Speaker 1: Journalists. Sam ken Units is the author of a new book,
Speaker 1: The Least of Us True Tales of America and The
Speaker 1: Hope and Hope in the Time of Fentyl and Meth
Speaker 1: joins us for Armstrong and Getty extra Large because four hours,
Speaker 1: simply enough, this is Armstrong and Getty extra Large. Sam,
Speaker 1: How are you, sir? Terrific? Thanks? It really excited to
Speaker 1: be talking to you today. I apologize that my co
Speaker 1: host is not with us. He is uh. He added
Speaker 1: surgery yesterday and was ironically under the influence of powerful painkillers.
Speaker 1: How anything like that and died well. I hope you're
Speaker 1: doing well well, thank you. So I've admired your work
Speaker 1: for a very long time, um, and so this is
Speaker 1: it's great to talk um. Sam might be best known,
Speaker 1: if not for writing for The l A Times for
Speaker 1: a decade from about two thousand two thousand fourteen, for
Speaker 1: then for his his best selling book in dream Land,
Speaker 1: which was about the opioid epidemic in the house and
Speaker 1: Where's and wins of that? When when you were wrapping
Speaker 1: that book up in I'll bet you couldn't dream of
Speaker 1: the reality we're dealing with now. That's in fact the case.
Speaker 1: I had I was. I've been a I've been a
Speaker 1: crime reporter for a lot of years, and um, really
Speaker 1: I just could not imagine what you would write about
Speaker 1: after Heroin, right, It just seemed to me like that
Speaker 1: was about as bad as it could dead. And then
Speaker 1: the book comes out, it generates I think, a lot
Speaker 1: of awareness and a lot of interests across the country.
Speaker 1: I began to do a lot of speaking over the
Speaker 1: next several years, and along the way I figured out
Speaker 1: what comes after Heroin, and out of course is as
Speaker 1: fretnal and so that that led in in large parts
Speaker 1: to the to the book I just put out. Well
Speaker 1: we uh. I read with interest the excerpt from your
Speaker 1: new book in The Atlantic entitled I don't know that
Speaker 1: I would even call it meth anymore. And we've spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking about that, partly because the
Speaker 1: show is based on the West Coast, and there is
Speaker 1: hardly a West Coast city of more than six thousand
Speaker 1: people that does not have a serious problem with quote
Speaker 1: unquote homelessness or homeless camps and that sort of thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I think to a very large extent, those are
Speaker 1: are junkie camps, their meth camps. But before we get
Speaker 1: to the meth thing, which is fascinating, UM, let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about opioids and heroin and fentanyl, which
Speaker 1: we're not for the COVID thing, I think would be
Speaker 1: an international conversation, it would be the leading conversation on earth. Probably. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's certainly um extraordinarily important and perhaps because
Speaker 1: because of COVID not really getting the attention uh it deserves. Basically,
Speaker 1: stuntonol is suttinol is a is a wonderful um drug.
Speaker 1: Medically speaking, it's highly likely that your your your colleague
Speaker 1: is being given sutonol as we speak at revolutionized surgery.
Speaker 1: It allowed for anesthesia that that really wasn't possible before that.
Speaker 1: And of course that's all of the medical context. But
Speaker 1: once in the hounds of the underworld, it's it's, it's
Speaker 1: a whole other story. Fentinol is very powerful, much more
Speaker 1: powerful than morphine, much more powerful than than than than
Speaker 1: than heroin. And um, it's part of on the street
Speaker 1: and it's part of the Mexican trafficking worlds. Uh shift
Speaker 1: you might say, away from what they traditionally focused on,
Speaker 1: which were plant based drugs, marijuana, course, first opium poppy
Speaker 1: too um away from plant based drugs and towards synthetics. UM.
Speaker 1: This happened with methem fettlement. But then as the opioid
Speaker 1: epidemic took took shape in our country, lots of people
Speaker 1: began shifting to heroin. They began producing heroin Downto Mexico,
Speaker 1: more of it than they've ever had before. And along
Speaker 1: the way they discover centinel. This is a synthetic heroin.
Speaker 1: You make it with chemicals only. The benefits of synthetic
Speaker 1: drugs over plant based drugs to a trafficker are many. Right,
Speaker 1: you don't need land. You really just need a warehouse
Speaker 1: or some kind or some place to to put your
Speaker 1: your lab. That's very small. And then you don't need rain, sunshine,
Speaker 1: you don't need farmers to harvest it. You don't need
Speaker 1: um just a lot of things, pesticides, etcetera. All you
Speaker 1: really need is access to shipping ports. Once you have
Speaker 1: access to shipping ports, which they do on the Pacific
Speaker 1: coast of Mexico, there's two major ports right down there.
Speaker 1: Um you you get you can get access then to
Speaker 1: all the world the world chemical market, which is vast
Speaker 1: and teage and and it comes from China, but it
Speaker 1: also can come from like almost any country. Really, once
Speaker 1: you have which you have a port to receive it
Speaker 1: uh in. And so that is what's been going on.
Speaker 1: It really their their their move a wave towards synthetic
Speaker 1: drugs really begin with method fettlement years ago and that's
Speaker 1: changed to recently, as I wrote wrote about in the
Speaker 1: book and in the extra Your Front tip Um. But
Speaker 1: and then along the way they discover funnel and another
Speaker 1: story that I talked about in the book, how the
Speaker 1: Solwer drug Cartel discovers funnel very interesting tale um largely
Speaker 1: due to one one underground chemist in particular. But what
Speaker 1: that means is that they can produce now drugs um
Speaker 1: all year round. There's no seasons anymore, right, there's no
Speaker 1: summer and fall when you have synthetic drugs. And if
Speaker 1: you can get the chemicals that you need UM, you
Speaker 1: can produce it in just studying quantities. And that is
Speaker 1: really what's happening. They they control when at least when
Speaker 1: it comes to those those chemicals, they they control the
Speaker 1: traffic at the at these courts. They're able to produce
Speaker 1: both sentinel and methem petomen in quantities that are absolutely
Speaker 1: um staggering, just unprecedented quantities, so much so that they've
Speaker 1: done something that is really unprecedented in this uh, in
Speaker 1: this country where one source underground underworld's source has been
Speaker 1: able to effectively cover the entire country with these with
Speaker 1: these two drugs, and in methem sediments case, the prices
Speaker 1: has collapsed, so in many areas the price of methem
Speaker 1: fedoment is lower than it was a few years a
Speaker 1: serious back. But whatever the case, they now have these
Speaker 1: drugs are now all across the country. There you know,
Speaker 1: New England never had any methem fedoment and now it does.
Speaker 1: You know, notton always found everywhere. And so this is
Speaker 1: the the enormous uh fact that we are now having
Speaker 1: to contend with as a country. Well, I was going
Speaker 1: to say one of the obvious advantages to smuggler is
Speaker 1: that the stuff is so incredibly powerful. A small amount
Speaker 1: will get many many people high. But it sounds like
Speaker 1: it's so profitable that that they're taking the risks such
Speaker 1: as they are to ship enormous amounts of this stuff. Hey,
Speaker 1: remind us, I think we've all heard anecdotal you know,
Speaker 1: the bits of quote unquote trivia about how you know
Speaker 1: an ounce of fentinel can kill X number of people.
