#346 - The $450 Million Da Vinci Conspiracy & CIA Psyops Behind Modern Art | Giampiero Ambrosi

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Giampiero Ambrosi is a writer, journalist, and producer of documentary films such as "Bad Influence" on Netflix and "The Royal Stunt", an investigation into the hidden world of art forgery. https://giampiero.com SPONSORS https://brooklynbedding.com - Use code DANNY for 30% off site wide. https://shopmando.com - Use code DANNY for 20% off plus FREE shipping. https://trueclassic.com/danny - Upgrade your wardrobe and SAVE on TrueClassic today. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS https://giampiero.com FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Tony Tetro - world's top art forger 14:25 - investigating James Stunt's art collection 34:25 - how James Stunt made millions on fake art 40:29 - the lost Leonardi da Vinci painting 55:42 - what happened to Tony Tetro & James Stunt 01:06:00 - how Tony Tetro became a forger 01:13:03 - why older paintings are harder to forge 01:25:11 - how CIA used Jackson Pollock art as a weapon 01:38:25 - the problem with artists' foundations 01:45:55 - why such great art was made during the renaissance 01:53:42 - how modern art has evolved 02:07:03 - the dark side of kid influencers 02:11:10 - Roblox & section 230 02:19:52 - how to fix social media 02:25:44 - the doomsday clock 02:38:08 - BrandArmy & social media poisoning kids 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  For decades, a shadowy organization called the Illuminati has kept lemon on top and lime in the shadows. Look around, lemon-forward sodas, even lemon-forward songs. We ran the tracks, slowed them down, reversed them, and squeezed out the truth.

• 0:50Speaker 01

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• 1:07Danny Jones?

  This whole world of modern art is wild. I've been diving into it like for the past year now, pretty deep. And I got inspired by that Lost Leonardo documentary, which was fascinating. And then I recently have been reading up on all of the history of covert operations during the Cold War to fund the modern art world. And your documentary is fascinating. So explain how you got into that whole world and what your book and the documentary are about.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  Sure. Remind me to tell you about the CIA thing because I'm doing a big project on a pollock from that program.

• 1:38Danny Jones?

  Oh, really?

• 1:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I'll tell you about that. But I was doing, you know, I started as a kind of a cub reporter for Japanese TV in the 90s. And during that time, the Japanese economy had a bubble economy. And so there was just money everywhere. Real estate was going crazy in central Tokyo. And it turned out that, you know, like lots of bubbles, there's a lot of shady business going on. And one of the things that was happening, the Japanese had just started getting really interested in European art. At all this money, they were able to start buying European art that they hadn't really been able to afford or weren't that interested in. And it turns out that they were getting a lot of fake art, you know, because they were relatively unsophisticated buyers.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  And so you had these giant real estate deals in, you know, in Tokyo, underwritten by art, you know, fifty million dollar work of art. A lot of it was fake. Right? And so we started looking into this and they said, hey, there's this guy called Tony Tetro, who's this huge art forger in America. He's in jail now, but when he gets out, when he gets out, um, go look him up. And so I did some investigation and I kind of found a lead. And I ended up meeting Tony. And it was kind of funny because we met at this kind of swanky place in Newport.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  And he had all these people around, you know, he was smoking cigars, everybody knew him, he had a bunch of cronies around him. He was talking about his, all his Ferraris and stuff. But the reality was that he was broke on his ass and he was living in a motel. Next, his room was literally next door to a Chinese restaurant and he walked across the street. You know, because he was really kind of down and out, but somehow we had, we had hit it off. And, um, you know, within a couple of months, like he gave me pretty much all of his stuff related to art. He just gave me boxes of stuff. He was like, I like you, you know, I like what you're doing and, you know, knock yourself out. So that's really how, how it started. And then over the years, um,

• 3:47Speaker 03

  you know, I would hear more and more and more about Tony. He'd kind of open up more and more about everything that happened. And, um, you know, it ended up that I knew him for like twenty something years. Um, and so I really, I, I kind of, it was funny because he would start to tell a story. And he just got a jump here, you tell it, you know, you know better than I do. I just, I kind of knew everything, knew where all the bodies were buried and all that stuff. So, um, you know, fast forward to two thousand.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  2019, well, 2017, really, he started doing some work for this, you know, crazy, coked up billionaire guy named James Stunt. I started doing some work for him and, uh, you know, he started telling me about it. And I was like, well, this is, this is weird. Who's this guy? What's he doing? You know, and Tony said, well, I'm doing like 10 or 12 things for him. You know, he wants to put him in this mansion. He had the biggest mansion in California. It used to be-

• 4:51Danny Jones?

  James Stunt?

• 4:51Speaker 03

  James Stunt. It used to be called Candyland and Aaron Spelling, the producer, built this house for his wife Candy and it was this huge mega mansion. And Stunt married, uh, the heiress of the Formula One fortune, Bernie Ecclestone. He married the daughter and so he got all this money. They bought this house. And now he calls it Stunt Manor, you know, because he was a little bit of a, you know, narcissist. So anyway, he, you know, as far as Tony's concerned, he wants this artwork, you know, Picasso, a Van Dyke, this, that for his house.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  Well, these guys get to be, you know, these guys get to be friends and, um, you know, they talk at night. Stunt's up all night, you know, doing drugs and stuff. He's awake, calls Tony in LA. Because Stunt at this time is back in London, calls Tony in LA and they talked about art, cars, women, whatever. And so Stunt says, hey, I want you to come to London. Well, Tony goes to London and, um, he shows up and Stunt is kind of on a bender. So he's up all night and then he sleeps all day. So Tony's just hanging around by himself. And I mean, Stunt's nowhere to be seen. So Tony is going to the British Museum with the, you know, with the bodyguards,

• 6:14Speaker 03

  taking them to the pub and like showing them a good time because they doesn't know what else to do. Anyway, he comes down one day and he's at the table by himself and there are these papers there. And he's like, what's this? Cause he's got nothing better to do. Nobody's there. He's by himself. Starts looking at him and on these papers, which are some kind of legal contract, some kind of contract that has something to do with a place called Dumfries House. He sees paintings.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  And the thing with Tony is these paintings are unique, individual paintings. They're not copies. So 99% of people think that forgers copy paintings. They don't copy paintings because if you copied a painting, you'd just be like, it's fake. The real one's at MoMA, you know?

• 7:03Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 7:03Speaker 03

  So it's a work that an artist might have done. Maybe in the style of for a certain time period, using the color palette and subjects of a certain time, right? So it's an individual new painting that you create sort of a backstory. Here's why this exists.

• 7:19Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Here's how this just showed up out of nowhere, like the, the lost Leonardo, for example, right? Here's an excuse for why this exists.

• 7:27Danny Jones?

  Yeah. And isn't it with typical, uh, pieces of art like this, that there's a historical chain of custody? That's written about and you can like, you can corroborate it with other literature that goes back into however long ago.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, that, that's, that's a great point. So, you know, um, there are a lot of people who can paint perfectly. Okay. You can go get a perfect copy of something. There's a village in China that everybody there works making exact copies of master works. So you can get that, right? However, what Tony's genius was that he is extremely passionate about, um, the backstory of the art. The, the details, the minutia. So there's a great example, which I talk about in the book. And, um, in a 17th or I, I, let's say 18th century expert book about, uh, Rembrandt engravings.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  There's a footnote, page 78, there's a little footnote. It says, hey, so and so said that there was a drawing of this. And so and so says that there's not a drawing of this. Nobody's sure. Well, that's really all you need to now go, hey, I'm going to make that maybe drawing exist. I'm going to bring it into being. So of course you have to execute it perfectly with all the right materials and all the right technique and the period and everything. Um, so.

• 8:49Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. So then now you've created a new piece that never existed, or maybe existed, but is lost. And you have the back history supporting why it exists.

• 8:59Danny Jones?

  Yeah, but how does he know that somebody doesn't have that already existing in like a private collection?

• 9:04Speaker 03

  I mean, it's, it's a risk you take, but you assume like, you know, it's been 350 years. If, if it's going to show up, it would have shown up, you know? Uh, so, so Tony, you know, going back to the, the, the loan that he saw, so he could see that these paintings on the contracts, they're mine. They're absolutely mine. These are new paintings that I made. They're my subject. They're mine. Why that, why are they on this document? That is going to Dumfries House, some royal Scottish thing. So he goes, mm, this sounds a little fishy to me. He takes out his cell phone and takes three pictures. Right?

• 9:50Speaker 03

  When he gets back to LA, he goes, hey, jump euro. You know, I was just in London and this funny thing happened. Take a look at these pictures. What do you think? And I look at him and I go, very fishy. They're loans to Dumfries House. And Tony had told me it was like Prince Andrew or something like that of the British royal family. But Dumfries House.

• 10:12Danny Jones?

  So this, this billionaire, uh, guy on a bender was loaning money.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Was loaning artworks.

• 10:18Danny Jones?

  Loaning artwork.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  To Prince Charles. Into his royal collection. And so I go, well, the fuck is going on here? And he had mentioned something to Tony. He had something, said something about like, I'm going to do a loan. And I'm going to get all this money. But I'm not going to have to pay it back.

• 10:39Danny Jones?

  So he explained this whole thing to.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  He didn't explain. He just kind of mentioned, he just kind of briefly mentioned like, um. This thing is going to kind of happen and I could make a bunch of money on it.

• 10:48Danny Jones?

  Got it.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  And Tony's like, well, it doesn't make any sense to me and whatever. So he shows it to me and goes, what do you think? And I go, okay, well, Dumfries House is Prince Charles, a future king of England's uh headquarters of his charitable um of his charitable foundation. It's in Scotland. He's got all this art in it and everything. And I'm like, okay, well, why is he lending money? That doesn't make it or why is he lending art to this thing? And how do you make money off it? Doesn't doesn't make sense. And the first thing that I saw was these artworks had crazy values, like 50 million dollars for a Picasso that Tony had made.

• 11:25Danny Jones?

  And he was claiming these were originals.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Claiming they're originals. Like I'm lending this to you.

• 11:29Danny Jones?

  Even the prints, Picasso prints can be worth lots of money, right?

• 11:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, prints can be worth, but you know, not like that. I mean, this is

• 11:36Danny Jones?

  Not 50 million dollars.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  50 million dollars is an oil on canvas major piece, right? So it's a major piece that's going to this uh foundation. He lent it, right? And go, what's going on? I look at it and I go, well, this is clearly there's something fishy here. They're not just fooling the people at Dumfries House. There's something fishy here because um for example, the Picasso said that it was verified by the Wildenstein Institute. Wildenstein Institute only exclusively looks at French impressionists. So they'll look at Renoir and stuff. They would never look at a Picasso. They would never verify a Picasso. They just don't. That's that's somebody else, right?

• 12:19Speaker 03

  So I go, there's no, no expert could have looked at this and accepted uh a provenance like that, an authentication like that. Then there was a Monet, you know, the famous water lilies, right?

• 12:31Danny Jones?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 12:31Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  So these these famous water lilies, there's a major water lily. It's worth, I forget what it was exactly now on the contract, 30 million, something like that. And it has a date of uh 18, I want to make, it's been a while, but let's say 1890.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  And I'm like, well, that's could never pass muster either because that garden, where the water lilies are and that Monet built specifically so that he could paint these paintings, wasn't built until 10 years later. So you're like, you wouldn't even have to be an expert to go like, this is bullshit. And it's really like a pretty bad, you know, it's a pretty bad mistake. So this told me, this did not go to the curatorial staff. Nobody really looked at this. Nobody really went, what are these things? This went to somewhere else.

• 13:22Danny Jones?

  Interesting.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so these contracts were signed with a guy called Michael Fawcett. Michael Fawcett was Prince Charles' right-hand man, like literally his right-hand man. When Prince Charles broke his arm, he was putting the royal toothpaste.

• 13:36Danny Jones?

  Sounds familiar.

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. He's putting the royal toothpaste on the royal toothbrush. I mean, he is as close as you can get. Somehow he's in this

• 13:46Speaker 03

  scheme with stunt. I can't prove it, right? But he's in the scheme with stunt. So I look at this and I go, this is a big story, you know, 300 million pounds, 300 million dollars worth of art going into the Prince's collection, the former, or the, the future King of England, the future owner of the Royal Collection, you know, one of the greatest art collections in the world is full of fake art. What's going on here?

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• 15:25Speaker 03

  So I was at the time exploring making a documentary with Keith Davidson, Academy nominated director. And I said, hey, look, I have this idea. And he just looks at me, he goes, prove it. I go, uh, not sure how to do that. But I said, no problem. Which, you know, is a huge task because A, this kind of stuff is just very hard to prove.

• 15:56Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  And B, the royal family has this culture of secrecy around them where their motto is never complain and never explain. So if something happens, you don't bitch about it. You just ignore it. No comment. Not going to happen. Nothing's ever going to happen. So I'm thinking, well, how am I going to go prove this?

• 16:17Danny Jones?

  Never complain, never explain.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Never complain, never explain. So.

• 16:20Danny Jones?

  That sounds about right. If you want to, going back to Prince Andrew's interview about Jeffrey Epstein, that makes perfect sense.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  And, you know, they have, they have teams and, you know, intelligence apparatus and stuff around them that just they quash everything. So I think, how am I going to do this? But, you know, it's a pretty, pretty good adventure. And so I started out, I mean, I thought this, this is a big story and it's super exciting and I'm really interested in it. And I'm just going to go for it. So on my own dime, I just said, I'm going to, I'm going to go try to do this. And we first contacted James Stunt and we said, hey, James, we're doing a thing, you know, it's about art. There was. There was some newspaper article that just said, hey, this guy is friendly with

• 17:11Speaker 03

  James, with Prince Charles and lend some stuff and give some gifts. What's the deal? So I called him up and I said, hey, you know, I'm interested in doing a documentary about great art collectors and I know that you've, you know, lent stuff to Prince Charles. Could we talk? He was polite, you know, and he said, well, let me think about it. And then he just was like, no, he's, he'd only given one print interview, had never been on camera and doing interviews, had never done any press. So he just didn't want to do anything. And so I thought, well, all right, how's this gonna happen? You know, how am I gonna figure this out? Um, and then so, so I thought, well, okay, I'm gonna send somebody to Dumfries house. I'm gonna sneak him in and I'm gonna have them look around because mostly 18th century portraiture. Are they gonna have some Picassos or whatever?

• 17:56Danny Jones?

  Who's Dumfries again?

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Dum- Dum- Dumfries house is the headquarters where the stuff was lent to.

• 18:02Danny Jones?

  Oh, got it.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  So I said, I'm gonna sneak somebody in there, take a look around. Do we see these paintings? Well, of course they went up there. They didn't see anything. So I'm like, wow, that's not good, you know, because now I'm thinking, did this ever happen? Was this just a scheme that never went anywhere? Did they pull that at the last minute? So we thought, well, what if we went to James Stunt's house or his office where he keeps his collection? If it's on the walls, it means it didn't happen. He didn't actually lend them. So no story.

• 18:35Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  The hard part is getting in there, right?

• 18:39Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 18:40Speaker 03

  So during this time, he was in a feud with the, uh, press in the UK because they were reporting on, he was having trouble with money laundering and stuff. There he'd been charged.

• 18:52Danny Jones?

  Shocker.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. He'd been charged with money laundering. And so the press was reporting on me. He hated the press. And so he would go on social media every day, go on YouTube and, you know, have these hour long kind of coke fueled rants.

• 19:04Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 19:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, about.

• 19:06Danny Jones?

  Is this shit still on YouTube?

• 19:07Speaker 03

  No, it's pulled down. In fact, I, for two years, I got up every morning at five. He got kicked off YouTube. So then he was on Instagram and he was doing, he was doing, um, lives and stuff and they would disappear after 24 hours. So every morning for two years, I'd get up at five in the morning. And record his lives. You know, I'd capture him on my phone.

• 19:29Danny Jones?

  So he would, he would wake up the next day and regret doing it and delete it?

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Or was it? No, well, no, they just last 24 hours.

• 19:34Danny Jones?

  Oh, gotcha. I gotcha. I see.

• 19:35Speaker 03

  So, so I'd have to grab them. And now they're all deleted. So I think I'm the only person who, who has, you know, the James stunt collection in my archives. So, but anyway, he would go on social media and one of the crazy things that he was saying was like, I'm gonna have, I'm gonna do a, um, a polygraph test. I'm gonna have a polygrapher come. I'm gonna have it filmed and I'm gonna prove that all this stuff that the press is saying about me is a lie. It's a lie. So I contacted him. We contacted him. I said, hey, we'll come film the polygraph and we'll put it out there if you let us come film your art collection. And he goes, I'm shocked. I was amazed. He goes, great idea. And so

• 20:20Speaker 03

  there you go. So now we had our way in to go look at his art collection. And so for two days, I actually used to, as I was saying before, used to work with Japanese TV. So I had a colleague of mine, um, you know, be the crew because I couldn't really go in because if I go in, he finds out who I am, you could kind of reverse engineer that I was connected to Tony Tetro, that I'd written some stuff about him. And so.

• 20:47Danny Jones?

  If he knew that you knew Tony, that wouldn't be good.

• 20:49Speaker 03

  He would, uh, this, you know, this smells, this smells bad. Um, but anyway, so we went for two days. We filmed in his house and office. And, um, we didn't see any of the works. So we thought, aha, I think they actually went to Dumfries' house. Um, and it was wild because this, you know, my crew was in there and he's showing, showing him around for two days. He's pointing out like another Tony Tetro fake. And he's going, yeah, I bought this at Sotheby's. I think I paid a million dollars for it. Isn't it great? And all this stuff. And I'm like.

