30-50 feral hogs

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Whole zone media.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Nine years ago, someone very close to me died, and
shortly after that something very funny happened.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
The person in.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
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

(00:35):
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

(00:57):
the wake.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Why did I invite him?

Speaker 2 (00:59):
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

(01:20):
myself it's not a set, it's a eulogy. A eulogy
is not stand up comedy unless.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
You're really good at it.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
To go up and speak, he leaned.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Over to me and asked, hey, like, should we give
our Twitter handles before we talk?

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Like do you think this is.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
A good opportunity to get new.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Followers on Twitter?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
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.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Out of your brain. And if you were.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
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

(02:37):
on the same day in Dayton, Ohio. In al 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 people.
That same day, in an entertainment district in Dayton, a
man used an ar pistol to kill nine people. And

(02:57):
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

(03:20):
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

(03:43):
great Wonderful Robert Evans, who has definitely never falsely accused
me of murder, famously reported on the Elpasa 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

(04:03):
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,

(04:25):
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.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
He didn't, and.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
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.

(05:13):
And among these people were public figures weighing in as
they tend to do. One was American singer songwriter Jason
I Isbel. On August fourth, twenty nineteen, he.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
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.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
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,

(05:54):
responded to this tweet from Jason Isbel.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
He says the following legit.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
Question for rural Americans, how do I kill.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
The stop stop stop stop stop stop stop?

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yes that tweet? Okay, grant you can finish.

Speaker 4 (06:12):
Legit question for rural Americans? How do I kill the
thirty to fifty feral hogs that run into my yard
within three to five minutes while my small kids play.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
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.

Speaker 5 (06:46):
Finish.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Okay, you sickos.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
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.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
It's feral Hogs.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
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,

(08:01):
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.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
I'm not a fan of guns.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
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

(08:40):
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.
It got 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

(09:02):
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

(09:25):
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. Willie McNabb,
what are you talking about? Everything about the Farrell hogs
tweet is so funny. It's great American poetry. Now Here

(09:46):
are my top five funny things about the Farall Hogs tweet.
Your mileage may vary, and I actually do encourage you
to share it with me. Number one, starting a statement
about Farrell 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

(10:09):
the kids are small, which kind of goes without saying right,
but it feels like it's sort of implying that fifty
feral hogs would be less threatening to larger children.

Speaker 1 (10:20):
Number five. The tone of the question.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
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

(10:45):
over the image of small kids surrounded by malevolent hogs,
the only line of defense being an assault rifle, and
between three and.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
Five minutes, just say four minutes.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
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.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
Was just a reply.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
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

(11:40):
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 forensic let's talk about how this happened. Willy
asks the question of our time, that of the perilous
haw at twelve oh one pm Eastern Standard time on

(12:00):
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 Willie McNabb three
minutes later at twelve oh four pm, responding with the
following Pithy's statement.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
If you have dozens of hogs chasing your children around
your yard, you have problems. No weapon will fix.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
He then adds at twelve oh eight pm, I.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
Don't think William is serious, guys, and.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
Willy McNabb is having none of it, he retorts at
twelve eleven pm.

Speaker 4 (12:34):
No, sir, I am.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
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

(13:00):
not from an assault rifle and not at a murderous pig.

Speaker 1 (13:04):
But and I can.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
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.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Make fun of him.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
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.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
The horrors of the world.

Speaker 2 (13:34):
And we do get some pretty solid riffs on the
treacherous hog like these thirty to fifty faral hogs sounds
like my dating history.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Take me down to the paradess city where the hogs
are farrel in the thirty to fifty.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
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.

Speaker 6 (14:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
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

(14:40):
as a first timer to the main character game, Willie
McNabb makes what many would consider to be a rookie mistake.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
He posts his way.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
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

(15:12):
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.

Speaker 4 (15:26):
Read husband, father, Christian, libertarian, West Carolina University alum, and
fan of Pearl Jam and Red Sox.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
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.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
But in this.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
Case, Willie's 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
back in down on wasn't gun control.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
It was feral hoggs.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Willy smars against other Twitter users who connect his hog
problem and gun advocacy with his personal politics. He tweets
at twelve twenty four pm.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
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.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
He writes again at two twenty one pm.

Speaker 4 (16:35):
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.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
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

(17:14):
is determined to get through to Jason isbel about these hogs.

