In this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, I sit down with the creator of the YouTube show "Soft White Underbelly" to talk about what it's like to be a photographer and how he makes a living by interviewing people who are downcast from society. He talks about how he got into photography, how he deals with the pressures of being a photographer, and what it takes to maintain a healthy mental health in the midst of it all. I hope you enjoy this episode and that it makes you think about how important it is to have a mental health professional in your life. I hope that it gives you some insight into what it means to be an expert at what you do, and that you can use it as a tool to help others do the same. Thank you so much to my friend Mark for coming on the show and sharing his story with us. I really appreciate it and I hope it inspires you to do what you need to do to improve your own mental health and get some perspective on what you can do to make a difference in the world. I know that we all need it. Thanks to Mark for his honesty, and for being vulnerable and being vulnerable with us all. Thank you for letting us know that it's important to be vulnerable and open up about what we can do what we do to help other people do to keep our mental health on the best possible day to day. You're not alone, we all have the ability to do the best we can get the most out of what they can do, no matter where we are in the best way we can, and how we can be. We can do the most we can have the best of what we are given the most beautiful day of our day to do, the most amazing things we can achieve the most meaningful day of their lives. - Thank you, Joe Rogans Podcast - by day, by night, all day, by night all day All day, All day All Day, by Night, All Day by Night by Day, All Night by Night by Night - by Night. by Day by Day By Night, By Day, By Night - By Night - All Day All Day all Day by Nights by Night All Day by Morning, by Day - By Day - All Night, by Nights, By Nights, All By Day By Day By Night by Evening, By Morning, By Any Day by Any Night
00:00:21.000Let's just tell everybody, you have the YouTube show Soft White Underbelly, which I found a while back and just watched one video and then I went down the rabbit hole.
00:00:35.000Today I binged a bunch of them preparing for this.
00:00:39.000Dude, it's so sad and so heartbreaking.
00:00:46.000You interview all kinds of people, addicts, prostitutes, Johns, gang members.
00:01:49.000And then what happened is, you know, my advertising work was so slick and beautiful and perfect and everything is retouched so it's better than life.
00:01:59.000And you do that for decades and you get burnt out.
00:02:01.000And you just get fed up with the perfection and all the aspirational aspects of advertising.
00:02:09.000And I just wanted something that was real.
00:02:13.000I recognized that there were things going on in the world that weren't so perfect.
00:02:17.000And I just felt like my life was out of balance.
00:02:20.000I didn't want to grow old and have my kids say, What did your dad do?
00:02:25.000Oh, he shot advertising his whole life.
00:03:06.000While I was doing advertising, I would sneak away whenever I had a hole in my schedule, which wasn't often, but over nine or ten years, I went to each of the lower 48 states and started photographing everything that exists in the U.S. Cowboys in Wyoming.
00:03:57.000But there's other subcultures that I've found that are more difficult to find and certainly difficult to photograph and now really difficult to interview.
00:04:47.000And, you know, I always had studios like on Skid Row, like while I was doing advertising in LA at my LA studio.
00:04:53.000I'd had another studio down on Skid Row, which was, you know, cheap and, you know, I would just sneak away there on slow days.
00:05:00.000And just photograph all the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the transgenders, the mental health, you know, the people that are off, the rockers, everything.
00:06:16.000My advertising industry changed a lot in those years.
00:06:20.000This was like seven years ago, seven, eight years ago.
00:06:24.000I gave up my studio and I just kind of didn't know what I was doing with my life.
00:06:29.000And I had all these storage units for all my studio equipment and my furniture.
00:06:34.000I was building a house, so I had all my furniture in the house.
00:06:37.000I had like four or five different storage units around the city.
00:06:39.000I'm like, let me just consolidate all these into one big space, and maybe I'll have room for a studio up front, and I'll start doing those portraits and those interviews I was doing on Skid Row before.
00:07:33.000I got all these skills, all these chops of how to find these people, how to interact with them, how to find them, how to connect with them, how to get their trust from doing Create Equal, where I did that for 10 years and I was interacting with all kinds of people, from Hell's Angels down to pedophiles,
00:07:58.000But when I first started, it was like, man, this is not my personality type, to go up to strangers and tell them, you know, I want to photograph you.
00:08:06.000But now I've gotten so good at it that it's a breeze.
00:08:10.000You know, I got to a point, I remember early on, I was just like so nervous to do this, to walk up to a stranger in a casino in Las Vegas and say, hey, I think you're interesting.
00:09:14.000But I've done this so much now that I'm so good at it that I knew to give him some time, allow him to say no, I'm not going to force, I'm not going to pressure him.
00:09:26.000Went across the street, there's a Mexican restaurant that was serving breakfast.
00:09:28.000I got breakfast for a bunch of guys, and I brought it over, and I rang it again, he opens the door, and I had breakfast for him.
00:09:36.000And eventually they let me in, and we chatted, and I eventually photographed the president, the head of that chapter, Cisco Valderrama and Flash, and this guy's name was Marvin.
00:09:52.000I made that happen because of my ability to just go up to anybody, killers, anybody, and just walk up to him and say, hey, this is what I'd like to do.
00:10:01.000Did you ever read Hunter Thompson's book on the Hells Angels?
00:11:10.000But when you think about the overall impact of what it's doing...
00:11:17.000It's giving people – it's sort of like the – part of the big problem that people have with social media is it creates these unrealistic expectations and then it also has people comparing their life to what they see in advertising.
00:11:31.000Yeah, advertising and social media are kind of following the same.
00:11:34.000This is the main concern with advertising of pharmaceutical drugs.
00:11:38.000Because it's all people having the best time.
00:11:41.000Like at a picnic, running through a wheat field, and this could be you.
00:12:25.000It didn't sit well with me at the end of the day.
00:12:27.000I'm just like, so that's how I made my money?
00:12:30.000That's how I spent my life on this planet?
00:12:35.000And I just wanted to do something that mattered.
