Welcome, welcome. Welcome to armchair expert. Experts on Expert. I'm Dax shepherd, and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

Hi.

I couldn't say Dan Shepard today because our guest is Dan. That would have gotten really confusing.

You're right.

Dan Slepien, he is an award winning investigative producer and a veteran Dateline producer, which we love. We love our Dateline.

Yeah.

The topics rough, but he's a party.

Yes. And he's a great storyteller. So you hear really intense stories, but you're riveted.

Yes. And his retention of all the players is really second to none.

Yeah.

He has a book out September 10 called the Sing Sing Files. One journalist, six innocent men in a 20 year fight for justice. Man, this is a good episode. It shines a light on something that we talk about occasionally, which is like, there's a lot of folks in prison that shouldn't be there. Yeah, it's about the worst thought, too, being innocent and having your life stolen, JG. Yeah. But, boy, these. His stories are riveting. The life he's led as a journalist the last 2030 years is incredible.

Yeah.

Please enjoy Dan Slepian. Wondry subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now. Join wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. He's an objector.

He's an object. I thought I was actually early.

Where were you?

I was sitting outside in the car. I thought it was 1130.

Oh, that's okay.

Listen, listen. I'm so sorry. This is.

This is the bathroom. You've been sitting in your car for a while.

No, I was on the Today show a couple of years ago for my podcast.

And you got up and left.

No, you did your research. Oh, my God.

It was very endearing because. Was it Roker? He goes, what are you doing? You produce television. Why are you walking off the set?

You know what I'm saying? I produce television and I'm playing and.

I think I'm early.

That is so. Oh, my God.

That's actually funny. Cause I thought we were at twelve today, too, until this morning when I double checked the calendar.

Weird monitor.

Dan rolled it and I was the only one here.

I think you're trying to make me feel that way.

I promise it happened.

This is all I have to say to start. This is where I'm at.

Okay? Emotionally.

Oh, emotionally.

Well, you're frazzled emotionally.

Cause I thought I was early, but my daughter got this from me because this is where I live state of gratitude.

Yeah, well, hold on. Dan, do you live there or do you aspire to live there?

That's an excellent question.

Thank you.

The power of now. Eckhart Tolle. I aspire to be in now. Can you ever really fully be in now? I don't know.

You can have moments.

This is the one thing about coming over here. First of all, I have so much gratitude for being here.

Oh, wow.

We're so happy to have you, that.

You care about this issue. And by doing this, I promise you, you are going to be changing lives. Not by me doing this. By you doing this.

Well, no, I think it's gonna require you, Dan.

You're gonna have to participate.

So I'm so grateful for being here. Thank you so much. And by the way, who doesn't know your podcast?

Well, listen, I was just in Europe and I didn't think anyone's feeling very lonely and unobserved.

I mean, you guys are killing it.

Oh, thank you so much. I hope it comes across. We genuinely love doing it. We get interesting people who have spent 20 years of their lives doing something that is you, and you're gonna distill it down for us into 2 hours and we get educated. It's like we've not left college. It's the dream job.

It's incredible. And it's incredible that you love it. And I know you love it. I hear it.

I think that's what makes it work.

Oh, by the way, Dan.

Yes, sir?

Our fridge broke. Instead of offering you in hot water, I've gone and gotten ice cold water for you. I'm gonna pour you a glass. Now.

Look how nice you are.

And I'm gonna do a little asmr. Because why not? We never have a pitcher.

Can I have ASR when I drink it?

Ooh, I bet the listener got thirsty.

I don't wanna make them throw up, but here we go. Ready?

Oh, yes.

Yes.

Oh, okay. Now, you know what's really interesting, Dan? I don't know if you know about misophonia. Do you know about this?

Misophonia? Misophonia?

You were about to say misophonia? No, misophonia.

Not misophonia. No, no, no.

Misophonia, believe it or not, is an actual genetic condition where you cannot stand the sound of hearing people chew and eat.

I've heard of it. I didn't know the name of it.

We thought our friends who claimed to have this were just intolerant people.

My wife.

Yeah.

See?

Has she done a 23 andme it'll actually show you if. So, once I saw that, I was like, okay, this is a real condition. I gotta be sympathetic to it. But now, here's the weird thing. I think misophonia. People like ASMR, they would have enjoyed the water being poured in there. But then once it goes into a mouth, it's a very arbitrary distinction between it going in a glass in your mouth.

It is. And I think that's a deep thought.

Actually, I've never heard about it. For people need to weigh in who have it weigh in in the comments.

Which you won't read, but I will see.

But Dax will see. If it's drinking, I feel like it's chewing.

Well, that, I think is rough. But I've heard many people complain just about that. Like, sipping sound drives them nuts. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you guys read your comments?

He does.

All of them?

Yeah, all of them. Do you have a take on it? Well, let's just start by saying our comments are overwhelmingly positive.

That's what I mean. I would read your comments if I was you, too.

Well, and you can help yourself in this pursuit by only allowing people who follow you to comment. You can't just get stragglers coming on to hate, mom. You know, they gotta follow you. So that's a great little tool. That definitely weeds out a ton of negativity. But the 5% that are negative, of that 5%, 20 percent's valid.

Do you think so?

Yeah. Like, I had misrepresented OCD at one point in the way I was talking about it, and a lot of people with OCD complained, or I won't even say complain, they corrected me. And so I was like, well, let's get an expert. And then it turned out to be one of our best episodes. And I loved getting educated.

This is what you do. You're in a life of education.

Yes. For free.

It's incredible.

Okay, I wanna start with your own story before we get into.

I know that I'm a little scared that you've done so much homework.

That's a good fear. I need you a little on edge. You're a producer. You know I am.

But usually when I'm either telling other people's stories or I'm being interviewed about my stories, it's factual stuff. This is a different. Like, I feel it in this room. By the way, I know we're on podcasting here, and I have a face for podcasting, but there's something about the environment which you've constructed that makes me feel immediately like, I'm home.

Oh, God, that's lovely.

I'm glad to hear that. We just added a door on the bathroom, and I was worried that that was gonna change everything.

Said that to me. Don't pee before they only have a curtain.

No, now we have a door, which is why I was so excited to offer you that option. But at any rate, before we get into your topic, which is very heavy, and it's horrific on many levels, it's not feel good story we're gonna delve into, but we're gonna have some fun before that because you have a very fun story. Take us from going to school and having always wanted to be working for NBC News. Cause really quick, we could interview you just on your career, like we would have you on. Just to learn as an expert what it's like to produce Dateline for so many years. That could be its own episode. Right? So I want to touch on some of that.

We love you. Oh, thank you. My bosses, Paul Ryan and Liz Cole, love you.

We love Daline, as they know.

Thank you for loving us.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Keith Morrison's my greatest. I know.

I'm sorry. I'm not him.

We had him. We had him. We know.

I know. I found my research too.

He was great.

This is my Keith Morrison. Ready?

Yeah. Oh, I'm gonna hear it.

Curious, isn't it?

That was good. That's good.

You know, he does. He does. You got his shoes on, too.

You got his shoes on.

He loves converse.

I know.

He does our interstitial where he says, stay tuned if you dare.

Dude, that man can read the phone book and have you like.

But you grew up in New York.

Yeah, I grew up in Westchester, New York, which is just north of the city. White, middle class kid, but didn't come from money. I mean, I came from nothing. My father was a special ed teacher in Spanish. Harvard, Harlem, later became social worker before he passed. And my mom was an administrative assistant, raising four of us. I had three older sisters, so my parents were divorced when I was eight, and so when they were divorced, you know, at the time, my dad had a drinking problem. When you're eight years old and your family's ruptured, everybody has their trauma. My trauma's no worse than anybody else's. It was a time where I learned. Oh, see, you call it the simulation. I call it quantum entanglement.

Okay, sure.

What happened?

A 24. I'm looking at a 24 right there.

Candle.

A 24 has been all over my universe this past month because JJ is in the movie sing, sing, sing with.

Colman Domingo, which we saw, and we interviewed Colman Domingo. Did you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beautiful movie.

I think, actually, we're gonna have this follow Coleman.

Coleman's a beautiful human being.

I love him.

I've met him as a result of this. And JJ is part of that small ensemble. And so a 24 was not part of all of this when they were making it. But it's been all over my world because of JJ. So, anyway, it just caught the corner of my eye.

The sim is lazy. You have to understand that. The sim is creating a lot of assets, which is inmate. But the sim makes assets, and it doesn't want to make unique assets for every room. It has to duplicate for efficiency.

And I don't even look for it. It just finds me. I don't. So when your family is ruptured like that, at that age, I've been emotionally on my own since I've been eight years old. Growing up, I always had this need to focus on people who never had a voice. And the way that I found that for myself, I was always taken by video and music.

Music.

When you put those two things together, I think people emote. And I think when you emote, you care. I've had a camera in my hand. I don't want to age myself here. But pre digital.

Yeah. VHS days, sure. Big boys, big tapes.

You're with me. A little bit older than you.

I was doing some reverse engineering, and you were a junior in college in 1990, and I graduated high school in 93. So, yeah, we're looking at probably a five year gap.

But VHS tapes, that's of my gen too.

Yeah. You're not in our demo, Monica.

Hey.

I'm just saying, we're in the same demo.

She wants to be in all demos. If we were talking about Gen Z, she would also be in Gen Z.

I mean, emotionally, mentally, you might be in our demo.

I'm 36.

I'm not old, Jordan.

Okay.

Okay.

But mentally, we're much younger than you.

Yeah, yeah. Mature wise.

So I always just grew up watching NBC in my house.

And you like the news specifically?

I always liked the news.

I mean, this is so generic, armchair y, but, like, dad's gone. All these NBC Nighttime news news shows we watched growing up, there was a patriarch in charge, and he made you feel safe. And Cronkite delivered it with a steady voice. Definitely. If you're longing for some maleness, I think those anchors of our childhood are obvious source of that as well.

It's the first time I ever thought of that?

Okay. All right.

I had a stepfather. God bless my mother. I love her. She's in Florida. The stepfather never spoke to me for 35 years, not present in my life, who was just fixture in my house.

You were an extra that came with mom.

Exactly.

Yeah, sure.

Me and my sisters were just kind of extras. And I love my mom dearly, and she is a superwoman for what she dealt with. But that analysis is actually an interesting one that I never thought of. It was, who am I paying attention to?

I'll add, because I happen to be writing about it. So my parents got divorced at three, and me, mom and brother went and moved into these welfare apartments in a town in Michigan. And I don't think I was so cognizant of it, but I can look and go like, it's real scary that dad's not in the picture. Crazy shit was happening in this apartment building, and you're like, who's stepping in when it gets violent? Like, where's dad? Where is the protector and all this? There's something primitive about not having a male around. This is a little scary. I think it is.

My dad loved me very much and was in the picture, but he wasn't even allowed in my house, so it was confusing as a little child.

And you did weekends?

Weekends, sometimes weeknights every once in a while. But my dad felt in love with another woman, and now, as an adult, I get it, but when you're 1012 years old, you're like, wait, what happened? Listen, I would not have changed anything in my life, warts and all, just because I luckily can say I love who I am today. All of that contributed to who I've become. But I had to go through it. So my mom would cook dinner every day, and I'd come home, and the two shows that we would watch, I'd be home by three. Something. 04:00 was Phil Donahue. I'm sorry, you don't know who Phil Donahue is? This is what I'm saying. This is my arbiter with people I work with just to get a sense of generation. I'm like, have you ever heard of Phil Donahue?

Yep. Sally Jessie Raphael.

I know her.

Yeah.

When I say Phil Donahue, I could be saying Millard Fillmore to a lot of people.

Yeah. And to put it into perspective, Phil Donahue was as big as Doctor Phil. Do you know, you couldn't have been born in the last 25 years and not know who doctor Phil was. Similarly, you couldn't not know who Phil Donahue was. And he was the first of this ilk to have white nationalists on with the black Panthers at the same time.

It was Oprah before Oprah.

Okay.

That's right. But also a bit salacious. There were some very hot buttony, edgy. There were fights on the show. Phil got attacked. He broke his nose in a nap. That was Geraldo, actually. Oh, Geraldo.

But there were. Yeah, sure, there were stuff, but maybe not. The broken nose was Geraldo.

That is Geraldo.

He was the first person in television history to take a microphone and put it in random people's faces in the audience. That's really what he was known for.

Got it.

He went off there in 1996. He was older at that point. He was what I call in the book the OG talk show host. So we would watch him at 04:00, and at 05:00 we'd be live at five with Tony Gata and Sue Simmons, which are the local news anchors at the time.

In New York, the news anchors in your town are the most famous people in the world. In Detroit, Bill bonds.

They're like your family.

The Brad Pitt of your town.

I gotta see. What's Tony saying? You know? So I always wanted to get into the news business. So I applied to WNBC and only WNBC, actually, and was rejected. And then I applied again, and I was rejected. At the time, I was president of my student government in college.

Did you have a degree in journalism? What was your degree in?

English and history.

Okay.

Yeah. You know.

College kids should not be making these decisions for themselves.

You know what I think that major is? Major is like, topic of conversation or family conversation.

What you want to talk about at the dinner table?

Yes. You gotta have an answer when people ask.

I guess so. Even a journalism major would not have prepared me for what I would end up learning.

Right.

My major was Dateline university.

Right.

I would watch Tony gotta and sue Simmons every day. And so I got rejected twice from this internship. I got one internship offer at a place called Common Cause, which is a good government group, and it was down by city hall in lower Manhattan. I was there for the first week, and I was making copies in this hallway. I hated it. Every day I would go out with my brown bag lunch, 19 years old, sitting at city hall, people watching. And one day I see a stream of journalists walking into the Seahawk. Now, this is pre 911. Not much security around willy nilly.