• 21:23Danny Jones?

  And he knew that the Tony Tetro made them?

• 21:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:25Danny Jones?

  And he was just lying to these people?

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he bought them. I have millions of emails. I have all the emails with, you know, they're discussing the specific work of art and, you know, their emails with images of the work. And he's going, oh yeah, do it like this, maybe like that, put the stamp on it and all this other stuff. And he's sitting there talking about how, yeah, I, you know, I bought this at Sotheby's, the real thing. Oh, I'm so great. You know, I know a lot about art and all this kind of stuff.

• 21:50Danny Jones?

  Oh, my.

• 21:51Speaker 03

  Yes. So.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  You know, we get back and I'm like, I think we got something, you know? Um, and I'm pretty excited. And I had a contact through someone, I had a contact who's a senior figure in MI6, which is foreign intelligence in the UK, like James Bond kind of thing. And he was an old guy and I said to him, I said, hey, I think this is going on. Do you know people in the palace who could verify this or who I could talk to? And he came back with this amazing email and um, the person wrote back to him, somebody like the right-hand, you know, people in the palace wrote back and they said, um, Fawcett, Stunt's right-hand guy,

• 22:37Speaker 03

  who I think was involved, Fawcett, uh, the palace, the firm, meaning the palace, the firm know about this. Fawcett will have gotten a rocket, meaning Fawcett would have just been blasted for this. And Giampiero will find all doors closed, meaning never complain and never explain. So we're going to pretend none of this happened. We're just going to pretend none of this happened, it's going to go away. You can't prove it, those paintings are going to be gone, it's over. So we thought, fuck that, you know? We're not going to just let it go like this. So we had made contact with some of the press in the UK.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  And we said, look, we have this story, can prove it all, I have millions of documents, I have all this stuff, I've done all this work, I can show you that this has happened, you publish it. And they go, because I wanted to force the hand of the palace, I wanted them to have to acknowledge it.

• 23:34Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  And so, uh, on the mail on Sunday, you know, we kind of worked the story up with them and they proved it up. And they went to Prince Charles's people and they had to acknowledge it. And they came back and they said, we acknowledge it happened, it's extremely regrettable. And, you know, we were in London at the time and the editor called me up and he said, hey, um, Tomorrow morning, check the paper. Pages one to five, check in there. Okay, so I'm like, alright, there's gonna be an article somewhere between page one and page five. I look, it's literally the entire first five pages of the newspaper of the largest circulation Sunday newspaper in the UK is this story.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  And, I mean, it's huge headlines, fake art hits Prince Charles and all this stuff. So at that point, um, you know, we knew, we knew we had it. Um, and when you do, when you do something like that, suddenly, I mean, you, I'm sure know this from when you, you know, do something about a story, people come out of the woodwork. And now there's all kinds of stuff that you can find out. And, um, you know, the, the, the, the, the first thing that happened is I was able to find more of his collection.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  And what I originally thought was that, alright, he, he got four Tony fakes in there. I still didn't know exactly what he was doing. I'm like, okay, you got four Tony, is he like, are they gonna lose them or burn them? And then claim insurance, you know? Now you've just made, I don't know, 15, 20 million from some fake works of art that got stolen? Or burned or whatever?

• 25:25Danny Jones?

  Interesting.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  That's what I thought. But then I looked at, I got all these other documents, and one of the things that I got was, um, the assessment of his entire collection. And I'm like, alright, this guy's got Renoir's, Monet's, Picasso's. In, in the loan, there were 17 paintings. Four of them were Tony Tetro paintings. So these other paintings, like Van Dyck and stuff like that, like very important paintings. I thought, okay, well, those are real, he fluffed it up with some Tony fakes, doubled the value, okay, he kind of, you know, plumped it up a little. But the reality was, when I looked at his whole collection, They were like kind of middling paintings, 10 grand, 20 grand, 30 grand.

• 26:11Speaker 03

  I think there was one that was maybe like 350 grand. That's a lot of money, but you know, compared to the rest of this work, it's peanuts.

• 26:18Danny Jones?

  And what were the four of Tonys? What were they supposedly?

• 26:21Speaker 03

  There was a Chagall, a um.

• 26:24Danny Jones?

  Picasso?

• 26:25Speaker 03

  Picasso, a Dali and a Monet, right? So that was worth 150 million just that.

• 26:32Danny Jones?

  God.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  Right? Yeah. It's a lot of money. It's a ton of money. But I'm still thinking, well, what is he doing? And this doesn't make sense that he has these, you know, he's really got kind of cheap paintings. And um, a lot of the paintings were what's called like followers, studio circle followers. So you and I today could go buy a follower of Rembrandt. Rembrandt's probably the most expensive painting painter in the world. Rembrandt, Caravaggio, 100 millions of dollars, right? 100 million dollars.

• 27:06Danny Jones?

  I didn't know that.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:08Danny Jones?

  I thought Picasso was the most expensive.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  Probably most expensive, modern.

• 27:12Danny Jones?

  Modern.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  Painter, but you know, old masters like, like those guys, I mean, um, extremely, extremely expensive. So you could go buy a studio or circle or follower, not studio for a Rembrandt, but circle or follower. And what does that mean? That just means somebody who was around at the time, they liked Rembrandt. Maybe they saw his paintings. They knew that he was great. They'd paint some of his painting, you know, something.

• 27:36Danny Jones?

  Same time?

• 27:36Speaker 03

  Same time.

• 27:37Danny Jones?

  Like maybe a student or something?

• 27:38Speaker 03

  Or later, could be a student, could be a, you know, just somebody who's kind of around the milieu.

• 27:43Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 27:43Speaker 03

  I mean, you're interested in films, you could be a, you know, you could be a, a follower of Martin Scorsese, you know?

• 27:50Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  You have nothing to do with him, except for the fact that you.

• 27:53Danny Jones?

  I'm a fan.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  You're a fan.

• 27:54Danny Jones?

  Okay, I got it.

• 27:55Speaker 03

  So anyway, you and I could go buy one for 10 grand, right? Now, if it's real, let's say it's 10 million of Van Dyke. Van Dyke can buy for 10, 10 grand, 6, 7, 8 million if it's real. Well, what's the difference between circle and by the hand of the master? Mostly somebody's opinion, right? So, so I'm gonna get to it in a minute, but so what happens is.

• 28:26Danny Jones?

  Can be paid for.

• 28:28Speaker 03

  You're a wise man. So what happens is, um.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  Stunt had all these studio circle followers and he would go online and he'd talk about like, "Yeah, I'm really great at finding sleepers." Well, what's a sleeper? A sleeper is a painting that's been attributed as studio circle or follower, but it's really by the hand of the master.

• 28:49Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, at the same time, what I found was stunt had put together a PowerPoint presentation. He got a financial advisory in London called W. Coleman to put this thing together. And it was a little PowerPoint presentation. It had the Tony paintings and it had 13 other paintings. And it said, "The stunt collection at Dumfries House." And it was a presentation. Well, what's a presentation for? Well, what he was doing, wow.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  So, he's got these paintings there. He's got these Van Dykes in there. Okay? He's got Tony's paintings, he's got these Van Dykes. And, um,

• 29:33Speaker 03

  if they're real, they're worth another 150 million or whatever. But all of these paintings, I mean, we figured out that all of these paintings were actually studio circle and follower. That he had gotten one guy who was the former director of the museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. And, I mean, a big time director and was the deputy director of, um, the National Portrait Gallery in London. One of the most important galleries in the world. He was a deputy director.

• 30:07Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  And this guy is buddies with stunt. Right? He's buddies with stunt and somehow he's written 14 letters for him saying, "Hey, remember that painting that you bought as a circle at Sotheby's or Christie's for 10 grand? Well, I've looked at it and it's really by the hand of so and so. It's really by the hand of Van Dyke. It's worth, you know, 10 million." Right? Now, you find one of those paintings in a generation, it's a big deal. Right? It's a big deal to find what you thought was this $10,000 painting. It's worth 10 million. He's found fourteen of them from one collector, verified by one expert. How's that possible? It's not possible.

• 30:52Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  Right? And I, we found this letter, you know, we took a picture of this letter of Stunt. It said, from Prince Charles, it said, "Oh, James, it was so, such a sad thing that you couldn't be there when Malcolm Rogers, this expert, showed up with your paintings at Dumfries' house to show them to me and to lend them to me. It's so wonderful of you to do this kind of stuff." And you go, "Why is Malcolm Rogers, this eminent director, hanging out with this, you know, crazy coke head who smokes crack on, on his social media and does his crazy stuff? Why is he hanging out with him?" Well, he's getting something out of this thing, you know? So when I called him up, I said, "Hey, um, you know, there's a painting that you had,

• 31:34Speaker 03

  it's in the catalog, resonators, a Van Dyke painting that you had, um, and it was a copy. And the catalog says it's a copy owned by Malcolm Rogers." "Well, how did James Stunt end up with it?" And he goes, "Oh, well, he traded me another painting for it." And I go, "Hmm, that's interesting. Well, what painting was it?" And he goes, "It's none of your business." And that's kind of one of the things, you know, one of the reasons why people like art, people with a lot of money like art, is because it's, it's not because they love art. A lot of them do love art, but it's not just because they love art, but it's kind of, um, the last Wild West financial instrument.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  So you can buy a painting. So my, my theory is there's no, there's no record of this, there's no nothing. It's just, I give you a painting, you give me a painting, great. It's a gift to you, a gift to me, everybody's happy.

• 32:29Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 32:30Speaker 03

  Right? So the painting I give you could be worth a dollar, and the painting you give me could be worth ten million dollars. Now you've just given me ten million dollars, but there's no record of it anywhere. There's no financial catalog, there's no nothing.

• 32:42Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 32:43Speaker 03

  You know, this is a great way to just like, transfer money.

• 32:46Danny Jones?

  Launder money.

• 32:47Speaker 03

  That's why people use, so you see a lot of financial transactions. Why do rich people, why do they even care about art? Why, why would you, isn't it stupid to pay fifty million dollars for a, it can't be worth that much money? Well, it is as a financial instrument, right? Because now you can, you can, for example, buy a piece of modern art. And you go, "Well, how the fuck did somebody pay ten million dollars for that banana taped to a wall?" Right. Did you see the banana taped to the wall?

• 33:14Danny Jones?

  Yes, I did.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 33:15Danny Jones?

  In Miami.

• 33:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, right. So you go, well, how is that possible? They go, okay, well, now you buy that paint, you, you take that painting. All right, let's say, I don't know, you buy it for two million. Somebody says, well, it's worth 10 million. Now you lend it to an institution. Now you have eight million dollars of, you know, kind of like charitable donation on your books. Nobody really knows what it's worth. You can kind of make it up.

• 33:40Danny Jones?

  It was printed out of thin air.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  It's an immaterial kind of thing. Does the market has no comparable to that? You say it's worth 10, is it really? I don't know. But now you have 10 million dollars worth of tax write-off. Right? And that's one of the things that people do with art. So it's used in all of these transactions.

• 33:59Danny Jones?

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• 35:25Speaker 03

  So what did Stunt do? You know, Stunt took this, um...

• 35:31Speaker 03

  Fake art and this inflated art, this art that was student follower, whatever,

• 35:38Speaker 03

  bundled it all up into this $300 million thing, lent it to Prince Charles. Now, what does he do? Now he goes out to special art lenders, right?

• 35:51Danny Jones?

  So it's a $350 million catalog of art?

• 35:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:56Danny Jones?

  That he loans?

• 35:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:58Danny Jones?

  To Prince Charles?

• 36:02Danny Jones?

  And when you say he loans that $350 million worth of art to Prince Charles, what is he getting in return? The tax write-off?

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Here's the thing. So now, here's a tip for, if you're an evil dude, or if you're, you know, somebody doing funky stuff, pay the people who work for you, because they know everything.

• 36:25Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  So I located this guy who was the driver and bodyguard. This is a huge former Lithuanian former professional basketball player who was their bodyguard. And he would hang out downstairs.

• 36:39Danny Jones?

  Or stunt?

• 36:40Speaker 03

  Yeah. And stunt and his guy would be upstairs doing whatever they were doing. And they'd send an email down to this guy and they'd say, hey, can you print this document out and then bring it upstairs? And then email him. So this guy, who was not paid by stunt, had a treasure trove of everything. And what it turned out was that, you know, I met the guy and we, you know, got to know each other and he sort of opened up about this stuff and gave me these things. But what it turns out happening is that stunt had this collection. It's now at the, it's Prince Charles's royal collection. So it's like absolutely above suspicion,

• 37:24Speaker 03

  right? I mean, there is no better provenance than it is in the royal collection.

• 37:29Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  And all of these experts have said it's good.

• 37:32Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 37:32Speaker 03

  Right? Because he also made a bunch of fake letters and saw this other stuff. But now he goes out to specialized art lenders in New York, because there are people who will lend on your art. You go, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you my Picasso as collateral. You lend me half the value. If I don't pay you back, you keep the art.

• 37:50Danny Jones?

  Like a pawn shop?

• 37:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, pretty much. High-class pawn shop with, um, you know, blue chip art.

• 37:57Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Nothing more blue chip than it's in the Prince's collection. Prince Charles has it right now. Lend me the money, of course. So he wanted a hundred and sixty-one million dollars. And the plan all along was I just walk away from it. They keep the collateral. It's not worth anything, you know?

• 38:15Danny Jones?

  Right, it's a fake, right?

• 38:17Speaker 03

  It's all I did. I did the.

• 38:20Speaker 03

  I did the total sum of what that art was really worth. It was probably worth charitably two million dollars. So you're getting a hundred and sixty-one million off a two million collateral. It's a pretty good deal. You walk away. That's it.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 38:35Danny Jones?

  This guy's a billionaire. And he's trying to-

• 38:38Speaker 03

  Well, you know, his wife was a billionaire-ess.

• 38:42Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  He was wealthy, but not in that category. But he spent money like, you know, like it was going out of style.

• 38:50Danny Jones?

  Was his wife still alive or no?

• 38:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, they got divorced. So when they got divorced, suddenly he's like, uh, you know, the gravy train is over, so. I gotta find access to his money.

• 39:01Danny Jones?

  Didn't get a great settlement on the divorce, huh?

• 39:02Speaker 03

  No.

• 39:04Speaker 03

  And, and went through it quick. I mean, the, some of the sources were telling me, you know, he'd go out and there'd be drugs and champagne and stuff, you know, a hundred grand a night, easy, you know, that's-

• 39:15Danny Jones?

  Jesus Christ.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  It's pretty, you'd go through money pretty quick at that clip.

• 39:19Danny Jones?

  That's insane.

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:21Danny Jones?

  And they also have, I forget which movie, I was, I was watching a movie where they had basically like this offshore vault of people, where people would keep artwork there.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:31Danny Jones?

  And people would go there, make transactions and something to do with it being like out of, uh, like a certain country's territory or jurisdiction.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:41Danny Jones?

  Made it away like a tax loophole or something?

• 39:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're called free ports.

• 39:45Danny Jones?

  Free ports.

• 39:45Speaker 03

  And, um, yeah, so they're literally basically like extra, extra territorial zones at airports usually.

• 39:55Danny Jones?

  At airports, yes.

• 39:56Speaker 03

  So the most famous one is in Geneva and that's, you know, that kind of figures in that whole story. We're talking about the lost Leonardo, which I have some interesting thoughts on too.

• 40:06Danny Jones?

  Was that in the lost Leonardo documentary, those?

• 40:08Speaker 03

  I believe so.

• 40:09Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  Yeah. So Yves Bouvier, who was the guy who bought- The Leonardo for the Russian. Um, he made his fortune with that um, Freeport.

• 40:21Danny Jones?

  Okay.

• 40:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. So there's so a lot of, a lot of people who buy import, you know, fifty million dollar pieces of art never have them. They kind of just go to the Freeport or stay in the Freeport. They don't pay taxes on them. They don't actually import them into their homes or into their possession. They just leave them there. So it's really like a, I mean, it's like any other financial asset. It's like crypto or whatever. You don't see, you don't have it. It's just kind of in this place.

• 40:47Danny Jones?

  It stays at this airport. That's so strange, dude.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  I don't know if you ever saw, there was this film, and I can't remember the name, but it involves a guy crashing um, a big plane into one of these.

• 41:00Danny Jones?

  Yes, that's what I was thinking about.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:02Danny Jones?

  I can't remember the name of that movie, though. It was a freaking amazing film.

• 41:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. So they have all this state of the art fire suppression, like they can evacuate all of the oxygen in like two seconds and everything locks and everything is like, you know, biometric.

• 41:15Danny Jones?

  Steve, you gotta find that movie, bro. Find the movie where they, there's a, there's a huge firefight in one of these airport Freeport uh, vaults where there's like all this like uh, modern art and all this crazy stuff.

• 41:29Danny Jones?

  But yeah, no, that's, that's, it's such a wild thing. And the lost Leonardo, the um, eventually, so that, that piece, the Salvator Mundi, which was allegedly um, they, they thought that that was basically drawn by one of Leonardo's students or something like this. And uh, that lady went to go restore it. She stripped a bunch of stuff off it and then basically repainted like ninety percent of it. And long story short, it ended up in the yacht of uh, Mohammed, Mohammed bin Salman, the prince of Saudi Arabia.

• 42:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:02Danny Jones?

  For like a half a billion dollars.

• 42:04Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, the, the really, there's a lot of interesting things about that. And, you know, everybody has their opinion. And I will say, I am not an expert at all. And I'm just kind of, you know, observing um, and giving what I sort of think is plausible. But um, a lot of people think that, that it is actually real. Tony Tetra, the art forger, thinks it's real.