00:12:37.000Do you think that advertising should be regulated or do you think we should leave that up to people or educate people on the effects of it the same way people are trying to educate people on the effects of Of social media and what it does to people's mental health when you compare these unrealistic lives to yours?
00:13:18.000I even wonder if in this day and age that's necessary.
00:13:22.000I feel like today, more than ever, because of social media, because of people that actually review things and talk about things on social media, honestly, without bias and without being paid to do so, you can do stuff And sell stuff,
00:14:11.000When you first started doing these videos, did you have to figure out a way to balance your own mental health with interviewing these people?
00:14:21.000Because I gotta tell you, like, I watched a bunch of videos today in the gym while I was working out, and I felt like shit.
00:15:07.000But even the ones that you have where the people can barely communicate, they're almost more disturbing.
00:15:13.000Like I watched a couple today of homeless people where, you know, there was this one woman, she was missing one of her toes and, you know, that woman and she's just the movement and the mental health.
00:15:28.000The obvious signs that she's very troubled and probably on some drugs and it's just...
00:15:36.000I have two daughters, 19 and 22. Yeah, so that to me was like the hearing the stories of how they were all abused sexually and physically when they were children and...
00:16:09.000I live in Bel Air basically, but then I go down to the worst.
00:16:12.000I go from the worst part of town to the best part of town.
00:16:14.000Yeah, it's a big, it's a drastic change from one to the other.
00:16:20.000But even when I was doing this before I started Soft White Underbelly, I was aware that this crap is going on to these people when they were kids.
00:16:30.000And when I decided, you know, I gave up advertising and wanted to do something that was meaningful to me, I looked around, like, that's a problem that needs to be addressed.
00:16:40.000And, you know, people say, oh, your work's exploitive.
00:16:42.000You're exploiting these poor drug addicts.
00:16:44.000Like, I understand there's an exploitive element to it.
00:16:47.000All photography has that, you know, element to it.
00:16:50.000But let's say I never did these videos.
00:16:53.000Let's say we just pretend these problems don't exist.
00:16:58.000It's all gonna continue and Caroline's kids are gonna get molested by the babysitter or by the uncle or by whoever and it's gonna repeat the pattern over and over and over.
00:17:08.000So I figured by putting out these You know, it's disguised as entertainment, but what it really is is if you watch a dozen of them, you're going to learn, like, fuck, we need to protect our kids.
00:18:11.000Just as they got clean doesn't mean they're going to stay clean.
00:18:13.000But the ones that I believe in the most, because some people told me they were clean, but I don't buy it.
00:18:23.000But the ones that I know are clean, they just did it by themselves.
00:18:27.000They just hold themselves up and they figured out a way to wean themselves and change their routine and change their environment and eventually broke through.
00:19:10.000And they're doing the drug just to escape the pain of what happened to them when they were seven years old with their dad or uncle or brother or whoever.
00:19:18.000And it's like, you can't fix a childhood.
00:19:23.000When you see a place like Skid Row and you see all these people that you've interviewed Do you try to formulate some way that these people can be helped, like that we can diminish this problem?
00:19:38.000When I first really got serious, like three and a half years ago is when I started, really just, I was down there every day doing eight interviews a day.
00:19:49.000I would see somebody who was like, oh my god, your life would be great if you just got clean.
00:20:27.000You'd have to be with them 24 hours a day.
00:20:28.000You'd have to be with them 24 hours a day.
00:20:34.000150,000 at least a year to house them, to feed them, to transport them, to get them therapy, all the drugs, all the mental health drugs, everything they're going to need, doctors, all that stuff.
00:20:46.000It's a lot of money for one person, and it may not even work.
00:21:50.000It's probably, I don't know how many square blocks, but maybe it's, it goes from like roughly, because it spreads out a lot, and it's spread out since I've been there.
00:22:01.000But let's call it like from 4th or 5th Street to 8th Street.
00:22:07.000It's just east of downtown LA. And downtown LA is cool.
00:23:57.000It's a woman who got off her meds, and there was a video of her in an elevator, and it looked like someone was following her, and she was looking out of the elevator.
00:24:06.000And then the woman turned up missing, and her family went to look for her.
00:24:10.000And what it turned out was that's a crime scene.
00:24:25.000My favorite or the most horrifying is so many people used to get thrown off the roof of the Cecil Hotel that the little chicken restaurant on the corner used to have a jar where you could put your money in and place bets on what floor the person would have been pushed out of.
00:24:50.000Oh, I've heard like hundreds, I think.
00:24:54.000I mean, stories get exaggerated over the years.
00:24:58.000So this documentary was about this woman and she had gotten off her medication.
00:25:03.000At first, it was like a crime-murder mystery.
00:25:05.000And then as it goes on, you realize, oh, no, this lady had just escaped from her family and got off her meds, and she was paranoid schizophrenic.
00:25:14.000None of these stories are as simple as, oh, I just got shot, or I just got stabbed.
00:25:19.000There's mental health that's mixed in.
00:25:23.000You asked me what the problem is with all this.
00:27:12.000If they have a job interview on Monday, like if I had something like that or a meeting to go to, I would know how to show up and I'm going to kick ass on Monday.
00:27:22.000These people don't know how to do anything like that.
00:29:33.000Those are extremes, but to some extent that happens in a lot of communities.
00:29:37.000Growing up in a good childhood, in a good family, and then being exposed to these people over and over and over again, what kind of an effect has that had on you personally?
00:29:51.000Initially, I thought I was super resilient.
00:32:26.000Before I started this project, I knew that—because I saw it during my advertising career.
00:32:33.000You deal with all kinds of people, and I saw over the course of my life—I've been around now long enough to see that a lot of people just love to open up with me.
00:32:43.000And tell me shit they shouldn't be telling me.
00:33:28.000With all the interviews that you've done and this overwhelming number of fucked up people that you've interacted with, Skid Row's grown considerably just since I've been there.
