Interviewing The Internet’s #1 Scammer, America’s Most Corrupt Mayor, & Infamous Liars | Tommy G

Upway: $150 off any purchase over $1,500 with code ICEDCOFFEE through the end of May at https://upway.co Pestie: For 10% off your order, go to https://pestie.com/ich Range Rover Sport: Start designing your Range Rover Sport today at https://www.rangerover.com/us/sport Follow Tommy G @TommyGMcGee On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@UCakIVH4t7k4vZe1AWPpewgA On Instagram - instagram.com/tommygmcgee Website - https://tommygmcgee.com/ Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [email protected] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:00 - What do you do? 00:01:50 - Not like mainstream media 00:06:25 - Most challenging video 00:10:03 - Afraid of lawsuits? 00:11:06 - Why police don’t stop him 00:12:14 - Kia Boys explained 00:15:08 - Unpostable interviews 00:16:24 - Worst footage received 00:16:29 - Sponsor - Upway 00:19:16 - Fear of crossing wrong people 00:20:39 - Criminals source of aggression 00:22:13 - Nearly committed a crime 00:26:04 - 5-year YouTube goals 00:27:51 - Chinese sweatshops 00:31:21 - Most memorable interview 00:32:36 - Area 51: real or fake? 00:34:26 - Alien docs changed his view? 00:35:45 - Sponsor - Pestie 00:36:58 - His interest in Journalism 00:39:43 - Blending in 00:40:38 - Meeting his wife 00:43:05 - Does his wife worry? 00:44:09 - Finding people to film 00:44:47 - Gang culture appeal 00:46:16 - Lessons on human nature 00:47:00 - Worst community 00:48:01 - His arrest story 00:49:56 - Most sympathetic community 00:51:04 - Most dangerous street in USA 00:51:47 - Staying safe 00:52:44 - What cities get wrong 00:55:33 - Most dangerous moments 00:59:30 - Threatened before? 01:00:38 - Threats from subjects 01:03:53 - Staying in touch 01:04:43 - Why people steal cars 01:04:52 - Sponsor - Range Rover 01:07:57 - Street takeovers 01:10:12 - Topics he avoids 01:11:48 - Psychopath interviews 01:14:24 - Criminal ethics 01:15:50 - Disliked subject 01:16:55 - Who is Tiffany Henyard? 01:23:26 - Easiest scams 01:23:55 - Most profitable scams 01:28:11 - Are smart criminals real? 01:30:15 - Victimless crimes? 01:31:29 - Least unethical crime 01:34:11 - Dealer profits 01:35:42 - Why Chris Hansen works 01:36:36 - Thoughts on vigilantes 01:38:03 - Verifying people 01:39:08 - Getting lied to 01:40:18 - How people contact him 01:42:17 - Business & revenue 01:45:46 - What he does with the money 01:48:41 - YouTube future 01:52:35 - Scrapped videos 01:53:30 - Future Plans *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration blog, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  In every city across America right now, there is a thriving underground economy that few people ever look into. My job is to get inside access to places that most people don't get to see, ask people questions, and bring it back to the people. This has to be one of the ground zero spots. We cover a lot of the fringes of society, the trailer parks, the reservations, the hoods, the smugglers. These are people that the average media outlet will not cover. We give them an opportunity to broadcast their message to the world. Is it safe to say that you are on the run right now? Yeah, I guess you could say. I've always had a desire to explore, to discover, and to really understand what makes people tick. You just got out of jail. What role do you feel like you play in all of that?

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Hopefully, whatever you're consuming is all you.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  It gets really scary when you piss off some of the most dangerous people in the world. But we get to look into this guy's mind and see why he does it, what led up to this, what happened in his childhood, what is his motivation? And have you ever met anyone that you thought was truly evil?

• 1:26Graham Stephan?

  What do you describe in terms of what you do? How do you describe that?

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Boots-on-the-ground journalists, giving people inside access to worlds that they don't normally see. And we've covered a lot of the criminal side of it, the criminal underworld, and that's one of our strongholds. But it's also, you know, day in the life of a billionaire. We have a narcotics raid that's coming out with Jacksonville Police. Basically, any interesting, one-of-one character, one-of-one situation, and investigative pieces. We have a lot of those in the chamber. Kenneth Copeland is not going to be happy with us in a couple of weeks. Around Easter Sunday, we're going to be releasing Expose and the megachurch pastor Kenneth Copeland. We have a Scientology piece in the works. We have an Area 51 piece in the works. We just launched our Tiffany Hennier, Most Corrupt Mayor in America piece. I want it to be where you can't predict what next week is gonna be.

• 2:14Speaker 01

  Every week is gonna be a new adventure I get to take you.

• 2:17Graham Stephan?

  How are you different from mainstream media?

• 2:19Speaker 01

  I would say a few things. One, we're a lot more running. I don't, there's not levels of bureaucracy that I have to do to approve a story. There's less regulation, so I can go talk to the train robber, no problem. Not gonna have 16 lawyers tell me that I can't.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  And I think the format, I think where mainstream media really went wrong is this. If they use their resources to do boots-on-the-ground investigative stuff that is interactive, like, maybe they don't have to read in a voice that's like, hello, today I'm gonna like, if they just acted like normal humans, wore normal clothes, and use their resources to get, you know, to contact sources, insiders, whistleblowers, and made pieces for YouTube, they would probably be.

• 2:58Graham Stephan?

  Dude, that was Vice, back in the day.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Vice, the Vice was.

• 3:00Graham Stephan?

  Early Vice videos.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Fantastic. They're early inspiration. Like, anytime if someone says, oh, you're like early Vice, like, that to me is like a little warm pat. Like, thank you. Like, uh, the thing is, mainstream media, I think they're, one of their biggest mistakes is they never adapted to the new era. They never switched to the pot, the long form, because that's what people have been hungry for. You, even when I, my, my wife will put NPR on in the morning, and they'll like do two second, like, two lines and then cut away. And like, you never really get, you hear like the tiniest detail of the story, but you never really get what's going on. I had an interaction with a mainstream media reporter, an anchor, in Chicago during the Tiffany Henyard conversation. Initially, it started off a little hostile, because I was wearing my RIP mainstream,

• 3:45Speaker 01

  my RIP mainstream media shirt, and he saw it. He's like, oh, what is that? I'm like, oh, well, it's not you personally, but it's just your organization and like, the, the people, like, power behind it. And I started listing why I think mainstream media is kind of like, how they have shifted the narrative. Like, you basically have these billionaires controlling the, the narrative, and then you have like the Sinclair effect, or have you ever seen where you see like, all those, um, local reporters saying the same script, or like, across dozens of news stations. You ever seen that before? So when you have that, like, your mouthpiece, like, we want straight from the heart. We want someone that, yes, I, I'm not the smartest guy out there. I'm totally imperfect. And there's better investigators, there's better researchers, but people at least know when

• 4:25Speaker 01

  they get it from someone like me, that there's an honesty, there's a trust factor, and I'm actually gonna try and see what's going on, rather than they just have like a prescribed narrative. I think that if they switch, I guess I wonder, have they lost so much trust from our generations and the ones a little bit above them before, that they're just totally toast? Even if they shift their recipe, I don't know if they can bring back their reputation.

• 4:50Jack Selby?

  It's interesting, because I've seen Don Lemon now, going around doing street interviews, trying like this new style of journalisming and the boots-on-the-ground approach, which I feel like is interesting, but a lot of people are not liking it. In the comments, they're like, wow, it's sad you've resorted to this. But I see it, I'm like, hey, at least it seems like he's reacting to the criticism.

• 5:11Graham Stephan?

  It's a different demographic. I feel like if you're over 45, you really like the news anchor. If you're under 30, you love the-

• 5:17Jack Selby?

  No, it's like young people, though, that are hating on him. I think that it was just because of, they didn't like what he done.

• 5:21Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, well, it's because, in general, younger people, I think, are more receptive to like your videos and-

• 5:25Speaker 01

  It just feels so fake. When-

• 5:27Graham Stephan?

  It still does.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  When you read in a voice that is totally un how other humans communicate, and most of the time, like, are they even reading something they wrote, or did someone in the back room write it, and this is the first time they're seeing it? And then when you know that there's like, certain angles of what they can and can't say, that they're steering it in a certain direction, they just have lost all public trust. And in some ways, I'm glad they did, because it opened up doors for guys that have, like me, that have no credentials, I don't have a journalism background, I'm totally untrained, so is my entire crew. Like, they, like, my camera guy jumped in from music videos, my other guy jumped in from real estate, like, and here we are, putting together YouTube documentary journalism.

• 6:07Graham Stephan?

  Hey, by the way, before we go into the episode, I just want to say, this is Graham from the future, and we had a lot of trouble uploading this episode. It kept getting age restricted. There was a lot in here, we actually had to take out, so our entire episode didn't get shadow banned and demonetized. So if you want to see the entire uncensored, full video, without anything cut, you can join as a channel member, and we're posting all of these podcasts a bit early, so you- See them before they go public and we're not censoring any of them. There's no ads, there's no sponsors, there's no nothing. It's just the entire uncensored podcast in its full format every single week. With maybe some bonus episodes thrown in every now and then. So if you want to join, it would mean the world to us. Thank you so much and now let's get to the podcast. Enjoy.

• 6:51Graham Stephan?

  What do you think is the most ethically challenging video that you've posted so far?

• 6:55Speaker 01

  Most recently, the train robbers. Because I don't want it to be like, I mean, I know I'm going to meet with a train robber, but I don't want, I'm not going to be part of the, I don't know when it's going to happen. Like, I just want it to be like, okay, if we're in the vicinity, when it starts to go down, we'll be there to catch the action. But the other thing is like, I don't even know what the federal laws are. So like, if I'm on a train tracks while it's happening, am I like, am I too close to the action for comfort? We have one coming up right now where I did a piece with a car thief, a very, very good car thief. And he wants to do a second piece that basically he, he knows that his window is going up where he's either going to be dead or in prison. Like he's like, the things I've done, like if they give me 30 years, it's a fair deal. And I, my, my other guy just got raided.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  I know that they're going to be hot on my trail. There's going to be a US marshal that probably picks me up soon. So I want to make a cautionary tale to the youth. I want to show what I do, but I also want to give the, the final message of this is, this lifestyle is not worth doing. The consequences of it, how he's disconnected from his family, how he can't really see his daughter anymore because it's too risky to go to the house. Cause the police are calling his girlfriend, they're calling his mom, like the, the walls are closing in. But it's like, okay, if I give this guy a GoPro and just say, report back to me in two weeks, is that crossing the line ethically? Another one, a hitman, alleged hitman in Dallas. I'm trying to figure out if he's legit or not, because I have to, I don't, I don't want to just put a kid that's like, oh, I just pulled a prank or I like, I just want my moment of fame.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  So I'm just going to lie about something. So I have to verify somewhat, is this guy at least one body of a? And so he's like, okay, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna call you. I'm gonna call you about an hour before the mission. And that's, that's your heads up to be by your phone. And I'm gonna FaceTime you for 10 seconds. And I'm gonna go on Signal and FaceTime you. And that, that'll be enough proof. Like, okay, uh, like, is he even, like, seen this? He's gonna do it anyways, though. That's the thing. He's gonna do it anyways, whether I'm involved or not. And to me, the value is, we get to look into this guy's mind and see why he does it. What led up to this? What happened in his childhood? What is his motivation? So the ethics of that, because I talked to a, um, I think it was WGN. It's a, um, a regional station in Chicago. I talked to a journalist there, like, is it even okay to interview a guy like this?

• 9:05Speaker 01

  And he's like, look, you're not helping him do the crime. You're not telling him to do the crime. You're just trying to get into your mind. And you're like, where, where do you draw the line ethically? Like, some people could say, you know, there's leaders of countries right now that are war criminals. But you'll sit down and ask him a question. So like, I think as long as you don't participate, like, I'm not gonna be like, hey, I know a dealership over here. You should go rob them. And I'm gonna be standing outside filming. But if you do something, if you, like, he's this guy, these, a lot of these guys film stuff on their own phone that is totally incriminating. And they'll send it to me and it's like, okay, like, you're legit.

• 9:36Graham Stephan?

  So if you knew that someone was going to die, you would step in? But if they don't tell you-

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't wanna be part of any active crime. If he says, this is a, a body that I just recently, you know, did, did a job for, I'll look at it to verify. And then there's like, there's an ethical argument, like, is it my duty, like, to be a mandated reporter of a crime of that nature? Because whose family did that guy just get taken from that wants justice? That I could help unravel that. But I do think, like, no one will ever go down from one of my videos. Like, we edit it very carefully, because we cover very serious criminals sometimes. No one is gonna go down because of me. They're gonna, like, the police gotta do their jobs. The, the agencies gotta do their jobs, or these guys gotta slip up on their own. My job is to get inside access to places that most people don't get to see, ask people questions and bring it back to the people. But I am not law enforcement.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  I'm never gonna participate with law enforcement.

• 10:29Graham Stephan?

  Are you afraid of lawsuits?

• 10:30Speaker 01

  I have some errors and admissions insurance, but I'm not confident they're gonna back me up when they need to. I'm paying like 220 bucks a month. And I'm sure as soon as there's a little bit of friction, that they're gonna have some technicality in the policy and drop me. I haven't been sued yet. And I don't, the other thing is, I don't do many hit piece style- Videos and the exposes we do, it's not me saying it about this person. It's insiders in the church, insiders that were former Scientology or people that lived in this town that can speak to it. And I think the thing that's on our side is if they do try and take me to court, yes, they're going to have bigger pockets than me. Yes, it's going to be an uncomfortable experience of me fighting, you know, a billion dollar organization in court or multimillion dollar pastor.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  But what happens in court, if he really wants to take it there, let's say Kenneth Copeland is now he has to open up his books and he doesn't want to do that because the people that we're calling out, I'm not just like making smoke about someone that I think is actually a good person. Like, these are people that are, they need to be called out. And if they were to reveal their books, it'd be even better because then we have a part two to go off on.

• 11:32Graham Stephan?

  How do the police not go to you and say, hey, you were filming with this guy? We've been looking for him for 10 years. You know who it is.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  In the last three years, the police or agencies have only come to my house twice. So first of all, with the Kia boys video, Milwaukee PD came to their house and I had already talked to my lawyer and I knew what my rights were as a journalist. So I knew, like, I can stand my ground. So I was very polite to them. I'm like, I understand you fellows are in a tight position. You guys are trying to, you know, now it's very visible in Milwaukee, what's happening. It's going nationwide with the publicity. Like, I understand you guys have a job to do, but I can't say anything about it. And they had a manila folder, they were going to ask me questions. They closed the manila folder and I remember I took them to my back porch because I, at the time I had lived two blocks from the east side hood of Milwaukee. And so like, if anyone saw me talking to police, even me saying, I'm not saying anything, it was dangerous. And so I had them come to my back porch.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  My dog Frank was still a puppy at the time and started humping the detective's leg. I'm just like, oh God, like, here we go. And they closed the manila folder and they say, we just have one question. Did these guys have any empathy for what they did? And I said, honestly, I didn't get that impression at all. I felt like. Again, it's your fault if you don't have insurance was the mentality.

