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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Welcome back to part two. I'm Tonya Pinkins on You Can't SAY THAT, my conversation with Ari Daniels.

[0:07] Ari Daniels: I think we're going into guns now. We've got to say one news to you. So we were talking about Antifa. And I know that you were in Charlottesville in 2017 because I was kind of talking to you and watching you. Yeah, we moved not too long after that. Um, but we were in Charlottesville. I was there in the park that day. Um, I refer to the two sort of, if you will, distinct groups of people. Uh, I would say there were two sides that day, and they're what I call park side and street side. Um, and that day, I'm sure, much to some people's chagrin, I was as neutral as I could possibly be. Um, I was there assisting a friend of mine who was a journalist, and I was basically there just filming. I was just running around.

If he needed something, uh, you know, I had extra batteries for phones. Yeah, I had cameras strapped to my head, I had my iPhone out. I was walking around trying to get as much of what was going on as I could to help him. And, uh, in really good part, just for my own purpose, I probably would have done the same thing anyway, except I might not have, you know, I might have not done quite so neutrally as in that case, right? And in that case, I was acting as a professional's assistant, and so that was one thing. Um, I'm sure there would have been some profanity coming from my lips were it not were it not, uh, were it not incumbent upon me to stay quiet for the cameras. But, um, yeah. I was in Charlottesville and Jess was none too happy about it.

My mom was none too happy about it. I had programmed in a little, uh, thing on my phone so I could just type two letters and hit send, and that would let everybody know I was okay. Um, so KB was callbused there. And I saw some of that video on Facebook while it was filming, and it was like the police seem to just be doing nothing. Like extra nothing. Like you have to go out of your way to do that amount of nothing. You know, somebody's coming at you, and you're like, oh, I better I better slide out of the way here. Go ahead. You know, that's that's that's active nothing. That's that's not just nothing. I mean, it was it was scary, and it was I don't know why it was surprising. I don't have that same kind of relationship with cops that a lot of folks do, but you know, I have my opinions.

Um, my opinions sometimes get me into trouble. Learn things, right? Someone says all cops are bastards, you're like, but wait a minute, are all cops don't don't even ask. Don't even ask. Um, but that was that was, uh, an unreal day. It was an unreal day. I can't, I still there's a part of it surreal for me. And I mean, you know a bit about my history, probably a lot more than you probably know more than all but three people in on the planet about my history. Um, and you know, probably part of what my experience with abuse gave me was a certain disconnection from it. You know, there's this like just absolute, I I don't know if Taoist, I I'm sure that a lot of different angles will will approach this thing the same way, but basically, like I I can remove myself from an emotional connection to things pretty well.

That's not saying that I'm a sociopath. I'm certainly not emotionless, but I do have what I consider to be now a very useful ability to to put it on hold and then to process it really well. And whether that's who knows maybe it's an unhealthy outlook. I doubt it. But that was it was a hell of a day. It was a hell of a day. Nazis. Like straight up actual full-blown fucking Nazis. Walking the streets of America protected by the US shouting shouting at and beating people fucking shooting at people. I mean I forget the dude's name. Like proud clansman pulls out a gun and we don't know whether he he accidentally screwed up his first shot and would have actually shot the guy but you know maybe he had that extra half a second to think about it or maybe he was just trying to fire a warning shot.

I don't know. I can't get inside this head I wouldn't want to get inside this guy's head. But you know fired a gun then walks past police officers. Right. Well not most people. It just depends on where you are right who's who's there why they're there. It was it was a thing. Anyway so yeah and and after that the follow-up some of that video made it into a documentary Charlottesville Our Streets that you know I the the extent of my help was a little bit of logistics help and you know giving them my footage but you know I think it was I it was important perspective. I know the they we I to a much lesser degree since I wasn't as directly involved took some flack for not my words, but normalizing Nazis.

