 To repel them, to make them leave.

01:38:09.000 So how do they do that?

01:38:10.000 They start fires at the base of the cliff?

01:38:12.000 Yes.

01:38:13.000 And these guys are so badass.

01:38:14.000 They know how to start a fire and basically put it into a makeshift backpack and then carry it up.

01:38:18.000 Oh boy.

01:38:19.000 So they're carrying smoke on their back and then dumping it at the base of the cliff.

01:38:23.000 And then the smoke goes up and then the bees go insane from there.

01:38:27.000 Is it because the bees know?

01:38:29.000 Are they accustomed to people trying to steal their honey?

01:38:32.000 I do think it puts them in a defensive mode.

01:38:35.000 But also, just like a lot of insects don't like smoke.

01:38:38.000 So it's like...

01:38:40.000 They know they have to leave because there's smoke, but they want to protect the hives at all costs.

01:38:45.000 So that's one aspect.

01:38:48.000 The other aspect is the hallucinogenic lightheaded effects that are purported to come from eating the honey.

01:38:55.000 So how does that happen?

01:38:57.000 The bees collect, I forget if it's nectar or pollen, from certain types of flowers that grow there locally.

01:39:06.000 These flowers have some kind of chemicals inside.

01:39:09.000 It creates a neurotoxic effect in your brain when you eat it.

01:39:15.000 So I interviewed a villager.

01:39:16.000 This is why I want to build up a little bit so you can see how gung-ho about trying the honey you still are, but I think we should still absolutely do it together.

01:39:22.000 I went to a villager there.

01:39:23.000 I was thinking everyone's just going to be jacked up on honey all the time, and it's a great time.

01:39:27.000 And so I talked to this guy.

01:39:28.000 He was the one who owned the cliff where the honey is.

01:39:31.000 And I said, how often do you do it?

01:39:33.000 He goes, I did it 20 years ago.

01:39:35.000 That's the last time.

01:39:36.000 I said, can you walk me through the experience?

01:39:38.000 He said, I took a lot and I couldn't walk for 24 hours.

01:39:43.000 I said, oh, you couldn't walk.

01:39:45.000 Okay.

01:39:46.000 That's pretty extreme.

01:39:47.000 I've heard similar stories from people while I was there and it seemed interesting because at least in the village I went to, I know it's different in different parts of Nepal, but at least where I went, people seemed like I've done it and I'm good.

01:40:00.000 And they didn't really want to do it much more.

01:40:02.000 So why are they collecting it?

01:40:03.000 Well, there's a big market in places like Japan and especially Korea, they said, where people want to buy the honey and eat the honey, which is interesting because I looked it up and it's actually illegal in Korea, it said.

01:40:16.000 So this brings me to...

01:40:19.000 That day I tried a bit.

01:40:20.000 I tried about a spoon.

01:40:21.000 And I got scared about trying too much because we still had to hike an hour out of there, then a three hour drive.

01:40:26.000 I'm like, I need to use my legs.

01:40:28.000 But my brother, my brother joined me, my brother Scott joined me at a hotel in St. Cloud recently about a week and a half ago.

01:40:34.000 And he knew I had the honey because I talked about bringing it here.

01:40:36.000 And he's like, I want to try the honey.

01:40:38.000 And he's a bit of a hater. 1.00

01:40:39.000 And he's like, it's fucking honey. 0.99

01:40:41.000 What's going to happen? 1.00

01:40:42.000 Yeah.

01:40:42.000 And I gotta go to bed, because I got work to do the next day.

01:40:45.000 And so I'm in his room across from mine in the hotel, and I give him a couple spoons, and I'm like, you should just do a couple spoons, wait 30 minutes and see how you feel.

01:40:52.000 He goes, uh, yeah, no, just give me more, you're going to sleep soon, just give me more, if I want more, I'll take it.

01:40:57.000 So while I'm still there, he takes more, maybe five, six spoons.

01:41:01.000 Then I go, alright, I gotta go to bed, have a good time, let me know.

01:41:04.000 Actually, I said, why don't you text me the effects during the evening, and I'll know what to expect when I do it.

01:41:11.000 So here's what he said.

01:41:12.000 I've got his text right here.

01:41:14.000 Feels good.

01:41:15.000 Warm.

01:41:16.000 Warm breath.

01:41:18.000 He goes on.

01:41:19.000 Totally legit.

01:41:21.000 Alright.

01:41:21.000 Hater vibes.

01:41:22.000 Gone.

01:41:24.000 My body's on fire in a very positive way.

01:41:27.000 It's weird.

01:41:28.000 My scalp feels hot.

01:41:29.000 My muscles tingle.

01:41:31.000 So far good.

01:41:34.000 Might get nauseous.

01:41:36.000 Take less.

01:41:36.000 I can't tell.

01:41:39.000 Not good.

01:41:41.000 Regret.

01:41:43.000 Very bad.

01:41:45.000 Just don't. 1.00

01:41:47.000 Stupid. 1.00

01:41:48.000 I keep hoping I'm done. 1.00

01:41:50.000 I'm so sick.

01:41:52.000 At 540 AM, I should maybe eat a banana.

01:41:57.000 So, that's my brother.

01:42:00.000 So how much in total did he take?

01:42:02.000 Six spoons.

01:42:04.000 Six of...

01:42:05.000 This spoon.

01:42:06.000 I brought this spoon because I needed a measurement system that was accurate.

01:42:10.000 I'm like, I need to know exactly which spoon you used.

01:42:12.000 A basic plastic ice cream spoon.

01:42:13.000 Yeah.

01:42:14.000 And so this is not a deep, big spoon.

01:42:16.000 This is not a tablespoon.

01:42:17.000 You took six of those.

01:42:18.000 Yeah, about six.

01:42:19.000 So, I think we should try it out. 1.00

01:42:22.000 Sounds like shit. 1.00

01:42:23.000 Sounds terrible. 1.00

01:42:24.000 No, but if you do too much, it's shit. 1.00

01:42:26.000 Are you sure? 1.00

01:42:28.000 We gotta find out, Joe.

01:42:29.000 But do we have to find out here?

01:42:30.000 How long does it take?

01:42:32.000 The show will be over before we really feel it.

01:42:34.000 How much time do we have left?

01:42:36.000 I don't know.

01:42:36.000 As long as we want, really.

01:42:39.000 Why not try a little bit?

01:42:40.000 Okay, let's try a little bit.

01:42:41.000 Try a little bit.

01:42:42.000 I don't know if you want to share this plastic spoon.

01:42:44.000 I also brought these.

01:42:45.000 These are a little bit deeper.

01:42:47.000 Okay.

01:42:47.000 I think I should use a regular spoon.

01:42:49.000 Oh, this one?

01:42:50.000 It doesn't matter.

01:42:51.000 I was going to use the spoon that was used.

01:42:52.000 Okay, so you gotta mix it up first.

01:42:55.000 Okay.

01:42:55.000 Mix it up real good.

01:42:56.000 I mixed it up before coming here, but it separates.

01:42:58.000 I'm not sure what's separating in there.

01:43:00.000 It's very liquidy.

01:43:01.000 It's very different than honey.

01:43:03.000 Like regular honey.

01:43:04.000 I'm just gonna have a little bit.

01:43:05.000 Does it smell like honey?

01:43:07.000 Yeah.

01:43:10.000 It tastes like honey too.

01:43:11.000 Do a whole spoon.

01:43:13.000 No.

01:43:13.000 I'm going to do a half spoon.

01:43:14.000 Okay.

01:43:15.000 You got plans tonight?

01:43:16.000 Yeah, I got a show I got to do.

01:43:18.000 I can't have fake legs.

01:43:20.000 My legs aren't moving.

01:43:21.000 Fake legs.

01:43:22.000 Wow, it feels weird.

01:43:23.000 Yeah, so don't drink any water.

01:43:25.000 I'll take a little bit too.

01:43:28.000 It definitely feels different than regular honey.

01:43:31.000 I think I took too much.

01:43:32.000 Yeah?

01:43:34.000 Let's find out.

01:43:36.000 So...

01:43:37.000 You want to put the lid on it?

01:43:38.000 Sure.

01:43:39.000 I'll leave this one here for you.

01:43:41.000 Thank you.

01:43:41.000 You can try it on your own time.

01:43:42.000 Uh-oh.

01:43:43.000 The first thing I experience...

01:43:44.000 You don't want to leave me alone to try things on my own time.

01:43:46.000 I've gone down dark roads.

01:43:47.000 Do you feel anything?

01:43:48.000 Because right away, I feel it in the back of my throat.

01:43:50.000 Yeah, I feel it in the back of my throat.

01:43:51.000 It feels itchy.

01:43:52.000 Like I want to cough, I want to clear my throat.

01:43:54.000 Yeah, it's almost got like a...

01:44:01.000 It's not hot like hot peppers, but it's got like that feeling like you're reacting to it almost like a hot pepper a little bit.

01:44:10.000 Like a whoo.

01:44:12.000 Yeah.

01:44:13.000 Yeah, like I want to cough when I have it.

01:44:15.000 Sorry.

01:44:16.000 So I'm told, at least by this guy in the mountain in Nepal, Don't drink any water.

01:44:22.000 Why?

01:44:22.000 He's like, you're just going to want to drink more and more water.

01:44:24.000 And look, I don't know if this is like a redneck, like mountain bro-speak, bro-science. 0.89

01:44:31.000 But he said, if you...

01:44:33.000 Sorry.

01:44:34.000 Yeah, I'm feeling it.

01:44:36.000 At least here in my throat, I'm feeling it.

01:44:37.000 How did your brother feel after it was all over?

01:44:40.000 So this guy said, if you drink water, you're just going to want to keep drinking more and more water and you'll never stop drinking water and it'll make you more sick.

01:44:46.000 I don't know.

01:44:47.000 So my brother felt hungover the next day.

01:44:50.000 He felt stiff.

01:44:51.000 He said that, so what happens is it can lower your blood pressure.

01:44:54.000 And I think that's what makes it difficult to move and to walk. 0.97

01:44:59.000 So your next question might be, why the fuck do people want to take this? 0.95

01:45:03.000 Right. 0.98

01:45:03.000 I don't know. 0.98

01:45:05.000 I couldn't figure it out.

01:45:06.000 And so I think maybe in the right dose, like too much of anything is bad.

01:45:10.000 A little bit of cough syrup, great.

01:45:12.000 The whole bottle, I did that one time.

01:45:13.000 Huge mistake.

01:45:14.000 You know when you watch the news and they're like, hey, kids are doing this and they shouldn't be. 1.00

01:45:18.000 And you're like, fuck, you can get high from cough syrup? 0.99

01:45:20.000 I was like, I'm going to do that. 1.00

01:45:21.000 And I did it and it was like the worst 24 hours of my life.

01:45:25.000 I think a little bit of honey in your tea at night might calm you down.

01:45:28.000 It might be soothing.

01:45:30.000 I'm not sure.

01:45:31.000 But to me, it's unclear why people are into it.

01:45:34.000 Folks in Korea seem to like it a lot.

01:45:35.000 At least that's what I learned in Nepal.

01:45:38.000 So, what's the recommended dose?

01:45:42.000 Yeah, that's the tricky part.

01:45:43.000 There's not one?

01:45:44.000 There's not one, and then there's no...

01:45:47.000 There's no way of figuring out how potent... 0.62

01:45:50.000 It's not like when you buy marijuana edibles, you can figure out how many milligrams are...

01:45:54.000 Can you really?

01:45:55.000 Well, at least it's a rough estimate, right?

01:45:57.000 Here it says, Mad Honey has been commonly used as an aphrodisiac, sexual stimulant, and alternative therapy for gastrointestinal disorders, peptic ulcer disease, dyspepsia, and gastritis, and for hypertension for a long time.

01:46:13.000 See what the recommended dose...

01:46:16.000 Of Mad Honey.

01:46:17.000 So they're selling a bunch of Mad Honey online, but is that real or is a lot of it phony baloney?

01:46:22.000 It's hard to say.

01:46:23.000 And, you know, that's the trouble I had even when I was there.

01:46:26.000 And luckily I had a fixer, a local producer who I could really trust.

01:46:31.000 And he said it's a real deal.

01:46:32.000 And I trust him.

01:46:33.000 As soon as I tried it, I felt something like, you know, I felt it in my throat.

01:46:36.000 I felt, did you feel your face get a little bit warm or flush?

01:46:38.000 No.

01:46:39.000 Maybe it didn't take enough.

