Eric Goode (documentary filmmaker)

I'm Dan Shepherd and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

- Hi.

“- This guy is among the most interesting human means of ever spoken to in my life.”

- Eric Good. - Colorful character. - He immediately, what you'll know is he directed Tiger King. And we all saw that. He also directed Chip Crazy.

- Oh, a favorite of ours. - A huge favorite, Tonka. And his new documentary is on HBO. Yo, it's streaming now called Monsters of God. I love it so much.

And I thought we were just gonna talk to a documentary in. No, no, no, no, no. Eric's had 26 lives before being the biggest documentary in. He owns all your favorite hotels in New York City. - It's wild.

- Crazy history with nightclubs. Biggest turtle conservation is probably around. This dude has done every single thing. He's so punk rock. I love him.

Please enjoy Eric Good. ♪ He's an opportunity ♪ ♪ He's an opportunity ♪ ♪ He's an opportunity ♪ ♪ He's an opportunity ♪

♪ He's an opportunity ♪ ♪ He's an opportunity ♪ ♪ He's an opportunity ♪ ♪ He's an opportunity ♪ - What are the hours of you been here?

- I've been here for about two hours. - Okay, so it's okay. - Fashionably late. - What we made into this space?

“- I was just asking about the set decorating,”

and Monica's grandmother. - Oh, isn't she beautiful? - I thought it was Monica. You have Indian descent or what are you? - Yeah, yeah.

- 'Cause your last name is what? - Padmat. - Padmat. - Which is not that's a shortened version that my grandfather did.

- Oh, okay. I spent a little time in India. And you meld you print.

- I'm gonna always happen in again.

- This happened yesterday. - What? - We're having a wardrobe malfunction. - Yeah. - The catacomal face.

- The catacomal face. - Is it a mechanical malfunction, Rob? - Gmail, email, email, email function. Where are you from in India? Are you from India?

- I was born in Georgia. - Georgia, US, Georgia. - Not Georgia, Eastern Europe. - I wish. - That would make me way more worldly.

But no. My family's from Carala. - Oh, Carala. I was in Carala in the Western Gats. I don't know.

When was that? A couple of years ago. Running around in a tiger preserve, where I given some money to help the tigers. - They have so many exotic animals there.

So I bet. - Well, I was there not to the tigers, but yeah, I know that part of India. - I know I've only been once when I was a turns out five years old. I thought it was four.

I've been saying four, my whole life. My mom corrected me the other day. - You've only been back to the homeland once. - Well, no. And then we went with Bill Gates a couple years ago.

- Oh. - But we didn't get to go to Carala. - Oh, that guy, Bill Gates. - That guy. - Yeah.

- We went with him for his foundation. - I'm so glad you guys didn't talk too much, because I have the most exciting things to reveal the monoco about you. And I want to start this by saying, "We don't generally interview directors." I can't say why.

We've had a handful, but in general, we don't. - Well, I have a fake director, so keep going. - But I was so obsessed with Jim Crazy. I can't imagine I got back to you, but I bet that's all I talked about for the entire time it was on on this show. Of course, I love Tiger King.

And I love them so much that I was like, "I actually want to meet this guy because these docks are so crazy." And I want to talk about animals. And then when I started reading about you today, I was like, "Oh my God, you're one of the most interesting human beings in the world."

I would wanted to interview you anyways. You've had like 25 lives. And some of these lives are going to make Monica's head explode. It's very exciting.

“- You must be talking about someone else.”

Someone's sitting over here, maybe. - No, no, no, a new guest coming in. - No, follow humility. - But let's start at the beginning. And when she hears these things, I mean, this is a very exciting year.

- What, like you like, we're on friends.

- The first of all, don't believe what you read on the internet.

Wikipedia, Google, even peer review. I'm just saying, even scientific peer review is not accurate. So let me hear this fiction that you've read about me. - We're now throwing up pure energy. - Pure energy.

- Yeah, I did in prison. What did you mean? - Well, let's start. - You've been investigating the world. - Our daughter's birthday, December 19th.

- Oh. - 1957? - Oh, God, you must be talking about the wrong guy. I was born in '77. - Okay.

- And you were originally born in Rhode Island, but then you grew up in New York City to eight. - My four of it, if you were supposedly Northern California in California. But yes, I had a stint in New York. - And was it zero to eight?

- I was born in Rhode Island. I left when I was so young, I don't remember. And then we went to California. Then we went to Westchester, New York, not New York City.

- Okay. - My father was a teacher. - And he moved around the like as he couldn't hold jobs very well. - He was an artist as well. - He was an artist and not terribly successful,

but I learned a lot about art from him, yeah. And then I grew up high school years and a bit earlier in Marine County in Sonoma County in California. - And for folks who have not been, it's on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge.

It's red woods. - It's so beautiful. - Very privileged part of the country.

- I moved to York in 1977 and spent over 40 years in New York City. - Wow.

“- Okay, but mom was a naturalist in a conservationist.”

- And what capacity is this in? - You know this. You know this probably everyone has crazy families.

I always think behind's the craziest, but it's not.

I had a eccentric mom who taught me to love creatures no matter how small. If someone squashed a bug in school, I would tell them to eat it because don't kill something unnecessarily.

My father was an artist and a professor. - A professor. - And gay, which I found out much later in life, so I had this kind of father that was like anti-sports. He started his own high school.

It was very artsy, fartsy. And I didn't really find out about his sexuality until very late in life. My parents had a very odd relationship. - As a result of the hit and the hit.

- Did five kids? She didn't know until very late in life. My mom just was attracted to guys that had kind of an effeminate side. - Yeah.

- Like art and museums and botanical gardens. - Yeah, those guys are great. - I think all girls are attached to those guys. - Yeah. - Yeah.

- Yeah.

“- That's what you guys have for best friends.”

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - I think that's what I mean. - Maybe the ACX wasn't too excited. (laughing) - That's our lag.

- But he was able to sire five of you. I think he just wanted to keep my mom busy, so he didn't have to engage in that kind of stuff. I don't know. - It was the 50s and 60s.

- That's a very hard time to be a gay man. - That's true. - Yeah. - Stonewall happened, and that was one of the big gay breakthroughs in New York.

Like, yeah, you couldn't say you were gay in those days. You said your mother was eccentric, can you elaborate a tiny bit on eccentric? They can take a lot of shades. - Yeah.

I always sort of compare my family to the Royal Tatum Bombs or something.

Because we grew up with a lot of animals in the house. Tropical fish, rats, snakes, lizards. You know, dog cat, five kids, dysfunctional, fighting all the time. I went to this thing called "Ask" when I was really young. You know, that's a precursor to landmark.

- In the '70s, you exactly, when I was 16. So, you know, New Age, kind of quickly asked what you thought of that as the experience rank is. Their proprietary approach was like confrontation therapy, right? - It's a self-help organization.

- Yeah, but the guy Warner Earhart was like a used car salesman. You know, probably from Detroit or somewhere near there. He didn't had an epiphany, and he said, "I'm going to indoctrinate this thing." And use car salesman's can be pretty convincing.

And so then, "With "Ask" he was pretty convincing. And he had his minions, and my mom thought, "Oh, my brother, and I are fighting, we're 15 and 16." You got to go to "Ask" in San Francisco. It's been two days listening to this guy.

I didn't know what the fuck I was listening to. All I remember was at the end, they say, "Get on the floor. Everyone gets on the floor. This big giant auditorium."

And they say, "We live your birth." And I'm lying on the floor with my brother, and we hear everyone agonizing gills, rings, or like this primordial ooze. Like, you know, we're like, "What the fuck is going on here?"

And we laughed, and then they say, "Do you get it?" And we go, "I don't know," and they said, "You got it." And that was asked. But did it carry your brother to you? And that you had a shared moment where you were like,

"Oh, they're crazy. We're not, I guess we know." We didn't know what was going on. You don't have that kind of intellectual or I didn't. I was dyslexic. I was bad at school. I was like, just going through the motions at "Ask."

Although, today, I'm not even doing a talk about "Ask" comes full circle. Did you see Americans? No. Incredible show on "FX"

with Matthew Reece and Kerry Russell, where they're playing Russian operatives in America in the early '80s. And she falls in love with "Asked." Oh, really?

Yes, there's lots of scenes set in "Asked."

I mean, "Asked," they always keep wanting you to go back.

It's like, say, "I acknowledge you a little bit." Like, it went from "Asked" to "actualization" to "the forum." It's an MR forum. And they keep wanting you to get to the next level.

I did it once. I grew up in such a new age crazy world in Northern California in the '70s. We had Joseph Campbell coming to speak at our ranch. We had everyone you can think of

in the new age moving at that time. Until I kind of rejected it. Sure. Because I was just so indoctrinated. Same with my dad was sober,

and he was into "Course and Miracles" and all this stuff. And I was like, "What the fuck's going on?" Did Mom go to "Asked one?" Oh, my God.

"Asked one, Red." You started ranch every Sunday. So "Asked one." I think it's her. The first time I think I ever had sex

was the kid of one of the "Asked one" leaders. But yes, of course. You know, all of that stuff. Jim Jones was in San Francisco for the time, but I didn't drink to cool it.

Thank God. You know, but there was sin and on. There were all the commutes. It was what I knew up there. Yeah, but of course, that's long.

Did you watch that doc? The sin and on that? I did watch some of the sin and on doc.

“I do remember vividly when the head of sin and on”

put the rattlesnake in the mailbox to try to kill the journalist on successfully. And of course, anything with rattlesnakes perched my ears. I lived in California with that.

Okay, so you end up going to two different art schools, right? You go to one in San Francisco and then you ultimately go to Parsons? Yeah, I got kicked out there.

There's already a vibe here, right? And I find it fascinating that you are a documentary

You remind me of Keith Morrison, like you don't want to talk. Yeah, but whatever. Yeah. No, but huh.

All right, a little bit. You guys a little bit of that. These are all interesting things. I mean, listen, takes one to no one over their dacks because you have an unorthodox career path.

If I made say so myself. For sure, just looking you up very briefly. Yeah. Going from Detroit, suburbs and the car world into Anthropology, studying that.

How do you land where you are right now? Yeah. So we all have a weird. Well, no, we don't all. Well, some of us do.

Yeah, some of us do.

I'm always very interested in folks because

“there's a lot of underlying things within that, right?”

I do as dyslexic. I've come to learn. I'm probably ADHD. Probably me, too. I get passionate about things.

And then if I've done anything for a while, I'm like, OK, what's the next thing in life I can do before I am off this planet, which is coming quickly. But you do go to Parsons. Which one did you get kicked out of Parsons, or

though, first? Oh, I was really going to grant you. Well, I got kicked out of my father's high school, which was called the School of Arts and Sciences for cheating out of GR, which you test.

My father. He started the school. It was an alternative high school that was called the School of Arts and Sciences. Thank God for that, because I know you've had Malcolm Gladwell, but thank God, because I could achieve in that environment,

because I excelled in art and I sucked in academics. I got kicked out of my father's school. I got kicked out of Parsons after the first foundation

year, because I was going to my clubs in New York,

and that's where the arts scene was really sort of germinating at the time. What was your infraction? At the arts college, I just think I was in good enough, because there was a certain level of academic

opportunity to take in foundation year. And I was studying more at Studio 54.

“Right, night and night clubs at the mud club.”

These are places that predate you guys, but no. They were big clubs in New York at the time. This is where we start with the mind blowing. Oh, so excited. This is incredibly exciting.

So Eric founded with a couple other folks, right? Or just you. I like to say everything's just me, by the way. So, never get credit. It was all just me.

You were a founder of, or if not the only of area. This night club that fused or conflated night club life with art. And among the collaborations at Eric, it was like wildly popular for four years. Is that how long it was going?

