Joe Rogan Experience #1614 - Tiller Russell

1. 0:00 – 0:54

   Kickoff & praise for Tiller Russell’s films (Silk Road, The Seven Five)

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      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.

   3. TRTiller Russell0:24

      Jalapeno pineapple's strong.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:26

      Not bad, right?

   5. TRTiller Russell0:26

      I like it. It's good.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:26

      It's called Flaming Joe. That's my face, bro.

   7. TRTiller Russell0:28

      (laughs) Then it's flaming.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:30

      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?

   9. TRTiller Russell0:50

      Jason Clarke. I love that guy.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:51

       He's great. He, he's been in a bunch of things.

   11. TRTiller Russell0:53

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:54

       I, I, I-

2. 0:54 – 3:08

   Casting Jason Clarke and building a composite corrupt-cop character

   1. TRTiller Russell0:54

      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."

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:12

      Yeah.

   3. TRTiller Russell1:12

      "I can't wait to see what this cat does," you know?

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:14

      He's so good as a bad guy.

   5. TRTiller Russell1:16

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:17

      He's such a-

   7. TRTiller Russell1:17

      And he, he, he's, he's game for it.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:19

      Yeah. Yeah.

   9. TRTiller Russell1:20

      You know?

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:20

       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."

   11. TRTiller Russell1:27

       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."

   12. JRJoe Rogan2:14

       Is he playing a real guy?

   13. TRTiller Russell2:16

       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.

   14. JRJoe Rogan2:54

       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. 3:08 – 5:21

   Why Silk Road became a ‘movie’ story: Ross vs. the crooked-cop half

   1. TRTiller Russell3:08

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan3:41

      Right.

   3. TRTiller Russell3:41

      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-

   4. JRJoe Rogan4:47

      Right.

   5. TRTiller Russell4:47

      ... 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."

4. 5:21 – 7:05

   Fact vs. fiction choices: family subplot, ‘pouring himself in,’ and authenticity goals

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:21

      The, the stuff with the corrupt cop's wife and daughter, was that fictionalized as well?

   2. TRTiller Russell5:27

      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?"

   3. JRJoe Rogan5:38

      Yeah.

   4. TRTiller Russell5:38

      "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?

   5. JRJoe Rogan6:17

      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...?

   6. TRTiller Russell6:24

      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."

   7. JRJoe Rogan6:54

      Hmm.

   8. TRTiller Russell6:54

      "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.

5. 7:05 – 15:27

   Explaining Silk Road: Tor, Bitcoin, libertarian ethos, and the megaphone effect

   1. JRJoe Rogan7:05

      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.

   2. TRTiller Russell7:35

      Yeah, it's basically like, it's, it's like the Harry Potter invisibility cloak.

   3. JRJoe Rogan7:38

      Mm-hmm.

   4. TRTiller Russell7:38

      You know, you go into Tor and, and it conceals usage and location.

   5. JRJoe Rogan7:43

      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-

   6. TRTiller Russell7:53

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JRJoe Rogan7:53

      ... 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-

   8. TRTiller Russell8:23

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan8:23

      ... 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.

   10. TRTiller Russell8:54

       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?

   11. JRJoe Rogan9:30

       Oh, wow.

   12. TRTiller Russell9:30

       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.

   13. JRJoe Rogan10:29

       Mmm.

   14. TRTiller Russell10:29

       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.

   15. JRJoe Rogan11:16

       Mmm.

   16. TRTiller Russell11:16

       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.

   17. JRJoe Rogan11:25

       Oh, wow.

   18. TRTiller Russell11:25

       Because I felt like you have to be true to who this guy is in some sense spiritually, you know?

   19. JRJoe Rogan11:31

       Yeah. Did you communicate with him at all?

   20. TRTiller Russell11:33

       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-

   21. JRJoe Rogan12:10

       How, how old was she when all it was going down?

   22. TRTiller Russell12:12

       20s. You know, in her 20s. I mean, and that's, and that's kind o-

   23. JRJoe Rogan12:15

       And what year is this?

   24. TRTiller Russell12:16

       That's basically 2011 to 2013.

   25. JRJoe Rogan12:19

       And so, you know, she's... Is she in college? Is she just out of college?

   26. TRTiller Russell12:22

       Like, just out, just out, right? So they're, like-

   27. JRJoe Rogan12:25

       Right.

