The Joe Rogan ExperienceAndrew Jarecki on Joe Rogan: Why prisons work as black sites
Guard-sold contraband phones became the only evidence trail inside Alabama prisons; Jarecki argues secrecy turns facilities into functional black sites.
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,029 words- 0:02 – 1:56
Why prison abuses stay hidden: secrecy, control, and deaths without investigation
- SPSpeaker
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day. [upbeat rock music]
- JRJoe Rogan
What's happening, man? How are you?
- SPSpeaker
I'm good. How are you?
- JRJoe Rogan
I'm great. I watched, uh, your documentary, The Alabama Solution, last night, and it was wild. It's very, very disturbing. Um, kind of shocked I hadn't heard more about it, you know, 'cause it's such a terrible, terrible story. It's such a, just an unbelievably awful situation, and, um, I think you covered it really well. It's just, it's very, very heartbreaking.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Thanks for watching it. Yeah, it's sort of a question of, of, sort of a question of why people, uh, don't know about things that are happening with our tax dollars in our backyards. You know, are there things that we don't wanna know? Um, there's a reason why people sort of drive by prisons on the highway, and they see the little metal sign, and it says, you know, XYZ Correctional, and they probably think, as I did for many years, "Well, I'm sure it's not great back there, but doesn't need to be great, and if anything terrible was happening back there, somebody'd probably tell me about it." But because of the secrecy that surrounds prisons, um, you know, we treat them sort of like black sites. There's no way for us to really look inside, so the press doesn't get let in, and the public doesn't understand what's happening. And we know that, you know, when you give people total control over other people, bad things happen.
- JRJoe Rogan
Bad things happen-
- SPSpeaker
Especially-
- JRJoe Rogan
... every single time. And this is one of the worst things. It's, what's really terrifying is the sheer numbers of people that died there with no investigation. That's what's really terrifying.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Because, you know, you even detailed at, at the end, like, since then, how many people have died, and it's just like, good Lord, you're, you're, thousands.
- 1:56 – 3:48
A system that kills: punishment, mental illness, and the ‘catchall’ role of prisons
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Well, there's a attorney general in Alabama named Steve Marshall, uh, who's always run on, like, tough on crime strategies and saying, you know, "We gotta lock more people up, and people who are in prison for, uh, violent crimes should potentially never get out of prison, ever." Um, and he says in the film, as you remember, um, that, uh, there... I, I ask him about the nature of crime, and he says, "Well, I think there are evil people in this world, people who have absolutely no regard for human life." And this is a guy who's presided over a system that's killed, that's led to the deaths of 1,500 people just since we started making the film.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
So this question of, like, who are the good guys, and who are the bad guys, and, you know, what's the nature of, of cruelty? What's the nature of punishment? Are we putting people there to try to make them better, rehabilitate them? Are we putting them there because they're drug addicts, and we're trying to get rid of them as opposed to rehabilitate them or as opposed to try to get them off of drugs? So obviously, prisons have become pretty much a catchall for the ills of society. So if you have mental illness, much more likely to go to prison. Once you're in prison, if you're mentally ill or you have bad social skills, you're much more likely to get into a scrape with a guard who probably isn't trained to deal with somebody who's mentally ill, and you're much more likely to get murdered, which is what we saw happening in Alabama.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, you, you even... The, the, it's the old expression, who's gonna watch the watchers, right? 'Cause one of the things that you detail is very obviously non-violent people who spend all their time writing and reading, and they're getting retribution because they're calling attention to the terrible conditions at the prison. So the one guy, um, with the glasses who was beaten blindly, what was his name?
- SPSpeaker
Uh, Robert O'Council.
- 3:48 – 5:04
Contraband phones and the guards’ economy: corruption as the access point
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, there's so many stories that you show in this documentary from smuggled cameras. So these guys all get contraband cameras, uh, from the guards.
- SPSpeaker
From, from the guards. Yeah, the guards sell the camera, sell the, uh, sell the phones to the men inside.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is also crazy.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. I mean, there's so many drugs in the Alabama state prison system, and I, I spoke to one of the people who was incarcerated there early on on a contraband cellphone, and I said, "You know, where are all the, the drugs coming from? The amount of drugs here, this is incredible, you know, human wasteland, and you're seeing just high, high percentage, maybe 80% of the people are addicted to drugs, many of whom were not addicted to drugs before they came in. And how are you getting all the cellphones?" And the guy looked at me like I was, you know, uh, uh, stupid. [laughs] And he said, "You know we don't leave, right?" And I thought, "Oh, I get it. The people that come and go are the guards." Those are the ones that go out. They get the packages. They bring them in. And I've spoken to guards who've said, you know, "We make $36,000 a year without the drugs, without the cellphones, so of course we gotta sell the cellphones and the drugs because that takes us up to 70 or 75,000."
- 5:04 – 6:34
Drugs inside: Flakka, fentanyl-on-paper, and overdose risk behind bars
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, God. Yeah. So what are the main drugs these guys are addicted to? Where are they getting them?
- SPSpeaker
Well, there's, there's, uh, originally, right, it was sort of more traditional drugs, and people were using heroin and using, um, whatever they could get ahold of. But as the drugs have gotten more, uh, complicated and easier to bring in, now they can actually put, there's a drug called Flakka, which is a very, uh, significant problem there. Uh, fentanyl obviously also, but these drugs can be brought in, uh, on a piece of paper. So somebody could send you a letter, and it could be in the letter. They can actually put the drug into the paper.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, sort of like acid, when they put acid on paper?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. And, and so, you know, there's this effort to kind of stopThat, but then does it lead to people being unable to communicate with their loved ones? Ultimately, the, the easiest way to get the drugs is for the officers to sell the drugs. And so, you know, we say, and I think it's sadly true, that the Alabama Department of Corrections, and it's not just in Alabama, but obviously we use that as the lens through which we saw incarceration more generally. But the Alabama Department of Corrections is the largest law enforcement agency in the state of Alabama, and it's also the biggest drug dealing operation.
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
You know, you're, you're much more likely to die of an overdose inside the prison than you are out on the street in Alabama.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- SPSpeaker
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
Statistically?
- SPSpeaker
Yep.
- 6:34 – 7:58
The strike and retaliation: ‘It’s prison, it’s supposed to suck’ meets reality
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh my God. Oh, boy. You know, one of the things that is, uh... what was very heart-wrenching is this, uh, callous approach. These... You, you showed at the one time where all these, uh, prisons went on strike, so they all communicated with each other through these contraband cell phones they all got from the guards. So I guess it's ubiquitous throughout the state. It's not just this one.
- SPSpeaker
Correct.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, um, these people on the radio were like, "Well, it's prison. It's supposed to suck." You know, maybe if they had saw your film, they wouldn't have such a cavalier attitude about it.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But it's that attitude. It's like these are human beings, and some of them barely did anything. Like one guy that wound up dying from y- you think they did something to, or they think they did something to a cigarette that they gave this guy. He... All he did was break into an abandoned building.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Enter, entering in-
- JRJoe Rogan
He didn't steal anything.
- SPSpeaker
En- entering an unoccupied building.
