Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Steven Seagal Is So Much Worse Than You'd Ever Imagine

Episode Date: October 18, 2018

In Part Two of our series on Steven Seagal, Robert is joined again by the Internet's Seanbaby and they continue to discuss Steven Seagal who is an actual monster. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I am Robert Evans, and this is again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. And this is of course part two of our epic two-part series on Steven Seagal, a man who is so much worse than you would guess. Yeah, he really sucks. You probably just thought he was a movie star who got rich and retired, and that was the end of this story.

But as we have learned, not only did his career start thanks to the mafia, he is a alleged serial sexual assaulter. And today we're about to get into his time as a lawman, his hobby as a best friend to dictators, and the human trafficking allegations against him. Thank God. Steven Seagal, I'd like to open up this episode with another excerpt from the bio on Steven Seagal's personal website. Sean, Sean Riley, I did not introduce you in this episode. They listened to part one. If you didn't listen to part one, you're terrible. Yeah, you blew it.

You're the bastard. Yeah, I'm Sean, maybe I write jokes on the internet. Yeah, and we're drinking, and I'm going to open another beer right now. Now we're talking. Now we're talking, and now we're drinking. And now we're Steven Seagaling. I'm ready. I'm ready.

Now, first, actually, I want to get through an important issue with you. If some sort of teleportation accident were to create multiple Steven Seagal, they would be Steven Seagal, right? It's like an attorney's general sort of situation. I think I would probably say Steven Seagal's just as an impulse, but when you say Steven Seagal, I like that a lot more, and I would absolutely train myself into saying it at that point. Steven Seagal. Absolutely. It happens, listeners, back us up on this, if there is like a Steven Seagal infestation. And it's likely to happen, and it probably already has happened if you listen to one of the Stevens Seagal who is inhabiting our world here.

In fact, it looks like several Stevens Seagal have merged into one giant Steven Seagal, like if you've seen him in the last 10 years or so. He looks like three Steven Seagals wearing a trench coat trying to be one Steven Seagal. Yeah. Because it's not like he's putting on weight, like he's getting obese. It's like he's growing in every direction. There's nothing shameful about being a 68-year-old man putting on some weight. Of course. Everyone, everyone.

I'm saying he's wearing it. He's wearing it as if it's other people attached to his body. He's like, ate the fucking Willy Wonka gum or something. He's just growing. But he's also, his hair is getting more Dracula every day? He, actually, that's how you would cast him today. Blood-feeding tick. He could be a good Dracula.

Yeah. He could be a really believable, heavy-set Dracula. Exactly. He would travel by, like, turning sideways, growing after you. The more CGI they can throw in there, the better, really. So I'd like to open him up. He turns sideways. He's, like, picking up shit, like Katamari.

I bet he wears all black now because it covers the sweat scenes. Yeah. Yeah, we know what's going on. So I'd like to open this episode with another excerpt from the bio on Steven Seagal's personal website. At the core of what drives Steven Seagal with all he does, his music, his martial arts, and his acting, is his commitment to Asian philosophies and religion. And Asian is capitalized.

Aw. Yeah. That's, that's, that's something else. As a Buddhist Zen teacher and healer, Steven lives by the principles that the development of the physical self is essential to protect the spiritual man. He believes that what he does in his life is about leading people into contemplation to wake them up and enlighten them in some manner. Fuck, if, if you can find one goddamn person that exists in the world who's like, I never

thought of myself as a deep philosopher until I met Steven Seagal. Oh boy. I am excited for this next part. I didn't even tease this. He's, he's a Buddhist Lama. Yeah. He's an, no, officially. Oh, of course.

Not just as he a Buddhist Lama, he is the reincarnation of a 17th century Buddhist mystic officially. Oh, I knew. Oh, you knew. Okay. You would have guessed that. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

So you've, you've got that kind of vision. Then you have the same kind of vision as a Buddhist leader, Panor Rinpoche, who is the actual Tibetan Buddhist leader who declared Steven Seagal a reincarnation of a 17th century Buddhist mystic. Here's Panor. Steven Seagal has been recognized as a reincarnation of the 17th century hidden treasure revealer Shundrag Dorhi of Palyu Monastery. Shundrag Dorhi founded a small monastery called Gigon Gompah near his native village in Fene

in the Kutsi area of Durj on Eastern Tibet. Though there are no monks there now, the small monastery building still exists and is well known in the area for its beautiful religious wall paintings. So that's nice. They're not known for their, their public school system. This dude sounds like he's kind of a dipshit. Well, he made Steven Seagal the reincarnation. That's what I'm saying.

I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I may not be reading it well, but yeah, as you might guess, other Hollywood Buddhists who have not been accused of numerous sexual assaults took issue with the announcement that Steven Seagal was officially a Buddhist Lama. He's literally like a step below the Dalai Lama. Like, that's, that's real.

That's as far as official. Yeah. It's official. Peter and Tina Turner, both devout Tibetan Buddhists, should, in theory, venerate Steven Seagal for being just a step down from the Dalai Lama himself, but instead they accused him of having bribed Pinor Rinpoche and other Buddhist Lamas into granting him the title. Gandon Thurman, director of special projects for the Tibet House in New York noted that quote, I'm afraid it troubles me.

I always wondered if the action heroes he played, he always seems to be the only one who tortures his enemies. He really is. He really is. I was saying this in the last episode, he just tears apart all of his enemies. Yeah. So there's some good questions as to why this guy would be a reincarnation of an enlightened Buddhist mystic.

Pinor Rinpoche denies being bribed by Seagal. He states that neither I nor any of my monasteries have received or sought any sort of substantial donation from him. I think substantial is the key word. There's the word. It seems like some bribery happened. So doesn't this guy talk to God and stuff? Wouldn't God be like, hey, don't make that guy that, I don't know how religion works.

I don't know how Buddhism works. Right. I don't think they talk to God because that's like a Buddhist thing, right? Well, no, because there's different types of Buddhism because there are some Buddhism, some Buddhist sects that like venerate Buddha as sort of a deity. Okay. But I think in general it's the idea. But there's no questions again.

It's like say you're like a dumbass and you're like in charge of somehow naming who is the reincarnated Dalai Lama. Because Stephen Segal gave you $70,000. Right. Like is there like no like checks and balances in that like religion for someone to say like, hey guys, I think I found the reincarnated. I think it's this sexual assaulter who lies about everything. And there's no one to say like, you know, I don't, I don't think you're right.

I don't think he's the reincarnation of that 17th century monk. I don't buy it. I like that tree might be the guy. I mean, let me, let me pause. Like how do you check? Do you have like a spectrometer? You can like attach the, because I know Scientologists have like little. Yeah.

And so they can like measure how many times you're being reincarnated. Well, there was like this ceremony where he had to recognize some possessions that had been owned by himself. But that's the kind of thing you can set up. Yeah, you can't fake that shit. You can't fake that shit. I don't know. My, my, my personal feeling here is that maybe Chung-Jung Dori, the 17th century Buddhist monk

who Steven Seagal is the reincarnated form of maybe Chung-Jung was a serial sexualist. This is all part of the course. Entirely possible. If he is, that would be like, I'd support this claim that Steven Seagal is reincarnated. Yeah. If the Dalai Lama comes out and says, no, he was a monster. And this man is the reincarnation and he must be stopped. Now we're talking.

Now we're talking. That's a Steven Seagal movie I would watch in the modern age. Under Buddha. I think six out of 10 so far. I think we can top it, but it's a good title. Okay. Good title. We'll see what else we can.

Yeah, the definition of substantial can vary a lot. So I wouldn't be surprised if Steven Seagal bribes some Buddhists. Now, despite being ordained as a holy man in 1997, the late 1990s proved to be the winding down period for Seagal's career, as we previously stated. Under Siege was his most successful film in 1994. On Deadly Ground, an action movie with an environmental message about oil companies in Alaska featuring offensively inaccurate depictions of Native American women doing actual spiritual dances, but doing them naked, which is not how the dances were performed.

Steven Seagal, everybody. That was Steven Seagal's note, I bet. Yeah. 100%. But like, I think it would be more enlightening if they took the titties out. Make sure they're real and very serious religious rituals, but make them do it naked. Yeah. Perfect.

