Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noah.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Speaker 4: Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3: You are here.
Speaker 4: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 4: This is the second part of a two part interview
Speaker 4: with the creator of Absolute, the journalist, documentarian, filmmaker, author,
Speaker 4: podcaster Nick Beredini. Way through the show in media rests,
Speaker 4: so why don't we just pick up where we left off.
Speaker 5: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: I know we've kind of hit this already, Nick, but
Speaker 2: I want to drill down more into those pig tests.
Speaker 2: One of the episodes is that you've made on your
Speaker 2: show is called Defective Pigs, and this episode goes into
Speaker 2: depth of what it was actually being done. And well,
Speaker 2: you tell us the details, but I think they were
Speaker 2: doing tests on pigs where an elongated taser event was occurring,
Speaker 2: that they were testing, right, and what happened there?
Speaker 6: The thing that really almost takes the whole company down,
Speaker 6: is this sort of accidental discovery. What happens is there's
Speaker 6: a lot of controversy by the mid two thousands around
Speaker 6: tasers because they are becoming incredibly popular with cops, and
Speaker 6: as such, you start to see a lot of people
Speaker 6: being killed. So now we're talking about The New York
Speaker 6: Times is doing big investigations. You're talking about CBS News,
Speaker 6: the Arizona Republic. Robert Anglan is a terrific, terrific reporter
Speaker 6: from the Arizona Republic, a great, great guy who just
Speaker 6: like kicked their ass, not on purpose, not trying to be,
Speaker 6: you know, somebody who was adversarial, but doing kind of
Speaker 6: what I was doing, which was taking these claims at
Speaker 6: face value and checking them out and being like, I
Speaker 6: don't think that adds up, bro, and then them fighting
Speaker 6: him over the fact that right what they're saying is
Speaker 6: in true. You have all of this scrutiny that didn't
Speaker 6: exist in the early days. In fact, this weapon got
Speaker 6: a lot of positive media attention in the beginning because
Speaker 6: it was a great idea, the idea that you could
Speaker 6: have an electric weapon that would prevent police shootings. Everybody
Speaker 6: can get on board with them. But of course, as
Speaker 6: people start dropping dead and there are stories popping up
Speaker 6: about six year olds being tasered and grandma's being tasered,
Speaker 6: and like, all these things start to make really controversial news,
Speaker 6: the company realizes they're going to basically be in a
Speaker 6: public opinion war, right, and they're a big target because
Speaker 6: at the same time as these debts and injuries are
Speaker 6: starting to happen, the stock had gone from like trading
Speaker 6: at like three dollars a share to like being like
Speaker 6: I said, I think they went from a shareholder value
Speaker 6: you know, maybe of like eight eight point four million
Speaker 6: I think when they went public in two thousand and one,
Speaker 6: to like one point nine billion by April of two
Speaker 6: thousand and four. This is like a unicorn unicorn, right,
Speaker 6: this is pretty Facebook and all these terms we've become
Speaker 6: familiar with, you know, with all these tech companies. Right,
Speaker 6: this was after the dot com crash. You have a
Speaker 6: tech company essentially a weapons manufacturer that's kind of a
Speaker 6: tech company, right, just smoking the NaSTA, I mean, doing incredible,
Speaker 6: incredible you know numbers in terms of its shareholder value.
Speaker 4: And Rick Smith is by the way, at this point
Speaker 4: becoming almost like a messiotic figure for stockbrokers, you know.
Speaker 4: And he's got he's got the uh you've established him
Speaker 4: not just as a uh, not just as a guy
Speaker 4: born into very good means with a lot of opportunities,
Speaker 4: but now a guy who might be drinking his own
Speaker 4: pool aider.
Speaker 6: To one thousand per right, Oh, this is everything he
Speaker 6: ever dreamed of, was to be basically up like he
Speaker 6: wanted to be, like Steve Jobs. I mean, that's really
Speaker 6: what he wanted to be like. And so he's got
Speaker 6: a cult of personality within law enforcement because the literal
Speaker 6: corporate you know mission statement was protect truth, protect life.
