Joe Rogan Experience Review podcast - JRE review of 1253 with Loan Grillo

Episode Date: March 1, 2019

Loan is a Journalist and author. He’s been working down in Mexico for a very long time researching the cartels and how they do business. The brutality and power of these groups is astonishing and is a must listen. Although a little disturbing I learned a lot and hope Loan safety in his future journalistic endeavors. Enjoy my review folks! Please email me with any suggestions and questions for future Reviews: [e-mail]

Hello and welcome to another episode of the JRE Review. Today I am reviewing quite disturbing podcast and a lot of ways a podcast 12.53, your Rogan's conversation with Johann Grillo, spelled alone. He's an English guy, journalist that has been working in Mexico and has written a book called El Narco. So just from the title, you can imagine what he's been doing down there in Mexico. This conversation is disturbing, just for what you learn about what's going on down in Mexico.

Johan has obviously put himself in a great deal of danger in a lot of ways by reporting on the cartel situation down there. For example, he gives a story fairly early on that at this one town or city, a new chief of police was elected and within, and somebody asked them, are you afraid of the cartels? And he's like, no, six hours later, we shot that. So madness, right? And what Johan is trying to do is not only just point out the devastation down there that these cartels are causing and how ruthless they are, but the larger point is, is how do we take care of this?

How do we sort this out? How do we take the power away from these people and the corruption and so on, because it's just horrific? One thing Johan talks about with Joe and Joe, obviously, is a bit of an advocate for this, is legalization of drugs. If you legalize it, like they have with, if you legalize it like you have,

they have with marijuana, you legalize that. Well, all of a sudden we don't need to buy marijuana anymore from cartels in Mexico. I mean, it's fairly simple and we're making money from it. You know, we're now making money. All of the money goes to the people selling the marijuana in the United States, the businesses and then tax revenue and so on. And you know, not to say that all tax revenue going to the government is necessarily a

good thing, but it's certainly better than going to cartels. So that's one way of doing it. He talks a little bit about the brutality. You know, we know about this. We've seen these horrible videos, beheading videos, and so on. He said that started around 2006. It started to get really popular. And I say popular that sounds disgusting, but you started to see it more and more is what he's saying. Basically that it was a tactic possibly taken from the Middle East, from kind of Alcada and those folks when they were doing their videos, where they were, you know, locking people's heads off.

And the Mexicans realized, wow, yeah, this is really effective for scaring the shit out of people. So we're going to start using it on videos. And yeah, it creates a lot of fear, a lot of pain, and it's an awful thing. But he also really puts it in perspective as to how dangerous the place is. I mean, in a lot of ways, you think, well, you can, you just can't go there anymore. It's so dangerous. But he's saying the Mexico City has the same, about the same murder rate as Houston. I don't know if that's really to make you feel

any better, but he's just making the point that there are American cities that have the same murder rate, and you wouldn't really think twice about going to Houston. So some of it is just bad publicity. You also kind of think that everyone's just getting kidnapped everywhere. So he's saying that's not exactly how it is. But there's still plenty of problems. And my question is, what do you guys think? You know, most of the people that download this podcast are in the US, mostly actually California. So close enough to the border, did you guys ever used to go to vacation in Mexico and

have you now changed your mind? Is this something you don't do anymore? Are you more kind of skeptical about your safety when it comes to going down there? To answer that question for myself, I think possibly yeah a little bit. I mean, I wouldn't get too excited about going to Mexico City anytime soon on a vacation And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I just don't have enough information to know but you know You hear these stories and even with him saying the murder rate's not quite as bad. I just You know they're gonna spot me as a tourist the mile away. So what does that mean? You know what I mean? It one thing the Joe points out when they're talking in this podcast and they do a really good job What Johan does is talking about how they get these young kids

