Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan
Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by
night, all day. What's happening, man? How are
you? I'm good, how are you? I'm great. I watched
your documentary, The Alabama Solution, last
night, and it was wild. It's very, very disturbing.
I'm kind of shocked I hadn't heard more about
it, you know, because it's such a terrible...
terrible story. It's just an unbelievably awful
situation. And I think you covered it really
well. It's very, very heartbreaking. Yeah. Thanks
for watching it. Yeah. It's sort of a question
of why people don't know about things that are
happening with our tax dollars in our backyards.
Are there things that we don't want to know?
There's a reason why people sort of drive by
prisons on the... highway and they see the little
metal sign and it says, you know, XYZ Correctional.
And they probably think, as I did for many years,
well, I'm sure it's not great back there, but
it doesn't need to be great. And if anything
terrible was happening back there, somebody would
probably tell me about it. But because of the
secrecy that surrounds prisons, you know, we
treat them sort of like black sites. There's
no way for us to really look inside. So the press
doesn't get let in and the public doesn't understand
what's happening. And we know that. You know,
when you give people total control over other
people, bad things happen. Bad things happen
every single time. And this is one of the worst
things. What's really terrifying is the sheer
numbers of people that died there with no investigation.
That's what's really terrifying. Yeah. Because,
you know, you even detail that at the end, like
since then, how many people have died. And it's
just like, good Lord, you're thousands. Yeah.
Well, there's an attorney general in Alabama
named Steve Marshall who's always run on like
tough on crime strategies and saying, you know,
we got to lock more people up and people who
are in prison for violent crime should potentially
never get out of prison ever. And he says in
the film, as you remember. I ask him about the
nature of crime, and he says, well, I think there
are evil people in this world, people who have
absolutely no regard for human life. And this
is a guy who's presided over a system that's
killed, that's led to the deaths of 1 ,500 people
just since we started making the film. So this
question of, like, who are the good guys and
who are the bad guys and, you know, what's the
nature of... of cruelty? What's the nature of
punishment? Are we putting people there to try
to make them better, rehabilitate them? Are we
putting them there because they're drug addicts
and we're trying to get rid of them as opposed
to rehabilitate them or as opposed to try to
get them off of drugs? So obviously, prisons
have become pretty much a catch -all for the
ills of society. So if you have mental illness,
much more likely to go to prison. Once you're
in prison, if you're mentally ill or you have
bad social skills, you're much more likely to
get into a scrape with a guard who probably isn't
trained to deal with somebody who's mentally
ill. And you're much more likely to get murdered,
which is what we saw happening in Alabama. Well,
you even – it's the old expression, who's going
to watch the watchers, right? Because one of
the things that you detail is very obviously
nonviolent people who – Spend all their time
writing and reading and they're getting retribution
because they're calling attention to the terrible
conditions at the prison. So the one guy with
glasses who was beaten blindly, what was his
name? Robert O. Council. I mean, there's so many
stories that you show in this documentary from
smuggled cameras. So these guys all get contraband
cameras. From the guards. From the guards, yeah.
The guards sell the phones to the men inside.
Which is also crazy. Yeah. I mean, there's so
many drugs in the Alabama state prison system.
And I spoke to one of the people who was incarcerated
there early on, on a contraband cell phone. And
I said, you know, where are all the drugs coming
from, the amount of drugs here? This is an incredible,
you know, human. You're seeing just high, high
percentage, maybe 80 % of the people are addicted
to drugs, many of whom were not addicted to drugs
before they came in. And how are you getting
all the cell phones? And the guy looked at me
like I was stupid. And he said, you know, we
don't leave, right? And I thought, oh, I get
it. The people that come and go are the guards.
Those are the ones that go out. They get the
packages. They bring them in. And I've spoken
to guards who said, you know, we make. $36 ,000
a year without the drugs, without the cell phones.
So, of course, we got to sell the cell phones
and the drugs because that takes us up to $70
,000 or $75 ,000. Oh, God. Yeah. So what are
the main drugs these guys are addicted to? What
are they getting them? Well, there's – originally,
right, it was sort of more traditional drugs
and people were using heroin and using – whatever
they could get a hold of. But as the drugs have
gotten more complicated and easier to bring in,
now they can actually put – there's a drug called
Flaco, which is a very significant problem there,
fentanyl obviously also. But these drugs can
be brought in on a piece of paper. So somebody
could send you a letter and it could be in the
letter. They can actually put the drug into the
paper. Oh, sort of like acid when they put acid
on paper? Yeah. And so – You know, there's this
effort to kind of stop that. But then does it
lead to people being unable to communicate with
their loved ones? Ultimately, the easiest way
to get the drugs is for the officers to sell
the drugs. And so, you know, we say, and I think
it's sadly true that the Alabama Department of
Corrections, and it's not just in Alabama, but
obviously we use that as the lens through which
we saw incarceration more generally. But the
Alabama Department of Corrections. is the largest
law enforcement agency in the state of Alabama,
and it's also the biggest drug dealing operation.
You know, you're much more likely to die of an
overdose inside the prison than you are out on
the street in Alabama. Really? Statistically?
Yeah. Oh, my God. Oh, boy. You know, one of the
things that is... What was very heart -wrenching
is this callous approach. You showed at the one
time where all these prisons went on strike.
So they all communicated with each other through
these contraband cell phones. They all got from
the guards. So I guess it's ubiquitous throughout
the state. It's not just this one. Correct. And
these people on the radio were like, well, it's
prison. It's supposed to suck. Maybe if they
had saw your film, they wouldn't have such a
cavalier attitude about it. It's that attitude.
It's like these are human beings and some of
them barely did anything. Like one guy that wound
up dying from you think they did something to
or they think they did something to a cigarette
that they gave this guy. All he did was break
into an abandoned building. He didn't steal anything.
Entering an unoccupied building. Yeah. His name
is James Sayles. I mean, I don't even know if
he broke in, right? It was unoccupied. It might
have even been open. Yeah, it said entering.
So he entered a building that he wasn't supposed
to enter, and he got 15 years in a cage. And
then on his way out, at least they're inferring
that they killed him. Because he had too much
information about what was going on inside and
he was going to get out. Yeah, this goes back
to the story of a woman who we had met and her
son. When we were first communicating with the
men using these contraband cell phones and they
were telling us what was going on inside the
prison. inside the various prisons. In the early
days, we couldn't believe it because the way
we got into the prisons to begin with is I had
gone down to Alabama because I was always interested
in incarceration and the problems of that system
and the justice system. I made other films about
the justice system. I was always curious about
Alabama because it's sort of famously maybe the
worst prison system in the country, but it mirrors
a lot of others. And my daughter was 14 at the
time, Jeremy, and she said, you know, I'm reading
this book by a guy named Anthony Ray Hinton,
and it's a book about his wrongful imprisonment
in Alabama, and maybe you should read this with
me. So we ended up reading the book together,
and then we both sort of just spontaneously decided
to take a road trip to Montgomery because...
which didn't know anything about it, had never
been there. She was growing up in New York and
it was just not in her frame of reference. So
we went down there and we met a man who was the
first black prison chaplain in the state of Alabama,
Chaplain Browder. And I said, well, I'm really
curious about what's going on in the prisons.
And he said, well, you should just come in with
me. And I said, well, I'm a filmmaker. They're
not going to let me just walk into the prison
in Alabama. And he said, well, just don't come
in as a filmmaker. You just don't have to bring
a camera. Just come in and talk to some of the
guys. So I went in to film. Ultimately, we were
allowed to film ultimately in one of the prisons.
And when we were in there to film this revival
meeting, just because we were lucky enough to
find a warden who felt like, you know, he wanted
to show. an example of how Christianity was active
and important in the prison system, which I agreed
with. But then while we were in there filming
with like five cameras, which was just unheard
of, the men inside couldn't believe that there
were any cameras in there. And they started taking
us aside and saying, listen, what they're showing
you here is a very curated... version of what's
going on in this prison. You have to get into
these other buildings. You've got to see what's
going on in that dorm over there called the behavior
modification dorm where guys have been killed
by guards. And you've got to look in that dorm
where people have been in solitary confinement
for five years at a time. You know, don't let
them show you just what they want to show you.
And I felt much safer, you know, even though
the warden had said to us, when you go in there.
You know, don't talk to any of the men. They're
all very dangerous. I immediately felt safer
talking to the inmates than I did talking to
any of the guards. And when we left, it was really
because we got kicked out, right? We start, you
saw in the beginning of the film, we sort of
start getting nosy and we start trying to look
in some of these other areas. And then they shut
down the filming. They throw us out. And then
we thought, well. Maybe we're stuck now. How
are we going to make a film about this? We feel
we have to because we're the only people that
know what's going on in here, but they're not
going to let us back. So it was then that we
found out that there was this network of men
inside who had access to these contraband cell
phones who were documenting what was going on.
So that was our way of getting into those buildings
that we couldn't see inside. And one of the first
things we... learned was one of the guys inside,
Melvin Ray, texted us to say, hey, you know,
this guard, it was a guard that we had been tracking
already who was a particularly violent guard.
He just beat somebody very badly and he's now,
that person, the victim is at UAB Hospital. So
we jumped in a car and we went to UAB Hospital
and just walked up. I just put my iPhone in my
pocket and we just walked up to the... intensive
care unit. And when we got there, we found that
this young man, Stephen Davis, had died from
his injuries. And as we started to get deeper
into it, we went and visited his mother because
we didn't even know if she knew that she had
lost her son. But in fact, she had been with
him when he passed away. She had sort of turned
off the life support. And we said, We want to
make a film about this. We're trying to tell
the story. And she immediately said, I'm in.
I want to help you. I don't want this to happen
to any other mothers. You know, and this is a
very nice white lady from Uniontown, Alabama,
with an oxygen tank. I mean, she's not somebody
that you would see ordinarily as kind of a heroic
person. But when she loses her son, she really
becomes so activated. And she ends up. telling
us the story. And then she says, look, they're
lying to me already. My son just died last night
and they're already calling me and telling me
things about how he was the one that attacked
guards. And none of this is true. This all seems
like it's fake. So teach me how to record my
phone calls. So this older woman suddenly became
a really important partner in making the film.
And this gets back to your question about Stephen
Davis. So her son, who was a drug addict, Right.
Didn't kill anybody, but was in a car when a
drug deal went bad. He went to try to buy drugs
and his friend went in the house and they had
a fight and somebody got shot. And then he got
arrested and was charged with murder because
that's how the felony murder statute works. And
so here you have a drug addict who goes to prison
in Alabama and is in the highest security. prison
there and is targeted by a particular guard who
is especially violent and is just beaten to death
in front of 70 witnesses. And then, of course,
as we go through the film, we start tracking
that in our investigation and we start. looking
into the cover -up and why they lied about how
he had died and how they scrambled the witnesses
and how the Department of Corrections is organized
so that they prevent people from finding out
what really happened to their kids or their loved
ones and they avoid liability and so on. And
there was one person that we ended up hearing
from, this guy James Sales, who originally tells
just... The police side of the story just says,
well, you know, yeah, it's exactly the way that
the guard said. But then he kind of hints on
the phone. Listen, when I get out of here, I'll
tell the real story. Now, do they have access
to these communications? Is there a way they
could be hacking into it and know that sales
had said that to you? Well, the person that he
said it to was the lawyer for Sandy Ray. So he
was supposed to be on a. private attorney call.
But we do think that the Department of Corrections
doesn't abide by that. I think they do listen
to attorney calls. Sales didn't say exactly on
the phone what he was going to say, but I think
they knew that he was a problem because he was
a good person. I mean, Sales, the one who entered
an unoccupied building and was locked up for
15 years for that, was obviously a decent person.
That's why he says, you know, when I get out,
I'll speak to that. I'm not going to lie to that
man's mother. But right now, this is their world,
bro. I'm not going to say more. I'm not going
to put myself in their shoes. But just by saying
that might have been his death sentence. He also,
as he started to get closer to getting out, you
know, because he was killed a month before he
was going to get out. And so as he started getting
closer to release, he just started to get more.
and more angry and started to say things to guards
about like, you know, you know what I've seen
in here and I'm going to, you know. And then
lo and behold, he gets found in his cell dead.
And, you know, he's bleeding from orifices in
his body. And it was pretty clear that he was
given what they call a hot shot, which is they
give you a cigarette that's got something bad
on it and it can kill you. Boy. So when you first
started – when you first showed up with cameras,
did you know basically what was going on? Do
you have an understanding of what was going on?
Like what were you attempting to do when you
got there? Were you just going to try to investigate
and figure it out? Or did you already have reports?
We already – we knew a bunch of stuff. We knew
because we had had this – we had visited some
prisons as volunteers. And I had gone on the
death row. with my filmmaking partner, Charlotte
Kaufman. We had gone into Easterling. We had
gone originally into Holman Prison where they
have the death row. And we went in there with
the chaplain. And the lieutenant came down and
said, you know, unfortunately, we're so... understaffed
right now, which is an understatement, that,
you know, we don't have anybody to take you around.
But, you know, chaplain, I know you want to show
your friends around the death row. So, you know,
just go for it. So we ended up walking around
the death row for like two or three hours just
talking to men. And those men were very helpful.
They weren't, you know, we weren't talking to
irrational people. We weren't talking to, you
know, they're... There are people who were trying
to get the story out. And so we knew going in
that there were a lot of bad things happening.
We didn't know exactly what. And then when we
went into Easterling and the men started calling
us aside and saying, you know, they beat me so
bad I defecated on myself. Or, you know, I just
saw there were five stabbings this week and none
have been reported. We started to realize that
it was really a huge crisis, but it was just
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months. So it's crazy that you're relying on
these guards to get in the phones that they're
using to expose the crimes of the guards. So
and it's like the guards are aware of the phones
because they provided them to the inmates and
they're contraband. They're not supposed to have
them, but yet they all do. And so they have to
ignore it if they want to keep selling them phones.
Well, another way of looking at it is that there's
so little accountability that they don't actually
think they're going to get in trouble for anything.
And they're kind of right. And if you remember
that guard who kills Stephen Davis, Rod Gadsden,
this guy might be the most violent prison guard
in America. He's still working in the Alabama
state prison system. After he has a starring
role against his will, I'm sure, but after he
has a starring role in our documentary, which
has been seen by millions of people, they still
have him employed there. They still have him
interacting with people. Hired to a higher position.
Yeah, yeah. He's been promoted twice and now
he's up for another promotion. So I think to
some extent the guards just say, well, you know,
I can do whatever I want. I can sell the cell
phones. And by the way, not all the guards are
bad, right? There are guards that we met there.
who were pretty heartbroken because they went
into the system hoping to make change or trying
to maybe they wanted to work in the police department
and there weren't any jobs. But in their town,
they had the ability to work in a prison. So
they kind of went in there and described to us
that they wanted to help people with addiction.
