This Past Weekend with Theo Von - Chris Hansen ｜ This Past Weekend #156

00:00:00.000 Today's episode is brought to you by Gray Block Pizza.

00:00:03.520 Gray Block Pizza, 1811 Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles on the way to the beach.

00:00:09.680 There have been moments in my life where my mouth was empty.

00:00:14.380 And then I realized there's a way I can change that.

00:00:17.100 Gray Block Pizza. Get that hitter. 1.00

00:00:20.240 Today's episode is a very unique guest.

00:00:23.900 This man has ran across more of the dark arts than maybe anyone.

00:00:28.980 He's come face to face with them. He's sat them down.

00:00:33.400 You know him from To Catch a Predator.

00:00:35.280 You know him from his years of investigative journalism.

00:00:40.260 He is something unique.

00:00:44.200 Let's get to know him right now.

00:00:46.060 Ladies and gentlemen, it is Mr. Chris Hansen.

00:00:58.980 Thank you for joining us today.

00:01:03.860 My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

00:01:05.280 Yeah. And have you, do you get out to Hollywood a lot?

00:01:09.660 I do because some of the production companies with which I work are based out here.

00:01:14.400 And so when I was doing the Crime Watch Daily show, for instance, that's Warner Brothers.

00:01:17.820 They're, you know, right there in the Burbank area.

00:01:20.040 Right.

00:01:20.220 And so I get out here frequently.

00:01:23.320 Do you, do, crime is so, people are obsessed with crime.

00:01:28.040 They really are.

00:01:29.120 I mean, you look at the show, for instance, Killer Instinct that is on Investigation Discovery, the ID network.

00:01:35.440 And that network literally has either the first or second number of female viewers from that coveted demographic.

00:01:45.080 Yeah.

00:01:45.220 Not just of cable, but in all of broadcasts.

00:01:47.340 Right.

00:01:47.800 And people watch.

00:01:49.160 Because females are, those are the ones most likely to be like shopping and spending money with advertising, right? 1.00

00:01:54.320 Well, I think that's part of it.

00:01:56.520 We also get a very healthy, you know, male viewership on, you know, the various crime shows that I do.

00:02:02.180 I think what draws people in is this attitude that I try to bring to every show where, you know, I take the viewer along on a journey of discovery.

00:02:13.220 Where they get to see things they wouldn't normally see, hear things they wouldn't normally hear.

00:02:17.080 Yeah.

00:02:17.360 You know, I get to go places that most people don't get to go.

00:02:20.920 I get to talk to people most people don't get to talk to.

00:02:24.680 And so that's fascinating for the average viewer, I think.

00:02:27.100 Yeah, it's kind of almost, I wonder if you seem to me like as, because I would consider myself a, I guess basically like this, I would consider myself probably a female viewer.

00:02:36.180 I mean, I've watched so much of those types of programming.

00:02:39.240 I mean, not really, but I mean, it's almost like, yeah, I guess I'm almost in that demographic.

00:02:43.580 But you are, you're almost like a liaison, you're like, I can't tell sometimes if I'm like, you're, you seem like an Edgar Allan Poe of sorts, you know, or like a, like a concierge to like the dark arts or something a little bit.

00:02:58.360 I mean, I know you're reporting and you're, you're the, you're kind of the, the Sherpa, but.

00:03:03.140 Well, that's valid.

00:03:04.500 You look at some of the different investigations we've done over the years and, you know, I do, you know, occupy a unique space in television and journalism.

00:03:14.600 And it's been crime and I've been at it literally for some 36 years.

00:03:18.960 Yeah.

00:03:19.100 I started very young in the, in the business.

00:03:20.820 I was six.

00:03:21.300 But, but, but, you know, so, so it's true.

00:03:25.180 You know, I was at a, a news conference in, in LA one time for kicking off a show and, and one of the print writers who covers broadcasts for Gannett, who has covered me for many, many years, said, do you ever go to therapy or get counseling for all the dark stuff you, you do and see?

00:03:43.640 I said, no, it's all kept down there nice and safe.

00:03:45.820 It's where I like it.

00:03:46.960 I'm good.

00:03:47.480 Do you, do you ever think that those types of things like that subconsciously though, that interacting with, you know, such a dark, you know, a Voldemorty cauldron of the universe kind of, that that can impact you like on a level that you're not able to.

00:04:03.400 Yeah, I think so.

00:04:04.380 I mean, you look at people sometimes like, what's that guy up to over there?

00:04:09.220 What's he doing over there?

00:04:09.920 Or you think through scenarios where something bad happens and you have to react, not just as a journalist and covering it, but you're in the middle of it.

00:04:17.100 Right.

00:04:17.480 And it's been interesting because, uh, my two sons are in the business now.

00:04:23.080 So one is a assistant cameraman and a production assistant on my shows and many, many others.

00:04:28.860 And the other is a, um, a reporter in Traverse city, Michigan.

00:04:31.880 He just got a job in Oklahoma city.

00:04:33.580 Oh, nice.

00:04:34.280 So, you know, they've grown up in this and, and you see it affect them a little bit.

00:04:39.980 You know, we finished a season of killer instinct and, uh, my oldest son looks up at me.

00:04:44.120 He goes, man, I am just murdered out.

00:04:46.540 I got to go do some food shows for a little while.

00:04:49.700 Yeah.

00:04:49.840 I need to focus on a flea market flip or something.

00:04:51.860 Dude, I need, I need, I need, I need some, I gotta go see Mr. Ramsey.

00:04:56.880 Um, when you go back to going back to talking about how women watch a lot of those types

00:05:01.220 of shows, do you feel like there's something secretive in women or something that, like, 0.98

00:05:08.200 I've always had this weird idea that some women like want to be murdered in a weird way. 0.99

00:05:12.560 And I know that's kind of a drastic statement, but like, there's something about it.

00:05:17.020 What is that?

00:05:18.540 Well, you know, that's, that's a great question.

00:05:20.820 And I think it's, it's a lot of things.

00:05:22.720 I think that, you know, women empathize with victims.

00:05:28.740 I mean, men do too.

00:05:29.820 Right.

00:05:30.000 I get a lot of, you know, grizzled male cops who watch these shows all the time and Wall

00:05:35.940 Street guys and business people and, and, and, you know, all shady comedians, shady comedians.

00:05:40.140 And, uh, but I, but I do think that for whatever reason, uh, again, our key demographic on a

00:05:47.660 lot of these shows skews female. 1.00

00:05:49.740 Do you think killers seem like tall, dark, and handsome in a way to women? 0.54

00:05:52.960 Like, is there, is there like on a, like a different level?

00:05:56.480 Do you feel like there's some romantic thing?

00:05:58.060 Cause yeah, for some reason in my head, I'm like, women secretly all want to have someone 1.00

00:06:02.600 break into their home or something.

00:06:04.700 I don't buy that.

00:06:05.740 I think it's, it's more of, all right, I'm going to learn how this stuff happens.

00:06:10.940 So I don't become a victim myself.

00:06:12.640 And that's kind of the way I look at these shows, these investigations is, is if we can

00:06:17.580 hear the voice of a victim or a victim's family, if we can get into the mind of a criminal,

00:06:21.640 whether it's a killer or a predator, you know, sex trafficker or human trafficker or somebody

00:06:27.220 dealing heroin in, in Dayton, Ohio, you can better understand how it all works and you

00:06:32.780 can prevent other people from falling into that trap of becoming a victim themselves.

00:06:37.060 And that's a big part of what I do.

00:06:38.940 Yeah.

00:06:39.740 Do you feel like, you know, after, um, like to catch a predator and you know, that, um,

00:06:45.740 do you feel, did you feel like a hero, like at certain points during that show?

00:06:50.280 Like, did you feel, how did you feel like as that show went on and you guys were, you 0.85

00:06:57.440 know, you guys were catching, um, I guess, I don't know if they're pedophiles or perverts

00:07:01.880 at that point or what the term is?

00:07:03.340 Well, predator, I think is the right term.

00:07:05.920 I mean, pedophile has a very distinct definition in psychiatric circles.

00:07:11.980 Uh, people use it all the time.

00:07:13.720 It was in the New York Post today on the flight here.

00:07:16.760 Yeah.

00:07:17.160 So, you know, people use that, but predator is the best way to put it.

00:07:20.920 And, and when we first did the, um, those investigations, the first one was in Long Island.

00:07:26.960 And I remember driving out there thinking, geez, what if nobody shows up?

00:07:30.720 What if I've just wasted thousands and thousands of dollars of the network's money?

00:07:34.420 And within seconds of that thought, my producer was on the cell phone saying, where the heck

00:07:39.240 are you?

00:07:39.840 We've got two guys coming in 45 minutes and all of a sudden 17 guys show up in the course

00:07:45.660 of three days, including a New York city firefighter and several others.

00:07:48.980 And you can imagine that first investigation.

00:07:51.100 I mean, we had security and we had precautions and we had the, the online decoys in the house.

00:07:55.880 And we had it all set up, but we didn't really know how this was going to go down.

00:08:00.320 So I've got transcripts all over a dining room table in the next room.

00:08:04.000 And I walk out to confront the third guy who comes in and I'm just trying to keep my

00:08:07.820 heart in my chest at this point.

00:08:09.120 So you are actually nervous when you walk out there.

00:08:11.140 I was, especially in the first one.

00:08:12.720 Now you always are on edge because you don't know what you don't know.

00:08:16.000 Right.

00:08:16.220 You don't know what is in his pocket.

00:08:17.440 I mean, we take precautions.

00:08:18.400 We know the background.

00:08:19.460 We know if they've got a concealed weapons permit and many other things that we.

00:08:23.620 So you have as much intel as you can, but you don't.

00:08:25.400 But I, you know, I walk out there and I confront this third guy in the first investigation.

00:08:30.440 I said, it says right here, you want to do this, that, and the other thing to a 13 year

00:08:33.380 old girl named Susan.

00:08:34.780 No, that's not me.

00:08:35.460 Excuse me.

00:08:35.900 Go back.

00:08:36.300 Get the other.

00:08:37.480 What about a 14 year old named Beth?

00:08:39.220 No, that's not me.

00:08:39.900 Excuse me.

00:08:40.420 Come back.

00:08:40.920 You know, a 12 year old named Betty.

00:08:43.780 Yeah, that's me.

00:08:44.460 Okay, good.

00:08:44.940 We can start, you know, and it was just, it was that.

00:08:46.760 Oh, wow.

00:08:46.940 There was that much.

00:08:48.040 There was just, you know, obviously we refined it as we went along and the most recent investigation.

00:08:52.500 But literally you were like saying, oh, the, oh, sorry.

00:08:54.880 I had the wrong transcript.

00:08:55.920 Yeah.

00:08:56.160 I got the wrong recipe.

00:08:57.020 I need to go back and find the other.

00:08:58.500 And I got to get the one.

00:08:59.400 So, you know, we, we refined it over, over time.

00:09:01.700 And, you know, we, the most recent one we did, we now call it Hanson versus predator.

00:09:05.360 And we're getting ready to do another one very soon.

00:09:08.180 And, you know, we have it down to a system, but there's always that unexpected possibility.

00:09:14.940 You know, again, we have security.

00:09:16.060 The police are doing a parallel investigation.

00:09:17.640 So I feel very safe.

00:09:19.480 The crew is very safe, but there are a lot of moving parts here.

00:09:23.320 And we essentially set up a television production studio in another part of the house because, you know, most of what we get in terms of video is with hidden cameras.

00:09:32.100 Yeah.

00:09:32.740 Yeah.

00:09:33.100 I'm seeing that.

00:09:33.660 And I'm seeing the lights kind of hidden.

00:09:35.140 And, like, I've worked with Howie Mandel on some hidden camera shows.

00:09:37.780 So, like, even when I'm able to watch some of you guys' work, it's like, you know, I'm even able to see some of the just the same parallels, you know, because a lot of the production kind of stuff is the same.

00:09:47.000 Did you, when these guys, like, did you feel, like, as a viewer sometimes when I would watch that show, sometimes I would feel, like, remorse.

00:10:00.120 I would feel, like, anger.

00:10:03.380 You know, I'd feel sorry sometimes for the person that was getting captured.

00:10:08.040 Not that, like, in one part of me, if you asked me any day of the week, like, what do you think about, you know, people that molest children or something?

00:10:14.260 Yes.

00:10:14.640 Somebody who was going to solicit a child for sex. 1.00

00:10:15.900 You know, they'd be damned. 1.00

00:10:16.900 Yeah.

00:10:17.220 You know, like, but in that moment and watching it, sometimes I felt bad for them.

00:10:21.720 What is that?

00:10:22.320 Well, sometimes I'm the prosecutor, the detective, sometimes I'm the psychologist just trying to get in their heads and have them talk to me, and sometimes I'm the dad, you know, when it's a younger guy.

00:10:35.740 Yeah.

00:10:36.140 And I do sometimes feel empathy for some of these characters, and everybody wants, in our society, one size fits all, this is how we treat the problem.

00:10:47.840 Yeah.

00:10:48.560 And the reality is that, you know, not all these guys are the same character.

00:10:54.040 They're the hardcore, you know, guys who would go after kids no matter what.

00:10:58.900 Yeah, I saw some of those guys in their 50s and 60s.

00:11:01.120 Right, they'd be at the playground with or without the internet.

00:11:03.180 The middle section is our guys who do this because they have the access to the internet, the 24-hour access, the anonymity, and just the ability to be on there and continually chase their fantasy.

00:11:18.040 And all of a sudden, they cross this line between fantasy and reality, and they're knocking on our door, and they're there.

00:11:23.580 And then you've got the younger guys who may be socially inept, and I'm not defending them one bit, but these are guys who, you know, made a mistake, and they can probably get probation for a year.

00:11:31.880 Right.

00:11:32.200 And computer monitoring, and they'll get scared straight.

00:11:35.800 Yeah, I saw there were some guys, yeah, like in their 19 and 20-year-old, you know.

00:11:39.500 We usually don't even, the decoys don't even engage somebody unless they're 21, unless there's an extenuating circumstance.

00:11:48.860 Right, so you guys, so at a certain point, the decoys started to really seek out, like, oh, these guys are a lot more predatory than maybe some young, some guy who's 18 years old might be just a little bit more on the perverted fringe or something?

00:12:02.060 Well, we don't seek them out.

00:12:04.240 Right.

00:12:04.580 We have a very strict protocol.

00:12:06.120 So the online decoys will go into various social platforms, and they'll create a profile that is unmistakably of an underage child.

00:12:19.080 Right.

00:12:19.860 Picture, age, everything there, and they don't contact anybody.

00:12:24.020 They get contacted.

00:12:25.540 I see.

00:12:25.960 And then the alleged predator has to make the sexual suggestion first.

00:12:32.760 Otherwise, we don't engage.

00:12:33.940 We don't go out and say, okay, here's a 44-year-old man.

00:12:36.740 Let's see what he's going to do if he's approached by a mature-looking 13-year-old girl.

00:12:41.760 Yeah.

00:12:42.080 That doesn't happen.

00:12:43.340 Then it's a gray area.

00:12:44.700 What we do is pretty much black and white.

00:12:47.280 Yeah.

00:12:47.900 Was there ever a predator that came in that brought tears to your eyes that really hit you?

00:12:52.760 Not because I was sorry for them, but I remember one, people always ask, what's the most memorable moment?

00:13:00.420 I said, well, it's a 100-way tie for first, because they're all memorable.

00:13:04.280 Right.

00:13:04.440 There was a fellow in Fort Myers, Florida, who showed up to meet a 13- or 14-year-old boy, clearly had solicited this boy for sex.

00:13:15.780 And he shows up, and he pulls up in an SUV, and we're watching on the monitors, and he goes around to the passenger side rear door.

00:13:24.860 And we think he's going to pull out pizza or DVDs or something.

00:13:28.940 Was it a red SUV?

00:13:29.740 I feel like I remember that.

00:13:30.420 It was bluish green.

00:13:32.360 Sorry.

00:13:32.700 Yeah, I'm wrong.

00:13:33.720 Yeah.

00:13:33.900 There are plenty to go around.

00:13:35.780 So anyway, he gets his five-year-old son out of the car, out of the child seat, and they walk up the driveway, and I'm like, how am I going to handle this one?

00:13:45.540 But where does that hit you?

00:13:46.480 Does that hit you at that moment?

00:13:47.540 It hits you just as a reporter, like a logistically?

00:13:51.240 No, it took the breath out of the room.

00:13:53.520 Now, these guys.

00:13:54.600 Yeah.

00:13:55.420 Let's say it.

00:13:56.240 Who I work with.

00:13:57.360 I mean, I've had them around the world.

00:13:58.920 We've been in Africa and India and Cambodia and all kinds of heavy-duty investigations over the years.

00:14:04.220 And these guys were silent, some in tears.

00:14:08.700 And so he walks in with his boy.

00:14:09.800 Yeah, it even hits me when hearing you say that.

00:14:11.180 He's got a five-year-old kid with him.

00:14:12.780 And I don't think he was going to involve the kid in the sex act.

00:14:15.180 He was going to put a Barney DVD on in the next room or some child show.

00:14:20.460 And he walks in.

00:14:21.260 I said, look, I'm Chris Hansen.

00:14:23.520 You know why you're here.

00:14:25.800 I know why you're here.

00:14:26.980 I'm not going to subject your child to what I normally do.

00:14:31.680 And he left and a female officer scooped him up and the child up and he was arrested.

00:14:37.160 And all the while, his wife's at work on a Sunday in a retail store.

00:14:45.520 And he's running around town doing this.

00:14:48.920 Yeah.

00:14:49.120 And a lot of that type of behavior, it seems like, you know, I'm like in recovery and stuff like that.

00:14:55.220 So I'm in a lot of world where you see a lot of people who struggle with stuff and they try to get through their demons.

00:15:00.160 I've actually met friends.

00:15:01.280 I have a friend now that's a flasher, you know, which is crazy, right?

00:15:04.600 It's crazy, but it's also he's a regular guy.

00:15:07.500 And he has this compulsivity that he's like, sometimes I'll go walk in my dog and halfway down the block, I realize I don't have my dog, you know?

00:15:17.160 Right.

00:15:17.340 So you like start to see some of the stuff that goes on in his head, right?

00:15:20.720 Do you feel like a lot of these guys that are predators, did something happen to them?

00:15:27.880 Like, are you able to see any of that, like, or learn about any of that, like, lineage?

00:15:31.400 Is there any lineage in that kind of thing?

00:15:32.560 I think there's been some linkage there, you know, among some of the 300 plus guys who have surfaced in our investigations.

00:15:41.040 It's hard to tell because once, you know, they're off our radar, they're either in prison or in counseling or doing whatever.

00:15:48.600 I think a lot of it is really just the opportunity and the ability of these guys to reach out to underage.

00:15:58.300 I mean, remember when we first started doing these investigations, we merely used chat rooms on Yahoo and AOL.

00:16:04.540 Right.

00:16:04.680 And that was just a little box.

00:16:05.980 That was just it.

00:16:06.780 Just it.

00:16:07.320 That was it.

00:16:07.840 I mean, I remember one time when Yahoo lost all power because of a fire on the West Coast.

00:16:18.600 And we were down.

00:16:19.720 We were done.

00:16:20.580 We couldn't put our decoys out there and we couldn't communicate with the alleged predator.

00:16:25.840 And we actually had to stop the investigation for a few days until it came back up.

00:16:28.980 So that just shows you how the internet is integral in that.

00:16:32.360 And look at today with Badoo and Kik and all these other, you know, social platforms.