You could wander into places anywhere you want.

So I'm like, what's going on? I get online and I follow everybody in and there's a security guard there, and people are showing their badges. He says to me, I'm 19 years old. He says, where are you from? Probably the proudest moment of my life. The quickest. I was. I was like, I'm from independent media. Oh, no. And he was like, okay, go on through. I'm like, what just happened?

You know?

So I'm sitting in the back of the blue room. They call it the blue room. And I have my brown bag lunch on my lap. And out comes at the time, Mayor David Dinkins. I'm like, whoa, David Dinkins. And then in the front row, four rows ahead of me, I see this snow white hair. I'm like, is that Tony fucking Guida?

His local news anchor. Oh, zero. The other Phil. Donnie.

Oh, my God. The guy you had on your wall.

No, no. The guy that I watched every night. My local news anchor. I was saying it to myself, like, is that Richard Gere?

Is that like Gwyneth Paltrow?

Right, exactly. I was like, is that Tony Kaida? And so I'm like, what do I do? So I waited outside city hall for everyone to come out, and then I saw him walking out, and I ran up to him like a puppy off a leash. And I was like, mister, gotta. My name is Dan sulfian. I applied twice to be an intern at WNBc. I got rejected twice. I will do anything. I'll get you coffee. I'll do whatever you want. This dude was like, either. I'm gonna call the police. He took a napkin out of his pocket and he wrote, call mike Callahan. And he wrote a phone number, and he handed it to me. And I said to him, thank you so much, mister. I gotta. If he tripped over me 2 hours later, he would not have recognized me.

Sure, sure.

That moment changed my life forever.

This is problematic. Cause this is a topic that comes up on here all the time. See, there's a couple of these stories, and they encourage everyone else to go up to someone at a dinner party table.

Oh, they.

I heard on your podcast, this guy.

Yeah.

Keith Morrison's, like, having a nice lunch with his wife, and some guy's like, I want to be on Dateline. But it happens sometimes.

In reality, I kind of think he was trying to get rid of me.

Yeah. What's great is he didn't do a ton for you. He gave you this number, and you called the next day, and the guy was nice enough to say, come down here. And then he just shoved you somewhere else. So you're kind of like a rock in everyone's shoe. But then you end up kind of interning without any real permission, and they're like, you gotta be officially working here. But then fast forward to you apply and you get. And this part fascinates me greatly. You were in the page program at NBC.

I was.

I was speaking of getting rejected. I tried to get in that program, so.

Oh, you did, did you?

Really?

Rejected.

Well, you should have gone to city hall to a press conference.

I guess it would have been after college.

I don't want to know. Yeah, 2024. Was it.

A long time ago?

Well, too bad we didn't know each other. I don't know if I could have.

Helped you anyway, but written something on a napkin.

The funny part about that internship is that it wasn't an official. The internship director would be like, why do you keep showing up? I literally saw her in the hallways for decades now.

This is the part of the story I stand behind. So, like, approaching people in public, I don't know about that, but showing up over and over again and getting people coffee and doing the fucking grunt work, just sticking around and doing the work. No one wants to do that. I'm a huge believer in my intent.

And my motivation was to understand this business and do what I could to give other people a voice. That was why I was the president of my student government in college, to answer your question, because of my internship. Internship. I put in air quotes. I got accepted into the page program.

And so you were seating people at Letterman and at SNL.

SNL? Letterman.

Year 20.

I was 21.

Were you pinching yourself? I can't think of anything more exciting than being able to be in the Dave Letterman theater or the SNL stage.

I can't explain how exciting it was.

Probably never got better, actually.

I don't know how to answer that. I haven't left that building. I'm 31 years. Rockefeller center. So there's something. When I first walked in. It's interesting that you say this, because when I give tours of the studio, there's a smell in the studios. The air conditioning is up high. There's an energy there that made me feel like I was part of something bigger than myself.

It's the apex of New York show business, in my opinion, that building, the many things that are going on there. You have SNL on a floor. You've got David Letterman, you've got the news happening.

And I was the audience coordinator for the Phil Donahue show.

That's the greatest.

I did the warm up of the studio audience, but it was all within that time period, I was pinching myself as a page. I'm seating people at Letterman. I'm seating people at Saturday night Live. I'm doing tours of the studio. I'm seeing famous people all over the place. The real unbelievable moment as a page was they have what they call job assignments. So they give you, like, three months of assignments in various departments. I was only page for three months. Cause I got hired at Donahue right away. But I had an assignment at NBC Sports, and this was in 1993 when the Chicago Bulls were playing the New York Knicks in the east coast finals. It was game five, and I was a runner, and my job was to get orange juice from Marv Albert.

Oh, wonderful.

So I have this thing on my neck, all active. There's a sports truck at the end of the ramp. I'm in the truck the whole time, and they're like, Marv needs to do right. So I take the juice. Ten minutes before the game starts, I'm running up the back, I swear to you, coming towards me in his uniform by himself, was Michael Jordan. No, baby, I didn't say a word.

Well, good.

You want to shoot a couple hoops, bro?

I'm an aspiring Chicago bull.

That's when you're like 86 forever.

Yeah, exactly.

But the moment was when I come out the player's entrance, and I ran to give him his orange juice, and it was like ten minutes before the game time, you know, 20,000 people looking around. I'm like, what else?

Yeah, that's when you start believing in quantum entanglement.

Yeah, quantum entanglement. Have you saying that?

I love it. Okay, so let's fast forward. So you end up, over the course of your career, you land at Dateline. Well, you end at NBC News. And maybe help me with that.

Donahue. I was at Donahue.

Yeah.

And then Donahue went off there in 1996, and I started at Dateline right away.

And so Dateline's a division of NBC News.

Is that how it works? It is, and it's evolved over the years.

And you've been there for going on.

My 29th year, 96. It was March 11. Eleven is a big number in my life.

I'm trying to.

1111. Very lucky.

JJ's birthday is eleven. 1111 is all over the place. A chapter in my book is 1111. But anyway, March 11, 1996, was my. My first day at dateline.

And how long there before you are actually producing segments?

I started producing segments in about 99, 2000.

Okay. 24, 25 years of that. And so I think it'd be fun just for people, in a very concise way, to know when we turn on Dateline and Lester or when Keith gets up there. Someone has done a lot of legwork before. He can report this story to us on camera. And that's what you're doing as a segment producer.

That's exactly right.

So let's just give, like, there's a murder in Ohio. Of course a man has murdered his wife. And how long before Keith goes out there to talk to people? Are you on the ground? What are you doing? How are you building the story?

The way I describe it is being a good producer is like choreographing a ballet. By the time the talent shows up, everything is in place, everything is ready. All questions are answered. You know what the story is about. You know what the questions are going to be asked. The characters kind of know what to expect. You know, why you're doing the interview, what the purpose of the interview is, the overall arc of the story. The location has been picked out. We know that there's not going to be trains.

You got to find something for Keith to lean on.

Exactly.

In his upfront, he is the leaner.

The producers are working on several stories at once. The correspondents are working on more than that. And it depends who you're working with. Keith, as you guys well know, has very much his own voice.

Oh, God. Yeah.

You don't really write Keith's scripts for him. Right, right. Keith writes scripts.

Well, Dateline's a division of NBC News, and then Keith is a division of Dateline. He's his own brand within the brand. Within. In the brand.

Many, many years ago, Kristen and I created a movie for Dax. It was called Baby director. We used Dachshund.

I know it.

Keith did it.

Yes. And Keith did it. But we were like, can you just maybe narrate this for us? And he said, sure. I think we said, like, it's gonna be this. We gave him some script, and he was like, maybe I'll take a stab at it. So he wrote that himself.

Listen, I just wanna tell you, Monica, do not take offense, though. It was perfect.

It was the dream come true. Cause you can't actually write.

But it's a real thing to feel insecure, you know, you write a script and you give it to Keith, whatever, and it comes back, like, a million times better, and you're like, I friggin suck.

Yeah, well, you just can't write for him. He's so specific.

Josh Mankiewicz is a dear friend, also has his own voice. He knows his voice. He writes all the correspondents write, but depending on who you're working with, Andrea Canning as well. But I work mainly now with Lester Holt. I'm his long form producer for most stuff. And Lester is really, really busy. He's a very, very dear friend of mine. He is my role model, my mentor. Without him even knowing it until now.

He's not gonna listen. Don't worry. He's doing it.

I'm gonna make him listen to the stuff. He's my mentor by how he behaves. He wants to walk just by watching him.

Here's my guess. Having no knowledge of how this works. But my guess is you have a team at Dateline that's kind of got their lures in the water all over the country. They're monitoring stories that are coming up and surfacing, and then they're reducing that to some of compelling stories that DatElINe might take on. And then my guess would be, do you then get that whittled down group and then some stick out to you and then you go pitch that to Lester?

There are, as you know, only certain 100 something hour slots a year. Primetime real estate is precious. There are literally thousands of pitches every year. The way that's decided. Paul Ryan and Liz Cole are the executive producers of the show. There's a pitch pack and producers pitch their stories, and then the group of seniors in the morning meeting go through them and they'll talk about them. And there's a whole host of reasons that they choose certain stories. If we have a two hour slot, if we have a 1 hour slot, you need variety.

You can't have six men in a row that killed their wives.

And I'm not really part of that process. I'm not part of the editorial process. And the reason why is because in the law firm of Ryan and Cole, I'm kind of like the pro bono unit. I came to Dateline when Stone Phillips and Jane Pauley were the anchors, when there were many different segments within an hour. Then I was part of a very robust investigative unit with Chris Hansen as the correspondent for many years, and we did some of that. Dateline, since then has morphed and known as the true crime original. And we do these hour long stories with twists and turns that keep viewers on the edge of their seats.

Don't you even have a two hour Saturday episode or something like that?

And the reason why Paul and Liz pick the stories they do is because we're on all the time. Simply from a production perspective, when they get pitches, the pitches are okay. So here was the baby flower. It had this flower, and now it ends with this tulip. So we know the beginning, the middle and the end. They need to do that by necessity, because there needs to be a production schedule. You need to know you're going to get on the air. You need to know a beginning and middle and end of a story. That's really the reason I have my job, because that's what Dateline is. That's what they're so good at doing. The reason I say I'm the pro bono you is because the way that I have come to view stories, and luckily I haven't been fired yet, is that I don't see a tulip. I just see fertile soil. The stories that I tend to navigate to, and this is what found me. I didn't find it. Are these stories of injustice? Are these stories of people who society has thrown away, who society has considered other or less than? People who don't have a voice and.

They don't have an advocate. Some of these people are so disenfranchised. It's not like they have an uncle that has somebody's phone number that could get the ball rolling. They're like completely on their own. They have no resources.

Exactly right.

Like if you or I were thrown in jail and we were innocent, there's a lot of folks we can call. Maybe you could call Lester Holt, but.

You might be surprised how hard it would be to get you out.

Indeed. But I'm imagining the kid whose dad was in jail to begin with, who doesn't have any money for a lawyer.

And I understand why you use the word advocate. It makes perfect sense. It's intuitive. There's a lot of things that are. That we can talk about that are actually counterintuitive about the system.

Okay, great.

People have called me an advocate for a long time. What I'd like to say is that I'm really not an advocate for individual human beings. I'm an advocate for the truth. I'm an advocate for elevating the stories. And the truth behind the stories pertains to so many more people than just that one person. So by telling that person's story, we're really telling hundreds of thousands of people's story. Which is why what I said to you when I came in here, I meant it. You are literally changing people's lives with this. Because when people feel heard, they feel hope. And when they feel hope, that's their future. And very often, people don't feel heard, forget, feel.

Most people aren't hurt.

Right? Exactly. True. Exactly.

Regardless of their feelings.

Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. What's up, guys?

It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season. And let me tell you, is too good. And I'm diving into the brains of.

Entertainment'S best and brightest. Okay?

Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation. And I don't mean just friends. I mean the likes of Amy Poehler.

Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox. The list goes on.

So follow, watch, and listen to baby. This is Keke Palmer on the wondery.

App or wherever you get your podcast. I think what would be fair and generous might be, weirdly, for us to start with Las Vegas homicide into such a lesser degree. I have gotten to partake in ride alongs because of my job, which is a great privilege. I found it to be a very conflicting experience. And so I think it might almost be fair for us to paint where this process kind of starts.

My first real experience with law enforcement was through Vegas homicide. I had done stories, obviously, with police before, but I had done a story in Vegas, a murder story, and I met a detective. This was 2000. 2001. Before 911, no digital cameras and no 1st 48, no reality tv. I think the only show at that time was survivor. Maybe there wasn't this culture of true crime. And I thought, wow, it would be really cool to follow these guys, to see what they do every day. So what I pitched was this idea. I got ahold of an early handheld camera, and I said, if it's just me and not these crews or the big boom mics and this following around.

All the stuff that makes you self conscious, right?

Exactly. I'll stand at a distance. And we obviously discussed this through legal and standards at NBC, but we came to this conclusion that we could do this where I could follow them, where they would be wearing microphones, and I would be able to go under crime scene tape with them and film them. So I literally went back and forth to Vegas from new York. Every two weeks for two years, I filmed maybe 40 homicides.

Whoa.

