Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hi, everybody, Jamie here. You'll notice there are is not
Speaker 2: a new.
Speaker 1: Episode this week. It is because I am so sick.
Speaker 1: I have COVID so bad.
Speaker 2: So instead of the Hawk Tua series starting this week,
Speaker 2: is going to start next week. I think it's going
Speaker 2: to be worth the wait. I have watched every second
Speaker 2: of talk to and I just am excited for you
Speaker 2: to hear it. But I need a little time to recover.
Speaker 2: So with that in mind, we're going to be re
Speaker 2: airing the winner of your favorite episode of last year,
Speaker 2: thirty to fifty Faral Hogs. The only other reminder I
Speaker 2: have for you today is I will be on tour
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon later this
Speaker 2: month at full health, and the links are in the description.
Speaker 2: I would love to see their tickets are running low
Speaker 2: in Portland. Get years now without further ado, I'll see
Speaker 2: you next week to Hawk To a spit on that discourse.
Speaker 2: But this week, let's revisit the Hogs. By Nine years ago,
Speaker 2: someone very close to me died, and shortly after that,
Speaker 2: something very funny happened. The person in question was old,
Speaker 2: but not dying. Old had been sick, but was not
Speaker 2: dying sick. Someone about to die wouldn't be a night
Speaker 2: owl with an encyclopedic knowledge about SNL and professional hockey.
Speaker 2: They just wouldn't. But then one day it was. They
Speaker 2: died suddenly and terribly, the sort of loss where I
Speaker 2: still find myself wanting to pick up the phone ten
Speaker 2: years later and try to explain what a podcast is
Speaker 2: to them. I really missed them, and it was a
Speaker 2: huge shock at the time, and everyone was still very
Speaker 2: in shock when the funeral happened. It had been in
Speaker 2: this really hectic week right like no one saw it
Speaker 2: coming or knew what sort of shape their affairs were in.
Speaker 2: Half of us were still actively in denial. I brought
Speaker 2: some loser I was dating to the wake.
Speaker 1: Why did I invite him?
Speaker 2: Why did I invite him?
Speaker 1: It was a Catholic.
Speaker 2: Funeral, and we were all instructed to either read something
Speaker 2: from the Bible or just say a few words. I
Speaker 2: hope you haven't been through this, but I know that.
Speaker 1: You very likely have.
Speaker 2: So the night before I said my few words, I
Speaker 2: stayed up late drinking PBR and writing out a set,
Speaker 2: And then I had to keep reminding myself it's not
Speaker 2: a set it's a eulogy. A eulogy is not stand
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: He had his notes for what he was going to.
Speaker 2: Say and was pretty quiet, and before we were supposed
Speaker 2: to go up and speak, he leaned over to me
Speaker 2: and asked, Hey, like, should we give our Twitter handles
Speaker 2: before we talk? Like, do you think this is a
Speaker 2: good opportunity to get new followers on Twitter? It was
Speaker 2: this really strange moment, you know, because something so terrible
Speaker 2: had just happened, and then this was said. I tell
Speaker 2: this story to people and they never laugh. But it's
Speaker 2: the sort of thing that's like, it's almost funny, but
Speaker 2: 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 and El Paso, Texas.
Speaker 1: There were mass shootings.
Speaker 2: Within hours of each other, first in El Paso, when
Speaker 2: a white nationalist entered a walmart with a semi automatic
Speaker 2: weapon and killed twenty three That same day, in an
Speaker 2: entertainment district in Dayton, a man used an ar pistol
Speaker 2: to kill nine people. And even in a country where
Speaker 2: these types of shootings had become increasingly commonplace, according to
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three research from the Pew Research Center, and
Speaker 2: also anecdotally from being a person, active shooter events in
Speaker 2: the United States have steadily increased since two thousand, over
Speaker 2: twenty times over and so on this weekend in August
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen, the whole world went into mourning for the
Speaker 2: victims of these senseless, horrible shootings, and as the days
Speaker 2: lurched on, online discourse on the many horrific questions that
Speaker 2: the shootings introduced began, while journalists worked to report on
Speaker 2: them as clearly and faithfully as possible. And in fact,
Speaker 2: it involves some of the main players in this show.
Speaker 2: The executive producer of this show, the great, Wonderful Robert Evans,
Speaker 2: who has definitely never falsely accused me of murder, famously
Speaker 2: reported on the il PA shooter, detailing his radicalization online
Speaker 2: on eight Chan before he resolved to become a domestic purist,
Speaker 2: which was a part of a disturbing trend that continued
Speaker 2: from earlier that year, most notoriously the christ Church mosque
Speaker 2: shooting in New Zealand. These murders, stoked by white supremacy,
Speaker 2: had everything to do with the Internet. The Internet was
Speaker 2: where shooters became radicalized and where they would often livestream
Speaker 2: their own atrocities, and so after two mass shootings in
Speaker 2: the same weekend, a familiar question emerged, how do we
Speaker 2: stop this? What will we need to change to fucking
Speaker 2: stop this? The days that followed restoked a debate that
Speaker 2: raged in real life and online spaces with increasing frequency,
Speaker 2: and Democrats put pressure on then Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell,
Speaker 2: the Devil's pet Turtle, to cancel the Senate summer recess
Speaker 2: to reopen a discussion on gun control. 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 Ibel.
Speaker 2: On August fourth, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: He tweeted, if you're on here arguing the definition of
Speaker 3: assault weapon today, you are part of the problem. You
Speaker 3: know what an assault weapon is, and you know you
Speaker 3: don't need one.
Speaker 1: So as the.
Speaker 2: World mourned and tried to figure out what they could
Speaker 2: do in a world where normal people are so often
Speaker 2: rendered powerless, people began to yell at each other on
Speaker 2: the Internet, and then, to everyone's surprise, something kind of
Speaker 2: funny happened.
Speaker 1: A Twitter user who I would describe as.
Speaker 2: A random guy, a normal man, Willie McNabb, responded to
Speaker 2: this tweet from Jason Isbel.
Speaker 1: He says the following.
Speaker 4: Legit question for rural Americans, how do I kill the three?
Speaker 1: Stop stop stop stop stop stop stop? Yes that tweet? Okay,
Speaker 1: grant you can finish.
Speaker 4: Legit question for rural Americans. How do I kiell 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, okay,
Speaker 2: you sickos, I'll give you what you want, and what
Speaker 2: you want is what many rural communities have been plagued by,
Speaker 2: which is thirty to fifty feral hogs. 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 it,
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.
Speaker 1: You can guess what they are.
Speaker 2: I'm not a fan of guns, and that's not the
Speaker 2: case for everyone I'm speaking with today, and each of
Speaker 2: them are going to explain why that is. And with that,
Speaker 2: come with me if you will to August twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: the first death from vaping is reported in Illinois. Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Epstein is found dead in his prison cell under very
Speaker 2: normal circumstances. I'm performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with
Speaker 2: a show called Boss Whom Is Girl? In which I
Speaker 2: play a demented girl boss hell bent on killing an
Speaker 2: island full of DJs using surveillance technologies. Good reviews and
Speaker 2: following two horrific massacres in the United States back to back,
Speaker 2: a man from Arkansas named Willie McNabb asked how he
Speaker 2: could kill the thirty to fifty faral hogs that run
Speaker 2: into his yard within three to five minutes while his
Speaker 2: small kids play. I'm gonna say it, this is one
Speaker 2: of the funniest things that's ever happened on the Internet
Speaker 2: for me, like you get it. Replying to a conversation
Speaker 2: denouncing people who are getting overly into semantics about assault
Speaker 2: weapons after two horrific mass shootings, with a question about
Speaker 2: thirty to fifty faral hogs.
Speaker 1: Is weird.
Speaker 2: It's confusing to most people. It makes no sense. I
Speaker 2: was one of those people. Willy McNabb, what are you
Speaker 2: talking about? Everything about the Farrell hogs tweet is so funny.
Speaker 2: It's great American poetry. Now Here are my top five
Speaker 2: funny things about the Farrell Hogs tweet. Your mileage may
Speaker 2: very and I actually do encourage you to share it
Speaker 2: with me. Number one, starting a statement about faral hogs
Speaker 2: with the phrase legit question number two thirty two fifty.
Speaker 2: It's such a wide range, it feels like a census
Speaker 2: taker's question. Number three. The qualifier that the kids are small,
Speaker 2: which kind of goes without saying right, but it feels
Speaker 2: like it's sort of implying that fifty faral hogs would
Speaker 2: be less threatening to larger children. Number five the tone
Speaker 2: of the question overall, the way that Willy phrases this
Speaker 2: makes it sound like this is something that was on
Speaker 2: the tip of everyone's tongues, and he's the first person
Speaker 2: brave enough to articulate what we were all thinking. Number five,
Speaker 2: of course, the imagery a father gunning down feral hogs
Speaker 2: like a game of Halo in your high school boyfriend's basement.
Speaker 2: Game 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 five minutes.
Speaker 1: 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 was just a reply. It's
Speaker 2: like every person who replies to dunk on Elon Musk
Speaker 2: and raise their own profile was doing it with the
Speaker 2: 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 for ends.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about how this happened.
