The Joe Rogan Experience - #1910 - Mark Laita

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Mark Laita is a photographer, documentarian, and creator of the YouTube channel "Soft White Underbelly." www.youtube.com/c/SoftWhiteUnderbelly www.softwhiteunderbelly.com www.marklaita.com

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Hello, Mark. Hey, Joe. How do you do what you do and maintain any... Mental health? Yeah. Let's just tell everybody, you have the YouTube show Soft White Underbelly, which I found a while back and just watched one video and then I went down the rabbit hole.

And now today I binged a bunch of them preparing for this. And dude, it's so sad and so heartbreaking. Dude, it's so sad and so heartbreaking. And you interview all kinds of people, addicts, prostitutes, johns, gang members. And why Soft White Underbelly? Why did you come up with that name? I remember my dad when I was in the 60s, 70s, talking on the phone with, you know, I heard that term being used to, you know, it's like an analogy for the vulnerable part of whatever you're talking

about. I don't hear that term anymore, but I remember it back then. And I always thought it was a cool name. Blue Oyster Cult used it as their original name before Blue Oyster Cult. So I just, it was a fun name. Makes people wonder what the hell it's all about. Well, it's very appropriate. Yeah, yeah. I think it's fitting for what I'm doing. Completely. How did you get involved in interviewing all of these people that are sort of downcast

from society? So I've been an advertising photographer since I was 14 years old or after high school, really. I went to college for it, but I was always into photography. And then I got into advertising and I did that for decades and decades. I had a great career. And then what happened is, you know, my advertising work was so slick and beautiful and perfect, and everything was retouched, so it's better than life.

And you do that for decades, and you get burnt out, and you just get fed up with the perfection and all the aspirational aspects of advertising. And I just wanted something that was real. You know, I recognize that there were things going on in the world that weren't so perfect. And I just felt like my life was out of balance because I didn't want to grow old and have my kids say, you know, what did your dad do? Oh, he shot advertising his whole life.

I wanted to do something different. And I've always done these side projects. Even when I was a teenager in Chicago, I was always fascinated with the drunks on Madison Avenue on the west side. You see these guys sleeping on park benches and just with a paper bag and a bottle in their hands. It was such an interesting lifestyle to me. Because I didn't grow up like that. I grew up in a pretty perfect household. Mom and dad, parents loved me. It was great. But I was fascinated with all that dark stuff. And that continued throughout my career. I was always doing portraits of people like that. And I didn't really do much with it until about 1999, I started working.

While I was doing advertising, I would sneak away whenever I had a hole in my schedule, which wasn't often. But for over nine or ten years, I went to each of the lower 48 states and started photographing everything that exists in the U.S. Cowboys in Wyoming, drunken Indians in New Mexico, ballerinas in New York City, repo men in Oklahoma, auto mechanics in Alabama, pedophiles all over the country, polygamists in Utah, the Amish in Pennsylvania. Just everything that kind of fits for you. Oh, that's Pennsylvania. They have Amish there. So I would pick that and I'd hunt it down and find it. So I got really good at finding these subcultures that we've all heard about,

but you didn't really know if, you know. Some of them are easy to find. Drug addicts are easy to find. But there's other subcultures that I've found that are more difficult to find and certainly difficult to photograph and now really difficult to interview. So I did that book., came out in 2010. It's called Created Equal. And I was really proud of it, put my heart and soul into it.

But it didn't really – like I would sit at a table when somebody's looking at it and they would go, oh, what did he sound like? What did the cowboy sound like? How did he get like this? How did he get this career? What was his childhood like? All these questions. And I honestly didn't know it for each of these 200 portraits in that book.

And I realized if I'm going to make this really stick the way I wanted it to, I'm going to have to do it with an interview as a backstory. So it's a portrait, and then I would just do these interviews that might just exist behind the portrait as you're looking at it. And that's how I started and you know I had I always had studios like like on skid row like while I was doing advertising in LA at my LA studio I'd had another studio down on skid row which was you know cheap and you know I would just sneak away there on slow days and just photograph all the the uh the drug addicts, the prostitutes, the transgenders, the mental health, you know, the people that are off the rockers, everything, gang members.

And I loved doing it, but I never really did anything with that until I started. Canon came out with a Canon 5D, which is a still camera that did video. And I just was playing around. I never shot video in my life. And I'm like, let me just put this thing on a tripod and interview somebody. And there was this girl, Caroline, who was a heroin addict, prostitute down on Skid Row. And I was like, hey, I got to know her. And I said, hey, would you want to just sit and tell me your life story? And she goes, sure, I'll do it. So she sat down and did this. And it was heartbreaking. Like,

Jesus, I just hit a grand slam my first time at bat. Like a really horrifying story. And so I did that and I was like, wow, that was amazing. I started doing a few more. And they were all interesting in their own way. Every single one was very different and interesting. I'm like, maybe there's something here. And went through a divorce, went through a lot of stuff.

My mom died, went through a divorce. My advertising industry changed a lot in those years. This was like seven years ago, seven, eight years ago. And I gave up my studio and I just kind of like didn't know what I was doing with my life and I had all these storage units for all my studio equipment and my furniture I was building a house so I had all my furniture in the house had like four or five different storage units around the city I'm like let me just consolidate all these into one big space and maybe I'll have room for a studio up front

and I'll start doing those portraits and those interviews I was doing on Skid Row before and just see if I enjoy doing that because I didn't know what I want to do with the rest of my life you know I was like I wasn't doing advertising anymore and uh I didn't know what I was you know I just I was just drifting and I started doing these and I just loved it just loved it and I started doing them every day And I've done it pretty much every day for over three years now. What you're doing is almost the exact opposite of advertising. It's a reaction to that slick, aspirational. I shot Apple for 10, 12 years and made these products look amazing, right?

They had to be perfect. And I'm like, life isn't perfect. Life is messy. Life can be really messed up. And I just, I, I, I've longed for that. So that's what this is. It's, it's, and I learned, I got all these skills, all these chops of how to interact, how to find these people, how to interact with them, how to, how to find them, how to connect with them, how to get their trust, uh, from doing create equal where I did that for 10 years. And I was interacting with all kinds of people from hell's Angels down to from pedophiles, everything, you name it, everything that exists in the US. When I first started, I was really shy. This is going to be really hard.

I decided this was my project. This is what I'm going to do. But when I first started, it was like, man, this is not my personality type to go up to strangers and tell them, you know, I want to photograph you. That was so hard. But now I've gotten so good at it that it's a breeze. You know, I got to a point, I remember early on I was just like so nervous to do this, to walk up to a stranger in a casino in Las Vegas and say, hey, I think you're interesting. I'd like to photograph you. That was the first one I did. And then

by the end, I was like, I remember I wanted to photograph the Hells Angels, the motorcycle gang up in, Oakland is like their main headquarters. And I just flew up to Oakland. You know, you can't really arrange that. You can't call them up on the phone and say, hey, I want to do a, I'm a photographer in LA. I want to photograph you guys. That's just not going to happen. So I, I just flew up there. And it was a morning. And I ring their buzzer at their headquarters in Oakland. And no answer. It's like 930 in the morning. I ring it again. Nobody answers. I ring it a third time. And somebody comes. This junkyard dog of a biker opens the door and says, what the fuck do you want?

junkyard dog of a biker opens the door and says, what the fuck do you want? And I'm like, I started telling him, he just slams the door in my face. He goes, fuck off. He slams the door. Like that didn't go well, but I've done this so much now that I'm so good at it that I knew to give him some time, allow him to say, no, I'm not going to force. I'm not going to pressure him. Went across the street. There's a Mexican restaurant that was serving breakfast. I got breakfast for a bunch of guys and I brought it over and I ring it again, he opens the door and I had breakfast for him. And eventually they let me in and we chatted and I eventually photographed the president, the head of that chapter,

Cisco Valderrama and Flash, and this guy's name was Marvin. And it was a great portrait. I'm proud of it. I made that happen because of my ability to just go up to anybody, killers, anybody, and just walk up to them and say, hey, this is what I'd like to do.

Did you ever read Hunter Thompson's book on the Hells Angels? No. It's really good. Not you ever read Hunter Thompson's book on the Hells Angels? No. It's really good. Not bad. That was his breakthrough book. And he was embedded with the Hells Angels and hung around with them for long periods of time. No, it's a hell of a lifestyle.

Yeah. And that's sort of where he invented that sort of gonzo journalism aspect. No, I love that kind of – William Volberg is another author that's kind of like that. I love Bill Volberg's work where it's just like you immerse yourself into these really fucked up dangerous situations. Yeah. And you come out with gold or you get killed or shot or knifed or whatever. That is a fear of yours. For sure.

Yeah. I've been robbed so many times on Skid Row. I came around the corner once and there's a gun to my face. And it's like, fuck. But you still do it? Yeah, I still do it. Did you feel when you were doing advertising? Advertising is so strange, right?

Because it doesn't bother me. And I have this sort of relaxed attitude on certain things. Like, well, that's not going to trick me. Some guy's talking about the hollow earth, well, that's not going to trick me. Some guy is talking about the hollow earth. Well, that's not going to trick me. That doesn't bother me. But when you think about the overall impact of what it's doing, it's giving people – it's sort of like the – part of the big problem that people have with social media is it creates these unrealistic expectations, and then it also has people comparing their life to what they see in advertising. Yeah, advertising and social media are kind of following the same pattern.

This is the main concern with advertising of pharmaceutical drugs because it's all people having the best time, like at a picnic, running through a wheat field. And like you, this could be you. Why isn't this you right now? This could be you if you just do this thing or take this thing or buy this thing. That's the manipulation of advertising. And what did that feel like when you were a part of that? Did you, you were acutely aware of it? I'm part of it. I'm part of that process. And I hated the feeling of that after a while. Initially, it was great. When I first started doing Apple, I was so proud of myself. And I'm still proud of my career.

I love what I did in advertising, and I'm so proud of that work. But I have to admit, as I got older, it started feeling really like I'm tricking people. I'm tricking people, and I'm not cool with that. It just didn't sit well with me at the end of the day. I'm just like, so that's how I made my money? That's how I've spent my life on this planet? And I just wanted to do something that mattered. Do you think that advertising should be regulated?

Or do you think we should leave that up to people or educate people on the effects of it the same way people are trying to educate people on the effects of social media and what it what it does to people's mental health when you compare these unrealistic lives to yours i mean it it comes down to greed it's human greed corporate greed they want what they want and they're gonna get it by creating these ads that are just Better than life, you know, just so amazing. Everything's your life would be perfect if you Drive this car if you buy this, you know this phone this Take this drug whatever I even wonder if in this day and age that's Necessary with what I feel like today more than ever because of social media

because of like people that actually review things and talk about things on social media honestly without you know bias and without being paid to do so you can do stuff and sell stuff and it just has to be good like look, look at Teslas, for instance. They don't even advertise. They don't. And it's, like, the number one car in America. Yeah. It's just because it's great.

It's that simple. Obviously, it's connected to Elon Musk, who's this enormous figure, but... It's a much smarter way to market a product. It's not deceptive. Elon could come out with a running shoe or anything, a drink, and people would drink it. When you first started doing these videos, did you have to figure out a way to balance

your own mental health with interviewing these people? Because I got to tell you, I watched a bunch of videos today in the gym while I was working out, and I felt like shit. And I hope these feel good after I work out. No, it affects people in different ways. Some people make, oh my God, my problems are not so bad. My life is pretty great.

I've heard that many times. I've heard that more often, but I get what you're saying because I'm immersed in it. What you see on my YouTube channel is 1,200, maybe 1,300 videos. I've done over 5,000. Because not everything I shoot, immersed in it yeah what you see on my on my youtube channel is 1200 maybe 1300 videos i've done over 5000 because not not everything i shoot like with you you're shooting you're doing interviews with uh elon musk and dave chappelle and you know huberman and they're and they're

great you know they're gonna great they're big you don't need to do eight or ten in a day like i do right like i'll do six seven eight nine ten in a day hoping I do. Right. Like I'll do six, seven, eight, nine, ten in a day hoping to get one or two. But even the ones that you have where the people can barely communicate, they're almost more disturbing. Like I watched a couple today of homeless people where, you know, there was this one woman, she was missing one of her toes and, you know, that woman and she's just the movement and the the mental health the the obvious signs that she's very troubled and probably on some drugs and

it's just yeah do you have children i do i have two daughters 19 and 22 yeah so that to me was like the hearing the stories of how they were all abused sexually and physically when they were children and seeing what it leads to. Right. So I'm aware that these things go on. Yeah. I've been down in Skid Row for 12 years now, maybe 13 years. And so I know what's going on. Do you live down there?

No, no, no, no, no. I live in Pacific Palisades, which is like the exact opposite. Yes. I live in Bel Air, basically, but then I go down to the worst. I go from the worst part of town to the best part of town.

Yeah, it's a big, it's a drastic change from one to the other. But even when I was doing this before I started Soft White Underbelly, I was aware that this crap is going on to these people when they were kids. Yeah. And when I decided, you know, I gave up advertising and wanted to do something that was meaningful to me, I looked around like that's a problem that needs to be addressed.

And, you know, people say, oh, your work is exploitive. You're exploiting these poor drug addicts. Like, I understand there's an exploitive element to it. All photography has that, you know, element to it. But let's say I never did these videos. Let's say we just pretend these problems don't exist. It's all going to continue. And Caroline's kids are going to get molested by the babysitter or by the uncle or by whoever.

And it's going to repeat the pattern over and over and over. So I figured by putting out these, you know, it's disguised as entertainment, but what it really is is if you watch a dozen of them, you're going to learn, like, fuck, we need to protect our kids. We need to watch our kids. We need to, you know, how many fathers were absent in these kids' lives that I do? Like 1% of them had fathers that were in their lives. Right.