And we did this series called Vegas Homicide. Some of it aired into three. 2004. We did a series. It was the first series that Dateline did without any correspondence, because at the time, what I was doing was coming back with these little mini DV tapes, and I was bringing them to the dub room to tape them so I could see them. So I went to my boss, Neil Shapiro. At the time, I was like, there's this new thing called Avid Express DV. Like, I could actually look at the video. So they bought me a laptop, and then I started dropping the clips in, and I saw, okay, there's a clip of Dax, Monica, and Dan sitting here talking, and then there's a clip of Dan in his car. And then I was like, wait a second. I don't need a correspondent. I just need Dax to later say, God damn, I was so happy he left. Boom. And then that was a joke. So we did this series in the words of the detectives, and I don't know if it was because the camera was there or what, but I was very taken by the brave of what these men and women had to do, and that was only elevated on 911.

I actually flew back from Las Vegas on one of these shoots on September 10, 2001. I landed at 01:00 in the morning on September 11. I think it was the last flight that landed that night. And I went home to my wife, Jocelyn. We lived at the time at 63rd between first and second. 7 hours later, those planes. I immediately went to St. Vincent's hospital to report for dateline about these people looking for their family members and these men and women in blue and red. Rushing to the bottom of that island was the most magical, safe, human. I had so much gratitude. I felt so impressed.

You feel lucky, right? You feel lucky. Lucky that you live somewhere that has this in place and that the people actually rise to the occasion.

Totally. These people have different blood than I do. I would not ever do that unless my kid was inside that building. I'm just being honest.

Yeah, yeah. You're not wired that way.

I'm not wired that way. I was running the other direction.

Right.

I decided at that time, I mean, these were the heroes of the city, I mean, the rock stars of the country. We were thinking about having a baby. We had gotten married in 2000, and I'm like, I don't want to go to Vegas every other week anymore. I was terrified. Don't forget the following month after that, anthrax showed up at NBC.

Right? Yeah, yeah. It's getting wild.

I had to take Cipro.

Yeah.

I'm like, Osama bin Laden's coming for me. You know what I mean? So I wanted to be in New York, so I thought, maybe we can get into the NYPD. I pitched this idea similar to what I had been doing in Las Vegas, and then NYPD let me in. It was this little sliver of time with this great deputy commissioner of public information that was like, okay, go ahead. They assigned me to these two detectives in the Bronx, Bobby Adelarado and John Schwartz. And so I showed, I. I showed up in Bronx homicide for my first day in April of 2002. And Bobby and John weren't like the Vegas detectives. They weren't so psyched to see me.

Yeah, of course not.

You know, they were like, all right, kid. There's, I think, about 5000 detectives in New York City and a force of about 30,000 or so. There's 1st, 2nd, 3rd grade detectives. So only a few hundred at a time are first grade detective. Bobby and John were the highest rank you could get. So I'm with them and I'm embedded with them and I'm doing their whole tours with them. And every murder is obviously horrible. There's something about the murderous in the Bronx that were a little different. I don't know if it was the method of murder or maybe it was after 911, I'm not really sure, but it felt different. And Bobby and I are out to dinner one night. I formed a really nice bond with Bobby to this day, this is in 2002. And I say to him, Bobby, you must bring this job home with you. He says, you know, I really don't accept. One case has been bothering me for a decade. So what's that about? And he started telling me about this murder that happened in 1990 at the Palladium nightclub in Manhattan. At the time, he had never heard of the palladium because he was a Bronx detective.

It's like two different countries, almost two different police forces. 1990 happened to be the single highest, most violent year in the history of New York. 2245 murders that year.

Whoa, 2000. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And many of them were happening in.

Bobby's precinct, by the way. That number, we were so shocked and outraged by 2000 people dying in 911.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's just like, it's the difference between dying by paper cuts or an axewound. Right. It's just like they're just trickling all day long. At 2000 a year, that's like nine a day. And so you miss it every day.

We miss it, yeah. Every time there's a mass shooting, go to the newspaper and ask how many people were killed in Chicago.

Right, right, yeah, yeah. So it's this trickle that escapes our general awareness.

So Bobby was dealing with his own never ending line of murders in the Bronx, which was one of the single poorest precincts in the entire country. He worked in the 40th Precinct called the 40. They called it the baddest station in the nation.

There's a dock about it.

I feel like I saw Fort Apache is the name of the building that they worked in on Simpson street. And so at the time, Bobby was taking down this very, very violent gang called the CNC gang. That gang was responsible for dozens of murders. It became so big that it became a federal case. Bobby was working with the United States Attorney's office to arrest them. And it was a Ricoh case, meaning gang case. And as part of the us attorney's office protocol, when people want to testify, cut a deal. It's called queen for a day. So basically, in the federal system, they say, Monica, you're going to prison forever. But if you tell. Tell us everything you've ever done, whether we know about it or not, don't lie about anything. We'll write a letter to the judge and you might be able to get a deal. So it incentivizes you.

But it's a might.

It's a might.

And they agree that they're not going to try you for these new cases.

Exactly. All one sentence. But if we find you ever lie to us, even ten years from now, the deal is torn up.

This is the Marianne Marion Jones?

Yes, she had queen for the day.

So Bobby had an informant in the CNC gang from the Bronx who gave a proffer, and he was telling Bobby about all these crimes. And this is in 1992, two years after the palladium happened. Palladium happened on Thanksgiving night, 1990, in Manhattan. This informant named Benny Rodriguez says, you know, we did this, this. And Joey and Spanky shot this bouncer on Thanksgiving night at the palladium. Bobby had never heard of it. So he takes Benny to the Manhattan da s office and Bobby is asked to wait outside. Years later, he thought that was a bit strange. Strange for good reason. And the assistant district attorney who handled the palladium case comes out and you go, Bobby, kid. You know what, kid? Benny's off the money with his facts. It wasn't Joey and Spanky. We just convicted two other guys, David Lemis and El Madell Hidalgo, three weeks ago. This is December of 1992. Bobby says, okay, benny must be off. He's always been good to me and he kind of forgot about it. In 1994, they start taking down everybody, and everyone's now cutting. One of the people they interview is a guy named Joey Pilat.

Joey's going through all the murders, and Bobby is working with an assistant district attorney named Steve Cohen in the us attorney's office. And they're debriefing all these guys, including Joey. And Joey says, we did this. We did this. And Steve says, look, if you're holding anything back, if you don't tell us, your pals are going to tell us and there's nothing we can do for you. And Joey says, you mean the palladium case? A shiver went up Bobby's spine because it matched exactly what Benny said. So they did all of this research and they find a 911 call made days after the crime saying Joey and Spanky from 550 East 139th street committed the crime. And they found admission witnesses saying, yeah, they came back and bragged about it and they found other evidence that pointed to them. So as a result of that, lemons and Hidalgo got a new hearing in 1996. Joey testified, I did it. Spanky said he would testify for a mutual immunity, but the Manhattan DA s office didn't give him immunity. Steve Cohen testified. Benny Rodriguez testified. Joey's wife testified, saying, we were at the palladium. And the judge, which was the same judge that oversaw the original trial, denied the motion.

Oh, my God.

So they went back to prison. So Steve Cohen, who worked at the us attorney's office by now, had left to go to private practice. And it always bothered him and Bobby. It always netted. So in the year 2000, Steve, who later became Andrew Cuomo's chief of staff.

So really quick, they've now been in prison for ten years.

So in 2000, Steve got an article written in the New York Times, a front page. Two men remain in prison despite admissions. Somebody in federal prison reads that article, a gang member from another gang named Richie Feliciano. And he calls the guy who locked him up at the us attorney's office by a guy named John O'Malley. First thing John says, richie, you read the New York Times. But Richie says, I was there that night. I was mediating the dispute. Joey and Spanky did this. It wasn't these two other guys. The original detective ten years ago knew there was a guy named Spanky. She ran his name in the database and it came back to several people, including the real Spanky, named Thomas Morales, one of which was a guy named Frankie Figueroa, known as Fats Banky. She shows his picture to the witnesses and they all pick him out as the guy mediating the dispute. But Frankie Figueroa could not have been there that night because he was in jail. They made the wrong id, but it confirmed there was this guy mediating the dispute. You put Richie Feliciano and Frankie Figueroa's picture next to each other.

They look like brothers. So the us attorney's office and John O'Malley take this information and they bring it back to the Manhattan DA's office. They say, now we got this guy who said he's there. What did they do? Nothing.

It's maddening.

Two more years go by.

Oh, my God. So twelve years of their life, 2002.

I show up, I ask this to Bobby, and I start filming from the very beginning, from the moment he writes the word palladium on a folder. And I film everything in real time, including an interview with David Lemis's alibi. Her name was Janice Katala, his girlfriend. There was a statement from Janice saying that she and David were at the palladium that night. The car broke down. This whole intricate story. She never testified at his trial. We go unannounced to her apartment. This is all on tv, by the way, and will be part of this docu series that Dawn Porter produced called Sing Sing Chronicles. We go to her apartment with me and toe filming unannounced. She lets me film their I she's sitting in her pajamas on her bed. She remembers the whole thing. Oh, I remember that very clearly. Detective theiss, he was the one telling me that we were at the palladium. She says it never happened, that they were home that night.

Oh, God.

There's no signed statement from her, but there's a statement in the file saying that she said that basically the officer perjured himself. But she never testified at trial. So that's the first thing. Then we go and I filmed Joey Palat in prison with Bobby. The guy who arrested him interviewed him. They greeted each other as long lost friends.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it just shows the kind of respect that Bobby had. And Joey went through the whole thing again. There was a fight with the bouncers. We went to our trunks, we got the car. We came back. He had a. 38. I had a nine miller. My gun jammed. Bullet came out, didn't fire. Well, there was a live nine millimeter found at the scene only Joey could explain to. And this is among other information that comes up. So Bobby goes to his bosses. My presence became a little bit too much. And they went to the Manhattan DA's office to make a report. I was waiting outside. And they went with the belief that truth matters, that two innocent guys were sitting in prison and they know who did it. They carried their box of information into the DA's office, onto the 6th floor. 45 minutes they had come out. Bobby looks at my camera, said, Bobby, you have anything to say? Nope. That was a stone wall we walked into. So they told them to just write a report. And Spanky, who had been in federal prison for his CNC crimes, was getting out in three weeks.

Bobby wanted to arrest him before his foot hit the pavement. Never got a response. The case was taken from him. The Manhattan DA's office says, we'll reinvestigate the case. They assigned two new Manhattan detectives and asked Bobby and John to go to Manhattan to get them up to speed. I wasn't invited. By that time, I was kicked out. So Bobby is by himself in the precinct, and he goes to the palladium case folder that he never could find for twelve years. It had been in the DA's office the whole time. And in the box he finds notes. For example, spanky Morales sister in law, Daniel Otroche, was interviewed the week of the crime. A border agent who said, my brother in law Spanky, tried to rape me. My husband, his brother, admitted that he did the palladium shooting. He was picked out by their own eyewitnesses, but there was never a photo array done. So he goes to his bosses and he says, what's my obligation? And he was basically ordered to remain silent. He ends up quitting his job.

Wow.

Talking to me on camera about it. And the Manhattan DA's office launches their own reinvestigation. A DA by the name of Dan Bibb does the reinvestigation, which Steve Cohen, the defense attorney, and Bobby think is going to take weeks, took 19 months. And Dan Bibb, who believed these guys were guilty at first, he comes to the conclusion the guys are innocent.

This is, what, 14 years after November.

Of 2004, he comes to the conclusion the guys are innocent.

Aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye. He's ordered to protect the convictions in January. They have a new theory now with him as the front man that he never wanted to be. He ended up on the front page of the New York Times for this because he claimed he threw the case and a bunch of other things. He felt that they would have stayed in longer. There was a paper written about him at Georgetown called the conscience of a prosecutor. But for a full year, he believed they were innocent and they were in Rikers island. The theory of the case, the office's theory that he put forward, was that it was now not a two shooter case, it was a three shooter case.

Oh, God. There was a terrible front line called the witnesses, I think. And it was the same thing where they wrongly got a false confession out of one guy. Then it didn't add up, so they resumed. Well, who else was there? So then they go get this guy, they get a false confession out of him. Five people by the end of this that they all looped into this thing and not one of the five had anything to do with it. And they wrote confessions. And this happens all the time. Yeah, it's crazy.

So now it's a three shooter case, which I even knew the DA didn't belief that was representing it. But let's see if the guys know each other. Leemi Saldago had said that they never knew each other. Not only did they not know each other, Hidalgo was like plucked out of thin air. No one ever any idea how he got involved. To this day, they all said they didn't know spanky. I found Spanky. I brought him to Rockefeller Center. I interviewed him at Rockefeller center. He basically said, you know, I don't know these guys. I've never seen these guys. They saying I have something to do with this thing. He's a guy I could respect because he was a little upfront about, look, they say they have something to do with it. Couldn't find him. I'm always where I said I was. Come and talk to me about it. Right. We aired that first hour in January of 2005 with Stone Phillips. Two bouncers saw the show and said, oh, yeah, it's spanky.

I mean, at this point, does it even matter? They've got like 15 people corroborating.

I had done a story in WNBC earlier. The jury, four woman who worked at New York magazine, who convicted them, was devastated and sat in court and fought with the mother together them out. So there's a new hearing. The hearing lasts nine months. Day here, day there. Meanwhile, they're going back and forth. I remember it being a very hot summer of July 2005. One day they come into court, and out of nowhere, after 15 years of fighting, they say, okay, Hidalgo's innocent. We'll let him go. And he was handcuffed, brought back into custody, and deported to the Dominican Republic because of a prior gun violation from 20 years earlier.

After already serving 15 years. 15 years, yeah.

Lemis had to wait another two months in Rikers island for the judge's decision. The judge, Roger Hayes, vacates the conviction. He comes out to his wailing mother. Dan Bibb ended up leaving and doing an interview with me for an updated two hour show we did in 2007. To this day, not only has the Manhattan district attorney's office never admitted they were, they retried David Lemis.

