The MeatEater Podcast

My life with the Eskimos is always on there.

It's like Coming into the Country by John McPhee, like greatest, greatest book for outdoorsman. Okay. Be like Coming into the Country for John McPhee, My Life With the Eskimo by Stephenson, Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez.

It's amazing. Because, and by the way, I think that contributes to some of the problems that end up occurring. But we can get into that.

And he had been on, in 1905, he did an expedition in Iceland and then he was on the North coast of Alaska and the Mackenzie River area. And he was really interested in the ethnology and studying the native peoples there.

And he wasn't like, what's cool about him too is he wasn't sort of chasing the North pole. He was just trying to find uncontacted peoples and hang out with them.

So he came back in 1912 and claims that he's contacted while he was out there for four years, that he's contacted these descendants of Leif Erikson who are blonde haired, blue eyed Eskimos or Inuit peoples. And, you know.

So he gets back after four years in the Arctic and he put this trip together, the Canadian Arctic Expedition, which is my book is about.

He had spent four years, he was just dropping this manuscript that was going to be like My Life With The Eskimo, you know, here's how it's done.

When he's up in the high Arctic, he's on, he's with hunters who have never seen a tree, but they have driftwood. Their explanation of what driftwood is, they think it's a plant that grows under the water.

Steffenson talked about one time stalking a grizzly bear that wound up being a ground squirrel when talking about, he talked about how deceptive, Oh, the Arctic light is.

So he resurfaces. Okay. And now he's, he is, his books are selling. He's writes, he's written My Life With the Eskimo and he also writes The Friendly Arctic, which is a great title for a book in which most people die.

So you need to go read Stefansson's My Life with the Eskimo.

Talks about that journey where that, that ship got encased in ice, very near Wrangel Island where these guys get marooned and it goes for like, I don't know, over a year

So he went out in, I think it was in 1834, Francis Parkman went out onto the Great Plains and then later wrote a book called The Oregon Trail.

He one day goes into, I think he goes into a trading post in Laramie, what's now Laramie, Wyoming. I think he was in Laramie. And he's invited to dinner in a Sioux family's, so an Oglala Sioux family's teepee.

All of their puppies are in the teepee. Okay, so you've hit a level of familiarity and care where the female dog is nursing her puppies inside.

A woman goes over, sorts through that little collection of puppies that is inside the teepee, thumps one in the head and cooks it for him.

If we ever do a book club, there's a super fun Oregon Trail book.

One by Rinker Buck.

It's a good pop approach to it. I liked it, I didn't love it.

I actually recommended it to Clay at one point because there's so much darn mule talk in there.

Half the book is about mules. The guy actually got mules and rode with a mule and cart across as close as he could follow the trail while examining the history of the whole thing. It was interesting. Again, I liked it. I do regret afterwards that I didn't pick a different Oregon Trail book because I think there are maybe better ones out there and I was looking for more of the historical perspective rather than someone just going down Highway 81 or whatever road. Yeah, this is an experiential one.

The Red Market, On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers and Child Traffickers.

I spent six years wandering around the world looking for, interviewing people involved in buying and selling human body parts.

Yeah, it was called The Red Market, On the Trail of the World's Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers and Child Traffickers.

Man, when I got your book, Woods Wise, I'm trying to say this in the nicest way possible. I was initially dismissive because I've never read a forestry book in my life.

the minute I opened it up and saw that there's a thing, why are conifers shaped like cones? I was like, shit, I never thought about that. Why are they shaped like cones?

I wanted. That's why I told Corrine we should have this guy on to talk about all the like, cause this is great for people's bar room banter capabilities.

Imagine some single fella down in the bar. Everyone go get Michael's book.

It's structured in like questions, many of which are great questions. And it's like, it poses a question and answers the question.

when I got your book, Woods Wise, I'm trying to say this in the nicest way possible. I was initially dismissive because I've never read a forestry book in my life.

the minute I opened it up and saw that there's a thing, why are conifers shaped like cones? I was like, shit, I never thought about that.

It's structured in like questions, many of which are great questions. And it's like, it poses a question and answers the question.

imagine some single fella down in the bar. Everyone go get Michael's book.

hey man, did you ever wonder why, you know, pine trees are cone shaped?

Give a Boy a Gun, a true story of law and disorder in the American West. That's the Claude Dallas story.

Give a Boy a Gun, not Jack Olson. Strasser Todd.