Like where are the dads? What are they doing that's so important that they can't raise their own kid? Well, they're probably fucked up too, which is the never-ending cycle. It's generation, it's cycle after cycle. Have you interviewed anyone and then come back years later and they straighten their life out yeah yeah that's happened yeah who i've done 5 000 right and it's literally like four that i know of and what has that been like like can you give me an example

and even though they've done it doesn't mean they didn't break down and relapse tomorrow, you know, today. Right. That happens all the time. Yeah. So just as they got clean doesn't mean they're going to stay clean. But the ones that I believe in the most, you know, because some people told me they were clean, but I don't buy it. But the ones that I know are clean, they just did it by themselves. They just hold themselves up and they figured out a way to wean themselves and

change their routine and change their environment and eventually broke through. But I think you need that self-worth. Like you and I have the self-worth to go, you know, I deserve better. I deserve to drive a nice car. I deserve to live in a great house in a great city and have a great job. And I deserve all these things and have a great woman in my life and all these things. If you have the self-worth, you're going to accept and build those things in your life. These people, especially the ones on Skid Row, the drug addicts, their self-worth is broken. It's broken. And they don't believe they deserve anything better than to live in a cardboard box or a tent on the sidewalk. In the rain, in the winter.

And they're doing the drug just to escape the pain of what happened to them when they were seven years old with their dad or uncle or brother or whoever. Yeah. And it's like you can't fix a childhood. How do you fix a childhood? When you see a place. I would, uh, see somebody who was like, Oh my God, your life would be great if you just got clean. I was naive. I was naive. And, uh, I started helping them and like, we're going to get you to rehab. And, you know, I spent so much money, like I've wasted so much money. Like, I've wasted so much money. My own hard-earned money I just, like, put towards somebody that had no intention of really ever doing anything.

Well, it seems like it has to come from the individual. It can't come from. It has to. That's what I've learned. You can't help people by saying, hey, you've got to do this. No, I see all these comments on my videos. Mark, you didn't help this person. I can't change their self-worth. You'd have to be with them 24 hours. You'd have to be with them 24 hours a day. You'd have to be spending easy 150,000 at least a year to house them, to feed

them, to transport them, to get them therapy, to, you know, all the drugs, all that mental health drugs, all the everything they're going to need, doctors, all that stuff. It's a lot of money for one person, and it may not even work. So I've got two kids of my own. I've got my own life. I've got bills of my own.

I'm doing a YouTube channel, and I'm shooting eight videos a day. When am I going to sit there and take somebody under my wing and save them? These people are on their phones, on their sofa, texting, leaving a comment saying, Mark, you didn't help this person. I'm the busiest person I know. I haven't taken a day off in over three years. Christmas, birthday, everything. I work every single day, either

shooting or editing. And these people are sitting on their phones telling me what to do. They can't get off their ass and maybe clear off their bank account to save somebody? But even that probably wouldn't do it. And still wouldn't work. What do you think could be done? Well, I mean, it's such a complicated problem. You look at homeless, the homelessness problem. You have it a little bit here in Austin, but in L.A., it's really bad. Let's explain Skid Row to people.

Skid Row is a neighborhood. It's probably, I don't know how many square blocks, but maybe it's, it goes from like roughly, because it spreads out a lot. And it's spread out since I've been there. But let's call it like from 4th or 5th Street to 8th Street. This is just east of downtown LA. And downtown LA is cool. It's nice. But just east of downtown. I know, I know. But it looks like Austin. I wouldn't recommend people visit. No, no, you wouldn't want to. It's not a place. If you want to go to LA, you don't go. Every other town, you go downtown. Right. Every other, I'm from Chicago. Yeah, I was going to say Chicago, but downtown.

If you go to visit Chicago, you spend the whole time downtown. In LA, you should not go downtown. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's exactly right. But Skid Row is this neighborhood just east of downtown that is the... Yeah, Jamie's got an image of it. Yeah, there it is. Let's find some photos of it because it's kind of an enormous swath of land that's been completely abandoned, it seems like. But like this girl smoking right here? Yeah. That goes on every block.

The cops will roll by. Nobody's stopping her. She's smoking meth. She's smoking meth or crack or whatever. Fentanyl. Yeah. And they're living like that let's find a video of it so you can see this the scale of it because it's pretty it's pretty intense when you see people like I found out about skid row

when we were filming Fear Factor downtown we filmed a lot of episodes of Fear Factor downtown and I just and this was early 2000s. And it was nothing like it is now. I'm sure now it's quite a bit more. But even back then, it was like, how is this one area isolated? Like, how is this one area just filled with homeless people and drug addicts and criminals? And I really didn't know until I watched this Netflix series on the Jerome Hotel. And it was about that woman who died in a water tank.

Are you aware of that story? I don't, but I've heard everything. It's a woman who got off her meds. And there was a video of her in an elevator, and it looked like someone was following her. And she was, like, looking out of the elevator. And then the woman turned up missing, and her family went to look for her. And what it turned out was that crime scene event. I'm sorry, did I say the Jerome?

Cecil. Oh, Cecil. Where's the Jerome? Is that down there too? I don't know the Jerome, but the Cecil is notorious. That's the one I meant. The Cecil is a hotel. I've heard so many stories.

Cecil's notorious. The Cecil. That's the one I meant. The Cecil is a hotel. I've heard so many stories. My favorite or the most horrifying is so many people used to get thrown off the roof of the Cecil Hotel that the little chicken restaurant on the corner used to have a jar where you could put your money in and place bets on what floor the person would be, have been pushed out of. Jesus Christ. Whether it's the roof, the 13th floor, the 12th. How many?

Oh, I've heard like hundreds, I think. I mean, stories get exaggerated over the years. So this documentary was about this woman, and she had gotten off her medication. And at first it was like a crime murder mystery. And then as it goes on, you realize, oh no, this lady had just escaped from her family and got off her meds and she was paranoid schizophrenic.

And it's always, none of these stories are as simple as, oh, I just got shot or I just got stabbed. There's mental health that's mixed in. I mean, the whole problem, you asked me what the problem is with all this. So you see homelessness. You see all these homeless people on the street in L.A. or in San Francisco or Seattle or Portland or Vancouver. You see it in a lot of cities.

It's really bad in L.A. and San Francisco. And the West Coast, for some reason, has a ton of it. So, oh, like what L.A. is doing, you put them up in housing. Problem solved, right? And we're done. Not really. No, because you peel back the layer, the top layer of that, underneath the homelessness is drug addiction, pretty much 100% across the board.

None of these people are down and out and just like, oh, my God, I'm homeless. That doesn't happen. They're all drug addicts. And even when they tell you they're clean, they're still lying. So you peel back the drug addiction layer, and what are you going to do? You put them all in rehab, which is going to be tremendously expensive, and it's not going to work all the time. But that would be part of the solution, but it's not going to be the solution.

So you peel back the layer of drug addiction, and you've got mental health. They all have mental health issues. And you can't just magically fix their mental health. The damage was done when they were little kids when they were five six seven eight years old with with whether it's neglect or abuse you know physical abuse sexual abuse whatever just terrible parenting yeah terrible role models terribly and they don't learn this you know it's like let's say you fixed let's say you got them off the streets let's say you fixed, let's say you got them off the streets. Let's say you, um, fix the drug addiction. You get them therapy for years and you've fixed the mental

health issues somewhat, but they still don't know how to do all the things that we all know how to do. Like build trust in others, gain the trust of others, how to handle money, uh, delayed gratification, uh, delayed gratification. They have no concept of that. Everything is just like, how do I make a quick buck right now? That's the only thing they know. If they have a job interview on Monday,

like if I had something like that or a meeting to go to, I would know how to show up and I'm going to kick ass on Monday. These people don't know how to do anything like that. They probably won't even show up. They don't know how to be on Monday. These people don't know how to do anything like that. They probably won't even show up. They don't know how to be on time. They don't know how to do anything in order to like advance their lives. I think it boils down to their self-worth is so broken that they don't believe they deserve anything better. So if you don't believe you deserve anything better,

you could be handed a million dollars. Here's a winning lottery ticket. Go cash it in. You've got a million dollars. They're going to fuck it up as fast as you can see it. As fast as you can imagine. Have you had any drug addicts or sad stories like that in your own friendship circle? No. No?

No. All my friends are clean as a whistle. I've never smoked pot. Really? Never smoked pot. Nothing, huh? Nothing. A little alcohol every now and then?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I haven't lately, but I'm not a drinker. I don't have a problem with drinking. My dad used to say to me, he still does, he goes, you don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't gamble, you don't chase women. What do you do? Everybody does something. I'm like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. It's a sign of being raised well, maybe. Yeah, no, I was raised really well. You don't need the escape. I mean, the way my mom

raised me was like, I can't imagine a better... I really think the problem... So you start going back to peeling the layers back. You go back to where did I leave it off? So you got the mental health problems. You peel back that layer and then you got the broken family. In a lot of these stories, dad was absent or dad was in prison, mom's on drugs, sister's a hoe, brother was in a gang. What do you think she's going to turn? Stepfather was abusive. Yeah.

Boyfriends were abusive. So the families are broken. Yeah. So you peel back that layer. And why is the family broken? Well, they're, they're growing up in a community that there's no opportunities. There's no education. There's no role models. There's no nothing. It's just like figure out how to survive at 12 years old. Yeah. And that's what, that's what they, and they're looking around what everyone else is doing. Everyone else is a con artist or a hustler. I got to figure out my hustle. And if you're an attractive female, you're going to become a hoe.

And if you're a dude, you're going to become a drug dealer or a gang member, and you're going to rob people or do whatever. And that's what happens. Those are extremes, but to some extent, that happens in a lot of communities. Growing up in a good childhood, in a good family, and then being exposed to these people over and over and over again. What kind of an effect has that had on you personally? Initially, I thought I was super resilient. Like I'm strong, not physically strong, but I'm strong mentally. Like I can handle anything, advertising, you know, advertising, you know, I was playing around with big money and big jobs and big campaigns, and it was very, very stressful at times. But I handled it all.

I was cool with it. But when I started doing this project, I recognized that, you know, I knew from Create Equal, the book I worked on, what it's like to deal with these kind of people because I interacted with a lot of them. So I knew getting into it what I was going to get robbed. I was going to deal with hustlers and con artists and thieves and liars. I knew that, but I dove in and like, you know, that's, that's like a barrier to entry. Like, like people watch my channel, like, oh, I want to do what Mark's doing. Good fucking luck. Like every day I want to quit. Well, you're really good at it too. You, you have a very nonjudgmental way of communicating with people that allows them to open up. It's very comforting.

Yeah, yeah. You seem like a very nice guy. And when you talk to these people, you know, you just, you're very flat, you know? Yeah, yeah. Like I can interview the Ku Klux Klan or a pimp or a pedophile. Yeah. You know, I interviewed a guy named Marshall on my channel. He's an older guy.

He's probably in his 70s. And he was having intercourse with his daughter from six until 14, and her best friend, I think. And he eventually did prison time for it, but he's free now and he's living in this, you know, he's living in Florida. And I interviewed him and I just,

I'm talking to him as if I'm talking to you right now. Like I could be interviewing or interacting with, it's not about how I interview, it's how I interact with others. And he was open about this? Yeah. I've interviewed a bunch of those guys. Did he have shame? He didn't seem to, but he said some of the right words, but it wasn't like he broke down. Like if I had done something like that, I'd be, I'd be crying, man. Yeah. I wouldn't be. Did that happen to him when he was younger?

I asked him about that, and he said, I suspect something might have, and who knows if that's the truth or what. I don't know. Probably did. He didn't recall anything, but he suspected that something happened. But you do see. Go ahead. But my point is that whether i'm interviewing the queen of england or a homeless drug addict on skid row i treat them the exact same way nothing in my behavior would change whether i'm interviewing a a pedophile that's having sex with his daughter or

or the president yeah well it comes across and it you have a very good way of getting these people to relax and communicate. I realized this. Before I started this project, I knew that, because I saw it during my advertising career, you deal with all kinds of people and I saw very,

over the course of my life, I've been around now long enough to see that a lot of people just love to open up with me and tell me shit they shouldn't be telling me. I'm a stranger. You just met me 20 minutes ago, but you're telling me all this person. There's something about my personality

that makes people just relax and trust me and just tell me all kinds of stuff. I don't even know what it is. I'm not judgmental. I know that. Like even the pedophiles, I don't condone what he did. I don't approve it in any way. I think it judgmental. I know that. Like even the pedophiles, I don't condone what he did. I don't approve it in any way. I think it's horrifying. But my job right then is not to

condemn him and say, you're so fucked up. It's just like, let me just hear your story. Because I'll bet you there's something we can learn from it. There's something that we could understand better that maybe we can apply to figure out how to prevent this in the future. Do you think that's possible? Like with all the interviews that you've done and this overwhelming number of fucked up people that you've interacted with, how does like Skid Row has grown considerably just since I've been there. Like when, when I first went there was the early two thousands, it's much, much bigger now. It's a much bigger problem.

It's all over the city. Yeah. How does that genie get put back in the bottle? I mean, how does one ever? That's why my channel is not an intervention type show where I'm trying to fix everybody and patch them up and put them back into the real world. I can't do that.

I'm one person. I can't do that. I'm one person. I believe the solution is to show people what's... I'm putting these videos out there so everyone can see this is how this happens. Let's not do this anymore. Let's figure out another solution. Perhaps if dad stayed in the family and the parenting was like something that would benefit the kid and not cause them trauma. Right. That would be great. But the odds of that happening

from one of your videos are very small. Very small. So does it feel futile sometimes? Oh yeah, for sure. For sure. But I'm the most, it's ironic that I'm doing this really, really dark project because I'm the most positive, hopeful person you'll ever meet. Still?

Yeah, I'm a Pollyanna. I don't think that'll ever change. And that hasn't had any effect on your own personal relationships, the way you view human beings? I'm aware of how often people are con artists and hustlers and how dishonest people can be. Because I never encountered that to the extent that I do now. Whereas when I go down to Skid Row, it's a different world. And literally everybody is trying to get my wallet, trying to get whatever I've got. Right. Camera equipment.

You name it. Yeah. Everything. And it's like to be surrounded by that many hustlers and con artists and thieves and it wears on you. And just recently, I exercise a lot. So every morning I'm working out for like an hour and a half, two hours and it never wore on me. You know, I don't get sore. I, you know, I'm in great shape just in the last three to four months. I'm like, God damn, I'm sore. What the fuck is going on? Like, you know, I'm not doing anything different.