   28. TRTiller Russell12:25

       ... young people-

   29. JRJoe Rogan12:26

       Idealistic, young.

   30. TRTiller Russell12:26

       ... knocking around Austin.
6. 15:27 – 18:24

   After the takedown: Silk Road 2.0/3.0, Dread Pirate Roberts identity, and ‘hit’ allegations

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:27

      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?

   2. TRTiller Russell15:41

      Well-

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:41

      Where you can do that and you don't get busted?

   4. TRTiller Russell15:44

      There were-

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:45

      I'm asking for a friend. (laughs)

   6. TRTiller Russell15:46

      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.

   7. JRJoe Rogan16:09

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TRTiller Russell16:10

      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.

   9. JRJoe Rogan16:23

      D- now, when the feds had shut it down, was this when Ross was running it?

   10. TRTiller Russell16:28

       When, when he... Basically, after Ross was busted, the feds went in and said, stamped the site that said, "Seized by the FBI."

   11. JRJoe Rogan16:35

       And then it reemerged?

   12. TRTiller Russell16:36

       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.

   13. JRJoe Rogan16:48

       Mm-hmm.

   14. TRTiller Russell16:48

       The idea being like, "Once I go away, there's gonna be a new Dread Pirate Roberts."

   15. JRJoe Rogan16:51

       Right.

   16. TRTiller Russell16:51

       "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.

   17. JRJoe Rogan17:07

       Right.

   18. TRTiller Russell17:07

       So there are those people who, who completely deny. You know, his family completely denies the culpability. And who knows? We'll never know.

   19. JRJoe Rogan17:13

       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?

7. 18:24 – 21:04

   Fake murder photos, true chat logs, and the moral weight of depicting contested events

   1. TRTiller Russell18:24

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan19:00

      Mm-hmm.

   3. TRTiller Russell19:00

      And as we're shooting the movie, we have access to the actual faked murder photos, where like-

   4. JRJoe Rogan19:04

      What does it look like?

   5. TRTiller Russell19:05

      It looks like-

   6. JRJoe Rogan19:06

      Is it available online? Can we see it?

   7. TRTiller Russell19:07

      It's... Yeah, it's available online.

   8. JRJoe Rogan19:08

      Oh. Th- We need to see that right now. See if you can find the-

   9. TRTiller Russell19:11

      Curtis Clark Green, uh, murder photos, fake murder photos.

   10. JRJoe Rogan19:16

       What was his, uh, online name?

   11. TRTiller Russell19:18

       Chronic Pain.

   12. JRJoe Rogan19:19

       (laughs)

   13. TRTiller Russell19:20

       Appropriately enough.

   14. JRJoe Rogan19:21

       Did he look like that guy? The fat-

   15. TRTiller Russell19:22

       He-

   16. JRJoe Rogan19:22

       ... guy with the Crocs?

   17. TRTiller Russell19:23

       ... he does. And I lo- I love that, uh, that actor is amazing.

   18. JRJoe Rogan19:26

       Amazing.

   19. TRTiller Russell19:26

       He was in, um... Eastwood put him in, um, Richard Jewell.

   20. JRJoe Rogan19:30

       Oh.

   21. TRTiller Russell19:30

       And he was in Spike Lee's last movie. Um, he's just gr- He's one of those guys-

   22. JRJoe Rogan19:34

       Did he play Richard Jewell?

   23. TRTiller Russell19:36

       Yeah, he played-

   24. JRJoe Rogan19:36

       Oh, wow.

   25. TRTiller Russell19:36

       ... Richard Jewell. And he's fantastic.

   26. JRJoe Rogan19:38

       He's really good. I mean, he seemed like the quintessential internet couch monster, you know? (laughs)

   27. TRTiller Russell19:43

       Yeah, working with that guy was so fun, you know, because like, again, we had the r- you know, we had information about the real guy. And what happened was when that guy gets busted, when Chronic Pain, um, gets busted, in this article it said he had a chihuahua. And the chihuahua's going batshit barking crazy as the feds are kicking in the door and whatever. And we're sitting there, and I'm thinking like, "Man, chihuahua going batshit on set, that's gonna screw up the dialogue. What do we do?" And so I'm talking to Paul, and Paul's like, "What if we give him a ferret instead?" And I'm like, "Ferret, dude."

