The Manosphere Report

0:01Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

0:03The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!

0:13What's happening, man? How are you?

0:14I'm good, how are you?

0:15I'm great. I watched your documentary, The Alabama Solution, last night, and it was wild.

0:21It's very, very disturbing. I'm kind of shocked I hadn't heard more about it, you

0:27know, because it's such a terrible, terrible story.

0:31It's such an unbelievably awful situation, and I think you covered it really well.

0:38It's very, very heartbreaking. Yeah, thanks for watching it.

0:42Yeah, it's sort of a question of why people don't know about things that are

0:49happening with our tax dollars in our backyards.

0:53You know, are there things that we don't want to know?

0:55There's a reason why people sort of drive by prisons on the highway, and they

0:59see the little metal sign, and it says, you know, X, Y, Z, Correctional, and

1:03they probably think, as I did for many years, well, I'm sure it's not great

1:07back there, but it doesn't need to be great, and if anything terrible was happening

1:10back there, somebody would probably tell me about it.

1:12But because of the secrecy that surrounds prisons, you know, we treat them sort of

1:17like black sites. There's no way for us to really look inside, so the press

1:22doesn't get lit in, and the public doesn't understand what's happening.

1:24And we know that, you know, when you give people total control over other people,

1:30bad things happen. Bad things happen every single time, and this is one of the

1:33worst things. What's really terrifying is the sheer numbers of people that died there with

1:40no investigation. That's what's really terrifying.

1:44Yeah. Because, you know, you even detail that at the end, like since then, how

1:50many people have died. And it's just like, good Lord, you're thousands.

1:55Yeah. Well, there's an attorney general in Alabama named Steve Marshall who's always run on

2:01like tough on crime strategies and saying, you know, we've got to lock more people

2:05up, and people who are in prison for violent crime should potentially never get out

2:11of prison, ever. And he says in the film, as you remember, that there –

2:18I ask him about the nature of crime, and he says, well, I think there

2:22are evil people in this world, people who have absolutely no regard for human life.

2:27And this is a guy who's presided over a system that's killed, that's led to

2:31the deaths of 1 ,500 people just since we started making the film.

2:35Right. So this question of like who are the good guys and who are the

2:38bad guys and, you know, what's the nature of cruelty?

2:41What's the nature of punishment?

2:42Are we putting people there to try to make them better, rehabilitate them?

2:46Are we putting them there because they're drug addicts and we're trying to get rid

2:51of them as opposed to rehabilitate them or as opposed to try to get them

2:54off of drugs? So obviously prisons have become pretty much a catch -all for the

2:59ills of society. So if you have mental illness, much more likely to go to

3:03prison. Once you're in prison, if you're mentally ill or you have bad social skills,

3:08you're much more likely to get into a scrape with a guard who probably isn't

3:11trained to deal with somebody who's mentally ill, and you're much more likely to get

3:15murdered, which is what we saw happening in Alabama.

3:17Well, you even – it's the old expression, who's going to watch the watchers, right?

3:23Because one of the things that you detail is very obviously nonviolent people who spend

3:31all their time writing and reading and they're getting retribution because they're calling attention to

3:38the terrible conditions at the prison.

3:40So the one guy with the glasses who was beaten blindly, what was his name?

3:45Robert O 'Counsel. I mean there's so many stories that you show in this documentary

3:54from smuggled cameras. So these guys all get contraband cameras from the guards.

4:00From the guards, yeah. The guards sell the camera – sell the phones to the

4:03men inside. Which is also crazy.

4:05I mean there's so many drugs in the Alabama state prison system and I spoke

4:11to one of the people who was incarcerated there early on on a contraband cell

4:15phone and I said, you know, where are all the drugs coming from, the amount

4:19of drugs here? This is an incredible, you know, human wasteland.

4:25You're seeing just high, high percentage, maybe 80 percent of the people are addicted to

4:28drugs, many of whom were not addicted to drugs before they came in.

4:31And how are you getting all the cell phones?

4:34And the guy looked at me like I was, you know, stupid and he said,

4:39you know, we don't leave, right?

4:42And I thought, oh, I get it.

4:44The people that come and go are the guards.

4:46Those are the ones that go out.

4:48They get the packages. They bring them in.

4:50And I've spoken to guards who said, you know, we make $36 ,000 a year

4:55without the drugs, without the cell phones.

4:58So, of course, we got to sell the cell phones and the drugs because that

5:01takes us up to 70 or 75 ,000.

5:04Oh, God. Yeah. So what are the main drugs these guys are addicted to?

5:12What are they getting them?

5:14Well, there's originally, right, it was sort of more traditional drugs and people were using

5:19heroin and using whatever they could get a hold of.

5:22But as the drugs have gotten more complicated and easier to bring in, now they

5:28can actually put – there's a drug called Flaco, which is a very significant problem

5:33there, fentanyl, obviously, also. But these drugs can be brought in on a piece of

5:38paper. So somebody could send you a letter and it could be in the letter.

5:43They can actually put the drug into the paper.

5:45Oh, sort of like acid when they put acid on paper.

5:48Yeah. And so, you know, there's this effort to kind of stop that.

5:53But then does it lead to people being unable to communicate with their loved ones?

5:58Ultimately, the easiest way to get the drugs is for the officers to sell the

6:02drugs. And so, you know, we say – and I think it's sadly true that

6:06the Alabama Department of Corrections – and it's not just an – But obviously we

6:11use that as the lens through which we saw incarceration more generally.

6:15But the Alabama Department of Corrections is the largest law enforcement agency in the state

6:21of Alabama. And it's also the biggest drug dealing operation.

6:25You know, you're much more likely to die of an overdose inside the prison than

6:30you are out on the street in Alabama.

6:32Really? Statistically? Yeah. Oh, my God.

6:36Oh, boy. You know, one of the things that was very heart -wrenching is this

6:44callous approach. You showed at the one time where all these prisons went on strike.

6:51So they all communicated with each other through these contraband cell phones.

6:54They all got from the guards.

6:55So I guess it's ubiquitous throughout the state.

6:57It's not just this one.

6:58Correct. And these people on the radio were like, well, it's prison.

7:03It's supposed to suck. You know, maybe if they had saw your film, they wouldn't

7:08have such a cavalier attitude about it.

7:11Yeah. But it's that attitude.

7:13It's like these are human beings.

7:15And some of them barely did anything.

7:18Like one guy that wound up dying from you think they did something or they

7:24think they did something to a cigarette that they gave this guy.

7:27But all he did was break into an abandoned building.

7:32Yeah. He didn't steal anything.

7:34Entering an unoccupied building. Yeah.

7:36Yeah. His name is James.

7:37I mean, I don't even know if he broke in, right?

7:39It was unoccupied. It might have even been open.

7:40Yeah. It said entering. So he entered a building that he wasn't supposed to enter

7:44and he got 15 years in a cage and then on his way out, at

7:51least they're inferring that they killed him because he had too much information about what

7:56was going on inside and he was going to get out.

7:58Yeah, this goes back to the story of a woman who we had met and

8:03her son when we were first communicating with the men using these contraband cell phones

8:08and they were telling us what was going on inside the prison, inside the various

8:14prisons. We sort of, in the early days, we couldn't believe it because the way

8:18we got into the prisons to begin with is I had gone down to Alabama

8:22because I was always interested in incarceration and the problems of that system and the

8:29justice system. I made other films about the justice system.

8:33And I was always curious about Alabama because it's sort of famously maybe the worst

8:37prison system in the country, but it mirrors a lot of others.

8:40And my daughter was 14 at the time, Jeremy, and she said, you know, I'm

8:45reading this book by a guy named Anthony Ray Hinton and it's a book about

8:49his wrongful imprisonment in Alabama and maybe you should read this with me.

8:53So we ended up reading the book together and then we both sort of just

8:58spontaneously decided to take a road trip to Montgomery because we just didn't know anything

9:02about it. It had never been there.

9:03She was growing up in New York and it was just not in her frame

9:07of reference. So we went down there and we met a man who was the

9:11first black prison chaplain in the state of Alabama, Chaplain Browder.

9:16And I said, well, I'm really curious about what's going on in the prisons.

9:19And he said, well, you should just come in with me.

9:22And I said, well, I'm a filmmaker.

9:24They're not going to let me just walk into the prison in Alabama.

9:26And he said, well, just don't come in as a filmmaker.

9:29You just don't have to bring a camera.

9:31Just come in and talk to some of the guys.

9:32So I went in to film ultimately – we were allowed to film ultimately in

9:38one of the prisons. And when we were in there to film this revival meeting

9:42just because we were lucky enough to find a warden who felt like he wanted

9:47to show an example of how Christianity was active and important in the prison system,

9:55which I agreed with. But then while we were in there filming with like five

10:01cameras, which was just unheard of, the men inside couldn't believe that there were any

10:05cameras in there. And they started taking us aside and saying, listen, what they're showing

10:10you here is a very curated version of what's going on in this prison.

10:14You have to get into these other buildings.

10:15You've got to see what's going on in that dorm over there called the behavior

10:20modification dorm where guys have been killed by guards.

10:23And you've got to look in that dorm where people have been in solitary confinement

10:26for five years at a time.

10:28You know, don't let them show you just what they want to show you.

10:32And I felt much safer, you know, even though the warden had said to us

10:35when you go in there, you know, don't talk to any of the men.

10:38They're all very dangerous. I immediately felt safer talking to the inmates than I did

10:42talking to any of the guards.

10:45And when we left, it was really because we got kicked out.

10:49Right. We start you saw in the beginning of the film, we sort of start

10:52getting nosy and we start trying to look in some of these other areas.

10:55And then they they shut down the filming.

10:57They throw us out. And then we thought, well, you know, maybe we're stuck now.

11:01How are we going to make a film about this?

11:02We feel we have to because we're the only people that know what's going on

11:06in here, but they're not going to let us back.

11:09So it was then that we found out that there was this network of men

11:13inside. Who had access to these contraband cell phones who were documenting what was going

11:17on. So that was our way of getting into those buildings that we couldn't see

11:21inside. And one of the first things we learned was one of one of the

11:28guys inside Melvin Ray texted us to say, hey, you know, this this this guard.

11:35It was a guard that we had been tracking already.

11:37He was a particularly violent guard.

11:39He just beat somebody very badly.

11:41And he's now that person.

11:43The victim is at UAB Hospital.

11:45So we jumped in a car and we went to UAB Hospital and just walked

11:49up. I just put my iPhone in my pocket and we just walked up to

11:52the intensive care unit. And when we got there, we found that this young man,

11:57Stephen Davis, had had died from his injuries.

12:00And as we started to get deeper into it, we went and visited his mother

12:05because we didn't even know if she knew that she had lost her son.

12:09But in fact, she had been with him when he passed away.

12:12She had sort of turned off the life support.

12:16And we said, we want to make a film about this.

12:19We were trying to tell the story.

12:21And she immediately said, I'm in.

12:24I want to help you.

12:25I don't want this to happen to any other mothers.

12:27You know, and this is a very nice white lady from Uniontown, Alabama, with an

12:32oxygen tank. I mean, she's not somebody that you would see ordinarily as kind of

12:37a heroic person. But when she loses her son, she really becomes so activated, and

12:44she ends up telling us a story.

12:46And then she says, look, you know, they're lying to me already.

12:50You know, my son just died last night, and they're already calling me and telling

12:54me things about how he was the one that attacked guards.

12:57And none of this is true.

12:58This all seems like it's fake.

13:00So teach me how to record my phone calls, you know.

13:03So this older woman suddenly became a really important partner in making the film.

13:09And this gets back to your question about Stephen Davis.

13:12So her son, who was a drug addict, right, didn't kill anybody, but was in

13:17a car when a drug deal went bad.

13:20He went to try to buy drugs, and his friend went in the house, and

13:23they had a fight, and somebody got shot.

13:25And then he got arrested and was charged with murder because that's how the felony

13:29murder statute works. And so here you have a drug addict who goes to prison

13:34in Alabama and is in the highest security prison there and is targeted by a

13:41particular guard who is especially violent and is just beaten to death in front of

13:4670 witnesses. And then, of course, as we go through the film, we start tracking

13:52that in our investigation, and we start looking into the cover -up and why they

13:57lied about how he had died and how they scrambled the witnesses and how the

14:01Department of Corrections is organized so that they prevent people from finding out what really

14:06happened to their kids or their loved ones, and they avoid liability and so on.

14:11And there was one person that we ended up hearing from, this guy James Sayles,

14:17who originally tells just the police side of the story, just says, well, you know,

14:22yeah, it's exactly the way that the guard said.

14:25But then he kind of hints on the phone, listen, when I get out of

14:28here, I'll tell the real story.

14:30Now, do they have access to these communications?

14:33Is there a way they could be hacking into it and know that Sayles had

14:37said that to you? Well, the person that he said it to was the lawyer

14:42for Sandy Ray. So he was supposed to be on a private attorney call.

14:48But we do think that the Department of Corrections doesn't abide by that.

14:54I think they do listen to attorney calls.

14:57Sayles didn't say exactly on the phone what he was going to say, but I

15:01think they knew that he was a problem because he was a good person.

15:04I mean, Sayles, the one who entered an unoccupied building and was locked up for

15:1015 years for that, was obviously a decent person.

15:13That's why he says, you know, when I get out, I'll speak to that.

15:18I'm not going to lie to that man's mother.

15:20But right now, this is their world, bro.

15:23I'm not going to say more.

15:25I'm not going to put myself on a hot spot.

15:26But just by saying that might have been his death sentence.

15:30He also, as he started to get closer to getting out, you know, because he

15:35was killed a month before he was going to get out.

15:39And so as he started getting closer to release, he just started to get more

15:44frustrated and more angry and started to say things to guards about like, you know,

15:49you know what I've seen in here.

15:50And, you know, and then lo and behold, he gets found in a cell dead.

16:00And, you know, he's bleeding from orifices in his body.

16:03And it was pretty clear that he was given what they call a hot shot,

16:06which is they give you a cigarette that's got something bad on it and it

16:10can kill you. Boy, so when you first started, when you first showed up with

16:19cameras, did you know basically what was going on?

16:23Do you have an understanding of what was going on?

16:25Like, what were you attempting to do when you got there?

16:28Were you just going to try to investigate and figure it out?

16:31Or did you already have reports?

16:34We already we knew a bunch of stuff.

16:36You know, we knew because we had had this this we had visited some prisons

16:40as volunteers and I had gone on the death row with my my filmmaking partner,

16:46Charlotte Kaufman. We had had gone into Easterling.

16:49We had gone originally into Holman prison where they have the death row.

16:52And we went in there with the chaplain and the lieutenant came down and said,

16:57you know, unfortunately, we're so understaffed right now, which is an understatement.

17:05And that, you know, we don't have anybody to take you around.

17:07But, you know, chaplain, I know you want to show your friends around the death

17:11row. So, you know, just go for it.

17:12So we ended up walking around the death row for like two or three hours

17:16just talking to men. And those men were very helpful.

17:22They weren't you know, we weren't talking to irrational people.

17:24We weren't talking to, you know, they're they're people who were trying to get the

17:28story out. And so we knew going in that there were a lot of bad

17:31things happening. We didn't know exactly what.

17:33And then when we went into Easterling and the men started calling us aside and

17:37saying, you know, they beat me so bad I defecated on myself or, you know,

17:42I just saw there were five stabbings this week and none have been reported.

17:47We started to realize that it was really a huge crisis, but it was just

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19:07rogan or code rogan for four extra months so it's a it's crazy that you're

19:15relying on these guards to get in the phones that they're using to expose the

19:21crimes of the guards so and it's like the guards are aware of the phones

19:26because they provided them to the inmates and they're contrabanded they're not supposed to have

19:31them but yet they all do and so they have to ignore it if they

19:34want to keep selling them phones well another way of looking at it is that

19:39there's so little accountability that they don't actually think they're going to get in trouble

19:44for anything and they're kind of right right and if you remember that that guard

19:49who kills steven davis uh rod gadson who's you know this guy might be the

19:53most violent prison guard in america he's still working in the alabama state prison system

19:58after he's a has a starring role against his will i'm sure but after he

20:03has a starring role in our documentary which has been seen by millions of people

20:07they still have him employed there they still have him interacting with people and he

20:11got hired to a higher position yeah yeah he got he's been promoted twice and

20:15now he's up for another promotion um so i think to some extent the guards

20:19just say well you know i can do whatever i want i can sell the

20:23cell phones and by the way not all the guards are bad right that there

20:26are guards that we met there who were pretty heartbroken because they went into the

20:31system hoping to make change or trying to maybe they wanted to work in the

20:36police department and there weren't any jobs but in their town they had the ability

20:40to work in a prison so they kind of went in there and described to

20:43us that they wanted to help people with addiction they wanted to see if they

20:46could help rehabilitate people but when they got in there they realized very quickly that

20:50was not what was in the offing that wasn't an opportunity for them so so

20:55the guy this roger guy that beat steven to death um the story was that

21:01steven had some sort of an implemented weapon correct yeah that he had a plastic

21:05knife right was there any evidence of that um he had some kind of like

21:10a some kind of plastic uh thing that he had made it did not appear

21:16to be anything very serious because the reason he had made it is because somebody

21:21had called him gay and you have to fight your way out of that right

21:25he wasn't gay as it turns out um but when they fight your way out

21:29of that so somebody calls you gay you have to fight them yeah you in

21:32other words you can't put up with that because otherwise they're going to turn you

21:35into what they call a sissy they're going to turn you into somebody that gets

21:38raped and there's so much rape in the prison that the the doj report uh

21:43that came out said that there's rape occurring at all hours of the day and

21:47night in all areas of the prison so rape is such a significant problem um

21:52and when steven davis was in there and was accused of being gay he had

21:58to make a show of of fighting the person that was calling him gay he

22:03he never went after the guards or anything like that and everybody that that the

22:07lawyer spoke to um you know a dozen witnesses who had seen what happened all

22:12of them said he as soon as the guards came in he immediately laid down

22:17on the floor and put his weapon about 15 feet away from him put his

22:20this plastic knife 15 feet away and then the guards came in and just started

22:26beating him even though there was no threat and he would and the guards would

22:29say gadson was saying to to steven davis you know quit resisting quit resisting and

22:35he wasn't resisting at all and that's what all the witnesses said so they just

22:38have to say that so they yell it out yeah it's almost i think it

22:41was almost like it was almost just a warning to everybody else like look i

22:45can do anything that i want i can say that he's resisting isn't it funny

22:49you know and uh and the way you know the way he kills him he

22:54stomps on his head with his size 15 boot this is a guy who's almost

22:58300 pounds i think he's about six foot five and he's been implicated in 24

23:05other excessive force cases and the attorney general in alabama every single time is defending

23:11the guard how many other people died in those cases there have been a lot

23:16of other injuries the only i think that there have been two people who've died

23:20out of the 24 25 cases that we know about um but but there are

23:25a lot of just maimings there are a lot of situations where people are just

23:28damaged often permanently you saw what happened in kinetic justice when he you know robert

23:34earl council when he leads a non -violent work strike that guards come and attack

23:40him and and he loses sight in one of his eyes he's you know dragged

23:44out of the cell there's a huge amount of blood um so you know the

23:49especially these guys who are leading a non -violent effort to try to improve conditions

23:53they're always met with violence right he was the guy that was at the head

23:58of this strike yeah and then the strike really highlights something that i think a

24:03lot of people are unaware of is how many industries actually use the prison system

24:08essentially for slave labor sure yeah i mean that was a shock to me i

24:13think is that you know i guess we all sort of assume well if you're

24:17in prison and they ask you to mop the floor you need to help serve

24:20the meals or something you know that's a reasonable thing to do i think what

24:24we don't realize is that those people are leased out to the governor to the

24:29mansion where the governor lives crazy um you know that was crazy yeah yeah people

24:34that were denied parole were allowed to be on the grounds of the governor's mansion

24:39doing like groundwork exactly landscaping and stuff yeah yeah and and beyond that they're used

24:47for labor in industry right so those are those guys are sent out in the

24:51mornings in vans they go work at McDonald's.

