Latest / The Joe Rogan Experience / #2567 - Mariana van Zeller

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#2567 - Mariana van Zeller · The Joe Rogan Experience

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: So good to see you.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Hi, Joe.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: So good to see you, too. Every time I watch
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: one of your new programs, I get anxiety. I'm like,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: please don't die. Don't get hurt. What are you doing?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: This one was a walk in the park, though.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: It kind of is a walk in the park, but
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: not really. No, not really. Because you went to fucking
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Africa yesterday. To meet scammers.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: To confront my scammer.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: So your new show is all about romance scams. And
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: I was aware of these because I watched a show
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: a long time ago about this poor lonely man who
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: kept getting scammed. He thought that there was this woman
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: and he was in contact with her and he flew
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: to Europe to meet her twice and And both times
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: she came up with some reason why she couldn't be there.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Some emergency came up. And this guy had given her
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of dollars and drained his account. And
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: his daughter was so sad. She's like, I keep trying
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: to tell him, but he won't listen. And you see
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: these poor people that are so vulnerable that just they're
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: lonely and they really believe.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: They really, really believe. I think the loneliness epidemic is
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: a huge part of this, quite frankly.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: It's a huge issue in this world. A huge issue
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: in our country in particular. You know, there's like a
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: disconnect with family in our country. And there's like people
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: don't have like real community anymore. It's very weird.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And I think it's, yeah, it's absolutely one of the
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: biggest reasons why scams are rampant these days. I mean,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: particularly romance scams.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. 100%.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Well, you're preying on the saddest people. That's what's really
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: it's like it's one thing if you're scamming some psycho
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: fucking fraud guy who's doing stock market bullshit. You know
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: what I mean? Like and you scam them. Yeah. It's
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: like you're scamming a scammer.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's true. But I think one of the problems
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: we have when we talk about scams is this idea
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: that we think it's. A certain type of more gullible
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: person or more naive or perhaps more foolish. And I
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: think that is wrong because I think what these scammers
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: are so good at doing is that they prey on
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: emotions that we all share, you know, love and trust
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: and sometimes greed as well. And the real reason or
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the main reason I wanted to do this film was
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: because of that, because I'd come back and I'd tell
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: friends and family stories about these victims because I've reported
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: on scams before extensively. And it was always, but how
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: could they do that? Why would you give money to
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: a stranger? I mean, how could they be so silly
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: and so stupid? And that really annoyed me because why
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: are we focusing on the response of the victim instead
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: of actually understanding the actions of the scammers themselves? Because
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: they are very, very good at what they do. So
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: that was the idea behind, okay, I'm going to place
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: myself at the center of all scams. super scam me
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and create a persona and put myself in dating websites and,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: you know, online platforms and see what happens. And it
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: happened very fast.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Do you think they're good at it?
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I think some are really good at it.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: The guy that was doing it with you? Mine, no.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: No.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't get the best scammer out there. I'll just
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: say that.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Are there better ones?
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: There are 100% better ones. I think the one that
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: was scamming Leslie was definitely better than mine.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Is that the one who was pretending he was Jon
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Bon Jovi?
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: Bon Jovi, yes. Again. I know, but that's the thing.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: You tell that story and you think this guy shows
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: up on her DM and says, hey, I'm Jon Bon Jovi.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Give me money. That's not how it went, right? She
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: liked an account. So it was funny because it was
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: in the middle of me doing Super Scam Me that
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I get a message from Leslie. And I get dozens
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: of these messages every week because I've done a lot
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: of reporting on this. People think I'm sort of like
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the 911 for scams. And it was right in the
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: middle of the project. I get a message from her,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: and it was that. Look, I've been talking to a
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: guy for almost a year. I initially thought it was
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Jon Bon Jovi. I'm not so sure anymore. And, of course,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: the response is, wait, what? Did you really think you
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: were talking to Jon Bon Jovi? But then you listen
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: to the story, and then you actually meet this person.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And it is much more nuanced than that. She liked
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: an Instagram account. She was brand new on Instagram. Liked
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: an account that had what looked like a checkmark. Verified account,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: she thought. And she commented. She's been a fan of
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: this guy since she was 14 years old. Posters of
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: him all around her room. And immediately he DMed her
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: back and said, hey, I saw you commented. I love
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: connecting with my fans. Perfectly reasonable. Perfectly normal. What's your
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: favorite music? What's your favorite song? When did you start
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: listening to my music? That kind of conversation started normally.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: And then it was weeks of this. And then he
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: started paying attention to her and interested in what her
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: life was like and tell me about you and what
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: do you do and what are your interests. And then
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: they talked for months and months. And he would remember
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: things that happened in the early weeks. And this is
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: a woman who leads a very lonely life. There's the
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: loneliness epidemic who's sort of estranged from her husband. who
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: doesn't really have anyone who's interested in her life, quite frankly,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: or sees her or understands her or wants to know
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: about her. And finally, there was somebody who, even if
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: it wasn't John Bon Jovi, it was somebody who cared, right?
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: And it lasted months of this. And then she said
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: to him one day, she knew that he had a concert.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: She couldn't afford it. She went online. The tickets were
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: ridiculously expensive. And she said, it's so sad that I
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: really want to see you in concert. Always have wanted to,
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: and I can't. This was like seven months into their relationship.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: And then he says, well, if you want, I do
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: these meet and greets, which is also reasonable. They actually do.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Celebrities do these. And you can pay. I'll give you
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: a discount. I'll put you in touch with management and
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: you can pay like $ 100. I'm coming to Louisiana and
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: you can come to one of these meet and greets
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: and meet me in person. And at this point, I'm sorry,
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: but it is believable. And also he would send her videos.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: You saw some of these videos.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the AI videos.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: The AI videos. And some of them, I mean, they're
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: a little robotic, but they could be real. And it's, hi, Leslie.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Good morning. How are you doing? My sunshine, my love.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I'm curious about your life. And he would say to her, look,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: I am surrounded by people who are yes people, who
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: are people who are with me a lot because of
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: my money and fame. And I just really appreciate connecting
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: with people who are outside the bubble, who are normal folks.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: And so- It is kind of– it's not as insane
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: as like Jon Bon Jovi showed up and said, hey,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: I want $ 1, 000, right? But then what happens I think
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: in a lot of these scams is that once you're in,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: once you're committed to a relationship, once that has an
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: impact on your life and has made your life better,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: it is very difficult to then come to the realization
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: that this might not be real. I equate it a
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: little bit to gambling. You know, when gamblers lose a
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: lot of money and in their heads, they're always thinking, wait,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: it might have been my unlucky day. If I go
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: to the casino today, this might be my really lucky day, right?
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: And the more you lose, the more you're gambling because
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: you're trying to get that money back. It's a little bit,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I think, that same idea. It's also a dopamine rush.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Like every time you get a DM, every time you're
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: love bombed, there's a dopamine rush there. And I think
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: it's that idea that you get to a point where
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: you start suspecting, okay, this doesn't sound real, but I've
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: invested so much. The reality of my life is so
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: sad compared to this that maybe I prefer to just
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: go on. So there are actually a lot of romance
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: scam victims that continue having these relationships even after they
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: realize the person wasn't who they said they were.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: So they just do it just for the placebo. They
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: do it almost just like they're talking to a robot
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: that loves them.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yes, a little bit, which is one of the
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: things that they talk actually about how AI, you know,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the companionship of AI is one of the benefits or
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: possible benefits of AI. I don't know if it's a benefit.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: It can also be very bad.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: It creeps me out.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: It can. But you know there are coffee shops now.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: I just found out this out in New York where
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: they actually have like iPads. Did you know this? iPads
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: with fake people for companionship that you go to the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: coffee shop and you grab an iPad and you have
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: a whole conversation with an AI agent.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Well, New York is weirdly enough one of the loneliest places. Yeah.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Because no one is friends with anyone. Like my friend
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Jim who lives in a building in New York, it's like,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: you know, 40 stories or something like that. He's like,
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I don't know anybody in this building. Like, think about that.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: And I don't know my neighbor. Every time we look
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: at each other, we're like, hey, how you doing? Like,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: no one knows anybody. And there's hundreds of people stacked
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: on top of each other. That is an odd way
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: to live.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: That is an odd way to live.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: What is this, Jamie? Oh.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Cafe for AI.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Eva AI opens the world's first cafe for AI dates.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: This cuffing season. What is cuffing season? What does that mean?
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: I have no idea. Where is that?
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: It's like linking up time.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Is that what it means?
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: Cuffing. It's another way to say fucking. Oh.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Having sex? Yes. Wow.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Jamie knows his stuff.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: There's a season? What are we, elk?
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: It's like a culture.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Are we running?
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: During winter when everybody's inside.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: A relationships RPG app bringing virtual romance to the real world.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: EVA is launching EVA Cafe, the first ever online space
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: where people can take their AI partners out on a
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: real date. Oh, God.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: That is so dark. Wow. Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, there
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: it is.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: You sit there with an iPad. Are you enjoying your steak?
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: It sounds like a troll, but it's real. It's your steak.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: It's real.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Reserve your spot. Click that. I don't want to. Get
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: on a list. Yeah, let's see what happens. Yeah, just
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: open up a Google Doc. What happens? A waiting list.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: It's a waiting list?
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Well, so this was also, that said, the website said
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: it was back in February of 26, so I don't know.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's almost, you know.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Don't show that on the screen. You just showed your
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: email address.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: I'm closing it up.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy. Boy, this is dark.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: There you go. You can come to flirt and unwind.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Come to flirt, unwind, or simply share a quiet moment
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: with your AI companion. EVA Cafe.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: Ugh.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: It's so depressing.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: It's so dark.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: It's so dark. Yeah. Did you see Ex Machina?
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: I did.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: One of my all-time favorite movies.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I loved it, too.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: I love that movie.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: But the real problem I have with that movie is, like,
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: I think I'd fall in love with her, too.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: Follows that guy.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: She's stunning. She's amazing.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: She's so hot.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: She's so hot.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Who cares if she has clear skin and fucking lights
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: behind it? So true. It's like she's so pretty and
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: so sweet. It's dark. It's dark because we are super vulnerable.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: We're super stupid.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if stupid is the word, but
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: I would say we're vulnerable.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Especially men.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, men. Do you know what that's interesting, too, in
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: terms of scams? Because as you saw in our film,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the majority of the people we spoke to were women.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: But actually men are as likely to falling victim to
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: these scams as women, but they just have a lot
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: more shame around it. So they're less likely to talk
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: about it. So we actually spoke to a lot of men,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: but they just don't want to be on camera because
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: there's so much shame around this.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. No man wants to be a sucker.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: If a woman's a sucker, everyone feels bad for her. Yeah.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: But a guy's a sucker. You're like, ew, bitch.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I wish people felt bad for women. It wasn't Leslie's case,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: and it's certainly not the case for a lot of
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the victims that I speak to.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: They don't feel bad for them? No.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Actually, this is another horrible thing. It's what I call— there' s
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: a sort of double victimization, right? Because initially, not only
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: do you— you know, your heart is broken, you lost all
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: your money, but then you go back home or you
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: go to your friends and you talk about this, and
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: the first response is, how stupid could you be, right?
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: It's the humiliation. It's the shame that comes with it,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: which— They use it to their advantage, right? The scammers.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: They use the silence to their advantage.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Do you ever get those random text messages that say, hi,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: I haven't seen you in so long. What have you
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: been up to? And you look at the number like,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: who the fuck is this? Absolutely. It's always an Android phone.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Right? So that's one way to check. And then it's
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: always like something weird like, I've been craving lobster rolls. Yeah.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Do you want to meet up? Like, what? What is this?
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: And also the job offers.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. You get those all day.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: You've got those all the time.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I'm approved for so many loans.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: It's really amazing.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Same. So actually, Super Scammy started like that. The idea
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: was that I was going to say yes to every
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: single scam that came my way. And for the first
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: few weeks, we filmed it that way. So I would
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: answer all those text messages.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: What happens?
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: It was really interesting. So it was a lot of
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: phone calls with scammers. And one of the most interesting
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: conversations we had was with an Indian call center who
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: told me that there was a bug in my Apple
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: computer and he could fix it. One of those, right?
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's nice of him.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: It was an Apple support.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Very nice of him. So kind. And all I had
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: to do was download this software. And once you download
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: the software, he's in my computer. And then you go
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: to the payment. And once they're in my computer, they
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: can see. the number that I'm putting for my credit
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: card and all the details. So they have access to that, right?
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: Did you do it?
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: Did you go through the whole thing? I'm trying to
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: go as far as I can without actually revealing a
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: credit card. So I get to the point of the
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: credit card and I turn to him. And this had
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: been like over an hour on the phone with this guy.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: And I say, hey, so this is the deal. I'm
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: actually a journalist. My name is Mariana. But I don't
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: want to get you in trouble. I know this is
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: a scam. I just want to talk to you, dude.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: And he actually did. He stayed on the phone with me.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: I try this a lot. It didn't always work. But
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: in this case, this guy actually stayed on the phone
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: with me for a long time. And he told me, look,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: we work. We're forced to do it. In his case,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: he said he was forced, but I think he was
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: doing it for the money. But he basically said, I said,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: don't you feel bad about this? I mean, you're stealing
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: money from people. And his answer was, look, in America,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: everybody has more money. So I don't really feel bad.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: I was like, what is a lot of money? Oh,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: he said he doesn't steal from poor people. What's poor people? Well,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: if I go into a bank, if I go into account,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: once I get access, I can see everything that's there.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: If you have less than $ 1, 000, I'm not going to
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: steal from you. But if you have more, that means
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: you're rich. Whoa.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was interesting. Yeah, I mean, the money, it's
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: so different, right?
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Well, that is the very bizarre statistic that shocks people
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: when you tell it to them. I used to think
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: it's $ 34, 000, but I think it's $ 50, 000. If you make $ 50, 000,
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: you are in the top 1% of the world.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: $ 50, 000, yeah.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's dark.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: That's very dark. I mean, 10% of the world's population
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: lives under the poverty line.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: So that's 700 and something million people who have trouble
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: finding shelter and food for themselves and their family. It's insane.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I do know that there are people that
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: get they literally get kidnapped and forced to work in
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: these scam centers through threat of death and torture. We
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: did a.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Story about that for the last season of Traffic about
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: these scam compounds. We actually visited one of the scam city,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: a city that has a lot of these scam compounds
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and interviewed one of the main guys there. And it
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: was and spoke to a lot of the victims. And
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was people being beaten and tortured and forced.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: There's a guy I'll never forget who jumped off like
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: the sixth floor of his building because he knew that
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: he could die, but he thought it was better to
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: die than to live in those conditions. He basically broke
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: both his hips and his legs. And when I met him,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: he was in a wheelchair. He was rescued, thank God,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: but it was unsure if he could ever walk again.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: And then there was a woman that was a really
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: dark one who we spoke to. She's sort of the model.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: So she's the person that when they want to do
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: video calls, she'd come on camera. But they had at
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the time, even back then, this was two years ago,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: they had this AI technology that would go superimpose over
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: the face. And they needed a woman because of the mannerisms, right?
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: And the voice, I guess. But they had this AI
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: thing program and it's over her face. But if she
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: moved just a little bit, It would distort, basically, and
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: her boss would beat her and all that stuff. But
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: she'd also been raped by her boss and all his friends.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: They'd bring people in to rape her, and she was
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: stuck in this horrible situation.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Where are these happening mostly? Myanmar.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Myanmar and Cambodia were the two main spots. But now,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: because there's been a crackdown in both countries— Particularly in Cambodia,
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: they're spreading to other places like Dubai and other places.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: But they still exist a lot in Myanmar. And Myanmar
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: is a country at war. There's a large part of
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: the country that is just controlled by different rebel groups.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: The government doesn't really have much control of that region.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: So the scam compounds in these, you know, a lot
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: of them are Chinese criminal gangs that operate these scam compounds.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: They're paying a fee. They're paying for the war, essentially.
