EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,002 words- 0:00 – 3:08
Silk Road film praise, casting Jason Clarke, and condensing reality into a movie
- NANarrator
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) Are we rolling? Oh, we are. We're up. Yeah, this is a, uh, (clears throat) Kill Cliff CBD, 25 milligrams of CBD, um, jalapeno pineapple.
- TRTiller Russell
Jalapeno pineapple's strong.
- JRJoe Rogan
Not bad, right?
- TRTiller Russell
I like it. It's good.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's called Flaming Joe. That's my face, bro.
- TRTiller Russell
(laughs) Then it's flaming.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hey, I love your fucking movies. I, I love the Seven Five, and uh, I really enjoyed Silk Road. It was really good. And it w- you did a great job of taking something that is a, a real story and laying it out in a movie format, where you only have like, a certain amount of time with actors. But even, the guy who played the bad cop, what is his name?
- TRTiller Russell
Jason Clarke. I love that guy.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's great. He, he's been in a bunch of things.
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I, I, I-
- TRTiller Russell
He was in Chappaquiddick. He was in First Man. He's been in a bunch of stuff, and he's just, he's a beast. Um, you know, it was so interesting, when I got there on set with him, and it's like, sort of, you know, day one, you don't know what you're getting into. And I'm r- and I was just standing there next to him, and I was like, "Dude, this guy is like a thoroughbred race horse, and he is at the Kentucky Derby."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
"I can't wait to see what this cat does," you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
He's so good as a bad guy.
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's such a-
- TRTiller Russell
And he, he, he's, he's game for it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
He's, he's intense. I've seen that guy in so many movies. He's just one of those guys, like you see him, and you're like, "Oh, that guy."
- TRTiller Russell
Well, you know, it's so funny when you're like, you know, I sat down ... So I had written the script for Silk Road several years ago. And you know, I have done all these documentaries. That's my background, right, which is kind of where you dive into the, you know, you do the deep dive on these, um, you know, crazy crime stories. That's my whole, that's my whole racket, you know, from Michael Dowd forward. And then, you, you know, go into the world suddenly going from the doc thing into the movie thing, and it's like, well, who are the people that are gonna inhabit this? So I sat down and I met with, you know, all these amazing actors, and you sort of are looking at, okay, what if it's this version of the movie? What if it's this kid? What if it's this, you know, what if it's this guy? And then suddenly, Jason Clarke, who I'd been a fan of forever, he was like, "Dude, I'm, I'm h- I'm hip to that. You know, I wanna do it."
- JRJoe Rogan
Is he playing a real guy?
- TRTiller Russell
He- it's a composite basically. What happened is there were a couple of corrupt law enforcement officers. There was a DEA guy. There was a Treasury guy. Um, and so what I had done is kind of combined them into that character because I've spent a lot of time in the documentaries hanging out with guys like that and, and also people who have relationships, long-term relationships with informants. So I was able to kind of take the work that I had done in the docs and put it into the movie so that it's drawn from real life, it's drawn from people I know, but it's, you know, kind of a hybrid between the two.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm. Yeah, it's, it's a great vehicle for moving the story along, you know, and, and condensing it without having too many different moving parts 'cause y- you got so much going on, you know?
- 3:08 – 5:21
Discovering the Silk Road story and the ‘crooked cop’ half that made it cinematic
- TRTiller Russell
Well, and i- and it's, w- with something like that, like, a, a story like this, there are the people that like ... I was one of the people that was fully geeked on this story. I remember th- the day after Ross Ulbricht was arrested in the San Francisco library, in, in the sci-fi section of the Glen Park Library. I was off shooting some crime doc or another. And I remember vividly opening the newspaper, and it just had kind of like the shadowy headlines of the story. It was like dark web, Bitcoin, you know, Dread Pirate Roberts, but we didn't ... None of this stuff was in the zeitgeist yet. We hadn't even like really heard of Bitcoin.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TRTiller Russell
But I remember thinking like, "Man, there's a, like there's a story there." It's, maybe it's a movie, maybe it's a doc, but like, there's something. And I was just kind of fascinated from the get-go, and then obsessively tracking the story as new pieces of information would come out. And then eventually, there was this Rolling Stone, uh, reporter, this guy by the name of David Kushner, who's this brilliant writer and reporter, has like a nose for story and is able to get to people, and he had gotten to Ross Ulbricht's girlfriend in Austin, and, um, and then the family. And so he wrote this profile of Ross that was this very kind of relatable, humanist portrait. And suddenly when I read that piece, I was like, "Oh. Okay, now I can like connect with this guy in some fundamental, emotional way." But at the time, none of the stuff about the corrupt cops had broken. None of that stuff was in the public. Nothing had been reported on. And I think that the feds deliberately kept that information under wraps so as not to screw up the prosecution-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TRTiller Russell
... of, of Ross, right? But I was, knowing people in DEA, knowing people in US Attorney from making, US Attorney's Office from making the Seven Five, from making Operation Odessa, whatever, those guys would call me, and they were like, "Man, there's a whole nother amazing half of this story," which is the crooked cop side of the story. Suddenly when I saw that, I thought, "Okay, now that's a movie 'cause I can imagine these two sort of people." You know, I always thought of it, it's almost like they're missiles on a collision course flying right at each other, you know? And so suddenly when I had that in my head, I was like, "I can make a movie outta that."
- 5:21 – 7:05
What’s factual vs fictional: writing the cop’s family and ‘pouring himself’ into gaps
- JRJoe Rogan
The, the stuff with the corrupt cop's wife and daughter, was that fictionalized as well?
