The Joe Rogan Experience - #2026 - Peter Berg

Episode Date: August 29, 2023

Peter Berg is a writer, director, and producer known for "Friday Night Lights," "Lone Survivor," "Deepwater Horizon," and "Patriots Day." His newest project is the Netflix exclusive limited series "Painkiller."https://film44.comwww.netflix.com/title/81095069

The Joe Rogan Experience. Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. What's happening? Good to see you. Good to see you, my friend. Your show is fantastic. It's really good, man. Thank you. Pain Killer on Netflix. Can't recommend it enough. I'm only two episodes deep. I started the third today.

It's so fucking good, dude. And it's so just it's so disturbing because it's true. It's an accurate account of how this all happened. It makes you so uncomfortable to think that there's people in the world that would do what the Sackler family did. Do you know anyone who's gone down from opioids? Quite a few. Yeah, same here. When they first came to me and asked me if I was interested, my buddy Eric Newman, who put the whole thing together, said, do you want to do something about the Sacklers? Do you know who the Sacklers are? And I did. I knew they were the family behind OxyContin.

And he said, are you interested? And I started thinking and I started counting the people I know who've died or whose kids have died because of OxyContin and opioids. And I quickly got off of both fingers. got off of both fingers you know and then i i started thinking about um some of my heroes my art my artistic heroes um chris cornell tom petty and like one of my big heroes was prince i was a huge huge prince fan i went to school in minneapolis when he was coming up i was in extra and purple rain back in the day you know first avenue in Avenue in Minneapolis. And, you know, those three guys, when Prince died, you know, Prince was, he was such a, he was legendary for his work ethic and his lifestyle, no alcohol, no swearing, and just incredible work ethic. And the fact that

OxyContin got him. And that really kind of fucked with me. So when they came to me and started talking to me about doing something about the Sacklers, I was like, yeah, I'm all in. And the more I dug into it, the more experts and writers who have been covering this epidemic for so long, the more I learned. I'm not necessarily the biggest conspiracy guy of all time. I do. If the proof's there, I'm down. But the more I learned about the Sacklers and how they maneuvered what is essentially just heroin in like a little M&M pill, you know, how they were so artful and so good at manipulating the system. I was shocked and I was all in on Painkiller. Well, I'm glad you were all in because people need to know this story.

And a lot of people aren't going to watch a documentary and, you know, they're not going to read about it. This is a very entertaining show that shows it accurately how this went down. And, you know, there's a moment, and I don't want to give too much away, but there's this one moment where this ethical doctor confronts this sales girl. And that's a very, very, very powerful moment. Yeah. Because the ethical doctor, who knows everything about opiates,

is essentially explaining to this very young girl, just a beautiful sales girl, that you're selling heroin. This is heroin. It's indistinguishable to the body. It's heroin. It's just you're calling it a different thing. And this idea that it's only 1% of the people have problems with it is, those numbers are all lies.

They're always lies. They lie about how many people died. They lie about how many people died. They lie about how many people get addicted. It's all a lie. And if they can keep lying and not face any repercussions, they'll keep lying because they almost have an obligation to their shareholders to do that. Yeah. And in this case, they didn't even have shareholders. It was a private company. Richard Sackler and his uncles were making all the money. They completely lied.

I mean, they were doctors and they knew how powerful the opioid dosage was. And what else is crazy is they knew that if they just kept, they would make so much more money by what they call titrating up, right? So we put you on 10 milligrams of OxyContin because you blew out your back in the gym and it works for a bit. And then when it doesn't, we're like, oh, well, we just got to kick you up. So let's put you on 20.

And then let's put you on 40. And they got up to 85 milligram Oxycontins. They called them Oxycoffins. That was the word on the street. And these reps, these cute little reps, these pretty little college graduates who were just looking to make some money, were paid bonuses based on the amount of milligrams in the pill. So I'm trying to convince you, if I'm a rep and you're a doctor, just to kick it up, Doc, prescribe 20 or 40 or 85 milligrams and everybody will make some more money.

And that was the game that the Sacklers were playing. And I've said, I'm down with capitalism. No problem. Make money. Do it. And if you just look at the Sacklers from a capitalistic perspective and you apply rules of capitalism and you're on their grade, they get an A+. They were fucking good at making money. You put like that much morality into the equation and these are some

evil human beings. It's unquestionably evil. And what's even more evil is they got away with it. They paid off. They had to give away a certain amount of money. I think it's $6 billion. See if we can find the settlement. A little bit around $6 billion. And now they can't be prosecuted. So they essentially bought their way out of going to jail for directly being responsible for the deaths of how many people? Hundreds of thousands? So in the most bizarre coincidence I've ever experienced in my years of being in the business, the day painkiller came out, the Supreme Court paused that decision. Have you heard this?

No. It's a fascinating story. You should read about this. The day we came out was about 12 days ago now. The Supreme Court said, hold up. You cannot cut a deal. Wow. Yeah, there it is.

So credit court blocks Purdue Pharma's $6 billion Sackler opioid settlement. The justices will examine if bankruptcy court can force claimants to sign away their legal rights in a settlement. So let me break it down quick because this is actually fascinating for anyone who's paying attention. The deal that they cut, Purdue cut, was $6 billion. We're going to pay $6 billion to all the victims of OxyContin, but we're going to do that over the next two decades. We're going to parcel it out. And the Sacklers have maybe 15 bill in the bank, give or take. So they're just counting on interest rates to pay that $6 billion. And the deal they had cut said, we'll pay you the

$6, but there's no more. And you can never come after any more of our money. And you can never come after us for any criminal charges. So they were basically buying their way to safety for $6 billion. And that deal was taken. The Supreme Court just said, hold up, not so fast. We're not going to accept that deal. You may have to pay more and we may go after you. So now the potential for them to face true bankruptcy and maybe more is on the table. How accurate do we know? I know this is a docudrama, right? Is that how you would describe it?

Sure. Or based on real life events yes some of the things that he that sackler said in both the older sackler and the younger sackler richard and what was his dad's name um arthur arthur his uncle yeah his uncle sorry both of those the the statements they're they're horrific. Do we know they definitely said that? Well, so, yes, there's so many horrific things they said. One of the things we know that they did said, which was like, one of the original strategies that Purdue Pharma had that they were advised to adopt by, you know, their lawyers and their advisors and their marketing guys,

when they realized that people were dying, the kids were crushing up OxyContin and snorting it and getting addicted and overdosed. And when they realized it was being misused this way, their strategy was, quote, hammer the abusers, hammer the abusers. So your Joe, your 19-year-old daughter has just dropped out of an OxyContin overdose. The response of Purdue basically is, well, your daughter was a drug addict. Oh, God. Your daughter was a drug addict. I'm so sorry for your loss, but your daughter was a drug addict. Don't blame us.

Hammer the abusers. And that was literally said out loud or written down? That was the strategy to blame abuse on addicts and to say anyone who has a problem with OxyContin, it's not our fault. They're just drug addicts. It's not our fault. Yeah, we gave them heroin, but they're not. Hammer on the abusers. Mass Attorney General alleges Purdue Pharma tried to shift Blaine for opioid addiction. Yeah.

So think about that. Think about you being the parent. And if you see the show, we open each episode with a parent. You know, we were told right, right when I got ready to lock the show, I got – I had to get on a Zoom with all the legal from Netflix and others because the Sacklers are really good at lawyers. Giuliani was one of their main attorneys. Mary Jo White, I don't know if you know who she is. She's a very powerful attorney and others. So there's a lot of fear about being sued. I have my talking

points here about what I'm not supposed to say. So again, everything I'm saying is more or less my theory and things that have been backed up by books like Painkiller by the very talented Barry Meyer, who wrote Investigative Reporter for The Times, who wrote it. But we were told by legal that we had to put disclaimers in front of each episode. You know, what you're about to see is based on fact, but some of the facts have been changed. And, you know, it's not all true. We've changed some of the facts. And that didn't really sit right with me because, yes, we have interpreted things and changed some things. But the reality is the Sacklers did what

they did. And I didn't I thought like just putting a standard disclaimer would be kind of letting them off a bit. And I was thinking about it. I'm like, well, what if we had a 50 year old woman sitting, we opened the show, 50 year old woman staring at the camera and she reads the disclaimer exactly as legal says. You know, what you see is based on fact, but some of it has been fictionalized. And then she stops and she says, but what hasn't been fictionalized is that my 22-year-old son, Tommy, and she holds up a picture, died of an OxyContin overdose. And that was, you know, the kind of thing that was, I think, very important to me and to all the makers of the show. That if we were going to veer from the truth and we were going to potentially occur the wrath of the Purdue legal, we did it in a way that never let them off the hook. Yeah, I like that.

It's so weird how many people are on it. I had a conversation with a friend of mine about his mom. His mom's 90, and she's had health issues. But could you imagine when we were kids if you told me that your friend's mom was on heroin? And that we had to get her more heroin and the doctor's not. There's something wrong with her prescription. So what had happened was the pharmacist, the doctor had screwed up and prescribed more pills verbally then he wrote it down on paper like he told her you have to take two a day you know and this is supposed to be good for you know whatever it is

30 60 days but he wrote the wrong number he instead of like 180 he wrote 90 or something I don't remember what the mistake was. He over-prescribed by accident. He under-prescribed by accident. Oh, under, okay. And so they were thinking someone was stealing her pills. Oh. So there was this like, she doesn't have enough.

Like it gets to the end of the month and she's out of pills and they're calling the doctor. And the doctor's like, what's going on? They're like, I don't know what's happening. Is someone stealing her pills? So there's this fear in the house that someone's stealing the pills. Yeah. So they figured out that's not what the case was the case was there was just a mistake the doctor inadvertently prescribed more in terms of take three a day every day or two a day every day but he just didn't give her enough pills to

do that but it's but you're imagine your 90 year old mom is jonesin because that's what's going on I mean imagine you imagine you're like, I got a grandma heroin. Hey, bro, you want to come with me? Do you have your gun? We're going to go get grandma heroin. Like, are you fucking crazy? Imagine that thought. No one would think that when we were kids, no one would think that was normal.

I got to get my grandma heroin. She's uncomfortable. Well, yeah. Well, yeah. And, you know, one of one of the things that I think like episode three or four, the patriarch of the Sackler family, Arthur Sackler, who started got the whole ball rolling. And he, you know, back in the day, they actually did prescribe heroin. We found all these great old ads for heroin and cough syrup, cocaine for a fever. Well, codeine used to be in cough syrup, right? Yeah. Used to be able to get when I was a kid.

You still can get it. Yeah. But there were literally ads that said heroin for a cough. And the whole history of how medicine started being marketed. Heroin. Look at that. Bare pharmaceutical products. The people who brought you aspirin.

And if you look up some of the old – see if you can find the – Look at how they describe it. The cheapest specific for the relief of coughs. Right. So this was real. This was real shit. And this is what, you know, doctors like Arthur Sackler,

who was Richard Sackler's uncle and is, you know, arguably the godfather of Oxycontin and opioids. They were sending this stuff out. Your child's having trouble sleeping? Put a little liquid morphine on a blanket and let him suck on it.

Jeez. This was happening. Like, our grandparents were around for this. Oh, my God. Cocaine tooth drops. You see that? Look at that. That's insane.

But that's real. Oh, my God. Instantaneous cure. You don't give a fuck about your teeth. No, you feel good. You're trying to start a business. Or you're 12 and you're just being annoying because your tooth hurts so your parents just give you a bunch of blow. Yeah, so crazy.

Stay fit and slim by taking amphetamine. Jesus Christ. It's so crazy how naive people were back then. But still today, right? Yes, still today. So the catchphrase for OxyContin that Richard Sackler came up with was OxyContin, the one to start with, the one to stay with. And those were the ads. And that's what the cute little 23-year-old graduates from Ohio State or Duke or wherever they were from, these cute girls would come into your office.

You're a doctor in some Midwestern town. doctor in some Midwestern town. And in comes this beautiful girl with a brochure that says OxyContin, the one to start with, the one to stay with. And you've never heard of it. So you just start, you know, and here's the thing about OxyContin. Have you ever taken an OxyContin? No. I took it once, recreationally.

Did you do it before you started doing this? Yes. I did about, I don't know, eight years ago. A friend of mine had one, and she's like, you got to try this. Jesus Christ. I'm like, okay. Try anything once, right? Try it.

Took it. It was fantastic. Oh, my God. It was like being dropped in a vat of warm honey. That's how I best describe it. And I'm like, holy shit, get this away from me. Right? Like, it works.

Heroin works. We've talked to people who have done heroin, and they describe the feeling, the actual moment of the high. Okay. Yes. It's a powerful experience. If you've got horrific pain and you take an Oxycontin or a fentanyl, it's probably going to make that pain go away and you're going to feel really good for a little while, right? For a little while and then you're not going to feel so good. And then you're going to want it again. And you're going to want it again and again.

And then your body becomes addicted to it. And then it's not fun. And I took it and recognized, okay, yeah, there's a lot of power in this little pill. No thank you. And I'm fortunate. I don't have an addictive gene. But I could easily see how. And look, the Sacklers knew this.

They all knew how powerful that product was. And they knew that if I put it in you, you're going to feel, as they say, as Richard Sackler says, life is about running away from pain towards pleasure. If you feel pain, that's right. The human condition is we want to stay away from pain towards pleasure. If you feel pain, that's right. The human condition is we want to stay away from pain. Yeah. Anything to feel no pain and to feel good. And so he knew he had this miracle because any pain, whether it's physical, emotional, you know, psychic pain that you're feeling, this little pill is going to turn that off. And you're going to feel like you've been dropped into a vat of warm honey for a little while.

