The MeatEater Podcast

Kathy Raven, whose brand new book is out yesterday.

So the book's called Fox and I. It is.

I am their first book.

I haven't kept track because that's not my thing, but it's been a lot of countries. Russia picked it up and Korea and Italy and Germany and waiting for Japan.

Even I'm really happy that even the English folks decided to translate it.

I think I read that in Helen McDonald's new book Vesper Flights.

F'd up old deer stands is the name of the book.

It was gonna be a fine art coffee table book for meat eater.

It's going to be a calendar

It's the greatest collection ever of fucked up old deer stands in existence.

there's a book by a writer Duncan Gilchrist Duncan Gilchrist was an outdoor writer who would publish his own books and he accidentally wrote like Hemingway very very simple clean lessons sentences he was a bush pilot, he was a guy in Alaska he used to hunt New Zealand hunted all over the place very like DIY Alpine hunting and he kind of put all of his thoughts and approaches and tips and tricks into a book called wait for it, All About Bears which is all about bears and then he wrote Hunt High phenomenal books and I'm always yapping about them

we have an audio we have an audio original book coming out with Random House and in this cause in this project we hear a very elaborate story

this very podcast told that story ultimately that experience inspired this immersive audio book with Random House by immersive we mean I hesitate to say this because you might get the wrong idea there's a soundscape there's like supporting sound and there's music and stuff but there's supporting sound it kind of like it's immersive I don't think everybody's shocked at how good it turned out I didn't know it was gonna be this good yeah it was when we started because we found the most craziest people with the craziest stories it's six hours long includes sixteen tales of harrowing close calls in the wild told by the people themselves a game warden almost gunned down by an oozy wielding sociopathic elk poacher a spear fisherman trapped in an underwater cave, a pheasant hunter shot by a dog a peacock bass fisherman who inadvertently gets tangled up with a drug cartel a fishing guide who saves the life of a boy whose father had written him off for dead that being none other than Brody Henderson Brody Henderson walking around all the time sitting on this very traumatic story about a boy he saved we got Seth in there too Seth's in there I get to him in a minute a fishing guide who saves the life of a boy whose father had written him off for dead and a wild land firefighter who's forced to reckon with the idea of his last day on earth spoiler alert we're sitting among giants flip flop flasher what's the spoiler alert? it wasn't his last day on earth since he's sitting here I said forced to reckon with you trying to sell the book or not dude? no I'd be like that's how Seth died long time ago to go on along the way I explore the unique aspects of human psychology and physiology that emerged during these brushes with death and seek to answer the question of why close calls in the wild have a way of haunting us for the rest of our lives I've always been a big fan of paradoxical undressing which happens to you during hypothermia or like haunt it's an unnerving idea but in this one in the hypothermia story in this book of a caribou guide we explore terminal burrowing it's kind of a nasty little description of it some people when they're suffering hypothermia get the idea that they're gonna dig a hole and climb into the hole to warm up often digging their own grave it's good it's very good we were going through and just doing final listens and I was driving down the road listening to edits with my wife and there were four times including during Brody's story where she did one of these noises she went um I can't quite do it be like uh huh no do one like a shocked noise Corinne no more than that way more it was like it was like Tim Allen whatever that is I should get her to come down she did a noise like conveyed this message oh my god oh my god do that again basically just like my wife like an oh my god without the words it's good this is one of the proudest things we don't celebrate a lot of stuff around here but I'm setting up a dinner for the bazillion people involved in that project it's one of the great I think it's one of the coolest things we've ever made I think it will very much appeal to people it's not just for hunters and fishermen no dude there's a skier there's a skier in it who rode an avalanche for 1800 feet mountaineer mountaineering game warden all kinds my wife really likes the show Hoarders are you familiar with that? I know there's a show called Hoarders yeah it's like where these people have an extreme hoarding problem. Are you going to bring this back to this audio? no it's coming there. I'm looking forward to this I do know about this show I haven't seen any episodes. If you're not familiar these folks fill their house with just trash, literal trash from floor to ceiling and then they bring in these experts to help them clean up their house. Experts? Yeah there's hoarding experts to help them clean up their house there's a dude with a dumpster? there's a dude with a dumpster and then there's also the expert that helps them psychologically I can't watch this show. There's too much dread and too much anxiety with that show and there's just no payoff I need to walk out of the room if my wife is watching Hoarders you get a little bit of that with these interviews. It approaches that line of giving you some anxiety and some dread but it's still wildly entertaining there's still a payoff it's one of the most fun things to listen to oh there's also a story not all hunting and fishing. There's a story about going to the old hot springs just a nice day having a warm dip what could possibly go wrong having a warm dip at the hot spring it's good it's coming out but you can just get it now. Here's the thing it's an audio book so you don't need to wait for it to come in the mail but it's good for us if we just go and preorder the damn thing you can go to audible or amazon yeah you can go to amazon.com and go to audible I think audible is owned by amazon and find it. It's called Meat Eaters Campfire Stories Close Calls it's all close calls should we point out that we're hoping there's going to be a volume 2 if everything goes well and then that'll give everybody that's listening a chance to let us know about their close calls they'll get casted cast into it

