The MeatEater Podcast

And in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, they're in a house looking for food and he finds some jarred some home canned goods on a shelf. And even though everybody's starving to death and has resorted to cannibalism, he finds them and leaves them.

I think even if Cormac McCarthy's The Road, right? There's only so much anxiety to go around.

As you think about your married life, read the works of Cormac McCarthy and look in there for the strict moral code that governs the world of Cormac McCarthy.

Because you'll find that the people that he's most severe with are people who make a decision to do something and then later try to live a life in which they hadn't made that decision.

If you're just flat out evil, Cormac McCarthy doesn't hurt you. He hurts people who dabble in evilness.

It's believed that Quint was based on Captain Ahab from Moby Dick.

Some of the similarities include that they're both obsessive captains with enemies that live in the sea and they both die after getting pulled under water.

Spielberg's original screenplay actually included Quint watching Moby Dick in a movie theater, but they couldn't use the scene because of copyright laws.

so i had my phone with me and i had an audible recording of Moby Dick so i put on Moby Dick which really in retrospect was the stupidest thing to do because it's completely unsoothing you know so they have

she talks about a way in which people, and this is, she's writing pre internet. Okay. So she wrote this before the internet came out, but she's talking about a way in which people rebel against information.

there's people who as information becomes so available and we know about so much and we can find out about so much. There's a way to rebel against information by like tenaciously grabbing onto rumors and myths and conspiracies because it gives you a sense of knowing something that everyone else just can't see.

You know, in Joan Didion's book, she wrote two books about the 60s. One was called The White Album and one was called Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

This is writer Joan Didion and she has a book called slouching toward Bethlehem or maybe it was she has another book called the white album.

What 1976 novel became a 1992 movie that heavily featured fly fishing in Montana?

River runs through it. That is correct.

River Runs Through It was filmed in 1991 and was set in Missoula, Montana.

What film was Rob Lowe filming in 1991... Give me a second. ...that starred an actor who was born in Missoula, Montana?

That's why you got to read your kids light in the forest, hatchet my side of the mountain.

And then River Runs Through It, it's like supposed to be about fishing, but it's about fatherhood, brotherhood. What are your obligations to the people that love you?

Also the author of 1968, The Big Oyster, A World Without Fish.

There's a really great book on this subject by the way called the swamp

There's a really great book on this subject by the way called the swamp. Okay, that kind of gives a fabulous history of the Everglades.

You should read that, Spencer.

Okay. Yeah. Everybody should.

I read that and Ruark's Use Enough Gun, which is about his time spent in Africa on safari in my early twenties.

And they were both extremely influential and stoked my fire for the outdoors.

Robert Ruark, you mentioned him, right? The Old Man and the Boy. Great book.

That's not his best book. His best book is The Old Man and the Boy, is Roo-Ark.

One of the best books about the Vietnam War is called Dispatches.

And Dispatches was written by a guy named Michael Hare.

His book that he wrote about is called Dispatches.

In the book Dispatches, he even talks about coming home and having a hard time getting,

And that's always stuck with me.

In Michael Harris' book, Dispatches, he talks about the Lerps, the long range reconnaissance patrollers in Vietnam. He talks about how they always kept uppers in the right pocket of their tiger suit and downers in the left pocket of their tiger suit.

And he meets a kid in the book. He meets a kid from Miles City. And every day, or not every day, but whenever he gets a list of fatalities and when they're in the military publication, he's always looking in there, hoping to see someone from Miles City on the list.

And Michael Herr goes, well, why do you want to see someone from Miles City on the list? He goes, because what are the chances two guys from Miles City are going to get killed in this war?

There's a novel by ab guthering it's like a mountain man novel called The big sky

And after The big sky came out someone actually wrote someone from the tourism board in montana actually wrote ab guthering and asked them if they could use The big sky in a in a highway campaign promoting like taking highway trips in montana

and ab guthering the novelist said oh it's fine and that's where big sky country came from in The big sky he talks there's a lot of cooking that happens in this mountain man novel The big sky

and then he takes a rabbit and bones out a rabbit and sticks the pieces to a rock and tips the rock up facing the flame and that's the first meal in The big sky

later in The big sky his favorite meal becomes varying a deer head in the ash

You ever read the book, The big sky? I have not. A mountain goat saves his life.

I mean, he shoots the mountain goat and eats it, but it saves his life. Oh, perfect. In the end, The big sky.

You ever read the book, The big sky? I have not. A mountain goat saves his life. Say what? I mean, he shoots the mountain goat and eats it, but it saves his life. Oh, perfect. In the end, The big sky.

So it could have been that if he had done Jeremiah Johnson, it wouldn't have like changed, but you gather, I don't really know. I have, I feel like when you watch Jeremiah Johnson, I feel a little bit like, I sense an ad-libbing quality to it.

So the author of The Educational Little Tree. Who, as we now know, as it became, this wasn't revealed until the nineties, the author of The Educational Little Tree had written Wallace's segregation now segregation forever speech, but had this like wrote novels under a pseudonym.

Clint Eastwood didn't even know it. Wow. Clint Eastwood wasn't aware when he did outlaw Josie Wales, but outlaw Josie Wales was, has the same tonality to it.

listen to Clay's Bear Grease episodes on The Education of Little Tree

Listen to Clay's Bear Grease episodes on The Education of Little Tree

We did a series on Asa Carter. A book called Education of the Little Tree. Lots of twists and turns. Dark twists and turns.

Tell everybody your other books...Did we do a show about This is Chance? I think so. Like we focus on that specifically?

