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Tommy G Confronts America’s Most Dangerous Hoods, The Kia boys, & Americas Most Corrupt Mayor

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Tommy G introduces his channel, which focuses on providing boots-on-the-ground access to America's underground economy and criminal underworlds that mainstream media typically ignores. He contrasts this approach with traditional journalism, criticizing major outlets for relying on prescribed narratives controlled by billionaires and failing to adapt to long-form content in the digital era. His team operates without bureaucratic hurdles or heavy regulation, allowing them to interview subjects ranging from train robbers and car thieves to cult leaders like Kenneth Copeland and figures connected to Scientology. While he acknowledges the ethical complexities of interviewing criminals—such as verifying claims about hitmen or avoiding participation in active crimes—he maintains that his role is investigative rather than participatory, aiming to understand motivations without facilitating further illegal acts. The podcast details several high-stakes investigations, including a segment on the "Kia Boys" phenomenon originating in Milwaukee, where teenagers exploit software vulnerabilities to steal vehicles and drive recklessly through residential areas before often escalating into more dangerous firearm-related crimes via Telegram networks. Tommy recounts his most terrifying experience being raided by Mexican police while interviewing an individual named Hostage near the border town of Progreso; despite the danger involving cartel connections and corrupt officers who beat suspects, he managed to salvage footage using security cameras and Snapchat videos from his crew member Chedda. He also describes navigating tense situations in American hoods where gang members might be planning drive-bys or possessing illegal automatic weapons sold on Telegram, emphasizing that while police raids are infrequent at his home due to legal protections, the risk of violence remains a constant reality for him and his crew. Beyond documenting crime, Tommy explores the systemic failures contributing to instability in marginalized communities, citing issues like poverty, lack of education, family breakdowns caused by domestic violence, and the loss of manufacturing jobs that once supported strong middle-class families in cities like Milwaukee. He argues that without viable economic opportunities or strict penalties for violent crimes, these cycles are difficult to break, noting how companies hesitate to invest in areas with high instability while residents struggle to find well-paying work outside their neighborhoods. Despite facing threats from individuals featured in his videos and the potential for lawsuits against a small operation, he remains committed to telling stories that expose corruption and injustice, even if it means fighting powerful organizations like mega-churches or billionaires who control public narratives. Financially, Tommy reveals that while ad revenue is his primary income stream, supplemented by sponsorships, Patreon, merchandise, real estate investments, and sales of single-family homes in distressed Milwaukee neighborhoods, he reinvests heavily into improving these properties to provide stable housing for residents rather than seeking luxury assets like Lamborghinis. He discusses the challenges of balancing a dangerous career with family life, acknowledging that his son's presence might eventually force him to slow down or shift focus away from constant travel and high-risk environments. Looking ahead, he expresses ambitions to produce content for major streaming platforms like Netflix or Amazon and envisions a radical reform in the prison system through performance-based incentives where inmates are trained in trades like plumbing and electrical work while receiving fair wages that allow them to save money before re-entering society as productive citizens rather than returning offenders.
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In every city across America right now, there is a thriving underground economy that few people ever look into. My job is to get inside access to places that most people don't get to see. Ask people questions and bring it back to the people. This has to be one of the ground zero spots. We cover a lot of the fringes of society, the trailer parks, the reservations, the hoods, the smugglers. These are people that the average media outlet will not cover. We give them an opportunity to broadcast their message to the world. Is it safe to say that you are on the run right now? Yeah, I guess you could say. I've always had a desire to explore, to discover, and to really understand what makes people tick. You just got out of jail. What role do you feel like you play in all of that? I feel like whatever you're consuming is on you. It gets really scary when you piss off some of the most dangerous people in the world. But we get to look into this guy's mind and see why he does it. What led up to this? What happened in his childhood? What is his motivation? And have you ever met anyone that you thought was truly evil? What do you describe in terms of what you do? How do you describe that? Boots on the ground journalist giving people inside access to worlds that they don't normally see. And we've covered a lot of the criminal side of it, the criminal underworld, and that's one of our strongholds, but it's also, you know, day in the life of a billionaire. We have a um our narcotics raid that's coming out with Jacksonville police. Um, basically any interesting one of one character, one of one situation a and investigative pieces. We've we have a lot of those in the chamber. Kenneth Copeland is not going to be happy with us in a couple weeks around Easter Sunday. We're going to be releasing uh expose on the mega church pastor uh Kenneth Copelan. Um we have a Scientology piece in the works. We have the Area 51 piece in the works. We just launched our Tiffany Henyard most corrupt mayor in America piece. So I want it to be where you can't predict what next week is going to be. Every week it's going to be a new adventure I get to take you on. How are you different from mainstream media? I I would say a few things. One, we're a lot more running. I don't there's not levels of bureaucracy that I have to do to approve a story. U there's less regulation. So I can go talk to the train robber, no problem. I'm not going to have 16 lawyers tell me that I can't. Um and I think the format I think where mainstream media really went wrong is this. if they use their resources to do boots on the ground investigative stuff that is interactive like maybe they don't have to read in a voice that's like hello today I'm going to like if they just acted like normal humans wore normal clothes and use their resources to get you know contact sources insiders whistleblowers and made pieces for YouTube they would probably be dude that was Vice back in the day early Vice videos I fantastic they're early inspiration like anytime if someone says oh you're like early Vice like that to me is like a a warm pat. Like thank you. Like uh the thing is mainstream media I think they're one of their biggest mistakes is they never adapted to the new era. They never switched to the p the long form cuz that's what people have been hungry for. You even when I I my wife will put NPR on in the morning and they'll like do two sec like two lines and then cut away and like you never really get you hear like the tiniest detail of the story but you never really get what's going on. I had an interaction with a mainstream media reporter, an anchor in Chicago during the Tiffany Henyard conversation. Initially, it started off a little hostile because I was wearing my RIP Main Street, my RIP mainstream media shirt, and he saw it. He's like, "Oh, what is that?" I'm like, "Oh, well, it's not you personally, but it's just your organization and like the the people like power behind it." And like I started listing why I think mainstream media is kind of like how they have shifted the narrative. like you basically have these billionaires controlling the the narrative and then you have like the Sinclair effect where have you ever seen where you see like all those um local reporters saying the same script like across dozens of news stations. You ever seen that before? So when you have that like your mouthpiece like we want straight from the heart we want someone that yes I'm not the smartest guy out there. I'm totally imperfect and there's better investigators, there's better researchers, but people at least know when they get it from someone like me that there's an honesty. there's a trust factor and I'm actually going to try and see what's going on rather than just have like a prescribed narrative. I think that if they switch I guess I wonder have they lost so much trust from our generations and the ones a little bit above and before that they're just totally toast even if they shift their their recipe. I don't know if they can bring back their reputation. It's interesting because I've seen Don Lemon now going around doing street interviews trying like this new style of journalisming and the boots on the ground approach which I feel like is is interesting but a lot of people are not liking it in the comments they're like wow it's sad you've resorted to this but I see I'm like hey at least it seems like he's you know demographic I feel like if you're over 45 you really like the the news anchor if you're under 35 young people though that are hating on him. I think that it was just because of but I'm just saying in general younger people I think are more receptive to like your videos. just feels so fake when like still does when you read in a voice that is totally un how other humans communicate and most of the time like are they even reading something they wrote or did someone in the back room write it and this is the first time they're seeing it and then when you know that there's like certain angles of what they can and can't say it that they're steering it in a certain direction they just have lost all public trust and in some ways I'm glad they did because it opened up doors for guys that have like me that have no credentials I don't have a journalism background I'm toally totally untrained. So is my entire crew. Like they like my my camera guy jumped in from music videos. My other guy jumped in from real estate. Like and here we are putting together YouTube documentary journalism. Hey, by the way, before we go into the episode, I just want to say this is Graham from the future and we had a lot of trouble uploading this episode. It kept getting age restricted. There was a lot in here we actually had to take out so our entire episode didn't get shadowbanned and demonetized. So, if you want to see the entire uncensored full video without anything cut, you can join as a channel member. And we're posting all of these podcasts a bit early so you could see them before they go public. And we're not censoring any of them. There's no ads, there's no sponsors, there's no nothing. It's just the entire uncensored podcast in its full format every single week with maybe some bonus episodes thrown in every now and then. So, if you want to join, it would mean the world to us. Thank you so much. And now, let's get to the podcast. Enjoy. What do you think is the most ethically challenging video that you've posted so far? Most recently, the train robbers. Um because I don't want it to be like I I know I'm going to meet with a train robber, but I don't want I'm not going to be part of the I don't know when it's going to happen. Like I just want it to be like okay, if we're in the vicinity when it starts to go down, we'll be there to catch the action. But the other thing is like I don't even know what the federal laws are. So like if I'm on a train tracks while it's happening, am I like am I too close to the action for comfort? Um, we have one coming up right now where I did a piece with a car thief, a very very good car thief, and he wants to do a second piece that basically he he knows that his window is going up where he's either going to be dead or in prison. Like he's like the things I've done like if they give me 30 years, it's a fair deal. And I my other guys just got raided. I know that they're going to be hot on my trail. There's going to be a US marshal that probably picks me up soon. So I want to make a cautionary tale to the youth. I want to show what I do, but I also want to give the the final message of this is this lifestyle is not worth doing. The consequences of it, how he's disconnected from his family, how he can't really see his daughter anymore because it's too risky to go to the house cuz the police are calling his girlfriend. They're calling his mom. Like, the the walls are closing in. But it's like, okay, if I give this guy a GoPro and just say, report back to me in two weeks, is that crossing the line ethically? Um, another one, uh, a hitman, alleged hitman in Dallas. I'm trying to figure out if he's legit or not cuz I have to I don't I don't want to just put a kid that's like, "Oh, I just pulled a prank or I like I just want my moment of fame, so I'm just going to lie about something." So, I have to verify somewhat is this guy at least one body of a And so, he's like, "Okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to call you. I'm going to call you about an hour before the mission." And that's that's your heads up to be by your phone. And I'm going to FaceTime you for 10 seconds and I'm gonna go on signal and FaceTime you and that that'll be enough proof like, "Okay." uh like is even like seeing this. He's gonna do it anyways though. That's the thing. He's gonna do it anyways whether I'm involved or not. And to me the value is we get to look into this guy's mind and see why he does it. What led up to this? What happened in his childhood? What is his motivation? So the ethics of that cuz I talked to a um I think it was WGN. It's a um a regional station in Chicago. I talked to a journalist there like is it even okay to interview a guy like this? And he's like look you're not helping him do the crime. You're not telling him to do the crime. you're just trying to get into your mind and where do you draw the line ethically like some people could say you know there's leaders of countries right now that are war criminals but you'll sit down and ask him a question so like I think as long as you don't participate like I'm not going to be like hey I know a dealership over here you should go rob them and I'm going to be standing outside filming but if you do something if you like he's this guy these a lot of these guys film stuff on their own phone that is totally incriminating and they'll send it to me and it's like okay like you're legit. So if you knew that someone was going to die, you would step in. But if they Yeah. I don't want to be part of any active crime. If he says this is a a body that I just recently, you know, did did a job for, I'll look at it to verify. And then there's like there's a ethical argument like is it my duty like to be a mandated reporter of a crime of that nature? Cuz whose family did that guy just get taken from that wants justice that I could help unravel that? But I do think like no one will ever go down from one of my videos. Like we edit it very carefully because we cover very serious criminals sometimes. No one is going to go down because of me. They're going to like the police got to do their jobs. The the agencies got to do their jobs or these guys got to slip up on their own. My job is to get inside access to places that most people don't get to see. Ask people questions and bring it back to the people. But I am not law enforcement. I'm never going to participate with law enforcement. You afraid of lawsuits? I have some errors in admissions insurance, but I'm not confident they're going to back me up when they would need to. I'm paying like 220 bucks a month, and I'm sure as soon as there's a little bit of friction that they're going to have some technicality in the policy and drop me. I haven't been sued yet, and I don't The other thing is I don't do many hit piece style videos and the in the exposees we do, it's not me saying it about this person. It's insiders in the church, insiders that were former Scientology or people that lived in this town that can speak to it. And I think the thing that's on our side is if they do try and take me to court, yes, they're going to have bigger pockets than me. Yes, it's going to be an uncomfortable experience of me fighting, you know, a billion dollar organization in court or multi-million dollar pastor. But um what happens in court if he really wants to take it there, let's say Kenneth Copelan, is now he has to open up his books and he doesn't want to do that cuz the people that were calling out like I'm not just like making smoke about someone that I think is actually a good person. Like these are people that are they need to be called out and if they were to reveal our their books, it'd be even better cuz then we'd have a part two to go off on. How do the police not go to you and say, "Hey, you were filming with this guy, we've been looking for him for 10 years." You know who it is. In the last 3 years, the police or agencies have only come to my house twice. So, first of all, with the Kiao video, Milwaukee PD came to their house and I had already talked to my lawyer and I I knew what my rights were as a journalist. So, I knew like I can stand my ground. So, I was very polite to them. I'm like, I understand you fellas are in a tight position. You guys are trying to, you know, now it's very visible in Milwaukee what's happening. It's going nationwide with the publicity. Like, I understand you guys have a job to do, but I can't say anything about it. And they had a Manila folder. They were going to ask me questions. They closed the Manila folder. And I remember I took him to my back porch cuz I at the time I had lived two blocks from the east side hood of Milwaukee. And so like if anyone saw me talking to police, even me saying I'm not saying anything, it was dangerous. And so I had him come to my back porch. Uh my dog Frank was still a puppy at the time and started humping the detective leg. I'm just like, "Oh god, like here we go." And they they closed the Manella folder and they say, "We just have one question. Did these guys have any empathy for what they did?" And I said, "Honestly, I didn't get that impression at all." I felt like again it's your fault if you don't have insurance was the mentality. Explain the KIA boys to those who may not have seen it. So the Kia Boys phenomenon originated in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where I've lived for the last 10 12 years. And it's these teenagers that are extremely reckless that are very proficient at stealing Kia because of a certain exploit that uh a USB allows them to take a car in about a minute or less. The really good guys, 30 seconds or less. And Hyundai were really big. That was a um an era of car thieving that those two cars are really easy to exploit. And they were so notorious in the city because of how they would drive. They'd get into a stolen car and they would drive like this. Like I have you ever seen how Kia Boys drive? They're certain like I do that every now and then. and you're just driving along. Not like that. They'll drive through playgrounds. They'll drive through high schools. Not not through them, but like the yard of a high school. Like there'll be kids going to class and they'll drive on the sidewalk and kids are running. Like if you go to this, there's a page called uh 414 hype house. 