The Meatcast by EPIC Provisions

This episode is something I've wanted to do since the Meatcast began, 50 episodes ago!  This week, we cover the art of butchery with butcher and restaurant owner, Ben Runkle, from the award-winning Salt & Time butchery and restaurant in Austin, Texas.   Butchery plays such an incredible role in our daily lives, yet most of us give it little thought or attention. The art of butchery all but vanished in the United States, but has seen an incredible resurgence thanks to folks like Ben and communities like EPIC’s!  During our conversation Ben and I discuss….

• His journey from veganism to butchery!
• A butcher vs. a “meat cutter”
• What should we be looking for in our local butchers?
• What are some of the most underrated cuts of meat?

If you’ve ever eaten a piece of meat, and wondered about the role proper butchery plays in how that meat tastes, how it chews, and the life it led prior to your palate and plate -- listen in!

For this week’s INSIDE EPIC, we’re lucky enough to chat with Shauna Sadowski who heads up the Sustainability team for Natural and Organic brands at General Mills.  What does it mean to work on sustainability at a big food company? What are the pros and cons, what makes it exciting, what makes it hard? We dive into all of this with Shauna! [37:00]

Relevant Links

Salt & Time

How Salt & Time Ramped Up New Wave Butchery in Austin

Meatcasters!

This week we talk to former Google exec Tom Chi, about how he went from working on virtual reality glasses and self-driving cars to using soil, trees, and oceans to tackle climate change.  Tom helped lead GoogleX, Google’s ‘big idea moonshot factory'.  When you're leading ambitious projects with such grandiose ideas, it actually makes a ton of sense to spend the rest of your life working with companies to tackle a problem as complex as climate change!  I’ll admit I was a little nervous before this conversation because I knew, fundamentally there were some places Tom and I would disagree. But I also knew that could facilitate better discussion and I wasn't disappointed.

Tom and I discuss

• His time leading GoogleX and his approach to rapid prototyping to develop innovation quickly and with little resources
• How taking his silicon valley approach to the environment can be both helpful and harmful
• Why he’s choosing to support both Regenerative Agriculture and ‘lab-grown meat’ when many would argue they’re in conflict with one another
• His investments in the health of soil, trees, and water and why he believes those three pillars are our keys to reversing climate change.

For this week’s INSIDE EPIC, we hear from two more Whole30’ers! First up is Sydney, who illustrates how critical it is to get and have a good support system for your first Whole30, and she also tells us how how she got her parents to try out their first Whole30!  [44:40]

Next up is Ingianni!  She shares how her first Whole30 helped her cure the eczema that had been plaguing her for most of her life!  As a fellow eczema sufferer, who cured it after getting nutritionally ‘woke’, this conversation really hit home for me.  Especially when I found out, the source of her eczema, turned out to be a Whole30 compliant food! We also talk about the challenge of adopting something like Whole30 when food plays such a critical role in your family’s culture. [53:50]

Relevant Links

Tom Chi

TED Talk: Rapid Prototyping Google Glass

Meatcasters!

This week we’ve got former CrossFit Games champion and garbage disposal connoisseur, James Hobart. Even if you’ve never done CrossFit, if you’ve ever googled it, James is in your internet history! He is the male athlete CrossFit uses in most of its exercise demo videos….that was until he was recently replaced by my grandfather. Well, not my grandfather, but somebody’s grandfather!

James and I chat about that and…

• Winning the CrossFit Games with multiple teams including Rich Froning’s Team Mayhem,
• The big changes we’ve recently seen in the CrossFit Games season.  
• Garbage disposals.

For this week’s INSIDE EPIC, we follow Hope and I to Denver where she takes on the challenge of ordering Whole30 at an airport restaurant and well...ultimately fails.  [40:57]

Finally we make a major announcement that could save you lots of money!  [44:57]

Relevant Links

James Hobart's Instagram

MorningChalkup: Asia goes HAM

Meatcasters!

This week we’ve got New York Times bestselling author, Nina Teicholz, talking about her book, The Big Fat Surprise. In The Big Fat Surprise, Nina argues that the dietary advice recommended by the majority of our doctors and nutritionists was all built on faulty science. She chronicles decades of studies to illustrate that what we think we know about saturated fat, cholesterol, and heart disease, it might be all wrong and Nina explains why butter, meat and cheese are part of a healthy diet.  

As promised, for this week’s INSIDE EPIC we chat with a couple of team members taking on Whole30 this January!  First up is Catalina, a marketing manager on the Annie’s team. She’s a Whole30 veteran having done three of them already, but this year’s was, well...different.  As in her Whole30 actually was just a Whole4. How does a Whole30 fall apart? Catalina is brave enough to share with us! [44:15]

Props again to Catalina for having the guts to share that with us! I hope she inspires some of yall who have had a small slip up to hop back on the wagon. Speaking of hope, our next Whole30er is indeed, Hope!  She leads our EPIC marketing communications and this is her first Whole30! One of the biggest challenges of Whole30 is eating out, and not only did Hope eat out during Week One of her first of Whole30, she went on a date!  Listen to Hope explain how that went and stay tuned for more of her journey! [49:04]  

Relevant Links

The Big Fat Surprise

WSJ: Nina Teicholz: The Last Anti-Fat Crusaders

The Nutrition Coalition

The Meatcast is officially returning January 14th, but we thought we'd give you this mini-Meatcast episode by re-sharing a brief conversation we had one year ago with Whole30 co-founder, Melissa Hartwig!

In less than 10 minutes, she gives some great tips and insights that'll help both Whole30 rookies and veterans alike!