Speaker 2: Willy asks the question of our time, that of the
Speaker 2: perilous Hall at twelve oh one pm Eastern Standard Time
Speaker 2: on August fourth, twenty nineteen, which is the day of
Speaker 2: the Dayton, Ohio massacre and the day after the El Paso,
Speaker 2: Texas massacre. After the reply, Jason isbel quote tweets Willy
Speaker 2: McNabb three minutes later at twelve oh four pm, responding
Speaker 2: with the 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.
Speaker 3: I don't think William is serious, guys, and.
Speaker 2: Willie 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 the horrors of the world. And we
Speaker 2: do get some pretty solid riffs on the treacherous hog,
Speaker 2: like these thirty to fifty Pharaoh of hogs sounds like
Speaker 2: my dating history.
Speaker 3: Take me down to the paradess city where the hogs
Speaker 3: are pharrol in the thirty to.
Speaker 2: Fifty my therapist, thirty to fifty faral hogs can't hurt you,
Speaker 2: they aren't real.
Speaker 1: Thirty to fifty faral.
Speaker 2: Hogs in my yard, threatening my children, and finally my favorite.
Speaker 5: Take a long drag for my cigarette as I stare
Speaker 5: out of my foxhole, hollow eye at the tree line,
Speaker 5: the distant sounds of winking coming nearer and nearer as
Speaker 5: the sun sets, the cold steal of my ar fifteen,
Speaker 5: the only thing that stands between those hogs and my
Speaker 5: kids 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 1: But critically, his profile also reveals that he lives in
Speaker 1: rural Arkansas.
Speaker 2: Collectively, all of these things add up to he is
Speaker 2: some guy who has decided to post through it after
Speaker 2: Jason isbel quote tweeted him. But in this case, Willie
Speaker 2: is posting through it is part of why this story
Speaker 2: is so interesting. He was not going to back down,
Speaker 2: no sir, I am. But the thing he was not
Speaker 2: backing down on wasn't gun control.
Speaker 1: It was feral hogs.
Speaker 2: Willy spars 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.
Speaker 1: 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 6: In Texas, they're going hog wild over wild hogs. The
Speaker 6: feral animals are causing hundreds of millions of dollars of
Speaker 6: damage to crops across the state, and to help deal
Speaker 6: with the problem, state lawmakers have approved the hunting of
Speaker 6: wild hogs and coyotes from hot air balloons. People had
Speaker 6: already been allowed to shoot the animals from helicopters, but
Speaker 6: it was an expensive and ineffective way to deal with
Speaker 6: the problem. Hoigher 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 feral 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 feral 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 fal fifth
Speaker 2: graders or NFL players are charging my small kids in
Speaker 2: three to five minutes, I'd be scared too. Willy 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. There are entire government agencies dedicated to
Speaker 2: protecting the general public from the wrath of the hogs.
Speaker 2: So while there's plenty to unpack in this story, before
Speaker 2: we can talk to the faral hogs guy. Because yes,
Speaker 2: I did talk to the faral hogs guy, I went
Speaker 2: to maybe the authority in the US on this. John
Speaker 2: Thomas k is an associate professor at Texas A and
Speaker 2: M and even more to the point, he's the chair
Speaker 2: of both the National Feral Swine Task Force and the
Speaker 2: Texas Feral Swine Task Force. Okay, now imagine I'm doing
Speaker 2: a pickup truck commercial.
Speaker 1: Man knows big bigs. I had to talk to him.
Speaker 7: I'm John Tomachek. I'm an associate professor working on wildlife damage,
Speaker 7: wildlife disease, and carnivore management at Texas A and M University.
Speaker 7: When this came up, some friends of mine that are
Speaker 7: not in the space of working in wildlife. They're not
Speaker 7: in the space of living and working on the land.
Speaker 7: They're urban folks. They saw this and sent it to me,
Speaker 7: and I really appreciated it because they said, John, this
Speaker 7: is going around, but everybody's making fun of it. It
Speaker 7: sounds ridiculous, But you're an expert, what do you think?
Speaker 7: And I just shrugged and said, yeah, sure, thirty or
Speaker 7: fifty faral hogs in a group is not uncommon. Makes
Speaker 7: perfect sense to me. And that really was kind of
Speaker 7: my moment of going, Oh, Okay, what's the big deal,
Speaker 7: what is so absurd about this? And I remember, you know,
Speaker 7: it was a conversation around like firearms and that kind
Speaker 7: of thing. And so friends of mine that are not
Speaker 7: gun owners, they're not hunters, but they know I am.
Speaker 7: They said, you know, what's your thought on this? And
Speaker 7: I said, you know, I never actually owned an ar
Speaker 7: platform rifle before I started working professionally on feral hogs.
Speaker 7: And this is one of the scenarios in which it
Speaker 7: actually does make sense because of the numbers of animals
Speaker 7: you're dealing with. And I think that's really the kind
Speaker 7: of the juxtaposition here is when a person is engaging
Speaker 7: in sport hunting or meat hunting or whatever it is,
Speaker 7: you are focused on the one animal and the search
Speaker 7: for that animal and the take of that animal, Whereas
Speaker 7: with feral hogs, it's this deluge of invasive, exotic animals
Speaker 7: that are destroying everything from clean air and clean water,
Speaker 7: to the food that we rely on for our tables,
Speaker 7: to the health and well being of our wild animals
Speaker 7: and wild places, and it's just everything, and so at
Speaker 7: times kind of an overwhelming sense of how will we
Speaker 7: ever get control over this problem? And so when the
Speaker 7: internet sensation kicked up to me, it was an interesting
Speaker 7: moment to say, ah, you know, for those of us
Speaker 7: that are actively engaged every day in the space, this
Speaker 7: makes perfect sense, but to the outside world it seems
Speaker 7: a little absurd. I took a different job, and academic job,
Speaker 7: and I was working with ranchers, landowners, farmers and just
Speaker 7: asking them, you know, what are the issues that are
Speaker 7: most important to you, What are the issues that are
Speaker 7: facing you that you need help on it? And almost unanimously,
Speaker 7: everyone was talking about damage that was caused by wildlife
Speaker 7: to their agricultural operation, whether they were farming your fruits
Speaker 7: and vegetables that come to the market everybody wants to
Speaker 7: eat right, or livestock production or whatever it was. And
Speaker 7: it was the idea of they don't hate the animal,
Speaker 7: they hate the damage and they don't know how to
Speaker 7: fix it to balance the production with the animals. So
Speaker 7: I got involved in that world of wildlife damage, and
Speaker 7: then feral hogs kind of came as an interesting track
Speaker 7: to that because it's an exotic invasive animal that doesn't
Speaker 7: belong in the system that makes the sustainability of native
Speaker 7: plants and animals as well as humans much more difficult.
Speaker 7: And so over the years, I've done more and more
Speaker 7: work in feral hogs simply because it's in my mind
Speaker 7: it's one of the greater conservation challenges of our generation,
Speaker 7: simply because we are fighting a human created problem that
Speaker 7: we essentially engineered these animals to be as effective at
Speaker 7: doing what they do, and now we're fighting against this,
Speaker 7: like I said earlier, deluge. So, like I said, long story,
Speaker 7: and I could go on for quite a while, but
Speaker 7: basically what brought me to the table was kind of
Speaker 7: looking at how people that live on the land and
Speaker 7: take care of the land because it is their livelihood
Speaker 7: as well, are struggling to do so in the face
Speaker 7: of this exotic invasive species that seems to have blown
Speaker 7: up in the last twenty or thirty years.
Speaker 8: So, could you tell me.
Speaker 2: A little bit about how did farrell hogs get here
Speaker 2: and what were people misunderstanding as they were encountering the story.
Speaker 9: In thirty to fifty number.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so what I love about this And I really
Speaker 7: can't emphasize this enough for your listener base. Most of
Speaker 7: us that work professionally with Farrell hogs, whether it's as
Speaker 7: researchers or managers or what have you. When the thirty
Speaker 7: to fifty number was thrown out, pretty much everyone like
Speaker 7: I said, shrugged and said, yeah, it seems reasonable. Farrelloh
Speaker 7: hogs got here a few different ways. Ironically, so Christopher
Speaker 7: Columbus brought them on his second voyage to the New World.
Speaker 7: So first voyage, no second voyage had pigs their domestic
Speaker 7: pigs at that time, and they were brought as a
Speaker 7: food source. And it's important to remember in this period
Speaker 7: in history, pigs were raised in what we call a
Speaker 7: free ranging environment, meaning you let them go forage, they
Speaker 7: do what they do, and then once a year you
Speaker 7: round them all up, usually before the winter time. If
Speaker 7: you're in a cold climate and you slaughter pigs, you
Speaker 7: keep a few in the barn over the winner. Then
Speaker 7: you feed them right, and then you make salt pork
Speaker 7: or sausages, whatever you're doing to put away food for
Speaker 7: the winner. And that's a pretty common European way of
Speaker 7: managing pigs. So they're brought to the New World by
Speaker 7: Columbus and then subsequent Spanish conquistadorres brought them with them.
