Off the Record With Steven Rinella

Summary

The Dr. John Delony Show

Off the Record with Steven Rinella

Date: March 28, 2026
Host: Dr. John Deloney (Ramsey Network)
Guest: Steven Rinella (Founder of MeatEater, author, outdoorsman)

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Episode Overview

In this special “Off the Record” episode, Dr. John Deloney sits down with Steven Rinella, famed outdoorsman and host of MeatEater, to tackle not just hunting, but the deeper threads of life—marriage, parenting, personal boundaries, and grappling with the chaos of modern existence. The conversation flows through authentic storytelling, vulnerability, and wisdom about balancing passion, family, and self.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

Setting Boundaries in Public and Private Life

• Rinella and Deloney discuss how to decide what parts of their lives—and their children's lives—are shared publicly, especially online.
• Importance of family rules and mutual respect in safeguarding children’s privacy.

Navigating Social Media & Modern Pressures

• Both share their waning interest in social media as it fails to bring promised connection or fulfillment.
• The impact of “sanitizing” reality for public consumption and choosing authenticity instead.

Embracing Authenticity and Failure

• Rinella explains the evolution of his show’s willingness to depict real outcomes—including failure and struggle, not just highlight reels.
• The power and trust built through showing vulnerability instead of a flawless facade.

Marriage Across Differences

• Honest narratives about being married to someone with different passions and temperaments, and how mismatched interests can still create a “mismatch made in heaven.”
• Facing the reality of children growing up and how that impacts the marital dynamic.

Parenting Philosophy & Family Traditions

• Reflecting on guiding children through the digital age, holding strong to tradition (like family dinners), and preemptively grieving kids growing up and leaving home.
• Balancing parental obligation, guilt, and striving to be a “trustworthy guy” and a safe place for children as they age.

The Challenge of Travel, Fame, and Returning Home

• Both men share the complexities and tension of being away for work or passion, and how to “merge back” into family life respectfully rather than forcing a jarring reentry.

Broader Reflections: Purpose, Commitment, and Cultural Shifts

• Musings on how commitment, obligation, and grounded routines (like family dinner) shape positive childhood and adulthood outcomes.
• Anxiety about cultural polarization and the denial of objective reality, balanced by hope found in personal experience with neighborly connection and evolving relationships with children.

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Memorable Quotes and Moments (with Timestamps)

On Family Privacy in the Public Eye

Steven Rinella [04:05]:
“We hit on this rule that we don’t show our kids’ faces publicly. Maybe on social media, I’d show a picture from behind, but it just made a thing that we don’t do … Gave us a line not to cross.”

On Social Media Burnout

John Deloney [07:00]:
“I’m hearing that from people: it hasn’t solved the problem in my life it said it was going to solve—in fact, it’s made it worse. So how do I talk to a person in real life now?”

On Authentic Storytelling

Steven Rinella [20:05]:
“We just found the way to make it be a story. If you go and you don’t get the thing you set out for, that’s still a story. The guys I worked with—what they loved was the realness, that there were obstacles, and sometimes you didn’t get what you wanted.”

On Parenting and Obligation

Steven Rinella [50:26]:
“About kids, like—they didn’t ask to be born and come live here. We invited them into this existence that we created. There’s some level of obligation.”

On the Reality of Marriage

Steven Rinella [39:12]:
“We shield ourselves from impulsive actions. When you’re married, you ain’t gonna do nothing—there are actions you think you might take, but when you’re committed, you realize, ‘I’m not getting revenge, I’m not leaving—I’m here.’”

On Merging Back Into Family After Travel

Steven Rinella [54:59]:
“My wife said, ‘If it’s not going to be a big deal when you leave, it’s not going to be a big deal when you come home.’ … When you merge back into the family, it’s like you’re exiting the highway—all smooth, not a lot of horn honking.”

On Polarization and Objective Reality

Steven Rinella [67:32]:
“A thing I’m very concerned about is polarization, political polarization in the country. Horrified. But when I look around my neighborhood, I don’t know how anyone votes. I just know they’d help me—and I’d help them. So there’s that. But … a denial of objective reality is what scares me most for my kids.”

On Hope for the Next Generation

Steven Rinella [77:28]:
“I’ve got a friend whose kids are all out of the house—he says, you know, I talk to all of them multiple times a week. He’s like a consigliere. … That would be cool—to have earned that respect.”

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Notable Segments & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |---------------|-------------| | 00:05–04:28 | How much to share publicly; family boundaries | | 06:20–07:57 | Social media: diminishing returns and disconnect | | 08:40–10:39 | Depicting real hunting—showing the unvarnished truth | | 19:03–23:44 | Showing failure and storytelling philosophy | | 29:24–38:46 | Being married and parenting with different passions | | 50:09–54:13 | Parenting obligation and reflecting on guilt | | 53:01–58:13 | Navigating travel and merging back into family | | 67:32–72:26 | Political polarization, denial of reality, and society’s future | | 74:15–78:18 | Excitement for kids’ futures and maintaining lifelong bonds |

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Engaging Takeaways for Listeners

• Boundary Setting: Creating simple, clear family rules about privacy or digital presence can relieve future conflict and anxiety.
• Authenticity Over Perfection: Showing real struggles and failures—whether in media or personal life—increases trust and connection.
• Marriage as Partnership: Navigating differences and periodic disconnection or mismatched passions is normal; unity is built through loyalty, effort, and embracing the long view.
• Obligation to Family: Children and partners are not “owed” the best versions of us—they deserve them. Obligation isn’t a burden, but a grounding force.
• Hope Amid Chaos: Despite division and uncertainty, personal communities, resilient family traditions, and lifelong curiosity offer reasons for hope.

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Final Words

Steven Rinella and Dr. John Deloney bring rare candor to a conversation that weaves from public identity to the private kitchen table, and from existential worries to the joys and anxieties of fatherhood and marriage. Listeners are left with wisdom about embracing imperfection, fostering real connection, and holding fast to tradition and responsibility—even as the world gets messier around us.

“There’s a humanity to it.”
—John Deloney [17:04]

“That would be cool—to have earned that respect.”
—Steven Rinella [77:46]

Transcript

[Steve Rinella]

Early on, I was very interested in engaging with that outside audience. I felt this compulsion to be like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, here, let me show you. There's a real effort to sanitize because it was of a fear of offending people. I was focused there and then over time I just realized I was more like focused on being like, isn't this a beautiful world we inhabit?

[John Deloney]

How do you decide what other people get to foreign? Hey, what's up? This is John Deloney and this is a special episode of off the Record. This is kind of a new episode that we're dropping once every few weeks on Saturday mornings. These are interviews. These are conversations I'm having with some of my friends, people I admire, and in today's case, a hero of mine. When I put together a list of. I would love to get these particular men and women on this show, this guest today was at the very top of the list. And I'm talking about the great and awesome Steve Ranella. Steve Rinella is the founder of Meat Eater, which is a hunting and cooking show. But he's also an amazing writer. He's written a number of best selling books. He's a historian. He is, he, he's just a mastermind. And the show is. Has very little to do with hunting today. We're both big hunters, but it has very little to do with that. We're talking about marriage, we're talking about kids, we're talking about balancing the chaos that's our life. We talk about what scares us to death about the future for our kids and what we're excited about for our kids. And we also talk about how do you manage things that you're really passionate about in a marriage when your spouse is not passionate about those things. This is one of my favorite conversations off camera. And Steve is an amazing guy, just a great, kind human being and a wealth of knowledge. Buckle up, put your headphones in, turn it up a little bit, and enjoy my conversation with the great and wonderful Steve Rella. The most important thing we have to talk about is this. So you were on my friend Sean Ryan show, and he lives right here. Yeah, he lives right here. Yeah, yeah. So I take Sean out hunting and he shoots his first buck. And I said, sean, you can't take a picture of that buck and put it on the Internet. And so he tells you the story and I'm watching it and I was like, oh, that's me, that's me. And then you go, man, I don't want to disparage your Friend. But that guy said, I don't know. Idiot.

[Steve Rinella]

That guy's.

[John Deloney]

I was like, oh, okay. So here's my question. It was awesome, by the way. Here's my question. How do you decide what other people get to see about your life? Or, like, how do you post? How do you. Because I'm navigating that and all the parents I talk to, like, who do I put this?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

And it feels.

[Steve Rinella]

You.

[John Deloney]

You do it at such a public skill, and it. It's such a third rail issue. Right. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

We. We. I'm. There's a. That's a dramatic pause, but it's not the. It's more like. I'm thinking. It's not a dramatic pause. It's just a thinking pause. And the reason. Because it's been a little bit. Our path toward. When I say we, like our path toward. What I share. We share is a we path because it's something that my wife and I navigated together early on when we had our. We have three kids. We had our first kid, remember? He. He wound up our first kid, James W. Up being in some media projects I did, like, as a baby. Okay. Okay. And then we just landed where we didn't like the way that felt. And we found that we had to make. We found that we just had to make a rule. And to an outside perspective, it might seem arbitrary, but we just needed to, like, make a thing.

[John Deloney]

Just. Y' all too.

[Steve Rinella]

We just. Yeah, we just were like, what is the rule?

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And we hit on this rule that we don't show our kids faces publicly. Okay. The reason it seems arbitrary is because I might put. I would. Maybe on social media, I would show a picture of my kids looking the other direction. Or if they're holding the fish up, the fish might be in front of their face, but it just, like, made. It made a thing that we don't do. And then it ruled out certain things.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Right. I mean, there's no way our kids are going to be sort of like, talking on video projects or like coming on TV shows. Right. They can't, because we don't show their face. And the work. And it worked really well because it just gave us, like, a line not to cross. And it wanted to be. You don't have to debate. We didn't need to, like, debate everything. The pros and cons of every possible.