They wanted to see if they could help rehabilitate
people. But when they got in there, they realized
very quickly that was not. what was in the offing.
That wasn't an opportunity for them. So the guy,
this Roderick guy that beat Stephen to death,
the story was that Stephen had some sort of an
implemented weapon, correct? Yeah, that he had
a plastic knife. Right. Was there any evidence
of that? He had some kind of plastic thing that
he had made. It did not appear to be anything
very serious because... The reason he had made
it is because somebody had called him gay. And
you have to fight your way out of that, right?
He wasn't gay, as it turns out. You have to fight
your way out of that? So if somebody calls you
gay, you have to fight them? Yeah. In other words,
you can't put up with that because otherwise
they're going to turn you into what they call
a sissy. They're going to turn you into somebody
that gets raped. And there's so much rape in
the prison that the DOJ report that came out
said that there's rape occurring at all hours
of the day and night in all areas of the prison.
So rape is such a significant problem. And when
Stephen Davis was in there and was accused of
being gay, he had to make a show of fighting
the person that was calling him gay. He never
went after the guards or anything like that.
And everybody that the lawyer spoke to, a dozen
witnesses who had seen what happened, all of
them said as soon as the guards came in, he immediately
laid down on the floor and put his weapon about
15 feet away from him, put this plastic knife.
15 feet away. And then the guards came in and
just started beating him, even though there was
no threat. And the guards would say, Gadson was
saying to Stephen Davis, you know, quit resisting,
quit resisting. And he wasn't resisting at all.
And that's what all the witnesses said. So they
just have to say that so they yell it out? Yeah,
it's almost, I think it was almost like, it was
almost just a warning to everybody else. Like,
look, I can do anything that I want. I can say
that he's resisting. Isn't it funny? You know,
and the way, you know, the way he kills him.
He stomps on his head with his size 15 boot.
This is a guy who's almost 300 pounds. I think
he's about six foot five. And he's been implicated
in 24 other excessive force cases. And the attorney
general in Alabama every single time is defending
the guard. How many other people died in those
cases? There have been a lot of other injuries.
I think that there have been two people who've
died out of the 24 or 25 cases that we know about.
But there are a lot of just maimings. There are
a lot of situations where people are just damaged,
often permanently. You saw what happened at Kinetic
Justice when he, you know, Robert Earl Counsel,
when he leads a nonviolent work strike. The guards
come and attack him and he loses sight in one
of his eyes. He's dragged out of the cell. There's
a huge amount of blood. So, you know, especially
these guys who are leading a nonviolent effort
to try to improve conditions, they're always
met with violence. Right. He was the guy that
was at the head of this strike. Yeah. And then
the strike really highlights something that I
think. a lot of people are unaware of is how
many industries actually use the prison system
essentially for slave labor. Sure. Yeah. I mean,
that was a shock to me, I think, is that, you
know, I guess we all sort of assume, well, if
you're in prison and they ask you to mop the
floor, you need to help serve the meals or something,
you know, that's a reasonable thing to do. I
think what we don't realize is that those people
are leased out to the governor. to the mansion
where the governor lives. Crazy. That was crazy.
Yeah, yeah. People that were denied parole were
allowed to be on the grounds of the governor's
mansion doing like groundwork. Exactly. Landscaping
and stuff. Yeah, yeah. And beyond that, they're
used for labor in industry, right? So those guys
are sent out in the mornings in vans. They go
work at McDonald's. They work at Burger King.
They work at Kentucky Fried Chicken. They work
at the Hyundai plant. They work at the Budweiser
distributorship. And it's all sort of under the
heading of, well, this is good for the guys.
They get to get out into the community. But it's
a forced labor situation because if they don't,
if they don't accept those assignments, then
they're going to be punished. And they're going
to be punished with long stays in solitary confinement.
They're going to be given disciplinaries so that
their sentences can be extended. are often just
beaten for that. So it's really an extension.
I've heard you on your show talk about the Jim
Crow laws, which led to convict leasing. And
what we're seeing in Alabama now... It's not
like convict leasing. It is exactly convict leasing.
They are just selling the labor of incarcerated
people to industries. For pennies on the dollar
of what you would get if you had to pay people.
Yeah. I mean they get paid well. They get paid
well. Yeah. But not the – you're saying they,
meaning the prisons, get paid well. Yes. But
not the prisoners. Correct. The prisoners get
any money? They get a little money. For example,
the guy you see who's driving a sanitation truck,
Danny Dandridge. describes how he's getting paid
$2 a day. Now, is that standard across the board
for all those other jobs? I think for that job,
they get paid a little bit of money. And then
on top of that, they're charged for the cost
of the van that takes them to the workplace.
They're charged for the uniform that they have
to wear. So it's sort of like they're kind of
fees and fines that knock everything down to
almost nothing. And in a lot of cases, The $2
a day is a lot. They're required to do lots of
work unpaid in the prisons. They do all the construction.
You could see that even the drug dorm where the
counselor decided to leave his job, there was
a professional drug counselor in one of the prisons.
And nobody replaces him. And so Raoul Poole,
one of the guys in our film, just starts running
the drug dorm. That's a drug dorm that's getting
money from the federal government to pay for
drug treatment program in prison. And that money
is just not going anywhere or money is just going
into the coffers of whoever is running the prison
system. And is there any accountability for all
the money? Is there any – do they do an audit
of the money? Is it just – There really is not
any meaningful accountability. There's like the
state auditor who we actually interviewed and
spent a lot of time with. just sort of threw
up his hands. You know, he said, there's just
no way for me to keep track of this money. And,
you know, for example, they got this incredibly
horrible set of findings from the Justice Department,
right? The DOJ went into the Alabama state prison
system and did an investigation because, for
reasons I can explain, they're kind of incredible.
But anyway, they went in there and they investigated
the whole prison system, which I think they'd
never done before. You know, usually they investigate.
an individual prison or something like that.
And they went in and issued a report that said,
this is beyond the pale. There's horrific things
that are happening in your prisons, people being
murdered, and there's the highest rate of drug
overdose and highest rate of rape. And Alabama's
response was to say, well, we think that's just
anecdotal and you don't know what you're talking
about. And then they decided that their solution
the Alabama solution that we sort of ironically
talk about in the title of the film, the one
the governor talks about, is just to build new
prisons. And meantime, the DOJ did not say to
build any new prisons. The DOJ said, your problem
is with corruption and brutality, and you're
operating really a criminal enterprise. And therefore...
You need to address the underlying problems.
And Alabama's response was, well, the DOJ says
the prisons are no good. So we got to build new
ones. Well, that, you know, so they get a massive
contract. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we always
call it the Alabama Department of Construction
because they don't really change anything unless
they have the opportunity to build something.
And that's really good for all the governor supporters
and all the other people who are, you know, in
the construction industry. And, you know. They've
now started construction on these massive new
prisons. Alabama is a tiny state. It's like a
smaller population, I think, than Norway. And
they've got a tiny budget, and yet they figure
out how to put together a multibillion -dollar
prison construction plan. They can't. fund it
at first. The governor announces she's going
to build these new prisons, which the DOJ did
not ask for, and are not going to solve the problem.
And they admit, by the way, that they're not
going to affect overcrowding, which is a huge
problem. The prisons are operating at like 200
% capacity. And, you know, when they're asked
about it, the head of the Department of Corrections...
They ask him, you know, is this going to affect
the overcrowding or is it just the same number
of beds? And he goes, no, it's the same number
of beds. You know, it's not going to affect overcrowding.
So they're building these massive new facilities.
The governor can't get them paid for. She can't
raise the money in a bond offering. So they go
after the COVID money that they got from the
government, which is not designed to build prisons,
right? It's very hard to argue that building
prisons is something that's going to relieve.
some other kind of health problem or whatever.
And then I think they get fined for that or you
have to pay a fine if you use government money
for a thing that's not supposed to be for. And
then when they start construction, they still
can't raise the money, but they start building
the new prisons even before they're authorized
by the legislature. That's how clearly it was
communicated that these prisons were going to
happen. You know, in other words, we had a crew
in Alabama that was watching this site of this
one massive prison that they were planning on
building. And there were just bean fields. And
it's quite beautiful, actually. And one day I
get a call from somebody and they say, we got
to start filming because there are 25 Earthmovers
here. And I said, well, that's impossible because
the legislature hasn't even approved the new
prison construction. And they said, well, the
prison construction companies know what's happening
and they're already spending hundreds of thousands
of dollars just to clear the site. So the fix
was in on this new prison construction. And the
governor announced that it was going to cost
$900 million to build three new prisons. So far,
they've broken ground and are far along on the
first prison. And it's up to $1 .3 billion. So
when you open that door, a whole lot of commerce
comes in. A whole lot of companies come in. And
they ask them, why was it so expensive? How did
it go from $300 million for one prison to $1
.3 billion for one prison and counting? And they
said, well, it's inflation. Meanwhile, I'm pretty
sure that the government is not going to say
that we got 400 percent inflation at the moment.
So it's kind of institutionalized thievery. It's
organized crime. Yeah. It means when you are
in charge of deciding what's crime and you're
running a state like Alabama. Yeah. Yeah. And
I think money in the justice system is a very
perverting factor. You know, I made this film,
this series called The Jinx. Great fucking series,
by the way. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Crazy.
Yeah. Like, you watch this going, what? Yeah.
Is this real? Yeah, me too. I mean, you know,
he's an incredible person to watch. But one thing
about him is... You know, that family's worth
$9 billion. This is not like a regular rich person
in America. This is an extra, super -duper rich
person in America. And he's killed three people
over 30 years and just walking around, gotten
away with it. Meantime, you have, you know, young
women moms in Brazos County Jail in Texas. You
know, our mutual friend Jeff Ross did a documentary
there. And he interviews the— girls that are
in there. And he says, what are you in here for?
And two of them say, I'm in here because I stole
baby formula. So, you know, that's a money. Money
means a lot in this equation. Yeah. Yeah. The
money stuff is is all over the place. You know,
it's that the perverting of the system with money
you see because, you know, for example. These
big prison companies like GeoGroup and CoreCivic
make money by having full prisons. They're private
prison companies. But there are lots of prison
– there are a lot of companies that provide services
to public prisons, to state prisons like Cisco
and all these companies that sell food there.
But everybody makes more money if the prisons
are full. And so you have the head of CoreCivic
just – did a shareholder call not too long ago.
And he's Henninger, I think his name is. And
they said, you know, what do you think, what's
the outlook? And he said, oh, with all the new
immigration prisons and all the prisons and all
the increased, you know, emphasis on law enforcement
and on incarceration, you know, this is the most
exciting time in my career. So, you know, you're
really building this prison industrial complex.
every day, especially right now, I think. And
all these people are doing, they're all doing
bad stuff. There's a company called Securus,
which is run by Tom Gores, who is a big team
owner, owns the Pistons, Detroit Pistons and
some other teams, and is a private equity guy
worth about $10 billion. And his company, Securus,
does communications for the prison systems. And
they made deals that have now been sort of exposed,
but they made deals with sheriff's departments
where they had jails. And they said, instead
of letting kids visit their parents in jail and
actually get to see them and hug them and maybe
have some kind of normalcy. let's install video
visit terminals. So the cover story was the video
visits are going to be great because you don't
have to drive across the state to see your loved
one. But the contract specifically said that
they had to replace in -person visits. So when
a kid went to go visit his dad, even if he was
20 yards away from him in the prison waiting
room, he had to use a video terminal, which cost
$12 .99 for 20 minutes. And he was not allowed
to see his dad in person. So that's an example
of – and that's in the contract. That's in the
Securus contract that said that they have to
eliminate the in -person visits. So when you
allow that for -profit motive to be driving things
in these like state institutions where theoretically
we should have some kind of like moral approach
that makes sense for society or can help community
or build. relationships or help people stay in
touch with their loved ones when they're incarcerated.
When you add that for -profit motive there, the
system is just designed to exploit. It just is
natural that all those people have to get, you
know, they all have, there's a kind of a value
to every visit. Every time a visit, you know,
every time a kid comes and visits a parent, it's
worth $12 .99. Well, why do it for free if you
can get $12 .99 for it? It's one of the darker
aspects of human nature in regards to our relationship
with money. That so many people, if unchecked,
if you give them the opportunity to make more
money at the expense of other people, they do
it. They just do it. They do it, especially under
the framework of a corporation. The framework
of a corporation allows you to have a diffusion
of responsibility because you don't think that
you're the one doing this horrible thing. It's
this thing that you work for and I'm just doing
my job. And also if you're involved in a corrupt
system and this is your job and you think of
these people as all good people that are part
of the corrupt system, it sort of minimizes the
horrible feelings that you have about that corruption.
You just dismiss it. I really believe – I've
heard you talk about the fusion of responsibility
before. I think it's such a huge part of what
drives all this is that you have people who don't
really have to ask themselves the hard question.
Am I the person that's exploiting somebody? Am
I the person that's overcharging a mom? Am I
the person that's charging somebody a crazy amount
of money for their medication or allowing somebody
to die from medical neglect? Because once you
have a corporation and you look at that org chart,
you know, you can see the org chart as, oh, that's
a nice orderly way of getting commerce to move
forward. But it's also... a thousand points of
responsibility. Every one of those persons just
takes a tiny measure of responsibility. Well,
I'm just in the accounting department. I mean,
I don't make the rules. I don't make the laws.
And you see that in the healthcare industry,
people... recording their calls with their healthcare
providers or their insurance companies saying,
oh, I'm sorry, I really can't answer. That's
not my job. Somebody else makes that decision.
And so when you have these massive organizations,
there's a way for very bad things to happen.
And it's like the death of a thousand cuts. And
it's also everybody's trying to maximize profit.
And when you're trying to maximize profit, You
just find some ways to justify things. Like your
main job is not to help people. These prisons
aren't rehabilitation centers. You're trying
to make – like you actually profit off people
becoming like functional members of society once
they get released. That would be amazing. Then
you'd have an incentive to make people better
people in prison. Like imagine if their profit
was based on people being rehabilitated, reentering
society and becoming functional – Proper members
of society where they contribute. Sure. Yeah.
I mean, the incentives are so they're so twisted.
Yeah, they're so twisted. It's like that saying
money is the root of all evil. It's not the root
of all evil. It's the root of most of it, though.
It's like a giant percentage of it. Maybe it's
75 percent of evil. The rest of it's like, what,
lust? Yeah. I mean, my anger, jealousy. Yeah.
That's the root of a lot of evil. You know, whatever,
whatever the other percentages. But money. 60
% maybe? Let's be charitable? It's the root of
a lot of fucking evil, man. And when you can
do it inside of this framework of a corporation,
it's so twisted because it's ubiquitous. It exists
in almost all industries. There's always, whether
it's the, like, this is the reason why people
celebrated when that healthcare executive was
shot. They were like, hey, man, fuck you guys.