And then that honey starts to turn into battery acid and it starts to burn. I think it's funny that people make fun of people who believe in demons. Because what would a demon do? If you were a demonic entity and you wanted to steal lives and souls, would you just go around just pulling people out of their house with a pitchfork

and being obvious about it? Or would you do it through a really evil, sociopathic person who decides that they're just gonna manipulate this system and ruin countless lives i mean how many people have been affected by this i don't know what the numbers are do you millions mean. How many people have died from it? Half from opioids, 600,000. But that doesn't. It's like war numbers. Of course. It is a war.

It is. You can look at opioids as an absolute war. Much, much higher body count than Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Iraq, you know, added up. Although I don't know what the full Ukraine body count numbers are. When we were kids, it was very rare that someone died of a heroin overdose, and there was always a lost soul. It was always some wild musician or some crazy poet. Someone is like, God, he died of heroin?

That's so crazy, right? It was like heroin was reserved for the people that were just not coming back. You know, every now and then someone would do cocaine or something like that. And if you know, you had a wild friend, he didn't knew how to get mushrooms. But heroin, nobody was like, let's go try heroin. Like, but now when you look at those numbers from the introduction of Oxycontin into now. How many people have died from that compound? It's fucking insane. Yeah, it is. It is really dark. And then, you know, something else we talk about in the show is, yes, the deaths are very high. But the amount of families that have been wrecked and destroyed and children who've lost parents and had to grow up with that kind of trauma. I have friends whose children have gotten hooked

and tangled up in opioids. And as a father, one of my biggest, biggest fears was, God forbid, my child should ever experience addiction, because I've seen what that does to a parent. To have to ride that chaotic roller coaster of childhood drug addiction and try everything you can to keep your kids safe and find that this pill has taken a hold of their soul, like you say, like a demon. And, you know, sometimes death is almost preferred. Yeah. That's what's so fucked up. That's what's so fucked up. That, you know. Death brings peace. Yeah. And that there's. That's so terrible to even think. It's true, though, that the chaos of dealing with someone, and it's not

just, look, it's not just Oxycontin, any addiction, right? I have many friends who've struggled with alcoholism and other addictions. Just trying to love somebody who's going through that kind of beast ride is just horrific. And to think that people like the Sacklers were in the business of monetizing such hurt and pain, that's dark. It's very, very dark. And kind of ironically, because of the war on drugs, because so many drugs are illegal, now people are dying from fentanyl from things that are not supposed to have opioids in them. Yeah. Which is even more insane because now people have this, I don't want to say a taste for it, but it's so common.

Opioids are so common in this country recreationally now because of OxyContin. And then you've got people try to buy Street xanax and it has fentanyl in it or street cocaine has found we lost a bunch of comics in la recently oh i heard that yeah in venice right yeah i don't know where it was i didn't know they were like having a little house party and doing some coke recreationally and it was fentanyl in it and they all died that's fucking one person survived but the whole thing is fucking insane. Right. It's so insane that it's so common.

It's so common to hear about someone overdosing from fentanyl. Yeah. You read about it in the news. It's in the news all the time. Athletes, singers, you know, someone fucks up and takes the wrong dose, and they're dead. And I believe what happened with Tom Petty was he got off stage and I think he had some sort of an injury and he got a pill from one of the guys.

It was like a sound guy. And it had fentanyl in it. And it had fentanyl in it. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, people are so desperate. They'll take, they'll take some stuff that's not even from the pharmacy. They just need it.

And that a family was able to make so much money how much money did they make in total i mean you who you if you if you google their value it's between 10 and 20 billion reported nobody knows exactly how much they're a really secretive family one of the most internet scrubbed families and richardackler in particular people I've ever encountered you just can get very little information on them but you know and and and the other I think big part of the story that that surprised me was the FDA right and the FDA's role in in opioid approvals and in the case of OxyContin, we think about like the FDA

as this big giant bureaucratic organization. And you think we were talking about stem cells a little bit earlier, that if you want to get an approval for a drug, well, okay, you gotta send it to the FDA and it's gonna be reviewed by this massive board of scientists and experts, and they're gonna make a determination after careful analysis, right? That's not how it works.

And in the case of OxyContin, the whole approval process came down to this one guy, this guy named Curtis Wright. And Curtis Wright, when Purdue Pharma needed the FDA to approve, they'd spent 30 million bucks developing this drug. The whole business of drug developing is fascinating. But they were all in and they needed this drug to keep the company alive. They needed the FDA to approve it. And this guy was like, I can't approve this. This is heroin in a pill. No.

And they kept trying to get him to approve it. And they kept trying to get, and they started trying to like pump his ego up. They started writing articles with them. They started trying to, you know, schmooze him and charm him. He wouldn't approve it. Finally, and no one knows the facts. They took him to a hotel on the East coast, Purdue Pharma took Curtis Wright of the FDA, spent a couple of days in this hotel room. They came out of the hotel room with an approval, with the language OxyContin quote, is believed to be non-addictive, is believed. If you think about that language, it had never been used in an approval process before ever, made no sense, is believed, not is not,

but is believed to not be addictive. A year later, he leaves the FDA, where he's making probably 50 grand a year. Where does he go work? Purdue Pharma. For 400 plus thousand dollars a year. They bought the approval. But the two days in the hotel what the fuck did

they do nobody knows who agrees to stay in a hotel for two days so i i wrote a scene in in painkiller we we were putting it together uh where we imagined what happened in that hotel. And I had like everything from monkeys to like kickboxing, Thai kickboxing, massage parlors, to like everything. And like I wanted to film the most debaucherous two day, like anything your mind could think of. Like the craziest of the crazy, right? Water sports. All of it, All of it.

All of it. Like jet water sports. Would they spray your house down with sandblasting? Yeah. Like just the crazy. And we wrote it like this just Faustian orgy of absolute decadence. And the lawyers called and they're like, are you fucking kidding me? We can't do this

so we just shut the door oh wow and we just i think it's episode three that that's it but he took a job i mean like like i was saying earlier i'm not big on you know conspiracies maybe maybe not i heard you were talking about you know about Kennedy being potentially killed by the CIA. I don't know. I don't know who killed him, but I do think that it wasn't just Lee Harvey Oswald. It couldn't have been. I think Lee Harvey Oswald was involved too. That's part of the problem with people's argument about this.

They're like, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. There's no evidence that he acted alone. There's a lot of evidence that he was involved. When I was in fifth grade, we had a social studies teacher who was absolutely like – before Oliver Stone in the film, this teacher was obsessed with the super bullet theory, right? Magic. The magic bullet theory that went through Connolly's shoulder, through his knee, bounced out of his knee, then hit Kennedy. No, hit Kennedy first. Okay, hit Kennedy first, and then it was Connolly, right?

Yeah. Connolly's shoulder, hand, knee. And wrist. Right. And we're just fifth grade kids trying to learn about George Washington or whatever. And she's like, do you understand the ballistics don't line up? And it's all she would talk about. So we'd come home and it's all we would talk about with our parents.

And our parents would call the school and be like, is this woman this teacher? Is she insane? Why are my kids only learning about the magic bullet? See, the thing is the ballistics are not the big issue. Because what people don't understand about ballistics is it's not a linear line between impact and exit. It hits things. You hit bones and they deviate. Right, right.

People shoot people and the bullet comes out the front. It's wild things, especially when you're 22. But when the problem with that bullet is, first of all, they found it on the gurney. Like, how fucking convenient. Second of all, I believe there's more fragments, metal fragments, that were in Connolly's wrist than are missing from this bullet. Right. And the bullet looks pristine. It looks like a bullet that you shot through water.

Anybody that shoots things with guns knows that when bullets hit bones, they distort. That's part of, unless it's a steel jacketed, you know, like armor piercing round, that's what it looked like. I mean, that's just bonkers. That was what it looked like after

it went through Kennedy and Connolly. It's bonkers. It's bonkers to believe that. The idea that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't involved, though, I don't buy that either. I think they set him up. I think for sure he knew what was going on. He seemed to have been some sort of an operative. He went back and forth to Russia.

But that conspiracy, it's like, I don't know. We're talking 1963. I don't, you know. But there's conspiracies today that are real. And this Sackler family is one of the best examples of one that was enormously successful and worked on multiple levels. And this story about getting this regulator to approve it by putting

him in a hotel for two weeks, how the fuck is that not illegal? Like, how is that not illegal? I mean, they, they handled themselves. He spent a year still working for the FDA before he came and worked for, um, Purdue. And, um, it's pretty intense. I just saw a video that I don't know whether it was TMZ or somebody found the guy, Curtis Wright, up in, I think he's in New Hampshire, just like two days ago. And they like, they kind of went after him. And I was like, they're like, what do you say? What do you have to say about the show? What do you think? And he got in his car and wouldn't talk. And then they just interviewed the local police chief for this town in New Hampshire who said, well, we had no idea that this guy's living in our town. I want to take him on a tour of our morgue and our cemeteries and show him.

I think you'll find Curtis Wright if you look him up. That is the definition of living in hell. Yeah, and that's, you know, I think that people have asked, you know, like what is justice? What does justice even look like in a situation like this, right?

Like, if you're... That's the guy? And the red, that, yeah, so that's Noah who plays him, and that was just... That's the actual guy. That's the actual gentleman who approved it. That's the guy who was, went and worked for... So he just moved to a remote

town. Yeah, moved to a remote town, and after our show came out, I think it was. Is that a gun on his hip? I don't think so. What is that? It's like a flashlight. He's got like a rig. He's got this phone in the front.

Yeah, he's got a whole vibe going on. And a passport filled with trips to Thailand probably. Thailand, probably. Yeah. Right? But, you know, like, that's the face of a big part of the issue. That, you know, this guy was a bureaucrat working for the FDA, living his life in, you know, the East Coast. Someone came along and said, hey, you want to get out of here? You're making 50 grand.

Just say that you believe this to be less addictive. That'll get us the approval. And you're good. We're going to make you good. And here we are. And that revolving door still exists today. People go from the FDA right into pharmaceutical companies today. For sure.

And it's so weird that that's legal. And another big part of the game are these medical journals, right? Like there's something called the New England Journal of Medicine. And like a big thing is for a doctor in some of these, and these journals are owned by the pharmaceutical companies, right? So think about it. You own Purdue Pharma. You either buy or control medical journals that write favorable articles about your products, about your drugs. So in the case of OxyContin, there was a small, like almost a letter to the editor written about OxyContin being less than 1% addictive. In a medical journal, which sounds like official and like, okay, well, damn, Joe is in a medical journal.

Let's go. But these are controlled by drug companies, and they're not legit. It's fake news. It's real fake news, and it's all part of the ecosystem of selling drugs. And these are the big drug dealers. Like we talk about Chappell or Pablo Escobar, you know, Eric Newman, my buddy who was the exact producer on this, he produced Narcos and went deep on Pablo Escobar. And he's like, when he first said, you want to do this?

He's like, these are the real drug dealers. Like, these are the drug dealers putting up the real numbers. And they're the drug dealers who put their name on museums like the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim, the Louvre in Paris. These are like, these are the big time, hard-hitting drug dealers. They're real gangsters. Oh, they're fucking gangsters, man. It's such a gangster move to put your name everywhere too. Uh-huh.

Especially on like education institutions. Dude, have you ever been in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Temple of Dender? The giant glass. It's the biggest exhibit in the Met in New York City. And that was the Sackler Wing. And I would go in there when we were making the show. And it was this giant, it's on the north side of the Met. It's a massive art wing. And you go in there, it says the Sackler Wing. And you go in there and there's parents running around with their kids. The last time I saw a guy get on his hands and knees and propose.

And it's just this happy, joyful room built on Oxycontin. And two, three months ago, they took the name down. They finally took the name down. Finally? After all these years? Yeah. So they've taken – and this is the thing that like what Arthur Sackler cared more about than anything, which is like the same as Alfred Nobel, right? You know that Alfred Nobel made dynamite.

That's how he made his money. It's a fascinating story that Nobel was the inventor of dynamite. It's almost like an Oppenheimer situation. I didn't know that. And the story is that someone ran a false obituary. They thought he died and they called him a merchant of death.

The great merchant of death is gone. This guy, Nobel, who invented dynamite. And at that moment he realized, fuck, this is how I'm going to be known. This is going to be my legacy. The merchant of death. He took a huge chunk of his fortune and started the Nobel Peace Prize. So when you hear the name Nobel, you don't think about dynamite, right?

He invented dynamite, hand grenades and howitzer rounds and munitions. That was all Nobel. Now you're just like, oh, my God, Barack Obama just won. The Dalai Lama just won the Martin Luther King and won the, like, this guy made it off a dynamite. That's insane. Right? And so the Sacklers were like the same

thing. Wait a minute. We know what we're selling here. We know where our money's coming from. Look at that. Merchant of death to pioneer of Nobel Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize was a big bait and switch. So nobody thought about the fact that this dude, you know, go look at the body count of Vietnam. This is interesting.

He said many saw his invention, what Alfred thought would end all wars, just like Oppenheimer, as a highly lethal product. When Alfred's brother Ludwig died in 1888, a French newspaper accidentally published an obituary for Alfred that referred to him as the merchant of death. Wow. Right? Did you know that? I did not. That's a mind blower.

But it makes sense because that's how evil fucks are. They'll try to cover up what they're doing with humanitarian work. A hundred percent. And that's what the Sacklers did. Very like, okay, we're selling heroin and pills. Hold the word like 300.