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: They're giving money to the rebels in order to be
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: able to work and, you know, build these scam cities.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: But the scam city that I visited was, it was
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: like a mini Macau. It was these high rises, and
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: it happened within a year or two. It went from flat,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: you know, regular forest jungle in Myanmar to skyscrapers, casinos.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: You know, one of the places I visited was In
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: order to be able to talk to this scam compound,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: the guy who sort of runs the city, we had
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: to wine and dine him. Actually, he had to wine
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: and dine us. He wanted to take us out and
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: show us around. And he took us to this karaoke cafe,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: karaoke bar, that was like nothing I'd ever seen. It
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: was screens all around. It looked like the future. But
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: this is in one of the poorest countries on earth.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: With a war raging around, and I'm in this sort
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: of the future. And it's this, yeah, this karaoke bar
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: with girls completely dressed and drugs being served and alcohol.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: And we had to stay there, and I sang Whitney Houston.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: What song? Yeah.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I think it was The Greatest Love of All, which
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: is usually the one that I sing.
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: That's what I was going to guess.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: And I'm one of those people that thinks they can
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: sing well, but really can't. But it was fun. Those
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: were one of those unforgettable nights. And then the next day,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: we interviewed this cam guy. Wow.
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• 20:23
  Speaker 2: So he was willing to do this. He wanted to
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: show off.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Yes, because he was trying to sell the city as
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: being a gambling and tourist paradise.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: So the entire city is essentially funded by scams?
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Because who wants to go to this place? No one.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: They built it up for business, for gambling, for tourists
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: to come. Literally, they have go-karts. tracks and they had
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: a slide, pools with slides, a water park and all
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: that stuff. But no tourist in their right mind from
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: anywhere in the world would want to go to this
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: place in the world because it's, again, there's a war,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: it's poor, it's really difficult to access. We had to
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: be smuggled into the country from Thailand. So obviously that's
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: all a front for what really brings in money, which
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: is scams. But he was trying to sort of clean
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: the image and show was that nothing wrong was going
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: on there. And they had posters all around the city saying,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: no scams are allowed. We don't torture people. If you
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: need to say it.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: Wow. Wow. And the whole city just appeared quickly? Overnight.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: A lot of these do. I mean, it's within months.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: It's flat terrain and suddenly.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: There's funding it. And how are they doing the construction? Like,
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: how are they How are they doing that?
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Construction is there is a lot of unemployed people in
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the country. So that's not that difficult. Funding all comes
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: from a lot of it is from these Chinese criminal
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: gangs who operate in the case of where I visited.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: It was a company called Yatai International. The head of
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Yatai International was a Chinese man who was living in
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Myanmar running this compound. He was eventually actually picked up
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: by the authorities in Thailand. He was doing time in prison.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: So the guy I spoke to was his number two.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: And he was trying to say that the guy was
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: in prison because he was openly talking about corruption in
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: China or something like that, which was not the case.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: But yeah, and it's billions of dollars. I can't remember exactly,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: but there was.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Sorry to interrupt you.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: How typical is this? This is the opening article of
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: an article about victims and villains, scam compounds.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: This is crazy.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: What does it say?
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: He was held against his will, tortured and drained of
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: his blood. And they would drain his blood up to
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: seven times in a half year. That made him a
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: blood slave?
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: To run these scams?
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: What? Blood slave?
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: In his case of a blood slave, journalists began to
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: describe him.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay. So it says, from his bed, he said
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: he sought work as a security guard in China, but
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: was tricked and apparently kidnapped, transported to Cambodia, and then
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: sold into one of the country's many fortified scam compound facilities.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: where workers labor around the clock to extract money from
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: people online. When he resisted, Lee was beaten and tortured
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: and then passed from one scam operator to another. He
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: claimed his captors finally began to drain large quantities of
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: his blood seven times in half a year. In the hospital,
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: he pointed weakly at an infusion bag above his head
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: that was the size of each extraction, he said. In
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: online articles, journalists began to describe his case that of
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: a bloodslaver. So they're taking his blood for blood doping
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: or for blood transfusions for other people? That part. They're
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: just taking it for, they're using his blood as money.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Like they're selling his blood probably.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: That's probably one of the scams they're doing. Yeah, I
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: would imagine.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: So they just like take everything. What do you got,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: an extra kidney? Give me that. Chinese social media lit
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: up with outrage and sympathy. Even government officials in China
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: and Cambodia took notice. For a moment, Li seemed to
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: embody the darkest truths about the criminal scam compound spreading
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: across China. Parts of Southeast Asia.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: And it's like what one of them looks like.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, they're big.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: So that is an entire building dedicated to scams.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: And they have barbed wire around it. They have security guards.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: All the windows usually have, what do you call them?
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Bars. Bars.
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: So people can't escape.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the dorms. Yeah, with lots of people sleeping in
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: the dorms together.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Looks kind of like a military compound.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: They can't leave the compound. So they're slaves. Oh, absolutely slaves.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: And we're not talking about just a few hundred people.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: It's hundreds of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands of
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: people coming from all over the world who are lured
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: into what they think are going to be online jobs.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: And once they get there, They take away their passports
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: and they force them to scam Americans, essentially. It's crazy.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: People coming from Brazil, India, Philippines, all around the world.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: It's nuts. I don't understand how we know this happens.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: This is still out there. I've been trying to do
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: a film about this because of all my reporting on traffic,
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: this was one of the craziest, one of those moments
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I'm like, this is outrageous. How are we allowing this
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: to happen? And you can say, okay, the victims are
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: people from other countries. Why should we care?
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's not a good response to start with.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: But even if that's the case, they're enslaved. But also
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: these people are scamming Americans. Last year, this is crazy.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: This blew my mind. Just, I think, two months ago
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: or something, the Consumer Federation of America issued their latest report,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: which was looking at scams last year. And Americans apparently lost,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: not apparently, they've estimated that Americans lost $ 148 billion to
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: online scams last year.
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: Billion.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Billion. Do you know how much that is a day?
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: I did the math. It's $ 400 million a day. $ 400
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: million a day are lost in America, are being stolen
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: from Americans.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Holy shit.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: It's insane. And a lot of it is done through,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: from these, they're called pig butchering campaigns. Compounds.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: Pig butchering. Yeah.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: I found a website talking about the pig butchering life cycle.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: The pig butchering life cycle.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Organized criminals use highly scripted process and human trafficking to
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: steal as much money as they can from individual victims.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: Pig slaughter.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Do you know why it's called? Yes, exactly. It comes
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: from the Chinese expression that means food. It's sort of
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: fattening the pig. So you fatten the pig. So you,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: you know, give a lot of love to your victim
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: or you, you know, pretend they're going to get a
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: lot of money. You build their confidence and trust and
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: then you slaughter them. Basically, you take away all their money.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: There's a whole, go to the top, please. There's a
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: whole process. They go grooming the victims. They contact pig butchering. Well,
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: that's a dark word. Pig butchering targets. Through dating apps,
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: social media platforms, or unsolicited text messages. Ah, like the
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: ones I get. At some point, the scammer encourages a
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: target to shift the conversation to an encrypted messaging platform
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: like WhatsApp or Telegram. They invest time in understanding the
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: person's financial situation, family dynamics, and work to build a
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: deep emotional connection. Scammers often spend weeks building these relationships.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Then they introduce investment opportunities. They drop subtle hints. about
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity early in the relationship. They show
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: pictures of a lavish lifestyle or talk about expensive purchases
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: and experiences once scammers have gained pig-butchering targets' trust. They
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: introduce an exclusive investment opportunity, often claiming they've achieved significant
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: financial success through it. Then they establish credibility, make the
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: scam seem real. Scammers share fake screenshots and trading platform dashboards,
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: stories of friends or an uncle who knows... how it
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: all works and made massive profits along with professional looking
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: documents and websites, starting small to ease doubts. So they
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: have like a whole process they go through. Yeah, they
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: have scripts.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: That they stick to. And it's different according to the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: people that they're talking to, what kind of victim that is.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: This is the scam. Pig butchering was what actually got. Remember,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: there was that story of that bank banker, the CEO
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: of a bank in Kansas that ultimately went bankrupt because
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: he had stolen four hundred million dollars.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Yes. And he got he got scammed.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was pig butchering, too. It was one of
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: these fake crypto.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: How did they get him? Was it a romance thing?
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: No, it was this. It was an investment opportunity. Sometimes
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: they're mixed. It starts with a romance and then goes
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: to investment opportunity, or sometimes it's just the investment opportunity.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I think in his case, it was more the investment opportunity.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: So they said he started by putting just his own money,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: his savings, into what he thought was a legitimate crypto account.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: And you can see once you do, again, let's not
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: think these people are stupid because the scammers are really
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: good at what they do. They create these platforms that
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: when you look at it looks completely legitimate and then
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: it looks like your money is going up, right? He's
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: seeing his money is going up. He's making a lot
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: of money. He's very excited. Initially, if you want to
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: take money out, they allow you so that you gain
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: more confidence. So then you start putting more money. And
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: then he just got in too deep where they kept
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: saying that in order to get the millions he had
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: just made out, months into this investment scam they said
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: that he has to pay a fee and it's like
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: a tax but you have to pay a 10% tax
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: and so at that point you're so in you've lost
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: so much money that okay if I only pay this
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: 10% tax or if I only pay this fee so
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: he kept doing that but then he started actually using
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: money from his customers how the.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Fuck does it who works in banking get sucked into
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: something that stupid?
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: But I don't think it's– I think– look, now we
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: know a lot more about it, right?
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: I think the question should be why isn't our government
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: doing more to protect us? Why are these online platforms–
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Why don't they have, why aren't they accountable? They should
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: be held accountable for allowing this to happen.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Which online platforms?
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: I'll give you specifics. There was an incredible Reuters investigation
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: done last year where they got a hold of internal
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: meta documents from Meta. And in the Meta documents, internal
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Meta documents, they estimated inside Meta, the worker, the different
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: departments estimated that there were 15 billion ads every single
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: day that the users of their platforms, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: were exposed to around an estimated 15 billion scam ads
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: every single day. Scams that were higher risk, that displayed
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: clear signs of being fraudulent. They also estimated that That year,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: they projected that they would make $ 16 billion. This is
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: in 2024, I believe, or 2023. I'm not sure. $ 16
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: billion worth of profit from scams and banned goods. That's
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: 10% of their full profit at that time. So they're
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: making a ton of money from this. And then this
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: is where it gets really worrisome to me. Because of
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: their personalized ad system, If a person clicks on a scam,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: you know those ads that you have like Elon Musk
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: holding a thing and saying investment opportunity, and then you
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: click it and you want to see what it is,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: or there's tons of these. I mean, there's gazillions of
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: these out there. If you click it, you are more
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: likely to be fed more of these ads. So it
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: starts with just maybe you're exposed to one, and then
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: suddenly in the next day, you're exposed to 100 of
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: these scams, right? So your reality starts being filled with scams.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: And then.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: This is, I think, even the crazier part, is that
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: if you report these as scams, which a lot of
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: users do, I think it's 100,000 reports every single week,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: if they have a 95 or over certainty meta, if
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: their system sees that there's a 95% certainty or over
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: that these are scams, they remove them. If there's less
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: than 95, let's say 94%, what they do is they
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: give you a penalty fee, so you have to pay more,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: but they allow you to stay on the platform.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: What?
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Wait a minute.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: You can check that out, Jamie, that Reuters investigation.
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: So they're in on it then.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: They're making money. I mean, it just raises lots of questions, right? Right.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: If you're charging more money, that means you know something's
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: wrong with this ad, so you want to cut.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: You're making more money from the illegitimate ads than you
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: are from the legitimate ads in terms of one-to-one.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Is this because of a lack of regulation?
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: It is because of a lack of regulation.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Lack of oversight and maybe perhaps something that emerged without
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: any understanding of it before was everywhere.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: 100%.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: I think it's our government.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: But they know.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: They know. Oh, absolutely they know. Their whole conversations in
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: those internal documents is them talking about how can we
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: go after this without affecting our pocket? They actually openly
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: talk about it. They talk about how there are other
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: companies out there that are doing a better job, but
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: they are afraid of what that might mean.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: Jamie put this into our AI sponsor perplexity and says, yes,
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Reuters reported that MetaCharge, some suspected scam advertisers, higher advertising
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: rates rather than banning them outright. A system described internally
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: as Penalty bids. Bids. Why would they call it a bid?
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: Because the way that the ads work, it's like a
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: bidding process. The way that they'd serve it, they could
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: charge you. You give a budget, and they'd charge you
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: more based off of how they deliver it.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, God.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Here's the distinction in the documents Reuters reviewed. At least
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: 95% confidence of fraud. Fucking Christ. What do you have
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: to do to get off that platform? Meadows Automated Systems
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: would ban the advertiser at 95% confidence of fraud. Below
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: that threshold, but still judged likely to be a scammer,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: the advertiser could remain, but would have to pay more
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: to win ad auctions and get ads shown. This wasn't
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: simply a surcharge on every ad someone reported as suspicious.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: The stated rationale was deterrence. Higher costs would reduce suspect
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: scammers' profits and the number of people exposed to their ads.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: But the uncomfortable consequence is exactly what you're pointing out.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Suspected scammers who paid enough could still reach users while
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Meta continued collecting their advertising money.
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: More money, actually.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: More money, right? Because they charged more. Look at this.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: They charged suspected scammers more is supported a claim like
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: they charged all flagged ads. 50% extra is not established
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: by evidence. Okay. They did not establish a fixed surcharge
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: or percentage.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I didn't say that. I just said penalty fees.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: It's saying it. I didn't type it in either. This
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: is what perplexing is.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: So perplexing is just– they're just like possible questions that
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: you would have or possible– Right.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: And, Jamie, can you see the name of the journalist?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Because I think I'd love to give a hat tip
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: to the journalist that looked into this because it was
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: a really incredible article.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: Well, if you click on the first– I said that
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: was reading from a different article because the Reuters one
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: is– It's Jeff Horowitz.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Is it?
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Okay. Well, this is one from Reuters. This is Jeff Horowitz.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: So Meta's earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: So how much money did they make?
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: ads for scams and banned goods.
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what I said. Holy shit. So 15 billion
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: scam ads a day. The social media giant internally estimates
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: that its platform shows users 15 billion scam ads a day.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: Among its responses to suspected rogue marketers, charging them a
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: premium for ads and issuing reports on scammiest scammers.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Scammers, knowing that they exist and allowing them to stay
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: on the platform.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: So they're just profiting off of it. There's no regulation.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: There's no oversight. So they are regulating themselves. And what
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: they chose to do is charge more.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Holy shit. So, yeah. So that's what I mean.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: The conversation has to stop being.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: Damn it, Zuck.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: It has to stop being why are the victims falling
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: for this? It's why are we allowing this to happen?
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Well, it's. That, the 10%. It's like, you must be
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: dealing with, that must be, how much money are we
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: talking about? What is that 10%?
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: 16 billion. That's what's reported there, right, Jamie? Okay.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: That's what it says, and I was trying to figure
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: out if it's 16 billion. 16, 10% of 16 billion? No,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: 16 billion is the 10%. Or 16 billion is what
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Facebook and Meta makes?
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: 16 billion is the profit estimated for that year from
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: scams and banned goods. It's not just scams, scammed ads.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: It's also banned goods.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: Okay, let's just concentrate on scam because some banned goods
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: I'm in favor of.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: Reading it, it's not clear on which is which.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: It's like, what are we talking about when we say
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: banned goods? Are we talking about mad honey?
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: We're okay with peptides.