00:16:39.340 Switch.

00:16:39.620 All these things work.

00:16:40.580 All of it.

00:16:41.420 The children interacting on video games with people that they don't know.

00:16:45.540 One of my producers was having a conversation with his teenage son.

00:16:49.860 I want to say he was like 14, 15 at the time.

00:16:51.820 And he said, what's that on your cell phone?

00:16:53.120 And he goes, oh, well, there's this app where you can randomly talk to people who are just on the app.

00:16:58.240 And he said, well, show me how it works.

00:16:59.800 And he dials somebody up and it's a 42-year-old woman who says, or someone who identifies themselves as a 42-year-old woman says, I'm just jumping in the shower.

00:17:09.200 I'll call you when I get a towel around me.

00:17:10.800 He's like, no, no, no, no.

00:17:11.720 We're getting rid of that app right now.

00:17:13.700 But just without even trying.

00:17:15.840 It's such a gateway.

00:17:16.680 It was a random, you know, connection.

00:17:18.840 Do you feel then like that there's some, like sometimes the internet, I mean, even for myself, like I've struggled in my life with like relationships, commitment.

00:17:27.740 I think a lot of it is probably from, or some of it, some of the things have been from growing up issues.

00:17:33.760 I had some of them, though, I've struggled with watching pornography growing up and like using that as like an outlet to feel something good about myself sometimes in whatever wrong way that is, right?

00:17:44.600 But I can see how that web can get tricky and you can get down that staircase and it's excessive.

00:17:52.340 It's like having the devil.

00:17:54.440 Yeah.

00:17:54.700 It's addictive.

00:17:55.320 It's like an opiate.

00:17:56.760 Should there be laws or more restrictions against that?

00:17:59.220 Well, it's hard to make laws because the whole notion of the internet is its ubiquitous nature.

00:18:07.140 And, you know, all the access is right there.

00:18:11.240 I mean, I think there's a responsibility for parents to regulate children on the internet.

00:18:15.820 I always say that, you know, the golden rule should be that if you don't know the person in real life, you shouldn't be chatting with them or giving personal information to them on the internet.

00:18:31.240 Because the person who is a stranger on Tuesday can groom kids into being their best buddy by Friday.

00:18:38.800 Yeah.

00:18:39.760 It's very dangerous.

00:18:40.720 You know what's interesting?

00:18:41.580 I used to do this thing called crank texting, right, Chris, where I would basically take – I took my phone number one day and I changed the last two digits of it and I just sent out a random text to that number.

00:18:51.620 And I said, hello, right?

00:18:53.560 So my last – my number ends in 6-7, so I changed it to like 7-4.

00:18:57.840 Right.

00:18:58.180 And I just said hello and sent a message out.

00:19:00.440 And then somebody texted me back and they're like, hey, who's this?

00:19:02.820 And I was like, oh, it's Alan.

00:19:05.840 Made up a name.

00:19:07.080 And that person's like, oh, Alan from so-and-so?

00:19:10.320 And I said, yup.

00:19:11.520 And next thing you know, they thought I was Alan.

00:19:13.660 So then for a while, I started doing this thing where I was just crank texting like masses of numbers.

00:19:17.620 I would send like a, hey, what's up, to like large groups of anonymous cell phone numbers that I didn't know.

00:19:23.600 And one time I found myself texting.

00:19:26.260 It was some kid who's like after school or something.

00:19:28.560 They thought they're in like a band or something at school and they thought I was some friend of theirs who was in the band, right?

00:19:34.420 And I realized, holy, this is crazy.

00:19:36.720 Like, I'm just here goofing around, like trying to like do like prank calls but on text.

00:19:41.400 And next thing you know, I'm communicating with a kid who thinks I'm immediately a peer of theirs, you know?

00:19:47.680 They assume.

00:19:48.960 It's, you know, obviously I do a lot of social media for the shows and for what I do for a living.

00:19:54.860 And, you know, the vast majority of the people on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, they may be listed as friends, but I actually don't know them.

00:20:03.320 Right.

00:20:03.380 And it's shocking sometimes what people will expect from you, will say to you, and you really don't know sometimes, do I respond to that?

00:20:12.660 If somebody identifies themselves as a live-in nanny in Washington State who suspects the mother's boyfriend has, you know, improper interests in the daughter she's babysitting, what do I do about that?

00:20:28.860 You know, it's a real quandary.

00:20:30.100 Right.

00:20:30.760 Because that's a real thing that could come into your social media.

00:20:33.160 It's been last week.

00:20:33.860 I'm sure.

00:20:34.080 And this is why, you know, I get these every day.

00:20:36.700 Oh, I'm sure.

00:20:37.100 And so is it a prank?

00:20:38.500 Is it real?

00:20:39.940 What is my social responsibility to deal with it?

00:20:42.660 You know, normally I alert the police or I tell the person to alert the police, and if they have a problem with that, I'll facilitate it.

00:20:50.300 But if I give them advice and it goes sideways.

00:20:54.460 Right.

00:20:54.900 Or do you have some liability?

00:20:55.960 Do I have some liability?

00:20:57.140 Or, you know, how do I know that somebody's not trying to set a guy up?

00:21:00.960 Right.

00:21:01.260 You know, you always assume the worst when somebody reports that sort of thing, but you never know.

00:21:06.520 And you don't even know if that person is who they say they are.

00:21:08.600 Yeah. 0.89

00:21:09.120 Yeah, somebody could screenshot that and say, Chris Hansen said my husband is a sexual predator or something. 0.96

00:21:13.900 Absolutely. 0.94

00:21:14.220 Yeah.

00:21:14.540 And so you try to do the socially responsible thing, the journalistically responsible thing, but you have this gray area where, wait a minute, who am I actually talking to?

00:21:24.000 Or, you know, someone will say, hey, can you talk for a minute?

00:21:26.080 Well, I'm on an airplane coming out to L.A.

00:21:27.620 No, I can't.

00:21:28.800 You know, and I try to be pretty engaged in all this stuff and answer all the questions and to be helpful, but it's difficult to follow.

00:21:40.280 And, again, you really don't know who all these people are.

00:21:44.720 Yeah, and you're kind of a linchpin in a strange way because a lot of reporters and a lot of journalists and investigative journalists, you know, they have the – it doesn't have – their thing hasn't hit home with so many – you know, it hasn't – I don't know.

00:22:00.680 You have – yeah, you're like the person that people think of when they think of anything in that world, you know?

00:22:06.940 Like I thought of John Walsh and I thought of you.

00:22:08.980 Like, I mean, you know, like just in terms of like, you know, just like helping out children or dealing with issues with children, you know?

00:22:16.780 Well, it's really hit home with people for a lot of different reasons.

00:22:20.420 You know, I only half-jokingly tell the story of being parodied on South Park some years ago.

00:22:28.240 Yeah, I saw that last night, actually.

00:22:29.280 And my kids were both in high school at the time, and it was the only South Park that season they didn't see.

00:22:37.000 For some reason, they went to bed early, and I didn't know it was going to be on.

00:22:40.080 So I get a call from one of my agents on the East Coast saying, South Park is doing you right now.

00:22:44.840 It's pretty funny.

00:22:45.500 And then about 20 minutes later, it's taken a dark turn because I was on the West Coast.

00:22:49.560 So I didn't see it until, you know, three hours later.

00:22:52.060 And it's fine.

00:22:53.180 Look, they're brilliant guys, and they're about satire.

00:22:55.880 Yeah, they're brilliant, and they also use a lot of people to just get funny.

00:22:58.400 It's fine.

00:22:58.980 And they, look, yeah, it was dark.

00:23:01.200 Would I have written it that way?

00:23:02.200 No, but I'm not a comedian like you or, you know.

00:23:06.400 Matt Groening or those guys, right?

00:23:08.020 Stone and Parker.

00:23:09.060 That's some sense.

00:23:09.360 No, Stone and Parker do that.

00:23:10.420 Right, yeah.

00:23:11.000 Yeah, and they're genius.

00:23:12.640 They really are.

00:23:13.140 Now, you can take issue with whether it's appropriate or whether, you know, you like it or not.

00:23:18.140 But in my son's eyes at, you know, 16 and 18 years old at the time or whatever, you know, that was – I had made it in their book because Chris Hansen was on the South Park.

00:23:29.600 Oh, the dad's cool now.

00:23:30.480 Oh, yeah.

00:23:30.900 Yeah.

00:23:31.140 And all the kids at high school the next day were like, oh, man, your old man was on South Park.

00:23:35.160 So that was, you know, that was the benchmark.

00:23:37.160 But, you know, it hits home with a lot of people.

00:23:38.960 And look, it's a very serious subject matter.

00:23:42.260 Right.

00:23:42.580 It's a very serious crime.

00:23:44.440 At the end of the day, just like any other investigation, we're trying to educate, create a dialogue that didn't exist before and awareness that didn't exist before.

00:23:54.680 Yeah.

00:23:54.880 And we've done that.

00:23:56.140 We will continue to do it.

00:23:57.540 And the big lesson, I think, is that, you know, enterprise journalism is still very important.

00:24:05.320 Using techniques like hidden cameras and computer-aided reporting and things like that, you know, you really can make a difference.

00:24:16.140 But you've got to get inside the cron.

00:24:18.020 Right.

00:24:18.220 And it's sometimes difficult.

00:24:20.600 It's sometimes expensive.

00:24:21.920 It's sometimes dangerous.

00:24:23.680 And you have to get, you know, the network to buy off on it.

00:24:28.780 Was there a lot of pushback when you guys first pushed to catch a predator?

00:24:34.800 There wasn't pushback, but there was an issue where some of the people didn't get how to promote it.

00:24:46.100 And I had a very blunt meeting with higher-ups in the chain of command.

00:24:51.360 And I put it this way. 1.00

00:24:52.520 I said, there's a man knocking on your back door who wants to have sex with your 13-year-old daughter. 0.99

00:24:56.840 Tonight, we're going to show you how to keep that from happening. 0.97

00:24:59.340 And suddenly, it was on TV.

00:25:00.880 Yeah.

00:25:02.100 Was there a parts where, so as it, because, I mean, that, it was like being on The Endeavor, you know?

00:25:07.780 I mean, that show, it was like a space show.

00:25:09.880 I don't know.

00:25:10.080 That's not the one that blew up, is it?

00:25:11.260 I hope not.

00:25:11.780 The Challenger.

00:25:12.440 Okay, good.

00:25:12.980 Yeah.

00:25:13.280 So, it was like being on The Endeavor.

00:25:14.500 I mean, that thing was a rocket, right?

00:25:15.880 Right.

00:25:17.100 Was there parts, though, where it started to become too much like, okay, let's, Chris, we want you to talk to him more.

00:25:23.540 We want to watch this guy fry out there kind of stuff?

00:25:26.080 Well, I think the goal has always been to get inside these guys' minds, whether it's this or whether it's somebody who's, you know, trafficking young women here in Los Angeles or in Atlanta.

00:25:36.380 And, look, anybody can jump out of the bushes and create, you know, 10 seconds of dramatic video.

00:25:42.420 Right.

00:25:42.580 My goal is to get the guy to have a seat and to explain to me what brought him into the situation.

00:25:51.400 And more often than not, they will sit and talk.

00:25:55.220 Now, they may run their line of BS and say, I was here to check on the girl. 0.98

00:25:59.140 I was worried about her safety.

00:26:00.240 Or I was just going to, you know, be a mentor to this young boy.

00:26:03.280 And I've heard all the excuses that you can possibly imagine.

00:26:07.740 But, you know, I want to know.

00:26:09.860 Yeah.

00:26:10.260 And oftentimes, these guys will open up and say, you know, I just got going on the internet.

00:26:15.960 And as I got older, the people I was talking to got younger.

00:26:19.700 And I just had this fantasy.

00:26:21.360 And, you know, it seemed like it was going to be okay.

00:26:23.580 I mean, I've had guys in the latest investigation that aired, you know, last year.

00:26:27.480 Is this True Crime Daily?

00:26:28.460 Is this a crime watch?

00:26:29.460 This is a part of crime watch.

00:26:30.500 So we did Hanson versus Predator.

00:26:32.240 Yeah, I was watching some of that.

00:26:33.220 And, you know, we had a guy show up, an insurance executive from Boston, drove all the way to Fairfield, Connecticut, brought pizza, offered me pizza, offered the crew pizza.

00:26:44.340 But he had in his car a, quote, unquote, marriage contract that he thought would make it legal for him to have sex.

00:26:51.960 I saw him and he sat and ate pizza.

00:26:53.520 Eight pizza.

00:26:53.800 And he had the contract.

00:26:54.960 Yeah.

00:26:55.100 We had a guy show up who was an employee of one of the cable companies who was on the waiting list to become a police officer in Connecticut who, when they searched his car, they found a loaded gun, duct tape, a camera, and a knife.

00:27:11.400 Oh, that's hide and go seek in Afghanistan, I feel like.

00:27:14.160 Right.

00:27:14.420 But, yeah, no, that's, I mean, that's scary.

00:27:18.540 What's he going to do with a 13-year-old girl once she goes for a ride with him?

00:27:21.340 Right.

00:27:21.640 To give, quote, unquote, a driving lesson.

00:27:23.520 Right, yeah.

00:27:23.940 Yeah, what if some, what if, yeah, say one behavior, right, a sex act occurs, then he still has these, like, what is it, then where does his mind go that he doesn't even know his mind is about to go to another place?

00:27:36.000 And it escalates, and what if she, you know, says, hey, wait, this is too much for me, I'm only 13.

00:27:40.300 Yeah, and he kills her.

00:27:42.100 Yeah. 0.97

00:27:42.220 Anything could happen.

00:27:43.620 Did you, did you, it's interesting to me that, like, when it goes from online to real life, like, that's really a lot of what I think.

00:27:53.920 I feel like when I'm watching your, like, that's what I started to see, like, oh, this is wild, because this is something that, you know, it's this fictional universe online.

00:28:03.260 It's, I mean, it's real, but it's, you know, it's not, it's not tangible.

00:28:08.860 Right.

00:28:09.060 You know, it's, so your brain can go to kind of dark places, but not really be doing dark things.

00:28:15.720 What happens, I think, sometimes, and you hit it right on the head, is that men will say things online that they wouldn't say face-to-face, not to a woman.

00:28:26.440 Right.

00:28:26.700 Certainly not to a 13-year-old or 12-year-old girl.

00:28:30.180 Yeah, I'll even text things when I'm dating somebody that I wouldn't probably, maybe afraid to say.

00:28:33.060 Well, you think about it later and say, you know, that's not, you know, kosher.

00:28:38.840 Right.

00:28:39.020 You know, it's just, but I think people get ahead of themselves.

00:28:41.500 Yes.

00:28:41.880 Texting or online.

00:28:43.180 It feels safer.

00:28:44.160 It feels.

00:28:44.920 Right.

00:28:45.320 You're one step removed, and it feels safer.

00:28:47.900 And suddenly this line gets blurred, you know, at some point between fantasy and reality.

00:28:53.200 And that's when these guys step over, and as I said earlier, come knocking on our door to fulfill this fantasy that's building inside them.

00:29:01.400 Did you ever feel, so were you the executive, were you the one calling your own shots as well as, were you directing yourself?

00:29:08.080 Well, there was a whole team.

00:29:09.360 When you were with Tickets for Better?

00:29:10.400 So, you know, obviously we have a main producer.

00:29:13.560 And we have the crew, and we have security and everything.

00:29:17.000 But, you know, generally, you know, I'm out there without a net.

00:29:20.360 But we did try one time having an earbud so I could communicate.

00:29:26.640 And I honestly didn't like it because it was, I don't, when I'm out there, whether it's on those investigations or others, if I'm listening to somebody, I'm not thinking about what I'm going to do next.

00:29:38.860 It's like doing an interview like this and having a list of questions and going from this to that.

00:29:43.360 The first thing I do when a producer hands me a list of questions is I put them under the chair.

00:29:46.840 Right.

00:29:47.060 Or you hold these, and when I finish, if there's anything else you want me to do other than what I've done.

00:29:52.520 Right.

00:29:52.960 Because an interview, as you know, because you do them, you know, every week.

00:29:56.700 I'm learning, yeah.

00:29:57.460 Is getting inside somebody's mind.

00:29:59.520 And it's more about listening than looking down at the legal pad for the next question.

00:30:04.120 Well, especially these days, I think audiences want more authenticity.

00:30:06.800 I think audiences feel like they've been so, and I feel like they have.

00:30:10.560 It became such a pattern with television to create, like, you know, such a specificity, you know, fueled by advertising kind of thing.

00:30:19.280 You know, like just a bad, it just became watered down.

00:30:22.060 Formulaic.

00:30:22.480 Yes, formulaic.

00:30:23.400 And this is why I think this investigation and others like it have become so popular with people is because you don't know.

00:30:33.440 I don't know what's going to happen next.

00:30:34.940 I mean, I always say a good interview is when I look back at the producer and I say anything else, and he or she says no, and I'm drained.

00:30:42.060 Yeah.

00:30:42.440 You know, whether it's with somebody who almost became a murder victim, somebody who is a relative of a murder victim, somebody who's a detective who investigated a murder, or any of these other cases that we delve so deeply into.

00:30:55.400 Um, do you, would, did you, um, did you ever follow up personally with any of those people?

00:31:03.580 Like, was there ever, is it always like a work, does it always feel like a work kind of, are you able, was there ever any, were you like, you know, I need to, I need to follow up with this person?

00:31:13.400 I think it'd be interesting to go back and see what some of these guys are up to.

00:31:18.060 And, and we're talking right now about doing that.

00:31:20.640 Yeah.

00:31:21.140 Um, and I think some would do it.

00:31:22.920 I think somebody would say, you know, you put me on TV doing something bad.

00:31:26.260 I never want to hear from you again. 0.99

00:31:27.280 I hate you. 0.99

00:31:28.720 Um, you know, there are people posing as some of the predators caught in the stings, you know, on social media, reaching out.

00:31:38.960 And I, I have a hard time believing it's actually them.

00:31:42.020 Right.

00:31:42.400 I think it's somebody's sick prank.

00:31:44.500 But, um, I, I think that would be worth doing because I think there are going to be guys who are angry and didn't change.

00:31:52.000 I think there are going to be guys who are repeat offenders and we know this.

00:31:55.520 Yeah.

00:31:56.180 And I think there are going to be guys who say, you know, I've, I've had some therapy.

00:32:00.940 I've figured this out.

00:32:01.800 I had some time to think about it and it's, it's wrong and they're probably not going to reoffend.

00:32:06.620 But when you get to the hardcore person, you know, you need to talk to the psychiatrists who interview them in the prison where they have no reason to, to not tell the truth.

00:32:19.720 Two things are, are common.

00:32:21.540 One is if they've done it once, they've done it at least a handful of times.

00:32:25.520 And two is there's a very, um, strong correlation between the viewing of child pornography and the commission of solicitation of a child.

00:32:36.100 Wow.

00:32:37.520 Almost always.

00:32:38.440 Do you think we are able as humans, especially like, um, do you, especially as men to be able to withstand the, the fire that is coming off the internet, like the internet and social media?

00:32:51.460 Like, are we even built to be able to, I think so.

00:32:54.320 I mean, at the end of the day, you're just as responsible online as you are in person.

00:32:58.820 Right.

00:32:59.280 But it's different.

00:32:59.940 It is different, clearly, as we've discussed.

00:33:03.140 But I, I still say that, you know, in this case, you know, right is right and wrong is wrong.