That encapsulates my interests very well. Both cultural appropriation and gratuitous nudity. I'm Steven Seagal. Steven Seagal approved this film. And he did. Oh boy, Steven. Steven, Steven, Steven. So, in 1995, Seagal filmed a sequel to Under Siege.

In 1986, he was in Kurt Russell's executive decision for about a hot minute and then very quickly got sucked out of a plane, right? Yeah. There was a rumor that he was in the movie theater when this happened and he gets sucked out of the plane like basically the moment it's about, oh, Steven Seagal time. And he just fucking dies. Like in the crowd cheered, like the crowd thought this was really funny and they loved that Steven Seagal died before he got to do anything.

And Steven Seagal in a fit like got up and like stormed out of the theater and his manager was like, no, dude, dude, dude, dude. They're cheering because they love you. And he had to talk him down like you would a toddler. No. Yeah, he's like, no, no, they're not cheering because you're dead. They're cheering because you're the best and you died a hero. And they calmed him down and got him to go back.

I have no idea how accurate this was, but this is the rumor that I heard. That's canon for this show, for sure. Yeah, we're calling that canon right now. That's absolutely like as true as any fucking thing Steven Seagal has ever said. Probably truer other than the thing about the Seagal exhibit because that I can't imagine someone lying about that. That's probably real. Yeah, yeah.

And he's probably that 17th century, like rapist. He's chung-dring Dory. Yes. Famed 17th century rapist, chung-dring Dory. Boy, that particular. I hope that doesn't make it onto that poor dude's Wikipedia. No, because he's been dead for centuries. Yeah, he wouldn't be able to answer this.

He doesn't need this. This is how it is. One accusation ruins your life even after you did. I do a bad Donald Trump. Oh, I thought you were doing a Steven Seagal. They have a lot of similarities. Not as many differences as you'd expect. Yeah, not as many as you'd expect.

Not the best impersonator, except for this one, which is the spot down Donald Trump. That was your Cosby. It was my Cosby. Oh boy, the world is just full of rich and powerful sex offenders. Speaking of one of them, Steven Seagal. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, obviously Seagal slid into obscurity. He transitioned from Big Hollywood Star to Direct to Video Star. He also put on more and more weight, which isn't at all odd for a man in his late 40s,

but did kind of get in the way of his successful action movie career. It's worth noting that Steven Seagal currently, look at a picture of him, is the same age, more or less, as Liam Neeson, who is a believable action movie star. Yeah, so again, he didn't make the right decisions in order to stay relevant, although that was probably always a kind of a long shot given his mafia finance start. And range, I think. Yeah, and range. Liam Neeson can make seven or eight different kinds of movies.

Liam Neeson can act as both Oscar Schindler and as a guy who punches people in the throat. Sure, and the guy from Kroll. And the guy from Kroll. Yeah, you put fucking Steven Seagal in Kroll, you ruined Kroll. You would have ruined Kroll, a film that could not have been more of a disaster if it had had its opening night on September 11th in the World Trade Center. Jesus. It was.

Strong disagree. I think Kroll is a Salon 10 out of 10 film. I was not disagreeing with that statement. Okay, the upshot of Seagal's slide into obscurity is that it gave him a chance to focus more. Of a spiritual life. Delivering lectures on Buddhism to classes of the faithful, hungry for the wisdom of an ancient Lama. And luckily for us, an attendee of one of these classes wrote about it. In the October 1999 issue of GQ, they published an article by David Rakhoff titled,

Steven Seagal, I Can't Believe It's Not Buddha. Jesus. 1999 was an easier time for jokes. I can't believe the title wasn't Steven Seagal. I can't believe he tried to put his finger in my butt. Oh, this was a yoga class though. Well, it was a Buddhism class. Sorry.

I can't believe it's not Buddha. Fuck you, dude, for writing that. Fuck you. It was 1999. Wait, let's do a fucking episode on that asshole. It was an easier time for comedy. Yeah, and he still blew it. Jerry Seinfeld was the biggest name in the world.

I think Jerry Seinfeld makes lots of great jokes. Jerry Seinfeld, if you brought him this and said, I got this great idea for a joke. I can't believe it's not Buddha. He'd say, get out of my office. You had to fuck out. You were really, we're getting a lot of mileage out of your impressions tonight. So, yeah, David Rakhoff attended a series of lectures, a memorial weekend, day weekend retreat by the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies.

The Omega Institute regularly held seminars with luminaries such as Deepak Chopra. But the weekend that Rakhoff attended, they scored a real get Steven Segal. He was teaching a class on, quote, cultivating compassion and clarity. Oh, no. Yeah, this is the guy you go to. You want to cultivate some compassion. You go to the guy who's famous in his movies for torturing people and has numerous sexual assault allegations against him.

I'm really great at breaking arms and grabbing titties. Much like the Buddha. The Buddha before me and the one living inside me and the four I ate. So before Segal arrived, students were advised to address him as Rinpoche, which means literally precious jewel. Fuck you, Rinpoche. So Rakhoff writes, precious jewel eventually does arrive some 45 minutes late. That turns out to be Segal's standard time.

He is a large man now with a bit of a late model, Brando Gerth about him. His narrow eyes, sleek ponytail and variation on traditional of Tibetan attire, an aubergine skirt and a saffron yellow set and jacket. Lint in the air of a Mongol potentate. This guy is article title and then like a fucking four paragraph description of his dress. Oh, it was a beautiful description. It was a beautiful description. He shambles in slowly, displaying a kind of bewilderment as if the temporal world were

too jarring and suffused with craving and pain for him to absorb just yet. This guy's grown on me. That's a really good way to describe the way Stephen Segal moves. So it quickly became obvious to the author that the students at the seminar were a mix of serious Buddhists and people who just wanted to hang out with the famous guy all weekend. Questions quickly turned to Segal's career. He explains to us that his absence from the screen is but an inevitable consequence of his emergence as a holy man. The students know exactly what they want fighting as I became a llama.

I had to establish a line I could not cross and I've taken two years off as a result. So that's there's not a single Stephen Segal movie where he doesn't beat the shit out of these 10 people. Really meanly to. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's gross. Now, Rakoff does note that Segal didn't come across as a dumb guy. He was charming and reasonably good at answering pretty basic questions about Buddhism.

His main flaw seemed to be that he was incapable of showing up on time. Quote the school day consists of a morning session from 9 to noon and an afternoon session from 2 30 to 5 30. But Segal tends to arrive at least an hour into each and he stays for only an hour. Yeah, Segal's explanation was that basically that he was people can only absorb so much wisdom in a day. That makes sense. That makes sense. He was he was over. He didn't want to overload them on his wisdom.

I think it's probably because he's all you can eat place. You know, they don't make you leave until you've been here for seven hours. I'll leave when I've had all the crab brand goons I can eat. But you have no idea how many crab brand goons I can eat. You don't know what you signed on for. So Rakoff notes that Segal's chief a keto disciple was brought in to lead stretches for the group. They were originally supposed to be just like 15 minute breaks in the middle of the day. But regularly expanded to 45 minutes or longer in order to distract from the fact.

Those Aikido stretches. Those Aikido stretches. You gotta be limber when you karate chop your hands around for a little bit. So he had his guy come in and do stretches while he blew off two thirds of the classes he signed up to teach. Like a real Buddhist mistake. Now Segal took the opportunity afforded by his cratering career to indulge in other passions too. Including his passion for being the creepiest possible version of himself. In 2004 he attended the funeral of musical legend Ray Charles.

At the funeral he met Charles' granddaughter Blair Robinson. He decided that the death of her grandfather was the perfect place to hit on her via lies. He invited her to his home to interview for a job as his personal assistant. Now Segal didn't do anything creepy at the interview. Probably because her dad Ray Charles Jr. came to the interview. Which is a smart move as a dad if you hear Steven Segal wants to interview your kid. But he did hire her on the spot. And a few weeks later she was in Memphis with Segal and his staff.

Segal held a meeting with everybody and then dismissed them all so we could talk to Blair alone. Which is another Weinstein tactic. At this point the focus of the meeting shifted from the logistics of their current project to the art of Japanese massage. Segal informed Blair that massaging him would be one of her duties as his assistant. And since she didn't actually know how to give massages, Segal would of course have to teach her. He started to demonstrate on her body but Blair fled the room and flew home to Los Angeles. Blair is a smart person. Good on you.