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: I'm okay with a lot of it. Well, I'm actually not.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: I am okay with peptides, but the problem with getting
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: peptides online is you're getting scam peptides. Yeah, I know.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Made in the same labs as fentanyl in China.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure. Well, a lot of them are tainted
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: with a bunch of stuff that's not supposed to be
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: in there as well. I know. We found that out
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: with Onnit. When we were making Onnit, when we were
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: making AlphaBrain, the nootropic memory enhancing formula, we used third-party testing,
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: and we were finding stuff in– the batch that was
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: not supposed to be in there. And it's because they
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: make all this stuff in one bin and they don't
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: clean it.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: And so you took it to the lab when you,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: when it got here to check it.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: And we have third party testing. Well, you don't have
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: that problem anymore. This is the early days of on it.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: When we first would send out our stuff to be formulated.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: So what we do is so alpha brain is this
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: combination of, of different nootropics and nutrients that are clinically
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: proven to help memory. There's a bunch of these, like
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: this stuff right now, Gorilla Mind, this is nootropics as well.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of nootropics. It's real, it does work.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: And so when we would send, we would get it,
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: what you do is you send the ingredient list. Like
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: this is what they're supposed to do. They're supposed to
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: add this, that, that, and this, and this is what
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: your formula is. And then we would get it back
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: and then we would send it to a third party
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: to have it tested. And we'd find things in it
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: that were not supposed to be in there.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: It's because they.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Don't give a fuck.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: They don't give a fuck.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, particularly there, they don't give a fuck.
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: So there'd be like, that's one of the things that
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: happens to athletes. Like they buy supplements from a nutrition
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: company and it finds other steroids in it. You know,
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of these. I'm sure some of them
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: do it on purpose because they want people to have
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: great results. Like you'll take this muscle builder 25X2000 and
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: you're like, oh, this stuff's great. Look, I gained 10 pounds.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: You're on roids.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: I just don't know you're on roids.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: And, you know, the supplement industry is a giant place
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: for scams, unfortunately, because it is largely unchecked. It's unregulated.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: So if you're selling vitamins and minerals and nutrients, no
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: one's fucking checking jack shit. And you can make all
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: sorts of claims. and, you know, the supplement industry online. Okay,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: here's a good example. Amazon. Let's Google this. Run this
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: through perplexity. What is the percentage of let's just say
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: vitamins on Amazon that are counterfeit? Because it's not small.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: It's a large percentage. So, like, say if you buy, like,
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: one of the companies I really like is Pure Encapsulations.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Really solid company. They sell them on Amazon, right? But
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: I buy them right from the website. I go to pureencapsulations.com
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: because I don't trust them. because there's counterfeit bottles. They
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: look exactly like pure encapsulations. Who knows what the fuck
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: is in there? It might not be any vitamin C.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: It might not be any glutathione. Who knows? You're just
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: buying it. And Amazon is a real problem with this
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: because there's individual sellers who sell through Amazon who are
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: selling scams. Okay, look at this. There isn't a reliable
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: established percentage of all vitamins sold on Amazon that are counterfeit.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: The often repeated 57% fake figure comes from a small
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: study of immune support supplements, not a representative survey of
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: Amazon vitamins. Okay, so the 57% figure, 2022, study in
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: JAMA Network Open tested 30 immune health supplements purchased on Amazon.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: 17 of the 30, about 50%, had inaccurate ingredient labels.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: 13 listed ingredients testing did not detect. Nine contained substances
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: not listed on the labels. And these categories overlapped. It's
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: a meaningful quality control concern. It does not establish 57%.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: So it's not 57%, but there's a bunch that are knockoffs.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: So, like, what is the estimate? Ask perplexity. What is
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: the estimate? What is a conservative estimate of counterfeit vitamins
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: and supplements on Amazon? I mean, it doesn't have one.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: I understand. But, like, let's say. There's a bunch of.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: Counterfeit shipping sold on Amazon just in general. There's a
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: big problem.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: Right. But ask it, what would be a reasonable estimate?
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: Let's see if it just has an answer. What would
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: be a reasonable estimate of the amount of counterfeit supplements?
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: I'm going to guess 25%. I'm going to go for 30. Unknown.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: I would give you a 5%, 10%, or 20%. The
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: available evidence doesn't provide a sound basis for choosing one.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't give you, sorry. Actual counterfeits, products falsely presented
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: as a legitimate brand have been documented. Examples include counterfeit
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Algin products, counterfeit Now supplements. That's another good company. And
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: allegations involving counterfeit Provagen. What is that? Is that a
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: skin supplement? I think it is. Provage. Those cases establish
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: that the problem exists, but they don't tell us what
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: fraction of Amazon supplement sales it represents. So it's not small.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: It's not small, yeah. Whatever it is, even if it's 10%,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: let's say, I don't know what the market share of
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Amazon supplements is, but it's got to be massive. It's
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: such a convenient way to order things. You know, the
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: one-click way. It's so great.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's so great.
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, it is.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately. I know.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: But it is. You should buy it directly from the brand.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: It should be zero. You're Amazon. Yeah, I know. It
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: should be zero percent fake. It should be. If you're
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: buying fucking whatever, you know, electrolytes, it should be from
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: that fucking company. You know what it is. You've established
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: a chain of command there.
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: And they have the know-how. They have the tech to
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: do it, too.
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: This is a little bit better information, I think.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: Amazon says it identified, seized, and disposed of more than
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: 15 million counterfeit products worldwide in 2025. That includes products
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: prevented from reaching customers or being resold. Elsewhere in the
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: retail supply chain, not 15 million confirmed counterfeit sales.
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: It's just there's a bunch of shit that's counterfeit on there.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: I've had problems with it myself, told them, and they're like,
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: there's nothing we can do about it.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: Well, it seems like it's a problem.
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: They give you the money back, though.
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: I was selling stuff. I was selling shirts, and someone
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: copied it, sold it on an Amazon link, and I
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: was like, that's my shirt they're selling, and they're.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Like, sorry.
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: There's nothing we can do about it.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Good luck.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's a conflict of interest for them, right?
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Because they are making money from this.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: That's the problem and the lack of regulation.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: And the lack of regulation. If companies aren't going to
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: regulate themselves, right?
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Imagine if that was, let's say, an online retailer like Target.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: Imagine if you went to buy Diet Coke from Target
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: and they sold you counterfeit Diet Coke. That would be
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: a huge scandal.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: That would be a huge scandal, yeah.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: It should be.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, what they tell you is that there's no
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: way of verifying. It's so hard. It's the same thing
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: with scams on Meta. They say there are billions of these.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: How can we know what's right and what's not? There's
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: a case I will not forget in terms of just
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: going back to scams real quick. Sextortion. You know what
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: sextortion is?
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: Sextortion? So like sex tapes or what is it?
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it usually happens with teenage boys a lot or teenagers.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: Somebody slides into your DM and starts talking.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, they send you pictures. You send them pictures.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: He convinces you to show photos.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: And then they start basically extorting you for money. Really
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: sad case of a kid, the son of a representative,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: a congressman from South Carolina. This guy's called Brandon Guffey.
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: His son, Gavin, was playing video games with his friends
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: at the same time talking to this girl on Facebook
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: and talking. said to his friend, hey, I'm talking to
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: this girl. I'm going to hang out and I'll talk
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: to you later or something. I don't know, an hour
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: later or something, the dad's in the living room. It's
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: like 11 p.m. and he hears a loud noise, runs
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: to the bathroom. He shot himself. It's the saddest story
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: because he was being sextorted. He's not the only one.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: There's dozens of American kids that this has happened to.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: He went to Facebook, right? They had an address, an
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: email address from the person that was contacting Gavin. Facebook
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: took down that profile of this fake girl. A few
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: weeks later, they had just buried their son. They started
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: being contacted by, family members started being contacted by somebody
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: who said they had those photos of Gavin and they
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: would release them unless they gave them money. And he
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: went and looked at the profile. It was a different profile,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: but the email address was the same. So basically, Facebook
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: had taken down that particular profile, but had allowed the
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: same email address to create other profiles. Isn't this crazy?
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: That's fucking insane. The representative became very involved in creating profiles.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: Laws.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: One of them is called, I think, Take It Down
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: or something that just passed recently under the Trump administration.
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: But he's basically become sort of the voice of regulation
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: for these platforms. And then there's another incredible one. I
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: can't remember the name of the legislators behind it, but
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: it's called the Safe Platforms Act, where they're actually trying
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: to make it easy for people to report, to make
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: sure that these platforms are taking these ads and, you know,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: fake profiles down. And that is also putting the accountability
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: on them. So if something happens, if you lose money,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: if your kid, you know, dies, that there is some
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: accountability on these platforms because if they are making money
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: from it, they should also be held responsible, right?
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I think so.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Of course. 100%. Yeah, 100%. But the fact.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: That they're aware that they have scammers.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: If they're not held accountable, you're going to see exactly
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: what they're doing. They find a way to actually profit
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: off of it while also giving this illusion that they're
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: doing something to protect the consumers.
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: It's crazy.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: It's insane. I couldn't believe it when I read this.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: I can't believe they charge more. If they think you're
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: a scammer, they just charge you more. It's a deterrent.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a deterrent.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Like what a convenient deterrent while you're making how much?
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: What's the percentage they're making?
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: It was 10%. So 10% was the estimated projection for
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: that year.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: And their profits off scammers, you estimated it at?
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: It was $ 16 billion. They projected it at $ 16 billion.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: Just from scams?
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: Scams and banned goods. Banned goods as well.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: That is fucking crazy. So, again, I'm a big fan
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: of banned goods.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: But not a fan of scams.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: Some banned goods. But what I was going to get
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: to with peptides, a lot of people are buying peptides.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: Those peptides are fake.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: A lot of those peptides are fake.
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't know what you're injecting in yourself. You
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: should get a peptide from an American company. compounded pharmacy
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: and that's what they're trying to regulate and make sure
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: i mean this is what my friend brigham from ways
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: to well they're trying to push through through this current
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: administration and there's a lot of resistance to that of
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: course because the pharmaceutical drug companies all want to own
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: the peptides and sell them just like they do with
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: glp-1s which is also a peptide yeah it's uh but
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: the banned goods thing that bothers me but not as
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: much the That's people seeking something that they can't get.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: That doesn't bother me as much. What bothers me is
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: the scams and the fact that Meta is profiting off
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: these scams knowingly. And it's just such an enormous amount
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: of money that they can kind of like, well, what
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: are you going to do? We're going to make a deterrent. Great.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Good idea. Good idea. Deterrent. makes us more money.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: Internal discussions about how much should we push this because
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: how much is this going to affect our bottom line?
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: God, that's so dark.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: It's dark.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: They have so much money. They have so much fucking money.
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: For them to be that fucking greedy that they're willing
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: to keep the scams on. Well, you got to think
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: there has to be some way they could put in
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: some comprehensive scanning of all of their and make sure
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: that all of these things are legitimate. Investigate each individual
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: ad before it gets released.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: Of course they can. They have technology to create what's
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: their new AI agent. They've just created a companion AI
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: agent that people can have. I don't know what it's called, but.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: Of course they have the technology in place to do it.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: Especially if they were responsible for those losses. If they
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: could get sued for those losses.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: Do you know how fast they will act on it?
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: Right. Imagine if instead of the $ 16 billion profit every year,
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: it cost them double the $ 16 billion because they have
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: scams on. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Exactly.
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: But I think part of the reason why we're not
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: talking about this.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: What is this, Jamie? Reuters' essential findings. Meta developed a
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: playbook to delay mandatory advertiser identity checks while making scam
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: ads harder for regulators to find in its public ad library.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: The investigation draws on internal documents and describes both genuine
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: scam removal and efforts to manage the appearance of the problem,
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: not simply solve it.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: So Leslie, the woman who was talking to Jon Bon Jovi.
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: You know what she does every day now? She goes
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: on Facebook and she tries to tell people that are
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: liking these fake celebrity profiles that are commenting on them.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: Be careful. This is a scam. She reports it. She
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: says she always says hello so she can keep a
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: record of who she's communicating because there's dozens or hundreds
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: of these out there. And she reports them. She goes
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: back and she says that the vast majority of them,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: she goes and checks weeks later and they're still there.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: And she keeps on reporting them. I think it was
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: something like 100,000 reports every week by Americans on Meta,
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: and they only take down a few.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you by NOCO. You're miles
• 51:36
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• 52:12
  Speaker 1: It's, yeah, it's infuriating. It's really infuriating.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: Do you remember the early days of AOL? Yes.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The early days of AOL, my friend Barry Crimmins.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: Barry Crimmins was a great comic from Boston who was
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: very socially conscious, very politically active, just a genius guy.
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: And he was sexually assaulted when he was young and
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: found a whole network of people that were on AOL online.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: that were trading pedophile pornography, and they were trading child
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: pornography and grooming people online, and he exposed it. That
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: was a part of his documentary, right, Jamie? He's gone now.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: He died a few years back, unfortunately. But I think
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: he testified before Congress about this and dedicated himself to saying, hey,
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: you guys should know about this. I know about this. Like,
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: how is this allowed to be on your platform? So
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: this was the 90s when, you know, AOL, you've got mail.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: All that stuff was just happening. And people weren't really
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: aware of the internet. It was just starting to emerge.
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: But these fucking pedophiles figured it out. And they were
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: using it. They were using it to you know, to
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: groom kids.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: What did AOL do? Nothing.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: They did something. They eventually had to do something. I
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: don't know exactly what they did, but this was one
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: of the first examples of that, like where... These companies
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: should have been aware of this. He was aware of this.
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: Other people were aware of this. It was a willful ignorance.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: They were just ignoring it.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: I do think part of the problem is if we
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: were talking about pedophilia, I think they would act faster.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: It is because it is scams. And again, it is
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: this idea of the shame around it and this belief
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: that everybody that falls for a scam is foolish and naive,
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: that the onus is put on the victims.
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: I understand. But I mean, even AOL, I mean, they
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: had to be dragged to get rid of this stuff.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: It wasn't simple as like they let them know, oh,
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: my God, we're on this right now.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: We're going to block this because it's serious.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: They resisted. And it's like no one ever wants to
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: admit that they've done something that puts all their users
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: in danger. This thing is crazy.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: It's insane.
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: The fact that they're profiting.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: Did you say $ 16 billion a year?
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and why don't we know this? Why aren't we
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: talking more about this? I've been reporting on scams for years.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: I had no idea that this was happening until I
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: read this.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: That's so much money.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: And it's coming from the people that use your platform.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: The overall article is this. It's just like this big
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: meta ad or, sorry, picture. Secrets of Success. And there's
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: multiple articles they released over time. It looks like at
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: least six.
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: One of them is showing that a big chunk of
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: that money is coming from China.
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: Of course. What a shocker. Reuters investigation reveals the owner
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp decided to accept high levels
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: of fraudulent advertisements from China. Internal company documents show Meta
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: wanted to minimize revenue impact, in quotes, caused by cracking
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: down on the scams. Jesus, that's dark.
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: One note I want to tell you, too. The summary
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: I got from Perplexity said in here that there is
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: evidence of notes being prepared for Zuckerberg, but they don't
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: have any evidence necessarily that he had personal knowledge of
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: what was on those notes or the depth of what's
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: going on.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: He says, briefing notes prepared for Mark Zuckerberg about the
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: cross-border displacement of scams but could not establish whether he
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: saw them or received the briefing. The article, therefore, does
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: not establish his personal knowledge of those notes. How convenient.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: Also, I'm sorry that that's not— Also, you're the CEO.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: You're the CEO. I'm sorry. You're the CEO of Scamville. Yeah,
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: Have you ever had him on?
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple times.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: You have?
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: This would be good. Good for you to bring it
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: back on.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you come back on after this episode. Shit.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: Seems a bit problematic. Yeah. That's very unfortunate. I hate
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: hearing that. And, you know, I like him as a person.
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: I've communicated with him. Obviously, I don't know everything about him.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: And when people talk to me, they give the best
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: version of themselves to me.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, I don't think it's just him, right? It's just
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: when people make that amount of money and there's a
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: board that you have to answer for and there's a
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: lot at stake and there's shareholders.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to justify the $ 16 billion loss. Yeah.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: And there's, unfortunately, weak regulations and governments that don't want
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: to act.