- JRJoe Rogan
And... Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. His name is James Sales.
- JRJoe Rogan
I mean, I don't even know if he broke in, right? If it was unoccupied, it might've even been open.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, it said entering. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So he entered a building that he wasn't supposed to enter, and he got 15 years in a cage, and then on his way out, the... at least they're inferring that they killed him because he had too much information about what was going on inside, and he was gonna get out.
- 7:58 – 11:31
How Jarecki got inside: chaplains, curated access, and being kicked out
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Yeah. This goes back to the story of, uh, a woman, um, who we had met and her son. When we were first communicating with the men using these contraband cell phones and they were telling us what was going on inside the prison, inside the various prisons, um, we sort of, in the early days, we couldn't believe it. 'Cause the way we got into the prisons to begin with is I had gone down to Alabama, um, because I was always interested in incarceration and the problems of that system and the justice system. I had made other films about the justice system. And, uh, and, and I was always curious about Alabama 'cause it's sort of famously maybe the worst prison system in the country, but it mirrors a lot of others. And my daughter was 14 at the time, Jeremy, and she, uh, and she said, "You know, I'm reading this book by a guy named Anthony Ray Hinton, and it's a book about his wrongful imprisonment in Alabama, and maybe you should read this with me." So we end up reading the book together, and then we both sort of just spontaneously decided to take a road trip to Montgomery because we just didn't know anything about it and had never been there. Uh, she was growing up in New York, and it was just not in her frame of reference. So we went down there, and we met a man who was the first Black prison chaplain in the state of Alabama, uh, Chaplain Browder, and I said, "Well, I'm really curious about what's going on in the prisons." And he said, um, "Well, you should just come in with me." And I said, "Well, I'm a filmmaker. They're not gonna let me just walk into the prison in Alabama." And he said, "Well, just don't come in as a filmmaker. You just don't have to bring a camera. Just come in and talk to some of the guys." So I went in to film. Uh, ultimately, we, we were allowed to film ultimately in one of the prisons, and when we were in there to film this revival meeting, just 'cause we, we were lucky enough to find a, a, a warden who felt like, uh, you know, he wanted to, to show an example of how Christianity was, um, active and important in the prison system, which I agreed with. Um, but then while we were in there filming, uh, with, like, five cameras, which was just unheard of, the men inside couldn't believe that there were any cameras in there, and they started taking us aside and saying, "Listen, what they're showing you here is a very curated version of what's going on in this prison. You have to get into these other buildings. You've got to see what's going on in that dorm over there called the, the Behavior Modification Dorm, where guys have been killed by guards, and you've got to look in that dorm where people have been in solitary confinement for five years at a time. You know, don't let them show you just what they want to show you." And I felt much safer, you know, even though the warden had said to us, "When you go in there, you know, don't talk to any of the men. They're all very dangerous," I, I immediately felt safer talking to the inmates than I did talking to any of the guards. And, uh, when we left, it was really because we got kicked out, right? We, we, we start... You saw in the beginning of the film, we sort of start getting nosy, and we start trying to look in some of these other areas, and then they, they shut down the filming. They throw us out. And then we thought, "Well, you know, maybe we're stuck now. How are we gonna make a film about this? We feel we have to because we're the only people that know what's going on in here, but they're not gonna let us back." So it was then that we found out that there was this network of men inside who had access to these contraband cell phones who were documenting what was going on, so that was our way of getting into those buildings that we couldn't see inside. Um, and one of the first things we learned was, uh, one of, one of the guys inside, Melvin Ray, texted us
- 11:31 – 19:47
Steven Davis: beating death, coverups, and a mother becomes an investigator
- SPSpeaker
to say, "Hey, um, you know, this, this, this guard," it was a guard that we had been tracking already who was a particularly violent guard, um, "he just beat somebody very badly, and he's now... That person, the victim, is at UAB Hospital." So we jumped in a car, and we went to UAB Hospital and just walked up. I just put my iPhone in my pocket, and we just walked up to theIntensive care unit. And when we got there, we found that this young man, Steven Davis, had, had died from his injuries. And as we started to get deeper into it, we went and visited his mother, 'cause we didn't even know if she knew that she had lost her son. But in fact, she had been with him when he passed away. She had sort of turned off the life support. And we said, "We wanna make a film about this. We- we're, we're trying to tell the story." And she immediately said, "I'm in. I wanna help you. I don't want this to happen to any other mothers." You know, and this is a, a very nice white lady from Uniontown, Alabama with a oxygen tank. I mean, she's, she's not somebody that you would see ordinarily as kind of a heroic person, but when she loses her son, she really becomes, uh, so activated, and she ends up telling us the story. And then she says, "Look, you know, uh, they're lying to me already. You know, my son just died last night, and they're already calling me and telling me things about how he was the one that attacked guards, and none of this is true. This all seems like it's f- it's fake. So teach me how to record my phone calls." You know, so this, this older woman suddenly became a, a really important partner in making the film. And this gets back to your question about Steven Davis. So her son, who was a drug addict, right, didn't kill anybody, but was in a car when a drug deal went bad. He went to try to buy drugs, and his friend went in the house, and they had a fight and somebody got shot. And then he got arrested and was charged with murder because that's how the felony murder statute works. And so here you have a drug addict who goes to prison in Alabama, um, and is in the highest security prison there, um, and is targeted by a particular guard who is especially violent and is just beaten to death in front of 70 witnesses. Um, and then of course, as we go through the film, we start tracking that in our investigation, and we start, uh, looking into the coverup and why they lied about how he had died and how they scrambled the witnesses and how the Department of Corrections, um, is organized so that they prevent people from finding out what really happened to their kids or their loved ones, and they avoid liability and so on. And there was one person that we ended up hearing from, this guy James Sales, who originally tells just the police side of the story, just says, "Well, you know, yeah, it's exactly the way that the guard said." But then he kind of hints on the phone, "Listen, when I get out of here, I'll, I'll tell the real story."
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, do they have access to these communications? Is there a way they could be hacking into it and known that Sales had said that to you?
- SPSpeaker
Well, the, the, the person that, that he said it to was the lawyer for Sandy Ray. So sh- so he was supposed to be on a, a private attorney call. But we do think that the Department of Corrections doesn't abide by that. I think they, I think they do listen to attorney calls. Sales didn't say exactly on the phone what he was gonna say, but, but I think they knew that he was a problem, 'cause he was a good person. I mean, Sales, the one who, who entered an unoccupied building and was locked up for 15 years for that, um, was obviously a decent person. That's why he says, you know, "When, when I get out, um, I'll speak to that... I'm not gonna lie to that man's mother. But right now, this is their world, bro. I, um, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say more. I'm not gonna put myself on the-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right, but just by saying that might've been his death sentence.
- SPSpeaker
He also... As he started to get closer to getting out, you know, 'cause he was, he was killed, uh, a month before he was gonna get out. And so as he started getting closer to release, he just started to get more frustrated and more angry and started to say things to guards about like, you know, "You know what I've seen in here, and, and I'm gonna..."