24:55They work at Burger King.

24:56They work at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

24:57They work at the Hyundai plant.

24:59They work at the Budweiser distributorship.

25:03And it's all sort of under the heading of, well, this is good for the

25:05guys. They get to get out into the community.

25:08But it's a forced labor situation because if they don't, if they don't accept those

25:13assignments, then they're going to be punished.

25:16And they're going to be punished with long stays in solitary confinement.

25:19They're going to be given disciplinaries so that their sentences can be extended.

25:24They are often just beaten for that.

25:27So it's really an extension.

25:28I've heard you on your show talk about the Jim Crow laws, which led to

25:35convict leasing. And what we're seeing in Alabama now, it's not like convict leasing.

25:40It is exactly convict leasing.

25:42They are just selling the labor of incarcerated people to industries.

25:47For pennies on the dollar of what you would get if you had to pay

25:50people. Yeah. And they, I mean, they get paid well.

25:53They get paid well. Yeah.

25:54But not the, you're saying they, meaning the prisons get paid well.

25:59Yes. But not the prisoners.

26:00Correct. The prisoners get any money?

26:02They get a little money.

26:04For example, the guy you see who's driving a sanitation truck, Danny Dandridge, describes how

26:12he's getting paid $2 a day.

26:15And - Is that standard across the board for all those other jobs?

26:18I think for that - Honey plant, everything?

26:19I think for that job, they get paid a little bit of money.

26:24And then on top of that, they're charged for the cost of the van that

26:28takes them to the workplace.

26:29They're charged for the uniform that they have to wear.

26:32So it's sort of like they're kind of fees and fines that knock everything down

26:36to almost nothing. And in a lot of cases, the $2 a day is a

26:41lot. They're required to do lots of work unpaid in the prisons.

26:47They do all the construction.

26:49You could see that even the drug dorm where the counselor decided to leave his

26:56job, there was a professional drug counselor in one of the prisons.

27:00And nobody replaces him. And so Raoul Poole, one of the guys in our film,

27:05just starts running the drug dorm.

27:08And that's a drug dorm that's getting money from the federal government to pay for

27:13drug treatment program in prison.

27:14And that money's just not going anywhere, or money's just going into the coffers of

27:18whoever's running the prison system.

27:20God. And is there any accountability for all the money?

27:24Is there any - do they do an audit of the money?

27:26Is there - is it just - There really is not any meaningful accountability.

27:31You know, there's like the state auditor, who we actually interviewed and spent a lot

27:35of time with, just sort of threw up his hands.

27:38You know, he said, there's just no way for me to keep track of this

27:40money. And, you know, for example, they got this incredibly horrible set of findings from

27:49the Justice Department, right? The DOJ went into the Alabama State Prison System and did

27:54an investigation because, for reasons I can explain, they're kind of incredible.

27:58But anyway, they went in there and they investigated the whole prison system, which I

28:02think they'd never done before.

28:04You know, usually they investigate an individual prison or something like that.

28:08And they went in and issued a report that said, this is a, you know,

28:13beyond the pale. There's horrific things that are happening in your prisons, people being murdered,

28:18and there's the highest rate of drug overdose and highest rate of rape.

28:23And Alabama's response was to say, well, you know, we think that's just anecdotal and

28:28you don't know what you're talking about.

28:29And then they decided that their solution, the Alabama solution that we sort of ironically

28:36talk about in the title of the film, the one the governor talks about, is

28:40just to build new prisons.

28:41And meantime, the DOJ did not say to build any new prisons.

28:46The DOJ said, your problem is with corruption and brutality.

28:50And you have, you're operating really a criminal enterprise.

28:54And therefore, you need to address the underlying problems.

28:59And Alabama's response was, well, the DOJ says the prisons are no good.

29:03So we got to build new ones.

29:04Well, that, you know, so they get a massive contract.

29:07Yeah, exactly. So we, you know, we always call it the Alabama Department of Construction,

29:11because they don't really change anything unless they have the opportunity to build something.

29:16And that's really good for all the governor supporters and all the other people who

29:20are, you know, in the construction industry.

29:22And, you know, they've now started construction on these massive new prisons.

29:29You know, Alabama's a tiny state.

29:31It's like, you know, a smaller population, I think, than Norway.

29:34And they've got a tiny budget.

29:37And yet, they figure out how to put together a multi -billion dollar prison construction

29:43plan. They can't fund it at first.

29:47The governor announces she's going to build these new prisons, which the DOJ did not

29:50ask for, and are not going to solve the problem.

29:53And they admit, by the way, that they're not going to affect overcrowding, which is

29:56a huge problem. The prisons are operating at like 200 % capacity.

30:00And, you know, when they're asked about it, the head of the Department of Corrections,

30:05they ask him, you know, is this going to affect the overcrowding?

30:08And he, or is it just the same number of beds?

30:10And he goes, no, it's the same number of beds.

30:12We're, you know, it's not going to affect overcrowding.

30:14So they're building these massive new facilities.

30:17The governor can't get them paid for.

30:19She can't raise the money in a bond offering.

30:22So they go after the COVID money that they got from the government, which is

30:27not designed to build prisons, right?

30:29It's very hard to argue that building prisons is something that's going to relieve some

30:33other kind of health problem or whatever.

30:37And then I think they get fined for that, or you have to pay a

30:42fine if you use government money for a thing that's not supposed to be for.

30:46And then when they start construction, they still can't raise the money, but they start

30:52building the new prisons, even before they're authorized by the legislature.

30:56That's how clearly it was communicated that these prisons were going to happen.

31:03You know, in other words, we had a crew in Alabama that was watching.

31:08this site of this one massive prison that they were planning on building.

31:12And there were just bean fields.

31:13And it's quite beautiful, actually.

31:15And one day I get a call from somebody and they say, we got to

31:18start filming because there are 25 earth movers here.

31:22And I said, well, that's impossible because the legislature hasn't even approved the new prison

31:27construction. And they said, well, the prison construction companies know it's happening and they're already

31:32spending hundreds of thousands of dollars just to clear the site.

31:36So the fix was in on this new prison construction.

31:39And the governor announced that it was going to cost $900 million to build three

31:44new prisons. So far, they've broken ground and are far along on the first prison

31:49and it's up to $1 .3 billion.

31:53So when you open that door, a whole lot of commerce comes in, a whole

31:59lot of companies come in.

32:01And they ask them, why was it so expensive?

32:04How did it go from $300 million for one prison to $1 .3 billion for

32:09one prison and counting? And they said, well, well, you know, it's inflation.

32:15And, you know, meanwhile, like I'm pretty sure that the government's not going to say

32:19that we got 400 % inflation at the moment.

32:22So it's, you know, it's kind of institutionalized thievery.

32:27Yeah. It's organized crime. Yeah.

32:29That, I mean, when you are in charge of deciding what's crime and you're running

32:35a state like Alabama. Yeah.

32:37Yeah. And I think, you know, money in the justice system is a very perverting

32:43factor. You know, I made this film, this series called The Jinx and Robert -

32:48Great fucking series, by the way.

32:49Oh, thank you. Thank you.

32:51Crazy. Yeah. Like, you watch this going, what?

32:55Yeah. Is this real? Yeah, me too.

32:59I mean, you know, he's an incredible person to watch.

33:05But one thing about him is, you know, that family's worth $9 billion.

33:10This is not like a regular rich person in America.

33:12This is an extra, super duper rich person in America.

33:15And he's killed three people over 30 years and just walking around, gotten away with

33:19it. Meantime, you have, you know, young women moms in Browses County Jail in Texas.

33:26You know, our mutual friend Jeff Ross did a documentary there.

33:30And he interviews the girls that are in there.

33:32And he says, what are you in here for?

33:34And two of them say, I'm in here because I stole baby formula.

33:38So, you know, that's a money.

33:40Money means a lot in this equation.

33:43That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. The money stuff is all over the place.

33:52You know, it's the perverting of the system with money, you see, because, you know,

33:59for example, these big prison companies like Geo Group and Core Civic make money by

34:06having full prisons. You know, they're private prison companies.

34:09But there are lots of prison companies.

34:11There are a lot of companies that provide services to public prisons to state prisons

34:15like, you know, Cisco and all these companies that sell food there.

34:19But everybody makes more money if the prisons are full.

34:22And so you have the head of Core Civic just did a shareholder call not

34:31too long ago. And he's Hininger, I think his name is.

34:35And they said, you know, what do you think?

34:37What's the outlook? And he said, oh, with all the new immigration prisons and all

34:42the prisons and all the increased in, you know, emphasis on law enforcement and on

34:49incarceration, you know, this is the most exciting time in my career.

34:54So, you know, you're really building this prison industrial complex every day, especially right now,

35:02I think. And all these people are doing, they're all doing bad stuff.

35:07You know, there's a company called, there's a company called Securus, which is run by

35:13Tom Gores, who is a big team owner, owns the Pistons, Detroit Pistons and some

35:20other teams, and is a private equity guy worth about $10 billion.

35:25And his company, Securus, does communications for the prison systems.

35:30And they made deals that have now been sort of exposed, but they made deals

35:37with sheriff's departments where they had jails.

35:40And they said, instead of letting kids visit their parents in jail and actually get

35:46to see them and hug them and maybe have some kind of normalcy, let's install

35:51video visit terminals. So the cover story was the video visits are going to be

35:56great because you don't have to drive across the state to see your loved one.

36:00But the contract specifically said that they had to replace in -person visits.

36:06So when a kid went to go visit his dad, even if he was 20

36:11yards away from him in the prison waiting room, he had to use a video

36:15terminal, which cost $12 .99 for 20 minutes, and he was not allowed to see

36:20his dad in person. So that's an example of, you know, and that's in the

36:27contract, that's in the Securus contract that said that they have to eliminate the in

36:31-person visits. So when you allow that for -profit motive to be driving things in

36:37these like state institutions where theoretically we should, you know, have some kind of like

36:42moral approach that makes sense for society or, you know, can help community or build

36:48our relationships or help people stay in touch with their loved ones when they're incarcerated.

36:54When you add that for -profit motive there, the system is just designed to exploit.

37:00It just is natural that all those people have to get, you know, they all

37:05have, there's a kind of a value to every visit.

37:09Every time a visit, you know, every time a kid comes and visits a parent,

37:13it's worth $12 .99. Well, why do it for free if you can get $12

37:17.99 for it? It's worth $12 .99.

37:20Well, it's worth $12 .99.

37:21Well, it's worth $12 .99.

37:21Well, it's worth $13 .99.

37:22Well, it's worth $13 .99.

37:22Well, it It's one of the darker aspects of human nature in regards to our

37:26relationship with money. If that so many people, if unchecked, if you give them the

37:32opportunity to make more money at the expense of other people, they do it.

37:36They just do it. They do, especially in under the framework of a corporation.

37:41The framework of a corporation allows you to have a diffusion of responsibility because you

37:47don't think that you're the one doing this horrible thing.

37:50It's this thing that you work for and I'm just doing my job.

37:54And also, if you're involved in a corrupt system and this is your job and

38:00you think of these people as all good people that are part of the corrupt

38:02system, it sort of minimizes the horrible feelings that you have about that corruption.

38:08You just dismiss it. I really believe – I've heard you talk about the diffusion

38:13of responsibility before. I think it's such a huge part of what drives all this

38:20is that you have people who don't really have to ask themselves the hard question.

38:26Am I the person that's exploiting somebody?

38:29Am I the person that's overcharging a mom?

38:32Am I the person that's charging somebody a crazy amount of money for their medication

38:37or allowing somebody to die from medical neglect?

38:42Because once you have a corporation and you look at that org chart, you can

38:48see the org chart as, oh, that's a nice orderly way of getting commerce to

38:52move forward. But it's also a thousand points of responsibility.

38:56Every one of those persons just takes a tiny measure of responsibility.

39:01Well, I'm just in the accounting department.

39:03I mean, you know, I don't make the rules.

39:06I don't make the laws, you know, and you see that, you know, in the

39:09healthcare industry, people recording their calls with their healthcare providers or their insurance companies saying,

39:16oh, I'm sorry. I really can't answer.

39:18That's not my job. Somebody else makes that decision.

39:20And so when you have these massive organizations, there's a way for very bad things

39:27to happen. And it's like the death of a thousand cuts.

39:30And it's also everybody's trying to maximize profit.

39:34And when you're trying to maximize profit, you just find some ways to justify things.

39:39Like your main job is not to help people.

39:41These prisons aren't rehabilitation centers.

39:43You're trying to make like you actually profit off people becoming like functional members of

39:49society once they get released.

39:51That would be amazing. Then you'd have an incentive to make people better people in

39:55prison. Like imagine if their profit was based on people being rehabilitated, reentering society and

40:02becoming, you know, functional, proper members of society where they contribute.

40:08Sure. Yeah. I mean the incentives are so – They're twisted.

40:12Yeah. They're so twisted. It's like that saying money is the root of all evil.

40:15It's not the root of all evil.

40:16It's the root of most of it though.

40:18It's like a giant percentage of it.

40:20Yeah. Maybe it's 75 percent of evil.

40:22The rest of it's like what?

40:23Lust? Yeah. I mean I guess money is – Anger, jealousy?

40:27Yeah. That's the root of a lot of evil.

40:29You know, whatever. Whatever the other percentage is.

40:32But money, 60 percent maybe?

40:34Let's be charitable? It's the root of a lot of fucking evil, man.

40:38And when you can do it inside of this framework of a corporation, it's so

40:44twisted because it's ubiquitous. It exists in almost all industries.

40:49There's always – whether it's the – like this is the reason why people celebrated

40:53when that healthcare executive was shot.

40:56Right. They were like, hey, man, fuck you guys.

40:59Like, yeah, finally one of you guys got it.

41:01I lost my dad. I lost my mom.

41:03I lost my sister. You know, that kind of shit is in every fucking industry.

41:09Yeah. Whether it's military industrial complex, whether it's the health insurance complex, whether it's pharmaceutical

41:15drug industry. When you look at the Sackler family and what they did with opioids,

41:20I'm sure you've seen the Netflix, the Peterberg Netflix painkiller series.

41:25Yeah. Fucking incredible. It's just incredible that that guy's just walking around.

41:29You're responsible for the death of who knows how many people.

41:33Because who knows how many people that had relationships with the people that got addicted

41:38also lost their lives, also lost everything.

41:42Because you're dealing with a brother or a mom that's completely lost and addicted.

41:47You've got – your life is hijacked now by this situation.

41:51You've lost your dad. You've lost your mom.

41:54You lost a spouse. Fuck.

41:56Yeah. I mean, you know, I've heard you talk a lot about mental health.

42:01And obviously there are a lot of causes of mental health problems.

42:05And, you know, that includes social media.

42:09It includes sort of alienation.

42:11It includes a lot of things that are, you know, present in society.

42:14But the prison industrial complex and the experience of having somebody incarcerated has a huge

42:24impact on mental health. They – you know, I think people don't realize when you

42:29have 2 million people locked up in these facilities and many of them are just

42:35being traumatized every day. Whether they're seeing somebody get killed or they're constantly in fear

42:40for their life. The idea that those people are going to somehow be okay when

42:43you want to let them out 10 years later and they're going to rejoin society.

42:47You give them $50 and a bus ticket and you say, hey, I hope you

42:50can become a taxpayer. Meantime, they don't have enough money to pay for one red

42:54roof in for one night.

42:56They can't do anything when they get out of prison.

43:00And then we say, well, why is there such high recidivism?

43:03I guess that means they're bad people.

43:04So let's put them back in.

43:06Right. You know. So the mental health implications for the people that are incarcerated are

43:10huge and the people who are in their families, as you say.

43:13Right. Imagine the anxiety you don't have any family members and they're going to give

43:17you $50. And now you're out.

43:19And you have to figure out how to eat, how to get a roof over

43:23your head and try to figure out a way to earn money.

43:25Yeah. With $50. Yeah. And there are ways to do it.

43:29You know, there are – if you go into the – I mean all this

43:32sounds very dark and horrible and it is.

43:35But the – There are a lot of positive developments that you can see when

43:43you give them a chance to grow in society, you know.

43:47So, for example, like I love what you say about community, you know, about the

43:53importance of building community and seeing the country as our community.

43:59And, you know, if we're torturing people that are in our community, if we're being

44:04cruel to people that are in our community, what does it say about us?

