Speaker 1: My name is Clay Knucomb and this is a production
Speaker 1: of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render
Speaker 1: where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Brought to you
Speaker 1: by to Covi's Boots. I'm a cowboy boot man and
Speaker 1: I've been wearing to Covis for years. The most comfortable
Speaker 1: boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. Man.
Speaker 1: Am I excited to talk about two things today, one
Speaker 1: being the Civil War which has been just like been
Speaker 1: burning in my bones for years now, finally get to
Speaker 1: talk about it with somebody.
Speaker 2: Thank you all for being here and we're just.
Speaker 3: Esteemed panel of civil war experts have gathered.
Speaker 2: Ye. Yes.
Speaker 1: Secondly, very excited to have in the COVID hot seat today.
Speaker 1: Jordan Sellers of Blood Trails Meat eaters acclaimed true crime
Speaker 1: podcast Blood Trails now on It's how many seasons have
Speaker 1: we done?
Speaker 3: Second season? Second in the middle of our second season,
Speaker 3: so six episodes into season two, so now there are
Speaker 3: fourteen episodes. So if you haven't started, you can and
Speaker 3: you're you know, going on a road trip summer. We're
Speaker 3: all taking trips to the beach sitting on the mower exactly.
Speaker 3: You got fourteen episodes. That's over fourteen hours of interesting
Speaker 3: crime stories. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: Also joined by Josh Lambridge Spilmmaker and his wife, Christy
Speaker 1: Lambridge spilm.
Speaker 4: Hello, Hello, Christie Lanforde. I've really been working on my
Speaker 4: mustache player.
Speaker 1: And my lovely wife, doctor Misty nukelem Hell. You two
Speaker 1: of the biggest Civil War buffs I know. Christy and
Speaker 1: Misty are here today to hash it out.
Speaker 5: Southern bells.
Speaker 6: You don't know, never described like that.
Speaker 1: It's it's going to be good. So Christy, you're you're
Speaker 1: a big fan of Jordan's p.
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, Jordan, you don't know this,
Speaker 4: but you kept me company during some of the darkest
Speaker 4: moments of my life, which were which we're cleaning out
Speaker 4: our shop.
Speaker 7: Yes, Josh, that was.
Speaker 5: Almost a true true crime podcast because she wanted to
Speaker 5: kill me.
Speaker 3: A crime scene. Hey, I'm you know, I'll find out
Speaker 3: who did it.
Speaker 1: That's that's the good thing. It's kind of like having
Speaker 1: I don't know if having a buddy that's a really
Speaker 1: good detective is better than having a buddy that's like
Speaker 1: a good detector. Do you understand like if if I
Speaker 1: were killed, like Jordan just said, oh, I'd find out
Speaker 1: who did it. And it's like, I mean that helps
Speaker 1: me a little bit, I mean not a lot better.
Speaker 3: I would at least tell everyone about, you know, whether
Speaker 3: or not someone else found out who did it. You know,
Speaker 3: if it was a cold case, I tell them, and
Speaker 3: if it you know, you found the murder, I'd tell them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, But I mean what I'm saying is like,
Speaker 1: probably a better friend would just be like a bodyguard
Speaker 1: play yeah, bodyguard essentially. And that's and that is why
Speaker 1: that we've brought Josh here today. He started a new
Speaker 1: podcast called Meat Eater's Bodyguard.
Speaker 5: That's basically what I do for Clay when we go
Speaker 5: on interviews. I'm there as the muscle.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're the muscle.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Jordan and I just had a brief conversation a
Speaker 1: minute ago. I asked him before we started, I said,
Speaker 1: are you ever concerned? And this is a question that
Speaker 1: people ask me from the beginning of Bear Grease, But
Speaker 1: they say, are you ever concerned You're going to run
Speaker 1: out of content? And I said, I say no, But
Speaker 1: my field of interest is broader, much broader than yours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you say, what do you say, I mean,
Speaker 3: not anytime soon. I have a list right now and
Speaker 3: I think there's over eighty stories for real on it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, for real.
Speaker 3: And my field of interest is pretty narrow. So we're
Speaker 3: looking at people outside, so hunters, anglers, campers, hikers, and
Speaker 3: some type of crime has been committed or is suspected
Speaker 3: of being committed. So like this season, we covered a
Speaker 3: case of a hunter up in Maine who disappeared, never
Speaker 3: been found. We don't know a crime has been committed,
Speaker 3: but it's very suspicious because they've searched those woods over
Speaker 3: and over and over again and they've never found him.
Speaker 3: And he had he just had cancer. He was very weak.
Speaker 3: It's very unlikely he left. He was seventy years old,
Speaker 3: and so they're pretty com confident something happened to him
Speaker 3: in those woods and then he was removed in some way.
Speaker 3: So those are the types of stories that we cover,
Speaker 3: and there are unfortunately quite a few of them. But yeah,
Speaker 3: we're not gonna be running out anytime soon.
Speaker 1: Would you say that most of the stories that you
Speaker 1: have done thus far there has been an element of
Speaker 1: foul play and air on the part of the person
Speaker 1: that died, I.
Speaker 3: Would say largely. No, most of them have.
Speaker 2: Just completely innocent, just victims.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean. So, the episode that came out this
Speaker 3: week is from down where I am, near where I
Speaker 3: am in East Texas, and it was of a big
Speaker 3: time fisherman. He loved to fish out on Lake sam Rayburn,
Speaker 3: which is the lake he had a lake house out there.
Speaker 3: He disappeared. His truck was found burned out, his boat
Speaker 3: was found shot. It was one of those pontoon boats.
Speaker 3: Someone had shot the pontoons in an effort to sink it,
Speaker 3: but it didn't sink, because that's not how those boats.
Speaker 3: Apparently I didn't know this before, but you can shoot
Speaker 3: those boats and they won't sink. And so foul play
Speaker 3: is suspected. And the more I talk with people about
Speaker 3: this guy, the more I come to find out he
Speaker 3: kind of a larger than life personality. Everyone knew him
Speaker 3: in town. But maybe a bit of a lady's man.
Speaker 3: Those words, those specific words were used multiple times by
Speaker 3: different people to describe him. But he was also married. Also,
Speaker 3: I found out he was an outlaw, so a guy
Speaker 3: who maybe didn't care so much about wildlife laws. So
Speaker 3: we don't know what happened to him. We don't know
Speaker 3: why he disappeared. We don't know anything, really, but it's
Speaker 3: conceivable that something he got into is what led to
Speaker 3: his disappearance and presumed death. So there are some worries
Speaker 3: like that, but usually it's someone who was just in
Speaker 3: the wrong place, at the wrong time, at the wrong
Speaker 3: person out in the woods.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's slightly unnerving. Yeah, I was hoping. I was
Speaker 2: hoping you'd be.
Speaker 1: Like, Nope, every single one had drugs, alcohol, gambling, horse
Speaker 1: racing and all whatever.
Speaker 2: I was wondering if you pick that, Yeah, that doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily mean you're a bad person. But where I come from,
Speaker 2: we only race mules.
Speaker 3: Is it? Is it the racing or the gambling gambling?
Speaker 1: It's kind of it's like throwing back on a joke
Speaker 1: that happened like weeks ago that nobody thought was funny
Speaker 1: about about.
Speaker 2: Horse racing being kind of a little sketchy.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so it would only be gambling. My parents
Speaker 1: were raising hot springs and so you know, now mule
Speaker 1: gambling and racing, that's fine, totally okay, I mean, because you.
Speaker 2: Know, how serious could that be taken.
Speaker 9: It's interesting because you don't have Clay doesn't have a
Speaker 9: really long list. He does not have eighty potential podcasts.
Speaker 9: He is looking for, you know, trying to mine out
Speaker 9: the heroes, like rural redemptive.
Speaker 6: Stories of rural people.
Speaker 9: Would you agree or disagree with that americanization sometimes?
Speaker 1: I mean sometimes we're just doing like big historical stuff
Speaker 1: like Civil War, which is kind of a little bit
Speaker 1: unusual for Bear Greece because there's not a direct tie
Speaker 1: to hunting or necessarily even rural America directly. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like all of America. This is probably the biggest,
Speaker 1: like all American thing that we've done in a long time.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but I'm just saying it's it's interesting that there's
Speaker 9: so much.
Speaker 6: He has such a longer list than you do.
Speaker 1: Well, and it's it's probably just a the nature of
Speaker 1: the way he plans.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: Stories I'll definitely do. It's like people send in a story,
Speaker 3: I look it up briefly and think this could work,
Speaker 3: and I put it on the list. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 3: extent of it.
Speaker 2: Really, But I mean eighty stories, that's years of work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a
Speaker 3: lot of hunters going missing under suspicious circumstances, but also
Speaker 3: like like I have I think I can think it's three,
Speaker 3: off the top of my head, spouses killing their spouses
Speaker 3: and to make it look like a hunting accident. Yeah, duck,
Speaker 3: a duck hunting accident, and then two deer hunting accidents.