Speaker 7: Early explorers in Florida brought them. And it's important to
Speaker 7: note that the first couple of expeditions brought those pigs,
Speaker 7: and then future expeditions in their diaries commented they needn't
Speaker 7: have bothered bringing pigs because they were so abundant here already.
Speaker 8: Ugh, okay, And.
Speaker 7: They're not native to the New World, So there are
Speaker 7: no classic swine native to the Western hemisphere. There are pekerees,
Speaker 7: like in Texas we have habelina, it's a collared pekeery.
Speaker 7: We just use the Spanish words typically because that's what
Speaker 7: we're used to here. But pekeres are not pigs. I
Speaker 7: can't emphasize that enough. They kind of look like pigs.
Speaker 7: That's just convergent evolution making a thing look similar, but
Speaker 7: they are not the same animal.
Speaker 8: Those are the native species.
Speaker 7: Correct, And they're native to southwestern US and then farther
Speaker 7: south in Central America and South America, and they do
Speaker 7: not have the problems that I'm about to describe. So
Speaker 7: one of the things about pigs. It is mankind's oldest
Speaker 7: livestock animal as far as we know. So they're bred
Speaker 7: from Eurasian wild boar, which are a wild animal still
Speaker 7: around in Europe. But animal husbandry over thousands of years
Speaker 7: produced an animal that could breed it in any time
Speaker 7: of the year, because that's important to produce sustainable food.
Speaker 7: And they would have more offspring in a litter, which
Speaker 7: makes sense when we're making sure they stay fed, so
Speaker 7: they can have the ability to make sure those animals survive,
Speaker 7: and more of those animals survive. They're heavier when they
Speaker 7: wean from their mothers. All of these things that in
Speaker 7: the wild wouldn't necessarily make sense, but in a farmed
Speaker 7: context or a raised context makes sense because it's a
Speaker 7: relationship where humans are also taking care of that animal.
Speaker 7: So we broke a natural reproductive cycle to create an
Speaker 7: animal that is the largest animal on the planet physically,
Speaker 7: that can reproduce that quickly with that many offspring. So
Speaker 7: I talked about the Spanish brought them, but then Anglo
Speaker 7: settlers in New England, the British colonies brought them, and
Speaker 7: in our part of the world, when Anglos started moving
Speaker 7: from what's now the Midwest to Texas when it was
Speaker 7: still a Spanish colony and then later part of Mexico.
Speaker 7: They brought pigs with them, and what we have today
Speaker 7: is a history of over the years those free ranging
Speaker 7: pigs escaped, or when the pork industry was in a
Speaker 7: bad spot, farmers might have just turned their pigs loose
Speaker 7: because they couldn't afford to feed them. And in the
Speaker 7: context of the am I going to let those animals starve?
Speaker 7: Or am I going to let them go forwarge and
Speaker 7: live because they can? Which one would you pick? I
Speaker 7: know what I would pick, and I get that right now.
Speaker 7: I don't think any of it was malicious. But we
Speaker 7: live in a situation now where we have a tremendous
Speaker 7: number of these animals, and their ability to reproduce means
Speaker 7: that the population is growing all the time. So when
Speaker 7: we talk about managing numbers, it's not enough just to
Speaker 7: remove one or two. We have to try to get
Speaker 7: the whole group. And now here comes the thirty to fifty.
Speaker 7: And I think it's important to recognize I'm not mad
Speaker 7: at the pigs. Nobody's mad at the pigs, but I
Speaker 7: have an exotic invasive that's hurting the environment, and that
Speaker 7: is the thing that I liked your city mouse, Country
Speaker 7: mouse analogy. For people that live on the land and
Speaker 7: work on the land, they understand the issue because they
Speaker 7: see it every day. Or people that may be perennial
Speaker 7: urbanites and that's their world and that's fine. They may
Speaker 7: not understand in the same way of watching the land
Speaker 7: be ripped apart and when the next rain comes all
Speaker 7: the soil washes away because of this animal. We're not
Speaker 7: mad at them per se, but they have to go.
Speaker 7: They're damaging the environment and that at the end of
Speaker 7: the day, we as humans rely on that environment to
Speaker 7: survive as well. You're in New England in the northwest
Speaker 7: or northeast, excuse me when you have black bears, they're
Speaker 7: much bigger than ours bears. Most animals in northern climates
Speaker 7: colder climates are larger, and warmer climates they're smaller, even
Speaker 7: if they're the same species. So our bears in Texas,
Speaker 7: though three hundred pounds is not an unusual size for
Speaker 7: a bear, I have pigs that are bigger than bears.
Speaker 8: That is, yeah, a crazy sentence to.
Speaker 7: Me, And that's why I wanted to get to that
Speaker 7: point of like forgive all the back info. But if
Speaker 7: you remember nothing else, remember that. And that is the
Speaker 7: resource issue.
Speaker 8: But the way you're describing it, it sounds like it
Speaker 8: is also related to colonialism that goes back hundreds of years,
Speaker 8: Like this problem exists because of colonialism.
Speaker 7: Which is an interesting tac one thing that I often
Speaker 7: will bring up in these conversations, and it's something that
Speaker 7: comes up a lot in conservation. Is most of the
Speaker 7: population lives in urban centers, and that's very true, been
Speaker 7: that way for better part of one hundred years. It's
Speaker 7: been that way, and the issues that face folks in
Speaker 7: rural areas are often cast aside or maligned or that
Speaker 7: kind of thing, which I think anytime we delegitimize the
Speaker 7: problem that anybody's facing, that is a real issue. This
Speaker 7: is an issue that affects everybody. If you don't think
Speaker 7: it affects you and your geography, just wait because it will.
Speaker 8: Thank you so much for speaking with me about this.
Speaker 8: I really really appreciate it.
Speaker 7: 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. Estimation almost everyone is a casualty in the story.
Speaker 2: Of the hogs, especially the hogs themselves.
Speaker 1: Of course, people and.
Speaker 2: Crops should be protected, but the fact that we can
Speaker 2: draw a direct line from European colonialism to shooting gigantic
Speaker 2: pigs from hot air balloons is you know, we need
Speaker 2: to keep moving. But you know, the wildest thing to
Speaker 2: me about the Willie McNabb saga is, while the subject
Speaker 2: felt completely out of left field, given that Jason Isbel
Speaker 2: was referencing a larger cultural conversation around mass shootings, what
Speaker 2: he was saying wasn't absurd. And while feral hog discourse
Speaker 2: continued for truly weeks after this first reply, I think
Speaker 2: the key to why people misunderstood it is contained in
Speaker 2: the very beginning legit question. For rural Americans, most of
Speaker 2: the people I quoted earlier are like me. They live
Speaker 2: in cities, they work in some vaguely entertainment or media job,
Speaker 2: and they like to make little jokes on the computer.
Speaker 2: I would hazard a guess that if a Twitter user
Speaker 2: lived in the rural South or ever, had the comment
Speaker 2: about feral hogs might still sound weird, but it wouldn't
Speaker 2: have struck them as the complete topic change that it
Speaker 2: was made out to be by most people. That's because,
Speaker 2: and on Twitter especially, the Internet doesn't make the same
Speaker 2: space or consideration for people who live in rural areas.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of my conversation with Meredith Brossard last
Speaker 2: week when we were talking about the black TikTok strike
Speaker 2: of who is considered to be neutral. They're white, they're young,
Speaker 2: they're a man, and they live in a city. Kew
Speaker 2: research indicates that only about thirteen percent of Twitter's user
Speaker 2: base lives in a rural area, so Willie was quite
Speaker 2: literally surrounded by users who just had no idea what
Speaker 2: he was talking about. This was picked up on at
Speaker 2: the time as well. There's an episode of Reply All
Speaker 2: about it that I remember vividly. Twenty nineteen is also
Speaker 2: the year that Twitter introduced the algorithmically driven topics feature
Speaker 2: that showed users' stories that were trending, meaning that even
Speaker 2: people who didn't follow Jason Isbel found out about the
Speaker 2: Faral Hoggs debate. Isbel's skepticism about Willy was further credited
Speaker 2: by the fact that both of these men are Southerners.
Speaker 2: Isbel is from Alabama, and there's no shortage of Farrell
Speaker 2: Hoggs in Alabama, so like main characters were wont to do.
Speaker 1: At this point, the.
Speaker 2: Mainstream media swept this story up. Explainer pieces were written
Speaker 2: breaking down the absurdity, and most of them ended with
Speaker 2: a flourish sort of a and in case he didn't know,
Speaker 2: the hogs are real. Not only had Willy McNabb achieved
Speaker 2: main character status, he'd managed to start a conversation about
Speaker 2: a very rural problem on an app where rural people
Speaker 2: were not very present. As the days wore on, Jason
Speaker 2: Isbel got a huge bump in social media engagement from
Speaker 2: bringing the hogs to the masses. The tweet was on
Speaker 2: August four and by August sixth, the Internet was so
Speaker 2: swept up in the hogs that Isabel was featured and
Speaker 2: interviewed in the La Times on 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 feral 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 and
Speaker 3: yes they're scary, but I'd much rather face a few
Speaker 3: dozen wild hogs than a freaked out dad with an
Speaker 3: AR fifteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, point taken, but it never quite feels to me
Speaker 2: like Isabel and McNab 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.
