No Jumper - The Mark Laita Interview: Creating “Soft White Underbelly” & Documenting America’s Dark Side

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

Mark from Soft White Underbelly talks about how he started his journey to interview people on Skid Row, his career in photography, traveling and capturing the best stories, working alone, helping people and more! https://www.instagram.com/soft_white_underbelly/ https://www.youtube.com/c/SoftWhiteUnderbelly/videos ----- CHECK OUT OUR NEW SPOTIFY PLAYLIST https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5tesvmDS8h50LkjnSAWMOs?si=j6sJD6DkR4mk5NZZWnlK7g FOLLOW US ON SNAPCHAT FOR THE LATEST NEWS & UPDATES https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_Jumper/4874336901 CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE STORE!!! http://www.nojumper.com/ SUBSCRIBE for new interviews (and more) weekly: http://bit.ly/nastymondayz Follow us on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nojumper iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/no-jumper/id1001659715?mt=2 Follow us on Social Media: https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_Jumper/4874336901 http://www.twitter.com/nojumper http://www.instagram.com/nojumper https://www.facebook.com/NOJUMPEROFFICIAL http://www.reddit.com/r/nojumper JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Q3XPfBm Follow Adam22: https://www.tiktok.com/@adam22 http://www.twitter.com/adam22 http://www.instagram.com/adam22 adam22hoe on Snapchat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No Jumper, coolest podcast on the world. And today we have somebody who I'm a huge fan of. You are. Yeah, totally, man. Oh, cool. Mark of Softwater Underbelly. How you doing? Nice feature, Adam.

Yeah, so, okay, this is the thing I've been thinking about is how when I first started doing podcasts, it was in downtown L.A., fifth in Los Angeles. So, right by me. Basically on the edge of Skid Row. And I used to always have people comment, like, you should interview a homeless person. You should interview one of these guys who we see hanging out. outside of your house. And I always thought, oh, that's a stupid idea. Nobody wants to see that.

And then one day I run across your channel, and I'm like, wow, I really did not take those comments as seriously as I should. Like your channel in a lot of ways sort of like has taught me a lot about the value of having conversations with people who, you know, the outside world would probably assume don't really have anything useful to say. Yeah, I mean, people are people. Right. They really, the people are people.

They're just like, whether they're powerful and wealthy or whether they're down and out, there are still stories, you know, lessons to learn from everybody. 100%. You know, lessons to learn, like, what not to do, maybe. More than what to do. And like we were just saying, there's a lot of, a lot of people that you interview operate in a way

that the people I interview don't. They have nothing to lose. They just unload. They'll tell you the whole fucking story. Not everything I do is about homeless people. and drug. Right, right. Sometimes it's strippers and gang members. But a lot of people who feel unheard. And a lot of people, once they make it

into the rap world and stuff, they end up feeling very differently. They end up feeling like everybody already knows everything about me. I want to be very protective of what I'm putting out there into the world. And a lot of times when you're interviewing a stripper or a prostitute or whatever it might be, they probably don't really feel like they've ever had an opportunity where anyone cared that much to ask so much about their life. me to what I'm doing is these people, they're not selling anything. They're not trying to further their career as a musician.

They're not trying to, you know, maybe they're trying to convince you that their story is the truth and what their family did to them is not fair or something like that, but they're really not trying to promote anything. Right. They're just telling their story, and sometimes you can just feel that they're telling a version of the truth that's pretty close to what actually happened. Definitely. Because anytime you tell us, like if you told me about your childhood or back in high school,

the way you're going to tell that story, you're going to embellish. We all do. That's human nature to tell your story and go, yeah, the gym teacher was 375 pounds and he was 6 foot 9 and that kind of, when he was actually 6 foot 1 and he was, you know, 240 pounds. Right. Is that something that concerns you is the amount of truth that's being told? because I've seen you do interviews with people where they were talking about getting molested by their parents

and then they do another interview and they say all that show is made up. Yeah, well, I mean, you have to be able to read. I'm not presenting these as these are sworn documents of the truth. A lot of them are full-blown lies or there's a lot of lies mixed in. Right. But if you're at all able to interpret

what someone's when someone's lying, like the best example is a prostitute of company, know, an older, a middle-aged prostitute, it comes on and says, yeah, I'm 24 years old. And I even questioned her on that. Like, you sure you're 24? And she goes, yeah. Like, OK, I'll love that slide.

And she just smiled. But you have to read through that. Because the way I see that is, here's a woman who's supporting yourself as a prostitute, which means being young and beautiful is her way to support herself. Other than that, she's down and out and homeless, with nothing to sell. So you have to understand where she's.

she's coming from. She's scared shitless that her only way of supporting herself is fading away. Right. So she's 24 years old. Out of fear. And if you can read through that lie, you get a glimpse into who she's

who she is and what she's concerned about. Right. She scared her. Right. I've been watching the show on Netflix called The No Go Zones. So what I'm saying is the lies are kind of a part of the story. Right. I feel you. I've been watching the show The No Go Zones. That basically will take you to like all the worst areas all over the world and sort of show you a lot of a lot of drug selling and a lot of prostitutes and stuff like that and it's it was interesting because i watched like kind of the whole season of that and then after i got done with that i started watching a shillow to your stuff to get ready for this interview and it occurred to me that like the the main difference between a show like that and what you're doing is that you're just sort of allowing them to pick their narrative you're not slotting them into let's see what a prostitute's life in Cape Town is like.

You're sort of just allowing them to run with whatever. And sometimes it feels like they want to tell you about the intimate details of their day-to-day work. And sometimes they want to tell you about their childhood trauma that got them here. But it seems like you kind of rarely forcefully guide that. Direct them. I mean, sometimes I'll ask who molested them or stuff like that,

which I get a lot of flag for. But I really just want to learn. You know, that's really what I think is behind a lot of why I'm doing this is just. I like learning about myself and about other humans. And I think by understanding and learning, you just become better suited to deal with life and be happy. Definitely.

That's all you really wanted is to be happy, right? Yeah. If you understand more of what's going on and why you're doing it and why other people are behaving the way they are, you can calm down and just like, oh, I get why you're doing that. It's not that you don't like me, is that you're scared shitless of getting hurt.

Or I'm acting this way because I'm afraid of taking advantage of or something like that. So did this all start with the photography part of the... Yeah, I'm a photographer and I've always been since I was 14. It's all I've ever done. And I just finished a big project called Create Equal, which took me like nine or ten years. And I went to every state, each of the lower 48 states, and photographed everything from cowboys to astronauts to... to repo men, to ballerinas, to, there's a couple homeless drug addicts,

there's everything in there. Just everything that kind of exists in the United States. Amish people, everything. Nuns and prostitutes, everything. And the idea was just to photograph normal people? It's a visual catalog of America, basically. And you spent 10 years?

Yeah, 10 years. It cost me like half a million to do it. Because when I do these projects, I really invest. Like, whatever I care of. about. I invest like without much concern for what's coming back from that investment. I'm not going to make money

on it. Right. I mean I actually did make a lot of money selling some of the gallery shows when that when that project finally came out and we did some gallery shows. I sold a lot of prints and I probably made that money back but it wasn't about making money. It's about I don't know what it's about.

Learning, doing what you love, furthering the human species. It's like all these things. I mean, your soul is telling you what you want to be doing with your life. I mean, because I'm an advertising photographer. It's all I've ever done. You know, and I've had these side projects that kind of kept me sane. Because if you just do advertising, you're selling a product.

And it's hard to feel like your life doesn't mean. And you're making it look, you know, with retouching and all that. We make things look better than they really are. And it's all perfect and homogenized. And that gets under your, that bugs you after a while. When that's all you're doing. What am I doing? I'm helping corporations make my, I'm making Coca-Cola make more money.

That's what I did with my life. You can make good money, and there's certainly a creative aspect to it, but ultimately, do you feel like that's a career that kind of... It started becoming less creative and more just like you're just a plumber installing a sink that the housewife bought as home people. Because there's so much data at a certain point, too. Like these days with advertising, I feel like there's a lot less, oh, maybe this will sell a soda. No, it's like we have all this data to base our decisions on.

And because everyone's afraid of losing their clients, the client gets to make all the creative decisions and the client doesn't know how to make good creative decisions. So the industry has changed a lot and I found myself less and less satisfied with that career. And I've been doing it my whole life and I've got money saved up. I have it all invested in a house I'm building right now,

but I basically have money. I just don't have it at my disposal right now because it's tied up in the house. But so if I had my druthers to just do anything I wanted, like, what would I do? And I just sat there for like a month or two and just sat like what what am I going to do? Am I going to become a real estate developer? Am I going to you know work out a lot?

Maybe I'll just work out a lot. I don't know what I do. You know, what would I do if I had the freedom to do anything I wanted? And then it hit me at one point. Oh yeah, I used to have that studio down on Skid Row. After I finished Create Equal, I got a studio down on Skid Row in L.A. And I just started doing portraits of all the people that you see on my channel, a lot of them. and I

it was a really interesting project because those people are just such interesting characters and at some point I started doing interviews of them when Canon came out with the first video the first still camera that did videos what year did you start interviewing that was like 2010 oh wow okay so that long you've been

2010 is when I've started doing this so it's been like 11 years now and the first interview I did was the prostitute heroin addict named Caroline and it was so powerful. Really?

In a way that you never thought photography could be? I mean, I feel like a lot of photographers are, they don't want to give and say that video can be more powerful than photography. Yeah, I know. That's a great question. Because I like to think the photo is everything. I'm a photographer.

I'm not an interviewer. You're an interviewer. You're a much better interviewer than I am. I'm just a photographer. But I recognize after looking at Create Equal, you page through it with somebody else at a party, they're going through the book. And I'm like, I should have done interviews. I should have done it. They want to know this.

They want to know that. I realize the portrait is as great as it is. I'm really proud of those portraits. You want to know more. You want to hear what they speak like. You want to see how their body language, you know, how they move. So many things. You learn so much more about somebody when you're hearing them speak.

watching them do what they do. Portrait's about that instant. And it also can be very false. Like if you look at the thumbnail on my channel or at the portrait, oh, this guy's dignified and like, I'm about... Those KKK guys

look a lot tougher than when you hear him talking. You know, and they're all squatted up with all their guys and the shit. And then you hear them talking and you're like, this fucking yokel in a costume, what is he talking about? So the photos can lie. Yeah. And the portrait, you know, it's a different kind of lying. than the lies you're talking earlier. I just watched Ron Jeremy, and man, he looked like he had girls all over him in the thumbnail or whatever.