• 42:27Danny Jones?

  Does he really?

• 42:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. Martin Kemp, who is the foremost um, Leonardo expert, I think, thinks it's real or think there's very good chance that it's.

• 42:35Danny Jones?

  Martin Kent?

• 42:36Speaker 03

  Kemp.

• 42:36Danny Jones?

  Kemp.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. But you know, I'm not sure. And what I what I do find interesting, like what you what you say is correct. So if you take a painting and you restore it to the extent where you've repainted a whole bunch of it. Well, yeah, of course, it looks like Leonardo because he just painted it to look like Leonardo.

• 42:59Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  I mean, so, so I don't know. I'm not saying that's what happened. Her name is Diane Modestini. And, um, you know, she's very well regarded and I and I don't know anything about this from an expert perspective, but I'll just say, you know, you do have to ask the question, like if it's been so extensively repainted, I mean, how can what can you really say about the painting? Um, you know, somebody like Kemp or Tetra will say that, you know, there are hallmarks of the work that definitely make it that. But the other thing here is, you know, so it was $450 million. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. And what the film gets into, which I thought was really interesting, was great, you know,

• 43:43Speaker 03

  great piece of of work was there's a lot of pressure with that kind of money that can be brought to bear when really all you're talking about is opinions. Right? I mean,

• 43:56Speaker 03

  would $450 million get you to say that Steve's the greatest guy who ever lived? It might make me say that, you know?

• 44:06Danny Jones?

  Tennant, that was the movie. Sorry to interrupt. Uh, yeah, this was such a good scene. Play with no audio so we don't get a copyright and make it small.

• 44:19Danny Jones?

  Yeah, this was, uh, was this a Christopher Nolan movie?

• 44:22Speaker 03

  I don't remember.

• 44:23Danny Jones?

  It was, right?

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 44:28Danny Jones?

  Yeah, fast forward to like halfway through where they're in that where they're in that vault. Yeah, there it is.

• 44:36Danny Jones?

  Oh, so they can like suck all the oxygen out of it?

• 44:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, they suck the oxygen out and they pump it with.

• 44:42Danny Jones?

  So like, oh, wow. Look at that, dude.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. So here they are stealing works kind of in the nick of time while all this stuff.

• 44:52Danny Jones?

  Is that so? Are the real ones? Can they suck the oxygen out of? Is that real? I wonder like if someone's trying to rob it or whatever, they can just like lock the doors and like make you blackout.

• 45:03Speaker 03

  I'm pretty sure, yeah.

• 45:08Danny Jones?

  Yeah, this was wild. And this was a wild scene.

• 45:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. So the

• 45:15Speaker 03

  the Leonardo, I mean, when there's that much money at stake, there's a lot of pressure that can be brought to bear, right? So what I thought was really interesting about that film was that all of these efforts, once MBS had bought the painting,

• 45:32Speaker 03

  there was a lot of pressure put by the Saudi government on the French government to make that thing be real. So if you remember, there was this whole thing about like, you know, they're talking about as the male Mona Lisa. The most famous painting in the world is the Mona Lisa.

• 45:48Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  Well, this thing, we're now going to make it be the male Mona Lisa. So they were trying to get the Louvre to show the piece next to the Mona Lisa, right? And legitimize it. And

• 46:01Danny Jones?

  Who was trying to do this?

• 46:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, because now he owns it. So he's like, all right, well, now I'm going to make this really valuable.

• 46:09Danny Jones?

  Just having that documented being there would be extremely valuable.

• 46:13Speaker 03

  Yes. Because that's and that's what happens with a lot of pieces like sometimes someone, if someone has a questionable painting, they might lend it to a museum, you know, under really favorable terms. Why? Because they wanted to have that stamp. This was in the, you know, this was in MoMA.

• 46:35Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  So now you've just added value. But anyway, so he's trying to add this value. And what they did was they came to the Louvre and the Louvre said, no, I think they printed, they had a book printed up and then they pulled it. And they were going to put it in there and then they pulled it because they had doubts. So MBS says to the French government, hey, listen, we would consider it.

• 46:57Speaker 03

  A great favor if maybe suggested to the Louvre that this thing be shown next to the Mona Lisa, right? And they said, and by the way, you know, we are building this huge city in the desert. And why wouldn't a French company get that contract? Right? You know, let's, let's see if we can't do something here. That's kind of what the, what the film talks about.

• 47:23Danny Jones?

  And that's, I mean, that's the way the whole world works, man.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. And that's what you, you know, you think that art is kind of like some, some blue blood, um, kind of specialty pursuit for people with really high sensibilities. And it is, and it is, and they're very genuine and passionate people in art, but there's a whole other part of it. The market is a different animal altogether. I mean, that's really people, a lot of people who don't know much or care much about art for art's sake, um, you know, use it as a useful, as a useful, um, financial instrument.

• 48:00Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  You know?

• 48:02Danny Jones?

  Right. Yeah. Would, would art, would, would this modern art be what it is culturally? If it wasn't for the billionaires, the stunt type fellows, or the MBSs, or the Pope, or the Popes for that matter, like with the Sistine Chapel, you know?

• 48:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it's a good question. Look, art has all, always has to have patrons. I mean, the great art of the past had patrons.

• 48:25Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  You know, you had Cardinal of the Vatican, just every, every church in Italy has 12 master paintings, you know, somebody paid for those. Um, you know, uh, there were great patrons at the turn of the century, you know, industrialist tycoons and stuff were building museums, you know, Carnegie and all that kind of stuff. They're building museums. So there's always patrons, but I think it's kind of reached a different level now. And a lot of that is because they're just, there really aren't that many, um, Ways to transact that are not very traceable or that are really subjective.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Right? I mean, it's, it's kind of hard to, it's kind of hard. You can't carry around fifty million dollars in gold. Can't. It's a huge amount.

• 49:19Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 49:19Speaker 03

  You can roll up a little painting, carry it around across borders, you know, you're fleeing a country or whatever. Hey, you got this thing. So there's that kind of utility. But also, you know, with like know your client regulations and money laundering regulations and stuff like that. It's just a lot harder to do funky transactions. You know, with art, it's so subjective that it's really easy to do. You know, you can make, you can make fifty million become eighty million. You can make twenty million become fifty million with the stroke of a pen. You know, and it's all subjective. I mean, they're really, people talk about comparables and stuff. But I mean, like I said,

• 50:01Speaker 03

  you know, who's really gonna, if, if somebody pays for it, then that's what it's worth.

• 50:05Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  You know?

• 50:07Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  So you don't know.

• 50:10Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 50:10Speaker 03

  That's one, that's one of the reasons why it's, why it's used so much now. And, you know, there's so like, I don't know, how many people?

• 50:23Speaker 03

  I mean, how many people really experience or value art in their daily lives, like modern art in their daily lives? Not that much for it to have those kind of values. So a lot of it is about kind of like manufacturing demand. You know, some, some guy gets plucked out of obscurity. And, you know, a gallery represents him, puts all their money behind it and stuff. So you have, you really do have like a lot of kind of manufactured value, which then the bottom drops out a lot of times. I was just reading, I can't remember who the artist was, but somebody who, you know, five, six years ago, the paintings are worth eight, ten million dollars. Why? Because, I don't know, freeze. Said it was at the time.

• 51:08Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 03

  Now, you know, it's a couple, you know, 50 grand or something like that. So that that happens a lot more.

• 51:14Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 51:14Speaker 03

  Seems to me.

• 51:15Danny Jones?

  And then like how rare it is too, right? Like there's only like if there's one of one of these things of this famous artist that existed in, you know, medieval times, that that obviously for people, obviously of a certain financial class are, is going to be super valuable. It's kind of like diamonds, right? It's kind of like a weird thing or gold, like diamonds and gold. It's a weird thing that humans are obsessed with and the value can go up and down and you can trade on it. And it's like, you know, and, and things like this are, uh, they're just like naturally, they naturally attract scam artists and con artists. And it's the same thing that you've seen with the rise of crypto and NFTs and these NFTs especially.

• 51:59Danny Jones?

  You've seen so many people get caught up in these crazy NFT scams where they like pump up the value when they beginning, give them all out, sell them all out to their people. And then they like pull all the money out and the thing just goes nowhere. And then none of these people even get in trouble.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's totally true. I mean, one thing with art and forgers that I find really interesting is that, um, you know, unlike some other scams where it's just like crypto or whatever, you know, you steal wallets or you have some fake token that isn't worth anything, but you can convince people that it's worth something for a while. The art forger is kind of seen as almost like a, kind of like a Robin Hood figure or kind of likes an anti-authority figure, right? Because you have this whole world that's created to tell you as a non-expert.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  The whole world is built up to look like this is really expensive. This is really elite. This is really classy. You don't get it. The experts get it. Here's why it's worth all this money, but you don't get it, right? And the art forger sort of says, well, that's bullshit. And I can prove that it's bullshit because I'll make a piece that's fake. And you'll talk about how great it is and how, you know, this could only be the great so and so because of this and that. And then you go, well, no, I made it. So, you know, what you're saying is bullshit and you don't know what you're talking about. So it's really kind of exposing the emperor's clothes.

• 53:36Speaker 03

  And I think people really like that and respond to that, you know? And that's why I think people like, it's a little bit of a folk hero. Why there's so many films about art forgers or why it's always an interesting story for people when art forgery happens.

• 53:51Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 53:51Speaker 03

  Cause it punctures this whole world of bullshit.

• 53:53Danny Jones?

  And it's, it's interesting. I like it be better than the crypto stuff because the crypto stuff, it's, you have just normal, everyday folks who are getting scammed.

• 54:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:02Danny Jones?

  With the art forgers, it's not usually the case, right? Like you're dealing with billionaires and like big institutions and like.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, ultimately lots of, lots of people get hurt, but, um, you know, I, but really, um, I, I mean, yeah, you're absolutely right.

• 54:21Danny Jones?

  With people who are living a paycheck to paycheck and like.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  You're absolutely right. I mean, if some rich, if some rich guy pays $10 million for a piece, it turns out to be fake. I mean, is, is he gonna be out on the street? I doubt it.

• 54:32Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 54:33Speaker 03

  So, so you're kind of okay with it. Um, but yeah, and I mean, and that's like, it's interesting because Tony always says that when he got busted, um, that, uh, I think it was, um, CNN or somebody did a documentary. And he was in some kind of bar that he hung out with, you know, hung out in and he had, they happened to have the VHS and he was sitting there and, um, the bartender said, hey, let's see your VHS. And he's like, nah, nobody's gonna be interested in this. Somebody's gonna be interested in this, you know? But they put it on, he said, you know, and this was kind of like a blue collar, you know, beer and sawdust kind of bar.

• 55:15Speaker 03

  And he said that it was just like, you could hear a pin drop and everybody kind of loved it, you know, because it is really sort of getting back at these, you know, rich people and experts and all that kind of stuff.

• 55:26Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:26Speaker 03

  So.

• 55:27Danny Jones?

  Yeah, the snobs.

• 55:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:31Danny Jones?

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• 56:14Danny Jones?

  It looks sharp, it feels soft, and it moves with your body. And now they've got lines for women and kids, too. Same comfort, same quality for everyone. So this holiday season, skip the overpriced designer stuff. Give comfort, give confidence, give True Classic. Find them at Amazon, Target, Costco, or for the best deals, go to trueclassic.com/danny. That's T R U E C L A S S I C dot com slash Danny. It's linked down below. Now, back to the show. What so, um, whatever happened to Tony? Did he, did he get, um, charged with anything and go to prison?

• 56:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. You mean, well, he got busted in 1989.

• 56:56Danny Jones?

  Oh, wow.

• 56:56Speaker 03

  In 1989, he got busted. And he, um, because somebody wore a wire on him. One of the, one of the guys. So the interesting thing about Tony is that Tony never really fooled anybody with his paintings. Never fooled anybody. The dealers in Beverly Hills Galleries and everywhere else would come to him and say, hey, Tony, make me, I need a Picasso. I need some Dali, I need some Miro. And they knew they could get them from him. So they'd come to him and then they were the ones selling him, selling, selling the paintings, right? So one of those guys got busted and wore a wire.

• 57:35Danny Jones?

  Ratted on him.

• 57:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, ratted on him. And Tony, who's this Italian-American guy from kind of a mob town in upstate New York, said, you know, it is ingrained in the DNA of every Italian kid from Fulton, New York that you never rat. The only time you rat is never. That's what he said. Um, but uh, so this guy wore wire. He ended up pleading and actually got off pretty easily. He, he did a year.

• 58:03Danny Jones?

  That's kind of an amazing picture.

• 58:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:08Danny Jones?

  So Tony only did a year?

• 58:09Speaker 03

  He only did a year, uh, because he had gone, he had been through like five years of trial. So I think the judge kinda had, had mercy on him. And you know, it was, it was debatable who was, um, really at fault on a lot of these things. So I think they went a little, a little easy on him.

• 58:30Danny Jones?

  You know, it's kinda cool. You know, his story is kinda cool and uh,

• 58:36Danny Jones?

  I can imagine his paintings, a Tony Tetro Picasso could be worth a lot of money now, you know?

• 58:42Speaker 03

  I mean, that's what he does now. So when he got out of jail, he went, he went clean. Cause he was like, this time I got off fairly easy.

• 58:48Danny Jones?

  He went legit?

• 58:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. I don't wanna, I don't wanna be here again. So he, you know, he would paint. That's why he ended up painting these paintings for stunt. So, you know, before that he had another very wealthy client, uh, tech billionaire in Texas, who, um, you know, had a bunch of mansions and stuff and he, I think painted 99 paintings for him.

• 59:08Danny Jones?

  Jesus.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  So, you know, there was a very good living to be made making plausible forgeries, emulations, um, for people who wanted to have art and they're, you know, some people wanna have like, maybe they have a piece, maybe it's in the Freeport, maybe they wanna put it on their wall.

• 59:27Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 59:27Speaker 03

  You know, but they don't wanna pull the thing out of insurance. They don't wanna insure it. They don't wanna worry about it.

• 59:31Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 59:32Speaker 03

  So they get a Tony Tetro.

• 59:33Danny Jones?

  And whatever happened to stunt?

• 59:36Speaker 03

  Stunt, stunt, um, was on trial. I mean, this was a big problem for our documentary. So our documentary is still not released.

• 59:45Danny Jones?

  I know.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  Because.

• 59:47Danny Jones?

  Cause of him?

• 59:48Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 59:49Danny Jones?

  Oh my god.

• 59:50Speaker 03

  Because the reason it's not released is because, um, when, after we released the, the, the story to the press, COVID hit. So we couldn't film for a year. That's when I wrote the book, uh, Con Artist, um, about Tony.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  Um, and when we kind of came back online, Stunt was then on trial for money laundering, the biggest money laundering trial in British history. Yeah, it was him and four co-defendants. So while he was on trial, we could not release the film. There are very, very, very stringent laws in the UK about contempt of court. So while someone's on trial, we could not.

• 1:00:31Danny Jones?

  Even if it's in America?

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, technically, we probably could have shown it in America.

• 1:00:36Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 1:00:36Speaker 03

  Possibly, but the studio chose not to.

• 1:00:38Danny Jones?

  Ah, okay. Oh, you're working with the studio.

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  Right. So this trial took forever. Finally, the trial came back. Guilty or innocent, didn't matter to us, right? Because we, if the trial would be over, we could show the fraud.

• 1:00:53Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:00:53Speaker 03

  What happened? The jury came back, hung, and the Crown Prosecution Service said, we're going to retry him, and we're going to retry him in two years. So two and a half years later, which was just, you know, a few months ago, the trial finally ended.

• 1:01:12Danny Jones?

  And where's he at?

• 1:01:13Speaker 03

  Stunt was acquitted. All of his co-conspir, all of his associates were found guilty.

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  The banks who were involved were all fined, had huge hefty fines, and he walked.

• 1:01:30Danny Jones?

  No fucking way.

• 1:01:33Speaker 03

  Correct. And the attempted fraud, the alleged attempted fraud, uh, with the art, was never prosecuted because the, um, the lenders never consummated the loan. And so they just said, ah, forget it. We'll let it go. So Stunt's walking around, free as a bird.

• 1:01:56Danny Jones?

  Probably not rolling as hard as he used to be.

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  Nope. Nope.

• 1:02:00Danny Jones?

  Is this him on the right?

• 1:02:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Danny Jones?

  He looks kind of young there.

• 1:02:03Speaker 03

  That, that was a younger.

• 1:02:04Danny Jones?

  That was an older photo.

• 1:02:05Speaker 03

  And the one on the left is as he looks now.

• 1:02:07Danny Jones?

  The one on the left looks like he's had a little bit too much plastic surgery.

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think there were some problems with the septum.

• 1:02:13Danny Jones?

  The deviated septum? He had to get a new nose?

• 1:02:18Danny Jones?

  Or find a better way to get the coke in his body. Jesus.

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  And I say that because he would go, you know, he would go on his social media and say, yeah, I mean, the social media was unbelievable.

• 1:02:31Danny Jones?

  I can imagine.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  It's unbelievable. He's, you know, you'll see it in the film, but you know, he gets on there and he goes like, do I love cocaine? Yeah, I love it. Do I shag prostitutes? Yeah. Do I sleep with royalty? Yes, I do. You know, all this kind of stuff. And, you know, he's like sitting there in one shot. He's sitting there and he's smoking a, you know, a foil thing off of a bottle. And he's going like, I'm just sitting here kicking it, chilling, smoke some crack and listening to some NWA gangster rap, as you do.

• 1:03:03Danny Jones?

  As one does.