There were two people interviewed in this documentary. Most of the people interviewed were, you know, folks in Charlottesville from Charlottesville on what I would call the street side, right? And if you need me to say it, the good guys. Um, the people who were opposed to the fascists and the whatever neo-fascists and the proud boys and all of that shit. And then you had all the other assholes. But there were two folks who were inter uh who were interviewed in that documentary. One was one of the he was the leader of one of those little militias out of Pennsylvania, one of the three percenters or something like that. Um, they think themselves neutral, they show up and they have their backs to the folks on the park side, and they have a number of nice little patches, many of which were, you know, the Confederate flag and whatever else and variations on a theme, the modern swastikas, as many people have identified, you know, the the blue lives matter flag, you know.

What what is this now? A lot of people may not realize it, but it's that's what the swastika was in 34. Um anyway, um, and then the one of the other guys was actual, I I don't know which little branch of Nazis. I I gather they've got a bunch of little subdivisions or whatever, but one of the Nazis. Um, and so the people who were making the film felt that it was important to get at least a sample of I think that's important too because people want to pretend these things aren't happening. They want to pretend it doesn't exist. Like for me, seeing those people in Washington this weekend burning BLM flags, that was a lynching. That was a symbolic lynching. They were trying to bring back that collective pleasure and joy that they used to get from lynchings.

100%. 100%. And to uh look, uh I realize there are times that I will basically contradict myself. Um, in this particular case, 100% very important to bring light to that. Absolutely. And at the same time, I also think that a long, long time ago, or starting a very long time ago. By long time I now mean four years, uh, and and moving forward, we should have had the cameras off and the microphones muted for like 99.5% of what the flaming orange asshole in the White House has been doing and saying. Most of that, most of it is a windbag making noise, right? But you know nobody wants to hear me when when when my body acts as a literal wind bag and I make noise, right? I mean, nobody's like, ooh, wait, did I hear Ari Fart? No. Les Moonvest says it made them money. And this, you know, this death economy that is this growth, infinite growth economy is is a death economy.

[8:05] Tonya Pinkins: Now, did you tell me that sometimes you've gone out to be like security for BLM?

[8:15] Ari Daniels: Um I don't think I've told you. Okay, I don't know. I mean, like, I sometimes think for myself that like I don't want to be in the march. I want to be on the outside of the people who might come to attack the people in the march so I can be on that third ring. You know what I mean? That's how I think of myself. That's what my firearm is for for me, other than protecting myself in my home. So I uh so I am I am God I guess my certifications have run out, but you know, I was I am trained and was certified in disaster travel and wilderness first aid. Uh have studied a bit uh just to focus on street medicing because it's a slightly different game, um, in in part because your your threats are different.

Um but I haven't I haven't actually done anything uh in quite a while. Luckily things have been relatively quiet. And god, as sad as this is, one of the switches that COVID turned off or at least turned way down was you know, public violence and and stuff like that. Now that was my impression until very very recently when obviously a shitload of people are out doing all sorts of I mean anyway, uh for a while it happened. And at at very least, thankfully, we haven't had any school shootings in quite a while, to my knowledge.

[9:43] Ari Daniels: We have had school shootings. We've had some school shootings. We actually still have had school shootings. Well, I don't know if there's school shootings so much as we've still had like 400 mass shootings this year that defined as more than two people. So they haven't been school shooting. We've had I'm gonna look it up right now because I I know we've had a bunch of them because I looked this up recently. Either way, either way, that doesn't surprise me too much, and because I mean, hey, nobody's nobody's showing you how to have a big gathering like most of the congressional Republicans.

[10:16] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah. You know, like, hey, uh, you know what I think would be a great idea? I think we should have a mass folks gathering, right? And they're a big party scheduled soon. Somebody in the government is planning one soon.

[10:28] Ari Daniels: So you're on a mountain, so you don't how do you work from home? How are you an engineer working from home?