[John Deloney]

Or she sees something you posted and she gets upset, doesn't say anything because

[Steve Rinella]

it's like their face or not their face. So it just was. It was. It just. It Worked remarkably well, and we never had to revisit it. What we ran into now is. Is now I have a. My youngest boy is now 15. And so we let him. He's very interested in photography. I don't know that he'll pursue it as a career, but he's, like, very interested in photography. Very interested in wildlife photography. And we let him get a social media page. And the deal at first was that he couldn't post anything without. Okay. And it would me, you know, because we were explaining him like, man, you could. You could screw up and forever be haunted.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I mean, like, when it's out there, like, you do it. You do a dumb thing, and it's just. It's out there. The other day he posted something or another. I was like, I never looked at it. And he pointed out there's a guy I work with, a photographer who I work very closely with and have for a long time named Seth Morris. We travel together. And I said, you never checked that with me. He's like, well, I checked it with Seth. I'm like, okay. It's not what we said, but it's a good guy.

[John Deloney]

Well played.

[Steve Rinella]

It's a good guy to check with. But now we said. So we're doing that now. He's into it. I. But. So that handles the kid aspect of it. The other aspects of it, I don't. I don't really know. I don't do things quick, you know, I don't do things impulsively. And I found, too, that maybe this is a function of getting older. I just turned 52 the other day. I'm just less and less. Like, I'm less and less interested in social media. Like, I just don't get it. I don't get excited about it anymore.

[John Deloney]

Yes. Yes. Across the board. It just.

[Steve Rinella]

It feels like a different landscape. I love video. I love, like, I like doing stuff. I mean, we distribute video in all manner of ways. Some people would regard YouTube as social media. I don't.

[John Deloney]

I don't either.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, I love making things like. Like pieces that I know are just Gonna Live on YouTube. Love doing it. Love books, love podcasts. Less and less interest in social media. I can. I can see a future where I'm just not.

[John Deloney]

I'm out. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I'll just taper off. Like, I. I slowly tapered off alcohol, and I don't drink any alcohol. I just quit.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, Totally. Yeah. It wasn't a big event. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

No, I just like, wow. I don't drink anymore. Yeah, I Could picture someday being like,

[John Deloney]

wow, I don't use social media that I'm hearing that. Like, not even from people who produce videos and things, but just the average people. Like, it's burned out. Like, it hasn't, it hasn't solved the problem in my life it said it was going to solve. In fact, it's made it worse. And so what if I just. How do I talk to a person in real life now? I don't know how to do that. Yeah, I, I struggle with that balance of. Because we made the same rule with our kids.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, you did?

[John Deloney]

Yeah. And mine was less thoughtful than yours. Mine was more anxiety ridden. Like one day, those computers.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[John Deloney]

Oh, and that was 15 years ago. I just, I didn't, I didn't want my son and, and now my daughter to have to answer for their face. Be on something that they didn't have any input in. Right. Like he'll have to. My son's 15. The day is coming when he will be responsible for what the world sees that he's put out. But I don't want it to be on me. I already feel bad telling stories about him from stage a lot.

[Steve Rinella]

I had this debate, I had this debate with a, with a friend of mine whose kids have always been part of his stuff, and he's like, hey, man, if I'm a dairy farmer, my kids, they're gonna get up in the morning and milk cows. He's like, this media, that's a family business.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, I get it.

[Steve Rinella]

But man, that's his take. Not my take, but it's his take. And I was like, okay, you know, you thought about it. You thought about it.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, but the cows see you. Not every, every computer and cows keep a secret. They do. Cows look at you and they're like, we see. We know, man. So how do you decide? How have you navigated? And you started talking about hunting, you started showing what this looks like when it was. It's way more accepted now.

[Steve Rinella]

You think so?

[John Deloney]

I think so. Maybe I'm, I guess maybe the.

[Steve Rinella]

Maybe the.

[John Deloney]

I haven't heard of people like dousing cans of paint on people in fur coats recently.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[John Deloney]

Like, like, correct. Like you're still gonna.

[Steve Rinella]

I got a good story about that actually.

[John Deloney]

But.

[Steve Rinella]

But okay, I, I think that.

[John Deloney]

But you came in this when it was like no one had ever seen.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, we were showing, we were, you know, 12 years ago, whatever. We're showing hunting. We were showing aspects of hunting that hadn't been shown to a large audience.

[John Deloney]

People knew grandpa went hunting. They didn't know what.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Like we were. We were like kind of capturing a very. Portrait. Yeah. A very. You know, for lack of a better. I mean, there are better words. I don't mean for lack of a better word because I'm too lazy to find a better word. We were showing a very graphic treatment of hunting at a time when that just wasn't out there. Even to the point where, you know, we would. We would distribute license shows to Sportsman Channel at the time. And. And we never. And they always encourage what we did. But. But they even had policies in place and other outdoor channels. Outdoor. Like hunting and fishing programs. Networks.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Had policies in place to block portrayal of like blood.

[John Deloney]

Raw.

[Steve Rinella]

Like even raw meat. You know what I mean?

[John Deloney]

Wow.

[Steve Rinella]

Like there's a real effort to sanitize.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Because it. Because of a fear of offending people. Then it wanted to be kind of the opposite became true where it was like people were wondering, what am I not seeing?

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And all of a sudden it was, I don't know, cathartic or whatever it was just to see it get turned into food.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Wound up not being a detriment, but it wound up being additive to the experience and made a whole new generation of people kind of understand what was all about. But it was, but that was regarded as a risky move at the time. As odd as it seems now.

[John Deloney]

Well, and that's what I'm fascinated by is what's your North Star in that? And what I mean by that question is I struggle with who gets a vote in my life. Like, and we were just talking earlier, 35% of the calls that come into my show are people who have cut off their in laws or cut off their parents or parents cutting off their kids because of that perceived. I'm tired of them telling me I need to drive a Camry instead of a whatever. Or they don't like the way I parent my kid. But I go all the way to. You did that. In a media ecosystem. Like, I think this is the right thing to do. And there's going to be this many people who not only don't like it, but who tell me I'm a terrible person and I'm evil. I'm what's wrong with the world and yada yada.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

But there's a North Star said, no, no, this is right. You know what I mean? Yeah. I wrestle with who gets a vote.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

And I look at you, I look at some of the, the, what I'd call the pioneer hunting guys who, who took Us along with you to say at some point, y' all said, I don't care. I think this is right. Does that make sense?

[Steve Rinella]

No, I understand. I'll approach that in a couple ways. I think I left off when talking about our decision about our kids. Years ago, I had gotten a threat from an animal rights person and they referenced my family. And so that was. That was a factor that played into it. They wound up. It was funny because when it was enough where we. The FBI, like, went to this person's work, went to his garbage. Oh, he ordered a pepperoni pizza. I mean, I'm not kidding. They came and they can't.

[John Deloney]

Like, they told you everything.

[Steve Rinella]

They show up like you dressed how they're supposed to be dressed. The FBI, you know, it's a guy and a girl. Guy's got super short hair. They got trench coats on. I'm not kidding you, like, they, like, scared the hell out of this guy.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

That. That influenced our decision. So you're right. There was a thing where there was a. A. A sort of threatening verbal opposition to what I do.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

The thing that shocks me. One of the things that shocks me most about kind of where I've spent. The ideas that I've spent exploring in exploring. Sorry. The ideas I've explored through my career is it. I don't really get that's. That's not a big part of my life is engaging with people who are, like, vehemently opposed to what I do. I feel like they look at them like a lost cause.

[John Deloney]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, because they can pressure. Like you can. Let's say you're like. There's a lot of closeted. There's a lot of celebrities are, like, closeted about their hunting because there's a thing you can take. There's a thing you can take away from them.

[John Deloney]

Right, Right.

[Steve Rinella]

You don't get. You don't get to be in, like, my movie. You don't get to play in Hollywood.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So they. They. There's like. Yeah, there's like a thing. Dude, I. Yeah, I could. Yeah, I could tell. I could tell you great stories about. Yeah, I can tell you great stories about closeted hunters. Because there's something that can be taken away from them. Yeah, there's like. There's a. There's a. There's a thing you can pressure, you know, certain kind of advertisers. There's a thing you can pressure.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

That's threatening to them. We recently had a high. We had a high profile individual who was going to Come on our podcast and pulled out. Just recently pulled out at the last minute for fear of punished. Getting punished by advertisers. Right.

[John Deloney]

For being on your show.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. But it's like, this isn't a thing that I'm, I'm not even, like, I don't live this at all.

[John Deloney]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

And I think I don't live it at all because I'm a lost cause. Like, what are you gonna take away from me? You know? So, so in that way, I guess the, the people that are opposed to the ideas I talk about, the lifestyle I have, like, they have no vote, you know?

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

To, to look at the question a different way, I, I, I used to imagine, like, like, I imagine there's two audiences for, for a person like me, there's two potential audiences. There's, there's, like, the audience that sits on the outside of what I do. Sits on the outside of outdoor, the outdoors. It's on the outside of hunting and fishing. Right. Sits on the outside of, like, any kind of extraction.

[John Deloney]

It's like you're a zoo animal. Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

They're like, on the outside and they're looking in and they're curious about the world. They're threatened by it. They hate it. Yeah, whatever. And then there's the audience that's on the inside. And I imagine that being like, the people I grew up around, the people I hang out with. Early on, I was very interested in engaging with that outside audience. I, I was like, I don't know why I felt this compulsion to be like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, here, let me show you.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, you got it all wrong, you know, like, let me explain all this to you. I was focused there, and then over time, I just realized I was more, like, focused on, on people from, on the inside being like, isn't this a beautiful world? Yeah, we inhabit. Yeah, let's, let's explore this and go deeper in this world and, like, kind of push on its boundaries and think about it together and, and find a way to perpetuate it and save the good parts.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Right. And that's sort of where I imagine spending my time now. Like, like I've shifted. I was here talking to the, the outside, and now more and more, I'm like, I'm very interested on the inside.