414 is the area code of Milwaukee and you see some of the Kia boy activities. Like the way they would drive is so scary, so reckless. It it it was something that originated in Milwaukee, but has come to find out is was a nationwide thing. And what was the the conclusion to the Kia Boys? the guy, the main character in in the video, Mr. Ereak, uh, I came to find out that he graduated into much more dangerous things. Uh, I'll just say in the firearm realm through Telegram. I was, if you guys can piece it together, like this guy went from cars to and certain parts that go on. Um, other kids in the video were repeat offenders. One of the kids got caught and apparently how he got caught was he was on the jail phone being like, "Hey yo, that was me in the video." And they're listening to the jail phones and they're like, "Okay." And then they match his fingerprints to like six or seven other cars. He went I think he did I don't know if he did like two months, three months. He did something light. Came out again, stole more cars, got into it and I sense has gone back. I don't know what happened to him since. And I've I've kept kept in touch with Mr. Ereak. That was the only kid that I actually messaged and knew a little bit. I met him that day. It wasn't like I had a relationship going in there, but u I've kept in touch with him cuz he's a guy that I was rooting for. Like he he definitely is is intelligent. He definitely like he's handy. like even what he you do with putting him together, knowing how to certain parts work. Like the kid is really smart and the kid is funny. Like he had some lines in the Key Boy video that he's a genuine genuine comedian. So I saw this potential in him and I was thinking like I I think I would sponsor him to go to my MMA gym. But then I'm like then I know what this guy like when I met up with him again, you know, hanging out of his ways. His friend has a they're in the business. I'm like there's no way I can have this kid come to the gym when I know what's in his backpack. Like it's just too much of a threat. And when I had followed up with him, he's like like I met with his mom and she's like, "Yeah, like it's been real crazy for us. Like our house has been up drive by." I'm like, they're not putting tuna together that her son is the reason that these driveby are happen. Drive by don't just happen to your house. They don't like you. He probably someone else's house up and they were retaliating. They're like, "Why is this happening?" And it's like, so how often is it that you do an interview and you decide you can't post it or they say something on camera that you just say we can't air that? I consistently edit certain pieces out. Um, I remember I was uh in a Midwest city where a gang I was with showed me a Snapchat video of a recently body like they just and they were they filmed it and they showed me and were talking about it. So I completely took that part out of the video. Uh, I'll be with guys that'll turn their and they'll show a the camera which is a federal charge. So, we'll blur that like what is a is something that makes it go fully automatic and it's a instant like the ATF will raid your house if they know you have these devices and right now they're getting sold on Telegram. and they'll come to your house disguised as a toy car or different things where you just disassemble this, put it on the back of your and boom, you pull it and like you'll hear with like this kind of the modernday violent rap out this right now like they love making like switch noise like cuz that's the sound of how what a switch is cuz it just and it's a very bad thing to put on your because it makes it inaccurate which is good for the rest of us but like it's it's not no Delta force operator be like this is a good idea to put on my because basically You just like miss you empty the clip in like 2 seconds and you miss pretty much all of what you're trying to What was the hardest thing for you to watch that one of these criminals has sent to you? 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And right now, Upway is giving our listeners $150 off any purchase over $1,500 when you use the code iced coffee through the end of May. Seriously, guys, you're going to absolutely love them. Check them out today at upwway.co. That is upw.co with the link down below in the description. Ditch the gas, skip the traffic, ride smarter, and you can thank me later. Every person is a yin-yang. Like I haven't met people that are genuinely 100% evil. Most people I meet there is redemptive qualities in them. And that's the hard part about it is I know some of what they do is really bad. Like I know gangsters that have caught a few a handful of bodies. And but then when I talk to them like, "Hey gang, how you doing? Like your son doing good? Your family doing good?" Like they're like they're compassionate in a way like they're nice to you. And part of me wonders like if I didn't have a platform, would I get the like I'm obviously probably wouldn't get the same level of treatment for some of these guys, but I do think you can make friendships. Like I think a lot of these guys are looking for love. They're growing up in these zero trust environments and this weird masculine energy where it's not like the pure version of masculine energy where you care for people. You express your you're vulnerable, but you also are strong. Like it's a fragile masculine energy where it's like if someone says the slightest thing about you, you either got to them or fight them. But a lot of these guys are looking for love like and you show genuine love towards them. Like these guys will go to the end. Like I had a situation where a kid owed me a good chunk of money because of a copyright issue on YouTube. And I I went public with it after months of trying to settle it privately and be amicable. And I had a few different guys reach out like, "Hey, I'm in New York right now. I'll kidnap this guy. Like do you want me to do that?" Like no, I don't need you to do that. Like another guy like I'll fly out there right now and get some guys and beat him up. And so like to them that's a love language. Like in the streets if someone is willing to be loyal to you like that that shows a lot of love because that means they're willing to risk their own well-being, their own uh time out in the free world for you. So that's like buying someone chocolates on Valentine's Day in the You know what I mean? Do you worry about getting so close to these people where if you do something to them even unknowingly that that could flip? Not really. I mean one uh I don't invite people to my house that I know are really dangerous. Like I keep like my private little bubble. We get we come to places with a lot of love. Like people people are excited for us to come. Especially like you're saying like the gangster world, the rapper world. Like we it's not 100% success rate, but there's a a few guys I can count on my hands that people get rap, you know, they get signed to record labels after they do a video with us. So we can provide a lot of value to somebody and work with them. And that there's nothing better than that to me. Like cuz a lot of these guys, even guys I know that have caught bodies in the street cuz their their rival gain lives three blocks away. Like if this kid could get a record deal and move out of the city, he's going to do it in a heartbeat and just chase after music. That's what he really wants to do. He doesn't want to be in a game turf war. It's stressful. Like can you imagine the stress waking up and knowing that the guys that don't like you and multiple groups of them live within two blocks of you sometimes? Like how you don't just go on a calm walk down the street with your family. even driving. They don't ever want their car film because like they'll line it up like then they're going to me up in the street or they'll catch me at a traffic light. They won't tell you that they're stressed out. They won't tell you that they're scared cuz they can't really like you can't really express that. But I know if I was in their shoes, I would be turning gray and losing hair. Where does all the hate come from? It just seems like if you live within a few blocks of each other, like you shouldn't necessarily hate the person because of what? It's tribalism in a hood sense. I mean, it's the same thing why Republicans and Democrats like you mix it up in any group form and it's the same thing. The difference is here you're in a violent environment and all it takes is one one game versus another and then you you have to inherit it. If you're part of the crew and you're not going to do anything about it, then you have to back it up. It's like a really strong river that's flowing and they just get born in these areas where let's just say sometimes 80 to 90% of the boys in that area will go into a gang. sometimes as long as as young as like 10, 11, 12, they're starting to get somewhat affiliated. And so you can't just sit on the sidelines like if someone on your team gets you can't just go back in your house and make dinner and call it a day. Like you have to do something about it. So then these guys are just stuck. And I wonder how many of them that if you just grew up in a different area, how different their life would be. And to put ourselves in their shoes, if we grew up in Little Village in Chicago and we grew up in Latin King territory and the two Sixers are here, the the SDS are here, you know, we're what are the chances that we're not in the game? And I think that's that's an element that like even though you can look at like cultural things like a lack of education, a lack of um integrity on certain things that like as an outsider, you're like why would you treat a woman like that or why wouldn't you emphasize education? But if we grew up there, what are the odds we would be any different? What's the closest you've ever been to committing a crime while making a documentary? Someone claiming to be a New York uh police officer reached out to me and said, "There's a warrant for me and next time I go to New York to contact him." He said, "It's not a big deal. It's just a misdemeanor trespassing." There's I'm not going to say where it was committed, but there was another one that uh there's a heavy fine and I don't know if I did something to an extent that it could be past misdemeanor. Um but usually I don't commit crimes when I film my videos if that's your question. Do you have a good lawyer? A good lawyer? Yeah. Mhm. I do. I feel like this would be a great integration for a sponsor at this point. Hi, I'm Saul Goodman. Did you know that you have rights? Shout out Dan Adams. Uh after the Kia Boys video came out, a local Milwaukee lawyer reached out to me and we've sent grown a really good friendship and anytime we're about to do something sketchy, I reach out to him. Like there was a time um we were on in Eagle Pass, Texas where a lot of the immigration was coming across. We just interviewed guys in a uh a stash house that you know basically when you cross the border, you come to the house and really like 20-year-old 22 year old kids run this house and then they transport you. you know, you need to oh, you have family in Ohio that you're trying to get to Cleveland and work in a factory with your brother. Okay, we're going to we'll do the driving past the checkpoints to get you there. And after that interview, we went to the border and we we had met um these two guys from Venezuela that were starving. They and they they had gotten beaten by Mexican police. Like they just had the roughest possible journey to get to this country. And all they wanted is to get a job and live in a neighborhood that's safe. They don't care if they live 10 deep in a house. They just they want to be a respectable citizen. And so like just to go on a political tangent, like some of the rhetoric has been like they're the worst, they're the they're the there's a handful of them, but overwhelmingly I think the people are crossing are trying to find a better life and just they just want to work hard. You put them in a construction job, a roofing job. Like some people a fast food job is a comeup. If they can make 15 bucks an hour at Wendy's, they're happy. But the the legal question that came in mind was we met these two Venezuelan guys and I'm like, you know what? Like, let's let's bring them back to the Airbnb. Let's let them have a shower. Let's let him sleep in a bed tonight. Let's cook him a a dinner. And we were going to do it. And then I we had to segue. I'm like, okay guys, like these guys that are going to show us um like chicken fighting, [ __ ] fighting. They're they've been expecting us for the last hour. Actually, I had to go run an interview and then I'm going to come back and we're going to meet you guys, get you guys supplies, and get you guys going. And then in the time driving to the the roosters, um I called the lawyer, my my guy Dan, and we looked up the line the the laws online like harboring a uh I don't know if it's harboring a fugitive, but there's there could be very serious felonies just by letting someone sleep in your house. It was like when we got back there, we went to Walmart, we got them camping supplies, we got them uh granola bars, we just loaded them up with supplies and but we we didn't invite them back to the Airbnb. And it felt wrong like from a human aspect. Like all we wanted to do were these guys to enjoy like these guys were suffering and I just wanted one cool night where they we could talk to them, get their story. And it felt weird that that was illegal. I get why it is, but it felt weird that giving someone a shower. Say like, "Hey, you know what? If the back door is unlocked, I'm a really sound sleeper. I'm not going to hear anything if you go in and take a shower." But don't do that. But anytime we talk felony, Yeah. That's an a long time in prison. Even six months to me would be a long time in prison. Maybe if I was a single man, I would entertain doing riskier ideas. And we just went to Area 51 and there were some certain things that we might have to redact because you just have to be careful in some of these situations. Uh nothing is worth your freedom. And that's I think a theme that we explore with a lot of these guys is the things you do. Like why is it worth to you to think like if these guys give me 30 years that's a fair deal? Like why would you do anything that that would make that a fair deal? Now speaking of opportunity, I went back to your earliest videos and there was a video that you posted and you held up a phone in front of a computer and you just said with complete conviction, this is going to make me a millionaire one day and one day I'm going to have an Instagram with a million followers on it and this computer right here, I'm going to edit my videos on this and I'm going to be a millionaire one day from this. And that was 5 