We're up to 300,000 deaths and a lot of wrecked families. Let's buy some art. Let's put, let's, let's donate to multiple medical schools, get our names on medical schools all around the country. Let's throw our name up on the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, the Louvre in Paris. They were putting their names on anything they could.

There was a bridge in London at one of the Sacklers, the Sackler Bridge. Like, just anything to take your eye off the ball. And so to me, you know, whether they end up paying $6 billion or $16 billion, yeah, that's real. That's deserved money. But I think the bigger issue is the name, the evisceration of the name is in deep process right now. As it should be.

Yes. And I just wonder how they're going to get away without paying criminal penalties. I mean, not just criminal penalties, but like going to jail. It's hard to go to jail today if you've got a lot of money, Joe. That's insane. Yeah. I mean, it's a jet. if you've got a lot of money, Joe.

That's insane. Yeah. I mean, it's a jet. I don't, I can't imagine the Sacklers going to jail, but I think worse than jail is the fact that the name is now done. Yeah. And that hurts because this, this was a family that was all about the legacy. That's over.

This guy that approved it, what was his name again? Curtis Wright. They found. Imagine being that guy. Because you didn't even get rich. You know, you got kind of rich. You made a lot of money, but you didn't get like billionaire. I can just go hide on an island rich. You're in a small town in in New Hampshire and then they find you when the series comes out? Yeah, I don't, I never know someone's morality. I always have trouble understanding how different people process morality

and what it would mean for, because you gotta assume a guy like that after 25 years has figured out a way of justifying to himself what he's done, right? Like we all do that. Like we justify our behaviors. We don't engage in behavior like that. But we, whatever we do, we justify it. And I wonder how much it hurts.

You know, like we tried to contact Richard Sackler several times during the early—he used to live here in Austin, and we couldn't find him. He has a house here in Austin still. But how it feels. You know, there's never been a moment where there's been any kind of accountability where, you know, Richard Sackler comes out and says, OK, OK, look, I am really fucking sorry. Let's just start with that. I am so sorry that this has happened. I'm so sorry for the pain like and I can't undo it. But I want to first acknowledge that I'm sorry I made some really bad decisions I thought I thought I was helping people I wasn't I didn't there was never been and I think that's where the anger comes from so much of it do you think that that that's because

of legal advice I mean even if he was I don't think you could admit that you're sorry. The situation is horrendous as this because I think it opens up the floodgates for further scrutiny. I guess. I just, yes, you're probably right. But I guess I feel like you've already, you've lost. You've lost. You've lost so much. And you've lost so much money.

Your reputation is destroyed. And if you look at, there's like a 12 hour deposition of Sackler that we recreate some of in the show. And the guy is just a fucking ice brick. Like he offers nothing. There's no humanity there. And obviously his lawyers were advising him, yes. And he can't say a lot.

But you want to... You want to believe that everyone's human. Yeah, like you want to see some version of like, okay, can I understand how it happened? Do I think they set out to have all this death and destruction? I'm going to say no. I don't know, but I have to believe that they didn't intend for that.

Then the ball got rolling. Then the money started coming in. Then it all got completely out of control. And by the time they realized how bad it was, they couldn't apologize, obviously. And they were boxed in by legal advice. But somewhere you're looking for some indication of like, look, ma'am, I am so sorry your son died. Not, I'm sorry your son died, but your son was a drug addict. An instant deflection, right? That's just's rough that's rough shit it is rough it's

just again it's it's hard to understand the way certain people function their their morals like what what are their ethics and are they sociopaths because there's a lot of people that are genuine sociopaths they do not care if other people are hurt they don't do not care not care about people's feelings. They only care about themselves. There are people like that out there in the world and they're amongst us. And I don't know what the number is, but I think it's like 1% or something like that. Is it something like that? Or is that schizophrenics? I think sociopaths, it's probably even higher than that. Like, and some of it has got to be because how you were treated when you were young. Some of it has got to be nurture. Yeah.

But I wonder how much of his nature. I wonder how much of his your wires are crossed wrong. And you just don't give a fuck about other people. It's totally possible. I mean, you look at like Jeffrey Dahmer. His parents seem to be normal. They didn't seem to abuse him. He didn't have like some horrific childhood where he was you know tortured it's

like what makes a person like that i don't fucking know man but when you see it it's so confusing like that sackler guy in your show it's like when you're watching him say what he says like how does a person like this exist right right and you know like obviously Dahmer is a fairly extreme example of. But is it? Because he only killed like six or seven people. Right. I just mean that. But he really put his hands on those people. Right. So that the idea of a serial killer is such an extreme, real but extreme version of that. Right. But like how many times do you kind of come across someone who's who's maybe not killing people or engaged in a lethal career? But you're like, whoa, that dude doesn't seem reachable.

I don't know what's going on there. Like I'm trying to have some sort of human connection. But this dude is just like, you know, and I've met many people generally who organize their lives strictly around making money. Like money is the prize. Money is the art. And I kind of am like, hello? Yeah. It's a very weird non-human pursuit.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like I'm about making money and my morality and, you know, sense of humanity is just not very readily apparent. And I think that that's like on a spectrum, not that not necessarily that far removed from something that could turn into Jeffrey Dahmer. Yeah, it's not that far. I mean, do you ever like study Putin and try and figure out what's going on in that guy's head? I could only imagine. Like, I think it was Bush who said, you know, he had just come back from meeting Putin years ago,

and he said, you know, I looked into his eyes and I didn't see a soul. And I remember, like, I was younger when he said that, but it chilled me. Like, in Bush, look, this is Bush 2. And he's like, I looked into his eyes and I didn't see his soul. Pull that quote up

because that's crazy. I hope I said it right. Oh, the opposite. I looked a man in the eye, I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy, Bush said. I was able to get a sense of his soul. Yeah, well, it was either he got it or he didn't get it, right? I'm so glad we searched that. Yeah, I am too. Because I was confused. I could have swore it was the opposite. Well, okay, I was wrong about that one. But then he said he later,

but he said he regretted it because he was wrong. He thought he saw a soul, but he didn't. He said that later? Well, that's what he said, right? He said he regretted. Pull it back up. I think he said, I thought I saw Saul. In 95, I looked at Putin. Bush later regretted saying this. Yes.

How about that? Bush later regretted saying this. In 95, I met with Putin. So he thought he saw Saul, Joe, but he didn't. That's what he came to believe. What does he say later? Did he say? He just said he's regretted it, according to. But then I was not able to get a sense of his soul. I did not see the relentless ambition when

I looked into Putin, looked Putin in the eye 27 years ago. But then I was not able to get a sense of his soul. Okay. I think that's the line that stuck with But then I was not able to get a sense of his soul. I think that's the line that stuck with me. I was not able to get a sense of his soul. Well, he doesn't speak Russian either. That's got to be hard as fuck. Just talking to someone in two different languages is extremely difficult. Have you been to Moscow?

No, I have not. The architecture is insane. I loved it. I've been there twice. Russia is incredible. I loved it. I've been there twice. Russia is incredible. I loved it. And, like, one of the many things that, like, sucks about this, I think, is, like, Moscow is just out now for such a long time. For a long time. Yeah.

And I've gone there twice for film promotions. And the people were so nice. The food was fantastic. The architecture, I mean, walking through Red Square, I loved it. I loved the culture. And it's too bad. Yeah, it is too bad. I would hope, I hope one day to be able to go back there. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing how many great chess players, how many great martial artists, how many great authors. Russia's produced some incredible things, incredible works. And the architecture in Russia is so different than anywhere else.

The Moscow architecture is so beautiful and so unique, uniquely Russian. You know, it's really fantastic stuff. I mean, but it's like the political aspect of it's so terrifying man that were like this close to a nuclear war god damn it scares the fuck out of me yes and I always wonder if the same sort of decision-making apparatus that exists and pushing through Oxycontin also exists in pushing through wars also exists in pushing through OxyContin also exists in pushing through wars, also exists in pushing through just things that, like, morally,

we would all say these are terrible, terrible things. We should all agree on this. And to be able to convince large groups of people to engage in them because you're the leader. I mean, something that I've been looking at for a while now is trying to get into the weapons contracting business, meaning like the big ones, the McDonnell Douglas, the Raytheons, the Boeing, the companies that are making so much money.

I was in Pearl Harbor working on a film, companies that are making so much money. I was in Pearl Harbor working on a film and they had the nuclear submarines coming in and out of the harbor. And have you ever seen one, these Trident submarines? No. And they're amazing. Like, you know, it never ceases to amaze me

that like many of our greatest creative accomplishments are these weapon systems, right? Like, have you been on an aircraft carrier before? Yes. Or, you know, witnessed the awe and spectacle of those planes. Right? It's incredible. And we were filming on a carrier in Pearl Harbor, and the subs kept coming in and out. And they're these massive, sleek, they look like, you know, sharks.

And they're cruising slow, and they dock like sharks and they're cruising slow and they dock. Can I see one Jamie? And we had handlers from Pearl Harbor there and I'm like, could I tour one? And they went to the Admiral of the Base and the word came back, yes, you can tour one. So they took me to a nuclear submarine that was tied up at Pearl Harbor, and they took me on it. And I go in.

I've got these public affairs people and the captain of the sub, and they're showing me around the sub. And they're just awesome. And they're massive, and they're full of people. And it's just all like the most technical, high-tech shit you've ever seen in your life. And they're like, this is the navigation room. This is where ever seen in your life and they're like this is the navigation room this is where we control the sub and they're showing me the equipment i'm like how much does this equipment cost and they're like well we can't we can't really tell you but it's 50 100 between 50 and 100 million dollars for this area of the sub and then they take me past

the nuclear reactors where there's armed guys guarding the nuclear reactors because they're propelled by nukes And I'm like, well, how much does it we can't tell you right and then they get you into the the torpedo rooms where there's these massive torpedoes to dozens of them and you're like How much do these things cost? Oh, we can't tell you I can't tell you Then they take you to the fucking missile room where there's 10 missiles, okay? Missiles that have nuclear warheads that can go on them, right? Sir, how much do these cost? Well, we can't tell you that.

Then you start looking up the prices, right? And you figure for a nuclear missile with the warhead and the guidance system and all the propulsion, you've got to be looking at least 30 million. That's my guess. For one, what do you think a nuclear missile armed and loaded costs? I have no idea. I'm going to say 30 million minimum. Are you just guessing? I'm guessing, but I think I'm under guessing. Probably. And I've done some calculating. Oh, there was a question about this recently because the missiles that they shot at the Chinese air balloon, that balloon, the spy balloon, they missed one of them. And then there was a talk of how much that missed cost.

Cost, right. A miss cost a lot of money. And so, but I'm on this sub and I'm looking at what appears to be- That one was 400K. That one was 400K? The ones that are out of the plane? Maybe it's different. But that wasn't a nuke. That wasn't.

I'm talking about a nuclear missile fired from a submarine, right? So now I'm on this thing. I'm counting these missiles, 10 missiles, right, that I can see. So I'm trying to do the math. I'd say it's $500 million worth of missiles on one sub, right? I'm looking, I can see eight subs docked in Pearl Harbor, right? So now I'm like, there's 10 times eight, right? There's 80 missiles in my visual at 500 a missile. And these are just the subs I can see, right? So I'm thinking, well, wait a minute.

If one of these subs fires one missile, right, we're fucked. We're done. The world is probably over, right? One missile goes. We've got at least 80 of them that I can see. How many people are making money off of this game, right? Where's the money going that we have to keep putting, loading these submarines with nuclear missiles, one of which is going to get it done? That's not then including all the missiles that are in the silos, right?

All the missiles that are flying 24-7 in planes and bombs. Like, we are loaded up good, right? We got enough, yet we keep making more. And this is, you know, like Purdue Pharma, these companies, and now it's all turning into like AI-controlled drones, right, that are going to be like the new forefront of the weapon systems where all the money is going to go. But I was thinking like, what would happen if you took two of these subs and took them offline and built, I don't know, schools? What would happen? Would we threat, would our national security be threatened? I don't know. Would our country be better off? national security be threatened? I don't know. Would our country be better off? I don't know.

With all the money, all the money is going into the military. And that's, I support the military. You know, I've done multiple films about our troops. And I understand, I've been to Iraq with the SEAL platoon. I know, you know, I've had a front row seat to the reality of what these men and women are going through. This kind of spending, it seems to me to be a bit reckless. Well, at the very least, they're incentivized. They're incentivized to be in conflict. If there's that much money to be made, the same way Purdue Pharma was incentivized to pretend that it wasn't addictive, even though they knew it was, it's the same kind of thing.

Like there's decisions that get made specifically because of money. That's really scary for us because we want to think that if we have a leader, we trust someone to be a leader. We have this thought in our head that this is our chief, right? This is the best warrior. This is the wisest person that's lived the longest and the best to govern us. We would never want to believe that someone that he appoints and that's in that chain involved in running all these people is making decisions that will absolutely

cost lives and souls. People will be destroyed, but they're making these decisions because of money. Because of money. And it's like the same thing with some of these drugs is the same thing with some of the big weapon systems. You know, some of like, if you're the president, right, if you're the next president of the U.S. and you decide that you want to reduce spending in the military. So say there's a jet program, F-35, or some massive jet program that's costing a shitload of money and you want to try and slow it down. Well, what they do is they build different parts of the aircraft in different states. So there might be 30 states that are all contributing to making one weapon system. So if you try and dismantle it, you've got the

government, the representatives from 30 different states saying you can't do it. We've got a factory that's making the guidance system. We've got a factory that's arming the ordnance on the missiles. We're doing the landing gear. And the weapons are now part of the economy, and they can't be divorced from it. And the spending just goes on. Isn't there an argument on the other side, though, that we can't allow another country to achieve military superiority over us. And if we stop innovation and stop the flow of money into developing these new jets, that we would run the risk of that happening. For sure. And that's what's going on with China right now, right? That we're in an arms race with China, a lot of AI technology involved, where like, we're now starting to

discuss letting AI fly and arm and release weapons on targets that are AI assessed and AI authorized kills, because China's doing the same thing. And we don't want to be out-teched by China. And so we're in a never-ending arms race to have the best technology. I get it. Okay, fine. Let's do it. It's just a lot of money. And I can't help but think, like, who's making money?