Speaker 3: All three interesting, probably not accidents.
Speaker 9: I wonder if if that worries you at all, Clay, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 9: I don't know, just kidding, just kidding, I don't with Clay.
Speaker 4: Well, Josh and Josh took me turkey hunting a few
Speaker 4: weeks ago and we're out at you know, it's five
Speaker 4: am and we're trapsing through the woods. Yeah, and I'm
Speaker 4: a little ways by, hi Josh, and he's like just
Speaker 4: turns his and logs and he's like, are you okay?
Speaker 4: And I was like, yeah, I'm great. I just probably
Speaker 4: shouldn't have listened to blood trails for real, like before
Speaker 4: we came out here, Like this was a little much.
Speaker 3: Just stay away from strangers, That's what I've learned. Just
Speaker 3: like you see a stranger.
Speaker 6: Just just go somewhere else, Just go somewhere else.
Speaker 2: Ways, Oh that's your hot tip.
Speaker 3: I listen. I I would say, don't, don't get into conflict.
Speaker 3: No conflict ever with not worth it. Maybe if like
Speaker 3: if they're obviously friendly and in their right mind, like
Speaker 3: you know, it's fine talk to them, but like if
Speaker 3: they walk through your hunt, if they mess something up,
Speaker 3: just don't say anything.
Speaker 9: Is that what a lot of your stories are about
Speaker 9: people kind of infringing on your hunting property.
Speaker 6: No, Well, so he's got eightyse stories. I'm just curious.
Speaker 3: Where's There are definitely a few that I haven't looked
Speaker 3: into in a lot of detail where there is some
Speaker 3: conflict over one actually up in Michigan allegedly conflict over
Speaker 3: a bare baiting location. Oh wow, and there was a
Speaker 3: gunfight basically happened as a result. Yeah, but but definitely definitely.
Speaker 3: I mean, we did one this season of a hunter
Speaker 3: who just it was in the parking lot of uh,
Speaker 3: some federal public land. I can't remember exactly what it was,
Speaker 3: but some federal public land down in Florida in the Panhandle,
Speaker 3: and they just got into a fight.
Speaker 8: The guy.
Speaker 3: The guy was walking his dogs and he said, hey,
Speaker 3: you should have orangehn because there's hunters in the area.
Speaker 3: He didn't like that. We don't know exactly how it escalated.
Speaker 3: From there, but it escalated to the guy walking the
Speaker 3: dogs shooting the hunters and killing him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and along dog walkers, peaceful people.
Speaker 3: This was just a few years ago. Wow, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: not not long ago. And so that's why I say, like,
Speaker 3: you just never know, Like and this guy, it turned
Speaker 3: out the murderer had a history of aggressive confrontations with
Speaker 3: his neighbors, just like kind of a not great guy.
Speaker 3: And the hunter didn't know that. Well, but he's not
Speaker 3: going to back down. You know, he probably should have,
Speaker 3: not that it's you know, at all his fault, but
Speaker 3: you just never know who you're gonna run.
Speaker 2: Well, that's I think that's great advice.
Speaker 1: Just general advice for life is just stay out of conflict. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know there's there there can be an
Speaker 1: ego thing rise up when someone really wrongs you that
Speaker 1: you feel like you need to stand in your space
Speaker 1: or whatever.
Speaker 2: That's rarely actually something you need to do. Like if
Speaker 2: someone like in the field.
Speaker 3: Especially way out in somewhere. Yeah, it's one thing. If
Speaker 3: it's like in a restaurant with you know, one hundred
Speaker 3: people around you. It's another thing if you're by yourself
Speaker 3: with someone in the.
Speaker 6: Sticks so stay out of conflict with strangers in the woods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is you know, I meant this checks out.
Speaker 1: Gary Nukum always taught me from the time I was
Speaker 1: a young kid, I was afraid of the dark. I
Speaker 1: was afraid of the woods. I really was more than
Speaker 1: the average kid. And he was always like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: there's nothing in these woods that's going to hurt you
Speaker 1: except for people. And he always advised us just to
Speaker 1: stay away from people.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's I'd say that's relatively good advice for
Speaker 1: the most part.
Speaker 5: Stay away from people. I'm keeping a list here.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Yeah, tips for life for Joshua exactly.
Speaker 8: I'm doing a lot of stuff wrong Jordan's.
Speaker 3: High risk lifestyle.
Speaker 1: So the second season of Blood Trails, what's your favorite
Speaker 1: episode you've done so far? One that stands out, one
Speaker 1: that was iconic, second, second, the second, just all of
Speaker 1: them you've done, because people ask me that all the time,
Speaker 1: and I'm always trying to like pick one bear, Like
Speaker 1: if we were like, what's the best bear grease?
Speaker 2: Which one would you listen to if you only have.
Speaker 3: So so I can tell you our most popular so
Speaker 3: far this season, by far, has been the first episode
Speaker 3: we did. It's from up in Montana near Helena. A
Speaker 3: guy named Mike krit was the victim, and Mike moved
Speaker 3: from Colorado to Montana basically to live off the grid.
Speaker 3: He bought eighty acres up north of Helena and built
Speaker 3: a cabin and kind of just kind of wanted to
Speaker 3: be left alone, but was also very kind of aggressive
Speaker 3: about keeping people off of his property. So really he
Speaker 3: did have some neighbors who got along with but he
Speaker 3: had conflicts with other neighbors. And that's really at the
Speaker 3: heart of the story, is this conflict he had with
Speaker 3: a neighbor farthered down the mountain from him. So and
Speaker 3: then the other big thing about this story is that
Speaker 3: there's this easement. There's a bunch of properties on this
Speaker 3: mountain and there's an easement, so a road that is
Speaker 3: not like a county road. There's like this official, unofficial
Speaker 3: agreement that all the neighbors are going to be able
Speaker 3: to use this road. A neighbor farther down the mountain
Speaker 3: from Mike decided he to want people driving or entering
Speaker 3: his property at all, and so he would try to
Speaker 3: block off that road. This conflict escalated, escalated, escalated. There
Speaker 3: were shots fired at Mike that he got on video,
Speaker 3: and we got that video and it's in the podcast.
Speaker 3: If you go on YouTube, it's there as well, you
Speaker 3: can watch that. And so that was the type of
Speaker 3: conflict that was going on on this mountain. Mike disappears.
Speaker 3: His remains are found a couple months later, and it
Speaker 3: turned out someone had actually.
Speaker 8: Cut him up, just remembered him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, put him in two separate plastic bags, deposited
Speaker 3: those bags on two sides of a pass, the McDonald
Speaker 3: Pass up there near Helena. And so they find these remains.
Speaker 3: This is all they're back in twenty eleven, and so
Speaker 3: you think, well, they found their remains, they're going to
Speaker 3: find some DNA, they're going to figure out who did it.
Speaker 3: And obviously they're looking very closely at this neighbor who
Speaker 3: he's been having conflict with. Kind of fast forward and
Speaker 3: nothing really happens for a long time. They don't make
Speaker 3: any arrest, they can't figure out who killed Mike. Eventually
Speaker 3: they connect some zip ties that were found on the remains.
Speaker 3: They've been used to zip tide like the bones together.
Speaker 3: They connect those zip ties to another neighbor. There's a
Speaker 3: different neighbor not the guy who'd shot at Mike, different
Speaker 3: guy on that same mountain. They connected to him. He's
Speaker 3: he's prosecuted, he goes to trial, but it's a hung
Speaker 3: jury and so and then a year later, the prosecutor
Speaker 3: decides we're not gonna refile the charges and try to
Speaker 3: prosecute him again because they don't feel like they have
Speaker 3: enough evidence. So and like there's eyes skimmed over, tons
Speaker 3: of detail, like there's there's all kinds of stuff in
Speaker 3: that podcast. But I think that one has done really
Speaker 3: well because there's so much uncertainty about the story. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of speculation. You can have your own opinions about,
Speaker 3: you know, the guy that they charged. Did you listen
Speaker 3: to that one? Okay, all right, well I'm I'm curious
Speaker 3: to hear them, But that that one really sticks out,
Speaker 3: especially this season, just with the uncertainty of it, the like,
Speaker 3: is Mike a good guys? He not a good guy?
Speaker 2: You know? What? Do you think?
Speaker 3: You's complicated?
Speaker 5: I think he did it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So if you haven't listened to the episode,
Speaker 3: Leon Ford is the guy that they eventually prosecuted, and
Speaker 3: the way they connected the ZIP ties to him is
Speaker 3: they were kind of unusual zip ties. They were apparently
Speaker 3: like really large heavy duty zip ties. You couldn't you
Speaker 3: can't really buy them like home deep over lows.
Speaker 5: But one of.
Speaker 6: You are doing a lot wrong.
Speaker 2: You did it.
