The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2432 - Josh Dubin

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan experience.

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

00:00:14.000 Brother Joe.

00:00:15.000 Good to see you again.

00:00:16.000 Nice to see you, man.

00:00:17.000 What's happening?

00:00:18.000 Everything's happening.

00:00:20.000 I got a lot on my mind.

00:00:22.000 I got notes today and everything.

00:00:24.000 Beautiful.

00:00:25.000 So let's kick it off.

00:00:27.000 What do you got?

00:00:30.000 No, I was just thinking that the more you do this work, the more routine the stories would get, and you would start to see fact patterns and situations repeat.

00:00:49.000 But I'm starting to think the more you do it, the more nutty and bizarre it gets.

00:00:55.000 And you find yourself in these situations where you're like, that can't be.

00:00:58.000 You got to check that out.

00:01:00.000 So I have like multiple cases going on where I feel that way.

00:01:07.000 And they range from wrongful convictions to why was this person charged in the first place?

00:01:16.000 Were you seeking clemency?

00:01:18.000 I mean, yeah, that's a weird world.

00:01:24.000 Yeah, your world in particular.

00:01:25.000 The world of wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted people is one of the darkest worlds in the world because you're taking away a person's freedom.

00:01:36.000 Yeah.

00:01:36.000 And they do it all the time for corruption.

00:01:41.000 They do it because they're corrupt.

00:01:43.000 They do it because they're dirty. 0.72

00:01:44.000 They do it because they want convictions.

00:01:46.000 They do it because they said someone was guilty and then they just want to fucking lock them up anyway.

00:01:51.000 You know, I started to read this.

00:01:54.000 Malcolm Gladwell just published a new book called Revenge or the Tipping Point.

00:02:00.000 And I'm only like 15 pages in.

00:02:04.000 And the way he starts it out is about, I think, he's going to come back to it at the end, but I think it's the opioid scandal.

00:02:15.000 He's leaving it blank until the end of the book about how when they testified, the executives of the company testified before Congress that they couldn't bring themselves to apologize or admit that they were wrong.

00:02:27.000 And they keep on using the words, our drug has been associated with, associated with addiction.

00:02:36.000 And it's almost this.

00:02:37.000 So I'm starting to think that this inability to admit fault, that you're wrong, that you're sorry, it transcends the legal system.

00:02:54.000 And, you know, I'm starting to believe that the cases where these cops are out to frame someone are far more, well,

00:03:09.000 maybe not far more, but they're less common than the cases where law enforcement's trying to do the right thing and a detective has a hunch and they just get to where they think they need to be on the evidence by following the hunch, which is often wrong.

00:03:27.000 So, yeah, it's a mix of all that shit.

00:03:31.000 Yeah, and people don't like to admit they're wrong ever, especially when it comes to something as crazy as a pharmaceutical drug company releasing some opioid that's going to kill a million people.

00:03:41.000 Like, they can't admit they're wrong.

00:03:43.000 They almost have to say things like associated with, especially during hearings.

00:03:48.000 Yeah, during congressional hearings, I guess there's a lot on the line if there's anything that smells like an admission.

00:03:55.000 Yeah, they can't admit it.

00:03:56.000 They have to not lie, right?

00:03:59.000 Because then they can get hit with perjury.

00:04:01.000 So they come up with different terms, like associated with.

00:04:05.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm interested to see where he goes with it.

00:04:08.000 I listen to his podcast a lot.

00:04:10.000 It's actually really good.

00:04:14.000 Some of them are good.

00:04:15.000 Revisionist history because he's a curious dude, this Malcolm Gladwell.

00:04:20.000 And, you know, some of his stuff I agree with, some I don't.

00:04:26.000 But I like that he looks beneath the surface and tries to figure out what is motivating people or what they're tricking themselves into believing.

00:04:37.000 And I just was watching this man Escalco bit the other day, and he was like, Can't you just say I'm sorry?

00:04:46.000 He's talking about his wife.

00:04:48.000 That's all I want.

00:04:50.000 And him and this dude are going back and forth.

00:04:52.000 I forget the guy's name on the podcast.

00:04:54.000 Some other comedian.

00:04:56.000 And the bit is so fucking funny.

00:04:59.000 And so I just find myself apologizing all the time.

00:05:04.000 Because what's wrong with just admitting that you're wrong?

00:05:08.000 Nothing at all.

00:05:09.000 It's good.

00:05:10.000 It's actually a show of strength.

00:05:12.000 And people that don't recognize that, they just believe that they're never wrong or that they want people to know they're never wrong or think they're never wrong.

00:05:19.000 So they just don't admit it and they just bury it deep inside.

00:05:22.000 But you find yourself apologizing all the fucking time sometimes when you're conscious of it.

00:05:27.000 I'm like, damn, I apologize a lot.

00:05:29.000 Maybe I'll do all this shit.

00:05:31.000 Well, better to apologize for something you didn't do than to not apologize for something you did.

00:05:37.000 Well, I don't know.

00:05:40.000 As long as you mean it.

00:05:42.000 Yeah.

00:05:43.000 You got to mean it.

00:05:43.000 Yeah.

00:05:44.000 That helps.

00:05:45.000 Meaning it helps.

00:05:46.000 Yeah.

00:05:47.000 Just saying it just to get it out of a fight.

00:05:50.000 Yeah, that's not good.

00:05:51.000 It's not good.

00:05:52.000 It's not worth it.

00:05:56.000 Yeah, I just finished.

00:05:59.000 I just finished this trial on a case that was super important to forensic science.

00:06:05.000 It was actually the namesake of my center, the Pearl Mutters, the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law.

00:06:13.000 So Ike and Laurie Pearlmutter's DNA was stolen by a neighbor.

00:06:18.000 And, you know, it's a nutty story.

00:06:20.000 You could read about it online.

00:06:22.000 I did read about it online.

00:06:24.000 It's crazy.

00:06:25.000 It's fucking crazy.

00:06:27.000 And but I had an expert, a so-called expert on the stand.

00:06:36.000 And there was an email where they it was an unaccredited DNA lab.

00:06:47.000 And someone that worked for him gets the results of DNA testing, one round of the results.

00:06:56.000 And she says, the good news is we have a full profile.

00:07:00.000 The bad news is it's not associated with the Pearl Mutters.

00:07:03.000 And I said to him in words or substance, why would it ever be bad news for a scientist if one particular person was implicated in a crime or not?

00:07:16.000 Aren't they supposed to just give the facts?

00:07:19.000 And in a moment of candor, I think it's one of the few times this has happened in all my years doing this.

00:07:26.000 The guy said, you know, I wouldn't have used those words.

00:07:29.000 And it had no place.

00:07:31.000 And it wasn't an email that he wrote.

00:07:32.000 It was an email that someone that worked for him wrote.

00:07:35.000 And I almost said right in front of the jerry, good for you, man.

00:07:38.000 That's super rare.

00:07:40.000 And I mean, the case is, I think it's an important one for forensic science because their DNA was stolen at a deposition over some petty shit.

00:07:52.000 It was about a tennis dispute in their community.

00:07:55.000 And they're lured to this deposition and their neighbor takes their DNA without their consent.

00:08:04.000 How did he do it?

00:08:08.000 He had a former crime scene analyst and some retired deputy chief of police from Toronto, because this guy's from Canada, come down and the former crime scene analyst sits at the deposition.

00:08:30.000 And they planned it all beforehand and they made sure that they did not handle paper that Ike Perlmutter would handle and they made sure that no one touched this water bottle that Lori Perlmutter was going to handle and they hand him this phony exhibit and they had it worked out before that they would only touch the bottom corner of it.

00:08:56.000 And they have.

00:08:58.000 They have a water bottle sitting in front of Lori Perlmutter and they ask questions about this dispute over the tennis center and you know, when they leave, it was treated like a crime scene and it was like some vigilante justice type of shit where they send all this stuff to an unaccredited lab,

00:09:24.000 who then sends it to an accredited lab and instead of waiting for the results to come in from this accredited lab, the unaccredited lab starts interpreting it and they're having pressure put on them by this man that ultimately accused Ike and Lori of being involved in this awful crime.

00:09:47.000 What was the crime?

00:09:48.000 All right, so it doesn't make sense without context.

00:09:51.000 So here's what happens.

00:09:55.000 Ike Perlmutter is the former chairman of Marvel.

00:09:59.000 He's very reclusive by all accounts.

00:10:04.000 He and Lori don't have children and they live a very quiet life in Palm Beach.

00:10:12.000 He was an avid tennis player this is about 14 years ago avid tennis player and he became very friendly with the woman that was the tennis pro.

00:10:23.000 She was a single mother.

00:10:25.000 She would set him up with tennis games and he became friends with her so she sold real estate on the side.

00:10:37.000 I mean, this is like a fucking episode of like Seinfeld or curb your enthusiasm at the beginning, then it like goes off the rails and descends into the depths of hell.

00:10:47.000 So bear with me, okay.

00:10:51.000 So a man moves into, or a man had been living at, or moves into their neighborhood and he um becomes friends with this other couple who also sell real estate.

00:11:03.000 The wife sells real estate and apparently they approach the tennis pro and they're like we should team up on real estate and she's like, no, it's just my side hustle, i'm gonna do it alone.

00:11:12.000 So this guy from Canada writes this memo and in the memo there's all these accusations about this woman that she could go to federal prison and she's committing.

00:11:23.000 She could be.

00:11:24.000 You know that that there's bid rigging going on because they never sent her her um, they never sent her tennis pro contract out for bid.

00:11:37.000 It was just kind of like nutty stuff.

00:11:39.000 Just because she wouldn't go into business with him.

00:11:41.000 I mean, that's our theory.

00:11:43.000 That's my opinion.

00:11:44.000 And yeah, that was our theory in the case.

00:11:46.000 So Ike stands up for her.

00:11:48.000 He's a very loyal guy.

00:11:50.000 He stands up for the people that he, you know, is friends with.

00:11:54.000 And he thought she was getting bullied.

00:11:56.000 So she sued the guy for defamation.

00:11:59.000 And Ike and another resident in this condo complex paid for her legal fees. 0.83

00:12:05.000 So about a year later, mail starts to arrive in this community and it is the most awful shit you have ever heard.

00:12:16.000 And it's accusing the Canadian guy of being a child molester, of being a murderer.

00:12:22.000 It's horrific, twisted, sick shit.

00:12:28.000 So it's about a year after this tennis center dispute, and there's misspelled Hebrew words and Jewish stars all over it.

00:12:38.000 So this guy thinks naturally that Ike and his wife are behind it, like they have nothing better to do.

00:12:46.000 All right.

00:12:47.000 So because he's so convinced that they did it and or that they were involved and he, you know, initially suspected that other people might be involved, this guy's going around and swabbing DNA off of with a q-tip, off of cars.

00:13:06.000 He's digging through trash in the condo community and he's like on this mission to collect people's DNA.

00:13:13.000 So he calls them to a deposition about the tennis center case and that's where this all went down.

00:13:19.000 So once they collect their DNA, this unaccredited lab claims that DNA taken off of the hate mail matches Lori Perlmutter's DNA from the water bottle at the deposition.

00:13:35.000 The problem was that this unaccredited lab didn't wait for the report from the accredited lab.

00:13:42.000 And that run of the DNA that this woman was relying on, the accredited lab discarded it because the man that actually did the testing contaminated the machine.

00:13:55.000 And he knew it, so he didn't rely on it.

00:13:59.000 So years and years and years go by and well after they knew that Lori had nothing to do with this.

00:14:07.000 In fact, in 2017, a man got arrested in Canada and he got arrested because a package got intercepted at Homeland at the border by Homeland Security and it had samples of the hate mail, latex gloves, you know, in the package.

00:14:26.000 And it was a former business associate of this Canadian guy and their relationship went sour.

00:14:34.000 And I thought the case was over.

00:14:37.000 You know, in 2019, I believe the guy gets arrested again and there's a detailed affidavit.

00:14:42.000 So it's clear that this man is responsible for it.

00:14:46.000 So in any event, in 2016, I believe it was 2016, there's an article in the fucking deal book in the New York Times saying that Lori Perlmutter DNA is on that hate mail.

00:15:00.000 And then there's another one in the Globe and Mail, which is a big Canadian paper.

00:15:06.000 So it was a defamation case against this guy and against this lawyer for a chub because Chubb helped this Chubb lawyer, federal insurance, also known as Chubb, helps him draw up the blueprints for collecting their DNA at the deposition. 0.97

00:15:24.000 So it was a super gratifying case.

00:15:29.000 We won a $50 million verdict and he was found liable for defamation, abusive process, which is abuse of the legal process.

00:15:40.000 And it's taken Ike and Lori all of these years to have their name restored in court.

00:15:46.000 And they'd kill me if I admitted it and it would be a violation of their confidence and my professional obligation, but they've spent an untold fortune.

00:15:57.000 And, you know, the case is important for forensic science because DNA is supposed to be the holy grail.

00:16:04.000 And you can't have private citizens running around trying to collect people's DNA without knowing what they're doing.

00:16:13.000 You could be leaning on someone and have good intentions to get results.

00:16:22.000 But if I told you or if I said to Jamie, here's my suspect, take a look at these fingerprints and tell me if they match him or her.

00:16:33.000 Or here's my suspect.

00:16:35.000 Here's their genetic profile.

00:16:37.000 Tell me if it matches.

00:16:40.000 You don't realize the, I mean, sometimes the error rate skyrockets by as much as 50% with fingerprints over 80%.

00:16:51.000 And fingerprint analysts will agree.

00:16:55.000 And they will say, yeah, I know that that happens.

00:16:59.000 And if someone tells me who the suspect is and only who the suspect is, and I'm comparing it, I think the error rate goes up, but not with me.

00:17:10.000 Not with me.

00:17:11.000 I mean, again, it's that phenomenon where you just can't think that you would be biased.

00:17:17.000 So, look, the case was super important because I think it reused, but beyond restoring their name, and, you know, it's the namesake of the center where we do this work.

00:17:28.000 It also preserves the integrity of forensic science and especially DNA, which is really one of the few super reliable forms of forensic science.

00:17:42.000 But even that, when put in the wrong hands, or if it's exposed to subjectivity and people's belief that they have the right person, it's vulnerable.

00:17:57.000 And science shouldn't be vulnerable.

00:18:00.000 It should be, it's either A or B.

00:18:04.000 It's either yes or no, especially with DNA.

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00:18:59.000 Can I ask you a question?

00:19:00.000 Yeah.

00:19:01.000 And you said that the evidence against her, the DNA evidence had to be thrown out because the machine was contaminated.

00:19:08.000 Yeah.

00:19:09.000 How was it contaminated and how did that implicate her DNA?

00:19:12.000 So what happens is when you're, I don't want to go too deep into DNA analysis, but it is actually interesting.

00:19:23.000 When you're conducting DNA testing, the manufacturer of the machine I think it's called the PowerPlex Plus, they ask you to run what's called a positive control and a negative control to make sure that the machine is correctly calibrated.

00:19:44.000 Because what it's doing through electrophoresis, it's shooting out what's called an electropharogram on the other end so that you're able to do what they what they what's referred to as calling alleles.

00:20:02.000 So you're recalling a chromosome pairing at a specific genetic marker, right?

00:20:09.000 So and they called them, there's various different loci or locations where there you either have two alleles or one.

00:20:20.000 You get one from your mom, one from your father, one from your mom, one from your dad.

00:20:24.000 And sometimes the one from your father might not show, but your mothers will show, but there'll be two alleles at most at a specific location.

00:20:32.000 So they want to make sure that the machine is working properly.

00:20:35.000 So the manufacturer has the lab analyst every time you do it run a positive control, meaning that you'll put a solution through the machine and it should on the other end give you very specific results.

00:20:51.000 And he accidentally pipetted or took the solution from her DNA mixture instead of from the positive control mixture and put that through the machine.

00:21:05.000 So when he was running the test, her DNA is already mixed in there.

00:21:11.000 But he realized he made a mistake.

00:21:14.000 So when he issued his report, he didn't rely on that run.

00:21:18.000 Because when I say run, it's another, you'll run the DNA on different occasions and sometimes on different dates because you want to make sure that your genetic profile will never change.

00:21:36.000 My genetic profile will never change.

00:21:40.000 So when you were looking at somebody's genetic profile, it should be consistent.

00:21:45.000 So when he saw that, wait a second, the first run of this doesn't match the second and third or the fourth, he realized he made a mistake.

00:21:55.000 But without having the lab analyst that's doing the interpretation, you know, weighing in on the results and you're antsy to get an answer and you're leaning on an unaccredited lab saying, interpret the results, interpret the results.

00:22:11.000 Money's no object.

00:22:12.000 There's an email that said that.

00:22:14.000 You know, instead of waiting, she relies on this run of the DNA. 0.99

00:22:21.000 And, you know, then what happens happen.

00:22:24.000 But at some point, this Canadian guy came to learn what actually happened and kept on going and kept on going and kept on going.

00:22:35.000 And there was evidence that he wanted hundreds of millions of dollars from my clients.

00:22:40.000 You know, I think what turned out to be a shitty situation for him because no doubt getting hate mail like that has to be disturbing and upsetting to the family.

00:22:52.000 Did it turn out that he had any sort of relationship with the Canadian man who was sending him the hate mail?

00:22:56.000 That was his former, one of his former business colleagues who he had a vicious falling out with, and he kept it from everyone.

00:23:06.000 So I think that the inference, in my opinion, the inference is that at some point, and in fact, there's an allegation in the hate mail where it says you were involved in the murder of these two people.

00:23:22.000 He accuses this man in Canada months after the hate mail began to arrive of spreading that rumor.

00:23:28.000 So I believe that he knew it was him the whole time.

00:23:31.000 And at some point, I believe he was trying to shake the Perlmutters down. 0.99

00:23:37.000 So he wanted money from them, otherwise he was going to go public?

00:23:41.000 And he went public.

00:23:43.000 How much did he request?

00:23:45.000 You know, look, there's an article in the Globe and Mail saying that he wants $600 million.

00:23:52.000 There was an article, he admitted on the stand that it was $100 million.

00:23:59.000 So he was just trying to get paid.

00:24:00.000 Well, that's my opinion.

00:24:03.000 That was the jury's opinion.

00:24:05.000 What does he do?

00:24:06.000 He was some embattled, in my opinion, an embattled businessman in Canada.

00:24:13.000 He had like an executive recruiting company, but there was all sorts of public information out there that he worked on the Toronto Harbor Commission and then been involved in what the press called cloak and dagger campaigns where he was wasting public funds.

00:24:29.000 So, you know, he bragged about all the lawsuits he's been involved in.

00:24:33.000 So I think the jury saw through it.

00:24:36.000 And, you know, look, again, sometimes you become really close with your clients, and that's not always a great thing.

00:24:49.000 I'm guilty of that a lot.

00:24:51.000 But these are wonderful people, reclusive.

00:24:54.000 They give most of their money away to charity.

00:24:58.000 And to watch these people get dragged through the mud for over a decade.

00:25:03.000 And, you know, there was evidence in the case that this is interesting because I initially fought this.

00:25:12.000 On the day, the first day of jury selection, they had been invited to go to Mar-a-Lago and sit at the president's table for a Halloween party.

00:25:23.000 It was just prospective jurors filling out questionnaires.

00:25:29.000 So the defense, and it was really, I think, the attorneys for Chubb or for the lawyer that worked for Chubb wanted to introduce evidence.