Oh, my lord. Two years later in 2007 for the same crime.

And get this, the jury couldn't hear that he had spent 15 years in prison.

What?

What cause it was prejudicial to the prosecution.

Oh, my God. I hate everything. I hate everything because it had nothing.

To do with what happened on the day of the murder. Let me just back up for 1 second. The day the hearing for them started, after I aired this spanky clip on, he was arrested for murder. 14 years later, the same day that limousine Hidalgo's hearing began, Spanky was arraigned. Spanky's attorney later filed a motion under a law called people v. Singer, which basically taught me a new lesson. There is a statute of limitation on murder. The argument was you. The people had so much information to arrest me. Overwhelming, showing my guilt. It is a violation of my civil rights to try me now.

Wow.

And an escaping opinion to the DA's office for the mistakes. He won and he's a free man.

Wow.

He got on the stand in David Liemus trial and confessed that he was the killer.

Oh my. Oh my God.

How are they able to retry him? And we're also double jeopardy.

When you're arrested, you're charged with a crime and there's an indictment. The DA can do that. Once your jury renders a verdict, only a judge can vacate that conviction. Once the judge vacates the conviction, it's like you were never convicted at all. It goes back to when you were arrested. So it's up to the DA to decide, oh, we can do this again or not. And so David Lemis took 2 hours for the jury to acquit him, and that night he left for Florida and never came back. That was my baptism into this world where I could not fathom how people in power who control your freedom can just brazenly disregard facts as if they don't exist, that are obvious to everyone.

So is it because of that work that you are ultimately approached by JJ's mom? Why do people start reaching out to you?

I used to visit David Lemand on Thanksgiving Day for the murder for which he was wrongfully convicted on November 28, I believe it was 2002. His mother flew up with perfect makeup. As heartbreaking as it is endearing with goodies and treats how difficult it is for her to see him once a year, fly up from Florida. We got a car, drove her up for the visit. My intent was to interview her after the visit, which I did, which was part of the show. On that Thanksgiving day, I walked into the lobby and there was a woman holding the hands of two little boys. And she stopped me and she said, are you dan? Even my mother hardly recognizes me. You know, my son John Adrian, JJ. He's innocent. Can you help us? Hello. My name is Maria Velazquez. Turned out that David Liemus and JJ shared a cement wall. They were in cells next to each other, and JJ knew I was coming because David told him that I. I was coming, and he asked his mother to wait for me to try and get my attention. At that point, I was 70% convinced, but I wasn't 100% yet convinced even about those two other guys.

Yeah, that's kind of one of my questions. And let me just hit you guys with some facts from the book. So, there are 2 million people incarcerated in our country, give or take, which is disproportionately huge around the world. And even the conservative estimates of how many people are wrongly imprisoned is 5%. So on a given day, that's 100,000 people that are in prison that are innocent. But that also means 95% of them are guilty, and many of them are claiming they're innocent.

Let's stop.

Okay.

I believe the number is higher than 5%. I just want to put this in perspective.

Yeah.

As we are talking, there are at least 100,000 people who have been stolen from their lives and their families and their communities that are looking at a cement ceiling right now. My belief, it's probably closer to 200 in the past 35 years, since 1989, just over 3200 people have been exonerated in more than 30 years.

You have 3500 people in the last 30 years.

This epidemic is a hidden epidemic that people think doesn't affect them. No one understands the gravity and the depth of how badly it goes. That's one, two guilty people, the world. And the reason ice can only manage barely to sleep 5 hours is because the injustice is too great, the stakes are too high, and that means for everyone.

Yes, but my point remains that when someone approaches you, you do, unfortunately, have the fact that 90% are. I'm just talking about when one evaluates whether what they're being told is factual or not, it has got to be challenging. Very, because the vast majority, in fact, are guilty. And how does one navigate that?

This is one of those counterintuitive moments. The trope. Even news says it all the time. Everybody in prison says they're innocent. Have you guys ever been to a prison?

Yeah.

Have you visited a prison? I visited JJ in particular, more than 200 times over 20 years. I spent two nights on death row with Lester Holt in Angola prison. I've spent thousands of days in prisons in this country. From my experience, 80% to 90% of the people that I meet, admit their guilt.

Yeah, I could see that.

That's the first thing. Now, there are people that have reached out to me, and there have probably been more than 1000 by now, no doubt, are lying.

Right. Right.

There's an algorithm. I can't tell you what it is. I don't even know it. There's a check mark list that I go over in my head. This is my bar because I know my show, I know my platform, and I know my responsibility.

You inherited a bit of some journalistic integrity and measures by which it has to be factual to put on the air.

It even goes beyond that. If you came to me and said, I got 25 to life from murder, I did not do this. So. Okay. And Dax shepherd, blah, blah, blah, committed rape in 2004, I'm not interested.

Right.

Somebody else can deal with that. The cases that I take on, generally.

Yeah, you don't criers.

I have no idea what anybody is talking about.

I was kidnapped, which happens all the.

Time, a good amount of the time. And now, generally, it stems from a minor offense.

You're in the system. Generally.

Sometimes there's a case that I did where a woman just didn't call a cab. She did. It was part of Eric Clinton's case. It's insane. So there's a check mark in my head.

This is very incongruous with who they were prior to this arrest.

Right.

A step one. Yeah.

Can I prove it? C are there visual elements that I can make a tv? D, how well can they tell their story? Do I have access to them? Do I have access to the elements that make it an hour long television? So. So it's very, very difficult to do, which is a lot of why my work has been veritable work. My own investigation videotaped in real time, so the audience doesn't know the same way I don't know. They're on the journey with me. So there is a good amount of work in advance, reading trial transcripts, and I kind of know the markers of what really bad evidence is. Single eyewitness misidentification from a stranger. The worst.

Yeah. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

There.

Well, in JJ's case, we should go through JJ now. And how you decide that this is a case you want to take on? But I want to say the number was, like, they showed the eyewitness 1800 photos or something.

Insane case. But what made it really difficult for me was that the time Maria approached me, I didn't know anything. And I'm thinking to myself, another guy in the same part of the same prison just happened, you know?

Yeah. It's all.

Place is innocent. Convenient, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Just like you say.

Yeah, yeah.

And in the palladium case, I had two active duty police officers and a prosecutor saying they were innocent. In JJ's case, there was nobody.

So what was he accused of?

JJ was accused of killing a former New York City police officer in Harlem during a botched robbery with another man.

Someone came into his home.

It wasn't his home. It was an apartment that they used as an illegal gambling partner.

Oh, so he was there gambling.

He owned it.

He, the retired police officer.

Within the confines of the precinct, he used to work.

All right.

Like one armed bandit.

Sure, sure. The stuff you see in a Bronx tale.

Exactly right.

Gangster stuff.

Exactly right. And the first thing that got me to pay attention to JJ was his son. Jacob was five. He had these huge eyes holding his grandmother's hand. Thanksgiving morning, you know, I had no idea if his dad was innocent or guilty. I was very skeptical, but my first thought was, this little dude should be running around with his cousins today.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He shouldn't be in a prison. And I had not become a father myself yet, but I remember going home that day and not being able to get that kid's eyes out of my. My head. I told Maria at the time before that, said, send me whatever, and I made a point. It's not going to happen anytime soon. She was thrilled. No one was listening to her. And I vowed that for that kid, I would at least try and find the truth. And so I was knee deep in the palladium case. A week later, in 2002, he wrote me his first letter, and his mom sent me a box with a jail transcript of 2044 pages.

I hope you read faster than I do. I'd be like, I'll call you back in three years.

And what was amazing to me is that he wrote to me and said, if I'm not mistaken, my mother only sent you 1787 pages of them, which is not the typical letter you get from somebody in prison.

Yes. This is a meticulous person.

And so, anyway, I didn't read it right away. I was busy. I was a new father. My daughter was born in 2003 at this other case. And by the way, this was kind of my extracurricular work. This wasn't like Dateline was like, when's that palladium story gonna get done? You know? It was a passion project, and it kind of broke the mold of the formulaic narrative of how we normally get things on the air have an ending. So it took me several years before I was able to really read into JJ's case. And it was two days after David Lemis was acquitted and got out that I went to see JJ at Sing Sing to film him for the first time. I had visited him a few times in the course of those five years, from 2002 to 2007, he was accused with another man of killing a former New York City police officer by the name of Albert Ward who ran an illegal number parlor. There were nine eyewitnesses in the place. All of them were black. That's an important point when it comes to cross racial identification. A science I later learned.

I'm gonna guess really quick in groups are great at identifying each other and out groups are terrible.

Right now we don't have to.

It's comforting to know black people think we all look the same. Asian people think all Caucasoids.

It's easier for us to look out group. Yeah, it's science. But the reason I point that out is that within hours of the crime, every single eyewitness who made a description, their first description was the shooter was a light skinned black man with braids. Some said he had braids, one said he had cornrows. But all of them said light skinned black man and his partner's accomplice was a dark skinned black man. They made a sketch of the suspect. They put it all over Harlem. They had one police plaza. When a former cop is killed, doesn't matter if he's running at illegal numbers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's on full court. Exactly. And they set up a mobile command unit with a few dozen officers and they arrested, they used the word debrief 150 people in Harlem on the street to get any information they could. Three different sources that we heard him talking about, his name is Mustafa. There was an all out search for Mustafa. They called him primary target Mustafa. I spoke to a guy who was black with braids, walking his dog with that. Police stopped, stopped him and picked him up and brought him into the precinct. Somebody said, that's not him, and he left. They were looking for Mustafa. Meanwhile, they were also looking for the accomplice. One of the guys who gave a sketch was looking at mug books, people who had been arrested of that area. They picked out a picture of a guy named Derry Daniels. He said, that's your guy. And he was arrested. Derry Daniels had a list of eleven former crimes, including a robbery at a numbers parlor. And he said that he was home that day with his dad. He was doing crack with Starlene. But they still needed to find the shooter. Two other people fled the scene.

Other than the shooters, two eyewitnesses who were in the back room. A 20 year old guy named Augustus Brown who was selling heroin to a 45 year old guy named Lorenzo Woodford.

That's a former police run numbers.

No, no. It was allegedly the first time Augustus Brown ever went there. But as soon as that it happened, the two of them took off. Lorenzo Woodford said he went across the street and watched the cops arrive. So while they're looking for their shooter, they're looking for Augustus and Lorenzo. They find Lorenzo first. He describes the shooter as a light skinned black man, possibly with red hair. Puts him in the back of a police car. Go find your drug dealer. They find Augustus Brown. 20 years old, salary, hiring on the ship streets. They bring him in, they show him mug shots, starting with light skinned black men, somehow ending with light skinned hispanic men. Okay, he had ten bags of heroin in his underwear. They put it in front of the table. Oh, they told him that they were going to arrest him unless he looked at 230 pages, six photos per page, more than 1800 mugshots of people who had been arrested in that area. And after several hours, he pointed to a picture of JJ, who was a light skinned hispanic man, and said, this is the exact quote, which is also a red flag for anyone who knows anything about eyewitness identification.

That's your guy. But his eyes look different in the picture. Never did he mention ever seeing him before. In this interview, when he picked him out, he didn't say, oh, I recognized him from 95th street. He was just like, that's the guy. He was allowed to leave the precinct uncharged with his heroin.

No, wait, JJ's Hispanic.

This gets even crazier. He had never been convicted before. The reason that his mugshot was in that photo array is because a year earlier, he was accused of shoplifting at the gap in Manhattan. He wasn't. He had receipts.

But they had photographed him.

No, they used it as a pretense to search his car. And they found some weed and cocaine in his glove compartment. The case was thrown out. Cause it was an illegal search and seizure. The photo should have been expunged, but it wasn't.

Oh, wow.

And when Augustus Brown picked that photo out, the prosecutor immediately went to the court to get it unsealed to show to the other witnesses. Lorenzo Woodford said he was number two. He said number three. Number two, maybe number two. I'm not sure. Right. But of course, by the time of the trial. But I was told at the beginning by police and prosecutors, five eyewitnesses picked him out and his co defendant pleaded guilty with him. JJ said he's never even met the guy, never said a word to him before.

And that guy is obviously cooperating.

He never testified against JJ. He just disappeared. And he would never talk to me. And he slammed the door in my face. Oh, when I started looking into it. There was no physical or forensic evidence linking JJ to the crime. The murder happened on January 27, 1998. His father's birthday was January 28 the next day. His father had died six months earlier. So the day after the murder, he wanted to go visit the gravesite. He had two little kids. His girlfriend and his mother were not talking to each other. JJ was in the Bronx. His mother lived in Haveistraw. JJ was trying to broker a piece for them to go to the cemetery. There's a 74 minutes phone call from a landline showing that there was a call from the Bronx to Haverstraw. If JJ was on the phone with his mother, there's no possible way he could have committed that crime. That was presented as evidence. He testified in his own defense, his mother testified, his girlfriend testified, and he was convicted. When I started to deconstruct, there was no physical evidence. There was nothing. It was only the eyewitnesses. So I started by going to speak to every eyewitness.

Ultimately, I filmed Augustus Brown in a maximum security prison with a hidden camera to document whatever he said. And he said, they were threatening me, they were going to lock me up. He basically recanted, which he has done since Lorenzo Woodford. They must have had something else. It wasn't just me that locked them up. If they didn't think it's him. Him. Go. Philip Jones, the third one, signed an affidavit saying, at the time of the trial, the police picked him up in prison and told him that he had the right guy and they would give him help if he testified. Augustus Brown didn't want to testify. He was in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Two detectives picked him up.

This is the guy with the heroin in his underwear? Yeah.

