#164 - Shane Smith (Part 1)

[0] But Joe Rogan, experience.

[1] Train by day, Joe Rogan, podcast by night, all day.

[2] It just doesn't feel like an official show unless you hear that stupid song.

[3] Oh, you're getting crafty with that.

[4] You're left right here.

[5] I like that good, right?

[6] You're crazy, bro.

[7] Shane Smith in the house, ladies and gentlemen, this guy, this one guy in front of us right now, I have probably enjoyed your online videos more than anything I have ever watched online.

[8] And that is the God's honest truth.

[9] Amen.

[10] I've been turning people on to you for a long time, man. And I don't remember which was the first one that I saw.

[11] Somebody sent a link to it on the message board.

[12] I don't remember which one it was.

[13] It was the Vice guy to travel.

[14] It might have been Thailand.

[15] Mine was.

[16] It was you chilling in a bathtub with some lady boys.

[17] And I was like, this dude's a bad motherfucker.

[18] He's got a big smile on his face, and he's chilling in a bathtub with these lady boys.

[19] And then, of course, I saw the Liberia one.

[20] And then I'm like, who the fuck are these guys?

[21] And then I started going, these guys are fucking nuts, man. They're just going to the weirdest situations, and they're giving you, like, a real take on it.

[22] It seems like people you know went to Liberia and saw the situation and broke it down intelligently.

[23] But it seems like people you know, whereas, like, if I watch a 60 minutes piece on Liberian, they send a correspondent, I don't know that dude.

[24] I don't know that dude, you know?

[25] The difference with what you guys are doing is whether it's Hamilton Morris doing drugs or whether it's, you know, you going somewhere or your boy, just went to the Congo.

[26] I feel like those are regular people.

[27] They're not bullshit artists.

[28] I'm not getting that.

[29] That's a rare thing, man. Well, that's the, that's the, I don't know how to close.

[30] That's good right there.

[31] That's right.

[32] That's the, we call it immersionism, where we don't really have a story before we go.

[33] Like, for example, Liberia started as an article in the mag, which was general butt -naked in the two -pack army, because they had stolen a container, like a ship with a container, and the container that had two -pack Shakur t -shirts, right?

[34] And so it became the uniform of the army.

[35] So that's right up by Sez Alley.

[36] We're like, wow, that's freaky in -catchel and wear.

[37] So we didn't really have a story, but when we went there, we just started hanging out with all these warlords, and each one would tell you a story that was worse than the next.

[38] And everyone, they're like, oh, yeah, we all ate flesh in limelmer.

[39] How many people have eaten, you know, human flesh in Liberia?

[40] Oh, 70%, you know, 85 % of the women have been raped.

[41] like it's just it's like such a shocking thing and you're just talking about cannibalism all the time it's just a given oh yeah no problem they used to eat people in the in the in the presidential palace and and you're sitting there going and not just people babies children they would steal people's babies yeah so the well but naked the guy that we spent a lot of time with they believe that if they split the back of a living innocent child open and take out the still beating heart and eat it that they couldn't be hurt in battle Oh my gosh So they would And they would fight naked So they would That's why he's called Gentleman naked So they would eat the heart Drink the blood And then take off all their clothes And then just run into battle Shooting the shit And this guy's still alive Yeah yeah It's amazing that he tells this story Like Wouldn't you want to keep that secret Well he's a He's now named Joshua Blahy And he's a He's a preacher And they had a Tribunal to sort of see all the war crimes and stuff.

[42] And he admitted to sort of killing, you know, and eating, you know, 25 ,000 to 30 ,000 people.

[43] Oh, my God.

[44] And, uh, but they, they said, oh, you're a, you're a preacher now.

[45] And he's like, yeah, and he's like, okay, well, it's okay then.

[46] Holy shit.

[47] Yeah.

[48] In 2011 in the world, in the earth that we live on, that's actually going down.

[49] Someone has killed 25 ,000 people and eaten babies.

[50] But it's okay now because you're in a cult.

[51] Yes.

[52] That's a great call to be in, man. I would say that's a good one to join.

[53] If you're in a situation where you've eaten about 20 ,000 people and you're like, fuck, I need a way to not go to jail.

[54] How do I explain this?

[55] Oh, I'm a preacher now.

[56] Yeah, he's a, you know, he was a priest in the crown tribe before, which is they believed in human sacrifice.

[57] And he was fighting on the sort of, on the Liberians of the crown side against the sort of American sponsored side.

[58] And so he had been, you know, ritualistic cannibal before.

[59] Jesus.

[60] And then there was not a lot of food during the Civil War, so people just started eating bodies for food.

[61] Jesus Christ.

[62] So would they hunt people and eat them?

[63] No, I mean, I'm sure.

[64] There's enough people dying.

[65] Like, there's a lot of dead people just lying around.

[66] Wow.

[67] Yeah, yeah.

[68] What a fucking crazy place on Earth.

[69] I mean, you want to talk about, like, Mad Max wasn't that bad, right?

[70] Like, what people are worried about with, like, Mad Max that, like, live in in Thunderdome, that's not as bad.

[71] I would way rather live in Thunderdrome than Liberia.

[72] Two men end to one man leave.

[73] It seems pretty straightforward.

[74] I'd rather live on a broke back mountain.

[75] Dude, that sounds completely insane.

[76] And Liberia started out as a U .S. slave colony, right?

[77] No, it was actually they took freed slaves.

[78] And they brought them back to Africa.

[79] They brought them back to Africa.

[80] And they called it Liberia for freedom.

[81] And Monrovia, the capital, is named after President Monroe.

[82] and they wrote the Constitution in America and then they brought the freed slaves over and then the slaves promptly enslaved the native Africans using the plantation method that they had learned in America.

[83] Oh my God.

[84] And so for the next sort of 150 years, the American Liberians, so they would have names like Charles Taylor, for example, or very sort of westernized names, would sort of, you know, had enslaved the sort of locals and tell the guy named Samuel Doe, who was an African Liberian over through the government and that started the Civil War and then Charles Taylor who was educated here in America went after him and that's when all this cannibalism and lunacy started and Charles Taylor now is on trial or being convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity but all the other generals like Butt Naked and Bin Laden and Rambo they're all still there just sort of hanging out in Liberia.

[85] That is incredible how when did it be when was it established as a country so it was established uh in the 1840s so slavery was made illegal in 1865 is that what it was so it was it was sort of you know repatriated slaves from the north and then when they outlawed slavery they would keep it going so I think it was a made an actual international state in 1860s and then it was it was sort of American um sort of run it was it was our sort of quasi foray into colonialism in Africa in in Africa and then it turned into a it turned into a complete an utter disaster holy shit you want to talk about there's no way to make anything worse is there a way is there a worse spot on earth no that sounds like the worst spot on earth yeah yeah I mean when you're in there's a place called West Point which is the the sort of slum of monrovia which by like it doesn't have electricity grid Monroevia the city or water or anything but there's a bad part.

[86] Yeah, it's all bad.

[87] It's all like a slum in hell.

[88] It's all bad, but hell has a slum.

[89] But there's there's there's this one part called West Point.

[90] It's a call West Point.

[91] It's a call West Point.

[92] And you go there and it's, I mean, it's shocking.

[93] It's, you know, eight, nine, 10 year old kid just smoking heroin, you know, you know, slashes across.

[94] It's milky eyes everywhere, you know, stumps everywhere.

[95] all these people have fought in wars prostitution is just everywhere drugs everywhere and there's a shit in the streets there's no like it's just it's literally chaos it's it's it's worse than chaos you're like well even in mad max there would be some yeah there would be some you know two men enter women there'd be some law there'd be some sort of border town yeah something but there's none it's just fucking crazy like it's it's full on and you can't fix that because those people are fucked they're programmed that way.

[96] They're like wild dogs that want to eat people.

[97] Well, the thing is, is they, what I don't know what I mean?

[98] You can't fix a wild dog.

[99] They've grown up.

[100] Most of them were child soldiers.

[101] So they've grown up just killing the shit out of people their whole lives.

[102] And so this is what I understand is, you know, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, okay, stop.

[103] And then they don't give them any money or jobs.

[104] Unemployment's at 75%.

[105] So there's these dudes who have one skill, which is to kill people.

[106] They don't have any jobs.

[107] And they're just sort of sitting around starving.

[108] You're like, well, they're just going to start fighting again.

[109] And that's why what all the generals said is like one of the guys Rambo was like I am a product of war I'm a son of war what do you expect me to do you know that's all I know how to do that has gotten to be the craziest place on earth it's amazing just even thinking about it thinking that that's possible that humanity can slip in in the same you know time frame as you and I sitting in this you know this room with air conditioning and this is this broadcasting the signal it's going out to hundreds of thousands of people all this is the future that There's just like a million minicams.

[110] But this is like post -Japan.

[111] Yeah, this is like the mad max of podcasting.

[112] Yeah, this is like the studio where the dude who made those replicants in Blade Runner, just like where he would work.

[113] Last of the V8 interceptors.

[114] So that's got to be as bad as things can go.

[115] I mean, you can't think of anything worse.

[116] Cannibalism, smoking heroin the street as a baby.

[117] Everyone's missing arms and shit.

[118] I mean, it really, it has to be the worst humanity you can get.

[119] And it co -exist with this.

[120] It's amazing.

[121] The one story, you know, we were going to church where But Naked was going to preach.

[122] And the one story that freaked me out the most was we went to the cemetery in the downtown, you know, of Monrovia.

[123] And there's all the graves were empty and they had been opened up.

[124] And what had happened is no one had anyone to live.

[125] So they opened up the graves, you know, took out the skeletons.

[126] and just lived in the graves.

[127] About 4 ,000 people were living in the graves, right?

[128] 4 ,000 people.

[129] Just living in the graves.

[130] And then, so, but he's telling me this story, and he's saying, you know, I was taking the bus back from Guinea, and I was going, and, you know, I got off the bus and they had sort of, you know, cooked sticks of meat.

[131] And so he had it, and he goes, oh, this is human flesh.

[132] And because he knows what human flesh tastes like, because he ate a lot.

[133] So he goes to the guy and he says, excuse me, you know, know I'm general butt naked, but you know, I'm now converted.

[134] Someone's selling this meat as, you know, beef or whatever, but it's actually human flesh.

[135] And they said, you know, it's human flesh.

[136] And he's like, well, because I ate human flesh a lot before.

[137] And so as he's telling me the story, I'm just like, all of that is just an aside.

[138] The punchline was when he said, oh, they were actually stealing cadavers, you know, from the hospitals and just cutting them up and making, you know, meat for the buses that go through the border.

[139] But so that's the punchline.

[140] But meanwhile, like I'm sitting in this graveyard, which had 4 ,000 people living in the graves and he's telling me, well, I knew it was human flesh because, you know, I ate it a lot.

[141] And you're sort of saying they're going, wait, all the givens of telling this joke or this story, every given is like, okay, so we're living in the cemetery, we're eating human flesh.

[142] And then I found out that they're grave robbing to make, you know, kebabs in the street.

[143] And you're sitting there going, at that point, you're just going, okay, I mean, just any kind of aside, any story, and you're just sitting, you're all, you're at the end of humanity.

