Speaker 1: Whole zone media.
Speaker 2: Nine years ago, someone very close to me died, and
Speaker 2: shortly after that something very funny happened.
Speaker 1: The person in.
Speaker 2: Question was old, but not dying, old, had been sick
Speaker 2: but was not dying. Sick someone about to die wouldn't
Speaker 2: be a night owl with an encyclopedic knowledge about SNL
Speaker 2: and professional hockey. They just wouldn't. But then one day
Speaker 2: it was. They died suddenly and terribly, the sort of
Speaker 2: loss where I still find myself wanting to pick up
Speaker 2: the phone ten years later and try to explain what
Speaker 2: a podcast is to them. I really missed them, and
Speaker 2: it was a huge shock at the time, and everyone
Speaker 2: was still very in shock when the funeral happened. It
Speaker 2: had been in this really hectic week right like no
Speaker 2: one saw it coming or knew what sort of shape
Speaker 2: their affairs were in. Half of us were still actively
Speaker 2: in denial. I brought some loser I was dating to
Speaker 2: the wake.
Speaker 1: Why did I invite him?
Speaker 2: Why did I invite him? It was a Catholic funeral
Speaker 2: and we were all instructed to either read something from
Speaker 2: the Bible or just say a few words. I hope
Speaker 2: you haven't been through this, but I know that you
Speaker 2: very likely have. So the night before I said my
Speaker 2: few words, I stayed up late drinking PBR and writing
Speaker 2: out a set, and then I had to keep reminding
Speaker 2: myself it's not a set, it's a eulogy. A eulogy
Speaker 2: is not stand up comedy unless.
Speaker 1: You're really good at it.
Speaker 2: At the service the next morning, I sat next to
Speaker 2: someone that I'm very close with. He had his notes
Speaker 2: for what he was going to say and was pretty quiet,
Speaker 2: and before we were supposed.
Speaker 1: To go up and speak, he leaned.
Speaker 2: Over to me and asked, hey, like, should we give
Speaker 2: our Twitter handles before we talk?
Speaker 1: Like do you think this is.
Speaker 2: A good opportunity to get new.
Speaker 1: Followers on Twitter?
Speaker 2: It was this really strange moment, you know, because something
Speaker 2: so terrible had just happened, and then this was said.
Speaker 2: I tell this story to people and they never laugh.
Speaker 2: But it's the sort of thing that's like, it's almost funny,
Speaker 2: but it's a little too weird to be an actual joke.
Speaker 2: It's just completely absurd in this way that you can
Speaker 2: never get.
Speaker 1: Out of your brain. And if you were.
Speaker 2: Asking, yes, I did read my Twitter handle, definitely don't
Speaker 2: do that at your grandma's funeral. I said who it
Speaker 2: was in that moment. If something just sad was said
Speaker 2: or something just funny was said, I probably wouldn't remember
Speaker 2: this moment as well as I do. It's just something
Speaker 2: in between. In August twenty nineteen, many terrible things happened
Speaker 2: on the same day in Dayton, Ohio. In al Paso, Texas,
Speaker 2: there were mass shootings within hours of each other. First
Speaker 2: in El Paso, when a white nationalist entered a Walmart
Speaker 2: with a semi automatic weapon and killed twenty three people.
Speaker 2: That same day, in an entertainment district in Dayton, a
Speaker 2: man used an ar pistol to kill nine people. And
Speaker 2: even in a country where these types of shootings had
Speaker 2: become increasingly commonplace, according to twenty twenty three research from
Speaker 2: the Pew Research Center and also anecdotally from being a
Speaker 2: person active shooter, events in the United States have steadily
Speaker 2: increased since two thousand, over twenty times over and so on.
Speaker 2: This weekend in August twenty nineteen, the whole world went
Speaker 2: into mourning for the victims of these senseless, horrible shootings,
Speaker 2: and as the days lurched on, online discourse on the
Speaker 2: many horrific questions that the shootings introduced began while journalists
Speaker 2: worked to report on them as clearly and faithfully as possible,
Speaker 2: and in fact, it involves some of the main players
Speaker 2: in this show. The executive producer of this show, the
Speaker 2: great Wonderful Robert Evans, who has definitely never falsely accused
Speaker 2: me of murder, famously reported on the Elpasa shooter, detailing
Speaker 2: his radicalization online on eight Chan before he resolved to
Speaker 2: become a domestic purist, which was a part of a
Speaker 2: disturbing trend that continued from earlier that year, most notoriously
Speaker 2: the christ Church mosque shooting in New Zealand. These murders,
Speaker 2: stoked by white supremacy, had everything to do with the Internet.
Speaker 2: The Internet was where shooters became radicalized and where they
Speaker 2: would often livestream their own atrocities, and so after two
Speaker 2: mass shootings in the same weekend, a familiar question emerged,
Speaker 2: how do we stop this? What will we need to
Speaker 2: change to fucking stop this? The days that followed restoked
Speaker 2: a debate that raged in real life and online spaces
Speaker 2: with increasing frequency, and Democrats put pressure on then Senate
Speaker 2: Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Devil's pet Turtle, to cancel
Speaker 2: the Senate summer recess to reopen a discussion on gun control.
Speaker 1: He didn't, and.
Speaker 2: So people were frustrated their leaders weren't doing anything, and
Speaker 2: so many took to the Internet as they had in
Speaker 2: the past, and hoped that saying how they felt would
Speaker 2: accomplish something. Many demanded action on gun control. Many mourned
Speaker 2: the victims of these shootings, and many started a familiar
Speaker 2: discourse around the weapons that were used to slaughter people.
Speaker 2: And among these people were public figures weighing in as
Speaker 2: they tend to do. One was American singer songwriter Jason
Speaker 2: I Isbel. On August fourth, twenty nineteen, he.
Speaker 3: Tweeted, if you're on here arguing the definition of assault
Speaker 3: weapon today, you are part of the problem. You know
Speaker 3: what an assault weapon is, and you know you don't
Speaker 3: need one.
Speaker 2: So, as the world mourned and tried to figure out
Speaker 2: what they could do in a world where normal people
Speaker 2: are so often rendered powerless, people began to yell at
Speaker 2: each other on the Internet, and then, to everyone's surprise,
Speaker 2: something kind of funny happened. A Twitter user who I
Speaker 2: would describe as a random guy, a normal man, Willie McNabb,
Speaker 2: responded to this tweet from Jason Isbel.
Speaker 1: He says the following legit.
Speaker 4: Question for rural Americans, how do I kill.
Speaker 2: The stop stop stop stop stop stop stop?
Speaker 1: Yes that tweet? Okay, grant you can finish.
Speaker 4: Legit question for rural Americans? How do I kill the
Speaker 4: thirty to fifty feral hogs that run into my yard
Speaker 4: within three to five minutes while my small kids play.
Speaker 2: So in the absolute middle of this awful moment, people
Speaker 2: stopped and asked, Wait, what the fuck did that guy
Speaker 2: just say thirty to fifty feral hogs? Your sixteenth minute starts, now.
Speaker 5: Finish.
Speaker 1: Okay, you sickos.
Speaker 2: I'll give you what you want, and what you want
Speaker 2: is what many rural communities have been plagued by, which
Speaker 2: is thirty to fifty feral hogs.
Speaker 1: It's feral Hogs.
Speaker 2: Day on sixteenth minute. One of our most requested main
Speaker 2: characters bar none, and like every single one of the
Speaker 2: Internet's main characters, all thirty to fifty feral hogs come
Speaker 2: with a lot of personal baggage. So let's throw some
Speaker 2: feral bacon into the feral pan. But before we do,
Speaker 2: just one quick note in a rear showing of keeping
Speaker 2: my mouth shut for forty minutes. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: get into my detailed opinions on gun control at the
Speaker 2: very top of this episode, although I'm sure you can
Speaker 2: guess what they are.
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan of guns.
Speaker 2: And that's not the case for everyone I'm speaking with today,
Speaker 2: and each of them are going to explain why that is.
Speaker 2: And with that, come with me if you will to
Speaker 2: August twenty nineteen, the first death from vaping is reported
Speaker 2: in Illinois. Jeffrey Epstein is found dead in his prison
Speaker 2: cell under very normal circumstances. I'm performing at the Edinburgh
Speaker 2: Fringe Festival with a show called Boss Whom Is Girl?
Speaker 2: In which I play a demented girl boss hell bent
Speaker 2: on killing an island full of DJs using surveillance technologies.
Speaker 2: It got good reviews, and following two horrific massacres in
Speaker 2: the United States back to back, a man from Arkansas
Speaker 2: named Willie McNabb asked how he could kill the thirty
Speaker 2: to fifty faral hogs that run into his yard within
Speaker 2: three to five minutes while his small kids play. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna say it, this is one of the funniest things
Speaker 2: that's ever happened on the Internet. For me like you
Speaker 2: get it. Replying to a conversation denouncing people who are
Speaker 2: getting overly into semantics about assault weapons after two horrific
Speaker 2: mass shootings with a question about thirty to fifty faral
Speaker 2: hogs is weird. It's confusing to most people. It makes
Speaker 2: no sense. I was one of those people. Willie McNabb,
Speaker 2: what are you talking about? Everything about the Farrell hogs
Speaker 2: tweet is so funny. It's great American poetry. Now Here
Speaker 2: are my top five funny things about the Farall Hogs tweet.
Speaker 2: Your mileage may vary, and I actually do encourage you
Speaker 2: to share it with me. Number one, starting a statement
Speaker 2: about Farrell hogs with the phrase legit. Question number two
Speaker 2: thirty two fifty. It's such a wide range. It feels
Speaker 2: like a census taker's question. Number three the qualifier that
Speaker 2: the kids are small, which kind of goes without saying right,
Speaker 2: but it feels like it's sort of implying that fifty
Speaker 2: feral hogs would be less threatening to larger children.
Speaker 1: Number five. The tone of the question.
Speaker 2: Overall, the way that Willy phrases this makes it sound
Speaker 2: like this is something that was on the tip of
Speaker 2: everyone's tongues and he's the first person brave enough to
Speaker 2: articulate what we were all thinking. Number five, of course,
Speaker 2: the imagery a father gunning down feral hogs like a
Speaker 2: game of Halo in your high school boyfriend's basement. Game
Speaker 2: over the image of small kids surrounded by malevolent hogs,
Speaker 2: the only line of defense being an assault rifle, and
Speaker 2: between three and.
Speaker 1: Five minutes, just say four minutes.
Speaker 2: As sad and bizarre as the circumstances that prompted this
Speaker 2: reply tweet are, it is awesome, and it squarely puts
Speaker 2: mister McNabb in a category of main character that was
Speaker 2: not intentional, because again, this.
Speaker 1: Was just a reply.
