On this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the legendary journalist joins us to talk about his new show Trafficked with Mariana Van Zeller, a new show on National Geographic exploring the black market in illegal drugs, guns, and violence in the streets of New York City. We talk about how dangerous it is to get drugs and guns in America, and what it's like to travel the world in a backpack carrying all kinds of illegal drugs and weapons. We also talk about what it was like to buy an AK-47 in a Taco Bell parking lot in Arizona, and how he ended up with an AR-15 in the middle of the night in the desert. And, of course, we talk about guns and immigration. This episode is brought to you by Trafficked, a National Geographic show on the growing illegal drug trade in New York, and Trafficked With Mariana van Zeller. It's on Hulu on Wednesdays at 9pm ET on Hulu, and it's available on Amazon Prime and Vimeo on Thursdays at 10pm ET. Thanks for listening and share the podcast with your friends and family! Cheers, Joe & Rory - The Joe and Rory Show. Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. Subscribe to the pod by Anchor.fm/TheJoeRogan Experience. and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! and we'll get a shoutout in next week's episode on the next episode of the podcast. Thank you for listening, Rory McElton John! - Thank you, Rory, for your support and support us. - Rory Mclean, for the podcast! Love Ghost Guns and Guns and Stuff? - Tomahawk? RIP, Tomahawks! Sarah, Sarah, for this episode and Good Morning Joe Podcasts, by Sarah, Caitie, for The Good Morning Podcast, by the Good Life Podcast, and Good Day Podcasts. by The Good Life Project, and the GoodLife Podcast, for Good Thing Podcasts Thanks, Rory and Sarah, Josh, for all your support, Sarah & Sarah, Thanks, Joe, for listening to the podcast Good Life, Sarah Goodday, Sarah and Sarah Goodnight, Good Day, Good Night, Good Luck, Good Morning, Good Blessings, and Thank You, Joe and Good Luck. Love, Sarah
00:01:04.000Illegal markets around the world, whether it's drugs, guns, fight clubs, anything, illegal surrogacy.
00:01:13.000The craziest one to me was the getting the guns in America and transporting them to Mexico, that that is going on, and that it's going on with cops.
00:01:28.000I think the first story I did on guns in America was about 12, 15 years ago, where I was able to buy an AK-47 out of a Taco Bell parking lot in Arizona.
00:01:46.000And then we went to a bar to sort of celebrate the fact that we just filmed this crazy thing that just happened because we knew it was possible that people were doing this but we wanted to show it with our camera so we had sort of secret cameras filming and then I went out and I bought it and we went out to a bar after and I ordered a beer and I forgot my driver's license so it didn't give me a beer.
00:02:09.000So no beer, but I could go out with a naked 47. And a few days later, we bought a 50 cal out of a guy's garage that we went out into the desert and filmed.
00:02:44.000At the time, there was a website called Backpage where you could essentially buy anything.
00:02:48.000I don't think that website exists anymore, but it's not even on the black market, regular online I think we spoke to the guy 20 minutes before.
00:03:25.000And then, yeah, so then we decided to do this for the first season, actually, of Traffic, the story on guns and how American guns are winding.
00:03:34.000up in the hands of the cartel in Mexico and how it's responsible for so much of the violence that's happening there and sort of this cycle which I don't think most people think about how then the violence leads people to immigrate to America and then they come here and you know so it's like a cycle of violence and immigration it's all and guns and it's all sort of connected but whenever we do a story on guns and we just one another one that I did on ghost guns was released last week On National Geographic.
00:04:04.000And it is the most sort of controversial issue, the hot topic that we can always...
00:04:11.000So I immediately start getting messages of people saying that I should go back to my country and what am I doing?
00:04:17.000And I'm trying to take away people's rights to want a gun, which is absolutely not the case.
00:04:38.000And that the guns that people are buying, and particularly with this last episode on ghost guns, which is the fact that the guns that are now these untraceable and licensed guns are so easy to make.
00:04:51.000And so many of them are ending up in crime scenes across America and on the hands of gang members and, you know, militant groups and anti-government groups.
00:05:02.000And that's all what we're trying to do as a journalist myself when we decided to do the stories because I started hearing from people talking about how these guns are ending up in the wrong place.
00:05:27.000It doesn't mean that it has to be 3D printed.
00:05:30.000However, nowadays, it's basically a gun that doesn't have a serial number.
00:05:34.000And it could have had a serial number and the serial number was scrubbed.
00:05:37.000And maybe they put a new fake serial number in there.
00:05:40.000But what happens is because of the 3D printers, it's now super easy to just print a gun or gun parts at home.
00:05:48.000So there are all these companies out there who sell 80% kits that have everything to build a gun except for the receiver.
00:05:56.000But there's a company, for example, called Defense Distributed, ran by Cody Wilson, who was the first one to use a ghost gun or a gun, a 3D-printed gun.
00:06:04.000Actually, it was called the Liberator.
00:06:10.000And he's a strong believer in—he wanted his company to be sort of the WikiLeaks for guns so that everybody could have access to guns.
00:06:19.000So he sells these kits that are 80% kits, and it's everything you need to buy a gun except for the lower receiver, which is what the ATF and the government actually considers to be the gun.
00:07:34.000Because I've seen carbon fiber barrels for hunting rifles.
00:07:38.000They make them very light so that people can take them into the backcountry when they go deep into the woods.
00:07:42.000There's all kinds of parts you can make with 3D printing metal stuff.
00:07:46.000Oh, one of the craziest things we filmed for this ghost gun episode was actually these teenagers that were also making 3D and ghost guns, and they came to the desert with us, and we spent a whole day with them shooting guns and showing us what they build.
00:08:01.000And they were also making drop-in sears, which are little pieces to the...
00:08:08.000Transform a gun from semi-automatic to fully automatic.
00:08:13.000And they're illegal, actually, in America.
00:08:15.000You can't buy that at a gun store, but they're making them for 50 cents.
00:08:41.000I think one of the biggest surprises for me filming this show has been finding out that even the people, not all, but the majority of the people that I've met involved in these illegal activities around the world, that they are very much people just like you and me.
00:08:59.000And it is more often than not because of a lack of opportunities that they end up involved in a life of crime.
00:09:05.000And I think there is the idea that no matter how far I travel to the edges of our society and that I can still find people who are relatable and redeemable makes me actually have a very optimistic view of the world.
00:09:21.000Of course, that doesn't apply to everyone.
00:09:23.000When I'm interviewing white supremacists who talk about wanting death for minorities or...
00:09:31.000You know, other people that I've interviewed...
00:09:43.000We interviewed a couple of people in Denver, one of which was a 28-year-old.
00:09:57.000I can't remember what he was by day, but he showed up wearing a swastika.
00:10:04.000And he was talking about a race war and he was going to do everything he could to make this race war start.
00:10:10.000And he was part of Atomwaffen, which is a big white supremacist group that has actually been responsible for some deaths in the US. How many of those people just need like somewhere to belong to and this is like something that they find that they can they can find a bunch of people that are energized about a very specific cause and then they find that if they align themselves with this group there's like a camaraderie and a brothership in this cause even if it's ridiculous and
00:10:50.000Unfortunately, it's a place where you can find that community, but that community is not always good.
00:10:54.000It's a danger of psychology too, right?
00:10:56.000The people are easily manipulated and they want to belong to a group.
00:11:01.000And especially if they think that it's like some sort of a secret group that other people don't know about and that they have this cause they think is valid or just.
00:13:07.000He did time in prison, basically, in the UK. But he's American, and he's now living in Montana.
00:13:16.000Actually, he lives out of school bus in Montana.
00:13:19.000And it was a really powerful interview because, you know, I spent so much time reporting on drugs and talking to people who do it because of the money.
00:13:27.000And with psychedelics, we've filmed a lot of people involved in the psychedelics business selling mushrooms and LSD. And not one single one of them was doing it because of the money.
00:13:37.000They all told us how they were doing it because of the power of the drug and how LSD has changed them and transformed them.
00:13:43.000And they really believe in the power of the drug in terms of sort of liberating and raising consciousness in the world.
00:14:59.000Oh, one of the episodes we have for the upcoming season is actually about hash, because it's the first drug I tried when I was growing up in Portugal.
00:15:06.000It's decriminalized in Portugal, right?
00:15:39.000I mean, one of the guys, the people we interviewed was a former military suffering from PTSD, a young kid.
00:15:49.000Who had been in Afghanistan, I believe, yes, Afghanistan.
00:15:54.000And he was part of the bomb-sniffing crew that goes looking for IEDs.
00:15:59.000And the car that he was in, actually, there was an IED that exploded under him.
00:16:05.000But it was all protected, so nothing happened to him.
00:16:07.000He suffered a concussion and was out for a few minutes.
00:16:10.000And then was rescued, but there was still incoming shooting coming at him.
00:16:13.000It was like a whole situation, and he was suffering from PTSD. And he told us he was incapable, and he tried everything, all the medication that was available for him by the traditional medical community.
00:16:25.000And nothing was working, and he says he was having trouble waking up in the morning.
00:16:30.000He was suffering again from PTSD, and then he tried...
00:18:08.000But microdosing on mushrooms, I've tried it three times during the pandemic.
00:18:12.000My position on that is that you should lose control.
00:18:16.000That feeling of wanting to be in control is ridiculous because you don't have any control anyway.
00:18:20.000And that you really should embrace this.
00:18:23.000The paranoia that comes with it, because I think what it is is expanding of your awareness and just how insanely bizarre life is.
00:18:34.000You can decide that life is normal if you do the same thing every day and you have a limited amount of variability.
