The Michael Knowles Show - ＂They Lied About Everything＂ Michael & To Catch A Predator ｜ Chris Hansen

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00:02:05.600 We found a house in Bethpage, Long Island.

00:02:07.600 I'm driving out there and I'm thinking, you know, what if nobody shows up?

00:02:10.160 My producer calls and said, look, there's two guys in 45 minutes.

00:02:12.960 You know, get here.

00:02:13.860 And that's where the rabbi showed up, the military intelligence officer,

00:02:17.040 a lieutenant from the Washington, D.C. Metro Police Department,

00:02:20.020 who was in charge of motorcades, including the president's.

00:02:22.540 Those were the second stink.

00:02:23.780 Right.

00:02:23.980 You leave the movie, which is supposed to paint you as basically the devil himself.

00:02:28.440 You leave the movie thinking, this movie is about as connected to reality as a Scooby-Doo animated cartoon movie.

00:02:36.060 I mean, it's so crazy fictional.

00:02:38.600 Are you going to sue them?

00:02:51.380 Chris, thank you for being here.

00:02:53.060 Michael, thanks for having me.

00:02:54.080 I appreciate it.

00:02:55.060 Thanks for the pizza.

00:02:57.120 That is identical to the pizza

00:03:00.740 Jeff Sokol brought to our Stinghouse

00:03:03.060 in Fairfield, Connecticut.

00:03:05.260 Should I have some pizza during our interview?

00:03:07.020 If you'd like.

00:03:07.660 It didn't work out so well for Jeff.

00:03:09.360 I think it'll be fine for you, though.

00:03:11.100 So, just to set the stage, Chris,

00:03:13.460 only Hollywood could make a movie

00:03:17.200 about a journalist exposing child sexual predators

00:03:21.460 and have the journalist be the villain.

00:03:25.600 I just saw the movie yesterday.

00:03:28.860 You're the bad guy.

00:03:30.780 I don't understand the purpose of it.

00:03:33.320 I mean, maybe I'm not sophisticated in the ways of Hollywood.

00:03:38.000 I'm just a working reporter.

00:03:39.460 I get that.

00:03:40.920 But what is the purpose of it?

00:03:43.060 I mean, you take something that has genuinely, I think,

00:03:46.660 created awareness and a dialogue that didn't exist before.

00:03:50.000 Obviously, there's a dark element of entertainment.

00:03:52.460 There's a dark element of humor, and I lean into that.

00:03:55.400 But at the end of the day, we're collaborating with law enforcement all over the country and have been for 22 years.

00:04:02.400 We started not with law enforcement, but it grew there.

00:04:07.100 Taking bad guys off the street.

00:04:09.560 And so when you look at the movie, as I did with my wife, we watched it in a theater in Times Square, New York City.

00:04:17.360 Walked out, interviewed moviegoers.

00:04:19.480 You know, we looked at each other, and it was so over-the-top, so hyper-sensationalized,

00:04:23.880 so dark, so twisted, a fever dream, as even the director has said it is.

00:04:28.340 It was hard to be angry about it.

00:04:30.400 So you go to see it.

00:04:32.400 You hadn't seen it before it hit theaters.

00:04:34.660 No.

00:04:35.700 You didn't collaborate on it.

00:04:37.400 No.

00:04:37.560 You didn't help write it.

00:04:38.340 Was not contacted.

00:04:39.600 The first official word from A24 came on May 27th, when they sent me a partial trailer.

00:04:49.480 and said, we hope you like it, we'd like you to support the film, we'd like to talk about

00:04:55.380 advertising, buying ad time on your network, True Blue, our streaming network, where the

00:05:00.000 Takedown Predator series goes, and your podcast platforms. And I said, well, it's a little

00:05:06.680 strange you didn't reach out before. Well, we didn't have to, because it's a fictional story

00:05:11.660 only loosely based on your real experience. And earlier on in January of this year, a colleague

00:05:17.540 of mine in the podcast world who knew

00:05:19.620 the director, Lance Oppenheim, well enough to reach

00:05:21.640 out, did so. Lance

00:05:23.620 Oppenheim texts back and

00:05:25.560 says, the studio's

00:05:27.520 going to reach out, but it's basically

00:05:29.700 a love letter to Chris Hansen. I'm a big

00:05:31.600 fan of Chris Hansen. I said

00:05:33.280 after seeing the movie, if that's this

00:05:35.720 director's love letter,

00:05:37.520 I'd hate to see a poison pen letter

00:05:39.340 from this guy, Lance Oppenheim.

00:05:41.280 So, your friend contacts them.

00:05:43.640 They don't reach out to you initially. They try to sweet talk

00:05:45.680 you then they try to sweet talk you a little bit more and when you ask a basic question which is

00:05:49.680 you make a movie about me why didn't you talk to me before this they say well we didn't have to

00:05:53.400 because it's a fictional account right at what point you know one of the key takeaways from your 0.99

00:05:57.900 interviews with the predators is that these guys are really really stupid and i have to wonder if 0.99

00:06:03.920 the same thing applies to the movie makers are they they really thought did they think you were 1.00

00:06:08.240 really really stupid or i think it speaks to the mindset of of some in hollywood they think that 0.98

00:06:15.300 you're going to be so blown away that an actor of the quality of Robert Pattinson, who's 0.99

00:06:21.200 insanely popular right now, would play Chris Hansen. And of course, that's flattering. And

00:06:26.420 I have no issue with Robert Pattinson. He's an actor. He got paid to do a job. I don't

00:06:30.440 think what he did is remotely reflective of who I am or what I do. It's so over the top

00:06:38.320 and, you know, dark and vampire makeup is just crazy.

00:06:42.680 But you have to wonder what the motive is. 0.99

00:06:46.680 I mean, these guys sitting around in a room engaging in mental masturbation 0.99

00:06:50.100 about how genius they are. 0.99

00:06:51.740 I know, guys, guys, guys, guys.

00:06:53.660 Let's take the Predator series and let's turn it around

00:06:57.020 and make people feel sorry for the Predators.

00:07:00.020 That's awesome.

00:07:00.940 Yeah, let's do it.

00:07:01.800 Isn't that basically every Hollywood movie for the last 20 years is,

00:07:05.120 hey, what if the bad guy were really the good guy?

00:07:07.460 So there's that.

00:07:08.320 Also, the idea that Hollywood would defend degenerate sexual behavior, that's not a man-bites-dog story.

00:07:13.820 That's the sort of thing we've come to expect.

00:07:16.300 When you were watching it, you see this over-the-top vampiric Robert Pattinson performance,

00:07:20.700 a great performance of whatever that character was, albeit not Chris Hansen.

00:07:24.800 But it has no connection to the real Chris Hansen.

00:07:26.860 So the moviegoer is watching the movie.

00:07:30.380 What are the differences between that movie and real life?

00:07:33.640 Well, everything.

00:07:34.180 I mean, this movie is about as connected to reality

00:07:37.960 as a Scooby-Doo animated cartoon movie.

00:07:41.380 I mean, literally.

00:07:42.500 There's nothing in that movie that happened the way it's portrayed,

00:07:46.600 except for the use of my name and a couple key phrases.

00:07:51.380 They had me in the movie with a dressing room in the Predator Stinghouse,

00:07:56.180 and I'm sitting there shirtless with a mirror that has light bulbs,

00:07:59.680 like a dressing room, rehearsing my lines for the Predator.

00:08:01.880 I mean, it's so...

00:08:04.180 disconnected so crazy fictional and so i i think that it's an insult to the thousands of men and

00:08:17.580 women who go out and try to protect children from predators every day there's there's no

00:08:23.740 they make fun of the police they glorify and try to create weaponized empathy for two of the 1.00

00:08:31.060 predators who are profiled. Two guys who were trying to sexually exploit children. One of whom

00:08:39.600 was an assistant district attorney who knew better, who had child pornography on his computer,

00:08:45.760 and now we're supposed to feel sorry for the guy? Well, that wasn't in the movie.

00:08:48.680 That part was not in the movie.

00:08:49.720 No, of course not.

00:08:50.500 This is the climax. And in all of the, even the pre-primetime criticism of To Catch a Predator

00:08:55.180 and of you, that's always the episode that is top of people's minds.

00:09:00.720 There was this assistant DA, and he was talking to the decoy and trying to approach a kid for sex.

00:09:06.480 He doesn't show up to the sting house, so the cops roll in, your crew rolls in, and the guy kills himself.

00:09:12.620 Correct.

00:09:12.760 And this is portrayed as the climax of the movie.

00:09:16.280 Nowhere is it mentioned in the movie, or really even in the reporting, that the guy had child pornography on his computer.

00:09:23.580 Correct.

00:09:23.800 That in itself is an act of violence against children.

00:09:25.920 Well, the movie is based on an article that appeared in Esquire written by a freelance writer who interviewed myself, my producer, at the time.

00:09:35.740 And it was clear in that interview that he had an agenda, that he was out to show TV bad, you know, police bad in this situation.

00:09:46.020 Predator should be alive today.

00:09:48.280 Somehow that we pressured police to go to his house and arrest this guy.

00:09:54.340 The truth of the matter is this, and we lay this out in the stories at the time, in both the episode about this guy, Bill Conrad, and even the next day after the suicide, I was on the Today Show, completely transparent, this is what led to it, this is what happened, this is what's under investigation.

00:10:15.200 We've been completely transparent about our methodology from day one

00:10:18.700 and continue to be so with the current Takedown episodes on True Blue.

00:10:23.800 But this man, who was an assistant DA, was online chatting with decoys,

00:10:29.700 posing as two different 13-year-old boys.

00:10:32.200 The chats were sexual.

00:10:33.540 In Texas, as in many states, that constitutes a felony.

00:10:37.400 Now, at the time, this is November of 2006, it's an election season in Texas,

00:10:41.600 And they're running campaign commercials with law enforcement figures going in and busting predators and dragging them out of their darkened computer rooms because everybody's trying to save kids from predators.

00:10:53.620 This has become a big issue in people's minds.

00:10:56.400 A phenomenon.

00:10:57.120 So he doesn't show up.

00:10:57.940 So now the police have a decision to make, a decision that I don't have a role in.

00:11:01.780 They have to decide, do we wait and arrest him at the DA's office the next day?

00:11:08.280 Yeah.

00:11:08.500 which, you know, would have been great TV,

00:11:12.220 but they were concerned apparently about evidence being destroyed.

00:11:15.720 So they went to his house.

00:11:17.460 They sent a sergeant.

00:11:18.740 They got a warrant, right, an actual warrant.

00:11:21.140 So they decided there was probable cause that crime was committed

00:11:24.660 and they were going to arrest somebody,

00:11:26.240 worried that evidence was going to be destroyed.

00:11:28.940 One of the sergeants in that department knew the assistant district attorney,

00:11:34.960 knocked on the door and said,

00:11:35.880 hey, you've got to come out, we've got to talk.

00:11:38.500 It doesn't come out.

00:11:39.680 They breach the door.

00:11:40.900 They go in.

00:11:42.700 He's got a laptop nearby.

00:11:44.880 There's evidence that he was trying to get the hard drive out. 0.92

00:11:47.700 And he said, I'm not going to hurt you guys, and shoots himself in the head. 0.83

00:11:52.500 Horrible. 0.98

00:11:53.500 Tragic.

00:11:54.340 Nobody wants to see this.

00:11:55.700 But he made the decision to escape the consequences of his acts.

00:12:01.780 Weeks and weeks later, after an independent investigation by the Texas Rangers,

00:12:06.560 they find that there were images of child pornography on that hard drive.

00:12:12.900 Right.

00:12:13.460 For which he knew, as a prosecutor,

00:12:17.280 he could spend 10 years potentially in prison on each charge, Texas law.

00:12:22.740 So, we'll never know what really went on in his head,

00:12:27.020 but you have to look at the totality of the circumstances.

00:12:30.380 There's also a big criticism of that episode was,

00:12:33.340 well, you shouldn't have gone to his house.

00:12:34.860 And first of all, you...

00:12:35.540 I wasn't running the show.

00:12:36.440 Right, yeah, you is referring to the cops here.

00:12:38.380 If you're looking for the perfect television scenario, you watch them being marched out of the DA's office on Monday morning. 0.88

00:12:46.360 But they made this, you know, that we're in a big rush, and the cops are these, you know, heavy gun-carrying militiamen. 0.82

00:12:53.800 They're going to go in and get them.

00:12:55.260 The decoy is singing show tunes.

00:12:58.260 I mean, it's just, it's insane.

00:13:00.800 Yes.

00:13:01.460 So, one, none of the reporting and the movie doesn't make the point

00:13:05.320 that the cops had good reason to go to the house.

00:13:07.680 They have to get probable cause to get a warrant.

00:13:09.540 Yes.

00:13:09.920 Go get him.

00:13:10.440 And also, it would have been harder to nab him

00:13:13.060 if he deleted the child pornography for destroying evidence.

00:13:15.620 Potentially.

00:13:16.300 They had copies of the chats, but, you know, they wanted the computer.

00:13:19.460 Yes.

00:13:20.540 On top of that, you bring up the show tunes thing.

00:13:22.520 What was the deal with the B story?

00:13:24.340 It was all made up.

00:13:25.520 That was made up.