I'm not eating anything different. I'm like, what is going on that my body is just hurting? And I suspect what it is, it's the mental toll after three and a half years of doing this, it's finally catching up. I would imagine. I mean, I think it's capable. I heard Gabor Mate say on your show,

I think it was on your show, he said that whatever happens to you mentally manifests physically. Yeah. And it's like, it makes perfect sense. But I mean, mentally, it hasn't really made me crazy. I'm not, if I'm hanging out with my friends who have nothing to do with this world

that I'm interviewing, the relationship's like it always was, you know, we just spend Thanksgiving with my ex wife and kids and my best friend. And it was just like old times. It's like 20 years ago, nothing changed. But I think physically, mentally, like somehow it's affecting me now. I don't know how it could not. Do you wonder how long you can keep doing this? Well, I don't really want to, like, how many drug addict interviews does the world need?

Right. I don't think we need any more. Right. If you want to watch some, there's probably 500 on my channel. Right. You can get all you need. So I think enough's enough. I'll probably phase out of that.

I'm already starting to do that. What are you going to do now? Just more, like yesterday I interviewed a guy. Mental health issues are interesting. Sexual fetishes are interesting. Sex workers are not as traumatic as they're, they're not as pathetic and traumatic

as the drug addict stories. Yeah, the most positive one I saw from you today was a guy who had a foot fetish. Yeah, some of them are lighter. I interviewed a guy here yesterday in Austin who was an oil field worker down in Odessa, but he moved further north to, he wanted to be a skydiving instructor.

Young kid, 20, I think he's 28, I think. And he was, you know, he was doing his like 25th jump, I think he said. And two of his shoes got tangled up. You have a backup shoot. First one didn't open up correctly, so he did the second one. I think they both opened up at the same time. And they got tangled up.

Held him for a while, and then he fell 4,000 feet. Hit a cornfield. And survived. He survived. The parachute slowed him hit a cornfield, and survived. He survived. The parachute slowed him down a little? Is that what happened? He doesn't remember because he blacked out. Oh, my God.

He blacked out, and he hit the ground, broke his— everything on the right side of his body is just— you know, but he's alive. And he still wants to jump? Yeah, he said he still would. I asked him at the end, I end, do you regret skydiving? He said, no, I'd like to still do it right now. They won't let me.

My friend Brian, his dad worked with this lady who was a skydiver, and she was always trying to get him to go skydiving. Let's go skydiving, let's go skydiving. And then one day he went to the office and she wasn't there. And he found out that she died skydiving. I mean, to me, it's such a senseless way to die it's a crazy thing to do no i mean he he talked about how the the adrenaline yeah uh he became addicted to the the adrenaline rush yeah that's that's his that was his he

says not a drug addiction it's not a sex addiction it's it's a adrenaline addiction yeah so stories like that are what i'm looking to do just not not that that's pretty it's a adrenaline addiction. Yeah. So stories like that are what I'm looking to do. Not that, that's pretty. How did you find this guy? He emailed me. See, I get people emailing me. I get hundreds of emails a day. Right.

Do you go through them yourself? Well, I just hired somebody to help me do that. But. So you're trying to move away from all the addicts. I'm trying to move away from just Skid Row drug addicts. It's like, we don't need any more. Right. It gets stale after a while.

Yeah. I mean, I'll do some once in a while. I mean, some of these people are magnificent speakers. They're fascinating to listen to. Some of them, I found so many just miraculous people down there. There's great people down there. I mean, there's not like they're all a bunch of drug addicted losers. Some of these people are just like you and me.

They just happened to get caught up in some quicksand that they just cannot get out of. It's so sad to listen to some of these stories when you see that's a great person. They're stuck in quicksand, and you can't pull them out, even if you want to. If you had all the money in the world, you couldn't pull them out. When I was 23— You're watching them drown. I moved to new york and i started hanging out at this pool hall and i met a lot of drug addicts and i had known a few people with drug problems from my hometown a few people with drinking problems that couldn't stop drinking but i'd never been like really close to someone had like a legitimate drug problem and uh i had a friend named Johnny, and he had a crack problem.

And he was a great guy, a really intelligent guy, could play musical instruments, could do complex math in his head. You could have a calculator, and you could say 500 times 50 minus 30 divided by 3, and he could give you the number yeah it was amazing and you could do you could do it with a calculator in front of him and he would be as fast as the calculator he was a brilliant brilliant guy and he was a pool hustler and uh i i met him when he was homeless and he was you know sleeping in these 24-hour pool, or he would get a, you know, a bed in these flop houses. And he was just addicted to drugs. And he, you know, he had mental health problems and he would self-medicate. And, uh, I would, you know, I drove him to get drugs on multiple occasions and I'd try

to get him to get off of them. And he would be on this rollercoaster ride where he would smoke crack and then he would need to come down so he would get alcohol and he would go and drink these 40 ounces of old english and and just try to like bring himself down from whatever the fuck he was on yeah and then i moved out here he came out to visit me once and uh i thought we're just gonna hang out and go places and play pool but he was coming out to try to kick heroin and uh when he came out he just stayed in the bedroom for like a week he was just all fucked up he was just sick for a week and then finally at the end of the week he came out of it and you know he hadn't had any heroin assist him in a week and he was starting

to come clean and feel better and that was the last time I saw him. And then the next time I talked to him, I think I saw him one time after that, but you know, he had kind of resumed his, I'd moved to Hollywood and I was on a television show and we were still friends, but he had kind of resumed his life of being homeless and drug addiction. And then I got a call from another friend that he died. And that was around a little bit after 2000. And it was such a helpless feeling because I knew him as a human.

And he was so funny and he's so smart and so interesting. No, some of the greatest minds, the most charismatic, most interesting people ever, super intelligent and talented people are living on the streets, addicted most charismatic, most interesting people ever. Yeah. Super intelligent and talented people are living on the streets, addicted to drugs. Yeah. Because it almost goes hand in hand. You get these great minds that are so creative

and they're also so self-destructive. Yeah, I don't know why those two things go together, but so oftentimes creativity goes along with the drug addiction all the dead people in your lobby all those pictures yes yes yeah they all died at 27 mug shots of the rock stars and stuff yeah it's um it's very confusing when you don't have that problem when you're like why don't you just do this i would just do and at the time when I met him, like now I smoke pot. I occasionally do mushrooms. And I don't fuck with anything that's dangerous, you know.

But back then I didn't do anything. So for me it was very strange to be like clean and sober and trying to like – I was like focused on my life. You're not prepared because you don't have the knowledge of what he'll do for that drug. Also in my mind, the people that did that were losers and idiots. And now here's this guy who's clearly brilliant and a beautiful person. I was one of my favorite human beings. He was my best friend. And he was homeless. And it was so strange for me to have grown up with a nice family in a nice place where things weren't bad, you know, middle class, everything was nice. And then for me to be around a person like that, who,

you know, spend his time trying to rob people in pool games, pretending that he couldn't play. It was like an art form for him. He would just pretend he was terrible, and he was an overweight guy, so he looked like a bumbling loser. And he would wind up getting a bunch of money from people, and then he would spend it on drugs. And it was such a helpless feeling to watch someone who you loved and cared about,

who just couldn't stop. They just couldn't get their life in order. They kept sabotaging their life. Like no matter what happened, like whatever his, his sense of self-worth, whatever the thing was inside of him, he just couldn't help himself. He just couldn't stop that. He would get off of it for a little while, decide he was going to clean up and then dive right back into it. Yeah. It's so heartbreaking to watch. And that was, he was the closest that I'd ever been to a person that had, everyone else that I knew that had problems was like my friend's cousin or this guy that I worked with or they weren't people that I was really close with and with him we spent so much time together and to

watch him just in just could not escape whatever the the gravity the magnetic pull the the addiction the thing to just like constantly trying to get fucked up and and escape yeah usually they're trying to escape something that happened in their childhood or some. Something. Some lack of love. Yeah. Something. Well, there's mental health in his family too. That's a big part.

I suspect, you know, there's a lot of these people that are schizophrenic or they have these issues and they have children and it's genetically transferred. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think there's nature, there's nurture, there's a lot of things that are... It's not just like, oh, you were molested when you were sick,

so that's why you're a drug addict. It's more complex than that, I think. Have you met any of these people that have gone through any sort of psychedelic therapy? Like, Gabor Mate is a big... Yeah. Have you? I've heard about it,

but I have not encountered anyone who's tried that and done that. It's not really available to these people. No, not in Skid Row. Yeah. And when you're – You've got to have the motivation first off to want to get clean and use that as a technique to do it. And I'm hopeful that somebody, some doctor somewhere, I think University of Chicago is doing something with skin grafts that help with drug addiction.

Skin grafts? Yeah. How so? I don't know all the details. It's just like they're doing studies right now, I think. But I'm hopeful that somebody is going to discover something that will cure that drive to fix. How do skin grafts work? I don't know.

It'll come on the news if it's successful. See if you can find what Jamie's on. University of Chicago. Skin grafts to cure drug addiction. That's so fast. How fucking smart some people are. Science is amazing. Some way around it.

CRISPR-modified skin grafts to treat addiction. The skin cells are then re-implanted to the patient through a skin graft that acts as a so-called bioengine, producing these molecules throughout the life of the graft. In preclinical studies, the engineered skin grafts protected against drug addiction and overdose in animal models. Whoa. I think they're doing human studies. So it's modified skin grafts. Interesting. Skin grafts.

Interesting. You know, and then there's a – here it is. Chicago genetically altered skin grafts hold promises addiction treatment. The treatment has been shown to work in mice, and the researchers hope to begin human trials next year. If it proves itself there, it would be a valuable addition to a growing but still inadequate arsenal of addiction treatments. I mean, it's one of the biggest problems we have in our culture. Oh, I mean, look at our country. It's horrifying.

Right. You come to L.A. Yeah. It's just so embarrassing. No, and Austin, too. Austin's cleaned it up quite a bit, but there's still some spots, and there's plenty of homeless people that are on 6th Street and down that area. It's really, really fucking sad. Yeah. Because also, like, people define themselves by their lowest moment often. and down that area, it's really, really fucking sad.

Yeah. Because also, like, people define themselves by their lowest moment often. And when you have been a person that sleeps on the street, it's that lack of self-worth, this identifying yourself as a complete and total failure, it's very difficult to escape that, especially when you compare yourself to these people that, you know, they show up for work at their tech job and they have this normal existence. And they're all looking down on you and treating you with disrespect. Right.

And you're living in the streets. It's cold. It's rainy. It's whatever. You're obviously worthless. Yes. There's nobody that's reinforcing the fact that you have any self, any worth at all. Right.

It's just going to take you down further. And it's probably come from your childhood of being treated as worthless and abused. And yeah, but you asked me like how I can go down to Skid Row and do this. I've done it every day for over three years. I think the fact that I, I am not tempted by these things. Like you could put crack fentanyl and crystal meth right here and they would sit here for three weeks, and I wouldn't even touch them. What about four weeks? Four weeks is when I'd give in. I'm just kidding.

They'd all be gone in the fourth week. My fear about all those things, like I've never tried cocaine. I've never tried amphetamines. And one of the reasons why is it seems like people love them. That's part of the problem is I think the thrill of whatever it is that those things give people. I think one of the reasons my channel is so popular is because there are a hell of a lot of people who are using some of these drugs and being functional in the real world. I think that's true, but I also think it's just fascinating. I mean, I don't use those things, and I'm fascinated by your channel.

I mean, it's just the human condition is very fascinating to people because we recognize all these elements in ourselves, maybe to a lesser degree, or maybe, you know, maybe you only have an addiction to pornography, or maybe you only have an addiction to gambling, but you see a person who's hooked on meth. They're all the same. And it's kind of, there's, there's parallels. Absolutely. Yeah. No, you can, you can, you can you can i've there was one addict in a gambler who turned into a heroin addict he was a big time gambler big time in new york city yeah i forget his name um i interviewed him this summer and he uh he switched his gambling addiction to a heroin addiction he's like whoo the gambling one it's wild gambling is fascinating to me that's

another one that i encountered when I was in the pool halls, people that were just absolutely just captured by gambling. And I never thought of gambling as being an addiction. I thought of gambling as being just a weird weakness that people do to escape their life. But then I saw the actual chemical chemical response these people have to winning and losing and chasing money and this this this constant so it becomes their whole life is trying to win a bet and trying to play and trying to recover from a bad bet and then trying to avoid people they owe money to there's so many addictions out there. There's so many. Whether it's sex or shopping or gambling or eating or laziness or-

Yeah, procrastination. Heroin, drinking. Yeah, even exercise, which is a great addiction. That's my addiction, but- Yeah, it's a good one. It's not killing me. I don't think there's anything wrong with that one. That one seems to actually improve the quality of your life, but it has characteristics of

impulsiveness. improve the quality of your life, but it has characteristics of impulsiveness. Yeah. When I go to Gold's Gym every morning at 5.30, I'll bet you more than half of the people that are there, it's the same crew every morning. We all know each other. I'll bet you half of them are former addicts. Really? Of some sort.

Well, that's a lot of people that get into running, marathon runners and triathletes and ultra runners. running marathon runners and triathletes and ultra runners they they substitute this very positive addiction the addiction of like overcoming yeah and and just pushing your body humans are wound up yeah i know i am and it's like you you know i like i'm never going to run a marathon it's not it's not my thing but you see people who are running marathons i'm just like what why right why why would you run 26 miles? Everything's going to hurt after that. Yeah.

But we have this drive to do something extreme, it seems. Call it self-destruction. I don't know what you want to call it, self-sabotage maybe. But so many of them are former alcoholics. And they put that aside and they found this new obsession. You can't just stop drinking and be like, I'm cool now. I don't drink anymore. It's like you need to find something to replace that.

Yeah. Yeah, and that's what people, they realize that eventually. I mean, I know so many people that went to Alcoholics Anonymous and then they became hooked on coffee and cigarettes. And the coffee and cigarettes, they said, this is okay. Yeah, well, that's not as bad. It's not killing me as quickly and it's not forcing me to lose jobs and I can function in society with this. But my mind has opened tremendously from when I started this.

I really consider when I started it maybe, you know, I kind of started and I've had three studios down on Skid Row. But the first one I had for three years, and I gave it up. Had to mess up my life with the divorce and other stuff. And then I had another one and got rid of that one, but the third one I've had now for almost four years. But I had a friend of mine who realized my channel is what I'm doing now, and she goes, she's known me for a long time, and she goes, I remember driving with you through L, we're going to a restaurant, and you saw some homeless guy begging on the street corner, hassling you for money, and you said under your breath,

just get a job. Oh boy, isn't that crazy? Get a job. Do you want some coffee? No, I'm good, thank you. That used to be me. Yeah, no, I think it's a lot of us. I still say it, sometimes these guys come at me

and they just, every day of the year, they're coming at me for free handouts. I mean, I give away, I hate to tell you how much money I give out. Every single day of the year, I'm giving between $2,000 and $3,000. Really? Just giving out money. Wow. Not like fucking Santa Claus.