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah, so it's a, so the, it's, it's interesting. You know, at, at a certain point, some- I remember like on set and kind of going up to it, people were like, "Okay, so what's, what's factual and what's f- you know, fictional?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
"What's factual and what's fictional?" And I, at a certain point, I was like, "I need to pour myself into this," because there wasn't ... You know, when you're making a doc, you're going out and you're harvesting people and you're harvesting information and you're harvesting photos, videos, news footage. This was like there was a limited amount of information. And so then when the information ran out, it was like, "Okay, what am I gonna pour in here?" I can research it the way I would do a doc, but really, if I'm gonna make this something that's true and, and authentic to me, I kind of poured myself into it. So, so that's what I ended up doing, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
So when you say pour- poured yourself into it, did- did you create this story with the daughter that needed the money for school and...?
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah. Um, th- I mean, what it is, is it's a combination. So there was a limited amount of information. This guy, one of these cops, had family members, had, um, you know, a background where he was jacked up in Puerto Rico and sort of thrown off track. So I took the pieces that were in the public record, that were in Rolling Stone articles or in the Wired article or whatever, and then I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna put my own biography into this."
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- TRTiller Russell
"So I'm gonna put, you know, maybe my relationship with my daughter or my relationship with my wife," and so kind of build out from what's there with a, with a personal story to it.
- 7:05 – 11:33
Explaining Silk Road: Tor, Bitcoin, libertarian idealism, and Ross’s self-portrait in writings
- JRJoe Rogan
Is that a difficult thing to do? Like, d- do you, do you tiptoe through that? Because here you are, you have this story, right? The story, for folks who don't know, we should probably let them know what the story is if they don't know. The story of Silk Road is a spectacular story because he created this marketplace through the dark web with, uh, you know, using Tor and encryption, where ... And, and Tor is a browser, um, i- it's an encrypted browser.
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah, it's basically like, it's, it's like the Harry Potter invisibility cloak.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TRTiller Russell
You know, you go into Tor and, and it conceals usage and location.
- JRJoe Rogan
And he developed this Silk Road platform where you could buy all kinds of drugs and then ultimately it, y- you could buy guns as well-
- TRTiller Russell
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and, and a lot of other illegal things. And his ... The way you portrayed him is really fascinating too, and I wonder how much of it is accurate, because you portrayed him as this sort of really intelligent, idealistic young man who ultimately believed that people should have the freedom to buy, sell, use, choose whatever they like, and that the people who support Silk Road, that's how they felt. And people that are proponents of a lot of these, uh, particularly psychedelics, which I'm one of them-
- TRTiller Russell
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... like, they like that. Like, like, "Yeah, well who, who is a grown adult to tell another grown adult what they can and can't use? Wouldn't it be great if there was some online marketplace that was free from the tentacles of the American government and you could buy whatever you wanted?" Well, there was, and he created it. And it's, uh, it's ... V- i- in, in, in the sense that it's, it's an important American story. It's an important internet story. It's an important worldwide story. But then you're also adding fiction.
- TRTiller Russell
Well, it's, it's, um ... Yes. And his story, what fascinated me about his story was you have this guy that starts out as a very kind of naive, innocent guy. He's somebody who wants to make his mark in the world, wants to change the world, and goes into it with an open heart and good intentions. And there was a lot of information about him. When I first sat down to write the script, there was ... He was locked up in MCC in New York, actually exactly where Michael Dowd from the 7-5 had been locked up years earlier, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- TRTiller Russell
And so I sat down and I wrote, um ... I wrote him a letter, and he was in- in, awaiting sentencing, I think, at the time. But I knew his lawyers were never gonna give me access to him, right? For ... Rightly so, because it would potentially screw up his defense. But I felt like, you know, I owe it to this guy in some fundamental sense if I'm gonna tell his story to try to connect with him. And I'm a doc guy. That's my process, you know? And so I wrote him a letter and I never heard back, and ... But then he had left this kind of amazing archive of breadcrumbs in his past, you know? He had written all of these public posts on the Silk Road website as Dread Pirate Roberts where he's putting out his philosophy, his ethos, his, you know, convictions. And then at the t- same time, he had been secretly keeping a journal long before he had launched Silk Road all the way through it up until the bitter end.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mmm.
- TRTiller Russell
And so when he got busted, they confiscated his laptop, and when they opened up his laptop, they had all of his private journal entries. So there was the combination of his public postings as Dread Pirate Roberts and the diary entries as Ross Ulbricht. And so while I didn't have access to the guy, I had access to his words and who, um, you know, his, I guess, accidental self-portrait in some way or another. And so when we got into ... And you're, uh, to your question of, of how much of this is, um, you know, journalistically accurate, so every piece of voiceover in the movie that's, that's spoken by Nick Robinson who plays Ross Ulbricht, all of that is either taken from the diary entries or taken from the public postings as Dread Pirate Roberts.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mmm.
- TRTiller Russell
And then all of the chat logs, all of the back and forth, the encrypted communications between, you know, NOB and Dread Pirate Roberts, all of that stuff is taken from the documentary record.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- TRTiller Russell
Because I felt like you have to be true to who this guy is in some sense spiritually, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Did you communicate with him at all?