00:18:41.000You drive to work the same way, you work with the same people, you do the same thing, come home with the same family, and life seems okay.
00:18:48.000And then you get really high and you're like, oh my god, this is crazy.
00:18:51.000It's true, but for somebody who already lives in the uncomfortable side of life constantly for my work, I'm always in places that usually people would make them feel out of control.
00:19:46.000People are, you know, we have a problem with discipline and with structure and with an objective analysis of life.
00:19:56.000And so when you add things like marijuana or mushrooms or LSD or anything to those, there's also people that have legitimate psychological and mental health problems.
00:20:07.000And for them, it's very dangerous because I had Alex Berenson on.
00:20:29.000And I was actually more on Barron's side, even though I'm a marijuana advocate.
00:20:34.000I think it's – for me, it's been very valuable.
00:20:37.000But I also know people that have lost their mind.
00:20:40.000I 100% know people that used to be okay and did too much pot and got really really deep into it and lost their grip of reality and became either marijuana triggered schizophrenia or they had schizophrenia already and but it was manageable you know that it's probably variable in its intensity and what happens and then their experiences with marijuana pushed them over the edge and I think that's a real possibility.
00:21:09.000Yeah, but I think you can apply that to a lot of things, right?
00:21:15.000Yeah, but again, people have a hard time keeping it together when something like marijuana comes along.
00:21:24.000But that doesn't mean that it should be illegal.
00:21:26.000That means there should be some real counseling and there should be places that people can go where they can talk to someone and There should be a way to make it legal.
00:23:58.000And then they ran a steroid business and they got in trouble.
00:24:01.000And then they realized that actually they could make a lot more money from selling OxyContin than they could from selling steroids.
00:24:07.000So they opened this little small strip mall pain clinic.
00:24:12.000And as you saw, you know, people started coming in from all over the country and buying.
00:24:17.000And the doctors wouldn't even look at them.
00:24:18.000And they were prescribing pills like it was Tic Tacs.
00:24:21.000And this, we found out about them because we were reporting in Kentucky and we were the sheriff who was, you know, overdoses all around them, people, you know, dying, devastating his community.
00:24:31.000And a lot of the pill bottles had this name, American Pain.
00:24:35.000And we started, we went down there and we took out the camera and my husband took out the camera and we, the first shot we got immediately, within minutes, This big SUV came with two big guys who were threatening us and started yelling at us and telling us to leave, that we weren't allowed to film.
00:25:46.000They had no idea, confused by what was happening, that they just parked behind us and they never came out of the car and then the police arrived.
00:25:53.000And then they made up an excuse that they thought I was an old girlfriend or something like that.
00:25:57.000But my husband took down their license plates and found out their names and it was the George brothers, Jeff and Chris George, who were running the biggest prescription or pill mill in America's history.
00:26:09.000They were making I think something like $40 million a year out of this small little pill mill, you know, strip mall clinic.
00:26:30.000The organization was just a strip mall clinic, pain clinic, with thousands of patients that would come in and out, and tons of doctors writing prescription pills.
00:26:41.000And when we were working at the time where we'd been interviewing, off the record, a DEA agent who didn't want to go on the record, That we later found out was actually investigating them, and they had wiretaps.
00:26:53.000So in Darren's movie, he got his hands on all the wiretaps, so you could hear them.
00:26:59.000And part of it, there's a part where they talk about us and our film and how we were trying to look into them.
00:28:16.000That's the biggest, I think, outrage about the whole opiate crisis is that There have been almost no pharmaceutical executive that has gone to prison.
00:28:28.000The pharmaceutical companies are the ones that were actually making the big money, right?
00:28:32.000And it's not just the Sacklers of Purdue.
00:28:34.000It's also the generic companies that were making even more.
00:28:37.000And nobody was actually – I mean nothing practically happened to them.
00:28:44.000And it's so sad when you find out how many people lost their lives and how many people – even if they're alive, their lives are destroyed.
00:28:51.000I mean, Joe, having traveled and reported on this, the opiate crisis for so long, it's whole communities that have been devastated.
00:31:06.000Like, couldn't I come back to you if I'm in pain?
00:31:08.000Like, if I'm not in pain now, why do you want me?
00:31:10.000It was this weird conversation where it's like, I don't know if he was incentivized to try to prescribe them, if he felt like it would be good for him.
00:31:53.000And he was basically telling them, if you...
00:32:04.000He was paying them out and taking them on trips, luxurious trips around the world.
00:32:11.000Telling them not only to prescribe this medication to people who have headaches and back pain, a medication that is made and FDA approved only for breakthrough cancer patients, but yet you go to the doctor and you say you have a headache and this guy knows that he can get a kickback from the company and so,
00:32:51.000I have a good friend who used to be a pharmaceutical representative and he explained to me how it works that he would not just know the doctor, but he got to know, he knew who the doctor's kids' names were.
00:33:02.000He would show up at their baseball games and he would give them gifts.
00:33:05.000He would take them out to dinners and it was all about cultivating these relationships.
00:33:10.000And that it was all about, like, I'm your friend, and they wanted to have this sort of weird cronyism, weird sort of relationship where even if it wasn't illegal, like, clearly he was influencing them to sell more pills.
00:33:30.000Yeah, it's crazy and it's crazy that it's still happening and it's just shocking that not more people have gotten in trouble because of it.
00:33:40.000Because they did change and they made a database, right?
00:33:43.000Yeah, there's a database right now, which was the biggest thing that didn't.
00:33:46.000So you could go to 10 doctors in one day and get 150 pills from each doctor.
00:33:51.000At the end of the day, you'd have 1,500 pills and no one would know about it.
00:33:54.000And then you'd grab those pills and go and sell them to other places of the country where you could get 20 times more for the same drug.
00:34:02.000Yeah, so the databases, it's just much harder.
00:34:05.000I think there's one of the things that I remember that we reported on, that you shouldn't be able to prescribe and dispense at the same location because it's a conflict of interest, right?
00:34:15.000If you're going to make money out of the selling of those pills...
00:34:20.000It shouldn't be at the same place where you're prescribing them because then there's an incentive for you to prescribe because you're making money from the sale of those pills.
00:34:29.000So that was happening in Florida as well, and it's not allowed in a lot of other states.
00:34:34.000And then the horrible truth is that a lot of those people became addicted, and then they had to get it on the black market.
00:34:39.000So then they were getting fentanyl-laced heroin and massive amount of overdoses.
00:34:44.000Yeah, the progression was Oxycontin, and then it was heroin, and then it became fentanyl.
00:34:53.000And yet, you know, we talk about drugs.
00:34:57.000One of the episodes we did this season that's coming out soon is about MDMA. And we also looked at sort of the therapeutical side of MDMA. But one of the reasons why I became interested in reporting on MDMA... I grew up with going to parties that there was ecstasy all around me,
00:35:14.000never tried it, knew some friends actually that tried it and it didn't go so well for them.
00:35:19.000They still have, like you were talking about your friend with the weed, how they went off the deep end a little bit.
00:35:24.000Oh, they went off the deep end with MDMA? Yeah, one friend I know that used to go to these parties, and I knew her well, and she, yeah, she went off the deep end.
00:35:34.000I haven't been in touch with her for a while, but it wasn't a good thing.
00:35:38.000It doesn't hit everybody the same way.
00:35:41.000Well, not only that, I think a lot of people were doing it almost every day.
00:35:45.000There was a lot of people that I had heard of that were going to these parties and raves, and they just couldn't wait to get back to that state.
00:35:53.000Because that state of being high on MDMA was so wonderful and so lovely and just so, you know, everyone was like dancing and touching each other's hands and hugging.
00:36:50.000But if there was a way to, I was thinking like if there was a way to maintain that state where you had an elevated level of serotonin, like people would treat people so much differently.
00:37:04.000There's a real—again, it was one of those drugs that when we—the episode we did, there was a lot of people who are real believers in MDMA and talk about it, how it's being used therapeutically.
00:37:15.000But obviously, there's a flip side to that, too.
00:37:17.000So the reason we decided to investigate MDMA was because I got an email from my son's school in L.A. And it was from a—basically warning parents that there had been a kid in a school close by, a high schooler, who died 50%.
00:37:31.000I was thinking they were taking an ecstasy pill and it was laced with fentanyl.
00:37:41.000And then I found out that the biggest, I don't know if you know this, but sort of the center, the best MDMA is actually coming from the Netherlands in Europe.
00:38:05.000Lawyers that were representing this guy that was a whistleblower for one of the big drug leaders was also killed.
00:38:13.000So there's insane things happening in Holland right now, and a lot of it because of the drug trade and partly because of MDMA. There were videos of torture chambers found.
00:38:24.000The police did a raid on a place that was being used as torture chambers for rival groups.
00:39:00.000So what happened in Portugal, actually, we talked about how it was decriminalized and why it was such a success is the rates of incarceration went immediately down.
00:39:12.000People are basically given an option whether they want to go to rehab or if they're caught with a certain amount over a certain amount or if they want to go to prison.
00:39:21.000Of course, most people just choose to go to rehab.
00:39:25.000And, you know, the rates of addiction have gone down.
00:39:28.000There are safe places for people to use drugs.
00:39:30.000And it really has been an incredible success in Portugal.
00:39:33.000And I keep telling everyone who wants to listen to me that we should emulate that or at least try to.
00:39:40.000But I think we already are so deep in this problem in the United States is that the cartels are bringing these drugs over here in such high numbers.
00:39:48.000And they obviously have a Very ruthless organized crime business and even if it's decriminalized, they're still going to be controlling the supply and demand.
00:39:57.000And that happened with weed in California.