• 12:41Jack Selby?

  Explain the Kia boys to those who may not have seen it.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  So the Kia boys phenomenon originated in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I've lived for the last 10, 12 years. And it's these teenagers that are extremely reckless, that are very proficient at stealing Kias because of a certain exploit that a USB allows them to take a car in about a minute or less, the really good guys, 30 seconds or less. And Hyundai's were really big. That was an era of car thieving, that those two cars are really easy to exploit. And they were so notorious in the city because of how they would drive. They'd get into a stolen car and they would drive like this. Like, I don't know if you've ever seen how Kia boys drive. There's certain like-

• 13:17Jack Selby?

  I do that every now and then. You're just driving along.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Not like that. They'll drive through playgrounds. They'll drive through high schools, not through, but like the yard of a high school. Like, there'll be kids going to class and they'll drive on the sidewalk and kids are running. Like, if you go to this, there's a page called 414 Hype House. 414 is the area code of Milwaukee. And you see some of the Kia boy activities, like the way they would drive is so scary, so reckless. It was something that originated in Milwaukee, but has come to find out is, was a nationwide thing.

• 13:43Jack Selby?

  And what was the, the conclusion to the Kia boys?

• 13:45Speaker 01

  The guy, the main character in, in the video, Mr. E-Brake. I came to find out that he graduated into much more dangerous things. I'll just say in the firearm realm through Telegram, I was, if you guys can piece it together, like this guy went from cars to- and certain parts that go on. Other kids in the video were repeat offenders. One of the kids got caught and apparently how he got caught was he was on a jail phone being like, "Hey yo, that was me" in the video. And they're listening to the jail phones and like, okay. And then they match his fingerprints to like six or seven other cars. He went, I think he did, I don't know if he did it like two months, three months, he did something like, came out again, stole more cars, got into a, and I think since he's gone back, I don't know what happened to him since.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  And I've, I've kept, kept in touch with Mr. E-Brake. That was the only kid that I actually messaged and knew a little bit. I met him that day. It wasn't like I had a relationship going in there. But I've kept in touch with him because he's a guy that I was rooting for. Like, he, he definitely is, is intelligent. He definitely, like, he's handy. Like, even what you do with putting them together, knowing how certain parts work. Like, the kid is really smart and the kid is funny. Like, he had some lines in the Kia boy video that he's a genuine, genuine comedian. So I saw this potential in him and I was thinking like, I, I think I would sponsor him to go to my MMA gym. But then I'm like, then I know what this guy, like, when I met up with him again. You know, hanging out of his waist, his friend has a, they're in the business. I'm like, there's no way I can have this kid come to the gym when I know what's in his backpack. Like it's just too much of a threat.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  And when I had followed up with him, he's like, like I had met with his mom and she's like, yeah, like it's been real crazy for us. Like our house has been shut up, drive by. I'm like, they're not putting two hundred together that her son is the reason that these drive bys are happening. Drive bys don't just happen to your house. They don't just like you, he probably someone else's house up and they were retaliating. They're like, why is this happening? It's like.

• 15:35Graham Stephan?

  So how often is it that you do an interview and you decide you can't post it? Or they say something on camera that you just say, we can't air that.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  I consistently edit certain pieces out. Uh, I remember I was, uh, in a Midwest city where a gang I was with showed me a Snapchat video of a recently body, like they just, and they were, they filmed it and they showed me and were talking about it. So I completely took that part out of the video. Uh, I'll be with guys that'll turn their, and they'll show a, the camera, which is a federal charge. So we'll blur that.

• 16:07Graham Stephan?

  What is this?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Is this something that makes it go fully automatic and it's a instant, like the ATF will raid your house if they know you have these devices. And right now they're getting sold on Telegram. They'll come to your house disguised as a toy car or different things where you just disassemble this, put it on the back of your and boom, you pull it and like, you'll hear with like this, kind of the modern day violent rap out this right now. Like they love making like switch and it's like cause that's the sound of how, what a switch is. Cause it just, and it's a very bad thing to put on your, because it makes it inaccurate, which is good for the rest of us, but like it's, it's not, no Delta Force operator be like, this is a good idea to put on my, because basically you just like miss, you, you empty the clip in like two seconds and you miss pretty much all of what you're trying to.

• 16:51Graham Stephan?

  What was the hardest thing for you to watch that one of these criminals has sent to you?

• 16:56Jack Selby?

  When I go back to SoCal to visit my parents, there is this perfect e-bike route that goes along the coastline. I love it. It's a nice path right next to the beach, beautiful views. And honestly, doing this has been one of the highlights of my trips back. E-bikes aren't only fun to ride though, they're becoming a serious transportation alternative. And our sponsor Upway is solving the main obstacle preventing people from getting. Into it, the price tag.

• 17:16Graham Stephan?

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• 17:37Jack Selby?

  If you're tired of wasting time in traffic, you don't want to arrive places sweaty from pedaling, or you just want to enjoy your commute for once, an e-bike makes perfect sense.

• 17:44Graham Stephan?

  And right now, Upway is giving our listeners $150 off any purchase over $1,500 when you use the code ICEDCOFFEE through the end of May.

• 17:52Jack Selby?

  Seriously, guys, you're gonna absolutely love them. Check them out today at upway.co, that is U-P-W-A-Y.co, with the link down below in the description. Ditch the gas, skip the traffic, ride smarter, and you can thank me later.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  Every person is a yin and yang. Like, I haven't met people that are genuinely 100% evil. Most people I meet, there's redemptive qualities in them. And that's the hard part about it, is I know some of what they do is really bad. Like, I know gangsters that have caught a few, a handful of bodies. And, but then when I talk to them, like, "Hey, gang, how you doing? Like, your son doing good? Your family doing good?" Like, they're compassionate in any way, like, they're nice to you. And part of me wonders, like, if I didn't have a platform, would I get the... Like, I'm obviously probably wouldn't get the same level of treatment for some of these guys. But I do think you can make friendships. Like, I think a lot of these guys are looking for love. They're growing up in these zero-trust environments. And this weird masculine energy where it's not like the pure version of masculine energy,

• 18:47Speaker 01

  where you care for people, you express you're vulnerable, but you also are strong. Like, it's a fragile masculine energy where it's like, if someone says the slightest thing about you, you either gotta kill them or fight them. But a lot of these guys are looking for love, like, and you show genuine love towards them. Like, these guys will go to the end. Like, I had a situation where... A kid owed me a good chunk of money because of a copyright issue on YouTube. And I went public with it after months of trying to settle it privately and be amicable. And I had a few different guys reach out like, hey, I'm in New York right now. I'll kidnap this guy. Like, do you want me to do that? Like, no, I don't need you to do that. Like, another guy, like, I'll fly out there right now and get some guys and beat them up. And so like to them, that's a love language. Like, in the streets, if someone is willing to be loyal to you like that,

• 19:32Speaker 01

  that shows a lot of love because that means they're willing to risk their own well-being, their own time out in the free world for you. So that's like buying someone chocolates on Valentine's Day in the hood. You know what I mean?

• 19:43Graham Stephan?

  Do you worry about getting so close to these people where if you do something to them, even unknowingly, that that could flip?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Not really. I mean, well, one, I don't invite people to my house that I know are really dangerous. Like, I keep my private little bubble. We come to places with a lot of love. Like, people are excited for us to come, especially like you're saying, like the gangster world, the rapper world. Like, it's not a hundred percent success rate, but there's a few guys I can count on my hands that people get rap, you know, they get signed to record labels after they do a video with us. So we can provide a lot of value to somebody and work with them. And there's nothing better than that to me. Like, because a lot of these guys, even guys I know that have caught bodies in the street because their rival gang lives three blocks away. Like, if this kid could get a record deal and move out of the city, he's gonna do it in a heartbeat and just chase after music.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  That's what he really wants to do. He doesn't want to be in a gang turf war. It's stressful. Like, can you imagine the stress waking up and knowing that the guys that don't like you, and multiple groups of them live within two blocks of you sometimes? Like, you don't just go on a calm walk down the street with your family. Even driving, they don't ever want their car filmed because, ooh, like, they'll line it up. Like, then they're gonna shoot me up in the street and they'll catch me at a traffic light. They won't tell you that they're stressed out. They won't tell you that they're scared because they can't really, like, you can't really express that. But I know if I was in their shoes, I would be turning gray and losing hair.

• 21:06Graham Stephan?

  Where does all the hate come from? It just seems like if you live within a few blocks of each other, like, you shouldn't necessarily hate the person because of what?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  It's tribalism in a hood sense. I mean, it's the same thing why Republicans and Democrats, like, you mix it up in any group form, and it's the same thing. The difference is here, you're in a violent environment, and all it takes is one One gang versus another and then you have to inherit it. If you're part of the crew and you're not going to do anything about it, then you have to back it up. It's like a really strong river that's flowing and they just get born in these areas where let's just say sometimes 80 to 90% of the boys in that area will go into a gang. Sometimes as young as like 10, 11, 12, they're starting to get somewhat affiliated. And so you can't just sit on the sidelines like if someone on your team gets, you can't just go back in your house and make dinner and call it a day. Like you have to do something about it. And then these guys are just stuck.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  And I wonder how many of them, that if you just grew up in a different area, how different their life would be. And to put ourselves in their shoes, if we grew up in Little Village in Chicago and we grew up on Latin King territory and the two sixers are here, the, the SDs are here, you know, we're, what are the chances that we're not in the game? And I think that's, that's an element that like, even though you can look at like cultural things, like a lack of education, a lack of integrity on certain things that like as an outsider, you're like, why would you treat a woman like that? Or why wouldn't you emphasize education? But if we grew up there, what are the odds we would be any different?

• 22:40Jack Selby?

  What's the closest you've ever been to committing a crime while making a documentary?

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Someone claiming to be a New York police officer reached out to me and said, there's a warrant for me. And next time I go to New York to contact him, he said, it's not a big deal. It's just a misdemeanor trespassing. There's, I'm not going to say where it was committed, but there was another one that, uh, there's a heavy fine. And I don't know if I did something to an extent that it could be past misdemeanor.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  But usually I don't commit crimes when I film my videos, if that's your question.

• 23:12Jack Selby?

  Do you have a good lawyer?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  A good lawyer, yeah. I do.

• 23:16Jack Selby?

  I feel like this would be a great integration for a sponsor at this point.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Saul Goodman. Did you know that you have rights?

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Shout out Dan Adams. Uh, after the Kia boys video came out, a local Milwaukee lawyer reached out to me and we've sent, grown a really good friendship. And anytime we're about to do something sketchy, I reach out to him. Like there was a time, um, we were on Eagle Pass, Texas, where a lot of the immigration was coming across. We just interviewed guys. In a stash house that you know, basically when you cross the border, you come to the house and really like 20 year old, 22 year old kids run this house. And then they transport you, you know, you need to, oh, you have family in Ohio that you're trying to get to Cleveland and work in a factory with your brother. Okay, we're gonna, we'll do the driving past the checkpoints to get you there. And after that interview, we went to the border and we had met these two guys from Venezuela that were starving.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  They, and they'd gotten beaten by Mexican police, like they just had the roughest possible journey to get to this country. All they wanted is to get a job and live in a neighborhood that's safe. They don't care if they live 10 deep in a house. They just, they want to be a respectable citizen. And so like, just go on a political tangent, like some of the rhetoric has been like, they're the worst, they're the, they're the right. There's a handful of them, but overwhelmingly, I think the people are crossing are trying to find a better life and just, they just want to work hard. You put them in a construction job, a roofing job. Like some people, a fast food job is a come up. If they can make 15 bucks an hour at Wendy's, they're happy. But the, the legal question that came in mind was, we met these two Venezuelan guys and I'm like, you know what?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  Like, let's, let's bring them back to the Airbnb, let's let them have a shower, let's let them sleep in a bed tonight, let's cook them a dinner. And we were gonna do it. And then I, we had to segue, I'm like, okay, guys, like, these guys that are gonna show us, um, like chicken fighting, cockfighting, they're, they're, they've been expecting us for the last hour. Actually, I had to go run an interview and then I'm gonna come back and we're gonna meet you guys, get you guys supplies and get you guys going. And then in the time driving to the, the Roosters, um, I called the lawyer, my, my guy Dan, and we looked up the li, the, the laws online, like harboring of, uh, I don't know if it's harboring a fugitive, but there's, there could be very serious felonies just by letting someone sleep in your house. It was like, when we got back there, we went to Walmart, we got them camping supplies, we got them, uh, granola bars, we just loaded them up with supplies.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  And, but we, we didn't invite them back to the Airbnb and it felt wrong, like from a human aspect, like all we wanted to do with these guys to enjoy, like these guys are suffering. And I just wanted one cool night where they, we could talk to them, get their story. And it felt weird that that was illegal. I get why it is, but it felt weird that giving someone a shower.

• 25:49Graham Stephan?

  Say like, hey, you know what, if the back door is unlocked. I'm a really sound sleeper. I'm not gonna hear anything if you go in and take a shower.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  I could have tried that.

• 25:57Graham Stephan?

  But don't do that.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  But anytime we talk felony.

• 26:00Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  That's a long time in prison. Even six months to me would be a long time in prison. Maybe if I was a single man, I would entertain doing riskier ideas. And we just went to area 51 and there was some certain things that we might have to redact. Because you just have to be careful in some of these situations. Uh, nothing is worth your freedom. And that's, I think, a theme that we explore with a lot of these guys is the things you do. Like, why is it worth you to think like, if these guys give me 30 years, that's a fair deal? Like, why would you do anything that would, that would make that a fair deal?

• 26:32Graham Stephan?

  Now, speaking of opportunity, I went back to your earliest videos. And there was a video that you posted and you held up a phone in front of a computer. And you just said with complete conviction, this is gonna make me a millionaire one day. And one day I'm gonna have an Instagram with a million followers on it. And this computer right here, I'm gonna edit my videos on this. I'm gonna be a millionaire one day from this. And that was five years ago. Did you hit that goal?

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Many of them, yes. And to me, I, I think that's like the beauty of chasing a dream. And I appreciate you saying that moment, because sometimes, like you probably know this, like, you're so much in the hustle and the grind sometimes that you forget to remember like, dude, my 20-year-old self would have traded his left nut to be in this position. And here I am. I, I literally would not trade my job with anyone in the world. You could offer me any job, this is what I wanna do. And I'm, and I'm making money off of it. And it just feels so fantastic because my first five years on YouTube, I would guess, I lost money. I, I never went into it to be, I'm not trying to be Jeff Bezos. I, all I ever wanted, I remember in college, looking up, there's this financial blog called Mr. Money Mustache.

• 27:37Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I love Mr. Money Mustache.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Super, like basically freedom through frugality.