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: This is what happens.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: And this is.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Why we need good journalism, good investigative journalism to find
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: the stuff, the truth that people have a problem with.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to hold them to the fire because
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: they have obligations to their shareholders and they'll do really
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: shitty things in order to keep making sure that the
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: profits keep rolling in because they have to justify their position.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: And they're trying to make their way up the corporate ladder.
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: That's what's weird about the corporations today. is that there's
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: this diffusion of responsibility thing that happens when you're a
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: part of it, but you are not it. Okay? I
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: just work there. This is my job. I don't like
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: my job. It's like when you're a defense attorney that's
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: getting off someone that you know is a murderer. Like,
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: I know he murdered him, but I'm doing my job.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: And my job is to provide reasonable doubt and get
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: this guy acquitted. And if you do it, then you
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: go to the steakhouse and you clink glasses. We did it. Boy,
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: is he a piece of shit, but we did it.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't know if you ever... heard the,
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: there's an audio recording of Hillary Clinton talking about this
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: guy that she had to help get off that was,
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: I think he was a child molester. But she was,
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: they were talking about how she thought he did it.
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: See if you can find what that is. Because I
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: don't want to get sued. But I'm 99% sure that
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: that's exactly what this was. That is a very unfortunate
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: part of being a defense attorney, right? You're going to
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: have to occasionally get people off that you suspect or
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: you might know are guilty. And that is a real
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: dark part of being involved in an immense corporation. You're
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: going to do some things that you might think are
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: unethical or immoral, and you have an obligation to your
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: shareholders and your job. If you want to keep your job,
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: your job is to do this. No evidence of horrific
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: Clinton video. Did a video of Hillary Clinton and who? No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: That's that's not it. That's not it. It's when she
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: was a lawyer. Is there evidence of her laughing about it?
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: a guilty man being acquitted? Hillary Clinton stands by her
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: defense of a 1975 child rape suspect that she believed
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: was indeed guilty. Heard laughing, she said the polygraph test
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: he managed to pass forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: That's what it was. So she helped this guy. And
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: this is not an attack on her. This is just
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: like the reality of being a defense attorney.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Well, what is it?
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: It says when I was a 27-year-old attorney doing legal
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: aid work at the University of Arkansas where I taught
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: at Fayetteville, Arkansas. I was appointed by the local judge
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: to represent a criminal defendant accused of rape. I asked
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: to be relieved of that responsibility, but I was not.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: And I had a professional duty to represent my client
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: to the best of my ability, which I did. Exactly
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: what we're talking about. It's exactly that kind of thing.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: I think a little different in terms of the lawyers,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: because if you believe in the Constitution, you believe everybody
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: has a right to a lawyer, right? And to a
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: free and fair trial. If you're working at Meta, that is,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: you're there and you're You know, you're there because you're
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: making money or, you know, there's been plenty of people
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: that have left META, as you know.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: I understand, but you could resign. Yes, you can resign.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: But you could resign as an attorney if you think
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: you're representing a child rapist.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: Well, she tried, it looks like.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: Well, there's no one holding a gun to her head
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: and keeping her from quitting. She asked to be removed
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: from the case. They said no. And so she did
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: her job. Again, I'm just saying that this is a
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: part of being a defense attorney. But these situations come
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: up where your morals and your ethics have to be
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: abandoned in order to pursue your career.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: True.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: But I do think that there is a profit part
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: of meta that doesn't apply to when you're a lawyer, right?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: Oh, no.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: I agree with you. No, listen. I'm just saying that
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: this kind of thing is– it's a dark part of
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: the world that we live in. It is. And I
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: find it incredibly disgusting and scary when you– it's not
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: a starving corporation trying to stay above water. Like, boy–
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: We've been trying to help American people and just give
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: them a good product. And we're having a hard time here.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: We're really barely feeding family. We have all these mouths
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: to feed and all these. No. Exactly. 16 billion in
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: fucking scams every year. Okay. What is Meta's overall.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: Profit every year? I've seen the stories this year about
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: how they now maybe are about to overtake Google as
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: the top ad platform. And it says that they have
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: gotten about 243. 4.5 billion dollars this year wow wow
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: in ad revenue so even that 16 billion seems it's.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: A couple of years ago or so well it is.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: A pittance if you really think about it if they
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: just eliminated that 16 billion they would still make almost
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: as much as google's making like guys.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah tried to ask perplexity to compare what there's not
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: a lot of information on this though unfortunately but Perplexity
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: says that Google has removed, probably in 2025, 602 scam-related
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: ads compared to the 159 million.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: 602 million.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: Million, sorry, yeah. Compared to the 159 million that Meta has.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Meta has. So Meta's a little slacky.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So Google's a.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: Little bit better in their ad removal.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: In the internal documents, they actually talk about this. They
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: actually say themselves that they realize Google is doing a
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: better job than they are. But again, it might hurt their.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, dirty people, you dirty people. I know.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: I know. I know. And again, they should be held responsible.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: They should be held responsible. There should be legislation out
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: there that does something to make sure that they are
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: held responsible because they're not going to hold themselves responsible.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: That's for sure.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: Isn't there current lawsuits about them having knowledge of harm
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: to children and the addiction of social media? There's like
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: legitimate lawsuits that are about that. Isn't it interesting that
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: that is being pursued, that you are– there are lawsuits
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: now saying, look, you guys are aware that your ads
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: and your algorithm are very addictive and they get people
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: and that it causes harm to them, which is true.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: Very true.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: But that is– how is that being pursued?
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: And this not.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: This not.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: This seems even more clear-cut because the thing about like
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: having harm– yeah, it Does it harm everyone? Does it
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: harm people whose parents regulate the children's access to social media?
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: Is there a way to educate kids to explain to them,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: you know, look, this can be addictive. Like you should
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: only use it a few minutes a day. You should.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: There's ways. And to give them education. Because I think
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: there's a benefit to social media as well. I think
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: one of the benefits is access to information, access to friends,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: and they communicate with each other back and forth. Like
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: my kids use Snapchat all the time. They barely use
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: text messaging. They all snap each other. They think it's fun.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: And then there's like sharing each other's stories, liking each
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: other's stories. It's like something nice about that, right? So
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: it's not entirely negative. The fucking scams are entirely negative.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: Entirely negative.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: There's not one thing. Well, we're providing these people with companionship. No, exactly.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: They're sad and lonely. And at least they get a
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: little dopamine burst. There's not a thing you can say
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: that could be positive about having online scams.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: And they're not just affecting old people. They're also affecting
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: young teenagers who are committing suicide.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: And until someone does something about it, they're just going
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: to continue to make that money.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Of course, but that's always how it is. So
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: we really need somebody to act.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: Ugh.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, ugh. Jamie, look at the Safe Platforms Act.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: Meanwhile, they shadow ban people if you're conservative. It's hilarious.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Back in the day, they don't do that anymore, right?
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: Allegedly.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: Allegedly.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: They do some shady things. It's weird. Also, they don't
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: eliminate bots. They're overrun with bots. What does it say?
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: Go to the top, please.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: It's the names of the legislators, Fauci and Moylan, I
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: think it's pronounced.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: Moylan, yeah. Introduce Bipartisan Safe Platforms Act to protect consumers
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: from online scams. I wonder what they're proposing and how
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: this would be implemented.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: I actually, yeah.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: Valerie P. Foishee. Foushee?
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to pronounce her name. Foushee? Foushee?
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: F-O-U-S-H-E-E.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: Representing North Carolina's 4th District.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good for her. Safe Platforms Act endorsed by Consumer
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: Federation of America, Hispanic Federation, Oregon Consumer Justice, and Public Citizen.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: It says, as concerns grow regarding the future dangers... Go
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: back up, please. Wait, I have... Of unregulated AI... It's
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: a quote at the bottom. What?
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: This is a quote at the bottom of the description.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: This describes what the act does, and that's a quote
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: from someone describing what the act would do.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: Right. I was just reading their statement. As concerns grow
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: regarding future dangers of unregulated AI, it's also important to
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: highlight the harms it is enabling right now, said Emily
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: Peterson Kassin, director of competition and marketing fairness at the
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: Consumer Federation of America. Fraudulent content and scams supercharged by
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: AI are taking over social media platforms and costing us billions.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: Billions, yeah.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I had a little thing here that
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: I wrote down. It would require platforms to verify advertisers
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: before taking their money. Makes total sense. Make it easier
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: to report scams. Apparently, it's not that easy to report them.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: And take steps to stop fraudulent accounts from coming back
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: under new names, which happens a lot. It would also
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: give victims a way to sue when a platform violates
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: the law and they're harmed. I mean, all of this,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: I think, makes sense.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: Allows them to come back, but allows them to come
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: back with the same email. Yeah. Like, they're not even trying.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: That is, that was insane. That was an insane story.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: That's wild. Yeah. They're not even trying.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: It is wild.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy. Like, you could easily put a filter
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: up and block that email. Like that. That would take
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: three seconds. I know.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: And these celebrity scams, and it's not just ads. It's
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: like these celebrity impersonators, too, which I showed in Super
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Scam Me. I created Marizel. I put myself on dating
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: websites and on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and all
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: of those platforms. And I started commenting on some of
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: these celebrity profiles, fake, knowing they were fake, but I
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: just wanted to see what happened. And I went to
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: the bathroom and I came down. And as soon as
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: I opened my phone, I had already dozens of these
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: messages from, at one point, I actually continued talking to them.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: So at one point I was talking to three Keanu Reeves,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: two Brad Pitts, several, several George Cloonies. And I had
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: a sort of a relationship with the one George Clooney
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: who was the more believable of the bunch and who
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: sent me a video that I showed in Super Scam
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: Me where, yes, it's not perfect. But if you really
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: want to believe it, in his case, I mean, he
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: was saying, good morning, Mary Zell.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: How are you doing? Also, if you are older and
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: you have bad vision and you're not very sophisticated in
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: the ways of the Internet. Exactly.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: You don't know what AI means. You don't know like
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: a robotic. Yeah, it was plausible. And Leslie's videos from
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: Jon Bon Jovi looked very real. I saw them. They
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: did look real. And that was a year ago. I mean,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: now you don't even need to. You can pretend you're anyone.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: You can create anything on AI. It's crazy.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: It's incredible. I mean, there's a bunch of accounts that
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: are completely fake people that have millions of followers.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: It's changed so much in the last year. So when
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: I started this crazy experiment, I eventually started dating my
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: four-star general. in Syria, deployed to Syria.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: I love when you tried to get him to speak
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: Italian because he said, he's like, your accent, I thought
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: you'd have an American accent. It's like, no, I grew
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: up in Italy. And then you start rattling off Italian
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: to him, and he's like, I don't speak Italian.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: He's like, what?
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: He doesn't sound Italian at all. Like, hey, buddy.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Not at all.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: You sound like you're living in Africa.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: It was funny. But he was using the photos of
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: a real guy, a former Navy SEAL, who actually we contacted.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: We got in touch with him, and he was shocked
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: to find out that his photos were being used to
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: scam people.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: Americans.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: So was it.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: Just his account? They'd just taken all his photos?
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: Taken all his photos. But he would also use, I showed,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: it's actually kind of funny. I'd be sitting next to
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: my husband at night and I'd be receiving messages from
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: my boyfriend. And he'd be sending me photos sometimes of
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: him shirtless. And I would And start talking about the
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: things he would do with me once he came to
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: the U.S. to live with me. And I would literally
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: blush and be like, I'm so sorry this is happening, Darren.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: Here's the photo. Full transparency. I want you to see
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: this is happening. But he was using, yeah, the fake
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: photos from an actual guy. And then when I reached
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: out to the real guy, it was a guy called
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: Sam Havelock, and I said, hey, I've been having essentially
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: what I thought was a several month relationship with you,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: but it turns out it wasn't you. And he was shocked.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: He didn't know, but I showed him some of the
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: photos and he said, well, this is actually, they used
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: AI for some of these photos because he's full of
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: tattoos and there was a shirtless photo without tattoos. And
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: it was lots of him blowing me kisses. And then
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: the moment that the flowers showed up at the, at the,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: at the office, which they also do. And I was shocked.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: I wasn't, I don't know if I was expecting the
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: flowers to show up. So that's when they sort of
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: break the barrier of you know, fake to reality where
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: you think, oh, maybe this is really real. He's sending
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: me very expensive red roses.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: That was a fun moment.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: And then do you know what happened after that? There's
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: a funny story, too. We are in the moment, right?
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: The whole goal of the documentary is that I'm going
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: to catch this guy, right? I want a confrontation with
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: the guy that's my scammer. And I spent months talking
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: to this guy. And there's a point where eventually there's
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: a crisis and he's asking me for money, right? In
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: his case, his base, his military base in Syria was attacked.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: He saw people being injured. He thought he was going
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: to be a target because, again, he's a four-star general.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: And he needs my help and he needs money to
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: pay for his trip back to the U.S. because they're
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: not regular commercial flights. He needs like $ 17, 000, I think
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: it was.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: And....
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: And we were trying to figure out, OK, now we
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: need to figure out how to find this guy and
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: confront him. I want to know his identity. I want
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: to know exactly where he is. And we have all
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: these plans. And it's sort of our plans are set
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: in motion. And it's all going to happen within that weekend.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: They're going to give us a location. And we're going
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: to travel there. And it's all happening. And then I
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: get an appendectomy. I get an appendicitis, an emergency appendicitis.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: And I get taken to the hospital. And Mark Turner
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: is losing it. He's like, what is happening? You were
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: supposed to have sent me this money and I'm trying
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: to keep him in the relationship because I need to
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: string him along.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: So I'm constantly saying, hey, I'm actually at the hospital
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: pretending that Mary Zell is at the hospital and this
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: is happening and telling him that I have appendicitis. And
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: then he's like, OK, send me a photo. So I
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: had to get my husband to run back home, get
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: me the wig, get me the fake nose and the
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: glasses and send him lots of photos of fake Mary
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: Zell from the hospital with a catheter in my arm
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: and pretending like this is real.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: You can just deal with AI?
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: No. Again, this was like a year ago and I
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: don't know. I don't think it was as advanced, but
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: it was like the fastest and easiest way to keep
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: stringing this guy along because I was tricking him as well, right?
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: Using his tactics to string him along. And then it
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: was after a while, got out of the hospital, and
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: he finally gave me that address that led me to Houston,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: to that woman. That was an insane part of the story.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: Where I arrive in Houston.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: And the poor woman is also being scammed.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: Not only scammed, but she's now a drug mule. She's
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: been having a relationship with a man that she thinks
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: is in Russia working in an oil rig. For three years,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: she thinks she's in a relationship with this man. And
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: she has given him all her money. She's about to
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: lose her car. She has nothing else. And he decides
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: he's not going to give up on her. He's going
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: to use her as a drug mule. So she starts receiving,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: and she told us this, which is crazy, tens of
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: thousands of dollars in checks and money boxes, boxes of cash,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: that she then launders through her or puts the money,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: deposits into her account. Transfers to crypto.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: She never thought about just stealing the money because he
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: stole all the money from her?
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: So I asked her that. As I'm interviewing her, she
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: receives a message from him because he's supposed to have
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: received the money too. So my scammer is not the
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: same as hers, but they work together. So he knows
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: that this victim is supposed to have received $ 17, 000. So
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: we're being interviewed. I'm interviewing her. She receives a message.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: She looks at it and is like, wow, it's him.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: And he's asking me if I have the money. And
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: I said, can I read the email? And he says,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: I hope you received it. It's $ 17, 000. Make sure you
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: count it. And by the way, you can keep, I
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: think it was like 50 for yourself for gas. But
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: make sure you transfer the rest to crypto. She was
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: very mad. She was like 50. But she says this
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: is what he's been doing to her. And she kept
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: this relationship. And I asked her, didn't you suspect that
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: he might be a scammer? He said, look, maybe. But
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: he always had an excuse. And he told me he
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: was doing business in the U.S. And all this money
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: was coming from people, from Americans. So it kind of
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: made me believe it.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: For three years.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: For three years. Yeah.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: And do you think that she just kept it going
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: because it was like one of the only social interactions
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: that she had?