Speaker 2: It's like every person who replies to dunk on Elon
Speaker 2: Musk and raise their own profile was doing it with
Speaker 2: the expectation of becoming the most famous person on the Internet.
Speaker 2: On top of that, the reply tweet itself isn't really accusatory.
Speaker 2: It's just the weirdest phrasing of a question that the
Speaker 2: person seems to genuinely be asking. And so interestingly, the
Speaker 2: reason that Willy becomes Internet famous doesn't seem to be
Speaker 2: the algorithm itself. It's because of Jason isbel So let's
Speaker 2: go full forensic let's talk about how this happened. Willy
Speaker 2: asks the question of our time, that of the perilous
Speaker 2: haw at twelve oh one pm Eastern Standard time on
Speaker 2: August fourth, twenty nineteen, which is the day of the Dayton,
Speaker 2: Ohio massacre and the day after the El Paso, Texas massacre.
Speaker 2: After the reply, Jason isbel quote tweets Willie McNabb three
Speaker 2: minutes later at twelve oh four pm, responding with the
Speaker 2: following Pithy's statement.
Speaker 3: If you have dozens of hogs chasing your children around
Speaker 3: your yard, you have problems. No weapon will fix.
Speaker 2: He then adds at twelve oh eight pm, I.
Speaker 3: Don't think William is serious, guys, and.
Speaker 2: Willy McNabb is having none of it, he retorts at
Speaker 2: twelve eleven pm.
Speaker 4: No, sir, I am.
Speaker 2: And now we as passive viewers, know that Willy McNabb
Speaker 2: is ready to go to the mat for this. And look,
Speaker 2: I know it sounds like I am like rehashing and
Speaker 2: pausing the Zapruder tape, but it is significant. It is
Speaker 2: clear ten minutes in that Willie McNabb is, for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: willing to go to the mat with a public figure
Speaker 2: on this topic, shots had been fired, only this time
Speaker 2: not from an assault rifle and not at a murderous pig.
Speaker 1: But and I can.
Speaker 2: Confirm this as someone who was observing this unfolded real time.
Speaker 2: Very few people on Twitter seem to have any idea
Speaker 2: what Willie is talking about, and so at first, instead
Speaker 2: of trying to understand what he's talking about, they.
Speaker 1: Make fun of him.
Speaker 2: People went nuts on Twitter over this reply tweet, and
Speaker 2: it seemed like for many this was almost a breath
Speaker 2: of fresh air, a little bit of absurdity to joke
Speaker 2: about while processing.
Speaker 1: The horrors of the world.
Speaker 2: And we do get some pretty solid riffs on the
Speaker 2: treacherous hog like these thirty to fifty faral hogs sounds
Speaker 2: like my dating history.
Speaker 3: Take me down to the paradess city where the hogs
Speaker 3: are farrel in the thirty to fifty.
Speaker 2: My therapist, thirty to fifty faral hogs can't hurt you,
Speaker 2: they aren't real. Thirty to fifty faral hogs in my
Speaker 2: yard threatening my children, And finally my favorite, take.
Speaker 6: A long drag for my cigarette. As I stare out
Speaker 6: of my foxhole hollow eye at the tree line, the
Speaker 6: distant sounds of winking, coming nearer and nearer as the
Speaker 6: sun sets, the cold steal of my ar fifteen the
Speaker 6: only thing that stands between those hogs and my kids
Speaker 6: behind me.
Speaker 2: So this reply tweet spawned news articles, podcast episodes, a
Speaker 2: flash mini game where you're playing as Willy and your
Speaker 2: goal is to mow down as many hogs as quickly
Speaker 2: as possible in eight bit. This is as close to
Speaker 2: a seminal main character experience as you can get, and
Speaker 2: as a first timer to the main character game, Willie
Speaker 2: McNabb makes what many would consider to be a rookie mistake.
Speaker 1: He posts his way.
Speaker 2: Through it, and while in most cases I would discourage
Speaker 2: this behavior, all main characters, especially when it's from something
Speaker 2: weird or innocuous as opposed to actually offensive, are advised
Speaker 2: to acknowledge their main characterhood then either fake their own
Speaker 2: death or start a rap career. Posting through it almost
Speaker 2: never helps because random Twitter users also have a vested
Speaker 2: interest in proving themselves to be the world's most normal person,
Speaker 2: and Willie McNabb is very much caught in the middle
Speaker 2: of it. So who is this guy? At the time
Speaker 2: of Ferrell Hoggate, Willie's Twitter bio.
Speaker 4: Read husband, father, Christian, libertarian, West Carolina University alum, and
Speaker 4: fan of Pearl Jam and Red Sox.
Speaker 2: But critically, his profile also reveals that he lives in
Speaker 2: rural Arkansas. Collectively, all of these things add up to
Speaker 2: he is some guy who has decided to post through
Speaker 2: it after Jason isbel quote tweeted him.
Speaker 1: But in this.
Speaker 2: Case, Willie's posting through it is part of why this
Speaker 2: story is so interesting. He was not going to back down,
Speaker 2: no sir, I am. But the thing he was not
Speaker 2: back in down on wasn't gun control.
Speaker 1: It was feral hoggs.
Speaker 2: Willy smars against other Twitter users who connect his hog
Speaker 2: problem and gun advocacy with his personal politics. He tweets
Speaker 2: at twelve twenty four pm.
Speaker 4: Funny thing about these responses. I would challenge any of
Speaker 4: you to find on my timeline where I say I
Speaker 4: voted for Trump. Do any of you people know what
Speaker 4: Arkansas's mascot is. It's for a reason, and a wall
Speaker 4: or fence over ten acres of land with a swamp
Speaker 4: in the backside isn't feasible.
Speaker 2: He writes again at two twenty one pm.
Speaker 4: I'm for the First Amendment. For those that say I
Speaker 4: should eat my kids, not have children, advocate the state
Speaker 4: taking them away from me, the ones who are driving
Speaker 4: by my home, taking aerial photos of my house, googling
Speaker 4: where I work, et cetera. This is why I'm for
Speaker 4: the Second Amendment.
Speaker 2: So at this point, Willy does bring it back to
Speaker 2: gun control because he has become the main character. He
Speaker 2: needs a gun. Actually, in twenty nineteen, he had fully
Speaker 2: lost me at this point, but the story somehow continues.
Speaker 2: The next day, Jason Isbel is still joking about the
Speaker 2: hogs on Twitter, and Willie replies to him again. He
Speaker 2: is determined to get through to Jason isbel about these hogs.
Speaker 4: He writes, even though people have threatened my kids, taking
Speaker 4: pics in my home, driven by my house, my job,
Speaker 4: and threatened me, I'm still a fan of your music.
Speaker 4: And I never said my situation was applicable to the
Speaker 4: entire country. It's real.
Speaker 2: Attached to this tweet is a video entitled wild hogs
Speaker 2: are fair Game to hunt from the air in Texas.
Speaker 7: In Texas, they're going hog wild over a wild hogs.
Speaker 7: The feral animals are causing hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 7: of damage to crops across the state, and to help
Speaker 7: deal with the problem, state lawmakers have approved the hunting
Speaker 7: of wild hogs and coyotes from hot air balloons. People
Speaker 7: had already been allowed to sh shoot the animals from helicopters,
Speaker 7: but it was an expensive and ineffective way to deal
Speaker 7: with the problem. Higher balloons apparently much better.
Speaker 2: So in case you're five years late and have never
Speaker 2: been to the rural South, the hog problem is real
Speaker 2: then now, and it might be getting actively worse. Brace
Speaker 2: yourself for some unbelievable hog facts. The current estimated population
Speaker 2: of faral hogs in the United States is six million.
Speaker 2: That's one feral hog for every dollar in the budget
Speaker 2: of the movie The Room. Adult faral hogs can weigh
Speaker 2: anywhere from seventy five to two hundred and fifty pounds.
Speaker 2: That is, anywhere from the size of a fifth grader
Speaker 2: to the size of a football player. That is so large,
Speaker 2: and for my money, if thirty to fifty feral fifth
Speaker 2: graders or NFL players are charging my small kids in
Speaker 2: three to five minutes, I'd be scared too. Willie is
Speaker 2: also right that these hogs are mainly in the rural South.
Speaker 2: Most of them live in Texas, but in Arkansas, where
Speaker 2: Willy lives. They're in all seventy five counties and there's
Speaker 2: about two hundred thousand of them, which, for comparison, is
Speaker 2: close to one gigantic feral hog for every resident of
Speaker 2: Little Rock, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: There are entire.
Speaker 2: Government agencies dedicated to protecting the general public from the
Speaker 2: wrath of the hogs. So while there's plenty to unpack
Speaker 2: in this story, before we can talk to the faral
Speaker 2: hogs guy. Because yes, I did talk to the faral
Speaker 2: hogs guy, I went to maybe the authority in the
Speaker 2: US on this. John Thomas k is an associate professor
Speaker 2: at Texas A and M and even more to the point,
Speaker 2: he's the chair of both the National Feral Swine Task
Speaker 2: Force and the Texas Feral Swine Task Force. Okay, now,
Speaker 2: imagine I'm doing a pickup truck commercial. This man knows
Speaker 2: big pigs.
Speaker 1: I had to talk to him.
Speaker 8: I'm John Tomachek. I'm an associate professor working on wildlife damage,
Speaker 8: wildlife disease, and carnivore management at Texas A and M University.
Speaker 8: When this came up, some friends of mine that are
Speaker 8: not in the space of working in wildlife, they're not
Speaker 8: in the space of living and working on the land.
Speaker 8: They're urban folks. They saw this and sent it to me,
Speaker 8: and I really appreciated it because they said, John, this
Speaker 8: is going around, but everybody's making fun of it. It
Speaker 8: sounds ridiculous, but you're an expert, what do you think?
Speaker 8: And I just shrugged and said, yeah, sure, thirty or
Speaker 8: fifty faral hogs in a group is not uncommon. Makes
Speaker 8: perfect sense to me. And that really was kind of
Speaker 8: my moment of going, Oh, Okay, what's the big deal?
Speaker 8: What is so absurd about this? And I remember, you know,
Speaker 8: it was a conversation around like firearms and that kind
Speaker 8: of thing. And so friends of mine that are not
Speaker 8: gun owners, they're not hunters, but they know I am.
Speaker 8: They said, you know, what's your thought on this? And
Speaker 8: I said, you know, I never actually owned an ar
Speaker 8: platform rifle before I started working professionally on faral hogs.
Speaker 8: And this is one of the scenarios in which it
Speaker 8: actually does make sense because of the numbers of animals
Speaker 8: you're dealing with. And I think that that's really the
Speaker 8: kind of the juxtaposition here is when a person is
Speaker 8: engaging in sport hunting or meat hunting, or whatever it is.