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- SPSpeaker
You know. And then lo and behold, uh, he, he gets found, uh, in his cell dead. And, you know, he's bleeding from orifices in his body. I mean, it was pretty clear that he was given what they call a hot shot, which is they give you a cigarette that's got something bad on it, and it, uh, and it can kill you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Boy. [exhales] Um, so when you first started, uh, when you first showed up with cameras, did you know basically what was going on? Did you have an understanding of what was going on? Like, what were you attempting to do when you got there? Were you just gonna try to investigate and figure it out, or did you already have reports?
- SPSpeaker
We already... We knew a bunch of stuff. You know, we knew because we had had this, this... We had visited some prisons as volunteers. Um, and I had gone on the death row, uh, with my, my filmmaking partner, Charlotte Kaufman. We had, had gone into Easterling. We had gone originally into Holman Prison, where they have the death row. And we went in there with the chaplain, and the lieutenant came down and said, um, "You know, unfortunately, we're so, um, understaffed right now," which is an understatement, um, "that, you know, we don't have anybody to take you around. But, you know, Chaplain, I, I know you wanna show your friends around the death row, so, you know, just go for it." So we ended up walking around the death row for like two or three hours just talking to men, and those men were very helpful. They, they weren't... You know, we weren't talking to irrational people. We weren't talking to... You know, they're, they're people who were trying to get the story out. And so we knew going in that there were a lot of bad things happening. We didn't know exactly what. And then when we went into Easterling and the men started calling us aside and saying, you know, "They beat me so bad I defecated on myself," or, you know, "I, I just saw there were f- five stabbings this week and none have been reported," um, we started to realize that it was really a, a huge crisis, but it was just being kept secret.
- JRJoe Rogan
This episode is brought to you by Surfshark.With the help of AI, scammers are getting smarter every day, sending emails that look legit but are designed to steal your data, passwords, and money. If you want to stay protected, you gotta check out Surfshark. It's way more than your good old VPN. It's an all-in-one security tool. They have a ton of advanced features and one in particular that's called Email Scam Checker. This thing notifies you if an email you received is a scam or a phishing attempt. So instead of just guessing whether the bank email is real, you can check it before you click. And of course, Surfshark still provides the standard VPN benefits of hiding your online activity or allowing you to virtually change your location and access geo-blocked content while traveling. The final kicker, one subscription covers unlimited devices, so you can protect your phone, laptop, even share it with your household, pay for one tool, protect all aspects of your online life. Go to surfshark.com/rogan or use code ROGAN at checkout and get four extra months of Surfshark. surfshark.com/rogan or code ROGAN for four extra months. So it's crazy that you're relying on these guards to get in the phones that they're using to expose the crimes of the guards. So, and it's like the guards are aware of the phones because they provided them to the inmates and they're contraband. They're not supposed to have them, but yet they all do. And so they have to ignore it if they want to keep selling them phones?
- SPSpeaker
Well, another way of looking at it is that there's so little accountability that they don't actually think they're going to get in trouble for anything. And they're kind of right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- 19:47 – 24:00
Rod Gadson and the mechanics of impunity: ‘Quit resisting’ and promotions
- SPSpeaker
Right? And if you remember that guard who kills Steven Davis, Rod Gadson-
- JRJoe Rogan
Uh-huh
- SPSpeaker
... who's, you know, this guy might be the most violent prison guard in America. He's still working in the Alabama state prison system after he's a, has a starring role, against his will I'm sure, but after he has a starring role in our documentary, which has been seen by millions of people, they still have him employed there. They still have him interacting with people.
- JRJoe Rogan
And he got hired to a higher position.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Yeah. He got, he's been promoted twice and now he's up for another promotion.
- JRJoe Rogan
[sighs]
- SPSpeaker
Um, so I think to some extent the guards just say, "Well, you know, I can do whatever I want. I can sell the cell phones." And by the way, not all the guards are bad, right? The, the, there are guards that we met there who were pretty heartbroken because they went into the system hoping to make change or trying to... Maybe they wanted to work in the police department and there weren't any jobs. But in their town, they had the ability to work in a prison, so they kind of went in there and described to us that they wanted to help people with addiction. They wanted to see if they could help rehabilitate people. But when they got in there, they realized very quickly that was not what was in the offing. That wasn't an opportunity for them.
- JRJoe Rogan
So, so the guy, this Roderick guy that beat Steven to death, um, the, the story was that Steven had some sort of an implemented weapon, correct?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. That he had a plastic knife.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Wa- was there any evidence of that?
- SPSpeaker
Um, he had some kind of like a, a, some kind of plastic, uh, thing that he had made. It did not appear to be anything very serious because the reason he had made it is because somebody had called him gay and you have to fight your way out of that, right? He wasn't gay as it turns out. Um, but when they-
- JRJoe Rogan
You have to fight your way out of that?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So if somebody calls you gay, you have to fight them?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. You, in other words, you can't put up with that because otherwise they're gonna turn you into what they call a sissy. They're gonna turn you into somebody that gets raped, and there's so much rape in the prison that the, the DOJ report, uh, that came out said that there's rape occurring at all hours of the day and night in all areas of the prison.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- SPSpeaker
So rape is such a significant problem, um, and when Steven Davis was in there and was accused of being gay, he had to make a show of, of fighting the person that was calling him gay. He, he never went after the guards or anything like that and everybody that, that the lawyer spoke to, um, you know, a dozen witnesses who had seen what happened, all of them said he, as soon as the guards came in, he immediately laid down on the floor and put his weapon about 15 feet away from him, put his, this plastic knife 15 feet away and w- then the guards came in and just started beating him even though there was no threat. And he would s- and the guards would say, Gadson was saying to, to Steven Davis, you know, "Quit resisting. Quit resisting." And he wasn't resisting at all and that's what all the witnesses said.
- JRJoe Rogan
So they just have to say that so they yell it out to-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. It's almost, I think it was almost like, it was almost just a warning to everybody else like, "Look, I can do anything that I want."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
"I can say that he's resisting."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
"Isn't it funny?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, God.
- SPSpeaker
You know? And, uh, and the way, you know, the way he kills him, he stomps on his head with his size 15 boot. This is a guy who's almost 300 pounds. I think he's about six foot five and he's been implicated in 24 other excessive force cases and the attorney general in Alabama every single time is defending the guard.
- JRJoe Rogan
How many other people have died in those cases?
- SPSpeaker
There've been a lot of other injuries. The only, uh, the, I, I think that there have been two people who've died out of the 24 or 25 cases that we know about. Um, but, but there are a lot of just maimings. There are a lot of situations where people are just damaged often permanently. You saw what happened at Kinetic Justice when he, you know, Robert Earl Council, when he leads a non-violent work strike, the guards come and attack him and, and he loses sight in one of his eyes.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
He's, you know, dragged out of the cell. There's a huge amount of blood. Um-So, you know, the, especially these guys who are leading a non-violent effort to try to improve conditions, they're always met with violence.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. He was the guy that was at the head of this strike.
- 24:00 – 27:20
Convict leasing revived: forced labor, corporate beneficiaries, and $2-a-day work
- JRJoe Rogan
And then the strike really highlights something that I think a lot of people are unaware of, is how many industries actually use the prison system essentially for slave labor.