01:46:40.000 Maybe.

01:46:41.000 Hopefully.

01:46:41.000 But hopefully.

01:46:43.000 I don't know if this is the place, but madhoney.net says one to three tablespoons.

01:46:46.000 Mmm.

01:46:47.000 But please read carefully.

01:46:49.000 Each of us is unique.

01:46:51.000 Our body chemistry, genetics, tolerance, lifestyle, and environment makes us all very different for every person.

01:46:57.000 Finding the appropriate madhoney amount is a personal, individual process, and as such, there is no one-size-fits-all dose.

01:47:05.000 It's like edibles.

01:47:06.000 Yeah, I like edibles.

01:47:08.000 Jamie can eat edibles all day long.

01:47:09.000 Yeah, I could probably have the whole jar.

01:47:10.000 Yeah, you should try it.

01:47:12.000 I don't think so.

01:47:12.000 I'm going to leave it here.

01:47:13.000 I have two jars.

01:47:14.000 I have one in my suitcase.

01:47:15.000 I don't know what I'm going to do with it.

01:47:17.000 Maybe I'll find this perfect ratio, and it'll be the perfect sleeping aid. 0.97

01:47:22.000 But I do think there's probably a lot of bullshit online, because how hard would it be to take this, mix it with 10 gallons of honey, and be like, yeah, it's mad honey. 0.97

01:47:29.000 Whatever, put a little red dye in there. 1.00

01:47:31.000 Yeah, our friend the beekeeper, Erica, what's her last name?

01:47:37.000 Sorry, no worries.

01:47:38.000 We had a local beekeeper on recently.

01:47:41.000 It was really fascinating, very interesting conversation.

01:47:44.000 And she was saying that a lot of honey that you buy, particularly honey from overseas, is not really honey.

01:47:48.000 It's like partly honey, but they mix it in with corn syrup and it's just to make it cheap.

01:47:53.000 Erica Thompson.

01:47:54.000 Just like maple syrup, I think most of the honey in the U.S. is...

01:47:57.000 That, like, corn syrup.

01:47:58.000 Most of it?

01:47:59.000 Really?

01:48:00.000 I think so. 0.99

01:48:00.000 But that's based on fucking nothing. 0.99

01:48:03.000 That's just my intuition. 0.99

01:48:04.000 She said you have to buy local honey.

01:48:05.000 Buy local honey from local beekeepers.

01:48:07.000 I totally agree.

01:48:08.000 That's the way to do it.

01:48:08.000 Yeah.

01:48:09.000 Yep.

01:48:10.000 So, that's it.

01:48:12.000 But you feel good now, right?

01:48:13.000 Yeah, I feel fine.

01:48:14.000 Is there a time where you would try more to see what it did?

01:48:17.000 Yeah.

01:48:17.000 Yeah, I'll try more if I get out of this, okay?

01:48:21.000 Oh, I think you'll be fine.

01:48:22.000 I think you just kind of taste it a little bit.

01:48:23.000 Yeah.

01:48:24.000 So, you know, I'll try a full tablespoon.

01:48:28.000 For me, when I had it in the mountain, I didn't hallucinate, but lights seemed a bit more vivid.

01:48:33.000 And, like, if I looked at lights, like the lights behind you and looked away, they were still kind of in my vision.

01:48:38.000 It's just fascinating that the locals are like, yeah, I did it 20 years ago.

01:48:41.000 I'm good.

01:48:42.000 Yeah.

01:48:43.000 Well, right.

01:48:44.000 And that's what made me even more apprehensive about trying it.

01:48:47.000 Yeah.

01:48:48.000 But there's a big market for it.

01:48:50.000 It seems to be a big market.

01:48:52.000 What's interesting about the market is you cannot increase supply.

01:48:56.000 Supply is supply.

01:48:57.000 So demand can go up, price can go up, but they can't really get more bees to make more honey.

01:49:02.000 Right, and it's probably something you can't really farm.

01:49:05.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:49:06.000 Seems like Turkey is another place where a lot comes from.

01:49:09.000 Correct.

01:49:09.000 Gathered by beekeepers, braving forests full of bears.

01:49:36.000 Yeah, or it can just make you completely fucking sick at a Kellyanne in St. Cloud. 0.99

01:49:40.000 So your brother felt, it seems like your brother had a good beginning of his trip.

01:49:43.000 Yeah, so he had a sweet spot for about 22 minutes.

01:49:46.000 Where he's like, this feels pretty good. 1.00

01:49:48.000 10 hours of fuck. 1.00

01:49:50.000 He was dry heaving, vomiting, he was sleeping on the floor next to a bucket. 1.00

01:49:54.000 He was in rough shape.

01:49:56.000 This is what the guy says for first time users.

01:49:58.000 The high lifts you up and throws you down.

01:50:00.000 Oh boy.

01:50:03.000 Yeah, so I think a little bit.

01:50:06.000 I think a little bit is the trick.

01:50:07.000 Maybe.

01:50:08.000 We'll find out. 0.99

01:50:09.000 Maybe a little bit sucks, too. 0.83

01:50:10.000 Maybe it's just one of those things like, what are people doing? 0.96

01:50:12.000 Yeah, why are they taking this?

01:50:13.000 People out there huffing paint, you know?

01:50:15.000 I would like to ask you something unrelated.

01:50:17.000 Please.

01:50:17.000 At the risk of sounding like I'm looking for validation, I'm curious what you find appealing about the show.

01:50:24.000 Well, I'm a huge fan of No Reservations and Anthony Bourdain and I love Andrew Zimmerman too.

01:50:31.000 I love looking at different cultures and how they eat and what they eat and why they eat it.

01:50:36.000 And I love different ethnic foods.

01:50:38.000 I love Indian food and I love Thai food.

01:50:42.000 I love a lot of Asian food and sharp flavors.

01:50:45.000 And I just love the fact that people that live in different parts of the world will find local ingredients and create their own very unique cuisine.

01:50:53.000 That's from their area.

01:51:11.000 Have you ever seen, have you been around when they butcher a camel?

01:51:14.000 We butchered a double humped camel in Mongolia.

01:51:20.000 Oh, go to that.

01:51:21.000 It's just made out of pure fat.

01:51:23.000 Yes, it's a giant fat mound.

01:51:25.000 I don't know. 0.98

01:51:26.000 Like a dummy.

01:51:27.000 I always thought it was like that's where they keep their water. 0.57

01:51:29.000 Right!

01:51:29.000 Like a big reservoir.

01:51:31.000 Yes.

01:51:32.000 Like a canteen.

01:51:33.000 But no, it's dense.

01:51:34.000 It's big and dense and thick.

01:51:36.000 Yeah, and so we tried that in Mongolia.

01:51:38.000 It's basically pure fat and people like it there.

01:51:41.000 It's rich and it has a lot of calories.

01:51:43.000 Yeah, and the meat...

01:51:45.000 Bourdain said the meat was delicious.

01:51:47.000 He ate the meat...

01:51:48.000 I forget what state, what country he was in when he did it.

01:51:52.000 I think he was in Egypt.

01:51:53.000 And they killed a camel and butchered it and they all sat around together and they laid it out on this giant tapestry.

01:52:04.000 And they all sat down and ate camel together.

01:52:07.000 Camel is delicious.

01:52:08.000 I think it might be even better than beef.

01:52:10.000 Really?

01:52:11.000 Yeah, it's really good and it has just a very clean, neutral taste.

01:52:15.000 I think sometimes, it depends on what kind of beef you're getting, sometimes beef could take a little bit of work to make it not so beefy, but camel just had a really clean...

01:52:23.000 It takes work to make beef not beefy?

01:52:25.000 Um, how do I explain this better?

01:52:28.000 So it doesn't have, because beef can have some strong flavor to it.

01:52:34.000 That's so fascinating. 0.99

01:52:35.000 All this shit you've eaten and you're like, beef. 1.00

01:52:37.000 Well, maybe I ate beef in some weird places. 1.00

01:52:40.000 But what I mean is, okay, you come here, you get brisket.

01:52:42.000 That's nowhere near the initial form of that beef.

01:52:45.000 Of course.

01:52:46.000 It's been treated and seasoned and it's been handled for hours and cooked for hours.

01:52:50.000 Right.

01:52:51.000 And what I mean is beef that is...

01:52:55.000 I think beef takes some skill to make delicious.

01:52:58.000 Like pork, I think pork is more easy to cook.

01:53:01.000 Around the world, I see people just throw a whole pig over fire.

01:53:03.000 It's got tons of fat.

01:53:05.000 It's got that thick skin to seal all the juices in. 1.00

01:53:08.000 It's hard to fuck up a pig. 1.00

01:53:10.000 But if you don't know what you're doing with beef, it's easier to fuck up. 1.00

01:53:15.000 That's an interesting perspective that I don't share. 0.98

01:53:18.000 I feel like beef is pretty easy to cook.

01:53:20.000 How do you cook it?

01:53:22.000 Well, mostly, you know, I'm on this carnivore diet for the entire month of January where I just eat meat.

01:53:27.000 All I've been eating all month is meat and eggs.

01:53:29.000 Yeah.

01:53:30.000 And one time I had sushi.

01:53:31.000 I cheated one day because I was going to dinner with my daughter and she likes sushi.

01:53:35.000 But for the most part, I think, I mean, I guess if you ate tough cuts, you know, then you have to stew it or things along those lines.

01:53:43.000 But domestic cattle is pretty easy to cook.

01:53:46.000 Well, how do you prepare it?

01:53:48.000 Most of the time, I use what's called the reverse sear method.

01:53:52.000 So, you know, I have a Traeger grill, you know, one of those pellet grills, and I'll set the Traeger to 265 degrees, which is fairly low.

01:54:00.000 I put a meat thermometer in it, and then I'll slowly get it up to about 110 degrees.

01:54:05.000 And then I use a cast iron skillet, and I get that cast iron skillet very hot, and I put beef tallow in the skillet, and then I sear it like a very, you know, very hot pan for about two minutes per side, depending on the thickness of the steak.

01:54:22.000 And then I'll let it rest for about 10 minutes, then I slice it, and then I'll put kosher salt on it.

01:54:29.000 So to me that doesn't sound simple at all.

01:54:31.000 And I think it's simple for you because you've done it many times and it's a routine you're accustomed to.

01:54:35.000 It's pretty simple.

01:54:36.000 I think if you gave the average person a steak, They would just like either throw it on a grill and maybe cook it too much or they'd throw it in a skillet and they wouldn't have the delicious sear that you have.

01:54:49.000 But it's simple if you just follow instructions.

01:54:52.000 It's like I do it so often.

01:54:54.000 It's just like take the meat probe, stick it in the steak.

01:54:57.000 I salt the steak usually generally with kosher salt or a little garlic salt as well.

01:55:03.000 And then I just wait.

01:55:05.000 Sure.

01:55:06.000 It's pretty simple.

01:55:07.000 Yeah.

01:55:08.000 Yeah.

01:55:09.000 I got it down to a science, though.

01:55:11.000 And I eat a lot of wild game, too, which is more difficult to cook.

01:55:15.000 Like, wild game, I'll slow it down even more and get it to, like, 225, and I'll put it on 225 degrees, and I'll get that up to about 100, a little lower temperature, and then I do the same method where I just sear it, cast iron, with beef tallow.

01:55:31.000 That sounds nice.

01:55:32.000 It's nice.

01:55:32.000 I'd like to try that.

01:55:33.000 It's very good.

01:55:34.000 You know, in Vietnam, I rarely...

01:55:37.000 Cook? 0.99

01:55:38.000 I'm so dumb. 0.99

01:55:39.000 I bought a $1,000 grill and I never use it because food is so incredibly cheap there. 0.98

01:55:43.000 You can go, you know, we could drive five minutes and get high quality Wagyu steak.

01:55:50.000 Steak better than the American Wagyu, which isn't real Wagyu.

01:55:53.000 It's not?

01:55:55.000 American Wagyu, so the real Japanese Wagyu, that DNA is never going to be in the USA. So they have some DNA that they've crossed with American breeds, and it's a version of Wagyu.

01:56:08.000 What the Japanese have done expertly over time is create a brand around Wagyu beef.

01:56:15.000 And I've been there. 0.89

01:56:15.000 I went to Kobe, Japan, and I got to see the farms, and they're not feeding them beer or playing classical music or any of that bullshit. 0.89

01:56:22.000 No.

01:56:22.000 It's all about DNA and food, too.

01:56:25.000 So they feed it good food.