A little less. But yeah, yeah, yeah. A war hall collaboration, Bosque collaboration, Keith Harry. Wow.

Is this contemporary to Studio 54? Host, the real part of Studio 54. My two friends had owned Studio 54. Unfortunately, went to prison. And when they got out of prison,

area basically opened in 1983.

Studio 54 from like 76 or 7 to 1979 or whatever. They went to prison. Yes, okay. And they got out of prison. And they really helped promote my club.

Because they were like, we were fresh out of prison. Yeah, what's next? What's the new club? They're like gangsters that got out. They're trying to figure out like, what's the next?

Ice at JFK. But you know, in New York, nightlife success. I guess if you measure it four years, three years is like dog ears. So that's like 50. Yeah.

Clubs are a family in New York. So if you've a run, that's three years. You're doing pretty well. Yeah. Because none of them last in New York City, at least.

Okay. So I'm trying to do the math on your age. What age were you around that? I was in my 20s. And we were all in our 20s back there.

And he was Andy Warhol's kind of like the older Statesmen in the art world. But John Michelle Bosque and I used to do our birthday parties together. Oh, my god. Well, by the way, we're not to the part that's going to make your head.

Well, so Keith Herring, Johnny Shaw, all of us were young kids in New York trying to find out where Parsons are just around. No, no. But everyone I met was in the nightclub scene. There was no cell phones, no internet, no social media.

No, nothing.

“The only way you connect with people is go to a place where the people were.”

And it was sex drugs and rock and roll and art. And they were kind of like laboratories these clubs for ideas and exchanging ideas and cross-pollinating. It took I met Johnny Shaw and Keith and all of us met in the late 70s. And we just started trying to figure out how to make our mark.

Like everyone. Madonna was a bartender back then. What? It's called Lucky Strike. Can New York a different lucky strike than the one you may know.

But we all would come to New York because we're misfits from in all over the country. You seem to have done some research on me. So you're aware of the fact that I'm an addict, right? Yeah, yeah.

But I was an addict too. And I'm still an addict in a different way. Yeah, right. So when I read this little passage about area, all I can think about is how many drugs was it a wash and drugs? The drugs seeing all these kind of morphs and changes.

And those days it was cocaine, quailants, and heroin where the three math was more of a rural drug. It wasn't a urban drug as it is today. Yeah. And it wasn't like what has become.

But yeah, it was those three drugs and alcohol. And were you participating in them? I was a late bloomer with addiction in the early days. I had no money. And so I was just survival mode.

And so I would do it opportunistically. But really I was so focused on trying to be able to survive in New York City.

Much cheaper, but nevertheless was area not hugely profitable. It sounds like it would have been clubs are rarely hugely profitable.

“I'd never forget when Andy Warhol said to me on Andy Warhol TV.”

He goes, you know, gee, Eric in an Andy way. What are you going to do with your money?

And I said, I'm going to get cool tortoises like it never before.

He was like, what? But you know, listen, we made money. We poured the money back into the club because we had these elaborate themes. So we would just try to outdo ourselves. Your production was expensive.

Yeah. So in the end, we walked away with not a lot of money. But we walked away with confidence that can do it. Gave us that thing when you're young and you get that confidence. Yeah.

It's a success. Fuck yeah. It's like Michael Jordan went in the game shot in college. That he'll always be able to win the game lane. So you give Michael Jordan, you have a talent that he has.

You can talk and chew gum at the same time. But he has one other thing he could. He can stick his tongue out and dunk. Because I saw Michael on the floor at the garden one time. Talking trash to everyone at the next.

Yeah. He's tongue wagging out. His gum still in his mouth and dunking. I was like, how the fuck does the gum stay? Well, it's a coordinated human being if we know anything about him.

I don't believe he scored 50 points in that game against the next one. He came back from baseball.

“But anyway, were you at any of those pastry games back in the day?”

I was at that one Michael Jordan game because Naomi Campbell took baby sat on the floor. I just remember. I'm parsing this out for him.

I remember being able to listen to every word Michael said it was amazing.

Okay. I'm going to get right to it. If you had to pick your favorite place to be in New York City. The road store. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't do that to the apartment. No, no, it's just going to pass this. What is your favorite place to post up and be in spend time at in New York City? I mean, I spend a lot of time at the Bowery. This motherfucker started the Bowery.

You did not. He started the maritime. What? Yeah. Maritime.

I'm just saying quiet. Okay. No, you were shaking your head and I didn't know. I was embarrassed. The maritime.

He's incredible. The waverely, the Bowery. Dude, I was at the maritime one shot. Baby, mom, I think it was the summer of 2005. The restaurant downstairs.

I'm going to bore you with this. Two thousand five. Okay. Okay. I want you to know how your things actually have touched people.

It seems like you don't do well taking that kind of compliment. But I'm going to tell you. It's good. I'm glad your ego isn't what it should be. Well, we'll try to get it there over the course of this next to you.

Okay. So I had been with a girlfriend nine years. We broke up. I was very in this doldrums of like, man, I just, I don't even know. My life as a we were supposed to have a baby.

I go to this movie, baby, mom. I barely worked in baby mama. I have to work one, two days a week. And I just developed a bunch of New York friends. And I'm staying at the maritime hotel.

And I go down by myself. And I met a little bittega. What does it called? A lot oftega. Yeah.

A lot oftega. Got you. Good memory. Yeah. Italian restaurant without door seating.

It's summer of '05, I think, in New York. And I'm sitting out there in the weather's perfect. And I eat this fucking beautiful meal. And I have this wave come over me. It's such a strong and visceral feeling.

I remember so much. And I was just like, you know what? Life is fucking good. And I'm going to be okay, man. And let's have some fucking fun in New York City this summer.

I had this moment. I love that restaurant. I was like, we're going to have a great time in New York City this summer. And we had a great time in New York City. Yeah.

Yes. It was a big part. The environment, the context that you created. And the taste of the food in the weather. And I was like, yeah, man, fucking at life is still going to be good.

That's cool. Yeah.

It's funny how I never thought an in clubs and restaurants and hotels

that that would somehow give me an advantage making films. And the thing that I realize now and all kind of weirdly connects. Because there are people that I've met through the years that were involved or stayed in my hotels or any of my restaurants. I have a roll of decks.

And then there's people like Ted Dancin who lives right across the street for me. You know, hi. Yeah. But he also did a film in the Maritime Hotel where they shot this film. And it's just funny that one degree of separation and the connective tissue that later helps

because I can pick up the phone and call Alan coming to be Jim Crazy. You know people. I know people. One more Maritime. I'm staying there every morning.

I wake up. I want a coffee, right? And so every time I call the operator answers and then I have to give her my order. She then talks to the kitchen, right? So one of these mornings.

I'm in there for three weeks, right? And I say to this woman who I'm not talking to every single morning. I say, listen, I just want you to know.

“I think it's bullshit that you have to deal with my order.”

And then I can't call directly to the room service. And she goes, oh, you think that's bullshit. That's just the beginning. What do you mean? She goes, I'm in a fucking basement right now.

I go, no shit. You're in the basement. We start chatting for a very, very long time. And then she goes, this is fun, but I got to go. I want to have my cigarette break.

I go on in the front of the hotel. I start talking to this woman. And I learn she's a writer for vice. And she tells me she has a book. And I get the book.

It's called Dear Diary. And then her hero is Amy Polar. So I bring her book to set. I'm baby mom. I give it to Amy.

That becomes a connection. She then ends up writing on girls.

“She then created her own TV show on Netflix.”

This woman Leslie Arfin, who's incredible, who was the operator at your hotel.

Who I developed this life. It turned out we were both sober. Yeah. And another crate. Well, yeah.

I had Zoe Casavetti's working down there. John Casavetti's daughter for a while. Yeah. It's funny how that works. And they are working in a basement.

Yes, right. So he made to my staff. Well, for real is it for real. Okay, sorry. Let's talk about it.

I love it so much. I was just there. The couple weeks ago I was just there. That's my hotel. That's her home base.

Well, I can hook you up next time on it. Oh, my. Oh, we had a whole week. Okay, great. Okay.

So I have to apologize to you. I suppose. I have an apology to make an immense.

So the keys at the battery are amazing.

The legendary. Yes, exactly the fobs. For people who don't know, they're this big tassel. Your number hotel number is carved onto the brass. It's beautiful.

Okay. I like items. So you stole the fog. I didn't. I didn't.

Okay, so I was in room 1111. Very. Very suspicious. Very. That's my lucky number.

I'm always seeing 1111. I get that room. And I was like, I have to have this tassel. Like, I don't know how I'm going to get it. But I have to.

Be careful because what happens at the battery stays at the battery. Monica, so don't say anything to. Well, I've already. Unfortunately, this whole story is now installed. Unfortunately.

Okay. Okay. I'm not going to keep you secret. But I'm also not good at stealing. So I did go up to the front desk.

And I said, how do I have this? I will buy it. I would like to buy it. How do I do that? And they're like, they're not for sale.

But if they are taken, we charge this amount. Some ridiculous numbers. Yeah. And I was like, thank you for telling me that.

“This is the last show I received this key.”

And we try to trick people into taking them. So we can charge it. So it's a real way we profit on the batteries. For the margins, that is a way. That is a way.

I was able to write down plugging my other. I have a hotel in Ohio called Hotel El Roblar. And we have these brass cowboy hats on the Fox. And everyone wants the brass cowboy hat. And they do take them all the time.

And we do have to charge. Yeah, I'm going to do that. You have to. You want to go. You have to.

That's been on my Instagram algorithm. I was looking at it this morning. It's gorgeous. And my wife is dating your tortoise place. Oh.

Oh, the cancer. Right. Is that not yours? It is. Yeah, I have a hotel for tortoises as well.

Ohio as well. And I much better tortoise hospitality than human hospitality. They get pampered. Really?

You are not the hospitality of those hotels are incredible.

I can't believe this. This is very great. But let me just tell you one last thing about hotels. Owning hotels.

“The thing that you learn is what do you do when someone commits suicide?”

What do you do with all these weird things that happen to hotels? So there's this whole thing we don't talk about when you own hotel. When did most people have sex? It's Friday afternoons when people are cheating on their wives in between the hours of like 8 p.m. and midnight.

You can hear the cacophony of sexual activity when you walk down the hall. And so there's all these sort of things that we and I can be saying. I'll keep my mouth shut about what happens in hotels. But it's very interesting. My grandparents on the roadside motel on the border of Indian and Michigan

growing up. And I would go there for this summer. There's got the colonial motor in. My sweet sweet grandmother, who is very tiny. The amount of dead by.

Found in her tenure front in the cold. You're my every day. My grandmother how many dead bodies have you found since I saw you because people do go to hotels to end their lives. And it's a whole thing, by the way, because your house keeping won't go into

those rooms until you have some income. Usually a priest and bless the room and cleanse the room. And there's a whole thing about, you know, the shining kind of like that. Kind of thing like, oh, it's just hotel haunted. You can get that room or a haunted hotel.

The maritime. The maritime. I was just going to say that. And it's like, I'm seeing there for like a couple of weeks. People just are telling me these ghost stories about the maritime.

And one of them was a woman woke up and it goes. That means sex with her. Oh my God. I said, what was your reaction shows? I was terrified.

I'm like, I would be so fucking delighted. But that's one of the amenities that we all have. It's not the maritime time. The ghost sex interaction is so lovely. Wow, what a light.

So yeah, that chapter was pretty long. What are the borders of that chapter where that was your full focus before you really

Yeah, like you said earlier, I like to figure something out. And you know, you kind of crack the code and you do. And then you don't want to just keep doing the same thing over over again. So the progression was the hotel tour great. I've afforded me resources to do other things.

I made some money clubs or femoral. I didn't really make money. But it was fun in my youth. And after a while, I had a few hotels. And then I started thinking, what's next?