   28. JRJoe Rogan20:12

       (laughs)

   29. TRTiller Russell20:12

       "Let's go ferret." You know? And then the other f- the other brilliant thing that Paul did was he said, "You know, all of this..." like, you know, all this online chatter where it's, you know, you're typing on the computer and then the other person types back, he's like, "What if the dude's a mumbler?" So he's kind of saying this shit out loud the whole time that he's talking, and he starts talking to himself. So once he had the ferret and made the guy a mumbler-

   30. JRJoe Rogan20:32

       Mm-hmm.
8. 21:04 – 34:36

   Sentencing shock: plea deal, Trump pardon hopes, and why the book got thrown

   1. TRTiller Russell21:04

      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?

   2. JRJoe Rogan21:26

      Jesus Christ.

   3. TRTiller Russell21:27

      And so they really, you know... Th- they threw the book at this guy and buried him. And, and yet-

   4. JRJoe Rogan21:34

      Did they offer a plea?

   5. TRTiller Russell21:35

      He had... He did ha- He was offered a deal at a certain point, and he turned it down because-

   6. JRJoe Rogan21:39

      What was the deal?

   7. TRTiller Russell21:40

      I think it was 10 years. Um-

   8. JRJoe Rogan21:41

      Jesus Christ, kid.

   9. TRTiller Russell21:42

      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.

   10. JRJoe Rogan23:26

       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.

   11. TRTiller Russell23:50

       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.

   12. JRJoe Rogan24:28

       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?

   13. TRTiller Russell24:38

       You know, there's this, there's-

   14. JRJoe Rogan24:39

       Such, such a disparity.

   15. TRTiller Russell24:40

       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.

   16. JRJoe Rogan25:24

       Crazy. So, what was the motivation for offering him 10 years as a plea?

   17. TRTiller Russell25:29

       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.

   18. JRJoe Rogan26:10

       God, it just... I mean, I just... He'd be out.

   19. TRTiller Russell26:15

       He'd be out.

   20. JRJoe Rogan26:16

       He'd be out now. Full 10 years later.

   21. TRTiller Russell26:19

       Well, and the crazy thing, you know-

   22. NANarrator26:20

       He tweeted this two hours ago. Kind of convenient timing.

   23. JRJoe Rogan26:23

       "I put Silk Road on the t-"

   24. NANarrator26:25

       Oh, sorry.

   25. JRJoe Rogan26:25

       "... 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?

   26. NANarrator26:39

       Mm-hmm. Yeah, he tweets a lot recently about, uh, meditation. He's been-

   27. JRJoe Rogan26:42

       How does he have a Twitter account?

   28. NANarrator26:43

       I don't... He might not be running it. He could be sending messages to someone, but it seems like he's running it.

   29. TRTiller Russell26:46

       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.

   30. JRJoe Rogan27:02

       Fuck.
9. 34:36 – 38:00

   Seized Bitcoin and forfeiture: where the money goes and the scale of the haul

   1. JRJoe Rogan34:36

      How much money did he make?

   2. TRTiller Russell34:38

      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.

   3. JRJoe Rogan34:47

      God. (exhales) And what did, what happened with all that Bitcoin?

   4. TRTiller Russell34:53

      It got, uh, confiscated and seized by the federal government.

   5. JRJoe Rogan34:56

      So the federal government owns it now?

   6. TRTiller Russell34:58

      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-

   7. JRJoe Rogan35:10

      "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?

   8. NANarrator35:25

      Uh, a couple... Just a couple-

   9. TRTiller Russell35:25

      Three months.

   10. NANarrator35:26

       ... weeks, yeah. From November 6th.

   11. JRJoe Rogan35:27

       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-

   12. NANarrator35:33

       (laughs)

   13. JRJoe Rogan35:33

       ... time is today.

   14. TRTiller Russell35:35

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan35:35

       Three months old. Like, pfft, bro, that's a fucking million years ago. Three months?

   16. TRTiller Russell35:39

       Well, time got particularly weird on us over the past year in the pandemic too-

   17. JRJoe Rogan35:43

       Oh, yeah.

   18. TRTiller Russell35:43

       ... you know?

   19. JRJoe Rogan35:44

       But that particularly is, is strange, that they have that little thing to let you know this is not new.

   20. TRTiller Russell35:50

       Waving the flag.

   21. JRJoe Rogan35:51

       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.