• 1:03:03Speaker 03

  Yes, one does.

• 1:03:04Danny Jones?

  As a billionaire does.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, I mean, that's kind of his persona and.

• 1:03:09Danny Jones?

  As a guy who didn't earn any of the money that he has.

• 1:03:13Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:03:13Danny Jones?

  He, he got it all out of the divorce from his super rich wife.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, yes and no. I mean, his, his father, it's interesting because his father was a self-made man from Brixton, which is, you know, a middle class, working class part of London, you know, made it big, made his fortune, sent James to a fancy school, which he, it's funny. I mean, he's actually a pretty funny guy. He said, the students there were like cream, rich and thick, thick meaning dumb. But, you know, so he kind of, that's the milieu that he ended up in. And then when he married, you know, so he was wealthy, but when he married Petra, it was like a completely, you know, completely different

• 1:04:00Speaker 03

  stratosphere. Yeah. So they had like a, I don't know, $15 million wedding at this castle in, in Italy and, you know, the Black Eyed Peas helicoptered in to play and.

• 1:04:11Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  Stuff like that. And then they bought this house. They had all this stuff in London. He used to drive around London in a cavalcade of cars. So, you know, he'd go to Sotheby's or whatever. He'd be in this carbon fiber Lamborghini. He'd have rolls on both sides and then all that surrounded by Land Rovers. And that's how he'd pull up at Sotheby's or where to go get a pack of cigarettes or whatever. So, so that's what he used to do. And now that those days, those days are over, I think.

• 1:04:42Danny Jones?

  Wow, there's something, there's a, there's a connection between just like an absurd amount of wealth and degeneracy with people where like, I don't think it's, I don't think it's good for people to, uh, to have that much, you know, like there, there's like a, there's a sweet spot, right? And when you get a little bit too far, depending on your psychology, I mean, I'm sure a lot of people can handle it, right? But a majority of people cannot handle that kind of wealth.

• 1:05:11Speaker 03

  I mean, I think it'd be hard. You've, you've, you know, done your own stuff. I mean, you've achieved things. I've achieved stuff, you know, you gotta, you know, there's some value to be said for, you gotta wake up, you gotta work hard, you gotta be there. This may or may not work. You gotta be able to take the risk, you know, you gotta work really hard.

• 1:05:29Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 03

  I mean, that builds character.

• 1:05:31Danny Jones?

  Some of the best people I know, most interesting, fun people I know, spent most of their lives poor.

• 1:05:35Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:05:35Danny Jones?

  You know?

• 1:05:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, you gotta, you gotta come up, you know?

• 1:05:38Danny Jones?

  But I can, you know, the funny, the interesting thing is, I can equal, I could say the most, uh, fucked up degenerates I've met are also poor, you know, like, but also rich, you know, like, I know some very degenerate rich people. So the, the spectrum is broad. You can't just, you can't just paint a broad brush over that.

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  But, um, yeah, I mean, this, this guy is a really, um, he's a really interesting character because I think, like, you know, I, I think that he genuinely wanted to, he, he mentions kind of like being cast in this new world, you know, and he was around Petra's friends who were all, um, wealthy, very wealthy people and people who knew like a lot about art and knew about all these things. And I think he was kind of thrust into that and felt like, oh, well, I wanna, I want to prove myself or I want to show that I know about something. And I think his initial and one of his earliest friends and dealers, art dealers, said that, you know, he, in the beginning, it seemed like he had a genuine kind of like

• 1:06:43Speaker 03

  passion for art, you know?

• 1:06:46Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  But then sort of saw the various uses or the various ways that you could, you know, you could do.

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  Things with art that were less than, you know,

• 1:06:59Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  On the up and up. And, you know, even some, somebody like Tony, like, so when Tony started out, he, he loves, he's very passionate about, um, about art and very passionate in a kind of like artisans way. Like, he wants to know, how did he do this? Or look at how he did that? How did, how did he mix that color and do it in such a light texture and all those kinds of things? And, you know, he went into the world, he got his girlfriend pregnant at 16 and became a father.

• 1:07:28Danny Jones?

  Tony?

• 1:07:29Speaker 03

  Yes. So he's like, okay, I gotta go make a living. He was selling furniture and he was being a milkman and all this shit. And he's like, I can't do this for the rest of my life. So on the weekends, he would do these paintings, you know, he'd go to an art fair or whatever, and people would go like, I'll give you 20 bucks for this Monet or whatever they'd worked on for three months.

• 1:07:49Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Speaker 03

  And, um, you know, so then he read this book. One day he's at the supermarket. And he's just sitting there bored, you know? And he looks over and he sees this book. It's real colorful and it has a Modigliani on it. He picks it up and it's like, it's called Fake. It was about this famous art forger called El Mir de Hori. And he opens it up and he's just like entranced. And he goes home and he just like basically reads it through the night. And it's about this art forger and how he did it. And he just goes, I could do this. I'm gonna do this. So he just does it, you know, and, um, it's really interesting because he brings the painting, he brings a drawing, it was a Modigliani drawing. And he brings it to this guy.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  And, uh, he goes, yeah, you know, he's like 20, 22 years old. And he brings it to this guy and he says, um, my grandfather is getting rid of all his stuff, so it doesn't end up in probate, you know, he's about to die. And I think this thing is worth some money. What do you think? And the guy goes, uh, You know, he has this like European accent and he's like, well, you know, perhaps it's worth, you know, I don't know, maybe I can give you one thousand six hundred dollars. You know, and he's like, oh, okay. And inside he's like, that's more money than he's ever had. You know, it's like five times his rent. He's like, okay. So he takes it and he's out of there. And he said he was like,

• 1:09:18Speaker 03

  he was like floating on clouds, you know, and he's like, it's gonna work. Like this is my whole. He gets home, the phone's ringing. And this guy found out that it was fake from somebody else, long story, but finds out it's fake. And now he's like, you motherfucker, you think you're gonna sell me a fagazi? You're gonna work for me now. And he's like, the whole European thing was, the whole European thing was fake. And he's just this fake guy, you know, and he's like, all right, you're gonna have to work for me now. And so he makes him, he makes him make fakes for him for the next couple of years. And that's how Tony learned to become an art forger was through his apprenticeship with this guy. Who, you know, was just selling these things out at his auction house, you know?

• 1:10:01Speaker 03

  And he made him be a shill at his auction. So you know, yeah, yeah, they'd be having an auction or something. Okay, you raise your paddle and you bid, bid everything up.

• 1:10:09Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:10Speaker 03

  He'd go there. But that's how he learned to do this, you know?

• 1:10:13Danny Jones?

  That's so wild.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  So you see that, you know, there are, there are legitimate people in the art world, lots of them. And truly passionate, knowledgeable people, but there are also a lot of people who, you know, it's pretty easy to cut some corners.

• 1:10:31Danny Jones?

  Is there a specific time period when the majority of these super valuable pieces of art were created? Because I don't have like a, I don't have a, a good understanding of like when Picasso, Da Vinci.

• 1:10:50Danny Jones?

  And some of these others were like, like, when, like, um, what was the one that you were saying was the most, most valuable?

• 1:10:56Speaker 03

  Like Caravaggio?

• 1:10:57Danny Jones?

  Caravaggio, and then was Rembrandt one of them you were saying, you were saying earlier?

• 1:11:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:01Danny Jones?

  Was that, was this all like Enlightenment mid, middle?

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  Sixteen hundreds, seventeen hundreds.

• 1:11:06Danny Jones?

  Sixteen, seventeen hundreds, and then I think Da Vinci was like fourteen, fifteen.

• 1:11:09Speaker 03

  Fourteen, fifteen, yeah. So you had like Renaissance. Um, but there's, so there's a whole, there's a whole spectrum. There are important and valuable antiquities, you know, Greek and Roman antiquities and stuff like that.

• 1:11:19Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Speaker 03

  Then you have really, um.

• 1:11:22Danny Jones?

  Like, how far back did these paintings go? Like, how far back do they survive?

• 1:11:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I mean, you, you have, you have stuff, valuable objects from, you know, uh, B.C. era. Um, but in, in terms of like real, like, oil on canvas, oil on wood, European painting.

• 1:11:43Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:43Speaker 03

  You know, the, the, really the thirteen hundreds, fourteen hundreds, the Renaissance is the peak. So that's when you have, you know, Michelangelo and Da Vinci and, you know, um, Pa- Pantormo, Parmigianino, all these people.

• 1:11:57Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Speaker 03

  Right? And then you have Baroque, Caravaggio, you know, you have like the Dutch painters, Rembrandt, and all these people. Then you get into, you know, um, uh, uh, Impressionist paintings, which are in the late eighteen hundreds. Then you get into modern, modern painting in the nineteen hundreds. Somebody like Picasso, early periods, you know, tens and twenties, and then, you know, all the way into the seventies. I don't remember exactly when he passed away, but some, something like, like that. But so there's a whole spectrum of, of valuable painting, you know?

• 1:12:31Danny Jones?

  We had a guy in here who was a forensic pathologist a couple of months ago, and he was, um,

• 1:12:41Danny Jones?

  Do you remember the painting Steve? He was, basically he tracked a painting, a painting that was done, I don't, I don't remember the date, but it was done with the remains of one of the French king's hearts. Somebody bought the heart of one of the French kings. And they took the heart and they ground a part of it up into paint and they used the shades of red in this painting to paint with his heart. So this guy did a forensic analysis of the painting to make sure it was real and put it under the microscope, did all the stuff that forensic pathologists do. And he could find the, the muscle fibers of this

• 1:13:21Danny Jones?

  king's heart in the red pigments of this painting. It was insane. Okay, it was Louis, what? Whatever that is, XIV, Louis the fifteenth heart to make paint. Scroll down to the first paragraph so you can, we can just like explain to people. Yeah, the 17th century French monarch was called the Sun King, but his heart ended up in a shadowy setting. According to the most, according to the most celebrated forensic scientist in France, fragments of Louis the fifteenth's heart was ground up by a second rate artist to make the color called mummy brown for the use in painting now hidden in the basement of a small museum in the Paris region.

• 1:13:59Speaker 04

  I love that they call him a second rate artist.

• 1:14:01Danny Jones?

  Crazy, man.

• 1:14:03Speaker 03

  I mean, it's really interesting because especially with, with forgery. So, you know, you can, you can do forgeries of any of those periods, right? It's harder to do with old paintings just because you have old materials, right? So you have to get those original materials.

• 1:14:22Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:14:23Speaker 03

  Um, forgery as Tony used to do it is no longer really possible. It's pretty much impossible because there's so much technology that you can bring to bear now.

• 1:14:34Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Speaker 03

  Okay, so when.

• 1:14:40Speaker 03

  In the past, when they wanted to make a pigment for blue, they would take lapis lazuli, which is a stone, and they would grind it up into fine powder and they would emulsify it in oil, linseed oil, lilac oil, whatever oils, and that's what your paint is. Basically, powders in oil. Okay, that's what an oil painting is. Well, now they can tell, did that, in the past, that lapis lazuli came from one mine in Afghanistan, and it would get traded all the way over to Europe. And so therefore, it was extremely expensive, it wasn't used that much. But it came from this one mine, you could identify it. Well, now you have a database of all these materials. So you can look at a painting, let's say

• 1:15:23Speaker 03

  the painting says, oh, it's a 1420 painting with this blue in it. Well, you can look at the blue and you go, well, you know what, that lapis lazuli comes from a mine that's in Peru. So there's no way that it could have been real, right? It's lapis lazuli, it's good, but it can't be real because it's from a mine that was in Peru before the discovery of the new world by Europe, right? So it couldn't have been, that material could not have been in that painting. So there's all of this stuff that you can do with technology now that makes that kind of art forgery almost impossible. Like, I'm working, and I'll tell

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  you about this Pollock thing that I'm working on now, which ties into this CIA, the CIA operation. But, you know, you can look at a piece of wood and you can tell exactly what date that was.

• 1:16:21Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:16:22Speaker 03

  You can tell, did that piece of wood come from a forest in Poland, or did it come from a forest, as it did a lot, like in the Renaissance and stuff? Did it come from a forest in Washington State?

• 1:16:35Speaker 03

  Even if it's an ancient piece of wood, there's no way that that could have made it into a painting like that. So you can just tell a lot more now that makes this kind of stuff impossible. And then there's, you know, database and just the existence of interconnecting this of the internet, you can just have access to databases and stuff that weren't possible before. Tony says that in the past, he was able to just kind of say like, well, where'd you get this painting? Oh, it's, uh, it's from an Italian family who wishes not to be named. And they go, oh, well, there's a dead end. So I guess we'll never know. And you get away with it.

• 1:17:11Danny Jones?

  Yeah, yeah, totally. You know, this whole, there's a whole, uh, parallel world that exists to this in ancient texts. I had this Dead Sea Scrolls expert on here and, uh, and he was explaining a very similar situation where this guy was buying these Dead Sea Scrolls and, uh, and he lit, this guy had to like do some crazy, uh, Mission Impossible where he had to go pick them up from this person and then like, and take them across, um, France or something, wherever they were to this, uh, uh, this place where they were going to analyze them and all this stuff. And they ended up, this guy paid millions of dollars for these fragments and they found out that they were fake and they have like specific ways of figuring. I mean, these weren't like any kind of like, they weren't

• 1:17:53Danny Jones?

  using AI or anything like that. They were like very rudimentary ways of detecting it under a microscope, like seeing like if this, uh, this paper or this animal skin has like indent indentations or like tears in the actual fiber itself and the ink goes over that perfectly, you know that it was written on it after the degradation of it versus like, you know, normally you would look at the text and you would see that like the actual ink had been impacted by that degradation of the actual paper or the animal skin. So like, there's all these interesting ways of detecting it. And another thing that throws a whole nother monkey wrench into the ancient text stuff is you have countries and cultures

• 1:18:37Danny Jones?

  that are incentivized to make sure these are real because it props up their whole religious belief. So like, and then you, and that goes along with the billionaires too, who are like very devout in their religious faith or whatever it is. They want that this needs to be real and from this time period, or else that kind of like kicks a leg out of my whole fundamental, uh, belief in God or whatever their belief is.

• 1:18:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, it's true. And I mean, that, that's that kind of, um, I mean, what would you call, I guess, like institutional

• 1:19:08Speaker 03

  um, support for something, you know, exists in the art world too. You know, there's, if you, if you put um, paintings under uh, black light, you can see the new paint. It kind of glows, right? So, people say like, if you went through, if you went through a museum with a black light, I mean, the whole thing would just start glowing, you know? Cause there's been so much restoration, all that kind of stuff. And at a certain point, you kind of go like, look, this thing's been in the collection for a couple hundred years. You know, it's an important painting. There's no reason to not believe it or whatever. So you eh, eh.

• 1:19:51Danny Jones?

  I mean, like.

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  Leave it alone. Leave it alone.

• 1:19:53Danny Jones?

  I've been to the Louvre. If I went, when I looked at the Mona Lisa, I would have no clue if I was looking at the real one or the print of it, you know? And I bet you 99.9% of people wouldn't either.

• 1:20:04Speaker 03

  Well, so that's, I mean, that's a really interesting topic too, because you go like, you know, what is the value of art? And there's all this philosophy at the turn of the century, when, when people started being able to take really good photographs, right? Cause before, paintings were the only means by which you could make a real likeness of someone. I want to remember this person. I want to commemorate this person. I want to laud them, right? I want a big monumental painting of their likeness. We had to have a painting. You couldn't do a poster. You weren't going to take a photo, right? So the, so one of the values of art was how realistically could you reproduce what someone looked like?

• 1:20:49Speaker 03

  For hundreds of years, you know, until the Impressionists and stuff, that's what mattered. Now you get a photograph and you go, whatever, I can just take a picture of this person. I don't need your, your painting. So you go, what's the value of this work of art? And there was this famous thing called the uh, art in the age of mechanical reproduction. And the idea was that, okay, well, if there's no Like utility, I'm not using this just to show me what a person looked like. What's the value of art? And one of the things that they say is that it's like a relic. It becomes like a relic, like a piece of the cross or the robe of a saint. Yeah, exactly. Or Michael Jordan sneaker, right? That's a relic. And so is that what the art is worth?

• 1:21:34Speaker 03

  And if it's worth that, is it, you know, how does that change everything? And, and also, you know, how does that incentivize people to really believe that it's real?

• 1:21:44Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:21:45Speaker 03

  You know, like you get an autograph, I mean, I don't, I, I'm a soccer guy. And I have some autographs from guys, you know, that like gave me their autograph, but.

• 1:21:56Danny Jones?

  Usually take a picture of them while they're signing it.

• 1:21:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. Is it any different than just anything? I mean, you know, I don't know, what is it? Is they touched it? I mean, what's the value? You gotta ask yourself that.

• 1:22:06Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's hard to rationalize it, right? But it's a, it's a weird thing that's wired into us.

• 1:22:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:14Danny Jones?

  You know, it's like wired into our DNA that these types of like rarities or, or the older something gets, the more valuable it is, or like the more rare or gold. Like, why is gold more valuable than anything else? Like, it's so weird.

• 1:22:29Speaker 03

  I refuse to buy a diamond ring for my wife. I was just like, and she doesn't care. She's, she's, she makes jewelry and stuff and she didn't care either. But it's like, yeah, I mean.

• 1:22:39Danny Jones?

  It's such a racket.

• 1:22:40Speaker 03

  Yes, it is. It was manufactured and you know, there's a lot of history about this, how it's manufactured. Demand, you know, that didn't exist until, I mean, somewhat existed, but not like, like today. And I think similar things happened with art, you know, as well, and the art market.

• 1:22:57Danny Jones?