00:33:08.980 Right.

00:33:09.120 I mean, I don't care what people are doing if they're adults and it's consensual online.

00:33:13.780 Right.

00:33:14.080 Uh, that's not my business.

00:33:15.700 I'm not the moral arbiter of society, but you can clearly say that soliciting a child online is illegal and wrong on every level.

00:33:25.760 And you create a victim there at a very young age who's scarred for life.

00:33:29.740 Do you, undeniably, do you feel though that, that like the, like, I guess like there's, I just feel sometimes like it's hard to battle against, not against the child pornography type of stuff.

00:33:42.420 But even if you just start with pornography, right, like it's hard to like, it's such a, it's such an opiate in a way, you know, it's such a.

00:33:50.440 Oh, it's addictive.

00:33:50.940 There's no question.

00:33:52.300 It just feels like it's unfair sometimes.

00:33:55.340 Like when I think about the young men now, you know, like I didn't have as much access.

00:33:59.800 Like when I was young, we had, when I was young, we had a guy that would draw a picture of a woman for us for the weekend. 0.94

00:34:05.820 If we wanted, like, if I wanted to see like some genitalia or something, they had this guy, Nick, would draw pictures and you'd buy it from him for a couple of dollars.

00:34:11.640 You know, I'm of the age where, you know, we buried Playboy magazines in the woods and that was.

00:34:16.180 And I dug them up.

00:34:17.840 And it was, it was, it was, you know, not even that racy by today's standards.

00:34:23.360 It just makes you wonder, like, if kids see that or young people see that, then do other darker things seem less, you know, those aren't real to them, you know, like just, just the effects of that and us not knowing those.

00:34:39.260 Well, I think there are studies that, that will prove that's true, that, you know, the repeated viewing of pornography and child pornography, especially.

00:34:49.060 Oh, yeah.

00:34:49.580 It is addictive and it, it creates addictive, you know, illegal antisocial behavior.

00:34:56.400 And the antisocialness has a lot to do with it too.

00:34:58.760 Right.

00:34:59.040 And that feeds into the internet.

00:35:00.760 Right.

00:35:00.880 So, I mean, who needs Playboy magazine anymore when you can go to Google.

00:35:06.960 Yeah.

00:35:07.380 And find out whatever you want.

00:35:09.160 I have blockers on my phone and computer.

00:35:11.560 Not for any child's, I've never had, you know, but just from pornography, like I don't want that influence anymore.

00:35:16.940 Well, you, you know, you get a friend request on social media.

00:35:21.340 Yeah.

00:35:21.440 And it can have breasts in the picture. 1.00

00:35:22.680 It's just like delete, delete, delete, delete.

00:35:25.200 And you don't know what, what's up or whether it's real or somebody's creating something or somebody wants to create a linkage that doesn't exist.

00:35:32.140 I mean, but you see it.

00:35:33.180 Yeah.

00:35:34.000 How many women reach out to Chris Hansen because like, there must be like a wild web of ladies out there that are intrigued by, you know, kind of this Clint Eastwood of pedophiles kind of, you know. 0.99

00:35:46.960 It's pretty tame, really, to be honest.

00:35:50.020 I mean, you know, there are some texts like that or messages on social media like that.

00:35:56.280 But generally, like, you know, 95% of them are either, you know, whack jobs.

00:36:02.720 Right. 0.98

00:36:03.080 Who are saying something absolutely outrageous like, you know, you should burn in hell for what you do to these innocent men. 0.99

00:36:09.140 You know, it's like, come on. 0.98

00:36:10.060 It's not even worth responding to.

00:36:11.380 It's block, block, block and, you know, move on.

00:36:13.540 And most of it's like, we've got a situation in our neighborhood, what do I do, or thank you for what you do, or you should look into this, or, you know, city council member in whatever city is up to no good.

00:36:24.180 You know, it's mostly story related.

00:36:26.720 Right.

00:36:27.020 Or it's my mom, you know, putting out pictures of, you know, my nieces or, you know, it's.

00:36:32.740 It's mostly on brand kind of stuff.

00:36:34.620 Yeah.

00:36:34.940 Yeah.

00:36:35.180 There's nothing really.

00:36:36.260 Yeah.

00:36:36.480 But do you feel like, though, that there's a, I mean, I feel like a, you know, especially with so many women watching that type of programming, that they would see you as like a, you know, you're kind of like a Hugh, like, not that you're a Hugh Hefner, but they would envision you like that.

00:36:51.520 Well, I mean, I think some people have fun with, you know, graphics of, you know, my head on a James Bond body or with that.

00:36:58.480 There was one the other day and I sent it to my significant other with, you know, I was in like all built up muscles and chains and ranges and stuff like that.

00:37:06.600 Yeah, definitely.

00:37:07.260 I said that Peloton bike's been working for me.

00:37:09.160 I feel pretty fit these days.

00:37:11.960 Did you, you know, a lot of people, when they think about, you know, you guys' show, there's a lot of To Catch a Predator and some of that work and Crime Watch Daily, right?

00:37:21.180 Right.

00:37:21.600 Okay.

00:37:23.380 That people talk about entrapment a lot, you know, that word gets thrown around a lot.

00:37:28.480 Did you feel like that sometimes?

00:37:31.460 No, and here's why.

00:37:33.940 First of all, you have to be in law enforcement to commit entrapment.

00:37:38.320 And second of all, we don't create a situation where we go out and say, hey, here's the enticement.

00:37:45.120 Here's the shiny red apple, come get it.

00:37:47.500 These people all come to us.

00:37:49.360 Right.

00:37:49.960 You know, we are passive.

00:37:51.760 We just exist online and the potential predator has to make that first approach.

00:37:56.020 And even in something like human trafficking where we worked with the, you know, L.A. County Sheriff's Department or the, you know, the Sheriff's Department, police departments down in Georgia, there's a very strict protocol.

00:38:09.680 Well, because after we make TV out of it, those cases have to be prosecuted.

00:38:14.880 Right.

00:38:15.540 And so it's a very strict protocol.

00:38:20.260 And people bring it up.

00:38:21.400 People say, I was entrapped.

00:38:22.540 Or, you know, the other common, you know, misunderstanding is that if somebody asks if you're the police or Chris Hansen that you can't do anything about it.

00:38:31.920 Well, that's not true.

00:38:33.060 It's just not.

00:38:33.820 Right.

00:38:34.040 And the police sort of don't want to say that because, you know, it's fine.

00:38:38.200 It just makes their cases easier.

00:38:39.580 Right.

00:38:39.800 Yeah, we're the police.

00:38:41.080 Okay.

00:38:41.900 Or are you the police?

00:38:43.640 No.

00:38:44.020 They're not committing a crime or committing entrapment by saying, no, they're not the police. 0.98

00:38:48.860 But did you ever, even on a personal note, was there times where you're like, man, like, because it's definitely like these guys, a lot of these pedophiles and, you know, and predators, I mean, they're sick. 0.97

00:38:59.720 Right.

00:38:59.980 There are some really bad people in that mix of 300.

00:39:04.540 So to take cocaine around somebody that, like, you know, they're addicted to cocaine.

00:39:08.680 They don't have any ability to control themselves.

00:39:12.000 You know, doesn't it?

00:39:13.280 Because I struggle with wondering if it, you know, like, even whether it's enticement or entrapment, like, what, if it is sometimes.

00:39:19.640 Because I would feel bad sometimes watching.

00:39:21.460 But if it's not us.

00:39:23.060 Right.

00:39:23.920 Then it's a real child.

00:39:25.300 I mean, what would happen in all these cases, 300 plus cases over, gosh, going on 14 years now.

00:39:33.380 Yeah.

00:39:34.340 And when you think of it, I mean, predators, maybe 10, 15% of what I've done over my career.

00:39:40.320 Right.

00:39:40.460 Maybe 20.

00:39:40.920 Right.

00:39:41.640 You know, but it's just one of those franchises.

00:39:44.240 Yes.

00:39:44.420 That's gotten all the attention.

00:39:45.380 What would happen if the guy walks in and there is a real 13-year-old? 0.69

00:39:51.580 I'll give you an example.

00:39:52.600 We were doing an investigation down in Riverside.

00:39:55.740 And it was just crazy.

00:39:58.720 We had 51 guys in three days.

00:40:01.320 And one of the guys who walked in clearly was not 100% intellectually.

00:40:08.620 And he came in.

00:40:09.840 The first thing he wanted to do was.

00:40:10.420 Like mentally challenged, you mean?

00:40:11.480 Mentally challenged, and I could see that there was a scar, like a carve-out on the side of his head where maybe he had suffered an injury or something.

00:40:18.440 Like a gang or something?

00:40:19.880 No, but it was an injury.

00:40:21.840 Okay, yeah.

00:40:22.700 And he, you know, was shown in the show, but it wasn't a big part of that particular show.

00:40:30.620 I didn't really go hard with the interview.

00:40:33.460 He left and was arrested and processed.

00:40:35.800 And I thought, you know, there's a guy who's got some problems, and I'm not going to make him, you know, too much worse.

00:40:41.520 He was wrong.

00:40:42.120 He broke the law.

00:40:43.060 He'll face that with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, the prosecutor's office.

00:40:47.020 A month later, we're in Long Beach.

00:40:50.340 And lo and behold, the same guy surfaces in that investigation and, in fact, says, I can't make it on a Friday because I've got a court date from the other Riverside County case.

00:41:00.140 He shows up on a Saturday, and in the course of him traveling to Long Beach, we find out that he did a year in jail for a violent assault.

00:41:12.640 Well, suddenly, he's going to make the movie.

00:41:14.980 You know, this is a danger.

00:41:16.700 Yeah.

00:41:17.140 And while I feel sorry for whatever injury he suffered and how that may impact his behavior, it doesn't take anything away from the danger he posed.

00:41:25.920 Right.

00:41:26.120 And so he becomes, you know, a significant part of that particular investigation.

00:41:30.280 And so you feel like over time, you've seen enough proof and evidence for you where you don't feel that you feel your responsibility tried and true.

00:41:40.040 If we weren't there, a real child would be.

00:41:44.020 You believe that?

00:41:44.740 I think in many of these cases, I believe that, yeah.

00:41:46.940 Wow.

00:41:48.500 Is it—

00:41:49.040 Because, I mean, these profiles exist.

00:41:51.720 Yeah, no.

00:41:52.060 Yeah, of course.

00:41:52.680 Right.

00:41:52.800 We're not the only one out there.

00:41:54.120 You're not making them make profiles.

00:41:56.520 You're not—yeah.

00:41:57.300 You guys are just putting something into that universe that is something they would be intrigued by.

00:42:02.580 You're not making them drive to a place.

00:42:04.560 And kids don't see the danger.

00:42:06.320 Right.

00:42:06.340 I'll give you another example.

00:42:07.480 We did some investigating, and I did this in a book called Catch a Predator some years back.

00:42:13.840 And we found a case in Arkansas where a young woman, great student, was in high school, the daughter of a police officer, was on a Christian youth chat room, talking to somebody who identified themselves as a teenager in San Diego, I think named David.

00:42:38.020 And it was harmless until it wasn't.

00:42:41.260 Right.

00:42:41.580 When David, who ends up being, you know, well into his 40s.

00:42:45.560 Dirtball.

00:42:45.980 Shows up in a van, kidnaps her from the home, assaults her, chains her to the back of his van.

00:42:51.560 Wow. 1.00

00:42:52.100 And kills her.

00:42:53.560 And so this whole panic, you know, starts looking for this poor missing young woman.

00:43:00.240 And tragically, it ended up the way it did, but it was a real wake-up call to me, and that's why I wanted to, you know, make it its own chapter in the book, because it's an example of a kid who is doing everything right and got tricked.

00:43:14.400 Right.

00:43:15.040 And that's exactly what happened.

00:43:16.200 He was able to reverse engineer the information.

00:43:21.120 The dad was working the night shift, and there's this haunting log of chat where she's talking to her boyfriend.

00:43:28.120 And her friends were talking to this guy, too.

00:43:30.540 Right.

00:43:30.720 It wasn't like, I want to date you, or what are you doing, or when are you coming to San Diego?

00:43:33.460 Yeah, it's David in San Diego.

00:43:34.440 He, a little bit, little bit at a time, was able to get the information, figure out where she lived.

00:43:40.660 And he had a storage locker all set up for the crime, a hotel room, and it was just, it was horrifying.

00:43:48.360 So the risk of possibly, you know, of some exploitation, you feel like that no matter what, that the reward and that far outweighs it?

00:43:58.140 Yeah, I think so.

00:43:58.820 And it's also about, you know, being ethical about your storytelling.

00:44:05.200 Right.

00:44:05.440 I mean, from the methodology to how you portray someone.

00:44:12.220 And, you know, when we do these investigations, whether it's a predator or anything else, I mean, we are absolutely transparent about the way we do things.

00:44:20.600 And if you say, look, we do it this way, this is why we do it, this is why the police run a parallel investigation and are there.

00:44:26.160 I mean, you got to remember, the first three investigations we did, the first two, the police were not involved until after the fact.

00:44:35.380 And it was, number one, socially irresponsible to let them go.

00:44:40.720 Now, the police did make some cases after the fact.

00:44:42.760 Right.

00:44:43.140 To their credit.

00:44:44.240 And it was also, from a television production standpoint, it wasn't really rewarding to the viewer.

00:44:52.120 And that's not what drives the decision.

00:44:54.360 Why?

00:44:54.600 Because the police weren't involved?

00:44:55.740 Well, because the guy walked away.

00:44:56.940 Because the guy walks away.

00:44:57.680 You know, we have video of him walking down the street or getting in his pickup truck and going away.

00:45:00.880 Yeah.

00:45:01.020 And yet he's out ready to offend the next day.

00:45:04.760 I mean, the social responsibility is what drove the decision to cooperate with the police.

00:45:09.520 And we, you know, developed a protocol.

00:45:13.360 So that's true.

00:45:13.920 It wasn't like an element of, okay, we need to add an element at the end where it's like the guy gets gnat.

00:45:18.680 Like it's, you actually, it actually came from a place you feel like of social responsibility?

00:45:23.020 It did.

00:45:23.660 And it also.

00:45:24.040 And I'm going to accuse you.

00:45:24.740 I'm just curious.

00:45:25.160 No, no, no, no, no.

00:45:25.580 I'm just telling you how it went down, which was, you know, we were, we had done the two.

00:45:30.440 We had done the one in Long Island, New York, and we had done the one in a suburb outside of D.C.

00:45:35.140 And we were looking to do the next investigation.

00:45:37.980 And I don't know whether they reached out to us or we reached out to them, but we got in contact with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

00:45:43.560 And, you know, a lot of lawyering and a lot of, you know, meetings went on and to do this in the appropriate fashion.

00:45:51.300 And I think we've done it all along, both at NBC and at Crime Watch Daily and down the road in how we, you know, distribute the next Hanson versus Predator.

00:46:01.220 Yeah, and what is Hanson doing now against Predators?

00:46:03.820 Like, what's going on in some of that world?

00:46:04.940 We're developing, you know, the next investigation as we speak.

00:46:09.040 We pretty much know where it's going to be.

00:46:10.780 The team's all on board.

00:46:11.880 And we're really just deciding, you know, where it's going to go.

00:46:14.720 And, in fact, some of the meetings I have out here in L.A. revolve around that.

00:46:19.280 Oh, great.

00:46:19.800 That's awesome.

00:46:20.920 I was thinking with the Me Too movement, right, and a lot of that, would you ever consider doing like a To Catch a Predator type of show, type of show in that world?

00:46:31.220 Not saying that they're sexual, like pedophiles, but in the corporate space or anything like that?

00:46:38.460 It's in the works.

00:46:41.280 There's a lot of that out there.

00:46:42.460 There's a lot of talk about it, yeah.

00:46:44.020 And there are people who would like to see me do it, and I've had meetings about it.

00:46:47.960 And, you know, again, it's harder to do something like that.

00:46:53.300 Right, there's a lot of legalities, I'm sure.

00:46:55.120 There's a lot of legalities, a lot of gray, I mean, what's wrong is wrong.

00:47:00.720 I mean, if you're a boss, you should not be hitting on an employee or doing some of the stuff that those have been accused of out on this side of the country.

00:47:08.060 Could you say that would be a softer, it would be?

00:47:10.700 Well, I think you would need to have people come to you and say, this is my horrific story.

00:47:17.880 Okay.

00:47:18.280 And then you would have to go backwards and say, okay, how do we capture this, you know, on hidden camera?

00:47:25.600 How do we prove it?

00:47:26.740 How do we show viewers what happened?

00:47:30.000 How do we take viewers inside the crime?

00:47:32.940 Right.

00:47:33.240 And then figure out a way to do a confrontation.

00:47:36.260 We just can't go, you know, beating it outdoors in private offices around the country.

00:47:40.760 But, you know, there are ways to do it.

00:47:43.540 And, you know, if the right cases come along where, you know, we know this is what's happening, we know it's wrong, we know it's illegal and actionable, that, you know, we'd take a look at doing it.

00:47:55.820 It's interesting, man.

00:47:56.680 Yeah, because I grew up, my mother was, you know, provided for me and my siblings.

00:47:59.760 And so I remember there were times where I know she was, you know, trying to get involved with different business or move up in her ladder.

00:48:05.560 And there were just times I even felt as a child that whatever, you know, maybe like she'd been taking advantage of her.

00:48:12.100 Like I even as a kid, I remember getting a specific feeling like that, like a man had mistreated her.

00:48:17.140 Well, I think any woman of a certain age has a story about, you know, looking back on a situation saying, ooh, that was a little creepy or that was inappropriate.

00:48:28.600 And, you know, what was accepted in even newsrooms across the country in the 70s, 60s, 70s, 80s is just, you know, it's people look at it today and say, well, how did that even happen?

00:48:39.620 Yeah, now you couldn't say like, you know, get your bosom up, Rhonda. 1.00

00:48:43.480 We got to sell this weather.

00:48:44.500 I remember, you know, as a young reporter and anchor, having a general manager walk in and berate my female co-anchor who also did the weather because a certain part of her anatomy was covering Montana.

00:48:59.480 Yeah.

00:48:59.800 And just in front of the newsroom.

00:49:01.020 Yeah.

00:49:01.340 And having her apologize.

00:49:03.040 Yeah.

00:49:03.380 Today she'd get a check for a million dollars. 0.98

00:49:04.820 Get your mouth off Montana. 1.00

00:49:05.420 Yeah. 0.77

00:49:05.820 I mean, it was cruder than that.

00:49:07.720 I'll spare your audience the exact language.

00:49:10.120 But, you know, I look back on that stuff and this is like 1981, 82.

00:49:14.720 Yeah.

00:49:15.540 And, you know, he'd been fired for sure.

00:49:17.560 And here you have this woman who's just trying to do her job. 1.00

00:49:20.440 Right.

00:49:20.640 Who's a good reporter.

00:49:22.100 And she's apologizing because of part of her anatomy was covering the, you know, the lousy weather map that we had in that market in 1982. 0.85

00:49:29.560 I mean, it's insane to think that that happened.

00:49:31.300 Yeah.

00:49:31.800 In front of the whole newsroom.

00:49:33.100 That map might have had three Indianas on it.

00:49:34.700 Who knows how cheap that map was.

00:49:35.100 We don't know what it was.

00:49:35.960 It was, yeah, it was pretty cheap as I recall.

00:49:38.320 No, it is interesting.

00:49:39.560 But it's also, we're in a time now where we're kind of prosecuting historically sometimes in a weird space in the world.