00:40:00.000So an episode we did last season was about weed and how the black market for weed, the illegal weed market, is actually three times bigger than the legal market, even after it's been legalized in California.
00:40:12.000And that is because the government has made it so difficult for people to get a license and so costly that people just decide to continue running their weed business illegally.
00:40:22.000Well, not only that, but they've also made it so that growing marijuana, even with an intent to distribute, is just a misdemeanor.
00:40:31.000So there was a man named John Norris, who we had on the podcast, who wrote a book called Hidden Wars, and he was a game warden in California.
00:41:07.000They were rappelling down helicopters.
00:41:09.000We had to hike in and it was hours and hours with all our gear to try to get to this place.
00:41:13.000It was in the middle of nowhere and it was fields and fields of illegal weed and it was all controlled by the cartel.
00:41:20.000We actually managed to speak to one of them that was there as a worker, and that's the really sad part of it, is that a lot of them are just getting paid nothing.
00:41:28.000Yeah, and they're risking their lives, and they're camping out there.
00:41:31.000Yeah, I have a friend who works on a ranch in California who discovered one of those.
00:42:12.000And again, I think that a lot of them, if they were given, again, not all, but a lot of them, if they were given the legal route, they would have been amazing members of our society.
00:42:57.000But another interesting thing, going back to weed, a scene we filmed, which still blows my mind, was we filmed, and this was a guy at the top.
00:43:06.000He was running a many million dollar worth illegal weed business.
00:43:11.000And he was running it, or at least he was selling it, out of the top floor of a building in downtown L.A., It was insane.
00:43:44.000Yeah, I mean, supply and demand, right?
00:43:47.000There's always going to be someone that comes along that's willing to take a chance.
00:43:50.000Yeah, and he had a real estate business, apparently, and he told us that he was making a lot more money from his illegal black market weed business than he was from his real estate business.
00:45:05.000And you have these tokens, and you can go and buy these tokens.
00:45:08.000And there's PR people that are out there telling you that this is the new hottest token, and you can make money overnight.
00:45:15.000So you set out, you launch this Joe Rogan token, you put some seed money on it, you get a PR person to go out there and get celebrities, you know, putting out social media posts about how this new Joe Rogan token is the shit and you should absolutely buy it.
00:49:14.000And apparently when you have a tiger, the tiger will listen to you, but no one else, which is terrifying.
00:49:20.000So you have this enormous predatory animal that you don't let kill things and has these deep...
00:49:30.000I mean, it's like taking a creature that has a genetic propensity for a very specific thing and denying them that thing and then hoping that they don't revert.
00:50:38.000The idea that there are more tigers in captivity in the United States, in Texas, to be even more precise.
00:50:43.000I didn't know that it was just in Texas, but in the US. They have them in Oklahoma, but Texas has some pretty wacky laws when it comes to the ownership of animals.
00:50:52.000In many ways, it's a success story for some animals.
00:50:57.000There's animals like oryx that are endangered in their natural habitat, but are prevalent and hunted in Texas.
00:51:06.000Like, I went to a ranch in South Texas recently to hunt wild white-tailed deer and an animal called Neil Guy, which is an Indian animal that evolved around tigers.
00:51:18.000This is a crazy animal, really bizarre-looking animal.
00:51:47.000There's no hunting regulations in terms of like wildlife conservation will put limits and tag limits on animals because they're controlling the population and they want to make sure that the populations are healthy and so like if you're in an area like say if you want to hunt mule deer in a very protected specific area there's thousands of people apply for tags but a very limited number of people get them and there's a very specific area you can hunt in And this is all done,
00:52:16.000and that money all goes to wildlife conservation.
00:52:19.000It all goes to park rangers and protecting habitat, and it's a very successful and really well-organized and well-funded plan.
00:52:31.000It's private property, so you can hunt these animals 365 days a year, and they're owned by the people who own the property.
00:52:39.000But again, in many ways, it's a success story because by giving these animals value, they have an incentive to keep their population strong and healthy.
00:52:48.000And so you have this enormous population of these exotic animals here.
00:52:52.000Right, which is what they're trying to do in places like the Congo and Rwanda, where you can still find gorillas, for example, is giving them value.
00:53:01.000So instead of hunting them, there is money going to the people who are currently hunting them, hopefully.
00:55:05.000That for us is completely exhilarating after you're hot and you're bitten by mosquitoes and you're exhausted and we're sure maybe we're not, maybe we're going to be the only people who are not going to see gorillas and finally we get to this corner in this place and the park ranger says, oh,
00:55:20.000completely nonchalantly, he says, oh, it's right here.
00:55:25.000And right behind a bush there was a gigantic silverback male gorilla and a family, the female and a bunch of little kid babies, including a little baby that was born two weeks before.
00:55:37.000And we were the first ones to ever film the little baby.
00:55:39.000And it was my mother carrying the baby around.
00:55:43.000And then there was that one moment we were all together and you have to sort of be quiet.
00:55:47.000Obviously you don't want to start yelling next to the gorillas because you can scare them.
00:56:45.000But obviously you're not supposed to go up to them and touch them.
00:56:48.000And as we were filming, our producer was sort of behind me and he was a little bit on this open trail or this patch that the gorillas had gone through, so it was kind of no brush there.
00:57:02.000And suddenly one of the big girls that we had an idea was there came behind him and was fast and fast approaching.
00:57:09.000And he had to like jump out of his place and it was a really close encounter.
00:57:14.000But he wasn't coming to attack him or anything.
00:57:21.000But yeah, they have never suffered any attacks and it's really a spectacular experience.
00:57:25.000There's a video that I saw of these men that are in this gorilla habitat and this gorilla walks through and grabs one of the men and just drags him.
00:58:45.000And so there's a real incentive there.
00:58:47.000And we ended up speaking with a guy who bought the chimps from the hunters and then was selling them, was sort of a middleman, and was telling us how he carries them, how he transports them, all of it.
00:59:43.000We know of a few of them that we heard and we wanted to go visit and ask questions and see, continue our investigation to find if any of them had come from the Congo.
00:59:52.000And who are these people that have these private zoos?
00:59:57.000Some are not even public zoos, so it's private, so it's just for them and their friends.
01:00:02.000There are others that have parks, you know, a little bit like Doc Antle Safari Park, where people can come and pay and visit the wild animals.
01:00:13.000And some people like to post it on Instagram or people pay to go and take selfies with these animals, which I'm still, I cannot believe that this is still a thing that happens today.
01:00:23.000People pay and want to take selfies with wild animals.
01:00:27.000It's very sad because it's incentivizing the trade is what it's doing.
01:00:31.000Had you heard anything when you were in the Congo about those extraordinarily large chimps, the Bondo apes?
01:01:40.000They call it the Beely Ape, the Bondo Ape, and they have a crest on their skull like a gorilla does.
01:01:47.000And so initially they thought they were a hybrid.
01:01:50.000That one is one of them that was walking upright, that photo to the left of that, Jamie, the one down, down, down below that, right there, that one.
01:02:00.000That one was a photo that they took with a camera trap.
01:02:05.000So it walked by upright and they saw this one walk across the road and they said it's six feet tall.
01:02:13.000A six foot tall chimpanzee that was hundreds and hundreds of pounds.
01:03:54.000But I would think that that animal in specific, you were a super wealthy individual and you wanted to get one of those giant chimps for your collection.
01:04:01.000Yeah, because the rarer they are, the more you think you're special because you own this very rare animal.
01:04:08.000So is it mostly chimps and gorillas or is it orangutans and monkeys as well?
01:04:14.000Our investigation was into the great apes, yeah.
01:04:16.000So chimps, gorillas, bonobos, and they are in high demand.
01:04:21.000And again, they go for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
01:04:23.000And, yeah, I think we tend to usually point the finger at the hunters and the middlemen, the people that are catching these and killing, but I think the finger should always be pointed at where the demand comes from and who are the people, because those are the people that,
01:04:40.000you know, it's, to me, I... I do not understand somebody who just wants to have a wild animal that came from the wild in their backyard.
01:04:48.000But I do understand why a pygmy or a poor guy without any other opportunities in the Congo, when given the chance to bring money for their families, they would do so.
01:05:00.000But it's just, it's such a disturbing part of human nature that they would be willing to do that, especially to an animal that they know is so endangered that they'd want to have a giant park in their backyard where they keep these things.
01:05:17.000But the fact that it exists here in the U.S. too, again, we can say it's all happening in places like the UAE and China, but we have these safari parks and these private zoos here.
01:05:58.000We went to a few sanctuaries for chimpanzees and apes in the Congo, and we had the chance of spending time with some baby chimps, and they're adorable.
01:06:10.000But one of the things, and they'll jump.
01:06:12.000They basically jumped on me and my whole crew.
01:06:49.000I think that once you have your big house, once you have your exotic cars, then you're thinking what else you can get.
01:06:56.000I think that's the case for a lot of them.
01:06:58.000And unfortunately, again, the idea that you're taking all these photos and posting them on social media, I think unfortunately social media has had a terrible negative effect on this because people think it's fun to take photos with all sorts of exotic animals and then They think, you know,
01:07:13.000once you have money, oh, I'm going to own this.
01:07:15.000I'm going to buy this and put it in a cage.
01:07:17.000And when my friends come over, they're going to be impressed by the fact that I own this tiger or this lion or this gorilla.
01:07:23.000But I imagine it would be very dangerous for you to be exposing that.
01:07:29.000It always is with all the stories we do.
01:07:32.000There's always a component of a lot of people there that don't want us to do those stories, for sure.
01:07:37.000Yeah, I mean, gaining access to these worlds is the hardest part of my job.