[John Deloney]

Is that because you felt this is futile, or has this crew become more and more unhinged? No, because I become more unhinged.

[Steve Rinella]

That's just who I am.

[John Deloney]

Like, the way you bifurcated that, I'll. I would have Said that has been your superpower, is the only guy that will run an entire episode. That and obviously you're a great writer. And order like, Like, I didn't get anything I missed. Yeah, right. I wounded an animal. Now I'm not gonna sleep for five nights. Like, you're the only guy that's explored failure in that way, which is awesome. But it has. Like, my daughter, like, again, born in Texas to Texas parents. We probably eat venison five nights a week. I mean, that's what we have. And she, she's 10, and she refuses. She thinks hunting is awful and terrible. But she watches your show. Oh, really?

[Steve Rinella]

But I put her in this.

[John Deloney]

When it comes to the. She's on the inside, actual dead. She'll do this.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[John Deloney]

She didn't want to see it, and she's like, oh, you watching Meter? Okay. She'll pop down the couch. And so. But it always felt there's a humanity to it. Does that make sense?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

And you've done it in a way that's not pornographic. Right. That's not just. But there's a human element to it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I, I, in all fairness, there is, like, at all times. It's always been to both, I guess, that I, I, I just pictured the emphasis.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Or, you know, like when I remember a piece of writing advice I got. There was a writer named. Is a writer named Ian Frazier, who's very influential to me when I was in writing school. And, and I don't think this is his advice to all writers, but he was like, try to get, like, in your bat, like, when you're writing, try to get in that. Your best self. Right. That, like, at the time, he'd like to drink. I like drink. He'd be like, you've had, like, you're like, in the bar, you're with your best friends, you've had, like a drink, maybe two, and you're like, you're like, telling your best ver. Like the best way you're gonna nail a story. It's great advice, you know? And it's like, who is that? Yeah, right.

[John Deloney]

Not your preachy self. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Who is that? And so when I'm doing my stuff, I guess if I imagine that that's the, the, the me I'm bringing, you know, I bring it better when I'm kind of talking to people. I'm like. You know what I mean? Right.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, maybe you never thought about it. Maybe you don't have the luxury of thinking about this all the time professionally. But when I tell you this. I know it's going to resonate with you. Yeah. Right. There's like. So that's kind of what I'm getting at, man. It's a little bit. What I'm saying is a. I recognize it's probably a little confusing, but it's just a way I come to think about it.

[John Deloney]

So how do, how do you, how have you established comfort with, I mean, burning an episode? And, and I say that intentionally, like burning an episode to show we missed. That takes a lot of courage. Oh, you see what I'm saying?

[Steve Rinella]

You, when you say. You mean like, like using it.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, yeah. You know, and you don't burn anything. I think those are some of the most powerful episodes. Right.

[Steve Rinella]

They're.

[John Deloney]

They're fun and they're beautiful and they're. What. But, but being able to say I, I. Because you have an opportunity to paint yourself as a hero. Right. The same as every. Oh, I was talking to a dad the other day who's had some bad stuff and he has a, like A I, a 12, 13 year old son. I said the greatest gift you can give that kid right now is to let him see you be sad and then he'll know his dad's a person and then he'll see what you do next. Right. But all of us want to put up the best versions of ourself and that takes a lot. I've never seen anyone else do what you do in that way.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. You know, we became known. You know, when I say we like the folks I have always worked on the Meat Eater, the show with. We became known for kind of showing these different aspects of failure at times. And it's great and I like it. But it also, it was motivated in part by how we worked early on

[John Deloney]

where you have a whole crew and that's what you got.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I mean, we would. So when we started making the show, I remember we left one time. The first time we ever went out to make episodes. We, we left and we knew we were going to, we, we. We were going to make 16 of them in a year. Right. Which is a ton.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Way more than we make now. We were making 16 a year and we'd go out and we're going to. Let's say we're going to go up wherever and go mess around Alaska. We're going to go do four and we have 20 days. So we're going to do this, this, this and this. You couldn't, it's like for, for a hundred reasons you couldn't come back and be like, but we're not going to use some of it.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

It was just like. It was. There's no way.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And. And so we just found the way to. Just to. To make it be a story. And. And the guys, I've told us so many times, people, like, when I started making Meat Eater, I wasn't making it with guys that hunt. Like, so I was with. I had a joint venture, like, Meat Eater was a joint venture between me and a production company called 0.0 Production. They most famously did all the Bourdain shows. Okay.

[John Deloney]

Cooking channel.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. So they did. They did like a Cooks tour, I think it was called. And then when. Then it went to no reservations and parts unknown. Okay. Y. So, I mean, they like all the Bourdain stuff they filmed. What they loved about these trips is they had this, like, very clear, objective.

[John Deloney]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

You're going to. We're going to try to get this thing, and they're excited about it, and they're. They. They want to know if we're going to get it, too. And then you don't. You don't get it. They're like, well, that's what happened. Like, we didn't get it to. In their mind to be like, who cares if he didn't get it? It's like the story is trying to get it. And there's this. There's this explanation of story. Like, at this most fundamental level, story is. You know, there's this definition of it. It's like someone or something wants something. Okay. And then. But there are obstacles in their way.

[John Deloney]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

So it's like Joe.

[John Deloney]

Joe Campbell 101.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

It's like a snail.

[Steve Rinella]

Like a little snail. He wants to, like, get a lettuce leaf.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But he's got to cross the highway, whatever the hell. It's like, story is like, you know, it's sort of like, you wanted this bear. That's cool. You didn't get it. There was obstacles in your way. They were insurmountable. What's there to like. It's cool. And so I got comfortable with it being cool, you know, because what if

[John Deloney]

we just, I don't know, told the truth about what happened? You know what I mean? What a crazy thing.

[Steve Rinella]

No, they got a kick out of. They loved it. We had. We had a lot of fun in those. In those days. And. And there's. We have this. In our crew. We have this robust debate, like, is it better? Is it. Is it better to go get a hunter? Is it easier to get A hunter and teach him how to hold a camera? Or is he. Is it easier go get a guy that knows how to hold a camera and teach him how to be out on a hunt?

[John Deloney]

It's got to be that one.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, there's a real split. This is a contentious issue. It's a contentious issue.

[John Deloney]

I thought it would be really easy to hold a camera. And those dudes are amazing.

[Steve Rinella]

In the end. In the end. And I like to tease them. I like to tease our guys, the guys I work with about. But in the end, yeah, there's. I think it's easier to learn to be sneaky.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. Just be quiet.

[Steve Rinella]

It is to learn how to have a really good eye and.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. And get like the. Yeah. The desert rose while you walk off.

[Steve Rinella]

Man, I can't remember what the hell you asked me.

[John Deloney]

No, it's. It's a. It's. Well, I'm struck by that. There. There's a humanity that runs through it. And I. I have a. I don't call it a bad habit. I just have a habit of taking any big issue, global issues, politics issues, like, big. Distilling them down to how does this work at my kitchen table. Right. And just what you said.

[Steve Rinella]

Give me an example. What you mean, what you like, what you.

[John Deloney]

I'll use what you just said, like, okay, so we have this. We have this budget. We have this time, and we have to come back with four episodes because that's what we promised the studio. All right, well, we only were successful, quote, unquote, in our hunts. Twice. And so how are we going to tell the story? Yeah. We could gloss it up. We could go do something else and pretend it was part of this story. Right. Or we can just tell them the truth. And if I'm sitting with my wife trying to come up with a reason why I was late again. Right. I could. I can, like, well, you know, or I could just say. So here's a great example. Last night I. I got home and I was like, to my wife, her name is Sheila, I was like, hey, this has been weighing on me and I need you to come up. I've got a room where I write and do all my stuff. And. And I said, I need you to come up here. I have a deep secret that I've been keeping from you, and I'm ashamed of it, and I just got to let it out.

[Steve Rinella]

Are you going to tell me?

[John Deloney]

I'll tell you. Yeah. I think this comes out. This will come out. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

And she. She was like, well, okay, let's Here we go. And long story short is I had a. I'm trying to come up with a. My son's going to turn 16. And I tried to come up with something that was going to be like just awesome. Right? And so I had a guy who makes custom rifles and he made this amazing thing and engraved some stuff from me to my son on it and all that. But the thing that I was upset about that it just, it was a light bulb for me, was here's this cool passing of the torch gift to my son who's been with me. I didn't get Hunt until late, so he's been with me at every opening day, right. Since he was little. Little bitty. I didn't include my wife in it. Right. And so I've been thinking of like, how do I like navigate this story? And here I am with like a parenting and a marriage show and I'm like, well, how do I spend this? And it was like, I'm going to bring her up in my writing room and say, like, I left you out of this thing. And after I finished it, she was

[Steve Rinella]

like, in this bullet that's from your mom.

[John Deloney]

Exactly. She, she signed it this little eternity. So it's special. Right? But. But when we got done, she started laughing. She's like, that's really what we're doing here. And I was like, well, I just want you to know.

[Steve Rinella]

She's like, yeah, yeah.

[John Deloney]

Okay. And she's like, are we done now? And she walked out. She's laughing, but like, because she, she's.

[Steve Rinella]

She might be instinctively more collaborative than you.

