The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1706 - Billy Corben

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan experience.

00:00:06.000 Showing my day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

00:00:14.000 Always good to see you, my friend.

00:00:15.000 I'm just here so you can give COVID back to Florida.

00:00:17.000 Ha! 0.89

00:00:19.000 What if it works like that?

00:00:21.000 Florida gave it to me.

00:00:22.000 I've got something for it.

00:00:23.000 I'll have to figure out how to pay Florida back.

00:00:25.000 Don't say Florida never gave you anything.

00:00:27.000 Listen, man, I had a good time down there.

00:00:29.000 It was a rough few days, but I had a good time.

00:00:34.000 I feel like everybody has the same Florida story and it's just that.

00:00:37.000 Well, Florida is just Florida.

00:00:39.000 You know, I mean, one of the things that Florida has gotten a lot of positive reviews since the pandemic.

00:00:46.000 You know, Florida came up during the pandemic.

00:00:50.000 Right?

00:00:50.000 I mean, a lot of people were negative on it.

00:00:52.000 They thought that the restrictions were terrible and, you know, he needs to do more and DeSantis is killing people.

00:00:57.000 But a lot of people are like, you know what?

00:00:59.000 At least I can go to restaurants.

00:01:01.000 Florida lets you go out.

00:01:02.000 Florida doesn't want to have you have mandates and the tax situation. 0.99

00:01:08.000 Florida came up.

00:01:08.000 You got to admit, Florida became a more attractive place during the pandemic.

00:01:13.000 August was the deadliest month in Florida in the history of the pandemic.

00:01:19.000 This past August?

00:01:20.000 Yeah.

00:01:20.000 One in five COVID deaths in the United States occurred in Florida.

00:01:24.000 Now it's almost as many as one in four COVID deaths in the United States are occurring in Florida.

00:01:29.000 We've had 13 Miami-Dade County Public Schools employees die of COVID. That includes teachers, bus drivers, people die of COVID since mid-August.

00:01:38.000 Jesus.

00:01:39.000 Last month we had...

00:01:41.000 I think no less than 20 police officers in the state of Florida die.

00:01:44.000 We had a 10-day period in which we had a police officer a day dying of COVID. If you go to the Officer Down Memorial page, the executive director there, a sergeant from Fairfax, Virginia, says that by the end of the pandemic,

00:02:04.000 It will overtake the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 as the single deadliest incident in the history of United States law enforcement. 0.93

00:02:13.000 I mean, if I told you that there's a killer out there in Florida killing a cop a day, there'd be fucking martial law. 0.83

00:02:19.000 There'd be tanks in the streets. 0.98

00:02:20.000 There'd be guys in tactical gear and assault rifles, rightfully so.

00:02:24.000 And there is.

00:02:25.000 And it's COVID-19.

00:02:26.000 And these people are interacting with the public, of course, to boot.

00:02:29.000 And it's a tragedy.

00:02:31.000 It's insane.

00:02:31.000 Human tragedy.

00:02:32.000 What is the difference between the way Florida is treating it and the way other states are treating it?

00:02:37.000 So Florida is having these, like so many cops in particular, dying in Florida.

00:02:42.000 Is that the case everywhere?

00:02:44.000 Is that the case with all first responders?

00:02:46.000 That they're all at risk?

00:02:47.000 Or is it just, is Florida uniquely dangerous?

00:02:51.000 The short answer is yes. 0.99

00:02:54.000 And by the way, what the fuck is happening in Florida is an evergreen question. 0.99

00:02:58.000 Right. 0.99

00:02:58.000 That is the question. 0.99

00:02:59.000 Yeah, but the answer, you know, the COVID-19 for the last two years is the Single largest cause of death for law enforcement officers, more so than all other causes combined.

00:03:13.000 That's crazy when you think about the amount of violence and the amount of crime that takes place.

00:03:18.000 Yeah.

00:03:19.000 COVID-19.

00:03:20.000 Number one cop killer for two years running and counting.

00:03:24.000 And this is just everywhere or just in Florida?

00:03:27.000 That's true nationally.

00:03:28.000 But Florida is uniquely because we're open for business.

00:03:32.000 That kind of pro-business, pro-freedom attitude.

00:03:37.000 You know, listen, Florida has no indigenous industry.

00:03:40.000 Okay?

00:03:41.000 We don't produce anything but oranges and machine guns.

00:03:45.000 That's what Florida makes.

00:03:46.000 We sell the sunshine.

00:03:48.000 Do you guys make machine guns?

00:03:49.000 Yeah, we have gun manufacturers in Florida.

00:03:51.000 We sell the sunshine, okay?

00:03:54.000 And that just means we have to, what we sell, we're all just tourism people, right? 0.99

00:03:59.000 We knock down the old shit, we build new shit, we build it taller, we build it bigger, so we can attract a thousand newcomers tomorrow. 0.99

00:04:07.000 It's a Ponzi scheme. 1.00

00:04:08.000 The economy is a Ponzi scheme.

00:04:10.000 It's not self-sufficient.

00:04:12.000 It relies solely on new outside things.

00:04:15.000 Money and investors coming in the next day.

00:04:17.000 So we subsist from hustle to hustle.

00:04:19.000 So our pandemic hustle was Come here.

00:04:22.000 Everybody else is on lockdown.

00:04:23.000 Come to Florida.

00:04:25.000 And a lot of people did, and a lot of people died as a consequence of that.

00:04:29.000 So some businesses did better, and people died.

00:04:34.000 I mean, that's the reality.

00:04:35.000 I was looking at something today that was showing the deaths in Florida per capita versus the deaths in California per capita when it was age-adjusted.

00:04:44.000 And Florida had less deaths.

00:04:47.000 When it was age-adjusted, when they looked at it in comparative to how old people die normally anyway.

00:04:54.000 And Florida has a much older population.

00:04:56.000 We do.

00:04:56.000 It was showing that, per capita, more people are dying in a very locked-down state like California.

00:05:03.000 Well, I think that, I don't know that that's entire, age-adjusted it may be.

00:05:07.000 Yeah, it's age-adjusted.

00:05:08.000 But there's a 27-year-old police officer, a mother of a two-year-old, five-month-old. 0.59

00:05:14.000 She died from COVID. Died from COVID. Are they getting bad treatment?

00:05:18.000 I think it's several things.

00:05:21.000 Listen, treatment is no substitute for the vaccine.

00:05:26.000 It's just not.

00:05:28.000 The vaccine is helping people.

00:05:32.000 It is helping people.

00:05:33.000 It's less likely they'll get infected.

00:05:35.000 It's more likely they will survive.

00:05:38.000 That just bears out.

00:05:39.000 I think it's the vaccine hesitation is what I think it is.

00:05:43.000 I think that that's the major cause.

00:05:44.000 And it's particularly problematic when you have public-facing people like law enforcement officers who are interacting.

00:05:50.000 They can come to your window to write a Write a traffic ticket, and that could be a death sentence.

00:05:55.000 It's very unusual for a 27-year-old person with good health care, someone who's been taken care of, to die from COVID. It's very, very statistically unusual.

00:06:07.000 And that is anecdotal.

00:06:08.000 That's one example.

00:06:08.000 So I'm not saying that that is the rule in Florida.

00:06:11.000 Did she have pre-existing medical conditions and comorbidities?

00:06:14.000 I have no idea, but let's be honest.

00:06:17.000 Americans, by and large, are not in as good a shape as you're in. 0.98

00:06:22.000 We're walking, talking comorbidities.

00:06:25.000 That's just the reality.

00:06:27.000 But the truth is that there is a safe and effective and, in fact, free...

00:06:35.000 That's the thing, too, is the treatment is not a pre-infection prophylaxis.

00:06:41.000 It's something you do later.

00:06:44.000 It's not something you do to avoid getting the virus.

00:06:49.000 And here's the thing.

00:06:49.000 Once you have the virus, for some people, that's a death sentence.

00:06:52.000 It doesn't matter how you treat it.

00:06:55.000 Wait a minute.

00:06:56.000 I don't know if that's true.

00:06:57.000 I don't know if that's true because we don't know what they're doing.

00:07:00.000 When you say it doesn't matter how you treat them, if they treat them with monoclonal antibodies in particular early on in their infection...

00:07:06.000 Which are available in Florida.

00:07:07.000 Yeah, they're available everywhere.

00:07:09.000 It's shown to have an incredible rate.

00:07:11.000 There's a recent study, Fauci actually talked about it.

00:07:13.000 85% keeps people from being hospitalized.

00:07:18.000 Absolutely.

00:07:19.000 And I don't begrudge anyone a cocktail or a kitchen sink approach once you get infected.

00:07:25.000 You should try everything that you and your doctor...

00:07:27.000 Right, but you were saying for some people, if they get infected, there's nothing they can do.

00:07:31.000 And I'm saying, I don't know if that's the case.

00:07:33.000 I don't know if they're doing that.

00:07:35.000 I think some people don't know what to do.

00:07:37.000 And they're basically sent home and told to take Tylenol.

00:07:40.000 If they have poor health care, they're getting bad advice and they're getting bad health care once they're infected.

00:07:46.000 I think there's a lot of people who don't have access to quality healthcare.

00:07:49.000 There's a lot of people who don't have access to healthcare, period.

00:07:51.000 If you're a cop, that should be paramount.

00:07:55.000 If you are interacting with the general public the way police officers are during a pandemic, they should have access to the best healthcare possible, especially if they're infected.

00:08:05.000 I mean, if you're gonna ask these people to protect you, you should absolutely protect them.

00:08:12.000 Absolutely.

00:08:13.000 Like I said, it's a human tragedy, you know, what's happening.

00:08:18.000 But I think that it starts with...

00:08:20.000 Listen, I'm a...

00:08:21.000 I'm a documentarian, so I'm a natural-born skeptic.

00:08:24.000 But I'm also pro-fact.

00:08:27.000 Because what we do as cultural anthropologists, which is effectively what documentarians are, is we apply the scientific method, right?

00:08:34.000 We make observations, we ask questions, we develop hypotheses, we collect data, we experiment, we analyze that data, and we draw conclusions.

00:08:41.000 With the best information we have at the time.

00:08:44.000 I don't know how all of these police officers were...

00:08:48.000 We're treated.

00:08:48.000 I know they died and I know that many of them were not were not in fact statistically most of them were not vaccinated.

00:08:56.000 I don't have access to their you know to their private health information.

00:08:59.000 I just know that the the treatment is not a replacement for your ability to prophylactically prevent Whether it's a placement or not, we know for sure that being vaccinated can protect you.

00:09:15.000 And it can protect you from hospitalization.

00:09:18.000 It can protect you from, you know, the odds of you dying once vaccinated are much lower.

00:09:25.000 We know all that.

00:09:26.000 That's a fact.

00:09:26.000 But we also know there are a lot of treatments available that are not being utilized for people once they get infected.

00:09:32.000 For whatever reason they have their vaccine hesitation, for whatever reason they don't want to do it, there's a lot of treatment that's available that's not discussed.

00:09:42.000 And I think monoclonal antibodies are among the best.

00:09:44.000 I just did it.

00:09:45.000 I just got through it.

00:09:46.000 When I got through it that quickly, I was like, oh, well this can clearly be done.

00:09:51.000 I mean, I'm not...

00:09:52.000 I'm 54. You know, I'm not a spring chicken.

00:09:55.000 And when I beat it that quick, I was like, okay, well this is...

00:09:59.000 I'm not that unusual.

00:10:00.000 I mean, I work out a lot.

00:10:02.000 I eat really well, and I'm healthy.

00:10:03.000 That helps tremendously, obviously, to have a resilient body.

00:10:07.000 But also, there's treatments available that aren't being utilized or people aren't aware of or they're not getting access to.

00:10:14.000 Some of those things treat symptoms, and some of those things are effective against the virus.

00:10:19.000 That's the other thing as well.

00:10:23.000 Monoclonal antibodies have emergency use authorization by the FDA. I think that's because they are probably the most effective thing that's available right now.

00:10:33.000 And again, I'm a natural-born skeptic, so I look at everything sideways.

00:10:37.000 I've been testing negative for, what, a year and a half, and I have to think, you know, in Florida, that I came into contact with it or I was sick and didn't know it, I was asymptomatic.

00:10:47.000 So I'm skeptical of these, although in Florida we literally have tents at the side of the road.

00:10:54.000 COVID testing.

00:10:55.000 Really?

00:10:56.000 Maybe not necessarily the most reliable.

00:10:59.000 This is so interesting to me.

00:11:01.000 There's so many places for testing, but so few places for treatment.

00:11:05.000 Wouldn't you think that they would set up places that could provide monoclonal antibodies and make them publicly available, like really obvious?

00:11:12.000 We have them.

00:11:13.000 Do you make them real obvious?

00:11:14.000 The governor has been on a promotional tour because one of his biggest donors, of course, is the guy who runs the company.

00:11:21.000 They do that in Texas. 0.98

00:11:22.000 Yeah.

00:11:23.000 And it's great.

00:11:24.000 And I just wish more people were aware of it.

00:11:26.000 I wish more people...

00:11:27.000 Listen, right now, it is a pandemic, I believe, of the unvaccinated, which means that it's a pandemic of the uninformed and misinformed.

00:11:34.000 And I think that, again, I think that people also don't necessarily have access to the same information that you and I have.

00:11:43.000 For example, you and I know that Invermectin is...

00:11:47.000 There are doses for humans.

00:11:48.000 It's not...

00:11:50.000 Just a horse paste.

00:11:51.000 But that's willful misinformation that they're distributing.

00:11:54.000 They're doing that for some strange reason and I don't know exactly why.

00:11:58.000 But I don't know that it is.

00:11:59.000 I think what happens is that people don't necessarily know that.

00:12:03.000 So they're going down to their local racetrack or feed store.

00:12:05.000 CNN knows that.

00:12:06.000 They know that the man who created it won the Nobel Prize for its use in humans in 2015. They know that it's used for yellow fever and dengue fever and has antiviral properties.

00:12:16.000 They know that.

00:12:17.000 They know that it's used for river blindness.

00:12:18.000 They know that it's been used for over 40 years.

00:12:20.000 They know that.

00:12:21.000 So when they say horse paste and a horse dewormer, they're not saying it because they want people to not take horse dewormer.

00:12:28.000 They're saying it to ridicule this particular medication.

00:12:31.000 I think they have an obligation to inform people that aren't informed, that are literally going down to feed stores, which by the way is anecdotal.

00:12:38.000 But that's not what they're doing.

00:12:38.000 That's not what they're doing.

00:12:40.000 They're talking about people who are taking the human drug and they're pretending they're taking horse dewormer.

00:12:45.000 Here's the thing.

00:12:46.000 It is not...

00:12:48.000 And even the big pharma company, Merck, made $46 billion last year, who manufactures ivermectin.

00:12:55.000 Even they say this is not a proven treatment either to avoid the virus or to treat the virus.

00:13:04.000 Whereas...

00:13:06.000 Monoclonal antibodies, Regeneron, has emergency use authorization.

00:13:10.000 But the reality is, first and foremost...

00:13:12.000 You and I are not doctors, so if we're going to get real specific about this and we start pulling up links, this is going to be a long conversation about COVID and ivermectin and...

00:13:20.000 I'm uniquely unqualified to opine.

00:13:22.000 I know a little bit about it because of my experiences with it and discussing with doctors, but it's not as cut and dry as anybody wants to pretend it is.

00:13:29.000 And one of the reasons why Merck is talking about it is they're developing their own antiviral medication, and it's a generic now, which means anybody can make it.

00:13:39.000 So ivermectin can literally be made by any pharmaceutical company.

00:13:43.000 There's a lot of complicated shit behind the scenes, and as a skeptic, maybe you should look at it from that perspective as well.

00:13:49.000 Because the, what was it, the Japanese, the Tokyo, what was that, the Tokyo Medical Organization that is traditionally very conservative, just adopted ivermectin use last week and just talked about the efficacy of it. 0.97

00:14:04.000 There's studies of it that have come out of India, there's studies of it that have come out of other places.

00:14:08.000 There's the frontline critical COVID care workers who have been administering it before there was a vaccine and had very positive effects using it.

00:14:17.000 It's very complicated, and I don't think we should just dismiss their work, particularly when we don't know that much about it.

00:14:24.000 Last thing I am is dismissive.

00:14:26.000 I think though it's important to deal in facts, it's important to say that there's a lot that we don't know.

00:14:31.000 I think we've learned that a lot over the last two years.

00:14:33.000 There's a lot that we don't know in the last two years. 0.99

00:14:35.000 There's a lot of bullshit going around. 0.88

00:14:35.000 Yeah, but I think that we do know that there is a safe, effective, free, FDA-approved I 0.88

00:15:08.000 don't know if that's true.

00:15:09.000 There's a lot of studies on ivermectin.

00:15:12.000 If you go to the Critical Care COVID Workers website, they detail, there's a long list of studies that they've shown ivermectin to be effective in preventing death and preventing hospitalization. 0.96

00:15:24.000 See, this is a thing where you and I are arguing about some shit we don't really have expertise in. 0.77

00:15:28.000 I think that's absolutely true. 0.95

00:15:30.000 That's why Netflix's publicist didn't want me to talk about it.

00:15:32.000 Ah, too late. 1.00

00:15:33.000 But you went right into it, motherfucker. 1.00

00:15:34.000 Look at you. 1.00

00:15:35.000 Did I go right into it?

00:15:36.000 No, you asked about Florida!

00:15:36.000 You went right into it.

00:15:38.000 Oh, yeah, I asked you about Florida, and you went right into COVID deaths.

00:15:41.000 Is that what happened?

00:15:42.000 Yeah, you went into police officers and more people dying of COVID. Well, you asked me about the state's response to the pandemic.

00:15:48.000 I was just going to talk to you about the preposterous nature of your state that you love so much. 0.98

00:15:53.000 You're a defender of Florida in its most ridiculousness. 0.51

00:15:57.000 And one of the things that I want to talk to, because I haven't talked to you since the pandemic started, last time I talked to you was Screwball, right? 0.89

00:16:03.000 Like, how long ago was that?

00:16:04.000 Oh yeah, what, 2019? 1.00

00:16:06.000 Yeah, it was right before the shit hit the fan. 0.99

00:16:08.000 That was the last time we talked, and we were talking about that documentary. 0.99

00:16:11.000 And then, when all this happened, and so much of the wackiness and the controversies coming out of Florida, like, you embrace the chaos of Florida.

00:16:21.000 Yeah, Florida fuckery is our genre, and it's also our top export, I think, as well.

00:16:26.000 It's really what we provide the rest of them.

00:16:28.000 But for you, and you, I mean, look about how much your work is about Florida.

00:16:33.000 The Cooking Cowboy series, you know, all the stuff on A-Rod, like all the...

00:16:38.000 There's so much of your work.

00:16:42.000 The petrifying...

00:16:43.000 I'm a Florida native, you know, and a lifelong Miamian, and I think the petrifying thing that I've learned through the years, and it's not my theory...

00:16:50.000 T.D. Allman called Miami the city of the future.

00:16:53.000 And effectively, the Florida of today is the America of tomorrow.

00:16:57.000 And more importantly, the Miami of today.

00:17:00.000 More specifically, the Miami of today is the America of tomorrow.

00:17:03.000 So if you want to know what challenges we'll face or calamities will befall us as a nation in the years or even decades to come, you need only look at the canary in the coal mine, which is South Florida.

00:17:14.000 Do you think that's because it's very vulnerable to climate change, first of all, right?

00:17:19.000 There's estimates about how long Miami can last.

00:17:23.000 Yeah, but not good.

00:17:24.000 Yeah, they think it got about two decades, right?

00:17:28.000 Isn't that the current thought?

00:17:30.000 I'm a renter, let me put it that way.

00:17:32.000 I've lived there my whole life.

00:17:34.000 I don't own any property in Miami.

00:17:36.000 It's probably a good move.

00:17:37.000 I'm not bullish.

00:17:38.000 It seems like it's gonna go underwater, right?

00:17:41.000 Yeah, it'll definitely be underwater.

00:17:43.000 It's just a question of when.

00:17:45.000 The ground itself is very porous, is that correct?

00:17:50.000 Yeah, I mean, you know, we have reclaimed wetlands.

00:17:53.000 That's Miami Beach.

00:17:54.000 That's where Champlain Towers is.

00:17:56.000 Reclaimed wetlands.

00:17:57.000 What does that mean? 0.99

00:17:57.000 It was fucking mangroves. 0.99

00:17:59.000 Swamps. 1.00

00:18:00.000 Yeah, swamp.

00:18:00.000 And that we reclaimed, which means we filled it in, and there's still porous limestone underneath that.

00:18:05.000 Champlain Towers only had water coming at it from the front, the back, above, and below.

00:18:09.000 But other than that, it was totally dry.

00:18:11.000 This is the tower that collapsed.

00:18:12.000 Collapsed, yeah.

00:18:13.000 I mean, just battered.

00:18:13.000 We're getting battered there.

00:18:14.000 They were on that porous limestone?

00:18:16.000 Yeah.

00:18:17.000 Yeah, built on reclaimed wetlands.

00:18:19.000 And so I'll tell you right now, as we speak, this is the King Tides.

00:18:24.000 You know what the King Tides are?

00:18:25.000 No.

00:18:25.000 They happen every September, October, and November.

00:18:28.000 Not the entire time, but there's like a week here, a weekend there for those three months.

00:18:32.000 It is what we call sunny day flooding.

00:18:35.000 So it has to do with the tides.

00:18:37.000 It has to do with the distance between the sun and the moon and the earth.

00:18:41.000 And it floods in the sunlight.

00:18:45.000 We can get as much as 12 inches above the highest high tide of the year.

00:18:53.000 So it's just, it's not from rain?

00:18:55.000 It's not.

00:18:55.000 Now, here's the problem.

00:18:56.000 We're still in hurricane season, which means rain exacerbates it. 0.97

00:18:59.000 Inclement weather can, we're totally fucked when it rains on top of the king ties.

00:19:03.000 But this is just like a day, like you just, if you were in a low-lying area or waterfront or oceanfront, bayfront, that's just what, sunny day. 0.85

00:19:11.000 It's perfectly, it could be perfectly beautiful, and you could have as much as 12 inches above the highest high tide.

00:19:18.000 So it's just an unusual level of the ocean.

00:19:20.000 Yeah, it's just a quirk of the tides.

00:19:22.000 It happens every year off and on for three months.

00:19:27.000 We call it sunny day flooding.

00:19:29.000 That's a thing that we have there.

00:19:32.000 I mean, you know Miami, we make it rain, but we have sunny day flooding is a thing.

00:19:37.000 And there's nothing they can do like New Orleans, like put up some sort of a...

00:19:42.000 Some sort of a wall, a dam.

00:19:44.000 So the Army Corps of Engineers proposed a kind of futuristic, post-apocalyptic, you know, after the flood, well, pre-flood, kind of a wall.

00:19:54.000 And Miami said, no gracias, no thank you.

00:19:57.000 We don't want that.

00:19:58.000 We'll fend for ourselves.

00:20:00.000 Did they say no because it was too expensive, or did they say no because...

00:20:03.000 No, the Army Corps of Engineers, I think, was going to be federally funded.

00:20:07.000 They just didn't want this unsightly, unseemly kind of a wall in our beautiful town.

00:20:12.000 But what they did want is they wanted a signature bridge.

00:20:14.000 We're building like this $800 million bridge that we don't need.

00:20:18.000 But it's super pretty, as we say in Miami.

00:20:21.000 It's super pretty.

00:20:22.000 And somebody probably got a good deal.

00:20:24.000 Oh, yeah.

00:20:24.000 You better believe the contract.

00:20:26.000 That's the thing.

00:20:27.000 That's why the Miami of today is the America of tomorrow.

00:20:30.000 It's really the corruption, dysfunction, and nonstop construction.

00:20:32.000 That's really what it is.

00:20:34.000 It's this anything-goes, Wild West kind of mentality.

00:20:37.000 Because, you know, I said this before on the show, you know, LA is where you go when you want to be somebody, New York is where you go when you are somebody, and Miami is where you go when you want to be somebody else.

00:20:47.000 It's always been a sunny place for shady people.

00:20:49.000 The Florida man phenomenon, it's just like, you know, if you have...

00:20:56.000 It's not New England.

00:20:57.000 It's not what's your name, who's your daddy.

00:20:59.000 Everyone's Nouveau Riche in Miami.

00:21:01.000 So no one cares where your money came from. 0.98

00:21:03.000 As long as the booze is flowing and everybody's dancing, the music's going, nobody gives a shit. 0.99

00:21:09.000 And it's always been that place. 0.98

00:21:11.000 It's always been that party place.

00:21:12.000 You were telling me before about how during, was it the 70s or the 80s, these recording artists would go down to Miami?

00:21:20.000 Yeah, listen, Miami is just...

00:21:22.000 It's America's Casablanca, you know?

00:21:24.000 And so, some of the biggest records of all time.

00:21:27.000 I mean, back when that was a business, like you could sell tens of millions of albums.

00:21:33.000 Everybody went to Miami.

00:21:35.000 Eric Clapton was one of the first.

00:21:37.000 Jimmy Buffett, the Bee Gees, the Eagles, Crosby, Stills, Nash& Young, the Allman Brothers, Fleetwood Mac, and they were doing...

00:21:47.000 All those records that we all still know today from the 70s.

00:21:49.000 They recorded, mixed, or mastered at least in part.

00:21:54.000 Glenn Frey and Don Henley wrote the lyrics to Hotel California in a rented mansion on Miami Beach.

00:22:01.000 That had been the love nest of Howard Hughes and Ava Gardner. 0.95

00:22:06.000 Winston Churchill used it as a winter home.

00:22:10.000 And the Watergate burglars and Howard Hunt used it as well.

00:22:13.000 And then Stephen Stills used it.

00:22:16.000 He was hanging out there with like Shel Silverstein.

00:22:18.000 It was like a weird scene.

00:22:20.000 And then eventually the Eagles came down to do Hotel California and wrote the lyrics. 1.00

00:22:26.000 They locked themselves, these two guys, in a fucking room. 0.99

00:22:28.000 And the housekeeper left sandwiches and... 1.00

00:22:32.000 And drinks at the door because the door was closed.

00:22:34.000 And they came down in bathrobes one day with legal pads, yellow legal pads, and said, we have it.

00:22:42.000 We have the lyrics.

00:22:43.000 And so everybody, and it was a communal scene too.

00:22:47.000 It's kind of like your place with the, you know, everybody just sort of like stops by.

00:22:51.000 People stop by to get, it was like that because you had all these artists.

00:22:56.000 In every room like so there was pickup basketball games outside you drive up and there'd be the Bee Gees playing the Allman Brothers playing Eric Clapton in a pickup basketball game and they to this day Criteria Studios they have an a wooden upright piano and the rumor has it one day there was an artist I won't mention the name was playing and had a baggie of cocaine on the top of the piano and he was playing and the baggie fell Open.