01:07:41.000Do you worry about coming on shows like this, that you're going to become famous?
01:08:03.000No, but it actually, it's funny that you say that because it has helped me in some way where I get a lot of messages from people who want to be on the show.
01:08:10.000So they send me videos of their guns and their drugs and the illicit businesses they are involved in.
01:10:14.000Here is viewed by some as downright undemocratic.
01:10:18.000It's kind of getting common just when a fellow can't put in a hard day's work, put in 11, 12 hours a day, and then get in your truck and at least running one or two beers.
01:10:26.000They're making it laws where you can't drink when you want to.
01:10:30.000You have to wear a seatbelt when you're driving.
01:10:34.000Pretty soon we're going to be a communist country.
01:10:39.000Pretty soon we're going to be a communist country.
01:10:42.000Making laws, you've got to wear seatbelts.
01:11:04.000I get a lot of people say, I used to love your show, but now I saw your gun story, and now I realize that it's all fabricated, and it's all you pay actor.
01:11:46.000Yeah, not, I mean, the amount of time, the amount of trips that I've done halfway around the world to wait for people that don't show up or the amount of back alley meetings that I've had with people trying to convince them to be on camera and eventually they say no, even disguise.
01:11:59.000So there's, yeah, there's just an incredible amount of work.
01:12:01.000Have there been subjects that you tried to investigate but you couldn't get access and you couldn't do a story on?
01:12:42.000And I think we started investigating even the season before and we were wondering if this was something we should do because obviously the access wasn't there.
01:12:48.000We thought if we gave it more time, There would be more access.
01:12:51.000There's another episode we really want to do on dirty bombs.
01:12:56.000And we started looking into it and we had a team that traveled to a country.
01:13:01.000I can't tell you which the country is yet because I'm hoping we can go back and if I'm afraid if they hear it then they're not going to let us in.
01:13:07.000But to a country and we were hoping we could get access and then everything failed and then they said we were being watched by the government so they had to leave.
01:13:16.000So the government is protecting dirty bomb manufacturers?
01:13:38.000There's a lot of radioactive material still left there, and it's really difficult.
01:13:43.000You know, there's sort of security perimeters around it.
01:13:46.000You can still get really sick if you go in there.
01:13:48.000But there's actually still people giving tourists an underground tour, a black market tour, where you can go and visit Chernobyl.
01:13:59.000So it is actually pretty easy to get your hands on radioactive material and then transform it into dirty bombs, which are really powerful bombs that have enormous, devastating impact on a lot of people.
01:14:12.000And so there's a real fear out there that groups like ISIS are getting their hands or were getting their hands on radioactive materials and making dirty bombs.
01:14:22.000And we started looking into it, and we still haven't been able to get the access we want.
01:14:27.000So it's a bomb that sprays this radioactive material?
01:15:35.000And getting access to the 1%ers was also crazy hard.
01:15:40.000And basically we were trying to figure out where their money, you know, they're involved in the drug business and we were trying to figure out how involved are they and if they're involved and people who would be willing to share that with us.
01:16:39.000We spent two months not filming, and then in June, we started filming.
01:16:44.000So we were very fast, and we were traveling all around the world, and we figured out a way to make it work.
01:16:49.000But suddenly arriving in Sturges, and not one single person is wearing a mask, and there's all these bars and people partying, and it was wild.
01:17:11.000It's the only sort of outlaw group that was born in America, that was made in America.
01:17:16.000So unlike the mafia that comes from Italy, right, or the cartel, it's the only group, outlaw group, that is completely 100% American.
01:17:24.000And it started with a lot of vets from the Vietnam War who basically felt like they lost a sense of identity and community once the war ended.
01:17:34.000And they came back and they started meeting and then they created these motorcycle groups and they call themselves the one percenters because they say that the rest of the clubs, the 99%, are above the law, which means that they consider themselves to be outlaws.
01:17:48.000And, you know, there are many cases out there.
01:17:50.000We interviewed an ATF agent who's been involved in some of the craziest, largest undercover operations in America's history, where he was able to infiltrate a couple of these groups.
01:19:14.000I mean, the people that were in the Hell's Angels were very upset because...
01:19:19.000Hunter has this way of writing or had this way of writing where it's like you couldn't really – there was a lot of fiction mixed in.
01:19:28.000There's a lot of craziness mixed in with the reality of it and his gonzo journalism, this thing that he sort of coined.
01:19:36.000But that was all about those guys that had got back from Vietnam and they just felt like society was bullshit and they just wanted to be free and ride motorcycles and I'm sure a lot of them had PTSD and all fucked up from their experiences and just feeling that they were used by the government and they wanted to be outlaws.
01:19:58.000We went to the funeral of one of them.
01:20:00.000We filmed in LA. And it was the most incredible.
01:21:16.000It's actually illegal in the majority of countries, but it's legal in Ukraine.
01:21:20.000And they have a strong commercial surrogacy program there and a safe one before the war.
01:21:26.000But what happened was when the war broke out, there's a lot of actually American babies that are in Ukrainian wombs and that were stuck in the war.
01:21:32.000So we managed to actually follow a couple from the Bay Area as they head into Ukraine.
01:21:39.000And the funny thing about the whole story, it was the first time I'd just gotten COVID for the first time.
01:21:47.000And the baby was about to be born in Ukraine and we knew we wanted to be there when the baby was born because we were following these parents as they were meeting their baby.
01:21:55.000And it was a crazy experience of having to be at home for five days and sort of waiting and hoping the baby wouldn't be born.
01:22:04.000I finished my five-day quarantine and I was able to get on a plane and go straight.
01:22:08.000And because I got there late, a few days later than my team, my team was all there already.
01:22:12.000I arrived in Poland and then I basically drove straight to Ukraine.
01:22:20.000I went in with nothing but went into Ukraine and eventually met this couple and the organization, it's an American organization that's helping them, Project Dynamo.
01:22:30.000And then filmed them as they go to the hospital and meet the surrogate mother for the first time and then holds their baby and meets their baby for the first time.
01:22:40.000And it was one of the most emotional moments we've ever filmed on traffic.
01:22:43.000You know, the show is all about these products that are harmful or sometimes even deadly and dangerous.
01:22:48.000And here we were seeing something that was bringing a lot of love and hope and joy.
01:22:55.000And then it was them trying to get the baby out of this war zone in time because the paperwork and having to deal with bureaucracy even in moments like that.
01:23:05.000After that, we basically, because the show's about black markets, we went to Kenya.
01:23:09.000And what happens is when it becomes people, like you said, they have to find, they're going to find a way to do what they want to do, in this case, surrogacy.
01:23:18.000And the people that can't afford it here, and then it became too dangerous to do it in Ukraine.
01:23:24.000People are finding new places to do it.
01:25:40.000How do you get connected to Hezbollah?
01:25:43.000So essentially the episode was about how oil is financing terrorist groups or groups that the U.S. considers to be terrorist organizations like Hezbollah.
01:25:53.000And so first we went to Nigeria and spent time.
01:25:57.000They kidnapped the 200 school children a few years back.
01:26:00.000And they recently pledged allegiance to ISIS. And they're a very, very scary group that has done very horrific things up in the north of the country.
01:26:09.000But what we heard is that they're getting their oil, a lot of their oil, from the south of the country, which is the biggest oil-producing region.
01:26:17.000I had been there before, but it's the most insane place in the world, the Niger Delta.
01:26:22.000It's basically swamps that are filled with oil.
01:26:25.000You've got ExxonMobil and Shell and all these corporations that have been there taking the oil for decades and people living in absolute poverty.
01:26:35.000And at one point they decided, you know, fuck this.
01:26:39.000They're getting wealthy out of our oil.
01:26:43.000So there's estimates that anywhere between 30 to 90 percent of the oil that comes from Nigeria or that is produced in Nigeria is actually stolen, which is insane.
01:26:56.000Days and days of—months and months of trying to get access and then days of going in Nigeria to different places and getting no's, no's, no's.
01:27:02.000And then eventually we met with a king who used to be a militant himself.
01:27:07.000But when the peace deal happened, they gave him the ceremonial post of being a king.
01:27:14.000And we asked for his permission to film in his land.
01:27:17.000And once we got that permission, we were able to film one of these huge— I think?
01:27:43.000Everything is burnt and black, and you've got hundreds of people working, women who carry the huge bags with the refined oil, with the diesel.
01:28:33.000So we arrive at this location and we'd finally been given permission to film and it's hundreds of people.
01:28:39.000And we started filming and then suddenly we see a group of people coming our way and yelling and picking up buckets of hot oil and threatening to throw it at my cameraman, Josh.
01:28:54.000And we were yelling back, please don't, don't.
01:28:57.000And the idea was that they thought we were white people coming from an oil corporation that were trying to shut down their operation, which would mean that they wouldn't have that $1 a day to bring back to their family.
01:29:06.000So I had to spend a lot of time showing them my press pass, telling them that I'm a journalist.
01:29:12.000I promise I'm not here as an oil corporation.
01:30:00.000And then a week later, we were on the border between Syria and Lebanon with Hezbollah and then with a group that works with Hezbollah and seeing them...
01:30:10.000Bringing in unsanctioned oil that was coming from Iran and that is basically providing jobs and money and financial help to Hezbollah.
01:30:55.000What they are not telling us is that this was not the first shipment, and they've been getting shipments for a long time, and that Hezbollah is making millions of dollars out of the Iranian oil.
01:31:05.000And, you know, when I asked him, so why, if I know, it means the U.S. government probably knows this is happening, why aren't they doing more?
