Latest / NO FILTER / Joe Rogan Experience _2475 - Andrew Jarecki

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Joe Rogan Experience _2475 - Andrew Jarecki · NO FILTER

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: by night, all day. What's happening, man? How are you?
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I'm good. How are you? I'm great. I watched your documentary,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: The Alabama Solution, last night, and it was wild. It's very,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: very disturbing. I'm kind of shocked I hadn't heard more
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: about it, you know, because it's such a terrible, terrible story.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: It's such a Just unbelievably awful situation. And I think
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: you covered it really well. It's very, very heartbreaking. Yeah.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Thanks for watching it. Yeah.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: It's sort of a question of why people don't know
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: about things that are happening with our tax dollars in
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: our backyards. Are there things that we don't want to know?
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: there's a reason why people sort of drive by prisons
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: on the highway and they see the little metal sign
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: and it says, you know, XYZ Correctional. And they probably think,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: as I did for many years, well, I'm sure it's
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: not great back there, but it doesn't need to be great.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: And if anything terrible was happening back there, somebody would
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: probably tell me about it. But because of the secrecy
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: that surrounds prisons, you know, we treat them sort of
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: like black sites. There's no way for us to really
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: look inside. So the press doesn't get let in and
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: the public doesn't understand what's happening. And we know that,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: you know, when you give people total control over other people,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: bad things happen.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Bad things happen every single time. And this is one
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: of the worst things. What's really terrifying is the sheer
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: numbers of people that died there with no investigation. That's
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: what's really terrifying. Yeah. Because, you know, you even detail
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: that at the end, like since then. how many people
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: have died. And it's just like, good Lord, you're thousands. Yeah.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a attorney general in Alabama named Steve Marshall, uh,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: who's always run on like tough on crime strategies and saying,
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: you know, we got to lock more people up and
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: people who are in prison for, uh, violent crime shouldn't
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: potentially never get out of prison ever. Um, and he
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: says in the film, as you remember, um, that I
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: ask him about the nature of crime. And he says, well,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: I think there are evil people in this world, people
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: who have absolutely no regard for human life. And this
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: is a guy who's presided over a system that's killed,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: that's led to the deaths of 1500 people just since
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: we started making the film. So this question of like,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: And what's the nature of cruelty? What's the nature of punishment?
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Are we putting people there to try to make them better,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: rehabilitate them. Are we putting them there because they're drug
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: addicts and we're trying to get rid of them as
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: opposed to rehabilitate them or as opposed to try to
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: get them off of drugs? So obviously prisons have become
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: pretty much a catch-all for the ills of society. So
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: if you have mental illness, much more likely to go
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: to prison. Once you're in prison, if you're mentally ill
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: or you have bad social skills, you're much more likely
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: to get into a scrape with a guard who probably
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: isn't trained to deal with somebody who's mentally ill. And
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: you're much more likely to get murdered, which is what
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: we saw happening in Alabama.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Well, you even– it's the old expression, who's going to
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: watch the watchers, right? Because one of the things that
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: you detail is very obviously nonviolent people who spend all
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: their time writing and reading. And they're getting retribution because
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: they're calling attention to the terrible conditions at the prison. Right.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: The one guy with the glasses who was beaten blindly,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: what was his name?
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Robert O.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Council. I mean, there's so many stories that you show
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: in this documentary from smuggled cameras. So these guys all
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: get contraband cameras from the guards. From the guards, yeah.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: The guards sell the phones to the men inside.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Which is also crazy. Yeah. I mean, there's so many.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: Drugs in the Alabama state prison system and- I spoke
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: to one of the people who was incarcerated there early on,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: on a contraband cell phone. And I said, you know,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: where are all the drugs coming from, the amount of
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: drugs here? This is an incredible, you know, human wasteland.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: You're seeing just high, high percentage, maybe 80% of the
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: people are addicted to drugs, many of whom were not
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: addicted to drugs before they came in. And how are
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: you getting all the cell phones? And the guy looked
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: at me like I was, you know, stupid. And he said,
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: You know, we don't leave, right? And I thought, oh,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: I get it. The people that come and go are
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: the guards. Those are the ones that go out. They
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: get the packages. They bring them in.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: And I've spoken to guards.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Who said, you know, we make $ 36, 000.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: A year without the drugs, without the cell phones.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: So, of course, we got to sell the cell phones
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: and the drugs because that takes us up to $ 70, 000
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: or $ 75, 000.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah. So what are the main drugs
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: these guys are addicted to? What are they getting them?
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Well, there's originally, right, it was sort of more traditional
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: drugs and people were using heroin and using whatever they
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: could get a hold of. But as the drugs have
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: gotten more complicated and easier to bring in, now they
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: can actually put, there's a drug called Flaco, which is
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: a very significant problem there, fentanyl obviously also, but these
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: drugs can be brought in on a piece of paper.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: So somebody could send you a letter and it could
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: be in the letter. They can actually put the drug
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: into the paper.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, sort of like acid when they put acid on paper?
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so, you know, there's this effort to kind
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: of stop that. But then does it lead to people
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: being unable to communicate with their loved ones? Ultimately, the
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: easiest way to get the drugs is for the officers
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: to sell the drugs. And so, you know, we say,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: And I think it's sadly true that the Alabama Department
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: of Corrections, and it's not just in Alabama, but obviously
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: we use that as the lens through which we saw
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: incarceration more generally. But the Alabama Department of Corrections is
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: the largest law enforcement agency in the state of Alabama,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: and it's also the biggest drug dealing operation. You know,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: you're much more likely to die of an overdose inside
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: the prison than you are out on the street in Alabama.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Really? Statistically? Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, boy. You know,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: one of the things that was very heart-wrenching is this
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: callous approach. You showed at the one time where all
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: these prisons were on strike, so they all communicated with
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: each other through these contraband cell phones that they all
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: got from the guards. So I guess it's ubiquitous throughout
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: the state. It's not just this one. Correct. And these
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: people on the radio were like, well, it's prison. It's
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: supposed to suck. You know, maybe if they had saw
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: your film, they wouldn't have such a cavalier attitude about it. Yeah.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: But it's that attitude. It's like these are human beings,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: and some of them barely did anything. Like one guy
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: that wound up dying from you think they did something
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: to or they think they did something to a cigarette
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: that they gave this guy. All he did was break
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: into an abandoned building. Yeah.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: He didn't steal anything. And entering an unoccupied building.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. His name is James. I mean, I don't
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: even know if he broke in. Right. It was unoccupied.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: It might have even been open. Yeah. It said entering.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: So he entered a building that he wasn't supposed to enter.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: And he got 15 years in a cage. And then
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: on his way out, at least they're inferring that they
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: killed him because he had too much information about what
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: was going on inside. And he was going to get out. Yeah.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: This goes back to the story of a woman who
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: we had met and her son. when we were first
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: communicating with the men using these contraband cell phones and
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: they were telling us what was going on inside the prison,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: inside the various prisons, um, we sort of, in the
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: early days, we couldn't believe it because the way we
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: got into the prisons to begin with is I had
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: gone down to Alabama, um, because I was always interested
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: in incarceration and the problems of that system and the
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: justice system. I had made other films about the justice
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: system and, uh, and, and I was always curious about
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Alabama because it's sort of famously maybe the worst prison
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: system in the country, but it mirrors a lot of others.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: And my daughter was 14 at the time, Jeremy, and
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: she said, you know, I'm reading this book by a
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: guy named Anthony Ray Hinton, and it's a book about
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: his wrongful imprisonment in Alabama, and maybe you should read
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: this with me. So we ended up reading the book together,
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: and then we both sort of just spontaneously decided to
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: take a road trip to Montgomery because we just didn't
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: know anything about it. It had never been there. She
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: was growing up in New York and it was just
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: not in her frame of reference. So we went down
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: there and we met a man who was the first
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: black prison chaplain in the state of Alabama, Chaplain Browder.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: And I said, well, I'm really curious about what's going
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: on in the prisons. And he said, well, you should
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: just come in with me. And I said, well, I'm
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: a filmmaker. They're not going to let me just walk
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: into the prison in Alabama. And he said, well, just
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: don't come in as a filmmaker. You just Don't have
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: to bring a camera. Just come in and talk to
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: some of the guys. So I went in to film. Ultimately,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: we were allowed to film ultimately in one of the prisons.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: And when we were in there to film this revival meeting,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: just because we were lucky enough to find a warden
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: who felt like he wanted to show an example of
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: how Christianity was active and important in the prison system,
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: which I agreed with. But then while we're in there
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: filming with like five cameras, which was just unheard of,
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: the men inside couldn't believe that there were any cameras
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: in there. And they started taking us aside and saying, listen,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: what they're showing you here is a very curated version
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: of what's going on in this prison. You have to
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: get into these other buildings. You've got to see what's
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: going on in that dorm over there called the, the
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: behavior modification dorm where guys have been killed by guards.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And you've got to look in that dorm where people
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: have been in solitary confinement for five years at a time.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Don't let them show you just what they want to
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: show you. And I felt much safer, even though the
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: warden had said to us, when you go in there,
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: don't talk to any of the men.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: They're all very dangerous.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: I immediately felt safer talking to the inmates than I
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: did talking to any of the guards.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: And when we left... it was really because we got
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: kicked out, right?
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: We start, you saw in the beginning of the film,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: we sort of start getting nosy and we start trying
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: to look in some of these other areas and then
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: they shut down the filming, they throw us out. And
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: then we thought, well, you know, maybe we're stuck now.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: How are we going to make a film about this?
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: We feel we have to because we're the only people
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: that know what's going on in here.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: But they're not going to let us back.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: So it was then that we found out that there
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: was this network of men inside who had access to
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: these contraband cell phones who were documenting what was going on.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: So that was our way of getting into those buildings
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: that we couldn't see inside. And one of the first
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: things we learned was one of the guys inside, Melvin Ray,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: texted us to say, hey, you know, this guard, it
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: was a guard that we had been tracking already who
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: was a particularly violent guard, He just beat somebody very badly.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: And he's now, that person, the victim is at UAB Hospital.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: So we jumped in a car and we went to
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: UAB Hospital and just walked up. I just put my
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: iPhone in my pocket and we just walked up to the.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Intensive care unit.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: And when we got there, we found that this young man,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Stephen Davis, had died from his injuries. And as we
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: started to get deeper into it, we went and visited
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: his mother because we didn't even know if she knew
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: that she had lost her son. But in fact, she
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: had been with him when he passed away. She had
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: sort of turned off the life support. And we said,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: we want to make a film about this. We're trying
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: to tell the story. And she immediately said, I'm in.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: I want to help you. I don't want this to
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: happen to any other mothers. You know, and this is
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: a very nice white lady from Uniontown, Alabama with an
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: oxygen tank. I mean, she's not somebody that you would
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: see ordinarily as kind of a heroic person. But when
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: she loses her son, she really becomes so activated and
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: she ends up telling us the story. And then she says, look,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: you know, they're lying to me already. You know, my
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: son just died last night and they're already calling me
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: and telling me things about how he was the one
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: that attacked guards. And none of this is true. This
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: all seems like it's fate. So teach me how to
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: record my phone calls. So this older woman suddenly became
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: a really important partner in making the film. And this
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: gets back to your question about Stephen Davis. So her son,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: who was a drug addict, didn't kill anybody, but was
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: in a car when a drug deal went bad. He
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: went to try to buy drugs and his friend went
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: in the house and they had a fight and somebody
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: got shot. And then he got arrested and was charged
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: with murder because that's how the felony murder statute works.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: And so here you have a drug addict who goes
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: to prison in Alabama and is in the highest security
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: prison there and is targeted by a particular guard who
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: is especially violent and is just beaten to death in
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: front of 70 witnesses. And then, of course, as we
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: go through the film, we start tracking that in our
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: investigation and we start looking into the cover up and
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: why they lied about how he had died and how
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: they scrambled the witnesses and how the Department of Corrections
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: is organized so that they prevent people from finding out
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: what really happened to their kids or their loved ones
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: and they avoid liability and so on. And there was
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: one person that we ended up hearing from, this guy
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: James Sales, who originally tells just the police side of
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: the story, just says, well, you know, yeah, it's exactly
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: the way that the guard said. But then he kind
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: of hints on the phone, listen, when I get out
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: of here, I'll tell the real story.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Now, do they have access to these communications? Is there
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: a way they could be hacking into it and know
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: that sales had said that to you?
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Well, the person that he said it to was the
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: lawyer for Sandy Ray. So he was supposed to be
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: on a private attorney call. But we do think that
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: the Department of Corrections doesn't.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: Abide by that.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: I think they do listen to attorney calls. Sales didn't
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: say exactly on the phone what he was going to say,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: but I think they knew that he was a problem
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: because he was a good person. I mean, Sales, the
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: one who entered an unoccupied building and was locked up
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: for 15 years for that, was obviously a decent person.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: That's why he says, you know, when I get out,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: I'll speak to that. I'm not going to lie to
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: that man's mother. But right now, this is their world, bro.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to say more. I'm not going to
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: put myself on the spot.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: But just by saying that might have been his death sentence.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: He also, as he started to get closer to getting out,
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: you know, because he was killed a month before he
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: was going to get out. And so as he started
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: getting closer to release, he just started to get more.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: frustrated and more angry and started to say things to
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: guards about like, you know, you know what I've seen
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: in here and I'm going to, you know, and then
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: lo and behold, uh, he, he gets found, uh, in
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: a cell that, and you know, he's bleeding from orifices
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: in his body. And it was pretty clear that he
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: was given what they call a hot shot, which is
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: they give you a cigarette that's got something bad on
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: it and it, uh, and it can kill you.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Boy, Um, so when you first started, uh, when you
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: first showed up with cameras, did you know basically what
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: was going on? Do you have an understanding of what
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: was going on? Like, what were you attempting to do
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: when you got there? We just kind of try to
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: investigate and figure it out. Or did you already have reports?
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: We already, we knew a bunch of stuff, you know,
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: we knew because we had had this, this, we had
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: visited some prisons as volunteers. Um, and I had gone
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: on the death row. with my filmmaking partner, Charlotte Kaufman.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: We had gone into Easterling. We had gone originally into
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Holman Prison, where they have the death row. And we
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: went in there with the chaplain. And the lieutenant came
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: down and said, you know, unfortunately, we're so understaffed right now,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: which is an understatement, that, you know, we don't have
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: anybody to take you around. But, you know, chaplain, I
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: know you want to show your friends around the death row. So,
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: you know, just go for it. So we ended up
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: walking around the death row for like two or three
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: hours just talking to men. And those men were very helpful.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: They weren't, you know, we weren't talking to irrational people.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: We weren't talking to, you know, they're people who were
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: trying to get the story out. And so we knew
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: going in that there were a lot of bad things happening.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: We didn't know exactly what. And then when we went
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: into Easterling and the men started calling us aside and saying,
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: you know, they beat me so bad I defecated on
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: myself or, you know, I just saw there were five
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: stabbings this week and none have been reported. We started
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: to realize that it was really a huge crisis, but
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: it was just being kept secret.
• 17:53
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• 19:08
  Speaker 1: rogan for four extra months. So it's crazy that you're
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: relying on these guards to get in the phones that
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: they're using to expose the crimes of the guards. And
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: it's like the guards are aware of the phones because
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: they provided them to the inmates and they're contraband. They're
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: not supposed to have them, but yet they all do.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: And so they have to ignore it if they want
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: to keep selling them phones.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Well, another way of looking at it is that there's
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: so little accountability that they don't actually think they're going
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: to get in trouble for anything. And they're kind of right.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: And if you remember that guard who kills Stephen Davis,
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: Rod Gadsden, this guy might be the most violent prison
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: guard in America. He's still working in the Alabama state
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: prison system after he has a starring role against his will,
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: I'm sure. But after he has a starring role in
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: our documentary, which has been seen by millions of people,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: They still have him employed there. They still have him
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: interacting with people.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: And he got hired to a higher position. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: He's been promoted twice and now he's up for another promotion.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: So I think to some extent the guards just say, well,
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: you know, I can do whatever I want. I can
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: sell the cell phones. And by the way, not all
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: the guards are bad, right? There are guards that we
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: met there. who were pretty heartbroken because they went into
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: the system hoping to make change or trying to maybe
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: they wanted to work in the police department and there
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: weren't any jobs. But in their town, they had the
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: ability to work in a prison. So they kind of
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: went in there and described to us that they wanted
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: to help people with addiction. They wanted to see if
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: they could help rehabilitate people. But when they got in there,
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: they realized very quickly that was not what was in
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: the offing. That wasn't an opportunity for them.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: So the guy, this Roderick guy that beat Stephen to death,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: the story was that Stephen had some sort of an
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: implemented weapon, correct? Yeah, that he had a plastic knife. Right.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Was there any evidence of that?
