Why were cops fainting from fentanyl?

Some urban legends are just for fun, like the “Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus,” while others are not. Today we’re investigating the claim that while busting drug dealers, police can accidentally “absorb” fentanyl through their skin, causing them to suffer a whole bevy of health problems — starting with fainting. Years later, it’s still impacting legislation across the country and mostly wasting a bunch of money. Mangesh Hattikudur and Mary Phillips-Sandy from Part-Time Genius join us to explain how fentanyl actually works, and debunk this one. Check out Part-Time Genius wherever you get your podcasts, and follow them on Instagram @parttimegenius. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: http://multitude.productions/ads. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

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

• 0:26Ryan Broderick?

  So this is actually very exciting. Typically, when we talk about mass panics and viral hysteria on this show, there's some kernel of truth. Today, we're talking about something that has like almost no kernel of truth to it, which is really great. But to start, I would love to ask, what is the most outlandish urban legend you've fallen for?

• 0:45Speaker 02

  I don't know if I exactly really believed it, but I was like surprised and stunned by the sort of effort that someone went to. There was a website in the late 90s that was devoted to saving the Pacific Northwest tree octopus. And they had these like photos of tree octopuses. And I was like, wait, like, if it's that wet, like maybe they... And it links out to all these other like research sites. And there's like a Russian paper about it. And like, it's incredible. And I guess someone was using it as a test for like kids.

• 1:23Ryan Broderick?

  I remember this.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  And just went full out to like figure out like literacy and media literacy and whether people would believe in hoaxes or whatever. And none of the kids passed.

• 1:51Ryan Broderick?

  That's awesome. What about you, Mary?

• 1:53Speaker 03

  I feel like I want to believe things more. Do you know what I mean? Like, I feel like I miss out on a lot because my first question, when someone tells me something good, it's always like, really? Are you sure? I feel like I am often the downer in my friend group.

• 2:10Ryan Broderick?

  That's perfect for this show. I will say, as a teenager, I briefly became very convinced that bonsai kittens were real.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:18Ryan Broderick?

  The genuinely horrifying internet meme about growing a cat inside of a glass jar or something. I was like 13 or 14, I was like, wow, the internet's, the world's a really scary place. This seems like very real to me.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  They look so cute, though.

• 2:32Ryan Broderick?

  I fell for the Pope puffer jacket thing. Oh, the AI Pope. Yeah, Pope in a coat. Yeah.

• 2:39Speaker 03

  Pope in a coat.

• 2:40Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, I briefly fell for the kangaroo at the airport thing the other day. Like, I had just woken up and looked at my phone and I was like, that could happen in Australia. Sure. This is all great prologue for today's episode. So first, let me just introduce everybody. So my name is Ryan Broderick. Joining with me sometimes, if you can't shut up sometimes, is our producer Grant, our lovely producer Grant. This is Panic World, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually, reality. And today, we are talking about a genuine reality warp, a panic that took over America for a while, is still sort of impacting laws and legislation and wasting lots and lots of money. We're going to be looking at why police became convinced that they could absorb fentanyl through their skin. And joining me today is Mangesh and Mary from Part-Time Genius. Welcome to the

• 3:25Ryan Broderick?

  show, guys.

• 3:26Speaker 03

  Thank you for having us.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so excited to be here.

• 3:28Ryan Broderick?

  We're going to be doing a classic split episode, so we're going to kick things off with the Panic World side, then throw to you guys for the Part-Time Genius side, and then we'll come together like the Wonder Twins at the end and close the whole thing out. And I wanted to start with some videos that went viral in 2022.

• 3:44Speaker 04

  Hey, hey, hey, catch him, catch him, catch him. It's your kid. He has fentanyl, he has fentanyl. Yes!

• 3:55Speaker 05

  The Kansas City, Kansas Police Department is opening up about a suspected fentanyl overdose and how a fast response might have made all the difference.

• 4:04Ryan Broderick?

  Fantastic. So this is a video of a suspected fentanyl overdose from the Kansas Police Department, and there's a cop totally splayed out on the ground. And let me read you a bit from the story here. Training kicked in. Grisella grabbed his Narcan and delivered a powerful dose which works to counteract opioids like fentanyl. The first few doses didn't seem to help. Grisella switched nostrils and eventually delivered a total of five doses to Officer Thompson, who confirms he felt like dying. I bet he felt like dying. Yeah, absolutely. If this thing was worth a million dollars, it's priceless to me now, Captain Grisella said while holding Narcan in his hand. And then here's, here's the best part here. It's not if it's going to happen, it's when. I think

• 4:48Ryan Broderick?

  as a police department, we've done a much better job making sure we're ready when it happens again, Captain Grisella said. So this is sort of a very, I think, archetypal example of what we've heard from police departments across the country about fentanyl. When was the first time you guys remember hearing that cops were touching fentanyl and passing out or overdosing or whatever?

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Like before the pandemic, 2017, 2018? I feel like there were news stories about it.

• 5:17Ryan Broderick?

  I just started working in newsrooms when a lot of this stuff was kicking off. From what we can see, May 2013 is the beginning.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 5:25Ryan Broderick?

  It's the earliest recorded case of cops being worried that they could be exposed to fentanyl. And it's from the Montreal Gazette, talking about cops seizing from toxic drugs. And I was trying to think of like the media environment in 2013. And I do think something that has sort of been lost to time is that in the very early 2010s, we had like this massive influx of digital media companies that were racing each other to find like viral news stories, like that very early Facebook traffic heavy world. And a lot of these newsrooms, hiring little idiots like me right out of college, and not training them at all, were like more than happy to just take whatever the cops are saying and just print it, or rather publish it online. And I do feel like that is like a massive

• 6:09Ryan Broderick?

  component here, is like a totally feckless, unskeptical media environment like 15 years ago.

• 6:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually. I hadn't thought about that, but you're right. I worked in a similar environment for a while. And it's like you have maybe 10 minutes to like skim a press release, and then you gotta hit click, because then you got the next post has to go up.

• 6:30Speaker 06

  When you first started seeing the articles about this or the videos of cops fainting? What were your first reactions to seeing how this was packaged?

• 6:40Speaker 03

  I think at the time, especially given the community that I grew up in, the opioid epidemic and fentanyl in particular were definitely scary things to me. And I knew people who had suffered from it. I knew people who'd been affected by it. And it just seemed like part of that. I think if anything, I felt like, why aren't those people on the front page of the newspaper? Why is it the cop who fainted and then felt better an hour later? That didn't seem to make a lot of sense to me.

• 7:10Ryan Broderick?

  And also like in J school, in journalism school, like the first thing they teach you is like, if the news, if the, if the cops say it, it's news, which has never gone wrong ever. Totally fine.

• 7:23Ryan Broderick?

  Totally, totally fine with that. But I wanted to read another passage here for you guys, which is from this Montreal Gazette piece. This is the first, seemingly the first ever sort of evidence of a police department claiming this. They write, "Some of the drugs seized were so toxic that four police officers handling them became ill. One officer had to be taken to the hospital with heart problems. Three other officers who were handling the drugs while wearing masks and gloves developed rashes on their arms." I, okay.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Also, I love that this was in Montreal. So at least they didn't have to pay for their hospital visit when they were there.