- 11:33 – 15:27
Ross’s relationships, the Gawker megaphone, and how platforms explode into the zeitgeist
- TRTiller Russell
No. So what happened was I c- so I couldn't. I couldn't get to him. You know, I wrote him a letter, never heard back. But what ended up happening was his ex-girlfriend who's, uh, i- in Austin, who's here in Austin, Julia V, who's portrayed in the movie by the a- the actor, actress Alexandra Shipp, she became a consultant for it, um, uh, when I was writing the script and then when making the movie, because I felt like I needed somebody who knew this guy, who loved him, who had an intimate viewpoint on who he was. And so she became my kind of source and way in in an emotional sense, right? I had-
- JRJoe Rogan
How, how old was she when all it was going down?
- TRTiller Russell
20s. You know, in her 20s. I mean, and that's, and that's kind o-
- JRJoe Rogan
And what year is this?
- TRTiller Russell
That's basically 2011 to 2013.
- JRJoe Rogan
And so, you know, she's... Is she in college? Is she just out of college?
- TRTiller Russell
Like, just out, just out, right? So they're, like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TRTiller Russell
... young people-
- JRJoe Rogan
Idealistic, young.
- TRTiller Russell
... knocking around Austin.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
And, and for her, I think it was... You know, what she had told me was, initially it was like he and I against the world, you know, inside the bubble. And then little by little, the Silk Road website became his masterpiece, and it was like everybody goes outside of the bubble except me and Silk Road. And so eventually, she felt like she was in almost like a three-way relationship, where it's like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TRTiller Russell
... her, him, and the website. And eventually, the website kinda eats him, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Yeah. Well, the... You did a great job of portraying the obsession that he had with all the inner workings of the website and, and seeing it ramp up through the website's growth and development when... Was it Gawker that made the article-
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... about it? And then it just exploded. I remember that article. I remember it very clearly. Like, when you showed the image of that article, I remember going, "Wow, I remember that article."
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah, because it, like... You know, and I think that that is true of many of these people that are the kind of disruptor innovators, you know. You have to get your message into the... You have to get, get into the zeitgeist in some-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
... fundamental way. So, like, Gawker was the way that, like, broadcast this to the world. "Hey man, Silk Road's out there." Like, "The mailman is your dope dealer and he's not even hip to it."
- JRJoe Rogan
I wonder what would have happened if he didn't contact Gawker. I wonder how it l- would have grown, you know. I mean, obviously, it would have eventually grown and become huge, but I wonder how much longer it would have taken.
- TRTiller Russell
It's a... I don't know. It's a fascinating question, but I think you always need the megaphone, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
I mean, in a way, like, this is... Your show is, is the megaphone, you know. Like, in some ways, it's the, like, transmission of a thing to a audience and to a public. That's how they connect to it. And it's... Otherwise, because you have to be pretty sophisticated, um... And that was the thing that, you know, he was struggling with initially is like, "Okay, I've got this amazing thing. I'm using Tor so you don't know who it is. I'm using Bitcoin." And nobody knew what the hell Bitcoin was at the time either, right? It's because of this story that we all know of Bitcoin.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TRTiller Russell
This is what put Bitcoin in the zeitgeist. But basically, he had this like... As many of these great ideas are, um, relatively simple one, which was Tor plus Bitcoin means e- encrypted transactions can't be traced. Anybody can get anything anytime from anywhere, uh, from anyone they want. And so it unleashed it to the world, but then it was like, "Okay, but nobody knows about this. How we gonna, how we gonna sort of broadcast it?" And the Gawker piece, it is the thing that injects it into the zeitgeist.
- JRJoe Rogan
But it was a thing before that, so it was reasonably successful before that, right? Like, people did know about it in terms of like the-
- TRTiller Russell
The people that were hip to it.
- JRJoe Rogan
... weirdo internet crowd.
- 15:27 – 21:04
Silk Road after the bust, DPR succession, and the murder-for-hire controversy
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Yeah, it's a, it's such a crazy story. And, um, I... Has it... What is the status of things like that now? Are, are, is there a more improved version of Silk Road now?
- TRTiller Russell
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
Where you can do that and you don't get busted?
- TRTiller Russell
There were-
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm asking for a friend. (laughs)
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Um, the, the, the crazy thing is there were several iterations of Silk Road that happened. So like the feds came in, like seized it, and then all of a sudden like on, on the website, it was like seized by the FBI, you know, putting the word out as the, as the feds are kinda pissing on the territory. But then, I forget what amount of time, I've forgotten the details at this point, but some amount... Six months later or whatever, Silk Road 2.0 comes up.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TRTiller Russell
Then the feds shut that down. Then Silk Road 3.0 comes up. It's kinda like... I think, you know, the genie never goes back in the bottle. Once the technology is out there, it's going to, in some way or another, continue to persist.
- JRJoe Rogan
D- now, when the feds had shut it down, was this when Ross was running it?
- TRTiller Russell
When, when he... Basically, after Ross was busted, the feds went in and said, stamped the site that said, "Seized by the FBI."
- JRJoe Rogan
And then it reemerged?
- TRTiller Russell
And then it reemerged. And the whole thing, you know, his, you know, his, um, online avatar, you know, nom de guerre or whatever was Dread Pirate Roberts taken from The Princess Bride.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TRTiller Russell
The idea being like, "Once I go away, there's gonna be a new Dread Pirate Roberts."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TRTiller Russell
"Somebody else is gonna pick up the baton and run with it." And nobody quite knows, okay, who is it that inherited it? And there are those people who say, "Hey, this wasn't Ross that ordered these hits." You know, this was... Like, nobody knows who's behind the keys at the time anything has happened.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TRTiller Russell
So there are those people who, who completely deny. You know, his family completely denies the culpability. And who knows? We'll never know.