Speaker 3: But but he had access to them because he worked
Speaker 3: at an air Force base in Washington State, and there's
Speaker 3: a record of him checking out those zip ties like
Speaker 3: a couple weeks before Mike goes missing. The other big
Speaker 3: there's two other big piece of evidence. One is the
Speaker 3: timing of it. So he didn't live up there on
Speaker 3: the mountain. He he had property up there, but he
Speaker 3: only visited every couple of years. So he visits and
Speaker 3: like the next day Mike goes missing, So that's kind
Speaker 3: of weird timing. Another thing is they got an opinion. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they had, They had trailcam footage of his truck going
Speaker 3: up there the day Mike goes missing, and they don't
Speaker 3: really have footage of anyone else.
Speaker 2: But they can't they can't pin it on him.
Speaker 3: Well, so, and I talked with the one of the
Speaker 3: primary investigators who ended up, you know, bringing this case
Speaker 3: to trial. What he what he told me is like
Speaker 3: if you take all of these things together, it's very convincing. Right,
Speaker 3: it's a pretty strong case, but each thing separately you
Speaker 3: can really pick it apart, which is exactly what his
Speaker 3: defense did. And so that combined with the other guy,
Speaker 3: I think the other neighbor throws a wrench into the
Speaker 3: whole thing. Because the defense calls the other neighbor who
Speaker 3: shot at Mike up to the stand and he pleads
Speaker 3: the fifth meaning he said, I'm not going to testify
Speaker 3: for fear of self incrimination.
Speaker 6: Oh man.
Speaker 3: The jury hears that and thinks, oh, well, this guy
Speaker 3: did it right. And so I actually got contacted by
Speaker 3: one of the members of that jury who told me
Speaker 3: it was like seven to five guilty. So it was
Speaker 3: very much split. And the jurors who said not guilty
Speaker 3: were like, Ford could have done it. There just isn't
Speaker 3: quite enough evidence. And also this other guy, we feel
Speaker 3: like he was in on it, but he was never
Speaker 3: he was never charged. So the whole thing is just
Speaker 3: a giant mess all the way around.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 9: Wow, what are the ethics of like a story like that,
Speaker 9: like Josh just said, this guy's name on and what
Speaker 9: are the ethics of telling these stories that you know someone.
Speaker 9: It's one thing to say this person was found guilty
Speaker 9: by a trial, you know. And but but you're talking
Speaker 9: about stories, and I'm curious both about the families of
Speaker 9: the victims. Have you ever run into a situation where
Speaker 9: the families don't want the story told? Because I could
Speaker 9: I could see that being the case, or a situation
Speaker 9: like this one, where are you allowed to do what
Speaker 9: you're doing? You know, are you how how do you
Speaker 9: navigate all that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think.
Speaker 6: And what are the legal parameters for?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So so like if someone hasn't been convicted, you
Speaker 3: can't say they did it. You have to say they've
Speaker 3: been accused of it, right, Well, but you can you can,
Speaker 3: I think, voice your opinion right like I could. I
Speaker 3: could maybe I could say I think he did it, right,
Speaker 3: but I have to say I think he did I
Speaker 3: don't send to weigh in in the podcast, But yeah,
Speaker 3: you do have to be really careful, and especially if
Speaker 3: they have never been charged but their name is out there,
Speaker 3: like we covered another case.
Speaker 1: They not bother you personally though, to like say just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess you're just a journalist, so you're just
Speaker 2: like telling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, Like I matter of public record. It's a
Speaker 3: matter of public records. So like another good example, we
Speaker 3: covered a case from Kentucky where law enforcement has been
Speaker 3: pretty vocal about who they think did it. But this
Speaker 3: guy has never actually been charged, but he has been
Speaker 3: named as a person of interest as a suspect. And
Speaker 3: so as a journalist, I can say, this guy, his
Speaker 3: name is Nick Nick Hawk, has been named as a
Speaker 3: person of interest in this murder. But then I also
Speaker 3: have to say he's never been charged. He maintains his innocence, right,
Speaker 3: and all that is true, And I don't know whether
Speaker 3: whether or not he did it, but I can say
Speaker 3: police say he did it. So if if law enforcement,
Speaker 3: law enforcement gives me a lot of cover as a
Speaker 3: journalist to say, well, this is just what law enforcement said, right,
Speaker 3: And it's up to them whether or not they want
Speaker 3: to come out with names like that.
Speaker 8: So I want to revise my statement about Ford.
Speaker 5: If I had a magic eight ball and I shook
Speaker 5: it and turned it over, it would definitely say signs
Speaker 5: point two.
Speaker 2: Yes, you're not have a magic eight ball.
Speaker 5: The well right and buts.
Speaker 6: So much wrong today.
Speaker 5: Also says the lot is cast in the lap, but
Speaker 5: the answers from.
Speaker 2: The lord so oh no, no, anything about eight ball.
Speaker 3: Probably would have used those.
Speaker 4: But in that story, that was crazy because there was
Speaker 4: a guy, the dad of the victim, of the of
Speaker 4: one of the victims, was putting billboards in town with
Speaker 4: people's names on it.
Speaker 7: Not Nick, but the brother.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Brooks. Yeah. So that's the crazy. That's that
Speaker 3: story is one of the most famous that we've covered.
Speaker 3: A lot of the stories we cover haven't been covered
Speaker 3: elsewhere for whatever reason. I don't know. People don't care
Speaker 3: about Yeah, they're a little bit more obscure. But that
Speaker 3: one guy named Tommy Ballard was shot in the chest
Speaker 3: while hunting. And previous to that, a year before, his
Speaker 3: daughter had gone missing, and he'd been very vocal but
Speaker 3: who he thought kidnapped and murdered his daughter? And so
Speaker 3: and Evan so again and spoil it in situations like that,
Speaker 3: like I can present the evidence, right. He had been
Speaker 3: doing been very vocal about this. He'd been naming this
Speaker 3: these brothers, like to the media. He had billboards around town,
Speaker 3: this guy killed my daughter, you know. And so then
Speaker 3: I can say, and then he was shot in the
Speaker 3: chest and law enforcement thinks the same people who kidnapped
Speaker 3: his daughter killed him. I don't have to say, well,
Speaker 3: I think he did it. Yeah, it's kind of doesn't
Speaker 3: really matter, right what I think. But I present all
Speaker 3: of that, and you know, people can kind of draw
Speaker 3: their own conclusions.
Speaker 4: Have you have you have you had or ever had
Speaker 4: any pushback, like someone who's related to one of these
Speaker 4: stories email you angry or mad or disagreeing.
Speaker 5: Have you ever gotten a letter from an attorney?
Speaker 3: Never gotten a letter from an attorney, Not about blood Trails.
Speaker 3: I have about some meat eater articles, and that's a
Speaker 3: whole that's a story we could maybe get into. But no,
Speaker 3: And and that's honestly, one of the things I'm most
Speaker 3: proud of about blood Trails is that, you know, so far,
Speaker 3: I haven't really gotten any messages like that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3: Usually the families that I've worked with have reached out
Speaker 3: and said, you know, we we liked the job you did,
Speaker 3: or they just some of them haven't said anything. So
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what that means all the time,
Speaker 3: But you know, I really try very hard to get
Speaker 3: the details right, to tell the stories truthfully and accurately
Speaker 3: as far as I can, to admit when like I
Speaker 3: don't know, I do that a lot to say, like
Speaker 3: this is a theory this is speculation. We don't know
Speaker 3: exactly what happened.
Speaker 9: And have you ever had a situation where a family
Speaker 9: reached out and said, hey, we don't we've heard you're
Speaker 9: talking about this.
Speaker 6: We don't want you to talk about this.
Speaker 3: Story the only one. Okay, Well, so there's been two cases.
Speaker 3: In season one, we covered a case of an elk
Speaker 3: hunter in Montana who went missing and then his remains
Speaker 3: were found two years later. There was a lot of
Speaker 3: speculation that his hunting buddies who'd been with him had
Speaker 3: killed him, which is probably not true. In that case,
Speaker 3: I did reach out to those hunting buddies who then
Speaker 3: were in contact with his wife, and they decided not
Speaker 3: to participate. And they didn't say exactly like his wife
Speaker 3: does and want you to do this, but they did say, like,
Speaker 3: we don't love that this is being brought back to
Speaker 3: public attention, and the buddies kind of have a reason.
Speaker 3: And it turned out there was a lot of details
Speaker 3: there that that things they maybe could have done that
Speaker 3: would have prevented this situation. Not that they killed him,
Speaker 3: but just like things they could have done. So they
Speaker 3: had kind of a reason, and you know, they said,
Speaker 3: like he had he has a son. He was young
Speaker 3: when this happened, but he's older now, and you know,
Speaker 3: we we think about those things very carefully and we
Speaker 3: try to, you know, tell the story in a responsible way.
Speaker 3: And for those families, I really try hard to present
Speaker 3: their loved one in like to humanize them to the audience,
Speaker 3: because that I think that gets lost a lot with
Speaker 3: these stories. True crime is kind of infamous, right for
Speaker 3: taking advantage of people suffering, and so I really try
Speaker 3: And so if the family talks me, that's I love
Speaker 3: that because then I can actually do that. With this story.