01:56:27.000 But if they're feeding it good food, is it good food for the cow?

01:56:31.000 Because one of the things that always disturbed me about that is it seems like you're eating an obese person.

01:56:35.000 Right.

01:56:35.000 You're eating an animal that's basically been fed something that's slowly killing it.

01:56:40.000 It's food that's good for the result that they're going after.

01:56:42.000 Right.

01:56:43.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:56:43.000 It's...

01:56:44.000 Yeah, it's a good question, because it's like, is that marbling?

01:56:48.000 That's what makes the Wagyu so expensive and so renowned, is this intramuscular fat, this web of fat throughout the protein that's kind of evenly dispersed.

01:56:56.000 It's very rich, very delicious.

01:56:58.000 And you just need, you don't need a big steak to feel satisfied.

01:57:02.000 Right, so much fat content, so many calories.

01:57:04.000 Right, so it's hard to say if they had a completely different diet, would that fat not be there?

01:57:09.000 I wonder about that.

01:57:11.000 I think they're doing everything in their power to make it...

01:57:13.000 As valuable as possible.

01:57:15.000 But I don't think that...

01:57:18.000 Sorry, the honey. 0.51

01:57:20.000 I think I'm high now.

01:57:20.000 You alright?

01:57:21.000 No, I think I'm okay.

01:57:22.000 Did it getcha?

01:57:23.000 No.

01:57:23.000 I think that it's all about the DNA. And I think the real secret there is years and years of breeding.

01:57:34.000 I went to one of the shops, one of the auction houses where they grade.

01:57:38.000 It's amazing.

01:57:39.000 Japan's an incredible and unusual place.

01:57:42.000 So you go to an auction house in Japan and they have to judge all the meat.

01:57:46.000 And so they're not at this point, it's just it's a half of a cow.

01:57:50.000 And And they have kind of a computer system, like a big piece of hardware that they put up to the tissue.

01:57:57.000 It does some kind of a reading, and it weighs into what they graded.

01:58:01.000 So you're familiar, I'm sure, with A5. A5 is the top of the top, but there might be A, B, C, just all these different ratings that the beef can get at that point.

01:58:11.000 So I think they're doing whatever they can.

01:58:13.000 To get the highest rating possible, I don't think the beer does much.

01:58:17.000 Or the classical music.

01:58:18.000 Or the massages.

01:58:19.000 Do they sometimes use beer?

01:58:21.000 I don't think so.

01:58:22.000 I think all that stuff is really good for, like, Thrillist articles and marketing.

01:58:27.000 I mean, just like so much stuff in media these days.

01:58:29.000 It's just, how do we have a clever selling point?

01:58:32.000 Yeah, this machine right here.

01:58:34.000 Oh, whoa.

01:58:35.000 Oh, it's like a CAT scan or something.

01:58:37.000 This is wild.

01:58:39.000 That's wild.

01:58:41.000 Yeah, super cool.

01:58:43.000 Oh, so look how fat that is. 0.99

01:58:44.000 Oh my god, that's so fat. 0.86

01:58:46.000 There's so much fat in those animals.

01:58:48.000 That just seems to me, like, I'm so used to wild game, like wild elk, which is like a lot of what I eat.

01:58:55.000 Very lean, right?

01:58:56.000 Very lean and rich, dark red.

01:58:58.000 That looks pale and sickly.

01:59:01.000 The nutrient content of a steak from an elk is so superior.

01:59:07.000 Yeah, it's like a dessert steak.

01:59:08.000 It's not something you want to eat every day as part of your normal diet, but it's super delicious, especially in Kobe.

01:59:13.000 They have the chef right in front of you there.

01:59:16.000 They light it on fire.

01:59:18.000 It's a show.

01:59:19.000 It's an experience.

01:59:20.000 We go to Sushi by Scratch, which is a restaurant my friend Philip Franklin Lee opened up out here that he serves Kobe and they lightly sear it.

01:59:31.000 And then there's a whole process that he does and puts it on a piece of rice like sushi.

01:59:39.000 You see, watch them cut this Kobe and it's just, the whole thing's fat.

01:59:43.000 It's just like a little bit of meat, a little bit of fat, a little bit of meat, a little bit of fat.

01:59:47.000 Like the whole thing is like, it's a pink.

01:59:50.000 It's buttery.

01:59:50.000 Yeah, buttery.

01:59:51.000 It's just all, like it melts in your mouth when you put it in your mouth.

01:59:54.000 It coats the inside of your throat.

01:59:57.000 You feel it.

01:59:57.000 And it has so much flavor, and you just need a little bit.

02:00:00.000 Yeah.

02:00:01.000 If you eat too much, you're going to feel sick.

02:00:03.000 Yeah.

02:00:04.000 Because it's so fatty.

02:00:05.000 You'll feel very full, that's for sure.

02:00:06.000 Yeah.

02:00:07.000 Yeah.

02:00:07.000 But American Wagyu, so that's just, what is that?

02:00:10.000 It's an inbreed?

02:00:12.000 Or excuse me, a crossbreed? 0.69

02:00:14.000 My understanding is that it's a crossbreed between some, whatever DNA that they were okay...

02:00:21.000 I spoke to, gosh, where were we?

02:00:23.000 Alabama or somewhere in the south.

02:00:25.000 This guy had Wagyu, and that was his big selling point for his restaurant.

02:00:28.000 But when I saw it, I was like, it was nothing like that Wagyu.

02:00:32.000 And I was like, how is this Wagyu?

02:00:34.000 And he's like, well, it's American Wagyu.

02:00:37.000 And I just remember him saying...

02:00:39.000 In the USA, you're never going to find the same stuff you get in Japan, and they're never going to let those genetics leave that country. 0.94

02:00:45.000 Because how would that be in their favor to have someone here mass-producing that delicious, sought-after, coveted meat around the world?

02:00:55.000 Yeah, it makes sense.

02:00:55.000 They would want to covet that.

02:00:57.000 They've got the market pinned on it.

02:00:58.000 Have you gone to Italy and had Bistecca Florentine?

02:01:02.000 No, I've not been to Italy yet.

02:01:03.000 Really?

02:01:04.000 And I've not done Europe very much at all.

02:01:06.000 Just this year I went to France and Spain and Portugal and the Faroe Islands for the first time.

02:01:10.000 That's interesting.

02:01:11.000 I would think Italy is a place I would want if I was like reviewing food.

02:01:15.000 You know, my heart is in Asia.

02:01:17.000 I love Asian food so much.

02:01:18.000 I lived since age 24. I'm 38 now.

02:01:20.000 I lived in Korea eight years.

02:01:22.000 I moved to Vietnam about seven years ago.

02:01:26.000 So I've lived there a long time.

02:01:27.000 I love Asian food and I find...

02:01:30.000 Asian food to be the most interesting to film and to eat in general.

02:01:34.000 And then now we're trying to do a better job of getting around the world.

02:01:38.000 We plan to go to South America this year.

02:01:39.000 And like I said, we just started in Europe.

02:01:41.000 And I want to go to those places in the future and try to, you know, film what people haven't filmed a thousand times before.

02:01:49.000 I think that's the main challenge in Europe is, OK, pizza, like the classic foods.

02:01:55.000 How do we cover this place and not just film what everyone's filmed a million times before?

02:01:59.000 I understand.

02:02:00.000 Yeah, that makes sense.

02:02:01.000 Well, as far as exotic foods, I would imagine Asia would be the place to go.

02:02:04.000 Yeah.

02:02:05.000 So, Bistecca Florentine is apparently from a very old cow.

02:02:09.000 It's a cow, not a bull.

02:02:12.000 It's not a steer, like a lot of the steak that we get here in America.

02:02:15.000 And they have a very specific way of cooking a porterhouse steak, a very thick steak.

02:02:22.000 It's always over wood.

02:02:23.000 They always cook it over wood.

02:02:25.000 They like to cook it over different kinds of wood.

02:02:27.000 There's a bunch of people that have different theories, like olive wood is one of them they really like.

02:02:31.000 And they add leaves to it to make it smoky.

02:02:34.000 But I went down a rabbit hole of watching all these different people.

02:02:38.000 What's that guy's name?

02:02:39.000 Stanley Tucci?

02:02:39.000 That guy.

02:02:40.000 He goes to Italy.

02:02:41.000 Oh, right.

02:02:41.000 Yeah.

02:02:42.000 On Netflix, maybe?

02:02:43.000 It's made from a young steer.

02:02:45.000 Is it?

02:02:47.000 No, it's aged.

02:02:48.000 Oh, it's aged.

02:02:49.000 But didn't someone say that it was from an old beef cow?

02:02:51.000 Who was here recently that was talking to us about that?

02:02:54.000 I remember hearing about it recently.

02:02:56.000 Yeah, who was here that was talking to us about food recently?

02:03:05.000 The spinal cord into the band.

02:03:10.000 I talk to too many people.

02:03:14.000 My hard drives overflowed with information.

02:03:18.000 But this particular type of steak, they cook it fairly rare.

02:03:23.000 And they do it, like I said, it's always over embers.

02:03:28.000 And they have those grills, like an Argentine-style grill.

02:03:31.000 It raises up and lowers, so they just get the perfect amount of temperature.

02:03:35.000 On the steak and sear it, but it's a tradition.

02:03:39.000 So you tried it in Italy?

02:03:40.000 I have tried steak in Italy, and I've tried Bistecca Florentine in Italy, but I don't know if it's from the correct cow.

02:03:49.000 There was a place we went in Florence that was like a legendary steakhouse that was pretty amazing.

02:03:55.000 And the meat is different because it's all grass fed.

02:03:59.000 They do not have American corn fed fatty beef over there.

02:04:04.000 Their beef is essentially like the way a cow would normally be if that cow was just free ranging and grazing on grass.

02:04:14.000 But it's very tender and they cook it very rare.

02:04:18.000 It's kind of seared on the outside, but the inside is pretty red.

02:04:23.000 Yeah, I like that.

02:04:25.000 There's a lot of stuff you can eat raw that you might not expect.

02:04:28.000 You find out, really, when you go to Japan.

02:04:33.000 Obviously, steak tartare is everywhere now, but even when I was in Japan, they served raw horse.

02:04:39.000 Whoa.

02:04:39.000 Over rice.

02:04:40.000 So raw horse nigiri.

02:04:42.000 And when you have raw horse, is it just very thinly sliced?

02:04:47.000 Do they brine it?

02:04:48.000 Do they do anything to it?

02:04:49.000 Nothing.

02:04:50.000 Nothing.

02:04:50.000 And that's what they do with so much different food.

02:04:54.000 We did a whole raw food episode there.

02:04:57.000 I mean, you're familiar with all the typical sushi stuff, but we even had raw shark heart as well, which they have to wash it for hours because it has a really strong, potent ammonia smell to it.

02:05:09.000 But the horse was delicious, but it's small.

02:05:13.000 Again, everything's like a little bite size.

02:05:15.000 You just put it in your hand, give it a little bit of a dip in the soy sauce, and then delicious.

02:05:20.000 Bourdain said the most disgusting thing that he had ever eaten was fermented shark meat in Iceland.

02:05:27.000 So I've not had that yet.

02:05:28.000 And I'd love to go to Iceland.

02:05:30.000 There's something similar in Korea called fermented skate.

02:05:33.000 So you know the skate already.

02:05:36.000 And this thing, it would make you cry.

02:05:40.000 Just the ammonia smell.

02:05:42.000 It's like being like a sports stadium toilet that's not been cleaned for 10 years.

02:05:47.000 The intense smell would make your eyes water.

02:05:50.000 And even, I swear to God, it could make the skin of your mouth peel off if you kept it in your mouth too long.

02:05:55.000 It is so intense.

02:05:57.000 And so it's maybe something similar to that.

02:05:59.000 But this is like more old dude drinking food. 0.98

02:06:02.000 All the greatest exotic stuff from around the world is just old drunk guys eating it.

02:06:07.000 Interesting.

02:06:08.000 Why do you think that is?

02:06:09.000 Because they're just like more brave because they're drunk?

02:06:11.000 I think there's like bravado that goes with it.

02:06:15.000 I'm trying to think of some good examples.

02:06:17.000 So that's certainly one.

02:06:18.000 I think it's also wanting powerful flavors while you're drinking.