01:32:23.000Yeah, it's an interesting thing because I think we all think of, when you think of terrorist organizations, you think of, you know, how are they getting their guns?
01:33:05.000I mean, you get to see some of the worst aspects of human life in a lot of ways.
01:33:12.000Some of the most disturbing aspects of human life.
01:33:16.000I do, but I always see it through the eyes as a journalist.
01:33:21.000I think that's what protects me in so many ways.
01:33:25.000You know, I think like how my cameramen that I work with who are amazing always say how their protection is seeing it through the camera and it gives them a certain level of protection.
01:33:35.000I don't want to sound too naive, but it is true that the fact that I find so many of these people to be so much like me and so human really gives me hope.
01:33:48.000Because, again, it's about what are the motivations?
01:33:50.000What is making these people do what they do?
01:33:53.000And if we can get at those motivations, we can actually do something to prevent these black markets from existing.
01:33:59.000And I think that's what's missing, is that we're always trying to sort of put a cap on these black markets, whether it's the war on drugs, you know, or whatever it is, we're trying to get to the sort of a very short-minded solution to the problem, our short-term solution as well.
01:34:15.000But really, what's at the The crux of the problem, at the center of all of this, is the inequality that exists.
01:34:22.000And if we provide people jobs, whether it's the militants that are now with Boko Haram, if we had given them jobs, or the kids in the cocaine trail, all of these people, the vast majority of them, if you provide them a job in the legal world,
01:34:40.000Not the guys at the top because they're making a shit ton of money.
01:34:44.000But the guys at the top wouldn't be able to run their operations if they didn't have an army out there of people without opportunities.
01:34:52.000Well, what you do is so important because if people didn't have access to the kind of footage that you're able to provide by going there and doing boots on the ground journalism, people wouldn't have this understanding of the reality of the world.
01:36:22.000He just put out a book about his experiences, but having him on was like one of the heaviest podcasts we've ever done and him explaining that these companies are doing this and they're well aware and that this is Cobalt Red,
01:36:39.000how the blood of the Congo powers our lives.
01:36:44.000Having this conversation with him and realizing that every smartphone has this in it.
01:36:51.000And this is something that people are blissfully unaware of, the source of the material that is powering the most sophisticated electronics that we use to operate our lives.
01:37:04.000We are, but the owners of the companies are well aware, right?
01:37:09.000He was explaining how Apple and all these other companies, every smartphone has this.
01:37:17.000With the lithium-ion batteries, they have cobalt in them.
01:37:20.000Yeah, we've been looking into doing an episode on that.
01:37:22.000I've reported extensively on gold mining also in Colombia, for example, and how it was fueling.
01:37:27.000Back then it was a civil war and it was FARC who was making a lot of money out of first cocaine and then gold became very profitable, if not more profitable.
01:37:38.000And since then, it's now the Clan del Golfo, which is sort of the Colombian cartel that is the most powerful cartel in Colombia.
01:37:46.000And I've been to a lot of these illegal mines.
01:37:49.000And it's, again, so sad because it's the poorest of the poor people in horrific conditions also trying to get gold so that we can wear this.
01:37:57.000Yeah, that's crazy, but that's not necessary.
01:38:02.000What's really crazy, because gold is not really necessary.
01:38:06.000Well, it is actually, because isn't it used for like airplanes?
01:38:37.000Two mils consider better conductive electricity than gold, silver, and copper.
01:38:41.000Gold connectors are also used for transmitting digital data fast and accurately.
01:38:47.000It's just so crazy that the most sophisticated electronics, like our smartphones, The root of it is someone with a hammer in the Congo inhaling these horrible toxic chemicals.
01:39:03.000People who probably cannot afford to own the smartphones.
01:40:28.000The Ultimate Fighting Championship is the name of the organization, and that was started in 1993. And it was purchased in 2001 by the company that I work for.
01:40:41.000I actually started working for them in 1997. I started working for the UFC when it was very underground, and it was only on direct TV. It was actually banned from cable.
01:40:50.000But that was more of an economic thing.
01:40:53.000It was like, Boxing was trying to keep it out.
01:40:56.000And also, people had a distorted idea of what it was.
01:41:00.000Some people, like John McCain, referred to it as human cockfighting.
01:41:04.000But me, as a lifelong martial artist, it was what I'd always wanted to see.
01:41:10.000Stylistically, what is the best style of martial art?
01:41:24.000So it was called Ultimate Fighter, right?
01:41:27.000Yes, that's the reality show that was on Spike TV. Which was so smart because it got people like me that I've never even watched or been interested in boxing to become obsessed with MMA. So for a little time, I was really into MMA and I was really into all the...
01:41:41.000I can't remember one single fighter that I liked at the time, but I promise you I did.
01:43:12.000I didn't actually see people biting, but I did see a lot of blood, and there was no medics there, and there's no ambulances, and there's no medical whatever.
01:43:18.000And then there were two kids in particular that we filmed that had a lot of blood coming out.
01:43:26.000So that was Thailand, and we spent time there with BKFC there that is actually run by a guy called Nick Chapman.
01:43:33.000And he was two of the fighters that he had for his upcoming big event actually came from these groups from the illegal and the underground fighting.
01:43:43.000And it was a big draw because the underground fight that these two kids had fought had millions of viewers and people loved it.
01:43:51.000And so then he brought them to the limelight of the BKFC and he had them fight.
01:43:56.000And then we came to the US and trying to figure out, wait, is this really happening here?
01:44:01.000Because like you said, you see these videos on YouTube, but how big a thing is this?
01:44:05.000But the first place we went was in Detroit.
01:44:07.000And we went to this, in this case, it was actually an illegal boxing match.
01:44:12.000And it was a soup kitchen for the homeless during the day.
01:44:15.000And at night, it became a gambling and fight club league.
01:44:19.000And it was boxing again, lots of kids, lots of gambling.
01:44:22.000So in this case, it's sort of what is legal and illegal changes in state by state.
01:44:31.000Bare knuckle fighting is not legal in half, I think more than half of the U.S. And in Michigan, for example, Detroit, this was boxing, but you can't, if there's gambling involved, they don't have a license.
01:44:41.000So all of it was illegal and there was gambling involved.
01:44:44.000And you're supposed to have paramedics on site and an ambulance on site.
01:44:58.000And then we follow this one kid who's 18 years old, the youngest ever BKFC fighter.
01:45:03.000As he sort of starts going to tryouts and then has his spot and then we filmed his first fight on the BKFC and it was really fascinating.
01:45:13.000They're doing a lot of what they're doing is they're taking fighters that are sort of...
01:45:18.000They fought for big organizations like the UFC and didn't do that well.
01:45:25.000Or they did well and maybe their time is up and then they offer them a lot of money to fight bare knuckle fights.
01:45:32.000Apparently they're offering them a lot of money.
01:45:35.000And we interviewed David Feldman, who is the head of the PKFC. And I asked him, so are you recruiting, because I know he's recruiting a lot from former UFC fighters,
01:45:50.000but I asked him if he was also recruiting from sort of these illegal...
01:45:53.000And he said, not so much, but this case, this kid, this 18-year-old was found out because he was fighting in one of these backyard fights.
01:46:01.000And somebody saw him, a promoter saw him, really liked him, and then gave him this opportunity.
01:46:05.000The bare knuckle thing is interesting because I was an advocate for removing gloves in MMA because I think that it gives you a false sense of safety and it also protects one part of your body because That is not the best weapon.
01:46:24.000The only reason why your hands are good weapons as a fist, really, is because your hand's protected by wraps and gloves.
01:46:41.000And to punch someone with your hand, breaks are very, very common in MMA. And I would imagine even more so in bare knuckle.
01:46:52.000You're allowed to hit someone with a bare elbow.
01:46:55.000You're allowed to hit someone with a bare shin.
01:46:57.000You're allowed to hit someone with knees.
01:47:00.000It didn't make sense to me that you would protect the hands because you're getting it.
01:47:04.000So for me as a martial artist, what I wanted was I was like, well, let's be honest about what this is.
01:47:12.000You're trying to figure out what's the best way to fight.
01:47:17.000And wouldn't that be more honest if you didn't have protection on your hands?
01:47:21.000Because you wouldn't be able to use the hands the same way.
01:47:23.000In MMA, guys just swing wildly and hope they don't break their hands, and their hands are somewhat protected by the gloves and somewhat protected by the wraps, but even then we still get a lot of hand breaks.
01:47:34.000And I was thinking, it doesn't make sense that you're allowed to kick someone in the face with your shins or knee someone in the face or elbow them in the face, but you had your hands protected.
01:47:44.000So what he says, which is interesting, is that he kept referring to this study that has been done where they found out that actually there are more concussions in UFC or MMA than there is in bare knuckle fighting, but there are more lacerations that happen when it's a bare hands or bare knuckles.
01:48:02.000Yeah, that's what I would believe, too.
01:48:25.000But I would imagine if you were just boxing, you're going to get hit in the head more.
01:48:31.000Because there's not the option to take someone down.
01:48:34.000There's not the option to clinch and hold and press them up against the cage.
01:48:40.000What I've seen from Bare Knuckle is this destroying of people's faces, like the laceration.
01:48:47.000There's a fighter named Chris Lieben, and he was on The Ultimate Fighter season one, and he's kind of a legend in MMA, just a crazy, wild dude who's a brutal knockout puncher.
01:48:59.000And he fought in bare knuckle towards the end of his career.
01:49:02.000And he fought this guy, I think, Dakota Cochran, I think was his name.
01:49:07.000And he got one of the worst cuts I've ever seen in all my years of watching fighting.
