Danny Jones Podcast - #333 - What Destroyed VICE Media: The Story They NEVER Told | Thomas Morton

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Thomas Morton is a writer, documentarian & former editor for VICE magazine who began working at Vice following a summer internship in 2004. After several years helping edit the print edition of the magazine, he became Vice.com's online editor. SPONSORS https://shopmando.com - Use code DANNY for 20% off + free shipping. https://bruntworkwear.com/danny - Use code DANNY for $10 BRUNT. https://shopify.com/dannyjones - Sign up for your $1 per month trial & start selling today. https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS https://x.com/Babyballs69 FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Unsung heroes of Vice Media 05:44 - The mastermind behind Vice 14:53 - Morton's first day at Vice 21:42 - Vice's "immersionism" approach 32:18 - Beginning of Vice video 34:41 - The decline of clubs 42:16 - Joining Scientology 56:41 - What happened to Gavin McInnes? 01:01:58 - The trans agenda 01:11:51 - Independent media landscape 01:18:26 - The story of Noisey & Chiraq 01:22:04 - Women who marry death row inmates 01:39:50 - antisemitism & r@cism 01:46:22 - IQ is bullsh*t 01:52:54 - Thomas' view on media in 2025 01:59:05 - The internet killed democratization of media 02:00:54 - Open AI & Palantir defense contracts 02:05:59 - Thomas' war on the word 'Content' 02:10:46 - Shame over nostalgiac music 02:19:16 - Are we turning into China? 02:31:15 - Vice's trip to North Korea 02:38:23 - Morton's writing process & future plans 02:44:42 - Why they call Morton "baby balls" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three-burner gas grill. Or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong.

Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Bad advice? You talking to me? Kayak, got that right. I'm happy to be able to finally have you on the show.

Sorry for dicking around for like five years. Yeah. Geez. That's on me. No, it's all good. No. You've been busy. No, no.

I was the opposite of busy. Oh, you were? Like scooting around, not doing much. Yeah. And you just finished that amazing document. You just won an award for your documentary on Gavin.

We got the Canadian Oscar. The Canadian Oscar. The Canadian Oscar. So I'm told. Yeah. But I think it's also the Canadian Emmy. So one-stop shop. Yeah.

I'm like, no, I didn't go to the ceremony. I don't think anybody on the crew expected to win. We were up against like, I think a doc about a guy from Gaza, a doc about someone from the Ukraine. So what made you want to make that documentary? I remember because we talked on it on the phone about a year ago when we spoke on the phone. And you mentioned that you're working on this. And then I'm happy to see that it finally came to fruition. But like what,

what lit the spark for you to work on to create this thing? Well, a long edible. editable pause while I think about this for a second how to say this. I mean, there's a very honest answer in that it got greenlit, right? That it is an idea that I had tossed out to a producer

in Canada like 2020, I think, because it was a year before January 6 and then it was sort of like, it was like, oh, it was kind of an interesting figure. I get it. It's sort of like, you know, niche American politics. And then once January 6 happened, it was like, oh, everybody knows who these people are

now. It's a more, it's a more bankable story, which makes it sound mercenary and gross. But that's sort of it. In general, like, you know, I was at Vice for 15 years and I've watched, I spent 15 years watching people from outside the company try to tell the story of Vice and just trip over their ass getting it wrong, you know, just doing a really bad job. And so I figured for 15 years worth of fun and a little bit of money, but not much, you know, I kind of owe it to, you know, I kind of owe it to the good times to, you know, make a college effort at capturing the stories of that era and the people who were there. And Gavin was just, you know, first on the list. Do you miss it?

Vice? Ish. Like, do you miss high school? No. Like, I had a great time. I can hate it high school. Oh, you did? Okay. Do you miss? Did you go to college? For like six months and I dropped out. Okay. So you probably didn't like that. I just like, I miss it in the sense that, you know,

I had a good time being a teenager, I think fondly on that. I don't need to do it again, although it isn't. You know, it doesn't exist in America right now as a cult. Like there's no cultural equivalent to it that I could, you know, be covetous of joining. I had a great time, right? So I miss it in the sense that I'm nostalgic for it a little bit, but that's just, you know, sad old guy. There's something about it. Like when I first discovered it, it was when I told this to, I think,

I told this to Gavin or or Hamilton maybe, but the first time I ever heard about it was when I was, I was traveling, shooting surfing videos with my friend Jerry. Yeah, I know Jerry. Who introduced us. Jerry Ritchiati. Yeah, he introduced us. Ritchiati.

Shout out to Jerry. Yeah. And I noticed some vice videos and I noticed that like he was posting on his Instagram being in like in like Antarctica and then like North Korea. And I'm like, what is he doing this? He can't be doing surf videos in North Korea. And I followed the YouTube video. and I found it all.

I'm like, whoa, this is wild. All these things these guys are doing. And then, you know, the noisy thing happened, which was freaking amazing. And that was my, basically my introduction to vice. And I thought it was so like, this is the opposite. What I thought was so cool about it was, it's like the opposite of what all the other media is doing. Right. Which I think is cool.

And, you know, obviously eventually they just started parroting, being the same thing. Now it's what everything does. Maybe it was like everyone tried to be vice. And then Vice just kind of like, you know, kind of like faded away. There was, you interviewed Hamilton Morris, right? Yeah. Who I used to live with him. Actually, I think, oh, there was a picture up of us, us living together as covered in the New York Times.

Yeah. And he mentioned one of the, like, there's many unsung figures in the Vice story, one of whom is Jesse Pearson, who was like the editor. He was the editor while Gavin was there in charge of that. When Gavin got pushed out, Jesse ended up taking over the magazine. He was the guy that was like, I don't want to say anything mean about Gavin. Jesse. Yeah. Oh,

and the dock. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, he's a bit of a old punk and an old crank, right? Yeah.

Comes through. Uh-huh. But he started a magazine after he left Vice called Apology. And I used to be like, come on. Like,

that's a little bit. There's a touch of sanctimony there, right? Right. But these days, watching all the shit that, you know, punk of him. It is in a way.

It's very like American hardcore. You know, there's a. Yeah, yeah. There's a purity to it, which he exemplifies. And like I say that as someone who admires his sense of purity, even though it's pretty funny. Anyway, now I get it. Like watching everybody, watching what effect the format of the Vice video has had on how general, like, video content to call it what it is versus documentaries.

Like, and just the explosion of, um, sort of hosted crap. Right. You know? I'm like, well. And I always thought, too, I always thought Shane was the mastermind behind everything because I only learned

about it until after Gavin left, right? So I was like, wow, like this guy, you know, and he did a really good job at sort of like parading himself as the mascot of vice and like doing all these videos where he'd walk around the office drinking, fucking wearing a jock strap or whatever. And I was like, wow, this guy's a fucking genius. And then, you know, I watched the, there was an interview with him and Spike Jones where they went or Spike Jones was interviewing him or whatever. Yeah.

And I was just, like, fascinated by the whole thing. And which was why, like, when I watched your documentary, I was like, holy shit, it all makes sense now. Right. But we didn't, like, due to who we could get to talk on camera, how much time we had, you know, we're making this thing for Canadian TV. And so what they wanted, factored into it. We don't get to talk about the other two founders or talk to them. And they didn't agree to be on the show. No, they didn't. Yeah. Shane Smith and Sirush Alvi. And it's like there was no mastermind of vice. It was a room full of geniuses who all either loved each other or eventually hated each other given, you know, depending what time of day it was. Right. Who would either all work in sync or against each other. It was wild. Yeah. But it seems like Gavin was the soul of vice though, right?

Ish. Yeah. Like he was like the voice. He was the voice. The original voice or sort of soul of it was really kind of him. He was the creative guy behind it. Right. He was the idea guy. When it was getting big in New York, for sure. Right. He was the frontman, right? I'd argue, Sirush was the soul of it for its first like five years in Montreal based on everybody I've talked to both on camera and off. And neither of them, I don't think anybody gets to New York without Shane. Like he gets dismissed as he was just the businessman, but it's like he turned it into what it was. There would be no vice video shit without his efforts. Right.

There's another guy Eddie Moretti who's completely written out of the story. I remember that name. Some people know. Yeah. Yeah, you need a good sales guy, right? Like, Shane was a really good talker. Well, it was a business, right? Of course.

And Gannon puts himself out as a businessman, which he, like, frankly, is, like, a business who meant about, like, eight times over, given all the, you know, jobs he's lost for himself and current companies he's had to shudder. It's, I think Michael Moynihan talked about how it's admirable that he's stuck to it and that he can pull himself back out, like, time and time again. I agree. you know and Shane was like I was like I was like I was saying he is a really good salesman because I remember watching videos of him when the when they launched the cable network and I was like at first my first reaction was like this is retarded why would they go make a cable channel and then I listen to him talk about it for like 15 minutes I'm like I'm sold that makes sense it makes perfect sense I'd buy it I love that that was another Hamilton was like this that was a stupid business venture I'm like it was art man I was like for love of the game like the great American medium like programming a television network. How could you say no? Mm-hmm.

You know? Right. So, like, the thing about Gavin is, which I think is really cool, is that he, from my perspective, at least, like, take it for what it's worth, is that he kind of stuck to the game and stuck to his art and never changed his views on things. And he always wanted to be sort of a contrarian, sort of over-the-top, get reality. reactions out of people. Provocateur.

Provocator. That's the word I'm looking for. He was like a super creative provocateur. Also strange fucking guy. He did these role playing things with people. He's treating the world like he's living in a simulation. Or a cartoon. Or a cartoonist.

Which is how he starts. A cartoonist. And I think it's pretty cool that he never fucking changed that to make more money. He just kind of said, this is who I am. But he made plenty of money too, just to put that out there. When he got kicked out? He was never lacking. Yeah.

He left the company. with something like $13 million. Oh, really? I had always heard, well, right? Oh, would you say 100? I thought it was 100. Jesus Christ. I just, I don't know.

I was just guessing. Well, the rumor when he got, uh, um, bought out was that it was something like 1.3 or 1.2. Really? That's it. Which you got to remember he gets pushed out in 2007. And around that time, nobody there's making, like, it was not, you know, one of the higher ups is making more than like $40,000 a year or whatever.

So 1.3 million was sort of like, it was like, oh, that's, that's not horrible. but within two or three years, it's like, Jesus, he might be like, he really, you know, missed the boat on that.

Anyway, he got offended when I brought up that rumor. Of all the things. About it being 1.3? After I did the interview when he texted, like, he repeatedly texted me about that.

He's like, who said, I only made $1.3 million on that? And I was like, I don't remember. Like, I was like, that's just,

maybe I got the figure bad. Like, that's just what I remember hearing. Well, the company was valued at a couple hundred, at least half a billion dollars back then, like that, right, yeah.

So if he was a third of it, I would imagine he would have to get at least a hundred. Oh, in 2007, I have no clue what it would have been evaluated at there. It would have been less, but anyway, he said, he said try adding a one to that. So there's our figure. Interesting. All right. So, and what is like the current state of it all? I mean, Shane, so it looks like it's just Shane's podcast now, right?

I think that podcast is a separate venture. I'm not really sure. I don't, there's a VC firm in Nashville that I read, bought it in receivership or whatever, like post- bankruptcy a year ago. It went bankrupt, right? They announced bankruptcy. And then it has been, you know, bought up and is being restored. I heard by someone in Nashville.

I've actually, they've been putting out a new magazine that's kind of like, I think on a quarterly basis. I think it's subscriber only. Like if you've seen like Cream Magazine or the Mountain Gazette, one of those places that they make like a big format, kind of like Italian fashion mag style paper, and it comes out like once or twice a year. And you just sign up for a subscription. They don't do newsstand or anything like that.

Anyway, run by some people from, you know, not the old old days, but from recent days advice, they've hit me up to try to write articles. But I'm lazy. And as you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I'm never, it never gets, it never gets, it never got the dramatic, romantic death it deserved. Right. It's just going to kind of stumble along like Rolling Stone or spin or something. Right.

Well, Gavin's happy now. Weird parody. It was, hey, hey, that guy is either always happy or always miserable. Well, he's happy about vice being dead now. Well, it's not. That's the problem. Well, it's practically dead, right? Well, well, sure.

but anything, you know, nothing. It's not worth billions anymore. Nothing that builds itself on being youth media is going to outlive the generation of youth that it was addressed to in the first place. It's a, you know, 30, yeah, this year would be, it's, sorry, can't do math, 30 year anniversary. Like, you know, a 20-year-old who read early issues in Montreal of it would be 55 right now. Like, how's that youth media, right? Boy is it hot outside.

And that means more sweat. And more sweat means more stank. And if there's one thing I don't skimp on, it's my deodorant. Mando deodorant plus sweat control. If you've been searching for the best deodorant like I have, I have great news. Today's sponsor Mando has upgraded the idea of what sweat control actually means with Mando's deodorant plus sweat control solid stick. If you're expecting to be active or out in the hot heat, you've got to experience what

Mando's science geeks have produced. Have you ever tried chasing your toddler around the park in the dead Florida summer heat? I have. And it's for the birds. The air is so thick with sweaty B-O. and humidity. When I pass any of the other parents in the park, they almost gag when I walk by them. I now get compliments from parents and kids for being the best smelling dad at the park. This ain't your typical deodorant.

It's clinical strength. Two times more effective at controlling sweat. It kicks sweat and odor for 72 hours. and even after 12 hours, sweat was still reduced by 92%. Mando is known for using premium ingredients like gentle mendelic acid. Mando deodorant plus sweat control solid stick. Don't wait, grab yours now at shopmando.com to experience double protection today. Mando starter pack is perfect for new customers.

It comes with solid stick deodorant, cream tube deodorant, two free products of your choice, like mini body wash and deodorant wipes, and free shipping. And as a special offer for our listeners, new customers can get 20, percent off site wide with our exclusive code use code dany at shopmando dot com for 20 percent off site wide plus free shipping that's s h o p m a and do dot com and use the promo code d a n n y please support our show and tell them we sent you mando's got you covered with deodorant plus sweat control protect your pits and smell great doing it so what was like how did you view with like your first day advice maybe maybe you can just explain

I think this would be a cool story for people to hear. Like, explain what it was like when you first went to go apply for a job, to be an intern advice. Well, my first day, we were moving from this tiny little office that was on the third floor of a building above a fashion brand called Triple Five Soul. And then there was a Polish furniture warehouse. And then there was us. And you went up a staircase.

And my first day, we were moving to a new office. And it was an internship. And so I was just like hustling box. And I mean, funny day. I remember the very first thing I did was when, did you ever see Gavin's old call them the tidbits? It was like a parody of a like, you know, kind of like a gear guide from something like Maxim or something

where they're like, here's the hot new whiskey, here's, you know, an $80,000 watch you should own. And in that it was just like weird little objects, generally like foreign foreign snack products yeah with funny names like they've got like Harrybo creamy dreams

I remember this one it's something about can you think of a more like Is that a Hitler wine? Hitler Hitler's spirits Snaps von Fuhr I remember that one This would have been from the

Hate issue I think Yeah so it's weird shit right And there was a there was a closet At the office The office was like one room About the size of your studio maybe With about 25 people crammed into it it.

All making the magazine, or half of them worked for like an ad agency. It was weird. And so first thing I did was go way back into this closet where all these old food wrappers were kept in boxes to go start taking them to where like a truck was going to pick them up or whatever. And I picked up this big box and like as I was stepping out of the closet, just like a volcano of cockroaches like enveloped my arm. and I like ran out like and I was like shaking them off me like like a like a wet dog like onto people in the office that was within five minutes of my internship starting it was like then like then the very next thing I did was accidentally unplug like the router that everybody was because everybody was still kind of working at which point it was just sort of like guess we're not working anymore like guess this is the move

and then and I met it's funny I met Gavin that day because he'd gone downstairs we're on the third floor right and we have a window overlooking North 4th Street on Williamsburg and he and Jesse had figured out instead of taking garbage bags full of shit downstairs down three flights of stairs you could just throw it out the window right and that had led Gavin to run downstairs

and dodge like he was trying to shit how do you describe this like in Braveheart when he as the guy threw the rock at him and like he stands perfectly still. How do you even say that he's not trying to dodge them? He's trying to like stand his ground. Sure. Jesse was trying to hit him with a garbage bag from three floors up. Anyway, I had to go down and get him for something.

And right then the mailman drove up and Gavin Seekiled the mailman. And I'm like, it's like a funny. I was meant to be here. Yeah. And then he taught me like an anti-Catholic football chant to the tune of she's coming around the mountain. But it was about Bobby. Sands the hunger striper striker but it's weird it's funny I I've started I wrote a book proposal to just be like whatever I remember memoir of ice and um in writing that out I was like this sounds fake as

hell it's like this guy who ends up starting the prowboys very first time I met him he was seek hiling the UPS guy you know but so I guess that funny joke that shows that he made me never changed he was I was always I was always part of his uh his character it's certainly part of his character, yeah. And that's also like, that's also like the whole ethos of the British punk scene, right? Like he always talks about, Nazi shit, yeah. Yeah, basically. To a degree, yeah.

Not like hardcore Nazi shit, being like a neo kind of like. Although then it's like you, you look at, you know, provocative punks and like, like, take for example, screwdriver who start out as a, you know, Rolling Stones cover band basically on a lot of speed and end up being like the poet laureates of the national front. Right. Actual avowed racist skinheads. Like the most racist band. Blood and honor.

Yeah. Right. Which is still on Spotify, by the way. I looked it up here. Oh, no. Somebody sent that, yeah, I've got a,

I've got a friend who, he doesn't love screwdriver because he's a racist. We take an ironic sort of appreciation for his own stewards of fucked up voice. Gavin was telling me he hit a, um, a screwdriver belt buckle. Can I open this? Of course.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. He put that in the tidbits. Yeah. Yeah. And then that reminded me. I'm like, shit, I haven't heard a screw ever since high school. So I went on Spotify.

See if it was still there. I was playing it for my girlfriend. She had never heard it before. And she's like, what the hell? This is like a racist Louis Armstrong. She's like, what's up with this guy's voice? Right. Yeah, that shit was like that.

The voice of Burton, you better believe it. That was perfect. Louis Armstrong's great. That was great. That was amazing. So after you started it, you didn't get any of these like, I mean, obviously culture was different. It's good, right?