00:23:20.000 Fell.

00:23:20.000 Boom.

00:23:21.000 Puff a smoke on the keys of the piano.

00:23:24.000 Appropriately.

00:23:25.000 And he grabbed the bag and salvaged what he could.

00:23:27.000 And then for the next several months, the people at the studio who worked at it would stick a straw between the keys on the piano and try to...

00:23:35.000 Mostly dust, they were probably snorting, but, like, would just try to salvage whatever they could from there.

00:23:39.000 So the joke was that...

00:23:43.000 They had a line item on the bills.

00:23:48.000 Because that's the thing.

00:23:48.000 They were away from the watchful eyes and ears of the labels, which were all based in New York and L.A. So they would go to Miami and no one knew what the fuck was going on.

00:23:56.000 I didn't have publicists or producers or executives from the recording studios. 0.92

00:24:01.000 So they would send them bills to pay for the studio time.

00:24:03.000 There'd be a line item for cocaine.

00:24:05.000 But you couldn't say cocaine.

00:24:07.000 Cocaine and I think by the way cocaine was at that time was probably part of the appeal of bringing the artists to Miami to be fair probably right but it was under the the category of piano tuning Was the cocaine.

00:24:19.000 So you get, like, some, you know, someone at, you know, accounts at a record label call up and say, hey, I have a question about this invoice.

00:24:27.000 There's $5,000 here for piano tuning, but there's only one ballad on the album. 0.98

00:24:32.000 So what's with all this fucking piano tuning? 0.99

00:24:34.000 There was an act. 0.99

00:24:36.000 Oh, God, I'm not going to say it, but there was a band who came down in the 80s to record a Criteria.

00:24:41.000 And then they came down again in the 90s.

00:24:43.000 And the guy who runs the studio, Trevor, his mom was the manager before him.

00:24:47.000 So he was a little kid running around this scene.

00:24:49.000 If you can imagine a little kid in Miami in the 70s running around this scene.

00:24:52.000 This is an incredible place.

00:24:53.000 Aretha Franklin did the Respect record at Criteria.

00:24:57.000 James Brown did I Feel Good, recorded that song at Criteria.

00:25:00.000 It's a really historic place.

00:25:01.000 And so...

00:25:03.000 This band comes in and he says to the lead singer, he says, hey listen, I don't know if you remember, you were down here 15 years ago, whatever, back in the late 70s, early 80s, doing this record.

00:25:12.000 And the singer says, I have no memory of that whatsoever, except for one thing.

00:25:21.000 He said, one night apparently, we were done recording here, and someone took us into the neighborhood, it's like in a residential kind of area, into the neighborhood, to this woman's house.

00:25:32.000 And she brought out a brick of cocaine, an entire kilo of cocaine. 0.75

00:25:36.000 He said, I'd never seen that before.

00:25:38.000 She put it down on the coffee table.

00:25:39.000 We're sitting on the couch.

00:25:40.000 She put it down.

00:25:41.000 This is a big band.

00:25:42.000 She put it down on the coffee table.

00:25:44.000 She cut it open.

00:25:46.000 And all I remember from my entire experience in Miami is the smell of that entire kilo of cocaine.

00:25:53.000 Like just what it feels like when an entire kilo of cocaine is opened up.

00:25:59.000 Before you and it hits and it hits you.

00:26:01.000 Have you ever done coke?

00:26:02.000 Never.

00:26:03.000 Me neither.

00:26:04.000 Never.

00:26:04.000 But hearing that, I want to sniff.

00:26:09.000 That is the takeaway for that.

00:26:10.000 I want to know what that's like.

00:26:13.000 Can you imagine you or I doing cocaine? 0.99

00:26:15.000 Oh my god, both of us wouldn't shut the fuck up. 1.00

00:26:17.000 You'd fucking imagine? 0.99

00:26:17.000 Two of us together in a room with coke. 0.99

00:26:19.000 They'd scrape us off the ceiling with a fucking shovel. 0.99

00:26:21.000 They'd be like, hey, what's that up there? 1.00

00:26:23.000 That's fucking, that's Joe and Bill up there. 1.00

00:26:25.000 No shit. 1.00

00:26:26.000 It's kind of amazing that you've managed to go through high school, college, the whole deal, and not. 0.99

00:26:31.000 And live this whole time in Miami.

00:26:33.000 But I went to an arts high school in the 90s, so...

00:26:36.000 Cocaine, you know, drug trends tend to be kind of cyclical, you know?

00:26:40.000 They run in the, like, nostalgia cycles.

00:26:42.000 They kind of run in 20-year kind of things.

00:26:43.000 Oh, this decade is defined by this, you know?

00:26:46.000 So, you know, you had psychedelics in the 60s.

00:26:50.000 Cocaine kind of comes in vogue in the 70s.

00:26:54.000 Obviously...

00:26:54.000 There's some overlap.

00:26:56.000 Beginning of the 70s is like the end of the 60s, etc.

00:26:59.000 But in the 90s, it kind of died away.

00:27:01.000 Totally.

00:27:02.000 And, of course, pot's a perennial.

00:27:03.000 Pot is always hot.

00:27:04.000 But by the 90s, what happens is, yeah, cocaine kind of fell out of favor.

00:27:08.000 Also, I went to arts high school.

00:27:10.000 No one could afford cocaine.

00:27:11.000 But the 60s drugs kind of came around again.

00:27:15.000 People were doing mushrooms, acid, MDMA, you know, ecstasy became a thing.

00:27:19.000 So that trend kind of came around again.

00:27:22.000 And people weren't really doing cocaine when I was in high school. 0.98

00:27:25.000 They were doing a lot of other shit, though. 0.95

00:27:27.000 When I was in high school, people were doing coke. 0.98

00:27:29.000 But in the 90s, after that, I remember someone saying something about coke and someone was like, you do coke still?

00:27:36.000 Yeah.

00:27:37.000 In the 90s, people had stopped.

00:27:39.000 But then somewhere in the 2000s, it seemed to kick up again.

00:27:43.000 And it's like people forget.

00:27:45.000 It's like a group of people ruin their entire lives with coke. 0.99

00:27:48.000 And then, I don't know if you know about this, what's going on right now in LA, but there was a terrible tragedy amongst these comedians where four comedians at a party overdosed.

00:27:57.000 Yeah, and they're getting cocaine that's laced with fentanyl.

00:28:02.000 And one of them survived, and she's in the ICU now, and she started to talk again and text people and stuff, so she seems like she's going to make it.

00:28:10.000 But three people died.

00:28:11.000 Legalize it, regulate it.

00:28:13.000 Yes! 0.99

00:28:13.000 Who the fuck knows what you're getting? 0.99

00:28:15.000 You get a pill or a baggie of powder from somebody in a club or whatever? 0.99

00:28:19.000 Stan Hope wrote about it on his Instagram, was getting into it with people, but it's 100% true.

00:28:24.000 Because then you would get actual cocaine. 0.98

00:28:27.000 And actual cocaine, you'd probably feel like shit in the morning, but you'd survive. 0.95

00:28:30.000 And you would at least know, like, you know, we had this whiskey. 0.97

00:28:33.000 You have a shot of whiskey, you know what it is.

00:28:35.000 It's a shot of whiskey.

00:28:36.000 We all know what it means.

00:28:37.000 We know what that dose is.

00:28:39.000 We know what that's gonna do to us.

00:28:41.000 And you can overdose on whiskey.

00:28:43.000 Anyone can.

00:28:44.000 You can all go to the store and buy enough alcohol to drink yourself to death on a daily basis.

00:28:49.000 But at least you know what it is.

00:28:52.000 With these cocaine laced with fentanyl products that people are getting or heroin laced with fentanyl, you have no idea.

00:28:59.000 You're just rolling the dice that the cartel didn't fuck up in this mix.

00:29:04.000 Forget the cartel. 0.93

00:29:05.000 Once it gets to retail, that's where they really step on it and cut it up.

00:29:09.000 Yeah, all kinds of people are stepping on it all over the place.

00:29:11.000 It's crazy.

00:29:11.000 Yeah, it's a scary thing, and it's unnecessary.

00:29:14.000 But it's a thing where it's political suicide, I think. 1.00

00:29:17.000 If someone came along and said, like if DeSantis said, legalize all drugs, people would be like, you're out of your fucking mind. 1.00

00:29:23.000 You can't do that. 0.99

00:29:24.000 He's still blocking the legalization of medical marijuana, which 70-plus percent of Floridians voted in favor of, so.

00:29:29.000 Yeah, that's a silly thing, because people with nausea, people with anything, any kind of wasting disease, any cancer, people that are dealing with chemotherapy, it is a godsend.

00:29:41.000 There's a thing called NAD, and we tried to come up with how you say it the other day, but what it does is it actually lengthens your telomeres.

00:29:50.000 It's something that you take in an intravenous form, and it's super good for your body.

00:29:55.000 It's...

00:29:57.000 It's one of the rare things that you take that you do it in IV form and like almost immediately afterwards you feel great.

00:30:05.000 But this stuff is brutal to take and it usually takes about two hours in a drip because you want to take it very slowly.

00:30:13.000 Because when you take it fast, it's the most unpleasant, uncomfortable feeling in your stomach.

00:30:19.000 Unless you're high.

00:30:21.000 When you smoke weed, I turn that thing up full crank, and I go through a full bag in 10 minutes, and I'm telling you, I barely feel it.

00:30:28.000 And when I was doing that, I was like, oh, well, this is probably the nausea-preventing aspect that chemo patients enjoy, and people with AIDS, people that have a really hard time eating food.

00:30:42.000 There's something about marijuana and nausea.

00:30:46.000 I know that it's a medicine.

00:30:48.000 You know that it's a medicine.

00:30:49.000 I think most people, even who participate in the prohibition, which has been the, incidentally, the deadliest thing about marijuana, has been the prohibition.

00:30:58.000 Of course.

00:30:59.000 With every drug, you're boosting up organized crime.

00:31:02.000 And I just...

00:31:04.000 But the point is, I also...

00:31:05.000 When it comes to the legalization, I don't care.

00:31:09.000 That it has a medicinal purpose.

00:31:10.000 That whiskey does not have a medicinal.

00:31:12.000 Well, a hot toddy when you have a little cold, maybe.

00:31:14.000 There's no medicinal purpose.

00:31:16.000 You do it for fun. 0.99

00:31:16.000 And I don't give a shit. 0.99

00:31:18.000 That's the autonomy. 0.99

00:31:22.000 It's your body.

00:31:22.000 It's not affecting other people.

00:31:24.000 And you want to enter into some sort of deal or contract with a certified marijuana dealer or a dispensary or a cocaine dealer, for that matter.

00:31:34.000 What do I care?

00:31:36.000 I feel the same way about everything.

00:31:37.000 I feel the same way about cigarettes, motorcycle racing. 0.99

00:31:40.000 Like, you do whatever the fuck you want, man. 0.99

00:31:42.000 As long as it's not hurting me, I am 100% for you making your own choices. 0.99

00:31:48.000 You're right to wave your hands and ends where my nose begins.

00:31:51.000 Yes. 0.99

00:31:52.000 Bottom line, if you're over there, what the fuck do I care? 0.99

00:31:55.000 Yeah, 100%. 0.99

00:31:56.000 But we have this attitude in this country that drugs are bad, right?

00:32:00.000 We all grew up in the 80s.

00:32:01.000 They just say no.

00:32:03.000 All that nonsense that got into people's heads while people all around you are doing sanctioned, government-approved drugs that are killing people.

00:32:12.000 Drug dealers in lab coats.

00:32:14.000 Yeah.

00:32:14.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:32:17.000 We did a documentary called Limelight about the disco-turned-nightclub.

00:32:23.000 I didn't see that one.

00:32:24.000 It was a deconsecrated historic church, a cathedral in Chelsea.

00:32:29.000 In New York City.

00:32:30.000 I remember that.

00:32:31.000 Pre-gentrification.

00:32:31.000 Yeah.

00:32:32.000 I was around back then.

00:32:34.000 It was fun.

00:32:34.000 Peter Gation bought this, this Canadian guy bought this place and turned it into a nightclub.

00:32:39.000 And it was the club kids scene.

00:32:41.000 It was all that.

00:32:43.000 And, of course, then the rise of ecstasy.

00:32:46.000 And then in this doc, we talk about how MDMA was a useful and effective tool that therapists were using online.

00:33:03.000 Particularly like marriage therapy, people open up.

00:33:05.000 They got more honest.

00:33:06.000 It was like a truth serum.

00:33:08.000 And we got in touch with their feelings.

00:33:11.000 And it was a viable, not only was it a viable medicine, but it was something that doctors were availing themselves of in treatment.

00:33:19.000 And then the DEA suddenly and unilaterally classifies it as a As a controlled substance.

00:33:30.000 And all of a sudden it went from potentially a viable...

00:33:33.000 So this wasn't an act of Congress.

00:33:34.000 This was an unelected bureaucratic organization who said, well, you know, the war on drugs is kind of winding down.

00:33:41.000 We need a new line item, right?

00:33:42.000 We need a new budget.

00:33:43.000 We need hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the scourge of this new party drug.

00:33:48.000 The kids and the discos.

00:33:49.000 It's killing the kids.

00:33:51.000 And so they just suddenly created a new villain overnight, which costs us...

00:33:57.000 We're good to go.

00:34:05.000 We got a bunch of guys making pills in their condos.

00:34:09.000 Right, of course.

00:34:10.000 With the synthetic drugs. 0.99

00:34:11.000 Who knows what the fuck is in that? 0.99

00:34:14.000 You're paying somebody $20 for a pill on a dance floor. 0.99

00:34:16.000 Well, at least MAPS has started to use MDMA therapy to help people with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries.

00:34:25.000 And this is something that's going on right now.

00:34:27.000 And there's federally approved studies.

00:34:30.000 So because of the good work that MAPS has done, And showing that a lot of these people with these traumatic experiences, people that have been assaulted, abused, sexual assault, they can have an amazing relief from MDMA therapy.

00:34:47.000 And so because of that, we have a real good chance of reintroducing MDMA because of MAPS. As a therapeutic use medicine, really.

00:34:58.000 Which is really what it is.

00:34:58.000 I mean, obviously, it's a party drug.

00:35:00.000 Obviously, it's great.

00:35:01.000 It makes people feel good.

00:35:02.000 But there's some amazing therapeutic uses for it.

00:35:05.000 Particularly for soldiers and, again, people with traumatic experiences.

00:35:08.000 Litany of drugs that you can abuse.

00:35:10.000 But legalize it, regulate it, tax it.

00:35:13.000 Yes! 0.99

00:35:14.000 It's what's been so frustrating about the medical marijuana fucking... 0.98

00:35:21.000 It's just like Trek it's just like it's this never-ending saga in Florida is that like I remember when I went so I didn't smoke pot until I was what I tried I was like 37 years old. 0.96

00:35:32.000 How old are you now?

00:35:33.000 I'm 43 so I tried pot.

00:35:35.000 So when I met you you had just started.

00:35:38.000 I just like I don't smoke it right I tried it.

00:35:41.000 When do you smoke it like how often?

00:35:43.000 Never.

00:35:43.000 I was in I was in Colorado And that's like, you know, it's like going to Italy and not eating pasta.

00:35:49.000 So you rarely smoke pot, is what you're saying?

00:35:51.000 Yeah, I never, I almost never smoke pot.

00:35:53.000 And you do smoke pot sometimes.

00:35:55.000 I do take, like, a gummy sometimes.

00:35:58.000 I don't smoke it, yeah.

00:35:59.000 Like a 10 milligram, like a little one?

00:36:01.000 I'm a lightweight, yeah.

00:36:02.000 Listen, 10 milligrams is nice.

00:36:05.000 It's a nice feeling.

00:36:06.000 I didn't...

00:36:07.000 I don't know.

00:36:08.000 I didn't care for it.

00:36:10.000 I said to my...

00:36:11.000 I remember I was in this pot smoking...

00:36:14.000 I was in this pot church in Denver.

00:36:16.000 That's always a bad place to be.

00:36:18.000 Yeah.

00:36:18.000 You don't want to be in public, dude.

00:36:19.000 It's not a social...

00:36:20.000 Well, anytime someone sets up a pot church, you're like, who am I associating with? 0.99

00:36:23.000 Well...

00:36:25.000 I knew the guy.

00:36:26.000 He was okay people.

00:36:27.000 You have wooden beads?

00:36:29.000 He might have.

00:36:31.000 I don't know.

00:36:32.000 I'm high and I'm sitting in these pews.

00:36:35.000 Right.

00:36:36.000 You know, and it's dark.

00:36:37.000 And I'm just like, I'm like, I don't like this.

00:36:40.000 I said to my girlfriend, I said, I wish I was drunk.

00:36:43.000 I wish I was drunk.

00:36:45.000 And then, and she's like, and we didn't, what I said, oh, she never let me forget this.

00:36:50.000 I said, I said, this will never catch on.

00:36:55.000 I didn't remember saying that, but she said that's what I said.

00:36:57.000 This will never catch on.

00:36:58.000 And then we went to Chick-fil-A. Game-changer.

00:37:03.000 Because hate tastes great.

00:37:05.000 Hate tastes great.

00:37:06.000 We went to Chick-fil-A and I gotta tell you, I'm like, oh, I get it.

00:37:11.000 Listen, Chick-fil-A is good without pot, but I was like, oh, I get it.

00:37:16.000 Even just the crunch of the chicken.

00:37:18.000 For me, it was an ice cream sundae.

00:37:20.000 I had an ice cream sundae.

00:37:22.000 I was 30 years old.

00:37:24.000 I had not been a pot smoker my whole life.

00:37:26.000 I had maybe smoked pot a handful of times.

00:37:28.000 And then when I was 30 years old, a buddy of mine, he was a musician, my friend Eddie Bravo, he's a musician, jiu-jitsu guy, and he's like, dude, it helps me creatively.

00:37:37.000 I love it.

00:37:37.000 I was like, really?

00:37:38.000 I just thought it made you stupid. 1.00

00:37:40.000 I thought it was just a thing that made people dumb. 1.00

00:37:42.000 So we smoked pot and went to Dairy Queen. 0.99

00:37:45.000 And like, oh my god.

00:37:47.000 Baskin-Robbins.

00:37:48.000 That's where we went.

00:37:48.000 Baskin-Robbins.

00:37:49.000 I remember I had a hot fudge sundae.

00:37:51.000 And I remember eating the hot fudge with the nuts and the vanilla ice cream.

00:37:56.000 I was like, this is sensational.

00:37:58.000 I've never tasted food like this.

00:37:59.000 And I was like, I get it now.

00:38:01.000 I get it.

00:38:02.000 I get it, yeah.

00:38:02.000 It was the Chick-fil-A that made me...

00:38:04.000 I was like, I understand it.

00:38:06.000 But it's weird.

00:38:07.000 It makes me feel like my head is closing in around my brain.

00:38:12.000 I get this weird pressure in my head from it.

00:38:15.000 I didn't get scared, but I found it uncomfortable and annoying.

00:38:19.000 I like to drink.

00:38:21.000 Did you try sex on it?

00:38:23.000 No. 0.98

00:38:23.000 That's the move. 0.98

00:38:24.000 Really?

00:38:25.000 Oh my god.

00:38:26.000 Oh my god. 1.00

00:38:27.000 Sex on marijuana? 1.00

00:38:28.000 Someone else could- On the bottom maybe. 0.98

00:38:30.000 It feels so different.

00:38:31.000 It feels so like everything.

00:38:33.000 It's like you can feel the person's soul.

00:38:36.000 It's wild.

00:38:37.000 Really?

00:38:38.000 Yeah.

00:38:38.000 It's a complete game changer.

00:38:40.000 Still with the gummies?

00:38:41.000 Will that work with the gummies?

00:38:42.000 Yeah, the gummies work.

00:38:43.000 You have to realize that gummies is a different thing because THC is what happens when you smoke it.

00:38:48.000 But when you eat it, It's processed by your liver and it produces 11-hydroxy metabolite.

00:38:53.000 It's much more psychoactive.

00:38:55.000 It's like four to five times more psychoactive than THC. So it's way more powerful.

00:39:00.000 That's why a lot of people when they eat marijuana, they think they got dosed.

00:39:03.000 Because it is essentially a psychedelic.

00:39:05.000 And when you take high dose...

00:39:08.000 High dose edibles with an isolation tank is as wild as any mushroom trip I've ever done.

00:39:14.000 It's really crazy. 0.99

00:39:15.000 You see crazy visuals like fucking pyramids and UFOs and these... 0.99

00:39:23.000 Cartoonish neon figures that are mating. 0.99

00:39:25.000 I remember I took a really strong edible once and got on a flight and it was one of the craziest experiences of my life.

00:39:31.000 All I did was close my eyes and curl up in a position.

00:39:34.000 I had a window seat so it was like my head was up against the window and my eyes were closed and the whole flight I was watching these animated neon characters breed.

00:39:44.000 They were like having sex and making all these other animated characters and then it was like this weird sort of fractal effect and it was...

00:39:52.000 It was hypnotic.

00:39:54.000 And it was insane.

00:39:56.000 And it lasted for a good solid hour.

00:39:59.000 Pass.

00:40:00.000 Yeah, man. 0.95

00:40:01.000 It'll freak you the fuck out. 0.89

00:40:03.000 Do you write when you're high? 0.96

00:40:04.000 Yes.

00:40:04.000 Like you write jokes and you...

00:40:05.000 Yeah.

00:40:06.000 George Carlin, I think, had the best idea.

00:40:09.000 What George Carlin would do is he would write sober and then he would smoke pot and punch it up.

00:40:15.000 So he'd have concepts.

00:40:16.000 So he'd have these concepts and just figure out where the humor is, where the irony is, and then he would get high.

00:40:24.000 That's like the exact opposite of the adage, which is write drunk, edit sober.

00:40:29.000 That's like write sober...

00:40:31.000 Edit high.

00:40:32.000 But you're trying for funny, right?

00:40:34.000 Like, write drunk, edit sober is great because you can take out the self-indulgent stuff and the chaos and sort of whittle it into a more conducive form for human consumption.

00:40:46.000 But there's something about writing high where you find the funny.

00:40:50.000 It's not like write drunk, edit sober.

00:40:54.000 When you edit high, you're literally editing for giggles.

00:40:59.000 You're looking for—and you'll find pathways that are funny.

00:41:03.000 I think George had it—well, obviously, George is one of the all-time greats.

00:41:07.000 And he had a great method. 0.98

00:41:09.000 I've used that method, but I also use the get high as fuck method and write. 0.97

00:41:12.000 It's a great method, too. 0.99

00:41:14.000 I like to do that late at night because, you know, I have family, I have children.

00:41:18.000 I can't be getting high during the day when my kids are in the house.

00:41:21.000 So what I do is I wait until everyone's asleep and then I get barbecued.

00:41:24.000 And then usually after a show, like I'll come home from a show at like 1230 at night and I'll just sit in front of the keyboard and just start mashing ideas.

00:41:33.000 That's great.

00:41:34.000 I've never, I've never, I mean, I've written work drunk before, but I just like, I don't know, it's kind of in my line of work, I guess, a little more important to have your wits about you.

00:41:43.000 Yeah, but it's, it is, there's a, it's a tool, you know, it's, it's, you can use it correctly and you can get a lot out of it or you can start abusing it, you know, it's, I'm a giant fan of Stephen King, and Stephen King's book on writing is one of my favorite books on the creative process.

00:42:00.000 It's a great book. 0.65

00:42:01.000 But one of the things that comes out of that book is, first of all, his thankfulness of his sobriety, his love for his family, and how he realized he could have lost it all, because he was really off the rails crazy and doing pounds of blow and fucking drinking cases of beer every night while I was writing.

00:42:15.000 Couldn't tell that from his books.

00:42:16.000 Interesting.

00:42:17.000 Well, the thing is, that's my point, is those are the best books.

00:42:20.000 Yeah.

00:42:21.000 They really are.

00:42:22.000 The best albums, yeah.

00:42:23.000 You go back and you read Carrie, you read The Shining, you read Cujo. 0.99

00:42:29.000 That was his wildest shit, man. 1.00

00:42:31.000 And he was out of his mind. 1.00

00:42:33.000 He was out of his mind.

00:42:35.000 And he just reached...

00:42:36.000 It's not that he can't write without it.

00:42:38.000 Absolutely, he's one of the greats. 0.98

00:42:40.000 But the stuff that he wrote when he was fucked up was magic. 0.98

00:42:45.000 Like, magically horrific. 0.98

00:42:48.000 Scenarios.

00:42:49.000 You know, because he was battling these like real-time demons in his head while he's mashing those keyboards.

00:42:57.000 I'm going to read that book.

00:42:57.000 I haven't read the book.

00:42:58.000 His book about writing.

00:42:59.000 Oh, it's really good.

00:43:00.000 I love...

00:43:00.000 You know, sometimes, like, writing about writing is like dancing about architecture, talking about love, but, like, it's like...

00:43:07.000 I'm endlessly fascinated by writers writing about writing.

00:43:12.000 Yes, me too.

00:43:12.000 And he...

00:43:13.000 I think his memoir...

00:43:15.000 That is a memoir, and it's...

00:43:16.000 I think it's one of the best because it's about many things.

00:43:20.000 It's about his life.

00:43:22.000 It's about how...

00:43:23.000 Incredibly, he found his early success and how rewarding it was and how chaotic it was and overwhelming and how he couldn't believe it was real.

00:43:32.000 And then it's also about his demons and struggles. 0.99

00:43:35.000 And then it's also about recovery from getting hit by a fucking bus or a van rather. 0.99

00:43:41.000 That's what he got hit by. 0.99

00:43:42.000 His accident, yeah.

00:43:43.000 And his body got destroyed.

00:43:45.000 And then trying to pick up the pieces and start writing again.

00:43:48.000 It's great.

00:43:49.000 It's a fantastic book.

00:43:50.000 It's really good. 0.99

00:43:51.000 But the things that struck me is like, man, when he was off the rails, he wrote some good shit. 0.98

00:43:56.000 It's like that kind of stuff. 0.99

00:43:58.000 When you go back and you read The Shining, I mean, The Shining was about an author that was losing his fucking mind in a haunted house. 0.98

00:44:07.000 And in a lot of ways, that was probably what was happening to Stephen King with the cocaine and the alcohol and, you know, and he's writing this crazy shit while he's battling his own literal deeds. 0.98

00:44:22.000 The alienation from your family. 0.98

00:44:23.000 Yes, yeah, all that, yeah. 1.00

00:44:25.000 The fucking chaos in his head. 0.99

00:44:27.000 A lot of that is, you know, I had to, when I was here last time, I had written a play for some reason. 0.99

00:44:31.000 And so, like, writing is the hardest thing.

00:44:36.000 It's the hardest thing.

00:44:37.000 It's very isolating.

00:44:38.000 I literally went to hotels.

00:44:40.000 I got hotel rooms.