• 8:04Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, they had to wait nine hours, but it was free.

• 8:10Ryan Broderick?

  Nowadays, I think the Canadian government would just suggest you do like assisted suicide.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  Just take more until it stops.

• 8:19Ryan Broderick?

  We love Canada. I shouldn't say that. I'll be moving there when I'm not allowed to live here anymore. Okay, so in 2016, we start to see like the actual formation of this idea. The DEA issues a press release about the dangers of fentanyl exposure. It has been taken down. I'm not sure if that's because they think it's wrong or because Trump has banned any sort of like public, you know, correspondence from government institutions. But either way, let's listen to a clip that the DEA put out.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  I'm Jack Riley, Deputy Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration. And I want to take a minute today to talk to you about something very important. As a matter of fact, it could kill you.

• 8:58Ryan Broderick?

  And I'll read a bit from the statement that went along with this. "Just touching fentanyl or accidentally inhaling the substance can result in absorption through the skin that is one of the biggest dangers with fentanyl. The onset of adverse health effects such as disorientation, coughing, sedation, respiratory distress, and cardiac arrest is very rapid and profound, usually occurring within minutes of exposure."

• 9:21Speaker 02

  I mean, it feels like, you know, fentanyl's being used in hospitals and things like that for people to be around it and not have seen some of this behavior before, I'd imagine.

• 9:35Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that's an excellent point. Let's return to our video, though, and see how the police frame this. So if you skip forward a bit, after Jack Riley, we cut to two real Jersey cops who both kind of look like they play in the band Crazy Train. You know what I'm talking about?

• 9:50Speaker 04

  The process of sealing the bag, just out of forced habit, I grabbed the bag and I closed it up. And when I did that, a bunch of it poofed up into the air, right in our face, and we ended up inhaling it. I felt like my body was shutting down. You actually felt like you were dying.

• 10:03Ryan Broderick?

  I don't know how they could have just happened to have thrown it up in the air and inhaled right away. That's so interesting that that happened to them. I think it's very purpose by the DEA at this time to sort of go this way, sort of more anecdotal, looking for like localized stories of this stuff happening. I mean, kind of tying back to the digital media thing, Facebook traffic was at its peak at this point. And I do think when you look back at like 2015, 2016, we were very like, we were very interested in like what was going on in local communities. Because, and I think that is largely to do with like Facebook building that network effect. And also by this point is like peak era of like Facebook departments having, is peak era of police departments having Facebook pages.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Yep. And creating a lot of content for Facebook.

• 10:51Ryan Broderick?

  Cops love making content.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  They do.

• 10:53Ryan Broderick?

  The only people who love making content more than cops are soldiers on TikTok, who were using TikTok so much that they had to ban it because of national security reasons, not because of China. That is a real thing that happened. So, obviously, once the DEA does this, we go back to sort of the classic rule of journalism, which is that when the institution says something, it becomes news. So we get the torrent now of just like everyone covering this. So, The Washington Post, in September 2016, reports on a SWAT team in Connecticut that all, that all had to be treated for overdosing on fentanyl because they got headaches and lightheadedness after a drug bust. They were all fine, of course. Uh, maybe they were hit by like the Cuban microwave gun, you know, like, maybe

• 11:37Ryan Broderick?

  that they got hit by that instead. But this is, this is all over the internet, over the next like nine months. So, in May of 2017, there's a bunch of posts that show up on places like BuzzFeed and The Atlantic. "Atlantic writing: The New Hampshire State Police Forensic Laboratory released a photo to highlight the drug's particular dangers. The photo showed two vials. One showed a big lethal dose of heroin, about 30mg, or a small scoop, if no one listening has ever done heroin before. Um, just in case. Grant threw that one in there for you guys." And the second showed the equivalent for fentanyl, which is only 3mg. "A bare sprinkle," The Atlantic writes. And then here's a quote that they include:

• 12:19Ryan Broderick?

  "A puff of fentanyl from a, from closing a plastic bag is enough to send a full-grown man, the biggest man you've got, into the emergency room, as a police officer from New Jersey described in a Drug Enforcement Agency video last fall."

• 12:33Speaker 06

  They are just copying and pasting from the DEA promo video on what the cop said.

• 12:40Ryan Broderick?

  This is standard, right? And of course, these stories keep escalating. That same month, in NBC, "Patrolman Chris Green of the East Liverpool Police Department had just finished searching the car when another officer spotted some white powder on his shirt." Oh, interesting. "Without thinking, he brushed it off with his bare hand, and passed out about an hour later." Chief John Lane said it took four doses of Narcan to re... These cops are Narcan-ing each other at such an extreme level? This cannot be good for you. Okay, for, for a person who might not be sort of like clocking what we're clocking here, like, what do you guys, once again, like, what, what would make you guys skeptical when you read reports like this? Like, what's missing?

• 13:20Speaker 03

  Uh, well, science, maybe, would be good. Um, consistency, I don't know.

• 13:30Speaker 03

  If it, I don't know, does it happen immediately? Or does it take an hour of driving around and then you pass out? Right? Like, these things are not, these stories are not the same.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  I think the other hard thing is like, in addition to a cop saying it anecdotally, right, like, they feel so strongly about the experience they had, right? That there's like an emotional aspect to it that comes across too. And I think as more and more cops are listening to more and more cops talk about this, it just spreads.

• 14:01Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's like a really easy way to get PTO if you want to go down that road.

• 14:09Ryan Broderick?

  From what I know about cops, it seems like that could be maybe one possibility here. So, a later BuzzFeed story shows that the person with the fentanyl got extra jail time for assaulting an officer. So this is like, actually where this stuff starts to impact the law, starts to impact how the law is implemented. And I, I think that's like a very important piece to this, which is that like misinformation like, starts very, kind of in a goofy way, and can really cause some damage. And it's all being passed around for about a year, until finally, there's some pushback. It took, it took until August 2017, two giant toxicology centers issue a joint statement

• 14:52Ryan Broderick?

  saying that you cannot absorb fentanyl through your skin, you have to ingest it, writing, "To date, we have not seen reports of emergency responders developing signs or symptoms consistent with opioid toxicity from incidental contact with opioids." And then they, they get a little even saucier here. "In the unlikely event of poisoning, naloxone should be administered to those with objective signs of hyperventilation or a depressed level of consciousness, and not for vague concerns such as dizziness or anxiety."

• 15:25Ryan Broderick?

  The idea that like, they're getting anxious and scared and Narcan-ing each other is extremely funny, honestly.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  I just love the idea of it as like an inhaler that you carry around.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  A little winded, need my Narcan.

• 15:38Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I'm just like imagining like the Pulp Fiction, like adrenaline shot in your heart moment, but they're just Narcan-ing each other when they get kind of spooked on their patrol. Kind of, you know, based on what you would know about like, how well information travels in America and how much we trust experts. Like, what do you think happens next here in our story?

• 15:56Speaker 03

  Oh, boy.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  I bet everybody paid attention and that made headlines everywhere and nothing bad happened, right?