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: He had some kind of like a some kind of
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: plastic thing that he had made. It did not appear
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: to be anything very serious because the reason he had
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: made it is because somebody had called him gay. And
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: you have to fight your way out of that.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: He wasn't gay, as it turns out.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: But when they fight your way out of that. So
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: somebody calls you gay. You have to fight them. Yeah.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: In other words, you can't put up with that because
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: otherwise they're going to turn you into what they call
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: a sissy. They're going to turn you into somebody that
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: gets raped. And there's so much rape in the prison
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: that the DOJ report that came out said that there's
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: rape occurring at all hours of the day and night
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: in all areas of the prison. So rape is such
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: a significant problem. Um, and when Stephen Davis was in
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: there and was accused of being gay, he had to
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: make a show of, of fighting the person that was
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: calling him gay. He, he never went after the guards
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: or anything like that. And everybody that, that the lawyer
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: spoke to, um, you know, a dozen witnesses who had
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: seen what happened, all of them said he, as soon
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: as the guards came in, he immediately laid down on
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: the floor and put his weapon about 15 feet away
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: from him, put his, this plastic knife 15 feet away.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: And then the guards came in and just started beating him,
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: even though there was no threat. And he would, and
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: the guards would say, Gadson was saying to, to Stephen Davis,
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: you know, quit resisting, quit resisting. And he wasn't resisting
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: at all. And that's what all the witnesses said.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: So they just have to say that. So they yell
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: it out.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's almost, I think it was almost like, it
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: was almost just a warning to everybody else. Like, look,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: I can do anything that I want. I can say
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: that he's resisting.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Isn't it funny? You know, and and.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: The way you know, the way he kills him, he
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: stomps on his head with his size 15 boot. This
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: is a guy who's almost 300 pounds. I think he's
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: about six foot five. And he's been implicated in 24
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: other excessive force cases. And the attorney general in Alabama
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: every single time is defending the guard.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: How many other people died in those cases?
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: There have been a lot of other injuries. I think
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: that there have been two people who've died out of
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: the 24 or 25 cases that we know about. But
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: there are a lot of just maimings. There are a
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: lot of situations where people are just damaged, often permanently.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: You saw what happened at Kinetic Justice when he, you know,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Robert Earl Council, when he leads a nonviolent work strike
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: against that guards come and attack him and he loses
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: sight in one of his eyes. He's dragged out of
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: the cell. There's a huge amount of blood. So, you know,
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: especially these guys who are leading a nonviolent effort to
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: try to improve conditions, they're always met with violence.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: Right. He was the guy that was at the head
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: of this strike. Yeah. And then the strike really highlights
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: something that I think a lot of people are unaware
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: of is how many industries actually use the prison system
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: essentially for slave labor. Sure. Yeah.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, that was a shock to me, I think,
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: is that, you know, I guess we all sort of assume, well,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: if you're in prison and they ask you to mop
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: the floor, you need to help serve the meals or something,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: you know, that's a reasonable thing to do. I think
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: what we don't realize is that those people are leased
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: out to the governor and to the mansion where the
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: governor lives.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Crazy. That was crazy. Yeah, yeah. People that were denied
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: parole were allowed to be on the grounds of the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: governor's mansion doing like groundwork. Exactly. Landscaping and stuff. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: And beyond that, they're used for labor in industry, right?
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: So those guys are sent out in the mornings in vans.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: They go work at McDonald's. They work at Burger King.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: They work at Kentucky Fried Chicken. They work at the
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: Hyundai plant. They work at the Budweiser distributorship. And it's
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: all sort of under the heading of, well, this is
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: good for the guys. They get to get out into
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: the community. But it's a forced labor situation because if
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: they don't, if they don't accept those assignments, then they're
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: going to be punished. And they're going to be punished
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: with long stays in solitary confinement. They're going to be
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: given disciplinaries so that their sentences can be extended. they
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: are often just beaten for that. So it's really an extension.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: I've heard you on your show talk about the Jim
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Crow laws, which led to convict leasing. And what we're
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: seeing in Alabama now, it's not like convict leasing. It
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: is exactly convict leasing. They are just selling the labor
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: of incarcerated people To industries.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: For pennies on the dollar of what you would get
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: if you had to pay people. Yeah. And they, I mean,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: they get paid well. They get paid well. Yeah. But
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: not the, you're saying they, meaning the prisons get paid well. Yes.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: But not the prisoners. Correct. The prisoners get any money?
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: They get a little money.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: For example, the guy you see who's driving a sanitation truck,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Danny Dandridge, describes how he's getting paid $ 2 a day.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: Now, is that standard across the board for all those
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: other jobs?
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: I think for that job, they get paid a little
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: bit of money. And then on top of that, they're
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: charged for the cost of the van that takes them
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: to the workplace. They're charged for the uniform that they
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: have to wear. So it's sort of like they're kind
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: of fees and fines that knock everything down to almost nothing.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: And In a lot of cases, the $ 2 a day
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: is a lot. They're required to do lots of work
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: unpaid in the prisons. They do all the construction. You
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: could see that even the drug dorm where the counselor
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: decided to leave his job, there was a professional drug
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: counselor in one of the prisons and nobody replaces him.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: And so Raoul Poole, one of the guys in our film,
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: just starts running the drug dorm and That's a drug
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: dorm that's getting money from the federal government to pay
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: for drug treatment program in prison. And that money is
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: just not going anywhere or money is just going into
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: the coffers of whoever is running the prison system.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: And is there any accountability for all the money? Is
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: there any– do they do an audit of the money?
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Is it just.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: There really is not any meaningful accountability. There's like the
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: state auditor who we actually interviewed and spent a lot
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: of time with. just sort of threw up his hands.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: You know, he said, there's just no way for me
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: to keep track of this money. And, you know, for example,
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: they got this incredibly horrible set of findings from the
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Justice Department, right? The DOJ went in to the Alabama
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: State Prison System and did an investigation because, for reasons
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: I can explain, they're kind of incredible. But anyway, they
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: went in there and they investigated the whole prison system,
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: which I think they'd never done before. You know, usually
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: they investigate an individual prison or something like that. And
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: they went in and issued a report that said, this
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: is beyond the pale. There's horrific things that are happening
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: in your prisons, people being murdered, and there's the highest
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: rate of drug overdose and highest rate of rape. And
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Alabama's response was to say, well, we think that's just
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: anecdotal and you don't know what you're talking about. And
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: then they decided that their solution was the Alabama solution
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: that we sort of ironically talk about in the title
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: of the film, the one the governor talks about, is
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: just to build new prisons. And meantime, the DOJ did
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: not say to build any new prisons. The DOJ said,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: your problem is with corruption and brutality, and you're operating
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: really a criminal enterprise, and therefore you need to address
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: the underlying problems. And Alabama's response was, Well, the DOJ
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: says the prisons are no good. So we got to
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: build new ones.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Well, that, you know, so they get a massive contract. Yeah, exactly.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: So we, you know, we always call it the Alabama
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: Department of Construction because they don't really change anything unless
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: they have the opportunity to build something. And that's really
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: good for all the governor supporters and all the other
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: people who are, you know, in the construction industry. And,
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: you know, they've now started construction on these massive new prisons.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Alabama is a tiny state. It's like a smaller population,
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: I think, than Norway. And they've got a tiny budget,
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: and yet they figure out how to... put together a
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: multibillion-dollar prison construction plan. They can't fund it at first.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: The governor announces she's going to build these new prisons,
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: which the DOJ did not ask for. and are not
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: going to solve the problem. And they admit, by the way,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: that they're not going to affect overcrowding, which is a
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: huge problem. The prisons are operating at like 200% capacity. And,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: you know, when they're asked about it, the head of
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: the Department of Corrections, they ask him, you know, is
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: this going to affect the overcrowding? Or is it just
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: the same number of beds? And he goes, no, it's
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: the same number of beds. You know, it's not going
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: to affect overcrowding. So they're building these massive new facilities.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: The governor can't get them paid for. She can't raise
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: the money in a bond offering. So they go after
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: the COVID money that they got from the government, which
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: is not designed to.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: Build prisons, right?
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: It's very hard to argue that building prisons is something
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: that's going to relieve some other kind of health problem
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: or whatever. And then I think they get fined for
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: that or you have to pay a fine if you
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: use government money for a thing that's not supposed to
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: be for work. And then when they start construction, They
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: still can't raise the money, but they start building the
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: new prisons even before.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: They're authorized by the legislature.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: That's how clearly it was communicated that these prisons were
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: going to happen. In other words, we had a crew
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: in Alabama that was watching this site of this one
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: massive prison that they were planning on building. And there
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: were just bean fields. And it's quite beautiful, actually. And
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: one day I get a call from somebody and they say,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: we got to start filming this. because there are 25
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: earthmovers here. And I said, well, that's impossible because the
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: legislature hasn't even approved the new prison construction. And they said, well,
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: the prison construction companies know what's happening and they're already
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: spending hundreds of thousands of dollars just to clear the site.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: So the fix was in on this new prison construction.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: And the governor announced that it was going to cost
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: $ 900 million to build three new prisons. So far, they've
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: broken ground and are far along on the first prison,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: and it's up to $ 1. 3 billion. So when you open
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: that door, a whole lot of commerce comes in, a
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: whole lot of companies come in. And they ask them,
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: why was it so expensive? How did it go from
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: $ 300 million for one prison to $ 1. 3 billion for one
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: prison and counting? And they said, well, it's inflation and
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: You know, meanwhile, like I'm pretty sure that the government's
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: not going to say that we got 400 percent inflation
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: at the moment. So it's, you know, it's kind of
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: institutionalized thievery.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: It's organized crime. Yeah. That it mean when you are
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: in charge of deciding what's crime.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And you're running a state like Alabama. Yeah. Yeah.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: And I think, you know, money in the justice system
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: is a very perverting factor. I made this series called
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: The Jinx.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Great fucking series, by the way. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Crazy. Yeah.
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: You watch this going, what? Yeah. Is this real? Yeah,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: me too.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's an incredible person to watch. But one
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: thing about him is, you know, that family's worth $ 9 billion.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: This is not like a regular rich person in America.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: This is an extra super duper rich person in America.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: And he's killed three people over 30 years and just
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: walking around, gotten away with it. Meantime, you have, you know,
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: young women, moms in Brazos County Jail in Texas. You know,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: our mutual friend Jeff Ross did a documentary there and
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: he interviews the girls that are in there and he
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: says what are you in here for and two of
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: them say I'm in here because I stole baby formula
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: so you know that's a money money means a lot.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: In this equation yeah yeah.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: The money stuff is is all over the place you
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: know it's um that the the perverting of the system
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: with money um you see because you know for example
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: These big prison companies like GeoGroup and CoreCivic make money
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: by having full prisons. They're private prison companies. But there
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: are lots of prison– there are a lot of companies
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: that provide services to public prisons, to state prisons like
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Cisco and all these companies that sell food there. But
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: everybody makes more money if the prisons are full. And
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: so you have.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: The head of.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: CoreCivic just– did a shareholder call not too long ago.
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: And he's Henninger, I think his name is. And they said,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: you know, what do you think, what's the outlook? And
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: he said, oh, with all the new immigration prisons and
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: all the prisons and all.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: The increased.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: Emphasis on law enforcement and on incarceration, you know, this
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: is the most exciting time in my career. So, you know,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: you're really building this prison industrial complex every day, especially
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: right now, I think. And all these people are doing,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: they're all doing bad stuff. You know, there's a company called,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: there's a company called Securus, which is run by Tom Gores,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: who is a big team owner, owns the Pistons, Detroit
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Pistons and some other teams, and is a private equity
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: guy worth about $ 10 billion. And And his company, Securus,
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: does communications for the prison systems. And they made deals
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: that have now been.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Sort of exposed.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: But they made deals with sheriff's departments where they had jails.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: And they said instead of letting kids visit their parents
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: in jail and actually get to see them and hug
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: them and maybe have some kind of normalcy– Let's install
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: video visit terminals. So the cover story was the video
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: visits are going to be great because you don't have
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: to drive across the state to see your loved one.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: But the contract specifically said that they had to replace
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: in-person visits. So when a kid went to go visit
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: his dad, even if he was 20 yards away from
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: him in the prison waiting room, he had to use
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: a video terminal, which cost $ 12.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: 99 for 20 minutes. And he was not allowed to
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: see his dad in person.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: So that's an example of, you know, and that's in
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: the contract that's in the Securus contract that said that
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: they have to eliminate the in-person visits. So when you
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: allow that for-profit motive to be driving things in these
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: like state institutions where theoretically we should, you know, have
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: some kind of like moral approach that makes sense for
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: society or, you know, can help community or build our
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: relationships or help people stay in touch with their loved
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: ones when they're incarcerated. When you add that for-profit motive there,
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: the system is just designed to exploit. It just is
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: natural that all those people have to get, you know,
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: they all have, there's a kind of a value to
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: every visit. Every time a visit, you know, every time
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: a kid comes and visits a parent, it's worth $ 12.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: 99.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: Well, why do it for free if you can get $ 12.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: 99 for it? Oh, it's one of the darker aspects
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: of human nature in regards to our relationship with money.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: If that so many people, if unchecked, if you give
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: them the opportunity to make more money at the expense
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: of other people, they do it. They just do it.
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: They do, especially in under the framework of a corporation,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: the framework work of a corporation allows you to have
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: a diffusion of responsibility because you don't think that you're
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: the one doing this horrible thing. It's this thing that
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: you work for, and I'm just doing my job. And also,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: if you're involved in a corrupt system, and this is
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: your job, and you think of these people as all
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: good people that are part of the corrupt system, it
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: sort of minimizes the horrible feelings that you have about
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: that corruption. You just dismiss it. I really believe.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: I've heard you talk about the fusion of responsibility before.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: I think it's... It's such a huge part of what
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: drives all this is that you have people who don't
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: really have to ask themselves the hard question. Am I
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: the person that's exploiting somebody? Am I the person that's
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: overcharging a mom? Am I the person that's charging somebody
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: a crazy amount of money for their medication or allowing
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: somebody to die from medical neglect? Because once you have
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: a corporation and you look at that org chart, you know,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: you could see the org chart as, oh, that's a
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: nice orderly way of getting commerce to move forward. But
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: it's also a thousand points of responsibility. Every one of
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: those persons just takes a tiny measure of responsibility. Well,
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: I'm just in the accounting department. I mean, you know, I.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: Don't make the rules.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: I don't make the laws, you know, and you see that,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: you know, in the healthcare industry, people recording their calls
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: with their healthcare providers or their insurance companies saying, Oh,
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I really can't answer. That's not my job.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Somebody else makes that decision. And so when you have
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: these massive organizations, there's a way for very bad things
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: to happen. And it's like the death of a thousand corpses.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Cuts. And it's also, everybody's trying to maximize profit. And
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: when you're trying to maximize profit, you just find some
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: ways to justify things. Like your, your main job is
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: not to help people. These prisons aren't rehabilitation centers. You're
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: trying to make like you, you actually profit off people
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: becoming like functional members of society once they get released,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: that would be amazing. Then you'd have an incentive to
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: make people better people in prison. Like imagine if their
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: profit was based on people being rehabilitated, reentering society and
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: becoming functional, proper members of society where they contribute.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, the incentives are so, they're so twisted.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: They're so twisted. It's like that saying money's the root
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: of all evil. It's not the root of all evil.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: It's the root of most of it though. It's like
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: a giant percentage of it. Yeah. Maybe it's 75% of evil.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: The rest of it's like what? Lust? Yeah. I mean,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: I guess money's- Anger, jealousy. Yeah. That's the root of
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: a lot of evil, you know, whatever, whatever the other percentages,
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: but money, 60% maybe, let's be charitable. It's the root
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: of a lot of fucking evil, man. It's, it's, And
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: when you can do it inside of this framework of
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: a corporation, it's so twisted because it's ubiquitous. It exists
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: in almost all industries. There's always, whether it's the, like,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: this is the reason why people celebrated when that healthcare
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: executive was shot. They were like, hey, man, fuck you guys. Like, yeah,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: finally one of you guys got it. I lost my dad.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: I lost my mom. I lost my sister. You know,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: that kind of shit. is in every fucking industry. Whether
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: it's military industrial complex, whether it's the health insurance complex,
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: whether it's pharmaceutical drug industry, when you look at the
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Sackler family and what they did with opioids. I'm sure
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: you've seen the Netflix, the Peter Berg Netflix painkiller series.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Fucking incredible. It's just incredible that that guy's just walking around,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: irresponsible for the death of who knows how many people.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: Because who knows how many people People that had relationships
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: with the people that got addicted also lost their lives,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: also lost everything because you're dealing with a brother or
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: a mom that's completely lost and addicted. Your life is
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: hijacked now by this situation. You've lost your dad. You've
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: lost your mom. You've lost a spouse. Fuck. Yeah.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I've heard you talk a lot
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: about mental health and obviously people There are a lot
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: of causes of mental health problems, and that includes social media.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: It includes sort of alienation. It includes a lot of
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: things that are present in society. But the prison industrial
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: complex and the experience of having somebody incarcerated has a
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: huge impact on mental health. I think people don't realize
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: when you have 2 million people locked up in these
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: facilities— And many of them are just being traumatized every day,
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: whether they're seeing somebody get killed or they're constantly in
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: fear for their life. The idea that those people are
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: going to somehow be OK when you want to let
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: them out 10 years later and they're going to rejoin society,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: you give them $ 50 and a bus ticket and you say, hey,
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: I hope you can become a taxpayer. Meantime, they don't
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: have enough money to pay for one red roof in
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: for one night. They can't do anything when they get
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: out of prison. And then we say, well, why is
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: there such high recidivism? I guess that means they're bad people.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: So let's put them back in. So the mental health
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: implications for the people that are incarcerated are huge and
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: the people who are in their families, as you say.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Imagine the anxiety. You don't have any family members and
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: they're going to give you $ 50. And now you're out
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: and you have to figure out how to eat, how
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: to get a roof over your head and try to
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: figure out a way to earn money. Yeah. The $ 50.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And there are ways to do it. I mean,
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: all this sounds very dark and horrible, and it is,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: but there are a lot of positive developments that you
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: can see when you give them a chance to grow
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: in society. So, for example, I love what you say
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: about community, about the importance of building community and seeing
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: the country as our community. And, you know, if we're
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: torturing people that are in our community, if we're being
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: cruel to people that are in our community.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: What does it say about us? Right.
