#2395 - Mariana van Zeller

[00:01] Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. [00:12] This is really not good for you. That glass of wine is so nice for you. One glass of wine I do not think is bad for you. Yeah, that's all I have. It's not great for you. Right. But a glass of wine relaxes you and there's probably benefit in being relaxed. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. But the problem was I own a nightclub and I'm there all the time. [00:30] And I'm out with the fellas. And then I'd maybe have a couple glasses of whiskey on a podcast with some guys. And then... [00:38] When I stopped, I was like, oh, my God, I feel so much better. Like, why was I poisoning myself? Really? You did feel much better? Immediately you felt it? Yeah, because when you think about it, we rolling? [00:48] So when I stopped drinking, I was probably having like – [00:52] 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 a little draggy like when I go to the gym. [01:13] And that's gone. [01:14] That's great. Yeah. I wish I had that ass front. It's not even straight. It was easy to do. Was it? Yeah, I didn't even miss it. You know, I had a... [01:24] I haven't had a glass of anything for a week. Now, I had surgery exactly a week ago. What did you have done? An appendectomy. Oh. Yeah. It was exactly last Thursday, which is why I have these...

[01:35] 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. Those are scary. Nothing was happening. Yeah, it didn't burst. But my husband forced me to go to the hospital and I got there. And yeah, it was appendicitis. And I had emergency appendectomy the next morning. [01:58] But so, which recovery has been totally fine. [02:05] I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to come here today. And I wanted to recover faster. So, yeah. So I think it's the longest I've ever been faster. 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. [02:35] where they process cocaine and then walked out with them, hiked out with them. I mean, that was just nuts. 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. [02:58] Why's that? [02:59] 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. Disney decided that Nat Geo 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.

[03:29] So now I'm in your competition. [03:34] Someone will do your show again somewhere else, though. It's too good. 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. The podcast is 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. Whoa, wait a minute. It's a crazy number, right? 35% of the economy? An estimated 35%, which is what economists call the hidden third. [03:59] legal activities and goods like drugs and scams and whatnot and guns. We're also talking about, so that's the black market and then there's the gray market, which is the unregulated part of the economy. So untaxed work, untaxed goods, everything from like the man selling fruit on the corner, you know, to other jobs and goods that are in tax. But this actually has an effect [04:29] 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

[04:59] who... [05:01] You know, I wanted to figure out why somebody decides 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 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. [05:31] the case yeah yeah most certainly is the case geographically oh a hundred percent geographically if you have no options and you're stuck in a third world country guess what yeah you know you do what you got to do 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 [06:01] 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 is too poor and they can't afford my education. And the only job that I have available for me now is doing this cocaine trafficking or, you know, carrying cocaine on my back. And these are stories I hear all the time. So the idea of being able to place ourselves

[06:31] could be me and you, as you know, has always been very important for me. So the podcast allows me to do that. Well, that's great. 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 on tax labor? It's difficult to have exact numbers, but the estimate is that about 15%, 15 to 20% are black markets and the rest are gray [07:01] Um, but I mean, so it's kind of half, half dangerous stuff, half people that are just unregulated stuff. Yeah. 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, um, the really interesting, the, um, the things that I think we've talked about a lot is, uh, uh. [07:25] I think this number shocks a lot of people, but if you think of the drug trade alone, $600 billion, that's the estimate, anywhere between $300 and $600 billion every year just from the drug trade alone. You know, these are – [07:40] crazy numbers. And so it's not so... [07:45] out of the box to think that, yeah, this is a large percentage of our economy. Is it difficult to get people to come and sit with you on a podcast and talk about illegal activities? [07:55] Thank you. [07:56] Yes, but it was also on the show. I think the harder part is that on the show, we figured out a way 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.

[08:26] drug labs or their drug houses or their homes sometimes. So this has been a little bit harder, but we're making it work. We're hoping that it grows so then we actually have money to start traveling more and going to some of the... This episode is brought to you by Traeger Grills. If you enjoy food, and I mean really good food, Traeger is a game changer. This isn't just a grill. It's [08:56] natural hardwood pellets that fuel everything you grill, smoke, or bake. That's it. Just wood and fire and flavor. And what's truly wild is how easy it is. Just set the temp, load the grill, and let Traeger handle the rest. Grill steak, smoked ribs, even baked pizza, all on one grill. If you're into fire, flavor, and doing things right, check out Traeger Grills. [09:22] This summer, the Cup is taking over the U.S., and only DraftKings has you covered every step of the way. Follow every group stage upset, every knockout round thriller, every stoppage time moment that flips the whole tournament. Sweat all the big matches you love in real time with a seamless experience built for the world's biggest stage. No matter where you're watching, you're always connected and in the game with one app. Yes, that means you in Ohio. [09:52] with code rogan spend five bucks to get 200 in rewards within 21 days that's code rogan in partnership with draft kings the crown is yours gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER 21 and over ohio only eligibility restrictions apply bonus bets expire seven days after issuance for additional terms and responsible gaming resources cdkng.co slash audio limited time offer

[10:16] Let's talk about Service Titan, the AI for the trades. The trades are the backbone of this country, and for the first time, they've got technology that actually matches the work. Over 10,000 contractors already use Service Titan software to run their businesses. Built by two guys whose dads were in the trades, this isn't some tech company guessing at solutions. [10:46] generic internet data. This is AI designed specifically for contracting work, HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and more. It's booking calls while you sleep, dispatching your texts, helping you run your back office, growing your revenue. One platform, fully automated, always learning, always improving. Every other industry is still trying to figure out AI. The trades are about to lead from the front. Service Titan, the AI for the trades. Learn more at [11:16] It's servicetitan.ai. 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 just think maybe I should branch out? 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.

[11:46] But I spent so much time talking to people who have really interesting backgrounds. And then we use only five minutes of their interview. And these are fascinating people that, again. Do you have access to that footage? [12:01] The footage that you edited out? [12:04] Yes. I mean, yes. But do you have access to it? Like, are you allowed to use it? Or is it – if it's owned by National Geographic, it's owned by National Geographic. 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. Oh, you have no idea. Yeah. Absolutely. But the good news is that I have still all these. Come on, Nat Geo. I know. Let her have the footage. It would only help. But I have all the contacts. So as soon as I start – as this starts building up, the podcast, the hope is that – [12:33] I'll build it myself from the ground up because all the contacts are mine, you know, all the expertise. You have contacts with like assassins and drug dealers. You text each other. Hey, what's up? Send emojis. I mean, yeah. I mean, these are people. I mean, the assassins less so, but the traffickers and the smugglers and the scammers. Absolutely. I'm still in touch with a lot of them. Wow. Yeah. [12:56] Do you have like a file? [12:58] You want to see my secret file? Do you have them like labeled, like super shady, less than just unfortunate circumstances, cold-blooded killers? [13:11] It's all under my encrypted messaging apps. [13:16] No, you know, it's really crazy because of the success of traffic,

[13:26] 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. Is it because these people feel like they're going to die anyway? Like they're going to probably get killed? A lot of them are. And they're not afraid? One of the most interesting people we filmed for this last season of Traffic was a guy that we called El Gringo. So it was the premiere episode of this season. It was about cartel. It was called Cartel USA. It's about the cartel presence in the United States. [13:56] on cartels in Mexico, right, and in Colombian and 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 U.S. 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 in America. And what I found was a [14:22] And several very surprising facts. The story actually starts in Sinaloa because I had to go there to get access to the people in the U.S. So I had to go to the top bosses to be able to get the green light to then film their operations. What is that like? 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.

[14:52] called he's a 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 um 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 and so they allow me to [15:22] I filmed super meth labs, super labs of meth there. I filmed fentanyl lab. I filmed a guy cooking fentanyl. We were all, you know, masked up and I filmed the whole operation. I mean, I filmed Sicarios. I've, yeah, I filmed more from Sinaloa than anywhere else in the world. But it's got to be very scary to go there and hang out with those people. [15:52] topics? I'm 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. They are the cartels trying to make headway in the in that region. But usually it's all Sinaloa. So you're not supposed to ask who exactly they work for. And any other some questions

[16:22] People don't like to ask that. But I always ask all those questions anyway. And, you know, you get a sense whether you're pushing it too far or not. [16:32] Have you ever had a moment when you're doing that where you're like, I think I crossed the line? [16:36] Um... [16:37] We 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. That was when you got the police people that were selling drugs illegally. So for people who 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. [17:07] They were selling it to gang members or affiliate of cartel members in L.A. who would then ship it. They would cross the border and ship it to L.A. Yeah, we visited. Crazy. It was a scene. Yeah, it started with a scene and that episode started with a scene in L.A. 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. [17:35] you know, sells us a lot of our drugs. I just don't understand what benefit [17:40] To them. To the police? Yeah, for them. No, but for them to talk to you. Which one? Any of them. Especially the cops. So it's the question that I get. The cops didn't talk. We didn't get the cops to talk to us. So you got it from the people that sold the guns to. We got it from the gang member. Yeah. Who sold the guns. The cops sold the guns to. So I've spoken to cops who are doing amazing work here in the U.S. in combating drug trafficking and gun trafficking, and in Mexico as well.

[18:10] But these were talking about corrupt cops. So, 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 LAPD. But even that, like what would be the benefit to him to talk to you? [18:40] between you, a turf war between you and another gang like the JNG, which is a cartel Jalisco. [18:49] they're they're fighting for power right so here's an opportunity to show how powerful you were 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 it's the traffickers it's the chemists the [19:13] 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 U.S. dollars and euros in Peru, in Lima. And this guy, like a shiny eye, so excited, showing me how he finishes these bills to make it counterfeit. [19:34] look and feel and smelled 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 of doing this. 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.

[20:04] to do this that's crazy 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 right 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 um [20:27] 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. The guy who makes counterfeit bills, what's his process? Oh, it's freaking fascinating. Does he replicate a dollar bill with all the little things inside of it? It was incredible. So there's the graphics person. There's the printer, and he does the finishing job. He's the finisher. [20:57] 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 a 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 serela you don't you guys don't have it here but it's like a meal what do you call that like cornmeal like a cornmeal and he uses that and I saw him

[21:27] 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. Is it made with the same paper? No, it's a different paper. The paper is the hardest part to get because the paper you can only get in the U.S. Federal Reserves or wherever the paper comes from. But that seems like an easy thing to duplicate. Yeah, it's not very hard. [21:57] and curves and what... What about those little things that you can only see with like a flashlight? 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... Isn't it illegal to possess that stuff? Okay. So we actually didn't bring the actual... We brought the cutouts so we wouldn't be able to use it. But it's in the background of my podcast. Whoa. This episode is brought to you by the Farmer's Dog. We all know ultra-processed food isn't good for us as humans. [22:27] Why would it be any different for our dogs? The farmer's dog is real, fresh food for dogs, and their recipe goes beyond just using good ingredients. It's all about how they use them. Unlike most pet food, they always use real meat and vegetables and gently cook them to retain vital nutrients without any of the bad stuff that comes from ultra-processing. Their food is developed by a team of on-staff, board-certified vet nutritionists who make sure it's all complete and balanced,

[22:57] Made to human-grade safety standards. It's portioned for your dog, making it easy to manage their weight. And they label each pack with your dog's name that lets you know that this food is truly packed for them. Plus, they have 24-7 customer support. So you can chat with real dog people who care about your dog anytime. The Farmer's Dog says good ingredients matter, but the best recipes call for so much more. [23:27] off your first box plus free shipping. This offer is for new customers only. You can see the cutout and it's really, it's phenomenal. It's crazy. How many bills that are counterfeit make their way into our currency? Is this it right here? Yeah, this is it. This is the finisher. [23:45] Yeah. [23:45] Thank you. [23:46] He is. And you see he's teaching me. He's showing me. And there's a glue too. Yeah. [23:52] And so he's making it seem more weathered, more worn? Yeah, and they make it seem weathered and worn. [23:57] Yeah. [24:00] It's so crazy. And how... [24:03] How many forage you see? Yeah. Yeah. So he scrubs it down a little bit. [24:08] Yeah. [24:08] With a toothbrush. All stuff that he bought at the store, like next door, that, you know... [24:14] How much currency goes through this guy's production? I cannot remember. This was five years ago, season one, but it was a lot. And it's the U.S. Secret Services that are in charge of going after these guys.

