Chris Feistl & Dave Mitchell (former DEA agents)

Chris Feistl and David Mitchell (After Escobar: Taking Down the Notorious Cali Godfathers and the Biggest Drug Cartel in History, with Jessica Balboni) are former DEA agents. Chris and David join the Armchair Expert to discuss the Miami Vice dream of being stationed in 1980s Florida as a DEA agent, the mechanics of providing transport for drug cartels, and how they became involved in the pursuit of the Cali cartel in Colombia. Chris, David, and Dax talk about the true magnitude of Pablo Escobar as the world’s first narcoterrorist, how Cali cartel’s approach to power differed from Medellín’s, and why those at such a high level in cartels can’t quit while they’re ahead. Chris and David explain breaking the rules by working unilaterally to get the job done, operating under the assumption that everything and everyone was corrupt, and the real-life raid to capture the head of Cali that inspired Narcos Season 3. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Watch new content on YouTube or listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ http://www.wondery.com/links/armchair-expert-with-dax-shepard/ now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dax Shepard?

  Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Buck Rogers and I'm joined by Gene Lightyear.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  And we're in the cartel.

• 0:08Dax Shepard?

  But don't tell anyone.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Keep it a secret.

• 0:10Dax Shepard?

  Today, we have two incredible DEA agents, Chris Fiesel and Dave Mitchell. And they were sent to Colombia to bring down the largest cocaine cartel after Pablo Escobar.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  It, this is such a good episode. If you enjoyed the Scott Payne episode, you're gonna love this. This is very in keeping with that. They've lived a crazy.

• 0:36Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Life.

• 0:37Dax Shepard?

  Some terrifying moments.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 0:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, these, Dave and Chris have the most harrowing stories of penetrating and bringing down this cartel.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  It's really, really interesting.

• 0:48Dax Shepard?

  They have a super interesting book out right now called After Escobar. Taking down the notorious Kelly Godfathers and the biggest drug cartel in history.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  And if you liked Narcos.

• 1:01Dax Shepard?

  Well, one of the seasons of Narcos is based on this.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:05Dax Shepard?

  And their play, well, one of them is played.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. This is a great episode. Please enjoy Chris and Dave. Buckle up. We get support from Quince.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about the fact that the holidays are already here? It's crazy. I feel like I blinked and now we're in gifting season, which I'm not really mad about because I do love giving gifts. And Quince is making it so easy to find something great for everyone on my list, including myself. Because let's be honest, self-gifting is a love language.

• 1:36Dax Shepard?

  Quince is seriously the gift that keeps on giving. Their high-quality staples are made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. Full-on luxury quality at prices that won't wreck your holiday budget.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  It's the dream. The cashmere sweater, starting at $60. Down jackets, wool outerwear, cashmere accessories. You and everyone on your list are staying cozy and looking incredible all season long.

• 2:03Dax Shepard?

  Well, I'm gonna tell you this, it just got chilly for the first time this year in California. And I'm so excited. And I'm wearing my Quince cashmere right now.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 2:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, and I am going to gift this to some of my friends. I hope they're not listening.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Quince is also more than clothing. They've got fine jewelry for your significant other, leather bags for your bestie, hotel-quality bedding to set up your guest rooms, chef-grade cookware. That's an amazing thing they offer here. And it's such a good gift because people don't like buying cookware for themselves, but it's very important. And they also have five-star luggage, another good gift that people don't like buying for themselves.

• 2:38Dax Shepard?

  Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. This episode is supported by Helix.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Okay, can we talk about how November is basically survival mode? Between the holidays, the travel, the hosting, the cooking, the everything. Sleep is the one thing keeping me from completely unraveling.

• 3:13Dax Shepard?

  It really is the foundation. And I think people underestimate how much a bad mattress is quietly ruining their day. You wake up stiff, your back's angry, you're already behind before your feet hit the floor.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  That was me before Helix. I took their sleep quiz, which is so fast. It took me like two minutes. And they matched me to a mattress that actually fits how I sleep. Not a guess, not a firm or soft coin flip. It's a real match. I have a midnight mattress and I really like it. I was noticing it because I actually had to sleep in one of my other beds.

• 3:42Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  Recently.

• 3:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  That doesn't have a Helix mattress on it. And I really could tell a big difference in my sleep.

• 3:47Dax Shepard?

  Temperature was all over the map.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  It was a mess.

• 3:49Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  I need a new one.

• 3:50Dax Shepard?

  Look, they've got over 20 mattress models. So whether you sleep hot, need extra back support, or you've got a partner who moves around all night, there's one built for you. Plus, free shipping and a 365-night Happy with Helix guarantee. That's a full year to decide.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Helix has been named the most awarded mattress by Forbes, Wired, and more. So it's not just us being enthusiastic. The experts agree.

• 4:11Dax Shepard?

  Right now, Helix is running their Black Friday sale with up to 30% off. Go to helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. That's helixsleep.com/armchair for up to 30% off your Helix mattress. Helixsleep.com/armchair.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like your studio. This is nice.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 4:51Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my goodness. You have so much stuff.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  What? I love this.

• 4:54Dax Shepard?

  The irony of me in a DEA shirt is rich.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's good.

• 5:00Dax Shepard?

  This is the most amount of presents we've ever received.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm gonna put this here so people can see it.

• 5:05Dax Shepard?

  Do you know how these work, Monica?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  No, how do they work?

• 5:08Dax Shepard?

  Challenge coins, they're popular in the military. How's it work? You set it on a bar and whoever picks it up last, they have to buy the round. Everyone carries these.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  I'm not a coin collector, but you're right.

• 5:17Dax Shepard?

  That's how it works, right?

• 5:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 5:21Dax Shepard?

  They're kind of gorgeous, though, right? I like the weight.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're real nice.

• 5:24Dax Shepard?

  You could really think you've given us gold, which is the dream.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  And you have a lot of people who collect those things. They have stacks of them all over.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so fun. Thank you for that.

• 5:33Dax Shepard?

  I wonder if there's one company that's making all of the coins, or there's multiple.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  There's certainly a few.

• 5:38Dax Shepard?

  Okay, what a niche industry to find yourself in, challenge coins. It is gorgeous.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  There's so many ways to live a life.

• 5:44Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so Dave and Chris, welcome. Where are you from, Dave, originally?

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Born and raised in Kentucky.

• 5:49Dax Shepard?

  And what did mom and dad do in Kentucky?

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Well, my dad worked for Louisville Gas and Electric, and my mom was stay-at-home housewife. And I have two older brothers.

• 5:57Dax Shepard?

  Were you trying to get their approval all the time and earn your...

• 6:00Speaker 03

  No.

• 6:00Dax Shepard?

  No, you didn't care. Oh, wow.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Good for you.

• 6:03Dax Shepard?

  You were free of that.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  My older brother, he's the type where my parents would leave to do something, he would come in, just move the furniture, and says, "Okay, time to get it on." My little brother's not gonna be a wimp.

• 6:14Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 6:15Speaker 03

  And we get in a fight, while my middle brother watches us.

• 6:18Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  The referee.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  So when my parents came home one time, I'm thinking, "Oh, man, I gotta get my oldest brother." So we're watching TV. I just jumped on his back and this thur hit him in the head. And he goes, "I told you he was nuts."

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Oh, he framed you.

• 6:33Speaker 03

  They thought I had an issue. I said, "No, when you leave, he beats me up."

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 6:38Dax Shepard?

  Listen, when you're the younger brother, you're forced into a situation where you have to be crazy, and then you look insane to your family.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  They push you to the limit.

• 6:46Dax Shepard?

  And how about you? Where are you from, Chris?

• 6:48Speaker 02

  I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and then grew up in northeast Pennsylvania.

• 6:51Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. And what did your parents do?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  My dad was a schoolteacher, very smart man, had master's degree, doctorate degree, and my mom worked in a library.

• 7:00Dax Shepard?

  So no law enforcement in either of your backgrounds?

• 7:02Speaker 03

  Zero. My oldest brother became a police officer, but that's not the reason why I came on DEA.

• 7:06Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so how did you find your way to the DEA?

• 7:08Speaker 03

  I was in the military. I was an officer because I was in ROTC in college. So after I graduated, did the military, I was in Greece and after that went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. And it was peacetime. I heard about DEA, you know, found out about their mission and how they have offices, you know, throughout the world and domestically.

• 7:27Dax Shepard?

  What year was this?

• 7:28Speaker 03

  That was probably eighty-seven. I got hired on in eighty-eight. It took a year for me to get hired on.

• 7:35Dax Shepard?

  Okay. Obviously, the locations are appealing, but did you have any internal distaste for drugs in general? Were you like, these are bad, we gotta clean these up?

• 7:45Speaker 03

  Yes and no, because I grew up in an area, it's a rural area. We weren't really exposed to overdose deaths like you would in the big cities. And you knew, hey, okay, this is right and wrong. Maybe on the periphery. But no one in my immediate family had issues with narcotics of any type.

• 8:04Dax Shepard?

  How'd you find your way into it, Chris?

• 8:06Speaker 02

  In the summer of my junior year in college, a bunch of my friends said, hey, let's go down to the beach. Let's go down to the shore to live. And of course, you know, when you go down there, you gotta have a place to live and you gotta have some money to support yourself while we were hanging out surfing and doing some stuff. I checked on a summer job and I went to the municipal building and they said we're hiring summer police officers or lifeguards. So I said, what's this summer police officer thing? So I was in college and I called back to my one of my professors and I said, hey, can I turn this into an internship or something? And they're like, yeah, absolutely. You get credit for it. So I applied for that summer police officer job. I got it. And then I was in a bar one night and some girl came up and asked me to buy methamphetamine.

• 8:47Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  So we set up this little undercover deal and, you know, I met her up on the boardwalk and then that's what got me interested in law enforcement because I was gonna go to law school. I played basketball in high school and college. I wanted to be like a sports agent and stuff. And that put me on the law enforcement track. So I started looking into DEA. They have offices all over in foreign countries. So I applied there, CIA, you know, FBI, and, you know, I got hired by DEA.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Because did you get a little, pardon this pun, but high off of that undercover exchange?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  It was interesting. I thought it was pretty cool to be able to do that. That's when I looked into DEA. I really didn't know much about it back then. I saw what they did and the mission. And I thought, hey, that's pretty good. It's better than me sitting in an office.

• 9:28Dax Shepard?

  So he was eighty-six or eighty-seven, do you say? Eighty-eight?

• 9:30Speaker 03

  I came out at eighty-eight.

• 9:31Dax Shepard?

  And how about you?

• 9:32Speaker 02

  Same.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was a class right behind me.

• 9:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh, he was?

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's kind of interesting because we got hired in DEA at the same time. We got out of the academy at the same time. We went to Miami at the same time. Worked there together, and then we went to Bogota at the same time.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 9:46Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you guys were working together in Miami?

• 9:49Speaker 03

  There's different groups that you work in. We never worked together, but he was in a different group.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  But we knew each other.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  But we knew each other.

• 9:55Dax Shepard?

  Okay. And obviously, if you join the DEA, or at least my assumption would be, if you join the DEA in the eighties, your fingers crossed you get sent to Florida. I mean, this is where everything is happening.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  That was my dream spot. It was my number-one choice.

• 10:09Dax Shepard?

  Yes, this is the era of Cocaine Cowboys. You have the Black Widow down there. You got a lot of shits popping in eighty-eight.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Don Johnson.

• 10:17Dax Shepard?

  Yes, Miami Vice.

• 10:18Speaker 02

  They put a huge spotlight on South Florida.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  I'll tell you one thing about Don Johnson. If he realizes in the late eighties, he's probably one of the number-one reasons why so many people joined DEA.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Oh, my.

• 10:30Dax Shepard?

  Even though he was a cop, though, right? He somehow worked for, yeah. Yeah, you have the Scara boat, the Ferrari.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  I heard first they're gonna make it a DEA, but DEA said, "We don't want nothing to do with that." So they made it a cop show.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Big mistake.

• 10:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, they say that, too, about Top Gun, like, the recruitment for Air Force. They didn't even need to advertise for ten years, and then you saw it dissipate as that movie's popularity waned.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  It's very timely.

• 10:54Dax Shepard?

  He brought it back.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  I've just been going down a Dakota Johnson rabbit hole, so this is quite timely.

• 11:00Dax Shepard?

  Very sim for you.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:02Dax Shepard?

  So what was happening as new agents in South Florida in the eighties? What kind of activities were you guys engaged in?

• 11:10Speaker 03

  That was the place to be. We felt we're so lucky being in Miami because you had so much cocaine coming through. It was coming through Kelly Cartel was bringing in through the container ships. They were known for that. They'll have it in a concrete post and wooden planks. And then the Medellin guys, you know, they were bringing it by air, dropping off the Everglades or flying it over northern part or central part of Florida. You name it, it would come in.

• 11:35Dax Shepard?

  People don't understand the context of Florida in the late eighties. At a certain point, there was more money in the Federal Reserve, cash.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Absolutely right.

• 11:44Dax Shepard?

  I want to say then every other Federal Reserve combined.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  Ten times.

• 11:48Dax Shepard?

  Ten times.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  Except the whole room was full of dollars. Oh, my God.

• 11:51Dax Shepard?

  I mean, think about that. You have where all the cash is stored for the government and you have one area of the country that has a hundred X everywhere else. And then also like exotic cars are being so they can't keep them down that there's a recession. Those cars are flying off the shelves. There's cash in abundance. It's so in everyone's face. Clearly, we know there's billions and billions of dollars flowing through Florida in cash.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  I think in the reserves, there is like six billion surplus. Cause they look at the surplus and know where the money laundering's been.

• 12:21Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Cause later in the years, that six billion went down to four billion. They noticed, oh, we have some action in LA. Their surplus is up. Oh, interesting. So that tells you now they're getting dope money in LA.

• 12:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's like a very transparent metric for how much cash is being put in the economy.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  But you're exactly right about buying cars, restaurants, because you have trickle down economics. I could tell it works with dope money. Right, right. Some of these countries, you have the rich and the poor with narcotics. You start seeing a middle class.

• 12:51Dax Shepard?

  Well, you need a lot of lawyers, you need bankers, you need finance people, and they're getting paid well.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  And that was the place to be. Like, if you wanted to be a DEA agent in the eighties, you wanted to go to Miami, right? Because cocaine cowboys, Miami Vice, everything was happening back then.

• 13:06Speaker 03

  All the action.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  All the action was happening there.

• 13:08Dax Shepard?

  So what kind of missions were you on as a DEA agent down there?

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Well, that was a good thing about Miami because you got exposed to every type of investigation that you could think of. From street level deals to marijuana cases to cocaine importation cases. I worked a lot of maritime smuggling investigations, which meant that we had good undercover setup with these coastal freighters and these houses like you would see on Miami Vice down in the Florida Keys that we used as potential stash houses. And we would pose as transporters and bring cocaine for the cartels into the US and then turn it over and then try to identify those cells.

• 13:43Dax Shepard?

  All right, so stop there. That's of great interest to me. First of all, there's a great doc on a guy who was a Kentucky boy who came down to Florida and he started importing on big cargo containers marijuana and then funded his Indianapolis race team. Do you know this guy? He ended up racing in the Indianapolis 500 as a rookie.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 14:02Dax Shepard?

  He just was doing it to pursue his race dreams. But at any rate, what are the mechanics of providing transportation to the drug cartel?

• 14:09Speaker 02

  So two of the vulnerabilities that these cocaine trafficking organizations or marijuana trafficking organizations always have is transportation and communications.

• 14:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Those are always areas that they're looking for people to get the drugs into the US. And we would have these assets that we would use, who would be undercover, basically working as informants. And they would say, hey, I have an organization that can transport your cocaine or your marijuana from Colombia into the US. And they would say, well, how would you do that? And then we would explain to them, look, we have access to coastal freighters. We have access to speedboats. We'll bring it in. We'll offload it to these houses in the Florida Keys. We'll transport it up into the Miami area and we'll turn it over to you.

• 14:49Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  And then what we do is we would get paid for our transportation fees, which would be two, $3,000 a kilo. So that's how we would make money technically as transporters.

• 14:59Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so that's already an interesting aspect. So now the transporters make a good deal of money.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  But do you ever feel like I'm making more money doing this than my actual job?

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, they were making 10 times money.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  But I mean, for DEA agents, when they're hiring them, how do they know that your morals are so good that you're not gonna like, turn?

• 15:20Speaker 02

  Well, that's a good question. You go through a battery of different tests, especially now. You'll do a written test, you'll do oral interview panels, you do polygraph examinations. They do periodic background checks on you now. And they would also do a whole entire background check before you got hired, to make sure that you were never in trouble.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  We both know, when we first got into Miami, there was several people who were arrested. They went to the dark side.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  I imagine it's fairly tempting.

• 15:45Speaker 03

  So this guy's their agent, doesn't mean, okay, he's not gonna take money. Unfortunately, sometimes they do. One person may take it. And that one person is gonna ruin the reputation of DEA for the other 99%, that's working hard.

• 15:58Dax Shepard?

  A friend of ours, he's in the FBI, every time he takes money out and gives it away to the informant, when he comes back, all the accounting, he is hooked up to a polygraph. Like, every time there's money involved, he's on the polygraph. They're monitoring that pretty closely, at least in the FBI.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  And there's a lot of safeguards, too. We have to take money out, we have to sign for it, we have to pay assets or informants with two people. We have to have them sign forms saying that they received the money. But again, it still happens.

• 16:24Dax Shepard?

  So back to when you guys, the DEA, is transporting the drugs, and it's 2-3 grand a kilo, you guys are receiving a ton of cash.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Sometimes.

• 16:34Speaker 03

  You receive some of it beforehand. We call it trafficker funds. So they'll say, you know what, we're gonna give you 50, 80,000 dollars. And you say, okay, and you can actually use that to fix your undercover boat, to buy the fuel, to buy food for the crew, to prep for the trip.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  But a lot of times, though, it never gets that far, right? And not to give away too much on the sources and methods part, but many times, if not most of the times, we arrest the people involved.