44:07Right. You know, what does it say about Christianity?

44:12What does it say about, you know, about God?

44:15What does it say about forgiveness?

44:19And clearly, we see that there are so many instances where people are trying, you

44:26know, trying to do something better.

44:28There's a woman named Erica in Alabama who is a mental health professional.

44:35And she described to me what it was like to try to give mental health

44:38services to people who are incarcerated.

44:41And I was trying to figure out, you know, looking at these images of the

44:45places that they keep people in, these cells, these solitary cells with just a little

44:50tray slot. And, you know, they're in there for in a five by eight room

44:55with no windows and they could be in there literally for years.

45:01And I said to her, well, can you tell me, like, when you do a

45:03session with somebody and you're trying to, you know, talk to them about their suicidal

45:08ideation or their various problems, you know, what does that look like?

45:13How does that work? And she goes, well, you know, it's a little uncomfortable because,

45:16you know, I got to be on my knees.

45:17And I said, wait, why are you on your knees?

45:21She said, oh, well, I have to be able to talk through the tray slot.

45:25And I said, so when you're giving a mental health counseling session to somebody who's

45:29incarcerated, you're not allowed to open the door.

45:33You're not allowed to see, assuming that person's not like having a violent fit or

45:37something like that. You're not allowed to sit down across from them and have that

45:41conversation. She said, no, no, no.

45:43But it's OK. I just put my mouth up to the tray slot.

45:46And I just thought, you know, when you think about the idea that that's going

45:51to be somehow something that will give relief to somebody who's really struggling with a

45:56mental health crisis in prison, you know, we're doing the absolute minimum.

46:01You know, we're checking the box that says, yeah, once a month, this guy has

46:05a psychiatric evaluation. But nobody's taking a picture of that and showing what it really

46:09looks like to have this nice, you know, young lady, this idealistic, young mental health

46:15person kneeling outside of a metal cell with, you know, bloodstains on it, talking to

46:21somebody inside. Through a food slot.

46:24Through a food slot. And that's probably the only interaction this person has with human

46:27beings other than the guards.

46:29Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not very cruel.

46:33Yeah. And you're alone in that cell, which is also terrible for mental health.

46:39Like, there's nothing worse for mental health than complete total isolation.

46:43Yeah. With no access to anything.

46:45Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Have you ever had experiences with people, friends or family who've been

46:52incarcerated? Oh, yeah. Yeah. What have you?

46:54What's that been like? Well, I had this one friend that I used to do

47:01martial arts with when I was a kid.

47:03And when I was probably around 16, 16 or 17, he wound up going to

47:12jail. I didn't know him that well, but I knew him as this guy who

47:18competed in tournaments and, you know, he would show up and train with us.

47:22And he's just a pretty tough guy.

47:25He went into jail and he came out, first of all, much bigger.

47:28He was just like stacked with muscle.

47:31All of his tattoos, he burned off.

47:34So he had scars, like these big keloid scars over all of his tattoos now.

47:40And he was a completely different person, like a violent animal, like a terrifying guy

47:47to spar with. If you spar with him, you were in a – it wasn't

47:51– there was nothing – no holding back.

47:52But sparring, for the most part, when you like people, you're hitting them only a

47:58certain percentage of your strength.

48:00This guy was not doing any of that.

48:02He was full blast with everything.

48:04It was like a caged animal.

48:06And as I got to be closer to him – I actually became closer to

48:11him after he got out of prison than he was before.

48:14You know, because I just spent more time sparring him and hanging out and training

48:18with him and, you know, being in these group classes with him.

48:22He started telling me these stories about what it was like in jail and just

48:26fighting for his life. He had to take on three guys and he picked up

48:30a broomstick and he was beating these – he was just telling me these crazy

48:33stories of guys trying to kill him in jail.

48:36You know, and he was in there for three years for drug selling.

48:39And then he went right back to selling drugs.

48:41I mean, he eventually got arrested.

48:45And I've told this story before, but it's kind of crazy.

48:48They found a guy that had every bone in his body broken with hammers.

48:56And they kept him awake by injecting him with cocaine.

48:59They kept injecting him with cocaine.

49:01And then they cut his arms off.

49:03They cut his hands off and then they cut his head off.

49:05And they found his body.

49:06But it's like all of his bones have been shattered.

49:08And this guy that I knew as a kid got arrested for that.

49:14They never wound up trying him for that.

49:16They brought him in for questioning.

49:18He definitely knew something about it.

49:20He knew either the people that did it or knew something about it.

49:23It was all drug related and he was selling cocaine.

49:26And then I lost touch with him after that.

49:29That's a crazy story. Oh, yeah.

49:31I knew quite a few guys like that because the world of fighting, like people

49:37that are interested in entering in competitions with people, you get a lot of troubled

49:43people, a lot of very angry people, you know, a lot of them that come

49:47from violent households. They were beating his children.

49:51They were beating his children.

49:51or they were bullied as kids, depending on where.

49:54I came from the most mild of those environments.

49:59I didn't have anybody abusing me.

50:02I lived in the suburbs of Boston.

50:05I lived in Newton, which is a really nice neighborhood.

50:07I just was interested in martial arts.

50:10And then I was fascinated by this idea of bettering myself through competition because it

50:14was so scary. And then all of a sudden I'm around like hit men.

50:18I knew one guy who was a hit man for Whitey Bulger.

50:21And I would train him.

50:23I would teach this guy how to do martial arts.

50:26And he was an assassin.

50:28That's amazing. It was very strange.

50:31I knew a bunch of organized crime figures, mostly with the Irish mob.

50:36A lot of those guys came and trained.

50:38And especially because they knew some other guys that we knew that were a couple

50:43of, one of my friends who was a professional boxer, and he lived in South

50:47Boston. He was very tight with a lot of these guys.

50:49So some of these guys came to train with us.

50:51And it was a very weird exposure for me.

50:53I'd never been around any of that.

50:55I'd never had anyone in my family that went to jail.

50:58No one was a, you know, no one was a criminal.

51:01No one was a drug addict.

51:02No, there's nothing really crazy.

51:04Yeah. And then all of a sudden I was around a lot of these people

51:07that either went to jail eventually or had been in jail.

51:13Yeah. Because I think there's that question of, you know, people say, well, if you

51:19don't like the prison system the way it is, or if you don't think people

51:22should get locked up forever, then, you know, you're just soft on crime.

51:25And, you know, obviously, you know, you're some kind of snowflake.

51:30But clearly there's a role for prison.

51:35There's a role for jail.

51:38The question is whether we should be putting people into institutions that just further damage

51:45them, further re -traumatize them.

51:47Right. You're just making them hardened.

51:48They're going to be worse criminals if they get out, if and when they get

51:52out. Yeah. And there's no emphasis on rehabilitation.

51:56So that's the thing. It's like if you're releasing them back into the street, like

51:58what are you doing to the rest of the society?

52:00If you're taking a person who's committed a violent crime, making them way worse in

52:05jail, and then releasing them.

52:06This is like a slow bomb, you know.

52:09It's a slow release bomb.

52:11And then also they have no options because no one wants to hire an ex

52:13-convict, especially someone who went to jail for like aggravating assault or something like that.

52:18So it's very, very difficult for these people and very, very difficult for society to

52:23make a decision. You know, you want to make a quick fix of something.

52:26You want to protect people.

52:27Just keep them in jail.

52:28Keep everybody in jail. But there's zero emphasis on how to take a person from

52:34a completely broken childhood, broken home, violence, drug addiction in the home, all the chaos,

52:43complete accustomed, completely being accustomed to violent crime because it's all around you.

52:48It's in your neighborhood. Imitate your atmosphere.

52:51And then what do we do with these people?

52:53You know, there's no emphasis whatsoever on it.

52:55It's just using them as human batteries to generate money.

52:58And that's evil. That's what's really crazy.

53:01And this is where people have subverted this idea of incarceration being some sort of

53:07a rehabilitation or correction. Right?

53:09They call them correctional facilities.

53:11You're not correcting anything. You're just making money.

53:14You're just making money off of people and you're taking advantage of the fact that

53:17no one wants to pay attention to it because society generally looks at people that

53:21are criminals and have committed violent crimes as like, oh, well, fuck them.

53:26Push them aside. And look, there's some people that I agree.

53:29Yeah, fuck them. If there's people that have, you know, killed a bunch of people

53:32and raped a bunch of people and are constantly robbing people and breaking their houses

53:36or violent, yeah, fuck those people.

53:39Fuck those people. But that's a small percentage of what's in jail.

53:43A large percentage is nonviolent drug offenders.

53:45And that's where it gets really weird.

53:48It's like so a person is deciding.

53:50You can have the drugs that we sanction.

53:52You can have the drugs that we tax.

53:54You can have these drugs.

53:55You can have these prescription drugs.

53:57You could have this drug that you buy in the liquor store that we call

54:00alcohol, which is clearly a drug.

54:01You could buy your cigarettes.

54:03You could buy your coffee.

54:04You could get all these drugs that we like.

54:06Adderall? You need Adderall. Oh, Andrew, I think you're doing a little ADHD.

54:10Maybe you should use some fucking speed.

54:12And we'll sell you that speed and we'll tax that speed.

54:16Anything else, we'll put you in a cage because you're not following our rules.

54:22And it's like a grown adult telling another grown adult what they can or can't

54:27do with their life is responsible for, what, 50 % of the people that are

54:32in cages? That's kind of crazy.

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55:42Yeah. That's really crazy. Yeah.

55:44I mean there's this kind of illusion that everybody that is in prison for something

55:52that we don't think, the average person doesn't think they should be in prison for

55:56for many, many, many years, like a drug crime or being an addict, basically.

56:03That all those people have been let out.

56:05already. That somehow like prison activist people have said, well, all the people that are

56:11in there for drug crimes should be released.

56:15But it's not really true.

56:17You have an enormous criminalization of drug addiction.

56:22So you're already making people sort of feel hopeless.

56:26Then they're turning to drugs, and then you're putting them into cages.

56:31So like Steve Marshall, for example, the AG in Alabama says, well, we've already released

56:38all of the nonviolent criminals, right?

56:40So the only people that are locked in there are the worst of the worst.

56:43But, you know, that's clearly not true just because of sales from your documentary.

56:47Yeah, of course. So you have, you know, and he was put into a maximum

56:51security facility for entering an unoccupied building.

56:55That's because there's sort of an inflation of this concept of violence.

57:00So they will, in Alabama, I think there are 44 different crimes that are that

57:04are considered violent crimes. And they include crimes that you and I would not consider

57:09violent. You know, so if somebody threatens somebody verbally, like most people do in arguments

57:15with, you know, people that they're mad at or whatever, but doesn't assault somebody, that

57:20could be considered a violent crime.

57:21If somebody enters a building, whether they steal something or not, that could be considered

57:27a violent crime. And so it makes it easier just to, as you say, like,

57:32I like that image of the battery.

57:34I think about it as like, sometimes like the matrix that, you know, for Alabama

57:39to do what it's doing, it's got to have 20 ,000 people in suspended animation,

57:43because that's how you can use them for labor.

57:46That's how you can use them to sell them stuff.

57:49That's how you can charge them for fees and fines, you know, that that you

57:53need that many people. I think they did a terrible thing when they allowed private

57:57prisons. I think it's a terrible thing.

58:00I think, like, if you think about the people that founded this country, and the

58:06people that wrote the Constitution, they had a great understanding of where, how tyranny can

58:12emerge. And so they tried to create a system, and again, 1776, crazy to think

58:19that we're still following those same rules today, you know, but they had a great

58:22understanding. Don't worry, we're not following those rules.

58:25But the checks and balances and make sure that one person couldn't accumulate all of

58:30the power. Whoever first initiated the policy of allowing and paying for private prisons to

58:41exist in this country, did not think it through like that at all, did not

58:45think of incentives, did not think of how people always, when given the chance to

58:50make more money, figure out a way to justify making that more money, and come

58:55up with rules or regulations or carve outs, caveats, some reason why they can continue

59:02to accelerate. And then you don't think about the fact that prison guard unions, and

59:08these private prisons, these people that own them, actively work to keep some laws on

59:14the books, that maybe the general public would not want to be illegal anymore, certain

59:19things. And they do that just so they can keep their prisons full, so they

59:23can keep making more money.

59:24So then they take the money that they get from these private prisons, where they're

59:28using people as human batteries, to make sure there's still laws in place that are

59:33ridiculous, so that they can keep arresting people, so they can keep filling up their

59:37buildings and making more money.

59:38And the fact that nobody saw that coming.

59:41Nobody saw that coming. They saw it coming.

59:43I don't even know if they did.

59:45You know, I think they probably short term were just saying, oh, this is a

59:48good business. We'll get into it.

59:50Then the business, like we got to grow this business, just like everything else.

59:53Like if you're selling tires, you know, you got to make better tires, sell more

59:56tires. We're trying to set, we want to be number one in the tire business.

1:00:00Well, they're trying to be number one in the human battery business.

1:00:03Yeah. And that's what's fucking insane about allowing that in this country.

1:00:08And how do you put that genie back in the bottle?

1:00:10I don't know. But I think it's very sick.

1:00:14Well, the genies figured out a way to get into a whole new bottle because

1:00:19a lot of people say to us, well, this film that you made, The Alabama

1:00:24Solution, is obviously about Alabama state prisons.

1:00:28Are those private prisons? And we always say, no, those are state run institutions.

1:00:34But they kind of function like private prisons in a way because they're able to

1:00:40make deals with securists about their prison phone system.

1:00:45And that makes millions and millions and millions of dollars that's extracted from the poorest

1:00:48people in the country, right, who are being charged like high, you know, daily and

1:00:54even per minute fees for being able to communicate with their families.

1:00:59Then you have companies who are selling the food to the prisons.

1:01:03You have companies that are doing health care contracts with the prisons.

1:01:07And so there's so much money in that, that they sort of, even though the

1:01:13state owns that piece of land, it still kind of functions the way that private

1:01:18prisons function. So we've sort of just given over the care of 2 million Americans

1:01:24to companies that are accountable to their shareholders, maybe, but the shareholders don't know.

1:01:32Well, they're certainly not accountable to humane living conditions.

1:01:36That one scene where Kinetic Justice, that gentleman, what's his real name?

1:01:40Robert Earl Council. When Robert Earl Council was in solitary and you see the rats

1:01:45swimming in his toilet. Rats are swimming in his toilet and he has rats in

1:01:50a water jar. And what did he say?

1:01:5211 caught in one night.

1:01:54And why are they there?

1:01:55Because, you know, he tries to put his food in a bag that hangs on

1:01:59the door of the cell, but then they write him a disciplinary for doing that.

1:02:03But if he takes his food out of the bag and he puts it on

1:02:06the counter, then the rats are going to get it during the night.

1:02:08They're just everywhere. Yeah. Yeah.

1:02:10So there are rats, all there are rats throughout the prison, you know.

1:02:14And so he has to sleep in this room where these rats are crawling all

1:02:17over him at night. Yeah.

1:02:19Yeah. You know, People – just to get into him for a second, I mean

1:02:22he is frankly one of the most – one of the bravest people I've ever

1:02:28met in my life. This is a guy who was incarcerated when he was 19

1:02:32and he was selling drugs in his neighborhood.

1:02:38Somebody is trying to chase him down with a car and almost runs him over

1:02:44and he shoots the person through the window and the guy dies.

1:02:47So this is now 30 years ago.

1:02:50In any other condition, you would have thought that's a self -defense case, right?

1:02:55It was clear that he was trying to prevent somebody from running him over with

1:03:00a car. And yet here he is 30 years later with a life without parole

1:03:05sentence in an Alabama prison and he's spending his time trying to organize nonviolent labor

1:03:15strikes. He's trying to do hunger strikes.

1:03:17He's trying to use every method that he can use to call attention to the

1:03:24problem that 20 ,000 other people have.

1:03:26And he's using a contraband cell phone to talk to us knowing that he's probably

1:03:30going to get retaliated against by the authorities once the film comes out or once

1:03:34they know that he's organizing a labor strike.

1:03:38He would be an unbelievable asset to society if he were out in the world,

1:03:46right? He's advocating for nonviolence.

1:03:48He's obviously smart as a whip.

1:03:50And he's incredibly motivating to other people.

1:03:53He's got that entire prison system listening to him when they want to be violent

1:03:59because they're so angry at the treatment.

1:04:01And the prison system starts bird feeding them, starts to cut off their food rations

1:04:07to force them back to work.

1:04:09And kinetic, Robert Earl is the person who says, you know, that's not going to

1:04:13solve anything. We don't want to do that.

1:04:15So, you know, you see this huge level of humanity, talent, thoughtfulness in people that

1:04:23are locked away. And we just assume, well, if they're in prison, that means that

1:04:27they're bad people. And meantime, there's so many other people on the outside who don't

1:04:31get locked up for doing things that are much worse.

1:04:35You know, so it's a very confusing message to be sending.

1:04:40Well, especially for someone like you who did the jinx and then you do this.

1:04:43Yeah. I mean, it's a really good point.

1:04:45You know, I worked for a long time on the story of Robert Durst.

1:04:50And when we discovered evidence that showed that he had killed his wife and his

1:04:56best friend and his neighbor in Galveston dismembered him, we found the only evidence that

1:05:02proved that he did those things.

1:05:04And suddenly I was in a dialogue with the L .A.

1:05:08district attorney, the L .A.

1:05:09PD, talking about how to get him arrested.

1:05:13You know, and even if I don't believe in the way that we incarcerate people,

1:05:17it's clear that there's a role for prison.

1:05:19And there's clearly a guy like Bob Durst who keeps killing people needs to be

1:05:24taken out of society. What kind of prison is he in?

1:05:26Well, he died now and he was locked up in a facility in Northern California.

1:05:34It was sort of a facility for senior citizens who had medical problems.

1:05:38So, you know, a lot of really rich people, as you could tell from, you

1:05:43know, there have been a bunch of cases on this, really rich people hire consultants

1:05:49to help them navigate what prison they're going to end up going to.

1:05:53They can negotiate for better conditions.