Speaker 1: It's really quite astounding, isn't it. Well, fentanyl is is um, yes,
Speaker 1: it's you know, a few grains of salt is what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, normally to kill a person who is
Speaker 1: UH doesn't have any tolerance to the drug. Again, this
Speaker 1: is an opioid, like heroin, like morphine. It develops, you
Speaker 1: develop tolerance on it. But if you have none, um,
Speaker 1: you know, a few grains of salt is all it's
Speaker 1: really going to take that. What that means is that
Speaker 1: this is more profitable than any other drug that the
Speaker 1: underworld has ever encountered. However, what it also means is
Speaker 1: that to access that profited they need to now mix
Speaker 1: it with something. It is not commercially viable to sell
Speaker 1: a few grains of salt on the street, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, So you have to mix it with powder.
Speaker 1: The problem is they're extraordinarily bad at mixing UH this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. They don't know what they're Most people
Speaker 1: on the street don't know what they're doing. Some people
Speaker 1: in Mexico seem to maybe know, but but not but
Speaker 1: not the majority. And so right and clearly the margin
Speaker 1: for air is so incredibly small with something that powerful.
Speaker 1: Exactly right early on in the book, UM, I tell
Speaker 1: the story of how early on when fentinel first started
Speaker 1: coming over here from China being mailed through the mail
Speaker 1: or largely and you know, kilos or half kilos or
Speaker 1: pounds size, it is not very large. Um. People here
Speaker 1: didn't know how to mix it either, UM, and they
Speaker 1: the myth grew that you could mix it best with
Speaker 1: a magic bullet blender. The magic bullet blender that you
Speaker 1: see a target for, like I guess I think it was.
Speaker 1: We We only one at our house, UM, and they
Speaker 1: make it's great for making smoothies. It is really bad
Speaker 1: machine for mixing fannel, largely because fentinel is normally a potty.
Speaker 1: You're trying to mix it with other powders, other white powders,
Speaker 1: so that you can then sell it. The problem is
Speaker 1: when you mix it that way m with a magic
Speaker 1: bullet blender, it's got a blade. The blade mixes liquid,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mix powders at all. And so what you
Speaker 1: began to see where these clusters of overdosees, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty fifty in a weekend in Cincinnati, seventy in a
Speaker 1: weekend and Huntington, West Virginia. UM. Uh that that that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And it's just this this drug is
Speaker 1: so difficult to mix that it's by itself because of
Speaker 1: that very very um dangerous And every every time you
Speaker 1: use it's it's it's a crapshoot and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a Russian game of Russian Roulette almost
Speaker 1: every time. Now, So to what extent is it still
Speaker 1: being manufactured in China And to what extent is it
Speaker 1: being cranked out of lambs in Mexico? No, No, it's
Speaker 1: all shifted to Mexico. Now, the two thousand nineteen, the
Speaker 1: Chinese government put a put a rule in place UM
Speaker 1: only certain companies can produce it, and all these other
Speaker 1: ones had to stop. And they're pretty scared of the
Speaker 1: government there, so they did. And but they still sell
Speaker 1: the ingredients, you know, the rest of the ingredients in channel,
Speaker 1: they're still sold out of China. And the major uh
Speaker 1: customers for that to believe that are the folks in
Speaker 1: Mexico who have now learned how to do that. They
Speaker 1: know now how to make UM. In fact, the truth
Speaker 1: is you would not be able to cover the country
Speaker 1: with centinel. The waste sentinel is covering the country now. Um,
Speaker 1: with the mounts that we're coming in from China in packages,
Speaker 1: you know, small packages, you know a pound here, a
Speaker 1: kilo there. That's not that would never be able to
Speaker 1: do the coverage. It's it has to be with a
Speaker 1: with a country with which we share a two thousand
Speaker 1: mile border. That that which with which we have free trade,
Speaker 1: and so we have all that that stuff is coming
Speaker 1: through walls, it's all coming through border crossing is most
Speaker 1: heavily guarded stuff in the quarter. Crossing is almost in
Speaker 1: the in the world outside maybe Korea and North Korea.
Speaker 1: But um, but it's it's it's getting it's getting through
Speaker 1: in quantities that never you could never really feasibly mail,
Speaker 1: you know, from from from from China. So what's happening
Speaker 1: now is because that shipment I'm saying that that source
Speaker 1: has shifted to Mexico. So before we get more into
Speaker 1: the logistics of the thing, help us understand the toll.
Speaker 1: How many people are dying of fentinel overdoses, Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: a great, great numbers, a hundred thousand a year every
Speaker 1: till they have they just came out with statistics. The
Speaker 1: CDC did that between April one, April twenty and Ape
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand people died of overdoses. That's the record
Speaker 1: that we've never gone over a hundred thousand before in
Speaker 1: the history of this country. Um. It's it's a very
Speaker 1: high numbers in many many states. There's a few where
Speaker 1: it's dropped off. But I mean this is happening constantly
Speaker 1: all across the country, and largely, Um it's because of
Speaker 1: the mixing. It's also because the trafficking world, particularly at
Speaker 1: the street level, has turned to making into mixing Fentinel
Speaker 1: into other drugs. So I don't believe there's any cocaine
Speaker 1: anymore in America, actually trust not to have Fentinel in it.
Speaker 1: Um Uh, it's it's it's like almost everything. You know,
Speaker 1: the great actor who was in The Wire, Michael Michael
Speaker 1: Kay Williams, he had a cocaine problem he was struggling
Speaker 1: with for many years. Um he died. Uh, not from
Speaker 1: the cocaine, but from the from the Fentinel that was
Speaker 1: in his in his the batch or the packet or
Speaker 1: whatever is that he bought. You see these things happening
Speaker 1: frequently all across the country. He was a celebrated case,
Speaker 1: but I mean there's many, many, many cases all across
Speaker 1: the country. It's also the way through which the African
Speaker 1: American community has been dying of in the opioid epidemics.
Speaker 1: When I wrote Dreamland, I could safely say I didn't
Speaker 1: speak with any Black people for Dreamland because it was
Speaker 1: really a white issue. It was like cent of all
Speaker 1: victims were white, right. But with Sentinel, what's happened is
Speaker 1: dealers at the in the in the black community have
Speaker 1: figured out if I could ask dealers have all across
Speaker 1: the country, I put my Futinel, which is dirt sheet,
Speaker 1: but they're very cheap. A little bit of Fentinel into
Speaker 1: a cocaine all of these them will boost it. But
Speaker 1: also what it'll do is it's almost like a business
Speaker 1: um expansion move. So if you have a cocaine buyer,
Speaker 1: normally those folks will buy every few days, maybe it
Speaker 1: take a week vacation from the dope or whatever, maybe
Speaker 1: even a month vacation whatever. They're not consistent buyers. But
Speaker 1: once you have an opioid addict, that that that person
Speaker 1: has to buy from you every single day, no vacation
Speaker 1: because the dope sickness is a bear, and they're trying
Speaker 1: to keep the dope sickness await. And so what what
Speaker 1: ends up happening is from a cocaine customer, you had
Speaker 1: Sentinel to the cocaine. Pretty soon you have an opioid addict.