• 16:05Ryan Broderick?

  So yeah, that's exactly right. Several months later, the DEA quietly retracts their initial warning and no one notices. In Hartford, after a SWAT team like was called in last year, a reported fentanyl overdose is responded to with a hazmat team. In December 2017, on an episode of Blue Bloods, one of the main characters nearly dies from an accidental fentanyl overdose. And without the law, nobody's safe.

• 16:30Speaker 04

  She's overdosing. Hang up, partner.

• 16:36Ryan Broderick?

  Finally, the National Library of Medicine in 2020 does a really fascinating story studying like how it spread. And it does seem to kind of come back to like the idea that this is partially or the result of Facebook activity. So they write, fueled by misinformation, fentanyl panic has harmed public health through complicating overdose rescue while rationalizing hyper punitive criminal laws. To assess misinformation about health risk from casual contact with fentanyl, we characterize its diffusion and excess visibility in mainstream and social media. And that's sort of like the back, the background of the, of the study. They found one article saying that if you breathe fentanyl, you will OD.

• 17:16Ryan Broderick?

  It had 450,000 shares on Facebook, reaching nearly 70 million people across four years. And several of the articles correcting it had less than 30,000 shares. Which is

• 17:30Speaker 06

  depressing.

• 17:31Ryan Broderick?

  Not, not great.

• 17:32Speaker 06

  Yeah. I'm not the internet expert here, Ryan, but uh, it seems like something was wrong with Facebook. Feels like it shouldn't have been that way.

• 17:41Ryan Broderick?

  You guys, you guys, you guys aren't on Facebook, you guys aren't hot on Facebook. I'm, I'm still using it all the time.

• 17:46Speaker 06

  Is, no, no, but is that like what you were finding for disinfo at that time on Facebook? Like, does that follow a trend that you're well aware of?

• 17:54Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. I mean, we didn't even talk about it back when we were in like 2016 in our story, but like that was the summer of killer clowns, right? There were so many localized hoaxes and myths happening in the mid 2010s on Facebook because Facebook had effectively mapped out every small community in America and connected all of them. And so the kind of thing that would be talked about, I feel like at your neighborhood bar and then kind of die a quiet death is now just like bouncing around the internet forever. Where are you guys from both?

• 18:27Speaker 03

  I'm from rural Maine.

• 18:29Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 18:30Speaker 03

  So we know about the opioid crisis, yeah.

• 18:32Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, Massachusetts.

• 18:35Speaker 02

  I'm from Delaware.

• 18:37Ryan Broderick?

  Delaware, okay. So, I mean, do you have a sense of like how your local Facebook, like in your hometowns, like how those Facebook networks like still operate today? Like, are they, are they big Facebook populations still?

• 18:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. And the fact that I'm not on Facebook makes it very hard to communicate with people sometimes. I have like a placeholder account and there are times when I have to go on. It's the only way to reach people.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  I feel like growing up Delaware was like such a moderate state. It just felt to me like a very moderate place. And as both things like Clear Channel came in, but then things like Facebook, you just saw the widening of these populations and then people forming into their own camps. But, but Facebook is definitely, like I see all my high school friends still on it.

• 19:24Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it's the same for me as well. Like the, the kinds of things that would have just been, I don't know, passed around a small town, they, they get stuck now. And I, I have no problem believing that like this was a thing a couple cops thought was possible. And it became like basically a meme. In the same way a meme becomes a meme because Facebook just doesn't, like stuff doesn't die on Facebook. It just lasts forever because of like the, the news feed. So even by 2021, we have stuff from like the San Diego Sheriff's Department putting out a video of a cop overdosing from skin contact. They put it on Instagram and I'll read you a couple of the comments here, which are wild.

• 20:09Ryan Broderick?

  And they're kind, and actually Mary, your, your sort of connection to the opioid crisis is interesting here because this, one of the top comments on this video is someone saying like, "Oh, just seeing this makes my heart break knowing this happened to my son." You have other people writing like, "Of all the things that never happened, this never happened the most." So obviously some people are realizing this.

• 20:31Ryan Broderick?

  But then you also have people saying, I don't care what anyone says. I'm a former fentanyl user and they might deny it all they want. I usually don't agree with what they say about contact that can give you an OD, but that looked 100% like an OD. And I've had an Narcan many people. But I do wonder if another connection to this, and like the reason this idea has persisted so much, is like, it does create a narrative that's easier to handle when you have so many small communities in America that have suffered from the opioid crisis. In the same way, like a lot of conspiracy theories kind of like thrive on grief or thrive on like 9/11 conspiracies thriving on confusion. I do wonder if this is similar.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  I think the connection to grief is really important because a lot of people have experienced loss because of fentanyl and because of opioids and they don't know why. It's hard to understand why. Why did this happen? Why did that happen to someone I care about? Where did this all come from? And that primes you to believe whatever you're then told about it. And I've actually, some of that goes the other way. I have a friend who works in healthcare back home and she was saying, she has patients who will say, I don't want any fentanyl. Like, if you're giving me anesthesia, don't give me that fentanyl. And she's like, I'm at, it's a hospital. I'm not a dealer in an alley. Like, we went to med school. We know what we're doing, but people are afraid. And so they say, just don't give it to me. I don't want any opioid medication. And it's like, you're having heart surgery. You're

• 21:54Speaker 03

  gonna, you're gonna, I'm sorry, we have to put you under, you know?

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, my son had this benign tumor that he had to go to surgery multiple times for. And when the surgeon mentioned to him that he was gonna be on fentanyl, he got terrified. It's really hard because like, I think, as Americans, like, we're not really good with like, the grays. We're really good with black and white. And I feel like, you know, like, it's so much easier to like, believe this and then, and then try to curb all drug use versus like, seeing sort of the space in between.

• 22:29Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I watched all eight seasons of House over the winter.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  Are you doing okay?

• 22:37Ryan Broderick?

  I watched eight, I spent eight full days of my life watching House and was continually shocked by how often they were using fentanyl because I, I did not realize that it had a purpose in, in a hospital. And apparently I'm not alone here because as of 2021, 80% of police officers in America believed you could OD from touching it. That no attempt at debunking has really broken through into the ranks of the people who continually report this stuff, who like we said, have a direct, have direct access to what's left of local news in America and they're just pumping the misinformation into that ecosystem.

• 23:14Speaker 02

  I feel like we should just start like a fentanyl petting zoo or something where you can go and realize that there are no, yeah, there aren't any impacts of, of touching it.

• 23:25Ryan Broderick?

  That feels like that would go down really well. I think people would be totally normal about that. Yeah. Here's a little booth where your kid can touch a pile of fentanyl and just, it's fine, it's okay. Throughout the early 2020s, you know, we have seen just more and more of this stuff coming out. NPR in 2023 published an article that said, uh, police were suffering from accidental fentanyl exposure. Every few weeks, Brandon Del Pazo, a former police chief who studies addiction and drug policy at Brown University said, "The idea of it hanging in the air and getting breathed in is highly, highly implausible. It's nearly impossible." And then NPR said they couldn't find a single

• 24:08Ryan Broderick?

  case of a police officer who reported being poisoned by fentanyl or overdosing after encountering the street drug that was confirmed by toxicology reports. So they are still saying this all of the time and it has never, ever, ever been proven with any sort of toxicology.