Speaker 8: You are focused on the one animal and the search
Speaker 8: for that animal and the take of that animal, Whereas
Speaker 8: with feral hogs, it's this deluge of invasive, exotic animals
Speaker 8: that are destroying everything from clean air and clean water,
Speaker 8: to the food that we rely on for our tables,
Speaker 8: to the health and well being of our wild animals
Speaker 8: and wild places, and it's just everything. And so it's
Speaker 8: at times kind of an overwhelming sense of how will
Speaker 8: we ever get control over this problem? And so when
Speaker 8: the internet sensation kicked up to me, it was an
Speaker 8: interesting moment to say, ah, you know, for those of
Speaker 8: us that are actively engaged every day in this space,
Speaker 8: this makes perfect sense, but to the outside world it
Speaker 8: seems a little absurd. I took a different job, and
Speaker 8: academic job, and I was working with ranchers, landowners, farmers
Speaker 8: and just asking them, you know, what are the issues
Speaker 8: that are most i ortant to you? What are the
Speaker 8: issues that are facing you that you need help on it?
Speaker 8: And almost unanimously, everyone was talking about damage that was
Speaker 8: caused by wildlife to their agricultural operation, whether they were
Speaker 8: farming your fruits and vegetables that come to the market.
Speaker 8: Everybody wants to eat right or livestock production or whatever
Speaker 8: it was, and it was the idea of they don't
Speaker 8: hate the animal, they hate the damage, and they don't
Speaker 8: know how to fix it to balance the production with
Speaker 8: the animals. So I got involved in that world of
Speaker 8: wildlife damage, and then feral hogs kind of came as
Speaker 8: an interesting track to that because it's an exotic, invasive
Speaker 8: animal that doesn't belong in the system that makes the
Speaker 8: sustainability of native plants and animals as well as humans
Speaker 8: much more difficult. And so over the years, I've done
Speaker 8: more and more work in feral hogs simply because it's
Speaker 8: in my mind it's one of the greater conservation challenges
Speaker 8: of our generation, simply because we are fighting a human
Speaker 8: created problem that we essentially engineered these animals to be
Speaker 8: as effective at doing what they do, and now we're
Speaker 8: fighting against this. Like I said earlier, deluge. So, like
Speaker 8: I said, long story, and I could go on for
Speaker 8: quite a while, but basically what brought me to the
Speaker 8: table was kind of looking at how people that live
Speaker 8: on the land and take care of the land because
Speaker 8: it is their livelihood as well, are struggling to do so.
Speaker 8: In the face of this exotic, invasive species that seems
Speaker 8: to have blown up in the last twenty or thirty years.
Speaker 1: So could you tell me a.
Speaker 2: Little bit about how did Farrell hogs get here and
Speaker 2: what were people misunderstanding as they were encountering the.
Speaker 5: Story in thirty to fifty number.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so what I love about this and I really
Speaker 8: can't emphasize this enough for your listener base. Most of
Speaker 8: us that work professionally with Farrell hogs, whether it's as
Speaker 8: researchers or managers or what have you. When the thirty
Speaker 8: to fifty number was thrown out, pretty much everyone, like
Speaker 8: I said, shrugged and said, yeah, it seems reasonable. Farrel
Speaker 8: hogs got here a few different ways. Ironically, so Christopher
Speaker 8: Columbus brought them on his second voyage to the New World.
Speaker 8: Voyage no second voyage had pigs, their domestic pigs at
Speaker 8: that time, and they were brought as a food source.
Speaker 8: And it's important to remember in this period in history,
Speaker 8: pigs were raised in what we call a free ranging environment,
Speaker 8: meaning you let them go forage, they do what they do,
Speaker 8: and then once a year you round them all up,
Speaker 8: usually before the winter time if you're in a cold
Speaker 8: climate and you slaughter pigs, you keep a few in
Speaker 8: the barn over the winter, and then you feed them
Speaker 8: right and then you make salt pork or sausages, whatever
Speaker 8: you're doing to put away food for the winner. And
Speaker 8: that's a pretty common European way of managing pigs. So
Speaker 8: they're brought to the New World by Columbus and then
Speaker 8: subsequent Spanish conquistadores brought them with them. Early explorers in
Speaker 8: Florida brought them. And it's important to note that the
Speaker 8: first couple of expeditions brought those pigs, and then future
Speaker 8: expeditions in their diaries commented they needn't have bothered bringing
Speaker 8: pigs because they were so abundant here already. Ugh, okay,
Speaker 8: And they're not native to the New World, so there
Speaker 8: are no classics swine native to the Western hemisphere. There
Speaker 8: are pekerees, like in Texas we have habelina. It's a
Speaker 8: collared pekerey. We just use the Spanish words typically because
Speaker 8: that's what we're used to here. But pekeres are not pigs.
Speaker 8: I can't emphasize that enough. They kind of look like pigs,
Speaker 8: that's just convergent evolution making a thing look similar, but
Speaker 8: they are not the same animal.
Speaker 1: Those are the native species.
Speaker 8: Correct, and they're native to southwestern US and then farther
Speaker 8: south in Central America and South America, and they do
Speaker 8: not have the problems that I'm about to describe. So
Speaker 8: one of the things about pigs, it is mankind's oldest
Speaker 8: livestock animal as far as we know. So they're bred
Speaker 8: from Eurasian wild boar, which are a wild animal still
Speaker 8: around in Europe. But animal husbandry over thousands of years
Speaker 8: produced an animal that could breed at any time of
Speaker 8: the year because that's important to produce sustainable food. And
Speaker 8: they would have more offspring in a litter, which makes
Speaker 8: sense when we're making sure they stay feds so they
Speaker 8: can have the ability to make sure those animals survive,
Speaker 8: and more of those animals survive. They're heavier when they
Speaker 8: wean from their mothers. All of these things that in
Speaker 8: the wild wouldn't necessarily make sense, but in a farmed
Speaker 8: context or a raised context makes sense because it's a
Speaker 8: relationship where humans are also taking care of that animal.
Speaker 8: So we broke a natural reproductive cycle to create an
Speaker 8: animal that is the largest animal on the planet physically,
Speaker 8: that can reproduce that quickly with that many offspring. So
Speaker 8: I talked about the Spanish brought them, but then Anglo
Speaker 8: settlers in New England, you know, the British colonies brought them.
Speaker 8: And in our part of the world, when Anglos started
Speaker 8: moving from what's now the Midwest to Texas when it
Speaker 8: was still a Spanish colony and then later part of Mexico,
Speaker 8: they brought pigs with them. And what we have today
Speaker 8: is a history of over the years those free ranging
Speaker 8: pigs escaped, or when the pork industry was in a
Speaker 8: bad spot, farmers might have just turned and their pigs
Speaker 8: loose because they couldn't afford to feed them. And in
Speaker 8: the context of am I going to let those animals
Speaker 8: starve or am I going to let them go forage
Speaker 8: and live because they can? Which one would you pick?
Speaker 8: I know what I would pick, and I get that right.
Speaker 8: I don't think any of it was malicious. But we
Speaker 8: live in a situation now where we have a tremendous
Speaker 8: number of these animals and their ability to reproduce means
Speaker 8: that the population is growing all the time. So when
Speaker 8: we talk about managing numbers, it's not enough just to
Speaker 8: remove one or two. We have to try to get
Speaker 8: the whole group, and now here comes the thirty to fifty.
Speaker 8: And I think it's important to recognize I'm not mad
Speaker 8: at the pigs. Nobody's mad at the pigs, but I
Speaker 8: have an exotic invasive that's hurting the environment. And that
Speaker 8: is the thing that I liked your city mouse, country
Speaker 8: mouse analogy. For people that live on the land and
Speaker 8: work on the land, they understand the issue because they
Speaker 8: see it every day. Or people that may be perennial
Speaker 8: urbanites and that's their world and that's fine. They may
Speaker 8: not understand in the same way of watching the land
Speaker 8: be ripped apart and when the next rain comes all
Speaker 8: the soil washes away because of this animal. We're not
Speaker 8: mad at them per se, but they have to go.
Speaker 8: They're damaging the environment and that at the end of
Speaker 8: the day, we as humans rely on that environment to
Speaker 8: survive as well. You're in New England in the northwest
Speaker 8: or northeast, excuse me, when you have black bears. They're
Speaker 8: much bigger.
Speaker 3: Than ours bears.
Speaker 8: Most animals in northern climates colder climates are larger, and
Speaker 8: warmer climates they're smaller, even if they're the same species.
Speaker 8: So our bears in Texas. Though three hundred pounds is
Speaker 8: not an unusual size for a bear. I have pigs
Speaker 8: that are bigger than bears.
Speaker 9: That is, yeah, a crazy sentence.
Speaker 8: To me, and that's why I wanted to get to
Speaker 8: that point of like, forgive all aback info. But if
Speaker 8: you remember nothing else, remember that. And that is the
Speaker 8: resource issue.
Speaker 9: But the way you're describing it, it sounds like it
Speaker 9: is also related to colonialism that goes back hundreds of years,
Speaker 9: Like this problem exists because of colonialism, Which is.
Speaker 8: An interesting tac one thing that I often will bring
Speaker 8: up in these conversations, and it's something that comes up
Speaker 8: a lot in conservation. Is most of the population lives
Speaker 8: in urban centers, and that's very true, been that way
Speaker 8: for better part of one hundred years. It's been that way,
Speaker 8: and the issues that face folks in rural areas are
Speaker 8: often cast aside or maligned or that kind of thing,
Speaker 8: which I think anytime we delegitimize the problem that anybody's facing,
Speaker 8: that is a real issue. This is an issue that
Speaker 8: affects everybody. If you don't think it affects you and
Speaker 8: your geography, just wait because it will.
Speaker 9: Thank you so much for speaking with me about this,
Speaker 9: I really really appreciate it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, my pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to John Thomas Sek keep fighting
Speaker 2: the good fight. And of course the villain was colonialism
Speaker 2: all along. In my estimation, almost everyone is a casualty
Speaker 2: in the story of the hogs, especially the hogs themselves.