Speaker 1: And this is happening all across the country. Uh as well,
Speaker 1: what's happening now is the people who have survived their
Speaker 1: first exposure to Sentinel, now they're addicted to to to
Speaker 1: the drug and they need Sentinel. So now heroin is
Speaker 1: almost worthless, right, Hero's worthless because there's no um it
Speaker 1: won't it's two mild to keep the dolt sickness away.
Speaker 1: Now you need Sentinel, and the problem is there again,
Speaker 1: as I was saying earlier, the mixes is frequently so unpredictable,
Speaker 1: and the only thing that really predict about it is
Speaker 1: that it's going to be bad eventually. Whatever you use
Speaker 1: will eventually be a bad mix and and we'll will
Speaker 1: kill you. And that's kind of what's happening now all
Speaker 1: across all across the country. Used to just be happening
Speaker 1: in the area where the opioid epidemic was bad. You know,
Speaker 1: the first state really, Ohio was the place where it
Speaker 1: first started. That in in my in the book The
Speaker 1: Least of Us and in the book that just published,
Speaker 1: I focus on Acron and Cleveland and some of these
Speaker 1: other towns where where this first hit in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: Cincinnati and then into West Virginia as well. It didn't
Speaker 1: really hit, didn't pardon me, the West coast, I would say,
Speaker 1: until maybe you know, two eighteen, it's it. It took
Speaker 1: takes a while before it kind of catches up. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and I know enough about drugs and addiction, and some
Speaker 1: of my musical heroes have died of overdoses that when
Speaker 1: when folks stumble on the road to recovery, they decided
Speaker 1: to go back and have another hit or whatever, often
Speaker 1: their tolerance is down from where it was, and they'll
Speaker 1: take the same hit, for instance, of heroin that they
Speaker 1: used to it'll kill them. Well, this has got to
Speaker 1: be that affect times, I don't know, ten times a
Speaker 1: hundred in terms of the risk of having one more hit.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. There's no more um in America, there's
Speaker 1: no more surviving recreational drug use and one that's that's
Speaker 1: the bottom line. I have to say that that. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm sixty two. I grew up in an era when
Speaker 1: it was almost like rude not to you know, take
Speaker 1: a line of cocaine and some parties, and and the
Speaker 1: truth is that, um, that that is uh those days,
Speaker 1: I mean every every every line of cocaine, every uh
Speaker 1: you know, Uh, it's it's it's these are um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's Russian roulette, right, so he listen, those old ideas
Speaker 1: are gone. I realized this could be the topic of
Speaker 1: another book or books. But in your opinion, and because
Speaker 1: I know you've written about studied Mexico in terms of
Speaker 1: the drug trade and a hundred other issues for a
Speaker 1: long time, to what extent is Mexico a functioning government
Speaker 1: and to what extent is it a narco state? Um,
Speaker 1: that's a hard question to answer because there's certainly many
Speaker 1: parts of the country that are auctioning. Clearly, UM, there
Speaker 1: are certain areas and certain attitudes within certain elements of
Speaker 1: the government government that I say, let's say lend itself
Speaker 1: to um to something along those lines where you just
Speaker 1: can't really um, you know, you can't that they are
Speaker 1: functioning freely and and UM, in the state of Sinaloa,
Speaker 1: I have to say parts of the state of meat
Speaker 1: Can where I used to go very very freely. I
Speaker 1: lived in Mexico for ten years and I would travel
Speaker 1: to metro Con very often, mostly to do stories about immigration,
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of immigration coming out of meat Con.
Speaker 1: Now it's really it's a state I wouldn't go to
Speaker 1: any more. Certain areas of the border like this in
Speaker 1: parts of uh Of around the Golden Triangle, what they
Speaker 1: call the areas that to waw Wa, durrangos in Aloa,
Speaker 1: the hill, the mountain areas there. Um, you know, these
Speaker 1: are areas that are that are not safe and and
Speaker 1: those areas keep on shifting to according to who's fighting
Speaker 1: whom and you know, so the cartel world down there,
Speaker 1: I would say, when I was in Mexico, it was
Speaker 1: very clear. You could draw the border, and you could
Speaker 1: divide up the border according to like the way they
Speaker 1: used to do with the Italian mob the five Families
Speaker 1: in New York and Jersey and so, and you could see, okay,
Speaker 1: this is the Colombo, this is the Banano family. You
Speaker 1: could do the same with the Houara's drug cartel that
Speaker 1: you want to drug cartel. All these guys were from
Speaker 1: sin a lawa, but they controlled parts of the border
Speaker 1: far away from far within the Say, what's happened now
Speaker 1: in the last fifteen years, really maybe longer? Really is
Speaker 1: that all those easily definable groups of fragmented and now following,
Speaker 1: who is a cartel? And where these cartels are? And
Speaker 1: I don't even call them carts tells anymore because here's
Speaker 1: the difference between a cartel. I studied economics and college,
Speaker 1: and a cartel is a group that that that the
Speaker 1: restricts product to drive price up. And that is the
Speaker 1: opposite of what's happening in Mexico now. And that is
Speaker 1: because they're not cartels in that strict sense. They are
Speaker 1: groups that are kind of loosely affiliated and you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes fighting al among themselves, but loosely affiliated, but who concerned.
Speaker 1: There's nobody really controlling production of these starts that everyone
Speaker 1: was kind of free to do what they want. A
Speaker 1: lot of the guys have taken like those like those uh,
Speaker 1: those merchants who sold the gold miners their shovels and
Speaker 1: tents during the gold rush. They're selling them the chemicals.
Speaker 1: That's how people are probably most likely getting getting wealthy.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't matter. They want people to make more,
Speaker 1: and so you have these collapse and prices. It's amazing
Speaker 1: thing with methempedomen Methempedoman's prices effectively dropped by about a
Speaker 1: d percent. It depends on the region, obviously, but about
Speaker 1: eight percent all acroass the country, even as they covered
Speaker 1: the entire country. You know, So there's meth in Vermont
Speaker 1: and New Hampshire that never used to be there, and
Speaker 1: the prices all over the country are below what they
Speaker 1: what they've what they've been historically, according to the d
Speaker 1: e A and agents who talked to you you on in
Speaker 1: these different areas. I'm in Nashville. At the moment, a
Speaker 1: pound of an ounce of let's just say, an ounce
Speaker 1: of matthews to be hundred fifty dollars. Now it's like
Speaker 1: about two d Wow. At least the price of something
Speaker 1: is dropping, he says, fully cognizant of how distasteful that
Speaker 1: joke is. Uh so, um, if you were dragged in
Speaker 1: front of Congress to the White House or whatever and asked,
Speaker 1: what in the world can we do to stem the
Speaker 1: flow of fentinel into the country, because the death toll
Speaker 1: is just astounding. Is there anything we can do well,
Speaker 1: I think I think there's a few things on the
Speaker 1: national level that we we absolutely need to do. I
Speaker 1: was overwhelmed by this feeling when I lived in max
Speaker 1: to code that we have never established the relationship. Our
Speaker 1: relationship with Mexico is ought to be equal in the
Speaker 1: minds of our policy makers, in our government and so on,
Speaker 1: and the political class, and so to any relationship we
Speaker 1: have in the world to England, out we have with England,
Speaker 1: with Japan, with Russia, with China. It's fraud, it's difficult,
Speaker 1: but we need to make it a priority of the
Speaker 1: equal to those countries that I just said. And when
Speaker 1: we do that, we don't like you know, how many
Speaker 1: people can actually Americans can actually name the six Mexican
Speaker 1: border states with the United States and that that kind
Speaker 1: of basic stuff. We just don't know about Mexico. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just not even there. And and so I believe
Speaker 1: that once we have this relationship, we can't There are
Speaker 1: lots of Mexicans I know who would be very happy
Speaker 1: to have their government pushed to address the horrible corruption
Speaker 1: in there um in a criminal justice. So really it's
Speaker 1: almost not just even corruption, it's just simply the institutions
Speaker 1: are unbelievably weak. It's not anything like we have here
Speaker 1: in the United States, except for maybe in the smallest
Speaker 1: town kind of shriff corrupt sheriff kind of idea, you know,
Speaker 1: or stuff that we used to have in the thirties
Speaker 1: under al Capone. It's that kind of thing, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think that that many Mexicans are begging for that.
