#2395 - Mariana van Zeller

Mariana van Zeller is the host and executive producer of National Geographic's "Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller." Check out her new podcast "The Hidden Third" and also more content on her new YouTube channel. ⁠https://www.youtube.com/marianavanzeller⁠ Perplexity: Download the app or ask Perplexity anything at ⁠https://pplx.ai/rogan⁠. 50% off your first box at ⁠https://www.thefarmersdog.com/rogan⁠! Buy 1 Get 1 Free Trucker Hat with code ROGAN at ⁠https://happydad.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The Joe Rogan Experience.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Training by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

• 0:12Speaker 02

  Is it really not good for you? That glass of wine is so nice.

• 0:15Joe Rogan?

  Well, one glass of wine I do not think is bad for you.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's all I have.

• 0:19Joe Rogan?

  It's not great for you.

• 0:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 0:20Joe Rogan?

  But a glass of wine relaxes you and there's probably benefit in being relaxed.

• 0:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 0:25Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 0:26Joe Rogan?

  But the problem was, I own a nightclub and I'm there all the time.

• 0:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:30Joe Rogan?

  And I'm, you know, out with the fellas and then I'd maybe have a couple glasses of whiskey on a podcast with some guys and then... When I stopped, I was like, "Oh, my God, I feel so much better." Like, why was that poisoning myself?

• 0:42Speaker 02

  Really? You did feel much better? Immediately, you felt it?

• 0:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, because when you think about it... We rolling? Yeah. So when I stopped drinking, I was probably having like two or three glasses of some kind of alcohol a night, two or three nights a week. And then I'd go out to dinner with my wife and have like a glass or two of wine. That's a lot of drinks over the week. And you don't think it's much because you're not drunk, but the next day I'd be like, "Ugh," like a little draggy, like when I go to the gym. And that's gone.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 1:15Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  I wish I had that astron.

• 1:17Joe Rogan?

  Ha, it's not even straight. It was easy to do.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  Was it?

• 1:22Joe Rogan?

  I don't... Yeah, I didn't even miss it.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  You know, I had a... I haven't had a glass of anything for a week. Now, I had surgery, exactly a week ago.

• 1:28Joe Rogan?

  What'd you have done?

• 1:29Speaker 02

  An appendectomy.

• 1:30Joe Rogan?

  Ooh.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Yep. I was, uh... It was exactly last Thursday, which is why I have these marks on my arms. Um, yeah, I thought I had to go to the bathroom all day and then my husband forced me because I had stomach pain and I just thought I had food poisoning or something, so I kept on going to the toilet.

• 1:46Joe Rogan?

  Those are scary.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  And nothing was happening.

• 1:48Joe Rogan?

  They burst.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I didn't burst, but my husband forced me to go to the hospital and I got there and, yeah, it was appendicitis.

• 1:53Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  And I had emergency appendectomy the next morning. Um, but so, uh, which recovery has been totally fine, but I haven't wanted to drink because I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to come here today. And I wanted to recover faster, so, um, yeah, so I think it's the longest I've ever been drinking.

• 2:15Joe Rogan?

  Well, you have a very, very stressful job. It's insanely stressful. You are one of the most boots-on-the-ground journalists I've ever met. You go to some really dangerous and terrifying places. Like, I still get nightmares from that video where you showed me where you went to the jungle where they process cocaine. And then walked out with them, hiked out with them, through the... I mean, that was just nuts.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't mean to cause you nightmares, but I love doing what I do. You know, we've done five seasons of Trafficked. The last season just premiered a couple of months ago. It's available now on Hulu. And unfortunately, it's the last season of Trafficked.

• 2:58Joe Rogan?

  Why's that?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  I think a few reasons. I think it's, you know, it's a risky show to put together, right? It's a costly show. It's... Disney decided that Nagio should be doing more natural history and animal programming. And, yeah, I think Trafficked is just a difficult... It is a really challenging show to put together. But I'm incredibly proud of the work we've done. And this last season, the fifth season, has some of my favorite stories we've done. And I'm now starting a podcast. You know, I launched it yesterday. So now I'm your competition.

• 3:34Joe Rogan?

  Someone will do your show again somewhere else, though. It's too good.

• 3:37Speaker 02

  This is what I'm hoping, is with the podcast. It's on YouTube, and I'm growing it into something bigger. So it starts with interviews, a podcast called The Hidden Third. Because an estimated 35% of the global economy are these black and gray markets, which is what I've reported on for the past few years.

• 3:52Joe Rogan?

  Whoa, wait a minute. Really? Thirty-five percent of the economy?

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Estimated 35%, which is what economists call the hidden third. So we're not just talking about illegal activities and goods, like drugs and scams and whatnot, and guns. We're also talking about... So the gray... That's the black market. And then there's the gray market, which are the... is the unregulated part of the economy. So untaxed work, untaxed goods, everything from like the man selling fruit on the corner.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  You know, to other, other jobs and, and goods that are in tax. But this actually has an effect on all of us because it's less money that comes in for schools and infrastructure and hospitals and all the stuff we need. And then apart from all that we know, which is the black market and how that affects us all, which is, you know, whether you talk about guns or drugs or immigration, I mean, it all has a direct impact on our lives. So with this podcast, what I really wanted to do is after reporting on these black markets for 20 years, is I wanted to have a place like this where I can have intimate, raw, you know, sometimes difficult conversations with people who have lived or are living on the other side of the law and who, you know, I wanted to figure out why somebody decides

• 5:03Speaker 02

  to become a smuggler, a trafficker, a scammer, a bookie, you know, all these crazy lives that people lead, see how it affects us all, understand why, that what they do affects us all. And also, I think the most important part for me, which has always been, and I've talked about this with you, which is trying to understand if the circumstances were different, if it could have been you and me doing that, you know?

• 5:28Joe Rogan?

  I think most certainly that's the case.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, most certainly as the case geographically.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Oh, 100% geographically.

• 5:36Joe Rogan?

  If you have no options and you're stuck in a third world country, guess what?

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:42Joe Rogan?

  You know, you do what you gotta do.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. It was that story that we did in the same episode you mentioned, the cocaine trafficking, which I will never forget, which was the kid who was carrying in his backpack, right? He was 16, 17 year old kid carrying cocaine, 20 kilos of cocaine on his back for days on end in the jungles, seen so many of his friends being killed in front of him by rebel gangs, rival gangs. And when he, you know, when I asked him, why are you doing what you do? He says, because I've always wanted... To be a dentist. I want to go to school and be a dentist, but my family's too poor and they can't afford my education. And the only job that I have available for me now is, uh, is doing this cocaine trafficking or, you know, carrying cocaine on my back. And these are stories I hear all the time. So the, uh, the idea of being able to place

• 6:27Speaker 02

  ourselves in people's shoes and understand that, yes, even the people that we consider the bad guys could be me and you, as, as you know, has always been very important for me. So the podcast allows me to do that.

• 6:36Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's great.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:38Joe Rogan?

  When, when you say that, like, it's one-third, how much of it is stuff that's not dangerous? Like, selling fruit on the side of the road and

• 6:45Speaker 02

  So it's

• 6:46Joe Rogan?

  Untaxed labor.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  It's difficult to have exact numbers, but the estimate is that about fifteen percent, fifteen to twenty percent are black markets and the rest are gray markets. So the totality is around thirty-five percent, an estimate.

• 7:00Joe Rogan?

  Okay.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Um, but, I mean,

• 7:02Joe Rogan?

  So it's kind of half?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, more or less.

• 7:04Joe Rogan?

  Half dangerous stuff?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:06Joe Rogan?

  Half people that are just not

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Untaxed, unregulated stuff.

• 7:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  But, I mean, they also mix, right? Because, um, you know, a lot of times what happens in one side affects the other, you know. Um, one of the, the really interest, the, the, the things that I think we've talked about a lot is, uh, I think this number shocks a lot of people, but if you think of the drug trade alone, six hundred billion dollars, that's the estimate, anywhere between three hundred and six hundred billion dollars every year just from the drug trade alone. Um, you know, these, these are crazy numbers.

• 7:42Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  And so it's, it's not so out of the box to think that, yeah, this is a hard, a large percentage of our economy.

• 7:49Joe Rogan?

  Is it difficult to get people to come and sit with you on a podcast and talk about illegal activities?

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Yes, but it's, it was also on the show. I think the harder part is that on the show, we figured out a way of how to make them comfortable because I would go to them, right? On the podcast, it's harder to convince an active trafficker or smuggler to come and sit down in my office.

• 8:13Joe Rogan?

  Right, I would think it's a setup.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  So, yeah. So, uh, you know, a lot of times, the meetings that we had on the show happened in undisclosed locations, in vans, for example, or in places that they felt comfortable with. Their, you know, drug labs, or their drug houses, or their homes sometimes. So this has been a little bit harder, but we're making it, we're making it work. We're having, we're hoping that it grows so then we actually have money to start traveling more and going to some of them.

• 8:40Joe Rogan?

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• 11:20Joe Rogan?

  Is this something that you always wanted to do, like do a podcast? Or is it something that was a necessity when the show was canceled? Or did you think, maybe I should branch out?

• 11:31Speaker 02

  I've always wanted to do it, and I tried. We had done an iteration of it a couple of years ago, but I just didn't have the time because I was traveling, you know, half the year or more for traffic. So it was really hard to do a weekly podcast. It was almost impossible. But I spent so much time talking to people who have really interesting backgrounds, and then we use only five minutes of their interview, if that. And these are fascinating people that, again...

• 12:00Joe Rogan?

  Do you have access to that footage?

• 12:02Speaker 02

  The footage?

• 12:04Joe Rogan?

  The footage that you edited out?

• 12:06Speaker 02

  Uh, yes. I mean, yes.

• 12:09Joe Rogan?

  But do you have access to it? Like, are you allowed to use it?

• 12:11Speaker 02

  If it's owned by National Geographic, it's owned by National Geographic.

• 12:14Joe Rogan?

  I wonder if they would sign off on letting you put that on your podcast, because that would be fascinating as well, because I bet there's a lot that was missed on the editing floor.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Oh, you have no idea. Yeah, absolutely. But the good news is that I have still all these...

• 12:25Joe Rogan?

  Come on, Nat Geo. Let her have the footage. It'd only help.

• 12:29Speaker 02

  But I have all the contacts. So as soon as I start, as this starts building up, the podcast, the hope is that I'll build it myself on the ground up, because all the contacts are mine, you know, all the expertise is mine.

• 12:42Joe Rogan?

  You have contacts with, like, assassins and drug dealers. Text each other? Hey, what's up? Send emojis?

• 12:47Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah. I mean, these are people. I mean, assassins, less so, but the traffickers and the smugglers and the scammers, absolutely, I'm still in touch with a lot of them.

• 12:57Joe Rogan?

  Wow. Do you have like a file? Or you're like?

• 13:01Speaker 02

  You want to see my secret file?

• 13:03Joe Rogan?

  But do you have them like labeled like super shady, less than just unfortunate circumstances? Cold-blooded killers?

• 13:14Speaker 02

  It's all under my encrypted messaging apps. No, uh, no, you know, it's really crazy because of the success of traffic, the amount of messages I still get on Instagram and social media on a weekly basis from people who want to be on the show. Now with the podcast as well, I'm hoping that it will grow into that. But people just showing me their drugs and their guns, they show me photos of the stuff that they're doing and they, they...

• 13:39Joe Rogan?

  Is it because these people feel like they're gonna die anyway? Like they're gonna probably get killed?

• 13:43Speaker 02

  A lot of them are, you know.

• 13:44Joe Rogan?

  And they're not afraid?

• 13:45Speaker 02

  One of the most interesting people we filmed for this last season of Traffic was a guy that we called El Ringo. So it was the premiere episode of the season. It was about cartel, it was called Cartel USA. It's about the cartel presence in the United States. So I've reported extensively on cartels in Mexico, right? And in Colombia and in other parts. But I haven't actually spent a lot of time with the cartel here or seen what kind of influence they have in the US. And so I had this idea, okay, let's try to figure out how massive their presence is here? How they make the money? How do they distribute the drugs? And what impact is it having on, in America? And what I found was, uh, several very surprising facts.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  The story actually starts in Sinaloa because I had to go there to get access to the people in the US. So I had to go to the top bosses to be able to get the green light to then film their operations here in the US.

• 14:38Joe Rogan?

  What is that like?

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Sinaloa, I mean, it's the place in the world that I've reported most, more from, apart from the United States. I've reported more from Sinaloa than anywhere else. I have good contacts there. I have an incredible local journalist called Miguel Angel Vega, who's called, he's El Fixer. He's the guy that any journalist in the world who wants to get access to the cartel will contact him. And then he has his own contacts. He's just an incredibly brave journalist with his own contacts. And then he basically contacts his people and then they decide if they want to talk or not. And a lot of times they don't. And sometimes, I've done this so many times that by now they trust me. They know that I'm not law enforcement.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  And so they allow me to film their operation. So we've I filmed super meth labs, uh, super labs of meth there. I filmed, uh, fentanyl lab. I filmed a guy cooking fentanyl. We were all full, you know, masked up and I filmed the whole operation. Um, I mean, uh, I filmed, uh, sicarios. I've, uh, yeah, I filmed more from Sinaloa than anywhere else in the world.

• 15:46Joe Rogan?

  But it's gotta be very scary to go there and hang out with those people. Is, as, did they put boundaries on topics?

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Uh, not on top, yes, for example. I'm not, even though I'm in Sinaloa, I'm not supposed to ask which cartel people work for. Where it's obvious that when you're in Sinaloa, everyone works for the Sinaloa cartel. I mean, everybody that's involved in the cartel works for the Sinaloa cartel. Um, they are the cartels trying to make, um, headway in the, in that region, but usually it's all Sinaloa. Um, so you're not supposed to ask, uh, who exactly they work for. And, um, and yeah, there are some questions about money, for example, how much money they make. People don't like to, uh, be, ask that. But I always ask all those questions anyway. And I, I, you know, you get a sense whether you're pushing it too far or not.

• 16:34Joe Rogan?

  Right. Have you ever had a moment when you're doing that where like, I think I crossed the line?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Um, we had a mo- I had a moment where we stayed too long. So it was a day we were doing a story. It was for season one. It was about guns and how about American guns, the flow of American guns to Mexico.

• 16:51Joe Rogan?

  That was when you got the police people that were selling drugs illegally. So for people that didn't see that episode, it's quite fascinating. Police in Los Angeles, dirty cops, were loading up their trunks with guns that they've confiscated and then selling them across the border in Mexico.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Oh, they were selling it to gang members or affiliate of cartel members in LA who would then ship it. Yeah, they would cross the border and ship it to LA. Yeah, we visit, it was, it was a scene. Yeah, it started with a scene and that episode started with a scene in LA where we interviewed a guy. Who goes by the name of T. And he had a room packed with rifles. And when I started asking him where they were from, he was like, oh, this one was confiscated. We have an LAPD contact that, you know, sells us a lot of our drugs.

• 17:39Joe Rogan?

  I just don't understand what benefit to them.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  To the police?

• 17:44Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, for them, no, but for them, no, for them to talk to you.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Which, which one?

• 17:49Joe Rogan?

  Any of them, like especially the cops.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  So it's the question that I get, the cops didn't talk, we didn't get the talks to talk to us.

• 17:58Joe Rogan?

  From the people that.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  We got it from the gang member, yeah.

• 18:01Joe Rogan?

  That the cops sold the guns to.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  So I've spoken, spoken to cops who are doing amazing work here in the US in combating drug trafficking and gun trafficking and in Mexico as well. But, but these, we're talking about corrupt cops. So we, yeah, that was not the case. This was a gang member telling me how he had acquired those guns from LAPD, confiscated guns that he had acquired from.

• 18:24Joe Rogan?

  But even that, like, what would be the benefit to him to talk to you?

• 18:28Speaker 02

  So in that case, it went back to my contacts in Sinaloa. And I think it's three reasons why people talk to us. Think the first one is ego, people want to boast. And if you're part of the Sinaloa cartel, or even if you're a boss in the Sinaloa cartel, and you're, there's an ongoing war between you, a turf war between you and another gang like the JNG, which is the cartel Jalisco. They're, they're fighting for power, right? So here's an opportunity to show how powerful you are. So it's ego, right? And a lot of these people that talk to me, I don't, you know, very often, or more often than not, it's not the bosses or the kingpins that I'm talking to, right? It's the sicarios, it's the middle and low level people.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  It's the traffickers, it's the chemists, the smugglers, it's not the kingpins. And for them. They spend their whole lives doing something that sometimes their own families don't know they do. Like, I remember an episode we did about counterfeit money, people who make fake US dollars and euros in Peru, in Lima. And this guy, like, shiny eyes, so excited, showing me how he finishes these bills to make it look and feel and smell exactly like a hundred-dollar bill. And when I asked him, and he's a taxi driver by day and he does this by night, and I was asking him, "So why did you accept talking to us?" He says, "Look, my wife doesn't even know how good I am. I am the best of the best at doing this.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Like, nobody in the whole world can make this as well as I do." And I always wanted to be able to talk to somebody and show off how good my skills are, and you're giving me an opportunity to do this.

• 20:07Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  So I think ego plays a huge role. And then impunity, like, in places like Mexico, so much corruption, like, what's the downside to talking to this woman who comes and asks funny questions, right?

• 20:18Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 20:19Speaker 02

  And then, and then I think it's the wanting to be understood. I think everybody wants to be understood. And they know they're considered the bad guys. They know that, you know, you know, there's so much stigma around what they do. And I tell everybody, "I'm here to try to understand what you do. I'm not here to judge you," because I think it's much more important to understand why you do what you do.

• 20:40Joe Rogan?

  The guy who makes counterfeit bills, what's his process?

• 20:43Speaker 02

  Oh, it's freaking fascinating.

• 20:44Joe Rogan?

  Because does he replicate a dollar bill with all, like, the little things inside of it?

• 20:50Speaker 02

  It was incredible. So there's different, there's the graphics person, there's the printer, and then he is, he does the finishing job. He's the finisher. And he said he was the best finisher in the job. And I said, he's, I started calling him Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese football player, because he's the finisher in soccer. So I called him Ronaldo, "Okay, you're Ronaldo." And he uses, he uses a

• 21:13Speaker 02

  It's kind of like a porridge that I used to eat when I was a kid in Portugal. It's called like, it's a type of like a cerelac. You don't, you guys don't have it here, but it's like a meal. What do you call that?

• 21:22Joe Rogan?

  Cornmeal.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Like a cornmeal. And he uses that, and I saw him using it.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  It's not cerelac, actually, it's Maizena, which is another brand. But he uses this sort of cornmeal to finish these bills, to make it the consistency when you touch it, feel exactly like the real stuff.

• 21:40Joe Rogan?

  Is it made with the same paper?

• 21:42Speaker 02

  Uh, no, it's a different paper. The paper is the hardest part to get, because the paper you can only get in the US Federal Reserves or wherever the paper comes from.

• 21:50Joe Rogan?

  But that seems like an easy thing to duplicate.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not very hard, and particularly if you put the, you know, all the little creases and curves and what.

• 22:02Joe Rogan?

  What about those little things that you can only see with like a flashlight?

• 22:05Speaker 02

  They, they have ways around that, too. It was incredible. We brought some home, haven't used it, it's at my office. But it is.

• 22:12Joe Rogan?

  Isn't it illegal to possess that stuff?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  Okay, so we actually didn't bring the actual, we, we brought the cutouts so we wouldn't be able to use it. But it's not, it's in the background of my podcast, so.

• 22:22Joe Rogan?

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• 23:06Joe Rogan?

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• 23:35Speaker 02

  You could see the cutout. And it's really, it's phenomenal. It's crazy.

• 23:39Joe Rogan?

  What, how many bills that are counterfeit make it their way into our currency? Is this it right here?

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is it. This is the finisher. Yeah. Yeah, he is. And you see, he's teaching, he's showing me. And there's a glue too, yeah.

• 23:54Joe Rogan?

  And so he's making it seem more weathered, more worn?

• 23:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they make it seem weathered and worn.

• 24:00Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  It's, it's, it's so crazy.

• 24:04Joe Rogan?

  And how, how many?

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Cook its porridge, you see, yeah.

• 24:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, so he scrubs it down a little bit?

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, with a toothbrush. All stuff that he bought at the store, like next door, that, that, you know.

• 24:16Joe Rogan?

  How much currency goes through this guy's production?

• 24:21Speaker 02

  I cannot remember. This was five years ago, season one, but it was a lot. And it's the US Secret Services that are in charge of going after these guys. So we actually saw the real money being made when we came back to the US. And, but I can't remember, but it was millions of dollars. I mean, there was, there were, it was like five or six families in Peru and Lima. They're the center of all this, that were making, that were in charge, that were the best of the best at making these. And we got inside one of these.

• 24:49Joe Rogan?

  And how does that stuff get into US distribution?

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Uh, usually in bags, um, commercial airlines, just like drugs. A lot of drugs make it in commercial airlines, same thing. Commercial airlines, bags, people would carry. Uh, the money mules would carry it, actually carry money.

• 25:04Joe Rogan?

  And then when it gets to America, what do they do with it?

• 25:08Speaker 02

  They distribute it. So it's funny, it's interesting. They actually start, they go to small towns and they distribute it in grocery stores. And they don't go to like a Walmart or a big superstore. They go to small first. And that's how it gets in the general, that's how, that's how it starts getting used. They buy things and, uh, Ah, I wish I remember this was five years ago. Um, they buy things, but they also have people that exchange that for less cash. Yeah, that's what it was. I think they get, end up getting people.

• 25:36Joe Rogan?

  So people that know.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, that know, and they end up getting like seventy percent of what, I think it was something like seventy percent of the actual cost for real bills. So they get real money in exchange for.

• 25:47Joe Rogan?

  They get seventy percent of what a real bill is?

• 25:49Speaker 02

  I mean, the whole operation, I think, was.

• 25:51Joe Rogan?

  So if you have a twenty dollar bill, you get seventy percent of that back in profit? Like a fake twenty dollar bill?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the head of the group that then sells the bills when they're made.

• 26:01Joe Rogan?

  I would have thought it'd be way less than that, for someone to be willing to exchange you real money for fake money.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have to, I have to verify, again, this is five years ago. But we've done fifty episodes, but I think it was something like that, if I remember correctly.