You know, life is short.

And I kind of always was a closet and reptile guy and turtle guy in New York.

And never really spoke about that while the fair that I would have. Did you have a bunch in your apartment? I did.

“Maybe kind of like, oh my god, what are you living with?”

Most of these apartment filled with these reptiles and tortoises? Did you not think there's a little bit of a smell when you have those aquariums? Yeah, sort of feeling a little bit like goats and the apartment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And they grew. But listen, that was an indelible love of first since I was a kid. Did you have any hijinks like didn't he reptiles get loose ever? Of course.

Yeah, it's their nature. I mean, I don't recommend this to people. But in the early days, you know, we had themes at this club I owned in the early 80s. And we would have natural history theme. Any chance I got I would try to figure out how to incorporate animals into the club.

Yeah, I had a great horned owl. I had bats. I had a 15 foot python that escaped under the floorboards. I only found a year later when we took the club apart the skeleton. No, no, no, no, no, I shouldn't even admit that. No, you're honest.

I like her. You like her? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, we got it later.

But snakes escaped in my life. You know, I used to sleep with a lizard when I was in high school. It called it take goo a big black and white South American lizard. Yeah. It wasn't the best creature to sleep with because it couldn't control itself.

You know, it's bowels. They're income. Oh, boy. Anyway. Yeah.

I did the hotels. I still have them. It just opened one in O. High last year. Open one here, please. In L.A.

L.A. needs better hotels. I all friends with Andre that owns the chat to Marma. And that's a whole other story. We love that. Yeah.

If you know, grandma could just tell me, tax, and I would maybe like to get in the hotel business. Yeah. I think we could really diversify. We could have a fun little. Another chapter.

For you, but for me. Inside hotel. I'm putting that out there. Oh, they're just quickly. Is that.

But did you have a little addiction? Did they ever get a little questionable? Oh, yeah. In my life. Yeah.

I'm like living in New York City. I like the dopamine rush of everything. Career dopamine rush. The euphoria of having a success.

And then the, you know, then why you always want more and more and more.

Of course.

“And I think my father was really an alcoholic to be fair.”

I think it runs in the family sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, look, the Xiaomi shell died of a heroin overdose. Yeah.

The Xiaomi shell boss got. I was with him the night he died. And I've seen a lot of casualties along the way. Obviously. It's like the opposite ends of the spectrum.

In the most dramatic way possible. But we always have you for a recall, right? We forget the bad stuff. Right. And then we go back and then we forget all this shit.

No, it's definitely taken a toll on certain periods of my life for sure. So then you must love monsters of God. I mean, we're getting to deal with a lot of drugs, which is fun. We haven't had that in your first couple. Well, no, that's not true.

Tiger King was very meth heavy. Yeah. I try not to go deep into the meth. But yeah, there was a lot of meth. I kind of didn't include as much as I could have.

But it's, it would be crazy not to acknowledge.

But it's such a powerful force within the stories we're witnessing.

And it's like, when you wonder, well, why is Joe exotic? Got these young guys. What's the leverage? That needs an explanation and the explanation is drugs. Yeah.

I mean, it's a little like that horrible, say. A little pooch gets you a lot of pooch. A little tiger gets you a lot of boys. Nothing better than a little tiger. Sorry.

But, you know, like the little baby tigers. A good gateway drug into getting boys for Joe. And then sprinkle a little meth in with the tigers. And then you have a threesome and a force. Yeah.

Got these cute little monkeys on top of it. That you can trigger code everything. He had a pretty good trap to get. Yes, he's victims. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But all of that was going on. It was a cocktail of baby tigers, baby animals and meth and boys.

“But I guess what I'm saying is I think it's helpful.”

Like, we'll go into 711, me and my family. And we get back in the car and they're a little bit like, What was going on with blank blank mic? And I'm like, okay. So that dude was on a math for three days.

That dude was not enough from junk. I know what's going on immediately. I know what the fuck is an aerial. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that is a useful skill set when navigating a world like that. I have offices next on Carthor Park. Oh, yes. My hotels on the Bowery in New York. I can tell when I see someone walking across the street.

Barely able to stand. I usually go, oh my god. I want to feel like that guy. I know what that is. Barely theater.

He's on dope. And then the meth addicts are over there.

I'm an anthropologist. I can tell what's what? I'm an urban anthropologist. Yeah. Yeah.

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“I think it's a great skill set for navigating in the dark world because you're dropping into these things.”

You're getting the fast pasta. What's really going on? Docs. I was filming in Vegas. Another project I'm doing with Netflix right now.

And we were filming this guy who was smoking fentanyl and bath. And my cameraman is sober and he blew it right in his face and contact high. You know, I'm okay for free. But I can't remember it. Literally absolutely had to take a pause.

A timeout. But we've been filming a lot of people that are in that state. Would we call that a healthy speed ball? Methin fentanyl? I think we call it like death, right?

Well, apparently it's a good blend for a lot of people. Really? What's a speed ball? I don't understand fentanyl that. I thought if you had just a little bit you died.

So how are people doing it? And it's insane. It's insanely insanely powerful. But you can get the right dosage. You're getting it at the hospital.

They know how to do it.

“No, they did it great on 60 minutes when they had an expert on.”

They had this little kilo and then they had a penny. And on the penny had a little amount of fentanyl. And so this is enough to kill a 10 dozen pound elephant. And then the little bag that was next to it said, "This is enough to kill like the villager."

You know, it's insanely powerful. But it obviously could be as the doctors do dose correctly. But a lot of these people, they're even smart enough to have Narcan. A lot of the people just have it already. So if you go into a drug debt house,

which I've been in recently and Vegas, where there's 20 people in there doing math and fentanyl and everything, they have Narcan.

But yeah, Narcan doesn't always.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so you also dabble in the 90s. And again, this is so exciting research in you today. You did the 90s nails video opinion.

Pinnon. I did too. I did too. They were more like making short films in the early 90s. I see, oh, he directed a video.

I wonder if I ever saw it. And the second, it starts like, oh my god, this is one of the most like, indelible. You know, this is a very memorable video. It starts with these three toilets black and white.

And then clearly like a New York bathroom. It's not inviting. You follow the swirl of the water down a pipe. You're going through all the pipes in the city. Following it for a while, there's machinery.

Also, the pipe is linked to a person in a rubber beat us out there. And it's just filling up. I mean, what a visual is funny. In between clubs and restaurants in New York. I thought it would be fun to make some music videos.

Someone came up to me on the street and said, you want to write something for 90s nails. I didn't even know Trent Resner. I didn't know 90s nails. And I wrote a treatment that one.

And they said, we love it. I did some drawings. And I made that short film. They gave me 10,000 bucks to make a music video. And this is what David Fencher and Mark Romantic

and all these guys were doing music videos before they were big movie directors. And we were all sort of writing for the same artists, Black Crows and Nirvana, et cetera. But anyway, I thought it was really fun

because the band wasn't even in the music video.

So I basically could do whatever I wanted

and make a short, weird, boonwell film. So I did a second one called Help Me I'm in Hell with a guy in a padded cell. Eating a steak dinner, shaved head, with just hundreds of flies flying around it,

and landing on his fork. And that was it. And then it goes down a little bit of a dark rabbit hole. You're almost like artsy John Waters. Oh, you know, it's world.

John and I are old friends. You are coming to Ohio, Doctor. Oh, okay John. I'm talking about you. I've got John Waters for 40 years.

I love John. I interviewed John in Baltimore at his house. Not so long ago. For a different project. But yeah, it was like making short films that making those music videos.

Yeah, it was fun. Okay, so you do the hotel thing. And I was like, what next? It's conservation first, then into Docs, right? Yeah, I reached a point like I said,

where I was successful with the hotel world and restaurants. And I had the resources to start thinking about other things.

“And maybe things were more important to me”

and maybe also things that were going on at the world at the time. And this was in the early 2000s, late 1990s. When I became more aware of the extinction crisis.

And there was a great book by Liz with Co.

“Bear called the sixth extinction, which is the first man-made extinction ever.”

Which is also called the Anthropocene. The current extinction we're in right now is because of us. Climate change, you know, the impact on the planet. 8 billion people on planet earth when I was four and there was two and a half billion people. All the things that we've done have created this extinction crisis we live in today.

And so primates and turtles and tortoises are the two vertebrates that are the most threatened with extinction. Because over half of each group has threatened with extinction. So I said, I want to do something about that. I want to help with these turtles that I love. So I started getting involved with turtle and tortoise conservation.

But conservation in general, working with different groups around the world. It's interesting because I'm watching last night with my family episode two. You know, of course, my wife and my children are horrified. There's some very horrific things about these very, very rare animals dying. And I'm just admitting my own shittingness.

I don't have a major connection to reptiles, right? So it's not hitting me. I'm more fascinated by the culture of the dudes. And then there's a bit of footage where they're talking about like, oh, yeah, yeah, everything. How do you get a baby gorilla?

Now my specialty or my focus was primates when I made your anthropology. That was my interest, right? And I'm a me and they're like, I'll tell you how I'm other fuckers. They killed all the family members of that little baby gorilla.

“That's what happened. That baby gorilla represents six probably dead adults.”

And I was like, fuck, fuck these motherfuckers. I was like, oh, yeah, that's just the power of that really affects me. And I've done the gorilla track, the majesty of those things. No, no, the old school way of getting madaziries into Zeus was you go to wherever. And you shoot and kill the adult hippos and you bag the baby.

You're not going to be able to get a giant hippo onto a boat or onto a plane. And so the old way was you shoot the adult elephant and you get the baby. The gorilla, you shoot the silver box and you get the baby. That was what manaziries did back in the day. And so it was really horrific.

What are manaziries? Are these traveling like animal shows? Getting a collection of animals. Like if that's called an azure, yeah. Okay.

So to get all these animals into Zeus they would do precisely what you just said. Yeah. They would shoot the adults and grab the babies. Today that's not the case. Grill is now or being bred in captivity.

And what are going in killing adult gorillas to the baby? But definitely in the dying faulty days. That was an epidemic. Yeah. Okay.

So you start first. I guess the turtle.

“The turtle conservancy is almost plugged.”

Yeah. And no. You donate 30 million dollars of your money to this. Probably more at this point. Yeah.

We're right now. This comes out after the show series. So I can no spoiler alerts, right? Yes, right. There's only three more weeks.

Yeah. Yes. No, but at the end of monsters that God, there's sort of an optimistic ending after a lot of dark history. Well, and yeah, just things that will be really surprising when you see all five episodes of monsters that God, there'll be things that you would not expect.

But at the end, we successfully breed at the turtle conservancy.

The rarest tortoise in the world that's never been bred before in the Western world ever.

In any zoo. And it was auspicious that when we basically finished monsters of God, we got our first hatchling of what's called a plousher tortoise. Which is a tortoise that's functionally extinct in the wild and Madagascar. Only comes from a tiny part about a gaskar.

But we're sending our young. And now we have 30 young baby plousher tortoises back to Madagascar. Yeah. So there's this kind of optimistic, really cool ending two monsters of God that's sort of beautiful. And it was just like I said, really auspicious because we've worked with this species for over 20 years.

And I got to give a shout out to Leonardo DiCaprio right now. She's helped us with some funding. And he's doing this thing right now with Bezos. That's incredible. That's helping us basically save a lot of really, really endangered species right now.

Oh, we should probably come on and talk about it. Leo? We should probably. He should probably just say people always say that actors shouldn't be doing anything other than acting. And they shouldn't do philanthropic things.

They shouldn't have any opinions. They shouldn't have an opinion. They shouldn't be political.

People always say, Sean Penn stopped, you know,

doing anything but acting. Stay in your lane. And I know Sean, and I have to say Sean, you went and met with Chopo Gusman. That was fucking unbelievable. Yeah.