- JRJoe Rogan
That is a problem when you're dealing with corrupt cops too, right? Like, they literally could have faked him doing that. We don't know. What... Has he denied that he called hits? We should explain to people that haven't seen the film. Spoiler alert. Uh, it goes off the rails for Ross, for young Ross and, uh, at one point in time, one of his... The guy he's working with gets busted and rats him out, and then the cops are using that guy's account and communicating with him, and he orders a hit on that guy. And the guy gets to see it and he's like, "Holy shit, I can't believe this." Who knows how much of that is real and how much is not, but the problem is you're dealing with corrupt cops and if the corrupt cops wanted to frame him for something that's gonna put him away for a long time, just running the website and allowing people a, a, a portal where they can do this and sell things is not quite good enough. But if you can get a guy to literally call for murder, not once but twice, then you've really got him locked up.W- we don't know, though. Did he deny that he called those hits?
- TRTiller Russell
Well, not only, not only did he deny it, but, um, what happened was... So, so to back up a step, basically, the, the corrupt cop, you know, in the movie, the corrupt cop at a certain point sets out to bust Ross. And then at a c- at a certain point, he's like kind of getting cock-blocked by his superiors and whatever, and so he's, uh, he says, "Okay, I'm gonna rip this kid off instead. If I can't bust him, I'm gonna steal the money and I'm gonna use it for my own purposes." But what ends up happening is... And all of that information, by the way, the, the fake murder of his employee and the photographs that were taken of it, all of that stuff is true. That's all in the real story.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TRTiller Russell
And as we're shooting the movie, we have access to the actual faked murder photos, where like-
- JRJoe Rogan
What does it look like?
- TRTiller Russell
It looks like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is it available online? Can we see it?
- TRTiller Russell
It's... Yeah, it's available online.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh. Th- We need to see that right now. See if you can find the-
- TRTiller Russell
Curtis Clark Green, uh, murder photos, fake murder photos.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was his, uh, online name?
- TRTiller Russell
Chronic Pain.
- 21:04 – 34:36
Sentencing shock, plea deal, pardons, and why the case feels ethically unsettled
- TRTiller Russell
Well, I think... Okay, so there's a couple of important points. One is the feds never charged him with attempted murder. They put him... You know, ro- Ross ended up getting sentenced to two life sentences plus 40 years without the possibility of parole, and this is a crazy fact, which is considerably harsher than what El Chapo was sentenced to, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus Christ.
- TRTiller Russell
And so they really, you know... Th- they threw the book at this guy and buried him. And, and yet-
- JRJoe Rogan
Did they offer a plea?
- TRTiller Russell
He had... He did ha- He was offered a deal at a certain point, and he turned it down because-
- JRJoe Rogan
What was the deal?
- TRTiller Russell
I think it was 10 years. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Jesus Christ, kid.
- TRTiller Russell
I know. And that... Well, and here, this is a crazy s- so this is a crazy story. So starting out with, um, you know, you had asked me if I had reached out to him. So I reached out to him when he was locked up in, in MCC in New York awaiting sentencing. And then all the way through, he was hoping t- you know, he was waiting... The case was working its way through the appeals process. So, um, and then finally, he was hoping that Trump was gonna pardon him. And there was a big kind of hullabaloo, "Okay, is Trump gonna pardon this, pardon him on his last day in office?" And he didn't. And I wo- And I was sitting there watching the news, waiting to see if he would. And I woke up the next day and I was like, "Man, I'm gonna look d- I'm gonna look it up." And so I went onto the Bureau of Prisons website, and I typed in Ross's name and it comes up, you know, Tucson Penitentiary. And then it said, "Release Date, colon, life." And it just like... It hit me, you know, this kid's 36 years old, he's 10 years younger than I am, and just staring down the barrel of that. And so I sat down, even though the movie's, you know, coming out or whatever at the time, and I decide, "You know what? I owe this guy," in some fun- like just human being, man to man. So I write him a letter and I said, "Listen, man, I've, I've made this movie, and this is my portrait of you and my portrait of your story and of Silk Road. Um, and it's, you know, it's coming out into the world, but if you ever want to tell your version of the story in any form or fashion, you want to do it as a Rolling Stone interview, you want to do it as a documentary, you want to do it any way you want, you tell me, and I will be there in person to sit down with you." Because I do feel like there's some kind of, I don't know, I guess like spiritual contract between me and him. Like, when you enter into a story like this, you're, you're in somebody else's life in a real way.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, uh, uh, it... We... It's almost like we do need to hear his version of it, right? And we don't. We just... And, and, uh, especially when you're dealing with lawyers in a court case where it's, you know, they're withholding some testimony if they think it'd be detrimental to his case or, you know, once all said and done. I wonder why Trump didn't pardon him.
- TRTiller Russell
I don't know. And, and then who knows? You know, the way it was reported that, um, he was closely considering it, um, but in the kind of last days of the, you know, chaotic end of the administration or whatever, it didn't happen. But I was, I was, you know... Because no matter what you think of Ross's politics or what he did as a, um, you know... or Silk Road, even, there is this thing where like, I'm a believer in second chances, man. You know, I've screwed up a million things in my lifetime and, um-... and I feel like somebody like that hopefully has something to give the world, you know, and isn't thrown away.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's just crazy that they were offering him 10 years, and instead, they gave him two life sentences plus 40 years with no possibility of parole. Like, why?
- TRTiller Russell
You know, there's this, there's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Such, such a disparity.