00:13:26.240 That's not real.

00:13:27.180 No.

00:13:27.300 You didn't have a decoy singing show tunes

00:13:29.500 in the To Catch a Predator dressing room.

00:13:32.200 No.

00:13:33.820 I mean, it's, like I said,

00:13:36.980 everything in that movie is fictional

00:13:40.700 except the use of my name

00:13:42.840 and a couple catchphrases that I have used over the years.

00:13:47.280 So then you ask the question,

00:13:48.560 well, if it's fictional,

00:13:50.720 and that was their intent to create

00:13:52.260 a dark fictional fever dream of a movie,

00:13:55.820 the director's interpretation

00:13:57.700 of the internet's interpretation of the public image

00:14:01.840 of the meme of me.

00:14:04.200 So we're now five generations removed from reality.

00:14:06.960 Baudrillard's hyper-reality to a great extent.

00:14:09.460 Exactly.

00:14:09.760 So if that's the intent,

00:14:10.900 why do you have to use my name, image, and likeness?

00:14:13.420 Because ordinarily, in this kind of a story,

00:14:15.920 they would say, okay, any resemblance...

00:14:17.080 Carl Ganson.

00:14:17.880 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:14:18.820 Charles Ganson, any resemblance to real figures

00:14:21.860 is purely coincidental.

00:14:23.540 And they put a graphic up on the movie

00:14:24.580 saying this is fiction, I think,

00:14:25.960 in the beginning and the end.

00:14:27.700 But, you know, the reason they used my name, Image and Likeness, is because it's got commercial value.

00:14:34.480 I spent 45 years in this business creating a brand that has value.

00:14:40.160 So they want to do a dark, fictional piece, but they also want to exploit my brand for commercial gain.

00:14:48.760 So they want it both ways, is what's happening.

00:14:51.200 So, one, are you going to sue them?

00:14:54.580 Could you sue them?

00:14:55.440 I don't know.

00:14:56.080 Lawyers are looking at it.

00:14:56.720 What I didn't want to do, Michael, is turn this into the movie that Chris Hansen doesn't want you to see.

00:15:01.720 Yeah, yeah.

00:15:02.120 And so you've got to play the long game on something like this.

00:15:07.000 And I've been in this business a long time, you know, and doing high-profile stories.

00:15:12.240 And so I didn't get upset.

00:15:15.920 I'm not furious, is the New York Post headlines.

00:15:18.780 I've never been.

00:15:19.840 But we did decide, myself and Sean Reck at True Blue and others involved, lawyers included,

00:15:26.720 to make the best of it.

00:15:29.680 And that is why we bought commercial ad time

00:15:33.880 before every showing of this movie in America.

00:15:38.160 So before people in 95% of the theaters

00:15:42.020 in the country that show this film,

00:15:43.500 before they see the film,

00:15:44.540 the last thing they see is me walking into a kitchen,

00:15:48.900 telling everybody in the theater to have a seat

00:15:51.260 because there's something they need to know.

00:15:53.580 And that is this very important work continues.

00:15:56.060 every day on my streaming network, True Blue.

00:15:59.300 Go to watchtrublue.com and you can see all the episodes.

00:16:02.080 A new episode drops every Thursday.

00:16:04.140 So we got ahead of it.

00:16:06.140 And obviously there's some benefit to that

00:16:09.680 for our platforms, our businesses, for the network,

00:16:13.220 for my visibility, for the podcast, Predators I've Caught,

00:16:16.460 and have a seat with Chris Hansen.

00:16:17.740 So, you know, we've definitely worked it to our advantage,

00:16:21.260 but it still raises questions as to, you know,

00:16:24.780 Is that fair?

00:16:26.460 And what is the motive behind it?

00:16:28.640 You know, what's the value of it?

00:16:31.240 Is it just entertainment?

00:16:32.600 Is it a larger indictment of what Hollywood is?

00:16:36.840 Because there are two reads.

00:16:38.220 There's one which is the sophomoric, you know,

00:16:41.880 the first time a creative arts student decides he's going to write a poem,

00:16:45.620 and he says, I know what I'm going to do.

00:16:46.980 I'm going to subvert expectations.

00:16:48.580 Okay, so there's that.

00:16:49.440 It could just be kind of weak sauce,

00:16:51.100 which is an impulse in Hollywood the last 20 years.

00:16:53.740 Right. Or they actually are more on the side of the predators. I shouldn't laugh about it.

00:17:01.740 Well, I mean, look at the industry. I mean, this is an industry, and I'm not engaging in hyperbole

00:17:07.180 here. This is just a fact that this is an industry that was ruled for decades by one of the most

00:17:13.080 prolific predators to walk the planet in Harvey Weinstein. That's just a fact.

00:17:19.400 There is a monument to the casting couch in Hollywood, right below the Hollywood sign at a shopping mall.

00:17:26.640 People kind of forget this.

00:17:28.120 Yes, Weinstein is a particular example, and he's so hideous that he reveals the rot of what it is in an evocative way.

00:17:35.180 But this has been true from the beginning of Hollywood.

00:17:37.840 Everybody would make jokes about that.

00:17:39.600 So it's Gamora by the sea. 0.99

00:17:41.380 It's an industry run by sexual predators.

00:17:44.320 That does color my view of what exactly is going on in the movie.

00:17:47.500 However, can I make an argument that it doesn't present you in a bad light?

00:17:52.140 Sure, go ahead.

00:17:52.740 So the argument is, the movie to me, as a biopic...

00:17:55.680 So you're going to say it is a love letter?

00:17:57.100 In a weird way.

00:17:59.840 It reminds me of that movie Vice about Dick Cheney.

00:18:03.280 I don't know if you ever caught that.

00:18:04.320 You know, I never saw it, and I should take a look at it.

00:18:07.480 So Vice is about Dick Cheney.

00:18:09.740 It's this fever dream crazy thing.

00:18:11.560 Dick Cheney breaks into Shakespearean soliloquies, breaking the fourth wall.

00:18:15.920 Like, really crazy stuff.

00:18:17.780 And the whole point of the movie is to make him out to be an uber villain.

00:18:22.100 And yet, you leave the movie thinking, man, this guy's cool.

00:18:25.260 It's kind of like American Psycho, Christian Bale.

00:18:27.340 He's this villain, but he is the protagonist of the movie.

00:18:31.440 I saw people tweeting about this online.

00:18:34.620 You leave the movie, which is supposed to paint you as basically the devil himself.

00:18:39.540 You leave the movie thinking, Chris Hansen's got a lot of aura.

00:18:43.900 You know, Chris Hansen's pretty cool guy.

00:18:45.400 And I understand that, and that goes back to your initial question about, are you suing?

00:18:51.240 Well, lawyers are looking at it, and I won't rule it out.

00:18:54.700 I mean, that's why I wouldn't sign the NDA, the non-disclosure agreement, that they wanted me to sign before seeing an early screening of the film.

00:19:03.160 Now, people are saying, well, the NDA, that's standard for anyone to see.

00:19:06.320 Now, I've been to a lot of screenings.

00:19:07.540 Right.

00:19:08.020 I usually don't have to sign an NDA, and was this a standard NDA?

00:19:11.560 Not for Chris Hansen.

00:19:12.960 No.

00:19:13.220 because it specifically prohibits in paragraph five

00:19:17.180 any legal remedy being sought against A24,

00:19:21.480 any employee of A24.

00:19:23.100 So they want you to send away.

00:19:24.220 So I knew that they were going to want me to sign the NDA.

00:19:28.360 They sent it to me in advance.

00:19:29.820 So they were setting you up, though.

00:19:31.260 Well, maybe.

00:19:33.600 You know, I think they were protecting themselves.

00:19:36.740 Yeah.

00:19:36.960 I mean, if it's, why do you worry about it?

00:19:40.140 You know, why would you make somebody

00:19:41.440 whose name, image, and likeness you stole essentially

00:19:45.080 have to sign an NDA

00:19:47.220 unless you're anxious about potential legal problems.

00:19:50.660 Now, what A24 has said is this is standard.

00:19:54.740 Everybody has to sign it.

00:19:55.660 But I know that people saw the movie without signing it.

00:20:00.020 Yeah.

00:20:00.680 I know that David Asit,

00:20:03.020 the director of a documentary called Predators,

00:20:06.340 in which I cooperated,

00:20:08.680 had some issues with it,

00:20:09.620 but I did cooperate with an interview.

00:20:11.820 That was a doc last year.

00:20:12.800 That was a doc last year.

00:20:13.860 He saw the movie without signing an NDA.

00:20:17.700 Now, when I go to the A24 offices in New York,

00:20:22.040 I know I'm not going to sign the NDA, right?

00:20:24.340 They're hoping I will, but I'm not going to.

00:20:27.380 My lawyers have said,

00:20:28.300 under no circumstances do you sign anything,

00:20:30.620 and I wasn't going to do it anyway.

00:20:32.080 There's a lot more to say first.

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00:22:24.780 real solutions for real people. So I roll in there with Joe Garner, who's my producing partner,

00:22:30.820 co-author on a book deal we just signed with Simon Schuster and, and a producer of one of

00:22:35.360 my podcasts. And, um, we meet the people from A24, lovely, polished, get coffee. Coffee's good.

00:22:45.780 They offer us chocolates. I can see the screening room. Like I can see the graphic of that front

00:22:50.840 door in the house here. And, um, they say, Oh yeah, we need that NDA. I said, well, I can't

00:22:56.400 sign it. I said, I'm not going to sign an NDA. And I, I'm sure you can understand why. And I'm

00:23:00.180 thinking i can appeal to their their you know common decency to let me see the movie anyway

00:23:05.160 classic hollywood common decency yeah exactly so i said well you can't see the movie i said

00:23:09.640 you know fine i'll watch it when it comes out to the theater i'm mad there's no threat there's

00:23:15.180 no hidden camera nonsense none of that it's just you know you invited me here yeah kind enough to

00:23:20.940 give me coffee we had a nice chat people taking pictures of me and you know folks who were walking

00:23:26.260 by. And, um, fine. You know, tell your lawyers that I'm not going to sign it for the obvious

00:23:33.440 reasons. You wouldn't sign it. I know that other people have seen it without signing an NDA. And I

00:23:37.940 tell them, I know I have this from David Austin himself and they're flummoxed. And they said,

00:23:44.200 well, what if we can work this out for later today? I said, fine. I said, I'll promise you

00:23:49.180 that I'm not going to give away the plot line. Yes. You know, I'm not going to ruin it. I get

00:23:53.220 that.

00:23:55.000 No, your issue with the NDA was not about potential

00:23:57.220 spoilers. It was about the, you can't

00:23:59.460 sue us for stealing your identity.

00:24:00.920 Right. So, we go down

00:24:03.300 the street to have coffee, Joe and I,

00:24:05.620 and get another email.

00:24:07.600 Here's the same NDA. Have your lawyers

00:24:09.240 just, you know, adjust it to make

00:24:11.420 it acceptable to you.

00:24:13.300 I said, you don't get it. This isn't

00:24:15.180 my lawyer's job, right?

00:24:17.120 This is your problem.

00:24:18.700 So, I'm not signing an NDA

00:24:20.480 unless it's just to say I won't

00:24:23.180 talk about the film until the film comes out. So they're back and forth and the lawyers get

00:24:28.060 involved from A24 and the lawyer says, well, that wasn't an official A24 screening, the one that

00:24:34.340 David Osset saw. That was just, you know, in a editing room with the director and David Osset

00:24:39.060 said, well, give me that screening. Call whatever you want. I'll be happy to, I'll do, let me do

00:24:43.980 that. And then the publicity person calls back and says, I just talked to Robert and Lance and

00:24:50.720 they're very concerned, and they want you to be happy with the movie. I said, well,

00:24:54.140 then they should have started the discussion in January when I first reached out to them.

00:24:57.680 I don't mean to flatter you, but there are a lot of people, and we'll get to them in a second.

00:25:02.060 There are a lot of people who try to copy what you did, and they do it on YouTube and everything,

00:25:05.320 but they're just like, guys, you have won 10 Emmy Awards. Is that right? You've won a lot

00:25:10.760 of journalism, like many journalism awards. Your whole job in the Predator series and all

00:25:15.980 the Successive series, has been to poke through bogus, ridiculous excuses by people who think 0.70

00:25:23.420 that they can get one over on you. That's like your whole job. That's the best observation,

00:25:28.160 most articulately put, yes. And they think, well, we're going to get one over on Chris Smith.

00:25:33.420 So you got the guy who's been an investigative reporter, an enterprise reporter for 45 years,

00:25:38.460 and you're going to get him to just sign it because you're Hollywood.

00:25:41.640 unbelievable so from the beginning you know it's a hit job they know it's a hit job they think you

00:25:48.840 don't know it's a hit job then they know that you know it's a hit job the movie comes out

00:25:52.000 okay the theme that i keep returning to here in all of the the story about the movie about going 1.00

00:25:58.020 to see the movie about your entire career is how are these people this stupid how does how does 0.99

00:26:07.120 Hollywood behaved this way? 1.00

00:26:08.340 How does an assistant district attorney 1.00

00:26:10.200 do something so painfully stupid? 1.00

00:26:12.860 There are other people. 1.00

00:26:14.120 Well, they're not stupid people. 1.00

00:26:15.900 I mean, they do stupid things. 1.00

00:26:17.340 You're absolutely right. 1.00

00:26:18.140 I mean, you can't call them smart things.