It is good, yeah. It's a peach, peach flavor. Peach. Enjoy that. It'll give you a nice little kick. Jack me up. Yeah. But like, so obviously his persona didn't like kind of throw you off back then, right?

Like you didn't think like, oh, this guy's like kind of weird. You sick hiling the mailman. Maybe he's like, well, of course I thought he was weird for seek hiling the mailman. It was weird and funny. Yeah. Funny weird. Right. Yeah.

Part of the, part of the humor in it, I was explaining it's some French people. I was like part of the humor. Like what made that funny was the fact that it was like, oh, it's a bunch of like gays and weirdos in Williamsburg in 2004. Like none of us like none of there you're not going to run into an actual neo-Nazi here. You know, that's clear as day. But then like the way the culture's changed now. Yeah. He can't exist in a society like today the way he was back then, right?

He won't have the same type of fans and that's proven out. He won't be able to have. He won't be able to have a successful business. especially a media business that people take seriously. But he's also not in like the indie rock world at age 32 with a bunch of peers anymore either. And the internet changed everything too. I don't know. It's, yeah.

Right. Different times. I know different times is like an excuse, but sometimes an excuse is a, all you can make. You guys created this term called immersionism where you're like, oh, we're just going to start immersing our. How do you say? the word? Emerging? Immersing.

Immersing. There we go. Like in water. Yeah. Emersing ourselves in these situations and in these different types of cultures around New York. And you went to like a, where was it like a Haitian? You went to like a Haitian house with a bunch of Haitians or something?

No. I mean, years later, I took part in a voodoo ceremony out in like East New York with a bunch of Haitian immigrants. Oh, okay. He's talking about the first article I wrote like under my own name, right? Which was with a Dominican family just up in. Washington Heights. I just hung out in these people's house for three days and wrote about it. Oh, okay.

That's how we, that's how we did things back then. That's a good way to do stuff. Oh, it's fun. Yeah. Yeah. They were real nice. Yeah. I think it's cool. I think it's like with podcasting, with like the explosion of podcasting, which I think has reached a critical mass a while ago, probably.

It's, um, you really kind of can appreciate the immersionism stuff. It's the best way to do anything, right? Because with podcasting, it's just like, what? We're just talking about things, right? Right. You've been to these places. You've seen stuff. And, you know, I by no means am trying to say that that's the only way to do stuff and you can't talk about things.

It's a good way to do stuff. It's a great way to do stuff. You miss that, you know. You missed. Exactly. Like, it's easy, it's easy for the telephone game to when you're doing podcasts and somebody's on coming on a podcast and saying, oh, I read an article that somebody wrote based on a book that somebody wrote about an. experience that they had when they were in Nazi Germany in the 40s or whatever. Right.

You know what I mean? Versus like you specifically were the direct source on the ground experiencing shit, talking to people that were there. Like that's something you kind of lose with the whole podcasting. Right. And there's a lot of intangibles that really don't, that you have a difficult time properly communicating to someone who's never been to a place that you've been or dealt with the people that you've dealt.

Like just the smells in different places are a sense that you don't, can you can be. can communicate a lot of things. It's the difference between knowledge and experience, really. And what, you know, Gavin mentioned that we were, you know, like he coined the term immersionism to describe the way that Vice did stories, which was go to the place, hang out with the people, or get the people to write the thing. You know, one of Jesse's crowning moments was you did an Iraq issue that was 2007-ish, written 100% like, or mostly written cover-to-cover by Iraqis.

Really? that like laid out and they did the music reviews you know um i forget if there was a fashion shooting that or not but anyway anyway i thought it was like i was like i was fucking proud to work on it and it was a masterpiece of something it was like we've been at war with these goddamn people for four years and it's like this the first time i'm reading there was there was an article at the beginning of it that's just like here's what bagdad looks like here's the shape here's a map of bagdad here are the different neighborhoods and i was just like four years of war and no and this and we are the first people to you to you're the first people to

print the geography of like the green zone and the different neighborhoods and shit of that nature. It's crazy. Wow. But so that was set in opposition to what was called Google journalism back then, which was, you know, the worst case scenario would be Jason Blair. You remember him in the New York Times? He was a reporter who kind of like, I think he was just having, having one really. And he stopped going out on assignments and he started just making up like details about it. He would, so he'd be like reporting on a story. I think the one that got him in trouble was he reported on something at a farm in Virginia, right? And he actually called the people and interviewed them on the phone. But he, when he wrote it up, he wrote up that he'd been there.

He wrote all these details about, you know, the way their barn was situated or what they were wearing or things like that. And somebody, some subject called, you know, whoever the person you call for that kind of crap is at the New York Times, the ombudsman or something. And it was like, hey, this guy never came to our house. Like, we talked to him on the phone. And we did. And we did. some emails or whatever and then I became a scandal because they looked back through his reporting for the last of the previous I think two or three years and they were like oh shit this guy hasn't left his apartment Jesus for all of this and then he wrote a book called burning down my master's house where he pretty pretty flagrantly played the race card in excusing his own shitty journalism

anyway that was what vice was trying to set ourselves used black but uh this was what we were you know immersionism was set against. There was also Stephen Glass. There was a movie about him. He was doing it for the New Republic. No, these are all, okay, generation gap. Tell me about him. He's made up, 42.

Okay, you're only four years older than me. That's, that's a full, you know, a full set of high school classes, though. That's a proper, that's how the generation gaps in America work. I had six years in high school, but. Oh, when you start when you're in like seventh grade? Six of the best years of my life. Hey, there you go. Oh, I see.

We're having fun. Okay. Sorry. Whosh. Stephen Glass is just like, he was a couple years before Jason Blair. He wrote for the New York Republic. He was like a hot shot young reporter.

I think they're based out of DC, I forget. There's a movie about him called Breaking Glass, right? And it turned out he was just making, completely making shit up. Like he wrote an article about a hackers convention that he got into and there was like a 16-year-old hacker there who had been hired by somebody he had hacked. He'd hacked like a big computer firm.

And so they were hiring him to do their security. And so this kid who was, you know, after he hacked him? A famous hacker, which like this kind of shit did happen in the world that, you know, people who grew up hackers became security consultants because they knew. Yeah, the FBI hired him too. And that kind of shit. Yeah. No, there's a history of that. And, but he claimed he had gone to this hacker convention.

He'd met this kid. This kid was getting now, you know, a six-figure salary at age 16 from having committed crimes against this place. And so he was being celebrated by all the other hackers. And none of this shit existed. None of the shit was real. And then he tried to, he would cover his ass by, I think he had his cousin or his brother or something would answer the phone. He'd be like, oh, here are my notes. You know, here's the number if you need to corroborate any of this with, you know, whatever,

whoever I'm claiming I got quotes from or whatever. And they'd call the number. And it would be his brother being like, yeah. what I said. I did that. He made some websites, you know, for like, it was, you know, the, the hacker kids, like, security company or whatever. So he's like, you can go check out their website. Like, it's totally up. And I think this is, I think he'd been doing this for years, but the story that got him was the hacker thing because they went, they were like, this kid's hacker website, like, makes no sense. It looks like shit. It's like, it's like the kind of like

HTML programming I would do, you know? It's like, this kid's a computer expert. Anyway, there was, you know, There was a rash of that shit happening in the 2000s. And those are the extreme examples. In general, Google journalism was just, you know, lazy people who didn't leave their desks and would just be like, oh, I'll just get a quote from them, you know, over the phone. Right. Which to me, at least, but I think to us, like people advice, it was like, why, you know, why bother? Like, that sounds like a shitty job. It doesn't like a shit job.

Like, the funest part of writing an article is going out, meeting people and talking to people. Sitting at your desk is the worst part. Like. Today's sponsor Brunt Workwear just sent me these brand new Marlin boots. And I have to say, anytime I'm doing real work outside or I want to wear work boots, these are my go-to. And all my construction buddies swear by them. And if you've ever worn a cheap work boot, you know all about the blisters and the pain.

But right out of the box, these Marlin workboots were super comfortable. No painful break in period, no limping around for a week waiting for them to soften up, just straight comfort from day one. And it's not by accident. Eric Girard founded Brunt after his work friends complained that their work boots haven't changed since the 1920s. Their boots are lightweight, waterproof, slip resistant, heat resistant, and even electrical hazard rated. Basically, whatever the job throws at you, these boots can handle it. And the best part is, it doesn't hurt. I can't stress that enough. Brunt's got over 500,000 workers backing them up, and you can even send them back if you don't like them. That's how confident they are. So if you're tired of

boots that destroy your feet even more than the job itself, do yourself a favor and check out Brunt workwear. And your feet will thank you. Brunt was tired of the workwear brands out there cutting corners. You work too hard to be stuck in uncomfortable boots that don't hold up. So they built something better, boots that are insanely comfortable and built for the job site. And for a limited time, our listeners can get $10 off at Brunt when you use my code, Danny, at checkout. Just head over to brunt workware.com and use the code da n n y and you're good to go after you order they're going to ask you where you heard about brunt and please do us a favor and tell them we sent you the link to brunt is down below now back to the show at what point did you guys start bringing video cameras

uh when you bring when we started making video things oh you know there's a wait what did were there any video did you guys when you guys went to iraq to iraqs to bring any video cameras for the iraqi issue yeah we didn't go to iraq we communicated with iraqis and They wrote from Iraq. Okay. I thought I might be mixing that up because I thought Shane did a video in Iraq. Sirush did. Sirush and Eddie went to do, they made a whole doc.

It was called Heavy Metal and Baghdad. Yes, that's what it was. With a Krasakata, a band of Iraqis, you know, under Saddam, who came out and went to Turkey. I think half of them live in Canada now, I forget. It was a while ago. Good doc, though. Fucking amazing. which was based on an article

that Gideon Yego who again, this is going to be you're going to be too young to know who he was he was the he was the glasses wearing guy on MTV News Oh okay Well the girls liked right He wrote the first article that was just about

He's like holy shit there's this cool metal band And uh fucking Saddam's Iraq You know and I like I met them They have a crazy practice space or whatever They have to sing pro Saddam songs It sucks They had to sing pro Saddam songs

there was yeah by law did they ever do any songs in the palace no no no no they were they were an underground band you know they were punk well they were metal but they were an extreme metal band right um

anyway like and the story of doing like video things at vice is supposedly promulgated by like Shane and Eddie Moretti meet Spike Jones we're on a call with Spike Jones the director guy made Jackass and he's like

I like your magazine a lot. I like these articles. Do you guys film your, uh, you know, film your pieces? You guys, you know, just roll tape while you're reporting these things. And they're like, oh, of course we do. You know, and they were like, we should be doing that. And so that's what leads to, you know, making the online video stuff. Or before that, there's a DVD that was basically just like magazine articles shot on video with the people who would have written them. Yeah. And so is that, So what year was that when Spike Jones started working for you guys? 2006.

I mean, working with, working with. Was this post Gavin or pre- or during? Middle, middle of Gavin getting kicked out. It's a, it's a loose, foggy history and none of the days are solid, right? Sure. People love to ask us like, it was like, when did, you know, Gavin, when did, I guess, but, you know, he got properly bought out in 2007, but by 2006, there was already, you know, tension and shit like that.

Yeah. And then at what point did you start Balls Deep? 2006 or 7. There was an early, there was a web, there was a web version. You're talking about it. Like, you know, the, because obviously once we had the television channel, I made like two seasons of the TV show of Balls Deep. But that was back when we called the video stuff VBS, that was, that was the thing I was, that was the thing I worked on. I shot episodes with leather daddies in New York, a guy named Christoff, I forget his last name, he was Mr. Leather 2005. He took me around to like the eagle and places like that.

He let me sleep on his floor, which is kind of how we operated back then, hung out with like a Chinese lady in like proper Chinatown, like down under the Manhattan Bridge. We were selling crabs together. What were the other ones? I wasn't able to finish editing of this because Gavin wrote some crazy fucking release for these guys, which I thought was how you did it. I spent like two weeks, two, three weeks with a motorcycle club called the American Brotherhood 9-11. And they were a 9-11 Memorial motorcycle club. Whoa. So you'd find some pictures of these guys, Steve.

They were based out of New York? They were based out of New York, right? Yeah. And they were all older. I think some of them were, you know, kind of former house angels and stuff. It was like a older guy's retirement club. They had all been in motorcycle clubs, like, growing up. And so this one was a bunch of guys, you know, getting into their 50s or whatever.

And one of the presidents of the club's brother, I think, had died in 9-11. And so the club was in his honor. Just a great name, right? American Brotherhood 9-11 MC. Is that them? I don't think that's them. They're like a bunch of firefighters on Harleys. I mean,

unless if those were the right guys. Oh, yeah, there's, yeah. Oh, that's their logo. American Brotherhood, 9-11. Oh, nice. I wonder what the Jason is. Were you in New York in 9-11? Yeah, it was my first day of college.

That was your first day of college. Wow. I had just gotten there, yeah. I was like, this town's exciting, man. Oh, my God. What a day to start college. Yeah. Well, in fact, I didn't.

They, I, I... You got, yeah, they probably shut it down that day, right? Yeah. I wrote the tackiest email of all time at about 1030, which is, I'm, it might have been between Tower 1 and Tower 2 coming down. I had a class at 11 with like Irish lit professor. I ended up, he was like my mentor in college. I'm a great guy. But I at like 1033, I wrote this email where I was like, I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but I just wanted to make sure we're not having class today, right? And he wrote like, and he wrote back pretty quickly. He was like, alas, we won't be. in class like take care of yourself and i was like holy shit i was like a sincere use of the word alas in 2001 how about that but yeah oh jesus christ yeah yeah these guys look crazy day these guys look awesome they're nice like they're fun to hang out with they were fun yeah

a little on the older side i broke my arm with those guys the idea of the idea of of wanting to to start a club is an interesting idea. You know? Like to like the, the idea of like getting a group of friends together and saying, hey man, let's come up with a title for our, for our group and let's make rules that we can live by.

Right. It's like a... It's fun. It's an American tradition to Tocqueville referred to early United States as a nation of clubs, I believe. Really? Yeah. It's a thing that I never thought about doing.

but it does sound fun. Well, that's the old, have you ever read the book Bowling Alone? No. Okay, whose author I couldn't tell you right now. It's also, it's a super thing. It's a sociology book, and it was about the decline. The titular bowling alone is about the decline in bowling teams, sorry, over between

about the 60s through, I think the book comes out in middle of the 90s. But in general, it's about the erosion of, what would you even call that, like, part of civil society of clubs. Like that, you know, if you look back into the 1950s and 60s, most adults in middle class adults in America belong to something, right? It's like some sort of club. Like Freemasons are Rotarians or they're part of the Elks Club. The women do Tupperware parties or are a lady's auxiliary in town, things of this nature. People are members of, you know, five and six clubs and things that.

And by, you know, the early 90s, it is all but gone away. And if you look at, I've known a couple people who are Freemasons who joined, you know, who are roughly my age. Yeah. And be like, oh, is that hard to, you know, is like, I thought there was, you know, you had to save a Freemason's life or something like that. And they're like, they're getting so old. They're itching for new blood, right? Like all these places are graying out. And then there's, you know, there are various explanations for that.

I think T's the biggest culprit. The drug cartel? No, no, no, no. The Knights Templar. because those guys are kind of fucked up. Yeah. There's a cartel called the Knights Templar? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In Mexico. I haven't heard about this. They're not, they're not, they're, well, I don't want to be on camera saying they're not cool guys, but they do some pretty uncool things, man. Tell me about it. They're rough, they're rough dudes. They're up there with, like, Los Zetas, you know. But you mean, like, the historical Knights Templar. Like the historical Knights Templar, yeah.

There's, except I wouldn't want to do any of the gay shit that they were doing. Like, well, what gay shit do they do? Oh, they did a lot of gay shit, bro. That's fucking like anti-Kathar fucking propaganda. No, I don't think it is. This is like listening to Herodotus tell you that the Thracians were sacrificing children. You got to take it with a grain of salt. Was it, so what was the claim?

Why? I don't know what the gay anti-Templar. No, the Templars. I thought it was that they were bank, that they were seizing too much temporal control due to their banking practices. Well, they had French king who burned Jacques de Mollet, but he was, he was like, hey, these guys were muslin on my turf. That's what it was. They wanted to steal. And he owed the money.

They didn't like the fact that. Templars had all that money, right? So they wanted to get the money from them. So they were trying to, so this is the... So they concocted. This is the argument. Yeah, yeah. So they made it say like, oh, they do all these gay ritual things with like they kiss, kiss their buttholes and like all this weird stuff. Oh, right, right. Okay. And then they invented the god Baphomet, which is like the goatheaded Satan figure that they worshiped. They kissed the head. They had to kiss the head of that thing. Right. And, uh, yeah, there's a whole bunch of gay... Stamp on a Bible and shit of that nature. About the, yeah, oh yeah, that's another thing. They were like, they didn't like Christians at all. They say that about everybody.

everybody's making you stamp on the Bible. They're making you do what? Back then. Oh, that was how you'd fire up the Christian Hoypolo. Back then, it'd be like, stamping on a Bible.

Yeah, no, but there's like a newer version of, like a, the Templars. A redux of the Knights Templars in the U.S. Well, it's,

kind of like a spin-off of Freemasonry. Okay, I was thinking in like continental freemasonry. There's a degree in like the Yorkish, right, I think. That is Knights Templar. It's like either above or below Knights of Malta, I forget. Yeah. Whatever. Those things are fun. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure they are.

There's a lot of, I guess there's like a lot of big musicians and, like, famous folks that are trying to join the nice Templar or like become freemasons. Oh, because they're getting older and they need buddies. They're getting older. They need an excuse to get out of the house. Sorry, sorry, honey. They also need Tuesday night, you know. Yeah, exactly. And they need good marketing too. So it's helpful for them. You know what I mean when they get these big shots in there. It's kind of like Scientology. That's where they got like Tom Cruise and. I was in a hotel last night and there's a Scientology channel here.

Do you know this? Where's your hotel? Like, is it in Clearwater? Ten minutes down the road. That way? Panellis, yeah. Is it that way or that way? East.

So it's closer to Scientology. Because Clearwater is where the Seorgs based on it, right? Yeah. Right. It's where it's where it's like the flag building. This is where Elron Hubbard had his pirate ship parked like five minutes down the road from here when he was here. So that's interesting.