They picked him up on what's called a material witness order. They put him in jail in the tombs in Reichert, New York City, for six days until he testified. The day he testified, they gave him money for a motel and food and let him go. Dorothy Cannady, the alleged fifth eyewitness, was 86 years old and was asked to identify the defendant sitting at the defense table. She picked out juror number six.

Okay.

And still voted to convict JJ, by the way. And I interviewed him, and he said he made a mistake. And I recently interviewed another judge who said she thought he was always innocent from the beginning and made the biggest mistake of her life at that time. They had to be sequestered at this terrible motel near LaGuardia airport. It was Halloween weekend, and everybody just wanted to go home with their kids.

Yeah.

That took me ten years to learn about JJ's case. I did a report in 2012. It aired against the Grammys the weekend Whitney Houston died. Obviously, we won that one. Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm saying this not with any sort of. Sort of pride or arrogance. I'm saying, because it was an act of journalism. Was nominated for three Emmy awards. JJ spent another decade in prison. They came after me. I have evidence to this day, they still haven't turned over JJ. Over the intervening decade, couple things happened. One, he led me to three other people that I did stories on that helped get them out, because it's always a team. After that first decade, when I knew he was innocent and I saw the way the system was working, I felt like a character in a. My relationship with him fundamentally changed, and we started working together inside. We built a program called. With the superintendent and ten other guys called voices from within about redefining what it means to pay a debt to society. Voices from within is now starting on the outside that JJ is going to be running. He got clemency from Cuomo his last week in office.

Biden made a public apology.

Biden? But it's a state crime. You can't pardon him.

Right?

So JJ was part of. Now this news. He was on a panel for criminal legal reform, and he talked to Biden about clemency. What kind of uniform standards can we establish? And Biden said, on behalf of society, I apologize to you. JJ, as of today, remains a convicted killer.

Right.

And what he did for me and what this movement did for me is it melted the ice for me. It poked a hole in pandora's body for me to understand the perversity and pathology of mass incarceration as a whole. So when we talk about guilty people, we're not talking about Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. Those aren't the people in prison. The people that are in prison are people like my friend Dario Pena, who now works at Columbia University justice lab, who, when he was 17 or 18 years old and was dodging bullets because he didn't have a home life to try to go to school. Brilliant guy. And his older brother was a member of a gang. And he thought that was funny family. And he thought he was a soldier in an army. And everybody knew the rules. It was either kill or be killed. And he made a horrible mistake as a teenager. And then he went to prison for 25 to life. But by the time he was 25, his frontal lobe developed. He went to college, and then he had another 20 years. Another example is Johnny Hinkappi and so many other people like him, which are in for murder but never killed anybody.

There were seven teenagers that were sent away. One tragedy happened on Labor Day weekend, 1990. A kid was stabbed when a family was there from Utah for the US Open. There was a bunch of teenagers going to the Roseland ballroom, 50 of them.

This is the Central park.

This is the subway tourist mall.

Oh, subway.

Kid named Brian Watkins was the victim. Yeah.

This is in the book.

Seven teenagers. A bunch of teenagers, depending on how many you believe stayed behind to rob someone to get money to go to the Roseland. None of them knew. One of the kids had a knife. And as he was running away, he swung his arm and he killed Brian. All seven went away for 25 to life. Johnny and cappy, eight turned out not to be on the subway platform into 25 years. But that's all I'm saying is that what I've learned is that the people that society has deemed as bad as other as the problem, with the right education, with the right rehabilitation, are the solution or can be the solution.

Yeah, this is one of my questions. I feel like I already know where you stand, but I think there is often a temptation to make this binary. Right? Like, the entire system's fucked up, it's injustice abounds. Or we got to get everyone in there and keep everyone safe. And it weirdly lines up politically. And this is going to be one of my questions of why you think this problem is so hard to tackle. There's a great framing. I read recently a book by Arnold Kleng, and it's called the three languages of politics. And it frames, really, conservatives and liberals having two different worldviews. Right. Conservatives feel like the world is a battle between civilization and barbarism, and then the liberal worldview is the world is a battle between the oppressed and the oppressors. And I would argue, unfortunately, and why it's so complicated is both things are true in the criminal justice system. There are most certainly tons of people that need to be removed from society to protect all of us.

I've done stories about them.

Yeah, hundreds. And yes, what files beautifully into the liberal view is, like most of these oppressed are the conventionally and historically oppressed people that then find themselves yet again oppressed in an asymmetric way in our criminal justice system. And so I don't think a left or a right approach to this can encompass what it is. It's both these things. And it's hard to rally some kind of movement or coalition when people are so fucking anchored into either these two worldviews when in fact it's suffering from both, are very true. And I'm just wondering how you think politics somehow is yet another force on this fucked up system.

The problem, it's interesting how you frame it, because I don't see it as politics. I see it as fact. Just by way of example, we don't vote on how much arsenic should be in our drinking water. The EPA does that. There are scientists that do that. We vote based on the COVID of the New York Post or the la whatever it is. A narrative of fear. I'm not saying there aren't bad people in this world. There are bad people in this world.

Yeah, yeah.

And there are people that need to be in prison. But from my experience with the nearly 2 million people that are in prison, we represent 5% of the world's population and 20% of the world's prisoners.

Yeah. It's abysmal.

Most of the people that I've met are not son of Sam. Are young men and women of color generally, who, as my friend JJ says, weren't even habilitated in the first place.

Yeah. Forget. Yeah, yeah. I also think really quickly, there's a profound example of it in your piece you did in Louisiana with Lester, where you guys slept there for a couple days. We meet an inmate who was sent there at 17. He's been there for 65 fucking years. That old, old, old, old man. And the notion that he needs to be separated from us is nuts.

Well, I think what we first need to do is define what the purpose of incapacitation is.

Yes. Punitive or rehabilitative. A lot of people want to be punitive, and I totally disagree with that.

When I say politics, I'm a registered independent. To me, this has nothing to do with politics. This has to do with numbers. When you look at. Here are the factual numbers. 95% of these nearly 2 million people will come home whether you like it or not. 95% are going to be serving you at Starbucks, waitresses driving you in your car, whatever. Of those 95%, about three quarters of them, more than 70%, are going to have some sort of interaction with the criminal justice system. Again, recidivism. Now, if people are given an opportunity for education or trade, it drops by about 43%. That's the Bureau of Justice Statistics. One study has shown to shown that when you give somebody an associate's degree, it's like 16%. Somebody with a bachelor's degree in prison, it's like 6% recidivism, a master's degree, which is basically not offered only a handful of places. 0%. Yeah, like water puts out fire.

But we will, even if you're fiscally conservative, cheaper.

This is my point.

Yes.

That it's intuitive for a single mom working two jobs, trying to put her own kid through college at minimum wage. First of all, taxpayers aren't going to that. But why would my tax money go to that perfect sense? I don't want my tax money killing kids in war. But it is. It's what makes sense for society. And by the way, those people that we're not giving any sort of attention to are gonna commit another crime and reoffend you. So people vote for what they believe and are told. Tough on crime is when in reality, there is no prognostication or thought process as to whether these policies are actually effective or not. And what ends up happening, happening is we spend more money to make ourselves less safe.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Okay, so, listen, the book you're here to promote is the sing sing files. One journalist, six innocent men, and a 25 year fight for justice. You also have a podcast that you've made on the same topic, which is letters from Sing.

That's just about JJ's. Yeah.

And that was just named as a finalist for a Pulitzer, so congratulations. I want everyone to read this book and read the story. You all also have a four part documentary coming out called the Sing Sing.

Chronicles, directed by Dawn Porter.

Lots of ways to learn about the story, and I think you should. And it's very compelling. I had a couple of just rapid fire questions.

Can I just say one thing?

Yeah.

And I totally appreciate you saying the word promote. It's difficult for me to hear that any profit that might be made for this on my behalf is gonna be.

Given back to me.

Do you and Kristen to build a building a Mississippi? This, to me, is not here to promote a book. This is a tool.

Well, you should 100% be promoting it so people will read.

But my goal is to get justice impacted people in front of students for the next generation of leaders who are going to hold people accountable.

Yes.

It's not self serving. You want to make it?

Yeah, I just. I have that Keith Morrison syndrome.

It's good.

Yeah.

So throughout the 20 years of being steeped in this. This criminal justice system, through telling these stories, I wanted to know if you've drawn any conclusions about the predominant issues that drive this. So I have some thoughts. I'm wondering, do you feel like this is racially motivated, or is this a system that just demands quick arrests and convictions? Is this a product of pretty bad courtroom science that is eyewitness identification? Is this a police culture issue that over the course of these careers, you get numb and detached from it? Or is it district attorneys who have too much pressure career wise? What do we point at? Is it all those things?

The answer is yes, every single one.

What do you think would be the most significant place to start?

I went to Germany and Norway to tour prisons. The recidivism rates there are. Or lower. Officers in Germany or Norway are trained in social work in addition to police work. A good day for an officer there is to make sure somebody doesn't come back to prison. A good day here is to go home alive. Over there, you're called by your name, not by your number. Over there, you wear your own clothes, not the same uniform, and your head is shaved. Over there, you take job training and go to school. Here, you're lucky to get it. Over there, you can close a door. Here, you can't. Now, there's plenty of people that say they don't deserve that, but the question is, who is they?

Exactly?

I wrote an anecdote in my book about getting in a car accident in my neighborhood on a Sunday. I had brunch. I had a Bloody Mary. It was 05:00. I hit a tree in a rainy day, and it was a county road. State troopers showed up. The homeowner was like, he's acting drunk. Lights are flashing.

In my personality, we've come to find.

Out, shit, it wasn't that bad. I'm like, do I need a lawyer? All their shoulders went up. Well, take your license for 150 days. And my wife is like, you know. So I blew into it. It was like, 0.01. I'm sorry. I didn't even get a ticket. But it made me think, what if I had two bloody marys? What if I had a beer before I went and picked up that burger? What if in that split second, I drove through a fence and taken a child's life? I'd be looking at 25 to life. That doesn't make me a bad person, but that would have been the weakness that I went from somebody in society who deserves some sort of human dignity to some other invisible line where I deserved whatever I got. And that's, I think, how we see incarceration and corrections. We do not put people away to make them better.

No, we put them in to punish them in a bad way.

I mean, the punishment is the incapacitation, but I literally would not put my dogs.

But by the way, even if you have to remove someone to keep everyone, I don't think that then forces you to be punitive and make them suffer. I don't think that should be the goal. Just in theory. It should be protecting us and removing the people that are dangerous for some period of time. But to make them suffer, it's implicit in their incarceration that they're suffering plenty.

Yes. There's a culture among police which has been embedded in our culture for hundreds of years.

They're human. I was in Afghanistan a couple different times for tours. Certainly saw how those people responded to someone having just been killed next to them. It's different than what you and I would respond because we haven't been in that situation 45 times. And it's taken on a numbness. There's a certain reality of the capacity people have to get through these jobs that are so fucking hard. I'm at both times critical in support of a police. I don't have to show up from a phone call and walk into an unknown home having no clue what's on the other side. I know violence is happening on the other side. Do that a couple thousand times.

I wouldn't do it once and tell.

Me you're the same as you and.

I want those people there when I need them.

Yeah. So it's very fucking complicated and it's very nuanced.

Let me ask you this question.

Yeah.

When you drive around here four years ago or after George Floyd, we had black lives matter and blue lives matter. How many lawns did you see with both signs on them?

I think you had to pick a side.

And to your point, I don't see it as a binary choice. My moral compass is Detective Bobby. I'm friends with detectives and police. I think they're heroes.

Yeah. In your support for them. If you're a staunch blue lives matter, it would be to be humane towards them as well and go like, well, humans have capacity. What resources exist for these people? How much help are they getting with this job none of us want to do?

I think it goes around mutually exclusive.

Exactly. There's, like, compassion that can be going around in all directions.

It's like how a paparazzi might treat you or how somebody might write about your life. That's not true. And are considered a journalist. That's my profession. That's not me. Right. So there's lawyers, there's cops, there's da's, there's good people, and there's bad people. Yeah.

Could you make an assessment of Starbucks cashiers? No. I've dealt with every version of a human being behind the counter.

And by the way, to your point, people who aren't policing certain neighbors, who happen to deal with crimes that are committed by people of the same age, of the same color, at a certain point, you become immune to it a little bit. You become like, it's not my job. I have probable cause. The prosecutor will figure it out. And the prosecutor's like, well, he's arrested. Let the jury figure it out. And then the jury's sitting there like, we just want to go home for the weekend.

Yeah. It keeps getting kicked down. The responsibility.

Yeah.

Or even the person you talked about in the JJ case. It's like, well, I'm not so sure about this, but they're telling me I'm one of five people, so probably these other four people are pretty certain of it. I feel a little less guilty going along with it.

Absolutely.

The whole thing, a lot of it is arrogance amongst everyone walking around that it wouldn't happen to them. They're immune. They're good.

Yeah, but what's gonna happen to you is crime.

Exactly.

And what's gonna happen to you is you're gonna be a juror deciding on someone else's life.

Also, what's gonna happen to you is you are gonna fuck up. We all.

Oh, I remember the thing. I think that most plagues us, and I could be completely wrong. There has to be some huge financial incentive for these cities to not acknowledge they erred because of the civil lawsuit. That's on the backside of that.

A lot of people say that. I don't buy it.