Speaker 2: Of course, people and crops should be protected. The fact
Speaker 2: that we can draw a direct line from European colonialism
Speaker 2: to shooting gigantic pigs from hot air balloons is you know,
Speaker 2: we need to keep moving. But you know, the wildest
Speaker 2: thing to me about the Willie McNabb saga is, while
Speaker 2: the subject felt completely out of left field, given that
Speaker 2: Jason Isbel was referencing a larger cultural conversation around mass shootings,
Speaker 2: what he was saying wasn't absurd, And while farrel hog
Speaker 2: discourse continued for truly weeks after this first reply, I
Speaker 2: think the key to why people misunderstood it is contained
Speaker 2: in the very beginning legit question. For rural Americans, most
Speaker 2: of the people I quoted earlier are like me. They
Speaker 2: live in cities, they work in some vaguely entertainment or
Speaker 2: media job, and they like to make little jokes on
Speaker 2: the computer guests that if a Twitter user lived in
Speaker 2: the rural South or ever had the comment about feral
Speaker 2: hoggs might still sound weird, but it wouldn't have struck
Speaker 2: them as the complete topic change that it was made
Speaker 2: out to be by most people. That's because, and on
Speaker 2: Twitter especially, the Internet doesn't make the same space or
Speaker 2: consideration for people who live in rural areas. It reminds
Speaker 2: me of my conversation with Meredith Broussard last week when
Speaker 2: we were talking about the black TikTok strike of who
Speaker 2: is considered to be neutral. They're white, they're young, they're
Speaker 2: a man, and they live in a city. Kew research
Speaker 2: indicates that only about thirteen percent of Twitter's user base
Speaker 2: lives in a rural area, so Willie was quite literally
Speaker 2: surrounded by users who just had no idea what he
Speaker 2: was talking about. This was picked up on at the
Speaker 2: time as well. There's an episode of Reply All about
Speaker 2: it that I remember vividly. Twenty nineteen is also the
Speaker 2: year that Twitter introduced the algorithmically driven topics feature that
Speaker 2: showed users' stories that were trending, meaning that even people
Speaker 2: who didn't follow Jason isbel found out about the farreal
Speaker 2: Hoggs debate. Isbel's skepticism about Willy was further credited by
Speaker 2: the fact that both of these men are Southerners. Isbel
Speaker 2: is from Alabama, and there's no shortage of Farrell Hoggs
Speaker 2: in Alabama, so, like main characters were wont to do
Speaker 2: at this point, the mainstream media swept this story up.
Speaker 2: Explainer pieces were written breaking down the absurdity, and most
Speaker 2: of them ended with a flourish sort of a and
Speaker 2: in case he didn't know, the hogs are real. Not
Speaker 2: only had Willy McNabb achieved main character status, he'd managed
Speaker 2: to start a conversation about a very rural problem on
Speaker 2: an app where rural people were not very present. As
Speaker 2: the days wore on, Jason Isbel got a huge bump
Speaker 2: in social media engagement from bringing the Hogs to the masses.
Speaker 2: The tweet was on August fourth, and by August sixth,
Speaker 2: the Internet was so swept up in the hogs that
Speaker 2: Isabel was featured and interviewed in the La Times on
Speaker 2: August seventh.
Speaker 3: He said, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people
Speaker 3: making hog jokes this week without knowing why. I saw
Speaker 3: quite a few farrel hogjokes are taking my mind off
Speaker 3: all the sadness in the world tweets yesterday. The sadness
Speaker 3: was the whole reason for the hog talk in the
Speaker 3: first place. This is like a TV show on an
Speaker 3: RFD network hog Talk.
Speaker 2: His Bell gets a bump from this, but he was
Speaker 2: already a celebrity. Willy was left to his own devices
Speaker 2: to figure out how to handle the sudden, massive wave
Speaker 2: of attention he was receiving. The people who have lived
Speaker 2: in rural areas replying to him mainly say some version
Speaker 2: of hey man, try an electric fence. Worked great for me.
Speaker 2: But the vast majority of people are making fun of him.
Speaker 2: And meanwhile, Jason isbel is holding his ground in saying
Speaker 2: that the concern Willy brought up in the weirdest way
Speaker 2: possible is a nothing burger. Here's another quote from the
Speaker 2: same La Times interview.
Speaker 3: I've seen a damn hog in my time, and yes
Speaker 3: they're scary, but I'd much rather face a few dozen
Speaker 3: wild hogs than a freaked out dad with an AR fifteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Point taken, but it never quite feels to me like
Speaker 2: is Bell and McNabb are having the same conversation. Isabel
Speaker 2: is railing against American's access to assault weapons. There was
Speaker 2: a ban on assault weapons from nineteen ninety four to
Speaker 2: two thousand and four that lapsed and has yet to unlapse,
Speaker 2: with mass shootings continuing throughout in the meantime. And while
Speaker 2: Willy is inarguably a defender of the Second Amendment, it
Speaker 2: does seem like he mainly.
Speaker 1: Wants to talk about hogs.
Speaker 2: All This happened almost five years ago, and Willy has
Speaker 2: never shied away from the infamy.
Speaker 1: In fact, he's.
Speaker 2: Taken up the cause of raising feral hog awareness, regularly
Speaker 2: retweeting reports about hog attacks and attempts to curb them.
Speaker 2: At the time I'm running this, there is a tusk
Speaker 2: hog emoji next to his name on Twitter, and his bioreads.
Speaker 4: Internet folk hero husband and dead hog emoji American flag emoji.
Speaker 2: I reached out to him on Twitter to see how
Speaker 2: this bizarre incident, this one reply has shaped the last
Speaker 2: half decade of his life.
Speaker 1: Here's our talk and.
Speaker 5: My name's Willie mcnah. I guess infamous from the tweet
Speaker 5: I tweeted out five years ago to Jason Iswell. I
Speaker 5: lived in South Arkansas. I'm a business owner originally from
Speaker 5: North Carolina. I graduated from Western Carolina University, moved here
Speaker 5: soon thereafter. My father had started a company here, and
Speaker 5: so I've been here ever since. So I'm a proud
Speaker 5: resident of Arkansas.
Speaker 2: My first question, because I feel self conscious about it,
Speaker 2: is is it annoying that people are still asking you
Speaker 2: about a reply tweet from five years ago?
Speaker 5: You know, it's I wouldn't say annoying. No, I think
Speaker 5: that initially, you know, it's a little overwhelming the initial
Speaker 5: response that I received, and I was I remember the
Speaker 5: first few days of it that I was very cognizant of. Okay,
Speaker 5: a lot of people are paying attention, and this is
Speaker 5: a public forum, and even one at that time, I
Speaker 5: didn't have a hundred followers. You know, it was a
Speaker 5: very small platform, or what I thought was, and so
Speaker 5: I was just you know, expressing an opinion or a
Speaker 5: thought or something that i'd heard. And so I came
Speaker 5: to realize pretty quick that this was a global forum
Speaker 5: and a platform. And it only took one person like
Speaker 5: Jason to be able to amplify that to see it.
Speaker 5: And I don't think he did it in a I
Speaker 5: don't think he was trying to get me in any way.
Speaker 5: I think he was just replying to somebody. He probably
Speaker 5: thought it was a troll at the time, frankly probably.
Speaker 5: So you know, after five years of it, there's not
Speaker 5: a day that goes by that I don't get some
Speaker 5: interaction or somebody saying something about it or so. No,
Speaker 5: I don't look at it as negative. Actually it's But
Speaker 5: on the other hand, I mean I can't reply to
Speaker 5: every feral hall thing that I see, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 5: it's a lot.
Speaker 2: So okay, Well, now that I cleared the air in
Speaker 2: that sense, tell me a little bit more about yourself.
Speaker 5: I grew up in western North Carolina. It is a
Speaker 5: very rural upbringing, and by the time I was ten
Speaker 5: twelve years old, I could handle a firearm. It wasn't
Speaker 5: unusual for us to hunt for squirrel or rabbits or
Speaker 5: my goodness, deer or grouse or quail or dove. And
Speaker 5: I have touched on this before, but you know, we
Speaker 5: we were not a family of many means. You know.
Speaker 5: It was a rural appalachious so we ate what we hunted,
Speaker 5: and grew a garden and a very rural upbringing. But
Speaker 5: it was a way of life for people like myself,
Speaker 5: especially this was in the seventies and early eighties, you know,
Speaker 5: when I was a kid, and so there was nothing
Speaker 5: unusual about it. You know, at that time, there was
Speaker 5: still my goodness, I had a couple of friends that
Speaker 5: I grew up with that didn't even have indoor plumbing.
Speaker 5: I mean, this was a it's probably hard for people
Speaker 5: to even believe or grasp, but it was real, but
Speaker 5: we didn't. The great equalizer was was that all of
Speaker 5: us were like that. All my friends, all the families
Speaker 5: that I knew, everybody grew up that way. So you know,
Speaker 5: I hunted some when I first came here. I'm not
Speaker 5: not an avid outdoorsman like I was. After having my
Speaker 5: own family. My kids were never They weren't into hunting
Speaker 5: and fishing like I was as a kid. They're more
Speaker 5: into basketball and volleyball and sports and video games. And
Speaker 5: culturally it's changed a lot, especially even in the South,
Speaker 5: from what it was when I was a kid. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it was a very simple upbringing. But I did travel
Speaker 5: some as a kid. My father was a business agent
Speaker 5: for a labor local labor union for years, and so
Speaker 5: I spent a lot of time. Home base was always
Speaker 5: the Carolinas, but I would spend a year in Arizona,
Speaker 5: or I would be in Mexico or Texas or the
Speaker 5: Gulf Coast or Salt Lake City, and we just traveled
Speaker 5: around a lot with mining. And he was working a
Speaker 5: lot of work with the mining companies and refineries and
Speaker 5: chemical plants and things like that. So he worked on
Speaker 5: specialty equipment in these mines and refineries and chemical plants.
Speaker 5: Actually it was specific to environmental control. So he traveled
Speaker 5: a lot, and we traveled a lot with him, And
Speaker 5: so I would be exposed to a lot of different
Speaker 5: parts of the United States and cultures. And I would
Speaker 5: go back to home base in Carolina, and then we
Speaker 5: would travel again. And then when I got to about
Speaker 5: junior high for stability reasons, my mother and him agree,
Speaker 5: but it's not good for the kids. I have two brothers,
Speaker 5: an older brother and a younger brother, and we just
Speaker 5: didn't travel anymore. We stayed finished school in North Carolina
Speaker 5: and then went on to college and found our way
Speaker 5: out here at art So awesome.
Speaker 1: And what sort of business do you run now? If
Speaker 1: you're okay saying.
Speaker 5: No, I don't mind saying it is a construction company
Speaker 5: slash manufacturing company. We do some work in the chemical
Speaker 5: industry and refinery and mining industries. It's what my father did.
Speaker 5: But the largest portion of our work is in the
Speaker 5: healthcare sector for radiation shielding for I think, in practical terms,
Speaker 5: in cts or pet scans or cancer treatment or anything
Speaker 5: like that. We build specialty shielding systems, stores systems, wall systems,
Speaker 5: et cetera. Wow, Me and and my younger brother hold
Speaker 5: a United States patent for some operators for some of
Speaker 5: these doors. And yeah, so we've been successful.
Speaker 1: You Wow, that's incredible. Prior to.
Speaker 2: However you think of it, Feral Hogsgate, what was your
Speaker 2: relationship to the Internet, Like, when did you start using it?
Speaker 1: How did you get into Twitter?