- TRTiller Russell
Well, it's, I think in some way or another, it was like, this changed the drug war, right? It changed the way the drug game happened, and it changed the way the drug war was fought. Suddenly, it's like, it's almost an existential threat to the drug war when it's not buy-busts and hand-to-hand and all the street stuff that we've seen, you know, f- since, you know, Nixon unleashes DEA, you know, in '73 or whatever the year is. Suddenly, it's, wait a minute, all happening online, anonymous, DHL, USPS, people are delivering it, nobody even knows that they're carrying it. So, it was like, it was an existential threat to the US government, to the DEA, to the drug war. And so, he got the book thrown at him.
- JRJoe Rogan
Crazy. So, what was the motivation for offering him 10 years as a plea?
- TRTiller Russell
You know, I don't know, and, and I wonder, you know, looking back on it, it's always kind of hindsight is 20/20, but he had been beating the system for a long time, right? He was, like, one dude with a laptop that unleashed this thing that kind of metastasized and went over the whole world. And, um, and he was winning for a while. He was ahead of the feds. He was ahead of the US Attorney's Office. He had Chuck Schumer there, you know, calling for his head, and yet he continued to kind of game the system and beat 'em by just being nimble and being able to throw his laptop in his backpack and roll onto the next location. So, maybe, you know, maybe he thought he'd be able to continue beating the system. I don't know.
- JRJoe Rogan
God, it just... I mean, I just... He'd be out.
- TRTiller Russell
He'd be out.
- JRJoe Rogan
He'd be out now. Full 10 years later.
- TRTiller Russell
Well, and the crazy thing, you know-
- NANarrator
He tweeted this two hours ago. Kind of convenient timing.
- JRJoe Rogan
"I put Silk Road on the t-"
- NANarrator
Oh, sorry.
- JRJoe Rogan
"... on the Tor network about 10 years ago. I've been thinking about what was going through the mind of my 26-year-old self back then in 2011. So much has changed. If only I could turn back time." Wow, so he's got a Twitter account?
- NANarrator
Mm-hmm. Yeah, he tweets a lot recently about, uh, meditation. He's been-
- JRJoe Rogan
How does he have a Twitter account?
- NANarrator
I don't... He might not be running it. He could be sending messages to someone, but it seems like he's running it.
- TRTiller Russell
Well, I think, you know, one of the things when I looked, when I looked at the, uh, federal penitentiary where he's being held is, is you actually can... They give everybody, um, access to, uh, you know, to the computers and to email periodically once you get on their list.
- JRJoe Rogan
Fuck.
- 34:36 – 40:25
Bitcoin forfeiture, missing coins, and the surreal economics of seized digital assets
- JRJoe Rogan
How much money did he make?
- TRTiller Russell
Well, you know, had he hang, hung onto the Bitcoin, with Bitcoin at 50,000 or whatever it is today, would be like an incalculable amount of money. It was tens of millions at the time.
- JRJoe Rogan
God. (exhales) And what did, what happened with all that Bitcoin?
- TRTiller Russell
It got, uh, confiscated and seized by the federal government.
- JRJoe Rogan
So the federal government owns it now?
- TRTiller Russell
Federal government seizes it and confiscates it, although there was just... I read in the news, and I don't know the details of this, but there was a bunch of, you know, significant amount of... Meaning like hundreds of millions of dollars, I think, missing Bitcoin. Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
"US seizes one billion in Bitcoin linked to Silk Road site. The DOJ, uh, is suing for formal forfeiture of funds after tracking down the person holding them." And this is, uh, how long ago was this story?
- NANarrator
Uh, a couple... Just a couple-
- TRTiller Russell
Three months.
- NANarrator
... weeks, yeah. From November 6th.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. Wow. Isn't that funny? Look at that little thing, "This article is more than three months old." That's how crazy this-
- NANarrator
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
... time is today.
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Three months old. Like, pfft, bro, that's a fucking million years ago. Three months?
- TRTiller Russell
Well, time got particularly weird on us over the past year in the pandemic too-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
... you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
But that particularly is, is strange, that they have that little thing to let you know this is not new.
- TRTiller Russell
Waving the flag.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. "According to the information, Ross Ulbricht, uh, now jailed founder of Silk Road, became aware of individ- Individual X's online identi- and threatened Individual X for return of the cryptocurrency to Ulbricht. Uh, Individual X did not return the cryptocurrency, but kept it and did not spend it, the complaint said. Uh, the complaint officially titled United States versus Approximately 69,370 Bitcoin." Holy shit.
- NANarrator
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Holy shit. (laughs)
- TRTiller Russell
Serious chunk of money.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's so much money.
- TRTiller Russell
Serious chunk of money.
- JRJoe Rogan
"Requires the DOJ to prove in court that the seized cryptocurrency is subject to forfeiture," meaning it is...... the proceeds of a criminal act. Wow. Hmm. What would they do with that money? Where's that go?
- TRTiller Russell
I think it goes into, like, you know, further investigations. M- and I'm not certain, but-
- JRJoe Rogan
Nancy Pelosi's hair fund.
- TRTiller Russell
Exactly. Exactly. There it goes.
- 40:25 – 43:05
How investigators found Ross: coding error breadcrumbs, Iceland servers, and forensic tracking
- JRJoe Rogan
So it would have to be an employee. It would have to be someone on site. It would have to be someone who had access to his laptop. Did they get, um, a log from the laptop that showed that those, th- that typed, tho- that type, like the, the, the typed out words, like, "Put the hit on that guy," whatever, however he said it, that that came from that laptop?