Like, yeah, finally one of you guys got it. I
lost my dad. I lost my mom. I lost my sister.
You know, that kind of shit is in every fucking
industry. Yeah. Whether it's military industrial
complex, whether it's the health insurance complex,
whether it's pharmaceutical drug industry, when
you look at the Sackler family and what they
did with opioids. I'm sure you've seen the Netflix,
the Peter Berg Netflix painkiller series. Fucking
incredible. It's just incredible that that guy's
just walking around. You're responsible for the
death of who knows how many people. Because who
knows how many people that had relationships
with the people that got addicted also lost their
lives, also lost everything. Because you're dealing
with a brother or a mom that's completely lost
and addicted. Your life is hijacked now by this
situation. You've lost your dad. You've lost
your mom. You lost a spouse. Fuck. Yeah. I mean,
you know, I've heard you talk a lot about mental
health. And obviously there are a lot of causes
of mental health problems. And, you know, that
includes social media. It includes sort of alienation.
It includes a lot of things that are present
in society. But the prison industrial complex
and the – experience of having somebody incarcerated
has a huge impact on mental health. I think people
don't realize when you have 2 million people
locked up in these facilities and... Many of
them are just being traumatized every day, whether
they're seeing somebody get killed or they're
constantly in fear for their life. The idea that
those people are going to somehow be OK when
you want to let them out 10 years later and they're
going to rejoin society, you give them $50 and
a bus ticket and you say, hey, I hope you can
become a taxpayer. Meantime, they don't have
enough money to pay for one red roof in for one
night. They can't do anything. When they get
out of prison and then we say, well, why is there
such high recidivism? I guess that means they're
bad people. So let's put them back in. So the
mental health implications for the people that
are incarcerated are huge and the people who
are in their families, as you say. Imagine the
anxiety. You don't have any family members and
they're going to give you $50. And now you're
out and you have to figure out how to eat, how
to get a roof over your head and try to figure
out a way to earn money. Yeah. The $50. Yeah.
And there are ways to do it. If you go into the
– I mean all this sounds very dark and horrible
and it is. But there are a lot of positive developments
that you can see when you give them a chance
to grow in society. So for example, like I love
what you say about community, about the importance
of building community and seeing the country.
community. And if we're torturing people that
are in our community, if we're being cruel to
people that are in our community, what does it
say about us? What does it say about Christianity?
What does it say about God? What does it say
about forgiveness? And clearly, we see that there
are... so many instances where people are trying,
trying to do something better. There's a woman
named Erica in Alabama who was a mental health
professional. And she described to me what it
was like to try to give mental health services
to people who are incarcerated. And I was trying
to figure out, looking at these images of the
places that they keep people and these cells,
these solitary cells with just a little tray
slot. And they're in there for in a five -by
-eight room with no windows, and they could be
in there literally for years. And I said to her,
well, can you tell me, like, when you do a session
with somebody and you're trying to, you know,
talk to them about their suicidal ideation or
their various problems, you know, what does that
look like? How does that work? And she goes,
well, you know, it's a little uncomfortable because,
you know, I got to be on my knees. And I said,
wait, why are you on your knees? She said, oh,
well, I have to be able to talk through the tray
slot. And I said, so when you're giving a mental
health counseling session to somebody who's incarcerated,
you're not allowed to open the door. You're not
allowed to see, assuming that person's not like
having a violent fit or something like that.
You're not allowed to sit down across from them
and have that conversation. She said, no, no,
no. But it's OK. I just put my mouth up to the
tray slot. And I just thought. When you think
about the idea that that's going to be somehow
something that will give relief to somebody who's
really struggling with a mental health crisis
in prison, we're doing the absolute minimum.
We're checking the box that says, yeah, once
a month this guy has a psychiatric evaluation.
But nobody's taking a picture of that and showing
what it really looks like to have this nice young
lady, this idealistic young mental health person.
kneeling outside of a metal cell with, you know,
bloodstains on it, talking to somebody inside.
Through a food slot. Through a food slot. And
that's probably the only interaction this person
has with human beings other than the guards.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Who are very cruel. Yeah. And
you're alone in that cell, which is also terrible
for mental health. Like, there's nothing worse
for mental health than complete total isolation
with no access to anything. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Have you ever had experiences with people, friends
or family who've been incarcerated? Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Quite a few. What's that been like? Well,
I had this one friend that I used to do martial
arts with when I was a kid. And when I was probably
around 16, 16 or 17, he wound up going to jail.
I didn't know him that well. But I knew him as
this guy who competed in tournaments and, you
know, he would show up and train with us. And
he's just a pretty tough guy. He went into jail
and he came out, first of all, much bigger. He
was just like stacked with muscle. All of his
tattoos he burned off. So he had scars, like
these big keloid scars over all of his tattoos
now. And he was a completely different person.
like a violent animal, like a terrifying guy
to spar with. If you spar with him, you were
in a, it wasn't, there was nothing, no holding
back. Sparring, for the most part, when you like
people, you're hitting them only a certain percentage
of your strength. This guy was not doing any
of that. He was full blast with everything. It
was like a caged animal. And as I got to be closer
to him, I actually became closer to him after
he got out of prison. Than he was before. Because
I just spent more time sparring him. And hanging
out and training with him. And being in these
group classes with him. He started telling me
stories. About what it was like in jail. And
just fighting for his life. He had to take on
three guys. And he picked up a broomstick. And
he was beating these guys. He was just telling
me these crazy stories. Of guys trying to kill
him in jail. And he was in there for three years
for drug selling. And then he went right back
to selling drugs. And he eventually got arrested.
And I've told this story before. It's kind of
crazy. They found a guy that had every bone in
his body broken with hammers. And they kept him
awake by injecting him with cocaine. They kept
injecting him with cocaine. And then they cut
his arms off. They cut his hands off. And then
they cut his head off. And they found his body.
But it's like all of his bones have been shattered.
And this guy that I knew as a kid. Got arrested
for that. They never wound up trying him for
that. They brought him in for questioning. He
definitely knew something about it. He knew either
the people that did it or knew something about
it. It was all drug related and he was selling
cocaine. And then I lost touch with him after
that. That's a crazy story. Oh, yeah. I knew
quite a few guys like that. Because the world
of fighting, like people that are interested
in... and entering in competitions with people,
you get a lot of troubled people, a lot of very
angry people. You know, a lot of them that come
from violent households. They were beaten as
children or they were bullied as kids, depending
on where. I came from the most mild of those
environments. I didn't have anybody abusing me.
I lived in the suburbs of Boston. I lived in
Newton, which is a really nice neighborhood.
I just was interested in martial arts. And then
I was fascinated by this idea of bettering myself
through competition because it was so scary.
And then all of a sudden I'm around like hit
men. I knew one guy who was a hit man for Whitey
Bulger. And I would train him. I would teach
this guy how to do martial arts. And he was an
assassin. That's amazing. It was very strange.
I knew a bunch of organized crime figures, mostly
with the Irish mob. A lot of those guys came
and trained, and especially because they knew
some other guys that we knew that were – one
of my friends who was a professional boxer, and
he lived in South Boston. He was very tight with
a lot of these guys, so some of these guys came
to train with us. It was a very weird exposure
for me. I've never been around any of that. I
never had anyone in my family that went to jail.
No one was a – You know, no one was a criminal.
No one was a drug addict. No, there's nothing
really crazy. Yeah. And then all of a sudden
I was around a lot of these people that either
went to jail eventually or had been in jail.
Yeah. Because I think there's that question of.
People say, well, if you don't like the prison
system the way it is or if you don't think people
should get locked up forever, then you're just
soft on crime and obviously you're some kind
of snowflake. But clearly there's a role for
prison. There's a role for jail. The question
is whether we should be putting people into institutions
that just further. Damage them. Further re -traumatize
them. Right. Just making them hardened. They're
going to be worse criminals if they get out.
If and when they get out. Yeah. And there's no
emphasis on rehabilitation. So that's the thing.
It's like if you're releasing them back into
the street, like what are you doing to the rest
of society? If you're taking a person who's committed
a violent crime, making them way worse in jail
and then releasing them. This is like a slow
bomb. It's a slow -release bomb. And then also
they have no options because no one wants to
hire an ex -convict, especially someone who went
to jail for aggravated assault or something like
that. So it's very, very difficult for these
people and very, very difficult for society to
make a decision. You want to make a quick fix
of something. You want to protect people. Just
keep them in jail. Keep everybody in jail. But
there's zero emphasis on how to take a person
from – A completely broken childhood, broken
home, violence, drug addiction in the home, all
the chaos, completely being accustomed to violent
crime because it's all around you. It's in your
neighborhood. You imitate your atmosphere. And
then what do we do with these people? There's
no emphasis whatsoever on it. It's just using
them as human batteries to generate money. And
that's evil. That's what's really crazy. And
this is where people have subverted this idea
of – of incarceration being some sort of a rehabilitation
or correction, right? They call them correctional
facilities. You're not correcting anything. You're
just making money. You're just making money off
of people and you're taking advantage of the
fact that no one wants to pay attention to it
because society generally looks at people that
are criminals and have committed violent crimes
as like, oh, well, fuck them. Push them aside.
And look, there's some people. That I agree.
Yeah, fuck them. If there's people that have
killed a bunch of people and raped a bunch of
people and are constantly robbing people and
breaking into houses that are violent, yeah,
fuck those people. Fuck those people. But that's
a small percentage of what's in jail. A large
percentage is nonviolent drug offenders. And
that's where it gets really weird. It's like
so a person is deciding. You can have the drugs
that we sanction. You can have the drugs that
we tax. You can have these drugs. You can have
these prescription drugs. You can have this drug
that you buy in the liquor store that we call
alcohol, which is clearly a drug. You could buy
your cigarettes. You could buy your coffee. You
could get all these drugs that we like. Adderall?
You need Adderall. Andrew, I think you have a
little ADHD. Maybe you should use some fucking
speed, and we'll sell you that speed, and we'll
tax that speed. Anything else? We'll put you
in a cage because you're not following our rules.
And it's like a grown adult telling another grown
adult what they can or can't do with their life
is responsible for, what, 50 % of the people
that are in cages? That's kind of crazy. It's
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for something that we don't think, the average
person doesn't think they should be in prison
for for many, many, many years, like a drug crime
or being an addict basically, that those people
– that all those people have been let out already.
That somehow like prison activist people have
said, well, all the people that are in there
for drug crimes should be released. But it's
not – It's not really true. You have an enormous
criminalization of drug addiction. So you're
already making people sort of feel hopeless.
Then they're turning to drugs and then you're
putting them into cages. So like Steve Marshall,
for example, the AG in Alabama says, well, we've
already released all of the nonviolent criminals.
Right. So the only people that are locked in
there are the worst of the worst. But, you know,
that's. Clearly not true just because of sales
from your documentary. Yeah, of course. So you
have – and he was put into a maximum security
facility for entering an unoccupied building.
That's because there's sort of an inflation of
this concept of violence. So they will – in Alabama,
I think there are 44 different crimes that are
considered violent crimes. And they include crimes
that you and I would not consider violent. So
if somebody threatens somebody verbally like
most people do in arguments with people that
they're mad at or whatever but doesn't assault
somebody, that could be considered a violent
crime. If somebody enters a building with – whether
they steal something or not, that could be considered
a violent crime. And so it makes it easier just
to, as you say, like, I like that image of the
battery. I think about it as like sometimes like
the matrix that, you know, for Alabama to do
what it's doing, it's got to have 20 ,000 people
in suspended animation because that's how you
can use them for labor. That's how you can use
them to sell them stuff. That's how you can.
charge them for fees and fines, you know, that
you need that many people. I think they did a
terrible thing when they allowed private prisons.
I think it's a terrible thing. I think, like,
if you think about the people that founded this
country and the people that wrote the Constitution,
they had a great understanding of where, how
tyranny can emerge. And so they tried to create
a system in, again, 1776. Crazy to think that
we're still following those same rules today.
But they had a great understanding. Don't worry.
We're not following those rules. But the checks
and balances and make sure that one person couldn't
accumulate all of the power. Whoever first initiated
the policy of allowing and paying for private
prisons to exist in this country did not. think
it through like that at all, did not think of
incentives, did not think of how people always,
when given the chance to make more money, figure
out a way to justify making that more money and
come up with rules or regulations or carve -outs,
caveats, some reason why they can continue to
accelerate. And then you don't think about the
fact that prison guard unions and these private
prisons, these people that own them, actively
work to keep some laws on the books that maybe
the general public would not want to be illegal
anymore, certain things. And they do that just
so they can keep their prisons full, so they
can keep making more money. So then they take
the money that they get from these private prisons
where they're using people as human batteries
to make sure there's still laws in place that
are ridiculous so that they can keep arresting
people so they can keep filling up their buildings
and making more. And the fact that nobody saw
that coming. Nobody saw that coming. They saw
it coming. I don't even know if they did. I think
they probably short term were just saying, oh,
this is a good business. We'll get into it. Then
the business is like, we've got to grow this
business, just like everything else. Like if
you're selling tires, you've got to make better
tires, sell more tires. We want to be number
one in the tire business. Well, they're trying
to be number one in the human battery business.
And that's what's fucking insane about allowing
that in this country. And how do you put that
genie back in the bottle? I don't know. But I
think it's very sick. Well, the genie's figured
out a way to get into a whole new bottle. because
a lot of people say to us, well, this film that
you made, The Alabama Solution, is obviously
about Alabama state prisons. Are those private
prisons? And we always say, no, those are state
-run institutions. But they kind of function
like... private prisons in a way because they're
able to make deals with securists about their
prison phone system. And that makes millions
and millions and millions of dollars that's extracted
from the poorest people in the country, right,
who are being charged like high... daily and
even per minute fees for being able to communicate
with their families. Then you have companies
who are selling the food to the prisons. You
have companies that are doing health care contracts
with the prisons. And so there's so much money
in that that they sort of, even though the state
owns that piece of land, it still kind of functions
the way that private prisons function. So we've
sort of just given over. the care of 2 million
Americans to companies that are accountable to
their shareholders, maybe, but the shareholders
don't know. Well, they're certainly not accountable
to humane living conditions. That one scene where
Kinetic Justice, that gentleman, what's his real
name? Robert Earl Counsel. When Robert Earl Counsel
was in solitary and you see the rat swimming
in his toilet? Rats are swimming in his toilet
and he has rats in a water jar. And what did
he say? Eleven caught in one night. And why are
they there? Because he tries to put his food
in a bag that hangs on the door of the cell.
But then they write him a disciplinary for doing
that. But if he takes his food out of the bag
and he puts it on the counter, then the rats
are going to get it during the night. They're
just everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. So there are rats
all – there are rats throughout the prison. And
so he has to sleep in this room where these rats
are crawling all over him at night. Yeah. And
people – just to get into him for a second. I
mean he is frankly one of the most – one of the
bravest people I've ever met in my life. This
is a guy who was incarcerated when he was 19
and he was selling drugs in his neighborhood.