[144] Like, we're all fucking doomed, you know.

[145] That is the low point.

[146] It's got to be.

[147] It's the lowest point on earth.

[148] Why does it not get more press?

[149] Why is that not like a bigger, like I watched your thing on the Congo, and that really fascinates me because now people are at least sort of forced to be paying attention to that part of Africa because it's the source of all the minerals that we need for electronics.

[150] And people are starting to realize that.

[151] And I didn't realize it until fairly recently.

[152] I wrote a message board post asking people, like, is there a way to get a karma -free cell phone?

[153] That was the question.

[154] Like, is there a cell phone where you can go, I don't feel bad about buying this?

[155] No one had a work slave labor.

[156] There's no child labor involved.

[157] But there's not.

[158] There's not.

[159] Coltan is, it's like Tanzanite.

[160] You know, it comes from, you know, one or two places in the world.

[161] And the biggest, I think, 85 % or 90 % of it comes from Congo.

[162] which is the most fucked up country next to Liberia, or maybe even more.

[163] And they've been having just a raging Civil War where, you know, they take, again, they kidnap people and turn them into child soldiers and stuff.

[164] And all of that is just to get Coltan, which is what they need to make tablets or cell phones or what have you.

[165] So if you have an iPad or a Blackberry, then guess what?

[166] You know, you're helping sponsor, you know, the longest running Civil War.

[167] And I think it's now, I think it's the seventh bloodiest war in history.

[168] Wow.

[169] But what my thought was like, if this was happening in France, This would be goddamn front page news every day of the week.

[170] It's, it's racist, it's weird, it's, you know, it really is like really out front.

[171] I mean, that's like, as out front and racist as you can get.

[172] I think it's definitely, there's, there's, you know, a race issue there.

[173] It's also, I think that there's a bit of Africa fatigue because, you know, it's always heavy.

[174] It's an interesting way to put it.

[175] It's always, you know, and I've been going to Africa.

[176] for a long time we do stuff for one and you know what they're doing there is really positive and really good and there's lots of good stuff going on but there's also i mean you know there's really bad stuff going on and and and i guess people like after a while it's the same thing too people are like listening to iraq and listening to iraq and then all of a sudden someone says well 50 people died in a you know traffic bomb today and people go oh well because they've heard it so many times before yeah and so i remember the first time i went to sudan um you know we We got quite a big scoop when we went there because everyone was saying it was racial.

[177] You know, it's Arab on black, Arab on black.

[178] And when we went there, they're like, we're all black.

[179] I mean, they just want the oil.

[180] They did this exact same thing in the South.

[181] They killed 2 million people, displaced 5 million, all for the oil.

[182] And now they found oil in Darfur, and they want to kick everybody out.

[183] It's very simple.

[184] And no one had reported on that it was about oil.

[185] No one, not anyone in the Western press.

[186] Al Jazeer had done one story on it.

[187] And it was all race, race, race, race, race.

[188] and you're like, it's about oil.

[189] You know, the whole Darfur conflict is about oil.

[190] So anyway, it's weird what happens in Africa and the press and how it doesn't really cover it.

[191] It's insane.

[192] It's insane.

[193] Watching your Congo documentary made me think, you know what, this is the only documentary I've ever watched on the Congo outside of ones that go deep into the wildlife.

[194] Sure, yeah.

[195] You know, a lot of people don't know about the Congo is it was grasslands too for fairly recently and then it filled in with jungle and it's like one of the strangest ecosystems in the world yeah it's a place where they have that wide that one gigantic chimpanzee do you know about that yeah yeah yeah did you have you ever been have you have you gone to the Congo yeah yeah but did you actually go in you actually went yeah yeah yeah yeah the fuck is that like the first time the first time we went you know David Cho do you know that guy David Cho he's an artist he's like a he's like a he's like a famous graffiti artist and then became a sort of fine artist or whatever.

[196] Okay.

[197] He's a really good artist, a cool guy.

[198] He does a series for us called Thumbs Up, and he hitchhiked across America.

[199] Jesus.

[200] And then he hitchhiked across China.

[201] And I think he's hitchhiking across North Africa next one.

[202] Anyway, he went because there's the German zoological society, the National Geographic Society, and all these people, are looking for this dinosaur deep in the middle of the Congress.

[203] Oh, I've heard of that.

[204] There's this part that nobody's ever really gotten into, and only the pygmies can go through, and they all speak into each other in song.

[205] I understand them.

[206] And he was trying to get to the pygmies.

[207] He was trying to get to see the dinosaur because he believes the dinosaur exists.

[208] And so when he went in there, it just sort of gets harder and harder and weirder and weirder and weirder.

[209] And then people are, you know, you want to see the dinosaur.

[210] You want to see the dinosaur.

[211] They make them drink this fucking potion.

[212] And then they come out all dressed as dinosaurs, but like palm prawns and shit.

[213] And he's like hallucinating going, well, what the fuck is going on?

[214] So he didn't get in to see the dinosaur because he went crazy before that.

[215] but that's sort of like that's sort of like the Congo like it's it is the heart of darkness the deeper you get into it it just gets freakier and freakyer and weirder and and just you know you can't even like for example you know again to go back to your mad max thing you think that there's going to be some sort of rule some sort of warlords will come up with some sort of law or something you know barter town has to have a fucking law there's no law like it's chaos it's just it's like it's like like, ah, there's a thing, I'll eat it, you know, there's something, kill it, you know, like, and, and, and, you know, it's just, it's staggering, like, it's, it's, it's literally chaos.

[216] Is that what happens to people when you leave the balloon?

[217] This is it, if you scratch, this is why religion, you know, I was driving here, and there's all these churches, and I was thinking about it, I was like, they have these churches and religion and society and laws and all this stuff, because left to our own devices, man, we are bad.

[218] We're just like, we're bad, kill it, fuck it, and eat it.

[219] Yeah, we're just like chimps.

[220] Yeah.

[221] I mean, that's really what the problem is.

[222] We're like 96, whatever percent chimps.

[223] This chimp in the Congo has been fascinating to me because it's a giant chip.

[224] It's like six feet tall.

[225] They have pictures of it walking upright.

[226] And they kill leopards.

[227] They have a video of one eating a fucking leopard.

[228] And they don't, the locals call them lion killers.

[229] They have two words for chimps, tree beaders and lion killers.

[230] And they get gray hair and their back stick up like a dog when they get excited.

[231] Like, what a wild fucking animal, man. That's a real animal.

[232] They know it exists.

[233] They have fecal matter samples.

[234] They have DNA, tissue, hair, video pictures.

[235] They know, like, this is a real, legit chimp, and they can't get to it.

[236] It's just too fucking far into crazy town.

[237] You know, you'd have to hike a month into the jungle, you know, to get to this one fucking pack of who knows how many of these things are left.

[238] And who knows how many of those, you know, in the conflict, who knows how many of those have been killed?

[239] Because there's a big picture of one of them that you can see if you look up Bondo ape online and look in the photo section of Google, There's one where these two dudes that look like, you know, regular -sized guys, you know, 150, 160 pounds.

[240] And they got this giant dead champ, and they killed it in the Congo.

[241] They shot it.

[242] Yeah.

[243] And it's, they're like one arm around one of them.

[244] I mean, the thing looks fucking huge.

[245] It looks like it's 300, 400 pounds.

[246] And these guys are sitting there posing with it with a big bullet hole in its chest.

[247] I think there's another sponsor of the show.

[248] It's like Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

[249] It's coming.

[250] It's coming, man. 3D.

[251] Well, it's just fascinating to me that this can exist.

[252] this, you know, Pasadena can exist at the same time as the Congo.

[253] And it's all in the same timeline.

[254] I mean, if you look at historical timelines, how many times has this existed before when, you know, when Atlantis was around?

[255] What the fuck was the rest of the world like?

[256] You know, are there just, is that humanity?

[257] Are we just shining spots and then just everything else, just a full spectrum all the way down to Congo?

[258] Yeah, it's, when you take away any sort of rules, when you take away shit, we are bad, bad people.

[259] That's why people, as they get older, become Republicans.

[260] That's what it is.

[261] They start understanding human nature.

[262] Don't let the children come knife me. You fucking people need discipline.

[263] Don't let them put a knitting needle in my liver.

[264] Yeah, show me a man who's a young man who's not a liberal and I'll show you a man with no heart.

[265] Show me an old man who is not a conservative.

[266] I'll show you a man with no brain.

[267] Right, right.

[268] There's a certain element of human nature.

[269] I don't know who said that, but there's a certain element of human nature.

[270] It is a good quote.

[271] Yeah, I don't remember who wrote it, though.

[272] You're supposed to remember it.

[273] It's much more.

[274] more than authentic.

[275] Just say, some smart dude.

[276] I don't know who actually said this one.

[277] And then you actually saw it.

[278] Left to our own devices.

[279] But I wonder if that's going to change now because of the internet.

[280] I wonder if, you know, we think about how, what a short period of time it's been around since, you know, the mid -90s to now.

[281] You know, it's a blip in human history.

[282] And the dissemination of information is so much easier now.

[283] I wonder if that's going to change things.

[284] I wonder if that's going to, you know, spread the better life or spread the idea of the better life across the world.

[285] Because, like, do they have the internet in the Congo?

[286] No. No. No, no. Cell phones?

[287] Not really.

[288] No?

[289] Wow.

[290] Holy shit.

[291] Yeah.

[292] I mean, I don't know.

[293] It's weird because, you know, I was in Libya during the revolution, and they all had cell phones, and that's how they were communicating, and that's how they did it.

[294] Actually, they did a lot of their organization through Twitter and stuff.

[295] And, uh, but.

[296] they were still pretty hardcore.

[297] Like, it was just a tool.

[298] It wasn't changing anything for the better.

[299] It was just making them more efficient.

[300] Well, I guess not for the better, because I think that it was essential in sort of Arab Spring, you know, to have ways of communication that the government couldn't shut down.

[301] But...

[302] Didn't they eventually want to kill them the whole internet?

[303] They did, yeah.

[304] They did, but they opened sites that you could get through dumb phones even.

[305] And then the rebels.

[306] freed up the cell phone tower so that people could communicate.

[307] Egypt shut down the whole internet.

[308] When you see that and then you come back to America and you see Occupy Wall Street, what do you think?

[309] Do you like, oh shit?

[310] Do you guys know what the rest of the world is like?

[311] What are you going to do?

[312] You're going to shut this thing down?

[313] I think Occupy Wall Street is funny.

[314] We did a lot of stories on it.

[315] You know, just because, you know, I always say Europe gets up my nose because their politics is kind of like first year university it's it's like they read a book you know and so therefore i know politics but american politics is like high school you know and so there's they're like well we just want to you know the rich people should give more to the to the poor people and everyone should just share it more and you're like well that's redistribution of well that's communism that's each according to his own according to and you and you sit there and say well if you're taking money if the state gets to take money from everyone and decide who gets it.

[316] Well, you can just look at the Soviet Union or China before they became the most capitalist country on earth.

[317] So is that what you're saying?

[318] You want communism?

[319] No, we don't want that.