Speaker 4 (17:19):
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.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
Attached to this tweet is a video entitled wild hogs
are fair Game to hunt from the air in Texas.

Speaker 7 (17:41):
In Texas, they're going hog wild over a 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 sh shoot the animals from helicopters,

(18:02):
but it was an expensive and ineffective way to deal
with the problem. Higher balloons apparently much better.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
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 faral hogs in the United States is six million.

(18:30):
That's one feral hog for every dollar in the budget
of the movie The Room. Adult faral 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 feral fifth

(18:50):
graders or NFL players are charging my small kids in
three to five minutes, I'd be scared too. Willie 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

(19:11):
close to one gigantic feral hog for every resident of
Little Rock, Arkansas.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
There are entire.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
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,

(19:40):
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. This man knows
big pigs.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
I had to talk to him.

Speaker 8 (19:54):
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

(20:16):
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

(20:37):
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 faral hogs.
And this is one of the scenarios in which it
actually does make sense because of the numbers of animals

(20:58):
you're dealing with. And I think that 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

(21:19):
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 it's
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

(21:40):
interesting moment to say, ah, you know, for those of
us that are actively engaged every day in this 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 i ortant to you? What are the

(22:01):
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

(22:21):
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

(22:42):
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

(23:02):
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

(23:22):
to have blown up in the last twenty or thirty years.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
So could you tell me a.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Little bit about how did Farrell hogs get here and
what were people misunderstanding as they were encountering the.

Speaker 5 (23:32):
Story in thirty to fifty number.

Speaker 8 (23:34):
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. Farrel
hogs got here a few different ways. Ironically, so Christopher

(23:55):
Columbus brought them on his second voyage to the New World.
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,

(24:16):
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 winter, and 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 conquistadores brought them with them. Early explorers in

(24:40):
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 classics swine native to the Western hemisphere. There

(25:02):
are pekerees, like in Texas we have habelina. It's a
collared pekerey. 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.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
Those are the native species.

Speaker 8 (25:23):
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

(25:43):
around in Europe. But animal husbandry over thousands of years
produced an animal that could breed at 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 feds so they
can have the ability to make sure those animals survive,

(26:03):
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

(26:24):
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, you know, 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

(26:46):
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 and their pigs
loose because they couldn't afford to feed them. And in
the context of am I going to let those animals
starve or am I going to let them go forage

(27:07):
and live because they can? Which one would you pick?
I know what I would pick, and I get that right.
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

(27:30):
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

(27:50):
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.

(28:10):
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.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
Than ours bears.

Speaker 8 (28:23):
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.

Speaker 9 (28:38):
That is, yeah, a crazy sentence.

Speaker 8 (28:41):
To me, and that's why I wanted to get to
that point of like, forgive all aback info. But if
you remember nothing else, remember that. And that is the
resource issue.

Speaker 9 (28:50):
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.

Speaker 8 (29:02):
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,

(29:24):
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.

Speaker 9 (29:35):
Thank you so much for speaking with me about this,
I really really appreciate it.

Speaker 8 (29:40):
Yeah, my pleasure.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Thank you so much to John Thomas Sek keep fighting
the good fight. And of course the villain was colonialism
all along. In my estimation, almost everyone is a casualty
in the story of the hogs, especially the hogs themselves.
Of course, people and crops should be protected. The fact
that we can draw a direct line from European colonialism

(30:03):
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

(30:26):
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 farrel 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

(30:50):
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 guests that if a Twitter user lived in
the rural South or ever had the comment about feral
hoggs might still sound weird, but it wouldn't have struck
them as the complete topic change that it was made

(31:11):
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 Broussard 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

(31:34):
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

(31:58):
showed users' stories that were trending, meaning that even people
who didn't follow Jason isbel found out about the farreal
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.

(32:21):
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

(32:42):
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 fourth, 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.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
He said, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people
making hog jokes this week without knowing why. I saw
quite a few farrel 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.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
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

(33:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
I've seen a damn hog in my time, 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.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Point taken, but it never quite feels to me like
is Bell and McNabb 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

(34:16):
Willy is inarguably a defender of the Second Amendment, it
does seem like he mainly.

Speaker 1 (34:22):
Wants to talk about hogs.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
All This happened almost five years ago, and Willy has
never shied away from the infamy.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
In fact, he's.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
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.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
Internet folk hero husband and dead hog emoji American flag emoji.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
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.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Here's our talk and.

