John Reeves — Alaska gold-mining company owner whose Fairbanks property sits atop a dense Ice Age fossil deposit. He's become known through repeat JRE appearances for battling the American Museum of Natural History over fossils excavated from his land.
The gist
Joe and John open with John's recovery from double pneumonia and quitting cigarettes after 50 years, then range across gold mining, the economy, Trump and DOGE, masks and COVID, the carnivore diet, and AI. The heart of the episode is John's gold operation and the prehistoric boneyard on his 2.1-acre site, where he pulls saber-tooth tiger, cave lion, woolly mammoth and bison remains from permafrost. He lays out his grievance against the American Museum of Natural History, which under a decades-old agreement took tons of bones, did no reporting, and allegedly dumped 50 tons in New York's East River. John is now pursuing the return of the fossils through the Alaska state legislature rather than litigation, hoping to build a research facility in Alaska. The conversation closes with gifts of carved mammoth ivory and a pitch for paleontologists to come study the site.
Big reveals
- John reveals he was hospitalized for double pneumonia and quit smoking after 50+ years when an ER doctor told him to.
- Joe explains the high satiety of meat and why he cycles into the carnivore diet to feel clearheaded.
- John relays a historian's claim that Russia 'gave' the US Alaska as cover for a $7M Civil War debt for blockading Charleston Harbor.
- John says the AMNH allegedly dumped roughly 50 tons of Alaskan fossils into New York's East River.
- John recounts standing in the rain for 4 hours in New York only to have the AMNH refuse to meet with him.
- Dana White is revealed to own a giant saber-tooth tiger skull bought from a museum.
- Discussion of paleontologist Dale Guthrie making and eating a stew from 38,000-year-old 'Blue Babe' bison meat.
- John offers to build a research lab on-site so returned bones never leave Alaska.
Things worth remembering
- Scientists found roughly three times more water than all the oceans trapped underground in the mineral ringwoodite.
- It takes an average of 29 years to go from discovering a gold deposit to an operating mine.
- China announced a ~1,000-metric-ton gold deposit in Hunan Province estimated worth $83 billion.
- A pre-1982 US penny is ~95% copper, making its metal worth more than one cent.
- Gold nuggets shaped like recognizable forms ('character' nuggets) can sell for four to five times the spot market price.
- The US has over 3.5 million professional truck drivers, a workforce John warns is exposed to self-driving trucks.
- Neil Armstrong's cryptic 1994 White House speech about removing 'one of truth's protective layers' is dissected as eerie.
- Roosevelt elk in Alaska originate from eight calves transplanted from Washington's Olympic Peninsula in 1928-29.
- A mammoth-bone tool from the site carbon-dated to about 25,000 years old, sawn flat and shaped by humans.
- A golden railroad spike driven by President Harding for the Alaska Railroad sold at auction for around $200,000.