• 26:14Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy, though, that it just gets distributed by small businesses.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and so one of the things we started was we reported on a lot of these small businesses that found out that they were having massive amounts of loss every year from fake bills. And, uh, and I remember it was in, in Oregon. Um, we did a few stories there where a lot of people were complaining about this, small business owners.

• 26:37Joe Rogan?

  How do they get discovered that they have fake bills?

• 26:40Speaker 02

  I think they go to the bank and try to.

• 26:41Joe Rogan?

  Oh, the bank knows? So does the bank, do they like look at every number on the bills? Like, how do they find out that they're fake?

• 26:49Speaker 02

  I think the bank is able to find out just by looking at it.

• 26:52Joe Rogan?

  Oh, okay.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Because I think it, it, it, you know, would fool us, but it doesn't fool somebody who's trained to look at these bills.

• 26:59Joe Rogan?

  So the bank, when you bring money to the bank, they look at every bill?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  They're supposed to, yeah. I know that that's how they figured out that they had been doing counterfeit.

• 27:07Joe Rogan?

  Go to a bank where people are just phoning it in. They just assume that it's real. They don't care. Yeah, that's crazy, though. So like, what is like, for the overall United States, like, how much money comes in every year that's fake?

• 27:21Speaker 02

  Oh, it was, I cannot remember at all the statistics, but it was, it was a lot. It was like in the millions of dollars that people were making down there.

• 27:28Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  It was crazy, yeah. But this all, back to the story of why I talked about this guy, about why people talk to us. And, oh, and back to the Cartel USA story.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Which started in Sinaloa. There was a point to this. You were asking me about how it ended up in the US. Oh, what I discovered with cartel's operations in the United States. So, one of the people we interviewed, which was really fascinating, and it was somebody who had this, carried this load on his back and why he decided to talk to us, was this guy called El Gringo, or we called him El Gringo. And El Gringo was an American citizen who doesn't speak a word of Spanish and who's sort of the wholesale buyer of drugs from the cartel. And then is in charge of distributing the drugs here in the US. He distributes most of his drugs through commercial airlines, usually Delta, because they have really good baggage fees. They, seventy pounds, two bags, seventy pounds if you fly business.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  And so, a lot of times it was strippers who would carry the drugs from the West Coast to the East Coast. And he, one of the things I'll never forget, he says, "If you're taking a Delta flight from the West Coast to the East Coast, I guarantee that there's a very high chance that somebody is carrying drugs on one of those flights."

• 28:40Joe Rogan?

  Wow, you said strippers?

• 28:42Speaker 02

  Strippers, yeah.

• 28:43Joe Rogan?

  Why do they use strippers?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Because they are, because people don't suspect it's a woman. So, people are less suspicious of women.

• 28:51Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  And there's a higher chance that they'll make it. And they are more likely to take the money to do this.

• 28:58Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  In this case, to do this job. Or they, I mean, at least those are the people that he found would agree to do this.

• 29:04Joe Rogan?

  Boy.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't want to say anything bad about strippers.

• 29:06Joe Rogan?

  You get busted doing that, though.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:08Joe Rogan?

  That is a big penalty.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:10Joe Rogan?

  You're going to jail for a long time.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  It's obviously a terrible idea.

• 29:14Joe Rogan?

  Such a risk.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, this guy, El Gringo, decided to talk to me. And he was the one who contacted me. He contacted me initially. And when, telling me that he had a story he wanted to share, that he was involved with the cartel. And then, so when we started doing the story about the cartel, I reached back out to him and said, "Actually, I'm doing a story about cartel presence here. Would you want to, you know, be on the show?" And, and he agreed. And he traveled out to me. And we met. And he said, "Look, I've been dying to tell this story because if I get whacked," which he thought he might, he wanted his story to be out there. He wanted somebody to have heard his whole story.

• 29:52Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he'd been threatened by the cartel. They'd been, sent him photos of his house. And where, they knew exactly where he lived and where his family was. Yeah, crazy.

• 30:03Joe Rogan?

  Jeez.

• 30:05Joe Rogan?

  So.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  That was a crazy story.

• 30:06Joe Rogan?

  When you go over and you have these conversations with the cartels, like, what is that like? Do they blindfold you and drive you out there? Do they take your phone away?

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, they ask for our phones to be off, turned off.

• 30:19Joe Rogan?

  That's not good enough. Don't they know that's not good enough?

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Where we go in Sinaloa.

• 30:26Joe Rogan?

  Uh huh.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Is areas that are operated and controlled by the cartel. It's not as if law enforcement doesn't know exactly where they are. They do.

• 30:35Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  You know.

• 30:36Joe Rogan?

  Okay. They just don't want you recording.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  They just don't want us recording and they, they are afraid that if we by any chance are being followed by American law enforcement, they're way more scared of the American law enforcement than they are of Mexican law enforcement.

• 30:50Joe Rogan?

  Because Mexican law enforcement's probably paid off.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Because there's a lot of corruption, yes, a lot of corruption. I mean, I've been in situations where, you know, there were police officers in the room. So.

• 31:02Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. So.

• 31:04Joe Rogan?

  Corrupt cops?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  Corrupt cops, yeah.

• 31:06Joe Rogan?

  Wow. Just in uniform?

• 31:09Speaker 02

  Sometimes in uniform, sometimes just hanging out, yeah. They're corrupt cops who work many times for the cartel, right? And that happens all over. I mean, that's not just in Mexico that it's happened. I've seen it in Colombia. We've, I've seen it in Brazil. We did a story about militias, where I filmed a militia in Brazil with cops around. So, yeah, that happens unfortunately everywhere. But, so when, it's not as if they don't know where these people are. They're just afraid that maybe the DEA, knowing that I'm a journalist and I go and do this stuff, that they might be following me. So sometimes they ask for our phones to stay behind, but a lot of times they just want our phones off, so that we don't transmit any signals.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  But, once we're in their territory, it takes months to get them to say yes. And there's all these ground rules, right? We can't disclose locations or people, we have to. Make sure we always bring masks and T-shirts, long-sleeve T-shirts and hoodies and everything with us because if they have tattoos and we want to make sure that they, we don't show who they are. Because that can create a problem for them, but it can also create a problem for us and it can create a problem to the local journalists that help us because they're going to be the first targets.

• 32:17Joe Rogan?

  If I was this finisher guy, I would say, you gotta put sunglasses on me because I have very recognizable eyes.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  You know, it's interesting, most people don't want to wear sunglasses. We always travel with sunglasses and we ask people to put on sunglasses and people sometimes don't. They say we don't care.

• 32:30Joe Rogan?

  That guy needed sunglasses.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:32Joe Rogan?

  His eyes are very recognizable, very unusual coloring under the eyes.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  I have not met, or I haven't heard of a single person yet who has been caught from our show and I'm in touch with a lot of them.

• 32:42Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's great.

• 32:43Speaker 02

  It's been, it's been good.

• 32:44Joe Rogan?

  It might just be because they're not trying.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  I, I really realistically don't think it's, it's not because they don't know that these, who they are or where they are. It's not that law enforcement is blind to this.

• 32:56Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  I think it's, it's, yeah, unwillingness sometimes to go after this. It's realizing that actually these are the low-level guys and what they really want is to get at the big guys, the kingpins.

• 33:08Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Which is a better strategy anyway.

• 33:10Joe Rogan?

  But isn't that sometimes how they do it? They get a low, low guy and get him to turn?

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:14Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 33:16Joe Rogan?

  Oof.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:18Joe Rogan?

  What a terrifying world that only exists because of an illegal market that the United States fuels.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, the biggest drug consumers in the world.

• 33:26Joe Rogan?

  We're number one.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Largest, number one.

• 33:28Joe Rogan?

  We're number one.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Number one. I mean, number one in incarcerations, number one. It's a hundred and fifty billion dollars in drugs that we spend every year.

• 33:36Joe Rogan?

  That's so crazy.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  It is crazy and, you know, we share this border with Mexico, which is fortunate and very unfortunate for them.

• 33:44Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  They blame us for creating the consumer market. We blame them for creating the, the drugs that feed this consumer market and there's...

• 33:52Joe Rogan?

  Is there anyone that has a realistic solution to how to at least mitigate some of that?

• 33:58Speaker 02

  We've talked about this. We had a little bit of a debate about this last time because I keep giving the example of Portugal and you said, which has decriminalized drugs, right?

• 34:08Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  I know Portugal is not the United States. We're 10 million people. We're a small country. But whatever, it worked there.

• 34:17Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Drug abuse went down, incarceration went down, HIV went down, levels of HIV went down. So it worked there. They tried it in Oregon, right? It went terribly.

• 34:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but Oregon's a bad place to try it.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:30Joe Rogan?

  Because Oregon was already so lawless that going to Oregon, it like allowed people to like ramp it up. And so because you could get anything and everything was decriminalized, they just went ham.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. And also, they didn't have the system in place for people who actually wanted rehab.

• 34:45Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  And so when you don't, what are people gonna do? They're gonna go back to drugs.

• 34:50Joe Rogan?

  Even then, rehab is very ineffective, like percentage-wise.

• 34:55Speaker 02

  It is. That was another episode we did this season that you should watch. It's called The Rehab Scam. It's The Great American Rehab Scam.

• 35:01Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  And it's about how in California, we did, we filmed in Arizona and California, in California alone, we got an insurance, the head of the insurance investigations in California, an insurance fraud investigator in California, told us that in his estimates, that he said, they're probably very low, 10% of the thousands of rehab facilities out there are probably a fraud and a scam, in which they get-

• 35:27Joe Rogan?

  10%?

• 35:28Speaker 02

  10%, which is a crazy number. But he thinks it's a low number, that it's probably much higher than that. So we, what we, our story was all about body brokering and rehab scams and-

• 35:38Joe Rogan?

  Body brokering?

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Body brokering, yeah.

• 35:40Joe Rogan?

  What is that?

• 35:41Speaker 02

  It's a term that applies to rehab scams. So rehab scams is basically the buying and selling of addicts in this billion-dollar market, right? So it's a-

• 35:55Speaker 02

  They create these fake rehab centers that bill insurance for treatments that they are not actually giving people. So, for example, it's a huge problem in Arizona, and that's why we started, and in California, but we started in Arizona. Native Americans have really easy access to health insurance through the Indian American Health Plan that they created. And it started as a good thing because it was difficult, a lot of people lived in reservations far away, a lot of people, you know, because of generational trauma and alcohol abuse and drug abuse, there's a real need for health insurance and for them to have access to health insurance.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  So you have these huge communities that, when COVID happened, the state made it even easier for them to get the help that they needed through health insurance. But all these bad actors realized, oh, this is great. We're just going to build these fake rehab centers, go around in white vans, literally, there's like thousands of people still missing in Arizona, most of them Native Americans. And they go out in white vans to these reservations in Arizona, New Mexico, and they bring people, people who, you know, have problems with drug and alcohol, and they bring people to these centers. And then they start billing insurance, they get you on an insurance plan, and they start billing insurance, crazy amounts of money.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  Like, we spoke, we were investigating this one facility that they were making eight hundred and something million dol- sorry, eight hundred and something thousand, eight hundred and seventy thousand dollars a week, a week, from, you know, dozens of people that they were housing.

• 37:38Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  And not actually providing them the treatment that they so desperately needed.

• 37:43Joe Rogan?

  So just house them?

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Which is also illegal. You can't house some, you can't offer somebody free housing. And then tell them that you will only get the free housing if you go and do our treatment. That's illegal. It's an illegal kickback. But so they were doing this out in the open. And some of these business operators were actually not even Americans. They were Nigerians. I found out that there were some Nigerians that owned some of these rehab facilities.

• 38:07Joe Rogan?

  Nigerians are so good at scamming.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 38:09Joe Rogan?

  Ingenious.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:12Joe Rogan?

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• 38:55Joe Rogan?

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• 39:24Speaker 02

  But Americans too. I mean, there were a lot of them that were Americans. So these guys are like driving around in Ferraris and, you know, people are living in these fake centers. I spoke to people who the therapy that they were they were billing like $2,500 for a therapy session, one hour therapy session. That was a Zoom meeting, Zoom call with 600 people on the call. And that's the therapy session.

• 39:47Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  It's bananas. Or people who weren't even there and they billed for insurance and the people wasn't even there.

• 39:54Joe Rogan?

  So 600 people were they were collecting $2,000 from 600 people for one hour. Wow.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  It is insane.

• 40:02Joe Rogan?

  Well, I could see why they would do that.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:04Joe Rogan?

  If that's a possibility to make money. Yeah, if you open the door to criminals, and the thing about rehabilitation centers is a lot of people that get, go to rehab or get involved in rehab, they've also had shady pasts.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:18Joe Rogan?

  Right, they've been involved with criminals, and then they go, listen, man, I think there's money to be made here. Like, this ain't fixing nobody, this is court ordered rehabilitation, I had to go in here.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:29Joe Rogan?

  Let's make some money.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 40:30Joe Rogan?

  Start our own place. What is, what's the, like, what, what's the steps that one has to take if one was to open up? Not that I'm thinking about doing it. No, I'm not thinking about doing it. If someone was a scumbag.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Let's, let's teach everybody.

• 40:43Joe Rogan?

  Someone was a terrible person, not me, but if someone was a terrible person, like, what would someone do? What, like, what are the parameters? What do you have to do to open up rehab?

• 40:50Speaker 02

  You need a license, probably, a state license, but in some cases, it was just really easy to get a state license. There was, in Florida, it became a huge problem, it was called the Florida Shuffle, which was this, you were going back and forth between, you know, detox and rehabs and outpatient treatment centers, and they were all owned by the same sort of, you know, well-known fraudsters. So you have to get a, a license, but there's not much more, and that was the problem, is that anyone could get a license, and anyone can operate one of these.

• 41:18Joe Rogan?

  I was reading about a judge that recently got busted, because this judge was sentencing people to the rehab that they owned.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  That is.

• 41:27Joe Rogan?

  And so taking, like, like, dangerous, violent criminals and not incarcerating them, but instead sending them to these rehabilitation centers that they owned.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Wow, yeah.

• 41:35Joe Rogan?

  And just collecting.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is, it's so sad, it's, it's really, you know, as somebody who's reported on the opiate crisis for so long, just, that is the only hope, right? Let's figure out a way, this is, we, we have been trying to arrest ourselves and militarize.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Uh, ourselves out of this problem.

• 41:56Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it doesn't work.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  It doesn't work. It's a public health crisis.

• 41:59Joe Rogan?

  One hundred percent.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  One of the other stories we did this season was about trank dope. Do you know what trank dope is?

• 42:04Joe Rogan?

  Trank dope?

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:05Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  It's fentanyl now is being mixed with a thing called xylazine, which is an animal tranquilizer.

• 42:11Joe Rogan?

  Oh, fun.

• 42:11Speaker 02

  Uh, so fun. Uh, it's horrible. Um, and ninety percent of the fentanyl that is now being, that's coming out of Philadelphia, you know, Kensington, you've, you've seen the zombies.

• 42:21Joe Rogan?

  Oh, I have seen trank, where those people like fall over.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, like zombies, they're walking down.

• 42:27Joe Rogan?

  They're doing crazy yoga.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, in Kensington, it's the saddest thing. So we spent time in Kensington filming.

• 42:32Joe Rogan?

  What is it about that stu- is it the tranquilizer that makes them just fall over like that, standing up?

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's part of it. So it's, it's a really interesting, you know, as we all know, it all started with hoxycotton. And then it went to heroin, and heroin was a great high for people who are addicted to opiates because it was a powerful high and it would ke- keep you high for a long time. And then came fentanyl. And fentanyl gives you an even more powerful high, but it's fast acting, so you get out of it fast. So somebody realized if we mix trank, um, animal tranquilizer with this, you will, you will still have the big high, but it will extend the time that you have that high. And what is happening to, you know, thousands of people across the US is that they are taking these drugs, getting the high that they want.

• 43:21Joe Rogan?

  You're just doing it like this, so is it IV?

• 43:23Speaker 02

  Oh, my God, it's horrible. No, they're shooting it up, and this is what we shot in Kensington. Yeah, they shoot it up, and what we shot in Kensington.

• 43:30Joe Rogan?

  Oh, this is it? And where is this?

• 43:32Speaker 05

  This is Philly.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Philly, outside of Philly, it's in Kensington.

• 43:34Joe Rogan?

  It's a big problem in Philadelphia, for some reason.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  But this is, if you find, and this might be too disturbing, Jamie.

• 43:40Speaker 05

  I was just trying to find something that, just to show what he was asking for.

• 43:43Joe Rogan?

  What's too disturbing?

• 43:43Speaker 02

  It's what we filmed in our show, which was the, the wounds that come.

• 43:48Joe Rogan?

  Gangrene, yeah.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Oh, it's like, it looks like leprosy.

• 43:51Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  And it's people being amputated because.

• 43:54Speaker 05

  The title of this is losing arms and legs from trank.

• 43:56Joe Rogan?

  Mmm, oh, my God, that guy's got an arm because of it. Oh, God.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, that guy is missing an arm. But the gangrene and the open wounds, and we filmed somebody being treated, and this woman's arm was like all gone. It was just one of the most painful things to to watch and this, you know, you can imagine the smell and and.

• 44:16Joe Rogan?

  I know a comedian who went to the hospital for gangrene because of heroin.

• 44:20Speaker 02

  No.

• 44:20Joe Rogan?

  Almost lost his leg. He wound up dying eventually, but yeah.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, and now with trank, it's just gotten. And yeah, I don't think any of these people want to be doing this, right? Nobody wants to be living out on the look.

• 44:34Joe Rogan?

  Oh, boy.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  And this is not, I mean, the one we.

• 44:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is just.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Thome is even worse than this.

• 44:40Speaker 05

  Clicking around them. There's a ton of videos about it. So if anyone's curious, just go on YouTube and look.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  Good comparatively.

• 44:45Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, there's some people in this country that have no hope and they're they're just caught there. The addiction just has got them and there's no help for them. And if you get sent to a phony rehab while you're in that state, that's that is really evil. That's really evil.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  I think it's really evil too. But I I think, yeah, in many ways, people sometimes think, oh, these, they're junkies, they're they're out there, they just want this life and they have failed society. I quite frankly, think we have failed them.

• 45:18Joe Rogan?

  Well, not you and me, but yeah.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Our government.

• 45:21Joe Rogan?

  The structure of society.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, has failed them.

• 45:23Joe Rogan?

  Are you aware of IbaGain?

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Yes, I I listened to the interview you did with.

• 45:27Joe Rogan?

  With Rick Perry?

• 45:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:28Joe Rogan?

  Governor, former governor of Texas?

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was fascinating.

• 45:30Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, that is insanely effective and readily available in Mexico. And now fortunately, because of former governor Rick Perry, it's available in Texas. So they're doing it now in Texas with soldiers with PTSD, people coming back from the war with great advocacy and people that have also been hooked on substances because of some of the things that they've seen. So I think that's a great doorway into the right because the right has always viewed these things, like particularly a psychedelic, which IbaGain is, I guess.

• 46:06Joe Rogan?

  It's category one, right? It's schedule one. I don't know. I think it's schedule one. So I began schedule one. But it's certainly illegal in America. And it's thought of as, I don't know how you could ever consider it recreational. Because it's apparently a very brutal experience. And very introspective. And most people say, I did not enjoy that at all. I hated it. I had Dakota Meyer on the podcast and he talked about it. And he's like, I wanted to punch the guy who gave it to me. He's like, it's fucking terrible. For like, one whole day. You're going over every horrible aspect of your life. And it finds like, the pathways in your brain that created behavior afterwards. And it like, gives you this like insanely introspective slideshow of your life.

• 46:49Joe Rogan?

  And sort of lays out, this is why you're an addict. This is why you're a gambling addict. This is why you're addicted to ruining your life. Like, these are the things that happened to you when you were young. And these are the things that you did when you were adult that you had shame over. And all these different things. These are the things that you've seen that are horrific, that have scarred you. And it has like, an 80% effective rate for people getting off drugs with one session. And it's in the 90s with two sessions.

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Wow, that is crazy high.

• 47:20Joe Rogan?

  Exactly.

• 47:21Speaker 02

  And it's illegal here, yeah.

• 47:23Joe Rogan?

  Well, it is now legal in Texas. Well, I don't know what the regulations are, how they're doing it. But at least they're, they're giving it to some people in Texas. And I think, like I was saying, this is a doorway for the right to understand. And I think, this is a lot of the case with a lot of these special forces guys. A lot of SEALs and Green Berets. They come back from combat and they're all fucked up. And some of their friends take them on ayahuasca journeys. And that helps them a lot. So that's another like, doorway into the right. Because people on the right have always thought of psychedelics as being for losers and hippies and people just trying to escape life. But just the sheer horror of combat experience has forced a lot of people to reconsider this position.

• 48:08Joe Rogan?

  And then they've had so many family members that are veterans and that are, you know, especially, especially guys that are like, in the heart of combat. And then they come back and they, they're just fucked up. And no one wants to help them. Nobody can just talk you through it. And the one thing that... I don't want to say universally, but a high percentage have had great success with is psychedelics. So I think it's another massive disservice that those are lumped in in the same illegal category as fentanyl.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  As fentanyl, I know, or meth, I know.

• 48:43Joe Rogan?

  Or meth, yeah.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 48:44Joe Rogan?

  But do you think that the pathway is legalization? Because like even decriminalization, where are you gonna get it? You're gonna get, see, here's the problem with decriminalization. In California, um, my friend John Norris, he was a game warden. And do you know the story?

• 49:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:03Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, okay, so John, for people that don't know.

• 49:05Speaker 02

  He's coming on my podcast.

• 49:06Joe Rogan?

  Oh, he's great. So John was a game warden, right? Loved the outdoors, became a game warden. He really wanted to like check people's fishing licenses and hunting licenses and making sure the land was taken care of and making sure people aren't littering or doing anything stupid. So he gets this call that the stream is blocked up. It's like the stream stopped running and they can't figure out why, maybe a farmer diverted water. They follow the stream, they find these PVC pipes that are rerouting it to this massive marijuana farm that the cartel owns. So when California made marijuana legal in the state, what they also did is make it a misdemeanor to grow marijuana illegally. So the cartels are like, fucking great, let's just start growing.

• 49:48Joe Rogan?