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: Um, you know, what does it say about, about, about Christianity?
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: What does it say about, you know, about, uh, about God?
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: What does it say about forgiveness? Um, and clearly we
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: see that there are so many instances where people are trying,
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: you know, trying to do something better. There's a woman
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: named Erica in Alabama who was a mental health professional.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: And she described to me what it was like to
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: try to give mental health services to people who are incarcerated.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: And I was trying to figure out, you know.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: Looking at these images of the places that they keep
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: people and these cells, these solitary cells with just a
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: little tray slot. And, you know, they're in there for
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: in a five-by-eight room with no windows, and they could
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: be in there literally for years. And I said to her, well,
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: can you tell me, like, when you do a session
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: with somebody and you're trying to, you know, talk to
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: them about their suicidal ideation or their various problems, you.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Know, what does that look like? How does that work?
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: And she goes, well, you know, it's a little uncomfortable because,
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: you know, I got to be on my knees. And
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: I said, wait, why are you on your knees? She said, oh, well,
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: I have to be able to talk through the tray slot.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: And I said, so when you're giving a mental health
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: counseling session to somebody who's incarcerated, you're not allowed to
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: open the door. You're not allowed to see, assuming that
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: person's not like having a violent fit or something like that.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: You're not allowed to sit down across from them and
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: have that conversation.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: She said, no, no, no, but it's okay. I just
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: put my mouth up.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: To the tray slot and I just thought, You know,
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: when you think about the idea that that's going to
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: be somehow something that will give relief to somebody who's
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: really struggling with a mental health crisis in prison, you know,
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: we're doing the absolute minimum. You know, we're checking the
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: box that says, yeah, once a month this guy has
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: a psychiatric evaluation. But nobody's taking a picture of that
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: and showing what it really looks like to have this nice,
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: you know, young lady, this idealistic young mental health person
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: Kneeling outside of a metal cell with, you know, bloodstains
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: on it, talking to somebody inside.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Through a food slot. Through a food slot. And that's
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: probably the only interaction this person has with human beings
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: other than the guards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who are very cruel.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: And you're alone in that cell, which is also terrible
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: for mental health. Like there's nothing worse for mental health
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: than complete total isolation. Yeah. With no access to anything. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: Have you ever had experiences with people, friends or family
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: who've been incarcerated?
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Quite a few. What's that been like? Well,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: I had this one friend that I used to do
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: martial arts with when I was a kid. And when
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: I was probably around 16, 16 or 17, he wound
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: up going to jail. I didn't know him that well.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: But I knew him as this guy who competed in
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: tournaments and, you know, he would show up and train
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: with us. And he's just a pretty tough guy. He
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: went into jail and he came out, first of all,
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: much bigger. He was just like stacked with muscle. All
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: of his tattoos he burned off. So he had scars,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: like these big keloid scars over all of his tattoos now.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: And he was a completely different person. like a violent animal,
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: like a terrifying guy to spar with. If you spar
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: with him, you were in a, it wasn't, there was nothing,
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: no holding back. Sparring, for the most part, when you
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: like people, you're hitting them only a certain percentage of
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: your strength. This guy was not doing any of that.
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: He was full blast with everything. It was like a
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: caged animal. And as I got to be closer to him,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: I actually became closer to him after he got out
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: of prison. than he was before, you know, because I
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: just spent more time sparring him and hanging out and
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: training with him and, you know, being in these group
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: classes with him. He started telling me these stories about
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: what it was like in jail and just fighting for
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: his life. He had to take on three guys and
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: he picked up a broomstick and he was beating these guys.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: He was just telling me these crazy stories of guys
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: trying to kill him in jail, you know, and he
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: was in there for three years for drug selling. And
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: then he went right back to selling drugs. And, um,
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: He eventually got arrested, and I've told this story before,
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: but it's kind of crazy. They found a guy that
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: had every bone in his body broken with hammers, and
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: they kept him awake by injecting him with cocaine. They
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: kept injecting him with cocaine, and then they cut his
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: arms off. They cut his hands off, and then they
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: cut his head off, and they found his body. But
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: all of his bones had been shattered, and this guy
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: that I knew as a kid got arrested for that. Um,
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: they never wind up trying him for that. They brought
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: him in for questioning. He definitely knew something. about it.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: He knew either the people that did it or knew
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: something about it. It was all drug-related, and he was
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: selling cocaine. And then I lost touch with him after that.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: That's a crazy story. Oh, yeah. I knew quite a
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: few guys like that. Because the world of fighting, like
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: people that are interested in... entering in competitions with people,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: you get a lot of troubled people, a lot of
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: very angry people, a lot of them that come from
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: violent households. They were beaten as children or they were
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: bullied as kids, depending on where. I came from the
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: most mild of those environments. I didn't have anybody abusing me.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: I lived in the suburbs of Boston. I lived in Newton,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: which is a really nice neighborhood. I just was interested
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: in martial arts. And then I was fascinated by this
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: idea of bettering myself through competition because it was so scary.
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden I'm around like hit men.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: I knew one guy who was a hit man for
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Whitey Bulger. And I would train him. I would teach
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: this guy how to do martial arts. And he was
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: an assassin. That's amazing. It was very strange. I knew
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: a bunch of organized crime figures, mostly with the Irish mob.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: A lot of those guys came and trained. And especially
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: because they knew some other guys that we knew that
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: were a couple of one of my friends who was
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: a professional boxer. And he lived in South Boston. He
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: was very tight with a lot of these guys. So
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: some of these guys came to train with us. And
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: it was very weird exposure for me. I've never been
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: around any of that. I never had anyone in my
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: family that went to jail. No one was a criminal.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: No one was a drug addict. There was nothing really crazy.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden I was around a
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: lot of these people that either went to jail eventually
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: or had been in jail. Yeah.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: Cause it's, I think there's that question of, you know,
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: people say, well, if you, if you don't like the
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: prison system the way it is, or if you don't
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: think people should get locked up forever, then, you know,
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: you're just soft on crime and, and, you know, obviously, uh,
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: you know, you're some kind of a snowflake and, but, uh, clearly.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: There's a role for prison. There's a role for jail.
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: Um, The question is whether we should be putting people
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: into institutions that just further damage them, further re-traumatize them.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Right. Just making them hardened. They're going to be worse
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: criminals if they get out, if and when they get out. Yeah.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: And there's no emphasis on rehabilitation. So that's the thing.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: It's like if you're releasing them back into the street,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: like what are you doing to the rest of the society?
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: If you're taking a person who's committed a violent crime,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: making them way worse in jail and then releasing them.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: This is like a slow– bomb you know it's slow
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: release bomb and then also they have no options because
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: no one wants to hire an ex-convict especially someone who
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: went to jail for like aggravated assault or something like
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: that so it's it's very very difficult for these people
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: and very very difficult for society to make a decision
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: you know you want to make a quick fix of
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: something you want to protect people just keep them in
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: jail keep everybody in jail but there's zero emphasis on
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: how to take a person from a completely broken childhood,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: broken home, violence, drug addiction in the home, all the chaos,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: completely being accustomed to violent crime because it's all around you.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: It's in your neighborhood. You imitate your atmosphere. And then
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: what do we do with these people? There's no emphasis
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: whatsoever on it. It's just using them as human batteries
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: to generate money. And that's evil. That's what's really crazy.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: And this is where people have subverted this idea of,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: incarceration being some sort of a rehabilitation or correction, right?
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: They call them correctional facilities. You're not correcting anything. You're
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: just making money. You're just making money off of people
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: and you're taking advantage of the fact that no one
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: wants to pay attention to it because society generally looks
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: at people that are criminals and have committed violent crimes
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: as like, oh, well, fuck them. Push them aside. And look,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: there's some people that I agree. Yeah, fuck them. If
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: there's people that have killed a bunch of people and
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: raped a bunch of people and are constantly robbing people
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: and breaking their houses, they're violent. Yeah, fuck those people.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: Fuck those people. But that's a small percentage of what's
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: in jail. A large percentage is nonviolent drug offenders. And
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: that's where it gets really weird. It's like so a
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: person is deciding you can have the drugs that we sanction.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: You can have the drugs that we tax. You can
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: have these drugs. You can have these prescription drugs. You
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: could have this drug that you buy in the liquor
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: store that we call alcohol, which is clearly a drug.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: You could buy your cigarettes. You could buy your coffee.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: You could get all these drugs that we like. Adderall.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: You need Adderall. Andrew, I think you have a little ADHD.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: Maybe you need some fucking speed. And we'll sell you
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: that speed and we'll tax that speed. Anything else, we'll
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: put you in a cage because you're not following our rules.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: And it's like a grown adult... telling another grown adult
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: what they can or can't do with their life is
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: responsible for what, 50% of the people that are in cages?
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: That's kind of crazy. It's almost time for spring break.
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: So maybe you're headed to the beach, or maybe you're
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: taking the kids on a road trip, or maybe you're
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: just taking some extra time for yourself. No matter what,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: you deserve a break and a reset, and AG1 can help.
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• 54:57
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  Speaker 1: really well so you can start working it into your
• 55:03
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• 55:09
  Speaker 1: nice flight. I've talked about AG1 for a long time,
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• 55:23
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• 55:35
  Speaker 1: That's a $ 111 value at drinkag1. com slash Joe Rogan. Yeah.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: That's really crazy. Yeah.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's this kind of illusion that everybody that
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: is in prison for something that we want, don't think,
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: the average person doesn't think they should be in prison
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: for for many, many, many years, like a drug crime
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: or being an addict, basically, that those people, that all
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: those people have been let out already. That somehow like
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: prison activist people have said, well, you know, all the
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: people that are in there for drug crimes should be released.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: But it's not really true.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: You have an enormous criminalization of drug addictions. So you're
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: already making people sort of feel hopeless. Then they're turning
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: to drugs and then you're putting them into cages. So
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: like Steve Marshall, for example, the AG in Alabama says, well,
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: we've already released all of the nonviolent criminals.
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: So the only people that are locked in there are
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: the worst of the worst.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: But, you know, that's clearly not true just because of
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: sales from your documentary. Yeah, of course.
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: So you have– and he was put into a maximum
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: security facility for entering an unoccupied building. That's because there's
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: sort of an inflation of this concept of violence. So
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: they will– in Alabama, I think there are 44 different
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: crimes that are considered violent crimes. And they include crimes
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: that you and I would not consider violent. You know,
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: so if somebody threatens somebody verbally, like most people do
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: in arguments with, you know, people that they're mad at
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: or whatever, but doesn't assault somebody, that could be considered
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: a violent crime. If somebody enters a building, whether they
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: steal something or not, that could be considered a violent crime.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: And so it makes it easier just to, as you say, like,
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: I like that image of the battery. I think about
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: it as like sometimes like the matrix.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: For Alabama to do what it's doing, it's got to
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: have 20,000 people in suspended animation because that's how you
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: can use them for labor. That's how you can use
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: them to sell them stuff. That's how you can charge
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: them for fees and fines. You need that many people.
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: I think they did a terrible thing when they allowed
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: private prisons. I think it's a terrible thing. If you
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: think about the people that founded this country and the
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: people that wrote the constitution, they had a great understanding
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: of where, how tyranny can emerge. And so they tried
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: to create a system and again, 1776 crazy to think
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: that we're still following those same rules today, you know,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: but they had a great understanding where we're not following those,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: but the checks and balances and make sure that one
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: person couldn't accumulate all of the power. Whoever, first initiated
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: the policy of allowing and paying for private prisons to
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: exist in this country, did not think it through like
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: that at all, did not think of incentives, did not
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: think of how people always, when given the chance to
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: make more money, figure out a way to justify making
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: that more money and come up with rules or regulations
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: or carve-outs, caveats, some reason why they can continue to
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: accelerate And then you don't think about the fact that
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: prison guard unions and these private prisons, these people that
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: own them, actively work to keep some laws on the
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: books that maybe the general public would not want to
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: be illegal anymore, certain things. And they do that just
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: so they can keep their prisons full, so they can
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: keep making more money. So then they take the money
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: that they get from these private prisons where they're using
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: people as human batteries To make sure there's still laws
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: in place that are ridiculous so that they can keep
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: arresting people so they can keep filling up their buildings
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: and making more. And the fact that nobody saw that coming.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: Nobody saw that coming. They saw it coming. I don't
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: even know if they did. I think they probably short
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: term were just saying, oh, this is a good business.
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: We'll get into it. Then the business is like, we've
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: got to grow this business. Just like everything else. Like
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: if you're selling tires, you know, you got to make
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: better tires, sell more tires. We're trying to set, we
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: want to be number one in the tire business. Well,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: they're trying to be number one in the human battery business. Yeah.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: And that's what's fucking insane about allowing that in this country.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: And how do you put that genie back in the bottle?
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I think it's very sick.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: Well, the genies figured out a way to get into
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: a whole new bottle because, um, A lot of people
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: say to us, well, this film that you made, The
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: Alabama Solution, is obviously about Alabama state prisons.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Are those private prisons? And we always say, no, those.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: Are state-run institutions. But they kind of function like private
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: prisons in a way because they're able to make deals
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: with securists about their prison phone system. And that makes
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: millions and millions and millions of dollars that's extracted from
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: the poorest people in the country. right, who are being
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: charged like high, you know, daily and even per minute
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: fees for being able to communicate with their families. Then
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: you have companies who are selling the food to the prisons.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: You have companies that are doing health care contracts with
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: the prisons. And so there's so much money in that,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: that they sort of, even though the state owns that
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: piece of land, it still kind of functions the way
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: that private prisons function.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: So we've sort of just given over the care of
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: 2 million Americans to companies that are accountable to their
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: shareholders maybe, but the shareholders don't know.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: Well, they're certainly not accountable to humane living conditions. That
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: one scene where Kinetic Justice, that gentleman, what's his real name?
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: Robert Earl Council. When Robert Earl Council was in solitary
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: and you see the rat swimming in his toilet? Rats
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: are swimming in his toilet and he has rats in
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: a water jar and what did he say? Eleven caught
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: in one night. And why are they there?
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: Because he tries to put his food in a bag
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: that hangs on the door of the cell. But then
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: they write him a disciplinary for doing that. But if
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: he takes his food out of the bag and he
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: puts it on the counter, then the rats are going
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: to get it during the night.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: They're just everywhere. Yeah.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: So there are rats throughout the prison.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: And so he has to sleep in this room where
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: these rats are crawling all over him at night. Yeah.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: You know, and people, just to get into him for
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: a second, I mean, he is frankly one of the most,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: one of the bravest people I've ever met in my life.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: You know, this is a guy who was incarcerated when
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: he was 19 and he was selling drugs in his neighborhood.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: Somebody is trying to chase him down with a car
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: and almost runs him over and he shoots the person
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: through the window and the guy dies. So this is
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: now 30 years ago. In any other condition, you would
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: have thought that's a self-defense case, right? It was clear
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: that he was trying to prevent somebody from running him
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: over with a car. And yet here he is 30
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: years later with a life without parole sentence in an
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: Alabama prison. And he's spending his time trying to organize non-peace,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: non- nonviolent labor strikes. He's trying to do hunger strikes.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: He's trying to use every method that he can use
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: to call attention to the problem that 20,000 other people have.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: And he's using a contraband cell phone to talk to us,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: knowing that he's probably going to get retaliated against by
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: the authorities once the film comes out or once they
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: know that he's organizing a labor strike.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: He would be an unbelievable....
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: Asset to society if he were out in the world, right?
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: He's advocating for nonviolence. He's obviously smart as a whip,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: and he's incredibly motivating to other people. He's got that
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: entire prison system listening to him when they want to
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: be violent because they're so angry at the treatment. And
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: the prison system starts bird feeding them, starts to cut
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: off their food rations to force them back to work.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: And kinetic, Robert Earle is the person who says, you know,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: that's not going to solve anything. We don't want to
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: do that. So, you know, you see this huge level
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: of humanity, talent, thoughtfulness in people that are locked away.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: And we just assume, well, if they're in prison, that
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: means that they're bad people. In the meantime, there's so
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: many other people on the outside who don't get locked
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: up for doing things that are much worse. You know,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: so it's a very confusing message to be sending.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: Well, especially for someone like you who did the jinx...
