Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Eric Goode (documentary filmmaker)

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

Eric Goode (Monsters of God, Chimp Crazy, Tiger King) is a filmmaker, hotelier, and conservationist. Eric joins Armchair Expert to discuss growing up in an animal-filled home, surviving Northern California’s New Age movement, and befriending Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring in 1980s New York. Eric and Dax talk about creating legendary nightclubs and hotels, directing Nine Inch Nails videos, and stumbling into Tiger King while investigating reptile smugglers. Eric explains why obsession can give life purpose, why conservation requires talking to people you oppose, and why there is rarely one clear bad guy.Thank you to our presenting partner Lilly. Lilly’s Foundayo™(orforglipron). Advertisement Disclaimer: Please see Indications and Safety Summary with Warnings for Foundayo™(orforglipron) at https://www.foundayo.lilly.com/riskStart your 2 month free trial today: https://youtube.com/premium . Terms Apply. Cancel Anytime.Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: https://www.allstate.com/Take printer ink off your to-do list with HP Smart Tank | http://www.hp.com/SmartTankSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert. I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hi. This guy is among the most interesting human beings I've ever spoken to in my life. Eric Good. Colorful character. He immediately what you'll know is he directed Tiger King and we all saw that. He also directed Chimp Crazy.

Oh, a favorite of ours. A huge favorite, Tonka. And his new documentary is on HBO at streaming now called Monster. of God. I love it so much. And I thought we were just going to talk to a documentarian. No, no, no, no, no. Eric's had 26 lives before being the biggest documentarian. He owns all your favorite hotels in New York City. It's wild. Crazy history with nightclubs. Biggest turtle conservationist probably around. This dude has done every single thing. He's so punk rock. I loved him. Please enjoy Eric Good.

We are supported by Airbnb. As we head into fall, I'm already thinking about where I want to be when the leaves start turning. And honestly, Canada and the fall is unmatched. I've been looking at homes on Airbnb in Montreal because you know what? I've still not been to Montreal. I know. And everyone raves about it. They say it's so European.

And I'm ready to enjoy all that it has to offer. And you know, when I go, I want to have a local coffee shop. I want to feel like I live there, not just that I'm a tourist. There's something about fall that makes you want to slow down, get cozy, and really soak in where you are. And that's exactly what Airbnb gives you, a home base in a neighborhood where you can really immerse yourself in the local culture. Plus, everyone on the trip gets their own space, but a common area like the kitchen where we can come together and enjoy some local bites. One of my favorite parts is that the host knows the neighborhood better than any search engine ever could. They'll point you to the bakery with the best croissants or a little market you'd never find on your own.

You end up discovering these spots that make the trip feel personal like you actually live there for a bit. With Airbnb, you're not just booking a place to stay. You're getting plugged into the neighborhood. Trips are just better with Airbnb. How many hours have you been here? I've been here for about two hours. So it's okay, fashionably late. I was just asking about the set decorating and Monica's grandmother.

Oh, isn't she beautiful? I thought it was Monica. You have Indian descent or what are you? Yeah, yeah. I am. Because your last name is what? Padman. Padman.

Uh-huh. Okay. I spent a little time in India. I emailed you print. Oh, it's happening again. This happened yesterday. We're having a, what is it, a wardrobe malfunction? Yeah, mechanical.

Mechanical mouth. There's a bit of nips. Is it a mechanical malfunction, Rob? Gmail email malfunction. Where are you from in India or are you from India? I was born in Georgia. Georgia, U.S. Georgia. Not Georgia, Eastern Europe.

I wish. That would make me way more worldly. But no. My family's from Carolla. Oh, Carolla. I was in Carolla in the Western Ghats. I don't know, when was that? A couple years ago. Running around in a tiger preserve where I'd given some money to help the tigers. They have so many exotic animals there, so I bet.

Well, I was there not for the tigers, but yeah, I know that part of India. I know. I've only been once when I'm, And I was, it turns out five years old. I thought it was four. I've been saying four my whole life. My mom corrected me the other day. You've only been back to the homeland once. Well, no.

And then we went with Bill Gates a couple years ago. But we didn't get to go to Carolina. Oh, that guy, Bill Gates. That guy. That guy. We went with him for his foundation. I'm so glad you guys didn't talk too much because I have the most exciting things to reveal the Monica about you. And I want to start this by saying, we don't generally interview directors.

I can't say why. We've had a handful, but in general, we don't. Well, I'm a fake director, so keep going. But I was so obsessed with Chimp Crazy. I can't imagine you got back to you, but I bet that's all I talked about for the entire time it was on on this show. Of course, I love Tiger King,

and I love them so much that I was like, I actually want to meet this guy because these docs are so crazy, and I want to talk about animals. And then when I started reading about you today, I was like, oh, my God, you're one of the most interesting human beings in the world. I would want to interview you anyways.

You've had like 25 lives, and some of these lives are going to make Monica's head explode. It's very exciting. You must be talking about someone else. Someone's sitting over here, maybe. No, no, no, no, no. A new guest coming in. No full humility.

But let's start at the beginning. And when she hears these things, I mean, this is a very exciting thing. What, like, you like, we're on friends or something? First of all, don't believe what you read on the internet. Wikipedia, Google. Even peer review is inaction. I'm just saying, even scientific. peer review is not accurate.

So let me hear this fiction that you've read about me. We're now throwing out peer review journals. How many years I did in prison? What did you mean? Well, let's start. You have the best birthday in the world, our daughter's birthday. December 19th. Oh.

1957. Oh, God, you must be talking about the wrong guy. I was born in 77. Okay. And you were originally born in Rhode Island, but then you grew up in New York City until 8? My formidable year is mostly in Northern California in California. But yes, I had a stint in New York.

And was it zero to eight? I was born in Rhode Island. I left when I was so young, I don't remember. And then we went to California. Then we went to Westchester, New York, not New York City. My father was a teacher, and he moved around a lot because he couldn't hold jobs very well. He was an artist as well? He was an artist and not terribly successful, but I learned a lot about art from him, yeah.

And then I grew up high school years and a bit earlier in Marin County and Sonoma County and California. And for folks who have not been, it's on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's redwoods. It's so beautiful. privileged part of the country. I moved to New York in 1977 and spent over 40 years in New York City. Wow. Okay, but mom was a

naturalist and a conservationist? In what capacity? Listen, you know this, you know this probably. Everyone has crazy families. I always think, oh, mine's the craziest, but it's not. I had an eccentric mom who taught me to love creatures, no matter how small. If someone squashed

a bug in school, I would tell them to eat because don't kill something unnecessarily. My father was an artist, a professor. A professor. And gay, which I found out much later in life. So I had this kind of father that was like anti-sports. He started his own high school.

It was very artsy-fartsy. And I didn't really find out about his sexuality until very late in life. My parents had a very odd relationship. As a result of the hidden five kids. She didn't know until very late in life. My mom just was attracted to guys that had kind of an effeminate side. Like art and museums and botanical gardens. Yeah.

Those guys are great. I think all girls are attached to those kind of guys. Yeah. That's why you guys have a girl best friend. What's not to like? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's what all grew up. Maybe the SCX wasn't too excited.

Yeah. That part lacked. But he was able to sire five of you. I think he just wanted to keep my mom busy so he didn't have to engage in that kind of stuff. I don't know. It was the 50s and 60s. That's a very hard time to be a gay man.

That's true. Yeah. Stonewall happened and that was one of the big gay breakthroughs. New York. Yeah, you couldn't say you were gay in those days. You said your mother was eccentric. Can you elaborate a tiny bit on eccentric? That can take a lot of shades. Yeah. I always sort of compare my family to the Royal Tannenbaum's or something, because we grew up with a lot of animals in the house, tropical fish, rats, snakes, lizards, you know, dog cat, five kids, dysfunctional, fighting all the time. I went to this thing

called Est when I was really young. You know, I don't know, Warner Air Hart trading. That's a precursor to Landmark. In the 70s, exactly, when I was. was 16. So, you know, New Age. Can I quickly ask what you thought of that S experience, right? Because their proprietary approach was like confrontation therapy, right? It's a self-help organization. Yeah, but the guy, Warner Earhart, was like a used car salesman, you know, probably from Detroit or somewhere near there. And he then had an epiphany, and he said, I'm going to indoctrinate this thing. And used car salesman's going to be pretty

convincing. And so then with AST, he was pretty convincing. And he had his minions. And my mom thought, oh, my brother and I are fighting. We're 15 and 16. You got to go to Esten, San Francisco, and spend two days listening to this guy. I didn't know what the fuck I was listening to. All I remember was at the end, they say, get on the floor, everyone gets on the floor in this big, giant auditorium,

and they say, we live your birth. And I'm lying on the floor with my brother, and we hear everyone agonizing yells and screams. Oh, my God. This primordial ooze. We're like, what the fuck is going on here? And we left, and then they say to you, did you get it?

And we go, I don't know, and they said, you got it. And that I was asked. But did it cure your brother in that you had a shared moment where you're like, oh, they're crazy, we're not. I guess we, you know. We didn't know what was going on. You don't have that kind of intellectual or I didn't. I was dyslexic.

I was bad in school. I was like just going through the motions at Est. Although today, I might even do a doc about Est, comes full circle. Did you watch the Americans? No. Incredible show on FX with Matthew Reese and Kerry Russell. where they're playing Russian operatives in America in the early 80s. And she falls in love with Est.

Oh, really? Yeah, so there's lots of scenes set in Est. I mean, Est, they always keep wanting you to go back. It's like Scientology a little bit. Like, it went from S to actualization to the forum. The landmark forum. And they keep wanting you to get to the next level. I did it once.

I grew up in such a new age, crazy world in Northern California in the 70s. We had Joseph Campbell come and speak at our ranch. We had everyone you can think of in the New Age moving at that time. And so I kind of rejected it. Sure. Because I was just so indoctrinated. My dad was sober and he was into Course of Miracles and all this stuff. And I was like, what the fuck's going on?

Did Mom go to Esselin? Oh my God. Eselin used our ranch every summer. So Eslin, the first time I think I ever had sex was the kid of one of the Eslon leaders. But yes, of course. Eslon, you know, all of that stuff. Jim Jones was in San Francisco. time, but I didn't drink the Kool-Aid.

Thank God. But there was Synanon. There were all the communes. It was what I grew up in. Yeah, but of course, Eslon. Did you watch that doc, the Synanon Dock? I did watch some of the Synanon doc. I do remember vividly when the head of Sinan

put the Rattlesnake in the mailbox to try to kill the journalist unsuccessfully. And of course, anything with rattlesnakes perks my ears. So yes, I lived in California when that happened. Okay, so you end up going to two different artists. schools, right? You go to one in San Francisco and then you ultimately go to Parsons. Yeah, I got kicked out, though. There's already a vibe here, right? And I find it fascinating that you are a documentarian and interview people. You're reminding me of Keith Morrison. Like, you don't want to talk, man. Yeah, but whatever. Yeah. No, but what?

Right? A little bit? Yeah, there's a little bit of that. These are all interesting things. I mean, listen, takes one to no one over their decks because you have an unorthodox career path, if I might say so myself. For sure? Just looking you up very briefly. Yeah. And going from Detroit suburbs and the car world into anthropology and studying that. And how the hell do you land where you are right now? Yeah. So we all have a weird. Well, no, we don't all.

Well, some of us do. Yeah, some of us do. I'm always very interested in folks because there's a lot of underlying things within that, right? I too is dyslexic. I've come to learn them, probably ADHD. Probably me too. I get passionate about things. And then if I've done anything for a while, I'm like, okay, what's the next thing in life I can do before I am off this planet,

which is coming quickly. But you do go to Parsons. Which one did you get kicked out of Parsons or the first one? Both. Oh, I was really good to get kicked out of school. Well, I got kicked out of my father's high school, which was called the School of Arts and Sciences for cheating on a geometry test. My father's. He started the school.