Speaker 6: So all these cops are you know, like hailing him
Speaker 6: as this great, you know, hero of policing because he's
Speaker 6: invented this weapon that can save lives by you know,
Speaker 6: not having to shoot people or beat people with batons anymore. Right,
Speaker 6: But then you also have this incredible retail investor rush
Speaker 6: of glorification of him, where these day traders and these
Speaker 6: average people are able to beat the big banks, you know,
Speaker 6: on a stock that the big banks think is kind
Speaker 6: of bolt and right, the day traders and the retail
Speaker 6: investors and the mom and pops doing their own trading
Speaker 6: are hailing because of the sales numbers or quarter are
Speaker 6: just bananas at this time. But what happens, and getting
Speaker 6: back to the pig tests, you know, is Rick now
Speaker 6: has everything at stake because he in two thousand and four,
Speaker 6: his family in two thousand and four makes one hundred
Speaker 6: million dollars in stock sales alone. Right their whole fortunes
Speaker 6: are being made, and the rocket ride up the Nastac
Speaker 6: in that year. At the same time, people start dying
Speaker 6: and the controversy starts to really swell about is this
Speaker 6: weapon really what they said it was, And they start
Speaker 6: having to do these other studies to basically try to
Speaker 6: confirm and backup sort of what they had said. And
Speaker 6: at the same time, other researchers are getting interested because
Speaker 6: it's a big story. It's a controversial story. So the
Speaker 6: guys like Andrew Dennis who I mentioned, are sitting in
Speaker 6: a daser training as a cop and going like, I'm
Speaker 6: gonna check that out myself. What they discover in in
Speaker 6: early two thousand and five, I believe it was sometime
Speaker 6: in early two thousand and five, they start doing this
Speaker 6: study with the Cleveland Clinic, which is one of the
Speaker 6: most reputable, you know, hospitals in the entire country, and
Speaker 6: they these this electrophysiologist, physiologist named Patrick chose one of
Speaker 6: the best electrophysiologists in the country. They hire him to
Speaker 6: prove that cocaine or stimulant drugs don't make someone more
Speaker 6: susceptible to heart trouble when they're tasered. And the study
Speaker 6: that he does kind of proves that. But this pig
Speaker 6: study is the first to use an ultrasound or an
Speaker 6: echo cardiogram to measure a heart rhythm because previously they
Speaker 6: were doing a lot of studies and if you use
Speaker 6: an EKG on a pig, for example, during an animal study,
Speaker 6: and you shoot it with a taser, right, the thekt's
Speaker 6: gonna go ap because the electric current is interfering with
Speaker 6: the reading. Then echo cardiogram is an image of the
Speaker 6: horror right, and the election cardiogram. They discover this current
Speaker 6: is overriding the pig's heartbeats in these early stages. Sometimes
Speaker 6: they bounce back to normal when the shock ends. Sometimes
Speaker 6: they speed up to rapid rates that can lead to
Speaker 6: what's called ventricular fibrillation, which is essentially what is described
Speaker 6: as a bag of squiggly worms. In your heart. No
Speaker 6: real rhythm quickly leads to death. When you see people
Speaker 6: shoveling snow. You hear about people shoveling snow and they
Speaker 6: drop dead in the snow, they have a heart attack.
