Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Flightless Bird: Drug Rehab

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

This week on Flightless Bird, David sets out to look at drug rehab in the state of Florida. According to the CDC, since 1999 over 932,000 people have died from a drug overdose. Since 1999, overdoses involving opioids have increased eight times. With those stats came an exploration of drug rehab facilities - many of which gamed the system and became corrupt. Why did Florida end up leading America in having the most drug centers per capita? What went wrong and has it been put right? To find out, David met with a number of former patients of rehab centers to find out what’s going on in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now I think all of us here on Flightless Bird, Monica Dax, Rob, watched and enjoyed a series called Dopesick. Enjoyed might be the wrong word, but it was a really good show. Well made. Great actors. Your most effective talking point are these magic words.

Less than 1% of people get addicted to Oxycontin. That's not possible. Based on the book of the same name by journalist Beth Macy, Dope Sick looked at the opioid epidemic that tore across America. Now according to the CDC, since 1999, the year the Matrix came out, over 932,000 people have died from a drug overdose in the States. And since 1999, overdoses involving opioids have increased eight times. All of this led to a huge increase in drug rehab centers in the US, places you could go to supposedly get clean. Are you tired of drugs and alcohol ruining your life? Have you lost your job or custody of your children? Has your marriage been destroyed? Are your parents kicking you out of the house?

Rewind six or seven years, Florida led America in having the most drug rehab centers per capita. One rehab for every 1,549 residents. That is why you need daylight detox and recovery. It was crazy. It was out of control. And I wanted to find out why Florida has so many drug rehab centers and if they're actually doing what they're meant to do. So pack your bags and get ready to dive deep into the complexities of Florida, because this is the drug rehab episode. I thought it was crazy not to be in Florida and look at drug rehab because I feel like when you think of Florida, I just think of sunny places you're sent to go and deal with your addiction problems when you said we were doing an episode on this in the florida series yeah i thought why oh really i didn't know that

yeah right i know of some drug rehab places facilities but they're not in Florida. Yeah, right. So this is surprising to me that they have so many. Yeah, no, there are loads of them. And I was staying in Ponce St. Lucie, which is about two hours north of Miami. My geography is terrible. Okay. So it's on the coast. And I just went to Google Maps and I typed in drug rehab. And all around me, it was just like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

And you do the same thing in Miami and they're everywhere. And apparently it's just partly to do with some loose state laws at the time when all this was popping off. And also like the exotic pets, it's sunny and bright and marketed as this place where you send your teen who can't get off drugs, send them to Florida. And so they all popped up around that. Do we have stats on the amount in Florida versus other places? I get into it a little bit in the doc. Interestingly, what I did find out is, spoiler alert, but there are way less in Florida than there used to be. And more of them are popping up in places like Los Angeles.

And a lot of the people that were doing it there have now moved to LA. Okay, interesting. One thing to say at this scene that I did quite find sort of funny on this episode is that this whole Florida trip, I was looking for places to stay and I just used Airbnb. And Port St. Lucie was the place where I really fucked it all up because I went on Airbnb. I'm like looking for a place.

I put in the price point I want, not too crazy cheap, not too crazy expensive. I always go super hosts because I figure it will be cleaner towels or something. Yeah. And the image was beautiful white sand beach, a really cute looking pastel colored front reminded me like a little batch you'd get in New Zealand at the beach. Okay. Do you know the word batch? No.

It's like, do you have cribs? Yeah. Like a little holiday you'd get in new zealand at the beach okay do you know the word batch no it's like uh do you have cribs yeah like a little holiday home basically wait cribs the show no oh no no so like a baby carrier the baby sleeping place so a batch is a holiday home by the beach it's really cute oh it's your second home and you call it a crib yeah crib is more like i might be doing this wrong i'm forgetting my new zealand roots more a crib in the south island in the north island it's more of a batch oh my god so anyway okay my point is i thought this was a beach side batch okay and i'm really worried about my accent when I say all these words. So I got it and I turn up and I drove along this causeway onto an island, Hutchinson Island. Okay.

And then I drove up some more and I arrived at what I thought was my beautiful beachside vacation house. And it was a reclaimed built up fortress that came up out of the water that was basically like an elevated caravan park and that beautiful thing i thought was a batch was a caravan or an rv that had been made permanent what do you call those you know like a trailer it was a trailer park and the little white beach that i thought was outside the front because i pictured waking up open the blinds, like stretch, and wander down into the water. Instead, there was just a wall that dropped into like a disgusting ocean.