No, I haven't had cable. But I'm not surprised. It's funny. All their programming looks like commercials for medicine. Like it's all cut that like jarring, obnoxious way. Like a Paxil commercial. They fucking advertise on the Super Bowl. Every Super Bowl, there's a Scientology commercial.

They got the money, yeah. But their membership is like supposedly declining badly. Like they're supposedly not. Understandably, yeah. You ever read that stuff? Yeah. I haven't, but I want to. I went.

There was, we did a drugs and cults issue of the magazine. Back with the magazine used to have themes. and I joined three cult simultaneously. And one was like this guru cult called Adidam, whose guru was a guy who was born Franklin Jones, but he had become Adidas Samraj, and it was your basic guru kind of jazz. Then what were the others?

I went to the Moonies, the Unification Church, like the Koreans, you know, they had a church in on like 44th Street, and I joined, or I, you know, I went to church with them. hung out, effectively joined. Once I was done with the article, I never went back.

But then Scientology was up on 46th Street. Did you join Scientology? Legally, I don't know if I should, you know, legally I'm not even sure if I did or not. I went, hung out with them, took a bunch of classes. I was twinned to someone who was joining Scientology. Twinned? Really, they give you a buddy for like your introduction.

And his name was Thomas too and he was like this Indian kid who had, I think, taking a job in the city. Like, everybody I met there who was being brought into the church, very lonely. Like, just clearly, lonely and nothing to do, right? And so I felt bad. I was, you know, I guess I was open-minded it and just, like, getting books,

learning about the stuff or whatever. And then to watch a guy, like, totally eat it up. I just always wanted to be like, hey, buddy, just, like, grain of salt with this stuff. Or it's like, if you need to meet, like, you need to meet some girls or something. But I don't know, like give me, like I can take you to a bar or something. Yeah. Right. And it was, it was crazy the, the mood of that place.

Because, you know, I was doing all this at the same time as kind of like, you know, funny stunt or whatever. Yeah. I'd have to pick what night I was going to my different cult. Whatever. And the moonies were great. I don't, you know, I guess it's just sign of the times that, you know, back in the 70s, that kind of shit was scary to people. And I think they've eased off of the mass marriage, kind of.

of thing, which is what bummed people out. But, like, that first month or, you know, the month I was going to stuff at the Church of Scientology, I was like, it feels like being in a, like, a subprime lending bank here, like, shady financial operation. It's like, one, that's how everybody dressed. But two, they'd, you know, get people to sign up for a $200, you know, 30-minute course or whatever. And they'd go back, and you'd see them go back to, like, the office and, like, start high-fiving

each other because they had made a sale. You're just like, Christ. I was like, you know we can hear you, right? You're just like vigorously making notes this whole time? Like, or are you just memorizing this and then writing it at the end of the day? I'd get on the subway and I'd write my notes. Okay. Yeah, because I was being super sneaky, you know? Right.

Yeah, covert. I mean, when there's a classroom, you can take notes, you know. Oh, sure. It did my best to be fair about that, too. Did you do any auditing sessions? Yeah, a couple. Really? What was that like? halfway between like a stage hypnotism and therapy like auditing you like should we explain what it is yeah explain what it is well I didn't you know and they didn't break because because I was

there of my own accord and they weren't trying to like trick me into coming to a Scientology office I didn't get the E meter which I was kind of sad about yeah yeah that's that's basically to bring in you know funny story my uh dazzle the rube's Yeah. My real estate broker bought me an e-meter as a gift. Oh, that's neat. Hamilton had, I lived with Hamilton Morris for a little bit. Yeah, he had an e-meter at his house, I think.

Really? I don't think we ever fired it up or anything. But I was always like, I was like, oh. He told me he has an astrology computer. Oh, I saw that. No, I, um, I texted him after watching the interview. And I was like, you found one of those? He's like, my pride and joy.

That thing's amazing. Yeah, what a weird story. Did he show you the picture? like the printer is a whole different component for the astrology thing. Oh, we just looked up photos on Google. Okay, did you see the whole thing? It's enormous. Oh, no. There's like a, um, what do you

call that? There's a thing that looks like an old calculator and then. That's what we saw. The brain of the thing that also has its printer in it. So it prints out, uh, like, ticker tape and you rip it off and that's your horoscope. How crazy is that? That they actually spent taxpayer dollars to make this.

Oh. This is it? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. There you Yeah, you can see the whole thing. The digicomp. Yeah. Jealous of that. He's got an impressive archive of arcane, arcane crap. Anyway, auditing, it was just, I just sat chair to chair with a nice little old lady who, like, I think we held hands while we did it. And you shut your eyes and you try to, like, basically remember back, but project yourself back into a memory.

and then walk through that memory and you know you pick a memory based on a time when you had some sort of hardship or something like that or whatever and then you just keep doing it right and so you'll you'll explain the memory to them you'll walk through it and then they'll be like okay go back is like and then you start over

and you try to and they're like what was the term sorry it's been 20 years they'd be like remember basically remember more and it'd be interesting as as you do this that you either are confabulating or recovering more and more member. It becomes a more and more vivid picture in your head. The details fill in. And you can have insights that way.

I thought auditing, it's interesting in that, you know. It's like a real thing. It's actually can be helpful. He ripped it off of a psychological school in the 30s. El Ron Hubbard ripped it off from a psychological school in the 30s whose name, I forget. It's kind of like fallen by the wayside. But it's, yeah, it's good practice. And as, you know, it's the kernel of truth at the heart of,

Yeah, sure. Whatever you want to say. Right. Did it help you at all? Do you think you... Help me write the article. Help me. That's all it counts, right?

Maybe, I mean, you know, I didn't... It wasn't itching to go back. Yeah, for sure. And have a loan pushed on me. But it seemed, you know, it was cool to sit and talk about yourself. I did it three times. And it was like, there was some sort of insight in there. insight in there. Nothing, nothing major. Yeah, I have a friend, especially, yeah, let's just call him a

friend who works for a big company in downtown Clearwater. Yeah. That is all, I think the owners are Scientologists or members of the church. It's weird, because all the richest people around here, they're Scientologists. Right. And, you see all that works, right? Yeah. Yeah. And there's, the floors are like segregated, right? So you'll have, floors of workers that are non-sio's oh and then you'll have separate floors where you have all the executives are sios yeah and uh then keep all the it's kind of like a it's kind of like a weird keep the unclear away it's kind of like a cultish version of the office where they all kind of like whisper and make jokes under their breath about the scientologists right and then when they come around

they're kind of try to cover their ass and and uh and he was explaining to me i was asking him because we were we were getting lunch in clear water i'm like i'm like how do you know can you tell just by walking down the street who's a scientologist and who's not like just aside from like the the the seorg members that what they all wear they all wear the best no shit oh oh they don't wear their dress whites right they aren't in full uniform so so so well they typically wear like a vest with like a white collared shirt and they're all they all dress that wear the same exact thing oh i think i know you're talking about okay yeah yeah they look like like like a regular like a formal vest they look like uh they look kind of like a white color they look kind of a white

of like flight attendants. Right, right. But other than that, like a, if you could find like a pedestrian or a, just a civilian Scientologist at a restaurant or like a grocery store. It's like Mormons. There's, right. There's a look. And I asked him, I'm like, what is that?

How do you, how do you find it? And he's like, just look into their eyes and you will just get this sense of this robotic soul. They're like, they're like robots. And I was like, and he goes, he goes, let's try it right now. he goes look around this room and we're sitting in this little dining room attached to a grocery store and he goes there's one of them in this room and i'm like okay so i'm like trying to look around and sure as shit i could tell i'm like that's the guy he called he's like yep amazing so it was it was

a interesting phenomenon but like you know it's one of those cults the science or scientology is one of those cults where like it's it's borderline it's not illegal right it's not an illegal cult where they're like breaking the they are breaking the law they're committing fucking human atrocities with slavery you know enslaving people and taking people's babies away from them against their will but like you could literally especially around here or i'm sure in new york and l.a everywhere they could just be part of they could be a part of your group and you would never know it like It's not like they're actively pushing it on you or talking about it. Daywalkers.

Yeah. Daywalkers, right? It's like you would never know who they were because they're a part of this weird thing. But they also never talk about it. Like you can never have a conversation. I've never had a conversation with an active Scientologist. Yeah. Because it's against their religion to talk about it.

To to non-scientologists. Or non-interested. Yeah. It's going to say, how do you get more? Because they're afraid getting ratted out by other Scientologists because they can get, they tell on you. Or made fun. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No. You get a ride up. You get a squirrel. Yeah. Right. So it's an interesting phenomenon.

Suppressive persons. That's what I'm trying to remember. Suppressive. That's where it is. So they keep the suppressive persons on, on a different floor. Yeah. Uh, whatever this business is. Well, no, they're not. The business is allowed to have non-scientologists. Right, right. But they keep them a floor below. Yes. But they're not suppressive people because they could be. It doesn't matter because they're not initiated into Scientology, basically. Well, that's, yeah, that's exactly who SPs are. Sure. Yeah. Right. But you can also be a suppressive, can you be a suppressive person that is also a Scientology?

Yeah, that's like, I believe. You know what? Don't take, this is 20 years ago. Yeah, who knows? Yeah, this shit's ancient. Any of my words about this. Allegedly, uh, David Miscavage still lives around here. But I haven't seen him or seen any interviews or anything about him in a long, long time. What was, did he surf?

David Miscavage. Oh, David. I thought he said Dana, which, okay, wow, I just invented a person. Oh, I know, no, he's the leader of Scientology. I know David Mischavich's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I misheard you.

And then I invented a son or daughter for him in my head. That surfs. And I just fully filled it out right there. Gavin told me surfing is fake. Oh, oh, why's that? He thinks he's a flattered earther when it comes to surfing. How does that even work? He just thinks it's impossible that people can paddle a surfboard out into waves.

and then surf them. He thinks it's physically impossible and not real. I mean, that's cute. That is cute. Right. What are you going to say? Yeah, I don't know. That's just a random anecdote.

Yeah, it was funny. I was talking to old Montreal cartoonists who knew Gavin back in this cartooning days. Right. And kind of like a minor insight from that period was no matter how much Gavin, when he would be writing about arts and culture would, like, because he loved shitting on musicians for pretending. He's like, music's bullshit.

You know, and he's like acting, acting is really bullshit. He's like, comedy, frankly, comedy's a little bit of bullshit. He's like, I respect making a good joke, but it's not, you know, oh, it's a craft. The one group of people, no matter whether or not he liked their art or not, that he would never, like, I never once saw him badmouth a cartoonist. Because he knew, like, how much fucking work and torture and craft went into it. It's funny. Interesting. So it's funny to hear him talk about how, like, surfing's bullshit.

It's like that's a good line for the bar or whatever. But like, this thing you don't do, yeah, it must not be worth it. Right. I don't think he wasn't really shitting on it. He was just kind of like thinking. It was a riff. Yeah, it was a riff. And he thinks it's just like, you know, too physically taxing for someone do you like him to do at the age of whatever the fuck age he is.

I think he slammed a whole 12 pack when he had a little bit. Oh, by the way. How many beers did he drink in your video? I didn't, I didn't catch it. What? Oh, when we were interviewing. Yeah. When you did the watch party.

Five or six. Oh. We went to the bar before we even started filming. It was like 11 a.m. on a Friday, yeah. He seemed no worse for where. Yeah. I think it helps him. I think the booze maybe helps him.

Right. Yeah. Helps them get into character. If you've ever shopped online, then chances are you've made purchases from a website powered by Shopify. It's super easy to spot that beautiful purple shop pay button. That's what we use for our merch store. That purple button has all your payment and shipping info.

You don't have to track down your card or hope that your browser remembered that payment info. There's a reason why so many businesses use Shopify. That's because they make it incredibly easy to run and start your own business. It's the business behind the business that really matters. And that's where Shopify excels with convenient tools and workflows. Shop pay has the best converting checkout on the planet, meaning fewer abandoned carts and way more sales. That's a game changer. You can spread your brand's word with the built-in marketing and email tools.

Don't want to build your own page. Shopify has hundreds of beautiful ready-to-go templates to express your brand and forget the code. Like Daylight Computer, whose website is absolutely gorgeous. So if you've got a product, a dream, and a drive to make it happen, Shopify is the platform that helps you do it with ease. Because businesses that sell sell more with Shopify. If you want less carts abandoned, it's time for you to head over to Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash Danny Jones, all lowercase. Again, that's Shopify.com

slash D-A-N-N-N-Y-J-O-N-E-S to start upgrading and selling today. Shopify.com slash Danny Jones. It's linked down below. Now back to the show. The theory, going back to the Gavin documentary, you came up with a bunch of theories on what happened to Gavin.

And you talked to everybody in his family. You talked to not everybody, but most people in his family. Wasn't able to reach Kyle, yeah. A lot of the people, like you talked to a lot of the coworkers, the people that were from early days of vice. And it seemed like the consensus was like, yeah, we, he's a great guy. We liked Gavin.

He did some weird stuff. I don't agree with his politics, but I liked him. So, and then you came up with a bunch of theories at the end, right? Like, what happened to him? Well, those derived from all the different people I spoke to. The theories derived from the people.

Right? Okay. That was, it's interesting because he doesn't, like, I think he kind of portrays it these days, as if one day he lost all his friends. Like everybody just turned against him or whatever. But it's he was, it was staggered over like 10 or 15 years based on, you know, the people I know, like, we, you know, mutually who are friends with him or worked with him.

Everybody had a different breaking point or falling out with him. Some of them are, you know, political or getting, you know, pissed off it or offended by something he said or whatever. Some of them are just straight up interpersonal problems. Some are professional. or whatever. And so everybody, you know, broke up with their friend Gavin

at a different time and everybody has a, you're like, sometimes completely different theory about what, what has happened to him between, you know, 2002 and 2022 or whatever.

And so that's where those all came from. Yeah. So what, after, after everything, what is your conclusion? Oh, it's all of them. I thought,

I thought I put that in the, it might not have ended up in the dock. We made a big, like, schizophrenic spider web board with all the theories and then the director Sebastian asked me he's like which one is the truth and I was like oh it's it's all of them it's they are all like that's and his position is he never changed he's like this has always been me he's been saying that yeah I mean it's I mentioned this to someone else too it's like if you go back like this guy writes

and used to draw like prodigiously and he has this huge body of work whereby you can go back and read stuff from his 20s and 30s and you're like, of course you changed. Well, everybody changes. You did the classic left wing to right wing conversion. Like, how can you say you didn't change at all? And of course, what virtue is it not to change?

Yeah. Well, what part of him changed? So how did he become more right wing? Because he was writing about the fucking trans stuff and all that stuff early on, wasn't he? He was writing about that in like 2012, 2013. I'm talking about stuff from like, you're talking about way early.

1998, you know? 2002. Although it's funny, that article comes out, and I'm going to get the years a little bit screwed up right now, but it's around 2013 or so, 2012 or 2013. And he publishes a book in 2012 called The Death of Cool, although it's original. If you find a book called How to Piss in Public, that is the same book with an earlier title. And it's a memoir of him up until that point, you know, from youth to think he's 40. Yeah. And I think the book kind of like ends with him becoming 40 and accepting adulthood and being happy about having a family and all that. But the very end of the book, a little epilogue, I can't do a good paraphrase of it, but he lays out his credo for people. And it's like, he's like, you know, he's like if there's one thing I've learned, it's like if you don't fit in where you grew up, if you're, you know, if you've got to be, you know, a Mormon Abba impersonator, but you were born. like an overweight cowboy or something like that. He's like, you've got to follow your dream. You've got to change into who you want to be. Right? So like one year difference between saying

that's the point of my entire life up until the year 40. And the very next year he's like, except trans. He's like, just don't fuck around with your genitals. Right. And his argument is primarily based on he's like, trans dicks look weird. Right?

I'm like, that's not a great argument, you know? That's not the kind of thing you should base law How about the new, what do you think about the new mayor? Didn't the new mayor for New York? I heard Zohan. Zohan, Momadami. I heard he wants to give 60 million dollars to trans surgeries. To trans surgeons?

I heard it was to trans surgeons. That's what I meant. And it's in cash. Yeah, no. Oh, I don't know anything about that. I live in Chicago now. Can you find that out if that's real? I'm still catching up on Lori Lightfoot.

Do you hear she wants to raise the bridges on all the, uh, George Lloyd protest? No, no. She's not around anymore. She lost office. Okay. Democratic candidate, Zola. Gender affirming care. Has pledged to allocate 65 million to gender, gender surgeons.

Well, he got your attention. For transgender New Yorkers, baby. All right. I wonder if that pledge is the same as the Amber Heard pledge. What's the Amber Heard pledge? Well, she pledged, like, her money, but didn't actually get it. Oh, it didn't actually do it. I know.

It's an easy thing to say. I will also say... You know what the funny thing is? He also simultaneously said that if... if Netanyahu ever comes to New York he's going to arrest him. Oh. Like is a hair transplant,

gender affirming care? Like that's all I gotta say. It's like that's, is, is, is, I look at that and that's super broad. That is very broad. I remember reading something and it's like, I kind of, you know, I like to take a walk when these issues come up.