Somebody – is trying to chase him down with a
car and almost runs him over and he shoots the
person through the window and the guy dies. So
this is now 30 years ago. In any other condition,
you would have thought that's a self -defense
case, right? It was clear that he was trying
to prevent somebody from running him over with
a car. And yet here he is 30 years later with
a life without parole sentence in an Alabama
prison. And he's spending his time trying to
organize nonviolent labor strikes. He's trying
to do hunger strikes. He's trying to use every
method that he can use to call attention to the
problem that 20 ,000 other people have. And he's
using a contraband cell phone to talk to us,
knowing that he's probably going to get retaliated
against by the authorities once the film comes
out or once they know that he's organizing a
labor strike. He would be an unbelievable asset
to society if he were out in the world, right?
He's advocating for nonviolence. He's obviously
smart as a whip. And he's incredibly motivating
to other people. You know, he's got that entire
prison system. Listening to him when they want
to be violent because they're so angry at the
treatment and the prison system starts bird feeding
them, starts to cut off their food rations to
force them back to work. And kinetic, Robert
Earl is the person who says, you know, that's
not going to solve anything. We don't want to
do that. So, you know, you see this huge level
of humanity, talent, thoughtfulness. in people
that are locked away. And we just assume, well,
if they're in prison, that means that they're
bad people. In the meantime, there's so many
other people on the outside who don't get locked
up for doing things that are much worse. So it's
a very confusing message to be sending. Well,
especially for someone like you who did the jinx
and then you do this. Yeah. I mean, it's a really
good point. I worked for a long time on the story
of Robert Durst. And when we discovered evidence
that showed that he had killed his wife and his
best friend and his neighbor in Galveston dismembered
him, we found the only evidence that proved that
he did those things. And suddenly I was in a
dialogue with the L .A. district attorney, the
L .A. PD, talking about how to get him arrested.
And even if I don't believe in the way that we
incarcerate people, it's clear that there's a
role for prison. Clearly a guy like Bob Durst
who keeps killing people needs to be taken out
of society. What kind of prison is he in? Well,
he died now and he was locked up in a facility
in Northern California. It was sort of a facility
for senior citizens who had medical problems.
So a lot of really rich people, as you could
tell from – there have been a bunch of cases
on this. Really rich people hire consultants.
to help them navigate what prison they're going
to end up going to. They can negotiate for better
conditions. And so you end up with that sort
of situation where a guy who maybe has stolen
$100 million and not paid his taxes or taken
money from his workers or committed some horrible
act of fraud ends up in a prison farm, ends up
in a pretty nice facility where he has access
to... Lots of things. And then you have poor
people that are locked up in places that have
rats in their cells and vermin. But, yeah, I
was always sort of amazed that Robert Durst was
able to get away with what he got away with for
so long. Why do you think that is? How much did
you know about it before you started the documentary
series? Well, I knew a lot because I had made
a film, a narrative film called All Good Things
about sort of Robert Durst's origin story, his
relationship with his beautiful wife when they
were both young, before all the bad stuff started
happening and he became the guy that he became.
There was this kind of strange love story between
this kind of difficult man and this very lovely
girl, Kathleen McCormick. And I made this film.
Ryan Gosling played the Bob Durst character and
Kirsten Dunst played played his wife and really
investigated that story so that we could tell
that the tale of what had happened to them in
an accurate way. And while I was doing that,
we reached out to Robert Durst, to the real Robert
Durst. And I said, you know, we're making this
film about I guess we spoke to his lawyer. So
we're making this film about you, about your
client. And we'd like to talk to him, get his
input, make sure that we're trying to tell the
story accurately. What was the premise of the
film? It was basically the story about him and
his wife when they first met, this rich guy and
this girl from sort of the other side of the
tracks, and then how eventually that relationship
got toxic. Eventually he kills her. And then
later his best friend, Susan Berman. who knows
about what happened to his wife, starts to become
problematic. Then he kills her. And then later
he moves to Galveston, Texas, and disguises himself
as a deaf mute woman, if you remember this. And
he ends up becoming friends with his elderly
neighbor and this guy named Morris Black. And
they go out shooting on Pelican Island and so
on. And eventually they have a little altercation.
Because he figured out who Bob Durst was and
that he was sort of on the run. And he dismembers
that man. He kills him and dismembers him. This
movie with Kristen Dunst, when was that released?
I guess we started working on that in around
2005 and it came out in 2010. So in 2010, it's
about to come out in theaters, this film. And
there was a big article in The New York Times
about how accurate it was and how much we had
done to make sure that the details were right
and so on. And the real Robert Durst reads the
article and calls me out of the blue. And I had
tried to get in touch with him before without
any success. And he actually calls the distributor
of the film first, Magnolia Pictures, and he
asks for the president, Eamon Bowles. And Eamon
and I would use Bob's voice like when we would
talk to each other because Bob had a very recognizable
voice. So when I would call him, we would hang
up and I would say, bye -bye. And that was always
sort of Bob's tone. And then one day somebody
calls Eamon's office and says, this is Robert
Durst. And so his secretary walks in the office
and says, like, you know, in air quotes, like,
it's Robert Durst on the phone thinking that
it's me. And he picks up the phone. He's like,
hey, Bob, I'm not surprised you're calling. I
think we did a hell of a job on the film. And
there's a long pause. And he says, the guy says,
who am I talking to? And Eamon says, oh, who's
this? And he says, this is Robert Durst. And
so he reaches out to me. I knew that he was trying
to reach me so I could record my very first phone
call with him. And I call him and I say, listen,
I'm keen to talk to you. I've been making this
film about you for the last five years. And he
said, well, I would like to see the film. So
I arranged for him to see the film. And he calls
me immediately after he sees the film. And he
says, I want you to know I like the movie very
much. The movie kind of shows him. killing people.
Right. And I said, well, why did you like it?
And he said, well, you know, you did a beautiful
job explaining what I was going through as a
child and the difficulty I had and losing my
mother. And Kirsten Dunst was just like my my
wife, Kathy. And I cried three times. And I would
like to do something with you. You know, I would
like there there to be something out there for
me, my ability to sort of tell my story. And
I said. All right, well, why don't we sit down?
I'll ask you a bunch of questions. And he said,
that's fine. Okay, let's do that. So I end up
sitting with him for three days. I've just finished
a movie about him, a dramatic film, which is
now in theaters. And I sit down with him and
interview him for 21 hours. And you think you
do long interviews. He's 21 hours with this one
person. And he is fascinating. I mean, absolutely
extraordinary. He is incredibly honest about
things that most people would never be honest
about. Like? You know, he talks about how, you
know, he had violent arguments with his wife
or he says, you know, that he says crazy stuff.
I mean, he explained to me that I said, you know,
I think you were kind of offensive when you went
to visit her mother. You know, she had this mother
who was in her 80s and you went to visit her
mother. And, you know, I think you did some odd
things. He goes, well, yeah, you know, I visited
those people and they were, you know, that woman,
she reads Yankee magazine and, you know, and
she asked me how I liked her daughter. And I
told her that Kathy had come out of the shower
and my penis was hard. Like you said that to
her aging mother? Yeah, yeah, I mean, what am
I going to, sure, that's what I thought, you
know. You know, or you say to him, well, what
did you say? You know, why did you tell the police
that after your wife, after you put your wife
on the train, you went to the neighbors to have
a drink when that clearly wasn't true? Oh, yes,
I lied about that. I said, well, why did you
lie to the police? Well, I needed to be somewhere
and I wanted them to stop asking me questions.
So I told them that I went to the neighbors.
I said, well, that was so easy to disprove. They
just talked to the neighbor. Well, yeah, but
people don't usually do that. So he's very candid.
He speaks very, very openly, almost like having
a level of sort of Asperger's. Did you believe
him at any moment while he's telling you this?
Because obviously he's proclaiming his innocence,
right? Yeah. I mean he is so good at telling
the story his way and he tells you so many facts
that are true that when he occasionally lies
about really critical things, I think a lot of
people just didn't pay attention to that. I did
because I had already researched the story. So
I knew when he was trying to tell me something
that was bullshit that it was bullshit. But,
you know, I did have to put myself in a position
of of giving him the benefit of the doubt whenever
I could, partly because that was the only you
know, you got to just get into that mode where
you're trying to hear his version without debating
it the whole time. Right. Because otherwise he's
not going to tell you his version. And, you know,
you want to hear his his theory about all this
stuff. And and in the course of that. he really
indicts himself. I mean, you know, he sort of
came into it with the attitude that he wanted
to tell his version of the story so people would
stop thinking he was a murderer. But during the
course of it, he admits to so many bad things
that, you know, you just pretty quickly assume
that he is guilty. How old is he when you first
started filming him? I guess he was in his early...
So he's probably already experiencing some kind
of cognitive decline. And then you have the years
and years of hiding all this, which wears on
you. Yeah. Yeah. And I do think there was a I
think he had a compulsion to confess. Yeah. You
know, I think most people that aren't complete
sociopaths, they get to a certain point in time
where it's almost too much and they want to tell
people. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that ultimately
what happened with him. as you may remember,
is we find this evidence. The evidence I thought
was determinative. I thought it was going to
be something that police would ultimately use
to convict him for murder. What was that evidence
again? So there was a famous note that the killer
of Susan Berman, this friend of Bob Durst in
California, had left behind when he shot. Susan
Berman. And the note said, 1527 Benedict Canyon,
cadaver. And it was sent to the Beverly Hills
Police Department. That very seldom happens,
but people speculated a lot. Well, why would
somebody who killed somebody have sent a note
to the police? Well, maybe if he liked the person,
if it was his best friend, this woman Susan Berman,
and it was Bob Durst that did it, then maybe
he wouldn't want her body to lie there and, you
know, she has dogs. They didn't want the dogs
to mess with the body. So he may have just killed
her and then left this note. But then later when
he was asked about it, he said, I have no knowledge
about that note. So when we're doing our investigation,
we discover a letter that he had written to Susan
Berman that has almost the exact same words on
it because it's addressed to her at 1527 Benedict
Canyon. So we can see the handwriting on that,
not just a handwriting sample, but a handwriting
sample that's saying exactly what it said on
the letter that— Right, with the same misspelled
words, right? Exactly. And he writes— 1527 Benedict
Canyon, Beverly Hills, California. He misspells
the word Beverly, puts in an extra E at the end.
And of course, this letter that we find, he also
misspells the word Beverly. So nobody had ever
seen or the police hadn't known about this letter.
So we find it. And then I immediately start planning
a way for me to show it to him in a second interview.
And he had always said to me like, oh, if you
ever need me to sit down again, I'm happy to
come back and I'll ask – I'll answer any question
you want. But I start to call him about doing
the second interview and he gets very skittish.
And then this goes on for two years. And so we
have this evidence but we need to show it to
him. And I had done a bunch of research. I talked
to Marsha Clark, for example, who is smart about
how the LA district attorney's office works.
And she said – If you have the opportunity to
sit down with him and show him the evidence,
do that before you go to the police because it's
going to be very – the police are not going to
be able to do something like that and he's going
to lawyer up. But you guys, before you're even
in contact with law enforcement, you could show
him the evidence and he's going to have to react
to it. I bet it's going to be interesting. So
we finally get him to sit for the second interview.
And I show him the evidence in the interview.
And he has this incredible meltdown. You know,
I don't know if you remember this, but he starts
burping uncontrollably and he starts rubbing
his face and breathing. And he's obviously very,
very surprised to see that there's this letter
that matches the cadaver note that he admitted
could only have been written by the killer. So
he's sort of in a – he's trapped. I finished
the interview with him and he gets up and goes
to the bathroom and he leaves his microphone
attached. And while he's in the bathroom, he
confesses to the murder. He's a guy who talks
to himself a lot. And he always said that to
me. He said, oh, sometimes I talk to myself for
long periods of time and I get in fights with
people because they think that I'm hassling them,
but it's just me. I just talk to myself. So when
he goes in the bathroom, the first thing he says
when he goes in is, There it is. You're caught.
He says that to himself. And then he goes on
to say, killed them all. I killed them all, of
course. And it's such an extraordinary thing
to have. Did you have your headphones on while
he was doing that? No. And that's kind of fascinating.
So I didn't know that he said anything when he
went to the bathroom. And so we're working with
the LAPD. We're giving them the printed evidence,
the letter that matches the cadaver note. And
it's a pretty strong case already. And we don't
know that he's said a word in the bathroom. And
it's not until 26 months later that we have an
editor, Shelby Siegel, who is just going through
audio. And kind of cleaning up old tracks because
we're getting ready to deliver the film to HBO.
And she sees on the editing system that there's
a little waveform. There's a little squiggle
that shows that there's some audio when he's
in the bathroom. So the problem was that I had
a microphone. There was a microphone in the room.
And he had a microphone on. So there's a lot
of noise. We're finishing. I just finished the
interview. I'm incredibly excited that I got
him to give this crazy reaction. And it's pretty
obvious that that's going to be part of proving
that he's guilty. And so I'm out there kind of
whispering to the crew. There's noise in the
room. And there's noise in the bathroom. And
so she mutes the other microphones. And she hears
him say, there it is, you're caught. And she
screams. And she runs to the next room to where
my other, our main editor was, Zach. And she
says, you have to hear this. And he listens to
it. And he says, wait a minute. I was there that
day. And we have audio that's a continuation
of that. That audio stops at there it is, you're
caught. But he was in the bathroom for seven
minutes. So they go and get the drive that has
the other seven minutes of audio on it and it's
this long rambling confession. And I come over
and I listen to it and I can't believe what we're
hearing. I mean it was extraordinary. And I had
to call the LAPD and the LA district attorney
and say, hey, I know literally two days ago we
gave you the documents. We gave you the letter
so that you could start this prosecution. We
found something else. And so they come to New
York and they listen to this confession. And
it's just absolutely mind -blowing that that
happened. And then when the series comes out,
we've been working with the police then for a
couple of years while they were building the
prosecution. And when the film finally comes
out, when the series comes out on HBO, he is
arrested the day before the final episode. So
it's in the final episode that he makes that
confession and they arrest him right before because
they knew that he was going to go on the run.
Was he aware that you had the audio of the confession?
I don't think he remembered saying anything.
You know, I don't think he's even all that aware
that he sometimes just burbles out with these.
Do you think he started? I mean, this is pure
speculation, but do you think he started going
crazy after he started killing people? Just like
the ability to. shut that part of your brain
off and put that aside and lie about it? Just
the struggle of having that information in your
head. I think the way that he would have thought
about it, you know, from inside the killer, right?
He doesn't think of himself as a murderer, right?
Steve Marshall in Alabama doesn't think of himself
as, you know, this incredibly amoral person.
He thinks of himself as law enforcement, right?