Speaker 1: It does seem like he mainly wants to talk about hogs.
Speaker 9: All.
Speaker 2: This happened almost five years ago, and Willy has never
Speaker 2: 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 1: I reached out to him on Twitter.
Speaker 2: To see how this bizarre incident, this one reply has
Speaker 2: shaped the last half decade of his life.
Speaker 1: Here's our talk.
Speaker 10: My name's Willie McNabb i, guess infamous from the tweet
Speaker 10: I tweeted out five years ago to Jason Isbell.
Speaker 9: I lived in South Arkansas.
Speaker 10: I'm a business owner originally from North Carolina, graduated from
Speaker 10: Western Carolina University, moved here soon thereafter my father had
Speaker 10: started a company here, and.
Speaker 9: So I've been here ever since. So I'm a proud
Speaker 9: 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 10: You know, it's I wouldn't say annoying, No, I think
Speaker 10: that initially, you know, it's a little overwhelming the initial
Speaker 10: response that I received. And I was remember the first
Speaker 10: few days of it that I was very cognizant of, Okay,
Speaker 10: a lot of people are paying attention, and this is
Speaker 10: a public forum, and even someone at that time, I
Speaker 10: didn't have a hundred followers, you know, it was a
Speaker 10: very small platform or what I thought it was, and
Speaker 10: so I was just you know, expressing an opinion or
Speaker 10: a thought or something that i'd heard. And so I
Speaker 10: came to realize pretty quick that this was a global
Speaker 10: forum and a platform, and it only took one person
Speaker 10: like Jason to be able to amplify that to see it.
Speaker 10: And I don't think he did it in a I
Speaker 10: don't think he was trying to get me in any way.
Speaker 10: I think he was just replying to somebody. He probably
Speaker 10: thought it was a troll at the time, frankly probably. So,
Speaker 10: you know, after five years of it, there's not a
Speaker 10: day that goes by that I don't get some interaction
Speaker 10: or somebody saying something about it or so.
Speaker 9: Now I don't look at it as negative.
Speaker 10: Actually it's But on the other hand, I mean I
Speaker 10: can't reply to every feral hall thing that I see,
Speaker 10: you know, yeah, 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 10: I grew up in western North Carolina, is a very
Speaker 10: rural upbringing, and by the time I was ten twelve
Speaker 10: years old, I could handle a firearm. It wasn't unusual
Speaker 10: for us to hunt for squirrel or rabbits or my goodness,
Speaker 10: deer or grouse or quail or dove. And I have
Speaker 10: touched on this before, but you know, we we were
Speaker 10: not a family of many means. You know, it was
Speaker 10: a rural appalacious so we ate what we hunted, and
Speaker 10: grew a garden and a very rural upbringing.
Speaker 9: But it was a way in life people like myself.
Speaker 10: Especially this was in the seventies and early eighties, you know,
Speaker 10: when I was a kid, and so there was nothing
Speaker 10: unusual about it. You know, at that time there was
Speaker 10: still my goodness, I had a couple of friends that
Speaker 10: I grew up with that didn't even have indoor plumbing.
Speaker 9: I mean, this was.
Speaker 10: A it's probably hard for people to even believe or grasp,
Speaker 10: but it was real. But we didn't. The great equalizer
Speaker 10: was was that all of us were like that. All
Speaker 10: my friends, all the families that I knew, everybody.
Speaker 9: Grew up that way.
Speaker 10: So you know, I hunted some when I first came here.
Speaker 10: I'm not not an avid outdoorsman like I was.
Speaker 9: After having my own family.
Speaker 10: My kids were never They weren't into hunting and fishing
Speaker 10: like I was as a kid. They're more into basketball
Speaker 10: and volleyball and sports and video games, and culturally it's
Speaker 10: changed a lot, especially even in the South, from what
Speaker 10: it was when I was a kid. Yeah, it was
Speaker 10: a very simple upbringing, but I did travel some as
Speaker 10: a kid. My father was a business agent for a
Speaker 10: labor local labor union for years, and so I spent
Speaker 10: a lot of time.
Speaker 9: Home base was.
Speaker 10: Always the Carolinas, but I would spend a year in Arizona,
Speaker 10: or I would be in Mexico or Texas or the
Speaker 10: Gulf Coast or Salt Lake City, And we just traveled
Speaker 10: around a lot. With mining and he was working a
Speaker 10: lot of work with the mining companies and refineries and
Speaker 10: chemical plants and things like that. So he worked on
Speaker 10: specialty equipment in these mines and refineries and chemical plans.
Speaker 10: Actually it was specific to environmental control. So he traveled
Speaker 10: a lot, and we traveled a lot with him, and
Speaker 10: so I would be exposed to a lot of different
Speaker 10: parts of the United States and cultures, and I would
Speaker 10: go back to home base in Carolina, and then we
Speaker 10: would travel again. And then when I got to about
Speaker 10: junior high versusability reasons, my mother and.
Speaker 9: Him agree, but it's not good for the kids.
Speaker 10: I have two brothers, an older brother and a younger brother,
Speaker 10: and we just didn't travel anymore.
Speaker 9: We stayed.
Speaker 10: We finished school in North Carolina and then went on
Speaker 10: to college and found our way out here at.
Speaker 1: Art so awesome.
Speaker 8: And what sort of business do you run now, if
Speaker 8: you're okay saying.
Speaker 10: No, I don't mind saying it is a construction company
Speaker 10: slash manufacturing company. We do some work in the chemical
Speaker 10: industry and refinery and mining industries. It's what my father did.
Speaker 10: But the largest portion of our work is in the
Speaker 10: healthcare sector for radiation shielding for I think in practical terms,
Speaker 10: and cts or pet scans or cancer treatment or anything
Speaker 10: like that we build specialty shielding systems, stores systems, wall systems,
Speaker 10: et cetera. Me and me and my younger brother hold
Speaker 10: a United States patent for some operators for some of
Speaker 10: these doors.
Speaker 9: And yeah, so we successful.
Speaker 1: You know, Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 2: Prior to however you think of it, Feral Hogsgate, what
Speaker 2: was your relationship to the Internet, Like, when did you
Speaker 2: start using it?
Speaker 1: How did you get into Twitter?
Speaker 10: Sure in nineteen ninety five when my father started this company,
Speaker 10: I remember getting an HTML for idiots and writing code
Speaker 10: to put up our first website.
Speaker 9: Okay, so that was my first introduction to it.
Speaker 10: And I was always adamant to try to every two
Speaker 10: to three years to redo our website and try to
Speaker 10: advertise in that way because it's a niche industry and
Speaker 10: we do work domestically as well as internationally. But from
Speaker 10: the social media aspect, I've never had Facebook. I don't
Speaker 10: have Facebook today my platform. I do have a private
Speaker 10: Instagram account. It's just pictures of my kids, you know'stial it.
Speaker 10: But as far as me engaging with other people, Twitter
Speaker 10: or x now as the platform I've always used and
Speaker 10: and I enjoy it, and it is a you know,
Speaker 10: it's like the wild West on there now it's not
Speaker 10: what it was. But any any ideas or things that
Speaker 10: I advocate for, I've usually post on there. But I
Speaker 10: am cognizant that don't. I don't wait off into debates
Speaker 10: that I don't have any understanding of or you know,
Speaker 10: and there's so many of these cultural issues that I
Speaker 10: just try to stay out of. I think, by nature,
Speaker 10: I don't look for conflict and I don't look for division,
Speaker 10: and I don't like those type of things, and so
Speaker 10: I intentionally do not. I don't take positions on the
Speaker 10: platform because if I say I'm for this, I lose
Speaker 10: half the audience, and if I say I'm for something else,
Speaker 10: I lose the other half of my audience.
Speaker 9: You understand what I mean.
Speaker 10: And I'm trying to get people to communicate with each
Speaker 10: other and talk to each other. And the difficulty and
Speaker 10: all of these issues are in the nuances of them.
Speaker 10: You know, if these were easy, if these were easy
Speaker 10: issues to fix, they would have been fixed by now.
Speaker 10: And so I really like the engagement part in getting
Speaker 10: people to get outside their comfort zone and try to
Speaker 10: understand somebody else's perspective and then try to look at
Speaker 10: those nuances.
Speaker 9: And get resolution to them.
Speaker 10: So I do not I'm not a big advocate for conflict,
Speaker 10: but I do like debate. I like people to actually
Speaker 10: sit and have conversations and try to figure out these problems.
Speaker 10: 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 start on Twitter. Why was this
Speaker 2: specific tweet something that you thought I have to reply?
Speaker 10: Well, it's look, it's a it's a tough it's a
Speaker 10: tough issue, and I think Jason was coming from a
Speaker 10: very intellectually honest place. And and for me, when I
Speaker 10: believe that people are not being surrogates necessarily for a cause,
Speaker 10: but they're they're being intellectually honest, like they believe these
Speaker 10: things need to from their perspective, these things need to change,
Speaker 10: and there needs to be Uh, there's legitimate ways we
Speaker 10: can do it. Because of the personal experience that I
Speaker 10: had on this issue, and it was you know, I've
Speaker 10: told the story a lot of times but it was
Speaker 10: very real. Uh, it happened, and my kids were very
Speaker 10: small at the time, and once it happened to me,
Speaker 10: and I started reaching out to people trying to understand
Speaker 10: the wise and realizing how complex it was. But on
Speaker 10: a very local, small level for an individual that you know,
Speaker 10: that's protecting as house or as kids, my ability to
Speaker 10: have the firearm to go out and no easier way
Speaker 10: of saying is shooting these pigs to get them out
Speaker 10: of my yard? It seemed like it always It has
Speaker 10: always seemed to me that it was a fair question.