I know what you're saying. But like sometimes it's paying interviewees. Sometimes it's paying the person who brought me the interviewee. Sometimes it's the people who keep it quiet outside my studio door. Sometimes it's, you know, I'm a square white dude. I go into South Central. You know, I interview a lot of the prostitutes on Figueroa Street, which is not Skid Row. It's South Central LA, very different neighborhood, but equally dangerous, probably more dangerous, in fact.

I used to go down there, and I'm like, I'm worried about getting killed. People get killed there every day. You know, gangs are thick. And they see a white guy, I'm either a cop, I'm either an undercover cop, or I'm a trick. And if I'm a trick, that means you can rob me. It's like open season. I got a wallet full of money that I'm looking to spend on a girl, but they're going to hustle me or con me or rob me. Right. And the way that I can continue to do this almost three and a half years now and do it fairly safely is by spreading so much goodwill. Like I'm generous with these people I interview, and I'm generous with the pimps, and I'm generous with the pimps and I'm generous with the you know the gangs that control the neighborhoods or whatever I have to do in order to go down there

safely and not get hassled yeah so I've and especially on skid row I've handed out so much over the years that it's like it's just I'm like I won't tell you what they call me, but it's a positive thing because I'm like Santa Claus down there. Yeah. Yeah, you got to get out of this. You can't keep doing this. No, no, no. I mean, the human struggle is fascinating. It's not just drug addicts.

Part of the reason I'm just doing drug addicts is because I'm in L.A. and Skid Row is right here. If I don't think about it, I'll just go to Skid Row and I'll get some interviews. Yeah. So now I'm making a serious effort to not do that. Have you thought about escaping LA? Oh, yeah. I've been all over the country. You know, for Create Equal, I went to each of the lower 48 states.

So, I mean, I just came back from New Orleans. What is Create the book? That's the book I did of American portraits. It was really the template for Soft White Underbelly. It's out of print now, so don't look for it. It's really hard to find. I think the last time I saw it, it was like $1,000 a used copy. But maybe somebody will do a reprint of it one day.

Because, God, I get emails every day of the year, people wanting to buy that book. If it came out tomorrow, it would sell out. Some publisher should do it. But I've been to New Orleans. I've been to Tampa several times. I've been to Kentucky and West Virginia many times. The Appalachias. Yeah, Appalachias, amazing.

Coal miners. Coal miners and just hillbillies. I love hillbillies. Did you ever see the wild and wonderful whites of West Virginia? Oh, yeah, yeah. I interviewed Mamie White. Did you really? Yeah, Jessica's sister.

Wow. She's a trip. Boy, that whole family's a trip. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that. Wow. Yeah, she's a trip. Boy, that whole family's a trip. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I saw that series. This is Create Equal.

They're all diptychs. They're all pairs of images. So I've got a fur trapper and a woman on the Upper East Side of New York with a fur coat. Wow. And they're not meant to be point. They're just juxtapositions of interesting. A lady with this little dog. She's holding up.

Oh, my goodness. Wow. Wow. Find the polygamists and the pimp. That's my favorite. There's a clan. Right there, top right. Oh, no, right there, that one.

so right there top right oh no right there that one these are polygamists in utah on the left and a detroit pimp and his girls what is it like interviewing pimps they're very braggadocious they're very full of themselves that you really won't get the truth you really won't get like a lot of the people I interview they break down and they tell me the honest truth of what they're feeling and what they experienced as kids. These guys are all focused on I want to look very

cool. So they're kind of very focused on their image. Right and how they're coming across. Did you ever watch any of those documentaries on pimps like Pimps Up, Pimps Down? I know all those guys. They went to Kenny Red's birthday party. Did you really?

Yeah. I'm like part of the clan. Jesus, what was that like? I mean, they're cool with me. They love me because I treat them nicely. I'm like part of the family now. I'm this square white guy that's like friends with all the pimps. I knew them from Chicago.

I knew Bishop Don Magic Juan from Chicago. Did you really? Yeah, yeah. Wow. He's probably the most famous pimp Chicago. I knew Bishop Don Magic Juan from Chicago. Did you really? Yeah, yeah. Wow. I used to see him at the- He's probably the most famous pimp ever. He's the most famous pimp ever. Yeah, well, probably the most famous

because he's been in movies with Snoop. Yeah. But Fillmore Slim? Yeah. Fillmore Slim I interviewed. I've done almost all of the really big name ones. But I'm just fascinated by that lifestyle. Not the new age pimps.

Most of the new age pimps are just gang members that are, they found a new hustle. And they're wearing like jeans and t-shirts. But the old school pimps from the 70s and 80s that are just dressed to kill and driving these custom Cadillacs or Lincolns or Rolls Royces and they're all about the show and they've got they've got three girls five girls in fur coats and you know the girls were sexy they dressed well the dudes were out of this world yeah I went to the players ball down in Atlanta oh boy a couple years ago what is that like it's a lot of people showing off is what it is. Yeah. It's not my scene. But that's the culture.

That's the culture. You've got to understand. What people don't understand, what white people don't understand about that whole subculture, they love to hate pimps. We all hate pimps. No one wants to see a woman taken advantage of. Nobody wants that. Except maybe some pimps.

wants that. But, except maybe some pimps, but what they don't understand is these guys, the women that they are managing, this will get a lot of negative comments on YouTube, but the women are, they're just trying to survive. And they figured out this is a way that I can make money. But they don't know how to do it well. They don't know how to manage their money. If they have money, they spend it. It's all gone. And they end up broke every night. And they're just like, they're spinning their wheels,

going nowhere. So a pimp will step in and like, let me handle your money. You give me all your money and I'm going to take care of you. We're going to save some for your future. And I'm going to keep some of it. And we're going to live in style.. We're going to save some for your future. And I'm going to keep some of it. And we're going to live in style. And you're going to work for me. You're going to be one of my stable.

So he provides some benefits and security and guidance. But when they break up, it's rare that the girl gets anything. And it's always a horrible ending. It's usually a horrible ending, yeah. When the pimp goes to jail sometimes. But the girls never end up with the story where like, oh yeah, and then I got my money and I went off to college. That never happens. Yeah. But the pimp does provide a lifestyle for the time when she is doing that, that is better than what she was doing without him. And you've interviewed people that have been open about murdering people too. Yeah. I've

interviewed a lot of people that have done that. I'll interview people. I could do a whole YouTube channel on what happens after the interviews that I do. Really? Does a lot of people get in trouble? No, no, no. Nobody's ever gotten in trouble. The cops have never come after anybody.

Really? I've done all these interviews and the cops have never approached me about anyone I've interviewed. Isn't that kind of crazy? It's crazy to me. But I know the cops watch because they'll roll by and say, hey, who are you posting today? So they watch all the time. I think the cops enjoy watching because the people that they're arresting are always lying to them. They're never telling the truth. Oh yeah, I was robbing that liquor store and I'm like, yeah, I'm sorry. I was guilty. They're never getting that. But when I interview people, I say, yeah, I robbed a liquor store

and I, you know, I got away with it and I people, I say, yeah, I robbed a liquor store and I got away with it and I did this and I robbed a jewelry store and I shot the guard in the shoulder and I got away with it. They're getting to hear the story told a very, very different way than the way they hear it when they book somebody. Do you interview cops as well?

I would love to, but I've only interviewed a couple of retired cops. And they're great stories great storytellers and great stories perhaps my favorite video on my channel is mike dowd who's a yes i know mike i've had him on the podcast mike's the best that documentary fuck yeah the seven what is it the seven five seven five yeah is an amazing documentary and it's just all about this young idealistic cop who gets tell me that's not a movie it's screaming to be made yeah i mean well the documentary is fantastic but yeah an actual movie about it he just got indoctrinated into the world of corruption right from the beginning yeah

he witnessed a murder he was told to shut the fuck up when he came to my studio he approached me and asked me if i'd be interested in doing an interview. And I said, yeah, sure, I'd love to. And we were talking as he was driving up from Orange County to me. He lives, I think, in New York and Florida. But he was in Orange County for something. So he was driving up. We're talking on the phone.

And I'm listening to the way he talks. I'm like, Mike, you could, I mean, this is the way I'd love my videos to go. You're a great conversationalist. You're probably the best conversationalist I've ever heard. And that's why you're so successful. One of the reasons you're so successful. But I'm not. I'm just a photographer. And all I'm doing with these interviews is trying to provide a little backstory that my photographs can't provide. So when Mike was driving up, he's talking to me on the phone. I'm like,

he's such a great speaker. And I love listening to him, even when he's just talking about what time he's going to be there. His voice and the way he talks is great. So New York. And I said, Mike, let me run something by you. And this is what I love to do. I wish every video on my channel was like this. I said, could you do this whole talk where you tell your entire story without me saying a single word? He goes, oh, yeah, no problem. I can i could do that and i'm like let's try it so he came in and he did exactly i didn't make

a single noise i said thank you at the very end and that was it and that's the way i love those are my best interviews where i don't say a word well he's a perfect candidate he's the best and i've had i've had some even drug addicts to do it and i've had other people do it and very often what happens is i'll ask them my typical questions are like, where are you from? What was your family like? And sometimes they just take the ball and run with it. And then they do the whole thing on their own, and I don't say another word. So that's almost the same thing. And that's the way I love it. I'm not looking to have a conversation like you and I are having right now. I'm not good at that anyway. That's not my strength. My strength is the

photograph. The reason why I asked you about cops is I feel about cops the same way I'm not good at that anyway. That's not my strength. My strength is the photograph. The reason why I asked you about cops is I feel about cops the same way I'm feeling about you, but even to more in an extreme, that they're exposed to things they cannot unsee, and the pressure and the stress of that is so, so overwhelming. And also they're thought of as the enemy, and they're not appreciated, and the risks that they take are not taken into consideration and the stress and the PTSD that they almost all have. Every one of those cops has seen videos of a cop pulling someone over for a routine traffic stop and getting gunned down. They've all seen that and they know that that's a possibility.

Every time they pull up to a car that has tinted windows, they have no idea what's going on. No, after doing what I'm doing, which is not as dangerous as what the cops are doing, because they're clearly trying to get somebody and put him in jail or prison. I'm just trying to give them money for an interview. So my danger is not as high as theirs, but I can relate to how dangerous their life is because every single person they approach is potentially going to shoot them, run, do something. Or they're mentally ill and they're going to just do something crazy. I follow a few. There's police-related Instagram pages that sort of highlight that, that are really well done.

One of them is police posts and faces of Rampart is another one. police posts and faces of rampart is another one and it's um these cops that post these videos and it's educational it just shows people first of all it's educational to other police officers because a lot of them they talk about what went wrong here situational awareness why why this officer got in trouble what you should, and how this officer handled this in an incompetent way, or you should never allow something to escalate to this place. But a lot of it is just you are forced to look at what they experience on an everyday basis, where everyone they're talking to is lying to them. Everyone they're talking to is lying to them. Everyone they're talking to has a potential.

And then they also develop this horrible cynicism about human beings and everyone they pull over. They just get so overwhelmed from decades of this job. Yeah. Cops are so underappreciated, especially right now. It's terrible. I say it all the time. People get mad at me all the time.

I'm like, listen, man, I know cops. because of my martial arts background i grew up with cops i was around cops from the moment i was a young teenager all throughout my adult life because of martial arts because so many cops train in martial arts to protect themselves and they're good people for the most part like all people most people are good people for the most part, like all people. Most people are good people for the most part. But good people that are forced into jobs that have horrific pressures attached to them and horrific consequences if anything goes wrong. And paid very little. Yes. And they're under just unbelievable stress and they make terrible errors because of that stress.

And then someone gets a cell phone video of that and they post someone planting a gun or doing this and then everyone thinks all cops do that. No, and you cannot shoot the wrong guy. Right. You cannot ever risk doing that. Yes. I watched a horrible video the other day. So they're shooting at you,

but you can't really just shoot back because what if you hit a kid? Right. Well, that was what I saw. It was a horrible video of a grandson, this very troubled grandson who pulled a knife on his grandfather, and while the cops were there, he went to stab the grandfather, and the cops opened fire on the kid and shot the grandfather too,

killed both of them. And I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ. And in the police post, this was all about understanding about accuracy and when to shoot and when to intervene. And it's sort of a step-by-step breakdown for other officers so they can sort of look at this. There's a great video on my channel with a retired cop named Kevin Donaldson. It's a great story about PTSD of being a cop and what the aftermath of all that is. I can't even imagine what their minds must be like, especially someone who works in a horrible neighborhood where you're constantly dealing with that. they see like they're constantly seeing murder constantly seeing car accidents constantly seeing overdose constantly seeing physical abuse sexual abuse rape torture you name it and you're married

and you come home to your wife and like how was your day honey yeah and you're in simi valley with your kids just trying to stay calm and then you know you hear the police and you're like okay you know it's a horrible yeah horrible job it's uh yeah and any support for them always gets like Okay. You know. Horrible. Yeah. Horrible job. It's, yeah, and any support for them always gets like shit on. But I think about them the same way I'm thinking about you. I think prolonged exposure to the most horrific elements

of society is, we sort of formulate our idea what the world is based on what we've encountered and you know if you've encountered nothing but a beautiful neighborhood and nice families and everybody's friendly and you go to the football game and everybody cheers yay you know this is life for you but if you're experiencing what you're experiencing you're talking to people on skid row on a day-in, day-out basis. Like, what does that affect? Like, how are your dreams? Do you have nightmares? I don't remember my dreams.