- SPSpeaker
Sure. Yeah. I mean, that was a shock to me, I think, is that, you know, I guess we all sort of assume, well, if you're in prison and they ask you to mop the floor, or you need to help serve the meals or something, you know, that's a reasonable thing to do. I think what we don't realize is that those people are leased out to the governor, to the mansion where the governor lives.
- JRJoe Rogan
Crazy.
- SPSpeaker
Um, you know, where they're-
- JRJoe Rogan
That was crazy.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
People that were denied parole were allowed to be on the grounds of the governor's mansion doing, like, groundwork.
- SPSpeaker
Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Landscaping and stuff.
- SPSpeaker
Yep, yep, yep. And, and beyond that, [clears throat] they're used for labor in industry, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
So those are s- those guys are sent out in the mornings in vans. They go work at McDonald's, they work at Burger King, they work at Kentucky Fried Chicken, they work at the Hyundai plant, they work at, uh, the Budweiser distributorship, um, and it's all sort of under the heading of, wow, this is good for the guys. They get to get out into the community. Um, but it's a forced labor situation because if they don't, if they don't accept those assignments, then they're gonna be punished, and they're gonna be punished with long stays in solitary confinement. They're gonna be given disciplinaries so that their sentences can be extended. Uh, they are often just beaten for that. So it's really an extension... I've heard you on the, on, on your show talk about, um, you know, talk about the Jim Crow laws, which led to convict leasing. And what we're seeing in Alabama now, it's not like convict leasing. It is exactly convict leasing. They are just selling the labor of incarcerated people, uh, to industries. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
For pennies on the dollar of what-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... you would get if you had to pay people.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. And they, I mean, they get paid well.
- JRJoe Rogan
But they get paid.
- SPSpeaker
They get paid well. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But not the f- the... N- you're saying they, meaning the prisons, get paid well.
- SPSpeaker
Yes.
- JRJoe Rogan
But not the prisoners.
- SPSpeaker
Correct. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The prisoners get any money?
- SPSpeaker
They, they get a little money. For example, the, the guy you see who's driving a sanitation truck, um, uh, Danny Dandridge, uh, describes how he's getting paid $2 a day. And-
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, is that standard across the board for all those other jobs?
- SPSpeaker
I think for that-
- JRJoe Rogan
The Hyundai plant, everything?
- SPSpeaker
I think for that, for that job, they're, they get paid a little bit of money, and then on top of that, they're charged for the cost of the van that takes them to the workplace. They're charged for the uniform that they have to wear. So it's sort of like there, there are kind of fees and fines that knock everything down to almost nothing, and in a lot of cases, the $2 a day is a lot. You know, they're, they're required to do, uh, lots of work unpaid, um, in the prisons. They do all the construction. Um, you could see that even the drug dorm where the, the counselor decided to leave his job, there was a professional drug counselor in one of the prisons, and nobody replaces him. And so Raul Poole, one of the guys in our film, uh, just starts running the drug dorm. And that's a drug dorm that's getting money from the federal government to pay for drug treatment program in prison, and that money's just not going anywhere, or money's just going into the coffers of whoever's running the prison system.
- 27:20 – 33:46
DOJ report vs. ‘build new prisons’: construction boondoggles and missing audits
- JRJoe Rogan
God. And is there any accountability for all the money? Is there any... Do they do an audit of the money? Does there... Or is it just-
- SPSpeaker
There really is not any meaningful accountability. You know, there's, like, the state auditor, who we actually interviewed and spent a lot of time with, just sort of threw up his hands. You know, he said, "This, there's just no way for me to keep track of this money." And, you know, for example, uh, they, they got this incredibly horrible, uh, set of findings from the Justice Department, right? The DOJ went into the Alabama state prison system and did an investigation because, for reasons I can explain that are kind of incredible. Um, but anyway, they went in there and they investigated the whole prison system, which I think they'd never done before. You know, usually they investigate an individual prison or something like that. Um, and they went in and, and, and issued a report that said, "This is a, you know, beyond the pale. There's, there are horrific things that are happening in your prisons, people being murdered, and there's the highest rate of drug overdose, and, uh, highest rate of rape." And Alabama's response was to say, "Well, you know, we think that's just anecdotal, and you don't know what you're talking about." And then they decided that their solution, the Alabama solution that we sort of ironically talk about in the title of the film, the one the governor talks about, is just to build new prisons. And meantime, the DOJ did not say to build any new prisons. The DOJ said, "Your problem is with corruption and brutality, and you ha- you're operating really a criminal enterprise. Um, and therefore you need to address the underlying problems." And Alabama's response was, "Well, the DOJ says the prisons are no good, so we gotta build new ones." Well, that, you know, so the-
- JRJoe Rogan
So they get a massive contract.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, exactly. So we, you know, we always call it the Alabama Department of Construction because they don't really change anything unless they have the opportunity to build something, and that's really good for all the governor's supporters and all the other people who are, you know, in the construction industry. And, you know, they've now started construction on these massive new prisons. You know, Alabama's a tiny state. It's, like, you know, smaller population, I think, than Norway. And they've got a tiny budget, and yet they figure out how to put together a multi-billion dollar prison construction plan. They can't fund it at first. The governor announces she's gonna build these new prisons, which the DOJ did not ask for and are not gonna solve the problem. And they admit, by the way, that they're not gonna affect overcrowding, which is a huge problem. The prisons are operating at, like, 200% capacity. And, you know, when they're asked about it, the head of the Department of CorrectionsThey ask him, "Is this going to affect the overcrowding, or is it just the same number of beds?" And he goes, "No, it's the same number of beds. It's not going to affect overcrowding." So they're building these massive new facilities. The governor can't get them paid for. She can't raise the money in a bond offering. So they go after the COVID money that they got from the government, which is not designed to build prisons. It's very hard to argue that building prisons is something that's going to relieve some other kind of health problem or whatever. And then I think they get fined for that, or you have to pay a fine if you use government money for a thing that it's not supposed to be for. And then when they start construction, they still can't raise the money, but they start building the new prisons even before they're authorized by the legislature. That's how clearly it was communicated that these prisons were going to happen. In other words, we had a crew in Alabama that was watching this site of this one massive prison that they were planning on building, and there were just bean fields. And it was quite beautiful, actually. And one day I get a call from somebody and they say, "We got to start filming because there are 25 earth movers here." And I said, "Well, that's impossible because the legislature hasn't even approved the new prison construction." And they said, "Well, the prison construction companies know it's happening, and they're already spending hundreds of thousands of dollars just to clear the site." So the fix was in on this new prison construction. And the governor announced that it was going to cost $900 million to build three new prisons. So far, they've broken ground and are far along on the first prison, and it's up to $1.3 billion. So when you open that door, a whole lot of commerce comes in. A whole lot of companies come in. And they ask them why was it so expensive? How did it go from $300 million for one prison to $1.3 billion for one prison and counting? And they said, "Well, it's inflation." Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure that the government's not going to say that we got 400% inflation at the moment. So it's kind of institutionalized thievery.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it's organized crime.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
When you are in charge of deciding what's crime-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... and you're running a state like Alabama.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. And I think money in the justice system is a very perverting factor. I made this series called "The Jinx" and Robert-
- JRJoe Rogan
Great fucking series, by the way.