Bob Durst thinks of himself as just a guy trying
to get along, you know, like we all are. So I
think what happened was in 1982, he and his wife
were having problems in large part because he
had big personality problems. I mean, he was
not an easy person to deal with at all and was
also very spoiled and had all these resources.
Grew up wealthy. Yeah, and had a lot of power
over her. And so I think something happened between
the two of them where they were at their lake
house and there was an altercation. He admitted
to me that they had had a pushing and shoving
argument that night. The night she died. Yeah.
And then he says he took her to the train and
sent her into the city. But none of that makes
any sense. So I think what happened was he either
accidentally or semi -accidentally killed her.
I think they had a fight. They ended up getting
into some altercation and she landed on the,
you know, maybe on the stone of the fireplace
or something like that. And she was dead. And
then he thought, well, it doesn't make any sense
for two people to go down. I mean, unfortunate
that this had to happen, but I got to get rid
of the body. And so he found a way to make her
disappear. We don't know exactly what happened
to her, but we know that he alleged that he had
put her on the train to go in the city and they
never found the body. So after that, he's sort
of widely believed to be a likely. person to
have killed his wife. There's no other explanation
for it. And how long did it take before they
realized the wife was missing? And when did they
determine that she was dead? It was a few days
later because he kept sort of, he held off on
telling anyone. And then later he said, oh, Kathy,
you know, I put her on the train to go in the
city and then I haven't heard from her. What's
going on? So he had a bunch of explanations about
why. And somehow she had run off with a drug
dealer or she had run off with some boyfriend
or something like that. But none of those really
held water. But it took him a while to report
her missing. He waits five days to report her
missing and does a brilliant thing, which is
he reports her missing in New York City, even
though the last time she's ever seen is in Westchester.
So they were at their house, their lake house
in Westchester. She disappears. And he goes into
the city five days later and he says, oh, my
wife was at our apartment. So he complete – this
is why I'm saying he's very smart. He completely
redirects the police so that they make – because
the police aren't organized for a guy to come
in and give a phony story about what happened
to his wife. Most of the time somebody comes
in and says, my wife is missing. And they say,
oh, where did you last see her? Let's help you
try to find her. So I think he was smart enough
to flip that on his head. And he says that my
wife was in the city. And so they do their whole
investigation in the city. They don't look at
the lake house. They don't figure out where she
really truly might have been. Did they ever do
an examination, like a forensic on the lake house?
Yeah, they did. And they – it was sort of – because
it was so late in the game, because it had taken
so long for him to report her missing, they didn't
find anything that showed that she had been killed
in the – in the house. And she may very well
have been killed somewhere else, but they never
find the body ever. And so her family is bereft
and they don't know what to do. Did he ever confess
to that? He didn't. But during the course of
his interview with me, I mean, he never did it
publicly, but in the bathroom, he says, killed
them all, of course. So he's being accused of
three murders, his wife, his best friend, and
his neighbor in Galveston, who he then cuts up.
And his confession in the bathroom has killed
them all, of course. So I think we know what
happened. We don't know how it happened. Did
they find his neighbor's body or his best friend's
body? Yeah, his best friend's body was in her
house where somebody shot her, and that's where
they left that cadaver note, the note saying
1527 Benedict Canyon. And then in Galveston,
When his elderly neighbor disappears, the reason
they find this out is because a bunch of black
trash bags wash up in Galveston Bay. And a little
kid is fishing with his dad and they see something
bobbing around in the water and they see these
bags. And the police come and they look in the
bags and there are all these body parts. So he
had actually taken off the legs and the arms
and all that. So, I mean, I think. I think it's
fair to say that there are people like Bob Durst
who need to be out of society and are repeatedly
causing problems for others. But that's, as you
say, that's the extraordinarily rare case. And
I think a lot of the sort of tough on crime politicians
will say, so you guys just want to let Jeffrey
Dahmer out on the street? Nobody thinks that.
Nobody really believes that. People are saying,
well, no. What we're saying is that people who
are in prison for having entered an unoccupied
building probably never should have been in prison
at all. And the people who are in prison with
good reason because they robbed somebody or something,
we don't necessarily. have to believe that those
people can never, ever have a chance to come
out of prison and be productive citizens. You
know, there's a there's a you just have to take
a nuanced view. You know, you can't just say,
well, they're bad people and they're good people,
especially because they've got so many bad people
walking around and so many good people locked
up and vice versa. Yeah. The nuance part is so
important because the real question is, like,
what causes so many people to become bad people?
And how come no one's examining the root of this?
How come no one is looking at these deeply impoverished
crime -ridden communities that have remained
that way for decades and decades and decades
and offered up some sort of a solution? It's
almost like you have to financially incentivize
a company to radically improve the economic and
the justice situation in any random community
that's experiencing a lot of crime. It's almost
like you have to figure out a way. To privatize
peace and safety. It's almost like the one way
– I mean it's really what I was saying before.
Like imagine if these prison companies got paid
based on the amount of productive citizens emerge
from their prisons and then wind up doing really
well. Like you get incentivized like this is
he's never committed another crime. Now he started
his own business. He's doing this and that. He's
got a family. His kids all get straight A's.
Everybody's happy. This is a success. And we
got a bonus because of that success. Yeah. I
mean, you're right in a way that it's the root
of some way we are. We sort of are privatizing
it because like in my neighborhood in New York,
there's a group called the Doe Fund, which has
been around for. a couple decades, I think. And
they take guys who have had severe drug addiction,
have ended up in prison, and are released and
have no starting place, as you were describing.
And they give them a bed. They give them a bank
account where they give them a certain amount
of money each week for working. And it's not
a huge amount of money, but it sort of is the
first step toward even being able to sort of
have a checkbook and be able to say, oh, OK,
so I've got $100 and I've spent $50 and this
is what I have left. And they give them a job,
which is they make deals with neighborhoods around
New York for them to come and do like street
cleaning and clean up the neighborhood. And they
give them a uniform, which is clean, and they
put them out on the street with a broom and things
like that. And sometimes they'll put them out
in pairs so that they can work in tandem. And
these neighborhoods become incredibly clean.
The guys stay in this facility for as long as
they need to until they sort of get back on their
feet. They can't do drugs when they're in the
facility. So there's a little bit of tough love
going on there too. But they end up bringing
people back. They end up bringing people back
who were otherwise abandoned and who otherwise
would have been additional homeless people lying
on the street in San Francisco or additional
people who are bothering people outside an ATM
or whatever because there's a level of desperation
that you have. We all know like if we absolutely
had absolutely nothing and we thought that our
kids were going to starve, we would do a bunch
of things that would probably get us in trouble.
100 percent. Taking care of people that are in
that situation and providing them some sort of
a vehicle for improving their life is going to
be a good thing and it's going to have some impact.
But the real impact is going to be when you address
the environment in which they came from. Sure.
Like, again, if we're our community, if this
entire country is a community, why do we have
these places? that have been fucked for 50, 60,
70 years. Like, why haven't we put resources
into community centers and education and providing
some method for these people to get peace and
safety? Why aren't we doing something about that
if we really care? Well, there is a lot that
can be done. You know, one of the places, for
example, this can be done inside and outside
of prison, obviously. And I think you're pointing
out a really important thing, which is... The
earlier, the better. So when you look at head
start programs, which are one of the first things
that people go to cut because you can't put your
finger on exactly what they do. But if you track
people that got early education, you see that
it dramatically reduces the likelihood that those
people are going to go to prison later in life.
And if you look at people who are even in prison,
like in the main state prison system, which is
a very humane. prison system, I have pictures
on my phone of guys who are sitting at a bench
working on models of tall ships, these beautiful,
stunning pieces of art that they've been trained
by other prisoners to build and they give them
a proper workbench and they give them some time
to do this work and they give them training.
And then they sell that stuff in the prison store
and they make a couple million dollars a year
that goes back into rehabilitation programs.
Oh, wow. Is Maine one of the best places for
that? I think Maine is the best prison system
I've seen in the U .S. And partly it's because
it's run by this very brilliant guy. Randy Liberty
is his name. That's crazy. And he first visited
the Maine State Prison when he was 14 because
his dad was locked up there. And later in life,
you know, he became a sheriff. And I think his
dad was in his jail at some point. And it was
like, Randy, get me a coffee. Sorry, Dad. That's
crazy. But over time, he just said, well, why
are we throwing people away when we put them
into prison for having made a mistake of some
kind or even a series of mistakes? Yeah. You
know, what can we do to bring these people out?
Because 95 % of the people are coming out. And,
you know, are these people that we want to be
our neighbors, you know? And this issue of community
is so important because, you know, how are we
going to get back to some kind of brotherhood
in this country? You know, it's so important.
And if we can demonize people so quickly and
just say, well, look, my neighbor. You know,
he put his tractor on my lawn and therefore he's
a horrible person and I'm going to go over and
smash his tractor. You know, as opposed to the
guy saying, oh, I couldn't put my tractor in
my garage because it had a flood. Oh, you had
a flood? Let me help you. You know, that there's
a level of, you know, rage right now that we're
tapping into. It seems like a higher percentage
of the people are like the martial arts people
that are going into it because of damage that
they suffered. It's like more Americans are becoming
like that. You know, more Americans are sort
of. Well, we're getting radicalized by the Internet
for sure. Yeah. One hundred percent on both sides
of the aisle. People are being radicalized by
hate and anger and frustration online. And a
lot of it isn't even real people that are writing
these things or it's state actors and organizations
that push certain narratives. And you're being
fed a lot of hate porn. And people are sucking
it up and it's highly addictive. So it's consuming
an enormous percentage of your available resources
in terms of your attention span. The people that
I know that are addicted to Twitter, X, whatever,
are like genuinely mentally ill. Like whether
they realize it or not because they're still
functional, they still do their jobs, but they
are. Fully addicted to a thing that is just people
bitching back and forth with each other. And
they check responses all the time. They can't
wait to type in another response. And they're
sitting there looking at someone else's response
and getting angry. It's illness. It's an illness.
It's like this is not in your life. Like if you
put that down and look around, what do you see?
You see the people that you know. You see the
neighborhood that you live in. The stores that
you visit. And none of that exists. It exists.
in this weird fucking cloud world that you choose
to enter to get upset for no fucking reason.
And if you put it down, you will feel better.
But yet you think you're missing out on something.
So you have to go check it. And when you're on
the toilet, well, I'm on the toilet. What am
I going to do? Let me check to see what people
are pissed off at. And I don't fucking agree
with that at all. This guy's an idiot. And then
you're mentally ill. And then it becomes, because
we have this bizarre... political system in our
country we have two sides only two we only have
two perspectives you know and then you have a
conglomeration of ideas that are attached to
each perspective that you might not agree with
at all but you have to because you're a right
wing this or a left wing that so you have to
say whatever the fucking party wants you to say
and if you don't you're a nazi or if you don't
you're whatever you are a communist whatever
it is and I loved your – in your comedy special,
which was so fucking funny. And, you know, I'm
like a big fan of comedy. But in your last special,
you sort of talk about how people like sign up
for, oh, yeah, well, you know, I agree with that.
That makes perfect sense. Oh, yeah, I agree with
that. Oh, and by the way, if you're going to
agree with that, you know, you're also going
to have to agree that, you know, that – Men can
get pregnant. Yeah, the men can get pregnant.
You're like – What? Wait. So that those are my
choices. I have to go along with like, you know,
trans people should be allowed to be in every
sport and it doesn't matter. I have to go along
with that one, too, if I want to be part of my
tribe. Oh, yeah. That's part of the tribal initiation
ritual. You're going to have to sign up for that.
I think it's a really great way of delivering
it also because it makes people laugh at themselves.
Yeah, and everybody wants to be on a team. Yeah.
And you're like, you know, oh, we believe that
everybody should, you know, be free to do whatever
you want. And as long as you're not hurting anybody,
I agree, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You start
going along with it. This sounds great. Yeah.
Hey, I'm with you guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And
then you're like, oh, fuck. That's right. Is
this a package deal? I have to. Yeah, and that's
what people are agreeing to, and then you get
groupthink, and then you get also ostracized
from the community if you don't do it. So you
get kicked out of the kingdom. You don't want
that. Being excommunicated from whatever group
that you identify with is terrifying because
then what are you going to do? Are you going
to join the fucking Nazis? I'm going to join
those people on the right because the left kicked
me out because I don't think that men can get
pregnant? Maybe I should just apologize. And
then you wind up apologizing for something you
don't even believe in. You're like, God, I can't
believe I have to say this. And it's just a bad
way of communicating. Online communication is
a terrible way of communicating. And it's the
primary source that young people experience.
Young people, like my kids, they don't even fucking
text each other. They Snapchat. You know, they're
all Snapchatting with pictures and shit. I'm
like, this is like the minimal amount of communication
you can do. And when they have to talk to people,
just put their phone down and talk to people,
they're lost. They're always like reaching for
their phone. Oh, yeah. They always want to grab
their phone in the middle of you talking. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They have to check.
Like, it's like you're. perpetually distracted.
Yeah. Yeah. It's going to get worse, I think,
when you have glasses and you could be walking
down the street or you can meet somebody and
be like, hi, Joe. So when you went to college
at and then you learned, you know, it's like
they're there. This idea that the information
is more available and therefore it's better.
My kids are like constantly deleting Instagram
or deleting TikTok. Yeah, a lot of kids are doing
that now. Yeah. But, you know, and then it comes
back for some reason or they'll say, well, I
felt like I needed to do this or whatever. FOMO.
But it's very encouraging to see them recognize
that, like, you have to go cold turkey on social
media. That narrative is out there. Fortunately
for a lot of kids, Twitter, which I think is
maybe the most toxic in terms of what it can
do, most beneficial in terms of like whistleblowers
getting news. Like if anything is happening in
the world, I almost immediately go to Twitter.
It used to be a little better for that because
now part of the problem is with AI -generated
content. There's a lot of weird stuff when it
comes to, like, especially war stuff. There's
a lot of videos that are just completely fake,
and it's hard to tell. Or they take a video that
is real and highly exaggerated, and they add
AI to it. It's very strange. And you've got to
wonder, like, who's doing that and why are they
doing this? Is this our government doing it?
it? Is it the Iranian government? Who's releasing
these fake videos? And are we doing it to ourselves,
by the way? 100%. A lot of people are doing that
just for clicks because there is an actual economy
based on engagement. So you can make money if
you're... If you're putting up these posts and
these posts are getting millions and millions
of interactions, you're going to get more money.
And so there's a lot of people doing that. So
it used to be better because it used to be just
pure information. And if it was a video, it was
just a video that someone took with their cell
phone generally. Now it's like a lot of weirdo
stuff, a lot of weird fake stuff. So it's hard.
Also there was a piece in the paper today that
talked about how like Trump gets a – like a few
minute video every day that's a compilation of
all the attacks and all the explosions that have
happened in Iran, you know, but is not getting
a more nuanced picture of it. So to some extent
is kind of, you know, drinking his own Kool -Aid.