[John Deloney]

Well, it was, I'm usually the overly collaborative one, but it was just. I got so absorbed with the same. But going back to if you just told the truth, like, this is what happened. Yeah. And then suddenly that becomes like a people. I trust that guy.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

That's the thing that, the, the thing that I get from you most is I trust that guy.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, the. In all fairness, there, there's a thing to consider is there's a, There's a built in artifice to TV production because we have a thing called like the shoot. The, the shoot ratio, meaning if you're shooting.

[John Deloney]

Shooting weapons or shooting. I'm sorry, film.

[Steve Rinella]

Film.

[John Deloney]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

Picture that you're. Picture that you're shooting 20 minutes of film for every minute used. But it's usually, it's a bigger ratio. Okay. So you go out, let's say you go out and you do something for five days and you're up before dark and you're still kind of doing stuff at dusk and all day you're just rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. The minute you go in and pick your 22 minutes, which is a 30 minute show is 22 minutes of material. The minute you go and pick the 22, like something's happened.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you follow me?

[John Deloney]

Oh, yeah, totally.

[Steve Rinella]

Where long, long periods of what whatever get caught and little side trips don't pan out. Yeah. Do. I mean so they're so there is baked into it a. It's not all there.

[John Deloney]

Yes. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

A bunch of stuff happened that's not there. And it's condensed and the thing can wind up seeing perhaps more exciting than it was. Boredom can seem poetic.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Rather than boring.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you know what I mean?

[John Deloney]

Yeah, totally.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[John Deloney]

Like, yeah, boredom, our three of glassing is not fun.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Boredom is conveyed with some beautiful time lapses of sunsets and a great over like voiceover. Yeah. If you're really going to capture the feeling, it'd be that it. We're just gonna have the video stop now and you. The audience will sit there for hours wondering when it's gonna start back up again. So there is a, you know, you're making a piece of entertainment and part of doing that as you're making decisions about what goes. But I think that like striving to. Striving to maintain a level of like purity, a level of responsibility that that's good aspiration to have. And I just have never found where that sits at odds with making something that's entertaining.

[John Deloney]

Agreed.

[Steve Rinella]

I mean they kind of work hand in hand.

[John Deloney]

But that is not a consensus view.

[Steve Rinella]

No, I don't think so.

[John Deloney]

I think the consensus view is I have to look as. As good as as possible. And I, I deal with the. The married couples who are like, yeah, but they have it all together or they're working on a great. Or I want it to be like, I don't know, I have to be like this woman on this movie or whatever. And it's like, that's not.

[Steve Rinella]

I should have brought my wife down here.

[John Deloney]

Solve some stuff. Solve some stuff, man.

[Steve Rinella]

She'd be like, hi, Button.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, exactly. One second, please. Yeah, we talked on a crew about that. That'd be a great. Just bringing an episode of the wives of people who are on TV and people who hunt and fish. Like that'd be a. That'd be a dark episode, man.

[Steve Rinella]

All right, so let's talk about that.

[John Deloney]

I want to talk about. You mind talking about being married?

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, no, man. I love, I love being married.

[John Deloney]

You have this great quote here.

[Steve Rinella]

I love it. Oh, really?

[John Deloney]

Well, I'm writing a book about marriage right now and I found an article. It's an old school one. I didn't find it. One of the people on my team did. Said you describe your marriage one time as a mismatch made in heaven. What does that mean?

[Steve Rinella]

My wife is. Is. Is not the outdoorsman that I am. Sort of coincidentally, we grew up not too far apart.

[John Deloney]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

We met. We met in New York. We met, like the first time I ever stepped foot in New York City. I mean, the first time ever is I. I had sold my first book to Miramax. My wife worked for Miramax at that time.

[John Deloney]

Miramax Publishing. Or you would get it made into a film.

[Steve Rinella]

So. No, the film house had a publishing arm.

[John Deloney]

Oh, wow.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, so she's. My wife used to, like, work for Bob and Harvey Weinstein.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

At Miramax. They bought my first book. First time I ever stepped foot in New York was to meet the publishing team. Yeah. That's how I met my wife. Turns out that she grew up a couple hours away from me and tried

[John Deloney]

to get as far away from there as possible.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. So, like, I went to. I was like, I was. At the time, I was living in Alaska, like, all over the place. No, that's not. Where was I living at the time? I remember where I was living at the time. Montana. I think I was living in Montana at the time when we met. And. But we wound up, like, we knew the same rock stations, you know.

[John Deloney]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, we both listened to klq, whatever. Like, we do all the same. Like all the kind of same stuff.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

We just knew about it. But we met far away and she was, like, very committed to urban life. Like, she wanted to work in book publishing and book publishing at that time, that was. That. That was where you went to work in book publishing. So that's how we met then. Some years went by before we were in a relationship. By the time we were in a relationship, I was living temp. I tried. I moved to Alaska, but it didn't stick. And because she was living there and so we just. We kind of bonded over shared experience. I mean, we're very. I think emotionally we're very similar.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But just our. Our. What we choose to do with our time was very different then. In time, we bond very much over kids. And she has a relationship with the stuff we do. And now our kids, my. Our kids are obsessed with it. They love hunting. They love fishing. You know, they like sports too. But they like the stuff I like to do. And she is a. She observes it. She loves that they do it.

[John Deloney]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

Loves that they do it. Loves that we do it. What else is good about it? This is advice to dads out there. If I take all three kids to go do something, you can do no wrong.

[John Deloney]

That's right. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It's like, there is no wrong.

[John Deloney]

That's 100.

[Steve Rinella]

There is no wrong. If I'm like, hey, I'm taking all the kids. Yep. And we're going fishing. It's like, you guys have a good time.

[John Deloney]

That's right.

[Steve Rinella]

Sounds.

[John Deloney]

There's no greater gift.

[Steve Rinella]

And so it just. It works really well.

[John Deloney]

But.

[Steve Rinella]

But there's just that. That lingering difference, you know, and it's only becoming, like, we have a 15 year old now and it's becoming where we do. We do talk about this. And she wonders about it, and it's good to wonder about it. She's like, but what happens later?

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you know? I mean, like, someday the kids are going to be like, all you, like, all your little hunting, fishing bodies leave.

[John Deloney]

No, I'm. Dude, I'm dying, right?

[Steve Rinella]

They leave and they go and, like, they have their own families and stuff. And then like, you know, and I've proposed to her arrangements. I'm like, I got a deal for you. We spend half the time doing what I want and half the time doing what you want. And she's like, reluctant to take the deal.

[John Deloney]

Anytime my husband says, I got a deal for you.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm like, no. Like, half the days we do what I want, like when we're retired. Half the days I pick. Half the days you pick. But they come in blocks. She's reluctant, sweet, which seems like, why would you not take that deal?

[John Deloney]

We're gonna go from mule deer hunting to downtown Denver.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Like, we start hunting turkeys. And like, we start hunting turkeys in late March. We finish hunting turkeys in late May. And then you get a couple months,

[John Deloney]

whatever you want to do. My, my. I had a. An event I was doing, and it fell on opening day this year and it was my 15 year old. He's like, man, I hope this is important, dad. And I was like, why? And he goes, you only got three more left with me. And then I'm gone. I was like, bro, that hurts, man. That was low, dude. But he was right.

[Steve Rinella]

We. We've developed a lot of those. They kind of add up. We have a lot of traditions now, like little hunting and fishing traditions. They eat up the calendar. They do, like, Little family outdoor traditions,

[John Deloney]

you know, I'm already pre grieving that like so in my former life I worked in universities forever. And the number of dads who I would hug on move in morning who were sobbing and I just roll my eyes through the back of my head like, good God, dude, shut up. Now I'm like already pre. Like I don't know what it's going to be like to walk out there in September, my kids away at college and I'm by myself. Like I don't know if I'm ready for that day.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm depressed about it. I don't think it was like that. Like, I don't, I don't think with.

[John Deloney]

I. I wonder if our dads thought that he didn't know how to say

[Steve Rinella]

I was just gonna get at it. I don't think it was like that. We just kind of like I, I grew up with, you know, siblings and, and we were brought up to hunt and fish and trap, you know, and, and just eventually as in high school, we just really stayed all the way into it, but just moved kind of away. Yeah. And I, I never even thought to wonder what the experience was like for the old man.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, and now it's like the most, now it's like the most depressing thought in the world, dude. You know? Yeah. It's so funny to think about like did they also need to wake up and they're like went fishing but didn't tell you?

[John Deloney]

Tell you you're like. Well yeah, but not having like our dads not having the skill set to be like hey, hey, I want to come right. Like I, I don't know. Dads, especially our dads didn't know how to do that. So they just probably went back to the newspaper.

[Steve Rinella]

I know you wouldn't. It's like I'm telling you man, till still sitting here right now. Like I've never in my life contemplated till this second, I've never my life contemplated how my dad had that experience.

[John Deloney]

What a terrible son.

[Steve Rinella]

As much as I think about it all the time now.

[John Deloney]

Well, I, but here's the other side of it. So a couple years ago I put together this big. It was my fantasy I put together down in South Texas, a hunt. It was going to be a three generation hunt. My dad, me, my son, my dad and I have been hunting. Never. When he was a, he was a homicide detective in Houston growing up and for a side hustle he would had somebody who did taxidermy stuff. So he would take me snake hunting we'd catch snakes, and we'd turn him over to this guy, this taxidermist. And so that was the hunting we did. And we fished all the time, but.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay.

[John Deloney]

We never hunt together. And so I put this whole thing together. And of course, old man, my dad, he's in his 70s. He's still a laser of a shot from all those years. He shoots the biggest deer. Of course, it was cool. And then when it was over, he's literally. I'll never forget this. He goes, all right, well, I'll see you guys. And I was like, no, no, no, you have to hug me. We have to have a whole thing. And he was like, okay, okay. But it was very much like, all right, well, I did this. So y' all have a good. So it was.