I only stayed there for one night. And the little white sand beach was a private members only thing that you could drive to that I didn't have access to. I bought the brochure. This is the place. So see that image on the front of the cupboard? Oh, my God, David. You fell for this.

Yeah. This is obviously a paint. You know, paint on. Yeah, MS Paint. Yes. Someone drew this on paint. Oh, my God. Yeah.

So that's where I stayed. And it was a real mare, Monica. I mean, it's great to have affordable housing. That's wonderful. But it just wasn't the image i had of where i was going yeah and that combined with the toilet air freshener kind of smell my trailer was also sort of designed to look like i was on a boat so all the windows were kind of round like i was on like a cruise ship or something yeah wow the population was definitely

over the age of 60 that moved there. Competing with the villages. It's trying to be the villages. I guess I'm like setting the scene for this weird little place I was at while I was doing this drug rehab episode. I was feeling a bit unhinged. Yeah. I find this topic very heavy, but it's very interesting to me because I had a friend, not Dax. People will probably jumped to conclusions not him who went to a rehab not that long ago and the one he went to is so nice so high end expensive

there are some that are really fancy and ride like horses on the beach, like things like that. Like the most idyllic, like a spa. Kind of place, like a spa. Well, I mean,

the cynical part of me is like, obviously if you've got money, they want it. And the other thing is if it's nice, you won't leave and your, your brain will go, I do want to be healthy. I do want to stay in this paradise.

Is that part of it? Just selling it to you? No, it's not a place you can't leave. You have to leave. You want to stay to get better. Oh, I see. I see what you're saying. Wow.

You're not like, I want to bust out of here. Yeah. You're like, wow, I feel terrible because I'm coming off whatever. But also I feel great about my life right now because I'm surrounded by beauty. Right. I do think it's probably the best shot at that, but I did think nobody can afford this. Nobody can afford this. The percentage is so tiny. And what about all these people who have drug problems and can't afford this? Totally. It feels kind of crazy. It's like there's this echelon of rich addicts

and then poor addicts, you know? Yeah, they're very different. And yeah, one has access to all this incredible stuff. And also if you have insurance, because that's what sort of get into a little bit in the doc, there's this relationship between these rehab centers and the insurers who they want customers to come in, basically. It's the same disease and you see it.

They have the same disease as the person outside on the street right now. 100%, same thing. They just have very different access to how they can potentially help themselves. Yeah. How did your friend, was it this particular base helpful for them? It was. It was, right. Yeah.

That's good they had access to it. I know. That's a good thing. Of course, when it's someone in your life, you feel grateful that that exists and that there is access and they have people in their lives who can help them. But it just does make me think about all of these people who don't. Yeah, who have nothing at all. Yeah. It's insane.

Yeah. So I wanted to sort of look into this a bit more, specifically in Florida. The setting is I'm in this horrible trailer, stinks like air freshener. Sure. I feel like I'm going a bit unhinged, and that's where I started my journey. Earlier this year, I stumbled on a movie from 2021 called Body Brokers. Since 2008, every healthcare provider needs to cover substance abuse treatment. This is what we in the treatment industry call a gold rush it was trying to be an adam mckay big short style thing

and it didn't quite work but it was a fascinating take on the multi-billion dollar industry based around helping drug users get clean the image that film painted was of a corrupt system where everyone was cashing in from doctors to therapists to pharmaceutical companies, and then the detox and rehab centres too. With that topic buzzing around in my brain, my original plan was to visit a drug rehab centre in Florida to get their take on how they were doing. But that proved challenging. Let's try some drug rehab centres. But that proved challenging. Let's try some drug rehab centres.

OK, that one doesn't exist anymore. I tried another one called Recovery by the Sea. Thank you for calling Recovery by the Sea. Please listen carefully as some of our menu options have changed. If you'd like to reach admissions, please press one. Just an endless dial tone. It was mostly dial tone. Numbers to nowhere. Sometimes I'd get through.

And it would be endless extensions. That led nowhere. No callbacks, no nothing. I gave up. Well, that took a very long time and I got nowhere. I wondered what was going on. Had many of these centres closed down? And if so, why?

Or did they just not want to talk to me? Maybe it was a combo of both. Also, the more I thought about this topic of drug rehab, the less confident I was in talking about it. I don't really know much about drugs. And while I've tried a few naughty drugs in my time on planet Earth, I'm too scared to talk about it here in America on a podcast because I'm convinced America will send me to prison.