Check out the links below for more info on Melissa, Whole30, and the EPIC Whole30 Kit!

Relevant Links

Whole30

EPIC's Whole30 Kit

Melissa Hartwig on the MindBodyGreen Podcast

Meatcasters!

This week we try something new! We go behind the scenes at EPIC and show you what happens when we don’t have enough salmon to support the growth of our salmon products!

You’ll hear from our Salmon fisherman, Steve, on what caused the massive disruption in this year’s sockeye salmon harvest and how we managed through it.  You’ll also get to be a fly on the wall, as our team taste tests the improved salmon products. This is definitely a different episode format for us, so please listen and let us know what you think!

Also, you still have an opportunity to get a FREE Impact Journal, listen to find out how!

Relevant Links

EPIC Blog: Sockeye Salmon Shortage

Meatcast Episode 32: Fred’s Alaska

2018 Impact Journal: Get yours while supplies last!

Meatcasters!

This week, we talk to filmmaker, hunter, conservationist, adventurer, none other than Donnie Vincent.  Donnie’s profound respect for nature, his incredibly physical approach to hunting, and his vision for storytelling have turned him into a household name among the younger hunting community. He’s been profiled by Men’s Health and interviewed on the Joe Rogan podcast.  

During our conversation, Donnie and I discuss [2:01]

• Hunting predators such as bears and mountain lions
• His physical approach to hunting, why he chooses to hunt this way and how he trains for it
• The respect he has for nature and the animals he kills

For this week’s Inside EPIC, we go behind the scenes of our second annual Impact Journal and talk to our EPIC Brand Journalist Liz and our EPIC In-House Designer Andrea about its creation and upcoming release! The Impact Journal is a 100+ page publication we launched this time last year, filled with beautiful stories and images, highlighting the key partners that EPIC works with and the impact they’re having on their communities, their animals, and our planet. We distributed over 10,000 copies last year for free to our EPIC fans and the response was overwhelming. Liz and Andrea join us this week to describe what it was like crafting this year’s Impact Journal, and how they were able to build upon last year’s success. [55:50]

Finally, I share how you can make sure you secure your copy of the 2018 Impact Journal and also put out a request for email stalkers. [1:05:41]

Relevant Links

Donnie Vincent: The Other Side (Trailer)

Joe Rogan Podcast: Donnie Vincent

Mens Health: Donnie Vincent

Sicmanta.com

2017 Impact Journal

This week’s episode, we’ll take you back to The CrossFit Games this summer and The Granite Games more recently!  I took the Meatcast on the road with me to talk to athletes, but more importantly, unique folks within the CrossFit community including...

• A CrossFitting priest who became the official CrossFit Games Chaplain [2:42]
• A college professor and her students who work with CrossFit Inc. to study the economic impact of the CrossFit Games on the local city [5:40]
• Two doctors who are using CrossFit, rather than traditional western medicine, to combat chronic disease [9:50]
• The founder of the MorningChalkUp newsletter and now widely considered, the Anderson Cooper of CrossFit [24:10]
• Jenn Dancer and Holden Rethwill, from Team Invictus X, who finished 2nd in the team competition at this year’s CrossFit Games [30:19]

Finally, I fill yall in on TWO new product launches, another word from my mom, and a request for your Thanksgiving dinners!

Relevant Links

Father Stephen Gadberry

CrossFit MedicusOne

Morning Chalkup

Team Invictus X: Road to the Games

Jenn Dancer

Holden Rethwill

Sam Dancer

Kaitlyn Kassis

Meatcasters!

This week’s episode is a special full INSIDE EPIC Meatcast!  We chat with our Meat Sourcerer, Kirk Blanchard, about getting stranded in the Arctic Circle bowhunting the largest migration of Caribou in North America.  Kirk grew up hunting and is an avid outdoorsmen, but there were challenges in the Arctic he’d never encountered before, including one of which that almost caused him to literally urinate on himself and another that forced him to ration food.  Kirk also chronicles what it was like, stalking caribou 10+ miles for 15+ hours a day and details the moment that would make or break his entire trip, as he was forced to make a hurried decision with a bull in his sights.

This was supposed to be your standard Inside EPIC segment, but Kirk’s story was so incredible we felt like it deserved an episode of its own!  We actually spoke with Kirk before his trip too, so if you’re curious about what his concerns were leading up to the trip after you’ve heard how it played out, see the show notes below!

Finally, I close out this episode with mega news from Savory & EPIC, a few Halloween tips and the Asian Batman origin story.

Relevant Links

EPIC EOV Launch

Meatcast Episode 41: Sitka (Kirk previews this hunt)

Meatcast Episode 4: An intro to Kirk Blanchard!

Original EPIC Elk Hunt: Featuring Kirk and our co-founder Taylor

Meatcasters!

Meat Erin Kiley, a regenerative land manager and grazer, a novice hunter,  a young woman pioneering spaces and communities historically dominated by men.  And as a special treat, she’s introduced by Brad and Tyler, co-founders of Modern Huntsman, who join me to discuss volume two of their publication.  We discuss what they’ve learned since volume one, why they’ve decided to partner with brands like EPIC, Sitka, and Yeti, and how they inspired Erin to learn how to hunt and ultimately be a contributor for volume two.

Brad & Tyler kickoff the episode [1:54] and help introduce Erin [15:38].  Whether its entrepreneurship, regenerative agriculture, female leadership, hunting, or just an unconventional personal journey -- I think there’s plenty to be learn from these folks!

Relevant Links

Meatcast Episode 33: Modern Huntsman

Modern Huntsman: Pre-Order Volume 2

Erin Kiley Instagram

Mountain and Prairie Podcast