00:26:19.820 They're not good things. 1.00

00:26:20.500 They're bad things, and they're stupid things. 1.00

00:26:21.840 You're absolutely right, 1.00

00:26:22.520 but they're not intellectually impaired people.

00:26:26.280 Now, some of them are.

00:26:27.500 We get some shady-looking characters

00:26:31.000 who might as well have the word predator

00:26:33.100 tattooed across their forehead.

00:26:34.320 We see that,

00:26:35.040 But we also have situations like we had in San Francisco several weeks back where an Ivy League educated lawyer shows up in the sting in the middle of the day.

00:26:47.140 This guy manages a multi-hundred million dollar fund.

00:26:51.220 He's married to the dean of a law school in San Francisco.

00:26:55.320 He's got a seventh grader.

00:26:56.920 And here he is in the middle of the day after chatting with somebody who's posing as the father of a 13- and 6-year-old. 0.73

00:27:05.200 He shows up after a very graphic conversation to sexually exploit those two boys.

00:27:11.860 Now, this is a guy with a big education, a big job, and yet he's twisted in a way that he's going to take part in this.

00:27:21.800 And I truly believe, and based upon the chats that I saw and the criminal charges that followed, that he was going to take part in this activity if it was provided for him. 0.99

00:27:32.500 So St. Thomas Aquinas, when describing the motivations for sin and how sin relates to the intellect and the will, Thomas Aquinas makes this point that sin makes you stupid. 0.98

00:27:43.580 This is part of the Catholic tradition, that sin darkens the intellect, that people who graduate from Ivy League schools and run big hedge funds and they probably have 140, 150 IQ, that they can do the stupidest things imaginable. 0.98

00:27:57.660 Right, and he did the same thing that a checkout clerk at Best Buy did. 0.98

00:28:02.740 Yes.

00:28:03.900 Right, because that's who came in next.

00:28:06.780 Yes. And by the way, there are checkout clerks at Best Buy who maybe they don't have the 150

00:28:13.200 super hedge fund or IQ. Maybe they've got an average IQ. And that guy would never do any

00:28:19.640 such thing. That guy would never, it wouldn't even cross his mind. So then I'm curious from

00:28:23.460 your 45 years of journalism and 22 years doing this kind of journalism, how does a guy go from 0.90

00:28:30.480 graduating from Harvard or whatever, forget about Harvard, they're all predators and degenerates,

00:28:35.320 But, you know, from some other, like, reputable school, how do you go from that to being in a kitchen over a pizza talking to Chris Hansen?

00:28:43.960 I wish I could give you a precise, articulate answer.

00:28:49.340 I can narrow it down to some areas for you, Michael.

00:28:52.900 I think some of these guys are hardwired as predators.

00:28:56.660 They're the guy who would be, you know, at the mall, at the movie theater, the unmarried little league coach.

00:29:05.320 The bad teacher, you know, we have 50 million kids a year who have inappropriate sexualized contacts from school employees in this country.

00:29:15.540 I mean, it's a big problem.

00:29:19.980 But what about these other guys, right?

00:29:22.680 I don't know why they're wired this way, but there's a group who are wired this way.

00:29:26.620 And then there are the younger guys who are socially inept and they get caught up in the fantasy.

00:29:33.820 Yeah. 0.79

00:29:34.520 Right?

00:29:35.320 And then there's this middle ground of guys like the lawyer in San Francisco, the doctor in Michigan, the police officer in Maryland, the Little League coach, the Catholic school teacher.

00:29:50.160 You know, all of these cases we've seen in the last month in current investigations.

00:29:56.520 What makes them do it?

00:29:59.380 And I think part of the answer to that is the proliferation of child sexual abuse of material on the Internet.

00:30:08.140 And I think there's a curiosity in the minds of some of these guys.

00:30:12.160 I can't tell you why, but I know that psychiatrists who study this, who go into the federal prison system and talk to guys who have nothing to lose, they're not getting out,

00:30:21.880 will tell you that there is very definitely a connection

00:30:25.160 between viewing CSAM, child porn, and offending in this way.

00:30:30.620 And that's why I get so upset when I see cases that, you know,

00:30:35.060 recently a judge ruled that AI-generated child porn was okay

00:30:41.780 if somebody was viewing it in their home and didn't take it out of the home.

00:30:45.640 Well, what's the difference between, you know, there's no child there,

00:30:49.420 but it's still the image of a child.

00:30:51.280 Yes.

00:30:51.880 right? And it's still going to feed their fantasy for only so long until they get to the point where

00:30:57.480 they need to knock on the door of one of our sting houses or to meet a child who's available

00:31:03.820 in real life. This highlights a couple major errors, I think, that people make in liberal

00:31:09.960 modern society. One of which is that the only thing that matters is consent. As long as consenting

00:31:15.240 people- Well, we see that. I come face to face with these guys. Every month we're out doing a

00:31:20.400 Every single month, there's at least one and sometimes two or three.

00:31:24.200 I mean, sadly, our production schedule is so far ahead at True Blue.

00:31:28.180 I mean, we've got episodes for the next year already.

00:31:31.440 Yes.

00:31:31.860 And we're still producing, right?

00:31:34.580 So it's out there.

00:31:37.400 I think in the beginning, you know, we would go to one of two chat rooms and one platform.

00:31:44.080 We had chat rooms in AOL and Yahoo and MySpace, and all the activity was there.

00:31:49.200 Well, today, it's so diffuse and so spread out that it's harder than ever to detect these guys, but there's more activity than ever before.

00:31:57.220 Right.

00:31:57.740 And that's why we've conducted investigations in places like Roblox, the wildly popular gaming platform.

00:32:05.120 It's like a game.

00:32:05.700 It's a kid's game thing.

00:32:06.840 And the characters look like little Lego characters.

00:32:09.100 But think about the argument they're making.

00:32:11.940 Not just the predators, but even the kind of liberal politician types who say, oh, it's okay.

00:32:16.100 If the kiddie porn is AI, it's no big deal.

00:32:19.200 And what they're viewing morality through is just basically a kind of basic liberal premise,

00:32:27.900 which is that, well, if you don't hurt another person, it's no big deal.

00:32:30.760 But one of the problems with child pornography or any kind of vice is not just what it does to the victim.

00:32:36.240 It's what it does to you.

00:32:37.980 And then this other error that they make, which is that they think, like Freud,

00:32:42.460 they think, well, if you blow off a little steam,

00:32:44.000 if you're one of these predators and you go look at child sexual abuse material,

00:32:47.980 you're going to blow off a little steam. 0.99

00:32:49.000 Maybe once or twice, but ultimately, that high that these guys get from this, wherever it comes from, is not going to be met by viewing child porn and going off in a corner and masturbating someplace. 0.98

00:33:07.480 Not to be overly graphic about it, but that's where these guys are. 0.93

00:33:10.000 I mean, they're not going to go bake some cookies.

00:33:11.740 That's what they do when they look at it.

00:33:13.100 And so, you know, these guys are so twisted that they get to the point where, you know, it doesn't work for them anymore.

00:33:20.880 Yes.

00:33:21.260 And so then what do they do?

00:33:22.280 Well, they find a child.

00:33:23.380 Where do they go?

00:33:24.760 They go where the children are.

00:33:26.160 Where are the children?

00:33:27.720 Various chat rooms, gaming platforms like Roblox.

00:33:31.900 I mean, in the course of the Roblox investigation, and there are thousands and thousands of cases across the country, across the world,

00:33:39.960 where men go on there, pose as children, and try to meet kids for sex.

00:33:46.040 I mean, it happens on a daily basis.

00:33:47.320 And the company has said that it has put in security measures, and it has.

00:33:52.400 Many of them have workarounds, and it continues to be an issue.

00:33:55.920 But during the course of this investigation,

00:33:58.000 which we turned into a documentary called Dangerous Games,

00:34:00.760 which people can see on True Blue, 0.98

00:34:03.060 a woman reaches out to me from Texas. 0.82

00:34:06.360 She reaches out on TikTok.

00:34:09.360 Now, I got to be the only 67-year-old guy in America who's got 1.2 million TikTok dollars.

00:34:14.200 But it's a place where I harvest intelligence and story ideas.

00:34:21.020 And she reaches out with a video saying, I need to find Chris Hansen and his team.

00:34:25.340 I've got a situation in my house.

00:34:26.660 My husband, I caught my husband grooming a child on Roblox.

00:34:29.960 Now, she's already got kids.

00:34:31.940 And so I immediately reach out, contact her.

00:34:36.480 We go down there.

00:34:37.160 We interview.

00:34:37.900 Now, she's estranged at this point from the husband.

00:34:40.500 She shares with me the texting, the messaging on the Roblox platform her husband conducted with a child in California.

00:34:49.320 A real child.

00:34:50.000 Real child.

00:34:50.340 Not a decoy or something.

00:34:51.040 Not a decoy.

00:34:51.720 Real child.

00:34:53.380 I take those texts, and I confront the husband as he leaves his workplace in a dark parking lot one night in Holland, Texas.

00:35:02.400 And he gives me his excuses, and I read the text, and he drives off.

00:35:06.600 then the estranged wife does her own investigation she reports this to police there's an investigation

00:35:16.360 she gets the she finds the mom of the child who's targeted and the child hooks them up with the

00:35:23.420 hollingen pd they get the statement and they prosecute the guy i can't get to texas for the

00:35:30.040 arrest she gets it on her cell phone and sends me the video so within the larger documentary we have

00:35:35.920 this very organic story that's told that I got because she heard that I was working with

00:35:42.840 a young man named Schlepp, who is an activist, who himself was victimized on Roblox and now

00:35:49.280 does his own stings.

00:35:50.900 Well, okay, this is a very important-

00:35:52.340 So this is, you know, this is how sometimes the new world of journalism works.

00:35:56.040 And I'm so blessed to have, you know, the ability to get in there and mine this stuff

00:36:03.220 and to work with young people who understand it

00:36:05.920 and can teach me about it so I can understand it as well.

00:36:09.240 This is a very important point in defending the whole endeavor

00:36:12.220 because the arguments against it are, well, okay, it's just fantasy, right?

00:36:16.860 And you say, well, no, no, no, it's bad for the person who's doing it.

00:36:18.820 Right.

00:36:19.080 You say, okay, well, no, they're blowing off a little steam.

00:36:21.840 You say, no, no, no, look, we've known since Aristotle,

00:36:23.980 people develop these habits and eventually that high,

00:36:26.340 it's not going to be enough, they're going to have to go further.

00:36:28.320 Okay, I get all that.

00:36:29.360 But then one of the chief criticisms of To Catch a Predator

00:36:31.920 all the way up to True Blue,

00:36:33.220 is, well, you know what?

00:36:34.720 These guys wouldn't do it if you were not getting them to do it.

00:36:36.940 Right, unless you presented the opportunity, right?

00:36:38.800 Yes, but you were not on Roblox getting that husband.

00:36:43.080 No, no, and look, in the stings, which are carefully done,

00:36:50.500 this isn't entrapment.

00:36:52.660 These guys have multiple outs.

00:36:55.980 You want to talk about feeling sorry, and we can talk about that,

00:36:59.280 and whether I have empathy or sympathy for some of the predators,

00:37:01.760 That's fair game.

00:37:02.940 It's a fair conversation.

00:37:04.600 But you know what?

00:37:05.480 It's really easy not to get caught in one of these things.

00:37:09.600 Very simple.

00:37:10.960 And you want to know how?

00:37:12.340 Don't try to sexually exploit children. 0.89

00:37:14.880 Don't do it.

00:37:15.680 Right.

00:37:16.320 Don't do it and you'll never get caught.

00:37:18.580 Don't drink and drive and you'll never get a DDUI.

00:37:21.320 Yeah.

00:37:22.000 Right.

00:37:22.180 But I wonder, when you say, okay, there's a connection between child sex abuse material

00:37:25.140 and trying to bless the kid.

00:37:27.600 There is.

00:37:28.040 Obviously there is.

00:37:28.800 There's no question.

00:37:29.740 But then my question is, well, how do you start looking for child sexual abuse material?

00:37:33.740 Well, there are organizations like the Child Rescue Coalition and others, law enforcement, who go out every day to do this work.

00:37:42.960 And it's hard work.

00:37:43.960 Yeah.

00:37:44.280 I mean, somebody's got to look at this.

00:37:46.000 I've never seen it, and I never want to see it.

00:37:48.040 Yeah.

00:37:48.640 And I think it would damage me.

00:37:50.420 I mean, I've seen a lot of dark stuff, and I've survived relatively undamaged.

00:37:54.620 But I don't think I could survive seeing it.

00:37:57.440 I mean, it's, it's, it's been described to me and it's, it's very disturbing, dark, uh, the darkest, most disturbing material I can potentially think of.

00:38:11.060 Right. Worse than a homicide scene, worse than a mass murder, worse than a car wreck, worse than anything you can possibly imagine would be what people do to children in these photographs and these videos.

00:38:25.200 But so how does a person either, you know, they're born that way. 0.95

00:38:29.320 Some people are born gay, some are born lesbian, some are born pedophile.