How do they know what he gets? I think that there
was enough of a leak to say that he was given
a, that each day he's given a chunk of video
to watch. And that I think historically has been
something that happens with him is he'd rather
watch it than read it. Right. And that that by
putting together just it's not even that they're
saying they're fake videos. I mean, obviously,
there are a lot of fake videos, but he's only
getting the positive videos. He's just getting
explosions. Right. He's just getting a lot of
pictures of explosions. So he's saying, you know,
we're destroying their. Here it is inside Trump's
daily video montage briefing on the Iran war.
This is NBC News. The montage typically runs
for about two minutes. That's enough time. Just
to give you a nuanced perspective on a fucking
international war. Has raised concerns amongst
those of the president's allies that he may not
be receiving the complete picture of the war.
Yeah. Yeah, of course he's not. Yeah. And of
course the people that tricked him into doing
this in the first place don't want him to get
a full nuanced perspective of the war. I mean,
nobody thinks it's a good idea. Yeah. The Bailey
video is a series of clips of stuff blowing up.
Hilarious. That's the world we're living in.
It's a TikTok president. I mean, or a TikTok
briefing for the president. You know, but video,
I mean, what we saw in Alabama, and I know you
have some clips of this, and I think if you feel
like running one, there's the level of depravity
that's going on in our prison system is so much
higher. than the average person thinks it is.
And one of the reasons why we've seen so much
outrage from people, finally millions of people
have seen the Alabama Solution because people
have HBO or they have watched it in a theater.
And it's the first time they've been able to
see inside. It's the first time they've been
able to really see it as opposed to reading a
statistic about a lot of people die in prison
or whatever. And I think it does tap into our
sense of humanity and it taps into our sense
of community and the feeling that... Like, I
don't want to be a part of that. I don't want
to be part of doing that to other people. You
know, I could be tough on crime. You know, we've
shown the film to a lot of conservative viewers,
including one of the founders of CPAC and various
people who are, you know, pretty, pretty right
wing people and have said, look, I might be tough
on crime. That's not what I'm talking about.
Right. That's that's a human rights crisis. And
where's the DOJ and where's the government? doing
anything to protect where are the inspectors
yeah how are they allowing any of that yeah you
know and that's the the one of the great things
about your documentary is it's clear i mean it
is there's no ambiguity at all it's like laid
out there Full color. You could see the blood
on the ground. You could see, I mean, it's horrific.
When kinetic justice, when that guy's beaten
in his cell, and you see how they dragged him
out, his face down, bleeding all over. They thought
he was dead, and he managed to live. And he's
being dragged out, and you're following the blood
trail from his cell with the contraband cameras
from the cell phones. And had those cell phone
cameras not existed, you'd have zero idea. Like
if those guards only decided to sell money bringing
drugs in and not phones with cameras, who knows
what you would know. You would know very little.
Yeah. Yeah. And it does. I mean, you know, I
would like to believe that the average American
does not want to harm the average other American,
you know. And even if you get hyped up on Twitter
or you get to see. you know, too many videos
of people blowing up stuff or whatever, that
ultimately people have that experience of saying,
you know, I went to that, like, coffee at the
church and I sat there with that guy who I really
can't stand. And, you know, we ended up having
a conversation. You know, people are kind of
amazed at how much commonality they can feel
with people where if they just see the person.
I mean, we all know, like, if you text somebody.
your kids or your wife or whatever, there's just
some places where texts are not good. It's not
enough. It's not enough. It's going to make somebody's
feelings hurt, you know. But when you get to
sit down across from somebody, you realize that
it's another person you can kind of relate to.
So it's really disturbing that whether it's social
media or just the demonization of people, the
way that we just... turn people into these one
-dimensional figures, and then we could just
rage at them and just hate them. And distract
yourself from your own problems. That's a big
part of it. People love something that takes
the focus away from whatever shortcomings they
have or whatever things in their life they don't
like. They'll focus on external things. I know
some people whose lives are completely fucked
up in so many ways. Their health is fucked up.
Their relationships are fucked up. Their job
is fucked up. And all they want to talk about
is politics. Like, hey, man. Clean up your backyard.
Like, clean up your life. Like, why are you spending
so much time paying attention to what's going
on with USAID? Like, how much does that affect
you? Does it? Does it really affect you that
much? All this fucking fraud. Right. But what
about your life, man? Your life is a fucking
disaster. And all you care about is the government.
You know? And what they're doing to fuck the
people over. Like, I don't think that's really
the problem. I think you're getting in your own
way, son. And that's a lot of people out there
in this world. And anything that you do to distract
yourself, whether it's start drinking, gamble,
get on pills, whatever it is, people find ways
to distract themselves from whatever is wrong
with their life. And that's part of what social
media is providing you. It's providing this alternative
avenue for your attention to divert you from
all the things that really are making your life
a fucking disaster. Yeah. There's also that I
think sort of nuance falls into that also because
people are made calm by the idea that they can
just identify problems and that they're simple.
Right. So if you say to somebody, hey, like locking
people up for 75 years probably doesn't make
a lot of sense. That's complicated. Wait, now
I got to make a determination of what's the right
thing to do with another person. And, you know,
so you end up with a lot of politicians who say,
well, I know. This is these the bad people. These
are the good people. We got to promote the good
people and get rid of the bad people. Not recognizing
that like everybody is a little of both and that
some people certainly do a lot more bad stuff
in the world than good stuff and vice versa.
But you have to see yourself, you know, as you're
describing, like you have to recognize what's
happening in your backyard in order for the community
to work. You can't say, well, look, I'm always
right. My neighbor's always wrong. And therefore,
I'm just going to keep raging over this. You
have to say like, you know, I could see myself
doing something. I could see myself. Boy, if
I really got out of hand, I could see myself
having a, you know, taking a swing at somebody.
And that's probably not a good thing. But I don't
want to say that somebody else that did it is
automatically just a horrible person. And that's
why, you know, if you see this attorney general
in Alabama, you know, this idea that. He says
there are these horrible people in the world,
people who have no respect for human life, and
yet he's presiding over 1 ,500 of them dying.
But he doesn't imagine that he's part of the
problem. Respect for human life while human life
is dying in these places where people are taken
if they show no respect for human life. And they're
being killed by the people who are watching over
them. Yeah. So it's a very topsy -turvy world.
And also cruelty plays a part in it. sometimes
we say about this film that, you know, it's about
what we do to each other when no one's watching.
Like, you know, all human beings have a little
bit of a propensity to want to put a firecracker
in a frog's mouth and just see what happens.
You know, there's a level of cruelty that I think
we have intrinsically. You certainly want to
other a person, right? Absolutely. And that's,
to some extent, why... When it's exposed, right,
when there's transparency, when the press is
allowed to report on what's happening inside
prisons, people kind of get a conscience because
they start realizing, I wouldn't want to do that
in front of my kid or I wouldn't want to do that
if it ends up in the paper. I wouldn't want to,
you know, and I think that is kind of a balancing
effect, which is one of the reasons why this
like war on, you know, on transparency is a.
It's a huge problem, right? We're not allowed
to see what's happening in prisons even though
we're paying for them. And the Supreme Court
had this ruling that said that wardens could
deny access to journalists simply by citing safety
and security. But meantime, in the last 20 years,
no journalist has been harmed inside a prison.
So who's all the secrecy keeping safe, right?
We're sort of perpetuating a system. Our job...
going into the Alabama state prison system was
to shine a light on that. It shouldn't be that
these guys who are incarcerated have to take
life and death risks using contraband cell phones
to show what's happening in institutions that
I'm paying for and you're paying for. We're spending
$116 billion a year in the United States on prisons,
jails, parole. That is an insane number. if we're
spending that much money, we should sort of know
what every one of those dollars is going to.
And we should have watchdogs who will say, hey,
guess what? In Alabama, they're supposed to be
paying for a drug treatment program. We don't
know where the money's going. Right. Yeah. Transparency
is always good, especially in something like
that. I mean, to me, the idea of preventing journalists
from it almost is akin to these ag gag laws that
they've slapped in states that have factory farming
to prevent people from filming the horrific treatment
of some of these animals because they would be
bad for business. You know, it's just fucking
crazy. Like, it should be bad for business and
people shouldn't tolerate it. They should take
their business elsewhere, which is what transparency
is all about. You don't want to buy chickens
from a place that. brutally beats their chickens
or pigs or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And I mean, and a lot of people say, oh, well,
you know, it's going to upset. It's we don't
need to upset the public. What are you doing
something for inside a slaughterhouse that would
upset the public? Like there are ways to if you
want to euthanize an animal or something like
that, there are ways to do it where you're not
using like a bolt and. smashing their skull with
it. Well, the bolt is actually the most humane
way because it instantaneously kills them. The
other way is when they hang them by their ankles
and slip their neck. That's a little rougher,
but that's if you want kosher. There's a lot
of weird ways that they kill animals, but it's
really the beating and it's the horrific torture
that the cruel people that work there sometimes
do. Because there's been some videos that have
been released of people beating animals with
crowbars and stuff for no fucking reason. Just
sadistic, sick people that just happen to work
in these places. They become very accustomed
to treating these animals badly, just like security
guards become very accustomed to treating prisoners
badly. It's kind of along the same lines. I totally
agree. And just imagine what would happen if
– what if Tyson Foods or any of these companies
just – the policy was just if the press wants
to come in and photograph and the press wants
to come in and write about it, they're allowed
to come in once a week or whatever. Just do whatever
they want. Well, it should be non -negotiable.
It should be a part of the ability to run a facility
like that because of the consequences. Because
if you don't do that, there is the potential
for you being a horrific abuser of animals. Of
course. And nobody wants to buy your chicken
or your pork or whatever it is if you're doing
that. And we should know. But like criminalizing
taking video of animals being abused. Crazy.
Like how could you justify that? You would only
do it if you value profit over ethics, over morals.
That's the only thing. If profit is more important
than educating people on the horrific nature
of how these animals are treated, it's more important
to you. Well, what's really important is we have
cheap bacon. OK. Yeah. But it's a big it's like
a big tapestry because the diffusion of responsibility
figures into it. Right. And, you know, the perverting
effect of money figures into it. But it's a very
I mean, I think there's just being accustomed
to horrors. You know, I knew a guy who worked
at a slaughterhouse and he told me, like, you
never get the smell of blood off of you. And
he goes and you never get. Just like the image
of animals dying. He goes, you got to understand,
like, if you're working in a slaughterhouse,
you're seeing who knows how many thousands of
cows die a week. Just thousands, just thousands
of death, constant death. Most farmers never
saw that. Like the way people used to raise animals
for food, you know, you would kill a cow and
you would eat it for six months. You know what
I mean? Like you would. You could kill the occasional
chicken. You weren't seeing thousands of dead
animals a week. You weren't, like, seeing thousands
of them get disemboweled a week. It's like after
a while. And you're in a factory. They're going
by on hooks on a conveyor belt. Like, what are
we doing? This is crazy. I went to visit a prison.
I went sort of on a series of prison visits in
Berlin and Norway and a few other places. sort
of elderly woman that was like a deputy commissioner,
I think, in North Carolina in the prison system,
Virginia, Ginny. And I loved her. She was so
smart. And the first thing they do is they bring
you to a concentration camp. So they bring you
to Sachsenhausen before they take you to the
prisons to see how the prisons are run. And we're
standing there in this concentration camp with
the... And the woman says, well, this is where
they would bring in the people on the trains
and then they would take them out. And then this
is where they would, you know, shave their heads
and then they would strip them down and they
would spray them with fire hoses and water. And
then they would put powder, disinfectant powder
on them. They would take away all of their, you
know, any kind of distinguishing marks that put
them all in the same outfit. And they would give
them a number instead of their name. They would
be, you know. And everybody started looking at
it like very disturbed. And Ginny leans over
to me and she says, you know, Andrew, we do every
one of those things in our prisons today. And
you realize that this dehumanization, this homogenization,
this like making everybody look the same is part
of just desensitizing us to what we're going
to do to those people because they just look
like. They look like bad people because, you
know, that's what happens when you shave your
head and you're pale and you have the same outfit
and you look like a convict. You've turned them
into another. Yeah, you've turned them into another.
tribal nature of ancient human civilization we
have almost like a deep -seated dna that allows
us to other people because those people were
coming and they were going to kill your tribal
members and steal your resources and do whatever
they could to the survivors and it was all horrific
and so we have this thing that we're able to
do that allows us to attack or to go after people
and just to not think of them as your brothers
and sisters and neighbors and fellow human beings
sharing this wonderful spinning ball. No. These
are evil people. These are others. You kill them.
These are fill in the blank. These are the Japanese.
These are the Germans. These are the this. These
are the that. Whatever it is that we're at war
with, those are the people that are not us and
we kill them. And that's how you feel about prisoners.
And then there's the other side where You go
too far the other way and you have these crazy
no cash bail policies where you've got violent
offenders in and out of jail constantly. You've
got people that have been arrested 40 times pushing
old people in front of the train in New York
City. You've got people that are just like mentally
ill, violent criminals punching women on the
street in Seattle. And they just keep getting
out of jail. And you go, how is this possible?
How is this OK, too? Yeah. Because that's not
good either. Yeah, you can't. But I think to
the extent to which we could get everybody, which
only is going to happen in little bits and little
areas where we can make an impact, but we're
trying to say, well, look, it shouldn't be, you
know, it shouldn't be that everybody who says
that we shouldn't be running our prison industrial
complex the way we are is soft on crime. It's
OK to be tough on crime. It's OK to recognize
that some people need to be separated out from
society. But if it becomes so polarized, then
you get the progressive DA who, you know, there
are some very smart ones. And then you get some
who are just saying, well, you know, we just
should abolish prisons and therefore, you know,
we don't need any of this. And that scares everybody
and probably doesn't lead to any level because
we all want public safety. Like everybody wants
to be serious about public safety. That's different
than being tough on crime. Yes. Well, it's also
like if you're not addressing the root of crime,
if you're not addressing the. Again, the same
neighborhoods where it happens over and over
and over. You don't have this rampant crime that's
developing in Beverly Hills, right? It's all
happening in these impoverished, gang -infested
neighborhoods. Why has there been no resources
put into that? Imagine the amount of return that
you would get. I always say if you want to make
America great again, here's the best way. Have
less losers. How do you have less losers? Give
more people an opportunity to succeed. It's not
like we're all at the same starting block. We
all know that. No one will say that. No one will
say everybody is at the same line and how you
get by in this life is depending upon how much
work you put in once you're at the line. Well,
that's not true. So how do we figure out these
people that are at the farthest end of the starting
line, the most fucked? Put some money into that.
Fix that. Put some engineering into that. trying
to devise some sort of a method to increase the
odds of having more productive people come out
of these places and give them hope. And you would
have better neighbors. You'd have more people
that are thriving in whatever business, more
people that are artists, more people in the economy.