It was an alternative high school that was called the School of Arts and Sciences. Thank God for that, because I know you've had Malcolm Gladwell on, but thank God because I could achieve in that environment because I excelled in art and I sucked in academics. I got kicked out of my father's school. I got kicked out of Parsons after the first foundation year because I was going to nightclubs in New York and that's where the art scene was really sort of germinating at the time.

What was your infraction? At the art school, I just think I wasn't good enough because there was a certain level of academics you had to take in the foundation year. And I was studying more at Studio 54 at nightclubs at the mug club. These are places that predate you guys, but they were big clubs in New York at the time.

This is where we start with the mind-blowers. Ooh, he's excited. This is incredibly exciting. So Eric founded with a couple other folks, right? Or just you? I like to say everything's just me, by the way. Never get credit to the others. It was all just me.

You were a founder of or if not the only of area, this nightclub that fused or conflated nightclub life with art. And among the collaborations that area, it was like wildly popular for four years. years? Is that how long it was going? A little less, but yeah, yeah, yeah. A Warhol collaboration, Basquiat collaboration, Keith Herring. Wow. Is this contemporary to Studio 54? Host the real part of Studio 54. My two friends that owned Studio 54, unfortunately, went to prison. And when they got out of prison, area basically opened in 1983. Studio 54 from like 76 or 7 to 1979 or whatever they went to prison. Yes, okay. And they got out of prison and they really helped promote my club because they were like,

we were fresh out of prison. What's next? What's the new club? Yeah, they're like gangsters that got out. They're trying to figure out like, what's the next? Heist at JFK. But you know, in New York Nightlife success, I guess, if you measure it, four years, three years is like dog years.

So that's like 50 years. Yeah. Clubs are ephemeral in New York. So if you have a run, that's three years, you're done pretty well. Yeah. Because none of them last, in New York City, at least. Okay, so I'm trying to do the math on your age.

What age were you around that? I was in my 20. and we were all in our 20s back there. Andy was, Andy Warhol was kind of like the older statesman in the art world, but Jean-Michel Bosca and I used to do our birthday parties together. Oh my God.

By the way, we're not to the part that's going to make your heads. Well, Keith Herring, Jean-Michel, all of us were young kids in New York trying to find the way. Had you met at Parsons or just around the village? No, no, I just met. Everyone I met it was in the nightclub scene. There was no cell phones, no internet, no social media, no nothing.

The only way you could connect with people is go to a place where other people were. And it was sex, drugs, and rock and roll and art. And they were kind of like laboratories, these clubs, for ideas and exchanging ideas and cross-pollinating. And so I met Jean-Michel and Keith, and all of us met in the late 70s. And we just started trying to figure out

how to make our mark like everyone. Madonna was a bartender back then. It was this place called Lucky Strike. In New York, a different Lucky Strike than the one you may know of. But we all would come to New York because we're misfits from all over the country. You seem to have done some research on me, so you're aware of the fact that I'm an addict, right? Yeah, yeah, but I was an addict, too, and I'm still an addict in a different way.

Oh, yeah, right. So when I read this little passage about area, all I can think about is how many drugs, was it awash in drugs? The drug scene always kind of morphs and changes. In those days, it was cocaine, quailards, and heroin, where the three, math was more of a rural drug. It wasn't an urban drug, as it is today. And it wasn't like what it's become. But yeah, it was those three drugs and alcohol. And were you participating in them?

I was a late bloomer with addiction. In the early days, I had no money. And so I was just survival mode. And so I would do it opportunistically, but really I was so focused on trying to be able to survive in New York City. And New York City was a very different place back then, much cheaper, but nevertheless. Was area not hugely profitable? It sounds like it would have been. Clubs are rarely hugely profitable.

I'd never forget when Andy Warhol said to me on Andy Warhol TV. He goes, you know, gee, Eric and Andy Way, what are you going to do with your money? And I said, I'm going to get cool tortoises I could never afford. He was like, what? But, you know, listen, we made money. We poured the money back into the club because we had these elaborate themes. And we would just try to outdo ourselves. Your production was expensive.

Yeah. So in the end, we walked away with not a lot of money. But we walked away with confidence that we could do it. It gave us that thing. When you're young and you get that confidence. Yeah. And it's a success. Fuck yeah.

It's like Michael Jordan winning the game shot in college. He does that. He'll always be able to win the game winning. Speaking of Michael Jordan, you have a talent that he has. You can talk and chew gum at the same time. But he has one other thing. He can stick his tongue out and dunk because I saw Michael on the floor at the garden one time.

Talking trash to everyone at the Knicks. Yeah. His tongue wagging out, his gum still in his mouth, and dunking. I was like, how the fuck does the gum stay in? He's a coordinated human being if we know anything about him. Unbelievable. He scored 50 points in that game against the Knicks when he came back from baseball. But anyway, were you in any of those Pacers games back in the day?

I was at that one Michael Jordan game because Naomi Campbell took me. We sat on the floor. What is going on? I'm parsing this out for you. I remember being able to listen to every word Michael said. It was amazing. Okay. I'm going to get right to it.

If you had to pick your favorite place to be in New York City. The Rose Store? No. Oh, okay. No, no. Okay. Don't do that to poor mom. No, no, she's going to pass this.

What is your favorite place to post up and be and spend time at in New York City? I mean, I spend a lot of time at the Bowery. This motherfucker. You did not. He started the Maritime? What? Maritime? I'm just saying quiet.

No, you were shaking your head in it, and I don't know he didn't know. He's embarrassed. The Maritime? He's incredible. The Waverly. The Bowery. Dude, I was at the. I'm married time when I shot.

Baby Mama, I think it was the summer of 2005. The restaurant downstairs, I'm going to bore you with this. 2005, okay. Okay, I want you to know how your things actually have touched people. It seems like you don't do well taking that kind of compliment, but I'm going to tell to you. It's good. I'm glad your ego isn't what it should be. Well, we'll try to get it there over the course of this next two hours.

Okay, so I had been with a girl for nine years. We broke up. I was very in this doldrums of like, man, I don't even know what my life is. We were supposed to have a baby. I go to this movie, Baby Mama. I barely worked in Baby Mama. I have to work one, two days a week. And I just developed a bunch of New York friends.

And I'm staying at the Maritime Hotel. And I go down by myself. And I met La Bataga. What is it called? La Batega. God, you're a good memory. Yeah, Italian restaurant. Italian restaurant with outdoor seating.

It's summer of 2005, I think, in New York. And I'm sitting out there, and the weather's perfect. And I eat this fucking beautiful meal. And I have this wave come over me. It's such a strong, invisceral feeling that I remember so much. And I was just like, you know what, life is fucking good. And I'm going to be okay, man. And let's have some fucking fun in New York City this summer.

I had this moment. I left that restaurant, I was like, we're going to have a great time in New York City this summer. And we had a great time in New York City. Yeah. It's nice to hear. Yes. It was a big part, the environment, the context that you created

and the taste of the food and the weather. And I was like, yeah, man, fucking life is still going to be good. That's cool. Yeah, it's funny how I never thought of, in clubs and restaurants and hotels, that that would somehow give me an advantage making films. And the thing that I realize now, it all kind of weirdly connects,

because there are people that I've met through the years that were involved or stayed at my hotels or ate at my restaurants. I have a Rolodex. And then there's people like Ted Danson, who lives right across the street from me. In Ohio? Yeah.

But he also did a film in the Maritime Hotel where they shot this film. And it's just funny that one degree of separation and the connective tissue that later helps because I can pick up the phone and call Alan coming to be in Chimp Crazy. You know people. I know people.

One more maritime story. I'm staying there. Every morning I wake up, I want a coffee, right? And so every time I call the operator answers and then I have to give her my order. She then talks to the kitchen, right? So one of these mornings, I've been there for three weeks, right? And I say to this woman who I've not talked to every single morning,

I say, listen, I just want you to know, I think it's bullshit that you have to deal with my order. And then I can't call directly to room service. And she goes, oh, you think that's bullshit. That's just the beginning. And I go, what do you mean? She goes, I'm in a fucking basement right now. I go, no, shit, you're in the basement.

We start chatting for a very, very long time. And then she goes, this is fun, but I got to go, I want to have my cigarette break. I go, okay, I'll come down and join you. I go out in the front of the hotel. I start talking to this woman. And I learned she's a writer for Vice, and she tells me she has a book, and I get the book. It's called Dear Diary. And then her hero is Amy Polar.

So I bring her book to set on Baby Mama. I give it to Amy. That becomes a connection. She then ends up writing on girls. She then created her own TV show on Netflix. This woman, Leslie Arfin, who's incredible, who was the operator at your hotel, who I developed this life. It turned out we were both sober. Yeah.

And, yeah, another crazy thing. Well, yeah, I had Zoe Casavetti's working down there. John Casavetti's daughter for a while. Yeah, it's funny how that works. And they are working in a basement. Yeah, it's really, I'm so inhumane to my staff. Bower hotel offices are also in the basement. Well, for real estate's a premium.

Where else are they going to be? Okay, sorry, let's talk about the Bower. Oh, my, I just, I love it so much. I was just there. A couple weeks ago I was just there. That's my hotel. That's her home base. That's my home base.

Well, I can hook you up next time, Monica. Oh, my. Oh, we got a whole. I want to tell them. Okay, great. Okay, so I have to apologize to you, I suppose. Sure. I have an apology to make an immense.

So the keys at the Bowery are amazing. The Fobbs. Yes, exactly, the Fobbs. For people who don't know, they're this big tassel. Your number, hotel room numbers carved onto the brass. It's beautiful, okay? I like items. So you stole the Fob?

I didn't, I didn't. I kind of did. Okay, so I was in room 11-11. Very, very auspicious. Very, very, very. That's my lucky number. I'm always seeing 11-11. I get that room.

And I was like, I have to have this tassel. Like, I don't know how I'm going to get it, but I have to. Now be careful, because what happens at the Bowery stays at the Bowery, Monica, so don't say anything to... Well, I've already said it. Unfortunately, this whole story is known to all the list. Unfortunately, I've already knows. I'm not going to keeping secrets. But I'm also not good at stealing.

So I did go up to the front desk, and I said, how do I, have this. I will buy it. I would like to buy it. How do I do that? And they're like, they're not for sale, but if they are taken, we charge this amount. Some ridiculous number. Yeah, and I was like, thank you for telling me that news. This is the last you'll ever see of this key. And they took it. We try to trick people into taking them so we can charge us in order. So it's a real way we profit on the Bower. That's where the margins at is in that key. I'm shameless right now plugging my other hotel. I'm a hotel in Ohio called Hotel. Roe Blar, and we have these brass cowboy hats on the fobs, and everyone wants the brass cowboy hat,

and they do take them all the time, and we do have to charge. Yeah, I'm going to do that. You have to. You have to. That's been on my Instagram algorithm. I was looking at it this morning, and it's gorgeous. And my wife has stayed at your tortoise place. Oh.

Oh, the conservators. Right? Is that not yours? It is. Yeah. I have a hotel for tortoises. As well. Oh, hi, as well.

and I'm much better at tortoise hospitality than human hospitality. They get pampered really well. You are not. The hospitality at those hotels are incredible. I can't believe this. This is very... This is great.

But let me just tell you one last thing about hotels. Owning hotels, the thing that you learn is what do you do when someone commits suicide? What do you do with all these weird things that happen in hotels? So there's this whole thing we don't talk about when you own hotels. When do most people have sex?

It's Friday afternoons when people are cheating on their wives in between the hours of like 8 p.m. and midnight, you can hear the cacophony of sexual activity when you walk down the hallways. And so there's all these sort of things that we, and I shouldn't be saying. I'll keep my mouth shut about what happens in hotels,

but it's very interesting. My grandparents own the roadside motel on the border of Indiana and Michigan growing up, and I would go there for this summer. It was called the Colonial Motor Inn. My sweet, sweet grandmother, who was very tiny, the amount of dead bodies she found in her tenure of running the colonial money. Like, every time I saw my grandma, how many dead buddies have you found since I saw you?