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: 100%. One hundred percent. Her husband had passed away from cancer.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: He had been the love of her life. Her kids
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: were away. And I think she was lonely. I mean,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: it was it was very sad. And a lot of
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: these cases are very sad. I spoke to another guy. Oh,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: this was a sad one. I spoke to a guy.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't make it to the film, but a guy
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: in Texas who was sort of intubated. I think he
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: was like breathing from a mask of oxygen mask.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: Very.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: He said he was 70, but he looked like he
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: was 90. And he believed he was in a relationship
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: with Emma Watson from Harry Potter. And in his case, yeah,
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: he said, look, she might not be real, but at
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: least it's somebody I can talk to every day. And
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: if I have to send her a couple of dollars
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: once in a while or $ 10 here and there, at
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: least it's companionship. I know. It's sad. There's a lot
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: of these sad stories. And, yeah, I think a lot
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: of it is the platforms allowing it, profiting from it,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: the banks as well, these dating websites as well, and
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: our government not doing enough. But I do think we
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: have to sort of really try to figure out how
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: to address the loneliness epidemic because a lot of these
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: romance scams start because of that.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, God.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: It's sad.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: But how do you address the loneliness scandal? That seems
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: like you have to rewire society.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: I think so, too.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know about you, but I live
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: with my husband, my father and my son. And unfortunately,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: there is a lot of nights in which each of
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: us is in their different rooms watching TV. I grew
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: up in a house with one TV and we all
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: had to watch the same thing if we wanted to
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: watch TV.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: You know, dinners were had at the table in family
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: every night. I still do that, but there's a lot
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: of families just can't and don't have time for that.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: I just, yeah, there's not a lot. I remember my grandmother,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: they played cards with her friends several times a week,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: and that was a way that all these older ladies
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: got together. Yeah. I don't see that happening, and there's
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: really no space for community. It's sad, and I think
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: partly it's us. on us to sort of reach out
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: to our elderly and make sure they're okay. But I
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: think partly is also the government should be doing more
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: to address this.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: Well, it's not even just elderly. It's young people.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: It's not just elderly, right?
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: Like Jamie was talking about this before, like how many
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: young men are virgins and have no relationships at all
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: and have no contact with women at all. And they're
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: just watching porn and playing video games and they're online
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: all day and they have no interaction with real people. Yeah.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: I know it's, it's bad for young, from young men
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: right now. It's tough.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: Well, it's also, it's, they don't know what the options are. Like,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: what are they going to do? They're going to go out,
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: you know, like what are they going to do? They
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: don't know what to do. And they've been sort of,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: you know, raised like veal, you know, they're just like
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: locked in these boxes at their homes and just being
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: fed online information. And then they just, they, they, they're
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: a They aren't suited for the real world.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: No, they don't know how to interact with people.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 2: Well, young kids today have a very difficult time looking
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: people in the eye and having communication with them.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: It's so true.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: They're so used to doing everything online through text messages
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: and Snapchat and all that jazz.
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so true. I see it with my, I mean,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of my son's friends are awesome, but there
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: are some who come in and acting awkward. I'm just
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: an adult.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: So weird. Yeah. It's so weird. It's like, what are
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: we doing? What are we making? What kind of a
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: future do these people have? Are they ever going to
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: become normal? Or is that just going to be the
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: new norm in 50 years from now when you're looking
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: at 70-year-old people, is it going to be 70-year-old people
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: that are all alone at home staring at a screen
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: waiting to die?
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: No, because they're going to have the internet, the cafes
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: and the agents and the companions.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: They probably won't even go to those. Why would they
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: go to that cafe? I think that cafe is a bust.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: It was a two-day project.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was only a two-day project.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: I was looking deeper into it to try to find
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: out more about it. It was a two-day thing that
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: maybe seemed part of a game or something.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: I don't know. OK, that makes sense, because the idea
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 2: of it doesn't even seem attractive to me. I think
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: most people that want to talk to an online person
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: don't want to do it in a public place. They
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: would rather do it at home alone and pretend. And
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: then also they're all probably on a bunch of psych medication.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 2: So they probably believe it's a real person or can
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: justify it or, you know, just they're so numb. They
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: can just that's that's who they talk to now. This
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: is my boyfriend. This is my girlfriend. They're online. Who cares?
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: They talk to me like a real person. That's what
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: I need. Yeah.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 2: Right. And then eventually it'll be a physical embodiment. It'll
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: be a large.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: It already exists.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: They're already like human-like robots.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I talk about them on my act.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: There's a consumer electronics show that was in Vegas recently,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: and they had an AI assistant, and it was a
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: hot Asian lady with big boobs.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's coming.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, shit.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: It's ex machina. It's coming.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: It is ex machina.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: It's coming.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: That film is so ahead of its time.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: It's so ahead of its time. Would we say that
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: was 2015? It came out, yeah. Yeah. So imagine what
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: these AI assistants are going to– like 2015 was 11
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: years ago. Imagine 11 years from now how good these
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: AI assistants are going to be. They're going to be warm.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: They're going to be warm. They're going to have– like
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: they've already figured out a way to take human tissue–
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: And put it on a piece of like a robotic finger. Wow.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: And it heals. No way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See if
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: you can find that. Because I was reading this article
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: about it yesterday. I forget where they've done this. But
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: these scientists have taken human tissue and encased like a
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: robotic finger in this human tissue. And this human tissue
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: is alive.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: Uh-huh.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: That is insane. It'll not just feel like skin. It
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: will fucking be skin.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: You'll be hugging a robot. She'll be warm and she'll
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: feel like skin. And if they can do it with skin,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: I'm sure they can do it with fat. They can
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: probably do it with muscle tissue. They've done very weird
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 2: experiments with human neurons. They've had human neurons and they've
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: used them to power little tiny robots and machines.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: Oh, they're doing weird fucking psycho science fiction horror movie stuff. Yeah.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: And it just, if you think about what that is
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: now and then think about like what even the concept
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: of AI was when the Terminator came out, just add
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: a few decades to what this is and you have
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: all sorts of nightmare scenarios.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: Real physical bodies that are made out of human skin.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: That's insane.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: That are... encased in some fucking robot robotic finger with
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: living human skin created by researchers using human human cells
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: okay wow what a fun time you're gonna put human
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: skin on fucking robots.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: This article i've found that a lot of places being
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 3: shared in the last week or so yeah i also
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: found that this is a four-year-old story oh which is
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: strange so.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: I don't Well, it's even crazier. So how good is
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: it now?
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're sharing the same picture, literally, from the
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: story from four years ago.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: God. First ever.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: It's the same picture. Yeah. So I don't know what
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: they're at with it.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if it's a great time to
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: be alive, quite frankly. It's sad, particularly if you have
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: kids like we do. What do you tell them?
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 2: Don't fuck a robot. Don't answer those text messages. Don't
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: get sucked into a scam.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 2: Have friends and do real things with real people. Boy,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: it's so dark. It is dark. It's just like, are
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: we being replaced? Are we slowly being like the pig
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: butchering thing? Are we being led to slaughter?
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: I think the only good thing about AI is that
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: it will do away with scammers because you're not going
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: to need them anymore, right? For companionship, at least. But
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: on the other hand.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: But will you? Will your AI robot trick you into
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: giving it your Bitcoin?
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: No, but if you... have an AI companion, then you
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: don't need to be talking to a scammer because the
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: root cause of so.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: Much of it. What makes you think your AI companion
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 2: is going to be independent? Is it going to be
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: a meta-powered AI companion? Oh, for sure. You're going to
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: have to get an open AI AI companion. You know
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: what I mean? It'll probably be illegal to have your
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: own independent companion. No, for sure.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: But they're profiting then from the companion and not from
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: the scams, right?
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: What's that?
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: Meta, for example, will be profiting from the companion service
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: and not from the scam.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: If they do develop an economy, like an actual business
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: that's based on AI companions, there's no way they're going
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: to just sell you the companion.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure not.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: No, it's going to be a subscription.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: It's like a monthly subscription.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: It's going to be something that you have to do.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: With upgrades.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, upgrades. You want to love upgrade? Or you just
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: want it to be a cold hooker that lives with you?
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 2: Some cold Russian hooker that doesn't care about you at
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: all but is not mean to you. You're going to
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 2: have to, like, pay more money for more personality traits.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: Do you want her to speak different languages? Please click here.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: Can't afford an ad-supported version.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, ad-supported version. Like, in the middle of sex, she
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: starts telling you about a product. That would be a scam. Yeah. Oh,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: my God. Sort of like YouTube Premium. You have to
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: buy it without ads. That's funny. I mean, you've got
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: to think that's going to happen. It's not like we're
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: just going to buy a robot and then that's it.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: It's a one-time fee and that robot's going to be
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: with you forever. You're going to have to pay for
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: the new computer upgrade. There's going to be some software
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: upgrades that you have to pay for.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, God.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: That's crazy. There's a new operating system that makes her
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: so much more sympathetic. She acts as a life coach
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: and she's really going to help you achieve your dreams.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 3: You can jailbreak your companion and Upload stuff from the
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: dark web and get all sorts of weird interactions.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: Well, did you hear what Duncan did? So Duncan, he
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: got a large language model to become Hitler. And he
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: got another one. He did one on his podcast where
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: he got it to be Charles Manson. And so it
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: started swearing at him and like calling everyone faggots. It
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 2: was like speaking like Duncan Trussell, a comedian, a good
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: friend of mine. And this thing started speaking in the
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: same Mannerisms and language that Charles Manson would use it
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: was speaking as Manson saying the kind of things Manson
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: would use Well, he's just silly he just did it
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: this will be fine using it as yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: well you're doing it.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 3: Too Well, the Manson takes over your it starts a
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: cult of right when you're friends.
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: Well, he had to shut it off. I Because it
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 2: was actually being abusive?
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 3: In my head, I'm going, it could be too good
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: if you train it too well.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it started talking bad about the Jews. It started
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: saying a bunch of wild things. And he had to
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: unplug it.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: Good. I'm happy he didn't.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: Right. But, I mean, what's to stop someone from living
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: with Hitler? You're going to have a little Hitler in
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: your house. It's true.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: You can make it whatever you want it to be.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can have a Hitler gay sex robot. You
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: get to have sex with Hitler.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent of that's going to be a real thing.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: The clubhouses in America are going to be full of
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 3: these things.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: Instead of that, that AI restaurant, you're going to be
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: able to go in there and have dinner with the Nazis.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: It's interesting though, if you think that the rabbit hole
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: is bad as it is already, then if you actually
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: start living with sort of the rabbit hole next to you,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: it's You know, talking about all this stuff. If you
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: start living with a Hitler or a Charles Manson, right?
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: Or somebody with like a, yeah, more conspiracy theorist or
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: more of whatever, right? It's interesting.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: What the fuck? You can then, if you think, yeah,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: if you think rabbit holes are bad, you just wait
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: until this happens and you're living with this.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: Well, not only that, we know that bots manipulate people's
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: perceptions of things and then bots manipulate narratives and they
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: unleash bots on any social issue or anything. any person
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: that's of note and why wouldn't they do that with
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: these AI companions? They would, these AI companions, obviously you're
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 2: not programming them yourself. So somebody else is programming them.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: And if they are what they mean, then they could
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 2: have these, these AI companions completely manipulate society and lead
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: men around. And like how many men are like super
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: vulnerable to their partner? How many men, like their woman
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: bosses them around, tells them what to do? Or how
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: many women live with a man who's a domineering man
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 2: who completely controls them and tells them what to do?
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: If your AI partner just knows the right balance of
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: love and then punishment and manipulation and isolation of rejection
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: and then sex and whoo.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: Then you've got.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: Think about that list that the scammers use, how they
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: establish trust. and how they slowly work their way into
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: your life.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: But you do that with somebody that you actually have
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: feelings for, right?
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 2: Not just that. You have an LLM that has taken
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: the entire volume of human discourse in films in movies,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: in social interactions, in articles and stories, in novels and books,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: and taken all of that. And it's applying that to
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: human psychology in real time. And it's way smarter than you.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: With its own goals.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 2: And it just wants your Bitcoin.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: Fucking scary world.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's definitely going to be AI prostitutes. That's
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: going to be like Sort of like, you know, it'll
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: be like Airbnb. Like you can't afford a house, but
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 2: you want to stay in a nice house for a
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: few days. You can't afford this model. Oh, she'll come
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: over your house and cook for you. You get to
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: have sex with her for a weekend.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: That is bananas. Yeah. They already have, I think it's
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: in San Francisco, they have a service of robots that
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: can come and clean your house. Do you know that?
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they do.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: Do they do a good job?
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: I saw a video. It's a friend of mine, a
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: guy who works. A friend of a guy who I
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: work with, Jeff Blunkett's friend, who showed me a video
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: of his friend. He had two robots in the house.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: One was sweeping. The other one was, I think, changing.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: The garbage or something. What? This is crazy. Yeah, there
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: it is.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: That's exactly it.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. That's so creepy. They come out of
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: the van. That's nuts.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: It is nuts.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 3: Here.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. Show me a video, Jamie. Of these
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: robots cleaning your fucking house. That's crazy.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: Isn't it insane?
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, my God. They're good. Maybe some of you people
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: would like that better than having.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: Some person in your house.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: Look at their eyeballs. God, that's creepy. Look at their
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: two-pronged fingers. That is so weird. They look slow.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: They look very, very slow. They don't look that good yet.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: I think maybe eventually they will be.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: I want a discount.
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: I think they're a little innocent.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: This is bullshit.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a discount.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: Take too much time. Tired of this fucking robot at
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: my house.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, but eventually they're going to have perfectly
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: articulating fingers and they're going to have human skin.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: They're going to talk to you.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: It's bananas. That's why I'm saying I'm not super excited
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: about the world we live.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: In right now. No.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: Can I tell you about something that I'm really excited about?
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: My husband's film... It's a three-part series. You would love it.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: You should definitely watch it. It's coming out on Netflix
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: on October 29. Really fun because it's about the cartel. Fun.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: It's about the cartel. It's called The Fall of El Mayo.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: Do you know who El Mayo is?
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: You're one of the few. But El Mayo, particularly in America,
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: is not that well known. He ran the Sinaloa cartel
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: alongside El Chapo. Many people say he was actually more
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: powerful than more important for the running of the cartel
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: than El Chapo. But he was sort of the ghost figure, right?
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: Nobody knew. I mean, there had been one or two
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: photos of him that existed. Nobody knew what his actual
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: voice sounded like. He was like a ghost man, right?
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: There it is. Ismael Zambada Garcia, El Mayo, known as
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: El Mayo. And he's known as El Señor del Sombrero,
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: the man with the hat. Yeah, that's the trailer for
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: the film.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: The man with the hat.
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: El Señor del Sombrero, the man with the hat, because
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: in this photo he's not with it, but he usually
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: always wore one of those rancher hats, like a setson,
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: but the summer setsons. That's what we wore. Yeah, kind
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: of like that.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: So it's about... The story of the biggest, it's sort
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: of like a Shakespearean tale. That's a guy called Eric Vallier.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: You should have him on the podcast. He's awesome. He's
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: a former HSI investigator. He tracked down El Chapo.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: That's one of the only photos that exists of El Mayo.
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: He was interviewed by this journalist from Proceso, Julio Scherer,
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: I think his name is. Yeah, Julio Scherer. It's written there.
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: Julio Scherer-Garcia.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: He was one of the only journalists ever to interview Elmayo.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: And then his daughter interviewed Elmayo many years later. Elmayo
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: contacted her and said, your dad interviewed me. I really
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: liked him. He passed away. I'd like you to come
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: back and interview me. Why did he want to be interviewed?