[320] We just want it to be nicer.

[321] We want it to be fair.

[322] Yeah, you hear that why do you need all that money?

[323] When I'm just looking for a job, why do you need a hundred?

[324] I would be more, I would be more into it for sure because I like chaos and I like riots and stuff.

[325] I like, no, but during a de -strata, like we're a young, new media company.

[326] So during de -stratification of power, you get in, you know, so you like chaos.

[327] Chaos is what we feed on what makes us.

[328] Do you worry about your safety when you go into these situations?

[329] Not really.

[330] Really?

[331] Do you just get hammered and fucking plow through?

[332] Like, how do you deal with being in Libya in the moment of...

[333] It's not really scary until you see it in the edit room, you know, like it's just you're there.

[334] You know how it is.

[335] You fly in somewhere, and you're kind of amped, and then shit happens, and people start shooting, and you're talking to dudes and they're going and we're going to fucking kill those guys and you're like just thinking like what am I going to ask this dude next you know?

[336] Right.

[337] And then like get the shot of the shooting or whatever the fuck it is.

[338] Jesus Christ.

[339] And then you're just there and like fuck it we need to eat something what are we going to eat and I've got the shits and I got to go and you're just and then get the fuck out go go go and then you're just on a plane and then you just collapse because you're tired and then when you actually watch it in the edit suite you're like oh fuck that was a bit hairy.

[340] Yeah I was hanging out with a cannibal.

[341] Yeah.

[342] Well, actually, I was just in Siberia, and that was actually, we, it was really, we got really fucked up.

[343] And it's a long story at that, but I realized then that was one, because Siberia is so big, it takes like two days to get anywhere.

[344] So when you're running, you have time to reflect on everything and why you're there and all this stuff.

[345] And we were running across Siberia and this sort of smuggler's route.

[346] And then I was a bit scared because I'm like, like the FSB.

[347] were after us, who's now the KGB, the militia were after us, like the local police were after us and the North Korean sort of thugs were after us.

[348] Jesus Christ, why were they all after you?

[349] So we broke this story, it's going to we're going to put it out on my new HBO show, but, so I did, I went to North Korea twice, and then I did two documentaries in North Korea and they became, I had like 250 million video views or something, it was like a big internet thing, and we won a bunch of Webbies, and so that was one of my big documentaries, So I've been fascinated with North Korea ever since.

[350] I've watched the thing on North Korea.

[351] It was amazing.

[352] Thanks.

[353] But you never really get to talk to North Koreans, right?

[354] And so I'm like, I'd like to just fucking talk to these guys and see what the real deal is.

[355] Like, because everyone you talk to there is just like, Kim Jong -il is God and, you know, Kim Jong -il is God, and everything's great, and we love it here.

[356] So we heard about these slave labor camps where Kim Jong -il is exporting his people to become slaves, or he'll arrest them, We're taking concentration camps within North Korea.

[357] And he sends them to Siberia out in the middle of fucking nowhere.

[358] And they do like logging and mining and shit for 10 years for no pay.

[359] And then they pay Kim Jong -il.

[360] And then Kim Jong -il, you know, supports his regime with that money.

[361] So he's selling slaves.

[362] Oh, shit.

[363] Yeah, big story.

[364] And so we went to Siberia and it's really hard to get there.

[365] I came in through China and then into Khabarovska.

[366] And then I was just taking, like, train after train, after train, after train, like two -day train, after two -day train, after two -day train.

[367] And then you finally get out in the middle of nowhere, and it's all North Korea.

[368] Like, they built it to look like North Korea.

[369] Siberia?

[370] In Siberia, yeah.

[371] And so it's Russia.

[372] And so they have these, like, little North Korean towns with just North Korean writing.

[373] And some of the people, the North Koreans, they don't actually know that they're not in North Korea.

[374] What?

[375] They think they're in North Korea, but they're in Siberia.

[376] What?

[377] Yeah.

[378] Wow.

[379] So anyway.

[380] Holy shit.

[381] Shit.

[382] So, right?

[383] So we broke this story.

[384] No one else has done it yet, except for the guy who was with us, Simon Etrovsky, who did it in Russia.

[385] And he's, you know, he's freaking out because they're making, they're making, so they do Larch, which goes to make like basically every desk or computer table in the world.

[386] So everybody has this furniture, IKEA, or everywhere.

[387] And it's all done by slaves.

[388] Oh, my God.

[389] Right?

[390] North Korean slaves.

[391] But, you know, we heard you can.

[392] actually go talk to them, you know, because it's not in North Korea and they can't do anything to, you know, so if you can talk to them.

[393] So they're just trapped by location?

[394] There's no way to get out of there because there's no way to get out.

[395] There's no way to get out.

[396] But they're trapped, well, they have, they have like their own, you know, security and police and.

[397] So you're not allowed to leave.

[398] No, no, you're not allowed.

[399] You are an actual slave.

[400] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[401] Holy shit.

[402] So we went there.

[403] What percentage do you think believe it's North Korea?

[404] You know, we talked to bunch of people there when we finally talked to the North Koreans and it was pretty interesting because you know you don't get to talk to them in North Korea and there they were saying we're here to work for the for the motherland and you know we're trying to increase our standard of living and we're trying to make things better in the country we're trying to help the hunger which is really interesting because they'll never say that in North Korea everything's perfect in North Korea the rest of the world is fucked and so they're actually saying North Greece is fucked.

[405] We're here to try to alleviate the, you know, the suffering of our people.

[406] So now you've already got insight into the real people know that it's fucked.

[407] The real people know that, you know, there's no food, the real people.

[408] Whereas they don't say that.

[409] You never hear that anywhere else in North Korea.

[410] But anyways, I don't know the percentage.

[411] I mean, we talked to a few people who were like, you know, why are this sort of American imperialists here in our country?

[412] We're like, well, we're in Russia.

[413] You know, like, so, wow.

[414] It was fucked up.

[415] Wow.

[416] So they were after you for one.

[417] Well, the Russians didn't want.

[418] So we went to this place.

[419] We weren't supposed to go there.

[420] There's no cops up there.

[421] It's so far away.

[422] But there's some mob dudes.

[423] And so we met the mob dudes.

[424] And the mob dudes were taking us around.

[425] They were super nice.

[426] And they took us around.

[427] So the North Koreans couldn't fuck with us too much because we were with the mob.

[428] And then so we get on the train to go back to sort of civilization.

[429] And all the North Koreans got on.

[430] And then when we got to the next sort of town, there was FSB, who's the ex -KGV, the militia, the local police, and then these thugs that the North Koreans worked with, and they all came after us.

[431] And, like, Simon Otrowski, I got to say, he's fucking, that's a real hero, because the FSB was like, you're coming with us, and Simon's like, no, I'm not, I'm not going anywhere.

[432] And he had these sort of Russian Federation sort of press credentials that he had made up for us.

[433] And he's going, the Ministry of Propaganda knows that we're here.

[434] We're totally allowed to be here.

[435] You're not allowed to do anything.

[436] You have to call the ministry in Moscow, and he was like really, you know, being tough with these guys.

[437] Because these guys are like bad boys, you know, KGB types.

[438] And so he wouldn't go anywhere with him.

[439] So while they went to call and the FSB guys, we said, well, we're going to go check into our hotel.

[440] We went to go check into our hotel and then did a, like, we went behind the thing and jumped into another car that we had called.

[441] So we jumped, like, did a running jump where we just chucked our shit into another car.

[442] Then the other car went out, and then we met another car at the edge of town and went out.

[443] But there's no real roads in Siberia.

[444] It's only the railway, the trans -Siberian.

[445] And so we're like, if we get on, if we jump the train, they're going to know we're just going to get us at the next stop.

[446] So we had to drive in this Jeep, like across Siberia with no roads, like in through ruts and hunting tracks and shit.

[447] Holy shit.

[448] To the Chinese border.

[449] How long did it take?

[450] Two days.

[451] And we got to the Chinese border.

[452] There's this little known place called a cabar house, but I'll remember later.

[453] But it's sort of half in Russia, half in China.

[454] And in between there's an island.

[455] And it's like a mega sort of trading sort of shitty mall thing where you can just buy like Chinese products and people go and trade And there's no real border So we knew about that because we'd hang out the mob And the mob told us that's how they smuggle shit So we went to this little mall thing and you just walk in on one side You're in Russia and walk out the other side and you're in China And that's how we got out Otherwise we would have fucked Did they talk about the machine when you were there?

[456] The mob No Inside joke So, yeah, we hung out with the mafia dudes And the mafia dudes were awesome They're the guys who told us About the smugglers road to get out They're the guys who told us How to get across the border They're the guys who saved us From the North Koreans And from the FSB What is this smuggler's route Is it like all just dirt, bumpy roads Just going 20 miles an hour The whole way Yeah, yeah And like hunting tracks And what about gas?

[457] They carry it They brought it all with them It's like Mad Max They have a big fuel tanks From the back Fucking Christ It's fucking hard wow that's as hardcore journalism as journalism gets we and actually the piece it's funny because it took so long to get there that we're just on the train forever so we're just getting wasted on the train and it starts off really sort of stupid like i was saying heart of darkness it was like you know when you go into the congo as you go into siberia it just gets weirder and weirder and drunker and so dudes are just like literally blind drunk and fucking like there's people doing murders on the train they have cops Jesus Christ no it's crazy like it's totally And you can see it, like you see it on the, on the footage.

[458] I don't know where we have any.

[459] Did we bring that footage?

[460] Yeah, I got the footage right here.

[461] Oh, fuck.

[462] Yeah, pull some of that shit up.

[463] I got to see this.

[464] And is, is this the stuff that's going to be in the HBO show?

[465] Yeah.

[466] Which one should I play first, you know, or just.

[467] I don't know.

[468] I don't know anything.

[469] Play Siberia, if they haven't.

[470] Oh, wow.

[471] You guys are like super tech.

[472] It's him.

[473] Not me. Wow.

[474] This is like the road warrior of love.

[475] Which one was it?

[476] I'm, I love it.

[477] here i'm not i don't want to do we can't read that uh see are they labeled yeah it says this is north korea well that's north korea well we can't show north korea north korea north korea well let's see the siberian one because that's what we were just talking about right yeah labor games korea doesn't say siberia it says port bombing rebels what would it be labeled no kno kno kno kno kno kno Slave camps?

[478] Yeah, yeah.

[479] Oh, yeah.

[480] Bombing, Liberia.

[481] There's Billy the Fish.

[482] We finally found our North Koreans deep in the bush, and we're busy talking to them when things started to get a bit hairy.

[483] Yeah, these guys are coming back here.

[484] The dude with the crowbar is coming back.

[485] Ah, don't.

[486] Don't.

[487] No, I'm just going to.

[488] He says, what is that?

[489] You're off switch.

[490] You're off switch.

[491] He says I use it for fixing tractors.

[492] I like the fish more and more.

[493] He took the crowbar from him and said, what is that, your off switch?

[494] That dude was a mob, dude.

[495] I love you.

[496] They're giving Mr. Kim shit, and they're quite angry.

[497] So that's just when we had first met the North Koreans, and they end up surrounding us there, and we can't leave.