02:06:24.000 So, I mean, there's so many foods like this in Vietnam. 0.99

02:06:27.000 I mean, even testicles, an assortment of testicles. 0.99

02:06:30.000 I think I've had them all now. 0.99

02:06:31.000 But, like, chicken testicles. 0.95

02:06:33.000 It's like, yeah, guys will get a hot cast iron steaming plate, like, instead of fajitas, they've got chicken testicles on there, and they pair that with beer, and they just love that contrast. 0.98

02:06:43.000 Hmm.

02:06:44.000 And so this shark heart that you ate, what was that?

02:06:51.000 What was it like?

02:06:52.000 So eventually, after they got the ammonia out of it, it was good.

02:06:55.000 It was cold, dense.

02:06:58.000 I like heart meat in general because it has a peculiar type of density to the meat that you don't find in other meats where it's dense but not tough and chewy.

02:07:06.000 Yeah.

02:07:06.000 I like chicken heart, beef heart, pork heart.

02:07:09.000 I love all of it.

02:07:11.000 Yeah, I do too.

02:07:11.000 So it had a certain density to it that I enjoyed.

02:07:15.000 And, you know, everything tastes fresh.

02:07:18.000 After they got the ammonia out of it, it tastes fresh, but you just mix it with either ponzi sauce or soy sauce, and it's delicious.

02:07:26.000 And a lot of sake.

02:07:27.000 How did you wind up in Vietnam?

02:07:29.000 So, yes, I know.

02:07:31.000 I was telling my story earlier, and we got off track a little bit.

02:07:36.000 The main point was...

02:07:38.000 In Korea, I transitioned finally into filmmaking, and I was trying to make content for myself, and I started with the show, and I was making the international food.

02:07:49.000 I transitioned to trying to do something more like Andrew Zimmern.

02:07:52.000 And then I just really went all in on trying to make these shows about exotic and bizarre and interesting food.

02:07:59.000 And in the course of doing that, I got the opportunity to go to Vietnam to film for a few days.

02:08:04.000 I had a friend come with me to come film with me.

02:08:06.000 And when I went to Vietnam, I met a company there, a tour company, who was interested in hiring me.

02:08:12.000 And so, at this point in Korea, I'd finally started to make a decent living.

02:08:17.000 I'm not teaching now for years, and I'm a filmmaker, like a commercial filmmaker for corporations and stuff, doing music videos.

02:08:26.000 I did a music video for BTS, or actually for Rat Monster from BTS. I'm sure you're a big K-pop fan.

02:08:32.000 Huge!

02:08:32.000 If you're a young girl, you'd be like, oh my god.

02:08:35.000 This was before he was super huge.

02:08:37.000 And so I wanted to get out of that world.

02:08:39.000 I'd saved enough money, and I was just ready to see if I could go all in on making a YouTube channel actually work.

02:08:45.000 And so this was kind of, you know, moving to Korea in the first place was like my way of burning the boats. 0.94

02:08:50.000 I knew a lot of people who moved to Korea who got homesick or lonely or whatever, and they quit their teaching contract halfway through.

02:08:59.000 Through and then they just went home.

02:09:01.000 For me, when I went to Korea, I had $2,000 in my pocket, in my bank account.

02:09:06.000 I had nowhere to go back to. 0.99

02:09:08.000 I sold my car, my lease was up, my dad had some dilapidated piece of shit trailer house. 1.00

02:09:13.000 I wasn't going back to that. 0.98

02:09:14.000 And so when times got tough in Korea, it was like, you gotta make this work, you gotta be resourceful, you gotta find solutions.

02:09:22.000 After I figured out how to make money as a videographer, as a director in Korea, I was looking for the next challenge.

02:09:30.000 And it's a funny story because sometimes success can make people depressed.

02:09:35.000 Sometimes achieving something can make you feel depressed.

02:09:37.000 And so in Korea, I remember I got a $15,000 contract to shoot a bunch of content for a liquor company.

02:09:43.000 And my feeling was just...

02:09:45.000 Is this it?

02:09:46.000 Like, I cracked the code.

02:09:47.000 I know how to do this now.

02:09:49.000 I put all this effort into it.

02:09:52.000 That's a very bizarre reaction.

02:09:54.000 You think that that's common that people achieve success and get depressed?

02:09:58.000 I think there's a lot of people who focus on a goal so strongly and they think that achieving that goal is going to give them some sort of fulfillment and then they get there and they go, this is it?

02:10:08.000 You know lots of successful people.

02:10:11.000 You've never heard somebody express that?

02:10:13.000 I think when people are trying to become happy through their work and they think that there's an end point, well, finally they'll become a different person and be happy.

02:10:22.000 And then when they reach that end point, they realize they're the same person.

02:10:25.000 Yeah.

02:10:25.000 But I think when people are focused on doing good work, and that's the goal, and they become more successful at that, but if they can continue just focusing on doing good work, I think they can avoid that.

02:10:39.000 100% agree.

02:10:41.000 And at this point, I think I was more focused on the money because I was just scrapping for so long.

02:10:47.000 And that getting the money didn't make me feel, well, it's 15,000 bucks, but maybe a million bucks would probably feel better.

02:10:54.000 But, joking.

02:10:55.000 15,000 bucks didn't do it for me.

02:10:57.000 And I've had a journey, a transformation in the last few years of doing what you're saying.

02:11:03.000 It's not about getting to a particular destination.

02:11:07.000 With the channel, this is all still getting back to why I moved to Vietnam, but with the channel, when I got 100,000 subscribers, when I got a million subscribers, you can get a plaque on YouTube.

02:11:16.000 I didn't want the plaque.

02:11:18.000 I just wanted to keep plowing forward and moving ahead.

02:11:21.000 And that's how I see the mission for the channel now.

02:11:24.000 It's like, I'm really happy with where we're at.

02:11:26.000 I love my team.

02:11:28.000 Obviously, I'm the face of the team, but we have an incredible team of 20 people.

02:11:31.000 I think some of the world-class people, I think some of the best in the world at documentary filmmaking.

02:11:36.000 And I want to just keep doing, keep iterating doing what we're doing and trying to get incrementally better video by video.

02:11:46.000 In Korea, I went to Vietnam.

02:11:50.000 I met a company there who said, and so at this point, I have some money in my bank account, and I have a YouTube channel that's not making any money, and I've made like 20 videos.

02:11:59.000 And they said, hey, if you move here, they were a tour company, a travel company.

02:12:03.000 They said, if you come here, if you make videos for us once a week, we will give you a thousand bucks a month, we'll give you a place to live, and we'll supply you with one of our camera guys to shoot your stuff.

02:12:14.000 And I said, alright, I'm all in.

02:12:15.000 So this is like round two, burning the boats, I'm moving to Vietnam, and I'm going there for the purpose of making this channel actually work and come to fruition.

02:12:23.000 Vietnam is an affordable place.

02:12:24.000 I'm next to Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, a close plane ride to the Philippines.

02:12:29.000 Southeast Asia is rich with really interesting food and culture, and overall it's inexpensive enough that I can afford to shoot for a long time without needing to make money.

02:12:38.000 And so that's what brought me to Vietnam initially.

02:12:42.000 And from there, it was just a slog.

02:12:44.000 It was just week after week of trying to figure out how can we tell better stories?

02:12:49.000 How can we make the videos better and more appealing? 0.51

02:12:51.000 I think I was too corny and silly and irreverent in the beginning.

02:12:55.000 And eventually, we got some traction.

02:12:58.000 More people started watching the videos.

02:13:00.000 And eventually, we started making money so I could hire staff.

02:13:04.000 But that was probably about two years, starting in Korea and then going into Vietnam, that I was able to actually start making money and build out a team there.

02:13:14.000 And what's incredible now is most of my team is Vietnamese.

02:13:17.000 If you told me years ago that I would have a team of Vietnamese editors who speak English as a second language and edit videos that are on par with or I think better than much of the shit that you see on network television now, I would not have believed you. 0.97

02:13:33.000 Somehow that's what's come to fruition.

02:13:34.000 And so we have an incredible team there now and we've been able to just focus on raising our standards every month, every year to get to this point and then hopefully we get somewhere beyond this in the future.

02:13:50.000 And so, in moving there, what was that transition like?

02:13:53.000 Is it difficult?

02:13:54.000 Did you have to learn Vietnamese?

02:13:56.000 Do you know how to speak it?

02:13:58.000 A little bit.

02:13:59.000 So my wife is Vietnamese, and what's amazing about speaking Vietnamese in Vietnam is you will be ridiculed immediately.

02:14:07.000 I speak much better Korean than Vietnamese.

02:14:09.000 Vietnamese is really difficult.

02:14:11.000 Say something to me in Vietnamese.

02:14:14.000 Say, uh, it's nice to be on this show.

02:14:17.000 Oh, I can't say that.

02:14:18.000 No?

02:14:19.000 What can I say?

02:14:20.000 I'm very hungry.

02:14:21.000 Oh, uh...

02:14:24.000 So I would say...

02:14:25.000 So this is a whole thing.

02:14:26.000 I have to think about it because you're older than me.

02:14:28.000 So I have to change my pronoun.

02:14:30.000 Not like how people change pronouns.

02:14:32.000 It's a different type of pronoun change.

02:14:33.000 So I need to say...

02:14:34.000 I can't say on.

02:14:36.000 If I was talking to my wife, I'm used to saying on.

02:14:38.000 It means like older guy.

02:14:39.000 So I'm speaking to you.

02:14:40.000 I need to say younger person.

02:14:41.000 I need to say em.

02:14:42.000 And then what was the sentence again?

02:14:45.000 I'm very hungry.

02:14:46.000 Yeah.

02:14:46.000 So emdoi or emdoi.

02:14:48.000 Emdoi.

02:14:49.000 Why?

02:14:49.000 Emdoi.

02:14:51.000 Even that pronunciation is probably wrong, but I'm saying me, a younger person, hungry, very.

02:14:59.000 And what is the younger person part?

02:15:00.000 Where are you saying that?

02:15:01.000 M. M. Yeah.

02:15:03.000 So if you were talking to like a 20-year-old, how would you say it?

02:15:08.000 How would I refer to them?

02:15:09.000 You wouldn't say M-doi.

02:15:11.000 Then I would be on.

02:15:13.000 On.

02:15:14.000 Like on top of something.

02:15:16.000 So on.

02:15:17.000 Yeah, like on top.

02:15:18.000 So yes, if I was speaking to someone younger, I would say on, like I'm an older man.

02:15:22.000 So on is going to do this, which is wild because they do phone calls with people and they've not seen each other.

02:15:27.000 They just hear each other's voice and at some point they figured out like, okay, I'm going to be the older one.

02:15:31.000 You're going to be the younger one.

02:15:33.000 Oh.

02:15:33.000 Beyond that, they have the tones.

02:15:37.000 And so you could say like ga or ga or ga or ga.

02:15:41.000 And that's four different words.

02:15:44.000 And it's the same, like, one consonant, one vowel, but since it's different tones, it's different words. 0.79

02:15:50.000 And so that's what's challenging, is I will go into a coffee shop where they sell one damn thing on the menu, and I'll say...

02:15:55.000 And they'll be like... 0.67

02:16:00.000 So can I have one milk coffee, please? 0.99

02:16:06.000 And they will look at me like, what the fuck's this guy saying? 0.99

02:16:10.000 I have no idea. 0.98

02:16:11.000 And I've created a term.

02:16:12.000 I've lived in Asia so long, I've created a term called language anticipation anxiety. 0.97

02:16:17.000 Where they probably think I'm speaking English, and they're like, I don't know these fucking English words at all. 0.94

02:16:21.000 What's he saying? 0.98

02:16:22.000 And you're trying to speak Vietnamese.

02:16:23.000 I'm trying to speak their language, and they're like, I don't get it. 0.96

02:16:26.000 And I'm just like, coffee, just one coffee, like the picture, like the only thing on the menu.

02:16:30.000 So it's so challenging.

02:16:32.000 I'm going to put more time into it in the future.

02:16:34.000 I have no excuse.

02:16:35.000 But, well, I travel a lot.

02:16:37.000 But that sounds insanely difficult, just the four different ways of saying the same word.

02:16:42.000 Yeah, and they have about maybe five or six different tones.

02:16:47.000 Wow.

02:16:48.000 Yeah.

02:16:50.000 Can you read it?

02:16:51.000 Yes.

02:16:51.000 Well, so I think possibly because of the French occupation there or the French colonized Vietnam for a long period of time.

02:17:01.000 And so it's actually like the Roman alphabet, the same alphabet we use, but then they have little symbols on top of the words.

02:17:08.000 So even the word, you know, have you had the Vietnamese beef noodle soup?

02:17:12.000 Fo?