• 17:00Dax Shepard?

  And never get paid.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Before we're actually able to get paid, because we can't give them the cocaine, right, or the marijuana, and let them take it away and go, right? We have to arrest them. We're not allowed to let that walk.

• 17:10Dax Shepard?

  You can't follow that around.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  We can, but ultimately, the potential of losing.

• 17:15Dax Shepard?

  If some people die.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Yes, correct.

• 17:17Dax Shepard?

  Is it fair to say, if my understanding correctly, like, ultimately, the overarching strategy is, we're getting our foot in the door, we're hoping to... Expose ourselves to the people we made contact with. Leverage that to get them to go up a rung on the ladder and climb the ladder. Is that part of the process where you're kind of trying to get people involved? So that you can get them to turn on someone above them and so on and so on?

• 17:40Speaker 03

  Well, that's exactly right on your street level type cases.

• 17:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 03

  But when we went to Bogota, started working the Cali, we were dealing with the top people. You don't get any hard.

• 17:49Dax Shepard?

  That's exactly why I bring it up is I want to establish like the known trajectory of it versus what you guys had to do. It's a whole different strategy.

• 17:56Speaker 03

  Different strategy.

• 17:57Dax Shepard?

  So when do you guys get sent to Colombian? Are you sent now as a pair?

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Pretty much we were. I got selected first is only like a week, but we both put in and we finally got selected. We had to go to Langwood School and learn Spanish is about three, four months. Oh, God, that is not enough time. Well, we both had a background.

• 18:16Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you did.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  And you had to like score a two. You talked to somebody on the phone. So it wasn't you can write or anything. You just had to speak on a two level. Yeah. So a two level, well, it goes to five.

• 18:27Dax Shepard?

  Oh, five.

• 18:28Speaker 03

  A five is a native language. Oh, wow. Okay. Really, if you get a three, if you're a three, you're a good Spanish speaker.

• 18:34Dax Shepard?

  You're good to go.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  Really good Spanish speaker.

• 18:35Dax Shepard?

  And now when they send the two of you, did they say to you, okay, here's our strategy down there. This is what you guys are going to do when you get there. Or were you guys sent and basically like figure this out for us?

• 18:48Speaker 02

  When we were both in Miami, we both worked investigations that targeted the Cali and the Medellin cartel. So we had a pretty good background on who the players were and what they were doing at that time. And since we were in Miami, a lot of our cases, we would follow leads that would go back into Central America, into South America, right? Because we were dealing with the upper echelon cartel leaders. So we knew some of the agents in Bogota that were there and they knew some of the work that we had done. And since we had that background on working against those cartels, they assigned us to work in the Cali group. That was to go after the Cali cartel because at the time, most of the resources of the Colombian government and the US government were dedicated to going after Pablo Escobar. We all know about Pablo Escobar.

• 19:30Dax Shepard?

  Can we take one second? Cause I don't think people really understand the magnitude of Pablo Escobar. And I think it's fun as we talk about what was happening in Miami. So some quick facts about Pablo Escobar, I think will blow people's mind. In the eighties, Forbes listed Escobar as the seventh richest person in the world. This is a dude that had a $30 billion net worth in the 80s, which would be like 70 billion today. He was making $420 million a week. He spent $2,500 a month on rubber bands to wrap the money. He lost 10% of the cash to rats in mold. Uh, he lost 2 billion a year to rats eating the money. Had his own private zoo. Offered to pay off Colombia's national debt.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 20:12Dax Shepard?

  Was in a position to pay off his own country's national debt. He bombed a commercial airliner. He built a ton of neighborhoods. He was loved. 25,000 people attended his funeral. Like, this is the scenario you're walking into.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 20:23Dax Shepard?

  This has become such a business that this is the seventh richest man in the world. And you guys arrived almost immediately after he's been killed, yeah?

• 20:29Speaker 02

  Couple of months after, right.

• 20:31Dax Shepard?

  So, obviously, Medellin was this big power source. And when he dies, what happens?

• 20:37Speaker 02

  So even before Escobar was killed, and you go back until the 1989 and some of the stuff that you brought out, they were actually assassinating presidential candidates. They had killed the Minister of Justice, Rodrigo Lara, in 1984.

• 20:50Dax Shepard?

  I'll add, they were gonna try him. And in the courthouse, he sent in tanks to drive through the fucking courthouse, grab all of the evidence and files, and then just leave. That's the kind of shit he was doing.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Right, the Palace of Justice attack, which is another terrorist activity, as well as blowing up the Avianca flight.

• 21:05Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he was a dictator, almost.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  He was a narco terrorist.

• 21:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  That's what we say. He was the world's first narco terrorist. And as a result of that, the Cali cartel was like in the shadows because all these resources were going after to try to eradicate Pablo because he was this evil, evil person.

• 21:22Dax Shepard?

  They had to be so grateful for him, on one hand.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  And that's why they were smart, because they learned about that. They saw what had happened, right? The Colombian security forces, the national police hunted Pablo down like a dog and killed him on top of a rooftop, barefoot.

• 21:35Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  And the Cali cartel wanted no part of that. So they learned. Their weapon of choice was the bribe, right? They paid everybody.

• 21:42Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  They owned businesses, banks, soccer teams, a drugstore chain. They owned everything.

• 21:46Dax Shepard?

  They had 4,000 legit employees.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  Yes, just in the drugstores alone.

• 21:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  They were massive. But the point is, is that while the Colombian government was at war... With Pablo Escobar, Cali started to rise. They took advantage of it and they were quietly making billions and billions of dollars a year.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  They say narco democracy. So that came from the Cali cartel because they paid everybody off from the foot cop in Cali, all the way up to the administration of the president.

• 22:14Dax Shepard?

  Well, they built police stations. Forty percent of the economy in Cali was their money. That's like General Motors being in Detroit.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Forty percent of the economic development in Cali during that time, they were responsible for.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 22:28Speaker 02

  So you see, just like Pablo, they had the will of the people behind them, right?

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  They were bringing in money, they were bringing in construction, they were bringing in jobs. And they were doing it how? Quietly, right? They weren't killing people like Escobar was.

• 22:40Dax Shepard?

  And who was they? There's four folks at the top?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Four leaders of the Cali cartel.

• 22:45Dax Shepard?

  Tell us about how they knew each other, how they were organized, how they were able to be peaceful like that. I know a couple were classmates.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  So you had the two brothers where Gilberto Rodriguez, the older brother, and his younger brother Miguel Rodriguez Orauella. They were the two principal de facto leaders of the Cali cartel. The number three man in the Cali cartel was Jose Santa Cruz Londonio, aka Chepe. And the fourth person was Pacho Herrera. The cartel started with the two Rodriguez brothers and Jose Santa Cruz. They formed this criminal gang called Los Chamas.

• 23:16Dax Shepard?

  And they had been classmates as kids, no?

• 23:18Speaker 02

  They knew each other from childhood, the three of them. And they formed this criminal gang, which ultimately evolved into more criminal activity, then drug trafficking, and then low and behold, Gilberto drives a couple of kilos back in the early seventies up into New York. And boom, Cali cartel is born.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  What qualifies it as a cartel? Does it have to be a certain amount of money?

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Oh, what a cartel is, you have independent organizations, smaller organizations below. And they're all working together for the same goal. For narcotics, okay, we're moving dope into the United States or to another country. So they use the same resources. They might use the same routes to transport the dope. Because many times we get a large load, there'd be different emblems, maybe Flintstone. So that's one.

• 24:03Dax Shepard?

  They would brand their product.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, they would brand their products. So you know. Where it goes, once it go to the States. But they would share their own assets. They would share like laundering money. So, everything is shared.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  It's a full business.

• 24:16Speaker 03

  Just a huge conglomerate.

• 24:17Dax Shepard?

  Organization, you have growers that are loyal to just that. You have the labs that are theirs.

• 24:21Speaker 03

  But what made Cali different? Cali was considered one of the most sophisticated drug organizations. Chris couldn't explain it better. They had four different areas, just like IBM. They have the trafficking organization, their military organization, their financial organization. But up in the States, they would work out of cells. And a cell would have anywhere, say, from 10 to 25, 30 people. But one cell would not know another cell. So, if they got arrested, that other cell wasn't compromised.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  Very compartmentalized, almost like a terrorist organization, right? So, if you take down one person, he only knows who's in that one cell. So, if you have 15 or 20 different cells working in one city, he can't jeopardize any of the other cells.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  And then the Cali cartel was noted. They really made narcotics, cocaine, worldwide.

• 25:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, because at one point, the Cali was responsible for 85% of the cocaine in the United States, but 90% of the cocaine worldwide.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  And we always say the Cali cartel dominated the cocaine trade on six continents. And if Antarctica had a drug problem, it would have been seven continents. They were global.

• 25:24Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Did you ever find yourself just admiring it?

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Many times.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  You had to respect them.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  If you didn't respect them, I mean, you couldn't do your job.

• 25:32Dax Shepard?

  I've had a long obsession with Pablo Escobar. He's a terrible, terrible person. It's tens of thousands of people suffered, maybe more. But, if you're not mildly attracted to see someone's will, take them somewhere on a ride, a poor kid becoming the seventh richest man in the world through his own will, it's minimally fascinating. That's quite an accomplishment to come from a barrio and become the seventh richest man in the world.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  People always ask, what is the fascination with Pablo Escobar or even some of these other drug cartels? And I think that's part of the reason is you see, how does somebody get that big? How does somebody get that violent? What in their background? Where did they start out as a poor person?

• 26:11Dax Shepard?

  But there's also a lot of administration and bureaucracy. It's a huge organization. The quintessential ingredient isn't crazy or brave. It's like, no, no, you kind of got to be a good manager. You got to be a good delegator. This is a huge business. It's just really impressive, even though we don't like it.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  No, but if you look at the sophistication and everything about these guys, just like you said, you'd have to sit back and go, Man, these guys are good.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  This is just making our job so difficult to try to penetrate that infrastructure and their security network and their intelligence.

• 26:40Dax Shepard?

  They're a worthy fucking adversary.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Extremely worthy adversary.

• 26:43Speaker 03

  They had the will of the people and you can't really blame the Colombian people. Pablo was putting bombs everywhere. Everywhere they go, my kid gonna die today with a bomb. Kelly Cartel didn't do that. Kelly Cartel was supporting the Pepe's to go after the Medellin. So if you're there and you know, okay, there's a demand for cocaine in the United States, so there's gonna be somebody.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  You know, serving it. So would you rather have Kelly Cartel who's not putting bombs anywhere?

• 27:12Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:14Speaker 03

  So that's why they kinda had the will of the people.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Those were the choices they had.

• 27:16Dax Shepard?

  This is probably a question for the end, but we're kinda here, which is another fascination I think people innately have. Certainly mine is like, why don't they quit?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  That's a very good point.

• 27:26Dax Shepard?

  Pablo, could he have stopped being the eighth richest man in the world and like let all the problems go away? Or these guys could have just pulled up stakes and been like, okay, great, we did it. We got our billions, we're out. And none of them can do it.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  It's not about the money at that point.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  It's about money. It's about power. It's about control. But then also, once you're in that far, you can't get out.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  How do you get out?

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Because if you try to get out, what happens is, and you see this a lot in the organized crime and in the mafia, if you try to get out, they think that you're gonna turn informant and you're gonna rat people out. And the minute that you try to get out, that's when they kill you because they're worried about everything that you know.

• 28:01Dax Shepard?

  They can't risk it.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:02Dax Shepard?

  You're a liability. Which then becomes a great tool for you guys.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  That's right. That's exactly right.

• 28:07Dax Shepard?

  It's a blessing that they won't let these guys retire. If they had just let these guys retire, you guys would probably have a lot less to work with.

• 28:13Speaker 03

  You never see anybody really retire.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, you retire in the ground when it's certain now. That's how you retire.

• 28:18Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you guys land in Colombia and you go to Cali, the city. And how do you design your approach? Where does one start trying to cut off the head of the serpent?

• 28:30Speaker 03

  We really started from crawling to walking to running. When we were told, hey, you guys are gonna be working Cali, we couldn't leave the embassy to go to Cali. They said, no one's allowed to Cali, it's too dangerous.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  So eventually we were allowed to go to Cali only for a day. And so you have to be back.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  Here's the outline. So we roll into Colombia. At that time, Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world. It's led the world in homicides. It's led the world in kidnappings. Car bombs were going off all over the city until Pablo died. So we walk into that. We try to go to Cali. As Dave said, they won't let us go. It's too dangerous. Two agents who were working there previously had their photos taken. The photo came back to the embassy and it was perceived as a threat. You guys can't go.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  And they were Hispanic agents that fit in. And they still caught him.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Cali, zero American presence. Who do they send to Cali?

• 29:16Dax Shepard?

  The whitest two guys they could find.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  The end of it. The whitest and the biggest, right? Cause we're both the good 6'2", 6'3". Dave looks like he could play tight end for, you know.

• 29:26Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  That was the environment that we were walking into. And we were extremely security conscious. We were always worried about our safety. We all knew the story about Kiki Camarena, what happened to him in Mexico. He was kidnapped and killed.

• 29:39Dax Shepard?

  He was an agent.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  He was a DEA agent. He's portrayed in season one of Narcos Mexico. So that's always on the back of your mind. We're operating in this very inhospitable, hot environment, which was Cali.

• 29:51Dax Shepard?

  And you're not going to be able to do anything covertly. Everyone knows you guys are DEA. I think that's important.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  We were embedded with the police and the military. So we actually lived with them on their base. So when we first got there, we started staying with the military. Then the colonel said, hey, you guys are DEA. I'm going to bring my friend down. He's with the Colombian National Police. So we met him. So then we would start staying at the police base, even though we were told they have more Cali snitches in there, infiltrators than Swiss cheese.

• 30:25Dax Shepard?

  Right. So yes, that's exactly what I want you guys to talk about, which is I want to know how the fuck you even evaluate who's helping you there. Because as you say in the book, the places. Almost universally corrupt at that point. They got a president elected.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 30:40Dax Shepard?

  How on earth do you know when you're talking to the friendlies, who you can share information with, who you can't, who you can actually trust? How do you sniff that out?

• 30:48Speaker 03

  Well, you don't know who the friendly is. So when we were working at the police space, you can kind of stand off. And what I would do and Chris would do, or if I was a bad guy, who would I go after? Who has all the information? And unfortunately, it was one of the liaison captains that was assigned to us. He was their top source.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  But we had to operate. We get criticized for this, but it was the only way that we could protect ourselves as well as our sources and methods and our assets that we were using is we had to operate under the assumption that everyone was corrupt.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  And we knew that that wasn't the case, but in order to do what we had to do, we had to operate because we could not take that chance.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Why do you get criticized for that?

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Because they say, well, you can't lump everybody into that category as being corrupt.

• 31:29Dax Shepard?

  You're gonna assume some very innocent people are guilty.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  We knew that. And look, Colombia sacrificed more than any other country on earth in terrorism.

• 31:35Dax Shepard?

  Because of our fucking consumption, by the way.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  And the narco trafficking. And there were a lot of, just for the record, a lot of hardworking and honest Colombian men and women who went out there every day to try to do the right thing, right? And a lot of them lost their lives doing it.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Even up to today, dozens of officers.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  To be safe, though, we had to operate under that assumption that everyone was corrupt. So we only shared part of the information that we had. If it came from A, we told them it came from B.

• 31:59Dax Shepard?

  But how do you even orchestrate any kind of action? Because you're gonna need them and you're gonna be immediately telling them what you're gonna do. How did you navigate that?

• 32:08Speaker 02

  And that's how we learned to navigate that system. Because raid after raid after raid that we did, we found that it was compromised, right? And we knew like, hey, this was really good information. Something's wrong. Some of the stuff too, it was like you'd seen the movies. We'd come in and there'd be half a cup of coffee there and it'd still be hot, but there'd be nobody in the apartment, right? Or there'd be some toast there, half eaten. And you'd be like, somebody was just here and they just left.

• 32:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, still filling the bathtub.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  Like Miguel had a problem with his low sugar level, so he had a lot of fruit or something. So we'll see all kinds of fruit, that type of diet he was eating.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, whoa.

• 32:41Speaker 03

  And you know, he always had, we called it a switching station, 25 lines. So if somebody picked up the phone, they wouldn't know what's going to that port. You know, they would do a raid over here.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  So we knew the info was good.

• 32:53Dax Shepard?

  But everyone you're dealing with, from the military to the police, they are all expressing the goal to bring down the Cali cartel?

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 33:03Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 33:10Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Skims. Okay, I have a confession. I genuinely love matching pajamas. It's the best part of Christmas morning, really. Everyone in the same matching set, looking ridiculously cute in front of the tree.

• 33:24Speaker 01

  I love matching pajamas. I'm literally going to be in coordinating sets with all my friends this holiday season. Because I got them, spoiler to my friends who are listening, the same Skims pajama set I've been living in. They are so soft and cozy and they look cute. So you can leave the house and go get a late night hot chocolate and cozy.

• 33:45Dax Shepard?

  It's so great how Skims has sets for everyone, too. Women's, men's, kids, even your pets. So nobody in your life has to be left out this year.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  I have a bunch of different pajama sets. One of my favorite is the organic cotton sleep long sleeve set.

• 34:02Dax Shepard?

  Okay, tell me more.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  It is so comfortable, very chic, too. The top is a button down, but very, very soft, easy to sleep in. But as I said before, you can multi-purpose this and look super cute.

• 34:15Dax Shepard?

  Hot chocolate runs. It's like the pajamas we grew up in, except without the scratchy polyester that made opening presents feel more like a hot yoga class that nobody signed up for.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  All the nostalgia, none of the discomfort. Shop my favorite loungewear and pajamas at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcasts in the survey and be sure to select Armchair Expert in the dropdown menu that follows. If you're looking for the perfect gifts for everyone on your list, the Skims Holiday Shop is now open at skims.com.