You don't. If they come out and just flat out admit we totally fucked this up, this person lost 15 years of their life. They have to know that that's coming with a financial, but not from their budget. Here's where I'm going with this. Of the many ways that we have to figure this out, I think we all. You want to talk about traveling the world, what you find out immediately is like, we are the most litigious people on the planet. It doesn't even exist in most places, the way we deal with it. And while I think someone whose life was stolen from them deserves a something, I also think when you look at the billions of dollars Chicago's paying out, you've created a very terrible incentive system where people are heavily disincentivized to come clean and be honest and admit error. I feel like that has to be a big part of this that needs to get figured out.

It might be, but these people aren't held personally responsible. It doesn't come from the DA's offices. It comes from the federal government or the city.

You say something, this is $7 million. You don't think those calls happen?

I mean, look, there's a former detective in New York City by the name of Louis Garcello right now who is responsible for many false confessions. The New York City taxpayers have already paid 150 million in compensation to his victims. This dude still gets his pension.

Yeah, that's bonkers. I mean.

But what I'm saying is, I think it's more about ego.

Yeah, sure. This is where I get suspicious. Most certainly for the people involved in these original trials. Yes, they're going to the grave claiming they did their right thing. For the many people who inherit these cases who have no dog in the fight. It's very weird to me that they don't hop on board when it's obvious. So then my question is, why don't they?

Because you're the one that made the arrest. Monica's the one that's doing the reinvestigation.

Meaning the people who inherit the case have a relationship with the person.

When you say inherit the case, you mean the person. Once someone's convicted, I'm talking about the.

Two people and the DA that got the case. Spanky, when eventually got to their desk to reinvestigate. They had no connection with the original case. So it's not even their error to admit.

Well, it's their office, but.

Okay, great.

So it's their office, their same boss.

Ego for sure. I buy in immediately for the original team, who is responsible for it. But we even see it downriver with people that aren't responsible for it. So it's not ego at that point, what is it?

I personally don't think it's money because it never shows up with these people who are, for lack of a better term, perpetrators of putting innocent people in prison. I think it's way more complicated than that. Part of his ego, part of it is precedent. Part of it is a very slippery slope. I don't think that people realize the depth of the problems of mass incarceration. There are so many sciences that have been completely debunked for which people are currently in prison.

Yeah, yeah.

Forensic odontology. Forensic bite marks.

Handwriting experts.

Blood spatter.

Yeah, blood spatters. Bullshitters. Right?

Even tire tread marks. Shaken baby syndrome. There are kids that die from falling off beds that would appear with what they call the triad. And even the guy who made that diagnosis said, it's wrong.

Yeah, these things, they just carry on with a momentum, and we're too quick.

As a society, we have this false narrative. Like, New York City a few months back had a terrible incident where a mentally ill guy shot a cop, killed him. Big funeral at St. Pat's. Next day, the front page of the New York Post is crying widow. And the big headline was, NYPD cops widow slams polls for spiraling crime.

Slams polls for spiraling. What does that mean?

Meaning slams politicians for spiraling crime.

Right. When every single. Here's the bit of data would argue.

2245 murders in 1990. When there was a spike during the pandemic in New York, when everyone was terrified, that number was 488. Last year, there were 391 murders. Yeah, there is not spiraling crime, but.

We'Re taught to believe there's a great tactic of all. I mean, we had a mayoral race here, and we were talking with friends, and this one mayor was going to be tough on crime. And I said, guys, tough on crime in LA, and it forced me to look it up. And yet, la is, like, almost the safest city in the country. It's, like, so fucking low on the list, you can't even find it.

You know what tough on crime is? Providing opportunities for children who don't have them. JJ would write me letters when his son was 1011 years old. Dan, I'm scared for my son. There's an intergenerational. The cycle of incarceration. Guess what? His son went to jail for two years when he was 19. He called it. Had he been given opportunities? A trade, an education, some attention?

Well, had he not had to go to thanksgiving in a jail. This is all part of it.

To me, prison is like going to the doctor. They have a pad. You have a symptom. They want to make you feel better. They write your prescription, you're gone. That's prison. Functional nutrition and medicine is like, wait a second, why is that happening in the first place? Let's prevent that from happening. And that's what we're not doing in this country.

Don't do preventative anything. Healthcare.

Just wait till it flares up.

I talk way too much for you.

No, this is lovely. I want everyone to check out your book, the Sing Sing files. Let me promote it for you. Uncomfortable with the term promotion? This has been a pleasure.

I am overwhelmed from being here. Thank you for having me so much.

This is just a funny thing to say on the way out. So you love power of now? Eckhart Tolle. I'm triggered by because my father wore a necklace with a clock and it said, now in all directions. Have you seen that? Someone needs to get this for you for Father's day. But it's funny when your parents do something that you would have probably discovered on your own, and I'm like, oh, this is my fucking dad's name necklace.

Yeah, I can't like it.

Anyways, Dan, this was really, really fun. And I hope it's horrifying.

It's important.

It's so important.

I'm really glad you've done all this work, sincerely.

And by the way, I just want to leave you by saying the truth is, these guys have done so much more for me than I have for them. There is absolutely no doubt about it.

Oh, I believe it.

I am a better person. I'm more thoughtful, I'm more humane, I'm more loyal. I'm more introspective. And I try to be better every day. And it's because of these guys.

Wonderful. Well, good luck on everything and I hope we get to talk to you again soon.

Thank you so much.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes.

Okay, I want to tell you something huge.

Oh, wow.

I've been waiting all day to tell you.

Okay. And we've been together all day, so it must have been really gnawing at your craw.

This is one of the craziest sim things that has happened.

More than when you were listening to the conversation about Carly and looked up and saw her.

Okay, that one.

Didn't that happen?

That one's crazy. Also, the one where you knew the song I was thinking, in my head.

For me, that's the apex of all weird experiences.

Me, too. Okay, so, fine, so that's number one. Carly's. That's up there.

Yeah.

That's really up there. But this is nuts because we spend a fair amount of time talking about Phil Donahue.

Mmm hmm.

Phil Donahue died yesterday.

Yeah. 88 or something. Yeah. So maybe you're listening to it and you're like, boy, they're not showing a lot of reverie for this man who just passed. But he hadn't passed yet.

And then he died the day before. We're recording this.

Yeah. That is very weird. Weird. Yeah, it's a very Donahue heavy episode.

Yeah. And he's explaining him and it's a whole thing.

Yeah.

And then I went to just find a clip this morning to play a clip of Phil Donahue. And then there was all these like remembering things and I didn't know enough about him, so I figured he died many years ago or something.

Sure, sure.

And then I'm like posted 2 hours ago.

What is good? But I feel like it should be better when you're rich.

No.

Does anyone else feel that way? Yeah, I can. I know what you mean. Yeah, like, you're rich, you probably have the very best healthcare imaginable. So I don't like that. I'm like, if he can't make it to 100 with great health care, hundred is like, well, that's what you set.

For me the other day.

I bought in before 100. I'm like, well, maybe I'm nothing. Make it Steve jobs dying. Not at a hundred, but. But that had an explanation.

Young, actually.

Yeah, but you would hope that much money he truly be able to solve it. But he was that unique case of he actually had the means to do it, but he did not want to take the course of treatment recommended. He believed in his fruit of or diet and stuff. I mean, it's like, it makes sense and it doesn't. Like at one point you're like, this guy's so fucking smart. How could he not be listening to an oncologist? But then the problem is he was so smart and he was proven right.

So many times, he thought he had all the answers.

It was misleading.

I know.

You gotta be careful how much you believe your own shit.

You have to be so careful in this life. And also, no one's above death.

Yeah.

Even doesn't matter how much money you have, death is the great equalizer. Will you knock on wood?

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Boy, this thing is. I've been knocking all day for you. You're on a knock kick.

Well, we've been talking a lot of about dad stuff.

It's funny, cause we have different takeaways from when we talk about it. Like when we talk about it for you, it invites it.

Yeah, because I think I have strong manifestation.

Right. And for me it exercises the demons. It's like you gotta talk about it and joke about it or it's too powerful or something. I don't know. We have the opposite. Like I generally like talking about ways I could die and stuff. But you don't like it. Knock on wood. I mean, not knock on wood, because you don't like. You like it. You don't. Wait. You don't like it.

I don't like it.

Right. Knock on wood. But you like what? Knocking on wood. A lot.

A lot, yeah. To me.

Your birthday.

No, my birthday is on Saturday, but.

Okay, so your birthdays in three days.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So we don't need to. But people should. They should know. They should be at the red on Saturday to blast the Internet with well wishes for the young mouse.

The old mouse.

The old mouse. The old mice.

You don't really think of mice being old, do you?

I don't think they live very long, that's why.

Fuck.

Not on wood.

Yeah. Like, if they're. If a mouse had made it to 88, we would be celebrating, but no, they don't.

Did I tell everyone already that there was a mouse rat? I'm not sure which. Outside my apartment in the courtyard.

Well, I can. Let me just tell you what to call it. If this story is gonna involve death. Say rat.

No, I know that's not fair. That's pretty person privilege. And so I don't like that. So it's a mouse rat. And I was walking into my courtyard and it was just in the courtyard.

Oh, alive? Alive. Okay. Enjoying.

Yeah. Enjoying. But still. And I was confused because it wasn't moving, right. But it wasn't dead. It wasn't like, flopped over.

It was sitting on its hind leg.

It was just regular sitting.

Okay.

And I thought maybe it was looking for its food and was, like, gonna go run and get it. And it was just, like, looking.

Yeah.

But I also expected, obviously, for as I got closer, for it to scurry away.

Right.

And then that did not happen.

Okay. Couple things there. One is, I don't know how good their sight is. So I don't know how far away I could see you.

Okay.

I just know a lot of animals do have worse eyes than we would imagine.

Okay.

Secondly, you know, one of the instincts is to freeze, right. You stay still so that the predator can't see you. Because we respond to movement.

I know.

And then when it gets so close, you go fucking. I'm moving.

Exactly.

If you watch these deer, these impala or antelope in the nature docs, frozen, and at the last minute they go, oh, fuck it, this isn't working.

Well, okay, exactly. So I thought maybe it's just freezing, but then that's dumb. Cause it's very out in the open. Yeah, it's, like, on display, really.

Hiding in plain sight.

I was getting very, very, very close, and it didn't move. Okay, all right. But I was like, that's fine. So then I went into my house. I took a picture of it from the inside of my house. Cause I was like, oh, this is a good omen. There's a mouse here.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then I kept going back to look, and it was just not. It was never moving. And I was like, I think it's dead. And then I felt really guilty because I posted a picture of a dead animal.

Oh, you posted?

Well.

Cause I was like, good omen. Hello, my gary. Now, it's a bad omen, but you.

Think it died in the upright position like that?

That's what I'm confused about. But why? How could it just stand there for that long?

Well, but was it there when you.

Left your apartment the next day? No, but I didn't, because it was.

That night you came in and didn't leave again.

I did not leave again that day.

And then the next morning, it was absent.

Yeah.

Okay. So I think it just was taking a nap or maybe meditating out in the courtyard.

Okay.

Yeah. And then went on its merry way. That or your landlord scooped it up. Right. You could find out, I guess.

I'd rather not know.

Just forget it.

You know, one of my landlords very sadly passed away last year.

Yeah.

And he loved that courtyard.

And he was always manicuring it.

Yeah. He was really into manicuring it. And we wondered if maybe it was.

The spirit of him. Yeah.

He wanted to come back and take it in. Yeah. Play around his little court yard.

And when you say we, that sounds like you and Jess. Yeah.

Yeah. It was Jess's idea. It was Jess's idea. Of course. I thought that was a sweet idea.

Mm hmm.

And I wouldn't like the idea that he died again. There.

Yeah. I will come back as a crow.

Okay.

So that I can look in people's windows.

Yeah. That's very you.

That's very me on brand a mouse. You're not getting. You know, you can't really choose to see everyone you want to see because you're not. You know, you're on the ground there real low.

It seems like maybe he was there not to see people, but to see his environment that he loves so much.

Right. I would be all about the people.

Yeah. And I guess if you love that courtyard or if you love plants, if you love foliage, maybe as a human, you always wish that you could, like.

Be in it, then it would be bigger.

Yeah. Scurry in it, and. Yeah, it could surround you.

Yeah, that's a good. But I wonder when people are picking what animal to come back on, if they evaluate just how long the lifespan of that animal is.

I don't think they're thinking about that kind of related.

Out of nowhere. Yesterday, I was in the garage all day, and I came in and all of a sudden there were four flies. Five flies. Get out of here, you jackass. That's from angry rv, man. Oh, there was an explosion of flies, and they were the weirdest flies. You could kill them so easy. You know, flies are really hard to smash. I was smacking them. I killed probably, like, 14 flies in ten minutes.

Oh, my God.

We must have brought something in the house and these things hatched, because I don't. It's not like we had the doors open or something. And that's a very unsettling feeling. You have something in the house. Then I was looking at this little pot of flowers that had been brought in. I'm like, okay, well, that's new.

Okay.

That could have definitely been housing some in the house.

I thought it was in your garage.

I had been in the garage all day, and when I came into the house, all of a sudden there was this proliferation of flies.

Do you know, in my experience, there is a fly thing that is way too easy to kill. They sometimes hatch from grain. Like, my family had this at one point, and we realized it was the rice.

It was in the rice, yeah.

So do you have new grain or anything?

No, but that is a ding, ding, ding. So after I killed all the flies, I had had an egg white and feta cheese omelet in the morning. That was it. And then I was out in that garage all day. Then I was feeling, like, low blood sugar, right? Like, because I hadn't had any carbs in that first meal, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I need some rice and some protein. So I heated up some turkey, taco meat and some rice, and as I was putting it in the bowl, Kristen said, that stuff's pretty old.

And I was like, eh, the rice or the meat?