[10:36] Tonya Pinkins: I am. I'm gonna turn my camera around here.

[10:42] Ari Daniels: Those four screens comprise my my workstation setup. Um I it was it was pretty awesome.

[10:54] Ari Daniels: Um I was working in construction management uh because I took a job out of school in Portland, Oregon. It was what was available. It's very hard to have a job search or or get a job from across the country, and especially when you're trying to move to a place that's desirable like Portland, Oregon. Uh but I you know I used to live there, I loved it. Just went out there a few summers, fell in love, so uh found slash got myself a job in Portland, Oregon, or just outside of Portland. And um it was a great place to be, uh, but it was not a great job for me at that time, at least in that context. I like the company, I like the people that I work with, it just it didn't suit me. It was a lot of hours, it was fast-paced.

Construction management is kind of um combative and uh sort of oppositional. Uh it just uh imagine a lot of testosterone, right? Um and you don't need testosterone, it's like my mom's term humdo, right? Heterosexual male dominance units. You don't need to be heterosexual or male to have humdo, but humdo is just it's that it's that character. Uh anyway, so Portland, I was there, I was looking for work again, trying to come back across the country. Uh somebody turned me on to uh an available job with the company that I'm still with right now. And uh the second question they asked me on the phone uh in our interview was how do you feel about remote work?

[12:16] Ari Daniels: And I had always been told not to ask an employer, hey, how you know, how how do you feel about work from home? Like, you know, how about remote work? Um, uh up until and including, you know, a year ago when I was first doing my search out of school, but they asked me, and I'm like, is this a is it a trick question? Because if you want me to like it, I like it, you know. And it was it was the thing. They're like, yeah, yeah. So what we're doing is removing offices, we're actually downsizing, we don't have enough space for everybody. So what we'd like is, you know, at least for the first year, we want you in a few days a week, and then you know, scale back whatever, and you know, we have people who are completely remote. Um, some people come in once a week or something like that. And I was like, awesome. It's environmental engineering, you know, pays well enough, and they're telling me I get to work from home.

[13:00] Ari Daniels: So what do you do? Me asking you pegging. So I am a water resources engineer. Um earlier today, I was wearing a t shirt that said water resources engineer. I do precision guesswork based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge. Um the subtle implication there that not a lot of people read the subtext is that I am often one of those people of questionable knowledge providing unreliable data. It is what it is. We all make mistakes, but I am I am a perfectionist. Uh, and as I said, I'm focused on continuous improvement. There's always room for improvement. I mean, I go back to my best design, I'm like, ah, I could have done a little better. But um, primarily, uh I I loved this, it was one of these little sort of like mimetic prompts. It was uh describe what you do or describe your job badly.

[13:42] Ari Daniels: Uh and my response was I design mud puddles. Um so I I am a stormwater engineer, uh, primarily a design engineer. And what I do is I design best management practices to treat stormwater runoff, primarily to help keep the Chesapeake Bay clean. So we're not exclusively a Chesapeake Bay organization. We're you know, we've done work around the world, we've actually done work in the world. But what does the Bay clean? Where what is what does that mean? So the to okay, the Chesapeake Bay, um, for those who don't know, and many of you may not, uh, is I can't remember whether it's I don't know, it's it's it's the top couple largest. It's got a 64,000 square mile watershed, which means that 64,000 square miles of land, which covers Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, DC, uh, a I think a tiny piece of Delaware, Pennsylvania, and a little chunk of New York, all of that, all of that water eventually drains to streams to flow all the way down to the Chesapeake Bay.