00:44:41.000 Just by myself.

00:44:42.000 Just to sit and write.

00:44:44.000 And it's so, and writing on command.

00:44:46.000 It's like stand-up, like I think stand-up comedy is like one of the bravest ones.

00:44:49.000 One of the bravest professions.

00:44:51.000 Because it's like, go be funny now.

00:44:53.000 Be funny on it.

00:44:54.000 It's like, you have a date and a time when you have to go and be funny. 0.93

00:44:56.000 And it's just like, I think, and it's fucking stressful.

00:44:59.000 And it doesn't matter how good the material may be in advance. 0.64

00:45:02.000 Sometimes it's not gonna work.

00:45:04.000 You know, I've seen like, my appreciation for stand-up comedy came from watching Legends Bomb. 0.96

00:45:11.000 I've been in a room where like, I'm the only motherfucker laughing at Gilbert Gottfried. 0.95

00:45:16.000 I've been in a room. 0.77

00:45:17.000 Where have you been?

00:45:17.000 Where was that?

00:45:18.000 That was at the old Miami Improv.

00:45:19.000 Remember the one at the Seminole?

00:45:21.000 Coconut Grove?

00:45:21.000 No, that was at, well, not the oldest Miami Improv, but the Miami Improv before the last.

00:45:26.000 Now it's in Doral.

00:45:27.000 It was at Hollywood, the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel.

00:45:30.000 Oh, okay.

00:45:31.000 That one.

00:45:31.000 Yeah.

00:45:32.000 I saw him bomb there.

00:45:33.000 I went to Vegas in like 2000-ish.

00:45:37.000 And I got to town, my girl at the time, and I saw Carlin's name on a marquee.

00:45:42.000 And I was like, well, that settles that.

00:45:45.000 I got on the phone, and I was like, Carlin tickets.

00:45:47.000 And my grandpa knew some high roller at that hotel.

00:45:50.000 I forget which hotel it was.

00:45:51.000 And they got us front row.

00:45:54.000 And so it was like a comedy club.

00:45:56.000 It's a cabaret-style room, but it was with a table...

00:46:01.000 You know perpendicular to the stage, you know, and we were sitting like the fucking stage was right here and then Carlin was like right up here and so He was doing that bit about because he was I was actually obviously trying out material for his HBO next day, which which was the the God bit the I don't believe in God I believe in Joe Pesci I believe in the Sun God,

00:46:20.000 but he's doing this whole God riff which was clearly still I think working on at the time and so I'm hysterically laughing And I'm realizing that other than Carlin's voice, the only thing I'm hearing is my laughter. 0.81

00:46:38.000 Oh God. 0.99

00:46:40.000 In an empty, sold-out fucking showroom. 0.99

00:46:43.000 And I literally turned, because I became self-conscious about it. 1.00

00:46:49.000 And I turn around.

00:46:51.000 You can imagine the shot from my POV. I kind of pan the room and I look at these people, these just good God-fearing Americans who just were not about Carlin dissing the big guy or the big girl.

00:47:04.000 And they're just like stone...

00:47:06.000 It's like the audience of the producers watching Springtime for Hitler. 0.61

00:47:10.000 They're just like... 1.00

00:47:11.000 Fucking appalled. 0.99

00:47:12.000 And so I sweep the room. 0.99

00:47:14.000 I come back.

00:47:16.000 And I look up here.

00:47:17.000 And George Carlin's nose is right here.

00:47:21.000 And he's bending down off the stage at me.

00:47:24.000 And we're practically nose-toed.

00:47:25.000 And he goes, Thank you, sir. 0.99

00:47:29.000 Because I'm the only motherfucker laughing in the room. 0.99

00:47:31.000 He goes, thank you, sir. 1.00

00:47:32.000 And then stalks back off the state.

00:47:35.000 And I was just like, oh my god.

00:47:37.000 And I watched George Carlin bomb.

00:47:40.000 And one of the funniest human beings to ever exist in this universe.

00:47:44.000 And probably one of the smartest human beings as well, I'd say. 0.97

00:47:48.000 Which was an added bonus that he was so fucking funny. 0.91

00:47:51.000 I saw Carlin bomb in New Hampshire in 1988 or 89. Somewhere around then. 0.98

00:47:58.000 He went through a rough patch where I don't know what was going on but I was a big fan of his before this and then during this there was a few albums I remember because George would put out an HBO special every year.

00:48:15.000 And what he would do differently than other comedians is he would write it all out and then he would bring legal paper on stage and he would have the script for what he was doing and he had no problem like having the notes on a stool and he would go over it.

00:48:32.000 And he had this one routine that he was trying to close with, and it just was bombing. 0.99

00:48:36.000 And it was basically fuck everything. 1.00

00:48:39.000 It was fuck Israel, fuck comedy clubs, fuck God, fuck the church. 1.00

00:48:45.000 It was like, he was going through this whole thing, and it just... 1.00

00:48:48.000 Wasn't working just didn't resonate and I remember thinking wow that's this is weird like I'm watching because I brought my roommates and my roommates were kind of unsophisticated at the time It's to put it mildly and they're like what is this is fucking terrible and You know we drove all the way to New Hampshire to watch George Carlin bomb I feel like that's always the way,

00:49:09.000 when you recommend somebody like to watch something or see a show, it's always the worst episode that's gonna be on, because they're like, you have no taste.

00:49:16.000 This is when I was just either thinking about doing stand-up or starting to do stand-up.

00:49:21.000 It was in that range.

00:49:23.000 So I was an evangelist.

00:49:25.000 I was like, you gotta see this guy.

00:49:26.000 Oh my god, Dom Herrera's the funniest guy that's ever lived.

00:49:28.000 Come see this guy with me. 0.93

00:49:29.000 So I was dragging my friends with me to these comedy clubs, and some of them were brutes. 0.95

00:49:34.000 Some of my friends that I knew at the time from my martial arts days were crazy people. 0.93

00:49:40.000 They had no artistic sophistication whatsoever. 0.97

00:49:44.000 You had to beat them over the head with the jokes or they weren't going to get it.

00:49:47.000 And there was a lot of value in that, too, because you get to watch comedy with people that were not comedy fans.

00:49:56.000 I got to see, like, how, like, sort of subtle stuff just didn't hit them at all.

00:50:01.000 Ironic stuff.

00:50:02.000 You know, it was interesting to see, but I'd taken them to see everybody. 0.98

00:50:06.000 And when I took them all the way to fucking New Hampshire to see George Carlin, he bombed. 0.97

00:50:11.000 Dom Herrera requires a sophisticated palate. 0.97

00:50:13.000 Dom Herrera, he's one of the all-time greats.

00:50:17.000 Have you ever met him?

00:50:18.000 I have.

00:50:19.000 He's awesome.

00:50:20.000 He's such a great guy.

00:50:22.000 He's so fucking funny, too. 0.93

00:50:23.000 And he's a guy that never stopped working on his act. 0.96

00:50:28.000 And as opposed to some comics got to this point where, as they got older, they just never wrote anymore.

00:50:34.000 They sort of relied on their old material, or they relied on their reputation.

00:50:38.000 Dom Herrera was always in the trenches.

00:50:41.000 Still is.

00:50:42.000 I was really lucky.

00:50:42.000 For a while, I would appear, whenever I was in Miami in town at home, I would go on this show, Paul and Young Ron show on the radio.

00:50:51.000 Yeah, I know those guys.

00:50:52.000 And so Ron's gone.

00:50:53.000 He retired.

00:50:54.000 But Paul Castanova's still there. 0.99

00:50:56.000 And he would have me on the show every Friday to talk about whatever movies were coming out that weekend or just talk shit. 0.89

00:51:01.000 And that was, of course, the day when the stand-ups were promoting their weekends at the improv. 0.82

00:51:07.000 And so I'd wind up With just the coolest people in a studio.

00:51:11.000 And what I found, which was really cool, because time-wise, that was like the dawn of Netflix streaming.

00:51:18.000 And so all these comics on the road were like, all I do is sit in the hotel or in the apartment and I watch...

00:51:25.000 Netflix streaming.

00:51:26.000 And so a lot of them had been exposed to my work, and it turned out, like, I'm big fans of theirs, and they're big fans.

00:51:31.000 It's kind of the fun thing about this business, like, the entertainment.

00:51:34.000 It's like, you know, you don't know who your fans are.

00:51:37.000 Right.

00:51:37.000 And some of them are much cool, me, rest assured, much cooler than I am.

00:51:41.000 I wound up in Janet Jackson's mansion one time in Miami Beach.

00:51:46.000 Whoa.

00:51:46.000 Because she, like, summoned us to the mansion.

00:51:49.000 Summoned?

00:51:50.000 How did she do that? 1.00

00:51:50.000 Did she have a horn? 1.00

00:51:51.000 Do an agent.

00:51:51.000 Oh!

00:51:54.000 Yes.

00:51:54.000 It's a shofar, really.

00:51:56.000 And so we got a call from an agent who was a mutual friend.

00:52:01.000 And he said, Janet is in town.

00:52:03.000 She's renting a mansion on LaGorse Island. 0.99

00:52:05.000 God, that's so wild.

00:52:06.000 LaGorse Island is where Sal Magluta from Co-King Cowboys, the Kings of Miami rented a mansion as well.

00:52:10.000 So that's how I knew LaGorse. 0.99

00:52:11.000 I'm like, fucking Sal Magluta's mansion? 0.99

00:52:13.000 Rental mansion? 0.99

00:52:14.000 So she said, she's here recording an album.

00:52:16.000 She wants to meet you.

00:52:18.000 She's a huge fan.

00:52:22.000 Did she think you were the guy from the Smashing Pumpkins?

00:52:24.000 Yeah, I was like, who did she?

00:52:26.000 Did she?

00:52:27.000 I'm the one with the hair.

00:52:28.000 Does she know that?

00:52:29.000 I'm like, not Billy Corgan.

00:52:31.000 And who incidentally has at Billy on Twitter? 0.98

00:52:33.000 Was he like a fucking investor in Twitter? 0.98

00:52:36.000 Like, how did he got at Billy? 0.99

00:52:37.000 I don't know, Billy's smart.

00:52:38.000 So what happens is, when people want to tweet at him, they go at Billy C-O-R. And my name, I guess, like, autofills?

00:52:47.000 Because they go right past at Billy, which he has at Billy.

00:52:50.000 And so I get all kinds of...

00:52:52.000 Like when they're like upset at how he treated Daisy on wrestling on Sunday. 0.99

00:52:56.000 I'm like, what the fuck is going on? 0.99

00:52:57.000 Like you're so mean to Daisy. 1.00

00:52:59.000 I'm like, what the fuck is happening? 0.99

00:53:00.000 Like why? 0.99

00:53:01.000 Who do you think I am?

00:53:03.000 That's hilarious.

00:53:03.000 But like, we get, so Janet wants to meet you.

00:53:09.000 And so, we come to this mansion.

00:53:12.000 We're sitting with her manager at the time.

00:53:14.000 It was this great, big, hilarious dude.

00:53:16.000 And we're just chilling on the couch.

00:53:17.000 And all of a sudden, he looks up.

00:53:19.000 And all of a sudden, at the top of the stairway, a vision.

00:53:22.000 Janet Jackson, she's like in this beautiful, like, muumuu.

00:53:25.000 It's like, I don't know.

00:53:25.000 It's just like seeing, like, Nefertiti.

00:53:28.000 Like, fucking... 1.00

00:53:29.000 Royalty. 1.00

00:53:29.000 Like, Cleopatra appear. 1.00

00:53:31.000 We're just all just like...

00:53:32.000 There's like, you know, the angels are singing.

00:53:34.000 And she's beautiful.

00:53:35.000 And so, like...

00:53:35.000 And she, like, descends the staircase.

00:53:37.000 You know, we're just like...

00:53:39.000 This is incredible.

00:53:40.000 And she sits down and she is just like the sweetest, like most casual down-to-earth person.

00:53:48.000 And she goes into this story.

00:53:50.000 She's like, one morning my phone rings.

00:53:54.000 It's like...

00:53:56.000 It's 4 o'clock in the morning, and it's Jermaine Dupri, not Jackson.

00:54:01.000 She was dating Jermaine Dupri at the time.

00:54:03.000 And I said, baby, is everything okay?

00:54:05.000 He says, yes.

00:54:06.000 I'm coming over right now.

00:54:08.000 There's something you need to see.

00:54:10.000 And she goes, okay.

00:54:11.000 It's 4 o'clock in the morning.

00:54:13.000 Shows up at the door.

00:54:14.000 She's like, are you sure everything's okay?

00:54:15.000 Yes, everything's fine, baby.

00:54:17.000 You've got to watch this.

00:54:18.000 And he hands me a DVD-R written in Sharpie.

00:54:22.000 It says, Cocaine Cowboys.

00:54:29.000 And I'm like...

00:54:30.000 I'm like...

00:54:31.000 I'm with my producing partner, Alfred Spellman. 0.98

00:54:33.000 I'm just like, what the fuck is happening right now? 0.99

00:54:36.000 What the fuck is happening? 1.00

00:54:37.000 And she said... 1.00

00:54:39.000 And I watched it twice.

00:54:42.000 She put the DVD, the bootleg, into the DVD player at 4 o'clock in the morning.

00:54:46.000 And she watched Cooking Cowboys twice.

00:54:48.000 And she's like, you know, when we were growing up, my sister...

00:54:53.000 She was interested in love story and romance novels.

00:54:55.000 She's talking about LaToya right now.

00:54:57.000 We know too much about this family.

00:55:00.000 She goes, I loved mafia stories, crime stories, Scarface, Crime Incorporated, Al Capone.

00:55:09.000 That was my thing.

00:55:10.000 And so I loved it.

00:55:12.000 And she wanted to talk about Griselda Blanco, the godmother.

00:55:15.000 And I'm like, this is batshit crazy.

00:55:17.000 So she says, do you guys like sushi?

00:55:22.000 Alfred hates sushi.

00:55:24.000 He says, yeah, I like sushi.

00:55:28.000 She says, we should go to Nobu and have sushi next week.

00:55:33.000 He's like, ah, absolutely!

00:55:34.000 Love sushi!

00:55:35.000 And we went out with Janet Jackson to Nobu, and she's like, and we shared, it was surreal.

00:55:44.000 It was a weird, wild experience.

00:55:46.000 That's what happened with Tony Bourdain, is I don't drink beer.

00:55:50.000 I drink whiskey or gin.

00:55:52.000 And so we get a call from Tony.

00:55:53.000 Why so specific?

00:55:55.000 That's just what I like.

00:55:58.000 I'm agnostic when it comes to whiskey.

00:56:01.000 I like good whiskey, but any whiskey will do.

00:56:05.000 When it comes to gin, I'm a little bit more of a stickler.

00:56:08.000 Bad gin is a bad night and a worse morning.

00:56:11.000 But whiskey, I can drink all kinds of whiskey.

00:56:15.000 But gin, I'm very picky about.

00:56:17.000 But I don't drink beer.

00:56:19.000 And so Tony's producer calls and says, Tony would like to have a beer and stone crabs with you for the show.

00:56:28.000 I said, yes.

00:56:29.000 Yes.

00:56:30.000 You better believe I'm drinking beer.

00:56:32.000 Stone crabs go with beer, though.

00:56:34.000 Yeah, and we had a local brewed. 0.99

00:56:36.000 Miami, we don't make a lot of shit. 0.98

00:56:38.000 You go to Colorado, and I'm like, oh, I'm going to try some local whiskey. 0.99

00:56:43.000 And I'm like, which one of those is a Colorado?

00:56:46.000 And they're like, all of them.

00:56:48.000 They're all made.

00:56:48.000 Miami, we don't have, like, we make a rum, and now we have some micro brewers.

00:56:52.000 We don't make a lot of shit, you know? 0.95

00:56:55.000 So, we had a locally brewed beer and stone crabs at Captain Jim's for the show, and talked, and then they stopped shooting, and we just sat there for, like, another hour just chilling, because we didn't do much eating on camera, 0.99

00:57:10.000 and then just eating and talking, and it was unforgettable.

00:57:14.000 You have to know that Cocaine Cowboys is without doubt one of the top five greatest documentaries of all time.

00:57:22.000 There's no doubt.

00:57:23.000 That's very nice of you.

00:57:24.000 Thank you.

00:57:25.000 I've seen hundreds of documentaries.

00:57:27.000 I've never seen a documentary as many times in a row as I've seen Cocaine Cowboys.

00:57:32.000 You and Janet Jackson. 0.99

00:57:33.000 So many times I've had people over the house and I was like, dude, you gotta fucking watch this. 0.97

00:57:37.000 And just looking over at my friends 20 minutes in where they're like, Like, bro, it gets crazier. 0.97

00:57:42.000 It gets crazier.

00:57:43.000 And there's a part two.

00:57:44.000 It does.

00:57:44.000 You're right.

00:57:45.000 It does get crazier, actually.

00:57:46.000 Yeah, it really does.

00:57:47.000 And now, I guess we should talk about this. 0.97

00:57:49.000 We have a fucking whole series on Netflix now. 0.95

00:57:51.000 How many episodes is this? 0.99

00:57:52.000 Six.

00:57:53.000 I'm only two in.

00:57:54.000 I'm two in now. 0.99

00:57:55.000 But goddamn, it's good. 1.00

00:57:56.000 It's like all your shit, man. 1.00

00:57:57.000 It gets better. 1.00

00:57:58.000 I can only imagine. 0.98

00:58:00.000 It is fucking amazing how many insane stories have come out of this one part of the country. 0.96

00:58:09.000 And, you know, I had a buddy of mine. 0.97

00:58:10.000 I think I told you this.

00:58:11.000 My good friend Steve Graham did his residency.

00:58:15.000 He's an ophthalmologist.

00:58:16.000 He did his residency in Miami during the 80s, during the chaos days. 0.99

00:58:21.000 And he would, like, save Polaroids of, like, just some of the craziest shit. 0.98

00:58:27.000 Best place to ply your trade. 0.98

00:58:28.000 I mean, really, whatever business you were in, especially in those days.

00:58:31.000 You were in law enforcement, you were a lawyer, a prosecutor, a doctor, and you name it.

00:58:38.000 That was the place that you wanted.

00:58:39.000 A journalist, God knows, that was where you wanted to ply your trade.

00:58:42.000 I know a...

00:58:43.000 Pardon me, a guy was working as an ER doctor, Jackson, at the trauma center in 1980. The Mariel boatlift had just happened.

00:58:52.000 You remember, this is how Scarface opens.

00:58:54.000 Oh, okay.

00:58:55.000 Castro opens up the Mariel Harbor and sends, allows people to leave.

00:59:00.000 And he empties the prisons, the mental institutions, the hospitals, and just, he said, I flush the toilet of Cuba. 0.90

00:59:05.000 On to the United States.

00:59:06.000 And it created a real crisis.

00:59:07.000 I mean, four counties in South Florida nearly got bankrupt because you're absorbing 150 refugees, some small percentage of which are, you know, dangerous people. 1.00

00:59:16.000 And you don't know who they are.

00:59:19.000 Yeah, you can't weed them out.

00:59:21.000 But then you have to absorb the infirm and the sick and the young and people who don't have, you know, health care or housing or food.

00:59:28.000 And so Miami Beach looks a lot like...

00:59:32.000 Like Havana, like the seawall, you know, like the seawall and the malecone.

00:59:36.000 It's like, it's so a lot of, and at that time, it was just like it was in Scarface. 0.70

00:59:39.000 It was like, it was like 75% plus Jewish, a lot of Holocaust survivors, literally just God's waiting room, they called it, just playing out the rest of their lives.

00:59:49.000 Inefficiencies on Ocean Drive, flop houses that would like $125 a week.

00:59:55.000 Maybe.

00:59:55.000 That was high.

00:59:56.000 Like, that's what you could live in Miami Beach for.

00:59:58.000 So people on fixed incomes, you know, social security, elderly, retired.

01:00:02.000 And then it attracted a lot of the Marielitas, particularly the criminal element.

01:00:06.000 And there were places where, like, the Miami Beach Police Department would just literally just drive around the block because they'd keep getting calls to go to this.

01:00:12.000 Oh, this guy just got shot.

01:00:13.000 This guy just got stabbed. 1.00

01:00:14.000 And it was over dumb shit. 1.00

01:00:15.000 It was Wild West shit. 1.00

01:00:16.000 It was like over a Domino's game, you know? 1.00

01:00:18.000 And so one day, this trauma surgeon is working at the ER. And in comes a Mariel refugee with a gunshot wound.

01:00:27.000 And he says to the guy, he's bilingual, he says, tells him Spanish, he says, listen, you're very lucky.

01:00:31.000 He said, if you had been shot, you know, just millimeters this way, it would have hit a vital organ, you would have bled out, you would have been dead before you even got here.

01:00:41.000 Saves the guy, guy goes on his way.

01:00:44.000 Days later, he gets another guy, another patient, a Marial refugee, with a gunshot wound in exactly the same place he told the other guy.

01:00:53.000 That if he got shot there, he would die.

01:00:56.000 And this guy died.

01:00:57.000 And he could never prove it, but he always believed that that was a retaliation shooting for the first guy that he had in there.

01:01:03.000 But that happened... 0.99

01:01:04.000 People have stories like that for fucking days. 0.99

01:01:07.000 It was the number one mayor's jewelers in South Florida, number one seller of Rolex watches. 0.99

01:01:12.000 The Mutiny Hotel, which we talk about in several docs, which was the inspiration for the Babylon Club and Scarface.

01:01:18.000 They were the number one seller of Dom Perignon.

01:01:20.000 They had to, like, convert hotel rooms into refrigerated walk-in units for the Dom Perignon because they could not keep it in stock.

01:01:28.000 They also filled the tubs.

01:01:29.000 The Mutiny Girls would fill the tubs in the rooms with the Dom Perignon as well so they could bill the customers. 1.00

01:01:35.000 So that was part of where the supply was going.

01:01:38.000 But that was a different kind of party depending on what you were willing to pay.

01:01:40.000 But Miami is just one of those places.

01:01:42.000 In that era, you know, when it became America's Casablanca.

01:01:44.000 I mean, look, our number one in two industries at that time, still today, early 1980s Miami.

01:01:50.000 Number two was tourism, generating upwards of about $7 billion a year into the Miami-Dade economy.

01:01:57.000 Number one, I should say legitimate industry, was real estate, generating about $9 billion a year into the economy in Miami.

01:02:03.000 The drug trade at the time was estimated to bring in upwards of $12 billion a year into our local economy.

01:02:10.000 So what you're saying is our number one business...

01:02:13.000 Was an illicit trade, was the illegal drug trade, the money laundering.

01:02:16.000 And I will tell you, I believe it to be the only case study, I should say the only successful case study, of Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics.

01:02:25.000 It's the only time it worked was in the drug boom in Miami.

01:02:29.000 Because banditos rob a bank and they ride on into the next town, right?

01:02:33.000 And they spend their ill-gotten gains.

01:02:35.000 They stayed in Miami.

01:02:36.000 They kept that money in Miami.

01:02:39.000 So that trickled down from the kingpins to banks, into real estate, into people who were not in the illicit trade, but just...

01:02:48.000 I'll give you an example.

01:02:49.000 Somebody...

01:02:51.000 Yeah.

01:02:55.000 Yeah.

01:03:05.000 Really?

01:03:06.000 In Miami, we're all guilty by geography.

01:03:09.000 We're all complicit by just virtue of proximity to colorful characters.

01:03:14.000 Mark Rubin was like 14. He wasn't in the drug trade, but his brother-in-law was a major cocaine trafficker, and they lived in West Kendall in Miami-Dade, southwest Miami-Dade, in a cocaine stash house for a summer.

01:03:25.000 That's like a rite of passage, like a quinceanera or bar mitzvah.

01:03:28.000 In Miami, like, I spent the summer in my brother-in-law's cocaine stash house by Marco Rubio.

01:03:33.000 Must have made a really interesting paper for high school, what I did with my summer vacation.

01:03:38.000 But that's just like, that's Miami.

01:03:41.000 We're all touched by this.

01:03:42.000 And so let's say you say to your buddy, hey, listen, I want to come out and just help you unload a plane, right?

01:03:47.000 Grunt work, physical labor.

01:03:49.000 The guy says, I'll give you $10,000 to come out, cash, tax-free.

01:03:53.000 Come on.

01:03:53.000 So here's a guy, not really in the drug business, just comes out to do some manual labor, gets $10,000 cash.

01:03:58.000 This is a guy probably making in those days about $15,000 a year on the books.

01:04:03.000 Taxable income.

01:04:04.000 But he's getting $10,000, let's say once a month, cash in Miami.

01:04:09.000 So he's got $120,000 cash.

01:04:12.000 Where?

01:04:13.000 Stash somewhere?

01:04:13.000 Where do you even put it?

01:04:14.000 Cash became like a real liability because it was just, it's so bulky and annoying. 0.97

01:04:19.000 People are putting it in walls and burying it and banks are charging you a vig to deposit cash because they had no fucking place to put it.

01:04:27.000 And so, but you have $120,000 so people spent it.

01:04:30.000 It went into Everything and that was the thing if you weren't addicted to cocaine in Miami You were addicted to that that money and that's that's the legacy too is that Hustle is you know the tech hub hustle.

01:04:42.000 It's just the new cocaine.

01:04:43.000 It's just the new Hollywood East never happened It's just the new modern art hub never happened.

01:04:50.000 It's just it's a hustle We just we have to subsist that way because we don't have any other any other industry Well, it also it it's the center of flossing in the country Right?

01:05:00.000 If you think about people that are just driving Lamborghinis and wearing giant rope chains, you think about Miami.

01:05:07.000 The culture is so flashy.

01:05:10.000 Fake it to make it.

01:05:11.000 It's fake it to make it, but it's also people that have it and want you to know.

01:05:15.000 It's all those things, right?

01:05:17.000 Yeah, but that's like some nouveau riche business.

01:05:18.000 That's what I said.

01:05:19.000 People from money don't necessarily behave.

01:05:23.000 They usually don't want you to know that they have money.

01:05:25.000 It makes them vulnerable.

01:05:26.000 It makes them targets.

01:05:27.000 If you're rich, you don't tell people you're rich.

01:05:30.000 If you're smart, you don't tell people you're smart.

01:05:32.000 I knew this guy whose family was insanely wealth, like generational wealth, and they got mad at him when he bought a Porsche.

01:05:40.000 They got mad at him.

01:05:41.000 They're like, what are you driving? 1.00

01:05:42.000 What are you doing with this fucking thing? 0.99

01:05:44.000 He's like, it's a nice car. 1.00

01:05:45.000 They're like, you fucking idiot. 1.00

01:05:46.000 Like, they wanted to, like, everybody shut the fuck up, because they were billionaires. 1.00

01:05:50.000 They wanted to shut the fuck up. 0.99

01:05:51.000 I think about De Niro and Goodfellas when you say that. 0.98

01:05:53.000 Right, right. 1.00

01:05:54.000 The wife with the fucking, get that fucking, fucking take that back. 1.00

01:05:58.000 Yes, exactly. 1.00

01:06:00.000 Like, keep it on the DL, man.