• 24:26Ryan Broderick?

  In 2022, I think Vice got like pretty close to maybe figuring out what happened here. So they wrote, "Police departments waste public resources when they deploy an excessive response to a perceived threat." Activists say, "In January, the Tennessee Highway Patrol flew in decontamination equipment by helicopter at an estimated cost of $3,800 while responding to a man who was overdosing. Then, after a deputy and EMS worker claimed to experience symptoms of an overdose, police and prosecutors criminally charged the man with two felonies for reckless endangerment." Which is nuts and genuinely terrifying.

• 25:05Ryan Broderick?

  By the way, that story was posted on what was once Twitter and the top response from Alex Perine, the journalist, is, "Do hazmat suits protect you from easily available factual information about how fentanyl works?" Great stuff. So, yeah, Keith Humphries, the former senior policy advisor for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, does have a theory, which is, generally, as prosecutors, the more things you can charge somebody with, the more power you have. So even if they knew that this is mostly hysteria and hokum, they might still welcome the power. I don't know if you can change that.

• 25:45Ryan Broderick?

  And I do think that's probably as close as we'll get to a real definitive answer for why this has never gone away. Once you give them that out, why would they give that up? Because they can just double, triple charge you with whatever they want if they do a little fainting dance and pretend like you've poisoned the air around them.

• 26:06Speaker 03

  Once that particular cloud of misinformation gets inhaled, you are just gonna...

• 26:11Ryan Broderick?

  That easily snortable cloud of misinformation.

• 26:13Speaker 03

  You're gonna keel over from misinformation, but that's what's happening.

• 26:17Speaker 06

  You try to brush off the misinformation with your hand, but then it gets inside you and then spreads.

• 26:22Ryan Broderick?

  You can't do it. You get double overdose. So yeah, after the break, we're gonna talk about what is actually going on with fentanyl, how it works, where you can buy it, who you can talk to to get it easily on your local street corner. But first, a word from our sponsors, Pfizer.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  Very nice.

• 26:47Speaker 06

  For listeners, there's almost a spit take there.

• 26:55Speaker 00

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

• 27:22Speaker 07

  Does checking your bank statements feel like digging through a dusty attic full of forgotten subscriptions and old free trials?

• 27:30Speaker 07

  Experian can help take the pain out of canceling by handling it for you. Think of it as Operation Get Your Sanity Back. Over 200 subscriptions are cancelable. So get started in the Experian app and see how much you could save. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions eligible. Savings not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required. See experian.com for details. Experian.

• 27:53Ryan Broderick?

  OK, so guys, I've given the reins of the show over to you. Please help me understand how fentanyl actually works.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, and the story behind it's like pretty remarkable. And it is in some ways like a wonder drug. And I want to talk about the guy who invented it, this guy.

• 28:10Ryan Broderick?

  Fentanyl is awesome.

• 28:13Speaker 02

  Appropriately used, but, you know, and there's this guy, Paul Janson, who discovered it, who's just a stunning character in history. But before we get to that, I'm going to pass it over to Mary to talk about sort of the history of opioids and fentanyl.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  Well, opioids are actually some of the world's oldest known drugs. The ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans were using them medicinally, not just to get high. But for as long as we've had them, there's been.

• 28:41Ryan Broderick?

  Were they also using them to get high?

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Oh, I mean, listen, what else are you going to do in ancient Rome? You know?

• 28:45Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, no, that's cool.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  But, you know, people have been aware of these addictive qualities, right? This has been a problem for as long as we've had them. And so in the 1800s, morphine was actually isolated to try to fix that, to try to get the benefit, the pain relief, the medical benefit, without as much of the addiction and overdose risk. Didn't work out too well, because morphine is morphine. So the next great idea was heroin. We thought, maybe that'll be, that'll do it. No one will get addicted to heroin.

• 29:13Ryan Broderick?

  Uh-oh.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  And so the synthetic opioids came along in the 1930s. And again, the whole idea was, how can we make something that will have the pain relief quality that we need without having the risk of addiction? And so that was actually why people wanted to create synthetic opioids.

• 29:30Ryan Broderick?

  I feel like a large criticism that's thrown at Big Pharma, and you know me, I'm a huge supporter of Big Pharma. They sponsor the show. Yeah, I mean, they're, they're, yeah, of course. But I do think it's interesting that they're trying to make a non-addictive opioid. Because like, so much of what you hear is like, they're trying to keep you hooked, you know? But like, this is like a centuries-long process to make a non-addictive opioid.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  Well, because these were designed to be used in medical settings, you know? This wasn't stuff that you were supposed to be running around with. It was stuff that, you know, you're, you're having surgery or something, this is what you need. But, but all of these things are derived from similar compounds, right? They all work kind of the same way on the brain. But again, the difference is potency, right? So fentanyl, it depends on the delivery mechanism, but good rule of thumb, it's about 100 times more potent than morphine. So it is no joke. You can use less of it and get the same result, which, again, in a surgical setting, that's a good thing. All of these opioid drugs, whether you're talking about oxycodone, morphine, or fentanyl, they have similar effects in terms of what you experience in your body. Number one, pain relief, that's what they're for. Sedation, right?

• 30:38Speaker 03

  Drowsiness, dizziness, decreased respiration, decreased heart rate. So all of these things about your heart racing, you know, feeling like you're hyperventilating, that's literally the opposite of what these drugs do.

• 30:51Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  And that's how people die from overdose typically, is their heart rate slows too far, their respiration slows too much. That's what causes the overdose death in many cases.

• 31:03Ryan Broderick?

  I didn't even consider how stupid that is, actually.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, coughing and rashes are not, are not really things that happen when you take these drugs.

• 31:12Ryan Broderick?

  That's, that's so awesome. I, I, I love that.

• 31:15Speaker 06

  It's almost like they're describing the symptoms of a panic attack, not a...

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:21Ryan Broderick?

  Cops would never have a panic attack and take it out on the public. That has never happened before.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but, but fentanyl, I mean, fentanyl really is, I mean, I know we, we joke about it, but it is an incredibly valuable drug and it really did a lot for the medical fields in which it is supposed to be used. And Mangesh, I know you did a lot of research about that.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I was hitting at this guy, this Belgian doctor, Paul Jensen, and he starts working for his family's pharmaceutical company in the 1950s. His life is really extraordinary. When he's eight years old, his sister is four and she passes away from tuberculosis. And this is the thing that essentially drives his entire life, right? He's determined to save people and he's determined to find drugs for things that don't exist. And so, you know, at the time, a lot of pharmacies and, and, and drug makers are basically just mixing compounds of things that already exist. And so he's looking for new ways to, to attack disease, et cetera. And so he has a chemistry lab as a kid in, in college.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  It's during the world war and so like, the Nazis have actually shut down the universities to any higher education. And somehow he wrangles his way into these universities and he studies in secret for, for a number of years. He's like getting attention from professors and stuff like that, but he's, he's like continuing his course of education. He borrows money from his dad. He takes over the third floor of their office building and he starts a lab on his own. It's like everyone else is basically just doing trial and error in this very coarse way. And he is kind of looking at a molecule from the start and trying to figure out how he can use it and wield it to attack biological diseases and

• 33:07Ryan Broderick?