[14:40] Ari Daniels: And the Chesapeake Bay is huge. Uh, it is a major driver for everything uh for the states, especially the ones uh like right around the DC area, like Maryland and you know, Virginia and DC, uh a huge amount of Maryland's economy depends on the bay. And one of the things that threatens that is utrefaction, which is nutrient loading uh and and sediment loading. So the three the three pollutants of concern that I focus most of my work on. And this isn't exclusive, you know, we're we're doing we're branching out a bit, but nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment. And basically, this is the stuff you find in peepoo and dirt. Um, and you know, when we fertilize our lawns, we're throwing nitrogen and phosphorus down when cows stomp through a stream and and knock a bunch of the dirt off the sides of the stream bank, you know, that's sediment and it's carrying a lot of phosphorus with it, you know.

[15:35] Ari Daniels: It basically natural processes and somewhat natural processes contribute a bunch of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment at the bay. And the places that you have that are more I don't want to say urbanized, I feel wrong, but more developed, right? The more impervious area you construct, buildings, parking lots, you know, any anything where the water hits it and it just runs right off. These surfaces contribute a lot more in terms of water, you know, volume, velocity, and pollutants and contaminants than undeveloped. So when you have uh a bunch of wide open virgin land, like where I am, we're not doing nearly as much in terms of most loading, unless you have heavy agriculture. But so connect me back to the mud puddle.

[16:17] Ari Daniels: The mud puddle is a bioretention. You're you're like you're a half a second ahead of me there. Um bioretentions and sand filters and wet ponds and wetlands and things like that, all of these things that are some combination of natural and perhaps built, what they do is they catch water and then through a couple different processes, either filtration or biological and chemical processes that break these things down or fix them in place, it removes the nitrogen, the phosphorus, and the sediment from the water before the water continues its way either downstream to surface waters like streams, rivers, the Chesapeake Bay, or into groundwater potentially.

[16:52] Ari Daniels: And there are places where the groundwater is basically your seawater or whatever else, also like if you're in New York, right? Long Island, and just north across that um that body of water, and you've got, I guess it it abuts Connecticut, and you know, basically all of that area, if you're close enough to the coast, your groundwater is basically seawater. Like there's there's almost a pretty, you know, regular exchange. If you're pulling your water out of a shallow well, it's salty. When you've got a shallow standard septic system, so you know, your your toilet flushes into a an uh a chamber of a couple feet underground, the water then just kind of comes and flushes that straight out to you know the Bay or the Sound or whatever.

[17:30] Ari Daniels: Oh. Now, where but where does all this nitrogen and phosphorus from the sediment go after you filtered it out? Hmm. So uh it's it's funny because the best thing, and and the the best thing I think that one can do in their design when it comes to these kinds of things, green infrastructure is what it's called, GI. Um, green infrastructure like bioretentions and wetlands and wet ponds. Um, the the best thing that you can do in these is make them as natural and native and sort of old school and original as possible.

[18:06] Ari Daniels: In a weird sort of way, you try to design something as primitive as you can. Because, you know, a bioretention, the thing for a while I called myself the bioretention maestro. It's just, you know, it was what I designed most. They get good credit, they're relatively easy and straightforward to build. You, you know, essentially you you've got the land, right? You dig a hole in the land. In the bottom of that hole, you put a pipe that goes out somewhere, you put some gravel over that pipe, you put a little bit of a finer gravel over that gravel so that you know the dirt can't clog that pipe, then you put some good sort of loose sandy soil media, you know, just some good dirt, some growing dirt, it's potting soil essentially, with a little bit less organic stuff in it over that, and then you know, a layer of mulch.

[18:45] Ari Daniels: The best thing that you can do in this, right? I I designed this as a structural thing, you can truck in all these materials. The best thing that you can do is specify the right plants. Because the plants are doing a lot of this work, right? You you ask a great question, right? Let's say it's just a filter. Um, you know, filter a bunch of water through the stuff, this catches all this crap. Well, eventually this is gonna get overloaded. You either have to change the filter or it's just no longer useful. And so one of the things that we're doing is that the the nitrogen and phosphorus specifically is becoming plants, right? When a plant grows, it takes up nitrogen and phosphorus. It's its food, right?