01:06:02.000 But Miami is, like, just universally known for being, like, the flashiest place in the country.

01:06:08.000 I don't think there's a flashier place.

01:06:10.000 Hollywood is not as flashy as Miami.

01:06:12.000 Not even close.

01:06:13.000 No, it's like where people come from Hollywood also to be that ostentatious.

01:06:17.000 Yeah, to get crazy.

01:06:19.000 Yeah, it's a baller economy.

01:06:20.000 It's like that's, you know, that's what it is.

01:06:22.000 Someone told me there's more banks per capita in Miami than any other major metropolitan city.

01:06:27.000 That was definitely true at one time and we had probably more international branches, you know, like branches of foreign banks.

01:06:33.000 And that it was all about processing cocaine money.

01:06:35.000 That was the reason why there were so many banks there.

01:06:37.000 Yeah, I mean, listen, it's not a coincidence that we're now, like, a Bitcoin hub.

01:06:42.000 You know, like, I mean, it's like, I mean, Crypto Cowboys will probably be my next documentary at this rate.

01:06:47.000 I mean, like, seriously.

01:06:47.000 Like, listen...

01:06:52.000 I'm not saying people use Bitcoin to money launder.

01:06:54.000 I'm just saying they may use Bitcoin to money launder.

01:06:57.000 First of all, I don't even know why a decentralized currency needs a hub.

01:07:01.000 Isn't that the whole point?

01:07:02.000 Why does Miami have to be a crypto hub?

01:07:04.000 First of all, we don't have the electricity.

01:07:05.000 We don't have the power.

01:07:06.000 I guess you could use the nuclear power plant, which one of these days is going to melt down.

01:07:09.000 We have more incidents.

01:07:11.000 Oh, is it a bad power plant?

01:07:13.000 It's not.

01:07:14.000 And they forge documents.

01:07:16.000 We had alarms.

01:07:17.000 Oh, Jesus Christ.

01:07:19.000 If you're going to fake it until you make it at Turkey Point at the nuclear power plant, you've got problems.

01:07:24.000 Are you going to make nuclear cowboys? 0.76

01:07:26.000 Listen, I hope to live long enough to start growing a tail and the alligators don't start turning into Godzilla or whatever.

01:07:35.000 A lot of these older power plants, apparently, I'm not very knowledgeable about this, but when I talk to people that are physicists, they've said that nuclear power plants can be made today and be made far more efficiently, and they're actually very good for the environment in terms of what you put in versus what gets out,

01:07:56.000 but the older ones.

01:07:58.000 Like, when they made them in the 60s and the 70s, he's like, they're a real problem.

01:08:01.000 And we saw it with Fukushima. 0.99

01:08:04.000 Because when the backup generator went down, and they realized, oh, we're fucked. 0.96

01:08:08.000 Like, this thing's gonna melt down, and there's no way to stop it.

01:08:11.000 And now we have a perpetually contaminated area that will be like this way for eons.

01:08:18.000 And ours is on the water.

01:08:20.000 So is Fukushima. 1.00

01:08:22.000 It is like Godzilla shit. 0.99

01:08:24.000 There's actually this hilarious, terrible, I can't even call it a B movie, it's like a Z movie. 1.00

01:08:28.000 It was executive produced by some Colombian drug traffickers to launder their money through this movie.

01:08:34.000 It's called Island Claws.

01:08:36.000 And it's about a nuclear incident that creates these aggressive, gigantic crabs that are attacking South Florida.

01:08:45.000 And they shot it in Virginia.

01:08:48.000 They shot it all over Miami.

01:08:49.000 And that's the thing, too.

01:08:50.000 I'm not saying that everything in Miami is money laundering.

01:08:53.000 But everything in Miami is basically money laundering.

01:08:56.000 I mean, what else do we do there?

01:09:00.000 I mean, Willie and Sal, Los Muchachos, the boys from Cocaine Cowboys, the Kings of Miami, they helped to start a bank with some of their high school buddies from Miami High, appropriately Miami High.

01:09:11.000 They helped start a bank.

01:09:13.000 Expressly for the purpose of drug money laundering.

01:09:16.000 Sunshine State Bank.

01:09:18.000 It was a drug money laundering bank.

01:09:20.000 Everybody knew it.

01:09:21.000 It was founded by...

01:09:22.000 It was expressly for that purpose.

01:09:25.000 And they had a guy...

01:09:27.000 This is funny.

01:09:28.000 From a deleted scene.

01:09:30.000 They had a guy, an attorney, named Juan Acosta.

01:09:33.000 He was very popular, let's say, among Miami's nouveau riche of the late 70s and early 80s.

01:09:39.000 The sudden millionaires and billionaires that we had cropping up.

01:09:42.000 I mean, Willie and Sal were accused by the government of smuggling over 75 tons of cocaine worth over $2 billion, with a B. And that was only what the government thought they knew about.

01:09:52.000 So you can imagine.

01:09:53.000 Their co-conspirators said, one of them says in the documentary, I think it was more like 175 tons.

01:09:58.000 These guys spent $25 million on their defense in their first trial. 1.00

01:10:04.000 Holy shit. 0.99

01:10:05.000 Yeah, talk about a dream team. 1.00

01:10:07.000 They put OJ to shame.

01:10:09.000 Did they get off?

01:10:10.000 Well, you're on episode three.

01:10:13.000 You gotta get through episode three.

01:10:15.000 But these guys had this lawyer to set up their offshore companies to kind of conceal their ill-gotten gains.

01:10:22.000 Money laundering.

01:10:22.000 He would set up these foreign companies, particularly in Panama, which was at the time a drug trafficking and laundering friendly state.

01:10:31.000 In fact, we raided it because of that.

01:10:34.000 And so they needed a man on the ground in country to be on the corporate documents, right, as an officer, as their treasurer.

01:10:41.000 So this guy Guillermo Indara appears on all of these corporate documents as an officer in these shell companies for drug money laundering.

01:10:49.000 Then the United States of America goes and invades Panama.

01:10:53.000 We're good to go.

01:10:55.000 We're good to go.

01:11:14.000 Guillermo Indara, the drug money launderer, who was listed in the documents of all these cocaine traffickers, who was their money launderer in Panama.

01:11:26.000 The United States makes him the president of Panama.

01:11:28.000 That's a deleted scene, by the way, from our documentary.

01:11:31.000 Why?

01:11:32.000 Why'd you delete that?

01:11:33.000 If you go to Netflix's YouTube page, you can see it there.

01:11:37.000 Why'd you take that out? 0.99

01:11:39.000 Like I should have called I should have called this instead of Kings of Miami could all the cocaine Cowboys We've got hours of this shit.

01:11:45.000 I mean because like there's no and and All the crazy shit that's in the movie and some people listen I say that's tantamount to malpractice cutting Cutting that out of the documentary, but you just have to it's just time you just have to and you're crafting a thing listen the pressure of building a six-part You need, 0.94

01:12:03.000 listen, I'm always looking for the button, right?

01:12:05.000 I'm doing an interview with someone.

01:12:06.000 What's the last line, right?

01:12:08.000 You want to leave them on a high.

01:12:09.000 What's the last line?

01:12:11.000 What's the last line? 1.00

01:12:13.000 Here I need fucking, I need six of them. 0.99

01:12:15.000 Buttons, cliffhangers, some way to get people. 0.99

01:12:18.000 I take that seriously.

01:12:19.000 I think we've all seen documentary series.

01:12:22.000 That were eight hours or ten hours and should have been three.

01:12:25.000 Yeah, for sure.

01:12:27.000 The Cecil Hotel one that they did.

01:12:29.000 I'm not gonna name names.

01:12:30.000 Yeah, there's been a few of those where they go, oh, I see what you're doing here.

01:12:33.000 You got contracted to do four of these and you really should have done one.

01:12:37.000 Right.

01:12:37.000 And so they're being a little bit more, the buyers are being more vigilant about that.

01:12:41.000 Because there was a moment where it was like, because the first Cocaine Cowboys documentary was four hours long.

01:12:45.000 And then I had to...

01:12:47.000 God, you should go back to make it four hours again.

01:12:50.000 I did Cocaine Cowboys Reloaded in 2014, which is two and a half hours, if you've never seen that.

01:12:55.000 And it's 60% new material.

01:12:57.000 Have you ever thought about going back and making a director's cut with the four hours and doing it with Netflix or something along those lines?

01:13:04.000 It's basically what Reloaded is.

01:13:07.000 Yeah, because it also was structurally different.

01:13:09.000 I think we found a better way to build it.

01:13:11.000 But what's really weird about this is that Cooking Cowboys The Kings of Miami, we've been working on it for 12 years.

01:13:19.000 So basically when I first met you, I was already well underway on this project.

01:13:25.000 Because even though it's the fourth...

01:13:27.000 Release in the franchise, we'll call it.

01:13:30.000 It was the first story that we wanted to tell.

01:13:33.000 How many people do you have working for you on these things?

01:13:36.000 With you.

01:13:37.000 Like regular?

01:13:38.000 Producers, editors.

01:13:41.000 We're a boutique operation.

01:13:42.000 We make everything by hand. 0.99

01:13:46.000 My editors call me a frame fucker. 1.00

01:13:48.000 Like, they say, Billy, stop frame-fucking. 0.99

01:13:50.000 Because I'll watch every, and I'll be like, no, no, no. 0.98

01:13:52.000 Just, like, every little frame, you know?

01:13:54.000 That's why it's so good, though, man.

01:13:56.000 I have to think that that's why your work's so good.

01:13:59.000 Scrapes years off the end of my life.

01:14:01.000 I'm sure it does, man.

01:14:02.000 But I'm telling you, it's very, very appreciated on my end.

01:14:05.000 Thank you.

01:14:06.000 You can tell it's like you don't half-ass anything.

01:14:09.000 It's so compelling.

01:14:10.000 Your stuff is all so good.

01:14:12.000 Thank you.

01:14:12.000 It's this the ones I that I feel click like that I know are like gonna work because you don't always know you come in with the best of intentions and after you work on something for 12 years You can't see the forest for the trees.

01:14:22.000 I mean right You know and so you do your best and then you just you know send it out into the world and listen it's not up to me I always say the measure of a successful filmmaker It's not money or critical acclaim or awards.

01:14:35.000 It's that you get to work again.

01:14:36.000 So I serve at the pleasure of an audience.

01:14:40.000 And if we get the eyeballs, we get to make another one.

01:14:43.000 And so with this one, I just...

01:14:45.000 When they start to...

01:14:46.000 I know this sounds weird, but when they start to sing to me is when I know they work.

01:14:51.000 I think some of our best documentaries are musicals.

01:14:55.000 Like, they just...

01:14:56.000 They sing.

01:14:57.000 They just move.

01:14:58.000 So, my composer on this, Carlos Jose Alvarez, actually the...

01:15:03.000 The soundtrack drops on Spotify and all the streaming services, finally.

01:15:07.000 It's amazing.

01:15:08.000 And I said to him, I said, listen, I want it all rooted in Afro-Cuban beats and rhythms and salsa music.

01:15:14.000 Like, I don't care if it's a suspense scene or an action scene, I want it all to feel like, be unapologetically Miami, you know, and Cuban-American.

01:15:23.000 And just, I wanted to sweat that.

01:15:24.000 I said, I want you to picture this.

01:15:26.000 Somebody sitting in bed, You know, their feet.

01:15:29.000 And this is my feet. 0.99

01:15:29.000 I'm sitting in bed watching this documentary for fucking six hours. 0.99

01:15:33.000 There's four and a half hours. 0.99

01:15:34.000 Six parts.

01:15:35.000 I want their foot to be tapping the entire time.

01:15:39.000 Just keep time.

01:15:40.000 You know, just like keep the rhythm.

01:15:41.000 Like, let there be like...

01:15:42.000 And that's the thing.

01:15:43.000 Like, there's a show.

01:15:44.000 Like, you want there to be a rhythm and a cadence and you want the audience to fall into that, right?

01:15:50.000 I mean, I don't take the audience's time for granted.

01:15:53.000 We have a finite amount of time between now and the day we die.

01:15:56.000 If you're going to give me four and a half hours of that, I'm going to entertain you.

01:15:59.000 Yeah, there's going to be investigative journalism in there.

01:16:03.000 Sometimes we call our work, Buddy Todd calls it, a Trojan horse.

01:16:09.000 You know, you think it's one thing, but you're getting a little bit bonus.

01:16:14.000 You kind of tempt the audience with the sugar, and then you feed them some broccoli in there too.

01:16:20.000 Because I think that that's, as a documentary filmmaker, especially now, with the ubiquity, and there's so many documentaries, there's so much content.

01:16:28.000 This is the golden age of documentaries.

01:16:30.000 Golden age.

01:16:31.000 And like, it's just, it's amazing.

01:16:33.000 I'm not complaining, God knows.

01:16:34.000 But there's only so much time the audience has.

01:16:38.000 And why watch this and not this?

01:16:39.000 And why spend six parts on this and not ten parts on this?

01:16:42.000 And part of that decision making is, you know, they want to be...

01:16:46.000 They want to be entertained.

01:16:47.000 In this era, because there's so many documentaries, is it harder to get people to really zoom in on one?

01:16:57.000 Because there's so many choices, is it this thing where it's like, hey, hey, hey, over here, over here.

01:17:04.000 Is it more difficult?

01:17:06.000 Because when Cocaine Cowboys came out, there was nothing like it.

01:17:10.000 And I imagine, I mean, obviously it was traded around.

01:17:12.000 All my friends told everybody about it.

01:17:16.000 It became popular a lot through word of mouth, but there's so many documentaries now.

01:17:22.000 Is it more difficult to get attention now for something, for your work?

01:17:25.000 Or do you already have a certain amount of momentum because of the stuff that you've already done in the past? 0.89

01:17:32.000 Listen, if we had to break in now, it would be fucking impossible.

01:17:35.000 The fact that we've been doing this for 20 years, and we have... 0.92

01:17:39.000 What year did Cocaine Cowboys come out?

01:17:41.000 2006 on bootleg.

01:17:43.000 That was the bootleg release.

01:17:45.000 Yeah, that's where it blew up.

01:17:46.000 It blew up in the bootleg market.

01:17:48.000 Really?

01:17:49.000 Blew up.

01:17:49.000 Strip clubs, Walmart parking lots, the bootleg guy.

01:17:52.000 The flea market, the flea.

01:17:54.000 The Carroll City flea market.

01:17:55.000 People ripping you off helped you.

01:17:58.000 Huge.

01:17:59.000 Wow.

01:17:59.000 Huge.

01:18:00.000 It was viral before viral was a thing.

01:18:01.000 With Janet Jackson.

01:18:02.000 She got an R, right?

01:18:03.000 She got a DVD-R. That's how it went viral.

01:18:07.000 First and foremost, in the hip-hop community.

01:18:10.000 And barber shops, flea markets, and it blew up from there.

01:18:15.000 It was a bootleg phenomenon.

01:18:16.000 That's wild.

01:18:16.000 A bootleg phenomenon.

01:18:18.000 And we don't, to this day, some people thought we did it on purpose, which some hip-hop artists did.

01:18:22.000 That's like a street team kind of a thing. 0.99

01:18:24.000 Like, you know, sell the shit at the traffic lights, you know? 0.99

01:18:28.000 And we didn't. 1.00

01:18:29.000 I wish we had.

01:18:30.000 I wish I could say, like, we're that smart or clever at marketing.

01:18:33.000 But people thought we leaked it on purpose because it just blew up.

01:18:37.000 Wow.

01:18:38.000 Yeah, in the bootleg market.

01:18:39.000 And when was 2?

01:18:41.000 2 was 08. Oh, so quickly afterwards.

01:18:44.000 Yeah, it was like a direct to...

01:18:46.000 I was young.

01:18:46.000 I needed the money.

01:18:48.000 But it was still great, though.

01:18:50.000 It was still great.

01:18:51.000 But did you have so much stuff that you wanted to cover in one that you just included in two?

01:18:58.000 Oh, yeah.

01:18:59.000 There was tons of stuff.

01:18:59.000 And that was when...

01:19:01.000 Was that when Griselda was out?

01:19:04.000 Griselda was out.

01:19:05.000 She was released just before we finished the first one.

01:19:08.000 She's dead now, right?

01:19:08.000 She was killed in 2012. Does that give you a little relief?

01:19:11.000 Like, oh, she's not coming for me?

01:19:13.000 Not particularly.

01:19:14.000 I mean, she was chilling in Columbia.

01:19:17.000 Like, she was, you know, she was minding her own business for the most part.

01:19:20.000 And I think she was killed over new beef, not old beef. 0.67

01:19:23.000 Really?

01:19:23.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:19:24.000 New beef?

01:19:25.000 Yeah.

01:19:26.000 I mean, not really...

01:19:26.000 No idea why?

01:19:27.000 Not really new beef, per se, but she was out there in her community.

01:19:31.000 She went to church every day.

01:19:32.000 She went down to the old neighborhood where she grew up and would go to the butcher shop.

01:19:37.000 Talk about somebody who had it coming.

01:19:39.000 We all had it coming, Joe.

01:19:41.000 But that lady had it coming. 1.00

01:19:44.000 Like, Jesus.

01:19:45.000 If you believe in karma, and she was actually, you know, she was killed by a motorcycle assassin, which, you know, one guy in the front driving, one guy in the back with an automatic or semi-automatic weapon, and that was actually a methodology that she is credited with importing.

01:20:02.000 From Columbia to the United States.

01:20:03.000 Oh, wow.

01:20:04.000 That kind of helped turn Miami into that cocaine cowboy's Wild West time in the 80s.

01:20:09.000 You know what they say, live by the motorcycle assassin, die by the motorcycle assassin.

01:20:15.000 Yeah.

01:20:16.000 That lady's a particularly powerful example of what's possible when people start selling cocaine and making millions of dollars and develop that sort of psychopathic, murderous, you know, advancement at any cost mentality. 1.00

01:20:32.000 Well, you're also a woman in a cocaine cowboys, B-O-Y-S, in a hyper-masculine world. 0.98

01:20:41.000 And you're in a trade where it was a consignment business.

01:20:44.000 And back in Miami at that time, kilos were going for as much as $50,000.

01:20:50.000 So you give someone, you know, she's a wholesaler, gives you four kilos, says go out and...

01:20:57.000 Sell them.

01:20:57.000 And in two weeks, or how much time you need?

01:20:59.000 Two weeks?

01:21:00.000 Great.

01:21:00.000 Bring me back $200,000.

01:21:03.000 Well, for the end of those two weeks, they don't have your $200,000.

01:21:06.000 You don't file a lawsuit.

01:21:09.000 You have to...

01:21:10.000 You have to enforce your trade.

01:21:12.000 So she was known for being uniquely brutal in her enforcement. 0.98

01:21:18.000 And they credited her with upwards of 200 homicides between Miami, Columbia, New York, and California.

01:21:26.000 Jesus.

01:21:29.000 I guess, if you're a woman and they don't take you seriously, you have to be particularly ruthless. 0.99

01:21:35.000 She certainly was.

01:21:36.000 Yeah, and probably a little bit of getting high on her own supply there at the end. 0.88

01:21:41.000 It's a business that, if you're doing that, and it's so crazy in the first place that you're making so much money off of this illegal stuff that everybody wants.

01:21:50.000 I mean, it lends itself to sort of chaotic brutality.

01:21:53.000 And that's the reality.

01:21:54.000 Like, if you want to talk about the success of the war on drugs, I mean, now the drug is as ubiquitous, just as pure, if not more so, and cheaper than it ever was before.

01:22:03.000 And that's not because demand's down, it's because supply is ample.

01:22:06.000 And so, they always treated it like a real business.

01:22:10.000 I mean, like these guys in Kings of Miami, they called it the company.

01:22:15.000 You work for the company.

01:22:16.000 They had a headquarters.

01:22:17.000 They had an opera.

01:22:17.000 They had ledgers.

01:22:18.000 They had books. 1.00

01:22:19.000 They had records, which turned out to bite him in the ass in the end. 0.99

01:22:22.000 Spoiler alert. 0.99

01:22:22.000 No, you're not there yet. 0.99

01:22:24.000 But like meticulous records.

01:22:27.000 And they treated it like a Fortune 500 company.

01:22:30.000 They were CEOs of this multi-billion dollar multinational corporation.

01:22:35.000 Import, export.

01:22:36.000 Importing cocaine, exporting cash.

01:22:37.000 Has anybody done it where they've kind of stayed under the radar?

01:22:42.000 Like, has anybody ever done it successfully?

01:22:44.000 Where they made a shitload of money, but did it all wisely, lived small, and got the fuck out of Dodge?

01:22:51.000 Absolutely.

01:22:52.000 Happened in Columbia, happened in Miami, there are people who, but their careers were not long, and they were not as lucrative, because that's the thing that makes William Sal so unique, is that the average career I would guesstimate In the United States for a cocaine trafficker in that time period was not more than five years.

01:23:12.000 Slightly longer than an NFL player's career.

01:23:16.000 Three seasons.

01:23:17.000 Three and a half seasons.

01:23:20.000 Willie and Sal operated for like 20 years.

01:23:24.000 That's only going to end one way.

01:23:25.000 Dead or in prison.

01:23:27.000 That's it.

01:23:27.000 Or one of two ways, I should say.

01:23:29.000 Dead or in prison.

01:23:30.000 So there were people who operated.

01:23:33.000 For a few years.

01:23:34.000 For five years.

01:23:35.000 And then just got out.

01:23:36.000 And bought real estate.

01:23:37.000 Wow.

01:23:38.000 Got into legitimate businesses.

01:23:39.000 Some went to jail, but still came out with a little bit of that money to then reinvest in a Medicare fraud operation or some new business.

01:23:48.000 Bags of cash, do you think, are still buried in backyards all throughout Miami?

01:23:54.000 We keep pushing the urban development line in Miami-Dade County.

01:23:58.000 We keep slashing and burning the Everglades and poisoning our natural resources.

01:24:02.000 I don't know where all those people are going to live when we don't have clean water anymore.

01:24:04.000 Or Turkey Point goes belly up. 0.99

01:24:07.000 Or the floods fucking come. 0.99

01:24:08.000 Or your building just collapses in the middle of the night while you're sleeping. 0.99

01:24:11.000 Pythons run out of things to eat.

01:24:12.000 Absolutely. 1.00

01:24:13.000 Fucking iguanas. 1.00

01:24:13.000 These iguanas, it's like Jurassic fucking park. 1.00

01:24:15.000 I know, dude. 0.99

01:24:16.000 We've been following on the show.

01:24:18.000 There's all these shows where people hunt iguanas.

01:24:21.000 Yes, hunt them.

01:24:21.000 And they cook them.

01:24:23.000 Eat them.

01:24:23.000 Hunt them.

01:24:24.000 Kill them. 1.00

01:24:25.000 They're fucking, they are destroyed. 1.00

01:24:28.000 And they're huge. 1.00

01:24:29.000 Listen, they, and they burrow underneath.

01:24:32.000 Houses. 1.00

01:24:33.000 Cement, seawalls, and shit. 1.00

01:24:37.000 Collapses. 1.00

01:24:39.000 I'm not saying it was iguanas, but it was iguanas.

01:24:43.000 And they're scared and aggressive, and they're not native. 1.00

01:24:47.000 These are idiots who got them as pets and then released them, and they start mating with squirrels and raccoons and possums. 1.00

01:24:55.000 They're like raptors. 1.00

01:24:57.000 They're going to learn how to open doors, Joe. 0.99

01:24:59.000 They're going to learn how to fucking open doors like the raptors did. 0.99

01:25:01.000 We've been documenting all these YouTube channels where people hunt them with, like, bowfishing rigs, and they're killing these five-foot-long iguanas in residential areas. 0.99

01:25:13.000 My dad does it.

01:25:15.000 He lives on a canal with a pelican.

01:25:18.000 And you have to.

01:25:21.000 Does he eat them?

01:25:21.000 Does your dad eat them?

01:25:22.000 He does not eat them.

01:25:22.000 They're not kosher.

01:25:23.000 So my dad is not. 1.00

01:25:24.000 He's fucking with you. 0.99

01:25:26.000 No, he does not, because he doesn't cap, because they're on the, they usually roll into the canal. 0.99

01:25:30.000 He doesn't actually, because he goes over a fence, you know, like Lee Harvey Oswald style, you know, kind of like grassy knoll, I should say.

01:25:36.000 Right, right. 0.99

01:25:36.000 He fucking shoots the iguanas. 0.99

01:25:40.000 But they're scared, and like, sometimes they're not dead. 1.00

01:25:42.000 You know, they freeze.

01:25:44.000 Yeah, and they fall out of trees and hit people.

01:25:45.000 They fall out of trees and hit people.

01:25:48.000 Here's the thing.

01:25:48.000 Ugh.

01:25:49.000 They can thaw out.

01:25:51.000 And they're not dead. 0.98

01:25:53.000 They're not fucking dead. 0.98

01:25:55.000 Really? 0.99

01:25:55.000 They thaw out and they get up and run away. 0.99

01:25:58.000 So when it warms up?

01:26:00.000 Yes! 1.00

01:26:01.000 Dude, I'm not scared of a lot of shit. 0.99

01:26:04.000 You thought I was worried about Griselda Blanco. 0.99

01:26:06.000 I'm worried about the iguanas, Joe.

01:26:09.000 It's petrifying.

01:26:10.000 It's that bad?

01:26:11.000 It's petrifying.

01:26:12.000 And they're aggressive.

01:26:13.000 They don't know.

01:26:14.000 They just, like, come up to you.

01:26:15.000 They'll walk around.

01:26:16.000 I mean, like, they're just...

01:26:17.000 It's a problem.

01:26:20.000 And they burrow.

01:26:21.000 They burrow.

01:26:23.000 The burrowing thing's a real problem with houses.

01:26:25.000 I do know that.

01:26:26.000 Yeah.

01:26:27.000 Yeah.

01:26:27.000 It's not like buildings are just falling.

01:26:29.000 Oh, get this.

01:26:29.000 So, you saw episode two.

01:26:32.000 Cooking Cowboys.

01:26:32.000 Another deleted scene.

01:26:33.000 But this, we didn't know about this until it was, you know, literally too late.

01:26:39.000 Particularly for those 98 people who died at the Champlain Tower South.

01:26:42.000 Collapse in Surfside.

01:26:44.000 But Alexia Echevarria, she's the beautiful blonde. 1.00

01:26:47.000 She's known as the Cuban Barbie from the Real Housewives of Miami. 1.00

01:26:50.000 She's the guy that fell in love with Peggy Rosello, who is like the Henry Hill of their operation. 0.94

01:26:56.000 He was a 12-year-old kid who his older sister married Tabby Falcone, one of the boys.