• 27:40Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  And I, I was a disciple of that teaching. Like, I was like calculating like the slimmest margin, like I'll live out of my car, I'll eat beans. Like, if I could just make, find something that can make 1,200 bucks a month, like I'll be free of the corporate world, I'll never join it and I'll be able to do what I want and be on the road. And to think that I, like, all I ever wanted was to replace the income. I had a sales job for, you know, two different sales jobs over the course of five and a half years uh, in the corporate world. If I could just replace this income or pay my rent, making stuff that I love, I'm happy. And now that this has taken off, like, I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't even believe that you could make this much money. It just is like, it feels really good to.

• 28:16Graham Stephan?

  That's so cool.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Committed to the dream.

• 28:17Graham Stephan?

  Have you ever considered doing a Chinese sweatshop video?

• 28:22Jack Selby?

  I feel like everyone's always talked about Chinese sweatshops, but we don't know what it's actually like.

• 28:27Graham Stephan?

  Oh, good luck going to China filming that coming back.

• 28:29Jack Selby?

  You think that would be impossible?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  I'm not as keen on the international side, mostly because the longer I spend away from home, which is just tough.

• 28:37Jack Selby?

  That's a good point.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  I would love, you know, I would love to one day. There's something adjacent to that. And you may have seen stories about Pakistani bricklayers that are like kind of indentured slaves. That the way that it's set up at the, these bricklaying factories, they can never make enough to get out of it. So some of these people, I think it's like, this sounds mind blowing to even say, but like 200 years their family has been at this brick factory, making bricks. And there was a gentleman that I was gonna go out and he's gonna buy out the factory and free everybody.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  He's a guy that's a really upstanding guy, good Christian guy, very good ethics and morals. And he respects what I do, but at the moment, my channel is a little brand dangerous to him. So I think we backed off on that idea, but something like that that brings justice to the world. And there's a lot of stories here that I think can bring justice to the world.

• 29:25Graham Stephan?

  The indentured servant industry is so interesting to me because you would never expect it, but it's in plain sight. Uh, I'll give you an example, Paris. I went there and in front of the Eiffel Tower, you have these people that are selling little figurines of the Eiffel Tower. And as soon as a police officer walks by, they're on radios, they're like, pack it up, pack it up.

• 29:46Speaker 00

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• 30:10Graham Stephan?

  They'll go and like, you know, pack it up, walk away. And then as soon as a police officer walks away, they'll come back to their spot and, and put it back up again. I'm thinking to myself, geez, this has got to be pretty profitable if they're risking something like this. How much do they make? And I started looking into this. I had no idea that these are basically indentured servants. Like slaves in a sense, because they get smuggled over into these European countries. And part of the deal is, well, now you have to pay back your debt. But they never pay off their debt.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  And you imagine-

• 30:45Graham Stephan?

  That's insane.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  How much of a psycho you have to be to run that operation to say, "Yeah, I'm gonna bring them over here with the promise of a new life, but then their life is gonna be selling trinkets or selling something that they're never gonna get." I mean, that's what I'm fascinated by is that people like that. That's real evil. There's just no way to rationalize that as like, "I'm a pretty good guy, but I just have a few hundred indentured servants rolling around."

• 31:07Graham Stephan?

  They could probably justify it that their life in Paris-

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Is safer.

• 31:10Graham Stephan?

  Is better than their other conditions.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  I suppose that's the thing, there's always a justification.

• 31:14Graham Stephan?

  They have a improvement based off probably where they were coming from. At least they have access to shelter, clean water, consistent food. Is that a justification? That's probably what they think.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  I do think that goes to show it's a real matter of perspective on how happy you are with what you have. Because when you really look at how some conditions are, like, there's certain things I'll see, like, I'll see, I'll go to Pine Ridge Reservation and I'll see how people are living there. I'm like, like, the car ride home is like, "I don't ever get to complain about anything ever again." Like, these people are living in like, there's, there's no heat. They're, they're, everyone is an alcoholic, like, eighty to ninety percent of the people there are either on alcoholics or they're meth heads. And imagine growing up near that and it's like, like, some people in this world have unspeakable conditions and it's good to put in perspective because when we, like, we're in this country where a lot of us have gotten a little comfortable, a little fat and lazy with the luxuries that we do have,

• 32:12Speaker 01

  like, it's a good reminder to be like, "Things are pretty good here, man."

• 32:14Graham Stephan?

  What's your most memorable interview?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Man, it just feels like the most recent one is always the best. Like, I have so many little gems in my mind of, because we really enjoy ourselves. Like, when we're out there, um, let's say recently, the Area 51 documentary we just did, which we just recorded in the last couple of days, um, just peeing out at a top, like, arguably the most secret base in the world with a guy that's dedicated his last thirty years, James Fox, towards investigating encounters and UFOs. And he's the guy that, you know, if someone has a, a Polaroid in Scotland from 1957, he's going there to interview that old man and, "What did you see that day?" And so we were with him, we really played the- Edge of where we could have gone in the base. We got security trucks and we got the alarm to go off.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  And then we're interviewing people that have had encounters. We talked to a guy from area 51 that like, yep, like he had an encounter with an alien and if he's been, he was sworn to secrecy, but now he's able to testify. Now he's able to go forward with his story. He just made a Joe Rogan appearance about it. And so like, to me, just to be, to be in the mix of like, if any of this is real, this is arguably one of the most important stories of humankind. It's either the biggest lie and like one of the biggest farces, or like this totally changes the paradigm of what we understand in this world.

• 33:30Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. How much of that is BS? Do you think, because I tend to think that it's so obvious that, you know, area 51 is like this, this UFO place. You know, it's just a front for like, it's, they're probably just doing, you know, military testing. It's not like an alien hub spot. It's too obvious. Like there, there's signs everywhere with like aliens. Like that wouldn't be the place to hide it, right?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  It would be because of how remote it is. They're like, one of the towns we, we stayed at the Ale Inn, this motel, it's a town of 20 people. The other Alamo Inn we stayed in is a town of like 1,200 people. It is so unbelievably remote there. Like there's some places where like next gas is 40 miles. Like you better load up. So it's the perfect place to hide it. I do think the majority of what happens at area 51 is from the sounds of it, from the guy that worked there. It, there's military exercises that are happening all the time. Pilots are training there and a lot of times, pilots from other countries come and we do joint exercises there. But what he said also happens is anytime an unidentified craft crashes,

• 34:33Speaker 01

  it is an absolute rush. So they send Delta Force, they said like, because if, let's say it lands in Brazil, we will send our best to go recover that. And probably Russia's doing the same thing. China's doing the same thing because we want to get our hands on that technology. And we bring it back to area 51 where you have some of the most premier researchers, scientists, physicists, geologists that are looking at this and trying to determine, one, what is it? And two, can we create it? Can we use this alien technology? And what this guy was saying is what the general public thinks is possible as far as. Crafts, we are hundreds of years ahead in terms of propulsion, navigating. And I'm like, when you say hundreds of years ahead of what the public is aware of, that's a pretty

• 35:18Speaker 01

  bold statement to say.

• 35:20Jack Selby?

  Has documenting aliens changed your perspective?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  It's opened me up. I'm usually a pretty healthy skeptic, like most things. I'm like, like, one of my biggest problems with the whole alien thing is like, you're telling me in the last, like, you're showing me photographs from 1947, 1952, and the videos I see online are like, pretty blurry, grainy. You're telling me in the last 15, 20 years since cameras have been prevalent, that all of a sudden the aliens have just not shown up anymore? There's elements of it that are really hard to believe. What makes it compelling is when I was talking to this researcher, James Fox, he has been around the world and people that have never communicated with each other, like, he'll ask people in Brazil, China, Africa, what they saw at, you know, at this land, you know, when the aliens came out. And across culture,

• 36:04Speaker 01

  it's the aliens, they look kind of like this, they smell kind of like this, they can telepathic communicate emotions to you, their craft looks like this, it moves this way. When you get all these different accounts corroborating it, it's like, hmm. Like, he's not going after crackpots that are looking for two seconds of fame, that are, just did a bundle of mushrooms and they're like, "Yeah, I saw aliens." Like, credible people, people that were engineers, people that had regular jobs, schoolteachers, like, when you, when all those people across culture start saying, "This is what I saw," that to me is, work is pretty compelling.

• 36:39Jack Selby?

  I think we've all had a problem with bugs. For me, it was last summer. We had a line of ants that went all the way from the downstairs bathroom upstairs into my roommate's room. Gavin, you need to stop leaving dirty plates in your room. But fortunately, this year, bugs don't need to be a problem with our sponsor, Pesti.

• 36:53Graham Stephan?

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• 37:11Jack Selby?

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• 37:24Graham Stephan?

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• 37:34Jack Selby?

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• 37:49Graham Stephan?

  Thanks again to our sponsor Pesti and now let's get back to the episode. How'd you get into journalism?

• 37:54Speaker 01

  I think I've always just been fascinated and curious by the world. When I was young, my mom took us to the library often. I was a triplet, so she would take the triplets to the library and we'd all, we were all very big readers. And I could read about endless amounts of things. Like right now, I'm reading about the Lewis and Clark expedition, discovering western part of America. Well, I guess I would say Europeans discovering the western part of America. There's plenty of folks still there doing their thing before they got there. But there's an endless amount of topics that I will, I can read sci-fi, I can read biographies, I can, like, I think I've just been very curious about the world naturally. One of the things that really was my first leap, I would say into journalism is, and I guess the experience of it, not actually documenting it.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  But I, when I was a sophomore in college, I went to go live with a tribe in the jungle of Ecuador. And there was this website, volunteerSouthAmerica.org and you could stay in a Peruvian dog shelter. You could do this over here, but I saw live with a tribe and I'm like, dude, I'm 100% doing that. So I packed my bags. I had a contact out there that was going to meet me. I go there and I'm in, uh, I forget some of the cities, but I went from the main city to a little city that you take the plane into the jungle from and. My contact wasn't answering the phone. So I started getting a little nervous. So I went to the tribal airport and I learned that the place that I wanted to fly into, the runway was destroyed. So I couldn't go in there. But an old lady heard my predicament and she's like, you can fly into my village.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  So I get into this eight person passenger plane. I fly for an hour or two across just a sea of wood or forest and trees. And I'm going away from civilization. And some lady that I met 45 minutes ago, I land with her and she allows me to stay in her hut with her husband for the night. And I ended up just staying in her village the whole time. Initially, the plan was some other guys were going to take me through the jungle and get me to the village I was supposed to go. But I stayed in this little 13 village hut. I lived with them. I did community workdays. I tried ayahuasca, but it never kicked in and the shaman gave me a bad feeling. So I didn't take a second dose to really get into it. But to me, I've always had a desire to explore, to understand, to discover and to really understand what makes people tick.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  And I think if there's any superpower I have, it's I am pretty comfortable to go into a room where I am the odd man out. I don't care if I'm in a mosque during Ramadan. I don't care if I'm in the middle of the jungle, sipping chicha, which is this little spit drink, or I'm in, you know, I'm in the middle of the hood and it's crazy and I'm only only white guy for miles. I've always just been curious about people and I think that genuine curiosity is what opens up doors. People want me to come in and I'm going to ask them questions. I'm going to be genuinely interested in them. And that to me is like the clear mark of a journalist.

• 40:37Jack Selby?

  How do you fit in so many different places?

• 40:40Speaker 01

  I don't know if I do.

• 40:41Jack Selby?

  Except you, though.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  I think it's because I accept myself. So I don't need to like, I don't, I don't mimic the environment that I'm in, but I'm okay with being myself, even if I stand out, even if I'm a little bit like nerdy or out there. And I think because I accept myself and I'm genuinely interested in asking questions, it makes you a welcome guest just by anywhere.

• 41:02Jack Selby?

  Have you always been that way or did it take a lot of self-development to become this way?

• 41:06Speaker 01

  I think it's always been who I am. I was always the little kid that, like, you know, my, my pop could send me on a mission to go talk to this person or, you know, I would be comfortable ordering for the family, whatever it was, like, I was okay going out there. And striking up a conversation with a stranger. I remember like I'd be the guy that on a train to Chicago, I'd be the guy talking to the guy next to me who, oh, your parents were missionaries and they saw this kind of witchcraft in Africa. And I could talk to him for an hour and a half until the train landed. And then, you know, I go on to my next thing.

• 41:32Jack Selby?

  Just curious then, if you have that level of confidence, did you cold approach your wife when you first met her?

• 41:37Speaker 01

  So I lived in a duplex for about five years. My wife lived in the upstairs and we each dated different people. We kind of knew each other a little bit. Maybe when we'd shovel together in the winter, we'd come in, we'd interact with each other. But then when COVID hit, they said, we're gonna be locked down. I think I said, I'm thinking I'm gonna go crazy. So I texted her, I'm like, you want to meet on the front porch and hang out? And from there, we started hanging out like every single day. And then we eventually started dating, which that was the most nerve wracking experience I've ever had, asking someone out. Because if she says no, like, she lives right there, I have to see her every day. Like, if someone says no, they don't live by you, like, okay, shake it off, go to the next one. But I think I've always been relatively bold and I've always been pretty down to gamble on myself.

• 42:18Jack Selby?

  Just curious, when you cross that bridge from becoming like friends to trying to develop more of a relationship, did you just word it differently? Like, hey, let's go on a date? Or did you say something like, hey, let's go grab dinner? Like, did you leave it ambiguous?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  We were, we were coming back, there was this old producer I used to work with, Smook, that I was making a song, I used to do some rap, let's say. And in the car ride home, I knew I was gonna ask her, but I, at every stoplight, I'd be like, okay, I'm gonna do it. At the next stoplight, I'm gonna do it. But I just was so nervous that I just kept pushing it. And eventually, I was very vulnerable and open, like, I really like you, I really want to see where this goes. I'd really love for you to be my girlfriend. And then it was like, you know, the eternity of waiting for the hammer to hit. And she's like, I like you too. So we, you know, we were able to kick things off. And that started, you know, we eventually moved into our own house and got married. Now we have a baby boy. So that's been a really cool journey to have happen.

• 43:09Jack Selby?

  Jack wants to know what the line was.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Did I, I'm not a, I'm not a smooth criminal. So I'm not, like, I don't have any really good lines. But actually, it was a book I read by Mark Manson, and I forget what the title.

• 43:21Jack Selby?

  I love Mark Manson.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  The Subtle Art?

• 43:22Jack Selby?

  Mm.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Or was it Everything?

• 43:24Jack Selby?

  Is F'd?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  It was, no, it was about dating in particular.

• 43:27Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, he had the whole pickup thing.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  And basically, his mentality on it was, yes, we all have a fear of being rejected, but you should go after it because either one, the best decision of your life will be made. You'll get a life partner and a best friend that you'll be able to do adventures with. Or they say no, and it's okay, I'm not going to spend months ruminating over it, fixating on it. I'm on to the next. So I was reading his book in the midst of asking her out. So thank you, Mark Manson, for your book.