00:33:41.000When I first went there was the early 2000s.
00:33:53.000That's why my channel is not an intervention-type show where I'm trying to fix everybody and patch them up and put them back into the real world.
00:34:42.000I'm the most, you know, it's ironic that I'm doing this really, really dark project because I'm the most positive, hopeful person you'll ever meet.
00:40:47.000And you could do it with a calculator in front of him and he would be as fast as the calculator.
00:40:52.000He was a brilliant, brilliant guy and he was a pool hustler.
00:40:56.000And I met him when he was homeless and he was, you know, sleeping in these 24-hour pool halls or he would get a, you know, a bed in these flop houses and he was just addicted to drugs and he, you know, he had mental health problems and he would self-medicate and I would,
00:41:15.000you know, I drove him to get drugs on multiple occasions and I'd try to get him to get off of them and And he would be on this rollercoaster ride where he would smoke crack and then he would need to come down so he would get alcohol and he would go and drink these 40 ounces of Old English and just try to bring himself down from whatever the fuck he was on.
00:42:06.000And then the next time I talked to him, I think I saw him one time after that.
00:42:11.000But, you know, he had kind of resumed his—I had moved to Hollywood, and I was on a television show, and we were still friends.
00:42:17.000But he had kind of resumed his life of being homeless and drug addiction, and then I got a call from another friend that he died.
00:42:25.000And that was around a little bit after 2000, and it was— It was such a helpless feeling because I knew him as a human and he was so funny and he's so smart and so interesting.
00:42:38.000No, some of the greatest minds, the most charismatic, most interesting people ever, super intelligent and talented people are living on the streets, addicted to drugs.
00:44:16.000And then for me to be around a person like that who, you know, spent his time trying to rob people in pool games, pretending that he couldn't play, it was like an art form for him.
00:44:29.000He would just pretend he was terrible and he was an overweight guy, so he looked like a bumbling loser.
00:44:34.000And, you know, he would wind up getting a bunch of money from people, and then he would spend it on drugs.
00:44:40.000And it was such a helpless feeling to watch someone who you loved and cared about Who just couldn't stop they just couldn't get their life in or they kept sabotaging their life like no matter what happened like whatever his His sense of self-worth Whatever the thing was inside of him.
00:45:01.000He just couldn't help himself He just couldn't stop that he would get off of it for a little while decide he was gonna clean up and then dive right back into it Yeah, it's so heartbreaking to watch.
00:45:14.000He was the closest that I'd ever been to a person.
00:45:19.000Everyone else that I knew that I had problems was like my friend's cousin or this guy that I worked with.
00:45:25.000They weren't people that I was really close with.
00:45:27.000And with him, we spent so much time together.
00:45:29.000And to watch him just could not escape.
00:45:33.000Whatever the gravity, the magnetic pull, the addiction, the thing to just like constantly trying to get fucked up and escape.
00:45:44.000Yeah, usually they're trying to escape something that happened in their childhood or some lack of love.
00:45:54.000I suspect, you know, there's a lot of these people that are schizophrenic or they have these issues and they have children and it's genetically transferred.
00:46:30.000You've got to have the motivation, first off, to want to get clean and use that as a technique to do it.
00:46:36.000And I'm hopeful that somebody, some doctor somewhere, I think University of Chicago is doing something with skin grafts that help with drug addiction.
00:48:13.000Austin's cleaned it up quite a bit, but there's still some spots, and there's plenty of homeless people that are on 6th Street and down that area.
00:48:25.000Because also, people define themselves by their lowest moment often.
00:48:30.000And when you have been a person that sleeps on the street, it's that lack of self-worth, this identifying yourself as a complete and total failure, it's very difficult to escape that, especially when you compare yourself To these people that,
00:48:46.000you know, they show up for work at their tech job and they have this normal existence.
00:48:50.000And they're all looking down on you and treating you with disrespect.
00:49:29.000I just They'll be gone in the fourth week.
00:49:32.000My fear about all those things, like I've never tried cocaine, I've never tried amphetamines, and one of the reasons why is it seems like people love them.
00:49:39.000You know, that's part of the problem is I think the thrill of whatever it is that those things give people.
00:49:46.000I think one of the reasons my channel is so popular is because there are a hell of a lot of people who are using some of these drugs and being functional in the real world.
00:49:54.000I think that's true, but I also think it's just fascinating.
00:49:58.000I mean, I don't use those things and I'm fascinated by your channel.
00:50:01.000I mean, it's just the human condition is very fascinating to people because we recognize all these elements in ourselves, maybe to a lesser degree or maybe...
00:50:10.000Maybe you only have an addiction to pornography, or maybe you only have an addiction to gambling, but you see a person who's hooked on meth.
00:50:44.000That's another one that I encountered when I was in the pool halls.
00:50:47.000People that were just absolutely just captured by gambling.
00:50:52.000And I never thought of gambling as being an addiction.
00:50:55.000I thought of gambling as being just a Weird weakness that people do to escape their life and they just get but then I saw the actual like chemical response these people have to winning and losing and Chasing money and this this this constant So it becomes their whole life is trying to win a bet and trying to play and trying to recover from a bad bet and then trying to avoid people they owe money to and There's so many addictions out there.
00:54:19.000But like, sometimes it's paying interviewees, sometimes it's paying the person who brought me the interviewee, sometimes it's The people who keep it quiet outside my studio door, sometimes it's, you know, I'm a square white dude.
00:54:32.000I go into South Central to, you know, I interview a lot of the prostitutes on Figueroa Street, which is not Skid Row.
00:54:38.000It's South Central LA, very different neighborhood, but equally dangerous, probably more dangerous, in fact.
00:54:45.000I used to go down there and like, I'm worried about getting killed.
00:55:32.000And especially on Skid Row, I've handed out so much over the years that it's just, I'm like, I won't tell you what they call me, but it's a positive thing.
00:55:45.000Because I'm like Santa Claus down there.