  So they're bringing AKs and assault rifles out into the woods, setting up camps, super toxic pesticides, super toxic, like shit that's totally illegal in modern farming in America, like way worse than glyphosate. And that's somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty plus percent of all the marijuana that gets sold in the places where marijuana is illegal, it's all getting sold from these grow ops in California by the cartels.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  I've filmed some of them. I've been there, I've been in those mountains in California.

• 50:23Joe Rogan?

  It's so crazy.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Seeing that, it is insane.

• 50:25Joe Rogan?

  It's so crazy. But it's also a side effect of like what Colorado did. Colorado made it legal, great, but then they also taxed it like thirty-nine percent. And so most people are like, look, it's still cheap, I'll pay thirty-nine percent, the state gets the money, it's a net benefit for everybody, but there's a lot of people that are like, I'll just grow weed illegally and sell that since it's legal in the state.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Right, and because it's impossible to get a license in California. When they legalized it initially, it was, they made it so hard for people. To actually get their licenses and doing and do it legally. That the actual black market increased when they legalized it.

• 50:59Joe Rogan?

  California is brilliant with that. That's why they still haven't rebuilt a single house in the Pacific Palisades that burnt down. Not a single house nine months later with some of the richest people in California. Because nobody can get a, nobody can get permits.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  They're trying to make it easier to build.

• 51:15Joe Rogan?

  Allegedly. How, if you would have done it.

• 51:18Speaker 02

  Have you had Gavin Newsom on your phone?

• 51:19Joe Rogan?

  No, he's been, he's been taunting me, trying to get me to have him on. Why?

• 51:24Speaker 02

  I don't know, because he's interesting if people.

• 51:26Joe Rogan?

  You think he's interesting?

• 51:29Joe Rogan?

  He's interesting as like a sociology experiment, like if you're a psychologist.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  You talk to everyone, I think. Do you know who I really love that you interviewed?

• 51:36Joe Rogan?

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• 52:20Joe Rogan?

  See app for details. This episode is brought to you by Visible. As fall hits, we enter another season of change. Time to shift gears, drop the dead weight, and upgrade the wardrobe for the drop in temperature. But one thing that doesn't need to change? Your phone. The smartest upgrade this season isn't a new phone. It's a better wireless plan. Switch to Visible, the ultimate wireless hack. You get unlimited 5G data and unlimited hotspot powered by Verizon for just $25 a month. That means keeping the phone you already have, ditching your overpriced phone bill, and pocketing some savings for yourself. All the perks of big wireless for half the cost. Switch today at visible.com.

• 53:04Joe Rogan?

  The Visible plan starts at just $25 a month. Or get the premium Visible Plus Pro Plan and save $10 on your first month with promo code ROGEN. Terms apply. See visible.com for plan features and network management details.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Recently?

• 53:21Joe Rogan?

  Who?

• 53:22Speaker 02

  James Tellerica.

• 53:23Joe Rogan?

  He's great, yeah, he's great. He had great insight as to what's going on in Texas, too. Where these Christian fundamentalists who are very, very wealthy are trying to turn Texas into a theocracy. Like, these guys sound like full-on nutters. And this is something that people have to be really careful of when you become aligned with one party or another party, right? If you become aligned with the left, like Jimmy Kimmel was like ignoring, he was like mocking the president for saying that Antifa, like Antifa's not real, Antifa's not, that's so crazy to say. I know it's a Democrat talking point currently, but it's dangerous for you and for everybody

• 54:03Joe Rogan?

  else to say, because they are real, they're real, and they're anarchists who are committed to overthrowing capitalism.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:13Joe Rogan?

  They want to destroy the Western government. Like, it's, and a lot of them are retards, a lot of them are just like goofy kids that got lost in the system and then they found like a gang, like a lot of gang members, like that's the same kind of thing. They get, you find a community and all of a sudden these people are yours and they're real and, and also, they're willing to fight for something and there's like a lot of passion involved in it, so it's kind of exciting. And then you also realize like, yeah, corporate society is fucked up. Yeah, United Healthcare, that is kind of crazy that you spend all that money on healthcare and you get fucking nothing and then when you do have something, they deny your claim? Like, what is going on?

• 54:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:51Joe Rogan?

  And it is fucked, and so they don't know where to turn and so they, they get involved with a bunch of people that are doing stupid shit and they light Starbucks on fire.

• 54:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:59Joe Rogan?

  Or they, you know, and but a lot of it's funded, too, that's the other thing. The reality is, a lot of these, you know...

• 55:05Speaker 02

  I don't know about the funding part of it, so I've, I've spoken, I've spoken to Antifa, we did, I've done stories on, on militias, was one of the stories we did this last season, and it was important for me when we did that story, I've been wanting to do, there's rising militias, a rising threat of militias.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Everywhere in the world, but particularly here in the United States, and we also filmed in Brazil, because it's a real problem there. And we, I knew from the start that I didn't want to just do right-wing militias, that it was important to also do left-wing militias. So we spent time with a group that operates on the border, a right-wing militia that operates on the border, and was basically trying to catch illegal immigrants. And then we also spent time, you know, just a few miles away from that group, there was another group called the Black Cat Rifle Group, that is a left-wing militia. And it is, to me, what was so scary was that they existed because of the other side. Of course. They existed because the other side exists, right? Yes.

• 56:08Speaker 02

  And none of them understood that, that, you know, that, that one would become stronger, the stronger the other would become, and that this was all going to end not well for any of us. And when I was asking the Black Cat Rifle Group, you know, when I was asking why they have a militia, and why are they training, I mean, they were training with guns, and, and, you know, they look, if you look at these guys, they actually look, I mean, especially the guys at the border, which were the right-wing militia groups, if, if I was an immigrant crossing the country illegally, and I saw one of these guys, 100% would think that this is the US Army or Border Patrol, and, and I would be terrified, or I'd hand myself

• 56:50Speaker 02

  in, and then, but it's, it's there, which, by the way, is not, that's the part that's not legal. You're not, you can train with your buddies, you can do all that, but you can't pretend to be, and you can't look like you're part of the, the military or law enforcement, when you're not. And, and these guys 100% look like they were. I know I'm gonna get a lot of flak for this, because every time we talk about, I talk about militias, I get flak for it, but... Why? Because, because we are, we're living in the most divided era of our time, and there's a lot of people who... You know, believe that militias are important and think that it's important that they exist.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  I, I, I find them incredibly dangerous, the existence of militias outside or on the periphery of the, of the law. I find it incredibly dangerous. And, and so when I was talking to the right wing group, they said something. When I started talking to left wing group, they were giving me the exact same reasons.

• 57:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 57:47Speaker 02

  I mean, it was the exact same conversation, but seen from the other side, right?

• 57:50Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  And so I said, like, do you not, this is exactly the same thing the other guy said. And they were like, yeah, we're, we're here, we think, and their, their point was that, and they don't call themselves militias, by the way, the, the left wing group, but they, and they didn't like the fact that I called them militias, but they were saying was that, but this is basically a group who trains for what they think is going, going to be an incoming possible civil war. We talked about civil war with them.

• 58:14Joe Rogan?

  Boy.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  I know. And they said, look, minorities in this country are under attack, a lot of times by these right wing militias, uh, whether they are part of the LGBTQ community, or they're, um, you know, um, black or Hispanic, they're under attack. And it's our job to train to make sure that we protect these people that are the most vulnerable in our society. And we have to arm up and train and be ready to fight and go after the other people, um, if we have to. They said they only protect themselves. Um, they only defend themselves, right?

• 58:47Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  But that's the exact same thing that I heard from the other side.

• 58:50Joe Rogan?

  It is the exact same thing. That was my point, was that, um, like, people like Jimmy Kimmel talking about Antifa not existing, like, that's not good for anybody. No, they are, they are real and they are violent. And then people on the right that want to ignore these people that are trying to turn Texas into theocracy and put the Ten Commandments in every school. The great thing about Talarico is that he went to seminary school. He's in seminary right now. So he's a very religious person and he does not want them to have the Ten Commandments in schools. He's like, you should not, this is going to create less Christians, it's going to have more resistance to Christianity. And really.

• 59:26Speaker 02

  Religion has no place in government.

• 59:28Joe Rogan?

  And also, why would you have that up, but you don't have something from Hinduism, something from Buddhism, something from Islam, something from Judaism? Like, you should, it should be all religions. If you're gonna have a religious class, that's a different thing. But if you're gonna have a thing on the wall that everybody pays attention to, that you have to look at every day, because it's your commandments, and it's Christianity, well, then you're forcing Christianity on people, and that's very un-American. And I think he's really right. And I think that's the thing about being on a fucking team, is that you feel like you have to defend your team and ignore the horrible thing that your team does, and then only pay attention to the bad things the other team does. That's crazy.

• 1:00:11Joe Rogan?

  Now, you're doing the man's work for the man, and you get no benefit. Not only do you get no benefit, but you actually help society erode and become more fractured.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, and get to the place, yeah.

• 1:00:20Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's horrible. It's horrible. We need another Martin Luther King, you know? We need someone who's like, an adamant expresser of nonviolence as the only option. And then we all need to embrace that, because there's too many punch-a-Nazi people out there. There's too many people out there that think you could just go out and do violence. And I get it, that sounds exciting. I'm a revolutionary. Yeah, I get it, it's exciting. It's the wrong way for human beings. We're, this is supposed to be 2025, right? We are supposed to have evolved to a point where we recognize that violence is one of the worst things that we ever have in our community, in any way, shape, or form, whether it's police violence, or whether it's gang violence, any kind of violence

• 1:01:03Joe Rogan?

  is the worst thing that we can do to each other. We're supposed to be living together in harmony. There's a way, at least, to minimize that violence by never having violent rhetoric, by never encouraging violence. And we seem to have lost that somewhere along the line.

• 1:01:20Speaker 02

  I agree. I mean, violence and hate, you know?

• 1:01:22Joe Rogan?

  And hate.

• 1:01:23Speaker 02

  There's so much hate.

• 1:01:23Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  And talk about hate, and hating the other side, and hating anyone that doesn't stand by what I stand, or what I believe in.

• 1:01:29Joe Rogan?

  Well, look what happened when Charlie Kirk got murdered. People were literally cheering. And we found out about it. I was doing a podcast with Charlie Sheen, and we went to the restroom, and when we were going to the restroom, Jamie told us that Charlie Kirk got shot, and he's dead. And we came back and did the podcast and I was like, people are going to celebrate this and this is what's terrifying to me. And I got a message from a friend of mine who was like, man, I think you're wrong. I think it's a bunch of bot counts that are gonna, it's just to rile people up. But it wasn't. I watched it. I watched a lot of it online. I watched it through famous people and prominent people that were just condoning his assassination, if not celebrating it, by saying, you know, that he put hateful rhetoric

• 1:02:13Joe Rogan?

  out there in the world. The way to counter hateful rhetoric is love. You like, you have to, you have to recognize that these people are wrong. They're coming from a wrong position and eloquently state the right position, which is what Martin Luther King Jr.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is not what President Trump said at the memorial of Charlie Kirk.

• 1:02:34Joe Rogan?

  What did he say?

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:02:36Joe Rogan?

  Oh, I hate my enemies. He loved his enemies. Yeah. Yeah, I don't agree with any of that. I don't agree with any of that.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  I mean, particularly if you're the President of the United States, you're not, you're not.

• 1:02:43Joe Rogan?

  Well, he's, you know, he's a nut. But it's also the only way that that guy survived what he did, what he went through, what they tried to put him through. You have to be a kind of a nut. They tried to put him in jail. They tried to make a fake Russia collusion thing. They did for three years, a concerted effort that was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign that funded the Steele dossier. It was like nutty stuff. Like, tried to put him, he got convicted for 34 counts of felony that none of them were a felony. It was misdemeanor booking, bookkeeping errors because he was paying off a lady he had sex with. Like, you gotta be a nut to get through that and not have any feeling about it at all and just brush it off your shoulder. So, yeah, he's fucking crazy.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  I don't think that's because he's great. That's not why he's crazy. I think he's

• 1:03:29Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm saying he is crazy, period. And that's how he got through all that. That's the only kind of person that gets through that and gets to where he is today. You have to be kind of crazy. I don't agree with any of that. Like, hating my enemies and going after my enemies.

• 1:03:46Speaker 02

  And I know you don't agree with immigration raids either, which I've heard you talk about on this podcast.

• 1:03:50Joe Rogan?

  No. Listen, I think.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  I'm so happy that you do talk about it because I do think. It's an incredibly important issue. I mean,

• 1:03:55Joe Rogan?

  It isn't important. It's one of those right-left things too, right? Where people on the right are like, fuck it, turn them all back.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  You have no idea. Every time I posted about this and I get so much hate also. Like I get immediately people saying horrible things about immigrants and saying horrible things about me. And I get unfollowed immediately. Like people don't like it.

• 1:04:12Joe Rogan?

  The thing is they like do it the right way. They like do it the right way. Here's the problem with that. You can't do it the right way. If you live in Mexico or you live in Guatemala and you're walking here and you're getting across the Rio Grande River, and here's the other thing. For the last four years during the Biden administration, it was well-known throughout the world that the borders were wide open. So an estimated, who knows, what is the total number? Put this into perplexity. That's our sponsor, Perplexity. What does it say? How many people do they estimate came in illegally over the past four years during the Biden administration? But it's millions and millions of people, right? So people knew that they can come across. Now they're here because somebody invited them, right?

• 1:04:56Joe Rogan?

  And then they were bussed to these places and flown to these places. And they were given EBD cards and some of them were given cell phones. And now you're gonna arrest them? Now you're gonna like swoop in and handcuff them? And fuck, like this is crazy. You asked me to be here. They don't know it's the same goddamn country.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  Okay, I have spent time on the trail of immigrants. I was in the southern Darien Gap where a lot of the immigrants were coming. And I spoke to dozens of people who were doing the journey. And maybe I just got lucky or unlucky that I spoke to, the majority of the people that I spoke to had, you know, a lot of them were from Haiti, from Venezuela, places that are completely torn out.

• 1:05:33Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:05:34Speaker 02

  No economic opportunities, whatever, whatsoever. Violence, extreme violence. These are the stories that I know are happening. And I have a good friend, his name is Jacob Soboroff. He's a reporter for MSNBC. And he's been covering immigration raids from the beginning. And one of the stories he did, and I love that I'm talking about this because this has become really important for me. Because I'm, I live in LA and I'm affected by this on many levels.

• 1:06:02Joe Rogan?

  Also, you have an accent.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  I have an accent. Exactly. I'm an immigrant.

• 1:06:06Joe Rogan?

  You might get green carded.

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:06:08Joe Rogan?

  They might pull you over. Ask for your papers.

• 1:06:10Speaker 02

  They might actually take away my citizenship. But this, one of the stories he covered, and I think exemplifies what's happening to me right now, is Stella and Nori. This is a mother and a daughter from Guatemala. The daughter was born in Guatemala with her mother, and her mother was gang raped in a small town. She's from a small, impoverished town in rural Guatemala. She was gang raped. And the next day, and her daughter watched her being gang raped. And she was violently beaten up. She had blood all over her face. They broke her bones. It was horrible, with her daughter, who was young at the time, watching. And the next day, she decided she had family members in the US, and she decided, this is it. I can't live here, and I have to take my daughter to a place that's safer. Her daughter was traumatized, by the way, by now.

• 1:06:54Speaker 02

  Took, they came to the US. They immediately went and asked for asylum, which, by the way, most people don't know this, but it is completely legal to become, to come to the United States. Whatever way you enter, even if you enter illegally, it is legal to come to the US and ask for asylum. That is not, coming to the US, entering without papers, and then asking for asylum is legal. So even when people say, yes, but you can't do it illegally, you're wrong. It is legal to do so, coming in with no papers and asking for asylum.

• 1:07:25Joe Rogan?

  What are the requirements to request?

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  Persecution. You have to be a victim of persecution, whether it's, you know.

• 1:07:33Joe Rogan?

  Cartels?

• 1:07:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Violence, rape, political, what are the five things? It's like, Jamie, can you look this up? It's political, religious, political, religious. There's like five reasons why people can be persecuted. And so they came to the US. They immediately started applying for asylum. And there's 11 million cases backlogged right now of people asking for asylum.

• 1:08:05Joe Rogan?

  Race, religion, nationality. Race, religion, nationality, political opinion, membership in a particular social group.

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Joe Rogan?

  So just those five things.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:17Joe Rogan?

  Interesting. So political persecution also involves imprisonment, torture, or threats of violence.

• 1:08:24Joe Rogan?

  Huh. The answer to that question. Yeah, how mu- what's the numbers? Uh, 10.8 million.

• 1:08:30Speaker 05

  This is encounter, it says encounters, though, where they cross and were stopped.

• 1:08:33Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 1:08:35Speaker 05

  It's also goes on to say.

• 1:08:36Joe Rogan?

  According to the Trump administrations, well, let me say this. According to someone I spoke to at the Trump administration, they said they, they believe it's 20 million over four years.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't think that's, I think that number is highly exaggerated.

• 1:08:49Joe Rogan?

  Well, this says, um, in addition to these, uh, apprehens- apprehensions and encounters, officials reported an estimated 2 million gotaways, individuals who were detected crossing the border illegally but evaded capture. Combining these figures suggests roughly 12.8 million total unauthorized border crossings or attempts during the Biden administration. So not 20, but 12.8.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:13Joe Rogan?

  That's still quite a bit.

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14Joe Rogan?

  Here's another thing that people keep talking about is how many people Obama deported. But I think that's not, I think they're saying it incorrectly. Cause I think when they say that Obama deported 3 million people, they always use this like as an, as an aha against Trump deportations. I believe Obama's deportation numbers count turnaways. Like when someone makes it to the border and then you send them back. Very different.

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, he was nicknamed the deporter in chief.

• 1:09:44Joe Rogan?

  Running into Home Depot.

• 1:09:44Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:09:45Joe Rogan?

  And grabbing people like with a mask over your face, like what we're seeing with ICE.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  Or, or worse than that. Like, even worse than going to the Home Depot is the case of Estelle and Rory, where they were going to check in on their procedures at the courthouse. And when they went to check on how their asylum case was going, they were detained. They had been living here for several years. The daughter is now, is a star athlete.

• 1:10:09Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  Amazing student, but wait, even worse. So they are deported back to Guatemala, taken, like their family didn't even know they were, where they were. They were taken. They took away her medication. She had high blood pressure, the, the mother, high blood pressure. They got to Guatemala. They don't know. They haven't lived there in decades. They have no idea what to do. They have no money in their pocket. They can't, they don't have access to the medication. So the mother dies.

• 1:10:33Joe Rogan?

  Oh my god.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  And the daughter stays in Guatemala and there's footage of her holding the coffin until it's buried.

• 1:10:39Joe Rogan?

  Oh my god.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  And her wanting to be with her mother. And these are the stories. I mean, even if this just happened with one person, we should be asking if this is the right thing to do. But this is happening to, you know, hundreds if not thousands of people all across the country. And this is not all right. I mean, this is not all right. We should not be doing this.

• 1:10:56Joe Rogan?

  Yo, especially if someone's already been granted asylum. Like, there should be...

• 1:11:00Speaker 02

  So their asylum procedure was ongoing. They hadn't been granted yet. But that is...

• 1:11:05Joe Rogan?

  But still...

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  You can't do, you can't remove somebody who's ongoing procedure.

• 1:11:10Joe Rogan?

  This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Believe it or not, the holiday season is here again, and that means you might need to fill some seasonal roles. Fast. Maybe you need extra cashiers or stockers, or maybe something more unique, like a lead elf, or an expert gift wrapper, or a Zamboni driver. Whoever you're looking for, whatever skills you need to power through the rest of the year, ZipRecruiter is one of the best places to start your search. Because you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/rogan. And because ZipRecruiter helps sort through thousands of resumes and applications, showing you the most qualified and interesting ones first. There's even an option for candidates

• 1:11:54Joe Rogan?

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• 1:12:14Speaker 01

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• 1:12:44Speaker 02

  And plus, that's not-

• 1:12:45Joe Rogan?

  Meaning she was trying to do it the right way.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. And that's not what we were sold, right?

• 1:12:51Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  A lot of people voted for Trump because they thought that he was gonna go after the criminals.

• 1:12:56Joe Rogan?

  Well, I think very unfortunately, a lot of this stuff is political. And the fear is, the both sides fear, right? So I don't know if you know this, but Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who was running for Vice President, he just passed-

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  You also had him on, right?

• 1:13:12Joe Rogan?

  No, no, I did not.

• 1:13:17Joe Rogan?

  They just passed something in Minnesota where illegal immigrants are allowed to have driver's licenses and vote.

• 1:13:25Joe Rogan?

  Which is kinda crazy, because-

• 1:13:27Speaker 02

  Are you sure?

• 1:13:28Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  That they're allowed to vote?

• 1:13:30Joe Rogan?

  Yes, just yesterday. We'll pull it up.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  Illegal immigrants as in-

• 1:13:34Joe Rogan?

  As in-

• 1:13:34Speaker 02

  They don't even have a green card.

• 1:13:36Joe Rogan?

  Ex- not supposed to be here-

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  And they're allowed to vote in what?

• 1:13:39Joe Rogan?

  ...can have driver's licenses and can vote.

• 1:13:42Joe Rogan?

  Let's find out. This is the story that I read.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  Jamie, find out.

• 1:13:46Joe Rogan?

  I read this story and he was like-

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  I don't believe this.

• 1:13:48Joe Rogan?

  -proudly talking about- I know, it sounds crazy, right?

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  It sounds crazy, yeah, because I became a citizen so I could vote and it took me a long time to get-

• 1:13:54Joe Rogan?

  Oh yeah, no, I know a lot of friends who became American citizens and it was a long, grueling process and they had to prove that they were exceptional, that there was a reason for them to be here. A lot of them were comedians and entertainers and-

• 1:14:08Joe Rogan?

  What is it?

• 1:14:09Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 1:14:09Joe Rogan?

  What are the facts of the case?

• 1:14:11Speaker 05

  I typed in, Tim Walz passed illegal immigrant vote and-

• 1:14:14Joe Rogan?

  It was all over Twitter like a couple of days ago.

• 1:14:17Speaker 05

  Twitter, Tim Walz has not passed a bill.

• 1:14:18Joe Rogan?

  Okay, um, driver's licenses.

• 1:14:22Speaker 05

  That was something that happened in 2023, it said.