• 43:52Graham Stephan?

  That is so cool.

• 43:53Jack Selby?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Graham Stephan?

  That's really.

• 43:54Jack Selby?

  Shout out Mark, he's been on the podcast before. He's a great guy.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Cool guy, modern day philosopher.

• 43:58Jack Selby?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 43:59Graham Stephan?

  Wow. Now, does your wife worry about you being on camera or associating with some of the people that you do?

• 44:05Speaker 01

  Not really. She, I would say, is a little bit more, like, I'll get more nervous than she does. She's as cool as a cucumber. So she knows that I, like, I prepare a lot for these things. Like, I'm on the phone with contacts constantly, building a relationship with them, trying to understand them, trying to verify them. And so by the time I get there, we've talked a handful of times and we're ready to go. Of course, there are situations that are dangerous. You know, a gang might invite me in and they might want me there. But if they're, like, the last time I was with the Latin Kings, they were in the middle of a turf war, where it was like fifteen guys in the last month or so had been shot. So every car that passes by is like a frightening experience. Like, you kind of want to hide behind a car and you wonder if when something's going to go down. So like, it is very possible that dangerous things could happen.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  But I, like, I kind of trust the universe that, hey, I'm in, I'm on the path I should be. And as long as I operate the right way, I'm good, I'm honest to people, I'm good to people. Like, I trust that the universe will guide me in the right direction.

• 45:04Graham Stephan?

  How do you find people who agree to be on camera? Where do you come up with these people?

• 45:08Speaker 01

  You'd be surprised at who wants to share their story. I was talking to my Carthy friend Felix and I was asking him, like, you know, what is the motivation? Because I think that's a pretty common question. Like, how do you get guys that are committing felonies on a daily basis to go on camera and talk about it? And he said, you know what? A lot of us know that we will either be dead or in jail in a short amount of time. And this is kind of like a living. Memory that we'll always be able to reference, like a piece of us will always live on in this 30 minute documentary you do about us where we get to share about ourselves. We get to hang out with you and tell the world about ourselves and what we do.

• 45:42Graham Stephan?

  Why are so many people drawn to gang culture? Because consistently, those are the videos that do the best. Those are the videos that I end up clicking on more than the positive videos. And there's another guy Hood Vlogs. It's just, it's so interesting for me to see this culture. Why do you think that is?

• 45:58Speaker 01

  I think people are always fascinated by the outlaws and hood culture has a lot of outlaws. You have guys that are willing and daring enough to not follow the traditional rules that most of us would be too scared to break. And there's a certain courage that outlaw has to have that I think you kind of respect. I think also, I mean, just the same reason why you'll watch a John Wick movie, like when there's that much action happening in a place like real life people. Like you could be standing next to four different and you have no idea until something goes down and you're like, oh, that was the guy that you guys rely on to take care of business. So I think there's just, there's a inherent want in us to like, want to poke our heads into the underworld. And these are guys that are the most open about it.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Certain crews, you're going to be, it's going to be hard pressed to really learn about them, like Russian gangsters in the United States that are running sex trafficking in Florida or Palm Springs. These are the guys that you will never get on camera to talk about it because things will happen to them if they do. But in the hood, you have, there's a culture that people want to share, they want to share their, their, their life, they want to share what they're thinking. And not only that, but they've also like the rap music that emerges from it has created one of the most influential cultures in America.

• 47:11Graham Stephan?

  What has it taught you about human nature?

• 47:13Speaker 01

  I think just about anyone, given the right circumstances, wants to share their story. It's like Dale Carnegie, you know, how to win friends and influence principle. Everyone wants to feel important. The most magical word you can ever say is someone else's name. People want to tell their story and be heard. And I think especially like, cause we cover a lot of the fringes of society, the trailer parks, the reservations, the hoods, the smugglers. These are people that the average media outlet will not cover. And so basically they're in their own little bubble and we give them an opportunity to broadcast their message to the world. And I think there's just an inherent value that. We're willing to talk to people that the average person would never sit down and talk to.

• 47:55Graham Stephan?

  What community do you think cultivates the worst kind of person?

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say a no trust, uh, fatherless, uh, poverty. That's the other thing, poverty. I mean, there's not a lot of people like, white collar crime isn't looked at the same. Like you can defraud, Bernie Madoff can defraud people worth billions of dollars. And they're like, ah, yeah, he defrauded them. He was running a scheme. But he doesn't get the same pressure that a in the hood or a bank robber would get. And I find that interesting. Like there's, there are people that corporations, big, big name politicians that do things that disproportionately impact people. But for some reason, like the local Compton guy, the local Chicago guy gets more heat.

• 48:38Jack Selby?

  I think probably because Bernie Madoff would not take someone's life with his own hands. But the person in Compton that's done that before would absolutely do what Bernie Madoff did. They would love to do something like that.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:52Jack Selby?

  And so it's like a degrees of detachment and self justification. How did you get arrested?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Back in my prank era, I did some wild things. Um, one of them was, uh, I was pretending to be a doctor and I ran into a grocery store and I had a fake and I'm like, someone just lost us in a car crash. We need to put on ice. And people were scrambling around and in setting up for that prank, I had the fake and I zipped it into my jeans and I had it hanging out and an old couple thought I was exposing myself to them. So they called the police on me. I had no idea anything was going on. I went back to my house in Milwaukee and was enjoying like the post filming little buzz. And then the, the Wauwatoza police knocked on my door and took me in and processed me.

• 49:35Graham Stephan?

  What was the conclusion of that? Do you fight it?

• 49:37Speaker 01

  No, I mean, it was like, I don't know if it was disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace. But it was just like, it was more of like, ah, this is kind of cool. Like as long as I'm not serving any jail time, like it's a little bit of a resume builder, you know?

• 49:48Graham Stephan?

  So you have a mug shot out there somewhere?

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a terrible mug shot. I thought it was like, oh, I'm going to turn this into a T-shirt. It's going to be so badass. I looked like I was missing a few chromosomes in the shot.

• 49:58Graham Stephan?

  Man exposes your face on.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  And that's the only.

• 50:03Graham Stephan?

  Instance of being arrested?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Hmm, I had the Secret Service visit me. I did this redneck video out in Tennessee where at one point I was just getting into my inner redneck. You know, and I was, I had this in my head. I was like, Joe Biden, you want to come and take our? And I was, it was, I was not threatening Joe Biden, but they had to investigate it as they should. So they came to my house and uh, they had two Milwaukee police officers, two Secret Service guys and they like two pretty much by the book, like glasses wearing like almost like uh, what's the superman's name? Clark Kent? Like what kind of like that? Um, hey, do you have any firearms in the house? Have you ever, are you on any uh, antipsychotic medicine or you know? Are you, do you think about going to do anything to Joe Biden? And I cleared the air with them, let them know it was just a little joke, but um, other than that, if I gotten arrested?

• 50:50Speaker 01

  No, I haven't.

• 50:51Graham Stephan?

  What community do you sympathize with the most?

• 50:54Speaker 01

  The underdog, man. Cause I think a lot of my time I've, I've kind of visualized myself as the underdog. And so I don't know, I think there's just, when you look at it, almost at everyone you meet at some point in their life is really going through something. And I'm just rooting for people to, to be on the journey where they can actualize. Cause a lot of people, what's the, the quote, uh, the, the massive men live in quiet desperation. So I've been in that, in that, in those shoes where I'm in a sales job where I'm, you know, I've just gotten told no the last four hours. So I go into a parking lot and I'm staring at the steering wheel. I'm just wondering like, is this all I'm ever going to do is sell payroll? Like I know I meant, there's something else in me that I just know I haven't expressed properly, but I don't know how to get to A, from A to B.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  And I know that there's millions of people out there like that, that have this big dream, have this big goal, or have this destination in mind. And they some, they just are struggling to ever get there. So I guess that's the person I'm rooting for is, and the person that I sympathize with is the person that is. Feels like they're stuck in life, knows they're capable of more and just hasn't quite gotten there yet.

• 51:59Graham Stephan?

  What would you say is the most dangerous street in America?

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Man, there's been places in St. Louis that are, I've been very frightened. St. Louis is consistently one of the top cities in America. And the way that the, Memphis too, I would say they're very comparable where you're on certain streets with some of these gangsters. Every single car that passes by, you are just like, oh God, here it goes. Like the way that they're driving, like in Memphis, like they drive very fast down the street. Partially because the people are scared to get like, if they see a bunch of guys outside, they don't want to get shot by them. So like they're going fast, but then is there, are they also planning on doing a drive by? And that's why they're going fast. So like, um, I don't know if there's any one street. There's probably many streets like that in hoods across America where it's like, you're just, you're just ready for something to happen.

• 52:42Graham Stephan?

  How do you feel safe filming? Do you wear like a bulletproof vest or anything?

• 52:46Speaker 01

  No security, no weapons, no vest. I'm here, I'm not threatening, I'm here to ask questions, I'm here to understand. And I feel like if I escalated things, like if I brought private security with me, I just don't think it would be the same.

• 52:59Graham Stephan?

  What about a vest? How is a vest?

• 53:01Speaker 01

  What about bulletproof windows?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  I don't want to be, uh, like that would be a bitch move in those areas. Like I'm not going to wear, no one else is wearing a vest, but I'm going to wear a vest. I think that's something cool. Like if I look at, um, some of the guys I look up to in the space too, like Louis Theroux. He went to Philadelphia with a police escort and a bulletproof vest. And it's not like a Harry Houdini thing where I'm trying to escalate it to the next thing. But there is a little bit of pride of like, I'm willing to take it a step further than maybe the other people will. And also that builds a moat around my brand is because some of the stuff is more daring. I'm going to have less competition because not as many people are going to be willing to try and do it.

• 53:40Graham Stephan?

  What are those cities doing wrong?

• 53:41Speaker 01

  I don't know. It's so much, I mean, you could argue, there's a lot of different angles you could cover. Like how, how are the DAs in that city treating certain violent crimes? Are they letting guys out? Like, like the, the car thieves we know in New York? They know that if they steal a car, they are out the next day. There is no concern, no worries. Same thing with California, theft, uh, stealing, robberies, they're going to be out the next day. So I think in some ways the law is not, there's not a strict enough penalty. There's no hand that, that comes up and slaps you if you do something wrong. And so I think because there's none of that, they're not as scared. But then I also say there are cultural things happening that are very serious.

• 54:20Speaker 01

  You have people that education is really not prioritized. Family units is not prioritized. Exposing your kids to violent domestic, like the amount of domestic violence that goes on in some of these hoods is unbelievable. And can you imagine as a kid, the fear, the instability you grow up with? Poverty is a big part, like here's one, if I want to go more, take like a little more of a left wing stance. A lot of these neighborhoods, I'll do Milwaukee because I know that the best. There are no really good job opportunities in the hood. There's your low paid daycare worker, home healthcare worker, gas station worker, although most of them are owned by people that don't live in that area. And they're, you know, the Singh family in Milwaukee is the one that owns like all the gas stations and their family works it.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  If you want a good, well-paying job that's outside of a factory, you have to drive 20 minutes outside of where you are. And so like there's a chicken before the egg though, because let's say I'm the mayor of Milwaukee and I say, hey, I'm going to, here's 300 million earmarked for two different major companies to open up factories and office jobs right here in the North Side.

• 55:25Speaker 00

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• 55:50Speaker 01

  Well, okay, now you're going to be dealing with a workforce like how much, how much late workers can you tolerate? How many people is not showing up that day can you tolerate? How many fights at the job can you tolerate? And it's like, it's a cycle that I don't see how it gets fixed because no company is going to risk going to a place where it's like, there's so much uphill battle for us to be successful in this area. But then the people don't have anything to look forward to, like. In the seventies, Milwaukee had a really, really strong black middle class. And we had a very strong automotive industry where people had, people owned their own houses. People had good jobs. There was family stability and people were thriving. All of those jobs went overseas to Mexico and China and somewhere else across the globe.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden you see this instability happening. Now more men are more likely to do stuff like sell drugs, which gets them in prison, which destabilizes the family. So like, there is societal things that are, that have hit these areas that like, there's so many boundaries to overcome to be successful. And then there are cultural things that are happening that like people are themselves in their own foot.

• 56:54Graham Stephan?

  What was the most dangerous situation that you've been in?

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Uh, getting raided by the Mexican police. Uh, we were, we had an interview set up. There was this guy that went by the name of Hostage and he lived in Mexico. And he was going to be traveling to the border town, Pietrus Negros, just across from Eagle Pass to meet with us. And the night before, we're sitting in the Airbnb in Eagle Pass and he calls in, he's like, "I don't know if this is a good idea, man. I'm wanted." And I'm like, "Wanna buy who? The cartels or the government?" He's like, "The government." And I'm like, "Okay, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna do this interview early and quick. So let's do 10 a.m. Let's knock this out in an hour. Let's make this happen and let's get out of there." So we cross the border and we get out of the car, we park, we walk about a block and a half. And Mexican police trucks are, you know, patrolling and everywhere we look,

• 57:40Speaker 01

  like if people are outside, they notice us and they're like, "What are these guys doing here?" Like it was a really rough neighborhood, like neighborhoods where some people don't have fridges in their house. And so we walk into Hostage's homie's house and things are really good. He's a very interesting guy. He'd been deported twice from America. He grew up in the Dallas area, did some prison time, did some crimes. Is now in Mexico doing various things, including being, trying to do it, be a tattoo artist, which I think goes to show again, like a lot of these guys, even the criminals, like their true dream is to do something with their art or with their, their business. But they're, to make money, they're stuck in other things as well. And it's their own personal choice. I go to the bathroom, I come out of the bathroom, boom, and I'll piece of La Vega, I'll piece of La Vega. Basically get your ass on the ground.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Three Mexican police come in, masks on, hand on the trigger, rifles pointed at us. The Mexican guys in the room immediately go on the ground, on the ground, on the stomach, surrendering. I went on my knees because if something's gonna happen, I at least wanna be able to see what's going on. Like if I'm gonna be kidnapped, cuz I don't know, is this cartel? Is this a prank? Are these dirty police? Because there's a lot of police in Mexico that have a terrible reputation. Like, it's very possible they could have gotten us. Hey, we're going to the ATM. Here's the limit. You're taking your entire limit out. Alright, who's next? You go. Like, things like that happen. Or, they just beat the hell out of you. They take you, they interrogate you. So, they take this guy Borregu up the stairs and they start beating him and they search the entire

• 59:08Speaker 01

  house. And this guy has almost nothing in his house. So it didn't take very long, but they, like, his clothes were on the ground, everything was open, and they find no drugs. And probably what they suspected was that a few white guys are here to make a pickup, buy some drugs, and go back across the border. I said, I know, like, I would call myself forty percent fluent in Spanish. I know a little bit of Spanish. I broke the ice with the police a little bit. I made a few jokes, got them laughing a little bit, and just told them what I'm here for. I said, I'm a journalist, this guy's a rapper, I'm here to interview him. And so we were let back up to our feet, and they're like, okay, where's the camera? And they start watching the clips that we had. And luckily, they couldn't understand English cuz hostages were speaking English to us cuz he was just like, this was around, we were talking about George Floyd because we were talking about police brutality

• 59:51Speaker 01

  in America and police brutality in Mexico. And he's basically saying, you guys think America's bad? Like, it's not even close to what happens in Mexico. So he's basically shit talking to police. And luckily, he didn't understand that cuz I think things would have probably turned a little bit. But he's like, okay, good. Delete this clip, delete this clip. And we're like, no, sir, please. Like, can we interview, can we interview you? He's like, no, delete the clip. So we had to delete the two clips in front of him. We were able to retrieve one of them cuz it's one of those classic YouTube things. If a YouTuber's like, got raided by the police, but we don't have anything to show for, like, everyone's gonna be like, that's clickbait, that's nonsense. Luckily, Miguel was able to rescue one of the clips of us on the ground and the police there. And then my guy Cheddar that took us there had Snapchat videos of the police. And then we also

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  went next door, there were security cameras where it showed the police truck pulling up, entering. And so, we did a little animation to show what happened in there. I think some Pakistani guy did a B plus. Last job on the animation and it told the story, but um, that was probably the scariest moment so far as a crew.