[19:22] Ari Daniels: I've stopped growing. Now I mostly just turn food into poo. But while plants are growing, they're taking that nitrogen and phosphorus and actually turning them into, you know, they're basically fixing it into some other form. So what plants? I am not a plant guy. So somebody else puts the plants in. You build the most of the time, somebody else is specifying the plants.

[19:42] Ari Daniels: Yeah. At our organization, uh, the guy who knows the most, he's actually a forester. Um, he's, you know, he he's the guy to go to when you need a planting plan. Um, but I've also worked with some other folks who do a wonderful job. Um, and it's it's not just about specifying the right plants, it's also knowing how to plant them and knowing what to do in order to foster them, knowing where to put them and stuff like that. Um but yeah, a quick shout out to the Center for Urban Habitats, uh, these folks, Devin Floyd, his wife Rachel, and uh, you know, their whole crew, they they do work all through the Piedmont, which is you know mountain range, it it it extends a a shoot, I think, well into Pennsylvania and down, I'm not even sure which state south of me, but it's it's it's a large range.

[20:25] Ari Daniels: But what they do is they actually get back to an incredibly old school, like native wood grow on its own if you just left shit the hell alone for a thousand years kind of community. And it's what they're doing is they're trying to design essentially ecosystems. You know, you you put the right plants in, it brings in the right pollinators, you get the right, you know, dragonflies and butterflies and things like that. What all of these things do together is again way beyond me. I'm a structures guy, right?

[20:55] Ari Daniels: I but you and Jess go out and do a lot of protesting for things too. I we do a lot of our work now from home. Really?

[21:05] Ari Daniels: So no going out. Whatever it is. I well, I mean, never mind coronavirus. You're vegan, right?

[21:10] Tonya Pinkins: So you know something about plants because you're you're not vegan?

[21:13] Ari Daniels: Oh, that's right, because you're talking about be able to do it. What why did I think you were vegan?

[21:17] Ari Daniels: Where did I get that idea from? There are a lot of there are a lot of associations. I am a staunch environmentalist.

[21:22] Ari Daniels: And there are people who maintain that in order to be an environmentalist, you must not eat animal products. And there's there's a way to and a way not to. And I look, I I fully understand or appreciate if if you're if you're a vegetarian or vegan because you don't want to cause harm, right? Uh ahimsa, I believe is the term.

[21:40] Ari Daniels: Um I don't know if it's Sanskrit or whatever, but anyway, you know, the the the yoga folk for for lack of a better term, of whom Jess is one.

[21:49] Ari Daniels: Uh, you know, do no harm and I understand she a vegan.

[21:53] Ari Daniels: She's not, no, she also she eats a little bit of mostly vegetarian.

[21:53] Ari Daniels: She eats a little bit of meat.

[21:58] Ari Daniels: I eat more meat than her, still not a ton.

[22:00] Ari Daniels: I have aspired for a long time to personally harvest.

[22:04] Ari Daniels: I don't need soft language or euphemistic language, to personally kill all of the meat that I eat.

[22:10] Ari Daniels: Um, if you eat meat and have never, I don't want to say never killed an animal for food, uh, but at least seen.

[22:19] Ari Daniels: I think that everyone who eats meat should maybe once a year watch an animal go from alive to dead to have that direct connection to what it is that their food actually is, what their food actually is where it comes from.

[22:34] Ari Daniels: You know, if you haven't seen an animal die, and it's not, it's not a pleasant thing to watch.

[22:37] Ari Daniels: I'm a hunter.

[22:37] Ari Daniels: I like hunting, I don't like killing.

[22:39] Ari Daniels: As as weird as that is, I'm out there with a gun.

[22:42] Ari Daniels: I dislike killing.

[22:44] Ari Daniels: But it's it's what I do for a couple different reasons.

[22:48] Ari Daniels: One of which is that is the most direct connection I can get to my food.

[22:51] Ari Daniels: Um, two, it's good food.