• 34:43Dax Shepard?

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Every family has that one holiday tradition nobody actually enjoys, but everyone keeps doing because stopping it would feel like a federal offense. For me, it was a specific meal situation that I will not name because my family listens. But at some point, you have to ask yourself, am I doing this because I love it? Or because I'm afraid of what happens if I don't?

• 35:06Speaker 01

  Yes, and that question applies to so much more than the holidays. I think a lot of us carry these invisible rules about how we're supposed to spend the holidays, who we're supposed to see, what it's supposed to look like. And when you start unpacking that with a therapist, you realize half of your stress is coming from rules you didn't even write.

• 35:22Dax Shepard?

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• 35:41Speaker 01

  I just love therapy. I've been avoiding it recently, or not avoiding it, but I was like, oh, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy. I have to cancel, cancel, cancel, but then I-

• 35:49Dax Shepard?

  You start feeling it.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, because then I had it this past weekend and I was like, oh my God. And just thank God, thank God for her. Yeah.

• 35:57Dax Shepard?

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• 36:42Dax Shepard?

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• 37:25Dax Shepard?

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• 38:30Speaker 05

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• 38:54Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so work me up to, I guess, the breakthrough for you guys, and maybe there's one before that, but I'm thinking the breakthrough is getting in touch with Celso? Celso. Other things that could. Get us up to that point.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Okay, so the real break comes in June of 1995. So by this time, Dave and I are on the ground almost one year.

• 39:13Dax Shepard?

  Can we add one thing? I forgot one thing.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 39:15Dax Shepard?

  The Cali cartel has an edict, "Do not kill the DEA agents."

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 39:20Dax Shepard?

  That's what we thought. That's what we hoped.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:23Dax Shepard?

  Obviously was the case because you guys could have been killed on day two.

• 39:26Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 39:27Dax Shepard?

  So you have to reverse engineer that that is.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  That's why you got to respect them.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  What's their reasoning for that?

• 39:31Speaker 02

  Well, they saw what happened when the agent Kiki Camarena was kidnapped and killed in Mexico. And they saw the response, not only from the US government, but from the Mexico government. They shut the border down and they did not rest until every one of those guys, as best they could, was brought to justice.

• 39:46Dax Shepard?

  You're picking up what you don't want.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 39:47Speaker 02

  They didn't want the heat. Plus, they saw what happened in Panama with Noriega, that the US invaded the country to go after Noriega. So they were concerned, the Cali cartel was always concerned of military action. Whether or not that would have ever came about, they were concerned about that. So that was always in the back of their minds. Don't harm the DEA guys because we don't want that added heat.

• 40:04Dax Shepard?

  Don't wake the tiger up.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  I thought the 82nd Airborne was flying into Cali.

• 40:07Speaker 02

  That's because of Dave, he could tell you that later.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  I would tell him that all the time. If we get hurt, 82nd Airborne's standing by.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  But there were three keys to us being successful going after the cartel leaders. And again, this was after a year on the ground, failure after failure after failure, compromise after compromise, corruption systemic throughout the service.

• 40:27Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, how you guys stayed optimistic, I don't know.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  That was our job. We had to keep pushing forward. But there were three things. One was the use of these special polygraphed and trained units that were in Bogota in Colombia that were trained by the intelligence community. And I think we all know who we're talking about when we talk about the intelligence community, the CIA.

• 40:47Dax Shepard?

  Yes.

• 40:47Speaker 02

  We started to use these specialized groups.

• 40:49Dax Shepard?

  And that would be to deal with your counterparts in the military?

• 40:53Speaker 02

  And the corruption, right? So they would come from Bogota. They weren't stationed in Cali. They would come over land in Bogota, so nobody knew that they were there. The second one was the recruitment of assets that we had. Salcedo was one of them, but before that, we recruited two other assets.

• 41:07Dax Shepard?

  How do you get in that door?

• 41:08Speaker 02

  It's complicated. There's a couple of different ways. Salcedo is a long story and we can get to that. But we're able to recruit these two assets that provide us with really good intelligence about where Hilberto Rodriguez is. And we're able to surveil one of his executive secretaries back to where Hilberto is.

• 41:23Dax Shepard?

  Because you need to get one of these four heads involved in some criminal activity when you approach them, right?

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Well, they're already wanted in Colombia for drug trafficking, money laundering.

• 41:32Dax Shepard?

  Oh, so they're already.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, the charge is already there.

• 41:34Dax Shepard?

  So it's really just finding them.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. A manhunt.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  This is terrorist. This is 100% the same thing.

• 41:40Dax Shepard?

  Finding Osama.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's exactly what it is. It's a manhunt. And then the third key thing was Dave and I being able to work unilaterally. Because of the systemic corruption, we started to do everything unilaterally.

• 41:51Dax Shepard?

  And what does that mean?

• 41:52Speaker 02

  We were operating on our own, independently from the Colombian units. We were living in safe houses away from the base because it was infiltrated. We were debriefing our own assets throughout the city at nighttime. We are doing our own surveillances. We are doing our own reconnaissance.

• 42:06Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you said the daytime was just a fake. Like, all day you were with the government people, and your real job happened at night.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  There's one thing, even though we're working unilateral, doing surveillance, doing interviews at night, debriefing, we don't have arrest powers. And in a safe way, we have arrest powers. So what our goal is to come up with intelligence information and have a package.

• 42:27Dax Shepard?

  And figure out who the right official is to give it to that you can trust.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  We want to use these better teams.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Teams that we use from Bogota.

• 42:33Dax Shepard?

  This is Kafkaesque.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  It's very complicated.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  So listen to our instructions. When we go back to our first trip to Cali, so they say, okay, you and Dave can go to Cali, but there's three rules you have to abide by. And this was the first trip. One is you had to be back by nightfall. You couldn't stay overnight. The second was we could never leave the police or military base without a police or military escort. And the third thing was, because you know the reputation that DEA has, no cowboy shit, right? No unilateral activity.

• 43:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  So what did we do? We violated those rules on a daily basis because that was what we had to do to get the job done.

• 43:10Dax Shepard?

  Yes. I imagine grooming an asset would be so hard because, again, everyone in town knows your DEA. Anybody you approach is like, well, the DEA wants to talk to me.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  You know, we were followed. And not to cause harm on us per se, but they wanted to see if we were meeting anyone that might be a source. And then they'll go after that person.

• 43:29Dax Shepard?

  Well, you were being followed by police officers. You were being followed by taxi cab drivers.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Couple guys on a motorcycle, you know who they are.

• 43:35Speaker 02

  And that's what made meeting these assets super difficult because we had to do it at night, right? We couldn't do it during the day because we would stand out like a bunch of sore thumbs, right? And they always told us at the embassy, you guys don't blend in. Cause I used to have real long hair before I went to Bali, I had it down to the middle of my back. I looked like an extra out of Point Break with

• 43:54Speaker 02

  but we would have to do that at night, not only for our safety, but for the asset's safety too, right? Cause we didn't want them to be exposed.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Where are you meeting them at night? Like in the woods?

• 44:04Speaker 03

  Cane fields, construction areas.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Even logistically getting to them, we need to meet here feels hard.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  Well, we had a whole process of communication. We would communicate by beepers. We would send coded messages. If I put in 5551212 to call me at that number, we had a pre-arranged plan where we would subtract one number from each digit. So it would be like 444, you know, if anybody intercepted the number, they wouldn't know what they were looking at.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  And also keep in mind that our main source, Jorge Sosero, he was the main security guard for the Cali cartel for Miguel Rodriguez.

• 44:39Dax Shepard?

  He is high up. How do you meet him?

• 44:41Speaker 03

  He would tell us where to meet him cause he would put security forces somewhere else. He'll say, hey, meet me in Seattle, the cane field, cause I don't have anybody there. Or you guys can drive by this location and check it out. I'll pull my forces out and I'll give you a 15 minute window, but only 15 minutes.

• 44:58Dax Shepard?

  He had control of all the eyes and ears luckily. He might've been the only person that could have come and worked with you in a way.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  So he knew where everybody was at, where the security, where the patrols were. But we came into contact with him because he had a long past in the cartel. So he gets recruited into the cartel because he has contacts with these British mercenaries. Because he was a captain in the army reserves. And while he was in the army reserves, they did an operation against the FARC, which is a left-wing Marxist Leninist guerrilla group that was fighting against the government. So the Cali cartel leaders asked him to bring in these mercenaries, it's right out of a movie. These mercenaries into Colombia to launch a helicopter assault operation against Pablo Escobar at his finca where the zoo was, hacienda de Nápoles. So they bring these guys in, they train for a couple of months.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  They launched this operation because they know Pablo's throwing a party for his soccer team. And these two helicopters go over to Hacienda Nopales, but on the way, they hit bad weather. One helicopter crashes.

• 45:58Dax Shepard?

  It's like Black Hawk Down.

• 45:59Speaker 02

  Couple of pilots killed. So Salcedo is recruited for that mission to kill Pablo Escobar because of his contacts. But as time goes on, right, he starts to see what's going on. He sees the murders. He sees the bribery. He sees the corruption.

• 46:15Speaker 03

  Well, he can't leave. He can't get out.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Right. So that's the point.

• 46:18Speaker 03

  Where you're gonna say, guys, I don't want to do this.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, he'll be killed immediately.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  When he got into the cartel with Cali, the agreement was that after Pablo was dead, he goes, I will help you kill Pablo because he's an enemy of the state. He's a terrorist. The world's a better place without him. Under one condition, that once Pablo is dead, I'm allowed to go back to my civilian life. He was an engineer.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 46:37Speaker 02

  So of course, what happens? Escobar is killed. Senor Miguel, Pablo is dead. My work here is done.

• 46:43Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, right.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  I'm going back to private life. No, you're not.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Oh, fuck, that's so mean.

• 46:47Speaker 03

  Plus, he went over to El Salvador to pick up four bombs and they wanted to get a particular plane. This is when Pablo was in prison. They want to fly over, drop these bombs on his prison.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  So this is the sequel to the helicopter movie part, right?

• 47:04Dax Shepard?

  Il fated helicopter.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  So he realizes that his only way out of the cartel is either he's gonna get arrested or he's gonna get killed.

• 47:11Dax Shepard?

  But does he find you or do you find him?

• 47:14Speaker 02

  It's kind of both. One of his associates gets, not associates, a contact. He was an attorney in the United States. He used to come down to do legal affairs for the Cali cartel. And they struck up a friendship and Salcedo would act as a translator for these American attorneys that would come down because they didn't speak Spanish. And he struck up a friendship with him. This attorney ends up getting indicted in an Operation Cornerstone case with 59 other people. And Salcedo starts to think, hey, this might be a way for me to maybe get out because otherwise I'm gonna be dead. So he sends a message basically saying like, hey, I think we might be able to help each other. I'll help you. Maybe you get your sentence reduced. You help me.

• 47:51Dax Shepard?

  He says that to the lawyer?

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, kind of hooked me up with somebody in the government where maybe.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  Discreet telephone call.

• 47:56Speaker 02

  Maybe we can do something.

• 47:57Dax Shepard?

  How much money does he have, Jorge? Is he loaded?

• 48:00Speaker 02

  No, we asked him that question when we first met him.

• 48:02Dax Shepard?

  Your bosses have hundreds of fucking millions of dollars a month.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  So in our first meeting, just to jump ahead, we asked him that, like, hey, how much money do you get paid by Miguel Rodriguez, who's the head of security for the Cali cartel? And he didn't even blink an eye. He said, I make a thousand dollars a month and get a take home car.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so dumb of them. You'd think you'd want that person.

• 48:21Speaker 03

  But some of these guys are really frugal.

• 48:22Dax Shepard?

  While hundreds of millions are rotting in a hole that they've forgotten about. It's like this dichotomy of frugality and total waste.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 48:32Dax Shepard?

  It's like great psychology that emerges when people find themselves in the situation with too much money, too much power, like all these other things that get predictable.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  And in the book, we outline our first meeting with Salcedo and everything that happens after that point. It's like very well detailed. It's very well documented because they've kept an incredible journal of when we were there. And I would always tell him, dude, what are you doing? Writing all this shit down? So every day he would come.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's scary.

• 48:56Speaker 02

  We did this, we did that, you know?

• 48:58Speaker 03

  I did it to myself because people say, you didn't do, where were you? And we say, on this day, we were here. On this day, we did this.

• 49:03Speaker 02

  So we were able to fill in with a lot of details about meetings like this.

• 49:07Dax Shepard?

  He called for a meeting in a sugar cane field and you guys had to go there a few hours ahead of time and scope it. And then act like you've arrived. That first meeting must have been.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  We're in the car and Chris is talking to him. He has an intercom. He goes, let's meet at CIOT. CIOT is agriculture location and that's where the cane field is. I looked at Chris. I said, Chris, we can't go to CIOT. First of all, we have no protection.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:32Speaker 03

  They could have anybody there to kill us.

• 49:34Dax Shepard?

  Are you even allowed to carry guns while you're there?

• 49:36Speaker 02

  We were carrying guns. We're allowed to carry guns, but remember, we're not supposed to leave the police base.

• 49:40Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 49:40Speaker 02

  So we're running around doing all these activities.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  So here's the head of security for the Cali cartel. First he tells me, let's meet at CIOT, but come alone. I'm like, I'm not coming alone. Are you crazy? I have to come with my partner. And then finally he says, you can come with your partner. And then he says, no Colombians, right? Because he was one of the guys that was paying off a lot of the Colombians. So he knew about the corruption. Because if I see anybody who's even looks Colombian, the deal is off.

• 50:04Dax Shepard?

  Even if they brought you, Monica, he might have, he might have been too brown, yeah.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  So we're sitting there thinking like, the head of security, the Cali cartel, wants to meet us an hour outside of Cali, telling me to come alone and not to bring any Colombians. And we're thinking like, dude, this could be a trap. This could be an ambush. We weren't sure what to expect. We're not even supposed to leave the base. And then here we are, going to go meet this counterintelligence officer. In the middle of a cane field, an hour outside of Cali. So it was pretty hairy. I think we outlined that pretty well in the book, how we felt because honestly, we were pretty scared, yeah.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  It's funny when we're there, everything's funny now. At the time, it wasn't. But I looked at Chris, I said, Chris, have you ever seen that movie Onion Fields? This could be our onion field.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Why?

• 50:45Speaker 03

  What's the onion field? Well, that actually happened in California. Yeah.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Oh, what happened?

• 50:49Speaker 03

  It's where some police officers were killed in the onion field. And they made a movie about it.

• 50:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so you meet with him and do you like him?

• 50:57Speaker 02

  He's not at all what we thought. Just to backtrack a little bit, he says, meet us at the cane field at 3 o'clock. Right? We get out there at 12 because we're terrified it's going to be an ambush or they're going to set us up and try to kill us or kidnap us or whatever. So we're out there in this blistering heat, like sitting around for three hours waiting, but we had a good vantage point. So at least we can see everything coming for a while. So if anybody came in, we were prepared and we were pretty heavily armed. Like I say, we looked like Neo and Trinity when they went into the government controlled building to get Morpheus. We were loaded, but as we were there, nobody came. Maybe this guy's for real.

• 51:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  And I think we all have preconceived notions. We're thinking head of security for the Cali cartel. It's going to be like a really bad guy.

• 51:39Dax Shepard?

  Something out of the movies.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Exactly. He's going to look a certain way. He's going to talk a certain way. And when we saw him, he was the exact opposite of what we thought. Came alone. He wasn't armed. We made sure Davey had patted him down. We checked the car. We were still wary for a trap.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  And he said our names first. We went to introduce ourselves.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, he knew who we were.

• 51:58Speaker 03

  They knew everything about us. They had nicknames for us. We were called Los Monos.

• 52:04Dax Shepard?

  What is Los Monos?

• 52:05Speaker 03

  Los Monos is a monkey, but what they would use it for is if somebody is bare skinned.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  Like the gringos, where the gringos.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  The gringos that's born, they would call them Los Monos.

• 52:15Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's interesting. That's almost a universal racial slur.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, for real.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  There's something comforting about that.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  That was what the cartel called us. They referred to us as the Monos. But he talked real softly, like with a very low voice.

• 52:29Dax Shepard?

  An imposing man or was he just a normal?

• 52:31Speaker 02

  No, he was just very normal looking. The clothes that he wore, the way he walked, like not trying to make a sound or an impression. So I look at they like, and this guy is like the exact opposite of everything that we thought. And then of course, the first thing he says to us is like, hey, this is going to be a one time meeting and it's going to be real quick. Because I got to get back to Cali because I'm on standby for him to go, the head of the cartel. But as we started to talk and go over things, we ended up being out there three hours that first meeting.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh.

• 52:56Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Until it got dark.

• 52:57Dax Shepard?

  Was your mind being blown? Were you learning things that were unimaginable?

• 53:01Speaker 03

  You open up the book. We learned more in those three hours than.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  The whole year on the ground.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 53:05Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 53:06Dax Shepard?

  Can you remember one of the most shocking things you heard during that?

• 53:09Speaker 03

  There was one thing. I looked at him. I said, hey, I just need to know, is DEA a threat? He looked at me just like a father would and says, you and Chris, you work very hard.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Oh, so patronizing.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  No, he goes, you guys are hard workers, but no, DEA is not a threat, and this is why. You and Chris can go out, talk to anybody you want, together, information, intelligence. But at the end of the day, you don't have arrest powers. You have to deal with the Colombians, and that's where we got you.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 53:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it all unravels a second. You gotta get official.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  And by that point, we were very well aware of the systemic corruption that existed within not only the security forces, but in the government. But just talking to him and how plainly and how simply he would just put out that, oh yeah, well, you can't deal with this person because he's corrupt and the cartel's paying that guy and we paid this guy. It was overwhelming, the amount of corruption that we were dealing with.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Did you ask, why should we trust you?