00:49:48.280 So, yeah, it's interesting.

00:49:50.200 It's like things that I would say even 15 years ago or 20 years ago to someone, almost anyone, man or woman, some things.

00:49:57.600 It's like, man, when I watch even old stand-up, I'm like, man, I couldn't even say that right now.

00:50:01.840 Yeah, it's, you know, it's changed for the better.

00:50:06.500 You know, I hope it doesn't continue.

00:50:09.760 Over.

00:50:10.320 Yeah.

00:50:10.800 I don't think it will.

00:50:11.860 I don't think so either.

00:50:13.380 I think it's swinging back a little bit.

00:50:14.580 I'm feeling it in the comedy world.

00:50:15.920 Right.

00:50:16.240 I'm feeling things start to like, enough is enough.

00:50:18.860 Like, I do think some things have needed to be noticed.

00:50:21.440 We do need to notice like, you know, what a lot of women have been through. 0.99

00:50:24.500 Like, even as you said, like, we were talking in the beginning about like victims, like women are always kind of the victim, like, or have been the victim a lot of times.

00:50:33.540 Absolutely.

00:50:34.180 And especially in the workplace.

00:50:35.940 I mean, again, whether it's your mother or, you know, your significant other or your girlfriend or, I mean, everybody of a certain age has a story.

00:50:45.520 Yeah.

00:50:45.700 That looking back, they might have just laughed off or said, ah, ha, ha, you're hysterical and, you know, made sure they didn't get put one-on-one with that person again.

00:50:54.340 Right.

00:50:54.960 But, you know, it's unfair.

00:50:57.980 Yeah.

00:50:58.760 Fundamentally.

00:50:59.320 Yeah.

00:50:59.740 Fundamentally, it's unfair.

00:51:00.780 And I think we're getting to that place in society now where it's like, yeah, it's like we're getting to a place where we're starting to be able to look back at what we've done.

00:51:08.660 It's almost like a comfortable level and a comfortability.

00:51:11.600 I think we're getting there.

00:51:12.420 Where we can look back and, like, see, okay, here are some ways where things could have maybe been different.

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00:54:17.840 And now back to the episode.

00:54:21.580 Do you feel like – did you have a good relationship with Hollywood?

00:54:24.540 Have you always had a good relationship with Hollywood?

00:54:26.600 Yeah, but it's pretty limited.

00:54:29.880 My relationship with Hollywood is a cameo appearance on 30 Rock or Black-ish.

00:54:35.920 Right, right.

00:54:36.400 Or, you know, on Will Ferrell's Funny or Die.

00:54:39.900 You know, I enjoy that.

00:54:40.840 It's fun stuff to do.

00:54:41.900 It gets you out there.

00:54:43.180 But, I mean, even with your own show, like when you're –

00:54:45.080 Yeah.

00:54:45.220 Like when you went – like did things get weird at the end of Predator?

00:54:51.000 You know, like was there any like issues with Hollywood?

00:54:53.960 Like were they –

00:54:55.240 Well, you'd see it show up as the impetus for Law and Order or CSI Miami or, you know, you saw a different version of yourself being played in an entertainment world, which is always interesting.

00:55:09.040 It almost jumped the shark a little bit.

00:55:10.500 But still today, I mean, you know, I remember getting a phone call.

00:55:14.820 One of the guys who does my security also did security for Saturday Night Live.

00:55:20.620 And Ronnie Knight, who's a former NYPD and had his own security company for years.

00:55:25.520 And I still bring him out of retirement for –

00:55:27.620 Oh, that's cool.

00:55:28.140 You know, the answer versus Predator.

00:55:28.820 When do we do it?

00:55:29.360 Yeah, yeah.

00:55:29.860 Track him.

00:55:30.220 I just ask him, can you –

00:55:30.920 Shout out Ronnie.

00:55:31.280 Can you still shoot straight?

00:55:32.880 That's all I want to know, you know.

00:55:33.800 So he calls me one day.

00:55:37.320 He said, hey, Bill Hader is doing you tonight on SNL.

00:55:41.780 Wow.

00:55:41.800 So I got to the rehearsal and I was watching and they did a whole thing, the Chris Hansen show where, you know, they had different actors on SNL portray, you know, Hollywood celebs.

00:55:52.420 And so they'd walk out and Hader, who was imitating me, would pop up from behind the desk and they had a band and the whole thing.

00:55:58.940 And he'd say, what are you doing here?

00:56:00.200 You know, and the guest would say, well, I just – I came here to be interviewed.

00:56:06.080 You invited me on your show.

00:56:06.920 He goes, what's in the bag?

00:56:08.000 I don't know.

00:56:08.580 Your producer told me to walk out with it, you know.

00:56:10.120 And so they – obviously they pull out the, you know, the –

00:56:12.760 Whatever's in there.

00:56:13.440 Yeah, the condoms and whatever else.

00:56:15.300 And then he said, you can go.

00:56:16.940 Well, you didn't ask me any questions.

00:56:18.240 Oh, I'm done with you now.

00:56:19.120 And he goes out and he gets arrested.

00:56:20.400 Yeah.

00:56:20.500 So I'm sitting in the audience and they come out after dress rehearsal to take their bow and I see Hader and Hader sees me because I'm in the front row of the second charity.

00:56:28.700 And he's just like this.

00:56:30.180 I said, it's fine.

00:56:30.880 I get it.

00:56:31.340 You know, you're all good.

00:56:34.480 Was there – like as you started to become very famous, you know, because that's happened over your career.

00:56:40.840 And, you know, fame is a different thing, you know.

00:56:42.640 Right.

00:56:43.000 And in my – even in this year of my career, my career is like exponentially increased, right?

00:56:47.460 And to me, it's like it's – I'm grateful and at the same time, it's a little alarming because I get scared of my own ego and like things that can happen if I get a wrong idea of myself, you know.

00:56:58.480 Did any – did you start to notice some of that in your world?

00:57:01.720 Like –

00:57:02.720 Yeah, just the recognition factor, you know, taking my kids to a baseball game or just, you know, in general being out in public, you know, especially here in L.A.

00:57:13.420 There's a lot of that.

00:57:14.740 And, you know, New York, yeah, you get stopped on the street.

00:57:19.620 But it's cool.

00:57:20.140 But it's also – to me, it's cool and it's also scary.

00:57:23.680 How did you kind of interpret some of that?

00:57:25.480 I know you've had a long career.

00:57:26.920 Like, you know, my best friend, I wanted to be a journalist.

00:57:29.680 We wanted to be broadcast journalists when we were young.

00:57:32.460 And he started in like – in Mississippi and he went to a market in, you know, some small markets.

00:57:39.120 And then he made his way up to –

00:57:39.480 You worked your way up, yeah.

00:57:40.240 Yeah, to anchor at WWL in New Orleans.

00:57:42.360 Oh, yeah.

00:57:42.580 It was just neat because he did that process and I kind of did broadcast from a stage as a stand-up.

00:57:47.640 Right, exactly.

00:57:48.360 But once you start to get popular and stuff, people start to – did you start to notice that and feel that?

00:57:56.440 Like, how did that kind of –

00:57:57.260 Definitely.

00:57:57.620 You know, there was always – there was always some recognition.

00:58:03.240 Right.

00:58:03.640 You know, especially the morning after a piece would air, you know, people would stop and talk to you or ask about it or do whatever.

00:58:10.180 And very much in law enforcement circles because so much of what I do is crime.

00:58:14.240 And, you know, a cop will stop you walking through the airport and, yeah, they would just want to chat or take a picture or something like that.

00:58:20.580 But, you know, we – I was with my sons.

00:58:23.500 I'm from Detroit originally and I'm back there a lot.

00:58:27.640 Sorry about your Lions, man.

00:58:28.780 I know they've had it from Josh.

00:58:29.540 I know.

00:58:29.640 Well, I was at – we were at the Thanksgiving.

00:58:32.720 Oh, really?

00:58:33.100 The game, yeah.

00:58:34.360 Beautiful seats. 0.96

00:58:35.380 Of course, you watch the Lions, you know, do very well against the Bears in the first half and then, you know, go to hell in a handbag after that.

00:58:41.100 Yeah, I'm a big Barry Sanders fan.

00:58:42.140 That's a whole – I am too – I'm a big Lions fan.

00:58:44.640 He's from Wichita.

00:58:45.320 A lot of people don't notice – didn't know that about Barry Sanders from Wichita.

00:58:48.780 You know, I wouldn't have been able to answer that question.

00:58:51.320 That's kind of interesting.

00:58:52.180 But anyway, yeah, I'm a Saints fan, so we're doing good this year.

00:58:54.840 But I've always – you know, B.J. Armstrong, I see him at the gym.

00:58:59.000 He used to play for the Chicago Bulls and he's like a big Lions fan.

00:59:01.920 You know where B.J. Armstrong went to a high school, Brother Rice High School.

00:59:05.660 Is that where you went?

00:59:06.180 I'm pretty sure it was Brother Rice High School.

00:59:07.740 I shouldn't – I went to Brother Rice in Birmingham, Michigan, yeah, but –

00:59:12.140 I should double-check that.

00:59:14.280 He's a super – he's a –

00:59:15.900 I have it in my mind that he went to Brother Rice.

00:59:17.700 He went to Brother Rice.

00:59:19.140 Yeah, Brother Rice in Birmingham, right?

00:59:20.580 Mm-hmm.

00:59:20.900 Yeah, I thought so.

00:59:21.580 He was –

00:59:22.000 In Michigan.

00:59:22.960 Yeah, that's where I went to – yeah, that's where I went to high school.

00:59:25.060 Now, he was probably five years younger than me.

00:59:29.020 Yeah.

00:59:29.380 But he was a standout and well-known.

00:59:31.620 Yeah, he's always – but anyway, he's a big Lions fan and sometimes I'll get to like –

00:59:34.700 Yeah.

00:59:34.720 Well, I wear all the Lions gear.

00:59:36.200 Oh, that's cool.

00:59:36.800 I mean, we're – Paul and I were sitting right there and just, you know, come on, let's do it.

00:59:43.320 But I think people in Michigan, Detroit appreciate it.

00:59:46.640 They appreciate, you know, seeing me with my gang cutting down a Christmas tree.

00:59:49.920 Right.

00:59:50.100 You know, in the suburbs, I think they appreciate being at a Tigers game or a Lions game and, you know, I very much have a presence there.

00:59:57.140 In fact, one of the shows I'm working on, one of the new shows, is a crime-based show that's going to be a lot of Detroit.

01:00:04.660 Yeah.

01:00:04.880 And, you know, I still feel very connected there.

01:00:07.360 I'm there all the time.

01:00:07.860 That's awesome, man.

01:00:08.680 Yeah.

01:00:09.100 That's really cool to hear, man.

01:00:10.180 If there's ever anything that I can do as a comedian to come and do like a fundraiser or something, let me know.

01:00:13.360 Oh, sure.

01:00:13.760 Yeah, that's cool.

01:00:14.380 You know, one thing I noticed, we grew up in like kind of like an impoverished area and we would get more, we would get a lot of those sex offender registry cards on our door a lot because a lot of poor neighborhoods can't keep, they don't have HOAs that can like, you know, even hypothetically scare off pedophiles and predators sometimes.

01:00:31.580 So I remember being, you know, in a lot of environments where you would have neighbors that, you know, were abused or, you know, guys that were doing things that were illegal, you know, and it was a little, it wasn't common.

01:00:44.720 But it was more part of the world in more of like an impoverished area because there aren't any HOAs, you know, parents are working. 0.79

01:00:53.800 There's only a single parent family.

01:00:55.080 A lot of latchkey kids.

01:00:56.300 Yeah.

01:00:56.780 And it gets, I just remember it being kind of scary.

01:00:59.500 So, yeah, I mean, if there's ever anything that I can do.

01:01:02.260 No, I appreciate that.

01:01:02.760 To help be a part of that, I mean, I would gladly come and help out.

01:01:05.000 Well, I try to do stuff like that for not only groups that, you know, raise money for awareness of issues with kids, but also, you know, the opiate addiction crisis.

01:01:17.480 Yeah.

01:01:17.620 And I try to do stuff for anything else.

01:01:19.060 It's big up in your area too.

01:01:20.200 Yeah.

01:01:20.580 Oh, yeah.

01:01:20.900 It's big in a lot of America.

01:01:21.480 It's big, it's, you know, I was looking at, there were 70,000 overdoses, overdose deaths in America in 2017.

01:01:31.300 And 28,400 of them were fentanyl involved.

01:01:39.640 And it's, you know, more than car wrecks, more than gunshots, more than domestic violence.

01:01:45.000 That's wild to think, isn't that?

01:01:45.840 I mean, think about that.

01:01:46.700 Yeah.

01:01:47.060 It has gotten so bad that for the first time, the life expectancy of an American has dropped by a tenth of a year.

01:01:56.320 Do you think it's like, as humans, we're, do you think we're running out of like a desire to engage in life or something?

01:02:09.420 Do you think there's a bigger thing going on that we're not seeing besides the fact that the medicine itself is addictive?

01:02:14.760 Well, I think it's out there more.

01:02:16.380 I mean, you know, I graduated from Michigan State University in 1981.

01:02:19.720 And when I started there, weed was decriminalized in East Lansing and in Ann Arbor, where University of Michigan is.

01:02:28.060 And so it wasn't a big deal.

01:02:30.040 The drinking age was 18.

01:02:31.200 If you want to have a few beers, you had a few beers.

01:02:33.180 And, you know, people had, you know, pot around the dorm rooms.

01:02:37.560 And nobody, didn't seem like anybody was really abusing it.

01:02:40.620 It wasn't this mystery.

01:02:41.600 And then, you know, it sort of went away with the war on drugs and obviously cocaine and crack.

01:02:46.880 And I watched that as a reporter, Detroit, what that did to Detroit and the drug dealers and, you know.

01:02:54.080 That was front lines of that.

01:02:55.320 Chambers Brothers and White Boy Rick and all that.

01:02:57.460 I mean, I'd lived that, you know, in the 80s and 90s.

01:03:00.820 That's cool.

01:03:01.200 I didn't think of it.

01:03:01.980 And I think with the advent of, you know, the opiates, I think so many young people follow that same road where, you know, somebody shows up freshman or sophomore year with a bottle of this stuff.

01:03:19.440 Yeah.

01:03:19.700 And you're all good with it for a long time.

01:03:23.440 And you take one once a week or on a Friday night or Saturday night and suddenly it snaps back and it owns you.

01:03:31.100 And you can't get it.

01:03:32.420 You can't get the prescription.

01:03:33.960 You can get it on Craigslist for $60 for two pills.

01:03:36.940 But, you know, you're trying to stay on the budget that your parents set for you and what you can earn.

01:03:40.580 Yeah.

01:03:40.860 And suddenly you can't get it and you're desperate.

01:03:44.560 And so heroin is way cheaper.

01:03:47.300 These kids start snorting the heroin.

01:03:49.340 Then they figure out if they inject it, they only have to do it once a day as opposed to three times a day.

01:03:54.060 And then they're into that.

01:03:55.160 It's almost necessity at a certain point that leads them down.

01:03:57.620 That's why they call it chasing the dragon.

01:03:59.720 You know, you're always chasing that first high.

01:04:02.240 Is that synonymous a little bit, you think, with the pornography and how it can lead people down?

01:04:06.340 Well, I think addiction is addiction, whether it's alcohol or drugs or pornography or, you know, any number of things.

01:04:13.300 But I think that this opiate crisis and, you know, like a year ago we did this story outside of Dayton, Ohio, right around Dayton in Montgomery County, Ohio,

01:04:26.720 which per capita had the highest number of overdoses in the country.

01:04:34.080 And who's to think?

01:04:34.960 They had Mexican cartel members living in Dayton, Ohio, because it's way safer to be there. 0.95

01:04:41.840 And the sheriff's department and the task force was very aggressive.

01:04:45.120 We rode with them.

01:04:46.000 And literally they were doing a buy bust.

01:04:49.580 And while the confidential informant was waiting for the dealer to buy the heroin so he could bust him,

01:04:55.240 another dealer came by and threw her a pack and said, hey, try this. 0.99

01:04:58.320 It's got my phone number on it.

01:04:59.100 It's cheaper and better.

01:05:00.540 Jesus.

01:05:01.380 I mean, in a snowstorm.

01:05:02.780 Yeah.

01:05:03.120 In Dayton, Ohio.

01:05:03.800 That's grassroots marketing.

01:05:04.960 But I'm just saying.

01:05:05.740 But I mean, no, it's, yeah.

01:05:06.820 But that's it.

01:05:07.580 That's what's happening.

01:05:08.500 It's happening everywhere in the country.

01:05:11.060 No, it's wild, man.

01:05:12.420 Like, you know, like, you know, I go to like a lot of meetings and stuff like that and in that recovery universe.

01:05:16.720 And it's sad, man.

01:05:17.560 I mean, it's, especially when you see young people, you know, and that's the saddest thing, I think, you know, even hearing some of your stories is like, because, you know, when it's wild how sometimes I'm still a child in some ways.

01:05:29.760 But in other ways, like, you know, at least now I can get a perception of things, I can see what's going on.

01:05:35.720 I have a clear view of the world a little bit.

01:05:37.560 And yeah, how susceptible you realize you were when you were a kid and almost how grateful you were that some things just didn't come along that locked you into something that you couldn't.

01:05:48.020 You know, what always strikes me is, you know, the random nature of this stuff.

01:05:52.680 In crime, this person made a left-hand turn and ended up being, you know, carjacked and killed.

01:05:58.640 This person went the other way and is fine.

01:06:01.340 This person was presented with a roommate who had, you know.

01:06:05.680 Drugs.

01:06:06.160 Drugs.

01:06:06.920 This person didn't.

01:06:08.920 It doesn't make them good or bad, but it just, you know, what if they had not been presented with that opportunity and never took the pill?

01:06:15.380 Yeah.

01:06:15.600 It's vexing.

01:06:20.640 And, you know, what's interesting is the level of prescriptions being written for opiates has gone down, yet the overdose is still rising.

01:06:31.960 So it'll be interesting to see with all this education, awareness, treatment, what happens when they tabulate 2018 to see if it hopefully starts to come down.

01:06:40.580 When you do shows like To Catch a Predator, are you, do you feel like you are doing that for kids?

01:06:48.420 Do you feel like you are doing that to, is it entertainment?

01:06:53.820 Do you, just in your own person, do you feel like there's a...

01:06:58.740 Obviously, there's an entertainment value to it.

01:07:01.400 Right.

01:07:01.560 I mean, you know, there's no question.

01:07:04.280 Having said that, you know, I feel that I'm doing it for parents and kids.

01:07:09.620 Right, parents.

01:07:10.520 I understand the ratings value, the popularity of it, and I understand why, and there are undeniably some humorous moments.

01:07:19.700 I mean, you think, you know, some guy...

01:07:21.100 Oh, yeah.

01:07:21.560 Some guy put together the top five most humorous moments.

01:07:25.240 Yeah, I went through all those this week.

01:07:26.580 It was 10 million hits, 12 million hits, something like that.

01:07:29.840 It's baffling.

01:07:30.100 I mean, people just watch it over and over again.

01:07:32.440 Yeah, I know, it's crazy.

01:07:34.140 And people know the characters.

01:07:36.060 Yeah.

01:07:37.360 You know what I do?

01:07:38.280 I do feel like it's deterred a lot of people probably from going down that road of getting caught in the internet and staying indoors and getting into these dark circles.