[Steve Rinella]

It. It.

[John Deloney]

I had all this expectation on it. But, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what it'll be like. You should call your. Is he still alive?

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, no, no. He's been a long time. Wow. Been dead a long time. He had me when he's old. Yeah.

[John Deloney]

Dang. I bet he cried.

[Steve Rinella]

He didn't do a lot of that.

[John Deloney]

So go back to.

[Steve Rinella]

I cut my thumb there not too long ago. Had to get stitched up. And last night, I was driving my daughter home from her volleyball, and she was like, when you caught your hand, how come you didn't cry? I'm like. It just like. People just quit crying. You'll see, it just stops.

[John Deloney]

That's right. How old is she? How old your little. She's 12.

[Steve Rinella]

I was like. I was like. To be honest with you, it was. I want to say she's 13. There's so many of them. They change their ages so much. I always get confused. But I was just trying to explain her. Like, I know that your instinct would be to cry, but that'll go away in prison. You won't cry at all.

[John Deloney]

We'll. My daughter cries a lot. I love that day. Will be awesome when it comes. What.

[Steve Rinella]

What did.

[John Deloney]

What. Would you go back and tell your younger self about being married if you could run some things back?

[Steve Rinella]

I don't know. I feel like I'm better at it. Well, I don't know if I'm better at it now than I thought it would be, man. I don't know. You know, what wound up being. I think the thing that, like. That's a good question. I don't think I would have had anything.

[John Deloney]

I think I got a laundry list of stuff I'd go tell myself, man.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, yeah. But if we.

[John Deloney]

If.

[Steve Rinella]

If we. If we had thrown in the towel and if we'd thrown in the towel and gotten divorced, then I'd probably have all these things I was going to tell myself.

[John Deloney]

That's probably true.

[Steve Rinella]

But we wound up doing like we wound up doing. I don't know. I guess we did a. We're, like, doing a fairly good job of being married.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you follow me?

[John Deloney]

Totally.

[Steve Rinella]

It's hard. I think that that's. That strikes some people so weird that it's hard, but it's like, we just. We're. We're kind of hard. We're hard workers, you know, and we're like. We have a loyalty.

[John Deloney]

We.

[Steve Rinella]

We shield ourselves from impulsive actions.

[John Deloney]

What does that look like?

[Steve Rinella]

Well, I remember, like, when you're in the dating phase, okay, this. This is gonna sound, like, terribly immature, but, like, when you're the dating face,

[John Deloney]

I own from my maturity.

[Steve Rinella]

So you have. There's this idea. This is a. This is an observation that I made my wife after we got married. There's like. You carry this idea in the back of your head where if you're wronged. Right. You're wronged. You'd be like, well, I'll show you, you know?

[John Deloney]

Oh, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You know what I mean?

[John Deloney]

Like, that goes.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. You try to call me. Like, I'm not gonna, you know.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I'll show you what's up. Right. This is always in the back of

[John Deloney]

your head, like, the thing keeping. Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, you're gonna. It's. You know, you're gonna stick it to them, you know, or like, they're gonna wish they had never said that, you

[John Deloney]

know, or the other side of it, like, I got flowers. That's five for me, right?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, exactly.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Just whatever you're doing this thing that. There's, like these. There's these actions you're gonna take that are gonna set records straight, you know? And I just remember getting married and just being like, you know, saying to myself, like, let's be honest, you ain't gonna do nothing. You're not gonna get any kind of revenge. No, it's just. You're not. It's not gonna. No one's gonna come to you and, like, beg for your forgiveness, you know?

[John Deloney]

Whenever I do live events, I always talk about the imaginary conversations we have in our heads. That. And the. That's one of a few. The audience is like, oh, it's like, I will have full. And I always win. And I always have these mic drop moments because of this, right? And she's like, oh, you're right. Hey, I'll never have that conversation.

[Steve Rinella]

It doesn't work that way.

[John Deloney]

I wish I had had that wisdom at 24 when I got married. Geez Louise, man. I discovered that, like, three years ago.

[Steve Rinella]

I remember another buddy of mine talking about the peace of mind. I already mentioned Morgan Fallon, who I' worked with over the years a bunch. He had this observation to me about getting married, where he said that he got married and. And he said it would have this feeling like, you know, like in old movies, when, like the. The you go. You got the coat rack, you know, in your hat, you know, and like you're heading off to work, and they put their hat on, you know, like their briefcase. Yeah. He said, like, he got married, he loved it because it sort of gave him. He'd get up and it was like, he's putting his hat on and grabbing his briefcase. Like he had, like, a purpose. Yeah. He had, like, a thing he was supposed to be doing.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And he had always been. And for parts of his life, he realized he wasn't. You know, you'd wake up and you weren't quite clear on what you're supposed to be doing.

[John Deloney]

Okay. Okay. Yes. So the. The question that has haunted me for the last two years is, why did Jeff Bezos get remarried? Like, why? No, like, why would you do that? Like, there's something. And I've talked to nerds, I've talked to scientists and anthropologists, you know, and we can talk all about the nurse,

[Steve Rinella]

I guess, like, fear of. Like, there's, like, why. Fear of death. There's like a show offiness.

[John Deloney]

But the thing that keeps coming back to is this wired for purpose or this wired for service? Like, this thing of I'm aimless and at this, like, I don't. Does that make sense? Like, in a strange. I don't know, you're the historian here, but like a strange, weird cultural uncoupling. It feels like every string that tethers us together has just been cut overnight. Yeah, but the idea is the most sacred thing is to be unconnected, uncommitted. Right. To always have a line in the water somewhere, doing a thing.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[John Deloney]

Professionally, personally, whatever. And there's something of. That's a beautiful way to put that. The alternative is I could wake up every day saying, like, dude, I got. I've got a thing I can contribute to.

[Steve Rinella]

I remember being in graduate school, and we would. I would work. I'd work in the mornings doing tree work. Like, I was A tree climber. Not working mornings, doing that.

[John Deloney]

Which. Hold on, I'm gonna talk directly to the camera. For the men in here. I mean, for the women watching this, that was a huge flex he just did. Huge. Exactly. I was a climber, so I. If I stood on this table, I. I come so scared of heights, so.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, really? Okay.

[John Deloney]

Tip my hat to you.

[Steve Rinella]

We had my hat to you. This guy I worked with, we would have these contracts where we would do. We would get a contract to do these boulevard trees and he would bid out. We'd have a bid to do, like, 400 boulevard trees in a winter. But we sort of had a pace to it, you know. But anyways, we would often get done. He was a writer too, and I was. I was an aspiring writer learning to write. And we would get done at noon.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, we'd usually wrap up, like. We'd work from 7 to 11 or 12, and sometimes I'd wander down. I'd be with friends of mine and we, like. Like. Well, I'm gonna, you know, probably write later in the day, but let's go down to Charlie's and we'll get a. We'll get a po Boy and, you know, maybe a cocktail and, you know, and then all sudden, it's one in the morning and they're. I mean, it's one in the morning and they're. They're playing closing time.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But, man, you mean to tell me we just, like, shot pool for 12 hours? For 12 hours?

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I was gonna write.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And. And I let a lot. It was like. We laughed. It was fun. I kind of learned a lot in some weird way. And if inefficiently, I learned a lot. I needed, like. I needed to get serious. Yeah. I don't know that I would have gotten serious. I don't think I would have found it myself.

[John Deloney]

No.

[Steve Rinella]

To get serious. If I hadn't gotten into. If I hadn't become a husband and become a parent. Because it's really easy to not get serious.

[John Deloney]

But you and I both run with people. I don't know if we run with people. We both know people who got married and continued.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah.

[John Deloney]

Where's that model come from, man?

[Steve Rinella]

Well, I mean.

[John Deloney]

Or maybe it wasn't modeled. Yeah, dude.

[Steve Rinella]

It would be like.

[John Deloney]

It'd be like.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, it's hard to tell what you pick up as influences

[John Deloney]

because it

[Steve Rinella]

would have been like for me as a kid. Yeah. We ate. We had dinner time. Do you know what I mean? And there was exceptions, but generally it Was like, there was dinner time. There's no way in the world. There's no way in the world my dad would have been out in the bars without my mom knowing where he was. It's just like.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

That there was a lot of things that, you know, there's a lot of things. You look and you're kind of like, what was going on there about growing up? But there was no sense of insecurity. I mean, you knew what the house was going to be like. You knew what the mood was going to be like. You knew when you got home there was food. You knew when you got home there was people wondering where you'd been. You had. There was expectations of you. Expectations that you had of home were met. Right.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And. And I, you know, I absorb some amount of that. My wife didn't grow up that way young. When I. When we got together and started having kids, and I was very insistent on family dinner, it was a little bit of a.

[John Deloney]

Not.

[Steve Rinella]

It was, you know, it wasn't her program as a kid doing that.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

For a long time, she just lived in a single family household.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And she was kind of surprised by it and was a little bit surprised by how adamant I was about it. But if I'm out of town now, they sit down for family dinner. It's just like, we have family that we say that. We sit at a table like this, right. Our little boy, for whatever reason, he's always at the head of the table.

[John Deloney]

Like.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, I sit here, my wife sits there, my dog. You know what I mean? And. And maybe it's boring. I don't know. It's just. It's just like there's a rigidity to things and.

[John Deloney]

But, you know, that's one of the.

[Steve Rinella]

I like that.

[John Deloney]

That's one of the highest predictors of childhood outcomes.

[Steve Rinella]

Is that right?