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: And then you do this. Yeah. I mean it's a
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: really good point.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: I worked for a long time on the story of
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: Robert Durst. And when we discovered evidence that showed that
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: he had killed his wife and his best friend and
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: his neighbor in Galveston dismembered him, we found the only
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: evidence that proved that he did those things. And suddenly
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: I was in a dialogue with the L.A. district attorney,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: the L.A. PD, talking about how to get him arrested.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: And even if I don't believe in the way that
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: we incarcerate people, it's clear that there's a role for prison.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: And there's clearly a guy like Bob Durst who keeps
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: killing people, needs to be taken out of society.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: What kind of prison is he in? Well, he died now.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: And he was locked up in a facility in Northern California.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: It was sort of a facility for senior citizens who
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: had medical problems.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: So- You know, a lot of.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: Really rich people, as you could tell from, you know,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: there have been a bunch of cases on this, really
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: rich people hire consultants to help them navigate what prison
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: they're going to end up going to. They can negotiate
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: for better conditions. And so you end up, you know,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: with that sort of situation where a guy who maybe
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: has stolen $ 100 million and not paid his taxes or
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: taken money from his workers or, committed some horrible act
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: of fraud, ends up in a prison farm, ends up
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: in a pretty nice facility where he has access to
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: lots of things. And then you have poor people that
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: are locked up in places that have rats in their
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: cells and vermin. But yeah, I was always sort of
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: amazed that Robert Durst was able to get away with
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: what he got away with for so long.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: Why do you think that is? Well, you know, how
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: much did you know about it before you started the
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: documentary series?
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: Well, I knew a lot because I had made a film,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 2: a narrative film called All Good Things about sort of
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: Robert Durst's origin story, his relationship with his beautiful wife
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: when they were both young, before all the bad stuff
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: started happening and he became the guy that he became.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: There was this kind of strange love story between this
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: kind of, difficult man and this very lovely girl, Kathleen McCormick.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: And I made this film. Ryan Gosling played the Bob
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: Durst character and Kirsten Dunst played his wife and really
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: investigated that story so that we could tell the tale
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: of what had happened to them in an accurate way.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: And while I was doing that, we... reached out to
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: Robert Durst, to the real Robert Durst, and I said,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: you know, we're making this film about, I guess we
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: spoke to his lawyer, so we're making this film about you,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: about your client, and we'd like to talk to him,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: get his input, make sure that we're trying to tell
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: the story accurately.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: What was the premise of the film?
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: It was basically the story about him and his wife
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: when they first met, this rich guy and this girl
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: from sort of the other side of the tracks, and
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: then how eventually that relationship got toxic, eventually he kills her,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: and then later his best friend Susan Berman, who knows
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: about what happened to his wife, starts to become problematic.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: Then he kills her. And then later he moves to Galveston,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: Texas and disguises himself as a deaf mute woman, if
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: you remember this. And he ends up becoming friends with
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: his elderly neighbor and this guy named Morris Black. And
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: they go out shooting on Pelican Island and so on.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: And eventually they have a little altercation because he figured
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: out who Bob Durst was and that he was sort
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: of on the run. And he dismembers that man. He
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: kills him and dismembers him.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: This movie with Kristen Dunst, when was that released?
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: I guess we started working on that in around 2005
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: and it came out in 2010. So in 2010, it's
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: about to come out in theaters, this film. And there
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: was a big article in New York Times about how
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: accurate it was and how much we had done to
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: you know, make sure that the details were right and
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: so on. And the real Robert Durst reads the article
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: and calls me out of the blue. And, you know,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: I had tried to get in touch with him before
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: without any success. And he actually calls the distributor of
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: the film first, Magnolia Pictures, and he asks for the president,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: Eamon Bowles. And Eamon and I would use Bob's voice
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: like when we would talk to each other because Bob
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: had a very recognizable voice. So when I would call him,
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: we would hang up and I would say, bye-bye. And
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: that was always sort of Bob's tone. And then one
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: day somebody calls Eamon's office and says, this is Robert Durst.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: And so his secretary walks in the office and says, like,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: you know, in air quotes, like, it's Robert Durst on
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: the phone thinking that it's me. And he picks up
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: the phone. He's like, hey, Bob, you know, I'm not
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: surprised you're calling. I think we did a hell of
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: a job on the film. And there's a long pause.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: And he says, the guy says, who am I talking to?
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: And Eamon says, oh, who's this? And he says, this
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: is Robert Durst. And so he reaches out to me.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: I knew that he was trying to reach me so
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: I could record my very first phone call with him.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: And I call him and I say, listen, I'm keen
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: to talk to you. I've been making this film about
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: you for the last five years. And he said, well,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: I would like to see the film. So I arranged
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: for him to see the film. And he calls me
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: immediately after he sees the film. And he says, I
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: want you to know I like the movie very much.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: The movie kind of shows him killing people, right? And
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: I said, well, why did you like it? And he said, well,
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: you did a beautiful job explaining what I was going
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: through as a child and the difficulty I had and
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: losing my mother. And Kirsten Dunst was just like my wife, Kathy.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: And I cried three times. And I would like to
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: do something with you. I would like there to be
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: something out there from me, my ability to sort of
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: tell my story. And I said, All right, well, why
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 2: don't we sit down? I'll ask you a bunch of questions.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: And he said, that's fine.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's do that.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: So I end up sitting with him for three days.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: I've just finished a movie about him, a dramatic film,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: which is now in theaters. And I sit down with
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: him and interview him for 21 hours. And you think
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: you do long interviews. He's 21 hours with this one person.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: And he is fascinating. I mean, absolutely extraordinary. He is
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: incredibly honest about things that most people would never be
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: honest about. You know, he talks about how, you know,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: he had violent arguments with his wife or he says,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: you know, that he says crazy stuff. I mean, he
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: explained to me that I said, you know, I think
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: you were kind of offensive when you went to visit
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: her mother. You know, she had this mother who was
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: in her 80s and you went to visit her mother
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: and And, you know, I think you did some odd things.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: He goes, well, yeah, you know, I visited those people
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: and they were, you know, that woman, she reads Yankee magazine. And,
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: you know, and she asked me how I liked her daughter.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: And I told her that Kathy had come out of
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: the shower and my penis was hard. Like you said
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: that to her aging mother?
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, what am I going to, sure,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: that's what I thought, you know.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: You know, or you say to him, well, what did
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: you say– you know, why did you tell the police
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: that after your wife– after you put your wife on
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: the train, you went to the neighbor's to have a
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: drink when that clearly wasn't– oh, yes, I lied about that.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: I said, well, why did you lie to the police? Well,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: you know, I needed to be somewhere and I wanted
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: them to stop asking me questions. So, you know, I
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: told them that I went to the neighbors. I said, well,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: that was so easy to disprove. They just talked to
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: the neighbor. Well, yeah, but, you know, I don't people
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: don't usually do that.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: So he's very candid.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: He speaks very, very openly, almost like having a level
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: of sort of Asperger's.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: Did you believe him at any moment while he's telling
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: you this? Because obviously he's proclaiming his innocence, right? Yeah.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, he is so good at telling the story
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: his way. And he tells you so many facts that
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: are true that when he occasionally lies about really critical things, um,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of people just didn't pay attention
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: to that. I did because I had already researched the story.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: So I knew when he was trying to tell me
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: something that was, that was bullshit, that, that it was bullshit. Um, But,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: you know, I did have to put myself in a
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: position of giving him the benefit of the doubt whenever
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: I could, partly because that was the only, you know,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: you got to just get into that mode where you're
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: trying to hear his version without debating it the whole time.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 2: Because otherwise he's not going to tell you his version. And,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: you know, you want to hear his theory about all
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: this stuff. And in the course of that, he really
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: indicts himself. I mean, you know, he sort of came
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: into it with the attitude that he wanted to tell
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: his version of the story so people would stop thinking
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: he was a murderer. But during the course of it,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: he admits to so many bad things that, you know,
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: you just pretty quickly assume that he is guilty.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: How old is he when you first started filming him?
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: I guess he was in his.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: He was in his early 70s. So he's probably already
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: experiencing some kind of cognitive decline. And then you have
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: the years and years of hiding all this, which wears
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: on you. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: And I do think there was a, I think he
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: had a compulsion to confess.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know. I think most people that aren't complete sociopaths,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: they get to a certain point in time where it's
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: almost too much and they want to tell people. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, and that ultimately what happened with him, as
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: you may remember, is we find this evidence. The evidence
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: I thought was determinative. I thought it was going to
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: be something that police would ultimately use to convict him
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 2: for murder.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: But we... What was that evidence again?
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: So there was a famous note that the killer of
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: Susan Berman, this friend of Bob Durst in California.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: Had left behind when he shot Susan Berman. And the
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: note said, 1527 Benedict Canyon, cadaver. And it was sent
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: to the Beverly Hills Police Department. And that very seldom happens,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 2: but people speculated a lot. Well, why would somebody who
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: killed somebody have sent a note to the police and well,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: maybe if he liked the person, if it was his
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: best friend, this woman, Susan Berman, and it was Bob
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 2: Durst that did it, then maybe he wouldn't want her
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: body to lie there and she has dogs. They didn't
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: want the dogs to mess with the body. So he
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 2: may have just killed her and then left this note.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: But then later when he was asked about it, he said,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: I have no knowledge about that note. So when we're
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: doing our investigation, we discover a letter that he had
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: written to Susan Berman That has almost the exact same
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: words on it because it's addressed to her at 1527
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: Benedict Canyon. So we can see the handwriting on that,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: not just a handwriting sample, but a handwriting sample that's
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 2: saying exactly what it said on the letter that.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: Right, with the same misspelled words, right? Exactly.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: And he writes, 1527 Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills, California. He
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: misspells the word Beverly, puts in an extra E at
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: the end. And of course, this letter that we find,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: he also... misspells the word Beverly. So nobody had ever
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: seen or the police hadn't known about this letter. So
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: we find it. And then I immediately start planning a
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: way for me to show it to him in a
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: second interview. And he had always said to me, like, oh,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: if you ever need me to sit down again, I'm
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: happy to come back and I'll ask, you know, I'll
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: answer any question you want. But I start to call
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: him about doing the second interview and he gets very skittish.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 2: And then this goes on for two years. And so
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: we have this evidence, but we need to show it
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: to them. And I had had done a bunch of research.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: I talked to Marsha Clark, for example, you know, who
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: is smart about how the L.A. district attorney's office works.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: And she said, if you had the opportunity to sit
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: down with him and show him the evidence, do that
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: before you go to the police, because it's going to
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: be very the police are not going to be able
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: to do something like that. And he's going to lawyer up.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: But you guys, before you're even in contact with law enforcement.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: You could show him the evidence and he's going to
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: have to react to it. And I bet it's going
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: to be interesting. So we finally get him to sit
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 2: for the second interview. And I show him the evidence
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: in the interview. And he has this incredible meltdown. You know,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember this, but he starts
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: burping uncontrollably and he starts rubbing his face and breathing.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: And he's obviously very, very surprised to see that there's
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: this letter that matches the cadaver note that he admitted
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: could only have been written by the killer. So he's trapped.
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: And I finished the interview with him and he gets
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: up and goes to the bathroom and he leaves his
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: microphone attached.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: And while he's in.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: The bathroom, he confesses to the murder. He's a guy
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: who talks to himself a lot. And he always said
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: that to me. He said, oh, sometimes I talk to
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: myself for long periods of time and I get in
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: fights with people because they think that I'm hassling them,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: but it's just me. I just talk to myself. So
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: when he goes in the bathroom, the first thing he
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: says when he goes in is, there it is, you're caught.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: He says that to himself. And then he goes on
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: to say, killed them all. I killed them all, of course.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 2: And it's such an extraordinary thing to have.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: Did you have your headphones on while he was doing that? No.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: And that's kind of fascinating. So I didn't know that
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: he said anything when he went to the bathroom. And
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: so we're working with the LAPD. We're giving them the
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: printed evidence, the letter that matches the cadaver note. And
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: it's a pretty strong case already. And we don't know
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: that he's said a word in the bathroom.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: And- It's not.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: Until 26 months later that we have an editor, Shelby Siegel,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: who is just going through audio and kind of cleaning
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: up old tracks because we're getting ready to deliver the
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: film to HBO. And she sees on the editing system
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: that there's a little waveform. There's a little squiggle that
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: shows that there's some audio when he's in the bathroom.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: So the problem was that I had a microphone. There
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: was a microphone in the room and he had a
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: microphone on. So there's a lot of noise. We're finishing.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: I just finished the interview. I'm incredibly excited that I
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: got him to give this crazy reaction. And it's pretty
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: obvious that that's going to be part of proving that
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: he's guilty. And so I'm out there kind of whispering
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: to the crew. There's noise in the room and there's
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: noise in the bathroom. And so she mutes the other microphones.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: And she hears him say, there it is, you're caught.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: And she screams. And she runs to the next room
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: to where my other, our main editor was, Zach. And
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: she says, you have to hear this. And he listens
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: to it. And he says, wait a minute. I was
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: there that day. And we have audio that's a continuation
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: of that. That audio stops at there it is, you're caught.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: But he was in the bathroom for seven minutes. So
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: they go and get the drive that has the other
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: seven minutes of audio on it. And it's this long
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: rambling confession. And I come over and I listen to it.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: And I can't believe what we're hearing. I mean, it
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: was extraordinary.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: And I had to call the LAPD and the L.A.
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: district attorney and say, hey, I know literally.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: Two days ago we gave you the documents. We gave
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: you the letter so that you could start this prosecution.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: We found something else. And so they come to New
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: York and they listen to this confession. And it's just,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: you know, absolutely mind-blowing that that happened. And then when
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: the film comes, when the series comes out, you know,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: we've been working with the police then for a couple
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 2: of years while they were building the prosecution. And when
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: the film finally comes out, when the series comes out
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: on HBO, he is arrested the day before the final episode.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: So it's in the final episode that he makes that
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: confession and they arrest him right before because they knew
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: that he was going to go on the run.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: Was he aware that you had the audio of the confession?
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: I don't think he remembered saying anything. You know, I
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: don't think he's even all that aware that he sometimes
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: just burbles out with these.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: Do you think he started, I mean, this is pure speculation,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: but do you think he started going crazy after he
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: started killing people? Just like the ability to... shut that
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: part of your brain off and put that aside and
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: lie about it? Just the struggle of having that information
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: in your head.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: I think the way that he would have thought about it,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: you know, from inside the killer, right? He doesn't think
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: of himself as a murderer, right? Steve Marshall in Alabama
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: doesn't think of himself as, you know, this incredibly amoral person.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: He thinks of himself as law enforcement, right? Bob Durst
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: thinks of himself as just a guy trying to get along,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: you know, like we all are. So I think what
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: happened was in 1982, he and his wife were having
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: problems in part, in large part, because he had big
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: personality problems. I mean, he was a he was not
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: a he was not an easy person to deal with
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: at all and was also very spoiled and was also.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: You know, had all these resources. Yeah.
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: And had a lot of power over her. And so
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: I think something happened between the two of them where
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: they were at their lake house and there was an altercation.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: He admitted to me that they had had a pushing
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: and shoving argument that night. The night she died. Yeah.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: And then he says he took her to the train
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 2: and sent her into the city, but none of that
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 2: makes any sense. So I think what happened was he
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: either accidentally or semi-accidentally killed her. I think they had
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: a fight. They ended up getting into some altercation and
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: she landed on the, you know, maybe on the stone
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: of the fireplace or something like that.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: And she was dead.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: And then he thought, well, it doesn't make any sense
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: for two people to go down. I mean, unfortunate that
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: this had to happen, but I got to get rid
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: of the body. And so he found a way to
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: make her disappear. We don't know exactly what happened to her,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: but we know that he alleged that he had put
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: her on the train to go in the city and
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: they never found the body.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: So after that, he's.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: Sort of widely believed to be a likely person to
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: have killed his wife. There's no other explanation for it.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: And how long did it take before they realized the
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: wife was missing? And when did they determine that she
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: was dead?
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: It was a few days later because he kept sort of,
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: he held off on telling anyone. And then later he said, oh, Kathy,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: you know, I put her on the train to go
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: in the city and then I haven't heard from her.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: What's going on?
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: So he had a bunch of explanations about why, you know,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 2: somehow she had run off with a drug dealer or
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: she had run off with some boyfriend or something like that.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 2: But none of those really held water. But it took
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: him a while to report her missing. He waits five
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: days to report her missing and does a brilliant thing,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: which is he reports her missing in New York City,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: even though the last time she's ever seen is in Westchester.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: So they were at their house, their lake house in Westchester.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: She disappears and he goes into the city five days
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: later and he says, oh, my wife was at our
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: apartment So he complete, this is why I'm saying.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: He's very smart.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: He completely redirects the police so that they make, because,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 2: you know, the police aren't organized for a guy to
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: come in and give a phony story about what happened
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: to his wife. Most of the time, somebody comes in
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: and says, my wife is missing. And they say, oh,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: where did you last see her? Let's help you try
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: to find her. So I think he was smart enough
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: to flip that on his head. And he says that
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: my wife was in the city. And so they do
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: their whole investigation in the city. They don't look at
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: the lake house. They don't figure out where she really
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: truly might have been. Did they ever do.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: An examination of like a forensic on the lake house? Yeah,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: they did.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: And they– it was sort of– because it was so
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: late in the game, because it had taken so long
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: for him to report her missing, they didn't find anything
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: that showed that she had been killed in the house.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: And she may very well have been killed somewhere else.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: But they never find the body ever. And so her
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: family is bereft and they don't.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: Know what to do. Did he ever confess to that?
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: He didn't.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: But during the course of his interview with me, I mean,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: he never did it publicly. But in the bathroom, he says,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: killed them all, of course. So he's being accused of
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: three murders, his wife, his best friend, and his neighbor
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: in Galveston, who he then cuts up. And his confession
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: in the bathroom is killed them all, of course. So
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: I think we, you know, we, I think we know
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: what happened. We don't know how it happened.