[24:28] So we actually saw the real money being made when we came back to the U.S. But I can't remember. But it was millions of dollars. I mean, it was like five or six families in Peru, in Lima. They're the center of all this, that were in charge, that were the best of the best at making these. And we got inside one of these. And how does that stuff get into U.S. distribution? Usually in bags, commercial airlines, just like drugs. A lot of drugs make it in commercial airlines. [24:58] People would carry – the money mules would carry it, actually carry money. And then when it gets to America, what do they do with it? 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. So they just buy things with it? They buy things and – [25:22] I wish I remember. This was five years ago. They buy things, but they also have people that exchange that for less cash. Yeah, that's what it was. I think they end up getting people. So people that know. Yeah, that know, and they end up getting like 70% of what I think of something like 70% of the actual cost for real bills. So they get real money in exchange for. They get 70% of what a real bill is?

[25:52] and profit? [25:53] Like a fake $20 bill? Yeah. The head of the group that then sells the bills when they're made. I would have thought it would be way less than that for someone to be willing to exchange you real money for fake money. Yeah. I have to verify. This is five years ago. We've done 50 episodes, but I think it was something like that if I remember. That's crazy, though, that it just gets distributed by small businesses. Yeah. [26:16] 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 I remember it was in Oregon. We did a few stories there where a lot of people were complaining about this, small business owners. How do they get discovered that they have fake bills? I think they go to the bank and try to – Oh, the bank knows. They try to deposit it. Do they look at every number on the bills? [26:46] they're fake. I think the bank is able to find out just by looking at it. Oh, okay. Because I think it, you know, would fool us, but it doesn't fool somebody who's trained to look at these bills. So the bank, when you bring money to the bank, they look at every bill? They're supposed to, yeah. I know that that's how they figured out that they had... You got to go to a lazy bank. [27:04] go to bank where people are just phoning it in partying all night yeah they just assume that it's real they don't care yeah that's crazy though so what is like for the overall united states like how much money comes in every year that's fake oh it was i cannot remember at all the statistics but it was uh it was a lot it was like in the millions of dollars that people were making down there wow it was crazy yeah but this all back to the story of why i talked about this

[27:34] USA story, 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 cartels 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 is an American citizen who doesn't speak a word [28:04] 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 U.S. [28:11] He distributes most of his drugs [28:13] through commercial airlines, usually Delta, because they have really good baggage fees. They have 70 pounds, two bags, 70 pounds if you fly business. And so a lot of times it was strippers who would carry the drugs from the West Coast to the East Coast. And 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. Wow. You said strippers? Strippers, yeah. Why do they use strippers? [28:43] because people don't suspect it's a woman. So people are less suspicious of women. And there's a higher chance that they'll make it. And they are more likely to take the money to do this. [28:55] Wow. I mean, at least those are the people that he found would agree to do this. I mean, I don't want to say anything bad about strippers. You get busted doing that, though. Yeah. That is a big penalty. Yeah. You're going to jail for a long time. It's obviously a terrible idea. Such a risk. Yeah. So this guy, El Gringo, decided to talk to me. And he was the one who contacted me. He contacted me initially.

[29:25] 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 um and he agreed and he uh traveled out to me and we met and he said look i've been dying to tell this story because if i get whacked uh which he thought he might he wanted his story to be out there he wanted somebody to have heard his whole story wow wow [29:51] Yeah, and he'd been threatened by the cartel. They'd sent him photos of his house, and they knew exactly where he lived and where his family was. [29:59] Yeah, crazy stuff. Jeez. [30:01] So 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? Yeah. They ask for our phones to be off. That's not good enough. [30:17] Don't they know that's not good enough? [30:19] How will you bear you? [30:22] Where we go in Sinaloa 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. [30:34] They just don't want you recording. They just don't want us recording, and they are afraid that if we by any chance are being followed by American law enforcement, they're way more scared of American law enforcement than they are of Mexican law enforcement. Because Mexican law enforcement is probably paid off. Because there's a lot of corruption. Yes, a lot of corruption. [30:52] um... [30:53] I mean, I've been in situations where, you know, there were police officers in the room.

[30:59] So... Whoa. Yeah. [31:00] corrupt cops wow [31:04] Just in uniform? [31:06] 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's happened. I've seen it in Colombia. 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 are 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. [31:36] so sometimes they ask for our phones to stay behind but a lot of times they just want our phones off um so that we don't transmit any signals um 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 [32:06] 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. If I was this finisher guy, I would say, you've got to put sunglasses on me because I have very recognizable eyes. 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. That guy needed sunglasses. His eyes are very recognizable, very unusual coloring under the eyes.

[32:36] who has been caught from our show. And I'm in touch with a lot of them. - Well, that's great. - It's been good. - It might just be because they're not trying. - 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. - Right. - I think it's, [32:55] It's, yeah. [32:57] 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 right which is a better strategy anyway but isn't that sometimes how they do it they get a low-level guy and get them to turn yeah yeah yeah absolutely um yeah but uh what a terrifying world that only exists because of an illegal market [33:19] that the United States fuels. [33:21] Yeah, the biggest drug consumers in the world. We're number one. Largest, number one. We're number one. Number one. I mean, number one in incarcerations. Number one, it's $150 billion in drugs that we spend every year. That's so crazy. It is crazy. And, you know, we share this border with Mexico, which is fortunate and very unfortunate for them. They blame us for creating the consumer market. We blame them for creating the drugs that feed this consumer market. [33:51] realistic solution to how to at least mitigate some of that? We've talked about this. [33:57] And 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? And I know Portugal is not the United States. We're 10 million people. We're a small country. But Portugal...

[34:12] Whatever, it worked there. 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. Yeah, but Oregon is a bad place to try it 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. [34:42] actually wanted rehab right and and so when you don't what are people going to do they're going to go back to trust even then rehab is very ineffective like percentage wise it is that's was another episode we did this season that you should watch it's about it's called the rehab scam it's the great american rehab scam yes and it's about how in california we did we filmed in arizona in california in california alone we got an insurance the head of the insurance um investigations in [35:12] an insurance fraud investigator in California told us that [35:15] 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. 10%? 10%, which is a crazy number, but he thinks it's a low number. That's probably much higher than that. So our story was all about body brokering and rehab scams. Body brokering? Body brokering, yeah. What is that? It's a term that applies to rehab scams.

[35:43] Rehab scams is basically the... [35:46] buying and selling as addicts in this billion-dollar market, right? So it's [35:52] they create these fake rehab centers that, [35:59] Bill insurance for treatments that they are not actually giving people. [36:04] 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. [36:29] trauma and alcohol abuse and drug abuse, there's a real need for health insurance and for them to have access to health insurance. So you have these huge communities that... [36:39] 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. [37:09] And they bring people to these centers and then they start building insurance. They get you on an insurance plan and they start building insurance.

[37:17] crazy amounts of money. Like we spoke, we were investigating this one facility that they were making 800 and something [37:24] million dollars sorry eight hundred and something thousand [37:28] $870,000 a week, a week from dozens of people that they were housing and not actually providing them the treatment that they so desperately needed. So just house them. Which is also illegal. You can't house some – you can't offer somebody free housing. [37:47] uh, [37:48] 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. Nigerians are so good at scamming. Oh, my God. It is. Ingenious. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Happy Dad Hard Seltzer. A nice cold Happy Dad is low carbonation, gluten-free, and easy to drink. [38:18] No bloating, no nonsense. Whether you're watching a football game or you're golfing, watching a fight with your boys, or out on the lake, these moments call for a cold, happy dad. People are drinking all these seltzers in skinny cans loaded with sugar, but happy dad only has one gram of sugar in a normal-sized can. [38:38] Can't decide on a flavor? Grab the variety pack. Lemon Lime, Watermelon, Pineapple, and Wild Cherry. They also have a great flavor in collaboration with Death Row Records and Snoop Dogg. They have their new lemonade coming out as well. Happy Dad, available nationwide across America and in Canada. Go to your local liquor store or visit HappyDad.com. For a limited time, use the code ROGAN to buy one Happy Dad trucker hat and get one free.

[39:08] Enjoy a cold, happy dad. Must be of legal drinking age. Please drink responsibly. Happy Dad, hard seltzer, tea, and lemonade is a malt alcohol located in Orange County, California. 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. [39:38] therapy session. That was a Zoom meeting, a Zoom call with 600 people on the call. And that's the therapy session. It's bananas. Or people who weren't even there and they billed for insurance. So 600 people were collecting $2,000 from 600 people for one out. Wow. [39:58] It is insane. Well, I could see why they would do that. Yeah. If that's a possibility to make money. Yeah. If you open the door to criminals and the thing about – [40:08] In rehabilitation centers, there's a lot of people that go to rehab or get involved in rehab. They've also had shady pasts. They've been involved with criminals. And then they go, listen, man, I think there's money to be made here. This ain't fixing nobody. This is court-ordered rehabilitation. I had to go in here. Let's make some money. Start our own place. What's the steps that one has to take if one was to open up? Not that I'm thinking about doing it. Not that I'm thinking about doing it.

[40:38] If someone was a scumbag, someone was a terrible person, not me, but if someone was a terrible person, like what would someone do? What are the parameters? What do you have to do to open up a rehab? You need a license, probably a state license, but in some cases it was just really easy to get a state license. In Florida, it became a huge problem. It was called the Florida Shuffle, which was this. You were going back and forth between detox and rehabs and outpatient treatment centers, and they were all owned by the same sort of well-known fraudsters. [41:08] So you have to get 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. I was reading about a judge that recently got busted because this judge was sentencing people to the rehab that they owned. And so taking like dangerous, violent criminals and not incarcerating them, but instead sending them to these rehabilitation centers that they owned. Wow. Yeah. And just collecting. Yeah. It is. It's so sad. [41:38] 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 have been trying to arrest ourselves and militarize ourselves out of this problem. It doesn't work. It's doesn't work. It's a public health. [41:56] crisis 100 one of the other stories we did this season was about trank dope do you know what trank dope is trank dope yeah no it's fentanyl now is being mixed with a thing called xylazine which is an animal tranquilizer oh fun uh so fun uh it's horrible um and 90 percent of the fentanyl that is now being that's coming out of philadelphia you know kensington you've seen the oh i have seen trank where those people like fall over like yeah like zombies they're walking down

[42:26] It's the saddest thing. So we spent time in Kensington filming. What is it about that stuff? Is it the tranquilizer that makes him just fall over like that, standing up? Yeah, it's part of it. So it's a really interesting... [42:39] As we all know, it all started with the hoxycontin. 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 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 animal tranquilizer with this, you will still have the big high, [43:06] But it will extend the time that you have that high. And what is happening to thousands of people across the U.S. is that they are taking these drugs, getting the high that they want. Just doing it like this? Was it IV? Oh, my God. It's horrible. No, they're shooting it up. And this is what we shot in Kensington. Intravenously, yeah. Yeah, they shoot it up. And what we shot in Kensington. Oh, this is it? [43:28] And where is this? This is Philly. Philly, outside of Philly. It's a big problem in Philadelphia for some reason. But this is, if you find, and this might be too disturbing, Jamie. I was just trying to find something just to show what he was asking for. What's too disturbing? It's what we filmed in our show, which was the wounds that come. It's gangrene. It looks like leprosy. Yeah. And it's people being amputated because. The title of this is Losing Arms and Legs. Yeah. There you go. Oh, my God. That guy's got a leg because of it. Oh, God.