1:05:56And so you end up, you know, with that sort of situation where a guy

1:06:00who maybe has stolen $100 million and not paid his taxes or taken money from

1:06:06his workers or committed some horrible act of fraud ends up in a prison farm,

1:06:13ends up in a pretty nice facility where, you know, he has access to lots

1:06:17of things. And then you have poor people that are locked up in places that

1:06:21have rats in their cells and vermin.

1:06:25But, yeah, I was always sort of amazed that Robert Durst was able to get

1:06:31away with what he got away with for so long.

1:06:35Why do you think that is?

1:06:37Well, you know, how much did you know about it before you started the documentary

1:06:41series? Well, I knew a lot because I had made a film, a narrative film

1:06:47called All Good Things about sort of Robert Durst's origin story.

1:06:51His relationship with his beautiful wife when they were both young, before all the bad

1:06:56stuff started happening and he became the guy that he became.

1:07:01There was this kind of strange love story between this kind of difficult man and

1:07:07this very lovely girl, Kathleen McCormick.

1:07:11And I made this film.

1:07:14Ryan Gosling played the Bob Durst character and Kirsten Dunst played his wife.

1:07:21And really investigated that story so that we could tell the tale of what had

1:07:26happened to them in an accurate way.

1:07:28And while I was doing that, we reached out to Robert Durst, to the real

1:07:34Robert Durst. And I said, you know, we're making this film about, I guess we

1:07:37spoke to his lawyer. So we're making this film about you, about your client.

1:07:42And we'd like to talk to him, get his input, make sure that we're trying

1:07:45to tell the story accurately.

1:07:46What was the premise of the film?

1:07:47It was basically the story about him and his wife when they first met this

1:07:52rich guy and this girl from sort of the other side of the tracks.

1:07:55And then how eventually that relationship got toxic.

1:07:58Eventually he kills her. And then later his best friend, Susan Berman, who knows about

1:08:05what happened to his wife, starts to become problematic.

1:08:09Then he kills her. And then later he moves to Galveston, Texas and disguises himself

1:08:14as a deaf mute woman, if you remember this.

1:08:17And he ends up becoming friends with his elderly neighbor and this guy named Morris

1:08:26Black. And they go out shooting on Pelican Island and so on.

1:08:30And eventually they have a little altercation because he figured out.

1:08:34who Bob Durst was and that he was sort of on the run, and he

1:08:38dismembers that man. He kills him and dismembers him.

1:08:41This movie with Kristen Dunst, when was that released?

1:08:45I guess we started working on that in around 2005, and it came out in

1:08:492010. So in 2010, it's about to come out in theaters, this film, and there

1:08:55was a big article in New York Times about how accurate it was and how

1:08:58much we had done to make sure that the details were right and so on.

1:09:02And the real Robert Durst reads the article and calls me out of the blue.

1:09:09And I had tried to get in touch with him before without any success, and

1:09:13he actually calls the distributor of the film first, Magnolia Pictures, and he asked for

1:09:20the president, Eamon Bowles. And Eamon and I would use Bob's voice like when we

1:09:30would talk to each other because Bob had a very recognizable voice.

1:09:33So when I would call him, we would hang up and I would say, bye

1:09:37-bye. And that was always sort of Bob's tone.

1:09:41And then one day somebody calls Eamon's office and says, this is Robert Durst.

1:09:45And so his secretary walks in the office and says like, you know, in air

1:09:48quotes, like, it's Robert Durst on the phone thinking that it's me.

1:09:51And he picks up the phone.

1:09:52And he's like, hey, Bob, I, you know, I'm not surprised you're calling.

1:09:55I think we did a hell of a job on the film.

1:09:57And there's a long pause.

1:09:58And he says, the guy says, who am I talking to?

1:10:02And Eamon says, oh, who's this?

1:10:05And he says, this is Robert Durst.

1:10:07And so he reaches out to me.

1:10:09I knew that he was trying to get, trying to reach me so I could

1:10:13record my very first phone call with him.

1:10:15And I call him and I say, listen, I'm keen to talk to you.

1:10:20I've been making this film about you for the last five years.

1:10:22And he said, well, I would like to see the film.

1:10:25So I arranged for him to see the film.

1:10:28And he calls me immediately after he sees the film.

1:10:31And he says, I want you to know I like the movie very much.

1:10:36The movie kind of shows him killing great people, right?

1:10:39And I said, well, why did you like it?

1:10:41And he said, well, you know, you did a beautiful job explaining what I was

1:10:46going through as a child and the difficulty I had and losing my mother.

1:10:51And Kirsten Dunst was just like my wife, Kathy.

1:10:55And I cried three times.

1:10:57And I would like to do something with you.

1:10:59You know, I would like there to be something out there from me.

1:11:03My ability to sort of tell my story.

1:11:06And I said, all right, well, why don't we sit down?

1:11:08I'll ask you a bunch of questions.

1:11:10And he said, that's fine.

1:11:11OK, let's do that. So I so I end up sitting with him for three

1:11:14days. I've just finished a movie about him, a dramatic film, which is now in

1:11:19theaters. And I sit down with him and interview him for 21 hours.

1:11:25And you think you do long interviews.

1:11:27He's 21 hours with this one person.

1:11:30And he is fascinating. I mean, absolutely extraordinary.

1:11:35He's he is incredibly honest about things that most people would never be honest about.

1:11:40Like, you know, he talks about how, you know, he had violent arguments with his

1:11:46wife or he says, you know, that he he says crazy stuff.

1:11:50I mean, he explained to me that I said, you know, I think you were

1:11:53kind of offensive when you went to visit her mother, you know, she had this

1:11:56mother who was in her 80s and you went to visit her mother.

1:12:03And, you know, I think you did some odd things.

1:12:06He goes, well, yeah, you know, I visited those people and they were, you know,

1:12:09that woman, she reads Yankee magazine and and, you know, and she asked me how

1:12:16I liked her daughter. And I told her that Kathy had come out of the

1:12:21shower and my penis was hard.

1:12:24Like you said that to her aging mother.

1:12:27Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what am I going to assure that's what I thought, you

1:12:30know, you know, or you say to him, well, what did you say?

1:12:35I, you know, why did you tell the police that after your wife, after you

1:12:42put your wife on the train, you went to the neighbors to have a drink

1:12:45when that clearly wasn't true?

1:12:46Oh, yes, I lied about that.

1:12:48I said, well, why did you lie to the police?

1:12:50Well, you know, I needed to be somewhere and I wanted them to stop asking

1:12:53me questions. So, you know, I told them that I went to the neighbors.

1:12:57I said, well, that was so easy to disprove.

1:12:58They just talked to the neighbor.

1:13:00Well, yeah, but, you know, I don't, people don't usually do that.

1:13:02But so he's very candid.

1:13:05He speaks very, very openly, almost like having a level of sort of Asperger's.

1:13:11Did you believe him at any moment while he's telling you this?

1:13:14Because obviously he's proclaiming his innocence, right?

1:13:17Yeah. I mean, he is so good at telling the story his way.

1:13:27And he tells you so many facts that are true that when he occasionally lies

1:13:32about really critical things, I think a lot of people just didn't pay attention to

1:13:37that. I did because I had already researched the story.

1:13:40So I knew when he was trying to tell me something that was bullshit that

1:13:45it was bullshit. But, you know, I did have to put myself in a position

1:13:50of giving him the benefit of the doubt whenever I could, partly because that was

1:13:55the only, you know, you got to just get into that mode where you're trying

1:13:59to hear his version without debating it the whole time.

1:14:03Right. Because otherwise he's not going to tell you his version.

1:14:07And, you know, you want to hear his theory about all this stuff.

1:14:10And in the course of that, he really indicts himself.

1:14:16I mean, you know, he sort of came into it with the attitude that he

1:14:18wanted to tell his version of the story so people would stop thinking he was

1:14:22a murderer. But during the course of it, he admits to so many bad things

1:14:27that, you know, you just pretty quickly assume that he is guilty.

1:14:32How old is he when you first started filming him?

1:14:35I guess he was in his early 70s.

1:14:39So he's probably already experiencing some kind of cognitive decline.

1:14:45And then you have the years and years of hiding all this.

1:14:48You what did you think?

1:14:49which wears on you. Yeah.

1:14:51Yeah. And I do think there was a, I think he had a compulsion to

1:14:54confess. Yeah. I think most people that aren't complete sociopaths, they get to a certain

1:15:02point in time where it's almost too much and they want to tell people.

1:15:05Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that ultimately what happened with him, as you may remember,

1:15:11is he, we find this evidence.

1:15:16The evidence I thought was determinative.

1:15:18I thought it was going to be something that police would ultimately use to convict

1:15:22him for murder. But we...

1:15:24What was that evidence again?

1:15:25So there's a, so, so there was a famous note that, that the killer of

1:15:30Susan Berman, this friend of Bob Durst in California, had left behind when he shot

1:15:37Susan Berman. And the note said, 1527 Benedict Canyon, cadaver.

1:15:45And it was sent to the Beverly Hills Police Department.

1:15:49And that very seldom happens, but people speculated a lot.

1:15:52Well, why would somebody who killed somebody have sent a note to the police?

1:15:57Well, maybe if he liked the person, if it was his best friend, this woman,

1:16:00Susan Berman, and it was Bob Durst that did it, then maybe he wouldn't want

1:16:04her body to lie there.

1:16:05And, you know, she has dogs.

1:16:07They didn't want the dogs to mess with the body.

1:16:09So he may have just killed her and then left this note.

1:16:13But then later when he was asked about it, he said, I have no knowledge

1:16:16about that note. So when we're doing our investigation, we discover a letter that he

1:16:22had written to Susan Berman that has almost the exact same words on it because

1:16:27it's addressed to her at 1527 Benedict Canyon.

1:16:30So we can see the handwriting on that, not just a handwriting sample, but a

1:16:35handwriting sample that's saying exactly what it said on the letter that...

1:16:39Right, with the same misspelled words, right?

1:16:41Exactly. And he writes 1527 Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills, California, misspells the word Beverly, puts

1:16:48in an extra E at the end.

1:16:50And of course, this letter that we find, he also misspells the word Beverly.

1:16:57So nobody had ever seen or the police hadn't known about this letter.

1:17:01So we find it. And then I immediately start planning a way for me to

1:17:07show it to him in a second interview.

1:17:08And he had always said to me, like, oh, if you ever need me to

1:17:11sit down again, I'm happy to come back and I'll ask him, you know, I'll

1:17:14answer any question you want.

1:17:16But I start to call him about doing the second interview and he gets very

1:17:19skittish. And then this goes on for two years.

1:17:23And so we have this evidence, but we need to show it to him.

1:17:28And I had done a bunch of research.

1:17:30I talked to Marsha Clark, for example, you know, who was smart about how the

1:17:34L .A. District Attorney's Office works.

1:17:36And she said, if you had the opportunity to sit down with him and show

1:17:40him the evidence, do that before you go to the police, because it's going to

1:17:45be very, the police are not going to be able to do something like that.

1:17:48And he's going to lawyer up.

1:17:49But you guys, before you're even in contact with law enforcement, you could show him

1:17:53the evidence and he's going to have to react to it.

1:17:55And I bet it's going to be interesting.

1:17:56So we finally get him to sit for the second interview.

1:18:00And I show him the evidence in the interview.

1:18:02And he has this incredible meltdown.

1:18:04You know, I don't know if you remember this, but he starts burping uncontrollably and

1:18:09he starts rubbing his face and breathing.

1:18:11And he's obviously very, very surprised to see that there's this letter that matches the

1:18:19cadaver note that he admitted could only have been written by the killer.

1:18:23So he's sort of in a, he's trapped.

1:18:27And I finished the interview with him and he gets up and goes to the

1:18:31bathroom and he leaves his microphone attached.

1:18:36And while he's in the bathroom, he confesses to the murder.

1:18:39He's, you know, he's a guy who talks to himself a lot.

1:18:41And he always said that to me.

1:18:43He said, oh, sometimes I talk to myself for long periods of time and I

1:18:46get in fights with people because they think that I'm hassling them, but it's just

1:18:50me. I just talk to myself.

1:18:51So when he goes in the bathroom, the first thing he says when he goes

1:18:57in is, there it is, you're caught.

1:19:00He says that to himself.

1:19:02And it's, it's, it's, it's, and then he goes on to say, killed them all.

1:19:08I killed them all, of course.

1:19:10And it's such an extraordinary thing to have.

1:19:14Did you have your headphones on while he was doing that?

1:19:17No. And that's, that's kind of fascinating.

1:19:19So I didn't know that he said anything when he went to the bathroom.

1:19:24And so we're working with the LAPD.

1:19:27We're giving them the printed evidence, this, the letter that matches the cadaver note.

1:19:32And it's a pretty strong case already.

1:19:35And we don't know that he's said a word in the bathroom.

1:19:39And it's not until 26 months later that we have an editor, Shelby Siegel, who

1:19:48is just going through audio and kind of cleaning up old tracks because we're getting

1:19:53ready to deliver the film to HBO.

1:19:56And she sees on the, the, uh, on the editing system that there's a little

1:20:01wave form. There's a little squiggle that shows that there's some audio when he's in

1:20:06the bathroom. So she, the problem was that I had a microphone that was a

1:20:10microphone in the room and he had a microphone on.

1:20:13So there's a lot of noise.

1:20:14We're finishing. I just finished the interview.

1:20:16I'm incredibly excited that I got him to give this crazy reaction.

1:20:21And it's pretty obvious that that's going to be, you know, part of proving that

1:20:25he's guilty. And so I'm out there kind of whispering to the crew, there's noise

1:20:30in the room and there's noise in the bathroom.

1:20:32And so she mutes the other microphones and she hears him say, there it is,

1:20:38you're caught. And she screams and she runs in the next room to where my,

1:20:43uh, uh, other, our main editor was, Zach.

1:20:47And she says, you, you have to hear this.

1:20:50And he listens to it and he says, wait a minute, I was there that

1:20:53day and we have audio.

1:20:55That's a continuation of that.

1:20:57That audio stops at, at, at, uh, there it is, you're caught.

1:21:01But there's, he was in the bathroom for seven minutes.

1:21:04So they go and get the drive that has the other seven minutes of audio

1:21:08on it, and it's this long, rambling confession.

1:21:13And I come over and I listen to it, and I can't believe what we're

1:21:18hearing. I mean, it was extraordinary.

1:21:20And I had to call the LAPD and the LA District Attorney and say, hey,

1:21:26I know, literally two days ago, we gave you the documents.

1:21:30We gave you the letter so that you could start this prosecution.

1:21:33We found something else. And so they come to New York, and they listen to

1:21:37this confession, and it's just absolutely mind -blowing that that happened.

1:21:43And then when the series comes out, we've been working with the police then for

1:21:49a couple of years while they were building the prosecution.

1:21:51And when the film finally comes out, when the series comes out on HBO, he

1:21:57is arrested the day before the final episode.

1:22:00So it's in the final episode that he makes that confession, and they arrest him

1:22:05right before because they knew that he was going to go on the run.

1:22:08Was he aware that you had the audio of the confession?

1:22:11I don't think he remembered saying anything.

1:22:13You know, I don't think he's even all that aware that he sometimes just burbles

1:22:18out with these. Do you think he started, I mean, this is pure speculation, but

1:22:22do you think he started going crazy after he started killing people?

1:22:26Just like the ability to shut that part of your brain off and put that

1:22:32aside and lie about it.

1:22:35Just the struggle of having that information in your head.

1:22:41I think the way that he would have thought about it, you know, from inside

1:22:46the killer, right? He doesn't think of himself as a murderer, right?

1:22:51Steve Marshall in Alabama doesn't think of himself as, you know, this incredibly amoral person.

1:22:56He thinks of himself as law enforcement, right?

1:22:59Bob Durst thinks of himself as just a guy trying to get along, you know,

1:23:04like we all are. So I think what happened was in 1982, he and his

1:23:09wife were having problems in part, in large part because he had big personality problems.

1:23:15I mean, he was not an easy person to deal with at all and was

1:23:20also very spoiled and was also, you know, had all these resources.

1:23:23Grew up wealthy. Yeah, and had a lot of power over her.

1:23:27And so I think something happened between the two of them where they were at

1:23:30their lake house and there was an altercation.

1:23:34He admitted to me that they had had a pushing and shoving argument that night.

1:23:39The night she died. Yeah.

1:23:43And then, you know, he says he took her to the train and sent her

1:23:47into the city, but none of that makes any sense.

1:23:49So I think what happened was he either accidentally or semi -accidentally killed her.

1:23:55I think they had a fight.

1:23:57They ended up getting into some altercation and she landed on the, you know, maybe

1:24:02on the stone of the fireplace or something like that and she was dead.

1:24:07And then he thought, well, it doesn't make any sense for two people to go

1:24:12down. I mean, unfortunate that this had to happen, but I got to get rid

1:24:16of the body. And so he found a way to make her disappear.

1:24:21We don't know exactly what happened to her, but we know that, you know, he

1:24:25alleged that he had put her on the train to go in the city and

1:24:27they never found the body.

1:24:29So after that, he's sort of widely believed to be a likely person to have

1:24:36killed his wife. There's no other explanation for it.

1:24:39And how long did it take before they realized the wife was missing and when

1:24:42did they determine that she was dead?

1:24:43It was a few days later because he kept sort of – he held off

1:24:48on telling anyone. And then later he said, oh, Kathy, you know, I put her

1:24:53on the train to go in the city and then I haven't heard from her.

1:24:56What's going on? So he had a bunch of explanations about why, you know, somehow

1:25:02she had run off with a drug dealer or she had run off with some

1:25:07boyfriend or something like that.

1:25:08But none of those really held water.

1:25:10But it took him a while to report her missing.

1:25:13He waits five days to report her missing and does a brilliant thing, which is

1:25:18he reports her missing in New York City even though the last time she's ever

1:25:23seen is in Westchester. So they were at their house, their lake house in Westchester.

1:25:28She disappears and he goes into the city five days later and he says, oh,

1:25:32my wife was at our apartment.

1:25:34So he complete – this is why I'm saying he's very smart.

1:25:36He completely redirects the police so that they make – because, you know, the police

1:25:42aren't organized for a guy to come in and give a phony story about what

1:25:48happened to his wife. Most of the time somebody comes in and says, my wife

1:25:50is missing and they say, oh, where did you last see her?