Speaker 6: A lot of times that's ventricular fibrillation. It's a messed
Speaker 6: up current, an uncontrollable current inside the heart rhythm.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 6: Well, this is a huge deal because they never tested
Speaker 6: for what was called cardiac capture, that the current could
Speaker 6: actually override somebody's heart. They were just testing to see
Speaker 6: in the beginning, would the electric current send a dog
Speaker 6: or a pig heart immediately into ventricular fibrillation, that squiggly
Speaker 6: worm current. Well, because they never tested for capture, and
Speaker 6: now they're finding capture, they're starting to cover their ass,
Speaker 6: thinking like, how do we show that that actually isn't
Speaker 6: what had happened in this test done by this incredibly
Speaker 6: reputal electrophysiologists they'd hired to do the study. And that
Speaker 6: leads to all of this internal testing that a lot
Speaker 6: of it wasn't published, trying to sort of disprove what
Speaker 6: Patrick Chu ended up proving, and that study is eventually
Speaker 6: going to become the real impetus for these legal threats
Speaker 6: because now lawyers can say they told you for years
Speaker 6: this weapon could not affect the heart, and they have
Speaker 6: known that it can by their own study that they
Speaker 6: have paid for since two thousand and five, and they
Speaker 6: have not warned cops anywhere. So those pig tests are
Speaker 6: basically a way to try to disprove it, and all
Speaker 6: they keep doing is just proving repeatedly what that original
Speaker 6: one that they did sort of showed, which is a
Speaker 6: shock in close enough to the heart, and especially in
Speaker 6: a long gated one, especially one for longer than five seconds,
Speaker 6: can override a person's heartbeat. And the longer that shock went,
Speaker 6: the more likely it was to happen. Not that it's
Speaker 6: likely to happen in the beginning, to be very clear,
Speaker 6: It's not like a bunch of people died from tasers
Speaker 6: because they got shot in the chest, but the risk
Speaker 6: was obviously significant given that the weapons at that point
Speaker 6: were being used something like a thousand times a day
Speaker 6: by American cops.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we also see at this point, we see a
Speaker 4: great appetite on behalf of Taser International, who has not
Speaker 4: yet changed their name to find I'll say it undiplomatically
Speaker 4: to cherry pick other ideas or frankly pitches not real
Speaker 4: science that will suit their narrative.
Speaker 3: There's a conversation we.
Speaker 4: Had back in twenty twenty one on a show called
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards about the concept of excit I did
Speaker 4: delirium and we know big Taser loved this idea. Could
Speaker 4: you tell us a little bit about excited delirium? Why
Speaker 4: Taser International was so on board with championing this.
Speaker 6: You have heard of excited delirium because of Taser International.
Speaker 6: This was a syndrome that was very, very you know,
Speaker 6: obscure comes comes all the way back. They would tie
Speaker 6: it all the way back to the eighteen hundreds in
Speaker 6: a thing called Bell's mania, which was basically like a
Speaker 6: psychosis in mental institutions. Going back to the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 6: A forensic pathologist named Cyril Wett, who's a very controversial
Speaker 6: figure in forensic pathology, started using the phrase excited delirium
Speaker 6: or cocaine psychosis in the nineteen eighties to try to
Speaker 6: explain people who were dying in Miami in bizarre circumstances
Speaker 6: that was then later debunked that it wasn't related to
Speaker 6: any sort of drug intoxication. I think, in fact, this
Speaker 6: is I'm speculating a little bit this because I forget
Speaker 6: it all now. But like, I think some of the
Speaker 6: deaths of these women that they were targeting were basically
Speaker 6: like they were using sort of like their sexuality against them,
Speaker 6: and that they were actually killed by a serial killer
Speaker 6: I believe was one of the findings. If you guys,
Speaker 6: am I right about that? You guys might know that you.
Speaker 3: Are on the stuff. Yeah, you are correct, Yeah, are correct. Nick.
Speaker 4: When I was talking with Robert, he was able to
Speaker 4: confirm that on the on that show, it's it's kind
Speaker 4: of bullsh though right excited.
Speaker 6: It's a bullsh syndrome that because people could not explain
Speaker 6: some pathology that led some people with mental illness to die.
Speaker 6: The pathology always required restraint. People weren't just dropping dead. Well,
Speaker 6: what could happen is somebody who was really worked up,
Speaker 6: whether that was because of drugs or some sort of
Speaker 6: mental break, would be restrained, and the restraint itself was
Speaker 6: typically a trigger for how someone might die because there
Speaker 6: was no obvious forensic pathway to show it was a asphyxiation, right,
Speaker 6: They just they didn't they couldn't.
Speaker 3: Breathe or whatever.