Okay, it says CBO estimates that plans for U.S. nuclear forces as described in the fiscal year 2023 budget and supporting documents would cost $756 billion over the 2023-2032 period. Okay, nine years. $122 billion more than CBO's 2021 estimate for the 2021 to 2030 period. Sorry, guys. We underestimated by $122 billion. This is our B61 nuke. That put on a lot of planes and stuff. Do you have a price tag on that one?

Yeah, I do. It's roughly $28 million. Wow, you're dead on. So this is what I'm saying. We have 3,000 of them. Jamie, how many do we have? Somewhere in the range of 3,000 to 4,000. So what's the total number just on that missile?

Can you do that multiplication? 30 times 3,000. Could you imagine the horror of how many missiles do we have? How many of those? There's something in the range of, I found something that said we had 3,700 nukes. Let's round it off to 3,500. Imagine 3,500 nuclear missiles launching through the air. The horrors of that.

One of those was the 83 Hiroshima bombs. Just two. Just one of them. It's over. Game over. One. 83 Hiroshima bombs. Yes. That that's like this is the issue like holy because yeah even that one blew up in the sky and these can go underground and make things worse

oh my god but those are just air delivered yes can you show me that sub that nuclear sub those are i mean there's a few i don't know exactly the one he saw i was trying to find a good picture from pearl harbor of a bunch of subs. It is pretty fucking amazing. They're amazing. To have a sub that runs on a nuclear reactor. They're beautiful achievements of engineering and, you know, skill and talent. And, like, to be on that thing was awe-inspiring.

But, my God, are they expensive. Yeah. Like, really expensive. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, can't get one that does something like that for cheap. But it's just, it is kind of amazing that our biggest accomplishments are in the world of weaponry. In the world of weaponry.

And like- Other than communication, like cell phones and the like, and wireless internet, this This is crazy that they develop a nuclear-powered underwater weapon that is capable of taking out a country. Yeah, designed really only to deliver nuclear missiles. I mean, how many does this motherfucker carry on it? How many cities can this thing take out instantly? And how many do we have? Like I've seen, like I said, I saw six of them in Pearl Harbor. Imagine being those kids. These kids look like they're like 20 years old. Look how young they look. That kid looks like they could be my friend's son.

And they're bottom right with the glasses? Yeah. That is wild. Wild. To be that young, you're holding a machine gun on a nuclear powered tank. Or you're that dude. You're the captain. Look at this guy. You're the vice Admiral Bill Houston. You run that shit. You run that.

Like we talk about power, like what we think of power and you know, that's a crazy job. Dana White has a tough job. That's a job. That's a job. This has to be so nerve wracking for all these people on board Especially when it goes in the water when you know you're underwater like Jesus Christ. I know they work

I mean, but do you remember the there was a Russian one that went down? There was a nuclear sub that went down and that's where the term can neither confirm nor deny That's when it was because they had to answer. So they had to have an answer to like, is this going on? Are you guys retrieving a nuclear sub from Russia? So because they had to answer, I don't think they have to answer now, but they had to come up with a phrase. Can neither confirm nor deny. Yeah.

What was that about? Which sub was that? I think they allegedly recovered it, which is crazy. So we have the ability to recover a nuclear sub at the bottom of the ocean? What the hell, man? I mean, the more time I've spent with the military, like when I was writing Lone Survivor, I got to go to Iraq with the SEAL team and see them operating and see the skill with which they operated. And that's almost – there's no technology involved there. Like SEALs don't really need this kind of stuff.

That's just more like give me a Jeep, give me some night vision goggles, give me some good intel on where the guy is, and I'll deal with it. That was beautiful. That was like the most elite team training and discipline and structure I'd ever seen. So on a human level, what I observed with a group like the SEALs was such an incredibly advanced form of team behavior. Then when you get into this stuff, have you ever seen an Apache helicopter up close? No. So these pilots for Apache helicopters, we use some alone. They're wearing, these helicopters pull up and they're just incredible looking pieces

of equipment. And these 22-year- old kids are flying them and they've got a helmet with a mask and they call it slaving the ship to the goggles. So they they they activate the goggles so that wherever they turn, the helicopter turns and where they've got eye sensors. So where their eyes go, the guns go. Right. So you look at it, you kill it. And they're giving us these demonstrations and they're flying them all around the set. I'm like, okay, I've seen the pyramids. I've seen the Notre Dame Cathedral in France.

I've seen a lot of Van Goghs. They're beautiful. I saw the Mona Lisa. That was great. Seeing this fucking helicopter turning as the guy's head turns with the weapon systems I'm like who's building cooler shit than this like like yes it wins it wins there it is our greatest achievement are these weapons of death they're incredible I just like well that's what you can make if you have an unlimited budget. And really smart guys. Yeah, really smart engineers. Oppenheimer had a hell of a like, that

was a great build, right? That was a great build. But man, it's expensive and it's kind of a bummer when this shit gets used. It's really bad. What do you think about all this UAP UFO stuff? Have you thought about this? Do you think that this is some sort of a government program, like they've developed these high-speed drones in secrecy? Because that's one prevailing theory. I have trouble understanding, like take the UFO aspect of it, right? Like, yes, there's absolutely zero question on Earth that there's life out in the solar system. It's an infinite solar system. It goes on forever. I'm sorry, infinite universe.

Smoke some 5-MeO and you'll go out there, right? Right. And like, yes, it's out there right right and and like yes it's out there the government keeping it secret and being that capable to find it and keep it secret i don't know um i took mushrooms with my friend mike dragorio and we tried to get on area 51 one day and we drove up there and like we just i just did mushrooms thing to do oh yeah we tried and we like have you ever gone up there no I have not because it's this road area 51 it's this

highway and the base is over a mountain but the road goes on forever and you're driving and we're high as fuck on mushrooms and we keep we're not getting any closer to the mountain and we're driving and we're driving and we're driving and suddenly there's a white van behind us right with the light on and we're like oh fuck okay good like this is kind of what

we thought might happen and sure enough guys get out military dudes with guns and they're looking at us like okay you guys are on mushrooms right we've seen this we've seen this turn around it's so common turn around that. That's hilarious. It's almost like the mushrooms want you to go to Area 51. You're not getting on the base. They're like, there's a hotel called the Little Alien. Go down there with everybody else that's on mushrooms. And you could sit out there all night and have all your theories.

And you're turning around. And we're like, roger that. That's amazing. That's so funny that they called it. Yeah, they knew it. It just must be so common. Buddies are like, let's take some shrooms and get on Area 51. And these guys, they weren't nasty or tough, but they're like, yeah, yeah, you're going to turn around, drink some water, turn around, and go to the little alien hotel.

You're allowed to get like a certain distance, and then it's illegal. And I believe they had to expand that distance i want to say it was during the obama administration they had to acknowledge the it might have been before that they had it might have been clinton they had to acknowledge the existence or it might have been bush rather they had to acknowledge the existence of area 51 in order to expand the forbidden zone. Yeah. Because they had a forbidden zone, but they did not acknowledge. Like no flies, no flyover. No drive. No drive.

You can't hike in. Because people were filming things, John Lear in particular, a lot of people were filming things that set up like very strong telescopes and high speed optics. And they were filming these tests of these things. Whether or not these things were UFOs or whether it's top-secret shit they're working on. Obviously, the stealth bomber came from that program. The Harrier jump jet, which would vertically lift and then take off. They made a lot of wild shit that is absolutely from us.

But the alleged claims, and the most fascinating one is this guy Bob Lazar, who claims to have worked at S4, which is a site four of Area 51. And he was on a program designed to back engineer this recovered disc. It's a fascinating story. Because if he's full of shit, oh, my God, what a great story. This guy's pulled the wool over people's eyes for 30 years. Right. Because he told the story in like 1989 was the first time he told it.

So it's more than 30 years. But he's also, he has like real knowledge of the area. He has real knowledge of Los Alamos labs where they tried to say that he never worked there. But then they found him on the employee roster from the time he went in there. People knew him. Right. Like it seems like the guy really was a propulsion specialist and they really did try to get some off the fucking beaten path scientists

like let's take because they have to get fresh eyes in these things allegedly every few years they bring in but everyone's sworn to secrecy and it's very compartmentalized so the metallurgy guys are not allowed to talk to the propulsion guys the propulsion right no one gets together and goes what the fuck is this like they can't have a group of science so they exist in a team form and it just it doesn't work that way they need more people and he said no one was able to figure out anything about it other than there's some sort of a reactor that worked on some new element it was theoretical back then but now they know it's a real element i mean i i will believe it like i have no reason to not believe it and to certainly not like what i was getting at though is that like when you see an insane system like these helicopters and the the goggles and then

you see these insane nuclear powered submarines and these insane aircraft carriers. Like what we have built is so fucking mind blowing. Why wouldn't we think that we've hit some next level propulsion system and that the reason why the Pentagon is talking about out of this world crafts, they're obscuring reality. Like the reason why people are like coming forward and telling you about their experience in this program, like maybe that's obscuring reality it might be bullshit it might be that we the government and the military and the contractors don't want any of our enemies to know that they have some fucking bonker shit that can go literally like the speed of light that we have that we have if um so i was just working up in New Mexico and like we were filming around

Los Alamos have you ever been to Los Alamos? and like it's amazing that like people just haven't seen the laboratory the current Los Alamos research laboratory which is you know across the street from where

Oppenheimer lived when he was doing the Manhattan Project, which was this boys school that they kicked everyone out and all the scientists moved in, which was not in the film, which is quite interesting. Like Los Alamos, if you can ever go there and see the museums and, you know, it's just a fascinating place to see where they built that bomb. But across the street, or actually across this river from where Oppenheimer lived, is now the current Los Alamos Research Laboratory. Pull up a picture of that one if you want to see something mind-blowing. It's bigger than UCLA campus. It's this massive research facility in Los Alamos, and you can't see half of it. It's supposedly

a giant chunk of it is underground. It's completely armed. We would drive, there's a road, that road at the top there is an access road that we would drive every day to go up. There's a ski mountain above it. So for some reason, they let you drive fairly close but it's all homeland security protecting it super fortified and armed and it's in the middle of fucking nowhere and this was birthed from yeah you can see where it is right it's in the middle of nowhere literally in the middle of nowhere we first got up there and we're like what are they doing here and like everyone's like well it's digital warfare it's um nuclear maintenance it's you know alien dissection it is like like like forget area 51 This place was like, you know, so if we're inventing shit, this is the kind of place we're inventing it.

And we went out a couple of days to these, there's, you know, some restaurants and bars in the town of Los Alamos. girls, getting them to turn and putting them as bartenders or cocktail waitresses because all the scientists from Los Alamos just go there after work and get drunk. That's where everything's going down. Wow. Half of it's underground? That's what they say. We'd be up on this mountain.

This place... That's what it looks like? Wow. It looks dope. And it's in the middle of nowhere. It's in the middle of nowhere. That's what it looks like? It's massive. And it's in the middle of nowhere. It's in the middle of nowhere. That's so wild. I'm like, I try and start conversation. I'm like, guys, what do you know about Los Alamos? Jamie, what's that image to the left?

It's got all the. I looked it up too. What is that? What the fuck is that? They've got like the accelerators, you know, if you've ever heard of like particle accelerators. I mean, I'm sure half your listeners know what this is. Yeah.

But like, this is. But like this is all, was all started by Oppenheimer. Wow. The whole. It used to be a log cabin. No, that's the school. What's that? I think that's the school that they took over.

They show a little bit of it. Oh, for all the scientists? Yeah, it was such a crazy story, like how these scientists just moved into this school, kicked all the kids out under national security order. And the scientists moved in and they just, and like to your point, no one knew what anyone else was doing when they were building the bomb. So you're working on one part, I'm working on another. Our wives have no idea what's going on. We're going out and building the bomb all day and coming home and just like drinking. They all drink. And like, I think there was like a lot of wife swapping and weird shit going on, too. They were just partying and building fucking nuclear bombs.

Jesus. And now you go out there and see what this. And it's just like, I just want to know, what are we doing? How much does it cost? And who's in charge? And Los Alamos now, so if there is those systems, in my mind, if there was an alien ship found the government wanted, they're going to take it to Los Alamos. That's where they're going to take it. That's where they're going to dissect it. And whatever's going on out there is some deep and real shit.

That's where Lazar worked. If you go from Wilbur and Orville Wright's invention of the aircraft, how long is the time period before someone drops a nuclear bomb out of one? How much time is between? Was it 60 years? Like, when was Wilbur and Orville's first flight? That's a great question. Because if you think of that,

just think of, like, what an insane jump in technology from the very first airplane to dropping a nuclear bomb out of one inside of a lifetime. Just dropping a bomb, right? Like, weaponizing Yes, air flight. Weaponizing air flight and like... But a

nuclear bomb. Yeah. Even more insane. Because of the technology involved. Just what a cool... 1902 is around when they credit them for flying. That was Kitty Hawk? Wow. I'm trying to find the exact date. I thought it was 1800. Yeah, I did too. That seems late. 1902. That's late. 1902.