00:38:32.440 That is an actual argument that some sociologists have made. 0.99

00:38:35.060 Well, I think some predators are born that way.

00:38:37.100 I mean, I think that's a third of these cases are people who are just, for whatever reason, wired that way.

00:38:43.340 That's the first most dangerous group.

00:38:45.620 What about the other two-thirds who, like, my question is, how does a guy say for the first time, 0.99

00:38:52.800 You know what? I think I'm going to go look up some child pornography.

00:38:56.180 You know, I wish I knew, Michael. I mean, I wish I knew.

00:39:00.920 I think that there's a curiosity.

00:39:04.780 I think for whatever reason, they go look at it.

00:39:08.360 They like it. They pursue it.

00:39:11.020 There's a whole world out there that didn't exist 25, 30 years ago

00:39:15.480 that is available to people who want to go see it.

00:39:18.080 And it's not just the dark web.

00:39:20.520 It's on the, because the dark web is the, you have to get a special browser and things.

00:39:25.740 But you're saying it's on the, like, the open Safari.

00:39:28.480 I'm saying you can find it on the, yeah, you can find it.

00:39:31.700 And there's technology that tracks it.

00:39:33.940 I mentioned earlier the Child Rescue Coalition.

00:39:35.880 They work with law enforcement all around the country.

00:39:37.700 They have technology, and they can put up a map,

00:39:41.820 and they'll put up dots where child porn is being traded in real time.

00:39:47.220 and we work with them

00:39:49.320 on some of these projects

00:39:50.540 and we've got something

00:39:51.220 coming up that I think

00:39:52.040 is going to be quite

00:39:52.740 stunning to see.

00:39:54.800 By what?

00:39:55.320 And they go bust the people

00:39:56.780 as it's happening.

00:39:57.660 There's a lot more to say.

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00:42:03.180 I wonder, my intuition on it, so you say about a third of these guys, there's just something real deep in them that it would be very hard to get rid of.

00:42:10.880 They're wired to that.

00:42:11.460 But so then you say, okay, the majority of the people, two-thirds, are not like that.

00:42:16.100 Right.

00:42:16.320 So then my suspicion is having a Catholic view of sin and human nature, which is not

00:42:24.260 like totally depraved, but it's pretty wounded, you know, and it's, my view of it is when

00:42:30.580 I look at those guys, I say, well, there but for the grace of God go I.

00:42:34.600 Whether I'm talking about the worst criminals or whether I'm talking about a guy who cheats

00:42:38.040 I don't know how you, I just don't know how you abuse a child in that way.

00:42:43.580 Yeah.

00:42:43.760 And I can't understand, and I've talked to, as I mentioned, hundreds of these guys,

00:42:49.180 and I have this question over and over again.

00:42:53.080 What makes you think this is okay?

00:42:56.120 And I very rarely get the truth out of these guys.

00:42:59.160 It's, well, I just came here to help the child.

00:43:01.520 That one, that's the best.

00:43:02.520 I wasn't going to do anything.

00:43:05.000 And to which I said, well, couldn't you call 911?

00:43:07.180 one? Couldn't you call child family services? We had a guy in Alabama once who actually had the

00:43:12.020 sheriff's cell phone number in his phone. I said, you couldn't call the sheriff? Well, I didn't

00:43:16.540 think of that. Well, I know you didn't think about that because you were thinking about exploiting a 1.00

00:43:19.620 child. Of all the Chris Hansen episodes I've ever seen, which are many on all the, you know, NBC to

00:43:24.880 True Blue, the excuse, the most ridiculous one is, well, I came here to help the child. I knew what

00:43:31.540 this was. I knew it was a sting and I was here to tell that child, stop talking about sex on the

00:43:37.060 have chats where people will say, potential predators will say, this sounds like a Chris

00:43:43.520 Hansen sting. I don't want to meet Chris Hansen. I don't want to meet Sheriff Grady Judd. I don't

00:43:47.260 want to meet Sheriff Chris Swanson. I don't want to meet this or that. And they show up anyway.

00:43:52.440 You know, the decoy plays it off and says, I don't know who that is. Who's that? Or,

00:43:55.540 you know, but there's the time to say, okay, this is a bad thing for me to be doing.

00:44:00.760 But that's what I mean. Stop it. Don't continue the chat.

00:44:04.440 They know at a certain level, intellectually, they know this is a sting.

00:44:08.860 This is not how children behave.

00:44:10.860 This is not normal.

00:44:12.340 This is totally, this is deeply immoral.

00:44:14.900 This is all these things.

00:44:15.780 And yet they do it anyway.

00:44:17.020 And so I guess my point on the sort of, just about any human being, of that two-thirds group,

00:44:21.960 just about any human being could commit any number of the gravest sins imaginable under the right circumstances.

00:44:28.700 It makes me wonder, okay, if what they had to do,

00:44:32.800 they show up to the kid with the pizza in the kitchen with Chris Hansen.

00:44:36.560 Before that, had they not looked at child pornography,

00:44:39.360 they probably wouldn't have gotten here.

00:44:41.100 I think in a number of cases you're exactly right.

00:44:43.520 So then you ask yourself, okay, how'd they start looking at child pornography?

00:44:46.340 I bet a lot of them were looking at normal pornography.

00:44:49.400 And that didn't do it anymore for them.

00:44:51.900 Yeah.

00:44:52.540 I think that's a real track for some of these guys.

00:44:56.200 So that's what I wonder.

00:44:57.360 I just think, okay, if...

00:44:58.740 And there's, you know, look at Pornhub,

00:45:00.700 look at all these different sites.

00:45:01.740 I mean, it's not hard to go find porn

00:45:04.760 if that's what you're looking for.

00:45:05.600 Yeah, one would say it is the entire internet.

00:45:08.380 Yeah.

00:45:09.100 Statistically, the entire internet.

00:45:10.500 And so I just think that when we...

00:45:12.840 You've been doing this a very, very long time.

00:45:14.460 You've talked to probably more of these people

00:45:16.080 than just about anybody has.

00:45:17.760 If you see these patterns emerge all the time,

00:45:21.780 shouldn't we try to...

00:45:23.380 If you want to protect kids,

00:45:24.840 shouldn't you try to cut the problem off

00:45:26.500 a few steps before they're showing up. I think so. I think that's valid.

00:45:31.640 So how do you go about doing that? You know, and I spend time thinking about this too,

00:45:37.160 on airplane rides and, you know, what's the bigger picture here? What is my duty

00:45:42.960 to give some thought to this or to work with organizations who address this?

00:45:50.100 But I can tell you that I occasionally get an email, sometimes anonymously, sometimes with the name attached to the podcast email, and occasionally somebody will say, I have this propensity.

00:46:08.060 I have an attraction towards inappropriately younger males or females.

00:46:14.120 I go to a therapist.

00:46:15.960 I keep it in check.

00:46:16.940 I don't act out on it.

00:46:18.720 you need to know that uh don't report me to the police because i haven't done anything

00:46:24.100 um but you need to work that into your equation and i'm what do you say to that guy

00:46:28.900 well i try to get them on the podcast yeah you know because i think it would be a very

00:46:33.780 uh interesting important maybe frightening in some ways discovery discussion

00:46:40.920 so i i know that that people understand they have the problems some subsection of this group

00:46:49.720 understands they have a problem and deals with it yeah and and i can't tell you i mean i don't

00:46:55.420 know if you can ever quantify how many people that is or who's out there who slips up i mean

00:47:01.360 have you such an individually specific crime i think it's hard to you know put everybody in

00:47:07.960 in their proper category.

00:47:09.880 Yes.

00:47:10.440 I mean, when I would watch the show

00:47:11.880 as a teenager in my early 20s,

00:47:14.340 I'd think, okay, yeah, get him, you know.

00:47:16.480 I had the reaction that most people had.

00:47:18.740 Then I had kids.

00:47:20.320 Children, yeah.

00:47:21.060 And it really does shift your perspective.

00:47:24.580 Not in kind, but in degree. 0.98

00:47:26.260 I mean, you want to rip these guys' heads off.

00:47:28.980 I've never had a guy email me and say, 0.98

00:47:30.780 hey, I'm a pedophile, but I keep it in check.

00:47:32.340 But I got a related email once, years ago.

00:47:34.960 The guy said he has pedophile obsessive compulsive disorder, that his intrusive thought was not an attraction to children.

00:47:44.260 It was the fear that he would be attracted to children.

00:47:48.740 I don't know if you've ever come across this strange, but to your point where you say this is such a bizarre kind of crime, it's hard to put these people exactly in one box or another.

00:48:00.340 I got that one.

00:48:00.980 I didn't know how to respond.

00:48:02.140 I said, I don't know, talk to a psychologist or a priest or something.

00:48:04.960 Like, I don't really know what to do with that.

00:48:07.360 But there's a reason that To Catch a Predator became a national and global phenomenon.

00:48:13.000 There's something about the age in which we live that this kind of crime seems particularly relevant.

00:48:21.620 Well, I think it's because it's happening, you know.

00:48:24.260 And I think that, you know, going back to the very beginning, you know, it was an area that interested me, right?

00:48:31.080 But how do we do that story in a way that takes the viewer inside the commission of the crime?

00:48:37.420 I mean, look, these crime stories, whether it's a murder mystery on one of the mainstream networks

00:48:44.320 or whether it's something that we do in the streaming world, these stories are as old as the Bible.

00:48:49.940 It's good versus evil.

00:48:51.580 People like to see that.

00:48:53.380 My theory on all this is that I like to take my viewer on a journey of discovery

00:48:58.600 where they see things they wouldn't normally see,

00:49:00.640 hear things they wouldn't normally hear.

00:49:02.040 And what the Predator series has done from the beginning

00:49:05.540 is take people inside the commission of a felony in real time,

00:49:10.980 from the chat to the showing up

00:49:12.700 to sometimes an interaction with an on-site decoy.

00:49:15.680 I mean, you see these guys cuddle up and go in for a hug.

00:49:18.620 They're ready to go.

00:49:20.080 And then they see them being confronted by me,

00:49:23.200 and then you see them being arrested by law enforcement,

00:49:25.860 and we follow up in the Predators I've Caught podcast.

00:49:28.600 with what happens to them once they go to trial.

00:49:31.400 Did you ever have the fear that,

00:49:32.820 speaking of getting a little too close,

00:49:34.360 that one of these guys would just pull out a gun 0.94

00:49:35.880 and shoot you?

00:49:36.900 Well, we have a lot of security, you know, in place, 0.74

00:49:40.960 and I think we've made it absolutely as safe

00:49:43.660 as it can possibly be.

00:49:45.700 And look, one of the reasons why this franchise

00:49:49.440 has been so popular is because of the edgy nature of it.

00:49:53.940 It's not without risk.

00:49:55.480 We adjust our security based upon, you know, each individual and the environment we're in.

00:50:01.560 We have a lot of built-in stuff that people don't see.

00:50:04.760 But, yeah, we've had guys bring guns in.

00:50:06.800 We've had, we've never seen somebody try to use the gun.

00:50:12.100 We've seen it in his waistband and had him taken away.

00:50:17.020 We've had situations like recently with the lieutenant from the Washington, D.C. Metro Police Department

00:50:22.960 who was in charge of dignitary protection,

00:50:26.460 motorcades, including the president's,

00:50:28.560 shows up to meet a 15-year-old boy

00:50:30.060 after 30 days of chatting and sending photos of himself

00:50:32.620 from his police office and in his police vehicle.

00:50:36.200 You know, there was fear that he might be carrying a gun

00:50:38.440 and not only harm us, but also harm himself.

00:50:43.380 And so we have a different protocol for that.

00:50:45.400 In those cases, law enforcement takes control of the situation

00:50:49.880 in a controlled environment,

00:50:51.280 and it's secured before I even get a chance to talk to him.

00:50:54.680 He showed up to meet a 15-year-old boy in his cop car?

00:50:57.900 Not in his cop car, but he sent pictures of himself in his cop car

00:51:01.000 in uniform to this 15-year-old boy.

00:51:02.660 He talked about taking him to Europe and Italy

00:51:04.600 and all the things they were going to do together

00:51:07.120 and describing his job in dignitary protection,

00:51:12.640 which is exactly what he did.

00:51:13.760 He was a lieutenant.

00:51:16.020 And, you know, when somebody comes in from another country,

00:51:19.400 You know, he knew the details of that motorcade movement.

00:51:25.600 He knows the daily motorcade movement of the president.

00:51:29.040 And so this adds another element to it, which is if you have somebody like that and say he doesn't get caught in our sting,

00:51:38.800 he gets caught in a foreign honeypot deal where now he's compromised by a foreign government.