• 54:08Speaker 02

  We did. We talked all about that. But then when we started to hear his story, how he got involved in the cartel and that he couldn't get out.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  I'd have such a hard time believing it.

• 54:18Speaker 03

  Really, you don't have a choice who you deal with.

• 54:20Dax Shepard?

  You don't have a choice. And then also, I think you'd be reasonable to conclude, it's not worth them fucking with us. As he said, they're not a threat. They don't have to be appeased. They could be ignored. So why do this? They already know where you're at. I would trust it because there's almost no incentive for them to be keeping an eye on you. They're already doing that.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  And at that point, we were pretty well versed on the cartel and what they were doing. But talking to him, it just took us to a whole nother level. But we would ask a lot of questions that we knew the answers to, just trying to vet him. He was basically doing the same thing to us. Like, hey, you guys are kids. You know, we were 30 years old at the time.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  You know, and he's like, you guys are here trying to bring down the head of the Cali cartel. Look at you guys. So he was like, how can I trust you? How do I know that you guys are gonna be able to handle it, right?

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:05Speaker 03

  Then he asked us, he goes, listen, it's not only my life, but my family's life. So it's my family's life is in your hands. Can I trust you?

• 55:13Dax Shepard?

  Well, what's funny is you already answered a question inadvertently earlier, which is my first thought when I thought of Jorge joining Witness Protection, which he has now done here in America. I thought, what a demotion in his lifestyle. But now that I know he made a thousand bucks a month.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Seriously.

• 55:28Dax Shepard?

  I'm him and I'm high on the hog and I gotta consider moving to St. Louis and living in a track home.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  But you're worried about your life, you're living in fear.

• 55:35Speaker 02

  Trusting him initially was difficult, but as we started to talk and we got more into details, like I said, and we were asking questions that we knew the answers to, and he was being honest and upfront and forthright. Plus, we were there three hours with him. We think this guy's above board, but that still doesn't mean that we didn't take precautions every time.

• 55:53Speaker 03

  So we met him numerous, numerous times after that one, one time.

• 55:56Dax Shepard?

  Okay, now what is mind blowing is you guys do find out where Miguel is, and you raid his place, and you don't find him. Is that correct? The first raid, he's in a wall?

• 56:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, there was actually two raids even before that.

• 56:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  Without Jorge.

• 56:13Dax Shepard?

  Without Jorge.

• 56:14Speaker 03

  The one where he's behind the wall, that was with Jorge.

• 56:17Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so the first big, solid tip with this new ass.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  I'm scared for Jorge during all of this.

• 56:22Dax Shepard?

  Are you guys present for that?

• 56:23Speaker 02

  We're there. Anybody who's seen Narcos, season three, it focuses on the Kelly cartel. This scene is very well done by Netflix and it's very well outlined in the show. To make a long story short, we're in this apartment looking for Miguel Rodriguez, at the time now the head of the Kelly cartel.

• 56:38Dax Shepard?

  How nice of an apartment.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  This one was very modest.

• 56:41Dax Shepard?

  Here's the other thing, when you learn more about these things, like it's such a dream to live this way, and then you find out half the time these people are running through tunnels and they're in shitty apartments. It's like, they can't enjoy any of it.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  At that point, they were on the run and they were hiding. You go back years before, they were living in the big walled houses, the Miami Vice style homes with the pools. But now, they were continually moving because we're hot on their trail. We're raiding place after place after place. And while we're in the apartment, we're in contact with Salcedo. And he keeps relaying information to us because he's at another meeting with other cartel members where he's getting this real time intelligence and he's forwarding it to us.

• 57:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  So the first thing he tells us is that he's there, he's in a coletta. It's a secret hiding spot, just like you see in these old movies where you push the wall and it opens. Yeah. Highly sophisticated. So he tells us, is there a big red desk in the apartment? Because there's these really sensitive documents. So we're looking around for latches, we're pushing, we can't find shit. And then one of our partners who's there, Jerry Salome, he comes and he picks the desk up and he just turns it over and it smashes on the marble floor and it breaks open and in the back of the desk is a hidden compartment in a desk. How do you do that? With three briefcases. And in these briefcases, check this out, this is staggering, are all these super sensitive files, corruption related information, letters from the president's office about money that

• 58:04Speaker 02

  they had donated. And there was a list of 2,800 corrupt officials. Just in those briefcases.

• 58:13Speaker 03

  2,800. Good luck finding the strength.

• 58:16Speaker 02

  Exactly. So we find that that buys us a little more time. Then he tells us, look, he's in this secret compartment in the bathroom. He's hiding, he's in the bathroom.

• 58:24Speaker 03

  He's there.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  So he's been there for the last 12 hours, right? How was he telling this, on the phone? Well, we were going outside, making phone calls. He was at a payphone. And we were at another phone about 100 yards away and we didn't even know, we didn't know we were that close. Oh my god. And then he would go back in and get more information to come out. As the head of security, he was able to get out and to relay, hey, I gotta go check on my guys, they're telling me this. So it didn't cause a lot of attention. So finally, there are like four bathrooms in the apartment. And we're knocking on walls, everything, how the hell can there be a hidden compartment in the bathroom? Finally, we take measurements of the apartments below and above. We were in the bathroom, we go, this bathroom is smaller. This is the only one that doesn't make sense. And we opened the sink cabinet and it hits the toilet.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  Keep in mind, we're going days and days with hardly limited sleep.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  We're not at our best, we're exhausted.

• 59:13Speaker 03

  Chris and I, we're in the restroom. We had the sink right here with the door right under it. And it doesn't open all the way, it hits the toilet. And we are so exhausted. We go, look at this. Who would make something like this?

• 59:24Dax Shepard?

  You're just judgment of the construction.

• 59:26Speaker 03

  And then we realized, this is the cover.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  And then we saw a little yellow hose over it. This is it. And that's when we started getting drills.

• 59:34Dax Shepard?

  So you start drilling into the walls and you break three drill bits.

• 59:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 59:40Dax Shepard?

  You run out of drill bits.

• 59:42Speaker 03

  Corrupt captain that was supposed to been our liaison, who was the main source for him. He grabbed me by the arm. This guy was literally in a panic. And he goes, who's your source? Who's your source?

• 59:53Speaker 02

  How do you know this?

• 59:54Speaker 03

  How do you know this? Who's your source?

• 59:56Dax Shepard?

  None of your business, bitch.

• 59:57Speaker 03

  And I said, I said, no, there's some space not accounted for. And then, once we started drilling through the walls, he looked at their lawyers for the government and said, the Americans are doing. Yeah, prosecutors are doing unilateral action. So that's when they detained us.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  Some say maybe arrested us.

• 1:00:17Dax Shepard?

  They got everyone out of there. They had drilled holes right next to it. Imagine his experience in the wall.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  He's just standing there.

• 1:00:24Dax Shepard?

  Listening to you guys bitch about the construction quality.

• 1:00:29Dax Shepard?

  Just wondering like, fuck, are they gonna get it? I mean, I can't imagine when his body was feeling like.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Dodging like.

• 1:00:34Dax Shepard?

  In there. And now drills are coming through.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  Saying.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  The prosecutor is getting this information that the Americans are conducting a unilateral operation. He comes in, shuts the entire operation down. We're within a minute.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Of accessing this component. This is no lie. You couldn't have drawn it up any better in a movie script if you tried. We were literally a minute away from grabbing this guy. And the prosecutor came in, he shut it down, he brought us out to the living room, took the keys, locked the keys to the door, put them in his pocket, typed up a formal complaint against us, and then escorted us and made us leave the apartment.

• 1:01:09Dax Shepard?

  Just full corruption.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:01:10Speaker 03

  And we said, can we leave? No. I said, so we're arrested? No, you're not arrested. You just can't leave.

• 1:01:15Dax Shepard?

  What new word are you gonna say?

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  So we left and jumped in. One of our friends, he worked for the intelligence community, he had a truck already for us. But when we went to Bogota that night, we were out of the news. I mean, names.

• 1:01:27Dax Shepard?

  And were they saying you guys had gone rogue?

• 1:01:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were saying that we conducted an operation. I thought, tomorrow I'm leaving Columbia.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  BPNG, I'm out.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  We got our asses handed to us by the ambassador. You know, he said, like, I thought you guys weren't participating in operations. You weren't supposed to leave the base. You're conducting unilateral action. Remember the three things that we broke every day?

• 1:01:45Dax Shepard?

  We warned you about.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Even though we were in a lot of trouble. The only thing we were worried about was Salcedo.

• 1:01:51Dax Shepard?

  He potentially blew his cover in that.

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  At that point, we thought they're gonna kill him.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  Because even if they don't know that he was responsible for that raid, he was one of the people that technically had access to information.

• 1:02:03Dax Shepard?

  I'm sure it's a narrow group that could have provided the info, and they're gonna go through that list.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  And they could just kill everybody. And then we didn't hear from him for a couple of days, so. So that was more sleep that we didn't get. I mean, we had lost 20 pounds by this point each because of the the stress and the crazy work hours that we were working in college.

• 1:02:21Dax Shepard?

  This is the end of the second act in a movie. You guys are ready to quit. So how do you then go from that failed mission where you guys are accused of all these crimes against the state to building another raid where you get him?

• 1:02:34Speaker 03

  So we're in Bogota, we're thinking, oh man, what's going on with our source? So we had a meeting and we said, listen, we haven't heard from this guy in about three days. Hey, we're gonna have to go down to Cali, pretty much meet with the captain who's dirty. Could really get bad. But fortunately, he gave us a call and says, hey, I'm still here. I'm gonna send you some photos.

• 1:02:55Dax Shepard?

  Of Jorge.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Of the new location. So we got those photos. And we're looking at it and we said, okay, let's meet up. He said, okay, you guys come on down. And that's when we met, he met at Cane Field again. We always meet in the Cane Field, it seems like. He had other photos, which Chris had under the seat of the car. And I don't know if you want to get into that now. That's when we had to bribe our way out.

• 1:03:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, tell us.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  So we're in the Cane Field and at that time, and you see all these taxi cab drivers everywhere. I'm saying, what's going on with these taxi cab drivers? Then you see the Colombian National Police with their lights on. But it turned out somebody killed a taxi cab driver. This happened to be right when we were in the area.

• 1:03:35Dax Shepard?

  Just by coincidence.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, we said, let's get deeper into the Cane Field. So we were. And we're talking about, you know, okay, the raid, where is your security? What's the entry points? How can we get in? We're trying to talk so fast so we get the information.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Is he mad at you guys? Is he's like, why didn't you get this done?

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  I mean, he was disappointed, obviously.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:56Dax Shepard?

  He knew the lay of the land. He knows there's people on the inside of that raid working for the cartel.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  His life is the one most in danger.

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  So we're talking to him, trying to get this information. And all of a sudden, we see a Colombian National Police van pull up with his lights on. So he gets out, first thing he does is separate us. Now, they separate Chris from me, they put Chris next to the car. There is a lieutenant and a sergeant. The sergeant is searching the vehicle, luckily, he didn't look under your seat. So, me and Jorge, we are with the lieutenant. You guys got put as a pair? Yeah, and the lieutenant's looking at us going, "What are you guys doing here?" Does he know Jorge? Exactly. No. He doesn't.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  That's why we met where we met, because we are an hour outside of Cal.

• 1:04:36Speaker 03

  Thank God, because he'd be dead if that. It gets even worse. Yeah, he goes, "I'm gonna have to take you guys in, to the police station." And we knew, our lives could be jeopardized, but really Jorge's life would be jeopardized. And there is no way we're gonna let that happen. So I had like $600 of operational fees with me, I gave it to Jorge, I said, "Go ahead and bribe him." So he gave me the $600, and he goes, "Whoa, I'm not taking that. If you're not doing nothing wrong, why are you bribing me?" I'm thinking, "Man, we got the only legit cop here." When you did need one.

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  The only two, the only two.

• 1:05:06Speaker 03

  Oh my God. So, what we did before they came, we had all of our IDs and our guns, we threw it in the cane field.

• 1:05:13Speaker 02

  So, because we couldn't be identified as DEA, right? Because if we said we were DEA, it would compromise him immediately.

• 1:05:18Speaker 03

  Exactly, yes.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  So we had to go into our whole undercover, cover stories, that we were German scientists, that we were working at this agricultural center, which is where we were meeting. And we were researching alternative crop development.

• 1:05:31Speaker 03

  It didn't go that far. I mean, because he realized, "No, no, these guys are Americans." So at that point, he goes, "Why are you trying to bribe me? You're gonna go to the police station." I'm thinking, "He ain't gonna take us to the police station, he'll probably take the money." But he kept on saying, "Going to the police station." Oh, boy. So I'm trying to get Chris's attention, I'm thinking, "Okay, what can we do? If he tells us to get in that van..."

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're not going, we're thrown down, at that point.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  Trying to come and dure him or do something. Yeah. So we were that close, we were that close, and he hosted his Beretta, and I'm thinking, "Okay, I can take him, but I hope Chris can take the guy."

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  They had Uzis too.

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  With the Uzi. Oh, God. All of a sudden, I heard Jorge scream out, "Somoos homosexualis."

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  We're gay.

• 1:06:12Speaker 03

  That means, "We are homosexuals." Oh! And I went, "Holy shit," and I looked around. That lieutenant's eyes got really big. And he goes, we just want to be left alone. The Americans want to be left alone. We've just come here. We want to just have alone time.

• 1:06:29Dax Shepard?

  Just some gay sex.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  This is brilliant.

• 1:06:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, somebody was probably so uncomfortable.

• 1:06:34Speaker 02

  Brilliant. This is something that they had never.

• 1:06:35Dax Shepard?

  He didn't want you in the car now.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Well, for him, then that makes total sense. Like, well, yeah, now I get why they want to be alone.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  So my eyes are like this, and the lieutenant sergeant walked over to me and Jorge, and they look at us up and down. They walk over to Chris. Chris had longer hair.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:50Speaker 03

  Looked him up and down and went.

• 1:06:51Dax Shepard?

  This checks out.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  And they were worried I wouldn't blend in in Columbia, right?

• 1:06:54Speaker 03

  Took the money, said, you guys leave. So when we were walking out, I said, Jorge, man, that's great. How do you come up with that? He goes, look at Chris's hair. I thought it wouldn't work out.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  That is so wild.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  It was brilliant. It was obviously something that they weren't expecting, and they hadn't gone over that in their police academy training thing because they didn't know what to do. And as bad as that situation could have been, you know, Kiki Camarena, right? We're worried they're going to take us and they're going to kidnap us and kill us. And that was some of the best undercover work that me and Dave did during that meeting. Because when he said, we're gay, none of us batted an eyelash, right? You would think we would laugh or something or smirk, but we were like.

• 1:07:30Dax Shepard?

  Oh, that's our way out.

• 1:07:31Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, that's brilliant. But, yeah, we couldn't be identified as DEA. We had to throw our weapons, our IDs.

• 1:07:38Dax Shepard?

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

• 1:07:45Dax Shepard?

  This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I have my dream job. I get to talk to folks I admire like crazy and ask them virtually any question that I want to. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. But even dream jobs have some not so dreamy parts, the stuff that gets in the way of the actual work. Now, that's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it, start to finish. Cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. So you and your team can focus on what matters most, which for me is, are they obsessed with male bodies on the same level as I am?

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

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• 1:08:28Dax Shepard?

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• 1:08:34Dax Shepard?

  We get support from Instagram teen accounts. So we talk a lot on this show about how the world is different now than when we were growing up. And one of the biggest differences is obviously social media. And I think a lot of people wonder, okay, what's actually being done to make it safer for teenagers?

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Which is a fair question.

• 1:08:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so Instagram has got something called teen accounts and they come with automatic protections built in by default. So anyone between 13 and 17 is automatically placed into this experience. They get age appropriate content settings, contact limits, so that by default, only people they're already connected to can message them. And time management tools, daily time limit reminders, and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Sleep mode is genius.

• 1:09:19Dax Shepard?

  Right? And here's the thing, for anyone under 16, a parent has to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age appropriate experiences for teens.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  I am really glad Instagram is helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts.

• 1:09:38Dax Shepard?

  Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. We get support by Peloton. You know that feeling when you're spiraling over a problem and you just can't figure it out? When that happens to me, I need a change of pace and I've found that running is the best way. It takes my brain out of the driver's seat and I come back with a fresh perspective. Running can be freeing and cathartic and Peloton helps you feel all of that. And now that feeling fits wherever you need it with the new Peloton Tread Flex. It's movable and foldable, designed to fit your life. So next time you feel stuck, you can go for a run literally anywhere, whether that's in your office, living room, or even the attic.

• 1:10:23Dax Shepard?

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• 1:11:12Dax Shepard?

  Okay, so with that information, now who do you approach that you can trust with it to initiate the next raid?

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  By this point, we had started to work with two of these specialized units attached to the intelligence community. By this point, based on the information that we were getting from Salcedo, Dave and I are working 100% unilaterally. No one in the Colombian government has any idea what we're doing at this point, right?

• 1:11:36Dax Shepard?

  So three of you.

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  Jorge, once we get back to Cali, he can't be seen with us.

• 1:11:40Dax Shepard?

  No, I'm just saying you three are the only humans that know.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Yes, so we're watching these suspected buildings where Miguel was at because he sent us two photographs. He goes, I think he's in one of these two buildings because where I have security stationed, there's only one way in and one way out, and it has to be these two buildings, right? So we were focused on those two buildings. And then we started to get a little bit more information, and we knew that Miguel had fired all of his domestic staff after the last raid, right? So he got new maids, he got new executive assistants, and he brought in these two Afro-Colombian maids to do his meal prep and stuff because of his hypoglycemia. So one night about 1 o'clock in the morning, we're doing our own surveillance, and we look through the binoculars.

• 1:12:21Speaker 03

  But tell me what we did surveillance?

• 1:12:23Speaker 02

  We were at a statue.

• 1:12:24Speaker 03

  It's like a little park.