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: Did they find his neighbor's body or his best friend, brother? Yeah.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: His best friend's body was in her house where somebody
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: shot her. And that's where they left that cadaver note,
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: the note saying 1527 Benedict Canyon. And then in Galveston,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: when his elderly neighbor disappears, the reason they find this
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: out is because a bunch of black trash bags wash
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: up in Galveston Bay and a little kid is fishing
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: with his dad and they see something bobbing around in
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: the water and they see these bags and the police
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: come and they look in the bags and there are
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: all these body parts. So he had actually taken off
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: the legs and the arms and all that. So, I mean, I,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, I think it's fair to say
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: that there are people like Bob Durst who need to
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: be out of society, you know, and are, and are
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: repeatedly causing problems for others.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: But that's, as you say, you.
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 2: Know, that's the extraordinarily rare case, you know. And I
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: think a lot of the sort of tough on crime
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 2: politicians will say, so you guys just want to let
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey Dahmer out on the street? Nobody thinks that. Nobody
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: really believes that. People are saying, well, no, what we're
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: saying is that people who are in prison for having
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: entered an unoccupied building probably never should have been in
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: prison at all. And the people who are in prison
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: with good reason because they robbed somebody or something, we
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: don't necessarily have to believe that those people can never,
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: ever have a chance to come out of prison and
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: be productive citizens. You know, there's a, there's a, you
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: just have to take a nuanced view. You know, you
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: can't just say, well, they're bad people and they're good people,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: especially because we've got so many bad people walking around
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: and so many good people locked up and vice versa.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The nuance part is so important because The real
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: question is like what causes so many people to become
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: bad people and how come no one is examining the
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: root of this? How come no one is looking at
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: these deeply impoverished crime-ridden communities that have remained that way
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: for decades and decades and decades and offered up some
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: sort of a solution? It's almost like you have to
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: financially incentivize a company to radically improve the economic and
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: the justice system. situation in any random community that's experiencing
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of crime. It's almost like you have to
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: figure out a way to privatize peace and safety. It's
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: almost like the one way... I mean, it's really what
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: I was saying before. Imagine if these prison companies got
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: paid based on the amount of productive citizens emerge from
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: their prisons and then wind up doing really well. Like
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: you get incentivized. Like this is– he's never committed another crime.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: Now he started his own business. He's doing this and that.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: He's got a family. His kids all get straight A's.
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: Everybody is happy. This is a success and we got
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: a bonus because of that success. Yeah.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: I mean you're right in a way that it's the
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: root of some way we are– we sort of are
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: privatizing it because like in my neighborhood in New York,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: there's a group called the Doe Fund, which has been
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: around for a couple of decades I think. And they
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: take guys who have had severe drug addiction, have ended
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: up in prison, and are released and have no starting place,
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: as you were describing. And they give them a bed.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: They give them a bank account where they give them
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: a certain amount of money each week for working. And
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: it's not a huge amount of money, but it sort
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: of is the first step toward even being able to
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: sort of have a checkbook and be able to say, oh, okay,
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: so I've got $ 100 and I've spent $ 50 and this
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: is what I have left. And they give them a job,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: which is they make deals with neighborhoods around New York
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: for them to come and do like street cleaning and
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: clean up the neighborhood. And they give them a uniform,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: which is clean, and they put them out on the
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: street with a broom and things like that. And sometimes
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: they'll put them out in pairs so that they can
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: work in tandem. And these neighborhoods become incredibly clean. The
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: guys stay in this facility for as long as they
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: need to until they sort of get back on their feet.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: They can't do drugs when they're in the facility. So
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: there's a little bit of tough love going on there too.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 2: But they end up bringing people back. They end up
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: bringing people back who were otherwise abandoned and who otherwise
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: would have been additional homeless people lying on the street
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 2: in San Francisco or additional people who are, you know,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: bothering people outside an ATM or whatever, because there's a
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: level of desperation that you, you know, you have. We
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: all know, like, if we absolutely had absolutely nothing and
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: we thought that our kids were going to starve, we
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: would do a bunch of things that, you know, would
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 2: probably get us in trouble.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: 100 percent. And. Taking care of people that are in
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: that situation and providing them some sort of a vehicle
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: for improving their life is going to be a good
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: thing and it's going to have some impact. But the real,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: real impact is going to be when you address the
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: environment in which they came from. Sure. Like if, again,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: if we're our community, we're this entire country as a community,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: why do we have these places that have been fucked
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: for 50, 60, 70 years? Like, Why haven't we put
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: resources into community centers and education and providing some method
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: for these people to get peace and safety? Why aren't
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: we doing something about that if we really care?
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: Well, there is a lot that can be done. One
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: of the places, for example, this can be done inside
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: and outside of prison, obviously, and I think you're pointing
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 2: out a really important thing, which is the earlier the better.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: So when you look at Head Start programs– which are
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: one of the first things that people go to cut
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 2: because you can't put your finger on exactly what they do.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: But if you track people that got early education, you
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: see that it dramatically reduces the likelihood that those people
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: are going to go to prison later in life. And
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: if you look at people who are even in prison,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: like in the main state prison system, which is a
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: very humane prison system, I have pictures on my phone
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: Of guys who are sitting at a bench working on
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 2: models of tall ships, these beautiful, stunning pieces of art
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: that they've been trained by other prisoners to build and
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: they give them a proper workbench and they give them
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 2: some time to do this work and they give them training.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: And then they sell that stuff in the prison store
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 2: and they make a couple million dollars a year that
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: goes back into rehabilitation programs.
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Is Maine one of the best places for that?
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: I think Maine is the best prison system I've seen
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: in the U.S. And partly it's because it's run by
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 2: this very brilliant guy. Randy Liberty is his name. That's crazy.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 2: And he first visited the Maine State Prison when he
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: was 14 because his dad was locked up there. And
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: later in life, you know, he became a sheriff. And
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: I think his dad was in his jail at some point.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: And it was like, Randy, get me a coffee.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: Sorry, dad. That's crazy.
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 2: But over time, he just said, well, why are we
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: throwing people away when we put them into prison for
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: having made a mistake of some kind or even a
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: series of mistakes?
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: You know, what can we do to bring these people out?
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: Because 95 percent of the people are coming out. Um,
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: and you know, are these people that we want to
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: be our neighbors.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: You know? Yeah.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: And that, that's that, that this issue of community is
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: so important because, you know, how are we going to
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: get back to some kind of brotherhood in this country?
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 2: You know, it's so important. And if we can demonize
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 2: people so quickly and just say, well, look, my neighbor,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: you know, he put his tractor on my lawn and
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: therefore he's a horrible person and I'm going to go
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: over and smash his tractor. And, you know, as opposed
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: to the guy saying, oh, I couldn't put my tractor
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: in my garage because it had a flood.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, you had a flood? Let me help you.
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: You know, that there's a level of, you know, rage
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: right now that we're tapping into. It seems like a
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: higher percentage of the people are like the martial arts
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: people that are going into it because of damage that
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 2: they suffered. It's like more Americans are becoming like that.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: You know, more Americans are sort of.
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: Well, we're getting radicalized by the internet for sure. Yeah.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: 100% on both sides of the aisle. People are being
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: radicalized by hate and anger and frustration online. And a
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: lot of it isn't even real people that are writing
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: these things or it's state actors and organizations that push
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: certain narratives. And you're being fed a lot of hate porn.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: And people are sucking it up and it's highly addictive.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: So it's consuming an enormous percentage of your available resources
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: in terms of your attention span. The people that I
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: know that are addicted to Twitter, X, whatever, are like
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: genuinely mentally ill. Like whether they realize it or not,
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: because they're still functional, they still do their jobs, but
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: they are fully addicted to a thing. that is just
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: people bitching back and forth with each other and they
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: check responses all the time and they can't wait to
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: type in another response and they're sitting there looking at
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: someone else's response and getting angry. It's illness, it's an illness.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: It's like this is not in your life. Like if
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: you put that down and look around, what do you see?
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: You see the people that you know, you see the
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 1: neighborhood that you live in, the stores that you visit
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: and none of that exists. It exists in this weird
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: fucking cloud world That you choose to enter to get
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: upset for no fucking reason. And if you put it down,
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: you will feel better. But yet you think you're missing
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: out on something. So you have to go check it.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: And when you're on the toilet, well, I'm on the toilet.
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: What am I going to do? Let me check to
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: see what people are pissed off at. And I don't
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: fucking agree with that at all. Well, this guy's an idiot.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: And then you're mentally ill. And then it becomes, because
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: we have this bizarre political system in our country where
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: we have two sides, only two. We only have two perspectives,
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: you know, and then you have a conglomeration of ideas
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: that are attached to each perspective that you might not
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: agree with at all. But you have to because you're
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: a right wing this or a left wing that. So
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: you have to say whatever the fucking party wants you
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: to say. And if you don't, you're a Nazi or
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: if you don't, you're whatever you are, a communist, whatever
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 2: And I loved your when in your comedy special, which
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: was so fucking funny. And, you know, I'm like a
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: big fan of comedy. But in your last special, you
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: sort of talk about how people like sign up for, oh, yeah, well,
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: you know, I agree with that.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: That makes perfect sense. Oh, yeah, I agree with that.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, and by the way, if you're going to agree
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: with that, you know, you're also going to have to
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: agree that, you know, that.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: Men can get pregnant. Yeah, the men can get pregnant.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: You're like, what? Wait. So that those are my choices.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: I have to go along with like, you know, trans
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: people should be allowed to be in every sport and
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter I have to go along with that
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: one too if I want to be part of my tribe. Oh, yeah,
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: that's part of the tribal initiation ritual.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: You're going to have to sign up for that.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 2: I think it's a really great way of delivering it
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: also because it makes people laugh at themselves.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and everybody wants to be on a team. And
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: you're like, oh, we believe that everybody should be free
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: to do whatever you want as long as you're not
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: hurting anybody. I agree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You start going
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: along with it. This sounds great. Yeah. Hey, I'm with
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: you guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you're like, ah, fuck.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: That's right. Is this a package deal? I have to. Yeah,
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: and that's what people are agreeing to. And then you
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: get groupthink. And then you get also ostracization. You get
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: ostracized from the community if you don't do it. So you,
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: you know, you get kicked out of the kingdom. And
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: so you don't want that. Yeah. Because being excommunicated from
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: whatever group that you identify with is terrifying. Because then
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: what are you going to do? You're going to join
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: the fucking Nazis? Yeah. I'm going to join those people
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: on the right because the left kicked me out because
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: I don't think that men can get pregnant. Maybe I
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: should just apologize. And then you wind up apologizing for
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: something you don't even believe in. You're like, God, I
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: can't believe I have to say this. And it's just–
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: it's a bad way of communicating. Online communication is a
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: terrible way of communicating. And it's the primary source that
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: young people experience. Young people– like my kids, they don't
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: even fucking text each other. They Snapchat, you know, they're
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: all Snapchatting with pictures and shit. I'm like, this is
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: like the minimal amount of communication you can do. And
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: when they have to talk to people, just put their
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: phone down and talk to people, they're lost. They're always
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: like reaching for their phone. They always want to grab
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: their phone in the middle of Utah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: They have to check, like, it's like you're Perpetually distracted. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: It's going to get worse, I think, when you have
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: glasses and you could be walking down the street or
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: you can meet somebody and be like, hi, Joe.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: So when you went to college at and then you.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: Learned, you know, it's like they're there. This idea that
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: the information is more available and therefore it's better. My
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: kids are like constantly deleting Instagram or deleting TikTok. Yeah.
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: A lot of kids are doing that now. Yeah. And
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: then it comes back for some reason or they'll say, well,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: I felt like I needed to do this or whatever. FOMO.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: But it's very encouraging to see them recognize that you
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: have to go cold turkey on social media.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: Well, that narrative is out there. Fortunately for a lot
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: of kids, Twitter, which I think is maybe the most
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: toxic in terms of what it can do, most beneficial
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 1: in terms of like whistleblowers getting news. Like if anything
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: is happening in the world, I almost immediately go to Twitter.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: It used to be a little better for that because
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: now part of the problem is with AI generated content.
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of weird stuff when it comes to
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: like especially war stuff. There's a lot of videos that
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: are just completely fake and it's hard to tell. Or
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: they take a video that is real and highly exaggerated
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: and they add AI to it. It's very strange. And
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: you've got to wonder, like, who's doing that and why
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: are they doing this? Is this our government doing it?
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: Is it the Iranian government? Who's releasing these fake videos?
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: And are we doing it to ourselves, by the way? 100%.
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: A lot of people are doing that just for clicks
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: because there is an actual economy based on engagement. So
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: you can make money if you're putting up these posts.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: These posts are getting millions and millions of interactions. You're
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: going to get more money. And so there's a lot
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: of people doing that. So it used to be better
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: because it used to be just pure information. And if
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: it was a video, it was just a video that
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: someone took with their cell phone generally. Now it's like
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of weirdo stuff, a lot of weird fake stuff.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: So it's hard.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: Also there was a piece in the paper today that
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: talked about how like Trump gets like a few-minute video
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: every day that's a compilation of all the attacks and
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: all the explosions that have happened in Iran. you know,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: but is not getting a more nuanced picture of it.
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: So to some extent is kind of, you know, drinking
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: his own Kool-Aid.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: How do they know what he gets?
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 2: I think that there was enough of a leak to
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: say that he was given a, that each day he's
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: given a chunk of video to watch. And that I
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: think historically has been something that happens with him is
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 2: he'd rather watch it than read it, right? And that
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: by putting together just It's not even that they're saying
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: they're fake videos.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, there are a lot of fake videos.
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: But he's only getting the positive videos. He's just getting explosions. Right.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: He's just getting a lot of pictures of explosions. So
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: he's saying, you know, we're destroying their.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: Here it is. Inside Trump's daily video montage briefing on
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: the Iran war. This is NBC News. The montage typically
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: runs for about two minutes. That's enough time to give
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: you a nuanced perspective on a fucking international war. has
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: raised concerns amongst those of the president's allies that he
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: may not be receiving the complete picture of the war. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: of course he's not. Yeah. And, of course, the people
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: that tricked him into doing this in the first place
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: don't want him to get a full nuanced perspective of
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: the war. I mean, nobody thinks it's a good idea. Yeah.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: Even the people he.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 2: Videos a series of clips of stuff blowing up.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: Hilarious. That's the world we're living in. It's a TikTok president.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, or a tick tock briefing for the president.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: You know, but video I mean, what we saw in
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 2: Alabama and I know you have some some clips of this.
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 2: And I think if you feel like running one, there's
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: the level of depravity that's going on in our prison
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: system is so much higher. than the average person thinks
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: it is. And one of the reasons why we've seen
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 2: so much outrage from people, finally millions of people have
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: seen the Alabama Solution because people have HBO or they
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: have watched it in theater. And it's the first time
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: they've been able to see inside. It's the first time
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: they've been able to really see it as opposed to
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: reading a statistic about a lot of people die in
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 2: prison or whatever. And I think it does tap into
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: our sense of humanity and it taps into our sense
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: of community and the feeling that Like, I don't want
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: to be a part of that. I don't want to
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: be part of doing that to other people. You know,
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: I could be tough on crime. You know, we've shown
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: the film to a lot of conservative viewers, including one
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 2: of the founders of CPAC and various people who are,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: you know, pretty right-wing people and have said, look, I
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 2: might be tough on crime. That's not what I'm talking about.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 2: That's a human rights crisis. And where's the DOJ and
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 2: where's the government?
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: Doing anything to protect. Where are the inspectors? Yeah. How
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: are they allowing any of that? Yeah. You know. Well,
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: that's one of the great things about your documentary is
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: it's clear. I mean, there's no ambiguity at all. It's
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: like laid out there, full color. You could see the
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: blood on the ground. You could see, I mean, it's horrific.
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: When kinetic justice, when that guy's beaten in his cell
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: and you see how they dragged him out, face his
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: face down bleeding all they thought he was dead and
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: he managed to live and he's being dragged out and
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: you're following the blood trail from his cell with the
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: contraband cameras from the cell phones and had those cell
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: phone cameras not existed you'd have zero idea like if
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: those guards only decided to sell money bringing drugs in
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: and not not phones with cameras who knows what you
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: would know. You would know very little. Yeah. Yeah. And
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: it does.
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I would like to believe that
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 2: the average American does not want to harm the average
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: other American, you know, and even if you get hyped
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: up on Twitter or you get to see, you know,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: too many videos of people blowing up stuff or whatever,
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: ultimately people have that experience of saying, you know, I
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: went to that like coffee at the church and I
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: sat there with that guy who I've really can't stand. And,
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 2: you know, we ended up having a conversation, you know,
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: people are, are, they're kind of amazed at how much
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: commonality they can feel with people where if they just
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: see the person, I mean, we all know, like if
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: you text somebody, your kids or your wife or whatever,
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: there's just some places where texts are not good.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: It's not enough. It's not enough.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: It's going to make somebody's feelings hurt, you know? But
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: when you get to sit down across from somebody, you
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: realize that it's another person you can kind of relate to.