1:25:53Let's help you try to find her.

1:25:54So I think he was smart enough to flip that on his head and he

1:25:59says that my wife was in the city.

1:26:01And so they do their whole investigation in the city.

1:26:03They don't look at the lake house.

1:26:04They don't figure out where she really truly might have been.

1:26:08Did they ever do an examination of the lake – like a forensic on the

1:26:11lake house? Yeah, they did and they – it was sort of – because it

1:26:16was so late in the game, because it had taken so long for him to

1:26:19report her missing, they didn't find anything that showed that she had been killed in

1:26:25the house. And she may very well have been killed somewhere else but they never

1:26:30find the body ever. And so her family is bereft and they don't know what

1:26:35to do. Did he ever confess to that?

1:26:38He didn't but during the course of his interview with me – I mean he

1:26:45never did it publicly. But in the bathroom, he says, killed them all, of course.

1:26:51So he's being accused of three murders, his wife, his best friend, and his neighbor

1:26:56in Galveston who he then cuts up.

1:26:59And his confession in the bathroom is killed them all, of course.

1:27:02So I think we – I think we know what happened.

1:27:06We don't know how it happened.

1:27:07Did they find his neighbor's body?

1:27:09Or his best friend, rather?

1:27:10His best friend's body? Yeah, his best friend's body was in her house where somebody

1:27:13shot her and that's where they left that cadaver note, the note saying 1526.

1:27:19And then in Galveston, when his elderly neighbor disappears, the reason they find this out

1:27:26is because a bunch of black trash bags wash up in Galveston Bay and a

1:27:33little kid is fishing with his dad and they see something bobbing around in the

1:27:37water and they see these bags and the police come and they look in the

1:27:40bags and there are all these body parts.

1:27:42So he had actually taken off the legs and the arms and all that.

1:27:47So, I mean, I think, you know, I think it's fair to say that there

1:27:50are people like Bob Durst who need to be out of society, you know, and

1:27:54are repeatedly causing problems for others.

1:27:59But that's, as you say, you know, that's the extraordinarily rare case, you know.

1:28:06And I think a lot of the sort of tough on crime politicians will say,

1:28:09so you guys just want to let Jeffrey Dahmer out on the street.

1:28:12Like, nobody thinks that. Nobody really believes that.

1:28:16People are saying, well, no.

1:28:17What we're saying is that people who are in prison for having entered an unoccupied

1:28:22building probably never should have been in prison at all.

1:28:25And the people who are in prison with good reason because they robbed somebody or

1:28:29something, we don't necessarily have to believe that those people can never, ever have a

1:28:34chance to come out of prison and be productive citizens.

1:28:37You know, there's a, there's a, you just have to take a nuanced view.

1:28:41You know, you can't just say, well, they're bad people and they're good people, especially

1:28:44because we've got so many bad people walking around and so many good people locked

1:28:47up and vice versa. Yeah.

1:28:49The nuance part is so important because the real question is like, what causes so

1:28:55many people to become bad people?

1:28:57And how come no one's examining the root of this?

1:29:00How come no one's looking at these deeply impoverished crime ridden communities that have remained

1:29:06that way for decades and decades and decades and offered up some sort of a

1:29:10solution? You know, it's almost like you have to financially incentivize a company to, to

1:29:16radically improve the economic and the justice situation in any random community that's experiencing a

1:29:25lot of crime. Like it's almost, it's almost like you have to figure out a

1:29:28way to privatize peace and safety.

1:29:32You know, it's almost like the, the, the one way, I mean, it's really what

1:29:38I was saying before. Like imagine if these prison companies got paid based on the

1:29:43amount of productive citizens emerge from their prisons and then wind up doing really well.

1:29:49Like you get incentivized. Like this is, he's never committed another crime.

1:29:54Now he started his own business.

1:29:56He's doing this and that.

1:29:56He's got a family. His kids all get straight A's.

1:29:59Everybody's happy. This is a success.

1:30:01And we got a bonus because of that success.

1:30:04Yeah. I mean, you're right in a way that it's, it's the root of some

1:30:07way we are, we sort of are privatizing it because like in my neighborhood in

1:30:11New York, um, there's a group called the Doe Fund, which has been around for

1:30:16a couple of decades, I think.

1:30:18And they take guys who are, who are, have had severe drug addiction, have ended

1:30:25up in prison and are released and have no starting place as you were describing.

1:30:33And they give them a bed.

1:30:35They give them a bank account where they give them a certain amount of money

1:30:40each week for working. And it's not a huge amount of money, but it sort

1:30:44of is the first step toward even being able to sort of have a checkbook

1:30:47and be able to say, oh, okay, so I've got a hundred dollars and I've

1:30:50spent 50 and this is what I have left.

1:30:53Um, and they give them a job, which is they make deals with neighborhoods around

1:30:57New York for them to come and do like street cleaning and clean up the

1:31:00neighborhood. And they give them a uniform, which is clean.

1:31:04And they put them out on the street with a big blue, uh, trash, uh,

1:31:08bucket and, uh, and some, you know, functional broom and things like that.

1:31:13And sometimes they'll put them out in pairs so that they have, you know, they,

1:31:17they can, they can work in tandem.

1:31:19And these neighborhoods become incredibly clean.

1:31:23The guys stay in this facility for as long as they need to until they

1:31:28sort of get back on their feet.

1:31:30They can't do drugs when they're in the facility.

1:31:32Um, so there's a little bit of tough love going on there too, but they

1:31:37end up bringing people back.

1:31:39They end up bringing people back who were otherwise abandoned and who otherwise would have

1:31:44been additional homeless people lying on the street in San Francisco or additional people who

1:31:48are, you know, bothering people outside an ATM or whatever, because there's a level of

1:31:53desperation that you, you know, you have, we all know, like if we absolutely had

1:31:58absolutely nothing and we thought that our kids were going to starve, we would do

1:32:03a bunch of things that, you know, would probably get us in trouble.

1:32:06100%. And taking care of people that are in that situation and providing them some

1:32:14sort of a vehicle for improving their life is going to be a good thing

1:32:19and it's going to have some impact.

1:32:21But the real, real impact is going to be when you address the environment in

1:32:26which they came from. Sure.

1:32:27Like if, again, if we're our community, we're this entire country as a community, why

1:32:33do we have these places that have been fucked for 50, 60, 70 years?

1:32:37Like why haven't we put resources into community centers and education and providing some method

1:32:46for these people to get peace and safety?

1:32:48Why, why aren't we doing something about that if we really care?

1:32:51Well, there is a lot that can be done.

1:32:54You know, one of the places, for example, this can be done inside and outside

1:32:58of prison, obviously. And I think you're pointing out a really important thing, which is

1:33:02the earlier the better. So when you look at, you know, Head Start programs, which

1:33:08are one of the first things that people go to cut because you can't put

1:33:11your finger on exactly what they do.

1:33:13But if you track people that got early education, you see that it dramatically reduces

1:33:19the likelihood that those people are going to go to prison later in life.

1:33:25And if you look at people who are even in prison, like in the main

1:33:29state prison system, which is a very humane...

1:33:32So, a lot of you have to cut, and you can look at the prison

1:33:32system and I'm in prison prison system.

1:33:34I have pictures on my phone of guys who are sitting at a bench working

1:33:41on models of tall ships, these beautiful, stunning pieces of art that they've been trained

1:33:48by other prisoners to build, and they give them a proper workbench, and they give

1:33:52them some time to do this work, and they give them training.

1:33:56And then they sell that stuff in the prison store, and they make a couple

1:34:00million dollars a year that goes back into rehabilitation programs.

1:34:04Oh, wow. So where people - Is Maine one of the best places for that?

1:34:08I think Maine is the best prison system I've seen in the US, and partly

1:34:12it's because it's run by this very brilliant guy, Randy Liberty is his name.

1:34:17That's crazy. And he first visited the Maine State Prison when he was 14, because

1:34:24his dad was locked up there.

1:34:26And later in life, he became a sheriff, and I think his dad was in

1:34:30his jail at some point, and it was like, Randy, get me a coffee.

1:34:33Oh, sorry, Dad. That's crazy.

1:34:35But over time, he just said, well, why are we throwing people away when we

1:34:38put them into prison for having made a mistake of some kind, or even a

1:34:42series of mistakes? What can we do to bring these people out?

1:34:46Because 95 % of the people are coming out, and are these people that we

1:34:51want to be our neighbors?

1:34:53And this issue of community is so important, because how are we going to get

1:34:59back to some kind of brotherhood in this country?

1:35:03It's so important. And if we can demonize people so quickly and just say, well,

1:35:07look, my neighbor, he put his tractor on my lawn, and therefore he's a horrible

1:35:11person, and I'm going to go over and smash his tractor, as opposed to the

1:35:15guy saying, oh, I couldn't put my tractor in my garage because it had a

1:35:17flood. Oh, you had a flood?

1:35:18Let me help you. You know, that there's a level of rage right now that

1:35:24we're tapping into. It seems like a higher percentage of the people are, like the

1:35:29martial arts people that are going into it because of damage that they suffered.

1:35:34It's like more Americans are becoming like that.

1:35:36You know, more Americans are sort of - Well, we're getting radicalized by the internet,

1:35:40for sure. Yeah. 100%, on both sides of the aisle, people are being radicalized by

1:35:45hate and anger and frustration online.

1:35:49And a lot of it isn't even real people that are writing these things, or

1:35:53it's state actors and organizations that push certain narratives.

1:35:57And you're being fed a lot of hate porn.

1:36:02Yeah. And people are sucking it up, and it's highly addictive.

1:36:06So it's consuming an enormous percentage of your available resources in terms of your attention

1:36:13span. The people that I know that are addicted to Twitter, X, whatever, are genuinely

1:36:19mentally ill. Whether they realize it or not, because they're still functional, they still do

1:36:25their jobs, but they are fully addicted to a thing that is just people bitching

1:36:31back and forth with each other.

1:36:33And they check responses all the time, and they can't wait to type in another

1:36:36response, and they're sitting there looking at someone else's response and getting angry.

1:36:40It's illness. It's an illness.

1:36:42It's like, this is not in your life.

1:36:44Like if you put that down and look around, what do you see?

1:36:48You see the people that you know, you see the neighborhood that you live in,

1:36:51the stores that you visit.

1:36:53And none of that exists.

1:36:55It exists in this weird fucking cloud world that you choose to enter to get

1:37:01upset for no fucking reason.

1:37:03And if you put it down, you will feel better.

1:37:07But yet you think you're missing out on something.

1:37:09So you have to go check it.

1:37:10And when you're on the toilet, well, I'm on the toilet.

1:37:12What am I going to do?

1:37:13Let me check to see what people are pissed off at.

1:37:15And I don't fucking agree with that at all.

1:37:17This guy's an idiot. And then you're mentally ill.

1:37:21And then it becomes, because we have this bizarre political system in our country, we

1:37:27have two sides, only two.

1:37:29We only have two perspectives.

1:37:31And then you have a conglomeration of ideas that are attached to each perspective that

1:37:36you might not agree with at all.

1:37:38But you have to, because you're a right wing this or a left wing that.

1:37:42And so you have to say whatever the fucking party wants you to say.

1:37:45And if you don't, you're a Nazi, or if you don't, you're whatever you are,

1:37:50a communist, whatever it is.

1:37:51And I loved your, when in your comedy special, which was so fucking funny.

1:37:56And, and, you know, I'm like a big fan of comedy, but in your last

1:38:00special, you sort of talk about how people like sign up for, oh yeah, well,

1:38:04you know, I agree with that.

1:38:05That makes perfect sense. Oh yeah, I agree with that.

1:38:07Oh, and by the way, if you're going to agree with that, you know, you're

1:38:08also going to have to agree that, you know, that - Men can get pregnant.

1:38:12Yeah, exactly. The men can get pregnant.

1:38:14And you're like, what? Wait, so that, those are my choices.

1:38:18I have to go along with like, you know, trans people should be allowed to

1:38:21be in every sport and it doesn't matter.

1:38:24Like, I have to go along with that one too, if I want to be

1:38:27part of my tribe. Oh yeah, that's part of the tribal initiation ritual.

1:38:30You're going to have to sign up for that.

1:38:32I think it's a really great way of delivering it also because - Because it

1:38:36makes people laugh at themselves.

1:38:37Yeah, and everybody wants to be on a team.

1:38:38Yeah. And you're like, you know, oh, we believe that everybody should, you know, be

1:38:43free to do whatever you want.

1:38:44And as long as you're not hurting anybody, I agree.

1:38:46You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:38:48You start going along with it.

1:38:49This sounds great. Hey, I'm with you guys.

1:38:52Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're like, oh, fuck.

1:38:55That's right. Is this a package deal?

1:38:56I have to - Yeah, and that's what people are agreeing to.

1:38:59And then you get groupthink.

1:39:00And then you get also ostracized from the community if you don't do it.

1:39:05So you, you know, you get kicked out of the kingdom.

1:39:09And you don't want that.

1:39:10Yeah. Because being excommunicated from whatever group that you identify with is terrifying.

1:39:15Because then what are you going to do?

1:39:16You're going to join the fucking Nazis?

1:39:18I'm going to join those people on the right because the left kicked me out

1:39:22because I don't think that men can get pregnant?

1:39:25Maybe I should just apologize.

1:39:27Maybe. And then you wind up apologizing for something you don't even believe in.

1:39:30You're like, God, I can't believe I have to say this.

1:39:32Yeah. And, you know, and it's just, it's a bad way of communicating.

1:39:37It's online communication is a terrible way of communicating.

1:39:41And it's the primary source that young people experience.

1:39:45You know, young people like.

1:39:47kids they don't even fucking text each other they snapchat you know they're all snapchatting

1:39:53with pictures and shit i'm like this is like the minimal amount of communication you

1:39:57can do and when they have to talk to people just put their phone down

1:40:02and talk to people they're lost they're always like reaching for their phone oh yeah

1:40:06they always want to grab their phone in the middle of you talk yeah yeah

1:40:08yeah yeah yeah they have to check like it's like you're perpetually distracted yeah yeah

1:40:13it's going to get worse i think when you have like glasses and you could

1:40:16be walking down the street or you can meet somebody and be like hi joe

1:40:20so when you went to college at and then you learned you know it's like

1:40:24they're they're this idea that the information is more available and therefore it's better my

1:40:29kids are like constantly deleting instagram or deleting tiktok yeah a lot of kids are

1:40:36doing that now yeah but you know and then it comes back for some reason

1:40:39or they'll say well i felt like i needed to do this or whatever but

1:40:42fomo but it's very encouraging to see them recognize that like you have to go

1:40:48cold turkey on yes social media well that narrative's out there fortunately for a lot

1:40:53of kids twitter which i think is maybe the most toxic in terms of what

1:40:58it can do most beneficial in terms of like whistleblowers getting news like if everything's

1:41:03happening in the world i almost immediately go to twitter it used to be a

1:41:08little better for that because now part of the problem is with ai generated content

1:41:14there's a lot of weird stuff when it comes to like especially war stuff there's

1:41:20a lot of videos that are just completely fake and it's hard to tell or

1:41:23they take a video that is real and highly exaggerated and they add ai to

1:41:29it it's it's very strange and if you got you gotta wonder like who's doing

1:41:32that and why are they doing this is this our government doing it is it

1:41:37the iranian government who's we're fucking who's releasing these fake videos and are we doing

1:41:41it to ourselves by the way 100 a lot of people are doing that just

1:41:44for clicks because there is an actual economy based on engagement so you can make

1:41:50money if you're you know if you're putting up these posts these posts are getting

1:41:54millions and millions of interactions you're going to get more money and so there's a

1:41:57lot of people doing that so it used to be better because it used to

1:42:01be just pure information and if it was a video it was just a video

1:42:05that someone took with their cell phone generally now it's like a lot of weirdo

1:42:09stuff a lot of weird fake stuff so it's hard also there was a there's

1:42:13a piece in the paper today that talked about how like trump gets a a

1:42:17like a few minute video every day that's a compilation of all the attacks and

1:42:22all the explosions that have happened in in iran you know but it's not getting

1:42:28a more nuanced picture of it so to some extent is kind of you know

1:42:32drinking his own kool -aid how do they know what he gets i think that

1:42:36there was a enough of a leak to say that he was given a that

1:42:40each day he's given a chunk of video to watch and that i think historically

1:42:43has been something that happens with him is he'd rather watch it than read it

1:42:48right and that that by putting together just it's not even that they're saying they're

1:42:52fake videos i mean obviously there are a lot of fake videos but he's only

1:42:55getting the positive videos he's just getting explosions right he's just getting a lot of

1:42:59pictures of explosions so he's saying you know we're destroying their uh there you go

1:43:03here it is inside trump's daily video montage briefing on the iran war this is

1:43:08nbc news the montage typically runs for about two minutes has that's enough time let's

1:43:13give you a nuanced perspective on a fucking international war has raised concerns amongst those

1:43:18of the president's allies that he may not be receiving the complete picture of the

1:43:23war yeah yeah of course he's not yeah uh and of course the people that

1:43:28tricked him into doing this in the first place don't want him to get a

1:43:32full nuanced perspective of the war i mean nobody thinks it's a good idea yeah

1:43:38the people the videos a series of clips of stuff blowing up hilarious that's the

1:43:42world we're living in it's a tiktok president i mean or a tiktok uh briefing

1:43:47yeah for the president you know but video i mean what we saw in alabama

1:43:51and i know you have some some clips of this and i think if you

1:43:54feel like running one there's the level of um uh depravity that's going on in

1:44:02our prison system is so much higher than the average person thinks it is and

1:44:07one of the reasons why we've seen so much outrage from people finally millions of

1:44:11people have seen the alabama solution because people have hbo or they have watched it

1:44:14at theater and it's the first time they've been able to see inside the first

1:44:19time they've been able to really see it as opposed to reading a statistic a

1:44:22lot of people die in prison or whatever and i think it does tap into

1:44:27our sense of humanity and it taps into our sense of community and the feeling

1:44:31that like i don't want to be a part of that i i don't want

1:44:34to be part of doing that to other people you know i could be tough

1:44:38on crime you know we've shown the film to a lot of conservative viewers uh

1:44:43including one of the founders of cpac and various people who are you know pretty

1:44:47pretty right -wing people and have said look i might be tough on crime that's

1:44:53not what i'm talking about right that's that's a human rights crisis and where's the

1:44:58doj and where's the government doing anything to protect where are the inspectors yeah how

1:45:03are they allowing any of that yeah you know well that's the the one of

1:45:08the great things about your documentary is it's clear i mean it is there's no

1:45:13ambiguity at all it's like laid out there full color you could see the blood

1:45:19on the ground you could see i mean it's horrific when kinetic justice when that

1:45:25guy's beaten in his cell and you see how they dragged him out face his

1:45:29face down bleeding all they thought he was dead and he he managed to live

1:45:34and he's being dragged out and you're following the blood trail from his cell with

1:45:41the contraband cameras from the cell phones and had those cell phone cameras not existed

1:45:47you'd have zero idea like if those guards only decided to sell money bringing drugs

1:45:54in and not not phones with cameras who knows what you would know you would

1:46:00know very little very little Yeah.