  And what years is?

• 33:08Speaker 02

  So this is in the 1950s.

• 33:11Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  So, yeah.

• 33:13Ryan Broderick?

  I didn't realize we were still like trialing and erroring by that point. That's

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, so there's a little bit before this. I think there's like a syphilis drug that uses this method. But for the most part, this ends up being the pioneer of like how startups are like biological startups or like pharma startups.

• 33:31Ryan Broderick?

  I was gonna say, we gotta go back in time and kill this guy. If he invented the startup. I don't care about fentanyl and how good it is. We gotta kill this guy with a time machine right away.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  But he's fascinating because like he has two mottos, right? He always goes around to everyone in his lab. He really doesn't have much of an ego, but he always asks two questions. He asks his like lab mates like, what's new? And his other motto is the patient is waiting, right? Cause he just wants these drugs to come out as quickly as possible.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  That's also kind of ominous if you think about it, though.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:01Ryan Broderick?

  The doctor will see you now.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  But he, apparently, like other people in the lab used to clink the test tubes as he'd walk down the hallway because like just to let people in the labs ahead of the way know that he was gonna come and ask, test to them about like what's new and how to develop things. But he starts immediately like creating incredible drugs, right? So one of his drugs that he creates is called halpiterol. It's also known as haldal. He creates this in 1958.

• 34:30Ryan Broderick?

  Oh.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  And yeah, it's an antipsychotic. It dramatically changes the lives of people who have schizophrenia, right? And, and so like before the schizophrenia drugs that were effective basically turned people into zombies, like they were completely out of it. And they administered it like a 16 year old who's, who's Has an impossible life up until this point and he basically gets a functional job. He gets a family.

• 34:54Ryan Broderick?

  Wow.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  Like has two kids. Ultimately, his dad.

• 34:57Ryan Broderick?

  That's way more than I have. So good for him. That's amazing.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  His dad takes him off the drug and his life falls apart. But until that point, it really is sort of a testament to how effective this drug is. Jansen also comes up with like a drug for menstrual cramps. He comes up with Imodium, which is just stunning.

• 35:16Ryan Broderick?

  Wow.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  At its peak, a drug a year is coming out of his lab and a very effective one.

• 35:21Ryan Broderick?

  I knew a guy in college.

• 35:25Ryan Broderick?

  But no, that's amazing. Like here's, here's the modern age. Like here, here's all of the preventable diseases that we'll like, don't have to deal with anymore. That's amazing.

• 35:32Speaker 02

  One of the craziest things I read about him was that like, he actually saves the terracotta soldiers in Xi'an because like, they're getting destroyed by fungal, like a fungus. And he comes up with this like anti-fungal ointment to basically like preserve all the terracotta soldier. Like he's, he's really remarkable.

• 35:50Ryan Broderick?

  Well, sure. If inventing drugs was a video game and he cleared it, like he's just doing side quests, right? He's just like, I don't know, like I'm going to do this terracotta soldier fungus one. Cause I'm bored. Like, yeah, sure. Sounds good to me.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  But back to fentanyl. In 1960, he creates fentanyl and it's another synthetic opioid. And, uh, you know, his goal is, as Mary pointed out, to improve the onset time, right? Fentanyl gets used in IV drugs in Europe in 1963. It's usually given in combination with other drugs for anesthesia. But it hits sort of this, the speed bump in the US because there's a guy named Dr. Robert Drips. He's an anesthesiologist.

• 36:35Ryan Broderick?

  Drips?

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 36:37Ryan Broderick?

  Fuck off. No, that's insane. Nominal determinism is so awesome. Being an anesthesiologist named Dr. Drips is amazing.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  It's phenomenal.

• 36:47Ryan Broderick?

  That's crazy work.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  And, and he, you know, in some ways like Jansen is ahead of his field. He is really worried that this is too potent. He's worried about it in the operating room, but he's also weirdly worried about, worried about what happens if it escapes the operating room. And he's worried about the addictive nature of it. And, and this is like so ahead of his time, right? Like in the 1960s, he's thinking about this.

• 37:12Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I mean, like, in the 1960s, like, people are just, like, drinking codeine at home all the time.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:19Ryan Broderick?

  This is, like, peak housewife codeine problem era. So the fact he's worried about that is actually pretty impressive.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Completely, but he does realize that this can change surgeries. And so Jansen and drips kind of meet and hash out the details. They meet in the middle, essentially, where Jansen tries to push through a drug that the FDA will approve. That's basically one part fentanyl to, I think it's 49 parts drapital. The other drug is an antipsychotic. It's used to treat nausea. And one of the side effects is dysphoria. And the idea is that, like, if you can counter the euphoria of fentanyl with this dysphoria...

• 37:58Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, interesting. So it's like, we've made, like, a really lame heroin.

• 38:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:03Ryan Broderick?

  Like, it's a really boring heroin. Okay. I see what they're trying to do here.

• 38:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, but so, I mean, what's fascinating is that, you know, 1972, the FDA approves fentanyl for use alone in these little IV vials in hospitals. Actually, one of the first overdose deaths in the United States was reported in 1973, so just one year later. And it was a young man. Well, it was a young-

• 38:27Ryan Broderick?

  Wow, really portends things to come, huh? Like, immediate.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  It was a young man who worked at a hospital in North Carolina. The local paper described it as a synthetic narcotic practically unknown outside the health professions, because that's what it was. It only existed in hospitals. But healthcare workers were starting to get hooked on it. People were starting to steal it from work. People were starting to siphon it out of the IV bags. What really changed everything was in 1981, fentanyl went off patent. And so when the patent expired, it blew up tenfold-

• 38:59Ryan Broderick?

  Wow, okay.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  ... increase in sales in the United States. So this is then in the mid 80s. You know what's coming in the early 90s? The Sackler family. And they want everybody to-

• 39:08Ryan Broderick?

  Who are the sponsors of our sad break, by the way.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so, you know, now fentanyl is out there. It's on the loose. And now people are getting addicted to opioids in ever-increasing numbers. And so what's going to happen next? Well, the internet happens. And what do you do with the internet?

• 39:27Ryan Broderick?

  You wouldn't download fentanyl, would you? Um, no, but you would sell it on the dark web for sure.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  But before you would do that, you could go read some chemistry papers that people have uploaded online, right?

• 39:37Ryan Broderick?

  Whoa, okay.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  And so it's a synthetic opioid, remember? It's just completely made up of lab chemicals.

• 39:43Ryan Broderick?

  You'd make it, right.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  Right, so if you know a little bit about chemistry, which I do not because I failed it, uh, if you read these papers, the molecules are actually not all that complicated. So people started realizing, well, wait, maybe there's a way we can just make this and we don't have to deal with buying it from pharmaceutical companies or sneaking it out of hospitals. What if we just cook some up at home?