Speaker 1: This is not something that is a debatable point. I
Speaker 1: don't think in Mexico. We absolutely this is this is
Speaker 1: running our country into the ground. Um. The other thing
Speaker 1: I think we need to do as a country in
Speaker 1: the United States is this is a binational problem, and
Speaker 1: that is that the guns that are purchased easily here
Speaker 1: are what ensures that impunity down in Mexico. So many
Speaker 1: of those guns are smuggled into Mexico, smuggled south, uh
Speaker 1: and usually in small quantities, not big truckloads of hundreds
Speaker 1: of guns or anything like That's usually you know of
Speaker 1: the five, ten, twenty here and there, and and but
Speaker 1: over period of years it adds up and that is
Speaker 1: what ensures their impunity. The price of of an a
Speaker 1: K forty seven made in Eastern Europe sold legally here
Speaker 1: into into the United States and then bought here illegally
Speaker 1: in the United States and then smuggled south. The price
Speaker 1: of that is too is meth and petomen for two
Speaker 1: dollars a pound, or announced rather in UM in Nashville, Tennessee. Boy,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about a topic that will take
Speaker 1: another book. I mean, that's that's a big one and
Speaker 1: full of twists, turns and difficulties. Obviously, yeah so so
Speaker 1: um incredibly troubling and deadly obviously. But let's turn to
Speaker 1: uh the P two P meth. That was the main
Speaker 1: topic of the excerpt from your book that was in
Speaker 1: The Atlantic. The Jack and I talked about a great
Speaker 1: deal we for what it's worth, you know. We we
Speaker 1: definitely swing conservative politically speaking on most things. I hate labels.
Speaker 1: Labors are for soup games. But um, it's also true
Speaker 1: that we don't hate anybody. We're not. We try not
Speaker 1: to be condescending unless it's intentional for the purpose as
Speaker 1: a humor. And we have quite a number of listeners
Speaker 1: who are either uh former drug drug addicts, recovering drug addicts,
Speaker 1: former homeless people, tweakers, people with all sorts of sins
Speaker 1: and all because they know we're not preaching at them.
Speaker 1: We understand people make choices, sometimes they make bad choices,
Speaker 1: and sometimes life goes sideways. It happens, you can't happen
Speaker 1: to anybody. You just have to take responsibility for you know,
Speaker 1: the way you live your life is our point of view.
Speaker 1: So we've talked to a hell of a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have been on the streets or are currently
Speaker 1: on the streets who say, everybody's a tweaker out here.
Speaker 1: Everybody in the tent camps is doing meth. And they
Speaker 1: don't mean literally every single human being. But there was
Speaker 1: a report out of Portland. They had a couple of
Speaker 1: guys who are now turning their lives around working for
Speaker 1: the city. Is actually a really nice story. But they're saying,
Speaker 1: oh my god, he's so called homeless temps are meth.
Speaker 1: The homeless camps rather are meth camps. How did we
Speaker 1: get to this point? And what effect is this new
Speaker 1: meth which is actually kind of the old meth, this
Speaker 1: P two P meth, what what effect is it happen? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: this the roots of all this are the are in
Speaker 1: the fact that the Mexican trafficking world, a few folks
Speaker 1: who are in particular who are instrumental in all this
Speaker 1: I talked about in the book. Um begins to understand
Speaker 1: and learn how to make methum fedomen in the late eighties,
Speaker 1: mostly in the San Diego Tijuana area, um uh and
Speaker 1: um they make it. They were able to learn because
Speaker 1: it's a very simple process. Then it uses a chemical
Speaker 1: called the federan, so decongestent. It's found in pseudo fed
Speaker 1: pills and all. That's why, that's why you can't buy
Speaker 1: those things very easily, have to sign and there's a
Speaker 1: behind lock and key and all. The ephedrian is a
Speaker 1: very easy chemical. It's very effective and good decongestent, but
Speaker 1: a couple of chemical tweaks and it becomes methum fedoment.
Speaker 1: It's not really hard to do um so any almost
Speaker 1: anybody can make and that it really democratizes how how
Speaker 1: of uh meth can be made. But the folks who
Speaker 1: really take greatest advantage of that, our Mexican trappickers increasingly
Speaker 1: into the into the nineteen nineties, the labs that they
Speaker 1: call them men super labs. That that acount sounds like
Speaker 1: a bizarre term now given those quantities coming out of
Speaker 1: Mexico today, but super lab would be fifty to one
Speaker 1: hundred towns every time you cook that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And you began to see this stuff in in the
Speaker 1: central Valley of California, San Diego, to Mecuela, up in
Speaker 1: the Bakersfield friends, and also and then also down into
Speaker 1: into Mexico, and they really specialized and they industrialized this,
Speaker 1: so they're able to produce the very large quantities of
Speaker 1: stuff of this stuff, but it's always limited by the
Speaker 1: amount of a phederan they can get. For a long
Speaker 1: time it was legal. You could get hundreds of tons imported,
Speaker 1: hundreds of tons of imported in Mexico, and significant part
Speaker 1: of that make methal and funniment. But there was never
Speaker 1: enough to really cover the entire United States increasingly, really
Speaker 1: it was just a lot of the West during you know,
Speaker 1: I say it's it never went east to the Mississippi River. Um,
Speaker 1: A federal meth was a very euphoric drug. You would
Speaker 1: stay up for several days, you wanted to be around
Speaker 1: people gathering away, you know. Um. Your withdrawals from it
Speaker 1: would be you basically slept solid for two days, you know,
Speaker 1: and just we're out and then you were coherent. You
Speaker 1: kind of returned more or less to your saying mental
Speaker 1: state that you were before that, although over time clearly
Speaker 1: it degraded your body and your mind. It took several
Speaker 1: years to do those. But so to be in a
Speaker 1: state where you really weren't functional, you would have to
Speaker 1: abuse it for years, for a long time, and stay
Speaker 1: up for many days. Once you stayed up for many days,
Speaker 1: you began to see these what they call shadow people frequently.