Because people do go to hotels to end their lives. And it's a whole thing, by the way, because your housekeeping won't go into those rooms until you have someone come, usually a priest, and bless the room and cleanse the room. And there's a whole thing about, you know, the shining kind of like that kind of thing. Like, oh, is this hotel haunted? You can get that rumor of a haunted hotel, The Maritime. Maritime. I was just going to say that.

And it's like, I'm staying there for like a couple of weeks, and people just start telling me these ghost stories about the Maritime. And one of them was a woman woke up and a ghost was having sex with her. Oh, my gosh. I said, what was your reaction? She goes, I was terrified. And I'm like, I would be so fucking delighted if I woke up. Well, that's one of the amenities that we are at the maritime.

The ghost sex interaction is one of the most popular. Wow, what a life. So yeah, that chapter was pretty long. What are the borders of that chapter where that was your full focus before you really start getting into conservation and stuff? Yeah, like you said earlier, I like to figure something out and you know, you kind of crack the code and you do it. And then you don't want to just keep doing the same thing over and over again.

So the progression was the hotels were great. It afforded me resources to do other things. I made some money. Clubs are ephemeral. I didn't really make money, but it was fun in my youth. and after a while I had a few hotels and then I started thinking what's next you know life is short

and I kind of always was a closeted reptile guy and turtle guy in New York and never really spoke about that love affair that I would have Did you have a bunch in your apartment? I did and girlfriends would always be kind of like oh my God what are you living with? Why is most of the apartment filled with these reptiles and tortoises? And do you not think there's a little bit of a smell

when you have those aquariums? Yeah I started feeling a little bit like goats in the apartment We had gomorite cortices were big and they grew. But listen, that was an indelible love affair since I was a kid. Did you have any hijinks? Like, did any reptiles get loose ever? Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's their nature.

I mean, listen, I don't recommend this to people. But in the early days, you know, we had themes at this club I owned in the early 80s, and we would have natural history theme. Any chance I got, I would try to figure out how to incorporate animals into the club. I had a great horndale. I had bats. I had a 15-foot python that escaped under the floorboards. I only found it years later when we took the club apart, the skeleton.

No, no, I shouldn't even admit that. No, you're honest. I like your honesty. Yeah, we like it. I'll regret it later. But snakes escaped in my life. You know, I used to sleep with a lizard when I was in high school called it Tegu, a big black and white South American lizard.

It wasn't the best creature to sleep with because it couldn't control itself. You know, it's bowels. They're in common. Oh, boy. Anyway, anyway. But yeah, I did the hotels. I still have them. They just opened one in Ohio last year.

Open one here, please. In L.A.? L.A. needs better hotels. I'm old friends with Andre that owns the Chateau Marmard, and that's a whole other story. We love that, but that's far away. Yeah, if you know of any, Monica, just tell me. Tax and now I would maybe like to get in the hotel business.

Yes, I think we could really diversify. We could have a fun little, another chapter. Not for you, but for me. Inside hotel. I'm putting that out there. Oh, then just quickly, because you said, but did you have a little addiction? Did it ever get a little question?

Oh, yeah. In my life, what are you talking about? I'm like leaving in New York City. I like the dopamine rush of everything. Career dopamine rush, drug dopamine rush, the euphoria of having a success and then the, you know, then why you always want more and more and more, of course. And I think my father was really an alcoholic, to be fair. I think it runs in the family sometimes. Yeah, yeah. You know, look, Jean-Michel died of a heroin overdose. Yeah. Jean-Michel Baskat. I was with him the night he died. And I've seen a of casualties along the way, obviously. It's like the opposite ends of the spectrum in the most dramatic way possible. We always have euphoric recall, right?

We forget the bad stuff, right? And then we go back and then we forget, oh, shit. No, it's definitely taken a toll on certain periods of my life for sure. So then you must love Monsters of God. I mean, we're getting to deal with a lot of drugs, which is fun, because we haven't had that in your first couple. Well, no, that's not true. Tiger King was very meth-heavy.

Yeah, I try not to go deep into the meth, Yeah, there was a lot of meth. I kind of didn't include as much as I could have. But it would be crazy not to acknowledge. It's such a powerful force within the stories we're witnessing. It's like when you wonder, why is Joe Exotic got these young guys? What's the leverage? That needs an explanation, and the explanation is drugs.

Yeah. I mean, it's a little like that horrible saying, a little pooch gets you a lot of cooch. A little tiger gets you a lot of boys. Nothing better than a little tiger. Sorry about that. No, I love that. But, you know, like the little baby tigers

were a good gateway drug into getting boys for Job and then sprinkle a little meth in with the tigers and then you have a threesome and a foursome. You've got these cute little monkeys on top of it that you can sugarcoat everything. He had a pretty good trap to get his victims. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. But all of that was going on.

It was a cocktail of baby tigers, baby animals, meth and boys. But I guess what I'm saying is I think it's helpful. Like, we'll go into 7-Eleven, me and my family. And we get back in the car and they're a little bit like, what was going on with Blank, blank, blank? And I'm like, okay, so that dude was on math for three days. That dude was nodding off from junk.

I know what's going on immediately. I know what the fucking scenario is. And I think that is a useful skill set when navigating a world like that. I have offices next to MacArthur Park. Oh, yes. My hotel's on the Bowery in New York. I can tell when I see someone walking across street, barely able to stand. I usually go and I go, oh, I want to feel like that guy.

I know what that feels like. It's just barely teetering. He's on dope. And then the meth addicts are over there. I don't know if I want to feel like that. I'm an anthropologist. I can tell what's what. An urban anthropologist.

Yeah. I can tell who's on what. Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. Not checking your teeth before walking into a meeting. You smiled at six people in the hallway, confidently, full teeth.

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I think it's a great skill set for navigating in the dock world because you're dropping into these things. You're getting the fast past of what's really going on. Dax, I was filming in Vegas, another project I'm doing with Netflix right now. And we were filming this guy who was smoking fentanyl and meth. And my cameraman is sober, and he blew it right in his face. Oh, God. And contact high. I'm okay for me.

Freed by camera, but literally absolutely had to take a pause, a timeout. But we've been filming a lot of people that are in that state. Would we call that a hillbilly speedball, meth and fentanyl? I think we call it like death, right? Well, apparently it's a good blend for a lot of people. Sure. Well, it's a speedball.

I don't understand fentanyl then. I thought if you had just a little bit, you died. So how are people doing it? It's insanely, insanely powerful. but you can get the right dosage. You're getting it at the hospital. They know how... No, they did it great on 60 minutes

when they had an expert on. They had this little kilo, and then they had a penny, and on the penny had a little amount of fentany and said, this is enough to kill a 10,000 pound elephant. And then the little bag that was next to it said, this is enough to kill like the village or something. You know, it's insanely powerful.

But it obviously could be, as the doctors do, dose correctly. But a lot of these people, they're even smart enough to have Narcan. A lot of the people just have it already. So if you go into a drug den house, which I've been in recently in Vegas, where there's 20 people in there doing math and fentanyl and everything, they have Narcan.

But yeah, Narcan doesn't always... Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you also dabble in the 90s, and again, it's so exciting research in you today. You did the 9-inch Nails video... Pinyin. Piny!

I did two 9-inch Nails videos. But they were more like making short films in the early 90s. I see, oh, he directed a video. I wonder if I ever saw it. And the second it starts like, oh my God, this is one of the most like indelible. You know, this is a very memorable video. It starts with these three toilets, black and white.

And clearly like a New York bathroom, it's not inviting. You follow the swirl of the water down a pipe. You're going through all the pipes in the city. Following it for a while, there's machinery. All of a sudden the pipe is linked to a person in a rubber BDSM outfit. And it's just spilling up. I mean, what a visual. It was funny.

In between clubs and restaurants in New York, I thought, It would be fun to make some music video. Someone came up to me on the street and said, you want to write something for 9-inch nails? I didn't even know Trent Resner. I didn't know 9-inch nails. And I wrote a treatment, that one. And they said, we love it.

I did some drawings. And I made that short film. They gave me $10,000 to make a music video. And this is when David Fincher and Mark Romantic and all these guys were doing music videos before they were big movie directors. And we were all sort of writing for the same artists, Black Crows, and Nirvana,

and etc. But anyway, I thought it was really fun because the band wasn't even in the music video. So I basically could do whatever I wanted and make a short, weird Boonwell film. So I did a second one called Help Me I'm in Hell with a guy in a padded cell, eating a steak dinner, shaved head with just hundreds of flies flying around and landing on him and landing on his fork and that was it. And then it goes down a little bit of a dark rabbit hole. You're almost like artsy John Waters. Oh, you know. John and I are old friends. You are?

Coming to Ohio in October. John, I'm talking about you. I've been John Waters for 40 years. I love John. I interviewed John in Baltimore at his house not so long ago for a different project. But yeah, it was like making short films and making those music videos for me. It was fun. Okay, so you do the hotel thing now.

I was like, what next? It's conservation first, then into docs, right? Yeah. I reached a point, like I said, where I was successful. with the hotel world and restaurants, and I had the resources to start thinking about other things and maybe things that were more important to me and maybe also things that were going on at the world at the time.

And this was in the early 2000s, late 1990s, when I became more aware of the extinction crisis, serious topic. And there was a great book by Elizabeth Colbert called The Sixth Extinction, which is the first man-made extinction ever, which is also called the Anthropocene. The current extinction we're in right now is because of us. Climate change, us, you know, the impact on the planet, eight billion people on planet Earth when I was born. There was two and a half billion people.

All the things that we've done have created this extinction crisis we live in today. And so primates and turtles and tortoises are the two vertebrates that are the most threatened with extinction. Because over half of each group is threatened with extinction. So I said, I want to do something about that. I want to help with these turtles that I love. So I started getting involved with turtle and tortoise conservation, but conservation in general, working with different groups around the world. It's interesting because I'm watching last night with my family episode two.

You know, of course, my wife and my children are horrified. There's some very horrific things about these very, very rare animals dying. And I'm just admitting my own shittiness. I don't have a major connection to reptiles, right? So it's not hitting me. I'm more fascinated by the culture of the dudes. And then there's a bit of footage where they're talking about like, oh, yeah, he had everything. How do you get a baby gorilla?

Now, my specialty or my focus was primates. when I major in anthropology. That was my interest, right? And I'm immediately like, I'll tell you how motherfuckers, they killed all the family members of that little baby gorilla. That's what happened.

That baby gorilla represents six probably dead adults. And I was like, fuck, fuck these motherfuckers. And I was like, oh yeah, that's just the power of, that really affects me. And I've done the gorilla track, the majesty of those things. No, no, the old school way

of getting menageries into zoos where you go to wherever, and you shoot and kill the adults, adult hippos and you bag the baby. You're not going to be able to get a giant hippo onto a boat or onto a plane. And so the old way was you shoot the adult elephants and you get the baby. The gorilla, you shoot the silverbacks and you get the baby. That was what menageries did back in the day.

And so it was really horrific. What are menageries? Are these traveling, like, animal shows? Getting a collection of animals. Oh, okay. That's called them. So to get all these animals into zoos, they would do precisely what you just said. They would shoot the adults and grab the babies.

Today, that's not the case. Grill is now, we're being bred in captivity, and we're not going and killing adult grillas to get the baby. But definitely in the Dian Fawsey days, that was an epidemic. Yeah. Okay, so you start first, I guess, the Turtle. The Turtle Conservancy's shameless plug. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You donate $30 million of your own money to this.

Probably more at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're right now, this comes out after the show series, right? So I can, no spoiler alerts, right? Yes, right? There's only three more weeks, right? Yes, yes. No, but at the end of Monsters of God, there's sort of an optimistic ending after a lot of dark, you know, history. Well, and yeah, just things that it will be really surprising when you see all five episodes of Monster God, there'll be things that you would not expect. But at the end, we successfully breed at the Turtle Conservancy,

the rarest tortoise in the world that's never been bred before in the Western world, ever, in any zoo. And it was auspicious that when we basically finished Monsters of God, we got our first hatchling of what's called a plowshare tortoise, which is a tortoise that's functionally extinct in the wild in Madagascar. It only comes from a tiny part of Madagascar. But we're sending our young, now we have 30 young baby plowshire tortoises back to Madagascar. So there's this kind of optimistic, really cool ending, two Monsters of God that's sort of beautiful.