That's crazy. So that's 45 years? Is that real? Right. About 40. Oh my God. 45 years before they dropped a nuclear bomb out of it? That's what it is, right?

It's 47? Yeah, I'm seeing like 1903 is the plane. So that's when I think they got the patent. Was Kitty Hawk? Oh my God. Kitty Hawk wasn't 1903, was it? The flight? I don't think it was. I'll double check. Wow. Oh, my God. Was Kitty Hawk? Kitty Hawk wasn't 1903, was it? The flight? I don't think it was.

I'll double check. Wow. Yeah, December 1903. Oh, my God. Well, that makes sense, though, because there's video of it. There's film of it. So it has to be when did they invent film? There's some stuff from the 1800s, but it's rough. Yeah, it was bad film.

It was, like, jumpy. Yeah. Right. But so your point is point is like how short a period of time what an insane jump and so where is it going right and what do they have already like if they have programs to do something like los alamos labs if they have programs to do something like area s4 if they can develop these insane machines in silence, what else are they? AI-controlled aircraft that's going to fly. There was just a great article in the New York Times yesterday about it. All these companies that are now scrambling to take over the buildings, which is a threat to the established weapons manufacturers, jet builders,

which is a threat to the established weapons manufacturers, jet builders, because the future, our fighting China in a large, like, full-scale battle is going to be AI-controlled drone dependent. So rather than sending human beings in $60 million jets, they're going to send swarms of $2 or $3 million AI-controlled fighter drones. And those are going to be self-driven, right? Self-flown, the way Elon's trying to get self-driving vehicles. This is the plan. Great article yesterday. And that's where it's going. And if Orville Wright could could see that robot wars robot a hundred percent robot wars robot wars like like um cameron had it right you know terminator had it right yeah and like like ai dude right like it's on it's crazy it. It's crazy, you know? I mean, I think this is what, I'm not defending Ted Kaczynski, but this is what Ted Kaczynski's manifesto was about, was the construction of technology was going to replace the human race.

What is this, Jamie? That's an AI drone. Wow. I mean, this is the future. Look at this fucking thing. And, like, my business is on strike, you know, the writers, and I support my strike. But, you know, AI is a big issue. We don't, like, everyone's worried about AI.

Right. Well, everybody's worried about AI, right? Like, AI is going to be fighting our wars. And, like, you know, when— AI is going to be fighting our wars. And, like, you know, when— AI is going to be writing books. When Trump was talking about Space Force back in the day, like, this is Space Force. Yeah. This is real Space Force shit.

Yeah. And— It's funny. They didn't even think of that in Star Wars. AI? No, they didn't. Isn't that wild? Like, in Star Wars, no one had a cell phone.

They did have lightsabers. Pretty dope. Definitely dope. R2 helped with some shit, but I don't know what he was really doing. But he was so sad all the time. He was so annoying. But there's a giant difference between that and sending a pilotless jet to engage in combat.

It seems like that's the direction. I get fucking so terrified when I watch those Boston Dynamic videos of those robots that they're inventing. Yeah, it's crazy. They're getting so good. They're acrobats now. I went to MIT. We filmed something at MIT,

and they took me into the robotics department down in the basement, and they showed me these 10 kids did a presentation. You've been to campus at MIT? Yes. Fucking cool, right? Yeah. We got to film on the campus. We're the first film Patriots Day, because one of the MIT cops was killed by the marathon bombers. They killed him after the bombing. And so they wanted to honor him and they let us film there and they took us down to the robotics wing and showed us a robot cheetah that they had invented that was

Sprinting up and down the halls and jumping over little obstacles and I'm like I'm like What? Like I see that show me the MIT robotic cheetah. Those little ones that look like dogs. They scare the shit out of me. Oh, like that. But it was a cheetah. It was different than this.

These things scare the shit out of me. Because you could just easily see them with a gun on them. Yeah, that's RoboCop shit. And if you watch that Netflix show, Black Mirror, there's one great episode. Did you ever see the heavy metal episode? Is that about robots? It's about one of these things chasing after this lady. It's fucking great.

It's terrifying. But look at how it moves and gyrates. It's real. And it's like you talk about like, so look at that and think about the progression from the Wright Brothers to Hiroshima in terms of aircraft. 50 years, that technology, that was what they were doing with the Cheetah. Oh, this one. Is that MIT? Yeah, this was 10 years ago.

10 years ago. Look how fast it's going. This is what they showed me. But they put a Cheetah skin over it. This is 28 miles an hour. I bet it goes 100 now. Like, think about that. It's probably electric now.

We were talking about electric engines. Think about that with a lightsaber attached to its head, just like charging through, crowd control. Look at this thing. That looks like a giant dog. That's the, see the cheetah tail there? See that cheetah tail? That was the room we were in.

That's MIT, isn't it? Yeah tail? That was the room we were in. Ah. That's MIT, isn't it? Yeah, that's the actual room we were in. Laser distance data. So it's figuring out distances between things. It just got faster one year ago. Wow. What a fucker. Like, think about the applications.

It's not good. It's not going to teach people. What's one kind, loving loving positive application for that thing like rescue people out of a I have a dog Yeah, okay, I may be rescued but they're not gonna use it for that That's coming like in your door remember remember when was it gates was the your door remember remember when uh was it gates was the the la chief of police who first used a tank in south central los angeles do you remember that story i don't remember oh god i think it was gates was his name and he was the like his strategy was okay if you're holed up in your

uh your house and we want to arrest you we're going to put a battering ram on a tank and he drove his tank. And he got in tremendous trouble. It was like the beginning of the LAPD being called out for like. Militarization. Excessive. Excessive. Nancy Reagan raided a South Central crack house.

What? I think this is it. This is it? Yeah, it was like the first designer drug raid is what some call it. Wow. It was a pure publicity stunt. Nancy, look at this. Nancy Reagan wanted to find a way to maintain her visibility as an anti-narcotics crusader now that her husband was out of office.

Chief Gates was looking toward a possible gubernatorial run, which mercifully never came to pass. For those arrested, it was another day in the war that American politicians and police had declared on black and brown communities. They really rolled in with a tank. Yeah, they did. They put a battering ram on a tank and rolled in. You know, that's another, you know, interesting element of painkiller that we touch upon was the parallels between that we touch upon was the parallels between between Oxycontin and crack cocaine. You know, the crack epidemic. Oh yeah, there it is. Look at that.

That's LAPD like going after, going after, that's the war on drugs in Los Angeles. Rescue. We need to rescue you from your life. But that was how crack was dealt with right in the 80s and if you look at oxycontin and what the sacklers were able to do and how they were able to basically take something much more lethal and certainly more profitable than fucking crack and get away with it like that's's, that's something that we, we talk about quite a bit. It's pretty insane. It's pretty insane that this is the reality of

our current generation, that money allowed this to happen and that influence allowed this to happen. And most people just trusted their healthcare professional and. And as it said in the film or in your show, that guy's trusting the FDA. He's trusting that they know what they're doing. What do you think you would do if you hurt yourself, you were training and had a really painful injury? Say you really fucked up your shoulder. And in between, the immediate pain was very high. And a doctor was like, okay, here's the deal. This is going to really fucking hurt.

We recommend a low dose of an opioid. How would you react to that? Well, I've had that happen. I have had knee surgery, and when I was in the hospital, they had like a morphine drip, and it was wonderful. It was a very, like apparently you press the button and you get more morphine. Sure. I think that's how it worked.

This is 92, somewhere around then, 93. But when I got my nose fixed, I got my nose fixed a few years back and it didn't even hurt. And the doctor prescribed medicine. Oh, I should bring it back to the first surgery when I got the drip. When I got the drip, he did give me Vicodin. It was either Vicodin or Percocet. I can't remember which one it was. I'm pretty sure it was Vicodin, though. I only took it once, and I felt so stupid. It made me feel so dumb and just dull that it wasn't a wonderful feeling. It wasn't Oxycontin.

It wasn't a wonderful feeling at all. It sucked. And so I only took it once, and then I just dealt with the pain. And that was a pretty significant knee surgery because it's a patella tendon graft. They take a piece out of your shin bone, a piece out of your patella tendon, and a piece out of your kneecap, and they open you up like a fish and screw into your bones. But I didn't take anything else. I was like, I'm not taking shit.

I'm just going to deal with pain. And then when I got my nose fixed, the doctor fixed it, and he prescribed me two different opiates one of them is oxycontin and i forget what the other one was and how long ago was this 15 years ago um and when he prescribed it to me i'm like but it doesn't hurt like it doesn't hurt like right now it doesn't hurt you did the operation it's done right like it's not hurting. I mean, it's uncomfortable because I've got these fucking Sponge things shoved up my nostrils with little tubes in them to expand my nostrils and allow it all to heal in the right form After it was horrible it sucked, but it's a really good move. You have a deviated septum Yeah, my nose I broke my nose for the first time when I was like five and I think I broke it

Who knows how many times after that maybe a dozen it was destroyed the inside of my nose for the first time when I was like five. And I think I broke it who knows how many times after that. Maybe a dozen. It was destroyed. The inside of my nose was all fucked up. It was completely closed off. So they fixed it. The doctor was fantastic. He fixed it.

But he tried to give me two different opiates. He's like, you're going to need these. And I was like, but it doesn't hurt. Like, I don't understand what you're saying. I'm telling you right now, I'm not in pain. Am I going to be in more pain? Like, how am I going to be in more pain later? I think like right after the operation is the most pain.

You'd be maxing out. And he goes, you're going to be very, very uncomfortable. Just take this prescription. And I took it home and I just put this prescription in the drawer. I go, okay, if it gets crazy, if something happens and I just, I can't sleep and I'm in agony. It never hurt at all. It was just uncomfortable. Just a little, you know, like I got punched in the nose. But it wasn't like I can't sleep and I'm in agony. It never hurt at all. It was just uncomfortable. Just a little, you know, like I got punched in the nose.

But it wasn't like I can't sleep. I was like, this isn't fine. Like, what the fuck are you talking? You're trying to give me heroin for this? Yes, you were. This is crazy. He did give you heroin. Two different kinds. I forget what it was, but one of them was Oxycontin.

One of them was something else. But I'm like, you're giving me two different kinds of painkillers? And this is when I was kind of already aware of that because I already had people in my family that had had issues with pills. And I was like, dude, what are you giving me? Yeah, it's, it's really disturbing. My, my son broke his collarbone playing lacrosse and I had to take him to the hospital in Connecticut. And, you know, the doctor's like, okay, it's a broken collarbone. There's not much we can do. You know, he was 16 or 17, and he wrote him a script for OxyContin.

And I'm like, are you out of your fucking mind? And I'm like, I held the prescription. I'm like, are you out of your mind? And the doctor's like, it works. It works. There's going to be pain. Like I held the prescription. Are you out of your mind? And the doctor's like, it works. It works. There's going to be pain. And I don't know. It's interesting because I do wonder, you know, I remember, you know, Marcus's brother, Morgan Luttrell.

Have you ever met him? No, I haven't. Tough dude. And when I was getting ready to do the film, I had heard about Morgan, but I never met him. And he had fallen out of a helicopter doing training and broken his back and was in Recouping in Virginia. And I knew he'd been hurt. And so I wanted to meet him because they're very close. And I knew if I was going to make a film about Marcus, I had to at least meet Morgan because Morgan's a powerful figure in Marcus' life.

So I flew out there and went to his house. I got there late at night and there were a bunch of seals in the house. And Morgan was sitting in a chair. And they were watching TV. And he was just sitting there. And every once in a while he would tremble. And he decided he wasn't going to take anything. He had a broken back.

And I'm like, dude, you're not taking anything? And he's like, fuck no. I'm not taking anything. I'm going to experience this pain. I'm going to process this pain. I'm going to use this pain. And he wrote out his broken back without any pain, without any pain medication. And it, it did make me think, and I still think, you know, how pain adverse we all

are, right? Like, oh, it hurts. Make it go away. Right. Make it go. give me the quickest path to being pain free. Drink this, smoke this, buy this, fuck this, whatever. And that we're so bad at tolerating pain. And the expectation is, oh, okay, Joe, we just worked on your nose. You're going to feel pain. Take this. You don't want that pain. No, you don't want that pain. You can't handle that pain.

And we're just so fucking soft when it comes to pain. Well, it's also, I think we've been programmed to think that when you're in pain, you need to take medication regardless of the dangers of that stuff. I remember this sad story from COVID where this woman overdosed on Tylenol. She died from acetaminophen poison, which is apparently fairly common. If you take a lot of Tylenol, your liver can't process it. You get liver failure. And it's just from pain. Just didn't want to feel it. I don't want to feel like this.

Give me something that makes me not feel like this. But, I mean, I have not had back surgery, but I've had three knee surgeries. And I told you on the one, I took the one Vicodin. But then after that, I didn't take anything. So my right knee, when I got it done the one, I took the one Vicodin, but then after that, I didn't take anything. So my right knee, when I got it done, I didn't take shit. And I got my left knee scoped. I didn't take shit. And then I got the nose fixed. Didn't take shit. I was like, he's just deal with pain. But back pain, I think is a different animal. Back pain is debilitating in a way that I haven't experienced. I could walk around on crutches if my knee was fucked up. There's a difference. And I think you got to be really

cautious. I don't want to make anybody feel bad because they're taking medication for back pain. Because I think back pain is something where it just overwhelms your existence if you have a bad herniated disc. It does. Overwhelms. I've had them. I had surgery on them. And like, yeah. What did you get done?