[John Deloney]

I didn't know. It's family dinner time. Really? Yeah, it really is. It's. It's. My wife and I are both nerds, and that was one of our. When we started having kids, it was like, this is. This is. Everything stops for this. And that's it now, though, that my kids. My wife had this idea, like, when she found out she was pregnant and she found out we were having a boy, she was like, hey, we gotta talk about this. Like, there's. We have one job with this kid. And I was like, ah, here we go. It's gonna. And I thought it was going to be some big poetic. And she said, we have to raise a kid that we like. That we like being around. And now I've got two hilarious, funny, like, smart kids I don't like. Let me put it this way. I had a buddy named John. And I've told this before on the show, like, I've had a buddy named John. He had a kid. He was the first one of our little gang to have kids. He disappeared. Like, we hung out every Monday night, kind of like you said, just blowing the night away. And I. His wife is a long 20 year friend of mine, but I was like, man, she's the worst dude. Like, he has like one kid, he can't hang out anymore. It wasn't until I had my son that him and I were having dinner one night and I was like, you didn't tell me that it wasn't that you didn't want to hang out with us, you'd rather be doing that. And he was like, you wouldn't have understood, man. I couldn't have explained it to you. But now I don't. There's not very many places I want to be other than that silly, goofy, too loud, too messy, too funny to whatever table. Yeah. I just think it's. Yeah, it's. It's an anchor point for me.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

I get a guilty.

[Steve Rinella]

I get a real guilty conscience. And people I don't know, there's probably a school of thought that thinks that like living under a guilt, not like it's like a cloud of guilt. Maybe guilt's not the right word. I have a strong sense of obligation. Obligation. Yeah. Yeah. Do you? I mean, like, like. And let's be straight, man, I miss a lot. Like, I travel and. But my promise, my sort of promise to our family is like, when I'm home, I'm home.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you know what I mean? When I'm home, they're part of the plan, you know, Like I, I like engaged, get my kids to do stuff, we make them do stuff with us still, you know, that those days will end. But. And, and I think that that's somewhat motivated by that feeling of, of an awareness of what I miss. And I do wonder if I liked, worked for. I don't know what kind of job

[John Deloney]

you have when Bob's tree trimming.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. I was still, I was still country. I'm still working for a tree service. And we just worked around town. And every night I came home, I wonder, like, would I have gotten complacent then?

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Would I been like, I'm here all the time. Yeah. I'm just gonna go to the bar

[John Deloney]

or I'M here all the time. I'll just spend the time staring at my phone.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. And I wasn't trying to be like, super dad when I'm home. Yeah. You know, that'. Fair.

[John Deloney]

I'm not like super intentional dad.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. But it's guilt motivated in some way. It's maybe not the perfect word, but I. I do feel a. Like. I know. Yeah. I feel like a. Like a. I don't know, man, like a, Like a obligation to hold up an end of the deal.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Philosophically. I. I remember having a feeling, and it had to do with quitting drinking too. I remember having like this, this. This thing that, like, about kids, like, and thinking about my kids. Be like, they didn't. Like, they didn't ask to be born.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And come live here.

[John Deloney]

I dragged you into this. You know what I'm saying?

[Steve Rinella]

It wasn't like they're like, please let us in. You know, I'm like, against my better judgment. You're in for a day. It was like we, like, dragged them into this situation. So, like, we asked them. Right. We, like, asked them. We invited them.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Into this existence that we created. There's some level of. Of, you know, there's this Greek principle, like Xenia, like a guest host bond. Be like the bond between a. I think it's like something to do with like the flower and a pollinator or something like that. But yeah, there is like a guest host bond a little bit. You know, we still like, constantly bust our kids balls, but there is a little bit of like, they didn't ask. Yeah. We did this. So there's a certain obligation.

[John Deloney]

Now, I. I've never thought through that, but I like on its face. I love that. I love that.

[Steve Rinella]

That had to do with, you know, what. It had to do with what reason I brought it up. It had to do with the feeling of being hungover in the morning and, and, and. And resenting them because, you know, when they're real little, they get up real early. Resenting them for being up at five. Like, why are you up at five?

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And just that feeling of like, man, I got like a headache now. You're up.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. Yeah. You're not going back to bed. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And, you know, and you're gonna pull some, you know, furniture over on yourself. And if I'm not out there watching you, you know, then you kind of like, get up.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And I remember just thinking, like, how could you have the. How could you be so arrogant as, like, resent them for being awake in the morning? Like, That's. That's bad. Xenia.

[John Deloney]

Well, and even worse. Happy to see you. Yeah, right.

[Steve Rinella]

First stop.

[John Deloney]

How dare you Want to come see. Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

First stop.

[John Deloney]

I chose to stay up till 2am and be stupid.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. And they're sitting there thinking, the minute I get up, I'm going in that guy's room and I'm waking him up and. Yeah. And then he's bummed. Okay, I'll go.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, that's a dude. That's a great point. And almost. I mean, I think I could extrapolate that out to be married too. Like. No, I chose you. I said yes. I said I do. Forever until one of us dies. Yeah, I'm in. I could choose for today to not be great, or I could choose to just pick up the towels and get on with the day. Right. How do you all navigate travel? Fame, Differing. Like, you've got attention that pulls you here. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

That.

[John Deloney]

She says, no, no, you're mine.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. I've often explained that the. The central conflict in our marriage. The central conflict was a travel 100. It wasn't like, it wasn't like lack of faith, lack of trust. It wasn't finance. It was. It was. It's never been money. It was like the central conflict was travel.

[John Deloney]

What was underneath that?

[Steve Rinella]

Like another central conflict?

[John Deloney]

No, just like the core conflict. Be like, I miss you or you care about that more than me.

[Steve Rinella]

I wish I was there and unspoken. I miss you.

[John Deloney]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

And it would be, it would. It would play out a couple ways. Like. Like picture from picture from my wife's perspective of I. I hadn't. Early on, I didn't build good limits for myself. So we would have little babies and I'd be like, I remember, I remember at a point saying, like, I'm not going to go away for more than two weeks because we would go away for three weeks or whatever. When I had. I had little kids, I had three kids one year. When I was gone, over half of the nights of a year.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, that's a lot.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, it was a lot lot. So here you. Here you have a person. And my wife always worked. She worked through. I mean, she'd take maternity, but she always worked very challenging. So. So picture that. Like, here they have this whole program, right? And it's like everybody's getting done what they need to get done. You know, they're like, the kids are getting where they need to go. They're doing all the stuff. She's doing her work. And then you come in and you wanna. When I say you, me, like, like, you come in, I come in and. And there's this like, terrible desire to like to piss on a post.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I'm home.

[Steve Rinella]

There's like. It's like, well, I would have done it.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And that. Yeah, right. Yeah, that stuff's tough, man. There. There was this thing early on too, that we had. It would be. I remember my wife saying, she's like, if it's not going to be a big deal when you leave, it's not going to be a big deal when you come home. What that meant was. What that meant was it's not as brutal as it seems. What it meant was you want to be able to. You want to be able to be like, oh, shoot, we got to take off for a week and go do something. And you want to, you know, you want to be like, everybody's right in the program. You take off, you know, but then when you come home, it's not like balloons and stuff. Like you gotta. You gotta like kind of merge back. Yeah, the river, you gotta merge back into the lane, you know, I mean, like, you're on a controlled access highway and you're exiting smoothly, you know, not a lot of horn honking and like. Right. And then when you merge back into the family and. And so learning that, learning that.

[John Deloney]

Look into my house right now, dude.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, learning that stuff was different. And I would come in and it's like terrible. Like, I. I have a. There's certain areas where I have very. I don't know, like, I like things exceptionally organized in my home space. I like open surfaces. Like, like picture like counters.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't like things on the counters. Do you know what I mean? So anyways, I would come home and I'd look and let's say I look and someone has taken one of my, like, like a. A knife of mine and cut something on a plate. And I look. I'm like, right. Or they've like scrubbed a cast iron pan like a soapy brillo pad. I would like, I would come in. I'm so excited and happy to see everybody. But then the next day I'm a little bit like, what happened here?

[John Deloney]

Yeah, yeah. I've got my inspector gadget glasses on, dude.

[Steve Rinella]

That caused like enormous tension, man.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So now. And I. Still not perfect on it. But now I would look and be like, looks like the. I would think to myself, looks like that cast iron pants kind of ruined, dude. But we'll just deal with that quietly later.

[John Deloney]

I. I'm trivial.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm Trivializing it by coming up with goofy examples. But. But. And. And then bigger ones. You know, I don't mean to. Like, it's not like pans. And those are my paths. Those are examples.

[John Deloney]

I have a. I have not a picture of what it's going to be when I get home. I have a sensation that I'm seeking. I think it's going to feel a certain way. And I walk in the door and my wife's in the middle of a project she's working on. I got. My daughter's doing this. My son's trying to get his chemistry homework done, but he forgot to do this. And they got a cross country thing, and it doesn't feel like I thought it was going to feel. And so I immediately goes to.

[Steve Rinella]

To.

[John Deloney]

To. Why isn't this feeling like I wanted to. Oh, there's this thing and there's this thing or the other. I. I try to manufacture it. So he's in there, my son's working, and I'm like, hey, you want to go? He's like, dad, I'm doing homework. And it took. It's taken a season for my wife. And I'd be like, hey, there is a flow to this house.

[Steve Rinella]

Y.

[John Deloney]

And when you exit out. We're glad that you're doing that. Right? It's providing all this. But, like, I like that term. Like, you have to exit back in. You can't just ramrod through and be like, all right, everybody. Because she's like, yeah, check your lane. Because there's like, that homework assignment still has to get done. And the meal that's halfway done, we can't just throw it away and just go out to dinner because you're home. It's like there's a rhythm to this thing. And learning that rhythm and checking my own guts as I walk in the door, like, this rhythm doesn't owe me something.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[John Deloney]

It doesn't need to perform for me.