And I felt like that when I met with some of the characters you're going to see and monsters at God. Yeah. Like it's dangerous. And Sean, he understands. You know drugs.

Yeah. And he understands that just putting Chopo in prison isn't the answer. And he went to Mexico. And I got to give Sean a lot of credit for that. But anyway, I'm sort of depressing or diverging.

But I will say just because of the community you're involved in. It's great when people speak out and do something. Whether it's a political or conservation related or whatever it is, whatever your thing is. You're pretty busy out imagine doing that work. And then how do we get to directing Tiger King?

A friend of mine, Fisher Steven, who won an Oscar for the film that cove with Luis Oboyos,

I always talking with Fisher about doing something on the reptile world.

And there was a book called The Lizard King written by a friend of mine, Brian Christie.

It's a great story.

And we mad at the Barry hotel at Jama one day for lunch.

And he said, I read the book. It's really good.

“But how do you make this documentary without getting killed?”

And that kind of discouraged me. Because there's a lot of scary people in this story. My favorite character of the whole thing is Mario. Well, wait until you meet Hanson Wong. In Malaysia, who's the kingpins of the Pablo Escobar of the, you know.

But anyway, I was discouraged. I was in like 2012. And then Fisher did a film with Leonardo DiCaprio called before the flood about climate change. And he was trying to sell it to CNN and CNN passed. And then Fisher goes, well, you know, my friend, Eric Good, has this footage of this weird guy,

Joe Exotic, and then I did a CNN pilot. They were interested in that. Really great. How had you met Joe? I just started filming reptile people in the beginning with these guys.

The Safty brothers. Yeah.

So 12 years ago, we started filming itself for it.

We were filming some reptile people Mario, Josh and I and his brother. And one day I drove in with a snow leopard in his van. And we were like, wait a minute. You can just buy a snow leopard. So that got me focused on big cats.

I got off reptiles. They see an n thing didn't work. Jeff Zucker, who was running CNN at the time, didn't want another old Anthony Burden. Anthony Burden was still alive.

So our CNN pilot didn't work, which was about our relationship with animals. Anyway, but I got into Tiger King accidentally because I just fell into it. You followed that snow leopard. Yeah. I was really doing a story about reptiles.

Yeah. Tiger King got in the way. Jim Casey got in the way. Finally finished. Monsters of God.

But yeah, Joe was a lot of fun. And Oklahoma was a lot of fun for me. So this is my question about Tiger King. I'm not conflicted. I don't mind loving bad people.

I think I grew up with people that I love. Right? So I am at both times judgmental, obviously of Joe Exotic's terrible treatment of animals. And I don't think people should have these animals. But also I am very attracted to them.

I'm he's a very compelling person. And I'm attracted to him, right? And I do wonder what your attention is when you're making these UFOs, with some of these people that obviously you condemn their behavior. But do you fall a little bit in love with them?

Yeah. There's a lot of lovable things about Joe Exotic. And all of us have our good parts and bad parts. He had some really bad parts as well. I think I mean gay really helped me.

That's a rough road in Oklahoma. Yeah. And he's kind of twisted now because gay, extreme narcissism was really interesting with him. But you know, I think what I'm interested in is often we think about New York, LA, London, Paris, whatever.

These are the places where everything's happening.

“And the truth is, in fly over states, middle America, places that you don't think anything”

interesting is happening. In fact, there's a lot of interesting weird shit going on. And if you start turning over the rocks and looking, you find these really interesting characters and you mentioned John Waters, or you think of Errol Morris and Vernon Florida, a really great film he did in the Panhandle of Florida.

You think of Todd Solons, another director who kind of looked at that landscape. He did that film. Welcome to the Dollhouse. But I'm really interested in worlds. That aren't so obvious to all of us.

So Joe Exotic wasn't really what people were thinking about, same with monkey moms, who knew that there were all these monkey moms across the country. We're meant that need and want to have a baby forever. And it becomes a monkey. And so yes, back to what you said earlier,

I think that it's the characters that are really important. But in the end, watching these stories, the silver lining is, of course, can we do something to prevent having a chimpanzee incarcerated in a basement and solitary confinement when they are complex social animals.

And you know about primates. You know, can we do something about that? Can we make change with people keeping 200 tigers in a zoo? And basically killing off the adults because they are expensive to keep,

“because you have to feed them a lot of fresh meat.”

So well. Tiger King got a lot of criticism, but at the end of it, what's this act that was passed? The Big Cat Public Safety Act, which banned people from having big cats in the private sector

and creating big cat puppy mills. Yeah. And so this movie that had its critics did get legislation passed and changed.

I never thought in a million years, Tiger King would be what it was.

No one in the planet. Thirty-nine million people watched it in the first ten day. But who could have imagined that COVID hit right when it hit? It had a captive audience. It's what you got your tigers.

When you have something like that, there are always going to be criticism in jealousy and all these kind of things happen. In the end of the day, it did change a really important piece of legislation. Or that legislation was passed to stop this abuse of tigers,

and big cats, lions, and Jaguar, etc. And we also donated money to Tiger Conservation in India. And that's why I was in Carolina, not so long ago. A lot of money.

And of course, more importantly,

and it's a cliche to say this, but you don't want to make films that just preach to the converted, right? Is why I make a film that everyone already knows the issue. And I'm going to show it to a small group of people. And we can talk about tigers.

You need to cast a wide net, and obviously preach to the unconverted. And I think Tiger King did that to some extent.

“That's why I think you're a very special face of conservation,”

because I don't find you to be preachy or saccharin or pretentious or sanctimonious. And that is what's all putting about a lot of these movements. We need a lot more, I think, level. Centristy people attacking these issues,

because the other mouthpieces are just very polarizing. Yeah, for sure. And I was on a call yesterday,

with someone from an animal rights group that wants me to speak.

Do a keynote at a big animal rights conference. That's going to take place actually in Mexico City. And I was saying to listen, you're not going to want me speaking, because I'm not as polarized as you guys. I'm more of an animal welfare person.

I kind of walked the line of trying to get everyone together. I work in a lot of red states. Thank God. But I have to talk to everybody. Yeah.

“And I walked in and just was like, I hate what you do.”

Don't do it. You're fucked up. You're morally repeat. Yeah. So it's going to talk to me.

Because listen, I'm watching monsters again. It's like again. What they're doing is terrible. Clearly. But I'm also seeing a story of manhood unfold too.

I'm seeing Tommy who starts this reptile pet shop. And all of a sudden, bikers are hanging out there. And all of a sudden, he's getting invited with the big boys to bikers stuff. And he's feeling like a man. And a lot of these guys, it was their pathway to feel like a man that the nerdy guy

who reaches out to Tommy, the reptile dude, and he even says in your dog, he's like,

"That's the second time I have sex on that trip."

I'm also quite empathetic to this masculinity journey that kind of directionless men are feeling and whoever embraced them. Yeah, they ran towards the motorcycle gang. And they ran towards the drug dealers, because they were invited. And so there's a lot of stories being told, and I'm very, very empathetic.

And sympathetic to those men and their weird journey of trying to be a man. There's a lot of sadness I have for them. Yeah, nothing is black and white. When you continue with the series, you'll start to see that a lot of best intentions, a lot of laws that are out there about what you can keep in this country.

Python's or this are that. A lot of them actually don't work. So there's a lot of unintended consequences from best intentions. The dangerous species act doesn't fit all. So there's species right now on the endangered species act that should not be.

There's species that should be added on. They need to be. But use for some wildlife service in this country is understaffed, under man. They're trying the best they can, but it needs to be better. The zoos need to be better.

I've gotten a lot of criticism from monster got from the zoo community. That I showed some of the skeletons and the closets that the zoos have been responsible for. You know, the Brock Zoo in the 19. I don't know, 15, 20.

“How do human being in a cage in the A-Powse called onabunga?”

They had a human a guy that was captured in West Africa. You know, sort of a small indigenous pig me with these teeth that were carved like sharks teeth. And they put them in a cage in the A-Powse at the Brock Zoo. There were people that were kept in zoological institutions on exhibit. In Europe, there were Native Americans in tents at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago in the 50s.

So we've exploited humans and animals and zoos have a long history. But we, as a culture of a long history, that isn't very good when you look back. And women couldn't vote and gay rights and you mentioned all these things. So anyway, zoos have evolved and they need to get better even still. But we showed some of the skeletons and the closets, but not just with zoos.

We also show law enforcement, it's not perfect in this story. And you'll see something really revealing in the fifth episode. And so the conclusion at the end of Monsters of God is we're all complicit. There isn't necessarily one clear bad guy. But let's walk through it a little bit, because I think a lot of people will not yet started Monsters of God.

So in a nutshell, we meet these two guys who are pretty infamous reptile traders. And they're mostly in the 80s, right? They're a Tom Crutchfield in Hank Bolt. Right, and Hank, he's a very specific archetype and he's a very intelligent guy. And by my non-expert judgment, and he seems a little sociopath.

I don't know for sure. So Hank kind of starts this thing, right? He publishes this list and you can buy these different reptiles and some of them are super rare. And then some of them become endangered, which ups the value enormously. And he's willing to travel the world and gather these things.

Most of his heavy-paying clients are zoos. There's San Diego Zoo, the Detroit Zoo. So we're in a marquee territory, right? These zoos want these animals. And who's going to go get 'em? The zoo doesn't have anybody to go do that. And so this guy fills this niche, and he starts making a lot of money.

And so that's kind of working out, and then what happens though to Hank? How's he go to prison? There's a shipment that comes in from Southeast Asia. Big shipment, and the customs agents at the time, before used to show wildlife was really doing this stuff.

You know, we're like suspicious of that shipment.

And then ultimately one thing led to another, it was illegal animals coming in.

A law had just been passed called the Endangered Species Act. And another law that was called "City's the Convention of International Trade and Endangered Species." They both happened around the same time. So he was in trouble, and he did some time for bringing in animals without getting, obviously, permission. And those laws were, in fact, that went into effect in 1973.

So Hank started a little earlier before the 80s. And then Tommy came into play in the early 80s. So when Hank goes to prison, Tommy just picks up basically his priceless. Now he's the Hank, and Hank hates him for it.

“So now we have the Carol fucking basket and Joe exotic war, right?”

Which I don't know how you keep stumbling into these crazy foods. But this is one of them. And so they kind of hate each other. And then Tommy becomes incredibly successful. And it's funny, because he just starts doing the exact same thing.

Hank did. And now he kind of gets rich, relatively rich in his world. Yeah, yeah. So that's simmering. So far, that's episode one's kind of simmering.

Then Hank gets revenge on Tommy and puts Tommy in prison for the Fiji Island iguanas. And then episode two, yeah. So episode two, we meet Raven Nostrum and Mario.

Tell me about those two guys for a second.

Mario was born in Cuba. His father was in the Bay of Pigs and worked for the CIA. CIA operative. They migrate to South Florida. And when he's very young, Mario has this affinity and love of animals.

That just family doesn't embrace. And of course you do what your family says no to and he gets into the animal business. But he also says to realize that the skills that his father learned in Cuba from the US government. What do you do with those skills? And they became very valuable.

A lot of the famous 80s Miami cooking cowboys had been in the Bay of Pigs. And they hated John F Kennedy at that time because he didn't go through with what he had promised. And the US backed out and left these guys high and dry. Anyway, they turned that skill into swuggling drugs. And so Mario was part of that culture.

His father obviously had those skills in Little Havana. They own no jewelry store where everyone would hang out and drug dealers like jewelry as you see in the show. And Mario got into both bringing in animals, parrots, monkeys, snakes and drugs, cocaine and marijuana mostly.

“And ultimately at the time, Janet Reno was I think the district attorney of Florida before she went up to DC.”