   22. NANarrator36:21

       Yeah, yeah.

   23. JRJoe Rogan36:22

       Holy shit. (laughs)

   24. TRTiller Russell36:24

       Serious chunk of money.

   25. JRJoe Rogan36:25

       That's so much money.

   26. TRTiller Russell36:26

       Serious chunk of money.

   27. JRJoe Rogan36:26

       "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?

   28. TRTiller Russell36:42

       I think it goes into, like, you know, further investigations. M- and I'm not certain, but-

   29. JRJoe Rogan36:46

       Nancy Pelosi's hair fund.

   30. TRTiller Russell36:48

       Exactly. Exactly. There it goes.
10. 38:00 – 1:48:24

    True-crime consumption and morality: Night Stalker, groupies, and why we watch

    1. TRTiller Russell38:00

       I struggle with, for me, every single one of these, uh, true stories or based on a true story has a big moral question to it, you know? When I'm making The Night Stalker for Netflix, the question is like, okay, you got all these like brutal cri- you know, crime scene photos of people that are just, you know-

    2. JRJoe Rogan38:23

       Yeah.

    3. TRTiller Russell38:23

       ... essentially gutted, and just the most horrible stuff ever. And so it becomes this question of, okay, how much of that stuff do you show the world? Um, a- or how much of it do you conceal because you want it to be a, a, you know, a compelling show that people are able to watch? And so every single one of them has a big moral question where you're constantly kind of struggling with it. With Silk Road, you know, the hits is a big thing because, okay, there's no, there's no guarantee that it was necessarily him behind the keys ordering them. But at the same time, you know, a reasonable mind would assume, "Okay, you're the guy that's got the keys to the kingdom. Um, you're broadcasting everything else. Presumably it is you that makes this decision." But it's, um, you know, that's, that's the thing with these crime stories and these true stories is it constantly requires me to make moral judgments about what to-

    4. JRJoe Rogan39:16

       Hmm.

    5. TRTiller Russell39:16

       ... include and what not to include.

    6. JRJoe Rogan39:17

       Yeah, that's what I would, uh, particularly with that ... Well, well, I guess with Richard Ramirez in The Night Stalker, like, you've got bodies, they're real photos. You've got, you know, obviously real murderers. My question is, with him, if he said he didn't call for those hits, if you portrayed the DEA agent c- creating a false account or hacking into his account in some way, what, what would be the method they could do that? Like, if it wasn't him that did it ... See, he's using an encrypted website. He's g- doing it through an encrypted browser. Like, how would it be possible for someone else to-

    7. TRTiller Russell39:56

       Well, say he's got employees that are working with h-

    8. JRJoe Rogan39:58

       I mean, did he-

    9. TRTiller Russell39:59

       Theor- theoretically, there are people that are co-conspirators, collaborators-

    10. JRJoe Rogan40:02

        Right.

    11. TRTiller Russell40:02

        ... that have access to different things, and maybe it's not him that's actually typing it. I mean, I think most reasonable minds would conclude that was the decision and that was the intent. But at the same time, you can't prove it a- and because that's the whole thing with the, the sort of anonymous internet, no accountability.

    12. JRJoe Rogan40:21

        Yeah.

    13. TRTiller Russell40:21

        Who knows, man?

    14. JRJoe Rogan40:21

        Yeah.

    15. TRTiller Russell40:22

        You know? So yeah, it's a, it's a big-

    16. JRJoe Rogan40:25

        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?

    17. TRTiller Russell40:47

        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.

    18. JRJoe Rogan41:17

        How did they do that?

    19. TRTiller Russell41:17

        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.

    20. JRJoe Rogan41:42

        Oh, no.

    21. TRTiller Russell41:42

        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.

    22. JRJoe Rogan42:00

        Wow. Oh my goodness.

    23. NANarrator42:02

        I finally found that photo.

    24. JRJoe Rogan42:03

        Yeah?

    25. NANarrator42:04

        It took forever, but that's it, I guess.

    26. JRJoe Rogan42:06

        So that's the photo of-

    27. TRTiller Russell42:08

        That's the, the fake murder, right?

    28. JRJoe Rogan42:10

        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-

    29. TRTiller Russell42:16

        There's the chihuahua.

    30. JRJoe Rogan42:17

        ... the soup coming out of his mouth.

Episode duration: 3:15:47