01:07:48.740 I hope so.

01:07:49.320 So, and again, it comes back to raising awareness and creating a dialogue.

01:07:54.340 But it still stuns me.

01:07:56.960 I mean, the last investigation we did, I identified myself, I'm Chris Hansen.

01:08:01.280 He said, no, you're not.

01:08:02.280 I go, oh, yes, I am.

01:08:03.320 Oh, no, you're not.

01:08:04.160 I said, well, look, I get the first investigation I did was in 2004, but I don't look that much older.

01:08:09.260 And I certainly sound the same.

01:08:11.100 You know, I may have been off my diet for a minute and gained five or ten pounds.

01:08:15.360 But, I mean, it's Chris Hansen, trust me.

01:08:17.060 You ever thought of opening, like, a chair store, like, have a seat?

01:08:21.080 I thought about that.

01:08:22.400 It was interesting.

01:08:23.480 The second investigation we did, as I mentioned earlier, was outside of Washington, D.C.

01:08:27.120 And it was at the home of a longtime acquaintance who was a retired FBI agent.

01:08:31.180 And that was one of the investigations where a guy came in naked.

01:08:36.320 And, you know, imagine that scene.

01:08:38.780 That's the whipped cream guy, too?

01:08:40.060 Was it the same?

01:08:40.600 That was the other naked guy.

01:08:41.460 Okay.

01:08:41.520 That was in Florida.

01:08:42.840 Right.

01:08:43.320 So the Washington, D.C. guy comes in, and he comes in naked.

01:08:46.940 And, you know, I had the towel on top of the refrigerator.

01:08:49.660 I said, why don't you wrap that around?

01:08:50.700 But he sat on the stool.

01:08:51.980 Mm.

01:08:52.300 And so that stool became famous.

01:08:55.560 Famous, yeah.

01:08:55.680 And I said, you may want to have that disinfected.

01:08:57.520 So the fellow, Greg Schwartz, sent it to another friend of ours, Danny Dietz, in Detroit, and

01:09:04.160 said, this is a piece of, you know, Predator memory history.

01:09:07.540 He's got it sealed in plastic in a closet someplace.

01:09:10.900 Oh, I bet a small museum people would go see.

01:09:13.060 I bet a small, if they had a To Catch a Predator museum or the Chris Hansen museum, I bet

01:09:16.740 people would go to see different artifacts from that type of stuff.

01:09:19.460 I mean, there's just such an infatuation with it.

01:09:22.160 There's such a curiosity.

01:09:25.080 I'm trying to think of a couple of other, like, do you think that after having seen a

01:09:31.000 lot of these people that have these diseases of being predators, and I don't know if it's,

01:09:37.160 and I might use some of the terminology wrong, right?

01:09:39.780 But do you think that it's a sickness that can be repaired sometimes?

01:09:44.840 I think sometimes.

01:09:45.720 Look, I think these guys break down into three different categories.

01:09:48.100 And I'm not a psychiatrist, but based upon everything I've seen and done, and I've interviewed

01:09:52.840 some of the top people in this field, and one of the problems in society is there are

01:09:58.060 not enough men and women in this field.

01:10:00.220 It's not a glamorous segment of medical practice.

01:10:05.220 Right.

01:10:05.640 I mean, do you want to be the doctor who spent how many countless years studying to be a

01:10:10.860 specialist and spend your time in prisons talking to child sex offenders?

01:10:16.060 Right.

01:10:18.720 Right.

01:10:19.240 People who are addicted to child born.

01:10:20.540 Is that what you want to do?

01:10:21.540 Now, there are some very dedicated people who do some very important work, and many of

01:10:25.660 them are connected to the US marshals who, you know, sort of on a federal level are in

01:10:29.880 charge of, you know, monitoring the sex offenders around the country.

01:10:34.400 We'd love to have one of those people, and that'd be really interesting, I think.

01:10:36.420 It is.

01:10:36.820 You might be able to set us up on one of those.

01:10:38.020 I'll hook you up.

01:10:38.420 That'd be awesome.

01:10:38.820 I know a really good guy who's based out of the Washington, D.C. area.

01:10:42.840 Cool.

01:10:43.120 But, you know, they break down into three different categories.

01:10:46.880 One is, you know, the heavy hitter who'd be doing this with or without the internet and

01:10:51.120 can't be cured.

01:10:52.080 Mm-hmm.

01:10:52.640 The second one is, you know, as we discussed earlier, the guy who wouldn't be doing this

01:10:58.540 without the internet, the 24-hour access, the addictive nature, and the anonymity.

01:11:04.220 Right.

01:11:04.700 And so these guys get out there, do it, doesn't make it any less wrong, but they get hooked

01:11:09.880 into the whole online culture.

01:11:12.240 And then there's young guys, as we discussed, who are, you know, mopey and antisocial, and 0.98

01:11:18.240 they're just trying to make some sort of a connection.

01:11:20.180 Right.

01:11:20.600 And if they're 19 or 20 and they're talking to a girl who's 13 or 14, well, in two years,

01:11:26.140 theoretically, it would be legal.

01:11:27.640 Okay.

01:11:28.100 And I think they think that way.

01:11:29.320 And those are the guys who get wrapped on the knuckles and probably never do it again.

01:11:33.760 But, you know, we had a case in the last investigation where, you know, a guy walked in and he was

01:11:39.940 19, but he was a towering presence.

01:11:42.800 And he went in for the hug of this girl and it was disturbing. 0.94

01:11:47.140 Now, the guy ended up breaking down in the interview and, you know, saying, I'm a loser 0.68

01:11:52.000 and I'm overweight and I want to be a cop, but I can't do that.

01:11:54.840 And I, you know, I can't make friends.

01:11:56.340 And, you know, as a parent.

01:11:58.940 Yeah.

01:11:59.220 How do you feel about that moment as a parent?

01:12:00.600 Yeah, I felt sorry for him.

01:12:01.240 So that's when it turns into me saying, look, you know, as bad as this situation is, you

01:12:07.840 know, go to your parents, get some help, straighten it around, you know, get it, get it, get going

01:12:11.700 in the right direction.

01:12:12.260 And is that genuine from you when you say that to those guys?

01:12:14.220 Yeah, I don't want to see this 19-year-old kid get jammed up.

01:12:17.880 But at the same time, you know, we've got them talking to two different decoys posing as,

01:12:23.800 you know, 12 or 13-year-old girl.

01:12:25.600 Right.

01:12:25.960 And if they were real girls, then what happens?

01:12:27.860 Right.

01:12:28.420 Right.

01:12:28.580 You know?

01:12:29.380 Yeah, no, look, man, I love it.

01:12:30.780 I love it because this is, you know, that's a question that I've always had from watching

01:12:33.640 Catch a Predator and some of those types of things.

01:12:35.320 So it's good to hear, like, it's good to think of putting those things on the scale

01:12:39.040 and think about what the, which one really, you know, can weigh heavier if it gets out

01:12:45.240 of hand, you know?

01:12:46.920 So to the young guys who are struggling, to a young guy who maybe, you know, spends a

01:12:51.440 lot of time by himself online and he's looked at too much pornography and maybe he's got into

01:12:55.480 some strange spaces, what kind of suggestions do you tell those guys like that if there are

01:13:01.900 any listening, you know?

01:13:02.820 Because, I mean, it's a, I think that the pornography and that kind of stuff is really,

01:13:07.680 it can be an opiate, you know?

01:13:09.180 And I think there are therapists who specialize in this too.

01:13:13.260 And I think there are programs just for alcohol and drugs.

01:13:16.040 Yeah.

01:13:16.320 For, you know. 0.90

01:13:17.600 Yeah, there's sex addiction, sex and love addiction. 0.98

01:13:20.080 And, you know, you see this all the time with these poor women. 1.00

01:13:23.420 You talk about being victimized, you know, on these sweetheart swindles. 0.90

01:13:27.100 And this is a story that I've been wanting to do for a long time is, you know, I'm not

01:13:32.540 talking about a guy who's trying to meet women online who's, you know, saying he's got a

01:13:36.840 PhD when he only has, you know, a master's.

01:13:39.500 I'm talking about somebody who says they're an astronaut when they've got a criminal history.

01:13:42.380 Right, right.

01:13:42.880 You know, I mean, it's a big difference there.

01:13:44.400 But you see all the time and we've done the, you know, the stories where the, these women 0.88

01:13:50.840 are vulnerable.

01:13:51.740 They're working two jobs to support their kids and their only social outlet is online.

01:13:59.200 And these guys know that.

01:14:00.460 And whether it's a, you know, Nigerian style scam where they're looking for money or they're 0.99

01:14:04.700 having them buy electronics and they're selling them and, you know, we've seen it all.

01:14:08.420 You know, we had a case one time where we were doing the Nigerian scams and we, we set 1.00

01:14:13.520 up a, a, a drop site or we're looking for a drop site.

01:14:18.440 And we found one that was in, outside of Rochester, New York.

01:14:22.620 And we knock on the door and we posed as delivery guys.

01:14:25.580 It was CH delivery.

01:14:27.080 And the slogan was, we absolutely positively guarantee you're going to get it.

01:14:32.740 So we deliver a bunch of packages there.

01:14:34.460 Long slogan.

01:14:34.760 Yeah.

01:14:35.020 Long slogan, yeah.

01:14:35.660 So we, uh, we, we finally get the guy who's getting all the packages and we want to get

01:14:40.360 him into a controlled environment where we can do a hidden camera interview.

01:14:42.860 And so I'm in a warehouse office and all these boxes and I'm hoping he doesn't touch

01:14:46.960 the boxes cause they're all empty.

01:14:48.640 And I'm not really undercover.

01:14:50.600 I mean, I've got a sweatshirt, a tiger's ball cap on and I'm sitting there and I said,

01:14:54.080 well, you know, how did you meet this woman for whom you are, you know, taking delivery

01:14:58.940 of all this stuff?

01:14:59.740 And he said, well, I met her online, but he said, you gotta be really careful on those chat sites.

01:15:05.180 I said, why is that?

01:15:05.940 He goes, well, that Chris Hansen, uh, you know, he's out there, he's going to catch

01:15:08.960 you.

01:15:09.120 And I'm sitting there and I said, I said, yeah, he's a pretty sharp guy, isn't he?

01:15:12.140 And I want to say he's handsome too, but I thought that might've been pushed a little

01:15:14.800 bit.

01:15:15.280 But yeah, this is all on camera, you know?

01:15:17.560 Good posture as well, actually, the guy.

01:15:19.540 And so we have him back at another time.

01:15:20.620 And this is not playing.

01:15:21.420 This is just a...

01:15:22.160 This is, it plays out.

01:15:23.040 It goes, you know that, and again, I'm not, I didn't, you know, I've done stuff undercover

01:15:26.780 where the makeup people will put a beard on and they'll make me dirty and messy 0.95

01:15:30.220 and all that.

01:15:30.780 But this is, you know, basically with a fleece and a ball cap on.

01:15:35.540 And, um, he just laid it all out there.

01:15:38.160 And so we had him back again.

01:15:39.060 I said, look, you know, I got to tell you, you know, I am, you know, and jaw dropped and

01:15:44.920 I said, we're, we're going to try.

01:15:46.420 And he was an innocent victim.

01:15:47.420 Yeah.

01:15:47.680 I mean, he was getting played.

01:15:48.720 Right.

01:15:48.960 You know, and he had this, you know, this woman was, uh, you know, sent pictures and

01:15:53.980 real, you know, looker.

01:15:56.540 And of course it wasn't reality.

01:15:59.000 It's fake.

01:15:59.520 The scammers had gotten the picture from someplace and, you know, we traced it back to a Danish 1.00

01:16:04.820 soft porn, you know, swimsuit site or something that they just clipped it.

01:16:09.200 Yeah.

01:16:09.540 When I used to, sometimes I used to do drugs and I would be at night and I would look at

01:16:12.260 like pornography and stuff on the internet.

01:16:13.820 You know, I did it like I would be by myself and that was my kind of thing.

01:16:16.740 Like I wasn't out partying and I would, you know, do some cocaine and stuff by myself

01:16:20.620 at home.

01:16:21.080 Right.

01:16:21.580 And my audience knows about this.

01:16:22.940 And so, um, and I would find myself, I would, you know, you start looking at escort sites

01:16:28.180 and stuff like that.

01:16:29.000 And then a lot of those pictures, they're not even real.

01:16:31.400 Like it's all, there's just such a scam.

01:16:33.620 There's so much of a, of a scam online.

01:16:36.980 It's such a fake world.

01:16:39.560 Just go to Craigslist sometime.

01:16:40.980 Yeah.

01:16:41.380 You know, and they got rid of the site that advertised, you know, those.

01:16:44.620 Yeah.

01:16:44.760 The casual encounters.

01:16:45.560 Yeah.

01:16:45.900 You know, but, but it exists in other places within Craigslist and, you know, I'm not casting

01:16:50.900 aspersions on Craigslist, but the reality is that, you know, there are millions and millions

01:16:56.000 and millions of people buying and selling things across the world at any given moment.

01:17:00.660 And Craigslist has, you know, 40 or 50 people monitoring it.

01:17:03.620 Now they cooperate with law enforcement.

01:17:05.200 They, they do their due diligence, but it's almost ungovernable.

01:17:09.120 Right.

01:17:09.360 And so when we do a human trafficking investigation, oftentimes it is, you know, um, on a, on a site

01:17:15.960 like, uh, like that.

01:17:17.180 And it's, it's, uh, um, it can be pretty intense.

01:17:20.380 The Craigslist is, is, is, is, you know, we, we purchased drugs.

01:17:23.460 We found alleged hitmen.

01:17:25.260 We've seen all kinds of stuff.

01:17:26.740 That hitman thing's interesting.

01:17:28.100 Yeah.

01:17:28.760 Yeah.

01:17:29.120 I, um.

01:17:29.740 Try saving it across from them in Bryant Park one afternoon.

01:17:32.380 Really?

01:17:32.780 Having them give you the price list to hurt or make somebody disappear.

01:17:35.940 Really?

01:17:36.420 Oh yeah.

01:17:36.700 It's a, it reminds me of a Napoleonic code. 0.81

01:17:39.680 I'm from Louisiana.

01:17:40.400 And so there they have, like, if you lose an arm, you get, there's no lawsuit.

01:17:44.140 Like you get 40 grand.

01:17:45.280 You know what I'm saying?

01:17:45.820 There's no, it's like pirate law, you know, like you lose a thumb, that's 11,000.

01:17:50.160 We're not going to court.

01:17:50.940 Right.

01:17:51.160 Come pick up your check.

01:17:52.860 Um, I'm trying to think of one, uh, other question that I had that was specifically Nick.

01:17:57.980 Is there anything else that you think of?

01:17:59.200 Uh, I was just wondering if there's any people that you're fans of that you found out were big

01:18:03.620 fans of you and the show and like, or like massive fans.

01:18:07.140 Yeah.

01:18:07.520 Have you ended up in any wild, like, has somebody said, you know, Chris Hanson, I want you to

01:18:11.200 be at this event.

01:18:11.880 And then you're like, next thing you know, you and Mike Tyson are playing, you know,

01:18:14.820 squash together.

01:18:15.960 Uh, you know, I've met some people over the years, uh, you know, celebrities and such who,

01:18:20.600 one who I won't embarrass, but, uh, I was at, uh, the U S open once and, and, uh, sitting

01:18:26.340 in a nice, you know, box suite type setting and, and, uh, big tennis fan and, and, and try

01:18:32.540 to play as much as possible.

01:18:33.500 And, uh, an actor came up to me and he had just gotten engaged.

01:18:37.360 His fiance was there.

01:18:38.080 He pulls me aside.

01:18:38.760 He said, Hey, I got to thank you.

01:18:39.740 I said, why?

01:18:40.180 Well, you know, the girl I dated before her, she used to get so turned on when we'd watch 0.99

01:18:44.820 your show.

01:18:45.420 I said, well, gotta help a brother out.

01:18:46.820 Oh, nice man.

01:18:50.580 Yeah.

01:18:50.880 It's, uh, was there, um, did you seeing the shows, uh, and being a part of to catch a predator

01:18:58.220 and, and did it adjust the way that you raised your own children?

01:19:04.060 You know, or did it make you grateful for the way you'd raised your own children?

01:19:08.480 Well, I, I, you know, it, um, you know, they watched it with me on the couch, you know,

01:19:14.840 and they grew up in an environment where, you know, FBI agents were over socially, judges,

01:19:20.820 other reporters, you know, the, you know, I joked my oldest son, his first assignment

01:19:25.280 was, he was 18 months old and I had him in a backpack and I was at, I was at a gun and,

01:19:29.720 uh, knife show in, in Detroit on eight mile at the armory.

01:19:32.960 And, you know, I had a hidden camera hidden in the, in the, in the baby backpack.

01:19:36.480 It's going to work with Dave.

01:19:37.460 Oh yeah, going to work with Dave.

01:19:38.040 Way more interesting.

01:19:38.840 Wait, what'd you guys do today?

01:19:39.800 Oh, nothing.

01:19:40.220 You know, and they're all looking at a cute baby and I've got the, you know, they've got

01:19:43.160 the tri-blast illegal, you know, trigger additions to make a semi-automatic automatic.

01:19:48.540 And then we, you know, so he went along on that and got the video and got back in the car

01:19:52.700 and we're driving back home and this is in Detroit, as I said, and, and we're almost home

01:19:57.020 and, and the pager and cell phone goes off and, and, uh, Dr. Kevorkian had, you know,

01:20:02.800 performed a medicide, you know, on those.

01:20:04.800 So we pull in there and, you know, the producers, you know, got them and then I'm doing the

01:20:08.820 live shot for the six o'clock news on a Saturday on another Kevorkian incident.

01:20:11.880 But yeah, so they, they, you know, they've always been around it, you know, and, and so

01:20:15.740 they, I never, you know, said you should go into it.

01:20:19.140 Right.

01:20:19.680 But I wasn't going to prevent them from doing it.

01:20:22.200 Yeah.

01:20:22.700 And it's interesting because one is so behind the scenes, you know.

01:20:27.140 Yeah.

01:20:27.460 You said one just got his first news or anger job somewhere.

01:20:30.320 He's a reporter.

01:20:31.120 He's been a reporter for the last two years up in Traverse City, Michigan.

01:20:33.660 Oh, nice.

01:20:34.360 And he just got a job in Oklahoma City, which is a nice jump.

01:20:37.160 That's cool.

01:20:37.640 Yeah.

01:20:38.000 That's a bigger market.

01:20:39.320 Yeah.

01:20:40.180 And, um, so I'm going to drive out with him, I think, get him settled and get back to work

01:20:44.780 myself.

01:20:45.600 Is it, uh, do you enjoy being a dad?

01:20:47.520 Is it fun?

01:20:48.420 Yeah.

01:20:48.740 I mean, it's, it's, I mean, I have a very cool situation because, you know, I've got, you

01:20:55.540 know, the two oldest are 27, 24 and then, you know, my significant other's kids who I'm

01:21:01.200 very close with are going to be 19 and, and are 17.

01:21:05.380 So, you know, I learned a lot.

01:21:07.960 Right.

01:21:08.840 And it, it's sometimes easier.

01:21:10.660 I never had someone who was a daughter before.

01:21:13.540 So it's, you know, that's a whole different thing, but it's, it's the, the, they're both

01:21:17.940 great.

01:21:18.320 Everybody gets along.

01:21:19.320 It's a nice blended situation.