00:59:11.000Most of the new age pimps are just gang members that found a new hustle.
00:59:15.000And they're wearing jeans and t-shirts.
00:59:18.000But the old school pimps from the 70s and 80s that are just dressed to kill and driving these custom Cadillacs or Lincolns or Rolls Royces.
00:59:27.000And they've got three girls, five girls in fur coats and You know, the girls were sexy, they dressed well, the dudes were out of this world.
00:59:35.000Yeah, I went to the Players' Ball down in Atlanta.
01:00:31.000And they end up broke every night and they're just like, they're spinning their wheels, going nowhere.
01:00:36.000So a pimp will step in and like, let me handle your money.
01:00:38.000You give me all your money and I'm going to take care of you.
01:00:41.000We're going to save some for your future and I'm going to keep some of it and we're going to live in style and you're going to work for me.
01:02:02.000But when I interview people, I say, yeah, I robbed a liquor store, and I got away with it, and I did this, and I robbed a jewelry store, and I shot the guard in the shoulder, and I got away with it.
01:02:12.000They're getting to hear the story told a very, very different way than the way they hear it when they book somebody.
01:04:44.000The reason why I asked you about cops is I feel about cops the same way I'm feeling about you, but even to more extreme, that they're exposed to things they cannot unsee, and the pressure and the stress of that is so, so overwhelming.
01:05:01.000And also, they're thought of as the enemy, and they're not appreciated, and the risks that they take are not taken into consideration, and the stress and the PTSD that they almost all have.
01:05:12.000Every one of those cops has seen videos of a cop pulling someone over for a routine traffic stop and getting gunned down.
01:05:19.000They've all seen that, and they know that that's a possibility.
01:05:21.000Every time they pull up to a car that has tinted windows, they have no idea what's going on.
01:05:26.000No, after doing what I'm doing, which is not as dangerous as what the cops are doing, because they're clearly trying to get somebody and put them in jail or prison, I'm just trying to give them money for an interview.
01:05:36.000So my danger is not as high as theirs, but...
01:05:39.000I can relate to how dangerous their life is because every single person they approach is potentially going to shoot them, run, do something.
01:05:48.000Or they're mentally ill and they're going to just do something crazy.
01:05:53.000There's police-related Instagram pages that sort of highlight that, that are really well done.
01:05:59.000One of them is police posts and faces of Rampart is another one.
01:06:04.000And it's these cops that post these videos, and it's educational.
01:06:11.000First of all, it's educational to other police officers, because a lot of them, they talk about what went wrong here, situational awareness, why this officer got in trouble, what you should do, and how this officer handled this in an incompetent way,
01:06:26.000or you should never allow something to escalate to this place.
01:06:31.000But a lot of it is just you are forced to look at what they experience on an everyday basis where everyone they're talking to is lying to them.
01:07:05.000Because of my martial arts background, I grew up with cops.
01:07:08.000I was around cops from the moment I was a young teenager all throughout my adult life because of martial arts.
01:07:15.000Because so many cops train in martial arts to protect themselves.
01:07:19.000And they're good people for the most part, like all people.
01:07:22.000Most people are good people for the most part, but good people that are forced into jobs that have horrific pressures attached to them and horrific consequences if anything goes wrong.
01:07:35.000Yes, and they're under just unbelievable stress and they make terrible errors because of that stress.
01:07:41.000And then someone gets a cell phone video of that, and they post someone planting a gun or doing this, and then everyone thinks all cops do that.
01:07:50.000No, and you cannot shoot the wrong guy.
01:08:24.000And in the police post, this was all about, you know, understanding about accuracy and when to shoot and When to intervene and it's sort of a step-by-step breakdown for other officers so they can sort of look at this.
01:08:37.000There's a great video on my channel with a retired cop named Kevin, Kevin Donaldson.
01:08:43.000It's a great story about PTSD of being a cop and what the aftermath of all that is.
01:08:51.000What their minds must be like, especially someone who works in a horrible neighborhood where you're constantly dealing with that.
01:08:58.000And the things that they see, like they're constantly seeing murder, constantly seeing car accidents, constantly seeing overdose, constantly seeing physical abuse, sexual abuse, rape, torture, you name it.
01:09:11.000And you're married and you come home to your wife and you're like, how was your day, honey?
01:09:14.000Yeah, and you're in Simi Valley with your kids just trying to stay calm and then, you know, you hear fuck the police and you're like, okay.
01:09:25.000It's a yeah, and any support for them always gets like shit on But I think about them the same way I'm thinking about you I think prolonged exposure to the most horrific elements of society is Got we you know,
01:09:42.000we sort of formulate our idea what the world is based on what we've encountered and And, you know, if you've encountered nothing but a beautiful neighborhood and nice families and everybody's friendly and you go to the football game and everybody cheers, yay!
01:09:57.000But if you're experiencing what you're experiencing, you're talking to people on Skid Row on a day-in, day-out basis, like, what does that affect?
01:10:34.000When people are developing and growing, there's certain things that happen to them that are very hard to unfuck.
01:10:43.000And when things go sideways and their life is fucked, like trying to bring them back to a place like where you are or a place where I am, where someone who didn't have those things happen to them as a child, that is an enormous task.
01:11:02.000You can just prop them up a little bit so they're better, but they're never going to...
01:11:07.000I mean, there are some that do it, but those people that have really recovered and have gone on to do great things...
01:11:13.000We're people who kind of were doing great things before, but then they got caught up with cocaine and then they pulled themselves out.
01:11:18.000So it seems like to me, and I've talked about this ad nauseum, is the only way to fix this is to fix the areas in which this is prevalent and to somehow or another pump money and resources into community centers and education and giving people some kind of hope.
01:11:40.000And then even then, you're just going to make less of it.
01:11:43.000You're not going to eliminate it entirely.
01:11:45.000And it's a generational problem that could take decades upon decades to really put a dent in it.