Yeah. Just because I've been, I grew up in the 90s. I've been around the bush. It was like all the arguments about trans people are literally the same arguments that were made about gays when I was, you know, 10 or 11, right?

they're gonna children they can't be trusted around children it's mentally they're you know it's a runaway mental illness that we should chun them for right now it's against God etc whatever the surgery stuff's kind of different though right like the surgery

yeah surgery stuff to me my view on it and there was a um some lesbian athlete I forget her name now she wrote a tweet about the um about this whole thing this whole like explosion of trans stuff and she was basically

explaining how the pushing the trans agenda whatever you want to call it is building a barrier between the people who like my dad who kind of like grew up in the 50s in the 60s or whatever and he's kind of like maybe started out not think not too fond of gays and all this stuff and then over the years he's kind of like okay these people are normal

I'm friends with gay people whatever this is kind of normal part of culture and then the trans thing comes and then you're like oh my god this is getting too fucking out of control and people are conflating the normal everyday gays with the people that are weirdly pushing this trans surgery on children and they're like fuck this fuck all of it i don't want nothing to do with it anymore that's the you know and i think that was a good point that she made there well the root of it is that it weirds people out you know and as a teenager i was really into like you know queer theory and all that which was like as i read it sort of an anti-assimilationalist vision of gays and

lesbians and trans and other folks that was like, well, whatever, let's preserve our weirdness instead of like, cowtowing to a regular society. And I always liked that, but what are you going to do, you know? Yeah. There was a, Gavin was showing me a, oh, but sort of the gender affirming care thing. And I was like, this is, this is some classic, like, I read somewhere, but I don't know, I was reading somewhere about like the, you know, because small numbers, right, of like kids under 18 who get some sort of like gender affirming care but how like a few of those figures also involve boys who were given like basically mastectomies for gynecomastia you know had like glandular issues so they had like big tits and it was like there's always so much of this shit and it's

just the internet in general is just like presented in bad faith in statistics especially I'm always just like sure yeah let's see the survey please Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, it's kind of impossible to find the truth with anything nowadays. Yeah. Welcome to Postmodern Energy. It's the, yeah. And Hamilton was explaining this beautifully when he was on here.

He was just like, he even, he wasn't like shitting on people who do this, but he's like, I even do this myself sometimes. I catch myself doing this where I'm looking for like, wouldn't it be cool if the Nazis were inventing LSD and I'm trying to come up find all this stuff and to find all this evidence. And then I find evidence that goes against it and I want to fucking ignore it. But I can't. You figured out the story. Yeah. Confirmation bias speaks in. It's real.

It's on guard. Yeah. Yeah. And it's bigger than ever now. It's just like especially, you know, social media is really fucking put the break on critical thinking. Right. Yeah. Well, now we get to hear what everybody has to say.

Isn't that great? Yeah, right? Ever been in a room of a hundred people and just had them all speaking? It's fucking, it's glorious. It's like a public square. Yeah. No. And there's also like the people, they want to be a part of the.

They don't want to say things. They don't want to signal the wrong thing to where their tribe is going to kick them out. Like I just noticed this with the whole war and with the whole Iran war thing that's been kicking off. All the heart, the people that have been blasting or that have been like blowing the trumpets for Trump the whole time leading up to the election, obviously was running on being anti-war, which I thought was great. And a lot of people thought was great. He ran on a lot of things. And some of the people that were really behind him, like Tucker, Candice and Alex Jones. Jones and Alex Jones is, I'm going to use him as an example here.

He was at basically, he made a, I saw watching a Twitter video he did yesterday and he was talking about the Iran War and he was talking about how stupid it was and how like Trump shouldn't be doing this and all this stuff. And throughout the whole thing, he was qualifying himself every 30 seconds. Don't get me wrong. I'm still MAGA. Don't try to say I'm not MAGA. I still support Trump.

I still support Donald Trump. I'm part of the team. I'm still MAGA. I'm not, I'm not saying that. I just think that what he's doing is wrong. We need to stop this stupid war. stop giving Israel all this money. Blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I've seen, I've seen a lot of that. Like, a lot of people are just saying, like, let me be clear. I'm still Maga. Don't say I'm not Maga. Right. But what Trump's doing, I didn't vote for this shit. I didn't vote to make Israel great again. I vote to make American great again.

And, you know, it just goes to the whole thing. Like, people, they want to be a part of their, of their tribe. They don't want to be kicked out of their so-called tribe. You know where that syntax comes from, that kind of cadence that you just, you did a really good impression right there. But you know exactly where that style is. Beacon comes from, right? Call in sports radio shows. That is how you would address the DJ on a sports call-in show in the 80s and 90s.

I mean, like, I don't want to, you know, I want to be a team player here, but, you know, I really think, you know, they should get rid of Fernandez and, you know, put Marcel in on shortstop for this. I think, I think the team's going to go down the hill if not. Yeah. It's the exact same tone. It is. I'm not the first person to be like, this shit is just all team sports.

It is. But it is. You're totally right. It is, bro. Yeah. Yeah. Going to the trans stuff, what Kevin pulled up a, there was a, apparently there was a Time magazine thing that came out where it said, um, tomboys have gone extinct. Oh, because it's all, because they're presumed to all be trans or they are just all trans now?

No, well, they're chopping all their tits off. Okay. Because their parents are saying, oh, you're, you're really a boy. We got to chop your tits off. And it was like, it was like. Is that happening a lot? like is this apparently if time magazine did a thing on it time magazines journalistic standards are like sending a kid to detroit for 12 hours and being like write a story on

the city hey these are one these are one of the top journalistic uh organizations in the u.s time magazine time magazine they're they're time honored yeah time honored institution in american yes exactly we can't just we can't just credit them yeah kids want to trap the jets off welcome to america go nuts you know well the problem is what are we going to do legislate something because they'll regret it

well the problem is young heterosexual males when they're first discovering that they like girls they're playing on the playground with other girls they don't like girls

on high heels and skimpy outfits yet obviously because they're young and they're like on the baseball field or whatever and like their first their first experience you know

maybe like kissing a girl or smooching a girl copping a little titty feel or whatever is going to be with another girl who's a tomboy right

Tomboys are the stepping stone to somebody who, you know, is a traditional heterosexual who likes ass and tities, right? I see where you're coming from. I just think it's... So if you're wiping out all the tomboys, you're making it way more difficult for the evolution for the development of young heterosexual males. I don't think anyone's wiping out the tombboys. What I would, what I would fear personally more is that those, these kids were talking about in the abstract, aren't on baseball teams and shit of that nature. They aren't physically with other kids their age, like on a routine basis.

You know, I don't hang out with teenagers in my spare time. Right. I've got a pair of God kids, but they're pretty young or whatever. But the sense I get from people who work with teenagers and or, you know, some folks who are just slightly younger is that, oh, I can, fuck, I can bake. I can, I can, I could pull up a chart if I wanted to right now. Nobody gets their driver's license anymore, right? Like and in the 90s if you looked at they would do every year in Georgia we would do I think it was called like the teen behavioral health survey Where they'd ask like have you ever done drugs have you ever had sex? You know what drugs have you done have you ever drank things of this nature and we used to fuck with it all the time and I used to love being like I've never I've never kissed another person but I have anal sex three times a week and it's like I've never drank a beer but I but I do heroin like more or less daily and

And I think it was funny. I think there was a, and then like a fucking teacher at my high school started a rumor that I was on dope. And I think it's because she looked in the fucking teen behavioral health survey and fell for it. Anyway, in general, when those things would come out and they'd be, you know, from 1950 to 1960, you'd see drug use doing this. And you'd see sex doing this also. You know, I was so proud of my generation.

I was like, look at it. We pushed it up another like three notches. or whatever. Sometime around like mid-2000s, it crests and starts plummeting, you know? And it's like, it's kids on the internet, it's kids on their fucking phones.

You could probably correlate it pretty well to the iPhone coming out because I believe it is around like 2005, 2006 when it really, when those rates start to sink. And it matches up with kids not getting their driver's license, kids being involved in less like outdoor physical activities and things of that nature. So I think, yeah, I wouldn't worry about, I'd worry that nobody's getting late.

It's a bad. And they're all miserable about it. And that could have some really bad repercussions because it makes people crazy. Yeah. It's not good that most of the population is now staying inside, not going out and doing stuff. That is not a good combination with the way media is going right now. Because media is unmanageable. And now more people.

are inside, surrounded by screens all day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it seems like a fucking terrible combo. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. And it's like a feedback loop that, you know, makes itself worse because who's making media on the internet? It's people who haven't been outside for a while.

It's people sitting at a computer screen, right? Oh, yeah. And so it's just over and over again. The internet is like that thing made by people who aren't doing something better with their lives at any given point, right? You know? Interesting. Yeah, now everybody can be a news source.

Right? Yeah. Anybody can. Wow. It's funny to watch like the kind of like the, the aesthetic of the YouTuber, which I don't keep up super often, but just from glancing in that for a while it was very. I fucking hate that word YouTube. Oh, it's awful, right? Yeah.

I mean, it replaced a worst word, which was vlogger. That's true. That's true. But the aesthetic for a while, or the dominant aesthetic was the sort of lo-fi thing where you like hold a Lavalier mic, you know, in your hand. And you go out and it really seems like kids. He's like, oh, I'm just out with my buddies and we're going to interview someone. I'll hold up my mic to them or whatever. And then in the last like five years, maybe, four years, that suddenly everybody's,

look, I like your studio, but everybody suddenly got these, like, weirdly, like, professional news. Well, this doesn't look like the, it doesn't look like you're trying to trick people into thinking you're a news network, you know, with like a little, the box graphic over the side of your shirt or wearing, like, a suit which may or may not fit well, like these sorts of things that people have taken on the trappings of, you know, kind of like institutional legitimacy. Right. Right. Have you seen that dude, um, Andrew Callahan from, he has this thing called channel five. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. All gas, no brakes.

All gas, no brakes. Yeah. He has a very similar style. He has a very similar mic and goes back and forth. Right, right, right. What, to me? So, similar style to like early vice stuff. Oh, like early vice stuff. I was going to say, he's, he's a bit on like the, the freaking mutant hunt. Although recently he's been doing some stuff that's like he's kind of come along and done some. Yeah, he's getting a little bit more political now. They're probably intelligent. Well,

and it's just that they're like he's kind of growing as a documentarian, I guess, whatever. Not my place to say. But, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're not supposed to grow as a documentarian. The best stuff is when you're young and retired.

It's all got to be raw and punk, right? Yeah, you don't want to sell out. No, you don't want to sell out. You can have a bunch of ad breaks in there and doing stuff for money. That's the other problem with,

with like the whole independent journalism stuff. Like, and everyone being a, content creator on online. Right. Is that like, people will find, I don't know if you've noticed this,

but people will find like a lane, whether it be a specific topic or a specific like niche of content, where there's like maybe it's politics, maybe it's fucking esoteric stuff like UFOs or whatever. Yeah. And they'll find out, oh, wow, this vertical makes the most money.

So I'm going to fucking make this my whole identity now. That's their beat. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Which is, which is not good.

It's super weird. Inns with what are those like TV nerds on the internet call it Flandersization? Like where TV characters that have a trait like get turn into caricatures of themselves. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Skip Baylis. Have you ever heard of Skip Bayliss? Yes, but he's a good example of that. Wait, who is he?

He is a sports commentator. Oh, he is. He had a show with, he originally had a show called on first take with Stephen A. Smith. Was he a proper announcer Back in the day? Okay. He's from Chicago, I think, actually. Right.

He took over for Harry Carrier. They overlapped in a way. Yeah. Yep, yep, yep. So he, uh, it was the same guy. He used to be like a traditional just journalist, a sports journalist. Right. And then he kind of became this talking head on TV who would be like, he would pick his stance on people.

He was like, I'm going to be pro this guy and anti this guy. And he made his career. He started when he started to get real popular, it was almost like because he would shit. on LeBron James and everything LeBron James did. He was the anti-Lebron pro-Jordan. LeBron will never be Jordan. And he kind of like,

he was famous because everyone hated him so much. And he just like leaned into it and leaned into it. And eventually just like he forgot. He lost the plot. And he became the character. Same thing happened to Alex Jones.

Same thing happened to like any of the like right wing shock jock kind of like Rush Limbaugh clones that existed across the country in the 90s. Ours was called Neil Bortz. and he just you can like over the years you just hear him become more and more of a detached asshole and you'd wonder if he was able to turn it off when he left the studio and went home you know right you'd read about his divorce and you'd say probably not yeah yeah yeah i wonder what happened to howard stern he's i think he's just you know goes home and sleeps on his millions

yeah he's still around yeah yeah he's he's um it seems like he just has like the the biggest hot shot celebrity or politician on his show. I don't watch it every day, but like, yeah. It's like presidential presidential presidential candidates and Taylor Swift and people like that. Not porn stars and

which I think is like what stuttering John. One of the reasons I think that you know, Rogan is so unique is because he's like the top of his media field. He's like the top of his

basically Howard Stern right now. He's the top podcaster in the world. He's the biggest. media thing, platform, the biggest, what is the word I'm looking for? The biggest media outlet in the world, I guess, you could say? Bigger than all cable channels, all cable shows. Sure. Combined. Yeah. And he still has people on his show that nobody knows. Like he'll find some nobody, right? Who's like trying to make a name for himself and bring him on and, you know, prop them up. Yeah. And there's not a lot of people who do that. People get like their egos get in the way like, oh,

I'm not going to have this person on. Like I'm not going to give them a fucking platform. I'm too jealous. And, uh, you know, that's that nobody does that. Right. Which I think is probably partially responsible for some of the success that he's had. It's good he does it. Sure. I'll say that. Yeah. Yeah. Trump and Bernie Sanders. It's a good habit to make. Yeah. You got to have both sides. Have both sides of the problem on or both sides of the issue. And then also have people who nobody fucking knows. Don't just fucking chase the superstars, you know? That's true. So the noisy thing. Was that whole thing? Which one? the One in Chicago and one in Atlanta

Okay. Noise Atlanta. Yeah, yeah. How did that whole thing happen? Well, we'd made it. We'd made a previous one in Chicago. Oh, it started with Chicago. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which I think the title was Noisy Shy rack. Shy rack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That one was good. Chief Keefe and all that stuff. With Chief Keefe, yes. Yeah. And young, I was about to say with Young Thug.

I'm sorry, with all the drill kids. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that was, I mean, you know, effectively a sequel. right in Atlanta where. Well, how did the Shireak thing start? The Shirek thing started with, there's a guy named Andy Kapper,

who was the editor of Vice U.K. in London. He came to America and he started making videos. He became a filmmaker. He's a really good filmmaker. And he was fascinated with drill music in Chicago. Like he had been the former editor of, you ever heard of the NME,

the new musical express? It's like a long-running British. like rock and roll magazine. It's like, it doesn't really have an equivalent in the United States, but I think of Rolling Stone or something like that. Anyway, it came from the music world, right? Not as a musician, but as like,

you know, I wouldn't want to call him a music journalist because that sounds stupid, frankly. And he was a real one. And he and this other filmmaker named Gregory Beef Jones started working on an idea about Chicago drill music. And I was at the time interested in Chicago

as the crime capital of the United States or the murder capital of the United States. And so we both kind of came into the story from those two sides. Like I couldn't tell you nothing about Chief Keefe at that point. So he was exposing me into the music and I was telling him, you know, the last 30 years of history of Chicago Street Life or whatever.

And that was it. I'm sorry, not a great story. Right. So you didn't know much about the music side of it. You were just more about like the Chicago culture in general. Yeah, basically the history. They're like the gun trade even frankly. Yeah, no.

I came into, I went into that pretty dumb and naive. I mean, by the time we were filming, I listened to all the stuff. I was like, it was pretty cool. I was like, that guy's 16? I was like, that guy killed someone? Amazing.

I love it. Yeah, yeah, it was funny. It was funny from, on the Atlanta episode, I think it was the first episode of the Atlanta one, you go into that recording studio. And the dude was like, you don't know Big Meach or whatever? Oh, because I asked a question in the wrong way.

Yeah, you're like, how the hell you not know this? How do you not know who this guy is? You're like, uh, that's my job is to ask questions. Well, I remember, yeah, I remember you're talking about where I just like, I admit like, can you tell us about Big Meach from the Black Mafia family, please? I had phrased it, who was,

big meat. Yeah. Yeah. That was hilarious. So goes. And Gucci Man was in prison during the whole thing? I believe so, yeah. Yeah.

That was a while ago. We were trying to get him on the phone because he had, you know, a phone in jail, but didn't. He didn't want to do it. Or just, it didn't, like, I don't know if he didn't want to do it or if it didn't make it to him or whatever. Yeah. It's kind of, kind of hard sending, you know, interview requests to prison. Right. As it turns out.

I mean, a lot of people go to prisons now and like literally conduct interviews there with cameras and all that. I've done one of those. God, it never aired, but I did a thing with a couple ladies in death row in Texas, where we went and interviewed some people on death row. And it was about women who would get married to guys on death row. So like death row wives. It was a, I regret that we never finished that and got an edit out. It was a crazy shoot. but the process of getting the prison to agree

and then on top of that you got to factor in a prison in Texas that is death row in Texas in Huntsville right was like six or seven week pain in the ass you know yeah it's a lot of work it's a lot of fucking bureaucratic bullshit they make it yeah it's the bureaucracy is kind of the point you know and it was it's funny most of the time when you go somewhere to do

like with a camera to do a documentary about someone's job anybody who sees it, they're like, oh, cool, like, taking an interest in us. And that was, death row was the one place where the guards were sort of like, great, here you are. Yeah. No, I don't have anything to say. Those guys don't want to fucking help you.

Those guys make zero money. And they found out who we were talking to, too. They were just like, who were you talking to? Yeah. It was, oh, shit, I forget his last name now. I don't even know how to look him up. He, he was a guy. Spit out some keywords and Steve will find him.

Okay. His name's Hank something. I just feel bad not remembering his surname. Hank, Texas, death row. Try that. And, oh, this is going to answer a question I've had for years that I've been cautiously avoiding asking, which is whether or not he got executed. Hank Skinner. Skinner.

Skinner. Oh, my God. Right. Look him up. That was crazy. Hank Skinner, thank you. Did it zap into your head the same time he said it? It did.

Like a second before, right? Wow. So Skinner was accused of murdering his girlfriend and his girlfriends to, uh, um, you know, um, adult mentally disabled sons from a previous relationship with an axe, right? And this guy was, I think he was in his early 20s or something. He was kind of like, he was like a roughneck from, I think he's from Lubbock, Texas. He's from North Texas. He worked shampooing hair.

Oh, he did die. Okay. Sorry to hear that. God, that guy was remarkable. So anyway, he was accused. Find like the latest article about his execution. Well, there was one. one there saying that he'd pass away, which I...

Zoom out, Steve? Well, he had been scheduled to be executed. And Texas... Texas doesn't execute the most people. I think it's either Florida or California has them beat. But Texas prides itself on executing people the most quickly, right? Go up, go up. Texas death row inmate dies after December surgery for tumor.

I'm sorry to hear that. He didn't get executed. He died accidentally. Well, this was the whole thing. So Texas, like Texas justice is we get you killed quick, right? Like we bring in there and we execute people as fast as possible. They're proud of that, right? Something to be proud of.