I sleep really well. But I'll tell you this. I call this project a crash course in empathy. Because, like, when I first started, like I said, you know, I would look at these people like, just get a job. Right. A bunch of lazy losers that won't get a job. Right. look at these people like just get a job right a bunch of lazy losers that won't get a job right and then after hearing story after story after story i see like oh now i get it people are sort of like you can't when when people are developing and growing there's certain things that happen to

them that are very hard to unfuck and when things go sideways and their life is fucked, like trying to bring them back to a place like where you are or a place where I am, where someone who didn't have those things happen to them as a child, that is an enormous task. Yeah. It's almost insurmountable. I don't think it's even possible. You can just prop them up a little bit so they're better, but they're never going to. I mean, there are some that do it, but those people that have really recovered and have gone on to do great things. Where people who kind of were doing great things before, but then they got caught up with cocaine and then they pulled themselves out. and I've talked about this ad nauseum, is the only way to fix this is to fix the areas in which this is prevalent

and to somehow or another pump money and resources into community centers and education and giving people some kind of hope. And then even then, you're just going to make less of it. You're not going to eliminate it entirely and it's a generational problem that could take decades upon decades to really put a dent in it but it's a task that's worth doing and no one is approaching this when politicians are sending billions of dollars overseas and billions of dollars on projects that a lot of people don't even agree to. And it's our tax money and nothing is being spent. No, if you want to save our country,

this is the way to do it. Yes. I mean, why are we looking at all the doing all these crazy things in other countries or going to the Mars or wherever the wherever we're thinking? How about right here in our own backyard? Yeah. How about fixing places like the south side of Chicago and Detroit and Baltimore? And the way to do that, I believe, is providing hope for those families. And it's not going to happen right away. It's not going to happen in a generation. Right. Exactly. And no one's got the patience for it because whatever work you're going to put in, whatever money you're going to put in and energy and effort, you won't see in your lifetime. I had a conversation with some friends about this last night and they were saying but would the country

even run the same way if that happened because don't you need all these poor and disenfranchised people to have the country work the way it works i'm like but the country doesn't have to work the way it works this is just the way it works right now it's not like it wouldn't work another way well you know what's interesting is you know, nature, even the human body regulates. That's what it does. When something's out of balance, it'll figure out and it'll find a, you know, it's like a seesaw. It'll eventually balance out. So we have a preponderance of down-and-out broken people on the streets, living in boxes and tents addicted to drugs and we've

also got this ultra super the billionaires and the multi multi-millionaires and they're both existing on the two extremes right and good luck getting the rich to say all right we're going to give away a third of our money so that we can help these people well they don't have any faith in it nobody's got they think they also think that, I mean, when I talk to people about this that are very wealthy, they have a problem with charities that most of the money actually winds up going to administrative costs. And very little of it actually goes to the people. And then you find out that people that are working on the homeless situation. I have a friend, Coleon Noir, who was a lawyer, and he was in San Francisco, and his perspective was,

oh, they're not spending enough money to fix this homeless problem. And then he talked to someone who is actually deeply embedded in that situation. He said, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not the problem. They are spending a lot of money on it, but the money is going to these people that get high salaries that work on the homeless problem. And he showed us a spreadsheet of all these people, and it's six-figure salaries, some of them $250,000 a year. And it's a lot of them that are handling the homeless situation in Los Angeles and the homeless situation in San Francisco. And there's no incentive to fix it. The budget goes up every year. The homeless problem goes up every year. There's no accountability. There's no, hey, we've spent all this money and the problem is bigger. And you guys keep getting

raises. Like what the fuck is going on here? It becomes an industry. And then fixing the homeless, like if you look at the actual budget for dealing with the homeless. Pull up the budget for dealing with the homeless in Los Angeles in 2022. Because it's bonkers. When you see the sheer amount of money that's being spent. Ineffectively. And all anybody seems to care about is we're working hard to mitigate the homeless situation and we're you know we we have upped our budget and like oh they've upped the budget this is great

and you think that must be effective we're going to fix this but nothing gets done no it's a big problem i think the big the big number was for californ, not just for Los Angeles. Okay, let's get the California number. 7.2 billion. 7.2 billion just for homeless. I would think with that, you could clean up Tenderloin in San Francisco and LA. 3.3 billion general fund in 21, 22 to almost 30 homelessness-related programs across the state. That is so much money. And yet the problem gets bigger and bigger every year.

And I don't... I think the problem, I was talking about the layers, you keep peeling them back. When you peel back the last layer, it's human greed. Human greed is the problem. But also, what can be done?

When you think about what are the strategies that these people are employing, shelters, food, food stamps, counseling, these are like Band-Aids on gunshot wounds. It's a Band-Aid on cancer. Yeah, that's a good description. That's all it is. No, but I think if we... Here, just look at what's taught in schools.

They're teaching trigonometry and algebra and all these things. When everyone's got a cell phone in their pocket, you don't need to be learning trigonometry anymore. If you're going to become an engineer, then study trigonometry in college, but you don't need to be teaching it in high school. They should be teaching human interaction, how to raise children, like all these skills that we're using on a daily basis. They should talk about empathy too, and how important it is, and kindness, and how it's not just good for the person you're kind to, it's actually good for you. Yeah. No, I mean, that's the thing. I mean, that's why I feel okay with giving away so much money, because I know that it benefits me. Yeah. Like that's what people don't understand about hate, whether it's hate on social media or hate in general or racism or just—

All of the above. All of the above. Any form of negativity and hate and judgment. What people don't realize about that, if I'm hating you, it hurts me. Yes. It doesn't hurt you. Right. You don't give a fuck if I hate you or not. Well, it hurts my feelings if you say it hurts me yes doesn't hurt you right you don't give a fuck if i hate you or not

you just well it hurts my feelings if you say it to me yeah but but mostly you're carrying it around it's like it's hurting me what is that expression my blood pressure is up my peace of mind is gone i'm sitting around distracted about how pissed off i am at you yeah it's like what a horrible way to go through life yeah there Yeah, there's an old expression about hate that it's a poison that kills the vessel that's holding it. Yeah. That's exactly right. It does.

And we're not told that. We're told, you know, revenge is being told. We were talking about Marcus Aurelius the other day, that Marcus Aurelius, who was the emperor of Rome 2,000 years ago, was talking about empathy and talking about Marcus Aurelius the other day that Marcus Aurelius who is the emperor of Rome 2,000 years ago was talking about empathy and talking about how important it is to forgive people like this is brilliant stoic philosopher thousands of years ago when people hacking each other to death with swords and arrows and shit and this guy was Trying to see through it as a leader Yeah

And it's the rarest of rare of people that lead like that, that really genuinely have this perspective like humanity can do better and we should strive to do better. And he was striving to do better in his own personal life. And that was what meditations was all about, his book. Yeah. No, that's what I try to do with my videos. My idea was I'm going to present these ideas. And I could write an article saying, oh, you need to raise our kids better. We need to be better parents, better role models, and we'll have a better outcome with these kids. Nobody's going to read that article.

Yeah. But if I put out some entertaining videos that how many people are watching, you'll learn the lesson, which is how important that childhood is to provide that kid with unconditional love. Not love. Not love. Not love.

Love is bullshit. Unconditional love. Everything else is some disguised bullshit. Because you can have a parent who, I love you if you get good grades. I'll love you if you stay out of jail. I'll love you if you're not gay. I'll love you if you're whatever.

Like the way my mom loved me. She passed away a couple years ago but Give me a second Like I could have been gay I could have been in jail I could have been flunking out of school Could have been mean to her I could have been anything And I know

That she would have loved me the exact same way. And because she did, you are the person you are. I wanted to make her proud. I still do. I think this project is just an homage to her. Well, you're very fortunate. Oh, yeah. I don't know anybody

that had a mom like mine. And my dad was great too. Not as great, but my dad was really great. My dad came from absolute shit. Well, all of our parents came from a different era too. We have to take that into consideration. That's a great point. I mean, look at how so many people in this new generation are looking for the easy lick, the shortcut, the hack, the easy way to get rich or do whatever.

They want the fast buck. Right. Look at anybody who's done anything great in our world. In the 1900s, in the 1800s, in the 17th, from the beginning of time, every one of those people have a story of overcoming great adversity and working harder than you can even imagine. They're amazing stories of perseverance, of courage, of all these things that nobody seems to want to do now.

Yeah. Well, they're not taught that that's something you should strive for. And when there are these options that are available, like becoming a TikTok star or becoming, you know, there's these things that are available that are so simple that you see 17 year olds making millions of dollars and you're like, well, that's what I want to available that are so simple that you see 17-year-olds making millions of dollars. And you're like, well, that's what I want to do. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to struggle. That's more attractive.

Yeah. And there's not enough emphasis on the fact that in doing difficult things, you learn about yourself. And then this thing that you can create that's hard to create that takes a long time is immensely satisfying as opposed to winning the lottery, which is what everybody wants to do, which is just for the most part when it happens to people, it kind of upturns their life. Well, I mean, you win the lottery. Most of these people that are not willing to work for it haven't put in the work for it. If they actually came upon $3 million, they would fuck it off. Yes. They would fuck it off because deep down subconsciously, they know they don't deserve it.

Which is so strange that we have this sort of watermark in our mind of what our value is. And anything that goes above that, we try to bring that water back down to where it was. Absolutely. No, like when two people are romantically involved and, you know, a guy and a girl meet or whatever, two people meet. If you rated self-worth on a scale from 1 to 10, if one of them's an 8 and the other one's a 5, there's no chance in hell it'll ever work out.

Right. Unless that 5 gets their shit together. Yeah, but that's so hard to do. one's a five, there's no chance in hell it'll ever work out. Right. Unless that five gets their shit together. Yeah, but that's so hard to do. It's so hard to do. It's so hard to do. Yeah. Generally, two fives can become an eight. If they grow together.

Maybe. But they have to really love each other and be friends. They can have their bipolar heaven or whatever. Well, I've seen a lot of really successful couples that like lose hundreds of pounds together. And there's a lot of that on social media that I think is very inspiring when people do get their life in order. No, and that would bond people better than anything.

Yes. Yes. And it seems to do that, you know. But one of the things that I noticed on your channel is there's a lot of couples that are addicted together. Yeah. You have these fentanyl addict couples, which is so heartbreaking. I just did one earlier this week, Mike and

Stephanie, and they were talking about how when they get apart from each other, they can kind of get clean and do fine, but then they love each other and they get back together and they self-destruct. It's so strange. They love each other and then they kill each other. Yeah. Yeah. It's just the programming of the human mind and the fact that we don't really have tools to fix that. Like, if you have a fucked up computer, you can bring it to a repair shop and they can go, oh, you've got a fucking virus on your hard drive

and it's infected this and that and, you know, your fucking, your hard drive is broken and we can fix that and replace that and reformat your set we can't do that to mine no you said something on the gabormate interview you did recently where you you said it's like we're these living life forms without an instruction manual yes that was great yeah that's what we are yeah we're these highly evolved living creatures and you don't know how to how to operate it yes so we're just going through school and we we all hate school and we get out and we just screw up and if they were teaching

gabor mate's work in schools oh my god we'd be a different society yeah. Yeah, we would be a different society. And just a few classes like that could shift the mindset of so many people. It's so easy to fall back into your old ways of thinking and behaving. But if we did that a lot in high school and expose people to that, we genuinely could fix a lot of the problems that we see, or at least make some strides. Absolutely. I think that would make more of a difference in the world than anything else we've talked about. Yeah. And just so many people have never encountered an environment where people are supportive. You know, for me, it was martial arts. When I was a young boy, when I found martial arts, I was immediately brought into this world of discipline, where discipline was celebrated, and it was admired, and then also love of your fellow practitioners.

community. And it was the first time I'd ever been around like a really positive community of people who valued hard work and also valued people who excelled at that hard work and really admired them and really used them as examples. And those people went on to become instructors. And it really profoundly affected the way I look at the world and profoundly affected the way I look at the world and profoundly affected the way I look at the value of other people and their hard work. Their esteem building acts. Yes. Yeah. And most people, I mean, I, you know, I found martial arts when I was a kid cause I was small and I was always fucked with and I was scared of everybody. And I had one pivotal day. I had sort of dabbled in martial arts. And then one day where I walked into this one school in Boston, which was the Jaehyun Kim Taekwondo Institute.

And from that one day, it changed my whole life. And I'm so fortunate that that happened to me. And I often wonder what would I be like if I didn't live in a nice neighborhood with nice people and didn't expose myself to that and didn't engross myself in that world of people that wanted to excel? There's not a chance in hell. No, that's right. A kid in South Central doesn't have any of those. A kid whose mother is on Skid Row. A kid who's, I mean, what do you do? How do you get there?

You're fucked from birth. You're being raised by a grandparent, if you're lucky. If you're lucky. Maybe the foster system. And you don't have access to martial arts or ballet classes or music classes or. Nothing. Even good education, I don't think. Right.

No opportunities. Right. No role models. Nothing. Even good education, I don't think. Right. No opportunities. Right. No role models. Nothing. And this is what I think couldn't be, that could be mitigated with money. If we allocated money, the way we allocate money to these overseas issues and the way we just throw money around at the military industrial complex. the military industrial complex and if we allocated that kind of money to try to take a comprehensive approach to shifting this this place like if we had this guy on who was a cop in baltimore and um i guess it was like the early 2000s he was there and he found a piece of paper that was an arrest report from the 1970s. And it was the same arrests in the same neighborhoods for the same crimes. And it was overwhelming to him.

He was like, oh my God, this is just corruption and systemic racism. And you're not going to fix this with just policing. You're not going to fix this with just policing you're not going to just arrest your way out of this no you need i think you need to change the mindset of these young these this younger generation like like what's become very cool to be bad oh if you're bad you're cool that has to change yeah that has to change i remember back in the to change. I remember back in the 60s. You're not old enough. I was born in the 60s. Like being a good person was cool. Right. It was for a while.

The thing in front of your face. You got it by your neck now. Oh, I'm sorry. It's okay. Being a good person was what people aspired to. Yes. And now it's like to be a bad person is what people. Well, that's a culture.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of culture that has emphasized that. And it's a lot of rap music. A lot of things celebrate that sort of badass lifestyle. And when you come from nothing, that looks incredibly attractive. Like here's a guy flashing money. He's wearing expensive sneakers. You don't know any better. Right. And those are all things that people aspire to that are very difficult to achieve. So you look at that instead of like having a balanced life and a loving family and

being a pillar of the community, you aspire instead to being this thing that's very difficult to become, which is the guy who has the big house and the fancy clothes and the money you're flashing around. And so it's just a, you're chasing the wrong carrot. Yeah. Now that's it. Yeah. We're a broken country. And it's like, if you want to, if you're, if you really love your country and you want to fix it, that, that would be the area to, those would be the areas to attack. Yeah. and i don't see any effort at all find me a politician that's like really going to do that well they don't even talk about it i mean they'll talk about uh social safety nets which i think are also very important welfare and and and you know things for for poor people that are genuinely just struggling because they're down on their luck and that we should treat them as members of our community and try to help them because we can.