01:49:28.000And, you know, this is a guy that fought, and that's Jason Knight, who also was a guy who fought in the UFC for a while and then left the UFC and wound up fighting bare knuckle.
01:49:41.000And, I mean, just crazy lacerations because your skin and your face tears very easily.
01:49:50.000So are you not a fan of BKFC? Have you watched any?
01:50:13.000There's skill involved in bare-knuckle boxing.
01:50:16.000I mean, it is a martial art, without a doubt.
01:50:20.000The damage that it does to your face is pretty, pretty real.
01:50:24.000And, you know, there's a woman named Paige Van Zandt, who's this beautiful girl who was a fighter for the UFC and has really become more wealthy from her OnlyFans and from her website and just from being hot.
01:50:40.000And she's fought a few times in bare knuckle boxing, too.
01:50:43.000And, you know, every time she fights, I'm like, you know, because I'm just worried about your face getting destroyed.
01:50:50.000Yeah, we saw there was definitely a lot of blood.
01:50:53.000But I think, yeah, I think it's the balance.
01:50:55.000What he kept telling us is the balance.
01:50:57.000Do you want more concussions or do you want more lacerations?
01:52:54.000And that's one of the things that when we were interviewing bull riders, for example, that they all told us.
01:52:58.000It's not as if we don't know this is a risk that this might happen to us, but this is still the profession we've chosen.
01:53:03.000Yeah, and I don't think you should protect people from their decisions.
01:53:09.000I think you should be allowed to, but you should be informed.
01:53:11.000Informed and there should be – I think there should be some sort of controls in terms of if a person has just had a concussion, there should be a time between when they're allowed to go back in the ring or go back on – if people are on top of a bull.
01:53:24.000And that's where sometimes in the name of profits and show business, that's where sometimes that lacks.
01:53:34.000Well, there's also the reality of training and that a lot of the brain damage that people get, they get from training.
01:54:35.000When the person goes back to St. Louis and they go back to their gym and they got knocked out a month ago, how are you going to stop them from sparring?
01:54:45.000I mean, when there's no one in the gym and they're just working out, how are you going to stop that?
01:54:50.000There was a story actually today about two women, two athletes.
01:54:53.000I think one was a cyclist and the other one was a snowboard or something to do with skiing and snow.
01:55:13.000It's really, and particularly in women, I think it's understudied, CT in women, because it apparently has even a bigger effect on women.
01:55:22.000It goes more undetected, or there's less studies done on how it affects the brain, and concussions have a completely different effect on women than they have on men, and that's what the article was talking about.
01:55:33.000Well, what Dr. Gordon describes is the damage to the pituitary gland.
01:55:36.000It's like the pituitary gland is particularly delicate.
01:55:39.000And when you get hit, it could be just one.
01:56:19.000His name was Tyler and he committed suicide and he was so young he was like 24 years old and he was very happy-go-lucky normal and then suddenly you know and he also I mean he had I think he actually did have a lot of concussions but it was everything happened so fast yeah it's horrible it's horrible and for many of these people they don't have another thing to do so this is their life and this is and they want to get back to doing it and they want to try and then it gets worse and You know and then when you're suffering from a concussion and you
01:56:49.000get repeated concussions and it's compounded Yeah, and a lot of these people, you know, for example, the bull riders and I think the MMA fighters, certainly in the bull riding community, once they start feeling like something isn't right, they don't really have,
01:57:05.000they don't feel like it's, they don't feel safe or they don't want to talk to other people about it because they think it's not manly to tell other people that they're feeling depressed and they can't figure out why or they're unhappy.
01:57:23.000Yeah, there's a lot of, there's unawareness, and then there's also the reality of what kind of person gravitates towards that thing in the first place.
01:57:31.000They also have this belief that they're different, and that they, especially if they're a fighter, like, I know what I am, and I'm better than this, and I'm better than everybody else, and I'm going to figure this out.
01:57:44.000And it's their identity and there's so many things wrapped up into it that makes them continue down that path.
01:57:52.000And a lot of them, their coaches don't help either.
01:57:55.000Their coaches, you know, I don't know if the coaches are unaware or if they're not sophisticated about it or they don't care, but they let these guys keep fighting when they 100% should retire.
01:58:08.000And, you know, it's very difficult for me to watch that.
01:58:12.000It's the number one thing that I'm most conflicted about, about commenting on MMA fights, is knowing that some people are gone.
01:58:50.000I had one very public thing that I did with a very good friend of mine.
01:58:58.000Who had been knocked out a bunch of times in the UFC. And I had to tell him on a podcast after he got knocked out, I'm like, you have to stop.
01:59:47.000I've seen people that never had a career in fighting, and they just got brain damage from sparring.
01:59:52.000You know, and I knew that I was on that road myself.
01:59:54.000Like, I remember one day when I was 21. Laying in bed after sparring and my head was throbbing and I was just lying on the pillow and my head was beat just bing, bing, bing.
02:00:09.000With every beat of my heart, my head was throbbing and I was like, what am I doing in my brain?
02:00:55.000And then other people, they're just one or two knockouts and they're never the same person again.
02:01:01.000You know, there was a guy named Meldrick Taylor who was an Olympic gold medalist, elite boxer, and he had one fight with Julio Cesar Chavez, and it was an absolutely brutal fight where he was knocked out with two seconds to go in the last round by Julio Cesar Chavez,
02:01:18.000who was one of the greatest of all time.
02:01:20.000But it was a fight that Meldrick Taylor was winning, and he got knocked out with two seconds to go.
02:01:25.000It was a famous thing because referee Richard Steele, he waved the fight off and everybody was so mad at him that he stopped the fight with two seconds to go but Meldrick was never the same again.
02:01:35.000He kept getting knocked out after that and now there's been interviews with him where you hear him talk now.
02:01:40.000He was planning a comeback years back and they interviewed him and it's the most depressing thing.
02:01:47.000See if you can find Meldrick Taylor being interviewed because in the beginning of his career You know, you would hear him talk, and he was talking about his training and his this and his that, and he was just a normal guy, nothing wrong.
02:02:01.000And then you see him, and he's in his 30s.
02:02:11.000It sounds like he just drank, you know, like five bottles of vodka, and, you know, and you picked him up off the couch and had him have to have a conversation.
02:03:39.000He retired, but another one is Terry Norris.
02:03:43.000I know there's ones with Terry Norris.
02:03:45.000Terry Norris is another, he actually knocked out Meldrick Taylor.
02:03:48.000He was one of the guys that knocked out Meldrick Taylor after the knockout loss to Julio Cesar Chavez.
02:03:53.000And Meldrick Taylor, there was actually a thing because his wife, he's teaching boxing now and his wife helps him and he's like really compromised.
02:04:03.000And Terry Norris in his prom, here, this is it, this is it.
02:04:08.000It's funny not to me because the media wrote bad things about me.
02:05:14.000The victory, and Meldrick was a champion.
02:05:17.000I mean, he was an elite, elite fighter.
02:05:19.000So he had trained so hard and dedicated so much.
02:05:23.000To be at that level that Meldrick Taylor was or that Terry Norris was, you have to dedicate everything you have to be that good because you're beating the best guys in the world.
02:05:34.000And that it's so much of your identity and you haven't done anything else.
02:07:29.000In fact, I don't think there's a lot of films out there that depict what we filmed.
02:07:34.000It was very, it was like in a garage transformed into, and it was a bunch of kids cheering these guys out.
02:07:41.000And one of them actually, the promoter, Nick Chapman, who runs BKFC in Thailand, had already picked two of these guys to go and fight with him.
02:07:52.000And then there was another one this day that he discovered and went up to him and asked for his phone number and said, hey, we want you to come and try out with us.
02:07:59.000How much money are they paying these people?
02:08:03.000The bare knuckle fighting thing, I know they're incentivizing these MMA fighters to stop fighting MMA. And guys who are like elite fighters like Hector Lombard and Diego Sanchez, who was on season one of The Ultimate Fighter, he's now fighting for them.
02:08:18.000And there's a guy named Mike Perry, who's a really good fighter, who's one of their, I think he's a champion over there now.
02:08:24.000And apparently they have a lot of viewers, a lot of people, a lot of fans, a lot of people tune in to their events.
02:08:42.000It's very difficult to put together a successful mixed martial arts promotion.
02:08:48.000It's very difficult to get elite talent.
02:08:50.000It's very difficult to lure people away from the UFC. There's like these UFC and Bellator in the United States and there's a lesser known organization called the PFL that pays a lot of money.
02:09:04.000And they pay a lot of money to try to incentivize people that are thinking about re-signing with the UFC to go over to there.
02:09:10.000And they were on NBC for a while, at least NBC Sports.
02:09:15.000And then there's One FC, which is an enormous company that's in Asia that gets a lot of elite talent to go over there.
02:09:22.000And again, it's like they incentivize people with money, but you have to have very, very, very deep pockets to be able to get these people.
02:09:30.000And then to put together a promotion that people are willing to pay for is even harder.
02:09:36.000Like Bellator, which is the number two organization in the United States, I think they've only done one pay-per-view event.
02:09:43.000I think most of what they do is on Showtime or now the last one they had was on CBS. But because it's costly?
02:10:06.000Right, if you're getting those kind of fighters.
02:10:08.000But if you're getting fighters like from the street fights of Thailand, you're not paying them.
02:10:11.000You're paying them a few thousand dollars.
02:10:13.000And I think there is an inbuilt – that's what we saw is that there's an inbuilt – they already have inbuilt followers because people are fascinated.
02:10:22.000This had millions of views, this fight between these two kids, these street fighters.
02:10:27.000And so that's what he used, the already following that these guys had to promote this big event.