America might love guns, but it hates drugs. I've listened to Reagan. I know how you feel. Drugs are menacing our society. They're threatening our values and undercutting our institutions. They're killing our children. With all this firmly in mind, I decided a good way to tackle this topic of drug rehab

was to go directly to the source, to people who'd been to a drug rehab center here in Florida. So after a load of emails, calls, and explaining what I was up to, I ended up in the outside courtyard of a Starbucks coffee shop at 8pm. How American a location is that? Just tell me your name and what you do. Jessica, I'm a dog groomer. Please tell me some of the secrets of dog grooming. What makes a good dog groomer? So patience, a lot of patience. Dogs, they don't exactly love being groomed. It's not their favorite thing to do, touching their feet and getting a bath with the water and everything. So yeah, it takes a lot of patience and love for the animals. You got to really love them.

Jessica says that doodles and schnauzers are the most difficult dogs to groom. Doodles because of the coat and schnauzers because of their personality. Dog people don't come for me. I'm merely passing on what I've learned. But I'm not here to talk dogs. I'm here to talk drugs, drug detox and rehab centers to be precise. And Jess knows what she's talking about. Yeah, so I've been to several of them. So I'm a drug addict and an alcoholic. I've been sober six and a half years. Congrats. Thank you. So I came down here in 2014.

I went to a detox. I was staying back at my parents' house and they were like, you gotta go. What were you addicted to? What was going on in your life? Heroin, Xanax, meth, all the drugs pretty much. Yeah, alcohol. You went all in. Yeah, I love it all. Jessica may have loved the drugs, but her parents did not. And one day they told her to pack seven days worth of clothes

because she was off to Florida, but not to the beach or a theme park. She'd been enrolled in a detox center. Because she was under 26, her parents' insurance covered it all. Were you happy to be there? Were you like, this is what I need to do? Or was it more your parents giving you an ultimatum of you must do this? I think it was both. So before my parents told me that, I was like, I would totally go to rehab if somebody like offered it to me because I didn't want to live like that anymore.

But like once you get there and like reality hits you that you're never going to be able to get high again, it's awful. It's crippling and it's really depressing. It's basically like breaking up with your lover that you've had for the past 10 years you know so it's like really heartbreaking to say goodbye to that whole part of your life and like i didn't know how to live any other way i'd been getting fucked up for 10 years i didn't know how to do anything else so it was really scary too

scary because she tried to get clean earlier before Before the detox, she tried to kick the heroin by seeing a doctor who prescribed her something called Suboxone. So Suboxone is a drug that, okay, how do I explain this? It's basically to like substitute for like heroin and it blocks the opiate receptors in your brain. and it blocks the opiate receptors in your brain, so that way you can't get high on heroin. You're not dope sick when you're on Suboxone, but you're not getting fucked up. It's just to make you feel normal. It turns out that before her parents sent her to Florida for a detox,

she had tried Suboxone. I had been seeing a Suboxone doctor. Okay, this is like a whole other thing. A can of worms has just been opened. Yes yes so i was seeing him for like seven or eight months and he was prescribing me suboxone and meanwhile i was still getting fucked up on like crack alcohol xanax because you can do all the other drugs you just can't do dope did he cotton on to it that you were high as a buddy kite no and then like a very good doctor no or he just didn't care yeah he just didn't care because they were getting their insurance money or whatever

one day that particular doctor wasn't in so she saw another doctor who drug tested her and the jig was up no more suboxone until she got clean from all the other stuff which is a problem because she liked the suboxone by now plus she was also splitting it with her boyfriend to sell. All that led her parents to ship her off to Florida. She did her 30 days and was then sent to a sober living facility, in her case an apartment building where she did outpatient therapy. If you relapsed, they would lock you in an apartment for three days with no phone, no TV. They gave you seven movies.

Like one of them was A Pursuit of Happiness. Don't ever let somebody tell you you can't do something. Not even me. All right? All right. The sober living facility, nor Will Smith's acting, helped in this case. And she ended up doing a series of rehab and detox centers her parents insurance paying for it all it was why it was good that i got sober before i turned 26

because that's when my insurance cut off with my parents there's a lot of people down here who ride that wave until they're 26 they just yeah... Florida Shuffle. Yeah, it's called the Florida Shuffle. And they just go from treatment center to treatment center to treatment center to treatment center. Because, I mean, you get like three hots and a cop. And then a lot of places you can get fucked up in between. Eventually, her Florida Shuffle slowed and came to a stop. She got sober and stayed sober.