Obviously other people couldn't escape and that's not because they're not smart. Just credit to Blair for getting the fuck out of there. Good on you. Wish everyone else had been that fortunate. The right combination of assertiveness and Blair with all and no. Yeah. And that is a dark tale as all of the allegations of sexual assault and harassment against Segal are. And we will be washing a little bit of that out of your tongues in a little bit because coming up very soon we're going to be listening to a selection from Stephen Segal's wonderful blues album.

Songs from the Crystal Cave. Which I bet you didn't know was a blues album if you listen to any of it because it sounds it is as close to the blues as I don't know. You're really more of that guy. I'm more of what guy? The guy who writes words things good. Do the words. You don't need to describe Stephen Segal's music in the form of words. Oh my God that's really working backwards from an artistic perspective.

Because like if his songs express so much words can't say like like if you ever heard a 40 minute fart put that into words then try to describe that to someone if you can't put Stephen Segal can. And that is songs of the Crystal Cave. We'll be talking about that in a little bit. But first some songs from ads. Dude that's sweet transition. I'm really good at transitions. That's my words. During the summer of 2020 some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations.

And you know what they were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark and on the gun badass way and nasty sharks.

He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match.

And when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart.

And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back and we're talking about Stephen Segal. Again, we are recording this in a home and drinking. A lovely home and thank you for having me. Yeah, it's been quite a time. So, next to being a Buddhist Lama and sexually, allegedly sexually harassing teenagers, Stephen Segal's music career was his major focus in the early 2000s. So it was in the top three, for sure. In 2005, he released his first album, Songs from the Crystal Cave.

I'd like to read from its top review on Amazon.com if I can. Can't wait. After a night of hitting the clubs, you meet a girl, head home with her, things get heated, put the CD in your system, turn it on and you'll find that magic happens. And it also doubles as a great white elephant exchange gift. I can't tell if that one's serious or not. It could go either way. It's a funny thing to give as a white elephant. If you opened a gift and it was a Stephen Segal album, you'd be like, this is pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, you would. This would be a good white elephant because you'd want to have that. Look at the cover. It'll be on our website of Stephen Segal's Songs from the Crystal Cave. I can only describe it as it looks like an album that Stephen Segal would write. He's in a loincloth fighting a minotaur in the center of an ice maze.

He's what he is now 100% of the time, which is the stolen valor equivalent of a Native American. That's the only thing he dresses as now. That's a solid burn. Still in valor equivalent of Native American. I love it. Stephen Segal, everybody. My own opinion is more in line with the one star reviews of his album that call it overproduced garbage. So that dude got that fucking Stephen Segal album. He's like genuinely earnestly reviewing it. It's hard to say. It's really hard. I will say in fairness, it has 4.1 stars. It is possible that a lot of people enjoyed this album. I would say many of the songs on it, were you to walk through a store where they were playing, you would not notice. That's the nicest thing you could say. It's boring enough that it would pass under your mind.

It's not as sensational a failure as you'd like hope. It's not like a Sean, or not Sean Conner, Captain Kirk, the fuck, William Shatner. It's not like William Shatner singing Rocket Man, where it's like everyone has to hear this. But he's like artistically going for it. There's a charm in that level of enthusiasm. Total commitment. And that I would say is absent from Stephen Segal's music. Although you may form a different opinion. Forgettable. Yeah, I would call it forgettable. But 2005 is the year that Stephen Segal started touring with the Stephen Segal Blues Band, which is a creative name for a blues band.

Great name. In 2006, Big City Blues Magazine put Stephen Segal on their cover. You can see the picture of it here. He's sitting with a group of blues legends, apparently. I have to trust other people have written about them that they're blues legends. I don't know much about blues. Nothing against blues. Wonderful art form. It does seem from the reviews I've read that the other people in his band are really talented, legitimate blues musicians. And the subtext is that Segal is paying them all very well, because being a great blues musician does not pay the bills. Right. But also, say you're just some blues dude and you've got your own little bubble where you're kind of cool, but Stephen Segal is an internationally known movie star.

I think most people would be excited to meet Stephen Segal. Assuming you hadn't listened to the part one of this podcast, you'd be like, you made like four really good movies and 85 terrible ones. You're kind of famous. Come take a picture with us. Yeah, I'll tour with you, Stephen Segal. One of these musicians said in an interview with The Washington Post, quote, I told him he'd have to play these grungy clubs and some real dives where real blues musicians would play. And he said, let's do it. He's focused on making it as a musician. He's paying his dues just like everybody else. Unlike everybody else, however, Segal traveled to different cities via charter jets and stayed only in luxury hotels.

That's the blues. That's the blues right there. That's the blues. Spending $1,900 a night in a hotel, staying at the fucking W. That's the blues. My mini bar's empty. How many great blues albums have been written about the Waldorf Astoria? Countless. Sometimes the bar closes at 1.30. Your flight was late and you're like, I didn't even have time to get my seventh drink. I got the blues. Heartbreaking. And then you got to go to the mini bar and you got to pay way too much for a very small bottle of wine. The blues, everybody.

The blues. We understand it. So does Stephen Segal. So in that Washington Post interview, Segal claimed to have been studying the blues since his childhood. Studying the blues. What the fuck does that mean? It means learning about pain, Sean. Learning about the true pain of an artist. Of a blues artist. It implies like you didn't want to like, I don't want to fucking learn about the stupid blues. It's like, head in the books, all these fucking blues musicians.

I only made it through blues 202. I never quite got my bachelor's in blues. He claims to have learned from the lapse of great but unknown, which is really fortunate for him. Mississippi Delta bluesmen who'd moved north to work in the steel mills. It's so stupid. Just nine-year-old Stephen Segal. Well, and also the fact that he's talking about steel mills and he lived in Fullerton, California from the age of five on. Not a lot of steel mills near Fullerton. Capital of steel mills, capital of the blues.

Well, that's the blues city. Not like the anywhere on the east coast. No, it's Fullerton, California, capital of the blues. Now, Sean, I'm not an expert on the blues. As the three blues experts listening to this podcast will surely attest to you. But listening to Stephen Segal's music does not make me think he is a blues musician. I would agree. As another non-expert. I'm going to play a selection from the best song on his album, Strut. And what do you mean by best?

I mean the best. Okay, okay. We'll leave it ambiguous. I mean this song is a work of art. So we're going to play a selection from Strut and... Dance along. You can decide for yourself if Stephen Segal is a real authentic blues musician. Alright, here it is. Okay, he's strong.

So, does that sound like the blues? Dude, I don't know what the fuck that was. Nobody does. That's the club jam. I know he wants the punani tonight. Is that really what he said he wants the punani tonight? That was something like that. And he also says when the girls strut, you want to look at their butts, but you shouldn't do that.

Which is advice he legitimately should have taken. Yeah, like take your own advice ten years ago. Stephen Segal and Stephen Segal are songs from the Crystal Cave, which by the way, the album cover art is the middle bisecting the frame is the center of Segal's guitar with his face on one side and his hand on another and an enormous turquoise ring. Of course it's a turquoise ring. Is that his pinky? You're goddamn right, it's his pinky. I should also note if you look at, he still plays the blues and if you look at modern pictures from his concerts, Stephen Segal is wearing a keffia in every single one of them. Which, of course.

Why not? Why not, Stephen Segal? He's got to get the punani. He's going to get that punani tonight. Stephen Segal. Everybody. I apologize for that particular accident I did. That was my Stephen Segal's reggae blues punani song.

The nice thing about making an offensive joke near a Stephen Segal song is that nothing you can say will be worse than that song. All outlands on him. Because that is a nightmare. Oh, it's, I... I like being in the room with the reggae performers and not having a question about like, Guys, am I allowed to say this punani line? Like, this is going to come off as weird? You're paying everyone $40,000 to be here, so you say whatever you want.

No, Stephen. Yeah. Do you want us to really, like, play up the Jamaican accents? Yeah, yeah, yeah, go real, real Jamaican. Here's a 2014 picture of Segal play. Oh my God. Let me describe this. He's got just the sweetest orange guitar.

He's got a Dureg, his shooter glasses. Like, he just came from the fucking gun range. Just like, like a goatee that looks like it wasn't painted on, but thrown on by like, a boomerang hunter from 400 yards away and just fucking slapped onto his face. I think he's, I think that's a yellow scarf, not an ascot. Oh, no, that's a Kefya, sir. I'm sorry, it's a Kefya. That is definitely a Kefya.