[43:58] 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 in this you know you can imagine the smell and I know a comedian who went to the hospital for gangrene because of heroin almost lost his leg he wound up dying eventually [44:21] But... [44:21] Yeah. 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. Oh, boy. And this is not, I mean, the one we. Yeah, this is just. I'm just clicking around. There's a ton of videos about it. So if anyone's curious, just go on YouTube. This one looks good comparatively. Yeah, there's some people in this country that have no hope. Yeah. And they're just, the addiction just has got them. [44:51] no help for them. And if you get sent to a phony rehab, [44:55] while you're in that state. That is really evil. [45:00] That's really evil. Isn't it? I think it's really evil, too. But I think, yeah, in many ways, people sometimes think, oh, these... [45:06] They're junkies. They're out there. They just want this life. And they have failed society. I quite frankly think we have failed them. Well, not you and me, but the structure of society. Our government has failed them. Are you aware of Ibogaine? [45:21] Yes. I listened to the interview you did with Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas. Yeah, that was fascinating. 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 efficacy, and people that have also been hooked on substances because of some of the things they've seen.

[45:51] I think that's a great doorway. [45:54] into the right because the right has always viewed these things like particularly a psychedelic, which I will gain is, I guess. [46:04] It's category one, right? It's schedule one. I don't know. I think it's schedule one. Is I became 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. [46:26] 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 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. [46:56] you when you were young and these are the things that you did when you were an 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 [47:06] It has like an 80% effective rate for people getting off drugs with one session. And it's in the 90s with two sessions. Wow. That is crazy high. Exactly. And it's illegal here. 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

[47:26] They're giving it to some people in Texas. And 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 doorway into the right. [47:56] trying to escape life, but [47:58] Just the sheer horror of combat experience has forced a lot of people to reconsider this position. And then they've had so many family members that are veterans and that are especially – [48:11] 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 [48:24] 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. I know. Or meth. I know. Or meth. Yeah, I agree. But do you think that the pathway is legalization? [48:45] Because even decriminalization... [48:49] Where are you going to get it? You're going to get – see, here's the problem with decriminalization. In California – [48:55] my friend John Norris, he was a game warden. Do you know the story? Yeah. He's coming on my podcast. Oh, he's great. So John was a game warden, right? Loved the outdoors, became a game warden. He really wanted to 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

[49:25] 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. So they're bringing AKs and assault rifles out into the woods, setting up camps. [49:52] 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 80 plus percent of all the marijuana that gets sold in the places where marijuana is illegal. [50:11] It's all getting sold from these grow-ups in California by the cartels. I've filmed some of them. I've been there. I've been in those mountains in California. It's so crazy. Seeing that, it is insane. It's so crazy. But it's also a side effect of what Colorado did. Colorado made it legal. Great. But then they also taxed it like 39%. And so most people are like, look, it's still cheap. I'll pay 39%. 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. [50:41] And sell that since it's legal in the state. Right. And because it's impossible to get a license in California. When they legalized it initially, they made it so hard for people to actually get their licenses and do it legally that the actual black market increased when they legalized it. 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. Right.

[51:07] Because nobody can get permits. They're trying to make it easier to build. Allegedly. If you would have done it. Have you had Gavin Isom when you're promoting it? No. He's been taunting me, trying to get me to have him on. Why? I don't know. Because he's interesting. You think he's interesting? He's interesting as like a sociology experiment. Like if you're a psychologist. You talk to everyone, I think. Do you know who I really love that you interviewed? This episode is brought to you by The Farmer's Dog. Here's a fun fact. [51:37] Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer on average than dogs who are overweight. Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra processed kibble still the status quo for most dog owners? Healthy alternatives exist. And trust me, I know. [51:59] I buy one, the Farmer's Dog. I use it for both my dogs. They love it. They eat it up quick. It smells good to them. It smells good to me. It's human-grade food. The Farmer's Dog makes fresh food for dogs, and my dogs love it. Their recipes are made with real meat and fresh vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients. They also portion out the meals to your dog's nutritional needs, which helps avoid overfeeding and makes weight management easier and isn't getting more time. [52:29] best friends something every dog owner wants? The answer to that is yes, obviously. So try the Farmer's Dog today and get 50% off your first box of fresh, healthy food.

[52:43] Plus, get free shipping. Just go to thefarmersdog.com slash rogan. This offer is for new customers only. This episode is brought to you by Uber Eats. This summer, soccer is here, and the watch parties will be going back to back to back. But don't worry. Uber Eats has your game day essentials covered with 30% off all orders from Aldi, Kroger, and Dollar General. [53:13] like chips, dips, wings, guac, and fresh ingredients for the perfect game day spread. Order in so you can stay locked in on the game, all the hosting, none of the hassle. Order now for 30% off your game day snacks and grocery order only on Uber Eats for a limited time. Offer eligible for 30% off entire order. Taxes, fees, and terms apply. Offer valid through July 5th. [53:43] exclusions may apply. Recently? Who? [53:46] James Tallarico. 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. 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.

[54:16] for saying that Antifa... Like, Antifa's not real. Antifa's not... [54:20] That's so crazy to say. I know it's a Democrat talking point currently, but it's dangerous for you and for everybody else to say because they are real. They're real. And they're anarchists who are committed to overthrowing capitalism. They want to destroy the Western government. 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. [54:50] You find a community, and all of a sudden these people are yours, and they're real. And also, they're willing to fight for something, and there's a lot of passion involved in it. So it's kind of exciting. And then you also realize, yeah, corporate society is fucked up. Yeah, UnitedHealthcare, 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? And it is fucked. And so they don't know where to turn. [55:20] stupid shit and they light Starbucks on fire. Right. Or they, you know, but a lot of it's funded too. That's the other thing. The reality is a lot of these, you know. I don't know about the funding part of it. So I've spoken to Antifa. I've done stories on militias. It 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, rising threat of militias everywhere in the world, but particularly here in the United States.

[55:50] 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, right wing militia that operates on the border, and was basically trying to catch legal immigrants. And then we also spend time, you know, just a few miles away from that group, there was another group called the Black Cat Rifle [56:20] a left-wing militia. And it is... [56:23] 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. And none of them understood that, you know… [56:38] 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, 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. [57:08] I 100% would think that this is the U.S. Army or Border Patrol, and I'd be terrified, or I'd hand myself in.

[57:24] train with your buddies you can do all that but you can't pretend to be right and you can't look like you're part of the right the military or law enforcement when you're not and and these guys 100 percent look like they were um and i'm going to get a lot of flack for this because every time we talk about i talk about militias um i get flack for it but why why why why why why why why why why why [57:43] Because we're living in the most divided era of our time, and there's a lot of people who – [57:51] you know, believe that militias are important and think that it's important that they exist. I find them incredibly dangerous, the existence of militias outside or on the periphery of the law. I find it incredibly dangerous. And so when I was talking to the right wing group, they said something. When I started talking to the left wing group, they were giving me the exact same reasons. I mean, it was the exact same conversation, but seen from the other side. Right. Yeah. So I said, do you not? This is exactly the same thing the other guy said. And they were like, yeah, we're here. [58:21] And their point was that – and they don't call themselves militias, by the way, the left-wing group. And they didn't like the fact that I called them militias. But they were saying was that this is basically a group who trains for what they think is going to be an incoming possible civil war. We talked about civil war with them. I know. And they said, look, minorities in this country are under attack a lot of times by these right-wing militias, whether they are part of the LGBTQ community or they're, you know, [58:51] 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 but that's the exact same thing that it is the exact same thing that was my point was that um like people like jimmy kimmel talking about antifa not existing

[59:21] No, 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 Tallarico 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. [59:51] Religion has no place in government. 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 going to have a religious class, that's a different thing. But if you're going to 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. That's very un-American. [1:00:21] 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. Now you're doing the man's work for the man and you get no benefit. Not only do you get no benefit, you actually help society erode and become more fractured. Yeah. And get to the place. Yeah. Yeah. It's horrible. It's horrible. We need another Martin Luther King.

[1:00:51] I'd have been... [1:00:52] The 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 supposed to be 2025, right? [1:01:13] 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 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. [1:01:43] Somewhere along the line. I agree. I mean, violence and hate. And hate. So much hate. Yeah. Talk about hate and hating the other side and hating anyone that doesn't stand by what I stand or what I believe in. 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, okay. [1:02:12] 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 going to – 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 that he put hateful rhetoric out there in the world.

[1:02:39] The way they'll counter hateful rhetoric is love. 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. did. Yeah, which is not what President Trump said at the memorial of Charlie Kirk. What did he say? 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. I mean, particularly if you're the president of the United States. No. You're not. [1:03:09] 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 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. [1:03:39] because he was paying off a lady he had sex with. [1:03:42] Like... [1:03:43] You got to 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. I don't think that's because he's great. That's not why he's crazy. I think he's. 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.

[1:04:13] I know. This podcast. Listen, I think. I'm so happy that you do talk about it because I do think it's an incredibly important issue. I mean, it is an important. And it's one of those right left things, too. Right. Where people on the right are like, fuck it. 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. The thing is they like do it the right way. They like do it the right way. Here's the problem with that. [1:04:40] 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. [1:04:59] total number, put this into perplexity. [1:05:02] 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. And then they were bused to these places and flown to these places. And they were given EBT cards and some of them were given cell phones. And now you're going to arrest them. [1:05:29] Now you're going to 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. 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 up. Yes.

[1:05:59] 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 live in LA, and I'm affected by this on many levels. [1:06:29] I'm an immigrant. You might get green card. I know, exactly. I might pull you over. Ask for your papers. I might actually take away my citizenship. But one of the stories he covered, and I think exemplifies what's happening to me right now, is Estela 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. [1:06:59] unraped and she was violently [1:07:01] 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 U.S. 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. [1:07:18] They came to the U.S. They immediately went and asked for asylum, which, by the way, most people don't know this, but it is completely legal to come to the United States. Whatever way you enter, even if you enter illegally, it is legal to come to the U.S. and ask for asylum. That is not coming to the U.S., 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.

[1:07:48] What are the requirements to request? You have to be a victim of persecution, whether it's, you know, cartels. 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. [1:08:16] persecuted. And so they came to the West, they immediately started applying for asylum. And [1:08:23] There's 11 million cases backlogged right now. [1:08:27] of people asking for asylum. Race, religion, nationality. [1:08:33] Political opinion. [1:08:35] membership in a particular social group. [1:08:38] So just those five things. Yeah. [1:08:41] Interesting. So political persecution also involves imprisonment, torture or threats of violence. [1:08:48] Huh. [1:08:49] to that question. [1:08:49] Yeah, what's the numbers? [1:08:52] Uh, 10.8 million. This is encounter. It says encounters though, where they crossed and were stopped. Stopped. [1:08:59] According to the Trump administration, well, let me say this. According to someone I spoke to at the Trump administration, they said they believe it's 20 million. [1:09:09] Over four years. Oh, I don't think that's... I think that number is highly exaggerated. Well, this says... [1:09:15] In addition to these 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.

[1:09:33] or attempts during the Biden administration. So not 20, but 12.8, still quite a bit. Here's another thing that people keep talking about is how many people Obama deported. [1:09:44] But I think that's not... [1:09:46] I think they're saying it incorrectly because I think when they say that Obama deported three million people, they always use this like as an aha against Trump deportations. [1:09:55] I believe Obama's deportation numbers count turnaways, like when someone makes it to the border and then you send them back. [1:10:05] Very different than running into Home Depot and grabbing people with a mask over your face like what we're seeing with ICE. Worse than that. Even worse than going to the Home Depot is the case of Estella 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. [1:10:35] But wait, even worse. So they are deported back to Guatemala, taken like their family didn't even know where they were. They were taken. They took away her medication. She had high blood pressure, 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 don't have access to the medication. So the mother dies.