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: So it's really disturbing that whether it's social media or
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: just the demonization of people, the way that we just
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: turn people into these one-dimensional figures and then we can
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: just rage at them and just hate them.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: And distract yourself from your own problems. That's a big
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: part of it. People love something that takes the focus
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: away from whatever shortcomings they have or whatever things in
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: their life they don't like. They'll focus on external things.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: I know some people whose lives are completely fucked up
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: in so many ways. Their health is fucked up. Their
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: relationships are fucked up. Their job is fucked up. And
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: all they want to talk about is politics. Like, hey, man,
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: clean up your backyard. Clean up your life. Why are
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: you spending so much time paying attention to what's going
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: on with USAID? How much does that affect you? Does it?
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: Does it really affect you that much? All this fucking fraud. Right.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: But what about your life, man? Your life is a
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: fucking disaster. And all you care about is the government,
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: you know, and what they're doing to fuck the people over. Like,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's really the problem. I think you
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: you're getting in your own way, son. You know, and
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: that's a lot of people out there in this world.
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: And anything that you do to distract yourself, whether it's
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: start drinking, gamble, get on pills, whatever it is, people
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: find ways to distract themselves from whatever is wrong with
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: their life. And that's part of what social media is
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: providing you. It's providing this alternative avenue for your attention
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: to divert you from all the things that really are
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: making your life a fucking disaster. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: There's also that, I think sort of nuance falls into
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 2: that also because people are made calm by the idea
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: that they can just identify problems and that they're simple, right?
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 2: So if you say to somebody, hey, like locking people
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 2: up for 75 years probably doesn't make a lot of sense.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: That's complicated.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: Wait, now I got to make a determination of what's
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 2: the right thing to do with another person. And So
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: you end up with a lot of politicians who say, well,
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: I know. These are the bad people. These are the
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: good people. We've got to promote the good people and
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: get rid of the bad people. Not recognizing that everybody's
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: a little of both and that some people certainly do
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: a lot more bad stuff in the world than good
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: stuff and vice versa.
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: But you have to see yourself.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: As you're describing, you have to recognize what's happening in
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: your backyard in order for the community to work. You
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 2: can't say, well, look, I'm always right. My neighbor's always wrong.
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 2: And therefore, I'm just going to keep raging over this.
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: You have to say like, you know, I could see
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 2: myself doing something. I could see myself, boy, if I
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: really got out of hand, I could see myself having a,
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: you know, taking a swing at somebody. And it's probably
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: not a good thing. But I don't want to say
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 2: that somebody else that did it is automatically just a
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: horrible person. And that's why, you know, if you see
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: this attorney general in Alabama, you know, this idea that
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: He says there are these horrible people in the world,
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: people who have no respect for human life, and yet
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: he's presiding over 1,500 of them dying. But he doesn't
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 2: imagine that he's part of the problem.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: Respect for human life while human life is dying in
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: these places where people are taken if they show no
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: respect for human life. And they're being killed by the
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: people who are watching over them. Yeah.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: So it's a very topsy-turvy kind of world. And also
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: cruelty plays a part in it.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: We know that if you, sometimes we say about this
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 2: film that, you know, it's about what we do to
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: each other when no one's watching. Like, you know, all
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 2: human beings have a little bit of a propensity to
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: want to put a firecracker in a frog's mouth and
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: just see what happens. You know, there's a level of
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: cruelty that I think we have intrinsically.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: You certainly want to other a person, right? Absolutely.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: And that's, to some extent, why when it's exposed, right?
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: When there's transparency, when the press is allowed to report
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 2: on what's happening inside prisons, people kind of get a
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: conscience because they start realizing, eh, I wouldn't want to
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 2: do that in front of my kid, or I wouldn't
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: want to do that if it ends up in the paper.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to, you know, and I think that
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: is kind of a balancing effect, which is one of
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: the reasons why this like war on, you know, on,
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 2: on transparency is a it's a huge problem, right? We're
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: not allowed to see what's happening in prisons, even though
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 2: we're paying for them. And the Supreme Court had this
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: ruling that said that wardens could deny access to journalists
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 2: simply by citing safety and security. But meantime, in the
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 2: last 20 years, no journalist has been harmed inside a prison.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: So who's all the secrecy keeping.
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: Safe, right?
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: We're sort of perpetuating a system Our job going into
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 2: the Alabama state prison system was to shine a light
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: on that. It shouldn't be that these guys who are
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: incarcerated have to take life and death risks using contraband
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: cell phones to show what's happening in institutions that I'm
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 2: paying for and you're paying for. We're spending $ 116 billion
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: a year in the United States on prisons, jails, parole.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: That is an insane number.
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: And- if we're spending that much money, we should sort
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: of know what every one of those dollars is going to.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: And we should have watchdogs who will say, Hey, guess what?
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: In Alabama, they're supposed to be paying for a drug
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: treatment program. We don't know where the money's going. Right.
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Transparency is always good, especially in something like that.
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, to me, the idea of preventing journalists from it,
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: if almost as akin to these ag gag laws is,
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: that they've slapped in states that have factory farming to
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: prevent people from filming the horrific treatment of some of
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: these animals because they would be bad for business, which
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: is fucking crazy. It should be bad for business, and
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: people shouldn't tolerate it. They should take their business elsewhere,
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: which is what transparency is all about. You don't want
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: to buy chickens from a place that brutally beats their
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: chickens or pigs or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: And a lot of people say, oh, well, it's going
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: to upset. We don't need to upset the public. What
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 2: are you doing something for inside a slaughterhouse that would
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: upset the public? Like there are ways to, if you
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: want to euthanize an animal or something like that, there
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 2: are ways to do it where you're not using like
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: a bolt and smashing your skull with it.
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: Well, the bolt is actually the most humane way. It
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: instantaneously kills them. The other way is when they hang
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: them by their ankles and slip their neck. That's a
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: little rougher, but that's if you want kosher. There's a
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: lot of weird ways that they kill animals. But it's
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: really the beating and it's the horrific torture that the
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 1: cruel people that work there sometimes do. Because there's been
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: some videos that have been released of people like beating
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: animals with crowbars and stuff for no fucking reason. Just
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: sadistic sick people that just happen to work in these places.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: They become very accustomed to treating these animals badly just
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: like security guards become very accustomed to. treating prisoners badly.
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: It's kind of a one and the same lines. I
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: totally agree.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 2: And just imagine what would happen if, you know, what
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: if Tyson Foods or any of these companies, just the
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: policy was just, if the press wants to come in
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 2: and photograph and the press wants to come in and
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 2: write about it, they're allowed to come in once a
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 2: week or whatever and Just do whatever they want.
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: Well, it should be non-negotiable. It should be a part
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 1: of the ability to run a facility like that because
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 1: of the consequences. Because if you don't do that, there
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: is the potential for you being a horrific abuser of animals.
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: Of course. And nobody wants to buy your chicken or
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: your pork or whatever it is if you're doing that.
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: And we should know.
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: But like criminalizing taking video of animals being abused.
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: Crazy.
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: Like how could you justify that?
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: You would only do it if you value profit over ethics,
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: over morals. That's the only thing. If profit is more
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: important than educating people on the horrific nature of how
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: these animals are treated. If it's more important to you, well,
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: what's really important is we have cheap bacon. Okay. Yeah.
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 2: But it's like a big tapestry because the diffusion of
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 2: responsibility figures into it.
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 2: And the perverting effect of money figures into it.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: But it's a very, I mean, I think there's just
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: being accustomed to horrors. You know, I knew a guy
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: who worked at a slaughterhouse. And he told me, like,
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: you never get the smell of blood off of you.
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: And he goes, and you never get just like the
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: image of animals dying. He goes, you got to understand, like,
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: if you're working in a slaughterhouse, you're seeing who knows
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: how many thousands of cows die a week. Just thousands,
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 1: just thousands of death, constant death. Most farmers never saw that.
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: Like the way people used to raise animals for food,
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: you know, you would kill a cow and you would
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: eat it for six months. You know what I mean?
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: Like you could kill the occasional chicken. You weren't seeing
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: thousands of dead animals a week. You weren't like seeing
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: thousands of them get disemboweled a week. It's like after
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: a while, like, And you're in a factory. They're going
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: by on hooks on a conveyor belt. What are we doing?
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: This is crazy.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: I went to visit a prison.
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: I went sort of on a series of prison visits
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 2: in Berlin and Norway and a few other places. And
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 2: I was there with this sort of elderly woman that
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 2: was like a deputy commissioner, I think, in North Carolina
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 2: in the prison system, Virginia, Ginny.
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: And I loved her. She was so smart.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: And the first thing they do is they bring you
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 2: to a concentration camp. So they bring you to Sachsenhausen
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 2: before they take you to the prisons to see how
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: the prisons are run. And we're standing there in this
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: concentration camp with the guide. And the woman says, well,
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: this is where they would bring in the people on
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: the trains and then they would take them out. And
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 2: then this is where they would, you know, shave their
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 2: heads and then they would strip them down and they
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: would spray them with fire hoses and water, and then
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 2: they would put powder, disinfectant powder on them. They would
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 2: take away all of their, you know, any kind of
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 2: distinguishing marks that put them all in the same outfit.
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 2: And they would give them a number instead of their name.
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: They would be, you know, and everybody started looking at
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 2: it like very disturbed. And Ginny leans over to me
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: and she says, you know, Andrew, we do every one
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 2: of those things in our prisons today. And you realize
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: that this This dehumanization, this homogenization, this like making everybody
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: look the same is part of just desensitizing us to
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: what we're going to do to those people because they
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 2: just look like bad people because, you know, that's what
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 2: happens when you shave your head and you're pale and
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: you have the same outfit and you look like a convict.
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 1: You've turned them into another. Yeah. you've turned them into
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: and because of the tribal nature of ancient human civilization
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: we have almost like a deep-seated dna that allows us
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: to other people because those people were coming and they
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: were going to kill your tribal members and steal your
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: resources and do whatever they could to the survivors, and
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: it was all horrific. And so we have this thing
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: that we're able to do that allows us to attack
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 1: or to go after people and just to not think
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 1: of them as your brothers and sisters and neighbors and
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: fellow human beings sharing this wonderful spinning ball. No, these
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: are evil people. These are others. You kill them. These
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: are fill in the blank. These are the Japanese. These
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: are the Germans. These are the this. These are the that.
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: Whatever it is that we're at war with, Those are
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: the people that are not us and we kill them.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: And that's how you feel about prisoners. And then there's
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: the other side where you go too far the other
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: way and you have these crazy no cash bail policies
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: where you've got violent offenders in and out of jail constantly.
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: You've got people that have been arrested 40 times, pushing
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: old people in front of the train in New York City.
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: You've got people that are just like mentally ill, violent criminals,
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: punching women on the street in Seattle. And they just
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 1: keep getting out of jail. And you go, how is
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: this possible? How is this OK, too? Yeah. Because that's
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: not good either. Yeah, you can't.
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: But I think to the extent to the extent to
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: which we could get everybody, which only is going to
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: happen in little bits and little areas where we can
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 2: make an impact. But we're trying to say, well, look.
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 2: It shouldn't be that everybody who says that we shouldn't
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 2: be running our prison industrial complex the way we are
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 2: is soft on crime. It's okay to be tough on crime.
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 2: It's okay to recognize that some people need to be
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: separated out from society. But if it becomes so polarized,
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 2: then you get the progressive DA who, you know, there
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: are some very smart ones. And then you get some
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 2: who are just saying, well, you know, we just should
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 2: abolish prisons and therefore, you know, we don't need any
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 2: of this.
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: And that scares everybody.
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 2: And probably doesn't lead to any level because we all
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 2: want public safety. Like everybody wants to be serious about
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: public safety. That's different than being tough on crime.
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: Yes. Well, it's also like if you're not addressing the
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: root of crime, if you're not addressing the the again,
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: the same neighborhoods where it happens over and over and over.
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: You don't have this rampant crime that's developing in Beverly Hills, right?
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: It's all happening in these impoverished, gang-infested neighborhoods. Why has
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: there been no resources put into that? Imagine the amount
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: of return that you would get. I always say if
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: you want to make America great again, here's the best way.
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: Have less losers. How do you have less losers? Give
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: more people an opportunity to succeed. Well, it's not like
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 1: we're all at the same starting block. We all know that.
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: No one will say that. No one will say everybody's
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: at the same line and how you get by in
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: this life is depending upon how much work you put
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: in once you're at the line. Well, that's not true.
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: So how do we figure out these people that are
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: at the farthest end of the starting line, the most fucked?
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: Put some money into that. Fix that. Put some engineering
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: into that. Put some actual thought into trying to devise
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: some sort of a method to increase the odds of
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: having more productive people come out of these places and
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: give them hope. And you would have better neighbors. You'd
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: have more people that are thriving in whatever business, more
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: people that are artists, more people in the economy. The
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: world would be a better place. Like, why wouldn't you
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: invest in that? Well, because there's no money in it.
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: You have to spend money on it.
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 2: Or there's money in it, but nobody really wants to
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 2: do the work to figure out.
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 1: There's money in it, but you can't make that money.
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: They're going to make that money, right? You're going to
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: help people make money and it'll contribute to the GDP.
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 1: It'll contribute to the tax base, to the overall economy,
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: but it's not a business where you can like say, oh,
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: if I get into that business of helping people, I
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: can get rich. And that's the problem. Yeah.
• 2:02:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you try to make the, if every,
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: if the, if the, if the, you know, the ultimate
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: adjudicator of everything is whether it is turning a profit,
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 2: you know, you sort of race to the bottom, right?
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: Nobody really wants to do anything smart. They just want
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: to do things that enable them to get the most
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: money the quickest. But ultimately, right now, spending $ 116 billion
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: a year on our prison system, you know, we've got
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 2: 5% of the world's population, but we've got 20, 25%.
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: Of the world's prisoners. Crazy. Like this whole thing. Fucking wild.
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: What a wild statement. Yeah. It's incredible. That's a broken society.
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: Like if that's not evidence of a broken society, look,
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: not like it's better in some of these other places
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: that don't have a high percentage of people because they
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: just kill them. Like there's a lot of places where
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: you do something bad, they just kill you. There's no
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: thinking about, you know.
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 2: But I mean, in terms of like modern civilized society,
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 2: you know, we don't do this well.
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: No, we don't rehabilitate well. That's for damn sure.
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 2: And we don't, as you're saying, we don't invest in kids.
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: We don't, you know, like, how are we, how are
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 2: we in a situation where we are paying teachers so
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 2: little money that they have to use their own money
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: to buy books and school supplies. We're beating the shit
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: out of our teachers who are the people that are
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 2: going to turn our kids into part of our community.
• 2:04:06
  Speaker 2: How can we be surprised we don't have a community?
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like it's a conspiracy. I mean, you
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: realize why people slap that tinfoil hat on and tighten
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: it down with a chin. Because at a certain point,
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: why wouldn't we put more money into schools? It seems
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: kind of crazy. When you've got, like, in California, they've
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: got programs that, like, spend hundreds of billions of dollars
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: and go nowhere. Like, where's the railroad? You spend so
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: much money. Where's all the tiny houses? Didn't you guys
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: get hundreds of millions of dollars for tiny? Where the
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: fuck is the tiny houses? No tiny houses? It's like
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: not a one tiny house has been built. There's a
• 2:04:40
  Speaker 1: lot of that stuff, the 24 billion to the homeless,
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: the homeless people increase. Like, imagine if they put 24
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: billion into the education system. Guess what? you would probably
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: ultimately wind up with less homeless. If you put $ 24
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: billion into education and community centers, God, imagine the work
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 1: that you could do in California with $ 24 billion just
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: in education. California would have the greatest education system in
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: the country. If you just paid teachers an exorbitant amount
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: a month, amount a year, had fantastic oversight, these incredibly
• 2:05:15
  Speaker 1: well-structured education systems, great counseling, social workers that can help
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: work with kids, people that can give them productive ways
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: to expel some of this excess energy that they have,
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: figure out how to focus, figure out what kind of
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: jobs they maybe excel at based on their personality type,
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: educate them towards that. You could get a lot done.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: You could get so much done with $ 24 billion. Instead,
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 1: it just disappears like Kaiser Sosae. There's fucking, no one
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: knows where it went. There's no accountability. They veto. Everybody
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: tries to put an audit on it. Yep. Right.
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 2: How did Alabama's prisons go from $ 300 million for one
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 2: to 1.3 billion?
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: And they described it as inflation. And no one's like,
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: no one's investigated. No one's going to jail. No one, like,
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: fuck you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's, and I think that when you say
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 2: it's a conspiracy, I really believe that You know, conspiracies
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 2: do not have to include people in dark back rooms, right?
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 2: It's very often just everybody sitting around the table. Everybody
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 2: knows what the motivation is. And they just go, OK,
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 2: I'll do the thing. You do the thing. There's not
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 2: nobody has to be rubbing their hands together and having
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: secret meetings. They all know what's in their financial interest. Well, clearly,
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 2: if you.
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 1: Beat prisoners to death and then lie about it and
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 1: you all agree that you're going to lie about it,
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: you're conspiring, right? Yeah. I mean that happens obviously all
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: the time. Clearly. Meetings like that all the time. Clearly.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: But I think there's an insidious element to the fact
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 2: that people are agreeing that $ 24 billion should be spent
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 2: on X, Y, or Z. Nobody really needs to get
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 2: like a secret memo saying how they're going to steal
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 2: that money. Like they just go, oh, okay, in Alabama,
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 2: what now? We're allowed to spend $ 1. 3 billion on one prison?
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 1: Great. Okay. Okay.