02:17:13.000 Right.

02:17:14.000 Oh, that's pretty good.

02:17:14.000 Yeah.

02:17:15.000 Because most people, you know, it's like there's three levels.

02:17:17.000 Level one is you say foe, and then you get ridiculed.

02:17:21.000 Level two is foe, but the actual way to say it is foe.

02:17:25.000 Fuh? 0.98

02:17:25.000 Like that? 0.98

02:17:26.000 Yeah, that's good.

02:17:26.000 Like you dip and come back up.

02:17:28.000 I thought it was fuh.

02:17:29.000 Yeah, it's fuh.

02:17:30.000 Fuh? 0.98

02:17:31.000 So almost like question, like what?

02:17:33.000 Yeah, right.

02:17:34.000 So intrinsically in English, we want to change our intonation to create questions.

02:17:40.000 So like in Korean, I can say, you have that?

02:17:44.000 Oh, you have that.

02:17:45.000 But if you change your intonation in Vietnamese, you've just changed the meaning of what you're saying.

02:17:49.000 Oh.

02:17:50.000 That's why it's so difficult.

02:17:52.000 Oh my god.

02:17:53.000 Is there a Rosetta Stone for Vietnamese? 1.00

02:17:56.000 Yeah, you know, they have a lot of them for like French and Spanish, but it's harder to find stuff like that.

02:18:03.000 I used to have a tutor.

02:18:03.000 I need to get back into it.

02:18:05.000 And, you know, I want to be able to speak to my parents-in-law more effectively, so I do need to study more in the future.

02:18:12.000 But it is, I mean, maybe Chinese is similarly difficult, and maybe that click language.

02:18:19.000 That seems like a tough one.

02:18:21.000 But they're both real tough.

02:18:23.000 The click language, to me, is the most fascinating.

02:18:25.000 Oh, yeah.

02:18:26.000 And they taught me some words when I was there, but not every word has a click.

02:18:30.000 Like, just Koko is friend.

02:18:32.000 So they call you Koko.

02:18:33.000 Did they teach you any click words?

02:18:36.000 Some of their names had clicks, and some of them can do the click so well, I just couldn't pull it out.

02:18:41.000 Yeah, they were loud.

02:18:42.000 Yeah, like, it's percussive.

02:18:44.000 Yeah, even that's pretty good.

02:18:46.000 But it's hard to emulate.

02:18:48.000 It's hard to copy that.

02:18:50.000 Do you have a place that you really look forward to going, that you really prefer going to?

02:18:57.000 Oh, so this is interesting.

02:18:58.000 Just kind of going back to mission.

02:19:01.000 Me saying like, oh, I hit that...

02:19:04.000 Benchmark, and then I got kind of depressed.

02:19:06.000 And recently, I had this revelation this last year, which was, my wife and I, it's going to be a long, meandering answer, but my wife and I left Vietnam because of the pandemic.

02:19:19.000 Finally, the virus got in.

02:19:21.000 They were locking things down.

02:19:23.000 They were closing down restaurants.

02:19:24.000 You couldn't order food.

02:19:25.000 The military for some time was helping to deliver food.

02:19:28.000 And so we left and we couldn't come back for 10 months.

02:19:32.000 She could have.

02:19:32.000 I couldn't.

02:19:33.000 The borders were closed for 10 months.

02:19:35.000 And so I had a long period of time being just in hotels, traveling.

02:19:39.000 I think we did 12 different countries in a row.

02:19:42.000 Sounds awesome.

02:19:42.000 It was exhausting.

02:19:43.000 And so by the time we got back, we did this noodle tour in Vietnam.

02:19:47.000 And the idea was like, do something easy, go to Hanoi, go throughout the country, go down to the Mekong Delta in the south, shoot noodles.

02:19:54.000 I love Vietnamese food more than anything.

02:19:56.000 I love noodles.

02:19:58.000 The series wasn't challenging in any way. 0.77

02:20:01.000 And by the end of each shooting day, I felt, I'm fucking tired anyways.

02:20:05.000 Why am I shooting this and not something more satisfying? 0.88

02:20:09.000 Something where I could feel more accomplished at the end.

02:20:11.000 And so after that, I plotted out every country I wanted to go to for the next year.

02:20:18.000 In the past, we'd always focused on a country maybe within the next month or two and little by little and thought about, okay, maybe we could go here next or go here next.

02:20:27.000 So now I have the whole next year plotted out.

02:20:29.000 And so for me, my mission is to go to places that people have heard of but don't know anything about.

02:20:35.000 That's one mission.

02:20:36.000 So in the past, we've gone to places like Madagascar.

02:20:39.000 People know Madagascar from the movie, but they don't know anything about the country.

02:20:43.000 And so we went there, and they had really interesting, unique food.

02:20:48.000 But my other mission is just to go to places that are difficult to go to.

02:20:52.000 I mean, recently we went to northeast India.

02:20:55.000 It's completely different from mainland India. 0.82

02:20:57.000 Everything you know about Indian people and cuisine, it's different in the northeast.

02:21:01.000 So there's a place called Nagaland.

02:21:03.000 Nagaland doesn't even want to be part of India. 0.99

02:21:05.000 These people eat anything, anything that walks.

02:21:09.000 They have the joke, like if it has four legs and it's not a table, it's okay to eat.

02:21:13.000 And they have no qualms about that.

02:21:14.000 They eat beef?

02:21:16.000 Beef?

02:21:16.000 Oh, yes.

02:21:17.000 Oh, yeah.

02:21:18.000 They eat beef, they eat rats, they eat guinea pigs, they eat dogs, they eat cats.

02:21:22.000 Our guide there said that his friend, the day previous, had backed over a cat, threw it in a box, took it home, cooked it.

02:21:32.000 Fascinating.

02:21:33.000 Not an easy place to go to.

02:21:35.000 And that's maybe another thing that turned me off of going to some places in Europe.

02:21:41.000 It's like I can't say that I love the challenge.

02:21:44.000 I'm not like this Mr. Positivity.

02:21:46.000 I don't go there and I'm like, this is so hard.

02:21:48.000 Isn't this great?

02:21:49.000 But I love being able to get it done and to accomplish something and then to look back on, hey, we got through that really difficult situation.

02:21:58.000 This last year, you wrote me when I was in Egypt for the first time.

02:22:05.000 This was the worst production we'd ever had.

02:22:08.000 The government took away our cameras.

02:22:11.000 Do you hear about this at all?

02:22:12.000 No.

02:22:13.000 Oh, Egypt.

02:22:14.000 Egypt is... 1.00

02:22:15.000 This place is so fucked. 1.00

02:22:16.000 So, we flew to Egypt. 1.00

02:22:18.000 In the beginning of the year, you know, last...

02:22:20.000 The year before, it was the pandemic year, we'd done all these...

02:22:23.000 We went to Bahamas and Jamaica and Mexico, and it's fine.

02:22:25.000 It's interesting.

02:22:26.000 And I was like, I want to do something.

02:22:27.000 I want to go back to our roots.

02:22:28.000 I want to shoot something that's difficult. 0.91

02:22:30.000 I want to get out of this pandemic mindset, this safety mindset. 1.00

02:22:33.000 Let's go shoot Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Egypt. 1.00

02:22:36.000 So, we did Zimbabwe first.

02:22:38.000 Awesome.

02:22:39.000 Lovely people.

02:22:40.000 Then we landed in Egypt.

02:22:42.000 As soon as we landed there, The airport is a mess.

02:22:46.000 So I have a drone.

02:22:47.000 I have a drone because we're flying with the drone.

02:22:49.000 I didn't leave from home.

02:22:50.000 I know you can't have a drone there already, but it was like a two-hour process for them to go between 12 different people and have me give my drone to somebody who would put it in a locker.

02:22:59.000 Fine.

02:23:00.000 It's like 1 a.m.

02:23:01.000 We're getting to our hotel.

02:23:03.000 Finally, we're going to get some rest, and then we have the next day to do a little scouting before we start shooting.

02:23:07.000 Now, you know you're not in the best place if your hotel has as much security as an airport.

02:23:14.000 So we pull up at this hotel and they are like, you need to scan the bags.

02:23:17.000 I'm like, nah, no thanks.

02:23:18.000 Don't worry about that.

02:23:19.000 They're like, yeah, we're scanning all the bags.

02:23:21.000 In big, giant scanners outside the hotel.

02:23:24.000 So every time you walk into this hotel, it's like you're going through airport security.

02:23:29.000 Is that all hotels in Egypt?

02:23:31.000 Not.

02:23:31.000 It's the expensive ones.

02:23:33.000 And so we were in a decent hotel.

02:23:35.000 Are you in Cairo?

02:23:37.000 Yeah, in Cairo.

02:23:38.000 And so they scan our bag.

02:23:40.000 They see a bunch of wires inside because we have all of our chargers.

02:23:43.000 And they open the bag. 1.00

02:23:44.000 And then this is where the shit hit the fan. 0.99

02:23:46.000 So they open it up. 0.99

02:23:47.000 The first thing they see is four walkie-talkies.

02:23:50.000 So it turns out walkie-talkies are illegal to have in Egypt.

02:23:54.000 For me, I couldn't understand this.

02:23:56.000 It's like, but I have WhatsApp.

02:23:57.000 I have the internet.

02:23:58.000 I have Messenger.

02:23:59.000 What's the big deal?

02:24:00.000 Well, the big deal is there's been two revolutions happening.

02:24:03.000 In the last 11 years, the government can turn off the internet.

02:24:07.000 They can't turn off your walkie-talkies.

02:24:09.000 And so they're scared of journalists, and they're scared of more uprisings in the future.

02:24:15.000 And so the police, the government, everyone there is very, very controlling.

02:24:19.000 And so for the next six hours, from about 2 a.m.

02:24:23.000 to 10 a.m., my team had to sit outside the hotel in the cold, and we were questioned nonstop about why are you here?

02:24:30.000 Why do you have this gear?

02:24:32.000 All these questions.

02:24:33.000 Meanwhile, we said, we're going to have a permit.

02:24:35.000 We're getting it tomorrow.

02:24:37.000 Can you just show them your YouTube channel and your bandana?

02:24:39.000 Oh, my God.

02:24:40.000 The bandana would have sold it.

02:24:43.000 I mean, like, look, it's me.

02:24:44.000 This guy, oh, my God. 0.60

02:24:45.000 And the night manager of this hotel, I hope to one day find him and choke him out.

02:24:50.000 This guy had no business questioning us.

02:24:52.000 And he said, well, you all four travel together, right?

02:24:55.000 So it's two camera guys and my producer, Liz, and myself.

02:24:59.000 And he's saying, well, show me all your passports in the country that you've been to and all the dates need to line up in every country.

02:25:05.000 And it's like, even if we all met today for the first time, what we're doing still isn't illegal.

02:25:10.000 And we showed them the channel, everything.

02:25:11.000 I said, I'm here to review food.

02:25:12.000 I'm not doing anything else.

02:25:14.000 We'll have our permit tomorrow.

02:25:15.000 In the end, they took all of our cameras.

02:25:17.000 They took some of our lights.

02:25:19.000 They took some hard drives.

02:25:21.000 And the police kept it.

02:25:23.000 And the police said, hey, don't worry about this.

02:25:25.000 It's not a big deal.

02:25:26.000 Show us a permit tomorrow.

02:25:28.000 We'll give it back.

02:25:29.000 It's like, alright.

02:25:30.000 Frustrating.

02:25:31.000 Exhausting.

02:25:32.000 Go to sleep.

02:25:34.000 The next day, we got the permit.

02:25:36.000 I go to the airport.

02:25:37.000 We spent about four hours, five hours there.

02:25:40.000 They won't give it back.

02:25:43.000 What are they saying?

02:25:44.000 Egypt is a country of intense bureaucracy.

02:25:48.000 Layers and layers of people.

02:25:50.000 And people who don't want to stick their neck out for anybody else.

02:25:53.000 Who don't want to make decisions.

02:25:55.000 And at least that was my experience there.

02:25:57.000 And so...

02:25:59.000 It took maybe two or three hours just to get access to customs.

02:26:02.000 When we finally got, I mean, we had to go, it was just, it seems all so pointless.

02:26:06.000 It's like government jobs created so people have something to do.

02:26:09.000 We spent an hour just to make a name badge that said we had permission to be in customs just for, you know, that one day.

02:26:16.000 A plastic badge with my face on it.

02:26:18.000 Cool.

02:26:19.000 Super efficient.