Speaker 6: There was no obvious, clear cut point to the liver
Speaker 6: and show the damage to deliver and say that's why
Speaker 6: it happened. Excited delierum kind of became this thing that
Speaker 6: was bandied about, like maybe there's some sort of right
Speaker 6: like syndrome that's taking place in people who are not
Speaker 6: within their own sound minded body. Taser took that in
Speaker 6: and it started in the very first training version. I
Speaker 6: believe I saw this, and I may be wrong. It
Speaker 6: might have come in earlier, but I really remember it
Speaker 6: starting to be pushed into trained versions around November of
Speaker 6: two thousand and four. This is a super controversial period
Speaker 6: because again the stock is skyrocketing, and this is when
Speaker 6: they're also for the first time, really being pounded by
Speaker 6: you know, big national media. The SEC is floating around
Speaker 6: thinking about an investigation. Yearson attorney generals about to start
Speaker 6: an investigation. So they are looking to show cops who
Speaker 6: are seeing these headlines and thinking about, how's the taser
Speaker 6: not killing these people? Why can we trust you when
Speaker 6: you say that the taser cannot kill? They point to
Speaker 6: excited delirium, which for American police is the perfect perfect
Speaker 6: excuse because we have such a culture victim blaming in
Speaker 6: American policing that it basically allows the cops to say,
Speaker 6: it wasn't the taser. It wasn't my actions of the
Speaker 6: tasering someone for a minute in fifteen seconds who was
Speaker 6: high on methamphetamine that caused this person to die. It
Speaker 6: was them being high on methamphetamine, dying of excited delirium
Speaker 6: and just crashing out. And that they they put so
Speaker 6: much energy into pushing excited delirium and all these conditions
Speaker 6: that sort of get bucketed with excited delirium as the
Speaker 6: reason for why people were dying in custody, and that
Speaker 6: coflected blame, especially with the customer with American police, from
Speaker 6: the weapon itself, because that's really who they were answering to.
Speaker 6: The SEC investigation that happened into Taser International was whether
Speaker 6: or not they lied about the safety of the Taser. Well,
Speaker 6: to prove that they lied about the safety of the tasers,
Speaker 6: you would need to do some medical research to dispute
Speaker 6: their claims, which the SEC is a financial regulatory body.
Speaker 6: The we're gonna do right. The Arizona Attorney General's Office
Speaker 6: dropped their investigation because Taser agreed to essentially stop calling
Speaker 6: tasers none wethough they would refer to them as less lethal,
Speaker 6: and that was fine for the Arizona AG. The investigation
Speaker 6: gets dropped, right, it's cops who matter. They are the
Speaker 6: only ones who can basically kill this business if there
Speaker 6: is some skepticism, and for a period there was. Two
Speaker 6: thousand and five was a brutal year for Taser International
Speaker 6: because they were under sec investigation and a lot of
Speaker 6: departments canceled orders saying we can't do business with a
Speaker 6: company who might get hammered by the Feds. We have
Speaker 6: to pause this until this gets sorted out, and excited
Speaker 6: de leering became a part of that push to show no, no, no, no,
Speaker 6: it's not the Taser, it's all these other things and like,
Speaker 6: you know, that guy was just a drug addict, piece
Speaker 6: of who dropped dead, and like they're blaming the Taser
Speaker 6: now because that's what these crybabies do. Mike Brave said
Speaker 6: something one of the most despicable things I've ever read
Speaker 6: in Princeton, quite frankly, where he said to mother Jones,
Speaker 6: I think who has did a big investigation at the
Speaker 6: time about excited tiary And he said, you know, do
Speaker 6: we blame the druggies, the druggie or the druggies mom
Speaker 6: who cries when someone dies. No, we blame the cop
Speaker 6: and we blame the taser because that's what's there the
Speaker 6: time of death. And it was so prevalent a part
Speaker 6: of their rhetoric that these were people out to get you,
Speaker 6: the officer in us, the company trying to provide you
Speaker 6: with service, and you know what, like them, it's their
Speaker 6: own fault. And that worked. That worked incredibly well. It
Speaker 6: worked on Matt Masters. And that is what I feel
Speaker 6: is so devastating is that if it had actually been
Speaker 6: taken seriously and honestly right, there could have been a
Speaker 6: sort of reforming of the way the weapon was treated
Speaker 6: and policies were made. There could have been an honest
Speaker 6: discussion about what the real risk was of the device,
Speaker 6: without without pulling them off the street, without getting cups
Speaker 6: to use them. But the difference is if police officers
Speaker 6: then started to put in their minds there was a
Speaker 6: small risk that someone could be killed or armed from
Speaker 6: this weapon, they would no longer be tasering six year
Speaker 6: olds and grandmothers and people who didn't want to sign
Speaker 6: speeding tickets. And why if I am the Chicago PD,
Speaker 6: find the NYPD, find these huge departments where they were
Speaker 6: pushing to arm every officer with a taser. Why would
Speaker 6: I give every officer a taser when they already have
Speaker 6: a gun, they already have pepper spread, they already have
Speaker 6: the baton, you know, whatever it may be. And if
Speaker 6: they're only going to be able to allow to use
Speaker 6: a taser when there's a real fight that's happening, why
Speaker 6: would I spend millions of dollars for the department to
Speaker 6: give everyone one? Just give them to you know, sergeants,
Speaker 6: give them the supervisory and it's give then the swat whatever.