I'm being told it's a Kefya. He's easy 370. Stephen Segal has never met a culture he will not appropriate. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. It's a work of art. It's like someone made the first random choice on the creative character and like,

that's just fucking what he's stuck with in his regular real life. He's like, that's a sarcastic creator wrestler in a cutscene is what the fuck we're looking at. That's a good way to describe Stephen Segal in the modern era. So now that he's been a blues musician, a Buddhist, Lama and reincarnation of a 17th century priest, a repeated alleged sexual offender, and of course, an action star, CIA agent, Navy Seal. Navy Seal. A great Akito master as well, obviously. After all of that, I bet you're thinking the only thing Stephen Segal hasn't done is be given a position of authority where he's allowed to carry around a gun and has the legal sanction to use violent force.

Absolutely give that to him. License to kill all the way. If anyone deserves it, it's this guy. Well, good news. In 2007, Stephen Segal revealed that he had been secretly spending the last two decades working as a reserve deputy officer for the Jefferson Paris Louisiana Sheriff's Department. Yeah. I remember this reality show. You remember when he revealed he'd secretly spent 20 years as a cop?

Yeah. No one knows I'm Stephen Segal. They think I'm a beach ball with a napkin on the top of my head. We really caught a lot of beach crime when Stephen Segal joined the force. This was stupid. Because I do remember the premise of that reality show was that he just did this all the time, unrelated to his other stuff. He was like, yeah, this is also a Louisiana Sheriff. And I remember on the show, he would appropriate a lot of black culture.

If he was meeting a black family, he'd be like, hey, yo, where's the mama at? He'd be like, what is this thing you're doing? He used the most offensive fake accents imaginable. He also did it as a blues musician. I actually wrote a cracked article about this about Stephen Segal's crime vision. And in the show, this happened where he would stare out the window with his squinty Stephen Segal eyes. And then it would go all white to imply that Stephen Segal had some sort of fundamental senses that could tell when crime was near. And so I called that the crime vision.

And my theory was that near him, five to six miles away, a baby would be turned into a husk. And the parents would never know what caused it. But it was Stephen Segal's crime vision, because that power has to come from someone. Yeah, it has to draw from something. The life essence of a baby makes sense. Where they have all of the editing capacity of a reality. So they can create any reality they want. And that show made it very clear that Stephen Segal's crime fighting techniques were to drive around until he saw black people and stare at them.

And if they ran away, you found yourself a crime. That was like fucking every episode. I don't know if you can still find it, but that's real. And I experienced that. Oh my God, is it ever fucking real? And the LA Times, God bless them, did some digging into just how true it was that Stephen Segal had spent decades working as a police officer. Which, I mean, there are uses I can imagine for him. Like if you knew a crime was going to occur in a aged leather bag factory.

If you had to plug a hole in a dam. Stephen, stand against this hole in the dam. You got it. Christ is averted. Someone's going to steal a lot of leather jackets. Put them all on at once, Stephen. I got you. God, he's big enough for all the leather jackets.

Stephen Segal. Okay. So the LA Times did some digging into whether or not Stephen Segal had actually worked for 20 years as the sheriff's deputy. And whether or not he had any qualifications. Don't spoil it, but I think probably didn't. It's actually kind of impossible to tell. The LA Times, yeah, says the LA Times quote Segal saying that it started 20 years ago when Segal was shooting a movie. Then Sheriff Harry Lee asked him to teach some of his officers martial arts.

He was so pleased at what I was doing that he asked me to come onto the force and be one of his cops. Maybe. You got good hand-to-hand combat. That's mostly what we do with police. That's mostly what we do. It's just a lot of karate chopping. You know the sad thing is that would be a lot better than the current situation. If that were the problem, cops keep karate chopping people.

It's whimsical, but it's annoying. Another black youth mildly inconvenienced by police karate chopping. What a better world that would be. I'm saying maybe Stephen Segal should have been the president of police. I don't know who heads our police nation. You're right. Some sort of doctor. President and mayor of police.

Mayor of police. There we go. Because the mayor is always on their ass. That makes sense. That makes sense. That does make sense. Yeah. So Segal claims that he worked major cases during this period, although his involvement was officially under the radar for most people.

It seems more likely that at most he spent one or two weekends a month or a year doing some volunteer policing work. Karate or Akito. Yeah, when the latter day sheriff was interviewed he basically said Stephen Segal was grandfathered in. So he had been working with the force for a while, but he seemed frustrated that he couldn't get rid of him. I fucking keep showing up. He's here. We were told we can't get rid of him. Now Segal claims that he attended a police academy in Los Angeles and received a certificate from the peace officer standards and training organization.

Neither the city of Los Angeles nor post has any record of Segal being certified in anything. His rank was described by the LA Times as purely ceremonial, which seems truer than him ever having any kind of training. It seems like it would have come up earlier, right? Like during his Navy Seals training. During his Navy Seals days, when he didn't learn how to read a map. All of us have such obvious gaps in the paper trail. Like if you got certified, that implies a certificate somewhere. Yeah, and the LA Times found fucking nothing from anybody.

Why wouldn't he show it to you? Not a big deal, but here's the cop certification. That I don't have. But you can look up it. Oh, you did. Who's your journalist? No, it wasn't a cop, but you can believe all the other crazy shit I said. So Segal insists that his time in law enforcement was purely a public service.

That's why he kept it secret until November of 2008 when he decided the... What the fuck does that mean? He decided, Sean, in November of 2008, that the brave men and women of the Jefferson Paris, Louisiana Sheriff's Department needed recognition. And that's why he launched the reality television series, Stephen Segal, Lawman. Oh yeah. I know you've seen it. I'm learning that now, but I'm going to play a little bit of the intro for those of you in our home non-studio audience. Sitting in your car, at the gym, fist fighting and also a lot.

Here's Stephen Segal, Lawman. Segal, Lawman, everybody. And then, of course, heavy set racist. The greatest of them all. Finest man, of course. We'd like to apologize to a major demographic for this podcast, the Jefferson Paris, who we see in the Sheriff's Department. Critical listeners, and we really do appreciate y'all, please keep buying the t-shirts. Jefferson Paris.

Keep getting that punani. As Stephen Segal would want you to know. Now, I know what you're all thinking, having listened to Stephen Segal, Lawman's intro. Is there any way that allowing an alleged serial sexual predator to work as a law enforcement officer might go terribly, terribly, terribly wrong? My god, dude. Is there any possible... I know it's a long shot, Sean, but is it possible? Can we imagine it?

Can we conceive of it? I'm not in charge of anything, but I'd say don't do it. Remember when I said we were going to talk about human trafficking? Oh, no. Stephen... I shouldn't... The laugh is inappropriate. It's just...

It's shocking how bad of a person he is. And that this... you would think that we had heard the worst of Stephen Segal at this point. God, I'd hope so. Because he's too old to move right, and it keeps on coming. So, according to CBS News, Stephen Segal, Lawman, had a very successful premiere. You know, it was Annie's most successful premiere in history, actually, at the time. Yeah, it did well. It was suspended in 2010, though, because Stephen Segal was accused of human trafficking.

Specifically of keeping a sex slave locked in his John Lafitte mansion. Which is, you know, maybe he shouldn't have a badge. Agreed. It seems like it was a bad idea. You guys keeping sex slaves? Cool. You may call if anyone steals anything. So, we're going to get into that, and we're going to get into Stephen Segal's long and storied friendship with dictators.

But first, it's time for some ads, for some things that are not Stephen Segal Lawman. But I wish they were. I apologize to our sponsors. You're far better than Stephen Segal Lawman, as are we all. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right.

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He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then, for sure, he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

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There was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991 and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Would you say something, Sean?

Yeah, I did my basic underwater demolition systems training in Steven Seacall's bathtub. They're hands out of the water and screamed for a few minutes. Call the good. Oh boy. You know, Jesse Ventura was a Navy SEAL, unlike Steven Seacall. And a governor. And a governor. And wonderful actor. And slandered by the sniper, Chris Kyle.