01:27:02.000 So he's now family.

01:27:03.000 He's a brother-in-law of the kings of Miami, or the future kings of Miami.

01:27:07.000 He's the 12-year-old kid washing the cars and making more money on a weekend doing that than his dad.

01:27:13.000 You know, this hard-working, you know, Cuban exile.

01:27:16.000 But these kids surrounded by these, at the time, kind of lower-end drug dealers who were about to blow up, but giving them $100, $200 cash, you know, to wash a car.

01:27:25.000 And so he grows up steeped in that.

01:27:27.000 He has this sort of, like, you know, you grow up, Miami, like I said, we're guilty by geography.

01:27:31.000 If you grow up in that time and place, people were becoming millionaires overnight.

01:27:36.000 You must, like, that's the American dream to you.

01:27:38.000 You're like, oh, the streets are paved with gold.

01:27:39.000 This is the opportunity I'm talking about.

01:27:41.000 And there was kind of a warped idea, I think, of what all that was.

01:27:44.000 I'm not making excuses, but just Miami was a different, Miami is a different place, and it was a seriously different place back there.

01:27:52.000 Everybody was involved in this industry, or everybody knew someone who was involved in this industry, and in some way or another, everybody benefited from this industry.

01:27:59.000 And so Alexia... 0.97

01:28:00.000 Is at this club, Club New, 1987. It was one of the first big nightclubs, popular nightclubs in South Beach.

01:28:07.000 And she's there and Peggy wants to get with her.

01:28:12.000 Jose Canseco is in VIP. He wants to get with her because Miami.

01:28:15.000 That's like the most 1987 Miami thing you can imagine.

01:28:18.000 VIP at this nightclub and you're in a love triangle with a drug dealer and Jose Canseco.

01:28:22.000 She didn't know he was a drug dealer yet.

01:28:24.000 But they wind up, she winds up hooking up with Peggy. 1.00

01:28:27.000 And she starts hanging out for the first time at his apartment on the ocean.

01:28:32.000 Beautiful, like, blinged out place on the fifth floor of this luxury condo.

01:28:36.000 And they hang out at the beach and they're swimming and then they go to bed and in the middle of the night, two o'clock in the morning, he gets a call.

01:28:43.000 And he says, yo, I gotta split.

01:28:46.000 But you could stay here. 0.97

01:28:48.000 She thought for sure, he's got a wife, he's got a girlfriend, I'm not gonna fucking chill here with this guy. 1.00

01:28:53.000 Fuck this. 1.00

01:28:54.000 And so it turns out he had to go pick up a load. 1.00

01:28:56.000 They had a shipment of cocaine that was coming in.

01:28:58.000 She didn't know that.

01:28:59.000 But here's the thing, and this is not in the documentary.

01:29:02.000 That apartment was on the fifth floor of the Champlain Tower South.

01:29:07.000 And true to form, if you were building a luxury condo in the late 70s, early 80s, your market, in no small part, would have been to drug smugglers.

01:29:16.000 And so that's the apartment that they're hanging out.

01:29:19.000 And I realized when I was in Los Angeles delivering the series to Netflix, and the tragedy happened in Surfside, I was like, Champlain Tower South?

01:29:29.000 That sounds familiar to me.

01:29:31.000 And we looked it up and that's where, yeah, that's where, that was his love nest, his Miami, Peggy's Miami Beach love nest that he took Alexia to. 0.98

01:29:38.000 Damn, it all comes full circle. 0.99

01:29:40.000 It's crazy. 1.00

01:29:40.000 Just crazy. 1.00

01:29:42.000 It's such a wealth of stories in that area that you would almost think that some of it's fabricated, but if anything, it's underreported.

01:29:53.000 Listen, Florida is the grift that keeps on grifting.

01:29:56.000 I mean, it's just a never-end.

01:29:57.000 But you love it.

01:29:58.000 That's one of the things that I love about you.

01:30:00.000 When you talk about it, there's like a twinkle in your eye.

01:30:05.000 You know, a buddy of mine, Jim DeFede, who's in the documentary, he's the journalist that we interview.

01:30:10.000 He's the only guy that really covered these guys in an extensive way.

01:30:13.000 He didn't write a book about it, but he wrote, like, feature cover stories for the Miami New Times.

01:30:18.000 And it was the only way these guys...

01:30:20.000 To this day, there's not a book that you can go out and get to learn anything about these guys.

01:30:25.000 And so...

01:30:27.000 He said, listen, I'm always trying to push for accountability, for transparency, for better government, always trying to encourage people to vote better.

01:30:35.000 It's an uphill battle.

01:30:37.000 Florida today is the America of tomorrow.

01:30:39.000 But the reality is that...

01:30:43.000 I want there to be a better Florida.

01:30:45.000 I want to leave behind a better Florida than the one I was born in.

01:30:48.000 I don't even know if Florida's going to be intact.

01:30:51.000 It's going to be the same geological area than the one I was born in by the time I die.

01:30:55.000 But the reality is that, I remember Jim telling me one day, because he's a political reporter especially, he says, Billy, just remember, I think you're good.

01:31:17.000 I think you're good.

01:31:18.000 You're a guy who's sitting on a diamond mine that's a mile long.

01:31:21.000 Like, I don't think you have to worry.

01:31:23.000 You have a hammer, a chisel, like, how much work can you do?

01:31:26.000 There's so many stories.

01:31:28.000 I don't think that's an issue.

01:31:29.000 But do you think it's possible that the influx of people from New York that just wanted to get the fuck out of New York and moved to Florida and moved to a lot of other places, from a lot of other places, do you think in any way that might benefit Florida? 0.55

01:31:41.000 No. 0.65

01:31:44.000 No?

01:31:45.000 Short answer.

01:31:45.000 No.

01:31:46.000 I mean, there's more complicated...

01:31:47.000 Is it detrimental?

01:31:47.000 Yeah, and listen...

01:31:50.000 New Yorkers are never going to treat it as anything more than the sixth borough.

01:31:53.000 I mean, that's just how they look. 0.99

01:31:55.000 Like you said, you know, come for the fuckery. 0.99

01:31:58.000 Right. 0.99

01:31:58.000 You know, stay for the tax haven. 0.99

01:31:59.000 You know, stay for no state income tax.

01:32:02.000 Well, and the weather.

01:32:03.000 I mean, it's hurricane season right now.

01:32:04.000 I told you, it's flooding in the sun right now.

01:32:06.000 I mean, like, the weather, you know?

01:32:08.000 Yeah, but it's still, in the wintertime, it doesn't snow.

01:32:11.000 That's true. 0.87

01:32:11.000 If you grow up on the East Coast, that's the thing, is that every winter for four months, it sucks. 0.87

01:32:17.000 Right.

01:32:17.000 And I'll tell you, I actually like August in Miami better than I like August in New York, for example.

01:32:22.000 Right.

01:32:23.000 I actually, I do.

01:32:23.000 I like that tropical...

01:32:25.000 Yeah, it's nice.

01:32:25.000 I like that.

01:32:26.000 Yeah, I like the tropical depression.

01:32:27.000 The ocean's there, you get a breeze.

01:32:29.000 I like the rain.

01:32:29.000 I actually like...

01:32:31.000 It's cleansing.

01:32:32.000 Direct hit by...

01:32:33.000 Yeah.

01:32:33.000 You know what?

01:32:34.000 Honestly, as they all start moving in, I get a little bit of that Travis Vickle in the back of my head.

01:32:40.000 You know, someday rain's gonna come. 0.99

01:32:42.000 Wash all the scum away. 0.97

01:32:44.000 You know, like, get a little bit of that. 0.99

01:32:46.000 Because that's what's gonna happen.

01:32:46.000 One hurricane, and these people are gonna head.

01:32:49.000 Head for the hills.

01:32:50.000 You think so?

01:32:50.000 Oh, no doubt.

01:32:51.000 But the reality, listen, they want to be there for six months and a day.

01:32:54.000 Or however long you have to be there to establish residency and not pay state income tax.

01:32:59.000 That's why OJ came there.

01:33:00.000 That's why the Enron executives, you know, came there.

01:33:02.000 You can't take someone's house.

01:33:04.000 You know, like, that's what it is.

01:33:06.000 It's that kind of haven.

01:33:07.000 I'm always stunned that people move into those high rises.

01:33:10.000 Because I'm like, if you are in a hurricane and you're experiencing 100 plus mile an hour winds, I would imagine that 81st floor is the last place I'd want to be. 0.99

01:33:23.000 I'm going to say something that like, oh, I'm going to get shit for this. 0.97

01:33:28.000 Joe's like, oh, they're not going to give me shit for something I say this podcast. 0.99

01:33:33.000 They probably will too. 0.99

01:33:35.000 Yeah.

01:33:37.000 It's going to happen again.

01:33:39.000 Another building's gonna fall.

01:33:41.000 You think so?

01:33:42.000 It's inevitable.

01:33:43.000 Are there some buildings that are suspect?

01:33:44.000 Not only are there old buildings that are suspect, that are not being well-maintained, that have, like I said, water coming at them from literally everywhere.

01:33:55.000 But the...

01:33:58.000 Listen, we have like a...

01:34:00.000 We have a third world government and fourth world infrastructure in Miami.

01:34:04.000 I saw a video of a guy taking a boat under one of your bridges.

01:34:08.000 And he was filming the underside of the bridge, showing all the parts of the concrete that are collapsing.

01:34:14.000 And he's like, I literally am fucking terrified getting under this bridge right now.

01:34:18.000 I mean, imagine how you feel driving over it. 0.82

01:34:20.000 You don't even know.

01:34:21.000 I will tell you, you know, we had a...

01:34:23.000 I think something like...

01:34:27.000 Three or four of the deadliest infrastructure failures and collapses in the United States in the last ten years have happened in Miami-Dade County.

01:34:43.000 One county in the entire country has had the majority of deadly infrastructure failures and building collapses.

01:34:51.000 We had a bridge That they were stress testing.

01:34:56.000 They had traffic open underneath it while they were stress testing this brand new bridge.

01:35:04.000 It's called the FIU bridge collapse.

01:35:06.000 This very politically connected contractor did it. 1.00

01:35:11.000 Fucking thing collapsed. 1.00

01:35:12.000 Killed six people. 1.00

01:35:13.000 Oh, Jesus.

01:35:14.000 One construction worker and five people who were just at a red light in their car sitting under this bridge.

01:35:21.000 I will tell you now, that happened a few years ago.

01:35:24.000 To this day...

01:35:26.000 Boom.

01:35:26.000 To this day...

01:35:28.000 I don't like to stop under, like, overpasses or bridges in Miami.

01:35:33.000 That guy.

01:35:33.000 That's a lucky...

01:35:35.000 Yeah.

01:35:35.000 Can you imagine?

01:35:36.000 That's the luckiest guy.

01:35:37.000 The luckiest driver that day.

01:35:39.000 And did they find out what... 0.96

01:35:40.000 I mean, if it's a brand new bridge, it's just built shitty? 0.60

01:35:43.000 There was design flaws, but they knew a week ahead there were cracks in the foundation.

01:35:47.000 There's emails, photographs, voice messages about it, and so they knew that it was fundamentally flawed, but then the kicker is that...

01:35:58.000 They're doing a stress test on the bridge.

01:36:01.000 Nobody shut down traffic.

01:36:03.000 And this is a major thoroughfare.

01:36:04.000 It goes by Florida National University.

01:36:06.000 Huge public school.

01:36:07.000 How do they do a stress test?

01:36:08.000 Is it like weight?

01:36:08.000 I don't know.

01:36:10.000 But they're pulling on core.

01:36:13.000 And needless to say, if someone said to you, Hey Joe, we're doing a stress test.

01:36:18.000 You want to stand under the bridge?

01:36:21.000 Just like Ivermectin, just say nay. 0.98

01:36:25.000 See what I did there? 1.00

01:36:26.000 Netflix publicist is like, Billy, shut the fuck up. 1.00

01:36:31.000 Six people crushed to death. 0.99

01:36:35.000 Nobody held responsible.

01:36:37.000 Nobody held accountable.

01:36:39.000 Why?

01:36:40.000 Because the mayor, Carlos Jimenez, now Congressman Carlos Jimenez, his wife's cousin, It owns the company, that's the contractor.

01:36:49.000 It employed both of his sons at various times.

01:36:53.000 Marco Rubio is a major benefactor, or I should say beneficiary.

01:36:58.000 Rick Scott, what happened was while bodies were still trapped in the rubble, You had Marco Rubio, the senator from the state of Florida, working as their public crisis manager.

01:37:09.000 Like, doing press saying, like, this is a good company, these are good, you know, good God-fearing Republicans.

01:37:15.000 And our mayor, our county mayor at the time, Carlos Jimenez, calling, who was on a junket in Hong Kong, calling in saying, it couldn't have been MCM, it couldn't have been these people.

01:37:26.000 These people just got a $70 million contract at the Miami International Airport, a new one.

01:37:30.000 Oh, Jesus.

01:37:32.000 So no punishment.

01:37:35.000 The bridges you're talking about?

01:37:36.000 Yeah.

01:37:36.000 They have contracts for the water and sewer in Miami-Dade to work on some of those bridges that the guy was concerned about.

01:37:43.000 If you watch the video, see if you can find a video of eroding Miami Bridge.

01:37:50.000 It's so bad.

01:37:52.000 When this guy's going under it, you're seeing holes in the concrete. 0.99

01:37:55.000 He's like, look at this shit. 1.00

01:37:56.000 Look at this shit. 1.00

01:37:57.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:37:58.000 But that's all over the place. 0.98

01:37:59.000 And people, after Champlain Towers, people started sending me shit like they're underground. 0.99

01:38:06.000 That's the thing. 0.99

01:38:07.000 In certain developments, particularly on the beach, you have a finite amount of real estate.

01:38:11.000 So one of the best designs to maximize the property is to build the parking structure underneath the building, basically.

01:38:19.000 But you can't go underground because we don't have an underground.

01:38:23.000 We're basically two feet above sea level, barely.

01:38:26.000 So they build these parking structures.

01:38:28.000 They build these pool kind of platforms where the pool is.

01:38:32.000 And then you have buildings on top of that that are being somewhat supported by these tenuous structures.

01:38:37.000 Somewhat is a good word. 0.96

01:38:38.000 And a lot of the new construction, which technologically speaking and design speaking, we are better at it.

01:38:44.000 But the problem is, is that when you have third world government and fourth world infrastructure, there's corner cutting.

01:38:53.000 And it's who's my cousin or who's my uncle and...

01:38:56.000 It's really that bad in terms of the government down there?

01:38:58.000 It's really that bad.

01:39:01.000 If people think I'm being hyperbolic, then why are buildings collapsing?

01:39:05.000 Yeah, they're not really collapsing like that anywhere else.

01:39:08.000 We had someone die in a ferry accident.

01:39:12.000 Their car drove off like a ferry and died. 0.99

01:39:17.000 What first world country does shit like that happen in? 0.99

01:39:20.000 It happens in, you know what they say, the great thing about Miami is it's so close to the United States. 0.99

01:39:25.000 Well, it is like a foreign country. 0.94

01:39:28.000 I mean, it is.

01:39:29.000 But when you say that Miami is like the rest of the United States in the future, what else do you mean other than the problem with climate control?

01:39:39.000 Well, first and foremost, I mean the separation between the haves and the have-nots.

01:39:43.000 I mean, Miami has, maybe second only to the San Francisco metro area, it is one of the greatest income and wealth gaps in the country.

01:39:55.000 We'll see swamp favelas in our lifetime.

01:39:57.000 You know, we'll see people who are in the service trade in Miami but can't afford the cost of living.

01:40:02.000 In fact, the United Way has an Alice report where they say 60%, nearly 60%, like 59% and change, of Miami-Dade County residents cannot afford To live in Miami-Dade County and most of those people have at least one job so these are not this is the working poor people with one two three four jobs who cannot afford the cost of living the education the transportation in Miami-Dade that's the first thing is that that is the wealth gap in the income gap and that is going to become ubiquitous I think nationwide certainly

01:40:33.000 the challenges of of sea level rise and climate change and climate change gentrification I think also though The way the government works this sort of the kleptocracy It used to be a narco kleptocracy like Venezuela now. 0.98

01:40:49.000 It's just a kleptocracy where a group of very rich very influential private business people Essentially run cronies Into and that's gonna be that's and all of this is being exacerbated by the pandemic because you got a bunch of people sitting at school board meetings going why the fuck do I need to put up with this shit and I'm just here to try to help kids. 0.97

01:41:14.000 Like, I don't need to put up with this. 1.00

01:41:15.000 Fuck this. 1.00

01:41:16.000 Who's going to take their place? 1.00

01:41:19.000 The crazy people yelling at the microphone at them are going to become the next school board members.

01:41:24.000 And this is what we've seen in Florida. 0.55

01:41:27.000 It's a plan to privatize, subsidize, brutalize.

01:41:32.000 So first you privatize bridges, industries, highways, schools with charter schools and private schools.

01:41:38.000 You subsidize them with tax dollars.

01:41:40.000 And when I say brutalize, I mean that because they're private entities, they may not be subject to the sunshine laws, public records laws, accountability and transparency that a public institution is supposed to follow.

01:41:54.000 So you don't even know.

01:41:55.000 We have charter schools.

01:41:56.000 We're like one of the number one charter school districts.

01:41:58.000 We're good to go.

01:42:17.000 He works for the largest charter school company in the state of Florida.

01:42:20.000 So what do you think he's doing about public education?

01:42:23.000 He's misappropriating our tax dollars into his boss's hands.

01:42:28.000 That's literally what he's doing every legislative session.

01:42:31.000 And we let this happen.

01:42:33.000 The mayor of Miami.

01:42:34.000 He is the mayor.

01:42:36.000 He has two private sector jobs, dude.

01:42:39.000 What?

01:42:40.000 Yes, it's unethical, but it's legal!

01:42:44.000 It's fine.

01:42:44.000 This is what legislators...

01:42:47.000 While he's the mayor, he's allowed to keep two private sector jobs?

01:42:50.000 One of which is a private equity firm.

01:42:55.000 For whom a lot of the client...

01:42:56.000 And the other one is a law firm.

01:43:00.000 He's a lobbyist, effectively, with a major cryptocurrency, digital asset, and blockchain practice, which is where a lot of the money is coming from.

01:43:09.000 The new new rich money is coming from in Miami.

01:43:13.000 So he has two private sector jobs.

01:43:17.000 Working for the richest people in town while he's the mayor of one of the poorest cities in America.

01:43:23.000 And here's the rub.

01:43:25.000 Because he's an attorney, he claims that his client list is privileged.

01:43:30.000 It's attorney-client privilege, which means that he has a secret client list, which it could be a minefield of conflicts of interest with his public position as mayor, but we're not allowed to know what they are.

01:43:40.000 Just trust me, there's no conflicts.

01:43:42.000 And of course there's conflicts, because I see him go out every day.

01:43:47.000 As a cheerleader for some of the...

01:43:49.000 Lobbying for some of the richest, most powerful people in town.

01:43:53.000 Selling out his constituents.

01:43:55.000 At the expense of his constituents.

01:43:58.000 The guys raised $4 million to run for re-election unopposed in a city of 450,000 people.

01:44:06.000 What does he need for...

01:44:07.000 Yeah.

01:44:08.000 $4 million.

01:44:09.000 Yeah.

01:44:10.000 And that's where his power lies, by the way.

01:44:11.000 By charter, he doesn't really have a lot of power.

01:44:13.000 Mayor Postalita, Francis Suarez, he doesn't have a lot of power, but he...

01:44:18.000 What's Postalita mean?

01:44:20.000 My Cuban friends will know what that means.

01:44:21.000 It's like a poser, a faker.

01:44:23.000 A postcard.

01:44:24.000 A guy who gives the veneer of one thing, but is actually another one.

01:44:27.000 He is actually... 0.89

01:44:28.000 He's a con man, is what he is. 0.98

01:44:30.000 But that's what Miami is. 0.99

01:44:32.000 He's a...

01:44:33.000 By charter, he's a mascot in the...

01:44:37.000 Head coach's office with his feet on the desk.

01:44:40.000 But where he yields the influence and the power is through that money.

01:44:43.000 It's through his private sector, his fundraising and his private sector gigs.

01:44:46.000 That's where he can start to influence what's happening in town.

01:44:50.000 And it is not for the better.

01:44:52.000 It is not.

01:44:53.000 It has been terribly damaging to the people of that city and that county.

01:44:58.000 And that's our biggest...

01:44:59.000 People say, well, how do you fix it?

01:45:01.000 Vote for, vote better.

01:45:02.000 Just vote better.

01:45:03.000 Is there any bright lights on the horizon in that whole area?

01:45:08.000 I mean, is any of this, like, newfound capital, newfound people immigrating, I won't say immigrating to Miami, moving to Miami, is any of it beneficial?

01:45:20.000 None of us like taxes, but we all, we pay them.

01:45:23.000 We do our part.

01:45:26.000 Theoretically, it's supposed to help our community.

01:45:28.000 It's supposed to uplift the country.

01:45:32.000 If you're moving to a place, because ultimately you want to avoid paying taxes, You're not necessarily going to have the interest of community in mind.

01:45:44.000 So we're not necessarily seeing people who are interested in investing in Miami in a way that's going to be productive for the people there now.

01:45:53.000 What it's going to do is it's going to make it more expensive for the people who live there.

01:45:56.000 They're going to have to...

01:45:59.000 Move away. 0.91

01:46:00.000 I don't know who is going to wind up being...

01:46:02.000 Again, that's why I say we wind up with swamp favelas.

01:46:04.000 Tent cities and things where people are stealing electricity and water.

01:46:10.000 We're already seeing it.

01:46:11.000 Downtown Miami, everybody complains about L.A. Same thing in Miami.

01:46:16.000 Under the overpasses, the tent cities, we have entire blocks and stretches in and around downtown Miami of tent cities.

01:46:22.000 The homelessness problem is a serious problem.

01:46:26.000 Basically, what they're starting to do is just kind of like Do sweeps?

01:46:29.000 There's no place to really put them, necessarily.

01:46:32.000 10 cities are a problem in every single city of the country.

01:46:34.000 100%.

01:46:35.000 Even in Hawaii.

01:46:36.000 Yeah.

01:46:36.000 It's a strange thing when you think about, this didn't exist a decade ago at all, and now it's overrunning cities.

01:46:44.000 I think they existed.

01:46:46.000 I think there wasn't as many people and they weren't necessarily in as high-profile location.

01:46:52.000 I can't remember any tents in California more than a decade ago.

01:46:57.000 If you go back two decades ago, I definitely can't remember them.

01:46:59.000 I don't think they existed.

01:47:01.000 I don't think what happened, but my concern is that no one seems to have a fix for it.

01:47:06.000 I mean, Austin has done a good job recently of getting them off of some of the major cities and then moving them into hotels and they've purchased hotels and motels for these folks.

01:47:18.000 But, I mean, when you're dealing with a place like Austin, you're only dealing with a million people and a couple thousand homeless people.

01:47:24.000 When you're dealing with something like Miami or Los Angeles or San Francisco, you're dealing with staggering numbers.

01:47:29.000 I don't think anybody's fixed it.

01:47:31.000 And there's very little incentives to create affordable housing or to do what they've done here, which is to buy up properties and start to provide housing for people.

01:47:40.000 There's very little incentive for it.

01:47:42.000 Listen, we're a community with a...

01:47:44.000 With a transient population and a lack of institutional memory.

01:47:47.000 And the pandemic is actually, remarkably, the pandemic helped Miami skip a bust cycle.

01:47:54.000 We exist in these booms and bust cycles.

01:47:57.000 We were on the real estate property values.

01:48:00.000 We were on a downturn. 1.00

01:48:01.000 Shit was going to collapse probably in 2020 or 2021. The pandemic saved Miami. 1.00

01:48:07.000 It spared us that real heavy bus cycle.

01:48:10.000 Instead, houses are more expensive than they ever were before.

01:48:14.000 Demand is through the roof.

01:48:15.000 It just makes it unaffordable, of course, for any of us who already live there.

01:48:19.000 But it somehow spared us, amazingly.

01:48:21.000 This tragedy has been like a boom for When you get caught in a hurricane, like if you know a hurricane's coming, where do you go?

01:48:30.000 Do you fly out of town a week in advance?

01:48:33.000 Like what do you do?

01:48:33.000 It depends on the course of the storm.

01:48:35.000 The last big one for us, I think it was Hurricane Irma.

01:48:40.000 What was that, back in like 2017?

01:48:44.000 I went to...

01:48:48.000 Nashville.

01:48:49.000 It seemed far enough out of the cone.

01:48:51.000 Did it work?

01:48:52.000 It worked.

01:48:52.000 We had a little rain at the end, but it was just rain.

01:48:55.000 Did you get a hotel room?

01:48:56.000 Got an Airbnb.

01:48:57.000 Ralphie May.

01:48:58.000 May he rest in peace.

01:49:01.000 Ralphie, he had this cold.

01:49:04.000 He just couldn't kick.

01:49:05.000 That's what he told me when I was there.

01:49:08.000 He wanted me to stay with his house.

01:49:11.000 In his house.

01:49:12.000 He's like, come, bring the whole family.

01:49:13.000 So this was before he was, right when he was dying.

01:49:15.000 This was like weeks, maybe weeks before.

01:49:19.000 And so he says, come and stay at my house.

01:49:22.000 I think he had like empty nest.

01:49:24.000 He's like, I got this great big house and just come.

01:49:26.000 I'm like, I'm not going to put you out.

01:49:28.000 I'm like, bring, you know, like, Take over his house, like, you know.

01:49:31.000 But he was just like, he was like, so sweet.

01:49:33.000 And he's like, well, you gotta come out to my show.

01:49:35.000 He did like a weekly thing, like on a weekday, like a Tuesday at the comedy club there.

01:49:41.000 Oh, God, I wish I could remember what it was called.

01:49:42.000 Zanies. 1.00

01:49:43.000 Zanies. 1.00

01:49:44.000 Yeah.

01:49:44.000 It's like a weekday thing.

01:49:45.000 Like off night, right?

01:49:46.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:49:47.000 Fucking packed for him. 1.00

01:49:50.000 Yeah, of course. 1.00

01:49:50.000 He just comes and packed. 1.00

01:49:53.000 And he, um...

01:49:56.000 He sits up there for like three hours, like he's just riffing and like...

01:50:01.000 There was a lot of hurricane refugees there, so he was like doing crowd work with the...

01:50:05.000 I mean, it was just buying people drinks.

01:50:07.000 It was just like, it was amazing.

01:50:09.000 And you could tell he was like, he had sniffle, like there was something not 100, but he was hilarious. 0.98

01:50:14.000 And he was hilarious for like three fucking hours. 0.98

01:50:16.000 He was hilarious. 0.98

01:50:17.000 And then I go backstage afterwards and he was like, come out with me.

01:50:24.000 Come out with me.