John Muallem, like moo, like a cow, Allum, not like Allen...New book is Serious Face, author of This is Chance,

This is Chance was about the biggest earthquake to ever strike...In America. Alaska earthquake. Yeah. Good Friday earthquake.

Yeah, I've been working on this book. You were working on your book that became This Is Chance.

This Is Chance is a book about the Great Alaska earthquake in 1964.

And the book basically tells the story in pretty intimate detail, just the narrative of these first three days in the city of Anchorage.

One of the biggest earthquakes in US history, right? Yeah, that's correct. The second most powerful one ever measured and the most powerful one in the US.

The book is called This Is Chance The Shaking of an All-American City and a voice that held it together and it just came out in paperback from fine people at Random House Books and you can buy it with your money

I was just reading this book about the - what year did the big earthquake hit Anchorage? 64. I read a book about the - John Mualim, who's been on this show, just wrote a book called This is Chance. And it's about the 64 earthquake in Anchorage.

author of what was the candid, not the creatures? Wild Ones.

More about all about animals. All about animals. Well, people. All about people going wacky about animals.

Last time I was here talking about a book called Wild Ones, which was about endangered species conservation. That's the most boring way to put it.

And the more interesting way to put it is it's sort of about how America has treated and thought about its wildlife throughout its history.

So, you know, why are we a country that at the beginning of one century we want to kill all the bears and at the end of another century we want to make sure that the bears don't go extinct?

So the book's called Wild Ones. The subtitle is a sometimes dismaying, weirdly reassuring story about looking at people looking at animals in America.

And it's a book about, basically it's a book about conservation and endangered species.

I think it shuts a lot of people down.

And so the book was really about trying to reconcile those two worlds.

What are these animals doing for us? Maybe not in the physical plane, but just emotionally?

In my world, for sure, being familiar with Mark's book Cod and his book Salt, which seemed to make its way onto every coffee table and bookshelf in the country.

Being familiar with Mark's book, Cod and his book Salt, which seemed to make its way onto every coffee table and bookshelf in the country.

I recently interviewed Dan Flores about his new book Wild New World

I read it in a book called Wild New World by the historian Dan Flores.

I just read uh Dan Flory's very great book Wild New World which is a ecological history of well he came on the damn show so he wrote an ecological history of the continent where where do you begin he began with the Chicxulub strike which is the asteroid that collided with uh into the Gulf of Mexico off of uh tells that place over there off the Yucatan Peninsula at a angle that he described very eloquently

Author of probably arguably when I make lists of my favorite books of all time, usually at the top of the list is the book Great Plains.

Great Plains was on the bestseller list for 10 weeks. New York times bestseller.

largely motivated by Great Plains and what a phenomenal job you did with that book about the American Great Plains.

There's a writer, Ian Frazier, who's a wonderful writer. You should read, everybody should read his book, Great Plains.

He wrote a book called Great Plains, A History of the American Great Plains. Okay. It's a phenomenal book.

That same author though wrote The Golden Spruce. That's right. You want book that'll curl your hair

Really, you know what? You want to read a real book, read his book The Golden Spruce. I have not read that one. That's a writing some bitch right there, man. He's good. But there's certain books that come out. It's like Malcolm Gladwell writes a book then for the next six months you got to have people tell you stuff that they read in there and act like that they didn't read it there. You know what actually way to think about that is and you learn later like where it's all coming from. But since that book came out I've had 50 people tell me that about tigers. Not to take away from it because he's a hell of a writer. What was his name again? John Valant, I think. Yeah, we've emailed. V-A-I-L-L-A-N-T. Dude, The Golden Spruce is about a giant golden spruce and the man who sawed it down and why he sawed it down and he did not saw it down for the reasons you think he would have sawed it down. It's about an act of eco-terrorism. It's a good ass book.

Phil is going to get a signed copy of The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine.

When I was working on my book, my first book called The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine it was about this French chef, Scoffier and all the wild game he would cook.

I read Cam's book because I have such a strong desire to beat you. And I learned from his book.

Cam's new book, Endure, is out!

Cam Haines' new book, Endure. How's that going?

So it's, you know, you meet with the publishers as you know, and they make a pitch for the advance and all that. And so make a decision.

it doesn't matter how you come up, what your upbringing is. If you follow your passion, whatever that is, you can have whatever success you dream of essentially.

if you wish you could run farther or shoot straighter, this book is for you.

We were talking about trail cams and how for a while, we're talking about trail cams. And my feeling that even though I use them, my feeling that at some point we're going to wind up needing to have a reckoning with trail cameras the same way we had to have a reckoning with drones.

he had a guy on call. He paid to pack his bulls out of the back country.

When I was researching my Buffalo book, it was talking about a very common, very common animal related injury.

I remember years ago when I was working on my Buffalo book, I went to a sort of an international bison conference, which means it had people from Mexico.

In 1997 I came out with my book on Cod. And this was as the northern stock in the Grand Banks was collapsing.

And people were really for the first time seriously thinking about the problems of overfishing and regulating commercial fisheries. I mean, the general public was.

It's become clear to me that overfishing and regulating fisheries is a minor problem.

In 1997 I came out with my book on Cod. And this was as the northern stock in the Grand Banks was collapsing. And people were really for the first time seriously thinking about the problems of overfishing and regulating commercial fisheries.

When my Cod book came out it came out at the same time as Sebastian Younger's Perfect Storm and we did a TV show together in Rhode Island

In 1997, I came out with my book on Cod. And this was as the northern stock in the Grand Banks was collapsing.