[22:53] Ari Daniels: I mean, there is plenty of evidence, yes, that humans most likely mostly can do mostly without yada yada yada, right?

[23:00] Ari Daniels: Every diet's different.

[23:01] Ari Daniels: Some people can't do without meat, some people can't do very well with meat.

[23:04] Ari Daniels: Um, but if you look just at purely evolutionary evidence, yeah, we we kind of we evolved eating meat.

[23:12] Ari Daniels: In fact, it's part of why we evolved.

[23:14] Ari Daniels: These brains of ours, this is basically because of meat.

[23:16] Ari Daniels: This is because we eat meat.

[23:18] Ari Daniels: Um, or ate meat, I guess.

[23:20] Ari Daniels: Now we could probably do without, but shit, I know some people who could use a little bit more brain power.

[23:24] Ari Daniels: So um I'm not saying that meat makes you smarter, I'm saying that meat helps your species evolve over millennia.

[23:30] Ari Daniels: Anyway, um I eat meat, absolutely.

[23:34] Ari Daniels: Um, but not a lot of.

[23:35] Tonya Pinkins: Well, I'm gonna have to come to Virginia and you're gonna have to help me kill a deer so I can have that experience because I'm willing.

[23:44] Ari Daniels: You come on out.

[23:45] Ari Daniels: You come on out, we get you covered.

[23:47] Ari Daniels: A rifle.

[23:49] Ari Daniels: So conversation is wandering in an odd direction.

[23:54] Ari Daniels: I guess not because I I live in Monterey, but um I I actually personally really like muzzle loader season.

[23:54] Ari Daniels: Muzzle loader.

[24:00] Ari Daniels: Muzzle loader.

[24:02] Ari Daniels: So you you have a you have a gun, right?

[24:04] Ari Daniels: Whether it's a pistol or a rifle or whatever, but you load the bullet from the end of the barrel, right?

[24:09] Ari Daniels: So this is this is my gun.

[24:11] Ari Daniels: Okay.

[24:11] Ari Daniels: I I load it from the muzzle.

[24:14] Ari Daniels: Okay, not the not the breeze.

[24:15] Ari Daniels: Okay.

[24:16] Ari Daniels: And it's a single shot, right?

[24:17] Ari Daniels: It's just like the old school, the muskets or whatever.

[24:19] Ari Daniels: You take a you take powder, you put powder in, or little powder, you know, pellets or something like that, you put a bullet in, you jam that thing down the barrel, and then you put a cap or or a primer or something like that in the back, you pull the hammer, and now you're ready.

[24:31] Ari Daniels: You've got one shot.

[24:32] Ari Daniels: One shot.

[24:33] Ari Daniels: One shot.

[24:34] Ari Daniels: If you miss with that one shot, you either have to reload quickly and hope that you didn't lose your deer, or it's is basically done.

[24:41] Ari Daniels: I I have taken a shot at a deer, missed, it didn't know where I was, and it ran up the road.

[24:46] Ari Daniels: Not not road road, is it trail back through the woods, but it ran up the trail right at me.

[24:51] Ari Daniels: And I was sitting here like I, you know, the first thing I do whenever I take a shot is is watch to see where the deer goes, you know, and then I try to reload as quickly as I can, but it ran right up and it stopped.

[24:59] Ari Daniels: It's like, oh, I'm like, yeah, that was me.

[25:02] Ari Daniels: And then it ran up the hill.

[25:03] Ari Daniels: I didn't have time to like that way it had a second chance.

[25:06] Tonya Pinkins: Why do you like that way?

[25:08] Ari Daniels: Two reasons.

[25:09] Ari Daniels: One, it's it's a compromise between not being like a total essentially omnipotent asshole and like old school, like, you know, err, you know, killing a deer with my teeth, right?

[25:23] Ari Daniels: Somewhere, somewhere in the middle.