- SPSpeaker
Oh, thank you. Thank you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Crazy.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
You watch this going, "What?"
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
"Is this real?"
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, me too. [laughs] He's an incredible person to watch, but one thing about him is that family's worth $9 billion. This is not like a regular rich person in America.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
This is an extra super-duper rich person in America, and he's killed three people over 30 years and just walking around, gotten away with it. Meantime, you have young women, moms in Brazos County Jail in Texas. Our mutual friend Jeff Ross did a documentary there, and he interviews the girls that are in there, and he says, "What are you in here for?" And two of them say, "I'm in here because I stole baby formula." So money means a lot in this equation.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's crazy. Yeah.
- 33:46 – 41:56
The prison industrial complex beyond private prisons: vendors, communications, and profit logic
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. [sighs] The money stuff is all over the place. The perverting of the system with money you see because, for example, these big prison companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic make money by having full prisons. They're private prison companies, but there are a lot of companies that provide services to public prisons, to state prisons like Cisco and all these companies that sell food there. But everybody makes more money if the prisons are full. And so you have the head of CoreCivic just did a shareholder call not too long ago, Andy Hinninger, I think his name is, and they said, "What's the outlook?" And he said, "Oh, with all the new immigration prisons and all the prisons and all the increased emphasis on law enforcement and on incarceration, this is the most exciting time in my career."
- JRJoe Rogan
Oy.
- SPSpeaker
So you're really building this prison industrial complex every day, especially right now, I think, and all these people, they're all doing bad stuff. There's a company called Securus, which is run by Tom Gores, who is a big team owner, owns the Pistons, Detroit Pistons, and some other teams, and is a private equity guy worth about $10 billion. And his company, Securus, does communications for the prison systems. And they made deals that have now been sort of exposed, but they made deals with sheriff's departments where they had jails, and they said, "Instead of letting kids visit their parents in jail and actually get to see them and hug them and maybe have some kind of normalcy, let's install video visit terminals." So the cover story was that video visits are going to be great because you don't have to drive across the state to see your loved one. But the contract specifically said that they had to replace in-person visits. So when a kid went to go visit his dad-Even if he was 20 yards away from him in the prison waiting room, he had to use a video terminal, which cost $12.99 for 20 minutes, and he was not allowed to see his dad in person.
- JRJoe Rogan
[sighs]
- SPSpeaker
So, so that's an example of, you know... And that's in the contract. That's in the Securus contract. It said that they have to eliminate the in-person visits. So when you allow that for-profit motive to be driving things in these, like, state institutions where theoretically we should, you know, have some kind of, like, m-moral approach that makes sense for society or, you know, can help community or build our relationships or help people stay in touch with their loved ones when they're incarcerated, um, when you add that for-profit motive there, the system is just designed to exploit. It just is natural that all those people have to get, you know, they all have... And so there's a, there's a kind of a, a value to every visit. Every time a visit, you know, every time a kid comes and visits a parent, it's worth $12.99. Well, why do it for free if you can get $12.99 for it?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh. Is it one of the darker aspects of human nature in regards to our relationship with money if that so many people, if unchecked, if you give them the opportunity to make more money at the expense of other people, they do it?
- SPSpeaker
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
They just do it.
- SPSpeaker
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
They do, especially in, under the framework of a corporation. Y- the framework of a corporation allows you to have a diffusion of responsibility because you don't think that you're the one doing this horrible thing. It's this thing that you work for, and I'm just doing my job.
- SPSpeaker
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
And also, if you're involved in a corrupt system, and this is your job, and you think of these people as all good people that are part of the corrupt system, it sort of minimizes the horrible feelings that you have about that corruption. You just dismiss it.
- SPSpeaker
I, I really believe... I've heard you talk about diffusion of responsibility before. I, I think it's, it's, uh, it's such a huge part of what drives all this, is that you have people who don't really have to ask themselves the hard question. Am I the person that's exploiting somebody? Am I the person that's overcharging a mom? Am I the person that's charging somebody a crazy amount of money for their medication or s- or allowing somebody to die from medical neglect? Um, because once you have a corporation and you look at that org chart, you know, you could see the org chart and say, "Oh, that's a nice orderly way of, uh, getting commerce to move forward." But it's also 1,000 points of responsibility. Every one of those per- those persons just takes a tiny measure of responsibility. Well, I'm j- I'm just in the accounting department. I mean, I, you know, I don't, I, I don't make the rules. I don't make the laws, you know. And you see that, you know, in the healthcare industry, people recording their, their calls with their healthcare providers or their insurance companies saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, I really can't answer. That's not my job. Somebody else makes that decision." And so when you have these massive organizations, there's a way for very bad things to happen in... And it's like the death of 1,000 cuts.
- JRJoe Rogan
And it's also everybody's trying to maximize profit. And when you're trying to maximize profit, you just find some ways to justify things. Like, your, your main job is not to help people. These prisons aren't rehabilitation centers. You're trying to make... Like, you, you actually profit off people becoming, like, functional members of society once they get released. That would be amazing. Then you'd have an incentive to make people better people in prison. Like, imagine if their profit was based on people being reha- rehabilitated, re-entering society, and becoming, you know, functional, proper members of society where they contribute.
- SPSpeaker
Sure. Yeah. I mean, the incentives are so, they're so-
- JRJoe Rogan
They're twisted.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, they're so twisted.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's like m- that saying money's the root of all evil, it's not the root of all evil. It's the root of most of it, though. [chuckles] Like, a giant percentage of it.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Maybe it's 75% of evil. The rest of it's like, what, lust?
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. I mean, my, I guess money-
- JRJoe Rogan
Anger and jealousy.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
But that's the root of a lot of evil. You know, whatever. Whatever the other percentage is. But money, 60% maybe? Let's be charitable. It's the root of a lot of fucking evil, man. It's, it's... And when you can do it inside of this framework of a corporation, it's so twisted because it's ubiquitous. It exists in almost all industries. There's always, whether it's the h- Like, this is the reason why people celebrated when that healthcare executive was shot.