For real? Yeah. Chris Kyle claimed that he beat him up in a bar because for whatever reason he said, Jesse Ventura said he hoped that Navy SEALs died in Iraq or someplace. I don't like anybody's chances in the fist fight against Jesse Ventura. Well, there was no fight. It was just a lie. Oh, okay. Yeah. No, Jesse Ventura sued him or like sued, I eventually sued his wife because like he was dead by that point. Jesus Christ.

Well, dude, that's a beef when you go after the dead guy's wife. The way Ventura explains it. He was suing the guy and then he died in the lawsuit. Like that's just what happens. Yeah, I don't know. He'll take that money, Jesse. It does seem like Jesse the body Ventura was wrong. Yeah, I think he won too. I mean, he's dead.

Well, and he was lying. Jesse was lying or the sniper? No, no, the sniper. They never had a fight. Why would Jesse Ventura, like of all the things he's not going to say wishes Navy SEALs go die? It would be a strange thing for him to say. It would be a strange thing for him to say. And it'd be super weird to pick a fight with the guy probably walking around 270. Yeah. And like knows what he's doing.

Well, I mean, now he's like an elderly, elderly man. Yeah, but if he still gets hold of you and you're just a normal sized dude. Yeah, I mean, tell you in half. He does seem like a dangerous man. Although he does go by the mind Ventura now. The mind? Well, because his mind is very sharp. Because his body is faded, but his mind is sharp.

He is like 70 something. I mean, he's in great shape for a 70 year old. I'm going to go by the flopping dong. Speaking of flopping dong. Speaking of flopping dong. Yeah, yeah, we were talking about Steven Segol. Yeah, we're talking about Steven Segol and we're talking about Steven Segol. Lawman.

Now, well, the way I said, Steven Segol got accused of keeping a woman as a sex slave in his mansion in rural Louisiana. Don't want to get controversial strongly against? Mansions? Keeping a sex slave. Oh yeah, no, I this... this show is generally pretty Anti sex slave. Yeah, good.

According to CBS News, Caden Nguyen, 23, saw an ad for an executive assistant job with Seagal's production company on Craigslist. She answered it and days later was on his private jet, which for start sounds way better than any Craigslist story goes, but then it immediately descends into what we're all scared of when we think about Craigslist. She was flown to New Orleans and then they drove to Seagal's house hours away in a rural area with no neighbors close by. It was at this point that Nguyen learned that the job she was expected to perform had nothing

to do with being an executive assistant. On Nguyen's first night, Seagal told her that she would be required to give him massages, which again, this is all very familiar, this is exactly what he said to other people. Then according to the suit, he proceeded to treat Nguyen as his sex toy. Nguyen claims that she was sexually assaulted three times in a five day period by Steven Seagal. He also claims that Seagal kept two young Russian attendants on staff who were available for his sexual needs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

I'm going to read a selection from the lawsuit. Once in Mr. Seagal's bedroom, Sasha began massaging Mr. Seagal's back as Ms. Nguyen massaged his legs. After approximately 70 minutes, Mr. Seagal abruptly ordered Sasha to leave. As soon as Sasha exited the bedroom and before she could escape, Mr. Seagal began a vicious sexual attack on Ms. Nguyen. Mr. Seagal held her right foot down with his leg and pushed his left knee up with his right hand.

Mr. Seagal then forced his hand into Ms. Nguyen's vagina. As Ms. Nguyen began sobbing, Mr. Seagal became sexually aroused and had a unique physiological reaction to sexual arousal. Ms. Nguyen can and will describe in great detail Mr. Seagal's unique physiological reaction to sexual arousal. Other females who have been present when Mr. Seagal has become sexually aroused will be able to verify the truthfulness of Ms. Nguyen's factual knowledge about the characteristics of Mr. Seagal's unique physiological reaction.

Squirting diarrhea. God, that is the best-case scenario. Dude, I am really trying to inject some light-heartedness into this nightmare of a story. Well, you're also saying the best-case scenario. Yeah. Like, I really, I can't even imagine what it would be. I haven't heard any sort of confirmation about what it might be. Mr. Seagal, or Ms. Nguyen claims that Mr. Seagal then ordered her to take some oval-shaped

pills before she left his room. He told her that he had illegally procured the pills from Tibet. She believes he wouldn't let her leave until she took them, so she took them. She says she was held against her will for almost a full week. When she finally escapes, she claims Seagal chased after her with a flashlight with a gun attached to it. Which seems like a scene from one of his movies, but with him as the bad guy. But I mean, like, his top speed's gotta be like one and a half miles an hour.

She got away. Yeah. She did get away. Like, okay, so now, I still got the girl who was on the Burning Man crew with a guy who ran Hink.com, and this dude lives in the armory. Oh, he lived in the, yeah, that gigantic castle in San Francisco that he owned, yeah. There's people who work there who are like straight up sex slaves, like that's whatever their fetish is, that's their job, that's their day job.

You don't need to go on Craigslist and say like, hey, I want an executive assistant. You can just go onto Craigslist and say, I want a sex slave. And theoretically, there's people out there willing to take that job. Theoretically, Steven Seagal could pay someone to do this job, but then it wouldn't be a power thing. I gotta think that's what it is. And that's what's so fucking gross about it. It's not just that he wants a sex slave, it's like he literally wants it.

It only works for him if like that person's trying to escape. Yeah. Maybe that's it. I mean, I'm not, of all the things I'm going to try to do on this show, cycle analyzing Steven fucking Seagal is not among them. So Nguyen claims that she did not call the police at any point because she assumed that they would listen to Seagal, her lawyer explained, Mr. Seagal is the police. She is in a remote area of Jefferson Paris, it is parish, it is in the middle of nowhere

and he is the police, which doesn't seem accurate. I think you would have trouble getting justice and I mean, look at how hard it is in an ideal court situation for a victim to get justice and then imagine you're in the woods and Steven Seagal is the police. Sure. Yeah. And you're like chubby racist number four. I'm a young Vietnamese woman and Steven Seagal has sexually assaulted me.

Yeah. He's like, wait, Steven Seagal, he taught me how to karate chop through 14 pieces of paper. Again, best case scenario. Best. Best case scenario. Best case scenario. Yeah. Yeah.

If she's not eaten by gators in the parking lot of that sheriff's department. What we're seeing has really taken a hit today. Seagal's lawyer obviously called the lawsuit absurd and alleged that Ms. Nguyen was an illegal drug user, which you might note does not at all mitigate claims of sexual assault. You can definitely use drugs and not be sexually assaulted. I haven't used so many drugs and never been a part of any kind of sexual assault. Yeah. A lot of my friends can say the same thing.

Not. Steven Seagal. Not Steven Seagal's friends. Now, Nguyen did eventually drop the suit, but only because she settled out of court with Seagal. It seems likely she was paid for her silence, which you can't blame her for. You take the money. But that's also kind of the same story we saw with Weinstein, where there's a lot of

NBA's attached to that sort of bribery. Their choice. Whatever, man. Yeah. Fuck it. It's hard to get justice. Our president just made fun of the girl for coming forward. I mean, Rich guy offers you $500,000, like better than being public, you humiliated by

a block. Exactly. Maybe you do that thing. You can't blame the victim. Your choice. Whatever. Yeah. So that lawsuit, however, was the end of Seagal's career as a Louisiana peace officer.

So that's good, at least. The storied career. That was one bridge too far. According to Jefferson Parish County Sheriff Newell Normand, Seagal was facing an internal affairs and affairs investigation immediately following the outcome of his lawsuit. He refused to return to Jefferson Parish, which time he would tendered his resignation. So Seagal fled the state rather than submit to an internal affairs investigation. It was the end of his career as the Louisiana sheriff's deputy, but not, however, the end

of his career as a dangerously unqualified police officer. I'm sure you're happy about that, Sean. I am happy. After having been accused of sex trafficking while a uniformed deputy. Quite the crime. Thing is, they teach you that on day four, and so if you call in sick on day four, they're like, you don't learn that, hey, deputies, don't take sex slaves. You're starting to get sick on day one, but you really power through those first couple

of days. You don't want to miss the start. Yeah. You learn firearm safety. Yeah. You learn conflict de-escalation. You know, cargo, which one makes it stop. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But you mix the one on not sex trafficking. Yeah. Easy mistake. Easy mistake to make. Yeah. Steven Seagal.