Did you get it fused? I had the discectomy. Okay, so they took a little bit of your disc out. Yeah, a little bit. In the future, if you're ever going to do something like that again, like we were talking about stem cells, that's the fix. And I avoided that kind of surgery. You think stem cells for herniated discs? Yes.

Yes. Stem cells and traction, spinal traction. It depends on how bad it's herniated, whether it's bulging or whether it's ruptured. Whether it's ruptured. They do have disc replacements that many people have done now. There's titanium articulating discs. My friend Eddie got it in his back. Aljamain Sterling, who is the UFC Bantamweight champion, he got it in his back Al Jermaine Sterling who is the UFC bantamweight champion he got it in his neck or this steel yeah it's a

titanium articulating disc and was able to fight fought again and he defend the title he defended the title what he won two I think three times after that that's amazing it's amazing amazing. Yeah, three times. And he actually defended the title more than anybody ever has in that division. Do you think his neck was stronger? A hundred percent. Like it was stronger than prior to the injury? Yes.

No, no, no. No. No, not as strong as like if he's not injured at all. He wasn't like the bionic man that was rebuilt stronger and had an advantage. I don't believe so. But it might be the same. It might be that his neck is the same. Strengthen your neck comes from obviously the structure, the bones, but it also comes from working your neck out.

There's a bunch of exercises that guys do to strengthen their neck. And sometimes when guys don't do that, then they run into problems like bulging discs. But you're going to run into those anyway in combat sports. It's inevitable. of problems like bulging discs, but you're going to run into those anyway in combat sports. It's inevitable. But I know of many, many, many, many people now that have sought help, particularly overseas, whether it is in Peru or Panama, rather, Columbia or Tijuana, the CPI Institute in Tijuana.

I know there's Biolux Accelerator in Columbia that's very good. They've taken care of a lot of UFC athletes. A lot of guys get stuff fixed. Why can't this stuff be approved in the US? My suspicion is the same suspicion when you see the influence that these pharmaceutical drug companies have over the FDA. Wow. My suspicion is that there has probably been an analysis done of what would happen if stem cell use was ubiquitous. What would happen if it was everywhere? What would happen if you allowed people to use stem cells the way we allow people? Surgeons would have trouble. Well, maybe, but certainly more people would get healed. More people would get fixed. Like,

I don't know of anyone who has had, and this is just my own anecdotal experience. I don't know of anyone who's had bad experiences with stem cells I've had people that I know that did it and it didn't help them but upon further examination either Their problem was too big and it needed required surgery or in the most part We're dealing with like fighters and a lot of these guys just don't wait long enough before they go hard They go back and they train hard. They have like a knee issue or a shoulder issue and they go back and they train. They don't heal. They train.

They're too savage. They get right back into it as soon as they start feeling good. And you really need a lot of time for it to take root and many, many months for it to really heal. But like I've said many times on this show and I told you earlier, I had a full length rotator cuff tear. My doctor assured me I was going to need surgery. But why were you able to do it in the U.S.? It was different. There was different regulations when I did it.

I don't remember exactly what mesenchymal stem cells and they used exosomes. I don't exactly remember like what it all was. But I know I remember that it's all processed from umbilical cords. So say if a young lady, like, and I think you have to be 25 years or younger, has a baby through a C-section, then they harvest their umbilical cord. I don't know, they sell it or whatever. And then they convert that into stem cells. And that is unique, particularly unique in its ability to help heal any kind of tissue. But the difference between what you're allowed to do in America now is different from what

it was back then. But also the stuff they're doing in these other places overseas is much more traumatic because they can use much larger doses and they keep you there for three days. And they also combine it with hyperbaric therapy and a bunch of other different things that also accelerate your healing. NAD, IV drips, a bunch of different things that help along the process of your healing. And I know many people that have avoided surgery because of that. And now we're back to a hundred percent, but it doesn't mean you don't need surgery. Like there's certain disc issues that are ruptured beyond the point of repair and you probably need something

done. And it's nice that there is all these different options. You just, you have to be careful, you know, whenever you're getting something that's an operation, like, especially if you're getting a replacement, like a knee replacement or something, all that stuff, you got to be careful. But you think that it's possible that the FDA is being coerced by other forces to keep this shit out of the US? I absolutely don right I'm very possible I think if it's possible that a human being a lone human being could be taken into a hotel room and for a couple of days and then comes out and he has a four hundred thousand dollar a year job after he retires and This revolving door does exist. We know that we know that exists Yeah, why wouldn't you protect your

interest by stopping some sort of a novel new sort of treatment that may lead to way less people on pain medication way less people that need anti-inflammatories way less people that need a lot of the stuff you sell it makes sense to to me. And then you go, oh, the dangers of stem cells. But Oxycontin is safe and effective. Like, that's so nuts. That's so nuts that they say that. Because where are the bodies? Where are the bodies?

Where are the bodies? I haven't heard about stem cell addiction. I haven't heard of stem cell overdoses. Yeah, where are the bodies? Where are the bodies? I have a bunch of stem cell overdoses. Yeah, where are the bodies? Where are the bodies? I have a bunch of anecdotal stories from UFC fighters, jiu-jitsu athletes, good friends of mine. A lot of them, like dozens of guys who have gone and had massive relief from stem cells. Yeah, I got a buddy in the UFC right now who just just went down to I think Bogota

Yeah, doing so because I have I have some back issues go down there. Yeah, I will you should but what I wanna what? I do or a Panama. It just sounds so crazy. I'm gonna go to Tijuana and fix my back No, I it sounds it sounds wrong, but I starting to believe that it's not I think we have a fucked-up system I think I really really do and the process to making that stuff legal, they're in the process of doing that. And Dr. Neil Reardon is deeply involved in this. He's the guy that I had on with Mel Gibson back in the day. And Mel talked about his own injuries

that he got fixed with stem cells and his dad. He said his dad was in a wheelchair. And then, you know, like a few years later, his dad's walking around and he's fine. Where did Mel go? They went to Panama. And Dr. Reardon, he was like the first guy that I ever talked to about this stuff. And he's written many published papers and books on it.

And very, very, very knowledgeable guy when it comes to this. And they're absolutely convinced that it's beneficial. And we should be using it everywhere. So, like, one of the things that I don't think anyone really understands that hasn't done it is like, okay, you're going to go get stem cell therapy in wherever in Panama. What does that mean? Like you, like you fly from Panama, you drive to some like established looking clinic or is it like in the back of a strip mall? No, no, no, no, no. It's in a very, I sent my mom there twice.

Really? Yeah. In Panama? Yeah. I sent my mom there twice yeah in panama yeah i sent my mom well you should lead with that yeah i should have told you that earlier yeah yeah my mom had really good success with it with her knee but when you uh you go there believe in it yeah okay oh yeah yeah yeah it's a nice area where you where their their clinic is is very nice it's in a beautiful office building they take you there for three days. And do you sleep?

You go to a hotel. Yeah, there's a hotel there. There's a hotel right next to it. And the treatment is what? It's an injection? It's a series of injections in wherever the injury is along with IV infusions. They do IV stem cells as well, which helps your whole body. Like whatever little weird aches and tears you have.

My friend Gordon Ryan, who's the best jiu-jitsu athlete of all time, he had an issue with his shoulder. So he got injections in his shoulder and it fixed his neck. He had a neck problem for like a year. And just by the fact that it's in the area, it literally goes to wherever the injury is off. Wow, wow. It fixed his neck.

He's like, there's no other explanation. He's like, four weeks later, my neck was better. I always felt that one of the greatest recoveries from an injury that I've ever witnessed, I'm interested to hear what yours is, I was at the fight when Silva cracked his leg. Yes. Chris Weidman.

Chris against Weidman. And I was there. I was likeidman. And I was there. I was like up front. And I heard it and I heard him scream and I saw it, right? You were there. Yeah. I was there. How did he recover from that in the fight again?

Well, he did, but he didn't. In my mind, I think Anderson Silva is the greatest middleweight of all time right up there with Adesanya. I think Adesanya and Anderson, it's like different eras, but goddamn when they were on top. I mean, Anderson was just in the matrix. He was so good. He was such an assassin in his prime. People forgot how great he was. Like top five of all time? Oh, yeah.

Top three of all time? I don't know. I don't like a Mount Rushmore because there's only room for four heads. I think there's a lot more because you have to have Hoyce Gracie up there. But maybe a Mount Rushmore. Close. He's one of the greatest of all time. How did he recover from that? But he didn't. He was never the same guy. He did. But if you

watch Anderson Silva pre-Chris Weidman, pre-leg break, and then post-leg break. It's a different athlete. He can't kick the same way with that leg anymore. I bet it doesn't move as well. I bet there's issues in terms of like load balance and like the way it feels. It's probably in pain all the time. There's a lot of factors. you're probably very hesitant to throw that same kick again because you just had your leg snap in half and your leg was fucked up for a good solid year and a half after that and you had to have surgery and there's plates in there and rods and shit screws did he win he won fights after that fights afterwards not as many no i mean what is anderson's

record should pull up anderson's record? Should we pull up Anderson's record? And again, this is not in disrespect of Anderson because I mean, Chris Weidman just came back from a knee break too, or a leg break as well, rather, and it was just last weekend. Was that the worst injury that you've ever seen in UFC? Well, I saw it with Weidman,

the same exact injury. He snapped his own leg too, which is crazy that Anderson was involved. So look at that Anderson was involved. So look at that. Go scroll up. Okay, so Derek Brunson was his last win and that was in 2017. Then he lost to Israel Adesanya,

Jared Cannoneer, and Uriah Hall. And then there's the loss of Michael Bisbee. So you go from Chris Weidman. So the Nick Diaz fight was kind of crazy. That was July 2013. Yeah, I think that was no contest because...

So you got two years or a year and a half from the Weidman leg break till he fights Nick Diaz again. And I think, what is that, no contest? Because I think Silva tested positive for steroids. They both popped, I think. Yeah, Silva tested positive for steroids, which makes sense because he's recovering from this horrific leg injury.

You know, like when you, there's no way you're going to do that clean and come back in a year and a half. Like you need help. You need like, that's the legit reason for those kind of steroids. So if you go before that, though, you go before the Weidman fight, look at these fucking wins right well I mean Stefan Bonner Chael Sonnen Yushin Okami Vitor Belfort Chael Sonnen Damian Maia Forrest Griffin Talos Latis Patrick Cote James Irvin it's just KO KO KO submission KO Rich Franklin KO Nate Marquardt

KO Travis Luter submission Rich Franklin KO Chris Lieben. Chris Lieben, KO. Tony Fricklin, KO. I mean, he's just dominating everyone. And then what after? And after the leg break, look, he won one fight. After the leg break, he's got the no contest, which was kind of a boring fight anyway. But then you got loss, loss, one win, a decision win over Derek Brunson.

He never came back. Loss, loss, loss. You're right. He was never the same again. He was never the same again. He was never the same again. The Anderson Silva that smoked Forrest Griffin, the Anderson Silva that destroyed Vitor Belfort, the Anderson Silva that just dominated that division,

he was never really that guy again. The Anderson Silva that beat Dan Henderson, he was never that guy again. And I think that it's a very, very, very, very difficult injury to come back from and be a hundred percent what what are your thoughts on and I've talked to Dana about it like what what you know we talk you talk about I've done work with the NFL on brain injury and worked on changing the way football players tackle,

started a heads-up tackling program with kids to try and get them to stop leading with their heads for brain injury and for paralysis. I've seen both and worked in that space a bit. And what are your thoughts on what we're you know, in the UFC with some of these fighters in five, ten years? Like what – you know, I work with a lot of boxers, and I've seen a lot of boxers have a rough time, obviously, as they get older and they get out of it. What do you think the long-term ramifications for fighters in their brains are when they get out of it um what what what do you think the long-term uh ramifications for fighters in their their their brains are when they get out it is absolutely never good to get hit in the head yeah we all know that to deny that is crazy but this sport is you trying to hit someone in the head and them trying to hit you in that it's a fucking insane sport it's you trying to hit someone in the head and them trying to hit you in the head. It's a fucking insane sport.

It's you trying to strangle them. You're trying to get them to not hit you. You try to take them down. You try to submit them. But it's this part of the sport, a big part of the sport, is getting hit in the head. And some of these guys are getting kicked in the head. And if you've ever seen someone get kicked in the head, and I've seen a lot, it is a terrifying moment.

You know, when a guy like Leon Edwards in the fifth round takes out Kamaru Usman, who's like one of the greatest of all time, with one kick. That's when you realize, like, oh, my God, what a ferocious weapon a shin to your neck is. I mean, it's crazy when you watch people get hit by those things. There's no way that's good for you watch people get hit by those things. There's no way that's good for you. That is definitely bad for you. The question is how bad and how much damage have you taken? What steps have you made in camp to mitigate the amount of damage that you take? In camp too, right? Like sparring? In camp, yes. And you have to make sure when you spar in camp

that you are being very careful that you are you're not going to war that you're not getting there's a lot of fights where guys have gotten big concussions before they fought and then when they fought the first punch that hits them they go out even punches that don't even look like a devastating punch but they're so damaged already going into the fight because they trained too hard. They got beat up in spite. And then there's this intangible thing where sometimes guys have an iron jaw.