And it was just, like I said, really auspicious because we've worked with this species for over 20 years. And I got to give a shout out to Leonardo to Caprio right now because he's helped us with some funding and he's doing this thing right now with Bezos. That's incredible. That's helping us basically save a lot of really, really endangered species right now. Oh, wonderful.

He should probably come on and talk about it. Leo? We should probably, he should probably just... Well, I got to just say, people always say that actors shouldn't be doing anything other than acting and they shouldn't do philanthropic things. They shouldn't have any opinions. They shouldn't have an opinion.

They shouldn't be political. People always say, Sean, Ben, stop, you know, doing anything but acting. Stay in your lane. And I know Sean, and I have to say, Sean, you went and met with Chapo Guzman. That was fucking unbelievable. And I felt like that when I met with some of the characters you're going to see in Monsters of God. Like, it's dangerous. And Sean, he understands, you know, drugs.

And he understands that just putting Chapo in prison isn't the answer. And he went to Mexico. And I got to give Sean a lot of credit for that. But anyway, I'm sort of digressing or diverging, but I will say just because of the community you're involved in, it's great when people speak out and do something, whether it's political or conservation-related or whatever it is, whatever your thing is.

You're pretty busy, I would imagine, doing that work. And then how do we get to directing Tiger King? A friend of mine, Fisher Stevens, who won an Oscar for the film The Cove with Louis Savoyos. I was talking with Fisher about doing something on the reptile world. And there was a book called The Lizard King written by a friend of mine, Brian Christie. And I said, Fisher, read this book.

It's a great story. And we met at the Bowery Hotel at Jammah one day for lunch. And he said, I read the book, it's really good. But how do you make this documentary without getting killed? And that kind of discouraged me, because there's a lot of scary people in this story. My favorite character, the whole thing is Mario. Well, wait until you meet Anson Wong in Malaysia,

who's the King Pit, which is the Pablo Escobar of the, you know. But anyway, I was discouraged. was in like 2012. And then Fisher did a film with Leonardo Caprio called Before the Flood about climate change. And he was trying to sell it to CNN. And CNN passed. And then Fisher goes, well, you know, my friend Eric Good has this footage of this weird guy, Joe Exotic. And then I did a CNN pilot.

They were interested in that. Really good. How had you met Joe? I just started filming reptile people in the beginning with these guys, the Safdi brothers. They may know. Josh Safdi. who just was up for an Oscar with the Party Supreme. And he's a producer on Monce.

Yeah, so 12 years ago, we started filming in South Florida. We were filming some reptile people, Mario, Josh and I and his brother. And one day, a guy drove in with a snow leopard in his van, and we were like, wait a minute, you can just buy a snow leopard. So that got me focused on big cats. I got off reptiles. The CNN thing didn't work. Jeff Zucker, who was running CNN at the time,

didn't want another old Anthony Bourdain. Anthony Bourdain. Anthony Bourdain was still alive. So our CNN pilot didn't work, which was about our relationship with animals. Anyway, but I got into Tiger King accidentally because I just fell into it. You followed that snow leopard. Yeah, I was really doing a story about reptiles. Tiger King got in the way.

Jim Casey got in the way, finally finished Monsters of God. But yeah, Joe was a lot of fun. And Oklahoma was a lot of fun for me. So this is my question about Tiger King. I'm not conflicted. I don't mind loving bad people. I think I grew up with a lot of bad people that I love, right? So I am at both times judgmental, obviously, of Joe Exotic's terrible treatment of animals.

And I don't think people should have any of these animals. But also, I am very attracted to him. He's a very compelling person, and I'm attracted to him, right? And I do wonder what your tension is when you're making these, do you fall in love with some of these people that obviously you condemn their behavior, but do you fall a little bit in love with them? Yeah, there's a lot of lovable things about Joe Exotic. And, you know, all of us have our good parts and bad parts.

He had some really bad parts as well. I think I'm being gay really helped me. That's a rough road in Oklahoma where he grew up. And he's kind of twisted now because of... That gay extreme narcissism was really interesting with him. But, you know, I think what I'm interested in is often we think about New York, L.A., London, Paris, whatever. These are the places where everything's happening.

And the truth is, in flyover states, middle America, places that you don't think anything interesting, is happening. In fact, there's a lot of interesting, weird shit going on. And if you start turning over the rocks and looking, you find these really interesting characters. And you mentioned John Waters, or you think of Errol Morris and Vernon, Florida, a really great film he did in the panhandle of Florida. You think of Todd Solon, so another director who kind of looked at that landscape. He did that film, Welcome to the Doll House. But I'm really interested in worlds that aren't so obvious to all of us. So Joe Exotic wasn't really what people were thinking about. Same with monkey moms.

Who knew that there were all these monkey moms across the country? Women that need and want to have a baby forever. And it becomes a monkey. And so, yes, back to what you said earlier, I think that it's the characters that are really important. But in the end, watching these stories, the silver lining is, of course, can we do something to prevent having a chimpanzee incarcerated in a basement

and solitary confinement when they are complex social animals and you know about primates? You know, can we do something about that? Can we make change with people keeping 200 tigers in a zoo and basically killing off the adults because they are expensive to keep because you have to feed them a lot of fresh meat? You watch the line so well. Tiger King got a lot of criticism, but at the end of it,

what's this act that was passed? The Big Cat Public Safety Act, which banned people from having big cats in the private sector. Wow. And creating Big Cat puppy mills. Yeah. And so this movie that had its critics did get legislation passed and changed

I never thought in a million years Tiger King would be what it was. Well, no one on the planet. 39 million people watched it in the first 10 days. But who could have imagined that COVID hit right when it hit? It was a captive audience watching captive tigers. When you have something like that, there are always going to be criticism and jealousy and all these kind of things happen. But in the end of the day, it did change a really important piece of legislation,

or that legislation was passed to stop this abuse of tigers and big cats, lines, and Jaguars, et cetera. And we also donated money to tiger conservation in India, and that's why I was in Carol, not so long ago, a lot of money. So there was a lot of things that I think came from that.

And of course, more importantly, and it's a cliche to say this, but you don't want to make films that just preach to the converted, right? Because why make a film that everyone already knows the issue and I'm going to show it to a small group of people and we can talk about tigers?

You need to cast a widenet and obviously preach to the unconverted. And I think Tiger King did that. to some extent. That's why I think you're a very special face of conservation because I don't find you to be preachy or saccharine or pretentious or sanctimonious. And that is what's off-putting about a lot of these movements. We need a lot more, I think, level centristy people attacking these issues because the other mouthpieces are just very polarizing. Yeah, for sure. And I was on a call yesterday was someone from an animal rights group that wants me to speak, do a keynote at a big

animal rights conference that's going to take place actually in Mexico City. And I was saying, listen, you're not going to want me speaking because I'm not as polarized as you guys. I'm more of an animal welfare person. I kind of walked the line of trying to get everyone together. I work in a lot of red states. Thank God. We need that. But I have to talk to everybody. Yes. And I walked in and just was like, I hate what you do. Don't Do what you're doing? You're fucked up. You're morally repulsed. Yeah.

No one's going to talk to me. Exactly. Because listen, I'm watching Monsters of God and it's like, again, what they're doing is terrible, clearly. But I'm also seeing a story of manhood unfold, too. I'm seeing Tommy who starts this reptile pet shop, and all of a sudden, bikers are hanging out there. And all of a sudden, he's getting invited with the big boys to biker stuff. And he's feeling like a man. And a lot of these guys, it was their pathway to feel like a man that the nerdy guy who reaches out to Tommy, the reptile dude,

And he even says in your dog, he's like, that's the second time I had sex on that trip. I'm also quite empathetic to like this masculinity journey that kind of directionless men are feeling. And whoever embraced them, yeah, they ran towards the motorcycle gang and they ran towards the drug dealers because they were invited. And so there's a lot of stories being told. And I'm very, very empathetic and sympathetic to those men in their weird journey of trying to be a man. There's a lot of sadness I have for them. Yeah, nothing is black and white. When you continue with the series, you'll start to see that a lot of best intentions,

a lot of laws that are out there about what you can keep in this country, pythons or this or that, a lot of them actually don't work. So there's a lot of unintended consequences from best intentions. The Endangered Species Act doesn't fit all. So there's species right now on the Endangered Species Act that should not be. their species that should be added on. They need to be, but U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in this country is understaffed, under manned.

They're trying the best they can, but it needs to be better. The zoos need to be better. I've gotten a lot of criticism from Monster God from the zoo community that I showed some of the skeletons in the closets that the zoos have been responsible for. You know, the Bronx Zoo in the 19, I don't know, 15, 20 had a human being in a cage in the ape house called Audubanga. They had a human. A guy that was captured in West Africa, you know, sort of a small indigenous pygmy

with these teeth that were carved like shark's teeth and they put them in a cage in the ape house at the Bronx Zoo. There were people that were kept in zoological institutions on exhibit in Europe. There were Native Americans in tents at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago in the 50s. So we've exploited humans and animals and zoos have a long history,

but we, as a culture, have a long history that isn't very good when you look back and women couldn't vote and gay rights and you mention all these things. So anyway, zoos have evolved and they need to get better even still. But we show some of the skeletons in the closets but not just with zoos.

We also show law enforcement is not perfect in this story and you'll see something really revealing in the fifth episode. And so the conclusion at the end of Monsters of God is we're all complicit. There isn't necessarily one clear bad guy. But let's walk through it a little bit

because I think a lot of people will have not yet started Monster God. So in a nutshell, We meet these two guys who are pretty infamous reptile traders, and they're mostly in the 80s, right? Yeah, yeah, Tom Crutchfield and Hank Mold. Right, and Hank, he's a very specific archetype, and he's a very intelligent guy. And by my non-expert judgment, he seems a little sociopath. No, no, for sure.

So Hank kind of starts this thing, right? He publishes this list, and you can buy these different reptiles, and some of them are super rare. And then some of them become endangered, which ups the value enormously. and he's willing to travel the world and gather these things. Most of his heavy paying clients are zoos, the San Diego Zoo, the Detroit Zoo. So we're in a murky territory, right? These zoos want these animals and who's going to go get them? The zoo doesn't have anybody to go do that.

And so this guy fills this niche. And he starts making a lot of money and he's now hiring people. And this Tommy guy's fascinated and he then gets into it. And so that's kind of working out. And then what happens, though, to Hank? How's he go to prison? There's a shipment that comes in from Southeast Asia, big shipment, and the customs agents at the time,

it's sort of before U.S. Social Wildlife was really doing this stuff, you know, we're like suspicious of that shipment. And then ultimately one thing led to another. It was illegal animals coming in. A law had just been passed called the Endangered Species Act, and another law that was called CITES, the Convention of International Trade and Endangered Species. They both happened around the same time.

So he was in trouble. and he did some time for bringing in animals without getting, obviously, permission. And those laws were, in fact, that went into effect in 1973. So Hank started a little earlier before the 80s, and then Tommy came into play in the early 80s. So when Hank goes to prison,

Tommy just picks up basically his priceless. Now he's the Hank, and Hank hates him for it. So now we have the Carol fucking basket and Joe Exotic War, right? Which I don't know how you keep stumbling into these. crazy feuds. But this is one of them.

And so they kind of hate each other. And then Tommy becomes incredibly successful. And it's funny because he just starts doing the exact same thing Hank did. And now he kind of gets rich, relatively rich in his world. Yeah, yeah. So that's simmering so far. That's episode one's kind of simmering. Then Hank gets revenge on Tommy and puts Tommy in prison for the Fiji Island,

Aguarez. And then episode two, yeah. So episode two, we meet Ray Van Nguyen. Nostron and Mario. Tell me about those two guys for a second. Mario was born in Cuba. His father was in the Bay of Pigs and worked for the CIA. CIA operative.