She says getting involved in a 12-step program was everything for her. It was a community and support. She didn't know how to be an adult, and so she got help with her grocery shopping and cooking from new friends she had made in the program. Now, as I'd gone to get another flat white from Starbucks, that's a type of very dairy-fueled coffee popular in New Zealand, Jessica's friend had joined us. So I did not get sober till I was 40, so I have been to treatment centres all over the United States. She had experienced the Florida Shuffle too,

going to her first detox centre when she was 26. She was a regular customer. Treatment isn't there to get anybody sober. It's just there to get you detoxed and get you more comfortable and get back into life. Like, you've got to do something afterwards. So I've been to really bad ones. I've been to really great ones.

And I honestly think it's almost sometimes the people that work there that make the difference. Like Jessica, her story also ended happily. She's alive and drug-free and at Starbucks. But I'd take this life over any other life, any day. I have grandkids and I got to be at all their births. I got, you know, like my son was in the army and I got to go to his graduation. You know what I mean?

Like I would have never showed up before. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Flightless Bird is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I've said this many times, but I have Athletic Greens once a day, every day. And it's made in New Zealand, so I believe it's the best because purely it's from New Zealand. Well, I think it's amazing because it is amazing because it has a ton of vitamins and super adaptogens and stuff and it's made you healthier. Yeah. And me. When I first came to

America because I wasn't eating vegetables, I got something that was like this product, but it wasn't it. And I stirred it up and it didn't dissolve properly. And I sort of projectile coughed it all over the wall. I know you've said that before in the visual is tough. It's disgusting. My point is that's the the visual is tough. It's disgusting. My point is that's the opposite with AG1 because it mixes in and it tastes really, really good. Also, you're absorbing 75 high-quality vitamins,

minerals, whole foods, source superfoods, probiotics, and adaptogens to help you start your day right. And it supports your gut health as well. And it does taste really good. Yeah. And it's just easy.

For someone like me that has a terrible diet, it's a dream come true. Right now, it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition. It's just one scoop and a cup of water each day. That's it. No need for a million different pills and supplements to look out for your health. To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you need to do is visit athleticgreens.com slash flightless. Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash flightless to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Flightless Bird is brought to you by HelloFresh, which is a revelation for me because

it's getting me away from takeout food, which I do way too often here in America. With HelloFresh, you get farm fresh pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. And it does more than just get you delicious dinners. You can take your pick from 40 weekly recipes, and you can also choose from over 100 items to round out your order from snacks and easy lunches to desserts and pantry necessities and everything arrives in one box on a delivery day that you choose so your week can be super organized no more scouring the grocery store for that one specific annoying ingredient which is wonderful music to my ears and it's cheaper

than grocery shopping and also music to my ears it's 25% cheaper than takeout. I use HelloFresh because I like not having to think as much. The hard work's mostly all done for me. The shopping and a lot of the pre-meal prep plus I'm eating way more healthily as it's not takeout. Go to hellofresh.com slash bird16 and use code Bird16 for 16 free meals plus free shipping. That's Bird1616 for 16 free meals. Holy Mac, sweet 16. How American is that? HelloFresh.com slash Bird16.

Code Bird16. HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit. Hello Fresh, America's number one meal kit. See, they were pretty amazing. It's funny interviewing people, talking to someone about like an exotic snake or something. That's one thing. And then sitting in a Starbucks late at night and people, both women were just so open. It's a privilege and it's also just a lot.

It is. It is both things things i think you're right and i do think for many addicts they do feel really comfortable if they've had some time of sobriety yeah i do find that they are open to talk about it and kind of help like i think they just recognize how difficult the process is and if they could ever be helpful i find that many are open to doing so addiction is so sad i mean that's the other thing i felt lucky talking to them and i guess the same with you've talked with dax about it so much but like i feel like i'm being led into this world and and it's a world that if you don't have it you'll never fully grasp it right yeah i've never been addicted to anything and so it's a world that if you don't have it you'll never fully grasp it right yeah i've never been addicted to anything and so it's just this thing that you have or you don't have and it's

this thing you live with and both these people still live with it like they're aware of it but the 12-step program obviously is a huge thing i talked to a few other people you don't hear their voices but they all talked about the 12-step being everything because it's people. And yeah, when these people came out of it, they didn't know how to cook or shop or sort of do anything. And that was a support system around them there. And that's isolating, which then leads to wanting the quick fix. which I do think AA does provide this amazing community for people to ask for help and not feel judged at all. It just seems so much in America, it's very easy to drop through the cracks.