Into the cartels and causing damage and murdering people and hurting people and what they do is they take kids from broken homes, from families where the parents don't care for the kids, the kids feel lost, they're angry. And these car-tow guys will exploit this. And they've told Johan this. He's interviewed them and they've said to him, you know, directly that, look, we need damaged kids because then we can exploit their aggression and their anger. If they've been loved and taken care of, they're not going to respond how we want. And that's super disturbing to hear. And Joe gives the example that, you know, when he says how to people kill like this, he's saying, look, they're in pain. So they want other people to feel the way that they feel. And I think that is an important message in a lot of ways because that kind of

explains why anybody treats anyone in any way, right? So you can look at it. If someone's having, if someone's treating somebody like shit, they're always grumpy, nagging you, making you feel terrible, then they more than likely feel terrible, almost exactly. Right? So they're just kind of transferring that frustration onto you, but it goes beyond that. It's not a question of transferring the frustration. I think that happens from everybody all the time. We can't help but reflect how we feel. So if you're in a really good

mood or you're in a positive place or you're all about helping people, then that's what you're going to project on others. You're going to make people feel good, they're going to laugh, they're going to want to be around you. And if you're in pain, it's the opposite way around. It's going to create a lot of frustration.. I mean, it's all relative, right? If someone's more extroverted or introverted, that may change the situation because you're here more or less from them, so you won't get as clear a picture of how they're feeling. But the general mood of that individual will come from that. So, yeah, it's something to think about,

right? It's it's a way of having a little bit more patience possibly with somebody, a little bit more compassion. If you know they're very, very angry and they're always attacking you and you want to defend yourself and get angry back, I mean, in a sense they're just turning you into them. And it's a good opportunity to kind of step away and say they're in pain. This is their problem. You can feel bad for them if you need to or really however you want to.

But try not to react in that way. So yeah, going back to the cartel story, they talk about buying guns. This was the serving. This was really one of the more disturbing parts of the podcast is that people can just come over and go to Texas from Mexico. They can go to gun shows and just buy guns with no idea and take them right back to Mexico. And they can get them back to Mexico fairly easily because they're not checking too many of the cars going into Mexico as they are checking things coming from Mexico to here because the major concern is smuggling drugs.

They're not overly bothered, I guess, about people taking weapons back to Mexico. Johan gives the example of a guy that he interviewed that said, I guess he would take fridges and stoves and he would buy them and he would pay the import tax on those things even though they were just full of weapons, mostly like AR-15s, that sort of thing. It does bring up some interesting points. I mean gun legislation aside, like let's say it doesn't matter where you stand on gun legislation, whether you think they should all be banned or whether you think we should have total freedoms and nothing should be checked. Either end of that spectrum,

it is wherever you want to be, right? You're American, you can feel however you want to about it. But one thing's for sure. Cartel guys being able to buy guns and take them easily back over to Mexico is really not a good thing. And if we can do something to stop that without infringing on the rights of American gun owners here, safely do it so that they just can't take them back over there in that level. I mean, that's a smart move. We should definitely do that. People should talk a lot more about that stuff. Some of the kind of hidden heroes of the journalism when it comes to war zones and cartel stuff,

they talk about the cameraman. Obviously, the journalist's a brave they put themselves very dangerous locations but but cameraman in a lot of ways because they have to get the shot they have to put their head to almost directly in the line of fire and he gives some anecdotes about cameraman that have fallen and been shot and got injured doing different things and it really is brutal I mean you don't think about what they have to put up with and what they have to go through when they're out there in the field it's really scary stuff I mean that is not a job I would want to do I the reporting site it sounds wild right I mean your hands obviously really into it and super passionate about it and it is doing important work it's work that needs to be done because you know people need to know how awful some

areas are and and the truth needs to be brought forward. We need to know what's happening. It's it's very important but at what cost and I think you know we should show a little bit more respect and gratitude to the people putting their lives on the line to bring us that information. But anyway, like I said, it was disturbing, but important to listen to. It was a really good conversation. Johan is obviously a brave, passionate individual. He's got multiple books, and I'm really keen to check them out to learn more

But I get a lot out of the conversation. I really liked it and I hope a Joe has him back on soon So anyway, thanks a lot for tuning in and listening to me Jaburon guys have a great day you