WEBVTT - 30-50 feral hogs 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:03.280 Whole zone media. 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:09.840 Nine years ago, someone very close to me died, and 0:00:09.920 --> 0:00:13.360 shortly after that something very funny happened. 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:14.120 The person in. 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:18.240 Question was old, but not dying, old, had been sick 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:22.239 but was not dying. Sick someone about to die wouldn't 0:00:22.280 --> 0:00:25.599 be a night owl with an encyclopedic knowledge about SNL 0:00:25.640 --> 0:00:29.440 and professional hockey. They just wouldn't. But then one day 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:33.400 it was. They died suddenly and terribly, the sort of 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:35.479 loss where I still find myself wanting to pick up 0:00:35.520 --> 0:00:37.800 the phone ten years later and try to explain what 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:40.800 a podcast is to them. I really missed them, and 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:43.760 it was a huge shock at the time, and everyone 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:46.320 was still very in shock when the funeral happened. It 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:48.479 had been in this really hectic week right like no 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:51.160 one saw it coming or knew what sort of shape 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:53.960 their affairs were in. Half of us were still actively 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:57.520 in denial. I brought some loser I was dating to 0:00:57.600 --> 0:00:58.120 the wake. 0:00:58.480 --> 0:00:59.639 Why did I invite him? 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:02.960 Why did I invite him? It was a Catholic funeral 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:06.000 and we were all instructed to either read something from 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:09.280 the Bible or just say a few words. I hope 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:11.760 you haven't been through this, but I know that you 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:14.600 very likely have. So the night before I said my 0:01:14.720 --> 0:01:18.360 few words, I stayed up late drinking PBR and writing 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:20.800 out a set, and then I had to keep reminding 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:25.000 myself it's not a set, it's a eulogy. A eulogy 0:01:25.240 --> 0:01:27.920 is not stand up comedy unless. 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:28.880 You're really good at it. 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:31.360 At the service the next morning, I sat next to 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:33.959 someone that I'm very close with. He had his notes 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:36.600 for what he was going to say and was pretty quiet, 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:39.039 and before we were supposed. 0:01:38.720 --> 0:01:41.160 To go up and speak, he leaned. 0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:44.240 Over to me and asked, hey, like, should we give 0:01:44.280 --> 0:01:46.080 our Twitter handles before we talk? 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:47.200 Like do you think this is. 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:49.240 A good opportunity to get new. 0:01:49.040 --> 0:01:50.400 Followers on Twitter? 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.160 It was this really strange moment, you know, because something 0:01:53.480 --> 0:01:58.200 so terrible had just happened, and then this was said. 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:01.559 I tell this story to people and they never laugh. 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:04.440 But it's the sort of thing that's like, it's almost funny, 0:02:04.480 --> 0:02:07.840 but it's a little too weird to be an actual joke. 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:10.280 It's just completely absurd in this way that you can 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:11.000 never get. 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:12.760 Out of your brain. And if you were. 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:17.119 Asking, yes, I did read my Twitter handle, definitely don't 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:19.320 do that at your grandma's funeral. I said who it 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:23.760 was in that moment. If something just sad was said 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:28.480 or something just funny was said, I probably wouldn't remember 0:02:28.520 --> 0:02:31.360 this moment as well as I do. It's just something 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:36.960 in between. In August twenty nineteen, many terrible things happened 0:02:37.120 --> 0:02:40.840 on the same day in Dayton, Ohio. In al Paso, Texas, 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:44.160 there were mass shootings within hours of each other. First 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:47.280 in El Paso, when a white nationalist entered a Walmart 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:50.480 with a semi automatic weapon and killed twenty three people. 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.560 That same day, in an entertainment district in Dayton, a 0:02:53.600 --> 0:02:57.160 man used an ar pistol to kill nine people. And 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:00.200 even in a country where these types of shootings had 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:04.200 become increasingly commonplace, according to twenty twenty three research from 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:07.480 the Pew Research Center and also anecdotally from being a 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:11.799 person active shooter, events in the United States have steadily 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:16.440 increased since two thousand, over twenty times over and so on. 