Speaker 1: You know there's somebody over there and you looking. Actually
Speaker 1: there's nobody, but you know it's that kind of your
Speaker 1: mind playing tricks on you, so to speak. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, all that changes Mexico in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, prompted by a number of of political reasons
Speaker 1: that I go go into in the book where they
Speaker 1: did this, but they make a veederan illegal except for
Speaker 1: a few pharmaceutical companies to possess and use in their processes,
Speaker 1: and and with that the Mexican trafficking world has to
Speaker 1: figure out how to make the federan. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not em fedoment. I'm sorry. Another another way, they've actually
Speaker 1: been seeing this writing on the wall for a couple
Speaker 1: of years by then two thousand six, and when they
Speaker 1: first begin to start experimenting with this, by two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, the whole the wall shut slam shut, and
Speaker 1: they now have to figure out a new So there
Speaker 1: is another way of making me fedoment. It's it's really
Speaker 1: not very easy. It's smelly, it's messy, a lot of
Speaker 1: different chemicals. UM, it's not anything you'd want to use,
Speaker 1: except for if you can't get a federan and so
Speaker 1: and in this UH method uses a precursor known as
Speaker 1: P two P penal to propanon, very commonly known in
Speaker 1: the meth making UH world. UH. This method has one
Speaker 1: benefit to traffickers over the Federman and that is that
Speaker 1: you can make P two P easily and with many
Speaker 1: different kind of chemical recipes or chemical hacks, using chemicals
Speaker 1: that are widely available in industry. They're all industrial, they're
Speaker 1: all legal, easily available in the world world markets. Half
Speaker 1: most of them very highly highly toxic. Which if so,
Speaker 1: if the government cracked down on this recipe of making
Speaker 1: P twop, you can come back with this other one
Speaker 1: and this one, and there's there's apparently dozens. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think they never stopped inventing new ways of making P.
Speaker 1: Two P. What this means is if you have access
Speaker 1: to to chemicals, which the Mexican trafficking world does, as
Speaker 1: I said, through these two ports on the Czivic coast
Speaker 1: of Mexico, you can begin to make this stuff all
Speaker 1: year round and in quantities that dwarf anything you were
Speaker 1: capable of making with the pedment. And that's what begins
Speaker 1: to happen. It not right off the bat, It takes
Speaker 1: a couple of years, takes a few years when people
Speaker 1: get used to this new reality. But certainly by two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve thirteen fourteen, you begin to see quantities, just
Speaker 1: staggering quantities coming through and marching across the country. So
Speaker 1: in l a Portland's west coast, basically two thousand thirteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: you're seeing this stuff. It hits the Midwest across the
Speaker 1: Mississippi River for the first time. It hits the Midwest
Speaker 1: by two thousand seventeen, and then hits the east coast
Speaker 1: and up into New Windland, which never had any meth
Speaker 1: in two thousand nineteen, roughly in eighteen nineteen um and
Speaker 1: so at the same time, as I said, it's producing
Speaker 1: such quantities that the price drops to not only covered
Speaker 1: the country, the price drops, but this, this methem fetomen
Speaker 1: has been shown to be accompanied. And I use these
Speaker 1: words carefully and I'll explain line a little bit is
Speaker 1: accompanied every place along the way, according to my reporting
Speaker 1: talking to people in all these different areas, by not
Speaker 1: just not just this staying up line. A lot of days,
Speaker 1: it's no longer a euphoric drug. It's a very sinister
Speaker 1: It turns you inward. It's accompanied by um symptoms of schizophrenia.
Speaker 1: So you see people of extraordinarily paranoid, very intense paranoia,
Speaker 1: like everyone's out to get you, no one can be trusted,
Speaker 1: and you're running because somebody, you think, somebody looks at
Speaker 1: you strange, you know, and at the same time, very
Speaker 1: very florid, intense hallucinations. Now, now, Sam, let me let
Speaker 1: me just jump in and ask you, because we've had
Speaker 1: some folks weather and law enforcement around the streets say, well, listen,
Speaker 1: it's not as much about the chemical nature of it,
Speaker 1: but just it is so cheap and so powerful these
Speaker 1: days that it's overwhelming people's brains. So is it one
Speaker 1: or the other? Is it really both? Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. The reason I said accompanied by and
Speaker 1: not cause causes us is because there is no neuroscience
Speaker 1: on this. Nobody understands really what's it work? At least
Speaker 1: of all me. Okay, I don't want to be putting
Speaker 1: myself out there. What I'm giving you is street reporting. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going I'm talking to people, you know, e er
Speaker 1: docs in these hounds and drug counselors over here and
Speaker 1: recovering addicts over here. Um, no one has actually studied
Speaker 1: P two P meth the way it's made in Mexico
Speaker 1: right now. There's no rat studies, no my studies, there's
Speaker 1: no journal reports. I'm simply telling you that this is
Speaker 1: the reporting I've done in these various areas and keep
Speaker 1: on doing even though the books published. I'm I'm still
Speaker 1: talking to people. I'm probably gonna talk with a person
Speaker 1: there Albuquerque, New Mexico and later later today on this
Speaker 1: very topic. But over and over and over, you just
Speaker 1: hear this all the same, the same stories. People go
Speaker 1: out of their minds, they're raving, they're incapable of living
Speaker 1: with anybody, so very quickly they're homeless, and the place
Speaker 1: they least want to be as a homeless shelter, because
Speaker 1: in a homeless shelter, everybody seems to be a threat.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're surrounded by people who are who
Speaker 1: are almost like themselves, a little bit out of their mind,
Speaker 1: and everyone's confined, and you've got to the rules, and
Speaker 1: there's all this stuff that's so so along with that
Speaker 1: comes this very you're um accompanied by all this method
Speaker 1: foundom comes as very severe mental illness and then along
Speaker 1: as well as a homelessness, and along with that then
Speaker 1: comes the tent encountenance. Tents become perfect lodging. If you
Speaker 1: are in the state of mind where you think the
Speaker 1: entire world is a threat, the last thing you want
Speaker 1: to do is be around other people. So a little
Speaker 1: it's a little pod in which you can kind of
Speaker 1: exist with what is stuck in your brain and all
Speaker 1: the those are ideas that are coming through through through
Speaker 1: through your brain. This is homelessness. Is A is A
Speaker 1: is a. There are many kinds of homelessness. There are
Speaker 1: many reasons why people end up homeless. A lot of them,
Speaker 1: you know, shredded safety net, homeless people who lose a
Speaker 1: job and have surgery, can't find can't afford a house,
Speaker 1: and the surgery that that kind of story is also
Speaker 1: part of it. There's the sex register at homeless who
Speaker 1: in a registered sex offender is only a few places
Speaker 1: in his in his town or as county where you
Speaker 1: can where you can live, and frequently they end up homeless.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of reasons. However, my reporting
Speaker 1: I believe has convinced me and shows that did a
Speaker 1: major force behind those tent encampments and the homeless of
Speaker 1: from the delirium that people are often suffering from and
Speaker 1: all that is this method set them and has come
Speaker 1: out of Mexico over the last eight ten eleven years
Speaker 1: and in many parts of the country, certainly eight or
Speaker 1: nine years, many and almost all the country. Um, it
Speaker 1: is made with this P two. Why is it? What
Speaker 1: are the neuroscientific reasons for it? I don't know that
Speaker 1: hasn't been studied in the least. Do we have any
Speaker 1: and I want to Yeah, I was gonna say, do
Speaker 1: we have any idea whether some of the mental health
Speaker 1: problems you're talking about? Uh, can they go away in
Speaker 1: the brain heal once you discontinue the Matthew, Sir, These
Speaker 1: people just damaged for life. I realized it's early days,
Speaker 1: but it is it is early. But I would tell
Speaker 1: you this. I spoke with a woman who is the
Speaker 1: who is a director of a homeless shelter in the Midwest,
Speaker 1: UM and she spent many years on skid road working
Speaker 1: with almost folks, and she was graphic about this stuff.