[498] And then the fish takes out his shotgun.

[499] The fish was the most awesome dude ever.

[500] he's he's like the local mafia dude just with all gold teeth and like a adidas track suit and he's just like this is russia you can't fuck with me oh there's another one i don't know what that one is dipun russia this is yeah trying into the middle of the forest this is a logging camp run by north koreans you can see there's a north korean flag and north korean propaganda in here there there's some north koreans waving at us over there all this wood is going to england when we get all we get off this train.

[501] We're going to go out into the camps where they actually logged out in the middle of Siberia.

[502] Holy fuck.

[503] This is like four hours, four hours, four days from anything and all of a sudden you just got trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, north Korea, like, camp, North Korea camp, North Korea camp, North Korea camp.

[504] And then when we got off, they were really not happy to see us.

[505] How did you find out about all this?

[506] This dude, Simon is, you know, he's a Russian journalist and he had heard that Russians couldn't get jobs in the far east because of slaves and where he was like what so he went out and checked it out but no one had really ever done the story except for him and he just did it on a on a on a on a small program there and then he didn't he didn't go as deep as we went he didn't so he wanted to go back and and course he didn't go as deep as he went who the fuck would yeah and so and so we went and and uh it was fucked up like North Korean slaves in Siberia it was a messed up, messed up trip.

[507] Why isn't Geraldo Revere covered this?

[508] Where are you, Geraldo?

[509] I don't think anyone cares.

[510] They're like, okay, who cares?

[511] But they should care just because it's so crazy.

[512] I mean, it's just...

[513] It's pretty crazy.

[514] Oh, so the reason why, so we get to the Chinese border and we're like, finally, we got out, and right when we were there, so we were in the Amir region, the Far Eastern Amir region, and Kim Jong -il, who hasn't left North Korea in like seven years, met Medvedev in the Amir region.

[515] So right when we were there, Kim Jong -il was in the same region to talk about new labor and trade agreements, which means more fucking slaves.

[516] So that's why they were so freaked out is because obviously Russia doesn't, they think, oh, we're Europe, we're smart, we're like everybody else.

[517] They don't want people to know that they have North Korean slaves.

[518] So they were trying to shut it down.

[519] And meanwhile, we were there right when Kim Jong -un was there.

[520] We didn't know it until we got into China.

[521] It was crazy.

[522] Wow.

[523] Imagine if they had caught you there.

[524] We've been bad.

[525] Fuck.

[526] Do you worry about that when you're doing these sort of stories?

[527] I mean, is that in the back your head or you just go, go, go?

[528] I think that, you know, people always say, like, what's the scariest place you've ever been to?

[529] And it's funny because I think that in places like Russia or Iran or even Afghanistan, places like that, if you're going to get caught, they're going to, you're going to go to, like, jail and it'll be unpleasant.

[530] But somebody's going to make some deal to get you out.

[531] somebody's going to sort of, you know, do a trade or put pressure on or do whatever to get you out.

[532] Whereas if you go to, like, Mexico, you know, and you're doing some narco shit, they'll just kill you, like, fuck it.

[533] If there's any question mark at all, just kill them, you know?

[534] Like, you know, when I did narco cinema, I don't know, I just come out of Iraq, you know, there's 50 ,000 narco -related killings a year in Mexico.

[535] And you're just like, that's way more than Iraq.

[536] Yeah.

[537] Like, so when you start to do, one of the stories we want to do now is fundamentalist Mormons from America, you know, went down there when they were sort of forced to give up polygamy.

[538] And so they went down to Mexico?

[539] Mexico, yeah.

[540] So, well, Mitt Romney's grandfather was one of them.

[541] Oh, my God.

[542] Somebody get that to someone in a debate.

[543] Yeah, exactly.

[544] So he went down there.

[545] So they have these like militias and shit, right?

[546] And now what's happened because they're fairly wealthy, the cartels have started kidnapping them, right?

[547] So there's a war going on between the cartels and the Mormon polygamist, extremist militias, right?

[548] But Americans.

[549] Holy shit.

[550] So they have like American colonies of Mormons down there?

[551] Correct.

[552] How many people?

[553] Well, so that's the thing.

[554] There's a few of them.

[555] They're quite big colonies.

[556] But, you know, we don't know exact numbers, but somewhere on 20 ,000, 30 ,000.

[557] Can I grab one of those?

[558] 20 or 30 ,000?

[559] I shouldn't say.

[560] I don't know the exact numbers.

[561] We're supposed to go down and talk.

[562] So anyways.

[563] So they've basically started their own little mini civilization.

[564] Yeah, exactly.

[565] But when you're in Mexico, like two stories, like, you know, everyone's like, oh, you know, Iraq is scary.

[566] And you're like, actually Jamaica was scary because when I went down to Jamaica, you know, I went down and I met Duddis, who was like, ran the shower posse.

[567] He was one of the biggest drug dealers in America.

[568] And in fact, America, we're going to call out all Jamaica's loans, bankrupt the country unless they gave them Dutas.

[569] But Dutas, it was like, he was like the most powerful man in the country, so they didn't want to give him up.

[570] So it was like raging gun battles in Kingston and shit.

[571] So I interviewed him, but then there was this war between, like, Mavado.

[572] He was a dance hall guy in Vibes, Kartel, and Gala and Gaza crew.

[573] and they were fighting each other and Duddis had this like peace concert and shit but anyways they used to have this party called Pasa Pasa in Kingston and it's in Tivoli and it was run by Duttas this Coke, the biggest Coke dealer and when you go down there on every street corner there's dudes with AK -47s and you're like a porkball you're like what the fuck you're doing here this isn't for you to be here and meanwhile like America's trying to extradite their god Duddis and so I was down there and I was with some dance hall guys and they were speeding through and they wouldn't stop at red lights I'm like, what are you doing?

[574] They're like, Demolada gunshot down here.

[575] You know, like, people were just getting shot and like super violent.

[576] And by the way, if they killed you, it wouldn't be a bad thing.

[577] They'd be like, good, fucking, you know, you killed the guy, he shouldn't be here.

[578] So, you know, Jamaica, Mexico for sure when you're doing anything with Narco because they'll just kill you just for being there, why the fuck are you here?

[579] And then the favelas in Brazil because of the same thing, They're just like, why the fuck are you here?

[580] There's no reason for you to be here, you know.

[581] Yeah, that's amazing, man. Now, when you go and you do these Mexico trips, do you have, like, someone who guides you and keeps you safe?

[582] Like, how do you, because I told, we had Anthony Bourdain on, and he said one of the things you've got to get a local guy.

[583] When you go to these crazy spots, you get a local guy who's like, you know, a handler, and that guy takes care of everything in a town you pay him.

[584] Do you guys do that?

[585] Yeah.

[586] Yeah, you definitely have to have local guys.

[587] I don't believe in security or definitely not like, you know, for sure, not like Western bodyguards or like pilgrims or any of those kind of.

[588] Big, obvious, visible big guys.

[589] Yeah, talking into their wrists and shit.

[590] That's just stupid because they're just going to.

[591] Tract attention.

[592] What the fuck is going on here?

[593] Let's get them, you know?

[594] Yeah.

[595] But definitely you need local fixers.

[596] In Mexico, we have 34 offices around the world.

[597] So we have our own guys, local guys pretty much everywhere.

[598] And then you have like local fixers who, you know, know the terrain, know the language.

[599] know what's going on and you know how to get you out of shit and you guys started this you were doing a magazine called voice and then you took it over and took the O out and just called advice yeah it was it was called Voice of Montreal and it was a it was sort of a welfare project in Canada run by Haitians and they were doing a Black History Month thing and they figured they could get more money out of the government by doing an English language cultural publication and so we were all working there I wanted to be a writer so I was like I finally got a job and meanwhile Quebec was trying to separate from the rest of Canada so like English language publications became illegal so like you know no audience and so anyway eventually they couldn't pay us our wages and stuff so we said okay well we own it now so we dropped the oh and just call advice and like everyone was like what a great name how do you think of that fucking name How'd you think it up, and we're like, we just drop the O, you know?

[600] It's a perfect story.

[601] Yeah, and then we moved to the States, and then we started expanding now we're in 34 countries.

[602] And where are you guys based out of?

[603] You're based out of New York?

[604] New York and London are our two, our biggest office next year is going to be in China.

[605] And how long have you been doing this?

[606] 16 years.

[607] Holy shit.

[608] Yeah, I'm old man. God damn.

[609] And now it's music.

[610] You even have a clothing line and, like, everything now.

[611] It's like a huge.

[612] Yeah, we have a record label and films and TV.

[613] and MAG and online and all our different verticals and events and was this a plan from the very beginning to branch off in all these different directions or it just sort of naturally happened?

[614] Yeah, no, there was, we never had a business plan we never knew anything, we never thought about it really.

[615] What happened was, you know, we wanted the outlawed English basically in Quebec, so we went national in Canada.

[616] We're the biggest magazine in Canada, but that was like being the biggest magazine in Reykjavik or something.

[617] We're the number one podcast in Canada.

[618] Really?

[619] Hey, Canada.

[620] All right.

[621] I love Canada.

[622] I do too.

[623] I love Canada.

[624] I'm going to swear I'm going to move if shit gets bad.

[625] Yeah, Vancouver.

[626] I came real close in 2004.

[627] I was looking at space in Vancouver.

[628] Really?

[629] Yeah.

[630] Yeah, I was thinking about it.

[631] I wouldn't go to, you got to go to the, because it's going to get real bad.

[632] You got to get to like one.

[633] North of where I grew up in Ottawa, there's like a million lakes.

[634] You can just buy a lake for like a hundred bucks.

[635] You got to buy a lake and, you know, build a cabin on the lake because when she gets bad, You've got to get far away from the cities.

[636] When shit gets that bad, though, you might want to just die.

[637] Yeah.

[638] You want to live like in Liberia, you know?

[639] I don't want to.

[640] I don't want to live like that.

[641] I'd rather take a bullet.

[642] Yeah.

[643] I'd rather take a bullet than live like that.

[644] A stump.

[645] O .D. on Flintstone.

[646] Yeah.

[647] I don't think you can, Brian.

[648] Yeah, you can.

[649] I think that's a rumor.

[650] So you guys started now.

[651] How did you get started from going from a magazine to these incredible in -depth on -scene investigative pieces that you're doing.

[652] What was the first one?

[653] Heavy metal in Baghdad.

[654] So we for about a decade we were kind of a style mag so we were really just interested in cocaine and supermodels and denim.

[655] And so like, these jeans are weird.

[656] And we had it was because it was fun.

[657] It was a lot of fun and we were kids and and And then when we started expanding around the world, we're like, oh, your shit is fucked up.

[658] Like, holy fuck.

[659] Have you seen this?

[660] You know, and we'd write about it, and people were like, I've never heard about that.

[661] What the fuck's going on?

[662] We're like, yeah, it's crazy.

[663] So that happened as well as the sort of failure of mainstream media during, you know, the Iraq war with everyone saying, like, weapons of mass destruction, just lying, and they knew that there was no weapons of mass destruction and all this shit.