They migrate to South Florida when he's very young. Mario has this affinity and love of animals that his family doesn't embrace. And of course you do what your family says no to and he gets into the animal business. But he also starts to realize that the skills that his father learned in Cuba from the U.S. government, what do you do with those skills?

And they became very valuable. A lot of the famous 80s Miami cooking cowboys had been in the Bay of Pigs. And they hated John F. Kennedy at that time because he didn't go through with what he had promised. And the U.S. backed out and left these guys high and dry. Anyway, they turned that skill into smuggling drugs. And so Mario was part of that culture. His father obviously had those skills. In Little Havana, they own a jewelry store where everyone would hang out and drug dealers like jewelry,

as you see in the show. Mario got into both bringing in animals, parrots, monkeys, snakes, and drugs, cocaine and marijuana, mostly. And ultimately, at the time Janet Reno was, I think, the district attorney of Florida before she went up to D.C., and they basically were looking at the big drug kingpins in Florida. Mario and his father were part of a group that was bringing in tens of millions of dollars with the drugs. They targeted him, and he got away a few times, and then he made a fatal mistake of killing a undercover informant, tried to bury him. But in South Florida, all you hit is coral.

You can't dig. So they burn the body. And that's what started everything. And ultimately, Mario did get caught, sentenced to 100 years in prison. And Mario's life, the footage of this guy's life in the 80s before he gets arrested, he has this compound that probably would only be rivaled by Pablo Escobarstown in fucking Medellin. Or Scarface. Yes.

He's got lions and tigers at his house. he's got monkeys running around and he's got all these crazy reptiles. And he even says in this dock, my addiction is animals. I sold drugs to fuel my addiction for animals. And you're talking to him in this dock? He ultimately, he's warned the whole dock, right? He's talking to this DA agent. Just even be careful the way you're talking.

And everyone he interviews about Mario, a husband will walk and be like, hon, don't say more about that. It's clear from the beginning. No one wants him to talk about Mario at all. He's still very dangerous. The DA guy said he's the only person I still fear. Don't even talk about him. And Eric goes to his fucking house and sits with him.

You know what's funny about, I don't know anything about profiling and law enforcement, but I was told to call his lobbyists in D.C. These guys have lobbyists to make sure they can keep their animals at their roadside zoo. I called this guy, he had an Italian name, Frank something, Perillo or something. And he said to me,

there's 100 reasons why you should. shouldn't talk to Mario. And he listed some of them. I can't think of any reason why this would be positive for Mario. So I struck out. And then I finally ambushed Mario one day and just went in there and got my foot in the door. The first thing he said to me, and I was with Josh Shafti, actually, the first time we went in with Mario and Josh, he put on these spy glasses that were so obvious. Like, wow, Mario was showing us right that was filming.

Of course, in the end, the footage didn't even work. But the next day we went, Josh goes, oh, fuck, Eric, I got to wear the glasses for continuity. He's going to think it's weird if I don't have the guy. So he had to put the glasses on again, and they're not even working. And Josh is, like, wearing these glasses. But Mario, it was almost like the cliche of that film, analyzed this with the mafia guys,

and what's his name, Place the Shrink. Billy Crystal. It was almost like that in real life. Mario, first time I went there, I kid you not, because maybe we're similar age, and I'm not really a journalist, I had nightclubs. He confided to meet with me the first day,

and he says to me, you know, I go to a therapist once a week. or twice a week. But really, I'm screwing this girl that works for me. I went to go to a motel down the street. And his wife standing right over there. But he confides to me, and we have this sort of this simpatico situation. He would tell me the most intimate things.

And we got on this level that was so unbelievable, way beyond just someone coming in and filming. It was almost cathartic for Mario to have someone to talk to. And there was a certain sadness with Mario. So I had this very mixed feeling about Mario to this day. There's honor among thieves. And he has this certain moral code that's really unbelievable.

He has principles. It's really interesting. Yeah, yeah. Well, all the guys, one guy's like, I'll steal the animals, but I don't want to do guns. I'll do the drugs, but I won't. Everyone has their factories and limits so that they feel okay doing it.

He saw episode two, though, and at first he was pissed because he was like, I didn't ship cocaine in with a cobra. And we were like, Mario, we're not really saying you necessarily did it, but people did. And then at the end of the show,

he goes, oh, I loved the sex scenes. I love that I'm still such as, you know, such a dude. Yeah. But he loved that. Yes, of course. And also, Monica, you're watching, it's like, he got sentenced to 100 years. He's out in 12.

This is a big mystery. It's one of the only things he doesn't want to talk about. Yeah. He says something very innocuous, like, you know, sometimes the government needs people who, so you get the sense they've let him out of dues. I don't know. Who knows what happened? No, that's crazy how you can get out of prison if you have information.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm always fascinating, like, these guys have insane amounts of money, right? Did you ever read Killing Pablo? No, no, I'm terribly illiterate. Okay. If you're ever going to read a book, that would be the one. You know, these guys, they're burying money, they forget about it, rots.

They're big problems with the cash. They couldn't ever convert it. And you always wonder when these guys go away, it's like, well, surely they had some somewhere. And when I at least see your doc, I'm like, yeah, somehow that guy still has. He's still in a big compound driving a G-6-3. It's so interesting because when I had nightclubs in the 80s, it was cash. There was no credit cards.

Yeah. I remember having so much cash at a certain point in my life. Yeah. They didn't have cash machines back then. And counting millions of dollars in cash is so tedious. And Mara used to tell me again, confiding with me, like, you know, $10 million in cash. And to count it and to figure out where you put it. And, you know, back in those days you're trying to get banks to take...

Yeah, you can't really use it. I buried some cash one time. It was the biggest mistake of my life. Lost? I came back eight years later and it turned into mud. I never want to touch cash again in my life, even though it's so fun to have cash. But when you're making that much cash, it's a liability.

This is Pablo. It's like he had no problem getting the cocaine in and out of places, but he couldn't do anything with his fucking cash. It's this weird, paradoxical. You know, South Florida in the 80s and 90s really was like that, by the way. The only time in my life I ever was shot at, randomly shot at with guns,

was in Florida, in Miami. In 1993 or something, I was going to a nightclub at night in a rented minivan with some friends. We didn't have cell phones. We got lost. We were trying to call Fab Five Freddy, who was telling us to go to some club in New York. Freddy, where's the fucking club? I say to one of the girls I was with, go and call at this phone booth. And the next thing I knew, these two guys were walking at night towards us and started shooting at our van, blew out the back window, blew out the side window.

And I suddenly, I was like, listen to you guys, we're going home, going back to the hotel. I had long hair back then. I woke up in the morning with all that little glass ice cubes in my hair and everywhere. But South Florida was like the wild wild west. People were shooting everybody. The emergency rooms were insane. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

I'm going to make a weird observation. Maybe if it comes off bad, I still want to go to the battery. But in all your docs, we're following people, and we're like, these people are crazy. But you're a little crazy. Like, you are a little crazy to be going to these people, to put yourself in these positions. The danger is so high.

And do you get, like, off on it? What's the draw to the danger? The honest answer is, I'm not like some tough guy by any stretch, and the honest answer is, it's like back to Champagne meeting Chopin-Gouzman, New Mexico. Bad guys kill people for a reason. Drug routes. are a big deal, and they kill over drug routes.

They kill if you stole their drugs or whatever. I'm walking in, I've done nothing to these people. So I'm not really worried about someone coming and killing me unless I wrong them. Where it gets scary isn't when you go in and first meet these folks. People don't just start killing you unless there's real reasons. And so it's when they've watched the show. Of course.

And then Mario sees, oh, you passed a law that means I can't have my tigers anymore. I need my tigers to make a living at my zoo. Or they feel used. So that's when I've talked to law enforcement and people about, are the people that are really threatening me online over and over the ones to be careful with? No, it's the ones that never say anything. I'd be stupid, and I'm probably stupid even saying this right now, but yeah, it's more later down the rub when you impact their lives. Sure.

Not when you walk in the door and are interviewing. Right. Because they don't know. They're not serial killers. They don't get off on just murder people. That's not the insanity. I'm not interviewing and talking around with serial killers. Yeah.

Back to the crazy part is like, I often say this about when I was smoking crack, which is like a lot of it's crack. It's great. But a lot of it's going downtown, I have to interact with the 17-year-old dude who's got a handgun and we got to go into this house. Like that is very dopamine rich. It's half of what's going on and the addiction to it. Yeah, of course.

That's kind of what I wonder. Like when you're walking up to the door to ring the doorbell. And everyone's told you do not go near this. Is it a high? I mean, it's a high to get in and then get that comfort where you realize you did it. Yeah. It's nerve-wracking getting to that point of ringing that door. But once you're in and you have the fluency that takes place, whether it's drugs or whether

it's my knowledge or reptiles, and they realize you're one of them, takes one to no one, then you get comfort. But you're sure it's a high to get the access. Because documentaries, at least the ones I make, it's all about access. And so people think, oh, I'm going to go out and make a doctor. Doc, good luck getting to that person. It's not so easy. Okay, so I can't wait to watch the next episodes because I would have begged for you to let me join you meeting Mario, right? Like, that's a no-brainer for me.

The person that I probably don't ever wish to meet nor be in his world would be Anson Wong. Anson Wong is kind of this mythical guy, sort of the Pablo Escobar of the Wildlife Trade. He's in Malaysia, Penang. He has been operating for 30, 40 years at least. he used to come to the United States and be able to go to the Bronx Zoo and all over the country, and people knew him. Tom Schultz at the San Diego Zoo, knew him personally, the curator of Reptals at the San Diego Zoo. So Anton Wong had access to everybody until he was wanted for smuggling into this country. Then he became bad guy number one in the wildlife trade.

He became this sort of mythical figure who was not allowed back in the country or he'd get arrested. Ultimately, he was arrested. They managed to get him, which happens in the story, did one of the longest sentences for wildlife crime ever in the 90s. I think he did seven or eight years in prison, which was a big deal back then. But Anson Wong, the government spent millions and millions of dollars to get him, five-year undercover operation to get Anson Wong.

They finally did. He was released, went back to Malaysia, never to return to the U.S., not allowed to. He got arrested again in Malaysia for smuggling reptiles, which was really incredible because he had connections to the royal family. He had high-level connections. Getting him and knowing who he was, I had pretty good access in the animal world

and know people, and I knew people that knew him. And I would try to get inroads to Anson Wong in a number of ways and failed. Ultimately, COVID became a problem. I couldn't travel to Malaysia when I was filming this. When COVID broke, I literally just went there. I couldn't get to him. And I had these fixers in Malaysia

that I was trying to use to get access to Anson Wong. And they kept saying, oh, you know, we know his cousin, his brother, this person. When I finally got to Penang in Malaysia, I realized, oh, they never really even wanted to reach him because they were scared to death. And so when I said to them, hey, can you call Anson? I got his phone number with a Malaysian number

because he's not responding to a U.S. number. They were like, we're not calling Anson Wong for you. And then I realized, okay, everyone's scared of this guy. Yeah. So I just kept calling and calling and calling. And one day, you know, I was in a weird place in Malaysia and he answered the phone. and then I got access to hands.

Wow. But yeah, it was scary, and he said something in jest when we were driving all in time about how his driver was killed, and he says it in such a nonchalant way because his driver turned on him, and he obviously made sure his driver isn't with us anymore. So, you know, he's a heavy guy. Well, man, I just think you've made like three of my top...

Oh, my God. Ten favorite documentaries of all time... Jim. We were obsessed with Jim Crazy. We actually, just so you know, again, how your hotel affected us. Yeah. Tell Eric. You gave us a gift.

Tonka is a huge part of our lives. We talked about Tonka nonstop on the show. And mainly just like we loved him and you know how he would throw poop at his cage. She'd be like, clean it up and he'd try, but it made it worse. We were. And then. Somebody had a little. Okay, there was an incident.

There was an unauthorized evacuation incident by me. That's all of it. Okay. Well, yeah. Yes, that's important. It was a bad situation. And Monica didn't want to actually say what she did. Yeah, I was so demoralized, but I had to share, right?