And you can't catch up. No. The work comes too fast. No, there's no getting the Cliffs Notes of that lesson. Louisiana sheriff's department. Tough course. It's great, because I don't think he ever had any training, but the fact that now he's not a real Louisiana sheriff's deputy becomes significant.

So what about the tough streets of Northern California? Well, no. That doesn't count as police training in Louisiana? No, it does not. What are you going to fucking wrestle a gator? What are you going to do? I mean, I'm guessing ride the former sheriff. That seems like what happened.

So this was not the end of Seagal's career as a police officer, as we already stated. It turns out that, yeah, after having been accused of all of these crimes, there were still exactly two organizations willing to support Steven's dream of carrying a gun while feeling important. Any. Of course. Great channel, any. And the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona.

If you were going to guess the sheriff's office, it would be Joe fucking R Piles. So in 2011, Steven Seagal wound up driving a tank into a man's home. Yeah, well, he was an Arizona sheriff's deputy. I'm not going to lie. That's what I would do if I was the sheriff and I had a tank. 100%. Yeah. And the veterans listening, well, yeah, I mean, it was an armored personnel carrier.

I think it was like a bearcat or something like that. Didn't have like a gun on it. I mean, I think it might have had a gun on it, but didn't have like a turret, you know? Not a battle tank. It's meant to carry people. Okay. Yeah. But it was an armored vehicle.

It was an armored vehicle. With a gun on it. I don't know. Treads or wheels? I think treads. Okay. Yeah, I do think treads. Fucking tank.

It's been described as, it's usually described as a tank. That's a tank. All right. All right. All right. All right. Other people are going to yell at me on Twitter and it's your fault, Sean. Um, so Steven Seagal had partnered with Sheriff Joe Apios Posse to arrest a suspected

cockfighting host. Seagal has advocated regularly on behalf of PETA for years and is a strong animal rights activist. So it makes sense that he'd consider animal cruelty a crime worthy of having a small army dispatch to stop it. What makes less sense is what happened next. I'm going to quote from an ABC7 article written about the charges, the subject of that raid, Jesus Levera levied against Seagal and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department.

Quote, Levera denies that cockfighting occurred on his property and says that he raised roosters for show. He says that 100 of them were killed during the raid and that authorities used two armored trucks in the tank to smash through a gate into his yard and that at least 30 SWAT personnel dressed in riot gear and armed with handguns or rivals rushed his home. Levera said he was unarmed. Levera said Seagal distracted his chickens by deploying explosives and then commited a sheriff's office tank and crashed through an iron gate on his property.

So Levera also alleges that his puppy was shot dead during the raid. So 100 chickens and a puppy. Seagal denies. Minus the puppy? No bullshit is exactly what I do if you gave me a tank and a badge. I would fucking drive straight on to some dude named Jesus' property, kill all his fucking chickens. It's show roosters, fuck you, Jesus.

And this is again, why cops shouldn't have tanks. I barely agree the army should have tanks. I've known a couple of tankers, none of them have been people I trust with tanks. Maybe no one should be trusted with tanks. I think my whole point is I know enough about myself, the self-select away from a job that would give me a tank. Yeah, yeah. Stephen Seagal put himself right there, killed 100 chickens and maybe a puppy, allegedly

he denies it. I grew up on a farm and I've met some chickens. So I don't give a shit at some chickens that chickens are miserable garbage monsters. I lived with some chickens up in my last place in Arcada and they were always shitin' on the floor. The worst. Yeah, they're terrible animals. We used to have a water supply for chickens that's sort of like an upside down bucket

with a trough that would sort of percolate into the trough and the chickens would shit in it in a way that didn't make any sense. It implied they either slowly back their ass into their own water supply or they were leaping over it and acrobatically shitting with perfect timing. And so at a certain point you're just like, why go through so much trouble to shit in your water supply unless you're just a garbage monster that shouldn't exist? So that's how I feel about chickens. So when I hear about cock fighting, I'm like, alright, whatever, it's what they were going

to do anyway. Speaking of which. I watched it. If I could still keep talking about chickens. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. My mother was attacked by a chicken once. We had two roosters and when you have two roosters, they kind of go crazy. Yeah, yeah.

Because the other thing, much like Stevens, they're called chickens are hardcore rapists. No chicken has ever willingly given herself to the love making process of a bird. So she'll be just walking along like, ooh, what's this in the ground? What's this in the ground? And she'll come up and like, and like, she'll freak the fuck out for four seconds and then the rooster will leave and he'll do that to her every single day. Chickens have a terrible life and they all should be killed. But the point is, if you have two roosters, they go crazy.

My mom goes out to collect some eggs and one of these roosters, driven mad by a dick competition, leaps at her face and she comes in and she's like, oh my God, the rooster tried to kill me. My step-deck is all fucking aggro and no one fucking tries to kill my wife. And so he takes a sidearm out to the chicken coop and I'm just a young child, you know? I mean, like, I'm like, wow, are you going shooting? That's weird. He usually takes me and he fucking gets like his feet shoulder-width apart, like execution

style. He's so fucking pissed at this rooster and he explodes a chicken just 20 feet from me, unprepared. And I'm like, what, what is going on with this entire world? And, and I'm just saying like, this is an ordinary day in the life of a chicken farmer. No. And chickens, I will also say in Jesus's, you know, defense or whatever, a hundred chickens is not a weird number of chickens to have if you have chickens.

Right. They're addictive. But if this dude had more than one rooster, chances are he was making them fight. And it says a hundred chickens. Now I don't know. Right. I don't know if the ABC7 reporters did that much background work. I'm saying, hey, let's do a background on that, fella.

Well, I mean, I guess maybe Steven Seagal was right to drive a tank on his property and just go fucking crazy and shoot his puppy dog. Okay. That part is like, dude, in front of his kids. Well, dude, I was actually a little bit wrecked when I watched that chicken explode. I was a little bit wrecked. If that was a dog I saw, oh, yeah, I'd be fucking that would have been the 10th time today.

I told that story because that would have been all I think about. Yeah. No, those kids are haunted by darkness. There's some fucking Dexter kids. Yeah. Seeing a puppy guy get shot by some cops or Steven Seagal unclear which Steven Seagal denies all allegations. Clearly.

So, yeah, it's hard to say exactly what happened. Jesus adds that when he was removed from the building, he was immediately asked to sign a release. The producers of the show. You're going to use your chicken house on TV. Can we use this on TV? He did not sign the release. Good for him.

This is not aired on television. It would be awesome if they aired it, but like blurred his face, blurred the chicken faces. They'd be fucking trampled by swatting. Blurred all but one of the chicken faces. He signed the release. There was one chicken that wanted it. He wants to be a star.

He's trying to get a spot in real world, Louisiana. So Laverra's cock fighting charge was quickly dismissed probably because it seems like the police broke many laws in all of this. Are you telling me there's a fucking law against driving a tank on a somebody's house with like no probable cause? The quartering act. Weirdly enough, it's a little corollary in there, but it's up in there. No British soldiers in your home.

No tanks through your game. No tanks through your chicken coop. Nope. Nope. Not allowed. Uh, Laverra was charged with possession of steroids, which I'm going to guess is probably not what they deployed 30 SWAT officers and several armored vehicles to find. Was he ripped or do you have like some back pain or something?

I think it might have been steroids for the animals, to be honest. It's not uncommon. You know, they found it like a small fridge near the chickens or something like that. Who knows? Delicious chicken breasts. So pumped up. Well, you're not going to have good. That would imply that he's like raising them for food and not to fight each other.

This would further exonerate them if they're bird steroid, illegal bird steroid. They found steroids. He's exonerated. Yeah. Oh boy. Unless, I guess, do you give steroids to fighting cocks? I have never hosted cockfights. I was in a fight with the turkey ones.

How'd you do? It was a gentleman's fight. Yeah. And we both won the gentleman. Oh, yeah. Your differences were settled? We're differences were settled. Okay, good.

We came to an accord. Good time, so, yeah, the raid was never aired. Here's a picture of Steven Seagal in a fake uniform next to Joe Arpaio also wearing a fake uniform. He's in like Marine Digicam and Joe Arpaio is in the sheriff's office, but he has four stars on his shoulders as if he's George fucking Patton. He's a fucking four star general of the sheriff's department. What is it about the worst people in history and fake awards?