Speaker 5 (34:59):
My name's Willie mcnah. I guess infamous from the tweet
I tweeted out five years ago to Jason Iswell. I
lived in South Arkansas. I'm a business owner originally from
North Carolina. I graduated from Western Carolina University, moved here
soon thereafter. My father had started a company here, and

(35:21):
so I've been here ever since. So I'm a proud
resident of Arkansas.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
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?

Speaker 5 (35:36):
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 I remember the
first few days of it that I was very cognizant of. Okay,
a lot of people are paying attention, and this is

(35:57):
a public forum, and even one at that time, I
didn't have a hundred followers. You know, it was a
very small platform, or what I thought 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

(36:18):
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.

(36:39):
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. No,
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,

(37:02):
it's a lot.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
So okay, Well, now that I cleared the air in
that sense, tell me a little bit more about yourself.

Speaker 5 (37:11):
I grew up in western North Carolina. It 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

(37:31):
I have touched on this before, but you know, we
we were not a family of many means. You know.
It was a rural appalachious so we ate what we hunted,
and grew a garden and a very rural upbringing. But
it was a way of life for people like myself,

(37:51):
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

(38:14):
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

(38:34):
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

(38:58):
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

(39:19):
chemical plants and things like that. So he worked on
specialty equipment in these mines and refineries and chemical plants.
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

(39:42):
go back to home base in Carolina, and then we
would travel again. And then when I got to about
junior high for stability 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 finished school in North Carolina
and then went on to college and found our way

(40:04):
out here at art So awesome.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
And what sort of business do you run now? If
you're okay saying.

Speaker 5 (40:11):
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,

(40:31):
in cts or pet scans or cancer treatment or anything
like that. We build specialty shielding systems, stores systems, wall systems,
et cetera. Wow, Me and and my younger brother hold
a United States patent for some operators for some of
these doors. And yeah, so we've been successful.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
You Wow, that's incredible. Prior to.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
However you think of it, Feral Hogsgate, what was your
relationship to the Internet, Like, when did you start using it?

Speaker 1 (41:04):
How did you get into Twitter?

Speaker 5 (41:06):
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. OK, so that was
my first introduction to it. And I was always adamant
to try to every two to three years to redo

(41:28):
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. That's untill it. But as far as

(41:48):
me engaging with other people, Twitter or x now as
the platform I've always used 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, uh, I'm

(42:09):
I usually post on there, but I am cognizant that
I 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 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,

(42:30):
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

(42:52):
the difficulty in all of these these issues are in
the nuances of them. You know, if these were easy,
if these were indy 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

(43:15):
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.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Them, depending on the conversation.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
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 started on Twitter. Why was this
specific tweet something that you thought I have to reply?

Speaker 5 (43:49):
Well, it's look, it's a tough it's a tough issue,
and I think Jason was coming from a very intellectually
honest place. 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

(44:10):
to from their perspective, these things need to change, and
there needs to be 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. It happened,

(44:32):
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 his house
or as kids, my ability to have the firearm to

(44:54):
go out in 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

(45:15):
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
look in any direction and I don't see any houses.

(45:35):
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 know it's a long
answer to a short question, but I just felt there
was a legitimacy to it. I mean, there is this
is a two and a half billion dollars worth of
damage annually in the country, Arkansas spending over or has

(46:01):
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.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Funding strictly to repair hog damage.

Speaker 5 (46:19):
Well, yeah, they were. There was the Arkansas Feral hal
Eradication Passports had been established.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Well what a title.

Speaker 5 (46:28):
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

(46:51):
it's just a it's 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.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
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 tweeting, 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.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
I'm not going to shy away from that.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
When you were talking with your community, what were the
potential solutions to take care of it?

Speaker 1 (47:27):
Was it just the gun?

Speaker 5 (47:29):
Was it?

Speaker 1 (47:29):
Were there other options? How? Yeah, walk me through that.

Speaker 5 (47:32):
You know, I mentioned earlier, I grew up in North
Carolina and I hunted a lot deer and pheasants or grouse,
et cetera. But hall 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

(47:53):
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

(48:16):
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

(48:40):
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

(49:02):
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 they'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

(49:23):
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 sidetracked here, but I remember a specific argument

(49:45):
that people would say is that, you know, every day,
Willy's out there fighting hogs in his yard and there's
just backs 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 come and then there was
a lot of environmental factors that could drive them up.
There could be it could be a rainy season that

(50:06):
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.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Shooting Jason as Bell.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
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.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
When the tweet takes off.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
What uh what is the initial reaction? As you remember,
how do you choose who to talk to and who
to kind of be like?