Speaker 3: I had a hard time because don't really talk to me,
Speaker 3: and so we couldn't really say what kind of person
Speaker 3: Aaron was. I did have. So the episode that's coming
Speaker 3: out Thursday, when we're recording this, I wanted to cover
Speaker 3: the story last year. I reached out to the victim's sister,
Speaker 3: who said it would be great if you didn't cover
Speaker 3: this now because the murder is going to trial and
Speaker 3: we don't want a bunch of coverage on this until
Speaker 3: after the title, right, And and you know, I wrestled
Speaker 3: with that a bit because as a journalist, like I
Speaker 3: don't love people telling me like cover this story. Now
Speaker 3: or not now, or you know, not this one or
Speaker 3: that one. At the same time, like I'm not interested
Speaker 3: in like messing anything up for prosecutors or going after
Speaker 3: a bad guy. And so we decided to hold the
Speaker 3: story until after the trial. And it was also a
Speaker 3: little selfish because like a trials went, all the details
Speaker 3: come out right, and so it was gonna be a
Speaker 3: better episode anyway. But so she did ask that, and
Speaker 3: and and she said, like, I'd be willing to help
Speaker 3: with this after the trial, And sure enough I reached
Speaker 3: back out and she was That episode's coming out on Thursday,
Speaker 3: and I think it's one of the best of the
Speaker 3: season because we got al we got. So the name
Speaker 3: of the episode is Finding Justice for Dustin Jersom. Dustin
Speaker 3: Jersom was a Bozeman guy actually, so he was up
Speaker 3: just south of Bozeman camping and he got attacked by someone.
Speaker 3: They thought it was a bear attack at first, which
Speaker 3: kind of tells you how bad it was. But they
Speaker 3: they found the guy and they locked him up, and
Speaker 3: I got I talked with everyone. I talked with all
Speaker 3: the detectives, prosecutors, defense attorneys, everyone, so that that story
Speaker 3: is really fully formed, and I think people are gonna
Speaker 3: like it.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, yeah sounds good.
Speaker 6: My last question, how do you sleep?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I sleep okay? It Yeah, covering the stories, I don't
Speaker 3: think bothers me too much. So I will say the
Speaker 3: one time that it kind of crept up is we
Speaker 3: live on We live on about four acres, but it's
Speaker 3: kind of like a neighborhood where like everyone is on
Speaker 3: four acres, but we have like a back part of
Speaker 3: our property that's all wooded and our older two kids
Speaker 3: go out and play back there. Well, one day we
Speaker 3: needed them to come inside, and we yelled for them
Speaker 3: and yelled for them and yelled for them, and they
Speaker 3: weren't there. And like it's not a huge piece of
Speaker 3: you know, you can kind of like look and see
Speaker 3: both sides. And so I'm like starting to kind of
Speaker 3: freak out. My wife is starting to freak out. And
Speaker 3: so I'm walking down the street because I think maybe
Speaker 3: they went to a neighbor's And as I'm walking, I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is like the beginning of a budget. I'm like
Speaker 3: writing the script in my head as I'm walking, like
Speaker 3: this is not maybe not super healthy. So but it
Speaker 3: doesn't like, you know, bother me just generally, I think
Speaker 3: just thinking about like those horrible things and how things
Speaker 3: change in an instant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you.
Speaker 1: When you said you have only had you have eighty
Speaker 1: episodes scripted out in front of you, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about how statistically, with the amount of people that are hunting,
Speaker 1: fishing using American public lands, I mean, it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a very rare thing for something terrible to happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, super rare.
Speaker 2: So it's it's it really is super rare.
Speaker 1: I mean, probably probably more rare than a lightning strike
Speaker 1: or something, you know, I think it probably is. But
Speaker 1: but but we we we fixate on the anomalies, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a we have a bias for the extreme things,
Speaker 1: and that's why it's interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, well it's a good thing that we have
Speaker 1: the Civil War to.
Speaker 3: Talk about now, lighter fair light.
Speaker 2: Yeah, are you much of a civil war?
Speaker 3: No? No, not really. I did grow up in northern Virginia,
Speaker 3: so if I wanted to be, I really I really
Speaker 3: could have. Really could we We would go up to
Speaker 3: Harper's Ferry occasionally. Oh it was right up there, John
Speaker 3: brown Way, Yep, No, I don't. I don't claim to
Speaker 3: know a ton about the war itself. I was very
Speaker 3: interested though in kind of the like the cultural the
Speaker 3: ways that it still impacts culture today.
Speaker 2: Well, that was a great one.
Speaker 1: So the to tackle a Civil War series is a
Speaker 1: big bite.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's just there's just a thousand ways you
Speaker 2: could do it. J D.
Speaker 1: Hewittt was our expert guest. He has a really great
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. JD is a high school history teacher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then has a really huge YouTube channel called History Underground,
Speaker 1: and I mean just top notch expert in my book,
Speaker 1: and he says that there are people, there are academics
Speaker 1: who spent their entire careers learning about specific battles in
Speaker 1: the Civil War. I mean like there are guys that
Speaker 1: like their whole academic career has been about you know,
Speaker 1: Gettysburg or whatever. And so you know, to think that
Speaker 1: you could bite off a big chunk about like and
Speaker 1: try to really understand the Civil War is a bold
Speaker 1: thing to do.
Speaker 2: But I've.
Speaker 1: You know, as I'm picking topics to discuss, it usually
Speaker 1: has to do with some unanswered questions that I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, what, it's time I really understand that. And
Speaker 1: so the Civil War is something that I mean I
Speaker 1: would be as familiar as the next guy.
Speaker 2: About you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was just public school educated, went to college,
Speaker 1: maybe took a college history class, but what really wouldn't
Speaker 1: have known that much about the Civil War, but did
Speaker 1: have this history that I disclosed on episode, which oddly
Speaker 1: was kind of I was a little bit nervous about,
Speaker 1: like saying that where I came from in my and
Speaker 1: I was quick to not pinted on my dad because literally,
Speaker 1: if Gary Nukan were here, he would.
Speaker 2: Be like, who told you about that? But yeah, I
Speaker 2: just rural Arkansas.
Speaker 1: This idea that the Confederacy was just this, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of honorable thing, and we're going to get into
Speaker 1: it more in the future.
Speaker 2: But I mean, I think there is absolutely a way to.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, look at your historical heritage and
Speaker 1: not be ashamed of something. I mean that like when
Speaker 1: you look into this war, you see both sides had
Speaker 1: lots of crazy stuff right going on. So again, and
Speaker 1: I said, I'm neither ashamed nor proud of that.
Speaker 2: It's just kind of the way it was.
Speaker 1: And uh and and I've had multiple people from from
Speaker 1: the Northern United States write me and say they had
Speaker 1: no connection to.
Speaker 2: The Civil War. Since this podcast is well, like I
Speaker 2: had like like I disclosed that.
Speaker 6: I had, right, but so since that time, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people, because I surmised and so did J. D. Hewitt.
Speaker 1: Then in the North there was not this deep seated
Speaker 1: pride that you fought for the North, like there would
Speaker 1: be a pride in the South that your ancestors fought
Speaker 1: for the Confederacy.
Speaker 2: And that has been confirmed by many people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that that that really rang true for me. I
Speaker 3: feel like that's probably true. And I was trying to
Speaker 3: think of of why that would be true, because usually
Speaker 3: if you are on the losing side, you're the most proud. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so it doesn't like intuitively, it doesn't quite make sense.
Speaker 3: I was wondering if maybe it's because like like everything
Speaker 3: changed in the South and so and so, like you know,
Speaker 3: things were kind of turned on their head, but the
Speaker 3: North just sort of went along business as usual. And
Speaker 3: so it doesn't it's not like it doesn't take up
Speaker 3: as much headspace if you grew up in the North
Speaker 3: and that's where your family was from, because there wasn't
Speaker 3: this like big moment where everything changed. Yeah, I wonder
Speaker 3: if that has anything to do with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought JD's Rocky analogy was pretty good, pretty
Speaker 1: great too. Yeah yeah, But I want to I want
Speaker 1: to project about what's coming. I really didn't have a
Speaker 1: idea of like how this was going to be scripted out.
Speaker 1: We just built an hour long episode and kind of
Speaker 1: got up to the beginnings of the war, like we
Speaker 1: didn'tven start the war yet. And the next episode, honestly
Speaker 1: is gonna be quite a bit about pre Civil War
Speaker 1: as well. We're going to talk about Lincoln and just fascinating.
Speaker 1: And I would have known Lincoln just in in general overview,
Speaker 1: but when you start actually looking at what he said
Speaker 1: and what he did, you realize that he's not quite
Speaker 1: the guy. I mean, not taking anything away from him,
Speaker 1: but I mean like there's some bizarre quotes that we're
Speaker 1: gonna read that that that will rival the quotes from
Speaker 1: this episode, which were so unique and wild as well.