• 1:14:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but there was something that just happened a couple of days ago.

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  Find it, find it.

• 1:14:32Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I'll find it.

• 1:14:37Joe Rogan?

  I'll check on Twitter.

• 1:14:40Joe Rogan?

  Illegal.

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  I have to say, I find it very hard to believe.

• 1:14:44Joe Rogan?

  Me too, but not, because I think that what I was getting at is a lot of the reason for wanting an open border is congressional seats. Because one of the things about when you do a census, it doesn't count how many people are citizens, it counts how many people. And so you can get extra congressional seats if you have more illegal immigrants in your city. And you have much more political power that way.

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  But why do you get more seats if they can't vote?

• 1:15:09Joe Rogan?

  It's just how it works. It's just how the, it's the way our census is set up. So the way a census is set up, it's just counting people. It's not counting people that are legally here.

• 1:15:18Speaker 02

  Oh, the census, okay.

• 1:15:19Joe Rogan?

  So the census is how they dictate the amount of congressional seats. Here's what was going around Twitter. Okay, Minnesota elections confirms non-citizens can vote with driver's licenses. October 14, 25, this is it. State hearing Minnesota director elections, Paul Linell, testified that non-citizens holding driver's licenses under the 2023 driver's licenses for all law can register to vote and cast ballots by affirming eligibility as the ID verifies identity but not citizenship. Secretary of State Steve Simone, Steve Simon, noted that such voting is illegal and rare with post-election adults identifying discrepancies for prosecution, including 59, just 59 potential

• 1:16:04Joe Rogan?

  cases in 2024 that they, the testimony has prompted Republican demands for voter role audits and reforms coinciding with federal lawsuit against Minnesota for incomplete registration data. So at the very least, this is opening up the door for people that are non-citizens to vote. And it seems like they're confirming that non-citizens with this driver's license can vote.

• 1:16:31Speaker 02

  That it can be, that it can be consequence of it. It's not, that's not the goal of it.

• 1:16:36Joe Rogan?

  But, but it's also.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  It's a consequence that can happen.

• 1:16:39Joe Rogan?

  It is a consequence of it.

• 1:16:40Speaker 02

  But I don't think it's purposely done. I mean, I think that it's trying to make it easier for people to vote. And unfortunately, it's a little bit like the rehab scam, right? You're trying to make it easier for Native Americans to get health insurance, but guess what? Then there's people who are going to abuse that, that, that opportunity or that, that.

• 1:16:58Joe Rogan?

  Most certainly.

• 1:16:59Speaker 02

  And that's what's happened, that seems like what's happening here.

• 1:17:01Joe Rogan?

  That's a very charitable way of looking at it.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  Maybe, but I...

• 1:17:04Joe Rogan?

  What are you trying to say, Jamie?

• 1:17:05Speaker 05

  I don't understand. It says that they can register to vote, but the next line says that the voting is illegal.

• 1:17:10Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it's illegal, but they can register. But they could do it if they wanted to.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  Either way, I think what is happening is that immigrants are being used as political pawns, right?

• 1:17:19Joe Rogan?

  That's true.

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  As we know, from both sides, by the way.

• 1:17:21Joe Rogan?

  That's true.

• 1:17:22Speaker 02

  Both sides.

• 1:17:22Joe Rogan?

  100%.

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  And...

• 1:17:23Joe Rogan?

  We both agree with that.

• 1:17:24Speaker 02

  And these are human beings, like the mother, and like so many of these stories, like the father of the three military American guys went and served for our country, and the father was deported. These are, you know, horrible stories of human beings. And a lot of times, the people that are traumatized are American citizens. They're the kids. They're pulling away their family members, their mothers, their fathers, and it's American kids who are being traumatized.

• 1:17:47Joe Rogan?

  It's also heartless.

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  It's...

• 1:17:49Joe Rogan?

  And you're showing to the world that you don't care, that you just want to achieve a result, and you want to achieve a result that is gonna leave a terrible feeling for anybody with a heart that looks at that story, in that case. And then you're gonna associate the United States government more and more with tyranny, more and more with fascism, more and more with...

• 1:18:10Speaker 02

  100%.

• 1:18:10Joe Rogan?

  You know, you think you're just enforcing a law, because these people broke a law, but that there's still human beings that have been a part of these communities. The law is just some shit people wrote down. It should make sense, and there should be exemptions, or at least some sort of amnesty for someone who's been here.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Which it is. Oh, that too, but there is...

• 1:18:29Joe Rogan?

  And a pathway.

• 1:18:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and a pathway. And right now, there isn't. There's a...

• 1:18:32Joe Rogan?

  Right, because these people are probably not paying taxes, and if you could make them citizens, how much more money you would make?

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:18:39Joe Rogan?

  Because there's probably...

• 1:18:39Speaker 02

  But they do pay taxes, you know?

• 1:18:40Joe Rogan?

  Sure, for buying things.

• 1:18:42Speaker 02

  No, not only for buying things.

• 1:18:43Joe Rogan?

  And for property taxes, or for income taxes.

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  For income. They actually pay income taxes.

• 1:18:46Joe Rogan?

  Right. Do they file for income taxes, or they get income taxes removed from their paycheck?

• 1:18:50Speaker 02

  Can you check that out, Jamie? I read about this recently, because it's something that so many people, it's often used by the right, how these people are here and they don't pay taxes. That is actually not, it's millions of dollars a year that... Undocumented immigrants pay in taxes.

• 1:19:03Joe Rogan?

  Oh, I'm most, I'm sure they pay a lot of taxes.

• 1:19:05Speaker 02

  Not only in sales, but also in income taxes. And all, both with the fake social security numbers that you get, but also I think there's something that I.

• 1:19:12Joe Rogan?

  Well, you probably have to have that for certain jobs, right? Fake social security numbers.

• 1:19:16Speaker 02

  Fake social security numbers, but I think there's a way also that they figured it out that people are here while they're going through asylum procedures or trying to get their green card that they can also pay taxes.

• 1:19:24Joe Rogan?

  But there's still a lot of people that are.

• 1:19:25Speaker 05

  From 2016 says 11.6 billion.

• 1:19:27Speaker 02

  Billion dollars in state of excess.

• 1:19:29Joe Rogan?

  Collectively undocumented immigrants. So I, I would imagine though that that's like at the very least less than there would be if everybody was totally above board. You know what I mean?

• 1:19:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, a hundred percent. We could be making so much more money.

• 1:19:46Joe Rogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:19:47Speaker 02

  And I mean, they're the, that's not, who are we kidding? Or so, I mean, they are the backbone of our economy, particularly in California where I live. There would be no construction, there would be no agriculture, there would be no, you know, kitchens and restaurants and hospitality services without these immigrants.

• 1:20:04Joe Rogan?

  Undocumented immigrants paid nearly 97 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022. That's nuts.

• 1:20:11Speaker 02

  So the idea that they don't pay taxes is bullshit.

• 1:20:13Joe Rogan?

  It's a lot of money. And that's money that now you have to account for because those people are going to get kicked out.

• 1:20:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:19Joe Rogan?

  Right? But meanwhile, if they'd figured out a pathway to citizenship, I bet that number would increase. You know, and also they could get different jobs.

• 1:20:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:28Joe Rogan?

  You know, they wouldn't be stuck economically because that's the, the weird thing about people that sneak, like when these farms get raided and they bust all these people and the farm doesn't get busted like, hey, what are you doing? And how much will you pay in them? Like, should you go to jail for paying them less than you're supposed to pay people? Because that's the reason why you hire people that don't have any paperwork.

• 1:20:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, because you want to pay them less.

• 1:20:51Joe Rogan?

  One guy is a horrible person. I heard that they, he did a job and then when the job was over, he called ICE on the people so he didn't have to pay them. Might not be real though. Might be a TikTok. Might be a little, they might, they might have got me.

• 1:21:04Speaker 02

  It wouldn't surprise me, unfortunately.

• 1:21:05Joe Rogan?

  Might be China, China set us up to yell at each other. Because that's a lot that's going on too. But yeah, it's, it's heartless and that's, that's, and.

• 1:21:14Joe Rogan?

  If you're supposed to be a Christian nation, right, which is like what the hardline right people want, well, that's not a very Christian ideal.

• 1:21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:21Joe Rogan?

  Well, they broke the law. Right, I get it. They're families, right? You would have broke the law too. By the way, most of those people are deeply religious. A lot of those people that are coming from South America, deeply religious. From Central America, deeply religious people.

• 1:21:34Speaker 02

  Deeply religious.

• 1:21:35Joe Rogan?

  They'd be on your side if they had a chance. You know, those are like, hardworking family people. They'd be the kind of people you want in your community, for the most part. But there have to be a way to sift out. You have to figure out, okay, who's the cartel members? Who's the terrorists?

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  100%.

• 1:21:53Joe Rogan?

  I don't believe in an open border. But I do believe that, once people are here and they've completely integrated into society, it seems pretty foolish to just snatch them up and send them to countries that they don't even know anymore. How about this guy in Maryland, this Abrego Garcia guy that they keep... They're trying to send him to Africa.

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  Oh my god, it's insane.

• 1:22:15Joe Rogan?

  Three countries in Africa said no.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  But one said yes, right?

• 1:22:19Joe Rogan?

  Oh, I don't know. Have they? Are they gonna send him to Africa?

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  Was it Ghana who said yes?

• 1:22:24Joe Rogan?

  It just got...

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  Oh, they failed. Okay, good.

• 1:22:28Joe Rogan?

  Why are they sending him to Africa? He's not from Africa. It's like, guys, that's crazy.

• 1:22:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm happy you use your platform to talk about this. Because I, you know, rarely do I get an issue that I'm like this passionate about, and that I see so much injustice that I feel like I need to talk about this.

• 1:22:45Joe Rogan?

  There's no heart to it. You have to have a heart. You have to. Like, you have to, like, the law should be to serve and protect, right? This is the whole reason why we should have law enforcement, right? So, in this situation, what are you protecting? Are you protecting American jobs? You want to go pick strawberries? Like, these people are like, coming here because this is a way better option than where they live. Wouldn't it be better if those people were doing that work and making a livable wage? And wouldn't it be better if these greedy corporations weren't just able to hire illegal people and pay them under the table a tiny amount of what they really should be? Be getting as a normal human being.

• 1:23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely, for all of us, it'd be better for all of us.

• 1:23:27Joe Rogan?

  This is just, you're taking advantage of these people. And once they're here, look, if you're here and you've been robbing people, it's like, yeah, fuck that guy. Get rid of them, like, get rid of all the parasites and all the criminals and all the predators that are destroying people's lives, all the people robbing people, and yeah, get rid of them.

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  Everybody wants that.

• 1:23:46Joe Rogan?

  But after that, you gotta figure out a way to, like, otherwise, we're just gonna have this stupid divided country with left and right. And these people will never vote Republican again, any, which is really interesting, because a lot of Hispanics and a lot of, like, Latino people are religious. And there's a lot of the things that the Republicans talk about that they would align with, like Cubans, for example, Cubans are hardliner, right-wing people. They don't fuck around, they're very disciplined, they know what communism looks like, fuck you. They're not, they don't tolerate no nonsense in Miami. You know, it's like, and that could have been, the Republicans could have captured a lot of those

• 1:24:28Joe Rogan?

  people that are deeply religious, like, that's one of your core values, is you think it's a Christian nation.

• 1:24:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:24:34Joe Rogan?

  It's just, you gotta figure out how to do it with a heart.

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:24:37Joe Rogan?

  You can't just snatch a hard-working father away from his children that he brought over here from another country just because he wants them to be able to live and not get killed in the streets.

• 1:24:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:24:48Joe Rogan?

  He wants to be able to make a living, and this guy probably works 14 hours a fucking day, sees them, kisses them on the head before he goes to sleep, crashes, gets up in the morning and does it again.

• 1:24:57Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:24:58Joe Rogan?

  That's what you want in this country.

• 1:24:59Speaker 02

  Right, of course.

• 1:25:00Joe Rogan?

  It's like, you gotta, you gotta find the pathway for good people, and like, you can't tell me we don't have enough resources for that, because you see the amount of money that goes through USA or went through USA, the amount of money that goes to fucking weapons manufacturers, you, we don't have enough money to sort out who's a good person and who's a bad person and find some sort of a pathway. I'm not saying keep the border open, but the people that are here, let's root out the fucking terrorists, let's figure out who's the bad people, some definitely bad people got through, after that, let's...

• 1:25:36Joe Rogan?

  You know, it's fucking break bread. Let's break bread.

• 1:25:39Speaker 02

  One hundred percent. I agree with you, one hundred percent.

• 1:25:41Joe Rogan?

  Let's, we're supposed to be a community.

• 1:25:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:43Joe Rogan?

  If you come over here and you bust ass for twenty-five fucking years, and you're a part of the American community, and then all of a sudden you don't have the right paperwork, so they're gonna send you to a country that you don't even remember. Because, you know, you came over here when you were fifteen. Like, you barely know how to speak Spanish anymore. Like, what?

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. It's absolutely, I mean, it's, yeah. It's, I've been reporting on these issues for so long. It's, it's truly, I mean, it's why I came to America, why so many people come to America. It's because this is what this country stands for. It's like, it's welcoming to immigrants, and immigrants make America great.

• 1:26:18Joe Rogan?

  Ed Calderon was telling us a story about a young man who came over here when he was a baby. His family brought him over here when he was a baby. So he doesn't have any paperwork. And he was in his twenties. They snatched him up and sent him to Mexico, and he doesn't even speak Spanish.

• 1:26:34Speaker 02

  And, yeah.

• 1:26:35Joe Rogan?

  And he's like, fuck you, you're not American.

• 1:26:37Speaker 02

  And why did they snatch him?

• 1:26:39Joe Rogan?

  They just ice grabbed him.

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  Was it during these raids right now?

• 1:26:42Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, during some sort of an ice raid. They grabbed him and sent him to Tijuana.

• 1:26:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:26:48Speaker 02

  Right, it's insane.

• 1:26:48Joe Rogan?

  He doesn't even speak Spanish.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  It's insane. It's absolutely insane.

• 1:26:51Joe Rogan?

  He's a full-on American, just with bad paperwork.

• 1:26:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's crazy. It's...

• 1:26:55Joe Rogan?

  And the only difference between him and me is that I, you know, my parents were born here. Yeah. I happened to be born here. I got lucky. It's like, I'm not saying you should have the border open, because you shouldn't. Every country should be checked, because there's threats in the world. And also, there's a lot of people mad at us, because we've done some fucked up things all over the world. And that's the, the dark part of all this mass migration in both Europe and in America. It's like, why are these people fleeing where they were? Well, because we bombed the fuck out of it. We destabilized their government. Yeah.

• 1:27:29Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I mean, not, not all. It's not all our fault.

• 1:27:32Joe Rogan?

  Not all of it, but like Libya, there's a lot of them.

• 1:27:33Speaker 02

  But why don't we use the money that we're using in trying, in these raids? Like, let's figure out how to stem the immigration. Let's try to figure out how to, you know, stop the consumption of drugs, so that there's less violence in those countries. Stop the flow of guns, so there's less killings and gangs. You know, it's, it's like, it's a, a cycle of destruction that we're enabling them, and, and then we go and catch them, and...

• 1:27:56Joe Rogan?

  But it all really started with moving manufacturing overseas as well. Once we took all the manufacturing out of America and then we moved manufacturing overseas or over to other countries across national lines. Now all of a sudden you can get things made way cheaper. But then you create all this poverty and then what happens with poverty? People fall into drugs because they have massive despair. You know, and then the pharmaceutical drug. Well, you brilliantly documented with that, with the OxyContin Express. That, that piece was how I found out about you, but also how I found out about that problem, which is so insane where you could tell people if they, they're not aware of how it all started.

• 1:28:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting because I just had the FBI agent that investigated that case on my podcast.

• 1:28:41Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  Fascinating. Okay, so I found out that, uh, reading the newspaper, my husband and I were working together at the time. And we found out that there were all these people who were going to Florida just to buy pills. So there was these pain clinics, these pill mills as they were called. And they were distributing, the, the numbers were crazy. Ninety of the top 100 doctors prescribing, prescribing OxyContin were in Flor- Florida. Ninety of the 100. It's insane.

• 1:29:13Joe Rogan?

  What are the odds that statistically with 50 states?

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  I know, it's insane. And, and this is the sad part is it's not as if like these pharmaceutical companies or the distribution companies didn't know this was happening. They did. They just pretended that they didn't because it was, it was huge business and it was great. And why Florida? Because they had really lax regulations. So you could go doctor shopping. You could go, I went undercover. So that was part of the story that we did OxyContin Express where I went undercover into one of these pain clinics. And I asked the receptionist, um, I said, I have a little bit of a back pain. What do I need to do if I want to get some pills? And she said, oh, what would you like? And we can give you OxyContin, we can give you some benzos, we can give you what's called the South Florida cocktail, which is essentially muscle relaxants, benzos and OxyContin.

• 1:30:00Joe Rogan?

  That's how she was describing it?

• 1:30:01Speaker 02

  She didn't say it, but that's what it became known as is the South Florida cocktail. But she said, we can give you this, this and this. It's the holy trinity, trinity, right? And all you need to do is you go to the back of the clinic and there's a place there where you can get an MRI. And then you come back to us and an MRI is a ridiculous thing because you can read anything into an MRI. Like any, all of us have backs, have a spine and whatever comes out, results in the MRI that you, the doctor can pretend to look at it and say, oh, yeah, yeah, I can see why you're having back pain or neck pain and I'm going to give you this.

• 1:30:33Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:30:34Speaker 02

  But the problem is that the doctors weren't even looking at the MRIs. That was just fake. There was just, you know, in case somebody ever came after them, they could say that they had MRIs. They were seeing people in less than three minutes and saying they were doing all these, less than three minutes. So you'd have a patient come in and then these amazing entrepreneurial twin brothers called the George Brothers built this business. It was called American Pain. They basically built a business out of two or three pain clinics.

• 1:31:01Joe Rogan?

  It sounds like a movie, American Pain.

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  So my husband did a documentary about it, about the rise and fall of these twin brothers.

• 1:31:07Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  They started by selling steroids, steroids, and then somebody told him like, dude, why are you doing, what are you doing selling, selling steroids or you could make, making so much more money selling OxyContin?

• 1:31:16Joe Rogan?

  What is the name of the documentary?

• 1:31:17Speaker 02

  It's called American Pain. You should watch it.

• 1:31:19Joe Rogan?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:31:20Speaker 02

  It's on HBO. It's so good.

• 1:31:22Joe Rogan?

  I think actually I've heard of it now, now that you mention it.

• 1:31:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really good. So we, we reported OxyContin together and because we were chased down I-95 by these goons, by these two brothers, by these twins, Darren became obsessed with them and then contacted them in prison. Okay, so it's a really funny story. I'm going to tell the story. So we find out that these were the biggest operators. Five of the top 20 prescribers in the whole country were doctors working for the George Brothers. They were, it was millions of pills. They were not only prescribing but selling out of their pain clinics. They were making millions of dollars. I mean, so much so that they were stashing it in bags and putting it in the attic, their mother's house's attic and stuff. There was like, Insane amounts of money. And people would come in from all over the country, mainly from Appalachia.

• 1:32:08Speaker 02

  And they would come in, drive down, and they would get to these clinics and they would say, I want, you know, see a doctor for less than three minutes. The doctor had a rubber stamp to stamp the prescription to make it fast. Oh, my god. So they'd see you three minutes, okay, next one, and stamp it. There were people passing out in these pain clinics, you know, in the lobby. People passing out outside. So when I went inside, talked to the receptionist, and then I went outside and I bummed a cigarette out of somebody. And I explained, hey, I pretended I had secret cameras, they didn't know I was filming. And I started saying, what are you, what are you doing here? And he's like, oh, yeah, I came from Kentucky and I, this is one of the best clinics. I can get all my pills here and then I go back and, you know, we sell them and we can still use the pills we want. It's feeding our addiction and we go out and we sell them for 10 times what we're paying here.

• 1:32:53Speaker 02

  Wow. And so it was a big business. And, and so... And then no database, right? No database, yeah. So you could go to several different doctors, doctor shopping. So we're outside this, this American Pain, Pain Clinic, which we knew at the time, they had security guards outside, surveillance cameras, so we knew they were like shady. And, but we also knew that they were the biggest operators in town, so we wanted to film outside. And it was our last day in Florida. We'd kept it to the last day for safety reasons. And we're outside and it's me and my husband, he's filming it. And suddenly, within minutes, a car comes across and these two, got big guys, start yelling at us and threatening us. So we get back in the car and we're saying, no, we're just filming, this is public property, we can film.

• 1:33:37Speaker 02

  It's like, get the fuck out of here, what are you guys filming? Da, da, da. We get in the car, we leave, they start chasing us down I-85. And I am running out of gas. And I stop at a gas station. And the night before, I'd watched The Sopranos, which is the wrong thing to do. So the whole time, I'm imagining it's straight a scene out of The Sopranos, right? They stop right behind us as we stop for gas and they come out of the car again. I was like, holy shit. Get back in the car, drive out, they continue chasing us, and then we run out of gas. Right out on the highway and we stopped the car in the side. I'm calling 911 by the way. And I called an F- a sheriff's department person I interviewed the day before and I told her what was happening. And she said, call 911 immediately. These are not people you want

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  to be messing with. So I called 911 and not eventually I stopped on the side of the road. They stopped next was because they're dumbfounded. They're like, what the fuck? Why did they stop? They have no idea that we ran out of gas. And then the police comes up and they asked them some questions and they came up with this silly excuse and they let them go. And a few months later, they were taken down by this massive FBI investigation that was happening at the same time. So I interviewed the guy Kurt McKenzie, who was the investigator that knew of us at the time. They re- he realized, oh, my God, there's like these crazy journalists that are doing this story and at the same time as they were. And we were actively trying to get them to talk to us, the FBI. And they couldn't because they had an active investigation.

• 1:35:04Speaker 02

  But they actually tapped in and American Pain, my husband's film is all about that. They tapped, they did taps, wiretaps on all of these guys. So they know everything how they were, how they, how they knew there were people dying, people ODing just outside their clinic and how they were just kept going. And the doctors themselves as well. They were dirty, dirty.

• 1:35:24Joe Rogan?

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• 1:36:08Joe Rogan?