  I have this friend who collects these ancient Egyptian vases. I don't know if you've ever seen these or heard of these. These were found underneath a lot, most of them were found underneath the step pyramid in Egypt. This is a 3D print remake, but um, they found these and they're made of granite. And they're like, wow, like that's pretty precise, like they, and they were dated to 4,000 B.C. So 5,000 years ago.

• 1:23:25Danny Jones?

  And so pre dynastic. Granite bases and they were like, you know, according to all of the Egyptologists and all of the archaeologists and historians, those people in that time, they were using pounding stones and shit, right? So like, that's one of the hardest stones on earth. It looks pretty symmetrical to the naked eye. Let's take it to like a, one of these aerospace places and get a light scanner on it and see how accurate it really is. They did that. They got, they did CT scans on it, you name it, the whole bit. And they found out that they were perfectly symmetrical from top to bottom within the deviation of less than a human hair.

• 1:24:08Danny Jones?

  Basically, if you wanted to recreate that out of granite today, you would need to do that on a computer or a CNC machine. Uh, it would have to be 3D printed on CAD, right? So like, it's, there's this huge rift now in like, in historians and Egyptologists of people like claiming like, uh, they, they're trying to deny this, that they're that perfect. And let, they, they put all those files out on the, like, on the internet for the public to look at and to scrutinize and no one's debunked it. But like, there's a, a certain sect of archaeologists and Egyptologists, older ones, who were like, just like purposely trying to pretend it doesn't exist because it's sort of like destroys

• 1:24:50Danny Jones?

  the whole timeline of humanity and especially in Egypt, the whole timeline of Egypt.

• 1:24:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's, I think that there's a, um, there's a resistance in any field, um, when expertise is, is questioned. I, look, I am a, I am a, a, uh, big stickler for, uh, evidence that can be repeatable. And, you know, documentary evidence and all that kind of stuff. That said, that said, there is always an orthodoxy that kind of, um, is resistant. I mean, I think it's incumbent upon everybody, journalists and everybody alike to, you have to do the work and you have to prove stuff and not just kind of like, oh, you know,

• 1:25:38Speaker 03

  um, small or what ifs or small inferences. I mean, it doesn't, you like, you gotta prove it. You gotta prove it. But if you do prove it, there is still a lot of, um, a lot of resistance. So I'm doing this work now, as mentioned, that Pollock piece, um,

• 1:25:57Speaker 03

  I don't know if you want to get into it or

• 1:25:59Danny Jones?

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 1:25:59Speaker 03

  Okay. All right. So, um, I, uh, you think we take a break?

• 1:26:06Danny Jones?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:06Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:26:07Danny Jones?

  Think we'll take it, we'll be right back. All right, so let's jump back into the show. We're back. Um, we were going to talk about Pollock and the CIA.

• 1:26:15Speaker 03

  Sure. So you, you know, a little bit about this topic.

• 1:26:18Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:18Speaker 03

  It sounds like, but, um, some of it is, I think, uh, overblown. And some of it, that some people make a little too much out of it. That's my personal opinion. But, um, so I started looking at this because, because of my book, Con Artist, and because of the James Stunt investigation, uh, I have been contacted by some collectors who will say, look, I'm thinking about buying this piece or, you know, I've been introduced to this piece. What do you think? You know, use your investigative chops or whatever and see, see what you can find out about this thing. Does it seem real or does it seem, uh, you know, potentially fake?

• 1:27:02Speaker 03

  So a person brought to me a Pollock, purported Pollock, not in the catalog. There are a lot of fake Pollocks out there. There are a lot of really bad fakes. There are some pretty good ones. But so he brought me this Pollock that had been in Switzerland. And it came out of Switzerland. It had a provenance behind it that it showed up in Switzerland in the early 50s, mid 50s. It had been in some prominent families in Switzerland. And it had some marks on it from the US consulate and a couple of people. So I started looking at this and, you know, what, what could this thing be?

• 1:27:45Speaker 03

  And, you know, it turns out that, um, in the post-war period,

• 1:27:52Speaker 03

  Um, the, you know, there was a cold war on and it was really for the hearts and minds of people.

• 1:28:01Danny Jones?

  Propaganda war.

• 1:28:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. It was a propaganda war and, and some of the main propaganda war was being fought for the hearts and minds of intellectuals. So, you know, the Soviet Union was saying like, look what Western democracies wrought. You know, so what we need is a world where the artist is

• 1:28:27Speaker 03

  working for the greater society and is doing basically like a political act, which is for the people. And so what Americans wanted to show was like, no, really, our method is the best whereby we let people be very free.

• 1:28:45Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:28:46Speaker 03

  And you just can do whatever you want. You can be a leftist. You can be on the right. You can do whatever, but our society says it's, we get better, richer, smarter, happier when we give people freedom. And so the CIA wanted to counter a kind of like, you know, Soviet realism with an art form that would appeal to these people. And they looked at abstract impressionism, expressionism, like, you know, what Jackson Pollock was doing. And they're like, well, here's this artist. He's a leftist. He's kind of a cowboy kind of guy, you know, he's from Wyoming. He's a big drinker, masculine guy.

• 1:29:28Speaker 03

  And he does these paintings that are so free, they don't even have to mean anything. They're, they don't represent anything. They're not impressionist. This or not, here's an impressionistic view of a landscape. They're just like pure expression.

• 1:29:40Danny Jones?

  Can you find a photo of Jackson Pollock, Steve? I've never actually looked at a photo of him.

• 1:29:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. He's, he's from Wyoming originally and was, you know, kind of like a cowboy kind of guy before he came to New York.

• 1:29:49Danny Jones?

  That's interesting.

• 1:29:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was like a, he drank too much, but I mean, he died because of it.

• 1:29:54Danny Jones?

  Most of the best artists do.

• 1:29:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Um, but you know, he was like, like a, a, a heavy drinking, masculine, tough guy sort of, sort of vibe. And so they thought, okay, well, you know, we need to push these paintings. And their initial steps at kind of pushing modernism were really terrible and hamfisted. And there were all these senators who came out and said like, hey, your taxpayers bought this crap. Your taxpayers bought these crappy paintings and brought them around and stuff. So the CIA said, hey, if we're going to do this, we're going to have to do this kind of on the, on the down low. And what they did was they set up all of these foundations and stuff that were really CIA fronts

• 1:30:40Speaker 03

  to support gallery shows and symposiums and magazines and newspapers and stuff. Like famously, the Paris Review was a CIA front and founded by these things. And what's what I found, so anyway, I started doing a lot of research about this particular Pollock painting. And I went and looked in the archives of MoMA and Crystal Bridges and at the Pollock Foundation out in Long Island and stuff. And, you know, you kind of, I kind of started looking at all of the communications between all of these people. And, I mean, there isn't anything that crazy nefarious in my mind here.

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  But, you know, they just kind of, they just kind of started pushing this as much as they could. But without really kind of telling anybody that it was the government that was behind this stuff. And what was really interesting to me was

• 1:31:42Danny Jones?

  Because these people were fundamentally against the government and the wars and everything that was going on.

• 1:31:47Speaker 03

  Yes. So you could, you could kind of show like somebody like Jackson Pollock, he's a leftist. He's, you know, he's a guy who

• 1:31:53Danny Jones?

  Anti CIA probably.

• 1:31:54Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. And so you could, you could use him. And I don't think he was in on this. And I don't think there was any big, you know, hey, guys, okay, Jackson, we're calling you in for a meeting and this is what we're going to do. It wasn't like that at all.

• 1:32:06Danny Jones?

  He'd be a useful idiot.

• 1:32:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:32:08Danny Jones?

  As I am, as we all are.

• 1:32:11Speaker 03

  But what was kind of interesting was if you look at all of the people who founded the Museum of Modern Art and the foundations that were related to them, almost all of them were wartime intelligence operatives. So, you know, they were intellectuals, they were not out there, you know, trudging with guns through trenches, they were fighting a cultural war during the war and afterwards. And they just kind of kept doing that as they went forward. So, the Museum of Modern Art formed what was called the International Program. And that International Program sort of took money and funneled it into these different

• 1:32:53Speaker 03

  organizations that then put on shows by Pollock. So, what I ended up finding with my painting that I was looking at was, you know, there's a pretty plausible case for this being one of those paintings that ended up going over to Europe and then ended up through Switzerland through the consul. So, they were using governmental agencies like the consuls and stuff to put these things, to put these shows on, to receive the paintings. And, you know, there are like, um, letters where somebody's like, "Hey, I want to know the price of these paintings that were in this show." And they're like, "Well, why don't you just ask the consulate?"

• 1:33:37Speaker 03

  So, it was very much kind of like this governmental, you know, like, "Why does the consulate have the prices of these Jackson Pollock paintings that appeared in this show in Paris?" And it's because they were kind of, you know, using this soft power stuff. So, I don't think it's a big cloak and dagger, you know, spy kind of situation, but I think it's just another one of these kind of soft power governmental things. But what I found, I mean, the thing's kind of interesting is there is a very plausible case for this painting. And I, as a person who likes evidence, goes, "That's great. I can make up a story about anything. But

• 1:34:18Speaker 03

  now, let's go take a look at this, at the actual, what paint is there?" Is this wood from the period? Is this paint real? You know, because the one thing that's cool about Jackson Pollock is that somebody had the brightness, because he painted on the floor, he had just unstretched canvas, just cloth on the floor, and he would drip paint on the floor and use sticks and things to kind of spatter paint and whatever. The studio has all kinds of paint on the floor.

• 1:34:48Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:34:48Speaker 03

  So a few years ago, somebody went, took samples of all that paint and did what's called-

• 1:34:53Danny Jones?

  On the floor?

• 1:34:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:54Danny Jones?

  Oh, his studio is still intact?

• 1:34:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:34:57Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 1:34:57Speaker 03

  Yes. So they went, they took all those paint samples, and they did what's called Ramen spectroscopy. It's an imaging thing that gives you basically signatures of elements. So you can go-

• 1:35:10Danny Jones?

  The chemical makeup or whatever?

• 1:35:11Speaker 03

  Correct. So you can go, okay, well, this paint in this painting that I'm looking at has the exact same paint as the paint that's on the studio floor. And they also did that analysis on a couple of known Pollock paintings. So one of them is called Alchemy 1A. Yeah.

• 1:35:27Danny Jones?

  Whoa. That's wild, dude.

• 1:35:31Speaker 03

  So you can, you can do that. So I have been working with a, a well-known university laboratory that does, you know, kind of Nobel level research, not related at all to art, because I wanted to go to, I wanted to go to a place that did not deal with art. Because, for a lot of reasons.

• 1:35:53Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:35:53Speaker 03

  Uh, one of them being that, you know, it's my impression that you can

• 1:36:00Speaker 03

  in some places buy the result you want. So I didn't want to have any bias or any, you know, kind of previous knowledge or any, you know, these people don't care about this. It's, it's an art thing. It's interesting to them, but it's not what they do, so they can look at it in a dispassionate way. And at every, to mu- much to my surprise, at every step, it kind of keeps going forward. Yes, it matches the paint. Does the blue match? Yeah, the blue matches. Does the red match? Yeah, the red matches. It matches the floor and it matches Alchemy 1A or whatever. And so you keep going forward and then, you know, you do this radiocarbon dating.

• 1:36:34Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:35Speaker 03

  So, and the thing that's interesting about radiocarbon dating is that because there was a lot of nuclear testing- Starting in the late 50s and into the 60s, um, there's a very specific signature from that blast of stuff that was, you know, the, it, it's not present in stuff that started that, that came earlier. Interesting. So if you find, if you do radiocarbon and you're looking for isotope 14, carbon 14, if you're looking for carbon 14 and it's not there, then it probably predates. And then they stopped. Anything? Yeah. Like any, anything? Most, most stuff, I, I think. Wow. Again, no expert, but you can do it on paint, you can do it on linen, you can do

• 1:37:19Speaker 03

  it on the wood, um, of the stretcher bars and stuff. But what's also interesting is that you can, um, because they then stopped testing, it kind of died off, right? So depending on where that level of carbon 14 is, you can sort of say, well, I think that's probably 1962 to 1964. In our case, the painting is, you know, supposedly from, um, 48, 49. So if you find evidence of lots of nuclear testing, couldn't have been, right? Because that would have been after. So it's really interesting that you can do all of these things, you know, whereas before

• 1:37:58Speaker 03

  you would just kind of say, as an expert, yes or no, now you can actually do all of these things, which are, you know, kind of irrefutable science. So I went and I did all the stuff that I know about and, you know, yes, this kind of makes sense. Here's all this evidence, here's notes saying that these paintings were sent from Switzerland, from France to Switzerland, they were sent to the consulate and all this kind of stuff. That gets you somewhere there, right? But then when you really look at the paint, all that other stuff, that's, you know, that's kind of where the rubber hits the road. But, but, and here's art, here's where art is interesting. A lot of people will tell you like, that's all well and good, that's fine. However, if the experts with connoisseurship, their eye.

• 1:38:47Speaker 03

  Don't like it. Good luck.

• 1:38:50Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 1:38:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, despite having all the other.

• 1:38:52Danny Jones?

  No matter how much scientific data you have.

• 1:38:54Speaker 03

  Good, yeah, good luck.

• 1:38:56Danny Jones?

  You have to have the people connected to the institutions.

• 1:38:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:38:58Danny Jones?

  Giving the nod.

• 1:39:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, and also because I think part of that is, you know, I think it's good to have like all of it, all of it, but I think there's also some reluctance on the part of some institutions to say like, yes, okay, you did not use us in any part of this, or you did not sort of get our okay, so therefore we are withholding it. And then there's a lot of other stuff like famously the Warhol Foundation.

• 1:39:34Speaker 03

  How can I say this without getting sued?

• 1:39:40Speaker 03

  There are foundations, not necessarily the Warhol Foundation, but there are foundations that are charged with verifying and authenticating paintings. So you'll give them a painting and you sign a paper which says, hey, you give us this painting, you want us to authenticate it. If we don't think it's real, you authorize us to destroy it. And you gotta sign that. If you don't sign that, they won't even look at it. So, you know, it's a little bit of a risk to take and there is very often, you know, controversy about about this stuff. So there are foundations where the people who make up the foundation may never have

• 1:40:25Speaker 03

  been close to the artist. They maybe own a bunch of the work, but they didn't know the artist, they weren't around during the artist's time, or just at the very end of the artist's life. And they're refusing to authenticate stuff by people who were collaborators of the artist, or, you know, worked with them, or were around, and they go, yeah, I had this painting, it was given to me by so and so, and it 100% looks real, everything real, but they don't like it because. Well, we own all these pieces. And if now there's a whole bunch of work coming from here, it devalues our stuff. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of funny business.

• 1:41:03Danny Jones?

  So if I pay a hundred thousand dollars for a Jackson Pollock painting, and I want to send it to the Jackson Pollock Institute for them to verify if it's real or not, I have to sign a piece of paper that says if they determine it's not real, they can destroy it?

• 1:41:16Speaker 03

  I don't think Jackson Pollock, well, there is no Jackson Pollock Foundation.

• 1:41:20Danny Jones?

  Well, like, this is like, for any artist.

• 1:41:22Speaker 03

  Shagal for sure. Shagal for sure.

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• 1:42:25Speaker 03

  Really? If you send it to, yeah, you send it to Komi Te Shagal, you have to sign a paper that says if we feel it's not real, we will destroy it. And you have to be okay with that.

• 1:42:37Danny Jones?

  Oh my God, imagine the level of corruption that goes on with that.

• 1:42:40Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, I mean, um, yeah, I don't know. I don't know that there is any, but there could be, there might be, you know, there is that potential.

• 1:42:50Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:51Speaker 03

  You know, I don't know that there is, but.

• 1:42:52Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Somebody was explaining to me how there was a, you know, this gets into the whole, um, the thing about like how you were explaining earlier when there is like extreme utility and doing a photo or a portrait of somebody because you can't take photos. Um, the person who can do it the most accurate, um, that would be the most valuable, uh, piece of artwork. Um, but now like there is no utility in something like that, right? Like it's with especially with AI and there was a, I think it was a Warhol documentary where they literally had an AI narrate the whole documentary as if it was Andy Warhol in his voice.

• 1:43:36Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 1:43:37Danny Jones?

  That's creepy.

• 1:43:38Speaker 03

  That's correct. And I mean, there's a whole bunch of, there's a whole bunch of other, um, other AI work that's happening now. So you can train, there were two examples that I know about that were pretty interesting. And the first one was there's an artist called Egon Schiele, Austrian artist, um, in the early, uh, 1900s. He had these beautiful pencil drawings, really, really amazing artist, but they trained a neural network to look at, it wasn't even a very big number of his drawings, but they trained it to look at these drawings and then it could with 99.99% accuracy determine,

• 1:44:22Speaker 03

  um, whether something was drawn by Egon Schiele or not by the pressure on the pencil, the dip, I mean, a million different sort of like inputs, um, so it could do that. Uh, and that's, you know, one of the other reasons why it is so difficult, um, for somebody like Tony to do what he did now. I mean, he says that's over.

• 1:44:44Danny Jones?

  Well, it's, it's, and also in today's day and age, there's also no more, who are the Picasso's or the Pollock's of now, right? Like there, that doesn't seem to exist anymore.

• 1:44:58Speaker 03

  I mean, there, there are definitely contemporary artists, um, that you and I've never heard of.

• 1:45:04Danny Jones?

  Hmm. That in, that in a hundred years, people are going to be like, oh my God, like.

• 1:45:09Speaker 03

  That, I mean, that's hard to say, but.

• 1:45:11Danny Jones?