- SPSpeaker
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
They were like, "Hey, man, fuck you guys." Like, "Yeah, finally one of you guys got it. I lost my dad. I lost my mom. I lost my sister." You know, that kind of shit is in every fucking industry.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whether it's military industrial complex, whether it's the health insurance complex, whether it's pharmaceutical drug industry. When you look at the Sackler family and what they did with opioids. You, you've s- I'm sure you've seen the Netflix, the Peterburg-
- SPSpeaker
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
Netflix painkiller-
- 41:56 – 1:28:49
Trauma factories: solitary confinement, mental health ‘care,’ and life after release
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. I mean, you know, you, I, I, I've heard you talk a lot about mental health, and obviously there are a lot of causes of mental health problems and, you know, that includes social media. It includes sort of alienation. It includes a lot of things that are, that are, you know, present in society. But the, but the prisonIndustrial complex and the, and the, uh, experience of having somebody incarcerated has a huge impact on mental health. Um, they... You know, I think people don't realize when you have two million people locked up in these facilities, and many of them are just being traumatized every day, whether they're seeing somebody get killed or they're constantly in fear for their life, the idea that those people are gonna somehow be okay when you wanna let them out 10 years later and they're gonna rejoin society, you give them $50 and a bus ticket, and you say, "Hey, I hope you can become a taxpayer." Meantime, they don't have enough money to pay for one Red Roof Inn for one night. They can't do anything when they get out of prison, and then we say, "Well, why, why is there such high recidivism? I guess that means they're bad people, so let's put them back in."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
You know? So the mental health implications for the people that are incarcerated are huge, and the people who are in their families, as you say, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Imagine the anxiety, you don't have any family members, and they're gonna give you $50, and now you're out, and you have to figure out how to eat, how to get a roof over your head, and try to figure out a way to earn money-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... with $50.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. And there are ways to do it, you know? There are, there... If you go into the... I mean, all this sounds very dark and horrible, uh, and it is, but there are a lot of, there are a lot of, um, of, of positive developments that you can see when you give them a chance to, to grow in society, you know? Um, so, so for example, um, like I love what you say about, about community, you know? About the importance of building community and seeing the country as our community and, you know, if we're torturing people that are in our community, if we're being cruel to people that are in our community, what does it say about us?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Um, you know, what does it say about, about, about Christianity? What does it say about, you know, about, uh, about God? What does it say about forgiveness? Um, and clearly we see that there are so many instances where people are trying, you know, trying to do something better. There's a, there's a woman, um, named Erica in Alabama who is a mental health professional, and she described to me what it was like to try to give mental health services to people who are incarcerated and, and I was trying to figure out, you know, looking at these images of the places that they keep people in these cells, these solitary cells with just a little tray slot and, you know, they're in there for, uh, in a five-by-eight room with no windows, and they could be in there literally for years. Um, and I said to her, "Well, can you tell me, like, when you do a session with somebody and you're trying to, you know, talk to them about their suicidal ideation or their various problems, you know, how do, what does that look like? How does that work?" And she goes, "Well, you know, it's a lit- it's a little uncomfortable 'cause I, you know, I gotta be on my knees." And, and I said, "Wait, why are you, why are you on your knees?" She said, "Oh, well, I have to be able to talk through the tray slot." And I said, "So when you're giving a mental health counseling session to somebody who's incarcerated, you're not allowed to open the door? You're not allowed to see..." Assuming that person's not, like, having a violent fit or something like that, "You're not allowed to sit down across from them and have that conversation?" She said, "No, no, no, but it's okay. I, I just put my mouth up to the tray slot." And I just thought, you know, when you think about the, the idea that that's gonna be somehow something that will give relief to somebody who's really struggling with a mental health crisis in prison, um, you know, we're doing the absolute minimum. You know, we're checking the box that says, yeah, once a month, this guy has a psychiatric evaluation. But nobody's taking a picture of that and showing what it really looks like to have this nice, you know, young lady, this idealistic young, uh, mental health person kneeling, uh, outside a, a, a metal cell with, you know, bloodstains on it, talking to somebody inside.
- JRJoe Rogan
Through a food slot.
- SPSpeaker
Through a food slot.
- JRJoe Rogan
And that's probably the only interaction this person has with human beings other than the guards.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so-
- JRJoe Rogan
Who are very cruel.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And you're alone in that cell, which is also terrible for mental health. Like, there's nothing worse for mental health than complete total isolation-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... with no access to anything.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Have you ever had, um, experiences with people, friends or, or family who've been incarcerated?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Quite a few.
- SPSpeaker
What's that been, what, what's that been like?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I had this one friend that, uh, I used to do martial arts with when I was a kid, and when I was [sighs] probably around 16, 16 or 17, he wound up going to jail. I didn't know him that well, but, uh, I knew him as this guy who competed in tournaments and, you know, he would show up and train with us, and he's just pretty tough guy. He went into jail, and he came out, first of all, much bigger. He was just, like, stacked with muscle. All of his tattoos, he burned off, so he had scars, like these big keloid scars over all of his tattoos now, and he was a completely different person, like a violent animal, like a terrifying guy to spar with. If you spar with him, you were, you were in a f- it wasn't... There was nothing, no holding back. Sparring, for the most part, when you like people, you're hitting them only a certain percentage of your strength. This guy was not doing any of that. He was full blast with everything. It was like a caged animal. And as I got to be closer to him, I actually became closer to him after he got out of prison than he was before, you know, because I just spent more time sparring him and hanging out and training with him and, you know, being in these c- group classes with him.He started telling me these stories about what it was like in jail and just fighting for his life. He had to take on three guys, and he picked up a broomstick, and he was beating these... He's just telling me these crazy stories of guys trying to kill him in jail, you know, and he was in there for three years for drug selling, and then he went right back to selling drugs. And, um, w- he eventually got arrested, and I've told this story before, but it's k- kind of crazy. They found a guy that had every bone in his body broken with hammers, and they kept him awake by injecting him with cocaine. They kept injecting him with cocaine, and then they cut his arms off. They cut his hands off, and then they cut his head off, and they found his body. But his, like, all of his bones had been shattered, and this guy that I knew as a kid got arrested for that. Um, they never wound up trying him for that. They brought him in for questioning. He definitely knew something about it. He knew either the people that did it or knew something about it. It was all drug-related, and he was selling cocaine. And then, um, I lost touch with him after that.
- SPSpeaker
That's a crazy story.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, yeah. I knew quite a few guys like that 'cause the world of, um, fighting, like people that are interested in, in, in entering in competitions with people, you get a lot of troubled people, a lot of very angry people. You know, a lot of them had come from violent households. They were beaten as children, or they were bullied as kids, de-depending on where... I came from, like, um, the most mild of those environments. I, I didn't co- I didn't have anybody abusing me. I lived in the suburbs of Boston. I lived in Newton, which is a really nice neighborhood.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
I just was interested in martial arts, and then I was fascinated by this idea of bettering myself through competition 'cause it was so scary. And then all of a sudden I'm around, like, hit men. I knew one guy who was a hit man for Whitey Bulger, and, uh, he... I would train him. I would teach this guy how to do martial arts, and he was a, an assassin. Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
That's amazing.
- JRJoe Rogan
It was very strange. I knew a bunch of organized crime figures for, mostly with the Irish mob. They, a lot of those guys came and trained, and especially 'cause they, they knew some other guys that we knew that were... Well, a couple of, one of my friends who was a box- He was a professional boxer, and he lived in South Boston, and he was very tight with a lot of these guys. So some of these guys came to train with us. It was very weird exposure for me. I'd never been around any of that. I never had anyone in my family that went to jail. Nev- no one was a, you know, no one was a criminal. No one was a drug addict. No-
- SPSpeaker
Mm
- JRJoe Rogan
... there was nothing, nothing really crazy.