00:51:46.220 what does he give up to keep this from being exposed and what if what if uh russian

00:51:56.040 you know fsb agents find out about this they would never do that but our foreign adversaries

00:52:02.140 would never try to sexually entrap you know what i'm saying it's it's it's what they you go to

00:52:05.940 china that's the first thing they do yeah yeah of course they send a woman to your room if you 0.59

00:52:09.640 don't like the woman then they send a man to your room yeah i mean they i mean china is notorious 1.00

00:52:13.320 is for this guy right this the stupidity of it all brings me back to that point you alluded to 0.98

00:52:19.340 earlier which is yeah look you know you can ask me if i have any empathy for them or pity for them 0.98

00:52:23.500 or anything so do you have any empathy for them well you know sometimes michael when when a guy

00:52:28.780 shows up who's 21 22 you know you think maybe the guy's made a mistake maybe he thought okay

00:52:35.900 she's 15 and it's only six years apart and redemption and second chances and you know

00:52:44.320 maybe but then you go back over the video and you see how this legally aged man

00:52:52.200 tried to exploit and physically make contact with somebody who's 14 or 15

00:52:58.480 and then you go through the chats again and realize what he was talking about was making

00:53:03.560 a porn film with this girl, you know, making a porn video, and then he's taken away, but

00:53:09.060 they search his backpack, and then in the bottom of the backpack, they find a loaded

00:53:12.740 .38 pistol, and you start to think, well, okay, well, if we're not here, and this happens

00:53:19.380 in a real scenario, which we know it does, and ultimately he would likely have found

00:53:24.140 that if he hadn't gotten caught in our stick, what does he do with that gun when the girl

00:53:29.040 doesn't want to do what he wants to do,

00:53:31.800 is halfway through what he wants to do

00:53:33.400 and has second thoughts,

00:53:35.020 or goes through with it

00:53:37.460 and then wants to call the police

00:53:38.720 because she realizes she's been exploited.

00:53:40.980 What happens then?

00:53:42.960 What does he do with that gun?

00:53:44.600 What does he do with the video?

00:53:45.700 What does he do with the video?

00:53:46.760 And then suddenly you have a whole lot less

00:53:49.340 sympathy or empathy for that person.

00:53:51.340 Of all the people you've ever interviewed,

00:53:54.060 you've done stings on,

00:53:56.120 is there one or two,

00:53:58.040 do any come to mind where you say,

00:53:59.400 you know, I really do feel bad for that guy?

00:54:01.960 Or no?

00:54:03.220 Not really.

00:54:04.660 I mean, really, I'm just being honest with you.

00:54:06.520 I mean, not really.

00:54:09.880 I've heard from some

00:54:11.720 who have led exemplary lives

00:54:15.240 since being caught.

00:54:17.100 I've heard from some

00:54:18.180 who just led quiet lives.

00:54:20.400 I've heard from some or about some

00:54:22.540 who've been dusted up

00:54:24.000 over and over again.

00:54:26.440 Wasn't there one guy who showed up

00:54:28.000 to you like two days in a row yeah a couple times and then we have we have that but we also have

00:54:36.500 guys who are chatting in a sting but don't show up and even though sometimes law enforcement will

00:54:43.560 go arrest them they'll do a roundup after the sting and get all the guys who broke the law

00:54:47.660 online but didn't show up but sometimes you know they can't find them or you know they move on to

00:54:52.500 other investigations but we've had guys show up in one two stings chatting but not physically at

00:54:59.320 the sting house and then the third time they finally work up the nerve to go fulfill their

00:55:03.940 fantasy and and i know it and i have the ability to get the chance from those earlier investigations

00:55:09.300 so we can really go through it and that's where you see the progression of these guys sometimes

00:55:13.940 what do you think of the guys who try to copy what you do there are a lot of these guys i've

00:55:20.060 interviewed at least one of them, but there are a bunch of these guys on YouTube, on TikTok who say

00:55:24.500 they're, they're going to go hunt pedos and they bring a camera and they live stream it. And they're

00:55:29.600 just, they're the, the younger Chris Hansen or so they say. Well, I think that, you know, access to

00:55:37.860 YouTube and digital media has been in some ways the great democratization of journalism or content

00:55:44.900 creation, right? And I think that people who have done podcasts with content like this have

00:55:50.240 sometimes crowd solved the solution to crime. So I think that's beneficial.

00:55:56.380 I think when you get to the predator catching thing, I think anytime a bad guy is identified

00:56:01.040 and taken off the street before they can harm a child, I think that's a good thing.

00:56:04.420 Having said all that, and this is the part that always gets me in trouble and will get me hate

00:56:08.660 on eggs, is that some of these content creators come from the prankster world, right? That's

00:56:18.580 their mindset. They were YouTube pranksters who decided, ah, look what Chris Hansen is doing.

00:56:24.740 Look what the police and sheriffs are doing around the country. Look what the FBI is doing. I can do

00:56:28.520 that. Well, the reality is not everybody does it well. And not all of those cases get prosecuted.

00:56:35.420 And sometimes, some of these individuals, not all, create dangerous situations for law enforcement.

00:56:44.420 Sometimes they bring cases to law enforcement that are prosecuted.

00:56:48.980 Sometimes that happens.

00:56:50.560 I can predict without fear of contradiction that most law enforcement agencies, most DA's offices around the country, aren't big fans of this sort of thing because they become difficult to prosecute.

00:57:02.700 And again, I don't want to make a blanket statement.

00:57:04.960 I'm sure there are a lot of people out there

00:57:06.300 trying to do good things, parents who care, all that stuff.

00:57:10.060 But generally speaking, a lot of these guys,

00:57:12.240 and I see some of the content.

00:57:13.420 I don't dwell upon it.

00:57:14.320 I don't follow it.

00:57:15.080 I'm not going to collaborate.

00:57:17.100 And that makes them mad that I won't join in this,

00:57:19.980 you know, world of superhero predator catchers.

00:57:23.020 I mean, I'm very comfortable with what I do.

00:57:24.580 I know how we do it.

00:57:25.540 I trust the people with whom we work.

00:57:27.940 And so we're going to keep doing it.

00:57:29.920 But, you know, I don't need the collaboration

00:57:33.520 with some of these folks.

00:57:34.380 Yeah, it's also, you're kind of the OG.

00:57:36.640 I mean, it's kind of like Elvis, you know,

00:57:39.400 playing around with the garage band.

00:57:41.100 It's not going to happen as much.

00:57:42.020 Well, there's no need for it.

00:57:43.700 I mean, we have more work than we can handle now.

00:57:47.500 I mean, I don't need to...

00:57:50.240 So then how...

00:57:51.200 Because another distinction,

00:57:53.400 these guys were pranksters, a lot of them on YouTube.

00:57:55.260 Some.

00:57:55.660 Some.

00:57:56.540 And you are this journalist.

00:57:58.600 So you covered all these stories.

00:58:00.460 You won all of these accolades.

00:58:01.860 You, you know, you were front and center during 9-11, just to name one of the big stories that you were front and center during.

00:58:11.620 What got you into this line of work, which has now dominated your career for over 20 years?

00:58:16.300 You know, well, we've always done other stuff.

00:58:18.280 I mean, you know, even at the height of the initial Predator series, you know, we're working on, it was just one of the things I did at the network.

00:58:26.060 It's one of the things I do now.

00:58:27.780 Obviously, it gets the most attention for all the reasons we know.

00:58:31.360 But it started with an interest in exposing this kind of activity.

00:58:38.740 We had heard anecdotal stories about kids getting harmed by predators, by adults online.

00:58:43.860 And so how do you get in it?

00:58:45.200 How do you do the story we did in Cambodia where we infiltrated a brothel

00:58:49.060 where five and six-year-olds are being sold to Western Europeans and Americans?

00:58:54.020 We posed as tourists. We got into it. We infiltrated.

00:58:56.700 Well, how do we do it in this world?

00:58:57.680 at about the time that i was thinking about all that a friend of mine who's a reporter in detroit

00:59:05.760 said have you heard of this group perverted justice which was an online watchdog group they

00:59:10.840 would put decoys out in these various platforms chat rooms and pose his children and if an adult

00:59:17.420 made the first contact and made the initial conversation about sex they would post these

00:59:24.380 guys on their website, pervertedjustice.com. Sometimes law enforcement would get involved,

00:59:29.840 sometimes they wouldn't. And I thought, well, if we could use these guys as decoys, perverted

00:59:34.940 justice, and wire a house with hidden cameras and microphones, it could be compelling. So we did it.

00:59:41.960 They agreed. We agreed. We found a house in Bethpage, Long Island. We rented it for two and a half

00:59:47.140 days, wired it, had our hidden camera guys come in, and they went to work chatting. And I'm driving

00:59:52.880 out there and i'm thinking you know what if nobody shows up what if i've just blown you know tens of

00:59:56.800 thousands of dollars in that works money well my producer calls and said look there's two guys in

01:00:00.500 45 minutes you know get here traffic clears i get there and in two and a half days 17 guys surfaced

01:00:07.280 including a new york city firefighter now no law enforcement those days one of the guys was

01:00:12.980 prosecuted after the fact but the rest of the guys were in the wind which made it unfulfilling to the

01:00:20.300 viewer, and, you know, you got to start asking questions about social responsibility. We did

01:00:25.820 it again outside Washington, D.C., and that's where the rabbi showed up, a military intelligence

01:00:31.340 officer, a teacher, a doctor, all these guys. Those were the second sting. Right. I thought

01:00:37.480 the, I mean, the rabbi one is really famous, an infamous interaction. I thought that one came 0.99

01:00:42.420 much later. That was that early. He was prosecuted after the fact by the FBI and U.S. Attorney's

01:00:47.120 office. And the Fairfax Virginia Police Department made a bunch of those cases. The military

01:00:54.180 prosecuted one of the guys. But by the third investigation, which we did with the Riverside

01:01:00.560 County Sheriff's Office, you know, it became very clear that we needed to figure out a way to

01:01:06.140 collaborate with law enforcement. So, okay, those were the early days of the career. You've kept it

01:01:11.520 obviously. You recently,

01:01:13.980 somewhat recently, sat down

01:01:15.460 with this big YouTuber weirdo

01:01:17.360 that I had never even heard of. He was my

01:01:19.400 associate producer, Jacob, who's

01:01:21.420 a complete freak, and he consumes

01:01:23.420 everything on the internet, and he

01:01:25.400 is so easy. Jacob is not alone, by the way.

01:01:27.740 Yeah. This guy's very popular.

01:01:29.740 He's very popular. What's his name?

01:01:32.800 EDP445.

01:01:34.840 And

01:01:35.360 EDP is a sexual... Eat that 0.89

01:01:37.620 blank. Got it. Okay. 0.98

01:01:39.540 And 445 is his weight.

01:01:41.520 So, during COVID, when I was first experimenting with YouTube and things, and one of my co-collaborators had me do a piece on EDP, and we interviewed some people involved in the case.

01:01:55.500 So, this guy was a wildly popular YouTuber who was a Philadelphia Eagles fan, and he would just run his mouth.

01:02:03.940 Big guy, talked about food, talked about all kinds of crazy things, and sports.

01:02:09.940 And so people latched on to this, and he became very popular.

01:02:13.900 Well, then there were rumors about him having inappropriate conversations with underage followers, 13-, 14-year-old girls.

01:02:23.040 And somebody caught him in a chat, either on Discord or someplace similar, having one of these chats.

01:02:30.280 And apparently the girl came forward, and this came to the attention of one of the, you know, prankster YouTuber guys.

01:02:38.540 and they confronted him.

01:02:40.500 And it was a big uproar.

01:02:42.560 The case couldn't be prosecuted, but he was shamed.

01:02:47.240 So I got a call from a film producer-director named Mike Klum,

01:02:54.660 and he was doing a big documentary on EDP 445.

01:02:58.660 And he wanted me to actually do the interview with him

01:03:01.840 as part of the documentary,

01:03:05.000 and then I would take that interview and put it on my platform.

01:03:08.540 after the documentary came out.

01:03:10.260 So they put this all together.

01:03:11.680 He agrees to sit down.

01:03:14.700 And in Vegas, a few years ago,

01:03:17.020 we walk into this very theatric,

01:03:19.540 beautifully lighted set,

01:03:22.540 and I go at him for an hour,

01:03:25.060 a full hour.

01:03:26.040 And he admits to everything.

01:03:29.560 So now this documentary comes out.

01:03:32.180 My interview with him comes out

01:03:33.800 on my Have a Seat with Chris Hansen podcast

01:03:35.580 and YouTube channel, the same name.

01:03:38.540 And now law enforcement is reopening the case because he's admitted, he's confessed essentially to these crimes in the interview with me.

01:03:49.720 So I think there's at least the potential of him now being prosecuted because he agreed to sit down with me as part of this larger documentary and the piece that aired on my podcast.

01:04:03.800 Why did he talk to you?

01:04:05.360 And this is actually a bigger question than just EDP.

01:04:07.340 Right.

01:04:07.900 Why do any of these people, the smart legal thing for them to do is to, the minute they

01:04:13.940 sequence it, there should be a that guy-shaped pole in the wall.

01:04:16.680 Just run out the door, right?

01:04:17.780 They don't have to speak to you.

01:04:19.180 And yet they do, even when they know what's going on.

01:04:22.380 Why?

01:04:22.540 Well, EDP 445 agreed to participate in the documentary knowing that I was going to do

01:04:27.780 this interview with him.

01:04:29.340 So he bought into it.

01:04:30.520 He fell on his sword.

01:04:31.580 Even crazier.

01:04:32.540 That's even crazier.

01:04:33.500 Right.