00:25:38.000 They got photos of the party and they wanted to introduce this evidence.

00:25:44.000 And there was one day during the trial where they went to the White House because one of their close friends was appointed to be the ambassador for India.

00:25:56.000 And they used that against them during the trial.

00:25:59.000 And I fought it tooth and nail.

00:26:01.000 And then I finally said, you know what?

00:26:04.000 I'm going to let it come in.

00:26:04.000 Fuck it.

00:26:06.000 I stopped fighting it.

00:26:08.000 And I knew that the jurors on their questionnaire filled out who they publicly admired most and least.

00:26:20.000 Two of them wrote they admired the president the most.

00:26:24.000 One of them said they admire him the least.

00:26:27.000 So I really had to speak to that juror and say during my closing argument, you know, What they're doing here is they're trying to say that Lori Perlmutter's reputation doesn't matter, that she can't emote and suffer humiliation or public ridicule, and that you should disregard her because of who she's friends with, who she votes for,

00:26:54.000 the fact that her husband came here and literally with $200 in his pocket and, you know, ascended.

00:27:03.000 That's the weird paradox about success.

00:27:07.000 You know, you get there and people are like, oh, these fucking rich people, but these are like, they represent the best in all of us.

00:27:15.000 Lori Perlmutter, with her free time, started to work at the gift shop at NYU because she liked the feeling of selling flowers and little gifts to people that were going through terrible times.

00:27:29.000 And she ends up becoming a board member at NYU and they give $50 million to start the Perlmutter Cancer Center.

00:27:36.000 I mean, who among us wouldn't want to aspire to that?

00:27:40.000 And they were trying to say, but she doesn't matter.

00:27:43.000 At one point, she was asked the question, you know, because with defamation, your reputation is on the line, right?

00:27:50.000 And you have to argue reputational damage.

00:27:53.000 And they said, well, isn't your reputation bound up in your husband's?

00:27:57.000 And they said this to a jury of like four or five women.

00:28:01.000 And I thought, what a dumb fucking thing to say.

00:28:03.000 In my opinion, at least it was like.

00:28:06.000 And I was able to say to them during the closing, they're saying she doesn't matter and that she's not her own person.

00:28:13.000 Her reputation.

00:28:14.000 So it's like these little victories help restore my faith in the system.

00:28:22.000 Because if billionaires can get awarded $50 million, which is what they got awarded, I think that that's the jury saying her reputation mattered.

00:28:34.000 And not only did her reputation matter, but it mattered to the point where you can't just tear somebody down when you know the facts.

00:28:48.000 Which just seems so insane that he would pursue that.

00:28:50.000 I mean, the guy literally owns the Ike Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice.

00:28:56.000 And you're like, yeah, I'm going to test that.

00:28:59.000 I'm going to test that justice.

00:29:01.000 Just bullshit my way.

00:29:03.000 I mean, the irony of that is that the center was born out of their experience in this case.

00:29:09.000 Yeah.

00:29:09.000 Really?

00:29:10.000 The center was born out of, at one point, I was offered this role to start a new post-conviction center.

00:29:18.000 Up until four years ago, five years ago, I did work at the Innocence Project.

00:29:22.000 And when I was offered this position at the same law school at Cardozo Law where the Innocence Project was born, they said, if you get that role, the Perlmutters, we're going to fund it for the first 10 years because we realize that if you're wrongfully accused in this country of a crime you didn't commit, if you don't have the resources to fight it like we did, that you're really in trouble.

00:29:50.000 And for them to have that kind of insight while going through this, you know, it's remarkable.

00:29:59.000 I'm indebted to them for life.

00:30:01.000 I mean, they've become like surrogate family to me.

00:30:03.000 But yeah, the center was born out of their experience in this case.

00:30:07.000 So good came out of it.

00:30:09.000 Does the guy have the money to pay them?

00:30:12.000 I don't know.

00:30:13.000 I don't know, but I'm going to find out.

00:30:17.000 About, you know, we have post-trial motions that the judge has to decide.

00:30:22.000 And then, you know, once we get, hopefully we get the judgment entered, Ike is not the guy to pick a fight with.

00:30:30.000 He was standing up for his wife's honor, really.

00:30:34.000 And look, sometimes you pick a fight with the wrong person and you, what did I say?

00:30:42.000 You fuck around and find out.

00:30:44.000 There's a lot of people that fuck around a lot until they find out.

00:30:49.000 And it sounds like this guy might have been one of those people.

00:30:52.000 I don't know.

00:30:53.000 I don't know. I mean... Perhaps. Perhaps.

00:30:56.000 Allegedly.

00:30:57.000 It just seems like there's people that are involved in conflict their whole fucking life, man, and they never get out of that pattern.

00:31:04.000 I don't get it.

00:31:06.000 Unhealthy people.

00:31:07.000 They develop a pattern.

00:31:09.000 They develop a pattern of thinking and behaving, you know?

00:31:14.000 Well, I don't know if it's the empath in me, but I try to see, like, what are you thinking?

00:31:21.000 Why can't you realize I've gone down the wrong path?

00:31:26.000 Let me course correct.

00:31:28.000 And you just end up with theories.

00:31:32.000 I mean, look.

00:31:38.000 I can understand why a former detective might be concerned about liability.

00:31:45.000 So they can't just say, well, here's what I was up to all this time.

00:31:50.000 I guess I can understand that, but I can understand the thinking and not just saying, I've gone down the wrong path.

00:32:02.000 And some people start to believe their own lies, I think.

00:32:05.000 Some people start to believe their own theories.

00:32:10.000 Human psychology is like it's vast and abstract and so complicated.

00:32:19.000 It varies.

00:32:20.000 Varies from individual to individual.

00:32:23.000 What they can justify, what they can sort of rationalize in their head.

00:32:30.000 Look, I told you at the beginning that there's only been like a handful of cases where I was like, yeah, that can't be.

00:32:39.000 There's got to be something missing from that story that you're not telling me.

00:32:43.000 But watch this.

00:32:49.000 Two officers in 1998 were on patrol in New York City, in Brooklyn, on Pitkin Avenue.

00:32:58.000 Gunfire breaks out.

00:33:01.000 And literally, as they're rolling down the street, the gunfire breaks out.

00:33:08.000 One of the officers looks to his left and sees the muzzle flash of the gun that was used to kill this young man, Trevor Vieira.

00:33:22.000 He exits the patrol car, draws on the man, and says, drop the gun.

00:33:31.000 The guy's pointing the gun still that was used to shoot Trevor Vieira.

00:33:39.000 And there's a tense moment.

00:33:42.000 And this officer has testified that there was a 14-year-old girl in the area, or he otherwise would have just shot the guy.

00:33:52.000 So he literally catches the murderer with the gun smoking in his hand.

00:33:59.000 Well, I've used that expression over the past two decades.

00:34:03.000 Oh, it's the smoking gun.

00:34:04.000 This is the fucking smoking gun.

00:34:08.000 He finally drops the gun.

00:34:11.000 His name is Eduardo Rodriguez.

00:34:16.000 He's put in handcuffs.

00:34:19.000 And, you know, you get documents as you're going through the discovery process during post-conviction.

00:34:28.000 You get it from the prosecutor, from the police, and there's a radio call by a detective that says, perps in custody, contemporaneous with the arrest.

00:34:43.000 They arrest two men, one guy standing next to him and the guy that Eduardo Rodriguez shot the gun.

00:34:50.000 He's placed under arrest.

00:34:53.000 He's brought to the precinct.

00:34:56.000 And he's delivered into the arms of no other than one of the most corrupt, sadistic detectives to ever work homicide in Brooklyn, in my opinion, Louis Garcella.

00:35:14.000 No, why should that name sound familiar to you or to others?

00:35:19.000 Because Louis Garcella is the guy that framed Derek Hamilton, who's the deputy director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo.

00:35:30.000 Louis Scarcella and his partner, I think his name is Schimmel or Chimmel, Kimmel, C-H-M-I-L.

00:35:43.000 These guys were so notorious for framing people for murders they didn't commit that there have been 21 cases where people's convictions were vacated where they were the lead detectives.

00:36:04.000 21.

00:36:05.000 Derek's is one of them.

00:36:07.000 So Eduardo Rodriguez is delivered to the precinct, smoking gun in his hand, and a couple of hours later, he's brought to the home of Nelson Cruz, who was 17 years old at the time, 16, turning 17.

00:36:27.000 And it's the story of these cops that while he was in the precinct, that he was yelling and screaming and tearing the place up.

00:36:38.000 I didn't do it.

00:36:40.000 Nelson Cruz did it.

00:36:42.000 He shot him and ran and dropped the gun and I just picked it up.

00:36:48.000 The officer that arrested him never saw Nelson Cruz.

00:36:51.000 He didn't see someone shoot and drop a gun.

00:36:54.000 The story is literally ludicrous.

00:36:58.000 Nelson Cruz is arrested and charged with murder.

00:37:03.000 So when I heard the story, I was like, there's no fucking way that this is what happened.

00:37:08.000 You're leaving something out.

00:37:11.000 And I then read the trial transcript.

00:37:16.000 There's another guy that shows up at the precinct named Andre Bellinger.

00:37:21.000 And Andre Bellinger says, yeah, I saw Nelson Cruz do it too.

00:37:29.000 And he shows up at the precinct and he's told what kind of gun was used.

00:37:36.000 He's told that Nelson Cruz is the suspect.

00:37:39.000 And then he picks him out of a lineup after being told we're going to put Nelson Cruz in a lineup.

00:37:46.000 All three of those things are gross violations of investigatory practices, and this has been established for decades.

00:37:57.000 So this guy ends up put on trial and they somehow claim that they don't have they can't locate this guy that is saying that he witnessed the crime.

00:38:24.000 They can't locate him.

00:38:27.000 He's not around to be located.

00:38:30.000 So the person who had the gun in his hand that is shooting the gun, who they believe who says Nelson Cruz did it, at Nelson Cruz's trial, he's nowhere to be found.

00:38:47.000 Wouldn't you think that the prosecutors would put that man, Eduardo Rodriguez, on the stand so he could explain how he picked up the gun?

00:38:57.000 He could explain, what did you see?

00:38:59.000 You saw Nelson Cruz do this, and he ran and dropped the gun, and he's never put on the stand.

00:39:04.000 It's like a three-day trial.

00:39:06.000 The only person put on the stand that claimed to have been a witness is this guy, Andre Bellinger.

00:39:12.000 So, I mean, some people have like bad luck, shitty luck, or cataclysmic, fucking apocalyptically bad luck.

00:39:28.000 And Nelson Cruz just happens to have, you know, won that shit lottery.

00:39:34.000 Nelson Cruz ends up before a judge about eight years ago and about six years ago.

00:39:47.000 And it's a post-conviction hearing.

00:39:50.000 And this guy, Andre Bellinger, who claims that he watched Nelson Cruz do it, is outed as a liar.

00:40:01.000 There are eyewitnesses that were with him that night who said he wasn't at that murder scene.

00:40:07.000 He was like blocks away with me.

00:40:11.000 He was outed as a liar on so many different occasions, it becomes like it would become laughable if it wasn't so serious.

00:40:20.000 After these post-conviction proceedings, during which 20 some odd witnesses were called, the courtroom is packed on the day of the decision because the expectation amongst the press and in the legal community is Nelson Cruz is about to get exonerated.

00:40:35.000 This judge had exonerated people that had been investigated by Lewis Garsella.

00:40:43.000 And she's acting kind of weird and erratic.

00:40:48.000 And she rules against Nelson Cruz and contradicts herself on multiple occasions.

00:40:56.000 And this is in 2019.

00:41:02.000 And we later, or 2020, and we later learn she never takes the bench again.

00:41:08.000 And she resigns because she has advanced stage Alzheimer's disease.

00:41:13.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:41:15.000 I have an affidavit from an investigator that says her husband said that she had been suffering from these symptoms for years before.

00:41:26.000 There was a judicial complaint filed because she wasn't showing up to court.

00:41:34.000 There's a ProPublica article about it, about this whole debacle.

00:41:40.000 And, you know, it's stories like this.

00:41:43.000 And so the Pearl Mutter Center for Legal Justice is working on the case.

00:41:49.000 And, you know, thankfully, we're before the Conviction Integrity Unit in Brooklyn.

00:41:55.000 And it's led by a really special guy, Eric Gonzalez, who's the district attorney in Brooklyn.

00:42:03.000 And he listens to these cases.

00:42:05.000 He has a real conviction integrity unit.

00:42:08.000 So I'm hopeful that once we present the case to them, that we'll get him some relief.

00:42:14.000 But to think about, he was paroled in 2023.

00:42:19.000 He's a mess.

00:42:20.000 He walks around nervous.

00:42:22.000 He's got terrible anxiety and paranoid, wonderful guy, and he's so stone-cold innocent, and you just wonder how and why this shit can happen to someone.

00:42:34.000 And, you know, it's like the perfect constellation of like, you got these crooked detectives who have already been found to have ruined a bunch of people's lives.

00:42:45.000 You have the smoking gun found in the hand of the murderer who mysteriously disappears.

00:42:53.000 And if you're wondering, so why do they believe this guy?

00:42:56.000 How does he go to the precinct and he raises hell and says Nelson Cruz did and I picked up the gun, even though there's no evidence of that?

00:43:06.000 What would be your guess?

00:43:08.000 Well, he's probably some sort of a witness and something else.

00:43:13.000 It was pretty well known back at the time that Lewis Garcella, other detectives in Brooklyn Homicide and all the boroughs had informants.

00:43:24.000 I mean, that's my best guess.

00:43:26.000 Why else would you just believe?

00:43:29.000 And they've gone as far as to try to discredit their own and say, well, Piati must not have seen him drop the gun and run.

00:43:38.000 This guy has been consistent throughout.

00:43:41.000 He hears the gunfire, looks, sees the muzzle flash.

00:43:45.000 He literally witnesses the murder.

00:43:48.000 So, you know, there was a joint FBI task force with the NYPD going at the time.

00:43:54.000 So, yeah, they relied on informants.

00:43:56.000 What's the state of the guy who actually committed the murder currently?

00:44:00.000 He's out.

00:44:01.000 Jesus.

00:44:02.000 He's running around the streets.

00:44:03.000 Who knows where he is?

00:44:06.000 So if your guy gets exonerated, does this guy get tried?

00:44:12.000 No, that very rarely happens.

00:44:16.000 So that guy just committed murder and he's free.

00:44:19.000 Oh, that's happened.

00:44:20.000 You know how many times that's happened to anyone that's done post-conviction work?

00:44:24.000 But you don't even think that's a possibility.

00:44:27.000 You're just dismissing it.

00:44:29.000 Like, no, the murderer is going to go free.

00:44:32.000 Yeah.

00:44:33.000 Because in order for me to expect that that would happen would be to defy logic as I know it in this world.

00:44:45.000 Because think about what happens.

00:44:46.000 If a municipality admits we did something horrible and it was a mistake and we did the wrong thing, there's going to be a civil rights lawsuit.

00:45:02.000 I mean, look, to Brooklyn's credit with this DA, they have done that and done the right thing.

00:45:09.000 But in terms of then going after the person that they think did it, you know, it's 2000 almost 26 and this crime happened in 1998.

00:45:17.000 It's 30 years later to be able to reassemble the witnesses and some of whom are probably dead or hard to find.

00:45:27.000 But it's very rare that once there's an exoneration and you're able to point to who the true killer is, very rare that law enforcement will go after the person that defense counsel has established actually did it.

00:45:45.000 That's insane.

00:45:47.000 Is it?

00:45:48.000 Yeah.

00:45:49.000 Because if the defense counsel has ruled that this other guy is innocent and that the police officer did see the guy execute that person, how do you not try that person with murder?

00:46:04.000 Now you're stumbling into the how could that the how could that be of our legal justice system?

00:46:12.000 It just it doesn't happen.

00:46:15.000 I mean, Clementia Geary, who I've talked about before, who was exonerated from death row, you know, if there's any doubt about this phenomenon of children killing their parents, I think that that was laid to rest a few days ago.

00:46:33.000 It happens.

00:46:34.000 It happens a lot more than was recently publicized.

00:46:38.000 You know, the real killer was the daughter of her mother and her grandmother.

00:46:44.000 Clementia Geary gets, you know, charged, put on death row, and in the middle of his retrial, you know, she all but confessed on the stand to me.

00:46:54.000 They have her blood mixed with her mother's blood at the crime scene and in a trail leading to the bathroom where the killer cleaned up, she confessed on six or seven different occasions, not under duress, not to law enforcement, to various people around town.

00:47:11.000 She's roaming the streets. 0.99

00:47:13.000 The day that Clemente got exonerated, I said, you know, I think I might have quoted like Jim Morrison.

00:47:22.000 I was like, there's a killer on the roam and she's in Kentucky and you better go get her.

00:47:28.000 You know, and they were like, oh, objections.

00:47:31.000 You know, but yeah, it happens.

00:47:32.000 I mean, it's my belief that she's stone-cold guilty.

00:47:39.000 And they haven't gone after her.

00:47:40.000 And that happens a lot.

00:47:41.000 I mean, look, the word exoneration is thrown around, but it's like Derek's case is rare.

00:47:49.000 He was declared actually innocent.

00:47:52.000 Sometimes the conviction gets vacated.

00:47:56.000 Sometimes it, you know, they decide not to retry the person and agree to time served.

00:48:04.000 But you're pushing a massive boulder up a steep hill every time.

00:48:09.000 Like Nelson Cruz should not have to carry this weight around anymore.

00:48:13.000 He's had other lawyers that have done a great job representing him.

00:48:17.000 You know, we've come in now.

00:48:18.000 How much time did he wind up doing?

00:48:22.000 I think 26 years.

00:48:24.000 Jesus.

00:48:26.000 Yeah.

00:48:27.000 It's horrifying.

00:48:29.000 Jesus.

00:48:30.000 I mean, when you've done so much time that you've paroled out and are still trying to prove your innocence.

00:48:36.000 Jesus.

00:48:41.000 I hate to give you indigestion. 0.99

00:48:46.000 I mean, but it's, this is like, I'm past tears at this point.

00:48:53.000 I'm more like, we just got to keep going and keep fighting.

00:48:59.000 And when you get these little victories here and there, like we've had a few releases recently that were super encouraging, where you're able to get people a second chance, where you're able to, you know, get it to the point where they could, even though they didn't do it, plead guilty.

00:49:19.000 We just had a release.

00:49:22.000 She was actually my co-counsel in the Clementia Geary case, Mari Palmer, and her client pled guilty, but we believe he's innocent.

00:49:31.000 He did it to get out.

00:49:32.000 He had done 24 years and he'd had enough.

00:49:35.000 But for her to get it to the place where he could even plead guilty after serving all that time, you know, innocent people plead guilty all the time.

00:49:46.000 Yeah, they do just to get a lighter sentence.

00:49:50.000 Yep.

00:49:51.000 It's a dirty business you're in, buddy.

00:49:55.000 Filthy.

00:49:58.000 It's filthy.

00:49:59.000 And it's got all these tentacles.

00:50:02.000 Because if you're doing post-conviction work, it's not just the wrongfully accused and convicted.

00:50:14.000 It's also, you know, we do clemency work, commutations and pardons.

00:50:22.000 You start to wade into the human mess and you see that like people have made mistakes and are worth a second chance.

00:50:35.000 What they do with it is up to them, but some of the stuff you can't explain.