And then you watch the interview and it's just you get a very different idea of what his real life might be like. Yeah, yeah. Especially now. No, but it's like I started doing these portraits and then I started doing interviews. And then I kind of, my life got turned upside down. The industry kind of changed and I lost my love for it. And, you know, digital technology took over. so everybody's a photographer.

And that undermined my ability to charge what I did and make the same money I used to. And then I got a divorce on top of it. And it's like, my whole life, my whole table got turned upside down. It's like, let me just, like, I put everything down for a while. Really? And then when everything kind of settled, and I, back to what I was saying a couple minutes ago,

I was like, so who am I? What do I want to do? And I decided, let me just, I really had a good time when I was down on Skid Road doing those crazy photos. And even the interviews, Let me start doing interviews and portraits down there again. And I started, I just got this, I had to store all my furniture

because I'm building this house, like I said. And I had four different storage units around the city. I'm paying like 1,000 here, 1,000 there, 1,000 here. I can save money if I just got a big space downtown somewhere off a Skid Row or near Skid Row or in Skid Row. And I could probably find room to shoot these portraits and interviews in the front. And that's exactly what I did. And it's been, I'm shooting every day now.

Not necessarily always on Skid Row. Like last week, I was in Mississippi. I was in Tampa, Florida, before that. I'm going to San Francisco as soon as we're done here. So it's not about Skid Row. It's more about just the United States for me. United States, or do you have international plans? No, I don't want to, if I started going international,

that means at some point I'm have to trudge through the forest of New Guinea, the jungle of New Guinea. and like because I'm not going to just say oh I'm only going to do Europe and South America I'm going to do the whole planet and when I do things I do them all out but if you do this for a few more decades do you think there's any chance that you kind of doing the skid roast stuff could start to feel a little stale even the USA can you see yourself wanting to take it to yeah to take any country boom that's another gigantic challenge you know there are great stories in other countries Even if I went to Africa, I could do this in Africa.

You know, I've said many times I could do a whole, like self-wide underbelly, like a year ago, was basically a Skid Row channel, right? 95% of the videos were shot on Skid Row. I always said I could do the exact same thing in Appalachia, which I've done a bunch of interviews in Appalachia last year. And what got you up there in particular? Create equal. I just went to every state, and I got to know it, and I know it's there. And I know those people are fascinating, and they're so, they're wired so differently than the rest of the country.

Right. The values they have are so different than the rest of us. They're beautiful people. You, like, one of the things I learned from owning a store downtown for all those years was don't talk to them, don't give them a dollar. If you give them an inch, they're going to take a mile. And there were other, and I'm not proud of this in retrospect, because when I see your channel, it makes me actually realize, like, wow, I think I actually missed out on a lot of the

interactions that I could have had. But I mean, I was in the mind state where, you know, I would have a girl in town from a different state or whatever, and she would be giving money to a homeless person that's other story. And I would tell her, listen, I know you are a nice person and you think that you're doing something nice. But if they start to get the idea that this is a place where you can just get free money, then it's going to be a big problem for us. So I'm actually in the position of telling other people to be less kind for our benefit. Because, you know, and to people who think that that sounds like I'm just kind of being an asshole. I mean, this is very, very much like a daily, you know, fight for survival. It wasn't like I was just trying to be an asshole and suggest that everybody else be an asshole,

but it just felt like for self-preservation that you kind of needed to keep that distance. They're trying to get their money for whatever their thing is. And if they feel a little bit of weakness, then they're going to keep pushing on that spot. And you just seem like you, I don't know, like, do you relate to what I just said? Oh, yeah, 100%. Okay. You know, 100%. Right.

This morning I probably bled, I'll bet you I bled about $1,200 in that, yeah. How so? Who are you giving it out to? Everybody that comes up to me, and I have a hard time saying no, and when I do say no, they don't leave. So at some point I'm paying them to leave, to just leave. Yeah, I think that ultimately that was kind of what we were trying to avoid to. I got a pack for going to the airport. I don't want to forget something, and I'm like, I'm in San Francisco and I forgot this.

Like, shit. You know, that's really tragic when I go to like Mississippi or, where I can't even rent the equipment I need or buy it. I'm in the middle of nowhere. So I need, give me a half an hour to focus on what I'm doing. Don't interrupt me. Don't knock on my door. Don't do anything.

So I pay somebody to like stand out front and make sure nobody comes to me and interrupts me. So I can just focus on packing up for my trip. Wow. Because if you come in five times, five different people come in and they, hey, I just need 20 bucks. My kids are dying. I'm distracted. I can't remember what I was just thinking about. Oh, yeah.

Oh, I need the charging cord for this microphone. And I'm like, oh, so now I'm in Kentucky. and I don't have the cord to charge this microphone that just died. Right. And that's because somebody just came to me and asked me for 20 bucks to say they're whatever. So even when you're traveling, what word kind of travels that you are somebody who's not scared to help somebody out? Oh yeah, for a while after I went to Memphis last December. And for three, four months after I came back from Memphis, I was getting phone calls from pimps and prostitutes because that's all I interviewed on that trip.

for months every morning. I'd get, you know, they're two hours ahead of us. So I'd just, my phone would be. But they want money or they want? Because I'm a white guy that peels off dollar bills for people. Right, but they want coverage? They want to be on the channel? Well, the pimp and his prostitute both got arrested, so they were in jail.

They needed somebody to get their bail out. Oh. open up some doors and they're going to help me and they're going to do what I want them to do. So let's take that Memphis trip just for example. When you show up there, do you show up there with no plans? Do you show up with a few? I know nobody. There was a girl who contacted me and say, I know all these people down there. Wendy was her name. And she just emailed me out of nowhere. She watches my channel and likes it and said, hey, if you ever come to Memphis, I can help you out with some interesting people and say, well, you know, I know Memphis is pretty well.

known for this kind of subculture. Do you know any people? She said, oh yeah, I know lots of people. So we met with her and she drove us around and one thing led to another and the one thing I learned is you make this contact and you know, great, I made this contact, but that contact knows four people. And then we meet those four people and this one happens to be really good and they know four other people and it just spreads out like that. Right. Like I went to Kentucky, I went to Appalachia, I think six times last fall, last summer and fall. We started going like in September, like August or September or something like that. And I would go back every few weeks, every month.

First three trips, I got nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I went to Mississippi last week. It cost me like $7,000, $8,000 just to go to Mississippi. You know, the baggage alone is $450 each way. The airfare, the hotels, the rental car, the, my assistant. Sometimes I bring an assistant to help me drive and carry bags.

And then the people that I contact with and the people I interview, you add all that up. It's close to $10,000. But why didn't you get anything? Because it wasn't interesting. Really? Yeah, it just wasn't. You've had interviews here. I'm sure they just, it just fell flat.

We put them out anyway. You do? I don't. And then they get judged harshly ideally. I only use about one out of five that I do. You do? Wow, that's interesting. I was wondering that.

Yeah. Because I was thinking I'm like... I've done 3,000. And there's only 700 on my channel. Ah, okay. So there's a lot that you don't see. Because I was thinking that, I'm thinking like, these are good. But there's got to be a lot of bad ones.

I was thinking that I'm like, there's got to be so many more bad ones than good ones. And I just sit through them all. Yeah. I'm beaten up by the end of the day. Emotionally? Yeah. Really? It wears me out.

How much pain can you listen to? How much pain can you listen to? Right. People get on my back because, you know, she told you she had three kids, and then you asked her how many kids you had. Part of that is because I'm doing, I'm operating, you have a whole crew. How many people you got working here? About 10, right? Yeah, about 10.

I've got nobody. It's just me. I'm operating. And I'm not, I'm not bitching. I'm just saying. I'm operating two cameras. Microphones. So the audio levels, the focus, the framing, the light,

because I use natural light. I'm not using artificial light. I'm using natural light. So when a cloud goes behind the sun, I got to adjust for like a stop or two on two cameras at the same time. That's a lot to be doing while you're conducting an interview. Right.

So forgive me if I didn't catch that she had three kids. And she liked nobody ever came back. I already answered that question. Nobody has ever said that. They're happy to talk about their kids. People get upset when their interview doesn't come out? No. I've never had anybody give me a hard time for it.

Really? That's interesting. If I didn't drop a lot of it's like even one percent of interviews I do here, oh my God, they'd be showing up. So you're dealing more with people that are like concerned with fame a little bit, right? I'm not. But I feel like a lot of those people still have a desire for fame, even if it's a different kind of fame.

Yeah, maybe, yeah. No one's ever came back. You never used my interview. I mean, I'm sure there are some people that are upset that I'm, I didn't, but it's got to be interesting. Yeah. You know, it's got to be something like that I'm proud of, where I don't feel like the person's selling their,

like I have a lot of pimps. The pimps are the worst where they come on and like, oh yeah, I'm super interesting. Like, are you really? Yeah. And I'll take a chance and they come on and they're either telling a story of redemption. But it's not like a compelling story of redemption.

It's just like, hey, I'm a good guy now. Yeah. So you, and you're in a position where you're selling their music. You then have to be basically kind of like judging their trauma or like your narrative. Like is this a compelling narrative? And that kind of puts you in a weird spot too. I would be happy to post nothing but content of crack addicts that got, got clean and tell their stories. Right.