Speaker 10: It was a fair debate to have. And I think
Speaker 10: it's the disconnect between urban and rural areas in the
Speaker 10: country that someone living in an urban atmosphere they simply
Speaker 10: can't comprehend it, they don't know. And living in a
Speaker 10: rural area, you know, I've got ten acres or whatever
Speaker 10: it is, but I've got a two acre yard. In
Speaker 10: the yard itself is huge. You know, I'm not going
Speaker 10: to put a gate up or a fence up for
Speaker 10: my kids to play.
Speaker 9: In the yard. I don't have neighbors.
Speaker 10: I mean I can't look in any direction and I
Speaker 10: don't see any houses, and so my kids are just
Speaker 10: being kids playing in the yard and so, but also
Speaker 10: the hogs feel like they've got a right to come
Speaker 10: in the yard too, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 10: you know it's a long answer to a short question,
Speaker 10: but I just there was a legitimacy to it. I mean,
Speaker 10: there is this is the two and a half billion
Speaker 10: dollars worth the damage annually in the country. Arkansas has
Speaker 10: spending over or has over forty million dollars worth of
Speaker 10: damage to crops here. And I remember it was three
Speaker 10: months after it was about three months after the tweet,
Speaker 10: Arkansas got almost three and a half million dollars in federal.
Speaker 1: Funding strictly to repair hog damage.
Speaker 9: Well, yeah, they were.
Speaker 10: There was the Arkansas Federal Hall Eradication Passports had been established.
Speaker 1: Well what a title.
Speaker 9: It's something that's a mouthful.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And so that funding came in. Now I can't
Speaker 10: specifically say that it was because of the tweet, but
Speaker 10: I've got to believe that, you know, all things point
Speaker 10: to the attention that was on that issue at that time,
Speaker 10: and the funding came in, and there's been additional funding since.
Speaker 10: I think Senator to Bozeman has been able to get
Speaker 10: some additional funding. But it's just as a huge issue.
Speaker 10: There's no easy answers to it. But I do believe
Speaker 10: the tweet probably led to some of that funding coming in,
Speaker 10: so that's 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 tweet, 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 2: Was it?
Speaker 1: Were there other options?
Speaker 2: How?
Speaker 1: Yeah, walk me through that.
Speaker 9: You know, I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 10: I grew up in North Carolina and I hunted a
Speaker 10: lot deer and pheasants or grouse, et cetera. But hal
Speaker 10: Counting was not really a big thing there when I
Speaker 10: was growing up, And so when I moved here, I
Speaker 10: lived in town for six or seven years, and then
Speaker 10: I moved I moved out of town and got a
Speaker 10: bigger home, more land and more conducive to the way
Speaker 10: I grew up and I'd been out there several years,
Speaker 10: four or five, six years, and my kids were small,
Speaker 10: and you know, it's Arkansas. You hear about hogs the
Speaker 10: whole time. You hear it's the mascot for the university.
Speaker 10: So you hear about hogs, and you hear about people
Speaker 10: killing them. But I'd never actually hunted hogs. I'd never
Speaker 10: never really been around them. And so when my kids
Speaker 10: were small was my introduction. All these pigs and hogs
Speaker 10: all over my yard, and so I you know, I
Speaker 10: shot three of them and then and then they came
Speaker 10: back a few more times. And when I started speaking
Speaker 10: to my neighbors, that was their Their answer was that,
Speaker 10: you know, you've just got to.
Speaker 9: Get a gun.
Speaker 10: And a lot of them I had the the you know,
Speaker 10: the ars and aks or whatever type of assault style
Speaker 10: weapons they had, and they were using them to eradicate
Speaker 10: hogs or get them off their their lands. And timber
Speaker 10: industry is really big here in South Arkansas, large tracts
Speaker 10: of land as well as soy.
Speaker 9: And you know crops.
Speaker 10: You know, it'll destroy the crops and it'll destroy the timberland,
Speaker 10: especially when they go in and don't have a clear cut,
Speaker 10: and I'll put seedlings out, so there's real problems with it.
Speaker 10: And these are not large corporate farming. It's a small farming,
Speaker 10: you know, this individuals and family farms. And so their
Speaker 10: answer was to go out and to just shoot these hogs.
Speaker 10: You know, I know that in Texas they're looking at
Speaker 10: there's like a strict nine or something like that. They're
Speaker 10: they're poisoning the hogs and those type of methods. That
Speaker 10: was never no one ever mentioned anything to me like that.
Speaker 10: It was always just, you know, you get a gun,
Speaker 10: you go out.
Speaker 9: You shoot them. That's what you do.
Speaker 10: I don't want to get side tracked here, but I
Speaker 10: remember a specific argument that people would say is that,
Speaker 10: you know, every day Willie's out there fighting hogs and
Speaker 10: as you are, and there's just packs of them running
Speaker 10: over his yard.
Speaker 9: And that's not really the way it works.
Speaker 10: You know, they would show up and I wouldn't see
Speaker 10: them for months, and then they would come back, or
Speaker 10: it might be a year or two and they would
Speaker 10: come back, and then there was a lot of environmental
Speaker 10: factors that could drive them up. There could be it
Speaker 10: could be a rainy season that would drive them out
Speaker 10: of the bottoms. You know, this is kind of swamp land.
Speaker 10: I never heard of any other solutions other than.
Speaker 1: Just 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.
Speaker 1: And then the tweet takes off.
Speaker 2: So the two of you are having a ridiculously complicated conversation.
Speaker 1: When the tweet takes off.
Speaker 2: What what is the initial reaction as you remember, how
Speaker 2: do you choose who to talk to and who to
Speaker 2: kind of be like?
Speaker 10: I was very careful and what I said once I
Speaker 10: realized the magnitude of it, And I remember it was
Speaker 10: on a Sunday that I tweeted that. By Tuesday, I
Speaker 10: came into the office and I had calls from Sky
Speaker 10: News and Boxee and in all these major media publications
Speaker 10: that were listening some type of response from me. And
Speaker 10: quite frankly, my major in college was communications, so I
Speaker 10: did a little studying in journalism, and I've always had
Speaker 10: such a admiration for what you guys do, but I
Speaker 10: felt that there was there was an agenda from a
Speaker 10: lot of them, and I didn't want to be part
Speaker 10: of that. If I was going to speak to the media,
Speaker 10: I wanted people that I felt would give me a
Speaker 10: fair a fair shake and what I was trying to say,
Speaker 10: because they didn't understand the situation. And I wasn't interested
Speaker 10: in a corporate media. I like independent media. I think
Speaker 10: that you guys them from an intellectually honest place and
Speaker 10: you're just trying to get the story out. So I
Speaker 10: was intentional in that. And I'll give you I'll give
Speaker 10: you a little something to me that I haven't told
Speaker 10: anybody else. I've referenced since a couple of times in
Speaker 10: tweets subsequently. You know, I in those first few days,
Speaker 10: I was really worried because I was worried. I was
Speaker 10: worried about I was worried about my family's safety because
Speaker 10: people were taking Google Earth pictures of my home and saying,
Speaker 10: you can put a fence right here, you can put
Speaker 10: a gate right here. They were driving by my house
Speaker 10: and taking pictures of my driveway. They called Health and
Speaker 10: Human Services and said I should have my kids taken
Speaker 10: away from me. I mean, just some of the craziest stuff.
Speaker 10: And I remember my profile picture at the time on
Speaker 10: my Twitter feed was me and my daughter. We had
Speaker 10: been on vacation in San Francisco, my family had and
Speaker 10: it was just an innocent picture. But somebody had sent
Speaker 10: me some links that they were taking my daughter's picture
Speaker 10: in mine and selling cups and t shirts on Etsy
Speaker 10: and all these places.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I had to.
Speaker 10: Hire an attorney. I mean, I spent ten thousand dollars
Speaker 10: in legal fees.
Speaker 8: What, yeah, break that down for me.
Speaker 9: Sure, I don't mind.
Speaker 10: So they had to tweet with a picture of me
Speaker 10: and my daughter, and they were selling it on these platforms,
Speaker 10: and I said I had to hire I had two attorneys.
Speaker 10: I had one that was writing cease and assist letters.
Speaker 10: This was all in the first couple of weeks to
Speaker 10: quit selling the image or not. And then I went
Speaker 10: to a copyright trademark lawyer said, okay, let's try to
Speaker 10: copyright this phrase thirty to fifty paral hogs so people
Speaker 10: can't use it to make.
Speaker 9: Money off of.