- TRTiller Russell
Basically what happened was they ended up ... He, he uses, instead of using a local server, he uses like a server farm in Iceland so that as people, you know, the feds are trying to track him, it's going to this weird ass locale that's not tied to him geographically. So eventually the feds get access to the server farm in Iceland and they're able to kind of ... The s- the simplified version of this is they open it up and they're looking at it in real time from the inside. So it's as if they're wa- they're watching from his laptop, but in another location.
- JRJoe Rogan
How did they do that?
- TRTiller Russell
They haven't gotten access. Because he had made a coding error ver- very early on, because he taught himself all this. Like, this guy wasn't a trained, um, you know, coder. He taught himself all of this, like, in his own time, looking stuff up on, you know, YouTube and whatever, the Dark Web and wherever else. And so he had made an early coding error and had left his, um, email address somewhere, rossulbricht@gmail.com.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, no.
- TRTiller Russell
And that one little breadcrumb very early on led to the IP address that he ends up getting busted for because even though you make those mistakes and you go back and cover it up, it's, um, it's still out there. And then, like, forensically, as they sort of recover and rebuild it, they catch that mistake and that's what ends up bringing him down in the end.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. Oh my goodness.
- NANarrator
I finally found that photo.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah?
- NANarrator
It took forever, but that's it, I guess.
- JRJoe Rogan
So that's the photo of-
- TRTiller Russell
That's the, the fake murder, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
God, that guy looked so close to the guy that you guys, they uh, play him. So there, there's the fake murderer with them with the-
- TRTiller Russell
There's the chihuahua.
- JRJoe Rogan
... the soup coming out of his mouth.
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah. And then that's him. That's, that's, that's one of the real DEA guys there at, at the bottom there. All hail Nob, you see that picture.
- JRJoe Rogan
So that guy with the hat on in the lower left?
- TRTiller Russell
Yep. That's one, that's one o-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's Nob?
- TRTiller Russell
That's one of the two DEA guys.
- JRJoe Rogan
God.
- TRTiller Russell
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's ... Th- the actor you got portrayed him so well.
- TRTiller Russell
Um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- TRTiller Russell
Well, that's the thing with those undercover guys, right, is they-
- JRJoe Rogan
Where is that guy now?
- TRTiller Russell
He's, he's out, and he's actually a huge advocate of Ross, and, you know, wanting to get him, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
Even though Ross wanted him dead?
- TRTiller Russell
Even though Ross wanted him dead, he's now sort of a big supporter of him and, and wants, you know, his... wants him granted clemency or a pardon.
- 43:05 – 45:33
Documentary ethics, filming real danger, and why audiences ‘process’ crime through retelling
- TRTiller Russell
It's a m- the... Like, it's crazy the culture like this, right, which is like, people wanting to relive their thing. I remember very early on, one of the earliest jobs I had was, um, I went out on the crab fishing boats, right, in the Bering Sea, doing, uh, what turned out to be Deadliest Catch once upon a time, right? And so I'm out there on these crab fishing boats, and I'm thinking like, "Who's gonna watch this shit?" You know, sorta crabs pulled out of the ocean. Who cares? And there was this kid on there that was like, a young kid that had washed up in Alaska, you know, got tossed from the army, smoking dope or something, and he ends up in Alaska. And he's on this boat, and he starts telling me, "Man, I'm having nightmares that I'm gonna, like, fall over this boat in the middle of the night." And eventually, he's out there fishing in the middle of the night, throws one of the crab pots over, and the rope catches his leg.
- JRJoe Rogan
(gasps)
- TRTiller Russell
Yanks his ass into the water, right? And the alarms start going off. And I go running out there in the middle of the night to see what the deal is. And my cameraman who's with me at the time is like, "Dude, we gotta help these guys. We gotta rescue that kid." So he drops his camera, and he goes running out to, like, help the other... And I'm kinda like, "Dude, my job is to, like, is to film this shit."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TRTiller Russell
And so I reach down, and I pick up the camera, and I start shooting. And I, and I'm feeling, like, conflicted.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TRTiller Russell
Again, that moral thing. Like, "Okay, should I be, like, helping or should I-"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- TRTiller Russell
"... be filming this?" And so they grab the kid, and they- th- miraculously, they save him. And they pull him onto the deck, and he's, like, shaking with cold, you know, 'cause your heart gives out in, like, six minutes when you're in the water like that. And so I'm holding a camera with one hand and a knife with the other, and I'm cutting the guy's clothes off, right? And the kid slaps me, and he goes, "It's all right, man. Just film it." And I'm thinking, like, "What, like, what world do we live..."
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- TRTiller Russell
It's insane, right? And that's, you know, but, like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- TRTiller Russell
... and then that's the moment that ends up, you know, being, like, "Okay, now we got a TV show, let's turn it into Deadliest Catch."
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- TRTiller Russell
But it's, like, so crazy that, like, people are like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's, yeah. People, people are so aware of what it means to be on television now or what it means to be on the internet or what it means to be a part of a, a thing that a bunch of people are gonna see.
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah. And that's kinda how we process these stories. It's like, why we're still fooling... Why, you know, why are people still watching the story of Richard Ramirez in The Night Stalker 35 years after that happened? And I think part of the reason why is, like, this is how we understand these stories, is by, like, telling them, retelling them, having the discussions about, like, what's the morality of Ross Ulbricht or using crime scene photos of Richard Ramirez. It's kind of this is the way we culturally process this stuff.
- 45:33 – 55:19
Violence, sex, and entertainment: why culture tolerates one and polices the other
- JRJoe Rogan
D- do you ever do a demographic breakdown of who watched? Like, does Netflix have a demogra- demographic breakdown of who watches those crime shows? 'Cause it's mostly women, isn't it?