[664] And so we did a thing where we went to, we snuck into Iraq, and we went to hang out with the only heavy metal band in Baghdad across the Cowda.

[665] And it was supposed to be like a seven -minute piece.

[666] It was the first piece that we launched the VBS with.

[667] And, you know, eventually we shot them over three years and we turned into a feature film that won Critics Choice in Toronto, at one best documentary in Berlin Film Festival, like it got picked up by the BBC, by Ken. out blues.

[668] My friend Eddie raves about it.

[669] Eddie Bravo raves about that movie.

[670] And so everyone's like, you know, oh, that's like news.

[671] You know, we're like, we're following a band.

[672] But you saw the whole thing unfold, like, how everything was fucked up and shit.

[673] And people could relate to it because they're like, oh, I'm in a band.

[674] And then their band gets, their practice space gets bombed by a scud missile.

[675] And, you know, they're going to be killed because they wear like Iron Maiden T -shirts or like they head bang, which is seen as Jewish, so they'll cut your head off and shit.

[676] And so that was the first thing and it was so successful that and we love doing it that we started saying well why don't we the whole everyone's like what's your been your demo and what's your business plan all this shit we're just like we have none all we do is stories that we like so if there's a story like general but naked in the two back army that's a fucking jaw dropper we're going to go shoot that you know and so we started shooting it and people were like I've never heard anything like this what the fuck and so more and more and more people started watching and And we started doing it more and more.

[677] If I have any criticism, is that sometimes it's hard to find shit.

[678] Like, you have a bunch of different shows on Vice .com.

[679] There's so many different ones.

[680] Like, I was trying to find Heinemann's Adventure, the dude who lives up in the Arctic, who lives in, like, East Alaska.

[681] And I couldn't find it how to Google it and then find it through Google.

[682] Yeah, we suck.

[683] We're only good at...

[684] I couldn't find it on your website.

[685] It's not on Netflix anymore either.

[686] We're only good at one thing.

[687] We're good at making content.

[688] We're not good at anything else.

[689] Yeah, but someone should be good at doing that for you.

[690] Well, this dude here, look at this fucking thing.

[691] Yeah, this is the master.

[692] We need to steal him and have him come over.

[693] He's not going to the Congo, bro.

[694] Trust me. You don't want anybody crying to your lap.

[695] No, I would be the crier.

[696] I'd be the, you could throw me out, though, first, so I'd be eating first, I guess.

[697] He would definitely be eaten first.

[698] He's fleshy, and he won't even run.

[699] He'll just.

[700] No, I'll cry.

[701] He's like a rabbit with epilepsy.

[702] I'll just fall and start shaking in a little soft, fluffy bundle.

[703] I'd probably survive, though.

[704] They'd be like, oh, I'm not going to eat that thing.

[705] You'd come back.

[706] with abs, hardened, doing chin -ups in the jungle.

[707] It would totally change the life.

[708] Well, the most hugely strong dudes I've ever seen in my life, actually were in Liberia because they don't have water.

[709] So they do this thing where they go way out into the outskirts in the jungle and they fill up these like two -ton wooden carts with water and one guy pushes and one guy pulls her two or three and they just up and down these hills all day long.

[710] They don't eat anything and they just push like two tons up a hill, two tons down a hill.

[711] And they're just fucking massive, like it's like conan you know he pushed the wheel for 10 years yeah well that's these kind of dudes just fucking massive dude wow anyway what a fucking insane place on earth that is yeah i just can't i i'll never be able to get over the fact that that exists right while this exists you know and we could be that's one no one wants to put their head there but you could have been born there man that could have been your shitty roll of the dice true you could have been shit out in the bottom of a hut in in the middle of liberia yeah just as easily as you could have in Montreal yeah fuck so you start out you do this Baghdad thing then how did how does it branch out into what you have now because now you guys have you know I mean Thailand and Liberia and I saw the Chernobyl thing that was fucking nuts man did you worry about that I mean you're you're there in some serious fucking radiation yeah I was drunk that that whole trip because does the drug does the alcohol supposedly protect you for radiation two things I heard God knows if they're true but I heard them so I believe them as fact.

[712] One, that the doctors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki live because they got so bummed out like by skin falling off and shit that they would get wasted and alcohol is a diuretic so it forces you to piss, it flushes out the radiation in your system, right?

[713] And also the firemen in Chernobyl lived because they would get drunk every night.

[714] and so when we were there they actually said take your medicine and it was like brandy you know so we were just drinking this like homemade brandy the whole time we were there and I was loaded and we were like laughing you know with the Geiger counter as it goes up like 1500 you know and you're just like you know 1 ,500, 1500, 1600s, 179 and meanwhile just because you're drunk and then when you go back they have like a Geiger counter to test your shoes and they're just like you know straight straight to red.

[715] So I just sort of threw everything out, you know, bought like a silver, a silver Ukrainian suit.

[716] And so, you know, I figured that.

[717] What's a normal level?

[718] What's like a healthy level?

[719] I think it's like 0 .25 millerangans is hot.

[720] And we were at like 1 ,500.

[721] Oh my God.

[722] Have you had any side effects?

[723] You've been going to the doctor like regularly?

[724] Like, are you freaking out about it at all?

[725] I do not go to the doctor.

[726] Put some wine on your feet Yeah, I'm Irish So I'm just like have a whiskey and you'll be fine But you know I was just in Japan actually And what's going down there You want to talk about Mad Max is Like that's fucking crazy shit And we're actually going to go back and shit We were doing the preliminary thing there And like the actual reactors The steel, the containment of the reactors Is now melting into the sort of groundwater And melting into the soil and there's like major cities there of like 500 ,000 people that are completely fucking irradiated and they're not telling people the truth and the kids know that it's wrong they're really frustrated and they're really angry and the government's just like denying shit and both Chernobyl and in Japan I was shocked because everyone because you know energy people are going oh nuclear power nuclear power it's a future it's great and whatever you just go there and you go if it fucks up even this much if it fucks up just a tiny bit like you know in the Ukraine, an area the size of France is still completely irradiated.

[727] You know, and you're just like, well, I mean, what the, like, how is this even a fucking option?

[728] Yeah.

[729] How is it a possibility that you could have one mistake or a natural disaster like a tsunami?

[730] You know, the fact that they only, they only planned for what was an 8 .2 or something like that, that's as bad as it could get, and they got a nine, and it just wrecked everything.

[731] And then the power goes out and they can't cool everything off, and then they're pouring ocean water on it.

[732] That water is now back in the ocean.

[733] There's an online presentation that shows the irradiated water and how it's moving through the Pacific Ocean.

[734] It's fucking terrifying.

[735] Yeah.

[736] It's beyond terrifying.

[737] And what's happening in Japan now is, I mean, it just shows you like, well, what are they going to, what can they do?

[738] How are they going to evacuate a million people?

[739] Where the fuck are they going to evacuate them too?

[740] And how big is Japan?

[741] Like, what is the total size of it?

[742] Is it possible that the entire Japanese, Nice island will get irradiated?

[743] Well, no, because it's, now I'm going to show myself up here for being a bad boy, but I think it's like seven major islands.

[744] So, you know, there's, you know, Sapporo's on the north one.

[745] So they have different islands, but it is definitely, it's sort of this area that's about an hour and a half, two hours north of Tokyo, but it's actually sort of heavily populated around there.

[746] Two hours drive?

[747] Yeah.

[748] So, and that's, you could be that close?

[749] to a horrible nuclear disaster like that, two hours drive?

[750] Yeah, and well, and there's a lot of, well, there's like, you know, Japan, when we first started having our office there was like, you know, the future.

[751] It was like, you know, wow, they're way ahead of us and technology and, you know, everything else.

[752] And now when you go there, you know, there's no air conditioning, so it's everybody's really hot.

[753] And the lights are at like half light.

[754] And, you know, even stupid shit, like we were at karaoke and like the, it'll just go on and slow down because the power's all fucked up and it's it feels kind of like a ghost town lots of people have left and it yeah it's like oh it's gone beyond future it's gone to like it was the future and now it's like post future and if it's the post future then we should drink a lot today because it's going to not be pleasant yeah it's like maybe akira I'm going there for the first time in February for the UFC go to Tokyo are you really yeah I flew over I flew over with a bunch of wrestlers there was a big I was just there two days ago or three days ago and there was just a bunch of huge huge fucking wrestlers those boys are big the wrestling dudes not the USC dudes I'm just drawing in a Japanese wrestlers were the Japanese wrestlers were the Japanese no they were like WWE do oh yeah yeah well the most those guys were real wrestlers originally a lot of more at least you know but there's no real outlet for amateur wrestlers if they want to go into professional sports except for MMA well now MMA but MMA to me seems like you know real fighting the ultimate fighting it's a big difference it shouldn't it doesn't seem to me to be real well well the real amateur wrestling is a great sport but unfortunately it never got popular enough to be a professional sport they've tried it a bunch of times there's a lot of wrestlers in the ms yeah because you can learn striking yes but it's hard to learn the wrestling well it's a great base and it's also those guys are toughest shit if you go through wrestling practice wrestling practice i only wrestled one year in high school and it's one of the toughest things athletically i ever did the practices are absolutely brutal you know especially if you're a very strong It's just a grueling kind of a workout and they're mentally tough because of it.

[755] I went and hung out with a bunch of juditsu guys with Daniel Gracie in Brazil.

[756] In Rio?

[757] Well, Rio and, yes, Rio.

[758] And we went to the favelas to where they train by running barefoot up mountains and beating the shit out of tractor tires.

[759] And they have full contact training where they knock each other out and practice and shit.

[760] he took me all around and those those dudes are tough like I don't know how anyone can beat a Brazilian because they're a fucking tough motherfuckers well there's a lot of Brazilian champions now one of the Brazilian one of the ultimate fighters the uh this last season that happened last weekend this past weekend one of them was a Brazilian kid we've got uh three Brazilian champions now you know and who knows how many more yeah we were doing the valetudo stuff which is anything goes no weight class no age no gender so you guys uh cover you guys uh cover you that stuff?

[761] They usually have weight classes in Valle Tudor fights, but you guys will fight bigger guys.

[762] We had the, well, we were going to the Valley Tudor like the full -on, like anything goes, Valle Tudor stuff.

[763] What's interesting is that the great, that's how the Gracie started, is they would fight anybody from any style, any weight class, anything, and they would have a, you know, $100 ,000, a $100 ,000 prize if you could beat a Gracie.

[764] And that's how the whole sort of valetudo thing started in that anime.

[765] Yeah, it's really fascinating when you find out that Jiu -Jitsu really was started by two guys.

[766] I mean, it wasn't started by two guys.

[767] It was judo in Japan and Japanese Jiu -Jitsu.

[768] And, you know, submission wrestling has been existing in many forms for a long time.

[769] But what Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu, the really technical version of Brazilian Jiu -Jitsu, was really started by Ilya O 'ILEO Gracie and Carlos Gracie, two bad motherfuckers from this one family in Brazil that created an army of super killers.

[770] Yeah, Daniel Gracie was three -time world jiu -jitsu champion.

[771] And so he's more of a jih Tzu guy.

[772] Yeah.