00:50:41.000 Some of these prosecutions are political.

00:50:45.000 Look, I'm dealing with a case right now that's like at the intersection of wrongful conviction and what the fuck are we doing with our immigration policy in this country.

00:51:00.000 And I don't even want to mention his name because I don't want to, you know, or the state because I don't want to sacrifice the good work that we're doing to get him a public hearing.

00:51:10.000 But I can say this much.

00:51:16.000 This is a guy from Albania that came to this country in the early 70s and had to sit in a refugee camp in Italy for damn near a month under horrid conditions just to come here to try to live a life. 1.00

00:51:38.000 He's in his early 20s.

00:51:40.000 He's at a gas station.

00:51:43.000 He has a $100 bill for $5 gas.

00:51:48.000 He goes into the gas station.

00:51:50.000 The guy takes the $100 bill.

00:51:52.000 He doesn't have change.

00:51:55.000 He says, when you get $5, come back.

00:51:57.000 I'm going to hold on to this $100 bill.

00:52:01.000 And they get into an argument.

00:52:04.000 He won't give him back the $100 bill.

00:52:08.000 So he leaves and goes to get his brother.

00:52:13.000 And he tells his brother about it.

00:52:17.000 They return to the gas station.

00:52:20.000 They have a gun in the back seat of their car.

00:52:23.000 His brother tells him, you stay here.

00:52:26.000 I'm going to go in and try to talk some sense into this guy and get your money back and give him five bucks.

00:52:34.000 My client's sitting in the car and gunshots erupt.

00:52:41.000 He goes in the back seat, gets the gun, goes around to the side, comes into the gas station.

00:52:49.000 It comes into the, you know, the, you remember back in the 80s where you would go in to pay and it would be like a little front desk area.

00:53:01.000 And the gas station attendant is holding the gun and he looks to his left and his brother is bleeding out.

00:53:08.000 The gas station attendant had shot his brother in the stomach.

00:53:13.000 Still holding the gun shaking, he shoots him one time dead.

00:53:18.000 Shoots the gas station attendant dead.

00:53:22.000 His brother miraculously survives and he's put on trial for murder.

00:53:30.000 And he goes to trial the first time.

00:53:36.000 Remember, he's in his early 20s and it's a hung jury.

00:53:40.000 Most of them are in favor of acquittal.

00:53:42.000 Goes to trial a second time and gets convicted.

00:53:48.000 The judge must have seen that this was damn near as close to self-defense as it gets.

00:53:54.000 He got sentenced to like four to seven years.

00:53:57.000 He was out in just under four years.

00:54:00.000 He had become an accomplished boxer in prison.

00:54:06.000 He's lived the last 51 years of his life without so much as a traffic ticket.

00:54:15.000 He goes to New York, joins the union as a super for buildings.

00:54:22.000 He pays taxes, social security, pays into his pension, builds a life for himself, has five kids, eight grandchildren, and he's living in upstate New York.

00:54:37.000 Leaves the country a couple of years ago to go to Albania to see family, comes back and gets stopped at the border.

00:54:49.000 Somehow is not detained at the border, but they start removal proceedings on him.

00:54:56.000 Why?

00:54:58.000 Because there is...

00:54:59.000 Is he a citizen at this point?

00:55:00.000 Is he a green card?

00:55:00.000 No.

00:55:00.000 No, he's not.

00:55:01.000 Yeah, he's a green card holder.

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00:56:24.000 He's exactly who we would want in this country.

00:56:26.000 A guy that comes here.

00:56:30.000 And by the way, I want to mention the state.

00:56:33.000 There are self-defense laws that did not exist then.

00:56:36.000 Many states have stand-your-ground laws.

00:56:39.000 I think under different circumstances, he doesn't even, and if the laws had evolved, he doesn't even get charged.

00:56:45.000 I mean, you see your brother shot, and the facts are not in dispute about this.

00:56:50.000 I've researched it exhaustively.

00:56:54.000 You know, isn't that the type of person we want who has contributed to this society for 51 years and built a family?

00:57:03.000 What happened with the brother and the attendant?

00:57:06.000 They got into an argument, and he called, the attendant called him some slur against Albanians, and they started to argue, and he just shot him in the stomach.

00:57:18.000 This isn't even, it's not in dispute at all what happened.

00:57:23.000 And there's a law that if you committed a violent crime, you're removable.

00:57:30.000 But for 51 years, he was not removed from this country.

00:57:35.000 And he lived here as a green card holder, and he paid taxes, and he built a family and a life.

00:57:45.000 So this removal was all during the Biden administration?

00:57:47.000 No.

00:57:48.000 Unfortunately, it was during the Trump administration.

00:57:51.000 You said it was two years ago?

00:57:53.000 It was when he was first asked at the airport and they flagged him.

00:58:05.000 I believe it was during the Biden administration, but no enforcement action was taken.

00:58:10.000 It was during the current, and this isn't an indictment of the president.

00:58:13.000 This is just during the current administration that they started removal proceedings against him to try to have him removed from the country.

00:58:21.000 So did they just go through all the old cases and find out anybody that had any sort of a violent offense?

00:58:29.000 I believe that that's what happened.

00:58:31.000 Nobody knows, but that's what I believe happened.

00:58:33.000 So again, I made the mistake, or maybe it's a virtue at this point of getting to know this family.

00:58:42.000 And I've met every sibling.

00:58:46.000 There's two boys and three girls, and they're literally like some of the most wonderful people I've ever met.

00:58:54.000 I wish I didn't like them as much as I did.

00:58:58.000 And I stay in close contact with one of the, I mean, I guess I could give first names with one of the sons, Anthony, and his sister, Joanna.

00:59:08.000 And to see the love that they have for their father and the fear that they're living under that this man could get deported and sent to Montenegro.

00:59:19.000 Why Montenegro?

00:59:20.000 Because that's where you get sent if you're Albanian, if you have Albanian citizenship. 0.99

00:59:29.000 Why there, though?

00:59:30.000 I think that that's the protectorate of Albania at this point.

00:59:34.000 Okay.

00:59:35.000 So, and to watch them, they went to one removal proceeding and the judge, I have the transcripts of the proceeding, and the judge is like saying to the prosecutors, at one point he said, what are you doing here?

00:59:49.000 He starts speaking Albanian to my client.

00:59:53.000 And look, I don't know immigration law that well.

00:59:56.000 I'm not an immigration lawyer, but I spoke to the immigration lawyer and he's like, look, I'm afraid that they're going to take him.

01:00:02.000 I mean, ICE is waiting outside courthouses.

01:00:05.000 And they're going to take this guy.

01:00:06.000 He's in his 70s, take him away from his family and his grandchildren.

01:00:12.000 So again, you don't just see these wrongful conviction cases.

01:00:15.000 You see cases that are like, this man has built a life.

01:00:18.000 And if you start to get beneath the surface and you see the pain and agony and fear that people are living, they're living it day to day.

01:00:31.000 We were able to get a delay into February for his removal proceedings.

01:00:36.000 So I'm now trying to get him pardoned.

01:00:39.000 Because if he gets pardoned, there's no basis upon which to remove him.

01:00:46.000 And, you know, we have a team at my center that's working on it.

01:00:50.000 And you want, these are the kind of people you want to fight for once you get to know them.

01:00:56.000 So there's like, I don't want to just tell nightmare after nightmare, but the reason why it's important, I think, for people to hear this is it's not just what you're seeing on TV or what you're hearing about.

01:01:11.000 I mean, what basis do we have to remove a grandfather who's lived here for 50 years and contributed to this society and paid his taxes and paid into Social Security and was part of a union and just like I'm looking for a flaw.

01:01:30.000 I really am.

01:01:31.000 I'm looking for like a reason for me not to like them and I just get drawn in more and more.

01:01:38.000 They're just wonderful people and these are the kinds of things that are like worth fighting for.

01:01:43.000 I think what's going on with ICE is one of the things that's going on with quotas for speeding tickets and things along those lines is that they have numbers that they want to achieve.

01:01:56.000 And they've openly talked about this, that they want to remove a certain amount of people per week.

01:02:01.000 And when they do that, I think everything's on the table.

01:02:03.000 Then they start showing up at Home Depot.

01:02:05.000 Instead of like looking for gangbangers, looking for criminals and cartel members, they go to whatever's easiest pickings so they can get numbers up.

01:02:16.000 Do you know Ed Calderon?

01:02:17.000 Do you know who he is?

01:02:21.000 He worked, he was a Mexican military guy who now is an American citizen, but he reports extensively on the cartels and just was telling me some horror stories about ICE raids.

01:02:36.000 And one of them was they took this guy who had been brought over here when he was a baby, but didn't have American citizenship.

01:02:43.000 His family came over here illegally.

01:02:46.000 Lived here for 20 years.

01:02:48.000 Can't speak Spanish.

01:02:50.000 They deport him.

01:02:52.000 Send him to Tijuana.

01:02:53.000 Can't speak Spanish.

01:02:54.000 Can't speak Spanish.

01:02:56.000 Does not speak Spanish.

01:02:57.000 He is essentially an American citizen.

01:02:58.000 He just never lived anywhere else.

01:03:01.000 He just doesn't have the paperwork.

01:03:03.000 He's not a criminal.

01:03:04.000 They sent him over to Tijuana, and now he has to live in Mexico.

01:03:09.000 He doesn't know what the fuck to do.

01:03:12.000 He's on the streets.

01:03:13.000 Has no idea.

01:03:14.000 He doesn't have any money.

01:03:16.000 Yeah, I don't understand.

01:03:18.000 I wish that there was.

01:03:20.000 It's sort of a black box, immigration, in terms of what the policy exactly is, and why do you want to continue this narrative that seems to be, again, more of a human rights issue than a political issue.

01:03:41.000 Like, what is the end game here?

01:03:43.000 The end game is to get as many illegals out as they can because so many were brought in over the last four years. 0.99

01:03:49.000 Well, that's a fair argument.

01:03:52.000 I understand that.

01:03:56.000 But do we want to be getting rid of 70-year-old men that really, I mean, I got to tell you, I have an older brother, and if someone had done something like that to him, I can't tell you I wouldn't have done the same fucking thing.

01:04:11.000 Of course.

01:04:12.000 Almost anybody who has family would say that.

01:04:15.000 Go and you see your brother shot, and you know the whole circumstances surrounding it.

01:04:21.000 Yeah.

01:04:22.000 So I just don't, and it's not, these immigration judges I've come to learn don't have much flexibility.

01:04:31.000 You know, they're hard and fast statutes about whether or not someone is considered removable.

01:04:39.000 And, you know, my appeal is really to the prosecutor is like, why are you doing this?

01:04:45.000 But then they're following orders from someone above them that's telling them, this is your case.

01:04:49.000 You're assigned to it.

01:04:50.000 Do the best job you can.

01:04:52.000 So that kind of shit just rolls downhill, unfortunately.

01:04:56.000 Yeah.

01:04:59.000 And, you know, I try not to wear this for my own mental health.

01:05:08.000 I'm trying to keep the empath in me in check a little bit more, because but sometimes it's difficult, like Nelson's case, this case that I'm talking about, and the only reason I'm not using names in that case is I don't want to alienate.

01:05:27.000 There's great people in the state that this happened in, which wasn't New York, that I think actually care and have shown that yeah, this is doesn't seem right, and we want to make sure that you get a public hearing.

01:05:41.000 I'm confident that we will before February and I like my chances if we do, because I think that the story he's worth pardoning, he's worth saving.

01:05:51.000 But you know, I don't, I don't understand, I mean, that's what I meant by this human mess.

01:06:00.000 It's like I wish there was a more transparent process of how and why people get pardons, certainly on the state and on the federal level.

01:06:10.000 I don't get it.

01:06:12.000 Well, I mean, the nuttiest thing is that the president can pardon people.

01:06:19.000 You could just decide because you're the president or the governor.

01:06:24.000 You can just decide this person, I like them.

01:06:29.000 It's an amazing responsibility.

01:06:36.000 And it's kind of an awesome power to have.

01:06:41.000 And how you go about exercising it becomes challenging, right?

01:06:49.000 Well, look, it's real weird.

01:06:50.000 Like, how about during the Biden administration when some of them, Biden clearly didn't even sign the pardons?

01:06:56.000 It was all auto-penned.

01:06:57.000 And he had the most pardons of any president ever.

01:07:01.000 So you have political influence.

01:07:03.000 You have people that would like to get someone pardoned.

01:07:05.000 And you know, someone inside.

01:07:07.000 You think you can make this happen.

01:07:08.000 Well, he's pardoning 9,000 people.

01:07:10.000 Fuck it.

01:07:11.000 Let's just throw that one in there. 1.00

01:07:12.000 Yeah, I mean, I don't think he's, I don't really know the auto-pen issue that well.

01:07:18.000 I don't know if he saw those, didn't see them.

01:07:22.000 I don't know what it's like organized chaos for every presidency.

01:07:30.000 You know, Bill Clinton pardoned people at the end of his terms that fucking bananas when you look at them. 0.98

01:07:38.000 Biden did it with his son.

01:07:40.000 You know, the Biden did it with his, with family members that weren't even accused of preemptive pardons.

01:07:46.000 I don't even know that that was a thing before.

01:07:48.000 It never was.

01:07:49.000 He did it with Fauci.

01:07:50.000 Preemptive back to 2014.

01:07:54.000 Yeah, listen, I don't.

01:07:57.000 Some of the pardons that the current administration issues are like, good for him.

01:08:02.000 Yeah.

01:08:03.000 Others are like head scratchers, and you're like, what the fuck?

01:08:08.000 Right.

01:08:08.000 But like, I, you know, what makes one person deserving and another not is a difficult thing to understand.

01:08:19.000 I, like, I have been to the White House.

01:08:23.000 I've, I've advocated for pardons.

01:08:26.000 It's a frustrating experience because you know that there are thousands of people doing the same thing.

01:08:34.000 And you try your best to say, this is why this case means something.

01:08:39.000 But where it goes from there is hard to understand.

01:08:42.000 I think I have tremendous respect for an admiration of the current pardons are Alice Johnson because she's been there before.

01:08:51.000 You know, she was actually incarcerated and pardoned by the president. 0.72

01:08:57.000 And she's now in that role as the pardons are.

01:08:59.000 Who is she pardoned by?

01:09:00.000 President Trump.

01:09:02.000 During his first parent.

01:09:02.000 Wow.

01:09:03.000 Yeah.

01:09:03.000 Wow.

01:09:04.000 Yeah.

01:09:05.000 And she's.

01:09:07.000 What was she wrongfully accused of?

01:09:08.000 Some drug offense.

01:09:12.000 And she did a ton of time.

01:09:13.000 And she's gone on to become this amazing, not just human being, but advocate for people to get second chances.

01:09:23.000 And he designated her the pardons are.

01:09:26.000 Now, I think between her and getting to the president and making her case for pardons is difficult because there's layers of influence in between. 1.00

01:09:36.000 But, you know, I have cases before them right now that have very prominent people backing them.

01:09:47.000 And, you know, you would hope that they end up, you know, On his desk and seeing getting some relief.

01:10:00.000 I have one client that I know Mike Tyson has backed him publicly, privately.

01:10:08.000 He was a childhood friend of his.

01:10:10.000 His name is Spencer Bowens.

01:10:13.000 And, you know, he's one of many people that were sentenced under these crazy regimes of like, let's weigh, let's weigh the drugs.

01:10:30.000 So what's heavier?

01:10:31.000 Crack or cocaine?

01:10:33.000 Cocaine.

01:10:34.000 All right.

01:10:35.000 What's heavier?

01:10:36.000 Heroin or crack?

01:10:39.000 All right.

01:10:39.000 Heroin.

01:10:40.000 So they start to weigh, and what's more destructive?

01:10:43.000 Who fucking knows?

01:10:44.000 Crack was pretty damn destructive.

01:10:47.000 And, you know, they, Spencer's been in prison for more than three decades.

01:10:54.000 And he would have been out if these nutty drug laws didn't exist and if they applied retroactively since they have been abolished.

01:11:05.000 And he's a guy that's sitting in there and I speak to and I start to lose hope.

01:11:10.000 I don't lose hope.

01:11:11.000 I start to feel his hopelessness over the phone because he should have been granted relief in the courts and he's someone that just really, really deserves to be out.

01:11:24.000 You know, and I have, there's a bunch of cases like that where we're trying so hard.

01:11:29.000 And you have to at the same time, at the same time, you express, you know, confidence in the people that are responsible for this stuff.

01:11:40.000 But you also want to make sure that you're not offending them by saying, look, I know you have a bunch of cases.

01:11:48.000 Emory Jones is another one.

01:11:51.000 I do a lot of work with Jay-Z's mom and Jay-Z.

01:11:54.000 He has a foundation.

01:11:55.000 I have one.

01:11:56.000 And we mentor college students together in the summer, pay for their last year of college.

01:12:02.000 And Emory is a childhood friend of Jay-Z's and has his full support.

01:12:11.000 Rock Nation, Jay-Z's company, they're behind him.

01:12:16.000 And he's another one that was convicted and spent decades in prison for some drug crime.

01:12:23.000 And he's come out and checked every box.

01:12:26.000 He's a mentor.

01:12:28.000 He's a pillar of the community.

01:12:29.000 He's done so many amazing things, but he's under the weight of this old conviction.

01:12:36.000 And he's denied job opportunities.

01:12:39.000 And, you know, you just got to keep pushing and keep fighting.

01:12:43.000 And hopefully your timing is right.

01:12:45.000 And you speak to the right person and you get good news one day.

01:12:50.000 But the odds are so the odds are so I don't want to say stacked against you, but yeah, it's who you know, who has influence at that particular time with the right person, the administration.

01:13:05.000 What kind of punishments are there for people like the corrupt guy in Brooklyn that you were talking about?

01:13:10.000 Whatever happened to him?

01:13:12.000 He's roaming the streets.

01:13:15.000 He's roaming the streets.

01:13:18.000 And look, that's the most, you know, the cop, Louis Garcella, he denies any, I mean, in the face of these 21 cases that have been vacated, he denies any wrongdoing.

01:13:32.000 So 21 different people.

01:13:34.000 21.

01:13:35.000 He incarcerated them.

01:13:36.000 Yeah, and you know, you know, one of the things that I'm thinking might be a good idea, because we can all go on the internet and look this shit up.

01:13:43.000 Like, if you look up Louis Garcella on the internet, I bet you there's a Wikipedia page that talks about his corruption and lists all the people.

01:13:53.000 We could all go on the internet.

01:13:55.000 One of the things that I think has been underused and I think should be part of people's calculus rather than reading a headline or listening to me or you or anyone is read the trial transcripts.

01:14:14.000 Make your own judgment.

01:14:17.000 I mean, I don't know what better way there is if you want to say, well, what actually happened?

01:14:26.000 What happened at this person's trial that you're and why do they deserve a second chance?

01:14:34.000 Listen, there's a dear friend of mine who runs an amazing organization called the Reform Alliance.

01:14:42.000 Her name is Jessica Jackson, fantastic lawyer.

01:14:46.000 And I mean, is in the bowels of the system fighting for change.

01:14:53.000 And right now, there's a bill that the president's own pollster, I forget the guy's name, has found that 80% of MAGA voters support this act.

01:15:06.000 It's called the SAPR Supervision Act.

01:15:09.000 And it's actually a system that rewards people for when they get out for doing the right thing.

01:15:17.000 So that if you want to make sure that you are, you know, when you get out, there are terms of your supervision.