- TRTiller Russell
The... Anecdotally, that's what everybody says.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
There was a funny bit on Saturday Night Live the other night that was like, you know, w- what, what do ladies do when they're home alone? You know, wait, wait, wait, you know. Then they, like, throw on the murder shows. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Why is that?
- TRTiller Russell
I don't know. It's a weird thing. And when we were making Night Stalker, there would, like... We would get to the, the point in the interview where it's finally, you know... I would ha- I would ask everybody, like, okay, so s- for some reason or another, this guy becomes, like, the Jim Morrison of serial killers, because, like, when he's paraded through the courtroom, all of a sudden, he's got these, like, groupies and fans, and they're sending him... And I had gotten access to all of the, like, naked pictures that the girls are sending in, you know, 'cause this author had written a book about him, had all this stuff. And I was like... And you always have to kind of ask that awkward question of, like, "So why does this guy become this sorta crazy sex symbol object of des- you know, obscure object of desire?" And it's always, like, kind of an... particularly with the, you know, the, the women who are being interviewed, but everybody, and nobody quite has an answer. Is it the bad boy thing? Is it the celebrity thing? But this is somebody that, like, you know, I think as one of the people said, this is somebody that would eat you for dinner, not, like... You know, there's no... It, it's craziness to have any attraction to it, but yet it exists, you know? This guy has, like, groupies and fans.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's very common for murderers to get-
- TRTiller Russell
Hugely common.
- JRJoe Rogan
... especially murders of women to get all these propositions from women.
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's very strange.
- TRTiller Russell
Super strange.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, you know, I read something about that. No, you know who t-... Whitney Cummings was actually telling me about this. She said she, uh, she read that it was something that had to do with... There was, like, a, an evolutionary benefit to getting close to killers. Like, that... I think this is theoretical.
- TRTiller Russell
In what regard?
- JRJoe Rogan
That the idea of it's very hard to kill someone, and-
- TRTiller Russell
Once you have, like, human personal contact?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well-
- TRTiller Russell
Is that what you're saying?
- JRJoe Rogan
No, no, no, no, that the, the act of killing someone, that it's difficult to do, and that it requires, like, someone who is, uh, uh, uh, to be capable of taking another person's life. And to be close to that person means somehow or another you're protected by them, and that they're, they're willing to kill, and that this is, like, something that existed thousands and thousands of years ago in our DNA, this desire to be close to killers, because you were more likely to survive, 'cause there were so many killers. Like, if you went back in time, you know, a few thousand years ago, murder must have been, like, really common.... like, when, when people were sword fighting all the time and stabbing each other-
- TRTiller Russell
Dude, there's a cra- there's a crazy book on this.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah?
- TRTiller Russell
Steven Pinker wrote this book called The Better Angels of Our Nature.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- TRTiller Russell
And what he does is he tracks over time kind of the nature of violence in humanity.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes.
- TRTiller Russell
And he's like, "Okay, once upon a time, there's Cain and Abel, and Cain kills Abel. Like, the murder rate is like 50%. So actually, we've been trending up ever since then."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
And like, it literally looks at how, you know, over time, the incidence of, like, violence has actually, even though it doesn't seem like that, dramatically decreased in humanity.
- JRJoe Rogan
It does seem like that. It does seem like that. I think we just focus on the instances of violence because we have mass media.
- TRTiller Russell
Right.
- 55:19 – 1:10:52
Drug war contradictions, Silk Road as an ‘existential threat,’ and changing enforcement culture
- JRJoe Rogan
It is. And when we get back to Silk Road and Ross Ulbricht, when you see his story and you see what he ... I mean, e- even if he did call for those murders, in a lot of people's eyes, like, what he was doing was stopping rats, stopping people from fucking up his thing, and that these people were ... They're, they were in the way of his idea of what the greater good is.
- TRTiller Russell
Well, and, you know, he has the argument with his, with his girlfriend in the movie where she's like, "Dude, you're selling, like, crack on the site. You're selling meth on the site."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
And his point is, like, "Hey, if you were to go buy this on the street, there's not a rating system. There's not reviews." Like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TRTiller Russell
... "My operation is safer than, like, the old school drug dealers because there actually is some amount of accountability because it's all publicly posted." It's Amazon. It's eBay.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's also a great misunderstanding and, um, uh, a great amount of ignorance when it comes to drugs themselves. There's, uh, a guy named Dr. Carl Hart who was recently on my podcast, he's been on in the past, who wrote a book called, uh, Dr- Drugs for Grown-Ups. I have it over here somewhere?
- NANarrator
Might be in another room.
- TRTiller Russell
It's probably in another room. Yeah, I think I saw it on the way in, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Um, and e- essentially he says crack is coke. It's the same goddamn thing. It's the same effects. He- he's like, "I've, I've had meth." He's like, "It's just an amphetamine." He's like, "The, the idea we put these things in our mind, like these are horrific things."
- TRTiller Russell
Here's the line, right.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's like, "Th- uh, y- you know," he's like, "Ketamine is PCP. It's the same thing." And he, he's a chemist. I mean, he's a PhD. He's a guy who really understands this stuff.
- TRTiller Russell
Right, this is science.
- JRJoe Rogan
He's, yeah, he's a clinical researcher and became a guy who started using these drugs after he became a clinical researcher, was basically a teetotaler til he was in his 30s. And then while he was doing clinical research on these drugs, he started realizing how, how much we've been sort of misinterpreting the effects or, or, uh, or misrepresenting the effects rather, and how people have these ideas on what crack is. And a lot of it is based on racist prosecution policies. Because if you have crack versus coke, the difference in prosecution is fucking astronomical.
