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