01:15:24.000 How many times you check in with your parole or probation officer?

01:15:28.000 How often are you being subject to drug tests?

01:15:31.000 Is there an end in sight?

01:15:34.000 This act actually is a merit system.

01:15:37.000 And it's heavily supported by Republicans, by Democrats, by everyone in between.

01:15:44.000 And you would hope that something like that would get passed and get pushed through because the Saper Supervision Act is a way that we can reward people for doing the right thing and hold people accountable that aren't doing the right thing when they get out.

01:15:59.000 But your question about what happens to the cops or the prosecutors that do this, they have immunity.

01:16:08.000 It's one of the most frustrating things in the world is that most of the time, qualified immunity applies.

01:16:16.000 I mean, I could see immunity for a mistake, perhaps.

01:16:21.000 But if there's a pattern and it's clearly corruption and you have a person that is taking away people's freedom, how is there not a crime committed?

01:16:32.000 How are they not convicted or at least charged with crimes?

01:16:38.000 Well, listen, for those listeners that want to get involved in the process and actually make a difference, you got to get involved.

01:16:46.000 This isn't just like activists speak.

01:16:52.000 You can make a fucking difference.

01:16:54.000 The person that ends up in a position to actually exercise their executive authority, executive clemency, whether it's a governor or a president, you should be a little more invested.

01:17:09.000 I mean, I had this situation.

01:17:11.000 I gave this guy every benefit of the doubt.

01:17:14.000 And I thought I made a breakthrough.

01:17:18.000 And this is almost sadistic, I think.

01:17:24.000 And I'm sure I'll get a bunch of hate mail about this that I could really give a shit.

01:17:30.000 I went through this process with Governor DeSantis in Florida.

01:17:34.000 And I think he was actually fucking with me, to be honest with you.

01:17:40.000 And he listened to the case as a favor.

01:17:45.000 And there's a public hearing of the clemency board.

01:17:51.000 And this guy's name is Michael Giles.

01:17:54.000 And again, read the transcript.

01:17:58.000 As a matter of fact, I brought a passage to read here.

01:18:02.000 This is another mind bender.

01:18:06.000 This guy's in the Air Force.

01:18:15.000 He is in Tampa.

01:18:18.000 He ends up taking leave for the weekend and goes up from Tampa to Famu in Tallahassee.

01:18:31.000 Never been there before.

01:18:34.000 He has a firearm that he's licensed to carry.

01:18:37.000 He actually went into a police station to get his carry license.

01:18:41.000 Military guy, never been in trouble in his life.

01:18:45.000 Goes up to Tallahassee and a massive fight breaks out in this club where they're at.

01:18:52.000 Literally zero testimony that he has anything to do with this fight.

01:18:58.000 Fight spills out into the parking lot and it's being instigated by one guy.

01:19:05.000 And this guy that's instigating the fight was thrown out of the club and his own friends testified in the trial.

01:19:12.000 We were afraid he was going to hurt someone bad.

01:19:15.000 My client, Michael Giles, ends up in a car with the people he came there with waiting for the person that had the keys to the car to come out and emerge from this melee.

01:19:29.000 And this fight is going on all around him.

01:19:31.000 People testified they were petrified.

01:19:34.000 And he takes his gun and puts it in his pocket.

01:19:38.000 He's standing there, like on the outskirts of this fight after he gets out of the car and goes to look for his friend that has the keys to the car.

01:19:46.000 The car was left unlocked, but they couldn't leave because there was no ignition key.

01:19:51.000 And he gets sucker punched.

01:19:54.000 And the guy that punched him says, yeah, I looked for the first person I could.

01:20:00.000 Don't take it from me.

01:20:01.000 Here's what he said at the trial.

01:20:07.000 Here's what he said at the trial.

01:20:13.000 First of all, his friends are testifying.

01:20:16.000 This is from the trial, right?

01:20:19.000 That he was at, that this man was acting, quote, crazy, that they were afraid he was going to, quote, attack someone.

01:20:26.000 He was excited and acting crazy and talking and cursing and upset and agitated.

01:20:32.000 Were you concerned that he was going to attack someone?

01:20:35.000 Question.

01:20:36.000 Answer, yes, I was.

01:20:37.000 Or get in a fight?

01:20:38.000 Answer, yes, I was.

01:20:41.000 That's why I told him to leave.

01:20:43.000 And that's why he was told to leave the club because he was wanting to fight someone.

01:20:47.000 Isn't that correct?

01:20:50.000 Witnesses testify.

01:20:53.000 Question.

01:20:54.000 You saw Courtney Thrower.

01:20:56.000 This is the guy that punched my client.

01:20:58.000 Jump on the individual with the plaid shirt, didn't you?

01:21:02.000 The guy with the plaid shirt is my client.

01:21:03.000 Yes, I did.

01:21:05.000 Your testimony is Courtney Thrower leapt and attacked Mr. Giles from the front.

01:21:12.000 Yeah, I was.

01:21:13.000 That was the thing.

01:21:14.000 Courtney then leaps toward Mr. Giles and takes a swing at his face. 1.00

01:21:20.000 And it goes on and on and on.

01:21:22.000 That he took a running start, left his feet, and punched my client in the face.

01:21:28.000 And look, there's a melee going on.

01:21:32.000 So he's on the ground after getting punched.

01:21:36.000 And the person that punched him didn't hold back.

01:21:39.000 He was asked at the trial, question, Mr. Thrower, is it your testimony that you ran with your entire body to strike this person?

01:21:47.000 Answer, yes.

01:21:48.000 Question, so you at a full run or a sprint use the weight of your body to impact this person in the head?

01:21:55.000 Answer yes.

01:21:56.000 Question, was it your intention to knock him out?

01:21:59.000 Answer, yes, it was.

01:22:02.000 Question, and is there any doubt in your intention?

01:22:05.000 Answer no.

01:22:07.000 Question, had this person actually done anything to you at any time whatsoever?

01:22:14.000 Answer physically, directly, no.

01:22:19.000 Question, was it your intent to hurt this individual?

01:22:22.000 Answer, yes, that's normally what you do when you punch someone.

01:22:27.000 So on those facts, as my client is laying on the ground and there's a melee going on where people are getting punched and kicked, is he justified at that point to take his gun out and shoot in self-defense?

01:22:43.000 He shoots this guy in the leg and fragments of the bullet hit two other people.

01:22:50.000 That's the case.

01:22:52.000 That's it.

01:22:55.000 He is sentenced under Florida's mandatory minimum to 25 years in prison.

01:23:04.000 25 years.

01:23:09.000 He's been in for 15 years.

01:23:12.000 I have gone to visit him.

01:23:15.000 He is the only client that I've ever represented that has never got a ticket in prison.

01:23:21.000 What is a ticket?

01:23:23.000 You didn't listen to a corrections officer when they said get against the fucking wall. 0.52

01:23:30.000 You didn't have, you know, you didn't follow the rules.

01:23:35.000 You didn't do that.

01:23:36.000 Not a ticket.

01:23:38.000 So various powerful people that know the governor finally got him to listen.

01:23:46.000 Now, before I got involved in the case, the family was told that the governor was prepared to grant him clemency and traveled to Tallahassee the day that they thought he was going to get released and were told on that day the governor changed his mind.

01:24:04.000 So I knew this all going in.

01:24:07.000 I went and I appeared at a clemency hearing and I was as, what do they say?

01:24:18.000 You're the words escaping me.

01:24:22.000 When you're not subservient, but you're trying to articulate it the right way.

01:24:34.000 I mean, I was not only respectful, but, you know, I understood the gravity of what I was asking for.

01:24:44.000 This is a governor that has never granted clemency, commuted a sentence to someone that was currently incarcerated.

01:24:53.000 And, you know, he went through a laundry list of things that he would like me to do.

01:25:02.000 His parents live, Michael Giles' parents live, that's the name of my client, Michael Giles.

01:25:08.000 His parents live in Georgia.

01:25:10.000 Could you con the governor, could you get in touch with the state of Georgia?

01:25:14.000 I mean, this is all at a public hearing.

01:25:16.000 It's online.

01:25:18.000 And see if their governor has any problem with abiding by the terms of release?

01:25:26.000 You want me to contact the governor of, okay, submit a supervised release plan that is exhaustive and runs all the way through the term that he would serve out his incarceration so that he should be on supervised release for another 10 years.

01:25:44.000 Contact this one.

01:25:45.000 Contact that one.

01:25:48.000 I learned on good information that the governor was like, he'll never be able to get all that done.

01:25:54.000 I got it all done.

01:25:57.000 I had people help me, went to the governor, spoke to the governor in Georgia.

01:26:02.000 He said, yeah, of course, we'll abide by it.

01:26:04.000 There's something called the Interstate Compact.

01:26:07.000 States have to abide by each other's supervision requirements when someone goes from one state to another.

01:26:13.000 This had the support of John Ashcroft, Mike Mukit, right-wing Republicans that otherwise wouldn't support this sort of thing.

01:26:24.000 It was like I had a list of like 40 people, former U.S. attorneys.

01:26:29.000 It got so much that the head of the Florida Commission of Offender Review gave him a positive recommendation to get out.

01:26:42.000 Super rare.

01:26:44.000 The Attorney General was in support.

01:26:46.000 Everyone was in support.

01:26:48.000 A week before I was told we're going to grant him relief, they actually had me speaking to the prison to transport him up to the clemency hearing.

01:27:02.000 We were down to whether he would be able to change into a suit because at the public hearing, Governor DeSantis said, I want to actually look at him eye to eye.

01:27:11.000 And at the last second, for no fucking articulated reason, he said, you know what?

01:27:18.000 I've changed my mind.

01:27:22.000 That is brutal.

01:27:26.000 It's evil, in my opinion.

01:27:29.000 And it's precisely why, you know, sometimes the king has to show mercy.

01:27:34.000 And it's precisely why this guy is not very popular, I don't think.

01:27:40.000 And I ask this because it's relevant.

01:27:43.000 Does Michael Giles get prosecuted if he's not a tall black man?

01:27:49.000 I don't think so.

01:27:53.000 The prosecutor that prosecuted him, I'm not calling him anything.

01:27:57.000 I'm giving you the facts.

01:28:00.000 The prosecutor that prosecuted him went through a DOJ investigation because something was found in his office targeting Hispanic residents for harsher punishment.

01:28:14.000 A whistleblower took a photo of it.

01:28:17.000 It was a memo hanging over a water cooler.

01:28:21.000 It's all over the place.

01:28:22.000 It's all online.

01:28:23.000 You can read about it.

01:28:24.000 And he had to enter into some agreement with the Department of Justice.

01:28:28.000 How is it phrased?

01:28:30.000 How is what for you?

01:28:31.000 How is this determination to prosecute?

01:28:34.000 If prior criminal history or Hispanic, and then it has an era. 0.98

01:28:40.000 Oh, yeah, you can pull it up.

01:28:41.000 His criminal history is the same as just being innocent.

01:28:44.000 Yeah, this is the South.

01:28:47.000 Wow.

01:28:47.000 I mean, it's out there.

01:28:50.000 His name is Jack Campbell.

01:28:54.000 I mean.

01:28:55.000 That is so crazy that they would not just, but actually print.

01:29:00.000 Prior criminal history is equal to being Hispanic. 1.00

01:29:02.000 I don't think it said equal.

01:29:03.000 But it's self-discipline.

01:29:04.000 Or Hispanic. 0.99

01:29:05.000 That's what we're saying.

01:29:06.000 Yeah, there's a whistleblower that took a picture of it, and then he had to apologize for it.

01:29:12.000 So should the thought enter my mind?

01:29:14.000 Hmm.

01:29:15.000 I mean, I was putting my daughter to bed one night, and I just looked up his name, and I stumbled across this, and I was like, oh, okay.

01:29:25.000 Because I spoke to him one time, and I asked if he would give a letter of support.

01:29:30.000 And he said, I won't give a letter of support, but I stand by what I did.

01:29:34.000 I said, do you want to know what he's done since he's been in?

01:29:38.000 No, I don't care.

01:29:39.000 I'm not going to support it.

01:29:41.000 I just won't.

01:29:42.000 Oh, there it is.

01:29:44.000 That's it.

01:29:45.000 No criminal history, diversion, if limited criminal history, withhold costs, if extensive criminal history, end or Hispanic. 0.92

01:29:54.000 Adjudicated guilty.

01:29:57.000 Plus costs.

01:29:58.000 End or extensive criminal history and or Hispanic. 0.99

01:30:04.000 And Hispanic is in capital letters. 0.68

01:30:06.000 Yeah, and so this whistleblower takes a picture of this and it leads to a DOJ investigation where he agrees, he apologizes publicly, and he agrees to go into some training program and have the prosecutors that work for him in a training program for racial sensitivity.

01:30:26.000 So you think, you know, I deal with the facts and I deal with what I see every day.

01:30:32.000 So should it beg the question, is Michael Giles getting charged with this crime under the facts as I just told you with the testimony that I just read to you?

01:30:45.000 And they said, well, he ran initially.

01:30:48.000 And when the police initially spoke to him, he didn't say he shot the gun.

01:30:53.000 He's a black man in America.

01:30:56.000 Later that night, he admitted it.

01:30:58.000 So what does it make a difference?

01:30:59.000 And what does it make a difference anyway?

01:31:01.000 The guy was attacked with a running start.

01:31:04.000 Someone leaves their feet and punches him in the face.

01:31:06.000 Isn't 15 years enough?

01:31:09.000 15 years?

01:31:10.000 He's had to go through.

01:31:12.000 I mean, you read the letters from his kids who have now grown up without him.

01:31:17.000 Your heart ends up in 50 million pieces.

01:31:20.000 And, you know, so a guy like Governor DeSantis, I think it's like there's no humanity there.

01:31:29.000 And, you know, the craziest part about it is that you never know who you'll meet and why this is all, to me, human rights issue.

01:31:38.000 The only person that gave me a sympathetic ear when I would go to Florida before I lived there, when I was still living in New York, and talk about clemency cases was Nikki Freed.

01:31:50.000 I think she was the commissioner of agriculture.

01:31:53.000 And she ran against DeSantis in the last governatorial election.

01:31:58.000 And she's like, the fascinating part about it is that this is like a woman that's dedicated herself to public service and she's a major marijuana advocate.

01:32:10.000 Legalizing marijuana has been her mission for so many years.

01:32:13.000 She's on the board of normal.

01:32:15.000 She'd be an awesome guest because she became super unpopular in Florida because of her stance on legalization of marijuana. 1.00

01:32:27.000 And, you know, she was attacked over it about how weed is a gateway drug somehow in the minds of, you know, people that don't get it, that it's some like pathway to heroin addiction.

01:32:43.000 And, you know, medicinal marijuana, you know, cannabis for healing, all of those things she's been a major advocate for.

01:32:50.000 And she told me, you're being strung along.

01:32:55.000 After she was out of office, she's now the head of the, I think she's the head of the Democratic Party for Florida. 0.66

01:33:02.000 Wonderful woman.

01:33:03.000 She's like, you're going to get strung along.

01:33:05.000 I said, no, watch, watch.

01:33:07.000 I'm going to be the first one to get clemency from someone in prison.

01:33:11.000 And he still can do it.

01:33:14.000 Why won't he?

01:33:16.000 Fuck knows.

01:33:17.000 And it's, you know, I have to talk to Michael's mom.

01:33:22.000 And I have to talk to him.

01:33:24.000 And it's like, you know, you run out of words.

01:33:29.000 And yeah, it's not just is this a dirty business, heartbreaking, you know?

01:33:35.000 It's.

01:33:36.000 Well, it's got to be particularly hard for you.

01:33:39.000 You are a very sensitive guy, which is odd.

01:33:42.000 You're a very empathetic guy, which is odd for a lawyer.

01:33:45.000 You know, usually lawyers eventually develop some sort of a shell just to don't let enough in.

01:33:52.000 You get hurt too many times.

01:33:53.000 Even if you start out empathetic, you eventually develop a thick skin.

01:34:01.000 Listen, I'm a crier, and I don't hide that.

01:34:04.000 And that's why you're able to do the kind of work you do, because you still are sensitive to this, and you still are empathetic, despite all the shit you've seen.

01:34:15.000 Well, I mean, look, I have to be, I don't think you're good.

01:34:20.000 I used to think that it was something to shrink from.

01:34:23.000 In other words, that because it becomes a heavy cross to bear when you start wearing other people's hurt and emotions.

01:34:36.000 And, you know, I've found myself sometimes inferring that people feel a certain way when they don't.

01:34:45.000 And I have to make sure that I'm careful about that.

01:34:49.000 I mean, my son Carter is like, he's 13.

01:34:53.000 He's going to be 14 in April.

01:34:56.000 And I sometimes feel like I have to be careful with the empathy because sometimes I'll be reliving some traumatic event from my childhood.

01:35:10.000 And I'll think, oh, he must feel this way at this point in time at 13.

01:35:16.000 And I'm imputing an emotion to him that isn't there.

01:35:21.000 And sometimes I'll do that with a client or their family.

01:35:27.000 And I've gotten better at it, but when you have to deliver hard news or bad news, because there's so many these exonerations, the commutations, the pardons, they're like each one of them is its own miracle.

01:35:49.000 Each one of them is, it's so hard, so hard to get it done.

01:35:55.000 I got a pee.

01:35:56.000 We'll be right back.

01:35:58.000 So today, right before we started this, Trump rescheduled marijuana.

01:36:04.000 So it's now Schedule 3.

01:36:06.000 So it's in the same category as Tylenol.

01:36:12.000 Which is interesting.

01:36:14.000 That's a compromise, right?

01:36:16.000 It should be legal and regulated.

01:36:19.000 That's what I think.

01:36:20.000 Isn't there been a stain on Tylenol, though, under this administration?

01:36:24.000 Yeah, sure.

01:36:25.000 Acetaminophen is responsible for at least 500 deaths a year.

01:36:30.000 I read a horrible case about a lady who had COVID and she was struggling, you know, in pain, really hurting, kept taking Tylenol.

01:36:38.000 Tylenol is with codein.

01:36:40.000 That's like Schedule 3.

01:36:40.000 Codeine?

01:36:41.000 Oh, okay.

01:36:42.000 Tylenol with codeine.

01:36:43.000 Tylenol 3.

01:36:46.000 That's Schedule 3.

01:36:48.000 That's different.

01:36:48.000 That's different Tylenol.

01:36:49.000 Different regular.

01:36:50.000 So acetaminophen is.

01:36:51.000 How do you feel about it being rescheduled?

01:36:54.000 Well, it's better.

01:36:55.000 Certainly it's better.

01:36:56.000 I believe if it's rescheduled, what does that mean?

01:36:58.000 It could be prescribed now, you know, and it can be prescribed state by state.

01:37:04.000 Even in Texas, there's some medical uses.

01:37:09.000 I feel like it should be like alcohol.

01:37:12.000 I think you should be of a certain age to be able to use it.

01:37:17.000 And I think it's not for everybody.

01:37:20.000 I think that's important, that it isn't for everybody.

01:37:24.000 There are people that have very particularly vulnerable psychological states, mental constitutions, whether they have a history of mental illness or whatever, especially like high-dose marijuana.

01:37:39.000 You know, Alex Berenson wrote about this in a book called, I think it's called Tell Your Children.

01:37:47.000 And he highlights the instances of people that have schizophrenic breaks from high doses of THC.