• 1:00:52Jack Selby?

  Has your life ever been threatened?

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  So my life has never been threatened. In the prank days it did. Like my, um, I had this sign, there was this comedian, I think Tom Mabe. And uh, he had this sign called, it was small penis parking. And so I would, what you do is you put it in front of his parking spot. And when someone pulls up, you're like, sir, like, what are you doing in this spot? Like, I actually have a small penis. Like, why are you parking in my spot? Do you have a? And like, I remember across from the, from the Milwaukee police station, like, I'm a chill ass. Like, he was so mad and, and got mad. Um. There was a guy that threatened me recently in the Tiffany Henyard video. And then I stood on business with him. I flexed on him too. I was like, you're not gonna do it. And kind of, I was egging him on a little bit. I don't usually ever look for conflict. I haven't been in a street fight since like eighth grade and I don't.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Like, I've always walked away from them. Even in college, rolling around with the wrestling team, like, so many guys got in a fight and we would have just cleared house. Like, if there's any opposition, I don't care if it was the football team, the track team, you name it. Like, if it's a bunch of wrestlers, like, there is no chance that they're ever gonna win. And even that, like, I would always go to sleep before that ever happened. Like, I was never interested in just being like, oh, you looked at my girlfriend or you call me, like. I've always avoided those kind of situations.

• 1:02:00Jack Selby?

  Have you ever been threatened by anyone you made a documentary on? Maybe they were upset with how you represented them.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  I don't think Tiffany Henyard was pleased with my piece on her, but um, threatened? You know, there's some guys in Memphis, some real, some real street dudes, um, connect, like, one of them was Poo Shiesty's cousin and the other guy. Uh, you know, it was, it was the same house that we were scared of the drive by. When we went in, it was a trap house, man. Like, there, it was probably thirty, forty deep. And in the kitchen, like, someone had just got from their crew the night before, or maybe that day. In the kitchen, there's guys with ski masks filing the serial numbers off of. People are pissed, like, no one's talking. People are just smoking weed and pissed. And then this guy, Jizzle, uh, he tried, like, big dogging me in the house.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Like, he's just like, he was like, asking me what sports I play or whatever, or, and I was like, oh, I watch fighting. And he's like, oh, you fight? And I'm like, yeah, I fought before. And he's like, you think you could beat me? And he's forty deep with all of his boys around him. And he's trying to, like, step on me a little bit. And I just was calm. And I was like, yeah, I think I could, I could take you in. He looked like a dick because he was. He was a total douchebag, no hospitality. Pretty tough to flex on me in front of 40 of your guys with around me while me and my two other guys have nothing. And so he wasn't happy with how he came out, but it's also like, dude, you knew we were coming. You knew we were filming. Your crew, like one of them asks my guy Keegan if he's a federal, he's a fed. Another guy is like, like, they were very aggressive.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  So like, what do you expect? Like you knew the cameras were rolling. You treated us like shit.

• 1:03:30Graham Stephan?

  Where do they get from? Like every video when you go into these neighborhoods and they have like five and they're just like, you know, pointing it to the camera. Where do they get them? How easy is that?

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  We're gonna do a piece eventually one day called how to make it to the hood. And we'll maybe do Houston, New York, Chicago. We'll cover a few different cities and explore that more in detail. But the general ways that I understand, one, a lot of these places is legal to buy. As long as you don't have a felony and then you can sell it to a friend. So, you know, there's it passed that way. That's a common way.

• 1:04:00Jack Selby?

  Also, here's a little note. From now on, we're gonna say strap instead of G U N just for the YouTube algorithm.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So another way straps make it to the hood is car theft. If I have a in my car, someone goes into my car, they'll take that.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Take the strap, take this, take the strap. I apologize. Another is, you know, home invasions. Some guy might have a safe with 20 straps and that's a big come up for a crew.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  When we were in Texas, we had a guy who agreed to meet with us that had a 3D printer in his house and did business with the cartel. And we pulled up to his apartment complex. He didn't give us his door and he chickened out. And I get it. I mean, if you're doing business with a cartel and you're about to go on camera explaining that, that's if they find out you're so toast, it's not even funny. So I get why he chickened out of filming with us. But 3D printing operations, I would imagine that's a, is it more sophisticated than the average street guy's probably willing to go? But that's certainly a way they make it in there. Ghost. Are like through Telegram dude like that's how this this 16 year old Kia boy is doing it like so if you get into the chat I'll pull up or what you want Draco or this or that and okay 400 bucks boom we'll meet here

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  but then another way to get is robbing the strap dealers so there's a lot of different ways

• 1:05:15Graham Stephan?

  How do you communicate with all of these people like how how is the FBI not logged into your phone remotely or something and just used it to catch all of these people?

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Well, the most secure ways to chat with people are either FaceTime audio, FaceTime or Signal. And so those cannot be traced from what I know. I'm sure there's some software being developed to crack that. WhatsApp has been compromised. Telegram was just compromised recently. So Signal, FaceTime Audio and FaceTime are the most common. Because it's very serious to me to protect, no matter what these guys are doing, it's very serious to me to protect them. Because to me, the value I bring to the public is I'm willing to find this guy and talk to this guy that most of us would be scared to interview or wouldn't couldn't get him to agree to an interview. And I'm gonna ask him enough questions that we get into his psyche and figure out what motivates him and also the economics, the business behind what he does.

• 1:06:05Graham Stephan?

  So I'm really curious, you've done these videos on these reckless drivers, like the most wanted drivers in New York City. How do they get these cars? Although before we go into that, you have to ask yourself, what makes a leader stand out? It's not just about taking charge, but it's about setting new standards and embracing bold moves. So if you lead by example and live with passion, then our sponsor, the Range Rover Sport is made for you. Every model of the Range Rover Sport offers a unique blend of dynamic sophistication and sporting luxury. It's where refined elegance meets visceral power. With focused on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability, this vehicle rises to every occasion.

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  Like you could experience the adaptive off-road cruise control that adjusts to your terrain or the dynamic air suspension for superior agility and control. Plus, adaptive dynamics ensures smooth, composed handling by minimizing unwanted body movements. For those who elevate their desires and lead by example, the Range Rover Sport is so much more than a luxury vehicle. It's a statement and you could build your Range Rover Sport today when you go to rangerover.com/us/sport. Again, that's rangerover.com/us/sport. Thank you so much to the Range Rover Sport for sponsoring this episode and now let's get back to the podcast. How do they get these cars?

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  Well, I've ever stolen cars.

• 1:07:22Graham Stephan?

  How do they drive stolen cars without getting caught?

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  Cause they drive very fast. Like I just got a police chase sent to me from my guy Felix. And you know, a lot of these criminals, I would say to me, it's more about the adrenaline than it is about the economics. You're trying to make money. They are so thrilled to hop behind the wheel of a Hellcat and pretty much taunt the police and go 120, 130 miles down the highway and get away. Like my guy Felix was like, he just got in one the other night. He's like, you know, this department in Ohio, like get the body, FOIA the body cam footage, cause you're gonna see what I just did to them. So I think it's a thrill. It's the same reason why Alex Honnold climbs mountains with no support, no safety lines.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  It's the, the time that they feel most alive is running into the dealership, running into someone's driveway, stealing it and getting out of there.

• 1:08:13Graham Stephan?

  Felix is the one though, that steals the vehicles, right? He's the one that did the, the car theft, that, that video. What about the ones in New York that like bob and weave throughout traffic? How do they afford such nice cars?

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  I don't think they do. I think, I'm not gonna give too much away, but from what I know about the scene, and this is connected to the takeover scenes that you see in LA, New York, across the country. A lot of those cars are hot cars, stolen cars.

• 1:08:37Graham Stephan?

  But we, we did see like a Lamborghini Urus, wasn't one of them driving?

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  Potentially, uh, there was a glitch, I think where they could do it off of Turo or a car rental app.

• 1:08:45Graham Stephan?

  But even that costs a lot of money because you ask them on average, how long can you hold on to a car for?

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Some of those guys are involved in other businesses that supply their car business.

• 1:08:54Graham Stephan?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  They do other black market stuff and they bring that money and they drive cool cars.

• 1:08:57Graham Stephan?

  I feel like if they know you're doing a video, they're gonna pull together like two grand.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  They're not gonna pull up a 1994 Toyota Camry for this video, like, and squeeze bends it perfectly. Like hiding in the back of this parking complex with a, a black Lamborghini Urus revving as we come up on the scene. Like you can't get any better of an introduction to a guy than that.

• 1:09:19Graham Stephan?

  I've been getting a lot of those videos on Instagram, the street takeover videos where they're like going in circles.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:24Graham Stephan?

  And they just will crash into another car and they don't care. And at, at first I was just like, well, what's their insurance gonna be? That like, think of the repair bill on that, but it makes sense that it's like, it's not their car because they don't care.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  The takeovers are particularly. Bad, I think. And I've been invited to cover a lot of different takeovers. It's really hard for me to go do that, knowing how much people's property is going to get destroyed in the process. I had a Milwaukee business say that their parking lot had to get repaved so many times, the family folded the business. And she's, and she kind of was mad at me because I covered it a little bit in a previous video. She's like, I hope you're happy with what you broadcasted and sell like celebrating these guys driving crazy because look what happened to my family's business.

• 1:10:12Graham Stephan?

  How do you make sure you're not glamorizing it? Because your New York video, like I see that and I'm like, that's stupid. I don't get it. But I could see there, there like a 16 year old who's like, wow, that's so cool. Look at these guys, all the praise they get. I want to do that. And then they end up someone.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Two different things. One is asking enough tough questions. When you sit down with a pimp, a dealer, a car thief, you have to ask about the societal impact. What about the single mom when you take it from her garage? What about if your customer ODs? You have to ask, oh, you're bossing up your woman that's working the streets, yet you take all of her money? And you're bossing her up? Like, I really pressed a pimp hard on that in an interview in Los Angeles. You have to ask the tough questions. It's not a fluff piece. So even if I go interview the cartel one day, tell me about how you guys give back to the community. Like, you have to ask them about some of the things that they do. That to me is a big part of not glamorizing it. Number two is almost unanimously, when you ask these guys, give your advice to the youth out there that think about joining again. You're getting into this profession.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  All of them will say, do not do it. Do not join it. Your life will end up in jail or prison or, and do not do it. So we always include those messages because there are impressionable kids out there that their economy is driven by the currency of clicks. And if me doing this gets me a million views on TikTok, they might consider doing that.

• 1:11:35Graham Stephan?

  What do you refuse to make a video on?

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  There, there's almost not a topic I would stay away from. Like, I would cover, I would interview a neo-Nazi. And I know some people would say, never platform a guy like that. I think you ask them questions that, like, a good question is like a mirror to the soul. So you want them to see the absurdity of what they're saying. And I think that's important. There's not really a line of who I wouldn't interview, whether it's a or someone that's a racist, but. I wouldn't go to a car dealership with a camera and be like, all right, you're gonna go run in and steal. I'll be right behind you. Like you, whatever you do in your free time, cool. I'm not gonna, cause I know that car dealership owner is gonna have a whole lot of trouble. Insurance claims, fix the broken glass, maybe an employee was there and is terrified. Like there's fallout that comes from an act of crime.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  So like, oh, you guys wanna, I'm never gonna go with a gang. Like, oh, you guys are about to do a drive by? Can I come with? Like, any crime that hurts someone or steals some stuff? Cause I'm really against theft. Even though I cover theft a lot, uh, it's something that really like, that's a line in the sand that I just really don't agree with. But if they wanna talk about it, if they're open to getting hard questions about why they do it, then I'll talk to you.

• 1:12:41Jack Selby?

  You don't wanna influence behavior, influence crime?

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  Things are already happening. I'm just asking why you do it.

• 1:12:47Jack Selby?

  But wouldn't interviewing someone like the cartel be way too dangerous? Like, isn't there a line to be drawn there?

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, there is. To me, it's always about having the right contact. If someone can bring you into that world that has a reputation, that can pretty much bring you as much as you can guarantee a safe passage, that's the biggest thing. That's the, the person that this hinges upon working.

• 1:13:11Jack Selby?

  Have you ever felt like you're genuinely talking to a psychopath?

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  Probably a lot of sociop- I don't know if how to differ- I have no the textbook difference between psychopath, sociopath, but probably a lot of them, the people that are okay with stealing a car and don't care about how it impacts the mom. I would probably say that's sociopathic behavior. People that are okay with selling, or man, we talked to this guy. We, we went into a, I wanted to document, uh, the, the how to cook crack because I thought this is a drug that's gonna disappear from the market. Like this, it's a relic of the past.

• 1:13:43Jack Selby?

  Why is it gonna disappear?

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  It was replacing a lot of these drugs or, or it's laced with, but, um, I wanted to be in a trap, a stove on that, like just like a young Jeezy song. I wanted to just see it for myself. And as we're interviewing this guy, there's a funny clip where, we're in Boston doing this and me and the camera guys are all, me, Keegan and Miguel are like this, interviewing him as like, like the fumes of crack are coming through their room. And me and Keegan at one point look at each other, cause I'm like, I think I feel a little different. So like, we look at each other and we're like, yeah, we both feel a little different right now. And- As he's cooking up, Miguel's like, we should ask him like, do you ever have a customer that didn't make it after you made a sale to them? So I asked him that. And he's like, yeah, there's this one lady who I sold it to. She wanted more.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  I sold it to again, and I knew if she asked again, that that would probably be the final dose. And I sold it to her and she did it. And she kind of passed out. I walked out of the house and sure enough, you know, the junkies that came to buy from me later that were friends with her told me, yeah, she didn't make it. And something that I like, I kind of moved on to the next question pretty quickly. But then in the car, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did he just say what I thought he said? Like, he just casually basically admitted as a sex accessory to a M word, as we can say on YouTube. And it made me realize this, like, there is an element of on this journey of being a little bit desensitized because, and how I compare it to is a surgeon in the ER room.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  When I, when one of us sees a strapped wound on somebody, we're going to be freaking out, panicking. How do we save this person? But an ER doctor is like, pass the sutures, pass the gauze, and it's just business as usual. And we've seen enough crazy stuff in this time that someone confessing to doing that is like, ah, next question. And I had to check within myself, like, that was a pretty major thing he said. Sometimes it just being able to take a pause in the moment to dive, because that's a pretty crazy thing to say. And for me not to dive deeper into it or follow up on that was like, damn, what is wrong with me? Have I seen too much wild stuff in the last few years to just like, that I move on to the next question?