[1:11:05] 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... [1:11:13] 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. Yo, especially if someone's already been granted asylum. [1:11:24] So their asylum procedure was ongoing. They hadn't been granted yet. But that is, you can't remove somebody whose ongoing procedure. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. When you're looking to hire, you consider someone's skills, experience, availability. But even more important than that is someone's enthusiasm. They should want to be there. Finding the right kind of motivation isn't as tough as you think. You just need ZipRecruiter. [1:11:54] Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. ZipRecruiter connects you with qualified candidates instantly, and their latest feature puts the most interested ones at the top of your list, so you can make sure you're speaking with the right people at the start. Use ZipRecruiter and find enthusiastic talent fast. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. [1:12:24] try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

[1:12:35] When you're a small business owner, you're always looking for the next big thing. Whether you're a gym owner looking to expand, a store stocking up for a busy season, or a restaurant owner planning a new menu, [1:12:46] you'll always need capital to grow. [1:12:48] But traditional banks are making it harder than ever to secure a small business loan. [1:12:53] That's why thousands of business owners trust Cardiff for same-day funding. [1:12:57] Their online application takes less than five minutes and won't impact your personal credit score. [1:13:03] With over two decades of expertise, it's no surprise business owners keep voting Cardiff, America's favorite small business lender. [1:13:11] If you've been operating for at least a year and are earning at least $20,000 a month in revenue, [1:13:15] Apply now for up to $500,000 in same-day business funding at cardiff.co.rogan. [1:13:22] Again, that's cardiff.co slash rogan. Cardiff. Borrow better. [1:13:28] And plus that's not. Meaning she was trying to do it the right way. Yes, absolutely. And that's not what we were sold, right? Right. A lot of people voted for Trump because they thought that he was going to go after the criminals. Well, I think very unfortunately a lot of this stuff is political. [1:13:44] And, um... [1:13:45] And the fear is the both sides fear, right? So I don't know if you know this, but Minnesota governor, Tim Walsh, who was running for vice president, he just passed. You also had him on, right? No, no, I did not. [1:14:00] They just passed something in Minnesota where illegal immigrants are allowed to have driver's licenses and vote.

[1:14:09] Which is kind of crazy because – Are you sure? Yes. Yes, just yesterday. [1:14:15] Illegal immigrants as in they don't even have a green card. [1:14:22] And there are lots of driver's licenses and can vote. [1:14:26] Let's find out. This is the story that I read. [1:14:29] Jamie, find out. I read this story and he was proudly talking about... I know. Sounds crazy, right? It sounds crazy, yeah, because I became a citizen so I could vote and it took me a long time to get... Oh, yeah. 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... [1:14:50] I'm not saying that. [1:14:52] What is it? [1:14:53] I don't know. What are the facts of the case? [1:14:55] I typed in... [1:14:56] Tim Walz passed a legal immigrant vote. It was all over Twitter a couple of days ago. Twitter, Tim Walz has not passed a bill. Okay, um... [1:15:04] driver's licenses [1:15:06] That was something that happened in 2023, it said. Yeah, but there was something that just happened a couple of days ago. [1:15:12] I... [1:15:15] Find it, find it. Yeah, I'll find it. [1:15:21] I'll check on Twitter. [1:15:23] illegal. I have to say I find it very hard to believe. Me too. But not because... [1:15:31] 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.

[1:15:48] And you have much more political power that way. But why do you get more seats if they can't vote? [1:15:53] It's just how it works. It's just how the set is the way our census is set up. [1:15:57] So the way a census is set up, it's just counting people. It's not counting people that are legally here. Oh, the census. Okay. So the census is how they dictate the amount of congressional seats. Here's what was going on around Twitter. [1:16:09] Okay, Minnesota elections confirms non-citizens can vote with driver's licenses. October 14, 25, this is it. State hearing Minnesota Director Elections Paul Linnell 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. [1:16:39] noted that such voting is illegal and rare, with post-election adults identifying discrepancies for prosecution, including 59, just 59 potential cases in 2024 that they... [1:16:51] The testimony has prompted Republican demands for voter roll audits and reforms, concise [1:16:58] 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. That it can be a consequence of it. That's not the goal of it. But it's also a consequence that can happen. It is a consequence of it. But I don't think it's purposely done.

[1:17:28] 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 opportunity or that. Most certainly. And that's what's happened. That seems like what's happening. That's a very charitable way of looking at it. Maybe, but I don't understand. It says that they can register to vote, but the next line says that the voting is illegal. Yeah, it's illegal, but they can register. But they could do it if they wanted to. [1:17:58] I think what is happening is that immigrants are being used as political pawns, right? That's true. From both sides, by the way. That's true. Both sides. 100%. We both agree with that. And these are human beings. [1:18:10] 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 are the kids. They're pulling away their family members, their mothers, their fathers. And it's American kids who are being traumatized. It's also heartless. [1:18:40] that is going to leave a terrible feeling for anybody with a heart that looks at that store in that case. And then they're going to associate... [1:18:49] the United States government more and more with tyranny, more and more with fascism, more and more with, 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. Oh, that too. But there is. Yeah, and a pathway. And right now there isn't. Right, because these people are probably not paying taxes.

[1:19:19] And if you could make them citizens, much more money you would make. Right. But they do pay taxes, you know. Sure. For buying things. No, not only for buying taxes. Or for income tax. They actually pay income taxes. Right. Do they file for income taxes or they get income taxes removed from their paycheck? 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 taxes. Oh, I'm sure. [1:19:49] but also in income taxes. And both with the fake Social Security numbers they get, but also I think there's something that I see. We probably have to have that for certain jobs, right? Fake Social Security numbers. But I think there's a way also that they figured out that people are here while they're going through asylum procedures or trying to get their green card. But there's still a lot of people that are from 2016 says $11.6 billion. Billion dollars in state of insurance. Collectively. [1:20:14] undocumented interviews. So, [1:20:17] 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? [1:20:27] Oh, yeah, 100 percent. You could be making so much more money. Exactly. I mean, they're the back. Let's not. Who are we kidding? 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. Undocumented immigrants paid nearly 97 billion in federal, state and local taxes in 2022. That's the idea that they don't pay taxes.

[1:20:57] 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. Yeah. Right. But meanwhile, if they had figured out a pathway to citizenship, I bet that number would increase. [1:21:09] And also they could get different jobs. They wouldn't be stuck economically because that's the weird thing about people that sneak about. Like when these farms get raided and they bust all these people, the farm doesn't get busted. Like, hey, what are you doing? And how much were you paying them? Like, should you go to jail for paying them less than you're supposed to pay people? Yeah. [1:21:30] Because that's the reason why you hire people that don't have any paperwork. Yeah, because you want to pay them less. One guy is a horrible person. I heard 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. It might not be real, though. It might be a TikTok. [1:21:46] They might have got me. It 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 heartless. It is heartless. [1:21:57] And... [1:21:58] If you're supposed to be a Christian nation, right, which is like what the hard line right people want. Well, that's not a very Christian ideal. 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. Deeply religious. They'd be on your side if they had a chance. Those are like hardworking family people. They'd be the kind of people you want in your community.

[1:22:28] for the most part. But there have to be [1:22:30] a way to sift out. You have to figure out, okay, who's the cartel members? Who's a terrorist? 100%. 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? They're trying to send them to Africa. Oh my God, it's insane. [1:23:00] Africa said no. [1:23:02] But one said yes, right? Oh, I don't know. Have they? Are they going to send them to Africa? Was it Ghana who said yes? They just got to... [1:23:10] Oh, they failed. Okay, good. Why are they sending him to Africa? He's not from Africa. It's like, guys, that's crazy. Yeah. I'm happy you use your platform to talk about this because I 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. 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. [1:23:40] and why we should have law enforcement, right? So in this situation... [1:23:44] What are you protecting? Are you protecting American jobs? Do 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 getting as a normal human being? Absolutely. For all of us. They'd be better for all of us.

[1:24:14] And once they're here, look, if you're here and you've been robbing people and say, yeah, fuck that guy. Get rid of him. 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. Yeah, get rid of everybody wants that. But after that, you've got to figure out a way to like. [1:24:34] Otherwise, we're just going to have this stupid divided country with left and right. And these people will never vote Republican again. Which is really interesting because a lot of Hispanics and a lot of 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. [1:25:04] tolerate no nonsense in Miami you know it's like and that could have been the Republicans could have captured a lot of those people that are deeper religious like that's one of your core values [1:25:15] Because you think it's a Christian nation. [1:25:18] It's just you've got to figure out how to do it with a heart. I know. You can't just snatch a hardworking 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. Right. 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. That's right. That's what you want in this country. Right. [1:25:44] Of course. It's like you've got to find the pathway for good people. And 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. 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.

[1:26:14] some definitely bad people got through. After that, [1:26:19] Let's... [1:26:20] You know, let's fucking break bread. Let's break bread. 100%. I agree with you 100%. We're supposed to be a community. Yeah. If you come over here and you bust ass for 25 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 going to send you a country that you don't even remember. [1:26:41] Because, you know, you came over here when you were 15. Like, you barely know how to speak Spanish anymore. Like, what? [1:26:46] 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 that's, immigrants make America great. [1:27:16] doesn't even speak Spanish. [1:27:18] And he's like, fuck you, you're not American. Now you're over there. [1:27:23] They just ice grabbed him. Yeah, during some sort of an ice raid. They grabbed him and sent him [1:27:29] to Tijuana. [1:27:32] He doesn't even speak Spanish. It's insane. He's a full-on American just with bad paperwork. [1:27:37] It's crazy. And the only difference between him and me is that 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 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've bombed.

[1:28:07] the fuck out of it we destabilize their government yeah and this is not not all it's not all of it but like libya there's a lot of them the money that we're using in trying in these raids like let's figure out how to stem the 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 [1:28:37] them and then we go and catch them and we don't 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 there's somebody well you brilliantly documented with that with the oxycontin express that that piece [1:29:08] was how I found out about you, but also how I found out about that problem, which is so insane. You could tell people if they're not aware of how it all started. Yeah, it's interesting because I just had the FBI agent that investigated that case on my podcast. Oh, wow. Which was fascinating. Okay, so I found out that reading the newspaper, my husband and I were working together at the time, and we found out that there were all these... [1:29:36] 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 numbers were crazy. Ninety of the top 100 doctors prescribing Oxycontin were in Florida. Ninety of the 100. It's insane. What are the odds that statistically with 50 states? I know. It's insane. And this is the sad part.

[1:30:06] distribution companies didn't know this was happening. They did. They just pretended that they didn't because it was huge business and it was great. And why Florida? Because they had really lax regulation. 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, 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. [1:30:36] 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. That's how she was describing it? 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, 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. [1:31:06] backs have a spine and whatever comes out results in the MRI that you get 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 but the problem is that the doctors weren't even looking at the MRIs that was just fake there was just [1:31:22] 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 incredible, incredible, incredible, [1:31:35] 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. It sounds like a movie, American Pain. So my husband did a documentary about it, about the rise and fall of these twin brothers. They started by selling steroids. And then somebody told him like, dude, why are you doing, what are you doing selling steroids? Are you making so much more money selling OxyContin? What is the name of the documentary? It's called American Pain. You

[1:32:05] I've heard of it now. Yeah. Now that you mentioned it. It's really good. So 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. [1:32:23] 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 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. [1:32:53] and they would get to these clinics and they would say, you know, see a doctor for less than three minutes. The doctor had a rubber stamp to stamp the prescription to make it fast. So I'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 doing here? [1:33:23] and 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. And so it was a big business. And the no database, right? No database, yes. So you could go to several different doctors, doctor shopping. So we're outside this American pain clinic, which we knew at the time. They had security guards outside, surveillance cameras.