Show. It's like goddamn Halloween costume. Yeah. It's it's shockingly bad. It's like two guys that got kicked out of a house party on Halloween for like fucking Yeah. One of the things that's funny about this, I was in Ukraine for their first Independence Day after the the Maidan revolutions, as well as kind of like the civil war is really just

starting to heat up and they had just opened up their military to like volunteers. So like essentially it seemed like from what I could gather, if you put on a uniform, you were basically in the army and they had and we did is close to the close we got to the front line. There were a lot of just like middle-aged dudes who had a Kalashnikov and thrown a thing, but they were like when we were in Kiev far away from the fighting, it just every man was in a uniform and there were a lot of very heavy set older men clearly trying to pick someone up by pretending they were going to go fight in the civil war and like you just

bought a uniform. That's a good move. That's how Steven Seagal looks in this picture. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I'm off to fight war, he's sexy. Although the actual Steven Seagal would never have sided with the Ukrainians against the Russian occupiers.

I do know enough about Steven Seagal, now he's a very big fan of Russia. Very big fan of Russia. Very against sovereignty of people who decide their own. Nelosh, Nelosh. The case against Levera was eventually overturned or the case that Levera filed against Seagal and the sheriff department was eventually dismissed by a judge after Levera fired his lawyer and failed to show up in court to pursue matters further. There was a controversy in Arizona over all of this because even though the opening to

Steven Seagal law man said Steven was on loan from Jackson Parish, he had actually resigned and was therefore in no shame. Yeah, in shame for sex trafficking. It was no longer a law man, which means our pile was not using a loaned Louisiana sheriff's deputy, but was just letting a random civilian dress like a soldier and leave sex criminal. Yeah, a fugitive sex criminal who had run from an internal affairs investigation, drive a tank, wearing a uniform and armed with a gun. Joe Arpaio.

It's his kind of guy. Joe Arpaio will for sure be an episode of this show. Steven Seagal law man only lasted three seasons, but don't you dare. Don't you fucking dare, Sean. Feel sorry for Steven Seagal. Oh, I wasn't considering it. He has other priorities than his television career. Priorities like his friendships with several of the world's most prominent dictators,

straw man. Oh, sweet. And he's got that widow's peak that touches the bridge of his nose. Very unusual. Very unusual. Most men don't. It goes the other direction for most men. Yeah, yeah.

It was not Steven Seagal. So let's start with Victor Lukashenko, the so-called last dictator in Europe and the leader of Belarus. Lukashenko is known for torturing and disappearing political rivals and letting his small child walk around with a golden handgun. He and Seagal met up back in 2016, and it's special. The dictator called him his dear friend, and Seagal claimed to have Belarusian ancestry, which he's claimed that about numerous nations around the world.

He's quite a mix. He's quite a mix, classic Mongol-Belarusian. At one point, they stopped by to pick some fresh carrots, and then this happened. Sean, I... Oh, are you going to show me the carrot picture? I... You think I haven't seen the carrot picture? Oh, I'm not going to show you the carrot picture.

I am going to show you Steven Seagal eating a goddamn carrot with a dictator in his... There he is. All right. Here's this. So they're at a farm picking carrots, and Lukashenko, the dictator who had his last political rival for president imprisoned and tortured, is shaving up a carrot and about to hand it to Steven. He's going to town on that carrot, really thinking about it.

You owe it to yourself to watch Steven Seagal eat a carrot, because he eats it exactly the way people don't eat carrots or anything? Contemplatively. Yeah, contemplatively. It's a carrot handed to him by a dictator, while the dictator's son, who was 100% carrying a very heavy golden handgun in that video, because he always is. Why not? Always is.

It tells him it's healthy. I gave my daughter nunchucks, which I think is like a little cooler than a golden gun. I mean... I don't want to brag or nothing. Nikolai Lukashenko wouldn't agree. Fuck Nikolai Lukashenko. How many times has your daughter met Hugo Chavez? How many times?

She met that Jesus guy that had all those dead chickens. You were just doing the Steven Seagal Lawman Tour of the Southwest. Yeah, I do that every year. The sight of all his massacres. I take the family to the sight of Steven Seagal's greatest crimes. That's a long vacation. Oh my God. It's about to get longer.

According to the Moscow Times, he was later handed a watermelon by Lukashenko's son, but was not required to eat it on the spot. Belarusian law says you may wait up to seven hours before eating watermelon. Apologies to our Belarusian listeners. Why would you apologize? No, because there's no way this media is allowed there. They have a dictator. I'm so sorry for your plight.

Solidarity, my friends. So this gets into something that I think drives some people crazy, which is the weird ways in which all of the world's shittiest and most dangerous people are connected. Just so far, we've done one episode that featured partly on Lukashenko. We've done one on Alex Jones. We're definitely going to cover Joe Arpaio. He's already friends with all of these people, and we're not even through fucking Steven Seagal's dictator buddies.

It's weird that terrible people have friends. I think this is like the root of a lot of conspiracy theories, but I think it's kind of sensible if you just assume that shitty people like to hang out with other shitty people. Yeah. Who else is going to hang out with Steven Seagal but garbage? You're talking about like your date and you're like, how'd the date go? You're like, I don't know if we have a lot in common, and then Steven Seagal's like,

she tried to get away, but I already had my hands on her wrist and I tore her arm off. And they're like, cool. Whereas I think you or I might say Steven, that's a terrible story. Steven, that's horrible and also certainly did not happen. Yeah, definitely didn't happen. You're a liar. You are sweating just standing up to get the check. Steven Seagal.

Fuck you, Steven Seagal. While we're on the subject. This has been the subject of the whole podcast, so it may not surprise you know that Steven Seagal is also friends with Rodriguez Duterte. Oh, yeah, yeah, the president of the Philippines who has had 20,000 people and counting murdered by motorcycle bound death squads during one meeting. To be fair, he said only killed the rug users, right? Well, but you're going to shoot people, you're going to hit other people.

Yeah. Yeah. I think Seagal understands. The cost of murdering rug users. Wasn't one of his movies collateral damage? It should have been. Oh, Schwarzenegger might have done a collateral damage. I mean, that was an actual Tom Cruise movie, right?

Collateral with Jimmy Fox. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With a taxi cab, something like that. Collateral damage was Schwarzenegger. Oh. Fantastic.

And that New Zealand guy, the Maui guy that always plays Middle Eastern people. I don't remember the actors. I can tell you that Steven Seagal is a great friend of Rodriguez Duterte during their meeting. Seagal told the almost dictator that he'd visited the country more than a hundred times, although he did not specify why. A hundred times. I'm going to guess creepy gross Steven Seagal sex. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a hundred percent what I'm going to guess because he's Steven Seagal. Or maybe he's zero times and he's just fucking lying. Maybe he's just a gigantic liar because he's lied about every single other thing in the story. Maybe he mistook it for Hawaii. Yeah. Like, oh, yeah, I've been there a hundred times.

Yeah. So Steven Seagal's most lasting and most consequential friendship is with one of the most powerful and dangerous men on the planet, Vladimir Putin. The how behind this friendship started with a guy named Bob Van Runkle. Mr. Van Runkle lived in Moscow until recently and ran the company Doors to Hollywood, which specialized in taking famous people over to Russia. While Van Runkle denies any political motivation to his work, it really does seem like his job was basically to make famous people sympathetic to a number of Russian and Eastern oligarchic

power brokers in order to push a very specific and particular political agenda. In which country? Like? Like what? In the United States, towards Russia. He's basically bringing celebrities over to the east in order to make them like Russia and like Ukrainian oligarchs, and then they'll talk nice about it. OK.

That seemed to be kind of his goal. You know? He's been at parties with Trump and stuff, too. Sure. There's some weird connections there. I just found out about this guy. Otherwise, I would have done a deeper dive into Van Runkle, but he is the guy who apparently introduced Vladimir Putin and Steven Seagal.

He also, weirdly enough, he introduced Oleg Daripashka, who is, he's in a, he's in a Ukrainian aluminum tycoon who was Paul Manafort's entry into that part of the world. He introduced Daripashka to Jim Carrey for reasons that are unclear to me so far. Uh, I'll be looking into that, but I don't like the sound of that. I don't like the sound of that at all. I don't like the sound of Jim Carrey. Jim Carrey doesn't need to be meeting any Ukrainian oligarchs. Jim Carrey seems like if you had him alone in a room, he might believe everything you

said. Yeah. He seems like a guy who's, who thinks, when he hears something, he doesn't think. Maybe that's not true. Yeah. That seems like a nice guy. Sure. But does not seem like he has a great deal of credibility.