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:20.000 This weekend in August twenty nineteen, the whole world went 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:24.519 into mourning for the victims of these senseless, horrible shootings, 0:03:24.760 --> 0:03:27.720 and as the days lurched on, online discourse on the 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:32.119 many horrific questions that the shootings introduced began while journalists 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:35.960 worked to report on them as clearly and faithfully as possible, 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:39.400 and in fact, it involves some of the main players 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:42.960 in this show. The executive producer of this show, the 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:47.600 great Wonderful Robert Evans, who has definitely never falsely accused 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:51.880 me of murder, famously reported on the Elpasa shooter, detailing 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:56.240 his radicalization online on eight Chan before he resolved to 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:58.760 become a domestic purist, which was a part of a 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:03.360 disturbing trend that continued from earlier that year, most notoriously 0:04:03.920 --> 0:04:07.680 the christ Church mosque shooting in New Zealand. These murders, 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:12.440 stoked by white supremacy, had everything to do with the Internet. 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:16.359 The Internet was where shooters became radicalized and where they 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:20.560 would often livestream their own atrocities, and so after two 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:25.000 mass shootings in the same weekend, a familiar question emerged, 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:27.880 how do we stop this? What will we need to 0:04:28.000 --> 0:04:32.359 change to fucking stop this? The days that followed restoked 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:35.719 a debate that raged in real life and online spaces 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:40.320 with increasing frequency, and Democrats put pressure on then Senate 0:04:40.360 --> 0:04:44.560 Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Devil's pet Turtle, to cancel 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:48.760 the Senate summer recess to reopen a discussion on gun control. 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:50.640 He didn't, and. 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:54.680 So people were frustrated their leaders weren't doing anything, and 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:57.080 so many took to the Internet as they had in 0:04:57.120 --> 0:05:00.360 the past, and hoped that saying how they felt would 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:04.800 accomplish something. Many demanded action on gun control. Many mourned 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:08.640 the victims of these shootings, and many started a familiar 0:05:08.839 --> 0:05:12.960 discourse around the weapons that were used to slaughter people. 0:05:13.200 --> 0:05:16.560 And among these people were public figures weighing in as 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:20.760 they tend to do. One was American singer songwriter Jason 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:23.800 I Isbel. On August fourth, twenty nineteen, he. 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:27.080 Tweeted, if you're on here arguing the definition of assault 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:29.760 weapon today, you are part of the problem. You know 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:31.880 what an assault weapon is, and you know you don't 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:32.440 need one. 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:35.160 So, as the world mourned and tried to figure out 0:05:35.200 --> 0:05:37.640 what they could do in a world where normal people 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:41.520 are so often rendered powerless, people began to yell at 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:44.920 each other on the Internet, and then, to everyone's surprise, 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:49.040 something kind of funny happened. A Twitter user who I 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:53.680 would describe as a random guy, a normal man, Willie McNabb, 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:57.800 responded to this tweet from Jason Isbel. 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:00.680 He says the following legit. 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:04.960 Question for rural Americans, how do I kill. 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:08.040 The stop stop stop stop stop stop stop? 0:06:08.200 --> 0:06:11.880 Yes that tweet? Okay, grant you can finish. 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:17.320 Legit question for rural Americans? How do I kill the 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:21.000 thirty to fifty feral hogs that run into my yard 0:06:21.000 --> 0:06:23.200 within three to five minutes while my small kids play. 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:27.680 So in the absolute middle of this awful moment, people 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:31.200 stopped and asked, Wait, what the fuck did that guy 0:06:31.360 --> 0:06:37.719 just say thirty to fifty feral hogs? Your sixteenth minute starts, now. 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:46.640 Finish. 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:28.960 Okay, you sickos. 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:31.320 I'll give you what you want, and what you want 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:35.119 is what many rural communities have been plagued by, which 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:38.040 is thirty to fifty feral hogs. 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:41.320 It's feral Hogs. 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:45.080 Day on sixteenth minute. One of our most requested main 0:07:45.240 --> 0:07:48.560 characters bar none, and like every single one of the 0:07:48.600 --> 0:07:53.239 Internet's main characters, all thirty to fifty feral hogs come 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:57.000 with a lot of personal baggage. So let's throw some 0:07:57.240 --> 0:08:00.960 feral bacon into the feral pan. But before we do, 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:03.920 just one quick note in a rear showing of keeping 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:06.520 my mouth shut for forty minutes. I'm not going to 0:08:06.560 --> 0:08:09.600 get into my detailed opinions on gun control at the 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:13.080 very top of this episode, although I'm sure you can 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:13.920 guess what they are. 