And they basically were looking at the big drug king pins in Florida.

Mario and his father were part of a group that was bringing in tens of millions of dollars with the drugs. They targeted him and he got away a few times and then he made a fatal mistake of killing a undercover informants by Debarium. But in South Florida, all you hit is coral. He can't dig so they burn the body. And that's what started everything.

And ultimately Mario did get caught, sentenced to 100 years of prison. And Mario's life, the footage of this guy's life in the 80s before he gets arrested. He has this compound that probably would only be rivaled by Pablo Escobar. That one in fucking meadow heat. Scarface.

Yes, he's got lions and tigers at his house. And he's got monkeys running around. And he's got all these crazy reptiles. And he even says in this dock, my addiction is animals. I sold drugs to fuel my addiction for animals.

And you're talking to him in this dock. He ultimately he's worn the whole dock, right? He's talking to this DA agent.

“He's just even be careful of the way you're talking.”

And everyone he interviews about Mario, a husband, a walk and be like, Oh, don't say more about that. It's clear from the beginning. No one wants him to talk about Mario at all. He's still very dangerous.

The DA guy said he's the only person I still fear. Don't even talk about him. And Eric goes to his fucking house in sits with him. You know, it's funny about, I don't know anything about profile and law enforcement. But I was told to call his lobbyist in DC.

These guys have lobbyists to make sure they can keep their animals. They're roadside suit. I call this guy in an Italian name. Frank something parallel or something. And he said to me, there's a hundred reasons why you shouldn't talk to Mario.

And he listed some of them. I can't think of any reason why this would be positive for Mario. So I struck out. And then I finally ambushed Mario one day and just went in there and got my foot in the door. The first thing he said to me, and I was with Josh Shafty, actually.

First time we went in with Mario and Josh, he put on these spy glasses that were so obvious. And I was like, oh, that was filming. Of course. And then the footage didn't even work.

Eric, I got to wear the glasses for continuity.

“He's going to think it's weird if I don't have the glasses.”

So he had to put glasses on again, and they're not even working. And Josh is like wearing these glasses. Mario, it was almost like taking the shape of that film. Analyze this with the mafia guys and what's his name. Place the shrink.

Billy Crystal. It was almost like that in real life.

Mario, first time I went there, I kid you not.

Because maybe we're similar age, and I'm not really a journalist. I had night clubs. He confided me with me the first day. And he says to me, you know, I go to a therapist once a week or twice a week. But really I'm screwing this girl that works for me. I go to a motel down the street.

There's white standing right over there. But he confides to me. And we had this sort of the sympathy co-situation. He would tell me the most interesting things. And we got on this level that was so unbelievable.

Way beyond just someone coming in and filming. It was almost cathartic for Mario to have someone to talk to. And there was this certain sadness with Mario. So I had this very mixed feeling about Mario to this day. There's honor among thieves.

And he has this certain moral code that's really unbelievable. He has principles. It's really interesting. Yeah, yeah.

“Well, all the guys, one guy's like, I'll steal the animals.”

But I don't want to do guns. I'll do the drugs, but I won't do the old kind of. There's a reason limit for that. They feel okay doing it. He saw episode two though.

And it first he was pissed because he was like, I didn't ship cocaine in with a cobra. And we're like, Mario, we're not really saying you necessarily did it. But people did. And then at the end of the show, he goes, I loved the sex scenes.

I love that. I'm still such a dude. Yeah. But he loved that. Yes, of course.

And also Monica, you're watching. He's like, he got sentenced to 100 years. He's out in 12. This is a big mystery. It's one of the only things he doesn't want to talk about.

Yeah. He says something very innocuous. Like, you know, sometimes the government needs people who-- So you get the sense they've let them out. Because I don't know who knows what's what happened.

No, that's crazy. How you can get out of prison if you have information. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm always fascinating.

“Like, he's guys have insane amounts of money, right?”

Did you ever eat killing Pablo? No. I terribly illiterate. Okay. If you were going to read about that better.

That would be the one. You know, these guys are bearing money. They forget about it. They're big problems with the cash.

They can't never convert it.

And you always wonder when these guys go away. It's like, well, surely they had some somewhere. And when I at least see your doctor, I'm like, yes, somehow that guy still has-- He's still in a big compound driving energy. It's so interesting.

Because when I had night clubs in the 80s, it was cash. There was no credit cards. Yeah. Yeah. I remember having so much cash at a certain point in my life.

Yeah. It didn't have cash machines back then. And counting millions of dollars in cash is so tedious. Oh, yeah. Sorry to tell me again, confiding with me, like, you know, $10 million in cash.

And it counted and to figure out where you put it. Yeah. And, you know, back in those days, you're trying to get banks to take-- Yeah, you can't use it. Use it.

I buried some cash one time. It was the biggest mistake in my life. I came back eight years later. It had turned into mud.

I never want to touch cash.

You got in my life. Even though it's so fun to have cash. Yeah. But when you're making that much cash, it's only a bill. It's like, you had no problem getting the cocaine in it out of place.

Is but he couldn't do anything with his fucking cash. It's this weird paradoxical. You know, South Florida in the '80s and '90s really was like that, by the way. The only time in my life I ever was shot at. Randomly shot at with guns was in Florida in Miami.

In 1993 or something, I was going to a nightclub at night. In a rented mini van with some friends. We didn't have cellphones. We got lost. We were trying to call Fab Five Freddy who was telling us to do a club in New York.

Freddy, where's the fucking club? I say to one of the girls I was with going. Call at this phone booth. And the next thing I knew these two guys were walking at night towards us. It started shooting at our van.

Blue out the back window. Blue out the side window. And I said, I was like, listen, you guys. We're going home. Going back to the hotel.

I had long hair back then. I woke up in the morning with all that little glass ice cubes from the, you know, in my hair and everywhere. But South Florida was like the wild wild west. People were shooting everybody.

The emergency rooms were insane. Stay tuned for more armchair expert. If you dare. I'm going to make a weird observation. Maybe if it comes off bad,

I still want to go to the battery. But in all your docs, we're following people. We're like, these people are crazy. But you're a little crazy. You are a little crazy to be going to these people to put yourself in these positions.

The danger is so high. And do you get like off on it? What's the draw to the danger? The honest answer is I'm not like some tough guy by any stretch.

The real job focus, Linda Mexico. Bad guys kill people for a reason. Drug routes are a big deal. And they kill over drug routes.

“They kill if you stole their drugs or whatever.”

I'm walking and I've done nothing to these people. So I'm not really worried about someone coming and killing me unless I wrong them. Where it gets scary isn't when you go in and first meet these folks. People just start killing you unless there's real reasons. And so it's when they've watched the show.

Of course. Ted Mario sees, oh, you passed a law that means I can't have my tigers anymore. I need my tigers to make a living at my zoo. Or they feel used. So that's when I've talked to law enforcement and people about are the people that are really threatening me online over the ones to be careful with no.

It's the ones that never say anything.

I'd be stupid and I'm probably stupid even saying this right now. But yeah, it's more later down the rub when you impact their lives. Not when you walk in the door or interview it because they don't know. And they're not serial killers. They don't get off on just morgue people.

That's not the one saying I'm not interviewing and talking about a serial killer. Yeah. Back to the crazy part is like I often say this about when I was smoking crack, which is like a lot of it's crack. It's great. But a lot of it's going downtown.

“I have to interact with the 7 channel dude.”

He's got a handgun and we got to go into this house. Like that is very dopamine rich. It's half of what's going on in the addiction to it. Yeah, of course. That's kind of what I wonder like when you're walking up to the door to ring the doorbell.

And everyone's told you to not go near this guy. Yeah. Is it a high? I mean, it's a high to get in and then get that comfort where you realize you did it. Yeah.

It's nerve rocking getting to that point of ringing that doorbell. Once you're in and you have the fluency that takes place. Whether it's drugs or whether it's my knowledge or reptiles. And they realize you're one of them. Takes one to no one.

Then you get it comfort. But you're sure it's a high to get the access. Because documentaries, at least the ones I make, it's all about access. And so people will say, oh, I'm going to go out and make a doc. Good luck getting to that person.

It's not so easy. Okay. So I can't wait to watch the next episodes because I would have beg for you to let me join you Meanie Mario, right? Like that's a no brainer for me.

The person that I probably don't ever wish to meet. Nor be in his world would be Anson Wong. Anson Wong is kind of this mythical guy sort of the Pablo Escobar of the Wildlife Trade. He's in Malaysia. Oh, canang.

He has been operating for 30, 40 years at least. He used to come to the United States and be able to go to the Bronx Zoo and all over the country. And people knew him. Tom Schultz at the San Diego Zoo knew him personally. The curative reptiles at the San Diego Zoo.

So Anson Wong had access to everybody until he was wafted for smuggling into this country. And then he became bad guy number one in the Wildlife Trade. He became this sort of mythical figure. It was not allowed back in the country or you'd get arrested.

Ultimately, he was arrested.

They managed to get in which happens in the story. He did one of the longest sentences for a wildlife crime ever in the 90s.

“I think he did seven or eight years in prison, which was a big deal back then.”

But Anson Wong, the government spent millions and millions of dollars to get him five year under cover operation to get Anson Wong. They finally did. He was released when back to Malaysia. Never to return to the US not allowed to. He got arrested again in Malaysia for smuggling reptiles, which was really incredible.

Because he had connections to the Royal Family, you know, he had high level connections. Getting him and knowing who he was, I pretty good access in the animal world and no people. I knew people that knew him and I would try to get inroads to Anson Wong in a number of ways and failed. Ultimately, COVID became a problem. I couldn't travel to Malaysia when I was filming this.

When COVID broke, I literally just went there. I couldn't get to him. And I had these fixers in Malaysia that I was trying to use to get access to Anson Wong. And they kept saying, "Oh, you know, we know his cousin is brother.

He's a person. When I finally got to Penang in Malaysia, I realized they never really even wanted

to reach him because they were scared to death." And so when I said to them, "Hey, can you call Anson?" I got his phone number with a Malaysian number because he's not responding to a US number. They were like, "We're not calling Anson Wong for you." And then I realized, "Okay, everyone's scared of this."

So I just kept calling and calling and calling. And one day, I was in a weird place in Malaysia and he answered the phone and then I got access to Anson Wong. But yeah, it was scary. And he said something in just when we were driving. Go and talk about how his driver was killed.

And he says it in such a non-slot way because his driver turned on him. And he obviously made sure his driver isn't with us anymore. So, you know, he's a heavy guy. Well, man, I just think you've made like three of my top ten favorite documentaries of all time. Champ, we were obsessed with Champ Crazy.

Yeah. Tell Eric. You gave us a gift.

Tonka is a huge part of our lives.

“We talked about Tonka non-stop on the show.”

And mainly, it's just like, we loved him and you know how he would throw poop. That is Kate. She'd be like, "Click it up and eat, try, but he's making it worse." We were obsessed with that part. We worked.

And then somebody had a-- Okay, there was an incident. There was an authorized evacuation incident by me. Well, driving a car. Well, that's important.

Yes, that's important. It was a bad situation. And Monica didn't want to actually say what she did. Yeah, I was so demoralized, but I had to share. Right? I had to tell back.

And I also, I guess, had to tell everyone. I was like, "I'm an animal. I'm Tonka." Like, I felt like him just like disgusting, just animals. We're all just animals.

I'm Tonka.

So, now if anyone who's in their pants, we say they Tonka'd.

And the listeners, like, people right in the comments, like, "I fucking Tonka'd that works. So now they become avert." It's a verb.

“Of course she didn't even pants, and I just want you to know.”

Yeah. We just want to thank you for helping us. Yeah, we do want to thank you. It's the cutest way to say it. I couldn't start gym crazy because that's my obsession, right?