01:37:55.000 And whether or not they would have had those schizophrenic breaks anyway, you know, we don't know.

01:38:00.000 There's a certain percentage of the population that's just schizophrenic.

01:38:03.000 What causes it?

01:38:03.000 We don't know.

01:38:05.000 Or we don't know clearly why something can cause it.

01:38:08.000 But you should be aware of those things.

01:38:10.000 You know, it's not for everybody.

01:38:11.000 I know a lot of people don't like it, but I know a lot of people who do.

01:38:15.000 A lot of people, it enhances their life.

01:38:17.000 It makes times more enjoyable, makes sex more enjoyable, and food more enjoyable, and fun times with friends.

01:38:24.000 It's like anything else.

01:38:26.000 You can abuse everything, including exercise.

01:38:29.000 I know a lot of people are addicted to exercise.

01:38:31.000 They overdo it.

01:38:32.000 And people take CrossFit classes and they go too hard and they wind up getting rhobdomyelosis.

01:38:38.000 That's some kind of thing with your kidneys or liver or something?

01:38:38.000 What is that?

01:38:41.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:38:42.000 You literally, your muscle tissue breaks down faster than your body can heal.

01:38:48.000 Rhapdoe's dangerous. 0.95

01:38:50.000 People die of that.

01:38:50.000 I remember reading about it when I did CrossFit 15 years ago, whatever it was, that I was like, I'm not going that hard.

01:39:00.000 Yeah.

01:39:02.000 Well, it's for psychos.

01:39:03.000 David Goggins is of the world.

01:39:06.000 You know, I think he got Rhabdo, went to the hospital, got out, and then completed his race. 1.00

01:39:11.000 Well, he's not human.

01:39:12.000 Yeah, he's a psycho.

01:39:15.000 He's amazing.

01:39:16.000 I wonder how he runs and speaks at the same time.

01:39:20.000 Oh, he's in insane shape.

01:39:22.000 I mean, he does it every day.

01:39:23.000 He runs 13 miles every fucking day.

01:39:26.000 And then on top of that, he does a series of like very rigorous workouts.

01:39:30.000 He does two or three workouts every day.

01:39:33.000 Yeah.

01:39:34.000 He's a fascinating guy.

01:39:36.000 He's awesome.

01:39:37.000 But he's a great guy.

01:39:38.000 Stay hard.

01:39:39.000 Great human being, though.

01:39:41.000 He really is.

01:39:41.000 He's great to talk to, great to hang out with.

01:39:43.000 I love him.

01:39:45.000 But point is, like, you can get addicted to video games.

01:39:48.000 You can get addicted to gambling.

01:39:49.000 The gambling thing is a big argument people use all the time, you know, because one of our sponsors is DraftKings, online gambling.

01:39:57.000 I think you should be able to gamble.

01:39:59.000 I don't have a problem with it.

01:40:00.000 Me personally.

01:40:02.000 I don't have a problem with gambling, but I know a lot of people that do.

01:40:06.000 They shouldn't fucking gamble.

01:40:08.000 You know, gambling is an evil addiction.

01:40:10.000 You watch people get gripped by it.

01:40:11.000 It's kind of crazy.

01:40:13.000 I've known quite a few people that have had gambling addictions, especially from my pool hall days.

01:40:18.000 I was just always around hardcore gamblers.

01:40:21.000 And the boy, man, it might as well be heroin.

01:40:24.000 It might as well be for those fucking people.

01:40:27.000 But I think you should be able to gamble.

01:40:30.000 I know it devastates some people's lives, but their choices devastate their lives.

01:40:34.000 And there's help.

01:40:35.000 And there's, you know, you should learn how to manage your mind.

01:40:39.000 I think you have to learn restraint in anything.

01:40:42.000 Yes, you can't nanny state the whole fucking world. 1.00

01:40:44.000 You know, you can't nerf every hard edge on the planet.

01:40:48.000 It's not how it works.

01:40:49.000 I love that.

01:40:49.000 I'm going to steal that.

01:40:50.000 Nerf it. 1.00

01:40:51.000 You know, listen, I do things you can get hurt doing, and I think you should be allowed to do that.

01:40:57.000 You know, I know people that have been very badly hurt doing martial arts, including competing.

01:41:02.000 I did a lot of that.

01:41:04.000 You should be able to do it.

01:41:05.000 You should be able to ride bulls.

01:41:06.000 I don't want to ride a bull.

01:41:07.000 You should be able to ride a bull.

01:41:09.000 I think one of the things about being a human being is as much freedom as you can give people, the better.

01:41:16.000 And also inform them about the dangers of whatever choices they make.

01:41:20.000 Give them an informed ability to make a decision for themselves.

01:41:26.000 This is what it means to be a free human being.

01:41:29.000 And you're going to make some dumb choices and you're going to make some dumb decisions.

01:41:32.000 And that's okay.

01:41:34.000 That's how we all learn together collectively.

01:41:37.000 And I think marijuana is far better for you than alcohol.

01:41:40.000 It has legitimate medical uses, legitimate psychological uses.

01:41:45.000 It relieves stress for a lot of people.

01:41:50.000 You can't criminalize something for something you don't agree with.

01:41:54.000 It's crazy.

01:41:55.000 Also, the LD50 of it is off the fucking charts.

01:41:58.000 Literally, the only way to die from marijuana is it would take about a 50-pound package hitting you in the head from a CIA drug plane.

01:42:07.000 That's how you die.

01:42:08.000 What's an LD50?

01:42:09.000 Lethal dose at 50% of the population.

01:42:12.000 It's very high.

01:42:14.000 So if you're saying, like, for people's benefit, like, if you're saying that marijuana should be illegal because it's dangerous, okay?

01:42:23.000 Dangerous, how?

01:42:25.000 When there's so many things that are, like, we talked about Tylenol, which I fully support Tylenol being legal.

01:42:30.000 You should be able to, if you're in pain, you can go get some Tylenol.

01:42:35.000 Cenaminophen fucking kills people.

01:42:37.000 You know, like I said, it's responsible for about 500 deaths a year.

01:42:41.000 And I was telling you about the COVID story.

01:42:43.000 This poor lady, she was hurting because she had COVID. 0.94

01:42:46.000 She kept taking Tylenol and didn't understand that you just, you can't, there's an amount you can take, and you should never take more than that.

01:42:53.000 And she had liver failure, and she fucking died, you know, of something that is, you know, it's horrible.

01:43:00.000 So, but I think you should be able to take Tylenol.

01:43:02.000 Just don't take enough to fucking kill you.

01:43:04.000 I think that should be the case with alcohol.

01:43:08.000 Same thing.

01:43:09.000 I'm for legalization of alcohol.

01:43:11.000 When you make things illegal, all you do is prop up illegal people to sell those things to people that want it.

01:43:16.000 There is a demand.

01:43:17.000 They will supply it.

01:43:19.000 You know, this is the situation that we live in in this country in regards to heroin, regards to cocaine, regards to so many different things.

01:43:27.000 They're being supplied, and they're being supplied, and you're propping up these illegal cartels, and these motherfuckers are killing people, and they make it ruthless.

01:43:35.000 It's ruthless.

01:43:36.000 And it's what happened during prohibition of alcohol in this country.

01:43:39.000 What did it do?

01:43:41.000 It propped up the fucking mafia.

01:43:44.000 And that's what they did.

01:43:45.000 They sold alcohol.

01:43:47.000 It propped up organized crime.

01:43:49.000 Yeah, I mean, we could learn something from countries in Europe that decriminalize not just marijuana, but other drugs.

01:43:56.000 And if you look at the statistics on, you know, the rate of crime, the rate of the incidence of overdose, it plummets.

01:44:04.000 Plummets.

01:44:04.000 Portugal is an excellent example.

01:44:06.000 Yeah.

01:44:08.000 But, you know, the problem is when you all of a sudden make things legal that didn't used to be, that didn't used to be legal, you're going to have a bunch of people that abuse it.

01:44:17.000 They're going to say, oh, it's legal now.

01:44:18.000 And a bunch of people are going to do it that don't do it.

01:44:18.000 Let's go.

01:44:20.000 You'll have problems.

01:44:21.000 But you're taking the band-aid off.

01:44:24.000 You put a fucking band-aid on this country in the 1930s for something that doesn't hurt people.

01:44:29.000 Which is what?

01:44:30.000 Marijuana.

01:44:31.000 They did that in the 1930s.

01:44:31.000 Oh.

01:44:32.000 Yeah.

01:44:33.000 And it was a vast conspiracy, by the way.

01:44:36.000 The marijuana legalization thing, the illegalization of it, is a vast conspiracy.

01:44:41.000 I don't know much about this backstory.

01:44:43.000 Okay.

01:44:44.000 Well, I'll fill you in.

01:44:45.000 William Randolph Hearst, who owned Hearst Publications, also owned paper mills.

01:44:51.000 So a popular science magazine on the front page, hemp, the new billion-dollar crop.

01:44:59.000 And the reason why hemp was problematic before that was because hemp fibers.

01:45:05.000 Like a friend of mine used to grow marijuana, and he had a hemp stalk on his desk.

01:45:11.000 And he's like, pick that up.

01:45:12.000 And you pick it up, and it's hard, like oak.

01:45:17.000 It's hard like this table.

01:45:18.000 It's an oak table.

01:45:19.000 It's hard like that, but it's light, like styrofoam.

01:45:22.000 It feels like balsa wood.

01:45:24.000 I was like, this is crazy.

01:45:25.000 He goes, yeah, it's like an alien plant.

01:45:27.000 There's nothing like it.

01:45:28.000 Hemp fiber is incredibly durable.

01:45:31.000 And it makes superior paper.

01:45:32.000 It makes superior clothing.

01:45:34.000 Canvas, all the great paintings were all made on hemp.

01:45:38.000 That's what canvas was made out of.

01:45:40.000 Light, but very strong.

01:45:41.000 Very strong.

01:45:42.000 Very strong.

01:45:43.000 The first draft of the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp fiber on hemp paper.

01:45:48.000 So hemp was used to make paper.

01:45:51.000 It was used to make cloth.

01:45:52.000 It was used to make so many different things.

01:45:53.000 But it was very difficult to do.

01:45:55.000 Then Eli Whitney came out with the cotton gin.

01:45:57.000 Well, cotton replaced a lot of the things that we made with clothing.

01:46:00.000 It replaced a lot of that.

01:46:03.000 It was an easier textile to process.

01:46:05.000 Well, in the 1930s, they came up with a new invention called the decorticator.

01:46:09.000 And the decorticator allowed them to effectively process hemp fiber much more easily.

01:46:14.000 So then Popular Science SS Magazine.

01:46:17.000 This is a machine?

01:46:18.000 Yes, it's a machine.

01:46:19.000 It's like this, it's like a steel cylinder that has all these protrusions on it, and that would grind up the hemp fiber more easily.

01:46:29.000 Because before it had to be done manually, and it's very time-consuming.

01:46:32.000 But the process was an incredible and very superior product.

01:46:36.000 So William Randolph Hearst recognizes this as a threat to his industry because he owns paper mills.

01:46:42.000 He owns forests that he's using to make paper out of.

01:46:46.000 Also, you should say that to make paper out of a forest, you have to chop down all those trees.

01:46:51.000 It will take 20, 30 years for them to grow back.

01:46:53.000 With hemp, you get a new crop every year.

01:46:56.000 The same amount of land, you're processing four times as much paper, and you can do it every year.

01:47:03.000 It's way more effective.

01:47:05.000 So he starts demonizing this plant called marijuana, this new drug.

01:47:12.000 Now, marijuana was not a name for cannabis.

01:47:15.000 Marijuana was a name for a Mexican slang for wild tobacco.

01:47:20.000 So he just tags this name and starts calling hemp.

01:47:26.000 Just the leaves on the hemp plant.

01:47:28.000 It's just the flower.

01:47:29.000 The flower.

01:47:30.000 The hemp plant.

01:47:31.000 But it's also, you can make and grow hemp that has no THC in it as well.

01:47:31.000 Yes.

01:47:36.000 I believe it's, is it the female that contains THC and the male doesn't?

01:47:42.000 Anyway, point is, so he, they sponsor all the Reefer Madness films, you know, all those propaganda films of the 1930s.

01:47:52.000 They start printing these stories about blacks and Mexicans that are raping white women after they take this new illegal drug.

01:48:02.000 So they pass laws on this drug, not even really understanding that they're making the textile, they're making the commodity, hemp, illegal, or making it very difficult to regulate.

01:48:14.000 And so William Randolph Hearst gets together with Harry Anslinger and they do this.

01:48:19.000 They also take all their police officers and all the people that they had used to process prohibition of alcohol and go after alcohol, you know, illegal alcohol sales, and now they turn it to cannabis.

01:48:32.000 And that's we've been stuck in that same horseshit since the 1930s.

01:48:37.000 So self-interest plus profit incentive, add a dose of hysteria, and you have prehistoric lobbying that leads to the demonization of.

01:48:53.000 I don't fucking get it.

01:48:54.000 I mean, listen.

01:48:55.000 It's also nylon.

01:48:56.000 Nylon was involved because, you know, they're using nylon for ropes because hemp was always used for ropes, and now they have this new product.

01:49:02.000 So there was a lot of people that were involved in making sure that hemp was very difficult to acquire so that their commodity could thrive.

01:49:12.000 And then how many people suffered because of that?

01:49:14.000 How many people were jailed?

01:49:15.000 How many people died?

01:49:17.000 How many people were incarcerated?

01:49:18.000 You're dealing with literally 90 years at this point.

01:49:21.000 90 years of bullshit.

01:49:23.000 I don't.

01:49:24.000 And I do believe that there are some drugs that are so addictive that you start to lose your sense of free will.

01:49:35.000 I don't think weed is one of them.

01:49:37.000 It's not to me.

01:49:38.000 I wouldn't say it's not.

01:49:39.000 It's one of them.

01:49:40.000 It's not one of them to everybody.

01:49:42.000 I don't know.

01:49:43.000 I don't know.

01:49:44.000 I hear horror stories about people that are addicted to weed and can't get off of it.

01:49:48.000 You know, I do sober October pretty much every year.

01:49:51.000 I didn't do it last year.

01:49:52.000 But we take off everything.

01:49:54.000 We don't do anything and we usually do like a little fitness challenge with it.

01:49:58.000 I've never had a problem.

01:50:00.000 Stopped doing it.

01:50:01.000 I got on these nicotine pouches.

01:50:04.000 I like nicotine pouches during podcasts.

01:50:06.000 Keeps my mind like popping.

01:50:08.000 It's like it's a cognitive enhancer.

01:50:10.000 And I was like, man, maybe I'm addicted to nicotine.

01:50:12.000 Went on vacation, didn't bring any nicotine pouches.

01:50:15.000 Had no problem.

01:50:16.000 You know, I'm happy I smoked a lot of weed in high school.

01:50:19.000 A lot of weed.

01:50:20.000 It was different, though.

01:50:21.000 For me, it was, at least.

01:50:23.000 It wasn't as strong.

01:50:24.000 I've got scientists involved now.

01:50:28.000 These botanists know what the fuck they are.

01:50:30.000 I one time smoked weed with Lennox in Jamaica.

01:50:33.000 Oh, no.

01:50:36.000 And that should be the song.

01:50:38.000 That's like by the time that blunt was being passed around for people, when it came to me the second time, I was like, the room went sideways on me.

01:50:51.000 I could not fucking cope.

01:50:53.000 The furniture seemed readjusted.

01:50:56.000 And I've had other times where for me, I got to a point where I could not function on it.

01:51:04.000 Yeah.

01:51:06.000 And the last time where I was like, this is just not for me anymore.

01:51:10.000 Maybe I smoked too much of it in high school.

01:51:12.000 I mean, almost every day.

01:51:15.000 I was at 15, but then I was at a casino.

01:51:17.000 I was at the ARIA one time.

01:51:20.000 And this must have been 15 years ago.

01:51:26.000 And I was playing craps.

01:51:28.000 And I had taken like one or two tokes.

01:51:33.000 And I convinced myself that the guy at the other end of the craps table was an undercover officer that was going to frame me for something.

01:51:44.000 Fucking the lady next to me was stealing my chips. 1.00

01:51:47.000 This guy was going to have me fucking hatcheted.

01:51:50.000 And I ended up in the corner of the casino for literally two hours trying to collect myself.

01:51:57.000 You went too deep.

01:51:58.000 I went, man, I was.

01:52:00.000 It's too strong for someone who doesn't use it.

01:52:03.000 See, there's a lot of people like my friend B-Reel from Cypress Hill.

01:52:09.000 I can't even watch the podcast because my blood pressure goes up when I watch how much weed these guys smoke.

01:52:15.000 Him and Everlasting.

01:52:16.000 Yeah, well, Be Real lives in the cloud.

01:52:20.000 There's a lot of those dudes that call it living in the cloud.

01:52:22.000 Like, they're just high all the time.

01:52:24.000 Well, B-Reel has his own weed business.

01:52:26.000 And I did his show, The Hot Box, where you sit in a car.

01:52:31.000 He has this dope car that's set up as a studio.

01:52:35.000 So there's like cameras inside the car and you just get obliterated because they're just constantly smoking in the car.

01:52:43.000 I just sit down for like two hours afterwards.

01:52:43.000 I got out of there.

01:52:46.000 You were okay or not?

01:52:48.000 No, I was okay, but I was just like, geez, boys.

01:52:51.000 You guys go fucking. 0.96

01:52:54.000 But the problem is for me with weed is that sometimes I've smoked it and been, I'm talking about as an adult.

01:53:02.000 Post 30.

01:53:02.000 Yes.

01:53:04.000 Yeah.

01:53:04.000 Sometimes I've been like, well, that was really great.

01:53:07.000 And other times I've been like, I don't want to contemplate my existence tonight.

01:53:15.000 I've done that enough.

01:53:16.000 I've done that enough.

01:53:18.000 And it's all unanswerable questions and I'm going to have a panic attack.

01:53:24.000 Yeah.

01:53:24.000 Man, one time I was on the platform at Penn Station and I started to like, you know, you get to that point when you're thinking about dying and we could talk death, dying, and we could say it and talk about it.

01:53:37.000 But I got to that point where that fifth dimensional wall crumbled and I was like, oh my God, I'm not going to exist one day.

01:53:47.000 And I started to have a panic attack where I had to leave and go up onto 8th Avenue and get some fresh air.

01:53:55.000 And I'm just like, at this stage, I can't, I would have to be like, so what kind of weed is this?

01:54:03.000 And how do you know?

01:54:05.000 And I don't want to interrogate someone that just wants to get me high.

01:54:08.000 But here's the thing.

01:54:08.000 If you don't get high a lot, and this is my message for everyone out there, if you go months and months and months without ever taking it, one hit, a small one.

01:54:17.000 Don't get crazy.

01:54:18.000 Don't get crazy.

01:54:20.000 What if that one hit leads to nine hours of being high?

01:54:25.000 It shouldn't.

01:54:26.000 It should.

01:54:27.000 For me, it has.

01:54:28.000 Well, it's like, how much are you smoking?

01:54:30.000 Like, you must be taking a giant hit.

01:54:32.000 And it also depends on like what kind of joint you have.

01:54:35.000 Like, there's crazy people.

01:54:37.000 Like in California, they'll sell you a joint that's like a $50 joint.

01:54:41.000 And this joint has Keith in it.

01:54:42.000 So it has all the resin, all the, you know, you have a grinder at the bottom of the grinder.