And that's a sign of a good, strong, healthy community that we do look out for people that are less fortunate than us. But there's more that has to be taken into consideration and much, much more that has to be done. Like you have to figure out like how is this continuing to happen in these same places over and over and over again and how is there no effort to try to mitigate that because it's a long-term thing like this expression you got to get better the same way you got sick yeah and this country got sick slowly you're very much on the pulse of what's going on in the world in the country and technology and everything right society culture everything do you think we are you, what you're watching is a society in downfall, like spiraling down?

There's a lot of us. There's a lot of our society that is in downfall. There's a lot of our society that is spiraling. There's a lot of the way we think about things that is fruitless and pointless and ultimately negative. But I think there's a lot of people also that are aware of that. And there's also a distribution of information today and the way people are having conversations today that's totally unavailable before.

Your channel is part of that. This podcast is part of that. The multitude of podcasts that are out there where intelligent, kind, compassionate people are thinking and talking about things, talking about the way you approach other human beings and talk to people, the way you live your life, the way you can put pleasure and immediate gratification aside and seek discipline and hard work and the value and the benefit of that, the value and the benefit of treating people with kindness and developing a good core group of friends and treating each other well,

I think that's spreading. I think that's helping. But I think we are constantly in this yin-yang battle as human beings. And I don't think you have darkness without light, and I don't think you have darkness without light and i don't think you have light without darkness yeah i think we're always going to be we're this bizarre flawed intelligent calculating entity that is trying to figure out its existence which is ultimately finite in nature anyway and our goals and our aspirations and our dreams, there's so much of our society that's based around chasing objects, which ultimately you can't keep.

And then also if you do give them to your kids, you're probably fucking them up. It's very few people that I've met that come from wealthy families aren't fucked up. Or at least I have friends that grew up very wealthy and their family's wealthy and they're wealthy now. And they know that they got there because of their family. And there's a thing about them that's always insecure.

So they have to kind of brag a little and tell you a little of this they've done, a little of that they've done. And I know what they're doing. And they're not bad people. They're just trying to establish that they're valuable. Now, imagine if your dad was an Elon Musk or somebody who is so wildly successful that you can never, in your wildest dreams, you're never going to outdo your father. Right. What's the motivation?

This is an old expression. Show me the son of a great man who's also a great man. It's very rare. It's for men to aspire to be like their father if your father was some like super conqueror type character who just is out there. Well, a great man is a vague term. It is a vague term. Vague term because it could be just a great emotional man. My dad was a great man, but he was not a multimillionaire.

Right, but the thing is like what our society values in terms of when we look at someone who's great. We look at a Bill Gates or we look at someone who's amassed insurmountable wealth. And if you're a son and you're born in that, also you don't have to work hard because you're kind of always going to be okay. You have an endowment, you have a fund, you have a this or that. How do you, if you're that wealthy and successful, as I guess you and I probably are, how do you protect your kids from that? How do you? Yeah. I'm not going to give you anything, so now you're a selfish bastard. Right, right. And if you do, you're damned if you do.

Well, I try to instill in my kids the value of hard work, but also sometimes kids don't want to hear it from you. No, kids won't do what you say. They'll do what you do. Right. Like I turned into my dad. I just kind of blended a bit of my mom in as well, so I'm an artist, but I work my ass off yeah and that

combination makes me a successful artist and I remember watching my dad my dad never came home from work saying oh I worked my ass off this week and I traveled all over the midwest and I did this I did I grew up in Chicago in Detroit um he never talked about how hard he worked he just did it he just shut up and did it yeah he never bragged about it he never complained about how hard he worked. He just did it. He just shut up and did it. Yeah. He never bragged about it. He never complained about it. It's just what he did.

Yeah. And my best friend Bob and I, we joke about how we had the same dad. Different dads, of course, different families, but our dads are almost the same type of person, just shut up and worked. Yeah. And brought home the bread to support the family. Yeah, if you grow up in that, I was very fortunate to grow up in the Northeast.

And stayed married forever. Yeah. Forever. The people that grow up in hardworking environments tend to value hard work. Yeah, I've heard you talk about that too. No, growing up in the Midwest or the Northeast, you learn that life is tough. Tough. When your car breaks down and it's February and it's dark

and it's 1130 at night and you've got to figure it out. Yeah, that's real. And there's a value that you get from that that's really unavailable any other place in life. No, you're not going to learn that in California. No, you're not. And I always say that one of the problems in California, it's also being a trust fund baby in terms of the weather. Yeah, it makes you soft. Yeah, you're just always sunny. I still see myself to this day. I've been in California, shit, 20, 30, three decades, I don't know, long time.

And I still think of myself as a Chicagoan who's just, I'm just doing this in LA for a while. Yeah. I'm still a Chicagoan in my mind. All my friends from Boston feel that way too. Yeah. They're Boston guys. I mean, I look like a California boy,

but I am a Chicagoan through and through. Yeah. And a Detroiter too. Well, you know, LA is such a strange place because it's a place where people go to become somebody. And that's, that's always bizarre. I saw that when I moved there. Like I moved with my best friend who I went to high school with in Chicago and we had each other to stabilize each other and we kept each other on track. That was, that was very helpful. But I saw so many people that I'd be friends with and like, man, they're just lost.

Like you're getting into what? You're going to what event? What club? And they eventually self-destruct and move back to their small towns. Yeah. It becomes a thing of like finding the social circle that's popular. And now it's about photographing yourself with those people. Right. It's hard to make friends in LA. Yeah. Well, it's even photographing yourself with those people right it's hard to make friends in la yeah well it's even weirder now i think with social media because social media it's so hollywood's always been kind of like it's all about the image and this this the red carpet which is like the most bullshit thing in the world like where in life are you standing there and there's a hundred cameras pointing at you you're posing and looking around and they're like, Mark, over here, over here, over here.

And you're smiling and, but they live for that moment. Yeah, yeah. I have more great friends in New York than I do in LA. I've lived in LA forever. There's great people in LA. I know there are. But in spite of LA. That's right.

That's true. Yeah, that's true. But that environment, it's also, you have all these people that are, even if they have no aspirations to show business, they're still flavored by that show business. And now it's even more fucked because you have these Instagram and social media influencers who are almost all full of shit. And like it's all nonsense and it's all image and it's all. Fake. full of shit and like it's all nonsense and it's all image and it's all fake it's all fake and this is what they're selling and pushing and promoting and that's what the young people are aspiring to and they realize that there's a value in it that you could actually achieve like social success and numbers on your instagram page and numbers in your tiktok and numbers in your TikTok and numbers on your YouTube. I think that's the most valued commodity now.

Yes. To be, what do you call it, an influencer or whatever? Mm-hmm. A YouTuber or whatever the hell. Yeah. I mean, I'm horrified that I'm probably one of those. Well, not really. I mean, yeah, I guess I am too, right?

But what are you doing? You're doing something that's very different than just like TikTok-ing or just – Yeah, I mean I tell people who are like agents and managers that I'm working with that the number one thing that's important to me is my integrity and how I'm perceived. Like I don't give a fuck if I make money or not. I don't need to make money from this channel. The way YouTube demonetizes it, it's like, I don't even... Does YouTube demonetize a lot of your videos?

A lot. But what is their rationalization for demonetizing what you do? I think they were good to me for a while. They were promoting my stuff and they were monetizing it for a while. But then, like, if you look at the top 10 videos, I've got some videos that have a lot of views, like 15 million, 30 million, 33 million,

uh, six of the top 10 have been demonetized or deleted, deleted, deleted. Which ones got deleted? A video of Lynn. She was, uh, she had like some mental issues and she was a crystal meth addict. It was a very popular video because she was just so many people connected with her and she actually passed away earlier this year i think why did they delete it she talked about suicide that's it i assume that's why because because youtube sent me a a notice they emailed me a notice saying are you considering suicide like this form document that they send out whenever there's a suicide mention or whatever. So there was a video where she mentioned suicide.

So somebody reported it and it got deleted. And that would have been a moneymaker. Did you try to respond to that or appeal it? Talking to YouTube is like talking to a wall. I have a partner manager, but nothing's really good. There's such a danger in that kind of censorship. Like anything to do with sex now, pretty much every video that has anything to do with sex gets demonetized.

Even the foot fetish guy? No, if it's a male, here's what's interesting about it. If it's a male talking about sex or sex work or sex being a trick or whatever, or a pimp, that's okay. If it's a female, demonetize. Is it because they think it's exploitation in some way? Like, is there a rationalization or is it just completely subjective?

No, I think it's because, oh, here's a poor vulnerable female who is talking about how she got into sex work. We can't have that on, you know, we can't allow advertising on that. So I can post it, but I can't make money off of it. It's so unfortunate because, well, and also not necessarily post it, right? Because you said the other one was deleted because of suicide. Yeah, sometimes they delete them. It's just what, I think what you're doing is very valuable. It's uncomfortable,

but it's very valuable. And the idea that someone at YouTube wouldn't recognize that and understand that, it's very disheartening for me. No, I mean, it's pathetic that you have a channel that has four million views, the spirit of it is to help society, and you can't make money with it. What I make on YouTube,

I spend in the first two weeks of every month. So that money, the additional money comes from I mean really what's what's you have a subscription model I have a subscription channel too and that's that's starting to take off and when did you start doing that about a year ago and was that in response to the demonetization that's exactly why I did censorship that's exactly why I did it and this subscription model is that also on YouTube or is that on your website no it no it's on my soft white underbell it. The censorship. That's exactly why I did it. And this subscription model, is that also on YouTube or is that on your website? No, it's on my softwhiteunderbelly.com. And that's really the state of the art of my channel. That's where every video lives, deleted, uncensored.

So they can find that one that was deleted from Instagram? Yeah, yeah. The original Lynn videos there. There's a bunch of others. Or on YouTube, rather. Yeah, there's some others that were deleted. All the demonetized ones. There's a lot of nudity that's not on YouTube.

There's a lot of videos that are not, there's like 150 videos that are not on YouTube. It's really, that to me is like, the reason I wanted, another reason I wanted to do it other than to try to make money with this project that I worked so hard at is I figured one day I'm going to post something

that's going to get my whole channel taken down. I figured eventually that's going to happen. I'll do something that just pisses somebody off and the whole channel will be gone, disappeared. See you later. It's just terrifying that that's an option today, especially with someone who's doing the kind of work that you're doing. Yeah, but there's rap videos that are 10 times raunchier

than what I'm doing, and the spirit behind it is that this is cool. Whereas the spirit of mine is like, I just want to create awareness so that maybe people will learn to avoid it. No, it's not rational. But they're monetized. The rap videos all have ads on them. Yeah. And my stuff does not. No, it's not. It's not logical. No. But it's a big corporation. Good luck trying to have a logical conversation. who are the victims and who's the perpetrator and who's the, and what should you be allowed to talk about? What are you not allowed to talk about? And what narrow confines of conversations are you allowed to exist in? And what topics are you just not allowed to approach? And YouTube has been horrible with that in a lot of ways.

Yeah. Just recently. Yeah. Well, it's like, it's accelerating it seems. And it seems like that's one of the things that does happen with censorship that people don't seem to understand.

When you want things censored that you don't agree with, what you have to understand is that you're setting in motion something that will look for more things that are offensive, more things that are not allowed, and will decide even further and further to push this until it's trying to control the way you think and the way you process information and what you're exposed to. And somehow or another, they think that that's a net positive or they think that it's positive for advertising revenue and that the advertisers think it's positive. I mean, but it's preposterous to me that someone would not want to advertise. There's certain things that they could advertise on your channel. And particularly if they were thinking about it and strategizing, that would maybe be beneficial to some of the people that are looking at those things.

I mean, the best example is like when a gang member or a prostitute video gets demonetized, which really means I can't make money on it, which really means I should put it on my subscription channel and not even put it on YouTube. I'm doing that as a favor to my audience. But eventually that's where it would lead when you demonetize something. The problem with, or they put an age restriction of 18 on it. Yeah.

So you can't be under 18 watching this. Look at the age that all these prostitutes and gang members were when they joined. Right. They were 13. They were 14. So the people who are joining these subcultures can't watch these videos that are giving you a clear picture of what your future is going to be. You can't watch them. My videos are clean. The exotic video, this is this very attractive prostitute from South Central LA, from Figueroa Street. She has tattoos all over her face from pimps. And the video has like, I don't know how many views, like 14 million, 15 million.

It's got millions of views. It's the second most popular video on my channel. It got demonetized. She doesn't swear once. She doesn't talk once, she doesn't talk about any sexual acts, all she talks about is how difficult that lifestyle is and how tough her life is. She mentions that she smokes crystal meth, but that's it.

And it is, in a way, it's educational. It's educational as anything, because I could put videos out of some girl saying, I was once a prostitute and it's a bad lifestyle and you shouldn't do it. All young girls, make sure you don't do this. Nobody's going to watch that. Who the fuck is going to watch that? But if you put a beautiful girl like Exotic out there and she tells you her whole life story, it's heartbreaking.

Yeah. And a young kid will listen to that and go, fuck. Yeah. I had no idea it could lead to that. Well, most people don't know anyone like that. So that's one of the things about your interviews would say like some of these homeless people. There was this woman who never looked at the camera once. And she was like gyrating in these weird ways.

Oh, yeah. Like looking at the sky. And you look at that. And me as a father, that was someone's baby at one point in time. That was a little child that could grow up to be anything. Yeah. Could grow up to be an artist. Could grow up to be, you know, whatever.