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:16.000 I'm not a fan of guns. 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:19.239 And that's not the case for everyone I'm speaking with today, 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:22.520 and each of them are going to explain why that is. 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:26.120 And with that, come with me if you will to 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:31.000 August twenty nineteen, the first death from vaping is reported 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:34.640 in Illinois. Jeffrey Epstein is found dead in his prison 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:39.960 cell under very normal circumstances. I'm performing at the Edinburgh 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:42.959 Fringe Festival with a show called Boss Whom Is Girl? 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:45.520 In which I play a demented girl boss hell bent 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:49.479 on killing an island full of DJs using surveillance technologies. 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:55.000 It got good reviews, and following two horrific massacres in 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:58.559 the United States back to back, a man from Arkansas 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:02.800 named Willie McNabb asked how he could kill the thirty 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:05.680 to fifty faral hogs that run into his yard within 0:09:05.760 --> 0:09:08.960 three to five minutes while his small kids play. I'm 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:11.960 gonna say it, this is one of the funniest things 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:15.240 that's ever happened on the Internet. For me like you 0:09:15.400 --> 0:09:19.719 get it. Replying to a conversation denouncing people who are 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:24.960 getting overly into semantics about assault weapons after two horrific 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:29.560 mass shootings with a question about thirty to fifty faral 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:34.920 hogs is weird. It's confusing to most people. It makes 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.040 no sense. I was one of those people. Willie McNabb, 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:42.360 what are you talking about? Everything about the Farrell hogs 0:09:42.360 --> 0:09:46.000 tweet is so funny. It's great American poetry. Now Here 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:49.160 are my top five funny things about the Farall Hogs tweet. 0:09:49.200 --> 0:09:51.800 Your mileage may vary, and I actually do encourage you 0:09:51.880 --> 0:09:54.960 to share it with me. Number one, starting a statement 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:59.800 about Farrell hogs with the phrase legit. Question number two 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:04.480 thirty two fifty. It's such a wide range. It feels 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:09.040 like a census taker's question. Number three the qualifier that 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:13.240 the kids are small, which kind of goes without saying right, 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:15.560 but it feels like it's sort of implying that fifty 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:20.440 feral hogs would be less threatening to larger children. 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.199 Number five. The tone of the question. 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:26.240 Overall, the way that Willy phrases this makes it sound 0:10:26.520 --> 0:10:28.640 like this is something that was on the tip of 0:10:28.800 --> 0:10:32.360 everyone's tongues and he's the first person brave enough to 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:36.520 articulate what we were all thinking. Number five, of course, 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:41.320 the imagery a father gunning down feral hogs like a 0:10:41.360 --> 0:10:45.559 game of Halo in your high school boyfriend's basement. Game 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:51.680 over the image of small kids surrounded by malevolent hogs, 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:55.160 the only line of defense being an assault rifle, and 0:10:55.280 --> 0:10:56.600 between three and. 0:10:56.720 --> 0:10:59.360 Five minutes, just say four minutes. 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:04.360 As sad and bizarre as the circumstances that prompted this 0:11:04.480 --> 0:11:08.400 reply tweet are, it is awesome, and it squarely puts 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:12.800 mister McNabb in a category of main character that was 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:15.400 not intentional, because again, this. 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:16.960 Was just a reply. 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:21.000 It's like every person who replies to dunk on Elon 0:11:21.200 --> 0:11:24.200 Musk and raise their own profile was doing it with 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:27.479 the expectation of becoming the most famous person on the Internet. 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:32.240 On top of that, the reply tweet itself isn't really accusatory. 0:11:32.480 --> 0:11:36.320 It's just the weirdest phrasing of a question that the 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:40.280 person seems to genuinely be asking. And so interestingly, the 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:44.040 reason that Willy becomes Internet famous doesn't seem to be 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:49.160 the algorithm itself. It's because of Jason isbel So let's 0:11:49.200 --> 0:11:53.160 go full forensic let's talk about how this happened. Willy 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.920 asks the question of our time, that of the perilous 0:11:57.000 --> 0:12:00.440 haw at twelve oh one pm Eastern Standard time on 0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:04.480 August fourth, twenty nineteen, which is the day of the Dayton, 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:09.240 Ohio massacre and the day after the El Paso, Texas massacre. 