01:54:47.000 There's a filter and you have all this THC crystals.

01:54:52.000 They take those THC crystals and they put it inside with the marijuana and then they wrap the outside of the joint and they roll it in the THC crystal.

01:55:01.000 It's like it's on the outside of it and it's just a pathway to paranoia.

01:55:07.000 It's just a rocket ship to your inner monologue screaming in your ears.

01:55:13.000 I can't talk about it.

01:55:14.000 It's scaring me.

01:55:15.000 But it doesn't have to be like that.

01:55:16.000 Have you ever got paranoid smoking?

01:55:18.000 Oh, yeah.

01:55:19.000 It's part of the fun.

01:55:21.000 I don't mind it.

01:55:22.000 I like it because there's always some sort of a revelation that I get on the other end of it.

01:55:25.000 Like if I'm paranoid, there's always like a reason that there's a thing that's bothering me.

01:55:30.000 Like, what is that thing that fucked with you during that time? 0.83

01:55:33.000 And maybe there's a thing in your head that you need to address.

01:55:36.000 But generally, if I'm in a good place and I get high, I feel great.

01:55:39.000 I must have been in a great place at like 15, 16 years old because getting high back then and listening to Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and hearing the lyrics for the first time, being like, oh my God, someone else had that thought that I'm afraid to say.

01:55:54.000 And they put it down in lyrics and I'm not alone.

01:55:58.000 And you feel profound.

01:55:59.000 You say profound things that aren't really profound.

01:56:01.000 There's benefit to it.

01:56:03.000 And I think that when you're young, also you don't have bills.

01:56:06.000 You don't have obligations.

01:56:08.000 You just have to go to school.

01:56:09.000 Your burden is so much lighter.

01:56:11.000 When you're an adult and you have a family and you have business and you have things you have to do all the time and you have conflicts and all the stuff that's in your life, like it could fuck with you.

01:56:20.000 But I think generally, like for a lot of people, not for everybody, but for a lot of people, those moments of paranoia of just dropping the veil, it's probably beneficial.

01:56:31.000 Oh, I think that, I think that in the long run, it opened the third eye of my mind at a time when, and fostered creativity and I think changed my perspective on the world, smoking that much weed.

01:56:48.000 I just got to a point where I was like, I can't parent on it.

01:56:52.000 Right.

01:56:53.000 For me.

01:56:53.000 Yeah.

01:56:54.000 You just have to know, you have to be mature enough and introspective enough and self-aware enough to know yourself.

01:56:59.000 For me, it just didn't work anymore.

01:57:01.000 Just like drinking, at some point I was like, it's not worth the fucking pain.

01:57:06.000 Right.

01:57:07.000 It just got too painful.

01:57:08.000 Right.

01:57:08.000 But that's a decision that you should be able to make as a man or as a woman, as an adult.

01:57:14.000 Make that decision for yourself.

01:57:15.000 Decide what you want to take into your life or not, including all sorts of other things that are bad for you.

01:57:20.000 Like fucking processed food and sugar.

01:57:23.000 Do whatever you want to do as long as you know what you're doing.

01:57:26.000 And so we should educate people on what these things are.

01:57:28.000 And the problem is with marijuana, there were so many years of lies.

01:57:32.000 There were so many years of misinformation.

01:57:34.000 And it was just constantly put out there as propaganda.

01:57:38.000 And, you know, this is your brain on drugs.

01:57:40.000 Like, shut the fuck up. 0.96

01:57:41.000 Well, listen, I remember those commercials from being a kid.

01:57:45.000 And I remember one in particular where there's a father that finds weed dating myself in his son's room.

01:57:54.000 And he said, where did you learn to do this shit?

01:57:56.000 And he goes, I learned from you, dad.

01:57:59.000 And I remember thinking, man, my dad's a motherfucker.

01:58:04.000 He's a bad guy because my dad was a big weed smoker.

01:58:07.000 And I would find it all the time.

01:58:09.000 And I'm telling you, I think in my mind, that commercial led me to thinking, Dad, you're amoral.

01:58:16.000 Yeah, they poisoned a lot of people with those commercials. 0.69

01:58:19.000 Meanwhile, your dad could be sitting there watching TV with a cocktail.

01:58:22.000 You wouldn't think a damn thing about it.

01:58:23.000 Nah, my dad on weed was like an alcoholic with a whiskey bottle.

01:58:29.000 Oh my God, that's it.

01:58:30.000 That's it.

01:58:33.000 You all right?

01:58:34.000 I learned it by watching you.

01:58:35.000 Parents who use drugs have children who use drugs.

01:58:41.000 Jamie is a fucking wizard.

01:58:42.000 Yeah, he's the best.

01:58:43.000 You know, my favorite one, though, is the girl who comes up to school and the girl starts and the dog starts talking to her.

01:58:49.000 Wait, before we get to that, you know how a song or a smell can have you tumbling back in time?

01:58:54.000 Oh, yeah.

01:58:55.000 I'm like, I'm drunk on nostalgia right now.

01:58:58.000 Like in the wrong.

01:59:00.000 Oh my God.

01:59:01.000 This is my favorite.

01:59:08.000 I wish he didn't smoke weed.

01:59:12.000 You're not the same when you smoke.

01:59:14.000 And I miss my friend.

01:59:18.000 I'll be outside.

01:59:24.000 How would you tell a friend?

01:59:25.000 Like, who fucking signed off on that commercial?

01:59:30.000 First of all, I've never seen that.

01:59:32.000 That girl is not on marijuana. 1.00

01:59:34.000 Because if you were on weed and your dog started talking, you'd be like, what the fuck?

01:59:39.000 You can talk?

01:59:40.000 The first thing I thought when that started to roll, I looked at Jamie all wide-eyed.

01:59:44.000 What did you put in my drink?

01:59:46.000 The dog is talking.

01:59:48.000 The only other time I saw that was Mr. Ed.

01:59:51.000 Yeah, right?

01:59:52.000 Well, or what's that movie?

01:59:54.000 Zookeeper.

01:59:55.000 All the animals talked.

01:59:56.000 Well, come on.

01:59:58.000 Fucking ridiculous.

01:59:58.000 You know, when you peel the layer back, I had never known that one slipped through the cracks on me, the criminalization of weed and the backstory.

02:00:08.000 The backstory is really crazy.

02:00:10.000 It's crazy.

02:00:10.000 And I remember a science teacher in high school telling me, you don't think that they can make a tire that doesn't wear?

02:00:22.000 And he told me the story about how all the big tire companies bought the patent for a tire that can't wear.

02:00:30.000 Right?

02:00:31.000 It has the same composition as same give and composition as rubber when it came to handling, but it was a material that doesn't wear.

02:00:44.000 And I just thought he was fucking crazy.

02:00:46.000 And now I believe that that's probably true.

02:00:49.000 It's probably locked in a vault somewhere because what would happen to Goodyear and Firestone and the rest of those tired.

02:00:54.000 You're telling me we can put a man on the moon and hear conversations behind the walls of the Kremlin, but we can't make a fucking tire that doesn't wear?

02:01:04.000 Well, I think one of those is true.

02:01:05.000 But the other one, the thing about tires is that a tire has to have a certain amount of softness to it in order for it to have traction.

02:01:13.000 When you have softness and then you have a rigid surface like asphalt, you're going to have some of that tire is going to rub off on that rigid surface because one is hard and one is soft.

02:01:24.000 Just like when you take a file and you rub wood, you're going to make sawdust.

02:01:29.000 You know, you would know about fucking tires.

02:01:33.000 Before I go giving an example of something that I think is so out there that there's no way this guy's going to, and you know about tire work.

02:01:40.000 I know a lot about tires.

02:01:41.000 Because the softer the tire, the more traction you get on a racetrack.

02:01:46.000 So with a really good tire, you know, you only have a certain amount of laps on a racetrack.

02:01:51.000 So the science teacher was bullshitting me, basically.

02:01:54.000 The scientist teacher probably was right directionally that there are things like that where they would hide patents to certain things and hide certain compounds if they found out these compounds would compromise.

02:02:08.000 Like if you had something that people had to buy all the time, like light bulbs, here's a better example, light bulbs.

02:02:15.000 So there are light bulbs that have been in continuous use, like on continuously for 50, 60 years, and they don't burn out because these are the original light bulbs.

02:02:27.000 The original light bulbs, they made the filaments much more durable.

02:02:30.000 Then they realized, like, why would we do this?

02:02:32.000 Well, we could have these light bulbs just burn out, and then you have to get a new light bulb.

02:02:36.000 And the filament would pop.

02:02:37.000 Exactly.

02:02:38.000 So I have read about this.

02:02:38.000 Yeah.

02:02:40.000 See if you can find those old light bulbs.

02:02:42.000 I think there's one that's been on continually for an extraordinary amount of time, decades.

02:02:47.000 120 years.

02:02:48.000 120 years.

02:02:49.000 Let's see that light bulb.

02:02:51.000 So if you look at the light bulb, light bulb, huh?

02:02:54.000 And you see the filaments of that light bulb, you realize, oh, they could have just built light bulbs like this from the beginning.

02:03:00.000 And instead of paying $5 for a light bulb or whatever a light bulb costs, maybe it would cost $10.

02:03:05.000 I've got a firehouse in California.

02:03:08.000 Intracennial light, 1901.

02:03:10.000 That light bulb.

02:03:11.000 Look at that.

02:03:12.000 Look at that beautiful filament.

02:03:13.000 Yeah, see how thick those filaments are?

02:03:15.000 So that's a light bulb that's built to last.

02:03:18.000 These motherfuckers, they figured out, well, we'll just make it real skinny, and eventually it'll wear out and pop. 1.00

02:03:25.000 That tire patent is sitting in a fucking vault somewhere.

02:03:28.000 It might be.

02:03:29.000 Sure.

02:03:29.000 But the problem is it doesn't make sense because it has to be softer than the ground.

02:03:34.000 And whenever you have something that's softer than a very rough, hard surface, the softer thing is going to give.

02:03:40.000 Something has to give.

02:03:41.000 Like if you have metal and you drive around with metal wheels on the asphalt, you know what gives?

02:03:47.000 The asphalt gives.

02:03:48.000 You have scratches on the asphalt.

02:03:50.000 Let me ask you this.

02:03:51.000 So going back to the weed.

02:03:54.000 Okay.

02:03:54.000 Because I got us on this diversity.

02:03:55.000 I want to find out about the tires eventually.

02:03:57.000 Well, I got something for it, but not exactly.

02:03:59.000 Let me just do it now.

02:04:00.000 What do you got?

02:04:01.000 It's not full-on nover.

02:04:03.000 Oh, but this is different.

02:04:04.000 Yeah, no, no, no.

02:04:05.000 This lasts way longer.

02:04:07.000 There's no air in this fucking tire.

02:04:08.000 Yeah, this is an airless tire.

02:04:10.000 But this is something that people have said forever.

02:04:13.000 Like, why would you have to fill up tires?

02:04:15.000 Can't they come up with something where it just gives?

02:04:19.000 And so Michelin has done this.

02:04:21.000 You're telling me that there's nothing out there about tires that don't wear?

02:04:25.000 I don't think so.

02:04:26.000 It doesn't make sense.

02:04:26.000 But watch this.

02:04:28.000 I have a question.

02:04:29.000 All right.

02:04:30.000 So weed is criminalized by some self-interested industrialist, right?

02:04:36.000 Before that, ubiquitous use for centuries.

02:04:39.000 Including in churches.

02:04:40.000 So cocaine, you can make the same argument for.

02:04:44.000 And then you have the Clinton administration comes along and dubs people.

02:04:44.000 You could.

02:04:51.000 So in other words, what is the moral inequivalency between someone that is selling cocaine, a lot of it, and someone that's selling a lot of weed?

02:05:04.000 Now, I understand the common retort as, well, cocaine is a lot more addictive, destructive.

02:05:10.000 There's a physical pathway to addiction.

02:05:12.000 There's a physical pathway to addiction.

02:05:14.000 Yeah, it's a different kind of addiction.

02:05:16.000 I think there is an addictive quality to marijuana, but I have a feeling it's same or similar to the addictive quality of a lot of other behavioral addictions.

02:05:26.000 But I guess my bigger question is, so with the advent of the quote-unquote super criminal, I think it was, who was it?

02:05:35.000 Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton that came up with this term or Biden.

02:05:40.000 I know he's a big supporter of that bill as a senator.

02:05:43.000 And, you know, without going down the rabbit hole of private prisons and the prison industrial complex, what bothers me about these old drug convictions that we were talking about earlier is it's just a perspective shift that somehow has in the psyche of America writ large that you hear cocaine or crack equals someone that should be locked away and forgotten about.

02:06:09.000 That was why I mentioned Spencer, Bowen, and other folks that I've mentioned, because I just, I feel like there's no, what's the right way to explain it?

02:06:25.000 There's no rhyme or reason to why we're leaving old people that have not much left locked up. 1.00

02:06:32.000 Right.

02:06:33.000 You know, and, you know, I don't, look, Larry Hoover is a good example.

02:06:39.000 Larry Hoover was pardoned or a sentence was commuted by President Trump.

02:06:47.000 And he was then put in, he was in the side of a fucking mountain for decades.

02:06:53.000 The man is 75 years old.

02:06:55.000 He's been in prison for over 50 years.

02:06:59.000 He has renounced gang life.

02:07:02.000 He has renounced any affiliation with it.

02:07:05.000 And then he was, his sentence is commuted and he's put in state custody on some old tenuous homicide charge where the person that actually pulled the trigger is out, has been out for like 30 years.

02:07:21.000 So Larry Hoover is sitting there in Colorado because he was in the side of that Supermax facility, the side of that mountain in Chicago.

02:07:30.000 And since Colorado, Chicago, no.

02:07:33.000 No, in Colorado.

02:07:34.000 He was in.

02:07:35.000 He was in Chicago.

02:07:36.000 Well, he was, then I misspoke.

02:07:38.000 He's from Chicago.

02:07:39.000 He was the leader of the gangster disciples.

02:07:41.000 You're familiar with Larry Hoover, right?

02:07:43.000 Sure.

02:07:43.000 Leader of the Gangster Disciples in Chicago.

02:07:45.000 He gets in prison and state prison.

02:07:51.000 Then he goes into, while he's in state prison, they have a CCE conspiracy against him and he gets continuing criminal enterprise.

02:08:00.000 I'm talking lawyer speak.

02:08:02.000 And then he goes into federal custody and he's put in the side of a mountain where he's on lockdown 23 hours a day for decades.

02:08:09.000 The man's 75 years old now.

02:08:12.000 Since he's been put in state custody, he's had three heart attacks doing prison work.

02:08:17.000 And what is the utility in keeping someone like that in?

02:08:24.000 Because Governor Pritzker could just say, you know what, enough's enough.

02:08:29.000 There's interesting stuff out there about what they call C criminals.

02:08:35.000 So it was like before February of 1978, I believe it was, 1998, where people would get indeterminate sentences in the state system in Illinois.

02:08:48.000 You know, you'd hear these sentences of like 100 years, 200 years, where there's no hope.

02:08:53.000 And there were like thousands and thousands of them.

02:08:57.000 There's only 30 of them left, and he's one of them.

02:09:00.000 He's got an indeterminate sentence.

02:09:03.000 Isn't 50 years enough?

02:09:05.000 So like that's another one of those cases that bothers me because, you know, If we're a society of reform, deterrence, rehabilitation, he's it.

02:09:19.000 And what better message is there to say, you know what, you've done enough, and now let's see what positive you can do.

02:09:26.000 The proposed terms of his release are like the strictest supervision.

02:09:31.000 He just wants to live out his life with his family.

02:09:34.000 He's got a great lawyer backing him named Justin Moore.

02:09:38.000 I helped, you know, advocate for his pardon to President Trump.

02:09:42.000 He was pardoned?

02:09:43.000 His sentence was commuted by President Trump, his federal sentence.

02:09:48.000 Right.

02:09:48.000 But he had some crazy 200-year sentence in state court.

02:09:55.000 Right?

02:09:56.000 Oh, look at this.

02:09:57.000 Is it?

02:09:58.000 So it was 1978.

02:09:59.000 He's one of just 35 people still incarcerated under Illinois' pre-78 indeterminate sentencing system.

02:10:06.000 So the case was from 73.

02:10:08.000 Oh, yeah.

02:10:09.000 He's been in prison for 50 some odd years.

02:10:12.000 And, you know, I just feel like at this point, isn't enough enough?

02:10:17.000 And, you know, he didn't even do the killing.

02:10:19.000 No.

02:10:20.000 And the person that did it is out.

02:10:22.000 The allegation was that he ordered it.

02:10:24.000 And I don't even believe that.

02:10:26.000 And Andrew Howard, the guy who killed him, was paroled more than 30 years ago.

02:10:29.000 Yeah.

02:10:30.000 It just doesn't, I don't understand.

02:10:32.000 And what's going on, I think, is that someone like Governor Pritzker is just, they don't want the political cost of taking a chance like this.

02:10:43.000 And, you know, this is another one that keeps me up.

02:10:46.000 You know, some people would say, well, I care about that guy because I know his wife.

02:10:52.000 I know his son.

02:10:55.000 James Prince knows the family so well and has supported them on this journey for over a decade.

02:11:03.000 There's so much public support for this.

02:11:05.000 The guy's 75.

02:11:07.000 So why are we wasting taxpayer money?

02:11:09.000 And why are we keeping someone incarcerated?

02:11:12.000 I mean, in the most.

02:11:13.000 So I understand if they commuted a sentence, how he's not how he's not out.

02:11:16.000 He was.

02:11:17.000 His federal sentence was commuted.

02:11:20.000 So as soon as he was released from federal custody, he was taken into state custody.

02:11:25.000 And they didn't even take him from Colorado.

02:11:32.000 His state sentence is in Chicago where he could be at least closer to his family.

02:11:38.000 And Colorado state system said, we'll keep him here.

02:11:42.000 So he was transferred from federal to state custody.

02:11:44.000 So that's one that's just like, you know, there's one heartbreak to the next.

02:11:50.000 And look, I'm super, super, super careful.

02:11:55.000 You can help people with second chances.

02:11:58.000 You can't help them with what they do with it.

02:11:59.000 And I'm now at a point where I really want to think long and hard about what people do with their second chances.

02:12:05.000 And, you know, I just wouldn't get behind someone that I didn't think was I just it's an indictment of society that we have these disparate sentences that are doled out.

02:12:17.000 And a lot of it is driven by what is considered worse behavior.

02:12:22.000 Is it worse behavior that you sold cocaine or marijuana?

02:12:28.000 I guess the argument is that cocaine was more destructive, more addictive.

02:12:33.000 You could die from it.

02:12:34.000 Well, same thing with alcohol.

02:12:36.000 And alcohol is legal.

02:12:38.000 So I just don't, I have a hard time grappling with what is considered a controlled substance.

02:12:45.000 Yeah.

02:12:46.000 Because alcohol, if abused, if put in the wrong hands, it's highly addictive.

02:12:53.000 It's highly destructive to your body if you abuse it.

02:12:56.000 Ruins people's lives.

02:12:58.000 I mean, how is it that alcohol is legal?

02:13:01.000 It is weird.

02:13:02.000 It is weird.

02:13:03.000 And the real problem is history.

02:13:06.000 So we have a long history of all these drugs being illegal now.

02:13:10.000 So you have a long history of people that are criminals selling these drugs.