But I found when I do that, I did some of those early on. And they got like an eighth of the number of views as a train wreck story. Really? Yeah. So I'm not necessarily doing things. just for the views, but at some point, you do need to get some views in order to, like, support, yeah. So you find when somebody is a former heroin addict that that will get way more, or way less views

than someone who is, like, presently, clearly addicted to drugs. Yeah, and telling a horrific story and all that. And what does that tell you about your viewers? People have called it pain porn. I was thinking that literal term, I'm like, this is like pornography. I'm not sure exactly what kind, but, yeah. Somebody called it pain porn. That's a great term.

it's kind of like that you're driving your home from work and there's a 16 year old driver who's doing a great job and he's using his directional he's changing lanes properly and he's doing a great job do you want to watch that

or do you want to watch the head on collision the other 16 year old had who was drunk right you're going to stop and look at the wreck you're going to not even look twice at the 16 year old who's doing a great job 100% it's human nature I remember when I first

started to take photos when I was in 16 or some shit. I remember I took a photo of like a homeless guy and somebody told me the next day, they said it's really trashy to take photos of homeless people because it's kind of like the

lowest hanging fruit. It's trashy. They can't really consent to it, et cetera. I'm sure you've probably heard those same arguments against photographing the homeless. Yep, I'm exploiting them. Yeah. How did you, I mean, I think when I see your portraits and it's very obvious to me that you're doing something that's a lot different and a lot

better than your average person. just picks up a camera and they see a homeless person and they think, oh, that's an easy thing to take a photo of. Where do you fall on the considerations that you have to make? Yeah, see, I treat everybody with respect. From the guy at your front door who greeted me to you to the president, to everybody. I treat everybody equally the same. Like, I don't treat a homeless person differently that I would treat Obama, who I loved. You know, I would treat them both the exact same way.

Not different in any way. Like if I was interviewing a homeless crack addict or the president of the United States, I would treat them the exact same way. So I treat everybody the same. So if I'm doing that, am I exploiting them? I'm not sure I am. They're agreeing to it. Most of these people come to me now. I'm not coming to them.

Hey, do an interview with them. Please do it. They all come to me, and they all want to come back a second, third, fourth time. Yes, I'm paying them money, but I bet you they would do it if I didn't pay them money. But I believe time is worth money, so I pay people money regardless of whether they want it or not. The only people that really refuse money are the Appalachians. Really? Why is that? Most of them won't take money.

They're probably like the most needing of it as well. Yeah, they're the poorest. It's interesting. It's the poorest part of the country where I go. The counties that I go in Kentucky and West Virginia are the poorest in the country. And unless they have a drug addiction, which some of them do now, a lot of, you know, drugs are pretty bad there. But the ones who don't, just drink moonshine maybe, you know, they don't really have a serious addiction problem. They just jump back when I pull out.

you know, money. I got to take that. Like I'm some kind of jerk. Really? Yeah. That's so interesting. It's just that they're raised a certain way. You know, they believe their stories are something they want to share, and that's it. It's not about paying money for it.

And I'm not paying for their stories. I believe I'm just paying you for your time. Right. You know, you sat with me for 20 minutes and told me your story. Thank you for doing that. And here's something just for sitting with me and telling me your story. Right. You know, it's more about the time.

and the effort and the distraction from their busy life. I think that helps to simplify the exchange as well in a way because it's kind of like, you know, even when people come in here and, you know, I have some contemporaries who will sometimes like pay their guests. And they've told me that once they start paying the guests, they show up on time, they don't cancel. It makes the whole thing a little bit more consensual

where both sides is benefiting. No one's ever mentioned that, but that's a huge part of why I do it. Because, like when I was doing Create Equal, which was just portraits, no interviews, I want, like, if I'm going to fly to Wyoming to shoot a cowboy that I've, you know, my scout already found a photo of,

and I want to photograph him. I want to make sure he's going to show up. So if I'm going to pay him $500 to show up, he's going to be there. But if I don't pay him $500, I'm just going to take his photo. I'm going to fly all the way to Wyoming, and he's not going to show up.

And I'm like, now what do we do? So by scout? My time is very valuable. By scout, you sort of just have people around the country that you'll just be in communication with and they'll sort of throw ideas to you? No, I don't have a lot of scouts.

Like for that project when I was looking for cowboys or ranchers up in Wyoming and Montana, I had somebody who worked at one of these ranches. And I said, could you photograph some of the guys that work on the ranch and just send me photos and then I'll see if I want to photograph these guys. And that's what I'm calling a scout.

I just connected with somebody that knew somebody that knew somebody. So I call it a scout, but it's really just a co-worker or a friend, and they sent me some photos of some of the guys, and, like, oh, he'd be a great photo. Now, an interview is a whole other thing, because I've had people that I've flown across the country for because they look so great, and then they can't tell their story. And then it's like, fuck. A waste of time. That's interesting.

The desire to not put out the episodes that you don't like, even though, is that out of respect for who the audience because I feel like the audience a lot of times kind of wants to hear the story from the person who's the most out there I'm sure if you ask my viewers if they want to see all 3,000 interviews they'd say yes but if I if I posted everything that I did I don't think I'd have the same audience I do so you have you have to understand like you know the quality of what you put out is is gonna affect everything you do there has to be a respect for the overall quality of the channel. You just, you don't want people to feel like, oh, maybe if I click this video, it's going to be horrible. Well, see, one of the things I realized early on when I did this, you know, I could title these, you know, something like, you know, a lot of these stories are

about having sex with my dad, you know, because a lot of these women have, right? I could, I could use that in the title somehow. I see, I see YouTube videos that have these kind of titles. Like when I, when I, when I title a video, a homeless woman, I want to do that knowing that, my viewers who know my channel will know that a video titled Homeless Woman interview is worth watching. Yeah. It's not just a woman talking. Yeah, I don't have a house. Yeah. So, there's usually something to it that makes it worth

watching. Because I feel like what you do is the kind of thing that opens you up to so much criticism of what you're doing. But, I mean, maybe I'm just sort of in a bubble where I'm just a fan. But it doesn't seem like you really get as much hate for it as I think a lot of people would. And I think a lot of it is the aesthetic decisions when you have this beautiful photograph for the for the photo and you don't have you trying to like really sort of lay the narrative out for them very often you don't have the

salacious titles again i feel like all that stuff kind of insulates you against a lot of the clickbait stuff really causes people to judge you very very harshly yeah and i get i'm i'm guilty of a little bit of clickbait because i could title my sex worker videos you know sex sex worker interview, right? But I don't. I title it prostitute or escort or stripper. Stripper is not the most PC term in the world, nor is a prostitute. But sex worker is the vaguest term ever.

Yeah. You know? A pimp is a sex worker. Right. A masseuse can be a sex worker. Is she a masseuse? So I want to have a little bit of, you know, descriptive. You know, I want a little bit of the detail so you know,

what you're going to watch. But, you know, I think the viewers who really know, if you watch a lot of my videos, you need to watch a lot. There's 750 on there now. But if you go through them, I can't save all 3,000 people I've interviewed. And it wouldn't just be the 3,000 I interviewed. What about the other 30,000 that are out there that I didn't interview? They don't get help because, why? Because I didn't meet them yet. So I can't save everybody. But I do help a lot of the people I interview in different ways. Sometimes I'm just peeling off money. people like I did this morning. Sometimes I'm paying people's, you know,

for people that really are showing signs of wanting to get out of their life style. I'll buy them a car, I'll give them housing, I'll pay for their expenses for a month or three so they can get their shit together, get a job, and then they're hopefully, hopefully, on their way to be self-sufficient. That really happens, though.

That's what I'm learning. Because a lot of homeless people, it's kind of, we think of homeless people as just being homeless people forever. I'm not always talking about, homeless people. I'm talking more about like sex workers or something like that. Right. But they're a little more capable of... But like drug addicts, homeless

people, we always tend to assume that they're just going to be like that forever when you see somebody on the side of the street. But I think the truth is that this is kind of like a transitionary state for a lot of people that they might be homeless for a while and then at some point somebody helps them out and they

get past them. I met a lot of people who were at one point homeless and then they got their lives together. Right. But I mean the problem is not drug addiction. The problem is not homelessness. The problem is mental health. Yeah. It really is. And people are starting to understand that a little bit. There's a great video I just shot.

Some of my favorite videos are the ones I shoot with Monica, who works for the Patrick Katie Foundation. And she's so informed about all this stuff, and she's just so intelligent. And she speaks so beautifully about what it's like to help these people and how it goes down, and what the problems are in society, why it doesn't work out, why we're not doing our part. You know, and we did that this morning, actually. this morning actually and she she and I spoke about how it's it's mental health not drugs drugs are just a symptom of the problem now drugs can exacerbate and maybe even cause like schizophrenia or some of the other mental conditions that you see but there's something it's like there's some

something was broken first for the person to say yeah let me try heroin at 16 years old yeah that's something i've definitely seen from watching enough of your videos is that i mean this is just a band-aid that people try to put on their mental illness like it's almost like want to 100% like very very rarely that you see somebody who's a drug outy that doesn't have childhood trauma that they're trying to yeah I mean every single one of my videos could be like mentally ill person you know like every single video including my you know I'm mentally ill we're all mentally ill one way or another you interview a lot of people who I think a lot of people would not be able to get away with interviewing like the clan stuff like I mean if I did a podcast with the

clan it would be or a sex offender like that I'm a child Malister. Exactly. I mean, a lot of that stuff, people would be like, wow, the fuck are you giving voice to someone who is abhorrent? Those are, I can't even read the comments anymore. I mean, the majority of my commenters are supportive and say really kind things. And I love that.

And that's great. And most of my audience is really evolved and intelligent. But there's a portion of my audience that just hates and hates what I do and just hates in general, hates the interviewee, hates life, hates themselves, really is what it truly boils down to if you really peel away the layers, you'll see the person really just hates themselves. So that's why they're lashing out against this prostitute or this homeless person or this drug addict or whatever. But it's, it's, you know, most of my audience is intelligent and supports what I do. And they understand that I do help when I can because there's, there's

people who like Jerry and you know Rita and a lot I mean I can't even count them all there's so many people that I support on a daily basis and you know in major ways sometimes but I don't want to make I don't want to make my channel about a help channel the purpose of my videos is is to prevent these things from happening so if I if I start becoming this Jesus figure who's helping everybody that it's going to be entertainment and that's not what I want you know I just want people I want I want to learn and I want maybe the audience to learn how these things happen so that we can protect it from our kids futures. You just said these stories are cautionary tales.

Does everybody on the channel have to basically be somebody who's been through hell or is a bad person? No, no, no. What's the standard? No, I mean, just interesting, really. Yeah. You know, because like Ruby Baker, who I interviewed from Kentucky, it's the most inspirational, you know, beautiful old woman you can ever find. and there's no trauma I think she lost a child or something

but she had a lot of kids so it's a beautiful story and people love that video so it's not about a bunch of trauma you know a lot of people that I've interviewed are just cool and interesting

and maybe they come from a tough childhood or a tough life came from the streets but you know like Sharp who's a pimp that I've interviewed several times he and I speak private, you know, just on the phone a lot. And he, he's just an interesting cat. He's just

an interesting dude. Right. He's charismatic as anybody you'll ever find. The women love them or they hate them. And the men love them or hate them. And I tell them all the time. It's like the reason that you're so magnetic and people react to you so strongly, it's like a portion of the audience hates you, thinks you're an exploitive bastard that beats your women, and the other half think you're like, the next best, you should run for president. Right. You know?