1:46:02Yeah. And it does. I mean, you know, I would like to believe that the

1:46:06average American does not want to harm the average other American, you know, and even

1:46:11if you get hyped up on Twitter or you get to see, you know, too

1:46:15many videos of people blowing up stuff or whatever, that ultimately people have that experience

1:46:20of saying, you know, I went to that like coffee at the church and I

1:46:25sat there with that guy who I really can't stand.

1:46:28And, you know, we ended up having a conversation.

1:46:31You know, people are, they're kind of amazed at how much commonality they can feel

1:46:37with people where if they just see the person, we all know, like if you

1:46:40text somebody, your kids or your wife or whatever, there's just some places where texts

1:46:48are not good. It's not enough.

1:46:50It's not enough. It's going to make somebody's feelings hurt, you know.

1:46:54But when you get to sit down across from somebody, you realize that it's another

1:47:00person you can kind of relate to.

1:47:01So it's really disturbing that whether it's social media or just the demonization of people,

1:47:08the way that we just turn people into these one dimensional figures and then we

1:47:13can just rage at them and just hate them.

1:47:16And distract yourself from your own problems.

1:47:19That's a big part of it.

1:47:20People love something that takes the focus away from whatever shortcomings they have or whatever

1:47:25things in their life they don't like.

1:47:27They'll focus on external things.

1:47:28I know some people whose lives are completely fucked up in so many ways.

1:47:33Their health is fucked up.

1:47:34The relationships are fucked up.

1:47:35Their job is fucked up.

1:47:37And all they want to talk about is politics.

1:47:39Like, Hey man, clean up your backyard.

1:47:42Like clean up your life.

1:47:43Like why are you spending so much time paying attention to what's going on with

1:47:47USAID? Like how much does that affect you?

1:47:50Does it? Does it really affect you that much?

1:47:52All this fucking fraud. Right.

1:47:54But what about your life, man?

1:47:56Your life is a fucking disaster.

1:47:59And all you care about is the government.

1:48:02You know, and what they're doing to fuck the people over.

1:48:05Like, I don't think that's really the problem.

1:48:07I think you, you're getting in your own way, son.

1:48:10You know, and that's a lot of people out there in this world.

1:48:13And anything that you can do to distract yourself, whether it's start drinking, gamble, get

1:48:18on pills, whatever it is, people find ways to distract themselves from whatever is wrong

1:48:24with their life. And that's part of what social media is providing you.

1:48:28It's providing this alternative avenue for your attention to divert you from all the things

1:48:34that really are making your life a fucking disaster.

1:48:37Yeah. Yeah. There's also that, I think, sort of nuance falls into that also because

1:48:41people are made calm by the idea that they can just identify problems and that

1:48:49they're simple. Right. So if you say to somebody, hey, like locking people up for

1:48:5375 years probably doesn't make a lot of sense.

1:48:56That's complicated. Wait, now I got to make a determination of what's the right thing

1:49:00to do with another person.

1:49:03And, you know, so you end up with a lot of politicians who say, well,

1:49:07I know this is, these, the bad people, these, the good people, we got to

1:49:10promote the good people and get rid of the bad people.

1:49:12Not recognizing that like everybody's a little of both and that some people certainly do

1:49:17a lot more bad stuff in the world than good stuff and vice versa.

1:49:21But you have to see yourself, you know, as you're describing, like you have to

1:49:25recognize what's happening in your backyard in order for the community to work.

1:49:30You can't say, well, look, I'm always right.

1:49:32My neighbor's always wrong. And therefore, I'm just going to keep raging over this.

1:49:37You have to say like, you know, I could see myself doing something.

1:49:41I could see myself, boy, if I really got out of hand, I could see

1:49:44myself having a, you know, taking a swing at somebody.

1:49:48And that's probably not a good thing.

1:49:51But I don't want to say that somebody else that did it is automatically just

1:49:55a horrible person. And that's why, you know, if you see this, this attorney general

1:49:59in Alabama, you know, this idea that, you know, he says there are these horrible

1:50:04people in the world, people who have no respect for human life.

1:50:07And yet he's presiding over 1500 of them dying.

1:50:11But he hasn't imagined that he's part of the problem, you know, and it's respect

1:50:15for human life while human life is dying in these places where people are taken

1:50:19if they show no respect for human life.

1:50:21And they're being killed by the people who are watching over them.

1:50:24Yeah. So it's a very topsy turvy.

1:50:26Yeah. Like what world, you know, and also cruelty plays a part in it.

1:50:29We, you know, we know that if you sometimes we say about this film that

1:50:34that, you know, it's about what we do to each other when no one's watching.

1:50:38Like, you know, all human beings have a little bit of a propensity to want

1:50:42to put a firecracker in a frog's mouth mouth and just see what happens.

1:50:47You know, there's a level of cruelty that I think we have intrinsically, you know,

1:50:52certainly once you other a person, right?

1:50:55Absolutely. And I, that's to some extent why when it's exposed, right, when there's transparency,

1:51:01when the press is allowed to report on what's happening inside prisons, people kind of

1:51:07get a conscience because they start realizing, yeah, I wouldn't want to do that in

1:51:10front of my kid, or I wouldn't want to do that if it ends up

1:51:13in the paper. I wouldn't want to, you know, and I think that is kind

1:51:16of a balancing effect, which is one of the reasons why this like war on,

1:51:20you know, on, on transparency is a, it's a huge problem, right?

1:51:26We're not allowed to see what's happening in prisons, even though we're paying for them.

1:51:29Right. You know, and the Supreme Court had this ruling that said that wardens could

1:51:34deny access to journalists simply by citing safety and security.

1:51:40But meantime, in the last 20 years, no journalist has been harmed inside a prison.

1:51:44So who's all the secrecy keeping safe, right?

1:51:47It's, it's, it's, we're, we're sort of perpetuating the system.

1:51:51Our job going into the Alabama state prison system was to shine a light on

1:51:55that. It shouldn't be that these guys who are incarcerated have to take life and

1:52:00death risks using contraband cell phones to show what's happening in institutions that I'm paying

1:52:05for and you're paying for.

1:52:06Right. You know, those that we're, we're spending, you know, $116 billion a year in

1:52:11the United States on prisons, jails, parole.

1:52:14That is. is an insane number.

1:52:18And if we're spending that much money, we should sort of know what every one

1:52:23of those dollars is going to.

1:52:25And we should have watchdogs who will say, hey, guess what?

1:52:28In Alabama, they're supposed to be paying for a drug treatment program.

1:52:31We don't know where the money's going.

1:52:32Right. Yeah. Transparency is always good, especially in something like that.

1:52:37I mean, to me, the idea of preventing journalists from it, it almost is akin

1:52:43to these ag -gag laws that they've slapped in states that have factory farming to

1:52:49prevent people from filming the horrific treatment of some of these animals because they would

1:52:54be bad for business, which is fucking crazy.

1:52:57It should be bad for business and people shouldn't tolerate it.

1:53:00They should take their business elsewhere, which is what transparency is all about.

1:53:03You don't want to buy chickens from a place that brutally beats their chickens or

1:53:07pigs or whatever it is.

1:53:08Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of people say, oh, well, it's going to upset.

1:53:13We don't need to upset the public.

1:53:15Well, what are you doing something for inside a slaughterhouse that would upset the public?

1:53:22Like there are ways to, if you want to euthanize an animal or something like

1:53:25that, there are ways to do it where you're not using like a bolt and

1:53:28smashing their skull with it.

1:53:30Well, the bolt is actually the most humane way.

1:53:32It kind of instantaneously kills them.

1:53:34The other way is when they hang them by their ankles and slip their neck.

1:53:37That's a little rougher. But that's if you want kosher.

1:53:41There's a lot of weird ways that they kill animals, but it's really the beating

1:53:45and it's the horrific torture that the cruel people that work there sometimes do.

1:53:51Because there's been some videos that have been released of people like beating animals with

1:53:55crowbars and stuff for no fucking reason.

1:53:57Just sadistic, sick people that just happen to work in these places that become very

1:54:03accustomed to treating these animals badly, just like security guards, become very accustomed to treating

1:54:10prisoners badly. It's kind of along the same lines.

1:54:12I totally agree. And just imagine what would happen if, you know, what if Tyson

1:54:19Foods or any of these companies just, the policy was just, if the press wants

1:54:23to come in and photograph and the press wants to come in and write about

1:54:26it, they're allowed to come in once a week or whatever and just do whatever

1:54:29they want. Well, it should be non -negotiable.

1:54:31It should be a part of the ability to run a facility like that because

1:54:35of the consequences. Because if you don't do that, there is the potential for you

1:54:39being a horrific abuser of animals.

1:54:41Of course. And nobody wants to buy your chicken or your pork or whatever it

1:54:45is if you're doing that.

1:54:47And we should know. But like criminalizing, taking video of animals being abused.

1:54:54Crazy. Like, how could you justify that?

1:54:56You know, you would only do it if you value profit over ethics, over morals.

1:55:02That's the only thing. If profit is more important than educating people on the horrific

1:55:08nature of how these animals are treated.

1:55:10Yeah. It's more important. Well, what's really important is we have cheap bacon.

1:55:14Okay. Yeah. But it is a big, it's like a big tapestry because the diffusion

1:55:19of responsibility figures into it.

1:55:21Right. And, you know, the perverting effect of money figures into it.

1:55:25But it's a very, um, I mean, I think there's just being accustomed to horrors.

1:55:31You know, I knew a guy worked at a slaughterhouse and he told me like,

1:55:36you never get the smell of blood off of you.

1:55:39And he goes, and you never get just like the, the, the image of animals

1:55:44dying. He goes, you got to understand, like if you're working at a slaughterhouse, you're

1:55:47seeing who knows how many thousands of cows die a week.

1:55:51Just thousands, just thousands of death, constant death.

1:55:56Most farmers never saw that.

1:55:59Like the way people used to raise animals for, for food, you know, you would

1:56:03kill a cow and you would eat it for six months.

1:56:08You know what I mean?

1:56:09Like you would, you could kill the occasional chicken.

1:56:13You, you weren't seeing thousands of dead animals a week.

1:56:18You weren't like seeing thousands of them get disemboweled a week.

1:56:22It's like after a while, like, and you're in a factory, they're going by on

1:56:25hooks on a conveyor belt.

1:56:27Like, what are we doing?

1:56:29This is crazy. I went to visit a prison.

1:56:32I went sort of on a series of prison visits in Berlin and Norway and

1:56:36a few other places. And I was there with this sort of elderly woman that,

1:56:42that was like a deputy commissioner, I think in North Carolina and the prison system,

1:56:47Virginia, Ginny. And I loved her.

1:56:50She was so smart. And the first thing they do is they bring you to

1:56:53a concentration camp. So they bring you to Soxenhausen before they take you to the

1:56:59prisons to see how the prisons are run.

1:57:01And we're standing there in this concentration camp with the guide.

1:57:06And the woman says, well, this is where they would bring in the people on

1:57:10the trains and then they would take them out.

1:57:12And then this is where they would, you know, shave their heads and then they

1:57:16would strip them down and they would spray them with fire hoses and water.

1:57:20And then they would put powder, disinfectant powder on them.

1:57:22They would take away all of their, you know, any kind of distinguishing marks that

1:57:28put them all in the same outfit.

1:57:30And they would give them a number instead of their name, they would be, you

1:57:33know, and everybody's sort of looking at it like very disturbed.

1:57:37And Ginny leans over to me and she says, you know, Andrew, we do every

1:57:41one of those things in our prisons today.

1:57:45And you realize that this dehumanization, this homogenization, this like making everybody look the same

1:57:53is part of just desensitizing us to what we're going to do to those people.

1:57:59Because they just look like they're look like bad people.

1:58:02Because, you know, that's what happens when you shave your head and you're pale and

1:58:05you have the same outfit and you look like a convict.

1:58:07You've turned them into another.

1:58:09Yeah, you've turned them into another.

1:58:10And because of the tribal nature of ancient human civilization, we have almost like a

1:58:16deep -seated DNA that allows us to other people.

1:58:20Because those people were coming and they were going to kill your tribal members and

1:58:25steal your resources and do whatever they could to the survivors.

1:58:29And it was all her.

1:58:30Terrific. And so we have this thing that we're able to do that allows us

1:58:34to attack or to go after people and just to not think of them as

1:58:39your brothers and sisters and neighbors and fellow human beings sharing this wonderful spinning ball.

1:58:45No, these are evil people.

1:58:47These are others. You kill them.

1:58:49These are fill in the blank.

1:58:50These are the Japanese. These are the Germans.

1:58:53These are the this. These are the that.

1:58:55Whatever it is that we're at war with, those are the people that are not

1:58:58us and we kill them.

1:58:59Yeah. Yeah. And that's how you feel about prisoners.

1:59:01And then there's the other side where you go too far the other way and

1:59:07you have these crazy no cash bail policies where you've got violent offenders in and

1:59:13out of jail constantly. You've got people that have been arrested 40 times pushing old

1:59:19people in front of the train in New York City.

1:59:23You've got people that are just like mentally ill, violent criminals, punching women on the

1:59:27street in Seattle and they just keep getting out of jail.

1:59:30And you go, how is this possible?

1:59:32How is this OK, too?

1:59:33Yeah. No, I that's not good either.

1:59:36Yeah, you can't. But I think to the extent to the extent to the extent

1:59:40to which we could get everybody, which only is going to happen in little bits

1:59:46and little areas where we can make an impact.

1:59:49But we're trying to say, well, look, it shouldn't be, you know, it's it's it's

1:59:54it shouldn't be that everybody who says that we shouldn't be running our prison industrial

2:00:00complex the way we are is soft on crime.

2:00:03It's OK to be tough on crime.

2:00:06It's OK to recognize that some people need to be separated out from society.

2:00:12But but if you if it becomes so polarized, then you get the progressive D

2:00:17.A. who, you know, there's a there are some very smart ones.

2:00:21And then you get some who are just saying, well, you know, we just should

2:00:24abolish prisons and therefore, you know, we don't need any of this.

2:00:27And that scares everybody and probably doesn't lead to any level because we all want

2:00:31public safety. Like everybody wants to be serious about public safety.

2:00:35That's different than being tough on crime.

2:00:38Yes. Well, it's also like if you're not addressing the root of crime, if you're

2:00:42not addressing the the again, the same neighborhoods where it happens over and over and

2:00:46over, you know, this is you don't have like this rampant crime that's developing in

2:00:51Beverly Hills. Right. It's all happening in these impoverished, gang infested neighborhoods.

2:00:55Like, why has there been no resources put into that?

2:01:00Imagine the amount of return that you would get.

2:01:03Like I always say, if you want to make America great again, here's the best

2:01:06way. Have less losers. How do you have less losers?

2:01:10Give more people an opportunity to succeed.

2:01:12Well, when it's it's not like we're all the same starting block.

2:01:16We all know that no one will say that.

2:01:19No one will say everybody's at the same line and how you get by in

2:01:22this life is depending upon how much work you put in once you're at the

2:01:25line. Well, that's not true.

2:01:26So how do we figure out these people that are at the farthest end of

2:01:32the starting line, the most fucked?

2:01:35Put some money into that.

2:01:37Fix that. Put some engineering into that.

2:01:39Put some like some actual thought in trying to devise some sort of a method

2:01:46to increase the odds of having more productive people come out of these places and

2:01:53give them hope. And you would have better neighbors.

2:01:56You'd have more people that are thriving in whatever business, more people that are artists,

2:02:01more people in the economy.

2:02:03The world would be a better place.

2:02:04Like, why wouldn't you invest in that?

2:02:07Well, because there's no money in it.

2:02:09You have to spend money on it.

2:02:11Yeah, I mean, or there's money in it, but nobody really wants to do the

2:02:15work to figure out that.

2:02:16There's money in it, but you can't make that money.

2:02:18They're going to make that money, right?

2:02:19You're going to help people make money.

2:02:21And it will contribute to the GDP.

2:02:23It will contribute to the tax base, to the overall economy.

2:02:26But it's not a business where you can like say, oh, if I get into

2:02:29that business of helping people, I can get rich.

2:02:33And that's the problem. Yeah, I mean, if you try to make the – if

2:02:37the ultimate adjudicator of everything is whether it is turning a profit, you sort of

2:02:47race to the bottom, right?

2:02:48Everybody is sort of – nobody really wants to do anything smart.

2:02:52They just want to do things that enable them to get the most money the

2:02:55quickest. But ultimately, right now, spending $116 billion a year on our prison system, you

2:03:03know, we've got 5 percent of the world's population.

2:03:06We've got 20, 25 percent of the world's prisoners.

2:03:09Crazy. Like, this whole thing.

2:03:11Fucking wild. What a wild statement.

2:03:13Yeah. It's incredible. That's a broken society.

2:03:17Like, if that's not evidence of a broken society – look, not like it's better

2:03:21in some of these other places that don't have a high percentage of people because

2:03:26they just kill them. Like, there's a lot of places where you do something bad,

2:03:29they just kill you. There's no thinking about, you know, rehabilitation at all.

2:03:33But, I mean, in terms of, like, modern civilized society, you know, we don't do

2:03:37this well. No. We don't rehabilitate well.