All these people. All these people. They're all just human beings. We're all just humans. Just a bundle of potential. And they just got fucked. They just got a terrible roll of the dice, terrible hand of cards, terrible circumstances, terrible experiences, terrible abuse. Sometimes you look at nature. The lion eats

the antelope. That's just the way it happened that day. The antelope loses, the lion wins. And it's like that's the nature of our universe or of our world. Who's to say that humans are exempt from that? Well, we certainly aren't. Some of us are going to be winners and drive fancy cars and live in nice houses and have great lives and great vacations and raise their kids well, and other ones are going to live on the street. I'm not saying that's what I believe. I'm just saying that's the reality

Well, I mean look at what's happening And I think about this all the time like should every kid get a should every swimmer get a trophy? No, just the winners. Yeah, so the winners get to win and the losers suffer the loss. Well, it's supposed to inspire people who are also trying to become winners to feel the pain of loss, which makes you more disciplined. It makes you work harder because you want to try to figure out a way to win. And that's supposed to be like a net benefit and also enforce the value of hard work and discipline. If you see that person who wins all the time and they're at the pool before anybody and they're eating healthy and they're stretching and doing all the right things and you're like, I want to be like that person.

Yeah. Listen to anybody who's done like, like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Jerry West, all these guys, they lost and lost and lost and lost. then they learned how to win yes and then they became they're only perceived as winners now yes but there was a time where they were like kobe sat on the bench for first few seasons that's how you become that person yeah you don't you don't become that person through like extraordinary gifts from the moment you're a child and nothing but great positive things happening yeah it comes from discipline and hard work. And that's what's not being enforced by the social media, TikTok sort of generation of kids looking for this immediate gratification and also looking to be rewarded for just existing.

Right. No, look at all these people I just mentioned, Michael and kobe for example they're angry they were they were driven michael jordan's the best example of anything if you ever watch his uh hall of fame acceptance speech yes it's magnificent a magnificent example of how angry a champion is yes it was that was i love that speech because was always this I'm from Chicago Michael was this they call him the black Jesus he was just better than anybody there was no question who the greatest basketball player of all time was

it's Michael Jordan watch the highlights and you'll see I love Kobe more than anybody but Michael was the best there ever was probably ever will be psychotically driven everybody was horrified in the whole theater there ever was. Probably ever will be. Psychotically driven. Fuck. Everybody was horrified in the whole theater when he's getting his Hall of Fame.

Because he was angry at- Angry at everybody. Yeah. And that's what- All the people that doubted him. All the people that doubted him. All the people that disrespected him. He just listed them all.

Like he had them on a sheet, but he had them in his brain. And it's amazing because you're like, why are you even thinking about those people? You're Michael Jordan. You're the fucking man. He's the greatest. Name an athlete who is more influential than Michael Jordan.

None. In their sport. None. I mean, look at Jordans. They're still the number one sneaker in the world. They should be. He's magnificent. And that comes from that.

Yeah. Fire. Yeah, fire. Yeah. I mean, I'm angry. You know, my dad treated me like, my dad, my sister's like, my sister's one of my favorite people. She's five years older, but she's about eight years older in terms of maturity. Because I matured very slowly and she matured very quick. She got out of, I think she went through grade school a year early. She got through high school in three years.

She went through college in three years. And she was trying to get into dental school at like 20 years old or 21 years old and didn't get accepted for a while. Worked in a motel for a while because she couldn't do anything. She just had to get a job. So she, and my dad, my dad was hard on us. My dad was hard on us and said things to her and me. I was not a straight A student. My sister doesn't know any other letter than A on a report card. But I remember him saying to us, if you're so smart, how come you can't get into dental school? That's harsh.

That's harsh. I mean, you got nothing but A's. Yeah. And the only reason you couldn't get in is because she was too young. No dental school wanted to take her because she was a teenager, basically. Yeah. She had to age a couple years, and then she got in. Now she was a teenager basically yeah you know she had to she had to age a couple years and then she got in now she's a dentist but my dad used to tell me that kind of stuff all the time and it put a fire on i mean it would either break you and you start smoking dope and you

spiral downward or you silently get angry and my sister and i joke about all the time now the reason we both became successful is just to prove our dad wrong. And, and, you know, I talked to him about it and he says, yeah, I was just trying to put a fire under your ass. And I'm like, well, it worked. It worked. It's hard because you're still going to resent that person for being cruel when you're younger. No, but I mean, to me, the reason I do these videos, the reason I love to learn, you do too. I mean, like, look at what you're doing. You love to learn. And I love to understand.

The wanting to understand why we self-destruct, why we self-sabotage, why the society is broken, why all these things that are topics on my channel is what drives me to do them. And I want to know why. I forget. I lost my train of thought there. Your dad being hard on you. Yeah, but I just want to know what. I lost my.

But I know what you're saying. Like, what is missing in these people? What are the factors that lead people to become downcast and downtrodden of society? And what are the factors that lead people to become downcast and downtrodden of society? And what are the factors that lead people to become healthy, functional, successful humans? Yeah. For me, it was a combination of the unconditional love I got from my mom that kind of kept me on track and made me believe in myself tremendously. I believe everything I do turns into gold. It's a magical gift. I love it. Artistically, I believe my work is the best. I'm sure it isn't, but I believe it is. So that just

gives me the confidence to proceed and do more. And like, oh my God, this is so much fun. I get to create, I'm laying golden eggs every day. That's how I look at it. But it could also have gone where, like, let's say I didn't get that unconditional love from my mom, and my dad was giving me a hard time saying, you know, that conditional love, saying you've got to be successful in order to – oh, so I guess where I was going with that is my dad used to give me this hard time all the time, and it drove me to succeed. And I didn't get good grades in school, but when got out of school in my mind I'm like now I'm

going to prove him wrong I'm going to prove everybody wrong I'm going to show everybody what I can do and it took years took a lot of years but I eventually just became so wildly successful I would send my dad I would mail him my, this is before cell phones, I would mail him my bank statements. I had a million dollars in the bank. I had a million dollars in the Bank of America checking account, getting like minimal interest. And even the tellers would be like, why do you have this much money in a checking account? Because I'm working so goddamn much, I don't have time to invest it. I literally was. When I was doing advertising, I worked so much all the time.

But you wanted him to know. Oh, yeah. I was shoving his nose in the shit. How did he respond to that? He was so proud of me. Oh, that's good. He was so proud of me. He talks about that to this day.

Well, that's great. Oh, yeah. No, I mean. So it was effective. Yeah, it worked. It worked. It worked for my sister too. We both laugh about it now. That it sucked, but it worked. It sucked, but it works. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't, I try to raise my kids differently. Why? Like you could, we could talk here for hours about whether that is the healthy way to raise a child.

Right. I could make a strong argument for why it is. And there were generations that raised their kids that way. But I tend to love more like my mom did. With women in my life, with my friends. I'm basically kind. I'm not a hard-driving, you know. Has this project and doing all these videos made you more empathetic? Oh, fuck yeah.

I mean, I always was soft and nice and loving, but now I think I'm more than ever. I'm much more understanding. Because the key to empathy, the key to forgiveness, which is really my biggest thing is forgiveness, is understanding. Because if you understand why somebody is behaving the way they are, you'll forgive them. And you don't even need to know all the details. You just need to have, if you've learned enough stories, you eventually will gain the understanding that even though I don't know your story, I'll bet you it's similar to his story and her story,

which I've already heard, and they're horrifying, and I understand why they're in the situation that's similar to yours. So you may not know the details, but you have gained the empathy and the compassion and the understanding to forgive. and the compassion, and the understanding to forgive. And so the overwhelming volume of these people that you've interacted with, it has to have shifted your idea of what it means to be a person.

Yeah, for sure. No, I've matured tremendously in the last three years from doing this. I mean, I started this just as like, let me just do this crazy project. I didn't think it was going to become a success on YouTube, but I knew that I was going to learn a lot about people, about why we self-destruct, about why we self-sabotage, about why we get in our own way. I mean, why would you drink like that to destroy your relationship with your wife, to lose your kids, lose your job, lose your finances, lose everything? You're now a drunk living on the street. Why would you do that? It makes no sense.

But if you hear the whole story and what they went through and how they weren't loved as a child and how their dad never neglected them or abused them or whatever, all the pieces start to fit. And then you gain some empathy and compassion. When you move on from doing this, like you're going to just interview interesting people that are doing different kinds of things. I did a really great interview with a girl named Kate down in New Orleans. She is an obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferer. And that was a great interview.

So many people liked it because it was just like, oh, my God, that's me. I saw so many comments saying that's what I have. I didn't even realize it because that's my story. And I see that in so many of my videos. Like, this is my story. So I like the mental health stories. The sex stories are always fun. I find sex interesting. Even though I don't make money on YouTube, I'll still do them. And I'll put them on my subscription channel sometimes too. And then this guy, like the skydiver I mentioned, that's an interesting story because, you know, what's interesting about his story is not that he had this crazy one in a million event happen in his life, tragic, is how he views life now.

That's what the second half of our talk is all about, is how he views life and values where he's at in life. I mean, he doesn't really have his body to use like he once did. Maybe he'll gain it back, hopefully. How long ago was his accident? Three months. Jesus. Three months. He just emailed me before I came down here.

And I'm like, this is great timing. Can he walk? He walks with a cane. I don't think he can use his right leg. He fell on his right side, so his right leg, his right arm, his right everything. He bit his tongue. Bit his tongue off, I think. Yeah.

Hemorrhage. He said his testicles turned like a cantaloupe. Oh, Jesus. I mean, you fall 4,000 feet under a cornfield, some bad shit's going to happen. So from now on, this new direction that you want to take things to, how do you seek out people? Do you just like when you get emailed, like, this seems interesting? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'll probably post a video on my channel. I've been thinking about doing it. I just haven't done it yet because I just hired somebody new,

and I want to get her up to speed on everything. But we put out little ads on Instagram and TikTok. Not TikTok, Craigslist and things like that. And we're getting some response to that, and that's been great. That's how I found him. But I've always gotten lots of emails from people that like my channel. Oh, I want to be on your channel. But if they don't send a video, I won't even consider it because everyone says they have a great story

But right I need to see how you speak, right? Yeah, that is that's a problem that I've had We're interviewing people who've written books Some of them are not terrible speakers. Yeah, and sometimes they talk the way they write like pause Pause, um, right click click, click, click, because that's how they think. See, what I do with everybody, I won't even consider you unless you've sent me just a 15- or 30-second video of you

just telling me your name and where you're from. It's just a basic so I can hear your voice, see what you look like, see how you speak because if you're – some people are more – they're more charismatic speakers than others. And what I'm doing is like maybe some people look more charismatic speakers than others and you know this what I'm doing is like you know maybe some people look at it as oh you're doing this good deed for society and maybe there is some of that but there's also this is entertainment as well

and I'm from advertising I'm slick I mean I'm you know I still have that in me you know I don't look like a homeless disheveled dude I know how to put myself together so my art tends to have that in me. I don't look like a homeless disheveled dude. I know how to put myself together. So my art tends to have some of that quality too. So I want it to look and sound good. Not technically, but in terms of how you speak, how you tell a story. I'm looking for great

storytelling is what I'm looking for. I tell people all the time, rather than telling me the most horrific story that's ever been told, I would rather have you tell a boring story about crack cocaine, but you're a great speaker. I had a guy, had a couple of crack addicts and crystal meth addicts just recently I just interviewed on Skid Row, and they're just great storytellers. Yeah. And I love that. But their story wasn't the most horrific ever, but it's great storytelling and it's fun to listen to. Yeah. And I love that.

How often do you consume these videos? I mean, are you watching them all day long? No. Do you like purposely go out of your way to not? Your very first question when we started, I never answered, which is like, how does it affect me? Yeah. You have to understand, like you have a crew and you have cameras all set, everything's

set. I'm using natural light. So the sun is going behind the clouds. The sun is moving throughout an interview. There's noise going outside. I'm doing this all by myself. I'm operating two cameras. I have to make sure the mic, I don't use headphones and a mic like this, I'm using a lavalier mic that they clip on so I have to make sure that's not getting bumped or knocked off or whatever I'm like a one-man band I'm trying to do two things you know I'm doing all these things at the same time oh and I'm also doing an interview let me ask you a question let me ask you this question and I'm doing like six or eight of these

a day so I have to remember like were you molested by your uncle or your dad I can't remember I can't remember and I've made this mistake people tell me that so eight of these a day so i have to remember like were you molested by your uncle or your dad i can't remember i can't remember and i've made this mistake people tell me that so i've got kids and all this and then later on the interview i ask them if they have kids right it's not because i'm an idiot it's because i'm doing so much at once that i can't possibly absorb everything i'm being told got it yeah and and i'm also interviewing at least on skid row especially so many like the force that comes at me of of bullshit and hustling and conning and lying and thievery and all that crap it's a lot so they recognize you now when you show up who's that people in skid row oh yeah oh yeah i'm like a fixture there so you're that guy i'm the guy that

does those interviews and they you know a lot of people will bring me somebody that they know or whatever yeah that happens a lot and you pay those people and i pay the people that bring them i pay the people i interview i pay some people that i've interviewed in the past and i'm helping them out with motel rooms or how did you find One of the most compelling and fascinating videos that I watched was those mountain people. Oh, the Whitaker family? Yeah. In West Virginia? Yeah.

How'd you find them? That was during Created Equal, the book that I mentioned. He, I was, you know, I was going to each other's lower 48 states and we were in West Virginia just driving around. Axel, my assistant and I, he's worked with me for decades. And we're just driving around looking for anybody interesting

to photograph. It was just like, let's just see what we can find. And we're in a truck stop, convenience store, gas station thing. And I'm inside and there's a cop in there. And cops always know everybody in their county or whatever. This is a Raleigh County cop. And I went up to him, told him what I'm doing. And he goes, oh yeah, I know all kinds of people. I'm like, I bet you do. He goes, I get off at two o'clock. And I go, I'll meet you here at two.

So we did. I've had people like this before who have helped me. This guy was probably the best I've ever had. He took me to pure gold over and over and over. All these interesting people who I photographed for Create Equal. He knew exactly what I'm looking for. He showed me the best of the best of Raleigh County. It was great. I'm sure there's more. I know there's more, but the ones he showed me were so great. And the first day we did this, we shot this person, we shot that, we shot a third, and then it started raining.

And the first day we did this, we shot this person, we shot that, we shot a third, and then it started raining. And my strobe equipment, I always use strobe equipment for my photographs. This is photographs only at the time. This is for a photo book. Got rained on. And so we had to pack up and leave. Can't rent photo gear in West Virginia, so we just had to go back to L.A. And I told him, we'll be back in two weeks.