And I get the same kind of crap sometimes where people like, oh, you're an exploited bastard, and oh, you're an angel that's helping all these people and moving society forward in a positive way. I'm both, and I'm neither, and I'm some mixing of all of these put together, just as he is, you know?

Yes, he's a pimp, but I've talked with his girls, and they're They're cool. They're happy. They're not, I don't sense anything other than a nice relationship. Right. Not a,

not a conventional relationship, but it, you know, I don't think I'd be, you know, the simplistic view that I am giving sex offenders, Klansmen,

and pimps, a voice is a very, it's a very small-minded way of looking at it. I'm just showing us as a society what exists and how these subcultures came to be and how they operate and how they think. I'm not saying anybody's good or bad. Right. You know, if you notice, like, the sex offender, like, I certainly don't

condone molesting a child. If anybody thinks I do, then you're not smart enough to watch my channel. But I'm just, I know that if I listen to your story, you're going to tell me more. Then if I go, you're a creep. Tell me your story. Right. Right. It's like, you're, you're, you're, you're, You're not going to tell me anything. No, because I've seen a video of yours that was titled...

I've seen interviews with the Klansman, and the interviewer is just like you can just feel the hatred before he even says hi. Right. Okay. So, do you know who Nick Cannon is? He's an actor and rapper and whatnot? No, I don't. Super famous, Rich, et cetera.

And he at one point interviewed Richard Spencer, who's probably the world... America's most well-known white supremacist, I guess, at this point. And he's a very, very slick communicator. You know, he wears the suits, and he's very, very well-spoken. he's smart but then at the end of the day his agenda is basically white power and i saw that nick canon interviewed him and i immediately thought in my head that's not coming out because i the thing that i knew as soon as i saw it is i know that they're going to get along too well and i know that the video is going to expose the fact that they have more in common than anybody is

going to want to admit just in the sense that i think that this whole white power ideology if it was coming from the mouth of some other groups, it wouldn't really sound as offensive. And I was right, the video never came out. Because I just, there's something different about doing a podcast where you have two people kind of getting along. And at a certain point, somebody in that whole corporate world that he's in is going to say,

we can't put out a video with you getting along this while of the white supremacist. I think that's a benefit to what you do, though, is you get out of the way so much. The Klansman gets to sort of go off. And you don't really seem like you're a real participant in this. I'm not an interviewer. All I'm trying to do is get everyone to do with Johnny, the gang member that I interviewed a lot,

or Eric, a former crack addict that I interviewed a lot, or Lewis, the alcoholic that I even interview. Those guys just tell a story. If you notice, I don't even say anything. I don't say, hey, Eric, how's it going? Tell me your story. I don't say anything. I just go. And I sit back for 30 minutes or 45 minutes, and then they tell me they're done, and I turn off the camera.

I never said a word in most of those videos. And that's my ideal. That's how I'd like every single one of my videos to go, but I can't. I need to ask you where you're from just to get the conversation going. And then sometimes it takes off, and other times I need to coax it out of them every step of the way. But it's interesting too because you, you know, they know that if they don't talk, then what the fuck are you sitting here for? So they just start talking. Yeah, I was so lucky that I've met people like the guys I just mentioned.

And there's some women, too. They're just great storytellers. there's just great I mean who knew you're like man you're the best speaker I've ever heard Eric especially and that's something I will notice when I you know I spent a lot of time around you know quote unquote important people

interviewing people that you know have done something with their lives it's quite important that they have to talk about and I notice that a lot of times those people are quite guarded you know like I certainly don't walk into a room with a bunch of normal people and just start telling them my life story I don't start telling them like what about this famous rapper I interviewed this week this is how much money I made off this YouTube video. I don't do that because I've kind of like accomplished

enough in my life that I don't really feel the need to walk into a room and start announcing what I've done. But I notice that when I hang out with people who are very much more, you know, ground floor in their lives, that I'll go hang out with some guy and he'll start telling me about his job as an electrician like he's the fucking, you know, like it's the most interesting thing on earth. He's just, he's used to that of just sort of making content by just talking about his experiences. And I find that very, very fascinating because a lot of the most accomplished people I know

have like no outer monologue that they're constantly presenting. But normal salt to the earth people, that's like a very normal thing for them is they'll walk into a room and just start talking about their lives in a way that rich and famous people a lot of times don't. Yeah. I mean, what I believe and sometimes I follow it

and sometimes I break my rule, but nothing is more. more powerful than if I find out that you have accomplishments that you're not telling me about. But I find out through the Graefiner, just some weird way, I found out that you went to Harvard and you were recruited by the clippers to play in the NBA, but you passed up on it. You're not telling me how cool you are, how great a basketball player you were, or how smart you are. I just happened to have found out through somebody that knew you or went to school with you or

or play basketball or whatever. And you, like, wow, really? Adam, really? He was, so if you're not selling it, it's a hundred times, a thousand times more powerful and significant than if you tell me how great you are. You know, if you're telling me how great you are, it's like, yeah, okay.

You know, but if you find out that you're great or have wonderful qualities or accomplishments, it just, but you weren't tell me about it? You're just a dude. Where is it one-on-one? Two people talking? It makes all the difference. somebody said this the other day. They said that

people are so one of the number one things you hear people talk about and you ask somebody, how are you doing? Oh, I'm so busy. And that's just like so consistent. You know, poor people, rich people. Everybody wants to tell you how busy they are. Me too. And they said, think about

what people are really telling you. And they say that they're busy. They would never sit there in the conversation and tell you, I'm extremely in demand. But that's what you really are saying when you say you're busy. And, you know, you're sort of letting people know in advance, I don't have that much time to offer. So really even this right here,

me talking to you, this is quite valuable. That's like really what people are saying when they say they're busy and people feel very comfortable saying that but they won't say what they're actually trying to communicate there. And that made so much sense to me because for the last few years I've really always found myself kind of annoyed by people who talk about how busy they are

in part because I know that when I was 10 times less busy than I am now, I was still telling people I was busy. So I'm kind of like, I don't really believe my own shit that much in that regard because I know that I was telling people I was busy 10 years ago when I really didn't have shit going on compared to now. Yeah. I mean, for me,

the reason that my life gets difficult lately as my channel gets bigger and bigger is there's so many, I'm being pulled in so many different directions. Like every day I wake up to 30 messages from people whose lives are in crisis and they need me to save them.

That just drains you after a while. Every day, Saturday, Sunday, I don't get a break every single day. all day long. And then there's all the, you know, I'm trying to make things happen, which is totally separate. And then there's my other career,

which is really first priority over all this BS that I'm going through. And then when I'm doing both at the same time, it just becomes impossible. And I just want to like, turn off my phones for a week and just... At some point, do you just have to ignore some emails?

Well, like, I'll... Like, emailing me is next to impossible now. I had one email address or two actually and they quickly became out of control so I got a second. That got over now I have like five or six different email addresses and I can't really deal with any of them because I get so many people saying you need to interview me

and you need to help this person and I'm the cousin of this guy who you times 3,000 people. 3,000 interviews are all getting not every one of them but I'm getting pulled in all these different directions by people that said, I want to reach out to save this person. I want to do this, I want to do that. I'm one dude.

I'm just one dude. I don't have a team behind me. I don't have the money to pay a team. If I was making a shit ton of money, I would hire the team of people. And here, this handle this email. But I have to do it myself. And if I never got any emails,

this channel takes up so much of my time. You could probably go on like a more business, first direction, but it seems like that really doesn't appeal to you. Like if you started to treat it like more of a business, if you started to really want to maximize profits. Yeah, like selling merchandise and all that kind of stuff. All these kind of things that are available to you. Yeah, I don't even know selling merchandise is the answer, but I would probably start doing that soon just because people want T-shirts. I've heard this, all these people selling fake soft white underbelly t-shirts now. Okay. You know, there's fake TikTok accounts with my channel that all my videos,

I paid to create them, but somebody else has created a TikTok channel with all my videos. And I guess you can make money on TikTok? Somehow. I don't know. We haven't really got there yet. I don't know anything about social media, but it's just like it's overwhelming. Does that bother you or do you feel like your content is kind of like public domain?

No, no, no, no. It bothers the hell out of it. I'm human. Yeah. But what am I going to do about it? Call Mr. TikTok and say ask him to take that down? You could. You could definitely have it removed for copyright.

That's a good question. But there's got to be a way. It's not a good question. It's a question I've been wrestling with for six months. Okay. Trying to get that channel to get taken. down but you can't try to contact YouTube I mean this the what we just talked about Susan is here right now yeah I just got an email this morning coincidentally from

YouTube offer me a what's it called partner manager so that might help me with YouTube but that doesn't help me with TikTok and Instagram and all these other things that are using my yeah how hospitable do you consider YouTube to be as a platform you you not only get videos age-restricted and demonetized but you get stuff removed as well I'm assuming? I've had some removed. I get a lot that are demonetized. It's not all or nothing. People seem to think, oh, all Marx videos are demonetized. That's not the case. It's only certain ones. But in general, I believe YouTube supports what I'm doing and is, YouTube's been really good to me. So I'm not angry at YouTube. But all I'm saying is I kind of, my stuff is educational.

It's not porn. You know, when I do an interview of a prostitute, the spirit behind it is, let's find out how this girl got into this career, why she's like this. I believe it's probably not an ideal career for a young woman. I'm glad. If she's happy, I'm happy for her, but prostitutes and porn stars, I don't know that it's an ideal career for a woman.

I really don't. So what I'm doing is just showing you how they got there. I'm not saying it's good or bad. You notice I don't say that, oh, porn is bad. I mean, very rarely do I make judgments like that. I've only done it like a handful of times in all my interviews. The spirit behind what I'm doing is to educate.