Speaker 5: Sure in nineteen ninety five when my father started this company,
Speaker 5: I remember getting an HTML for idiots and writing code
Speaker 5: to put up our first website. OK, so that was
Speaker 5: my first introduction to it. And I was always adamant
Speaker 5: to try to every two to three years to redo
Speaker 5: our website and try to advertise in that way because
Speaker 5: it's a niche industry and we do work domestically as
Speaker 5: well as internationally. But from the social media aspect, I've
Speaker 5: never had Facebook. I don't have Facebook today. My platform
Speaker 5: I do have a private Instagram account. It's just pictures
Speaker 5: of my kids. That's untill it. But as far as
Speaker 5: me engaging with other people, Twitter or x now as
Speaker 5: the platform I've always used and I enjoy it, and
Speaker 5: it is a you know, it's like the Wild West
Speaker 5: on there now it's not what it was. But any
Speaker 5: any ideas or things that I advocate for, uh, I'm
Speaker 5: I usually post on there, but I am cognizant that
Speaker 5: I don't. I don't wait off into debates that I
Speaker 5: don't have any understanding of or you know, and there's
Speaker 5: so many of these cultural issues that that I just
Speaker 5: try to stay out of. I think by nature, I
Speaker 5: don't look for conflict and I don't look for division,
Speaker 5: and I don't like those type of things, and so
Speaker 5: I intentionally do not. I don't take positions on the
Speaker 5: platform because if I say I'm for this, I lose
Speaker 5: half the audience, and if I say I'm for something else,
Speaker 5: I lose the other half of my audience. You understand
Speaker 5: what I mean. And I'm trying to get people to
Speaker 5: communicate with each other and talk to each other. And
Speaker 5: the difficulty in all of these these issues are in
Speaker 5: the nuances of them. You know, if these were easy,
Speaker 5: if these were indy issues to fix, they would have
Speaker 5: been fixed by now. And so I really like the
Speaker 5: engagement part in getting people to get outside their comfort
Speaker 5: zone and try to understand somebody else's perspective and then
Speaker 5: try to look at those nuances and get resolution to them.
Speaker 5: So I do not I'm not a big advocate for conflict,
Speaker 5: but I do like debate. I like people to actually
Speaker 5: sit and have conversations and try to figure out these problems.
Speaker 5: I think that's the only way we get through.
Speaker 1: Them, depending on the conversation.
Speaker 2: I think this is an interesting example of it where
Speaker 2: I certainly learned a lot from just delving deeper into
Speaker 2: thirty to fifty faral hogs. So you're careful about the
Speaker 2: kinds of conversations you started on Twitter. Why was this
Speaker 2: specific tweet something that you thought I have to reply?
Speaker 5: Well, it's look, it's a tough it's a tough issue,
Speaker 5: and I think Jason was coming from a very intellectually
Speaker 5: honest place. And for me, when I believe that people
Speaker 5: are not being surrogates necessarily for a cause, but they're
Speaker 5: they're being intellectually honest, like they believe these things need
Speaker 5: to from their perspective, these things need to change, and
Speaker 5: there needs to be there's legitimate ways we can do it.
Speaker 5: Because of the personal experience that I had on this issue,
Speaker 5: and it was you know, I've told the story a
Speaker 5: lot of times, but it was very real. It happened,
Speaker 5: and my kids were very small at the time, and
Speaker 5: once it happened to me, and I started reaching out
Speaker 5: to people trying to understand the wise and realizing how
Speaker 5: complex it was, but on a very local, small level
Speaker 5: for an individual that you know, that's protecting his house
Speaker 5: or as kids, my ability to have the firearm to
Speaker 5: go out in no easier way of saying, is shooting
Speaker 5: these pigs to get them out of my yard? It
Speaker 5: seemed like it always it has always seemed to me
Speaker 5: that it was a fair question. It was a fair
Speaker 5: debate to have. And I think it's the disconnect between
Speaker 5: urban and rural areas in the country that someone living
Speaker 5: in an urban atmosphere they simply can't comprehend it, they
Speaker 5: don't know, and living in a rural area, you know,
Speaker 5: I've got ten acres or whatever it is, but I've
Speaker 5: got a two acre yard in the yard itself is huge.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm not going to put a gate up
Speaker 5: or a fence up for my kids to play in
Speaker 5: the yard. I don't have neighbors. I mean I can
Speaker 5: look in any direction and I don't see any houses.
Speaker 5: And so my kids are just being kids playing in
Speaker 5: the yard and so. But also the hogs feel like
Speaker 5: they've got a right to come in the yard too,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. And know it's a long
Speaker 5: answer to a short question, but I just felt there
Speaker 5: was a legitimacy to it. I mean, there is this
Speaker 5: is a two and a half billion dollars worth of
Speaker 5: damage annually in the country, Arkansas spending over or has
Speaker 5: over forty million dollars worth of damage to crops here.
Speaker 5: And I remember it was three months after it was
Speaker 5: about three months after the tweet, Arkansas got almost three
Speaker 5: and a half million dollars in federal.
Speaker 1: Funding strictly to repair hog damage.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, they were. There was the Arkansas Feral hal
Speaker 5: Eradication Passports had been established.
Speaker 1: Well what a title.
Speaker 5: It's something that's a mouthful. Yeah, and so that funding
Speaker 5: came in. Now, I can't specifically say that it was
Speaker 5: because of the tweet, but I've got to believe that
Speaker 5: you know, all things point to the attention that was
Speaker 5: on that issue at that time, and the funding came in,
Speaker 5: and there's been additional funding since. I think Senator to
Speaker 5: Bozeman has been able to get some additional funding. But
Speaker 5: it's just a it's a huge issue. There's no easy
Speaker 5: answers to it. But I do believe the tweet probably
Speaker 5: led to some of that funding coming in, so that's
Speaker 5: a positive to it.
Speaker 2: I certainly didn't know what a huge issue this was
Speaker 2: really until I saw your tweet and then saw all
Speaker 2: the memes about the tweet, and then read the explainers
Speaker 2: about the tweeting, you know, sort of that classic internet cycle.
Speaker 2: But I wanted to go back because again I'm coming
Speaker 2: into this conversation in a pretty naive way.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to shy away from that.
Speaker 2: When you were talking with your community, what were the
Speaker 2: potential solutions to take care of it?
Speaker 1: Was it just the gun?
Speaker 5: Was it?
Speaker 1: Were there other options? How? Yeah, walk me through that.
Speaker 5: You know, I mentioned earlier, I grew up in North
Speaker 5: Carolina and I hunted a lot deer and pheasants or grouse,
Speaker 5: et cetera. But hall counting was not really a big
Speaker 5: thing there. When I was growing up. And so when
Speaker 5: I moved here, I lived in town for six or
Speaker 5: seven years, and then I moved. I moved out of
Speaker 5: town and got a bigger home, more land and more
Speaker 5: conducive to the way I grew up. And i'd been
Speaker 5: out there several years, four or five, six years, and
Speaker 5: my kids were small, and you know, it's Arkansas. You
Speaker 5: hear about hogs the whole time. You hear it's the
Speaker 5: mascot for the university. So you hear about hogs, and
Speaker 5: you hear about people killing them. But I'd never actually
Speaker 5: hunted hogs. I'd never never really been around them, and
Speaker 5: so when my kids were small was my introduction. All
Speaker 5: these pigs and hogs all over my yard, and so I,
Speaker 5: you know, I shot three of them and then and
Speaker 5: then they came back a few more times. And when
Speaker 5: I started speaking to my neighbors, that was their Their
Speaker 5: answer was that, you know, you've just got to get
Speaker 5: a gun, and a lot of them. I had the
Speaker 5: the you know, the ars and aks or whatever type
Speaker 5: of assault style weapons they had, and they were using
Speaker 5: them to eradicate hogs or get them off their their lands.
Speaker 5: And timber industry is really big here in South Arkansas
Speaker 5: large tracts of land as well as soy and you
Speaker 5: know crops. You know, it'll destroy the crops, and it'll
Speaker 5: destroy the timberland, especially when they go in and don't
Speaker 5: have a clear cut and they'll put seedlings out. So
Speaker 5: there's real problems with it. And these are not large
Speaker 5: corporate farming. It's a small farming, you know, this individuals
Speaker 5: and family farms. And so their answer was to go
Speaker 5: out and to just shoot these hogs. You know, I
Speaker 5: know that in Texas they're looking at there's like a
Speaker 5: strict nine or something like that. They're they're poisoning the
Speaker 5: hogs and those type of methods. That was never no
Speaker 5: one ever mentioned anything to me like that. It was
Speaker 5: always just you know, you get a gun, you go out,
Speaker 5: you shoot them. That's what you do. I don't want
Speaker 5: to get sidetracked here, but I remember a specific argument
Speaker 5: that people would say is that, you know, every day,
Speaker 5: Willy's out there fighting hogs in his yard and there's
Speaker 5: just backs of them running over his yard. And that's
Speaker 5: not really the way it works. You know, they would
Speaker 5: show up and I wouldn't see them for months, and
Speaker 5: then they would come back, or it might be a
Speaker 5: year or two and they come and then there was
Speaker 5: a lot of environmental factors that could drive them up.
Speaker 5: There could be it could be a rainy season that
Speaker 5: would drive them out of the bottoms. You know, this
Speaker 5: is kind of swamp land. I never heard of any
Speaker 5: other solutions other than just.
Speaker 1: Shooting Jason as Bell.
Speaker 2: It seems like the undercurrent of what he's saying is
Speaker 2: in relation to recent mass shootings that took place. You
Speaker 2: bring up, well, here is a use for a rifle,
Speaker 2: that is, you know, to protect my children, and then
Speaker 2: the tweet takes off. So the two of you are
Speaker 2: having a ridiculously complicated conversation.
Speaker 1: When the tweet takes off.
Speaker 2: What uh what is the initial reaction? As you remember,
Speaker 2: how do you choose who to talk to and who
Speaker 2: to kind of be like?
Speaker 5: I was very careful and what I said once I
Speaker 5: realized the magnitude of it and I had I remember
Speaker 5: it was on a Sunday that I tweeted that. By Tuesday,
Speaker 5: I came into the office and I had calls from
Speaker 5: Sky News and do seeing in all these major your
Speaker 5: media publications that were listening some type of response from me,
Speaker 5: and quite frankly, my major in college is communications, So
Speaker 5: I did a little studying in journalism, and I've always
Speaker 5: had such an admiration for what you guys do. But
Speaker 5: I felt that there was there was an agenda from
Speaker 5: a lot of them, and I didn't want to be
Speaker 5: part of that. If I was going to speak to
Speaker 5: the media, I wanted people that I felt would give
Speaker 5: me a fair a fair shake and what I was
Speaker 5: trying to say, because they didn't understand the situation. And
Speaker 5: I wasn't interested in a corporate media. I like independent media.
Speaker 5: I think that you guys come from an intellectually honest
Speaker 5: place and you're just trying to get this story out.