[25:24] Ari Daniels: I look, I I wanted to bow hunt.

[25:27] Ari Daniels: The thing about bow hunting is well, there are two things about bow hunting.

[25:30] Ari Daniels: One, for me, every time I've done it, I call it bow hiking or bow sitting, because very rarely see a deer.

[25:36] Ari Daniels: My useful range with the bow is up to maybe 40 yards, but honestly, 20 to 30.

[25:41] Ari Daniels: And the deer are gonna smell me or hear me or see me long before I smell, hear, or see them.

[25:47] Ari Daniels: Typically, if I'm in a little blind, if I've built myself a little shelter and I'm sitting there and I wait all day long, maybe one's gonna walk in front of me.

[25:53] Ari Daniels: But you don't go and find, you know, I'm not gonna stalk a deer and find it and shoot it with a bow.

[25:58] Ari Daniels: It's they're they are incredibly impressive animals, right?

[26:01] Ari Daniels: I can't leap a six-foot fence in a single bound.

[26:04] Ari Daniels: It's just that's that ain't me.

[26:06] Ari Daniels: I can't run 30 miles an hour or whatever it is they do, right?

[26:09] Ari Daniels: That's just that's not me.

[26:10] Ari Daniels: They run through brambles like it's nothing.

[26:12] Ari Daniels: I'm like, I'm I'm hung up on my my coveralls trying to get myself out of the brambles and shit.

[26:16] Ari Daniels: Anyway, so suffice to say, absolutely a ranged weapon is the advantage.

[26:21] Ari Daniels: I I could not catch and kill a deer if it came down.

[26:25] Ari Daniels: And you don't I understand that.

[26:26] Ari Daniels: And you want to level the playing field a little bit, you don't want to just have a rifle where you could just have boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[26:32] Ari Daniels: So during rifle season, which fortunately lasts only two weeks or so out here, um, it it sounds like a war zone.

[26:39] Ari Daniels: There's just a lot of shooting going on.

[26:41] Ari Daniels: And and it also allows you to shoot really far.

[26:44] Ari Daniels: The the useful range, I mean, I'll take shot up to about a hundred yards or so with a muzzle loader.

[26:49] Ari Daniels: So I get one shot, it's only up to a hundred yards.

[26:52] Ari Daniels: Um, and it's it's part that it's also part you've got much more season.

[26:56] Ari Daniels: You've got an extra five weeks of the year that you can hunt, or maybe even seven weeks of the year that you can hunt with a muzzle loader over a regular rifle, this a center fire rifle.

[27:05] Ari Daniels: Um, and you know, having more time, a quieter time, that that bit of leveling of the playing.

[27:13] Ari Daniels: It's again, it's not a little playing field.

[27:14] Ari Daniels: I got a gun, right?

[27:15] Ari Daniels: I mean, no, no deer has ever threatened my life, let me put it that way, except the ones I've hit with my car, which is another story entirely.

[27:22] Ari Daniels: Um, but the other thing is that it's also actually a particularly practical and good weapon for this area because it's a lot of fairly thick brush, forest and stuff like that.

[27:32] Ari Daniels: You want a bigger, kind of slightly slower moving bullet.

[27:36] Ari Daniels: These, you know, the high powered rifles that these guys have, you know, some people think that IR 15s are great for everything.

[27:40] Ari Daniels: They're great for some things, they're probably good for groundhog hunting.

[27:43] Ari Daniels: You actually can if you only load three rounds and you can use that for hunting a lot of things.

[27:47] Ari Daniels: You can't hunt deer with it here because the bullet's slightly too small.

[27:50] Ari Daniels: But those small, really super fast bullets, when they're zinging like that, they touch a little twig or a branch, it diverts their path enough that you're missing shots.

[28:00] Ari Daniels: You you want you want like the lumbering thing.