Yet sometimes my work gets treated like it's porn. And if you really watch my interviews, you'll see that it's pretty educational. And YouTube, 99% of the time treats it like that. But if a video is titled Prostitute Interview, it's very hard for me to get it monetized. Sometimes they do, which makes no sense to me, but usually they don't.

Like this week, I think I've got three or four prostitute interviews and they're all the amount. I think one got monetized. And the thing that really kills you isn't the fact that it's not monetized, it's the fact that the views stop coming in. And so you could have a video doing extremely well, and then it gets demonetized and boom, it just flatlines and doesn't get any more views. Yeah, that problem is well. I don't really pay too much attention to all that. Because that's what I'll notice is that when it turns from green to yellow and they turn off the ads, then they also kind of turn off the suggested video thing.

So the views will just plummet. And that's what hurts. It's like, listen, you can keep the money, but let me keep getting all the fucking views. on this so I at least know that it made the impact that it could have or should have. I know very little about YouTube and social media. Okay. But I believe you, I mean, my channel is, what I got, like 2 million subscribers now, that wouldn't be the case if YouTube didn't support what I'm doing and promote it.

So I believe they're generally good to me, but they have to do what they have to do. You know, if somebody says, oh, you know, Lynn talked about suicide, you got to take that down. You know, it's going to trigger people. What are they going to do? No, we're going to leave it up. So they have to take it down. So it's probably a viewer that was upset about, Lynn, this girl that was a Crystal Math Addict that I interviewed, her first interview, she talked about suicide.

She didn't commit suicide, and she's threatened suicide a thousand times, but she's never ever going to do it, I don't believe. But she talked about it, and it got deleted, like two weeks ago. Just because she was talking about doing it? Yeah, but if you're going to start deleting videos because someone talked about suicide, that's a quarter of my videos. Pretty much. Yeah. So I'm not sure if that's, I think it's a viewer who got upset because it's a powerful, Lynn's first video is very powerful because she's so, like, troubled and so just full of angst

that it triggered somebody and they reported it and it got deleted. So that's gone. That's unfortunate. Yeah. That's what my Patreon channel is for it. You want nudity, you want all the rawest content, you go to Patreon and pay $10 a month and you can get that. Oh, okay. So is that doing pretty well?

No. No. We're about to launch ours. I don't promote it. Right. Oh, okay. You know, I don't promote it. I just put it up.

And I did a video a year and a half ago or whatever it was when I started it and that's all I've ever really done. I have a little thing at the very end of my videos saying I have a Patreon channel, but people don't watch the ends of my videos. They only watch the first eight minutes and then they bail. I feel bad when I miss like the last 10 minutes. You know, I'll be watching a 45 minute one

and sort of, you know, I'll notice myself skipping the next one when there's like eight minutes left and I'll be thinking like, am I missing? Like, maybe there's a really good ender to that one. Yeah, sometimes, I mean, like, I did have been this morning that I thought was, I probably wasn't going to use and then the gentleman told me, like, I asked them, like, you know, how do you think if your childhood was different?

If, you know, it may have been taking your life in a different direction. He goes, well, when I got molested, it was like, oh, you know, so then it became, it became more interesting again. I noticed there's, like, almost trends with your content. Like, you'll just get interested in something, and then there'll be a bunch of stuff about that, like the nudist thing. Like, is that? No, it's because I took a trip to Tampa where there are all these nudist resorts.

So that's why you got an influx of, like, a whole bunch of nudist and swinger videos. I'm going to be going back there at the end of the month. Where did that, because that's not something I ever would have thought as something that would make sense on your channel. See, if you really understand my channel, which is, it can be very, it's my fault because I did so many videos on Skid Row that people thought it was a drug addiction Skid Row channel, and it is not.

And if you're coming here just for drug addict stories, you're going to be disappointed. Because, like when I sell that house next year, I'll have money to really do what I want to do with this channel, you'll still see some drug addict stories, but you're going to see, you know, cowboys, and you're going to see Amish people, and you'll see, you know,

you'll see all kinds of different subcultures across the country. And they're all going to be interesting, but they're not all drug addict stories. The only reason you see so many drug addict stories is because Skid Row is half an hour from my house. And it's full of a lot of the worst stories you ever heard. No, I mean, finding, as you, I'm sure know,

finding interesting content is the biggest challenge. If I go to Skid Row, I don't have to even think about it. I just go down there and I find gold all the time every day. I found one of the best interviews I've done all year this morning with a woman who is sex trafficked since she was a little kid. Oh, wow. Clover. When people used to always ask me to interview people on the street or whatever,

a lot of the first thing that would come to mind for me would be if someone's on the street smoking crap, doing heroin, meth, whatever. Are they really able to consent to being on camera? Yeah, that's a great question. How often does that weigh into your decision about putting these people on camera? And a lot of times I feel like they're at some level of sobriety,

like maybe they're not like actually on drugs at the moment that you're interviewing? I've had, you know, of all the interviews I've done, I've had two where the, in one case, the family of a crack addict, and he wanted me to keep his video up. but his family and friends contacted me his friends mainly and said you got to take that down he's he's got a respected career and you're making him look like he's you know they were really

polite about it they weren't aggressive they were just like can you take that down because it's going to ruin his career and i don't want to ruin anyone's career so i took it down right but then i saw him like a couple days later he goes you took that down and i'm like yeah he goes i wish you hadn't and then i'm like you know so he wants it up but but it was an interesting video because it's a really intelligent talk about being on Skid Row. Rather than just a, you know, he's a white guy, he's accomplished, he was a musician, he was respected, he had a great life, but he chose this street life at least temporarily at this point in his life.

And I thought it was really a deep, interesting talk, but it's gone now. I think it exists on Patreon, but it's gone from my YouTube channel. And the other one was a guy who was so fascinating, but he was, he was clearly high. And I normally don't do interviews with people who are high, but he was just so fascinating and interesting and beautiful. He was a beautiful, you know, physically beautiful person. You know, Sean, he's on, they all still exist on my Patreon channel.

That's a reason to go to Patreon. But I just thought he was just so, like, interesting to look at and listen to. He spoke beautifully about how much he loved his dad. And it was a great talk. But his family called me and says, you've got to take that down. He looks like an asshole. So I did. But that's a weird decision because it's like if he was down to do it, like who is the family

necessarily to tell me what narrative should be being put out there? Even he called me up. Says, yeah, I was so high. I didn't, I looked stupid. Yeah. Yeah, I have his number. I may do another one later, but typically you can't recreate magic. You know, it worked that time because it worked.

You try to recreate it 99% of the time it falls flat. And that's a lot of the whole thing with drug addicts too, is that a lot of times you will get there might be 10 different versions to their personality that you might get in an interview you might get multiple different versions of their personality in one interview because they might be like still sort of high and then the adrenaline sort of wears off midway through the interview all of a sudden they're kind of drowsy yeah no but i think people fall asleep in the middle of an interview yeah that it happened this morning because you're so not in control of like where you're at in your yeah your energy no but back to your original question about whether

it's okay you don't really have their consent if they're high Look, what I do is pushing the limits of what's appropriate or right, you know? I push the limits all the time. Like the stuff I do is like I really thought my channel would get taken down from YouTube by now. That was really kind of my secret little goal was to put this channel up, make it as edgy as I can, and eventually get it taken down by YouTube because it's just too inappropriate. And then there'll be a Patreon channel backup, and that's people can go. go there. That was my plan, but YouTube is basically done the opposite and supported me,

which is cool too. So instead I'm getting support from YouTube. So if YouTube ever took it down, then I'd probably start making money because everyone would probably pay when I'm charging $10 a month on Patreon and then I'd probably start making money. But who knows? I'm just doing what I do. I'm learning every day I do this, you know, about myself and about other people and about society and our country and how humans work. And I love learning. Definitely. What does the sheer size of your audience at this point say?

Back to what I'm saying. To answer your first question, I'll be quick. It's about prevention. Right. So if somebody has to pay the price, which always is going to have, there's always a trade-off. Somebody's going to have to pay a price

if you're going to do an interview of a drug addict. It's the interviewee. The interviewee is paying the price. I pay them, I compensate them. I treat them with respect, but they are taking the hit because, look, here I am. I'm a drug addict. And it's humiliating or embarrassing, even though they're not particularly humiliated. They're proud of it, and they want to come back and do another one.

But I understand how people say, oh, no, you made that person look bad because you show them as a drug addict. But it's not about them. It's about the thousands of young people who are being parented by people who are watching my channel, or even the young people that are watching my channel. My channel is pretty popular, so a lot of people are seeing it, and I'll bet you it's affecting somebody in terms of their decisions about using drugs

or joining a gang or become a sex worker or all these things. So somebody has to pay the price for that awareness and understanding, and that's the drug addict, or the prostitute. Yeah. Sorry. No, for sure. Your audience is gigantic.

What do you think that says about, you know, the fans, the world? the YouTube audience. You know what's interesting, Monica and I were speaking off camera about this. She's a musician first, and then this help that she does with the Patrick Katie Foundation is just her little side hustle. She was saying everybody in the music industry is using. I've heard.

Really? Because I'm naive. I've never smoked pot. You know? I'm the square as square you'll ever see in terms of drugs. But I think the drugs are much more common, you know, because a lot of my, you know, because a lot of my channel is about drugs, it seems. It's ridiculous that I'm the head of this channel

that has something to do with drugs. But it's really not about drugs. It's about humans. I like learning about humans, so that's really what I do it. But drugs seem to be super popular across our country. And the most popular video I posted in the last six months is of Matthew, who's a functional heroin addict. It's got two and a half million views.

I didn't think that video would get 50,000 views. It's got 2.5 million. And the reason for that is because there's a lot of people who are functioning and using, I believe. Yeah, I have a friend who... Because he's not particularly charismatic or interesting. He's just a nice dude who uses heroin. I think that functional word was the whole thing. Because I remember when I first met somebody from the Northwest when I first moved to L.A.,

and he just told me, like, yeah, my mom and dad, they do a... crystal meth they go to work it's like a fucking cup of coffee to you it's like they do meth all day and i'm never being so shocked because i just didn't realize that there were people who had functional relationships with that kind of stuff but now that seems incredibly obvious to me like of course like everybody who does heroin or crystal meth can't be out on the streets robbing people you know there's got to be people with workable relationships with these drugs yeah no and i'd like to do more of them yeah but it's hard to find people that want to talk about it when they've got a nine to five and they don't want to lose their job.