I got a really cool personal book that I've been making and it's going to be coming out this November. All the pre-sales out now. ...it's called Field Notes for Food Adventure.

it's Bradley Oney's Field Notes. Field Notes for Food Adventure. ...from New Jersey to Maine, from seaweed foraging and shellfish foraging and then recipes that go with it. We do some fermentation, we do ramping. There's a chapter called Dear Dad where we go making venison sausage and stuff like that and recipes that go with it. Some good old saltwater fishing, maple syrup production.

The book I'm reading right now, I keep talking about, I want to do a full report on it. Alaska's Wolfman.

When he was doing wolf work, he would go into an area where there was like a caribou herd that was getting too much predation on it. And any patch of high ground around, he would shoot a caribou, lace his carcass with strychnine, and then use also little balls of fat that he would also poison and scatter them all around. And that was his methodology.

Very effective. Very effective. Very effective.

In this book, he goes to this prospector's house and the prospector's house is the, he talks about it's the kind of the grossest, grimy-est place he's ever spent the night. But the prospector keeps his plates screwed to the tabletop.

I read the book.

It's a great book, isn't it?

You read that book?

He has dogs and the guy wonders like, why are the plates screwed to the table permanently? And it's because he just eats and then the dogs can get up and lick the plates clean and the plate doesn't move around so they can get it extra clean.

As you know, and it may also be found in Meteor's Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival, ulceroglandular forms of the disease can be contracted by humans following interaction with small rodents and lagomorphs.

Now we talk about tularemia extensively in the Wilderness Skills book. Yep. All the different ways you can get it.

There was a guy, I don't know if we mentioned this, did we mention this in the book? A guy that hit a desiccated rabbit, a dead desiccated rabbit with a lawnmower and contracted an airborne tularemia in his lungs?

In there I make a very spirited argument for using as your fire starter, you go find a friend who dips and get one of their used dip tins, right? Chew tin.

The book that I gave you Ron Jolly's book You'll learn like what his daddy used to do He used to carry parts with him To repair his call During a hunt That's real Yeah, that's real

Preston's talking about a book Memories of Spring by Ron Jolly Which he gifted to me

Oh, sorry

Then we got talking about my new favorite book, life and death at the mouth of the muscle shell.

It's about this beaver who's real lonely. And, uh, I always says, build a dam, make a pond.

And then he's not lonely anymore. And my kids like it because the last line of the book is about, it says now beavers got a lot of damn friends.

One of my favorite short story collections of all time is Dennis Johnson's Jesus Son.

Squirrels of the World, uh, is the, is the one that we, uh, that we're most proud of and we're working on a new, new edition of that.