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• 1:36:53Joe Rogan?

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• 1:37:19Speaker 02

  The horrible doctors that knew there were people dying and they couldn't get a shit because they were making millions of dollars.

• 1:37:25Joe Rogan?

  They also, I think something happens when you see a bunch of people die. There's a lot of doctors that are, I think they get very calloused to the idea of death. And especially if the idea, not, not good doctors. There's great doctors out there, obviously, but there's sociopaths that become doctors and become even more sociopathic once they realize they can make money off of it. And that, that whole Florida pain pill scene was a classic example of that. Cause there's only one way you would have a system like this. You'd have a system like this if you want it to be corrupt. I mean, it's just designed to be corrupt.

• 1:38:02Speaker 02

  Designed to be corrupt. I mean, how is it possible that you can go? I remember, I'll never forget interviewing the mother. Of a kid who had just died and then a few months later, her other kid died. So she had two sons and she lost both of them to this. And it was all because of the pain clinics. And she was showing me the pain killer bottles, the prescription bottles that the kid got. It was like hundreds and hundreds of pain pills that the kid got from just doctor shop.

• 1:38:26Joe Rogan?

  They were just selling them. And the fact that you could doctor shop, the only reason why you would have that, like it's not difficult to have a database. I mean, this was like 2000 and what, when this was going on? What year?

• 1:38:36Speaker 02

  2008, 2009, that's when we did our story.

• 1:38:38Joe Rogan?

  Plenty of computers, the internet was around, like this could all be prevented.

• 1:38:42Speaker 02

  I know, but everybody was just making so much money. The doctors, the pain clinics, the distributors, the pharmaceutical companies.

• 1:38:48Joe Rogan?

  And the Sackler family.

• 1:38:49Speaker 02

  The Sackler family.

• 1:38:50Joe Rogan?

  Now, I know that after Peter Berg's Netflix series, Painkiller came out, that they put a halt on, because they were supposed to pay an enormous settlement, like six billion. Not really enormous compared to their profit.

• 1:39:03Speaker 02

  Exactly, I was about to say.

• 1:39:04Joe Rogan?

  But it was gonna supposedly keep them out of jail. And I think there was a judge that put a halt on that. And they started another investigation.

• 1:39:11Speaker 02

  What happened was that they, the settlement, they agreed to settle as long as they were never found. The family itself was never found liable again.

• 1:39:19Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:39:20Speaker 02

  Which is fucked up.

• 1:39:21Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, you can't do that. You're literally buying your way out of jail when you might be responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

• 1:39:28Speaker 02

  And, I mean, it's been, it's been a million people who have died in the past 20 something years from the opiate crisis. It's crazy. Like, I don't think people realize how high the risk is.

• 1:39:41Joe Rogan?

  This family thinks they're gonna be able to buy their way out of being responsible for maybe a million people dead.

• 1:39:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, with a drop in the bucket. I mean, they're not directly, you know, guilty of all those deaths, but they created the problem of the opiate crisis, the biggest drug epidemic in America's history. And they're paying, buying their way out with a, you know, a profit of the, a drop in the bucket of the profits.

• 1:40:01Joe Rogan?

  Compared to what they have. Yeah, they're not even gonna feel it. They've got six billion dollars.

• 1:40:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 1:40:05Joe Rogan?

  Oh, it's so evil.

• 1:40:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:08Joe Rogan?

  It's just so evil.

• 1:40:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:10Joe Rogan?

  They tracked down the guy who approved it for the FDA, do you know that?

• 1:40:14Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:40:15Joe Rogan?

  He was living in a small town in New Hampshire. And apparently, they'd taken, this guy would not approve it, and then they got him in a hotel for a weekend. And the pharmaceutical drug companies and no one knows what happened in the hotel. No one knows what they did, what kind of deal they made or what happened, but when they got out, he approved it.

• 1:40:36Speaker 02

  He approved what?

• 1:40:37Joe Rogan?

  He approved OxyContin.

• 1:40:39Speaker 02

  From just...

• 1:40:40Joe Rogan?

  The original approving of OxyContin.

• 1:40:42Speaker 02

  Do you think he was bribed to do that?

• 1:40:45Joe Rogan?

  I don't think he did it because he's a nice guy. I mean, I don't know what...

• 1:40:49Speaker 02

  But OxyContin has its place, like for terminal cancer patients, for people dealing with a lot of pain, there's a reason why people...

• 1:40:56Joe Rogan?

  Sure.

• 1:40:57Speaker 02

  That it should be available for those in need.

• 1:40:59Joe Rogan?

  But that's not how they were selling it.

• 1:41:01Speaker 02

  No, they were not. In fact, the ads at the time from Purdue Pharma was that less than 1% of people would become addicted from this.

• 1:41:07Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 1:41:07Speaker 02

  That literally, that was the number they gave, less than 1% of addiction rates from this.

• 1:41:11Joe Rogan?

  Do you know what we found out the other day? Heroin was created to help people who had morphine addiction.

• 1:41:17Speaker 02

  Huh, to try to wean them off?

• 1:41:19Joe Rogan?

  It was offered as a safe alternative to morphine.

• 1:41:23Speaker 02

  Huh, wow, I didn't know that.

• 1:41:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I didn't know that either. Isn't that kooky? So it's like we've been doing that forever. Well, I've got something better for you. It's called OxyContin. By the way, only 1% of the people get addicted to it.

• 1:41:37Speaker 02

  And then it was fentanyl too.

• 1:41:38Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:38Speaker 02

  You know, when we investigated fentanyl, they started, it started as a drug for terminal cancer patients.

• 1:41:45Joe Rogan?

  Hmm.

• 1:41:45Speaker 02

  And we went after this one company called Subsys, where the guy, the head of that company called John Kapoor, was the first, and I believe only until this day, head of a pharmaceutical company to be charged and go to jail. And we had a whistleblower in our investigation, this was before he was arrested and found out and charged, we had a whistleblower telling us that the company, Incis Pharmaceuticals, Subsys was the thing, Incis Pharmaceuticals was the name of the company, that they were doing exactly the same that Purdue Pharma did back in the day, which was, in their case, they were actually bribing doctors, they were taking these doctors all to like travel experiences around the world and paying them to prescribe their medication. So you'd call and you'd go to the doctor and say, I have a headache. Oh, you should

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  be taking Subsys. It's a great fentanyl to fentanyl, it's going to cure your headache, imagine. And then the people at the company, hired by Incis, they had their insurance department, would call insurance and say, oh... This person, you need to approve this medication for this person because they have cancer. They were lying to insurance because it was only approved, insurance would only pay, and these were very expensive drugs if it was for cancer patients. So they would lie. And so this whistleblower basically opened up the Pandora's Box and told us all about this. And then there was a big investigation into it. And it was the first and only, I believe, pharmaceutical company owner that ever went to prison for it.

• 1:43:09Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 1:43:09Speaker 02

  But it was the same playbook. It's crazy. So it's like it keeps repeating itself.

• 1:43:14Joe Rogan?

  Well, it's just evil, right? It's just evil finds a way to manifest itself through any business. If you've got people that are incentivized by money rather than doing the right thing.

• 1:43:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:25Joe Rogan?

  And evil finds a way to go, listen, we could fudge the books.

• 1:43:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:29Joe Rogan?

  Listen, we can form a study and make this study seem as effective. And by the time they get it, by the time they figure it out, we made a lot of money.

• 1:43:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:43:38Joe Rogan?

  And that's the playbook. I mean, that's how they got Vioxx through. It was like clear email evidence that they knew it was going to cause serious health problems with people that took it.

• 1:43:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:43:48Joe Rogan?

  But I believe the exact quote was, but we believe we will do very well with this.

• 1:43:55Speaker 02

  It's fucking crazy.

• 1:43:56Joe Rogan?

  It's evil. It's evil. And they're detached from it because they're not like seeing the person die in front of them. They're not seeing some child trying to wake their father up and realizing their father is cold and dead because he had an overdose in the middle of the night and no one's taking them to school because their dad's dead.

• 1:44:13Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:44:13Joe Rogan?

  You know, they don't see that. They're, you know, sipping scotch in some fucking country club somewhere and driving around in a Mercedes and they're just looking at the amount of numbers that they made from that. And it's evil.

• 1:44:24Speaker 02

  It's evil. I remember interviewing a woman, we did a story about fake pharmaceuticals and why, I think it's 20 million Americans that can't afford their pharmaceuticals, so they go to places like Mexico and online to Indian pharmaceutical companies or fake and buy medication that sometimes works, but a lot of times is counterfeit and is bad and actually can kill you. And I remember interviewing the, sort of the head of this big lobby, one of the biggest DC lobby groups for pharmaceutical companies and asking her, and she was very happy to be on the show because we were talking about counterfeit, right? And she Thought she was going to be able to just talk about how bad counterfeit medications are and how important it is it to buy the real medications from real pharmacies. And I was asking her, but what does it say about the pharmaceutical companies and the

• 1:45:09Speaker 02

  healthcare system in this country when 20 million Americans can't afford their life-saving medications? What do you think that says? And she says, oh, I don't, you know, the medications, they're too expensive. We have to figure out a way to bring prices down. And, you know, they always say that it's not for profit, it's for research and development, which is bullshit.

• 1:45:29Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:45:30Speaker 02

  Because a lot of it is used for marketing and a lot of it is used for its profit, right?

• 1:45:35Joe Rogan?

  Of course.

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  They're making a fucking ton of money out of it.

• 1:45:37Joe Rogan?

  They make so much money.

• 1:45:38Speaker 02

  And I asked her, have you ever actually spent time with anyone who's struggling to buy their medications? As the head of this pharmaceutical lobby, have you spent time with any of these people? She was like, no. Like, straight out, no.

• 1:45:51Joe Rogan?

  It's like, how can you, how can you represent the pharmaceutical companies?

• 1:45:55Speaker 02

  Know that one of the biggest problems we have in this country is that people cannot afford these medications and not have spent one single minute with a person who has a hard time affording these medications, right?

• 1:46:07Joe Rogan?

  That's how I'm able to.

• 1:46:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. But it's that disconnect that you're talking about, right? It's not actually understanding the problem or wanting to know the people that are being affected by these problems.

• 1:46:17Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, and the medications are so expensive. Some medications are so ridiculously expensive. And you realize, like, they're not, they don't have to be that expensive.

• 1:46:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:46:28Joe Rogan?

  This is just a company making massive amounts of profit.

• 1:46:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and paying their CEOs millions of dollars and...

• 1:46:33Joe Rogan?

  They could stop a lot of that if they cut that revolving door bullshit out. If they made it so that if you work for the FDA, you can't just hop over to Eli Lilly, like, right away after you leave. Like, you have to wait 10 years.

• 1:46:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:46Joe Rogan?

  Say that. Like, okay, you want a career some way?

• 1:46:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:49Joe Rogan?

  You could not profit at all from the pharmaceutical drug industry for 10 years after you're done being a regulator.

• 1:46:55Speaker 02

  I agree with you, and I know that it's a huge conflict of interest, and we've seen how bad that can be and prejudicial, how bad it could be. But I also, I try to put myself, if, I've spent my whole entire career... You know, with ambition and trying to do good and then I end up at the FDA and I have a chance to do something good and then I, yeah, whatever happens, I lose my job or I...

• 1:47:18Joe Rogan?

  You're in the vampire machine and you realize like, oh, this whole system's fucked. Let me just hop on over to Galaxo Smith-Kline.

• 1:47:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out like what...

• 1:47:26Joe Rogan?

  Break it in. I wanna get a house in the suburbs.

• 1:47:29Speaker 02

  Right. I know, I know, but I, I try to see with a, see, look at it through other eyes and see like, okay, we have to figure out what these people are gonna do because what do you do after if you can't work for ten years? This is what they've lived all their lives, working in, right?

• 1:47:41Joe Rogan?

  Sort of, but I think it's incentivized. I think they're, they are making laws and pushing things specifically at the behest of the pharmaceutical drug industry, knowing that there's a golden parachute awaiting them.

• 1:47:53Speaker 02

  Right, but I don't think all of them. I think a lot of people, and I've interviewed the head of the, the, uh, CDs, the, uh, it was a while back, we did a story about, um, anyway, I've interviewed some of these government officials that work at the FDA and, and I don't think all of them work, are there with bad intentions.

• 1:48:15Joe Rogan?

  No, no, no, no, but a lot of the ones that do know it's available and the shocking number of people that leave those positions of being a regulator and go over to work for the pharmaceutical drug, I mean, that's a kind of crazy conflict of interest.

• 1:48:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is a huge, huge conflict.

• 1:48:31Joe Rogan?

  If you've been passing laws and, and winking at people and shaking hands and playing golf with them and then you make it easy for them and then all of a sudden you work for them and you're making a million and a half a year, ooh.

• 1:48:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course it is.

• 1:48:43Joe Rogan?

  A lot of people like that.

• 1:48:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:45Joe Rogan?

  And that's why it's a dirty ass business.

• 1:48:47Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:48:48Joe Rogan?

  And then you got a dirty ass business because they sponsor all the news, like, brought to you by Pfizer, Anderson Cooper, brought to you by Pfizer.

• 1:48:57Speaker 02

  That's another thing that's bananas in this country. It's so crazy. It only exists in America, you know? I grew up in Europe.

• 1:49:01Joe Rogan?

  Callie Mains was talking about this and said, the issue is not that this way more people will buy their drugs. The issue is now the media won't criticize their drugs.

• 1:49:12Speaker 02

  Oh, because they need it. Oh, my God, yeah.

• 1:49:14Joe Rogan?

  Exactly, because they, they financially invested in these companies. They're partners, basically.

• 1:49:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:49:19Joe Rogan?

  Without the pharmaceutical drug companies, I think cable news would be in deep shit.

• 1:49:23Speaker 02

  Well, as a member of the media, I've never had that problem. I have never had, and I've investigated, as you know, pharmaceutical companies before. But I've never had my boss tell me I can't.

• 1:49:32Joe Rogan?

  Of course, but you look at the kind of stuff you do, you know. You're, you're, you're doing the real stuff. Like, you're boots on the ground in the scariest parts of the world. You're doing a different thing. You're a real journalist, and I really appreciate that.

• 1:49:44Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:49:45Joe Rogan?

  And, um, that's, you know, you're not getting that on TV for the most part. You know, it's only, it has to be on a show like yours, but like on TV news, you're, you're not getting that kind of, I mean, not that kind of investigative journalism that you do as applied to everything. But there's a lot of conflicts of interest.

• 1:50:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:02Joe Rogan?

  There's a lot of people that don't want you investigating certain things, you know. Don't want you investigate waste and fraud and government and...

• 1:50:09Speaker 02

  And that's the role of journalism, yeah. I mean, people in power have a hard time with the truth.

• 1:50:12Joe Rogan?

  Exactly.

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  And their job is to go out and...

• 1:50:15Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:50:16Speaker 02

  Which, I know, but which is why, you know, it's so troublesome that we live at a time where people don't believe in journalists and, and think that all journalists are either fake or they're lying, and that's a real problem, because it's a real problem for all of us.

• 1:50:29Joe Rogan?

  I think it is, but the one solution to that, um, I think is, A, mainstream journalism has to change its way. They, you can't just be working as a propaganda arm for the Republican or the Democratic Party, which is what Fox News does and which is what, you know, MSNBC does. They, they were, they're, they stick within the lines, right? And you also, it opens a door for independent journalists, which I think is the most promising part of it. The people that come through that you know you can count on because they always tell the truth about stuff. And then they develop a reputation, like guys like Glenn, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, those type, Michael Schellenberger, those type of people that work for mainstream organizations

• 1:51:11Joe Rogan?

  and then realize these are, this, I'm being constrained and this is not real journalism, this is not what I signed up for. Like, Matt Taibbi, I trust that guy just with everything. He doesn't lie, and he's gonna tell you what he knows about this and why he thinks it's this way and what's going on, regardless of party lines, regardless... Have you ever read Hate, Inc., his book? Really fucking good. He makes the case that Rachel Maddow is Bill O'Reilly on the left. It's like basically the same thing. And he's just talking about this, this...

• 1:51:43Joe Rogan?

  Whole industry that's sort of set up with media to keep everybody at each other's throats. And that's what they're selling. They're selling hate and outrage every day. And your dad gets home, "Oh, these motherfuckers!" And he's yelling at the TV. Like, that's what that is. It's like, everybody's being played. But in your real life, what, how, are you encountering most of this? Most of this, you're not encountering. Like, you, you don't need to be this elevated and agitated. But then you're online, and your Twitter feed, arguing with people, and it's like, "Ah!"

• 1:52:14Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:52:15Joe Rogan?

  And everybody's going crazy.

• 1:52:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the attention economy, right? And that's what is all about.

• 1:52:19Joe Rogan?

  We need a Martin Luther King. We need someone who has a very compelling voice that preaches nonviolence, and someone who resonates with people because he's a powerful speaker, or she's a powerful speaker, who has this message.

• 1:52:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe it's James Tellerico.

• 1:52:35Joe Rogan?

  Maybe.

• 1:52:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:36Joe Rogan?

  Look, he's, he's a good man. Like, he's a genuinely good man. And, but that was the point, was like, if you're a right-winger, and you go, "Fuck those Antifa people", you gotta realize, like, stop. Stop being on a team. Because these kooky theocrats, they're on this side too. They wanna turn this entire state into theocracy. Like, there's a lot of nutty people on the right, too. The right-wing militias, they're fucking insane, too. Don't ignore them. And on the left, hey, don't ignore Antifa. Hey, don't light the Capitol building on fire. Hey, don't take over giant chunks of Seattle and, and change the name of it. Remember that, when they did that?

• 1:53:13Speaker 02

  Mm-mm.

• 1:53:14Joe Rogan?

  Do you remember? Like, what did they call it? CHAZ. CHAZ. Remember that? Where they took over, and the, the mayor said, "Maybe it's the summer of love"? They took over blocks of Seattle.

• 1:53:24Speaker 02

  Wait, this was, we're talking about Antifa?

• 1:53:26Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, when, like, what?

• 1:53:27Joe Rogan?

  Well, I mean, what is Antifa, right? It's just, it's not-

• 1:53:29Speaker 02

  But that's the thing. I think maybe that's what Jimmy Kimmel meant when, when he was, I didn't, I didn't see that play.

• 1:53:33Joe Rogan?

  They have a handbook, they have a flag. Like, Antifa has-

• 1:53:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's several different groups, right? It's not, there's not one group. It's not like, you know, some of these right-wing groups that are actually-

• 1:53:43Joe Rogan?

  Right, but you could say Islamic terrorism. Are you talking about Hamas? Are you talking about Hezbollah? There's a lot of different factions, but the reality is, there is Islamic terrorism. And- And there is Antifa.

• 1:53:54Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I mean, like I said, I've reported on them. I'm not denying that they exist.

• 1:53:58Joe Rogan?

  But the thing is, the people on the left don't want to admit things.

• 1:54:00Speaker 02

  But it's more decentralized is what I mean.

• 1:54:01Joe Rogan?

  They want to ignore it because they're the tough guys of the left. They're the people that are going to go out and do the dirty work that needs to be done. The same way that people would look at like some right wing militias, if they're right wing, oh, a few extremists, but hey, they keep those left wing people on their toes, like.

• 1:54:16Speaker 02

  Right. Right. Yeah, we need, we need more independent journalists. I think you're right. Going back to the independent journalists. It's, it's partly why I've now started this podcast on YouTube is because I know it's a place that I can keep doing, if it grows, and I hope it will, doing the kind of reporting that I do, that I don't have to depend on a Disney or as much as I thank Disney and National Geographic for having me all these years. It is really important to be able to do independent journalism and not be limited and stop and, and, and be told what you can and cannot do.

• 1:54:48Joe Rogan?

  Of course.

• 1:54:49Speaker 02

  It is crucial for the health and, and survival of our democracy. So YouTube is actually an amazing platform for that.

• 1:54:57Joe Rogan?

  It really is. And fortunately, because of social media, you can kind of suss out who's legit and who's just a propagandist. You know, it's a really.

• 1:55:05Speaker 02

  I, I agree.

• 1:55:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, because now, like, if you're a person who's an independent journalist, but it seems fishy that you'll talk about one issue all the time. And then all of a sudden someone finds out, oh, look, this guy gets funding from this organization. And this organization is run by this guy and this guy supports, you know, he's from Russia or whatever it is.

• 1:55:26Speaker 02

  Or just by perpetrating, perpetuating these lies, I will keep my fan base, even if I know that is a lie. It's not, I don't even think it's like they're being paid to say this. I think that they get, they get their audience and their followers and paid that way.

• 1:55:41Joe Rogan?

  They're also probably not the most nuanced thinkers.

• 1:55:44Speaker 02

  Oh, they're definitely not the most nuanced thinkers.

• 1:55:46Joe Rogan?

  Or willing, even to entertain. I had a friend who briefly worked on a right wing show and one of the things that the host told him was, hey, man, you gotta stay. And defend the party, like whatever the party says, like whatever, you gotta go with that and get them on your side. That's how you build an audience. And he was like.

• 1:56:05Speaker 02

  Right, but that's exactly it.

• 1:56:07Joe Rogan?

  My friend was like, I'm out. I'm done. No, I'm not doing that. Like, I'm gonna tell you my opinions on things. And some of my opinions are very left wing. So I'm not doing that. So he left. Kudos to him. But this is the world that we're living in now, where it's like, people decide that they're gonna only adhere to one ideology. And you don't realize how malleable humans are. It's so easy to form a group and have everybody like, get a part of it and have an ideology. And it could be positive, or it could be negative. And if it's negative and everybody's on board with it, then you got Hamas. Or then you've got, you know, whatever. Whatever organization it is, you've got the, you know.

• 1:56:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:56:47Joe Rogan?

  Fill it out.

• 1:56:48Speaker 02

  I think it's a comfortable, it's a much more comfortable way of living to believe that there's bad people, and then you're the good part, right? And there's that other side, and you're on this side, you're on the good side, right?

• 1:56:59Joe Rogan?

  You just gotta never be willing to do evil because you think you're doing it against evil people. You can't do that, because then you're evil. Like, you're the thing that you're trying, yeah.