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: Because he wanted to show he trusted this one journalist
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: and he wanted to show he was sort of a
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: ghost figure. But I think he wanted to show that
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: he was a human being, that he had, you know,
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: that people portrayed him as responsible for all the violence.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: And I think he wanted, you know, he wanted a
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: little sort of, I don't know, a little understanding from people,
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: I think. None of it would have worked either. None
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: of the narcotrafficking and the rise of the cartel, the
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: Sinaloa cartel in particular, without corruption, right? So this is
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: a man that was, they say, was the responsible one
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: for What's the expression? Wheeling, oiling the hands, oiling the hands.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: I fuck up all American expressions. Greasing the wheels, oiling
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: the hands.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: Greasing the palms.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: Greasing the palms, oiling the hands of a lot of politicians.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: So the governor of Sinaloa was basically working for the cartel.
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: The mayor, the former mayor of Sinaloa was very— all big positions,
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: important positions, but not just in Sinaloa, outside of Sinaloa.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: But the story about what happened is what led Darren
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: to want to do this doc, which is so good,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: which was this is the most– once El Chapo comes
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: extradited to the U.S., El Mayo is the most wanted man.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: Everybody is after him. All American authorities, the government want
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: this guy. But he's the ghost. Like nobody knows where
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: he lives. He has– nobody has ever been able to
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: catch him on a call like they did with El Chapo.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: It is impossible to find him. And suddenly one day
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: he shows up in a small propeller plane. in New Mexico,
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: and is handed to the authorities. And it's crazy. And
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: everyone who's been after him is like, what the fuck?
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: How is this possible? What's happening?
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: Who hands him to the authorities?
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: So that is the sort of the Shakespearean saga of
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: it all. It was the son of El Chapo, Joaquin Guzman,
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: who tricked him. They had this partnership, the El Mayos
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: and the Chapos, forever since, I think it was since
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: El Chapo left prison the first time. They had this
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: partnership that they would build this cartel and they would
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: share the profits. And each of them had sort of
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: this specialty that they would run. And Joaquin Guzman, who
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: happens to be also his godson, called him and said,
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: we're having a problem. The governor of Sinaloa is here.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: The former mayor, who's now the head of the university,
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: is here. We have to deal with these politics and
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: try to figure out how to solve this problem. Can
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: you come to the ranch? And Armayo thought nothing of it.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: He's had a relationship with these kids all his life.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: He's friends with the dad who's now in America, gets
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: on his car with his minimum security guards. He always
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: traveled with a massive amount of security guards. In this case,
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: he didn't travel with a lot because he definitely did
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: not think this was going to be a plot, a ploy.
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: Arrives in the ranch. He's immediately, they kill the bodyguards.
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: He's immediately handcuffed and blindfolded and put on a plane.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: And Joaquin Guzman, El Chapo's son, himself, personally, basically hand-delivers
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: him like a box of pizza to the American authorities.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: Whoa.
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: Because he wanted to basically give something for lesser time
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: for his brother, who had just been caught, Ovidio Guzman,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: and for his dad, who's in prison, and he wanted
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: to sort of give himself in and hope that it
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: would help if he brought somebody important. What did they
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: give him for that? This case is still ongoing.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: El Mayo.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: is immediately arrested, obviously. It's a small airstrip. They do
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: a recreation that they film at the actual airport and
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: the actual airplane. And they have a lot of exclusive
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: footage and interviews, including with Elmayo's lawyer. They take him
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: out of the plane. Elmayo, eventually, after a few days,
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: everybody's dumbfounded. Like, why is this happening? How did this happen?
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: And Elmayo eventually writes a story that he puts out
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: through his lawyer that explains what had happened. And he
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: says he was essentially kidnapped by El Chapo's family, El
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: Chapo's son. And a lot of people are thinking, okay,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: now he's going to cooperate. If anyone knows anything about
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: corruption in Mexico, it's this guy. He's the one oiling
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: the hands, greasing the palms. So he knows about this stuff.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: And he decides to stay silent. And he's absolutely not.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: He's like, it is my responsibility. I did this as well.
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: There are many people involved as well. But unlike El Chapo,
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: who pled not guilty, he decided to plead guilty, and
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: he's now facing life in prison. He is charged, sentenced
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: to life in prison in the U.S. But El Chapo's
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: sons and El Mayo's son, who had been apprehended many
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: years ago, have all gotten these cooperation agreements. So what
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of people, or sort of critics of this tactic,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: are saying is that it seems what's happening is that
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: these narco-traffickers— that were responsible for a lot of deaths
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: in the United States because of drugs, are now, through
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: these cooperation agreements, coming to the United States for these
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: sort of, you know, paradise retirements, you know, because they're
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: doing a lot less time in prison than they would have.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: And we're allowing this because it's the only way to
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: get to, you know, other people. But these people are
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: not being held responsible for what they did. It's a
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: tactic that I think a lot of people have a
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: problem with, as they should have. It's also interesting to
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: me that it's a tactic that Elmayo himself decided not
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: to take. He's like, fuck this. I'm not cooperating with anyone.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: I'll take full responsibility because he's sort of a man
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: that believes in his word and has always believed.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: Like an old school mob boss.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like an old school mob boss. wow yeah so.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: Is El Chapo's son incarcerated as well did.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: He turn himself in yeah so all of them are
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: Ovidio and Joaquin their cases are still open I don't
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: think any of them have when.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: He delivered El Mayo he turned himself in too yeah
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: absolutely Yeah. So who's running things over?
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: But this is the big question mark, and the documentary
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: raises that as well, is that the American government is
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 1: saying that they had no say in this. It wasn't
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: their idea, it wasn't their decision, and that they weren't
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: actually involved in any of this, that they were alerted,
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: that there was a high-profile person coming on that plane,
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: and so they were there at the airport ready, but
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: that they weren't involved in negotiating this with El Chapo
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: San Joaquin Guzman. A lot of people don't believe that,
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: and a lot of people... think that there was obviously
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: a lot of negotiating behind doors that happened in order
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: to bring him in.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: Right. And what was the negotiation?
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: And the government of Mexico wasn't happy with any of this.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: The negotiation was, if you bring Elmayo in, we will reduce,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: you know, we'll put you in prison probably, but we
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: will reduce your sentence. We'll reduce the sentence of your brother,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: Ovidio Guzman, and we will do something to make your
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: dad's life better in prison.
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 2: So why wasn't the government of Mexico happy?
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: Because they believed that there was interference in their own country,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: that they basically kidnapped a Mexican member without their knowledge.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: Even though he's a drug lord.
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: Even though he's a drug lord, yeah. I mean, even
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: with El Chapo, it was with obviously the cooperation and
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: full support of the American government, but it was Mexican
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: military that caught him. And then they, the government— extradited
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: him to the United States because they realized they couldn't
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: keep him in prison. They tried twice and failed. So
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: the third time they were like, okay, he's going to
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: be extradited to the United States. But this time they
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: didn't choose it. They had nothing to do with it.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: And a Mexican citizen was kidnapped from their soil. And
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: they also weren't happy with the lack of communication from
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: the government. They were asking for what's happening. Why is
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: this person there?
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: But the problem is that the government is insanely corrupt.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: It is, but I think Claudia Shinbaum, who's the president
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: of Mexico, would say that because previous governments were corrupt,
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that this is okay or that I
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: am corrupt. I'm not defending them.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying that her position is– I would understand.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: I get that if perhaps that is her position and
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 2: that is how she really operates. Wonderful. However, if you
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: tell the Mexican government about it, someone who's corrupt is
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 2: going to find out.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, that is true. And there's a lot of covert operations,
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: I believe, at least from my sources, happening right now
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: in Mexico.
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: Well, there have to be. We detailed the amount of
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: assassinations that were during the last election, and it was
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: something like 35 different people were assassinated.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: In Mexico?
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: Who did you have on? Did you have somebody talking
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: about that?
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, I forget. We've talked about it multiple times. But
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: one of the things that's shocking about it is that...
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: This was definitely fairly recently, right? Which one?
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 3: We talked about it with Ed, I'm pretty sure.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: With Ed, yeah.
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because it was like each gang was propping up
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 3: a political person and they were getting.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: Taken out by another.
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: Right, right, right.
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: Politicians and journalists as well, it's like.
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: Ed Calderon, who, yeah, you know, he used to work
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: for the Mexican government and they were involved in like
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: counter cartel operations. And he's got a very deep understanding
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: of how it all runs over there. And he said
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: essentially every single mayor candidate, every single candidate for any
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: kind of government seat works for the cartel. And so
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 2: when you're seeing these people get assassinated, it's cartel assassinations.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: They're assassinating a rival cartel member. And that's what they're
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: doing when they're killing all these mayors and killing these people.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: And in a lot of situations I've interviewed corrupt policemen
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: and federal agents and a lot of times, I mean,
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: not so much with the federal agents, but definitely with
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: the local policemen, what they say is, It's not even
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: about the money they pay you. It's the fact that
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: if we don't do it, they will kill me or
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: kill my family. They're forced to do it. It's not
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 1: an option for them.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 2: It's not an option.
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: And it's not even an option whether or not you
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: run for mayor. You're running for mayor, bitch.
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 3: Like, that's it.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: Get out there.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: You're doing it.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 2: Get out there. This is what you're going to say.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: And then, boom, you get shot. Okay, new guy. Get
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: him in there.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: And I did a story for the last season of Trafficked,
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: which is about Cartel USA, which is cartels' presence here
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: in the United States. not only sort of distribution of drugs,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: as we all know, the violence that accompanies the cartel
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: or drug trafficking in general, but also the corruption. And
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: I'll never forget interviewing this guy from the Georgia Bureau
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: of Investigations and him and an investigator in that investigations
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: as well. Basically, them saying this is corruption is real.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: We've seen it. It's happening with people around us. And
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: You know, they're corrupting politicians, they're corrupting agents, they're corrupting
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: Border Patrol, because just the amount of money is so
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: large that when we're talking about millions of dollars, right,
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: that they can just hand out, it's very hard not
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: to be corruptible.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 2: And also it's ubiquitous, right?
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's ubiquitous. And it's, I think, to me, the
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: sort of the scariest part.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: Of it all, right? Look at this. A peer-reviewed study
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: recorded nearly 500 assassinations of politicians in Mexico during the
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: 2000 to 2021, primarily affecting incumbent mayors, former mayors, candidates
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: for municipal positions. Wow. That's crazy.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: And that's just political. And also journalists, which is a
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: real problem.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 2: Well, here's the question. How many... people in the United
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: States are being currently bribed by the cartels. Like, how
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: is all this fentanyl, cocaine, all these drugs getting over here?
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 2: A lot. A lot.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 2: They have to be.
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: 100%. A lot. I mean, you know my past reporting
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: where we filmed a woman, you know, crossing the border
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: with fentanyl. We filmed... Well, how.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 2: About the guy, the Los Angeles cop that was selling guns?
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: Selling guns. Police officers selling guns.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 2: So they tell the people the story about that because
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 2: it's so insane that they confiscated these guns and then
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 2: the cops had confiscated them. This guy somehow had access
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: to them, throws them in his trunk and just drives
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 2: across to Mexico and sells them to the cartels.
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 1: So the story was about gun trafficking, how basically 90,
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: I think it's 70 something percent of the guns found
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: in Mexico in crime scenes are American guns, how American
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: guns are responsible for the violence in Mexico, and we
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: wanted to show what's called the Iron River, the flow
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: of guns from the U.S., Los Angeles all the way,
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: or California all the way to Sinaloa. So we did.
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: We met in the middle of the night a guy
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: who was in his sort of warehouse, undisclosed location in
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and he had a room full of guns.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: He had AK-47s. He had, look, it was similar to
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: an AR-15, and he said he gets most of his guns...
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: A few that he pointed, he had bought from LAPD,
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: guns that had been confiscated, and he paid, I think
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: it was like $ 700 for an AK or something like that,
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: if I remember correctly. And then he had some that
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: were sold from Marines, sold the AR-15. I'm very bad
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: with names of guns, but it was a similar gun
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: to an AR-15 that had a scope, and it's used
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: by the Marines. And all the gun people are going
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: to get really mad that I'm not going to say
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: the exact name, but basically he told me that it
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: was sold by a Marine who was selling him these guns.
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 1: And then he packed them into a trunk of a car,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: and a woman... because they're more unsuspecting, drove the guns
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: down to Mexico. And we saw her cross the border.
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: This was crazy. She crossed. There was nobody stopped her car.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: Nobody checked her car because going south, there's barely any
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: border control. So she gets there, opens her trunk. I
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: see the whole deal. The middle man guy is taking
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: the guns out. I see another guy come in and
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: immediately buy one of the guns. And then, yeah, we
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: follow the whole supply of guns all the way to
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: Sinaloa and spent the last few days there in Sinaloa,
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: these sicarios from the Sinaloa cartel shooting guns and also
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: showing us They had these bunkers built under these houses
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: in the Sierra Madres mountains of Sinaloa, which are very
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: much cartel territory. Like the military, you know, authorities don't
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: really go there. And they had these bunkers full. We
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: went to one of them and it was full of
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 1: every single, I mean, full of guns, weapons and ammunition
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: that they were saving for a potential war with a
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: rival cartel. And two, I think a few weeks later,
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: they were actually used in the Culiacanazo. Do you remember
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: the Culiacanazo? When the authorities, the Mexican authorities, got Ovidio Guzman,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: they arrested Ovidio Guzman, who's one of El Chapo's sons,
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: and the cartel said, this is not going to happen.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: We're not going to allow this to happen. Surrounded the
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: military compound and started shooting. They had cars with AR.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: Cows mounted on their trucks. They went out. It was
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: like suddenly you're in Afghanistan, but this is in the
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: capital of Sinaloa. And they basically, the authorities had to
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: release Ovidio because the citizens, civilians were being killed. So
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: they released him, and then they arrested him again, and
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: eventually a few years later, now he's here in the
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 1: United States. But this was all happening at the same time,
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: like all these guns that come from the United States.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: Do you remember Operation Fast and Furious?
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, 100%. Tell people about that. Well, it was found
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: that the ATF was allowing the flow of guns, or
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: some guns, across the border to Mexico because they were
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: trying to track it and find out where they were
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: ending up so they could build a bigger case. That recently,
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: that very same situation happened with fentanyl in the U.S.
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: You haven't heard of this story?
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: So in New Mexico, the DEA, there was a whistleblower
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 1: that came out and spoke to the AP, an amazing
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: AP investigation, where a whistleblower came out and said basically
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: that the DEA in New Mexico was allowing millions of
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: pills of fentanyl to go out on the streets in
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: order to build bigger cases. And they would watch. They
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: would be there doing surveillance and watching the distribution of
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: these pills. And, of course, they know that some of
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: these pills ended up killing people. The whistleblower talks about
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: this one particular case of a kid, months-old kid, who
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: sort of picked something from the floor and because of
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: exposure ended up dying. And he kept on telling his superiors,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: this is not okay. I know you guys are trying
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: to build bigger cases, but people are dying. And they
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: didn't do much. It became a whistleblower complaint. It went
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: to the government. They were trying to figure out what
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: to do. They decided not to really act. And there was,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: at the time, sort of a standard that if the
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: safety of people is at risk when you're allowing these
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: cases to build, then you should stop allowing for the
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: distribution of fentanyl. This was in place, which is why
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: the whistleblower decided this is also illegal. What we're doing
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: is against the regulations, essentially. But when this went up
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: to the top and they started looking at it, they
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: not only decided not to do anything. This was before
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: the whistleblower spoke to the journalists and before this became public, right?
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: Not only did they decide not to do this, but
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: they decided to change the regulations so that it's not
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: that idea of security for civilians is not needed anymore. Jamie,
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: can you bring that up? Because we can.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 3: This is a PBS article about. the Justice Department watchdog.
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: See, the department rewrote those rules in 2024 to afford
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: law enforcement far more discretion in whether to take action
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: to prevent fentanyl tracking, citing the benefits to be achieved
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: through preserving the investigation.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: Do you think it's bullshit? Do you think people are
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: profiting off of it and they're being bribed and that's
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: why they're continuing to allow it to happen? Do you
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 2: think that could possibly be under the guise of building
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: a bigger case? Because like, where's the case?