years ago. Did you hit that goal? Many of them. Yes. And to me, I I think that's like the beauty of chasing a dream. And I I appreciate you saying that moment cuz sometimes, like you probably know this, like you're so much in the hustle and the grind sometimes that you forget to remember like, dude, my 20-year-old self would have traded his left nut to be in this position. And here I am. I I literally would not trade my job with anyone in the world. You could offer me any job. This is what I want to do. And I'm And I'm making money off of it. And it just feels so fantastic because my first 5 years on YouTube, I would guess I lost money. I never went into it to be I'm not trying to be Jeff Bezos. I all I ever wanted I remember in college looking up there's this financial blog called Mr. Money Mustache. Yeah, I love Mr. Money Mustache. Super like basically freedom through frugality. And I I was a disciple of that teaching. Like I was like calculating like the slimmest margin. Like I'll live out of my car. I'll eat beans. Like if I could just make find something that can make 1,200 bucks a month, like I'll be free of the corporate world. I'll never join it and I'll be able to do what I want and be on the road. And to think that I like all I ever wanted was to replace the income. I had a sales job for, you know, two different sales jobs over the course of five and a half years uh in the corporate world. If I could just replace this income or pay my rent, making stuff that I love, I'm happy. And now that this has taken off, like I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I can't even believe that you could make this much money." It just is like it feels really good to committed to the dream. Have you ever considered doing a Chinese sweat shop video? I feel like everyone's always talked about Chinese sweat shops, but we don't know what it's actually like. Oh, good luck going to China, filming that, coming back. And you think that would be impossible? I'm not as keen on the international side, mostly because the longer I spend away from home, it just is tough. That's a good point. Um, I would love, you know, I I would love to one day. There was something adjacent to that. Um, and you may have seen stories about Pakistani brick layers that are like kind of indentured slaves that the way that it's set up at the these brick laying factories. They can never make enough to get out of it. So, some of these people I think it's like this sounds mind-blowing to even say, but like 200 years their family has been at this brick factory making bricks. And there was a gentleman that I was going to go out and he was going to buy out the factory and free everybody. Um, he's a guy that's a really upstanding guy, good Christian guy, very good ethics and morals, and he respects what I do, but at the moment, my channel is a little brand dangerous to him. So, I think we we backed off on that idea. But something like that that brings justice to the world, and there's a lot of stories here that I think can bring justice to the world that I indentured servant industry is so interesting to me because you would never expect it, but it's in plain sight. Uh, I'll give you an example. Paris. I went there and in front of the Eiffel Tower, you have these people that are selling little figurines of the Eiffel Tower. And as soon as a police officer walks by, they're on radios. They're like, "Pack it up, pack it up." They'll go and like, you know, pack it up, walk away, and then as soon as a police officer walks away, they'll come back to their spot and and put it back up again. I'm thinking to myself, geez, this has got to be pretty profitable. If they're risking something like this, how much do they make? And I started looking into this. I had no idea that these are basically indentured servants like slaves in a sense because they get smuggled over into these European countries and part of the deal is well now you have to pay back your debt but they never pay off their debt and there's insane how much of a psycho you have to be to run that operation to say yeah I'm going to bring them over here with the promise of a new life but then their life is going to be selling trinkets or selling something that they're never going to get. I mean, that's what I'm fascinated by is the people like that. That's real evil. There's no way to rationalize that is like, I'm a pretty good guy, but I just have 300 indentured servants. They could probably justify it that their life in Paris is better than their justification. They have a improvement based off probably where they were coming from. At least they have access to shelter, clean water, consistent food. Is that a justification? That that's probably what they think. I do think that goes to show it's a real matter of perspective on how happy you are with what you have because when you really look at how some conditions are like there's certain things I'll see like I'll see I'll go to Pine Ridge Reservation and I'll see how people are living there. I'm like like the car ride home is like I don't ever get to complain about anything ever again. Like the you these people are living in like there's there's no uh heat. They're they're everyone is an al like like the like 80 to 90% of the people there are either alcoholics or they're methheads and imagine growing up near that. It's like like some people in this world have unspeakable conditions and it's good to put in perspective because when we like we're in this country where a lot of us have gotten a little comfortable, a little fat and lazy with the luxuries that we do have. Like it's a good reminder to be like things are pretty good here, man. What's your most memorable interview? Man, it just feels like the most recent one is always the best. Like I have so many little gems in my mind of like cuz we really enjoy ourselves like when we're out there. Um let's say recently the Area 51 documentary we just did which we just recorded in the last couple days. Um just being out at a top like arguably the most secret base in the world with a guy that's dedicated his last 30 years James Fox towards investigating encounters and UFOs. and he's the guy that, you know, if someone has a a Polaroid in Scotland from 1957, he's going there to interview that old man and what did you see that day? And so we were with him. We really played the edge of where we could have gone in the base. We got security trucks and we got the alarm to go off. And then we're interviewing people that have had encounters. We we talked to a guy from Area 51 that like, yep, like he had an encounter with an alien and he's been he was sworn sworn to secrecy, but now he's able to testify and now he's able to go forward with his story. He just made a Joe Rogan appearance about it. And so like to me just to be to be in the mix of like if any of this is real, this is arguably one of the most important stories of humankind. It's either the biggest lie and like one of the biggest farces or like this totally changes the paradigm of what we understand in this world. Yeah. How much of that is BS do you think that? Because I tend to think that it's so obvious that you know Area 51 is like this this UFO place. it, you know, it's just a front for like it's they're probably just doing, you know, military testing. It's not like an alien hub spot. It's too obvious. Like there there's signs everywhere with like aliens. Like that wouldn't be the place to hide it, right? It would be because of how remote it is. There like one of the towns we we stayed at the Ali in this motel. It's a town of 20 people. The other Alamo in we stayed in is a town of like 1,200 people. It is so unbelievably remote there. Like there's some places like next gas is 40 miles like you better load up. So it's the perfect place to hide it. I do think the majority of what happens at Area 51 is from the sounds of from the guy that worked there. It there's military exercises that are happening all the time. Pilots are training there and a lot of times um pilots from other countries come and we do joint uh exercises there. But what he said also happens is anytime a an unidentified craft crashes, it is an absolute rush. So they send Delta force, they send like cuz if let's say it lands in Brazil, we will send our best to go recover that and probably Russia's doing the same thing, China's doing the same thing because we want to get our hands on that technology and we bring it back to Area 51 where you have some of the most premier researchers, scientists, physicists, um geologists that are looking at this and trying to determine one, what is it, and two, can we create it? Can we use this alien technology? And what this guy was saying is what the general public thinks is possible as far as crafts. We are hundreds of years ahead in terms of propulsion, navigating. Um, and I'm like, when you say hundreds of years ahead of what the public is aware of? That's a pretty bold statement to say. Has documenting aliens changed your perspective? It's opened me up. I'm I'm usually a pretty healthy skeptic. Like most things I'm like like one of my biggest problems with the whole alien thing is like you're telling me in the last like you're showing me photographs from 1947 1952 and the videos I see online are like pretty blurry grainy. You're telling me in the last 15 20 years since cameras have been prevalent that all of a sudden the aliens have just not shown up anymore. There's elements of it that are really hard to believe. What makes it compelling is when I was talking to this researcher James Fox, he has been around the world and people that have never communicated with each other like he'll ask people in Brazil, China, Africa what they saw at, you know, at this landing or when the aliens came out. And across culture, it's the aliens, they look kind of like this, they smell kind of like this. They can telepathically communicate emotions to you. Their craft looks like this. It it moves this way. When you get all these different accounts corroborating it, it's like like he's not going after crackpots that are looking for two seconds of fame that are just did a bundle of mushrooms and they're like, "Yeah, I saw aliens." Like credible people, people that were engineers, people that had regular jobs, school teachers, like when you when all those people across culture start saying, "This is what I saw." That to me is where it gets pretty compelling. I think we've all had a problem with bugs. For me, it was last summer. We had a line of ants that went all the way from the downstairs bathroom upstairs into my roommate's room. Gavin, you need to stop leaving dirty plates in your room. But fortunately, this year, bugs don't need to be a problem with our sponsor, Pesti. For those unaware, Pesti is a do-it-yourself pest control that allows you to easily protect your home for a quarter of the cost. 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And now, let's get back to the episode. How'd you get into journalism? I think I've always just been fascinated and curious by the world. Um, when I was young, my mom took us to the library often. I was a triplet, so she'd take the triplets to the library, and we'd all, we were all very big, uh, readers. And I could read about endless amounts of things. Like right now, I'm reading about the Louiswis and Clark expedition, um, discovering western part of America. Well, I guess I would say Europeans discovering the western part of America. There's plenty of folks still there doing their thing before they got there. But there's an endless amount of topics that I will I can read sci-fi. I can read biographies. I can like I think I've just been very curious about the world naturally. Uh one of the things that really was my first leap I would say into journalism is and I guess the experience of it, not actually documenting it, but I when I was a sophomore in college, I I went to go live with a tribe in the jungle of Ecuador. And there was this website volunteers south america.org and you could stay in a a Peruvian dog shelter. You could do this over here. But I saw live with a tribe and I'm like, dude, I'm 100% doing that. So, I packed my bags. I had a contact out there that was going to meet me. I go there and I'm in uh I forget some of the the cities, but I went from the main city to a little city that you take the plane into the jungle from and my contact wasn't answering the phone. So, I started to get a little nervous. So, I went to the tribal airport and I learned that the the place that I wanted to fly into, the runway was destroyed. So, I couldn't go in there. But a old lady heard my predicament and she's like, "You can fly into my village." So I get into this eightperson passenger plane. I fly for an hour or two across just a sea of wood or forest and trees and I'm going away from civilization and some lady that I met 45 minutes ago. I land with her and she allows me to stay in her hut with her husband for the night and I ended up just staying in her village the whole time. Initially the plan was some other guys were going to take me through the jungle and get me to the village I was supposed to go. Um but I stayed in this little 13 village hut. I lived with them. I did community work days. Um I tried Iawaska but it never kicked in and the shaman gave me a bad feeling. So I didn't take a second dose to really get into it. Uh but to me I've always had a desire to explore, to understand, to discover and to really understand what makes people tick. And I think if there's any superpower I have, it's I am pretty comfortable to go into a room where I am the odd man out. I don't care if I'm in a mosque during Ramadan. I don't care if I'm in the middle of the jungle sipping chicha, which is this little spit drink, or I'm in, you know, I'm in the middle of the hood and it's crazy, and I'm only the only white guy for miles. I've always just been curious about people, and I think that genuine curiosity is what opens up doors. People want me to come in, and I'm going to ask them questions. I'm going to be genuinely interested in them. And that to me is like the clear mark of a journalist. How do you fit in so many different places? Like, seems to accept you though. I think it's because I accept myself. So, I don't need to like I don't I don't mimic the environment that I'm in, but I'm okay with being myself even if I stand out, even if I'm a little bit like nerdy or out there or um and I think because I accept myself and I'm genuinely interested in asking questions, it makes you a welcome guest just about anywhere. Have you always been that way or did it take a lot of self-development to become this way? I think it's always been who I am. I was always the little kid that like, you know, my my pop could send me on a mission to go talk to this person or, you know, I would be comfortable ordering for the family or whatever it was. Like I was okay going out there and striking up a conversation with a stranger. I remember like I'd be the guy that on a train to Chicago, uh, I'd be the guy talking to the guy next to me who, oh, your parents were missionaries and they saw this kind of witchcraft in Africa and I could talk to him for an hour and a half until the train landed and then, you know, I go on to my next thing. Just curious then if you have that level of confidence, did you cold approach your wife when you first met her? So I lived in a duplex for about 5 years. Um my wife lived in the upstairs and we each dated different people. We kind of knew each other a little bit. Maybe when we'd shovel together in the winter, we'd come and we'd interact with each other. But then when CO hit, they said we're going to be locked down. I think I said I think I'm going to go crazy. So I texted her. I'm like, "You want to meet on the front porch and hang out?" And from there, we started hanging out like every single day. And then we eventually started dating, which that was the most nerve-wracking experience I've ever had asking someone out because if she says no, like she lives right there. I have to see her every day. Like if someone says no, they don't live by you. Like, okay, shake it off. Go to the next one. But I think I've always been relatively bold and I've always been pretty down to gamble on myself. Just curious, when you cross that bridge from becoming like friends to trying to develop more of a relationship, did you just word it differently like, "Hey, let's go on a date." or did you say something like, "Hey, let's go grab dinner." Like, did you leave it ambiguous? We were we were coming back. There was this old uh producer I used to work with, Smook, that I was making a song. I used to do some rap, let's say. And in the car ride home, I knew I was going to ask her, but I and every stoplight, I'd be like, "Okay, I'm going to do it at the next stoplight. I'm going to do it." But I just was so nervous that I just kept pushing it. And event say I was very vulnerable and open like, "I really like you. I really want to see where this goes. I'd really love for you to be my girlfriend." And then it was like, you know, the eternity of waiting for the hammer to hit and she's like, I like you too. So we, you know, we were able to kick things off and that started, you know, we we eventually moved into our own house and got married. Now we have