Speaker 10: And I learned pretty quick within a few weeks, Okay,
Speaker 10: I can't control this. There's just no way. I can't
Speaker 10: control this. I can't control any of this. And so
Speaker 10: I remember, I remember in the first few days, it's
Speaker 10: like you ought to make some merchandise. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 10: not making merchandise off this, And then after three weeks,
Speaker 10: I'm like, Okay, I've spent ten grand in legal fees here.
Speaker 9: I've got to recoup some of it.
Speaker 10: And what a horrible idea that was because the T
Speaker 10: shirt or a bomb, they didn't do anything. And so
Speaker 10: I've got boxes full of T shirts no way, yeah,
Speaker 10: that I never sold and it was strictly to try
Speaker 10: to help pay for my legal expenses.
Speaker 9: So I spent ten.
Speaker 10: Thousand legal fields houses being surveilled by people coming up
Speaker 10: and taking pictures of my driveway that was getting called
Speaker 10: in for child and dangerment. I mean, just the craziest
Speaker 10: things those first few weeks were they were a little
Speaker 10: they were a little crazy. They really were just.
Speaker 2: See hearing the particulars of what it's like to not
Speaker 2: even just like mentally, have to process that volume of attention,
Speaker 2: especially when most people who are replying don't know what
Speaker 2: you're talking about, and then to have to take those
Speaker 2: sorts of measures, that is wild. So how did your
Speaker 2: family and just your community in general react to you
Speaker 2: becoming feral Hogs guy overnight? Because they certainly knew about
Speaker 2: the hogs.
Speaker 10: Well, locally, everybody here thought it was hilarious. They thought
Speaker 10: the whole thing was just ludicrous and hilarious because you know,
Speaker 10: this is this is normal way alive for people here.
Speaker 10: You know that I wasn't the only person dealing with
Speaker 10: hogs because I wasn't not even an avid outdoorsman, and
Speaker 10: people are like you, you're the Faral guy. You don't
Speaker 10: even really hunt. Everybody else are these hunters that it
Speaker 10: definitely people more.
Speaker 9: Equipped to have this debate.
Speaker 10: You know. My I remember my wife, She's like, I'm
Speaker 10: not talking to anybody. This is ridiculous. I'm not speaking
Speaker 10: to anybody about this. She thought the whole thing was crazy.
Speaker 10: My kids they got I think they probably got a
Speaker 10: little popularity because their dad was the Faral Hall guy,
Speaker 10: so they thought it was hilarious, you know, but it
Speaker 10: was stressful. I mean, the truth of it is, if
Speaker 10: I would have been twenty years younger, it would have
Speaker 10: you know, I don't know how anyone I remember having
Speaker 10: that conversation with my attorney. I don't know how anyone
Speaker 10: fifteen to thirty years of age could deal with that
Speaker 10: type of attention. You know, you see people having meltdowns
Speaker 10: that are these public figures my goodness, no wonder. I mean,
Speaker 10: this is just a very small thing that I dealt
Speaker 10: with in the age I was. It was hard, especially
Speaker 10: the first few weeks of it. So, yeah, that was difficult.
Speaker 10: As far as the positive, I think that there was
Speaker 10: at the root of it is a legitimate problem, and
Speaker 10: I think the monies that have been allocated for that
Speaker 10: that there's legitimacy to it. And I remember after I
Speaker 10: put out my statement, like a week into it, the
Speaker 10: amount of it's like people switched one eighty. I remember
Speaker 10: Jason was interacting with like Kevin Bacon or something on
Speaker 10: a tweet and they were laughing about it, and I thought,
Speaker 10: you know, this is kind of crazy. Yea even has
Speaker 10: an opinion.
Speaker 9: On something like this, right, and I put it.
Speaker 10: But when I put out that statement, it's like public
Speaker 10: sentiment changed. And quite frankly, Jason was he could have
Speaker 10: been a lot, are sure, and a lot he was
Speaker 10: kind to me. He was just you know, I've never
Speaker 10: met him, I've never spoke to him personally. We have
Speaker 10: communicated over Twitter, but he was genuinely kind of me.
Speaker 10: He could have been a lot different type of person,
Speaker 10: and I think that speaks to who he is and
Speaker 10: what he believes in and what he advocates for. I'm
Speaker 10: still just as big a fan of his as I
Speaker 10: ever was.
Speaker 1: You were you a fan of his beforehand?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 10: A massive fan. But you know, it was weird. I
Speaker 10: kind of backed into his music. He had been around
Speaker 10: for a while. I didn't really follow him when he
Speaker 10: was Drive by Truckers. Then he put out a couple
Speaker 10: of albums and Southeastern had already kind of blown up,
Speaker 10: and he was coming out with something more than something
Speaker 10: more than pre is at the album. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 10: one that I really started paying attention. And then I
Speaker 10: went back and discovered Southeastern and I saw him on
Speaker 10: that tour last ball with my daughter, which was a
Speaker 10: good one.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I took her. Yeah, we got I got front
Speaker 9: row seeds.
Speaker 10: We went down to Streetport and saw him the auditorium
Speaker 10: down there and it was a fantastic show.
Speaker 1: And did he know you were there?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 10: He tweeted something about it. He tweeted something about it. Yeah,
Speaker 10: And like I said, he's been nothing but kind of
Speaker 10: And those first few days, once he realized that I
Speaker 10: was a sincere person and not some troll, he was,
Speaker 10: you know, he was very nice to me and and
Speaker 10: I'm I'm still a huge Jason many.
Speaker 2: My last question now is has your relationship changed to
Speaker 2: the Internet since this incident.
Speaker 10: I'm very careful to what I say.
Speaker 9: If I'm advocating.
Speaker 10: For something specifically, I'm you know that there are a
Speaker 10: few causes that I openly advocate for and I speak to.
Speaker 9: But I like listening. You know.
Speaker 10: I spend a lot of time on Twitter. You know,
Speaker 10: that's where I get a lot of my news from.
Speaker 10: I listened to a lot of podcasts. I don't think
Speaker 10: there's any issue that it's any that's confronting the American
Speaker 10: people right now that if we would just just step
Speaker 10: back to the half step and listen to each other.
Speaker 10: I really don't think we're that far part on things.
Speaker 9: I think it's in the nuances of.
Speaker 10: It that requires some long form conversations, some true discussion
Speaker 10: of the issues. I still believe that twitter's the it's
Speaker 10: the wild West out there, but there's people there that
Speaker 10: that will have honest, intellectual conversations with you, and.
Speaker 9: I've made some friends on there. You know.
Speaker 10: I'm just I'm probably more careful than what I say
Speaker 10: and just try to listen a little bit more, and
Speaker 10: I think twice about it. I remember somebody had quoted,
Speaker 10: if you're going to take a real position on something,
Speaker 10: you better believe in it because you never know, you
Speaker 10: never know how it may blow up. And it's truly
Speaker 10: a public forum out there. So I don't know if
Speaker 10: 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 1: And to me, it's.
Speaker 2: Ultimately like thirty to fifty is a very funny amount
Speaker 2: of specific for a range of hogs. Where does thirty
Speaker 2: for fifty come from?
Speaker 9: Uh?
Speaker 10: You know the uh. I've spoken about that a couple
Speaker 10: of times. The numbers were literally just pulled out of
Speaker 10: the air. You know, there was a lot of hogs.
Speaker 10: I don't know it was. You know, I'd said that
Speaker 10: to DJ. It could have been twenty to twenty five.
Speaker 10: You know, it was just a number. It was a
Speaker 10: large number of haulks. I was trying to convey. It
Speaker 10: was a large number of hogs. They were in my yard.
Speaker 10: I had to get him out of there fast. There
Speaker 10: was literally no more thought put into it than that
Speaker 10: I've learned since that I didn't know it then that
Speaker 10: you know, a large pack of hogs is called a sounder,
Speaker 10: and a sounder can be thirty hogs. Is a large sounder,
Speaker 10: a large group of hogs. And you know when when
Speaker 10: your kids are out in your yard playing and a
Speaker 10: bunch of them out is out there, you don't know
Speaker 10: how many. You just know your whole car yards covered
Speaker 10: with fogs, and so it's just a bunch, you know,
Speaker 10: it's just a lot. I could have said there was a.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 1: And it was a pleasure talking to you. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Willy.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to Willy for his time and
Speaker 2: just for being such a kind person and a good
Speaker 2: sport about farll hogs over the years. He was so
Speaker 2: so kind to me and I really really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, Willy. You can still catch 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 happened in the first place, when two mass
Speaker 2: shootings happened in the space of the same day in
Speaker 2: the US, It's something I haven't seen discussed as much
Speaker 2: in the scope of this story, that this moment of
Speaker 2: the Internet coming together to make hog jokes was prompted
Speaker 2: by something really awful.
Speaker 1: So before we get to our last interview today, here's
Speaker 1: the thing.