Speaker 5 (50:45):
I was very careful and what I said once I
realized the magnitude of it and I had 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 do seeing in all these major your
media publications that were listening some type of response from me,

(51:05):
and quite frankly, my major in college is communications, So
I did a little studying in journalism, and I've always
had such an 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

(51:26):
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 come from an intellectually honest
place and you're just trying to get this story out.
So I was intentional in that. Uh, 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

(51:48):
of times in tweets subsequently. You know, I in those
first few days, I was 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.

(52:08):
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

(52:29):
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.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
Oh my god.

Speaker 5 (52:42):
I had to hire an attorney. I mean, I spent
ten thousand dollars in legal fees.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
What you had to break that down for me?

Speaker 5 (52:50):
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 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 parrel

(53:12):
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, Mad,
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 spent ten grand in legal fees here,

(53:35):
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, well yeah, that I never
sold and it was strictly to try to help pay
for my legal expenses. So I spent ten thousand in
legal foods. House was being surveilled by people coming up
and taking pictures of my driveway. I was getting called

(53:57):
in for child and danger. Man. I mean, the craziest
things those first few weeks. For they were a little
they were a little crazy.

Speaker 2 (54:05):
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

(54:26):
general react to you becoming feral hogs guy overnight? Because
they certainly knew about the hogs.

Speaker 5 (54:33):
Well locally, everybody here thought it was hilarious. They thought
the whole thing was just ludicrous and hilarious because you know,
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 outdoorsement and people are
like you, you're the Faral Hall guy. You don't even
really hunt. Everybody else are these hunters that definitely people

(54:55):
more equipped to have this debate. You know, my I
remember my wife, It'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

(55:16):
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.

(55:39):
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 been allocated for that that there's legitimacy to it.

(56:03):
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

(56:25):
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
har 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,

(56:48):
but he was genuinely kind to 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.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
You were you a fan of his beforehand?

Speaker 5 (57:04):
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

(57:27):
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 Yeah. I took her, Yeah, we got I
got front row seeds. We went down to Streetport and
saw him at the Auditorium down there and it was
a fantastic show.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
And did he know you were there.

Speaker 5 (57:49):
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 is many.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
My last question now is has your relationship changed to
the Internet since this incident.

Speaker 5 (58:18):
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've listened to a
lot of podcasts. I don't think there's any issue that

(58:40):
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 apart on our things. I think it's
in the nuances of it, and it requires some some
long form conversations, some true discussion of the issues I

(59:00):
still believe that what is it's the wild West out there,
But there's people there 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,

(59:21):
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.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
It absolutely does.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
Yeah, this is a story about the different ways that
Americans view guns.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
It's a story about.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
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?

Speaker 5 (01:00:00):
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 hauls. I was trying to convey. It
was a large number of hogs. They were in my yard.

(01:00:22):
I had to get him out of their 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

(01:00:42):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
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.
WILLI thank you so much to Willy for his time
and just for being such a kind person and a
good sport about faral hogs over the years. He was
so so kind to me and I really really appreciate it.

(01:01:12):
Hell yeah, Willy, you can still catch.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Him on Twitter today.

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
And when we come back, I try to slide that
final piece of the piggy puzzle into place. Welcome back

(01:01:37):
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

(01:01:59):
this conversation had 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.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
So before we get to our.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
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

(01:02:40):
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

(01:03:03):
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

(01:03:23):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
A hobby is totally.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Fine, but leave your gun at the range, but a
horse girl leaves her horse.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
In the stable.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
A hobbyist shouldn't need a gun in their house anymore
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 admit 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.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
I hope I never have reason too.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):
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

(01:04:21):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
A lot of.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
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 colonizer's hogs?

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
No, I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
I wanted to talk to someone who felt more like
Willie McNabb than about me on gun ownership because it's
a perspective that I 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

(01:05:15):
a friend of the producers of this show, Sophie and Robert,
and he was so kind to talk to me for
this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Here's our talk.

Speaker 10 (01:05:21):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
Well, thank you so.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
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 it in aalt weapon is and you know
you don't need one. What's your take on that?