02:12:22.000One of my biggest questions was about the incentive, right?
02:12:25.000Basically, if you're getting these kids and offering them money once you see them play or fight in the underground, you're basically incentivizing these fight clubs to exist.
02:12:37.000But I think that can be applied to many other forms of fighting.
02:12:41.000What I did see was that these kids were given an opportunity to be completely fair.
02:12:45.000They were given an opportunity that they would never be given.
02:13:49.000I mean, there's a few fighters like Kimbo Slice, but Kimbo Slice...
02:13:54.000He actually became very famous like the first guy to become famous from these backyard fights and became hugely famous and then eventually went on the Ultimate Fighter and lost in the Ultimate Fighter to Roy Big Country Nelson who was a skilled grappler who took him down and beat him up on the ground.
02:14:12.000And it showed that someone who is a bare-knuckle fighter really has...
02:14:18.000They're missing some skills that would allow...
02:14:21.000Because people are like, Kimbo Slice can beat anybody.
02:14:22.000But then you see, no, this big fat guy takes him down and beats the shit out of him.
02:14:26.000And you're like, oh, there's levels to this.
02:14:28.000And then Kimbo, with his incredible courage, decided to continue to learn and grow and try to fight in the UFC. And he had a bunch of fights.
02:14:36.000And he fought for a company called Elite XC. Which was a CBS startup where they're trying to do the same thing and recreate what the UFC had done.
02:14:50.000But other than that, most of the people come from amateur organizations.
02:14:55.000And they come from small shows like the LFA and like lower tiered mixed martial arts organizations that are...
02:15:03.000The level of talent is extremely high now.
02:15:06.000So because of the incentive to get into the UFC or Bellator or any of these big organizations where you can make a lot of money, you're getting very skilled amateur wrestlers, very skilled kickboxers.
02:15:17.000They're not all pulling from these backyard fights.
02:15:22.000But if you don't have an opportunity to fight on an amateur level, and if all you can do is fight in the backyard and there's somebody filming, and there is an example of a Kimbo Slice out there, I can guarantee that there are hundreds of kids out there willing to take those risks because they think they might be able to be the next Kimbo Slice.
02:16:11.000And you're seeing guys who compete in the UFC for the very first time that are world-class talents because they fought in these other organizations and successfully built up their skills until they're ready for the UFC. Right.
02:16:24.000But I think BKFC would probably say the same thing, that the vast majority of their fighters are also skilled and they come from other leagues and other places.
02:16:31.000But some of them also come from the underground.
02:16:33.000I think BKFC is probably the best example of that sort of underground thing.
02:16:39.000As far as I know, I think they take care of things medically and they have EMTs on staff.
02:16:50.000It's different than the underground backyard things.
02:16:53.000Just BFC, BKFC is illegal in a lot of states, but it's legal in like Wyoming and that's where they were having a lot of their fights and some other states that are like, fuck it.
02:17:17.000I have to say, we went to the event both here and in Thailand, and it's really, as a huge fan of MMA myself, no, it is really, really, I mean, it was really entertaining.
02:17:39.000But I think for the casual observer, it can give the sport a bad name because people think of it as just being this awful fight club type thing and this is what it's all about.
02:17:53.000It appeals to the worst aspects of human nature.
02:17:56.000Yeah, and particularly if people are making money out of other people's risking without any medical support, again, that idea is bad.
02:18:03.000And if there's gambling involved and these kids are not being paid or they're only paid if they win, but again, no medical support, that's all questionable.
02:18:13.000Well, the UFC actually recently outlawed gambling in terms of all of its fighters.
02:18:17.000Like, no one's allowed to gamble anymore because there was a scandal.
02:18:22.000One of the fighters apparently was injured and it was revealed on an online forum in some way.
02:18:30.000I don't know the full details because there's currently an investigation.
02:18:35.000So the coach was suspended, the fighter who was in question was suspended, and everyone from that gym or that coach trained is no longer allowed to compete in the UFC. So everyone from that gym had to leave that gym and go to other gyms.
02:18:50.000So these are professionals that relied on that gym for all of their training and they planned their career.
02:19:01.000And then this fighter or this trainer rather is in deep shit.
02:19:05.000Like there's a real serious investigation as to whether or not They told people that this guy was injured and he was going to take a dive or that he was no way he was going to be able to win the fight.
02:19:16.000And then a bunch of people bet on his opponent.
02:19:19.000And there was so late money, informed money.
02:20:10.000So this guy went in and essentially he had no chance.
02:20:13.000And all this informed money on the fact that this guy shouldn't have been fighting in the first place, bet against him, bet on the opponent, and made a lot of money.
02:20:22.000The bookmakers found out about this, the oddsmakers found out about this, and it's akin to cheating because they knew that this guy was not going to be able to really fight.
02:20:30.000What would have been even smarter because then the odds would have been more in favor of him as if he had told a large group of people that he was injured and in fact he wasn't injured and he went there and won and then everybody was betting against the opponent and there were less people betting for him so they would win more money.
02:20:45.000That's what I thought you were saying.
02:20:46.000No, you could do that but then you would have to actually win.
02:21:13.000So if a guy's injured and you know he's going to lose, then people pushed all the...
02:21:18.000There was too much money that was being bet, and that's what triggered the investigation.
02:21:21.000And then people found out that they had discussed the fact this guy was allegedly discussed the fact this guy was unable to really compete.
02:21:31.000So now, no one's allowed to bet in the UFC. You can't even bet on yourself, which I think is kind of fucked.
02:21:38.000Because like if a fighter is going to win, like let's say if your win bonus, your show money and win money is like $100,000 to show and $100,000 to win, which is often the case.
02:21:51.000A fighter could say, I'm going to bet $100,000 on myself because I'm going to fuck this guy up.
02:23:53.000We calculated it up over multiple cards.
02:23:56.000But a lot of it was because you were getting these guys like Anderson Silva, who's this elite fighter who came over from fighting in Japan and then fighting in England.
02:25:04.000A lot of people couldn't go to casinos, so they started either online gambling or going to underground poker games and underground casitas, which are all over the U.S. We visited a few, but they have these machines called the fish game, where they spend hours and hours.
02:25:19.000This is sort of the cheaper gambling, but they...
02:25:22.000They put in $10 and $20 and they spend hours and hours.
02:25:25.000But all of this is illegal and there's drugs.
02:25:41.000We interviewed one of the guys that runs one of these casitas.
02:25:43.000And I got tipped into this because I was working with the LA Sheriff's Department on another story, and they told me, have you done anything on these casitas, these illegal gambling operations?
02:25:51.000Because a lot of, like, there's cartel involvement in it, there's Asian gangs involved.
02:25:57.000And so we started looking into it, and eventually, after many months, we got access to one of them.
02:26:02.000And the guy was saying how whenever people actually start winning from these machines, he goes and disconnects the machine and then connects it again.
02:26:08.000He basically rigs it in his favor, which is very much how casinos work in general, right?
02:26:43.000He's really well known for poker and he's got celebrities and rappers who go up to him and tell him, can you play my money or can you help me play?
02:26:56.000And so we basically filmed this and we filmed with him and he took us to a few places and it was really fascinating to see the illegal underground poker games through his eyes.
02:27:17.000Yeah, it's basically people who don't have a license.
02:27:19.000So whenever there's a person taking a fraction of what is being made that day, and you don't have a casino license, you can have a poker game at your house.
02:27:30.000But if the person that is running that game is making money, and you don't have a casino license for gambling or a casino license, that is immediately illegal.
02:28:18.000They put in money or they have these chips that they buy.
02:28:21.000The one we visited, we arrived and the guy told us, welcome to Vegas.
02:28:25.000And then there's a bunch of guys around these tables playing.
02:28:28.000And we went on a raid with the sheriff's department, the LA Sheriff's Department, where they basically raided a few of these casitas and got a bunch of these casitas.
02:28:36.000But then on the flip side, a few weeks later, we actually got in with the owner of one of these casitas who showed us how they do it.
02:28:43.000And he doesn't do it, but a lot of the people that run these games also sell meth for really cheap because meth makes you play for longer.
02:29:39.000That's what I love about my job is you find out about these worlds that sometimes are happening just 10 minutes from your house.
02:29:45.000Thriving games and trades and black markets and you know nothing about them and they're happening every single day dressed in your own backyard and you have no idea.
02:29:56.000So the privilege of being able to gain access to these worlds.
02:30:03.000It makes sense that it would explode during the pandemic when they shut the casinos down.
02:30:08.000In general, I would say that all black markets exploded during the pandemic.
02:30:11.000Guns, drugs, sex trafficking, but gambling, yeah, as well.
02:30:16.000And one of the things I think that the poker games in particular, what they're giving people is they hire like Michelin level chefs to cook for...
02:30:25.000The guests, they have girls that stand behind scantily dressed women that massage you and then can go into a private room with you if you want to.
02:30:36.000In some places, not all, but some of them.
02:30:38.000And so you're given the VIP treatment that some people are given in Vegas, or at least used to be given in Vegas.
02:30:54.000And you have everything at your disposal and it's, you know, once or twice a week you're hanging out with your friends and you're eating amazing food and you have these beautiful women and you're, you know, spending millions of dollars.
02:32:47.000And we saw her get this gift card, get somebody, you know, John Smith from somewhere, from Colorado, his information on his credit card stolen, information on this gift card, and the next day we saw her trying it out first in one of those snack machines.
02:33:12.000And then we escalated from there and spent time with the Crips, with a member of the Crips who used to deal with drugs and now exclusively does ID theft online.
02:33:25.000Using the money that was given out by the government during COVID. And particularly in Illinois, it was really easy to give out a name and an address, and they would send you unemployment funds.