Is primates. I knew I couldn't police myself. I would have gone too hard. Some people do have their, like, "I can't watch those because they love animals too much."

Like, then you should watch them. I think even more. Well, we try to not show too much suffering or badly. Yeah. Because otherwise, people turn the channel.

You try to keep a balance. But if we go too into that realm, and we could, we don't. We try to keep it fun, even though serious. Yeah, good. Just because people don't have the stomach to watch brutality.

I would say because I know so much about them. This weirdly parallels, Monica, and I have talked about this several times. Us addicts in recovery. We have a very specific way that we feel and react to and other addicts die. And for the non-addicts, it's this crazy heartbreak.

And then sadly, and this isn't nice, but for us, it helps confirm that's right, man.

“That's what happens when you're not in the past.”

So for us, it's weirdly a little bit of like... It's a reminder. It's a reminder. It's a moment of gratitude. And it's a moment of like, "All right, that's right, man."

Thank you for that reminder, because that's where we end up. We're dead, institutionalized, or incarcerated. And so when it happens, it's like, "Check. We have a different feeling about it." I would say in the same way when I was in Afghanistan

and I watched the soldiers deal with people that were getting killed around them. I was like, "You see it a bunch of times in certain predictable patterns. It happened and there's a way." And it's just kind of like, "Yeah." And when you light a cigarette, that's happened.

It's weirdly comforting to go right. That's how it works. I don't know.

But similarly, from the second, it started.

And I was like, "Why know where this goes?" I know what happens when a male chimpanzee gets fertile. But a lot of people don't know when we were doing chimpanzees. I was communicating with some of the world's top-privateologists about Taka. Thanks, Stanford, who's here at USC.

Good friend of mine who's actually in Madagascar right now. Working with me, Russell Minimire. I don't know if you know him. Now that we don't have Jane Goodall with us anymore, plus her heart, Russell Minimire is described more species of lemurs

than anyone of the world in recent times. And so, anyway, I was communicating with them about this chim. And asking them, "Should I do something now or is Taka okay?" Or "Can I wait?" And the reason I waited, a lot of people don't know this,

is because I thought Tanya Hatex, who's now in prison, would lead me to more chimps, which he ultimately did. But it's sort of like drugs. We want to just get the little guy with five ounces of cocaine. I wanted to get the source.

And so I kept waiting. A lot of people thought, "Oh, I'm exploiting her. I'm not doing anything about Taka in the cage." But of course, we were very sensitive to Taka's well-being, when we were doing chimps crazy.

Yeah. The craziest part of that entire doc is when those knuckleheads fucking drag that cage of the stairs had a holiday. Like a lot of things you look back on your addiction,

like the times you go, "This is the most absurd I ever got." Like if they're looking at their weird textures, like the time they drug a fucking chimp upstairs and a cage had a holiday. Like, they must go, "How did I end up in this situation?"

Keeping these animals and hoarding and the obsession. By the way, I like the word obsession. I don't think being obsessive is a bad thing. I think you wake up in the morning.

You have something to do. People that have no interest, I worry about. But when it goes into addiction mode, addiction isn't only drugs. Alcohol, sex addiction gambling.

It's also shop-a-holics. In this case, it's wanting these animals so badly that you'll do anything in ruin your life. And what happened to Tanya after chimpanzee wrapped, you know, she went and got another chimpanzee in her basement.

And now she's imprisoned for it. And I really worked with her after chimpanzee. Trying to counsel her, help her to sort of just have some contrition. Don't keep doing the same thing.

The owner of Travis tried to get a baby monkey.

She did.

She did get another chip.

I mean, how on earth? It's so horrible. It's so deep. I mean, that's like the sadness of it. It's really trying to fill up.

Yeah, for sure. Yes.

“And whether it's like she was never loved,”

it's like I'm the chimp lady. Look at me, gives you some kind of self-work. Purpose validation. But another day, if you come up to Ohio, we can trade crazy drug stories because drug addiction,

the shit you do. When you just said that, oh, my God, the shit you do. Yeah. Like the stuff I've done crawling on the floor, trying to get the crumbs.

Trying to snort the floor. Or whatever, the stuff you do. We can go down a drug rabbit hole. Yeah. But it is crazy.

But this stuff you do, even these edible people, they're addicted. Do you know every using dream I have is the exact same. I've had over the last 22 years. Many, many using dreams about cocaine.

And all of it involves me getting the coke out of the carpet.

And there's so much fucking lit and carpet in the coke. And I'm deciding do I snort all the lit? I have those two. Why do we still have those? I don't know why.

And they're panicking. Yes. Yes. I'm like, it's there, but I can't get it. But why still do we have those?

Yes. I want to shake those dreams. Every using dream is that dream. I wish my using dreams were about getting a rare tortoise. Or not.

You have basketball dreams. Who dreams? I like me to be able to do things like this. But the drug dreams, it's hard to shake those. But maybe it's good for you.

It's because then when you wake up, you're like, um, so glad I'm not doing that. Oh, my God. waking up is the best. Yeah. I'm so glad I agreed to interview a director.

This was fantastic. Oh, I love meeting. I don't know what I am. I just know. I'm not big as Dilatot ever.

No. I think you're everything. I can't wait for you to keep doing more of these. Because they're really important. I think, but also so entertaining.

I have a really crazy one that we're just finishing. It's three episodes. You love it. I can't wait. I probably have the same feeling about you as I have about us.

It's like, I don't know. We're 1100 in or 1200 in. I keep thinking, why aren't we going to run out of famous people? And then someone said, oh my, I guess there's another famous person. When I watch your shit, I'm like, what's left?

Guy with a dolphin he's making love to. Oh, that's so bad. We're fascinating with that. We know about those guys. Yeah, the scientists.

Well, that. Yeah. There's people that have followed love with the horse. I fall in love with their dolphin. That's more of an A and E's.

That's a fatal attraction. Really good. Both of you do really work well together. Cool. Yeah.

Thank you. Sorry. A hug so much of the oxygen. Yeah. That's what you're here.

It's to take a box.

“If you haven't watched monsters of God, you must.”

I know you've already seen Tiger King and Jim Crazy. Of course. You're so talented. And I certainly hope you'll come back. This was so fun.

Thanks. Take care. Thank you. He is at our pair. Expert.

But he makes mistakes all the time. Thank God, my hug is here. He's got a little help. The facts. I would like to officially introduce you to a new friend of the studio.

His name is Peter. Peter loves knowledge. And Peter's a crow. Okay. And Lincoln made this.

It's beautiful. Isn't it great? Yes. It doesn't Peter look friendly. Somehow my kids when they draw pictures.

I don't know how it happens, but they're able to.

They always look friendly.

Yeah. Right. Doesn't he look like a particularly friendly crow? Yeah. He's really.

I can't really see him. You can't see him. Now you're head. Oh, now my head is. Yeah.

But you can tell he has really pretty feathers. Uh-huh. Yeah. And he's holding cherries. Yeah.

She's very good at drawing. It's kind of crazy how good she is at drawing. Like a glass. The other day like a pencil drawing of a glass. Like a plank glass.

Oh, nice.

“And I'm like, I don't, how did you get all, like, you know, it's 3D?”

She's really good. And she's like a rip. It's cool. Oh. There's a really funny thing happening.

Do you know Delta's new life path? Well, I know she was earning sign language yesterday. Yeah. So on her own instigation. She said I'd like to learn sign language.

And Kristen threw Disney, of course, as an employee of Disney. She knew that Disney had this project where they had used a lot of ASL consultants. So she reached out to that production. Found this teacher. He came over.

He's so sweet. Yeah. She's learning at the craziest speed. Even he is like, this is bonkers. He gave her a card unlike maybe their fourth session.

And it said, um, Delta, welcome to the ASL community. We've been expecting you. Oh. Isn't that so sweet? It's really sweet.

So she's, this bonkers good at it.

I have a question about her teacher. Yes. Um, is he deaf? He's deaf. Okay.

Okay. Which became its own funny hijinks.

Cause when he very first came to the door, Kristen kind of opened it.

She was in the middle 19 things and she has her back to him. Yeah, come in here. You can sit over here. Mom and she's realized she's just giving this whole stream of thing. And then she just hears a noise come from the door.

And she's like, oh, fuck. Of course. Why wouldn't I have assumed he was deaf? Right. So she turned around, you know, and made a very clear what she was saying.

And he can read lips. Great. I talked to him. I know. So yeah.

Yesterday I walked in the house during the lesson. Because I wanted to say hi to the kids. Right. You know, you just have to look directly at him and like speak. But I don't like you.

I was like, is it rude for me to be trying to talk to someone who like, I don't know if he can read. Right. Right. He can. Yeah.

Um, so at any rate. Yeah. She's just bizarre. I mean, I'm really not seeing anyone learn something so quickly. I'm like, well, this is fucking.

And by the way, before this, I think the reason she wanted to learn ASL is she loves my, I can't stand it. It should be being bad. And she wants to like mind what she needs. I'm like, I like her rates.

Yeah. Like some version of. And then in some weird way her and Chris have worked out. They have no lot of hand signals that they just made up. So she just really wants to communicate that way.

Yeah. So we're driving in the car the other day. And she's just talking about how much she loves it.

“And I'm like, yeah, maybe you should do something.”

Yeah. Yeah. And then, sure other things she wants to be a therapist. So then we put it together. And so now her new dream in life is to be an ASL therapist for kids.

Great. And she told her teacher this and he said that would be so great. There's not a lot of therapists who can sign.

I think that would be amazing.

That's so sweet. Yeah. Great job. I was such a piece of shit. Like, I want to glory at her age.

I want to be evil. Can evil? Or, you know, like, I want it to be. Yeah. Some kind of world renown a hero.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And she wants to do sign language therapy for children. Well, I hope she does. Yeah.

Because she'll be great at that. But anyways, yeah, they're bone. It's so fun to watch them both have these crazy skills. Yeah. That's so awesome.

Your sister taught them sign language both when they were little. Yeah. Her and Kristen really learned sign language. And they could talk to the babies. I learned like, this, I brought this up in my defense yesterday.

Because I said, I'm scared. I'm not going to be able to communicate with you guys.

Like, you, Kristen's also learning that pretty quick.

Mm-hmm. And they're talking a lot. And I'm like, I'm afraid I'm going to be like, left out. Yeah. And then Kristen said, well, you could learn.

And I was like, I mean, I don't think I can. Yeah. And I'm not trying to be lazy about it. I'm not lazy.

“But remember, I put a lot of effort into learning when they were kids.”

And I knew like five things. Yeah. You know, more and water and stuff. Some of that. Yeah.

You knew something. You picked it up about as good as I. No. By the way, no. I came in whenever one had already learned.

And I was like, OK, I guess this ship is failing. This is happening. But yeah. So maybe their brains are like, since they've been doing it, since they were really little, maybe they're more like adept.

Yeah. And if I were listening to this, and I didn't have kids. And I was in my 20s. And I'm like, why did you teach it? Why wouldn't you try to teach it?

I can do that. I mean, parents. Right. So this is the thing that I doubt if you had kids. You wouldn't know about, which is like, they can't.

They're not going to develop their speech for a long time. But they can learn signs much quicker. And it alleviates so much of their frustration when they're babies. When they want to tell you they won't water. I don't know how to ask for it.

And they can. Or they want more of something. Or no more. All done. All done.

Yeah. All done. Make you sad. Remember, Kristen took Lincoln to Universal. And they were on the tram.

And she didn't realize it went through like, you know, like a girl. Like a King Kong exhibit. Yeah. And she uses a baby. And she was doing all.

No. All done. Yeah. So sad. Yeah.

Who? But yeah. I mean, I kind of. Maybe this is an excuse.

“But I think it's in the it's in like the foreign language department for me.”