• 1:12:25Speaker 02

  And we would sit there, and we would drink beer and hang out.

• 1:12:27Speaker 03

  There's a bunch of locals around. And you could see a cane field from the distance, and they were burning the cane field. So it was actually nice. So people would just lean against the hill, drink their beers, and watch the cane field burn.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  It was like a hangout.

• 1:12:39Speaker 03

  So we fit in.

• 1:12:40Dax Shepard?

  So you're occasionally looking through binoculars?

• 1:12:41Speaker 02

  We were looking through binoculars. Yeah, but we would pretend like we're looking at the burning Sure, because other people were doing the same thing.

• 1:12:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  And then a light came on in the kitchen at about one o'clock in the morning. And we started to look through the binoculars and I was able to see these two Afro-Columbian maids. So that was a key that we saw the maids working at one o'clock because we knew they're making him meal to control his hypoglycemia. So we called for the raid and we brought these teams in from Bogota, 210 miles away. And they came over, we didn't tell them what they were doing, we actually lied to them. We told them that we were gonna hit a location over here, which had nothing to do with Miguel, but actually we were going after the head of the county.

• 1:13:18Dax Shepard?

  You didn't have a lot of people with you, did you?

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  There were four DEA agents, one or two intel community guys.

• 1:13:24Speaker 03

  But if I can back up just for a minute, because we kind of narrowed down where was that? And he goes, "There is a concrete channel for water to flow through. You can go through there and go through the back way." So Chris and I, we actually went up there and walked it discreetly. And yeah, it opened right up.

• 1:13:42Speaker 02

  But the operation involved coming down the side of a mountain after we transited through that flood control channel. So these people were like, "I thought this way we were raiding a chemical company. Where are we going? Why are we going climbing mountains and stuff?" So nobody knew anything about what we were doing or where we were going.

• 1:13:57Dax Shepard?

  There was rappelling involved?

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  We had to come down the side of the mountain. But we didn't have to rappel, but a lot of people fell and jumped and slid. It was pretty hectic.

• 1:14:06Speaker 03

  When we did our little recon beforehand, just me and Chris, we weren't able to see the very end, the drop off.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  Down the side of the mountain.

• 1:14:14Speaker 03

  And Jorge told us, "Tell them to take a rope." So we told the Navy Commandos, we said, "Hey, take a rope." So they did take a rope, but I guess it didn't help out.

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  Well, it was pitch black, right? The terrain was super rugged and treacherous. It was pitch black at night. We did the raid at four o'clock in the morning. People were falling, they couldn't see. The prosecutor we were with broke her heel. Oh. People had to help her out. Other people couldn't make it down the hill. So it was pretty, pretty treacherous descent down the side of the mountain.

• 1:14:41Dax Shepard?

  All right, so you get into this apartment and what happens?

• 1:14:45Speaker 02

  We spread out, we start going room to room. Now, this is a very nice place, right? This one is about 4,000 square feet, very modern, one apartment per floor, 19-story building, very nice. So we start running through the apartment, turning on lights, looking in, you know, the rooms. And one of the Navy Commandos we were with, we hear him yell from the back of the room, "I got him, I got him." And I looked at Jerry, who was with us, Jerry Salma. And then we ran into the back of the bedroom where he was. He was holding him by the shirt. Miguel Rodriguez, the commando, was holding him. Pulling him out of the hidden compartment in the closet. He was just getting ready to get in. There was a concrete door about six inches thick. So what he would do is he would slide the door closed and lock it from the inside with horizontal bars.

• 1:15:29Speaker 02

  And then he was with one of his ex wives. So he always had to have somebody else there in the apartment to close the coletta and seal it up, right? Because what this one was is imagine two file cabinets, two dressers side by side. You would have to take the drawers out

• 1:15:44Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  to access the coletta. So once he got in and locked the doors, his ex wife or the assistant would come and put the drawers back in. So when you walked into that closet, you would just see a dresser.

• 1:15:55Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  You would never think to take the dr- and even if you took the drawers out, it was so perfectly constructed, you would just see the back of the wall.

• 1:16:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But inside there, you would have an oxygen tank, water, food.

• 1:16:07Speaker 04

  My God.

• 1:16:08Dax Shepard?

  The amount of preparation to stay on the run. Yeah, so it was a walk-in closet and it was basically three feet shorter than it should have been. They built out the back wall of it.

• 1:16:18Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  And the only reason that we were able to grab him was because we had spoken to the Attorney General in advance of Columbia and we got special permission to do like a no-knock search warrant, to knock the door down.

• 1:16:29Speaker 03

  Which is unheard of there.

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  Which they didn't want to do because these are very extravagant apartments and houses, I mean, millions of dollars. So we were able to get up there and knock the door down after a couple whacks and get in there very quickly. So he didn't have enough time to get into that coletta, that hidden compartment and put the drawers back. But if we were probably a minute or two, he would have already been sealed up. Still, till this day, we would be in there knocking and looking for stuff. We would have never found him because this was probably the most highly sophisticated compartment that we had found in Columbia.

• 1:17:00Dax Shepard?

  Can you just think of the logistics of this man's life, like? All of these safe houses need to be being built around the clock because he's got to move nonstop. They all have to have the Coletta. Like the amount of staff required and construction and all this shit to stay ahead of it.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  Yep. And these were very skilled architects and carpenters that were building these. Now, some of them were pretty rudimentary. I mean, they weren't that great. The last couple we found were highly sophisticated and we would have never found them. They were very, very skillfully done.

• 1:17:30Dax Shepard?

  Well, unlimited budget.

• 1:17:31Speaker 03

  A lot of times they go inside the hidden compartment. You might know he's here. We just have to find him. But after you've been there for an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours, you know, the Colombians might lose interest.

• 1:17:42Dax Shepard?

  Well, I was gonna say, you're against the clock of when does someone high enough up the chain of command kick you out before you can find them?

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  Which happened several times.

• 1:17:50Speaker 03

  The first one, when he got out, the captain who was our liaison, he actually just went in and took him and put him in the back of his car and drove out.

• 1:17:58Speaker 02

  That's what happened after we left.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  He went back in, extracted him out of the compartment and took him to the new place.

• 1:18:06Dax Shepard?

  Your liaison.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  Now, we didn't know that at the time.

• 1:18:08Dax Shepard?

  How much were those guys making? So you got the head of security is making a grand a month. What were the payoffs?

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  Great question. For that extraction alone, he got $50,000.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:18:18Speaker 03

  But that's back in those days.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  That was 1994.

• 1:18:20Dax Shepard?

  Also, from Jorge, I'm furious. The most offensive part of this whole story is what they were paying Jorge. I'm more appalled by that than the drug trade.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm glad because otherwise he would have had more of an incentive to just stay and deal with it.

• 1:18:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he might have been like, I'm stuck in this life, but damn, it's good. I got hippos like Pablo.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:36Speaker 02

  And that's what's good about the book because we go into excruciating detail about all of our time on the ground operating in Cali. All of the raids that we did, what we did, why we did what we did, why we didn't do this and why we did this. And it's from our point of view, right? So you're on the ground, you're kind of like with us through this journey that we're taking and you're getting a lot of inside information about the operations that we did, which is pretty cool because there hasn't been anything other than Narcos, which is 50, 60% true about the Cali cartel. And it's much lesser known than Pablo, right?

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Dax Shepard?

  You know, Chris is one of the leads of Narcos 3. I mean, he's not an actor, but the lead actor is playing him.

• 1:19:12Speaker 02

  There's an actor who plays me.

• 1:19:14Speaker 03

  The other guy's playing me. He doesn't have my name, though. I was still in the job.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  Oh, I see.

• 1:19:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. Were you a little resentful that he was getting all this love and you're like, hey, he had a partner and his name's Dave.

• 1:19:23Speaker 03

  If you can make it work for yourself, go ahead.

• 1:19:26Dax Shepard?

  Can you quantify or make the experience relative to other experiences in your life? The moment where you walk in the room and you see he's actually being held. And that barring some crazy intervention, you have him. And I'll add, I think more rewarding than for the guys that are working on Pablo, which is like, he got killed in front of them. You're not going to get to talk to him. There's not going to be a prosecution. What was that sensation when you see he's right there? We have him.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  Thank God it's over. First thing I said, because at that point, we were on the ground in Cali 15 months or so. And we were exhausted. We were happy because it was over because now Salcedo can get him and his family out. Get into WITSEC in the US. When they brought him, the Navy SEAL, Colombian Navy SEAL, dragged him out. And he pretty much plopped him right in front of me and Jerry. I was only a couple of feet away from him.

• 1:20:17Dax Shepard?

  What if he said, oh, my God, it's the homosexuals I heard about?

• 1:20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:22Speaker 02

  But he had the deadest eyes, like that thousand yard stare that you can just look into and go like, man, this guy's killed a lot of people or ordered them to be killed. It was pretty chilling to actually sit there. And I just told him, Seko, listen, you're Seko. Like, it's over. But relief, thanks. And that Salcedo was safe because you imagine every day we had to bear that burden of.

• 1:20:47Dax Shepard?

  Getting this guy killed.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yes. And after that first failed raid, we thought, oh, man, we got him killed.

• 1:20:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:53Speaker 02

  That's so stressful.

• 1:20:55Speaker 03

  The stakes of it. Wasn't the final, though. I mean, we still had other work to do. We told Salcedo, all right, get your family when we start pulling you out. He goes, no, we still have more work to do.

• 1:21:03Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:21:04Speaker 03

  And he goes, we have to get Palomari.

• 1:21:05Speaker 02

  He's a hero.

• 1:21:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:21:07Dax Shepard?

  He did not become a suspect after the guy was caught. So how did he help with the other?

• 1:21:13Speaker 03

  He just told us where Palomari's wife was working.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  Tell them who Palomari was.

• 1:21:18Speaker 03

  Oh, Palomari was the accountant. And he was the accountant that knew all the skeletons. It was Paul Amari who we needed after the arrest. Because all the books were coded. Mmm. And he can cipher all the codes, tell you where all the money went. Keep in mind, Paul Amari, he was from Chile. So he can be extradited. So that's why the Cali cartel wanted him dead. Ah. And pretty much, he kind of made some stupid comments before during one of the police raids. I work for the Rodriguezes, he shouldn't have been saying. They knew that he would talk. We got with the wife. She met us in Bogota, and they decided to cooperate.

• 1:21:54Speaker 02

  The cartel was actively trying to kill

• 1:21:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  the accountant because he had been indicted in the US. So he wasn't a Colombian national, so he was eligible to be extradited back to the US. And plus, they had raided his office. And there were these highly sensitive documents that were seized out of his office related to corruption, the cartel. So he was like number one on the cartel hit list.

• 1:22:16Dax Shepard?

  Shocking they didn't kill him.

• 1:22:17Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  Well, we got to him first, and we were able to extract them, exfiltrate them out of Cali, and ultimately back into the US.

• 1:22:23Dax Shepard?

  Now, you were there for 12 years, Colombia, yeah?

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  Off and on, correct.

• 1:22:26Dax Shepard?

  And you?

• 1:22:27Speaker 03

  Three years.

• 1:22:28Dax Shepard?

  So what were you doing the remaining 10 and a half years?

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  In Colombia?

• 1:22:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:33Speaker 02

  We all left Colombia about the same time, in mid 1997. We either got promoted or we went back to the US on different assignments. I went back to Colombia a couple of years later for a three-year tour to work against the North Valley Cartel and some of the other organizations that were popping up. And then I went back to the US for a cup of coffee, and then I went back to Colombia again for just over six years.

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:22:53Speaker 02

  And we worked on, you know, investigations targeting, again, the North Valley Cartel, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which was a designated terrorist group at the time, which was a left-wing group, as well as a paramilitary group, which was also the AUC, designated as a foreign terrorist organization. And I had been promoted again up.

• 1:23:10Dax Shepard?

  Did you have a good life in Colombia those years?

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:23:12Speaker 03

  You know, you get a nice apartment. You're treated like a diplomat. Yeah. It's affordable there, too, right?

• 1:23:17Dax Shepard?

  Do you miss it? Because I heard you went back for Narcos III. And you were like, yeah, cool. That's it. And I want to get out.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I went back to Columbia recently. I did a six-episode show with the Discovery Channel.

• 1:23:31Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Called Finding Escobar's Millions. We went all over Columbia tearing up the ground.

• 1:23:34Dax Shepard?

  Did you find some?

• 1:23:35Speaker 02

  We didn't find anything.

• 1:23:36Dax Shepard?

  Ah, I know. That would be the next big treasure hunt.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, but people have been looking for that for 30 years. So I went back to Columbia there. And then Narcos too, when I was on set in Cali. But what we're talking about here is that Cali had changed a lot. Places where me and Dave would meet people or we would do our surveillances. It was completely different. Everything was built up. But some of the stuff we saw, we went back to some of the buildings where we actually did raids. That still belonged to the cartel that they couldn't sell. So being back was kind of surreal. And then going out filming on set right in the cane field.

• 1:24:08Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:08Speaker 02

  Where we had met Salcedo in the same place. That was pretty cool.

• 1:24:11Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  But it was a little different though going back.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  What a story. What a lie.

• 1:24:14Dax Shepard?

  What a story. It's not shocking. They made a hit TV show out of it. It's hair-raising. Okay. Now, these are my questions, not specifically about the work itself in Columbia, but just whatever overall tensions you were or weren't managing. So just in general, what is it like to do that job knowing whoever you grab means nothing? You kill Pablo, Cali's on top. You get rid of the Cali guys, this group's on top. What is it like to have such a Sisyphean task where it's like, so long as Americans want to snort cocaine, it is what it is?

• 1:24:48Speaker 03

  That's true. Now, what was told to us at the academy by one of our instructors? He goes, you'll never solve this cocaine or narcotics problem. Our job is to slow it down. Cause there's only like, it floats around with 5,000 DEA agents. There's not that many and that's worldwide.

• 1:25:04Dax Shepard?

  Wow.

• 1:25:05Speaker 03

  He goes, we put our finger in the dyke, but anything behind us is chaos.

• 1:25:09Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. So how do you keep your dedication and your enthusiasm and your passion for it, knowing? I mean, I hate to say it so cruelly, but just the second you get the guy, there'll be another guy right there.

• 1:25:21Speaker 03

  We always had a saying in DEA that you may lose the war, but we'll win every battle that we choose to fight. Cali cartel was a battle.

• 1:25:28Speaker 02

  But that was our job though, right? That's what we signed up to do and that's what we were sent there to do. You take pride in what you do. Like my dad used to tell me all the time. Whatever you do in life, do it to the best of your ability.

• 1:25:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, you're kind of forcing a bit of Buddhism with the whole thing, which is like, I think you have to, I would imagine you'd have to get. Purposely myopic, like, yeah, I'm not actually gonna focus on that bigger strata. It's just like, this is the guy today.

• 1:25:52Speaker 02

  This is the mission, this is the job.

• 1:25:53Speaker 03

  That's what I'm focused on. You're absolutely right.

• 1:25:55Dax Shepard?

  But when you were burnt out and it was towards the end and as you're worried about Jorge, in those moments, are you like, what the fuck is this all about? Like, I'm about to kill myself, we're gonna get Jorge killed, and everyone's gonna snort the same amount of cocaine.

• 1:26:08Speaker 03

  Well, you know, it did affect the cocaine trade for two days.

• 1:26:13Dax Shepard?

  Sure.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  Oh, my god. It's very admirable. It really is. I think a lot of people would be like, I'm done now.

• 1:26:20Speaker 02

  We just had to see it through, right? We had invested so much time and energy. And at one point, I told him, like, you know what, dude, I'm tired of this. Let's just pass it on. And he wouldn't let me. He's like, dude, this is what we were sent here to do. This is our job. We have to see it through. And by that point, it had become pretty much an obsession for us.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:36Speaker 02

  We were finishing that one way or the other, whether Jorge got killed, whether something happened to us, or we got thrown out of the country. One way or the other, we were gonna finish.

• 1:26:45Speaker 03

  You compartmentalize it and say, okay, this is our battle. This is what we're focusing on. We're not looking at the whole scope of things, just this area.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  You guys didn't have families at the time, like, kids or...

• 1:26:57Speaker 02

  I didn't.

• 1:26:57Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  That helps, probably.

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  At one point in the book, too, we make a vow. This is before we started to get successful. We've been on the ground probably, I don't know, six, eight months at this point. And we had just launched these operations at the airport because the cartel was flying in these plane loads full of money, like fifty, sixty, seventy million dollars at a shot.

• 1:27:17Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Speaker 02

  And we went out three separate times and we missed everyone. And we can tell it was obviously compromised because of some stuff, and we outlined it in the book. And we sat there and we made a vow. And we said, we are not leaving this country until every one of those four motherfuckers are dead or in handcuffs.

• 1:27:34Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  And that was the vow we made, and we stuck to it.

• 1:27:37Dax Shepard?

  I was in an off-road race, and another guy that was also in the race, he was a retired DEA agent. And I got talking to him, and he was talking about marijuana as if he had just seen Reefer Madness. Like, there was... This crazy kind of Pollyanna belief in whatever he was taught about the DEA and marijuana's killing people and he's very in trouble that his daughter smoked marijuana. And I'm like, well, would you prefer she was drunk? And he's like, absolutely. And I'm like, okay, even though you know that alcohol is probably worse for her and she'll probably drive and crash or there'll be violence. And I was just kind of shocked with how rigid he was in the wake of us having loosened up as a country and the results being in.

• 1:28:22Speaker 03

  They teach you at the academy that marijuana is a gateway drug.

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:28:26Speaker 03

  That if you smoke marijuana, your odds are going into a higher type drugs, cocaine or heroin. So if you don't smoke marijuana, you won't do that. But you have to really look today at what does marijuana provide? Does it provide any health benefits? That needs to be looked into because you know, the THC level today compared to 30 years ago, it's a lot higher.

• 1:28:48Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's on the chart.