• 1:15:47Jack Selby?

  Have you ever seen, even of the most sociopathic criminals, draw an ethical line that surprised you?

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  A lot of them have pretty ethical lines. Like, one of my friends, one of my, one of my best friends on earth is a former bank robber. And in his twenties, he robbed, I think, six or eight banks in California and went to prison for 10 years. Now he's an incredible family man, multimillionaire, runs a nationwide construction business, very, very good guy, one of my favorite people on earth. And he's in prison like, and now that he runs a construction business, like, I will hire an ex-con, no problems. I won't hire a drug addict because a drug addict will do anything to cheat you, lie to you, steal from you. But a lot of these Guys have very strict moral compasses that loyalty and respect means a lot to them. So their word is everything. Like there's raps on all I have in this world, my balls and my word. So there are guys that if they say it, it means a lot to them to back it up.

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  And I've seen this in the rental business. I have a few rentals in Milwaukee. If someone just gets out of prison and gets a factory job and calls me up and wants to rent for me, that actually to me is a pretty reliable guy because I know this guy's taking his life in a direction. I don't care if he got arrested for selling with a strap. If he's, you know, his boss at his factory clears him and he's been really good. Oh, this is one of my best guys on the job. I would, you know, the business would hurt if this guy left. Okay, I'll rent to you. But a drug addict and people like that, you really can't trust their word because they're always scheming because their addiction is their number one priority.

• 1:17:13Graham Stephan?

  Out of all the people you've documented, is there anyone you genuinely just disliked?

• 1:17:17Speaker 01

  Most of the people I like, I'm a pretty easy guy to get along with and I look for the good in people. And there's like a little bit of a naivety towards me where I'm willing to see your good side, even though I know you do a bunch of other things that are bad. But totally dislike.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  It is hard to respect anyone that does something that involves women and children. Like if you steal from a mom, you're, you know, a PDF file.

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  But I have trouble disliking people like most, even Tiffany Henyard. On paper, lying to my face, compulsive liar, ran her town, millions of dollars in debt in a two-year period. Unverifiably a bad person, I enjoyed her. I, I like, there's an element of where I get the cult of personality that made her the way she is. And even though I wouldn't trust her, I wouldn't invite her into my circle, knowing what I know about her, I had fun hanging out with her throughout the day.

• 1:18:18Graham Stephan?

  Let's talk about her. She is known as the most corrupt mayor in the United States.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  Shout out Tiffany, by the way.

• 1:18:24Graham Stephan?

  Who is she? How do people catch on to her? What is she doing?

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Because she basically took this small town, the South Chicago village of Dalton, Illinois, and turned it into like a third world dictatorship where You know, she was getting escorted out of Tahoe's that she paid 50,000 over asking for. She got a fleet of six of them. She would, she would get escorted out like a security guard would grab her hand and she'd have police working overtime and she, like the tiny, small town mayor, like you guys have met really wealthy people, CEOs, billionaires where they maybe have one security guard, if at all. You know, she's act, she's just a diva. She would sit in a queen throne and watch the town and like at events. She would make business owners do pay to play schemes like, oh, if you don't donate $3,500 for the 4th of July

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  party I'm trying to do for the town, well, then I'm not going to approve your liquor license. And so like she would nearly bankrupt people that wouldn't agree with her. She allegedly had rivals up. She just blatantly lies and she basically used the town tax money to live a luxury life. First class flights, steak dinners, wigs, Tahoe's. It just, the list does not end with how much she balled off of the taxpayers.

• 1:19:37Jack Selby?

  And she also paid off the police allegedly, right? So she-

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  She paid them off by having them work egregious overtime hours so that it was in their favor to protect her and walk her around.

• 1:19:47Graham Stephan?

  Do you think she's going to pay any like penalties or crimes or like who's looking into this?

• 1:19:52Speaker 01

  Right now, currently, the word on the street in Dalton is that there's a few people collaborating with the feds. And to not impede their investigation, because I have an idea, there's like two or three main people that are in her circle. They haven't been revealed yet, that it's one of them. The walls are closing in. They know that the, the whole thing is going down and there's, to me, there's no way she doesn't do time. Apparently, one of the, the former right-hand man is actively working with the feds right now. He knows she's going away and he's talking as much as he can to kind of reduce his sentence.

• 1:20:25Graham Stephan?

  Was it YouTube that really brought this to light? Because I hadn't seen this before until I started seeing YouTube videos of people going to the city and like trying to track her down. Like, is that what made it mainstream?

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  I saw a couple TikTok clips of her and I know there's early guys at the party, like a guy Spencer Cornelius. There's a lot of investigative journalism that's really good. I just saw a couple TikToks. Like, I actually try not to watch almost any YouTube, like in my space at all if I can, because I, especially if I haven't covered that story yet. Because I want to make it unique. I don't want to be influenced. But TikTok was what brought it to my attention. I'm like, oh, this is two hours from my house. Like, we gotta go see this lady.

• 1:21:01Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, usually with federal investigations like that, you're never gonna hear a word until they actually have a case. And once they bring that case, it's practically unbeatable.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  If the feds are going up against you, it's over 99% conviction rate. So the fact that it's confirmed that they're in town, talking to people in those circles, and just how egregious she is. That my favorite part of the interview with her was, I kept asking her about these Tahoe's because why in the hell did you pay $50,000 over asking and have a fleet of Tahoe's like you're Brad Pitt or something? And she just lied and lied and lied. And I got a paperwork with her signature on it. And I even took it out of my breast pocket and I showed it to her and she's like, oh, yeah, that was forged. And how do you double down on a lie like that? And then we even did signature comparison and like, how is it even possible that this could have been forged? There's just no, no

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  way that it's not her that bought the Tahoe's. And to me, it was just a fascinating study. I don't know how you would diagnose her. I don't know if she's a compulsive liar, a sociopath. There is a likable quality of her, but I think, I genuinely think my hunch on her is that she's mentally sick. I think she is a good person that means well. In some ways, like she genuinely has a love for some people in her community. Like she, she wants to be the one that brings resources. Hey, you need a new sidewalk? Hey, you need food from the food pantry? I'm gonna bring this to you. I wanna show how much I love my city. She wants to be the, the, the source of it all. Anyone that would help outside of that, she would cut down or put licensing restrictions or permit restrictions in front of her. But I did get a warm feeling, like the first time I met her and walked into her

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  room, like she gave me a big hug. I'm like, I.

• 1:22:41Speaker 00

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• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  She had me living in this weird reality bubble where I knew everything about her was true and I knew how bad she was, but when I was in her presence, I'm like, have I been gravely mistaken? Like, is it possible? She just lives in this entirely different reality bubble.

• 1:23:20Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, sometimes the people who are sick in the, in the head like that are the most charismatic, nicest people you've ever met.

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:29Graham Stephan?

  We've encountered a few, not, not to that degree, but a few people who are just so friendly that my guard is down.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:36Graham Stephan?

  I'm like, oh, this is just a cool guy. And then turns around and like, just weird stuff goes on.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  That's how cults get started. I think we think going into it that this person's gonna be so easily identifiable as evil, that's gonna be easy to not like them, easy to just kind of mash them down. The reason that cults get started is because, and there's also some good to it, like the base level of Scientology has some decent self-development principles, but then you go further into it when they're doing child labor. There's so many dark things that are happening in that organization, but there's always a yin and yang to everybody. I don't think there's anyone that you can look at and they're just pure, you know, all their, their stuff is just bad. And that's how they attract a following.

• 1:24:16Graham Stephan?

  So you've never met a single person that you thought is through and through evil?

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  I've met guys that claim to be evil because I think they're trying to be tough on camera. There's this one, excuse me, Afghani gangster that I met in California that he showed me proof of him robbing, like there's a Chinese Triad gang that run illegal black market grow ops. And he showed me the proof that he robbed them. He showed me the proof of, like, they showed me this guy that they scammed that apparently he tried scamming them. And then what they did is they invited, like, they invited him to an area. He got into the car, pointing a strap at him, had him sit in the passenger seat as he drove around his own car. And he's like, if you move, I'm gonna blam you. Like, show me the Snapchat video of that. And multiple other things that these guys had done. And he was like, yeah, I'm evil. Even him.

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  I do think like he has an allegiance to his family. Like, I think in a weird way, the money goes to help his family, his brothers and sisters. So no one I've met is purely evil.

• 1:25:15Graham Stephan?

  You deal a lot with scammers as well. What's the easiest way that the, just the general public gets scammed?

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  I think we're all gullible to a degree and we're all looking for that silver bullet, that get rich quick. And if someone packages it the right way and sells it to us, there's a good part of us, especially if we haven't made it yet and we're looking for that way to break through or get some money so we can live this life of our dreams. I think it's easy for those people to capitalize on that because they're tapping into like a basic human desire that we all have.

• 1:25:45Graham Stephan?

  What are the most lucrative scams?

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  As of recently, it seemed like running a non-government NGO seems pretty lucrative. I cover more of the street level scams. Street level scams, uh, you know, so I'm in the landlord business in Milwaukee. There's a lot of tenants that are very scared to send you any money through Cash App because they get these guys that will be like, oh, I'm the landlord, but if you want this, like send me four or five months up ahead right now. And then they just, they never see the property and they sent the money and now they're screwed. But most of these scams are, like, if you have any sort of common sense, seem pretty easy. Like, if you're not in a desperate position, they seem pretty easy to see through.

• 1:26:22Graham Stephan?

  They're getting better and better though. So there are two scams that, that have just recently happened to me, which are crazy.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  You got scammed?

• 1:26:30Graham Stephan?

  One of them I fell for.

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:26:31Graham Stephan?

  And another, another one I'll tell you about, which is crazy. The first one I fell for was that we got a podcast request, but they wanted to do a Facebook Live and I distantly knew the person. So I'm like, oh yeah, this seems legit. The email was just like a random Gmail account, but like, the way it was written is like usually pretty on par with our podcast request. And so they said, we'll do a Facebook Live this date and, you know, as a thank you, we're going to pay you like a few grand. I was like, okay, perfect. And the day before they say, hey, we want to make sure that you're set up on, on Facebook Live for this thing. I'm going to run you through exactly what to do. I was like, okay, fine. So we do a Zoom call and the guy doesn't show his, his face, but I'm like,

• 1:27:14Graham Stephan?

  Okay, you know, the guy spoke like really good English. Didn't seem like anything was suspicious. And he says, okay, we have to make a Facebook event for you to like join us. And I went through and I followed his instruction. He was so fast and I was in the middle of doing something. So I'm like just kind of like clicking buttons. And he's like, okay, perfect. You have to send this request to like this email so we could approve it. And it was to like this, this podcast email. And I sent it. Sure enough, the next day it takes over my Facebook. And they start posting just like spam. It took me weeks to get that Facebook account back, but, but they got me like complete hook line and sinker.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Meta support system is pretty hard to work with.

• 1:27:53Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, it took me.

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  Mark, if you're listening to this, man, I've been banned from Facebook Marketplace for no reason for over a year. Mark, we would love to have more people that are boots in the ground to help us with our concerns like Graham has here.

• 1:28:04Graham Stephan?

  This was the other one that was crazy. So I know someone who got an email from their work. And their work says, hey, there's a process server here who wants to serve you papers. But they don't want to do it at your workplace in front of everybody. So if you could please call this number and they'll arrange a time for you to go and get served these papers. Here's their information. Here is the claim number. Here is their name, all of this. When you call the phone number, it says, hey, we have a debt outstanding for like $40,000, $30,000 from this company. And this is you, right?

• 1:28:44Graham Stephan?

  And they, they read off like your name, your address, people that you like are associated with relatives, all of this, your age. Okay, this is the last four of your social. Okay, this is the right person. Yeah, we have a debt for like 39 grand. We want to serve you. And the scam is that they say, or we could just settle the debt. So we, we don't have to do all of this. If you send us like five grand, you know, we're a debt collection agency. That's all we want and we'll release it.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  Cause they typically negotiate anyways.

• 1:29:14Graham Stephan?

  Exactly. Turns out the whole thing is a scam, the whole thing. And I started looking into this because I Googled the phone number. It turns out it just goes to a random P O box in like Rancho Cucamonga. And other people have said, yeah, they've done the exact same thing. And they go through your employer because they're like, the shame aspect of like, I don't want to get served papers for a lawsuit in front of like all of my coworkers. So I'm more likely to call. It's crazy.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  It's pretty sophisticated social engineering. Like, to me, I like crimes that have a certain amount of finesse to them. Because anyone can just break in with a bat or do something like that. But the criminals that are able to use finesse, I'm very fascinated by. Because as much as I know that what you're doing is bad, there's an element of skill. Like, how are you even doing this or getting away with it? That's intriguing to me.

• 1:30:01Graham Stephan?

  Are a lot of these criminals that you talk to that are effective and successful at committing crimes actually pretty intelligent?

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  A fair amount. There's like the Felix's of the world are pretty rare. Like, the guy that can, like, that could have been an IT specialist or in finance or a different. Like, there are some of these guys that are really, really smart. And like, the way they know cars is better than like, almost any car expert at a dealership would ever know a car. There's some of those guys, but most of the guys I think I come in contact with are the more brute force criminals.

• 1:30:30Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, Punchmade Dev. How is he not in jail? He's just this brazen.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Explain this for those.

• 1:30:36Graham Stephan?

  So, you did a video, and he's the only one that I remember that was like, not blurring his face, was like, out in the open, here's who I am, had to tone designer clothes, and was like openly skimming debit card information and then buying things for everybody. Going to the bank, pulled out $10,000 in cash from someone else's account, and was like, here you go, here's proof, don't worry, I'm gonna put it back, though. Because I don't want to, you know, do this. How is that, how does the police not see that and just arrest the dude?

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  I'll say it like this. Punchmade Dev, 100% has a lot of money that he's made from scamming. I know that, I can verify that. How he does his scams, I'm gonna kind of leave to the imagination and also say, certain things that he shows, it's possible that he is a very good allusionist with some of the scams he's pulling. But there's other scams he's pulling that are, he definitely scams people.