You know, as you know, I had to take it at like four three different college three three different colleges to pass. Yes. We've discussed this. We both. I had to struggle.

I took eight. I took four years of in high school and eight. Four and four. The masters. The masters.

Or eight. The masters. A lot. I did do a lot. They did a department.

They required you to do a lot of foreign language, which like.

I got a. Anyway, I was very. Bad at it.

I was very bad at speaking.

I was good at reading it. Okay.

“And I could write it like it like make sentences.”

Yeah. Because I got to choose the words to put in. Yeah. But the communication. I just could not do this will not surprise you.

But I was okay by the end. It's saying some stuff. But once people were speaking to me in Spanish. I was like, I don't know what they're saying. It sounds so fast.

Yeah. It is fast. Yeah. It is fast. That was something I'm just uniquely bad at that.

I got was telling Ryan. We were in Nashville for. Labor day. Uh-huh.

And my very favorite song of all time, which is.

This is the place slash naive melody. By talking heads. I have listened to this song more than any other song in the 10,000 range. There's been weeks where I was on repeat. I don't know one word of that song.

And I'm like, how could this be? I can't hear what he is saying. Yeah, same. I have, we, again, we have this. Yeah, we know this.

“We have holes in that part of our brain.”

Weaknesses. That's a big weakness. Yeah. Noings, lyrics, and language. And I do think they're in the same space in the brain.

I've just decided that. I think they are. And it makes sense that they would be. Yeah. Yes.

Symbols, converting symbols into whatever.

Yeah, it's like an auditory, but you're good at auditory because.

You, like, audiobook, like you, you retain audiobooks. Yeah, retain whatever I do here. Yeah. Also, I'm great at, like, rap, lyrics, and country song lyrics. But they talk slowly.

Right. I can get it minutes in there pretty pretty deep. Yeah. I got to tell you, we have the greatest four days in Nashville. Tell me.

It was crazy hot, too. I just keep going from heat bubbled to heat bubble. It's hot. All summer I did it. And now I just did it.

It was blazing hot.

“There was like 98 in, you know, the humidity.”

Yeah. But we were on the boat, mostly the whole time. And what I discovered, my pontoon boss, women under it, early part of summer this year. And I could see I had LED light strips under the deck of the pontoon. But I don't know where any buttons are for this thing.

But thank goodness, Kennedy was visiting. And he likes nothing more than going through the menu of a screen. In the long behold, he figured out, I have disco lights on Mike pontoon. Oh, that's fun. So now we're in a habit of going swimming at night with the disco lights on and loud music.

Oh, is it fun? And you're floating in your diaper, which is an upside down life jacket. And it was just boating after boating. But the thing that I most want to talk about. Do you have a favorite breakfast spot in America?

In America. Because like I have so many favorite lunch spots in dinner spots. But I have only one favorite prior to this breakfast spot. It's in New York, Bubbys. Do you remember Bubbys?

Yes, I've been to Bubbys many times love it. Yeah, love it. I don't, I mean, I guess I don't know. Are you better say Waffle House? No, that's fun.

I love Waffle House. It's in a style jacket. It's fun. It's damn affordable. Yes.

Weirdly, they built one in about five seconds by my house recently. But I discovered this through chat. Oh. Last, right before I left for the end of summer, I discovered a place in Mount Julia. In Monica, this is my favorite breakfast spot I've ever had anywhere in the world.

Oh, my God. They have this thing called piggy Benedict. Okay. It's a biscuit. Freshly made biscuit, a big round sausage patty.

Poached egg. Howling these and gravy. Nice. Fuck. Then they have a chicken and waffle that will put it up against Roscoe.

Well, any day, it's unreal. They have this banana bread that is like bananas foster almost. It's impossibly good. And then you get like the basket of mini biscuits. Yeah, that's yummy. I don't think it's a low caloric breakfast.

But I guess we should tell people you're eating gluten again. I've been eating gluten again. Yeah, yeah. I have post that. Um, acrimentsia, uh, probiotic. The, the one that Pendulum, we had an episode and she, she gave me. I'm not endorsing anything. I'm not a doctor. I'm not saying it'll work for you. I don't know.

I've been eating gluten. Yeah. And it's been going well. That's amazing. And I enjoy it. Yeah.

A boy is at Fundy biscuits. But we were only there for four mornings and we went twice. Nice. And fucking juice. What's a cold?

I'm going to smell it out. Paper mill. Cute name. This town is so tiny. And it has in it now my favorite breakfast spot I've ever eaten at paper mill.

Yeah. This is crazy. Yeah. That's great. It's going to be there.

Yeah.

Motorcycle rides at night.

There's a little mix up. I know he's listening.

“There's really sad Ryan had a little mix up on on the dirt bike.”

He fell. He had a fall. Oh, sorry. It's going to go card in the dirt bike and he really let himself have it over it. He really, really abused himself.

He was so mad that it had happened. Oh, I'm not going to make any sad. Torrop is saying I'm pretty good. Oh, yeah. It's dangerous.

It's okay. It's why they're falling. Yeah. They weren't dangerous. They wouldn't be fun.

That's not true. Spades isn't dangerous and it's super fun. I'm not saying something has to be dangerous to be fun. Oh, okay. But what makes motorcycles fun is that they're dangerous.

You have your adrenaline up and you know the stakes are high. Yeah. That is why I don't like that. That's why you don't do a motorcycle. I wanted to say Shane Lee and Woodley from Paradise season two, which we talked about.

She won the Emmy. What should you do? Yeah. And I had put in my endorsement on this podcast for her to win. It might be why.

Can you explain the Emmy's to me? Yeah. I don't know what happened this year. There was an Emmy's last week, but then there also next week. Creative arts Emmys were last week and then this week.

“But does it paradise like you winning for best supporting actor, whatever that feels like that would be in the normal Emmy's?”

I agree. Because the TV has expanded so much. Yeah. It's too much for one show now.

I think they've always had creative arts Emmys as a separate day.

But I do think some of the categories... They got a little bit of junk. Yeah. Yeah. They all felt more production-wise.

But, yeah. Now, I don't know. Anyway, she won, congrats. She deserves it. Yeah.

Incredible performance. Incredible performance. But yeah, the real Emmy's... I mean, the... Oh.

The traditional Emmy's. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's part two. The one day night, Emmy's. Yeah, or on Monday, which is also weird.

That's weird, right? Wasn't it? I didn't normally on Sunday? Yeah. What have they done?

I'm... I present every year... I know the Emmys are coming up because I present every year at the prop master awards. Oh, yeah. Are you doing that again?

Of course. When is it? I go support my best friend, Jeff. They're Saturday evening. Yeah.

Oh, that's fun. Wow. And he said, how about for a bit... You carry me out because we carry you actors all the time. And I said, I'll carry you anywhere you want me to...

Even you're going to lift him up. I'm going to carry him out on the stage. Oh. Yeah, we usually do a bit, Jeff. Oh, you do.

Yes, yes. Who's Jeff? Jeff was the prop master on... Parenthood is where I found love with him. But then he was the prop master on chips.

Oh, God. Oh, God. My movie, which was so fun. He's the greatest. I've any crew member I've ever met.

I just love Jeff. Yeah. You like a lot of people.

“And I think he's the president of the prop master's.”

Oh, really? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. How big is he? Seven feet tall. No.

No. No. No. Because you have to carry him. He had a large man.

He's a good size. I mean, he's probably six feet tall. Are you going to carry on like a baby? Yeah. Like the baby.

Right. Or on your shoulders. That's cumbersome. I got to get him off. What do you want to do with Bay?

You might as well. You want to go big. Yeah. I can work my head on my shoulders. And I came out on a polo stick.

Wow. Now that would be... That would really be awesome. Evil can evil. So it would make.

We would have a prop. That would make sense. Last year he was making a speech. And I had his prop bag. Oh, kind of like...

The name is is a role reversal. Like that amazing speech that Julie Louie Drive is made. Like she wanted at me probably. And I mean, dignity. Nink for deep.

And then Tony Hill went up the floor. Oh, and whispered in her mouth. Yeah. That was so good. It was so funny.

Stay tuned for more armchair experts. If you dare. I do want to say I don't know if this was a wink. But Tonka was awarding connections some days ago. It was interesting.

And it was didn't reference to the... Or we don't know. No, we do. Tonka trucks? Yeah.

Oh, because was it. Truck toy related or some toy related toy. Yeah, toy brand related sort of. I want to do that one. Well, now you know, this happened to me.

Just always spoils things on accident.

It's like his super power. Yeah, but a horror. It's not a super power. It's a it's a crypto night. It's like a kill evil power.

Yeah. It's so bad. He cannot help with spoiled things. Wow. And...

What do you spoil? Well, he spoiled that.

“But then, you know, because he plays connections at the gym with his trainer.”

And then we were in line. Just not what he should be doing. I know. But whatever. Listen.

I don't know. He's a master of the strategy. They do connections sometimes. Anyway, and so we were in line for a restaurant. And he was like, "Have you done connections today?"

Said, "No, I'll pull it up." And I said, "But don't tell me." He was like, "No, I only did one." And he was like, "Starting." I know.

I was like, "Yes. Stop." And then he was saying, "No, it's just." And I was like, "Don't say any other words." That's me in the F1 races.

Some people want to start talking. Like, "Do I have watch?" And like, "Oh, yeah, I know. I know." And I was like, "No, no.

There's nothing more to say if I've said I haven't watched." Some people just love to spoil. They don't even know they're doing it. Just as happening. It's happening.

Anyway, he's spoiled the talk. He's well-talking. Yeah. And it was exciting to think that maybe when I had talked it, that, like, "Oh, maybe she was letting us know."

She was communicating with us. She was communicating with us. Yeah. That's right. That's right.

Speaking of F1. Uh-huh. There's a very exciting thing happening right now in F1. I know I've already talked about him, but Kimming unto Naly. Oh, yeah.

He just turned 20. He's won seven races this year from Mercedes.

“I think that record is Lewis winning maybe 11 in a season.”

So he's lots of season left. He could break at 20 years old. This Lewis Hamilton record. Wow. And Lewis's car was actually more dominant over the competition

that iteration of the car than Kimming is. And Kimming last race less weekend. He had to start at the back of the grid because he had an engine penalty. So he started in 19. And he won the race.

No. This is like a Max Verstappen drive. This is impossible. And his teammate is up there in the lead in the exact same car.

And he makes his way through 18 other cars passes Max Verstappen in third.

And uh, and wins the race. And he's 20 years old and he couldn't be cuter. He's the first. It was the Italian Grand Prix. And he's the first Italian to win the Italian Grand Prix in 60 some years.

Oh, that's a happy story. It's a really triumphant season of F1 right now. I love. I'm going to be really conflicted when Max has a comparable car. Because obviously Max is my deity.

Uh-huh. He's my god. But I love this Kimming kid. Oh, do I love him? Maybe see you know, you're going to flip flop.

Uh, it's going to be tough, man. I don't know what I'm going to do. Because I love Kimming, but Max is dangerous. You know, if they're in the same, okay, that's enough. I don't know why everyone.

No, I just like. Have you seen him? Have you seen him talk Kimming? Yeah, you should have seen him. You showed us the video.

Oh, yes, if he and Lincoln talk you. He's so cute. He's so cute. He's got a great body to do the summer on the summer break. He posted a lot of photos of him doing different water sports.

Oh, yeah. He was with Toto and Susie. Susie had a great bathing suit on in those pictures. I was served them. I did not go looking.

Oh, really? I came across. Probably because it knows I posted about them. Oh, maybe. Algorithm is very smart.

We came up with a good idea yesterday that we should emerge. It'll happen again in the episode. But I want to get it out there as quick as possible.

“We think you should be able, like you can send your playlist to people.”