• 1:28:49Speaker 03

  So, I mean, if there is a way to help like cancer patients, let's look into it.

• 1:28:54Dax Shepard?

  Or just people are going to recreationally get fucked up. We can evaluate which one's more dangerous. Police don't arrive to domestic disputes after people have been smoking weed. They arrive after a fifth of Jack Daniels is being consumed.

• 1:29:06Speaker 03

  I mean, that's why everybody says, hey, my back hurts and they get prescription to get legal weed.

• 1:29:11Dax Shepard?

  There's a comedian I'm friends with and his joke was he went to get his weed card and the doctor said, are you having trouble sleeping 16 hours a night?

• 1:29:17Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:29:18Dax Shepard?

  And he said, yeah, I can only sleep about 12. He said, perfect.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  Well, I get it. I think you have to buy into that. If this is your life, this is what you're doing daily. You have to stand by that.

• 1:29:30Dax Shepard?

  I am curious what the tension is because also you have the war on drugs. You have this insane explosion in incarceration rates. We know it's very asymmetrically affecting black folks. The war on drugs itself has got some troubles.

• 1:29:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:29:45Dax Shepard?

  And I just wonder what it's like for you guys who have dedicated your lives to it as we reframe it and start to question some of the things. Are you at all caught in that? Like, huh?

• 1:29:55Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, it's not a war on drugs. It never was. It's more of a skirmish, right? Because there's a lot of resources and a lot of stuff that we don't do to go after the problem. But there's a lot of true believers out there in DEA and else that they're firm believers that, you know, no. Illegal, can't use it. And then you have other people at the other end of the spectrum that are like, whatever floats your boat.

• 1:30:14Speaker 03

  We're not gonna wrest ourselves out of this issue. We don't have enough people arresting anyone. But I won't think legalizing everything per se would be an issue. So let's say if you say, okay, drugs are legalized. Instead of McDonald's, you're gonna have McDrugs and people just go in.

• 1:30:30Dax Shepard?

  I have reversed my position. So growing up, I was very libertarian. I was very much like, you know what? It's victimless in that you've decided to take drugs. And I think if you want to pursue that, great. I did it myself. I had to get sober because of it. But I always had a pretty much, let's legalize this stuff. Why have it on the black market? Why have criminals control it? Let's get the tax revenue. I have now seen the experiment run in Oregon, and I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think meth should be legal or decriminalized. I don't think heroin should be. So I find myself in an interesting reversal of my position. And then I start wondering, is this weirdly the best approach? Is it like, we want to keep it hard enough to get that it's not the explosion of availability? We do know availability does impact. Look at the opioid epidemic.

• 1:31:13Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 1:31:14Dax Shepard?

  It was around. So we all got addicted to it. So that's undeniable. That's really fascinating. And we got to acknowledge that. So it's like, what is the fucking approach to this? Are we doing the right approach? Is it just like, keep it hard, keep it expensive?

• 1:31:26Speaker 03

  Look at it this way. We came in 1988. And at that time, I thought, you can't have any more drugs. And I mean, follow now the sky. And the traditional drugs was cocaine, heroin. But if you look at it today, there's more drugs today. Because you have all the synthetic drugs.

• 1:31:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:41Speaker 03

  And the Mexican cartels make more money off these synthetic drugs than the regular traditional drugs.

• 1:31:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, chemistry is cheaper than fucking agriculture.

• 1:31:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  And more dangerous.

• 1:31:51Dax Shepard?

  So what do you think? What is the strategy? It's like, just keep it kind of pinched?

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  It's kind of a no win situation. But I think you have to attack it on all fronts. Enforcement, treatment, education, everything like that. But like we always say, he brought up Portland or Seattle. Imagine that times 50,000. If it's in every city throughout the United States.

• 1:32:10Dax Shepard?

  No, we were in San Francisco, the guy had a card table set up. Literally a card table with crack and heroin for sale. I was like, well, that can't be where we're going.

• 1:32:17Speaker 02

  I mean, imagine the healthcare system would be overrun, overwhelmed with overdoses. Crime would explode because you'd have more people committing crimes to get money to get more drugs. So I think you just have to try to contain it. You have to try to hit it on multi facets.

• 1:32:31Speaker 03

  The other thing too is education. Instead of going after high school or middle kids, let's go after the kids in elementary school. Let's get them young.

• 1:32:39Dax Shepard?

  Well, the other unavoidable reality is it's also been very disproportionate who gets criminalized, which is the consumer walks scot-free for the most part. The consumer of the drugs doesn't really do any jail time. So you have this consumer base and then you have a group of people that are going to meet the demands of this market that these people create it. Dealers and growers can't create a market. The consumers have to create the market.

• 1:33:06Speaker 03

  True, very true. Yes and no.

• 1:33:07Dax Shepard?

  Tell me.

• 1:33:08Speaker 03

  Who can create the market, say the Mexican cartels? Because you say, okay, what's the market? Is it cocaine? Well, they will hold back the cocaine and says, no, we're going to send in more methamphetamine or something else. So if you're using cocaine, you don't have access to cocaine, you're going to go to another drug.

• 1:33:25Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:26Speaker 03

  So that's how the cartels are managing.

• 1:33:28Dax Shepard?

  Manipulating.

• 1:33:29Speaker 03

  Manipulating the drugs.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  But still, there's no demand.

• 1:33:31Dax Shepard?

  If there's not a demand, there's no bad.

• 1:33:33Speaker 03

  You're exactly right.

• 1:33:33Dax Shepard?

  So it's like when you really chase it down in a logical experiment, you recognize the problems the consumer.

• 1:33:39Speaker 03

  It's the consumer.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  And the dealers are the desperate ones. They're the ones that are doing it because they need the money and they need.

• 1:33:45Dax Shepard?

  They're doing it for a livelihood, not kicks.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:33:47Speaker 03

  Well, that's why going back years ago and we were talking to the Colombians, that's why they're saying Cali cartel, they have the will of the people because it's you Americans who have the demand for this.

• 1:33:56Dax Shepard?

  If I were them, I would feel guilt free and totally like I have the moral high ground. We're not addicts. Y'all are the fucking junkies.

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  If there was no demand, these cartels wouldn't exist.

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:34:05Dax Shepard?

  I admire what it takes to fight your hardest for it, given the overall context.

• 1:34:12Speaker 03

  Don't you think our society is where Big Pharma can kind of advertise directly to the client? I think it started legal in 1985 when they can do that.

• 1:34:22Dax Shepard?

  You can put ads on TV.

• 1:34:23Speaker 03

  You turn the TV, if your back hurts, take this pill. Foot hurts, take this pill. In the late seventies, New York had a really bad heroin problem. But if you wanted heroin, you actually had to go in to that area. It's bad stigma.

• 1:34:35Dax Shepard?

  There was a barrier of entry.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:34:37Speaker 03

  And you had to inject it in your veins.

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:39Speaker 03

  But nowadays, you can go on social media and get these pills with fentanyl and take it mouth.

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  You can go to your doctor. I mean, the opioid crisis started because of doctors, not because of the street.

• 1:34:51Speaker 03

  So we have to change the mindset. I take a pill, I'll be okay.

• 1:34:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Speaker 03

  But there is no good answer.

• 1:34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:58Dax Shepard?

  Some of these problems, you have to have a certain tolerance for the messiness of them.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:02Dax Shepard?

  Now, I had a grand conspiracy theory cooking. It's like the only one I've ever been able to buy into. I was like, well, the drug cartels are not incentivized to put fentanyl in coke. It's not good for the people buying the coke to think they might overdose on fentanyl when they didn't know they were getting it. I don't understand the incentive of putting fentanyl in cocaine.

• 1:35:19Speaker 03

  I never understood that either, too, as explained to me how much money that they can make. And just the people that's overdosing, they'll say, in the United States, we have an endless supply of clients.

• 1:35:30Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I just, I'm confused as an ex-drug addict. If I go buy cocaine, I'm not trying to buy an opiate.

• 1:35:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:35:36Dax Shepard?

  So if I buy cocaine and you give me an opiate and then I almost die, I don't want to fucking buy from you.

• 1:35:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:40Dax Shepard?

  So then I was like, you know, the ultimate Machiavellian move for the DEA would be to just be putting fentanyl in coke, because then make it so fucking scary. Everyone's afraid to do coke. That would be so highly illegal. But I'm like, if anyone has an incentive here for fentanyl, cocaine would have to be the DEA. I just don't know how it benefits the consumer or the supplier.

• 1:36:00Speaker 03

  Fentanyl is one of our biggest issue right now.

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:36:03Speaker 03

  Because when you go eat at a restaurant, you know, you have that gram of sugar.

• 1:36:08Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:36:08Speaker 03

  That would be enough to kill 500 people.

• 1:36:10Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, it's insane. There was a 60 Minutes segment on fentanyl, and they showed this little tiny pile of grain, and they said this would be enough to kill an elephant. And then the bag, it said, would be enough to kill a city of 50,000 people.

• 1:36:23Speaker 03

  Well, now you have carfentanil. This carfentanil is used. It's even worse, yeah. What is it? Carfentanil. It's stronger than fentanyl. Carfentanil is used to put down elephants.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  I agree with you. I don't understand why anyone, it's like, why would we kill our clients?

• 1:36:38Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  It doesn't, it really doesn't make sense.

• 1:36:40Speaker 03

  They have so many clients.

• 1:36:42Speaker 02

  But a lot of it goes to though, is that they have to put in the precise.

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  Amount.

• 1:36:47Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:48Speaker 02

  And you're talking about granules of salt. So you're having these people who are not chemists.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  Is fentanyl extra addictive? Cause then that makes sense to me then. If you want to put the exact amount in so that people are extra addicted, so they keep coming back, but they don't die.

• 1:37:04Dax Shepard?

  Opposite highs. It's really weird. Like if you went to order a glass of wine and I said, well, I gave you marijuana. People love marijuana. You'd be like, I would have got marijuana. That's the part that I, as a drug addict, I don't really understand. Now, if you were selling it as a speedball in a bag, that's a great product.

• 1:37:19Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, I thought that was good speedballs.

• 1:37:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah. But I think you'd want to know you're taking a speedball. You, you gotta plan your night accordingly.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  Wild.

• 1:37:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, well, guys, this is fascinating. I can't believe you really live these lives. It's absolutely worthy of a TV show and it was. But your book is incredible. After Escobar, Taking Down the Notorious Cali Godfathers and the Biggest Drug Cartel in History.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  So cool.

• 1:37:43Dax Shepard?

  What a fucking feather in y'all's cap. Brought down the biggest cartel in history.

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  Congratulations. Cool.

• 1:37:48Dax Shepard?

  Pretty gangster. Couple of white bozos coming out, bro.

• 1:37:53Dax Shepard?

  You guys are great. Thanks so much for coming in. This is really fascinating. Yeah. I hope everyone checks out the book. It's out now. Take care.

• 1:38:02Dax Shepard?

  Hi there. This is Hermium Hermium. If you like that, you're gonna love the fact check with Miss Monica.

• 1:38:09Dax Shepard?

  Hello.

• 1:38:10Speaker 01

  Hi.

• 1:38:11Dax Shepard?

  I have an update.

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  Okay, let's hear it.

• 1:38:13Dax Shepard?

  So this, I'm kind of famous for this, right? Um, I've done this once before. You may recall. I was in Italy and a man offered me his leather jacket, so I invited him to our home and he stayed with us for a week and he didn't speak English. And Kristen was like, that was a pretty wild invite. She was lovely to him and it was fine, but you know, wild invite stranger for a week.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  Normally something she would do, not you. So it is weird.

• 1:38:38Dax Shepard?

  I know I get these weird moments of like great optimism and humanity and and I think I don't know what I think, but all to say about three months ago. Freddie, who you've I've told you about a million times, Delta's buddy, who I adore Freddie. I think he's the greatest little boy, so popular and confident. And so he's over all the time and then I see his mom quite often, or almost every morning at drop off and she's lovely. We chat every time we've talked, you know, we see each other. And then the dad Blake, I've seen just a few times at like, you know, the big run at the back of the school or whatever the big school events are.

• 1:39:23Dax Shepard?

  And I say, three months ago, you guys should come to Nashville this summer with Freddie and bring all the kids. And it felt so good when I said it and I just was like, this is going to be great. And then, you know, for the next couple of months, I was like, well, that was a pretty big swing. We've never ever hung out with anyone other than Freddie. And so we had like a dinner before we left a couple of months ago. We're like, you know, minimally, we should all go out to dinner. And so we went out to dinner, but you know, this whole summer, we've had visitors the whole time, but they've been family or old friends. And then this was just looming that this family I've invited to live with us for a

• 1:40:07Dax Shepard?

  week, who we don't really know is coming. And so I had anxiety about that. And I Delta and I picked them up from the airport on Friday. Kristen and Lincoln had flown back to LA to see the Hollywood Bowl Cynthia Revo thing. Jesus Christ, superstar. The big man upstairs superstar. And, um, and so they arrived. Again, I don't have Kristen there as a buffer or helper. And it's just Delta and I, and it started off. Immediately really well.

• 1:40:39Speaker 01

  Great.

• 1:40:40Dax Shepard?

  And then it just got better and better and better. And Blake and I were bro-ing out so hard. He's a drummer, it turns out. He was super into the punk punk scene like I was. We had all this in common. He's a rascal. Um, the kids, the other two kids who are tinier, I completely fell in love with. One of them is a raccoon animal, the little girl. She's a vampire and a raccoon. And she said, one, we were watching, uh, Tom Cruise. Oh, we were watching Days of Thunder, continuing the Tom Cruise's cruises party.

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:15Dax Shepard?

  And, uh, someone in the movie said, fuck. And then you hear her go. He said, fuck. I love swear words. I like to say fuck.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:41:27Dax Shepard?

  It's tiny, it's little. I laughed for 20 minutes straight. This tiny, cute little raccoon said, I like to say, oh my God, it was so fun.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  What makes her raccoon like?

• 1:41:37Dax Shepard?

  Oh my God, well, she's a couple of things. She's definitely Arya Stark too. She's always got like a knife in her hand and a weapon.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 1:41:44Dax Shepard?

  And she wants to, oh yeah, yeah. She's like feral and, and, and impossibly cute. She looks a lot like Vinnie. She's like the girl version of Vinnie.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Oh my God.

• 1:41:54Dax Shepard?

  Way too big of eyes. You gotta see her. She's incredible. And then the little boy Sal is just so sweet. Oh my God. So my God, it was in, it was such a fun visit. And I said to them the night before they left, can we all acknowledge how high risk this was for everyone involved? And they both came clear and they're like, oh yeah, we were like, what did we say yes to? We don't even know these people.

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:23Dax Shepard?

  All of us, all of us were like, what is this Hail Mary pass we all committed to? Um, but with high risk came great, great reward. And it was so fun. And Delta was, she was driving Freddie around on the golf cart the whole time. Like she was a little boss and she had the run of the, yeah, run, you know, run of the roost. Is that an expression? She was just on fire. And now here's where it's going to get controversial.

• 1:42:51Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:42:52Dax Shepard?

  And I'm just gonna, I'm gonna ask you. To give it a shot. Oh, what am I saying? You already went. Never mind. We're not gonna have a dust up. We took them to Brick Tops.

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Great. Great restaurant.

• 1:43:07Dax Shepard?

  So I think I have this right. People could correct me. I believe the founder of Houston's and this person were partners and they split up. And the man who didn't stay with Houston's in Hillstone started Brick Tops. I'm pretty sure that's the history.

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:43:27Dax Shepard?

  Maybe Rob will check it while we're on the.

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, Rob, check it. I did ask and I got different information.

• 1:43:37Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:39Dax Shepard?

  But as everyone knows, Houston's is our favorite restaurant. But I have to say, and this is crazy to say, Brick Tops is better.

• 1:43:48Speaker 01

  I disagree.

• 1:43:49Dax Shepard?

  You disagree?

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 1:43:51Dax Shepard?

  What did you order at Kristen's birthday party?

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  I got a burger. It was incredible. It was so good and I.

• 1:43:58Dax Shepard?

  Did you have the deviled eggs and bacon?

• 1:43:59Speaker 01

  Yep. So good. Um, I thought it was an incredible meal. I would love to go back there. And I think Houston's is better personally.

• 1:44:10Dax Shepard?

  Wow. Okay, so we're split.

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:14Dax Shepard?

  We're split. Well.

• 1:44:16Speaker 07

  I'm not finding any connection between Houston's owned by Hillstone Restaurant Group and Brick Top is owned by a separate guy named Joe.

• 1:44:24Dax Shepard?

  Well, I guess, could you ask if those two are ever partners?

• 1:44:27Speaker 07

  That was my search. Yeah.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  My guess is, and this has happened with Houston's a lot, that people work for Houston's or like their managers or whatever, and then they start their own restaurants. And a lot of them are very based off of Houston's. There's one here in LA. I don't know if I'm allowed to say what. That's like, definitely that.

• 1:44:51Speaker 07

  I found something. Brick Tops owner, Joe, was one of the original co-founders of Houston's.

• 1:44:57Dax Shepard?

  There we go. Yeah, that's what I I thought and been told.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  With George?

• 1:45:02Dax Shepard?

  Irreputable people.

• 1:45:03Speaker 07

  Um, yes, George Beal.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, George Beal, yeah, is the founder.

• 1:45:09Speaker 07

  George Beal and Joe Ledbetter and Vic Brainstutters.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Hmm. The first Houston's ever was in Nashville. It closed, but it was there.

• 1:45:19Dax Shepard?

  Nineteen seventy seven, the first Houston's in Nashville, seventy seven.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:23Dax Shepard?

  Wow. They've been at it.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  I know. Well, anyway.

• 1:45:27Dax Shepard?

  So then I was, I was, I was right. So, yeah, it's got some shared DNA vibe.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 1:45:32Dax Shepard?