a baby boy. So that's been a really cool journey to have happen. Jack wants to know what the line was. Did I I'm not I'm not a smooth criminal, so I'm not uh like I don't have any really good lines, but actually it was a book I read by Mark Manson and I forget what the titans subtle art. Was it Everything is effed. It wasn't. No, it was about dating in particular. The whole pickup thing. And basically his mentality on it was yes, we all have a fear of being rejected, but you should go after it because either one, the best decision of your life will be made. You'll get a life partner and a best friend that you'll be able to do adventures with. Or they say no, it's okay. I'm not going to spend months ruminating over it, fixating on it. I'm on to the next. So reading I was reading his book in the midst of asking her out. So thank you Mark Manson for your book. That is so cool. Yeah, that's really Shout out Mark. He's been on the podcast before. He's a great guy. Cool guy. Modern day philosopher. Yeah, I agree. Wow. Now, does your wife worry about you being on camera or associating with some of the people that you do? Not really. Uh she, I would say, is a little bit more uh like I'll get more nervous than she does. She's cool as a cucumber. So, she knows that I like I prepare a lot for these things. Like I'm on on the phone with contacts constantly building a relationship with them, trying to understand them, trying to verify them. And so by the time I get there, we've talked a handful of times and we're ready to go. Of course, there's situations that are dangerous. You know, a a gang might invite me in and they might want me there, but if they're like the last time I was with the Latin Kings, they were in the middle of a turf war where it was like 15 guys in the last month or so had been. So every car that passes by is like a frightening experience. Like you kind of want to hide behind a car and you wonder when something's going to go down. So like it is very possible that dangerous things could happen. But I like I kind of trust the universe that hey, I'm in I'm on the path I should be. And as long as I operate the right way, I'm good. I'm honest to people. I'm good to people. Like I trust that the universe will guide me in the right direction. How do you find people who agree to be on camera? Where do you where do you come up with these people? You'd be surprised at who wants to share their story? I I was talking to my Karthy friend Felix and I was asking him like, you know, what is the motivation? cuz I think that's a pretty common question like how do you get guys that are committing felonies on a daily basis to go on camera and talk about it and he said you know what a lot of us know that we will either be dead or in jail in a short amount of time and this is kind of like a living memory that we'll always be able to reference like a piece of us will always live on in this 30-minute documentary you do about us where we get to share about ourselves we get to hang out with you and tell the world about ourselves and what we do why are so many people drawn to gang culture because consistently those are the videos that do the best, those are the videos that I end up clicking on more than the positive videos. And there's another guy, Hood Vlogs. It's just it's so interesting for me to see this culture. Why do you think that is? I think people are always fascinated by the outlaws. And hood culture has a lot of outlaws. You have guys that are willing and and daring enough to not follow the traditional rules that most of us would be too scared to break. And there's a certain courage that a outlaw has to have that I think you kind of respect. I think also I mean there's the same reason why you'll watch a John Wick movie like when there's that much action happening in a place like real life people like you could be standing next to four different and you have no idea until something goes down and you're like oh that was the guy that you guys rely on to take care of business. So, I think there's just there's a inherent want in us to like want to poke our heads into the underworld and these are guys that are the most open about it. Uh certain crews you're going to be it's going to be hardressed to really learn about them like Russian gangsters in the United States that are running sex trafficking in in Florida or Palm Springs. These are the guys that you will never get on camera to talk about it because things will happen to them if they do. But in the hood, you have there's a a culture that people want to share. They want to share that their their their life. They want to share what they're thinking. And not only that, but they've also like the rap music that emerges from it has created one of the most influential cultures in America. What has that taught you about human nature? I think just about anyone given the right circumstances wants to share their story. It's like a Dale Carnegie, you know, how to win friends and influence principle. Everyone wants to feel important. The most magical word you can ever say is someone else's name. People want to tell their story and be heard. And I think especially because we cover a lot of the fringes of society, the trailer parks, the reservations, the hoods, the smugglers. These are people that the average media outlet will not cover. And so basically, they're in their own little bubble. And we give them an opportunity to broadcast their message to the world. And I think there just an inherent value that we're willing to talk to people that the average person would never sit down and talk to. What community do you think cultivates the worst kind of person? Yeah, I would say a no trust uh fatherless uh povert that's the other thing poverty. I mean there's not a lot of people like white collar crime isn't looked at the same like you can defraud Bernie Maid off can defraud people worth billions of dollars and they're like ah yeah he defrauded them he was running a scheme but he doesn't get the same pressure that a in the hood or a bank robber would get and I find that interesting like there's there are people that corporations big bignign big name politicians that do things that disproportionately impact people but for some reason like the local Compton guy the local Chicago guy gets more heat. I think probably because Bernie Maid off would not take someone's life with his own hands, but the person in Compton that's done that before would absolutely do what Bernie Maid off did. They would love to do something like that. Yeah. And so it's like a degrees of detachment and uh self-justification. How did you get arrested? Back in my prank era, I did some wild things. Um, one of them was, uh, I was pretending to be a doctor and I ran into a grocery store and I had a fake that I'm like, "Someone just lost us in a car crash. We need to put it on ice and people were scrambling around." And in setting up for that prank, I had the fake and I zipped it into my jeans and I had it hanging out and an old couple thought I was exposing myself to them. So, they called the police on me. I had no idea anything was going on. I went back to my house in Milwaukee and was enjoying like the post uh filming little buzz and then the the Wawaossa police knocked on my door and took me in and processed me. What was the conclusion of that? Do you fight it? No, I mean it it was like I don't know if it was disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace, but it was just like it was more of like a this is kind of cool. Like as long as I'm not serving any jail time, like it's a little bit of a resume builder, you know? So you have a mug shot out there somewhere. Yeah, it's a terrible mug shot. I thought it was like oh I'm gonna turn this into a t-shirt. shirt is going to be so badass. I looked like I was missing a few chromosomes in the shot. Man exposes your face on and that's the only instance of being arrested. I had the Secret Service visit me. Uh I did this redneck video out in Tennessee where at one point I was just getting into my inner redneck, you know, and I was I had this in my head. And I was like, "Joe Biden, you want to come and take our" And I was, it was I was not threatening Joe Biden, but they had to investigate it as they should. So, they came to my house and uh they had two Milwaukee police officers, two Secret Service guys, and they like two pretty much by the book like glasses wearing like almost like uh what's the Superman's name? Clark Kent. Like kind of like that. Um hey, do you have any firearms in the house? Have you ever are you on any uh antisycchotic medicine or you know, are you do you think about going to do anything to Joe Biden? and I cleared the air with him and let him know it was just a little joke. But um other than that, have I gotten arrested? No, I haven't. What community do you sympathize with the most? The underdog, man. Cuz I think a lot of my time I've vis I've kind of visualized myself as the underdog. And so, I don't know. I think there's just when you look at it, almost everyone you meet at some point in their life is really going through something. And I'm just rooting for people to to be on the journey where they can actualize because a lot of people what's the the quote uh the massive men live in quiet desperation. So I've been in that in that in those shoes where I'm in a sales job where I'm you know I just gotten told no the last 4 hours I go into a parking lot and I'm staring at the steering wheel. I'm just wondering like is this all I'm ever going to do is sell payroll? Like I know I'm meant there's something else in me that I just know I haven't expressed properly, but I don't know how to get to a from A to B. And I know that there's millions of people out there like that that have this big dream, have this big goal or have this destination in mind and they some they just are struggling to ever get there. So I guess that's the person I'm rooting for and the person that I sympathize with is the person that is feels like they're stuck in life, knows they're capable of more, and just hasn't quite gotten there yet. What would you say is the most dangerous street in America? Man, there's been places in St. Louis that are I've been very frightened. Um, St. Louis is consistently one of the top cities in America and the way that the Memphis too, I would say they're very comparable where you're on certain streets with some of these gangsters. Every single car that passes by, you are just like, "Oh god, here it goes." Like the way that they're driving, like in Memphis, like they drive very fast down the street partially because the people are scared to get like if they see a bunch of guys outside, they don't want to get by them. So, like they're going fast, but then is there are they also planning on doing a driveby and that's why they're going fast. So, like um I don't know if there's any one street there's probably many streets like that in hoods across America where it's like you're just you're just ready for something to happen. How do you feel safe filming? Do you wear like a bulletproof vest or anything? No security, no weapons, no vest. I'm here. I'm non-threatening. I'm here to ask questions. I'm here to understand. And I feel like if I escalated things, like if I brought private security with me, I just don't think it would be the same. What about a vest? How is a vest? What about bulletproof windows? I don't want to be uh like that would be a [ __ ] move in those areas. Like I'm not going to wear No one else is wearing a vest, but I'm going to wear a vest. I think that's something cool. Like if I look at um some of the guys I look up to in the space too, like Louis Thorough, he went to Philadelphia with a police escort and a bulletproof vest. And it's not like a Harry Houdini thing where I'm trying to escalate it to the next thing, but there is a little bit of uh pride of like I'm willing to take it a step further than maybe the other people will. And also that builds a moat around my brand is because some of the stuff is more daring. I'm going to have less competition because not as many people are going to be willing to try and do it. What are those cities doing wrong? I don't know. It's so much I mean you could arg there's a lot of different angles you could cover like how how are the DAs in that city treating certain violent crimes? Are they letting guys out? Like like the the car thieves we know in New York, they know that if they steal a car, they are out the next day. There is no concern, no worries. Same thing with California. Theft, uh, stealing, robberies, they're going to be out the next day. So, I think in some ways, the law is not there's not a strict enough penalty. There's no hand that that comes up and slaps you if you do something wrong. And so, I think because there's none of that, they're not as scared. But then I also say there are cultural things happening that are very serious. Um, you have people that education is really not prioritized. Family units is not prioritized. Exposing your kids to violent domestic like the amount of domestic violence that goes on in some of these hoods is unbelievable. And can you imagine as a kid the fear, the un instability you grow up with? Uh, poverty is a big part. Like here's one if I want to go more take like a little more of a leftwing stance. A lot of these neighborhoods I'll do Milwaukee because I know that the best. There are no really good job opportunities in the hood. There's you're a low paid daycare worker, home healthare worker, gas station worker, although most of them are owned by people that don't live in that area and they're, you know, the Singh family in Milwaukee is the one that owns like all the gas stations and their family works at. If you want a good well-paying job that's outside of a factory, you have to drive 20 minutes outside of where you are. And so like there's a chicken before the egg though because let's say I'm the mayor of Milwaukee and I say, "Hey, I'm going to here's 300 million earmarked for two different major companies to open up factories and office jobs right here in the north side." Well, okay. Now you're going to be dealing with a workforce like how much how much late workers can you tolerate? How many people just not showing up that day can you tolerate? How many fights at the job can you tolerate? And it's like it's a cycle that I don't see how it gets fixed because no company is going to risk going to a place where it's like there's so much uphill battle for us to be successful in this area. But then the people don't have anything to look forward to. Like in the 70s Milwaukee had a really really strong black middle class and we had a very strong automotive industry where people had people own their own houses, people had good jobs, there was family stability and people were thriving. All those jobs went overseas to Mexico and China and somewhere else across the globe and all of a sudden you just see this instability happening. Now more men are more likely to do stuff like sell drugs which gets them in prison which destabilizes the family. So like there is societal things that are that have hit these areas that like there's so many boundaries to overcome to be successful and then there are are cultural things that are happening that like people are themselves in their own foot. What was the most dangerous situation that you've been in? uh getting raided by the Mexican police. Uh we were we had an interview set up. There was this guy that went by the name of Hostage and he lived in Mexico and he was going to be traveling to the border town Pros Negros just across from Eagle Pass to meet with us. And the night before we're sitting in the Airbnb in Eagle Pass and he calls and he's like, "I don't know if this is a good idea, man. I'm wanted." And I'm like, "Wanted by who? The cartels or the government?" He's like, "The government?" I'm like, "Okay, this is what we're going to do. We're going to do this interview early and quick. So, let's do 10:00 a.m. Let's knock this out in an hour. Let's make this happen and let's get out of there. So, we cross the border and we we get out of the car, we park, we walk about a block and a half and uh Mexican police trucks are, you know, patrolling and everywhere we look, like if people are outside, they notice us and they're like, "What are these guys doing here?" Like it was a really rough neighborhood. Like neighborhoods were some people don't have fridges in their house. And so, we walk into Hostage's homiey's house and things are really good. He's a very interesting guy. He had been deported twice from America. He grew up in the Dallas area. Did some prison time. Did some crimes. Is now in Mexico doing various things including being trying to do it be a tattoo artist which I think goes to show again like a lot of these guys even the criminals like their true dream is to do something with their art or with their their business. But they're to make money. They're stuck in other things as well. And it's their own personal choice. I go to the bathroom. I come out of the bathroom. Boom. And a piece of La Vera. And a piece of La Vera. Basically get your ass on the ground. Three Mexican police come in, masks on, hand on the trigger, rifles pointed at us. The Mexican guys in the room immediately go on the ground. Stomach