This guy, this guy was accused of murdering three people and claimed he didn't do it. It was a real, you know, like I don't know, I don't know whose story is correct, which is exactly, it was just a fantastic argument for not killing people, right? Like, leave him in prison until you can figure some shit out. Yeah, the biggest argument. It was a dubious case, right? And he had been on death row the longest of any inmate who was alive at that point. We're filming him in like 2012, I want to say. And he had, his execution had been scheduled.

He'd gone through all his appeals, right? So he was done with all his appeals. But different things kept happening. Like the prison warden was like, yeah, that guy's got nine lives, then some. Because different things had delayed his execution. Like he should have been dead two or three years before we went and spoke with. and he got married just married by proxy, right, because he can't leave death row, to a French woman who was an anti-death penalty activist named Sandrine Skinner,

when she took his name. I forget her maiden name. Who we got to speak to who was there because he was about to be executed. And then they stayed his execution once again, like first time in Texas history kind of shit. It was really weird. But I remember we got an interview with him and we sat down and we chatted with him. and he was like classic North Texas roughneck like missing a tooth just like like kind of guy you'd see at the back of the bar or whatever

and it was a year after the Warner Herzog documentary into the abyss which was about death row in Texas in Huntsville had come out and um you like in the course of just you know pleasantries were getting the interview started he was like he goes do you know my friend friend Warner and I was like your friend who and he was like my friend Werner and I was like Werner Werner Herzog he's like yeah that guy he's like you know I gave him his uh title right I was like the title of his movie he goes he's like uh what's the quote be careful those y'all

gaze into the abyss for the agis may be beware beware those I'll stop doing my shitty impression. Anyway, it was like, it was, beware of those who gaze into the abyss for the abyss also gazes into you. And he goes, Frederick Nietzsche, also spraggerathustra. And I was like, ah, be still my heart. It was like, this is a man who's just been sitting reading for 20 years on death row. It's like, you took, you took the roughest lump of coal in Texas prison unit and have turned him into some sort of like, a literary scholar. A literary scholar. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry you died. What a weird phenomenon about these women who want to marry dudes on death row. That was the whole thing. I actually met a woman once when I was doing a documentary about my friend who's a lawyer. And he was representing a guy who got the death penalty for killing two prostitutes. He was a truck driver. Yeah.

And he got two prostitutes and they wound up dead. He maintained his innocence. And he, this lawyer. this lawyer that I'm talking about is very, very against the death penalty. So he'll just take random death penalty cases like this. And the lady who he was partnering with as her defense team, she fucking married this dude. Right. And she's been representing him for like the past 15 years, 20 years maybe.

I think I might know who you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. This was in Stark, Florida, which is like the, it's the middle of nowhere, Florida. It's out of a fucking movie, dude. It's like, it's not even a real place. Which, which part of the state? It's like. What is it near?

It's like northern middle. I would say it's close to Gainesville, but more near to the middle of the state. Tallahassee or? Not that far north. Okay, gotcha. I know. Okay, yeah. That is the middle of nowhere.

Yeah, there's like a couple churches, convenient stores and like a water tower. Start. And then the prison. Yeah. For the start. Yeah. Evocative. And the sun never shines and start.

Oh. And anyways, so this guy's maintained his innocence. And I don't remember. what happened with the DNA. I don't even remember this guy's name, but something happened where the DNA was like inconclusive or something like this. Yeah.

And they were still going to execute him. And like leading up to the hours where they were supposed to execute him, they were waiting, they were going back and forth with the Supreme Court. And we are there filming. Yeah. And there's this group,

there's this giant field. On one side of the group, there was people that were there in a group to stop him from getting executed. Right. And in that group of people, the guy had no friends, but he had people that were like former members of death row who got exonerated through DNA evidence, right? So they're like, one of the guys had just got off death row the week before. He's like, I just left death row because they fucking finally got my DNA evidence right.

So and then the other group of people on the other side of the field roped off with caution tape where the victims of the prostitutes or the family members of the prostitutes that got killed and like all their friends. as well as other people who are victims of similar crimes. Right. And, um, dude, what a weird fucking twilight zone situation that was, bro. And then like we were, we were there for like eight hours. This is a Bose moment. Your 10 boring blocks from home until the beat drops in Bose clarity. And the baseline transforms boring into maybe the best part of your day.

Your life deserves music. Your music deserves Bose. Find your perfect product at Bose. This Mother's Day, celebrate the woman who's been there through it all. With Pandora jewelry, choose jewelry that reflects the love you share and the moments that matter most. Now through May 12th, give Mom some extra shine with a special gift from Pandora. Buy any two jewelry pieces and get a third free. Choose from rings, charms, bracelets, and more.

This limited time offer ends soon. Find the perfect Mother's Day gift at your local Pandora store. Or tap the banner. Waiting for this guy to be executed. Like they had him strapped to the cross, right? I guess the lethal injection is kind of like a crucifix. Yeah. And they put it in like a, it's like a peep show, right?

With the window. With the window and the curtain. It's like a peep show. And then you have the people. Wait, did you guys go to the execution? No, we were across the street from the prison in the field. And it's like, how'd you pull down? But apparently he was in the little showroom, like, and the people that were supposed to watch were sitting in the theater.

Yeah. Waiting for this to happen. And this was like an eight-hour ordeal. Going back and forth to the Supreme Court. And then finally they lost and they fucking, you know, they killed him. Yeah. And, you know, just like such a, such a weird, weird, creepy fucking situation. And like, I understand like putting somebody to death for some fucking atrocious crimes.

But the, like you said, the biggest argument against it is the fact that they get it wrong so many times. Like, how many innocent people have they fucking killed? You know, we don't know. Right. Like if we had a magic wand and could fucking go back, take a time machine back and figure out if they actually did it, then that would be, I would not have any problems with the death penalty. But this guy, my lawyer friend, he's so against the death penalty. He was just representing a guy. Well, he knows how the sausages made.

Yeah. He knows the people who are involved in it. This is how. This is how. This is how. Yeah. Totally. Talk to anybody in any field about how things actually go.

Right. And they're like, you know this is all made by idiots, right? Yeah, totally. And this is like a hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So much so that he was just represented.

a guy who was a dentist who killed his lawyer. So he was representing a dude who just killed his previous lawyer and he was getting fucking the death penalty for killing a lawyer. What did he have that lawyer for? A previous murder? I think so. Jeez. He's just going down the daisy chain.

So exactly. And then, so my friend is representing this guy who just killed his lawyer. Yeah. And he fucking somehow gets a hold of a phone call while he's in prison where he's calling his girlfriend or something saying, we're going to fuck this new lawyer out of everything.

We're going to somehow get a mistrial and we're not going to pay him a dime. My lawyer friend got a hold of this. Yeah. And he's like, I'm bowing out of this trial or whatever. And he had the option to give up his evidence or the client, attorney client privilege. Was violated. He could have, he could have given that to the judge. Right, right.

Which would have made the guy be dead, basically. And he elected not to do it, even after this guy conspired to fuck him over. That's how against, yeah. That's how against the death penalty he is, which is fucking wild. Good for him. Yeah. Yeah. Great guy.

But the, you know, the fucking phenomena of people wanting, women wanting to marry people on death row is beyond my comprehension. Takes all types. But it's common. It's very, very common. No. I mean, in terms of numbers, like compared to what? Compared to guys on death row don't get married or compared to how many people get married in America. It's a fringe thing.

It is a French thing. Yeah. Right. But it's, it's not, I mean, you hear about it a lot. And we're a big country, you know. Maybe it's just when it does happen, we just, it's all over the headlines. So we think it happens everywhere. Right. Yeah. I mean, Charles Manson got married how many times when he was on, when he was in prison? Did he? Yeah, I forget. He got married a few times, I think. Is it more than once? Yeah. I think so. But I think it's like a real psychological thing, you know, like, like, I mean, I know people who married people in prison. Oh, they eventually got out. They weren't on death row. You know? I think we, I'm trying to remember how many people we interviewed who were. who were proper like death row wives right and couldn't have been more than four what a good

tv show death row wives maybe actually they were they were characters you know um but it was in general and it wasn't uh there was always a reason you could always figure it out really like there was always something that had happened there was a lot of i forget how many of the four had had previous, like, had come out of abuse of relationships and things like that. And so you think, well, you wouldn't want to go, you know, you wouldn't want to be connected to somebody accused of murder, right? But it's also like, I'm trying to remember who it was who kind of broke this down neatly. It was somebody who worked either in the county clerk's office where did they get married

or something like that. But if you think about it, for a woman who's had a hard time with men and who's, you know, been traumatized, it's like, here's a guy you always know where he's going to be. Anytime you see him, he's never going to cheat on you. Yeah, there's glass and guards between you. And you can, you know, you can have an emotional relationship with someone who can't turn it around on you, right? Right. Who's not going to be able to can't get through the glass.

You can go buy them little snacks that you, you know, put in the bucket. It goes over to them. And so. There's no conjugal visits on death row, right? Not in Texas. Not in Texas. That's for fucking sure. Yeah.

No. I don't know about elsewhere. That's a little European for us here. A little European. Well, so's death row, I should say. The prison is pretty American. Although it's thinking of the French lady who married Hank Skinner, Sandrine, and the fact that she was a French anti-death row activist is always funny that 1980, believe it's 1980.

Well, 1980 is the year France outlawed the death penalty. and I think it's 1978 so the year the deer hunter came out is the last time the guillotine

was used in 1978 was the last time? Yeah so she was Sandry yeah in her

in her teens I think and she was in early like that was she was part of the activist community

that got them to outlaw the death penalty uh it was either in France or it was in like Martinique

which is still France or like French Guiana you know it's a department of France it's like a state

Right. Last time the guillotine was used for... 77. Okay, sorry, the year Star Wars came out. That wasn't that fucking long ago, bro. I know, right? It's pretty funny. Ten years before I was born.

Right. A Tunisian man was beheaded after being convicted of murder. Does it say where they did it? I'm curious which Department of France it was. If it was in Metropolitan France or... Oh, he's in Marseilles. Oh, it must have been, yeah. Okay, they didn't probably...

Oh, they did it in Marseilles. Bormit prison. interesting hmm what you do oh Jesus Pimp killer he was known as the

pimp killer I mean does that he killed pimps or is that was he also was it like pimpcom it says in the 73

a 21 year old woman had met in the hospital while receiving while recovered from an amputation filed a complaint against him stating that he had tried

to force her into prostitution he beat women to death that fucking sucks he tried to force amputees into prostitution Jeez. That's pretty metal.

Wow. Release from custody during the... Oh, and he amputated her. What the fuck. Oh, he did the amputation? I'm just going to say, this guy sounds like a bit of a jerk. Holy shit, dude. Maybe you deserve the guillotine.

Hey, look, I'm not... God, the guillotine would probably be pretty painless. That's the whole idea. Yeah, you wouldn't feel shit. Public safety razor. That was its official name. The public safety razor, really? Dr. Guatine, who made it.

Yeah. made it because it was like the previous method of beheading people was you hit their head with an axe and that depends on how well you swung it. Sometimes it takes a couple swings. Sometimes takes a couple swings. Yeah. And so the guillotine's whole point was that it was like, look, comes down evenly, heads off, dead immediately or dead in six seconds or whatever. There's actually some people that refute that they die instantly because they hold up the head. They hold up the head.

And it's still talking. Right, right. What the fuck is that, bro? Are you still conscious after that? Well, you know, you still got blood in your brain for the first few seconds. Yeah. Why wouldn't your brain keep working just because it's been, you know, maybe the shock of having your fucking spinal cord and, you know, whole neck severed would be enough to, like, kill you. Like the way some people, like, when shot are, you know, dead before they hit the ground.

Just because the body, it shocks the body so hard for that. Yeah. But who knows? you know? Yeah. Such a weird thing. Like, let's try to find out more humane ways

to fucking murder people. Such a funny thing. I'm sure I've fucking been telling this. I told this story with Hamilton. Me and Hamilton talked about the Mr. Death documentary. Oh, right. Yeah.

Well, his dad made that. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Fucking amazing document. Incredible documentary. Yeah. Right.

Fred Luchter, right? Lutcher. No, Lutcher. Fred Lutcher. Oh, it's Lutcher. Fred Lutcher. Just fucking figured out how to repair an electric chair

or make it more humane so people didn't fucking get turned into vegetables. Found himself a job. Yeah. Got a great job, right? No, yeah. Made gas chambers, then got fucking hoodwinked by Zundel, and then to testify against how the Jews weren't really killed by the gas chamber. Was that during the David Irving trial? Was he the character or the expert witness in that? I thought it was the Ernst Zundel. Is that? That sounds right. Okay. I haven't seen it for a long time.

What year, can you find out what year the Ernst's Zundle? All those Holocaust deniers kind of, you know, sound the same after a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. They're still around, bro. They're still fucking never. It's like there's this new. Oh, what on the internet? On Quora? There's a crazy resurgence of, uh, of anti-Semitism online and Christianity, interestingly enough.

Yeah. Everyone's becoming a Christian right now. Right. I've seen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like all these, uh, podcasters are getting baptized and, uh, you know, on, on, on YouTube. What was that thing you were saying about figuring out your niche so that you can maximize do you think that's what it is?

Yeah, of course. I had my friend told me that yesterday, too. I was talking to my buddy, uh, Neil about this. And he was thinking, he was saying the same thing. Yeah. getting baptized on camera is attention seeking behavior I'm sorry

No is this Ernst Zon okay yeah Zundl Oh 85 oh 85 okay so I thought it was farther longer Is it got a Loitur Loiter and is a or Lutcher Hmm Yeah

Whatever happened with that trial He lost right Is he where is he now Zundel? Does it say where he is? I don't know Where's this fucking weirdo now He died

Bad, wild bad. In Germany. In Germany. Bad in Wartonburg, Germany. That's three bads. That's how bad that guy was. Yeah. I don't know.

I don't know. I guess there are a lot of Christians in the United States. I guess there's more Christians here than anywhere. On earth? Yeah, there's more Christians in the U.S. In South America? Brazil would be number two, I think. The United States is number one.

Yeah, we're number one. Brazil's number two. I think Mexico is number three. and then probably Russia. I was to guess. I was going to get Russia also, yeah. Yeah. Huh.

But yeah, what a weird thing to do for views become a Christian. I don't know. I can't, I can't, I just can't imagine that people would do that. Would grift Christianity. Well, right. It, it, um,

it overturns your expectations, doesn't it? You'd never, what, what wouldn't you, you know, what's the least likely thing you'd think of to become like an internet trend? How about Catholicism, right?

And then here we are. Yeah. Or is it just like people copycatting other people? Well, that too. Yeah. Then it becomes social contagion. Yeah. Right.

That becomes real. And it's one of, you know, you pick from the big four religions. It's like, pick the one you grew up with. Muslim. Like, you get a little bit of that too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I love how when you. you and Gavin were talking. He was talking about how much he hates Islam. And you're like, well, there's like a quarter of the world's population. A third. A third of the world's population. That's your enemy? And he's like, one third of all humanity.

He's like, uh, yeah, so. And you're like, which Islam countries have you been to? He's like, uh, Paris. Right. Yeah. Got me there. If there's going to be racist, this is what I will say. It's just bar arguing.

If there is, I don't, I'm not calling Gavin racist. okay but if there are racists i would rather than be self-aware funny racists and out and open i was going to say that that that's like malcolm max yeah i forget his term for it let me use is that is there a quote about that yeah i really wish i could remember the quote better because he was talking about like overt racism yeah in in american whites versus um kind of like white liberals in the 50s and 60s who he referred to as I want to say it was like wolves versus like a dog that may turn on you or something. He's like, at least I know where I stand.

Yes. With the, you know, the wallaces. Right. Forget the sheriff's name, but yeah. Yeah. Of the world. Have you heard of, what is that gentleman's name again? I've had him on the show.

He's the black dude who turned a bunch of KKK people out of the KKK. Darrell Davis. Oh, okay. I've heard of him. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He was a basically, when he was a kid, he was like marching, doing some march and some parade or something with the Boy Scouts.

And then somebody, somebody like threw a fucking brick and hit him in the head. Jesus. Yeah. And he was like, what the fuck was that? And that was the first time he ever experienced racism. His mom had to like sit him down. That's a pretty bad one. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Usually it's someone says, you know. Yeah. And his mom had to like explain to him and he didn't understand it. He was like, what? I don't understand. And he spent like his whole college, he went to school overseas in like Europe or something like that.

What is that word again when you do exchange? Study abroad. Oh. No, there's a foreign exchange. Foreign exchange student. Yeah. Study abroad. Not that retarded.

Oh, sorry. Which broad we'd study? How dare you? So anyway, so he came back here when he was in his teens or whatever. And then I forget, I think he was in Virginia, maybe. I could be wrong. Tennessee, Virginia, one of the two. Anyways, he went to a bar and there ended up being like a bunch of KKK people there.

And he was like talking to him, whatever. And then he met one guy or whatever. And he was like befriending the guy that were talking about music and all this stuff. And he said he really liked the guy. And then he learned like, you know, a couple hours of the conversation that this guy was in the KKK. And he was like, whoa, what? And so he basically, you know, he made his life's mission to like meet every KKK member he possibly could. And he had to like trick a lot of them.

Like he was trying to meet these grand wizards and stuff like that. So he was setting them up saying, oh, there's this journalist who wants to meet you or whatever. And they wouldn't say he was black. and they would fucking walk they would film some of the some of it and they'd be like

what the fuck whatever anything they ended up sitting down and talking to him and he befriended a lot of them and got a lot of them to fucking lay down their wizard hats

and you know denounce the KKK and all this crap and he was saying like the number one common denominator I think if I remember correctly

between all of these people was that they had never left like the little town they were raised and born and raised in never once like traveled outside of state lines

You know, you're just fucking ignorant of the world. Right. I mean, you know, I grew up in Georgia in the 90s, so it was like, you hear it from people's parents. It wasn't that, you know, there wasn't, it wasn't everybody, right? Small percentage of the population. But I never heard it from anyone who I figured out was smart later on. It always came from the middle of the packer lower types of people. people, you know.