[Steve Rinella]

That's an interesting point, man. I never. The point you make about that. You're expecting it to feel, and it didn't feel the way it did.

[John Deloney]

You know, that's like the most common. That's a good way of putting first hunters, first job. The first time you make a big sale. Like the. I remember distinctly, it was such a powerful thing. Like, I'm driving in a Suburban to a book signing at a Barnes and Noble kind of thing. And Dave calls my. The phone of the publisher, who hands it back to me like this. And I get it. And he's screaming, you're Number one. And I was like, oh, we did it, man. And we do this book signing thing. And I went back to hotel, and then I called my wife and I was like, all right, good night. And then it's just, oh, this. I don't know what I thought this was gonna feel like, but it just feels like yesterday. Except I got this thing right and nothing changed. And I. I remember telling a buddy, the next couple days, I get now why people do drugs. Because it's like. Or people drink too much when they're on the road. Like, I get it now because it doesn't feel like you think it's going to. So I got to either take away the way I feel now or I got to try to prop something up.

[Steve Rinella]

I had a friend that she had some. I don't want to get off on this, but I had a friend had addiction issues. And I remember her explaining, someone I knew in school, her explaining, like, the first time of doing, like, first time doing hard drugs. And afterwards, she's like, hold on. You mean I'm supposed to just like. I mean, I can just feel that way all the time.

[John Deloney]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Why would I, like, why would I not do that? Like. Like this rational thing, you know, rational decision about it.

[John Deloney]

But we talk to people in recovery. Like, that's. This. That's the. The inner secret of the inner. Inner core of recovery is. No, that works. It's incredible. It'll kill you and take everything.

[Steve Rinella]

Recognize. Yeah.

[John Deloney]

It served a role. Like, it works.

[Steve Rinella]

I think I. In thinking about this thing, about being gone and these complications of marriage, what I have. What I feel compelled now that I have to bring up is I have a number of friends who got and you know, rolled up in the war on terror. When I say that, I mean service members deployed. Yeah.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, and like, then, man,

[John Deloney]

all

[Steve Rinella]

this is like child's play.

[John Deloney]

Oh, yeah, of course.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you follow me?

[John Deloney]

Oh, 100%.

[Steve Rinella]

We're talking about. I was gone two weeks.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. And.

[Steve Rinella]

And then you get. Then you realize you get into, like, a lot of guys, man. They weren't gone two weeks. I got a friend, I think he was telling me that in. In the first. In the first three years after 9, 11, in. In a three year period in which he had kids, a three year period. He was home for 200 days. He says, in those 200 days, you're not really home.

[John Deloney]

No, you're not. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[John Deloney]

Wow.

[Steve Rinella]

And then I'm like, yeah, man, it's just like, I just want to, like, I feel Obligated to acknowledge that. Having a number of friends went through that because like to sit and talk about being gone and like you're kind of like out hunting and fishing. You're being well compensated, you know what I mean?

[John Deloney]

Or I'm on a stage.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

Like, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

People come, they're like, dude, I stuff. And you're going. And then just to think of some guy sitting at home being like, you pompous.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you know what I mean?

[John Deloney]

Totally, totally.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, like I have to acknowledge it because cuz just, just how I remember being down. I tell this story a bunch of times, but I got invited down to talk to a special forces group at Fort Bragg one time and remember sitting there, people said it was enough years ago, there's still a phone book around. I'm sitting there talking to this, he's a green Bray captain. I remember he's, he's, he's happens to have a phone book with like the yellow pages. And I remember him grabbing this big chunk of pages, like in the yellow pages, like a big chunk, like a finger thick section. Him saying to me, that's divorce attorneys.

[John Deloney]

Wow.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, right. In Fort Bragg, you know. And I was kind of like, oh, yeah, I get that. You know, I get that. These guys are just gone, man.

[John Deloney]

They're gone, they're gone and they come back a different person. They loved and their kids are two or three years older.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, exactly.

[John Deloney]

They're different human beings. Their spouse is different. Different. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So it's like I just. Anytime now when, and I, you know, anytime now when discussing this issue, I just, I, I feel obligated to acknowledge that. It's like some people might be sitting there being like, must be tough.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, you were hunting with a film crew. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

My wife, I remember another important thing that my wife said. She's like, man, you got to be very, very careful who you complain to.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, well, and, but, but, but again, the other side of that is a thing that plagues everybody. But I think it plagues men especially these days, is just profound loneliness. Right. Not having somebody that I can complain to or to be like, I just need to say this sucks. Right?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. I, I know of examples, like, I don't want to name names, but I know of examples like that in my life where I do look and I do look and I'm like, man, I wonder if, if what their experience in life might have been like, had they taken on that reason to put your hat on and grab a briefcase.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, yeah. You know? Well, it's.

[Steve Rinella]

As much as they love would. They would tell you about the freedom they have. I'm like, I don't know, man. It might have been better if you had to grab the briefcase or.

[John Deloney]

I mean, it's easy to say, look how sore I'm not, because I'm not lifting weights. And the other side of it is like, yeah, but look how strong I got. Year after year, getting under that squat rack and going again. Right. And so you can say that. Great. But I'll. I'll take this temporary discomfort, this constant obligation for the.

[Steve Rinella]

What.

[John Deloney]

What comes on the back end of that day, man. Okay, so I. You're a historian. It's the last thing I'll. I'll ask you. I could talk to you all day, man. And by the way, for folks who listen, like you talked earlier about, it's 22 minutes of an episode, and there's always some tag that you've written or some tag where you've thought through something.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[John Deloney]

And you're knowledgeable about where you are. The. The history of where you are. You remind me of. I remember being so disappointed. I followed, like, the metal band Pantera around when I was a kid. Like, I was obsessed. Obsessed. And I remember being so disillusioned. Oh, man. Pathologically so. I remember being so disillusioned.

[Steve Rinella]

Is that a lot different than being a big Metallica guy? Because I'm older than you, I'm assuming I'm quite a bit older.

[John Deloney]

We're. We're close.

[Steve Rinella]

Hold on.

[John Deloney]

I'm 48.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, I'm 4 years old.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. So you're. Yeah, my sister was in Metallica. Yeah, probably. They were like, Metallica's anger. Younger brother.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[John Deloney]

Because older brother got all the attention. Yeah. But I remember when their guitarist, who had big red beard, the whole thing, he came out with a column in Guitar World magazine talking about, like, different scales and keys and how to play. And I remember thinking, like, oh, I thought you just like jammed, man. You know what I mean? It was like, bro, like.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, oh, there's a level of professionalism. Yeah.

[John Deloney]

Like, oh, you, like, know what you're doing, right? Like. Like, you all have song structure and you play in time. And so. But, like, you can only be philosophical and poetic when you put the time in. Right. And so I think, like, the most, like, the. One of my favorite things about watching your work from afar and reading your work is what a historian you are. And this is a question I love to ask. I grew up working in the universities, I love sitting with historians, and I look at them almost as like oracles, like future tellers. So if you look backwards and you've gone through, man, your history knowledge, and we'll link to all that stuff. But your. Your history knowledge of the United States, political movements, land movements, like economic movements. If you look forward, what's pretty exciting for you and what scares you to death for the world that our kids are in. About to have.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, man. First off, I, you know, like, you know the difference between a cook and a chef. Okay. There's a difference between a writer and a historian.

[John Deloney]

That's true.

[Steve Rinella]

I appreciate it.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But, yeah. I'm a writer. I know historians.

[John Deloney]

That's fair.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm a writer.

[John Deloney]

That's fair.

[Steve Rinella]

Who's very interested in history.

[John Deloney]

That's fair.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm a cook, not a chef. I'm a writer, not historian.

[John Deloney]

That's fair.

[Steve Rinella]

A thing I'm very concerned about is polarization, political polarization in the country. Horrified. Horrified. I can.

[John Deloney]

It's horrific.

[Steve Rinella]

I can make myself feel better by looking and saying, well, there was the Civil War.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

There was the late 60s in. In Vietnam, which cut a, you know, rift through the country. In the 50s, you could hang a man semi publicly from a tree and face. No legal recourse.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

If you lived in the right zip code.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Right. That's pretty divisive.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So maybe it's not so bad. It just is really scary to me.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Except when I stop and look at it, though. What is scary to me is what I understand to be true from the reading I do online. By and large, though, I don't see it reflected in my lived experience. Meaning. And this is the thing I like to bring up. I live on a. You know, I live on like a.

[John Deloney]

A.

[Steve Rinella]

There's like a. It's a road. It's a public road, but I live like a. Like a circular drive. I'm not. I'm not kidding when I tell you this. I could look around my area and I don't know how any of those people vote. I don't want to know how they vote.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I know that they would do anything to defend my family, to defend my home. Yeah. To. If there was a problem, any of them is going to run over. Likewise, I would run to any of them.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And any reason, if something happened and their kids needed to come, they would be brought into our house. Like, they would be. Take care. You're right. Taken care of. I would. Without question. Without even thinking, like, if something. All of a sudden happened and we had to run off somewhere. My wife and I had to go to deal with some emergency, and our neighbor's like, we'll take care of the kids. I wouldn't even think about it. Yeah. I don't know how they vote.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So there's that. Right. We still hold that. That. But I'm just getting really concerned about terrible polarization and then also a. And I really don't want to cite examples at all because it's just going to lead it in a different direction. But like a. A denial of. Of. Of objective reality.