01:11:52.000But it's a task that's worth doing and no one is approaching this.
01:11:57.000When politicians are sending billions of dollars overseas and billions of dollars on projects that a lot of people don't even agree to, And it's our tax money.
01:12:33.000Because whatever work you're going to put in, whatever money you're going to put in and energy and effort, you won't see in your lifetime.
01:12:39.000I had a conversation with some friends about this last night, and they were saying, but would the country even run the same way if that happened?
01:12:48.000Because don't you need all these poor and disenfranchised people to have the country work the way it works?
01:12:53.000I'm like, but the country doesn't have to work the way it works.
01:12:55.000This is just the way it works right now.
01:12:57.000It's not like it wouldn't work another way.
01:12:59.000Well, you know, what's interesting is You know, the universe, nature, even the human body regulates.
01:13:36.000And good luck getting the rich to say, all right, we're going to give away a third of our money so that we can help these people.
01:13:41.000Well, they don't have any faith in it.
01:13:43.000They also think that, I mean, when I talk to people about this that are very wealthy, they have a problem with charities that most of the money actually winds up going to administrative costs.
01:13:53.000And very little of it actually goes to the people.
01:13:56.000And then you find out that people that are working on the homeless situation...
01:13:59.000I have a friend, Coleon Noir, who was a lawyer, and he was in San Francisco, and his perspective was, oh, they're not spending enough money to fix this homeless problem.
01:14:12.000And then he talked to someone who was actually deeply embedded in that situation.
01:15:04.000Like, if you look at the actual budget for dealing with the homeless, pull up the budget for dealing with the homeless in Los Angeles in 2022. Because it's bonkers when you see the sheer amount of money that's being spent ineffectively.
01:15:20.000And all anybody seems to care about is we're working hard to mitigate the homeless situation, and we have upped our budget, and we're like, oh, they've upped the budget.
01:15:49.000I would think with that you could clean up Tenderloin in San Francisco and LA. 3.3 billion general fund in 21-22 to almost 30 homelessness related programs across the state.
01:16:23.000When you think about what are the strategies that these people are employing, shelters, food, food stamps, counseling, these are like Band-Aids on gunshot wounds.
01:18:15.000We're told, you know, revenge is being told.
01:18:20.000We were talking about Marcus Aurelius the other day, that Marcus Aurelius, who was the emperor of Rome 2,000 years ago, was talking about empathy.
01:20:37.000I mean, look at how so many people in this new generation are looking for the easy lick, the shortcut, the hack, the easy way to get rich or do whatever.
01:20:46.000Look at anybody who's done anything great in our world.
01:20:50.000In the 1900s, in the 1800s, in the 1700s, from the beginning of time, every one of those people have a story of overcoming great adversity and working harder than you can even imagine.
01:21:04.000They're amazing stories of perseverance, of courage, of all these things that nobody seems to want to do now.
01:21:12.000Well, they're not taught that that's something you should strive for.
01:21:15.000And when there are these options that are available, like becoming a TikTok star or becoming...
01:21:20.000You know, there's these things that are available that are so simple that you see 17-year-olds making millions of dollars and you're like, well, that's what I want to do.
01:21:33.000There's not enough emphasis on the fact that in doing difficult things, you learn about yourself.
01:21:40.000And then this thing that you can create that's hard to create, that takes a long time, is immensely satisfying, as opposed to winning the lottery, which is what everybody wants to do, which is just, for the most part, when it happens to people, it kind of upturns their life.
01:21:56.000Well, I mean, you win the lottery, most of these people that are not willing to work for it haven't put in the work for it.
01:22:04.000If they actually came upon $3 million, they would fuck it off.
01:22:26.000No, like when two people are romantically involved, a guy and a girl meet, or whatever, two people meet.
01:22:36.000If you rated self-worth on a scale from 1 to 10, if one of them's an 8 and the other one's a 5, there's no chance in hell it'll ever work out.
01:23:18.000But one of the things that I've noticed on your channel is there's a lot of couples that are addicted together.
01:23:23.000You have these fentanyl addict couples, which is so heartbreaking.
01:23:28.000I just did one earlier this week, Mike and Stephanie, and they were talking about how when they get apart from each other, they can kind of get clean and do fine, but then they love each other and they get back together and they self-destruct.
01:23:44.000It's just the programming of the human mind and the fact that we don't really have tools to fix that.
01:23:51.000Like, if you have a fucked up computer, you can bring it to a repair shop and they can go, oh, you've got a fucking virus on your hard drive and it's infected this and that and, you know, your fucking, your hard drive is broken and we can fix that and Replace that and reformat.
01:24:08.000No, you said something on the Gabor Mate interview you did recently, where you said, it's like we're these living life forms without an instruction manual.
01:24:44.000Yeah, we would be a different society.
01:24:47.000And just a few classes like that could shift the mindset of so many people.
01:24:52.000It's so easy to fall back into your old ways of thinking and behaving.
01:24:56.000But if we did that a lot in high school and exposed people to that, we genuinely could fix a lot of the problems that we see or at least make some strides.
01:25:08.000I think that would make more of a difference in the world than anything else we've talked about.
01:25:13.000Yeah, and just so many people have never encountered an environment where people are supportive.
01:25:18.000You know, for me, it was martial arts.
01:25:21.000When I was a young boy, when I found martial arts, I was immediately brought into this world of discipline, where discipline was celebrated, and it was admired, and then also love of your fellow practitioners,
01:25:41.000And it was the first time I'd ever been around like a really positive community of people who valued hard work and also valued people who excelled at that hard work and really admired them and really used them as examples.
01:25:57.000And those people went on to become instructors and it really – Profoundly affected the way I look at the world and profoundly affected the way I look at the value of other people and their hard work.
01:26:12.000Yeah, and most people, I mean, you know, I found martial arts when I was a kid because I was small and I was always fucked with and I was scared of everybody.
01:26:24.000I had sort of dabbled in martial arts.