Oh, you're a heroin addict? You're fired. You know, so there's that. Yeah. But there are people who can get around that somehow. Yeah. And that's the ones I'll interview. But what I think interesting,

because I get drawn to a lot of the gang stuff that you do just because I feel like that's kind of the stuff that's the closest. What is your background? I mean, what do you? I'm waiting for my soft white underbelly interview. No, just really quickly. How did you get into this? So in 2006, I started like the first BMX blog website.

basically when I was living in New York City. I've been riding BMX bike since I was 12. I basically did that from like 2006, so around 2016. That was all I did was run this blog. Over time, it kind of became more like, oh, I'm a podcaster. I started interviewing all these pro BMX riders and stuff. Within the first year, I interviewed a couple of underground rappers, and those interviews did so many more views than the BMX riders I was interviewing,

which gave me a little bit more confidence because I've been like a lifelong, like hip hop addict and that was always the number one thing that I was a fan of all of a sudden I started to realize for the first time of my life like oh there are people in this world who give a fuck about what I have to say and I was very lucky because I was sort of there for the early era of the sound cloud era so there's a rapper xxxintasian who you might have heard of who passed away a couple years ago and his interview is by far my biggest interview I think it was like 14 million views or something like that and that that one was the one where all of a sudden it became like, oh, now everybody knows about you. And that kind of took it to a totally

different level. And now I just try to interview whoever I find interesting. Yeah, but you're very good. I like your style of like Joe Rogan's really great too. Like the way he makes conversation happen is just like it's perfect. It's beautiful. Yeah, there's so many different interview styles. What have you learned about interviewing? I know your style is kind of get out of the way. Yeah, I don't really see myself as an interviewer. I see myself as just a photographer who's just trying to get their story. So my ideal scenario, what I'm aiming for is like the Johnny or the Eric or the Lewis videos that I mentioned, which is just a photo and them telling their story.

It's perfect for me. That's the formula. But that doesn't work in 95% of the cases. So I need to coax it out. but the fewer words I can say the better. Now, every once in a while I'll interview somebody who we just click with and we have conversations off camera that are great,

so I'll actually have a conversation with them on camera. But everyone complains when I do that, so I should probably not do that, but I still do it sometime. That's interesting. Yeah, because one thing that stands out to me about your stuff is that, you know, photography, I guess in a lot of ways, is like, bigger than ever

since everybody can take a photo, and obviously there's, you know, You know, if you're a great photographer, there's tons of commercial opportunities. There's tons of brands that need high-quality photo work all the time. But photos don't go viral that often these days in comparison to video. And that's why I find so fascinating about yours is that if I was a photographer who was just looking for a way, like, how do I make my photos get out there more? I would probably land on something like what you're doing. Oh, I'll do this YouTube content.

And then I'll have the photos as the thumbnail and inserted inside the video. Well, I'm not selling my photos. Right, but if you just wanted people to see them, then I feel like the YouTube videos are the perfect vehicle to get more people, if the goal is just for people to see the photos, the YouTube videos are perfect. That thought never even entered my mind. Really?

All I'm trying to do is inform society about each other. That's all I'm thinking about. Definitely. Like when a prostitute comes out and tells you how she got to where she is, how she, her boyfriend at 15 years old turned out to be her pimp and she didn't know it, and how she was molested when she was six years old, how sex became a part of her life at a very young age. That is a story that should be told.

You know, because you know it's going to happen again and again. Listen to the 300 sex worker videos on my channel. Every girl has almost the same story. Yeah. You know, I guarantee it's happening right now somewhere. For sure. That shit is a constant over and over and over a reminder of how fucking careful you need to be with your kids.

Yeah. I mean, it's really, it's the reason. for my channel is like if you love yourself, you're going to treat others differently. You're not going to be molesting your kids if you love yourself, right? So clearly we don't love ourselves enough. How do you love yourself? Is it religion? For a lot of people, it's religion.

I'm not religious, so I don't get religion as the way, but I was parented really well. Not perfectly, but, you know, on a scale from 1 to 10, I would say, you know, was parented like a 9.5. So I didn't have this traumatic, terrible child. with my parents. So I've never had these kind of weird sexual things with anybody, right? You know, my relationships have all been pretty cool with everyone I've had a relationship with. So I don't really have enemies. I don't have people that hate me other than on this YouTube channel. They don't really hate me. What's really going on there is they hate themselves or they hate what my channel represents and that's not me. but we just need to as a society be healthier, be happier.

Because if you're happy, you're not going to fuck with anybody. You're not going to do anything to a young kid. Yeah, I was wondering how you're going to humanize this guy. I forget his name that you interviewed and just said rapist in the title. Yeah. And I was wondering, like, how do you do that interview before I even clicked on it? Like, how do you do that interview and not seem like you're giving him space to justify his actions? I was just immediately interested, too, because it's like,

is he just admitting that he's a rapist off rip, which he did. But before he even got into that, he was talking about how his earliest memories of sex and relationships or just love were based around his family members raping him. And it's like that just immediately forces you into this mind state where even the most judgmental person can't help but understand that this guy is a product of his circumstances and that doesn't like absolve him for all the shit he's done. but it's impossible to remove a person from trying to understand their upbringing. Yeah, I mean, like, if you're watching my channel and you're judging or hating somebody, like James the rapist or a sex offender, for example, you know, the ones who molest young kids, if you're judging or hating them, you're not learning. Your mind is in a different, you're using a different part of your brain.

And what I want to do is help everyone learn. So if your mind is open, you're just listening to the story. Like, there's a video that I didn't post on YouTube. I posted it on Patreon last week. Richie, who's a sex offender. It was just too much for YouTube. So I didn't even post it there. But he talks about how he was molested by his uncle,

who would take him to the zoo all the time. They never went to the zoo. And then his stepdad, his mom's boyfriend, or somebody came into the picture, and the same thing happened again. And I think it happened to either other times. camp counselors and all this kind of it was an entire childhood full of being screwed with sexually so sure enough he's he's gone out and he's I think I forget how many

kids way too many kids that he's done this with and he has a ton of remorse but he says at the end of the video it's like I'm gonna do it again that guy was just talking about James yeah and then by the end of the video he was talking about raping his own mother yeah and that that was the moment where I found myself I noticed stuff for a few minutes that my hands that were breaking up weed had frozen my eyes my jaws dropped and I'd just been staring at the TV for like three minutes straight

it was that intense when I asked him like what did you just say and he's like well right I raped my mother like he couldn't really say it he mumbled it and he kind of you raped your mother he was yeah yeah he even he had a lot of shame and he's squirming around in his chair

and he just he could barely like live with himself enough to tell you that story, but for some reason it was like he had to let it down. It's, again, mental health. I mean, there's something wrong with him mentally, whether it's his family's fault, or maybe it's just the brain chemistry he was born with, or maybe, I mean, all these serial killers and all that.

I mean, is it because something terrible happened to them as kids, or is it just genetics, or is it the water they're drinking? What is it? Is it the cell phones? Is it the plastic? I don't know what's going on, but there's something going on in the world. There's so many people shooting random people, and raping so many kids

and like, why are we all so violent and cruel? Do you feel like you are better equipped to answer that question now than when you started? It should be, right? That's a great question. I mean, yes, but I don't have the answer. I mean, like, with all the sex,

I used to, like, you see a stripper or a prostitute or whatever, and I used to be much more judgmental. Now I never judge. I don't even, I think I've eradicated it from my personality now. Because I know now, after doing all these interviews, that there's something happened to you when you were young that kind of set you on that path.

So I'm not even going to think that what you're doing is bad or wrong or anything. I'm just going to see it as you found a way to support yourself. Good for you. And if you want something better, you know, maybe I can help you with that, or maybe I can't or whatever.

You know, it's like, but all you can do, is love and support. That's all you can do. Because if you're going to judge and say, no, what you're doing is fucked up, they're not going to stop doing it. They're going to dig their heels and deeper and just do it more with more shame.

But the only way out is to build them up and give them dignity and respect and love and let them take a deep breath and hold their head up high and feel good about themselves. And when they do that, they're much more likely to make better decisions for themselves. and maybe make decisions that might make them a little less money,

but make them happier. Yeah. So, I don't, I mean, it's hard to say, oh, I have all the answers now if you're doing all these interviews. I understand things better, but I still don't understand a lot, which is why I'm still hungry to do this. I look forward to doing these, because I'm learning all the time. There's no type of interview that has grown stale to you?

Are there interviews that you did early on that maybe, you would turn down now because you just don't find that person. Like, I feel like if I did a couple of Klan interviews that I just wouldn't really be able to keep doing it. Oh, yeah. I mean, I don't want to do a whole bunch of them. I've got one more in the can that I'll use, but I'm waiting for the right.

I don't want to just put up a Klan video. But the reason I went to Mississippi was to find the counterpoint to the Klan interview, which is a cold-hearted Klansman. It's an interesting video because there's even full. footage of their ritual thing at the beginning. But I wanted to find an older, like a 90-year-old, I interviewed a bunch of 90-year-old African-American people

in the middle of Mississippi, hoping to find a racism story. There really would be a good counterpoint to that. Right. The best I found, and she wasn't the most compelling storyteller, so I'm not going to use it, but I'm persistent. I'll probably keep trying. But I asked her about racism. She was 94 years old.

She was, tell me, racism must have seen a lot in your 94 years. Tell me what you've seen. Racism, I've never seen racism. And this is a totally black community. I mean, you can count the white people on one hand, I think, that I saw while I was there. For two days, three days, whatever. I've never seen racism. I wonder what she would define racism is.

And she worked on, like, I think she worked on the cotton fields as a kid and all that. And she's, what is racism? Well, racism is where, like, maybe people from one race might not like people from another race and treat them badly. And I had to explain to her what racism was. And she goes, yeah. No, when we worked in the fields, the cotton fields,

the plantation owners would treat the children of the black people a certain way. And she kind of got into it. And it was very clear that, yes, there was racism in her life that she experienced, like, harshly, right? But she didn't even see it as anything other than just that's the way life is. Right.