01:04:33.640 Right. Get it off his chest, facing health problems. Maybe he wants to go to prison and

01:04:41.220 wrap up his life there where he gets medical attention, gets three squares a day and,

01:04:45.020 you know, lives his life out. Maybe that's it. The other predators, that's a good question. I

01:04:51.220 would like to think I have wit and guile as a reporter to get people to talk to me that

01:04:57.100 other people maybe don't have that skill. But I think sometimes they're anxious and they want

01:05:02.920 explain themselves sometimes they come up with an excuse going into this thinking that they can

01:05:08.280 talk their way out of it some people honestly get fanboyish i mean i've had situations where they

01:05:15.640 told the detectives to pound sand and i walk in and they say oh it's chris hansen and they tell

01:05:20.360 me the whole story this is this has happened i mean there are people who are at least for a

01:05:27.400 a minute excited to see me. Imagine the psychology of the pedophile to catch a Predator fan. Chris

01:05:35.240 Hansen, True Blue. We had a guy in Livingston, Paris, Louisiana, who drove two hours to the

01:05:41.840 Stinghouse and while he was driving was watching takedown episodes on his tablet to pass the time

01:05:50.020 of the drive. I mean, you helped me to understand that. You're the investigative journalist. I'm but

01:05:56.580 humble cigar salesman and podcaster. The psychology, that seems significant to me.

01:06:02.180 It seems that there is something meaningful going on in their minds that, is that part

01:06:07.660 of the thrill? Is the breaking of the taboo and the risk of getting caught, are those

01:06:13.280 Well, I think they're able to compartmentalize that what they're doing isn't that bad, right?

01:06:22.020 i'm not the guy in the sting this is something different because i'm just going over there to 0.92

01:06:29.100 check it out i'm not really going to have sex with her well maybe i will maybe i won't let's

01:06:33.340 see how this plays out if she wants to if she's mature for her age i mean they they think about

01:06:38.320 all this as they're driving over sometimes and and sometimes they just don't they just don't see

01:06:44.540 the criminality of it they're just going over there to as one guy said bust a nut you know i

01:06:50.880 I mean, well, it's like, that can be a crime, actually.

01:06:55.020 It ain't going to happen tonight, son.

01:06:56.640 Yeah.

01:06:58.620 It's like the compartmentalization bit is so astute because this seems to be a feature of our whole political order is that we compartmentalize.

01:07:08.000 Look, I'm one guy at home, and you better stay out of my bedroom, and I'm one guy at work, and I'm another person in my family life, and I'm another person in my political life, and whatever.

01:07:17.520 We compartmentalize in a way that earlier generations simply did not.

01:07:20.880 and we've lost the sense of the near occasion of sin,

01:07:24.840 you know, to bring it back to that Catholic view of sin.

01:07:28.580 We have this, Catholics think about sin a lot,

01:07:30.620 and we think about sin so much

01:07:32.400 that actually opening yourself up

01:07:34.420 to a situation in which you might sin

01:07:36.680 is itself a sin.

01:07:38.800 Right, right.

01:07:39.140 The near occasion of sin.

01:07:40.420 And so I wonder with these guys

01:07:42.320 if it's just, if they really do believe,

01:07:45.000 when they go, first of all, they say,

01:07:46.280 well, what I'm doing is different

01:07:47.140 from what those guys are doing.

01:07:48.000 Right.

01:07:48.140 And two, I'm just going to, I'm just going to go look at the kid.

01:07:53.320 Yeah.

01:07:53.800 I'm just, but I'm, they might actually believe.

01:07:56.540 Well, I'm not necessarily.

01:07:57.680 Well, it may start out as, you know, I came over here to have a discussion with her, but

01:08:02.580 I just don't buy that.

01:08:04.040 I mean, who does that, right?

01:08:07.700 I mean, in what real world scenario does somebody conduct their own sting operation?

01:08:15.160 We had a guy who was an activist in Florida show up and give me that whole story about, you know, he was just there to say, well, what about this chat when you told the mother you wanted to do this with the daughter and you wanted to, after you did it with the daughter, you wanted the mother to join in.

01:08:30.620 Was that all part of your sting?

01:08:32.180 Right.

01:08:33.220 And if you're such an activist with connections to law enforcement, couldn't you have called somebody?

01:08:39.140 Yeah.

01:08:39.620 And tell them this is going on at this hotel?

01:08:41.120 Well, we had a guy, it's an interesting story, who was just sentenced a month ago.

01:08:46.360 He was a TSA security guy, worked at one of the airports in North Carolina, and he was

01:08:54.580 driving down to Florida and was chatting with different people on different sites, looking

01:08:59.740 to sexually hook up, was married, newly married, and he was going to a family birthday party.

01:09:06.520 and he hits us up and the scenario was a father or a stepfather guardian selling the girl for sex

01:09:15.900 girls 14 15 years old in a hotel so he pulls up he goes in he gives the father money

01:09:24.820 the undercover detective gives him the hotel room key he goes in

01:09:29.660 sees the on-set decoy they take him down screaming crying high pitch you know this is a setup this

01:09:38.600 isn't driving this is you know it went on forever so now it's my turn to try to talk to him get

01:09:43.780 these cameras out of my face i'm not gonna talk well you know like i'm gonna have sympathy for

01:09:47.800 that right so i'm right in there and uh the whole thing plays out and goes through the system he

01:09:56.100 He goes through three different lawyers.

01:09:58.080 And in Florida, because of the way this went down,

01:10:01.480 he got charged with human trafficking.

01:10:03.400 And if you're convicted in Florida of human trafficking,

01:10:05.780 it's a mandatory life sentence.

01:10:07.840 Wow.

01:10:08.760 So in the process of this,

01:10:10.580 his family apparently had some money for a defense.

01:10:12.600 In the process of this, they offer him a plea deal.

01:10:18.360 15 years.

01:10:20.540 37 years old.

01:10:21.700 You get out, clean up your life, move on.

01:10:23.980 well he doesn't take it

01:10:26.440 he goes to trial

01:10:28.080 and his third attorney

01:10:29.940 who comes up from Miami

01:10:31.520 decides he's going to

01:10:33.660 you know call me to the stand

01:10:34.800 which rarely happens

01:10:36.220 because there's no need for it

01:10:37.380 they have the chats

01:10:38.260 they have the

01:10:38.800 I provide the video

01:10:39.780 they have the footage

01:10:40.780 we give them

01:10:41.800 we don't hide around with it

01:10:43.360 we give it to the prosecutor

01:10:44.520 and the prosecutor gives it to the

01:10:46.040 defense

01:10:46.840 in discovery

01:10:47.680 it's all out there

01:10:48.720 very transparent

01:10:49.860 as is every part of this is

01:10:51.960 but he's going to

01:10:53.980 call me to the stands remotely because I'm off actually on another sting and he's going to be

01:10:59.780 fancy with me. Uh, isn't it true that you make money for every predator that comes in? No,

01:11:06.500 we don't. I said, they find us. We don't find them. Aren't you friends with the sheriff? I've

01:11:11.580 known the sheriff for a long time, 42 years to be exact, but we don't go to each other's house for

01:11:16.040 Christmas or Easter. But you, I said, yeah, just like I'm friends with a lot of criminal defense

01:11:20.700 lawyers around the country. I've been doing this a long time. He goes, well, but you must make more

01:11:24.900 money the more predators you catch. I said, I would love to have a sting, sir, where nobody

01:11:29.520 shows up. I'd love to do a cooking show. And I'd like to go hang out with the fine folks at Blackburn's

01:11:34.740 Barbecue right there at Eagle Lake in Polk County, Florida. Oh, you wouldn't know where that is

01:11:38.400 because you're from Miami. No further questions. Case goes to the jury. The jury's out 20 minutes,

01:11:45.440 convicted on all charges.

01:11:48.160 Now, this guy

01:11:50.640 has to do mandatory life

01:11:53.180 in prison in Florida.

01:11:54.580 Could have taken the 15-year deal.

01:11:56.840 Is that not part of the mania?

01:12:00.340 This is the theme that I just,

01:12:01.720 I can't help but return to.

01:12:03.080 It's just, okay, wow, man,

01:12:05.200 you got, you won the jackpot.

01:12:07.360 15 years, you won the jackpot.

01:12:09.000 This is the best you could possibly hope for.

01:12:11.920 And we've seen it in Florida.

01:12:13.720 Just put it on Red 23.

01:12:15.780 I'm just going to keep taking risk after risk after risk.

01:12:20.240 You're being accused of something where there's a lot of proof, a lot of evidence.

01:12:27.240 You showed up, all of which is on camera.

01:12:31.980 On my cameras and on law enforcement cameras.

01:12:35.760 You know, they don't depend just on us for the camera work.

01:12:38.780 They have, in some cases, their own cameras.

01:12:43.220 Is there any sting or any program or any episode or any guy

01:12:50.620 where you had a second thought, where you regretted it,

01:12:54.840 where you felt something was improper?

01:12:56.640 Because this is the thesis of the movie, is you, you know.

01:12:59.960 And that's why it's such an offensive piece of fiction to me.

01:13:08.140 And you don't hear anywhere anybody affiliated with this film

01:13:12.920 who wants to give a portion of the proceeds

01:13:17.420 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,

01:13:21.080 Child USA, Child Rescue Coalition,

01:13:23.200 the National Center for Victims of Crime, none of that.

01:13:26.200 It's just a purely selfish, money-making Hollywood endeavor.

01:13:32.400 Yeah.

01:13:32.800 And if they cared at all about victims and survivors,

01:13:37.440 they would at least make an attempt to make it look like

01:13:40.820 they were doing something, something positive would come out of it.

01:13:44.720 Yeah.

01:13:45.040 But you don't even see that.

01:13:47.400 You don't see the actors talking about that.

01:13:49.320 You don't see the director talking about that.

01:13:51.640 You don't see the A24 talking about that.

01:13:54.500 You don't see the writer of the original Esquire hit piece talking about that

01:13:58.740 or the screenwriter with whom he worked.

01:14:01.100 There's none of that.

01:14:01.900 And maybe that's not their responsibility.

01:14:04.220 But I think it says something about who they are, what they do, and how they do it.

01:14:10.820 But if the thesis of the film is that you compromised your journalistic responsibility, which is a major theme of the movie, then surely they, the filmmakers, would have to consider their own ethical responsibilities.

01:14:23.340 Right, which they don't.

01:14:24.260 The subject.

01:14:24.800 Right.

01:14:26.420 Do you find, on the journalistic side, forget about the perps and all that kind of stuff, do you take any of that criticism to heart?

01:14:33.660 No, I understand the criticism, and I understand when the Poynter Institute, they sit in their tower of Scarlet J Journalism, and they think that we work too closely with law enforcement.

01:14:46.540 And I would answer that criticism with, it's the only socially responsible way to proceed.

01:14:52.580 And they would say, well, don't do it.

01:14:54.900 I said, well, that's not an option for me.

01:14:57.920 The thing is, they act like I didn't come up through traditional journalism.

01:15:03.660 I mean, I've been a reporter on air and before that radio and a minute in print for many years, 45 years now.

01:15:13.340 And I wore button-down white shirts with, you know, rep ties to go cover the state capitol in Michigan.

01:15:19.540 I mean, I, you know, I came up that way, old school, you know, well before we could even conceive of how a computer would help us to be journalists.

01:15:29.880 I mean, they weren't even in newsrooms and we had typewriters when I started.

01:15:33.660 And, um, and so I get it, but we have to evolve.

01:15:39.440 Yeah.

01:15:41.620 Yeah.

01:15:42.140 We have to, we have to be enterprising and, and, uh, you know, people talk about investigative

01:15:47.540 reporting.

01:15:48.220 I mean, it is that, but it's also enterprise reporting.

01:15:50.600 It's like, how do you take the viewer inside the crime?

01:15:53.380 And if you're not going to innovate, then you're going to end up like some of the newspapers

01:15:57.460 that have gone out of business.

01:15:58.640 And I'm not saying that we, you know, give up our ethics, certainly not.

01:16:04.980 I think a lot of ethics questions and we evaluate all the time how we do things in both the

01:16:13.940 Take Down Predator episodes on True Blue and the documentaries we work on.

01:16:18.040 We have these open discussions all the time to make sure that we're doing the right thing.

01:16:22.740 but you know we do have freedom to do it the way we think is the right way to do it and that's what

01:16:29.600 the streaming world has allowed us to do i mean imagine after having worked for the man you know

01:16:36.320 for so many years and and i'm grateful for that opportunity because i wouldn't have had the brand

01:16:40.040 to do what i'm doing today but we own the content we own the distribution of the content we have

01:16:44.980 relationships with folks like Fox News, come here, have a chat. So we're very blessed because we have

01:16:54.800 the best of all worlds. Right, right. And it does seem to me that the ethical complaints all kind

01:17:01.680 of break down a little bit, to your point. They say, well, you work too closely with law enforcement.

01:17:04.920 Would you prefer that we didn't work with law enforcement? Okay, hold on. So we're never going

01:17:08.760 to evolve right in order to come story so you have us not do this that's it and we had that

01:17:15.580 discussion internally i mean there were producers at nbc with whom i worked on other stories

01:17:20.280 who said you should cool it on the predator stuff i think enough is enough i said why is it enough

01:17:24.720 is enough why because you don't like it because it's not you're not involved in it why don't i

01:17:30.860 wouldn't want to be involved in that well why it's different it's new it scares you you got to go

01:17:35.780 talk to these guys, like this was a taboo subject that nobody wanted to talk about or

01:17:41.120 a few people wanted to talk about.