02:13:15.000 So it's got this criminal history attached to it.

02:13:18.000 If you were to make cocaine legal in the United States, you'd essentially put the cartels out of business, right?

02:13:25.000 Because that's probably their main business is probably either fentanyl and heroin or heroin pills, you know, oxy pills or cocaine.

02:13:36.000 And you would have way less accidental overdose deaths because a lot of it is not people overdosing from actual cocaine.

02:13:44.000 It's getting fentanyl or whatever else they're fucking mixing it up.

02:13:48.000 All sorts of different amphetamines.

02:13:51.000 We have a long history now dating back to the 30s of alcohol being legal.

02:13:56.000 People are accustomed to it.

02:13:57.000 It's normal.

02:13:59.000 You're accustomed to growing up, being able to have a couple of beers with your friends, going to a party when you're a kid.

02:14:05.000 There's a keg party.

02:14:06.000 People know how to handle it.

02:14:08.000 It's been around.

02:14:09.000 Cocaine has not.

02:14:12.000 You get scared.

02:14:14.000 What's in it?

02:14:14.000 How do I know where it came from?

02:14:16.000 You know, you get a fucking beer.

02:14:17.000 You know, it's a beer.

02:14:18.000 You know, you crack open a bud light.

02:14:20.000 It's a bud light.

02:14:21.000 It's what it is.

02:14:23.000 Cocaine is unregulated.

02:14:26.000 It's crazy.

02:14:27.000 If you think about it, if you're someone doing cocaine these days and you're trying to think like, am I going to die?

02:14:34.000 Right.

02:14:34.000 You dip a fentanyl strips that you can test it and see what's in it.

02:14:39.000 But if it was regulated and if people want to do it, you know, let them go bang their head against the wall and do it.

02:14:47.000 And then the problem is people would be profiting off of that.

02:14:47.000 Yeah.

02:14:50.000 And then so you'd have, instead of, you know, no one has a problem with Anheuser-Busch selling beer, right?

02:14:55.000 But meanwhile, there's alcoholics and it's going to ruin their life.

02:14:59.000 But if Anheuser-Busch all of a sudden started selling cocaine, the social stigma that's attached to it because of all the years of it being illegal would be a real problem.

02:15:10.000 We would have, like I said, it would be like ripping the band-aid off.

02:15:13.000 You're going to have a lot of problems initially for quite a while, I would imagine.

02:15:18.000 There's going to be a lot of people that do cocaine that would never do it previously because it was illegal.

02:15:23.000 But if they find out that there's, you can go to the cocaine store and buy a certain amount of cocaine and go do it.

02:15:28.000 But you also would be getting pure cocaine.

02:15:31.000 So you would be getting this experience that people have used way back to the fucking, you know, who knows what time.

02:15:38.000 I mean, there's Egyptian mummies that have tested positive for cocaine.

02:15:42.000 I mean, look, I don't control it.

02:15:43.000 Controversially.

02:15:44.000 Yeah, I'm not advocating for it one way or another.

02:15:46.000 It just seems like anything that I've looked into and read about in countries that have legalized or decriminalized it at least, and you could get it and not have to worry about it being adulterated in some way.

02:16:01.000 It seems like the statistics are overwhelmingly pointing in one direction.

02:16:05.000 100%.

02:16:06.000 But those are smaller countries, you know, and that don't have the consumption problem that America has.

02:16:12.000 We uniquely love to consume drugs.

02:16:15.000 And we are propping up the cartel by doing that.

02:16:18.000 And, you know, if you want to go to war with the cartel, if you want to really stop the flood of illegal drugs in this country, unfortunately, one of the only ways to really do that accurately is to both stop them from bringing in illegal drugs and then give people access to legal, air quotes safer drugs seems like a it's a problem it's a you got Politically, it's a suicide.

02:16:45.000 I was going to say, you got to swim uphill through or upstream through a river of shit.

02:16:52.000 Yeah.

02:16:53.000 Yeah.

02:16:53.000 In order to pull that one off.

02:16:55.000 Yeah, for a long time.

02:16:56.000 Yeah, and I just, this has struck me more lately in dealing with these old drug cases where these people have spent decades and decades in prison and, you know, You hear them on the other end of the phone.

02:17:11.000 He's like, look, I was a kid.

02:17:13.000 I was in my 20s.

02:17:14.000 I'm 50.

02:17:15.000 I'm 60 years old.

02:17:17.000 Isn't it enough?

02:17:18.000 It's getting to the point where it's putative to the point of harmful and barbaric.

02:17:23.000 Yeah, and then they don't want to let those people back out on the street.

02:17:25.000 It's more convenient for them to keep that person locked up forever.

02:17:29.000 You know, and you got if you saw what's behind it, you know, this is an interesting update on the Ohio 4 case.

02:17:38.000 And we don't have to go back into the whole thing again because people could watch the last time.

02:17:42.000 But you remember we had the former prosecutor, J.D. Tomlinson, on at one point with the case in Ohio.

02:17:49.000 Yes.

02:17:50.000 Where these guys did not need to assume the burden of being demonstrably innocent, but we were able to prove it.

02:17:57.000 And, you know, J.D. Tomlinson agreed to vacate their convictions.

02:18:02.000 And then when he left office, you know, a few weeks later, the new, the incoming, their equivalent of the district attorney overturned it, right?

02:18:12.000 Since coming on this show, J.D. Tomlinson has been under attack for a previous exoneration that he granted by this same sitting Lorain County prosecutor who just filed a 300-page brief saying that he committed fraud on the court and all kinds of nonsense over a crime that never happened.

02:18:35.000 And this is why he was so reluctant to ever speak to me in the first place because he knew he'd be targeted.

02:18:42.000 And they're trying to undo an exoneration for this poor woman that's already been exonerated.

02:18:48.000 And I thought, you know, I would talk about it publicly and say I trust him.

02:18:53.000 I made a presentation to this new prosecutor.

02:18:56.000 I got myself along with the Ohio Innocence Project public defenders.

02:19:03.000 I got a bar complaint filed against me by the original prosecutor for standing up to exonerate someone.

02:19:09.000 I was summarily dismissed in Ohio.

02:19:12.000 But, you know, and what, and the question becomes like, what can you do?

02:19:16.000 So Derek Hamilton and I are trying to, do we go to the city council and raise awareness?

02:19:22.000 Don't you care that you have a prosecutor that is seemingly more interested in settling personal scores and vendettas than he is about letting innocent people go free?

02:19:34.000 And I have this guy, you know, John Edwards, who's one of the Ohio 4.

02:19:38.000 And I feel like when I see him calling from prison, I'm running out of things to say to him.

02:19:46.000 Like, I'm so desperate for help.

02:19:48.000 And, you know, if anyone is living in Lorain, Ohio, or Elyria, I mean, you got to take a look at your local elected officials.

02:19:57.000 I mean, demand to know what happened in the Ohio 4 case.

02:20:02.000 I mean, we have it online.

02:20:04.000 You could read the trial transcripts.

02:20:04.000 You can read about it.

02:20:06.000 I just don't get why people can't let go and say, maybe I made a mistake.

02:20:14.000 Maybe I was wrong.

02:20:15.000 I mean, these guys are so demonstrably innocent where you have the person that claims he witnessed the whole thing, you know, came went to the FBI and said, I made the whole thing up.

02:20:27.000 You know, it's just a horrible case.

02:20:29.000 It's horrible.

02:20:31.000 Nobody wants to admit it.

02:20:33.000 The problem is, I think if they do admit it, someone's going to start digging into their past and they're going to find out these motherfuckers have been wrong a bunch of times.

02:20:40.000 Well, I'll tell you what.

02:20:41.000 One thing that's different about me and why I hang around Derek so much is I want his superpowers to rub off on me because I realize that if you don't get stay aggressive and keep the pressure on, the truth will eventually, what was the truth crushed to earth shall rise again?

02:21:02.000 Was that like an MLK quote?

02:21:04.000 I always think about that because at some point, at some point, the truth comes out.

02:21:14.000 It's a stubborn thing.

02:21:16.000 And whether it's old files of an old case and who you used to hang out with, and if you have photos sitting in a vault somewhere, whatever it is, it's going to come out.

02:21:28.000 And it just seems like you're doing so much more damage to hold on to these old beliefs rather than, and because one thing is for sure, I'm stubborn.

02:21:39.000 And I'm growing more stubborn as time goes by to, you have to have the resolve and the wherewithal that every time you get a no and every time you get rejected, you're like, all right, all right, I see you.

02:21:54.000 I'm going to get my beast on now and keep coming back.

02:21:57.000 And I'm going to bring people with me.

02:21:59.000 And we're going to make as much noise.

02:22:01.000 One thing that people don't like is to have the light on them.

02:22:07.000 And, you know, we now have the ability to do that, not only through this platform, but, you know, I was talking to someone before I came here today that works at the center.

02:22:20.000 And I said, you can't be afraid to speak to the press.

02:22:26.000 And I said, as long as, you know, you have some control, some control over what you're saying.

02:22:34.000 And then I like quickly stuffed the words back in my mouth.

02:22:37.000 And I said, forget about that.

02:22:39.000 You got to be very careful when speaking to the press because it gets edited and chopped up.

02:22:44.000 Sure.

02:22:44.000 You know, I just, I did an article with the New York Times about something recently.

02:22:48.000 Man, I told that reporter, lose my fucking phone number because you took one sentence of a throwaway quote and disregarded everything else.

02:23:00.000 You know, and that's why I'm really careful about it.

02:23:00.000 Of course.

02:23:03.000 That's why nobody wants to talk to them.

02:23:05.000 I mean, everybody knows the game now.

02:23:09.000 It's just, they have a long history doing that.

02:23:11.000 What they care about is a juicy story.

02:23:13.000 That's all they care about.

02:23:14.000 Yeah, and suffering sells and human tragedy sells.

02:23:19.000 And I would really love to be able to tell the triumphant stories that a prosecutor did the right thing on the front end, right?

02:23:28.000 On the front end rather than after 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

02:23:33.000 So, you know, all of these cases that we talk about, we're going to do something a little bit different is I'm going to set up a repository where people can go in and look at the public records.

02:23:44.000 No one's really ever done that.

02:23:46.000 This way you don't have to rely on my word, a headline, a clip from a video where, you know, there were people that started to consume the Ohio 4 case and are writing in and are saying, like, how are you letting this stand?

02:24:02.000 Eventually, enough drips of water fills the bucket and the bucket overflows.

02:24:08.000 And at some point, something's got to give, right?

02:24:10.000 Yeah.

02:24:11.000 I mean, if you believe in good over evil.

02:24:19.000 I don't know.

02:24:19.000 Yeah.

02:24:21.000 I mean, something's got to give.

02:24:22.000 I mean, if you really believe in good over evil.

02:24:25.000 I mean, we all believe in good over evil, but sometimes it doesn't work.

02:24:30.000 And is it for lack of trying or is it just the world's not fair?

02:24:35.000 I think it's both.

02:24:36.000 Well, you know, and I think there's a lot of people that have a lot of power that will keep good from winning because it would somehow or another derail their life or their career because they have done something evil.

02:24:49.000 But this is a sick, this is a sick trait that we possess as mammals, as humans.

02:24:57.000 Whether you're a safety patrol as a fourth or fifth grader or a bouncer outside of a club or a TSA agent, there's something about that authority, something about that power that people get drunk on.

02:25:10.000 Oh, and they get, they get, it's almost like it courses through their veins to the point where they're like, well, I like this.

02:25:17.000 I'm going to exert this.

02:25:19.000 And it's like, I just, I understand it, but I don't understand how at some point your conscience doesn't kick in and say, all right, devil on this shoulder, let's do the right thing.

02:25:39.000 Because I always feel like bound by some sort of social contract, right?

02:25:44.000 Did it ever feel good to harm someone?

02:25:46.000 Never did for me as a kid.

02:25:46.000 I don't know.

02:25:48.000 I mean, I could look back at my childhood and be like, that was a shitty thing you did.

02:25:48.000 No.

02:25:52.000 You know, I still feel guilty about things I did as an elementary school student.

02:25:58.000 Because you're a good person.

02:25:59.000 No, no, I don't think that I really part of being a good person is when you do make a mistake or do something bad, you feel something.

02:26:08.000 I don't actually, I appreciate that, but I don't actually think that's what it is.

02:26:12.000 I think that we all know when we're saying something hurtful or harmful, at some point you know it or you're doing something harmful.

02:26:21.000 And it's just, I don't understand, I guess, the disconnect between having that realization and just saying, fuck it, or actually taking like a pause.

02:26:34.000 Right.

02:26:35.000 And I guess if I could solve that, I'd have the key to many of the world's problems, but I guess I'm just dealing with these in the meantime.

02:26:42.000 Well, you would have to completely rewire the way people think.

02:26:46.000 And there's ways to do that.

02:26:48.000 And all those ways are illegal.

02:26:52.000 That's where psychedelics comes in.

02:26:55.000 You know, it's one of the things I had a conversation with my friend Jesse Michaels the other day.

02:26:58.000 And one of the things I said is one of the things that's really interesting about psychedelics is there's no criminal cartel that sells them, even though they're illegal.

02:27:07.000 That's true.

02:27:08.000 There's no criminal mushroom industry where there's a bunch of like evil assassins selling kids mushrooms.

02:27:16.000 It's such a uniquely beautiful experience that it's really only connected to like kind people who sell it for the most part.

02:27:24.000 Let me ask you the same thing.

02:27:28.000 Let me ask you something in reference to what you said earlier.

02:27:30.000 Do you think you have to have a particular mental constitution to take psychedelics?

02:27:36.000 I think you should.

02:27:37.000 Yeah.

02:27:38.000 I don't think it's for people that are very vulnerable.

02:27:41.000 I think there's a lot of people that regular reality is difficult enough to manage.

02:27:46.000 You know, I'm, you know, I'm saying this objectively, right?

02:27:52.000 Because it's not me.

02:27:54.000 But I don't want to be arrogant and say, I can do it.

02:27:57.000 That's ridiculous.

02:27:57.000 You can do it too.

02:27:58.000 There's a lot of people that shouldn't be doing anything.

02:28:00.000 They shouldn't be drinking.

02:28:02.000 They shouldn't be.

02:28:03.000 There's people out there that shouldn't do caffeine.

02:28:07.000 People have very different biological vulnerabilities.

02:28:10.000 There's some people that I believe are biologically vulnerable to alcoholism.

02:28:14.000 Their whole family's alcoholic.

02:28:16.000 It might be a genetic trait.

02:28:17.000 It seems to be like some, there's something wrong with them and their ability.

02:28:22.000 And there's also genes that, like, this was the issue with Native Americans when we introduced alcohol to them. 0.77

02:28:29.000 They didn't have a history of alcohol.

02:28:31.000 They didn't know how to handle it.

02:28:32.000 They got wrecked.

02:28:33.000 Like, there's alcoholism to this day is an enormous problem in Native American tribes and reservations.

02:28:41.000 It's a major problem in Canada.

02:28:43.000 Yeah.

02:28:43.000 You know, my with First Nation people, right?

02:28:47.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because they were given reparations.

02:28:49.000 And my experience with it up there is that there's a serious problem, especially in Western Canada with it.

02:28:57.000 But the reason I ask about it with psychedelics is that at probably the lowest point in my life, I was with you, and I remember you recommending ketamine therapy or thinking that might be something I should look into.

02:29:17.000 Yeah, this is something that I've never done, but I do know quite a few people.

02:29:21.000 My friend Neil, Neil Brennan, he went to a doctor to get ketamine therapy.

02:29:27.000 Yeah, so when I raised it with my therapist at the time, and she was like, the body of research on this is so overwhelming that I would be remiss if I told you, don't try it.

02:29:42.000 Something we should talk about and think about.

02:29:45.000 And, you know, it helped me tremendously in a way that very, very low dose, but it's like, you know, I mean, I thank you for even like suggesting it because it was something that I had always associated with like my roommate in college in the fetal position in his bed.

02:30:07.000 And I was like, yo, what's wrong with him?

02:30:09.000 And someone said, he's in a K-hole.

02:30:11.000 I was like, the fuck is that?

02:30:15.000 He's in a K-hole.

02:30:17.000 And it was always like, oh, man, I'm staying away from that.

02:30:22.000 He looks like he could expire any moment.

02:30:26.000 He was not a lighter shade of pale.

02:30:28.000 He was like translucent.

02:30:30.000 And I was like, but then, you know, under supervision.

02:30:34.000 That's the key.

02:30:35.000 Under supervision and then with the correct dose.

02:30:38.000 And I think that would probably be the case with most psychedelics.

02:30:41.000 And it would turn the field of psychiatry on its head.

02:30:46.000 And there would be such a lobby against it and the drug companies that make all these great drugs that rewire your brain.

02:30:54.000 They hate that shit.

02:30:56.000 Yeah, they would.

02:30:56.000 Yep.

02:30:57.000 Yeah, they would.

02:30:58.000 And I think they're wrong.

02:31:00.000 Yeah, I mean, I think humans throughout history have been using it to various degrees of success.

02:31:07.000 I think for some people, it's not good.

02:31:09.000 It's like a lot of other things.

02:31:10.000 But it's up to us to figure out what's good for you and what's not good for you.

02:31:15.000 This is part of the freedom of being a person.

02:31:17.000 I mean, there's a lot of things that you could easily protect people from that we allow people to do.

02:31:27.000 Here's the one that I saw a documentary about this, and the one that I can't make a decision on.

02:31:36.000 What's the one where you take it and you're fucking puking?

02:31:39.000 You're retching to the point where you're like puking out of your eyeballs.

02:31:44.000 Ayahuasca?

02:31:45.000 Ayahuasca.

02:31:46.000 And people are like, fucking, how can that be good?

02:31:52.000 Well, the reason why you puke, well, here's what ayahuasca is, first of all.

02:31:57.000 Ayahuasca is orally active dimethyltryptamine.

02:32:01.000 Dimethyltryptamine is an endogenous drug that your body produces.

02:32:05.000 Your brain produces.

02:32:06.000 It's produced in the liver, in the lungs.

02:32:09.000 It's a natural component of the human body.

02:32:12.000 Terrence McKenna had a great line about it.

02:32:14.000 He said the thing about DMT is everyone's holding.

02:32:17.000 Meaning, like, everyone has it.

02:32:19.000 If it's illegal, it's like making blood illegal.

02:32:23.000 So your body has it.

02:32:24.000 So what does ayahuasca do chemically?

02:32:27.000 So ayahuasca, so dimethyltryptamine, which is the active drug, the active compound, dimethyltryptamine exists in thousands of different plants.

02:32:40.000 It's in a bunch of different grasses and plants.

02:32:43.000 It's not orally active because your body produces something called monoamine oxidase.

02:32:48.000 Monoamine oxidase breaks down dimethyltryptamine in the gut.

02:32:53.000 So that if you consume things like these grasses or different plants that have high levels of dimethyltryptamine in it, your body breaks it down so it doesn't become active.

02:33:04.000 What ayahuasca is, is the one plant that contains dimethyltryptamine and another plant that contains harmine harmine, which is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor.

02:33:19.000 So you take the MAO inhibitor and then the dimethyltryptamine, they brew it all together and then you have a slow release orally active dimethyltramamine.

02:33:29.000 That's that motherfucker with the ore. 1.00

02:33:31.000 Yeah.

02:33:32.000 He's working on what he's making.

02:33:33.000 All right.