Speaker 1: But but what I would just like to open the floor, Christy, Misty,
Speaker 1: Josh Jordan, what what stood out to you and how
Speaker 1: could we?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: If I had anything to do over, I would have
Speaker 1: done the beginning of the episode over.
Speaker 2: I felt like I kind of way.
Speaker 1: Well, I uh, yeah, I don't know. I wasn't super
Speaker 1: happy with the beginning of the of the episode.
Speaker 8: I'm not supposed to tell people that.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean this is the render where we talked
Speaker 2: about you. Now what what stood out to you? Christy?
Speaker 4: I think what maybe the obvious thing that stood out
Speaker 4: is just what felt so duplicitous? Is that a word,
Speaker 4: Misty excellent word with Thomas Jefferson, like, it's really hard
Speaker 4: to reconcile. And I think even the episode you were
Speaker 4: like how even a JD like, how do you, like,
Speaker 4: how do you reconcile that? And there still was no answer,
Speaker 4: like it's very hard to reconcile that I live one way.
Speaker 4: I profess that something different should be happening, and how
Speaker 4: do you how do you walk that out?
Speaker 3: That?
Speaker 4: That was just fascinating to me. So and I don't
Speaker 4: I don't have that resolution quite yet. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 4: I also didn't know that his mistress and his wife were.
Speaker 7: Half sister.
Speaker 3: That I didn't know that either, very weird it At
Speaker 3: the same time it's was like hard to reconcile, it
Speaker 3: also felt very human to me, like like I have
Speaker 3: these ideals that I believe in, but like implementing them
Speaker 3: in my life would really be hard, you know, like
Speaker 3: I have this huge like plantation, this like this estate
Speaker 3: that I'm managing, and to you know, live my ideals
Speaker 3: out would just throw everything for a loop. And I'm
Speaker 3: not I don't know if that was actually his motivation,
Speaker 3: but that that strikes me as as very human.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, somebody wrote in and told me that Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson was in massive debt. Like he he he had
Speaker 1: a lot of financial debt, and their assumption was that
Speaker 1: just the economics, the economics of it just didn't make
Speaker 1: sense for him to just free all his slaves based
Speaker 1: upon just his moral compass.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so maybe it's something you hope will happen
Speaker 3: when you die. Like George Washington, I think you mentioned
Speaker 3: he freed his slaves upon his death, which is a
Speaker 3: bit of a cop out, right, It's like you're not
Speaker 3: having to live through the hardship that that would bring.
Speaker 3: But you understand this is a bad thing, and so
Speaker 3: you're going to try to rectify it.
Speaker 9: And to that in I think a lot of times
Speaker 9: people and you hear things like this, how can we
Speaker 9: possibly do that?
Speaker 6: We're just doing what the rest of the world is.
Speaker 9: We can't play by a different set of rules that
Speaker 9: everybody else plays by and stay competitive or whatever. You
Speaker 9: hear that in politics a lot like until the law changes,
Speaker 9: we have to still operate by these standards. And I
Speaker 9: thought the whole thing, you know, just kicking the can
Speaker 9: down the road twenty years, right, it felt like such
Speaker 9: a modern solution. Yeah, it is a politician, right, it's
Speaker 9: very politically Yeah, And I think there I wasn't.
Speaker 2: I knew.
Speaker 6: Because I've taught classes, like high school.
Speaker 9: Classes on on like the US Constitution things like that,
Speaker 9: and so I knew some of those things, but hearing
Speaker 9: it all together in this context, and it just felt
Speaker 9: everything it feels a little bit like there's nothing new
Speaker 9: under the sun. As you hear these things, it feels
Speaker 9: so political. And how many laws are passed now with
Speaker 9: the sunset clause that this we're going to do this
Speaker 9: for now, but then this is going to go. And
Speaker 9: then when the sunset clause hits, it wreaks havoc on
Speaker 9: the on the system, which you know that just happened
Speaker 9: with the healthcare rules and things like that, and it's
Speaker 9: just it's, yeah, it's people who want to take a
Speaker 9: stand but don't want to are maybe they're just not
Speaker 9: able to get the political cover that they need in
Speaker 9: the moment, and so you put these parameters around it,
Speaker 9: and it is it's it's.
Speaker 6: It felt like a Marl.
Speaker 2: What did you learn? Did you learn anything?
Speaker 9: Well, Jefferson, I didn't know about wife and sister. I
Speaker 9: didn't know about that. I'm trying to think if I learned.
Speaker 1: Because you know, there's when you make a podcast, you're
Speaker 1: trying to provide a service to people.
Speaker 2: And I mean I learned a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I learned a lot about the about the the
Speaker 1: way cotton was such a I mean I would have
Speaker 1: known that cotton was important and it was a big
Speaker 1: part of the Southern economy, but to compare cotton to
Speaker 1: like the oil of the Middle East very comparison.
Speaker 6: I thought that was a very good comparison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it makes you you're like, oh, okay, I get it,
Speaker 1: Like these people were willing to do anything to save
Speaker 1: this thing. And and then you know, I was also
Speaker 1: trying to address something that I've heard about just how
Speaker 1: the Civil Wars about states rights. You know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't about slavery. And I honestly didn't intend to
Speaker 1: just like get in this like big time conversation about slavery.
Speaker 1: But if you asked, I think ninety percent of the
Speaker 1: people in the country would say the war was about slavery.
Speaker 1: I think they would say that, right, but to really
Speaker 1: including me. But now I know the ins and outs
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm. So I did learn a lot.
Speaker 1: About you know that from the very beginning of the country,
Speaker 1: this was a tiger by the ears.
Speaker 2: What was taken out by Jefferson or or was independent?
Speaker 8: I had no idea that.
Speaker 2: Was in there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well, I just thought that was fascinating tying
Speaker 4: what was what was left out of the declaration of
Speaker 4: Independence to the civil war, which is how many how
Speaker 4: many years separated.
Speaker 2: I mean like nearly one hundred Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean like that was pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes it was.
Speaker 9: And that the trouble persisted, right, I mean, that's that's
Speaker 9: what's that's what's interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm always just bewildered by our ability to revise
Speaker 1: history and just like look back.
Speaker 2: At these people and be like, how could they have
Speaker 2: been so dumb? But man, and and.
Speaker 1: You can't cast shade on something as clearly wrong as
Speaker 1: like this this kind of slavery. But at the same
Speaker 1: time that had been going on since the beginning of time.
Speaker 1: I mean like when people finally started writing stuff down
Speaker 1: in history, like they were writing about I mean, they
Speaker 1: had slaves, right, We don't know even when it started.
Speaker 1: So this was like this practice that was fairly normalized
Speaker 1: across basically all cultures. And I do recognize that there's
Speaker 1: like different levels of slavery and all this. And then
Speaker 1: so you know, like a Thomas Jefferson, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of saying all men are created equal, But I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just so easy to look back and and just
Speaker 1: pin them to the ground on. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: there there was I don't think it was ever okay to.
Speaker 2: Slave a person, right.
Speaker 3: But that quote you had towards the end from the
Speaker 3: Mississippi was it Mississippi They're like declaration of Independence? That
Speaker 3: was I'd never heard that before. Yeah, that was pretty incredible,
Speaker 3: and I thought that that was a great way of
Speaker 3: like explaining this was it was about the states rights
Speaker 3: to have slavery. So it's kind of like you can't
Speaker 3: just say it was about states rights, it was about slavery.
Speaker 3: It was about both. It was about them that those
Speaker 3: two issues kind of married together, and that quote I
Speaker 3: felt really kind of brought that home and I'd never
Speaker 3: heard those those types of arguments before. And you can
Speaker 3: see how people would be like our economy, like the
Speaker 3: whole economy will collapse, you know, and people are are,
Speaker 3: you know, weak in a lot of ways, and like
Speaker 3: if you say you're you know, you'll lose your house
Speaker 3: if this happens, Yeah, you're probably not gonna want it
Speaker 3: to happen. Yeah, yeah, it still happens today, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Who was the quote Clay towards again, I think maybe
Speaker 4: towards the end of the episode where they were talking
Speaker 4: about the classes, like if the king come King Cott.
Speaker 1: No, it was the Senator from souths James Hammond. What
Speaker 1: were you going to say about it?
Speaker 4: Well, I just I mean it rubbed me the wrong way,
Speaker 4: and I like, and I think that.
Speaker 7: Whole philosophy exists today.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you don't have I mean, how many
Speaker 4: how many publications are there about CEOs what they make,
Speaker 4: and then you know at the base of their company
Speaker 4: what their entry level people make, and the disparity between
Speaker 4: the two. And if you don't have the entry level person,
Speaker 4: you don't have the CEO who's getting paid what they're
Speaker 4: being paid. It doesn't work that you know, it doesn't exist.