0:12:09.559 --> 0:12:14.440 After the reply, Jason isbel quote tweets Willie McNabb three 0:12:14.520 --> 0:12:17.800 minutes later at twelve oh four pm, responding with the 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:19.800 following Pithy's statement. 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:22.480 If you have dozens of hogs chasing your children around 0:12:22.480 --> 0:12:25.000 your yard, you have problems. No weapon will fix. 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:27.920 He then adds at twelve oh eight pm, I. 0:12:27.840 --> 0:12:30.040 Don't think William is serious, guys, and. 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:32.880 Willy McNabb is having none of it, he retorts at 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:34.120 twelve eleven pm. 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:36.000 No, sir, I am. 0:12:36.440 --> 0:12:39.200 And now we as passive viewers, know that Willy McNabb 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:41.280 is ready to go to the mat for this. And look, 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:43.559 I know it sounds like I am like rehashing and 0:12:43.640 --> 0:12:47.160 pausing the Zapruder tape, but it is significant. It is 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:52.480 clear ten minutes in that Willie McNabb is, for whatever reason, 0:12:52.760 --> 0:12:55.880 willing to go to the mat with a public figure 0:12:56.200 --> 0:13:00.880 on this topic, shots had been fired, only this time 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:03.800 not from an assault rifle and not at a murderous pig. 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:05.960 But and I can. 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:10.000 Confirm this as someone who was observing this unfolded real time. 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:13.840 Very few people on Twitter seem to have any idea 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:18.080 what Willie is talking about, and so at first, instead 0:13:18.080 --> 0:13:20.960 of trying to understand what he's talking about, they. 0:13:20.840 --> 0:13:21.600 Make fun of him. 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:25.120 People went nuts on Twitter over this reply tweet, and 0:13:25.160 --> 0:13:27.800 it seemed like for many this was almost a breath 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:30.840 of fresh air, a little bit of absurdity to joke 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:32.839 about while processing. 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:33.960 The horrors of the world. 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:36.680 And we do get some pretty solid riffs on the 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:42.560 treacherous hog like these thirty to fifty faral hogs sounds 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:44.120 like my dating history. 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:47.680 Take me down to the paradess city where the hogs 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:49.720 are farrel in the thirty to fifty. 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:53.440 My therapist, thirty to fifty faral hogs can't hurt you, 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:57.160 they aren't real. Thirty to fifty faral hogs in my 0:13:57.360 --> 0:14:01.920 yard threatening my children, And finally my favorite, take. 0:14:01.800 --> 0:14:04.120 A long drag for my cigarette. As I stare out 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:07.120 of my foxhole hollow eye at the tree line, the 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.080 distant sounds of winking, coming nearer and nearer as the 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:13.600 sun sets, the cold steal of my ar fifteen the 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:17.400 only thing that stands between those hogs and my kids 0:14:17.440 --> 0:14:17.920 behind me. 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:24.840 So this reply tweet spawned news articles, podcast episodes, a 0:14:24.920 --> 0:14:28.880 flash mini game where you're playing as Willy and your 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:32.520 goal is to mow down as many hogs as quickly 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:35.840 as possible in eight bit. This is as close to 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:39.960 a seminal main character experience as you can get, and 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:42.880 as a first timer to the main character game, Willie 0:14:42.920 --> 0:14:46.720 McNabb makes what many would consider to be a rookie mistake. 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:48.920 He posts his way. 0:14:48.720 --> 0:14:51.600 Through it, and while in most cases I would discourage 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:55.640 this behavior, all main characters, especially when it's from something 0:14:55.760 --> 0:15:00.520 weird or innocuous as opposed to actually offensive, are advised 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:04.840 to acknowledge their main characterhood then either fake their own 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:07.800 death or start a rap career. Posting through it almost 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:12.480 never helps because random Twitter users also have a vested 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:17.320 interest in proving themselves to be the world's most normal person, 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:20.520 and Willie McNabb is very much caught in the middle 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:24.000 of it. So who is this guy? At the time 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:26.960 of Ferrell Hoggate, Willie's Twitter bio. 0:15:26.840 --> 0:15:32.840 Read husband, father, Christian, libertarian, West Carolina University alum, and 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:34.880 fan of Pearl Jam and Red Sox. 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:39.440 But critically, his profile also reveals that he lives in 0:15:39.520 --> 0:15:43.160 rural Arkansas. Collectively, all of these things add up to 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:46.360 he is some guy who has decided to post through 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:48.760 it after Jason isbel quote tweeted him. 