Speaker 1: She's saying. Used to be we could teach people how
Speaker 1: to repair their lives. We're almost like life coaches. Basically,
Speaker 1: you know how to get a driver's license, how do
Speaker 1: life for a job? All these kinds of that. You
Speaker 1: could teach people all these ways of recovering and getting
Speaker 1: back into life. But the problem is the effect nowadays
Speaker 1: of the meth is so devastating. This is the woman
Speaker 1: of thirty years on the job. Okay, this is she
Speaker 1: is a not born yesterday and the stuff. And she
Speaker 1: was telling me that that we no longer use life
Speaker 1: coaching because the people who we see who even though
Speaker 1: they're sober, they're not on meth, they are not capable.
Speaker 1: They their brains have been so devastated that they're not
Speaker 1: capable of following these simple societal rules. As frequently their
Speaker 1: memories shot too. They're just not able to function the
Speaker 1: way you need to function in a in a in
Speaker 1: a in a society, you know, so you have all
Speaker 1: of this kind of um combined. So it's still not clear.
Speaker 1: But the initial indications, and I asked your question, seemed
Speaker 1: to be that there is in many people, uh, permanent,
Speaker 1: at least semi permanent, at lasting, let's say, damage to
Speaker 1: one's brain. And one woman I quote in the book
Speaker 1: in the least of this my latest book, says that too.
Speaker 1: She she you know, she was barking like a dog,
Speaker 1: she said, and went out of her mind on the stuff.
Speaker 1: She gets sober. She's been sober two years by the
Speaker 1: time I spoke with her, And but she still knows
Speaker 1: she's not the same as such a point in interview,
Speaker 1: she says, I'm hoping they can study this stuff, because
Speaker 1: you know, meditation helps, quiet time helps physical exercise health.
Speaker 1: But there's she's still not the same. She knows this,
Speaker 1: and she said, I just would love to know what
Speaker 1: I can do, what more I can do to help
Speaker 1: heel my brain. And and I think that's what's really
Speaker 1: going on out there. And it's there's so many folks.
Speaker 1: The longer they're left in presence of this myth, the
Speaker 1: more damage it's going to do. And the other promise,
Speaker 1: even if it doesn't create your homelessness, even it's not
Speaker 1: the root cause of why you're on the street, the
Speaker 1: fact that you are on the street, and it is
Speaker 1: so prevalent and so cheap and many, so many areas
Speaker 1: of this country that frequently people fall into using it
Speaker 1: sometimes to remove themselves from the reality that they happen
Speaker 1: to be living, and so they don't feel that reality,
Speaker 1: and so it but that means it serves to keep
Speaker 1: you homeless and make homelessness more durable, more endurable. Kind
Speaker 1: of Well, it strikes me that all of us who
Speaker 1: grew up in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, maybe
Speaker 1: we're part of yours, maybe not conservative, liberal or whatever,
Speaker 1: we need to just to completely reapproach the question of
Speaker 1: drug use and legalization and what's partying and what's not.
Speaker 1: I mean, all the facts have changed. I mean, other
Speaker 1: than I'm thinking back to when you know, when I
Speaker 1: was a kid or a you know, college student whatever.
Speaker 1: If you overdid L s D, you could really screw
Speaker 1: your mind. And ecstasy was just coming on the scene
Speaker 1: when I was in college, and there were definitely some
Speaker 1: people who did themselves serious damage. But I mean, whether
Speaker 1: it's the much much more potent pot or what we've
Speaker 1: been talking about is just that the equation, all the
Speaker 1: factors in the equation have changed. That's that's absolutely verioustuet observation.
Speaker 1: I think that that's actually the truth all the all
Speaker 1: the myths that we used to scoff at, frankly, because
Speaker 1: frankly a lot of more myth they were silly, you know,
Speaker 1: um back in the thirties, fifties, seventies, whatever it was.
Speaker 1: You know, I got some of this stuff when I
Speaker 1: was in school too, and I knew it wasn't really
Speaker 1: true what they were saying, you know, so I laughed
Speaker 1: at And well, all those myths have become reality. You
Speaker 1: can die from a line of cocaine. One hit of
Speaker 1: myth can lead to you going out of your mind, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, by repotent pot can lead you to be
Speaker 1: um uh you know, yeah, send you twenty r with
Speaker 1: psychotic episode. Heroin does kill One hit of heroin does
Speaker 1: kill you. You know, that is the reality of today.
Speaker 1: And so the facts have changed, but frequently are um
Speaker 1: our how shall I put it? Our thinking has not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's so this idea that that you know, we shouldn't
Speaker 1: arrest people for this stuff. Frequently about the only place
Speaker 1: that people are safe. And I hate to put it
Speaker 1: this way because it's it's it's a nuanced idea, but frequently,
Speaker 1: but the only people are people are safe away from
Speaker 1: this damaging, these damaging to trouble and cheap drugs is
Speaker 1: in jail, you know, Sam, Just let me jump in
Speaker 1: and point out. We read an email on the air
Speaker 1: the other day of a guy who's turned his life
Speaker 1: around after a fairly prolonged meth addiction, and it was
Speaker 1: so interesting how he phrased one aspect of his journey.
Speaker 1: He said that uh meth was essentially decriminalized right after
Speaker 1: he got arrested, and he said, thank god I dodged
Speaker 1: that bullet. It was only being incarcerated it that stopped
Speaker 1: his use, and he's so grateful for it. And you
Speaker 1: know that's not some sort of idiotic ham handed to
Speaker 1: arrest everybody argument, but it's it's true. It just is
Speaker 1: it is. And I can tell you I've been doing
Speaker 1: this now nine years and the number of has heard
Speaker 1: this so many times in long interviews and short and
Speaker 1: new casual conversations, on and on and on and every
Speaker 1: Drug Council has heard it as well that the best
Speaker 1: day of my life, the best thing ever happened to
Speaker 1: me was that I was arrested, got off the streets. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, in Dreamland, my previous book, a guide almost
Speaker 1: ordered me to quote him and I did. Uh in
Speaker 1: in in New Mexico and Santa Fe saying, um, the
Speaker 1: I want to thank the d E H for arresting me,
Speaker 1: because I would be dead otherwise. Now he's doing very well.
Speaker 1: He's that we're stolen contact on Facebook, and he's doing
Speaker 1: very well. And but that happened because he was taken
Speaker 1: off the street. Jail is not the way we do
Speaker 1: jail today needs to be changed. That can I'm confessed.