[1:33:53] And but we also knew that there 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, it's me and my husband, he's filming it. And suddenly, within minutes, [1:34:09] A car comes across and these two big guys walk. [1:34:14] 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. It's like, get the fuck out of here. What are you guys filming? We get in the car. We leave. They start chasing us down 985. And I am running out of gas. And I stop at a gas station. And the night before, I'd watch The Sopranos, which is the wrong thing to do. So the whole time I'm imagining it 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, [1:34:44] Holy shit. [1:34:45] Get back in the car, drive out. They continue chasing us, and then we run out of gas. [1:34:51] right out on the highway and we stopped the car in the side i'm calling 9-1-[redacted address] and uh 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 9-1-1 immediately these are not people you want to be messing with so i call 9-1-1 and not eventually i stop on the side of the road they stop next to us because they're dumbfounded they're like what the fuck why did they stop they have no idea that we ran out of

[1:35:21] came up with a 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. He realized, oh, my God, there's like these crazy journalists that are doing this story 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. [1:35:51] American Pain, my husband's film, is all about that. They did wire taps on all of these guys. So they know everything, 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. This episode is brought to you by Gold Belly. Gold Belly will ship you the most insane dude foods from all across the country. You've got to try the ribs from Terry Black's in Austin. Massive, juicy beef ribs that take a day to cook. [1:36:21] And you just... [1:36:22] sink your teeth into them, Gold Belly will ship them to you anywhere. [1:36:27] And you've heard me talk about Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles from L.A. Man, now you don't have to sit in L.A. traffic to get some of that chicken. Just order on Gold Belly. So ship, Dad, something awesome from the most iconic restaurants across the USA. Go to goldbelly.com and get 20% off your first order with the promo code ROGAN. That's goldbelly.com, promo code ROGAN. This episode is brought to you by 8 Sleep. Okay, when it comes to sleep...

[1:36:54] I've got to have the right temperature dialed in, depending on the time of year that might be ripping hot. I'm talking volcanic or igloo levels of iciness. The point is, I need the temperature to be just right so I can get deep sleep, the kind of sleep that drives real recovery. And luckily, 8 Sleep is all about giving you the best sleep possible. [1:37:24] regulating the temperature on each side of the bed in real time. Why? So you and your partner can consistently hit your ideal deep restorative sleep range and wake up feeling truly refreshed and recovered. Use my code Rogan at 8sleep.com slash Rogan for up to $350 off the Pod 5 Ultra. The best part is that you get 30 days to try it at home and return it if you don't like it. [1:37:54] love your investment in better sleep. That's code Rogan at 8sleep.com slash Rogan. The horrible doctors that knew there were people dying and they couldn't give a shit because they were making millions of dollars. I think something happens when you see a bunch of people die. There's a lot of doctors that are [1:38:12] 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, [1:38:23] 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 because 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 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

[1:38:53] and she lost both of them to this. And it was all because of the pain clinics. And she was showing me the pain clinics, [1:38:59] the painkiller bottles, the prescription bottles that the kid got. It was like hundreds and hundreds of pain pills that the kid got from just doctor shopping. They were just selling them. And the fact that you could doctor shop, the only reason why you would have that, it's not difficult to have a database. I mean, this was like 2000 and what when this was going on? 2008, 2009, that's when we did our story. Plenty of computers. The internet was around. Like this could all be prevented. I know, but everybody was just making so much money. [1:39:29] companies. And the Sackler family. The Sackler family. 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 $6 billion, not really enormous compared to their property. Exactly. I was about to say that. But it was going to supposedly keep them out of jail. And I think there was a judge that put a halt on that. And they started another investigation. What happened was that the settlement, they agreed to settle as long as they were never [1:39:59] was never found liable again. Right. Which is fucked up. 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. And... [1:40:11] I mean, it's been a million people who have died in the past 20-something years from the opiate crisis. It's crazy. I don't think people realize how high the number is. And this family thinks they're going to be able to buy their way out of being responsible for maybe a million people dead. Yeah, with a drop in the bucket. I mean, they're not directly...

[1:40:31] 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, profit of the drop in the bucket of the profit. Compared to what they have. Yeah, they're not even going to feel it. Yeah. Six billion dollars. It's crazy. Oh, it's so evil. Yeah. It's just so evil. Yeah. [1:40:52] They tracked down the guy who approved it for the FDA. Do you know that? No. 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. [1:41:16] He approved it. [1:41:17] He approved what? He approved OxyContin. [1:41:20] from just... [1:41:21] The original approving of Oxycontin. Do you think he was bribed to do that? [1:41:27] I don't think he did it because he's a nice guy. [1:41:30] I mean, I don't know what. But OxyContin has its place, like for germally ill cancer patients, for people dealing with a lot of pain. There's a reason why people should be available for those in need. But that's not how they were selling. No, they were not. And in fact, the ads at the time from Purdue Pharma was that less than 1% of people would become addicted from this. [1:41:49] Yes. Literally, that was the number they gave. Less than 1% of addiction rates. Do you know what we found out the other day? Heroin was created to help people who had morphine addiction. [1:41:59] Huh. [1:42:00] To try to wean them off? No, no. It was offered as a safe alternative to morphine.

[1:42:05] Wow. [1:42:06] I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that either. Isn't that kooky? It's great. So it's like we've been doing that forever. It's like round to round. Well, I've got something better for you. It's called Oxycontin. By the way, only 1% of the people get addicted to it. And then it was fentanyl, too. Yeah. You know, when we investigated fentanyl, it started as a drug for terminal cancer patients. [1:42:36] 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 Insys Pharmaceuticals, Subsys was the thing, Insys 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 travel experiences around the world and paying them to prescribe their medication. [1:43:06] call and you go to the doctor and say, I have a headache. Oh, you should be taking substance. It's a great fentanyl to fentanyl. It's going to cure your headache. [1:43:15] Imagine. And then the people at the company hired by INSYS, they had their [1:43:21] insurance department would call insurance and say oh this person um 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 this 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

[1:43:51] Wow. But it was the same playbook. It's crazy. So it's like it keeps repeating itself. 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. [1:44:04] rather than doing the right thing. Yeah. [1:44:07] And evil finds a way to go, listen, we can just fudge the books. Listen, we can form a study and make this study seem as if it's a victim by the time they get it. By the time they figure it out, we made a lot of money. 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 for people that took it. But I believe the exact quote was, but we believe we will do very well with this. [1:44:37] Fucking crazy. It's evil. It's evil. And they're detached from it because they're not like seeing the purple 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 him to school because... [1:44:53] their dad's dead you know like they don't they don't see that they're 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 yeah it's evil 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

[1:45:23] they 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 for counterfeit medications are and how important it is to buy the real medications from real pharmacies and i was asking her but but i'm [1:45:48] What does it say about the pharmaceutical companies and the health care 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 because a lot of it is used for marketing and a lot of it is used for its profit, right? [1:46:18] They make so much money. And I ask you, have you ever actually spent time with anyone who's struggling to buy their medications? As the head of this pharmaceutical company, [1:46:27] lobby. Have you spent time with any of these people? [1:46:30] She was like, "No." [1:46:31] Like straight out, no. [1:46:33] It's like, how can you represent the pharmaceutical companies? 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. [1:46:47] affording these medications, right? That seems able to. 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. Yeah, and the medications are so expensive.

[1:47:02] Some medications are so ridiculously expensive. [1:47:05] And you realize like they're not [1:47:08] They don't have to be that expensive. This is just a company making massive amounts of profit. Paying their CEOs millions of dollars. 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 right away after you leave. You have to wait 10 years. Say that. Okay, you want a career some way? You can not profit at all from the pharmaceutical drug industry. [1:47:34] for 10 years after you're done being a regulator. 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 how bad it can be. But I also try to put myself, I've spent my whole entire career 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 whatever happens, I lose my job. You're in the vampire machine, and you realize, oh, this whole system's fucked. [1:48:04] over to GlaxoSmithKline and break it in. I want to get a house in the suburbs. I know, but I try to look at it through other eyes and see like, okay, we have to figure out what these people are going to do because what do you do after if you can't work for 10 years? This is what they've lived all their lives working in, right? Sort of, but I think it's incentivized. I think they are making laws and pushing things specifically at the behest of

[1:48:34] them. Right, but I don't think all of them. I think a lot of people, and I've interviewed the head of the... [1:48:41] It was a while back we did a story about... [1:48:47] Anyway, I've interviewed some of these government officials that work at the FDA, and I don't think all of them work there with benefits. 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. [1:49:17] 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. [1:49:24] Yeah, of course it is. A lot of people like that. Yeah. And that's why it's a... [1:49:28] Dirty-ass business. And then you've got a dirty-ass business because they sponsor all the news. [1:49:34] Like brought to you by Pfizer. Anderson Cooper brought to you by Pfizer. Bananas in this country. It's so crazy. It only exists in America. Callie Means 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. Because they need it. Oh, my God. Because they're financially invested in these companies. They're partners, basically. [1:50:04] Well, as a member of the media, I've never had that problem. I have never had, and I've investigated, as you know, from pharmaceutical companies before. But I've never had my boss tell me I can't hear it off. Of course, but you look at the kind of stuff you do. You're doing the real stuff. 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. Thank you.

[1:50:29] You're not getting that on TV for the most part. [1:50:34] show like yours, but like on TV news, 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. Yeah. 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 that's the role of journalism. Yeah. I mean, people in power have a hard time with the truth. Exactly. And their job is to go out. Yeah, exactly. Which I know, but which is why, you know, it's so troublesome that we live at a time [1:51:04] Right. 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. I think it is. But the one solution to that, I think, is a mainstream journalism has to change its way. You can't just be. [1:51:20] working as a propaganda arm for the Republican or the Democratic Party, which is what Fox News does and which is what [1:51:27] MSNBC does. They stick within the lines, right? And you also... [1:51:35] It opens the 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 Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Michael Schellenberger, those type of people that work for mainstream organizations and then realize 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.

[1:52:00] Just with everything. He doesn't lie. And he's going to tell you what he knows about this and why he thinks it's this way and what's going on, regardless of party lines. [1:52:30] Right. [1:52:48] Most of this you're not encountering. Like you don't need to be this elevated and agitated. But then you're online or your Twitter feed arguing with people and it's like, ah! I know. Everybody's going crazy. Yeah. It's the attention economy, right? That's what – 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. Yeah. Maybe it's James Tallarico. Maybe. Yeah. [1:53:18] He's a good man. He's a genuinely good man. But that was the point. If you're a right-winger and you go, fuck those Antifa people, you've got to realize, stop. Stop being on a team. Because these kooky theocrats, they're on this side too. They want to turn this entire state into theocracy. 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.

[1:53:48] Put a building on fire. Hey, don't take over giant chunks of Seattle and change the name of it. Remember that when they did that? [1:53:55] Do you remember? What did they call it? Chaz. Remember that? Where they took over and the mayor said maybe it's the summer of love. They took over blocks of Seattle. Wait, this was we're talking about Antifa. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, what is Antifa? Right. It's just it's not. I think maybe that's what Jimmy Kimmel meant when when he was. I don't see that. [1:54:25] 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 there is Antifa. Absolutely. I mean, like I said, I have reported on them. I'm not denying that they exist. The thing is, the people on the left don't want to admit things. But it's more decentralized is what I mean. 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 a right-wing, a few extremists. [1:54:55] to keep those left-wing people on their toes. [1:54:58] Right. [1:54:59] Right. Yeah, we need we need more independent journalists. I think you're right. Going back to the independent journalists. 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 National Geographic for having me all these years.