- TRTiller Russell
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's really crazy if you-
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah, and one's the, one's the, one's the ghetto street drug-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
... and one's the, like, Wall Street drug, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly. And he said, "But the, the effect is the same. It's the same drug."
- TRTiller Russell
Well, it's also weird, you know, we talk about the, like, cultural shifts, you know, and I always think about this, you know, having done several DEA stories, whether it's The Last Narc on Amazon. And I think of, like, hanging out with these, you know, DEA agents who've, like, become my friends that are in it. Well, now all of a sudden, like, you're in California, like, the weed store ... There's more weed stores in California than there are Starbucks.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
Like, how weird must that be for these, like, DEA guys, these, like, old school kinda knockaround w- like, warriors that dedicated their entire life to the war on drugs? And then it's like ... And then they're like, "Maybe get me some edibles." You know what I mean?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- TRTiller Russell
Like, it's, it's a crazy ... These cultural shifts are so radical in our time. It's like, you know, I wonder if you look at Silk Road 20 years from now and it seems like preposterous that he ... Or, or e- even now maybe, you know, that he gets double life sentences plus 40 without the possibility of parole, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
And so ... These guys that are the cops, they're not bad people either. That's what's fucked. It's like the culture is bad. Like, the culture of law enforcement in terms of, like, prosecuting people for marijuana, it's just, it's bad. It's a bad setup. And they get pushed into this box because this is what their job is. Look, if you're working at Dairy Queen, your job is to make the ice cream, go in a circle, and then you hand it to people. That's your fucking job, right? You might hate swirly ice cream, but that's your job. If you're a cop and they tell you you're supposed to bust people for pot, that's your job. And when things change, these guys have this totally mixed signal. Now, some cops are like, "Look, it's stupid to bust people for pot." But other cops, they had it in their head, "No, pot is a fucking ... I bust people when they have pot. That's what I do." Like, this is-
- TRTiller Russell
It's the job.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that's the job. The job ... That's how I get a collar.
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's, that's what I do. I ... There was a guy that I used to do jujitsu with who was a cop who knew I was a pothead. And it was, it was hilarious 'cause I had a medical, um, prescription for pot. And, uh, he used to just joke around about it. "I'll, I'll still fucking bust people for, for pot." I go, "Why?" M- his friend Mark ... Shout out to Mark. He's still out there. He's l- he would be like, "I-" He goes, "It's, uh, fucking what I do, man. I bust people for pot." We were all joking around about him. I'm like, "What's wrong with you, man? Why are you busting people for pot? Think about all these people out there that are robbing people and lighting houses on fire and stealing cars. Why the fuck are you busting people for pot?" But in his mind, that's the job.
- 1:10:52 – 1:41:26
From Serpico to streaming: revisiting corruption stories and why TV is now the best format
- TRTiller Russell
Serpis f- speaking of Serpico, Serpico looked me up. Serpico found me after the 7-5 came out.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- TRTiller Russell
And-
- JRJoe Rogan
He still alive?
- TRTiller Russell
Still alive.
- JRJoe Rogan
Where is he?
- TRTiller Russell
Still in hiding. He's, um-
- JRJoe Rogan
He's in hiding?
- TRTiller Russell
I mean, he's-
- JRJoe Rogan
What cops wanna kill him now?
- TRTiller Russell
Uh, you know, when you take a bullet through the head, I think you're probably forever looking over your shoulder, which is what happened to him.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, he got shot in the head?
- TRTiller Russell
Got shot in the head.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I didn't know that.
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah, so at the end of it, on like dr-
- JRJoe Rogan
I haven't seen that movie in so long.
- TRTiller Russell
it's, it's, it's really interesting to re- and it was such a crazy call to get. So the 7-5 comes out and he calls me and he's like, "Yo, this is Serpico." And I'm like, "Serpico, Serpico?" And he's like, "Yeah, this is Serpico. I just wanted to say, what that movie showed, nothing's changed, man. Nothing's changed." And it was so weird to get the call, and it made me wanna go back and, you know, kinda re-explore Serpico's story.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- TRTiller Russell
You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
So, how did he get shot in the head? By another cop?
- TRTiller Russell
Yeah, basically at the end, he was th- he was the kinda... He was going around reporting the police corruption that was kind of, you know, epidemic in the police department and, um, uh, you know, according to him anyway. And so eventually, he goes to respond to a call and he goes through the door and he's the first through the door and you're expecting your backup to be there to like, uh, um, you know, get your back. And he goes through the door and I think the door slams on his arm, and all of a sudden he turns around, there's no backup. Bang, he gets shot in the head and that's his like exit from, from working.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- TRTiller Russell
It's a crazy story. And yet he's still like completely lucid and, um, you know, very sharp guy and Pacino nailed him 'cause I was sitting there talking on the phone. It was like he sounded exactly like Pacino in the movie, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- TRTiller Russell
It was really interesting.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was the effects of the bullet hitting his head?
- TRTiller Russell
Um, I don't know. I mean, cognitively, he seemed totally capable. I think it was the s- as I recall, I don't remember all the details, but I think it was like small caliber, didn't, you know, cause any sort of significant cognitive damage. Um, you know, he ended up getting... He has a detective shield when he's like lying in the hospital bed.
- JRJoe Rogan
Jamie's got something there.
Episode duration: 3:15:47
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Transcript of episode 5FHOeiU-ka0