Speaker 2: I don't have an expert opinion on gun control. I
Speaker 2: only have my opinion, and it's that I hate guns
Speaker 2: and I struggle to hear out defenses of them, even
Speaker 2: in cases where that defense makes some sense. And that
Speaker 2: opinion is built on the way anyone built opinions. It's
Speaker 2: informed by how I grew up, where I live now
Speaker 2: and what my personal experiences are. I grew up in
Speaker 2: a small city and not really around gun owners. I
Speaker 2: live in a city now and don't know many gun
Speaker 2: owners now, and my personal experience with a school shooting
Speaker 2: where there were thankfully no fatalities, any anxiety that I
Speaker 2: have for a family that mainly consists of teachers who
Speaker 2: have to conduct these terrifying, tedious, and necessary drills with
Speaker 2: their students more or less solidifies that opinion. I was
Speaker 2: talking about this with my brother last night. He is
Speaker 2: a friend who grew up in a rural area, is queer,
Speaker 2: and felt necessary to have a gun because outside of
Speaker 2: things like the hogs, their perspective is that the people
Speaker 2: who pose an active threat to them in their community
Speaker 2: certainly have guns, and they want to be able to
Speaker 2: defend themselves in their community should anything happen. And I
Speaker 2: know that hobbyists are an argument for guns, that argument
Speaker 2: was kind of a 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 any
Speaker 2: more than a horse girl needs a horse.
Speaker 1: 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 it lacks nuance. I've never had a reason
Speaker 2: to own a gun, and outside of being just really
Speaker 2: fucking juice after seeing Atomic Blonde, I hope I never
Speaker 2: have reason too. It's absurdly frustrating to me how easy
Speaker 2: it is to acquire an ar weapon in most places
Speaker 2: in the United States, and the consequences are what we
Speaker 2: saw in Dayton and San Antonio and many times since.
Speaker 2: And so, while this is pretty immovably how I feel,
Speaker 2: talking to today's guests pulled me out of the bubble
Speaker 2: of my own experience a little bit. With shootings like these,
Speaker 2: the gun isn't the only problem. There's a massive need
Speaker 2: to make some movement on how people are radicalized to
Speaker 2: do things like this, But I don't see how making
Speaker 2: it way more difficult for guns to fall into these hands.
Speaker 1: Isn't a place to start.
Speaker 2: A lot of arguments I've heard for guns rarely acknowledge
Speaker 2: or account for the people who are most likely to
Speaker 2: be harmed by them, disproportionately people of color, specifically unarmed
Speaker 2: black Americans. And while all of this is true, do
Speaker 2: I have an answer of how to defend one's self
Speaker 2: from the Colons Hogs, No, I don't. I wanted to
Speaker 2: talk to someone who felt more like William McNabb than
Speaker 2: about me on gun ownership, because it's a perspective that
Speaker 2: I genuinely struggle with, especially with people who have politics
Speaker 2: that are very similar to mine. And the perfect person
Speaker 2: to speak to was Carl Cassarta, whose YouTube channel in
Speaker 2: Range TV is described as the channel where firearms, culture,
Speaker 2: history and human rights meet. He's a friend of the
Speaker 2: producers of this show, Sophie and Robert, and he was
Speaker 2: so kind to talk to me for this episode.
Speaker 1: Here's our talk.
Speaker 11: So, Hi, I'm Carl Casarta, and I am the creator
Speaker 11: and producer of in range TV, which is a ostensibly
Speaker 11: of firearms content creation YouTube channel, but really it's extended
Speaker 11: beyond that. It's much more about We do a lot
Speaker 11: to do with firearms, but I also do a lot
Speaker 11: of content about history, civil rights, essentially the intersectionality of
Speaker 11: 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 what an assault weapon is and you know
Speaker 2: you don't need one. What's your take on that.
Speaker 11: Well, the thing about that term assault weapon is actually
Speaker 11: a politically charged term or essentially like legislative attempts to
Speaker 11: restrict firearms. Right, it's whether you agree or disagree that
Speaker 11: term assault weapon is not actually something that's ever used
Speaker 11: in any firearms realities, like there is the term assault rifle.
Speaker 11: And oddly, of course, as all things seem too sadly
Speaker 11: goes all the way back to Hitler when he called
Speaker 11: when he coined the gum the storm gaverra, which was
Speaker 11: the storm rifle, which is where assault rifle comes from.
Speaker 11: So what that did is that codified a type of
Speaker 11: firearm which was an intermediate cartridge, meaning something that wasn't
Speaker 11: a full size cartridge, but not a pistol cartridge, something
Speaker 11: between the two, that had a box fed magazine, meaning
Speaker 11: a detachable magazine usually of thirty round capacity, that could
Speaker 11: find single shot or fully automatic. And that is actual,
Speaker 11: technically the firearms definition of what an assault rifle is.
Speaker 11: But in the nineties and when we saw a gun
Speaker 11: control on the rise, this term assault weapon was used
Speaker 11: by politicians, and it was vague and they never could
Speaker 11: really define it because they were trying to say things
Speaker 11: like the shoulder thing that goes up. I'm not kidding
Speaker 11: that one politician said that a shroud like. They had
Speaker 11: all these ideas of what they were just trying to
Speaker 11: like codify this phrase assault weapon, but there is no
Speaker 11: such actual thing technically, and so so it's a political term.
Speaker 2: Actually, because I know the cultural moment that Jason Isbell's
Speaker 2: responding to here, but I can't tell if he is
Speaker 2: responding to a specific person making a semantic argument or what.
Speaker 11: First of all, I want, I want. I hope the audience,
Speaker 11: at least some of the audience is familiar with my
Speaker 11: work and they'll know that I'm not making light of
Speaker 11: any of these horrific events. This is a terrible thing,
Speaker 11: but we're not directly talking about it. We're talking about
Speaker 11: this phrase assault weapon. And it came about, as far
Speaker 11: as I know, the real phraseology came about in the
Speaker 11: early nineties, which is what ultimately turned into the nineteen
Speaker 11: ninety for Assault Weapons Bill, which was a restriction on
Speaker 11: the ownership of a large swath of firearms that were
Speaker 11: defined initially by name but then they realized they couldn't
Speaker 11: define them by name because there was too many variants
Speaker 11: in like manufacturers, So then they tried to define them
Speaker 11: by features like a pistol grip or a shroud, or
Speaker 11: a flash hier or a bayonet lug. I'm not getting
Speaker 11: one of the defining characteristics of an assault weapon legally speaking,
Speaker 11: has frequently been a bayonet lug. And so this is
Speaker 11: where it starts to get a little absurd, because we
Speaker 11: don't hear about a lot of drive by bayonettings, right,
Speaker 11: So it became almost esthetic and not really functionally in practice.
Speaker 11: And that's where the challenge is because and this is
Speaker 11: where you hear like the trope from gun people like, well,
Speaker 11: an assault weapon is a weapon, is a weapon. It's
Speaker 11: how you use it to determine difference.
Speaker 9: In a sult weapon.
Speaker 11: And you know that's not totally incorrect. But at the
Speaker 11: same time, when someone says a soul weapon, because of
Speaker 11: the politics behind it, you know what they mean, right.
Speaker 11: It's kind of like, you know, you can't define porn,
Speaker 11: but you know when you see it kind of thing.
Speaker 11: That's what they were trying to do with the law,
Speaker 11: and they could never really pull it off because it's
Speaker 11: really it's kind of a morpheus and hard to hold
Speaker 11: on too.
Speaker 2: Sounds so much like they're talking about two very 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 11: Wherever anyone's falls on the topic of firearms and firearms
Speaker 11: ownership in this country, this is a really good moment
Speaker 11: to kind of like really distinctively show the very different
Speaker 11: world view that are existing in this space. Right, So,
Speaker 11: I know what his original post mean, right, So, like
Speaker 11: he's using a political term of assault weapon, but I
Speaker 11: also understand the context of why this person is saying this.
Speaker 11: They're talking about a weapon that is probably thirty round
Speaker 11: capacity semi automatic, can fire many rounds, you know quickly,
Speaker 11: or to be honest with you, a lot of people
Speaker 11: that are not familiar with firearms just assume these things
Speaker 11: are fully automatic machine guns and they're not like that.
Speaker 11: There's such a broken conversation being had that neither side
Speaker 11: can really speak the same language, and part of that
Speaker 11: is one side's defensive and doesn't want to lose the
Speaker 11: thing that's important to them in some ways may be
Speaker 11: important only psychologically, and in some ways may be important
Speaker 11: actually in reality when you live in a rural life,
Speaker 11: because I do live a rural existence for most of
Speaker 11: my existence. The truth is in those spaces like where
Speaker 11: I'm at, whether or not you like police or not
Speaker 11: calling them, is the chances are you're going to have
Speaker 11: a third minute to one hour response time. And so
Speaker 11: that's just how it works. And so there is a
Speaker 11: reality there that in a world filled with items like this,
Speaker 11: there is a chance that that item could very well
Speaker 11: be the thing that saves your life, like maybe not
Speaker 11: against fifty hogs, but it could be something else like.
Speaker 10: I means or even.
Speaker 11: Five or whatever. But the thing is that's interesting about
Speaker 11: this is that, let's be realistic. When people say assault WEP,
Speaker 11: and they almost always now think of an AR fifteen, right,
Speaker 11: And so here's the thing that's so interesting about this. Yes,
Speaker 11: an AR fifteen does hold thirty rounds or even sixty rounds.