01:50:26.000 We're going out.

01:50:27.000 We're going out.

01:50:28.000 I was like, how are you feeling?

01:50:29.000 He's like, I'm not feeling great.

01:50:30.000 But we're going out.

01:50:31.000 And I was like, my girl was like, he doesn't seem like, I don't want you to catch something, you know, like get a cold.

01:50:39.000 And I was like, all right, I can't make up.

01:50:41.000 But we had like a brunch date for Sunday.

01:50:43.000 We're like, let's have brunch.

01:50:44.000 She's like, oh, I know this place.

01:50:44.000 We got to go have brunch at this place on Sunday.

01:50:46.000 So let's do it.

01:50:48.000 So...

01:50:50.000 He calls me up the neck.

01:50:51.000 He goes, I'm not feeling brunch.

01:50:53.000 I'm not feeling well.

01:50:54.000 And I said, you know, and then we left and I was on a plane and I was landing and my phone was off.

01:51:05.000 My phone on.

01:51:06.000 A couple weeks, you know, a few weeks later, whenever it was.

01:51:08.000 And he was gone.

01:51:09.000 And I just sat on the plane crying on the tarmac at MIA. And I just was like, and I regretted not going out.

01:51:18.000 I regretted not going out with him that night. 0.98

01:51:20.000 It would have been worth getting a little cold or whatever the fuck it was. 0.98

01:51:24.000 But, you know, yeah. 0.98

01:51:26.000 Or the Corrogan, the Corrogan virus.

01:51:31.000 Give it back to Florida, baby. 1.00

01:51:32.000 Give it back to Florida. 0.64

01:51:35.000 I'll go right to Orlando. 1.00

01:51:36.000 Fuck them in Central Florida. 1.00

01:51:38.000 I wonder where I got it. 1.00

01:51:40.000 You know, the problem is I'm doing these arena shows, so I'm in the round, and I get off stage, and I've got to go through thousands of people screaming at me and high-fiving.

01:51:52.000 Well, at least they're wearing masks.

01:51:54.000 Oh, no.

01:51:55.000 I was just kidding.

01:51:55.000 You're joking.

01:51:57.000 There's none of that.

01:51:58.000 And then we were drunk, and then we stayed out late.

01:52:01.000 There's a lot of factors that lead to- Pandemic drinking!

01:52:04.000 So the only place I pandemic drink now- Oh man, I'm not gonna blow my spot.

01:52:11.000 It's outside, but it's a classic Keys kind of bar.

01:52:16.000 There is no inside.

01:52:18.000 It's entirely outside.

01:52:19.000 And it's just like, it's the perfect, like I've only had meetings, like I had meetings there during the pandemic.

01:52:24.000 It was like the perfect spot to go and, because you get reckless.

01:52:28.000 You get irresponsible.

01:52:29.000 You don't make, nobody says, oh, I'm going to have whiskey and make responsible decisions.

01:52:33.000 Like that's not, so like, especially now, it's just like, you know.

01:52:37.000 Avoid crowds.

01:52:38.000 Right, or avoid, like I just try to, especially if you're going to drink.

01:52:42.000 Yeah, there's some value in getting it, though, and getting over it, because obviously the natural immunity is pretty substantial.

01:52:53.000 Like, if you can get over it, catch COVID and survive and get over it.

01:52:57.000 I'm not advocating that anybody do that, but they say that.

01:53:01.000 But I just got over it.

01:53:03.000 It wasn't that bad with good treatment.

01:53:05.000 Like, for me, it wasn't.

01:53:07.000 Right.

01:53:07.000 Your experience is, you know, is your experience.

01:53:10.000 Yes.

01:53:10.000 And no one can begrudge you that.

01:53:12.000 And I said, like, if your doctor has shit to throw at it, fucking throw at it. 1.00

01:53:17.000 Like, absolutely. 1.00

01:53:18.000 Your doctor says, listen, take this as prescribed, and it will help these symptoms, or it'll help the virus. 0.78

01:53:23.000 Abso-fucking- My fear is that these variants are going to continue to get more and more aggressive, and we're going to be dealing with something completely different three years from now, two years from now. 0.89

01:53:34.000 And more of them can happen. 0.98

01:53:36.000 I had a meeting once with the CDC in Galveston.

01:53:40.000 We did a show down there, and me and Duncan were talking to this guy, and we were talking essentially about bioweapons, about someone making a disease.

01:53:50.000 And he said, that's a concern.

01:53:51.000 He said, but that's not my concern.

01:53:53.000 He goes, my concern is nature.

01:53:55.000 My concern is that something jumps from livestock to human beings and just runs right through us.

01:54:01.000 And he goes, and it's going to happen.

01:54:03.000 But then the misinformation.

01:54:06.000 You know, the Russians have been working on anti-vax stuff for decades because it's bipartisan.

01:54:12.000 It's very effective.

01:54:14.000 When you say the Russians have been working on anti-vax stuff, you mean like anti-vax information propaganda on the internet?

01:54:20.000 Absolutely.

01:54:21.000 The psyops and influencing kind of campaigns.

01:54:24.000 What have you seen that they've done? 1.00

01:54:26.000 It's a social media shit. 1.00

01:54:27.000 That's all. 1.00

01:54:28.000 They promote pages and they promote information because it's bipartisan.

01:54:34.000 There's people who...

01:54:35.000 They seem to promote anything that gets attention. 1.00

01:54:39.000 Anything that divides Americans and gets us at each other's fucking throats. 0.99

01:54:43.000 Have you ever seen that? 0.99

01:54:45.000 There's an interview from 1985. 85, 86 is a KGB agent and he's breaking down how you destroy America and he's saying you don't destroy America with weapons he goes you destroy it by slowly enforcing propaganda and getting the students to first of all getting them to endorse Marxist principles and ideology and I

01:55:28.000 mean, you're like, holy fuck, that's exactly what happened. 0.54

01:55:34.000 Did they engineer this? 1.00

01:55:37.000 Did they engineer the collapse of our higher learning institutions?

01:55:41.000 We already had two countries. 0.99

01:55:43.000 We fought a whole fucking war over it with each other. 0.99

01:55:45.000 We already had two countries. 0.99

01:55:47.000 So we were already...

01:55:50.000 Coexisting here.

01:55:51.000 So all you had to do was attack that rift.

01:55:55.000 That's what you had to do.

01:55:58.000 Florida.

01:55:58.000 There's two Floridas.

01:55:59.000 The I-4 corridor where you were in Orlando.

01:56:02.000 There's North Florida and there's South Florida.

01:56:04.000 What's the difference?

01:56:05.000 Well, it used to be.

01:56:07.000 It's not quite true.

01:56:08.000 Back when we were considered a purple state.

01:56:09.000 We're a red state now. 0.99

01:56:11.000 But, you know, it used to be, you know, Florida was like America's Red penis with a blue foreskin that everybody wished we could circumcise. 0.99

01:56:19.000 And we could just have two... 0.97

01:56:20.000 North Florida and South Florida.

01:56:22.000 And most of the revenue-generating locations are obviously South.

01:56:28.000 They were the bluer places.

01:56:30.000 Not so blue anymore.

01:56:31.000 But it was two Floridas.

01:56:33.000 Florida, we still have bars.

01:56:37.000 Not stars, but bars on our state...

01:56:40.000 We were...

01:56:41.000 Miami was Jim Crow South. 0.94

01:56:43.000 What do you mean by bars in your state flag?

01:56:45.000 As in stars and bars, as in the Confederate flag.

01:56:47.000 What I'm saying, we were a Southern state.

01:56:50.000 You have that now?

01:56:51.000 Yeah, it's...

01:56:52.000 Well, what I'm saying is it's evocative.

01:56:54.000 It's not directly...

01:56:54.000 It's not stars and bars, but I mean, it does have...

01:56:58.000 What is the...

01:56:59.000 Pull up the Florida flag.

01:57:00.000 What I'm saying is the design is...

01:57:01.000 It's not...

01:57:02.000 I'm not saying it's the Confederate flag.

01:57:04.000 What I'm saying is it's evocative because we were a southern state.

01:57:08.000 Miami Beach had Jim Crow laws. 0.74

01:57:09.000 Black people could not be in Miami Beach. 1.00

01:57:12.000 That's the Florida flag? 1.00

01:57:13.000 Yeah.

01:57:14.000 Wow.

01:57:15.000 Yeah.

01:57:16.000 That looks remarkably like the Confederate flag.

01:57:18.000 It's evocative.

01:57:18.000 Listen, it's a southern state.

01:57:20.000 What I'm saying is that's...

01:57:21.000 That's crazy.

01:57:22.000 That's the reality.

01:57:22.000 I did not know that.

01:57:23.000 It's the reality.

01:57:23.000 I didn't know what...

01:57:24.000 I had no idea what the Florida flag looked like.

01:57:27.000 No one really knows with these.

01:57:28.000 I think that's the first time I've seen it.

01:57:28.000 Yeah, no one really knows with these.

01:57:30.000 You probably figured there's, you know...

01:57:31.000 Mickey Mouse and a manatee.

01:57:33.000 That's kind of crazy.

01:57:34.000 Now, pull up a Confederate flag.

01:57:36.000 Pull up in comparison, Jamie.

01:57:38.000 It's not that similar.

01:57:41.000 But the point is, it's not a coincidence, that's all I'm saying.

01:57:44.000 That's all I'm saying.

01:57:45.000 It's evocative.

01:57:46.000 And people, up until the 60s, even into the 70s, black people could not be in the city of Miami Beach after dark.

01:57:56.000 Whoa.

01:57:56.000 Unless you worked there and if you did you had to go to the police department and get an ID badge.

01:58:00.000 They literally took your fingerprints and you had to be tagged. 0.99

01:58:03.000 You had to have a fucking number. 0.99

01:58:04.000 So Muhammad Ali could fight in Miami Beach. 1.00

01:58:07.000 He could not stay in Miami Beach.

01:58:09.000 Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., they could perform in Miami Beach.

01:58:14.000 Even at the hotels, but they could not stay in Miami Beach.

01:58:32.000 We had a black beach in Virginia Key. 0.98

01:58:43.000 Black people were not allowed on the beach in Miami Beach.

01:58:46.000 We're talking about through the 60s or 70s.

01:58:48.000 This is very recent...

01:58:50.000 History.

01:58:50.000 So what I'm saying is, is that like, you know, if you have a fault line and you can just drop, you know, you can just drop, you know, like you don't have to attack it with a nuclear weapon.

01:59:00.000 Right.

01:59:01.000 You could just just kind of rattle it a little bit, you know, stick a wedge in there and kind of shake.

01:59:05.000 That's America.

01:59:06.000 We're two Americas.

01:59:07.000 And so we're just, you know, people are just constantly ready to be at each other's throats.

01:59:12.000 And so it's very easy to exploit that.

01:59:14.000 That world of foreign instigated propaganda and division is really fascinating.

01:59:19.000 I had this woman on the podcast named Renee DiResta and she had thoroughly researched the Internet Research Agency in Russia, which just does that. 0.92

01:59:30.000 It's basically a farm That all they do all day long is create pages and memes and work on these pages and develop these memes that are shared amongst like QAnon supporters and just a lot of crazy people and a lot of like divisive ideologies online and they're constantly stoking the fires and she goes,

01:59:55.000 some of them are so clever too.

01:59:57.000 It's really interesting because some of these memes and she said she had to look through hundreds of thousands, some of them are hilarious.

02:00:02.000 And they're made in Russia. 0.62

02:00:04.000 They're made in Russia so people can share them in America and that these will stoke division. 0.99

02:00:11.000 And the funnier the better because they're more likely to go viral and people will share them if only because they're funny. 0.99

02:00:17.000 But they did wild shit, man. 0.99

02:00:19.000 She documented that they had a Texas separatist group. 1.00

02:00:24.000 They organized a meeting on Facebook with a Texas separatist group across from a Muslim group.

02:00:32.000 So, they had this Islamic group that had a meeting, like a gathering, directly across the street from this Texas sexist group.

02:00:42.000 Like, they did it on purpose, where they tried to get them close to each other so they would fight.

02:00:49.000 It doesn't take that much, even Miami. 0.97

02:00:52.000 You just drive down the street and people just start fucking fighting with each other. 0.97

02:00:56.000 There's a compassion gap. 0.99

02:00:59.000 In this country.

02:01:00.000 A compassion gap?

02:01:01.000 A compassion gap.

02:01:02.000 Okay.

02:01:03.000 Where, like, you know...

02:01:08.000 American values used to be like the golden rule.

02:01:11.000 Like, do unto others as you'd have done to you, right?

02:01:13.000 The rising tide raises all ships, to use a sea-level rise metaphor.

02:01:17.000 But like, now, we talked about this with Screwball. 0.99

02:01:20.000 Like, the new American values are like, fuck everybody else. 1.00

02:01:24.000 Lie, cheat, and steal to get ahead for me and mine. 1.00

02:01:27.000 And when you start to circle the wagons that way...

02:01:30.000 You're gonna cause trouble.

02:01:32.000 In Miami, it's as simple as the way we drive. 1.00

02:01:39.000 We treat each other like assholes. 1.00

02:01:41.000 We're doing the way. 1.00

02:01:43.000 Yeah, but this is a shared experience.

02:01:45.000 You're not going to get anywhere any faster by cutting me off.

02:01:48.000 User turn signal.

02:01:50.000 I'm not a psychic.

02:01:50.000 Let's all play by the same rules and we'll all be cool.

02:01:54.000 Why treat each other like shit? 0.99

02:01:55.000 We're all pretty happy here. 1.00

02:01:57.000 Let's just chill out.

02:02:00.000 My bad joke is, well, it's not called your Emmy or our Emmy. 0.99

02:02:03.000 It's my fucking Emmy. 0.98

02:02:05.000 I'm like, why do we treat each other that way? 0.99

02:02:07.000 Why can't we just learn that this is a shared experience?

02:02:10.000 Listen, I feel that way about, you know, when people say, you know, my driver over here today was like, listen, she's like, the, you know, the ICUs are full.

02:02:21.000 She's like, so if I get into a car accident and I need a bed, she's like, that does affect me.

02:02:26.000 So people who are getting sick...

02:02:29.000 I don't want a cop a day dying in Florida. 1.00

02:02:33.000 I don't want people to die for no fucking reason. 0.99

02:02:38.000 Did you hear that polio is killing one police officer a day in Florida? 0.99

02:02:42.000 No, because it doesn't fucking happen. 0.97

02:02:44.000 There's no polio anymore. 0.95

02:02:45.000 It's one of the six vaccines that, you know, all your kids need in the Miami-Dade public schools.

02:02:49.000 Like, there's a way to realize that, like, these states are united.

02:02:54.000 We are United States.

02:02:55.000 We are literally all of us fighting the same battle every day for our families to have a better life, to hopefully, you know, millennials, so the first generation, millennials.

02:03:08.000 To have it shittier than the previous generation.

02:03:13.000 Do you really think they do?

02:03:14.000 Unquestionably they do.

02:03:15.000 How so?

02:03:16.000 Unquestionably they do.

02:03:18.000 The earning potential, the student debt, the availability of jobs, of 401ks, of retirement.

02:03:28.000 They're a 1099 generation. 1.00

02:03:30.000 They're a freelance generation. 0.99

02:03:32.000 Gone are the opportunities that provided for the baby boomers after the greatest generation fought a war to create the most extraordinary and robust economy in the world. 0.99

02:03:42.000 I mean, they're the first generation of Americans since the Great Depression to not have it better than the previous generation.

02:03:49.000 That's a doc I've always talked about doing.

02:03:52.000 Call it the...

02:03:55.000 The worst generation. 1.00

02:03:56.000 How baby boomers fucked up America. 1.00

02:03:59.000 And the slogan would be, greatness skips a generation. 0.99

02:04:02.000 That's what it would be.

02:04:03.000 They had every opportunity.

02:04:05.000 They had jobs.

02:04:06.000 They had mortgages.

02:04:07.000 They had credit.

02:04:08.000 They had education.

02:04:10.000 Affordable educations.

02:04:11.000 And the millennials are just kind of like living at home. 0.99

02:04:14.000 And I don't think it's because they suck. 0.99

02:04:16.000 I don't think that's enough. 0.99

02:04:19.000 I think that it's not because Time Magazine called them the people of the year.

02:04:22.000 Remember when there was that mirror on the cover of Time Magazine?

02:04:25.000 I don't think they got full of that.

02:04:26.000 I think there are just fewer opportunities systemically in this country for that gender, for subs and future generation and post-millennials as well. 0.64

02:04:36.000 I just I think that there's not the opportunity necessarily available in a in a fair system also.

02:04:43.000 You know, where it's a real meritocracy.

02:04:45.000 It's what I always liked about sports, you know, is that it was as close to a pure meritocracy as we get.

02:04:52.000 Well, you take referees out of the equation sometimes.

02:04:55.000 But I just mean that, like, if you are the best in a sport, if you are the best athlete, if you are the best conditioned and the best trained, you are going to rise to the top.

02:05:04.000 And you don't feel that that's the case with most businesses today?

02:05:08.000 Is that what you're saying?

02:05:09.000 I don't.

02:05:09.000 I don't necessarily.

02:05:11.000 What do you think holds it back?

02:05:11.000 What do you think prevents it from being a meritocracy?

02:05:14.000 I think there's several.

02:05:14.000 I think corruption is a kleptocracy.

02:05:18.000 So I think corruption plays a very big part in that.

02:05:21.000 I think people who are already at the top exert so much influence that it becomes harder.

02:05:26.000 I mean, metaphorically speaking, if you look at Main Street America and you look at the mom and pop businesses that shut down when the big box store opens down the street, it could be as simple as that kind of image.

02:05:37.000 But I think it gets much more Complicated.

02:05:40.000 You know, when you have people who, when you have a stacked, you're playing effectively with a stacked deck.

02:05:46.000 Does that mean there's no such thing as successful entrepreneurism?

02:05:48.000 Of course not.

02:05:49.000 But I'm saying that it's much more challenging, I think, in this economy and this environment than it ever was before.

02:05:57.000 And we say there's like a compassion gap, is that the term you used?

02:06:01.000 Like, what do you mean by that, though?

02:06:03.000 I mean, a lack of empathy.

02:06:04.000 A lack of people saying, like, my experiences are not necessarily your experiences.

02:06:10.000 The world may treat...

02:06:11.000 Your life experience may be different.

02:06:13.000 The world may treat you differently as a result of no power of your own.

02:06:17.000 Whether it's your gender, the color of your skin, whatever it may be.

02:06:20.000 To just say, like, listen, I don't know everything...

02:06:23.000 About all people.

02:06:24.000 All I could do is listen and pay attention and kind of realize that, oh, like, yeah, you know, the world does kind of treat me different winning the genetic lottery and being born a white man in America.

02:06:35.000 Life's pretty good.

02:06:36.000 You know, it's tough to complain.

02:06:37.000 There are opportunities for me.

02:06:39.000 There are, you know, I can be entrepreneurial and creative and clever and get ahead in a way that maybe other people don't necessarily have those doors open to them.

02:06:48.000 And just an understanding of that in and of itself, I think, Makes your community better, makes your family better, makes people safer and healthier.

02:06:57.000 How is it related to a compassion gap?

02:07:01.000 It's having compassion for other people.

02:07:02.000 It's saying that I'm going to acknowledge that you...

02:07:08.000 By the way, some people can't even acknowledge when people are going through the same experiences that they're going through.

02:07:13.000 There are some immigrants who are anti-immigration.

02:07:18.000 We have that in Miami, who say they don't see their experiences in the experiences of Central Americans, for example.

02:07:27.000 We have that in Miami.

02:07:28.000 It's very profound.

02:07:29.000 The Cuban exile experience is not very different, but there's a compassion gap when they see people suffering in Central America trying to escape oppression and crime and corruption and close the borders.

02:07:44.000 And it's like, I get it.

02:07:46.000 There are concerns about the borders, but we can also at least say that, wait a second.

02:07:51.000 These people have suffered.

02:07:53.000 You've suffered.

02:07:54.000 America provided violence. 0.75

02:07:56.000 You know, the people of your country with exile, with opportunity, with freedom.

02:08:01.000 Everybody wants a piece of that.

02:08:03.000 And who can blame them?

02:08:05.000 So at least we can say, like, well, how do you say close the door behind me?

02:08:09.000 That's a compassion gap.

02:08:11.000 That's a compassion gap.

02:08:12.000 When you say this compassion gap, when you talk about this, do you think that there's something that we can do to mitigate this?

02:08:21.000 Is there, I mean, obviously you've thought about this.

02:08:24.000 Yeah.

02:08:24.000 If you've discussed it and you think it's one of our main problems, do you think there's something that we can do collectively?

02:08:29.000 I think we can be better informed.

02:08:31.000 I think we can, you know, listen, I was talking about this.

02:08:34.000 Be better informed about what?

02:08:35.000 About other people's experiences.

02:08:38.000 It's part of the reason why I'm a documentarian, you know.

02:08:41.000 I tell stories about a lot of different people about, you know, Gringos, Cuban-Americans, African-Americans.

02:08:49.000 For me, they're all Miamians.

02:08:51.000 You give people an opportunity to tell their story or give them a platform to share.

02:08:56.000 I think watching documentaries makes us more sympathetic and compassionate.

02:09:01.000 No, I think so.

02:09:01.000 I absolutely do.

02:09:03.000 Because you're learning about shit that you never would have otherwise. 0.99

02:09:05.000 Yeah, you relate to people. 0.99

02:09:06.000 Yeah, you never would have.

02:09:07.000 You know, we were talking about that here. 0.99

02:09:09.000 I think that, you know, a lot of people give you a lot of shit for what you say. 0.98

02:09:12.000 I don't think they give you a lot of credit for what you don't say. 0.99

02:09:15.000 And what you do on this show more than talk is listen.

02:09:19.000 And I think that that's...

02:09:20.000 I'm different when I'm on this side of the mic or the camera than when I'm interviewing somebody.

02:09:26.000 Which is what I do for a living.

02:09:27.000 Intellectual curiosity is my business.

02:09:30.000 It's what keeps you going. 0.98

02:09:33.000 Like wanting to meet interesting people and learn different shit. 0.95

02:09:37.000 Like I said, I'm a natural skeptic, so I'm always asking questions. 0.97

02:09:40.000 But I am pro-fact.

02:09:41.000 And I think the fact is that people look at other people in the world and just...

02:09:47.000 Either they don't like them because they're the same, they don't like them because they are different, and I just, I feel like there's a way to say, like, it's cool if they're different, but like, why can't we, uh, why can't we just, uh, uh, not, why can't we just not hate because of that?

02:10:03.000 I think we need to smoke now.

02:10:04.000 Do we need to smoke?

02:10:08.000 Yeah, I'm trying to figure out where you're going with this.

02:10:10.000 You're in this weird place.

02:10:11.000 I need to write sober and edit stones, is the Carlin approach.

02:10:18.000 There's things that I want to say that I'm not saying for a very specific reason, but I want to...

02:10:25.000 I think that when we cut off...

02:10:33.000 When we cut off what it is that we teach our children or what it is that they can learn and I think that that is very damaging.

02:10:43.000 When we cut it off?

02:10:44.000 Yeah.

02:10:45.000 What do you mean?

02:10:45.000 Well, I think when people say that they don't want Kids to learn about racism.

02:10:51.000 They don't want their kids to learn about the history of this country.

02:10:55.000 For all its flaws.

02:10:57.000 This was an experiment in democracy.

02:11:00.000 And it's had varying degrees of success, I think, through the years.

02:11:04.000 Are you talking about critical race theory?

02:11:06.000 That is one of the things that I'm talking about.

02:11:08.000 Yeah.

02:11:09.000 And what do you think about critical race theory?

02:11:10.000 First of all, I think critical race theory is not a thing that's taught or should be taught, per se, in elementary school.

02:11:16.000 That's not a thing.

02:11:17.000 I think what people have done is they've applied that to all things that they don't want their kids taught.

02:11:23.000 But it is taught in some elementary schools.

02:11:26.000 But not as critical race theory.

02:11:27.000 There are elements of it that are present in terms of teaching compassion, teaching diversity, teaching that this was a...

02:11:37.000 I think what people are concerned about is teaching children that they're inherently racist, they're inherently biased, instead of teaching people love and compassion.

02:11:47.000 So their fear is that you're putting people in this position when they're very young where they already feel guilty.

02:11:54.000 They feel like they did something wrong and that they're responsible for things that they have no say in whatsoever, especially young children, and that maybe there's a better approach to it.

02:12:03.000 They're also worried about grifters.

02:12:06.000 They're also worried about people that latch on to these socially conscious, socially progressive movements that have good intentions overall, but yet these people are using these platforms for their own personal gain and profit, which there are quite a few people like that.

02:12:23.000 And there's quite a few movements like that, and there's quite a few authors that have written books that have capitalized on these movements in this very Personally profitable way, and you can see what they're doing.

02:12:35.000 They're grifters.

02:12:36.000 They would have found something else, but they found critical race theory, and it's a very complicated and divisive conversation to have in 2021. But that happens with everything.

02:12:46.000 There's always going to be opportunists and grifters, especially in pure movements, because those are the places that you can exploit.

02:12:53.000 With this infecting the way their children get educated, and that they're indoctrinated into these These philosophies, these ideas that they think are ideologies, rigid ideologies, that can't be debated or discussed.

02:13:08.000 Because if you disagree with them, then you're a racist, you're a bad person.

02:13:12.000 Even if you're not, if you just think, like, hey, I don't think that this is something that we should be teaching children, that they're inherently biased and racist.

02:13:19.000 But I don't think that's what children are being teaching.

02:13:22.000 They are being taught that in some places.

02:13:38.000 Racism, who don't want to teach that there is, that there are institutionally places in this country where people who don't look and sound like you are simply treated different.

02:13:48.000 I just think that that's a reality for a lot of people.

02:13:50.000 And I don't think there's any reason to not tell a kid, like, but they're not different from you.

02:13:55.000 They're, you know, they're people who may have some different experiences, but want the same things as you, might have the same hopes and dreams as you.

02:14:02.000 And I mean, that's what we should be teaching kids.

02:14:04.000 I think we're looking at it through different filters, but I think ultimately we have the same perspective on it and that there is a reality of racism and there's also a reality and you have an ability to mold children and you can do it in a positive way and you can teach children.

02:14:22.000 But my concern is that teaching children that they're already guilty is a very dangerous step.

02:14:28.000 But teaching children that compassion is incredibly valuable and that we are all the same ultimately and that the differences are our strengths and that they're fascinating and they're amazing and that the fact that one of the great things about this country is like you can't really point out an American Because we're everything.

02:14:47.000 We really are everything.

02:14:48.000 It is one of the great experiments in immigration. 0.82

02:14:52.000 The census certainly proves that. 0.69

02:14:54.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:14:54.000 We're all kinds of shit. 1.00

02:14:55.000 The browning of America and the tanning of America. 1.00

02:14:57.000 It's fabulous.