On the IQ chain. If you want to, yeah, if you want to use that metric. It's a good metric. I've seen a resurgence of IQ talk a lot lately. Yeah. It's like I feel like a lot of these people think it's like a Dungeons and Dragons stat. They don't understand what IQ is supposed to be and how it's assessed or whatever, that it's just like a hard number that is intelligence, you know?

And it would be like, that guy is, you know, the guy with the 118 IQ is five smart. than the guy with the 113. So he should be in charge. Yeah. Yeah, you guys were talking about this too. Oh, was I? Somebody complimented you about having a high IQ. Like, oh, that's nice.

And you're like, you were like bragging it or something. You know what it means. Something like it's great. Like you like the IQ argument when you're smart. Oh, no, I'm sorry. You're right. I forgot that was in the, I made it into the cut.

I was talking to Gavin about it. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. I was talking about because he bases a lot of his arguments in IQ and stuff. And I'm like, I think IQ is kind of bullshit. I think it's like, I don't think it equates to intelligence. Like, I don't think there's a hard number that you can put on that. And there's tremendous number of examples that you can pull from just to kind of demonstrate that.

And also, it was like when I was talking to them, this would have been in like the mid-2000s, you know, at the vice office or whatever. And it'd probably be in relation to that book the bell curve. And I'm like, when were all these, you know, when did he IQ test every race? What, like the 70s? like how how hard of a you know kind of innate characteristic is this that it's going to last that we can rely on it 40 years later with a completely different group of people than the sample or whatever and he said he was like well he had that his his retort was he was like well one time I heard your first wife say that you had an high IQ and I'm like that's your argument that my ex-wife

once said something. I was like, all right. But you didn't argue about it. You agreed with her. I don't even know if I was there. I don't even know if that happened. He didn't know, like he didn't remember my ex-wife's name. Right, right, right.

He identified her by her breast, which I was like, it was a little, you know. So what was the premise of that Belker book? Oh, just that, um, I never made it more than five pages into that. Oh. It's famously that there's, uh, if you, If you look at IQs by race, the bell curve is a normal distribution and that the different races come out at different averages on it. Right, right, right.

I think most within a standard deviation, maybe some within two, but it's big, it helps prop up arguments that race is genetically determinative of people's intelligence and achievement. And it's like how many people's IQ test is fucking based on. Yeah, sure. How are we defining race? It's like... Yeah, and the way he was, he was explaining it, and I could be wrong, is that the argument was it was like recognizing patterns in IQ

and different types of races, but like you have to look at each individuals, like in a vacuum, right? A separate individual. He treats everybody as individual. Keep everybody's individual, right? You can't automatically like take so okay, oh, okay, you are Chinese,

so you are automatically better at math. Like, it's not... Right, right, even though I could hear him saying that very easily. It's tricky in that the term, racism means both hates people of other races, but also there's, I guess, what we used to call scientific racism, too, that is, like,

race is a biological reality, and that a person's skin color is directly correlated to, you know, genetically determine traits which govern their intelligence and how they behave and that kind of shit. And they overlap tremendously. One can lead to the other, and vice versa, and so forth, but yeah.

But the, so the Chinese argument is interesting. So are Chinese people generally more good at math because they're because of their heritage or is it because of their culture that they're the way their school the way their education system works it's going to be 99% their fucking culture in my mind um of course because it's like what is the chinese person somebody with you know pure han heritage where does that begin like at what point is the chinese race begin and what delineates it if a you know Korean woman marries a chinese guy and they have a kid is he now half, does he now have half

the Chinese prowess in math? Like, it's just, it's baloney. You know, it's discredited nonsense. Yeah, I had this dude on. Everybody in the world behaves like I, you know, like they look, you know, it's just not a, not a great, yeah. The funny thing.

It doesn't have much scientific rigor to it. Right. Right. Yeah, totally. I had this dude from the human genome project on here and he was telling me that all, every single human being on earth descended from something like 10,000 people. Right. There's the bottleneck, right? Yeah. The big genetic bottleneck. It's insane.

We came from that many people and they're like, you know, it's not that fucking, we're not that fucking different. We're pretty much saying. And another funny thing is even so like there's this whole generational war between Israel and Palestine, right? Also, they have, they're literally genetically identical. Oh, it's, I mean, it's funnier than that. People talk about Palestinian anti-Semitism and it's like, they're Semitic people too, you know? Yeah. It's like, I know, I understand that we're dressing up the word Jew hate. Right.

With anti-Semitism, but it's like, can we at least be a little more accurate? Yeah. Right. No, it is the same fucking people. They have the same exact heritage. They come from the Canaanites, both of them. Right. It's just fucking culture shit.

The idea of that groups, we, back when, like, it was taken, like, high flute and critical theory, like, graduate classes at, in college. We talk about, like, essentialism and essentialism. and essentialist narratives. And the idea that these, you know, the traits, specifically the traits you can see in the traits that you can organize people into groups with are, you know, necessarily innate

and that a Palestinian person must behave Palestinianly because of their Palestinianness, you know, is like 100% concocted horseshit, right? Yeah, it's different. It's, it's, uh, that all these, all these, you know, it's like the borders of a, of a country. There's like, it's like some guy made these, right? Yeah.

These is, I guess it's, you know, become some sort of dog whistle or not to be like, this is a social construct, which doesn't mean it's not, it doesn't have validity or it's not, you know, important or useful or whatever. It's like, but this is 100% socially constructed shit that could change that, you know, should be examined. Mm-hmm. And this is also part of the thing we were talking about, like the social contagion and how, like, the media fuels all this stuff, right? because like 99.999% of people who have an opinion on things like Israel and Palestine or Iran don't have a fucking clue about what it's like there or like what the people are like there nor have they met people there. And it's like fucking, you know, just the television. But they've all got an opinion. Yeah.

They've all got a take. They've all got a take. Which is, you know, they've stolen from somebody else who that person stole it from somebody else. course. And, you know, it's like, internet is a font of received wisdom. It's like nothing else. It's like nothing is fucking real anymore.

Right. We're in post reality. But how real was it before? And why was it real before, right? This is my thing. I've got a girlfriend who's kind of freaked out about the fact that you can no longer read the news and trust sources and things of this nature.

I'm like, well, why do you trust them to begin with? How much does this actually change your life, right? You know? And how much of this is seeing the lay of the land that, that previously felt firm and stable from a new vantage point, right? You know, we all know now

to take what the New York Times writers write with a grain of salt because they fucked up things, right? Yeah. And, you know, there's a slant to almost everything they write that can be, you know, delineated into a discrete agenda.

We're more aware of the bullshit now. But what, you know, at what point did this start? Why was, you know, like, how do you not think that that was the case with specifically the New York Times in like the 60s and 70s? And what is then the basis for your understanding of history? Right, right. Project Mockingbird. Wait, which one's that?

I think that was during Kennedy where he gave, he gave, um, I was thinking of Project Mungoose. Type in Project Mockingbird. I don't want to fuck this up. But basically what it was, it was like allowing the top four or five news publications. Oh, Henry Lutz. The CIA. So Project Mockingberg refers to the two distinct but related activities by the CIA. One was a telephone intercent program officially named Project Mockingbird, targeting two journalists for publishing classified information.

There was Operation Mockingbird. Much broader program. It seems like there's two. One's an alleged program. Go up, go up, go up, up, up, up, up, up, up, engaged in a widespread. Ferrymanering. I get it. Manipulating the American news media for propaganda purposes.

Right. So what year was that? 63. Right. So it was the intelligence agency specifically influencing the news media for propaganda. Like, of course, yeah. I mean, there's, what was it? We were talking about Time Magazine earlier. And Henry Lutz, I don't know how you pronounce his name, Lutzi, Lucci, is famously like a effect, he's close friends with the Dulles Brothers, an effective mouthpiece for whatever, you know, whatever ideas they want to put out into the public discourse, you know. that's the nature of the beast yeah yeah yep everything for the almighty it's nice that it has a project name though right because it's also it's like this is it's like frankly this is how journalism power and society work there's a few people and no matter their you know specific

duties they they all you know kind of collaborate with each other socialize like how do you think journal you know how do you think journalists get get the information that they get it's by being at dinner parties it's by knowing having a guy that you can call regularly um in like what kind of guy you're talking about sources right right right what is a source right you know and how does like i wonder how it works today like in publications like the new york times or these other big magazines right like with with how like did they know they're being influenced by the government or intelligence agencies or does that just kind of like happen without them knowing about it and they kind of like gets massaged in or like sources get planted i have a friend who because i because it's interesting because i have a friend

who was publishing a piece on how the see this was like two years ago he was working on this piece where uh with like 25 sources where who were all former intelligence community people in the u.s yeah and it was basically exposing how the CIA was using a nato proxy intelligence in service to conduct sabotage operations inside of Russia, like blowing up munitions depots and train tracks and things like this. And he worked on the, he worked on the store for wet works. No, he worked on the sort of like over a year with 25 different sources or whatever with an editor at, I don't know, he didn't tell me exactly, he didn't want to give me the exact name of the publication, but it was like one of the top three. And it came time to publish it around December. And he had

like one final call before they pressed the button to launch the story, right? Right. And she the editor of the piece that he was working with was like, okay, we gotta have one more call with the deputy director of the CIA. He's like, what? Here it comes. So, like, they're on the phone, and they're going through it or whatever, and he goes, I categorically deny all of this. This is untrue.

And even if it was true, this would put people's lives at risk. Right. Right? So it's like, we're not gonna, he's like, I completely deny this, whatever, this is false, blah, blah, blah. And he was like, okay, fine, we'll put a blurb at the end of the article saying the deputy director categorically denies any of this is real. And then so he hangs up and he's like, cool, let's go.

Let's go ahead and launch it. I'll write this up. We'll add it to the story and we'll be done. And the editor goes, no, we have an off-the-record agreement with the CIA. So if they deny anything, we will not publish it. Click. Right. That's the end of that.

Right. So just one anecdote, if that's happening, you know, with people wasting fucking a year of their life on a story and such like that can happen. And I wonder how much more is going on. Who knows? We will never know. We will never fucking know. But, yeah, Project Mockingbird, 1963.

Kennedy. It's a weird time. We're living in with the media, bro, and all these individual content creators and put these, like, it's funny too. There's like only a certain amount of platforms that exist. Right. To publish all this stuff, right?

Well, that's the weird part, right? Like, wasn't the dream of the internet that everybody can just publish their own thing and make their own website? Yeah, that was the best internet. How did we end up with like four websites? Consolidated. This is called social media.

Right, right, right. Well, it's media consolidation, which I grew up in the middle of, you know, in the 90s, right. Right, right. But it's interesting to see it on the, you know, the great democratizing medium of the internet, you know? And then Google, too. I'm familiar with, like, the history of Google

and how it was like incubated by the CIA and, and like funded with DARPA money and shit like that. funded with Darry. Everything is I love when like fucking tech bros talk about like the self-made men of Silicon Valley. Right. Like you guys were fucking subsidized by. Sergey Brayin was getting visited by the NSA, CIA, DARPA. The entirety of Silicon Valley's existence. Yeah. Which is a little unsettling, right?

Oh, sure. The whole whole thing's unsettling. You know, so you have you have Google and YouTube, which are basically one. number one and two websites on the earth face of the earth what was the recent one that oh open i i just um what did they do like just this morning it was an announcement so maybe they did it a while ago they either gave they're in partnership either directly with the defense department or uh palenteer at oh my god don't take my word on that yeah one of those things such that everybody was like great you know it's like well it's the way it's the way all the shit has worked for the last 30 years why shit changed now, you know? Yeah, I don't know if shit's just

getting worse or I'm paying more attention. Well, could be both. Open AI has secured a $200 million contract with you. It is Defense Department. Okay. To develop a prototype AI system for national security applications. Okay. Well, that's not as bad as the contract Pallenteer got two weeks ago for 800 million from the Pentagon. It's not as much. Can you Google Palantir's recent Palantir, new Palantir defense contract. There was, did you see, what's his name, Alex Carp? Did you see the video of him, um, fantasizing about, uh, getting drones to spray fentanyl-l-laced urine on CIA analyst who had fucked him over?

He was, uh, this is a real video? Yeah, yeah, it's him, uh, he's doing some sort of Q&A on a stage with, with, like, I don't know what the fucking context of it was, but they were asking him about like, think about his, like, dreams and earth as, like, fantasies. for what they can do with technology or something like that. And he talked about, he mentions being like, oh, you want my good dreams or like my dark dreams

or whatever. And they're like, well, let's start with the dark dreams. And he's like, I wish. And you see him getting like his voice starts to crack. And he's like, actually angry. And he's like, I wish I could have a fleet of drone spray, fentanyl-laced urine on every analyst who's fucked me over. And it's like, your fantasy is to frame

intelligence agents for drug use. Like, you're a man in his 50s, I believe, and like the head of one of the most, like, not only successful, but powerful companies on earth. Isn't it also interesting that Peter Thiel's one of the owners of Palantir, who's been one of the biggest Trump supporters in history, and Alex Karp is the CEO of Palantir who just donated like millions of dollars to Kamala Harris for her campaign.

Oh, did he? Yeah. He admitted it in his New York Times. article. There you go. Such a weird thing, bro. It's like this uniparty thing behind line, like, behind our projection of right and left is like all the billionaires who doesn't matter to them because they're just going to still get whatever they're going to control everything. Right. They're going to co-opped whatever side. Right. So it's a, so the recent Palantir. Have you ever had Harold Innes? It's, uh, they're, um, what do you call them? They're a technology

monopoly. Anytime a new technology takes roots that the people in control of it, eventually consolidate and often conspire into a new effective political elite. You know, happened with radio and television. You could argue it happened with the printing press back in the late 15th century. And we're watching it happen now. Do you ever read Marshall McLuhan or Neil Postman? I've read a little bit of Marshall McLuhan. Okay.

Do you know Neil Postman is yet a protege who wrote a little less optimistically, kind of about very much around similar things. I've actually, I mentioned this. because I've got his book in the other room. I just brought it on the plane. His most famous book is called Amusing Ourselves to Death. Oh, yes, I have heard of that. You seen that? Yeah, the famous cover.

And it's good. And it's sort of like, you know, whereas Marshall McLuhan was like, those who, those who fear, like, television for what is on it right now missed the fact that it's the format of the medium that is, that will impart the great cultural changes. That's the whole idea with, you know, the medium is the message. The medium is the message. Right. That it's like you can't cram Shakespeare. onto television. Television will be its own thing. It'll have its own effect. It'll be disruptive and it'll be good and bad and we have to, you know, it's like just wait and adjust. And Neil Postman comes along

20 years later and he's like, you know, it wouldn't hurt if we put some Shakespeare or something on it. It's like we don't, just because, you know, the content is less important than the format of the medium doesn't mean we have to put literal garbage on it, you know, like watch TV in America in the 80s. And it's like, we could do a little bit better than turning all news into entertainment and et cetera and so forth. Anyways, you wrote a book called Technopoly in the early 90s, which is what I'm reading right now. And it's, which is predictive and it's amazing because it's so early, he doesn't even, like,

the internet hasn't been named yet. So what he's referring to is he's like computer information systems. He's like, and computers will be, you know, recapitulating some of the, like, cultural effects and political effects of the printing press. He's like, but this is different because whereas the printing press is a technology that you could, you know, if you taught someone how to make a printing press, they could go to their country or their little town or whatever and set up their new printing press. It's like we haven't had an experience before, except, you know, arguably like television radio or something like that where the, you know, the means of the information revolution is controlled by companies. You can't build your own computer. Like you can't build your own silicon transistors.

that this is, this changes the lay of the land, that people control, you know, people control every single element, specific people, you know, specific people at specific companies. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the idea of, of content being less important than the medium is interesting, you know, like, and how does that evolve, right? Like how, like, just look how it's evolved so far. Well, I still think back with a sad sort of wistfulness about fighting the war against the word content. Because that was like mid-2000s, I'm trying to remember the first time I heard it. But it was literally something that like marketing and advertising guys would say as a placeholder for something they were selling, right? You know, well, we're going to make like a tip in, which would be like a little thing that goes inside the magazine, you know, for camel cigarettes or science.

is like commoditizing it. And it will content is like it, I mean, content makes it content. And he's like, and then the content, which literally means whatever the fuck we put in here. Exactly. You know, um, whoever's art or writing. Exactly. But it's, it's all interchangeable.

It really doesn't matter. It's just, you know, just loramips and this shit up right now. And to have that become the actual term that people, all it means is it's taking art and turning it into a vehicle for revenue. Sausage filling, right? Yes. It's what goes in the casing. The casing is what you sell.

but the content's what's in it. It's crazy to me and this is a long lost battle to hear kids refer to it. It's like my goal in life is to be a content creator and it's just like brutal. Or just like going through your life

and experiencing like an interesting moment and be like, whoa, hold on. This is content. Grist for the mill. Yeah. We are all now millers of experience. And people will like, you know, this is real.

People will choose what they're going to do with their life. or with their day based on what kind of content they can get or what kind of video they can get like what are we going to do today timmy oh i don't know let's fucking go to the lake and fucking see if we can catch a shark if it gets them out of the house i'm happy yeah yeah it's just weird how like it's it's reversed yeah it's reversed now you're going to design your day based around how much content you can get well it's like flipping the news right from an event happens and you see it and so you write about it to communicate that event to other people too. You go and seek out the event and sometimes cause it such that it is news.

Right, right. Yeah, it was like, even Hamilton was telling a story about this, how like some company tried to get him to conduct an interview and they wanted to reverse engineer the interview. Oh, oh, that's very common. Yeah. And he was talking about National Geographic and how that was kind of the way they did their, the way they would pre-produce a documentary, right, instead of just being like, oh, this seems like this seems like an interesting person go film him.

They would want to know exactly exactly what was going to be said there, exactly how it was going to be set up, and exactly how it would end. And we'd sometimes get folks like that in the early days in the video stuff. They would come in sometimes from like commercial video, like making ads or whatever. And then sometimes from like places that are like Nat Geo where it's like not quite the news, but like mainstream media, whatever,

who would want to know how a story ended, you know? know, while writing the pitch, right, in order to get the green light to get out the door. And you're like, well, you don't realize, like, if you haven't told this, you know, if you haven't seen and reported the story, how do you know how it's going to end? Right. And I think for the most part in those, like, at places like that, Hamilton wouldn't dance with them. But, like, the way, the way it is is that you just, you make up some bullshit and you get out the door.