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:49.600 But in this. 0:15:49.560 --> 0:15:52.520 Case, Willie's posting through it is part of why this 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:56.120 story is so interesting. He was not going to back down, 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:59.480 no sir, I am. But the thing he was not 0:15:59.600 --> 0:16:02.520 back in down on wasn't gun control. 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:04.240 It was feral hoggs. 0:16:04.600 --> 0:16:08.520 Willy smars against other Twitter users who connect his hog 0:16:08.680 --> 0:16:12.880 problem and gun advocacy with his personal politics. He tweets 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:15.520 at twelve twenty four pm. 0:16:15.120 --> 0:16:18.640 Funny thing about these responses. I would challenge any of 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:20.800 you to find on my timeline where I say I 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:23.360 voted for Trump. Do any of you people know what 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:27.560 Arkansas's mascot is. It's for a reason, and a wall 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:30.400 or fence over ten acres of land with a swamp 0:16:30.400 --> 0:16:32.160 in the backside isn't feasible. 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:35.640 He writes again at two twenty one pm. 0:16:35.560 --> 0:16:39.040 I'm for the First Amendment. For those that say I 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:42.520 should eat my kids, not have children, advocate the state 0:16:42.600 --> 0:16:45.080 taking them away from me, the ones who are driving 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:48.080 by my home, taking aerial photos of my house, googling 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:51.280 where I work, et cetera. This is why I'm for 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:52.240 the Second Amendment. 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:55.400 So at this point, Willy does bring it back to 0:16:55.440 --> 0:16:59.320 gun control because he has become the main character. He 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:03.560 needs a gun. Actually, in twenty nineteen, he had fully 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.159 lost me at this point, but the story somehow continues. 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:10.399 The next day, Jason Isbel is still joking about the 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:14.159 hogs on Twitter, and Willie replies to him again. He 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:18.880 is determined to get through to Jason isbel about these hogs. 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:22.679 He writes, even though people have threatened my kids, taking 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.760 pics in my home, driven by my house, my job, 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:28.600 and threatened me, I'm still a fan of your music. 0:17:29.040 --> 0:17:31.600 And I never said my situation was applicable to the 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:33.240 entire country. It's real. 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:37.720 Attached to this tweet is a video entitled wild hogs 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:40.480 are fair Game to hunt from the air in Texas. 0:17:41.119 --> 0:17:44.640 In Texas, they're going hog wild over a wild hogs. 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.680 The feral animals are causing hundreds of millions of dollars 0:17:47.720 --> 0:17:50.640 of damage to crops across the state, and to help 0:17:50.720 --> 0:17:53.600 deal with the problem, state lawmakers have approved the hunting 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:58.720 of wild hogs and coyotes from hot air balloons. People 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:01.720 had already been allowed to sh shoot the animals from helicopters, 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:05.240 but it was an expensive and ineffective way to deal 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:08.080 with the problem. Higher balloons apparently much better. 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:11.760 So in case you're five years late and have never 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:15.560 been to the rural South, the hog problem is real 0:18:15.840 --> 0:18:20.160 then now, and it might be getting actively worse. Brace 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:25.720 yourself for some unbelievable hog facts. The current estimated population 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:30.280 of faral hogs in the United States is six million. 0:18:30.480 --> 0:18:33.600 That's one feral hog for every dollar in the budget 0:18:33.600 --> 0:18:37.000 of the movie The Room. Adult faral hogs can weigh 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:41.400 anywhere from seventy five to two hundred and fifty pounds. 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:44.439 That is, anywhere from the size of a fifth grader 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:47.919 to the size of a football player. That is so large, 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:50.600 and for my money, if thirty to fifty feral fifth 0:18:50.600 --> 0:18:54.159 graders or NFL players are charging my small kids in 0:18:54.200 --> 0:18:57.199 three to five minutes, I'd be scared too. Willie is 0:18:57.200 --> 0:19:00.639 also right that these hogs are mainly in the rural South. 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:04.080 Most of them live in Texas, but in Arkansas, where 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:07.720 Willy lives. They're in all seventy five counties and there's 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:11.439 about two hundred thousand of them, which, for comparison, is 0:19:11.520 --> 0:19:16.119 close to one gigantic feral hog for every resident of 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:17.520 Little Rock, Arkansas. 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:18.879 There are entire. 0:19:18.720 --> 0:19:23.080 Government agencies dedicated to protecting the general public from the 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:27.080 wrath of the hogs. So while there's plenty to unpack 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:29.320 in this story, before we can talk to the faral 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:32.320 hogs guy. Because yes, I did talk to the faral 0:19:32.400 --> 0:19:35.159 hogs guy, I went to maybe the authority in the 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:38.240 US on this. John Thomas k is an associate professor 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:40.720 at Texas A and M and even more to the point, 0:19:40.760 --> 0:19:43.720 he's the chair of both the National Feral Swine Task 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:47.639 Force and the Texas Feral Swine Task Force. Okay, now, 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:51.320 imagine I'm doing a pickup truck commercial. This man knows 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:52.360 big pigs. 