  During this time when AI was ubiquitous, like how much more difficult is that going to be?

• 1:45:15Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's hard to say. So there's, there's a bunch of, of, of, uh,

• 1:45:23Speaker 03

  Attention that's being paid now to what can we do to make sure that the holes and gaps of the past don't exist anymore. So there are companies that, you know, allow you to put DNA in a, in a painting or, you know, microchip and catalog paintings from the second they were born to whatever. So there's all kinds of stuff, you know, blockchain certification for stuff like that. So that happens, you know, there are definitely artists that you and I have never heard of who are huge, huge names. If you, you know, if you are in that world that we don't know about and their painting and stuff is worth millions of dollars. Which of those are going to last, you know, beyond their lifetime? I don't know, beyond

• 1:46:06Speaker 03

  two or three lifetimes? I don't know either. But there's another interesting AI thing that I read about, which was amazing. And that is, there is an AI that can kind of look at oil painting. Most, some oil painting like, you know, Dali had a very thin, almost transparent painting style, but you know, some is thick. And they just kind of glob it on and stuff. But these AIs can look at like a 3D map of the painting. And it's so good that with, you know, certain painters that it has been trained on, you can kind

• 1:46:50Speaker 03

  of start to tell the difference between brushstrokes by the student and brushstrokes by the master. So a lot of in the, in the Renaissance and even later in the Baroque period, you would have a studio. So you'd go to the, to the master and you'd say, hey, I want a painting of my wife, the Duchess of whatever. And he'd say, great. And he'd have 10 paintings going at the same time. And he'd kind of sketch it out, draw the composition. And then the students would paint in the costume and the legs and stuff. And the master would do the hands, which are very hard to do, and the face. So this AI can tell the difference between the various strokes, which is, you know, pretty amazing.

• 1:47:35Speaker 03

  There's just so much you can do now that it's, it's quite, quite difficult to, to really tell the difference. Or, or to really, you know, fool.

• 1:47:47Speaker 03

  Full, full technology, all the chemical analysis, all the, you know, uh, spectroscopic analysis and everything, you just, you know?

• 1:47:56Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I wonder, like, why was the Renaissance? The period of time when we had the most, like, insane amount of art coming out, not just art, like, architecture, all these cathedrals that were built, like, it just seems like, uh, an absorbent amount of creativity was coming out during that time. And like, you know, people were creating stuff. Not, I mean, I'm, I'm guessing that people were doing this stuff not just as like a, a thing for a return on investment. They weren't doing this because it was gonna make them money. They were creating this stuff because something else was going on in society that was

• 1:48:42Danny Jones?

  promoting. Like, just a crazy amount of creativity, you know? Like, was it the climate? I mean, I'm sure, like, the climate, the, the economy,

• 1:48:55Danny Jones?

  like, the, the religious culture that was going on. I'm sure there were so many uh, elements that were contributing to that. But it's just interesting how that period in history was just known Yeah. for so much amazing art.

• 1:49:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the, the very short answer is, uh, the church and the Counter-Reformation. So you had, uh, the church vastly, uh, wealthy, who wanted to, um, you know, the, the, the, the Reformation said, "Hey, you can have a personal one-on-one relationship with God through your own reading of the Bible." And- The Catholic Church said, well, yeah, that's all good, but you know, there also needs to be a hierarchy and we are the institution on earth, which is, you know, kind of mediating between the two.

• 1:49:50Speaker 03

  So they wanted to, you know, bring these stories to the common person through the church, through, they wanted to illustrate that here's the story of Saint Matthew. And they were, you know, you could make the argument that essentially these were comic books, graphic novels of their time for people to look at. And there was a tremendous, tremendous amount of money available to do this. And, um, you know, in the, in our, in the book, con artists, con artists that I wrote with Tony, um, you know, he talks a lot about how Caravaggio is his favorite artist, but like when Caravaggio came to Rome,

• 1:50:28Speaker 03

  it was like Hollywood was in the 50s or whatever. It's like every artist, every person, everybody who wanted to be a director, went to LA, went to Hollywood.

• 1:50:38Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:38Speaker 03

  Everybody who wanted to be an architect or an artist or a sculptor, whatever, went to Rome. You know, because that's where all the commissions were coming from, from the church, you know, they were building, building these massive cathedrals, building churches, decorating them, chapels.

• 1:50:54Danny Jones?

  Right, right. Yeah. And I think Leonardo da Vinci, he was also like, if I remember correctly, he was doing all kinds of things like developing things for war, like weapons and stuff for war and stuff like this, and like being commissioned to do stuff like, I mean, I guess a lot of it was just, he was just trying to, to feed himself.

• 1:51:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, um, they, like some, Da Vinci, I'm not as familiar with his life because, you know, I want to stress that I'm not a great art expert.

• 1:51:25Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:51:26Speaker 03

  Um, but I do know, you know, a little bit. Um, but yes, I mean, he was, some people would argue that he was, um, a, a, uh, an engineer first.

• 1:51:37Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:51:37Speaker 03

  And an artist after, you know, so he famously came up with designs for like helicopter screws and, you know, flying machines and, um, different catapults and instruments of war.

• 1:51:51Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 1:51:51Speaker 03

  Like you say. And so, you know, when I talked to Tony, Tony always says, you know, that he was just fas- as a boy, just fascinated with the notebooks of Da Vinci and was actually more interested in Da Vinci, the engineer than Da Vinci, the artist. Cause he wasn't actually a very prolific artist. He worked really, really, really slowly. So it'd take him years to make paintings, you know, months and months and months to make paintings. Whereas Caravaggio would make like literally a painting in a day. Because when he first came to Rome, he was, you know, like any, like imagine a 22 year old person going to Hollywood because they want to be a director.

• 1:52:34Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:34Speaker 03

  Same kind of thing. And so he got, you know, he got a job painting essentially like tourist postcards, you know? And he'd have to paint like these heads.

• 1:52:46Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:52:46Speaker 03

  One in a day or fruit. His job was to paint fruit, you know?

• 1:52:50Danny Jones?

  Uh huh.

• 1:52:50Speaker 03

  Still lives. And so he'd do one in a day and that's how he would, you know, he'd make a, I don't know, a penny or whatever.

• 1:52:57Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 1:52:58Speaker 03

  And he lived, he lived with this guy.

• 1:53:00Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:00Speaker 03

  Mon- Monsignor del Monte. And he called him Monsignor Salad because he said that all he ever fed him was salad.

• 1:53:08Danny Jones?

  Really?

• 1:53:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was just like, he was the literal starving artist. But that's what, you know, that was the climate of the Renaissance. And that points out, that kind of points out, you know, that um, for everything that we say about, you know, the evils of the art market and, you know, all this stuff, you must have patrons, you must have people who are interested in having art and want to pay for it or feel it's important enough in their lives that it's a priority for them to spend money on. Otherwise, you know, no, no art.

• 1:53:41Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:41Speaker 03

  You know?

• 1:53:42Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:42Speaker 03

  I mean, you have, you have the, you have to have the person who's commissioning stuff.

• 1:53:45Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:53:46Speaker 03

  Um, you know?

• 1:53:47Danny Jones?

  Right. Yeah, it is, it is really interesting how um, it's evolved, you know? Especially like what we were talking about with the Cold War and uh, and art and, and these, and the CIA trying to through like second and third hands people uh, fund these artists and prop up this industry of art, of modern art. And to just basically like show that, hey, we're all about liberty and creativity and openness and like, we're so much better than the Soviet Union. And like, yeah, there was no like victims or anything. They weren't like kidnapping and torturing people. They were just spending taxpayer dollars on trying to

• 1:54:27Danny Jones?

  uh, drive culture and show how much better we and that was during the whole like McCarthy area too, right? So like.

• 1:54:35Speaker 03

  That being, that's why they had, that's why they had to use the CIA. Cause they had, they had the first couple of shows. I forget what it was called. I think it was called advancing American art or something like that. And they bought all of these paintings um, from famous artists of the time.

• 1:54:51Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:54:52Speaker 03

  And they put them out there and then everybody came out and said like this, this is like modern art is all communistic. This is all garbage. And look at what, look, and, and Harry Truman famously said, if that's art, then I'm a hot and todd.

• 1:55:04Danny Jones?

  Right, right.

• 1:55:05Speaker 03

  Right? Um, so you know, uh, but, but you know, you think about this, like every, everything that happens, everything that happens. Um, basically starts with an idea. I mean, go like, well, books don't matter, you know, and all this kind of stuff. Well, they do, because everything starts with ideas and that exchange of ideas is what makes like real world changes happen or things happen. Um, you know, so art of its time and you know, depending on how you define art, I mean, what's the art of today? I mean, I don't, I don't know what, what you think, but you know, is it a painting? Probably not.

• 1:55:51Speaker 03

  You know, is it a TikTok video? Maybe. Is it, you know, music? Probably. Is it a little video? Yeah, probably. You know, is it a meme? Yes. You know, that's really the art of today and think about how many ideas and how much our world has changed because of ideas that we're, you know, that we're exchanging. So art doesn't necessarily, it doesn't look like it used to in the past. You know, so what, what is happening now as art is probably not even what we recognize.

• 1:56:23Danny Jones?

  Well, it's interesting how it's, how it's today. It seems like it's more of, um, it's more of like. People copying things that other successful people have already done with art, right? Like they'll, they'll, they'll see a model and say, uh, I can copy this and do this in maybe a little bit of a different way. It's a successful model. It makes a lot of money. Maybe it'll make me famous. I can do this and put my own spin on it or whatever. It's, it's less like unique, new, super creative, right? It's more of like copy and paste nowadays.

• 1:57:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, that, that's true because it's possible to do that, you know? But I mean, I think that, that kind of, I don't know, call it inspiration if you want, or call it straight up copying. I mean, there are, I mean, the great old masters would, you know, there's always this, this, there's always this, uh, uh, I don't know if it's an argument, but discussion, who's the greatest painter was oil painter? Was it Caravaggio or was it Rembrandt? You know, well, maybe it's Rembrandt, but there could have been no Rembrandt without Caravaggio.

• 1:57:39Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 1:57:39Speaker 03

  You know, and there's all kinds of examples of, I mean, look at any, any period. People happen to be doing stuff that kind of looks very similar. It's just the way it is, you know, their ideas in the air. Oh, I saw him do that. Let me, let me try that too, or whatever, you know? It's kind of the way it is. It is true now that though, like, I mean, you can sample a hook out of a song, which you weren't able to do in the past, but you sample it, you just stick it in your song.

• 1:58:03Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 1:58:04Speaker 03

  That's what drives your song. And then you do some other crap on top of it. But you know, really what drives your song is that sample or you know, whatever. That was not possible before. It's not possible to cut and paste.

• 1:58:14Danny Jones?

  We had this guy, this gentleman on the other day, Mike Benz, who was explaining to us, uh, he was, uh, he used to work for the state department in the cyber division. And, um, he was explaining to us how the state department, basically like the state department was the department in the United States that will do all the things that this is too dirty for the CIA to do.

• 1:58:37Danny Jones?

  And he was explaining how they were basically doing the same thing you're explaining with the modern art movement during the Cold War with music in like the last 10, 20 to 30 years.

• 1:58:50Danny Jones?

  And they were doing this thing called music diplomacy where they were like funding musicians, funding artists, funding music festivals in different countries to overthrow governments or to like push political agendas all over the world. It's crazy with jazz. I think one of the original ones was jazz. I think what he was explaining was like, maybe this was like even during the Cold War when

• 1:59:12Danny Jones?

  I think it was like Stalin was trying to say that like, uh, America and the West were super racist, right? So we came in and we funded this jazz diplomacy, right? To show that no, we were not like we have all this jazz and all this stuff, all these black musicians all over the place. And it's kind of the same thing.

• 1:59:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I, I think so too. And I mean, it, it makes, it makes total sense.

• 1:59:41Speaker 03

  It's, you know, famously in the 50s, uh, Khrushchev came to America, you know, Soviet ruler Khrushchev came to America and, um, he was shown around and saw like a Western, you know, the kitchen of the future or whatever. And it's just mind blowing, you know? So if you have all of these things like, hey, for young people who are going to affect the most change. Anyway, now they're really into rock and roll. How are you going to keep those people interested in, you know, Soviet realism or whatever, when you got the Beatles, you know? So whatever, whatever that thing is, but I mean, um, art has that, art has that ability and it has always had that ability. And, you know, I think one of the,

• 2:00:25Speaker 03

  one of the difficult things in dealing with art is that the experience of most art

• 2:00:35Speaker 03

  is

• 2:00:38Speaker 03

  Off putting, you know, how many people really look forward to going to a museum? You know, how many people really look forward to that? And part of that is just

• 2:00:50Danny Jones?

  My mom's the only one I know.

• 2:00:52Speaker 03

  I mean, I was just talking to somebody else and they were like, they're a great outdoors person. And they're like, you know, we went climbing in Italy and they're like, the only thing is I don't want to go to, I don't want to go to any museums. And I, I kind of get that because there's this kind of like, um, overwhelming solemnity to a lot of it. Or just like, I don't get it. Um, so, uh, you know, so it's easy to sort of look

• 2:01:20Danny Jones?

  Vogue aspect to it all.

• 2:01:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, and, and it's really easy to look at it and go like, I don't really see how this applies to my life.

• 2:01:25Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:01:26Speaker 03

  You know, I don't see how this applies to my life. When at, whereas, you know, when you look at art as kind of like, all the music and ideas and, and imagery and stuff that we see every day. Um, you know, then you, you see it as, as part of your life. And I think that's kind of one of the things like I, I'm, I'm not super interested in the, uh, like late Warhol, where it's just like, here's a bunch of, you know, here's a bunch of pictures of Liz Taylor. Here's a hundred images of Liz Taylor or Chairman Mao or whatever. But you know, if you read his early, uh, notebooks and stuff, I mean, it's super fascinating and what he was saying, which nobody understood at the time, like, what does that even mean? Everybody's fame, every, in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. Hmm.

• 2:02:11Speaker 03

  What does that mean? We know what it means now. I mean, that's social media.

• 2:02:15Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:02:16Speaker 03

  You know, that was 40, that was 50 years before social media. That's amazing, you know? So, um, it's, it's, it's really kind of about like, how does? How do the ideas, the imagery, the music, the ways that people think kind of influence your life? You know, I think that's what art is. It might not look like it used, it might not be a piece of canvas on a

• 2:02:43Danny Jones?

  Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I think it's cool because it's like taking a time machine back, you know, and seeing like, you know, well, well, like you said, like what was going through people's minds back then? How were they thinking? What was it like? Just to be in like that museum surrounded by all this ancient shit is like, it's weird. It gives you a, it's like, it's not just seeing it. It's this sort of like a feeling you get. You know what I mean? Where it's, it's kind of a, a feeling you don't forget. When you get to experience some sort of history like that and a little glimpse into the past.

• 2:03:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I had, I had a, one of the, like this really great art experience in a way that I hadn't in a long time in a museum. I was at the Getty Center, not the Villa, I was at the Getty Center. And I was there, like I was there, I took somebody for their birthday to this cafe to hang out. It's a nice place to stay. But I said, well, let's run up and go look at a couple of paintings. And usually, you know, you sort of walk through and eh, I like that, or I look at a few things. But I stopped and I looked at this Monet haystack, these famous haystack paintings. And I kind of looked at it, I started looking, I started looking at it. And it turned into, I mean, it sounds goofy, but it turned into, you know, like those magic eye paintings.

• 2:04:00Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:01Speaker 03

  It kind of had this magic eye effect.

• 2:04:03Danny Jones?

  Interesting.

• 2:04:04Speaker 03

  And I was like, wow. So this, this was kind of like how using, yeah, using impressionism, he had found a way to show how light, you know, a flat surface could become 3D. And not just in, not just in kind of like straight line perspective, you know, like Renaissance paintings, but how this impressionistic thing could, could make this thing become a 3D real thing. And that's, you know, that's amazing for the time, you know, we, we kind of become blind to these things because we see it all the time. We have all kinds of imagery and effects and optical illusions and things. But that to me was like truly, wow, truly an amazing thing.

• 2:04:44Danny Jones?

  That is fascinating. I read this thing about Picasso, about how he was so good at purvey, of, of, like, he was really good at.

• 2:04:54Danny Jones?

  Displaying depth because allegedly he could only see in 2D. So allegedly he had, I don't know if this is for sure, but allegedly he had like one eye that went really far out and he couldn't see depth very good. So he relied a lot on light and shadows and things to discern depth. And he was really good at translating this into a canvas, into turning something that was 2D into something 3D. What is this AI? Yes, Picasso's right eye showed signs of strabismus, a condition of misaligned eyes with poor depth perception. So because he had poor depth, he couldn't see space.

• 2:05:33Danny Jones?

  He had to figure out ways to get through the world using light and shadows and shapes to discern depth. And he was like, that's a fascinating thing about how he was able to make his paintings. And this is also true with filmmakers too. There's this famous documentarian named Errol Morris, who has the same issue and he's does these incredible, he has this incredible way of doing cinematography. He even invented this thing called the interatron during his documentaries where the person's looking straight down the barrel of the camera. So instead of like sitting to the side and having the person look off camera, they looked straight down the barrel. He would put this, this mirror in front of his face. So they could see his face. They would talk to him.

• 2:06:19Danny Jones?

  But somehow it would like reflect into the lens to like the looking straight on the barrel of camera. So like, it's just weird. It's just interesting to hear how like certain people's like disabilities or shortcomings can translate into like something incredible. And yeah, there it is. There's the intertron right there.

• 2:06:40Speaker 03

  Intertron.