2:03:40That's for damn sure. And we don't – as you're saying, we don't invest in

2:03:43kids. We don't – you know, like, how are we in a situation where we

2:03:49are paying teachers so little money that they have to use their own money to

2:03:56buy books and school supplies?

2:03:58Right. We're beating the shit out of our teachers who are the people that are

2:04:03going to turn our kids into part of our community.

2:04:06How can we be surprised if we don't have a community?

2:04:08Yeah. It's almost like it's a conspiracy.

2:04:09I mean, that's – you realize why people slap that tinfoil hat on and tighten

2:04:13it down to the chin because, like, at a certain point on, we're like, why

2:04:17wouldn't we put more money into schools?

2:04:19It seems kind of crazy.

2:04:21When you've got – like, in California, they've got programs that, like, spend hundreds of

2:04:25billions of dollars and go nowhere.

2:04:27Like, where did you – where's the railroad?

2:04:29You spend so much money.

2:04:30Where's all the tiny houses?

2:04:32Didn't you guys get hundreds of millions of dollars for tiny – where the fuck

2:04:34is the tiny houses? There's no tiny houses?

2:04:36It's like not a one tiny house has been built, but there's a lot of

2:04:41that stuff, the $24 billion to the homeless, the homeless people increase.

2:04:44He's like, imagine – If they put $24 billion into the education system, guess what?

2:04:50You would probably ultimately wind up with less homeless.

2:04:54If you put $24 billion into education and community centers, God, imagine the work that

2:05:00you could do in California with $24 billion just in education.

2:05:04California would have the greatest education system in the country.

2:05:07If you just paid teachers an exorbitant amount a month, amount a year, had fantastic

2:05:13oversight, these incredibly well -structured education systems, great counseling, social workers that can help work

2:05:20with kids, people that could give them productive ways to expel some of this excess

2:05:25energy that they have, figure out how to focus, figure out what kind of jobs

2:05:30they maybe excel at based on their personality type, educate them towards that.

2:05:35You could get a lot done.

2:05:38You could get so much done with $24 billion.

2:05:41Instead, it just disappears like Kaiser so say.

2:05:46There's fucking no one knows where it went.

2:05:49There's no accountability. They veto.

2:05:51Everybody tries to put an audit on it.

2:05:53Yeah. How did Alabama's prisons go from $300 million for one to $1 .3 billion?

2:05:59And they described it as inflation.

2:06:01And no one's like, no one's investigated.

2:06:03No one's going to jail.

2:06:05No one's like, fuck you.

2:06:10I think that when you say it's a conspiracy, I really believe that conspiracies do

2:06:17not have to include people in dark back rooms, right?

2:06:21It's very often just everybody's sitting around the table.

2:06:24Everybody knows what the motivation is.

2:06:26And they just go, OK, I'll do the thing.

2:06:28You do the thing. There's not – nobody has to be rubbing their hands together

2:06:32and having secret meetings. They all know what's in their financial interest.

2:06:37Well, clearly, if you beat prisoners to death and then lie about it and you

2:06:41all agree that you're going to lie about it, you're conspiring, right?

2:06:45Yeah. I mean, that happens obviously all the time.

2:06:48Clearly. Meetings like that all the time.

2:06:49Clearly. But I think there's an insidious element to the fact that people are agreeing

2:06:56that $24 billion should be spent on X, Y, or Z.

2:07:00Nobody really needs to get like a secret memo saying how they're going to steal

2:07:04that money. Like they just go, oh, OK.

2:07:06In Alabama, what now? We're allowed to spend $1 .3 billion on one prison?

2:07:10Great. OK. Well, I'm not personally taking the $1 .3 – I'm not personally taking

2:07:15the billion dollar overage myself, but it's going into the system the way that –

2:07:20well, your first red flag is they start construction before the deal is even signed.

2:07:25They already start. So the fix is in.

2:07:28They know what's going on.

2:07:29Look, I grew up in Boston and Boston was a part of the most corrupt

2:07:34construction site in the history of the country, the Big Dig.

2:07:38Big Dig, right. That fucking thing was supposed to take like – I don't know

2:07:41how long it was supposed to take, but it went on long after I moved

2:07:45out and then came back to Boston like 10 years later.

2:07:49It was still going on.

2:07:50I'm like, this is crazy.

2:07:52And by the time it did it, the population in Boston increased, so it didn't

2:07:56even really alleviate traffic. Yeah.

2:07:59But there's always going to be stuff like that.

2:08:00If you have no oversight or if you have people that can figure out a

2:08:05way to inflate this and add on to that and da -da, da -da, da

2:08:09-da, next thing you know it.

2:08:11Well, the press is extremely important, which is why government, this government or prior government,

2:08:18they don't like the press, right?

2:08:20Of course. Nobody likes getting in trouble because the press does when it operates at

2:08:24its best and when you have the people that are able to make a living

2:08:29being journalists and you're not firing everybody who's a good investigative reporter, then that should

2:08:36be – it's one of the reasons why the country was founded in that way,

2:08:40why freedom of the press is so important, is because it's the only disinfectant.

2:08:45It's the only way – and it doesn't mean people don't use the press in

2:08:48malevolent ways or people don't bullshit in the press.

2:08:51But – People bullshit everything.

2:08:52Yeah. But like the public kind of has a sense or at least used to

2:08:56have a sense and hopefully will again, that when somebody does an investigative story and

2:09:02they are able to produce the facts and figure out who's really responsible for a

2:09:06certain kind of corruption, that it reduces the corruption, just is the case, you know?

2:09:11And it's like you can't really regulate it or you can regulate it, but if

2:09:15you regulate it, nobody's paying attention to it, then the press has to identify that

2:09:19people are breaking the rules, you know?

2:09:21The DOJ right now is supposed to be the monitor of making sure that government

2:09:31institutions and others don't defy the Constitution, right?

2:09:35So in Alabama, clearly, every time you see one of these events that happens in

2:09:39our film, those are all crimes.

2:09:42Those are being committed by a state actor, by a prison guard, right?

2:09:47Those are crimes being committed against our fellow citizens.

2:09:50The fact that some of these people are incarcerated doesn't mean they're also supposed to

2:09:53be killed or maimed, right?

2:09:55And so who really monitors that is the U .S.

2:09:59Department of Justice because at the end of the day, their job is to maintain

2:10:03a constitutional level of care and it's not – by the way, that's not that

2:10:07great, right? It's like you have to make sure that there's no cruel and unusual

2:10:11punishment. Well, clearly in Alabama, there is.

2:10:14Well, they started starving them, which is really crazy.

2:10:16During the strike, they were giving them like a tiny ration.

2:10:20Yeah. Yeah. They kept shrinking their – Sometimes no food for days.

2:10:23Yeah. And so the DOJ's job is to do that.

2:10:26What was the DOJ doing a few years back is they were doing a kind

2:10:30of a sort of an okay job pursuing just the worst actors, the worst of

2:10:35the worst. So they would find a police station that was just regularly harming people

2:10:40in its jails, arresting people for no reason.

2:10:44You know, they were finding prison systems where people were getting murdered, like in Alabama,

2:10:52and that was going okay.

2:10:56Well, that whole civil rights division of the – The DOJ is now basically gone,

2:11:02right? It's been totally repurposed.

2:11:04So now it's dealing with reverse racism and various things like that.

2:11:10But they're not doing those other cases anymore.

2:11:13They don't care about what's happening in a police department or what's happening in a...

2:11:16So you don't even have that level of scrutiny.

2:11:20So you don't have the press.

2:11:21And when did all this change?

2:11:22I mean, I think most recently you've seen the DOJ just dismantle the Civil Rights

2:11:26Division. So that's been in the current administration.

2:11:29And the Civil Rights Division was in charge of looking at the prisons?

2:11:32Yeah. So what had they done during the last four years before that?

2:11:36They also didn't do a great job, but they did bring actions that had impact

2:11:44in a bunch of different states.

2:11:45So for example, they sued the state of Alabama, which happened under the first Trump

2:11:50administration, actually. The case against Alabama Alabama started under Obama.

2:11:58Then under Trump, Jeff Sessions had to approve the issuance of these letters, these findings

2:12:04letters. And then they had, when Alabama said, take a hike, you're wrong.

2:12:09We don't agree. We're not going to make a consent decree.

2:12:11We're not going to settle.

2:12:13Then they had to sue them.

2:12:14So that happened under Jeff Sessions.

2:12:19And that was now two administrations ago.

2:12:23The Trump administration brought this action, but it's just being dragged on and dragged on.

2:12:31And now the DOJ doesn't really care about this kind of litigation.

2:12:34So the people that were running it are gone, all those people.

2:12:37Well, I have to also imagine that you're, there are so many cases.

2:12:41And if the press was allowed to weekly, if there was weekly access, the press

2:12:46had to these correction facilities all over the country, the amount of cases would be

2:12:52fucking extraordinary. But because they've been allowed to hide, because they've been allowed to do

2:12:57this stuff in complete secrecy with total control over whether or not things get released

2:13:01or don't get released, like it's, it's just, it's become just a part of the

2:13:06system. It's like standard operational procedure.

2:13:09Yeah. And it's, I mean, but the cases would go down, right?

2:13:15Oh, yeah. As soon as you can see it, right?

2:13:17If you're beating people in your care, if you're a prison guard, like Roderick Gadsden,

2:13:21and you've, and you've had 24 cases of excessive force.

2:13:24Yeah. It's sport for them.

2:13:27You know, you would say at one point, well, this is not working so great

2:13:31for me. So I want to at least behave somewhat better.

2:13:34Of course. Well, I think your film was probably the first time most people ever

2:13:40got a chance to see.

2:13:41And I would hope that your film and then also this conversation and the other

2:13:47ones that you've been having will move this conversation in a different direction where people

2:13:52start talking about it openly where they're forced to do something.

2:13:55Because it seems like you have to force them to act.

2:13:58And they're probably dealing with so many other cases as well.

2:14:01This is just another burden to them.

2:14:03And if it's the prisoners, oh, well, that's the least priority situation we have to

2:14:08deal with. These people are bad people.

2:14:10They're in jail. Like those, the radio people that you used, their voices.

2:14:15Like it's God, it's like, shut the fuck up.

2:14:17Like you're listening to them.

2:14:18As a person who's had multiple podcasts with people that were wrongfully convicted, I've done

2:14:26a ton of them with my friend Josh Dubin, who was originally with the Innocence

2:14:29Project and he's now with the Ike Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice.

2:14:34It's like his passion project is, besides being a successful attorney outside of that, his

2:14:39passion project is finding these very obvious cases of people that were wrongfully convicted that

2:14:46have spent a giant chunk of their life in jail.

2:14:48And through these podcasts, we've gotten a bunch of these people out.

2:14:52And you've got a chance to have conversations with them.

2:14:55I've had a few on here.

2:14:56And you have these conversations with these people and you realize like, well, these are

2:15:01brilliant people who lost a giant chunk of their potential to nonsense.

2:15:09Yeah. And I think if it's, first of all, I think Josh is really smart

2:15:13and I know you've done a lot with him.

2:15:15And I think that's so important.

2:15:17There's always a tendency to sort of think of only wrongful convictions because everybody can

2:15:27agree that we shouldn't be locked up for something that we didn't do.

2:15:31We've had people on that weren't wrongfully convicted that did an extraordinary amount of time

2:15:35for a minor crime. Right.

2:15:37But unfortunately, one of them wound up getting out and then killing a guy.

2:15:41Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cutting off his head and wearing a wig.

2:15:43He didn't, I guess he didn't know what norm, the new cameras could do.

2:15:49Which is funny, but also not funny.

2:15:51So basically, you're saying it's a technology problem.

2:15:53He didn't understand the technology he was dealing with because he put on a wig

2:15:55and he thought, oh, I'm going to look like a woman.

2:15:57Like, bro, it was like HD.

2:16:00It's you with a wig.

2:16:01He was learning from Bob Durst.

2:16:03Yeah. He was, yeah. Well, I think he, you know, he probably acted out of

2:16:07passion and then was trying to figure out how rectify this problem that he created.

2:16:13Yeah. But one thing I want to talk, I haven't met Josh, but I want

2:16:15to talk to him. And one thing I want to talk to him about is

2:16:18the fact that there's like a level of conviction on the part of a lot

2:16:26of prosecutors that they're on the, as you were saying, they're like, they're on that

2:16:31team and therefore they have to subscribe to everybody's guilty.

2:16:36Everybody should be locked up for as long as possible because there are all these

2:16:38other people, there are defense lawyers and people like that who are on the other

2:16:41team. Right. But then you end up with people like Steve Marshall, who by the

2:16:45way, is running for Senate right now.

2:16:47And we're pushing to get him to step down from a Senate run because, you

2:16:51know, he's sort of been exposed for what he's, and by the way, he said

2:16:54that he had never been in the film.

2:16:55He never met me. He just came out with a whole public statement saying I

2:16:58had nothing to do with those people.

2:16:59I never met them. I got like 50 pictures in my phone of him walking

2:17:04me around the state house in Alabama.

2:17:06You know, it's, it was, there's a missing piece there, but, um, that's being very

2:17:11charitable, but why is it?

2:17:14That I'm a charitable person.

2:17:15But why is it that, you know, in Alabama, for example, there's a guy named

2:17:19Tafaris Johnson who was arrested for a murder a million years ago.

2:17:26He's been on death row the entire time.

2:17:29And the evidence against him totally fell apart.

2:17:31There are a dozen people that gave him an alibi that said we were with

2:17:35him at this club that was across town.

2:17:36He had nothing to do with this crime.

2:17:39And yet – and by the way, the DA who – that office is the

2:17:44office that should prosecute that crime.

2:17:46They've asked for a new trial.

2:17:48They've said that they're not confident that he's guilty.

2:17:50And yet the attorney general's office is continuing to try to execute him.

2:17:55They're trying to kill him for something which he clearly did not do.

2:17:58So there's another case, a guy named Chris Barber, where there's DNA evidence that showed

2:18:04that somebody else committed the crime and the DA is trying to execute Christopher Barber.

2:18:10And so, you know, there's this teeming, you know, where you become a part of

2:18:17law enforcement and then somehow you lose your sense of judgment or nuance or your

2:18:25ability to decide who's guilty and who's not guilty.

2:18:28And that's a really dangerous thing because – Yeah, because your career depends on you

2:18:31getting a win. Your career advances if you get a win.

2:18:35The way you get a win is convict people.

2:18:37And not getting convictions overturned, that's a loss.

2:18:41That fucks up your career.

2:18:42So better to kill them.

2:18:44Yeah. Which is really crazy.

2:18:47Yeah. Which is – I mean it's disturbing that we haven't come up with ways

2:18:54to identify fairness, right? That fairness should be the method by which you judge how

2:19:01a district attorney performs. It's like, well, we decided to prosecute a certain number of

2:19:05cases. Some of those cases weren't worth prosecuting.

2:19:08Some of those cases were going to turn into wrongful convictions.

2:19:11We're not just going to prosecute everything, which is why this whole thing about like

2:19:14Brady material where you're supposed to give the other side anything that comes out in

2:19:19the investigation that might be used to prove their innocence.

2:19:22If there's something that goes against the criminal case, you have to provide it to

2:19:27the lawyer on the other side.

2:19:28But regularly, prosecutors just bury this information.

2:19:31You have some witness that said, I was with that person at the time and

2:19:34that witness's testimony disappears. Or you have something that shows that the gun that they

2:19:39thought was used to commit the crime wasn't the one that was used to commit

2:19:41the crime. So there's just a – that's the thing, the teaming, the decision that

2:19:46you have to be part of one side or another.

2:19:49You know, I really think that that part of your special where you're sort of

2:19:55like putting me in the position of somebody who's having to make a decision about

2:19:59what team I'm on and where I lose the thread.

2:20:02You know, that's like – that's a very significant thing that you did there, you

2:20:07know, because it was like a way of bringing to the average citizen that feeling

2:20:11that they're all having right now.

2:20:13Yeah, you all get lumped into it.

2:20:16Everybody gets lumped into it because there's only two choices in this country and that's

2:20:20stupid. Or you could be one of those wacky libertarians, you know, and then you're

2:20:25like, oh, Bob's a libertarian.

2:20:26He's out of the fucking – that shit's never going to work.

2:20:29You know, what else you get?

2:20:30I mean I'm always – I'm always curious about – I'm always asking myself what

2:20:36I should be – you know, what I should be spending my time on.

2:20:39And I get involved in a film and it kind of grabs you and it

2:20:43could – How do you decide?

2:20:44Hold of you. I feel like it decides.

2:20:48You know, I feel like I'm just sort of walking around thinking maybe I don't

2:20:52need to make another one of these things.

2:20:53They're very exhausting, you know, and then something happens or, you know, my shrink says

2:20:58to me, yeah, I know.

2:21:00You always say you're not going to make another movie but I think you're better

2:21:03when you're making a movie.

2:21:04I think you're better when you're engaged in something like this.

2:21:07And I'm curious for – you know, you've built this incredible platform and you have

2:21:12access to just a remarkable number of people in the universe.

2:21:19And what do you feel like your mission is?

2:21:21What do you feel like is the – you know, when you get to the

2:21:24end of a week and you look back and you think like, I did what

2:21:27I was – I did what I set out to do this week.

2:21:30Like, all I ever do is try to talk to people I'm interested in talking

2:21:36to and that's it. And I feel like that's what I started with and that's

2:21:41what I stuck with. And if I deviate from that path, if I say, oh,

2:21:48I'll get this guy on because he's famous and then I'll get more views or

2:21:53I'll get her on because she's controversial and I'll get more views.

2:21:58I don't think like that at all.

2:22:01I don't allow it into my head.

2:22:03I get a list of people on my phone that are interested in coming on

2:22:08the show and I spend a couple hours a few times a week just going

2:22:13over this list and then I'll go, hmm, that's interesting.

2:22:17Let me look into this.

2:22:19And so then I'll do a search on this person and what they're interested in

2:22:22and then maybe I'll watch a documentary or I'll get an audio book and I'll

2:22:27start listening to it on the way to work and then I'll decide.

2:22:31And I'll go, yeah, okay, I like this.

2:22:33This is cool. I'm into this.