[773] He's a big, big motherfucker.

[774] Jiu -jitsu is a much safer way to compete.

[775] You know, when you start getting involved with head trauma, that's when things get sketchy.

[776] Yeah.

[777] You know, the returns aren't the same, you know?

[778] Yeah, yeah.

[779] And you're going to lose.

[780] Everyone's going to lose.

[781] But if you lose in a jihisoo tournament, you know, occasionally get your arm popped.

[782] You couldn't even, you know, have to have a surgery on a knee or something like that.

[783] But you lose in an MMA fight.

[784] That's a completely different animal.

[785] Yeah, yeah.

[786] It's a hard world.

[787] It is.

[788] So Mayhem lost that last fight?

[789] Yep.

[790] Yeah, he got beat up.

[791] He gassed.

[792] I don't know what happened.

[793] It could have been that he hadn't fought in a long time.

[794] It could have been that it was a giant adrenaline dump.

[795] But he got tired really quickly.

[796] And Michael Bisping fought a real good fight.

[797] And Michael Bisping looked better than he's ever looked before.

[798] And he beat the shit out of Jason, especially standing up.

[799] Standing up, he really just boxed his face in.

[800] Have you talked to him since then?

[801] No, I'm going to let him chill out.

[802] You know, I know Jason, you know, is a big disappointing loss for a guy like him, so just going to let him just relax.

[803] And maybe he'll come back on the podcast once he's, you know, he's going to be bummed out for a while, but he'll be back.

[804] You know, the thing about fighting is a lot of it is psychological.

[805] A lot of it is just being able to perform in the moment.

[806] You know, and a lot of people are dwarfed by that moment.

[807] They just tense up, and their adrenaline gets to them, and they get nervous, and they just, they just can't do it.

[808] Yeah.

[809] Well, it's also, like, fighting, you know, when you're used to winning, you're just like, I'm always going to win.

[810] Yeah.

[811] And then when someone beats you down, you're like, look at George Foreman, like, he was the baddest man on the planet.

[812] He was the bad, and then after he got beat, he's like, okay, I'm done.

[813] That's it.

[814] Like, forget it.

[815] Yeah, Ali beat him, and then he came back, and he fought.

[816] Someone else, he fought one other guy and had like this crazy rock -up soccer robots fight.

[817] And then he took, yeah, well, they both got knocked down like three times each.

[818] And then he's like, fuck this.

[819] And then he became a preacher.

[820] And then big and fat at 36 years.

[821] And then came back.

[822] Decides to make a comeback.

[823] Really fat, too.

[824] Everybody thought it was a joke.

[825] I like that style of boxing too.

[826] He looked like a weble, you know, where he had his left right out and he'd just sort of rock back and forth.

[827] And he were just waiting for that right hand to come out.

[828] The thing is, when it came, it was like you were hit by a telephone pole.

[829] It was like somebody thrusted a telephone pole on you.

[830] Dung!

[831] Yeah, yeah.

[832] Wow.

[833] So when you were in Thailand, did you get to go and check out any of the Muay fights?

[834] I did, actually.

[835] I interviewed the beautiful boxer.

[836] Do you know about her?

[837] Is that the she -mail?

[838] Yeah.

[839] She used to be a guy?

[840] Used to be a guy.

[841] Became a she -mail and then became the champion Mu -I -Tai boxer for her weight, class and she used to do this her signature move was she'd run up your legs and the knee in the face so you know you in the classic muntai they sort of plant and she would do this thing where she'd run up your legs and kick you in the face and then was she fighting men or men men only men yeah and then when the men would go down she'd kiss them on the lips as a as a fuck you because like they wouldn't let didn't want her to fight stuff she had a she had a big uh target on her back and so she was she uh post -op oh i don't fuck What did it feel like?

[842] I think the story is, see, the story is there was one of these women that was a fucking killer until she got the surgery.

[843] And then essentially they take your balls away.

[844] And when they take your balls away, you no longer have testosterone.

[845] She lost her muscle tone.

[846] And, you know, she essentially became a real girl.

[847] And she was fighting guys.

[848] And they were kicking her in the fucking head all of a sudden.

[849] Yeah.

[850] Yeah, she became champion.

[851] I don't think she was real, really, she was a celebrity.

[852] I don't think she was really fighting that much anymore.

[853] But she might have had the operation.

[854] Isn't it funny that you have to keep calling her she?

[855] I get them all confused because there was a lot of them.

[856] I was interviewing a lot.

[857] I was surrounded by she -mails for a time of my life in Thailand.

[858] Wow.

[859] So when she originally started fighting, she was fighting men.

[860] But then after she got the operation, even though you're calling her a she, she's still fighting men.

[861] Yeah, yeah.

[862] What the fuck is that?

[863] I mean, we think that that's like the whole point of getting the operation here.

[864] a woman now.

[865] She, you know, she started getting into Muay because she was getting picked on for being, you know, a she -mail.

[866] And then, so, you know, she wanted to beat the shit out of everybody, and she did.

[867] And, but I think by the time, by the time I met her, I think she was probably, maybe, I asked the question, so I, but I don't remember the answer, but I think she was, she was post off, but she had just had the operation, but she wasn't fighting anymore.

[868] She got the money she got the money to do it through fighting wow so she financed her surgery her transgender surgery sexual reassignment surgery yeah through kicking people kicking people's asses and tough those guys are tough as fucking hell fuck yeah that's one of the most brutal martial arts in the world and they start really really young that's a strange thing to cover just in and of itself yeah i have a friend who went over there and he was over there for a long time Like several, several months, just training in Muay.

[869] Sam Shepard, he wrote a book about it.

[870] You know, and he was on a...

[871] Not the Sam Shepard.

[872] No. No, a different one.

[873] Different guy.

[874] A M .MA author.

[875] All right, right.

[876] Who's the Sam Shepard?

[877] He's like a famous writer, playwright, you know.

[878] No, I better not be saying this guy's wrong last name because I'm drug.

[879] I'm going to get another great.

[880] It's right there, buddy.

[881] So when you were in Thailand, tell me what, is there in a real?

[882] reason?

[883] Do they have like some sort of a rationalization for why there are so many lady boys there?

[884] Like what causes one place to have such an exorbitant amount of men that dress like women?

[885] I asked a...

[886] Sam Sheridan.

[887] Sam Sheridan.

[888] You dumb motherfucker.

[889] I'm dumb as fuck, dude.

[890] I asked that a lot why there's so many lady boys there and they were like, well, you know, very feminine and it's Buddhist so it's not frowned upon.

[891] And I'm like, yeah, but even if it wasn't frowned upon in other places, like they have like 100 % more lady boys than anyway Yeah, what is that?

[892] I don't know.

[893] There's no no one has a reason?

[894] I don't know.

[895] It's weird.

[896] And they look the best looking lady boys, the most authentic.

[897] There's this one town, the most authentic.

[898] Well, German look, ladyboys are just so sad.

[899] If you want an authentic lady boy, go to Thailand.

[900] Yeah, if you see like a German, you know, a fucking Austrian lady boy.

[901] Yeah.

[902] American are the worst.

[903] Big huge fucking football players.

[904] Yeah, I want a sucker.

[905] I wish they were a girl.

[906] That's a strange.

[907] strange thing man because it's not it's not gay and it's not straight it's like you're doing they're women in men's body what the fuck is going they want to be free some of them don't even they just get off on dressing like women sure you know Oscar de la Jolla that's like a really yeah he actually admitted to it Huffa no who's the guy Sam Shepard J Edgar Hoover yeah that was uh de la Jolla like kept it a secret forever and paid the girl off and and, you know, and sued everybody who tried to say any differently.

[908] That's probably why he's such a good boxer.

[909] He knows that to avoid duck haymakers.

[910] That ain't me in the girl's underwear.

[911] He, apparently he's just kind of kank.

[912] He just likes dressing up like a girl, but he fucks these girls.

[913] So it's like, hmm, okay.

[914] I don't know what that's all that.

[915] You know, I mean, you're entitled to it.

[916] I don't even know.

[917] Everyone was always like, didn't son, did you fuck them?

[918] Did you fuck them?

[919] And I'm like, you understand that there's like two good dudes with cameras and lighting rigs and shit.

[920] Yeah.

[921] It's like, we're there to shoot something.

[922] I don't even actually expect to know why we were there.

[923] We were shooting, Schemales are always a good story, A, but B, I think we were shooting beautiful boxer and we're like, oh, you know, an hour and a half south of Bangkok or there's Pataya, which is the Shemiao capital of the world.

[924] It's like, and it became big because all the dudes from Vietnam would go there on R &R.

[925] And so they would all fuck Shemales.

[926] And now, well, now, like, the, whatever, the seventh fleet or whatever the fuck it is, comes in there and they all have their R &R and it's all she mails so we heard that there was this place where there's like this she mail beauty page and then they have like a shooting range downstairs where you can shoot machine guns and shit so we're like okay we can go get like 10 you know she males dressed up like Marilyn Monroe and shoot machine guns with them like we have to do that so we did that and then and then and then we decided to interview them and by then I had a few al so they're like get in a hot tub and I'm like okay yeah well that's what it was the craziest shit when you were that's one of the first things i ever saw you do you're in this hot tub with these lady boys i'm like who is this wild motherfucker he doesn't that's not so wild that's pretty wild dude i like to have i'd like to have a bath yeah you were smiling with them and laughing and having a good time and yeah i wonder why people asked you if you fucked them because it seemed like you fucked them so if i had a guess he'd be like yeah man i have a friend who's a comic and he uh was uh doing this show with a lady boy and she was really hot and she offered to blow him And he's like, all right.

[927] And I'm like, dude, you got blown by a guy.

[928] He goes, maybe, yeah.

[929] But I never saw a dick.

[930] I'm not really sure.

[931] To me, a hot chick blew me. And it was awesome.

[932] Yeah.

[933] Well, there was a while there that I was interested.

[934] I was interested in weird shit.

[935] And there was a, I did a piece on the, in Japan.

[936] They grow up masturbating to cartoons, you know, like the porn is cartoon.

[937] Yeah, tentacle, baby.

[938] What is that about?

[939] I don't know.

[940] It's hot, but...

[941] Have you seen their...

[942] They have a really good artist there.

[943] It's pretty good.

[944] But they grow up like cartoons are like porn, right?

[945] So now they have these brothels like whorehouses, right?

[946] But they're dolls, real dolls, so like 20 grand, 30 grand.

[947] And, but they're like cartoon characters, so you can fuck a cartoon, right?

[948] And so I did this thing where I went and I'm like, oh, that's crazy.

[949] Japanese people are crazy.

[950] So I went to these ghetto doll brothels.

[951] I went to these brothels where you dress them, you dress them up, and then you fuck them.

[952] And so I shot the whole thing.

[953] And it was just a stupid little funny piece like, oh, Japanese people are crazy.

[954] And it was so, it got picked up so much.

[955] Like, it was like huge.

[956] And so I did a follow -up where they actually will deliver dolls to your house.

[957] So you go online and you say, I want them to look like this cartoon character, or I want them to look like a schoolgirl, I want them to look, whatever you want them to look like.