Speaker 4: And I thought, so today we don't have slavery in
Speaker 4: the sense of like a manual labor class that that
Speaker 4: you know, but he he clearly says, if you don't
Speaker 4: have them, then you don't have the other classes. And
Speaker 4: it's it's I think that's my rustle, right is you're like,
Speaker 4: You're like, I don't it hurts me to hear that, like,
Speaker 4: oh we have to so we have this class so
Speaker 4: you can have the other class.
Speaker 7: That doesn't seem to jive with you.
Speaker 1: Well, it was fascinating to me. Essentially, if you haven't listened,
Speaker 1: he said. He basically said, slavery is the is the
Speaker 1: architecture of human existence. He said, basically, in the South,
Speaker 1: we hire our menial working class for life and take
Speaker 1: care of them. And they said, you people in the
Speaker 1: North that don't have slaves, hire your slaves essentially by
Speaker 1: the day, don't take care of them, pay them poorly.
Speaker 2: And I mean it was a a it's a wild idea.
Speaker 9: It's a wild idea also because they they didn't take
Speaker 9: care of them. I mean, when we can, like that's
Speaker 9: that's part of the thing. That's a little bit like, Okay,
Speaker 9: great speech. It is built online, and I think you
Speaker 9: have to have to say that. And you can even
Speaker 9: just look in recent history people who lived through Jim
Speaker 9: Crow laws, like was that taking care of them?
Speaker 2: Was that?
Speaker 6: I mean?
Speaker 9: Or sharecropping, like even even take There are people who
Speaker 9: are alive who live through those things. And so I
Speaker 9: think it's like, yeah, you're that's not true. But what
Speaker 9: you're saying is just false. Is not true. You didn't
Speaker 9: take care of them. Maybe some people did, Maybe there
Speaker 9: were people who were, And that's one of the arguments
Speaker 9: that that I think always exists.
Speaker 6: But but it it was a pretty i mean, it
Speaker 6: was extremely impressive environment.
Speaker 2: Yes it was.
Speaker 9: And that was one of the things that in the
Speaker 9: history books that I've read, that was one of the
Speaker 9: things that really stuck out about about slavery at that
Speaker 9: time in the in the US South, was just how brutal,
Speaker 9: how brutal it was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they call it chattel slavery. Yeah, yeah, it's like
Speaker 3: very brutal. And that's the difference, right, It's like the
Speaker 3: people who work, you know, as a day laborer, they
Speaker 3: could decide not.
Speaker 1: To yeah, yeah, and that and obviously The reason that's
Speaker 1: that quote is interesting and relevant is because it gives
Speaker 1: you insight into the people that were willing to die
Speaker 1: for this thing.
Speaker 2: Because that's why it's like, wait a minute, why would
Speaker 2: someone be.
Speaker 1: This, Yeah, this devoted to the cause of slavery, like
Speaker 1: you know, trying to understand where someone could come from.
Speaker 2: So it's not that anybody today.
Speaker 1: Would agree with that, but it's just like, golly, you
Speaker 1: can you can at least understand a little bit of
Speaker 1: the way.
Speaker 9: I mean, you can understand the logic of the argument.
Speaker 9: But the problem is is the argument itself is founded
Speaker 9: on lines. What he was saying was not true, right,
Speaker 9: And and that's that's the that's the that's the whole thing.
Speaker 9: You have to just kind of shut off a part
Speaker 9: of your brain to be able to make that that
Speaker 9: argument a part of reality and facts to make that argument.
Speaker 4: I think definitely the part of we take care of
Speaker 4: that exactly he did. He did He clearly stated or
Speaker 4: what I heard is that this class does exist, so
Speaker 4: these other classes can also exist, right, And I think
Speaker 4: that philosophy still exists in the world time like that
Speaker 4: is nothing new under the sign exactly you were talking
Speaker 4: about earlier, and it's like it looks different today and
Speaker 4: what we would see in modern America, but it's that
Speaker 4: mindset still exists. Oh yeah, yeah, which is wild, like
Speaker 4: still kind of wild to me that the classes system
Speaker 4: still yeah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 5: I'm trying to break things down into simple concepts in
Speaker 5: my mind, and what kind of stands out to me
Speaker 5: is like this thing was perpetuated by greed, Like it
Speaker 5: all kind of came from a position of greed of
Speaker 5: keeping the economic status the way they wanted it, so
Speaker 5: people made money off of cotton. And I think that
Speaker 5: position of greed caused people to compromise values and justify
Speaker 5: things that were really, when you break it down, are unjustifiable.
Speaker 2: You know, mm hm for sure, Well it was.
Speaker 1: It was news to me as well that the the
Speaker 1: backdrop of the Civil War was massive American prosperity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you kind of wouldn't think about I would have probably
Speaker 1: felt that on a Civics test if it said when
Speaker 1: was the greatest rise in American prosperity from this, you know,
Speaker 1: from antebellum antebellum America. I probably and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that we didn't continue to rise even at.
Speaker 2: A faster j curve after that.
Speaker 1: But America's rise to global prominence through economics began, you know,
Speaker 1: way before the Civil War. And point being to you
Speaker 1: what you said, Josh, is that prosperity breeds its own devils.
Speaker 2: Yep, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And and expansion of the country, right, and that was
Speaker 3: a big reason for the war too, is like the
Speaker 3: country is expanding and these new states are being formed.
Speaker 3: Are they going to be slave states or free states?
Speaker 3: And I think it's hard for us now to imagine
Speaker 3: like the excitement of like growing your country and creating
Speaker 3: new states, and the stakes of like what is this
Speaker 3: new country going to be? And like are we going
Speaker 3: to be a country with slavery or not? And you
Speaker 3: can kind of see why people would fight over that,
Speaker 3: Like if this is this giant new country we're making
Speaker 3: right now, you know what, what what is it going
Speaker 3: to look like in the future?
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm mm hmm. This is so This book right here.
Speaker 1: Is the the main book that I have have read,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a good one.
Speaker 2: Battlecraft Freedom.
Speaker 1: It was written in the eighties, Pulitzer Prise winning book.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a general overview of the
Speaker 1: Civil War, and it's pretty thick, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Pretty si.
Speaker 7: What did you what did you relate it to?
Speaker 2: You thick as an Appalachian Bible, that family bible.
Speaker 1: I guess people appleachas a big print because they're sure.
Speaker 8: We had a family bible? Did y'all have one?
Speaker 5: We had a family bible like this? I mean it was,
Speaker 5: isn't it? Paintings in it and stuff I.
Speaker 9: Think about like the importance of the Bible and my family,
Speaker 9: you know, I mean, and we didn't have a family
Speaker 9: Bible and no, and like when my when my grandma died,
Speaker 9: my mom that's what she wanted was her Bible. And
Speaker 9: she brought it to me one day and it was
Speaker 9: kind of like it just happened. But my daughter was
Speaker 9: in the room. I was at the I went my
Speaker 9: my daughter and I went to my mom's house and
Speaker 9: she handed me, you know, we were looking through the
Speaker 9: box of things that she brought back after her mom died,
Speaker 9: and she handed me the Bible and I start reading
Speaker 9: it and just reading her notes in it, like I
Speaker 9: just start crying. And my mom is sitting across from
Speaker 9: the room and she starts crying. And it's because it
Speaker 9: was just such a meaningful you know, just such a
Speaker 9: meaningful art of my grandma's life. And it's like this
Speaker 9: heritage that she passed on to us extremely extremely important.
Speaker 6: At no point did anyone in our history have have
Speaker 6: a Bible.
Speaker 9: I mean a family a family bible that was passed down.
Speaker 9: This was just my grandma's personal Bible with her notes
Speaker 9: in it. It wasn't a family bible, like, we didn't
Speaker 9: have one of those where you would register things. And
Speaker 9: I wonder they were migrant people, like all my grandparents
Speaker 9: were migrants, and they were migrant farmers, and she'd be
Speaker 9: taken out of school. And I just can't help but
Speaker 9: wonder if it's not the the more stationary you are,
Speaker 9: the more likely you are to have a giant bible
Speaker 9: that's passed down intergenerationally.
Speaker 2: And if you have a giant Civil War book. We
Speaker 2: do have a war book.
Speaker 6: It's true, it's true.
Speaker 9: And yeah, I wish we had something cool like that,
Speaker 9: but we we didn't.
Speaker 1: Did y'all learn anything about John Brown? Would y'all have
Speaker 1: known that Christy Jordan?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was aware of some of the things that
Speaker 3: he did, having been to you know, Harper's Ferry.
Speaker 2: As a kid. Oh that's right. Yeah, But I didn't
Speaker 2: know you grew up with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't know all of the details or kind
Speaker 3: of the implications for like how this I mean basically
Speaker 3: like a terrorist attack would spur the South and would
Speaker 3: like terrify the South. Yeah, I'm sure I've been taught
Speaker 3: that at some point, but I don't. I didn't remember.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, so there's a college over here in northwest
Speaker 1: Arkansas called John Brown University and it is not the
Speaker 1: same John Brown.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, but no, I I didn't. I wouldn't have.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have known that that was a.