• 1:57:10Speaker 02

  Which is interesting, we did a story about assassins. And we interviewed an assassin in America and an assassin in South Africa, which has the highest rates of assassins. And that is exactly what they said when they justified what they do, which is the worst of the worst crime, right? You're taking away somebody's life. But that is their justification was that they were killing bad people. And so, you know, God was on their side, and they were killing bad people. But it's, it's, it's a little bit, not on assassin level, but it's a little bit that, that idea, like.

• 1:57:38Joe Rogan?

  That's a crazy rationalization. You know, that's what Genghis Khan used to say.

• 1:57:43Speaker 02

  That he was killing.

• 1:57:44Joe Rogan?

  There was a famous quote of Genghis Khan, "You must have done something horrible for God to bring me."

• 1:57:48Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:57:49Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Then I'm your punishment. I'm the punishment of God. That was his quote, it's the craziest quote from a guy that killed 50 million people in his lifetime, or responsible, at least indirectly, to 50-plus million people dying.

• 1:58:02Speaker 02

  Holy shit.

• 1:58:04Joe Rogan?

  But imagine that, among, you know, God must have sent me. You must be terrible if God sent me.

• 1:58:10Speaker 02

  I mean, when you bring God to the equation, right?

• 1:58:12Joe Rogan?

  But the thing, but that's how crazy people could rationalize evil. That like, I'm working for God to just destroy this whole village. I'm gonna kill a million people in this village and stack their bodies up in the center.

• 1:58:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:25Joe Rogan?

  That's what Genghis Khan did. And he said, "Well, God must have really hated you."

• 1:58:30Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:58:30Joe Rogan?

  "If he sent me."

• 1:58:31Speaker 02

  Right, yeah.

• 1:58:34Joe Rogan?

  Well, people could do that with anything. And this is the problem with tribalism. This is the problem with being on a team. Because if you're on the left, you hate the people on the right. If you're on the right, you hate the people on the left.

• 1:58:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:46Joe Rogan?

  And, you know, you, you wear your outfits, like, maybe you have blue hair, you got an American flag t-shirt. You know, and everybody hates everybody. It's like, for what?

• 1:58:53Speaker 02

  Right, and then they're on social media talking about stuff with so many opinions with, with no actual knowledge. Like, not once having spent time actually on the ground looking at any of these issues, right?

• 1:59:04Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 1:59:04Speaker 02

  They talk about these immigrant raids, immigration raids, or drugs coming across. But not one, not one single one of these people that have all these opinions have actually spent a fucking day reporting on it.

• 1:59:15Joe Rogan?

  I saw one of the conversations with Tom Homan where they were saying that 70% of the people that they catch coming across-

• 1:59:22Speaker 02

  Which was bullshit, you know?

• 1:59:23Joe Rogan?

  But let me say this, 70% of the people that they catch and send back are criminals.

• 1:59:30Speaker 02

  Bullshit.

• 1:59:31Joe Rogan?

  Even if it was true, why don't you get that down to 100%? Like, why don't you, like, figure out who's not a criminal? And then you'll have everybody on your side. Like, if you're only deporting gang members, no one would be complaining. If you're only going after known gang members and getting them, only going after known scammers, criminals,

• 1:59:53Speaker 02

  Prosters, traffickers, yeah.

• 1:59:55Joe Rogan?

  Armed robbery, whatever anybody's doing, then you'd have everybody on your side. Like, 30%, it's crazy. Imagine if that applied to most things, like, if most people who are accused of a crime, 30% of them were injured.

• 2:00:05Speaker 02

  70%, 70% were guilty, the 30...

• 2:00:07Joe Rogan?

  30% were innocent, three out of 10, and everyone's getting fucking snatched up en masse.

• 2:00:12Speaker 02

  But you know that that number is not correct. It's actually 40% that have some sort of-

• 2:00:17Joe Rogan?

  Criminal history.

• 2:00:17Speaker 02

  Criminal history, but a lot of time it's nonviolent. It can be a misdemeanor, it can be actually a parking ticket. And only 7% of the people being deported have been, have criminal, have been charged with criminal violence. So, the numbers are insane.

• 2:00:33Joe Rogan?

  I wonder if they could mitigate some of this shit if they just changed the way the census works. But I don't think they can. I think it's a constitutional thing. I think it's the way the constitution is written. I think it has something to do with just, the way it says it, it doesn't say lawful citizens. I think it says people living.

• 2:00:51Speaker 02

  People, people living.

• 2:00:52Joe Rogan?

  Which is, you know, kind of, you know, they're people. They're just people, like people with paperwork or people with not paperwork. We just gotta figure out who's a fucking criminal.

• 2:01:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:02Joe Rogan?

  That's it.

• 2:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:01:03Joe Rogan?

  That should be the only thing that everybody agrees on.

• 2:01:05Speaker 02

  Which take money, which takes money and resources, right? It's a lot harder to do it well.

• 2:01:09Joe Rogan?

  They think that they were moving people into this country politically to get these people eventually a pathway to citizenship and then they would have lifelong voters. And this is what, this is the allegations of why they were moving people to luxury hotels in New York City and paying them and, and doing it in Chicago as well where the people that were poor that were living in Chicago were like, hey, we're not getting these resources. Like, why are you giving these resources to people that just came here from another country? This is obviously before all the ICE raids, which have completely changed public opinion. So that's where it gets really fucked up because there's people that probably would have been willing to vote Republican again. Because they didn't like what the Democrats were doing because essentially they had a dead man who was pretending to be president and then they just

• 2:01:53Joe Rogan?

  had some people running the government from behind the scenes. We're not really sure who that was and that doesn't seem right, so I voted Republican. There's a lot of people that feel that way. And then they see this and they're like, I can't support that. I can't support this heartless shit.

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  Exactly, I agree, a hundred percent.

• 2:02:08Joe Rogan?

  And I'm sure I catch shit for it online, but lucky, I don't read it.

• 2:02:13Speaker 02

  You definitely read it, right? You don't read the online stories.

• 2:02:15Joe Rogan?

  You gotta, if you have to, if you're in a position like I'm in, you have to stay sane.

• 2:02:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:02:19Joe Rogan?

  And the only way to stay sane is to say as conflict free as possible. So even though I talk a lot of shit, I don't read anything anybody says back. Like, say it all, you're allowed to, you should be.

• 2:02:30Speaker 02

  I read, I read it all. I mean, I don't read what people are posting, but I read all the messages I get sent and everything. And I reply and everything.

• 2:02:37Joe Rogan?

  That's very nice of you. It's just, it's not tenable at my.

• 2:02:40Speaker 02

  Oh, of course not.

• 2:02:42Joe Rogan?

  But it, it, it would be nice if I knew they were gonna be nice. You know, like, people that I meet are almost all nice.

• 2:02:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's so much.

• 2:02:49Joe Rogan?

  Universally nice people.

• 2:02:51Speaker 02

  So much easier to be mean online than it is face to face, right?

• 2:02:54Joe Rogan?

  Even people that I know don't like me, like, you know, certain people, like, I could say, I say hi, they're like, hi. And like, they don't like me because I represent some, but they're not mean to me. You know, whereas in the privacy of their own home or sitting on the toilet, they could say the most awful shit on Twitter. I don't need to read that and I would probably say it if I was them too. That's the thing. If you're, you feel powerless and voiceless and you see someone doing something that you don't agree with. And then you have this Twitter account and you're just like, fuck that guy.

• 2:03:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:03:24Joe Rogan?

  I get it. I understand it, but I can't read it.

• 2:03:27Speaker 02

  Right. No, I don't think you should. It's not, you'd have to start drinking again if you did.

• 2:03:32Joe Rogan?

  Well, I never drank for that reason. I always drank for fun. Uh, I just, you know, I think, uh, social media for the most part is, uh, net positive. I think, um.

• 2:03:45Speaker 02

  You think so?

• 2:03:45Joe Rogan?

  Yes, I do.

• 2:03:47Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I, I love it and I use it and I use it as a tool from the work that I do 100%. But, uh, but I, I, I, I was you, I'm a very optimistic person and I always thought, you know, there's, there's a reason, you know, there's great ways of using social media like you do, but with, with young people nowadays and.

• 2:04:06Joe Rogan?

  Yeah. Young people, it's very challenging, but this is what I think. Information is almost always good and then the understanding that some of the information is bad is good. Because then you realize like, oh, don't trust everything, like figure out what's right and what's wrong. And then finding verifiable, like accurate sources of information is good.

• 2:04:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that's what I think is harder and harder to do.

• 2:04:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but you can do it, but the point is at least more information is available now than ever before, which is makes it very difficult for governments to pull off stuff that they were trying to pull off before. It makes it very difficult for people to get, get scammed like they were getting scammed in the past. It's just, it's, it's just, there's going to be a bunch of people that get duped no matter what. And there's going to be a bunch of people that get kidnapped by social media, meaning that their attention span and their focus, their life becomes a part of that thing. But I think this is a new and emerging aspect of society that we will navigate

• 2:05:07Joe Rogan?

  and that we will learn from the failures and it will cost a lot of people their happiness and prosperity. A lot of people will get wrapped up in that shit and it will fuck them up and that's net negative, right? But I think we'll learn from it like you don't want to get bit by the rattlesnake. You hear that rattle? Get the fuck out of there. Well, we'll realize through all these other people's mistakes where the pitfalls are. So we'll have to develop more robust ways of thinking about thing and more resilience. More resiliency. And I think that's the net positive. And then this communication with people all over the world, net positive, I think, ultimately. The real problem is the challenging aspect of is a lot of people you're communicating with aren't real. And that's, that's a giant problem now.

• 2:05:52Joe Rogan?

  China was busted using ChatGPT to promulgate, they were, they were using it to, um, they were going into Reddit forums and they're using it on social media and they, they, they were pretending to be people. And they were arguing about stuff and you know, you could just give it a prompt like from the position of a white supremacist, say why all Mexicans should be kicked out of this country.

• 2:06:13Speaker 02

  To create a vision, I know, in this country, I know.

• 2:06:15Joe Rogan?

  And so that's a giant percentage of all social media discourse. So I don't necessarily think you should be going back and forth with people. But I think as a source of information and news and alternative perspectives and boots on the ground people like, hey, I'm reporting live from Gaza, look what they just did to this A party.

• 2:06:32Speaker 02

  And it was what we thought was going to happen when the Arab Spring happened, you know, because everybody has a phone and finally we were able to film these amazing, you know, revolutions. But I think that promise has sort of waited a little bit. I have to point out one thing you said, how scams are not as prevalent these days.

• 2:06:48Joe Rogan?

  I should have said that. That's not what I meant really. I meant, um, The government, it's very, it's more difficult for governments.

• 2:06:57Speaker 02

  Fraud from the government, yeah.

• 2:06:58Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, online fraud is crazy.

• 2:07:00Speaker 02

  We're living in the golden age of scams.

• 2:07:03Joe Rogan?

  I get like thirty texts a day. The dude that owned my phone number before me, this dude Raymond, was a moron. And Raymond, Raymond, you fucking idiot. Did you sign up for everything, bitch? Because this guy, like, every day, like, hey Raymond, like, your loan's been approved.

• 2:07:21Speaker 02

  So, really fun. I'm going to come on your podcast next year, once I'm done with this project. But I'm working on a really fun project for National Geographic, which is where I say yes to every single scam that comes my way.

• 2:07:33Joe Rogan?

  Oh, boy.

• 2:07:34Speaker 02

  I've been filming it for a few months, and it's been the craziest, wildest journey of my life.

• 2:07:39Joe Rogan?

  Can you tell us?

• 2:07:40Speaker 02

  I can't.

• 2:07:40Joe Rogan?

  No?

• 2:07:41Speaker 02

  I can't. I just can tell you that I've been, I have romantic relationships with people.

• 2:07:45Joe Rogan?

  Hot damn.

• 2:07:47Speaker 02

  I spend a lot of time on my burner phone with people love bombing me.

• 2:07:52Joe Rogan?

  Really?

• 2:07:52Speaker 02

  But it's not, it's a fake persona. Like, I put a wig and glasses.

• 2:07:57Joe Rogan?

  Oh, so you use your own picture? You don't even use AI?

• 2:07:59Speaker 02

  No, I don't use AI. We actually sort of modified. We put a fake nose on me and a wig and glasses. But people say it doesn't look at all like me. I can see it's me. But I will talk, it's really fascinating. But also to talk about scams, which I can talk about a lot, is we are living in the golden age of scams. I think it was Warren Buffett that said fraud and scams are the number one industry, growth industry of our time. And one of the stories we did, which is so sad, and I hate to bring it down back to a sad topic, but is that we, I didn't know this before starting to report on it, which a lot of times you think, you know, these scammers, these guys that are texting and

• 2:08:41Speaker 02

  emailing you and calling you, that these are, you know, people in West Africa or, you know, wherever, but like loan operators. Well, we did a story about these scam factories. Have you heard of these?

• 2:08:52Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 2:08:53Speaker 02

  It's these compounds in places like Cambodia and Myanmar in Asia, where they are, it's basically factories, but sometimes with thousands and thousands of people, forced labor. So these are mostly people from India, sometimes Brazil, other Asian countries. The Philippines is a big place, where they respond to ads to work in what they think are legitimate businesses, to work in online companies and whatnot. And they are, they pay for their expenses to travel to these places, to Cambodia and Myanmar. In Myanmar, they're operating out of this area that's, that's an ongoing civil war and is ruled by these militias. And they get in there and they're, as soon as they get in, they take away their passports and they're trapped and they're forced to scam.

• 2:09:36Speaker 02

  So they spend 24/7 scamming Americans and European people.

• 2:09:41Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:09:42Speaker 02

  And it is an industry where they're making billions of dollars. The US government just recently seized 15 billion dollars from one company, from one group of people alone in crypto. It's the craziest thing. So these people are being tortured and, and, you know, beaten, sometimes killed, and forced to, to scam. So we went actually to Myanmar. We were smuggled into the border, into Myanmar, into the country illegally.

• 2:10:09Joe Rogan?

  Whoa.

• 2:10:10Speaker 02

  Across the river and spent time in this town that was basically built by these, this Chinese gang that was all with the money of scamming Americans. And they were trying to build like a mini Macau. And the guy that ran the, the company is called Yata International and he took us on a tour of this mini Macau. And it was so surreal. It was like these aquaparks with no one in the aquapark and these luxury casinos. We ended the night, it was so crazy, in, we were trying, this guy said he would give us an interview, but first we had to do the tour. So, and the interview would happen the next day. So we ended the night, this was actually not filmed, in a karaoke.

• 2:10:54Speaker 02

  That was a massive room where every single, the whole, every wall and the ceiling was all this cream. It was like the future. And this is in a war-torn area of a country that's incredibly poor and they've built this place with millions and billions of dollars from, from profits of scamming. And we ended the night with this guy, who's basically the head of this criminal Chinese gang, running these scams, in this karaoke, singing Celine Dion and Whitney Houston.

• 2:11:24Speaker 02

  And being poured whiskey and whatever Oh my god. high-end brand we wanted. You were getting drunk with them? Oh my god, yes. I was singing my heart out. I spent the whole night singing Whitney Houston. The videos are so embarrassing because I That's hilarious. cannot sing for my life. But I was like, well, we need to get this guy on tape. So I'm just gonna do whatever. Wow. And then the next day, we interviewed him. And it was just fucking crazy. And we ended our last day. I mean, we interviewed a Chinese dude, so sad, like 21-year-old, who was caught trying to escape and was chased out of the building. He ran out of a third floor, broke both his legs,

• 2:12:08Speaker 02

  one at the hip, practically died, was actually saved by an onlooker who took him to the hospital and then moved to Thailand where I met him. He was in a wheelchair, told us about beatings. We spoke to another Indian kid also who was like they had a water hose on his body. He was forced to stand for 24 hours and then electrocuted. And I mean, the videos out of these places were insane, like people with horrific wounds and people dying and killed. And yeah, and just forced to scam. So they're being forced and I never considered that. Forced to fucking scam. Being forced into scamming. Yeah, forced into scamming. And then we interviewed a girl called Angel, who was raped repeatedly by her bosses. And she's sort of the face model. So a lot of times after speaking to these,

• 2:12:53Speaker 02

  what they think are romantic relationships for a long time, they want to see people's faces. So this is the girl that then they put a fake AI face on top of her, but it has to be a girl because of the mannerisms and the voice. And they have this girl who actually speaks English. And she would talk to victims of scams and pretend that she was the wonderful woman that they'd been dating for months. And convince them to put their money into this crypto business that was fake. And take millions out of these victims. So this woman starts crying and telling me how she knows she's doing something awful. But and how she's raped and how she doesn't want to be doing. And at the end, she says, I just want your, I said yes to doing this, even though it's incredibly dangerous.

• 2:13:38Speaker 02

  But I accepted doing this because I just want a message for the victims in America, the people that I've spoken to, that I don't, that I'm sorry. I just want to apologize for all the harm that I've caused. And she's like in tears, but I have no way out. I mean, these are heart wrenching, heart wrenching stories. And the last day we were there, we were able to, there's this amazing organization called Acts of Mercy, religious based organization that is working to try to get these people out. And a lot of these bosses, actually, you can pay for ransom. You can pay $10,000 to save a person from there. So because if you're a bad scammer, if you're there and you're horrible and you're, you know, if you're sad and depressed and you're not doing your job, it's better for these

• 2:14:23Speaker 02

  bosses if you just get paid $10,000 to let this person go. So there was this case of this Filipino woman who the boss had agreed to a $12,000 payment to release her. But it's really dangerous for, there's this negotiator that goes and sort of tries to get her out of this compound. But he has to come with the money and he has to be able to pay the crime boss, but he also has to pay the militias to get him in. So it was like a whole process. And we were with this group, Acts of Mercy and another guy, filming them as they're on the phone negotiating her release. And they're on the phone with her. She's inside the scam center. And she's like, where do I go? This scam center is massive. She had no idea where to go.

• 2:15:05Speaker 02

  And they're saying, go to the west gate and the guy is there waiting for you. She's like, I don't know where to go. And she's crying. If they see me with the phone, because it's a confiscated phone, they're going to beat me and they're going to put me in the dark room where I'm beaten and, you know, tortured for days. And Amy, the woman on this side, is telling her. Believe us, there's somebody waiting for you. Do not be afraid. Bring your phone. We need to be telling you how to get there. It's this whole, it was this whole ordeal. It was like fucking insane. It was out of a movie. And in the end, they didn't manage to get her out. Um, but she was, not that day, but she was released a month later.

• 2:15:43Speaker 02

  Um, and she made it to safety, but so this, just to show how dangerous and difficult it is, even when they agree to let them go.

• 2:15:51Joe Rogan?

  So what are most of the scams? Are most of the scams romantic?

• 2:15:54Speaker 02

  Crypto scams. They're called pig butchering scams.

• 2:15:56Joe Rogan?

  Pig butchering?

• 2:15:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the name they give them because it's an express, Chinese expression. It started in China. It started as a domestic scam in China, actually. And yeah, pig butchering because the idea is that you fatten the pig, which is your victim, and then you kill them at the end, right? And, and uh, which that's why it's called pig butchering. But the idea is that you meet somebody online and it's usually a beautiful girl or man. And um, and you create, you start a relationship with that person.

• 2:16:26Joe Rogan?

  How do they meet them?

• 2:16:28Speaker 02

  You know those texts that you get a lot of times like, hey, I haven't talked to you in a while? A lot of those are pig butchering scams. A lot of messages you get on Instagram from these beautiful girls or.

• 2:16:37Joe Rogan?

  They're stepping it up because I got a few iMessages like that. I was like, whoa. Not even just a green text bubble anymore. They got iPhones now.

• 2:16:44Speaker 02

  And then they tell you, you know, follow me on Instagram and then you go, let's go on WhatsApp. And then they are sending you photos of them in their private jets and living this wonderful life.

• 2:16:54Joe Rogan?

  Is that what they're doing with you?

• 2:16:55Speaker 02

  Yes, in other ways, yeah.

• 2:16:58Joe Rogan?

  So these scams that you're responding to?

• 2:17:00Speaker 02

  One of the ones we're trying to get is that. We're getting several different kinds of scams, like Indian call centers and all, all of the different scams. But eventually they start saying, look, we are leave living. And so you're curious, like, how do you like, how are you making so much money? It's like, oh yeah, I've been investing in crypto and, you know, I can't really tell you much about it now. So they, they last, it can last months. And at some point they're like, okay, I've built a relationship, yeah? I'm going to tell you how I do it. You've got five thousand dollars right now and then you put the five thousand dollars and then they show profit on these fake websites. It looks completely legitimate and you're saying, oh my God, I put five thousand and now I have ten? How much more can I put in? So people are going all in. And they're like, everything they have, 401Ks, they're

• 2:17:44Speaker 02

  pre-mortgaging their houses, everything. And then, did you hear the case about the guy in Kansas?

• 2:17:50Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 2:17:50Speaker 02

  The bank?

• 2:17:51Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 2:17:51Speaker 02

  The guy that was the head of this bank in Kansas? Jamie, did you hear about this? It's a fucking fascinating story. It was a story in the New York Times, and then it got reported everywhere. I was trying to get this guy to talk to me, because this story is fascinating. So, this guy, amazing member of the community, small town in Kansas, the local bank that was started by the farmers decades ago, it's where all the farm community was, put their money, would trust this bank. Well, it turns out that this guy, the head of this bank that everybody trusted, outstanding member of the community, was, stole millions of dollars from the bank, and the bank went bankrupt. And he was stealing the money, because he was being scammed by a big butchering scam.

• 2:18:34Speaker 02

  And it started with him putting his own money. And then, they kept on saying that in order to release the funds and all the millions that he'd made from his initial investment, he would put in more and more money. I think he ended up putting in, something like...

• 2:18:48Joe Rogan?

  Forty-seven million.

• 2:18:50Speaker 02

  Million dollars from, from customers.

• 2:18:51Joe Rogan?

  Customer accounts to scammers, depleting the bank's holdings. When a state banking regulator uncovered this fraud, it closed the bank and called the FBI. Whoa. He started slow, investing a few thousand dollars in 2022 to buy what he thought was cryptocurrency. Oh my goodness.

• 2:19:09Speaker 02

  How sad is that?

• 2:19:10Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:19:10Speaker 02

  I mean, awful, obviously, he was stealing from his customers.

• 2:19:13Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:19:14Speaker 02

  But I find it so, he actually traveled to Australia at one point, thinking he was gonna meet these, the, the, the people that owed him money. I mean, he actually was completely scammed. And this is like, the head of a bank.