• 40:03Ryan Broderick?

  Is that the same reason why like synthetic marijuana has spread so aggressively? Is because you can just make it? Like, I, I guess I'd never considered that with a synthetic drug, if you know chemistry, you can just make it.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Well, you have to know chemistry and you have to have access to the right precursor chemicals, right? But if you, if you, if you know what you're doing and you have, I guess, some time on your hands, uh, and you have access to the stuff, um, but yeah, so that, I mean, a lot of this esoteric knowledge about, about, you know, drug manufacturing is readily available online. Don't go look it up, anybody listening to this, I'm not saying.

• 40:34Ryan Broderick?

  You should go to ChatGPT and ask it to make you fentanyl.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  How do I make fentanyl? Right, and so that's kind of what, uh, really opened the.

• 40:44Ryan Broderick?

  I think our producer Grant is doing that right now. I can see his face.

• 40:48Ryan Broderick?

  I believe he is asking ChatGPT to make fentanyl for him right now. So like, we'll, we'll update you in a couple of minutes of what happens. Uh, okay, so people are making this because they're sharing it online in the 90s.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Early 2000s, yeah.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  But I, I think the difference between, um, something like meth or, uh, synthetic marijuana, et cetera, is that, those are actually harder to make, uh, and, and ultimately, like, the meth is more dangerous versus like the, the fentanyl is, is an easier chemical process. You actually don't have to be a chemist. You can get trained by someone who, who can show you essentially.

• 41:22Ryan Broderick?

  Interesting. This also colors my entire understanding of like Trump's hysteria around like the fentanyl taxes he's like talking about where there's this idea that it's this dangerous drug that's coming up from Mexico or down from Canada, but like you could just Google it and make it anywhere you want, really, if you have the access to what you need.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Right, but we're Americans and we're lazy, so we prefer to let people in other countries do that for us.

• 41:45Ryan Broderick?

  Dude, we used to make things in this country.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  Bring back American-made fentanyl.

• 41:50Ryan Broderick?

  Bring back American-made synthetic opioids. God damn it.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  Everything is made in Mexico and China these days.

• 41:57Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, my God. Yeah, maybe the terrorists are a good thing. So we're gonna, we're gonna hear all about how the cartels get involved, right after a word from our sponsors, the Sinaloa Cartel.

• 42:11Speaker 00

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

• 42:36Speaker 00

  Traditional home security only alerts you after a break-in, and that's too late. SimpliSafe is changing that. Stop, this is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. We don't just alert, we help stop crime before it starts. Plans starting around a dollar a day. Right now, get 70% off your new system with professional monitoring at simplisafe.com/spotify. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time. Outdoor deterrence plans start at $49.99 a month.

• 43:02Ryan Broderick?

  Visit simplisafe.com/licenses for alarm license information.

• 43:08Ryan Broderick?

  All right, so yeah, the big question mark that I've had actually this whole episode is, is where we do get this idea that it's coming up from Mexico? Like, how do the cartels, like, because obviously there's a moment where the cartels realize it's cheaper to put this stuff in other, in other drugs. That's my understanding, is that that's the major vector for getting people sick in the first place. But yeah, so how does this all start?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, um...

• 43:31Speaker 02

  I think the people who really sort of embrace this and make a business of it is the Chepitos, who are El Chapo Guzman's four kids. What's fascinating about them to me is that like as El Chapo was on the run and he was tunneling out of various prisons and escaping, people were really talking about the kids like succession, right? Like they were like kind of these like, they thought of them as these sort of like four idiots who were like, you know, El Chapo had grown up hard and these kids had gone to like really fancy schools, they were spoiled, they dressed flashy, completely. And they were on Instagram, right? So they were like flashing it all the time. They were-

• 44:12Ryan Broderick?

  I remember this. I remember this happening, yes. I was following them on Instagram.

• 44:16Speaker 02

  Photos of them with like tigers and stuff like that. And, you know, people think they're just not capable and also that they're not capable of-

• 44:23Ryan Broderick?

  Classic millennials.

• 44:24Speaker 02

  -working together, right? Like they think like there's going to be a power struggle between these four and it'll be like succession essentially, right? You know, there is a power vacuum when their dad goes to prison and the cartel fractures. Most of the cartel seems to go to the side of like this guy El Mayo, who was El Chapo's right-hand man or partner. But what people forget is that these teens actually did grow up in the business. And they weren't just like interning. They got real roles and responsibilities and they're actually ruthless and cunning, right? And so like instead of going after the heroin market or marijuana, they really spot this opportunity to modernize. And it becomes clear that like even their Instagram like positioning is all about the future. They

• 45:09Speaker 02

  want to create like a new brand and new branding mechanism for like young drug lords. They want to like counter the press narratives in this way. They're like, they want to be seen as human, flashy and innovative, right? Like it's crazy. And, and they spot this opportunity in fentanyl. As Mary was saying, right?

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Chemical compounds or precursors are produced in China. And for many years, that's where like fentanyl itself was made and then trafficked to North America via Mexico. But they kind of shore up their power first, right? And so like one of the brothers, this guy Ivan, he's known as El Chapito. He sets up a group called Los Ninis. And this is basically the armed security forces. And he oversees like a notorious group of hitmen that are actually called the Los Ninis. And so like-

• 46:01Ryan Broderick?

  Until they get exposed by fentanyl and start saying, "Oh no, I touched it. Oh no." Yeah, exactly.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  And you kind of see how these four brothers really like take on their own roles within this thing, right? And so like Alfredo, he works closely with Ivan. He's good with the financial aspects and the logistics. So he's really the transportation distribution guy. There's a guy named Ovidio Alrattan. He's known as the mouse because he's good at evading security. But he's actually the really, the one who supervises the production of these fentanyl super clandestine facilities that all work isolated from one another, right?

• 46:35Ryan Broderick?

  I do have to say, cartels have the greatest nicknames for each other. Honestly, you gotta hand it to them. They're really good with nicknames.

• 46:43Speaker 03

  It's the branding. The branding.

• 46:45Ryan Broderick?

  They're so good at branding. Yeah. Okay, so they've built this, they've built the facility.

• 46:51Speaker 02

  And there's one other guy, Joaquin, who is known as El Guero. He is the money launderer and he's the one who's best at ensuring some of the international facilitation of logistics. He's also heavily into crypto and figures out how to like launder money through crypto, right?

• 47:07Speaker 03

  Crypto bro. Never trust a crypto bro.

• 47:09Ryan Broderick?

  I was gonna say, the only person who's ever figured out how to launder money through crypto, it's just this one guy. Nobody else has ever done that.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's this like-

• 47:18Speaker 03

  You know, I was kind of with them until you told me they were into crypto.