- 1:28:49 – 2:38:13
What ‘good’ could look like: reentry programs, Maine’s model, and building community
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, the nuanced part is so important because the real question is, like, what causes so many people to become bad people, and how come no one's examining the root of this? How come no one's looking at these deeply impoverished, crime-ridden communities that have remained that way for decades and decades and decades and offered up some sort of a solution? You know, it's almost like you have to financially incentivize a company to, to radically improve the economic and the justice situation in any random community that's experiencing a lot of crime. Like, it's almost, almost like you have to figure out a way [chuckles] to privatize peace and safety. You know? It's almost like the, the, the one way... [sighs] I mean, it's really what I was saying before, like, imagine if these prison companies got paid based on the amount of productive citizens emerge from their prisons and then wind up doing really well. Like, you get incentivized. Like, this is, he's never committed another crime. Now he started his own business. He's doing this and that. He's got a family.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
His kids all get straight As. Everybody's happy. This is a s- success, and we got a bonus because of that success.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. I mean, you're right in a way that it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
[clears throat] It's the root of-
- SPSpeaker
... in some way, we are, we're, we sort of are privatizing it because, like in my neighborhood in New York, um, there's a group called the Doe Fund, which has been around for a couple decades, I think, and they take guys who are a- who are, have had severe drug addiction, have ended up in prison, and are released and have no starting place, as you were describing, and they give them a bed.They give them a bank account where they give them a certain amount of money each week for working. And it's not a huge amount of money, but it sort of is the first step toward even being able to sort of have a checkbook and be able to say, "Oh, okay, so I've got $100, and I've spent 50, and this is what I have left." Um, and they give them a job, which is they make deals with neighborhoods around New York for them to come and do, like, street cleaning and clean up the neighborhood. And they give them a uniform, which is clean, and they put them out on the street with a big blue, uh, trash, uh, bucket and a, and some, you know, functional broom and things like that. And sometimes they'll put them out in pairs so that they have... you know, they, they can, they can work in tandem. And these neighborhoods become incredibly clean. The guys stay in this facility for as long as they need to until they sort of get back on their feet. They can't do drugs when they're in the facility, um, so there's a little bit of tough love going on there, too. But they end up bringing people back. They end up bringing people back who are otherwise abandoned and who otherwise would've been additional homeless people lying on the street in San Francisco or additional-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah
- SPSpeaker
... people who are, you know, bothering people outside an ATM or whatever because there's a level of desperation that you, you know, you have. We all know, like, if we absolutely had absolutely nothing, and we thought that our kids were gonna starve, we would do a bunch of things that, you know, would probably get us in trouble.
- JRJoe Rogan
100%. And taking care of people that are in that situation and providing them some sort of a vehicle for improving their life is gonna be a good thing, and it's gonna have some impact. But the real, real impact is gonna be when you address the environment in which they came from.
- SPSpeaker
Sure.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like if, again, if we're our community, if we're this entire country as a community, why do we have these places that have been fucked for 50, 60, 70 years? Like, why haven't we put resources into community centers and education and providing some method for these people to get peace and safety? Why, why aren't we doing something about that if we really care?
- SPSpeaker
Well, there is a lot that can be done. You know, uh, one of the places, for example, this can be done inside and outside of, of prison obviously, and, and I think you're pointing out a really important thing, which is the earlier the better.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
So when you look at, you know, Head Start programs, which are one of the first things that people go to cut because you can't put your finger on exactly what they do, but if you track people that got early education, you see that it dramatically reduces the likelihood that those people are gonna go to prison later in life. Um, and if you look at people who are even in prison, like in the Maine State Prison System, which is a very humane prison system, um, I have pictures, uh, uh, on my phone of guys who are sitting at a bench working on models of tall ships, these beautiful, stunning pieces of art that they've been trained by other prisoners to, to build, and they give them a proper workbench, and they give them some, uh, uh, time to do this work, and they give them training. And then they sell that stuff in the prison store, and they make a couple million dollars a year that goes back into rehabilitation programs.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- SPSpeaker
So where people-
- JRJoe Rogan
Is Maine one of the best places for that?
- SPSpeaker
I think Maine is the best prison system I've seen in the US, um, and partly it's 'cause it's run by this very brilliant guy, Randy Liberty is his name.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's crazy. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
And he first, uh, he first went to... He first visited the Maine State Prison when he was 14 'cause his dad was locked up there. And later in life, you know, he became a sheriff, and I think his dad was in his jail at some point, and it was like, "Randy, get me a coffee." "Oh, sorry, Dad."
- JRJoe Rogan
That's crazy.
- SPSpeaker
You know. And but over time, he just said, "Well, why are we throwing people away when we put them into prison for having made a mistake of some kind or even a series of mistakes?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
You know, "What can we do to bring these people out?" Because 95% of the people are coming out, um, and, you know, are these people that we wanna be our neighbors, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
And that, that's, that, that... This issue of community is so important because, you know, how are we gonna get back to some kind of brotherhood in this country? You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- SPSpeaker
It's so important, and if we can demonize people so quickly and just say, "Well, look, my neighbor, you know, he, uh, put his tractor on my lawn, and therefore he's a horrible person, and I'm gonna go over and smash his tractor," and, you know, as opposed to the guy saying, "Oh, I couldn't put my tractor in my garage 'cause it had a flood." "Oh, you had a flood? Let me help you." You know, that it's, it's that there's a level of, of, you know, rage right now that we're tapping into. It seems like a higher percentage of the people are, like the martial arts people that are going into it because of damage that they suffered. It's like more Americans are becoming like that. You know, more Americans are sort of-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, we're getting radicalized by the internet for sure.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- 1:51:26 – 2:20:31
Transparency, the press, and what changes when people can finally see
- SPSpeaker
We're not allowed to see what's happening in prisons even though we're paying for them.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
You know, and the Supreme Court had this ruling that said that, uh, wardens could, uh, deny access to journalists simply by citing safety and security. But meantime, the last 20 years, no journalist has been harmed inside a prison. So who's all the secrecy keeping safe?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Right? It's, it's, it's we're, we're sort of perpetuating the system. Our job going into the Alabama state prison system was to shine a light on that. It shouldn't be that these guys who are incarcerated have to take life and death risks using contraband cell phones to show what's happening in institutions that I'm paying for and you're paying for.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
You know, those, we're, we're spending, you know, $116 billion a year in the United States on prisons, jails, parole. That is an insane number, and if we're spending that much money, we should sort of know what every one of those dollars is going to, and we should have watchdogs who will say, "Hey, guess what? In Alabama, they're supposed to be paying for a drug treatment program. We don't know where the money's going."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Transparency is always good, especially in something like that. I mean, it, to me, the idea of preventing journalists from... It, it, almost is akin to these ag-gag laws that they've slapped in states that have factory farming to prevent people from filming the horrific treatment of some of these animals because it would be bad for business, you know, which is fucking crazy.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, it should be bad for business, and people shouldn't tolerate it, and they should take their business elsewhere-
- SPSpeaker
Yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... which is what transparency's all about. You don't wanna buy chickens from a place that brutally beats their chickens or pigs or whatever it is.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, uh, and a lot of people say, "Oh, well, you know, it's gonna upset... It's, we don't need to upset the public." Well, what are you doing something, uh, uh, for inside a slaughterhouse that would upset the public?