02:26:19.000 So then we get in there and they said, no, you can take this gear when you leave the country.

02:26:24.000 That's when you can have it back, when you leave the country. 0.97

02:26:27.000 Like, are you fucking kidding me? 0.97

02:26:28.000 They have all my stuff. 0.99

02:26:29.000 And so at this point, we go, you know, we have one option left, which is that we can shoot on this.

02:26:36.000 We have the iPhone.

02:26:36.000 I can go buy another iPhone and we still had some microphones that they didn't take and lights.

02:26:43.000 It's amazing.

02:26:44.000 They took my lights, right?

02:26:45.000 I just went to the store and bought more lights.

02:26:47.000 I don't know what the point of taking my lights was.

02:26:50.000 So, it seems like everything's going to be okay.

02:26:52.000 In my head, I'm still stuck on this idea of, like, I still want to make a positive series about Egypt.

02:26:57.000 The people overall were friendly.

02:26:59.000 Not the officials, but the people.

02:27:00.000 The food's really interesting and delicious.

02:27:02.000 The next day, halfway through shooting day one, the police stop us.

02:27:07.000 It's always some guy in plain clothes.

02:27:09.000 He whips out a wallet with a dirty ID on it.

02:27:13.000 Hey, police, come over here. 0.70

02:27:14.000 Come bring the whole band.

02:27:15.000 Bring everyone over here. 0.99

02:27:17.000 What the fuck is going on? 0.99

02:27:18.000 We have our permit at this point. 0.99

02:27:19.000 We have a permit.

02:27:20.000 It has my picture on it.

02:27:22.000 We have all the credentials that we're legally required to have.

02:27:25.000 We go to the police station.

02:27:27.000 In the main time, I have a dummy phone.

02:27:29.000 I transferred some of the footage onto an extra phone so that I don't...

02:27:33.000 So if he asks me to delete something, I'll delete the dummy footage.

02:27:36.000 And exactly that happens.

02:27:38.000 The police officer says, sorry, you have to delete all this stuff.

02:27:40.000 What does he want you to delete?

02:27:41.000 Yeah.

02:27:42.000 Great question.

02:27:43.000 Food.

02:27:44.000 So we went to a restaurant.

02:27:45.000 We went to a restaurant.

02:27:46.000 We shot food.

02:27:47.000 And on the street, too, we shot some bread that they were making on the streets.

02:27:52.000 And that's it.

02:27:53.000 And he just was like, these pictures aren't beautiful.

02:27:55.000 This isn't good.

02:27:56.000 Suddenly this guy is like a documentary critic.

02:27:59.000 And he's just saying, not okay.

02:28:01.000 So he's acting as like a spokesperson for the country, like for PR? Yeah.

02:28:05.000 Like he doesn't think that your footage is good enough?

02:28:07.000 It's confusing to understand the motives sometimes, especially because we had a permit that said we had permission to shoot on the sidewalks and to do exactly what we were doing. 0.97

02:28:17.000 And it's not like, you know, a lot of people watch my video talking about this and they're like, well, idiot, you can't just show up. 0.95

02:28:22.000 Yeah, okay, we've been doing this for a while. 1.00

02:28:23.000 We didn't just fucking show up. 0.97

02:28:25.000 We had a plan. 0.99

02:28:26.000 We had a fixer there.

02:28:27.000 We had permits.

02:28:28.000 We went through all this tedious process before even landing.

02:28:31.000 And so with the permit, It's funny because I asked our fixer.

02:28:36.000 I said, we have the permit.

02:28:40.000 What's the permit doing?

02:28:42.000 Obviously, he's telling me to delete the footage.

02:28:44.000 What's the purpose of the permit?

02:28:45.000 And he just goes, well, we're not in jail.

02:28:50.000 We're not in jail. 1.00

02:28:52.000 So it was a complete fucking debacle. 0.99

02:28:54.000 So you could have been in jail for filming bad footage, what they considered not beautiful footage of food. 0.99

02:29:00.000 And if you look it up, there are people who they accused of being journalists who are in jail even now in Egypt.

02:29:08.000 And maybe they're journalists, maybe they were tourists.

02:29:12.000 It's hard to say.

02:29:14.000 What's confusing about Egypt is that it's not like I went to the Congo.

02:29:18.000 This is a country that brands themselves as a tourist destination, right?

02:29:23.000 We've got the pyramids.

02:29:24.000 We have take a ride on the camels.

02:29:26.000 There's all these incredible things you can do over it.

02:29:28.000 I want to go there.

02:29:30.000 Really?

02:29:31.000 I mean, make sure you have a good guide or someone with you.

02:29:34.000 25 journalists detained.

02:29:36.000 Egypt's third worst jailer of media workers globally.

02:29:39.000 Whoa.

02:29:41.000 What's interesting is so many YouTubers had similar experiences to me and they didn't talk about it.

02:29:46.000 And I'm so happy that police officer talked to us on that day and made me delete that footage because it just flipped it for me.

02:29:52.000 It's like I got punched in the face 10 times and now I'm ready to finally fight back after trying to be peaceful.

02:29:58.000 And now I'm like, I'm just going to show everybody the reality of what it's like to shoot here.

02:30:03.000 And when we posted the videos, of course there's a little bit of concern like, am I going to get hate?

02:30:08.000 Is there going to be backlash?

02:30:09.000 We got thousands and thousands of comments of people talking about their awful experiences that they had while in Egypt.

02:30:15.000 Just regular tourists.

02:30:16.000 Regular tourists.

02:30:17.000 Regular people.

02:30:18.000 People who maybe they had a GoPro or...

02:30:21.000 They're really anti-camera.

02:30:23.000 They're really just afraid of...

02:30:24.000 But they're okay with iPhones.

02:30:26.000 That's what's confusing, right?

02:30:27.000 It's like the world's changing so much.

02:30:29.000 It's like you could say, okay, no microphones, no cameras.

02:30:31.000 It's like, whoa, what do you think this is right here?

02:30:33.000 Right.

02:30:34.000 The iPhone is just that, and our series looks incredible.

02:30:36.000 You showed some shots already from each of them before.

02:30:39.000 Show some of the shots, Jamie, please.

02:30:41.000 And it's all shot on iPhone.

02:30:42.000 It looks incredible, and nobody could necessarily tell the difference.

02:30:47.000 So, yeah, I mean, isn't it amazing how good cell phones are? 0.95

02:30:51.000 I mean, this is fucking great. 0.91

02:30:52.000 This really looks like high-end photography. 0.98

02:30:55.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:30:56.000 I mean, it's fucking amazing. 0.92

02:30:57.000 And credit to my team for, you know, shooting it well and for working with what they had and for coloring it well, too. 0.92

02:31:03.000 Yeah, they did an amazing job.

02:31:05.000 What is it like to see the pyramids?

02:31:07.000 That's where I want to go.

02:31:08.000 Oh, so the pyramids were awesome.

02:31:10.000 And I wish I got to spend more time there.

02:31:11.000 How many days were you there?

02:31:13.000 I wish I could spend more time at the pyramids.

02:31:15.000 We just spend about three or four days.

02:31:16.000 I do not wish I spent more time in Egypt.

02:31:19.000 And actually, our trip was much elongated because we all got COVID. But I wish we spent maybe two hours at the pyramids.

02:31:25.000 I could spend the whole day.

02:31:26.000 What's awesome about it is the time we went was like still, it was right at the beginning of 2022. So everyone's freaked out still about traveling.

02:31:34.000 I mean, there must have been just like 100 people just in this huge area where there's usually thousands.

02:31:40.000 And so it's remarkable.

02:31:41.000 It's like awe-inspiring.

02:31:42.000 You look up and these structures are gigantic.

02:31:44.000 And you can go up into the big pyramid.

02:31:47.000 You can walk up inside to the main tomb.

02:31:50.000 I think there's nothing in there now, but...

02:31:52.000 Just being able to see it for yourself and imagining all the work that went into making that place.

02:31:59.000 The guides are very quick to dispel the notions of aliens or even slavery.

02:32:05.000 They're like, oh, this wasn't slavery.

02:32:08.000 It was a fascinating place.

02:32:11.000 But it doesn't sound like you recommend it.

02:32:13.000 So one good thing that came out of all this, and I can't say whether or not my team is responsible for this consequences or this result, but a few months after we posted the videos about Egypt, the laws changed in Egypt, and now tourists and locals are not required to have a permit to shoot on the sidewalk.

02:32:33.000 And there's an article now How one U.S. street food blogger exposed CC's authoritarian rules.

02:32:40.000 Is that you?

02:32:41.000 I don't know if that's me.

02:32:42.000 That'd be sweet if it was me.

02:32:43.000 Oh, I haven't seen that one yet.

02:32:44.000 Congratulations.

02:32:45.000 Oh, yeah.

02:32:46.000 Look at you.

02:32:47.000 Egypt food tour.

02:32:48.000 Worst place to shoot in Africa. 0.79

02:32:50.000 Look at you. 1.00

02:32:51.000 Worst country!

02:32:52.000 I know.

02:32:52.000 See, this is what...

02:32:53.000 So you changed the rules. 0.97

02:32:55.000 Bourdain didn't have to do all these fucking thumbnails with all the titles with the exclamation points. 0.97

02:33:01.000 You have to. 0.97

02:33:02.000 That's part of the game.

02:33:03.000 Are you sure?

02:33:07.000 It seems to help.

02:33:08.000 I mean, we've done over 500 videos.

02:33:10.000 It seems to help when...

02:33:12.000 We don't do that, but some people do that with our stuff.

02:33:16.000 Like, I've seen clips of our...

02:33:17.000 Because our stuff is...

02:33:18.000 We only have 15-minute clips from each episode that goes on YouTube.

02:33:22.000 Right.

02:33:22.000 Everything, the full episode, its entirety, goes on Spotify.

02:33:25.000 But if you go onto YouTube, there's a bunch of people that have, like, cut our clips from Spotify, and they put these, like, really...

02:33:32.000 You know, salacious, clickbait headlines. 0.94

02:33:35.000 And I'm like, that sucks. 0.76

02:33:37.000 Because that's not how we do it. 0.94

02:33:38.000 Well, so I agree.

02:33:39.000 You never want to misrepresent your content.

02:33:41.000 Yeah.

02:33:41.000 And you don't want to mislead.

02:33:43.000 You want to create intrigue or create curiosity.

02:33:47.000 So people want to click and want to learn more.

02:33:48.000 Worst country will get you clicking.

02:33:50.000 I've got to say, it's probably the worst country to shoot in Africa.

02:33:52.000 How many views did that video get?

02:33:54.000 I don't think that's misleading.

02:33:55.000 I mean, the whole series in all probably got around 15 or 20 million. 0.73

02:33:58.000 That's pretty fucking amazing.

02:34:00.000 Isn't it kind of amazing? 0.98

02:34:02.000 What's amazing is that it's our best performing series ever.

02:34:05.000 And I was like, team, we're going back.

02:34:07.000 Just kidding, we're not.

02:34:08.000 We're not going back.

02:34:09.000 We probably shouldn't go back now.

02:34:10.000 Oh my god, could you imagine?

02:34:11.000 Now they probably would arrest you.

02:34:13.000 They'd be like, hey, look at my passport.

02:34:14.000 Yeah, right this way.

02:34:15.000 We have a special room for you. 1.00

02:34:17.000 Hole in the ground for you, filled with rats. 1.00

02:34:18.000 Hole in the ground. 0.99

02:34:19.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:34:21.000 Yeah, fuck that. 0.99

02:34:22.000 But do you recommend it for tourists? 1.00

02:34:25.000 No.

02:34:26.000 Really?

02:34:27.000 No, I can't.

02:34:27.000 It's tough.

02:34:28.000 It's like we were shooting, and people are like, yeah, but you're shooting.

02:34:32.000 We were shooting with iPhones.

02:34:34.000 And look, hopefully...

02:34:36.000 Culture takes time to change.

02:34:38.000 And they've changed the law, and that's, I think, a very positive step in the right direction.

02:34:44.000 That had to be devastating to their tourism industry.

02:34:48.000 A very popular guy like you makes a video like that, and it gets millions and millions of views. 0.98

02:34:54.000 And it says it's the worst country to film, and you detail all the bullshit that you had to go through. 0.98

02:35:00.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:35:01.000 Maybe you help change things.

02:35:03.000 Of course, we would hope for that.

02:35:05.000 And I hope they're moving in the right direction.

02:35:08.000 I mean, who am I? All the people that I know that have gone over there have just gone over there to study the ancient structures.