She didn't see it like, hey, you're treating me unfairly. Like now I think blacks are much more aware that, hey, you're treating me differently than you would treat a white person or whatever. So they're much more on edge about it. And it's a bigger deal, the Black Lives Matter and all that kind of stuff. I mean, her threshold for what she probably,

for what would have to happen for her to consider a racist, would probably be incredibly high. Yeah, I mean, she didn't even know it existed. But that's a community. It was so black that there was no tension between the whites and blacks. There just wasn't anything. The whites were basically, they thought it was a cop.

Everyone assumed I was a cop in that community because I was white. Wow. Because why would a white person be there? There was no reason. That must just be such an eye-opening learning experience for you, too, because I'm sure you could have never imagined that dynamic. Right, right.

No, so that's what I'm saying. I love to learn in doing these interviews. I just keep learning. So eventually when I stop learning, like when I do the Klansman videos, I don't, interviews, I'm not really learning a whole lot. So I'm kind of,

I did a handful of those and I think I'm, I might, if somebody was really interesting, I'd do it, but probably, I probably won't go looking for more of those. You ever do a clan interview and then look at the comments

and realize a lot of people agree with them? Yeah, yeah, I've seen some of that. And did that bother you or make you think twice about? No, no, because I'm not, I'm not assuming my entire audience has evolved

and sees things the way I do. Like, I work very hard and I'm very successful at being non-judgmental. Every once in a while, I'll tell a young prostitute's like, you know, what you're doing is probably not good for your kid. And it's not going to end well. Look at some of the other interviews. You'll see that it's not going to end well.

And I'll talk her out of it. But generally, I just let them tell their story and stand back. So I'm really good at just standing back and letting people do their thing and say their peace and say, thanks for telling your story. Definitely. Is there any part of you, when I was interviewing Big U from who's basically like

the founder of the Roland 60s Crips out here and he's really transitioned into like making documentaries and doing all this stuff in the music industry and stuff is a really great story but he's very much figured out that his name is so powerful and his you know everything that he's been

through in his life is so big that he constantly will have different documentary people wanting to work with him trying to turn his ideas or stories that he's been a part of into documentaries stuff like that and when I was having that conversation with him, I was like, that's so interesting because I feel like, you know,

a documentary is just one way that you could present a narrative, just the same way that a podcast is. Like this big you could have easily started a podcast. He could have easily, not easily, but he could have created a TV show. There's so many different ways to tell a story in this day and age.

It occurs to me that the stories that you're telling, I could completely imagine a lot of those stories being sort of like interwoven into a, a documentary or a narrative. Oh, yeah. Is there anything that, is that something that you think about? Is any of this content ever going to be repurposed for a bigger purpose?

Eric is writing a book currently with his, you know, life story, which would be great, right? Johnny should, but he's so high that I don't think that'll ever happen. Okay. The gang member, he's got great stories, and it would be a great movie or. But you don't automatically think, oh, I could do a document about this one person. For me to do it? A soft white underbelly, like something. like the like a see i i the spirit of what i want to do is is is to learn for me and i think my

audience likes to learn that that's that's 99.9 or percent of what i'm doing so if i was going to do a documentary about chongo or about johnny for example let's say johnny i'm going to stop learning while i do that i'll learn a little bit about johnny and the gang life and all that but i'm not learning like you know this the interviews i did this morning i learned from the interviews is I'll do up in San Francisco this week. I'll learn from. I'll learn a little bit every day. I love what I've learned in the last, especially the last two years is when I've

done this so hot and heavy. You know, like every day I've been doing it. I just learn, learn, learn, learn, and you know, just a little bit more every day. I just become like a more well-rounded person by doing that. So I don't think I'll put it down to go do something else, even if it's going to make

money. Because I think what's, at this point of my life, I'm more interested in doing what's right than making money. I'll make money when I sell the house, you know? So if I need money, I just sit on the beach until next summer when I saw the house and then I'll have money. It's not about money. It's about, to me, it's about learning.

Right, because you said earlier that once you saw the house, things will be a little different and you're going to do different things. If somebody just dropped a million dollars on you right now, what would I do? What do you doing a little different with the channel? I would hire editors because I spend so much my time editing. Oh, really? I would hire researchers to help me find you. people because I'm doing that as well.

Editing takes up most of my day. You could get somebody for fucking five bucks a day to edit for you, man. I don't know. Are you really picky with the editing? Yeah, I'm really picky. I'm a freak. Not five bucks a day. That's not a living wage, but.

No, I know what you mean. No, I could, but I like doing it myself. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure I could hire somebody who's really great. Like, when I hired people, I pay them a lot. I don't pay them just a little. Like people want to intern for me. I get emails every day from people that want to intern.

They want to work for me for free. I love what you're doing. I want to work for free. I don't hire people for free. I pay them a lot. So if you're fucking amazing and worth what I'm going to pay you, then you're going to be maybe part of my team

if I ever start making money. But I'm not going to hire somebody who just wants to work for free. I don't need that. Yeah, you don't want to ever hire anyone who wants to work for free. Plus what I'm doing is so dangerous. Like if you're going to work on set with me,

yeah. Like when I went to Memphis, the first pimp I interviewed I ended up becoming really good friends with and he just died recently. drove in an auto accident. But he told me, he's like, when we first saw you, you're a white guy in our neighborhood, man.

We were just going to rob you. But then you came walking up to us and told us what you're doing, and you're offering us money, and we're like, what the fuck? Let's not rob this guy yet. And then he and I became friends later, but he initially was going to rob me. So if I had some intern out there who's like young and, you know, naive,

because not everybody knows how to navigate those kind of situations. as well. It can be a real problem. I don't want that liability of somebody, you know, he got stabbed or he got robbed or shot or killed or whatever because he was working with me. Right. The liability is too much.

So I'd rather do this by myself. 100%. Some of your more high-profile interviews, like the Ron Jeremy thing or the Michael Franzis one, are those situations that happen in different ways, since I'm assuming, you know, just like see Ron Jeremy walking down the street? No, no.

I'm not into porn at all, so I'm not... I saw an interview with him, and he was an interesting cat. And he's lived a very, very different lifestyle. And I just thought it would be funny and interesting. And let me just try it. And he's a charming guy. He's friendly, charming, he's intelligent. He had interesting things to share.

But that was just a little experiment that probably is not a direction I want to go in. So I don't think even if I had all the money to spend on this channel, I wouldn't take it in that direction. I like people who aren't selling anything and have never told their story. Like I get a lot of people coming to me that they've got a little secret agenda. They want to sell their music or they want to sell this or they're going to be famous or they want to start a podcast or they want to do this, that or the other. And I tend to steer away from those because I'd rather find a pimp who's never ever talked about anything. or a drug addict or a gang member or whatever.

I mean, the gang members, here's one thing I've learned. The people that don't want to tell me their story, that really just, those are the most interesting ones. Those are the ones I want. Those are the ones I want. As soon as I find out, you know, when I go to a no city and, well, there's these four people, and this one doesn't want to tell her story and, like, get her. That's the one I want.

Because that's one who's got something really interesting to share. A lot of the best conversations I've had through this podcast have been, and the conversations that took place immediately after we stopped recording. And the rapper just started telling me about how they used to run this drug empire. They're literally like unplugging the mics like as if we're still recording and shit because they're so paranoid that somebody could re-recording them. And that is a weird one. Because on one hand, of course, I don't want you to say anything on camera that's going to get you in trouble.

Your interview is in mine overlap. Yeah, probably. You've done gang members. Oh, yeah. But you know, it's funny because when I watch your stuff, a lot of times when I interview someone who's in a gang or whatever sometimes though especially with the older guys they'll be regretful about it they'll have negative things to say about it

but then at the same time a lot of dudes love the gang shit they love it they fucking love the culture of it they love everything about it like and a lot of times when I watch yours I don't know if it's just the ones you use or if it's just the environment makes them want to present it differently but they like very rarely are you know presenting gangbanging in a positive way on your stuff. Is that intentional? No. I don't like not use the ones that support. Like if I had

a gang member who came out and really thought it was awesome and it was great, is that what you're saying? Yeah. I would love that. Really? I would love that because it's not necessarily, I'm not endorsing it but it just shows you some, like what I'd really love to get more of with the gang because I've got Johnny 12 times, right? How many more Johnny interviews do I need?

Even though he's still interesting. But every once in a while I'll find a gang member. What I'd love is to find a young, active one. who's 17, 18, 19, and lives for it. It's his only option. That gives you a window into that subculture that we probably need to look at as a society. Yeah, I could probably help you out.

Although I wonder, just, you know, I feel like if you're 18 and really in it, gangbanging-wise, you don't want to talk about it. It's like the number one thing where you're going to be really disincentivized to talk about it. Yeah, yeah. No, that's the problem. That's why I don't have more of them because they generally don't talk about it. Like I've met guys on the street who have tattoos all over their face. And like, dude, I'd love to talk to you.

I can just tell by the attitude and the look and the whole thing. And you're asking me to do something that I would never, ever do. So it's like, I get it. Yeah. Some of the vlogs that we've done where we go to people's neighborhoods have been like the most shocking and like moving for me. Like even little things. Like we did one in Long Beach where we went to this rapper's like neighborhood. and I just saw all these like

you know 15, 16 year old kids just sort of hanging out in this alley and, you know, they're like 16 and I saw a gun poking out of one of their pocket like in the back of their shirt. You're like me as white as can be, right? Yeah, and I'm just hanging. I had a couple guys with me and stuff.

I'm not worried, but I'm just like seeing like these dudes sit on the fucking corner. These kids, these are kids are 15 or 16 and if you ask them what they want to do with their life, they'll tell you that they want to gang bang. Yeah. That they want to be part of this and they want to represent this well. Right.

and they don't know anything else. And I mean... That's why I'd love to find. Shocking, yeah. I'd love to get more of those kind of interviews. And maybe I have to go to Chicago for it or something, but, again, they sometimes don't want to talk. Yeah.

Yeah. It's an interesting subculture. But again, as a small part of my audience likes that. I'm not going to, like, start becoming a gang channel. It's not my thing. Yeah. Understandable. Yeah, I mean, it was a great conversation.

I really appreciate you coming in. Oh, thanks. No, it's nice to talk about it sometimes. I never really talk about it. I just do it. Really? Yeah, so I've done like three interviews now for him. Okay.