• 1:31:32Graham Stephan?

  But how do the police still not see that? Regardless of how he's scamming, it's like, let's at least investigate this because he's showing himself on camera.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  My hunch is if he's really scamming Chase Bank, with his face showing, there would be trouble.

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  I think he's very good. He's, I would say, I don't want to say he's a method actor because I know he's made a lot of money in a scam. But there are certain rap characters that they're not just a rapper, they're also like he's the scam rapper. And I think he plays his character to a T.

• 1:32:04Graham Stephan?

  Are some of these crimes truly victimless? It seems as though everyone has like a, like an out. Like if I steal a car, they have insurance that pays for it. If I steal from someone's debit card account, the bank is going to reimburse them anyway, so it's free.

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  I don't think any crime is truly victimless, mostly is because even a guy that has insurance, insurance is going to hassle them. I interviewed a guy that got his car stolen. He's like, the insurance acted like I stole my own car. Like they didn't want to give me any money. They want to give me the least amount. Like it was a three or four month hassle and nightmare to get what I should have gotten for my car. I am sure that there's people that have been evicted because of their car getting stolen. Cause that's their, if they're a single parent, they try and get to work. Now they can't get to work and they have to get their kid, like it is a nightmare. So even if they are covered, there's a delay in that coverage where if my rent is due on the first and you scam me on the 29th and it takes Chase 10 days to reimburse my account, I am totally hosed.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  I have to have a very understanding landlord and the other bills that are automatic draw, like I might get, uh, the, the withdrawal. What is the fee, the overdraft fees? Like you're going to get hit with a lot of things that start to add up. So for sure, it's not a victimless crime.

• 1:33:19Jack Selby?

  What is the least unethical crime that you've investigated? For example, if you steal a car from a dealership, the dealership has insurance, the premiums get increased, but that risk is spread amongst all of the different insurers.

• 1:33:30Graham Stephan?

  It's probably got to be sex workers doing it on their own.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  I would say, I don't even think sex work should be a crime. If a consenting female and a consenting whoever their partner is want to do it, I really don't see an issue with that. And in fact, most of the jurisdictions, they've really started to just crack down on the John, getting the, and the, because the pimp, man, those guys are parasites. Like those guys will put these women through hell, they'll get them addicted to drugs, they'll have them work unbelievable hours. Uh, I mean, if you follow the textbook of a famous pimp iceberg slim, if you read, I guess it's called gorilla pimping, where you're very heavy handed. That is, that's a profession that um is really bad, but the woman, I don't think is that unethical.

• 1:34:15Jack Selby?

  And what about the most unethical crimes?

• 1:34:17Speaker 01

  We'll go with the, because all the other crimes, uh, at least they get to live to see another day, to try and bounce back or to do something else with their life, but you take someone's life, there's no coming back from that.

• 1:34:30Jack Selby?

  How often are assigned to people that have done nothing wrong, that are just completely by, different bystanders that maybe did one thing that's disconnected from something else?

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  So the, the that I've come across is more of the hood street where uh, as far as I've gotten explained to me, it's really just a like, hey, I don't want to do this myself, I'll pay you a few grand to do it. But sophisticated, like taking out a politician, taking out, I don't, my wife, my wife has an insurance policy, I really want to divorce her, but I need the money, I don't wanna, can you do it? Like, there's sophisticated levels of, of there that I haven't really explored.

• 1:35:10Speaker 01

  As far as the street level guys, I would say that the person that they're taking out has probably done something that they feel like the reaction that's necessary for that person is to, you took that guy's life, now I'm gonna take yours.

• 1:35:23Jack Selby?

  How much does it cost to end a life?

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  In some neighborhoods, it's free, they'll do it off the loyalty and the love. If you're talking more of a professional, street level guy that does hits, some of them are as low as a couple grand, a few grand. Um, I would say the more sophisticated guys, maybe 10 to 50. It's really, like the guy that I talked to, it escalates on the job, like, how easy is this person to reach, how public of a profile do they present? But I would say like in the street side, it's probably more so done for free than I actually charge. It's like, this guy did something to us, we need to take him out.

• 1:36:01Jack Selby?

  It seems like some of these crimes then can be pretty lucrative. What about doing simple things like dealing? Do you see a lot of people that deal, D R U G S's, uh, making a whole lot of money?

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  Honestly, most of the criminals I talk to, they're not that wealthy. Because it's always, it's a hustle, I mean. Some of these dealers, depending on the product, can go well, but the opportunity cost of selling, even if you're making 30, 40 grand a month now, the way they spend the money, okay, well, now I'm getting a fancy car, now I'm going to a strip club, now I'm buying bags, I'm buying Dior, I'm buying all these fancy luxury items. They're like, most of these guys, it's not like they wash it and go into real estate, or wash it and go into the trucking business. The smart guys will, but most of these guys spend as much as they make, and then when you look at the prison time facing them for what they're doing, it's, I haven't met that many guys, I'm like, this is a pretty lucrative operation.

• 1:36:58Graham Stephan?

  You gotta get them on Mr. Money Mustache. Like, at least if they're gonna be making the money, invest it, a balanced portfolio of US versus international equities with a small risk tolerance to Bitcoin.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  Do you see any of them doing that? Some of the guys, for sure. Like, I know one of the Afghan guys that robbed, you know, the Triads, and they got like half a million dollars worth of cushion bags and cash that was on site. They're gonna try and wash it into other things. The smart guys will wash it.

• 1:37:26Graham Stephan?

  What are your thoughts? Cause you did a video with Chris Hansen, which I found really interesting.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  Chris Hansen.

• 1:37:32Graham Stephan?

  Why are people drawn to those videos? Why do they just consistently do so well?

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  I think it's the same reason why police body cam footage does consistently well, gangs do consistently well. You're seeing someone commit a crime that is, like, once you're publicized as a PDF file, like, it is one of the most serious things. Like, I'd rather go to prison for any other crime but that. Like, that's a very serious crime to commit, especially in the criminal world, because you're gonna be holding someone's pocket, if you're lucky, and then other things will be happening to you for the rest of your stay in jail. I think people are just fascinated, like, just why I think so many women are into crime podcasts and they wanna hear about what Jeffrey Dahmer did. We wanna see into the depths of the darkest side of society without going too far. And I think

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  that kind of person is a prime example of someone's, like, it's so unspeakably dark that they would do that, and we kinda get to see into their mind of why they do.

• 1:38:26Graham Stephan?

  What are your thoughts about those videos of people beating up the PDFs?

• 1:38:31Speaker 01

  I see the argument either way. It depends on the intention. Like, some of the guys I see doing that, it almost seems like they, they're bullies, and they see this as their opportunity to freely be a bully. The counter argument is if slapping a guy like that a few times and humiliating him gets him to stop and you save a kid's life or save a kid's future from being traumatized, is it worth getting bullied like that?

• 1:38:52Graham Stephan?

  Some of these videos that I see get recommended to me on Twitter like that, I can't help but look at the guy who's getting beat up and thinking to myself, this guy has severe something going on in his head.

• 1:39:06Speaker 01

  I think from a concept, you can look and you can have sympathy for these guys. Like, there is no one that, like, what, their life is probably entirely miserable and you feel sorry for them because of how pathetic it is. But then when you conceptualize it down to like it happening to someone you know or your kid, you're like, oh, I'll end this guy's life in a heartbeat. So like, I can see the sympathy, but then as soon as they act on it, it is like, there's consequences for actions like that.

• 1:39:29Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, I'm also surprised that so many of them just openly talk on camera, like, when confronted, like, they never take the just stay silent approach. It's always, let me explain everything and divulge all of my past crimes.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  I think you're onto it, though. A lot of them are lonely people. And if this is their, like, if Chris Hansen's sitting them down as the most, like, in-depth conversation they've had with a human in a while, they're probably hungry for it.

• 1:39:53Graham Stephan?

  How often do people fake themselves? Like, they'll fake the story or they try to, like, trick you?

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  Early on, I got tricked a couple of times. I've been, I've gotten a lot better at verifying, so I, hey, if you sell XYZ, I'm hopping on FaceTime with you and I want to confirm that you're selling XYZ. I remember early on, we got a lead to a Chicago trap house that said, oh, this, like, we're really like the biggest trappers in the city. I look at the address, it's somewhere like in a suburb, and I pull up there and the guy like could have matched the description, but I'm like, okay, let's check it out. And he's like, well, it's actually not here, but my cousin does it. And you have to give me a ride to Chicago so we can go there. But my cousin's not answering the phone and I'm just like, me and Miguel drove two hours for nothing for this guy. And so, there are people that... Like that, there is, that's another thing about like, when I said at the beginning of this

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  episode about a no trust society, a lot of times in the hood, the other thing that accompanies no trust is the amount of lying you encounter is staggering. There's people that will lie about the littlest things that they have no need to lie about. And so you do have to verify things. And so I use FaceTime as a very productive means to do that.

• 1:40:59Graham Stephan?

  How often does it happen now that you get lied to?

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  Rarely. I would say there's some leads that I have to figure out, like with the, with the guy that does hits, how deep do I want to go to verify that? Cause then I have to see stuff that I really don't want to see. Like, I'm not a guy that watches a Saw movie. I'm like, oh, this is awesome. Like I leave the room because I can't, I don't want to see that type of stuff. But if I'm, I have to, if I'm going to verify a guy says he's doing that, I, to a degree, you have to, but I rarely get fooled.

• 1:41:26Graham Stephan?

  And you hire that out, like have someone else see it? And then it's like, you trust their word?

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  Trust is the, probably one of the greatest currencies my channel has. My channel has the trust that whether you're a billionaire, presidential candidate, or a dealer, that I'm going to come in and tell your story in a fair and open way. And so that's my competitive advantage. Like, uh, Keegan out, sitting outside helps me with a lot of leads, especially like he got a Harvard, uh, astrophysicist, Avi Loeb, to help comment on our Area 51 episode with the potential spacecraft. But when it's an underworld character, my, I'm the highest close, right? If I'm hopping on the phone with that guy, I'm going to talk to him. By the end of the conversation, I feel like at this point, I'm almost unmissable of like, this guy's going to be ready to go when we come to his town.

• 1:42:08Graham Stephan?

  How does somebody reach you? Is it just Instagram?

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  Email and Instagram is a primary lead source. At the end of every episode, we'll say like, looking for a jail that'll let us stay there for 24 hours, looking for a car thief, looking for this. And then I'll get inbound leads through Instagram and email that will, and then we'll probably usually, if they're really about it, we'll graduate the conversation to Signal or FaceTime.

• 1:42:30Graham Stephan?

  What are you looking for now?

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  I would love to stay in a jail for 24 hours.

• 1:42:34Graham Stephan?

  I saw that one guy, um, Did the jail, the most dangerous jail in, uh,

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  Across the world?

• 1:42:41Graham Stephan?

  El Salvador?

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  Oh, El Salvador. There's been a few Timmy Carter, um, Rui.

• 1:42:46Graham Stephan?

  That was the one. I think that was the one I saw. It was incredible.

• 1:42:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:50Graham Stephan?

  His videos are insane. Anytime he posts something, I watch it on the TV.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  He has an unbelievable concept. So let's talk about this for a second is he puts out one documentary a month and it does like 20 to 40 million views. We eventually, because we're on a quick treadmill, like the amount of production and work it takes to put out one 30 to 40 minute, really good piece out a week. Like these guys hustle all, like they're hustling all the time. And eventually we would like to get to a place where we maybe get to spend more time with a contact, more time on an issue. And we put out one or two pieces a month because the pace that we have to go at to like Vice would have an entire company, dozens and dozens of employees to put out at this pace. And we do it with like a skeleton crew of six or seven people.

• 1:43:35Graham Stephan?

  I feel like some big legacy company should reach out to you either for consulting or to hire you. I mean, I'm surprised.

• 1:43:41Speaker 01

  They're not gonna be able to pay me more than I would make independently. And there's almost a stigma now of working with them.

• 1:43:48Graham Stephan?

  True.

• 1:43:48Speaker 01

  I had Vice, some Vice guys reach out. We were collaborating them. I was gonna bring them to Milwaukee and then we were gonna collaborate on another idea. And then it's like, you know what? Why would I spend a minute? Not that I don't like what they do, but why would I, I'm already too busy as it is and I'm already away from home more than I want to be. Why would I spend a minute investing in their platform rather than my own?

• 1:44:07Graham Stephan?

  Are you open to talking about your own business?

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Graham Stephan?

  Like breaking it down? I'm curious where your income sources come from.

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  So it's a few different streams. Ad revenue is the most significant stream, sponsorships, Patreon, merch, um, real estate.

• 1:44:21Graham Stephan?

  Ad revenue is number one? How? I thought for sure your videos would just get demonetized.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  They used to be. I almost got actually banned from YouTube. I got two strikes at one time. I remember landing from a honeymoon and getting the second strike notification in my phone. And if you get one more, you're banned permanently. So that was a real fear, but I've kind of learned what to edit, what to take out, how to blur certain things so that we, we've been, most of my stuff actually does get monetized now.

• 1:44:48Graham Stephan?

  We've had, we've had a few episodes in the past where they've shared graphic stories and we've done our best to censor them. And the, the whole thing just gets like limited ads and it does not get pushed.

• 1:44:57Speaker 01

  It's amazing how certain words are entirely off limits. Like you have to bleep this, but I cannot call someone. You have to call it like what you have to call them a PDF file to come on like I get that they have to protect people that are watching it, but I'm on the side of very on the other side of almost censor nothing.

• 1:45:17Graham Stephan?

  What's your overhead like to run this production?

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  It's become very significant. So, um, so first of all, from an employee standpoint, we have like four or five full-time guys and then we have a couple editors that are part-time but their hours are picking up. Um, so I would say in travel, um, tour or car rentals, I would say my average overhead is about 50K a month.

• 1:45:40Graham Stephan?

  No way. That's a lot of money.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:45Graham Stephan?

  Can you share how much you bring in every month?

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  So you want just ad revenue or you want my whole little picture? Um, I would say in a given month, it can really fluctuate, but I can probably do from anywhere from 90 to 220.

• 1:45:58Graham Stephan?

  Congratulations.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:46:00Graham Stephan?

  I think that's so cool to go from that video on your phone and be like, this is, this is going to be it.

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:46:06Graham Stephan?