01:21:21.940 Yeah.

01:21:22.220 And, uh, you know, it's really pretty cool, but, but you do learn some stuff.

01:21:26.020 So when you get a shot at being helpful, or as I say, I'm just an unpaid advisor, so

01:21:31.200 you can come to me for advice at the end of the day, talk to your mom.

01:21:34.680 She's the one who's in charge here.

01:21:36.280 Yeah.

01:21:37.040 Do you, um, do, when you look forward to like, uh, the future of like, um, I guess almost

01:21:45.180 a lot of the, the guys you called on To Catch a Predator were men.

01:21:49.380 Yeah.

01:21:49.760 All.

01:21:50.180 Is there a reason?

01:21:51.440 Well, if you ask the people who really know the psychology of it, they'll tell you that

01:21:57.200 when it comes to female predators, you're more likely to see the teacher and the student. 0.97

01:22:01.200 Right.

01:22:01.680 Because the female predator doesn't get off on the anonymity where the male predator sort 0.99

01:22:07.600 of likes the anonymity and it gives them a sense of excitement.

01:22:10.620 Like a hunting thing or something maybe.

01:22:12.320 Or just, I don't know what's going to happen.

01:22:13.860 Right.

01:22:15.640 Yeah, man.

01:22:16.240 It's fascinating.

01:22:17.240 After meeting a lot of these people face to face, do you feel like there's just, did

01:22:25.440 it make you feel worse about humanity or better about humanity or did it have any effect on

01:22:29.440 you like that?

01:22:30.320 Well, it's, you know, I was on Jon Stewart's show one time.

01:22:33.200 He said, you know, what do these guys have in common?

01:22:35.120 And I said, what they have in common is they typically don't stand out in a crowd.

01:22:40.300 They don't have, you know, the word predator emblazoned on their forehead in scarlet letters.

01:22:45.180 It could be the guy, you know, standing next to you at the grocery store or the dry cleaner.

01:22:49.680 And to which Stewart said, I'd find another dry cleaner if I were here.

01:22:52.940 Yeah.

01:22:53.440 But they don't stand out of the crowd.

01:22:55.700 Yeah.

01:22:55.820 You know, it's, it's, it's guys who, you know, have darkness within them who are committing

01:23:00.900 this crime.

01:23:02.060 After doing stand up for about 14 years or whatever, I've been doing it, you know, I

01:23:05.960 start to get a sense of the crowd when I'm there.

01:23:08.080 I can tell in the first couple of like moments, like where the laughter is coming from.

01:23:12.300 Everybody's having a good time.

01:23:13.300 If people aren't, I can get a vibe.

01:23:15.060 If somebody in the distance is like, I'm starting to pay their check or if they're them

01:23:19.120 and their wife even aren't getting along at a certain point, you really get some kind

01:23:22.740 of keen senses.

01:23:23.840 Do you start to have those senses when you're just out in the regular world about sexual predators

01:23:28.820 and like people that might be deviant?

01:23:31.000 Well, that's tough to do.

01:23:32.440 I mean, you know.

01:23:32.820 Right.

01:23:32.960 It is tough to do, but do you feel like at moments that there's any, because the sense

01:23:36.680 could only build in you because you've had that much experience.

01:23:39.540 But honestly, I can't decide whether it's just me being, you know, overly suspicious

01:23:44.680 of somebody who may look overly suspicious or, you know, whether I'm just, you know, reading

01:23:49.640 it into something, you know, but, but I do know what you're talking about in terms

01:23:52.840 of the vibe because, you know, I give a lot of speeches and, and, and, and do a lot

01:23:55.820 of fundraisers and, you know, when you're engaged.

01:23:58.580 You know, when you're on a roll, you know, when you own them, you know, when you, you

01:24:01.780 know, you lean into the bike and people are listening, you know, and, and, and it's, you

01:24:06.000 know, you have to remember that when you're doing the broadcast, when you're doing an

01:24:11.560 interview with somebody and, you know, take them on that journey of discovery and kind

01:24:16.820 of just get in their heads and, you know, peel it away like an onion.

01:24:20.320 Yeah.

01:24:21.920 Yeah, man.

01:24:22.480 It's just, uh, have you ever been like at a dinner party and a man's come over to you

01:24:26.780 and said, Hey, Chris, I'm having a problem, like on a side or something like that, you

01:24:29.880 know?

01:24:30.640 Frequently I'll get people approach me and, you know, public settings and say, or even,

01:24:36.700 you know, on, on, um, um, the internet on social platforms to say, I was victimized.

01:24:42.660 Oh, wow.

01:24:43.040 And thank you for the show and, and, and probably makes them feel comfort in some way.

01:24:48.540 Well, it does.

01:24:49.040 And you end up hearing all about it, whether it was a, you know, a priest thing or a, you

01:24:53.280 know, teacher thing or, you know, stepfather thing.

01:24:56.320 And, and, you know, it's, it's, you know, on one hand it's like, okay, you know, I'm glad

01:25:02.680 we're able to be helpful.

01:25:03.920 And, and, you know, they're, they're just really reaching out to say, you know, it soothed

01:25:09.420 the pain a little bit and I just can't imagine, yeah, you know, being victimized that way

01:25:15.400 or having a child who was victimized.

01:25:17.540 I mean, I'd come unglued if it happened to a loved one.

01:25:21.420 I mean, honestly, I just, I don't know that I could be the guy who just stood back and

01:25:25.760 I mean, it would just, I mean, it's wrong that it happens to anyone, but you know what

01:25:31.060 I'm saying?

01:25:31.620 Yeah, you know, yeah.

01:25:33.180 You're trying to, yeah.

01:25:33.820 How you would feel if that was in your world.

01:25:35.800 Yeah.

01:25:36.760 Yeah.

01:25:37.200 No, it's striking.

01:25:38.080 I mean, it's a huge thing.

01:25:38.860 I think it's why, you know, it's a dark, it's such a darkness.

01:25:41.460 I think that's why, you know, like you're saying, it's so fascinating to people, you

01:25:44.980 know, it's just such a, it's such a taboo kind of.

01:25:48.860 Well, and you know, most people thankfully go through life without being the victim of

01:25:52.540 a crime.

01:25:53.160 Yeah.

01:25:53.600 You know, and, and again, I, I get accused sometimes of, of creating fear amongst my loved

01:25:59.380 ones about, you know, coming and going and parking lots and locking doors and, you know,

01:26:04.340 the usual stuff.

01:26:05.340 But, you know, I've seen some random stuff where people in safe areas get victimized

01:26:11.080 just by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

01:26:13.960 And it's not always a, you know, a, a diabolical serial killer like in the movies.

01:26:19.260 I mean, it's, it's just a chance kids who are take advantage and make a wrong decision

01:26:23.320 and suddenly they're, they're criminals.

01:26:26.500 Do you, do people, I'm sure you've had an instance where you just like went to sit in

01:26:32.100 an area at an airport or something and some dude saw you come and sit near him and lost

01:26:36.620 freak, just got super scared.

01:26:38.500 Oh yeah.

01:26:39.640 Yeah.

01:26:39.940 Like people must think anywhere you go that you're about to bust somebody.

01:26:42.720 I mean, uh, I, I, you were standing in the lobby at, uh, at discovery, you know, on third

01:26:48.580 Avenue in New York city, you know, with my roller bag that's sitting right over there.

01:26:51.820 Yeah.

01:26:52.440 And, uh, if you're like, wait, what?

01:26:54.900 I remember one time I was looking, I was, I was years ago and it might even have been

01:26:59.580 before predator, but we had just done some hidden camera stuff and, uh, I was looking at

01:27:06.240 an item and the guy is showing it to me and sweat starts pouring out of his forehead.

01:27:10.200 Wow.

01:27:10.900 I said, Hey man, you all right?

01:27:12.380 You know, and I, it was just last minute Christmas shopping.

01:27:14.040 Yeah.

01:27:14.860 And he says, do you have a hidden camera on me right now?

01:27:16.580 I said, no, no, no.

01:27:17.300 I mean, I just, you know, like, you know, on 47th street trying to figure something out

01:27:20.680 at the last minute.

01:27:20.920 I just need a lightsaber, brother.

01:27:22.480 You know?

01:27:22.860 Yeah.

01:27:23.200 I said, calm, chill.

01:27:24.060 I just need a massage chair guy. 0.96

01:27:25.600 We went, uh, I went to the pharmacy in, in, in the office building and, and my doctor

01:27:30.600 had prescribed a bunch of different antibiotics traveling overseas.

01:27:33.520 So there's, you know, there's five different antibiotics and if you were to take them all

01:27:37.760 together, you could get sick or die, but that's not the point of it.

01:27:41.400 The point of it was to have it.

01:27:43.460 And if I got sick, I could call the doctor and say, what should I do?

01:27:48.240 And he could say, okay, take this one for that.

01:27:50.980 And so the pharmacist looks at me and he said, I'm going to fill this, but are you trying

01:27:54.720 to trick me into giving, you know, too many of the wrong things with counterintuitive?

01:27:58.240 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:27:59.820 I just, I just, I carry this with me and it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, uh, approved by

01:28:04.280 my doctor and, you know, this is just what I do when I travel overseas, you know.

01:28:08.520 Have you ever gotten to meet, uh, John Walsh?

01:28:11.120 Yeah, I know John Walsh.

01:28:12.020 Do you really?

01:28:12.520 Yeah.

01:28:12.940 Yeah.

01:28:13.120 Wow.

01:28:13.720 He and I, I did some work for, um, um, the National, uh, Center for Missing and Exploited

01:28:21.820 Children and, uh, was honored to receive a award from them, um, a few years back and,

01:28:27.180 and got to know John, uh, through that.

01:28:29.460 And John does some stuff with LexisNexis and LexisNexis was very helpful to us in a, we

01:28:35.060 had sort of a, uh, cooperative effort on some investigative stories.

01:28:38.600 So yeah, John's a great guy.

01:28:39.560 Is he a really neat man?

01:28:40.340 Yeah, he's, he's a good guy.

01:28:41.100 I was actually down in Florida just after that case occurred and I just could not imagine,

01:28:46.660 you know, having gone through that and, you know, the strain on a relationship, the loss

01:28:52.820 of a, you know, a young child.

01:28:56.220 I mean, I, you know, there's a lot of things I could survive, but I, I give him and his

01:29:01.620 wife as well, just such great credit for the way they've channeled this into something positive. 0.96

01:29:07.680 Yeah.

01:29:07.880 It's right.

01:29:08.160 You know, when you say that, yeah, there was something about them that made it so like

01:29:12.420 you can see the, like what's going on on his face so well.

01:29:15.840 Like it made it so human, like it made it so, uh.

01:29:19.660 And here's a young couple who, you know, had it all.

01:29:21.900 Yeah, starting their life.

01:29:22.820 Life down in, in, in Florida and suddenly Adam's gone.

01:29:27.220 Yeah.

01:29:27.620 And, you know, I, I started in Tampa.

01:29:31.720 I went from Lansing to Tampa after that occurred, but it wasn't too long after.

01:29:35.760 And one of my cameramen was actually working in, uh, on the East coast of Florida when they

01:29:41.140 found his, Adam's head floating in a canal and just, God, it was just.

01:29:45.480 And I, he would tell the story and you could see just being the cameraman out there, it

01:29:49.540 just affected him at such a level that he just never, you know, it was seared into his,

01:29:54.800 into his mind.

01:29:55.740 Yeah.

01:29:57.380 Yeah, man.

01:29:57.980 I think, yeah, I think it just made that kind of stuff just so human to everyone, you know,

01:30:01.560 and especially watching he and his wife, he's how he saw their relationship part, but them

01:30:05.000 still have the foundation.

01:30:06.160 Well, they, they held it together, you know, I, I, you know, um, they're, as far as I know,

01:30:10.860 I mean, I don't pretend to be, you know, in contact with them regularly, but, but.

01:30:15.480 Oh, I thought there was a point, maybe, and I could be wrong.

01:30:17.080 I thought there was a point during, I remember seeing the movie or reading something where

01:30:20.060 I thought that they, they took a, like they had to separate from each other at a point

01:30:24.040 because they were just losing their mind or something.

01:30:25.760 I think they all pulled it back together.

01:30:26.940 Yeah.

01:30:27.180 Both of them did.

01:30:27.700 What a fascinating, I mean, what a sad story, but what a fascinating story.

01:30:31.840 This is Nick from Maryland, uh, Chris Hansen, huge fan, um, two questions or two part question,

01:30:39.560 whatever.

01:30:40.460 Um, these guys always seem to come up with crazy excuses as to why they're there, I guess,

01:30:45.440 not knowing that you already know.

01:30:47.540 Um, so what's the funniest or craziest or wildest one that you've ever heard?

01:30:52.380 And then the second part would be what's the craziest thing that's happened that's never

01:30:56.820 been on, you know, aired on TV.

01:30:59.760 Well, I'll take the second one first.

01:31:01.540 Everything has aired.

01:31:02.760 Right.

01:31:03.160 That was appropriate, but there's no one scene that was crazy and wild that we didn't put on.

01:31:09.060 Okay.

01:31:09.340 I mean, we might've had to edit around rough language or, uh, rough video or pictures that

01:31:16.460 the predator may have sent, but everything that happened, the viewer saw.

01:31:22.960 Yeah.

01:31:23.160 But in terms of the, the excuses, I mean, I've heard them all.

01:31:28.940 I was just coming over to take care of the young woman to, to, to make sure she didn't 1.00

01:31:32.900 do anything wrong until her mother got home.

01:31:34.660 Yeah.

01:31:35.380 Uh, bad one.

01:31:36.500 I, uh, I thought the house was for sale.

01:31:39.100 I said, well, who told you the house was for sale?

01:31:40.840 Well, my friend.

01:31:41.500 I said, who's, what's your friend's name?

01:31:43.620 Roger.

01:31:44.380 I said, what's Roger's phone number?

01:31:45.700 I pulled my cell phone.

01:31:46.500 I said, let's call Roger right now and see how, how he found out this house was for sale.

01:31:50.180 And, and we had one down in Florida where the guy shows up and he's a real estate executive

01:31:55.600 and he pulled it again.

01:31:57.400 He said, well, I thought the house was for sale.

01:31:59.480 I said, so you didn't just write down the number on the sign and where is the sign?

01:32:02.580 Well, there's no sign.

01:32:03.440 Yeah.

01:32:03.780 He said, well, well, you know, then I saw the young woman and she was waving at me and

01:32:07.040 I wanted to make sure she was okay.

01:32:08.400 Well, you know, they're talking on the phone, they're texting back and forth.

01:32:10.760 So he walks in and I'm reading him the transcripts.

01:32:13.220 I said, you said this to someone who identified themselves as a 13, 14 year old girl.

01:32:19.640 He said, no, I would never say that.

01:32:21.840 My computer's in my office, which is upstairs in my home and my wife and daughter were downstairs.

01:32:25.620 I said, well, let me read further.

01:32:26.900 Wow.

01:32:27.300 I have to be very careful talking to you like this because my wife and daughter are downstairs.

01:32:30.580 I'm up in my office.

01:32:31.540 And so, was there, um, and what was it?

01:32:37.880 Was that both parts of the question?

01:32:38.940 Yeah.

01:32:39.060 Yep.

01:32:39.460 Okay.

01:32:40.080 Was there, um, was there an, is there an, is there an arch nemesis out there that you've

01:32:45.040 always wanted to catch that you haven't been able to like that big, like a big fish, you

01:32:49.540 know?

01:32:50.980 Not really.

01:32:52.100 You know, a lot of these things develop as, as, uh, um, you know, crimes become not more

01:33:00.200 popular, but, but, you know, more active and, you know, you sort of see a trend coming,

01:33:05.660 whether it's the opiates or whether it's human trafficking and, you know, you pursue that.

01:33:09.060 If you find along the way that there is a person who is the kingpin of this particular

01:33:14.220 crime, yeah, of course you, you want to pursue that.

01:33:16.520 But do you have one that swims around in the back of your head where you're like, oh, you

01:33:19.440 know, there's some, there's a dark artist out there that I need to catch, you know? 1.00

01:33:23.340 You know, there was a story, a case, a series of killings in suburban Detroit when I was

01:33:29.020 in high school and college called the Oakland County child killer.

01:33:32.500 And the victims were both male and female.

01:33:34.640 And this one hits home because a family, uh, that I became friendly with later in life as

01:33:42.960 a reporter had lost a child in this string of killings.

01:33:46.140 And it was just bizarre and random and, and, uh, good kids from good homes, you know, nobody

01:33:51.320 was at risk.

01:33:52.080 And, and, uh, and there are theories as to who the killer was, or perhaps there were

01:33:57.440 two killers because there were male and female victims, but they never have charged the case.

01:34:01.720 And it has always haunted me.

01:34:04.160 You know, I'd love to be able to solve that.

01:34:05.940 I'd like to get, be able to give the family closure on that.

01:34:08.600 Yeah.

01:34:08.800 And, and again, there, there, there have been some people identified over the years and

01:34:12.260 I've reported on it.

01:34:13.880 Um, and, uh, but nothing ever definitive, no charges were ever brought.

01:34:18.820 What's sad, huh?

01:34:20.020 Yeah.

01:34:21.100 I mean, this goes back to the late seventies.

01:34:23.660 Do you feel a little bit like you have a responsibility to bust people or not?

01:34:27.920 I mean, I use the term bust, like, I don't even know, but do you feel like you have a

01:34:31.320 responsibility to catch these predators because you have such a profile in that space now?

01:34:35.460 Like, do you feel like, like there's this ticking time clock, like, you know, even just

01:34:39.100 with your own life and livelihood, I mean, I know you're still pretty young, but even,

01:34:42.260 but, but it's like, you know, I have this platform, you know, and we, and, and, and,

01:34:46.320 because that's a rare platform.

01:34:48.000 It's like, you know, you're right.

01:34:49.160 And whether it's, you know, the actual, you know, child predators, right.

01:34:54.640 You know, predators targeting children is a better way to put it or something else.

01:34:58.540 I mean, yeah, I, I, I feel like I have this currency that I can use and a brand that I can

01:35:05.100 can use to, to go route these things out.

01:35:08.180 And, and I have, you know, a great team of folks around me who, you know, want to work

01:35:13.040 and, and, and do these things and do important work.

01:35:15.960 And it's, you know, we, it, this is a funny business, as you know, I mean, I'll go, there

01:35:20.660 are periods of the year where I'm seven days a week and then the, you know, you have two

01:35:24.380 months off and then you're waiting for the next thing.

01:35:26.540 And so it's, you know, it can be a little herky jerky, but it, it does weigh heavily on me

01:35:31.660 that, you know, I'm that guy and, and while I love my summertime in Michigan, yeah, yeah,

01:35:40.020 I got stuff to do and, uh, I got stuff to do.

01:35:43.360 I like that.

01:35:44.080 Yeah.

01:35:44.420 So, and, uh, we're, we're teeing it all up right now.

01:35:46.840 Good.

01:35:47.100 A lot of exciting stuff coming up, including more predator.

01:35:49.520 Yeah.

01:35:50.340 Well, yeah, well, we'd love to, you know, be able to support in any way.

01:35:52.880 And I genuinely meant that like, I, you know, I've never offered to go and do a show if

01:35:56.120 there's some, you guys are doing for fundraising to help with that, with that, with something

01:35:58.720 like that, and that may be 10 years from now, you know?

01:36:00.800 Well, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, you know, I've been fortunate, you know, throughout

01:36:04.840 my career to meet people in entertainment and, and to, you know, meet people in the music

01:36:09.840 world who, you know, have big hearts.