Both, I guess. So I smell. I don't smell anything. I'm just gonna put it in the microwave for a long time. Time. And I did that, and I ate quite a bit of it. This is a triple ding, ding, ding. I gotta fast forward, you know, who's been out of rotation for a very long time, and he just made a return. Is Michael. The tiger. Delta's tiger. Michael.

I loved Michael.

Yes, me, too. We had a lot of fun with Michael.

Yeah, we did.

And for people who don't remember those episodes, Michael had a bad habit of getting into tainted food.

Yeah, he was stuffy.

Yeah, he's a stuffy, but he is a baby tiger. And he was always rummaging around trash cans, and he thought it was so good. And then he would get really sick.

Yeah.

And all the stories Michael told were about him getting sick.

Yeah.

Okay. So I ate all this food, and I'm laying in bed with the girls, and Michael's been brought back into the fold. He got a bath that day, and we were all greeting Michael, and all of a sudden. Sudden I was like, I gotta go right now. Gotta go right now.

Yeah, sure.

I'll see you guys later. And then I went up. I went a few times. Honest.

Yeah.

In a very uncomfortable stomach. In some burps that I was like, oh, please, I don't want to start.

Yeah.

The other side. That needs a cute title. Like Hannes throwing up.

Coming up. Both sides.

Yeah, we're just throwing up. We need a.

There's not a good word for it.

A word for it. But, yeah, I paid the price. I was too brave, as I tend to be sometimes with my food. And then, you know, after I was sick, I think we started doing the math on when that stuff was made. And it was. It was too long ago.

I don't.

The rice was crunchy. It was, like, hard. It had the. Yeah. And I was like, oh, it's all right. I'll throw a little hot water at the bottom of the bowl when I microwave.

The rice is probably not the problem. I'm sure it was the old meat.

You ate the old turkey meat.

My God, Dax. What? Maybe the flies came from that old rice.

No, because that was in the fridge.

Oh, that's true.

Yeah.

I don't keep the rice out on.

The counter, but maybe the rice do you have. I think you have rice hidden somewhere in the cabinet that's too old and it's developing. Those flies, they're making me feel so itchy.

Uh huh.

Yeah. I'm sorry that happened.

Right.

But I. It's like.

It's hard to feel bad for me.

I do struggle a little with when I know someone's done something stupid.

Yep.

I do struggle with just.

They deserve it.

No, it's not. I don't. I don't ever feel like anyone deserves anything.

Yeah.

But it's also hard for me to feel really really bad for them.

Yeah. Mm hmm.

It's weird because I normally tell them, that sucks.

Right.

But I'm also like, what?

Did you do that?

Why'd you do that?

Yeah, I. If I were you, I wouldn't feel bad about that. To me, that seems really logical, which is if something bad has happened to somebody, the act of compassion in soothing them is you kind of got to enter that space of, like, pain and discomfort and sadness. And so we don't want to feel pain and discomfort and sadness, even if it's to comfort somebody. So if you get a little, you know, you get a little excuse to not go down that road, you're going.

To kind of take it, I guess, or I think there's just a part of me that's like, you didn't have to be this way.

Yep. Yeah. And we. We don't have to both be here dealing with this problem, I guess. Yeah. I think it's snatch.

I guess it's fat.

But you do the right thing. You say, oh, that's bummer. You're thinking, you deserve this.

And I know.

I hear my story. You're like, I hope it hurt when you.

No, that's not fair. I don't think that. I think I'm, like, kind of mad at them.

Yeah.

Because.

Why?

Why did you have to have pain for no reason?

Mm hmm. Yeah.

And now I'm mad at you for your pain.

I know, but the truth is, almost all of our pain is self inflicted. Yeah. So it's just like, you're picking what thing is okay to be stupid about and what thing is not.

Well, I know.

Yeah, we just figured that out. They're all the same. You should probably. Just because everyone's culpable. For the most part.

Of course.

I mean, there are victims, let me be clear.

Yeah.

But we generally play a role in most of our discomfort.

Yeah, we do. Um, what animal would I come back as?

A chinchilla.

Nope. I don't like those guys. I think I want to come back as, like, maybe a puppy or something, because then, like, people would hold me and pet me and stuff and play with my hair.

If you got a good owner.

Oh, true.

How would I guarantee you'd want to be a deformed puppy in the pound so that we would get you? You have to be deformed, or we won't take you.

But that's running a risk, because what if you guys never come to get me? And then no one else is gonna come to get me if I'm deformed?

Although whoever gets you is gonna have a really good heart.

That's true.

Pretty much. I think you probably, like, weed out the irresponsible, mean owners. You don't want to come back as an elephant or something that's gonna live a very long time. It's a tricky riddle, but because you might not enjoy being an animal.

I know.

And it's hard to kill yourself if you're an elephant. I don't really know how you do it.

There's no suicidal loud in this game.

Well, if I didn't like being crow, I could just fly as fast as I could into the side of a building. But was that elephant gonna run and then fall down? No, they'd have to find a cliff.

No, listen, the whole. No, no, no. We might not like being an animal. That's why you have to pick an animal that you do. Like that life.

Okay.

Okay.

All right.

You like flying around and stuff.

I just thought of the pervious joke.

What?

It's so pervy.

What?

I was gonna say I would come back as a rabbit.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

That'S not. That's not actually as pervy as I thought you were gonna.

That's very pervy. I'm saying I want to be a vibrator. A vibrator?

Yeah.

Dolphin. Oh.

No. Do you?

No, they're too predatorial for me.

Yeah.

Like, I want the woman choose to use me, you know, like, I want the woman to pick me up, you know?

Right.

The dolphin is too aggressive. Yes, yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree.

If you had to come back as a fruit, what one would you come back as?

Probably a strawberry.

Not a peach?

No, a strawberry. Because I'm ready to come back as something that everyone just likes. Oh, you don't have to work hard to like it.

Yeah.

You don't have to overcome an ugly exterior.

Hey, you don't. You do not hear a lot of people say that they hate strawberries.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's very, very popular among birth.

Very vulnerable fruit, though, in a very short shelf life.

Oh, you're so hung up on the lifestyle.

Well, because I'm getting. I'm older than you.

No, I'm so.

It's on the front of my mind more.

It's really on the front of my mind this week.

Well, as it should be. This is the time. Are you gonna do shrooms on Friday night like Michael Pollan?

No, I don't think so.

Okay.

What fruit do you want to come back as?

Well, I was inclined to think an elephant, banana, a cucumber eggplant.

What'd you pick?

Well, I'm inclined to say an elephant.

Fruit.

Oh, fruit. We're both still on fruit. Probably an apple. They stick around a long time. Michigan's known for its apple.

They are tough.

They're tough. They travel well. You take them on an adventure. You would never take strawberries on an adventure. You can't throw strawberries on a backpack and, like, you're good.

Yeah, that's really true.

But banana's really good. Cause it has that protective layer around it. But it does. Again, it goes brown quick.

Very quick. Yeah, very quick.

Yeah.

Wait, so now you wanna move to elephant as opposed to crow?

Oh, right. I already picked crow, and they live a long time, so I'm sticking with crow.

Okay.

But you could be one of those lobsters that lives 230 years.

Oh, and also lobsters mate for life, so. That's cute.

Yeah, that's cute.

Also, penguins mate for life, but that's too cold of an environment for me.

Yeah. No, thank you.

I'm gonna stick with really, really cute dog.

Likable.

Yeah. With, like, hair that if people pet me, it will feel really nice. Like hair.

Play like a golden retriever or a Newfoundland. You don't know.

I'm not so sure.

Okay. A doodle. That way you could open yourself up to hypoallergenics people. Or people that need a hypoallergenic.

People also very, like, doodles a lot.

Yeah. They ask Aaron what kind of doodle he has.

Exactly. Exactly. All right, well, that was.

Well, you had a weekend. Anything you want to tell me about your weekend? I went to Bob's on Friday. That was really fun.

Again, great. I finished my show. I finished JD.

Wow. I just got really confused. Okay, you finished JD?

What do you mean?

Gyllenhaal.

Oh, you got confused on the days.

I did. Because Eric came over on Saturday. Because you guys had a girls dinner on Saturday.

We did.

Yeah. How was that?

So fun. Yeah. We had a little girls dinner for Kristen's birthday. Belated.

Yeah.

At all time. And it was delicious. And Kristen tried lamb.

Oh, she did.

She tried the lamb ragu. She liked it.

Okay, good.

It was delightful.

I heard the cake. I heard that they have got basically the hot fudge ice cream cake from Bob's big boys, but the very elevated version.

It's a chocolate cake. It's my favorite cake. It's. So. We had it at my birthday last year, actually.

Buttercream filling, not ice cream, but buttercream, not ice cream.

But it's like. Doesn't taste like regular buttercream. I don't know how to explain it. It's so good. Liz and I had it pretty much every day during our egg freezing.

Oh, fun.

And, God, it's good. It's so good. Anywho, so if you're in LA, you should go get that cake.

Yeah, if you had their mochi cake they have on, like, weekend mornings. No, like, from their pastry window.

Oh.

No one even told me about that. Is it so good?

Vincent loves it. He's, like, constantly asking for mochi cake.

Oh, my God. Okay, I'll try it. I'll try it anyway. Yeah, there's not much to report from the weekend. Except that. That was a nice dinner. And then I finished. I finished JG.

Was it great?

It had me captive.

Oh, good. I got. I gotta check it out.

Okay. But you know what? I didn't know. Kristen told me. I didn't know that that show is, like, based off an old thing.

Oh, it's. Yes. A movie with the greatest surprise ending ever before. 6th sense. So then, and I was so curious with this show, were they gonna have the same review reveal. Because how would it be a big reveal if everyone already knows about the movie? Don't tell me because I don't know. But I think it's long enough. We can talk about the movie because this is one of the funnier things I've ever heard. This is a Will Arnett story. Will Arnett was at his apartment one day, you know, 1520 years ago.

Yeah.

And so the movie presumed innocent.

Ding, ding, ding. Dan. Wow. Wow. Didn't even plan that.

Bonnie Bedalia is the wife, side note. Mother from parenthood. Parenthood. So. And then maybe Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford. Yep. Yeah. Is our guy. Okay, so the huge surprise ending at the end of the movie is that his wife was the murderer the whole time. Right. And he's like, either a lawyer or prosecutor or something. He's somehow investigating it. So will Arnett's watching it at home, and he gets a call from his buddy, and he's like, hey, what's up? I'm gonna call you back. I'm watching a movie. And this buddy goes, what are you watching? He goes, presumed innocence. And he goes, okay, I'll call me when you're done. Will hangs up the phone, phone rings again in two minutes. He picks it up, and his buddy goes, the wife did it and then hung up. Such a dick move. But it's really kind of worth it. This is so funny.

That's really funny. Yeah. I won't say anything, obviously, but people should watch it. It was good. JG was great.

Yeah. Was he making you horny?

I mean. Yeah, he is really attractive in the show.

Well, you like. You'll report when Cooper was making you. It's always fun to clock who's bringing.

You online sexual activity in the show.

Oh, there is.

Yeah.

I'm okay.

And you see a lot of JG's body.

You do?

Yeah.

And is it phenomenal?

We know.

I haven't seen it, so I don't know if he kept the same one from Rona, so I know he changes it a bit.

Yeah. I don't know which bodies. Which would.

The timeline of whatever one this was is working big time.

Yeah, he looks great.

Yeah.

Not shocking. Do you see penis?

Not penis.

Okay. But butt cheeks.

Yeah.

You see his butt?

Oh, wow, I can't wait. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that.

I think you'll. I think you'll really like that. Yeah, you'll. You'll like his body. And there's other bodies, too.

Some. There's some female physiques.

Yeah.

Yeah, I will like those, but I won't admit that I do.

Why?

You know I'm not allowed to do that, but I can.

Yeah.

Coming on boy's body. So I just think.

That's right.

Yeah. So I just stick to that.

Okay.

Yeah. So I'll like them and I just won't say anything.

We don't need. You don't need to keep saying that.

So what I'll like the most about the female bodies, which I can't say anything about.

Yeah. So now I kind of want to watch the original movie, but now I.

Know I have follow up questions. I'm gonna leave them alone.

What?

No.

What is it?

Did you pause at all?

Yeah, I paused.

Oh, wow.

Whatever. I'm a perimenopausal woman.

I love pyramids.

It's scary to say because these people are in and out of our lives, and you do have to be respectful.

You do. But I'm gonna speak for JG.

You can speak for JG.

I could text him now and see if this is clear. I'm just telling you, me personally, I would never mind that someone did some pausing and something I did. I would be very flattered.

I know you would. All right, we're gonna respect him, and we're not gonna ask him. Okay, I under. I think. Look, I think you're probably right that he would be flattered.

Yeah.

By people pausing.

Yeah, but we.

I know you. Okay, so we already said that?

Yeah. Do you know where I stand on this?

You've established that you would. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say most people would.

Okay. Most men mostly.

Most straight Mendez would.

And gay men.

Yeah, probably. I don't know enough about that group as a whole, so I feel a little bit less comfortable assuming. But.

Well, you know, Jess would love it if someone had paused, of course.

But that's a one. Says the sample size. That's small.

Anywho, what if I started texting all my gay friends now?

I mean, do you. But really think, like, is there someone.

I don't know, a dude?

Really think?

Yeah. I'm racking my brain. Unless that person dislikes their own body so much, they couldn't buy into the notion that that's really why someone was pausing. Like, if they couldn't accept that someone was pausing because they were, you know, aroused, which is totally possible.

Yeah.

Right? I have friends.

Yeah.

Who's an example of. Oh, we had Bobby Leon.

Yeah.