The world would be a better place. Like, why
wouldn't you invest in that? Well, because there's
no money in it. You have to spend money on it.
Or there's money in it, but nobody really wants
to do the work to figure out. There's money in
it, but you can't make that money. They're going
to make that money, right? You're going to help
people make money. And it will contribute to
the GDP. It will contribute to the tax base,
to the overall economy. But it's not a business
where you can, like, say, oh, if I get into that
business of helping people, I can get rich. And
that's the problem. Yeah. I mean, if you try
to make the – if every – if the – If the ultimate
adjudicator of everything is whether it is turning
a profit, you sort of race to the bottom, right?
Nobody really wants to do anything smart. They
just want to do things that enable them to get
the most money the quickest. But ultimately,
right now, spending $116 billion a year on our
prison system, we've got... 5 % of the world's
population, but we've got 20, 25 % of the world's
prisoners. Crazy. Like, this whole thing. Fucking
wild. What a wild statement. Yeah. It's incredible.
That's a broken society. Like, if that's not
evidence of a broken society, look, not like
it's better in some of these other places that
don't have a high percentage of people because
they just kill them. Like, there's a lot of places
where you do something bad, they just kill you.
There's no thinking about, you know. But, I mean,
in terms of like modern civilized society, you
know, we don't do this well. No, we don't rehabilitate
well. That's for damn sure. And we don't, as
you're saying, we don't invest in kids. We don't,
you know, like how are we in a situation where
we are paying teachers? So little money that
they have to use their own money to buy books
and school supplies. We're beating the shit out
of our teachers who are the people that are going
to turn our kids into part of our community.
How can we be surprised we don't have a community?
Yeah, it's almost like it's a conspiracy. I mean,
you realize why people slap that tinfoil hat
on and tighten it down with a chin. Because,
like, at a certain point in time, like, why wouldn't
we put more money into schools? It seems kind
of crazy. When you've got, like, in California,
they've got programs that, like, spend hundreds
of billions of dollars and go nowhere. Like,
where's the railroad? You spend so much money.
Where's all the tiny houses? Didn't you guys
get hundreds of millions of dollars for tiny?
Where the fuck is the tiny houses? No tiny houses?
It's like not a one tiny house has been built.
There's a lot of that stuff, the $24 billion
to the homeless, the homeless people increase.
Imagine if they put $24 billion into the education
system. Guess what? You would probably ultimately
wind up with less homeless. If you put $24 billion
into education and community centers, God, imagine
the work that you could do in California with
$24 billion just in education. California would
have the greatest education system in the country.
If you just paid teachers an exorbitant amount
a month, amount a year, had fantastic oversight,
these incredibly well -structured education systems,
great counseling, social workers that can help
work with kids, people that can give them productive
ways to expel some of this excess energy that
they have, figure out how to focus, figure out
what kind of jobs they maybe excel at based on
their personality type, educate them towards
that. You could get a lot done. You could get
so much done with $24 billion. Instead, it just
disappears like Kaiser Sosa. There's fucking
no one knows where it went. There's no accountability.
They veto. Everybody tries to put an audit on
it. Yeah. How did Alabama's prisons go from $300
million to $1 .3 billion? And they described
it as inflation. And no one's like – no one's
investigated. No one's going to jail. No one
– like fuck you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's
– and I think that when you say it's a conspiracy,
I really believe that – You know, conspiracies
do not have to include people in dark back rooms,
right? It's very often just everybody sitting
around the table. Everybody knows what the motivation
is. And they just go, OK, I'll do the thing.
You do the thing. There's not nobody has to be
rubbing their hands together and having secret
meetings. They all know what's in their financial
interest. Well, clearly, if you beat prisoners
to death and then lie about it and you all agree
that you're going to lie about it, you're conspiring.
Right. Yeah. I mean, that's that happens obviously
all the time. Clearly. Meetings like that all
the time. Clearly. But I think there's an insidious
element to the fact that, you know, that people
are agreeing that twenty four billion dollars
should be spent on X, Y or Z. Nobody really needs
to get like a secret memo saying how they're
going to steal that money. Like they just go,
OK, in Alabama, what now? We're allowed to spend
one point three billion dollars on one prison.
Great. OK. Well, I'm not personally taking the
$1 .3 – I'm not personally taking the billion
-dollar overage myself. But it's going into the
system the way that – Well, your first red flag
is they start construction before the deal is
even signed. They already start. So the fix is
in. They know what's going on. Look, I grew up
in Boston and Boston was a part of the most –
corrupt construction site in the history of the
country, the Big Dig. Big Dig, right. That fucking
thing was supposed to take like, I don't know
how long it was supposed to take, but it went
on long after I moved out and then came back
to Boston like 10 years later. It was still going
on. I'm like, this is crazy. And by the time
it did it, the population in Boston increased,
so it didn't even really alleviate traffic. Yeah.
But there's always going to be stuff like that.
If you have no oversight or if you have people
that can figure out a way to inflate this and
add on to that and da -da -da -da -da -da, next
thing you know it. Well, the press is extremely
important, which is why government, this government
or prior government, they don't like the press,
right? people that are able to make a living
being journalists and you're not, you know, firing
everybody who's a good investigative reporter,
then that should be. It's one of the reasons
why the country was founded in that way, why
freedom of the press is so important, is because
it's the only disinfectant. It's the only way.
And it doesn't mean people don't use the press
in malevolent ways or people don't bullshit in
the press. Of course. People bullshit everything.
Yeah. But, like, the public kind of has a sense
or at least used to have a sense and hopefully
will again. That when somebody does an investigative
story and they are able to produce the facts
and figure out who's really responsible for a
certain kind of corruption, that it reduces the
corruption. Just is the case. And it's like you
can't really regulate it or you can regulate
it. But if you regulate it, nobody's paying attention
to it. Then the press has to identify that people
are breaking the rules. making sure that government
institutions and others don't defy the Constitution,
right? So in Alabama, clearly, every time you
see one of these events that happens in our film,
those are all crimes. Those are being committed
by a state actor, by a prison guard, right? Those
are crimes being committed against our fellow
citizens. The fact that some of these people
are incarcerated doesn't mean they're also supposed
to be killed or named, right? And so who really
monitors that is the U .S. Department of Justice
because at the end of the day, their job is to
maintain a constitutional level of care. And
it's not – by the way, that's not that great,
right? It's like you have to make sure that there's
no cruel and unusual punishment. Well, clearly
in Alabama, there is. Well, they started starving
them, which is really crazy. During the strike
… They were giving them like a tiny ration. Yeah.
Sometimes no food for days. Yeah. And so the
DOJ's job is to do that. What was the DOJ doing,
you know, a few years back is they were doing
a kind of a sort of an OK job pursuing just the
worst actors, the worst of the worst. So they
would find a police station that was just regularly
harming people in its jails, arresting people
for no reason, you know. They were finding prison
systems where people were getting murdered, like
in Alabama, and that was going okay. Well, that
whole civil rights division of the DOJ is now
basically gone, right? It's been totally repurposed.
So now it's dealing with, you know, reverse racism
and various things like that. But they're not
doing those other cases anymore. They don't care
about what's happening in a police department
or what's happening in a – so you don't even
have that level of scrutiny. When did all this
change? I mean I think most recently you've seen
the DOJ just dismantle the Civil Rights Division.
So that's been in the current administration.
And the Civil Rights Division was in charge of
looking at the prisons? Yeah. So what have they
done during the last four years before that?
They didn't – They also didn't do a great job,
but they did bring actions that had impact in
a bunch of different states. So, for example,
they sued the state of Alabama, which happened
under the first Trump administration, actually.
The case against Alabama started under Obama.
Then under Trump, Jeff Sessions had to approve
the issuance of these letters, these findings
letters. And then they had when Alabama said,
you know, take a hike. You're wrong. We don't
agree. We're not going to make a consent decree.
We're not going to settle. Then they had to sue
them. So that happened under Jeff Sessions. And
that was now, you know, two administrations ago.
The Trump administration brought this action.
But it's just being dragged on and dragged on.
And now the DOJ doesn't really care about this
kind of litigation. So the people that were running
it are gone, all those people. Well, I have to
also imagine that there are so many cases. And
if the press was allowed to weekly, if there
was weekly access the press had to these correction
facilities all over the country, the amount of
cases would be fucking extraordinary. But because
they've been allowed to hide. Because they've
been allowed to do this stuff in complete secrecy
with total control over whether or not things
get released or don't get released. Like it's
just – it's become just a part of the system.
It's like standard operational procedure. And
it's – I mean – But the cases would go down,
right? Oh, yeah. As soon as you can see it. They
would have to. If you're beating people in your
care, if you're a prison guard like Roderick
Gadsen and you've had 24 cases of excessive force.
Yeah. It's sport for them. You know, you would
say at one point, well, this is not working so
great for me. So I want to at least behave somewhat
better. Of course. Well, I think your film was
probably the first time most people ever got
a chance to see. And I would hope that your film
and then also this conversation and the other
ones that you've been having will move this conversation
in a different direction where people start.
talking about it openly where they're forced
to do something because it seems like you have
to force them to act. And they're probably dealing
with so many other cases as well. This is just
another burden to them. And if it's the prisoners,
oh, well, that's the least priority situation
we have to deal with. These people are bad people.
They're in jail. Like those, the radio people
that you used, their voices. Like, it's God.
It's like, shut the fuck up. Like, you're listening
to them. As a person who's had multiple podcasts
with people that were wrongfully convicted, I've
done a ton of them with my friend Josh Dubin,
who was originally with the Innocence Project,
and he's now with the Ike Perlmutter Center for
Legal Justice. Like, his passion project is,
besides being a successful attorney outside of
that, his passion project is finding these very
obvious cases. of people that were wrongfully
convicted that have spent a giant chunk of their
life in jail and through these podcasts we've
gotten a bunch of these people out and you've
got a chance to have conversations with them
i've had a few on here and you have these conversations
with these people and you realize like these
are brilliant people who lost a giant chunk of
their potential to nonsense yeah And I think
if it's – first of all, I think Josh is really
smart and I know I've – you've done a lot with
him. And I think that's so important. There's
always a tendency to sort of think of only wrongful
convictions because everybody can agree that
we shouldn't be locked up for something that
we didn't do. We've had people on that weren't
wrongfully convicted that did an extraordinary
amount of time for a minor crime. Right. But
unfortunately, one of them wind up getting out
and then killing a guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cutting
off his head and wearing a wig. He didn't, I
guess he didn't know what the new cameras could
do. Which is funny, but also not funny. You're
saying it's a technology problem. He didn't understand
the technology he was dealing with because he
put on a wig and he thought, oh, I'm going to
look like a woman. Like, bro, it was like HD.
It's you with a wig. He was learning from Bob
Durst. Well, I think he probably acted out of
passion and then was trying to figure out how
to rectify this problem that he created. But
one thing I want to talk, I haven't met Josh,
but I want to talk to him. And one thing I want
to talk to him about is the fact that There is
like a level of conviction on the part of a lot
of prosecutors that they're on the – as you're
saying, they're like – they're on that team.
And therefore, they have to subscribe to everybody's
guilty. Everybody should be locked up for as
long as possible because there are all these
other people that are defense lawyers and people
like that who are on the other team. But then
you end up with people like Steve Marshall who,
by the way, is running for Senate. Right now.
And we're pushing to get him to step down from
his Senate run because, you know, he's sort of
been exposed for what he's. And by the way, he
said that he had never been in the film. He never
met me. He just came out with a whole public
statement saying I had nothing to do with those
people. I never met them. I got like 50 pictures
in my phone of him walking me around the statehouse
in Alabama. You know, it's it was there's a missing
piece there. But that's being very charitable.
But why is it that – I'm a charitable person.
But why is it that in Alabama, for example, there's
a guy named Tafaris Johnson who was arrested
for a murder a million years ago. He's been on
death row the entire time. And the evidence against
him totally fell apart. There are a dozen people
that gave him an alibi that said we were with
him at this club that was across town. He had
nothing to do with this crime. And yet – and
by the way, the DA – who that office is the office
that should prosecute that crime. They've asked
for a new trial. They've said that they're not
confident that he's guilty. And yet the attorney
general's office is continuing to try to execute
him. They're trying to kill him for something
which he clearly did not do. There's another
case, a guy named Chris Barber, where there's
DNA evidence that showed that somebody else committed
the crime and the DA is trying to execute Christopher
Barber. And so, you know, there's this teaming,
you know, where you become a part of law enforcement
and then somehow you lose your sense of judgment
or nuance, your ability to decide who's guilty
and who's not guilty. And that's a really dangerous
thing. Yeah, because your career depends on you
getting a win. Your career advances if you get
a win. The way you get a win is convict people.
And not getting convictions overturned, that's
a loss. That fucks up your career. So better
to kill them. Yeah. Which is really crazy. Yeah.
I mean it's disturbing that we haven't come up
with ways to identify fairness, right? That fairness
should be the method by which you judge how a
– district attorney performs. It's like, well,
we decided to prosecute a certain number of cases.
Some of those cases weren't worth prosecuting.
Some of those cases were going to turn into wrongful
convictions. We're not just going to prosecute
everything, which is why this whole thing about
like Brady material, where you're supposed to
give the other side anything that comes out in
the investigation that might be used to prove
their innocence. If there's something that goes
against the criminal case, you have to provide
it to the lawyer on the other side. But regularly,
prosecutors just bury this information. You have
some witness that said, I was with that person
at the time, and that witness's testimony disappears.
Or you have something that shows that the gun
that they thought was used to commit the crime
wasn't the one that was used to commit the crime.
So there's just a – that's the thing, the teaming,
the decision that you have to be part of one
side or another. I really think that that part
of your special where you're sort of like – Putting
me in the position of somebody who's having to
make a decision about what team I'm on and where
I lose the thread. You know, that's like that's
a very significant thing that you did there,
you know, because it was like a way of bringing
to the average citizen that feeling that they're
all having right now. Yeah, you all get lumped
into it. Everybody gets lumped into it because
there's only two choices in this country. And
that's stupid. Or you could be one of those wacky
libertarians, you know. And then you're like,
oh, Bob's a libertarian. He's out of his fucking
mind. That shit's never going to work. You know,
what else you get? I mean, I'm always, I'm always
curious about, I'm always asking myself what
I should be, you know, what I should be spending
my time on. And I get involved in a film and
it kind of grabs you and it could. How do you
decide? I feel like it decides. You know, I feel
like I'm just sort of walking around thinking.
Maybe I don't need to make another one of these
things. They're very exhausting. And then something
happens or, you know, my shrink says to me, yeah,
I know you always say you're not going to make
another movie, but I think you're better when
you're making a movie. I think you're better
when you're engaged in something like this. And
I'm curious for, you know, you've built this
incredible platform and you have access to just
a remarkable number of people in the universe.