Speaker 1: I think I think there are um uh, they're in
Speaker 1: fact in my latest book that there's chapters on this
Speaker 1: one county in Kentucky that is experimenting with how to
Speaker 1: do jail differently. Have a pod of recovery, of recovery
Speaker 1: pod as part of the jail and G E D
Speaker 1: classes and Criminals thinking classes and all that. Because jail
Speaker 1: has largely been this anchor around our neck. If you
Speaker 1: go in a criminal mentally ill or addicted, you're gonna
Speaker 1: come out worse. You know, we need to approach this differently,
Speaker 1: I believe, or at least a offer a different option
Speaker 1: to folks in jail who want to follow it. And
Speaker 1: and that's happening now in many counties, particularly in those
Speaker 1: areas where the opioid epidemic was worse Kentucky, Ohio, places
Speaker 1: like that. But um, even the fact of just getting
Speaker 1: off the street if you if you buy the homeless
Speaker 1: UM shelter administrators comment to me that the folks who
Speaker 1: are out there on the street now that that that
Speaker 1: they are using this stuff when they stopped, that their
Speaker 1: brains are perhaps permanently at least long term devastated and
Speaker 1: her words, um, then then more exposure to that stuff
Speaker 1: is going to lead to further u devastation. Of course,
Speaker 1: with frontinol risk almost every day basically every day, um
Speaker 1: uh death. You know. So the idea that of decriminalizing
Speaker 1: the stuff COVID was simply I've taken as saying COVID
Speaker 1: is simply a year long, unplanned, completely obviously unplanned experiment,
Speaker 1: and decriminalizing drugs on the street when those drugs on
Speaker 1: the street our frontinl and math and so you see
Speaker 1: the record overdose deaths. You see. My my opinion really
Speaker 1: the real expansion of mental illness and homelessness. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: driven I believe my reporting shows by by by this
Speaker 1: method phetom and that's coming out of Mexico and its
Speaker 1: unprecedented quantities. Wow. What a great point. So final thought,
Speaker 1: you've scared the crap out of us, in appropriately so.
Speaker 1: But the tital of your book, the Least of Us,
Speaker 1: true tales of America and hope in the time of
Speaker 1: fentanyl and meth. Where's the hope coming from? Well, this
Speaker 1: is always the problem I get into with interviews like that.
Speaker 1: I love talking about all parts of this book. This
Speaker 1: part of the book is really most of the book. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's more than half the book is taken up
Speaker 1: with stories, and so it really I hate to put
Speaker 1: to say that, but it really warrants a full conversation
Speaker 1: of another hour. And I'm happy to do that at
Speaker 1: another time if you wish. But but the the I
Speaker 1: really did view this as as a as an opportunity,
Speaker 1: this whole thing, and and and and in part because
Speaker 1: I thought that one of the main reasons for the
Speaker 1: opioid epidemic and all the problems we faced um uh
Speaker 1: and in terms of trucks, has a lot to do
Speaker 1: with our turning our back or ignoring or shredding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the what bonded us? What bonds? You know, if you
Speaker 1: think about why we humans survived and prospered as a
Speaker 1: species for whatever millions of years, what is the thing
Speaker 1: that held it held made that possible? And I would
Speaker 1: argue to you that it is our feeling that not
Speaker 1: of community that we need. It's not a nice thing,
Speaker 1: it's an essential, but it's what kept us alive, allowed
Speaker 1: us to survive. And and we have decided in America,
Speaker 1: I would say, I don't know about other countries. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's also true, but I'm just talking about the country
Speaker 1: right now. In America, we have decided in the last
Speaker 1: forty years that that's not necessary. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: really need to be around other people, or we can
Speaker 1: just be around certain kinds of people. We don't need
Speaker 1: to you know, um, the community banks that can be
Speaker 1: swallowed up and buy big banks and who cares. You know,
Speaker 1: there's we could go on for like literally an hour
Speaker 1: talking about all the ways in which American our culture
Speaker 1: we have shredded, destroyed, ignored, unfunded, whatever things that brought
Speaker 1: us together that were really the bulwarks of the sense
Speaker 1: against the stuff. And now we we find ourselves so
Speaker 1: vulnerable because why my my feeling is because we're so isolated,
Speaker 1: and we we got away from the idea that a
Speaker 1: community is built by small acts, gaily act, not worrying
Speaker 1: if you're saving the world, not worrying if you're if
Speaker 1: you're some noble person out there doing everything and getting
Speaker 1: all the credit, and you're just And so what I
Speaker 1: did was understanding believing that this was the case. I
Speaker 1: decided I was going to fill my book, actually half
Speaker 1: of the book with the stories of Americans involved as
Speaker 1: many stories of quiet active the quiet work, daily work
Speaker 1: of Americans involved in community repair that I could find,
Speaker 1: not necessarily working only with addiction. Now the idea that
Speaker 1: we need to be outside among each other, overlooking all
Speaker 1: these reasons why we're supposed to hate this other person,
Speaker 1: race or or or political persuasion or all these kind
Speaker 1: of clapp and when you get down to the bottom,
Speaker 1: local grassroots level, you find a lot of that just
Speaker 1: does not matter at all. And it's very exhilarating to
Speaker 1: do that. So, for example, just give you one example
Speaker 1: there's many in the book because this was this became
Speaker 1: my main focus, not the not the dope. The dope.
Speaker 1: I I understood it, I understood noting all. I understood nothing.
Speaker 1: And I told those stories without blinking. But the real
Speaker 1: stories that exhilarated me, that made me feel like, damn,
Speaker 1: this is work doing, you know, and and this is
Speaker 1: the heart and soul of what I'm trying to learn.
Speaker 1: There are stories of this small kind of stories of
Speaker 1: community repair. One of them had to do with a
Speaker 1: guy named Bird Mike mckissic and the small Southern South Muns,
Speaker 1: Indiana South Monthly neighborhood surrounded by what used to be
Speaker 1: enormous transmission plants and transmission Capital of America Munthsly Monthly
Speaker 1: once was well, as those plants, you know, are really
Speaker 1: on the verge of dying out. They've been dwindling for years,
Speaker 1: and how they're about to die out. The city fathers say,
Speaker 1: you know what, we can't afford to keep open these
Speaker 1: community centers that we have three of him around, and
Speaker 1: one of them was right across the street from Bird's house.
Speaker 1: He had worked there for a while. So the city
Speaker 1: fathers he went on the budget, you know, it is
Speaker 1: not possible anymore. And so they closed the centers, and
Speaker 1: they think that's the end of it, except except that
Speaker 1: Bird keeps the key. Right, the bird keeps the key,
Speaker 1: doesn't tell the city lead there's anything about this. He
Speaker 1: just becomes a community center unto himself, as his neighborhood
Speaker 1: suffers from this real economic stress. And then of course
Speaker 1: the opio thing on top of that. I mean, all
Speaker 1: of this is happening at the same time. And he
Speaker 1: keeps the key, and he goes over and he opens
Speaker 1: the door for the kids when I want to play basketball.
Speaker 1: He gives him a place to hang out amid all this,
Speaker 1: you know, devastation all around them, the community center without
Speaker 1: any money and pains that Clay continues to function as
Speaker 1: a community center. And of course he he he keeps
Speaker 1: the he keeps the he mows the lawn outside, he
Speaker 1: keeps the toilets fixed, all this kind of stuff. He
Speaker 1: allows his community, his his neighborhood to whether this powerful,
Speaker 1: these powerful storms, and come out kind of the the
Speaker 1: the other, the other side. So I tell three chapters
Speaker 1: in the books about Munsey, Indiana and Bird Makissic who
Speaker 1: later who dies. He's a strange man, no doubt. He's
Speaker 1: a man who literally, like psychologically, had some issues and
Speaker 1: and literally never could leave his neighborhood. He was afraid
Speaker 1: to leave his neighborhood, but he was. He was like
Speaker 1: the mayor of the South Mundsy neighborhood, and he kept
Speaker 1: it a lot. It's those kinds of stories that I
Speaker 1: believe I wanted to tell, not because they're a prescription.