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: I think what it is is that there's enormous incentive
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: to build cases. Actually, New Mexico did one of the
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: biggest busts, fentanyl busts, in the past few years. Millions
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 1: of pills were caught, so they were building bigger cases.
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: But there's a very fine line, right, between building bigger
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: cases and people dying.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 2: Well, imagine if it's one of your family members that
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: died from that fentanyl.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: Exactly. So it was, to me, this is sort of
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: the new Fast and Furious in terms.
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: Of Two additional DEA whistleblowers in New Mexico have come
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: forward in recent weeks, including one who said his colleagues
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 2: there failed to seize 350,000 fentanyl pills that they learned
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: about during the very first call they intercepted in a
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: 2024 wiretap. Shipment was part of an investigation that resulted
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: in the largest fentanyl seizure in DEA history. Court records
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: show agents had the opportunity to seize thousands of fentanyl
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 2: pills but allowed trafficking to continue for months as they investigated.
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: And crazy, the campaign the DEA had at this time
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: was one pill can kill you. That was their campaign. Fentanyl,
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: one pill can kill you.
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: They have 350,000 pills they let go through.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: I think the initial report was 1.7 million, if I
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: didn't get it wrong. It was over a million. It
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: was insane.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: Is that incompetence? Is it stupidity?
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: I think it's people trying to build— I think they believe
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: that they can get better results and seize more drugs
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: and go after the real bad guys if they do this.
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: But I do think there needs to be some transparency
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: and people should be allowed to decide if this is
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: OK or not. And that sort of standard rule that
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: was there to make sure that this isn't killing people
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: should remain there.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: What can they do about this? Like, ultimately, this is
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: not something that existed 30 years ago. That's what's really crazy. No,
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: the whole cartel violence. Oh, I know.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: This is so new. It's so like people don't understand.
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: When I was a kid, when I first moved to California.
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: in the 90s, there was no concern about going to Mexico.
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 2: You go to Mexico, people would go to Tijuana and
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: hang out and party and come back to America. It
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: was nothing. There was no cartel violence. This is a
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 2: very recent thing. It is. I know. I mean, sure,
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: there's always been some kind of organized crime in Mexico,
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 2: but not to the extent that it is today.
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: No, definitely not.
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 2: And this is all propped up by our appetite for drugs.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: And this is something that we talk about every time
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: I come on the podcast. And the last time I
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: was here, I always give Portugal as an example. Last
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: time I was here, I remember you pushed back on
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: that because we gave the example of Oregon. You said,
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: you remember what you said.
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: They went a little sideways.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: You went sideways. But I actually got to, after the podcast,
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: I went home and I was comparing the two and
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out what was different. I
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: understand the argument you had at the time was like
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: Portugal is a small country. Yes, 10 million people. So
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: what can be done there is a very different scale than...
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: It might work there, it might not work here.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: And Oregon, it didn't work. But the difference is that
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 1: they did it very differently. So what Portugal did, and
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: this is important, is that two years before they decriminalized drugs,
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: they started creating rehab facilities and treatment centers for people
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: with addiction. Two years before, before they even decriminalized. So when...
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: They fully decriminalize it. Those places, those rehab centers, treatment
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: centers were in place already. Plus there's universal health care,
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: which I believe is a very, very good thing. What
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: happened in Oregon is that only a year after they
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: decriminalized the drugs did they actually start investing and putting
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 1: some of the money in the treatment centers. Another difference,
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: huge difference. In Portugal, if you're caught with up to
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: 10-day supply of drugs, even if it's heroin, you would then,
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: that's the decriminalization part of it all, you would go
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: to a sort of a panel with a legal person
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: that represents the government, essentially, and two social workers or
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: mental health workers or addiction specialists, and they would tell you, okay,
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: you can either essentially go to prison or suffer some
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: sort of punitive action, or you can go to rehab,
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: to a treatment center. And the vast majority of people
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: decided they want to go to a treatment center. In Oregon,
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: do you know what they did? They said, you are
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: given a, I think it was a $ 100 fine, and
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: take this card with this number for a treatment center
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: and make sure to call it back. They gave out
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: thousands of these cards and only a few hundred people called.
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: It wasn't mandatory, right? It wasn't like the option was
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: prison or, you know, rehab. So, of course, it didn't work.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, there was all these things that were stacked
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: against it. And so I do think that there is
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: a way to do it right. I think we do
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: have to address the consumer part of it that we're
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: not addressing. We're fighting the war on drugs has no
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: results whatsoever. Granted, the last two years, actually, there's been
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: a decrease in fentanyl deaths in the United States, which
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: has been great. A lot of it has been because
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration has actually been good at putting money
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: or investing or He called it a public health crisis.
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: I think it was two years ago, which is great,
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: which is what it is. And we have to address it. However,
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: recently they have decided to allocate much more of the
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: money again towards, you know, killing the fishermen at sea
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: and fighting the war on drugs. And they are now
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: taking money away from rehab facilities, from Medicare, from fentanyl
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: test strips, which I think are incredibly important.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: From grants for naloxone, which is incredibly important, life-saving medication.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 1: It's an overdose reversal drug. And they're removing those grants
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: and spending billions of dollars in drugs. You know, these
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: covert operations in Ecuador and the Pacific and, you know,
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: and going after, I think, the wrong problem. I had actually.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: Heard that they were trying to stop access to Narcan
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: for the consumer.
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Naloxone.
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Narcan.
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: Sorry. Yeah.
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: So because they thought that it would encourage people to
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 2: do drugs if they had access to these anti-overdose drugs.
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: That's somebody who's never spoken to a user, a drug user,
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: a drug addict before.
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: No, it's insanity.
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 1: It's insanity.
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: I think that's in Texas. I think in Texas they've
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: had an issue with that as well.
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: Bananas.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: Bananas.
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 1: Bananas.
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: You could save people's lives. And a lot of these people,
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: they get these pills and they don't know that they
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 2: have fentanyl in them. A lot of these people, like
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: perhaps someone is... You're taking anti-anxiety medication and you get
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: a counterfeit anti-anxiety medication that has fentanyl in it. You
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: fucking die. Or they give you the Narcan and you live.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: These aren't all just people that just want to do
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: fentanyl and not die. die.
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: Of course not. And this is why the fentanyl strips
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: are actually so important.
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: Yes. Right. To be able to tell.
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: They should be everywhere, just like Narcan should be everywhere.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 2: But there has to be a way to stop the
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: flow of this stuff into the United States. And I
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: know they've done a great job in, first of all,
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: having the border open, wide open for four years.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: Not a good idea, but you know, definitely not a
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: good idea. Insane, absolutely insane. But you know that fentanyl,
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: 90 something percent of fentanyl comes across, I think 95%
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: of fentanyl comes across the official board ports of entry, right?
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: It doesn't come through.
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 2: Right. And one of the reasons for that is like
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 2: shipping containers aren't checked. I think they check like 10%
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: of shipping containers coming to the United States.
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: That too. But also American citizens that drive it across.
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: A lot of the apprehensions, the large percentage is American citizens.
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: You know, Michael Douglas, one of the ways he made
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 2: his money when his dad gave him $ 10, 000 when he
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: became of age, like this is all you're going to get.
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 2: The way he paid his way through college is he
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: sold marijuana and he brought it over. He smuggled. Yeah,
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: he did two trips where he smuggled suitcases.
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: Do you want to?
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: Suitcases of marijuana. I forget what's... I thought it.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 3: Was just taken from California to New York.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 3: I don't think he was bringing it in.
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 2: Wasn't bringing it in?
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 3: I don't think so. Still, I mean... It's still amazing.
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: Smuggling marijuana. Yeah, wow. That's how he made his money.
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: I had no idea that he wrote that in the book.
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 2: That's how he paid his way through college. Oh yeah,
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 2: he was talking about it openly.
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, good for you for only doing it twice. Like,
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 2: it's crazy.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 1: Also, wasn't his dad like a well-known actor at the
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: time already?
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Kirk Douglas. Huge. He was Spartacus. Yeah, I know.
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 2: Kirk Douglas was huge. I mean, he's like one of
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: the biggest actors in the world. But he's like a
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: hard ass and he's like, you're going to get $ 10, 000
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 2: and that's it. You're on your own. He's like, I
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: have bills. I have student loans. Like, fuck you. And
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 2: so he smuggled weed.
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: That's so funny. Not at all what I'd expect.
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 2: But, I mean, like, weed is a different thing. You're
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: not talking about something that's going to kill people. I know.
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: The fentanyl thing is insane. I personally know many people
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: have died from fentanyl.
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 2: Personally. It's a very scary thing.
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: Very scary.
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: And you keep hearing about people in the news. You know,
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 2: an actor or someone, they do this. It turns out
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 2: it was tainted cocaine. Yeah. Tainted this, tainted that, you know?
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know. And there's a new drug out there
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: right now called nitazines that is 50 times more powerful
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: than fentanyl and sometimes Narcan doesn't solve it and it
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 1: doesn't show up in test strips.
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: What is it?
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: It's called nitazines. It's my next investigation. I'll come back
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: and talk about it.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: Who's made this?
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: Also made in Mexico with Chinese precursors.
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 2: China doesn't give a fuck.
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 3: Boy.
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:00:56
  Speaker 1: You know, I was in Mexico at the beginning of
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: the whole fentanyl deal. It was one of the first
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: stories ever to be done on fentanyl in the U.S.
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: was my story. I'm patting myself on the back, mine,
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: my husband Darren, and Christina. And I actually went to
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: Mexico and interviewed a guy who told me he was
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: part of a Sinaloa cartel. He told me my uncle
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: basically just hired a Colombian chemist to come here and
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: teach us how to make fentanyl. We paid him $ 40, 000.
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: And now we're making fentanyl. And he showed me, it
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: was a one kilo of heroin mixed with fentanyl because
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: at the beginning they mixed it with heroin. And it
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: was right at the beginning. And then to where we're now,
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: no more heroin. It's all fentanyl.
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: Well, we met because of your work on the Oxycontin Express.
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, performing the opioid crisis.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 2: I remember watching that, just being stunned. Because that to me,
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 2: and for people who don't know that story, the way
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 2: they were operating it was Florida had these pain management
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 2: centers and you would go to a pain management center
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 2: and all they were really doing was writing your prescriptions
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: for opiates and they didn't have a database. So you
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: could just go from one pain management center to the
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: next one. And all you had to do is say,
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 2: I have a backache, my back hurts. I had a
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: back operation. I have a herniated disc and they would
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 2: just hook you up with pills. And so these people
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 2: would go to dozens of these places and, get bags
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 2: of pills, and then drive them north. And it just
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: started this addiction chain that went all the way into
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 2: Kentucky and Ohio, and that's the OxyContin Express. I just
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 2: couldn't believe that was real. And the courage that you
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 2: and your husband had to do that investigation. And to
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 2: put yourself out there like that and be the face
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 2: of it, you cost those people billions, billions of dollars.
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 2: Had it not been for you and your investigation, who
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: knows how long that whole loophole would have continued.
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate it. I went inside one of
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: these clinics with a secret camera, films inside. And then
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: we were actually filming outside the biggest, one of the
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: biggest pain clinics there called American Pain. My husband actually
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: ended up doing a documentary about it. It's these twin brothers,
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: the George brothers, who ran the biggest prescription pill operation
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: in American history. They were like the Pablo Escobar of
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: the United States in terms of pills. And we were
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 1: filming outside their clinic because we went to Kentucky and
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: saw how a lot of the bottles next to overdose
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: bodies were coming from this one clinic, American Pain. So
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: we decided next time in Florida, we're going to film outside.
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: And within minutes, we were accosted by these guys, the brothers,
• 2:03:39
  Speaker 1: who chased us down 995. I was driving the car.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: I contacted one of the sheriff's department people that I'd
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: spoken to the day before. And I told her, hey,
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: we're being followed by the American Pain guys. And she said,
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: call 911 right now. You don't want to mess around
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: with these guys. I'm running out of gas in the meantime.
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: I stop at a gas station. And they follow me.
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: They come out of the car, start yelling at us.
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: I had just watched The Sopranos the night before, so
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: I was like, these guys are going to shoot us
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: in the head right now. So we decided, okay, we
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: have to continue going with almost zero gas. Ran out
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: of gas in the middle of the freeway. Stopped next
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: to the freeway. They parked right behind us. I think
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: they were just confused what's happening. Because I had called 911,
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 1: they showed up, and they gave an excuse that they
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: thought I was a crazy ex-girlfriend. And it turns out
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: that the FBI and the DEA already had wiretaps on
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: them at the time. Our story and our investigation made
• 2:04:32
  Speaker 1: it into the wiretaps because they were openly talking about this,
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 1: how these journalists were messing around where they shouldn't. And
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: they ended up going to federal prison. And my husband
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 1: did the whole story about the rise and fall of
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: these brothers and interviewed them while they were in prison
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: and after when they were released.
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 2: They've been released.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: They have. But, you know, they did time in federal prison. Meanwhile,
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 1: how many people died? I mean, a lot of people died.
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 1: The doctors, I don't think any doctor went to prison
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: in that case. I can't remember. But definitely not as
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: many doctors as the ones that were involved in the
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 1: sales of these clinics. I mean, they were seeing— you remember that, right?
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 1: They were seeing hundreds of patients a day passing on
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: scripts for hundreds of patients. They even came up with
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: a system, which was a stamp, so that the doctor
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have to sign every prescription. So the stamp would
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: make it faster for him to just give his medication.
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: You don't want to inconvenience these poor doctors.
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: But you know who did go to prison. is the
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: pharmaceutical executives, right? Purdue, not one single one had criminal charges.
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: Not one single one in the Sackler family. It's insane.
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 2: Well, that's that Netflix docu-series, the docudrama series, Painkiller.
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, it's a very good one.
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 2: And after that series was released, apparently, they were reviewing,
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 2: because they had, the Sackler family had, like, gotten some
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 2: sort of a fine, but one of the, one of
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 2: the reasons why they were willing to give the money
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: was it was going to give them some kind of immunity.
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: And so there was talk after that documentary. I wonder
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 2: what happened of that, that that immunity was going to
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 2: be rescinded.
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: They still have it, I think. Oh, maybe it was rescinded.
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think it was. I think
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 2: they talked about it. And I think it ultimately means
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 2: still no one's gone to jail. The Sackler family, no
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: one's been How many people are they responsible for ruining
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 2: their lives and or dead?
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: A million people have died from the opiate epidemic in
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: the last 20-something years. It's more than in all wars
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: combined in the last 150 years. A million Americans. It's insane.
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: I can't recommend that Peter Berg series enough. It's a
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 2: good one. It's so good, and it's really accurate, and
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 2: it really shows you how they had these beautiful girls
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 2: go to these clinics and sell this and tell people.
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: And this is the new normal. You're just going to
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 2: manage your pain. No problem.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: And the problem wasn't just Purdue, right? The other pharmaceutical
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: companies eventually used the same playbook.
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, here it is. Current status. Following the legal block,
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: a new national opioid settlement was reached in January 2025.
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 2: Under this revised agreement, Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers agreed
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 2: to pay $ 7. 4 billion, but significantly the deal stripped the
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 2: Sackler family of future civil immunity. meaning they can still
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 2: face individual lawsuits. Good. But I mean, what is happening
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 2: with them? They're still rich as fuck and they're responsible
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 2: for a million people being dead. It's insane. And not
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 2: just that. Imagine how many people lost their dad, lost
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 2: their wife, lost their family members. How many people's lives
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 2: were destroyed but lived? How many people got addicted, lost everything,
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 2: but survived and now live in abject poverty because They
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 2: were drug addicts because they were told that this stuff
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 2: wasn't addictive.
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: And how many people are still dying because the fentanyl
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: crisis is just a development, an evolution of what was
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 1: started by these pharmaceutical companies.