Literally, you can't knock them out, and then one day it goes. And when it goes, it's gone forever. When it goes, they get knocked out a bunch of times after that. And that seems to be indicative of something wrong, something seriously wrong. What that is, I'm not a neurologist, I'm not sure, it's got to be damage to your brain. It's got to be damage to your body.

You're not durable anymore for some reason. And that's the tip of the iceberg. The long-term effects are like severe cognitive decline. It's pugilistica dementia. Yeah. It's trauma-induced Parkinson's that some boxers like Freddie Roach has. Yeah. It's a reality of the sport.

And you would hope that they have friends that can have that long hard talk with them when it's over and say This is not it. There's I'm not saying this because you know For any reason other than you you literally have to be told this you got to get out now Or you're not gonna be normal in ten years like I have run into old boxers normal in 10 years like i have run into old boxers um guys that were younger than me and i ran into terry norris once who was a i was a giant fan of terry norris he was so fucking good and i ran into him at a fight and he slurred his words so bad yeah they did a whole uh news piece on him where he talked about it his wife is helping him and he's gotten better since then but the struggle that you see like one of the fucking great welterweight champions ever and then you see like how he's dealing with things now was he 154 i'm not sure but you see how he's dealing with

things now it's like god was it worth it i don't know man i don't know yeah i mean i was thinking i i saw you had um terence crawford the other day, who I love so much. He's amazing. And he just seems so sharp. And his defensive skills are great. Yeah. And, you know, but I watch it and I'm like, man, I hope you know when to stop. Yeah.

It would be a tragedy to see a guy that sharp struggle mentally. And I do think it's interesting. You know, I've worked in boxing for a while. I have a gym and I manage some fighters. Where is it? It's in Santa Monica, Churchill Boxing Club. Oh, wow. That's awesome. It's a great gym. We were Wild Card West. We started as Wild Card West. Freddie let me use his name to get the gym going. And then we were wildcard west forever. We've had Alvarez did four camps at our gym. Wow, Canelo did? Yeah, Canelo did.

That's amazing. Canelo used to do all... The gym was actually, we were about to close. I was about to close the gym down. And I was here. I was in Albuquerque making Lone Survivor. And the gym was falling apart. And it was's a fucking headache to have a boxing gym. It's a real headache.

I can imagine. And all the toilet, the pipes had blown, the toilet pipes. So I had to fly back on a weekend with my assistant, mop it up. And my assistant was this, you know, she was a director's assistant, and she's in there cleaning shit in a boxing gym with me and at one point she's like i didn't sign up for this i'm i'm i'm a princess and i'm meant to be she was delusional and delirious from cleaning up shit with me in a gym and she was like muttering about how she was a princess and i'm like okay stop we cleaned it up and i'm i'm there for one more day and i'm gonna go back to new mexico to film and i'm like okay stop we cleaned it up and i'm i'm there for one more day and i'm gonna go back to new mexico to film and i'm in the gym and i'm like i gotta i gotta shut

this down and you know gary shanley was a partner of mine in the gym yeah do you know gary love i met him once he loved boxing i did not know that and i called him and i'm like gary i'm closing it down it's it's too much of a headache It's just nothing but a liability all the time. And I'm in the gym by myself getting my last day there. I'm going to go back to New Mexico and it's clean and I'm kind of looking at it. And I had it for like six years and it was fun. And, you know, I love boxing. I'm like, I got to shut it down.

And in the mirror, I see this like little flash of red in the mirror and i see someone's come in and i turn this guy's standing there he's like are you peter i'm like yes he goes freddie roach told me to come down i'm looking to train for my next camp my name's sol everest i'm like yeah i know who you are. It's fucking Canelo at my gym, right? Red hair. And he's like, very polite. He's like, could I train? Could I do my camp?

He was fighting this kid named Lopez. He was getting ready for his camp for Lopez. This was before, you know, he'd really taken up. But he was emerging, right? And I'm like, yeah, you can train here. I'm about to close the gym down for good. And I show him around. He's like, I see the gym. I'm like, well, here can train here. I'm about to close the gym down for good. And I show him around. He's like, I see the gym.

I'm like, well, here's the gym. It's not much. It's a ring and our heavy bags, our speed bags. Here's our sauna. He looks around and goes, okay, could I train here? I go, yeah. He goes out. There's two suburbans out in the parking lot full of his camp,

Eddie and Shepo's trainers, five fighters. They're like, come on on and they all come running in turn on the music start eating and he came in and started doing his camps there and that got that got my gym going like once he came to gym and we've had everyone do camps there and i've had a front row seat to boxing and man like one of the many things that that I I look at is how hard it is for these guys to let go you know so you talk about Terry Norris staying a little bit too long you know Freddie Roach stayed in the ring probably a few too many fights Ali certainly did right yeah and like watching these guys and we have a lot of UFC

guys have come in and you know worked on their their boxing in our gym and seeing the struggles that they go through you know and you hope yeah like yeah there's someone that's going to say okay enough it's time yeah but man is it hard to let go of that it's very hard to let go and i think there's an also there's a bunch of factors at play at play in that one of them is their identity that their identity is all wrapped up in them being a fighter yeah it's it's very hard for people to let that go also it's the only thing they've ever dedicated their time to. A lot of these guys don't have like serious other side jobs or serious other side professions. Some of them do. Some of the really smart ones, they kind of – they break off and they start little businesses and they do stuff so that –

like Eric Anders, the guy who's been on the podcast before, he's invested in real estate. He's bought a bunch of houses. So he's good forever. UFC or boxing? UFC. Yeah. So some guys are smart like that. Conor McGreg in real estate. He's bought a bunch of houses. So he's good forever. UFC or boxing? UFC. Yeah. So some guys are smart like that. You know, Conor McGregor obviously did.

He's very smart. I mean, Conor started that whiskey company, did the Floyd Mayweather fight. He made $100 million and he starts this whiskey company. It's worth like a half a billion. Right. He doesn't have to do shit forever. And he's only fighting if he fights again because he wants to. But most of them, when it's over,'re they're confused they don't know what to do

and the high of winning a fight is like nothing else in all sports it's there's no other because you might lose and if you lose it's going to be more devastating than anything else in sports if you lose a basketball game i'm sure it sucks i'm sure you feel terrible but you can go home you don't go to the fucking hospital with your face battered in and the whole world If you lose a basketball game, I'm sure it sucks. I'm sure you feel terrible. But you can go home. You don't go to the fucking hospital with your face battered in and the whole world saw you get kicked in the face. And there's memes of you getting flatlined. And there's like animation of you getting knocked into orbit. And you have to have all these trolls and haters talk shit about you on Twitter when you got knocked out in a world championship fight in front of the whole world. Yeah, and if you're on a basketball team or a football team or any other sport really,

at least you know, guess what, I'm playing next Tuesday. Exactly. And I got a contract. Exactly. And I got a player's union. Exactly. And I got a whole bunch of stuff. And I got a league.

It is a lone wolf sport. Fuck. It's for people that don't play well with others. Yeah, yeah. And it's for people that also value play well with others. Yeah. And it's for people that also value the camaraderie of other people that are similar to them.

And like, what gets me with boxing, which is like, you know, UFC, at least there's an organizing principle uniting it, right?

Like, there's the UFC. There's Dana, right? There's you as part of the face of the UFC. There's owners that have built a system, right? I think Frank Lorenzo did a really good job of giving birth to. But like boxing, it's like,

do you know how many weight classes are in boxing today? Can you name them all? There's a lot. But I don't think that's a bad thing. Oh, come on. I don't. How about multiple promoters and multiple- That's a lot. But I don't think that's a bad thing. Oh, come on. I don't. How about multiple promoters and multiple— That's an issue. And multiple belts. Like, too many belts.

Yeah. Too many promoters. So, like, you've got 440-pound champions that are all promoted by different guys, and then 447-pound champions that are— And so there's no continuity of organization to our falls. Yeah, that is absolutely true. When we get to a level like a guy like Terrence Crawford, who is the only man to ever be undisputed in two weight classes,

which is pretty insane that no one else has. Manny Pacquiao won. I love him so much. He's so good, man. He's such a great guy, too. Yeah, I love him. Manny Pacquiao won world titles in eight different weight classes. I mean, that's insane.

How many world titles did Manny Pacquiao win? Let's pull that up. Look at his body progression from when he started to when he ended. He got saucy. Something was going on there. He got saucy. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Like, wow. Yeah. Okay. Oh, my God. 12 major world titles in eight different weight divisions. That is so insane. Those accomplishments are so insane. But what were the weight –

What did he start? Like 118 and went up to 147 maybe? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, I think his first one was – so his first one was flyweight. What is that? Is that – what is it, 126? In the UFC it's different. I think it's lighter than – I think it's like –

What's bantamweight is 126? What is bantamweight? Well, lightweight is 135. This is my point. There's too many weight classes. Super featherweight is 130. So featherweight must be 125. And then bantamweight must be 120.

And flyweight is like 118. Yeah, there's weird numbers, right? Like welterweight is 147 for some reason. But you don't think there's too many weight classes? Here's the deal. The thing about weight cutting, weight cutting is so bad for you. It's so bad. But when there's only a few weight classes, there's massive advantages. And one of the best ways to disincentivize weight cutting,

which is as bad as anything else in the sport, might be as bad as the strikes that you take with some guys. I've seen guys that look like they're on death's door. But they are. Death's door. They are on death's door. They are on death's door. And then 24 hours later, they have a cage fight, which is so nuts.

But the problem is, if you're a guy and you're 5'9 and you want to fight in the welterweight division, can you make 55? Because if you can make 55, dude, it would be better for you. Because if you make 55, those guys would be your height. You're dealing with – You mean if you can come down to 155? Yeah, if you make 155. Then those guys will probably be your size. If you make 155, then those guys will probably be your size.

Because if you just walk around at like 180 pounds, you want to fight at 170, you're dealing with guys that are 200 plus. And then they suck down to 170 for a very brief amount of time. And then when you get into that octagon and they're fully hydrated and you look at them, you're like, Jesus, they're so much bigger than 170. Yeah, the rehydration is crazy. But my point is, if there's multiple weight classes in between that gap, you wouldn't have to do that. I think there should be at the very minimum a weight class every 10 pounds. And I don't think that's outrageous and that's way less than boxing, but you would start at 125 like there is now and 135, which already exists. 145 already exists and then you go 55 which already exists. Are you saying UFC? Yeah, 65, 75, 85, 95, 205, maybe 215 or just go right to 225 and then maybe even a 265 and then super heavyweight which doesn't exist.

Which is really wild that the heavyweight champion of the UFC has to make weight. Like the heavyweight champion of the UFC has to be 265 pounds or less. Why? Because there's a weight class. But what if- There's a super heavyweight. Oh, there's a super heavyweight. But it's never been used.

Has there ever been a 300-pound fighter? In the early days of the UFC, for sure. Yeah. Paul Varlins, I think, was 300 pounds. One of the really early ones when he fought Marco Huas. What was Kerr? Was it Mark Kerr? Oh, geez. He was big. He was gigantic marker. How good was he? Oh, he's phenomenal. He was phenomenal He was an elite wrestler. I thought that would be a good was on all the juicy

Yeah, I wanted I looked at doing a film about him for a minute. There is one out a Documentary. Yeah, the Smashing Machine. Yes, you know, but I meant I meant a scripted oh I know Dwayne Johnson was interested in playing him for a minute he's he's gonna turn me on to him this they call them the smashing machine yeah is that the best fight name ever oh so good I saw him submit a guy with his chin in the guy's eye socket it was an fuck. It was an early, early, early UFC. He mounted this guy, this guy Dan Bobish,

and he stuck his chin in the guy's eye socket. He just fucking drove his chin. It was then. Is it now? I don't know. No one's ever done it before. But also, no one's on the same amount of sauce

as Kerr was. Kerr was... He looked like a superhero. He didn't even look like a real person. Yeah. Super nice guy, by the way.

Sweet guy. Like, does not make sense when you talk to him his personality that he's such a murderer. I think he had the wrong woman

in his life, as I recall. That was a part of it. I can't believe that. Right? Nah. I think he's a pain guy. Yeah.

I think he got hooked on pain pills. Interesting, it'd be an interesting film. Well, it would be interesting. I think he's a pain guy. Yeah. I think he got hooked on pain pills. Interesting. It would be an interesting film. Well, it would be interesting because I think, have you seen The Smashing Machine? I haven't. I will. I'll watch it.

That's why you don't know. He was addicted to pain pills. Yeah, I knew that. Pain killers. I knew that. Yeah. And that's what happened. So what happened to him is very related to your series.

Yeah. I'm going to look at it because someone sent it to me. Dwayne sent it to me. He was obsessed with them. It's a very interesting story because at one point in time when they were following him, they were following him because they thought they were following this unstoppable force in pride, which was the rival organization to the UFC. Yeah, that's him in his prime.

Dude. What a stud, huh? He was fucking people up. Look at him down there. How much? That's what he fought. That's me's him in his prime. Dude. What a stud, huh? He was fucking people up. Look at him down there. How much? That's what he fought. That's me interviewing him. What?

Yeah. That's 1997. Oh, shit. Yeah. Do you remember that interview? Yeah, I do. Yeah. Where was that?

I'm not sure. I only did a few of these back then. Isn't it wild that it- I did it from 1997 to late into 1998, and then it became, it wasn't cost effective. I was losing money, and I was like, I did it. It was fun. But wait, that was a UFC?