And then if the story changes, maybe you get some, like, guy with a dick up his ass who's like, oh, you said it was going to end this way. I don't, you know, you have to go back and make it into this. way or whatever. Yeah, right. But it is a crummy way to do anything that's supposed to be reporting, right? Right, right. To know your story. It's like, and it's like, it's like, it's boring. Like, why would you want to go tell a story that you already know the, you know, the ending of? Like, why don't you just sit at your desk and chat it out? Why don't you just get chat GPT and the Defense Department to spit out fucking copy for you for your content, right? Yeah. Like, yeah. Why bother?

That generation is fucking fading into the dark of people that are, you know, like you're able to express that sentiment because you've, you can't, you were raised in the 90s going, you know, working at Biden doing this stuff. Yeah, but my generation sucked too. We were one magazine out of hundreds of thousands, right? And there were probably a couple other good ones, but we were, you know, the shining stars of that. Yeah. It's like when people are nostalgic for like, you know, the yeah, yeah, yeah, and stuff. And I'm like, you know, most people were listening to the black eyed peas back then. but it's we always at it

the yeah yeah yeah yes I forgot about the yeah yeah yes still going strong you know it's funny I was listening to uh you ever had it ever happened to you or like you randomly hear a song that you've like used to listen to when you were really really young and uh you hear it now like for me it would be like 25 years later

and it's like fuck I'm really embarrassed to be listening to this but I'm gonna play it on repeat I was gonna say without the embarrassment I do that every day Yeah. No, no, no, no. It happened to me recently. I love it. Little time capsules. Yeah, I went to a Metallica concert the other day and Limp Biscuit opened it for me. And I was like, so I was like, okay, whatever.

I would never go to a Limp Biscuit concert. I would never admit to wanting to go to a Limp Biscuit concert. But I got there and I was like in the middle of the snake pit thing. Yeah. And they fucking started playing Nookie and I was like, fuck, this is awesome. Jacked you up. This is sweet. And I've been listening to it on Spotify and my truck for the last week.

That's how they get you. I'm kind of ashamed to admit. Well, I take it back. That is a generation gap, though. It is a generation gap. I used to get driven to school by, when I was like 15 by a juggalo, a juggolette, a girl who was like a grade up. It was really into insane clown posse. And we'd have to listen to insane clown posse like every fucking day in the car.

And it's like, I've grown to, I went to the gathering of the juggalo's. I've grown to really love insane clown posse. But at the time, you know, I was a little teenage sophisticate. And I was like, come on, man, bugs on my nuts again. We really have to listen to this every fucking day at this volume, you know? in the back of your civic. And one day she was excited.

She was like, hey, she's like, I just found this new band they're punk. Like, I'm really excited about them. And she's like,

and I think, I think you, like, I think you'll like them, like a little more than like ICP. Or ever, I'm like, cool.

I was like, I like punk stuff. Yeah, absolutely. And it was limp biscuit doing faith, George Michael's faith. And I was like, I did not think there was something in this world

that could be worse than bugs on my nuts. or chicken honor but here it fucking is yeah yeah it's pretty bad it's pretty bad but it's so bad it's good you know and listen if you're a limp biscuit listener out there there's nothing wrong with listening

to limp biscuit you shouldn't be ashamed of it oh no flyer you fart proudly isn't that what benjamin Franklin said did you say that well I'm paraphrasing it's like that's how it's known he wrote an essay about that which is you're just like fly your flag man like

yeah own I listen to embarrassing shit too. We were talking about listening to Screwdriver earlier. Who cares what you listened to? Exactly. If it makes you happy, how does the rest of that

Cheryl Crow line go? It's not that bad. It's something that bad. I'm getting the, it's scanning the arm. It might not be that bad. Nah, I can't. If it makes you happy

is not that bad. It can't be that bad. It can't be that bad. And then it becomes, why are you so sad? Yeah. Why the hell? If it makes you happy,

Happy, why the hell are you so sad? Right. Yeah. I'm really, I noticed, I realized that I'm like, I regret not going to more concerts in my youth. Oh. I don't know if you have that same regret, but like it's, they went to a bunch. You went to a bunch? I missed, there's, you ever heard the band Orchid?

No. They were like, I feel bad calling them. They were a hardcore band, right? I guess you could call them screamo, right? I tried to see them at least twice in high school and something happened each time. I went to go see them. Like my car broke down one of the times. I think I got lost one of the times,

which is a funny thing you even consider in this day and age. Yeah. But you could certainly do it in Atlanta in the 90s. And then I met the singer from Orchid. He actually worked like with Vice for a little while or whatever. He was in other bands like Panthers and what was his third band? It was even better.

Violent bullshit was his band. His name's Jason Green. And he was like, and he would hang out. Like I was friends with a bunch of people. I got to know him. He'd be at the bar, be very friendly. And he was kind of like, like, you know, year or two older, but it was like a teenage icon to me.

And I missed him again. He was in Chicago and I got sick. And so that's the one thing. I regret. Yeah. And that just happened last year. Oh, really? Right.

But otherwise, I saw plenty of concerts. I'm pretty good. Here's the DOD thing with Palantir. So what was it? How much was it? 800 million. one i see 1.3 billion well it was a

according to 3 billion was like a three year deal right so the for maven their most recent installment which was like two weeks ago was 800 million yeah um so goes

yeah I had this lady in here the other day what does maven do maven is one of their new uh products I don't know what exactly does scroll down it accelerates the targeting cycle and reduces civilian casualties

according to AI invest. So it can scan people's faces and figure out their terrorist. Sounds like some facial scanning crap, yeah. I'll see. Sounds like it, nothing could go wrong there. Exactly. There's this lady I had in the other day who was a like a math wizard who was a part of the work for the Department of HUD

during the Bush years. Yeah. And she was talking about Doge, like Elon's Doge thing. It's not pronounced doggy. Oh, I thought it was pronounced Doge. I thought the whole deal was that was how the dog spells it, right? Right? I like that. That's good.

I'm going to start calling it doggie. Doge. So I'm going to steal that. Doggy. So she was basically talking about how, you know, doggy is all about creating the, you know, figuring out all this waste, fraud and abuse or whatever. And Elon's going for the IRS, the Social Security, HHS, Treasury, all this stuff. and trying to weed out all these things

and all these people in these departments. And she was making the case. She's like, I remember during the Bush years, in fact, it was the day before 9-11 when Donald Runsville came out and said there's $2.5 trillion missing from the Pentagon. And it was the part of the Pentagon

that got hit by the plane. Oh, sorry. It was, wasn't it? You're right. It may or may not have been, it may or may not be germained anything. That's the word on the street. Sorry, right.

Anyways, so now that missing money that is still unaccounted for from the Pentagon has ballooned to like somewhere in the realms of like 20 something trillion. Sure. From the DOD in the Pentagon. So she's like, if I'm Elon and I'm trying to find missing money, I'm going to look at the $21 trillion black hole in the Pentagon, not trying to like waste time with a bunch of middle managers. A bunch of middle managers at the IRS, HHS and Social Security. And like, I was like, whoa. And she's like, okay, if you look at that, she goes, and this was her theory.

This is all conjecture, obviously. But this was an interesting fucking story. She was saying that if I wanted to create a digital social credit system that was controlled with money. Right. And HHS and all this stuff. She goes, I would go to get all the data from the IRS, the Treasury,

HHS, and Social Security, and I would integrate it with AI to have like a complete comprehensive 360 degree database of every citizen in America. And she goes, that's exactly what Elon did. Right.

She literally, he literally was working with Palantir to integrate all the, and XAI, to integrate all that data. Right. Into these AIs. Yeah. And they're trying to do this thing then apparently a part of this big beautiful bill is the stable coin stuff. So she's saying like they want to use stable coin.

I don't remember exactly how she worked in the stable coin angle. Right. But like somehow stable coins will be able to make this whole thing work with creating, you know, basically like, you know, Elon said before that he's a, he's really, he admires China's, we chat thing. Right. Or China has this thing where like finance and social media and everything is condescending. into one app, right? Essentially, it's called WeChat. And he thinks that that's cool

and he wanted to model X off of it. So she's like, if I wanted to do that, she's like, that's exactly what the fuck out of doing. Well, he wants to make the everything app, right? Yeah, he wants to make the everything app. So are we turning into China? There are worse places to turn into. I kind of like China, frankly.

Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the last time you were there? It's been a bit. 2014, 2015, maybe. Okay. Or so. But I like growing up like I was really you know

Like we didn't we didn't we didn't have the term weibo Yeah but me and my friends we loved like Akira and we called it Japanimation back then Like anime right like I remember when Hollywood video changed the Shelf from Japanimation Really? We were like an I'm what the fuck is this? Like that's how they say it in Japan right? Anyway, so I always loved Japan grown up right and it didn't mean I hated China, but it was like my preference would have been oh if I can go anywhere in the world, I would love to go to Japan. Yes. And I ended up

pitching and then getting roped into some stories in China, like, which I was equally excited to do, but I just, I never thought China would be my thing. And then I went there and I was like, this place rules. This feels like what I assume 1970s America felt like.

What? These people are awesome. This place is great. How so? Well, I mean, it's you know, speaking in crash generalizations. It's a bunch of second generation farmers who were just yanked

into modernity like 30 years ago, maybe 40 years ago at this point or whatever. Like, people spit in the streets constantly. You see combovers that you can't believe. No one expects to be filmed or appear on TV. They don't have that

like star lust that's just like endemic to the average American. You know, they They're just kind of going about their own fucking business. And I would, you know, when I'd go somewhere, we had a really cool office too. We had a foreign office in China, vice. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the editor was this rad gal named Maddie Zhu, right? I might be fucking up for the last name. Maddie Jew, shout out. Shout out. And then this other guy who was, I forget his title there, but he ruled. His name was Billy Starman. Anyway, they were, you know, served his fixers, helped me around with the rest of the crew and all that. Anytime I go somewhere, you at least try to learn, like, how do I say, like, please and thank you in the language?

Or like, how do I go to the better? Or excuse me would be a big one, you know, just so like, you know, you can at least learn those 10 phrases in any language. Right? And so I was trying to do that with Mandarin. And they gave me, you know, Nihau Shushu, the basics and stuff. And I was like, well, how do you, I was like, well, how do you say please? And they're like, we don't really use that very often. They're like, don't worry about that.

like oh okay well how about like excuse me like just the basic if I bump into someone or if I do something wrong or whatever and they're like they're like yeah they're like we never say that no man like but what I can tell you it was like but let me tell you how to say stupid and that's shabby and I was like oh okay so they taught me shabby newbie which is like they were like that means fuck yeah and I was like doesn't that literally mean cow vagina and they're like there you go you're catching on right and then like so only which is like I'm butchering these like no doubt which it means fuck your mom and they taught me that they were like don't don't say that to people people will actually fight you over that oh really

but then but then one time I was I was there I was having um it was like November I was in Beijing and Beijing is kind of like Washington DC it's not my not my favorite city I went to I got to go to a lot of different parts of China and that was I prefer I don't prefer Beijing whatever um it was like raining and shitty and I kept having we're staying at this hotel where where in the morning, these shady adoption services would bring a Chinese baby that was gonna be adopted to an American couple. And for some reason all the American couples,

like we saw this over and over for like a week and a half. There's always different couples. And I wanna say all of them, but at least the majority were lesbian couples, which is kind of funny. And so it's like six in the morning, we'd be getting up and going, getting ready to get our coffee or whatever. And that's when they would be introducing these American would be parents to their adoptive children. So it just had a real kind of fucked up mood there.

And then my underwear kept getting stolen, which the other members of the crew were like, no one's stealing your underwear. I'm like, I'm not out here trying to accuse some fucking maid of stealing my underwear. But it's like, but where is my goddamn underwear? Like, why do I have zero underwear? And then I mentioned it to Maddie and Billy Starman. And they're like, oh, they 100% stole your underwear. I was like, see? Thank you.

It's like, the Chinese back me up on this. Right? And anyway, so and I got like slightly sick and it was like ice rain, right? Like Beijing's like I think on the same latitude as like Minneapolis. So it gets like nasty there. Right. Anyway, so I had to go buy underwear on like a day off that was technically like a sick day. And I just remember having my like having my underwear not being happy about having to like go out and find a shopping mall.

Standing in like ice rain without an umbrella. and I was like two, you know, two miles from the hotel. And so I was trying to get a cab. And every time I'd tell the cab driver the name of the hotel, they'd just peel off. Like, I think the deal was it wasn't far enough to be worth it. They wanted to take me to the airport or something like that. And just like they were going to go find a better fare. And the third or fourth cab who did it, I just like, I just momentarily lost my mind.

He rolled up the window, started to pull off, and I kicked his door. like the back door, back passenger side door, and I yelled, Soni Ma! Maybe I did it better, maybe not. Fuck your mother? Yeah, fuck your mom, right? And he, in the brake lights immediately. And I was like, oh, shit, that was so stupid.

I was like, now I'm getting, I'm drenched, I'm freezing. I have, like, the flu or something, holding my underwear like a chump, and now I'm going to get a fight or whatever. And he backed up, and I was like, I didn't know where to go. Like, it was a crowded sidewalk. And he rolled down the window, and I saw his face, And he was like, hey, he's like, hop in.

And I was like, and I got in the car and he just took me, took me straight back to the hotel, knew exactly where it was. You got Machi Bell. He was talking to me the whole time. And I was like, you know, it was like, oh, sure, yeah, that, whatever. I don't speak Mandarin, but keep the ball rolling with you. And I mentioned that to like, Maddie and Billy the next day. And they were like, dude, you're learning.

They're like, you're adapting to Chinese culture. That's hilarious. So they got a sense of humor. Oh, fuck yeah. that's I mean that's that's an important I'm trying to think anywhere in the world I've been where people aren't in general funny that's a big thing about Iraq I have a like I got to go to Iraq twice and the northern part which is safer well was until ISIS fuck and then I know a couple kids who like were Americans but grew up in Baghdad or once from Mosul and those guys are the funniest motherfuckers I've ever met my life like I think I think I'm major sort of sense of cultural friction that maybe could have been avoided in the build up to the Iraq War because I was like, you know, I've also spoken about this to one, I was going to to say a bunch, but a single soldier who had been in Iraq mid-2000s, I forget what year,

whose sense of the Iraqis was he was like, oh, these are backwards rural goat-herting people. And it's like my sense of Baghdaddies especially, but Iraqis in general, I was like, Those guys are the New Yorkers of the Middle East. I was like, they are from an 800-year-old urban environment. They act like guys who grew up in the Bronx, basically, you know, which is not without its own set of, you know, issues. But it's like, I wonder if, it's just a little pet theory that it's like, if American soldiers were taught that, then I'd be like, watch out for these guys. They can they can sheist you sometimes, but they're overwhelming. funny and they like joking and they like you know so don't you know don't get your panties in a

twist if they're joking with you or whatever recognize this how that might have affected the war if like all the american soldiers didn't think there's like oh these guys are rednecks like who don't understand anything right right yeah these guys have a personality in a sense of humor they're human beings right what is it about what is it about these specific cultures of parts of the world that like makes people like because i i would never fucking imagine I would never guess in a million years that somebody in fucking china or iraq would be like that. It would be funny.

I just imagine them to be fucking blank, you know, no emotion. Inscrutable. Yeah. You got to go there and meet them. They're not all funny, but in general,

they're pretty fucking funny. Swear like, those goddamn sailors, once you learn. Like, I only learned like five or six swear words, but then I was just like, whoa.

Like, you guys. They aren't offended. Letting everyone have it. Yeah. Maybe it has something to do with, like, like, living in a shitty fucking situation

being in a shitty situation your whole life you kind of have to have a sense of humor to get through it maybe could be yeah hmm what um so working in China though like doing journalism in China were there any

fucking guidelines did they come and throw us in the clink yeah no no no no we were doing like cultural shit though right hmm you didn't talk about Tianan square or anything oh not that either yeah or the weakers yeah no yeah no were there is that a rule

or was that a choice? This was a choice. I didn't, I mean, it just wasn't the stories I was there to cover. People love to be like that, especially like about vice. They were like, whoa,

would you ever write a story? While I was working at vice, like, read a story about the founder's advice. And I was like, I was like, now you're gonna make it sound like, if I say no,

it sounds like, I'm afraid of doing something. And someone over was like, why would I, like, why would I be fucking interested in that in the first place? I don't know.

Anyway, yeah, no, it was like a thing about dating due to the gender disparity, which is kind of like a lingering effect Oh, yeah. One child policy.

One child policy, right? So it left. It's, I don't know if this is evened out over the years, but a woman named Mara Vistendal wrote a really good book whose name I don't remember. But it's about how they're, you know, whereas in most parts of the world, women are slightly disproportionate to men. That in China, it's the reverse, that there's more men than women. It has these weird, you know, weird effects. Like, and we were there specifically, like, inspired by that book to try dating and to meet matchmakers. to go to weird things where, you know,

guys grow up in villages where there's, like, you know, almost literally no women. And so they have to go to the city and find one or they have to try to online date and da-da-da-da-da. And then what else? Yeah. So, yeah, no, nobody fucked with us, but we had our paperwork in order.

We were there with, you know, Chinese nationals who ran in addition to the magazine. Although, in that edition started in 2009 or 10, maybe later there was a little bit of back and forth sometimes between the editors

because you know the website was supposed to be this kind of collecting place for all the different foreign additions advice so you could see

something from Vice Germany that'd be cool because you know who knows anything about what's going on in Germany right now or whatever and there'd be some

like anti-CC like not anti-Chinese but anti-communist party things occasionally occasionally and in the Chinese that are just to be like, hey, like

we got it, we can't have this show up on our side of the site. We need to, you know, kind of cordon this off. This could actually get us in trouble, you know. Membership means more with American Express Business Gold. Earn four times membership rewards points in your top two eligible

spending categories every month, including eligible U.S. advertising purchases and select media and U.S. purchases at restaurants, including takeout and delivery. What are you waiting for? Get the card that flexes with your spending every month. Terms and points cap apply. Learn more at Americanexpress.com slash business dash gold.