• 47:20Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Yeah. Like, I can get behind a narco state, but I don't think I can get behind cryptocurrency. Yeah, exactly.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  So anyway, they're kind of this Voltron of like drug operations logistics and they they spot this opportunity and so they're getting these chemicals shipped to to small itinerant labs and they're using them to synthesize fentanyl. But what's really amazing, and obviously they're smuggling the product to the US, but what's stunning is the economics on this stuff, right? So like for just $800 of precursor chemicals, they make a $640,000 profit, right? Like, so like if you scale it up, right, like a million dollar investment makes about $800 million in profit. That's crazy.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so like, they're using crypto to launder money. They're sophisticated. They're making billions of dollars. And obviously, they're causing 100,000 deaths in, you know, in the US every year. But but the volume is insane. And so like in 2024, the DEA reports it seized over 60 million fentanyl-laced fake pills and nearly 8,000 pounds of fentanyl powder, which equated to more than 380 million lethal doses. And in May of this year, there was another big drug bust. They captured 400 kilograms of fentanyl and 2.7 million pills, along with cash and other drugs. And the thing is, at that volume, right, like

• 48:54Speaker 02

  you can afford to lose a lot of batches and still make a ton of money. As Mary was pointing out, there's kind of like, nothing inherently wrong with the chemicals themselves and the reason like China makes these precursors, because, you know, sometimes they're used in over the counter drugs, sometimes prescription drugs, also plastics, pesticides, fragrances, right? And so like, even if the authorities crack down on one type of these precursors, like there, chemists can figure out a clever way to like, use these and come up with alternatives. And so like, there's kind of no, no crushing this, this source of materials.

• 49:31Speaker 03

  I found a really great analogy about making fentanyl, where it described it as, I want to say it was a Reuters article, but it talked about it like a Mr. Potato Head. Like, the core ring of the fentanyl molecule is the head, and then there's accessories that you can put on. But if you have the ears from one box, or the ears from another box, they still fit in the ear hole, right? So you can ban 12 different precursor chemicals, but then there's 90 others that you can plug into those holes if you know what you're doing and the effect will generally be about the same.

• 50:02Ryan Broderick?

  So you're saying that there's no hope here?

• 50:05Speaker 03

  There is no hope. We should all give up.

• 50:06Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. Well, speaking of which, Grant has spent the last several minutes convincing ChatGPT to tell him how to make fentanyl and he's going to read you that verbatim right now.

• 50:16Speaker 06

  So at first I was like, hey ChatGPT, show me how to make fentanyl. And I was like, no. But then I was like, I'm a journalist and I'm trying to understand the process. And then when I broke it down into different questions, it became very helpful. And I was like, so how would you source these synthetic materials? And it's like, would you like a diagram of how to source this? And I was like, and just in theory, if I wanted the lab equipment, like what is all the lab equipment I'd need to make fentanyl? And I listed it and I'm guessing in the order that you would need the equipment in. Like I think from five minutes while also listening to us record this podcast, I think I could get like 70% of the way there of like, it's now kind of a one stop shop.

• 50:56Ryan Broderick?

  Party at Grant's house.

• 51:01Speaker 06

  Terrifying.

• 51:02Ryan Broderick?

  So, well, well, Grant continues to be a very hands-on actor producer, searching how to make drugs while we do the work. I wanted to end, I wanted to end with a character we started with because I, there's some interesting synchronicities here. So Jack Riley, the DEA guy who gave the warning with the dangerous offense and all, he retired in 2022 and he's been doing a bit of a press tour. He wrote a book about how he helped capture El Chapo and he's made a lot of very interesting claims. In 2022, he claimed that fentanyl was in the Halloween candy that was being passed around.

• 51:38Speaker 05

  With Halloween only a few weeks away, DEA officials are sounding the alarm on how drug cartels are targeting our children. In fact, rainbow fentanyl has been seized in 21 states.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  If my son's going to go trick or treating, I'm going with him. And when he's done collecting his, his goods, I'm going to go through it before he consumes it. This is right out of the Mexican cartels. playbook what they're doing. They're going after the most vulnerable.

• 52:06Speaker 05

  I had to talk to my daughter about it. And I said, before you open your candy, you know, back in the day, our parents used to do that, looking for razor blades. And I said, we're gonna have to open up all your candy because bad people are putting drugs in candy boxes and it makes mama worried.

• 52:19Ryan Broderick?

  He claims that there's no doubt that cartels are using the American military to distribute fentanyl. And then just in December of last year, he asked Trump to let him run the DEA. That's what he wants to do. So not only is fentanyl an unstoppable Mr. Potato Hood of human misery, the people who are the most vocal about it in America are using it as a like unbeatable boogeyman to basically install themselves at the top of federal agencies and do press tours.

• 52:51Speaker 06

  In all of these interviews, he's just happy to go on cable news with zero pushback and be like, it's only logical for the cartel to be doing this. Of course, like, it's totally the cart, like, right, there's never a figure. There's, there's a lot of I feel, and he, but he says it very authoritatively.

• 53:11Ryan Broderick?

  The only, the only way the cartel is going after American children is by beating them in Fortnite, because they play a lot of Fortnite.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  Do they really?

• 53:18Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I mean, being in a cartel is boring. It's like being in the military. But like, if you're not making the product, like, if you're like, you're just hanging out, hanging around. I mean, my, my son told me that, like, that, and I, I should fact check this, but, but, but, um, that when the creator of Dragon Ball Z passed away, that the cartels took a day off? They did. Yeah. So people don't know this, but Goku is Mexican. And Mexicans really love Goku. He, there's like, like, if you go to Mexico City, like, every couple blocks, you're gonna see like a Goku branded like taco truck. It's a whole thing.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  But just, just real quickly, God, Jack Riley sucks so much. I don't like seeing his face. It upsets me. But yeah, I, I think this is the thing that upsets me the most about this whole situation, which is that we are trying to find a way to pin blame on the Mexican cartels, the Chinese factories, the this, the that. You know, the Halloween candy, all we actually need to do, right, is like, provide people with healthcare and mental healthcare and resolve poverty and desperation in rural and urban America. And then like, maybe that makes the problem better, but oh no, that might be, that might be too difficult, right? It's not, that's no fun to yell about on cable news.

• 54:34Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, if I could synthesize a takeaway much like an opioid here, you're exactly right, which is that at every turn of the story that we've told today, even the invention of Facebook, have been like, private attempts at like, solving systemic issues. You're synthesizing a different version of heroin because heroin's too addictive. You're, you're creating Facebook because you want to connect local communities and like, give them a way to communicate with each other. And then they start spreading misinformation. The cops are now using them to spread their own misinformation. And then the cartels get a hold of the fentanyl, and it's pretty much impossible to ban it because you can just make it a different way because it's so versatile. Like, all of these things are, it's like the failure of the modern

• 55:18Ryan Broderick?

  age, sort of, in one story, in a way, that's really fascinating. And it is inherently stupid, also, like, everything in the modern age. Like, the idea that cops are going around claiming that you can absorb it through your skin, or throw it in the air and breathe it in and die, it is inherently dumb. But behind that dumbness is like, this very fascinating and sad story of the breakdown of basically the last 50 years. And that's the tagline for Panic World.

• 55:47Speaker 06

  I think you just, you just got at something that like, is, made maybe, made me the most depressed in all of this, is that I think some people in this, the police, local news ecosystem, were cynically bad actors. But I think for most of them, it's like, when there's a truth that is convenient to you, and you can circulate it.