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm not personally taking the $ 1. 3. You know, I'm
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 2: not personally taking the billion-dollar overage myself.
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: But, you know, it's going into the system the way that,
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: you know, there was an overage. Well, your first red
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: flag is they start construction before the deal is even signed.
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: They already start. So the fix is in. They know
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: what's going on. Look, I grew up in Boston, and
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: Boston was a part of the most corrupt construction site
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: in the history of the country, the Big Dig. Big Dig, right.
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: fucking thing was supposed to take. Like, I don't know
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 1: how long it was supposed to take, but it went
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: on long after I moved out and then came back
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: to Boston, like 10 years later, it was still going on.
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: I'm like, this is crazy. Yeah. And by the time
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: it did it, the population in Boston increased. So it
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: didn't even really alleviate traffic. But there's always going to
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: be stuff like that. If you have no oversight or
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: if you have people that can figure out a way
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: to inflate this and add on to that, next thing
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 1: you know it.
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 2: Well, the press is extremely important, which is why government,
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 2: this government or prior government, they don't like the press.
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: Nobody likes getting in trouble because the press does when
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 2: it operates at its best. And when you have the
• 2:08:28
  Speaker 2: people that are able to make a living being journalists
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 2: and you're not firing everybody who's a good investigative reporter,
• 2:08:35
  Speaker 2: then that should be, it's one of the reasons why
• 2:08:37
  Speaker 2: the country was founded in that way, why freedom of
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 2: the press is so important, is because it's the only disinfectant.
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 2: It's the only way. And it doesn't mean people don't
• 2:08:47
  Speaker 2: use the press in malevolent ways or people don't bullshit
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 2: in the press, but people bullshit everything.
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: But like the public kind of has a sense or
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 2: at least used to have a sense and hopefully will again, uh,
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 2: that when somebody does an investigative story and they are
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 2: able to produce the facts and figure out who's really
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 2: responsible for a certain kind of corruption, that it reduces
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: the corruption just as the case, you know? And it's like,
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 2: you can't really regulate it or you can regulate it,
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 2: but if you regulate it, nobody's paying attention to it.
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 2: then the press has to identify that people are breaking
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 2: the rules. The DOJ right now is supposed to be
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 2: the monitor of making sure that government institutions and others
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 2: don't defy the constitution, right? So in Alabama, clearly, every
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: time you see one of these events that happens in
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 2: our film, those are all crimes. Those are being committed
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 2: by a state actor by a prison guard, right? Those
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 2: are crimes being committed against our fellow citizens. The fact
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 2: that some of these people are incarcerated doesn't mean they're
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 2: also supposed to be killed or maimed, right? And so
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 2: who really monitors.
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: That is the U.S.
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 2: Department of Justice, because at the end of the day,
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 2: their job is to maintain a constitutional.
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: Level of care.
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 2: And it's not, by the way, that's not that great, right?
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: It's like you have to make sure that there's no
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 2: cruel and unusual punishment. Well, clearly in Alabama, there is.
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: Well, they started starving them which is really crazy during
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: the strike they were giving them like a tiny ration
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah they kept shrinking no food for days yeah and.
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 2: So the DOJ's job is to do that what was
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 2: the DOJ doing you know a few years back is
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 2: they were doing a kind of a sort of an
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 2: okay job pursuing just the worst actors the worst of
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 2: the worst so they would find a police station that
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 2: was just regularly harming people in its jails arresting people
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 2: for no reason you know They were finding prison systems
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 2: where people were getting murdered, like in Alabama, and that
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 2: was going okay. Well, that whole civil rights division of
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 2: the DOJ is now basically gone, right? It's been totally repurposed.
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 2: So now it's dealing with reverse racism and various.
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: Things like that.
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 2: But they're not doing those other cases anymore. They don't
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 2: care about what's happening in a police department or what's
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 2: happening in a– so you don't even have that level
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 2: of scrutiny.
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: When did all this change?
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 2: I mean I think most recently you've seen the DOJ
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 2: just dismantle the Civil Rights Division. So that's been in
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 2: the current administration.
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: And the Civil Rights Division was in charge of looking
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: at the prisons? Yeah. So what have they done during
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: the last four years before that?
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 2: They also didn't do a great job, but they did
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 2: bring actions that had impact in a bunch of different states. So,
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 2: for example, they sued the state of Alabama, which happened
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 2: under the first Trump administration, actually. The case against Alabama
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 2: started under Obama. Then under Trump, Jeff Sessions had to
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 2: approve the issuance of these letters, these findings letters. And
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 2: then they had, when Alabama said, you know, take a hike,
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 2: you're wrong. We don't agree. We're not going to make
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 2: a consent decree. We're not going to settle. Then they
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 2: had to sue them. So that happened under Jeff Sessions.
• 2:12:19
  Speaker 2: And that was now, you know, two administrations ago. The
• 2:12:24
  Speaker 2: Trump administration brought this action. But it's just being dragged
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 2: on and dragged on. And now the DOJ doesn't really
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 2: care about this kind of litigation. So the people that
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 2: were running it are gone, all those people.
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 1: Well, I have to also imagine that there are so
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: many cases. And if the press was allowed to weekly,
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: if there was weekly access the press had to these
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: correction facilities all over the country, the amount of cases
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: would be fucking extraordinary. But because they've been allowed to
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: hide because they've been allowed to do this stuff in
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 1: complete secrecy with total control over whether or not things
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: get released or don't get released. It's become just a
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: part of the system. It's like standard operational procedure. And it's,
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: I mean. But the cases would go down, right?
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: As soon as you can see it. They would have to.
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 2: If you're beating people in your care, if you're a
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 2: prison guard like Roderick Gadsen and you've had 24 cases
• 2:13:23
  Speaker 2: of excessive force.
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 2: It's sport for them. You know, you would say at
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 2: one point, well, this is not working so great for me.
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 2: So I want to at least behave somewhat better.
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: Of course. Well, I think your film was probably the
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: first time most people ever got a chance to see.
• 2:13:42
  Speaker 1: And I would hope that your film and then also
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: this conversation and the other ones that you've been having
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: will move this conversation in a different direction where people
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: start talking about it openly where they're forced to do
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: something because it seems like you have to force them
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: to act and they're probably dealing with so many other
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: cases as well this is just another burden to them
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: and if it's the prisoners oh well that's the least
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 1: priority situation we have to deal with these people are
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 1: bad people they're in jail like those the radio people
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: that you used their voices like it's god it's like
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: shut the fuck up like you're listening to them as
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: a person who's had multiple podcasts with people that were
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: wrongfully convicted. I've done a ton of them with my
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: friend Josh Dubin, who was originally with the Innocence Project,
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 1: and he's now with the Ike Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice.
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 1: It's like his passion project is, besides being a successful
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 1: attorney outside of that, his passion project is finding these
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 1: very obvious cases of people that were wrongfully convicted that
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 1: have spent a giant chunk of their life in jail.
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 1: And through these podcasts, we've gotten a bunch of these
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: people out. And you've got a chance to have conversations
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: with them. I've had a few on here. And you
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 1: have these conversations with these people and you realize, like,
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: these are brilliant people who lost a giant chunk of
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: their potential to nonsense. Yeah.
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 2: And I think if it's, first of all, I think
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 2: Josh is really smart and I know you've done a
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 2: lot with him. And I think that's so important. There's,
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 2: you know, there's always a tendency to sort of Think
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 2: of only wrongful convictions because, you know, everybody can agree
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 2: that we shouldn't be locked up for something that we
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 2: didn't do.
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: We've had people on that weren't wrongfully convicted that did
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: an extraordinary amount of time for a minor crime. Right.
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: But unfortunately, one of them wind up getting out and
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: then killing a guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cutting off his
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: head and wearing a wig. He didn't– I guess he
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 1: didn't know what the new cameras could do. Which is funny,
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: but also not funny. So basically you're saying it's a
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: technology problem. He didn't understand the technology he was dealing
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: with because he put on a wig and he thought, oh,
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: I'm going to look like a woman. Like, bro, it
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: was like HD. It's you with a wig. He was
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: learning from Bob Durst. Yeah. Well, I think he, you know,
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: he probably acted out of passion and then was trying
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to rectify this problem that he created.
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 2: But one thing I want to talk, I haven't met Josh,
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 2: but I want to talk to him. And one thing
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 2: I want to talk to him about is the fact
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 2: that There's like a level of conviction on the part
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 2: of a lot of prosecutors that they're on the– as
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 2: you're saying, they're like– they're on that team. And therefore,
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 2: they have to subscribe to everybody's guilty. Everybody should be
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 2: locked up for as long as possible because there are
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 2: all these other people that are defense lawyers and people
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 2: like that who are on the other team. But then
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 2: you end up with people like Steve Marshall who, by
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 2: the way, is running for Senate. right now and we're
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 2: pushing to get him to step down from his Senate
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 2: run because, you know, he's sort of been exposed for
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 2: what he's... And by the way, he said that he
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 2: had never been in the film.
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: He'd never met me.
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 2: He just came out with a whole public statement saying
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 2: I had nothing to do with those people.
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: I never met them.
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 2: I got like 50 pictures in my phone of him
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 2: walking me around the state house in Alabama. You know,
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 2: there's a missing piece there, but.
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: That's being very charitable. But why is it that... I'm
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 1: a charitable person.
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 2: But why is it that in Alabama, for example, there's
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 2: a guy named Tafaris Johnson who was arrested for a
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 2: murder a million years ago. He's been on death row
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 2: the entire time. And the evidence against him totally fell apart.
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 2: There are a dozen people that gave him an alibi
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 2: that said we were with him at this club that
• 2:17:36
  Speaker 2: was across town. He had nothing to do with this crime.
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 2: And yet– and by the way, the DA who– that
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 2: office is the office that should prosecute that crime. They've
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 2: asked for a new trial. They've said that they're not
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 2: confident that he's guilty. And yet the attorney general's office
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 2: is continuing to try to execute him. They're trying to
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 2: kill him for something which he clearly did not do.
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 2: There's another case, a guy named Chris Barber, where there's
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 2: DNA evidence that showed that somebody else committed the crime
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 2: and the DA is trying to execute Christopher Barber. And so,
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 2: you know, there's this teaming, you know, where you become
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 2: a part of law enforcement and then somehow you lose
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 2: your sense of judgment or nuance, your ability to decide
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 2: who's guilty and who's not guilty. And that's a really
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 2: dangerous thing because.
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: Because your career depends on you getting a win. Your
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: career advances if you get a win. The way you
• 2:18:35
  Speaker 1: get a win is convict people. And not getting convictions overturned,
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 1: that's a loss. That fucks up your career. So better
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: to kill them. Yeah. Which is really crazy. Yeah.
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's disturbing that we haven't come up with
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 2: ways to identify fairness, right? That fairness should be the
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 2: method by which you judge how a district attorney performs.
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, we decided to prosecute a certain number
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 2: of cases. Some of those cases weren't worth prosecuting. Some
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 2: of those cases were going to turn into wrongful convictions.
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 2: We're not just going to prosecute everything, which is why
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 2: this whole thing about like Brady material where you're supposed
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 2: to give the other side anything that comes out in
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 2: the investigation that might be used to prove their innocence.
• 2:19:23
  Speaker 2: You know, if there's something that goes against the criminal case,
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 2: you have to provide it to the lawyer on the
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 2: other side. But regularly, prosecutors just bury this information. You
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 2: have some witness that said, I was with that person
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 2: at the time, and that witness's testimony disappears. Or you
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 2: have something that shows that the gun that they thought
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 2: was used to commit the crime wasn't the one that
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 2: was used to commit the crime. So that's the thing,
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 2: the teaming, the decision that you have to be part
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 2: of one side or another. I really think that that
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 2: part of your special where you're sort of like, putting
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 2: me in the position of somebody who's having to make
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 2: a decision about what team I'm on and where I
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 2: lose the thread. That's a very significant thing that you
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 2: did there because it was like a way of bringing
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 2: to the average citizen that feeling that they're all having
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 2: right now.
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you all get lumped into it. Everybody gets lumped
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: into it because there's only two choices in this country,
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: and that's stupid. Or you could be one of those
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: wacky libertarians. You know, and then you're like, oh, Bob's
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: a libertarian. He's out of his fucking mind. That shit's
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: never going to work. You know, what else you get?
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm always, I'm always curious about.
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 2: I'm always asking myself what I should be, you know,
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 2: what I should be spending my time on. And I
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 2: get involved in a film and it kind of grabs
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 2: you and it could- How do you decide?
• 2:20:44
  Speaker 1: Hold of you. I feel like it decides.
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 2: You know, I feel like I'm just sort of walking
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 2: around thinking- Maybe I don't need to make another one
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 2: of these things.
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: They're very exhausting.
• 2:20:55
  Speaker 2: You know, and then something happens or, you know, my
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 2: shrink says to me, yeah, I know you always say
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 2: you're not going to make another movie, but I think
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 2: you're better when you're making a movie. I think you're
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 2: better when you're engaged in something like this. And I'm
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 2: curious for, you know, you've built this incredible platform and
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 2: you have access to just a remarkable number of people
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 2: in the universe. And what do you feel like your
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 2: mission is? What do you feel like is the, you know,
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 2: when you get to the end of a week and
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 2: you look back and you think like, I did what
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 2: I was, I did what I set out to do
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 2: this week.
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 1: All I ever do is try to talk to people
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: I'm interested in talking to. And that's it. And I
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 1: feel like that's what I started with. And that's what
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: I stuck with. And if I deviate from that path,
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: if I say, Oh, I'll get this guy on because
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: he's famous and then I'll get more views. Or I'll
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: get her on because she's controversial and I'll get more views.
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: I don't think like that at all. I don't allow
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: it into my head. I get a list of people
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: on my phone that are interested in coming on the show.
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: And I spend a couple hours, a few times a week,
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 1: just going over this list. And then I'll go, hmm.
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 1: That's interesting. Let me look into this. And so then
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: I'll do a search on this person and what they're
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 1: interested in. And then maybe I'll watch a documentary or
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: I'll get an audio book and I'll start listening to
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: it on the way to work. And then I'll decide
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: and I'll go, yeah, okay. I like this. This is cool.
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: I'm into this. This would be a conversation that I'll
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: be genuinely curious about. And so that's the only way
• 2:22:41
  Speaker 1: I do it. And I've done it that way from
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: the very beginning. I either talk to my friends. Or
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: I talk to people who I've seen a documentary that
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: they did or read one of their books or I've
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 1: watched a YouTube video with them and I thought they
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: were fascinating. And then I reach out to my guy
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: and I say, hey, can you see if this guy's
• 2:22:59
  Speaker 1: interested in being on? And that's the only way I
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: do it. So I feel like as long as I
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: do that, I will continue to give people the same service.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: And this service is. This is an extension of my curiosity,
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 1: my honest curiosity to the world. So whoever I'm honestly
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: curious about, sit them down, talk to them, do my best.
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 1: That's it. And if I try to make anything more
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: than that, if I try to change it or distort
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: it or move it in a general direction or make
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 1: it have a message or make it make more money
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: or whatever it is, I'll fuck it up. That's what
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 2:23:41
  Speaker 2: I think that's really smart. And I think, you know,
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 2: this is what's lacking is sort of authenticity. And everybody's like, oh,
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 2: authenticity is so important. How can I manufacture that?
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: Right. And I think your approach is really smart.
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 2: I also think, you know, I think you talked about
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 2: that you really like playing pool and that if you
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 2: weren't doing this, you.
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 1: Might just play pool all day. Yeah, that's what I
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: would do. I like playing pool.
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 2: But I'm wondering, like, you know, something's keeping you from
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 2: playing pool right now.
• 2:24:10
  Speaker 1: Well, I still enjoy this. If I didn't enjoy this,
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 1: I would stop. Like I don't need any more money.
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: I could just stop if I didn't enjoy it. But
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 1: I do enjoy it. I am a very curious person.
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by different people's perspectives, how they view the world,
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: how they got to where they are, what was their
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 1: first step, like why they make these choices. Like what
• 2:24:29
  Speaker 1: is it about the way they think that makes them unique?
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 1: And I don't think I'm ever going to lose that.
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 1: I think that's a very important part of my understanding
• 2:24:39
  Speaker 1: of us as a species. Us as a civilization, and
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: I'm very fascinated with the history of the human race
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: and how we got to this point and where we
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 1: are and how we define what is normal and what
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: is not normal and what our standards are and how
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: they get manipulated. I don't think I'm ever going to
• 2:24:59
  Speaker 1: stop being curious about those things. I may stop doing
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: this publicly. I will never stop being curious. I'll never
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 1: stop watching all these documentaries or reading books or I
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 1: don't think I'll ever stop trying to have conversations with people,
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: even if I don't do it publicly. Because it's, I mean,
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: this is totally accidental. I don't know if you know
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 1: the history of this podcast. It started out with me
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 1: and my friends just bullshitting in front of a laptop.
• 2:25:24
  Speaker 1: And there was no expectations. It made no money for years.
• 2:25:29
  Speaker 1: And then it just kind of grew. And I never
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: promoted it. I never went on anywhere and said, please
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: watch my show. I never took an ad out anywhere.