2:22:35This will be a conversation that I'll be genuinely curious about.

2:22:39And so that's the only way I do it.

2:22:42And I've done it that way from the very beginning.

2:22:45I either talk to my friends or I talk to people who I've seen a

2:22:50documentary that they did or read one of their books or I've watched a YouTube

2:22:54video with them and I thought they were fascinating.

2:22:56And then I reach out to my guy and I say, hey, can you see

2:22:58if this guy's interested in being on?

2:23:00And that's the only way I do it.

2:23:02So I feel like as long as I do that, I will continue to give

2:23:08people this same service. And this service is this is an extension of my curiosity,

2:23:16my honest curiosity to the world.

2:23:18So whoever I'm honestly curious about, sit them down, talk to them, do my best.

2:23:25That's it. And if I try to make it anything more than.

2:23:29If I try to change it or distort it or move it in a general

2:23:33direction or make it have a message or make it make more money or whatever

2:23:37it is, I'll fuck it up.

2:23:39That's what I think. I think that's really smart.

2:23:42And I think, you know, this is what's lacking is sort of authenticity.

2:23:46And everybody's like, oh, authenticity is so important.

2:23:49How can I manufacture that?

2:23:50Right. And I think your approach is really smart.

2:23:53I also think, you know, I think you talked about that you really like playing

2:23:57pool and that if you weren't doing this, you might just play pool.

2:24:00Yeah, that's what I would do.

2:24:02I like playing pool. But I'm wondering, like, you know, something's keeping you from playing

2:24:09pool right now. Well, I still enjoy this.

2:24:11If I didn't enjoy this, I would stop.

2:24:13Like, I don't need any more money.

2:24:15I could just stop if I didn't enjoy it.

2:24:17But I do enjoy it.

2:24:18I am a very curious person and I'm fascinated by different people's perspectives, how they

2:24:23view the world, how they got to where they are, what was their first step,

2:24:27like why they make these choices, like what is it about the way they think

2:24:31that makes them unique? And I don't think I'm ever going to lose that.

2:24:35I think that's a very important part of my understanding of us as a species,

2:24:40us as a civilization. And I'm very fascinated with the history of the human race

2:24:47and how we got to this point and where we are and how we define

2:24:50what is normal and what is not normal and what our standards are and how,

2:24:55you know, how they get manipulated.

2:24:57I don't think I'm ever going to stop being curious about those things.

2:25:00I may stop doing this publicly.

2:25:02I will never stop being curious.

2:25:04I'll never stop watching all these documentaries or reading books or I don't think I'll

2:25:09ever stop trying to have conversations with people.

2:25:11Even if I don't do it publicly, because it's, I mean, it's, this is totally

2:25:16accidental. I don't know if you know the history of this podcast.

2:25:19It started out with me and my friends just bullshitting in front of a laptop

2:25:23and there was no expectations.

2:25:26It made no money for years.

2:25:28And then it just kind of grew and I never promoted it.

2:25:33I never went on anywhere and said, please watch my show.

2:25:36I never took an ad out anywhere.

2:25:38I just kept doing it and it just snowballed to the point where I'm like,

2:25:42all right. And now I just feel like I have this responsibility and I get

2:25:47up and I go, all right, I got to do this thing today for, let

2:25:50me clear my mind first.

2:25:52So I go to the gym and I work out and I get in the

2:25:54cold plunge and I get in the sauna and I clear my mind out.

2:25:57And then I'm like, make sure I'm prepared and just show up at work.

2:26:01Like, yeah, I notice that you're not, like, you don't look at shit.

2:26:05You don't look at your phone.

2:26:07No, you can't do that.

2:26:08That distracts people. I totally agree.

2:26:10It's very gross. Yeah. Especially if you're talking to someone that has something really important

2:26:15to say. I mean, if I'm looking at my phone for a brief second, it's

2:26:18because it's something relevant to what we are talking about.

2:26:21I want to send it to Jamie so he can pull it up on the

2:26:23screen. But I think it's one of the great benefits of having these long conversations

2:26:28with people on a podcast is that that's time where you're not staring at a

2:26:32fucking device. And most people lack that.

2:26:35So I've gotten this completely unexpected education in life, in human beings and how they

2:26:41think and what drives them and just what makes them interesting.

2:26:45And, you know, how does it how does it impact like you're you're you have

2:26:51girl, you have two girls, three.

2:26:53You have three girls. How does it impact sort of how you interact with them?

2:26:58You feel like you you learn something and then.

2:27:00Yeah, I'm a way more educated person than I ever was when I was younger.

2:27:04I'm just I just know more about humans.

2:27:07I know more about myself.

2:27:09I just, you know, you're thinking and you're constantly thinking.

2:27:13So it's just adding to this database of understanding that you have about human beings

2:27:18and about just life in general and just education.

2:27:21And, you know, I'm fortunate.

2:27:25My kids are really smart.

2:27:26And so I have this cool conversations with them about stuff.

2:27:29And, you know, one of my kids has this crazy recall that my wife insists

2:27:34comes from me. She's it's nuts.

2:27:35It's like she can recall things about the Titanic and specifics about like the voyages

2:27:41because she's got down this Titanic kick for a while.

2:27:44You know, and lately we've been talking about the Mongols because there's she's studying Genghis

2:27:49Khan in school. And so we had these long conversations about Mongols and and what

2:27:54they did. And what was and, you know, I'm telling her some stuff that she

2:27:57has known that she tells me some stuff that I didn't know.

2:27:59So I'm like, whoa, this one's 15.

2:28:03But so it impacts my not just my relationship with them, but really my relationship

2:28:08with everybody in my life.

2:28:10And what's really hard is talking to people that aren't interested in anything and don't

2:28:18engage with all these different things.

2:28:19And then when you talk to them, it's like they're operating on this frequency that's

2:28:25like time and and work and life is sort of ground down all their sensitivity

2:28:33and calloused all of their their their their senses to the world or their thoughts

2:28:39of the world. Their perspectives of the world and they've developed these sort of placeholder

2:28:44opinions for things. And it's so awkward.

2:28:48And, you know, and over time, like, you know, Tony Robbins talked about this once,

2:28:53that if you make small changes in your life, like if you're both going in

2:28:56parallel lines. Right. And then you make a small deviation, a few degrees to the

2:29:01right over time, you'll be way over here where they're kind of on the same

2:29:06path. And that's what I find in life.

2:29:10That's weird. And then I think about how many people don't have the opportunity to

2:29:13do that because they have a job that's like mundane and it's consuming and they're

2:29:18involved in it all day long.

2:29:19When they get done, they're exhausted and they never really satisfy their curiosity or encourage

2:29:26and engage with their curiosity.

2:29:28They foster it, you know, and it's it's what to me makes people fascinating.

2:29:35When I talk to someone who's curious about things and it's really like and it

2:29:39went down all while I was curious.

2:29:40So then I started researching and this is what I found out.

2:29:43Like, that's the kind of person I want to talk to, you know?

2:29:46Yeah, it's real. I mean, I think it's also, you know, you're probably because it

2:29:51got big without a plan to get big.

2:29:55And because I think you're the essence of it is wanting to express curiosity, wanting

2:30:02to take in information. How do you deal with the people who say like, oh,

2:30:08you know, you had so -and -so on.

2:30:09You should have asked them this or you should have done this.

2:30:12I don't know that they're saying that.

2:30:14Because you don't hear it or you don't pay attention.

2:30:15I don't pay attention. I gave up on that years ago.

2:30:19Like, fuck off. Because you used to follow like.

2:30:20Yeah, and you realize like, oh, I'm at the will of other people's opinions constantly.

2:30:24And some of them aren't logical.

2:30:25And some of them are petty.

2:30:27And some of them are shitty.

2:30:28They're just shitty people. They're mean.

2:30:30Like, why are you being mean for no reason?

2:30:32Like, you know, why are you being insulting for no reason?

2:30:35And a lot of it is jealousy.

2:30:36They're not getting enough attention.

2:30:38They think you're an idiot.

2:30:39Why are you getting so much attention?

2:30:41I'm brilliant. I should be getting more attention.

2:30:43There's a lot of that.

2:30:44There's a lot of ego involved.

2:30:45But there's a lot of like very.

2:30:51To be nice. Like just people with shitty perspectives.

2:30:54And you don't want to engage with that.

2:30:56You don't want that in your head.

2:30:57Because I think that's contagious.

2:30:59And that's why people that are constantly surrounded by negative, shitty people.

2:31:04They develop negative, shitty tendencies.

2:31:06It's just we imitate our atmosphere.

2:31:08Which is why, like, this idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is so

2:31:13fucking crazy. When you're asking some kid whose, you know, dad's been in jail since

2:31:18he was three and lives in a crime -infested neighborhood.

2:31:21And there's 11 kids living in a one -bedroom apartment.

2:31:25And you're saying, well, how come you went to jail?

2:31:28Shut the fuck up, bitch.

2:31:29You would have went to jail, too, if you lived there.

2:31:31You don't know what you're doing.

2:31:32Like, what we need to do is figure out why are these kids in this

2:31:34situation? Why are so many of our citizens, people of our community, stuck in these

2:31:39situations with no attention paid to it whatsoever?

2:31:42And then you're wondering why so many people commit crimes.

2:31:45You're wondering why your prisons are so full.

2:31:48Like, that. When you engage with people that constantly have shitty perspectives and shitty –

2:31:54a little about that, a little when you're young is good.

2:31:57But once you're – by the time you're, like, 19, 20, you know what an

2:32:01asshole is. You know, you don't want assholes in your life.

2:32:04You, like, avoid at all costs.

2:32:06And online, if you're engaging with people online, you're getting at least 10 % assholes.

2:32:12It's like there's no way of avoiding it.

2:32:14So I don't pay attention.

2:32:14And it gets in your head.

2:32:15Yeah, it gets in your head.

2:32:17I am probably as critical, like, logically critical as anybody is ever going to be

2:32:23about me. Like, and what I do and the way I do it and, like,

2:32:27interviews that went well or didn't go well.

2:32:29I examine them, you know, and I think about it.

2:32:32Like, when they're done, like, that one's like – I should have stopped them from

2:32:36talking about that because I should have said, like, wait, that doesn't make sense.

2:32:39Like, you let people ramble a little bit too much and then they change subjects.

2:32:42You want to go back to it and then something else comes up and you

2:32:45lose – like, ah, I should have really challenged that a little bit more.

2:32:49Or I should have done this or I should have done that.

2:32:51But, you know, you're free balling.

2:32:54You don't know what – I don't have any, like, questions I know I'm going

2:32:58to ask. I just have an understanding of the subject and I let it play

2:33:02out. And I think that's why it's good.

2:33:05I just think when you listen to people, when I know – you grew up

2:33:09in blah, blah, blah. You did this.

2:33:11You did that. It's like the same tone.

2:33:12These are just questions and then the person answers the question and then another question

2:33:16comes. Like, you're not having a conversation.

2:33:19And I don't think of them as interviews.

2:33:21I think of them as conversations.

2:33:22And I think that's what I want to hear.

2:33:24So that's what I do.

2:33:26And if people are like, well, you should have done this and asked them this,

2:33:28like, no, you should go get a fucking podcast, bitch.

2:33:31Make your own podcast and then get popular enough where you can get that person

2:33:35on. Then you ask them that.

2:33:37I'm going to ask them what I ask them.

2:33:39And when I'm done, I'm done.

2:33:40That's it. Yeah. I mean, I haven't – you know, I do interviews for –

2:33:45when I'm doing documentaries. I'll do an interview for seven, eight, nine hours at a

2:33:49time. Not that I suggest you do it.

2:33:51But it's – the reason I do it is because I want to, like, converse.

2:33:55I want to really understand the other person.

2:33:57I want to give myself time to, like, really hear them out.

2:34:00And also, you know, to some extent, the most interesting stuff comes out when everybody

2:34:06just feels comfortable and their defenses go down.

2:34:09Yeah. Yeah. Elon was talking about that.

2:34:11He's like, that's that last hour.

2:34:12The last hour you can really get them.

2:34:15Because it's hard for – especially if someone has an agenda.

2:34:19You know, you could – after a while you're talking to them.

2:34:22The tendencies, the way they view the world comes out.

2:34:25If I really want to know how someone feels about love or life, I want

2:34:30to ask them, you know, how they got to where they are in life.

2:34:33How they became who they are.

2:34:35Like, give them a chance to brag.

2:34:37Like, give them a chance to inflate their accomplishments or give them a chance to

2:34:44pat themselves on the back.

2:34:46Give them a chance to dismiss other people's accomplishments.

2:34:50Give them a chance. You'll find out who people are without even pressing them on

2:34:54certain things. No, they want to tell you who they are.

2:34:57They really do. And they also – like, a lot of people, they have an

2:35:02agenda. You know, they really want to project something to the world.

2:35:06And then there's people that don't.

2:35:08And those people are amazing.

2:35:09There's some people that come in that just open books.

2:35:11They're just like – just a mind, a curious person.

2:35:14Just a person who followed a path, an artist, a singer, a comedian, a this

2:35:18or that, an athlete. Like, whatever it is.

2:35:21Like, what made you you?

2:35:23How did you get there?

2:35:24That's why I love comedy so much because, you know, just listen.

2:35:27There's a joke in Bumping Mics, this little series that we did with Jeff Ross

2:35:33and Dave Attell. And I got to watch, you know, six versions of Dave, just

2:35:40incredible, telling – they're both great.

2:35:42But Dave telling the same joke, like, six different times.

2:35:46Right. Because we filmed it over, like, a long weekend and we did two shows

2:35:50a night at the Cellar.

2:35:51And so he's got this line when he says – they're talking about, like, in

2:35:56memoriam, you know. People we lost, and they talk about Stephen Hawking, and Dave says,

2:36:03yeah, Steve Hawking, the great astrophysicist, you know, we lost him, and Jeff says that,

2:36:10and Dave says, yeah, I knew something happened because my printer stopped working.

2:36:15And for some reason, like, this joke makes people, so many people laughed at this

2:36:22joke because it's so insanely, like, impulsive, right?

2:36:26I knew Stephen Hawking died because my printer stopped working.

2:36:30And the next night, he did a different version of it where he said, oh,

2:36:34because my computer stopped working, and it got no laughs at all.

2:36:37And just being able to see the spontaneity and, like, the unlocked quality of Dave's

2:36:44mind. The tweaking of the joke.

2:36:46Yeah. But also just, like, the freedom, right, which maybe some of that for some

2:36:50people come with being stoned.

2:36:53Some people, but I see, like, the feeling, like, even your comedy special, the feeling

2:36:59that it's coming in the moment, even though I know a lot of those things

2:37:02are things that you've been thinking about, talking about, and honing over a lot of

2:37:06years. It's the moment when it feels like it's coming naturally.

2:37:11That's where, like, the biggest laughs are.

2:37:14It's also, like, where the biggest connection, the biggest human connection is.

2:37:17Yeah, that's where the dance is.

2:37:18The dance is, like, staying in the moment, no matter how many times you've talked

2:37:22about a subject. Don't think about that.

2:37:24Think about the actual subject.

2:37:27Right, right. You're basically doing, like, a form of hypnosis.

2:37:30You're leading people to think the way your mind is working.

2:37:34And the only way you can do that is if your mind is actually thinking

2:37:37that way. If you're thinking about some other stuff, for some reason, even if you're

2:37:40saying the words the exact same way, they can smell it on you.

2:37:44Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can tell.

2:37:47Well, hey, man, thank you for everything you've done.

2:37:50Thank you for the jinx, and thank you for the Alabama solution, because it's really

2:37:54awesome. And I really hope that through that film, a lot of people get outraged,

2:38:02and the right people, and enough attention gets put on it where you force people

2:38:07to do something about it.

2:38:09And I don't think people have any idea how bad these fucking prisons are until

2:38:12they see that. And I think those contraband phones and what those inmates have done,

2:38:17and the inmates themselves, through the way they conduct themselves, and when you can see

2:38:23how intelligent these people are, and that you realize, like, this is not right.

2:38:30None of this is right.

2:38:31This is... I mean, on the positive side, I would say, just so we don't

2:38:35end on a really negative note, the film has had an impact in Alabama.

2:38:43It's having an impact in Alabama already.

2:38:45And there are incredible demonstrations that have been happening.

2:38:49There's actually... I don't know if you have it.

2:38:51There's a still of this, if you want to look at it.

2:38:53But there's hundreds of people showed up on the steps of the Capitol, people really

2:38:58showing up with the intention of showing their loved ones being there and saying, this

2:39:04is really happening, and giving the rest of the public permission to understand that this

2:39:09is... You know, 45 % of Americans have had an incarcerated relative or been incarcerated.

2:39:15This is an infection. This is happening in many, many, many places.

2:39:19So for us, the film has been unlocking that, giving people a feeling that they're

2:39:25not alone, that they don't have to be ashamed of having somebody.

2:39:28Yeah. So, you know, these are people who've seen the film, who've decided that they

2:39:33want to express themselves. And this is happening more and more.

2:39:36And we just saw there was a bipartisan bill that was just introduced by Senator

2:39:42Larry Stutz, who's a Republican senator, who said he saw the film, he couldn't unsee

2:39:48it. And he said, this is not...

2:39:50He wrote an op -ed about it not being an example of Christian values.

2:39:54And he introduced this bipartisan bill for prison oversight, which is a real bill.

2:40:00It's not a bullshit bill.

2:40:01It's a real bill about how you take the investigations, because you saw in the

2:40:04film, the investigations are run by the same department that commits the crimes.

2:40:10So I think we're seeing a lot of positive action as a result of the

2:40:15film. And I think that's what transparency is all about, is if the public can

2:40:19see it. And I appreciate your talking about this and having this be in the

2:40:26public conversation, because it's really important.

2:40:28If people see it, they're not happy about it.

2:40:31They understand that something more humane needs to be done.

2:40:35Yeah, I think universally. It matters.

2:40:36I don't think anybody could watch that and not think something should be done.

2:40:39So thank you. Really appreciate it.

2:40:41Thank you. Thanks for being here.

2:40:42I enjoyed it. All right.

2:40:44Appreciate it. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.

2:40:45Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody.

#2475 - Andrew Jarecki