02:14:58.000 But I think that...

02:14:59.000 Here's the thing.

02:15:01.000 Yes, we want the same thing, but I don't know that...

02:15:05.000 I mean, kids could feel guilty about things, but I don't know that they're being taught...

02:15:10.000 Listen, we are ultimately two white guys having this conversation about racism.

02:15:15.000 We're ultimately not children either.

02:15:16.000 We're not in classes, right?

02:15:17.000 The problem is I've seen videos of people have leaked out of classes where teachers are teaching these things to children that they're responsible for.

02:15:25.000 The sins of their ancestors and that this is something that's inherently a part of who they are and I think There's a way to teach the positive aspects of what we're talking about.

02:15:36.000 There's a way to teach compassion There's a way to teach open-mindedness and this sort of Understanding of the strength of the fact that we're all so different and unique.

02:15:47.000 I think those anecdotal Examples, though.

02:15:50.000 It's kind of why I feel guilty sometimes when I share, you know, viral videos of fuckery, you know, in Florida.

02:15:55.000 It's like, some of these things are just anomalies, you know what I mean? 0.93

02:15:58.000 They're just, but thanks to the ubiquity of cell phones, and we can kind of take this, I don't think, I don't know that crazier shit's happening now, so much as it is we're all more aware, you know, aware of it.

02:16:09.000 We have evidence of it.

02:16:10.000 Right, and I don't know that that's healthy, per se.

02:16:13.000 I appreciate the transparency, and I like having the information, but I think that when you have, to borrow your term, grifters, who are exploiting an opportunity, it's good to catch them, but I think then it provides ammunition to vilify an entire area of study,

02:16:31.000 or an entire movement.

02:16:32.000 I mean, it's kind of what you were saying about some of the treatments.

02:16:35.000 The viable treatments.

02:16:48.000 I think it's the same thing.

02:17:00.000 I'm not abusing their authority or their platform as an educator, which I think that there's probably more than one person doing that in myriad ways.

02:17:07.000 But I'm saying I don't think that that is necessarily a fair cross-section of how things are being taught and applied.

02:17:17.000 I'm a product of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, graduate of the University of Miami.

02:17:23.000 I'm basically a functioning illiterate, let's be honest about it.

02:17:27.000 The reality is I was taught pretty well, all things concerned.

02:17:31.000 I don't think I came from a broken system.

02:17:34.000 I don't know what the hell is going on right now in the public school system.

02:17:40.000 I know a lot of people are yelling and screaming about masks, which has nothing to do with the education of their children.

02:17:45.000 I know a lot of people are pulling their kids out of school and going to private schools and charter schools, which is only going to help expedite the collapse of the public school system, which I think is a bummer because, like I said, I'm a product of it.

02:17:57.000 I'm a believer in it.

02:18:00.000 Well, it's certainly massively underfunded.

02:18:02.000 And there's a real problem in this country when we don't value one of the most important things.

02:18:08.000 That a child ever encounters, which is their education.

02:18:11.000 We don't value it.

02:18:12.000 We don't value it to the point where we don't want a radical change of it. 0.93

02:18:16.000 One of the things that we realized through this pandemic when they started introducing these stimulus packages and started propping up corporations and boosting them to the tune of untold fucking billions of dollars.

02:18:28.000 Is that they have the ability to allocate resources in a way that benefits corporations.

02:18:34.000 But they don't seem to be able to do that to disenfranchised communities.

02:18:37.000 They don't seem to be able to do that to places that have been historically poor.

02:18:42.000 And historically, you know, talk about these people that have experienced redline laws.

02:18:47.000 And people that, you know, are still, they have the echoes of Jim Crow still in their community.

02:18:53.000 They still have the same poor neighborhoods.

02:18:55.000 Same crime-ridden neighborhoods, and no one's done anything to fix it.

02:18:58.000 Well, remember, when you take from the poor and give to the rich, that's capitalism.

02:19:01.000 When you take from the rich and give to the poor, that's socialism, remember.

02:19:05.000 Yeah, but it's also...

02:19:07.000 It has a stigma.

02:19:07.000 What I'm saying is that...

02:19:08.000 I understand.

02:19:09.000 I learned that from a meme, by the way.

02:19:10.000 Yeah.

02:19:11.000 I learned that from a...

02:19:12.000 Probably a Russian... 1.00

02:19:13.000 Probably a Russian meme. 0.55

02:19:14.000 No, but you're right.

02:19:16.000 We had these Liberty City... 0.88

02:19:19.000 Burned in 1980 after a group of white and Hispanic police officers beat a black insurance salesman on a motorcycle to death.

02:19:28.000 And they moved the...

02:19:30.000 It was such a hot-button issue.

02:19:31.000 It happened in December of 79. Arthur McDuffie was his name.

02:19:34.000 It was such a hot-button issue.

02:19:35.000 They moved...

02:19:36.000 They changed the venue from Miami-Dade County to Tampa.

02:19:39.000 And an all-white jury acquitted the police officers.

02:19:41.000 And Miami had what is to this day one of the worst...

02:20:04.000 You're absolutely right.

02:20:07.000 Yeah, it's a major problem in this country that it never gets addressed.

02:20:12.000 And when, you know, they talk about rebuilding places overseas and nation building, like the amount of allocation of resources that have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan.

02:20:22.000 Just think about that.

02:20:23.000 Think about what could have been done in the United States.

02:20:26.000 Like when you heard about Halliburton getting these no-bid contracts for untold billions of dollars to do work in Iraq and Afghanistan.

02:20:37.000 Particularly Iraq. 0.70

02:20:38.000 Well, listen, I mean, that's who won the war.

02:20:42.000 The military contractors and the Taliban. 0.88

02:20:44.000 That's who won the war.

02:20:46.000 I mean, but at least it's over.

02:20:47.000 I can say that for the time being.

02:20:51.000 But I think that... 0.99

02:20:52.000 Jesus, how the fuck did we... 0.99

02:20:55.000 I don't know. 0.99

02:20:56.000 We always did.

02:20:57.000 We started with iguanas.

02:20:59.000 This is where we went.

02:21:01.000 Frozen and deep and thawed out iguanas.

02:21:03.000 Dude, I'm gonna have nightmares.

02:21:04.000 I try not to think about them.

02:21:06.000 I'm gonna have nightmares about them tonight.

02:21:09.000 You should start eating them.

02:21:11.000 I'd love to.

02:21:11.000 I heard what you heard.

02:21:13.000 I heard that they're really delicious.

02:21:15.000 Yeah, apparently they taste good.

02:21:16.000 Yeah, I might open like a whole iguana restaurant.

02:21:19.000 Do you live near like a canal or anything?

02:21:22.000 In Miami, you never live far from a canal.

02:21:25.000 Yeah, get a pellet gun.

02:21:26.000 They're everywhere, dude.

02:21:27.000 They're everywhere.

02:21:28.000 And they claw and they... 1.00

02:21:31.000 Holy shit. 0.99

02:21:32.000 You know, it's always... 1.00

02:21:33.000 We elect some of them.

02:21:35.000 But, you know, that's what I wanted to say.

02:21:37.000 Like...

02:21:38.000 Because you make an exceptionally good point, which is what I was getting.

02:21:41.000 When you say why the Florida of today or the Miami of today is the America of tomorrow, it's just like when I hear, and I hear a lot of this in Miami, it's a lot of this propaganda which helps to swing the county and swing the state.

02:21:54.000 You know, there is no...

02:21:56.000 There is no communist threat to the United States.

02:22:01.000 The greatest threat to capitalism, for example, is cronyism.

02:22:07.000 That is the greatest threat.

02:22:09.000 That corruption is what taints the system.

02:22:12.000 I see that in the bridge collapse.

02:22:15.000 Why isn't anybody in trouble?

02:22:17.000 They call it the friends and family program.

02:22:21.000 Friends and family plan in Miami.

02:22:23.000 And we have that everywhere.

02:22:24.000 And that manifests itself to the tune of trillions of dollars in war.

02:22:29.000 That's the greatest threat, is the kleptocracy. 0.70

02:22:32.000 That's the greatest threat.

02:22:33.000 There's no communist threat.

02:22:35.000 This is always going to be a democracy.

02:22:38.000 It's always going to be a capital...

02:22:40.000 Well, I hope it's going to be a democracy.

02:22:41.000 But capitalism is not threatened by communism or socialism.

02:22:48.000 Capitalism is threatened by cronyism.

02:22:50.000 That's the threat.

02:22:51.000 Because it perverts what capitalism...

02:22:53.000 Exactly what we're talking about.

02:22:54.000 The cream rises to the top.

02:22:56.000 You work hard, you get ahead.

02:22:57.000 This generation will have it better than their parents did.

02:23:00.000 That's being perverted.

02:23:02.000 By toxic, it's crony capitalism. 1.00

02:23:05.000 And then it's kleptocracy and then we're just fucked. 0.99

02:23:07.000 And then you're just either on the inside of it or you're on the outside of it. 0.96

02:23:11.000 Right, so how do we get out of that?

02:23:13.000 I think we vote better.

02:23:15.000 We vote better.

02:23:16.000 Yeah, the problem is who wants to run for office.

02:23:18.000 Right, that's the problem. 1.00

02:23:19.000 Crap! 1.00

02:23:19.000 Where are these great choices? 1.00

02:23:21.000 When the choice is two men who are elderly, which is apparently all we have available in this country... 0.96

02:23:30.000 Old white men still run the show. 1.00

02:23:32.000 I mean, it's really kind of crazy, right? 0.87

02:23:34.000 Even one of them was an outsider. 0.89

02:23:36.000 Our outsider was Trump, this old white man, who was going up against an insider in Joe Biden, who's an old white man.

02:23:43.000 I often say the Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

02:23:47.000 Oh, well, that's the case in this one.

02:23:49.000 But the reality is, is they...

02:23:51.000 The Democrats...

02:23:54.000 There are...

02:23:56.000 Left wing.

02:23:57.000 They're extremists in the Democrat Party.

02:23:58.000 They have no power.

02:24:00.000 They might be popular on social media.

02:24:02.000 They might be very loud.

02:24:03.000 They might even have a few good ideas.

02:24:04.000 They have no power in the party.

02:24:06.000 They aren't passing.

02:24:07.000 You talking about like the squad, like those type of folks?

02:24:10.000 Anyway, Bernie Sanders for that matter.

02:24:12.000 Could be AOC. Could be Bernie Sanders.

02:24:15.000 Elizabeth Warren.

02:24:16.000 They have no real power in the party.

02:24:19.000 Okay?

02:24:20.000 You don't see Louis Farrakhan speaking in the Democratic National Convention.

02:24:23.000 The Democrats have time and again, even in the 2016 election, which was clearly the outsider election, to your point, clearly the Republicans were like, we're flushing the toilet on the Tea Party.

02:24:35.000 We're flushing the toilet on the Bush political crime family in China.

02:24:39.000 We're done with Jeb.

02:24:40.000 We're done with Marco.

02:24:41.000 We're done with Ted Cruz.

02:24:42.000 We're done.

02:24:43.000 We want this outsider. 0.99

02:24:44.000 Okay?

02:24:45.000 Democrats didn't quite read the room.

02:24:48.000 They nominated probably...

02:24:51.000 I wouldn't even call her a centrist.

02:24:54.000 I would say Hillary Clinton was right of center. 1.00

02:24:57.000 And it's like when the coach goes for the two-point conversion.

02:25:03.000 If they make it, the coach is a genius.

02:25:05.000 If they fuck it up, he gets second-guessed for the rest of his life.

02:25:09.000 People ask him about that play.

02:25:10.000 It's also the likability factor.

02:25:11.000 She's a very unlikable person. 0.80

02:25:13.000 She was one of the most qualified people to run for that office in my lifetime. 1.00

02:25:18.000 Actually, no, not even second to.

02:25:20.000 I think Al Gore would come in second.

02:25:23.000 I'm an entrepreneur.

02:25:23.000 I'm a small business owner.

02:25:25.000 I have to hire people all the time.

02:25:26.000 You give me two CVs.

02:25:27.000 You give me two resumes.

02:25:29.000 And you use a Sharpie and you black out the name of the person on top.

02:25:32.000 And you give me the resumes of the two major party candidates in the 2016 election.

02:25:39.000 There's no doubt who I would hire.

02:25:42.000 Blindly for that job based on the on the resumes a leader of the free world Essentially the head of the United States of America There's a lot involved in people's choices and a big one is trust trust and whether or not they like the person and They just did not trust the whole Clinton family.

02:26:03.000 They did not like Hillary Clinton There was a lot of people that had this feeling about her that she was this icky Insider. 0.97

02:26:12.000 That she was a part of this whole system that had not served us.

02:26:17.000 And that was corruption-laced and deeply entwined and big businesses and special interest groups. 0.99

02:26:25.000 And Donald Trump wisely positioned himself as this guy who didn't give a fuck and was going to drain the swamp and crooked Hillary's going to get kicked out. 1.00

02:26:35.000 But that corrupt system is what enabled and benefited to Donald Trump. 0.99

02:26:39.000 Sure.

02:26:39.000 So what I'm saying is even in a best of the worst competition, I still think she was the better of the two options at that time.

02:26:44.000 But I think you're right.

02:26:45.000 The marketing was...

02:26:46.000 But again, the Republicans read the room.

02:26:48.000 I'm agreeing that it was the outsider election, that that was the spin that was necessary there.

02:26:54.000 And the Democrats blew it.

02:26:56.000 But same thing again in 2020. They did not...

02:27:02.000 They did not nominate a democratic socialist.

02:27:04.000 They did not nominate.

02:27:05.000 The Democrats did not nominate Bernie Sanders.

02:27:07.000 They nominated, again, a centrist, arguably, for much of his career, part of it anyway, a right-of-center candidate in Joe Biden.

02:27:14.000 They nominated a moderate.

02:27:17.000 They nominated someone who could be palatable to larger swaths of the country than Donald Trump.

02:27:24.000 And they didn't nominate anybody popular.

02:27:26.000 They nominated someone who, at least on paper, was like, okay, we'll take it.

02:27:31.000 Safe!

02:27:31.000 Yeah.

02:27:31.000 We'll take it because we don't want Donald Trump.

02:27:34.000 It was basically a vote against Donald Trump.

02:27:36.000 Yeah.

02:27:36.000 A vote against instability and insanity and people who said, only in third world authoritarian or totalitarian dictatorships do we listen and think about the leader of the country all the time.

02:27:49.000 I want to go to work and not fucking think about what the president is tweeting or doing. 0.95

02:27:54.000 No, I want to go live my life! 0.99

02:27:55.000 What are your thoughts on social media and like banning people like Donald Trump from social media?

02:28:04.000 Do you think that's ultimately dangerous?

02:28:06.000 I think the private businesses need to have Some autonomy.

02:28:13.000 I think private businesses need to be able to make up rules.

02:28:16.000 No shirt, no shoes, no masks, no service.

02:28:19.000 I think you need to be able to have your terms of service. 0.98

02:28:23.000 And I think if someone breaks your rules, you say, get the fuck out of my business.

02:28:26.000 But do you think that there's a time where something becomes so big that it no longer is simply a private business?

02:28:34.000 And then it becomes a town square.

02:28:36.000 It becomes almost like a utility.

02:28:39.000 That you could argue that people deserve their right to be heard, and this is a platform that has a reach that's unprecedented in American history, that there's a thing that people can plug into and instantaneously reach millions and millions and millions of people.

02:28:57.000 The question is, like, did he abuse it?

02:29:03.000 I don't want to say coerced, but did he help instigate the attack on the Capitol on January 6th?

02:29:11.000 Did using his Twitter account and using his social media presence ultimately endanger people?

02:29:18.000 That was the real question, whether or not someone should be banned from social media for expressing themselves.

02:29:25.000 Yes.

02:29:25.000 Well, I think that, I don't know if your suggestion is to nationalize effectively, or regulate, or in this case, over-regulate, or apply laws and rules that apply only to the government to a private corporation.

02:29:39.000 I mean, listen, you can say whatever you want on your platform, on your show.

02:29:44.000 No one can tell.

02:29:44.000 And you can invite or not invite guests that Right, but I could be kicked off of YouTube.

02:29:48.000 If I was on YouTube with this show, they could decide that this show is too controversial.

02:29:53.000 We don't like what Joe and Billy said about COVID. We're going to demonetize or we're going to even delete this episode.

02:30:01.000 That's possible.

02:30:02.000 Yes.

02:30:03.000 There's forms of censorship where people don't like people discussing ideas.

02:30:07.000 That's one conversation.

02:30:09.000 But this is a platform like Twitter, where you have hundreds and hundreds of millions of users.

02:30:16.000 I don't know how many, maybe billions.

02:30:20.000 It's so big, you can make an argument that it's like a utility more than it is like a private company.

02:30:25.000 But if YouTube did that to you, you'd go to Spotify.

02:30:28.000 What I'm saying is you'd have the platform.

02:30:31.000 There's no thing other than Twitter like that.

02:30:34.000 And then you have women like Jen Psaki, who's the press secretary for the White House, who says that if you get banned from one platform, you should be banned from all platforms, which is very convenient for them if they can get someone banned that's a critic of the United States government.

02:30:50.000 Oh, I don't think that should be the case.

02:30:52.000 I think each platform...

02:30:54.000 It depends on...

02:30:54.000 You might use one platform differently than you use another.

02:30:57.000 I don't think that's fair.

02:30:58.000 I mean, obviously, each platform...

02:30:59.000 I don't think the government should impose...

02:31:02.000 Some sort of blanket.

02:31:04.000 Why should Twitter be able to decide for Facebook?

02:31:08.000 Facebook has their own terms and their own conditions, and you have to follow their rules.

02:31:12.000 No, I thought it was a ridiculous thing for someone to say, especially someone who's a White House press secretary.

02:31:17.000 Look, I'm in the fence on this, in a way, in that I don't think...

02:31:23.000 I don't think it's wise to have someone who is in a great position of power who's outwardly calling for some sort of a violent movement or a violent attack.

02:31:36.000 And that can happen, right?

02:31:38.000 Let's forget about the January 6th thing and let's imagine that some senator or some politician is calling for people to aggressively assume Control of a building or take control of a place.

02:31:56.000 That's a dangerous, dangerous megaphone to use, right?

02:32:01.000 And in that situation, I think we have to be really careful about how we allow people to use Any kind of platform, right? 0.97

02:32:10.000 Whether it's a social media platform or whatever the fuck it is.

02:32:13.000 In that case, I think that's where your argument can... 0.96

02:32:18.000 That's where there's the argument about Trump and the Capitol Hill attack.

02:32:22.000 That's where it gets real squirrely with me.

02:32:24.000 But other than that...

02:32:26.000 I feel like the answer to bad speech is better speech.

02:32:30.000 The answer is robust debate.

02:32:32.000 The answer is people that are intelligent, articulate, and convincing making far better points.

02:32:38.000 But not dangerous misinformation, or to your point, inciting violence.

02:32:46.000 Inciting.

02:32:46.000 Inciting violence.

02:32:47.000 Yeah.

02:32:48.000 Yeah.

02:32:48.000 I mean, I think that's...

02:32:49.000 But I think that, again, you as the private business owner, as a restaurant owner or whatever it is, have to make a decision about that guy acting a fool at that table over there. 0.95

02:32:59.000 Right. 0.95

02:32:59.000 Am I gonna put my hand on his shoulder and say, buddy, just kind of keep it down a little bit? 0.95

02:33:04.000 Or am I gonna pick him up and use his head to open the back door and toss him out in the alley and say, not in my...

02:33:09.000 I mean, I think businesses need to have some freedom and ability to make their own rules.

02:33:15.000 I just don't think it's as simple as a small business anymore.

02:33:18.000 I think when you're dealing with something like Twitter, which also has...

02:33:20.000 Victims of their own success?

02:33:21.000 Well, it is in a way, but, I mean, they're also inconsistent.

02:33:25.000 I mean, Twitter has the Taliban on it. 0.91

02:33:27.000 The Taliban is openly posting on Twitter. 1.00

02:33:31.000 That's fucking wild. 0.99

02:33:33.000 I mean, the documented atrocities are occurring right now. 0.99

02:33:38.000 I mean, you can pay attention to what's happening right now in Kabul.

02:33:41.000 It's not good.

02:33:42.000 And they're on Twitter.

02:33:44.000 Here's the thing.

02:33:45.000 You walk into my restaurant.

02:33:47.000 I don't like your politics. 0.92

02:33:50.000 I could probably refuse you service for any reason, but the reality is if you come in and you don't act a fool in my place, it's a private bill.

02:33:59.000 Again, if they come on Twitter and they don't violate Twitter's rules, I don't like it.

02:34:03.000 I don't want, I don't like their, I don't follow them.

02:34:06.000 I don't like their message.

02:34:08.000 I don't particularly want their message on the platform, which is I could leave the platform myself in protest, for example, because there are a lot of, but the reality is I just, I block them out.

02:34:18.000 They don't exist in my timeline.

02:34:21.000 But the bottom line is that the private business owner needs some autonomy, needs some ability to say, I control this space.

02:34:28.000 And I get it's not a restaurant.

02:34:30.000 I understand Twitter's not a restaurant.

02:34:31.000 The problem people have is that it's enforced almost down an ideological division.

02:34:38.000 It's like very rock-solid, enforced in a left-wing manner.

02:34:43.000 And that right-wing people are much more likely to be banned and censored.

02:34:49.000 But then I think you have to look at the nuances of this, meaning why were these, why were the people, why was each account banned? 0.97

02:34:55.000 What I'm saying is if you're going to incite violence, I don't really care who you're, if you're a fanatic, I don't really give a fuck if you're left or right or whatever. 0.99

02:35:03.000 Ban them, of course. 0.93

02:35:03.000 Right, but as a proponent of free speech, which I'm sure you are, you know that it gets slippery when people have the ability to silence their critics or silence their opposition, silence people that have differing opinions. 0.93

02:35:19.000 And when you're dealing with a small business, like a restaurant, I understand it, but you're dealing with something like Twitter, where you have access to untold millions and millions of people.

02:35:32.000 It seems like we have to have a very nuanced perspective on this.

02:35:37.000 We have to really take into consideration the ripple effect of any decision that gets made in terms of silencing voices. 0.99

02:35:45.000 Because I think it can all come back and bite us in the ass. 0.96

02:35:50.000 I think it's an amazing ability that we have that's unprecedented to express ourselves and to explore ideas. 1.00

02:35:58.000 Unfortunately, Twitter is used by a lot of fucking dummies. 0.99

02:36:01.000 And a lot of it is just hate and insults, which is normal. 1.00

02:36:06.000 It's standard for the internet, right?

02:36:07.000 People dunking on people.

02:36:08.000 It's all normal stuff.

02:36:10.000 But there's also...

02:36:11.000 It's a portal for information.

02:36:14.000 And it's an amazing portal for information.

02:36:16.000 But we've got to be real careful about silencing voices just because you disagree with them.

02:36:21.000 But they do have...

02:36:23.000 But I don't think that's...

02:36:24.000 What it is.

02:36:25.000 I don't think Twitter is banning people that they disagree with.

02:36:27.000 I think Twitter is banning people who violate their terms of service.

02:36:30.000 Not necessarily true.

02:36:31.000 We talked yesterday on the podcast about Unity 2020. That was a website that Brett Weinstein had put together, developing a plausible third-party candidate.

02:36:43.000 And the people that they wanted to use were...

02:36:45.000 Someone very good from the left and very good from the right.

02:36:48.000 The concept was Tulsi Gabbard with Dan Crenshaw, the two of them together, maybe something along those lines.

02:36:54.000 And Twitter banned that account.

02:36:56.000 They banned the Unity 2020 account because they thought that Trump was so dangerous, they didn't want any sort of potential Ross Perot type situation where some very charismatic third party moves in and takes votes away from the opposition and then Trump gets into office.

02:37:15.000 So they banned it.

02:37:16.000 And they banned it under false pretenses.

02:37:17.000 They said that they were using some sort of a bot to accelerate the use of hashtags, which is not true.

02:37:24.000 And they did an internal investigation that proved it wasn't true.

02:37:27.000 But there's this sort of subjective censorship that's available to them.

02:37:34.000 Where they can just decide. 0.97

02:37:36.000 They can have, what do they call it, their trust and safety commission or some shit. 0.80

02:37:39.000 They can just decide, this is, we think this is, should get, and you got a bunch of woke kids that are pushing these buttons and making these decisions. 0.84

02:37:47.000 And it gets slippery.

02:37:48.000 It gets really slippery.

02:37:49.000 And I think there's inconvenient things that you're going to see.

02:37:55.000 And there's going to be people that are saying things you disagree with. 1.00

02:37:58.000 And there's going to be people saying things and arguing things that you think are just outright fucking stupid. 0.99

02:38:02.000 But I think they have to be able to argue those things. 0.99

02:38:04.000 I think they have to be able to say those things.

02:38:06.000 Otherwise, we don't have a robust debate-based form of communication.

02:38:12.000 And if we don't do that, then we don't know who's right and who's wrong.

02:38:15.000 We just know who gets silenced.

02:38:17.000 And a lot of times when people get silenced, it actually winds up making them look like a martyr.

02:38:21.000 It elevates their point.

02:38:24.000 And here's the thing, I think we agree on all of that.

02:38:26.000 I think the question is when, or the real debate is when does a private business cross the threshold into a utility?

02:38:31.000 And when should they be regulated that way?

02:38:34.000 Because I think the, I know literally less than nothing about the specific, you know, example you just gave.

02:38:41.000 So I can't speak directly to that.

02:38:43.000 But I know that...

02:38:46.000 They need to be able to...

02:38:47.000 They are publishing that speech.

02:38:49.000 They need to be able to regulate the content to some extent.

02:38:53.000 They need to be able to say, you know, maybe you can't put the blueprints to build a bomb or a homemade gun.

02:38:59.000 Meaning there has to be, you know, there has to be...

02:39:02.000 Can't dox people.

02:39:02.000 Right.

02:39:03.000 There has to be some...

02:39:05.000 There has to be some rules.

02:39:06.000 They have to have some...

02:39:07.000 You say, you can come here and play, but you gotta...

02:39:10.000 You know, the house rules.

02:39:11.000 This is what they are.

02:39:12.000 So then it just becomes a question of when should the government...

02:39:15.000 Which also, talk about a slippery slope, the government should come in and effectively regulate...

02:39:20.000 Listen, we've already said we don't like the idea of the government regulating that if you get banned on one platform, you automatically get banned on all of them.

02:39:28.000 Right. 0.85

02:39:29.000 That's ridiculous. 0.99

02:39:30.000 It's ridiculous. 0.98

02:39:30.000 Right, but that... 0.98

02:39:31.000 That's not how I want the government to regulate it.

02:39:33.000 So maybe it's just best to say, like, maybe the government should just stay, maybe sit this one out, let this private...