And like that doctor that prescribed her Suboxone, you know, obviously haven't got their side of things, but didn't sound like a great doctor and was completely unaware of what else she was on. And yeah, it's just a strange thing and then getting into this florida shuffle where essentially and that's what they were talked about the florida shuffle just basically being taken care of in a facility but then you leave high again but then you can just go to another one and these facilities which is what i get into in part two are all obviously just being supported by the insurance companies. And it just goes around in this big kind of circle.

Do we have some numbers of costs if you're not covered? Oh, you wouldn't be going there unless you've got insurance. It's just not an option. It's like you've got to tap into that world. Or you go to a private institution, which is like where your friend went. And from what I can tell, they don't exactly come cheap, you know? No, no, no. I should know about this, but I don't.

But I imagine there are surely in some states some like publicly funded places you can get help. Right. Going on the state of America, I think any of them would be completely slammed and just not even an option for most people because the problem is so big, right? and just not even an option for most people because the problem's so big, right? Looks like inpatient rehab typically costs about $6,000 for a 30-day program. Well-known centers often cost up to $20,000 for a 30-day program. Anywhere from $12,000 to $60,000. That's so much money.

It's nuts. Okay, so I talked to one other person that sort of talked about how bleak this world can kind of get. There was a newspaper headline I read back in 2017 that stuck with me. Florida's billion dollar drug treatment industry is plagued by overdoses and fraud. The report wrote about Florida's Palm Beach County saying, thousands of addicts arrive here each year from Ohio and West Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, hoping that at one of South Florida's many drug treatment saying, brokers and operators of so-called sober homes to find patients with good health insurance. Brokers and sober homeowners offer those trying to get clean free rent and grocery store gift cards, cigarettes and manicures in exchange for going to a specific treatment center. Now Jessica and her friend had already told me about that Florida shuffle,

patients just going from detox to detox, rehab to rehab. But I wondered if she'd heard about the body broker phenomenon during their time in rehab. Turns out, they had. My best friend Katie, she came down here to Florida for treatment and there was a guy in there and he was like, if you leave with me, I'll give you $3,000 and then we can go get high, get fucked up, whatever, Jessica tells me I should talk to someone else about this too. Someone who knew this side of things better than her. My name is Tim and I've been in Florida since about 2014 and right now I'm working for a medical

billing company. What brought you to Florida? I got gifted a one-way ticket with my family telling me not to call them for 90 days. And one month of a halfway house paid for for me. And then I had to figure it out after that. Tim told a familiar story in and out of various rehabs. His last stint was just last year. It was strange talking to him because I was sort of worried and talking about drugs with him on somehow send him back into it. But he said he was fine to talk and like Jessica, had good people around him. There was a lot of what they call patient brokering. Just an easy example of you worked at a treatment center and I was relapsing and you had my phone number and you said come to treatment, I'll buy cigarettes for you the whole time. And then you, as the person that worked at the treatment center, which we would call marketer,

we get a cut of my insurance payments from the treatment center because you're getting me in and they're getting you money. So that's how you make your commission. Yeah. Did that happen to people that you knew? It did. And another quick example is me saying, I want to go back out. I'm really going to relapse and telling people. And then finally, I have a marketer say, hey, if you really want to go out that bad, you know, do it, quote unquote, safely. And I'll give you five hundred dollars and then call me in a week and then we'll get you back into treatment. People would get manipulated into doing that. Six years ago, things were at peak bad.

As America's opioid crisis grew, South Florida's rehab scene was booming. People came for the sun and the treatment centers, which were becoming increasingly corrupt. A state attorney at the time who was prosecuting some dodgy rehab said, there's no incentive in sobriety, the money's all in relapse. People were getting handed money to go buy drugs and then they were starting to OD or they were in halfway houses and they were paying their rent, but the owner of the house knew that they were getting high, but they're paying their rent so they can stay. And then someone who wasn't paying their rent and actually working a program, but not able to afford rent

that week would get kicked out. And then people in halfway houses started to die in that 2017-18 and then that's when the feds really had to step in and a lot of places got raided the government got in place and it was just wild the owner of one rehab back then was arrested after billing nearly 60 million dollars to various insurance companies arrested on federal charges he'd been offering free rent to addicts, making money as long as they were getting treatment. Stories like this littered the news in 2017 and 2018. Tim tells me from what he's observed centers in Florida. The warning comes after several people overdosed at these facilities. Tim tells me from what he's observed here in Florida, things have changed for the better.