01:26:26.000And then one day, where I walked into this one school in Boston, which was the Jaehyun Kim Taekwondo Institute, and from that one day, it changed my whole life.
01:26:39.000And I'm so fortunate that that happened to me, and I often wonder, What would I be like if I didn't live in a nice neighborhood with nice people and didn't expose myself to that and didn't engross myself in that world of people that wanted to excel?
01:27:25.000And this is what I think that could be mitigated with money.
01:27:30.000If we allocated money, the way we allocate money to these overseas issues and the way we just throw money around at the military-industrial complex, and if we allocated that kind of money to try to take a comprehensive approach to shifting We had this guy on who was a cop in Baltimore,
01:27:55.000and I guess it was like the early 2000s he was there, and he found a piece of paper that was an arrest report from the 1970s, and it was the same arrests in the same neighborhoods for the same crimes,
01:29:27.000Things that people aspire to that are very difficult to achieve.
01:29:30.000So you look at that, instead of like having a balanced life and a loving family and being a pillar of the community, you aspire instead to being this thing that's very difficult to become, which is the guy who has the big house and the fancy clothes and the money you're flashing around.
01:29:47.000And so it's just that you're chasing the wrong carrot.
01:29:55.000And it's like if you want to – if you really love your country and you want to fix it, that would be the area to – those would be the areas to attack.
01:30:11.000I mean, they'll talk about social safety nets, which I think are also very important, welfare and, you know, things for poor people that are genuinely just struggling because they're down on their luck.
01:30:25.000That we should treat them as members of our community and try to help them because we can.
01:30:29.000And that's a sign of a good, strong, healthy community that we do look out for people that are less fortunate than us.
01:30:36.000But there's more that has to be taken into consideration.
01:31:39.000The multitude of podcasts that are out there where intelligent, kind, compassionate people Are thinking and talking about things, talking about the way you approach other human beings and talk to people the way you live your life, the way you can put pleasure and immediate gratification aside and seek discipline and hard work and the value and the benefit of that,
01:32:04.000the value and the benefit of treating people with kindness.
01:32:07.000And developing a good core group of friends and treating each other well.
01:32:28.000We're this bizarre, flawed, intelligent, calculating entity.
01:32:35.000That is trying to figure out its existence which is ultimately finite in nature anyway.
01:32:40.000And our goals and our aspirations and our dreams, there's so much of our society that's based around chasing objects which ultimately you can't keep.
01:32:54.000And then also if you do give them to your kids, you're probably fucking them up.
01:33:00.000It's very very few people that I've met that come from wealthy families aren't fucked up or at least I have friends that grew up very wealthy and their families wealthy and they're wealthy now and they know that they got there because of their family and there's a thing about them that's always insecure so they have to kind of brag a little and tell you a little of this they've done a little of that they've done and I know what they're doing and they're not bad people they're just trying to establish that they're valuable No,
01:33:27.000imagine if your dad was an Elon Musk or somebody who was so wildly successful that you can never, in your wildest dreams, you're never going to outdo your father.
01:34:07.000But the thing is, like, what our society values in terms of when we look at someone who's great, we look at a Bill Gates, or we look at a, you know, someone who's amassed insurmountable wealth.
01:34:18.000And that's, if you're a son and you're born in that, also, you don't have to work hard, because you're kind of always going to be okay.
01:34:27.000You have an endowment, you have a fund, you have a this or that.
01:34:32.000If you're that wealthy and successful, as I guess you and I probably are, how do you protect your kids from that?
01:35:12.000My dad never came home from work saying, oh, I worked my ass off this week and I traveled all over the Midwest and I did this and I did that.
01:37:32.000And they eventually self-destruct and move back to their small towns.
01:37:36.000Yeah, it becomes a thing of like finding the social circle that's popular and now it's about photographing yourself with those people.
01:37:44.000Right, it's hard to make friends in LA. Yeah, well it's even weirder now I think with social media because social media...
01:37:50.000Hollywood's always been kind of like it's all about the image and this The red carpet, which is like the most bullshit thing in the world.
01:37:59.000Where in life are you standing there and there's a hundred cameras pointing at you and you're posing and looking around and they're like, Mark, over here, over here, over here.
01:38:47.000And this is what they're selling and pushing and promoting, and that's what the young people are aspiring to, and they realize that there's a value in it, that you could actually achieve social success and numbers on your Instagram page and numbers on your TikTok and numbers on your YouTube.
01:39:04.000No, I think that's the most valued commodity now.
01:39:22.000Like, you're doing something that's very different than just, like, TikTok-ing, you know, or just...
01:39:29.000Yeah, I mean, I tell people who are like, Like, agents and managers that I'm working with, the number one thing that's important to me is my integrity and how I'm perceived.
01:39:42.000Like, I don't give a fuck if I make money or not.
01:39:44.000I don't need to make money from this channel.
01:39:46.000The way YouTube demonetizes it, it's like I don't even...
01:39:50.000Does YouTube demonetize a lot of your videos?
01:41:58.000It's just, I think what you're doing is very valuable.
01:42:01.000It's uncomfortable, but it's very valuable.
01:42:03.000And the idea that someone at YouTube wouldn't recognize that and understand that, it's very disheartening.
01:42:11.000No, I mean, it's pathetic that you have a channel that has 4 million views, The spirit of it is to help society, and you can't make money with it.
01:42:20.000What I make on YouTube, I spend in the first two weeks of every month.
01:42:26.000So that money, the additional money comes from...
01:43:08.000There's like 150 videos that are not on YouTube.
01:43:11.000That, to me, is another reason I wanted to do it, other than to try to make money with this project that I worked so hard at, is I figured one day I'm going to post something that's going to get my whole channel taken down.
01:44:03.000But it's a big corporation, and good luck trying to have a logical conversation with them.
01:44:09.000It's a big corporation that's also under the spell of an ideology.