[John Deloney]

One million percent.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Like, I still believe that they're. There are areas where I feel like there are objective realities.

[John Deloney]

Yes, yes.

[Steve Rinella]

And. And I get uncomfortable in toying with those objective realities. And I see cases where my kids will come from school and they will. And they don't even know. They don't even believe it, but they're throwing out. I heard that. Yes, I heard that. And it's things that are just like, objectively false, nonsensical. Yeah.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. Well. And that's the definition of. Of. Not the definition, but that's the definition of mental illness is a divorce from reality.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

Right. And that's the whole ecosystem.

[Steve Rinella]

It could be a thing about 9, 11.

[John Deloney]

It's. It's. It's Mad House. Right? It's Mad House.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

And.

[Steve Rinella]

And I. And it's. I almost find it being like a thing that, like, makes it hard to keep my cool.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. And so I, I worry about. I have, you know, other concerns. Like, you know, you wonder with AI like what the hell they're going to do for a living. But they'll figure it out. They'll figure it out. But that, but, but the country. The country going through something like what we went through in the late 60s, something like we went through and the 1860s, that scares the hell out of me.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, I'm with you on that. Yeah, I'm with you on that. The. The not inability, but the unwillingness to

[Steve Rinella]

say,

[John Deloney]

I changed my mind or I was wrong or I actually thought this, but this is what happened, or I voted for this, but this is what's actually happening then, in a refusal to say, all right, I'm. I'm gonna get off that boat, then that's the part that I, I can't wrap my head around. You know what I mean? Because all of us, if trying to go to, you know, Arby's down in the corner, and we go the wrong way, we'll turn around and go the other way. Right. But for some reason, I. I can't. I can't put my finger on it. Doesn't make sense to me. We just keep hitting the gas and going the wrong way.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

Like, hey, but Arby's is right here. And we're like, we're going that way, dude.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

And, yeah. I don't. I don't have a. I get scared because I don't have a psychology for it. I don't know. I don't know if that's a right way to say that. I don't have a. I don't have a mental model for that.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

You know what I mean? Mean, it's like, dude, what are you. What are you talking about? Right.

[Steve Rinella]

And I think there's also. Seems to be a growing tendency. Maybe I'm wrong. Seems to be a growing tendency that you would condemn that. That every. Every human. Every person has a suite of beliefs. And those beliefs are full of contradictions, of course, but. And. And they change. They're evolving all the time. But this thing where someone would look and go within your suite of beliefs is a belief that I see and I will condemn you for having.

[John Deloney]

And it wipes out.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Every. I condemn every aspect of you.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Because within your suite of beliefs is one thing I've decided I condemn. Now, that belief could be something horrific that deserves to be condemned, but I think that it could also be they grew up in a different place, they have a different set of experiences, their family's different, Their finances are different. Different people talk to them. Like, I don't know how they arrived at that.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But I'm not going to condemn the guy over it.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. There's something powerful about being curious. Like, tell me more about that as opposed to saying, oh, now I've got you figured out. I can either put you in this category or this one.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

And when the reverse is true, all of these other things I'm not okay with. With. But you got that one. All right. I'll overlook all of this because we're aligned on that one. It's like, that's madness.

[Steve Rinella]

There's a flip side.

[John Deloney]

Madness. Right.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. There is that madness. There is that.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. I. I've wrestled with how to explain to my kids the importance of objective reality when the picture they're getting that success is just deny reality to the end. Right. Ride it off into the sunset, and you can kind of shape it however you want to. And again, it'll catch at some point. And they're like, I don't think it will.

[Steve Rinella]

It's been with having kids, it's been fun. It's been fun to, to see that they'll have opinions that you don't share.

[John Deloney]

That's my favorite thing.

[Steve Rinella]

And like the me sitting there like, and you know you want almost like attack.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And you're like, easy.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Because this is the future.

[John Deloney]

Well.

[Steve Rinella]

And that like these kids are gonna have spouses. Spouses. Yeah. And those spouses are going to have families.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Like you're going to be hearing some opinions that you don't agree with.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And you better learn how to be like. That's interesting.

[John Deloney]

Yeah. Well. And why not look in the mirror and be like, what is it about a 10 year old's thought on whatever that sets me as a grown man off if I'm, if my beliefs are that fragile and my self worth is that dependent on this 10 year old who probably still believes in dragons or whatever.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

If it's that fragile, I probably need to go talk to somebody. Like I need to go do some work. Right.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. There are some things that they've floated that we have said not in this household.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, that's, that's.

[Steve Rinella]

And that's for sure. It's like not here. It's not.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But you know, getting into like whatever. Like, you know, their perspective on what, you know, how our country should be handling itself in the Middle east or whatever. I'm like, I'm open for something. I'm open for some level of individual interpretation.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

To a limit.

[John Deloney]

To a limit. What excites you about the future for them?

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, man. I like to think about. I really like to think about. This is very granular. I like to think about the, the, the sort of outdoor adventures.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, that they'll go on to have. I only am just now starting to think about the second act, which would be, you know, like my boy will be 15, my oldest will be 15. It's like it's not, it's closer than it is. What am I trying to say? Like there's. They're going to have families. Yeah.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I mean, he's 16, man.

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you know what I mean?

[John Deloney]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

This is, this is closer than it is far away or whatever. I can't. Yeah. I don't know what I'm trying to say.

[John Deloney]

It's nothing on the door.

[Steve Rinella]

Been with us for 16 years. When that amount of time has passed again, there's a high likelihood he's got

[John Deloney]

a family, he's got his own Ecosystem.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, that is, you know, and, and so we're already starting to think about like, what does that look like? Like I got a friend who's a little farther ahead of me where his kids are in college and not of college. And, and what I think that he's done very well and he's proud of it is he's still a big part of his kids life. Right. And they like call him about buying a house, they call him about buying a car, they call him about relationship issues. And, and he's got four. They're all out of the house. And he says, you know, I talk to all of them multiple times a week. And I'm like, he's like a consilier.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you know, you follow me?

[John Deloney]

But that means he was a. And I say this not in a, in an eye rolly way. That means he's been a safe place of wisdom and he could hold their attention their whole childhood. And so he's a. Not like that's, that's a trustworthy guy. You know what I mean?

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, not over. No, not a. Liquor over bearing.

[John Deloney]

Which is incredible.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. So I. Now I know you asked me what excites me for them. I'm talking about what excites me for me. But yeah, it would be cool. I'm starting to think about that. It would be very cool to have. Right. To earn that respect.

[John Deloney]

I. I want to.

[Steve Rinella]

Where they don't just split. I just kind of split. When I split, I split.

[John Deloney]

Yes. I same. I want. When my son thinks I'm gonna take my son out fishing, I want him to think, oh, we gotta call dad. Not we gotta call dad. Yeah, we have to, right?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. And that guy tell us about how he used to catch him.

[John Deloney]

Yeah, exact. And I want him to tell my son, Dad's going to tell all kind of crazy stories. That's what he does. I like that part of it. But there's something about my wife. Several years ago, man, he came, he was in seventh grade, he was, he would always come down and his hair would be crazy. And I would ask like, dude, turn your shirt around. Fix this, fix this. And every day was the same. And I remember my wife, she came in one day and I was just picking him apart. And she said, you would not hang out with somebody who every interaction was 18 things you need to fix about yourself.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[John Deloney]

I was like, I'm wholly unlikable. I'm unlikable. You know what I mean? And I can wrap it up in why he needs to be Ready for the. So we sat down, we went to. We used to go to breakfast every single. Every week. Went to Waffle House, dude. It was our diabetes trip every week. And at one for breakfast, I told him, I said, hey, like, I'm out on, like, the middle school wolves are gonna take care of your wardrobe and your hygiene and whatever. Like. And I want you to know I love you and you can always come home, but I'm turning you loose. I'm gonna stop mentioning. You want to grow your hair. Grow your hair. You want to not brush your teeth, like, whatever. And I remember at the end of his eighth grade, we had had, like, his old friends came, we all had to get together, and I was like, y' all failed me. Because they were like, we accept everyone. Like, everyone. I was like, man, you need some old bullies. Like, we had, right? They're just mean. But. And not really. We don't. But. But, like, like, I focused on what hills do I need to die on. And, like, like, hey, hey, in this house, we don't talk to each other like that, right? And we've got that on the tack that on the wall. But I wouldn't listen to that. But what do you like about it, right? Or I'll get tickets to that show, but you're going to have to show me why this is a good show and vice versa. I took him to a punk rock show recently, and I was like, hey, he's in a 90s country. He loves it. I failed him at some level, but he's into it. But I was like, I need you to go to this Smash P show,

[Steve Rinella]

you know, where you live nearby, right?

[John Deloney]

Oh, I know. In the air. Literally, it's in the air. He had an old weather radio when he was out in the woods by himself. He would turn it real low when he was hunting, and it would only catch the 1 90s country station. And he's, dad, you know who Garth Brooks is? I was like, yes. But I was like, hey, you need to come to this show with your old man. This is for me. He's like, all right, dad, I'll do it. So I like, I. Yeah, that. That sounds awesome. Like, I wanna.

[Steve Rinella]

Man.

[John Deloney]

And I hate to say this, but. But I don't hate to say this. That's one of the big reasons I exercise as much as I do. I remember my first, like, major climbing up mountains, elk hunting trip several years ago. And I was like, oh, if I don't do something different with my health, I've got about seven more years of this. Yeah. And this is. This was too awesome. And there's too many memories and too much fun and too much, like, I need to take care of myself on a regular basis so I can do this for another 20 years instead of number seven. And I like to that, like, don't be able to go fishing with my kids. Thanks for coming. Hang out, brother. Appreciate you, man.