01:17:42.480 Did they give an answer as to why they wanted you to cool it?

01:17:45.560 Just because it was, it was, it was different.

01:17:48.020 They saw it as unseemly.

01:17:50.180 Yeah.

01:17:52.100 Because it was popular?

01:17:53.600 I mean, I wonder, too many people wanted to watch it.

01:17:55.980 I'm not saying I agreed with it.

01:17:57.700 Yeah, yeah.

01:17:58.000 I'm just saying that those conversations would be had from time to time.

01:18:02.760 And in fact, you know, there was a period of time where we didn't do it.

01:18:06.500 I mean, NBC, you know, we did it for about four years on Dateline for To Catch a Predator.

01:18:11.440 They continued for years after that to re-cut them and expand them and update them for MSNBC.

01:18:19.120 Before it was MSDNC.

01:18:20.960 Yeah, MSLSD.

01:18:22.860 Yeah, MSLSD.

01:18:24.520 And then, you know, I picked it up independently for a little bit in the middle.

01:18:28.800 And then four years ago, we started up again at True Blue.

01:18:31.420 Yeah, there's also the social context. For some of the people who raise objections to it, there is a social context of, for many decades now, we have seen a consistent trend of liberalizing weird sex stuff and trying to normalize aberrant sexual behaviors up to and including the sexualization of children.

01:18:52.380 at the highest levels of government,

01:18:55.080 you know, when it comes to the trans kids issue,

01:18:57.680 for instance, in the popular culture,

01:18:59.980 all sorts of...

01:19:00.980 Isn't that movie Moonlight or whatever 0.99

01:19:03.440 about, like, having sex with a teenager? 0.96

01:19:07.220 It won the Oscar a few years ago. 0.85

01:19:09.000 I mean, there's really...

01:19:10.320 It's consistent.

01:19:11.940 And so I do wonder if some of the objection was that

01:19:14.140 because this was showing the dark side

01:19:16.700 of the sexual revolution

01:19:17.620 and some of the technological developments.

01:19:19.900 uh and then i guess i have to ask you about your opinion of the underage sex stuff in the news

01:19:27.800 for the last five ten years that the epstein stuff the various theories about pedophile rings and all

01:19:35.180 does that i actually haven't seen you talk that much about it well we've had a number of the

01:19:40.380 epstein survivors on on my have a seat with chris hansen podcast i've done some reporting on it i

01:19:45.780 I mean, the reality of the Epstein case is it took, you know, Julie K. Brown and folks at the Miami Herald to stay on it as a local news story, which speaks to the importance of local news.

01:19:57.940 And these people were threatened by Epstein and his people.

01:20:01.460 They were followed.

01:20:03.220 They were, in some cases, there was legal action.

01:20:07.020 And they stayed with it.

01:20:08.200 And the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York when he was indicted in 2019 said as much that, you know, without the Miami Herald reporting, this case doesn't happen.

01:20:17.380 I mean, I remember looking at the Epstein case in about 2015, 2016 and thinking, okay, if all this is going on, and obviously he had that sweetheart deal where he pleaded in Florida and his lawyers and he tried to frame this as, yeah, it's bad.

01:20:36.820 it was illegal, but it wasn't child sexual abuse.

01:20:41.400 It was, you know, hiring girls who were... 1.00

01:20:45.620 16, 17. 1.00

01:20:46.640 16, 17.

01:20:47.860 It was unseemly, but it wasn't illegal. 0.99

01:20:49.700 It was prostitution, but it wasn't always prostitution. 0.98

01:20:52.080 You know, they came up with this thinly veiled distinction

01:20:55.080 to protect themselves, engineered by high power lawyers

01:20:58.420 and bought off on by prosecutors inappropriately,

01:21:01.780 in my opinion.

01:21:02.860 But the police chief down there pushed and pushed and pushed.

01:21:06.880 The survivors finally were emboldened enough

01:21:09.000 to push and push and push,

01:21:10.260 and the truth came out,

01:21:11.220 which was Epstein rang a pedophile ring

01:21:14.000 and was grooming women,

01:21:17.280 exploiting women from a very young age

01:21:19.320 until they were adults. 0.93

01:21:21.620 And there were hundreds of them.

01:21:25.380 And he was a bad guy.

01:21:26.920 And he involved a lot of other powerful people,

01:21:30.020 some of whom we have not identified yet

01:21:32.740 or don't know about yet.

01:21:34.380 But he, you talk about power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

01:21:39.220 This guy is, you know, not only guilty as homemade sin, but he's the devil incarnate.

01:21:43.720 And I remember in 1516 trying to figure out, okay, well, how do I, if we could do a sting

01:21:48.320 with him, you know, if we could get into that world or into the mansion on the Upper East

01:21:54.020 Side or, you know, how do we do this?

01:21:55.720 And, and it was so well protected by layers of security that, you know, I kind of just

01:22:02.720 got busy with other stories.

01:22:03.960 That doesn't mean it's not a big story. It's a huge story. And again, I've given a voice to a lot of the survivors and will always in that case. And I don't think we've gotten all the information and evidence that we need to get. But it was the Miami Herald and local news that stayed on that and made that case.

01:22:24.020 Right. Yeah. My take on it, to your point on the security, was always, for a long time,

01:22:29.780 all these audiences, all these podcasts would say, we're on the brink of the dirty, the biggest

01:22:34.300 secret with Epstein, and we're going to break up in the whole story. And I said, I don't buy that

01:22:38.080 for a second. This story really took place in the mid-2000s and before. If you think that there is

01:22:46.260 some evidence that has survived for 20 years, I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. If there

01:22:50.380 was evidence. It ain't there now. And so my take on it was either Epstein is who they say he is,

01:22:56.380 which is this corrupt finance. Which I believe. Yeah. I mean, look at the money he's throwing

01:23:02.100 around. I mean, the campaigns and the contributions. I mean, you know, Interlochen Music Camp in

01:23:08.280 Northern Michigan, you'd think that your child would be safe there, but apparently he was giving

01:23:12.200 money and trying to corrupt kids and teachers and have inappropriate influence there. But I,

01:23:17.320 you know, either he's that guy or he's something else, you know, that he's some James Bond super

01:23:22.880 spy, triple agent, whatever. In either of those cases, I suspect we know everything we're ever

01:23:28.700 going to know about Jeffrey Epstein. I just, either way, I don't think there's any new evidence

01:23:34.100 that's going to emerge. And, and it's, look, that's a, it's a big story. It's a big sensational

01:23:40.040 story. It grabs a lot of headlines. But then I think, well, hold on. It was cracked by local

01:23:44.120 journalists. And I think if the story is the sexual exploitation of children, there are a lot

01:23:51.060 of guys who aren't Jeffrey Epstein, who aren't powerful, who aren't rich, whoever. And those

01:23:55.440 guys are showing up to your setup houses. And some are rich and powerful who show up.

01:23:59.640 Right, right, right. So what comes next? Obviously, this movie is coming out. There was the

01:24:07.580 documentary last year. You've got True Blue. You've got this development, this evolution of

01:24:13.720 the predator project uh what now you know are you you've already gotten robert pattinson to play

01:24:20.000 yeah well we uh i cooperated in a documentary that was in the works before we even knew about

01:24:26.180 the movie called i'm chris hansen so that's coming out very soon which is more of a personal profile

01:24:31.560 of me we just um signed a book deal with simon and schuster for a chris hansen uh thriller series

01:24:38.740 with a fictional character.

01:24:41.460 See, I find it somewhat ironic

01:24:42.780 that when I write a thriller series,

01:24:44.760 I have a fictional character,

01:24:46.060 but when Hollywood does it,

01:24:47.020 they exploit my name for a fictional movie.

01:24:49.960 It's just, you know, life imitating art, I suppose.

01:24:52.620 But so I'm excited about that.

01:24:54.100 So that's underway.

01:24:56.360 And, you know, we've got a bunch of new documentaries

01:24:59.160 underway at True Blue.

01:25:00.720 We just finished one on sextortion.

01:25:02.780 And, you know, I sat across four sets of parents

01:25:06.040 who lost kids to suicide.

01:25:09.940 Good kids, good students, good athletes, good parents.

01:25:12.800 And they got caught up in these extortion plots.

01:25:15.800 You know, victims of criminals

01:25:17.520 sometimes a half a world away in Nigeria 0.97

01:25:19.620 who poses young girls, attractive girls. 0.98

01:25:22.820 They get the boys to send, you know,

01:25:25.180 explicit photos or racy photos.

01:25:26.920 They use it against them.

01:25:28.240 And these kids at 15, 16 years old,

01:25:31.400 sometimes 17, can't see their way out of it

01:25:33.980 and think that they're going to be embarrassed

01:25:35.940 and their online presence is going to be corrupted.

01:25:39.140 And they sadly commit suicide.

01:25:42.180 And this has become somewhat of an epidemic in our country.

01:25:47.100 And so my message to parents is that, you know,

01:25:50.560 they should obviously watch the documentary,

01:25:52.280 but you need to create an off-ramp for children.

01:25:56.780 You almost have to approach this as if kids will be

01:26:01.540 the target of exploitation yeah and so when it happens not if it happens but when it happens

01:26:08.860 you got to come talk to me as your parent and together we'll stop it prevent it and figure out

01:26:14.980 a healthy path forward because if these kids had just stayed alive for 20 more minutes 30 more

01:26:21.580 minutes a half a day they'd be they wouldn't have committed suicide right right there's a state

01:26:28.060 lawmaker brendan guffey in uh in south carolina happened to his son and he literally is going to

01:26:35.480 bed and the son passes him unbeknownst to him he's got his dad's pistol and goes in the bathroom and 0.97

01:26:40.840 kills himself because of this non-event because what grandma's going to see your junk grandma saw 0.96

01:26:47.660 you being born and change your diaper yeah right but in the moment it's the biggest crisis you've 0.99

01:26:54.400 let your parents down, you've let your coaches down, you've let your girlfriend down, you've

01:26:58.520 let your grandma down, they're going to put it on Facebook. And these con artists are

01:27:02.640 experts at doing this. But now, you know, and you just see in the documentary, the sextortion

01:27:09.800 documentary, you know, the FBI actually went over and made arrests in Nigeria, brought culprits

01:27:15.280 back, and they're serving time in federal prison here in the United States in the Michigan case.

01:27:19.160 This is one of the most horrifying crimes, and it doesn't get a lot of play. This one,

01:27:23.380 especially father of four kids.

01:27:25.100 Yeah.

01:27:25.620 It's one of the most horrifying crimes

01:27:27.080 I can imagine,

01:27:27.900 which is, you know,

01:27:28.460 and you don't see it coming.

01:27:29.780 Again,

01:27:30.500 there are no bad kids

01:27:31.580 profiled in this documentary.

01:27:33.220 Yeah.

01:27:34.540 Track stars,

01:27:36.080 athletes,

01:27:37.140 great students,

01:27:37.740 they should all be,

01:27:38.440 you know,

01:27:39.000 getting ready to graduate

01:27:39.640 from college about now.

01:27:41.280 And we spent a couple years

01:27:42.640 putting this together

01:27:43.420 and people led us

01:27:45.120 into their lives.

01:27:46.580 And, you know,

01:27:47.720 obviously True Blue is a streamer

01:27:49.360 to which you can subscribe.

01:27:50.920 We have a YouTube channel

01:27:51.860 where we put free content up,

01:27:53.060 But we made this sextortion documentary free on the platform to everybody at WatchTrueBlue.com to get it because it's that important for people to see.

01:28:05.120 Especially when you think about these kids, but even for the perps and the predator takedowns, is the answer just take away everybody's phone?

01:28:15.280 Is it that simple?

01:28:17.160 Unplug.

01:28:17.820 Well, we have Wi-Fi.

01:28:18.520 I always get anxious when parents say that because the kid's going to find a way to get on it, right?

01:28:25.760 It's like if you've got boys and they're interested in shooting a pellet gun or a BB gun or a toy gun,

01:28:33.960 they're going to chew their cheese sandwich in the shape of a gun to play with it, right?

01:28:37.980 So, again, I'm not promoting guns.

01:28:40.180 I'm not promoting violence or knives.

01:28:43.380 I mean, we walked around our neighborhood in Michigan with BB guns and bows and arrows.

01:28:47.840 I'm not saying that was particularly good.

01:28:49.380 We also played jarts, which was dangerous, lawn darts.

01:28:52.240 But we all survived.

01:28:54.540 But the point is that kids will find a way to do what they want to do.

01:28:59.640 They're going to get on the Internet at Starbucks, on a friend's phone.

01:29:03.680 They're going to do it.

01:29:04.600 So given that, what do you do?

01:29:07.180 You've got to give them the off-ramp.

01:29:08.800 I mean, I preach this over and over again.

01:29:11.340 And when my kids were coming up, it wasn't as ubiquitous as it is today.