[1:55:29] told what you can and cannot do. Of course. It is crucial for the health and survival of our democracy. So YouTube is actually an amazing platform for that. It really is. And fortunately, because of social media, you can kind of suss out who's legit and who's just a propagandist. [1:55:46] You know, it's a really interesting... I agree. [1:55:48] 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. Or just by perpetuating these lies, I will keep my fan base, even if I know that is a lie. Exactly. I don't even think it's like they're being paid to say this. [1:56:18] They get their audience and their followers and pay that way. They're also probably not the most nuanced thinkers. Oh, they're definitely not the most nuanced thinkers. Or willing. Yeah, but it makes them money to not be. 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've got to stay active. [1:56:39] and defend the party. Like whatever the party says, like whatever, you got to go with that and get them on your side. That's how you build an audience. And he was like, right. But that's exactly it. My friend was like, I'm out. I'm done. No, I'm not doing that. Like, I'm going to tell you my opinions on things. And some of my opinions are very left wing. So I'm not doing that. So he left good kudos to him. But this is the world that we're living in now, where it's like people decide that they're going to only adhere to one ideology. And you don't realize how malleable

[1:57:09] 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. [1:57:18] If it's negative and everybody's on board with it, then you've got Hamas or then you've got whatever organization it is. You've got the – fill it out. 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 person, right? And there's that other side and you're on this side. You're on the good side, right? You just got to never be willing to do evil because you think you're doing it against evil people. You can't do that. [1:57:48] Because then you're evil. Like you're the thing that you're trying. 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. Yeah. And so, you know, God was on their side and they were killing bad people. [1:58:18] that idea. That's a crazy rationalization. That's what Genghis Khan used to say. [1:58:24] That he was killing. That was a famous quote of Genghis Khan. You must have done something horrible for God to bring me. Oh, my God. Yeah. That's crazy. That 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. Wow. At least indirectly to 50 plus million people dying. Holy shit. Yeah. That's insane. But imagine that. I'm on, you know, God must have sent me. Right. You must be terrible if God sent me. Right. I mean, when you bring God to the equation, right?

[1:58:54] But that's how crazy people could rationalize evil, that like – [1:58:59] I'm working for God to just destroy this whole village. I'm going to kill a million people in this village and stack their bodies up in the center. Yeah. [1:59:07] That's what Genghis Khan did. He said, well, God must have really hated you if he sent me. [1:59:13] Yeah. [1:59:14] Ooh. Well, people can 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. And you wear your outfits, like maybe you have blue hair, you got an American flag t-shirt, and everybody hates everybody. It's like, for what? [1:59:44] of these issues, right? They talk about these immigration raids or drugs coming across, but not one single [1:59:52] One of these people that have all these opinions have actually spent a fucking day reporting on it. I saw one of the conversations with Tom Homan where they were saying that 70% of the people that they catch coming across. Which was bullshit. [2:00:05] But let me say this. 70% of the people that they catch and send back... [2:00:09] or criminals. [2:00:10] Um... [2:00:12] Bullshit. [2:00:13] Even if it was true... [2:00:15] Why don't you get that... [2:00:16] down to 100%. [2:00:18] 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, armed robbery, whatever anybody's doing.

[2:00:38] Then you'd have everybody on your side. Like 30 percent is crazy. Imagine if that applied to most things. Like if most people who are accused of a crime, 30 percent of them were injured. Seven percent were guilty. 30 percent were innocent. Three out of ten. And everyone's getting fucking snatched up en masse. But you know that that number is not correct. It's actually 40 percent that have some sort of criminal history. Criminal history. But a lot of times it's nonviolent. It can be a misdemeanor. It can be actually a parking ticket. [2:01:08] have been charged with criminal violence. So the numbers are insane. I wonder if they could mitigate some of this shit if they just change 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. [2:01:25] I think it has something to do with the way it says it. It doesn't say lawful citizens. [2:01:31] I think it says people living. People living. Which is, you know. [2:01:36] kind of [2:01:37] You know, they're people. They're just people. Like people with paperwork and people with not paperwork. We've just got to figure out who's a fucking criminal. That's it. That should be the only thing that everybody agrees on. Which takes money and resources, right? It's a lot harder to do it well. 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.

[2:02:07] 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?" [2:02:16] This is obviously before all the ICE raids, which have completely changed public opinion. So that's where it gets – [2:02:23] 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 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. [2:02:47] Exactly. I agree. A hundred percent. And I'm sure I catch shit for it online, but lucky I don't read it. You never read it, right? You don't read your online stories. You got it. If you have to, if you're in a position like I'm in, you have to stay sane. Right. 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. You should be allowed to talk about anything.

[2:03:17] And I reply and everything. That's very nice of you. It's just it's not tenable at my of course not. But it would be nice if I knew they were going to be nice. You know, like people that I meet are almost all nice. Yeah. I mean, it's so much universally nice. So much easier to be mean online than it is face to face. Even people that I know don't like me. Like, you know, certain people like I could sell say when I say hi, they like hi. [2:03:42] And they're like, they don't like me because I represent them. But they're not mean to me. 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 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. Right. I get it. [2:04:07] I understand it, but I can't read it. I can't be involved. No, I don't think you should. You'd have to start drinking again if you did. Well, I never drank for that reason. I always drank for fun. I just, you know, I think... [2:04:20] social media for the most part, [2:04:23] is net positive. I think... You think so? Yes, I do. I mean, I love it and I use it and I use it as a tool from the work that I do 100%. But I'm a very optimistic person. And I always thought, you know, there's great ways of using social media like you do. But with young people nowadays... Yeah, young people, it's very challenging. But this is what I think. Information is almost

[2:04:53] 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. Yeah, that's what I think is harder and harder to do. Yeah, but you can do it. But the point is, at least more information is available now than ever before, which makes it very difficult for governments to pull off stuff [2:05:23] people to get [2:05:24] get scammed like they were getting scammed in the past. It's just... [2:05:30] 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. [2:05:43] But I think this is a new and emerging aspect of society that we will navigate 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. [2:06:13] ways of thinking about things 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 it is a lot of people you're communicating with aren't real. And that's a giant problem now. China was busted using ChatGPT to promulgate.

[2:06:43] They're using it on social media and they're 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 create a vision to create a vision. I know in this country. Yeah. 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. [2:07:13] Yeah, 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 weighted a little bit. I have to point out one thing you said, how scams are not as prevalent these days. I should have said that. That's not what I meant, really. [2:07:34] The government. [2:07:36] It's more difficult for governments. Online fraud is crazy. We're living in the golden age of scams. I get like 30 texts a day. The dude that owned my phone number before me, this dude Raymond, was a moron. And Raymond, you fucking idiot. Did you sign up for everything, bitch? Because this guy, like every day, like, hey, Raymond, your loan's been approved. So really fun. [2:08:06] gas next year once I'm done with this project, but I'm working on a really fun project for National Geographic, which is... [2:08:12] where I say yes to every single scam that comes my way. Oh, boy. I've been filming it for a few months, and it's been the craziest, wildest journey of my life. Can you tell us? I can't. No? I can't. I just can tell you that I have romantic relationships with people. Hot damn. I spend a lot of time on my burner phone with people love-bombing me. Really? But it's a fake persona. I put a wig and glasses. Oh, so you use your own picture. You don't even use AI?

[2:08:42] We actually sort of modified. We put a fake nose on me and a wig and glasses. But people say it doesn't look a lot like me. I can see it's me. But but I will talk. It's 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. [2:09:12] 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 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? No. It's these compounds in places like Cambodia and Myanmar in Asia, where they are, it's basically factories [2:09:42] 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... [2:09:53] respond to ads to work in what they think are legitimate businesses, to work in online companies and whatnot. And 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 an ongoing civil war and is ruled by these militias. And they get in there, and as soon as they get in, they take away their passports and they're trapped, and they're forced to scam. So they spend 24-7 scamming Americans and European people.

[2:10:23] And it is an industry where they're making billions of dollars. The U.S. government just recently seized $15 billion from one company, from one group of people alone in crypto. It's the craziest thing. So these people are being tortured and beaten, sometimes killed, and forced to scam. So we went actually to Myanmar. We were smuggled into the border, into Myanmar, into the country illegally. Wow. [2:10:52] across the river and [2:10:55] spent time in this town that was basically built by 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 company is called Yatai International, and he took us on a tour of this mini Macau. And it was so surreal. It was like these aqua parks with no one in the aqua park and these luxury casinos. We ended the night. It was so crazy. [2:11:25] would give us an interview, but first we had to do the tour. And the interview would happen the next day. So we ended the night, this was actually not filmed, in a... [2:11:35] karaoke that was a massive room where every single the whole every wall and the ceiling was all the screen 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

[2:12:01] in this karaoke, singing Celine Dion and Whitney Houston, and being poured whiskey and whatever 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 cannot sing to play my life. But I was like, we need to get this guy on tape, so I'm just going to do whatever. Wow. [2:12:31] him and it was just fucking crazy. Then 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... [2:12:44] chased out of the building he ran out of a third floor broke both his legs 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 for like they had a water hose on his body for he was forced to stand for 24 hours um and then electrocuted and i mean the videos out of these places were insane like [2:13:14] with horrific wounds and people dying and killed. And just forced to scam. Forced to fucking scam. Yeah, forced into scamming. And then we interviewed a girl called Angel. [2:13:28] who was raped repeatedly by her bosses, and she's sort of the face model. So a lot of times after speaking to these 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...

[2:13:49] Talk to people. [2:13:50] victims of scams and pretend that she was the wonderful woman that they'd been dating for months and and convince them to put their money into this crypto business that was fake and 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 you i said yes it's doing this even though it's incredibly dangerous [2:14:20] I'm not going to be accepted doing this because I just want a message for the victims in America, the people that I've spoken to, 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… [2:14:39] 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. 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 bosses if you just get paid $10,000 to let this person go. [2:15:09] There was this case of this Filipino woman who the boss had agreed to a $12,000 payment to release her. [2:15:18] But it's really dangerous for it. There's this negotiator that goes and sort of tries to...

[2:15:23] 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 they're saying go to the west [2:15:53] if they see me with a 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 tortured for days. And Amy, the woman on this side, is telling her, [2:16:07] 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 his 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. But she was not that day. But she was released a month later 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. So what are most of the scams or most of the scams from those scams? [2:16:37] Yeah, that's the name they give them because it's a Chinese expression. It started in China. It started as a domestic scam in China, actually. [2:16:46] And pig butchering because the idea is that you fatten the pig, which is your victim, and then you kill them at the end, right? Oh, boy. And 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 –

[2:17:04] And you create, you start a relationship with that person. How do they meet them? You know those texts that you get a lot of times like, hey, I haven't talked to you in a while? Yes. A lot of those are big butchering scams. A lot of messages you get on Instagram from these beautiful girls. They're stepping it up because I've got a few iMessages like that. Yeah, me too. I was like, whoa. Me too. Not even just a green text bubble anymore. They've got iPhones now. And then they tell you, you know, follow me on Instagram and then let's go on WhatsApp. [2:17:34] living this wonderful life. Is that what they're doing with you? [2:17:37] Yes, in other ways. So these scams that you're responding to? 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 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 last, it can last months. And at some point they're like, OK, I built a relationship. Yeah, I'm going to tell you how I do it. [2:18:07] you've got $5,000 right now, and then you put the $5,000, and then they show profit on these fake websites. It looks completely legitimate. And you're saying, oh, my God, I put $5,000, and now I have $10,000. How much more can I put in? So people are going all in, and they're like everything they have, 401Ks, they're remortgaging their houses, everything. And then did you hear the case about the guy in Kansas? Yeah. [2:18:32] No. The bank? No. 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 his story is fascinating. So...