Was that UFC then? That was UFC, yeah. I was the post-fight interviewer for the UFC from 97 to 98, and then I quit, and then I'm doing news radio, and then I wound up doing Fear Factor. And then Dana White contacted me and was getting me tickets to the fights. I was like, oh, this is amazing.

The fights are in Vegas now. Because my friend Eddie and I, we'd always had this dream. Because we always loved the sport. But we were like, you know what would be amazing? If these fucking billionaire dudes just fell in love with the sport and dumped a bunch of money into it. And that's exactly what happened that's exactly what happened and uh so when they said that they had actually done that i was like oh that's fantastic and so i went and i did some press for them and and then uh i started asking dana about fights i was like have you ever do you know about this guy

do you know what this guy fights in japan do you know about this and that he's like and he goes you want to do commentary did he know that you knew so much about it i don't know i don't know what this guy fights in japan you know about this and that he's like and he goes you want to do commentary did he know that you knew so much about it i don't know i don't know what he knew you know he knew eventually once we started talking i was saying i trained jujitsu five days a week and you know i'm obsessed with the sport but look at me with all that hair you look great oh you still look great joe thank you very much but you look great, Joe. Thank you very much. But you look great there, too. I should have. Different chapters. UFC 15. UFC 15. Oh, shit. 1997.

But see, my theory, being a big boxing fan, we need a couple of billionaires to buy boxing. And it almost happened with DAZN. I don't know if you follow, like, this guy Lem Belitnik, the— I didn't follow it, no. A Russian oligarch, basically, gave Eddie Hearn a shitload of money and said, roll up boxing. And I always felt like one guy could have rolled up boxing because it's, you know, it's controlled by— there's Al Heyman, there's Bob Arum, and there's now his own Eddie Hearn. Golden Boy. Huh?

Golden Boy. Yeah, and Golden Boy is lurking around. But it's actually an asset that if you look at what it's all worth, it's conceivable that one billionaire could come in and for, I don't know what the number is, couple of billion, buy out everyone, roll it up and create one international boxing league, kind of like what UFC has done. It's hard, but if they did it, it's almost like boxing now. It's like if there were four different NFL football leagues. So there wasn't one Super Bowl, Lombardi Trophy. There wasn't one UFC belt. How many, like, people don't understand that.

Like, oh, I'm a UFC, I'm a WBO 140-pound champion. He's an IBF 140-pound, what? It's too, like, if one person could roll it up. I've asked Dana several times to do it, to roll it up. How much would it cost? I mean, I would think. You're pretty good at guessing missiles. I would say to really roll it up and buy all the belts and get Eddie.

Because I put Eddie in charge of it. I think he's the smartest guy in boxing, Eddie Hearn. The face of boxing at this point. Bob Arum, God love him. He's 90, whatever. Yeah, you got to get Eddie Hearn. I don't know what Al Heyman's experience is, what he really, De La Hoya, I don't. Eddie Hearn's like, to me, the guy.

I like him. Knows a lot about boxing. You take Eddie and Dana partner him up have re broker the whole deal right and probably One point two billion buys the whole thing and you then create a league. Okay Here's what I picked good idea and then how about this you? What's the biggest fight you could make in UFC right now? The biggest fight.

Or a huge fight. The biggest fight. Well, Francis Ngannou just left. That would be the biggest fight. If you could get Francis Ngannou versus Jon Jones. Jon Jones-Ngannou, right? Yeah. I think that would be the biggest fight in history.

What's your best venue? Is it Vegas? Does it matter? Madison Square Garden? Vegas is kind of like Madison Square Garden. You can't go wrong with Vegas or Madison Square Garden. Okay, so let's go to Madison Square Garden just because I'm from New York, right? Okay.

So you have that fight, and let's think about the biggest fight in boxing right now. Is it, I don't know. terence crawford's talking about fighting canelo crawford canelo that would be the biggest at 140 150 no no 150 no he's gonna go up to 68 okay i was talking about him like you're gonna go up to 68 that's crazy i i have that let's say that could happen i it's hard for me to imagine that happening right from 147 What did he just find out 147 mm-hmm? Okay? What he said he met canelo. He's like he's kind of my height. Yeah, okay? And he's like just give me shorter. Yeah, he goes just give me time to put on some weight, okay? He goes I wouldn't do it immediately all right. He goes, but I like six months

I really put I don't know man mean, look, Canelo's a monster. He's a monster. And his power, the fact that the guy knocked out Kovalev at 175, his power's unstoppable. But. So let's say that fight happens. You've got Canelo Crawford at whatever weight. Right. And you've got Jones.

Ngannou. Ngannou, right? So you fill up the garden. I don't know who goes first. Oh, my God. You have both fights in one night? Okay. The ring is an octagon.

You have the UFC fight. You're there. Whole thing. Fight ends. The premier fight. The ring lifts up. The octagon lifts up. Flips over.

Drops a boxing ring down. Yes. Drops a boxing ring down. Yes. Drops a boxing ring down. And in one night, one league, Dana owns all of it. I pitched him this in Mexico. How drunk were you? Drunk. I'm like, you don't understand.

And he's kind of going for it. But why not? Combat sports. Roll them up and, like, clean it up. Yeah. Because boxing is fucked up. Well, maybe the Saudis. I mean, who has more money than them?

And they're also doing a lot of boxing events now. Like, Tysa Fury versus Francis Ngannou. Isn't that in Saudi Arabia? Yes. Yeah. So they've had some major fights in Saudi Arabia. And they have a lot of money. They could do that.

Maybe someone's listening right now. And they'll go, you know what? Hey, I like it. Let's broker a deal. Have you seen the line in Saudi Arabia? Do you know what that is? Yes. So I was just, I was just, I was just in Europe and I had lunch with this guy, Saudi guy. Who's he's like, what do you do?

He's like, well, I'm in charge of all the insurance for the line. And I'm like. So let's explain the line. I'm like, and then he started telling me, like this, you think like, we think we know what money is. This is where the money is. So what this is,

is some mega city that's many miles long that they're building that's many miles long, that they're building that's all completely integrated, right? Yeah, to the middle of nowhere. So it's like one building. It's like a- No roads. Look at this.

Read that. No roads, cars, or emissions. It will run on 100% renewable energy, and 95% of the land will be preserved for nature. People's health and well-being will be prioritized over transportation and infrastructure, unlike traditional cities. That might be amazing to visit. But fuck that.

Nine million people. It's in the middle. They're building this thing. And it's like, I don't know. Look how cool it looks. Oh, it's insane. Scroll down, Jimmy. Like those photos.

Like, look at that. But you can see actual construction. They're building it now. Like I saw there's a whole city, you know, a couple of thousand workers living out there in these little air conditioned cubicles. This guy was showing me. This sort of brings us. Look at this. It's amazing.

That's insane. That's so Star Wars. They're building that shit. That is so insane looking. A revolution in civilization. Nine million. It might be dope to get a fucking spot there to visit. Well, it's like Dubai, right?

Like when Dubai, remember when they were building the palm tree islands and everyone thought it was crazy? Look at what it looks like inside. It is. It's happening. Autonomous services. Look, you got drones that are fucking delivering you food. Bro, that might be sick.

Look how high it is. Look at it. It's higher than the Empire State Building. It's 200 miles wide. It's happening. Oh, my God. Mirror glass facade. I want to see the Black Mirror episode. Bro, this literally is science fiction.

Science fiction turned reality. Saudi Arabia is going off. But it's what we were talking about before. If you have endless money, like with the nuclear submarines and the battleships, if you have endless money, you can get a lot of cool shit done. But what's disturbing to you

and I think to I as people that you like to think about everybody, like where's this money coming from? Taxes? Why aren't we putting an enormous amount into new schools? Why aren't we putting an enormous amount into new schools? Why aren't we putting an enormous amount into cleaning up communities and stopping crime? Why are we putting an enormous amount into health care?

Because the companies that make the weapon systems are not going to let it happen. It's just this this ecosystem of money. ecosystem of money, I think it was Truman, it was either Truman or Roosevelt, who said, be careful because we're going to have an economy that is forever interconnected to our military. It was Eisenhower and his departing speech. Eisenhower, right? Yeah. We have an economy that is now linked to the military-industrial complex. So you can't separate them. You can't turn it off.

But I'm not even saying turn it off. Turn it down. I'm saying if you have enough money to send how many billion dollars to Ukraine, where was that money when we needed infrastructure in cities? Where was that money when we needed better education? But where was it? Where was it? But where was it? It's crazy that we prioritize certain things to the tune of just insane amounts of money.

It's crazy. No one's asking this question. Okay, this is not even a commentary on whether or not we should be funding Ukraine. I'm just saying if you can do that, why haven't you looked at the state of emergency that exists in many of the cities in America? Oh, fuck yes. It's outrageous. It should be a statement.

It should be on the front of everybody's lips. It should. And if you can put 20 nuclear missiles with warheads, guidance systems, propulsion systems on a billion-dollar submarine, 20 missiles, and put them on however many subs one of which being detonated means we're done anyway why can't we take two or three of those fucking missiles and do something here's the thing according to what's going on in ukraine because we we don't have to because they're doing both they're doing both they're funding ukraine and they're building these weapon systems i don't think it has to be an either or or you even have to like have less of them but it's just like where did you guys get all this money and why did you use it for stuff that we need that's crazy i mean

i understand that it's all inflation i understand i understand it's caught with the problems that it causes spending all this money and just printing all this money i get it but i'm saying like maybe there would be an overall net benefit for the country and for all the human beings involved. How many less people would we have that were addicted to opiates or they had a better situation in their life? And how much of that could be fixed if we invested money in it? How many lives can we save? How many people's lives can we enhance how many trajectories of their life could we completely change for the better forever i bet a fuckload yeah i bet a fuckload for sure and if they just invested in people the way invest in other shit but i thought about that like like

if you could actually see what it was like when we when we started like the the literal if you get into the weeds on how we armed Ukraine, right? So you've got a bunch of 20-year-old Ukrainian, whatever, kids, college students, electricians, plumbers, whatever they were doing, the trucks pull up and the equipment that gets presented to them, night vision goggles, drones, drone technology, you know, Kevlar body suits, the weapon systems and the clothes and the value of that. And you think about we're just we're giving it. OK, I understand why we're giving it. But think about those trucks rolling up and the amount of money being handed through equipment to young Ukrainian men. What comparable value or asset we're giving to young American

men of the same age, it just doesn't happen. But we can do it. We can fly all the way over there and deliver it. I mean, the amount of money we're putting into the hands of all these young of money we're putting into the hands of all these young soldier slash men from Ukraine compared to what that money could do in our cities. It's worth I think talking about. It is worth talking about. It's not some radical socialist idea that we should fix cities. It's in everybody's best interest. Also just for the human race, It's in everyone's best interest the world would be better off if there was less people who are losing

Yes, what's the best way to stop that give them a start a better start to their life? So what's the best way to do that? You have to improve upon community somehow? I'm not an expert in this but I recognize like that's a giant issue I don't know what you would do, but I would imagine there's got to be some strategies to improve things Well schools are good. Yeah like schools parks community centers Counseling places where people can have healthy food schools and teachers and teach them things Yeah, you know have them have places where you know people could teach them, you know, whatever it is

things outside of how to play music, martial arts. You know, the more people can learn, they have opportunities to do things, the better off everyone's going to be. The more safe they feel, the better off everyone's going to be. The more human beings that have a better shot at having an enjoyable life, the better off we'll all be. Go Joe. But the fact that we don't think about it that way. Everybody just goes about their business and thinks about themselves but then complains about all these problems that are happening in our in our cities while you're got a ukraine flag in your fucking twitter bio that you know it's wild it's wild god it's weird i mean yeah and and like i

just go back to the time in pearl harbor when i was getting toured around that sub and I'm just trying to count how I'm trying to do the math in my head. Yeah. How much does it. Yes. It's beautiful. Are you going to do a piece on this? Are you going to do. do, I want to, and so then it starts getting like, you go down the rabbit hole of it and you look up the 10 biggest arms companies, weapons manufacturers, and you start looking up the CEO pay packages and like, you start getting a sense

of how, like, it gets pretty dark pretty fast. Yeah, look up, like, you know, just... Satan's real. I mean, it's, this whole conversation started when I'm like, well, okay, I learned this about Big Pharma because, okay, you know, I've heard conspiracy theories on Big Pharma and be careful. But until I really went deep with Purdue, I never really—like, I understood it intellectually, but I never viscerally felt it. Like, oh, shit, this is real. This isn't some left-wing conspiracy theory that there's greedy people out there manipulating the FDA. No, this is actually fucking real.

And they got away with it. And they got away with it. And I'm not saying that I support the fuck out of our troops. And I have. And I do. Like, my father was a Marine. The time I've spent working in that space, 100%, yes, support. However, when I see all the other people that are making money off of the backs of, like, at the end of the day,

money off of the backs of like at the end of the day what I observed when I went to Iraq was not big technology out there and you know saving the day these were 25 year old men like kicking indoors fighting a war that nobody cared about back home anyway because it was over there so when I see like all this money and all this tech being thrown into systems that like, I don't know, are we ever going to really use this shit? Because if we do, it's game over anyway. I see all these people making so much money. I'm like, this feels like we're in the same waters that we were swimming in when we were dealing with purdue pharma yeah so yeah i would like to do something in this space well listen uh painkillers fucking

fantastic it's really good like everything you do you've done so many fucking great movies man lone survivor is incredible you know you're the shit so appreciate you very much thank you for being here and ladies and gentlemen please watch watch it. It's on Netflix. It's fucking great. Fuck yeah. Thank you. All right. Bye.