I had to tell that, and then I also, I guess, had to tell everyone. I was like, I'm an animal. I'm Tonka. Like, I felt like him, just, like, disgusting, just animals. We're all just animals. I'm Tonka. So now if anyone poops in their pants, we say they talk it. And the listeners, like, people write.

in the comments like I fucking talk a work. So now it's become a verb. It's a verb. For shit in your pants. And I just want you to know. We just want to thank you for giving us. We do want to thank you. It's the cutest way to say it. I couldn't start Chimp Crazy because that's my obsession, right? As primates, I knew I couldn't police myself. I would, I've gone too hard.

Some people do have, they're like, I can't watch those because I love animals too much. It's like, then you should watch them. I think even more. Well, we try to not show too much suffering or battering of animals because otherwise people turn the channel. You try to keep a balance, but if we go too into that realm and we could, we don't. And we try to keep it fun, even though serious shit going on. Just because people don't have the stomach to watch brutality.

I would say because I know so much about them, this weirdly parallels, Monica and I have talked about this several times. Us addicts in recovery, we have a very specific way that we feel and react to when other addicts die. And for the non-addicts, it's this crazy heartbreak. And then sadly, and this isn't nice, but for us, it helps confirm, that's right, man, that's what happens when you're not in the past. So for us, it's weirdly a little bit of like- It's a reminder. It's a reminder. And it's a moment of gratitude. And it's a moment of like, oh, right, that's right, man. And thank you for that reminder, because that's where we end up. We're dead, institutionalized or incarcerated. And so

when it happens, it's like, check. We have a different feeling about it. I would say in the same way when I was in Afghanistan, and, you know, I watched the soldiers deal with people that were getting killed around them. It was like, you see it a bunch of times, and certain predictable patterns happen, and there's a way, and it's just kind of like, yeah, and when you light a cigarette, that happens.

You know, it's weirdly comforting to go right. That's how it works. I don't know. But similarly, from the second it started, I'm like, well, I know where this goes. I know what happens when a male chimpanzee gets fertile. What a lot of people don't know when we were doing chimp crazy, I was communicating with some of the world's top private.

about Tanka. Greg Stanford, who's here at USC, and a good friend of mine who's actually in Madagascar right now working with me, Russell Mittemeyer. I don't know if you know him. Now that we don't have Jane Goodall with us anymore, bless her heart. Russell Mittermeier is described more species of lemurs than anyone in the world in recent times.

And so anyway, I was communicating with them about this chimp and asking them, you know, should I do something now or is Tanka okay? Or can I wait? And the reason I waited, a lot of people don't know this, because I thought Tanya Haddix, who's now in prison, would lead me to more chimps, which she ultimately did. It's sort of like drugs.

We wanted to just get the little guy with five ounces of cocaine. I wanted to get the source. And so I kept waiting. A lot of people thought, oh, I'm exploiting her. I'm not doing anything about Tonka in the cage. But, of course, we were very sensitive to Tonka's well-being when we were doing Jim Crazy. Yeah.

The craziest part of that entire doc is when those knuckleheads fucking drag that cage up the stairs at a holiday. And like a lot of times you look back on your addiction, like the times you go like, this is the most absurd I ever got. It's like if they're looking at their weird addiction, it's like the time they drug a fucking chimp upstairs in a cage at a holiday.

Like, they must go, how did I end up in this situation? Keeping these animals and hoarding and the obsession, and by the way, I like the word obsession. I don't think being obsessive is a bad thing. I think you wake up in the morning, you have something to do. People that have no interest I worry about. But when it goes into addiction mode,

Yeah. Addiction isn't only drugs, alcohol, you know, sex addiction, gambling. It's also shopaholics. And in this case, it's wanting these animals so badly that you'll do anything and ruin your life. And what happened to Tanya after Chim Crazy wrapped, you know, she went and got another chimp in her basement and now she's in prison for it. And I really worked with her after Chim Crazy, trying to counsel her, help her to sort of just have some contrition. Don't keep doing the same thing. The owner of Travis tried to get a baby monkey. Well, she did. She did. She did get another chip. I mean, how on earth. That is the most horrific of all of them. It's so deep.

I mean, that's like the sadness of it. It's really trying to fill a void. Yeah, for sure. Yes. And whether it's like she was never loved, it's like I'm the chimp lady. Look at me. It gives you some kind of self-worth.

Purpose, yes. Purpose validation. But another day, if you come up to Ohio, we can trade crazy drug stories. Because drug addiction, the shit you do when you just said that, oh my God, the shit you do. Yeah. Like the stuff I've done crawling on the floor, trying to get the crumbs or trying to snort

the floor or whatever, the stuff you do, we can go down a drug rabbit hole, but it is crazy. But the stuff you do, even these animal people, they're addicted. Of course. You know, every using dream I have is the exact same. I've had over the last 22 years, many, many using dreams about cocaine. And all of it involves me getting the coke out of the carpet. And there's so much fucking lint and carpet in the coke. and I'm deciding do I snort all the link.

I have those two. Why do we still have those dreams? I don't know. But why? And they're panicking dreams. Yes, yes. I'm like, it's there, but I can't get it. I can't get it.

But why still do we have those dreams? Yes, yes. Those are indelible. Yes. I want to shake those dreams. Every using dream is that dream. I wish my using dreams were about getting a rare tortoise. Or like, you know, I used to have basketball dreams,

hoop dreams of like me being able to do things like Michael Jordan. But the drug dreams, it's hard to share. shake those. But maybe it's good for you. It's like, because then when you wake up, you're like, oh, I'm so glad I'm not doing that. Oh, my God. Waking up's the best part of that dream. The Dreamdash has said, waking up, you're like, oh my God, God, because

they're really intense. Yeah. They are. I'm so glad I agreed to interview a director. This was fantastic. Oh, Eric. I love meaning. I don't know what I am. I just fell into it. I'm the biggest dilettant ever. No. I think you're everything. I can't wait for you to.

keep doing more of these because they're really important, I think, but also so entertaining. I have a really crazy one that we're just finishing. It's three episodes. You love it, I think. Oh, I can't wait. I probably have the same feeling about you as I have about us. It's like, I don't know, we're 1,100 in or 1,200 in. I keep thinking, why am we going to run out of famous people?

And then someone sits down, I guess there's another famous person. When I watch your shit, I'm like, what's left? A guy with a dolphin he's making love to? Oh, that's not so bad. We're fascinated with that. We know about those guys. the scientists that are in love with the dolphins. There's people that have fallen in love with a horse.

They'll live with their horse and fall in love with their dolphins. That's more of an A&E's show. Fatal attraction. You're really good. Both of you and you really work well together. Thank you. We appreciate that. Sorry, I'll hog so much of the oxygen.

No. That's why you're here. It's to take up the oxygen. If you haven't watched Monsters of God, you must, I know you've already seen Tiger King and Chip Crazy, of course, is great. You're so talented, and I certainly hope you'll come back. This was so fun. Thanks for having.

Thank you. He is an armchair expert, but he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God Monica's here. She's got to let him have the facts. I would like to officially introduce you to a new friend of the studio. His name is Peter. Peter loves knowledge. And Peter's a crow.

Okay. And Lincoln made this. It's beautiful. Isn't it great? Yes. Doesn't Peter look friendly? Somehow my kids, when they draw pictures, I don't know how it happens, but they're able to, they always look friendly. Yeah.

Right? Doesn't he look like a particularly friendly crow? Yeah, he's really, I can't really see him now. You can't see him here. Now your head. Oh, now my head is there. Yeah. But you can tell he has really pretty feathers.

Uh-huh. Yeah. And he's holding cherries. Yeah, she's very good at drawing. It's kind of crazy how good she is at drawing. She did a glass the other day, like a pencil drawing of a glass, like a pint glass. Oh, nice. And I'm like, how did you get all, like, you know, it's 3D?

She's really good. And she just lets it rip. It's cool. Oh, there's a really funny thing happening. Do you know Delta's new life bath? Well, I know she was learning sign language yesterday. Yeah. So on her own instigation, she said I'd like to learn sign language.

And Kristen through Disney, of course, as a. an employee of Disney, she knew that Disney had this project where they had used a lot of ASL consultants. So she reached out to that production, found this teacher. He came over. He's so sweet. Yeah. She's learning at the craziest speed. I can't even he is like, this is bonkers.

He gave her a card on like maybe their fourth session. And it said, Delta, welcome to the ASL community. We've been expecting you. Oh. Isn't that so sweet? That's really sweet. So she's bonkers good at it. She knows like 300 signs already.

I have a question about her teacher. Yes. Is he deaf? He's deaf. Okay, okay. Which became its own funny hijinks. Because when he very first came to the door, Kristen kind of opened it. She was in the middle of 19 things, and she has her back to him.

She's like, oh, yeah, come in here, you can sit over here, blah. And she's realized she's just giving this whole stream of things. And then she just hears a noise come from the door. And she's like, oh, fuck, of course. Why wouldn't have I assumed he was deaf? Oh, right. So then she turned around, you know, made it very clear what she was saying, and he can read lips. Great.

I've talked to him. I know. So, yeah, yesterday I walked in the house during the lesson, because I wanted to say hi to the kids. And I then didn't know what to do. Right. You know, you just have to look directly at him and, like, speak. Don't mumble your words, you know. I was like, is it rude for me to be trying to talk to someone who, like, you know,

like I don't know if he can read lips, but he can. He can, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So at any rate, it's just this bizarre. I mean, I've really not seen anyone learn something so quickly. I'm like, well, this is fucking, and by the way, before this, and I think the reason she wanted to learn ASL is she loves mine. I can't stand it. She'll be in bed and she wants to like mime what she needs.

And I'm like, I like charades. Yeah, like some version of. And then in some weird way, her and Kristen have worked out, they have no, a lot of hand signals that they just made up. So she just really wants to communicate that way. Yeah. So we're driving in the car the other day. And she's just talking about how much she loves it.

And I'm like, yeah, maybe you should do something career-wise with it, you know. And then we're talking about the different things you could do. Yeah. You can sign at events. You can sign, you know, DTF. You can sign on the news. And then her other thing is she wants to be a therapist. So then we put it together.

And so now her new dream in life is to be an ASL therapist for kids. Great. And she told her teacher this and he said that would be so great. There's not a lot of therapists who can sign. I think that would be amazing. That's so sweet. Yeah. Great job.

I was such a piece of shit. Like I wanted glory at her age. I wanted to be evil can evil or, you know, like I wanted to be some kind of world-renowned hero. Uh-huh. Yeah. And she wants to do sign language therapy for children. Well, I hope she does. Yeah.

Because she'll be great at that. But anyways, yeah, they're both. It's so fun to watch them both have these crazy skills. Yeah, that's so awesome. Your sister taught them sign language both when they were little. Yeah, her and Chris didn't really learn sign language and they could talk to the babies. I learned like this, I brought this up in my defense yesterday because I said, I'm scared I'm not going to be able to communicate with you guys. Like you, Kristen's also learning it pretty quick.

And they're talking a lot. And I'm like, I'm afraid I'm going to be like left out. Yeah. And then Kristen said, well, you could learn. And I was like, I mean, I don't think I can. I'm not trying to be lazy about it. I'm not lazy. But remember, I put a lot of effort into learning when they were kids.

And I knew like five things. Yeah. You know more and water and stuff. I knew some of that. Yeah, you knew some. You picked it up about as good as I did. Well, no, by the way, no. I came in when everyone had already learned and I was like, okay, I guess some of this is happening.

But yeah. So maybe their brains are like since they've been doing it since they were really little, maybe they're more like adept. Yeah. And if I were listening to this and I didn't have kids and I was in my 20s and I was like, why did you teach your, why wouldn't you try to teach you? A lot of kids do that. I mean, parents. Right. So this is the thing that I doubt if you had kids you wouldn't know about, which is.

is like they can't, they're not going to develop their speech for a long time. But they can learn signs much quicker. And it alleviates so much of their frustration when they're babies, when they want to tell you they want water, but they don't know how to ask for it. And they can or they want more of something or no more. All done. All done is make you sad. Remember, Kristen took Lincoln to Universal and they were on the tram and she didn't realize it went through like, you know, like a gorilla, like a king con exhibit. Yeah, and she was just a baby and she was doing normal, all done, all done.