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 1: I just kept doing it. And it just snowballed to
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: the point where I'm like, all right. And now I
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 1: just feel like I have this responsibility. And I get
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 1: up and I go, all right, I got to do
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: this thing today. Let me clear my mind first. So
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: I go to the gym and I work out and
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: I get in the cold plunge and I get in
• 2:25:55
  Speaker 1: the sauna and I clear my mind out. And then
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 1: I'm like, make sure I'm prepared and just show up
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 1: at work. Yeah.
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 2: I notice that you're not– like you don't look at shit.
• 2:26:05
  Speaker 2: You don't look at your phone. No, you can't do that.
• 2:26:08
  Speaker 1: That distracts people. I totally agree. It's very– It's gross. Yeah.
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: Especially if you're talking to someone that has something really
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 1: important to say. I mean if I'm looking at my
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: phone for a brief second, it's because it's something relevant
• 2:26:20
  Speaker 1: to what we are talking about. I want to send
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 1: it to Jamie so he can pull it up on
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 1: the screen. But I think it's one of the great
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 1: benefits of having these long conversations with people online. on
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: a podcast is that that's time where you're not staring
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 1: at a fucking device. And most people lack that. So
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 1: I've gotten this completely unexpected education in life, in human
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: beings and how they think and what drives them and
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 1: just what, what makes them interesting.
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 2: And, you know, how does it, how does it impact
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 2: like your, your, you have girl, you have two girls, three,
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 2: you have three girls. How, how does it impact sort
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 2: of how you interact with them? You feel like you,
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 2: you learn something and then.
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah i'm a way more educated person than i ever
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: was when i was younger i'm just um i just
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: know more about humans i know more about myself i
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: i've just you know you're thinking and you're constantly thinking
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: so it's just adding to this database of understanding that
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: you have about human beings and about just life in
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: general and just education and you know um Unfortunately, my
• 2:27:25
  Speaker 1: kids are really smart. And so I have these cool
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 1: conversations with them about stuff. And, you know, one of
• 2:27:30
  Speaker 1: my kids has this crazy recall that my wife insists
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 1: comes from me. She's, it's nuts. Like she can recall
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: things about the Titanic and specifics about like the, the voyages.
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: Cause she's, she's got down this Titanic kick for a while,
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 1: you know, and lately we've been talking about the Mongols
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 1: because they're, there's, she's studying Genghis Khan in school. And
• 2:27:51
  Speaker 1: so we had these long conversations about Mongols and, and
• 2:27:54
  Speaker 1: what they did, and I'm telling her some stuff that
• 2:27:57
  Speaker 1: she doesn't know, and she tells me some stuff that
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: I didn't know. I'm like, whoa. How old is she?
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: This one's 15. So it impacts not just my relationship
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: with them, but really my relationship with everybody in my life.
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: And what's really hard is talking to people that aren't
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: interested in anything and don't engage with all these different things.
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: And then when you talk to them, it's like they're
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 1: operating on this– that's like time and work and life
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: is sort of ground down all their sensitivity and calloused
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 1: all of their senses to the world or their thoughts
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 1: of the world, their perspectives of the world. And they've
• 2:28:42
  Speaker 1: developed these sort of placeholder opinions for things. And it's
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 1: so awkward. And, you know, and over time, like, you know,
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: Tony Robbins talked about this once, that if you make
• 2:28:54
  Speaker 1: small changes in your life, like if you're both going
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 1: in parallel lines, right, and then you make a small deviation,
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: a few degrees to the right, over time, you'll be
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 1: way over here where they're kind of on the same path.
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: And that's what I find in life that's weird. And
• 2:29:11
  Speaker 1: then I think about how many people don't have the
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 1: opportunity to do that because they have a job that's
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 1: like mundane and it's consuming. And they're involved in it
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: all day long. When they get done, they're exhausted. And
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 1: they never really satisfy their curiosity or encourage and engage
• 2:29:27
  Speaker 1: with their curiosity. Foster it, you know. And it's what
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 1: to me makes people fascinating. When I talk to someone
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 1: who's curious about things and it's really like and it
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: went down a while. I was curious. So then I
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 1: started researching. And this is what I found out. Like
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: that's the kind of person I want to talk to,
• 2:29:46
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah.
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's also, you know, you're probably
• 2:29:51
  Speaker 2: because it got big without a plan to get big.
• 2:29:56
  Speaker 1: And because I think you're the essence of it is
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 1: wanting to.
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 2: Express curiosity, wanting to take in information. How do you
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 2: deal with the people who say like, oh, you know,
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 2: you had so and so on. You should have asked
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 2: them this or you should have.
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 1: I don't know that they're saying that because you don't
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: hear it or I don't pay attention. I gave up
• 2:30:17
  Speaker 1: on that years ago. Like, fuck off. Because you used
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 1: to follow. Yeah, and you realize, like, oh, I'm at
• 2:30:22
  Speaker 1: the will of other people's opinions constantly. And some of
• 2:30:25
  Speaker 1: them aren't logical. And some of them are petty. And
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 1: some of them are shitty. They're just shitty people. They're mean. Like,
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: why are you being mean for no reason? Like, you know,
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 1: why are you being insulting for no reason? And a
• 2:30:35
  Speaker 1: lot of it is jealousy. They're not getting enough attention.
• 2:30:38
  Speaker 1: They think you're an idiot. Why are you getting so
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: much attention? I'm brilliant. I should be getting more attention.
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of that. There's a lot of ego involved.
• 2:30:45
  Speaker 1: But there's a lot of, like, very should be nice.
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 1: Like just people with shitty perspectives and you don't want
• 2:30:55
  Speaker 1: to engage with that. You don't want that in your
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: head because I think that's contagious. And that's why people
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 1: that are constantly surrounded by negative, shitty people, they develop negative,
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 1: shitty tendencies. It's just, we imitate our atmosphere, which is
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 1: why like this idea of pulling yourself up by your
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: bootstraps is so fucking crazy. When you're asking some kid
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 1: whose dad's been in jail since he was three and
• 2:31:19
  Speaker 1: lives in a crime-infested neighborhood and has 11 kids living
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 1: in a one-bedroom apartment, and you're saying, well, how come
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 1: you went to jail? Shut the fuck up, bitch. You
• 2:31:29
  Speaker 1: would have went to jail too if you lived there.
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: What we need to do is figure out why are
• 2:31:33
  Speaker 1: these kids in this situation? Why are so many of
• 2:31:36
  Speaker 1: our citizens, people of our community, stuck in these situations
• 2:31:40
  Speaker 1: with no attention paid to it whatsoever? And then you're
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 1: wondering why so many people commit crimes. You're wondering why
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: your prisons are so full. When you engage with people
• 2:31:51
  Speaker 1: that constantly have shitty perspectives and shitty– a little about that,
• 2:31:55
  Speaker 1: a little when you're young is good. But once you're–
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: by the time you're like 19, 20, you know what
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: an asshole is. You don't want assholes in your life.
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: You like– avoid at all costs. And online, if you're
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: engaging with people online– You're getting at least 10% assholes.
• 2:32:12
  Speaker 1: It's like there's no way of avoiding it. So I
• 2:32:14
  Speaker 1: don't pay attention. And it gets in your head. Yeah,
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 1: it gets in your head. I am probably as critical,
• 2:32:20
  Speaker 1: like logically critical, as anybody is ever going to be
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: about me. Like in what I do and the way
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: I do it and like interviews that went well or
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: didn't go well. I examine them. You know, I think
• 2:32:31
  Speaker 1: about it. Like when they're done, like, oh, that was like.
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: I should have stopped him from talking about that because
• 2:32:37
  Speaker 1: I should have said like, wait, that doesn't make sense.
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: You let people ramble a little bit too much and
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 1: then they change subjects. You want to go back to
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: it and then something else comes up and you lose like, ah,
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 1: I should have really challenged that a little bit more
• 2:32:49
  Speaker 1: or I should have done this or should have done that. But,
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: you know, you're, you're free balling. You don't know what,
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 1: I don't have any like questions I know I'm going
• 2:32:58
  Speaker 1: to ask. I just have an understanding of the subject
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 1: and I let it play out. And I think that's
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: why it's good. I just think when you listen to people,
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: when I know you grew up in blah, blah, blah.
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 1: You did this. You did that. It's like the same tone.
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 1: These are just questions. Then the person answers the question.
• 2:33:15
  Speaker 1: And then another question comes like you're not having a conversation.
• 2:33:19
  Speaker 1: And I don't think of them as interviews. I think
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 1: of them as conversations. And I think that's what I
• 2:33:24
  Speaker 1: want to hear. So that's what I do. And if
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 1: people are like, well, you should have done this and
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 1: ask them, it's like, no, you should go get a
• 2:33:29
  Speaker 1: fucking podcast, bitch. Make your own podcast and then get
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 1: popular enough where you can get that person on. Then
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 1: you ask them that. I'm going to ask them what
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 1: I ask them. And when I'm done, I'm done. That's it. Yeah.
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, I haven't, you know, I do interviews for
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 2: when I'm doing documentaries. I'll do an interview for seven, eight,
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 2: nine hours at a time. Not that I suggest you
• 2:33:50
  Speaker 2: do it, but. The reason I do it is because
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 2: I want to converse. I want to really understand the
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 2: other person. I want to give myself time to really
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 2: hear them out. And also, to some extent, the most
• 2:34:03
  Speaker 2: interesting stuff comes out when everybody just feels comfortable and
• 2:34:07
  Speaker 2: their defenses go down.
• 2:34:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Elon was talking about that. He's like, that's
• 2:34:11
  Speaker 1: that last hour. The last hour, you can really get them.
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: Because it's hard for, especially if someone has an agenda. Yeah.
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 1: After a while, you're talking to them. The tendencies, the
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 1: way they view the world comes out. If I really
• 2:34:26
  Speaker 1: want to know how someone feels about love or life,
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 1: I want to ask them how they got to where
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 1: they are in life. How they became who they are.
• 2:34:36
  Speaker 1: Give them a chance to brag. Give them a chance
• 2:34:38
  Speaker 1: to inflate their accomplishments. Give them a chance to pat
• 2:34:45
  Speaker 1: themselves on the back. Give them a chance to dismiss
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: other people's accomplishments give them a chance you'll find out
• 2:34:52
  Speaker 1: who people are without even pressing them on certain things
• 2:34:55
  Speaker 1: yeah no they want to tell you they are they
• 2:34:57
  Speaker 1: really yeah and they also like a lot of people
• 2:35:00
  Speaker 1: they have a they have an agenda you know they
• 2:35:03
  Speaker 1: really want to project something to the world and then
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 1: there's people that don't those people are amazing there's some
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 1: people that come in they're just open books they're just
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 1: like just a mind a curious person just a person
• 2:35:15
  Speaker 1: who followed a path, an artist, a singer, a comedian,
• 2:35:18
  Speaker 1: a this, a that, an athlete, like whatever it is,
• 2:35:21
  Speaker 1: like what made you, you, how'd you get there?
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 2: That's why I love comedy so much because, you know,
• 2:35:27
  Speaker 2: just listen, there's a joke in, in pumping mics, this
• 2:35:31
  Speaker 2: little series that we did with Jeff, you know, Jeff
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 2: Ross and David tell, and I, I got to watch,
• 2:35:37
  Speaker 2: you know, six versions of Dave.
• 2:35:39
  Speaker 1: It was just incredible.
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 2: Telling, they're both great, but Dave telling the same joke
• 2:35:45
  Speaker 2: like six different times.
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 2:35:47
  Speaker 2: Because we filmed it over like a long weekend and
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 2: we did two shows a night at the Cellar. And
• 2:35:52
  Speaker 2: so he's got this line when he says, they're talking
• 2:35:55
  Speaker 2: about like in memoriam, you know, people we lost. And
• 2:35:59
  Speaker 2: they talk about Stephen Hawking. And Dave says, yeah, Steve Hawking,
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 2: the great astrophysicist, you know, we lost him. And Jeff
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 2: says that. And Dave says, He says, yeah, I knew
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 2: something happened because my printer stopped working. And for some reason, like,
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 2: this joke makes people, so many people laughed at this
• 2:36:22
  Speaker 2: joke because it's so insanely, like, impulsive, right? I knew
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 2: Stephen Hawking died because my printer stopped working. And the
• 2:36:31
  Speaker 2: next night, he did a different version of it where
• 2:36:33
  Speaker 2: he said, oh, because my computer stopped working. And it
• 2:36:36
  Speaker 2: got no laughs at all. And just being able to
• 2:36:39
  Speaker 2: see the spontaneity and the unlocked quality of Dave's mind.
• 2:36:44
  Speaker 1: The tweaking of the joke.
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 2: But also just the freedom, which maybe some of that
• 2:36:50
  Speaker 2: for some people comes with being stoned. But I see
• 2:36:56
  Speaker 2: the feeling, like in your comedy special, the feeling that
• 2:37:00
  Speaker 2: it's coming in the moment, even though I know a
• 2:37:02
  Speaker 2: lot of those things are things that you've been thinking about,
• 2:37:04
  Speaker 2: talking about, and honing over a lot of years. It's
• 2:37:07
  Speaker 2: the moment when it feels like it's coming naturally. That's
• 2:37:12
  Speaker 2: where like the biggest laughs are. It's also like where
• 2:37:15
  Speaker 2: the biggest connection, the biggest human connection is.
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where the dance is. The dance is like
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 1: staying in the moment no matter how many times you've
• 2:37:22
  Speaker 1: talked about a subject. Don't think about that. Think about
• 2:37:25
  Speaker 1: the actual subject. You're basically doing like a form of hypnosis.
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 1: you're leading people to think the way your mind is
• 2:37:33
  Speaker 1: working and the only way you can do that is
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 1: if your mind is actually thinking that way if you're
• 2:37:38
  Speaker 1: thinking about some other stuff for some reason even if
• 2:37:40
  Speaker 1: you're saying the words the exact same way they can
• 2:37:43
  Speaker 1: smell it on you they can tell well hey man Um,
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 1: thank you for everything you've done. Thank you for the
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 1: jinx and thank you for the Alabama solution. Cause it's
• 2:37:54
  Speaker 1: really awesome. And I really hope that, um, through that film,
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of people get outraged and the right people
• 2:38:04
  Speaker 1: and a lot enough attention gets put on it where
• 2:38:07
  Speaker 1: you force people to do something about it. And I
• 2:38:10
  Speaker 1: don't think people have any idea how bad these fucking
• 2:38:12
  Speaker 1: prisons are until they see that. Yeah. And I think
• 2:38:15
  Speaker 1: those contraband phones and what those inmates have done and
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 1: the inmates themselves through the way they conduct themselves and
• 2:38:23
  Speaker 1: when you can see how intelligent these people are and
• 2:38:26
  Speaker 1: that you realize like this is not right. None of
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 1: this is right. This is– I mean on the positive
• 2:38:33
  Speaker 1: side I would say just so.
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 2: We don't end on a really negative note, the– Film
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 2: has had an impact in Alabama. It's having an impact
• 2:38:44
  Speaker 2: in Alabama already. And there are incredible demonstrations that have
• 2:38:48
  Speaker 2: been happening. There's actually, I don't know if you have it,
• 2:38:51
  Speaker 2: there's a still of this if you want to look
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 2: at it, but there's hundreds of people showed up on
• 2:38:55
  Speaker 2: the steps of the Capitol. People really showing up with
• 2:39:00
  Speaker 2: the intention of showing their loved ones being there and saying,
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 2: this is really happening and giving the rest of the
• 2:39:06
  Speaker 2: public permission to to understand that this is, you know,
• 2:39:09
  Speaker 2: 45% of Americans have had an incarcerated relative or been incarcerated.
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 2: This is an infection. This is happening in many, many,
• 2:39:18
  Speaker 2: many places. So for us, the film has been unlocking that,
• 2:39:22
  Speaker 2: giving people a feeling that they're not alone, that they
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 2: don't have to be ashamed of having somebody. So, you know,
• 2:39:30
  Speaker 2: these are people who've seen the film, who've decided that
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 2: they want to express themselves. And this is happening more
• 2:39:36
  Speaker 2: and more. And we just saw there was a bipartisan
• 2:39:39
  Speaker 2: bill that was just introduced by Senator Larry Stutz, who's
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 2: a Republican senator, who said he saw the film.
• 2:39:48
  Speaker 1: He couldn't unsee it.
• 2:39:49
  Speaker 2: And he said this is not– he wrote an op-ed
• 2:39:52
  Speaker 2: about it not being an example of Christian values and
• 2:39:56
  Speaker 2: He introduced this bipartisan bill for prison oversight, which is
• 2:39:59
  Speaker 2: a real bill.
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 1: It's not a bullshit bill. It's a real bill about
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 1: how you take the investigations.
• 2:40:04
  Speaker 2: Because you saw in the film, the investigations are run
• 2:40:06
  Speaker 2: by the same department that commits the crimes. So I
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 2: think we're seeing a lot of positive action as a
• 2:40:15
  Speaker 2: result of the film. And I think that's what transparency
• 2:40:17
  Speaker 2: is all about, is if the public can see it.
• 2:40:20
  Speaker 2: And I appreciate your talking about this and having this
• 2:40:25
  Speaker 2: be in the public conversation because it's really important if
• 2:40:28
  Speaker 2: people see it they they're not happy about it they
• 2:40:31
  Speaker 2: understand that something more humane needs to be done.
• 2:40:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah i think universally i don't think anybody could watch
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 1: that and not think something should be done so thank
• 2:40:40
  Speaker 1: you really appreciate it thank you bye everybody