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
Like, there are ways to, to-
- JRJoe Rogan
Exactly
- SPSpeaker
... if you wanna euthanize an animal or something like that, there are ways to do it where you're not using, like, a bolt and smashing their skull with it, and-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, the bolt is actually the most humane way.
- SPSpeaker
Okay.
- JRJoe Rogan
It kinda instantaneously kills them.
- SPSpeaker
All right. Now I'm, I'm, I'm on board with the bolt.
- JRJoe Rogan
The other way is when they hang them by their ankles and slit their neck. That's a little rougher, but that's if you want kosher. [laughs] There's a lot of weird ways that they kill animals, but it's really the beating, and it's the horrific torture that the cruel people that work there sometimes do. 'Cause there's been some videos that have been released of people, like, beating animals with crowbars-
- SPSpeaker
Oh, yeah
- JRJoe Rogan
... and stuff for no fucking reason.
- SPSpeaker
Horrible.
- JRJoe Rogan
Just, just sadic- sadistic, sick people that just happen to work in these places who become very accustomed to treating these animals badly, just like security guards become very accustomed to treating prisoners badly. It's a kind of along the same lines.
- SPSpeaker
They get... I tot- I totally agree. And, and just imagine what would happen if, you know, what if, if Tyson Foods or any of these companies just, the policy was just if the press wants to come in and photograph, and the press wants to come in and write about it, they're allowed to come in once a week or whatever and just do whatever they want. Like, what would happen?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it should be non-negotiable. It should be a part of the ability to run a facility like that because of the consequences. Because i- if you don't do that, there is the potential for you being a horrific abuser of animals.
- 2:20:31 – 2:38:13
Rogan’s method and the closing call: curiosity, long-form conversation, and reform pressure
- SPSpeaker
I mean, I'm always, I'm always curious about... I'm always asking myself what I should be, you know, what I should be spending my time on, and I get involved in a film, and it kind of grabs you, and it could-
- JRJoe Rogan
How do you decide?
- SPSpeaker
... get a hold of you. I f- I feel like it decides.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
You know, I feel like I'm just sort of walking around thinking, "Maybe I don't need to make another one of these things."
- JRJoe Rogan
[laughs]
- SPSpeaker
They're very exhausting. You know, and then something happens or, you know, my shrink says to me, "Uh, yeah, I know you always say you're not gonna make another movie, but I think you're better when you're making a movie."
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm.
- SPSpeaker
"I think you're better when you're engaged in something like this." And I'm curious for, you know, you've built this incredible platform, and you have access to just a remarkable number of people in the universe. And what do you feel like your mission is? What do you feel like is the... You know, when you get to the end of a week and you look back and you think, like, "I did what I was, I did what I set out to do this week."
- JRJoe Rogan
All I ever do is try to talk to people I'm interested in talking to, and that's it. And I feel like that's what I started with, and that's what I stuck with. And if I deviate from that path, if I say, "Oh, uh, I'll get this guy on because he's famous, and then I'll get more views," or, "I'll get her on because she's controversial, and I'll get more views," I don't think like that at all. I don't allow it into my head. I get a list of people on my phone that are interested in coming on the show, and I spend a couple hours a few times a week just going over this list, and then I'll go, "Hmm, that's interesting. Let me look into this." And so then I'll do a search on this person and what they're interested in, and then maybe I'll watch a documentary or I'll get an audiobook and I'll start listening to it on the way to work, and then I'll decide, and I'll go, "Yeah, okay, I like this. This is cool. I'm into this. This will be a conversation that I'll be genuinely curious about." And so that's the only way I do it.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, I get it.
- JRJoe Rogan
And I've done it that way from the very beginning. I either talk to my friends or I talk to people who I've seen a documentary that they did or I've read one of their books or I've watched a YouTube video with them in it, I thought they were fascinating, and then I reach out to my guy and I say, "Hey, can you see if this guy's interested in being on?" And that's the only way I do it. So I feel like as long as I do that, I will continue to give people this same service. And this service is, this is an extension of my curiosity, my honest curiosity to the world. So whoever I'm honestly curious about, sit them down, talk to them, do my best. That's it. And if I try to make it anything more than that, if I try to change it or distort it or move it in a general direction or make it have a message or make it make more money or whatever it is, I'll fuck it up. That's what I think.
- SPSpeaker
I think that's really smart, and I think, you know, this is what's lacking is sort of authenticity, and everybody's like, "Oh, authenticity is so important. How can I manufacture that?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- SPSpeaker
And I think your approach is really smart. I, I also think, you know, y- I think you talked about that you really like playing pool and that if you weren't doing this, you might just play pool all the time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, that's what I would do.
- SPSpeaker
And I like playing pool, but I'm wondering, like, you know, w- something's keeping you from playing pool right now, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I still enjoy this. If I didn't enjoy this, I would stop. Like, I don't need any more money. I could just stop if I didn't enjoy it, but I do enjoy it. I am a very curious person. I'm fascinated by different people's perspectives, how they view the world, how they got to where they are, what was their first step, like, why they make these choices. Like, what, what is it about the way they think that makes them unique? And, um, I don't think I'm ever gonna lose that. I think that's a very important part of m- my understanding of us as a species, us as a civilization, and I'm very fascinated with the history of the human race and how we got to this point and where we are and how we define what is normal and what is not normal and what our standards are and how, you know, how they get manipulated. Um, I don't think I'm ever gonna stop being curious about those things. I may stop doing this publicly. I will never stop being curious. I'll never stop watching all these documentaries or reading books or... I don't think I'll ever stop trying to have conversations with people, even if I don't do it publicly.
- SPSpeaker
Mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
'Cause it's, I mean, it's per- This was totally accidental. I don't know if you know the history of this podcast.It started out with me and my friends just bullshitting in front of a laptop, and there was no expectations. It, it made no money for years. And then, um, it just kinda grew. And I never promoted it. I never went on anywhere and said, "Please watch my show." I never took an ad out anywhere. I just kept doing it, and it just snowballed to the point where I'm like, "All right." And now I just feel like I have this responsibility. And I get up, and I go, "All right. I gotta do this thing today. First, let me clear my mind first." So I go to the gym, and I work out, and I get in the cold plunge, and I get in the sauna, and I clear my mind out. And then I'm like, make sure I'm prepared, and just show up at work.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. I notice that you're not... Like, you don't look at shit. You don't look at your phone. You know, you don't-
- JRJoe Rogan
No, I can't do that. That distracts people.
- SPSpeaker
I totally agree. It's very...
- JRJoe Rogan
It-
- SPSpeaker
It's gross.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Especially if you're talking to someone that has something really important to say. I mean, if I'm looking at my phone for a brief second, it's because it's something relevant to what we are talking about.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I wanna send it to Jamie so he can pull it up on the screen. But, uh, I think that's one of the great benefits of having these long conversations with people on a podcast, is that that's time where you're not staring at a fucking device, and most people lack that. So I've gotten this completely unexpected education in life, in human beings and how they think, and what drives them, and, and just what, what makes them interesting and, you know, and-
- SPSpeaker
How does it, how does it impact, like, your, your... You have girl- you have two girls, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm. Three.
Episode duration: 2:40:59
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode 9uhx6ApHD-8