Yeah, so sad. Yeah. Hmm. But, yeah, I mean, I kind of, maybe this is an excuse, but I think it's in the, it's in like the foreign language department for me, you know. As you know, I had to take it at like four, three different colleges, three, three different colleges to pass. Yes, we've discussed this. We both, I had to take an eight. I took eight.

I took four years in high school and eight. Four in college? Four semesters. Semesters? Four or eight semesters? Four and quarters? I had to do a lot. For the theater department, they required you to do a lot of foreign language, which like, okay, I guess.

Anyway, I was very bad at it. I was very bad at speaking. I was good at reading it. Okay. And I could write it, like make sentences. Yeah. Because I got to choose the words to put in. Yeah.

But the communication I just could not do. This will not surprise you, but I was okay by the end at saying some stuff. But once people were speaking to me in Spanish, I was like, I don't know what they're saying. It sounds so fast. Yeah, it is so fast. I also think I'm just uniquely bad at that. Like I was telling Ryan, we were in Nashville for Labor Day. And my very favorite song of all time, which is this is the play slash naive melody by talking to

heads. I have listened to this song more than any other song in the 10,000 range. There's been weeks where it was on repeat. I don't know one word of that song. And I'm like, how could this be? I can't hear what he is saying. Yeah, same. I have, again, we have discussed this.

Yeah, we know this. We have holes in that part of our brains. Weaknesses. That's a big weakness. Yeah. Knowing lyrics and language. And I do think they're in the same space in the brain. I've just decided that.

I think they are too. And it makes sense that they would be. Yeah. Yeah, symbols, converting symbols into whatever English is. Yeah, it's like an auditory. But you're good at auditory because you like audiobook. Like you retain audiobooks. Yeah, I retain whatever I do here.

Yeah. Also, I'm great at like rap lyrics and country song lyrics. If they talk slowly, I can get it. And then it's in there pretty deep. Huh. Yeah. I got to tell you, we had the greatest four days in Nashville. Tell me.

It was crazy hot, too. I just keep going from heat bubble to heat bubble. It's hot. All summer I did it, and now I just did. It was blazing hot there. It was like 98, and you know the humidity. Yeah. But we were on the boat mostly the whole time.

And what I discovered, my pontoon bow swimming under it early part of summer this year. And I could see I had LED light strips under the deck of the pondumbo. Pontoon. But I don't know where any buttons are for this thing. Thank goodness Ken Kennedy was visiting, and he likes nothing more than going through the menu of a screen. And lo and behold, he figured out, I have disco lights on my pontoon boat. Oh, that's fun.

So now we're in a habit of going swimming at night with the disco lights on and loud music. Oh, is it fun. And you're floating in your dip, which is an upside down life jacket. And it was just boating after boating. But the thing that I most want to talk about, do you have a favorite breakfast spot in America? In America. Because like I have so many favorite lunch spots and dinner spots. Mm-hmm.

But I have only one favorite prior to this breakfast spot. It's in New York. Bubbies. You ever been to Bubbies? Yes. I've been to Bubbies many times. Love it. Yeah.

It's great. I don't, I mean, I guess I don't know. Are you about to say Waffle House? No, that's fine. I love Waffle House. It is, it's nostalgic, it's fun, it's damn affordable. Hash Browns. Yes.

Weirdly, they built one in about five seconds by my house recently. But I discovered this through chat. Oh. Last, right before I left for the end of summer, I discovered a place in Mount Juliet. And Monica, this is my favorite breakfast spot I've ever had anywhere in the world. What do they have? Oh my God. They have this thing called Piggy Benedict.

Okay. It's a biscuit, freshly made biscuit, a big round sausage patty, poached egg, hollandays and gravy. Nice. Fuck. Then they have a chicken and waffle that will put it up against Roscoe any day. It's unreal. They have this banana bread that is like bananas foster almost.

It's impossibly good. And then you get like the basket of mini biscuits. Yeah, that's yummy. I don't think it's a low caloric breakfast. Well, I guess we should tell people you're eating gluten again. I've been eating gluten again. Yeah, yeah, I have. Post that acrimencia probiotic.

The one that pendulum, we had an episode and she gave us. I'm not endorsing anything. I'm not a doctor. I'm not saying it'll work for you. I don't know. I've been eating gluten. Yeah. And it's been going well.

That's amazing. And I enjoy it. Yeah. Boy, is it fun to eat biscuits. But we were only there for four mornings and we went twice. Nice. And fucking just. What's it called?

You want to shout it out? Paper Mill. Cute name. This town is so tiny and it has in it now my favorite breakfast spot I've ever eaten at paper mill. And then the best Thai food I've ever had in my life, Smiley Thai. Yeah. This is crazy.

Yeah. It's great. It shouldn't be. Yeah. It meant to be. Motorcycle rides at night. There's a little mix up. I know he's listening.

It was really sad. Ryan had a little mix up. What happened? On the dirt bike. He fell? He had a fall. Oh, sorry. We were out in the go card and the dirt bike and he really let himself have it over it.

He really abused himself. He was so mad that it had happened. Oh, I'm glad we're talking about it then. Tore up his hand pretty good. Oh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's dangerous.

It's okay that you fell. They weren't dangerous. They wouldn't be fun. That's not true. Spades isn't dangerous and it's super fun. I'm not saying something has to be dangerous to be fun. Oh, okay. But what makes motorcycles fun is that they're dangerous.

You have your adrenaline up and you know the stakes are high. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is why I don't like that. That's why you don't do a lot of motorcycling. I wanted to say Shailene Woodley from Paradise Season 2. which we talked about. She won the Emmy.

Well, she did. Yeah. And I had put in my endorsement on this podcast for her to win. Might be why. Can you explain the Emmys to me? Yeah, I don't know what happened this year. I am confused. There was only Emmys last week, but then they're also next week.

Creative Arts Emmys were last week. And then this week. But does it paradise, like winning for best supporting actor or whatever? That feels like that would be in the, normal Emmys. I agree. Maybe because the TV has expanded so much. Yeah.

It's too much for one show now. I think they've always had Creative Arts Emmys as a separate day, but I do think some of the categories got moved over. They were all kind of technical, right? Yeah. Yeah, they all felt more production-wise. But now, I don't know. Anyway, she won.

Congrats. She deserves it. Yeah. Incredible performance. Incredible performance. But yeah, the real Emmys, I mean, the. Oh. The traditional Emmys.

The other Emmys. Yeah, yeah. Emmys part two. The Monday night Emmys. Yeah, are on Monday, which is also weird. That's weird, right? Wasn't it, is it normally on Sunday? Yeah.

What have they done? I present every year, I know the Emmys are coming up because I present every year at the Prop Master Awards. Oh, yeah. Are you doing that again? Of course. When is it? Saturday? I go support my best friend, Jeff.

Their Saturday evening, yeah. Oh, that's fun. Mm-hmm. Wow, cool. And he said, how about for a bit you carry me out because we carry you actors all the time? And I said, I'll carry you anywhere you want me to carry. You mean you're going to lift him up? I'm going to carry him out on the stage.

Oh, wow. Yeah, we usually do a bit, Jeff and I. Oh, you do? Yes, yes, yes. Who's Jeff? Jeff was the prop master on parenthood is where I fell in love with them. But then he was the prop master on chips. He came and did my movie, which was so fun.

He's the greatest. Of any crew member I've ever met, I just love Joe. Yeah, you like a lot of people. And I think he's the president of the prop masters union or something. Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How big is he? Seven feet tall.

No, how big is he? Because you have to carry him. Oh, he's not a large man. He's a good size man. Are you going to carry him six feet? Or are you going to carry him like a baby? Yeah, like a baby. Right.

Or on your shoulders. That's cumbersome because I've got to get them off while we're on stage. You want to do a bit. You might as well go all the way. Yeah. What if I had them on my shoulders and I came out on a polo stick? Wow. Now that would be evil can evil legendary status.

So it would make sense. We would have a prop. That would make sense. Last year he was making a speech and I had his prop bag. Oh, kind of like. It was a role reversal. Like that amazing speech that Julia Louis Dreyfus made. Like she won an Emmy probably an Emmy ding ding ding for Veep and then Tony Hale went up with her.

It whispered in her ear the whole time. Yeah, so good. That is so funny. Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. I do want to say, I don't know if this was a wink, but Tonka was awarding connections some days ago. It was interesting. And was it in reference to the, well, we don't know. No, we do.

Tonka trucks? Yeah. Oh, because was it truck toy related or some toy related? It was like toy, yeah, a toy brand related. I want to do that one. Well, now you know, this happened to me. Jess always spoils things on accident. It's like his...

Superpower. Yeah, but it's not a superpower. It's a, it's a, um, kryptonite. It's like, Achilles heel. Evil power. Yeah. It's so bad. He cannot help what spoil things.

Wow. And, um... What did he spoil? Well, he spoiled that. But then we, you know, because he, he, plays connections at the gym with his trainer and then we were in line. That's not what you should be doing with your trainer. You should be lifting weights.

Okay. He does what he's a master of distraction. In between they do connections sometimes. Anyway, and so we were in line for a restaurant and he was like, have you done connections today? He said, no, I'll pull it up. And I said, but don't tell me. He was like, no, I only did one.

And he was like starting to. Oh. I know. I was like, Jess. Stop. And then he was saying like, no, it's just. And I was like, don't say any other words. That's me in the F1 races when people want to start talking.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, no, I know. And it's like, no, no, there's nothing more to say. If I've said I haven't watched. Some people just love to spoil. They don't even know they're doing it. Just is happening. It's happening. Anyway, he spoiled the talk.

He spoiled taco. And it was exciting to think that maybe Winnah had tonked that, like, like, you know? Maybe she was letting us know. Yeah. She was communicating with us. Bottom of pants, stuff of mine. That's right. That's right.

Speaking of F1, there's a very exciting thing happening right now in F1. I know I've already talked about him, but Kimmy Antonelli. Oh, yeah. He just turned 20. He's won seven races this year for Mercedes. I think the record is Lewis winning maybe 11 in a season. So he has lots of season left. He could break at 20 years old, this Lewis Hamilton record.

Wow. Lewis's car was actually more dominant over the competition, that iteration of the car than Kimmy's is. And Kimmy last race last weekend, he had to start at the back of the grid because he had an engine penalty. So he started in 19 and he won the race. No. This is like a max for a step and drive. This is impossible. And his teammate is up there in the lead in the exact same car.

And he makes his way through 18 other cars. Passes Max Verstappen in third and wins the race. And he's 20 years old and he couldn't be cuter. Yeah, and he's so nice too. And it was the Italian Grand Prix and he's the first Italian to win the Italian Grand Prix in 60-some years. Oh, that's such a happy story. It's a really triumphant season of F-1 right now. I love it.

I'm going to be really conflicted when Max has a comparable car. Because obviously Max is my deity. He's my God. but I love this Kimmy kid Oh, do I love him? Have you seen him? Are you going to flip-flop? It's going to be tough, man.

I don't know what I'm going to do because I love Kimmy, but Max is dangerous. You know, if they're in the same, okay, that's enough. I just don't know what you're going. No, I just like. Have you seen him?

Have you seen him talk, Kimmy? Yeah, you showed us the video. Oh, yes, if he and Lincoln talked. Yeah, he's so cute. He's so cute. He's got a great body. too. The summer, on the summer break, he posted a lot of photos of him doing different water sports. Oh, yeah, he was with Toto and Susie.

Mm-hmm. Susie had a great bathing suit on in those pictures. I would serve them. I did not go looking. Oh, really? That came across. Probably because it knows I've posted about them. Oh, maybe. Algorithm is very smart. We came up with a good idea yesterday that we should urge, it'll happen again in the episode, but I want to get it out there as quick as possible. We think you should be able, like you can send your playlist to people. Yeah.