Speaker 1: Part of history that that I would would have not
Speaker 1: been too dialed on, but super important. And it's interesting
Speaker 1: how people, uh their lives become known for really more
Speaker 1: than what they were really. There was a huge emphasis
Speaker 1: in this particular book about how John Brown was like
Speaker 1: a madman, like everybody was just like this guy was
Speaker 1: easy and it's it's I could hear the modern news
Speaker 1: cycle of the the other side like saying, oh, you
Speaker 1: think it's okay to like kill people because John Brown,
Speaker 1: women and children was on the right side, you know,
Speaker 1: today of this thing about yeah, there shouldn't be slaves,
Speaker 1: slaves should be set free, like I think we all
Speaker 1: could agree that's that's the good side to be on
Speaker 1: on this deal. Yet he was murdering people with a broadsword. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's you know, you can hear this this side
Speaker 1: of the media going.
Speaker 2: Those guys are crazy. We're just down here, you know,
Speaker 2: doing our agriculture. And so anyway, you just you see
Speaker 2: all this up.
Speaker 1: But then John Brown becomes massively more than, uh than
Speaker 1: than what he actually did. He did have a backup plan,
Speaker 1: his military. His tactics were just bizarre. Suicide mission didn't work.
Speaker 3: You say, it was like seventeen people or something in total.
Speaker 1: I think it was twenty three. I think it was
Speaker 1: seventeen white people and five blacks. And then they did
Speaker 1: not get a single slave to come with them. So
Speaker 1: they actually did get some arms, go down into some
Speaker 1: plantations and like bust into someplace and be like let's
Speaker 1: go got guns.
Speaker 2: And people were like, wait a minute, what I mean.
Speaker 1: That's why I understood the story to be and just
Speaker 1: a few so it's like it didn't work at all.
Speaker 1: But then his legacy, you know, sparks this thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was so funny the comment
Speaker 3: that Lincoln makes to the uncle Tom's Cabin Harto, like
Speaker 3: the little lady that that's like started. Yeah, it's like WHOA.
Speaker 3: I wonder how she felt about being told.
Speaker 2: Have any of y'all read Uncle Tom's Cabin?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Have you read it? You read it in school?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Yo?
Speaker 2: Did you?
Speaker 9: I think I that was one of the My mom
Speaker 9: always bought books from some some magazine and where we
Speaker 9: were bored in Hatfield the nineties, and we read all
Speaker 9: those books and that was one of the that was
Speaker 9: in that that little subscriber thing that she had, that
Speaker 9: was one of the books that she bought.
Speaker 1: Well, I started reading it. I've got it and uh it.
Speaker 1: You know, that book during the eighteen fifties sold in
Speaker 1: America only second to the Bible, which at the time
Speaker 1: was kind of the best seller.
Speaker 9: And it does really show the power of culture and turning.
Speaker 9: Like even Lincoln's comment to her, it shows the power
Speaker 9: that that really the arts and uh, you know, there
Speaker 9: would be different things now that would probably be as influential,
Speaker 9: but it shows the power of those things and just
Speaker 9: stories to shift a narrative and to shift perspective and
Speaker 9: to ignite people into action and and engagement with this
Speaker 9: because it's kind of like the the example he gave
Speaker 9: of the the kids, you know in the cobalt mines
Speaker 9: in Africa.
Speaker 6: It's it's there, it bothers you.
Speaker 2: But I thought that was It's so good. It was.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it puts things in perspective. Yeah, I mean when
Speaker 5: he said it, I've like had this sense of guilt.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Why does that not bother me more?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, as you have a giant watch on your hand
Speaker 1: that probably has lots of precious metals in that probably.
Speaker 7: To the list of things is doing wrong.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but Josh, this has really been an opportunity for
Speaker 9: us to examine your life.
Speaker 5: I mean that I'm fifty yea, everybody's after me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well the.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm excited about the rest of the Civil War episode.
Speaker 1: When I do these, I feel like if I had
Speaker 1: if I had like a trophy room, like I would
Speaker 1: have podcasts like Up on the Wall, I mean, like
Speaker 1: deer Heads. That's the way it kind of feels like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Gold Records, got that taken care of, Civil War
Speaker 1: dusted off.
Speaker 6: You'll feel good when you're done him of this series.
Speaker 1: I will, Yeah, because it's been on the docket for
Speaker 1: a long time and I was kind of over planning
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, I was thinking, Man, this is going
Speaker 1: to be so hard, this is I need to get
Speaker 1: all these guests. I don't really know where to start.
Speaker 1: And I finally just was like, I'm just gonna start
Speaker 1: with JD. We're just going to dive in.
Speaker 6: He was a great a great first guest. He really was.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 6: He was a great narrator.
Speaker 2: And I quit trying to feel like I needed to.
Speaker 1: We needed to service people that really knew a ton
Speaker 1: about the Civil War. Like, I just thought, man, I'm
Speaker 1: probably a pretty central figure in terms of knowledge of
Speaker 1: the war, and I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know that much, and but I'm.
Speaker 1: Very interested in it should and I feel like j
Speaker 1: D brought some really interesting stuff and it's it's just
Speaker 1: gonna it actually keeps getting better.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I feel like you started at the right place,
Speaker 3: right because when you when you ask someone like what
Speaker 3: do you think about the Civil War? One of the
Speaker 3: first things they think is, well, what started it? Where
Speaker 3: you know? Is it about states rights? Is it about slavery?
Speaker 3: And the first episode does a great job of kind
Speaker 3: of outlining the complexities of that. Yeah. I also think
Speaker 3: the points you made about like kind of marveling at
Speaker 3: how this is still relevant seventy five years later. That's
Speaker 3: super interesting. It did make me think, so my my
Speaker 3: my wife's her grandparents on her mom's side, that family
Speaker 3: has been in San Antonio, like South Texas area for
Speaker 3: hundreds of years, but her grandmother was born in like
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties, like nineteen twenty three, and I knew her,
Speaker 3: and of course, you know, my wife knew her. She
Speaker 3: lived to be you know, late nineties. I think it
Speaker 3: occurred to me that, like, if she was born in
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty three, her grandparents would have been around. Yeah, so,
Speaker 3: like I interacted with, my wife, grew up interacting with
Speaker 3: someone who knew people around during the Civil War, which
Speaker 3: really kind of makes it seem much closer to our day,
Speaker 3: even though so many things seem so different. Like people
Speaker 3: are around who knew people who told them about the
Speaker 3: Civil War, which is crazy to think about, but you know,
Speaker 3: it kind of makes sense. You can understand why it's
Speaker 3: still relevant and people still talk about it and are interested.
Speaker 3: So I think people are going to be how many
Speaker 3: episodes do you think it's going to take?
Speaker 2: Time?
Speaker 8: Twelve over thirteen?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Ken Burns over.
Speaker 1: Here you know, we'll probably we'll probably do We'll probably
Speaker 1: do three.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably do three.
Speaker 1: Because what I don't really care to get into is
Speaker 1: like all the specifics of the battles.
Speaker 2: And different stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, there's there's a lot of yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of information about those things. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm interested in the main players Robert E. Lee Uleases this,
Speaker 1: Grant Lincoln, other people that were, you know, like a
Speaker 1: John Brown or or I'm just interested in like kind
Speaker 1: of some of these big players. And I had I
Speaker 1: had a guy write me, a friend of mine, Tal Jones.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't mind me saying his name. He he he
Speaker 1: grew up in East Tennessee. This goes back to your
Speaker 1: statement about why is it still relevant? Why are we
Speaker 1: still talking about it? And he said, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to paraphrase what he said, but he said he growing up,
Speaker 1: he never heard anybody talking about the Civil War. But
Speaker 1: in the sixties and seventies, the symbolism of rebellion, particularly
Speaker 1: the South, latched onto and that's when And you know,
Speaker 1: I'd have to get some of the details to really
Speaker 1: fully quantify what he's saying, but I believe that he
Speaker 1: talked about mascots becoming the rebels, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the Civil War statues and different things didn't happen in
Speaker 1: these in eighteen seventy. They happened like the in the
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies, Dukes of Hazzard like massively popularized the
Speaker 1: Confederate flag, which was always called the Confederate flag, but
Speaker 1: I grew up knowing it as the rebel.
Speaker 2: Flag, the rebel flag, starbar flag, stars and bars. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and so he picked up on that.
Speaker 1: We kind of attached to the symbolism, and honestly, when
Speaker 1: he said it, I was like, yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: what the people that I was around, and even me
Speaker 1: I was interested in it was. It was like kind
Speaker 1: of a rebel right, you know, just a rebel Yeah.