• 2:19:26Joe Rogan?

  A banker.

• 2:19:27Speaker 02

  The head of a fucking bank.

• 2:19:28Joe Rogan?

  Wow.

• 2:19:29Speaker 02

  It's fucking crazy. These guys are so good.

• 2:19:33Joe Rogan?

  That's crazy. They get a banker, but he's a banker in Kansas, though, you know what I'm saying? Like, come on.

• 2:19:40Speaker 02

  Don't be mean.

• 2:19:44Joe Rogan?

  Sorry, Kansas. But you know what I'm saying.

• 2:19:46Speaker 02

  Well, he's in prison now.

• 2:19:48Joe Rogan?

  Oh, well, he should be. He stole forty-seven million dollars. But he's also a dumbass. And the crazy thing is that you could be a dumbass and be a smart person if greed gets involved. Greed is like, for greed, I think greed for shady people...

• 2:20:05Joe Rogan?

  It it's almost it's kind of fascinating because you gotta know at one point in time, this is not smart, but the greed is like, but what if it is?

• 2:20:19Speaker 02

  But I think more than greed, I think it's the acceptance that you have lost all that money and that must weigh so heavily on you. If you have, you know, if you're about to foreclose your home, if you'd sent all the money from your kids' college funds, if.

• 2:20:36Joe Rogan?

  Oh, I mean, the banker.

• 2:20:38Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, but even the banker, I mean, but even the banker, he sent all his initially, it was all his money.

• 2:20:44Joe Rogan?

  Right, but then he started stealing, that's all greed.

• 2:20:45Speaker 02

  I I I don't think, I think it got to a point that he was swindled and made to believe that if he gives more money, he would he would get the money that he initially invested back.

• 2:20:59Joe Rogan?

  When you think after like one million, you'd realize you had lied to?

• 2:21:00Speaker 02

  And he would be able to put back the forty five million that he gave, he stole from his customers.

• 2:21:04Joe Rogan?

  Oh, boy.

• 2:21:05Speaker 02

  I think the realization, and this is something that I know from talking to so many scam scamming victims, the it's not so much about wanting to make that money, it's the realization that you've been talking to somebody that's not real and that you have been so swindled and, you know, I don't want to use the word dumb because I think all of us can fall victims to these scams, but that that the acceptance of that is really difficult. So you just want to keep on believing it.

• 2:21:34Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:35Speaker 02

  You just pay whatever you need to pay so the dream stays alive.

• 2:21:38Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, there's a Carl Sagan quote about that, that it's easier to convince a person, like it's harder to, like, once a person has been swindled, it's much more difficult to convince them of the swindle.

• 2:21:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:52Joe Rogan?

  They'll they'll find ways to justify that it must be true.

• 2:21:54Speaker 02

  One hundred percent.

• 2:21:55Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:56Speaker 02

  I feel that with this experiment I'm doing right now. I mean, even though I know I'm being swindled, but there's something about once you're deep in that relationship, it's it's, yeah, it it does something funny to you.

• 2:22:06Joe Rogan?

  It's also exciting. Right, and that's the problem is that most of life is boring.

• 2:22:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:11Joe Rogan?

  You know, and if you're involved in something that may or may not yield money, or may or may not yield some sort of romantic relationship, or may or may not yield

• 2:22:19Speaker 02

  One hundred percent.

• 2:22:19Joe Rogan?

  A drug deal.

• 2:22:20Speaker 02

  Or a celebrity scam, which is huge these days. If you're talk- if you think you're talking to, you know.

• 2:22:25Joe Rogan?

  Brad Pitt.

• 2:22:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:22:26Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:26Speaker 02

  Like you get that, maybe, maybe your life has a meaning, right?

• 2:22:30Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:22:30Speaker 02

  There's a reason why you're here. There's something exciting happening.

• 2:22:32Joe Rogan?

  Especially if you have like a sixty-five IQ.

• 2:22:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:22:35Joe Rogan?

  That's the problem. There's a lot of dumbasses out there, and it's not fair to scam those people.

• 2:22:42Joe Rogan?

  Some scams, like, we tolerate. Like, televangelists. We fail, we're, we're like, look, if you really believe that guy with the private jet and the Bentley, that guy, you need, send him money, because God wants you to send him money, you're on your own. You know, it's such a dumb scam, and it's so out in the open, you know?

• 2:23:04Speaker 02

  Astrology is another one I've been looking into.

• 2:23:06Joe Rogan?

  I don't know if astrology is a hundred percent bullshit. This is my take on astrology. I think at one point in time, they had some knowledge about astrology that may or may not be lost. Maybe some people understand it.

• 2:23:20Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm a believer like you, by the way.

• 2:23:23Joe Rogan?

  There's thousands of books that are like ancient book, I don't know, thousands, but a lot, written about the very specific details of astrology. Like, in terms of like where the constellations are, what time of the day it is, where, you know, where the earth is in relationship to Mars. It's very weird stuff, because I want to know like, what the fuck was the origin of all this?

• 2:23:46Speaker 02

  Right, absolutely. I meant psychic scammers, sorry. Not astrology, I meant psychic scammers.

• 2:23:50Joe Rogan?

  Oh, psychic scammers, yeah, psychic scammers.

• 2:23:52Speaker 02

  I'm a believer in astrology as well as.

• 2:23:54Joe Rogan?

  I think there's something to real astrology. I need to get a real astrologer on. I've, I've tried to find one that I think is legit.

• 2:24:01Speaker 02

  What sign are you, Beni?

• 2:24:02Joe Rogan?

  I am a Leo.

• 2:24:04Speaker 02

  Oh, of course you were.

• 2:24:05Joe Rogan?

  Ah, of course, that's ridiculous.

• 2:24:09Speaker 02

  So is my son, so is my dad. It's one of my favorite signs. I'm a Taurus.

• 2:24:13Joe Rogan?

  Okay.

• 2:24:15Joe Rogan?

  I don't know, I think that like newspaper astrology is bullshit.

• 2:24:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 2:24:20Joe Rogan?

  But I don't know that real astrology is not nonsense.

• 2:24:25Speaker 02

  Do you get, do you get that a lot? That when you say you're a Leo, they say, of course you are?

• 2:24:28Joe Rogan?

  I've heard it before, yeah.

• 2:24:29Speaker 02

  Why?

• 2:24:30Joe Rogan?

  I don't know.

• 2:24:31Speaker 02

  Oh, because you like the spotlight, right? Which is my son and my dad as well.

• 2:24:36Joe Rogan?

  Is that what it is? A spotlight?

• 2:24:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, Leo's like to...

• 2:24:39Joe Rogan?

  Interesting.

• 2:24:40Speaker 02

  What is it?

• 2:24:40Joe Rogan?

  Look at attention.

• 2:24:41Speaker 02

  They like attention, yeah. I think I'm a little Leo as well. But I'm a Taurus, I'm stubborn.

• 2:24:46Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I've heard like bullheaded, I've heard, you know, strong-willed.

• 2:24:51Speaker 02

  That's, Leo's Taurus.

• 2:24:53Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, Taurus as well. Right, the bull, right, yeah.

• 2:24:58Joe Rogan?

  But I don't... What I'm talking about is like the super-specific stuff.

• 2:25:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:25:03Joe Rogan?

  You were born at 3:00 AM, you were conceived nine months before that. When were you conceived? What was going on? Like, how did this, you know, where, what, in the procession of the equinoxes? Where's the position of the earth? You know, there's a lot of weird stuff they take into consideration. I'm like, wow, I'd really like to learn about it.

• 2:25:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:25:25Joe Rogan?

  Like from someone, I'm gonna have someone on that really understands, I just have to have someone on who's not a kook. And that's the problem, is it's like one of those disciplines that's littered with kooks.

• 2:25:35Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. I find it fascinating too. And I'm a non-believer in everything, I'm very skeptical about everything. But astrology, I've always kind of believed into. I mean, it's, it's the idea that, you know, where the sun and the stars, they have an effect on, on tides and currents. And, and why wouldn't that all have an effect? I mean, I know nothing about it. But why wouldn't it have an effect of, on you when you're born and when and where and the time?

• 2:25:58Joe Rogan?

  Right, and it's probably a part of nature's natural order too, to create a bunch of different kinds of people.

• 2:26:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe.

• 2:26:04Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, because, I mean, what makes you who you are? There's a lot of factors, right? There's environment, there's genetics, and then there's probably some

• 2:26:13Speaker 02

  Some, yeah.

• 2:26:14Joe Rogan?

  celestial shit going on.

• 2:26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, going on, yeah.

• 2:26:16Joe Rogan?

  Maybe. I'm not, you know, I don't know enough about it to, but I'm, I'm open to it because I think there's a lot of information that was lost. I think there's a lot of information that we would dismiss, you know, from ancient civilizations that we dismiss. But I think, I think the problem is that these ancient civilizations collapsed and like with the burning of the Library of Alexandria, you're left with very little. Like, a lot, a lot of like very important information is missing. And so then you gotta kinda like go, well, that seems like bullshit. That seems like old folksy stuff. Like, maybe, or maybe there was like,

• 2:26:53Speaker 02

  Right, maybe not, yeah.

• 2:26:54Joe Rogan?

  Maybe they had figured something out over a long period of time and there was a science to it.

• 2:26:57Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. You should have an astrologist on, that would be super interesting.

• 2:27:01Joe Rogan?

  Just gotta find one who's not crazy.

• 2:27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:03Joe Rogan?

  You know, like, a psychic, like, get a psychic on, it's not crazy. I've had people on that were remote viewers, that's another weird one.

• 2:27:10Speaker 02

  You have?

• 2:27:10Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, Hal Putoff. Hal Putoff was, um, he was, uh, running, uh, some various programs for the United States government. Specifically, I had him on, though, to not talk about remote viewing, to talk about UFOs.

• 2:27:23Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 2:27:24Joe Rogan?

  And, uh, he was actually brought on board during, um, Herbert Walker Bush's administration. They, um, well, well, he was working for the government at the time, but they brought him on as one of the scientists that they, they'd got a group of people from various disciplines and they said, "We're gonna compile a list of pros and cons in terms of the impact on society, of disclosure, of alien life." And this is what they were telling him. "We have recovered crashed UFOs and we are doing back engineering programs on them. We have for years. We also have recovered biological entities. We are thinking about disclosing this information to the American public.

• 2:28:06Joe Rogan?

  I want you to compile a list on the positive aspects of disclosure, how it affects society, and give a numerical value to these things." And then, negative. And all these scientists came up with a much higher negative than positive. And so they didn't disclose.

• 2:28:22Speaker 02

  And what, do you know what the list was? What were the negatives versus positives?

• 2:28:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, it was religion, government, the economy.

• 2:28:30Speaker 02

  Those were all negatives.

• 2:28:31Joe Rogan?

  Those were all negatives, yes.

• 2:28:32Speaker 02

  It could affect religion.

• 2:28:33Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:28:33Speaker 02

  It could affect the economy.

• 2:28:34Joe Rogan?

  It would affect government and the fact that no one would ever listen to the president because he's just a bitch. The fucking aliens are hovering over our head, abducting people every day.

• 2:28:43Speaker 02

  So this is where I think it would be interesting. I actually think that there's a positive if it were to happen right now because it sure as hell would bring us all together, right?

• 2:28:51Joe Rogan?

  Yes. Well, that was Reagan said that. You ever see that speech?

• 2:28:53Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:28:54Joe Rogan?

  It was a famous speech that he gave in front of the United Nations. And I think he gave this speech at a time where, you know, this was like Gorbachev, tear down that wall. It was that kind of speech where there's like trying to unite us all together. And his speech was, imagine if we were all faced with an alien threat from another world, how quickly we would unite together.

• 2:29:15Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah.

• 2:29:16Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, we would.

• 2:29:16Speaker 02

  I mean, we need it now more than ever. So if they're out there.

• 2:29:19Joe Rogan?

  I know, but is that the only way we can unite? We have to be threatened by another enemy? Like, God, we're so fucking warlike. We're so warlike, we need an interstellar war to unite America and the rest of the world.

• 2:29:31Speaker 02

  It's so sad because it didn't used to be like that, right? Politics wasn't something that people talked about all day long, all the time. Like, it wasn't.

• 2:29:38Joe Rogan?

  That's the negative aspect of social media.

• 2:29:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:40Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:40Speaker 02

  Because this is all people talk about, like even us, like, you know, there's so much interesting stuff to talk about and yet we've spent time talking about politics because unfortunately...

• 2:29:49Joe Rogan?

  But we're talking about the fascinating aspects of politics as it affects human civilization and discourse.

• 2:29:56Speaker 02

  Yes, but also like the division and the right and the left and being careful with what you say because what if the other side, this and that. It's now in every single home, in every single conversation people have. And it's just, it didn't used to be like that. It just didn't. Like, government was there, it existed, it's supposed to work well. If it's not, hopefully there are good journalists out there exposing what's not working out well. But it should not be the discourse all the time about whether you're right wing, you're left wing, whether you're with us or not or against us.

• 2:30:30Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:31Speaker 02

  And it just taints everything and...

• 2:30:36Speaker 02

  And takes too much space.

• 2:30:38Joe Rogan?

  Yes.

• 2:30:39Speaker 02

  For other conversations with much more important.

• 2:30:42Joe Rogan?

  One hundred percent.

• 2:30:42Speaker 02

  That we should be having, whether it's about AI, whether it's about social media, whether it's about aliens. There are much bigger problems that are coming in our future. And we shouldn't be so sort of tunnel focused on whether we're, you know, whether what we're saying is approved by the right or the left, or whether this or that, it's just.

• 2:31:01Joe Rogan?

  Just an amazing waste of mental resources.

• 2:31:03Speaker 02

  My fault, yes.

• 2:31:04Joe Rogan?

  And it's also a way for very uninteresting people to attach themselves to a worthy cause.

• 2:31:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:09Joe Rogan?

  People that have nothing else going on in their life and all of a sudden it's this whatever issue it is, whatever issue it is, that's their whole identity.

• 2:31:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:16Joe Rogan?

  And they go all in. And it's generally a distraction for a failed life.

• 2:31:21Speaker 02

  I think so too.

• 2:31:22Joe Rogan?

  That's a lot of it. It's not doing what you really want to do, not having the relationships you really want to have, the friendships you really, and instead you're involved in this fucking stupid cause.

• 2:31:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:32Joe Rogan?

  You know?

• 2:31:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know.

• 2:31:34Joe Rogan?

  That's so dumb. But you're right, if the aliens showed up, we'd probably all unite together. Unfortunately, like, I feel like the most united moment that I could remember in my adult life was right after September 11.

• 2:31:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, same.

• 2:31:46Joe Rogan?

  Were you in America at the time?

• 2:31:47Speaker 02

  I was in New York.

• 2:31:48Joe Rogan?

  You were in New York, oh, boy.

• 2:31:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was.

• 2:31:50Joe Rogan?

  How different was the feeling? Where everybody was like smiling to each other and saying hi on the street afterwards?

• 2:31:56Speaker 02

  The elevators, I mean, I did the initial reporting for Portugal, Portuguese television that day.

• 2:32:01Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 2:32:01Speaker 02

  So I was at Columbia University's journalism school, I'd just moved to New York a month before.

• 2:32:06Joe Rogan?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:32:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think it's so interesting.

• 2:32:09Joe Rogan?

  Where were you living?

• 2:32:10Speaker 02

  I was living on Seventy Second and Broadway.

• 2:32:13Joe Rogan?

  Okay, so you're.

• 2:32:14Speaker 02

  Upper West.

• 2:32:15Joe Rogan?

  Pretty far away from the actual.

• 2:32:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:18Joe Rogan?

  Did you go down?

• 2:32:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I didn't go to ground zero, but I went to Midtown to the rooftop of this building where everybody was doing sort of the satellite life feed. So you had journalists from all over the world. Meanwhile, I was twenty-four, twenty-five years old. I had like zero experience doing a live feed. I was just, I'd just moved to the United States. It's actually, it's an interesting story how I even got to the US. Because, you know, I applied for Columbia University three times. The first time I was not accepted. The second time I was put in a waitlist and didn't get accepted. The third time, I flew to New York and I knocked on the dean's door. And I explained, I'm Portuguese, I really want to come to this university. I want to be a journalist in America. And he sat me down, we spoke for an hour, and that year I was accepted.

• 2:33:00Joe Rogan?

  That's amazing. It's amazing that you could do that.

• 2:33:02Speaker 02

  And it taught me my first big important lesson in journalism, which is

• 2:33:07Joe Rogan?

  Get in there.

• 2:33:07Speaker 02

  Persistence. Don't be afraid to get no's because, I mean, what's worse, it can happen, right?

• 2:33:12Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:13Speaker 02

  And, but a month after this, I'm in New York, I'm sleeping in the morning, and I start getting phone calls. And I was sleeping that late because I'd been studying until really late that night, the night before. And the first phone I pick up was my television station that I'd worked for in Portugal. I'd done an internship there and worked there. And they called me and said, hey, turn on your television. And it was when the second, the first tower had collapsed. And they said, turn on the television and see what's happening. I had no idea this was happening. And they said, we need you to go to Midtown and do, we have no Portuguese journalists in Manhattan. They're, all our journalists are in DC or they are outside of Manhattan. Manhattan had been locked down. You need to go down and do the live reporting for us of what's happening.

• 2:33:57Speaker 02

  And on, and suddenly my cell phone started ringing and it was my mother, who was crying and begging me not to leave the house. And, and I was, I had to explain to her mom, this is like, my dream is to become a journalist. It's part of my job and I have to go. Anyway, an hour later, I was at the rooftop of this building, surrounded by all these journalist heroes of mine that I grew up watching on live television, and shaking, I was so, so nervous. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to put two words together. So nervous. And I ended up doing my live report and it all went well. And I was ecstatic. I was so happy. I was like, oh, my God, I did it, I did it. I have a future in this profession that I really want to be a journalist and this is great. And then I will never forget, and I get emotional every time I talk about this,

• 2:34:41Speaker 02

  but I will never forget just walking down to the streets and

• 2:34:47Speaker 02

  It's every time I talk about this, but in seeing the first people looking for their loved ones, right? And it's like the posters with the faces of the husbands and the children and not knowing where they were. And that moment totally changed my life because, sorry.

• 2:35:04Joe Rogan?

  It was.

• 2:35:06Speaker 02

  It was a moment that I, yeah, first of all, realization like, what the fuck? This is not about you and this is about something so much bigger that's happening, where so many people are affected by this.

• 2:35:19Speaker 02

  And it was a moment also that I realized that the kind of journalism that I wanted to do was try to understand why this sort of evil happens in the world and how do things like this exist? And a year after I graduated from Columbia, I moved to the Middle East. And I enrolled in the University of Damascus in Syria to learn Arabic and to try to

• 2:35:42Speaker 02

  do my, I did my first story as a freelance journalist about the jihadis who were crossing to Iraq to fight against the Americans. That was the first story I ever did as a freelance journalist. And, and so, yeah, so I was, I was there on nine eleven and remember after reporting and going, you know, to school and going up to my building and meeting strangers on the streets and everybody was just like looking at each other and hugging each other. And there was like so much love and support.

• 2:36:13Joe Rogan?

  And it lasted for months.

• 2:36:14Speaker 02

  And it lasted for months. And it was really beautiful and everybody came together and it was a beautiful, beautiful time.

• 2:36:19Joe Rogan?

  And everybody went right back to being a fucking asshole.

• 2:36:21Speaker 02

  And everybody went back to this.

• 2:36:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:23Speaker 02

  Which is, yeah, which is me against you, you know, which is so sad.

• 2:36:27Joe Rogan?

  Well, for just that one brief moment, I realized, like, for that, during that time when everybody had that American flag on their car and they were driving around with it, in L.A.

• 2:36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:36:36Joe Rogan?

  Which is like one of the most unpatriotic places in the country. They all had American flags in their car. It was, it was a crazy moment and I realized like, oh, this is possible to unite us. Like, we don't have to be in this stupid mindset. But why does it take something terrible? Why does it take a tragedy for us to be united?

• 2:36:54Speaker 02

  And, and you know what's so sad is that 3,000 people died on that day, right? Um, I'm gonna bring it back to drug and alcohol addiction. But 3,000 people die every single week in America from addiction, from drug and alcohol addiction. These, these crises are happening every day. And, uh, and, and like, yes, let's actually unite to do some good and to try to solve problems instead of, you know, dividing to try to figure out, you know, how to hate more another person.

• 2:37:21Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:22Speaker 02

  And how to separate us all, yeah.

• 2:37:25Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I mean, you know that and I know that and we both live that way.

• 2:37:30Speaker 02

  And we can talk in circles about this.

• 2:37:31Joe Rogan?

  What's going on? Why can't we get the rest of the world on board? We need to get people to stop paying attention to all this shit.

• 2:37:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:37:38Joe Rogan?

  And just, just learn how to be nicer.

• 2:37:40Speaker 02

  Right, I agree.

• 2:37:42Joe Rogan?

  I mean, there's, you don't have much time in this life. It doesn't last as long as you think it does.

• 2:37:48Speaker 02

  No, and just have empathy. It's my main message always. It's just like, try to place yourself in somebody else's shoes.

• 2:37:54Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:37:54Speaker 02

  Don't be quick to judge. Like, actually try to understand why these migrants are coming to this country, why these, you know, people are carrying drugs on their backs and excruciating difficult work and dangerous work. Why are they doing it instead? And why are people scamming?

• 2:38:08Joe Rogan?

  Right.

• 2:38:09Speaker 02

  You know, try and understand why they're doing what they do. And once you understand the root causes, then you can actually make a difference and try to change that and actually have an impact.

• 2:38:18Joe Rogan?

  Absolutely.

• 2:38:19Speaker 02

  Which is much harder, right? Much harder to try to solve it that way.

• 2:38:22Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, much harder. It's, it's hard for people to have empathy too. Some people, especially if they're just tired all the time and exhausted and they're unhealthy and their life sucks and they just want other people like, fuck. And they don't see those people, they don't feel it, they're not.

• 2:38:36Speaker 02

  They need a Martin Luther King.

• 2:38:38Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:38Speaker 02

  They need a James Tellerico.

• 2:38:40Joe Rogan?