And what do you feel like your mission is? What
do you feel like is the, you know, when you get
to the end of a week and you look back and you
think like, I did what I was, I did what I set
out to do this week. All I ever do is try to
talk to people I'm interested in talking to and
that's it. And I feel like that's what I started
with and that's what I stuck with. And if I deviate
from that path, if I say. Oh, I'll get this guy
on because he's famous and then I'll get more
views. Or I'll get her on because she's controversial
and I'll get more views. I don't think like that
at all. I don't allow it into my head. I get
a list of people on my phone that are interested
in coming on the show. And I spend a couple hours,
a few times a week, just going over this list.
And then I'll go, hmm. That's interesting. Let
me look into this. And so then I'll do a search
on this person and what they're interested in.
And then maybe I'll watch a documentary or I'll
get an audio book and I'll start listening to
it on the way to work. And then I'll decide.
And I'll go, yeah, okay, I like this. This is
cool. I'm into this. This will be a conversation
that I'll be genuinely curious about. And so
that's the only way I do it. And I've done it
that way from the very beginning. I either talk
to my friends or I talk to people who I've seen
a documentary that they did or read one of their
books or I've watched a YouTube video with them
and I thought they were fascinating. And then
I reach out to my guy and I say, hey, can you
see if this guy's interested in being on? And
that's the only way I do it. So I feel like as
long as I do that, I will continue to give people
the same service. And this service is this is
an extension of my curiosity, my honest curiosity
to the world. So whoever I'm honestly curious
about, sit them down, talk to them, do my best.
That's it. And if I try to make anything more
than that, if I try to change it or distort it
or move it in a general direction or make it
have a message or make it make more money or
whatever it is, I'll fuck it up. That's what
I think. I think that's really smart. And I think,
you know, this is what's lacking is sort of authenticity.
And everybody's like, oh, authenticity is so
important. How can I manufacture that? Right.
And I think your approach is really smart. I
also think, you know, I think you talked about
that you really like playing pool and that if
you weren't doing this, you might just play pool
all day. Yeah, that's what I would do. I like
playing pool. But I'm wondering, like, you know,
something's keeping you from playing pool. Right
now. Well, I still enjoy this. If I didn't enjoy
this, I would stop. Like I don't need any more
money. I could just stop if I didn't enjoy it.
But I do enjoy it. I am a very curious person.
I'm fascinated by different people's perspectives,
how they view the world, how they got to where
they are, what was their first step, like why
they make these choices. Like what is it about
the way they think that makes them unique? I
don't think I'm ever going to lose that. I think
that's a very important part of my understanding
of us as a species, us as a civilization. And
I'm very fascinated with the history of the human
race and how we got to this point and where we
are and how we define what is normal and what
is not normal and what our standards are and
how they get manipulated. I don't think I'm ever
going to stop being curious about those things.
I may stop doing this publicly. I will never
stop being curious. I'll never stop watching
all these documentaries or reading books. I don't
think I'll ever stop trying to have conversations
with people even if I don't do it publicly because
it's – I mean it's – this is totally accidental.
I don't know if you know the history of this
podcast. It started out with me and my friends
just bullshitting in front of a laptop and there
was no expectations. It made no money for years.
And then it just kind of grew. And I never promoted
it. I never went on anywhere and said, please
watch my show. I never took an ad out anywhere.
I just kept doing it. And it just snowballed
to the point where I'm like, all right. And now
I just feel like I have this responsibility.
And I get up. And I go, all right, I got to do
this thing today. Let me clear my mind first.
So I go to the gym and I work out and I get in
the cold plunge and I get in the sauna and I
clear my mind out. And then I'm like, make sure
I'm prepared and just show up at work. Yeah.
I notice that you're not like you don't look
at shit. You don't look at your phone. No, you
can't do that. That distracts people. I totally
agree. It's very gross. Yeah. Especially if you're
talking to someone that has something really
important to say. I mean, if I'm looking at my
phone for a brief second, it's because it's something
relevant to what we are talking about. I want
to send it to Jamie so he can pull it up on the
screen. But I think it's one of the great benefits
of having these long conversations with people
on a podcast is that that's time where you're
not staring at a fucking device. And most people
lack that. So I've gotten this completely unexpected
education in life and human beings and how they
think and what drives them and just what makes
them interesting. How does it impact – like you
have two girls, right? Three. You have three
girls. How does it impact sort of how you interact
with them? You feel like you learn something
and then you – Yeah, I'm a way more educated
person than I ever was when I was younger. I
just know more about humans. I know more about
myself. I've just – You know, you're thinking
and you're constantly thinking. So it's just
adding to this database of understanding that
you have about human beings and about just life
in general and just education. And, you know,
unfortunately, my kids are really smart. And
so I have cool conversations with them about
stuff. And, you know, one of my kids has this
crazy recall. that my wife insists comes from
me. It's nuts. Like, she can recall things about
the Titanic and specifics about, like, the voyages
because she got down this Titanic kick for a
while, you know, and lately we've been talking
about the Mongols because she's studying Genghis
Khan in school, and so we had these long conversations
about Mongols and what they did and, you know,
I'm telling her some stuff that she doesn't know
and she tells me some stuff that I didn't know.
I'm like, whoa. How old is she? This one's 15.
But – so it impacts my – not just my relationship
with them but really my relationship with everybody
in my life. And what's really hard is talking
to people that aren't interested in anything
and don't engage with all these different things.
And then when you talk to them, it's like they're
operating on this frequency that's like time
and – And work and life has sort of ground down
all their sensitivity and calloused all of their
senses to the world or their thoughts of the
world, their perspectives of the world. And they've
developed these sort of placeholder opinions
for things. And it's so awkward. And, you know,
and over time, like, you know. Tony Robbins talked
about this once, that if you make small changes
in your life, like if you're both going in parallel
lines, right, and then you make a small deviation,
a few degrees to the right, over time, you'll
be way over here where they're kind of on the
same path. And that's what I find. in life that's
weird and then I think about how many people
don't have the opportunity to do that because
they have a job that's like mundane and it's
consuming and they're involved in it all day
long when they get done they're exhausted and
they never really satisfy their curiosity or
encourage and engage with their curiosity foster
it you know and it's what to me makes people
fascinating when i talk to someone who's curious
about things and it's really like and it went
down a while i was curious so then i started
researching and this is what i found out like
that's the kind of person i want to talk to you
know yeah it's really i mean i think it's also
you know you're probably because it got big without
a plan to get big and because i think you're
the essence of it is wanting to express curiosity
wanting to Take in information. How do you deal
with the people who say like, oh, you know, you
had so -and -so on. You should have asked them
this or you should have done this. I don't know
that they're saying that. Because you don't hear
it. I don't pay attention. I gave up on that
years ago. Because you used to follow. Yeah.
And you realize like, oh, I'm at the will of
other people's opinions constantly. And some
of them aren't logical. And some of them are
petty. And some of them are shitty. They're just
shitty people. They're mean. Like why are you
being mean for no reason? Like why are you being
insulting for no reason? And a lot of it is jealousy.
They're not getting enough attention. They think
you're an idiot. Why are you getting so much
attention? I'm brilliant. I should be getting
more attention. There's a lot of that. There's
a lot of ego involved. But there's a lot of like
very – Should be nice. Like just people with
shitty perspectives. And you don't want to engage
with that. You don't want that in your head because
I think that's contagious. And that's why people
that are constantly surrounded by negative, shitty
people, they develop negative, shitty tendencies.
It's just we imitate our atmosphere, which is
why like this idea of. Pulling yourself up by
your bootstraps is so fucking crazy. When you're
asking some kid whose dad's been in jail since
he was three and lives in a crime -infested neighborhood
and has 11 kids living in a one -bedroom apartment.
And you're saying, well, how come you went to
jail? Shut the fuck up, bitch. You would have
went to jail too if you lived there. What we
need to do is figure out why are these kids in
this situation? Why are so many of our citizens,
people of our community, stuck in these situations
with no attention paid to it whatsoever? And
then you're wondering why so many people commit
crimes. You're wondering why your prisons are
so full. When you engage with people that constantly
have shitty perspectives, a little about... A
little when you're young is good. But once you're
– by the time you're like 19, 20, you know what
an asshole is. You don't want assholes in your
life. Avoid at all costs. And online, if you're
engaging with people online, you're getting at
least 10 percent assholes. It's like there's
no way of avoiding it. So I don't pay attention.
And it gets in your head. Yeah, it gets in your
head. I am probably as critical, like logically
critical, as anybody is ever going to be about
me. And what I do and the way I do it and interviews
that went well or didn't go well, I examine them.
I think about it. When they're done, that one's
like, I should have stopped them from talking
about that because I should have said, wait,
that doesn't make sense. You let people ramble
a little bit too much and then they change subjects.
You want to go back to it and then something
else comes up and you lose. I should have really
challenged that a little bit more. Or I should
have done this or I should have done that. You're
free balling. You don't know what I don't have
any like questions. I know I'm gonna ask I just
have an understanding of the subject that I let
it play out and I think that's why it's good
I just think when you listen to people when I
know You grew up in ba -ba -ba you did this you
did that it's like the same tone These are just
questions then the person answers the question
and then another question comes like you're not
having a conversation And I don't think of them
as interviews. I think of them as conversations
and I think that's what I want to hear, so that's
what I do. And if people are like, well, you
should have done this, and ask them, it's like,
no, you should go get a fucking podcast, bitch.
Make your own podcast, and then get popular enough
where you can get that person on, then you ask
them that. I'm going to ask them what I ask them,
and when I'm done, I'm done. That's it. Yeah.
I mean, I do interviews for when I'm doing documentaries.
I'll do interviews for seven, eight, nine hours
at a time. Not that I suggest you do it, but...
And the reason I do it is because I want to,
like, converse. I want to really understand the
other person. I want to give myself time to,
like, really hear them out. And also, you know,
to some extent the most interesting stuff comes
out when everybody just feels comfortable and
their defenses go down. Yeah. Yeah, Elon was
talking about that. He's like, that's that last
hour. The last hour you can really get them.
Because it's hard for – especially if someone
has an agenda. After a while, you're talking
to them. The tendencies, the way they view the
world comes out. If I really want to know how
someone feels about love or life, I want to ask
them how they got to where they are in life.
How they became who they are. Give them a chance
to brag. Give them a chance to inflate their
accomplishments. Give them a chance to pat themselves
on the back. Give them a chance to... Dismiss
other people's accomplishments. Give them a chance.
You'll find out who people are without even pressing
them on certain things. No, they want to tell
you who they are. They really do. And they also,
like a lot of people, they have an agenda. They
really want to project something to the world.
And then there's people that don't, and those
people are amazing. There's some people that
come in that just open books. They're just like
a mind, a curious person, just a person who followed
a path, an artist, a singer, a comedian, a this,
a that, an athlete, like whatever it is. Like
what made you you? How did you get there? That's
why I love comedy so much because, you know,
just listen. There's a joke in Pumping Mics,
this little series that we did with Jeff Ross
and Dave Attell. I got to watch, you know, six
versions of Dave, just incredible, telling, they're
both great, but Dave telling the same joke like
six different times. Right. Because we filmed
it over like a long weekend and we did two shows
a night at the cellar. And so he's got this line
when he says, they're talking about like in memoriam,
you know, people we lost. And they talk about
Stephen Hawking. And Dave says, Yeah, Steve Hawking,
the great astrophysicist, you know, we lost him.
And Jeff says that. And Dave says, yeah, I knew
something happened because my printer stopped
working. And for some reason, like, this joke
makes people – so many people laughed at this
joke because it's so insanely, like, impulsive,
right? I knew that Stephen – I knew Stephen Hawking
died because my printer stopped working. And
the next night – He did a different version of
it where he said, oh, because my computer stopped
working and it got no laughs at all. And just
being able to see the spontaneity and like the
unlocked quality of Dave's mind. The tweaking
of the joke. But also just like the freedom.
Right. Which may be some some of that for some
people come being stoned. Some people. But I
see like the feeling like in your comedy special,
the feeling that that. That it's coming in the
moment. Even though I know a lot of those things
are things that you've been thinking about talking
about and honing over a lot of years. It's the
moment when it feels like it's coming naturally.
That's where like the biggest laughs are. It's
also like where the biggest connection, the biggest
human connection is. Yeah, so the dance is. The
dance is like staying in the moment no matter
how many times you've talked about a subject.
Don't think about that. Think about the actual
subject. You're basically doing like a form of
hypnosis. You're leading people to think the
way your mind is working. And the only way you
could do that is if your mind is actually thinking
that way. If you're thinking about some other
stuff, for some reason, even if you're saying
the words the exact same way, they can smell
it on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can tell. Yeah,
yeah. Well, hey, man. um thank you for everything
you've done thank you for the jinx and thank
you for the alabama solution because it's really
awesome and i really hope that um through that
film a lot of people get outraged and the right
people and a lot enough attention gets put on
it where you force people to do something about
it. And I don't think people have any idea how
bad these fucking prisons are until they see
that. Yeah. And I think, um, those contraband
phones and what those inmates have done and,
and, and the inmates themselves through the way
they conduct themselves. And, and you, when you
could see how intelligent these people are and,
you know, and that you realize like, this is
not right. None of this is right. This is, I
mean, on the positive side, I would say, Just
so we don't end on a really negative note, the
film has had an impact in Alabama. It's having
an impact in Alabama already. And there are incredible
demonstrations that have been happening. There's
actually – I don't know if you have it. There's
a still of this if you want to look at it. But
there's hundreds of people showed up on the steps
of the Capitol, people really showing up with
the – intention of showing their loved ones being
there and saying, this is really happening, and
giving the rest of the public permission to understand
that this is, you know, 45 % of Americans have
had an incarcerated relative or been incarcerated.
This is an infection. This is happening in many,
many, many places. So for us, the film has been
unlocking that, giving people a feeling that
they're not alone, that they don't have to be
ashamed of having somebody. So, you know, these
are people who've seen the film who've decided
that they want to express themselves. And this
is happening more and more. And we just saw there
was a bipartisan bill that was just introduced
by Senator Larry Stutz, who's a Republican senator,
who said he saw the film. He couldn't unsee it.
And he said this is not – he wrote an op -ed
about it not being an example of Christian values.
He introduced this bipartisan bill for prison
oversight, which is a real bill. It's not a bullshit
bill. It's a real bill about how you take the
investigations because you saw in the film the
investigations are run by the same department
that commits the crimes. So I think we're seeing
a lot of positive action as a result of the film.
And I think that's what transparency is all about
is if the public can see it. And I appreciate
your talking about this and having this. be in
the public conversation because it's really important.
If people see it, they're not happy about it.
They understand that something more humane needs
to be done. Yeah, I think universally. I don't
think anybody could watch that and not think
something should be done. So thank you. Really
appreciate it. Thanks for being here. Enjoy.
Bye, everybody.