Yeah. Like your liked songs. You can do that. We want to be able to send our algorithms. Oh, yes.

Exactly. On Instagram. We do. Be able to use other people's algorithms for how we're learning. You wanted to.

I agree. But I really enjoy having your algorithm for a couple days. Because it's just. It's close, right? Is it just close?

It's close. Should I tell you what I see right now? Yeah. Let's close. Susie and a bathing suit.

Yeah. Susie. Okay.

First thing that pops up is Megan Fay.

He then Aziz. I'm just going to read everyone. Okay. Then Aziz. Okay.

See? Because I just said, I do. Oh, I just said channelling with Lee. There you go.

I got a pop up. Just about Aaron Rogers. Okay. Listen, it is. And it's a page six.

I don't follow. Uh-huh. I don't like when they serve me. Saying gossip. Tabloid.

Yeah. It's almost irresponsible to not read. Yeah. I just read it. Yeah.

I didn't click it. But I hate that. So I don't like when they put threads in my timeline. Yeah. Because threads is all trash.

It's all like. It's all sticky gossip. It's all inflammatory. Yeah. It's just like Twitter.

And they never delivered to.

Yeah. I don't have. And I read it.

And it's never as good as the first two sentences.

And it almost negates itself immediately. Yeah. I mean, they figured it out. I know. Yeah.

You can have a eye. It like make me a very sticky sentence. And then you can do it. I know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We are.

“That's why you just like kind of can't have it.”

Because if you have it, we're clicking it. Or also if you enjoy it, that's great too. I get a hangover from it. I go like, oh, I read like three. Because then that apps open everything is terrible.

Right. And then I get sucked into four or five of them. I know. And then I'm just like, oh, I don't like how I feel when I can suit this. Yeah.

Yeah. It's pretty good to have during fashion week though.

Is it life fun stuff popping up?

Fun stuff. Anyway, all right, let's use some facts. Yes. Okay. Facts for Eric Good.

Great episode. Just fun guy. I mean, wow. We love him. I have to put him at the top of the heat.

For most interest, impression we've ever interviewed. And I'm just obsessed with him. I think I told you. I sent him a text that was like, hey, next time you're getting into any kind of tricky situations.

And you need to go pilot. I'm there. Whether that's for work or just otherwise, like, bring me along. Yeah. Yeah.

He's getting into all the tricky stitches. He really is getting into the tricky stitches. I don't think he can bring you along to some of them.

“Because I think it's going to do the opposite of what he is hoping to do, which is”

kind of just be under the radar and be one of them and be kind of, you know. I'm not that famous. I mean, most people, even if you're not famous, you're large. Okay. You have a large boy.

Okay. And a lot of tattoos. And stuff.

So like, I don't think people are ready as if I'm there.

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Okay. I'm pretty good at winning people over.

I know there's no time for that in some of these situations. Okay. He's got to get in and like, you know. I think I would have done great with that drug trafficker. More of Mario.

Oh, yeah. But you even said you didn't want to meet Hanson Wong. You said that to me. I don't want to meet him. Yeah.

You have to be low status. That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah. But how status is determined in that world, which is all toughness and intimidation. Really.

So it's like an actor. Is this like a guy? No. He's not threatening it. A actor.

No, it's not like. I almost said someone and I'm not going to say it. So it's mean. Okay. He's a very good actor.

He's a great actor and he is. He put people at ease. Everyone can just guess who I'm. I don't even know when I'm. Steve Bushemi.

Yeah. Yeah. It was obvious. I don't know. That's that.

I don't even know how he crossed your mind. This is what it was saying. Okay. Whether you're an actor or not. You have a presence.

Okay. And that shows status. Okay. But how many times have to say you're big? Yeah.

I don't know. But what I'm saying is in the drug trafficking world. They're like an actor. He pretends to be tough. It's so easy to write me off.

Like they've been in gun battles. It's just a difference. I know. I just don't think. Okay.

I think. Ding, ding, ding. This is funny. The other yesterday at dinner. I don't remember how it came up.

But we were. I think discussing. Maybe we were discussing the incident in Palm Springs. Maybe. And we were talking about how everyone reacts differently in these situations.

The confrontation on blah, blah, blah. And just said he didn't mean it in the way that it's going to sound. But he was like, yeah. No. The only reason you're super successful is because you would fight with DAX in the kitchen.

And what he meant was I'm not afraid to have a debate or meet someone intimidating. Yeah. You and Lincoln. Exactly. You should be.

You should be. Great. You know, one time you probably don't think this anymore. But at one time when I was babysitting, you did tell you said, I hope you grow up and you're like Monica.

I don't want to feel that way and she is. Yeah. So when she's, you know, she's not intimidated by at all me. Yeah. It's good.

Of course it is. That's what I want. I know. Yeah. So anyways.

“That's what I hope to raise some a woman not afraid of anyone.”

Of her dad. Yeah. And I'm a, as you, the aforementioned size and this and that. Exactly. And she can give a fuck.

And I love that. Exactly. Yeah. So that doesn't mean it's so easy for me all the time.

Yeah. That's part of the cost. Yeah. But yeah.

So he, all to say, I am not like those drug dealers.

I don't find you intimidating. I know. But they do. Or did we tell people that we do have an answer to the fact that

“Remember when you pretended to be dead on the railroad tracks or passed out?”

And I was trying to move you off the railroad tracks. No, here. You were playing down. We were, we were role playing. Yeah.

If I were on a railroad tracks and you were dead weight passed out. What I'd be able to get you off the road. Rail road tracks. And I said, I would get superhuman strength. But we can't practice superhuman strength.

And it's dangerous to rely on the notion you'll have superhuman strength when you need it. I know. But then we got the answer because I had to end up breaking into my house. And it required a level of strength. You probably would not have had on a railroad tracks.

Why did you do a pull-up or something? No. Joe. My uncle. Uncle contractor.

He was very impressed. Okay. Great. He was very impressed. And I can do that.

And then I was like, oh yeah, I can definitely roll DAX off of the tracks. Right. This fight. Yeah. You can't practice.

Yeah. All right. Now. Is the creator of S. Warner Earhart.

“Where was he from and was he a used car salesman?”

Yeah. He. All the above. Yeah. He worked as a car salesman and encyclopedia salesman before creating the self-help program.

S. Which like. You know, I bet a ton of people got a lot of great stuff. I'm sure. The condiments was successful.

Yeah. I'm sure. He sold both new and used cars in Pennsylvania and California. Ooh, sometimes using the alias jack frost. Oh, fun.

Nippinate your toes. Put in a nice Chrysler Imperial. Low mileage. All highway.

Things never been on a arterial road.

Oh. My dad told me he used to sometimes stand in front of dense. When he was just dead. First start now. Yeah.

Oh. And he is a large man. So he could. When he when he was a used car salesman. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, no. But then he graduated. And I know I'm told this before.

“But he graduated into, you know, he was the best car salesman at Davis Ford.”

He won this. He won two free cars. There's like a national whoever could sell the most for trucks. He won that incredible salesman. Yeah.

And he kind of got so good that he had a helper who turned out to be my first stepdad. Carly's dad. He worked at the dealership. And so. So wild.

He basically Greg would set up the deals. And my father would close them. And he mostly closes them across the street. The bar. Oh, he said, like, let me take you to get a drink.

Exactly. And on a couple different occasions. This is in the 70s. Sure. Where my book takes place.

The people who bought the new car got so drunk with my dad at the bar that when they pulled out of the lot. They got broad sighted and smashed their brand new car. They have a couple different things. Yeah.

That's bad. Really bad. So this is a poor dad got sober obviously. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow. Yeah. That was bad. That was a kid. How big was my father?

Yeah. Like probably six one. And always 250 or more. Okay. And how tell us your brother?

I think my brother's six one as well. Okay. You're a little taller. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. A couple inches. I'm writing that down. You're going to have a suit made for me. Yeah.

Okay. You said in the American she falls in love with asked. But it wasn't her. It was Philip who got really in. Sorry.

A big mistake. That's a big mistake. But it's okay. Philip is the Matthew Reese character. Yeah.

They both just swayed those performance. They really did. What is the most profitable club ever? Nightclub. Okay.

Okay. Thanks. Nightclub. At on court in win loss Vegas is widely recognized as the highest grossing and most profitable

nightclub ever routinely pulling in between 103 million dollars and 105 million dollars

in a single year. Wow. But they have big expenses. They're paying those residences to those DJs and stuff. Definitely.

Studio 54 had to be a cash account. Because those guys, one of them had like the top two or three floors in the San Hotel were in their own very expensive piece of real estate. Yeah. That I think now bond along.

Wow. That's funny when I was in New York. My friend Maddie and I were taking a walk and she knows she's just pointing out all the buildings and she knows everything. New York real estate is real like interesting niche.

Yeah. Yeah.

What is a hillbilly speedball?

“Generally refers to a slang or colloquial term for a comment.”

We'll term for a combination of elicit or prescription drugs. Typically substituting a rural accessible stimulant like meth or prescription amphedamines and a downer like a prescription opioid pain killer in place of the classic heroin and cocaine. Mm hmm.

Okay. So yeah, fentanyl meth. I'd call that definitely a hillbilly. Do not worry. We could call it a hillbilly highball.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to get flagged for sure, but. What are you? How much fentanyl.

This is so. This was really bad. Also this so person person specific. Right. I said how much fentanyl can you survive with?

“First thing that comes up to speak with someone today.”

98 suicide in crisis. I like that they did that. Yeah. Cool. But I'm going to say it's for a fact check.

Oh boy. Yeah. Yes. Please call this another way. We've heard that before.

Even more reason. Yeah. Oh, it's really searching. It's thinking. It probably can't.

Ethically answer this. This is interesting. Well, also. It's just no way they could give you a range. It would be humongous.

All right. Like are you already addicted to opioids?

Do you have a million receptors?

Are you mean? But what are talking about the penny? Yeah. Like I'm just like that can kill an elephant. Then I can't have even one micron.

Yeah. You can, though. Really? Yeah. When you, they administer fentanyl the hospital.

That's what I don't get. The nasal spray and intervene. I know. That's what I really do not understand. Well, just the issue, of course, with it is is they mix it perfectly.

It's just diluted perfectly. Every bit of fluid in the vial has the same amount of fentanyl. But when they're mixing these batches of fentanyl in a 55 gallon drum in Mexico, some portion of it may have 10 acts of some other portion. That's the issue with black market manufacturing.

Yeah. It says fentanyl is an extremely potent synthetic. It says disclaimer. Information is for general knowledge and should not be taken as medical advice. But knowledge and extremely potent synthetic opioid and ingestion of even a miniscule amount

can be fatal because there is an exceptionally narrow margin between a psychoactive amount and a lethal amount. There's no single safe threshold and individual outcomes depend heavily on factors. Such as body size, personal tolerance and history of opioid use. Yeah.

You can give a red head that whole penny. No, don't. Don't do that. Oh my god. It's 50 times stronger than heroin.

There's one now more powerful than fentanyl.

The one word that crank. No, that's trank. That's a different drug altogether. That's not an opiate. But those people are so hunched.

Fuck are they. Oh, it's horrible. That's terrible advertisement for the drug.

“I think they're like they're a perfect advertisement for it.”

Because it makes, I mean, they are the face of dare. Yeah, you know. Yeah. All right. That's it.

That's all. Yeah. Fuck. I can't believe it was the fire. And the best hotel. And the biggest turtle conservation is like, what? And it was really some, I did say it in the episode, but I didn't put too fine.

I didn't like scream at or emphasize, I've been wanting to go to the L. Roblar hotel and O. Hi, for a while. And we drove by it on the way to the way. And I was like, "Oh, do we have time to sleep in there and have a T?" Oh, a T. That's nice. We didn't. Oh, I can't remember. All right, love you.