01:29:16.880 You know, um, so you got to have the discussion. You got to, you got to tell them, look, you know,

01:29:23.760 it's going to happen. I hope it doesn't, but it could, and it probably will. So let's talk about

01:29:29.540 it. No, you, I mean, you think, especially with these young people, there was this story in the

01:29:32.780 news, what, just a couple of weeks ago, the Cornell seven. Yeah. And here, you know, this is a,

01:29:38.500 we don't go blue on this show too often, but, uh, to describe this story, I had to invent new

01:29:42.820 euphemisms because you had this girl show up to a frat house. She is going to hook up with this guy. 0.95

01:29:48.780 The guy asks if he can bring another guy in, which is, uh, I don't know a lot of frat guys who

01:29:54.700 in my day would have wanted to do that. Then there are these other guys. Then, then the girl

01:30:00.380 seems to be fine with it. Then she gets upset because she wasn't invited to a party the next 0.96

01:30:04.940 week. Then she later alleges she was raped. Uh, but then text messages come out where she says 0.70

01:30:10.820 It was all consensual, and the whole thing is, there are even more lurid details about different arrangements and configurations.

01:30:19.120 Anyway, the whole thing is so depraved where you start to ask yourself, are the kids just, clearly they just saw this on the internet.

01:30:28.560 I wonder if kids aren't getting desensitized and becoming over-sexualized.

01:30:38.100 In other words, what passed for exciting in 1980 is now seen as so old-fashioned and boring that they had to ratchet this up.

01:30:49.440 Yeah, you have a Farrah Fawcett poster in your bedroom.

01:30:51.900 And I had one.

01:30:53.200 And that was great.

01:30:54.440 It was glorious. 0.98

01:30:55.400 All the porn I needed. 0.91

01:30:57.140 It wasn't even pornographic.

01:30:58.160 But, you know, in the Victorian era, it would have been a little ankle.

01:31:00.460 You know, I tell people this.

01:31:01.260 You know, I've been around so long.

01:31:02.020 I was born in 1959, right?

01:31:03.700 Yeah.

01:31:03.980 So racy pictures to us meant that you had to sneak down the street to Bobby West's garage

01:31:11.340 where his dad kept Playboys, which weren't even pornography by today's standard, in a box.

01:31:16.220 And you had to secretly carry them to the woods to look at them and then somehow get them back in the box.

01:31:22.120 But, you know, today, I just think that kids have gotten, young people have gotten desensitized.

01:31:27.820 And so now they're looking for excitement at different levels.

01:31:30.660 I mean, storing ketamine off of somebody's private parts?

01:31:36.340 I mean, when did that become a thing?

01:31:38.260 Yeah.

01:31:38.940 And maybe I'm just disconnected from it, but I was in a fraternity.

01:31:42.700 My son was in a fraternity, two of them.

01:31:45.560 And none of that was going on.

01:31:49.060 No, no.

01:31:50.240 The hardest drug I've ever been attracted to is a cigar, and it did not involve anybody's appendages.

01:31:54.900 You know, but, you know, what if they are smoking weed?

01:31:57.720 All right, you know, you can debate the merits of that.

01:32:00.840 Ketamine?

01:32:01.360 No, ketamine.

01:32:02.100 When did that become a thing?

01:32:03.360 I mean, I know it is in Hollywood.

01:32:05.280 Yeah.

01:32:05.680 You know, the poor, you know, Matthew Perry and that whole situation.

01:32:10.320 But, I mean, what is being allowed in this fraternity house?

01:32:14.480 And, again, take the legal aspect out of it.

01:32:17.320 Yeah.

01:32:17.720 Which can be debated.

01:32:19.200 But where's the morality in this?

01:32:21.240 i mean who thought if the allegations are true who thought it was okay to have seven guys come

01:32:27.740 in and out of that room and why why is that exciting why why does anybody even think that

01:32:32.820 that's acceptable and why do we even need a monitor at a party to make sure stuff like this

01:32:42.400 doesn't happen i mean why is it happening in the first place it's because they're all

01:32:46.000 bored and secluded

01:32:48.000 in upstate New York

01:32:49.880 and I remember Cornell

01:32:51.200 had a big suicide problem

01:32:52.640 you know

01:32:52.980 and what does it say

01:32:54.260 about that school

01:32:55.660 what does it say

01:32:56.220 about school age kids today

01:32:58.860 but I just

01:32:59.360 that's what I mean

01:32:59.900 it's it's

01:33:00.500 the whole thing is disturbing

01:33:02.020 and then you've got

01:33:03.300 for instance

01:33:04.000 and I'm having somebody

01:33:06.080 come on my podcast

01:33:07.080 and talk about it

01:33:07.780 later this week

01:33:08.560 the lawyer

01:33:12.140 the plaintiff's lawyer

01:33:12.960 for the survivor victim

01:33:14.680 in this case

01:33:15.660 files a complaint that names one of the perpetrators but puts the address of another

01:33:24.840 person who has the same name of the perpetrator who's actually a sergeant in the marines and this

01:33:32.340 guy and his family are getting hate and threats of violence and and the guy is not quick to amend

01:33:40.060 the complaint to put the right person in there so what is it you know if you're going to accuse

01:33:45.500 somebody of this and i will always take the side of the victim the survivor that's what i do as

01:33:50.760 long as it really is as long but but you got to be really careful when you level these complaints

01:33:55.720 and you got to be right and double check things so for this guy to go out and have the wrong

01:34:01.700 information in the complaint yeah that triggers hate to a guy who did nothing wrong and is serving

01:34:07.900 our country and the Marines. I mean, there's something wrong with that. It's also, I kind of,

01:34:13.020 I think of the frat guys, forget about the legality or what happened or the girl changing

01:34:18.580 her story. I think about the, how bizarre it is in much the same way as I think about the

01:34:23.740 perpetrators that you're talking to all the time, which is in my single days, in my wayward youth,

01:34:29.320 if a girl came up to me at a party and said, Hey, you know, I want to hang out with you at this

01:34:34.400 party. It wouldn't be the first thought on my mind or the second or third or 500th. Probably

01:34:40.700 the 10 billionth thought on my mind. I wouldn't be inviting another fellow. Yeah. Let's get that

01:34:44.960 guy over here too. So what even makes you think of that? And then, and that's my point about the

01:34:49.640 desensitization that these kids have going on. No, this is, if one of the knocks on the whole

01:34:56.520 Predator series, uh, which is an undercurrent of the movie, but has been recurrent for decades now

01:35:03.720 is, well, you know, this is a sensationalist, this isn't hard journalism, this isn't a big story.

01:35:08.640 I think, first of all, it's pretty hard journalism when you've got the burps walking in.

01:35:11.260 But two, it seems to me that the desensitization and the debauchery, particularly when it comes

01:35:18.920 to sexual culture, is one of the driving issues in the country for decades. I mean, it was decisive,

01:35:27.140 especially when you look at the trans issue. That was decisive in 2024. It was one of the top issues 0.85

01:35:31.600 because it showed up in the polls in common sense.

01:35:34.500 So it was why the Republican candidates

01:35:37.060 campaigned on it all over the country.

01:35:40.060 We've redefined marriage as a result.

01:35:42.240 We've had major, major...

01:35:44.180 Bill Clinton tried to pass two laws against online porn

01:35:47.320 with bipartisan support.

01:35:48.900 The courts shut him down on it.

01:35:50.200 In other words, the subject matter that you have taken on

01:35:53.900 for a lot of your time over the last 20 years

01:35:56.340 seems to be a lot more important than, I don't know,

01:36:00.460 insider trading or something. Well, I agree. And that's why we continue to do it. You know,

01:36:05.940 I mean, there comes a point in a career where you can say, okay, I already did it. Set it aside.

01:36:13.820 We'll do something else. But what's your responsibility? Obviously you have the

01:36:18.220 infrastructure to do it. You have the relationship with law enforcement agencies across the country

01:36:23.120 and the world to do it, shouldn't you, me, continue to do this

01:36:30.240 to ensure that the discussion, the dialogue, the awareness continues,

01:36:36.060 to follow the crime as it evolves, as it has over the years,

01:36:40.480 to expand the franchise to cover areas where you haven't worked before,

01:36:45.760 which is what we're doing?

01:36:48.340 Yeah, there's an entertainment portion of this.

01:36:52.420 No question. There's a darkly humorous part of this, which we've talked about. I understand it. There is the collision of right versus wrong, evil versus good. That's a part of it. And maybe traditionally that has not been an integral part of journalism.

01:37:12.580 But go back several years.

01:37:16.160 Optin Sinclair went into the meatpacking business, exposed what was going on there.

01:37:21.620 Now, he was very liberal, socialist, but Teddy Roosevelt, who was president, looked past that to see that he had exposed something that was very important and implemented measures into law to make the system safer and better.

01:37:41.420 I remember being 18 years old, 17, 18 years old with my uncle in Chicago at a saloon where reporters and pressmen from the Chicago Sun-Times would go.

01:37:55.400 And around 77, 78, they did a series called the Mirage Tavern.

01:38:00.340 And the newspaper reporters, with permission from the newspaper, opened a tavern.

01:38:06.000 And they had cameras, such as they existed in those days,

01:38:09.020 hidden cameras, recording all the inspectors,

01:38:12.140 all the people coming in to hit them up for bribes.

01:38:14.880 And the Chicago Sun-Times did like a 20-part investigative series

01:38:18.220 blowing the lid off the corruption in the city of Chicago.

01:38:21.400 And it was the Mirage Tavern.

01:38:24.100 And I was fascinated by this story.

01:38:26.920 And my Uncle Charlie was a character.

01:38:28.300 He operated the cranes that built Sears Tower

01:38:31.100 and the John Hancock building.

01:38:33.220 I mean, he was just a true Chicago character.

01:38:36.280 I loved him, did that.

01:38:37.080 Loved him, did that.

01:38:38.380 And, you know, he'd taken me to the saloon,

01:38:40.360 and I listened to these guys talk about this.

01:38:44.220 And it was just, to go back and read those stories today,

01:38:47.580 it's a great reminder that we didn't invent investigative journalism,

01:38:52.740 and it's really not that radical to use hidden cameras.

01:38:57.160 Well, that's my question.

01:38:58.320 Did you change journalism?

01:39:01.020 Did you innovate?

01:39:01.760 I don't know if I change journalism.

01:39:03.440 I think there's a lot of good journalism going on out there using hidden cameras.

01:39:07.120 And sometimes it's citizen journalism.

01:39:09.400 I think about my pals, James O'Keefe, Nick Shirley.

01:39:12.880 They've got a lot of attention for these.

01:39:14.340 They're not doing...

01:39:15.560 Well, weirdly, it does sometimes involve sex stuff because James O'Keefe lures these guys in.

01:39:20.060 No, I know James.

01:39:20.820 Yeah, yeah.

01:39:21.740 But they're usually on other issues and political issues.

01:39:24.960 But they, you know, the whole gig is undercover camera investigations.

01:39:29.420 I think as long as you're painstakingly transparent, as we have been from the very beginning, continuing through the investigations we do today, I think it's fair game.

01:39:40.000 And I think it's our responsibility to take people inside the story, inside the commission of the crime, to hear things they wouldn't normally hear, to experience things they wouldn't experience, to take them along on this journey of discovery.

01:39:53.840 I mean, that's what separates me from a lot of other people in this business.

01:39:57.940 And I'm proud of that at the end of the day.

01:39:59.880 And, you know, I'll put my body of work up against anybody else's predator and everything else.

01:40:06.160 If the movie is waiting for Chris Hansen to make an apology, big mea culpa.

01:40:12.640 Not happening.

01:40:13.540 I sleep very well at night.

01:40:14.760 I sleep very well.

01:40:16.000 If I'm up, you know, and unable to sleep, it's because I'm working through a script or an idea or a passage in the book

01:40:22.460 or I had one extra cup of espresso that day,

01:40:26.160 but it's not because of any regret

01:40:28.360 for anything I've done professionally ever

01:40:30.300 in my entire career.

01:40:32.400 Chris Hansen.

01:40:33.340 We didn't even have the pizza.

01:40:34.400 I know.

01:40:34.720 I regret that.

01:40:35.200 I think we let it go cold.

01:40:36.440 That's bad.

01:40:36.900 Put it in the microwave.

01:40:37.720 We'll get it back.

01:40:38.240 We're looking at pizza too

01:40:39.300 and identical to the pizza

01:40:40.880 in the Predator segment we discussed.

01:40:43.600 You know, I initially thought...

01:40:44.740 The producers did a good job with that.

01:40:45.700 I said this would be really funny

01:40:47.480 to have Chris here and then I'm sitting...

01:40:49.100 But then I realized, wait a second,

01:40:50.100 if I'm sitting across from Chris Hansen

01:40:51.340 and there's a pizza...

01:40:51.880 You're in the bad chair.

01:40:52.640 I'm in the bad chair.

01:40:52.980 I don't need to.

01:40:53.640 All right.

01:40:53.920 Before it gets any worse, Chris, thank you for being here.

01:40:55.880 Michael, thank you very much.

01:40:56.840 It was a pleasure.

01:40:57.520 Great job.

01:40:57.720 Wonderful to be with all.

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01:41:00.760 This is not.

01:41:02.080 Again, he's stealing my lines.

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The Michael Knowles Show - October 18, 2026

＂They Lied About Everything＂ Michael & To Catch A Predator ｜ Chris Hansen

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