  How did you have such conviction back then that that was going to be it? Like you seem like you could see the future back then.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  There was times where I couldn't like there's times where like I almost quit YouTube altogether when I was in my prank era because I'm like, it just wasn't working. I wasn't growing. Um, so definitely I'm an overly optimistic person. I do have a very strong belief in myself and I think like I have, I have a unique personality where I can go talk to almost anyone. I believe I can talk to anyone in the world and for that reason, I think that it's possible that this can succeed. Um, but to see it come full circle, like I was, I was really struggling in my sales jobs because I just, the money never motivated me. The money doesn't motivate me now either. Like I could talk, like think in my head like, well, if I hit my quota for this, I'm going to be making this. I can never like do the extra phone call in my sales job because the money was motivating

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  me to do it. Um, so to get to a point where now I'm making more in a month than I ever did in a year is unbelievable. And the overhead, like that's the other thing, like you would think like, I think we always look at just the revenue and we think that's what they're making. Um, like there's some months where it's an absolute crusher, like three sponsorships that were delayed in paying just came through. And there's some months where it's like, like we were slightly in the red or right on the edge. Um, But to me, to be able to do this full time, to be able to, like, I have a job that I can talk endlessly about. I've like, I get to live almost a bucket list. Like, oh, you just did Area 51, now you're hanging out with the Bloods, now you just went with these high rolling gamblers. And that was in a four day span, you just did that. Like, I have a dream, dream job.

• 1:47:37Graham Stephan?

  What do you do with the money?

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  I'm a heavy investor.

• 1:47:40Graham Stephan?

  Cool.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Um, so every month, right now, I'm up to, I put, so I put 16 right off the bat into a Vanguard, like VFIAX.

• 1:47:47Graham Stephan?

  Yeah, VFIAX is what I call it.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:47:50Graham Stephan?

  Oh.

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  Uh, I have eight single families and one four unit in Milwaukee. I'll probably get up to 12 or 15. I self-manage all of it, so I don't, I don't know if I ever want to-

• 1:47:58Graham Stephan?

  That's insane.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  Get to a point where I don't manage it, because I, I take, like, so some people might be mad, like, oh, you buy single family homes. What I do, I get houses that were trap houses, and they're like abandoned for four years in the city of Milwaukee. There's boards on the windows, they're, they're just crap holes. I go in there, I buy them for like 30K, then I put about 30K, and I make it the nicest house on the block. I'll send you, I'll show you guys some pictures of the houses that I do. Like, people have been outside of some of the houses I own, and there's tape around the tree of the memorial. Like, these are really rough areas. And what I'll do is I'll make it the nicest house for miles, where people think it's a scam almost. Like, when people look at this on Zillow and they see it, they're like, there's no way this is, you're just gonna take my money. Like, this is not a real house. 11th and Atkinson, there's no way a house that nice is on 11th and Keith or 11th and Atkinson.

• 1:48:43Speaker 01

  Then they go in and they're like, holy crap. Because I want to make a house that someone never wants to leave. It's because there's a lot of slum lords in Milwaukee, it's a huge problem. There was even a book written about it called Eviction, that the conditions, I've been in houses that the roof is leaking so bad that the second floor of ceiling has a hole in it, the first floor ceiling has a hole in it, and water is dripping onto the floor of the first floor, and they have, they just continually have to get a bucket.

• 1:49:06Graham Stephan?

  Wow.

• 1:49:07Speaker 01

  Because the landlord doesn't want to fix it. So, to me-

• 1:49:12Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you more about my, my philosophy with real estate. So I'll get a house like that. And maybe like one of them, I have a daycare in it that pay me, that pays me 1600 a month, five bedroom, one bath. My four unit, I don't raise rents on people. Like I've had it for probably five or six years now. If someone moves out and I renovate it, I might bring it, I bring it up to market. I don't charge anything over what I think market is. So I have people that have been in a, in a unit for five years that still pay 700, 750. Some people are paying 900, 10, 1,000, which I think is overpriced in Milwaukee in that market. So I try and pay them or have them pay reasonable amounts that I think they can afford. And I think that they're going to be, have some longevity in the house. And then my goal is to keep them as long as they possibly can. And so

• 1:49:55Speaker 01

  to me, like I have no aspirations. I'm never going to have a Lamborghini. I don't want a massive, massive house. I just want the ability. I want to buy a ribeye when I want to. I want to live like, I want to be able to walk in the woods a couple of times a day with my wife, dog and baby. I want to be able to host friends and pay for good food. I want to be able to say, hey, we're having a boys trip. I got the Airbnb, you guys cover the, like, that's the type of stuff like I want to be wealthy for and to never be in a job where I'm miserable. I always want to just be chasing stuff that I'm excited about. So to me, financial freedom is not so I can like, you know, get grills or something. It's so that I can do life on my terms.

• 1:50:32Graham Stephan?

  How long do you see yourself making YouTube videos for?

• 1:50:35Speaker 01

  Until it's not fun anymore or until it becomes too much. I, I don't know. I don't see slowing down, but, or like stopping all together, but sometimes it's hard with a little kid at home and

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  I know it's a stress on my family to be away from home. So that is hard. But the thing is, the alternative is like, if I go back to the cubicle, I'm going to be away from the home anyways, and I'm going to be miserable. Like I'm fully alive right now. I'm fully passionate about what I do. And so it's just a trade off. But I do know like, as my boy gets older, like I owe my wife some nice trips, some good experiences.

• 1:51:07Graham Stephan?

  I'll tell you from an outside perspective, I see you putting yourself in some very dangerous situations that I think would be.

• 1:51:16Graham Stephan?

  You know, a little iffy to put your family in a situation where something could happen to you.

• 1:51:20Speaker 01

  I have a good life insurance policy, Graham.

• 1:51:23Graham Stephan?

  But you want to be around.

• 1:51:24Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:51:25Graham Stephan?

  And maybe you want more kids and you want to see them get married one day and you want to be like a grandparent and all that. Like, I think there's gonna be a tipping point where you start looking at like, here's how much I have invested. Here are the rentals that I have and I'm going out there putting my life at risk for this little bit. Even though I love it, it's like, I think there's gonna be a balance at some point where you're gonna be like, well, better for me to spend time with family to have a one in a thousand chance of being that.

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  A couple of things to say that, Graham. One is, I believe that when you are on the path, the universe will open up doors for you. And I believe right now, 100% that I'm on the right path. So I'm gonna trust that journey. The second thing is, I'll use a rap analogy. Rappers tend to make their best albums at the beginning of their career when they're hungry. No rapper makes their best album when they're already worth millions of dollars, like usually not. So I don't ever want to tone it down to play it safe. At the same time, we are shifting a little bit. Like, we're, the last couple of years, we were really heavy into hood. Right now, we have zero hood in our, we have eight videos in the chamber, none of them are hood. We actually have four police videos in the chamber. So it's like a total shift.

• 1:52:32Speaker 01

  I do think the topics will change. And not that I don't want to go to the hood, I'm about to go to the hood in like two hours. It's gonna be surrounded by a bunch of Bloods, but I've hit it enough where it's gotten less and less interesting over time. And unless there's a really compelling character or thing that I want to check out, it's just not something we're gonna cover as much. But I do believe like one of the primary strongholds of the channel is the underworld. We are the kings of the underworld. Like, there's no one, I think, doing it right now that has the contacts I do, that is willing to go where I'm willing to go and get the complete picture, the inside access that we get. And so to me, it's like, if I can vet my contacts, I feel very good about it. And- I think the biggest gamble at all is not to take a gamble on yourself.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  So I'd much rather be in this position where there's danger on the line than be back at the office job where I'm like, I could have done something, but I didn't.

• 1:53:24Graham Stephan?

  You and Andrew Callahan, man, if you get together, I swear you could. The two of you have like the journalism covered.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  He does a really good job too. I think he covers almost a different niche than I do. He leans like he covers more of the.

• 1:53:37Graham Stephan?

  He compliments you well.

• 1:53:38Speaker 01

  Yes, I wouldn't say either of us are, especially my side is no sleep political. But he covers more of the rallies. He covers more of the social issues. And I think with, with who's in power right now, he has an opportunity to cover some really good subject that need to be covered. Like when we talk about veterans losing their social security, I just saw a town hall where a guy was really mad about that. When we talk about unions getting busted and I want to cover some of that too. I'm, I'm pretty squared on the line. I voted independent almost my entire life.

• 1:54:10Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration blog, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  But yes, I, Andrew does some really remarkable journalism. In fact, his, his movie that he came to you guys to talk about, Dear Kelly.

• 1:54:41Graham Stephan?

  Love that.

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  One of the best pieces I've ever seen. Kudos to him for that. The way that he storytell, the way that he put it all together over a multi-year period, like that guy is really good for the space.

• 1:54:51Graham Stephan?

  I agree. Have you ever scrapped a video?

• 1:54:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, like there's a Fresno police investigation where there's a lot of really sketchy circumstances that the now mayor of Fresno has tied to his name, but the activists, the people that could have spoken out, didn't. So it was like, same thing with, there's a school called Judge Rottenberg in Massachusetts that it's alleged, these people sue a lot. So I'm going to say very allegedly that they use electroshock therapy on children, a lot of times with autism or different things. The people that were going to blow the whistle about it totally chickened out. And so it's like, look, if you guys aren't going to back up, I'm not going to put a flimsy piece accusing some powerful organization of something. If you guys aren't willing to put your own face on the line here. So those are pieces I've scrapped and also.

• 1:55:36Speaker 01

  Like we just know, like when Miguel was putting the final edits on, if we just feel like we're not giving someone a A level piece that gives them inside access, like we don't want to put out any fluff pieces just to post it.

• 1:55:46Jack Selby?

  Yeah. How does this all end for you?

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  There's a lot more to cover. I'm just getting started. I'm very new to this world. Actually, I've been in this business for about three years. So there's a lot I have to learn and a lot I still have to cover. What's next? One day we'll make a Netflix or Amazon piece. We'll, we'll cut a deal with a streaming platform. That's definitely on the goal. Maybe a series, maybe a one-off documentary, but would absolutely love to do that. I think really focusing on developing my son, I think like really, really these precious moments as, as having a young kid. Focusing on that, because I think like you can get, this is a career that I could spend seven days a week, every single hour of the day working on it. I have to be careful that I don't, I'm not the dad that neglected their kids. So I'm spending a lot of time hands-on with my boys, very important to me, taking trips with the family.

• 1:56:34Speaker 01

  But as far as career and a story that I really, really want to get into,

• 1:56:39Speaker 01

  I'm very interested in prisons right now, and a lot of prisons are hesitant to let you in. Largely because I think the conditions are so deplorable that they're worried that if you were a gotcha hit piece journalist, that they'd be afraid of the story you tell. And then when you look at our incarceration numbers, we really have to look ourselves in the eyes and ask if we're doing the right things. When we, when we're the land of the free, but we incarcerate more people by far than any other country on earth, we really have to look ourselves in the eyes. So things that go into the justice process. The last thing I'll throw out, this is a total pipe dream, but I've always floated out the idea of running a private prison. Now, before everyone says I'm an evil maniac, let me explain what it would be. One of the things we're really going to need going forward is the trades.

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  A lot of the contractors are aging out of the industry. They're 40, 50 years old, their backs are hurt. And there's not as many young guys taking up the, the mantle. These are a lot of guys in there, in these prisons that are very smart and they would love nothing more than to use entrepreneurial skills. They've done it other ways and put it into a legitimate business. I would love to set up a prison that's basically like the Harvard of prisons for, for the trades. You can apply from prison around the country and you live here and, and. The pipe dream would be the way we eat is going to be different. We're going to eat healthy, good food. You guys are going to be allowed to work out. Like, we want you to be a well-developed person when you get out. But also, we're going to spend a heavy amount of time investing into electricians and plumbers and HVAC guys. So that when you leave, you have something for you waiting on the other side.

• 1:58:03Speaker 01

  And a big problem with a lot of prisons right now is they either do labor for free. Like in Texas, they do labor for free, which someone could argue that's your debt to society. But also, if someone's bawling off of it, if someone has a private prison where there's a guy driving around on rolls of rice because you're working for free. I have an issue with that. Or some states do like 20 cents an hour. I want them, when they leave, they have a few, you know, 10, 20, $30,000 sitting in an account. So they have money to put down an apartment. They have money for a vehicle. They have money for the clothes. If they've been locked up for 20 years, the fashion has changed. And you could tell guys, like, they come back out in Timberlands and baggy shirts, like, oh, this guy was recently incarcerated and so isn't adjusted to the times. So give them their push so that they don't come back.

• 1:58:45Speaker 01

  That'd be my pipe dream. If anyone knows, any investors want to talk down the line?

• 1:58:49Graham Stephan?

  How much would it cost for someone to join a prison like that?

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  Uh, maybe we'll take government money and grants if that's on the table. But I would, my idea of how it could be funded is, and this is a, this is a performance-based incentive is we take, let's just say, we have to figure out the math, but the first four or five years that they're out, we take 10% of their income and that funds it. So it's on us to make them as highly qualified as possible so they're getting paid the most and help them grow their business. And then both hands are getting shaken, you know, like both people are benefiting.

• 1:59:18Graham Stephan?

  Yeah. I almost thought that would be so interesting. Like, this was an idea I had like years ago of investing in people. And so if someone's just like, this is a bright fellow, an up-and-comer, good ideas. I want to give him 100 grand, make sure he's got his base needs taken care of, but I want 10% of what he makes for the next X years. I think that's a cool business and just like invest in people themselves that you think are like really promising. I think that'd be cool, but, but you could game it. There's so many ways that you could be like, well, technically we had to pay out this subsidiary.

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  Right, just increase expenses.

• 1:59:56Graham Stephan?

  Islands. And so I actually didn't make any money. It's like, there's so many little loopholes that anyone could pull or like, yeah, well, I need that Range Rover as part of my living expenses. So we were in the red this year, actually. Sorry. And then as soon as it's up, this person starts making like tens of millions of dollars. But if people were honest about it, and like, I think it could work well.

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  The only thing I say to that, I think it's

• 2:00:19Graham Stephan?

  10% gross, actually.

• 2:00:20Speaker 01

  Really good on the table, but does that violate a fundamental law of human motivation and psychology? Like, do they need to be so hungry that they need to succeed? Or is it, hey, if you pave the path for me, I'm just going to commit my life to it. I just need the chance. I think there's, there's people you could find.

• 2:00:34Jack Selby?

  It's kind of like taxes, though. It's like, at a certain point, they may disincentivize you.

• 2:00:38Graham Stephan?

  It does, yeah. Yeah, once they start taking more than 50%, I think it causes me to take my foot off the gas a little bit. I'm like, ah, do I really want to do that? Take 49? Ah, maybe not.

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  I hate how much money we work for really hard to think that the government is taking a quarter, a third, a half of what you make. And you're in these dangerous situations. You've grinded so much of your life and they just get to take it and spend it out. That's a time for another podcast.

• 2:01:04Jack Selby?

  Probably bring taxes down a little bit.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  A little bit.

• 2:01:06Jack Selby?

  Yeah, another podcast. Guys, thank you so much for watching. We'll leave all of your information down below in the description. Is there anything that you'd like to mention?

• 2:01:16Speaker 01

  I appreciate the support because of people watching like you. I have a dream job. I'm happy. I'm ready to rumble. So, thank you.

• 2:01:23Jack Selby?

  Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was such an enjoyable episode. You're such a nice guy.

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:01:27Jack Selby?

  Very happy for your success. Thank you, everybody, for watching. Until next time.