[28:02] Ari Daniels: So, you know, 44 or 50 caliber, moving two-thirds the speed of some of these high powered rounds, it kind of pushes through the woods to a little bit uh uh of an extent.

[28:13] Ari Daniels: And also, I've just had better, I don't want to say I've had more and better luck with it.

[28:18] Ari Daniels: It's I I am all about a humane kill.

[28:21] Ari Daniels: Well, I like that.

[28:22] Ari Daniels: I don't want I don't want the deer to live any longer.

[28:24] Ari Daniels: Yeah, I mean, I'd love for it to not live, you know, two seconds past, you know, there's way to see an animal die.

[28:29] Ari Daniels: It's a few seconds.

[28:30] Ari Daniels: I don't want it to suffer.

[28:31] Ari Daniels: I've killed 40 with firearms, and uh two of them made a very, very short run, two of them dropped right where they were.

[28:40] Ari Daniels: I did my job right.

[28:41] Ari Daniels: I have passed on many more shots than I have taken.

[28:44] Ari Daniels: I've seen deer plenty of times, I've had pretty darn good shots.

[28:48] Ari Daniels: If I'm not 99 and a half percent sure that I've got what's going to be a quick kill on, you know, a legal appropriate and sort of ecologically appropriate deer, I'm not gonna take the shot.

[29:01] Ari Daniels: So I've lord knows I've probably passed 10 times as many shots as I've taken.

[29:05] Ari Daniels: But I don't take crap shots.

[29:06] Ari Daniels: One of the reasons is I have no faith in myself as a tracker.

[29:09] Ari Daniels: If I don't want to wound a deer, right?

[29:12] Ari Daniels: For for it, I I definitely don't want something suffering, but you know, I'm also just not confident that I can end it that quickly, right?

[29:17] Ari Daniels: You know, if I wound it, it might make it three, four hundred yards.

[29:20] Ari Daniels: I don't know that I can track it for three or four hundred yards, depending on the conditions outside.

[29:24] Ari Daniels: And I don't want it to sit and die slowly.

[29:26] Tonya Pinkins: Thank you, Aaron.

[29:27] Tonya Pinkins: So I thank you for coming and talking to me.

[29:32] Tonya Pinkins: We've had quite a conversation from from hunting to water as a life interest to building a house to Nazis.

[29:40] Tonya Pinkins: You're listening to Tonya Pinkins.

[29:42] Tonya Pinkins: I always take you somewhere you've never been before.

[29:45] Tonya Pinkins: This is You Can't SAY THAT on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[29:51] Tonya Pinkins: Thanks for listening to You Can't SAY THAT.

[29:54] Tonya Pinkins: The show where you can.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: I'm Tonya Pinkins, and You Can't SAY THAT is part of the Broadway Podcast Network.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: Produced by Dori Berinstein and Alan Seales, edited by Derek Gunther, with music by Cat Dail.

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[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: You gotta say what.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: You is kind.

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[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: You is dead.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: Tonya Pinkins' horror film Red Pill brings African American perspective to progressive movement.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: We are a majority in this country.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: And we're gonna win the election.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: Do you know what the red pill is?

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: A red pill is someone who infiltrates a group and then destroys them from the inside.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: This place is spooky.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: Some people like to live dangerously.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: Yes, why are you so jumpy tonight?

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: You know what, guys?

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: I'm gonna go back tomorrow.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: Did you hear about the creature woman that attacked a father and son hunting down here?

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: I don't see the case.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: This place creeps me out.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: I think we should call the sheriff's office.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: The only people missing or dead are brown people.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: They're after all of us.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: What do we do, Amelia?

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: We die.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: But we take some of them with us.

[32:10] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, I'm Tonya Pinkins, and I would love to hear from you.

[32:14] Tonya Pinkins: You can text me at 917-724-8998.

[32:19] Tonya Pinkins: Tell me what you're up to, and I'll let you know what I'm up to.

[32:22] Tonya Pinkins: Text me.