Speaker 5: So I was intentional in that. Uh, and I'll give
Speaker 5: you I'll give you a little something to me that
Speaker 5: I haven't told anybody else. I've referenced since a couple
Speaker 5: of times in tweets subsequently. You know, I in those
Speaker 5: first few days, I was I was really worried because
Speaker 5: I was worried, I was worried about I was worried
Speaker 5: about my family's safety because people were taking Google Earth
Speaker 5: pictures of my home and saying, you can put a
Speaker 5: fence right here, you can put a gate right here.
Speaker 5: They were driving by my house and taking pictures of
Speaker 5: my driveway. They called Health and Human Services and said
Speaker 5: I should have my kids taken away from me. I mean,
Speaker 5: just some of the craziest stuff. And I remember my
Speaker 5: profile picture at the time on my Twitter feed was
Speaker 5: me and my daughter. We had been on vacation in
Speaker 5: San Francisco, my family had and it was just an
Speaker 5: innocent picture. But somebody had sent me some links that
Speaker 5: they were taking my daughter's picture in mine and selling
Speaker 5: cups and t shirts on Etsy and all these places.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: I had to hire an attorney. I mean, I spent
Speaker 5: ten thousand dollars in legal fees.
Speaker 1: What you had to break that down for me?
Speaker 5: Sure, I don't mind. So they had to tweet with
Speaker 5: a picture of me and my daughter and they were
Speaker 5: selling it on these platforms, and I said I had
Speaker 5: to hire. I had two attorneys. I had one that
Speaker 5: was cease and assist letters. This was all in the
Speaker 5: first couple of weeks to quit selling the image or not.
Speaker 5: And then I went to a copyright trademark lawyer said, okay,
Speaker 5: let's try to copyright this phrase thirty to fifty parrel
Speaker 5: hogs so people can't use it. To make money off of.
Speaker 5: And I learned pretty quick within a few weeks, Okay,
Speaker 5: I can't control this. There's just no way. I can't
Speaker 5: control this. I can't control any of this. And so
Speaker 5: I remember, I remember in the first few days, Mad,
Speaker 5: It's like, you ought to make some merchandise. I'm like,
Speaker 5: I'm not making merchandise off this. And then after three weeks,
Speaker 5: I'm like, okay, i spent ten grand in legal fees here,
Speaker 5: I've got to recoup some of it. And what a
Speaker 5: horrible idea that was because the T shirt or a bomb,
Speaker 5: they didn't do anything. And so I've got boxes full
Speaker 5: of T shirts no way, well yeah, that I never
Speaker 5: sold and it was strictly to try to help pay
Speaker 5: for my legal expenses. So I spent ten thousand in
Speaker 5: legal foods. House was being surveilled by people coming up
Speaker 5: and taking pictures of my driveway. I was getting called
Speaker 5: in for child and danger. Man. I mean, the craziest
Speaker 5: things those first few weeks. For they were a little
Speaker 5: they were a little crazy.
Speaker 2: They really were just see hearing the particulars of what
Speaker 2: it's like to not even just like mentally have to
Speaker 2: process that volume of attention, especially when most people who
Speaker 2: are replying don't know what you're talking about, and then
Speaker 2: to have to take those sorts of measures, that is wild.
Speaker 2: So how did your family and just your community in
Speaker 2: general react to you becoming feral hogs guy overnight? Because
Speaker 2: they certainly knew about the hogs.
Speaker 5: Well locally, everybody here thought it was hilarious. They thought
Speaker 5: the whole thing was just ludicrous and hilarious because you know,
Speaker 5: this is normal way alive for people here. You know
Speaker 5: that I wasn't the only person dealing with hogs because
Speaker 5: I wasn't not even an avid outdoorsement and people are
Speaker 5: like you, you're the Faral Hall guy. You don't even
Speaker 5: really hunt. Everybody else are these hunters that definitely people
Speaker 5: more equipped to have this debate. You know, my I
Speaker 5: remember my wife, It's like, I'm not talking to anybody.
Speaker 5: This is ridiculous. I'm not speaking to anybody about this.
Speaker 5: She thought the whole thing was crazy. My kids they
Speaker 5: got I think they probably got a little popularity because
Speaker 5: their dad was the Faral Hall guy, so they thought
Speaker 5: it was hilarious, you know, but it was stressful. I mean,
Speaker 5: the truth of it is, if I would have been
Speaker 5: twenty years younger it would have. You know, I don't
Speaker 5: know how anyone I remember having that conversation with my attorney.
Speaker 5: I don't know how anyone fifteen to thirty years of
Speaker 5: age could deal with that type of attention. You know,
Speaker 5: you see people having meltdowns that are these public figures.
Speaker 5: My goodness, no wonder. I mean, this is just a
Speaker 5: very small thing that I dealt with in the age
Speaker 5: I was. It was hard, especially the first few weeks
Speaker 5: of it. So, yeah, that was difficult. As far as
Speaker 5: the positive, I think that there was at the root
Speaker 5: of it is a legitimate problem, and I think the
Speaker 5: monies that been allocated for that that there's legitimacy to it.
Speaker 5: And I remember after I put out my statement, like
Speaker 5: a week into it, the amount of it's like people
Speaker 5: switched one eighty. I remember Jason was interacting with like
Speaker 5: Kevin Bacon or something on a tweet and they were
Speaker 5: laughing about it, and I thought, you know, this is
Speaker 5: kind of crazy. Yea even has an opinion on something
Speaker 5: like this, right, and I put it. But when I
Speaker 5: put out that statement, it's like public sentiment changed, and
Speaker 5: quite frankly, Jason was he could have been a lot
Speaker 5: har sure, and a lot. He was kind to me.
Speaker 5: He was just you know, I've never met him, I've
Speaker 5: never spoke to him personally. We have communicated over Twitter,
Speaker 5: but he was genuinely kind to me. He could have
Speaker 5: been a lot different type of person, and I think
Speaker 5: that speaks to who he is and what he believes
Speaker 5: in and what he advocates for. I'm still just as
Speaker 5: big a fan of his as I ever was.
Speaker 1: You were you a fan of his beforehand?
Speaker 5: Oh? A massive fan, But you know, it was weird.
Speaker 5: I kind of backed into his music. He had been
Speaker 5: around for a while. I didn't really follow him when
Speaker 5: he was Drive by Truckers. Then he put out a
Speaker 5: couple of albums and Southeastern had already kind of blown
Speaker 5: up and he was coming out with something more than
Speaker 5: something more than pre is at the album, Yeah, that's
Speaker 5: the one that I really started paying attention. And then
Speaker 5: I went back and discovered Southeastern and I saw him
Speaker 5: on that tour last ball with my daughter, which was
Speaker 5: a good Yeah. I took her, Yeah, we got I
Speaker 5: got front row seeds. We went down to Streetport and
Speaker 5: saw him at the Auditorium down there and it was
Speaker 5: a fantastic show.
Speaker 1: And did he know you were there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he tweeted something about it. He tweeted something about it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And like I said, he's been nothing but kind of
Speaker 5: And those first few days, once he realized that I
Speaker 5: was a sincere person and not some troll, he was,
Speaker 5: you know, he was very nice to me and and
Speaker 5: I'm I'm still a huge Jason is many.
Speaker 2: My last question now is has your relationship changed to
Speaker 2: the Internet since this incident.
Speaker 5: I'm very careful to what I say. If I'm advocating
Speaker 5: for something specifically, I'm you know that there are a
Speaker 5: few causes that I openly advocate for and I speak to.
Speaker 5: But I like listening, you know. I spend a lot
Speaker 5: of time on Twitter, you know, that's where I get
Speaker 5: a lot of my news from. I've listened to a
Speaker 5: lot of podcasts. I don't think there's any issue that
Speaker 5: it's any that's confronting the American people right now that
Speaker 5: if we would just just step back to the half
Speaker 5: step and listen to each other. I really don't think
Speaker 5: we're that far apart on our things. I think it's
Speaker 5: in the nuances of it, and it requires some some
Speaker 5: long form conversations, some true discussion of the issues I
Speaker 5: still believe that what is it's the wild West out there,
Speaker 5: But there's people there that will have honest, intellectual conversations
Speaker 5: with you, and I've made some friends on there. You know.
Speaker 5: I'm just I'm probably more careful than what I say
Speaker 5: and just try to listen a little bit more. And
Speaker 5: I think twice about it. I remember somebody had quoted,
Speaker 5: if you're going to take a real position on something,
Speaker 5: you better believe in it because you never know, you
Speaker 5: never know how it may blow up. And it's truly
Speaker 5: a public forum out there. So I don't know if
Speaker 5: that answers the question, but.
Speaker 1: It absolutely does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a story about the different ways that
Speaker 2: Americans view guns.
Speaker 1: It's a story about.
Speaker 2: Rural and urban online audiences trying to understand the same interaction.
Speaker 2: And to me, it's ultimately like thirty to fifty is
Speaker 2: a very funny amount of specific for a range of hogs.
Speaker 2: Where does thirty for fifty come from? Uh?
Speaker 5: You know the uh I've spoken about that a couple
Speaker 5: of times. The numbers were literally just pulled out of
Speaker 5: the air. You know, there was a lot of hogs.
Speaker 5: I don't know it was, you know, I'd said that
Speaker 5: to DJ it could have been twenty to twenty five.
Speaker 5: You know, it was just a number. It was a
Speaker 5: large number of hauls. I was trying to convey. It
Speaker 5: was a large number of hogs. They were in my yard.
Speaker 5: I had to get him out of their fast. There
Speaker 5: was literally no more thought put into it than that
Speaker 5: I've learned since that I didn't know it then that
Speaker 5: you know, a large pack of hogs is called a sounder,
Speaker 5: and a sounder can be thirty hogs. Is a large sounder,
Speaker 5: a large group of hogs. And you know when when
Speaker 5: your kids are out in your yard playing and a
Speaker 5: bunch of them out is out there, you don't know
Speaker 5: how many. You just know your whole car yards covered
Speaker 5: with fogs, and so it's just a bunch, you know,
Speaker 5: it's just a lot. I could have said there was
Speaker 5: a lot of hogs.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel like if you had just said a
Speaker 2: lot of hogs, we would not be sitting here. And
Speaker 2: it was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: WILLI thank you so much to Willy for his time
Speaker 2: and just for being such a kind person and a
Speaker 2: good sport about faral hogs over the years. He was
Speaker 2: so so kind to me and I really really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, Willy, you can still catch.
Speaker 1: Him on Twitter today.
Speaker 2: And when we come back, I try to slide that
Speaker 2: final piece of the piggy puzzle into place. Welcome back
Speaker 2: to sixteenth minute. When I was a kid, my mom
Speaker 2: would not let me even look at a Halo game
Speaker 2: and would constantly repeat that guns are for squirting, not hurting.