The authorities have cleaned things up somewhat. Most of the rehab centers that remain in Florida have cleaned up their act. Loopholes have been tightened. I think the recovery community around here and in South Florida has gotten much better than what it was, say, in 2017-18. I guess it explains why some of those numbers were disconnected. Rings that went nowhere. They were the bad ones, and a lot of them are gone. Which is not to say the problem isn't moving elsewhere.

As I carry on my Florida roadie, which is what we call road trips in New Zealand, I read a headline from November last year in the Philadelphia Inquirer. In New Jersey, investigators say they're uncovering abuse in the state's booming rehab industry. Addiction recovery is a massive business with little regulation, the article went on to say. It all sounded very, very familiar. So you essentially, dodgy operators have just sort of moved elsewhere and they're just doing their thing. And it's tied up, obviously, with the insurance industry here, which is another big business. And the pharmaceuticals. I mean, it's like all three of these.

Just bleak. I don't even know what to add to this. It's just pretty bleak out there. It is. And it's so heartbreaking because to know the level of vulnerability they're preying on is so evil. How can they sleep at night? Yeah, billing millions and millions to these insurance companies and just keeping them people in there so that you can bill that amount. Yeah, it's rough.

And the person calling to say, hey, it's fine. I'll get you this if you come back here. And they also might have been at it. You know, I'm trying to maybe find some level of compassion. Maybe those people themselves were addicts and need the money or anyone who needs the money and feels desperate. And you end up just doing these awful, awful things. And yeah, Tim had bounced around different places and done that.

He was out of all three people I spoke to for the story, he'd been sober the least. So he was fresh to all this. And it is this weird thing where you're having these conversations and you're like, oh God, just please stay sober. And he's doing long form running now. But he showed me some photos on the phone of when his body, I mean, he overdid in an insane way and his friends took him to the hospital and he had parts of his body that were rotting, the needle sites. And again, it's that level of openness. Most people, when they show you photos and they want you to see their best selves and he's like, here's me at my absolute worst and this is what it's like. And it was, yeah, it's pretty confronting.

Well, sending him really positive vibes. Yeah, big time. Yeah, yeah yeah they were all pretty wonderful and yeah all had a very surreal conversation while at a starbucks people were just getting that late night coffee it was a very surreal place to be i'm impressed by anyone who can do it i really am totally it's incredible and they all had each other's backs, which is cool. Be a Florida. What a stage. You did it all. I did all the things. I survived. I came back. I really like Florida.

It's a bit of a mess, but I enjoyed it. It's such a fun microcosm there. And you really tapped into a lot of the good spots. Everglades. Gladesman. A lot of animals. A lot of animal content. World's largest retirement village. 120,000 old people, Epcot

What a place What a place And I think I've definitely become more American, I would argue, a lot out to Florida I think it's one thing to be in Los Angeles, it's another thing to be in the middle of a swamp in the Everglades Yes, I think you could never really call yourself American if you haven't been to Florida. Completely. So you at least check that box off. I think deep into the heart of Texas is the next plan.

And that'll just further solidify things. Also DC. The capital. The big old C. You were there recently, right? I was, yeah. Do you like it there? It's a great city, yeah.

I picture a lot of people in suits walking around. I loved it. I think I said already, but I really loved that it was an industry town that I wasn't, an industry I wasn't in. Yeah. So I could really observe in a way that you, you know, this is an industry town here in LA, but I am in that industry. So, this is a whole other thing. So, you're immersed. I want to see all the monuments.

I want to see the White House. There's a lot to do. They've got the big statues of the men, don't they? And the steps. A lot of flags flying. Are you talking about Mount Rushmore? Mount Rushmore is not in DC. Oh, that's Mount, where's Mount Rushmore?

It's in Wyoming or North Dakota or something. The big faces. Yeah, that was a funny thing to do. That's American, isn't it? It is. You should go there. It's in South Dakota. South Dakota.

Yeah. All right. Well, Florida was great. And thanks for taking us through. Thanks for coming on this trip. Thanks for putting up with all the animals. And I think it's just nice to be reminded that america is vast and insane and wild and good and bad and wonderful and terrible all at the same time all of it yeah love it bye music music music music