• 2:06:41Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:44Speaker 03

  I mean, you know, you're a documentary guy, you know, it's always like one of these things where if you're doing the interview, you always have to like stand right next to the camera.

• 2:06:52Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:53Speaker 03

  You have to tell the person like look, look in. It's never quite there. So I didn't know about that.

• 2:06:59Danny Jones?

  Yeah, it's always like, it's always interesting to me when, when somebody can come along and like innovate a new way of creating something like a new.

• 2:07:10Danny Jones?

  A new medium, not necessarily a new medium, but a new way to like, like, like an example would be like podcasting. How like Joe Rogan basically was the first one, I mean, to have the idea to have two people just sit down and talk uninterrupted, unedited for hours and put it out there. And who knew it would be like the number one thing that everyone listens to in the world like. Anyone during that time would say, no, you have to make it more entertaining. You have to start out with like a, a, a hook that grabs people and, you know, it has to be shorter. You're going to lose people's attention, but like, no, it just blew that out of the water.

• 2:07:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Picasso was, uh, was interesting too, cause, um, you know, you can always, you, you can think about how, uh,

• 2:07:56Speaker 03

  the great artists just have kind of a different way of looking as they bring a new way of looking at something. And so I think that, you know, what you described about his eyes and stuff, kind of tied into a bigger cultural thing at the time too, or a bigger, um, discovery at the time. So, you know, science and philosophy, thinking about like,

• 2:08:20Speaker 03

  you know, other, other dimensions or the fact of looking at something changes something.

• 2:08:30Speaker 03

  And subatomic particles and all that kind of stuff. So Cubism is really like, hey, when you're looking at something, you're looking at it from every direction at the same time, you know? And so I think that his way of looking probably like allowed him to see that in a way that he might not have, um, might not have seen.

• 2:08:49Danny Jones?

  Might not have appreciated.

• 2:08:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:08:51Danny Jones?

  In, in another.

• 2:08:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. And it's an idea that had like greater resonance or whatever. Um, but, uh, yeah.

• 2:08:59Danny Jones?

  Yeah, man. That's super fascinating. What, what, um?

• 2:09:04Danny Jones?

  You did another documentary that was on Netflix that was about social media and kids, influencer kids. Can you explain what that was about?

• 2:09:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was called Bad Influence and it was a documentary that was directed by Jenna Rocher and Keith Davidson. And they did a great job. I produced it. It was this look at a particular social media influencer, huge social media influencer called Piper Raquel, kind of a kid influencer. And what it sort of looked at was, you know, you think that there's this world that's it's for kids, it's harmless, it's just harmless fun. But what you really start to see is that this is

• 2:09:51Speaker 03

  a world that is not kid friendly, that has a lot of problems inherent in it. I mean, I personally think that social media is a huge, huge problem, not just for kids, but for everybody today. I think it's completely messed up our information environment and there's the horrible information hygiene because of it. But so this, this was a bunch of Piper Raquel had a squad of kids with her. They all kind of joined together and they would make prank videos and all this kind of stuff.

• 2:10:32Speaker 03

  And their mother, Piper's mother Tiffany Raquel was kind of the momager of all these kids. And so it's really a story of abuse. You know, these kids were made to work all the time. They were kind of pitted against each other. They received no schooling. And, you know, it's just, just, just kind of like almost cult-like world in which these, these children fell. And again, you know, it's one of these situations where you have that kind of money, like, you know, an 11-year-old kid making, you know, a couple hundred grand a month.

• 2:11:19Speaker 03

  I mean, there's, there's, uh, there are a lot of incentives that kind of go awry. So, um, I, I mean, I do, I do think that generally speaking, the, uh, I think generally speaking, social media is a terrible thing for, uh, children. I think that it is, uh, largely can be largely unhealthy for adults who can't mediate. But for kids, I mean, you know, it's undeniable that it is designed to be addictive. You know, that's just undeniable.

• 2:11:56Danny Jones?

  Yes.

• 2:11:57Speaker 03

  Um, it is, uh, unpoliced largely. And while many of the companies claim that they have the safety of children at heart, or that they have, you know, dedicated safety teams and all this stuff. The reality is that anytime that safety, uh, or mental health, um, butts up against, you know, the need to have viewers and, you know, time spent on site, that always wins out.

• 2:12:26Danny Jones?

  And please shareholders.

• 2:12:27Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, it always, it always wins out. So for example, um, you know, one of the most, this is crazy. I mean, I have an 11 year old daughter who does know screen time, except for like on the weekend, you know, we'll watch some movies.

• 2:12:42Danny Jones?

  Wow.

• 2:12:43Speaker 03

  Um, and it's funny because that is, you know, that's sort of a radical thing.

• 2:12:50Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:51Speaker 03

  But then I look at it and go like, you know, I mean, really, if you understood what's going on, most parents would think like, oh yeah, that, that's makes sense. I mean, you wouldn't give your kids cigarettes, you know, not giving your kids cigarettes is not a radical thing. I think not giving your kids social media is similar. So anyway, there's this very popular, uh, game called Roblox.

• 2:13:14Danny Jones?

  Oh yeah.

• 2:13:15Speaker 03

  Okay, so you know, Roblox.

• 2:13:18Speaker 03

  Roblox is, for those who don't know, is essentially, you know, a user-generated content. Everybody makes like little environments that you can run around in, in your avatar, and you buy merch and whatever.

• 2:13:33Speaker 03

  Kids as young as, I think, I don't remember this exactly, but I think it's 13-ish. And, you know, anybody who wants to get in can get in pretty easily. You know, you have nine, 10-year-old kids, and some of these environments, one of the most popular environments, is public restroom. So, you know, imagine what happens in a public restroom in a club or whatever, you know? That's all the kind of stuff that takes place in these, in these places. And there are, I mean, many, many, many, I mean,

• 2:14:09Speaker 03

  I don't know if it's 100, but dozens, dozens of cases of grooming, you know, where some, where it's, it's been described as a profile paradise. And everybody, every time I mention this to a, you know, fellow parent, "Oh yeah, my kid's on Roblox," and I go, "Oh, really?" And they go, "Yeah, actually, my kid, you know, somebody was trying to groom my kid on it." Like, it's so rife, it's unbelievable.

• 2:14:35Speaker 03

  And there are, you know, dozens of cases where somebody, you know, sets up, like Jeffrey Epstein Island, there, there were, I think they've kind of specifically taken those out, but Jeffrey Epstein Island, where kids are running around in this Roblox thing, and they're, you know, getting kids to compromise themselves some way. Or, you know, they're kind of meeting through this and then take them off-line, you know, to, or take them off-site to another private messaging thing.

• 2:15:04Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:15:04Speaker 03

  And then they'll want to come meet him and all this stuff. And it's like many, many examples of this happening.

• 2:15:09Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:09Speaker 03

  And if you ask the company, the company's like, "Oh, no, we take safety very seriously." And the question is like, "Hmm, I'm not sure that's true."

• 2:15:18Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:15:19Speaker 03

  And, you know, I think that is just repeated over and over and over again, you know, like, one of the main ways that kids buy drugs now is just on social media. That's like the number one way to buy drugs.

• 2:15:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. So that that Roblox example there is repeated many, many, many times. There are many cases that are being adjudicated right now. There's I believe there's a class action lawsuit that's being formed. And, you know, it's it's kind of the same thing with with all of the social media sites where, you know, they they kind of almost like a blanket immunity.

• 2:16:04Danny Jones?

  Yeah, section two forty or two thirty.

• 2:16:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I I helped start an early internet travel company that then became part of TripAdvisor. So we're one of the first ones. And I remember at the time, you know, we were kind of grappling with, well, how do you deal with user generated content? Right? Who's responsible for it? What if somebody uses a picture that's copyrighted? What do you do? And what ended up happening was that the law basically just said, you are a utility. You can do more or less what you want. It's the onus is on someone to report. Right? And then you have to deal with it. So for example, if somebody used copyrighted imagery. Okay, the photographer

• 2:16:49Speaker 03

  has to come in and go through a really onerous pro- process, project to get your to get you to remove that information. And let's say somebody took 500 photos. Well, I'm a photographer.

• 2:17:05Speaker 03

  Can I really spend all that time to go through this whole process of filling out 500 separate forms? You know, to show you that these things have been copyright, you know, have violated my copyright. Now, repeat that 500 times. Right? How are you going to how are you going to deal with that?

• 2:17:25Speaker 03

  So, you know, what I used to do is I'd say if somebody showed me that I just nuke the account, I'd just be like, good, you you did a copyright violation. You're out of here. You know, I wouldn't make the person go through all those, all those hoops. And similarly, with social media, because it's treated like a utility, despite the fact that somebody like Twitter, you know, very.

• 2:17:54Speaker 03

  Openly shapes the content. I mean, the algorithm is pushing stuff to you.

• 2:17:59Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:18:00Speaker 03

  These are the top stories. You should look at this. You should look at this. If you're interested in this, you're going to be interested in that. Let me push this to you.

• 2:18:05Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:18:06Speaker 03

  Push that to you. They still have no real liability for any of the stuff that they that they're showing. So, you know, you have this information environment where unsafe stuff or, you know, like really radicalizing stuff is out there and there's no repercussions because these guys are shielded.

• 2:18:26Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:18:26Speaker 03

  So personally, I think it would be fairly easy to deal with that. You know, why, you know, regardless of how you feel about this, but why is Fox no longer reporting that Dominion voting machines were compromised in previous election? Because they got sued for a billion dollars.

• 2:18:49Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:18:50Speaker 03

  Right?

• 2:18:50Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:18:51Speaker 03

  That stuff is all over social media and, you know, there are trends and they push it and, you know, they're making money off of that content, you know, and lots of it. But there's really no repercussion against that because their claim is, oh, well, it's not me who's publishing it.

• 2:19:09Danny Jones?

  It's individuals.

• 2:19:10Speaker 03

  It's individuals.

• 2:19:11Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:19:11Speaker 03

  However, you are now shaping this. You're pushing it, you know?

• 2:19:16Danny Jones?

  The thing is you have to, right, the, the, the thing is you have to prove that they are specifically institutionally pushing specific narratives or specific, specific stories because

• 2:19:29Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 2:19:30Danny Jones?

  The ultimate way for that to work is you would have all of the people who exist on the social media platforms dependent on how many followers they have would have equal, uh, equal exposure to their content and to their stories they push out. The problem with, in my view, this whole, so this section 230 blanket, um, blanket immunity to lawsuits is that, um,

• 2:20:00Danny Jones?

  They can put their finger on the scale and nobody knows about it.

• 2:20:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:20:05Danny Jones?

  Um, you know, and the argument against is like, why, you know, why should social media companies get li- uh, get off the hook for any sort of liability when, you know, if I make playground equipment, you're not off the hook for any kind of liability. Why do they, why do they deserve it? I get it. And, um, uh, the other side of the coin is if they didn't have this, they would probably go out of business.

• 2:20:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, personally, I, I think it would probably be fine. I mean, as it currently exists, I think it would be fine. And I think there's a really interesting, there's a really interesting, um, kind of legal, uh, framework that's being developed. There's a lot of kind of youth groups and stuff. There's one called Design It For Us, you know, whose, whose theory is, look, this is just, um, product, this is just a product liability case. In the same way that if you make a car that explodes, if you make cigarettes that are marketed at children, you know, you can't do that.

• 2:21:07Speaker 03

  This is very specifically marketed to addict us. This is very specifically marketed negligent, there, there's a negligence in the way that it allows, uh, inappropriate interactions to happen and stuff like that. So for example, you know, I, I'm not sure with the current status of everyone of the social media thing, but you know, default that you're, you know, that your messaging is open, you know, things like that. So, so most, most social media, the default is anybody can contact you, let's say, right? Um, whereas it should be like, nobody can contact you unless, you know, parental intervention happens.

• 2:21:48Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:21:49Speaker 03

  You know?

• 2:21:49Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:21:50Speaker 03

  So, um.

• 2:21:52Danny Jones?

  Or, or another argument that people make is that, uh, there shouldn't be any anonymity on social media. Like it should be you, your name connected to your social security number, whatever it is, so that if you do do anything out of line, you are punished for it.

• 2:22:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, that, that seems a little too far for me. And I kind of feel like, well, everybody's like, well, that'll change everything or this.

• 2:22:15Danny Jones?

  Well, are you going to be out there screaming obscenities at people and, and being, you know, a complete asshole to everybody online if everybody knows who you are?

• 2:22:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah. I mean, um.

• 2:22:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, but the thing is, you know, this kind of already exists. This is not like some crazy notion. The crazy notion is the opposite whereby, hey, you get a blanket immunity. Like, wait a minute, how did that happen? Because you could make this, you know, it already works for media. I know when I make a documentary, I make a spreadsheet with every claim. Every claim I make, I make a spreadsheet and I go, here's source one, here's source two, and here's source three. And then, claim number two. And I mean, that spreadsheet's long. And that's a hard process to do, but that's kind of the hoop that I have to jump through. You know, to show, to, to really kind of like shore up all my claims. And if I can't defend my claim, I'm not going to make it.

• 2:23:13Speaker 03

  You know, so that's kind of what I have to go through. And similarly, you know, media, if New York Times publishes something, you go, well, it's a columnist. Well, sorry, that's your columnist. You published it in your platform. You are liable in the same way that, you know, you, I'm sure you could have a, a method by which you could say like, for example, the Dominion story. All right. X, you are pushing this to people. We've, we've shown that this has no merit, yet you're pushing this to people in your algorithm. Okay. So either stop pushing it in the algorithm, right? Remove it from whatever.

• 2:23:58Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:23:59Speaker 03

  Or face some of the liability.

• 2:24:02Danny Jones?

  Right, but do we know that there, is it, is it a fact? Do we know that X or Twitter is giving that Dominion story more favorable push in the algorithm? Are they pushing it any more than other stuff? And shouldn't people be allowed to talk about shit, whether that's, whether it's fake, real, a lie, propaganda? Shouldn't all speech on these things have equal push or equal availability to see, right? Instead of like, can you prove that they're pushing that more than the alternate story? Because I agree with you that that's wrong. But like. Conversely, it should be a place where bad ideas should have just as much reach as good ideas should have.

• 2:24:46Speaker 03

  Uh, uh, yes and no. In my opinion, I mean, this is all just our opinion.

• 2:24:52Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:24:52Speaker 03

  Um, in my opinion, uh, of course you should be able to have your idea, should be able to talk to you about, you know, lawful ideas. I shouldn't be able to say like, hey, you and I are going to murder Steve.

• 2:25:05Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:25:06Speaker 03

  But, um, although you may want to sometimes.

• 2:25:11Speaker 03

  But, you know, yeah, you can, you can have that conversation, you know, of course you can. Um, but the difference is, you know, should you amplify that? Can you amplify that? You know, that's, that's my, uh, that's my way of looking and it's, it's fairly practical, right? If there's three guys with no followers talking about it, okay, it's not a problem. Don't worry about it.

• 2:25:36Danny Jones?

  Well, the, the thing is, isn't that a slippery slope when you have the platform deciding what should be squashed or what should be amplified when you're giving them that power?

• 2:25:46Speaker 03

  But I don't think, I don't think the platform, the, the platform, first of all, the platforms are private companies. They're private companies.

• 2:25:53Danny Jones?

  Totally.

• 2:25:54Speaker 03

  Okay. So like when we had our, our website, um, which was a huge community, right? Of user generated content. I could remove you anytime I wanted to, just because you were a jerk, you were unkind, you were using copyrighted imagery, you used copyrighted, uh, text. I could do that.

• 2:26:15Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:26:15Speaker 03

  So they can do that. Um, and that's, you know, that's the prerogative of a private company. Okay. Um, should they do it or how do they do it? I think is kind of like,

• 2:26:30Speaker 03

  to me, to my mind, slightly more difficult than dealing with the media. I mean, we already have, I mean, we have libel lawsuits, right? All the time. We know what that means. We know what that looks like. We know how that's adjudicated. You know, it's not some great giant unknown. We already know how to do it. Just kind of do that, you know? Because I think the downside is so much worse. I mean, I really think that we are in a terrible situation where it's very difficult to deal with any problems.

• 2:27:07Speaker 03

  Because of the fact that we are so unable to find a non-radicalized middle ground on anything. So there's a

• 2:27:17Danny Jones?

  That's the biggest problem right there. You just nailed that. The people, the ideas that get the most attention on social media are the most extreme ones.

• 2:27:25Speaker 03

  And that's algorithmic.

• 2:27:26Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:26Speaker 03

  That is algorithmic. That is, that is purely pushed by an algorithm, which is based upon creating dopamine hits and, um, uh, and views.

• 2:27:39Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, you're not going to grow your followers by having a nuanced middle of the road opinion.

• 2:27:44Speaker 03

  Exactly. Exactly. So there is, um, I don't know if you've ever heard of the, uh, the doomsday clock?

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• 2:28:49Speaker 03

  The doomsday clock was created in the eighties by the, um, an organization of atomic scientists. And it was a metaphor for talking about how, um,

• 2:29:05Speaker 03

  How much in danger were we of nuclear apocalypse?

• 2:29:11Danny Jones?

  Oh, yes.

• 2:29:12Speaker 03

  So they go, it's 1159 and 58 seconds. And they would occasionally sort of, yeah, so there you go. So it's very close and right now it's, it's like basically any moment we're going to have a nuclear apocalypse. Um, but they have also started to-

• 2:29:30Danny Jones?

  So right now in 2025, they think it's a high probability that we're going to have a nuclear-

• 2:29:36Speaker 03

  89 seconds to midnight. Again, it's a metaphor. It's a metaphor for saying like, you know, midnight is nuclear apocalypse. So they're saying we are very close to-

• 2:29:45Danny Jones?