  Uh, yes, uh, so great. Okay. So that was that. What a win. So it's sad, sad to see him leave yesterday. Now, last night, we had a very unique experience. I have heard of the Grand Old Opry through many of Wail and Jennings songs, many of Hank Jr., Hank Senior. Don't you know they fired him from the Opry and that caused as great a shame? I've never been to the Grand Ole Opry. I've only heard of it. And we went last night and what a place. Have you been?

• 1:46:08Speaker 01

  I don't think so.

• 1:46:10Dax Shepard?

  There were multiple acts. Everyone did like three songs. You know, these are all like, like several of the people that played had written a bunch of Miley Cyrus songs or had written all these hit songs. So it's mostly like the songwriters who are also performers. And so, you know, it's just like premium musicians, not the stars, but the song. That was really fun. And then, um, yeah, LeAnn Morgan, who I'm new to, but she's so radical. She's fifty nine. She'd been doing comedy for like twenty five years and was going to quit, basically. And in the last few years, has just exploded. She had a Netflix one hour special. She's got a show with Chuck Lorre now on Netflix.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 1:46:53Dax Shepard?

  And she's like fifty nine and it's just so rad and life affirming. And then.

• 1:47:00Dax Shepard?

  Who came out Monica after her Jelly Roll.

• 1:47:03Speaker 01

  Ah, yes.

• 1:47:04Dax Shepard?

  Jelly Roll, who we were so close to interviewing here in Nashville and then he was just on tour. I got to meet him backstage. He's so lovely. What a sweet dude. And what a performer. Oh, my God. I recommend everyone see Jelly Roll. What a monster. And then, okay, beyond that, you know what I was noticing, which my continual kind of like just observing the culture and how it's like different down here and it's really genuinely different. And especially at a place like the Grand Ole Opry, right? Where it's just like, it's tradition, it's Hank Senior, it's all these famous. It's a hollowed venue.

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:43Dax Shepard?

  And you've got a host of the night. And she is like bringing out the different acts and then she'll interview people for five, 10 minutes after. And then she'll like, read some stories of people in the audience, whatever. All to say, there was this, I was like, having a hard time pinpointing what was going on. It all just felt so nostalgic. It felt like we were seeing this in the seventies or eighties. And there was like, she had a delivery that just made you feel good. Like it was outdated, I guess, in some sense, but it just felt so good and positive.

• 1:48:26Dax Shepard?

  And what I was really detecting is I was like, you know what it is? There's just a real absence of cynicism. That's kind of like one of the, it's one of the ingredients I've kind of isolated is like, there's really just a much lower rate of general cynicism, which is interesting to observe and quite pleasant. And, you know, everyone's talking about Jesus, right? Like, and obviously that's not my bag. But even Jelly Roll is talking a lot about Jesus and how Jesus helped him get his life together.

• 1:49:08Dax Shepard?

  And everyone's on board. And I was a little bit like, yeah, I mean, you come to atheism through cynicism. I do. That's how I got there. I'm the kind of cynical of this story. I'm skeptical. It doesn't hold water to me.

• 1:49:23Speaker 01

  That's not, yeah, I disagree. I don't think being, I think cynicism.

• 1:49:29Speaker 01

  Isn't the same thing as critical thinking. Cynicism is, is, is nega-, it has a negative streak through it.

• 1:49:38Dax Shepard?

  Let's, I'm gonna get the real definition, just so we can, we can, we can read it and see what we think. I think you're right, but what's the definition of cynicism? "A cynical person tends to believe that people are primarily motivated by self-interest and distrust others' sincerity or integrity."

• 1:49:57Dax Shepard?

  Philosophical origins. Cynicism was originally a school of philosophy founded in ancient Greece. The cynics rejected wealth, power, and social conventions, believing virtue was the only good and that it came from living in accordance with nature." Huh. Um, well, let's just say that we would agree probably. The line between skepticism and cynicism is pretty thin. Or not, for you.

• 1:50:19Speaker 01

  Um, sure, I, I, I think that's, yeah. I think that's right. I also think it's a little dangerous because cynicism is, to me, a pejorative. And I don't, to me, skepticism is not. To me skepticism is

• 1:50:41Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  a smart way to go through life. Like, is required, actually, to, I don't know, like, come to your own real beliefs about everything, anything.

• 1:50:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so it's interesting. So, so Kristen had a long follow-up on the ride home, because it was like very palpable and it was interesting. And it was much different than anything you would see in Los Angeles. And that was fascinating and worth talking about. And what's interesting is like, it's a two-sided coin. So, one thing is like, Kristen's like, "Well, I don't like that, the notion of like, you're an addict because the devil's a liar and evil tempted you and sin found you because the devil's at work and evil's at work." Like, that really, um, takes away your own personal responsibility from your addiction or your cheating or whatever the thing is, you're saying, "Oh, the devil, huh." So, that, that's true. But, on the flip side, that wasn't rubbing me the wrong way.

• 1:51:39Dax Shepard?

  What was rubbing me the wrong way is, dude, you can't give this Guy in the sky credit for your sobriety, like you did that. That God isn't, God did not come down and take a bottle out of your hand. I want you to own that you did that. So it's interesting because, so on one side, there's a lack of humility, which is like, I'm not even responsible for this. But then on the, on the success side, there is great humility because he's, he's not even taking credit for it. It's like, he's saying God intervened and did something for me I couldn't do. So that's an interesting mix, right? It's like, which side of this equation are you going to be really humble on? The fact that you own your responsibility in causing it?

• 1:52:22Dax Shepard?

  And then by which you get to own your success in conquering it? Or are you going to say, I'm not fully responsible for it, nor am I responsible for the solution? So I think it's like, it's kind of a net, it's net the same, which is interesting.

• 1:52:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, but it's similar to me, not similar, it's exactly the same as the sim conversation we had with Riz and your problems with it, right? Where you're like, if we just say we were assigned a, a, a character in a video game, that's so problematic because what about all these other characters that are suffering? Like, so God gave you this thing, but isn't giving another person the same? Like, it, it, it breaks down so quickly. Because even if they're like, well, God made me sober. It, there is still a, I agree that there's a humility because you're not taking any credit,

• 1:53:17Speaker 01

  but it's also like, God chose me to be sober.

• 1:53:20Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, so it's just interesting. And you already know how I feel, which is like, I don't believe in God, but I am seeing, I'm just recognizing what is, what is the outcome of it? And that's interesting. And it's interesting that there's not humility on one side, but then there's a lot of humility on the other side. And then flipped for someone like me who's an atheist, that's interesting. But I think the bigger, so then it led to.

• 1:53:44Dax Shepard?

  Chris and I saying, oh, what's interesting is she's like, no, I would come to that realization I need to get sober and here's the technique I needed to use. And I would credit that for it. And I said, yeah, but you know, we're really just arguing between us like, what mechanism do you want to choose to get there? So it's like, you could choose my version, but the results not drinking and taking pills. His can be God and the result is not taking and drinking pills. Like, we're really kind of just debating what mechanism you want to use to get there. And if both are valid, that's interesting.

• 1:54:25Dax Shepard?

  And then, but deeper than that, and this runs the risk of offending some people. I had this moment where I was like, you know, I'm on the outside thinking, oh, they just lock, stock, believe that God invented all animals in seven days. And that Jesus is the son of God and they're the same person and there's no women involved. And somehow they think all that is, is accurate. But I got a different sense sitting there last night where I was a little bit like, no, it's, I think it might more be just a choice of a holistic worldview.

• 1:55:05Dax Shepard?

  And you're not necessarily, the whether I believe in every aspect of it isn't what's important. The importance is, um, I have this declaration of humility to this thing. And that's this really bonding thing between all of us. And I guess I think, I thought it was a little more literal than maybe it might be, if that makes any sense.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's true for a lot of people. I don't think everyone believes every single word. To the letter, I think some people do and they say it, right? They're like, the Bible says this, so you can't do this. Like, and it's, and it is often used to tell other people what they're doing wrong.

• 1:55:51Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:51Speaker 01

  Or right, which I.

• 1:55:53Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it's weaponized, yeah, for sure.

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  But it's definitely, religion is a community. It's an in-group. It's, it's, it is that. I mean.

• 1:56:02Dax Shepard?

  And the result for them, which again is like, you're kind of arguing over mechanisms to get to a result. And the result for them is like this real sense of shared community.

• 1:56:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:56:12Dax Shepard?

  And in my like, you know, just kind of unfolding a lot of things sitting here, which is really fun to have as an experience. Which is like, I also, the other thing I've been aware of since I've been here is like, I'm so used to being in LA, where there's 12 million of us and we're really packed in on top of each other. And resources feel very scarce and water is sometimes an issue. And, you know, we have fires, we have a lot of this stuff. That is the world we live in. And we're very worried about being sustainable because there's so many of us in this little area. And I was thinking, yeah, if you're sitting here where I'm at, it's just endless trees and lush.

• 1:56:54Dax Shepard?

  And it rains non-stop and everything's growing and there's a cabillion insects. And it's like, here, everything feels quite healthy. Like this place is thriving, you know, like nature is on fire here. I understand if you're sitting here and you're like, I don't know what they're all so freaked out about. Like, everything's fucking great.

• 1:57:17Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 1:57:18Dax Shepard?

  Because what are you surrounded by, you know? What you're surrounded by is going to definitely impact how you think the world is or isn't really vulnerable or on the brink or teetering, you know?

• 1:57:29Speaker 01

  But it is, it's not the same, it's not fires, but there's other disasters that are happening over on that side of the country as well. And like, you know, there's hurricanes, there's tornadoes, there's the Asheville situation. Like, it's still happening. It's just not, it doesn't look the way it looks here.

• 1:57:49Dax Shepard?

  I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you're in Michigan, and you're surrounded by the Great Lakes, and you're hearing the rest of the country freak out about fresh water, intellectually, you understand that they're, that that's their experience.

• 1:58:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:58:02Dax Shepard?

  But your day-to-day experience is like, no, water actually isn't a problem at all. I see it everywhere. And I'm just, I'm not, I have no emotional connection to that, because that's not at all what I'm experiencing. I would just have to be like intellectually traveling to where you're at and thinking about all that. But just my day, day-to-day, if you're in Michigan surrounded by the Great Lakes, I understand why you're not thinking about water.

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, yes, I, I agree. And I think it's not, we're, we're not obligated to be like constantly thinking about other people's plights. But we are obligated, when those come up, to have empathy and sympathy for them and, and do force yourself to put yourself in those people's positions. Across the board for everyone, us too. Like, everyone needs to be doing that. I mean, and we're just talking about this country, let alone like the world.

• 1:58:59Dax Shepard?

  Oh, yeah. I just, um, I've, I, I'm experiencing the, the massive different mindset you have if you're in a rural area versus an urban area, you know? And I grew up in a rural area, and then I went to an urban area for 30 years. And now I'm back in this rural area. And I'm just realizing like, oh, yeah, you feel a lot differently. You think about different things. There's not people, there's no traffic. You're not like, you know, a lot of these concerns, you just have to know exist, but you're not having any experience.

• 1:59:29Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:59:29Dax Shepard?

  Or even like, when I look at the rural response to COVID, like, yes, that makes sense to me, sitting here. When we were in LA, and you're just like packed on people, you're like, oh, this thing's gonna fucking explode like an atom bomb.

• 1:59:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:59:42Dax Shepard?

  And it's true, because you're, and just, yeah, you're gonna have different mindsets.

• 1:59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:47Dax Shepard?

  If you're living in tons of ample land, or you're really packed in on each other. And it's kind of predictable, you know?

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, definitely.

• 1:59:55Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:58Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.

• 2:00:05Speaker 08

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• 2:00:41Speaker 01

  Speaking of being packed in, did you hear that in Harlem, there's a big breakout of Legionnaires' disease?

• 2:00:49Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no. That's the one you get from AC units?

• 2:00:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's in the air.

• 2:00:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  Like 58 people have it and a couple have died.

• 2:01:00Dax Shepard?

  I have a friend who got it two years ago from a hotel with a stanky air conditioner. And he was telling me that and Aaron and I were in Gulf Shores, Alabama. We're in a restaurant. I'm looking at this AC vent on the ceiling and it's just like black mold, mud, just all caked all around the register from whatever the difference in moisture level between the AC. And I was like, oh my God, that thing is just spewing Legionnaires' disease. I'm overly worried about Legionnaires' disease.

• 2:01:32Speaker 01

  Well, I'm glad to hear that because yesterday I was like, oh, I definitely got it in New York. Like I definitely got Legionnaires' because I have like a little bit of a cold or like a little under the weather. So I was looking it up and then, you know, it's like hollis, headache, things I have.

• 2:01:51Speaker 01

  So we can't.

• 2:01:52Dax Shepard?

  The double H's, harness and headache.

• 2:01:54Speaker 01

  We can't rule it out.

• 2:01:55Dax Shepard?

  H squared.

• 2:01:57Speaker 01

  Two H.

• 2:01:58Dax Shepard?

  It is a scary one because it's a silent killer just pouring out of an A C unit.

• 2:02:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. So that's bad. I hope.

• 2:02:07Dax Shepard?

  I will say though, as we've talked about, some diseases are terribly named, like my penis disease I had for a year, peronies, that's a, don't do that on top of having a penis issue.

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  Carbuncles.

• 2:02:19Dax Shepard?

  Pepperonis disease, carbuncles. At least Legionnaires feels like it has some pride and glory. Like you got it, maybe in battle.

• 2:02:28Speaker 01

  It sounds like it was in war. Yeah, for sure.

• 2:02:32Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah. So you're not like as embarrassed to go like I had a bad case of Legionnaires.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  But I also like, I like that it's Legionnaires because it also has the transmission element included in the name, Legionairs. So it, it is transported by air and it's easy for me to remember that way. It's kind of a built in mnemonic device.

• 2:02:57Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great. I hadn't even considered that part of it.

• 2:03:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, I, speaking of luck, it's lucky that I probably don't have Legionnaires. So that's my transition. Okay.

• 2:03:10Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:03:10Speaker 01

  I had a moral dilemma.

• 2:03:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, fun.

• 2:03:13Speaker 01

  Yes. So I was staying at the Bowery Hotel. At the Bowery, they give you, the key is a, is on this tassel. It's this like old school, huge, red tassel with like gold top and it has the number of your room engraved in there. You, it's, it's like, it's a thing at the Bowery. And, um, you can't take it, right? Like it's, it's not like a regular key. Now.

• 2:03:44Dax Shepard?

  I can already feel where this is going, but go ahead.

• 2:03:49Speaker 01

  Okay. I was in room 1111.

• 2:03:54Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Okay?

• 2:03:57Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:03:57Speaker 01

  That's huge for so many reasons. One, it just is. Like 1111 is such a cool room to be in. Two, 1111 is my thing. Like, I'm always seeing 1111. I'm always wishing on 1111. It's like, it's part of me. It's very lucky. So I go through this whole trip and it's like, wow, this is so, so cool. And then the day on the, before I left, I was like, looking at the tassel and it has engraved in it 1111. And I was like, oh my, I need this. Like, I have to have it. But I also knew, well, fuck, if I take it, is it gonna have the opposite effect?

• 2:04:42Speaker 01

  It's there for luck, but if I steal it, like, am I gonna be cursed?

• 2:04:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I, I mean, yes, is the answer to that.

• 2:04:51Speaker 01

  Oh, but also I knew they would say no if I asked. Like, I was like, they're gonna say no. I know people who've asked and it's like, you can't, you can't have it.

• 2:05:00Dax Shepard?

  And they won't tell you who makes them?

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 2:05:03Dax Shepard?

  Cause why don't you just have one made?

• 2:05:04Speaker 01

  No, that's not lucky to have it made. It's like, you got this and like, that's the luck. You know, you can't manufacture luck. So I was in a huge moral dilemma. I asked a bunch of people their thoughts on this.

• 2:05:20Dax Shepard?

  This is recurring. You recognize this is recurring. You wanted to steal the mugs.

• 2:05:25Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:05:25Dax Shepard?

  You wanna steal everything from places.

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  No, I don't. No, I don't. I want to have.

• 2:05:32Dax Shepard?

  You wanna steal plates? You wanted to steal a candle holder once and I tried to find it for you.

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  Wait, what candle?

• 2:05:38Dax Shepard?

  You wanna steal, you wanted to steal this candle holder? And I found one for you. You don't remember? It was like a pewter kinda.

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

  I don't remember that.

• 2:05:47Dax Shepard?

  You wanted to steal from like an English restaurant, maybe?

• 2:05:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sounds so cute. Yeah. I, it's not that I wanna steal things, hence the dilemma. I want the thing.

• 2:05:59Speaker 01

  And I don't want to steal it. I want them to give it to me. Um, I want permission. Like, I want.

• 2:06:08Dax Shepard?

  Think of that was your defense when you got in trouble for stealing a car and you said in cry, why, what I wanted was them for to give it to me. I didn't want to steal it.

• 2:06:16Speaker 01

  Listen, normally I, I ask, I'm like, how can I have this? Tell me how I can have it. And then when they say you can't, that's when the stealing starts to come into play, right? But I'm actually like.

• 2:06:31Dax Shepard?

  Best option, yeah.

• 2:06:32Speaker 01

  I really haven't, I didn't steal those mugs. Remember? I wanted to, but I didn't do it. I wanted to steal the candle from the restaurant and I didn't do it. Like, I normally

• 2:06:44Dax Shepard?

  Right.

• 2:06:44Speaker 01

  have the instinct and then I don't see it through. This was, this was the height, though. Oh, because I was like, I have to have this. Like, there's no

• 2:06:55Dax Shepard?

  Right, right.

• 2:06:57Speaker 01

  option for me not to.

• 2:06:58Dax Shepard?

  What did you do?

• 2:06:59Speaker 01

  What do you think I did? I want you to guess.

• 2:07:01Dax Shepard?

  I think you turned it in.

• 2:07:03Speaker 01

  Rob?

• 2:07:03Dax Shepard?

  I think you returned it to.

• 2:07:05Speaker 01

  Okay. I took it. Um.

