#1099 - Christopher Ryan

Joe Rogan (0:11)

Three, two, one.

That was a weird point. I wasn't sure if that was the gun. Chris Ryan, how are you buddy?

Christopher Ryan (0:18)

Hey, I'm good.

Joe Rogan (0:18)

Dude, the van.

Christopher Ryan (0:20)

Vanthropology.

Joe Rogan (0:20)

Right out there, man.

Christopher Ryan (0:21)

Scarlett Johansson, I call her.

Joe Rogan (0:23)

You just traveling in that thing?

Christopher Ryan (0:24)

I just got back from a month on the road, yeah. To New Orleans and back.

Joe Rogan (0:29)

I was just in New Orleans, too, but it only took three hours.

Christopher Ryan (0:31)

Yeah, I took a scenic route.

Joe Rogan (0:34)

How many days did it take to drive to New Orleans?

Christopher Ryan (0:37)

You know, we stopped a lot along the way.

Joe Rogan (0:38)

Yeah.

Christopher Ryan (0:39)

But I don't know, 10, 12 days, something like that.

Joe Rogan (0:44)

You want to stop.

Christopher Ryan (0:45)

We actually went down along the border. We were in Bisbee. Stanhope was in Asia. No, he was in Asia.

He was on Southeast Asia.

Joe Rogan (0:53)

That's how, like, when you think of Bisbee, you think of Stanhope. They're inexorable at this point.

Christopher Ryan (0:59)

There's not much of a reason to go to Bisbee.

Joe Rogan (1:02)

Like, if you said Bisbee and you didn't visit Stanhope. Like, if you went to Phoenix and didn't visit a guy that you knew there, it's like, sorry, man, I got really busy.

Christopher Ryan (1:08)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (1:09)

That's normal. But if you went to Bisbee and didn't visit Stanhope.

Christopher Ryan (1:13)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (1:13)

How many people are in Bisbee?

Christopher Ryan (1:14)

I don't know, but it's a strange little place. Have you been there?

Joe Rogan (1:18)

I'm scared.

Christopher Ryan (1:19)

It's like this giant open pit mine, and like the hills are all kind of purple and weird colors because it's all slag from the mine.

Joe Rogan (1:28)

Really?

Christopher Ryan (1:28)

Yeah. It's a toxic looking place, I got to say.

Joe Rogan (1:32)

Jesus Christ.

Christopher Ryan (1:33)

I don't know why anyone would choose to live there.

Joe Rogan (1:35)

Real estate crashes. Dr. Chris Ryan trashes Bisbee. It's going down.

Christopher Ryan (1:42)

I'm not saying anything that isn't pretty obvious if you drive through town.

I'm sure there are nice parts of town. I don't know. We just drove through. The coolest thing about this van is I've combined it with the podcast. And so I'm traveling and I'm also meeting people along the way, some of which are planned, like if Stan Hope had been around and was willing to hang, definitely would have hung with him.

But others just come up, like right near Bisbee. I see people following me on social media and they're like, oh, I see you're in Texas. You should visit my buddy in Tlingwa. And I did. And I'll tell you that story in a minute. But near Bisbee, this woman, Dorothy, I think her name was, wrote to me and she's like, dude, you're in southern Arizona. You gotta drop in on my buddy, the rattlesnake guy, who's been studying rattlesnakes for 50 years by himself.

He's not looking for fame or anything, but I'll talk to him. I think he'd like you and you guys would enjoy each other's company. And so I'm like, sure, I'll talk to the rattlesnake guy.

Joe Rogan (2:45)

Perfect.

Christopher Ryan (2:46)

So he came out to this campsite and we hung out for the morning. This guy is amazing. John Porter is his name. He's been studying snakes for 50 years. He's just totally interested in them.

Lives on Next to Nothing in a trailer in the desert. That's his focus. He's been bit 15 times.

Joe Rogan (3:02)

Jesus. What keeps you fucking with snakes after bite number 11?

Christopher Ryan (3:08)

Yeah, I know. Fully bite me 10 times. Shame on me.

Joe Rogan (3:12)

This is bullshit. This job sucks.

Like how many years has he been doing it?

Christopher Ryan (3:17)

50 years.

Joe Rogan (3:17)

50

Christopher Ryan (3:18)

He's almost 70

Joe Rogan (3:19)

That's incredible.

Christopher Ryan (3:20)

And he's in really good shape. He scrambles around in the hills and pulls snakes out of holes.

Joe Rogan (3:26)

Wow.

Christopher Ryan (3:27)

Yeah, he's a really interesting cat and he's just like, that's his passion. That's what he does.

Joe Rogan (3:32)

Now, did he do the slow amount of venom in his system to try to make himself immune?

Christopher Ryan (3:39)

You can't be immune to it because what I learned from him, one of many things I learned from him is that rattlesnake venom is essentially digestive enzymes.