  It's a metaphor. They're not necessarily saying like thermonuclear bombs.

• 2:29:48Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no.

• 2:29:48Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:29:49Speaker 03

  They're saying it's a metaphor for the danger we have of nuclear apocalypse happening. So it's not going to happen in 89 seconds, but in this metaphor, we're very close and we have a very high level of danger. So I talked to one of the chief scientists there and they've, they've expanded to some other areas like, um, uh, climate change, um, you know, political instability and stuff. And one of the things that they talk about is information hygiene or information environment, you know? How bad is the information that we get now? You know, when every single sort of like, um,

• 2:30:26Danny Jones?

  Steve, can you turn that off? I'm freezing my ass off, dude. That thing is fucking, that thing is freezing me.

• 2:30:33Danny Jones?

  Or just turn it down a little bit.

• 2:30:34Speaker 03

  Uh, when, when every single piece of information is disagreed upon in the most radical terms, you cannot solve any of these problems.

• 2:30:46Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:30:46Speaker 03

  So we talked to them and they, they just basically said, unless we solve, and you know, they were very specific, specifically talking about X because that was just part of the conversation. But, but when, when you can't have the discussion or there is no viable objective fact anywhere, you can't solve any of this.

• 2:31:08Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:31:08Speaker 03

  And so therefore to me, it seems to me that the greatest problem that we face today and the greatest opportunity for positive change is to kind of just like-

• 2:31:21Speaker 03

  Pull back from that, you know, and, and, you know, it's not like be before social media. We still had freedom of expression. We still had the ability to get ideas out. You know, we did not have giant psy ops operations from foreign governments in every single person's brain at all times, which is happening today.

• 2:31:49Danny Jones?

  Well.

• 2:31:50Speaker 03

  Maybe we did. I mean.

• 2:31:51Danny Jones?

  Well, we had four major news outlets.

• 2:31:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:31:56Danny Jones?

  Right?

• 2:31:56Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:31:57Danny Jones?

  And we know for a fact that there were CIA operations to manipulate the media and everyone was getting their information from four mainstream outlets. So it was so much easier to propagandize people and sow discourse and narrative.

• 2:32:10Speaker 03

  True, true.

• 2:32:11Danny Jones?

  Which, which I'm not saying to your point, for a stable society, maybe that's the better way to do it.

• 2:32:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:32:21Danny Jones?

  I like.

• 2:32:22Speaker 03

  But I'm not even saying return to that. What I'm saying is let, let a thousand flowers bloom. Let them all bloom, but just have them sort of operate under the same terms of, you know, you can't just say anything about anybody anytime you want with total impunity. You know, you can't say that you are a vampire, you know, eating children in the basement of a pizza establishment, you know, without facing some controversy.

• 2:33:00Speaker 03

  And you can't, you can't boost that, you know, as the number one topic of your thing without facing some, you know, can you prove it? Great. Report away. I mean, that's reporting. Report away.

• 2:33:17Danny Jones?

  Yeah. And the question also goes to like, what can they suppress? Like, what kind of information can we suppress? And look, that was one of the biggest controversies, which I think was the catalyst to this stuff starting to go downhill at an exponential rate was during COVID.

• 2:33:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:33:34Danny Jones?

  Because we had social media companies censoring all kinds of things on COVID. People, doctors getting kicked off social media, losing their livelihood for saying, hey, that's not, this is not the same thing I'm seeing in my practice. You know, like people questioning, getting kicked off for questioning vaccines, like, like, that's, can you see how that could go the wrong way very, very quickly? When you have the people and the people who are funding these companies? And I mean, even mainstream media companies,

• 2:34:07Danny Jones?

  like incentivized to take people off that aren't going with the financial incentive? That might not be the right thing for the people. You know, and there's, there's, there's this great account on X.

• 2:34:20Danny Jones?

  I wish I remember what the guy's name was, but I'm sure you've seen these videos. There's videos where they've stitched together newscasts from all these local news sites during the COVID era and after, all these local news stations, I'm sorry,

• 2:34:35Danny Jones?

  where they're literally saying the same lines verbatim.

• 2:34:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:34:41Danny Jones?

  Like, you want to talk about pushing a narrative? Like, well, like, is this just a coincidence? That these people are using the exact same words, like eight words in a row, talking about certain things like that's, that's insane.

• 2:34:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:34:55Danny Jones?

  So, um, I don't know if this is it, Steve. No, there was something on X that was, it was, uh, they were talking about on all different topics, like on topics regarding war, regarding COVID, uh, regarding elections and all this stuff.

• 2:35:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's definitely, there's definitely danger of, you know, group think. There's definitely dangers of, um, you know, narratives being pushed if you have a small number of outlets. So again, I mean, I'm saying have as many as you want.

• 2:35:29Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:29Speaker 03

  Just have them also be liable.

• 2:35:33Speaker 03

  Uh, you know, for the same uh, standards.

• 2:35:37Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:37Speaker 03

  You know, because we're we're pretending that this is just a guy saying some stuff. But it's not. It's not a guy saying some stuff. This is now um, the main source of news. It's algorithmically manipulated.

• 2:35:54Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:35:54Speaker 03

  It's uh, you know, it's.

• 2:35:58Danny Jones?

  Is this it? Here, see if you can hear it.

• 2:36:02Danny Jones?

  Give us some volume.

• 2:36:12Danny Jones?

  They were gonna get to it? All right, this isn't the video.

• 2:36:17Danny Jones?

  Yeah, no, I see what you're saying. Actually, and and this this gentleman that we had on the other day, too, was also laying out all of these companies that um,

• 2:36:26Danny Jones?

  they were funded by the State Department, AI companies, creating this spider web, this algorithmic spider web of keywords. And they had like, literally, like, there was like, video conferences of people that were a part of these think tanks, these government think tanks, talking about how we need to censor these narratives. Anyone who discusses nineteen, discusses Pfizer or Moderna or anything like this, like, take these people down, suppress their accounts, and they had these like, and and it covered all kinds of topics, this crazy spider web, and this was funded by the State Department, CIA, DOD, to literally clamp down on speech on the internet. And

• 2:37:10Danny Jones?

  like, this isn't the type of stuff that's like, protect your kids, or like, stop the crazy person from breaking into your house or burning down your house, whatever. This is where, this is the type of topic where the only purpose of it is to protect institutions, right, and to protect the profits of of large companies.

• 2:37:32Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, a- again, I think, yes, you're you're right, um, that there is, you know, there is potential to push narratives or suppress narratives, right? So my thing is, we're just in a place where we can't have.

• 2:37:52Speaker 03

  We can't have problem solving. It's basically impossible.

• 2:37:57Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:37:57Speaker 03

  Uh, just, you know, like those scientists were saying, you know, we can't really solve anything because all we do is like, it's a hundred percent this way and it's a hundred percent this way. There's no in between. We can't meet anywhere. So, I mean, I think there's already, there's already a, um, a structure that works. You know, the, the news media already works. You can report on anything you want. So long as you have some support for it, or you kind of face, you know, you face repercussions in a court of law.

• 2:38:31Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:38:32Speaker 03

  I mean, that's, that just works. You, you're gonna say this? Okay. I mean, I can't say that you're, I can't go, I can't go, uh, and publish to the world that you are a [BLEEP] file.

• 2:38:44Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:38:45Speaker 03

  I, I can, but then I am liable for repercussions.

• 2:38:48Danny Jones?

  Of course.

• 2:38:49Speaker 03

  So in the same, in the same way.

• 2:38:51Danny Jones?

  You are not the platform.

• 2:38:52Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 2:38:53Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:38:53Speaker 03

  Correct. But on a platform, you know, I could have a million AI bots, put it out there. I could push that.

• 2:39:03Danny Jones?

  Yep.

• 2:39:04Speaker 03

  And.

• 2:39:04Danny Jones?

  As countries do.

• 2:39:06Speaker 03

  Yeah. And I'm not liable in any way.

• 2:39:09Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:39:09Speaker 03

  You know, whereas if you said like, hey, just so you know, I'm gonna sue you for this because it's untrue, you must remove it or face repercussions.

• 2:39:21Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:39:22Speaker 03

  I mean, that just seems like a natural and normal.

• 2:39:25Danny Jones?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:39:26Speaker 03

  Process that happens in the real world today.

• 2:39:29Danny Jones?

  There is a process on YouTube where this is very easy to do.

• 2:39:32Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 2:39:32Danny Jones?

  And I've been a part of it.

• 2:39:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:39:34Danny Jones?

  And where if somebody does do this, steals your material or posts abusive content or things that you believe are untrue, there's a, a button right there on the YouTube video where you can report it to YouTube. It sends direct, YouTube stays out of it. It's directly between you and the create, that creator, where you type up a little paragraph on what you think happened. That gets sent directly to the person who published it. And they have something like 20 days to either remove the content. Or, uh, and if they don't do it, then you basically have to like file a lawsuit against them and get that. The stuff gets taken down and then when the courts determine the outcome, they notify YouTube and then YouTube will make a determination on that.

• 2:40:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really, it's really a case of the stakes, right? So in this case, YouTube has zero stake. Your person probably has zero stake as well, right? Because they've got 20 days for 20 days, this material could go viral. And then, okay, I'll take it down.

• 2:40:37Danny Jones?

  It goes down for that 20, that 20 day period, it's down.

• 2:40:40Speaker 03

  Okay. So, yeah, I mean, I feel, look, I think that there are, um, probably, there are probably structures, I think demonstrably, they're, you know, incredibly in, in, ineffective right now. I mean, I think we can kind of assume that.

• 2:40:58Speaker 03

  But, uh, to me, it's, it's the biggest challenge that we are facing. And the, the documentary that we did, um, you know, Bad Influence was kind of one, one view into, you know, what one part of that world kind of looks like. And, you know, there was this really interesting thing, like, so these are, this was a girl who at the beginning was, I want to say 10 years old when she started. You know? And now, I mean, this is like, you can see the algorithm pushing the behavior and the content.

• 2:41:42Speaker 03

  So as she got a little bit older, everything became more sexual because it gets more. So at 16, you know, she is now on, she was kind of demonetized by YouTube. But then she's on a thing called Brand Army. Was on a thing called Brand Army and Brand Army was unbelievable to me because in order to be a creator on Brand Army, you could be 13. Okay. You can be 13 and be a creator. You must be 18 to be a consumer. So de facto, you have adults consuming, yes, consuming

• 2:42:26Speaker 03

  minor content, right? And this minor content took the form of, in the case of Piper, you know, private subscriber only hot tub shoots, you know, and this is a like a 16 year old girl, you know, all kinds of bikini shoots, all this kind of stuff. You could DM this person, all this stuff. And I go, how is this possible? You know, how is this okay? And some somehow

• 2:42:54Danny Jones?

  Is this still their policy?

• 2:42:56Speaker 03

  Um, I think that they, I, you know, when I talked, when I talked to the, to the founder, the CEO, he sort of said, yeah, it's just, it's such a big pain for us. We're going to stop accepting this. But really, it was kind of like, it just felt like, uh, really, it was just more hassle than it was worth was kind of what he was telling me.

• 2:43:22Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:43:22Speaker 03

  It's more hassle than it was worth. But I mean, that's the, that's the kind of thing where you sort of go like, how, how is this okay? How is this not, um, better? How is this not better known? How is this sort of, you know, just sliding by?

• 2:43:38Danny Jones?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's crazy. That, that should absolutely never be allowed.

• 2:43:44Speaker 03

  And I think that that's pretty much how for kids anyway. I mean, let's leave adults aside for now, but for kids, that is the world that, um, you know, is social media.

• 2:43:54Danny Jones?

  And it's crazy too, just the culture we live in, because you have the most children today, young kids say, when you ask them what they want to do when they grow up, they want to be a YouTuber or the TikToker or something like this.

• 2:44:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, and I tell parents, and the thing is that parents don't, even well intentioned parents, you know, don't realize this. They go, well, that's a kids, oh, that's kids, right? That's YouTube kids, or that's whatever. That's a kid's game. And, you know, but anything that has messaging, I go, here's what you just did. You gave your kid a phone.

• 2:44:29Speaker 03

  You publish their private phone number on the internet. And you allowed anybody, anywhere in the world who wants to, to have private conversations with them. Would you be okay with that? I doubt it.

• 2:44:40Danny Jones?

  No.

• 2:44:40Speaker 03

  I mean, I doubt.

• 2:44:41Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:42Speaker 03

  So that's, that's kind of what you've allowed, you know? And it's a very difficult thing. It's a very difficult thing is you got kids, you know? It's a very difficult thing to say to your kid. You know, everybody in my class has a phone. Sorry, you're not going to get a phone.

• 2:44:58Danny Jones?

  Right.

• 2:44:58Speaker 03

  You can have a, you know, there's this thing called tin can. I don't know if you've seen it.

• 2:45:02Danny Jones?

  Uh-uh.

• 2:45:03Speaker 03

  It's basically a wifi version of a landline. So.

• 2:45:09Danny Jones?

  Huh.

• 2:45:10Speaker 03

  You can't text, can't surf the internet, you can't do anything other than make phone calls. So you want to talk to your friends? Awesome, be my guest. Call your friend, chat, whatever you want.

• 2:45:21Danny Jones?

  Hmm.

• 2:45:21Speaker 03

  That's it. That's what I did when I was growing up. That's probably what you did when you were growing up.

• 2:45:25Danny Jones?

  Right, yeah, I would be lucky to have a pager when I was growing up.

• 2:45:30Speaker 03

  So.

• 2:45:30Danny Jones?

  It's a crazy scary world that we're living in and it's moving at an exponential speed. It seems like it's just the, the, the, the speed of the technological advancement is just at a, is just going faster and faster and faster every year. I feel like I just learned about these L L Ms a year ago. And now it's just like they've taken over. They're taking over industries, they're taking over movies.

• 2:45:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, people ask, ask me all the time, well, what do you think? What's AI going to do to, you know, documentaries or film in general? And I, you know, I don't know what you think, but to me it seems like we're going to be in a world, not in the very distant future where instead of going like, oh, I want to watch that film. You're going to say, okay, it's Tuesday night. I got, I want to watch a, you know, sixty-three minute film.

• 2:46:17Danny Jones?

  In five minutes.

• 2:46:19Speaker 03

  Well, no, I want to watch, I want to watch a sixty-three minute film. It's going to have Scarlett Johansson in it. It's going to be a romantic comedy. It takes place in Portland. It's going to be about, it's going to involve a dog. And there's going to be some, you know, misunderstanding about identity.

• 2:46:36Danny Jones?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:37Speaker 03

  Go. You know?

• 2:46:39Danny Jones?

  Oh, my God.

• 2:46:39Speaker 03

  That's what.

• 2:46:40Danny Jones?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:46:42Speaker 03

  So you and me, man, we're.

• 2:46:46Danny Jones?

  It's crazy. Have you seen the music stuff, the, the covers of different bands where they turn them into soul music?

• 2:46:51Speaker 03

  No.

• 2:46:52Danny Jones?

  You haven't seen this? Oh, my God. Steve, pull up the, uh, pull up the soul cover band that covers like metal bands. There's, there's a Metallica one. There's like a Limp Bizkit one. Uh, they, basically they cover like all the, you could plug in this guy. There's these people on YouTube who are plugging in specific like modern songs and then turning them into like soul jazz covers. And they are fantastic. Like if I had never heard that song before, I would have thought like this would have been like a, a top hit done by like real people. It's indistinguishable from, from reality.

• 2:47:25Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I, I personally think that,

• 2:47:29Speaker 03

  I mean, not exactly, but the, uh, Matrix like version of a future is, is not, you know, it's not science fiction. It's feasible and pretty plausible.

• 2:47:44Danny Jones?

  Yeah, I hope so, man. Well, listen, man, thank you for coming and doing this stuff and, and talking and explaining all this up to me that the art stuff is fantastic. Oh yeah. Here, here's the, uh, let's play, play Master of Puppets.

• 2:47:57Speaker 03

  Oh my God. Oh my God.

• 2:48:00Danny Jones?

  There's no views on this.

• 2:48:03Speaker 03

  There's a lot of these, uh, soul covered bands.

• 2:48:10Speaker 05

  And the passion play crumbling away.

• 2:48:16Danny Jones?

  Go like halfway into the song.

• 2:48:26Danny Jones?

  Go farther in.

• 2:48:34Speaker 05

  I'm pulling your strings, twisting your mind and smashing your dreams.

• 2:48:45Danny Jones?

  It's not bad. It's pretty incredible, isn't it?

• 2:48:48Speaker 03

  It's unbelievable. And you're right, it is, I mean,

• 2:48:53Danny Jones?

  I would never know that it was AI.

• 2:48:54Speaker 03

  Came out of nowhere.

• 2:48:55Danny Jones?

  It's wild.

• 2:48:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:48:57Danny Jones?

  Tell people where they can find more of your work, um, get your books, your doc, and listen, or, uh, watch your documentaries, all that stuff.

• 2:49:03Speaker 03

  Sure. The book is called Con/Artist, Con Artist, and it's, uh, it's published by Hachette. You can find it pretty much anywhere. And, um, if you look up my name, johnpiero.com, G I A M P I E R O dot com, you'll see more of the stuff that I'm working on. Uh, Bad Influence was out on Netflix. Uh, the Royal Stunt Documentary should be out, uh, sometime soon.

• 2:49:29Danny Jones?

  I'm looking forward to it, man. We'll link it all below. Thanks again for your time.

• 2:49:32Speaker 03

  Thank you, thank you.

• 2:49:33Danny Jones?

  All right. Good night, everybody.

• 2:49:36Speaker 00

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