Right. Yeah. In terms of visibility, the question of story. I think what I'm saying is it's possible to influence Jim Carrey. Yes. Uh, very curious about that meeting. Yeah. Yeah.

Very curious about that meeting. Uh, in 2010, Van Runkle brought Steven Seagal to Russia. Quote, I was hired to bring Steven Seagal to perform with his band for another event with President Putin. So was kind of responsible for that introduction and Steven becoming best friends with him. So that's nice. Beautiful story. Van Runkle said to NPR, um, I really hope Putin enjoyed, uh, Steven Seagal's blues

band. I bet he didn't. He seems like a man who doesn't have a ton of joy in his life, but also Steven Seagal's band's fucking son. I will say. Except for that Poonani song. That's pretty hot. I will say one of the nice things about this whole tragic story is imagining these like,

these like old, sad blues singers getting a free trip to Russia, like, fuck it at least, you know, they probably had rough lives. Yeah. They're not, they're not Steven Seagal. Good luck, guys. I hope you, I hope you stay in the blues. Yeah. Well, we, we sang about Poonani.

Right. There was no blues. We put on some Jamaican accent. Yeah. It was a shameful time for all, but we stayed in a nice hotel. I hope that that fueled some good blues albums, like the sorrow of being, of having to work with Steven Seagal in Russia. Just that we would seem like it might.

Playing with Seagal blues. Yeah. Everyone can relate. Everyone's been in a band headed by a lying rapist, a keto master movie star. That is a tale as old as time. So an after party for the event where Seagal's band played for the president, the actor met Putin personally. The two kept up a friendship for years and bonded over their mutual love of martial arts,

which I mean, obviously in a fight between the two. There's not even a question. Vladimir Putin's got to tear him apart. I definitely have Vladimir Putin in that fight. He seems like a dangerous man in a number of ways. Not to overstate his capabilities. I think he's either got a knife, but I also know that he leased Davos and Judah, which beats a keto any day.

Well, and it's also like, he just doesn't seem like the kind of guy to hesitate to hurt somebody. Which is kind of the key when you're trying to hurt somebody. And I think Steven Seagal could get cowed by just like a harsh word. Yeah. Yeah. Or a couple of mafia people. He's the only one in the room with a gun.

Yeah. Oh boy. In 2016, Putin gave Seagal a Russian passport and Russian citizenship, which is the kind of thing you could do when you aren't accountable to the laws of your own nation. It's a sweet gig being a dictator. According to the Washington Post, Seagal once referred to Putin as one of the greatest world leaders, if not the greatest world leader alive today. His geopolitical bromance with Putin is only part of the attraction to the country.

Ben Runkel estimated his career peak there, but he's not doing the 30 to 60 million dollar movies he once was. Russia is a place to rebrand himself. And apparently Seagal decided to rebrand himself as an international diplomat to dictators. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, natural, natural elevation. In 2013, Russia's deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, suggested to President Obama

that Stephen Seagal be given a special diplomatic status to help bridge the hostile gap that had developed between the two nations. President Obama declined because he was an actual person who knows things. I can't believe this story doesn't go off in a President Obama direction. Oh, oh, if only, if only. And did find a way around Obama, since Seagal was already a Russian citizen in 2018, Putin just had him appointed a special diplomatic envoy for Russia. This means that Stephen Seagal, alleged sexual harasser and serial rapist, alleged serial

rapist, is now in charge of improving Russo-American relations. You're doing a great job so far. There's so much more to say about Stephen Seagal and where their time we could continue talking about Seagal for hours. He is a truly remarkable piece of shit. But I'm afraid we have to draw the line at some point, and this is where I fix it. I do want to tell one little story about Judo Jean LaBelle. Tell me a little about Judo Jean LaBelle, because I understand this guy is a...

Yeah, and he's a legit Judo guy. He trained Ronda Rousey back in the day, and he did some MMA before that was a thing. He had some real fights against boxers where he would take him down and choke him out. I assume the story you're telling about him and Stephen Seagal was Stephen Seagal talking to Jean LaBelle, and I was like, I could get out of any chokehold. And Judo Jean's like, well, whatever, pal. He's like, no, no, no, I'm serious, put me in a chokehold. And so he talked him into putting him in a real chokehold.

He said he had a special move that could get him out of any chokehold. And here's what that fucking special move was. It was a cry-chop to the dick. Like, that's the fucking make-believe world Stephen Seagal was living in, that he thought he knew a secret to get out of a choke, and it was like the first move that fucking Man invented when they started fighting. Was a hit to the dick. He thought he invented the punch to the dick.

So Jean LaBelle chokes out Stephen Seagal, and Seagal allegedly craps his pants. And Seagal has denied this. Why? You're not going to fucking admit that if you're a liar. No, you're not. And LaBelle was even the classiest you could be about saying another man. He was like, well, you know, it's not uncommon when a guy is choked out after having a big meal.

It might happen. He wasn't mean about it. I think Stephen Seagal shed his pants. I think we got a 90% chance of Stephen Seagal shedding his pants. So before we roll out here, Sean, when I started research for this, I googled the name Stephen Seagal. Just typed it in and see what would turn out. You know, usually a fun place to start research.

On the right-hand side of the search results page, I was presented with three quotes from the actor in Luminary. I'd like to read those quotes now. Quote number one, I am hoping that I could be known as a great writer and actor someday rather than as a sex symbol. He did write. He did write a book recently, The Way of the Shadow Wolves with someone else. We will.

We'll. That has to be another. There was just too much. You're right. I couldn't cover it. It's about how Obama tried to conquer the country. It's really like all of the Fox News talking points like filtered through Alex Jones' craziness into the mind of a very, very dumb man who doesn't care about the truth.

Weird that he went hard right because you would have guessed he would have been like a loony left kind of guy. You would think. Yeah. What with like the Buddhism and the spirituality stuff. But nope. He's all in on Trump. Interesting.

Interesting how that happens. Second quote, I have made a lot of mistakes, but I've worked hard. I have no fear of death. More important. I don't fear life. There's a lot of wisdom in that statement from Steven Seagal. He wishes. All right.

Dude, that's the most fucking I'm trying to sound fucking wise bullshit. I didn't even include this stuff. What a dumb person trying to sound smart. One of the through lines in this is his repeated attempts to get writing credits on movies he didn't write and being denied them by like the writers give the WGA being like, no, you didn't write this. You don't get a writing credit. I had the idea that I should have all the funny lines to what I don't get a writer

credit for that. He also said he'd rather be doing movies like since insensibility than under siege, something like that. Like that he wished he wanted to pull people's heart strings. Good luck to you, buddy. He didn't. He never did not even. He didn't even try one.

No. He had the poll. He could have fucking made it. Never attempted. John Claude Van Damme did no way to run. That was sort of. And he did JCVD, which had some had some emotional beats had some emotional beats. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to one, one more quote.

It doesn't work if the bad guys kill his mother's uncle's friend's neighbor's pet dog. You've got to make the stakes high, which I think is fun because he almost certainly killed a guy's dog. Yeah, absolutely. That guy fucking killed 70 of a guy's chickens in one fucking minute. Oh boy. Steven Seagal. That's all I have on Steven Seagal.

I think that's plenty. That was more than enough. Real piece of shit. Sean, do you want to plug your pluggables before we roll out here? You can find me on crack.com, you can find on Twitter, play Calculiards and mobile devices. You know, that's it. I'm around. I'm easy to find.

You can find me on Twitter at IWriteUpGame. You can find me on, or you can find our website behindthebasters.com, where there will be some very, very sad pictures of Steven Seagal. Really profoundly depressing. As well as all the sources for this article. You can also find us on Twitter and Instagram at IWriteUpGame. You can find me on Twitter at IWriteUpGame. You can find me on Twitter at IWriteUpGame.

You can find me on Twitter at IWriteUpGame. You can find me on Twitter at IWriteUpGame. You can find me on Twitter at IWriteUpGame. You can find me on Twitter at IWriteUpGame. You can find me on Twitter at IWriteUpGame. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse.

And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become

the youngest person to go to space? Well, I oughta know. Because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.