on the ground on the stomach surrendering. I went on my knees because like if something's going to happen, I at least want to be able to see what's going on. Like if I'm going to be kidnapped because I don't know, is this cartel? Is this a prank? Are these dirty police? Because there's a lot of police in Mexico that have a terrible reputation. Like it's very possible they could have gotten us. Hey, we're going to the ATM. Here's the limit. You're taking your entire limit out. All right, who's next? You you go. Like things like that happen. Um or they just beat the hell out of you. They take you. They interrogate you. So, um they take this guy Bora up the stairs and they start beating him and they search the entire house. And this guy has almost nothing in his house. So, it didn't take very long, but they like his clothes were on the ground, everything was open. And they find no drugs. And the probably what they suspected was that a few white guys are here to make a pickup, buy some drugs, and go back across the border. I said a I know like I would call myself 40% fluent in Spanish. So I know a little bit of Spanish. I broke the ice with the police a little bit. I made a few jokes. Um got them laughing a little bit and just told them what I'm here for. I said, "I'm a journalist. This guy's a rapper. I'm here to interview him." And so we were let back up to our feet and they're like, "Okay, where's the camera?" And they start watching the clips that we had. And luckily they couldn't understand English cuz hostages were speaking English to us cuz he was just like we this was around uh we were talking about um George Floyd because we were talking about police brutality in America and police brutality in Mexico and he's basically saying you guys think America's bad like it's not even close to what happens in Mexico. So he's basically shit-talking the police and luckily he didn't understand that because I think things would have probably turned a little bit but he's like okay good uh delete this clip delete this clip and we're like no sir please like can we interview I can we interview you? He's like, "No, uh, delete the clip." So, we had to delete the two clips in front of him. We were able to retrieve one of them because it's one of those classic YouTube things. If a YouTuber's like, "Got raided by the police, but we don't have anything to show for like everyone's going to be like, "That's clickbait. That's nonsense." Luckily, Miguel was able to rescue one of the clips of us on the ground and the police there. And and then my guy Chedda that took us there had Snapchat videos of the police. And then we also went next door. There were security cameras where it showed the police truck pulling up, entering. And so uh we did a little animation to show what happened in there. I think some Pakistani guy did a B+ job on the animation and it told the story but um that was probably the scariest moment so far as a crew. Has your life ever been threatened? So my life has never been threatened in the prank days it did. Like my um I had this sign there was this comedian I think Tom Mayab and uh he had this sign called it was small penis parking and so I would you what you do is you put it in front of his parking spot and when someone pulls up you're like sir like what are you doing in this spot like I actually have a small penis like why are you parking in my spot do you have a and like I remember across from the Milwaukee police station like I'm a your ass like he was so mad and and got mad um there was a guy that threatened me recently in the Tiffany Henyard video and then I stood on business with him. I flexed on him, too. I was like, "You're not going to do it." And kind of I always egging him on a little bit. I don't usually ever look for conflict. I I haven't been in a street fight since like 8th grade. And I don't like I've always walked away from them. Even in college rolling around with the wrestling team, like so many guys got into a fight and we would have just cleared house. Like if there's any opposition, I don't care if it was the football team, the track team, you name it. Like if it's a bunch of wrestlers, like there was no chance that they were ever going to win. And even that, like I would always go to sleep before that ever happened. Like I was never interested in just being like, "Oh, you looked at my girlfriend or you called me." Like I've always avoided those kind of situations, you know. Have you ever been threatened by anyone you made a documentary on? Maybe they were upset with how you represented them. I don't think Tiffany Hener was pleased with my piece on her, but um threatened, you know, there was some some guys in Memphis, some real some real street dudes um connect like one of them was Push Heisty's cousin and the other guy uh you know, it was the it was the same house that we were scared of the driveby when we went in. It was a trap house, man. Like there it was probably 30 40 deep and in the kitchen like someone had just got from their crew the night before or maybe that day. In the kitchen there's guys with ski mask filing the serial numbers off of people are pissed. Like no one's talking. People are just smoking weed and pissed. And then this guy Jizzel um he tried like big dogging me in the house. Like he's just like he was like asking me what sports I play or whatever or and I was like oh I watch fighting. And he's like oh you fight? And I'm like, "Yeah, I fought before." And he's like, "You think you could beat me?" And he's 40 deep with all of his boys around him. And he's trying to like step on me a little bit. And I just was calm. I was like, "Yeah, I think I could I could take you." And he looked like a dick cuz he was he was a total douchebag. No hospitality. Pretty tough to flex on me in front of 40 of your guys with around me while me and my two other guys have nothing. And so he wasn't happy with how he came out. But it's also like, "Dude, you knew we were coming. You knew we were filming. your crew like one of them asks my guy Keegan if he's a federal he's a fed another guy he's like like just they were very aggressive so like what do you expect like you knew the cameras were rolling you treated us like [ __ ] where do they get from like every video when you go into these neighborhoods and they had like five and they're just like you know pointing it to the camera where do they get them how easy is it we're going to do a piece eventually one day called how make it to the hood and we'll maybe do Houston New York Chicago we'll cover a few different cities and explore that more in detail. But the general ways that I understand, one, a lot of these places it's legal to buy as long as you don't have a felony and then you can sell it to a friend. So, you know, there's get passed that way. That's a common way. Also, here's a little note. From now on, we're going to say strap instead of go just for the YouTube algorithm. So, another way straps make it to the hood is car theft. If I have a my car, someone goes into my car, they'll take that um take the strap, take this take the strap. I apologize. Another is uh you know home invasions. Some guy might have a safe with 20 straps and that's a big come up for a crew. Um when we were in Texas, we had a guy who agreed to meet with us that had a 3D printer in his house and did business with the cartel and we pulled up to his apartment complex. He didn't give us his door and he chickenened out. And I get it. I mean, if you're doing business with the cartel and you're about to go on camera explaining that, that's if they find out, you're so toast it's not even funny. So, I get why he chickened out of of filming with us, but 3D printing operations, I would imagine that's a that's a more sophisticated than the average street guy is probably willing to go, but that's certainly a way they make it in there. Um, ghost like through Telegram, dude. Like, that's how this this 16-year-old Kia boy is doing it. Like, so if you get into the chat, I'll pull up. Oh, what you want, Draco or this or that? And okay, 400 bucks. Boom. We'll meet here. But then another way they get is robbing the strap dealers. So there's a lot of different ways. How do you communicate with all of these people? Like how how is the FBI not logged into your phone remotely or something and just used it to catch all of these people? Well, the most secure ways to chat with people are either FaceTime audio, FaceTime, or Signal. And so those cannot be traced from what I know. I'm sure there's some software being developed to crack that. WhatsApp has been compromised. Telegram was just compromised recently. So signal, FaceTime, audio, and FaceTime are the most common because it's very serious to me to protect no matter what these guys are doing. It's very serious to me to protect them because to me, the value I bring to the public is I'm willing to find this guy and talk to this guy that most of us would be scared to interview or wouldn't couldn't get him to agree to an interview. And I'm going to ask him enough questions that we get into his psyche and figure out what motivates him and also the economics, the business behind what he does. So I'm really curious. You've done these videos on these reckless drivers, like the most wanted drivers in New York City. How do they get these cars? Although, before we go into that, you have to ask yourself, what makes a leader stand out? It's not just about taking charge, but it's about setting new standards and embracing bold moves. 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How do they get these cars? A lot of them are stolen cars. How do they drive stolen cars without getting caught? Cuz they drive very fast. Like, I just got a police chase sent to me from my guy Felix. And you know, a lot of these criminals, I would say to me, it's more about the adrenaline than it is about the economics. They're trying to make money. They are so thrilled to hop behind the the wheel of a Hellcat and pretty much taunt the police and go 120, 130 mi down the highway and get away. Like my guy Felix was like, he just got in one the other night. He's like, you know, this department in Ohio, like get the body foyer the body cam footage cuz you're going to see what I just did to them. So, I think it's a thrill. It's the same reason why Alex Hold climbs mountains with no support, no safety lines. It's the the time that they feel most alive is running into the dealership, running into someone's driveway, stealing it, and getting out of there. Felix is the one though that steals the vehicles, right? He's the one that did the the car theft that that video. What about the ones in New York that like bob and weave throughout traffic? How do they afford such nice cars? I don't think they do. I think I'm not going to give too much away, but from what I know about the scene, and this is connected to the takeover scenes that you see in LA, New York, across the country, a lot of those cars are hot cars, stolen cars. But we we did see like a Lamborghini Urus, wasn't one of them driving potentially. Uh there was a glitch, I think, where they could do it off of Turo or a car rental app, but even that costs a lot of money because you ask them on average, how long can you hold on to a car for? Some of those guys are involved in other businesses that supply their car business. They do other black market stuff and they bring that money and they drive cool cars. I feel like if they know you're doing a video, they're going to pull together like two grand. They're not going to pull up a 1994 Toyota Camry for this video. Like, and Squeeze Ben did it perfectly. Like hiding in the back of this uh parking complex with a a black Lamborghini Urus revving as we come up on the scene. Like, you can't get any better of an introduction to a guy than that. I've been getting a lot of those videos on Instagram, the street takeover videos where they're like going in circles and they just will crash into another car and they don't care. And at first I was just like, well, what's their insurance going to be that like think of the repair bill on that? But it makes sense that it's like it's not their car because they don't care. The takeovers are particularly bad, I think. And I've been invited to cover a lot of different takeovers. It's really hard for me to go do that knowing how much people's property is going to get destroyed in the process. I had a Milwaukee uh business say that their parking lot had to get repaved so many times the family folded the business and she's and she kind of was mad at me cuz I covered it a little bit in a previous video. She's like, "I hope you're happy with what you broadcasted and c like celebrating these guys driving crazy because look what happened to my family's business." How do you make sure you're not glamorizing it because your New York video like I see that and I'm like that's stupid. I don't get it. But I I could see their they're like a 16-year-old who's like wow that's so cool. Look at these guys all the praise they get. I want to do that and then they end up someone two different things. One is asking enough tough questions. When you sit down with a pan birth dealer or car thief you have to ask about the societal impact. What about the single mom when you take it from her garage? What about if your customer ods? You have to ask, "Oh, you're bossing up your woman that's working the streets, yet you take all of her money and you're bossing her up." Like, I really pressed a pimp hard on that uh in an interview in Los Angeles. You have to ask a tough question. It's not a fluff piece. So, even if I go interview the cartel one day, tell me about how you guys give back to the community. Like, you have to ask them about some of the things that they do. That to me is a big part of not glamorizing it. Number two is almost unanimously when you ask these guys, give your advice to the youth out there that think about joining a game or getting to this profession, all of them will say, "Do not do it. Do not join it. Your life will end up in jail or prison or or and do not do it." So, we always include those messages because there are impressionable kids out there that um their economy is driven by the currency of clicks and if me doing this gets me a million views on TikTok, they might consider doing that. What do you refuse to make a video on? There there's almost not a topic I would stay away from. Like I would cover I would interview a neo-Nazi. I know some people would say never platform a guy like that. I think you ask them questions that like a good question is like a mirror to the soul. So, you want them to see the the absurdity of what they're saying, and I think that's important. There's not really a line of who I wouldn't interview, whether it's a or someone that's a racist, but I wouldn't go to a car dealership with a camera and be like, "All right, you're going to go run in and steal. I'll be right behind you." Like you, whatever you do in your free time, cool. I'm not going to cuz I know that car dealership owner is going to have a whole lot of trouble. Insurance claims, fix the broken glass, maybe an employee was there and is terrified. Like there's fallout that comes from an act of crime. So like, oh, you guys want I'm never going to go with a gang. Like, oh, you guys are about to do a driveby. Can I come with like any crime that hurts someone or steals some stuff? Cuz I'm really against theft. Even though I cover theft a lot, uh, it's something that really like that's a line in the sand that I just really don't agree with. But if they want to talk about it, if they're open to getting hard questions about why they do it, then I'll talk to you. You don't want to influence behavior, influence crime. Things are already happening. I'm just asking why you do it. But wouldn't interviewing someone like the cartel be way too dangerous? Like, isn't there a line to be drawn there? Yeah, there is. To me, it's always about having the right contact. If someone can bring you into that world that has a reputation that can pretty much bring you as much as you can guarantee a safe passage, that's the biggest thing. That's the the person that this hinges upon working. Have you ever felt like you're genuinely talking to a psychopath? probably a lot of socio I don't know if how to diff I know the textbook difference between psychopath sociopath but probably a lot of them the people that are okay with stealing a car and don't care about how it impacts the mom I would probably say that's sociopathic behavior uh people that are okay with selling or man we talked to this guy we we went into a I wanted to document uh the the how to cook crack because I thought this is a drug that's going to disappear from the market like this it's a relic of the past why is it going to disappear if was replacing a lot of these drugs or or it's laced with but um I wanted to be in a trap stove on the like just like a young Jeezy song. I wanted to just see it for myself and as we're interviewing this guy there's a funny clip where we're in Boston doing this and me and the camera guys are all me Keegan and Miguel are like this interviewing him as the like the fumes of crack are coming through the room and me and Keegan at one point look at each other cuz I'm like I think I feel a little different. So, like