01:44:14.000The woke ideology of today is trying to find who are the victims and who's the perpetrator and what should you be allowed to talk about and what are you not allowed to talk about and what narrow confines Of conversations are you allowed to exist in?
01:44:32.000And what topics are you just not allowed to approach?
01:44:35.000And YouTube has been horrible with that in a lot of ways.
01:44:39.000Well, it's like it's accelerating, it seems.
01:44:41.000And it seems like that's one of the things that does happen with censorship that people don't seem to understand.
01:44:47.000When you want things censored that you don't agree with, what you have to understand is that you're setting in motion something that will look for more things that are offensive, more things that are not allowed and will decide even further and further to push this until it's trying to control the way you think and the way you process information and what you're exposed to.
01:45:13.000And somehow or another they think that that's a net positive.
01:45:16.000Or they think that it's positive for advertising revenue.
01:45:19.000And that the advertisers think it's positive.
01:45:22.000But it's preposterous to me that someone would not want to advertise.
01:45:26.000There's certain things that they could advertise on your channel.
01:45:29.000And particularly if they were thinking about it and strategizing.
01:45:32.000That would maybe be beneficial to some of the people that are looking at those things.
01:45:37.000I mean the best example is like when a gang member...
01:45:41.000Or a prostitute video gets demonetized.
01:45:44.000Which really means I can't make money on it, which really means I should put it on my subscription channel and not even put it on YouTube.
01:45:49.000I'm doing that as a favor to my audience.
01:45:50.000But eventually that's where it would lead when you demonetize something.
01:45:56.000Or they put an age restriction of 18 on it.
01:46:08.000So the people who are joining these subcultures Can't watch these videos that are giving you a clear picture of what your future is going to be.
01:48:34.000Some of us are going to be winners and drive fancy cars and live in nice houses and have great lives and great vacations and raise their kids well.
01:48:43.000And other ones are going to live on the street.
01:48:59.000So the winners get to win and the losers suffer the loss.
01:49:04.000Well, it's supposed to inspire people who are also trying to become winners to feel the pain of loss, which makes you more disciplined.
01:49:13.000It makes you work harder because you want to try to figure out a way to win.
01:49:17.000And that's supposed to be like a net benefit and to also enforce the value of hard work and discipline.
01:49:25.000If you see that person who wins all the time and they're at the pool before anybody and they're eating healthy and they're stretching and doing all the right things and you're like, I want to be like that person.
01:49:35.000Yeah, listen to anybody who's done, like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Jerry West, all these guys, they lost and lost and lost and lost and then they learned how to win.
01:49:54.000Yeah, you don't become that person through like extraordinary gifts from the moment you're a child and nothing but great positive things happening.
01:50:03.000It comes from discipline and hard work and That's what's not being enforced by the social media, TikTok sort of generation of kids looking for this immediate gratification and also looking to be rewarded for just existing.
01:50:20.000Look at all these people I just mentioned, Michael and Covey, for example.
01:53:28.000The wanting to understand why we self-destruct, why we self-sabotage, why society is broken, why all these things that are topics on my channel is what drives me to do them.
01:54:00.000What are the factors that lead people to become downcast and downtrodden of society?
01:54:06.000And what are the factors that lead people to become healthy, functional, successful humans?
01:54:12.000For me, it was a combination of the unconditional love I got from my mom that kind of kept me on track and made me believe in myself Tremendous.
01:54:22.000I believe everything I do turns to gold.
01:54:30.000Artistically, I believe my work is the best.
01:54:33.000I'm sure it isn't, but I believe it is, so that just gives me the confidence to proceed and do more and like, oh my god, this is so much fun.
01:54:48.000But it could also have gone where, like, let's say I didn't get that unconditional love from my mom, and my dad was giving me a hard time saying, you know, that conditional love, saying, you've got to be successful in order to...
01:54:58.000Oh, so I guess where I was going with that is my dad used to give me this hard time all the time, and it drove me to succeed.
01:55:04.000And I didn't get good grades in school, but when I got out of school, in my mind, I'm like, now I'm going to prove him wrong.
01:56:58.000Because the key to empathy, the key to forgiveness, which is really my biggest thing is forgiveness, is understanding.
01:57:06.000Because if you understand why somebody is behaving the way they are, you'll forgive them.
01:57:13.000And you don't even need to know all the details.
01:57:16.000If you've learned enough stories, you eventually will...
01:57:20.000Gain the understanding that even though I don't know your story, I'll bet you it's similar to his story and her story, which I've already heard, and they're horrifying, and I understand why they're in the situation that's similar to yours.
01:57:34.000So you may not know the details, but you have gained the empathy and the compassion and the understanding to forgive.
01:57:44.000And so the overwhelming volume of these people that you've interacted with, it has to have shifted your idea of what it means to be a person.
01:58:00.000No, I've matured tremendously in the last three years from doing this.
01:58:06.000I mean, I started this just as like, let me just do this crazy project.
01:58:12.000I didn't think it was going to become a success on YouTube, but I knew that I was going to learn a lot about people, about why we self-destruct, about why we self-sabotage, about why we...
01:58:24.000Why would you drink like that to destroy your relationship with your wife, to lose your kids, lose your job, lose your finances, lose everything?
01:58:34.000You're now a drunk living on the street.
01:58:41.000But if you hear the whole story and what they went through and how they weren't loved as a child and how their dad never neglected them or abused them or whatever, all the pieces start to fit.
01:58:50.000And then you gain some empathy and compassion.
01:58:54.000When you move on from doing this, you're going to just interview interesting people that are doing different kinds of things?
01:59:03.000I did a really great interview with a girl named Kate down in New Orleans.
01:59:06.000She is an obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferer.
01:59:32.000Even though I don't make money on YouTube, I'll still do them.
01:59:36.000And I'll put them on my subscription channel sometimes too.
01:59:39.000And then this guy, like the skydiver I mentioned, that's an interesting story because what's interesting about his story is not that he had this crazy one-in-a-million event happen in his life, tragic, is how he views life now.