One of my favorite episodes. And I was watching his ex girlfriend describe how much she loves his body, and she was saying all these things that, for another person, would be kind of triggering. She's like, I love his big pot belly. I love to rub it. And so I believe. I know she's sincere.

Yeah.

That's her body type. But there is some guy with that body type that wouldn't really be able to trust that she was sincere about it.

Right, but that's a little bit of a tangential, because if he didn't know her and he just heard she paused.

Yeah.

Would he like that? Or are you saying that there could be a person that's like, when people like me, and then I get that feeling for some reason that they just like indian girls.

Oh, right, right.

Then I'm skeptical of them. What they like.

Exactly.

It could be like that with bodies.

Yeah. I just think if you hate your body, you can't really accept someone actually does like it. But if you're even neutral on your body and you found out someone was pausing because. And they were so excited to look at it longer, I just don't know how.

Yeah.

Anyone could skewer that into something negative.

Yeah.

Unless. Okay, someone's screaming at their radio right now.

Okay.

If you've been a hot woman your whole life and you've been objectified and stared at in the gym and harassed by dudes, that won't leave you be and they found out someone paused on them, they would probably. Yeah, they're probably over it, but I don't think any dude has that.

I was not talking about women.

Yeah, I wasn't either.

I don't know why women, really, a lot would not like that.

I know why. Because we were talking about you and then also, now the gates were open for women.

Yes, but we. A lot of women would not like that. It could feel very predatorial and creepy and weird. Men are in a. It's different.

That's right.

So straight men, most of them.

Well, probably gay, too, but we're not sure.

We just don't know.

Yeah. Is it funny? You're not comfortable speaking hypothetically on what a gay man would want, but you are on a straight man.

Yeah.

You're already like, I know what you're comfortable with. A completely different gender.

I've had enough interactions with straight men.

For me to feel pretty good of it.

Pretty. Pretty comfortable. Anyway, great show.

Yeah, great show.

And ding, ding, ding.

And I'm gonna pause the fuck out of it.

Okay. I have a few facts. Oh. I looked up a little bit of what used to be considered forensic science. That's, like, been debunked, basically.

Oh, this will be a good list.

But there's only a few.

Because almost. Oh, there's only a few.

Yeah.

Because virtually all the movies we were raised on, these are the knockout punch of the trial in the movie, and they're all bullshit.

I think some of them are still.

Used, though, even the ones handwriting analysis. Now, mind you, it's funny to say that, because it was dead obvious in the Robert Durst case. Like, I do believe in handwriting analysis for that.

Yeah.

And spelling analysis. I guess that was the real thing. Misspelled Beverly twice.

But also, I think it's still. Well, it is still used. That case is not that old.

Yeah, I don't know if that actually made it into the courtroom or not. Oh, you know, so much other stuff.

There's also. People use blood batter still, but. Okay, so there's a few here. Optography.

What is that?

In 19th century Europe, especially in England, there was a widespread belief that people's eyes somehow recorded the last thing seen before their death.

Oh, my God.

It is unknown where this belief came from, but it was probably an old superstition enhanced in popularity by literary works. Kuhn came to develop studies on the light sensitive pro teen named rhodopsin, also known as visual purple. He discovered that not only was the rhodopsin extremely sensitive to light, but under certain ideal circumstances would act very much like a photography negative fixing an image on whatever support it was currently in. Ew. After performing some rather gruesome experiments on rabbits.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Okay, so they put the solution in, and then they look at the eyeball.

Yeah.

Okay.

I don't know.

Yeah.

I have to imagine there's a ton of interpretation on what you're seeing. That little cluster of proteins.

Famously, optography was used as a last dish effort to identify Jack the Ripper.

Sure.

The method being tried with the eyes of Mary Jane Kelly, the supposed final victim of the famous serial killer, with no good results. Okay. And then anthropological criminology. Ding, ding, ding.

Careful. Criminology, tread lightly.

Cesar Lombrosco was an italian physician and famous criminologist who rejected what came to be called the classical school of criminology. By classical school, he referred to the works of the enlightenment era philosophers. In their works, both classical criminologists described crime as a purely social phenomenon caused by social problems that brought certain individuals to commit crimes to right or wrong resulting from said social imbalance. As such, classical criminology focused almost entirely on the social causes of crime, rather than the personal motivations of the criminal or the characterizations of the victim. Lambrusco rejected this view. While he admitted that social phenomena could influence the occurrence of crimes, he argued that the factors that determine criminal behavior were largely biological and anthropological in origin. La Bros. Lombroso. Oh, I was saying Lombrosco, but it's. Lombroso had the opportunity to analyze hundreds of criminals. After many studies that largely focused on anthropometry, the measurement of the proportions of a human's being body, he concluded that there were clear physical distinctions between criminals and non criminals.

Yeah, that's the field anthropometry that was heavily weaponized during the Third Reich's rise and went away so they would have these facial pragmatism measurements, like, how much did your forehead jump shut out?

Or how much it says? It says. He pointed to a series of physical traits which he deemed atavistic, which represented a kind of involution, that is a reversion to the physical traits of primates. Lombroso argued that individuals who showed traits similar to large primates, such as large ears, sloping foreheads, widened flat noses, long arms, etcetera, were clearly less evolved than the rest of humanity, and thus less able to cope with social norms and more prone to criminal behavior. Okay, then the polygraph. We all know about the polygraph.

We do. And what's crazy is they still are giving every single one of these docs I watch about a wrongfully accused person or virtually any doc involving a murder. Dateline. They still give polygraphs.

I know, but I don't. I don't know if that's like.

They're not admissible in court, but they still, like, they still do it.

Okay. Those were the three.

Do you think you could pass the.

Polygraph if I was lying?

Yeah.

Hmm. Good question.

I think I could.

I think you could. Do you know why? Because I think. And I do think I could, too, actually. It requires a level of compartmentalization that I think you can do.

Well, my past addiction would suggest so, but I have a whole technique in my mind I think I would use.

Okay.

Which is I would anticipate whatever question was coming.

Okay.

You know, did you kill your wife? And I would work on a definition for kill that would fall outside of what I did. So, like, I would really concentrate on the fact that, like, no, killing your wife is when you murder her. You know, whatever thing. I would find a way. I think that's the key. Might. I don't know what I'm basing this on, but I've decided if you could redefine the word, they're going to ask you.

Yeah.

You could believe it as you're saying it.

I see what you mean. But that requires so much.

It's like, think about how many people do this with cheating, right? Like, is it. Oh, is it? Well, it's not cheating to text a co worker naughty stuff. Their definition would be. No, I would have to touch that person before it's cheating. Well, this is very ardent, arbitrary. They probably could pass a lie detector if they asked, have you cheated on your spouse? Well, because the definition they gave, cheating excluded the thing they did. That makes sense.

It does. And I think that is. That is compartmental.

Right. Like he was saying, I did not have sexual relations with that woman. It was like he selectively decided that intercourse was sexual relations.

Right.

You know what I'm saying?

I guess. And I think he was just lying.

Well, he was lying.

Yeah, he knew he was lying, but.

It did feel like he just. His word choice was so specific. It felt like he was intentionally setting it up so he could say I wasn't lying because my. I say sexual relations is intercourse.

Maybe.

I don't know.

Okay, but you.

Never. A great topic.

That is a way to do it. But I just think it all requires a profound level of compartmentalizing. Yeah, like you're tricking your brain into forgetting a definition. You're putting one definition in a compartment, adding a new one.

Right.

And deciding to live there.

Yeah, I think that would be the technique at least. I guess. I don't even know if I would pass one. I've just thought that that would probably be the technique.

Yeah. Okay. Safest cities in America. I think we've done this before, but, um, we're gonna do it again.

Okay.

Cuz you.

I always talk about how safe.

La.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Number ten. Scottsdale, Arizona. Nine. Burlington, Vermont. Eight. Yonkers, New York.

I wouldn't count these cities, by the way.

I think this happened before. Yeah, but they're cities. It's not fair. Yeah. Okay.

I'm thinking of just like St. Louis.

I know what they next.

That's Chicago.

You're just. You're saying of the kind of cities, violent cities.

Well, just big cities.

Yeah. Okay. Casper, Wyoming.

Yeah. You've never even heard of Casper, Wyoming.

Portland, Maine.

You mean Portland, Oregon?

No, Maine.

Okay, 4000 people live in each of these.

Warwick, Rhode Island. Gilbert, Arizona.

I'll respect all these places if you live there.

South Burlington, Vermont. I've heard of it.

I think you've heard of Burlington, Vermont, the coat factory. And from Armchair Anonymous, we had a Burlington.

Did we?

Isn't that where she landed the emergency landing of the plane?

Maybe.

I think it was Burlington.

Oh, maybe, yeah, I think you're right.

I guess it's not so safe.

Okay. Columbia, Maryland, and then Nashua, New Hampshire is number one. Okay. All right. It's per capita. Per capita.

I get it, I get it, I get it. I think those are probably statistically the safest cities that you've not heard of in the country. Again, lots of respect to everyone.

Yeah, that's so. I know to only count the ones, the big ones that you know about.

Well, but also I think we could just say objective. If you asked ten people on the street, many of these, they would not have heard of them. That's also true. I'm being elitist. And it's also true.

Okay. An FBI study places LA at number five of the safest large cities in the US.

I can live with that one.

Or the four before a 2023 gallup poll places LA at number 14.

Well, gallup poll doesn't work.

Okay. And some other studies.

Hold on.

Let me tell you why.

Okay, go ahead.

And gallup polls are opinion polls. I know they're not factual polls. It's not death rate per 10,000.

That's true. That's right.

That's all I want to.

And some other studies don't include LA. In the top 20. In the top 20. Theft in LA is reported to be the city's most frequent crime, and violent crimes are reportedly on the decline.

Yeah. And I wouldn't include theft in my measure of safety.

Yeah.

Like having shit stole on your car.

Oh, it's bad.

Well, it's scary.

Yeah.

But I'm just saying it doesn't make you unsafe. Cause someone's stealing cars.

Do you wanna know the safest neighborhoods in LA?

In LA?

Seven safest. Okay.

Okay. Santa Monica.

No, Beverlywood. You know, Beverly Wood ish. Yeah. Palisades.

Sure.

Rancho park, encino. Sautel. I'm kind of surprised.

Well, are we thinking of the street sautel?

Cause it's that area, like.

Oh, wow. Because it's grimy over there.

I know.

No disrespect. I mean, you. You should feel disrespected. But I lived over there, so.

Me too.

Yeah.

Sherman Oaks.

Yeah.

And then Cheviot Hills.

That makes sense. I'm surprised. Chevy Hills number one.

No.

Were you going in reverse order?

I went.

Okay. Okay.

I don't know.

All right. Yeah. Chevy at Hills is very nice.

Our. Our neighborhood isn't in there.

Of course not. And either we have one of the busiest police stations in Laden.

We do?

Yeah. When I did my ride along, Los Feliz was part of the Hollywood station.

Hollywood, yeah, I know, but I count Los Feliz is different.

Sure. But there were, you know, I was with the gang patrol.

Yeah.

And they rolled up on a bunch of different dudes with gang tattoos that were.

Well, Hollywood's rough.

Well, in our area.

Really?

Oh, yeah. That fucking corner where the Ralph's shit's popping off there by Cara, wherever.

Go, every day.

Yeah, there was a dude, in fact. Yeah. In front of a tree selling some stuff. Yep.

Yeah. And remember, someone got shot at the Rite Aid.

There you go.

All right, well, knock on wood. Knock on wood. Everything's fine.

Now if you're counting theft, I wouldn't even. Yeah, I think we got a lot of theft in LA.

This one says top seven neighborhoods. Safest neighborhoods in Ladenhouse. LA is Highland park number one. I could see that.

You could?

Don't you think? Oh, no, I'm thinking Hancock.

Exactly.

Yeah. No, Highland Park west.

Still got the avenue boys are over there. It reminds me of Chicago so much over there.

Yeah, but it says 0.017 crimes per thousand people.

That's pretty good.

Westwood, playa Vista, Sherman Oaks. That's the only one on both Venice beach. Okay.

No, no, no.

Throw this list in the trash. Yeah. All right, well, you got what you wanted. An FBI study places LA at number five of the safest, larger.

What are the four above? It doesn't have that. Don't worry about it. I mean, I wouldn't hate if you.

Did murder because murder rates, we could do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Should we do murder rates by lowest rate?

Lowest murder rate. Big city.

Oh, my God.

Why? That's good.

It feels very cherry picky. Yeah. Okay, let's do cities with most murders. 2024. Okay.

Oh, boy.

This is good. This is from.

But if you don't do rate, it's.

Not gonna be per capita population review.com. that's very trusted.

Do you think my legs look as dark as yours right now? Just occurred to me. I think surfing. Yeah, I think up here.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay, ready? St. Louis. Baltimore.

These are the scariest.

Yeah.

Highest.

Highest murder rate. Yeah. St. Louis. Baltimore. Baltimore.

Chicago.

New Orleans. Detroit. Cleveland. Las Vegas. Kansas City. Memphis, Newark, Chicago. Cincinnati. Philadelphia. Milwaukee. Tulsa. Pittsburgh. Indianapolis. Louisville, Oakland, Atlanta.

Yeah, there's not a surprise on that list.

We all made it.

Good job, Atlanta.

But yes, to your point, LA is not on.

Yeah.

All right, well, I think we've talked enough about death for one day.

Great.

And if you want to watch the movie for free, sing Sing. Remember to go to. It's on the post for Coleman. And it'll be on the post for Dan as well. Where to go?

Great.

And you'll get your tickets for free.

Free tickets.

Go see that movie. All right.

Love you.

Love you.

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