we look at each other, we're like, "Yeah, we both feel a little different right now." And as he's cooking up, Miguel's like, "We should ask him like, "Do you ever have a customer that didn't make it after you made a sale to them?" So, I asked him that and he's like, "Yeah, there was this one lady who I sold it to. She wanted more. I sold it to again." And I knew if she asked again, that that would probably be the final dose. And I sold it to her and she did it and she kind of passed out. I walked out of the house and sure enough, you know, the junkies that came to buy from me later that were friends with her told me, "Yeah, she didn't make it." And something that I like kind of moved on to the next question pretty quickly. But then the car ran, I'm like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did he just say what I thought he said?" Like he just casually basically admitted as a sex accessory to a Mword as we can say on YouTube. And it made me realize this like there is an element of on this journey of being a little bit desensitized because and how I compare it to is a is a surgeon in the ER room. When I when one of us sees a a strap wound on somebody, we're going to be freaking out, panicking. How do we save this person? But an ER doctor is like pass the sutures, past the gauze, and it's just business as usual. And there we've seen enough crazy stuff in this time that someone confessing to doing that is like next question. and and and I had to check in within myself like that was a pretty major thing he said sometimes just being able to take a pause in the moment to dive because that's a pretty crazy thing to say and for me not to dive deeper into it or follow up on that was like damn what is wrong with me have I seen too much wild stuff in the last few years to just like that I move on to the next question have you ever seen even of the most sociopathic criminals draw an ethical line that surprised you a lot of them have pretty ethical lines like um One of my friends, one of my one of my best friends on earth as a former bank robber. And in his 20s, he robbed I think six or eight banks in in uh California and went to prison for 10 years. Now he's an incredible family man, multi-millionaire, runs a nationwide construction business, very very good guy, one of my favorite people on earth. And he said in prison like uh and now that he runs a construction business, like I will hire an ex-con, no problems. I won't hire a drug addict because a drug addict will do anything to cheat you, lie to you, steal from you. But a lot of these guys have very strict moral compasses that loyalty and respect means a lot to them. So their word is everything. Like there's raps on all I have in this world and my balls and my word. So the there are guys that if they say it, it means a lot to them to back it up. And I've seen this in the rental business. I have a few rentals in Milwaukee. If someone just gets out of prison and gets a factory job and calls me up and wants to rent for me, that actually to me is a pretty reliable guy cuz I know this guy's taking his life in a new direction. I don't care if he got arrested for selling with a strap. If he's, you know, his boss at his factory clears him and he's been really good. Oh, this is one of my best guys on the job. I would, you know, the business would hurt if this guy left. Okay, I'll rent to you. Um, but a drug addict and people like that, you really can't trust their word cuz they're always scheming cuz that their their addiction is their number one priority. Out of all the people you've documented, is there anyone you genuinely just disliked? Most of people I like. I'm a pretty easy guy to get along with and I look for the good in people and there's like a little bit of a naivity towards me where I'm willing to see your good side even though I know you do a bunch of other things that are bad. Um, but totally dislike it is hard to respect anyone that does something that involves women and children. Like if you steal from a mom, you you're you know a PDF file. Um, but I have trouble disliking people. Like most, even Tiffany Henard on paper, lying to my face, compulsive liar, ran her town millions of dollars in debt in a two-year period on verifiably a bad person. I enjoyed her. I I like there's an element of where I get the cult of personality that made her the way she is. And even though I wouldn't trust her, I wouldn't invite her into my circle knowing what I know about her. I had fun hanging out with her throughout the day. Let's talk about her. She is known as the most corrupt mayor in the United States. Shout out Tiffany, by the way. Who is she? How did people catch on to her? What is she doing? because she basically took this small town, the south Chicago village of Dalton, Illinois, and turned it into like a third world dictatorship where, you know, she was getting escorted out of uh Taho that she paid $50,000 asking for. She got a fleet of six of them. She would she would get escorted out like a security guard would grab her hand and she'd have police working overtime and she like the tiny small town mayor like you guys have met really wealthy people CEOs billionaires where they maybe have one security guard if at all you know she's act like she's just a diva she would sit in a queen throne and watch the town and like at events um she would make business owners do paytoplay schemes like oh if you don't donate $3500 for the Fourth of July party I'm trying to do for the town well then I'm not going to approve your liquor license And so like she would nearly bankrupt people that wouldn't agree with her. She allegedly had rivals up. She just blatantly lies. And she basically used the town tax money to live a luxury life. First class flights, steak dinners, wigs, taho. It just the list does not end with how much she balled off of the taxpayers. And she also paid off the police allegedly. Right. So she she paid him off by having them work egregious overtime hours so that it was in their favor to protect her and walk her around. Do you think she's going to pay any like penalties or crimes or like who's looking right now? Currently the word on the street in Dalton is that there's a few people collaborating with the feds and to not impede their investigation because I I have an idea there's like two or three main people that are in her circle that haven't been revealed yet that it's one of them. Um the walls are closing in. They know that the the whole thing is going down and there's to me there's no way she doesn't do time. Apparently, one of the the former right-hand man is actively working with the feds right now. He knows she's going away and he's talking as much as he can to kind of reduce his sentence. Was it YouTube that really brought this to light? Because I hadn't seen this before until I started seeing YouTube videos of people going to the city and like trying to track her down. Like, is that what made it mainstream? I saw a couple Tik Tok clips of her and I know there's early guys to the party like a guy Spencer Cornelius does a lot of investigative journalism that's really good. Um I just saw a couple Tik Toks like I actually try not to watch almost any YouTube like in my space at all if I can cuz I especially if I haven't covered that story yet cuz I want to make it unique. I don't want to be influenced. Um but Tik Tok was what brought it to my attention. I'm like, "Oh, this is two hours from my house. Like we got to go see this lady." Yeah. Usually with federal investigations like that, you're never going to hear a word until they actually have a case. And once they bring that case, it's practically unbeatable. If the feds are going up against you, it's over 99% conviction rate. So the fact that it's confirmed that they're in town talking to people in those circles and just how egregious she is. that my favorite part of the interview with her was I kept asking her about these Taho because why in the hell did you pay $50,000 over asking and have a fleet of Taho like your Brad Pitt or something and she just lied and lied and lied and I got a paperwork with her signature on it and I even took it out of my breast pocket and I I showed it to her and she's like, "Oh yeah, that was forged." And how do you double down on a lie like that? And then we even did signature comparison and like how is it even possible that this could have been forged? There's just no no way that it's not her that bought the Taho. And to me, it was just a fascinating study. I don't know how you would diagnose her. I don't know if she's a compulsive liar, a sociopath. There is a likable quality of her, but I think I genuinely think my hunch on her is that she's mentally sick. I think she is a good person that means well in some ways. Like she genuinely has a love for some people in her community. Like she she wants to be the one that brings resources. Hey, you need a new sidewalk. Hey, you need food from the food pantry. I'm going to bring this to you. I want to show how much I love my city. She wants to be the the the source of it all. And anyone that would help outside of that, she would cut down or put licensing restrictions or permit restrictions in front of her. But I did get a warm feeling like the first time I met her and walked into her room like she gave me a big hug and I'm like I she had me living in this weird reality bubble where I knew everything about her was true and I knew how bad she was. But when I was in her presence, I'm like, have I been gravely mistaken? Like, is it possly different reality bubble? Yeah. Sometimes the people who are sick in the in the head like that are the most charismatic, nicest people you've ever met. We've encountered a few, not not to that degree, but a few people who are just so friendly that my guard is down. I'm like, "Ah, this is just a cool guy." And then turns around and like just weird stuff goes on. That's how cults get started. I think we think going into it that this person is going to be so easily identifiable as evil that's going to be easy to not like them, easy to kind of mash them down. The reason the cults get started is because and there's also some good to it. Like the base level of Scientology has some decent self-development principles, but then you go further into it when they're doing child labor. There's so many dark things that are happening in that organization, but there's always a yin and yang to everybody. I don't think there's anyone that you can look at and they're just pure, you know, all their their stuff is just bad and that's how they attract a following. So, you've never met a single person that you thought is through and through evil. I met guys that claim to be evil cuz I think they're trying to be tough on camera. Uh there's this one, excuse me, Afghani gangster that I met in uh California that he showed me proof of him robbing like there's a a Chinese triad gang that they run illegal black market grow ops and he showed me the proof that he robbed them. He showed me the proof of like they showed me this guy that they scammed that apparently he tried scamming them and then what they did is they invite like they invited him to an area. He got into the car, pointed a strap at him, had him sit in the passenger seat as he drove around his own car and he's like if if you move I'm going to blame you. Like show me the Snapchat video of that and multiple other things that these guys had done. And he was like yeah I'm evil. Even him uh I do think like he has an allegiance to his family. Like I think in a weird way the money goes to help his family, his brothers and sisters. So no one I've met is purely evil. You deal a lot with scammers as well. What's the easiest way that the just the general public gets scammed? I think we're all gullible to a degree and we're all looking for that silver bullet that get rich quick. And if someone packages it the right way and sells it to us, there's a good part of us, especially if we haven't made it yet and we're looking for that way to break through or get some money. so we can live this life of our dreams. I think it's easy for those people to capitalize on that cuz they're they're tapping into like a basic human desire that we all have. What are the most lucrative scams? As of recently, it seems like running a non-government NGO seems pretty lucrative. Um I cover more of the street level scams. Street level scams, uh you know, so I'm in the landlord business in Milwaukee. There's a lot of tenants that are very scared uh to send you any money through Cash App because they get these guys that will be like, "Oh, I'm the landlord, but if you want this, like, send me four or five months up ahead right now." And then they just they never see the property and they sent the money and now they're screwed. Um, but most of these scams are like if you have any sort of common sense seem pretty easy, like if you're not in a desperate position, they seem pretty easy to see through. They're getting better and better though. So there there are two scams that that have just recently happened to me which which are crazy. One scammed one of them I fell for and another one I'll tell you about which is crazy. The first one I fell for was that we got a podcast request but they wanted to do a Facebook live and I distantly knew the person. So I'm like, "Oh yeah, this seems legit." The email was just like a random Gmail account, but like the way it was written is like usually pretty on par with our podcast request. And so they said, "We'll do a Facebook live this date and you know, as a thank you, we're going to pay you like a few grand." I was like, "Okay, perfect." And the day before they say, "Hey, we want to make sure that you're set up on on Facebook Live for this thing. I'm going to run you through exactly what to do." I was like, "Okay, fine." So, we do a Zoom call and the guy doesn't show his his face, but I'm like, "Okay, you know, the guy spoke like really good English, didn't seem like anything was suspicious, and he says, "Okay, we have to make a Facebook event for you to like join us." And I went through and I followed his instruction. He was so fast. And I was in the middle of doing something. So, I'm like just kind of like clicking buttons. And he's like, "Okay, perfect. You have to send this request to like this email so we could approve it." And it was to like this this podcast email. And I sent it. Sure enough, the next day he takes over my Facebook and they start posting just like spam. It took me weeks to get that Facebook account back, but but they got me like completely support line and sinker. Meta support system is pretty hard to work with. Yeah, it took me if you're listening to this, man. I've been banned from Facebook Marketplace for no reason for over a year. Mark, we would love to have more people that are boots in the ground to help us with our concerns like Graham has here. This was the other one that was crazy. So, I know someone who got an email from their work and their work says, "Hey, there's a process server here who wants to serve you papers, but they don't want to do it at your workplace in front of everybody. So, if you could please call this number and they'll arrange a time for you to go and get served these papers. Here's their information. Here's the claim number. Here is their name." All of this. When you call the phone number, it says, "Hey, we have a debt outstanding for like $40,000, $30,000 from this company, and this is you, right?" And they they read off like your name, your address, people that you like are associated with, relatives, all of this, your age. Okay, this is the last four of your social. Okay, this is the right person. Yeah, we have a debt for like 39 grand. We want to serve you. And the scam is that they say, "Or we could just settle the debt. So we we don't have to do all of this. If you send us like five grand, you know, we're a debt collection agency. That's all we want and we'll release it." Cuz they typically negotiate anyways. Exactly. Turns out the whole thing is a scam. The whole thing. And I started looking into this because I Googled the phone number. It turns out it just goes to a random PO box and like Rancho Cukamonga. And other people have said, "Yeah, they've done the exact same thing." and they go through your employer because they're like the shame aspect of like I don't want to get served papers for a lawsuit in front of like all of my co-workers so I'm more likely to call. It's crazy. It's pretty sophisticated social engineering. Like to me, I like crimes that like that have a certain amount of finesse to them cuz anyone can just break in with a bat or do something like that, but the the criminals that are able to use finesse, I'm very fascinated by because as much as I know that what you're doing is bad, there's an element of skill like how are you even doing this or getting away with it that's intriguing to me. Are a lot of these criminals that you talk to that are effective and successful at committing crimes actually pretty intelligent? A fair amount. There there's like the Felixes of the world are pretty rare. like the guys that can that like like that could have been an IT specialist or in finance or a different like there's some of these guys that are really really smart and like they like the way they know