Speaker 10 (01:06:03):
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 seemed too sadly

(01:06:26):
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

(01:06:46):
a detachable magazine usually of thirty round capacity that could
fire 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

(01:07:09):
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.

Speaker 5 (01:07:17):
Like.

Speaker 10 (01:07:17):
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.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Actually, because I know the cultural moment that Jason as
Bell's responding to here, but I can't tell if he
is responding to a specific person making a semantic argument
or what.

Speaker 10 (01:07:40):
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

(01:08:03):
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

(01:08:25):
a flash hier or a bayonet lug. I'm not kidding.
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 like,
so it became almost esthetic and not really functionally in practice.

(01:08:47):
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 assault weapon And
you know that's not totally incorrect, but at the same time,
when someone says a soult weapon because of the politics
behind it, you know what they mean, right. It's kind

(01:09:08):
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.

Speaker 9 (01:09:21):
To sounds so much like they're talking about two very
different things?

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
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.

Speaker 10 (01:09:37):
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
worldview that are existing in this space. Right, So I
know what his original post mean, right, So, like he's

(01:09:58):
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 there's

(01:10:18):
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.

(01:10:41):
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 thirty
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

(01:11:02):
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 weapon, 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

(01:11:23):
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

(01:11:45):
this world where people do need well. I do believe
in the right assault defense across the board, but there
are places where that weapon may very well be the
right choice because the person who needs to use it
really couldn't handle something else. 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

(01:12:06):
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 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

(01:12:27):
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

(01:12:51):
really very foreign to each other. That person living with
those quite possibly thirty hogs in the yard can't fathom
walking down in 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.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
Such different world I am 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 isbel is asking essentially how can we
get mass shootings to stop? And William mcnabbus asking, how
can I protect my children from the hot.

Speaker 10 (01:13:32):
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'tlieve 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 AAR fifteen. But the reality is anyone
using any of these things for the things they're doing

(01:13:55):
is to me, the symptom of a much deeper cultural
problem 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

(01:14:19):
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 cockyl, 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

(01:14:40):
this happening? And what is it we're doing in our
society that's making everybody in all directions feeling I don'tan
it sounds so dark, but like America is 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,

(01:15:03):
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 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.

Speaker 5 (01:15:23):
To be blah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
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.

Speaker 10 (01:15:44):
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 you 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.

Speaker 5 (01:16:03):
We just aren't.

Speaker 10 (01:16:04):
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

(01:16:26):
he's his heart's on the right place. We should never
have another matterting again. And the other guy's like, well,
what do I do about these things in my yard
that are trying to kill my kids, and they're both.
They're not neither ones wrong right.

Speaker 2 (01:16:37):
Thanks so much to Carl Casarta. You can follow his work.
I would particularly recommend the historical stuff over on in
Range TV linked in the description of this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:16:48):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
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

(01:17:11):
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

(01:17:33):
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

(01:17:53):
traveling to Maine following the mass shooting in Lewiston that
left eighteen people dead.

Speaker 11 (01:17:58):
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 them to know that there are still
people around that are willing to help.

Speaker 12 (01:18:12):
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.

Speaker 11 (01:18:33):
That band 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.

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
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

(01:19:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
Are lower this year than the previous.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
View, 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.

Speaker 1 (01:19:43):
That's not nothing. It's just almost nothing. And so my suite.

Speaker 2 (01:19:48):
Probably dearly departed thirty to fifty feral hogs. Your sixteenth
minute ends.

Speaker 12 (01:19:55):
Now I'm seeing things.

Speaker 1 (01:20:02):
Mister Zuckerman, Mister.

Speaker 5 (01:20:04):
Zuckerman, Something's happened to Leervy?

Speaker 4 (01:20:09):
Do you see what I see?

Speaker 5 (01:20:12):
Some pie?

Speaker 4 (01:20:14):
You don't suppose that spider.

Speaker 2 (01:20:16):
If we have received a sign, we have a very
unusual pig. Sixteenth Minute is a production of Full Zone
Media and iHeart Radio.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
It is written, posted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 2 (01:20:34):
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans.

Speaker 1 (01:20:38):
You amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):
Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our
theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet. Shout outs
to our dog producer Anderson, my cat's fleeing Casper, and
my pet Rockbert.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
You will outlive us all. Bye.

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