02:39:39.000 Now the debate then becomes, when is it too big?

02:39:42.000 When is it too big to where we have to have some sort of intervention?

02:39:48.000 I don't know...

02:39:50.000 That it's there yet.

02:39:51.000 Whenever something gets so big that the government comes in and starts messing with...

02:39:55.000 I mean, usually what they're doing is corporate welfare.

02:39:58.000 Usually they're giving them billions of dollars like a bank.

02:40:00.000 When we're talking about this lack of compassion, I think we also have to have this...

02:40:05.000 We have to have more compassion by other people's perspectives and viewpoints because there's this real...

02:40:10.000 Especially today, the polarization in this country is so extreme.

02:40:15.000 That there is this instant demonization of anybody who holds opposing viewpoints politically, especially.

02:40:23.000 And I think that's very dangerous for us.

02:40:26.000 It's not healthy, it's not wise, and it doesn't make for good community.

02:40:30.000 Like, you can have a neighbor...

02:40:32.000 Who's a hardcore right-wing person, and he could be a good friend.

02:40:36.000 You can have a neighbor who's a hardcore socialist, and he could be a good friend.

02:40:40.000 You can have good friends that maybe you don't necessarily share their opinions, but you have a certain amount of decency and a certain amount of just love that you approach these people with.

02:40:56.000 And we can get along better in this way.

02:40:58.000 This is one of the worst things about social media and Twitter is that we're not communicating in a manner where we're seeing each other.

02:41:06.000 We have face-to-face contact.

02:41:08.000 We're reading social cues.

02:41:09.000 So people are just lobbing grenades over fences.

02:41:13.000 280 characters at a time.

02:41:14.000 Yeah.

02:41:14.000 It's not very nuanced.

02:41:16.000 There's no time for real discussion.

02:41:18.000 I think of how many threads where people, like you said, it's just like, okay, I'm just going to go back with a Yo Mama joke.

02:41:23.000 You know?

02:41:23.000 We're not going to end this thing.

02:41:24.000 But then, like, you see people actually kind of come, if they realize they're talking about the same thing or they come to an under... 0.99

02:41:29.000 I always like those threads where you're like, oh, shit.

02:41:30.000 Like, they kind of, they're like, realize that instead of talking past each other, they realize that they have more in common. 0.99

02:41:36.000 I mean...

02:41:37.000 Those are great.

02:41:37.000 I love when people, like, agree to disagree or agree to communicate in a pleasant and civil manner.

02:41:45.000 Those renew my faith. 0.91

02:41:48.000 But then it also, to your point, causes us to over-politicize shit that just simply is not political. 0.85

02:41:57.000 I think about all the time, nobody's agenda is masks. 0.95

02:42:02.000 Except for maybe the Halloween store.

02:42:06.000 There's no mask industrial complex that wants to force masks. 0.99

02:42:10.000 No one gives a shit. 0.99

02:42:11.000 So why, like, whatever. 1.00

02:42:12.000 Wear a fucking mask. 1.00

02:42:13.000 Is that a contrarian perspective? 1.00

02:42:15.000 No, I think it's whatever the opposite of virtue signaling is, I guess.

02:42:20.000 Lack of virtue.

02:42:21.000 I don't know.

02:42:23.000 It's your thing.

02:42:25.000 You suddenly politicize things that are simply not political.

02:42:29.000 Some things are just for public health.

02:42:31.000 Some things are just people trying to figure out the best way to navigate an unprecedented, once-in-a-generation situation.

02:42:38.000 By science, which is imperfect, you go with the best data you have at the time and things can evolve and things can change.

02:42:45.000 They're trying to figure it out.

02:42:46.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:42:47.000 And wearing a mask, when people ask you to wear a mask, it makes you not be an asshole. 1.00

02:42:52.000 Yeah, what's the harm? 1.00

02:42:53.000 Who gives a shit? 0.99

02:42:54.000 I don't care. 0.99

02:42:55.000 I don't know if it works.

02:42:56.000 Listen, for sure, they're not all created equal.

02:42:59.000 That's for sure.

02:43:00.000 Because there's really tight-fitting...

02:43:02.000 This is not a thing. 1.00

02:43:03.000 Yeah, these fucking bandanas. 1.00

02:43:05.000 Or my favorite is when people wear a face shield. 1.00

02:43:07.000 I'm like, hey, fuckface, what's all this? 0.99

02:43:09.000 Yeah. 0.99

02:43:10.000 What's all this?

02:43:10.000 You're literally just talking.

02:43:12.000 It's going out there.

02:43:13.000 Like, are you stopping just spit from hitting you?

02:43:16.000 Like, the face shield one is madness. 0.99

02:43:19.000 Because there's this fucking gap under there. 0.98

02:43:21.000 Although, that said, I'd rather the shield at the buffet than not the shield at the buffet. 0.99

02:43:26.000 I know you're still going under, but I'd rather a shield than no shield.

02:43:32.000 Not a buffet.

02:43:33.000 But why is it political?

02:43:36.000 Why is that political?

02:43:37.000 Because it seems like the people that are more sensitive to the mask thing tend to be Democrats, and the people that are more, I'm going to live my life with freedom, they want the mask.

02:43:48.000 The no mask thing.

02:43:49.000 Dude, how is it that, like, how is it that, with all the rights, particularly post- War on terror, post 9-11.

02:43:59.000 All of the rights that we've been willing to just give up.

02:44:04.000 Or not aware that we gave up, right?

02:44:06.000 Patriot Act.

02:44:07.000 In the interest of national security or, you know, I mean, how is the TSA still a thing?

02:44:12.000 How is that still a thing?

02:44:14.000 Okay?

02:44:15.000 All the rights and the indignities that we have allowed...

02:44:18.000 This is where we... 1.00

02:44:19.000 Tyranny as a mask is a piece of fucking... 1.00

02:44:22.000 Come on. 1.00

02:44:23.000 Come on.

02:44:23.000 It doesn't make sense.

02:44:24.000 Choose your battles, man.

02:44:25.000 But I think it's also like people don't like that you wear it and then you sit down and you take it off. 0.98

02:44:29.000 They're like, what the fuck are we doing? 0.98

02:44:30.000 What are we doing? 0.98

02:44:31.000 There's non-logic to it. 0.99

02:44:34.000 But there's also this thing that you're doing where you're just letting people know you're not an asshole. 0.97

02:44:40.000 And hopefully, you know, and then hopefully one day we don't have to do it anymore. 0.98

02:44:43.000 But that's what you're doing.

02:44:45.000 You know, when they say you have to wear a mask and you wear a mask till you sit down, it's not that hard.

02:44:49.000 At least we're at a restaurant.

02:44:50.000 And that's one thing that I felt like when the pandemic sort of lightened up and you could start going to places again. 0.99

02:44:56.000 I didn't give a fuck if I had to wear a mask until I sat down at my table. 0.99

02:45:00.000 Or when I went to take a leak, I had to wear a mask to go to the restroom. 0.99

02:45:04.000 It's not like, it's okay.

02:45:05.000 It's like, I'm just happy that I could eat at a restaurant.

02:45:09.000 And if they put these laws in place, maybe that are a little illogical, I think they're trying to figure it out as they went along.

02:45:14.000 And if there's a way to reopen schools, which everybody wants, and the price to pay is your kids wear a mask for, like...

02:45:25.000 If that's what it takes to get the economy going, to get childcare, to get kids out of the house, to get... 0.97

02:45:31.000 What's the big fucking deal? 0.96

02:45:35.000 And by the way, sometimes the rules don't make sense. 0.99

02:45:37.000 There's a lot of rules that don't make sense.

02:45:40.000 And by the way, God forbid...

02:45:42.000 God forbid...

02:45:43.000 It might actually help somebody or save somebody or someone didn't get...

02:45:49.000 We don't know for sure, but if, God forbid, that's the worst that can happen is that you have an annoying mask on for a few minutes and you don't get somebody else sick.

02:45:57.000 Like, I don't know. 1.00

02:45:59.000 That's just some dumb shit to me. 1.00

02:46:01.000 I don't know if it stops people from getting sick. 1.00

02:46:03.000 I've heard arguments in both ways and I've also seen a video where there was a doctor who was explaining that the reason why he wears a mask is during surgery and it's to stop things from getting into the wound.

02:46:14.000 And he said, I'm going to show you what it looks like when you vape and you blow the vape out of a mask.

02:46:21.000 Have you ever seen this video?

02:46:22.000 Yes.

02:46:23.000 Crazy.

02:46:24.000 Like, it all goes through.

02:46:25.000 And he's like, vape particles are so much larger than viral particles.

02:46:29.000 He's like, it's not really stopping anything.

02:46:32.000 It's making you feel better.

02:46:33.000 And I'm like, okay, it's illogical. 0.98

02:46:35.000 But, like, until this shit is over, it makes sense that people at least want you to wear it or think it's a good idea to wear it because it makes it seem like you care. 0.98

02:46:46.000 I don't know. 0.99

02:46:47.000 I don't know that it's just virtue signaling.

02:46:49.000 I don't know it is either.

02:46:50.000 I think it's got to filter something out.

02:46:52.000 Yes, it's something.

02:46:53.000 It filters something out.

02:46:54.000 Yeah, maybe it's enough of a viral load so you'll barely get sick versus get really sick. 0.99

02:47:00.000 Like, who the fuck knows? 0.98

02:47:01.000 But I wish there was a better solution. 0.99

02:47:06.000 I wish there was something more logical, like fucking advanced HEPA filters that suck all the bad shit out of the air, you know, so you know that if you go into an indoor location, you're in fact safer than you would be anywhere else. 0.98

02:47:18.000 That's one of the things that they say that's actually pretty good about airline travel, is that the filtration systems in airline travel are pretty substantial. 0.99

02:47:27.000 But I will tell you, I used to get sick almost every time I flew on a fucking plane. 0.98

02:47:31.000 I get a cold every time. 0.98

02:47:33.000 I honestly might keep up the mask thing.

02:47:36.000 Post-pandemic, knock wood. 0.98

02:47:37.000 When I air travel, I might fucking do it. 0.99

02:47:40.000 A lot of people think that. 0.98

02:47:41.000 Yeah, just in the airport and airplanes. 1.00

02:47:44.000 Because I would get a stupid fucking cold. 0.99

02:47:45.000 I'd be down for the count for a couple days every time I get home. 1.00

02:47:48.000 My friend Reggie clued us onto these fucking space helmets, these HEPA filters. 0.99

02:47:53.000 They're literal helmets. 0.99

02:47:55.000 They go over your head and they cinch up at the bottom so you're completely airtight and you're breathing.

02:48:02.000 They're battery powered, right, Jamie?

02:48:04.000 Yeah, they're battery powered. 0.99

02:48:05.000 And so there's like a fan in there that keeps it from fogging up and you don't have to worry about shit. 0.98

02:48:10.000 Yeah. 0.98

02:48:10.000 So, Reggie wore these when he was traveling. 0.98

02:48:13.000 It's wild, though.

02:48:14.000 I mean, you're committing to a look.

02:48:16.000 I mean, you're basically a spaceman.

02:48:18.000 I'm not above that. 1.00

02:48:19.000 I mean, I would just get his dumb shit cold every time I would get on an airplane. 1.00

02:48:24.000 It was ridiculous. 1.00

02:48:24.000 If they let you wear it, they'll let you wear it. 1.00

02:48:26.000 I mean, I get it.

02:48:28.000 Would they not let him wear it?

02:48:29.000 I don't know.

02:48:30.000 Maybe not through TSA. No, I've never heard of anybody not being able to wear it, but it is a kind of a crazy contraption.

02:48:35.000 You're wearing a space helmet. 0.96

02:48:37.000 You know, you're like fucking scuba-ing through the airport. 0.99

02:48:41.000 I don't know that I could pull that off. 0.99

02:48:42.000 Maybe Reggie could just pull that off.

02:48:44.000 Yeah, Reggie could pull off anything, but it is one of those things where I don't think I can wear it.

02:48:49.000 Yeah.

02:48:50.000 Also, I have a large head.

02:48:52.000 Yeah, so I don't have a normal head.

02:48:54.000 I have a big head, too, though.

02:48:55.000 Yeah, so I don't know if there's like an XXXL. Oh, it'll fit, dude.

02:48:58.000 It'll fit.

02:48:59.000 Because it fits with Reggie's afro.

02:49:02.000 It'll fit you.

02:49:04.000 I don't know if that's the move either, though.

02:49:08.000 We can only hope that we get out of this with a better sense of health.

02:49:13.000 At the other end, people really legitimately choose to take care of themselves better.

02:49:19.000 That's one of the only things that's going to help you.

02:49:22.000 I'm like, if this taught Americans to wash their hands and be a little less disgusting, and really, with the pre-existing... 0.94

02:49:29.000 Most Americans have pre-existing conditions.

02:49:31.000 Obesity is a major part of that.

02:49:34.000 It's a huge factor.

02:49:35.000 Yeah, so if this gets people to say, like, you know what, maybe one of the lessons of this pandemic...

02:49:40.000 Is to get in better shape, is to take care of myself more, to eat better or whatever.

02:49:44.000 I ate pretty good during this pandemic.

02:49:46.000 I need to get back into jail, I'll tell you.

02:49:48.000 Well, it's hard, right?

02:49:49.000 Because you're looking for comfort.

02:49:50.000 Oh, I ate my feelings.

02:49:52.000 When you're just trapped in the house.

02:49:52.000 I ate my feelings.

02:49:53.000 Oh, yeah.

02:49:56.000 I gotta be honest, the beginning I enjoyed.

02:49:58.000 I enjoyed the beginning of the pandemic because it just made me closer to my family, spent more time with them, just spent a lot of time just hanging out at the house.

02:50:06.000 We watched movies, watched a lot of Netflix.

02:50:08.000 It wasn't that bad, but then after a while, it just started to grate and grind.

02:50:13.000 Turns into The Shining. 0.94

02:50:14.000 Well, not that bad, but you can see how people have a tendency to just, they realize the world's fucked, so I'm eating lasagna. 0.99

02:50:23.000 You know, the world's fucked, I'm gonna order a pizza. 0.96

02:50:25.000 I had a lot of nights like that. 0.99

02:50:26.000 I'll tell you, I did my part for local restaurants in Miami.

02:50:29.000 I went on the apps and, you know.

02:50:31.000 Actually, a lot of times I tried to avoid the apps and would order direct so as they don't have to hit that vig.

02:50:36.000 That's good.

02:50:37.000 They get hit hard.

02:50:38.000 So I would just order directly from the restaurants and go pick it up or if they had their own delivery service or whatever I could do.

02:50:44.000 I didn't get COVID-19.

02:50:46.000 I might have got the COVID-35.

02:50:48.000 Did you gain that much?

02:50:50.000 No, not that much.

02:50:50.000 Maybe COVID-20, COVID-25.

02:50:52.000 Are you a regular exerciser?

02:50:54.000 I used to be.

02:50:54.000 Yeah?

02:50:55.000 I used to be.

02:50:55.000 What changed?

02:50:57.000 Time.

02:50:58.000 I didn't make the time.

02:50:58.000 By the way, not that I had less time, but I didn't make...

02:51:01.000 I'm calling myself out.

02:51:02.000 I didn't make the time.

02:51:04.000 I didn't prioritize it in a way where it's like, okay, yeah, I gotta be on set at 7 a.m.

02:51:09.000 or 8 a.m., but I'm gonna wake up at 5, you know what I mean, to get the workout.

02:51:12.000 Like, you have to do that.

02:51:13.000 I'd rather...

02:51:14.000 Because I went to sleep late last night, I'd rather sleep in and then go right to set.

02:51:17.000 So, yeah, so it was just time.

02:51:18.000 We became busier.

02:51:19.000 I mean, we're working on, you know...

02:51:21.000 Four documentaries at the same time now.

02:51:22.000 Gone are the days where I can spend 12 years on a doc like we did The Kings of Miami or we go one project at a time.

02:51:28.000 Now, listen, I mean, it's a golden era.

02:51:30.000 You said it.

02:51:31.000 It's a golden age of nonfiction content.

02:51:34.000 And so, like, we, you know, like, docs are the thing when you think about it.

02:51:39.000 I mean, listen, I don't know.

02:51:39.000 Netflix wants to be talking about their business.

02:51:41.000 But, you know, a 10-episode season of The Crown on Netflix costs $100 million.

02:51:46.000 It's $10 million an episode.

02:51:49.000 Docs cost less. 0.96

02:51:51.000 Meaning, and if they rate and people watch it and love it, as much so as some of the scripted and premium big budget shit, then it's a bargain for them. 0.90

02:52:00.000 It's great for us because we have work.

02:52:01.000 It's a bargain for them because they don't have to pay $10 million an hour, you know, an episode. 0.97

02:52:05.000 Boy, the fucking convergence happened perfect for Tiger King, didn't it? 0.98

02:52:09.000 Oh, yeah. 0.99

02:52:09.000 It was like the lockdown and then Joe Exotic! 0.99

02:52:13.000 Look who we got for you.

02:52:14.000 We got some craziness.

02:52:16.000 It was amazing.

02:52:16.000 An incredible convergence, right?

02:52:18.000 And that comes out now.

02:52:21.000 I don't think it becomes that zeitgeist-y kind of a moment.

02:52:24.000 It's just crazy. 0.99

02:52:25.000 It's like a lot of other crazy shit. 0.99

02:52:26.000 It's also very good, though. 0.99

02:52:27.000 It's very good.

02:52:29.000 I'm not saying it wouldn't succeed on its own merits.

02:52:31.000 I'm saying the confluence of circumstances that you refer to.

02:52:35.000 I mean, like, you know, and Netflix is, they're so good.

02:52:38.000 They're so good at what they do.

02:52:40.000 They know so much more about us and our viewing habits than we even know.

02:52:44.000 Their algorithms are super sophisticated.

02:52:46.000 And they get the content in front of the faces of people that they think are going to be into it based on your That's the thing.

02:52:54.000 People who share passwords, it fucks up the algorithms.

02:52:57.000 Right. 1.00

02:52:57.000 Because they're recommending you shit your mom would like because she knows she shares her password. 1.00

02:53:01.000 So you're like, what the? 0.99

02:53:02.000 Someone wrote a very funny tweet there just like, no Netflix.

02:53:06.000 Now that I've watched Cocaine Cowboys, I don't want to watch Grace and Frankie.

02:53:10.000 It's like, how did you get that?

02:53:13.000 But Netflix is so good.

02:53:15.000 They just get, whether it's by email or when you turn on the service, right?

02:53:22.000 And all of those, nobody else is looking at the homepage that you're seeing.

02:53:29.000 They actually called us, they play their cards very close to the vest.

02:53:35.000 Netflix does not tell you anything. 0.98

02:53:37.000 Yeah, they don't tell you shit when you have a comedy special either. 0.95

02:53:39.000 They go, you're doing very, very well. 0.98

02:53:41.000 Right.

02:53:41.000 What are the numbers?

02:53:42.000 Code words.

02:53:43.000 You're doing very, very well.

02:53:44.000 Code words.

02:53:45.000 Like, no.

02:53:45.000 So I was in a meeting with them once and we were pitching them something.

02:53:48.000 This is years ago.

02:53:49.000 Pardon me.

02:53:50.000 Dude's sitting there.

02:53:51.000 Dude's sitting there with his laptop open.

02:53:52.000 I'm trying to look into with the reflection of his glasses to see if I can see what he... 1.00

02:53:57.000 Because he's looking up our shit. 0.97

02:53:58.000 Like, what other titles have they had? 0.99

02:53:59.000 Like, we're pitching something new.

02:54:00.000 It's like, kind of see how you're...

02:54:01.000 And I got the...

02:54:03.000 You know, kind of like grimace nod.

02:54:04.000 And I was just like, oh, I guess that's good.

02:54:07.000 And so, it's funny that they don't tell you anything, but they know.

02:54:11.000 Oh, do they know so much?

02:54:12.000 They told us, like, which were the most popular thumbnails.

02:54:16.000 Interactive thumbnails.

02:54:17.000 Meaning, like, because they generate a bunch of in-service art.

02:54:20.000 And they tell you which one people interacted with the most.

02:54:23.000 Like, so which artwork they responded to the most.

02:54:26.000 And then how many finished.

02:54:27.000 It's fascinating.

02:54:28.000 And so, it's funny.

02:54:29.000 So, we did Dogfight.

02:54:33.000 The backyard fighting doc.

02:54:35.000 It was a license.

02:54:39.000 We worked with a bunch of people.

02:54:41.000 We didn't hear anything.

02:54:42.000 It launched.

02:54:42.000 A few weeks later, we get a call from a big guy over there.

02:54:52.000 We're good to go.

02:54:53.000 We're good to go.

02:54:57.000 We're good to go.

02:55:05.000 We're good to go.

02:55:10.000 ESPN 30 for 30, The U, and Dogfight.

02:55:14.000 What do those things have in common?

02:55:16.000 And I said, well, Miami and the American dream by any means necessary.

02:55:23.000 And he said, bring us more of that.

02:55:28.000 And so that's...

02:55:29.000 And we ultimately pitched Cocaine Cowboys, The Kings of Miami.

02:55:32.000 Bring us more of that.

02:55:33.000 Those are the hints.

02:55:34.000 Otherwise, there's no...

02:55:35.000 They were so brilliant.

02:55:36.000 What they used to do for a while, I noticed this.

02:55:38.000 I don't know if they still do this, but I noticed this back in the early days of their originals.

02:55:42.000 Orange is the New Black, House of Cards.

02:55:44.000 I don't think David Fincher knew what kind of numbers House of Cards were getting.

02:55:47.000 I don't think they'd tell you anything.

02:55:49.000 But here's what they did that was so brilliant.

02:55:51.000 Let's say the show, the new season, was launching on a Tuesday.

02:55:53.000 On Monday, they would announce...

02:55:56.000 That it's already been picked up for a new season.

02:55:59.000 So that's two brilliant things.

02:56:02.000 Number one, you've just made a contract with your audience.

02:56:04.000 That if you invest 10 hours on this thing, there's going to be more of it next year.

02:56:09.000 So do it.

02:56:10.000 And then, if you're a cast and crew, what do you care what the numbers are?

02:56:15.000 All you care about the numbers is that you have a job.

02:56:17.000 You got picked up for next year.

02:56:19.000 So now they don't even care about the job.

02:56:21.000 And of course, you can't use the numbers to renegotiate your...

02:56:26.000 Right, of course.

02:56:28.000 And what do you care at that point?

02:56:31.000 You're like, I got a new season.

02:56:32.000 I got a job next year.

02:56:33.000 That's all you care about is you get picked up, right?

02:56:35.000 That's why the numbers matter.

02:56:36.000 And so if you've already been picked up, what do you care?

02:56:39.000 They're so good.

02:56:40.000 And people just watch.

02:56:41.000 You know what happens?

02:56:42.000 So on the first Cocaine Cowboys...

02:56:45.000 It took like three or four years for it to become like a thing, I feel.

02:56:51.000 So first, in 2006, it blew up in the bootleg market.

02:56:54.000 And here's the thing.

02:56:55.000 Every window was a different demographic that saw it and got exposed to it.

02:57:01.000 So the first one was like a younger urban audience with the bootlegs.

02:57:05.000 Then there was legit DVD, which was like Amazon, Best Buy, Netflix, Red Envelope.

02:57:10.000 Remember the old school days of the DVDs?

02:57:13.000 Yeah, it blew up there.

02:57:14.000 Then it went on Showtime.

02:57:15.000 Then it went on CNBC. Then it was one of the first docs on Netflix's streaming service when they first launched the streaming service.

02:57:25.000 But every one of those...

02:57:28.000 Windows opened up like the the show to a totally different Demo, you know by time it gets to CNBC. That's not young urban, you know That's a different very different audience So it's just like it but it took that many years for it to kind of for me basically to get into ubers and You know someone would say hey, where you from?

02:57:43.000 I say Miami you ever see cocaine Cowboys?

02:57:45.000 We're like you knew like when it comes back when when when your tweet comes back to you You know when it kind of goes around the world and people are like are sending you your own meme, you know, you're like, oh, that's cool But it took years but like Kings of Miami Boom.

02:57:58.000 They flick a switch, baby.

02:58:00.000 It's on 190 countries and 30 different languages and everybody is just seeing it.

02:58:06.000 So it's like it's all those windows collapsed.

02:58:08.000 It's incredible.

02:58:10.000 It's amazing.

02:58:11.000 It's a pretty stunning network.

02:58:13.000 Unbelievable.

02:58:14.000 Yeah, and the fact that they have figured out how to not just replace traditional networks, but make it far superior.

02:58:23.000 And then they figured out how to make you...

02:58:25.000 How about I'll give you the whole series in one burst?

02:58:29.000 Sit down for 20 hours.

02:58:31.000 Watch it all.

02:58:31.000 You're like, what?

02:58:32.000 All the episodes?

02:58:34.000 You're the network.

02:58:34.000 You're the programmer.

02:58:35.000 You're the network executive.

02:58:36.000 You can binge.

02:58:38.000 Nobody binged before.

02:58:40.000 They figured it out.

02:58:41.000 Actually, you know what?

02:58:43.000 It's a DVD experience.

02:58:45.000 When I first got, I remember what was it?

02:58:47.000 Like The Wire or something like that.

02:58:48.000 The Wire, The Shield. 0.99

02:58:49.000 And I'd stay up all fucking night. 0.99

02:58:52.000 And I wouldn't even realize it. 0.98

02:58:53.000 The sun would be coming up.

02:58:54.000 I'd be all cracked out. 0.98

02:58:55.000 I'd be like, did I just sit and watch fucking ten episodes of this thing? 0.96

02:58:59.000 That was like the beginning, I feel like, of that. 0.95

02:59:02.000 And they were a DVD company, you know, a distribution company originally. 0.96

02:59:05.000 So I feel like that's how they were like, oh, maybe people just, what if we just give them the whole fucking season? 0.96

02:59:11.000 It's so good. 0.97

02:59:11.000 So brilliant. 0.97

02:59:13.000 Well, I'm glad you got a platform and keep bringing more of that.

02:59:19.000 Keep doing it.

02:59:20.000 Whatever you're doing, man.

02:59:21.000 I love it.

02:59:21.000 I'm a giant fan of your work.

02:59:23.000 Thank you.

02:59:23.000 I'm happy you're here.

02:59:24.000 I may not be a one-hit wonder, but I might be a one-trick cowboy. 0.99

02:59:27.000 Whatever the fuck, it's a great trick, man. 0.99

02:59:29.000 One-trick pony. 1.00

02:59:30.000 Keep swinging.

02:59:31.000 Thank you, brother.

02:59:32.000 I really appreciate you very much.

02:59:33.000 Thank you.

02:59:33.000 Thanks, Jim.

02:59:34.000 All right.

02:59:34.000 Bye, everybody.

The Joe Rogan Experience - September 14, 2021

Joe Rogan Experience #1706 - Billy Corben

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