cars is better than like almost any car expert at a dealership would ever know a car. There's there's some of those guys but most of the guys I think I come in contact with are the more brute force criminals. Yeah. Punchade Dev. How is he not in jail? He's just this brazen. Explain this for those. So, you did a video and he's the only one that I remember that was like not blurring his face, was like out in the open, here's who I am, head to toe designer clothes and was like open skimming debit card information and then buying things for everybody, going to the bank, pulled out $10,000 in cash from someone else's account and was like, "Here you go. Here's proof. Don't worry. I'm going to put it back though cuz I don't want to, you know, do this." How is that? How do how does the police not see that and just arrest the dude? I'll say it like this. Punch Made Dev 100% has a lot of money that he's made from scamming. I know that I can verify that how he does his scams. I'm going to kind of leave to the imagination and also say certain things that he shows. It's possible that he is a very good illusionist with some of the scams he's pulling, but there's other scams he's pulling that are he definitely scams people. But how do the police still not see that regardless of how he's scamming? It's like, hey, let's at least investigate this because on camera. My hunch is if he's really scamming Chase Bank with his face showing, there would be trouble. I think he's very good. He's I would say I don't want to say he's a method actor because I know he's made a lot of money in a scam, but there are certain rap characters that they're not just a rapper, they're also like he's the scam rapper and I think he plays his character to a tea. Are some of these crimes truly victimless? It seems as though everyone has like a like an out. Like if I steal a car, they have insurance that pays for it. If I steal from someone's debit card account, the bank is going to reimburse them anyway. So, it's free. I don't think any crime is truly victimless. Be most of these because even a guy that has insurance, insurance is going to hassle them. I interviewed a guy that got his car stolen. He's like, the insurance acted like I stole my own car. Like, they didn't want to give me any money. They want to give me the least amount. Like, it was a three or four month hassle and nightmare to get what I should have gotten for my car. I am sure that there's people that have been evicted because of their car getting stolen because that's their if this they're a single parent they try and get to work now they can't get to work they have to get their kid like it is a nightmare. So even if they are covered there's a delay in that coverage where if my rent is due on the 1st and you scam me on the 29th and it takes Chase 10 days to reimburse my account. I am totally hosed. I have to have a very understanding landlord and the other bills that are automatic draw like I might get uh the the withdraw what is the fee the the overdraft fees like you're going to get hit with a lot of things that start to add up. So for sure it's not a victimless crime. What is the least unethical crime that you've investigated? For example, if you steal a car from a dealership, the dealership has insurance, the premiums get increased, but that risk is spread amongst all of the different things. It's probably got to be sex workers doing it on their own. I would say I don't even think sex work should be a crime. If a consenting female and a consenting whoever their partner is want to do it, I really don't see an issue with that. Um, and in fact, most of the the jurisdictions, they've really started to just crack down on the John getting the and cuz the pimp, man, those guys are parasites. Like those guys will put these women through hell. They'll get them addicted to drugs. They'll have them work unbelievable hours. Uh, I mean, if you follow the textbook of a famous pimp, Iceberg Slim, if you read like it's it's called gorilla pimping, where you're very heavy-handed, that is that's a profession that um is really bad. But the woman I I don't think is that unethical. And what about the most unethical crimes? We'll go with it because all the other crimes uh at least they get to live to see another day, to try and bounce back or to do something else with their life. But you take someone's life, there's no coming back from that. How often are assigned to people that have done nothing wrong, that are just completely different bystanders that maybe did one thing that's disconnected from something else. So the the come across is more of the hood street where uh as far as I've gotten explained to me, it's really just a like, hey, I don't want to do this myself. I'll pay you a few grand to do it. But sophisticated like taking out a politician, taking out, hey, I my wife my wife has an insurance policy. I really want to divorce her, but I need the money and I don't want to can you do it? Like there's sophisticated levels of of there that I haven't really explored. Um, as far as the street level guys, I would say that the person that they're taking out has probably done something that they feel like the reaction that's necessary for that person is to you took that guy's life, now I'm going to take yours. How much does it cost to end a life? In some neighborhoods, it's free. They'll do it off the loyalty and the love. Uh, if you're talking more of a professional street level guy that does hits, some of them are as low as a couple grand, a few grand. Um, I would say the more sophisticated guys maybe 10 to 50. It's really like the guy that I talked to, it escalates on the job, like how easy is this person to reach? How public of a profile do they present? Um, but I would say like on the street side, it's probably more so done for free than are actually charged. It's like this guy did something to us, we need to take him out. It seems like some of these crimes then can be pretty lucrative. What about doing simple things like dealing? Do you see a lot of people that deal druggs uh making a whole lot of money? Honestly, most of the criminals I talk to, they're not that wealthy. Um, because it's always it's a hustle. I mean, some of these dealers, depending on the product, can go well, but the the the opportunity cost of selling, even if you're making 30, 40 grand a month. Now, the way they spend the money, okay, we're now I'm getting a fancy car. Now, I'm going to a strip club. Now, I'm do I'm buying bags, I'm buying Dior, I'm buying all these fancy luxury items. They're like, most these guys, it's not like they wash it and go into real estate or wash it and go into the trucking business. the smart guys will, but most these guys spend as much as they make. And then when you look at the prison time facing them for what they're doing, it it's I haven't met that many guys. I'm like, this is a pretty lucrative operation. You got to get them on Mr. Money Mustache. Like, at least if they're going to be making the money, invest it, a balanced portfolio of US versus international equities with a small risk tolerance to Bitcoin. Do you see any of them doing that? Some of the guys for sure, like I know one of the Afghani guys that robbed um you know the triads and they got like half a million dollars worth of cushion bags and and cash that was on site. They're going to try and wash it into other things. The smart guys will wash it. What are your thoughts? Cuz you did a video with Chris Hansen, which I found really interesting. Chris Hansen, why are people drawn to those videos? Why do they just consistently do so well? I think it's the same reason why police body cam footage does consistently well, gains do consistently well. Uh, you're seeing someone commit a crime that is like once you're publicized as a PDF file, like it is one of the most serious things. Like I'd rather go to prison for any other crime but that. Like that's a very serious crime to commit, especially in the criminal world because you're going to be holding someone's pocket if you're lucky and then other things will be happening to you for the rest of your stay in jail. I think people are just fascinated like just why I think so many women are into crime podcast and they want to hear about what Jeffrey Dmer did. We want to see into the depths of the darkest side of society without going too far. And I think that kind of person is a prime example of someone like it's so unspeakably dark that they would do that and we kind of get to see into their mind of why they do. What are your thoughts about those videos of people beating up the PDFs? I see the argument either way. It depends on the intention. Like some of the guys I see doing that, it almost seems like they they're bullies and they see this as their opportunity to freely be a bully. The counterargument is if slapping a guy like that a few times and humiliate him gets him to stop and you save a kid's life or save a kid's future from being traumatized, is it worth getting bullied like that? some of these videos that I' that I see get recommended to me on Twitter like that, I can't help but look at the guy who's getting beat up and thinking to myself, this guy has severe something going on in his head. I think from a concept, you can look and you can have sympathy for these guys. Like there is no one that like what their life is probably entirely miserable and you feel sorry for them because of how pathetic it is. But then when you conceptualize it down to like it happening to someone you know or your kid, you're like, "Oh, I'll end this guy's life in a heartbeat." So like I can see the sympathy, but then as soon as they act on it is like there's consequences for actions like that. Yeah. I'm also surprised that so many of them just openly talk on camera like when confronted. Like they never take the just stay silent approach. It's always let me explain everything and and divulge all of my past crimes. I think you're on to it though. A lot of them are lonely people and if this is their like if Chris Hansen's sitting them down is the most like in-depth conversation they've had with a human in a while. They're probably hungry for it. How often do people fake themselves? Like they'll fake the story or they try to like early on I got tricked a couple times. I've been I've gotten a lot better at verifying. So, hey, if you sell XYZ, I'm hopping on FaceTime with you and I want to confirm that you're selling XYZ. I remember early on we got a lead to a Chicago trap house that said, "Oh, this like we're really like the biggest trappers in the city." I look at the address. It's somewhere like in a suburb. And I pull up there and the guy like could have matched the description, but I'm like, "Okay, let's check it out." And he's like, "Well, it's actually not here, but my cousin does it and you have to give me a ride to Chicago so we can go there." But my cousin's not answering the phone. And I'm just like, "Me and Miguel drove two hours for nothing for this guy." And so there are people that like that there is that's the other thing about like what I said at the beginning of this episode about a no trust society a lot of times in the hood. The other thing that accompanies no trust is the amount of lying you encounter is staggering. There's people that will lie about the littlest things that they have no need to lie about. And so you do have to verify things. And so I use FaceTime as a very productive means to do that. How often does it happen now that you get lie to? Rarely. I would say there's some leads that I have to figure out like with the with the guy that does hits. How deep do I want to go to verify that? Because then I have to see stuff that I really don't want to see. Like I'm not a guy that watches a Saw movie. I'm like, "Oh, this is awesome." Like I leave the room cuz I can't I don't want to see that type of stuff. But if I'm I have to if I if I'm going to verify a guy says he's doing that, I to a degree you have to. But I rarely get fooled. Can you hire that out? Like have someone else see it and then it's like you trust their word. Trust is the probably one of the greatest currencies my channel has. My channel has to trust that whether you're a billionaire, a presidential candidate, or a dealer that I'm going to come in and tell your story in a fair and open way. And so that's my competitive advantage. Like uh Keegan sitting outside helps me with a lot of leads, especially like he got a Harvard uh astrophysicist Avi Lo to help comment on our Area 51 episode with the potential spacecraft. But when it's an underworld character by I'm the highest close rate. If I'm hopping on the phone with that guy, I'm going to talk to him. By the end of the conversation, I feel like at this point, I'm almost unmissable of like this guy's going to be ready to go when we come to his town. How does somebody reach you? Is it just Instagram? Email Instagram is a primary lead source. At the end of every episode, we'll say like, "Looking for a jail that will last stay there for 24 hours. Looking for a car thief. Looking for this." And then I'll get inbound leads through Instagram and email that will and then we'll probably usually if they're really about it, we'll graduate the conversation to Signal or FaceTime. What are you looking for now? I would love to stay in a jail for 24 hours. I saw that one guy um did the jail, the most dangerous jail in uh across the world. El Salvador. Oh, El Salvador. There's been a few Timmy Carter um that was the one I think that was the one I saw. It was incredible. Yeah, his videos are insane. Anytime I he posts something, I watch it on the TV. He has an unbelievable concept. So, let's talk about this for a second. Is he puts out one documentary a month and it does like 20 to 40 million views. We eventually cuz we're on a quick treadmill like that the amount of production and work it takes to put out one 30 to 40 minute really good piece out a week. Like these guys hustle all like they're hustling all the time. And eventually we would like to get to a place where we maybe get to spend more time with a contact, more time on an issue and we put out one or two pieces a month because the pace that we have to go at to like Vice would have an entire company, dozens and dozen employees to put out at this pace and we do it with like a skeleton crew of six or seven people. I feel like some big legacy company should reach out to you either for consulting or to hire you. I mean, I I'm surprised they're not going to be able to pay me more than I would make independently. And there's almost a stigma now of working with them. True. I had vice some vice guys reach out. We were collaborating them. I was going to bring them to Milwaukee. Then we were going to collaborate on another idea. And then it's like, you know what? Why would I spend a minute, not that I don't like what they do, but why would I'm already too busy as it is, and I'm already away from home more than I want to be. Why would I spend a minute investing in their platform rather than my own? Are you open to talking about your own business? Yeah. like breaking it down. I'm curious where your income sources come from. So, it's a few different streams. Ad revenue is the most significant stream. Sponsorships, Patreon, merch, um, real estate. Ad revenue is number one. How? I thought for sure your videos would just get demonetized. They used to be. I almost got actually banned from YouTube. I got two strikes at one time. I remember landing from a honeymoon and getting the second strike notification to my phone and if you get one more, you're banned permanently. So, that was a real fear. But, I've kind of learned what to edit, what to take out, how to blur certain things. So, that we we've been most of my stuff actually does get monetized. Now, we've we've had a few episodes in the past where they've shared graphic stories and we've done our best to sensor them and the the whole thing just gets like limited ads and it does not get pushed. It's amazing how certain words are entirely off limits. Like, you have to bleep this. But I cannot call someone a You have to call like what? It's like you have to call them a PDF file to come on. Like I get that they have to protect people that are watching it, but I'm on the side of very on the the other side of almost sensor nothing. What's your overhead like to run this production? It's become very significant. So, um so first of all, from an employee standpoint, we have what like four or five full-time guys and then we have a couple editors that are part-time with their hours are picking up. Um, so I would say in travel, um, tour, car rentals, I would say my average overhead is about 50k a month. No way. That's a lot of money. Mhm. Can you share how much you bring in every month? So, you want just ad revenue or you want my whole little picture? Um, I would say in a given month it can really fluctuate, but I can probably do from anywhere from 90 to 220. Congratulations. Thank you. I think that's so cool to to go from that video on your phone and be like this is this is going to be it. It's unbelievable. How did you have such conviction back then that that was going to be it? Like you seem like you could see the future back then. There was times where I couldn't like there was times where like I almost