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:53.800 I had to talk to him. 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:59.040 I'm John Tomachek. I'm an associate professor working on wildlife damage, 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:03.280 wildlife disease, and carnivore management at Texas A and M University. 0:20:03.520 --> 0:20:05.880 When this came up, some friends of mine that are 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:08.760 not in the space of working in wildlife, they're not 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:10.880 in the space of living and working on the land. 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:13.679 They're urban folks. They saw this and sent it to me, 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:16.119 and I really appreciated it because they said, John, this 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:18.679 is going around, but everybody's making fun of it. It 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:21.560 sounds ridiculous, but you're an expert, what do you think? 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:24.639 And I just shrugged and said, yeah, sure, thirty or 0:20:24.680 --> 0:20:27.120 fifty faral hogs in a group is not uncommon. Makes 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:29.479 perfect sense to me. And that really was kind of 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:32.400 my moment of going, Oh, Okay, what's the big deal? 0:20:32.440 --> 0:20:34.720 What is so absurd about this? And I remember, you know, 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:37.080 it was a conversation around like firearms and that kind 0:20:37.119 --> 0:20:39.480 of thing. And so friends of mine that are not 0:20:39.680 --> 0:20:42.200 gun owners, they're not hunters, but they know I am. 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:44.159 They said, you know, what's your thought on this? And 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:47.560 I said, you know, I never actually owned an ar 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:52.280 platform rifle before I started working professionally on faral hogs. 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:54.240 And this is one of the scenarios in which it 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:58.240 actually does make sense because of the numbers of animals 0:20:58.320 --> 0:21:00.800 you're dealing with. And I think that that's really the 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:03.600 kind of the juxtaposition here is when a person is 0:21:03.640 --> 0:21:07.760 engaging in sport hunting or meat hunting, or whatever it is. 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.280 You are focused on the one animal and the search 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:14.320 for that animal and the take of that animal, Whereas 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:19.000 with feral hogs, it's this deluge of invasive, exotic animals 0:21:19.040 --> 0:21:22.520 that are destroying everything from clean air and clean water, 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:25.720 to the food that we rely on for our tables, 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:28.360 to the health and well being of our wild animals 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:31.160 and wild places, and it's just everything. And so it's 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:34.640 at times kind of an overwhelming sense of how will 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:37.040 we ever get control over this problem? And so when 0:21:37.080 --> 0:21:40.239 the internet sensation kicked up to me, it was an 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:43.480 interesting moment to say, ah, you know, for those of 0:21:43.520 --> 0:21:46.240 us that are actively engaged every day in this space, 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:48.840 this makes perfect sense, but to the outside world it 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:51.720 seems a little absurd. I took a different job, and 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:56.800 academic job, and I was working with ranchers, landowners, farmers 0:21:56.880 --> 0:21:58.800 and just asking them, you know, what are the issues 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:01.000 that are most i ortant to you? What are the 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:03.080 issues that are facing you that you need help on it? 0:22:03.240 --> 0:22:06.800 And almost unanimously, everyone was talking about damage that was 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:10.720 caused by wildlife to their agricultural operation, whether they were 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:13.280 farming your fruits and vegetables that come to the market. 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:16.960 Everybody wants to eat right or livestock production or whatever 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:19.320 it was, and it was the idea of they don't 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:21.879 hate the animal, they hate the damage, and they don't 0:22:21.880 --> 0:22:24.480 know how to fix it to balance the production with 0:22:24.600 --> 0:22:26.600 the animals. So I got involved in that world of 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:29.960 wildlife damage, and then feral hogs kind of came as 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:33.880 an interesting track to that because it's an exotic, invasive 0:22:33.920 --> 0:22:37.800 animal that doesn't belong in the system that makes the 0:22:37.840 --> 0:22:41.920 sustainability of native plants and animals as well as humans 0:22:42.160 --> 0:22:45.040 much more difficult. And so over the years, I've done 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:48.240 more and more work in feral hogs simply because it's 0:22:48.400 --> 0:22:51.160 in my mind it's one of the greater conservation challenges 0:22:51.200 --> 0:22:54.639 of our generation, simply because we are fighting a human 0:22:54.720 --> 0:22:58.960 created problem that we essentially engineered these animals to be 0:22:59.119 --> 0:23:02.480