So we come back, and he says, when you come back, make sure you bring video cameras. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I don't do video. So I didn't say anything. But two weeks later, we come back and he meets us and he goes, did you bring video cameras? I'm like, no, I don't do video. He got really pissed. He's like, you're going to want video.

I'm like, I don't do video i'm sorry just photos so we follow him he's in one car not not a cop car but his own private car and we're following him in our rental and we're going off the highway then we go off this mountain road and it's winding through the mountains beautiful country appalachia that western west virginia and eastern kentucky is it's right near the border of Kentucky. It's so beautiful. It's one of the most beautiful parts of the U.S. And this windy road turns into like a gravel road

and then turns into a dirt road. And there's shacks. Every once in a while you see a house. Like, somebody lives there? Like, you can't believe people live there. And we're going, very poor. I mean, the poverty in that part of West Virginia is like, these people are making, I think, an average of $12,000 a month. That's what they live on.

So we're going down this dirt road and then we come around this bend and we're going really slow. $12,000 a month? $12,000. I'm sorry, $12,000 a year. Yeah. $12,000 a year. How do they live on $12,000 a month? I was like, that's actually- No, no, no. I'm sorry. 12,000 a year. Yeah. 12,000 a year. Can you imagine that? No. That's crazy. That's like parts of Kentucky and West Virginia are like that. So poor. So we're driving down this dirt road. We come around this bend. There's a shack on the left and there's a trailer on the right, small trailer trailer and there's about 10 or 12 people just walking around and we're going really slow so they're they're not used to cars coming by at all but going that slow they definitely we got their attention and it's like everyone you look

at it's like their eyeballs are going this way and a single tooth among them not a single tooth in any of their heads. And they look at us and we look at them and they start yapping and screaming and barking. Some of them are just staring at us and drooling. And it was like... Yeah, these people. This was the video.

The inbred family, the Whitakers. Yeah. Let's play some of this because... So what are your names? I will write to you. I'm sorry. sound is this man barking None of them speak. You guys grew up here in Odd, West Virginia. How many years have you lived here? I don't know.

I'm not right. You're, uh... You guys, I mean, did you go to school? You did? Some of your brothers and sisters probably didn't go to school? How much schooling did they get? These are all brothers and sisters. They didn't go to school at all. But they graduated.

You graduated from what? We were from high school. You went to high school, Timmy? Yeah, he went to high school. Timmy graduated high school. Doesn't speak a word. He's actually Lorraine's daughter son son

come on out and that's a man barking for people just listening to this so they live with a bunch of dogs and he's adopted their way of communicating. I don't know about that, but he does sound like a dog when he speaks.

Here he is right here. So some of it's a dog, some of it is him. They sound very similar. Yeah, that's a dog some of it is him they sound very similar yeah that's a dog barking and that's him now what is the story of this family so that's it's ray on the left timmy in the center this lorraine's son not daughter uh and that's Freddie on the right. Freddie has passed away recently. So let me tell the story about how we met. So we pull up, and these people are just staring at us. And it's something that, like, it's the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. I will never, I'm certain I will never see anything crazier than this.

And, you know, we pull the cars over me and the cop get out and the cop comes up to me and says I told you, should have brought a video camera I'm like yeah, you're right so I walk over to the house to ask them if I could photograph them and she

I think one of the sisters just points to the trailer home across the road. So I go to the trailer home, and there's a man sitting on the couch with two women. And I poked my head in. The door was open, so I poked my head in, and I said, My name's Mark. I'm a photographer from California. I just started giving my spiel, and he interrupts me. He says, Sorry, sir. We had a death in the family. We're mourning. We're not interested at this time. And I'm just like, fuck, came all the way out here. And I gotta, I gotta be respectful. Somebody died.

So I just like, okay, I'll check in with you later. And I left. I go back to the cop and Axel and I'm talking to him. Like, fuck, we came at the wrong time. But then I started thinking. You know, I'm fast on my feet thinking. I'm shooting 8x10 film and 8x10 Polaroids. So you get an instant Polaroid.

So I have the ability to take pictures of the family. And I thought maybe that might be nice to give them 8x10 prints, these instant Polaroids of their family. And they can include that in the casket of, I think it was their sister-in-law who passed away. And you could put the prints in the casket, take the family with her, some symbolic gesture like that. So I asked Kenneth, who's one of the brothers who speaks, if I could take his photo. And he's always been friendly. And he said, yeah, sure, no problem. So we set up on the side of the house. And I got my backdrop and the light and the camera. So we set up on the side of the house, and I got my backdrop and the light and the camera.

It's a bit of a production. Clearly something unusual is going on here, and some pickup truck comes running down the road, sees what's going on, slams on his brake, and this dude gets out of the car angry as fuck. It looks like he wants to kill me. He's marching over to me. I'm like, oh, God, this is not going to be pretty. And I'm like, he goes, what the fuck are you doing? And I'm like, let me explain what I'm doing. I grab my book, and I show him the samples of other portraits I've done,

and they're all respectful. They're beautiful portraits. And I explained that there was a death in the family, and I'm going to take photos of the family, and they're going to include it in the casket. I'm also going to pay these people for letting me take their photos. And I calmed him down, and eventually he let me be. And I took the photo. Who was that gentleman? He was just one of the neighbors, I think. He was protecting those people? He was protecting,

yeah. Because a lot of people in that area know about them and like to drive by and throw eggs and make fun of them and stuff like that. So he thought I was doing something like that. So I got him off my back and I'm taking a photo of Kenneth. I think I took a photo of Lorraine and her sister Barbara, and Lorraine's holding a nephew or something. So I had a couple prints already, and I go over to Larry, who was one of the other brothers who was in that trailer, and I showed him the prints, and I said, you know, I have an idea.

What if I took photos of the family and I gave it to you guys? You could include it in the casket with your sister-in-law. Would you like me to do that? He goes, well, that's fine by me. If they want to do it, it's up to them. So that gave me the green light to go ahead and do this. And I went back, and I tried to get that photo that you just saw of Ray on the left, Timmy in the center, and then Freddie on the right.

Timmy and Freddie were cool. They'll stand there for as long as I want. Freddie was like Ray is now. But Ray, this is 2004, so it's, what, 16 years ago? 18 years ago. Ray was so uncontrollable. So I have Freddie and Timmy standing there, and I'd go find Ray, and I'd ask him, Ray, could I ask you to come over here,

and I'll take your photo with your brothers. And he would come over, and he would stand right next to my camera, like right next to it, two inches away from the lens. And I'm like, no, no, no, I need you to stand with your brothers. And as soon as I corrected him, he would just flip out and go screaming, running off. Pants would fall around his ankles, no belt. And he's wearing jeans that are too big.

So his pants fall around his ankles. He runs off and goes to kick a metal garbage can. Screaming. And this would happen over and over and over. I spent like an hour, probably an hour and a half trying to get him to stand for a portrait. Eventually, I tried this over and over again. Eventually, he got it to happen. And we pack up and we leave. And I gave them the prints and I gave them some money as well. And we're driving away. And Axel, before he got on the highway again, I said,

dude, you just got to pull over the car. I just need to soak in what just happened. That was the craziest shit I've ever seen. I've never seen human beings like that. That's like being on another planet. That was the craziest thing ever. And over the years, I kind of maintained a relationship. So those photos came in that were put out in my first book, Created Equal, which I mentioned earlier.

So years go by. I popped there again and visited them once or twice over the years when I was doing some other projects for advertising or something in the area. So I kind of stayed in touch with them a little bit. But then when I started doing Soft White Underbelly, I love Appalachia. I love going there for content. And I find the people just so beautiful and interesting. It's a shame that there's drugs there. I went there to avoid the drugs, to get away from it, but the drug problem there is worse than L.A. But there's other people who have not touched drugs,

and they're my favorites. Just the backwoods hillbillies are my favorite. They're so beautiful. So we're back in West Virginia. I'm like, hey, we're close to the Whitakers. Let's go drive by. So we drive by their house. And I'm not thinking of doing an interview with them.

You can't because I have these rules that I set for my project for Soft White Underbelly where I kind of do it in a studio. I try to. And it's an interview where I'm asking questions. And these people can barely answer anything. They just bark or they stare at you or whatever. So I didn't see this as being for my channel. I just was going to say hi to them. And we pull up and I'm like, you know, life is different now.

I have a video camera in my pocket. Let me just shoot a video of this as I'm saying hi to them. And I'll show it to my friends back home who have been here before. I've seen them about, you know, I've heard about them before. So I'm shooting a video as I'm talking to them. And as I'm shooting, I'm realizing, this is kind of interesting. I wonder if I stretch this out, maybe it could be a video somehow. And I could use the portrait from Create Equal, because I always include a portrait in all my videos. If it doesn't have a portrait, I don't use it. So, you know, I kind of

think I could use it, but then, but then I, I just proceeded. I made it as long as I could. I asked them the same question over again. They couldn't answer them because they don't really communicate so well, but that video ended up, I ended up editing it and putting it together and I put it on my channel and now it's got 33 million views. 33 million. It's crazy. What is the story with that family? The parents were double, I think their parents were double first cousins. But in addition to being double first cousins. What is double first cousins? I don't even know. But in addition to that, their fathers on both the mother and the father side were twins, identical twins. So it's like the same person birthed the mom and dad, even though they were different people, but they're identical twins.

And then the parents were cousins on top of it. Yeah. And then who knows what other environmental issues there are. What is a double cousin? Double cousins, first cousins, but twice. They share both sets of grandparents. It can happen both parents of one double first cousin are also the siblings of parents of another double first cousin. This is like a puzzle for a test. I don't explain it. I don't understand. It can happen when two siblings meet and have offsprings for two other siblings.

I don't understand it. I don't understand it. But there's a guy who did all the genetic mapping of this, and he just showed me. He posted a video on YouTube. Jesus. So he explains the whole genealogy of this. So that is,

uh, this family, first double cousins share all four grandparents. Okay. So this family was deeply inbred. Yeah. And, and, and, and as poor as, as can be poorer than poor. I mean, the conditions under which they live are like. The house is so filthy. How do they get any money? I'm sure they get some support from the state or something. But when I did that video, I just felt like the right thing to do is to help them financially.

Because even though YouTube demonetized that video, eventually I fought YouTube on it and they eventually monetized it. I don't know why they would demonetize it because there was no swearing, no nothing. It's just a poor family, but that's YouTube. But eventually I'm making money on that video, so I just figured I'll share it with them. And then I got so many people requesting, oh my, how do I help this family? So I put up a GoFundMe that's just for them, and people donate to it, and I give them money.

I've given them lots of money now. You can see in the more recent, there's I think four videos with that family. Their living conditions have improved quite a bit. So is the entire family inbred? The woman who's talking, is she just like a lesser? They're all brothers and sisters, except for Timmy, who is Lorraine's...

Family tree someone put together. Yeah, yeah. Did you put this together? No, I did not. This video is four days old. Yeah, yeah. This is the one I told you about. So the father of John Emery Whitaker and Gracie Whitaker are identical twins.

There you go. Maybe this twin's born March 1st, 1882. Yeah, so Henry Wade Whitaker and John Whitaker are identical twins. There you go. Maybe this twins born March 1st, 1882. Yeah, so Henry Wade Whitaker and John Whitaker. So the children of identical twins then had sex. Who are also cousins. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. So I posted that video, and they've become so popular.

People want more videos from them all the time, but I don't want to just turn them into a circus act. But now their living conditions have improved. Yeah, because of my whatever, because of meeting me, I'm not saying I did any great thing. All I'm saying is I've helped them out. But I'm not going to milk this and turn it into a regular thing. them out. Is that... But I'm not going to milk this and turn it into a regular thing.

People want to see them weekly. I'm not going to do that. Is that the most bizarre of all the people that you've encountered? Oh, no. I mean, yeah, probably the most,

but, man, I've heard so many stories. So many women that got pregnant by their dads at 10 years old. So many women that have been through

some of the most horrific. Men, too. I mean, I could say some things here, but this video would get demonetized. Well, we're on Spotify. That's not going to happen. Okay, so Latoya, who's this black girl. She's on Skid Row to this day.

I still see her. I help her out when I see her sometimes she was getting fucked in the ass by her dad and tore the area

between the vagina and the asshole she said like 27 stitches to fix that. I mean, how that happens and the dad doesn't get – somebody doesn't get investigated, I don't know. But that was a different time maybe. Or somebody's just afraid to – who's going to make that call?

Who's going to do something? So do you – when you – this new project, are you going to do this independently of Soft White Underbelly? No, no, no. It's not a new project. It would just be a slightly different direction. Because I can't – how many drug addict stories do we need? Right, of course. I mean I'll do them once in a while still because a lot of my audience likes that.

But it's interesting because I'll put up gang member videos and some of the audience is like, oh, I hate these gang members. They're too violent. But there's similar lessons. But there's similar lessons. I watched one of the gang member videos today, and it's, you know, he was just talking about how no one ever encouraged him in any way when he was growing up. He was never worth shit,

and the only sort of value that he found ever was being a part of the gang. Yeah, that's the story. That's what happens to these guys. And then, you know, I put the Appalachian videos up, and some people think they're boring, and other people love them, and they want more. So I do a mixed bag of all kinds of stuff.

Eventually, I'd like to go to every state and just do interesting stories from all over. And if someone has, and they're listening to this, and they have an interesting story, they should contact you on softwhiteunderbelly.com? No. There's a website that's in the about, in the header of the YouTube channel.

There's an about section up at the top of the screen, I think, or near the top with my email address, which is soft underscore white underscore underbelly at yahoo.com. There you go. Jamie's good. And so good luck sorting through all those. No kidding. Yeah.

After this. After this, yeah. Yeah. But listen, what you've done is very fascinating and very disturbing, but I think ultimately educational. And if anything, I think it will bring a sense of understanding of what these people have been through that, you know, you can't just say, hey, you're lazy, go get a job. There's a lot going on, and it's horrible. And it's showing the flaws in this culture.

It's showing the massive problems that we have in raising human beings in these gigantic cities. It's hard to believe this is the greatest country in the world. Yeah. With these stories. Right. How could that be the greatest country in the world? Yeah, how could it be? But it is.

That's what's even more fucked, right? Well, thank you. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for doing what you do. It's been very, very disturbing, but ultimately very educational. You do a great job, too.

Thank you very much. Appreciate you. Bye, everybody.