[958] And then they bring.

[959] the dolls to your house and then you spend like a weekend with them like having a party you know that sounds amazing drinking doing whatever i would fucking do that in a second and so i so i did it so i filmed it you know and um and again like it was just hugely popular and then i met this dude so i was you know the guy gaspar in a way do that director no he did a film called irreversible you know that film yeah yeah it's got like the most you know anyway it's a he's a shocking director Like I saw that film and I was like That's the most fucked up thing I've ever seen in my life Really?

[960] Fucking heavy The heaviest film for you to say that You gotta watch it It's insane Irreversible Irreversible So he was shooting his His next film called Enter the Void In a place called Kabuki Cho Which is run by the mafia And Kabuki like you know The Japanese opera shit Well Kabuki Cho now is just like Orgy houses Sex houses S &M houses What is Enter the Void?

[961] Is that the The voice one I talked about the DMT and then Irreversible was his first one, which was, I think, better than Enter the Void.

[962] Irreversible is, like, so, like, it's amazing.

[963] The most creative thing about Anthony the void was the way it was shot.

[964] Yeah.

[965] So he actually had cameras in Kabuki Cho just, like, hanging from light, and he would, like, they would spin, and he would just let them run.

[966] And he wouldn't even be on the set.

[967] He'd be, like, in a bar, like, four blocks away.

[968] And he had to pay off the yakas and stuff.

[969] So I ended up doing sort of the making of them.

[970] I followed him for a while because it was like my friend Harmony Corinne who does, you know, he's a filmmaker.

[971] He did a gummo and he was, you know, wrote kids.

[972] He's like, you want to talk about, because I was doing a film show at the time for I've seen, he was like, you want to talk about the craziest film shit ever?

[973] You got to go to Tokyo and see Gaspar in the way because he's paid off the mafia and he's just got these fucking cameras swirling on bungee cords and shit and everyone's fucking everybody else.

[974] So I went there and I met these directors through him to do this thing called Genki.

[975] which means good or clean and it's a it's it's it's a porn it's kind of porn um where they fuck food so for example they'll get a fish yeah to felch like milk out of a girl's ass and then they eat the fish or they'll fuck eels or like they'll fuck like that's like when you see the videos of girls with eels up their ass yeah and there was one where like a mud skipper came out have you ever seen a mud skipper no what's a mud skipper is like this it looks like an alien It's kind of like this translucent thing with big black eyes that sort of see through with red veins And you're just like that, no way is anyone putting that up my ass That's like an alien motherfucker And so they're doing all this crazy eel porn And octopus porn and fish felching And you're just like, this is the most fucked up shit I've ever seen in my life And they're like, I know it's called ginky You know, it's like, Jesus.

[976] I thought the fucking cartoon dolls were bad, but shoving, you know, mud skippers on your...

[977] Has all this traveling and all this crazy shit that you've seen, has this given you any unusual insight to human nature?

[978] Because I've got to think you've seen some shit.

[979] You have a much different perspective on the human race.

[980] If you were a scientist, you know, and you were an objective scientist, you were studying Earth, you would have a much different view of human beings in the average person?

[981] Well, you know, I think that, you know, this is, I wish I could have a better analogy to make myself look better, but there is this, there is definitely a sort of good and evil.

[982] There is a sort of yin and yang that's what I was embarrassed of saying, but really like in Liberia, for example, you have these guys who grew up like killing and eating people.

[983] And on the other side of it, there's just churches everywhere.

[984] Like churches and fucking every car has got to, you know, you know bumper sticker or whatever and so there's like these people just super good and like trying to be good and you know and then other people are just like the worst like the worst people on earth and so there's there's definitely a good and evil vibe and we have tremendous capacity for good but we also have tremendous capacity for evil like people do some fucked up shit like bad stuff like eating a baby's heart it doesn't get worse than that but you know people do really bad stuff and, you know, when they want to send a message, oh, just cut his arm off.

[985] You know, there were AIDS brigades in Africa where they, you know, they would have whole brigades of people with AIDS.

[986] And then they would go and then intentionally infect other people because they wanted to effectively have genocide.

[987] And you're sitting there going, this is what human beings are capable of.

[988] We are really bad.

[989] Like, we're the worst.

[990] Also, I think when you go to a lot of places, you're like, we're just destroying.

[991] Like, we're literally the stupidest, right?

[992] race or not race a species because we're destroying what we live in you know don't shit where you eat well we're we're like having projectile fucking diarrhea where we everywhere the ocean rainforests just killing everything everything we kind of have the mightest touch we kill it and we make money at the same time and then it's dead and so you know every time we go anywhere now it gets everyone asks us our politics and i say look it's just the absurdity of the modern condition it's just fucking insane like I was in China and then a two and a half week traffic jam right so and every year they have to sell 3 % more cars just to break even and you're in a two and a half week traffic jam two and a half weeks yeah it went from mongolia to Beijing it was famous thing they created a whole micro economy and there were people going out there selling food and clothes and shit to people who how close how fast are you going on this road no you're not at all yeah you're not moving at all it was it was a whole it was a whole it was a literally a two and a half week traffic jam.

[993] Stop dead.

[994] Stop dead.

[995] Wow.

[996] What the fuck.

[997] And so you're like, well, how many fucking cars do we need?

[998] And you know, you've been around, you go to Brazil, you can't go.

[999] I was in Tehran, which I don't know why.

[1000] I didn't think it was a real car place, but, you know, you'd go out, you'd sit in traffic for three hours and you just go home because we couldn't get there.

[1001] So you're like, well, it's ceased to work, yet we're still fucking make it more and more and more and more and more.

[1002] And so I think, you know, when you go to Japan, and everyone is getting cooked on the inside and no one's admitting it when you go to Russia where the mob is running everything and there's North Korean slaves and you go to Africa which they're having war over every single mineral or anything that they can find or are going to kill somebody else about and you just start to say okay I mean we're literally hovering on this sort of edge of it's funny because I'm a real sort of optimist guy and lately I've been sort of saying to people we should get a bolt hole so I was talking to you before we was like we should get a bolt hole we should you know get that lake in Canada and get up there where there's fresh water because sometimes I was in South Africa and I was flying back in the plane and I watched collapsed did you ever see that movie?

[1003] Yeah I watched collapse and okay the guy's a bit of a fruitcake or whatever but I was watching and I was going shit you know because what I just saw in South Africa too had freaked me out so much South Africa is a fucked up place What's fucked up about South Africa?

[1004] You know, it's the most...

[1005] When you say South Africa is a fucked up place after you just got a ton of talking about Liberia.

[1006] Well, South Africa, because it's the richest country in Africa and it's always heralded as sort of you know, the...

[1007] Look at what's happening in South Africa, it's so good and so great and whatever.

[1008] And we actually went down to shoot there and you know, it's incredibly corrupt.

[1009] You know, the police captains are always being arrested, but basically it's completely incredibly racist, incredibly segregated, people living behind barbed wire and electric fences.

[1010] You know, there's a famous book called Disgrace, which won, I don't know, the Nobel Prize or the Booker Prize, one of them, about a, you know, a guy from Cape Town professor who gets, who gets, disgraced by fucking one of his students and goes out into the townships and they end up getting their farm taken over and his daughter gets raped and he gets set on fire and all this shit and you know I was reading that before going there and I was like well that's just crazy shit and it doesn't happen and when you're there you're like oh that happens every fucking day like it's full fucking on and so as we were shooting we were shooting the Afrikaans neighborhoods and the Afrikaans are fighting you know the collards who are the mixed races who are fighting the blacks who are fighting the whites.

[1011] And then the whites are just sort of in their compounds, electric wire and security and machine guns.

[1012] And you're just like, holy fuck, dude.

[1013] I'm like, why don't you go to Australia?

[1014] Why wouldn't you just get to fuck out?

[1015] So they choose to stay for what reason?

[1016] Well, they're African.

[1017] We're like, we're African.

[1018] We've been here, you know.

[1019] Since the Dutch settled.

[1020] And so there was that.

[1021] What year was that?

[1022] In the 1600s.

[1023] And I, you know, the Bantu, there was the Bantu migration and the Zulu migration.

[1024] and they both sort of happened relatively late because South Africa is sort of hard to get to from the rest of the continent and then so the Dutch got there a bit after like 40 years ago now don't know everyone say that I'm wrong I don't know the actual exact times but so they've been there a long time but there's definitely a strategy of sort of you know and intimidation and there's a lot of institutionalized rape like there and whenever you see that when you're like rape when rape is part of the equation and home takeovers and all this shit I'm out like you know that's it's just like not on so this the crime rate in South Africa is just ridiculous compared to the rest of the world it's just another example of Africa Africa just as a whole is pretty crazy yeah I mean it's crazy but South Africa you're just sort of like well South Africa is like I always thought of it as sort of you know Canada right in Africa You know, because it's just sort of, you know, it's rich or richer, and, you know, it has these sort of, you know, modern cities and, you know, just sort of, you know, and I grew up in the area of I'm not going to place some city and, you know, fuck apartheid and all that shit, which I agree with fuck apartheid and all that stuff.

[1025] It just, now when you go there, it's so segregated and so there's so much hatred and so much fucking violence and crazy shit going on every day.

[1026] people driving in mad max electrified cars with machine guns and living behind electric fences and shit and you're like fuck is this what like is this where it's headed because this is the whole thing about occupy wall street if you get to be to have too much discrepancy with money so these people have tons of money they're living you know behind barbed wire electric wire compounds with security guards and machine guns and the other dudes are out fucking eating rats and smilees and whatever you know then you're like you know, okay, well, there's going to be a fight.

[1027] There's going to be continual, you know, I'm going to take what you have, you know.

[1028] When we were in Somalia, it's interesting because we went there with this story that was the pirate stock exchange, right, which we thought is a funny idea, because what it is is poor people pay for shares, right, in an RPG or a machine gun.

[1029] And if it's part of a successful hijacking, they get their dividends back.

[1030] What?

[1031] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1032] So it's the pirate stock exchange, right?

[1033] Holy shit.

[1034] However, when we went there, so that's the story.

[1035] But when we went there, we found out, we're like, you know, the pirates are like, well, the Portuguese and Japanese and Spanish illegally overfished the area, took all the fish, killed all the fish.

[1036] And so they have no fucking fish.

[1037] And then an Italian waste management company dumped radioactive waste all up and down the coast illegally.

[1038] So they irradiated the beaches, killed all the fish.

[1039] And they're like, what else the fuck we're going to do?

[1040] Right?

[1041] So they became pirates.

[1042] And so that's the story.

[1043] And this is what we always like about going to story because you go to do a story like the pirate stock exchange, which is just kind of like wild and weird.

[1044] And then it turns out like we're not so far removed from this shit because we're part of the problem.

[1045] We caused the problems that led to the piracy because people aren't actually going to go out and be pirates if you give them any other opportunity.

[1046] But if you fuck their shit up and there's no food and there's no money and there's no beaches there's no water, there's no nothing.

[1047] What the hell else are they going to do?

[1048] Didn't they call themselves a voluntary Coast Guard of Somalia?

[1049] Yeah, there's a bunch of them.