02:35:15.000 And they've had nothing but amazing stories.

02:35:17.000 Is that right?

02:35:18.000 Yeah.

02:35:18.000 You know, I would challenge you to, in the future, just say, how was it working with the officials there?

02:35:23.000 No, they definitely, like, Graham Hancock has nightmares.

02:35:26.000 I think, isn't Graham Hancock banned from Egypt now?

02:35:29.000 I believe he's banned.

02:35:30.000 He literally can't get into the country now.

02:35:32.000 And Graham Hancock has been one of the, I mean, if anybody has made people excited to go to Egypt on a grand scale, I would say Graham Hancock is one of the very top of that list.

02:35:44.000 He had the show about pyramids and structures around the world on Netflix.

02:35:47.000 Is that right?

02:35:48.000 Yes.

02:35:48.000 Okay, yeah, I watched it.

02:35:49.000 Ancient catastrophe.

02:35:50.000 Yeah, that's fantastic.

02:35:52.000 Yeah.

02:35:52.000 Excuse me.

02:35:52.000 Ancient apocalypse.

02:35:54.000 He made me want to go see a bunch of that stuff.

02:35:56.000 We're going to Peru.

02:35:57.000 We're going to Mexico soon.

02:35:58.000 I'm like, oh, I want to see this stuff, too.

02:36:01.000 There is many redeeming qualities in Egypt.

02:36:06.000 Of course, the history and the food was incredible.

02:36:08.000 I love the food there.

02:36:09.000 It's different from food I've had in any other country.

02:36:12.000 I hope they can just figure out the tourism part.

02:36:15.000 And my gripe is like, it's not like I just go to every country and say like, oh, this needs to be changed.

02:36:20.000 This needs to...

02:36:21.000 This is the first and only time I've ever made a video kind of criticizing a country in this way.

02:36:25.000 And it felt like it needed to be done.

02:36:28.000 And I felt...

02:36:30.000 I felt like I'd made the right decision when I saw the hundreds or thousands of comments of people sharing their similarly bad stories.

02:36:36.000 Well, that was probably also very good to change that law because I'm sure they read those comments as well.

02:36:41.000 Yes. 0.99

02:36:41.000 They're like, hey, we've got a fucking problem. 0.99

02:36:43.000 Right. 1.00

02:36:44.000 Hopefully.

02:36:45.000 Well, with an economy that must depend on a large part for tourism.

02:36:50.000 Yeah, I think it's at least 9-10%.

02:36:51.000 Oh, wow.

02:36:53.000 Which is substantial.

02:36:54.000 Yeah.

02:36:55.000 Well, I mean, they have some of the most amazing structures human beings have ever created.

02:36:59.000 Yeah.

02:37:00.000 I have many friends that have gone there and said it changed the way they look at the world.

02:37:03.000 It changed the way they look at humans.

02:37:05.000 Really?

02:37:06.000 Yeah, because you just, like, you think of people who knows how many thousands of years ago.

02:37:10.000 It was 4,500 plus years ago who created these things.

02:37:13.000 Like, what was life like back then?

02:37:15.000 What did they do?

02:37:15.000 How did they do this?

02:37:17.000 How did they get these stones from hundreds of miles away and perfectly cut them and make these insane structures?

02:37:23.000 Mm-hmm.

02:37:24.000 What would you want to get out of a trip?

02:37:25.000 Just want to see it.

02:37:27.000 I mean, I was baffled by Chichen Itza. 0.99

02:37:30.000 I went to see the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, and just that alone, you're like, holy shit. 0.97

02:37:36.000 Like, what were you guys doing? 0.99

02:37:38.000 Like, how did you do this?

02:37:39.000 Like, what was the culture like back then?

02:37:42.000 And what happened?

02:37:43.000 And now what they think happened is European diseases that just wiped out the Mayans because we know that it also wiped out 90% of all North American people when they came over here.

02:37:54.000 Just smallpox.

02:37:57.000 It's a great reason to go.

02:37:58.000 It gives you perspective on humanity and it's just this – I think – is it Graham Hancock?

02:38:05.000 Yes.

02:38:05.000 I think one of the big takeaways from his message is that there's a certain arrogance to modern man and no one could be smarter than we are right now.

02:38:15.000 Right.

02:38:15.000 And it's just simply not true.

02:38:16.000 Well, you know the whole theory behind what he's promoting?

02:38:20.000 It's actually based on this thing called the Younger Dryas Impact Theory.

02:38:25.000 And this has been substantiated by science that somewhere around 11,000 plus years ago, Earth was hit by comet debris.

02:38:33.000 And this is substantiated by levels of iridium that is very common in space but very rare on Earth.

02:38:39.000 A sheet of it across the world at that certain time period when they do core samples of the Earth and nanodiamonds that also indicate impacts that are all throughout Europe.

02:38:51.000 The immediate...

02:38:54.000 The melting of the polar ice caps, or the ice caps rather, on North America and all the ensuing destruction that came from that, the extinction of 65% of all megafauna almost instantaneously.

02:39:08.000 It's really, really fascinating stuff.

02:39:10.000 But what he believes is that there was a massive natural catastrophe due to Earth getting hit.

02:39:16.000 And this is all backed up by legitimate researchers and scientists and a man named Randall Carlson who's absolutely fantastic.

02:39:23.000 Really fascinating, in-depth understanding of this impact theory.

02:39:27.000 And that human beings were essentially knocked back into the Stone Age.

02:39:31.000 Right.

02:39:32.000 So does he think we would have gotten to the Industrial Age that much sooner if that wouldn't have happened?

02:39:36.000 They don't know what they were doing back then.

02:39:39.000 That's what's interesting, because everything was wiped out to the point where all we have left is these immense stone structures, which we have no understanding of the construction methods at all to this day.

02:39:50.000 There's some half-assed theories of how they did it, and no one really knows.

02:39:54.000 There's 2,300,000 stones.

02:39:57.000 Yeah.

02:40:07.000 Yeah.

02:40:13.000 Everyone's gonna have an answer for you, and it's interesting.

02:40:16.000 They don't know though.

02:40:16.000 The thing is like I've heard all the answers.

02:40:18.000 Oh, sure.

02:40:19.000 I've heard everything.

02:40:20.000 I've been reading about this for years and years and years.

02:40:23.000 They really don't know.

02:40:24.000 And that's what's amazing about it.

02:40:26.000 What's amazing is you have evidence that human beings who lived in Egypt thousands and thousands of years ago did things that we really can't do today.

02:40:37.000 We really don't have the equipment.

02:40:39.000 We really don't have the understanding.

02:40:41.000 I mean, if you're off by a little bit with each individual stone, by the time you get to the top, it doesn't meet up right.

02:40:47.000 And they just nailed it.

02:40:48.000 They nailed it to the point where they have these immense stones.

02:40:50.000 You can't even get a razor blade in between them.

02:40:52.000 I mean, incredible construction.

02:40:54.000 Back when people had just come out of hunter and gathering.

02:40:58.000 I mean, it was like 5,000-plus years ago they were doing this.

02:41:02.000 Like, how?

02:41:03.000 How long did it take?

02:41:04.000 Who was in charge?

02:41:06.000 How did you figure it out?

02:41:07.000 They don't know.

02:41:09.000 They really don't know.

02:41:10.000 And then due to the burning of the Library of Alexandria, there's like so much missing information in history.

02:41:15.000 Yeah, that's what...

02:41:17.000 Maybe it'll seem unrelated, but this idea like, oh, if we ever meet aliens or see alien technology, will we be able to figure it out or understand it?

02:41:25.000 It's like there's so much we don't understand about what's already here right now.

02:41:28.000 Yeah.

02:41:28.000 I think human beings used to have a very, very advanced civilization.

02:41:33.000 I think we, and when I say we...

02:41:36.000 Humans that were living in Africa 5,000 plus years ago, 10,000 years ago, whatever it was, they had an incredibly advanced civilization.

02:41:44.000 And that they, you know, if you think of how long modern anatomical human beings existed, they used to think we went back like 50,000 years and then they pushed that to like 150 and now some believe it's 300,000, even more.

02:42:00.000 That's people that look essentially like you and I. If you gave those people time, if you look at like, go back from the Romans, go back 2000 years ago to today, what an insane amount of progress has taken place in 2000 years.

02:42:18.000 In 2000 years, they've gone from slaughtering people with swords and bows and arrows and catapults To making incredible videos like you made with a fucking iPhone. 0.98

02:42:27.000 A little tiny thing that slides into your pocket easily. 0.99

02:42:30.000 You could travel around the world in metal tubes that fly through the air.

02:42:35.000 You can send video from your phone all the way to United States within seconds.

02:42:40.000 I mean, it's amazing just in 2,000 years.

02:42:43.000 Right.

02:42:43.000 So if these anatomical human beings existed 200,000 years ago and they had enough time and enough agriculture and enough food and resources to develop incredibly complex Really advanced technology that's dissimilar from the advanced technology that we have today.

02:43:04.000 We like to think of advanced technology as only involving internal combustion engines and silicon chips, but what if they develop something on a totally different path?

02:43:14.000 Just developed it to this level that we can't possibly comprehend.

02:43:19.000 What if they had 10, 20,000 years to do that?

02:43:23.000 That's likely what we're looking at when we look at the structures in Egypt.

02:43:27.000 We're likely looking at what at one point in time – look, we know all human beings came from Africa.

02:43:33.000 That's the birthplace of humanity itself.

02:43:36.000 And then the most complex structures that have ever been created also are in Africa. 1.00

02:43:42.000 So if you would imagine that those people had been given enough time, whether it's 20,000, 30,000 years, to evolve these technologies, and then, boom, hit by giant rocks from the sky and millions of people are killed.

02:43:58.000 The people that are left live a barbaric existence for thousands of years and then relearn civilization and starts from scratch.

02:44:07.000 That's what Graham Hackonk is talking about.

02:44:10.000 That's what Randall Carlson is talking about.

02:44:12.000 That's what John Anthony West was talking about while he was alive, who has an amazing series called Magical Egypt.

02:44:18.000 It's a multi-part DVD series that details the incredible complexities of the structures and how they related to the cosmos.

02:44:28.000 Magic stuff.

02:44:29.000 Just amazing, amazing stuff.

02:44:31.000 That's what I think probably happened.

02:44:33.000 Obviously, I'm not an expert, but when I'm talking to these people, that makes the most sense when you look at the immense amount of data that points to this Younger Dryas impact theory.

02:44:43.000 And it's not like some loony theory.

02:44:45.000 It's a theory that's embraced by cosmologists, and they know exactly the meteor storm, the comet storm that we pass through every November, and I believe it's every June as well.

02:44:56.000 And that, you know, you could see the meteor showers in the sky.

02:45:01.000 Well, occasionally, you go through a bad spot, and you run into some serious chunks of debris, and those slam into the earth, whether it's every 10,000 years, every 20,000 years, and it just fucks everything up and knocks whatever progress we've enacted,

02:45:21.000 knocks it back to the Stone Age.

02:45:22.000 Right. 0.99

02:45:23.000 And whatever people live are fucking barbarians for the longest time. 0.99

02:45:27.000 It's certainly not my area of expertise, but it seems plausible to me. 0.99

02:45:31.000 Totally plausible.

02:45:32.000 I know for some people it's controversial.

02:45:35.000 I'm not sure how controversial the idea is.

02:45:37.000 I've not looked into it enough.

02:45:39.000 For me, seeing enough cultures and being to enough countries around the world, I can see that there are so many different ways of living.

02:45:50.000 And sadly...

02:45:54.000 Cultures as they exist now, traditions and customs are slowly being eroded, and soon we're just going to have this kind of Eurocentric, like, metropolis cities look like this, they should have a grid pattern, streets look like this, stoplights look like this, and then that's just going to be replicated throughout the world,

02:46:10.000 and that's really fucking boring. 0.80

02:46:12.000 And that's tragic. 0.97

02:46:13.000 And I want to go to all the unique places I can before that happens...

02:46:18.000 Globally, which it will.

02:46:20.000 I think one of the things that you're doing that's really amazing is you're giving people, without them having to travel, you're giving people a window into these cultures.

02:46:27.000 That's what I always said about Bourdain and all these different travel shows where, you know, most people don't have the time or the resources to go to all these different places, but you're going there and you're getting involved and you're hunting with these hunter-gatherers and you're eating this food in these strange places. 0.98

02:46:42.000 You're eating rats and all kinds of wild shit. 0.99

02:46:46.000 Yeah, rats are pretty good. 1.00

02:46:46.000 Is it? 1.00

02:46:47.000 You ever tried rat?