MX business gold card, built for business by American Express. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on. now book on hilton.com or the hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected when you want savings not surprises it matters where you stay hilton for this day different places though right yeah anyway it didn't feel like an orwellian shit hole it didn't feel like an orwellian shit hole did you ever go to north kore you didn't go to north korea i didn't go to north korea no i wasn't on that trip those were they did two trips right well Shane went yeah Shane went with uh photographer her Jamie James Medina and they shot a secret documentary.

Like Jamie James Medina was a photographer from London. Just kept his camera in video mode. I think it was like a Canon L for something. And they just pretended to be taking pictures the whole time, which is like I always thought that was a cool way to fucking make a piece and the fact that they got an entire piece out of it. You know, it was almost a feature length doc. And they got it out.

They're checking the memory cards? Yeah, yeah. That's nuts. Yeah. can't do that again, right? And then Ryan Duffy, and then that trip was set up by Vice's old news director, Jason Mojika, who worked out the way you could get in with the then-recent, recently installed Kim Jong-un regime, was that he loves the Chicago Bulls.

So they try, I think, I believe he tried to get like Scotty Pippen or Michael Jordan to do it. Like Dennis Rodman was like fourth or fifth down the list. Or no, he went to the, there was like a back channel that it's like a famous back channel for the North Koreans. And I think they live around D.C. or whatever. And so they helped set up the whole thing. And they were hoping for Michael Jordan or Scotty Pipp and, you know, and Dennis Rodman will settle for Dennis. We'll settle for Dennis Rodman.

I think he. Crazy story. Oh, my God. Yeah, that was completely nuts. I think Jerry went there and that dude Jake. Yeah, do you know Jake? I don't know. I've never met him.

I've just heard about him. Jake's good. He's Florida. He's from. I think he's from St. Augustine. He's a ganges kid though. He was in the Gainesville punk scene. He was friends with like against me and stuff.

Yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah. Gavin was saying that he was like a big surfer. Big surfer. Spacoli dad. That's what guy. He is. Oh, that's, dang.

When he's good, he's good, man. That's a good line. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, the, um, the whole thing about like how this fucking technocracy or whatever. or techno oligarchy, whatever the fuck you call it. Oh, the technopoly is what a postman calls it. Right, but that, yeah, so he was writing about it being a technopoly,

but now it's like turning into like tech running the fucking world or running the government at least. Right. That's like a, that's, I think about like that sometimes with making stuff for the internet in today's day and age. Because like now you can literally, if you do the wrong thing, on YouTube specifically. I don't know about other platforms. You can get like kicked off of YouTube permanently. Yeah.

And a lot of that stuff is like for the most part can be reasoned against or like there's no, it's not like. There's no appeal. There's no appeal, right? It's not like you sit in front of a jury and like they make a decision or whatever. This is often like just one person presses a button and it's like once that button's pressed. You hope it's a person. Yeah.

You hope it's a person. You might have just triggered a fucking algorithm. Yeah. Yeah, you triggered an algorithm. And we've seen this happen to so many people for so many different reasons that like now you're operating from this mindset of like I have to make sure I can keep this gravy train going, but I'm a journalist. And YouTube is my employer basically. I'm making my money off of YouTube. which is all of the fucking tentacles of the government are in.

Right. So like whatever the decisions are made there, you know, we saw, I don't know if you pay attention to Twitter files, but basically they found out like FBI people were like meeting with the moderation team of at Twitter every fucking week. Right. And like if that's happening at Twitter, imagine what's happening at Google and YouTube. Right, right, right. So it's like, it's like the antithesis.

It creates this fear, this constant fear of like. Makes you want to unalive yourself, right? Makes you want to unalive yourself. But it's like it makes you not want to because like for me at least like journalism is like putting stuff out there that hasn't had what gets at least what gets me excited is like turning under over rocks and finding stuff that hasn't been had light shined on it yet that, you know, might not make a lot of people happy. And if you're doing that, that's my definition of what like exciting journalism is. And if you're doing that, YouTube is not the proper vehicle to do that. that in because you're going to lose your... YouTube's fucking Mammon.

Aren't they part of Google? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So it's like it's, uh, it's like it scares me to think that, you know, why are they the biggest employer of, you know, video journalism, right? That's, that's the part that sucks to me. Yeah. That's, that's, you know, the fact that it's like a necessary condition for people's

livelihood that they're not able to, that we ended up with like three platforms, basically. Yeah. And, you know, which of the three are you going to get on? on, right? And that's going to be your career and that's the only career path people have available to them. And you see the effect. You see the effect with like shitty language like unalive and what are the other ones, you know, algorithm and moderation team dodging workarounds that just sound like deranged speech. You know? Yeah. It's a bummer. It's fucking scary, man. I don't

know. I don't know where it goes. I don't know where it goes. But when you have AI running all this stuff when you have AI in charge. Well, it's okay because AI can all, like, they'll be the viewers too. We can all take a hike. The AI will be viewers? Yeah, yeah. What do you mean? That it won't be people watching it.

They'll just have AI viewers. Oh, oh, oh, oh. So AI can make the content and then watch its own content. And that'll feed back into the content that AI is making. Right. And we've got a whole world. We don't have to work anymore.

Yeah, go sit under the shade. Yeah, what are we going to do? Tie a fishing line to our toes. Yeah. Wow. Take it easy. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

What happens when we don't have to work anymore? AI does it all. We're going to lose everything. We're going to lose our meaning. We're going to lose everything. It's going to be fucking weird. We'll figure something out. You think?

Yeah. What are you going to do? Maybe not much different than I do at present. Hang out, read a book. Go see people. Do you? do you still actively try to like put out new work? I don't put it out very well.

I'm really shitty about that. I write every day, you know? And I've worked on some things. I mean, obviously the Gavin Dock. That was about a year, years worth of work. I have to remind myself, I'm just coming off a feature-length doc

because otherwise I'll look back, you know, I get laid off in 2019. I'm like, what have I been up to since then? Just like dicking around. I went and lived in Mexico as a roused about or whatever and came to Chicago. um but um but yeah when you when you write what do you write about like how what is your writing you just fucking journal every day or what yeah say more or less call it that yeah i just i've done

it since i was a kid i like it you know what do you want it'd be nice if it was turning into something that i was putting somewhere i used to be better about writing for something and obviously when i was working at vice i was advice 15 years and so i just had an automatic platform and I couldn't have asked for a better one. Yeah. You know. Yeah. It's good to have a system, right?

That you're a part of that you can just like. Right. Or just that it was automatic. Like I've played the game of trying to be like a freelance writer and, you know, pitch stories to different places. And like, even getting once accepted and then you're like, oh, that's great. That'll pay my rent this month. You know, and then the invoice takes eight weeks to put through, which when I was, you know, editing for the magazine of the website, I was the guy who was getting yelled at for not getting an invoice out on time and et cetera. So I have the dueling sympathies for that.

It's just it's a hustle, you know. You never get to rest easy like you do with a salary. Right. Right. Well, what do you want to do? What's an ideal situation would look like for you as far as like creating shit and writing? Jesus, I don't know. Someone gives me a lot of money and I just, I go do.

Why don't you do more documentaries? Great question. I don't have a good answer for you. Not motivated? A little of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I pitch a bunch of stuff, and it's, you know, it's hit or miss. Like, I have pitches outstanding.

I'm working on a book show, basically, with an old friend from Vice. I don't know, have you ever saw really early video stuff? Trace Crutchfield, Tall Texan, he kind of looks like Dick Van Dyke. No? Okay, he was like, I think he was like the first on-air host when Vice started making video stuff. He's great. Grew up in Austin. He's a little older than everybody else.

I think he saw a minor threat. like when he was in college, which apologies for dating him. Anyway, or, you know, you catch back up with the gang every so often. There's this eternal impulse to try to get the band back together, right? So I'm in the middle of that right now. We'll see how it goes. It's always, you know. Why you start a podcast?

I've recorded a bunch of stuff. I've made a few tips. I did a podcast, actually. I did a podcast with Seth Abramson during the 2020 election, that guy from Twitter. You know, okay. Never heard of them. It did okay. That was my first podcast.

But we just made it. It was a limited. We made 10 episodes. That was the whole thing. Oh, it was like a, okay. Like a limit, what do you call that? Limited series. Yeah.

That was what it was. And what was it about? It was about Trump. He's written, I think it was three books when I was talking to him. I think there's a fourth of what does he call it? Meta journalism, I think, where he just basically, I mean, it's not dissimilar from Google journalism, but he assembled, like the full Trump story from, like the full Trump story from previous, like almost Wikipedia style from previous reporting, you know, and it was just did a good

job of digging up all the, you know, on record elements of the story, the dirt, the funny stuff and whatever, and just assembled it into one big narrative. And he did that three times with three different subjects, or three different facets of Trump and like the Trump organization. But anyway, I'm sitting on a lot of recordings. I should get around and get it. It's, they have a limited bandwidth for the internet as I age. You know, you see the same arguments play out three or four times on a, like, grand cultural level. Yeah.

Over your life. And you start being like, like, really? We're arguing about abortion again? It's like, oh, oh, look at that. Literally the same arguments. Like, yet I fucking get. Oh, we're blaming feminism for like every ill in modern society. It's like just like that 1979 book by Doodlebug Murphy, feminist destroyed, you know, Nixon's America.

But, you know, but I do say, I mostly just sit around a little bit too much. I've got, I've, maybe I'll have this done and finish, which I should have done over a year ago. Do you know Brad Phillips? No. He's a painter. But he's also, he wrote a book of essays that did really well for a book of essays. We have a dead friend named Giancarlo DiTrapano who used to put out a meet. He was the best publisher in, fuck, the English-speaking, like publishing industry.

He had a book line called Tyrant Books, and he put out his essay book. Anyway, he's a smart, cool painter guy from Canada. And we had recorded episodes of a podcast that all I need to do is finish it and get it up. that was about the differences between Canada and where he's from and America, where I'm from, the conceit kind of being like he just moved to America and it was like, oh, you know, quiz each other for the citizenship test, right? But also it's like whoever really gets into the weeds about what Canadian culture is like, right? I don't know jack's shit about it.

I just made a documentary for their, you know, the CBC. And I couldn't tell you like I fucking read Louis Reel by Chester Brown, you know, the night before like the video aired and anyway so that's the gist right it's just the differences between America and Canada right but he's got a good name

well now okay so now I'll tell it to you so that I have to get it done so nobody else steals it borderline friends borderline friends ooh that's a good name I like that thanks right anyway yeah

you know the real answer is like combination of happenstance and laziness got some things in the works why not I take it you voted for Trump Oh I don't vote You don't vote that's good No no I voted for Cornell West

Oh did you really good for you I love Dr. West long time Journalists See and I'm run Right Yeah The interview that Gavin did with Cornell West Debating Candace Owens

Was saw that West West That was great American treasure Yeah he is Last American man of letters He's been holding strong For a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

By the way, I wanted to ask you this in the front of the show. But I heard the story about the baby balls thing. Oh, wait, wait, wait, where the nickname came from? The nickname Baby Balls. It's weird. It's a really convoluted story, the real version, and everybody simplifies it into a different, it always, it ends up changing. It's weird, right? Yeah.

So, like, Gavin. I heard the ketchup bottle story. Which version of the ketchup bottle story did you hear, right? I heard the story. Let's hear what you hear, yeah. was that you guys were somewhere at dinner or whatever and you were like, I don't give a fuck you. This one dared you to smash the ketchup bottle over your head.

And you were like about to do it. This one was egging you wanted to do it. Then Gavin was like, no, no, no. You're going to end up with like a fucking, you know, a Nazi dueling scar across your whole face and you're going to hurt yourself. Don't do it. So Gavin told you that version, right? He's the hero in that version.

He's the hero. Of course he is. So what actually happened was we went out for drinks. The first week of my internship, all the interns go out for drinks, right? as a, you know, because we're not, you're not of us getting paid. This is before, like, back when you could have unpaid internally at a bit, right, in New York. And so they took the petty cash and the office manager. We all went to a bar, like big outdoor place that's not there in Williamsburg anymore.

And like, one by one, everybody from the office came by and was like, oh, what's going on here? Free drink? Like, you know, like, oh, drink it on petty cash? You mind if we just sighed in? And so eventually the whole office assembled. And Sirouche, who held like the company credit card at that point, was like, okay, guys, we're covering drinks tonight it's an event this will be fun and i just met gavin and jesse like two or three days before that and jesse's the editor of the magazine and they're seated across

from me and gavin bets me three hundred dollars that i can't break ketchup bottle over the back of my head jesse hears that and he goes i'll put 200 in there that's a 500 bet right and they're staring at name and just to be clear you cannot break a cat the glass the glass is so far it's like marble it's so fucking thick but we're here in the middle of a you know a a tense sort of riff and I'm holding the ketchup bottle I'm waiting in my hands considering I was like if we're empty or full of ketchup full of ketchup it's just the catch a bottle that's on the table Nobody went and got a catch-up bottle. And, you know, in considering how I'm going to respond to this provocation, I'm like, you know, if I were to try to break it, how would I even do it?

Like, how would you, the back of my head? Like, because I think that was specified or whatever. And so I'm holding the catch-a-bottle. It looks as if I might be taking some practice swings. And as of yet unnamed bystander named Trevor Silmser, who was Andrew W.K.'s manager and went on. to be the publisher of Noisy, who was a cool old, like, New York hardcore guy, tall, towering, scary, like, skinheaded, not a skinhead, but like, bald muscle dude, who was also a great guy, was sitting right next to him. I was friends with, you know, Gavin and Jesse, like,

like, threw his arms out and was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He's like, dude, these guys don't have $500 on them. And he's like, and by the way, he's like, the ambulance ride alone is going to cost you 800. And it sort of diffused it. And so we came up with a, and like Gavin and Jesse were both like, hey, hey, hey, you got us. Like, they wouldn't have paid an hour on a bet no matter what. Right.

And so there was a backup bet that was that I think Jesse came up with. And he's like, all right, we'll each is everybody at this table will give you $50, but we're each allowed to slap you as hard as we can. And I was like, fuck, I'll take that. Yeah, let's do that. I went to the bathroom and I came back and they were talking about something else. Because this whole thing was just a fucking riff. And I was like, hey, what happened to that bet we were going to do?

And Trevor, who had just saved me from McNamony, like five minutes prior, goes, what? You welched on that, baby balls. And that was it. It was just like, it was as if lightning had come and engraven upon my, you know, forehead. It was just a fitting name. Yeah. But that was Gavin made himself the hero of the story or the voice of reason. Jimmy.

Fucking never fails with that guy. Unbelievable. The history writes itself, bro. It's beautiful. History is written by the writers, yeah. So are you and Gavin friends now? Oh, I don't know. That's a fuck.

It seemed like that when you guys were sitting... Did he say we are? When you guys were sitting... I'll leave that up to him. It seems like you guys kind of like kissed and made up during that little watch party. Follow of our Lord Jesus Christ, I'm friends with all of humanity and all children of God, right? Yeah. Whether or not he thinks we're friends, I'll leave it to, you know, leave that up to him.

Yeah. I think you guys are right. Yeah. We'll leave it at that. Yeah. Yeah. Good question, though. They literally don't know the answer.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks for doing this, bro. Oh, of course. Tell people where they can follow your stuff, get a hold of you, all that jazz. You can find me on Substack at CompostMintus. com. Or also on Substack, the podcast, Borderline Friends.

look for the picture of the cat and mouse wearing bow ties. Okay. That'll be the right one. And if this ends up going up in late July, you can find me on Two Way's YouTube channel. Two Ways? Two way. Like the most basic sex act.

Two way. It's a company I'm trying to work for. Trace works for them. You're trying to work for this. or pitching them a show about reading. That's kind of like reading rainbow for adults, right? Wow. And the show is called the books nook.

The books nook. And you're teaching people how to read? Plural. I guess in a way, yeah, yeah. Just encouraging reading. Okay. It's an excuse to blather about books, right? Okay.

Look, I like books. Yeah. What kind of book? What's your preferred way of consuming a book? Oh, read it to read it. To read like to read like the physical, paper book? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You're old school. I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Feels good. Yeah. Most people all put them on their pads and whatnot. Yeah. You get it on your iPad. It's okay. If I can't find, if I don't have a, I have a lot of books, right?

Do you find it easier to, like, retain the information by reading it? That's a good question. Oh, then what? Versus like listening to it? Yeah. For me, for certain. Yeah. And I'm kind of a slow reader. So I guess it gives it a little bit of time to like sit in. If I'm listening to, cool book, I'll go do things. I'll go like tidy up around the house or go get in the car or whatever. I like listening to. Certain types of books are better to listen to and certain types of books I would prefer to read. Certain types of books, I don't mind reading them as a PDF on a screen. Other books would rather have, you know. The whole reason I went to work advice, they made a nice book. The magazine was like a whole book that she got every month for free. And they put like, that was one of the first things I recognized in Gavin and Jesse.

I was like, these guys care so much about what they're fucking making. They're like, and they're way smarter. Because I was a fan advice. That was why I wanted an internship with them. I thought they were the funniest motherfuckers in publishing and in the English language publishing sphere. And, um, but I didn't they, it took me by surprise how fucking smart those guys were. Yeah.

And how well they knew what they were doing. And how much they fucking cared about it. And how much what they made was derived from how disciplined. they were with the rest of media, right? Like the first four months into the, I interned for like almost a year and then I graduated and they gave me a job the day after my graduation, which was, as long as I don't say the salary,

it sounds like a real nice thing, nice thing for them to do to me. But they made, on their 10th anniversary of vice, they made an issue that was a parody of mainstream print journalism. And they called it the worst issue ever. Although on the cover it had the best issue ever. And I shouldn't like, it'd be like trying to describe a YouTube video. I'm just going to not do it justice by explaining these things.

But it was like page by page and like line by line, like one of the sharpest and funniest like parody satire or whatever, uh, send up of what was happening. Like you could learn more about magazine culture in the United, mainstream medicine culture in the United States in 2004 from that issue than you could from like an entire like bookshelf of paper magazine and whoever else. Wow. Like that's, yeah. That's fucking cool. That's me. That's my, given my old boss is a blowjob portion of the show for you.

But it was. It was fucking cool. Beautiful way to end it. Thanks again, bro. I appreciate it. Yeah. All right. Good night, folks.

Thank. Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you, and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Spring's calling. Ross, work your magic.