That's dope, yeah. Oh, you know, I got to talk about this. Amanda. Yeah. I don't think I really understood how big your channel was until I saw number one trending on Twitter. And I'm like, that many people are talking about an interview that he did. And granted, she did a bunch of interviews. Yeah.

But she was just a little street girl that I thought was interesting. And I kept doing interviews with her. And she, I got friendly with her dad. and I said, man, Amanda's coming over here. She wants money all the time. What do I do? And it was very clear what she was doing to get money, which is super dangerous, right?

Ten different ways. So I said, tell you what, I'll have Amanda come to me every day and I'll give her $40. And we'll do a quick little interview, a quick little, like sometimes they were like two minutes or less, one minute, sometimes more. But gentlemen, she was so incohing. just gibberish coming out of her mouth.

Nonsense, monely. But she's cute, and she's a quirky personality, and she was fun to watch while she was deep into her crack addiction. And so I'd give her the $40, and she'd come back for more, and I'd have to tell her how I couldn't give her anymore because I'm just feeding her addiction at that point.

It's tough, it's tough dealing with addicts, but she would have temper tantrums and all this kind of stuff. It was out of control. And she'd, like, yell outside my studio. You'd hear it in the background of other videos, other interviews I've done. You'll hear Amanda yelling, Mark, you know, because she just wants her money for more crack. But she got clean miraculously through this woman Lima who just came out of nowhere, like an angel, just came out of nowhere. And helped her get clean?

Yeah. How involved did she have to get to help her get clean? Super involved. Like, she was talking to the courts every day, talking with her. with the judge, talking with the district attorney, talking with whoever she needed to talk to, to make sure that Amanda stayed in, she assaulted her dad right before she met,

right before Lima contacted me. And Larry, Amanda's dad calls me and says, what do I do? Mark, what do I do? He and I talk a lot. Amanda just assaulted me and the police are here and they wanna know if I wanna press charges. I'm like, yeah, what do you got to lose?

If you don't press charges, she's out in the street again and she's gonna do something terrible, like she always does, why not put her in jail? It's not gonna be so bad. okay I'm going to press charges so he did so she went to jail for like a week or two or three until her court date and that's when lima came into the picture and Lima decided she's going to help Amanda and make a long story short she got the court to hold Amanda for two months which must have been terrible for a crack addict to be going through all that and just sitting there

in a cell but eventually her case got the court decided that she's got to do one year of rehab or she's going to do five years in prison. And it wasn't just a rehab where you could leave if you wanted to. It was basically like a jail. I mean, it was super pleasant. Great rehab. Great rehabs. She went to.

She went to two different ones. One in L.A., and it got too expensive because Lima and her husband were basically paying for all this rehab. Well over $100,000 that she and her husband were paying because the GoFundMe really wasn't supported that much. And she found Amanda through your channel? She found Amanda through my channel. Wow.

And she kind of just oversaw the entire process. Lima did. I give Lima all the credit for that. I mean, I did my part to make things happen, but Lima was like an angel that came in and just saved Amanda from herself. Wow. And she got clean, which was beautiful. The last interview I did, I think in April, she was just like talking with you. It was weird. It was like, that's the same person because I know you as a crackhead that's like so out of control. It's weird to see you speaking intelligently and having compassion for others and all like all these skills that I never seen come out of this person. It was really a beautiful story and then she dies.

And do you know the circumstances that she died in it? They're still doing the autopsy. They said it's going to take two or three months. So this was just May that it happened, early May, I think. It was Mother's Day. Wow. It happened to Mother's Day morning. She fell, she died in her sleep.

Wow. And her dad told me that there's a history of aneurisms in the family. so maybe it's that. Lima suspects it had something to do with all the trauma that she went through. I mean, she would come and see my studio with like scrapes and beating up. She'd get beaten up, like weekly.

All her teeth are gone. You know, scrapes on her head, bumps here, bleeding there. Is the one where she was wearing the overalls, her first interview? That was the first one, yeah. And she's totally pretty, and it's really kind of weird to hear her talking about doing all these drugs and stuff

because she isn't really like showing the signs that you typically see that somebody's living on the street. Everyone gives me a hard time because I made some comment, some joke. When she tells me that she made some comment about all the crazy sexual things that she does with guys. And I'm like, look, I'm a guy. I'm a guy. I'm not an angel. Everybody thinks I'm a saint and an angel.

I'm just a dude of the camera. You know, I'm not a bad dude. What did you say, though, that the piss people are? I think I said, you know, she does something crazy, sexual, whatever. And I'm like, so what are you doing later? I'm a guy. I have a sense of humor. I can't show it on these videos because I have to be straight.

So I play the straight man, which is hard for me because I could say some of the funniest stuff ever. But I choose not to. So that's my rule. And I follow rules. So if my rule is I don't make jokes with people, then I just don't. So I have to play a straight man. Sharp and I work really nicely together. Because he's the whole street and he's got such a great persona.

And he's so charismatic. And I have to be the straight white guy. Yeah. And it's a good dynamic. It's like a comedy team. Do you think that the fact that you are such a sort of clean cut white guy that you like don't do drugs, that you're not even on the spectrum of drug use? Like I feel like even me smoking weed, maybe that would blur the line a little bit if I were to be doing the kind of interviews that you do. Do you think it helps you in some way that you're kind of from a completely different world?

Yeah, I treat everyone with respect. And that's how I get into this pimp world. And that's why I'm accepted into I treat everybody well, basically, until they start just taking advantage. of me, which happens. Once I start giving people support, then they start taking advantage of me, and that's when I'll back off, and that's the only problems I've ever had. But because I'm not

tempted by drugs at all, I'm surrounded by them all the time. People are smoking crack right in front of me in my studio. People come, you know, I've seen everything, right? None of it tempts me. It's not even, there's not a chance in hell that I would ever use any of these things. So that gives me

the ability to dive into that community that that world without any danger of becoming an addict because if if you're going to smoke pot you might smoke crystal meth on a weekend or something and then next you know so that that could happen right with me i don't think it ever could no i'm not i'm not saying i'm better than me i'm not perfect i have my vices too you know but but they're not drugs yeah with amanda um what do you think it was, though, that many people stand up and ever... Did she stand out to you as being the most

popular person on your chance? No, no. But then when she passed, were you just shocked by the number of people who were clearly affected by your story? It was very surprising for me because I'm like, really? Amanda? Like, when her like some of her videos kind of went semi viral early on, they got like a couple

million views. Like, wow, that was interesting. I didn't think anything of her. I just thought she was an interesting little street girl. And But there's other people, I think, are a little more compelling than Amanda. But, you know, celebrity is almost like she became a celebrity. Celebrity is a weird thing. Like, why do some of the people that become huge celebrities become celebrities? It's not because they're more intelligent or they're more talented or they're more anything.

They've got something that pushes the buttons of people and makes them connect with them or something. You know, and Amanda seemed to have something like that. And it was also a really sweet recovery. You know, everyone's rooting for everyone on my channel to get happy and healthy. You know, that's the general spirit of my audience, which is really beautiful. So Amanda actually came through and did it. Because very few do. You know, of the 3,000 people I've interviewed, has been Alex, a white kid from Chicago,

who's clean from fentanyl now. I talked to him recently, and he goes, yeah, I'm clean. I'm craving like a motherfucker, but I'm clean. So he's done it on his own. you know he went to a rehab in Chicago and you know he's he's doing it but his family is supporting him tremendously and I think he's still doing good Jimmy a little kid from Florida who I sent to Colorado to go to rehab and I'm helping him a little financially to stay stick with it and then Amanda who was kind of forced into it by the by the courts about it

I mean, Rita's, you know, in housing, but it's hard to break free from the hold of these addictions. It's hard, man. It's got to be brutal. So, I don't know. It's sad. I mean, that's why I can do what I do and not get too discouraged and too bent out of shape over how traumatic and terrible and depressing it is. Because when somebody tells me a really depressing, terrible, horrible, tragic story, I go, this is going to prevent some, a lot of people, from doing this.

It's going to help some parents parent better. It's going to help some kids to not make the same decisions this person did. So I feel like that's good. The interviewee took the hit, but there's a world of people watching that are going to benefit from it. So that's why I can do what I do without losing any sleep over it. I don't feel guilt over like exploiting a heroin addict when I know that I'm preventing probably thousands, maybe many more, other people from becoming heroin addicts.

Because if you watch 10 of my videos, you're probably going to think really long and hard about smoking crystal meth this weekend. Right. If you've watched 10 of your videos and somebody offers you crystal meth, it's like, shit, you might still fall for it. But, I mean, just having that massive wall of content that you've consumed that's telling you the exact opposite, it has to help. Yeah. That's why I do it. Yeah. That's why I can do it and not feel not a second of guilt over exploiting anybody. because no matter what you're doing, you're going to end up pissing off somebody

or you're going to upset somebody. So I'm not worried about that. And I even believe, I know that the interviewees would want people to hear their stories so they won't fall into the same traps that they did. They've told me that a thousand times. So when I'm okay with it and the interviewe is okay with it and everybody's still okay with it six months or a year later,

then what's the problem? but somebody's still got a problem. So that's the human nature. You ever think about anybody do an interview anonymously, like blur out their face or something? Yeah, I've done that. There's two of them with two people

that were hitmen for the Mexican mafia. Right. And those got the least views of, they're probably two of the most interesting videos interviews on my channel, and they're the least watched. Wow. Because there's that.

You don't get to see their face. Interesting. That humanity means that much more to people. Yeah, I mean, I've had a lot of people come to me. It's like, I'll do an interview, but you've got to blur my face. Yeah.

And I'm not going to do it. Makes sense. Yeah, I'm very visual. That's what I was thinking. I'm like, as soon as you blur the face, you're a photographer, that's just most really like get in the way of your stated purpose, you know?

When I had to blur those two interviews faces, it's just like, oh, I hate doing this. Yeah. Ruins the whole visual. Makes sense. Yeah. I appreciate you, man. Yeah, man.

You too. Thank you for coming on. You're doing a great thing. real honor. Everybody, subscribe to soft white underbelly. Oh, thanks. And yeah, much respect for what you're doing. No Jumper, coolest podcast on the world. Check us on YouTube, SoundCloud, iTunes, like, comment, subscribe, nojumber.com, if you want to support. Friday will be streaming your music. Appreciate you, man. Thank you, Adam.

For real.