• 56:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 56:08Speaker 06

  Yes. I think Jack Riley is earnestly believes the things he's saying, and doesn't need facts or figures to back them up. And it pings through their, they keep sharing it. And so they believe their own hype. And even if the comments are like, that's fake, you just tune, tune out that noise. It's, uh, this is like, an episode about how everyone can get high on their own supply.

• 56:29Ryan Broderick?

  Hey, there you go. That's why you're the creep.

• 56:36Ryan Broderick?

  I am not willing to sort of say Jack Riley is earnest or not. It's you know what? Like it functionally doesn't matter. I do think many of like many people tend to forget that like police officers are like they're not experts in public policy. They're not like they're caught like it's they're just people, right? And they now have access to broadcasting tools, the same ones that normal people do, the same ones that normal people didn't have 20, 30 years ago. So it's all sort of connected in the same way where you can spread this stuff. It's really easy and I'm not, I'm not going to define what stuff is in that sentence because it applies for anything we're talking about. And yeah, I do, I totally believe that like a cop is terrified of fentanyl because like the cops live in the community where the opioid crisis is happening.

• 57:20Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 57:21Ryan Broderick?

  Hundred percent.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  They've had people they know be affected by it too. Yeah.

• 57:25Ryan Broderick?

  I know cops who have, who have had an opioid problem and died in, you know, in New England, that is not uncommon. I understand to a point like how this is not going away. And for the same reason, like just fentanyl can't go away as far as we, I understand now and I'm terrified.

• 57:40Speaker 03

  Especially now that Grant can just make it at his house, apparently.

• 57:43Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. So Grant, there, there do appear to be federal agents breaking down the door behind you as we speak, but that could be from a different thing. I don't know what you're into.

• 57:53Speaker 06

  As we for podcasts are going down, we got to subsidize the podcast industry somehow.

• 58:00Ryan Broderick?

  That's right. That's right. If you want to go to patreon.com/panicworld for $5 a month, we will mail you the recipe for fentanyl. You can make it yourself at home, totally fine. I guess like, yeah, last sort of thoughts here, last question here, like where do we go with all of this? I mean, both with the misinformation and with the fentanyl problem, like, I mean, in your guys sort of research, like, do you have anything even mildly hopeful we can end on? Please, for the love of God.

• 58:26Speaker 03

  There's not a big happy solution. There are maybe a bunch of small happy solutions. There could be changes that happen, not even at a whole community level, within a family, right? Or within a block or a neighborhood where people are able to convey accurate information, get NARC and training, everybody. You can do it. It's really easy and-

• 58:49Ryan Broderick?

  Testing strips as well.

• 58:51Speaker 03

  That's right. And so if, if we can find ways to keep each other safe and to share what we know, like, share this podcast with everybody. You know-

• 59:01Ryan Broderick?

  There's something I can get behind.

• 59:02Speaker 03

  That's right. And that, and that will maybe not save everybody, but it could save someone.

• 59:07Ryan Broderick?

  May I guess you got any, anything hopeful we can end on?

• 59:09Speaker 03

  Notorious optimist, my guess.

• 59:12Ryan Broderick?

  He's just shaking his head.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  He's giving up.

• 59:16Speaker 02

  I mean, two of the Chapolitos are in jail right now, so that's something.

• 59:21Ryan Broderick?

  So two down?

• 59:21Speaker 03

  Two down, two to go.

• 59:22Speaker 02

  But Grant's in the business now, so that changes the equation.

• 59:27Ryan Broderick?

  You mean, you mean Grant D.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:32Ryan Broderick?

  Little Grant, little Grant?

• 59:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I, I think, I think it's just so sad, right? Like, it, it is, the whole situation is so sad.

• 59:44Ryan Broderick?

  Thank you, thank you. Very helpful. Thank you very much. Thank you.

• 59:48Speaker 06

  Normally we plug things here, but a lot of the, I'll just go stare into the, the rain.

• 59:53Ryan Broderick?

  I just want to just take a, take a, take a quick minute to, to cry and then we can-

• 59:57Speaker 02

  I think the, that both Mary and you are right, that like, everything, to me, as the world feels harder and harder, I've taken so much, I've taken so much from communities, right? Like, and, and the idea that like our, whether it's like community gardens and seeing people come together, or, or like the, the, the way our, our little co-op like, hands out coffee to, to the unhoused people around the corner. And, and like, it, it just feels like there's a pulling together of community that people had forgotten about in, in a way previously, and, and people are really leaning into now. That is hopeful to me. Like, it, it feels like as, as, you know, institutions are failing us,

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  like, it, it feels like small groups of people collecting is, is, is, is a bomb for all of them.

• 1:00:50Ryan Broderick?

  And that's, let's, let's end it there before things get dark again. That's perfect. Thank you guys for coming on the show. This was truly as delightful a conversation about something so dark it could ever be. People want to follow you. People want to find your stuff on the internet where they want to find your recipes for fentanyl on your various blogs. Like where can they do that?

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  They can find Part Time Genius on any podcast app of their choice and we're on Instagram at Part Time Genius.

• 1:01:16Ryan Broderick?

  Panic World is a Garbage Day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at garbage day dot email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. It's engineered by Rebecca Seidel. Our deranged logo was created by Gabby Cash. Please give us $5 at patreon.com/panicworld. Please give us products to sell by contacting multitude at multitude dot production slash ads. For any other way you would like to give us money or work with us or promote us or become financially entangled with us, you can reach out to our fixer, our wonderful bag man, Josh Fielstad, and you can reach him at [email protected]. And one piece of advice from me to you, chill out, touch grass while you still can.

• 1:02:05Speaker 03

  Oh, you know what? I take it back. I fell for the running Pikachu during the protests in, I think it was Turkey. And there was footage-

• 1:02:13Ryan Broderick?

  That wasn't real? I've seen like multiple angles of that.

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  Wait a minute. I heard that someone told me that Pikachu was AI. We have to debunk this right now before we can continue.

• 1:02:22Ryan Broderick?

  There were, there were, there were photoshops of it, but-

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  Because again, that was one of those things where you think, well, that could happen. I mean, I could, I could see-

• 1:02:33Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, I see the confusion here. It, there was a real Pikachu protest there, but then people started doing AI versions of it.

• 1:02:40Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 1:02:41Ryan Broderick?

  So it's both fake and real.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:02:44Ryan Broderick?

  My favorite kind of thing.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  The best.

• 1:02:47Ryan Broderick?

  My favorite kind of thing.

• 1:02:48Speaker 03

  There was a Pikachu, but not like that.

• 1:02:51Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, there was a Pikachu there and then people loved it so much, they kept putting the Pikachu in other kinds of parts of the protest. Yeah.

• 1:03:01Ryan Broderick?

  If you're building AI agents, you should check out Strands Agents. It's an open source SDK for Python and TypeScript. The idea is simple. Give a model some-

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  Tools that decide what to call and when and loop until it's done. No chain convicts, no graph orchestration, and works with any model provider. It's also open source and built and tested for production agents. Get started at strandsagents.com.