Like your liked songs, you can do that. Uh-huh. We want to be able to send our algorithms back and forth. Oh, yeah, exactly. Yeah. On Instagram. We do. It'd be fun to be able to use other people's algorithms for however long you want it to.

I agree. But I'd really enjoy having your algorithm for a couple days because it's just, it's closed, right? Is it just closed, close, close? Should I tell you what I see right now? Yeah. What's up? It is close. Susie in a bathing suit.

Yeah, has Susie. Okay, first thing that pops up is Megan Fahey. Then Aziz. I'm just going to read everyone, okay? Okay. Then Aziz. Okay, now see, because I just said, I, oh, I just said Shaline Woodley. There you go.

I got to pop up. This is about Aaron Rogers? Okay, listen, it is. And it's a page six. I don't follow. Uh-huh. So it's just serving. When they serve me gossip.

Tabloids. Yeah. It's almost irresistible to not read. Yeah, I just read it. Yeah. Ugh. I didn't click it, but I hate that. So I don't like when they put threads in my timeline.

Because threads is all trash. It's all like. Threads is true. It's all sticky gossip. It's all inflammatory. Yes, it's just like Twitter. And they never deliver to. When I get suckered into clicking on a threads thing and it takes me to that

freaking app. I don't have it. And I read it and it's never as good. the first two sentences and it almost negates itself immediately. Yeah. I mean, they figured it out. I know.

Yeah. You can have AI go like make me a very sticky sentence and that you can do it. I know. We're all so predictable. Yeah. Yeah, we are. That's why you just like kind of can't have it. Because if you have it, we're clicking it.

Or also if you enjoy it, that's great too. I get a hangover from it. I go like, oh, I read like three. Because then that apps open. everything is terribly, right? And then I get sucked into four or five of them. I know. And then I'm just like, I don't like how I feel when I consume this.

Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty good to have during fashion week, though. Is it? Yeah, a lot of fun stuff popping up. Fun stuff. Anyway, all right, let's do some facts. Yes.

Okay, facts for Eric Good. Great episode. Just fun guy. I mean, wow, we loved it. I have to put him at the top. of the heat. For the most interesting person we've ever interviewed, and I'm, I'm just obsessed with them. I think I told you, I sent him a text that was like, hey, next time you're getting into any kind of tricky situations, then you need a co-pilot. I'm there, whether that's for work or just

otherwise, like, bring me along. Yeah. Yeah, he's getting into all the tricky stitches. He really is getting into the tricky stitches. I don't think he can bring you along to some of them, because I think it's going to do the opposite of what he is hoping to do, which is kind of just be under the radar and be one of them and be kind of, you know. I'm not that famous. I mean, most people. But even if you're not famous, you're large. Okay.

You have a large voice. Okay. And a lot of tattoos and stuff. So like, I don't, I don't think people. Are at ease if I'm there? Yeah. Interesting. Okay.

At first. Okay. At first. I'm pretty good at winning people over. I know there's no time for that in some of these situations. He's got to get in and like, you know. I think I would have done great with that drug trafficker, more Mario. Oh, yeah, but you even said you didn't want to meet Anson Wong.

You said that in the episode. I don't want to meet him. You have to be low status. That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, but how status is determined in that world, which is all toughness and intimidation, really. So it's like an actor is just like, This is a guy, he's not threatening at all. An actor.

It's not like, okay. I almost said someone and I'm not going to say it because I was mean. Okay. It's not mean. He's a very. Good actor? He's a great actor and he is e. He puts people at ease.

Everyone can just guess who I'm thinking about. I don't even know. And I'm Steve Buscemi. Oh my God. That was obvious. I don't know. I don't know how he crossed your mind. This is what I was saying.

Okay. whether you're an actor or not, you have a presence. Okay. That shows status. Okay. How many times I have to say? You're big.

Yeah, yeah. Big nose. What I'm saying is in the drug trafficking world, they're like an actor. He pretends to be tough. It's so easy to write me off. Like they've been in gun battles. Like it's just a different stitch.

I know, but I just don't think. Okay. Okay. Ding, ding, ding. this is funny. The other, yesterday at dinner, I don't remember how it came up. But we were, I think, discussing,

maybe we were discussing the incident in Palm Springs, maybe. And we were talking about how everyone reacts differently in these situations and confrontation and blah, blah, blah. And Jess said he didn't mean it in the way that it's going to sound. But he was like, yeah, no, the only reason you're super successful

is because you would fight with Dax in the kitchen. And what he meant was, I'm not afraid to have a debate or meet someone intimidating. Yeah, you and Lincoln. Exactly. You should be grateful. You know, one time, you probably don't think this anymore. But at one time when I was babysitting, you did tell her, you said, I hope you grow up and you're like Monica. No, well, she, yeah, I feel that way and she is.

Yeah, so when she's being a little rastly. I'll tell you, she's not intimidated by at all me. Yeah, it's good. Of course it is. That's what I want. I know. Yeah. So anyway.

That's what I hope to raise. A woman who's not afraid of anyone. Of her dad. Yeah. And I'm a, as the aforementioned size and this and that. Exactly. And she can give a fuck. And I love that.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So that doesn't make it so. easy for me all the time, but, uh, I know. That's part of the cost. Yeah. It's part of the cost. But yeah, he, um, so he, all to say, I am not like those drug dealers. I don't find you intimidating. I know. But, uh, they do. Or did we tell people that we do have an answer to the fact that remember when you pretended to be dead on the railroad tracks or passed out and I was trying to move you

off the railroad tracks? In your dream. No, here. You were laying down. Oh, on the ground. We were. We were a role playing if I were on railroad tracks. If you're on railroad tracks and you were deadweight passed out, would I be able to get you off the railroad tracks? And I said I would get superhuman strength, but we can't practice superhuman strength. And it's dangerous to rely on the notion you'll have superhuman strength when you need it. I know. But then we got the answer because I had to end up breaking into my house. And it required a level of strength I probably would not have had on a regular day.

Have to do a pull-up or something? No. Joe, my uncle, uncle, contractor, he was very impressed. Okay, great. He was very impressed and I could do that. And then I was like, oh, yeah, I can definitely roll decks off of the traps. Right. Despite, yeah.

You can't practice. You can't practice, yeah. All right. Now, is the creator of Est, Warner Earhart, where was he from? Was he a used car salesman? Yeah. All the above? Yeah.

He worked as a car salesman, an encyclopedia salesman before creating the self-help program est, which like tracks. You know, I bet a ton of people got a lot of great stuff on us. I'm sure. It couldn't have been so successful. Yeah, I'm sure. He sold both new and used cars in Pennsylvania and California. Ooh, sometimes using the alias Jack Frost.

Oh, fun. Nipping at your toes. Put you in a nice Chrysler Imperial. low mileage, all highway. This thing's never been on a arterial road. Ew. My dad told me he used to sometimes stand in front of dense when he was just first starting off.

Yeah. Oh. And he is a large man. So he could. When he was a used car salesman. Yeah, yeah, when he first started. Yeah. Oh, no.

But then he graduated. I know I've told this before, but he graduated to, you know, he was the best car salesman at Davis Ford. He won two free cars. There's like a national. Whoever could sell the most four trucks. He won that. Incredible salesman.

Yeah. And he kind of got so good that he had a helper who turned out to be my first stepdad. Carly's dad. He worked in the dealership. So wild. Basically, Greg would set up the deals and my father would close them. And he mostly closed them across the street at the bar. Oh, he said like, let me take you to get a drink.

Exactly. And on a couple different occasions, this is in the 70s. Sure. Where my book takes place. The people who bought the new car got so drunk with my dad at the bar that when they pulled out of the lot, they got broadsided and smashed their brand new car. That happened a couple different times. So this is before your dad got sober, obviously. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow. That was the seventh. That was that I was a kid. How big was my father? Yeah. Like probably 6-1 and always 250 or more. Okay. And how tall is your brother?

I think my brother's 6-1 as well. Okay. You're a little taller. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. A couple inches taller. I'm writing that down.

You're going to have a suit made for them? Yeah. Okay. You said in the Americans she falls in love with Est. But it wasn't her. It was Philip who got really into. Sorry, big mistake. That's a big mistake, but it's okay.

Philip is the Matthew Reese character. Yeah. They both just slayed those performances. They really did. What is the most profitable club ever, nightclub? Okay? Okay. XS Nightclub at Encore in Win Las Vegas is widely recognized as the highest grossing

and most profitable nightclub ever, routinely pulling in between $103 million and $105 million in a single year. Oh, wow. But they have big expenses. They're paying those residences to those DJs and stuff. Definitely. Studio 54 had to be a cash cow because those guys, one of them, had like the top two or three floors in the San Remo Tower in New York. Very expensive piece of real estate that I think now Bono owns. Wow.

That's funny. When I was just in, when I was in New York, my friend Maddie and I were taking a walk and she knows she was just pointing out all the buildings and she knows everything. New York real estate is a real, like, interesting niche. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I liked it. What is a hillbilly speedball? Generally refers to a slang or colloquial term for a combination of illicit or prescription drugs, typically substituting a rural accessible stimulant like meth or prescription amphetamines

and a downer like a prescription opioid painkiller in place of the classic heroin and cocaine. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, yeah, fentanyl meth. I'd call that definitely a hillbilly. Do not. We could call it a hillbilly highball instead of a speedball. That's got more of a, it's more marketable, hillbilly highball.

Yeah, I'm going to get flagged for sure, but. Were you? How much fentany? I, oh, no. This was really bad. Also, this is so person specific. Right. I said, how much fentanyl can you survive with?

First thing that comes up is speak with someone today, 9-8-8-6. suicide and crisis life. I like that they did that. Yeah, yeah, cool. But I'm going to say it's for a fact check. Oh, boy. Please call this number. We've heard that before.

Even more reason. Yeah. Oh, it's really searching. It's thinking it probably can't ethically answer this. This is interesting. Well, also, there's no way they could give you a range. It would be humongous. All right.

Like, are you already addicted to opiates? Do you have a million receptors? Yeah. But when we're talking about the penny, yeah. Like, I'm just like, that can kill an elephant, then I can't have even one. Micron?

Yeah. You can, though. Really? Yeah, when you, they administer fentanyl at the hospital. That's what I don't get. The nasal spray and intervening. I know. That's what I really do not understand.

Well, just the issue, of course, with it is they mix it perfectly. It's diluted perfectly. every bit of fluid in the vial has the same amount of fentanyl. Yeah. But when they're mixing these batches of fentanyl in a 55-gallon drum in Mexico, some portion of it may have 10x of some other portion. You know, that's the issue with black market manufacturing. Yeah.

It says fentanyl is an extremely potent synthetic. Oh, it says disclaimer. Information is for general knowledge and should not be taken as medical advice. Betanol is an extremely potent synthetic opioid, and ingestion of even a minuscule amount can be fatal. Because there is an exceptionally narrow margin between a psychoactive amount and a lethal amount, there's no single safe threshold in individual outcomes depend heavily on factors such as body size, personal tolerance and history of opioid use. Yeah, you can give a redhead that whole penny. No, don't. Don't do that.

Oh, my God. It's 50 times stronger than heroin. There's one now more powerful than fentanyl. The one word of crank? No, that's Trank. Oh, Trank. That's a different drug altogether. That's not an opiate.

Oh. But those people are so hunched over. Fuck, are they? Oh, it's so upsetting. They're a terrible advertisement for the drug. It does not look like they're having any fun. They're a perfect advertisement for it because it makes, I mean, they are the face of dare. Yeah.

You know? Yeah. All right. That's it. That's all. Yeah. Fuck, I love Derek. Me too.

What a dude. I can't believe. Come the biggest documentarian and the best hotel. Best hotel. And the biggest turtle conservationist. Yeah. And it was really sim. I did say it in the episode, but I didn't put too fine.

I didn't like scream it or emphasize. I've been wanting to go to the El Roblar Hotel in Ohio for a while. And we drove by it on the way to the wedding. And I was like, fuck, do we have time to swing in there and have a tea? Oh, a tea. That's nice. Yeah. We didn't, though.

Oh, okay. All right. Love you.