02:33:34.000 You know, and so there's that is what it is.

02:33:37.000 So you take it orally.

02:33:39.000 It takes a long time because it has to go through your digestive process.

02:33:42.000 It gets in your bloodstream.

02:33:44.000 You have this trip.

02:33:45.000 And, you know, when you're, you know, puking and shitting and all that stuff, it's like your body is like, whatever the fuck this is, it's not good.

02:33:55.000 But the result of it, the end of it, is this extremely impactful experience that leads many people to quit alcohol.

02:34:06.000 Many people quit cigarettes from it.

02:34:08.000 They quit destructive behavior.

02:34:10.000 They release trauma and learn to get over things that have happened in their life and move on.

02:34:17.000 You have these experiences where you are in contact with what seems like entities and incredibly wise, loving entities that connect you to nature and to the earth.

02:34:32.000 And I'm sure people have bad experiences.

02:34:35.000 I'm sure it's a very powerful psychedelic.

02:34:38.000 You shit yourself too.

02:34:39.000 Yeah, you could shit yourself.

02:34:40.000 You could throw up.

02:34:41.000 Yeah.

02:34:42.000 I mean, it doesn't happen with everybody, but it happens with a lot of people that do it.

02:34:47.000 But that's not the case with smoking dimethyltryptamine or with IV drip dimethyltryptamine.

02:34:52.000 We had a guy on recently that they're doing a clinic.

02:34:57.000 Where was that island they're doing that?

02:34:59.000 They got it legal in some place.

02:35:03.000 And so you could fly to this place and do an IV dimethyltryptamine experience without the shitting, without the vomiting.

02:35:10.000 And it's even more intense than ayahuasca.

02:35:14.000 Unless you would have like a really high dose of ayahuasca.

02:35:17.000 But like this, the pure smoking of DMT is much more powerful, but very short experience.

02:35:24.000 Your body brings it back to baseline very quickly because your body knows how to process it, right?

02:35:28.000 Your body doesn't know how to process alcohol nearly as well as it knows how to process DMT because DMT is natural in the body.

02:35:36.000 Yeah, but you don't shit yourself and puke.

02:35:38.000 Well, but you don't with the IV.

02:35:41.000 With the IV, you don't.

02:35:42.000 You don't with smoking it.

02:35:43.000 You don't shit yourself.

02:35:44.000 Just when you drink that fucking witch's brew in the drug's brew in the drugs. 0.94

02:35:48.000 Yeah.

02:35:49.000 You know, bit by mosquitoes and shit.

02:35:51.000 You know what's interesting?

02:35:53.000 Hanging out with hippies.

02:35:54.000 You could do all of these forms of psychedelics that lead to some sort of resolution or peace on the other side.

02:36:06.000 You have to still, even if you do it in modern psychiatry, like I did something called EMDR.

02:36:12.000 Are you familiar with that?

02:36:13.000 No.

02:36:14.000 I think it stands for Eye Movement Desensitization EMDR.

02:36:20.000 Yeah.

02:36:21.000 I don't know what the R stands for.

02:36:24.000 But it is something that I mean, you have to go through a similar amount of suffering, and it's to deal with past traumas, eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing.

02:36:36.000 All right.

02:36:37.000 So I went through this, and it helps you.

02:36:43.000 You could do it.

02:36:45.000 Sometimes you're doing it with your eyes, but you ever use flones?

02:36:52.000 No.

02:36:53.000 You know what it is?

02:36:54.000 Yeah.

02:36:54.000 All right.

02:36:55.000 And it has like a green cover on it.

02:36:58.000 You hold on to these two paddles the way I did it, and they're hooked up to this little transistor, this little box, and it's like it buzzes your hand.

02:37:07.000 You hold on to them and it'll buzz your hands no more than like the buzz of a cell phone in this rhythmic.

02:37:12.000 this rhythmic pattern.

02:37:15.000 And before you do it, you really set up what the trauma is.

02:37:20.000 So I went through months of trying to identify like what were the things from my childhood that were haunting me.

02:37:28.000 And once you do, you then relive those moments with this rhythmic buzzing.

02:37:35.000 And you do it again and again and again.

02:37:39.000 And after each session, which could last anywhere between a minute to 10 minutes, where your eyes are shut and you're getting this rhythmic pattern and you open your eyes and you explain what just happened.

02:37:57.000 But you start in that place.

02:38:00.000 You're 12.

02:38:02.000 And I have to tell you, it was one of the most painful, agonizing things I had ever done.

02:38:11.000 And it was the most religious experience I had ever had.

02:38:16.000 Because you're almost in a, you're almost in a trance-like state and your mind is going and you then explain what happened.

02:38:29.000 And it's almost like a guided daydream.

02:38:34.000 And then when you explain it, you then go back again and start.

02:38:38.000 And when I was first doing it, I was like, this is just torture.

02:38:42.000 It's just straight up torture.

02:38:44.000 But then you start to see an improvement in your mood and an improvement dealing with that particular.

02:38:52.000 And I learned more about myself, my childhood, my behaviors than I did doing any drug, any psychedelic, which I did in my youth.

02:39:07.000 And it literally saved me.

02:39:10.000 Yeah.

02:39:10.000 Interesting.

02:39:10.000 And it sounds to me, I just had this revelation as you're talking about, like, you know, it's almost like you have to purge the pain.

02:39:19.000 You have to relive it almost in order to get rid of it.

02:39:23.000 And the theory behind EMDR, as I understand it, is that you don't have the same physiological response at recalling the trauma.

02:39:31.000 You know, you could think of something that happened to you 10 years ago and you can still get the heart palpitation and the adrenaline rush and the, you know, the other, whatever is being released in your body, whatever hormones get activated and it doesn't happen anymore.

02:39:49.000 I mean, it's the way that it was introduced to me was that my therapist did it with combat veterans who could get triggered by a grain of sand on the beach because they were in Desert Storm and spiral.

02:40:05.000 So I find it interesting because it seems like the same methodology is at play, but it's just a different way of getting there than such.

02:40:13.000 Well, there's other ways that they do it without the psychedelic drug that induces psychedelic experience like holotropic breathing.

02:40:20.000 What is that?

02:40:21.000 Put that into perplexity, young Jamie.

02:40:26.000 It's a particular style of breathing that allows you to achieve an altered state.

02:40:35.000 I don't want to misspeak on exactly how to do it.

02:40:39.000 It's an intense structured breathing technique designed to induce an altered, non-ordinary state of consciousness for emotional healing and self-exploration.

02:40:48.000 Typically involves prolonged, deep, rapid breathing while lying down accompanied by evocative music and guidance from a trained facilitator.

02:40:57.000 Developed in 1970 by psychiatrist Stanislav Groff and his wife Christina after LSD-assisted psychotherapy became restricted as a way to reach similar therapeutic states without drugs.

02:41:09.000 Wow.

02:41:10.000 Yeah, so there's a bunch of different styles of breathing that like James Nestor writes about some of these in his book Breath.

02:41:19.000 Is it breath or breathe?

02:41:22.000 Spelled the same way, man.

02:41:25.000 Doesn't one have an E?

02:41:26.000 One has an E. What country you're from, I think.

02:41:28.000 I think breathe has an E.

02:41:30.000 But the point is, like, there's ways of inducing a psychedelic state without drugs.

02:41:36.000 Obviously, the best one is the sensory deprivation tank.

02:41:40.000 That takes you to a very psychedelic place, and it's completely natural and safe.

02:41:45.000 A float tank.

02:41:46.000 Yeah, float tank.

02:41:47.000 Yeah.

02:41:48.000 Which is invented by John Lilly, who also was a ketamine guy.

02:41:48.000 Done that.

02:41:54.000 He was really into ketamine.

02:41:55.000 Oh, I got, I got, you got me into that float tank.

02:41:58.000 I was in there one time, and I was like, I didn't know if I was facing north or south.

02:42:04.000 I didn't know if I was submerged in fucking water.

02:42:06.000 It feels like you're flying through the universe.

02:42:08.000 There's so much, the salt content keeps you so buoyant that you go into this trance-like state.

02:42:14.000 I highly recommend that shit.

02:42:16.000 Yeah.

02:42:16.000 I have a question for you off-topic.

02:42:21.000 Who the fuck wins this fight Friday night?

02:42:25.000 Oh, God.

02:42:26.000 If you have money to bet on it, you're betting on the Olympic gold medalist who's a multiple-time heavyweight world champion, who's one of the greatest knockout artists in the history of the heavyweight division.

02:42:26.000 Okay.

02:42:40.000 That's Anthony Joshua.

02:42:42.000 What's fun is you don't think Jake Paul can win.

02:42:45.000 And so the underdog rooter in you is like, well, let's see.

02:42:49.000 Let's order this.

02:42:50.000 Let's see.

02:42:51.000 I mean, the size difference is insane.

02:42:54.000 Anthony Joshua's 245 pounds was the weight limit that he had to reach.

02:42:59.000 He had to drop down to 245 pounds.

02:43:01.000 He's probably a little heavier, but that's normal for him.

02:43:03.000 That's fine.

02:43:03.000 It's not like he's going to be dehydrated or anything.

02:43:06.000 He weighed 243, and Jake Paul weighed 216.

02:43:10.000 So, I mean, that's a big gap.

02:43:12.000 It's a big gap in weight.

02:43:13.000 It's a big gap in experience.

02:43:15.000 I mean, you're talking about a guy who fought Usuk twice and wasn't stopped by Usuk, who's one of the greatest heavyweights, if not the greatest of all time, one of the greatest boxers of all time.

02:43:25.000 You're talking about a guy who beat Vladimir Klitschko again, fantastic, great.

02:43:29.000 In a great fight.

02:43:30.000 Great fight.

02:43:32.000 You're talking about a guy who just knocked out Francis Ngano like it was nothing.

02:43:38.000 I mean, he's fucking dangerous.

02:43:40.000 Anthony Joshua is still in his prime.

02:43:43.000 He's still one of the best of the best.

02:43:45.000 And Jake Paul is a guy who's been fighting guys like Ben Askren and Tyron Woodley, who was a great MMA fighter, but, you know, fought Nate Diaz and had a tough fight with Nate Diaz.

02:43:56.000 And now he's going to fight Anthony fucking Joshua.

02:44:00.000 Yeah, I mean, I got to say, the reason I asked.

02:44:02.000 He's got balls.

02:44:03.000 He's got balls.

02:44:04.000 You know, Shakur just went and sparred with him recently.

02:44:08.000 Yeah.

02:44:10.000 And all these kids, I don't think I've ever wanted two people that are fighting each other to lose more.

02:44:17.000 So I don't know which one I want to lose more.

02:44:20.000 Because Anthony Joshua, as great as he is, I don't know.

02:44:24.000 He beefed with Lennox, so I gotta, you know, I gotta kind of like be with my guy.

02:44:29.000 Of course.

02:44:29.000 And then the other guy is just like so smart in the way he's playing this from a marketing standpoint, I think.

02:44:39.000 He was supposed to fight Jervante Davis, who's 135-pounder, who's tiny in comparison to it.

02:44:45.000 He flips it.

02:44:46.000 But he's taking a lot of heat for almost fighting Gervante, right?

02:44:49.000 But Jervante had some legal troubles, so he got out of that.

02:44:52.000 And then his response to that is, okay, I'll fight the biggest, baddest fucking heavyweight alive, or one of them.

02:44:59.000 Yeah, and it's almost like a parallel universe because two guys that I manage in their professional career are both calling the fight.

02:45:09.000 So Lennox and Andre are both there.

02:45:12.000 And I was talking to them last night because they were at dinner together.

02:45:15.000 I said, how are you taking this?

02:45:16.000 Isn't this fucking nutty to you?

02:45:19.000 It's definitely nutty, but that's the Jake Paul show.

02:45:21.000 It's a sideshow.

02:45:22.000 And all the young kids, like Shakur, they want to be around him.

02:45:28.000 They think he's brilliant.

02:45:28.000 And they're right in a way, right?

02:45:30.000 Oh, yeah.

02:45:31.000 No, he's brilliant in his marketing, for sure.

02:45:34.000 Look, he's made an extraordinary amount of money, right?

02:45:37.000 So he's doing great, and he's young.

02:45:39.000 And he's super dedicated to boxing.

02:45:42.000 I mean, you watch him train.

02:45:44.000 I've watched many highlight reels of his training.

02:45:47.000 He's very dedicated to boxing.

02:45:49.000 He's his ass off, but he keeps getting better with every fight.

02:45:52.000 If you're Anthony Joshua and you don't knock that fucking kid out, how do you show your face again in the UK?

02:45:57.000 And look, he might knock him out.

02:45:59.000 I mean, and that would probably just show that Jake Paul is legitimate in his ability to take a very difficult fight.

02:46:06.000 You know, that he's willing to not just fight guys that he could beat like Ben Askron, but fight guys that no experts picking him to beat Anthony Joshua.

02:46:16.000 I mean, I think I'm going to go.

02:46:19.000 I think I'm going to go.

02:46:20.000 And this is the fights in Florida.

02:46:22.000 Yeah, it's the first time that I'm like, I want to see this shit show.

02:46:27.000 I want to see him.

02:46:27.000 I mean, these are two.

02:46:28.000 I mean, Anthony Joshua, for all, all bullshit aside, for all his shit talking like it's a big moose of a man.

02:46:36.000 He's fast as fuck.

02:46:38.000 He's built like an Adonis.

02:46:40.000 I mean, you got to, like, if you're betting, I mean, I don't know what the odds are, but the odds have to be heavily in Anthony Joshua's favor.

02:46:47.000 Are they?

02:46:48.000 They have to be.

02:46:49.000 He's an Olympic gold medal.

02:46:50.000 What are the odds are?

02:46:51.000 He's a two-time heavyweight world champion.

02:46:53.000 I mean.

02:46:54.000 Let's both get hooked on gambling right now.

02:46:56.000 Yeah.

02:46:56.000 Let's put that in DraftKings.

02:46:58.000 Find out what the odds are if you bet on to win.

02:47:01.000 Let me guess.

02:47:03.000 10 to 1.

02:47:05.000 10 to 1 seems reasonable.

02:47:06.000 I'm going to guess it's 17 to 1.

02:47:08.000 Yeah, that's even more reasonable.

02:47:10.000 I'm trying to be polite.

02:47:12.000 Maybe it should be 30 to 1.

02:47:13.000 I'm like, what was Buster Douglas when he beat Mike Tyson?

02:47:16.000 I think it was 42 to 1.

02:47:20.000 Jamie doesn't gamble.

02:47:23.000 I definitely don't.

02:47:24.000 It's not allowed in Texas.

02:47:27.000 He is a minus 1,000 favorite.

02:47:29.000 You're right.

02:47:30.000 So it's 10, 15, for Jake Paul.

02:47:30.000 Yeah.

02:47:32.000 10 to 1, right?

02:47:33.000 Yeah.

02:47:34.000 Holy shit.

02:47:35.000 That's a great bet.

02:47:36.000 You got to bet 1,000 to win 100.

02:47:39.000 Yeah, but you got to feel like you're going to win.

02:47:43.000 If everything is normal.

02:47:44.000 Joshua's chinny, though, man.

02:47:46.000 Is he that chinny, though?

02:47:48.000 I mean, he fought in Gano.

02:47:49.000 There's a minus 10,000 favorite on that card also.

02:47:52.000 Who's the minus 10,000?

02:47:54.000 You know, Marley versus.

02:47:55.000 It's the very first fight, but minus 10,000 is an insane number.

02:47:59.000 Because listen, my feeling is who knows what's going to happen.

02:48:02.000 It's a fight.

02:48:03.000 Fights are crazy.

02:48:04.000 But if I had a guess, I mean, you got to lean towards the guy who's a two-time heavyweight champion.

02:48:09.000 Is that on that card, too?

02:48:11.000 Yeah.

02:48:12.000 Anderson Silver versus Tyron Woods.

02:48:14.000 Interesting.

02:48:15.000 Yeah.

02:48:16.000 Yeah.

02:48:19.000 You got to kind of respect this Jake Paul kid.

02:48:22.000 As much as it pains me to say it, he takes two guys that he beat and puts them on the card together.

02:48:28.000 Listen, he also supported Ben Askram when Ben Askrid needed multiple or double lung transplant, and his insurance didn't cover it.

02:48:37.000 He footed part of the bill for that.

02:48:40.000 I'll tell you what's going to be a great fight.

02:48:42.000 What?

02:48:43.000 Shakur against Teofimo Lopez.

02:48:45.000 That's a very good fight.

02:48:46.000 That's a very good fight.

02:48:46.000 Yeah.

02:48:48.000 Jay Prince and I were, you know, here's a kid that'll fight anyone.

02:48:54.000 Literally.

02:48:56.000 The only other fighter that we've managed over all these years that was like, I don't care who it is, put him in front of me.

02:49:01.000 I want the best was Andre Ward.

02:49:03.000 Everyone else is chess playing.

02:49:05.000 Shakur is like, I want Javante Davis, Teofimo, get me the biggest name you can.

02:49:10.000 And I just think that's going to be an awesome fight.

02:49:13.000 That's a phenomenal fight.

02:49:14.000 That's at the garden.

02:49:15.000 When is that?

02:49:16.000 January 31st.

02:49:17.000 I would love for you to be there.

02:49:19.000 That'll be great.

02:49:19.000 That's an exciting fight.

02:49:21.000 Yeah, we were.

02:49:22.000 I'm super excited about that.

02:49:23.000 We were just up there for the press conference, me and Jay.

02:49:26.000 And yeah, it's going to be a good one.

02:49:29.000 Yeah.

02:49:29.000 Two guys in their prime.

02:49:31.000 I love it.

02:49:33.000 I have one more thing I wanted to throw in here.

02:49:36.000 Jelly Roll received a full pardon today.

02:49:38.000 Wow.

02:49:40.000 Governor of Tennessee.

02:49:42.000 Fuck yeah.

02:49:43.000 That's amazing.

02:49:43.000 Good.

02:49:44.000 Yo, man.

02:49:45.000 That moment.

02:49:46.000 That moment on the show.

02:49:48.000 What was it, last week?

02:49:50.000 Man, I was a puddle.

02:49:52.000 Yeah.

02:49:53.000 That was so cool.

02:49:54.000 He's an amazing person.

02:49:55.000 That dude's lost 300 pounds.

02:49:58.000 Let me see that picture of him again.

02:50:00.000 Look at him.

02:50:01.000 He looks like a different fucking person.

02:50:03.000 He has different hands.

02:50:05.000 He's got a different face, different body.

02:50:08.000 And we worked out together, man.

02:50:10.000 He ran 2.6 miles on the treadmill out there.

02:50:13.000 And then we got in the sauna together.

02:50:14.000 He's fucking great.

02:50:15.000 He's that moment when he said, Can I hug you?

02:50:19.000 That was beautiful.

02:50:19.000 Yeah.

02:50:20.000 He's a beautiful person.

02:50:22.000 He really is.

02:50:22.000 And you are too, brother.

02:50:23.000 Good for him.

02:50:24.000 Thank you, Bran.

02:50:25.000 Thank you.

02:50:25.000 Thank you, as always.

02:50:26.000 Thanks for being here.

02:50:27.000 You're awesome.

02:50:28.000 Appreciate you, brother.

02:50:29.000 Appreciate you too.

The Joe Rogan Experience - December 30, 2025

Joe Rogan Experience #2432 - Josh Dubin

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