• 2:07:10Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:07:12Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow. I didn't see that coming.

• 2:07:15Speaker 01

  Hold on. It, I, I did it. I did it properly. I went to the front and I said, I know you're gonna say no, but I'm in a very lucky room and I really want the tassel. Is there a way for me to have it?

• 2:07:33Dax Shepard?

  They said what?

• 2:07:34Speaker 01

  They said, they laughed and they said, the tassel, yeah. So if it is taken.

• 2:07:42Dax Shepard?

  We charge you $60.

• 2:07:44Speaker 01

  She said, if it is taken, there's a blank charge. I'm not going to say the amount. So they said, so there is a way to take it.

• 2:07:53Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:07:53Speaker 01

  And then another person next to her laughed. So that was permission to me. That was permission granted.

• 2:08:00Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, that was somewhere in between begging for forgiveness and asking permission. That's like in the middle somehow.

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I knew.

• 2:08:07Dax Shepard?

  You threaded the needle.

• 2:08:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, because technically I know what they're supposed to say is like, no, you can't take it, right? And I knew that. So I had to say.

• 2:08:15Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, no one's got time to be replacing all these. Like, if all the guests want their keys. They need a whole new department now.

• 2:08:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:08:22Dax Shepard?

  It's just replacing the keys every day.

• 2:08:24Speaker 01

  Right. But also.

• 2:08:25Dax Shepard?

  I'm a little bummed you took it because as you're telling the story, I'm like, okay, great. I'm gonna ask AI who makes these keys. Hopefully they can find out your birthday's around the corner. Finally, I have something to get you for your birthday and now I don't.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:38Dax Shepard?

  So I'm like happy for you and resent, I resent you.

• 2:08:40Speaker 01

  I understand. I think that's how a lot of people feel about me. It's definitely good luck and I feel good. I feel like it was definitely permission granted and I paid for it. I assume.

• 2:08:52Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:52Speaker 01

  I assume I got charged and um, great.

• 2:08:55Dax Shepard?

  And you love it. Have you looked at it and held it since you got home? Or did you move on to the next?

• 2:08:59Speaker 01

  No, I love it.

• 2:08:59Dax Shepard?

  Do you ever like rub it on your neck, like tickle your neck with the tassels? Like, are you ever laying in bed and just kind of tickling yourself with the tassels?

• 2:09:07Speaker 01

  No, it's probably a little dirty for that. I don't think I'd put it on my face.

• 2:09:11Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:09:12Speaker 01

  Or close.

• 2:09:12Dax Shepard?

  Maybe your heels, like your, uh, tickle your feet?

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  Oh, speaking of, tomorrow I'm gonna get a medical pedicure.

• 2:09:18Dax Shepard?

  What on earth does that mean?

• 2:09:20Speaker 01

  It's like at a podiatrist, they're gonna give me like a real pedicure. They're gonna make my feet look good again for Eric.

• 2:09:28Dax Shepard?

  Oh, okay. Like dig out like ingrown nails and stuff?

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  Everything. They're gonna make them babyish again.

• 2:09:34Dax Shepard?

  Well, I hope they don't make it literally a baby toe like I have. I just had to go through that whole thing with our guests because my feet were exposed a lot. And I had this hunch that they were dying to know why I had a baby toe on one foot.

• 2:09:48Speaker 01

  Right. And to be, for people who forget, you, like, your middle toe is a baby toe and it sticks up a little bit and it's tiny.

• 2:09:58Dax Shepard?

  It's super tiny and then the second toe has, is a comb over it. It's, it's completely curved to the side. It's confusing for them when they see it at this stage because like, wait, he made, he shortened that one in half and then turned your other toe to the right? I'm like, no, no, that happened on its own.

• 2:10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:14Dax Shepard?

  And it's probably getting worse. And then Blake said, oh, he's trying to protect that little toe.

• 2:10:19Speaker 01

  That's what I was thinking.

• 2:10:21Dax Shepard?

  No, I think it's more of a stability issue, but he saw it as him like, wow, that little guy's tiny. Let's protect him.

• 2:10:27Speaker 01

  The little piggy, the runt piggy needs protection.

• 2:10:31Dax Shepard?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  I think that's also what it is.

• 2:10:33Dax Shepard?

  It's a mess. What a mess. Yeah.

• 2:10:37Speaker 01

  Um, all right. Should we do some facts?

• 2:10:39Dax Shepard?

  Yes, ma'am.

• 2:10:40Speaker 01

  Okay. Um, all right. Let's, okay, yeah, let's do some facties. Chris and David are cartel guys.

• 2:10:48Dax Shepard?

  Mmm.

• 2:10:49Speaker 01

  What an episode.

• 2:10:50Dax Shepard?

  What a couple of fun-loving guys.

• 2:10:51Speaker 01

  They were, they were so fun and, whew, what a story. I love when we have people on who have all these really crazy stories to tell.

• 2:11:00Dax Shepard?

  That have been in movies, basically.

• 2:11:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:11:03Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:04Speaker 01

  Like-

• 2:11:05Dax Shepard?

  Like our FBI.

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:11:07Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:07Speaker 01

  Scott Payne.

• 2:11:08Dax Shepard?

  Yes, in the outlaw basement.

• 2:11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so good. All right. Couple of facts. Um, how many companies make challenge coins?

• 2:11:17Dax Shepard?

  Wait, really quick. I know it was probably stated in the episode, but the notion of sending those two guys to blend in in Columbia is really fucking funny. They couldn't have picked two more standout-y guys.

• 2:11:29Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 2:11:29Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:30Speaker 01

  Okay, there are many companies that do this now and can custom make them for the general customer, too. Um, so it's not just one company. Lots of companies do these.

• 2:11:41Dax Shepard?

  Okay, great.

• 2:11:42Speaker 01

  Um, Air Force recruiting stats after Top Gun movies.

• 2:11:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh, good. I was just going on about this the other night again without the numbers.

• 2:11:51Speaker 01

  A statistic often repeated without attribution is that the 1986 Top Gun films led to a 500% increase in naval recruiting, but that figure has been debunked numerous times. Following the original Top Gun, there was a bump in recruiting, but it was much more modest, 8%.

• 2:12:09Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:12:09Speaker 01

  According to a recent fact check from the Australian Associated Press, but-

• 2:12:13Dax Shepard?

  The Australian, what are they, how would they have our info?

• 2:12:16Speaker 01

  They're really good at it, but the sea service also began advertising two years prior to the original Top Gun. 13.3 million in 1984 and 19.9 million in 1985. So it's unreliable how much the movie was responsible for the uptick in recruiting versus advertising.

• 2:12:32Dax Shepard?

  I gotta stop saying that then. Did Maverick have any impact?

• 2:12:35Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know.

• 2:12:37Dax Shepard?

  Cause Maverick was huge.

• 2:12:39Speaker 01

  Oh, this says, yeah. Well, will Top Gun Maverick boost Navy recruiting? History says probably not.

• 2:12:46Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, I've been repeating that. I've been overseas and had generals tell me that.

• 2:12:52Speaker 01

  You should have told them they're fucking wrong. Who was the Indy 500 racer who funded his career by smuggling marijuana?

• 2:12:59Dax Shepard?

  I love this guy.

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  Richard Lanier.

• 2:13:02Dax Shepard?

  Guys, watch this. It's called, it's part of the Bad Sports series on Netflix, which is a great sports doc series.

• 2:13:12Speaker 01

  1986 Indy 500 Rookie of the Year was secretly funded by marijuana smuggling operations. He started running small loads of weed via speedboats and barges from the Bahamas, but later started shipments weighing over 100,000 pounds hidden under legit cargo. It's expected around 600,000 pounds were transported in total. He was indicted in 1988 for distributing over 1,000 pounds of marijuana under the Continuing Criminal Enterprise Act. He received a life sentence without parole, which was later commuted to... Yeah, it says commuted.

• 2:13:46Dax Shepard?

  Oh, it does? I thought it was communed. It's commuted?

• 2:13:48Speaker 01

  I don't know any of these words.

• 2:13:50Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, maybe it is commuted.

• 2:13:51Speaker 01

  To 27 years behind bars. They found $2 million in cash buried in his father's lawn and signed PVC pipes, which his dad was also sentenced for.

• 2:14:00Dax Shepard?

  He's such a good time Charlie, that guy. He's the most likable criminal I've ever seen, yeah. And he was a fucking hell of a driver.

• 2:14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. It sucks, why didn't he just do that?

• 2:14:12Dax Shepard?

  Because he can't make any money doing that. Like, 0001% of people in racing make money.

• 2:14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sucks.

• 2:14:19Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:20Speaker 01

  Okay, I get why he did it.

• 2:14:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, he had to.

• 2:14:22Speaker 01

  How many Colombians lost their lives fighting cartels or were victims of cartels? It is estimated that the Medellin cartel was responsible for over 4,000 Colombian deaths, including authority figures like police officers, judges, and the presidential candidate, Louis Carlos Galan. Um, okay.

• 2:14:41Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:14:41Speaker 01

  Um, okay. What is the Onion Field cop killing movie mentioned? The Onion Field, 1979 movie directed by Harold Becker. Starred John Savage, James Wood, Franklin Seals, and Ted Danson in his feature film debut.

• 2:14:58Dax Shepard?

  Oh, Papa Ted.

• 2:15:01Speaker 01

  This movie centered around...

• 2:15:02Dax Shepard?

  Friend.

• 2:15:04Speaker 01

  This movie centered around two LAPD officers who were kidnapped by ex-convicts who feared returning to prison. One was murdered, Ted Danson spoiler.

• 2:15:11Dax Shepard?

  Oh, no.

• 2:15:12Speaker 01

  In an onion field while the other escaped.

• 2:15:15Dax Shepard?

  An onion field to me is a seahorse to you. I can't picture what that is at all.

• 2:15:20Speaker 01

  I just think it's.

• 2:15:21Dax Shepard?

  I'm picturing, you know, when you let an onion live too long in your cupboard?

• 2:15:24Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:15:25Dax Shepard?

  And it sprouts an enormous green thing.

• 2:15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:27Dax Shepard?

  And that's what I'm picturing, but I have no basis for that other than my cupboard.

• 2:15:31Speaker 01

  That's probably right.

• 2:15:32Dax Shepard?

  Okay.

• 2:15:33Speaker 01

  What is the average THC level in weed today versus back then? Reports list modern day cannabis to have significantly higher THC levels than in prior decades. According to the Cannabis Museum of Amsterdam, average THC levels were 1.1 to 3% in the 70s, 3 to 5% in 80s, 5 to 10 in 90s, 10 to 15 in 2000s, and 15 to 20% since 2020. This is validated by a University of Mississippi study, the National Library of Medicine, and other studies.

• 2:16:05Dax Shepard?

  I mean, on one hand, you could look at that as a negative. But on another hand, you could go, well, people were always going to get high. So should they have to smoke a ton of carcinogens to get the THC? Or is it better if they're smoking less?

• 2:16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:19Dax Shepard?

  I don't know. I'll tell you this, though. The recruitment went through the roof after the first Top Gun. That I do know.

• 2:16:25Speaker 01

  Oh, boy. Okay. How long does it take to manufacture a plant-based drug versus a synthetic? And what are the profit margins?

• 2:16:38Dax Shepard?

  That is a really in-depth question you've asked.

• 2:16:40Speaker 01

  I'm so upset. This is such a good, this is such a good fact check. I didn't do this.

• 2:16:50Dax Shepard?

  Oh, you didn't?

• 2:16:51Speaker 01

  No, because I, I would have to be getting so far ahead to get this, but I knew this was the opportunity for us.

• 2:16:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:57Speaker 01

  So I had Sophia, our incredible intern.

• 2:17:00Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:17:01Speaker 01

  Listen for facts on double speed. And she did this.

• 2:17:04Dax Shepard?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:17:05Speaker 01

  And it is so much better than anything I do. And it is very, it's humbling. My facts are more like.

• 2:17:15Dax Shepard?

  Playful.

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:19Speaker 01

  Okay, how long?

• 2:17:20Dax Shepard?

  That is really fun. That's really funny that it just was revealed like.

• 2:17:25Speaker 01

  I mean, I've been thinking it this whole time. She sent me like such an intense.

• 2:17:29Dax Shepard?

  Oh, my God, Sophia.

• 2:17:30Speaker 01

  Really, really good, really good job. But is she checking like, is my dad the sim lore? Like, no.

• 2:17:39Dax Shepard?

  Is she exploring whether or not she has acne or not?

• 2:17:40Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:17:42Dax Shepard?

  She doesn't.

• 2:17:43Speaker 01

  There's pros and cons. No, she doesn't.

• 2:17:44Dax Shepard?

  She does not.

• 2:17:45Speaker 01

  The indoor cannabis life cycle from germination to flowering can take anywhere from six to 20 weeks. Different sources say different things. Then the drying, curing, testing, packaging, and distribution processes can take anywhere from a week to four to five weeks. Outdoor growth can take up to six months. Synthetic drugs' chemical synthesis takes a few days. Purification, testing, packaging, and distribution can take anywhere from a few days to two weeks, depending on level of quality assurance and testing. This is an extremely high potency program for many synthetic drugs, making it very scalable.

• 2:18:19Dax Shepard?

  Cocaine's kind of a hybrid of that. You've got to grow the coca, but then you have to process it chemically. And you know, that's what's wild. Have you ever seen that?

• 2:18:28Speaker 01

  Mm-mm.

• 2:18:28Dax Shepard?

  They put in some kind of petroleum, like a turpentine or something, all over all the leaves. And they have people, so when you're starting cocaine, you're getting some of their feet in your nose. They stomp on it like the grapes. Yes, and they're walking around all day long and they get sores on their feet.

• 2:18:47Speaker 01

  Carbuncles?

• 2:18:48Dax Shepard?

  But they're absorbing cocaine.

• 2:18:50Speaker 01

  Oh, they love it.

• 2:18:52Dax Shepard?

  So they don't mind at all.

• 2:18:54Speaker 01

  Did you think about putting some cocaine on your farm uncle?

• 2:18:57Dax Shepard?

  I didn't because I know I couldn't be trusted to apply it to my carb uncle. I've always said this, like, I don't even, I don't think about drinking tetol. I'll be at a bar, I don't even know, you know, it's just, I don't.

• 2:19:11Speaker 01

  You don't care.

• 2:19:12Dax Shepard?

  I don't care. I've not seen a couple grams of cocaine laid on a table in 21 years. And I'm very glad I have it, yeah.

• 2:19:19Speaker 01

  Well, I'm glad that you're aware of that.

• 2:19:21Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:22Speaker 01

  Okay, the legal cannabis market has a gross profit margin of around 45 to 55%. Dispensaries typically earning net profit margins of around 15 to 21% in modern day. What year did they legalize Big Pharma marketing directly to the consumer? 1985 was said in the interview. In the early 80s, pharma companies started exploring TV ads aimed at consumers. In 83, the FDA imposed a moratorium on DTC direct-to-consumer ads to study the implications. In 1985, the FDA lifted the moratorium, given they comply with advertising rules, which were in line with rules put on physicians at that time. Okay, so 85 is right. But then in 97, saw another policy change that loosened the guidelines.

• 2:20:05Dax Shepard?

  This is a tricky one.

• 2:20:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:20:08Dax Shepard?

  Because if you are poor and you have no insurance and you don't go to the doctor and you have a condition.

• 2:20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:15Dax Shepard?

  How are you to learn there is an immune suppressant that could fix it? How are you to learn? So in that way, if you at least go like, oh, there's a solution to this. Now, now, now it's worth me going to pay the doctor to get the solution. That's great.

• 2:20:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:20:28Dax Shepard?

  But also advertising works.

• 2:20:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:20:31Dax Shepard?

  And we're so over-medicated, it's insane.

• 2:20:33Speaker 01

  Yep, I agree. It is complicated.

• 2:20:36Dax Shepard?

  Trade-offs. Trade-offs. This is what I think about non-stop. That's my new obsession, trade-offs.

• 2:20:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:41Dax Shepard?

  There's no such thing as wins. There's just trade-offs. We've had guests say that, but I, I really have.

• 2:20:45Speaker 01

  Now you're taking it on.

• 2:20:47Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:47Speaker 01

  Okay. What is the difference between carfentanil? Carbuncles? Carfentanil and normal fentanyl?

• 2:20:57Dax Shepard?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:58Speaker 01

  Okay. Fentanyl is 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. It drives 70% of opioid overdoses deaths in the US as of 2023. Carfentanil is 10,000 times stronger than morphine.

• 2:21:13Dax Shepard?

  No.

• 2:21:14Speaker 01

  Making it 100 times more potent than fentanyl.

• 2:21:18Dax Shepard?

  Oh my, you have a micron of it in your.

• 2:21:21Speaker 01

  Carfentanil is not approved for human use. It is a veterinary tranquilizer for animals like elephants. A lethal dose of fentanyl is around 2mg, while carfentanil can be as low as 0.02mg.

• 2:21:34Dax Shepard?

  Oh.

• 2:21:36Speaker 01

  Ew, it can cause an overdose through skin or airborne exposure.

• 2:21:40Dax Shepard?

  Well, sure, those, the patches, fentanyl patches.

• 2:21:44Speaker 01

  Biggest organ in the, of the body, the skin.

• 2:21:46Dax Shepard?

  The human skin.

• 2:21:47Speaker 01

  I did that fact. That was me, not Sophia. She would never do that.

• 2:21:53Dax Shepard?

  She wouldn't know about the skin.

• 2:21:54Speaker 01

  She wouldn't know. She doesn't have acne.

• 2:21:56Dax Shepard?

  She doesn't have acne.

• 2:21:58Speaker 01

  Um, that's it.

• 2:22:00Dax Shepard?

  That was great.

• 2:22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:01Dax Shepard?

  Yeah, good job, Sophia. That's great.

• 2:22:05Speaker 01

  All right. I love you.

• 2:22:06Dax Shepard?

  Love you.