  Well, we need someone like that for sure. We need someone who's got a... Someone who is a powerful speaker too, like they have to be charismatic that has a message of non-violence and love. Because it's really the only way. You you you don't get anything from violence other than more violence. You know, unless you're the the biggest, baddest bully and then you squash everything around you and great, now you're a dictator.

• 2:39:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:39:05Joe Rogan?

  It's not good for any of us.

• 2:39:07Speaker 02

  None, no, it doesn't.

• 2:39:08Joe Rogan?

  It's contrary to what we're supposed to be about in the first place. This is supposed to be the United States of America. We're supposed to be a community.

• 2:39:15Speaker 02

  I don't think that LA is the most unpatriotic. I know you don't like LA, I still live there. And I know you don't like it, but I disagree that it's unpatriotic.

• 2:39:24Joe Rogan?

  What do you think it is?

• 2:39:26Speaker 02

  Why would you say it's unpatriotic? California is an incredible state.

• 2:39:29Joe Rogan?

  If you have an American flag in front of your house, people will call you racist. That's a fact.

• 2:39:36Speaker 02

  I haven't seen that happen.

• 2:39:37Joe Rogan?

  That's a fact, that's a fact. There's there's a lot of indoctrinated young kids.

• 2:39:41Speaker 02

  Perhaps, and those people are assholes and they're not, they're as full of hate as the other side.

• 2:39:47Joe Rogan?

  You don't get that in Texas.

• 2:39:49Speaker 02

  Right, but you you also have places in America where if you have an LGBTQ flag on the front of your door, you're called lots of other things.

• 2:39:54Joe Rogan?

  Sure, yeah.

• 2:39:55Speaker 02

  Right, so that goes both ways.

• 2:39:57Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's not necessarily patriotism, that's just being an intolerant asshole. But I think that the real problem with Los Angeles is the government. And the fact that they want to ignore the rampant fraud and the fact that everything is so overregulated, it's impossible to get permits for things, so industry's leaving, the overtaxing.

• 2:40:18Speaker 02

  Have you read Ezra Klein's book about this?

• 2:40:21Joe Rogan?

  No, I have not.

• 2:40:22Speaker 02

  I haven't read the book yet, but I've heard him giving a bunch of interviews about about it.

• 2:40:27Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, he's getting attacked for it now. People are saying he's leaning right, which is hilarious.

• 2:40:31Speaker 02

  But it's about how if you're, he's a Democrat, as you know, but how Democrats have to figure out how to make the system work and and and how to build things and how to and not. Do what you were saying, create all these limits and these problems for like building houses in the Palisades and.

• 2:40:49Joe Rogan?

  What's also the problem is that Democrats are the Democrats of 2025, not the Democrats of 1994. If you go back to the Democrats and Bill Clinton was president, it was a totally different thing. Like Bill Clinton's, if you hear him talk, he sounds like a populist that is like.

• 2:41:05Speaker 02

  Sex about going after criminals.

• 2:41:07Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, pretty pro-America. Like it's so, it's like that's what everybody can get aboard with. It's like, that's the, the real problem is these ideologies shift with special interests and money and funding and propaganda, and then they become something unrecognizable. They become something that supports war. They become something that suppresses free speech. They become something that was like entirely in direct opposition to what it would have been in 1985. It's like.

• 2:41:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but not all, not all Democrats.

• 2:41:36Joe Rogan?

  No, of course not all, but this is the same problem because it's like if you decide I'm a right-winger, you're supposed to take in all of that. You're supposed to like, like that guy said to my friend, like you gotta, gotta support a party. Cross the line. There's the only way, you gotta get him on your side. And like, wow. Even if I don't agree at all with what they say, I have to bite my tongue because I'm a part of a gang now? Fuck off. And that's the problem is that we only have two stupid parties and.

• 2:42:04Speaker 02

  Huge problem.

• 2:42:05Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, I mean, you do have a liberty, I've voted Libertarian twice, but it's kind of like, fuck these people, I'm gonna vote for nothing.

• 2:42:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:42:15Joe Rogan?

  You know, that's never gonna win.

• 2:42:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:42:17Joe Rogan?

  Which is crazy to say.

• 2:42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:19Joe Rogan?

  But that is kind of what it is.

• 2:42:20Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:42:21Joe Rogan?

  You know, and then you see other countries that have like six, seven.

• 2:42:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, Portugal and some of the majority of European countries.

• 2:42:27Joe Rogan?

  The Netherlands, yeah. There's a lot of countries that have multiple parties and.

• 2:42:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, obviously there's division, but there's nothing like the division that exists in the US right now.

• 2:42:38Joe Rogan?

  Well, that's the negative aspect of social media, I believe. I believe it's ramping up people and it's pushing the divide even further. But what I'm hoping is that this is a growing pain and that we'll sort through this. But we need nonviolent leaders that are very intelligent, that also make sense to both people, which I do think is possible. Both groups, both ideologically captured sides, which I do think is possible. Because in the middle is where we all live. In the middle is where I'll live. We all want safety. We all want education. We all want fairness. We all want to make sure that no one's polluting and good access to resources and a chance to make

• 2:43:22Joe Rogan?

  a life for yourself and pursue your dreams. That's what we all want. All that other stuff is just dividing points. One of the things, I had Rep. Luna on the podcast, we were talking about something, and she said, "They don't want to fix this issue because they can fund their campaign with it."

• 2:43:39Speaker 02

  Of course. I mean, that's immigration to a T.

• 2:43:41Joe Rogan?

  Isn't that crazy? Like, that politicians will fail to resolve an issue on purpose because they want to raise funds by campaigning on this issue.

• 2:43:51Speaker 02

  It is disgusting, yeah.

• 2:43:52Joe Rogan?

  It's so gross. That is un-American. That's truly evil.

• 2:43:57Speaker 02

  Truly evil, yeah.

• 2:43:58Joe Rogan?

  And when she said, I was like, "Oh!" I didn't think of that. But I kind of did, but I didn't want to believe it. And then coming out of someone's mouth who works in government, I'm like, "Oh, fuck."

• 2:44:07Speaker 02

  Right. If you stand for a cause, right, and you're seen as the person that can potentially solve that problem, and then that problem goes away, then you don't have a platform to stand on. So a lot of times, you don't want to solve that problem.

• 2:44:21Joe Rogan?

  She's...

• 2:44:22Speaker 02

  And I think in many ways, that's what immigration has been, because it is not possible that we have the broken immigration system that we have. We have the backlog of people trying to become, to get papers, who can't. We don't have a way for people who want to come to this country legally, to come to this country legally. It's, you know, and it's been decades and decades of this, and we haven't been able to figure out how to solve this problem. It has to be because it benefits all politicians.

• 2:44:49Speaker 02

  That this hasn't been solved, right?

• 2:44:50Joe Rogan?

  Well, another very high level politician told me once, I can't remember if he said it on the podcast, I don't want to say his name, but that he had a conversation with a man who was the CEO of a large corporation and said he was very opposed to tightening up the border because he needs the illegal immigrants for the workforce. He just said it openly, like, yo, like, so that's part of it, too. They want cheap labor.

• 2:45:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:45:16Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, because it helps their bottom line, which is like, oh, God.

• 2:45:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:45:21Joe Rogan?

  Oh, God. And as long as those people don't have paperwork, they have to shut the fuck up. They can't demand better worker rights. They can't, yeah.

• 2:45:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is a problem also now with the raids, is that a lot of violence is happening, you know, even if it's rapes or domestic abuse and people are just, even if they're going through this, they're not going to call the police because they're afraid of being deported.

• 2:45:40Joe Rogan?

  They're scared they're going to get deported.

• 2:45:41Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 2:45:41Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:42Speaker 02

  It's, yeah.

• 2:45:43Joe Rogan?

  I know. It's like, boy, it's an overcorrection after overcorrection, you know?

• 2:45:49Speaker 02

  Without actually fixing the fucking bill.

• 2:45:51Joe Rogan?

  Left and right, and left and right, and that's where you get real cynical. You're like, I think these people like it like this.

• 2:45:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:45:58Joe Rogan?

  I think they like all this crazy shit back and forth.

• 2:46:00Speaker 02

  It's difficult not to get cynical, right? And I actually, it's, to me, it's always heartbreaking when you hear people saying that they don't vote or they don't really, they're not into politics. They don't, they don't care about what's happening because politicians are all the same and they don't, they're completely disengaged, and to me, that's heartbreaking.

• 2:46:15Joe Rogan?

  It is heartbreaking.

• 2:46:16Speaker 02

  Because, yeah, that's taking the power away from people, right?

• 2:46:19Joe Rogan?

  The other thing you think about these dark times is they call for people to rise up, like, not, I mean, like, rise up against the machine and rebel. I mean, like, they call for a hero, and that's what we always hope for. We're like, maybe there's one person's going to figure this out. Maybe there's going to be this person that emerges, this real leader.

• 2:46:38Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:46:38Joe Rogan?

  And they're looking at the Democratic Party and they're like...

• 2:46:42Joe Rogan?

  No, there's no one there. Who's it gonna be? I don't think Talarico is trying to run for president. So outside of him, who really makes sense? Well, you got a bunch of people that are just politicians, politics as usual. And then, once they get inside-

• 2:46:57Speaker 02

  You have a bunch of cowards on the Republican side-

• 2:46:59Joe Rogan?

  100%

• 2:46:59Speaker 02

  ...and even when they're seeing this stuff happening, even though we know that they don't agree with it.

• 2:47:03Joe Rogan?

  100%

• 2:47:03Speaker 02

  Even though we know they know it's morally wrong, they're too afraid to speak out.

• 2:47:08Joe Rogan?

  And they're all insider trading.

• 2:47:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:11Joe Rogan?

  All of them on top of that. They're all making- It's crazy. You see, they're making $170,000 a year. They get into office, within a couple of years, they're worth 10 million. They're worth 15 million. And you look at it, it's all stock trades. Like, this is bananas, that this is legal. You motherfuckers put Martha Quinn in jail. Put Martha Quinn in jail. Tried her for insider trading and got her on lying.

• 2:47:33Speaker 02

  Martha Stewart, you mean?

• 2:47:34Joe Rogan?

  Oh, did I say Martha Quinn? That's the MTVV jay. Sorry, Martha Quinn.

• 2:47:38Speaker 02

  Martha Stewart. I love Martha Stewart so much.

• 2:47:40Joe Rogan?

  Martha Stewart. That's so funny. I fucked that up.

• 2:47:41Speaker 02

  I really wanna have her on my podcast.

• 2:47:42Joe Rogan?

  Oh, yeah. She's a badass lady. But they put her in jail. They put Martha Stewart in jail, who was like-

• 2:47:48Speaker 02

  I know. I mean, so ridiculous. Have you watched The Doc?

• 2:47:51Joe Rogan?

  No.

• 2:47:51Speaker 02

  About her. It's so good.

• 2:47:52Joe Rogan?

  No. She's quite a lot.

• 2:47:54Speaker 02

  She's so great.

• 2:47:54Joe Rogan?

  But you also have to be quite a lot to become that person, you know?

• 2:47:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:47:58Joe Rogan?

  That's how you become that person.

• 2:47:59Speaker 02

  She's a proud bitch, and I love her.

• 2:48:01Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but that's, it's kinda funny, you know? You could say the same thing about a lot of people that are very famous. Well, listen, it's always great to talk to you. I really appreciate you coming here, and you do amazing work. You really do. It's so courageous and so necessary, and I think you provide a window into various aspects of life on this planet that otherwise people would not have access to.

• 2:48:26Speaker 02

  Thank you, and I hope the podcast will be the continuation of that.

• 2:48:29Joe Rogan?

  I'm sure it will be. I'm sure it will be. So, the hidden third-

• 2:48:34Joe Rogan?

  And it is available on YouTube. Is it available everywhere?

• 2:48:38Speaker 02

  Everywhere.

• 2:48:39Joe Rogan?

  Everywhere. Who's this first guy you have here?

• 2:48:41Speaker 02

  Podcast.

• 2:48:42Joe Rogan?

  That's the trailer?

• 2:48:42Speaker 02

  Fabian Alomar is an amazing guy. That's the retired FBI agent that I spoke with. You should listen to that.

• 2:48:48Joe Rogan?

  What is it about?

• 2:48:49Speaker 02

  He's the guy who went after the pill mills in Florida.

• 2:48:51Joe Rogan?

  Oh.

• 2:48:51Speaker 02

  Who was doing his investigation at the same time as I was doing. And then Fabian Alomar is a great guy.

• 2:48:55Joe Rogan?

  And he's a, oh, this guy's a different guy.

• 2:48:57Speaker 02

  A former skater, did nine years in prison. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for kidnapping and beating the shit out of this guy who supposedly, he was on meth, very high, on crack, actually, very high on crack. Anyway, beat the shit out of this guy who supposedly, allegedly, had raped his sister, but beat the shit, kept him in a trunk, beat the shit out of him, was arrested for seven years and then did two more years because he almost killed a child molester in prison. But basically did a whole 180. Is now an actor on The Mayans, has an incredible life story. He was brought up by gangs, his family member were all gang members all the time in prison. But has done a whole 180, is now involved in an anti-

• 2:49:35Joe Rogan?

  What is The Mayans?

• 2:49:36Speaker 02

  It was that show with the guy, The Bikers.

• 2:49:39Joe Rogan?

  Oh, it's a biker gang show?

• 2:49:40Speaker 02

  He also did that, with Eva Longoria, the Hot Chili, what was it called? The Flaming Hot movie. He was also in that movie. Anyway, he's become an actor, but also very involved, a pro skater, and also very involved in anti-recidivism. And then another guy we had on was Matt Boyer. Do you know Matt Boyer? He was, you should have him on. He's in prison right now. We interviewed him a week before he went to prison, actually. He's the guy in the Otani scandal. Baseball, the baseball, the Otani scandal?

• 2:50:07Joe Rogan?

  I don't know that scandal. Do you know it, Jamie?

• 2:50:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:09Joe Rogan?

  What happened?

• 2:50:10Speaker 02

  So, you know Otani?

• 2:50:11Joe Rogan?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:12Speaker 02

  The biggest, most well-known, most successful, I don't know what term, I don't know.

• 2:50:18Joe Rogan?

  Baseball player, yeah.

• 2:50:19Speaker 02

  The best player, baseball player ever, apparently, is Otani. He's in the Dodgers. He was signed up for the Dodgers. It turns out that his translator, who is also his best friend, because Otani is Japanese and doesn't speak fluent, or doesn't speak English, so he has a translator who's also his best friend in the US, was with him 24/7, had a gambling problem. And the bookie in this gambling problem was a guy called Matt Boyer, fascinating guy. Grew up in Orange County and built an empire, I mean, making millions of dollars as an illegal bookie. Flying private jets, like betting insane amounts of money himself. He's also a gambling addict.

• 2:51:00Speaker 02

  But was like had high, you know, athletes from all over and important celebrities. Basically placing bets with him instead of placing them online, they placed them with him. But all illegal. And it was found out just before he was about to sign for the Dodgers, the Otani, that while they were investigating a casino in Vegas, they came across this bookie and with through this bookie, they found out that Otani's translator and possibly they thought initially maybe Otani was illegally betting. This is a guy that stands to make millions for the Dodgers, for all the companies that he sponsors. So this was a fucking massive deal.

• 2:51:40Speaker 02

  And it turns out that Otani was not the one betting, that it was his translator. Matt Boyer, who's at the center of the scandal, believes that Otani knew that he had that his friend and translator had a betting gambling problem. But he came out and said he had no idea. And, you know, nobody wanted this problem on their hands. It came out of money that you you could lose. And and so they basically, the guy came out saying, initially he said that Otani knew, the translator said Otani knew. And then he came out and said, actually, Otani had no idea. And I lied. And now he's also in prison. But Matt Boyer is now serving, I believe it's seven or something months in prison.

• 2:52:25Joe Rogan?

  For illegal gambling.

• 2:52:27Speaker 02

  For illegal, for being a bookie, yeah, for for money laundering. And he was, I think it was something like forty million dollars. Yeah, okay, yeah, much more. His losses were around.

• 2:52:40Joe Rogan?

  Nineteen thousand bets, boy, that guy was hooked between September twenty one and January twenty twenty four. His winnings amassed to be over a hundred and forty two million. Whoa! He won over a hundred and forty two million, which he kept for himself. His losses were around a hundred and eighty three million. Oh.

• 2:52:57Speaker 02

  He lost forty million dollars that he still owes Matt Boyer, by the way. He only, I mean, his main bookie was this guy.

• 2:53:04Joe Rogan?

  Oh, my God. He must have been gambling so high.

• 2:53:07Speaker 02

  It's insane.

• 2:53:08Joe Rogan?

  That, oh, that's so scary.

• 2:53:11Speaker 02

  And Matt talks about, like, this guy, I would text, he would like, he'd be down on a place and he says, "Let's double that. Let's triple that." He was always sort of chasing that dopamine high.

• 2:53:21Joe Rogan?

  It is a crazy addiction.

• 2:53:22Speaker 02

  It's the secret, it's the hidden addiction, as they call it. Because you can be a completely, you can have a job, you can be a working addict, and nobody will ever know that you have a massive gambling problem.

• 2:53:34Joe Rogan?

  And for whatever reason, when people get hooked, they can't shake it. It is a crazy one.

• 2:53:39Speaker 02

  Because the dopamine, it's really interesting, because you get the hit of dopamine whether you lose or win. So you're always getting that dopamine hit.

• 2:53:47Joe Rogan?

  Did you see Uncut Gems, Adam Sandler movie?

• 2:53:50Speaker 02

  I did, yes, I did.

• 2:53:51Joe Rogan?

  The best representation of a gambling addict I've ever seen in a film. Like, watching that film gave me anxiety. I was like, "Oh, my God, don't do it. Don't do that. Don't do that."

• 2:53:59Speaker 02

  I know. It's so anathema to who I am, too, that I always get so nervous, like, "Don't let people do this."

• 2:54:05Joe Rogan?

  I know. But I've been around a lot of those people, you know, when I was in my early twenties, I spent a lot of time in pool halls, and I was around a lot of gambling addicts, and I was just fascinated by it. People that would go from the track to the pool hall. So they'd go to the racetrack all day, gamble on the races, and then go to, you know, maybe off-track betting, bet there, and then they'd go to the pool hall, bet there, try to get a poker game, bet there, try to go to Atlantic City on the weekend, bet there. Just full-on gambling junkies, their whole life revolved around gambling.

• 2:54:38Speaker 02

  And it's not smart, because they know that the probability that they're gonna lose more than they win.

• 2:54:42Joe Rogan?

  They were like a full-on meth head that was just chasing the high. I mean, there was no thought of, "Hey, I don't have any money and I'm forty." There was nothing like that. It was just, there was no, it was just, "I'm in this, and this is what I'm doing. I need to, I need to win."

• 2:54:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah.

• 2:54:59Joe Rogan?

  It's a terrifying addiction.

• 2:55:01Speaker 02

  It's terrifying. It's really, really terrifying.

• 2:55:02Joe Rogan?

  Because it's weird. It's like, oh, my God, what hijacked your brain?

• 2:55:05Speaker 02

  And unlike other addictions, there's no government program out there to help you. And now we're making betting legal. Sports betting is now legal in the majority of states. So it's like, and, you know, we've got ESPN and all these big companies making money from it.

• 2:55:20Joe Rogan?

  I know, but I'm not opposed to that. Here's the, because I don't have a gambling problem. So if like-

• 2:55:25Speaker 02

  But I, I agree that you, the problem is not that you're making money from the betting, but then knowing that gambling is a problem and that there is addiction, then you should be able, you have to, it is your responsibility to set aside some money to try to figure out how to address the problem of addiction and gambling.

• 2:55:41Joe Rogan?

  Yeah, but I don't think there has been an established solution for gambling addiction. I think some people are gonna fall by the wayside, and they've always been that way. That, that's my take on it. It's like, I'm not a gambling addict, but like, say if there's a boxing match, and like, it's Terrence Crawford versus Canelo Alvarez, I'm like, I think Terrence Crawford's gonna beat the odds. I think he's gonna beat him. That's what I was saying before the fight. No, I didn't. But if I did, I would have bet, but I would have bet a couple hundred bucks or something, maybe a thousand, you know?

• 2:56:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:09Joe Rogan?

  Um, and I think the odds are, I mean, it might have been like two to one for Canelo. So you would have made two thousand bucks on a thousand.

• 2:56:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:56:18Joe Rogan?

  Uh, but I don't have a problem with gambling, you know? So it's not, I think it should be legal, just like I think alcohol should be legal. I think you should be able to go to a store and buy alcohol, you know?

• 2:56:30Speaker 02

  No, me too.

• 2:56:31Joe Rogan?

  I think most drugs should be legal.

• 2:56:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:33Joe Rogan?

  I think the real problem is the fact that they're illegal, which means you're getting them from cartels, you know? And, but then there's a dilemma of how do you change that? Like, would you just rip off the Band-Aid and make everything legal? And then you become Portland for a few years, the whole country's fucked? And how many people die of overdoses because of that?

• 2:56:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, Portland, I don't think is a good example because they also didn't have the safety net. So that's what I usually say.

• 2:56:56Joe Rogan?

  They were also super kooky. It's a super kooky place to live, anyway.

• 2:57:00Speaker 02

  Keep Portland weird.

• 2:57:01Joe Rogan?

  Mariana, I appreciate you very much.

• 2:57:02Speaker 02

  Thank you, Joe.

• 2:57:03Joe Rogan?

  And, uh, when you're done with the scammer thing, come back.

• 2:57:06Speaker 02

  I will.

• 2:57:07Joe Rogan?

  Please, I need to hear everything, okay? All right. Uh, one more time, the show is called- The Hidden Third.

• 2:57:14Speaker 02

  The Hidden Third. It's on YouTube, on youtube.com/mariana van zeller. And we've got two episodes already that premiered this week and it's a weekly podcast.

• 2:57:23Joe Rogan?

  Fantastic.

• 2:57:23Speaker 02

  New episodes all the time. And you can also get it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:57:28Joe Rogan?

  All right. Good luck with that.

• 2:57:30Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:57:30Joe Rogan?

  Thanks for being here. Bye, everybody.

• 2:57:47Joe Rogan?

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  Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terzepatide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems, to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains terzepatide and should not be used with other terzepatide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens or reuse needles.

• 2:59:18Speaker 00

  Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer. Or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979 or visit zepbound.lily.com.