Speaker 2: And today we are talking about the legend of thirty
Speaker 2: to fifty feral hogs that run into my yard within
Speaker 2: three to five minutes while my small kids play. I
Speaker 2: put a pin in it at the top of the episode.
Speaker 2: But I want to get back into the reason that
Speaker 2: this conversation had happened in the first place, when two
Speaker 2: mass shootings happened in the space of the same day
Speaker 2: in the US. It's something I haven't seen discussed as
Speaker 2: much in the scope of this story, that this moment
Speaker 2: of the Internet coming together to make hog jokes was
Speaker 2: prompted by something really awful.
Speaker 1: So before we get to our.
Speaker 2: Last interview today, here's the thing. I don't have an
Speaker 2: expert opinion on gun control. I only have my opinion,
Speaker 2: and it's that I hate guns, and I struggle to
Speaker 2: hear out defenses of them, even in cases where that
Speaker 2: defense makes some sense. And that opinion is built on
Speaker 2: the way anyone built opinions. It's informed by how I
Speaker 2: grew up, where I live now, and what my personal
Speaker 2: experiences are. I grew up in a small city and
Speaker 2: not really around gun owners. I live in a city
Speaker 2: now and don't know many gun owners now, and my
Speaker 2: personal experience with a school shooting where there were thankfully
Speaker 2: no fatalities. Any anxiety that I have for a family
Speaker 2: that mainly consists of teachers who have to conduct these terrifying,
Speaker 2: tedious and necessary drills with their students more or less
Speaker 2: solidifies that opinion. I was talking about this with my
Speaker 2: brother last night. He is a friend who grew up
Speaker 2: in a rural area, is queer, and felt necessary to
Speaker 2: have a gun because outside of things like the hogs.
Speaker 2: Their perspective is that the people who pose an active
Speaker 2: threat to them in their community certainly have guns, and
Speaker 2: they want to be able to defend themselves in their
Speaker 2: community should anything happen. And I know that hobbyists are
Speaker 2: an argument for guns, that argument was kind of a
Speaker 2: non starter for us as well.
Speaker 1: A hobby is totally.
Speaker 2: Fine, but leave your gun at the range, but a
Speaker 2: horse girl leaves her horse.
Speaker 1: In the stable.
Speaker 2: A hobbyist shouldn't need a gun in their house anymore
Speaker 2: than a horse girl needs a horse in her bathroom.
Speaker 2: You don't want the wrong person with a loaded gun
Speaker 2: or a temperamental horse within arm's reach. That's my opinion,
Speaker 2: and I'll admit it lacks nuance. I've never had a
Speaker 2: reason to own a gun, and outside of being just
Speaker 2: really fucking juice after seeing Atomic Blonde.
Speaker 1: I hope I never have reason too.
Speaker 2: It's absurdly frustrating to me how easy it is to
Speaker 2: acquire an ar weapon in most places in the United States,
Speaker 2: and the consequences are what we saw in Dayton and
Speaker 2: San Antonio and many times since. And so, while this
Speaker 2: is pretty immovably how I feel, talking to today's guests
Speaker 2: pulled me out of the bubble of my own experience
Speaker 2: a little bit. With shootings like these, the gun isn't
Speaker 2: the only problem. There's a massive need to make some
Speaker 2: movement on how people are radicalized to do things like this,
Speaker 2: But I don't see how making it way more difficult
Speaker 2: for guns to fall into these hands isn't a place
Speaker 2: to start.
Speaker 1: A lot of.
Speaker 2: Arguments I've heard for guns rarely acknowledge or account for
Speaker 2: the people who are most likely to be harmed by them,
Speaker 2: disproportionately people of color, specifically unarmed black Americans. And while
Speaker 2: all of this is true, do I have an answer
Speaker 2: of how to defend one's self from the colonizer's hogs?
Speaker 1: No, I don't.
Speaker 2: I wanted to talk to someone who felt more like
Speaker 2: Willie McNabb than about me on gun ownership because it's
Speaker 2: a perspective that I I genuinely struggle with, especially with
Speaker 2: people who have politics that are very similar to mine.
Speaker 2: And the perfect person to speak to was Carl Cassarta,
Speaker 2: whose YouTube channel in Range TV is described as the
Speaker 2: channel where firearms, culture, history, and human rights meet. He's
Speaker 2: a friend of the producers of this show, Sophie and Robert,
Speaker 2: and he was so kind to talk to me for
Speaker 2: this episode.
Speaker 1: Here's our talk.
Speaker 10: So, Hi, I'm Carl Casarta, and I am the creator
Speaker 10: and producer of in range TV, which is a ostensibly
Speaker 10: of firearms content creation YouTube channel, but really it's extended
Speaker 10: beyond that. It's much more about We do a lot
Speaker 10: to do with firearms, but I also do a lot
Speaker 10: of content about history, civil rights, essentially the intersectionality of
Speaker 10: how firearms have really shaped society.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so.
Speaker 2: Much for being here to talk about the pressing issue
Speaker 2: of thirty to fifty faral hogs five years ago. So
Speaker 2: Jason DISWELLI yes, says, if you're on here arguing the
Speaker 2: definition of assault weapon today, you are part of the problem.
Speaker 2: You know it in aalt weapon is and you know
Speaker 2: you don't need one. What's your take on that?
Speaker 10: Well, the thing about that term assault weapon is actually
Speaker 10: a politically charged term or essentially like legislative attempts to
Speaker 10: restrict firearms, right, it's whether you agree or disagree that
Speaker 10: term assault weapon is not actually something that's ever used
Speaker 10: in any firearms realities, Like there is the term assault rifle.
Speaker 10: And oddly, of course, as all things seemed too sadly
Speaker 10: goes all the way back to Hitler when he called
Speaker 10: when he coined the gum the storm gaverra, which was
Speaker 10: the storm rifle, which is where assault rifle comes from.
Speaker 10: So what that did is that codified a type of
Speaker 10: firearm which was an intermediate cartridge, meaning something that wasn't
Speaker 10: a full size cartridge, but not a pistol cartridge, something
Speaker 10: between the two that had a box fed magazine, meaning
Speaker 10: a detachable magazine usually of thirty round capacity that could
Speaker 10: fire single shot or fully automatic. And that is actual, technically,
Speaker 10: the firearms definition of what an assault rifle is. But
Speaker 10: in the nineties and when we saw a gun control
Speaker 10: on the rise, this term assault weapon was used by
Speaker 10: politicians and it was vague and they never could really
Speaker 10: define it because they were trying to say things like
Speaker 10: the shoulder thing that goes up. I'm not kidding that
Speaker 10: one politician said that a shroud.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 10: They had all these ideas of what they were just
Speaker 10: trying to like codify this phrase assault weapon, but there
Speaker 10: is no such actual thing technically, and so so it's
Speaker 10: a political term.
Speaker 2: Actually, because I know the cultural moment that Jason as
Speaker 2: Bell's responding to here, but I can't tell if he
Speaker 2: is responding to a specific person making a semantic argument
Speaker 2: or what.
Speaker 10: First of all, I want, I want I hope the audience,
Speaker 10: at least some of the audience is familiar with my
Speaker 10: work and they'll know that I'm not making light of
Speaker 10: any of these horrific events. This is a terrible thing,
Speaker 10: but we're not directly talking about it. We're talking about
Speaker 10: this phrase assault weapon, and it came about as far
Speaker 10: as I know, the real phraseology came about in the
Speaker 10: early nineties, which is what ultimately turned into the nineteen
Speaker 10: ninety for Assault Weapons Bill, which was a restriction on
Speaker 10: the ownership of a large swath of firearms that were
Speaker 10: defined initially by name, but then they realized they couldn't
Speaker 10: define them by name because there was too many variants
Speaker 10: in like manufacturers, So then they tried to define them
Speaker 10: by features like a pistol grip, or a shroud, or
Speaker 10: a flash hier or a bayonet lug. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 10: One of the defining characteristics of an assault weapon legally speaking,
Speaker 10: has frequently been a bayonet lug. And so this is
Speaker 10: where it starts to get a little absurd, because we
Speaker 10: don't hear about a lot of drive by bayonettings, right like,
Speaker 10: so it became almost esthetic and not really functionally in practice.
Speaker 10: And that's where the challenge is because and this is
Speaker 10: where you hear like the trope from gun people like, well,
Speaker 10: an assault weapon is a weapon, is a weapon. It's
Speaker 10: how you use it to determine difference assault weapon And
Speaker 10: you know that's not totally incorrect, but at the same time,
Speaker 10: when someone says a soult weapon because of the politics
Speaker 10: behind it, you know what they mean, right. It's kind
Speaker 10: of like, you know, you can't define porn, but you
Speaker 10: know when you see it kind of thing. That's what
Speaker 10: they were trying to do with the law, and they
Speaker 10: could never really pull it off because it's really it's
Speaker 10: kind of a morpheus and hard to hold on.
Speaker 9: To sounds so much like they're talking about two very
Speaker 9: different things?
Speaker 2: Are they talking about two very different things? Where is
Speaker 2: the disconnect happening here outside of this being a rural
Speaker 2: issue that a lot of city people would not be
Speaker 2: aware exists.
Speaker 10: Wherever anyone's falls on the topic of firearms and firearms
Speaker 10: ownership in this country, This is a really good moment
Speaker 10: to kind of like really distinctively show the very different
Speaker 10: worldview that are existing in this space. Right, So I
Speaker 10: know what his original post mean, right, So, like he's
Speaker 10: using a political term of assault weapon, but I also
Speaker 10: understand the context of why this person is saying this.
Speaker 10: They're talking about a weapon that is probably thirty round
Speaker 10: capacity semi automatic, can fire many rounds, you know quickly,
Speaker 10: or to be honest with you, a lot of people
Speaker 10: that are not familiar with firearms. Just assume these things
Speaker 10: are fully automatic machine guns and they're not. Like there's
Speaker 10: such a broken conversation being had that neither side can
Speaker 10: really speak the same language. And part of that is
Speaker 10: one side's defensive and doesn't want to lose the thing
Speaker 10: that's important to them. In some ways may be important
Speaker 10: only psychologically, and in some ways may be important actually
Speaker 10: in reality when you live in a rural life, because
Speaker 10: I do live a rural existence for most of my existence.