01:36:12.440 Yeah.

01:36:12.880 Kid rocks that way.

01:36:14.100 Yeah, yeah, I've heard, yeah, I've heard a lot of great things about it.

01:36:15.760 And, you know, he'll pick up the newspaper in Detroit and see somebody in distress and tell

01:36:19.960 one of his, you know, write a check and I don't want any attention, just send it over

01:36:23.220 there.

01:36:23.500 Yeah.

01:36:23.760 I mean, he, he does this stuff all the time and nobody, you know, he doesn't seek attention

01:36:28.460 for it.

01:36:29.020 Yeah.

01:36:29.880 Yeah.

01:36:30.200 I don't know, man.

01:36:30.620 It just, I mean, it really hurts my heart when I think about, you know, uh, just kids,

01:36:35.000 something happening to kids and them not being able to, you know, just even realize that

01:36:40.020 life can have joy in it because something like stunts them at such a point, you know?

01:36:44.460 Yeah.

01:36:44.660 It could be being a victim of a crime or, you know, there was a, a story in the papers this

01:36:50.460 morning about a kid in Britain of, uh, uh, middle Eastern descent who was, uh, you know,

01:36:57.340 harassed at school and bullied at school.

01:36:59.280 And they sort of, according to the story, you know, uh, simulated waterboarding kid in

01:37:05.040 the playground.

01:37:05.560 It's like, Oh God, I mean.

01:37:07.740 Yeah.

01:37:08.660 What, what makes kids so mean sometimes the whole bullying culture is, is, is something

01:37:12.960 that needs to be dealt with too.

01:37:14.420 Yeah.

01:37:14.740 Out of that.

01:37:15.300 There's a lot of space out there for you to, there's a lot, you know, you're kind of a shark

01:37:18.540 and there's a lot of space for you to swim in, you know, do you have to be cognizant

01:37:21.640 of your own behaviors too sometimes?

01:37:23.340 Cause you worry like that you're going to be under such a microscope though. 0.99

01:37:26.100 Like I think about that sometimes, like, you know, like shit, if I start talking about 0.98

01:37:30.900 something or being in a world, am I going to somehow in a way that I don't even know, 0.98

01:37:34.980 bring that into my own life?

01:37:36.860 Well, I, you know, the truth is I lead a pretty, you know, sedate life.

01:37:41.620 Sedate's not the right word, but, but, you know, centered at least.

01:37:44.600 And, but it's true.

01:37:45.780 I mean, you know, if you are the guy who's using hidden cameras to catch people, you know,

01:37:50.880 you should be aware of that when you're out in public and govern yourself appropriately.

01:37:55.140 You know, I, it's no longer an issue.

01:37:58.280 And when I was young enough to be running around, it was, you know, mostly before the

01:38:03.480 internet and cell phones, much less cell phone video.

01:38:06.380 So, you know, it doesn't take much to get dusted up if you're not paying attention all

01:38:10.460 the time.

01:38:11.120 Yeah.

01:38:11.320 I've watched the show, you know, I've seen it.

01:38:13.680 I've watched the show.

01:38:14.560 I've seen the show.

01:38:15.360 I've been in the show, you know.

01:38:17.320 Anything else, Nick?

01:38:18.340 Oh yeah, here's another one.

01:38:19.520 We'll do one more here, Chris, and then we'll, we'll wrap it up.

01:38:22.580 Yo, Theo, it's Jake from Charleston, South Carolina.

01:38:26.580 It's weird hearing your voice on the phone.

01:38:28.900 I love the podcast.

01:38:30.360 I keep pumping them out.

01:38:31.820 My question for Chris Hansen is, which guy that they caught was he most freaked out by?

01:38:37.540 Was it the Indian guy who walked in naked or was it the guy that they caught twice? 0.82

01:38:42.300 Anyway, gang, gang, man, get that hitter.

01:38:44.740 Gang, bro.

01:38:45.180 Thank you.

01:38:46.320 Well, I think both.

01:38:47.480 I mean, those two are right on the top of the list.

01:38:49.500 I remember the fellow who came in naked, the second, the first guy you referred to.

01:38:55.420 I literally, I was in like a back den of this house and here comes this guy naked and he's

01:39:04.480 moving fast, faster than I was able to get around the-

01:39:07.040 Oh, fast and naked sounds scary to me.

01:39:09.120 And this guy was talking about whipped cream and a cat and incorporating all this stuff

01:39:12.200 with the young girl.

01:39:13.040 And so literally I go to open the door to confront him.

01:39:16.220 Yeah.

01:39:16.480 And he's got his hand on the opposite doorknob.

01:39:19.820 And so I open up and he sees me and he's, whoa, you know, and so, you know, this whole

01:39:24.020 crazy Q&A develops after that.

01:39:27.740 And, you know, again, with the towel and he walks out the door with the towel and tries

01:39:33.300 to find his clothes at the back door and it's nutty.

01:39:35.960 And then, you know, the other guy in Washington who came in naked, the next day there's all

01:39:41.980 this commotion upstairs with the online decoys.

01:39:44.320 I said, what's going on?

01:39:45.340 He said, remember the guy who walked in naked last night?

01:39:46.940 I said, hard to forget.

01:39:47.980 Yeah.

01:39:48.580 You know, he said, well, he's online again trying to talk to another kid.

01:39:52.960 And I said, set up a meeting at the, you know, find a McDonald's at a meeting.

01:39:55.900 So we show up, you know, we leave the house, which is a little edgy because what if you

01:40:00.220 miss something there?

01:40:01.000 That's rogue, yeah.

01:40:01.700 Yeah.

01:40:01.860 So we go and we watch them and the guys get video and walking into the McDonald's and

01:40:06.140 we, you know, move in.

01:40:07.220 And now I'm trying to think of what I'm going to say.

01:40:08.980 Yeah.

01:40:09.380 You know, because I got one shot and he runs, it's, you know, it's over.

01:40:12.380 I didn't want to chase him into traffic.

01:40:13.640 And you had just seen this guy the day before.

01:40:15.660 The day before, naked in the kitchen of this house.

01:40:18.980 So he's, John Cannelly.

01:40:19.980 This is a bad second date.

01:40:20.960 Yeah, I remember his name.

01:40:21.880 John Cannelly was his name.

01:40:23.160 Yeah.

01:40:23.440 Special guy, 29.

01:40:24.540 He wasn't 29, nor is he that special.

01:40:27.460 So he's coming out of the McDonald's and I'm there with two camera crews and two sound

01:40:30.860 men with the booms.

01:40:31.540 I said, John, I said, you know, I've been in this business at the time, 20 some years,

01:40:38.560 and I very seldom been at a loss for words.

01:40:42.660 Yeah.

01:40:42.900 But I don't know what to ask you first.

01:40:45.080 I just said it because it was the only thing that came to my mind.

01:40:47.200 I, you know, and he looked at me, he says, well, I'm getting help.

01:40:51.080 I'm getting treatment.

01:40:51.780 I said, John, I got news for you.

01:40:52.820 It's not working.

01:40:53.760 Yeah.

01:40:54.640 You remember yesterday, right?

01:40:55.980 Yeah.

01:40:56.340 Last night?

01:40:57.140 And now you're out here again?

01:40:58.660 And, you know, he took off in his red pickup truck.

01:41:01.140 And I don't know if they ever prosecuted him in that case or not.

01:41:04.660 I know that they found him trying to do something with some other little kids in a park someplace.

01:41:12.040 And I don't know what happened after that.

01:41:13.280 But, yeah, those, those are two very bizarre cases.

01:41:17.220 Overall, what do you think these predators like to eat?

01:41:19.440 Like they always seem to bring a snack.

01:41:20.720 Well, they bring snacks and obviously we have sometimes snacks there.

01:41:26.520 Oh, yeah.

01:41:26.700 I've seen you got the little cupcake sometimes in that.

01:41:28.620 But what do they bring?

01:41:29.640 If they're bringing, you know, do they have a food of choice?

01:41:31.560 Usually fast food.

01:41:33.000 You know, we actually got a letter from the lawyers one time from Mike's Hard Lemonade.

01:41:37.100 Yeah.

01:41:37.340 Because whatever period of time during two or three of the investigations, that was the hit drink of young people.

01:41:46.100 Oh, rich people's Zima.

01:41:47.260 That was rich people's Zima.

01:41:48.360 Exactly.

01:41:48.720 So, we had this letter saying, please do not use our product.

01:41:52.480 Oh, come on. 0.87

01:41:53.320 Our investigations anymore.

01:41:56.680 So, but no specific fast food company really kind of resonated?

01:41:59.620 Was it overall that you saw like?

01:42:01.000 It was just a little bit of this, a little bit of that, you know.

01:42:03.340 And basically it's whatever the decoy asked for.

01:42:06.180 Right.

01:42:06.440 In many cases.

01:42:07.080 There was one guy who showed up.

01:42:08.360 He was a plumber and he brought food for himself, but not for the 13-year-old girl he was going to molest that night.

01:42:16.040 It's like, really?

01:42:17.080 Yeah.

01:42:17.440 How are you going to molest somebody that doesn't have any energy in their body?

01:42:20.000 Well, it's just...

01:42:21.000 I mean, that's not a way to think about it.

01:42:22.200 Right.

01:42:22.360 But it's also like, yeah.

01:42:23.820 What about Chick-fil-A?

01:42:24.720 Did anybody ever bring that?

01:42:25.720 Not that I can recall.

01:42:26.960 Yeah.

01:42:27.240 That's awesome.

01:42:27.760 I like that and I don't want to think about that when I eat it.

01:42:31.800 Are there any things that you, are there other stuff that you like to do like outside?

01:42:35.980 Like, do you have any games on your phone or anything?

01:42:37.400 What else does Chris Hansen like to do?

01:42:39.380 You know, I don't really have any games on the phone or do the video game thing.

01:42:42.760 I mean, I did, you know, when the kids were young, obviously, and they would routinely, whether it was Guitar Hero or whatever, beat me senseless at whatever game.

01:42:50.380 You know, I think the last one I played was Pong, you know, back when I was a kid, but, you know, I like tennis and skiing and, you know, being out on the water and reading, you know, it's, it's, I've really gotten into this Peloton bike, though.

01:43:05.960 Have you really?

01:43:06.480 Yeah, it's really, and I'm not, I promise that I'm not getting any money from Peloton.

01:43:09.300 No, it's okay.

01:43:09.720 You can talk about it.

01:43:10.800 One of our friends, Rod, one of the biggest podcasts also is right through this wall.

01:43:14.500 They're not taping today, but Fighter and the Kid and one of their guys, he's Peloton every day almost.

01:43:19.120 Yeah, I do it pretty much every day because I, you know, we have an apartment in New York and then, you know, home in Michigan.

01:43:24.180 So, you know, in Michigan, it just lends itself.

01:43:26.300 It's near a park and, you know, you go for a run and you do the hills and all that stuff.

01:43:29.680 But in New York, while I enjoy running in New York and I'm close to, you know, being on a walkway near the river, it just, if I can get 45 minutes right off the bat and it's right in the bedroom and I have to trip over, you know, going to make the coffee in the morning, I do it.

01:43:43.600 Right.

01:43:43.780 You know, and it's, it's, it's a great piece of equipment.

01:43:47.420 It's interactive.

01:43:48.000 You can take the live classes or the classes that are taped.

01:43:50.700 And for me, it's just, it's a great way to ensure, you know, getting work out.

01:43:56.360 Yeah.

01:43:56.840 No, I love hearing that, man.

01:43:57.820 It's funny.

01:43:58.240 I was just thinking about it the other day when I see my friends on them and stuff.

01:44:01.860 It's like, oh, it's interesting.

01:44:03.440 Who inspired, do you have, do you have like inspiration at this point?

01:44:06.140 Do you find like inspiration has changed in your life as you've gotten, you know, further in your career?

01:44:10.220 You know, you know, one of the greatest compliments I've ever gotten was, you know, I ran into Mike Wallace one time years ago and he was still working for 60 Minutes at the time and, and he's so good with people, you know.

01:44:22.060 And then I said, um, hey Mike, Chris Hansen, and I was at, with Daylight at the time and he looked at me and said, oh, Chris.

01:44:29.120 And I was on like goofing off that day in Miami and he was working, he was doing an interview with Lawrence Taylor, I think, who had just written about him.

01:44:35.960 Wow.

01:44:36.520 He's at a wild life.

01:44:37.620 Yeah.

01:44:37.940 You could catch him.

01:44:38.760 And so, yeah.

01:44:40.160 And, uh, Wallace looks at me and says, Chris, what was it that I just saw that you did?

01:44:45.100 Not having seen it, but he knew how to compliment a young, younger, uh, version of him.

01:44:50.140 And I said, oh, it was the story on the Stinger missiles of the terrorists who were trying to buy, you know, you know, before 9-11.

01:44:54.580 He goes, oh, it was so good.

01:44:56.280 And I felt so, you know, later I sort of figured out a system of being able to say something nice, even though he didn't have it at the top of his head.

01:45:01.960 But it meant so much to me that he would even think to do that, you know, and, and he, you know, had so many great classic stories over the years, you know.

01:45:11.020 Do you feel like, uh, when you look back just on like, uh, the work in sexual predator, do you feel person, do you feel like a hero or no?

01:45:17.060 No, it's, you know, look, I, I think it's important.

01:45:20.260 I think we've made a difference.

01:45:21.780 Um, you know, it, it built a platform for me to do some of the stories that weren't.

01:45:32.260 Automatic fits in the format of a syndicated show.

01:45:37.300 Uh, it's given me some leverage to do things that I think are important, you know, that, that, you know, are highly rated, but they're expensive.

01:45:45.800 Right.

01:45:46.280 You know, if you're going to go hang out and do stuff undercover, you know, it's, it's, it's not the murder story where you interview the six characters and you put it together, the dramatic video.

01:45:56.180 I mean, you got to go get it and there's no guarantee.

01:45:58.800 I mean, as much as you try to get it set up and you work, you know, side by side with law enforcement, so you know, something's going to happen that'll, that'll constitute interesting television.

01:46:07.520 There's no guarantee.

01:46:08.440 I mean, there's nothing worse than going out, talking your executive producers into doing something, spending the money and then missing the guy at the last minute.

01:46:17.860 But I mean, we were going after a guy, it's a horrible case where this guy was raping his 11 year old stepdaughter and did it for like four years.

01:46:25.860 And we did the story and, and they had let him out on parole.

01:46:29.560 Yeah.

01:46:29.860 Now they got these nonviolent drug offenders who have been in for 29 years.

01:46:33.300 They want to get this guy out after, you know, far less time.

01:46:37.560 And so we're going to go chase him down.

01:46:38.940 He's working at this plant and I was going to, and I was all sitting in front of him.

01:46:42.220 I'd driven around it.

01:46:43.240 We'd checked it out and we're there.

01:46:45.680 And I just, you know, I jumped the gun too early.

01:46:48.080 He saw, and his buddy smuggled him out a back gate across, you know, and I got to call Los Angeles and say, Hey, oh, how'd it go?

01:46:55.760 Was it really good?

01:46:56.420 Was it dramatic?

01:46:57.180 Well, it was.

01:46:58.840 20,000 down the drain today.

01:47:00.280 Yeah.

01:47:00.900 Yeah.

01:47:01.760 Or something, you know.

01:47:02.500 Yeah.

01:47:02.640 It's not a good conversation to have.

01:47:05.440 Did you feel, yeah, at a certain point, does it get tricky though?

01:47:07.940 When like, you know, there's an executive, there's a, there's a financial push to like get it right.

01:47:12.760 And it's like, you have to, like, did you ever feel like at that point you're, you're, you're sacrificing integrity?

01:47:18.420 No, nobody's ever asked me to sacrifice integrity.

01:47:20.940 Oh, wow.

01:47:21.380 And, and, and again, you know, I started television 1981.

01:47:25.600 Wow.

01:47:25.960 When I was still in college and making $4 and 80 cents an hour.

01:47:29.840 Jesus.

01:47:30.340 You know, 39 hours a week.

01:47:31.460 And then went full time when I, when I graduated.

01:47:34.120 But, uh, honestly, and I know these questions come up with different syndicates that own different, uh, groups of television stations.

01:47:42.840 And, you know, are you pro this or pro that?

01:47:45.740 Are you right wing, left wing?

01:47:46.540 But I've never felt it ever.

01:47:49.640 Yeah.

01:47:50.140 In, in, in a, in a lot of years.

01:47:51.920 And yeah, I mean, are there realistic constraints in terms of budget?

01:47:56.560 Absolutely.

01:47:57.840 You know, do we necessarily go around the world that we once did?

01:48:04.040 And you got to justify it.

01:48:05.900 Right.

01:48:06.160 And you got to make sure the audience is there.

01:48:07.900 Yeah.

01:48:08.220 It's different.

01:48:08.720 Shows used to go around the world a lot more.

01:48:10.040 And now everything it's, I mean, budgets are smaller and bigger pieces of production companies take bigger people.

01:48:15.420 You know, overall there's back people behind the scenes.

01:48:17.500 Who's your audience?

01:48:18.640 Right.

01:48:18.940 And do you spend a year going undercover and going to India to expose human drug trials of something that you know is dangerous, but you caught them doing?

01:48:31.080 I mean, it's good TV.

01:48:32.100 It's a brand TV.

01:48:32.840 You win an overseas press club award, maybe an Emmy.

01:48:36.100 Uh, but you know, where do you put your resources?

01:48:40.120 Right.

01:48:40.240 And that's the, you know, depending on the show, uh, you know, look, crime is big.

01:48:45.220 Look alive.

01:48:45.940 Crime is big.

01:48:46.500 I've literally got four shows in the works.

01:48:48.780 Wow.

01:48:49.140 All crime.

01:48:50.680 And, um, I love crime.

01:48:52.880 It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's important.

01:48:55.560 It's what I've always done.

01:48:56.440 I mean, I just didn't start doing this, you know, four years ago because it was popular.

01:49:00.320 You know, do you think it would be more exciting to die of natural causes or to honestly, to get murdered?

01:49:04.180 Be honest.

01:49:04.800 I just want a long life.

01:49:06.180 I really, but at the end though, I think I'd want a long life.

01:49:09.900 Okay.

01:49:10.300 But when you get to the end of that long life, I think about this.

01:49:13.820 Yeah.

01:49:14.020 So do I. 0.73

01:49:14.340 But I want to die of natural causes or is there something exciting about getting murdered?

01:49:20.900 I don't want to get murdered.

01:49:22.680 I can accept a horrible ski accident.

01:49:25.640 I can accept a heart attack doing something that I truly was passionate about.

01:49:30.780 Right.

01:49:31.040 But I don't need to, you know, have a cleanup crew.

01:49:36.880 I just think it would be that.

01:49:38.320 I mean, I just watched the equalizer too on the plane coming out here.

01:49:41.060 So I saw that I've seen more blood and guts today than a normal, normal five and a half hour flight.

01:49:46.820 But you, we talked, you mentioned sex trafficking and we had a sex worker in, right?

01:49:51.040 And she was upset.

01:49:53.040 And a lot of sex workers were upset when they shut down some of the sites where they were able to sell their services.

01:49:58.920 Because, you know, there's such a big sex trafficking, let's stop sex trafficking. 0.82

01:50:02.600 But then at the same time, it was preventing, you know, women who were, had been sustaining their livelihood and supporting, you know, families or whatever for a while.