It's an epistolary tale for young adults by Todd Strasser first published in 2000.

No one's touched it since Jack Olsen or whatever his name was, he wrote Give a Boy a Gun.

there is an author named Doug Chadwick who wrote Wolverine way Where he talks about the Wolverine that you know started to like go around Mount Cleveland And then just decided you know the hell with it It's gonna be easier to go over the top and went up 5,000 vertical feet or something like that in about 45 minutes and down the other side and there was a carcass on the other side That it was trying to get to and it you could see in the collar data Like it started to go around and then it was like nope I'm just hungry and I want to get to my meal immediately and up it went and over And to that carcass

I'm reading a book and I'm going to do a big, big, huge book report on this show coming soon. I'm reading a book with don't judge. My brother sent it to me. Listen, my brother sent it to me, said, don't look at the title. Just read the book. Okay. The title is Alaska's Wolf Man. But it's interesting.

And then Labyrinth of Ice was a book that I wrote about the Greeley Expedition, which ended up with some cannibalism involved and, you know, grim experiences.

By many paths and by many means, mankind has endeavored to penetrate this kingdom of death.

It's like Coming into the Country by John McPhee, like greatest, greatest book for outdoorsman.

Have you read John McPhee's Coming into the Country

For sending this great question, PJ is going to get a signed copy of Meat Eater Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter.

Chances are Stephen Rinella's life is very different than yours or mine. He does not source his food at the local supermarket.

Meat Eater is a unique and valuable alternative view of where our food comes from and what can be involved. It looks both backwards at the way things used to be and forward to a time when every diner truly understands what's on the end of this fork.

Where's the book about the high Colorado site?

Mountaineer. It's out.

University of Colorado Press. And I presume it's on Amazon.

Um, Mountaineer, a Folsom winter camp in the Rockies.

54 bucks for a paperback.

The Mountaineer Site, a Folsom winter camp in the Rockies.

He always, he always likes to cringe when I say it's his favorite book, but, uh, he turned, there's a book called Black Range Tales.

It's, it's mostly like the memoirs and recollections of a minor, a prospector and minor who was active in the 1880s down in New Mexico, in the black range, but all around that area.

What's funny about it is the first pay. Oh, I can't say this. Nevermind. Nevermind.

he talks about 50 pound turkeys in that book.

It was sitting in some window at a curio shop in some town in Arizona or New Mexico. I can't remember where.

the writer, John Muellem, author most recently of Serious Face. I like it, which is about... It's a collection of his magazine reporting, some of which deals with the ways in which animals drive people a little wacky. I like it.

I like it.

get Jon's brilliant new book, Serious Face

Jon who's been on the show...He has a brand spick and new book out Serious Face essays by John Muellem, several of which pertain to the stuff we like to talk about.

I love this book.

In your new book, Serious Face is a...What's that one called about the monk seals?

And it tells the story of the...It's kind of an endangered species story. It's like a CSI endangered species.

So right now, auction group number four, we have a signed copy of Ridgeline by a two-time podcast guest, Michael Punk.

It's like, there's a story about like wolves. And they can. How to think like a mountain, right?

Yes. And like how the mountain doesn't have the wolves on there anymore. And so the deer eating it, I mean, it's a longer story.

And then I read Alan Eckert's book, The Frontiersman, about - That's a good-ass book.

It's from the 60s. The Frontiersman of the Yellowstone.

we had on the author and professor Scott Giltner who authored a book Hunting and Fishing in the New South and in it we were talking about you know a lot about slavery the hunting practices of slaves

I now began to live well and to feel myself at least in some measure an independent man.

If I could have one of the fondest wishes of my heart fulfilled, I would export four-thirds of Chicago Negroes.

When he should be between the plow handles

It's not like people just show up randomly doing freezer checks.

If you're interested in ice age hunters and Clovis and... All that good stuff. Killing mammoths or not. Or not.

That book was actually almost obsolete as soon as it came out.

The real novel parts are the last 10 years of the genetic work.

It's everything I know. There's nothing left guys. It's the sum of...

I rotate Huffman's book of photography with Ice Age Peoples in a New World with your Folsom book. I rotate them and I put them there and it's meant to be like, this is my, my, this is like my, you know, my expression of myself is that, that I value David J. Meltzer's books.

You bring up a thing where you said the movement of people as people are moving around, they're moving quickly.