quit YouTube altogether when I was in my prank era because I'm like it just wasn't working. I wasn't growing. Um so definitely I'm a overly optimistic person. I do have a very strong belief in myself and I think like I have I have a unique personality where I can go talk to almost anyone. I believe I can talk to anyone in the world and for that reason I think that it's possible that this can succeed. Um but to see it come full circle like I was in I was really struggling in my sales jobs cuz I just the money never motivated me. The money doesn't motivate me now either. Like I could talk like think in my head like well if I hit my quota for this I'm going to be making the I could never like do the extra phone call in my sales job because the money was motivating me to do it. Um, so to get to a point where now I'm making more in a month than I ever did in a year is unbelievable. And the overhead, like that's the other thing, like you would think like I think we always look at just the revenue and we think that's what they're making. Um, like there's some months where it's an absolute crusher like three sponsorships that were delayed in paying just came through and there's some months where it's like like we were slightly in the red or right on the edge. Um, but to me to be able to do this full-time to be able to like I have a job that I can talk endlessly about. I have like I get to live almost a bucket list. Like, oh, you just did Area 51. Now you're hanging out with the Bloods. Now you just went with these high rolling gamblers. And that was in a 4-day span. You just did that. Like I have a dream dream job. What do you do with the money? I'm a heavy investor. Cool. Um, so every month right now I'm up to I put So I put 16 right off the bat into a Vanguard like V VFAX. Yeah, is what I call it. Yes. Uh I have eight single families and one four unit in Milwaukee. I'll probably get up to 12 or 15. I self-manage all of it. So I don't I don't know if I ever wants get to a point where I don't manage it cuz I I take like So some people might be mad like, "Oh, you buy single family homes." What I do, I get houses that were trap houses. They're like abandoned for four years in the city of Milwaukee. There's boards on the windows. They're there's crap holes. I go in there, I buy them for like 30k, then I put about 30k and I make it the nicest house on the block. I'll send you I'll show you guys some pictures of the houses that I do. Like people have been outside of some of the houses I own and there's tape around the tree of the memorial. Like these are really rough areas. And what I'll do is I'll make it the nicest house for miles or people think it's a scam almost. Like when people look at this on Zillow and they see it, they're like, "There's no way this is you're just going to take my money. Like this is not a real house. 11th in Atinson. There's no way a house that nice on 11th and Keef or 11th Atinson." Then they go in and they're like, "Holy crap." Because I want to make a house that someone never wants to leave. It's because there's a lot of slum lords in Milwaukee. It's a huge problem. There's even a book written about it called Eviction that the conditions. I've been in houses that the roof is leaking so bad that the second floor ceiling has a hole in it. The first floor ceiling has a hole in it and water is dripping onto the floor of the first floor and they have they just continually have to get a bucket because a landlord doesn't want to fix it. So to me, and I'll tell you more about my my philosophy with real estate. So I'll get a house like that. Um and maybe like one of them I have a daycare in it that pay me that pays me 1,600 a month. Five bedroom, one bath. Um my four unit, I don't raise rents on people like I've had it for probably five or six years now. If someone moves out and I renovate it, I might bring it I bring it up to market. I don't charge anything over what I think market is. So I have people that have been in in a h in a unit for 5 years that still pay 700 750. Some people are paying 900 a,000 for which I think is overpriced in Milwaukee in that market. Um so I try and pay them or have them pay reasonable amounts that I think they can afford and I think that they're going to be have some longevity in the house and then my goal is to keep them as long as they possibly can. And so to me like I have no aspirations. I'm never going to have a Lamborghini. I don't want a massive massive house. Mhm. I just want the ability. I want to buy a ribeye when I want to. I want to live like I want to be able to walk in the woods a couple times a day with my wife, dog, and baby. I want to be able to host friends and pay for good food. I want to be able to say, "Hey, we're having a boys trip. I got the Airbnb. You guys cover the like." That's the type of stuff like I want to be wealthy for. And to never be in a job where I'm miserable. I always want to just be chasing stuff that I'm excited about. So, to me, financial freedom is not so I can like, you know, get grills or something. It's so that I can do life on my terms. How long do you see yourself making YouTube videos for until it's not fun anymore or until it becomes too much? I don't know. I don't see slowing down but or like stopping all together. But sometimes it's hard with a little kid at home and um I know it's a stress on my family to be away from home. So that is hard. But the thing is the alternative is like if I go back to the cubicle, I'm going to be away from the home anyways and I'm going to be miserable. Like I'm fully alive right now. I'm fully passionate about what I do and so it's just a trade-off. But I do know like as my boy gets older, like I owe my wife some nice trips, some good experiences. I'll tell you from an outside perspective, I see you putting yourself in some very dangerous situations that I think would be, you know, a little iffy to put your family in a situation where something could happen to you. I have a good life insurance policy, Graham. But you want to be around and maybe you want more kids and you want to see them get married one day and you want to be like a grandparent and all that. Like I I think there's going to be a tipping point where you start looking at like here's how much I have invested. Here are the the rentals that I have and I'm going out there putting my life at risk for this little bit even though I love it. It's like I think there's going to be a balance at some point. Well, better for me to spend time with family to have a thous on the path the universe will open up doors for you. And I believe right now 100% that I'm on the right path. So, I'm going to trust that journey. Um, the second thing is I'll use a rap analogy. Rappers tend to make their best albums at the beginning of their career when they're hungry. No rapper makes their best album when they're already worth millions of dollars. Like, usually not. So, I don't ever want to tone it down to play it safe. At the same time, we are shifting a little bit. Like, we're the last couple years we were really heavy into hood. Right now, we have zero hood in our we have eight videos in the chamber. None of them are hood. We actually have four police videos in the chamber. So, it's like a total shift. Um, I do think the topics will change. And not that I don't want to go to the hood. I'm about to go to the hood in like two hours and surround be surrounded by a bunch of bloods. But I've hit it enough where it's gotten less and less interesting over time. And unless there's a really compelling character or thing that I want to check out, it's just not something we're going to cover as much. But I do believe like one of the primary strongholds of the channel is the under underworld. We are the kings of the underworld. Like there's no one I think doing it right now that has the contacts I do that is willing to go where I'm willing to go and get the complete picture, the inside access that we get. And so to me, it's like if I can vet my contacts, I feel very good about it. And I think the biggest gamble at all is not to take a gamble on yourself. So I'd much rather be in this position where there's danger on the line than be back at the office job where I'm like, I could have done something, but I didn't. You and Andrew Callahan, man, if you get together, I swear you could The two of you have like the the journalism covered. He does a really good job, too. I think he covers almost a different niche than I do. He leans like he covers more. Yes. I I wouldn't say either of us are are especially my side is mostly political. Um but he covers more of the rallies. He covers more of the social issues. And I think with with who's in power right now, he has an opportunity to cover some really good subject that need to be covered. Like when we talk about veterans losing their social security, I just saw a town hall where a guy was really mad about that. Uh when we talk about unions getting busted and I want to cover some of that, too. I'm pretty squared on the line. I voted independent almost my entire life. Um, but yes, I I Andrew does some really remarkable journalism. In fact, his his movie that he came to you guys to talk about, Dear Kelly, love that. One of the best pieces I've ever seen. Like, kudos to him for that. The way that he storytell, the way that he put it all together over a multi-year period, like that guy is really good for the space. I agree. Have you ever scrapped a video? Yeah. like there's a Fresno police investigation where there's a lot of really sketchy circumstances that the now mayor of Fresno has tied to his name, but the activist the people that could have spoken out didn't. So, it's like same thing with there's a school called Judge Rottenberg uh in Massachusetts that it's alleged these people sue a lot. So, I'm going to say very allegedly that they use electroshock therapy on children a lot of times with autism or different things. The people that were going to blow the whistle about it totally chickenened out. And so it's like, look, if you guys aren't going to back up, I'm not going to put out a flimsy piece accusing some powerful organization of something if you guys aren't willing to put your own face on the line here. So those are pieces I've scrapped. And also like we just know like when Miguel was putting the final edits on, if we just feel like we're not giving someone a A-level piece that gives them inside access, we don't want to put out any fluff pieces just to post it. Yeah. How does this all end for you? There's a lot more to cover. I'm just getting started. And I'm very new to this world. Actually, I've been in this business for about 3 years. So, there's a lot I have to learn and a lot I still have to cover. Um, what's next? One day we'll make a Netflix or Amazon piece. We'll cut a deal with a streaming platform. That's definitely on the goal. Maybe a series, maybe a one-off documentary, but would absolutely love to do that. Um, I think really focusing on developing my son. I think like really really these precious moments as a as having a young kid focusing on that cuz I think like you can get this is a career that I could spend seven days a week every single hour of the day working on I have to be careful that I don't I'm not the dad that neglected their kids. So um spending a lot of time hands-on with my boy is very important to me taking trips with the family. Um, but as far as career and a story that I really, really want to get into, I'm very interested in prisons right now. And a lot of prisons are hesitant to let you in. Largely because I think the conditions are so deplorable that they're worried that if you were a gotcha hit piece journalist that they'd be afraid of the story you tell. And when you look at our incarceration numbers, we really have to look ourselves in the eyes and ask if we're doing the right things. when we when we're the land of the free, but we incarcerate more people by far than any other country on earth, we really have to look ourselves in the eyes. So, things that go into the justice process. Um, the last thing I'll throw out, this is a total pipe dream, but I've always floated out the idea of running a private prison. Now, before everyone says I'm an evil maniac, let me explain what it would be. One of the things we're really going to need going forward is the trades. A lot of the contractors are a aging out of the industry. They're 40, 50 years old. Their backs are hurt, and there's not as many young guys taking up the the mantle. These are a lot of guys in there in these prisons that are very smart, and they would love nothing more than to use entrepreneurial skills they've done in other ways and put it into a legitimate business. I would love to set up a prison that's basically like the Harvard of prisons for for the trades. You can apply from prison around the country and you live here. And and the pipe dream would be the way we eat is going to be different. We're going to eat healthy, good food. You guys are going to be allowed to work out. Like we want you to be a well-developed person when you get out, but also we're going to spend a heavy amount of time investing into electricians and plumbers and HVAC guys so that when you leave, you have something for you waiting on the other side. And a big problem with a lot of prisons right now is they either do labor for free, like in Texas, they do labor for free, which someone could argue that's your debt to society, but also if someone's balling off of it, if someone has a private prison where there's a guy driving around on a Rolls-Royce because you're working for free, I have an issue with that. or some states do like 20 cents an hour. I want them when they when they leave, they have a a few, you know, 10 20 $30,000 sitting in an account so they have money to put down an apartment. They have money for a vehicle. They have money for the clothes. If they've been locked up for 20 years, the fashion has changed. And you can tell guys like they come back out in Timberland and baggy shirts like, "Oh, this guy was recently incarcerated and still hasn't adjusted to the times." So, give them their their push so that they don't come back. That'd be my pipe dream. If anyone knows, any investors want to talk down the line, how much would it cost for someone to join a prison like that? Uh maybe we'll take government money and and grants if that's on the table. But I would my idea of how it could be funded is and this is a this is a performance-based incentive is we take let's just say we have to figure out the math, but the first four or five years that they're out, we take 10% of their income and that funds it. So it's on us to make them as highly qualified as possible so they're getting paid the most and help them grow their business. And then both hands are getting shaken, you know, like both people are benefiting. Yeah. I almost thought that would be so interesting. Like this was an idea I had like years ago of investing in people and so if someone's just like this is a bright fellow, an upandcomer, good ideas. I want to give him 100 grand, make sure he's got his base needs taken care of, but I want 10% of what he makes for the next X years. I think that's a cool business. and just like invest in people themselves that you think are like really promising. I think that'd be cool. But but you could game it. There's so many ways that you could be like, well, technically we had to pay out this subsidiary LLC expensive and they came in islands. Uh and so I actually didn't make any money. It's like there's so many little loopholes that anyone could pull or like, yeah, well I need that Range Rover as part of my living expenses. So we we're in the red this year actually. Sorry. And then as soon as it's up, this person starts making like tens of millions of dollars. But if if people were honest about it and like I think it could work well. The only thing I say to that I think gross actually really good on the table. But does that violate a fundamental law of human motivation and psychology? Like do they need to be so hungry that they need to succeed or is it hey if you pave the path for me I'm just going to commit my life to it. I just need the chance. I think there's there's people you can find out. It's kind of like taxes though. It's like at at a certain point they may disincentivize you, but yeah. Once they start taking more than 50%, I think it it it causes me to take my foot off the gas a little bit. H do I really want to do that? Take 49? Maybe not. I hate how much money we work for really hard. To think that the government's taking a quarter, a third, a half of what you make and I you're in these dangerous situations. You grinded so much of your life and they just get to take it and spend. That's a time for another podcast. probably bring taxes down a little bit. Yeah. Another podcast. Guys, thank you so much for watching. We'll leave all of your information down below in the description. Is there anything that you'd like to mention? I appreciate the support. Because of people watching like you, I have a dream job. I'm happy. I'm ready to rumble. So, thank you. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was such an enjoyable episode. You're such a nice guy. Very happy for your success. Thank you everybody for watching. Until next time.