[2:18:45] 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 would put their money and would trust this bank. Well, it turns out that this guy... [2:19:01] The head of this bank that everybody trusted, upstanding member of the community, stole millions of dollars from the bank and the bank went bankrupt. And he was stealing the money. [2:19:13] because he was being scammed by a pig butchering scam. 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 made from his initial investment, he would put in more and more money. I think he ended up putting in something like... [2:19:30] $47 million from 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. Whoa. [2:19:46] to buy what he thought was cryptocurrency. Oh my goodness. [2:19:51] How sad is that? I mean, awful. Obviously, he was stealing from his customers. But I find it so he actually traveled to Australia at one point thinking he was going to meet the people that owed him money. I mean, he actually was completely scamming. This is like the head of a bank. [2:20:08] Yeah. The head of a fucking bank. Wow. It's fucking crazy. These guys are so good. [2:20:14] That's crazy. They get a banker, but it's a banker in Kansas though. You know what I'm saying? Come on. Sorry, Kansas. But you know what I'm saying? He's in prison now. Oh, well, he should be. He stole $47 million, 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...

[2:20:42] I think greed for shady people... [2:20:48] It's almost... [2:20:51] It's kind of fascinating because you've got to know at one point in time this is not smart. But the greed is like, but what if it is? I think more than greed, I think it's the – [2:21:04] acceptance that you have lost all that money. And that must weigh so heavily on you. If you have... [2:21:12] If you're about to foreclose your home, if you'd sent all the money from your kid's college funds. Oh, I mean the banker. Yeah, but even the banker. I mean, but even the banker. He sent all his – initially, it was all his money. But then he started stealing. That's all greed. I don't think – I think it got to a point that – [2:21:32] He was swindled and made to believe that if he gives more money, he would get the money that he initially invested back. When do you think after like $1 million you'd realize he gets lied to? And he would be able to put back the $45 million that he gave, he stole from his customers. Oh, boy. I think the realization, and this is something that I know from talking to so many scamming victims, it's not so much about… [2:21:54] wanting to make that money, it's the realization that you've been talking to somebody that's not real and that you... [2:22:02] have been so... [2:22:04] 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 the acceptance of that is really difficult. So you just want to keep on believing it. You just pay whatever you need to pay. So the dream stays alive. Yeah, there's a Carl Sagan quote about that, that it's easier to convince a person.

[2:22:25] Like it's harder to like once a person has been swindled, it's much more difficult to convince them. [2:22:32] of the swindle. They'll find ways to justify that it must be true. 100%. 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, yeah, it does something funny to you. It's also exciting. [2:22:49] Right. And that's the problem is that most of life is boring. Yeah. 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 a drug deal or a celebrity scam, which is huge these days, if you're taught, if you think you're talking to, you know, Brad Pitt. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe maybe your life has a meaning. Right. Right. There's a reason why you're here. There's something exciting happening, especially if you have like a 65 IQ. [2:23:16] Right. That's the problem. There's a lot of dumbasses out there, and it's not fair to scam those people. [2:23:24] Some scams we tolerate, like televangelists. [2:23:28] We're like, look... [2:23:31] If you really believe that guy with the private jet and the Bentley, that guy, you need to send him money because God wants you to send him money. [2:23:40] You're on your own. You know, it's such a dumb scam. It's so out in the open. You know? Astrology is another one I've been looking into. I don't know if astrology is 100% bullshit. This is my take on astrology. I think at one point in time...

[2:23:55] They had some knowledge about astrology that may or may not be lost. Maybe some people understand it. I'm a believer like you, by the way. [2:24:04] thousands of books [2:24:07] that are like ancient books, I don't know, thousands, but a lot, written about the very specific details of astrology, like in terms of where the constellations are, what time of the day it is, 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? Right, absolutely. I meant psychic scammers. Sorry. Not astrology, I meant psychic scammers. Oh, psychic scammers. Yeah, psychic scammers. I'm a believer in astrology as well. [2:24:37] Real astrology. I need to get a real astrologer on. I've tried to find one that I think is legit. What sign are you, by the way? I am a Leo. Oh, of course you were. Of course. That's ridiculous. [2:24:50] So is my son, so is my dad. It's one of my favorite signs. I'm a Taurus. Okay. Um... [2:24:56] I don't know... [2:24:58] I think that newspaper astrology is bullshit. Yeah, of course. But I don't know that real astrology is not nonsense. Do you get that a lot? That when you say you're a Leo, they say, of course you are. I've heard it before. Yeah. Why? Why? [2:25:12] I don't know. [2:25:13] Oh, because you like the spotlight, right? Which is my son and my dad as well. Is that what it is? A spotlight? Yeah, Leo's like to... [2:25:21] Interesting. What is it? They like attention. They like attention, yeah. I think I'm a little Leo, but I'm a Taurus. I'm stubborn. Yeah, I've heard like bullheaded. I've heard, you know, strong-willed. That's Leo's Taurus. Yeah. Taurus as well. Right, the bull, right? Yeah, the bull.

[2:25:39] But I don't. [2:25:41] What I'm talking about is like the super specific stuff. You were born at 3 a.m. You were conceived nine months before that. When were you conceived? What was going on? Like how did this – what in the procession of the equinoxes? Where is the position of the earth? There's a lot of weird stuff they take into consideration. I'm like, wow, what? [2:26:04] I'd really like to learn about it. Right. Like from someone, I'm going to have someone on that really understands. I just have to have someone on that's not a kook. And that's the problem is it's like one of those disciplines that's littered with kooks. Right. Yeah. I find it fascinating, too. And I'm a nonbeliever in everything. I'm very skeptical about everything. But astrology, I've always kind of believed in, too. I mean, it's the idea that, you know, where the sun and the stars, they have an effect on tides and currents. And why wouldn't that all have an effect? [2:26:34] nothing about it, but why wouldn't it have an effect on you when you're born and when and where? Right. And it's probably a part of nature's natural order, too, to create a bunch of different kinds of people. [2:26:45] Yeah, maybe. Because 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... Yeah. [2:26:55] celestial shit going on. Maybe. I don't know enough about it, but 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 from ancient civilizations that we dismiss that I think...

[2:27:15] 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, right? [2:27:23] Like a lot of very important information is missing. [2:27:27] And so then you've got to kind of like go, well, that seems like bullshit. Right. That seems like old folksy stuff. Right. Like maybe. Or maybe that was like – maybe not. Yeah. Maybe they had figured something out over a long period of time and there was a science to it. Right. Yeah. [2:27:40] Yeah, you should have an astrologist on. That would be super interesting. Scott's time when it's not crazy. 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. You have? Yeah, Hal Puthoff. Hal Puthoff was, he was running some various programs for the United States government. Specifically, I had him on, though, to not talk about remote viewing, to talk about UFOs. [2:28:10] Robert Walker Bush's administration, they, well, he was working for the government at the time, but they brought him on as one of the scientists that they'd got a group of people from various disciplines. And they said, we're going to compile a list of pros and cons in terms of the impact of society, of disclosure, of alien life. And this is what they were telling him. [2:28:40] We have for years. We also have recovered biological entities. We are thinking about disclosing this information to the American public. I want you to compile a list on the positive aspects of disclosure, how it will affect 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, so they didn't disclose.

[2:29:03] And what do you know what the list was? Yeah, it was religion, government, the economy. Those were all those were all negative. Yes, religion. Yes, it could affect the economy. 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. So this is why I think it would be interesting. I actually think that there is a positive if it were to happen right now, because it sure as hell would bring us all together. [2:29:33] You ever see that speech? No. 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 is like Gorbachev, tear down that wall. It was that kind of speech. It was 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. [2:29:57] Yeah, we would. I mean, we need it now more than ever. So if they're out there. 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. It's so sad because it didn't used to be like that, right? A politics wasn't something that people talked about all day long, all the time. That's the negative aspect of social media. Yeah. Yeah. Because this is all people talk about.

[2:30:27] stuff to talk about. And yet we've spent time talking about politics because... But we're talking about the fascinating aspects of politics as it affects human civilization and discourse. 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 did this and that? It's now in every single... [2:30:49] 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, [2:31:01] 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. And it just... [2:31:15] It taints everything. [2:31:18] And it takes too much space. [2:31:19] Yes. For other conversations with much more important conversations 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 what we're saying is approved by the right or the left or whether this or that. It's just an amazing waste of mental resources. [2:31:49] cause. [2:31:50] Yeah. 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. Yeah. And they go all in. And it's generally a distraction for a failed life.

[2:32:03] I think so, too. There'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 want. And instead, you're involved in this fucking stupid cause. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. [2:32:15] I know. That's so dumb. But you're right. If the aliens showed up, we'd probably all unite together. Unfortunately, I feel like the most united moment that I could remember in my adult life was right after September 11th. Yeah, same. [2:32:28] Were you in America at the time? I was in New York. You were in New York. Oh, boy. Yeah. I was – How different was the feeling where everybody was like smiling to each other and saying hi on the street afterwards? The elevators. I mean I did the initial reporting for Portugal, for Portuguese television that day. Oh. So I was at Columbia University's journalism school. I just moved to New York a month before. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. [2:32:49] Where were you living? I was living on 72nd and Broadway. Okay, so you're pretty far away from the actual area. [2:32:59] Yeah. [2:32:59] Did you go down? Yes. 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 live feed. So you had journalists from all over the world. Meanwhile, I was 24, 25 years old. I had like zero experience doing a live feed. I just moved to the United States. Actually, it's an interesting story how I even got to the U.S. because, you know, I applied for Columbia University three times. The first [2:33:25] 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. That's amazing. That's amazing that you could do that. And it taught me my first big important lesson in journalism, which is persistence. Don't be afraid to get no's because I mean, what's the worst that can happen,

[2:33:55] 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 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 first tower had collapsed. And they said, turn on the television and see what's happening. [2:34:25] happening and they said we need you to go to midtown and do that we have no portuguese journalists in manhattan they're all our journalists are in dc or they're outside of manhattan manhattan had been locked down you need to go down and do the live reporting for us of what's happening 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 uh and i was i had to explain to her mom this is like [2:34:49] My dream is to become a journalist as 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 threw 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. [2:35:19] and I get emotional every time I talk about this. [2:35:22] But I will never forget just walking down to the streets and...

[2:35:27] it. [2:35:28] And it's every time I talk about this, but and 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. [2:35:41] And that moment totally changed my life because... Sorry. [2:35:48] It was a moment that, yeah, first of all, realization, like... [2:35:52] 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. [2:36:00] 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 Colombia, I moved to the Middle East. And I enrolled in the University of Damascus in Syria to learn Arabic and to try to do my – I did my first story as a freelance journalist about the jihadis who were crossing to Iraq to fight against the Americans. [2:36:30] did as a freelance journalist. And, and so yeah, so I was I was there on 9/11. And I [2:36:38] 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 so much love and support. And it lasted for months. And it lasted for months. And it was really beautiful. And everybody came together. And it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. Everybody went right back to being a fucking asshole. And everybody went back

[2:37:08] 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., which is like one of the most. [2:37:19] unpatriotic places in the country. They all had American flags in their car. It was... [2:37:24] 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? And you know what's so sad is that 3,000 people died on that day, right? I'm going to 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 crises are happening every day. [2:37:54] 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. [2:38:04] And how to separate us all. [2:38:07] Yeah, I mean... [2:38:08] You know that, and I know that, and we both live that way. We can talk in circles about this. What's going on? We can get the rest of the world on board. We need to get people to stop paying attention to all this shit and just learn how to be nicer. Right. I agree. I mean, there's... [2:38:26] You don't have much time in this life. [2:38:28] It doesn't last as long as you think it does. No, and just have empathy. It's my main message. It's just like try to place yourself in somebody else's shoes. Don't be quick to judge. Like actually try to understand why these migrants are coming to this country, why these 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? Try to understand why they're doing what they do.