01:59:54.000That's what the second half of our talk is all about, is how he views life.
01:59:59.000Life and values where he's at in life.
02:00:03.000I mean, he doesn't really have his body to use like he once did.
02:00:57.000I mean, I'll probably post a video on my channel.
02:01:00.000I've been thinking about doing it, I just haven't done it yet, because I just hired somebody new, and I want to get her, like, up to speed on everything.
02:01:31.000Yeah, that's a problem that I've had where we're interviewing people who've written books.
02:01:36.000Some of them are not terrible speakers.
02:01:38.000Yeah, and sometimes they talk the way they write.
02:01:41.000Like, pause, um, pause, um, right, click, click, click, because that's how they think.
02:01:47.000No, see, what I do with everybody, I won't even consider you unless you've sent me just a 15 or 30 second video of you just telling me your name and where you're from.
02:01:55.000It's just the basics, so I can hear your voice, see what you look like, see how you speak, because if you're...
02:02:01.000Some people are more charismatic speakers than others.
02:02:06.000What I'm doing is maybe some people look at it as, oh, you're doing this good deed for society.
02:02:11.000And maybe there is some of that, but there's also this is entertainment as well.
02:02:37.000I'm looking for great storytelling is what I'm looking for.
02:02:39.000I tell people all the time, rather than telling me the most horrific story that's ever been told, I would rather have you tell a boring story about crack cocaine, but you're a great speaker.
02:02:49.000I had a guy, I had a couple of crack addicts and crystal meth addicts just recently I just interviewed on Skid Row, and they're just great storytellers.
02:04:21.000And I'm also interviewing, at least on Skid Row especially, so many, like, The force that comes at me of bullshit and hustling and conning and lying and thievery and all that crap, it's a lot.
02:04:37.000So they recognize you now when you show up?
02:12:34.000You know, I'm fast on my feet thinking.
02:12:40.000I'm shooting 8x10 film and 8x10 Polaroids, so you get an instant Polaroid.
02:12:45.000So I have the ability to take pictures of the family, and I thought maybe that might be nice to give them 8x10 prints, these instant Polaroids, of their family.
02:12:54.000And they can include that in the casket of, I think it was their sister-in-law who passed away.
02:13:03.000And you could put the prince in the casket, take the family with her, some symbolic gesture like that.
02:13:13.000So I asked Kenneth, who's one of the brothers who speaks, if I could take his photo.
02:13:56.000And I explained that there was a death in the family and I'm going to take photos of the family and they're going to include it in the casket.
02:14:00.000I'm also going to pay these people for letting me take their photos.
02:14:03.000And I calmed them down and eventually he let me be and I took the photo.
02:14:13.000Because a lot of people in that area know about them and like to drive by and throw eggs and make fun of them and stuff like that.
02:14:20.000So he thought I was doing something like that.
02:14:22.000So I got him off my back and I'm taking a photo of Kenneth.
02:14:26.000I think I took a photo of Lorraine and her sister Barbara.
02:14:30.000And Lorraine's holding a nephew or something.
02:14:34.000So I had a couple prints already, and I go over to Larry, who was one of the other brothers who was in that trailer, and I showed him the prints, and I said, you know, I have an idea.
02:14:43.000What if I took photos of the family and I gave it to you guys?
02:14:45.000You could include it in the casket with your sister-in-law.
02:14:52.000If they want to do it, it's up to them.
02:14:54.000So that gave me the green light to go ahead and do this, and I went back, and I tried to get that photo that you just saw of Ray on the left, Timmy in the center, and then Freddie on the right.
02:15:22.000So I have Freddie and Timmy standing there, and I'd go find Ray, and I'd ask him, Ray, could I ask you to come over here, and I'll take your photo with your brothers.
02:15:32.000And he would come over and he would stand right next to my camera, like right next to it, two inches away from the lens.
02:15:37.000And I'm like, no, no, no, I need you to stand with your brothers.
02:15:39.000And he would get, as soon as I corrected him, he would just flip out and go screaming, running off.
02:15:45.000Pants would fall around his ankles, no belt, and he's wearing jeans that are too big, so his pants fall around his ankles.
02:15:49.000And he runs off and goes to kick a metal garbage can.
02:16:43.000I popped there again and visited them once or twice over the years when I was doing some other projects for advertising or something in the area.
02:16:51.000So I kind of stayed in touch with them a little bit.
02:16:54.000But then when I started doing Self White Underbelly, I love Appalachia.
02:17:00.000And I find the people just so beautiful and interesting.
02:17:03.000It's a shame that there's drugs there.
02:17:04.000I went there to avoid the drugs, to get away from it, but the drug problem there is worse than L.A. But there's other people who have not touched drugs, and they're my favorites.
02:17:13.000Just the backwoods hillbillies are my favorite.
02:23:50.000I mean, I'll do them once in a while still because a lot of my audience likes that.
02:23:53.000But, you know, it's interesting because, like, I'll put up gang member videos and some of the audience is like, oh, I hate these gang members.
02:24:03.000I've watched one of the gang member videos today and it's, you know, he was just talking about how no one ever encouraged him in any way when he was growing up.
02:24:12.000He was never worth shit and the only sort of value that he found ever was being a part of the gang.
02:24:22.000And then, you know, I put the Appalachian videos up and some people think they're boring and other people love them and that's, you know, they want more.
02:24:28.000So I do a mixed bag of all kinds of stuff.
02:24:30.000Eventually, I'd like to go to every state and just do interesting stories from all over.
02:24:34.000And if someone has and they're listening to this and they have an interesting story...
02:24:39.000They should contact you on softwhiteunderbelly.com?
02:25:04.000But listen, what you've done is very fascinating and very disturbing, but I think ultimately educational.
02:25:11.000And if anything, I think it will bring a sense of understanding of what these people have been through that, you know, you can't just say, hey, you're lazy, go get a job.