01:50:10.240 Do you think that one just outweighs the other and it doesn't matter?

01:50:13.520 I still think women are being exploited. 1.00

01:50:15.580 Right.

01:50:15.880 You know, that's got to be a tough life.

01:50:20.020 You know, I'm not one to say, look, you know, law or society should, you know, arbitrate what a woman does with her own body. 0.99

01:50:27.360 That's not up to me.

01:50:28.420 But in my experience, seeing this and doing stories and talking to recovered sex industry workers, that's not a pretty life.

01:50:39.100 Right.

01:50:39.240 I mean, you sit there and you talk to a 17 or 18-year-old who was coaxed into this life at 14 or 15 years old because she was having a bad day and somebody appealed to her, her weaknesses and exploited that.

01:50:53.640 And a pimp made her feel loved and put her to work and took all the money, you know. 0.99

01:50:59.020 Oh, yeah.

01:50:59.580 That's true.

01:51:00.020 You talk about degrading, showing up in a hotel room in Cincinnati or wherever.

01:51:05.000 And, you know, being forced into, you know, doing things.

01:51:09.460 Lewd acts, yeah.

01:51:10.260 Yeah.

01:51:10.640 Yeah, this woman was, she was in her 30s, I think. 1.00

01:51:13.000 And so I guess her perception was different.

01:51:15.280 But I guess how these people get into that situation and how that all starts, it's probably.

01:51:19.900 Yeah, I'd be willing to say and go on a limb here that the vast majority of women who find themselves in that situation are desperate, threatened, or victimized in some way that makes them vulnerable.

01:51:33.820 Yeah.

01:51:34.040 To going into it.

01:51:34.860 I mean, you know, this, it's like, you know, the notion of, you know, somebody working their way through law school, you know, that's, that's a rarity.

01:51:45.180 Right, right, right.

01:51:45.920 Yeah, using that to get.

01:51:47.180 These people get jammed up in bad situations on whatever level and resort to this sort of thing.

01:51:53.320 Is sex trafficking as big of a problem?

01:51:55.700 Like, like, you know, every now and then, like the live, like far liberal go, you know, it's like, they'll just make a postcard says 700,000 women were abused yesterday.

01:52:05.040 Yeah, the number is, I always caution.

01:52:06.420 I sit on boards and am an advisor to, you know, a number of groups, airline ambassadors being one of them, which is made up of airline employees who, it started out donating their airline parks miles to bring kids in from third world countries who needed extraordinary medical care.

01:52:23.840 And they'd fly them into the United States for that medical care.

01:52:27.880 And then sort of branched off into educating airline employees to recognize human trafficking when it goes on.

01:52:37.300 So I speak to, because of a lot of the stories I've done over the years, I speak to the groups and I'm on a panel that helps educate, you know, flight attendants.

01:52:44.700 But, you know, flight attendants will see stuff.

01:52:47.420 You know, if you see a guy with, with a, you know, young girl, and for some reason it's not.

01:52:54.260 Doesn't fit.

01:52:55.000 They don't look.

01:52:55.420 Yeah, like, yeah.

01:52:55.940 I mean, you get a sense about that stuff.

01:52:57.840 I mean, you look at, and again, I caution these groups about coming up with numbers and extrapolating things.

01:53:02.940 People say, you know, how many predators are online at any given time?

01:53:05.640 And we one time in one of the stories used the number 50,000.

01:53:10.500 And it could be 10 times that.

01:53:12.480 But the problem is you don't know because of the ubiquitous nature.

01:53:15.640 And, you know, we got wrapped by some fact checkers and how do you know?

01:53:18.980 And, well, it came out of a speech by a state attorney general.

01:53:22.440 And then it was picked up and, you know, confirmed by a FBI agent who worked that kind of crime.

01:53:27.600 And so it, it, it, the, the, somebody traced it back.

01:53:30.760 I think it was NPR to say, where did this number actually come from?

01:53:34.060 And I did interviews.

01:53:34.820 I was very honest about it.

01:53:35.600 I said, look, this is the estimate that, you know, has been commonly used.

01:53:39.780 And I used it too.

01:53:40.680 Uh, I'm guessing that worldwide it's much higher than that.

01:53:44.740 Right.

01:53:45.000 Yeah.

01:53:45.160 Especially worldwide.

01:53:45.940 But I, I, I, you know, I always caution these groups, don't put a number on it because we really don't know.

01:53:52.020 What I can tell you is that when it comes to human trafficking, you can take any big event, whether it's a Super Bowl, World Series, a Republican convention, a Democratic convention, and I guarantee you a fight in Las Vegas.

01:54:04.680 A dog show too, probably even.

01:54:06.760 Thousands of women will be flown into that area and trafficked. 1.00

01:54:09.920 Right.

01:54:11.420 Right.

01:54:11.700 That I can guarantee.

01:54:12.620 Yeah.

01:54:13.240 Yeah.

01:54:13.640 And, you know, I think I even see that.

01:54:15.440 I mean, I don't know any of those people, but I definitely see things where it's like, oh, that makes me, it sets off a bell.

01:54:22.160 Like I'll see things on Instagram or social media.

01:54:23.860 It's like, oh, that's, that seems very odd that suddenly, you know, these people are there for some reason.

01:54:28.900 We did a sting with the LA County Sheriff's Department a year or so ago.

01:54:32.260 And, you know, within 30 minutes drive of where we're sitting right now, in one afternoon, literally had six or eight cases.

01:54:41.300 Yeah.

01:54:41.960 You know, where.

01:54:43.220 And who are these predators mostly that are doing that sort of thing?

01:54:45.700 Is that more of an international type of thing?

01:54:47.800 Well, it's, it's both.

01:54:49.340 I mean, you have people who are, you know, importing, you know, vulnerable women from, you know, Eastern European bloc.

01:54:59.220 Yeah.

01:54:59.440 Other countries, Asia, you see it within Asia and then you see, you know, PIMS who are just.

01:55:06.480 Running local, just small game.

01:55:07.840 At the local mall.

01:55:08.660 Yeah.

01:55:08.960 You know, you recruit people and suddenly there's money where there was no money.

01:55:12.100 I remember we did a story in Las Vegas once.

01:55:14.660 We were doing a lot of undercover stuff down there a few years back and there was a young woman.

01:55:19.560 She had been accepted into Air Force intelligence.

01:55:23.620 She was good to go.

01:55:24.900 All she had to do was show up.

01:55:25.980 She had passed all the tests and she was dating a guy who is, you know.

01:55:29.560 Kind of living on the fridges, gangster wise.

01:55:32.320 And he pulls up in this BMW and says, come on, let's go for a ride.

01:55:34.880 She goes, where'd you get this?

01:55:35.560 He goes, ah, it's, you know, it's a friend.

01:55:37.500 The car ended up being stolen.

01:55:39.280 They put them both in, her and the women's lockup and him in the men's lockup.

01:55:42.800 And while she's in the lockup, there's a woman there who works for a pimp in Las Vegas who recruits her. 1.00

01:55:47.300 And suddenly she goes from being an Air Force intelligence officer.

01:55:54.600 Yeah.

01:55:55.240 To being sold on the streets of Las Vegas.

01:56:00.080 By a notorious pimp.

01:56:01.260 Right.

01:56:02.580 Wow.

01:56:03.100 To think that they would have somebody in a prison that that's where they would be recruiting people.

01:56:05.980 It was the lockup.

01:56:06.780 It was the county lockup.

01:56:08.000 Right.

01:56:08.200 What a unique.

01:56:08.920 I'm just saying, but think about if she didn't take the ride, she'd be in the Air Force. 1.00

01:56:12.700 Yeah. 0.86

01:56:13.480 As opposed to being a recovering sex trade worker.

01:56:18.240 Yeah.

01:56:18.500 So those small things that, yeah, it's just, like you say, sometimes it's just so moment to moment how one thing could happen to somebody in one turn or one car ride or one this or one that.

01:56:27.760 So it really, at that point, then you have to just be aware.

01:56:31.060 You have to be cognizant of what's going on, no matter what situations you're getting into.

01:56:35.660 Well, again, it goes back to, you know, why we do all these stories.

01:56:38.720 If you can get into the mind of a criminal and hear the voice of a victim, you can prevent other people from becoming victims.

01:56:44.360 Yeah.

01:56:44.460 And that's really the credo of the thing.

01:56:46.480 Yeah.

01:56:46.640 And I feel it, too, from this conversation that the risk of exploitation, the risk, I kind of feel like it does, it outweighs, you know, it just weighs heavier.

01:56:59.180 You know, it weighs, like, it's a worthwhile risk to take when you look at the other side of the scale and see the possibilities of things that can be going on, you know.

01:57:09.860 It's interesting, man.

01:57:11.160 Do you try to stay off of certain places on the Internet to try and keep your own head straight?

01:57:15.220 Yeah.

01:57:15.680 I mean, I don't go big on it.

01:57:17.160 You know, I use it for research, for stories.

01:57:18.980 I do, you know, engage in, you know, promotion of projects and stories.

01:57:24.960 And, you know, I'll wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving.

01:57:28.000 Right, but you're not dabbling in porn.

01:57:29.520 Have you ever had any issues with that kind of stuff?

01:57:31.540 No, no, no, no.

01:57:32.540 It's powerful.

01:57:33.200 I mean, it's a lot of young men, you know, a lot of guys are struggling.

01:57:35.060 Unquestionably, and it's, I think, your age group was more exposed to it than my age group.

01:57:40.200 Again, you know, the only thing we ever saw was, you know, Playboy magazine from 1973.

01:57:44.020 Oh, yeah.

01:57:44.040 Oh, those were good.

01:57:44.840 It was a team compared to, you know, anything.

01:57:46.460 Dude, sometimes somebody, they would get a perfume thing and would get stuck in a Playboy magazine, right?

01:57:50.620 A woman's perfume thing.

01:57:52.060 So you had, like, that was another universe because then you had, you know, the bosoms and you had the scent.

01:57:58.000 You know, you were just, like, living, oh, man.

01:57:59.840 It was like having a stepmother, you know, like a hot stepmother. 0.78

01:58:02.360 Yeah, but I don't even know how those magazines stay in business anymore.

01:58:05.760 I don't know.

01:58:06.140 Except for the editorial part of it because any young man who wants to see anything, it's a film.

01:58:11.520 Well, I remember years and years ago, a friend of mine was helping his daughter with a, you know, school project and went to the, I forget, was it, it was on the Wizard of Oz and he put into a search website, Dorothy, and the stuff that came up.

01:58:29.080 Wow.

01:58:29.620 And this is 10, 12, 15 years ago.

01:58:32.520 Yeah.

01:58:32.640 And it was like, you know, cover the kid's eyes.

01:58:34.820 Yeah.

01:58:35.120 Just, you know.

01:58:35.980 That lion ain't very cowardly all of a sudden.

01:58:38.140 Yeah, it's a whole different situation.

01:58:41.680 Yeah, that's wild, man.

01:58:42.980 It's a wild world out there.

01:58:44.100 It's the dark arts, you know.

01:58:45.800 Well, what about the dark web?

01:58:47.180 Think about that.

01:58:47.880 Oh, I can't even think about that, man.

01:58:49.940 I can't even, I don't even know how to get there.

01:58:51.440 Yeah.

01:58:51.900 Is there really a dark web?

01:58:53.300 Oh, yeah, yeah, it exists.

01:58:54.380 And what is it?

01:58:55.160 You get into the back of your computer or something?

01:58:57.180 It's non-monitored, really, and they're, you know, it's kind of the secret world.

01:59:01.120 You need access and verification.

01:59:03.020 It's like the blockchain or something, kind of, like, in a way.

01:59:05.340 Yeah, exactly.

01:59:06.080 That's a good way to put it.

01:59:07.180 And I don't pretend to be an expert.

01:59:08.940 No.

01:59:09.160 I've never been into it.

01:59:10.060 It's something I'd like to explore.

01:59:12.600 Wow.

01:59:13.040 But it's a real thing.

01:59:14.020 It's a real thing.

01:59:14.680 There's no question.

01:59:15.600 I know that.

01:59:16.320 Because I know people who are involved in investigating it.

01:59:21.100 Dude, that makes me scared, man.

01:59:22.760 Yeah.

01:59:23.060 Because the internet's already dark enough as is.

01:59:25.040 It is, you know?

01:59:26.380 It makes me really, really scared.

01:59:31.840 Take care of yourselves.

01:59:32.920 Yeah.

01:59:34.020 Happy holidays from us.

01:59:35.000 What do you have planned for Christmas, Chris?

01:59:37.940 I'll be back in Michigan once I get things wrapped up.

01:59:40.620 As you know, in this business, you know, I'm trying to do a month's worth of work in two weeks.

01:59:45.580 Yeah.

01:59:45.880 Because after the 15th, everything pretty much shuts down to the first.

01:59:49.340 Have you ever been on Dr. Drew's podcast, Drew Pinsky?

01:59:51.560 I have not.

01:59:52.140 I know a lot of people who have.

01:59:55.000 I'd love to hear you guys talk.

01:59:56.320 We kind of run in concentric circles.

01:59:58.140 You know, a lot of the Dr. Lisa Stroman, who's a psychologist, a lawyer who's done some stuff for our shows, also does a lot of stuff with Dr. Drew.

02:00:06.940 So, I mean, you know, he's a smart guy with a good reputation.

02:00:09.460 I've done Dr. Oz.

02:00:10.640 Yeah, yeah.

02:00:11.080 He's a sharp guy, and that's an interesting show to do.

02:00:14.760 Yeah, I've never done that.

02:00:15.720 I've seen that guy at the gym once or twice.

02:00:17.740 But, yeah, Dr. Drew's is fascinating.

02:00:19.660 Anyway, I'll have to reach out to him and see if he has some time when you're around, if you guys can be in the same circle.

02:00:23.820 I would just love to hear that conversation.

02:00:25.180 I think it would be really cool.

02:00:26.140 Yeah.

02:00:26.680 He's a special guy.

02:00:27.540 He's a sharp guy.

02:00:28.380 And so are you, man.

02:00:29.240 Chris Hanson, we appreciate your time, man.

02:00:31.280 Thanks for having me.

02:00:31.720 Thank you so much, and we look forward to your future projects, and we'll promote them however we can to help out.

02:00:35.980 I appreciate that.

02:00:36.200 And you got a quick gift for Chris?

02:00:37.860 Oh, yeah, that's right, actually.

02:00:39.360 But this is from our sponsor.

02:00:40.200 This is just a knife.

02:00:40.760 Oh, that's great.

02:00:41.380 Oh, thank you.

02:00:42.700 Might be some guys after you holding grudges.

02:00:45.280 Yeah, I appreciate that.

02:00:45.580 Not today, but just overall, you know.

02:00:47.520 Yeah, well, you never know.

02:00:48.080 Just be safe.

02:00:48.740 And it's even hard to get into it.

02:00:49.860 You almost need a knife to get into it.

02:00:51.000 To get into it.

02:00:51.700 Yeah, but it is a nice blade, man.

02:00:53.980 Oh, thank you.

02:00:54.500 And I keep one in my car just in case.

02:00:56.300 Yeah.

02:00:57.500 Well, that's nice.

02:00:58.260 How do you open this?

02:01:02.360 Yeah, it's kind of tricky, man.

02:01:04.060 Oh, there you go.

02:01:05.020 Yeah.

02:01:06.240 So there you go.

02:01:07.060 But, yeah, that's a nice little piece in it.

02:01:08.660 I keep one in my car, though.

02:01:09.780 Oh, that's nice.

02:01:10.360 Just to be safe.

02:01:11.580 Well, you know, you don't use one until you need it, and something's messed up, or, you know, you're trying to.

02:01:19.120 Right, yeah.

02:01:19.660 Thank you very much.

02:01:20.080 I'm not saying break it out, you know.

02:01:21.740 No, no, no.

02:01:22.660 It's not a switchblade.

02:01:24.360 I'm not saying lead with it.

02:01:25.860 Years ago, as a kid, a buddy of mine and I were down in Tijuana.

02:01:29.740 I mean, we were 19 years old.

02:01:31.720 Of course, we bought, you know, switchblades and stilettos, and I was digging through a drawer, I don't know, a couple years ago, and I found this thing.

02:01:37.180 It's a stiletto.

02:01:37.840 Yeah.

02:01:37.980 It still works, and I keep it in the drawer in the apartment, because it works as a screwdriver, and if they're a letter opener, and my oldest saw it, he goes, you know, you carry that on the street.

02:01:48.240 That'll get you a year.

02:01:48.900 I said, I don't take it out of the apartment, you know.

02:01:51.780 How about your son is teaching you?

02:01:53.820 He goes, you know, you can get a year for that.

02:01:55.100 I go, not in the apartment, unscrewing a, you know, a light fixture, for God's sake.

02:01:59.980 I said, I happen to be pretty familiar with the laws, you know, by the way.

02:02:05.560 Man.

02:02:06.040 I said, I taught you everything you know now.

02:02:07.880 You're just serving it back to me in bad increments.

02:02:11.180 Chris Hansen, thank you so much.

02:02:12.360 Thank you.

02:02:12.820 I've got to remember to check my bag with this so I don't get busted.

02:02:15.380 Oh, yeah, that's true.

02:02:16.420 Yeah, we would love for you to get busted.

02:02:17.840 That would be so great.

02:02:19.980 Thank you, Chris.

02:02:20.840 Thank you.

02:02:21.140 Now I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.

02:02:27.540 I must be cornerstone.

02:02:32.660 Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.

02:02:38.280 I can feel it in my bones, but it's gonna take.

02:02:45.160 A little time for me to set that parking brake and let myself unwind Shine that light on me

02:02:57.920 I'll sit and tell you my stories Shine on me

02:03:08.640 And I will find a song

02:03:12.820 I will sing it just for you

02:03:16.400 And now I've been moving way too fast

02:03:23.700 Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite, and welcome to Kite Club,

02:03:28.380 a podcast where I'll be sharing thoughts on things like current events,

02:03:32.060 stand-up stories, and seven ways to pleasure your partner.

02:03:35.780 The answer may shock you.

02:03:37.080 Sometimes I'll interview my friends.

02:03:39.560 Sometimes I won't.

02:03:41.240 And as always, I'll be joined by the voices in my head.

02:03:44.160 You have three new voice messages.

02:03:47.180 A lot of people are talking about Kite Club.

02:03:50.100 I've been talking about Kite Club for so long.

02:03:52.780 Longer than anybody else.

02:03:54.400 So great.

02:03:55.760 Hi.

02:03:56.400 Sweetie.

02:03:57.360 Here's a deal. 1.00

02:03:58.700 Anyone who doesn't listen to Kite Club is a dodgy bloody wanker. 1.00

02:04:01.840 Wanker. 1.00

02:04:02.680 Jar mine.

02:04:03.960 Hi.

02:04:04.820 I'll take a quarter pounder with cheese and a McFlurry.

02:04:07.760 Sorry, sir, but our ice cream machine is broken.

02:04:09.840 Oh, no.

02:04:12.160 I think Tom Hanks just butt-dialed me.

02:04:14.560 Anyway, first rule of Kite Club is, tell everyone about Kite Club.

02:04:18.720 Second rule of Kite Club is, tell everyone about Kite Club.

02:04:22.920 Third rule.

02:04:23.880 Like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

02:04:26.120 Or watch us on YouTube, yeah?

02:04:28.740 And yes, don't worry.

02:04:30.040 My Brad Pitt impression will get better.

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - December 13, 2018

Chris Hansen ｜ This Past Weekend #156

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