Speaker 1: I don't know what every county in America needs to
Speaker 1: do about this stuff. I just think that it's very
Speaker 1: important to understand that we have gotten away from this stuff.
Speaker 1: That is our life saver, it's our it's our life
Speaker 1: rep and that is the feeling of repairing community, making
Speaker 1: that strong again. Boy, I'm starting to get a sense
Speaker 1: of why you juxtapose those two major things in your book.
Speaker 1: But it's it's interesting to me that you did in
Speaker 1: that way. And by the way, these issues are stuff
Speaker 1: we talk about all the time, substituting the empty calories
Speaker 1: of say, online engagement with actual human contact and if
Speaker 1: a Facebook friend is anything like a friend, etcetera center. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly what an idea, you know, I'll face to face contact,
Speaker 1: My god, it seems like radical in the in the
Speaker 1: context of America, of America today. Don't you think I
Speaker 1: mean to me? But to me this is and and
Speaker 1: and the idea is to get to cross this idea.
Speaker 1: We are only as strong as the most vulnerable. We're
Speaker 1: only as strong. We learned during the pandemic, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, our lives relied on that beat packing worker
Speaker 1: in Kansas, we who, all of a sudden we discover
Speaker 1: is actually an essential worker, every bit as essentials as
Speaker 1: some paramedic, you know, because so is the food supply
Speaker 1: dies we do you know, what about the grocery store clerk?
Speaker 1: All of these things and and along the way, just
Speaker 1: to explain the title. You know, I'm not Christian, but
Speaker 1: I was reading the Bible during writing this, and I
Speaker 1: read the Gospel of mass You, and of course that's
Speaker 1: a very powerful gospel, particularly in certain parts of it.
Speaker 1: Um several parts, but one of them, of course, one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful, is one of Jesus says to
Speaker 1: his disciples that would you do for the least of
Speaker 1: my brother? And you do for me? And I And
Speaker 1: that hit me. It was something I'd read years ago,
Speaker 1: but I came back to it for some reason. And
Speaker 1: when in the middle of it, I realized kind of
Speaker 1: why I had done that, and that that that seemed
Speaker 1: to me also this perfect messing of the of the
Speaker 1: ideas I was trying to get across. What is the
Speaker 1: defense against not only not only the sinister drug craft
Speaker 1: that's coming up, but all these other uh addictive substances
Speaker 1: and stuff that we are constantly bombarded with sugar and
Speaker 1: fast food and social media and you know, Twitter and
Speaker 1: Facebook and all the rest, and and cable TV news
Speaker 1: and and pornography and gambling and video daancity go on
Speaker 1: and not take the alcohol? What is our best defense?
Speaker 1: These are all the same kind of thing. They're all
Speaker 1: a bunch of groups whose job is to week whatever
Speaker 1: they're selling so that we will need, we will feel
Speaker 1: like we have to have it. Send a lot a
Speaker 1: drug cartel, McDonald's Facebook, you know, uh scuser's gambling has.
Speaker 1: You know that it's kind of all in the same
Speaker 1: uh continuum. I believe in so to me, I think
Speaker 1: Jesus understood that the important idea that had allowed people
Speaker 1: to survive up to his time and have allowed us
Speaker 1: to survive as a species ever since, and that is
Speaker 1: that we have to understand how important it is to
Speaker 1: be with each other. So in some sense that community idea,
Speaker 1: he understood that. You may not have understood the neuroscience
Speaker 1: of it, but he's certainly understood the idea there. And
Speaker 1: so at some point these these solutions maybe even become
Speaker 1: fairly low tech, you know, like how about just getting
Speaker 1: out of the house, have a barbecue with your neighbors,
Speaker 1: get to know that person always seems like such a commudgeon.
Speaker 1: Maybe actually get to know maybe he's actually a nice guy,
Speaker 1: you know, not worrying about whether that person has a
Speaker 1: Trump or Biden sign in s front yard anymore. You know,
Speaker 1: once you get beyond that, get beyond that established let's
Speaker 1: face to face relationships, so we we what we've lost
Speaker 1: so much of in this country. I think, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon myself, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm concerned that though there's an enormous amount of awareness
Speaker 1: of the things you're talking about, um that number one,
Speaker 1: the pace of change makes it very difficult to come
Speaker 1: up with cures as quickly as the disease has happened.
Speaker 1: And number two, the greatest minds of our our generations
Speaker 1: are devoted to the very endeavors you're talking about, which
Speaker 1: are you know, utterly heartless and soul less in in
Speaker 1: their effects. But no, I agree with you completely. I'm troubled.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny there are there are no chimpanzees
Speaker 1: sitting around discussing how chimpanzees will clearly be their own doom,
Speaker 1: whereas human kind of think has been aware of that
Speaker 1: since you know, when people started tossing ideas around the campfire.
Speaker 1: It's not clear whether it's going to be a virus
Speaker 1: or a nuclear weapon, or or drug or Facebook. But
Speaker 1: by god, I've often said that Sam that Homo sapiens
Speaker 1: are my least favorite species. It's mosquitoes are second to
Speaker 1: the bottom, But Homo sapiens, I don't know what to
Speaker 1: do with us. You know what, I don't particularly no either.
Speaker 1: I don't claim to have any answers here. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying the stories I tried to write. We're saying this
Speaker 1: is what people are doing. Maybe that attitude is something
Speaker 1: you might want to think about. Well, that's the most
Speaker 1: of the journalists can really do. I think I love
Speaker 1: the idea of getting together again and chatting about that
Speaker 1: theme of the book, the connectedness and things that we
Speaker 1: can do on small and medium scales. Uh, and not
Speaker 1: just get on Twitter and announced that anybody who disagrees
Speaker 1: with me as a piece of crap um or worse.
Speaker 1: But you know, what can we do in our own communities?
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's a number of the great philosophers,
Speaker 1: religious figures who would point out that start with your
Speaker 1: own soul, then perhaps your family, your household, then maybe
Speaker 1: your block. Why don't you deal with that and then
Speaker 1: start crying the problems of the globe and not worry
Speaker 1: that what you're doing is not in some noble, virtuous
Speaker 1: way of saving the world. And how it be enough
Speaker 1: that you're doing it down your block, your church, your
Speaker 1: pt A, your school, your kids school. That kind of thing,
Speaker 1: to me so often gets in the way, like I'm
Speaker 1: not Oh, there's all these other problems you ask, So
Speaker 1: what just do like work with your own garden, so
Speaker 1: to speak. Yeah, yeah, save the one starship. It's a
Speaker 1: metaphor that's both cliche and incredibly powerful. The starfish. Rather,
Speaker 1: we're not stay saving starships, were not Captain Kirk in
Speaker 1: the scenario star I think you know what I'm talking about. Uh, Sam, Hey,
Speaker 1: it's been great to talk, and we will will absolutely
Speaker 1: do it again. Extra large