Speaker 11: It can fire very quickly. But you know what else
Speaker 11: it can do. It's actually very capable for someone who
Speaker 11: doesn't have the opportunity to train a lot or have
Speaker 11: like lots of upper body strength or isn't necessarily proficient
Speaker 11: to actually be capable to use. So there's actually a
Speaker 11: weird sense of ableism in this sometimes because there are
Speaker 11: places I believe in spaces in this world where people
Speaker 11: do need well I do believe in the right of
Speaker 11: self defense. Across the board, there are places and where
Speaker 11: that weapon may very well be the right choice because
Speaker 11: the person who needs to use it really couldn't handle
Speaker 11: something else. And so that's never talked about, and it's
Speaker 11: like it's kind of an interesting thing. But when you
Speaker 11: live in the city, you of course are in a
Speaker 11: place where ostensibly, with the pushup a button on your phone,
Speaker 11: hopefully actual help is there to be had, or you're
Speaker 11: amongst other people, or there aren't feral hogs rolling in
Speaker 11: the streets of like Times Square, I assume, And so
Speaker 11: this worldview when you live in a rural place, it's
Speaker 11: almost like they're on different We're in the same country,
Speaker 11: but we're on different planets. One of the interesting things
Speaker 11: about social media is that it's caused everyone like we
Speaker 11: used to have, like our circles we existed in, like
Speaker 11: these people hung out over there and those people hung
Speaker 11: over there, and sometimes they would talk at the local
Speaker 11: supermarket or whatever, the coffee shop, but it was somewhat
Speaker 11: cursory interaction. But social media has forced us all into
Speaker 11: one giant communal living space. But without context, these worldviews
Speaker 11: really very foreign to each other. That person living with
Speaker 11: those quite possibly thirty hogs in the yard can't fathom
Speaker 11: walking down New York City or New Orleans. That's like
Speaker 11: it is a different planet. And someone from one of
Speaker 11: those places can't fathom a bunch of wild creatures in
Speaker 11: the yard that actually could legitimately kill them. Like those
Speaker 11: are very such.
Speaker 2: Different world I'm very possibly ask you to solve the
Speaker 2: entire world for me right now. But is there in
Speaker 2: this conversation that they're having, is there a solution where
Speaker 2: Jason isbela is asking essentially how can we get mass
Speaker 2: shootings to stop? And William mcnabbus asking how can I
Speaker 2: protect my children from the hot.
Speaker 11: Well, you're going to hear the opinion of a person
Speaker 11: that's a big proponent of of of self defense rights,
Speaker 11: So you're gonna get my bias there is. Everyone's got
Speaker 11: to have a line somewhere, right, So I don't know
Speaker 11: that you should I don't believe you should walk down
Speaker 11: to the street and be able to buy an RPG
Speaker 11: like this is a problem, right, okay, And maybe some
Speaker 11: people's line is an AIR fifteen, But the reality is
Speaker 11: anyone using any of these things for the things they're
Speaker 11: doing is to me the symptom of a much deeper
Speaker 11: cultural problem that isn't being discussed. Why is this happening?
Speaker 11: And when it comes historically because you said you watch
Speaker 11: some of my history work, the reality is from a
Speaker 11: firearms perspective, this is a topic that's been really dwelling
Speaker 11: on me for a while. Technologically speaking, we didn't have
Speaker 11: AR fifteens in like eighteen eighty, but the types of
Speaker 11: firearms that existed in eighteen eighty we're capable of doing
Speaker 11: almost the same sort of horrific things you can do
Speaker 11: now with an AR fifteen. It almost it's not trying
Speaker 11: to be a cocky, but something happened somewhere where these things,
Speaker 11: which are prolific in this country and always have been,
Speaker 11: started taking this even darker turn. And that darker turn,
Speaker 11: to me is where we should be focusing is why
Speaker 11: is this happening? And what is it we're doing in
Speaker 11: our society that's making everybody in all directions feeling I
Speaker 11: don't mean it sounds so dark, but like America feeling
Speaker 11: like a dark place, and there's reasons, and I think
Speaker 11: it's across the spectrum, right. It's like almost anyone you
Speaker 11: talk to isn't happy with how it is, and there's
Speaker 11: a reason. Something's wrong, something's deeply wrong. And you hear
Speaker 11: things like capitalism, which is true for sure, but the
Speaker 11: social ills that we are built in and aren't addressing
Speaker 11: are manifesting in so many ways beyond and just isn't
Speaker 11: the right word, because you can't see just a mass shooting,
Speaker 11: because these are lives, But that is one example of
Speaker 11: many manifestations of I'm going to go ahead and say
Speaker 11: a diseased society to be better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, both people are essentially talking about being
Speaker 2: failed in various ways by their government. The conversation doesn't
Speaker 2: quite connect, and I don't know, I mean, just based
Speaker 2: off of what you were just saying, it feels very
Speaker 2: much like contributing to this disease while also being a
Speaker 2: place that I love, a place where I've found a
Speaker 2: lot of dear friends is the Internet.
Speaker 11: And I'm not trying to take us off topic because
Speaker 11: I know we're talking about the wild hogs issue versus
Speaker 11: assault weapons. But like, hopefully he brought some context of
Speaker 11: where that phrase comes from. And the reality of the
Speaker 11: cultural divide that exists in this country is diverse. And
Speaker 11: here we are all in one space using American style English,
Speaker 11: but we're not speaking the same language. We're just aren't.
Speaker 11: And I how to get people to get on a
Speaker 11: better page is a hard call. I don't know, but
Speaker 11: like what I do in my opinion, what I do
Speaker 11: know or believe at least, is that the best answer
Speaker 11: ever is education, and I'm not sure how to do
Speaker 11: that when the algorithm just wants to make it a war.
Speaker 11: And that's what this is why this is kind of
Speaker 11: like that, right, because this guy posts the thing and
Speaker 11: he's his heart's on the right place. We should never
Speaker 11: have another master footing again. And the other guy's like, well,
Speaker 11: what do I do about these things in my heart
Speaker 11: that are trying to kill my kids? And they're both
Speaker 11: they're not. Neither one's wrong, right.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much to Carl Cassarta. 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. I
Speaker 2: don't know, maybe there is a version of the world
Speaker 2: where most people could handle a weapon as dangerous and
Speaker 2: volatile as an AR fifteen. But I don't think we're
Speaker 2: living in that world. The issues that the hog tweet prompted,
Speaker 2: those of mass shootings and gun violence, and that of
Speaker 2: a hostile and violent species hell bent on killing children
Speaker 2: are more similar than I realized. They're both invasive species,
Speaker 2: and outside of supporting people who are trying to prevent
Speaker 2: these horrors, I'm not the person that has the solution.
Speaker 2: I don't even have a driver's license. But what I
Speaker 2: do want to do here is include the voice of
Speaker 2: someone who is doing their level best to prevent further
Speaker 2: gun violence in the US in a genuine way, because
Speaker 2: the loss that's caused by US policies on guns is huge.
Speaker 2: One story that really stuck with me in the researching
Speaker 2: for this episode is an ongoing effort organized by a
Speaker 2: man named Dion Green, the son of a victim from
Speaker 2: the Dayton mass shooting. Since he lost his father, he
Speaker 2: is focused on helping people and communities affected by this
Speaker 2: kind of violence and showing them a path to healing
Speaker 2: or He is speaking on the local news last year
Speaker 2: after traveling to Maine following the mass shooting in Lewiston
Speaker 2: that left eighteen people dead.
Speaker 12: The sad thing about it is there's going to be
Speaker 12: another shooting and they're going to disperse out, and when
Speaker 12: they disperse out, the resources to leave with them as well.
Speaker 12: So I need to know. I need them to know
Speaker 12: that there are still people around that are willing to help.
Speaker 13: Green knows their grief well. He lost his father, Derek Fudge,
Speaker 13: in the twenty nineteen Oregon District mass shooting. Green taking
Speaker 13: his pain and creating an outlet for support. He now
Speaker 13: leads the Fudge Foundation, a nonprofit in his father's name.
Speaker 13: Its mission is to help those dealing with traumatic events
Speaker 13: and advocate at the local and national level.
Speaker 12: That bend aid comes off and that trauma surfaces. So
Speaker 12: to have people there to be able to help and
Speaker 12: assist and let them know how to get through it
Speaker 12: and just share opinions and things of how other survivors
Speaker 12: got through it is monumental to the next survivors that
Speaker 12: 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 are lower this year than the previous few,
Speaker 2: the United States still has markedly more gun violence than
Speaker 2: in other developed nations. And that's where we are five
Speaker 2: years later. Gun laws are stagnant.
Speaker 1: The hogs are loose, but at least Willie.
Speaker 2: McNabb and Jason isbel got to hang out at a
Speaker 2: concert one time. That's not nothing. It's just almost nothing.
Speaker 2: And so my suite probably dearly departed thirty to fifty
Speaker 2: faral hogs. Your sixteenth minute ends.
Speaker 13: Now I'm seeing things, mister Zuckerman.
Speaker 12: Mister Zuckerman, something's happened to leurvy.
Speaker 9: Do you see what I see? So, p.
Speaker 4: You don't suppose that spider.
Speaker 10: If we have received a sign we have a very
Speaker 10: unusual pig.
Speaker 2: Sixteenth minute is a production of Full Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
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