[2:38:58] Absolutely. [2:39:02] Much harder to try to solve it that way. Yeah, much harder. It's hard for people to have empathy, too. Some people, especially as they're just tired all the time and exhausted and they're unhealthy and their life sucks. And they just want other people to like fuck. And they don't see those people. They don't feel it. They need a Martin Luther King. Yeah. They need a James Tallarico. Well, we need someone like that for sure. We need someone who's got a... [2:39:26] Someone who is a powerful speaker, too. They have to be charismatic. [2:39:31] a message of nonviolence and love. [2:39:35] Because it's really the only way. You don't get anything from violence other than more violence. I agree. [2:39:41] Unless you're the biggest, baddest bully, and then you squash everything around you, and great, now you're a dictator. Right. It's not... [2:39:48] Good for any of us. No, it doesn't. 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. I don't think that L.A. is the most unpatriotic. I know you don't like L.A. I still live there, and I know you don't like it, but I disagree that it's unpatriotic. What do you think it is? [2:40:07] Why would you say it's unpatriotic? California is an incredible state. If you have an American flag in front of your house, people will call you racist. [2:40:16] That's a fact. [2:40:17] I haven't seen that happen. That's a fact. That's a fact. There's a lot of indoctrinated young kids. Perhaps. And those people are assholes. Yeah. They're as full of hate as the other side. You don't get that in Texas. Right. That's the difference. But you also have places in America where if you have an LGBTQ flag on the front of your door, you're called thoughts of other things. Sure.

[2:40:37] So that goes both ways. Well, that's not necessarily patriotism. That's just being an intolerant asshole. Right. [2:40:44] I think that the real problem with Los Angeles is the government. [2:40:48] 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 is leaving the overtaxing. Have you read Ezra Klein's book? No, I have not. I haven't read the book yet, but I've heard him giving a bunch of interviews about about it. He's getting attacked for it now. People are saying he's leaning right, which is hilarious. [2:41:18] Democrats have to figure out how to make the system work and how to build things and how to – and not – [2:41:24] And do what you were saying, create all these limits and these problems for like building houses in the Palisades. It'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 situation. [2:41:41] thing. Like Bill Clinton, if you hear him talk, he sounds like a populist that is like going after criminals. Yes, pretty pro-America. It's like that's what everybody can get on board with. It's like that's 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

[2:42:11] In direct opposition to what it would have been in 1985. It's like. Yeah, but not all. Not all. 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 that guy said to my friend, like you got to support a party. Cross the way. That's the only way. You got to get him on your side. What? 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. [2:42:41] off. And that's the problem is that we only have two stupid parties and huge problem. Yeah. I mean, you do have a libertarian. I voted libertarian twice. It's kind of like, fuck these people. I'm going to vote for nothing. You know, that's never going to win, which is crazy to say. [2:42:59] But that is kind of what it is. Right. And then you see other countries that have like six, seven parties. Yeah, Portugal and the majority of European countries. The Netherlands, yeah. There's a lot of countries that have multiple parties. [2:43:14] Obviously, there's division, but there's nothing like the division that exists in the U.S. right now. 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. [2:43:29] is that this is a growing pain and that we'll sort through this. But we need... [2:43:35] Nonviolent leaders that are very intelligent that also makes sense to both people, which I do think is possible.

[2:43:42] 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 a life for yourself and pursue your dreams. That's what we all want. All that other stuff is just dividing points. [2:44:12] We were talking about something and she said they don't want to fix this issue because they can fund their campaign with it. Of course. I mean, that's immigration. Isn't that crazy? Like that politicians will fail to resolve an issue on purpose because they want to raise funds. Right. [2:44:31] by campaigning on this issue. It is disgusting. It's so gross. That is un-American. That's truly evil. Truly evil, yeah. And when she said it, 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. 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. Exactly. [2:45:01] solve that problem. [2:45:02] 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 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.

[2:45:22] 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 that this hasn't been solved, right? [2:45:32] 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. [2:45:51] They just said it openly. Like, yo. So that's part of it, too. They want cheap labor. Right. [2:45:57] Yeah, because it helps their bottom line, which is like, oh, God. Yeah. 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. 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. They're scared they're going to get deported. Of course. Yeah. [2:46:23] Yeah. I know. It's like, boy. [2:46:28] It's an overcorrection after overcorrection. [2:46:31] You know, without actually fixing the 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. Yeah. I think they like all this crazy shit. 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. It is heartbreaking. Yeah. That's taking the power away from people. Right.

[2:47:01] The other thing you think about these dark times is they call for people to rise up. Like, no, I don't mean, like, rise up against the machine and the bell. I mean, like, they call for a hero. And that's what we always hope for. We're like, maybe there's one person who's going to figure this out. Maybe there's going to be this person that emerges, this real leader. Right. And they're looking at the Democratic Party and they're like, [2:47:24] No. There's no one there. Who's it going to be? I don't think Tallarico is trying to run for president. So outside of him, who really makes sense? Well, you've got a bunch of people that are just politicians, politics as usual. And then once they get inside – [2:47:51] They're all insider trading. Yeah. 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. [2:48:10] You put Martha Quinn in jail, tried her for insider trading and got her on lying. Martha Stewart, you mean? Oh, did I say Martha Quinn? That's the MTV VJ. Sorry, Martha Quinn. Martha Stewart. I love Martha Stewart so much. Sorry, Martha Stewart. That's so funny. I fucked that up. I really want to have her on my podcast. Oh, yeah. She's a badass lady. But they put her in jail. They put Martha Stewart in jail, who was like beloved by America. Yeah, I know. I mean, so ridiculous. Have you watched the doc? No. About her? It's so good. No, she's quite a lot. She's so great. But you also have to be quite a lot to become that person. You know? Absolutely.

[2:48:40] That's how you become that person. She's a proud bitch, and I love her. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of funny, you know? You could say the same thing about a lot of people that are very famous. [2:48:50] Well, listen, it's always great to talk to you. I really appreciate you coming here and you do amazing work. You really do. [2:48:57] So courageous and so necessary. And I think you provide a window into various ways. [2:49:03] aspects of life on this planet that otherwise people would not have access to. Thank you. And I hope the podcast will be the continuation of that. I'm sure it will be. I'm sure it will be. Really excited. So The Hidden Third. [2:49:16] And it is available on YouTube. Is it available everywhere? Everywhere. Everywhere. Who's this first guy you have here? Wherever you get your podcast. That's the trailer? Fabian Alomar is an amazing guy. That's the retired FBI agent that I spoke with. You should listen to that episode. What is it about? He's the guy who went after the pill mills in Florida. He was doing his investigation at the same time as I was doing. And then Fabian Alomar is a great guy. He's a former skater. He did nine years in prison. [2:49:46] out of this guy who supposedly, he was on meth, on crack actually, very high on crack. Anyway, he beat the shit out of this guy who supposedly allegedly had raped his... [2:49:55] sister but beat the shit kept him in a trunk beat the shit out of him it 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 um 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 what is the mayans it was that show with the guy the bikers oh it's

[2:50:25] Mongoria, the hot chili, what was it called? The Flaming Hot movie. He was 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? I don't know that scandal. Do you know it, Jamie? Yeah. What happened? So, you know Otani? Yeah. [2:50:55] most well-known, most successful, I don't know what term, I don't know what sports term term, but 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 U.S., was with him 24-7, had a gambling problem. And the bookie [2:51:25] 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. [2:51:34] Flying private jets, like betting insane amounts of money himself. He's also a gambling addict, 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 place them with him, but all illegal.

[2:52:04] 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. And it turns out that Otani was not the one betting that it was his translator. Yeah. [2:52:28] Matt Boyer, who's at the center of the scandal, believes that Otani knew that he had, that his... [2:52:35] friend and translator had a betting gambling problem. But [2:52:40] He came out and said he had no idea. And nobody wanted this problem on their hands. The amount of money that you could lose. And so they basically, the guy came out saying... [2:52:52] 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. For illegal gambling. For illegal, for being a bookie. Yeah, for money laundering. And he was, I think it was something like $40 million. Yeah. [2:53:18] Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Much more. His losses were around. 19,000 bets. Boy, that guy was hooked between September 21 and January 2024. His winnings amassed to be over $142 million. Whoa! [2:53:32] He won over $142 million, which he kept for himself. His losses were around $183 million. Oh. He lost $40 million that he still owes Matt Boyer, by the way. He only, I mean, his main bookie was this guy. Oh, my God. He must have been gambling so high. It's insane. That, oh, that's so scary. And he couldn't stop. 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.

[2:54:02] It is a crazy addiction. It's the secret. It's the hidden addiction as they call it because you can be completely you can have a job. You can be a working addict and nobody will ever know that you have a massive gambling problem. And until it all comes. Whatever reason when people get hooked, they can't shake it. It is a crazy one because 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. Did you see uncut gems? [2:54:30] uh i did yes 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 i know it's so anathema to who i am too that i always get so nervous like don't find people i know it's but i i've been around a lot of those people you know when i was in my early 20s i spent a lot of time in pool halls and i was around a lot of gambling addicts and i was just fascinated by [2:55:00] Go to the racetrack all day, gamble on the races, and then go to maybe off-track betting, bet there. And then go to the pool hall, bet there. Try to get a poker game, bet there. [2:55:12] Try to go to Atlantic City on the weekend, bet there. Bet there, yeah. Just full-on gambling junkies. Their whole life revolved around gambling. They didn't care about anything else. And it's not smart because they know that the probability that they're going to lose more than they win. 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 40. 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. Right.

[2:55:39] Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. It's a terrifying addiction. It's terrifying. It's really, really terrifying. Because it's weird. It's like, oh, my God, what hijacked your brain? 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, you know, we've got ESPN and all these big companies making money from it. I know, but I'm not opposed to that. Here's the thing because I don't have a gambling problem. [2:56:09] 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 in gambling. Yeah, but I don't think there has been an established solution for gambling addiction. [2:56:27] I think some people are going to fall by the wayside, and they've always been that way. [2:56:31] 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 is going to beat the odds. I think he's going to 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? Yeah. And I think the odds are – [2:56:53] It might have been like two to one for Canelo. So you would have made $2,000 on $1,000. Right. But... [2:57:03] I don't have a problem with gambling. [2:57:06] 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. I think most drugs should be legal. I think the real problem is the fact that they're illegal, which means you're getting them from cartels. 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 is fucked and how many people die of overdoses because of that?

[2:57:36] They were also super kooky. It's a super kooky place to live anyway. Keep Portland weird. Mariana, I appreciate you very much. Thank you, Joe. When you're done with the scammer thing, come back. Please. I need to hear everything. Okay? All right. Thanks, Joe. One more time. [2:57:53] Is called... [2:57:55] The Hidden Third. The Hidden Third. It's on YouTube, on YouTube.com slash Mariana Van Zeller. And we've got two episodes already that premiere this week, and it's a weekly podcast. Fantastic. New episodes all the time. And you can also get it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Good luck with that. Thank you. Thanks for being here. Bye, everybody. [2:58:25] . [2:58:28] This episode is brought to you by the Farmer's Dog. Here's a fun fact. Research shows that dogs who maintain a healthy weight can live up to two and a half years longer on average than dogs who are overweight. [2:58:39] Isn't that wild and also kind of obvious at the same time? So why is feeding vague scoops of ultra-processed kibble still the status quo for most dog owners? Healthy alternatives exist, and trust me, I know. [2:58:54] I buy one, the Farmer's Dog. I use it for both my dogs. They love it. They eat it up quick. It smells good to them. It smells good to me. It's human-grade food. The Farmer's Dog makes fresh food for dogs, and my dogs love it. Their recipes are made with real meat and fresh vegetables that are gently cooked to retain vital nutrients. They also portion out the meals to your dog's nutritional needs, which helps avoid overfeeding and makes weight management easier.

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