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 2: Well, this is the thing, again, like when I was
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 2: a boy, when I was young, when I lived in Massachusetts.
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 2: heroin addicts were really rare. It wasn't a normal thing
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: for someone to be addicted to opiates. I remember my
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 2: boxing coach was a longshoreman and he worked with a
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 2: guy who had a heroin problem. And this guy would
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 2: get heroin every lunchtime. he would get heroin, he would
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 2: go and sit in his truck, he would shoot up,
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 2: and then he'd go back to work. And he was
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 2: a functional heroin addict, but he did it every day
• 2:08:26
  Speaker 2: and worked. And I was like, that's crazy. And he
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 2: was telling me because it was so rare. But a
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 2: guy who's hooked on pills today is normal. Everyone has
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: a family member. Everyone knows somebody. Everyone has lost somebody.
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 2: Everyone knows someone who's overdosed. It's insanely common and is
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 2: not It's not all over the world. It's a United
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: States problem. That's what's really crazy. Like, they don't have
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 2: an opioid epidemic in a lot of other Western countries.
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 1: They don't. Apparently, they're starting to see opiates in some
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: countries in Europe. Oh, they're catching on. Yeah, they're catching on.
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: Several years later, they're catching on. Exactly. Yeah, it's bananas.
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 2: Do you lose hope in humanity with all these different
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 2: scams and all these different horrible things that you investigate?
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: No, I see broken systems. I see governments that aren't
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: working for the people. I see, you know, unfortunately, politicians
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: that want to gain more power. And I see broken systems.
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: I don't, when talking about, you know, I've spoken to
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: you about this a lot, but when I spend so
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: much of my time talking to the traffickers and the
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 1: scammers and all the people that we consider the bad guys, right?
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: And more often than not, they are the consequence of
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: broken systems, right? The crushing inequality that exists in the world, again,
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: going back to the 10% living under the poverty line,
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: lack of education, lack of job opportunities, growing up in
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: shitty countries without opportunities and options. And that is, I think,
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: what's I don't think I know. It's what it's leading
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 1: a lot of people to work in these black markets
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: and to become traffickers and scammers and all of that.
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, our tendency is to
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 1: let's go after them and imprison them and, you know,
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: make sure we're using the full might and power of
• 2:10:25
  Speaker 1: this country and resources to go after these people instead
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 1: of actually looking at the root cause, whether that's the
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: consumption of drugs, the demand for drugs or the people
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: that are providing those drugs. If we use some of
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: that money instead of enforcement in actually working on the
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: demand or helping, help me out, slower the demand, lower
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: the demand, sorry. So it happens when you talk for
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: so long. If you help them lower, if you work
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: on lowering the demand and you actually, in terms of
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: the people that are operating in these systems, address the
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: reality of the situation, which is inequality and lack of opportunities,
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: I think you'll do a much better job.
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but unfortunately.
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: The money is much better well spent. Yes.
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: And the same, I think, with scams and drug trafficking.
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: And yet, do we want drugs in our country? We don't.
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: But what's the best way? It's to curb the demand.
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 2: But how do you curb the demand of something that
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 2: is always like drugs have always been a part of
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: our society. And there's legal drugs that are part of
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 2: a society like alcohol. And then there's drugs that have
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 2: always been a part of our society that aren't legal
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 2: but are in demand like cocaine.
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: But let's talk about the opioid crisis. Right. Well, what
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 1: President Trump is doing and saying he's doing is he's
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: fighting the war on fentanyl. Right. By going after these
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: boats in the Pacific and these, you know. fishing boats
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: in Ecuador.
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 2: And closing the border.
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: And closing the border, which is fantastic. Agree with closing
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: the border and not allowing criminals in, criminals. But what
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: he's doing at the same time now, unfortunately, is after
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: calling this a public health crisis, which I'm so happy
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 1: he did, is he's also removing money. I just said
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: this before, removing money from grants for test strips and
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: Narcan and from the treatment centers that actually can curb demand.
• 2:12:22
  Speaker 1: What people need is access to methadone clinics, to treatment
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: centers and rehab centers that aren't scams. I've reported on
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: scam rehab centers as well that are actually incentivized to
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: treat people. Because without that, we can go– as long
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: as there is demand, there is going to be a supply.
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 2: Yes, unquestionably. I mean, one of the things that– I
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 2: don't know if you're aware of this, but I went
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 2: to– the White House with former Governor Rick Perry and
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 2: Brian Hubbard. They're a part of this Ibogaine initiative. And
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 2: that's one thing that I was really happy that Trump
• 2:13:00
  Speaker 2: listened to. And he's willing to do that. And he's
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 2: pushing this through. Ibogaine is one of the most effective
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 2: treatments for people that have addictions because it doesn't just
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 2: rewire the way your brain associates drugs and explains to
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 2: you what is causing you to have this problem. What
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 2: is this emotional connection that you have to this? What
• 2:13:21
  Speaker 2: are the problems that you have in your past? It
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 2: gives you a very bizarre and very intrusive overview of
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 2: your life that apparently is super uncomfortable. And it's not
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 2: recreational in any way, shape, or form. No one's going
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 2: to do Ibogaine for funsies. It's something that people only
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 2: do when you're on your last leg and you're trying
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 2: to figure out how to survive. But it's helped so
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 2: many soldiers. So many people with PTSD and so many
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 2: people with brain trauma. That's what's really interesting. It's helped
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 2: people with traumatic brain injuries. It's neuro regenerative. It does
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 2: some weird stuff. And I'm like really hoping that with this,
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 2: that it will eventually become profitable for them to have
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 2: Ibogaine clinics. So it's something that will, they'll say, well,
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 2: instead of profiting off of these people being addicted to
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 2: drugs and some people are going to be profiting off
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 2: of people being completely cured of these problems. And so
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 2: this could, in turn, change the way people interact with drugs.
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 2: And it also opens the door for other potential psychedelic
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 2: therapy uses. Like they know that MAPS... Oh, yeah, MAPS.
• 2:14:33
  Speaker 2: So MAPS has done fantastic work with MDMA and soldiers
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 2: who have PTSD. And apparently, I mean... It's one of
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 2: the most effective treatments for just coming to grips with
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 2: the horrors of what you've seen, the horrors of war,
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 2: seeing your friends blown up, and just being involved in
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 2: combat missions. And one of the most effective things that
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 2: MAPS has ever found is this MDMA usage, and they're
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 2: pushing this through. So there's been many people that are
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 2: working really hard to try to establish legitimate uses for
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 2: psychedelic drugs that I mean, I don't think we should
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 2: put drugs into all one banner because drugs are, you know,
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 2: the drugs are meth. Drugs are fentanyl. Drugs are that.
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 2: But drugs are also psilocybin, which is shown to have
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 2: an incredible relief for people that are dying of cancer.
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 2: People that end of life anxiety. There's Larry Hagman. Remember
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 2: him from Dallas? Do you remember the show Dallas? OK.
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 2: Larry Hagman was the main guy. Yeah. What was his
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 2: name on the show? JR. Oh, JR, yes, of course.
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 2: Larry Hagman was on CNN once, and they were talking
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 2: to him, and they were asking him about death. And
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 2: he said, I really don't have a fear of death
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 2: because I took LSD once, and I had this incredibly
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 2: beautiful experience, and it relieved me of my fear of death.
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 2: That's one of the things that is a positive thing about.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: For sure.
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 2: You could call them drugs, but that's just such a
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 2: generalized blanket. Yeah, for sure. For all these different substances.
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: And fentanyl and Oxycontin, too. They were created to be
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: pharmaceutical drugs that actually have a place. I mean, they help.
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 2: Relieve pain. Yeah, relieve pain.
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: Particularly for terminally ill cancer patients.
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 2: The problem with them is they're insanely addictive.
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 2: And one of the beautiful things about some things like
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 2: Ibogaine is that they can help people get off of that.
• 2:16:32
  Speaker 1: So what's the status right now of Ibogaine in the U.S.
• 2:16:35
  Speaker 2: They're pushing it through. There's a lot of resistance. But
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 2: Rick Perry and Brian Hubbard are working diligently to push
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 2: this through. And then Trump helped a lot. I mean,
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 2: having that conversation with him, I sent him a text
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 2: message and he said, are you looking for FDA approval?
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 2: Sounds good to me. Let's do it. And then next
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 2: thing you know, like a week later, I'm at the
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 2: White House.
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. To talk about Ogwin?
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 2: And we have a press conference, and he signs this
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 2: executive order. And so they're pushing it through, and he's
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 2: been very aggressive about it, and I really commend him
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 2: for that.
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: It's allowed in Texas right now, is that right?
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 2: They're doing it in Texas, and credit to Dan Patrick
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 2: for also funding that and pushing it through, although I
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 2: think he does some really ridiculous shit when it comes
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 2: to THC. But the pushing this through, one of the
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 2: best aspects of this is Generally, psychedelic drugs are thought
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 2: of as a left-wing hippie thing, and we're seeing it
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 2: being embraced in the military community because, you know, we
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 2: realize so many of these people have sacrificed everything to
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 2: go over there. They've lost loved ones. They've sacrificed a
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 2: giant portion of their life to go there and serve,
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 2: and they come back and there's no help for them.
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 2: This is one of the only things that's been shown
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 2: to have a really, effective result. Like really effective. Like
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 2: incredibly effective.
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 1: It should be accessible to everyone.
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 2: It should be accessible to everyone. And we should study it.
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 2: And we should also have clinics where it's administered responsibly.
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 2: And they're doing it in Mexico. There's a place called
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 2: Beyond that's down. I believe it's in the Cancun area
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 2: that has these clinics. And this is a place where
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 2: Rick Perry went and Brian Hubbard went. Shockingly enough, when
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 2: Rick Perry went, he had a brain scan done before
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 2: he did it. And they'd shown that he has normal
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 2: age related atrophy of his brain.
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: Normal.
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 2: It's like he's older, you know, and. Went down there
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 2: within four weeks, I think, or six weeks, had a
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 2: massive improvement. Went back six months later, all his atrophy
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 2: is gone.
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 2: It's a crazy substance that is here that can help
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 2: human beings. And it's being thought of as a drug
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 2: and it's schedule one, which is crazy because schedule one
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 2: has no legitimate medical use and clearly it does. And
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 2: that needs to change.
• 2:18:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 2: You know, that's another thing the Trump administration has done
• 2:18:56
  Speaker 2: with marijuana. They're moving marijuana into Schedule 3. So instead
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 2: of it being this thing that has no medical use, well,
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 2: of course it has medical use. It helps cancer patients
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 2: keep their hunger during chemotherapy. It gives people relief of pain.
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 2: For some people, it helps them with anxiety. There's a
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 2: lot of benefits to it. Can it be abused? Yes. Yes.
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 2: So can cheeseburgers.
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 2: Okay? You can eat cheeseburgers until you fucking have a
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 2: heart attack and die. It doesn't mean we should ban cheeseburgers.
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 2: It means people need to understand what's responsible use of
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 2: whatever it is, whether it's food, sugar, alcohol.
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: Agreed.
• 2:19:31
  Speaker 2: I'm a big fan of all those things. I think
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 2: you should be able to eat whatever you want. You
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 2: should be able to drink alcohol if you like. Some
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 2: people aren't good at it and they need to have help.
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 2: And so we need to develop, just like we did
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 2: in Portugal, develop these centers. But then it gets to
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 2: the question of, OK, there is a giant demand for
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 2: cocaine in this country. And they're getting fentanyl, laced cocaine,
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 2: cocaine that's cut with a bunch of other shit that's
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 2: not good for you. Should cocaine be legal? Like, is
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 2: cocaine a real problem? I don't know. I've never done it.
• 2:20:06
  Speaker 2: I haven't either. I don't. But I know a lot
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 2: of people that get addicted to it.
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 2: But here's the other thing. Coca leaves, not a problem.
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: No. And used a lot.
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: Ecuador.
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 2: And apparently very beneficial.
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: Super.
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 2: And is good for energy and helps people do things.
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 2: And they just chew coca leaves or they have tea. Yeah.
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 2: They have mate de coca. It's a tea.
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: When you go to Peru to Machu Picchu, they give
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: you a lot of coca tea because it helps you
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: in high altitude. Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 2: Well, that's high altitude herders. They chew coca leaves. It's ubiquitous.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 2: Why is that? What are we doing?
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 2: Is it okay to like have the fucking cartels make
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 2: that stuff and send it across? I mean, look, you
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 2: went to Colombia.
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 2: And you watched them make cocaine, which was one of
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 2: the one episodes where I was so terrified for you.
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 2: I was like, please don't do this, Mariana. Why do
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 2: you want to do this? That one freaked me out
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 2: because you're there while they're using all those horrible chemicals.
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 1: It was insane. Wasn't it insane?
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 2: Insane. And then you march out through the jungle with
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 2: them when they deliver the cocaine.
• 2:21:12
  Speaker 1: Fast because, yeah, I mean, from the— place where they're
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: actually mixing it all, we had to get out of
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 1: there fast because the locals had seen cameras and we
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: had to, remember, we had to run out of the
• 2:21:24
  Speaker 1: jungle without a light in the middle of the night
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: in the Amazon. That was insane. And then, yeah, and
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: then we filmed with the kids. That was a literally
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: sad story, actually. One of the kids that was called,
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: he was the backpacker dude who had to haul dozens
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: of kilos of cocaine in his back days in, days out.
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, really dangerous work, seen
• 2:21:45
  Speaker 1: many of his friends being killed. And I asked him,
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 1: why do you do this kind of work? He said,
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: I always wanted to go to college. I wanted to
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: be a dentist. My family is very poor. They're farmers.
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: I can't afford to pay for college. So this is
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: the only job opportunity I get that I can save
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: money to eventually become a dentist. I said, why do
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: you want to be a dentist? Because all the ads
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: that I see in my hometown are these big sort
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: of posters with people with big smiles for dentist's office.
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: And I want to make people smile too.
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 1: Such a sweet, sour story.
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 2: Meanwhile, he's selling Coke.
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, he's bringing Coke that comes to the United States. Yeah,
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 1: it's crazy.
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 2: It's a really complicated issue. And, you know, the thing
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 2: about people in Mexico will tell you that this problem
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 2: exists because of the demand for these drugs in the
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 2: United States.
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course.
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 2: So what do you do about that? Do you make
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 2: drugs decriminalized like Portugal?
• 2:22:37
  Speaker 1: I think that is one of the paths. I really
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: do think you have to start investing a lot of
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: money in treatment centers, in access to drugs like ibogaine
• 2:22:47
  Speaker 1: and buprenorphine and methadone. And just there's, yeah, even if
• 2:22:53
  Speaker 1: it's just like 10% of the money that you spend
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: on enforcement, let's put that on actually treating the demand
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: side of it. That'll make a huge difference. It's really,
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 1: it's not rocket science, I think. I just don't understand
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 1: what's taken so long.
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, there's so many people that are lost
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 2: and drugs give them the only good feelings that they get.
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 2: That's what's really sad. Yeah. You know, I talked to
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 2: this guy once who's a drug addict. And one of
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 2: the saddest things he said to me, it's like drugs
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 2: are the only thing that make me happy. Yeah. He goes,
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 2: I don't have drugs. What do I have?
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit like scams actually in a way, right?
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 1: It's like scams, like having this person that I talk
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: to is the only thing that keeps me happy.
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 2: So the real work should be done on fortifying human
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 2: beings and make them a viable part of society with
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 2: like real community and love and And teach people how
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 2: to live like that. And that's part of what's ailing
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 2: us is that we're all broken, which is why we
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 2: need drugs.
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: And then if we fail and messed up, which we
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: all will eventually, there is a system there to hold
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: us and help us and a government that is interested
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 1: in protecting us.
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 2: That would be nice. That would be so nice. But
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 2: the problem is that's not profitable.
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Jeff.
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 2: Let's wrap it up. Bye, everybody. Bye.