Speaker 10: The truth is in those spaces like where I'm at,
Speaker 10: whether or not you like police or not calling them,
Speaker 10: is the chances are you're going to have a thirty
Speaker 10: minute to one hour response time. And so that's just
Speaker 10: how it works. And so there is a reality there
Speaker 10: that in a world filled with items like this, there
Speaker 10: is a chance that that item could very well be
Speaker 10: the thing that saves your life, like maybe not against
Speaker 10: fifty hogs, but it could be something else like I
Speaker 10: means or even five or whatever. But the thing is
Speaker 10: that's interesting about this is that, let's be realistic. When
Speaker 10: people say assault weapon, they almost always now think of
Speaker 10: an AR fifteen, right, And so here's the thing that's
Speaker 10: so interesting about this. Yes, an AR fifteen does hold
Speaker 10: thirty rounds or even sixty rounds. It can fire very quickly,
Speaker 10: but you know what else it can do. It's actually
Speaker 10: very capable for someone who doesn't have the opportunity to
Speaker 10: train a lot, or have like lots of upper body strength,
Speaker 10: or isn't necessarily proficient to actually be capable to use.
Speaker 10: So there's actually a weird sense of ableism in this
Speaker 10: sometimes because there are places I believe in spaces in
Speaker 10: this world where people do need well. I do believe
Speaker 10: in the right assault defense across the board, but there
Speaker 10: are places where that weapon may very well be the
Speaker 10: right choice because the person who needs to use it
Speaker 10: really couldn't handle something else. So that's never talked about,
Speaker 10: and it's like it's kind of an interesting thing. But
Speaker 10: when you live in the city, you of course are
Speaker 10: in a place where ostensibly, with the pushup a button
Speaker 10: on your phone, hopefully actual help is there to be had,
Speaker 10: or you're amongst other people, or there aren't feral hogs
Speaker 10: rolling in the streets of Times Square, I assume, And
Speaker 10: so this worldview when you live in a rural place,
Speaker 10: it's almost like they're on different We're in the same country,
Speaker 10: but we're on different planets. One of the interesting things
Speaker 10: about social media is that it's caused everyone like we
Speaker 10: used to have like our circles we existed in, like
Speaker 10: these people hung out over there and those people hung
Speaker 10: over there, and sometimes they would talk at the local
Speaker 10: supermarket or whatever, the coffee shop, but it was somewhat
Speaker 10: cursory interaction. But social media has forced us all into
Speaker 10: one giant communal living space. But without context, these worldviews
Speaker 10: really very foreign to each other. That person living with
Speaker 10: those quite possibly thirty hogs in the yard can't fathom
Speaker 10: walking down in New York City or New Orleans. That's
Speaker 10: like it is a different planet, and someone from one
Speaker 10: of those places can't fathom a bunch of wild creatures
Speaker 10: in the yard that actually could legitimately kill them. Like
Speaker 10: those are very.
Speaker 2: Such different world I am very possibly ask you to
Speaker 2: solve the entire world for me right now. But is
Speaker 2: there in this conversation that they're having, is there a
Speaker 2: solution Where Jason isbel is asking essentially how can we
Speaker 2: get mass shootings to stop? And William mcnabbus asking, how
Speaker 2: can I protect my children from the hot.
Speaker 10: Well you're going to hear the opinion of a person
Speaker 10: that's a big proponent of of of self defense rights,
Speaker 10: So you're gonna get my bias there is. Everyone's got
Speaker 10: to have a line somewhere, right, So I don't know
Speaker 10: that you should. I don'tlieve you should walk down to
Speaker 10: the street and be able to buy an RPG like
Speaker 10: this is a problem, right, Okay, And maybe some people's
Speaker 10: line is an AAR fifteen. But the reality is anyone
Speaker 10: using any of these things for the things they're doing
Speaker 10: is to me, the symptom of a much deeper cultural
Speaker 10: problem isn't being discussed. Why is this happening? And when
Speaker 10: it comes historically? Because you said you watch some of
Speaker 10: my history work. The reality is from a firearms perspective,
Speaker 10: this is a topic that's been really dwelling on me
Speaker 10: for a while. Technologically speaking, we didn't have AR fifteens
Speaker 10: in like eighteen eighty, but the types of firearms that
Speaker 10: existed in eighteen eighty we're capable of doing almost the
Speaker 10: same sort of horrific things you can do now with
Speaker 10: an AR fifteen. It almost it's not trying to be
Speaker 10: a cockyl, but something happened somewhere where these things which
Speaker 10: are prolific in this country and always have been, started
Speaker 10: taking this even darker turn. And that darker turn, to
Speaker 10: me is where we should be focusing, is why is
Speaker 10: this happening? And what is it we're doing in our
Speaker 10: society that's making everybody in all directions feeling I don'tan
Speaker 10: it sounds so dark, but like America is feeling like
Speaker 10: a dark place, and there's reasons, and I think it's
Speaker 10: across the spectrum, right. It's like almost anyone you talk
Speaker 10: to isn't happy with how it is, and there's a reason.
Speaker 10: Something's wrong, something's deeply wrong. And you hear things like capitalism,
Speaker 10: which is true for sure, but the social ills that
Speaker 10: we are built in and aren't addressing are manifesting in
Speaker 10: so many ways beyond just isn't the right word, because
Speaker 10: you can't see just a mass shooting, because these are lives.
Speaker 10: But that is one example of many manifestations of I'm
Speaker 10: going to go ahead and say a diseased society.
Speaker 5: To be blah.
Speaker 2: You know, both people are essentially talking about being failed
Speaker 2: in various ways by their government. The conversation doesn't quite connect,
Speaker 2: and I don't know, I mean, just based off of
Speaker 2: what you were just saying it feels very much like
Speaker 2: contributing to this disease while also being a place that
Speaker 2: I love, a place where I've found a lot of
Speaker 2: dear friends is the Internet.
Speaker 10: And I'm not trying to take us off topic because
Speaker 10: I know we're talking about the wild hogs issue versus
Speaker 10: assault weapons, but like, hopefully you brought some context of
Speaker 10: where that phrase comes from. And the reality of the
Speaker 10: cultural divide that exists in this country is diverse. And
Speaker 10: here we are all in one space using American style English,
Speaker 10: but we're not speaking the same language.
Speaker 5: We just aren't.
Speaker 10: And I how to get people to get on a
Speaker 10: better page is a hard call. I don't know, but
Speaker 10: like what I do in my opinion, what I do know,
Speaker 10: or believe at least, is that the best answer ever
Speaker 10: is education, and I'm not sure how to do that
Speaker 10: when the algorithm just wants to make it a war.
Speaker 10: And that's what this is, why this is kind of
Speaker 10: like that, right, because this guy posts the thing and
Speaker 10: he's his heart's on the right place. We should never
Speaker 10: have another matterting again. And the other guy's like, well,
Speaker 10: what do I do about these things in my yard
Speaker 10: that are trying to kill my kids, and they're both.
Speaker 10: They're not neither ones wrong right.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much to Carl Casarta. You can follow his work.
Speaker 2: I would particularly recommend the historical stuff over on in
Speaker 2: Range TV linked in the description of this episode.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe there is a version of the world where most
Speaker 2: people could handle a weapon as dangerous and volatile as
Speaker 2: an AR fifteen, but I don't think we're living in
Speaker 2: that world. The issues that the hog tweet prompted, those
Speaker 2: of mass shootings and gun violence, and that of a
Speaker 2: hostile and violent species hell bent on killing children are
Speaker 2: more similar than I realized. They're both invasive species, and
Speaker 2: outside of supporting people who are trying to prevent these horrors,
Speaker 2: I'm not the person that has the solution. I don't
Speaker 2: even have a driver's license. But what I do want
Speaker 2: to do here is include the voice of someone who
Speaker 2: is doing their level best to prevent further gun violence
Speaker 2: in the US in a genuine way, because the loss
Speaker 2: that's caused by US policies on guns is huge. One
Speaker 2: story that really stuck with me in the researching for
Speaker 2: this episode is an ongoing effort organized by a man
Speaker 2: named Dion Green, the son of a victim from the
Speaker 2: Dayton mass shooting. Since he lost his father, he is
Speaker 2: focused on helping people and communities affected by this kind
Speaker 2: of violence and showing them a path to healing or
Speaker 2: He is speaking on the local news last year after
Speaker 2: traveling to Maine following the mass shooting in Lewiston that
Speaker 2: left eighteen people dead.
Speaker 11: The sad thing about it is there's going to be
Speaker 11: another shooting, and they're going to disperse out, and when
Speaker 11: they disperse out, the resources to leave with them as well.
Speaker 11: So I need them to know that there are still
Speaker 11: people around that are willing to help.
Speaker 12: Green knows their grief well. He lost his father, Derek Fudge,
Speaker 12: in the twenty nineteen Oregon District mass shooting. Green taking
Speaker 12: his pain and creating an outlet for support. He now
Speaker 12: leads the Fudge Foundation, a nonprofit in his father's name.
Speaker 12: Its mission is to help those dealing with traumatic events
Speaker 12: and advocate at the local and national level.
Speaker 11: That band aid comes off and that trauma surfaces, so
Speaker 11: to have people there to be able to help and
Speaker 11: assist and let them know how to get through it
Speaker 11: and just share opinions and things of how other survivors
Speaker 11: got through it is monumental to the next survivors that
Speaker 11: are being able to process these things.
Speaker 2: I think Dion's work is really amazing. I will link
Speaker 2: to it in the description. And I'm so sorry that
Speaker 2: the hogs episode got so sad. Jesus, So what happened
Speaker 2: to these hogs? The hogs that we were told numbered
Speaker 2: between thirty and fifty, but in retrospect was probably less. Listener,
Speaker 2: I wish I had better news. The hogs are probably dead,
Speaker 2: giving the average life expectancy of a hog, or potentially
Speaker 2: them being shot from a balloon. And when it comes
Speaker 2: to gun policy in the US, at the time i'm writing,
Speaker 2: assault weapons are prohibited in only nine states, and while
Speaker 2: mass shootings.
Speaker 1: Are lower this year than the previous.
Speaker 2: View, the United States still has markedly more gun violence
Speaker 2: than in other developed nations. And that's where we are
Speaker 2: five years later. Gun laws are stagnant, the hogs are loose.
Speaker 2: But at least Willie McNabb and Jason isbel got to
Speaker 2: hang out at a concert one time.
Speaker 1: That's not nothing. It's just almost nothing. And so my suite.
Speaker 2: Probably dearly departed thirty to fifty feral hogs. Your sixteenth
Speaker 2: minute ends.
Speaker 12: Now I'm seeing things.
Speaker 1: Mister Zuckerman, Mister.
Speaker 5: Zuckerman, Something's happened to Leervy?
Speaker 4: Do you see what I see?
Speaker 5: Some pie?
Speaker 4: You don't suppose that spider.
Speaker 2: If we have received a sign, we have a very
Speaker 2: unusual pig. Sixteenth Minute is a production of Full Zone
Speaker 2: Media and iHeart Radio.
Speaker 1: It is written, posted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: You amazing.
Speaker 2: Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our
Speaker 2: theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet. Shout outs
Speaker 2: to our dog producer Anderson, my cat's fleeing Casper, and
Speaker 2: my pet Rockbert.
Speaker 1: You will outlive us all. Bye.