02:46:48.000 No.

02:46:48.000 That's kind of sweet.

02:46:49.000 That's a funny question, have I ever tried rat?

02:46:51.000 What do you think?

02:46:52.000 I don't know.

02:46:53.000 So where have you traveled to?

02:46:54.000 I know you went to Thailand.

02:46:55.000 Where else have you been?

02:46:56.000 I've been to Italy many times.

02:47:00.000 I love Mexico.

02:47:01.000 I love going to Mexico.

02:47:03.000 I've been to Dublin.

02:47:06.000 I've been to Northern Ireland.

02:47:09.000 I've been to England a bunch of times.

02:47:11.000 I've been to Japan.

02:47:14.000 I've been to Costa Rica.

02:47:17.000 I've been to a bunch of island countries and stuff like that on vacation.

02:47:21.000 Sure.

02:47:22.000 More like vacation, less like traveling.

02:47:25.000 I have a family.

02:47:26.000 So when I travel, I have to make it fun for everybody.

02:47:28.000 Totally.

02:47:29.000 Because if it was me, I'd be like, we're going on safari. 1.00

02:47:31.000 And they'd be like, fuck you, dad. 1.00

02:47:32.000 Right. 1.00

02:47:33.000 Although safari, who doesn't like looking at big animals?

02:47:36.000 Well, they get separated from their friends, and they want to do stuff, and I'm missing out on parties, and you know how it is.

02:47:43.000 Fair enough.

02:47:43.000 Yeah, understood.

02:47:45.000 So I have to make it exciting for them, too.

02:47:48.000 But from the time my kids were little, I've been taking them to other countries.

02:47:52.000 So what compelled you to go to Thailand?

02:47:54.000 Because that's far from here.

02:47:55.000 Well, I train Muay Thai.

02:47:57.000 I've always loved the art of Muay Thai, martial art.

02:48:00.000 And I just think it's an amazing place.

02:48:03.000 It's interesting.

02:48:04.000 And I have friends that have gone over there to train and they always come back with these amazing stories of how friendly the people are and about how beautiful the country is.

02:48:13.000 And, you know, we went over there and hung out with elephants and did the whole deal.

02:48:17.000 We rode elephants and it was amazing.

02:48:18.000 It was amazing.

02:48:19.000 It was beautiful.

02:48:20.000 And the people are so nice.

02:48:21.000 They're so friendly.

02:48:22.000 Yeah, it's a culture that...

02:48:24.000 I think some cultures are better at hospitality than others just naturally.

02:48:29.000 And they're very soft-spoken, sweet, hospitable people.

02:48:33.000 Yes, they really are.

02:48:34.000 Which is really wild because they've developed one of the best fighting styles ever.

02:48:38.000 Yeah.

02:48:38.000 It's really incredible when you think about, like, the nicest, friendliest people have the most brutal, striking style.

02:48:45.000 Yeah, I went, last time I was there, maybe six months ago, I went and watched some of the matches.

02:48:52.000 This is funny, as I was watching this, I was like, oh, I'll ask Joe Rogan this one day.

02:48:56.000 When they fight, I forgot how many rounds they do, maybe three or five, and it feels like they don't go for it until the last couple rounds.

02:49:04.000 Yes.

02:49:05.000 What's that about?

02:49:05.000 Well, the first rounds, they get the bets in.

02:49:08.000 So the first round is like a gambling round.

02:49:11.000 And they like to warm up.

02:49:14.000 And so they move.

02:49:15.000 First of all, they do the waikuru, which is the dance that they do before they start.

02:49:20.000 You know, if you've ever seen it live, you know they play the music and they go through this.

02:49:24.000 It's like a combination of stretching and then loosening up.

02:49:28.000 And they have a bunch of different things that they do.

02:49:30.000 And part of that is a warm up exercise.

02:49:34.000 And part of it is just a tradition to sort of honor what they're about to do.

02:49:38.000 And then they start the first round and Muay Thai, a lot of it is about gambling.

02:49:44.000 So there's people in the audience and they're making bets and placing bets and that all takes place during the first round.

02:49:51.000 And then the second round and third round determine How the fight goes, then oftentimes when a fighter's ahead, they'll coast in the last round.

02:49:59.000 They don't fight hard at all in the last round because they might have to fight again in a week.

02:50:04.000 They fight so much.

02:50:06.000 Like some of the elite Muay Thai fighters, like Sanchai, who is probably, if not the greatest, one of the greatest of all time.

02:50:14.000 He's got hundreds of fights.

02:50:16.000 I mean hundreds and hundreds of fights.

02:50:18.000 He fights constantly.

02:50:20.000 And to this day, and I think he's 37?

02:50:23.000 Like, go to San Chai Muay Thai record.

02:50:27.000 Let's find out his Muay Thai record.

02:50:29.000 Because he's a fascinating guy, too, because he has a very different style than a lot of the Muay Thai fighters, where he's not like a plodding, stiff guy.

02:50:38.000 He bounces around, he moves very fast, and he's known for his footwork and his clever maneuvers.

02:50:46.000 I mean, these guys oftentimes start fighting when they're six, seven years old, and they amass this incredible record of 315 wins, 41 losses, 5 draws.

02:51:00.000 And by the way, the guy seems fine.

02:51:04.000 That's remarkable. 0.99

02:51:05.000 You look at all those fucking wins, too. 0.99

02:51:08.000 He's got an occasional loss every now and then, which is just... 0.98

02:51:11.000 I mean, most people think that he's the greatest of all time.

02:51:15.000 Go do a Sanchai Muay Thai highlight reel.

02:51:19.000 It's very different than a lot of the ways a lot of these other guys fight.

02:51:23.000 He almost has his own completely unique style.

02:51:27.000 That people are trying to emulate now, but he seems to have developed it on his own. 0.97

02:51:33.000 He's a very playful, silly guy. 0.85

02:51:35.000 That's San Chai here in the pink shorts. 1.00

02:51:38.000 He's like a very playful guy.

02:51:40.000 He's always smiling and laughing.

02:51:42.000 Even inside the fights he does it, but his Instagram is hilarious.

02:51:46.000 His Instagram, sometimes he puts on little comedy sketches.

02:51:49.000 He's dancing.

02:51:50.000 Sometimes he's dancing with a girl and his wife comes in and he has to run away.

02:51:53.000 It's really funny, but the guy is just...

02:51:58.000 Look at that.

02:51:58.000 That specific type of movement that he has is very unique to him.

02:52:03.000 He does traditional Muay Thai stuff, but the way he moves is very unique to him.

02:52:10.000 He's very fast.

02:52:13.000 So the other thing I witnessed while I was there, so the first was, yeah, them kind of mailing it in for the first few rounds.

02:52:19.000 And then if they got smoked at the end of the round, they would get up and act like, yeah, I just rocked that round.

02:52:25.000 Like, I crushed that.

02:52:26.000 Is that something you've seen, too?

02:52:27.000 Is that, like, about judges or...

02:52:29.000 Or is that something you've not seen before?

02:52:31.000 You think they're trying to game the judges?

02:52:33.000 You mean like pretend they did well?

02:52:35.000 Like, didn't hurt.

02:52:35.000 Didn't hurt.

02:52:36.000 I'm good.

02:52:36.000 Yeah, probably.

02:52:38.000 Fighters do that all the time. 0.81

02:52:39.000 They get hit, they shake their head, and they smile.

02:52:41.000 But generally, that's because you got hit hard.

02:52:44.000 You don't really do that if you barely got touched.

02:52:46.000 Right.

02:52:47.000 Yeah.

02:52:47.000 Okay.

02:52:48.000 Yeah, I didn't know that about them.

02:52:50.000 It's gambling.

02:52:51.000 The gambling.

02:52:51.000 Yeah, gambling's a big part of it.

02:52:53.000 It's a huge part of it.

02:52:54.000 Yeah.

02:52:55.000 And the fighters all assume the name of the camp.

02:52:58.000 You know, like whatever camp they're from, you know, whichever group, Muay Thai group, they assume that name.

02:53:07.000 And so when you were there, did you go see a lot of Muay Thai?

02:53:10.000 I didn't see much because I was with my family, but I actually had a trainer work with my daughter, which was kind of cool.

02:53:17.000 And, you know, they trained her.

02:53:18.000 So we went to a gym and did that.

02:53:20.000 It was fun, but we were there for the full family experience.

02:53:23.000 Right.

02:53:24.000 We did all kinds of other stuff there.

02:53:25.000 Sure.

02:53:26.000 We actually did this experience where you go and harvest rice with them.

02:53:31.000 So they take you and they take you through all the traditional steps that they used to do to get rice.

02:53:37.000 And you realize what a labor-intensive thing it is to just get rice.

02:53:42.000 Because you had to beat the husk off of each individual grain.

02:53:45.000 It's insane.

02:53:46.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:53:46.000 And we did the traditional methods.

02:53:49.000 We did a lot of cool stuff, but the food there was amazing.

02:53:52.000 Really incredible.

02:53:53.000 We actually took cooking lessons there while we were there too, which was fun.

02:53:57.000 Thai food is fantastic.

02:53:59.000 And I think when you do something like going to Thailand, you realize how different Asian food is.

02:54:06.000 In Asia versus here.

02:54:08.000 At least to me.

02:54:09.000 I mean, I tried Vietnamese food for the first time in Vietnam, and I had it for years, and then I came here and tried it, and I was like, what is this?

02:54:17.000 It's completely different.

02:54:18.000 Well, that's the same with Italian food.

02:54:20.000 Oh yeah, I believe it.

02:54:21.000 Yeah, if you get Italian food in Italy, it's so different than Italian food on the East Coast, which is Italian immigrant food.

02:54:28.000 And I guess the other – the funny thing that always strikes me as funny here is they'll have like Asian restaurant.

02:54:33.000 It's like Indian, Japanese, and Thai food.

02:54:36.000 It's like those aren't even similar whatsoever.

02:54:39.000 How do you get all that together?

02:54:40.000 But you'll see – and I'm like, well, I do like Japanese and Thai.

02:54:42.000 I'll do it.

02:54:42.000 I'll give it a shot.

02:54:43.000 But it's interesting how just Asia is just this massive, incredibly diverse place and – In the USA, it just gets boiled down to just Asia, Asian, the Asian community.

02:54:57.000 Right, right, which includes India, which most people don't even think of as Asia.

02:55:00.000 Yeah, right, that's South Asia.

02:55:05.000 But being there, you just realize it's so different actually being there than whatever representation you get here.

02:55:11.000 Generally, of course, you can still find really good Asian food, especially in California and in New York, too.

02:55:16.000 Yeah, wherever Asian immigrants come and actually make authentic food.

02:55:20.000 So not so much in Minnesota.

02:55:22.000 We try.

02:55:22.000 Oh, my God.

02:55:23.000 When we were here during the pandemic, when we kind of escaped Vietnam during the bad times over there, we went to a sushi place in Minneapolis.

02:55:31.000 It was such a mistake.

02:55:32.000 They had some kind of like peanut butter and jelly sushi.

02:55:35.000 And I was like, of course you would.

02:55:36.000 Oh, no.

02:55:37.000 Yeah, it wasn't good.

02:55:39.000 Yeah, I'm just kidding.

02:55:40.000 I didn't order it.

02:55:41.000 I'm sure it wasn't good anyway.

02:55:43.000 Well, listen, man, thank you very much for coming here, and thanks for your show.

02:55:47.000 It's a really fun show, and continued success, and best of luck to you.

02:55:51.000 Yeah, thank you.

02:55:52.000 I hope to collect some more stories before I see you next time.

02:55:54.000 Yeah, for sure.

02:55:55.000 Let's do it again.

02:55:55.000 And tell people the name of your YouTube channel and your social media so they can find you.

02:55:59.000 Sure.

02:55:59.000 Best Ever Food Review Show.

02:56:00.000 We're on YouTube, and you can look up to see any of our social media.

02:56:03.000 Best Ever Food Review Show. 0.90

02:56:05.000 It's a silly name.

02:56:06.000 9.54 million subscribers. 0.90

02:56:10.000 Congratulations, man.

02:56:10.000 That's amazing.

02:56:11.000 Thanks a lot.

02:56:11.000 Really appreciate it.

02:56:12.000 All right.

02:56:12.000 My pleasure.

02:56:13.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - January 13, 2023

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

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