Speaker 9: So but if you look at what was going on
Speaker 9: in the sixties and seventies in the South with civil
Speaker 9: rights and things like that, I think even that has
Speaker 9: its roots in and something pretty terrible, Yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 9: pretty and it was rebellion against what it was, rebellion
Speaker 9: against this move for civil rights and inequality, and that's
Speaker 9: and it was it was this they had. I mean,
Speaker 9: I think that that's a big piece of the of
Speaker 9: the of the story. And I think growing up in Arkansas,
Speaker 9: I'm working in some of the fields that I've worked
Speaker 9: in, in the places that I've worked in, it's like the
Speaker 9: legacy of the Civil War. Can I feel like you
Speaker 9: get like pockets of time where it just hits, hits
Speaker 9: really hard, the reconstruct era in the Jim Crow Laws.
Speaker 9: Then you get into the sixties and seventies in that
Speaker 9: fight and you're you're still feeling the pangs of that.
Speaker 9: And when we first covered this in the school I
Speaker 9: worked for, when the kids were really young, you know,
Speaker 9: I talked to people, we have good friends from the Caribbean,
Speaker 9: and we talked about, like, why is this so different
Speaker 9: to cover in the US than it is to cover
Speaker 9: in the Caribbean, Because there's so there's no like emotional
Speaker 9: the emotional ties to this subject are much different when
Speaker 9: you cover it in the Caribbean. And you cannot say
Speaker 9: that they had different experiences in that time period, you know,
Speaker 9: I mean it. And one of my friends said, I
Speaker 9: don't know many people who are alive, like when it
Speaker 9: was over, it was over in the Caribbean, and there's
Speaker 9: not people who are alive today who can tell you
Speaker 9: the stories of the harsh discrimination that they experienced, like
Speaker 9: there are in the US.
Speaker 6: Because it just kept going so long.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the repercussions of.
Speaker 6: It lasted for so long.
Speaker 9: And I'm thinking about like my parents lifetime, your parents' lifetime,
Speaker 9: I have, I have stories of my childhood of some
Speaker 9: of these things. Still, some of this discrimination that really
Speaker 9: starts back at our founding persisting, and and so I
Speaker 9: don't I don't know. I just think it's like really
Speaker 9: dark stories.
Speaker 1: Not yeah, and so I just think it not something
Speaker 1: to be celebrated. Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. Well it is fascinating.
Speaker 1: It seems like so long ago, but it wasn't that
Speaker 1: long ago. Yeah, I mean, it just it just wasn't
Speaker 1: that long ago. Like our our grandparents, my grandparents, your
Speaker 1: grandparents would have known people that were alive in the
Speaker 1: Civil War, like we knew what World War two veterans, right, right,
Speaker 1: That's essentially what it would have been.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like my grandfather, who was like a massive influence
Speaker 1: in my life. Well, let me think about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he would have known Civil War vats like I knew him.
Speaker 2: Essentially. My grandfather was born in nineteen nineteen, like your
Speaker 2: wife's grandmother.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean that just is just like, wow, yeah, that
Speaker 1: wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 3: I mean, and I think you mentioned the podcast something
Speaker 3: about like if an alien came down, right, and I
Speaker 3: forget the context of that, but if an alien came down,
Speaker 3: I think and saw in such a short amount of
Speaker 3: time our country going from chattel slavery not a person, right,
Speaker 3: we can sell buy them and sell them like a
Speaker 3: commodity to where we are now in the space of
Speaker 3: time for basically like two grand two generations of grandparents.
Speaker 3: It would be incredible, right, Like they would say, that's
Speaker 3: a pretty amazing that's pretty amazing progress in the you know,
Speaker 3: relative to human history a pretty short amount of time.
Speaker 3: And I'm amazed by that. Learning about the Civil War,
Speaker 3: thinking about that time, thinking about where we are today,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's a pretty incredible story overall.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll leave you with one foreshadowed piece of data
Speaker 1: that will come out and it's pretty interesting. But the
Speaker 1: the American Civil War, which we now see really was
Speaker 1: fought about slavery. There has never been in the history
Speaker 1: of the world an enslaved group of people that was
Speaker 1: set free by another outside group.
Speaker 4: Oh, it's all so history would say, they've been set
Speaker 4: for you by their own not like.
Speaker 1: That's unique as I understand it, that is unique to
Speaker 1: the situation in America.
Speaker 2: That does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Y'all seem not like baseasically everywhere else in history that
Speaker 1: there has been a group of marginalized people that were
Speaker 1: never was there an outside group that it really had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with them that came in.
Speaker 3: And oh the North I got it, Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting because I mean, I think
Speaker 1: most most of most things would come from the inside.
Speaker 9: Yeah right, You're going to have to convince me on that.
Speaker 9: I'm looking forward to you.
Speaker 2: You can check that up with mister James.
Speaker 1: Make sure hold on, hold on, Josh, give us a
Speaker 1: closer while I try to find this.
Speaker 9: I don't believe that. I'm not I'm not ready to
Speaker 9: believe James. He's not earned my trust just yet.
Speaker 5: Well this Clay finds his quote. I want to throw
Speaker 5: in a couple of things unrelated to the Civil War.
Speaker 5: Make sure and check out the Bear Grease YouTube channel. Yes,
Speaker 5: Bear is throwing out some fantastic content. My wife watched
Speaker 5: his entire video.
Speaker 7: Of the.
Speaker 2: She was riveted. I was, she was riveted.
Speaker 7: Fantastic.
Speaker 5: So he's putting out some great stuff, so make sure
Speaker 5: and pay attention to that.
Speaker 8: Number two.
Speaker 5: Starting June first, we're gonna be uh, we're going to
Speaker 5: be opening up a bear Grease podcast, Bear Grease Feed survey,
Speaker 5: listener survey for everybody. Yeah, you take that to to
Speaker 5: and we'll we'll be announcing it again because it won't
Speaker 5: be open until June first, so it'll be after this
Speaker 5: podcast comes out. But get on there, fill out the podcast.
Speaker 5: We want to know what you guys think about the
Speaker 5: about the the the content, about the schedule that it
Speaker 5: comes out, all our feet everything. There's some great questions
Speaker 5: in there. You guys can help us discover what you
Speaker 5: want to hear more of, So do that. That will
Speaker 5: be up in June first. We'll be announcing the link
Speaker 5: for that, so just be ready, so get on there
Speaker 5: and do that. Also, Jordan Siller's in the Taka's hot
Speaker 5: seat courtesy of you will be receiving a pair of
Speaker 5: Takovi's books. So yeah, look at the surprise on his face.
Speaker 5: He's like ready, he's like stoked.
Speaker 3: So oh, I am super stoked.
Speaker 2: A pair of Christine Nikes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know I just got these. I thank you.
Speaker 3: I have a pair of Covis. Oh really, I have
Speaker 3: their ostrich skin, extremely soft, extremely comfortable. So I am
Speaker 3: some of that plug beyond excited and I'm not that's
Speaker 3: pretty sincere. I'm very excited about this Christy's Sporting boot.
Speaker 8: So yeah, you'll be receiving that from from the Covis.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Thank you to Covis, Thank you to covi. Ye.
Speaker 8: Anyway, I was able.
Speaker 9: To find it, but isn't that where we're going. You
Speaker 9: don't need you don't need to find it today. Just
Speaker 9: you're gonna have to sell me on that.
Speaker 8: Just make sure I.
Speaker 7: Had one more question I forgot to ask. Am I
Speaker 7: allowed to ask you? We have time? You keep thumbing.
Speaker 7: I was.
Speaker 4: I was super intrigued when you were talking on the
Speaker 4: podcast and you basically said, all I'm doing is I'm
Speaker 4: asking questions a JD. Like we were driving down the
Speaker 4: road in a truck, and I was curious if you
Speaker 4: were driving down the road in a.
Speaker 5: Car doesn't have a truck sons with the question.
Speaker 1: The conversation in a car would have just been a
Speaker 1: little more comfortable and quiet, because when you're a you
Speaker 1: have to yell.
Speaker 2: What do you think about the Civil War? You want
Speaker 2: to roll the windows up for a minute. The air
Speaker 2: conditions doesn't work very good.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and there's just like a little bit more stress
Speaker 9: in the room because, like I hope it makes it
Speaker 9: to the next desk. The nation and and the recurring
Speaker 9: nature of the the AC to turn off at this
Speaker 9: point in the truck's.
Speaker 7: Life, I am okay, I'm satisfied.
Speaker 1: Great, well, I can't wait. Thanks, thanks for listening, Thanks
Speaker 1: for coming. Jordan really appreciate it. I look forward. I
Speaker 1: know everyone's looking forward to more blood trails and how
Speaker 1: to avoid being a blood trail. Conflict conflict of people,
Speaker 1: avoid strangers, avoid strangers in the woods.
Speaker 6: Have a good relationship with your spouse.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, keep your wife.
Speaker 8: That's key.
Speaker 1: Actually on one of my big tenants has been keep
Speaker 1: your friends close, your enemies closer.
Speaker 8: I follow you around everywhere.
Speaker 1: Thanks everybody, thanks so much. Keep the wild places wild
Speaker 1: because that's where the bears live.