[1050] There's all different pirate groups.

[1051] You know, when you see this and you see these parts of the world that you can get to in an airplane in a day and you see how fuck they are and then you see shit like Occupy Wall Street and you realize like what a thin veneer of civilization we have over, you know, just a boiling kettle of chaos that is most of, most of the world.

[1052] Well, when I was in Libya recently during the revolution, they were like, we just want freedom.

[1053] There was actually one kid in the thing who's just like, my dream is to play for the Dallas Mavericks.

[1054] Whoa.

[1055] And yeah, he was like a 17 -year -old kid who was operating a grad missile launcher.

[1056] He was like a truck with a, you know, Calliopee on the back of the, yeah.

[1057] So he was just in this truck with like 50 missiles.

[1058] And he's like, I want to play for the Dallas Marverick.

[1059] Oh, my gosh.

[1060] And so, uh, somebody called Mark Cuban.

[1061] There you go.

[1062] That was his dream.

[1063] And I asked all these dudes that are all kids.

[1064] And I was like, why are you fighting?

[1065] And they're like, I want to fight for freedom.

[1066] I'm just fighting for freedom.

[1067] We want to be like everybody else.

[1068] And it was, it was pretty inspiring because these guys have never known freedom.

[1069] Gaddafi's been in there since 1969 or was in there.

[1070] So they were just always under him.

[1071] He's the worst dude ever.

[1072] Like, he's the worst motherfucker.

[1073] He actually put me in jail, so I hate him.

[1074] He put you in jail?

[1075] Yeah, the first time I went, I got arrested.

[1076] I went for a youth conference.

[1077] which is the only way to get into Libya, and then I went to shoot the party for the Locker B bomber guy, and I got put in jail.

[1078] You got put in jail in Libya?

[1079] Fuck.

[1080] Boom, boom, boom.

[1081] What is that like?

[1082] Well, to be brutally honest, it was really nice because they actually jailed me and their sort of only place that foreigners were really allowed to go, which was this really nice hotel.

[1083] Oh, really?

[1084] Yeah.

[1085] But it was scary because they're just like, we're going to fuck you up, and you can't say anything, what the fuck you're doing?

[1086] and there's a lot of yelling and slapping and swearing and shit.

[1087] But they were asked, it was just a bummer.

[1088] Slapping.

[1089] Yeah.

[1090] You know, they like to slap your honor.

[1091] They like to slap your face.

[1092] Really?

[1093] As if that's going to make you.

[1094] Like, I'm waiting for them to sort of put like electrodes on my genitals or like shove a glass rod up my ass or slapping me. I'm like, okay, good.

[1095] If that's all I get, I'll be going.

[1096] It's fine.

[1097] So anyways, they were asked to me, I got out.

[1098] I filmed part of it, and I put it in the show.

[1099] And then a lot of Libyans had seen that, and I met a lot of Libyans when I was there.

[1100] when the revolution happened, they invited me to come over.

[1101] So I went to Benghazian, and I went to Mizrata, where the fighting was.

[1102] We were completely surrounded, and we were fighting, pushing to Tripoli.

[1103] And, you know, I was, everyone was just like, we're fighting for freedom.

[1104] We're fighting for freedom.

[1105] And it was like, they were so positive, and they were, like, risking everything.

[1106] And, like, there was one kid who had his leg blown off, and he snuck out of the hospital.

[1107] They were going to send him to Germany and get him a new leg.

[1108] And he wouldn't do it.

[1109] He snuck out so he could get back and fight with his brothers.

[1110] And, like, you know, he was fighting with a fucking spear gun and shit, you know, against tanks and and you know they were doing it for freedom and when I came back I I flew through some hub I'm in Chicago I've been St. Louis and just everyone was just fat like eating cheese dogs and just sort of like you know I was like would these dudes fight for freedom like would these dudes really sort of get up and give anything and fight with a speargun against the tank to fucking we've been complacent for so long you know we think that we have freedom already and we think that everything's fine and this is America I think there, at least they understood that they were being repressed by a dictator.

[1111] I think over there they at least, you know, have a sense.

[1112] I just wonder how bad it would have to get for people to sort of, you know, say, fuck and I'm going to get off my couch and do something, which actually says something about America.

[1113] Look, I'm Canadian.

[1114] I came down here because it's still, I'm the perfect example of the American dream.

[1115] You can come here.

[1116] You can do well.

[1117] It is the best country in the world.

[1118] You know, it's the freest, you know, media country in the world.

[1119] You can do whatever the fuck you want.

[1120] And I love it.

[1121] But at the same time, you know, we're not necessarily the most adept at fixing problems.

[1122] No, we just rape.

[1123] We just take their shit.

[1124] We go over there and we put them in Hawk, you know, and then we take their resources.

[1125] Where's this going, man?

[1126] You're scaring the shit out of me. Everybody's scared.

[1127] The news scares the shit out of me. The internet scares the shit out of me. You're scaring the shit out of me. Let's talk about she emails again.

[1128] We'll lighten it up.

[1129] I fucked a cartoon.

[1130] There's no way it ends well, though.

[1131] It just seems like, unless.

[1132] the aliens land or we invent something crazy every time everyone asked me they're like you know you've seen some bad shit uh you know what what what what do you think you know you're like your question and i just have this flash i don't know why it's subconscious flash of there's a movie called angel heart you remember that yeah sure yeah and there was an old blues singer and he was trying to he was trying to get information from the blue singer and the blue singer was like i don't know I just drink the two boots, cocktails, and whatever they put him, that's all I need.

[1133] And so whenever I feel really bad, I'm just going to have some of this whiskey that you have here.

[1134] And you have one of these and you go, actually it's not so bad.

[1135] You know, it's a lot better than people.

[1136] The world is a nice place.

[1137] You can have a hamburger on a Sunday.

[1138] The thing is it's the best that people have ever lived, supposedly.

[1139] I don't know about overall, but at least America.

[1140] This is the best humans have ever lived ever.

[1141] Yes.

[1142] But it seems like it's not going to last.

[1143] Well, you know.

[1144] It seems like it can't.

[1145] Yeah.

[1146] I don't know if it's, by sort of fact of getting older and you're like well it can't last or it's not like it used to be but my problem is when I come back from you know India or Africa or Siberia wherever and you go to New York and you're like what the fuck do you want to eat you can eat the best whatever it is you want you know by the way I was just in India the best India food I've ever had is in New York the best French food the best time and you're in New York you can eat this you can do this you can go party online long you want you do whatever you want and you sit there and go, this can't.

[1147] Go on, it's too good.

[1148] New York is too fucking good.

[1149] We shouldn't be allowed to have this much fucking.

[1150] So I do have a bit of eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we may die.

[1151] I definitely have a bit of that.

[1152] Because when you see the alternative, like when it's going to be the road, you're probably right.

[1153] You're probably just going to go, well, I had a good time.

[1154] I'm going to leave you with this because I know you've got to get out of here.

[1155] But do you feel like a certain amount of responsibility for illuminating people on all these different things that you find?

[1156] because you guys are covering shit that not too many people are covering.

[1157] You know, you joke around that you're not a real journalist, but I didn't know about Liberia the way I know about it because of your, you know, I didn't know about cold tan.

[1158] You know, I didn't, you guys are letting people know a lot of shit.

[1159] Do you feel responsibility?

[1160] Well, I think so.

[1161] I think, you know, there was a time when we realized, you know, there was about 15 million people watching us every month and, you know, we distributed about 2 million magazines, and we realized that we had a big platform and that all we were talking about was like Nike, you know, limited edition Tokyo fucking come to Garland trainers.

[1162] And so at some point you're like, look, you know, there's a lot of shit going on.

[1163] When we did Garbage Island, that was a big thing for us because we went out into the Pacific and there's an island.

[1164] Would you guys the first to cover that?

[1165] We were one of the first.

[1166] I mean, we went out with the scientists that found it.

[1167] It hadn't really been done by a major media outlet by the time.

[1168] talked about it several times in this podcast is fucking insane yeah and bigger now right yeah well it's just growing and uh so when we went out there you realize holy fuck there's an island the size of texas made out of plastic like it's just is this Texas yeah think about Texas going 70 miles an hour it takes you a day to drive through it yeah and that's all plastic plastic and so well now it's even worse because it's actually dissolving into sort of those little beads that they make all plastics from and the krill and the shrimps and everything are eating that plastic so it's entering into the food chain which is corrupting the whole food chain but at that point you're like well what am i going to do talk about fucking shoes i mean yeah the whole food chain's getting fucked here like you know there's no and by the way i always say if the world was going along ticcitty boo people wouldn't be looking to me for news i mean like you know it's so fucked that people had to go to vice which was again about cocaine and supermodels and denim to go oh fuck that's where i get my news then the world's really fucked you know so so do they have any ideas of how to clean that up is there any well no i mean it's just uh you have to stop making plastic and chucking it in the ocean you know like yeah how are you going to do that we're so disgusting we eat all the fish we poison it we throw our fucking nuclear waste in it we we shit all over it we send some shit into space we just if we could pollute space the sky would be littered the sky would look like it is littered but it'd be really would look like stars at night just things floating above us us slamming in each other but listen thank you very much for coming down here this has been fucking awesome man we got to do this again next time you're in l a time man i need to hear more shit when is your show debut on hboh so we're just shooting it now um we're actually having a party tomorrow night uh to celebrate uh we got some pretty uh great i can't believe i'm gonna miss it to go to the fucking today show today's show's very big though you're gonna be a very popular young man i don't want to be any more popular i'm good you're very popular this whole thing is even like the most insane thing on Twitter.

[1169] You're like the god of Twitter.

[1170] Oh, hardly.

[1171] You're the sort of sexy, beefier version of Ashton Kuchner.

[1172] Nice.

[1173] I'll take that as a compliment, but I don't want to.

[1174] He's a nut bar.

[1175] You think?

[1176] He's a young, handsome man that married a famous old lady.

[1177] I think he's nuts?

[1178] And he's getting some crazy pussy in a hotel room where he'd make them give up their phones and give me your cell phones and hand them all to my box.

[1179] You're all down with the Hollywood gossip.

[1180] I just meant he was the first guy to get to the million Twitter.

[1181] Oh, that's all I know about.

[1182] Oh, you don't know about all the...

[1183] You're getting up there fast.

[1184] You're like the fucking man. Well, you know, Twitter's an interesting little resource, the ability to communicate with all these interesting people, and people connecting me to you on Twitter.

[1185] And, you know, they've connected me to Hamilton Morris on Twitter, a lot of different people on Twitter.

[1186] He's awesome.

[1187] Yeah, it's Dennis McKenna.

[1188] I got connected to him on Twitter.

[1189] It's amazing thing.

[1190] It's the resource of the other.

[1191] internet is just fucking fantastic and you guys are part of that the big part of that well thanks for having me it was great please this is one of my favorite podcasts of all time this is fucking awesome and please keep me in touch with anything you do we'll promote the shit out of it oh for sure and let us know when your HBO thing is is ready to launch all right so let's pause for a minute we'll let these guys go and then brian you and i'll wrap this up so everybody at home watching online just go take a leak we'll be right back