02:33:36.000So these kids, I kid you not, they made millions and millions of dollars.
02:33:40.000This one kid made over a million dollars, and he showed me his online bank statements, and I could see it.
02:33:50.000And we saw him actually going online and with this fake information and ID, he was able to purchase $25,000 worth of music equipment that he wanted shipped to a place.
02:34:04.000So there was a lot of disposable money, is what I'm saying, during the pandemic that went into purchasing things on the black market as well.
02:34:12.000What happens to these gambling places now that the casinos are open again?
02:34:20.000One of the things we heard is that people prefer not to—I kept on asking, like, why don't you just go to Vegas, particularly if you're in L.A.? You're very close.
02:35:32.000And that's another thing that we saw was people showing us, yeah, just how easy it is to gamble online.
02:35:39.000You get these WhatsApp groups that give you a link, and then you get into this thing.
02:35:44.000It looks so legitimate that it's all illegal.
02:35:47.000It used to be that online gambling was illegal.
02:35:51.000They made it illegal to help the casinos, because I think the casinos lobbied to stop online gambling.
02:35:57.000Because there was an organization that was, I think it's called the International Pool Tour, and their business model was based on they were going to have these big matches between elite pool players and people could gamble online.
02:36:11.000And right when they were launching, they made online gambling illegal.
02:36:16.000And it destroyed the organization, they wind up owing a bunch of people money, and then the guy who was the head of this whole thing was Kevin Trudeau.
02:36:25.000I don't know if you remember who Kevin Trudeau was, but he was a guy who would, he was arrested and went to jail for scams.
02:36:33.000And the scams were, he would put out books like, weight loss secrets they don't want you to know.
02:36:39.000And he had infomercials that I guess they decided were deceptive, allegedly.
02:37:11.000You know, like his whole thing was just like preying on people that wanted to, oh, there's a weight loss cure that they don't want you to know about.
02:37:19.00037 million dollar fine you got for that.
02:37:21.000The government refunded many of the purchases of the book, but Trudeau said he was broke and did not explain where the money had gone.
02:37:27.000The government Said he still needed to refund millions of dollars more.
02:37:31.000Before halting the case years ago, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said Trudeau would have to explain where the money was.
02:37:37.000The judge added then, that will be interesting.
02:37:40.000I'm not sure I'll be sitting here, but I hope to be.
02:38:52.000But this was early 2000s, I want to say, that this was happening.
02:38:58.000So at this time, gambling was illegal.
02:39:01.000And there was actually a company called Bodog.
02:39:04.000That was an online gambling site and the guy who is the head of Bowdog was a guy named Calvin Ayers and he was like this famous playboy, super rich guy who put together a Bowdog fight and it was the same sort of premise.
02:39:19.000They were going to have fights and then people were going to be able to gamble on it with his Bowdog website which became illegal so then he had to flee the country.
02:39:28.000So I believed at one point in time at least if he came back to America he would have been arrested.
02:39:33.000But he got in a feud with the UFC because, like, his organization was spending similar to, like, you know what I was talking about.
02:39:42.000It's, like, very difficult to create a new online league.
02:39:48.000Got really big-name fighters like Fedor Emelianenko and, you know...
02:39:53.000Like these big guys and got them to fight and one of the events he put and his thing would be like all scantily clad women and you know and one of them they did I think they did it in Costa Rica They did it on the beach.
02:40:07.000So they had see if you find bow dog fight on the beach So they put together these MMA fights Like in these exotic locations where they had these elite fighters fight and they fought like on the beach in the sun.
02:40:20.000And they had the ring set up and people were around it.
02:40:25.000But again, his thing, I believe, was gambling.
02:40:29.000Now I think he's involved in some other stuff like cryptocurrencies and stuff, but he's overseas.
02:40:52.000They brought in like Chael Sonnen fought for them.
02:40:56.000Again, Fedor, Matt Lindland, a lot of like elite, elite fighters, top of the food chain fighters, went over there with the promise of that big cash.
02:41:04.000But you were saying how it was not legal nowadays, online gambling and sports gambling too.
02:41:08.000I think a lot of it opened up during the pandemic.
02:41:10.000I think they opened up a lot of online gambling.
02:43:38.000But you're smelling, you're sniffing it.
02:43:42.000It's a thing where these people that just are in the casinos every day and the people that live in Vegas and are constantly gambling.
02:43:51.000But again, I feel like it should be legal and I definitely think that someone should be able to go to a casino and bet money and have a good time and lose money or win money and it should be fine.
02:44:03.000For some people, the allure of it is no different than a place that sells heroin.
02:44:09.000Yeah, and actually, not making it, yeah.
02:44:12.000I mean, there's always the thing that we all know, which is by illegalizing it, you're actually creating a black market because it's not going to disappear.
02:44:18.000It's going to still be there, but it's going to be there with no rules and regulations.
02:44:21.000Right, and then you don't get Cirque du Soleil, you don't get a buffet.
02:46:37.000It was, yeah, I think it all starts, we all think it's a rumor, and it can't really exist, and it's a Hollywood depiction of stuff going on.
02:48:52.000But it was horrible because, again, with trying to always empathize and understand why people do what they do, this one was impossible.
02:49:00.000There was no part of me that I understood what he did.
02:49:03.000And that's why it was so much disbelief.
02:49:05.000But then we find out that this trade is very much alive.
02:49:10.000We eventually landed an interview with a doctor in Mexico who told us how he's part of the whole ordeal.
02:49:15.000And he is actually, in his case, we were able to corroborate a lot more.
02:49:18.000And he was a doctor with medical expertise.
02:49:20.000And then with a patient who had gotten one of these organs on the black market.
02:49:28.000And he looked me in the eye and he said...
02:49:33.000I know you're judging me, but what would you do if it was you or your loved one and you know that they would be dying?
02:49:40.000Essentially in the U.S. there's 17 people every day that die waiting for an organ.
02:49:44.00017 people every single day that wait, wait, wait, wait for years.
02:49:48.000Their organ never happens, never comes, and then they die.
02:49:51.000So that's why a black market exists because there are desperate people out there who desperately need an organ and know that they're going to die if they don't have one.
02:50:29.000It's the most dangerous, lawless part of the world, one of...
02:50:34.000It's the only part, there's basically a road that connects all the way South America up to Canada.
02:50:41.000And there's one patch where the engineers will never be able to construct a road, which is this Darien Gap.
02:50:47.000It's a massive jungle with horrible conditions, very wet, and right now full of cartel members that are preying upon the migrants that are crossing, that spend days, sometimes even weeks trying to cross for, you know, it's up hills and muddy and people die of dehydration.
02:51:09.000So we spent time filming right on the South as they were about, all these hundreds of migrants were about to make their way into the Darien Gap to try to make it to the United States.
02:51:20.000And it was really horrible stories, as you can imagine, right?
02:51:22.000People traveling with their babies, with their kids, and they're about to go through the most horrific experience of their life and dangerous.
02:51:30.000And, you know, families get separated, kids lose their parents.
02:51:44.000And then we were able to interview a policeman who actually corroborated.
02:51:48.000What we were saying, he didn't want to be on camera because it was too scary for him because he was afraid the cartel was going to go after him.
02:51:54.000But he told us essentially with a mask, he told us, yeah, I know that this trade is happening right here and that the migrants are the victims.
02:52:06.000So they find these people, they find their blood type, and then they alert?
02:52:23.000Colombia or Panama or other countries around there, Mexico, and some of them, particularly the stuff that is being harvested in Mexico, either American patients go down there and get their operations done there.
02:52:36.000It's not like the organ travels to the United States.
02:52:38.000The patients go to these places to get there.
02:52:41.000And one of the guys we filmed with was this amazing guy called Garrett Rowe who has a kidney disease and for five years has been waiting for an organ.
02:52:51.000He's young, 30-something-year-old, married, amazing guy, and has to spend half of his day linked up to a dialysis machine and can't work, can't sleep well.
02:53:17.000And then the good news of the story is that he just got a kidney.
02:53:21.000Through a triangle where his wife wasn't able to donate to him, because they're not the same type, but she was able to donate to somebody else who eventually donated to him.
02:53:30.000It was like a charity, I can't remember what it's called, but a charity donor triangle or something like that, donor circle.
02:53:38.000And he was able to get a kidney, but he was one of the people we asked, like, would you consider the black market?
02:53:43.000And he says, if a few more years pass by, if I'm at the edge and I know I'm about to die, 100%.
02:53:50.000But of course, there are people willing to donate or to sell their organs.
02:54:26.000But I think that ultimately, I want people to tune in.
02:54:30.000At the end of the day, anyone who watches Traffic doesn't come out of Traffic saying, oh my god, that was most horrific, depressing, because people keep on watching.
02:54:38.000Because there's also always, or a lot of times, there is, I'm trying to find the humanity.
02:54:43.000Of course, in the record, it's impossible to find their humanity.
02:54:45.000But again, at the end of the day, I think the message is that in all, the majority of the people that I meet, there is a humanity that can be found.
02:55:15.000And the show is completely the opposite.
02:55:17.000We are trying to understand even the people that are the most stereotyped.
02:55:22.000People in our society, the criminals, the outlaws.
02:55:24.000We're at least trying to understand because without understanding them, understanding is not condoning, but without understanding them, we will never understand their motivations.
02:55:32.000And without knowing their motivations, we'll never prevent these black markets from existing.
02:55:36.000I think what you're providing is a window into a world that most people don't experience.
02:55:43.000And by looking at it from that perspective, you do get a chance to recognize that if you were in that situation, what would you do?