Speaker 6: And that would kill the whole business model, because the
Speaker 6: business model was this wasn't some niche weapon. The business
Speaker 6: model was this was a panacea. This was a magical
Speaker 6: bullet that could be used for anything.
Speaker 4: Let's pause here, we'll have a word from our sponsors,
Speaker 4: and then we'll dive deeper into the story of tasers,
Speaker 4: and we've returned.
Speaker 2: It really sucks because, like I said at the top
Speaker 2: of this, it seems like a great idea to have
Speaker 2: this thing at the ready as a non lethal force
Speaker 2: that can be deployed. But you know, it just it.
Speaker 2: It isn't used in the way that it's ever I've seen.
Speaker 2: I've never seen a video of a taser being deployed
Speaker 2: by a police officer that is used in the way
Speaker 2: that is used in the tests. And if you look
Speaker 2: at those tests, every single one, including the one with
Speaker 2: Hans Morrero, which was like the big one, there is
Speaker 2: a mat laid on the ground so that a human
Speaker 2: being when they fall down in the way a human
Speaker 2: being falls down when they're tased, it doesn't cause damage
Speaker 2: right when you fall down that way. But then in
Speaker 2: almost every video you see of a police officer using
Speaker 2: a taser, there is either asphalt or concrete or some
Speaker 2: hard surface that's there. And people don't talk about the
Speaker 2: traumatic brain injuries that occur when a taser is deployed
Speaker 2: because a human being falls face down onto concrete or asphalt.
Speaker 2: It just stinks because if it was used in those
Speaker 2: little bursts, Like I'm not trying to say tasers are
Speaker 2: safe in that way, but if it was used in
Speaker 2: those little bursts to stop someone in the moment, it
Speaker 2: seems like it would be a fairly safe weapon, fairly
Speaker 2: safe weapon for most instances.
Speaker 5: But it's just it's just not and it seems like
Speaker 5: it's just become a device for intimidation.
Speaker 4: Also, yeah, yeah, also a huge profit center, but as
Speaker 4: we alluded to, not the sole income stream for Taser
Speaker 4: International at this point, and that's something we definitely have
Speaker 4: to address. Like the thing that Matt is bringing up
Speaker 4: here is mission critical, right. It's kind of like how
Speaker 4: during prohibition, companies would sell grape juice concentrate and they
Speaker 4: would have an awarding label on the package that said,
Speaker 4: don't do the following things because this will turn that
Speaker 4: grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. And everyone was like, oh, gotcha, buddy.
Speaker 4: So we see again the conflict of Like, one thing
Speaker 4: I love about absolute in general is the way that
Speaker 4: you describe it as a story about unchecked power, and
Speaker 4: it goes so much deeper than the mechanics or the
Speaker 4: science of taser technology. I see it as a battle
Speaker 4: between stories with lives on the line, right, narratives, truth
Speaker 4: versus fiction, pr versus reality. And we see also and
Speaker 4: this is a personal question, now I want to put
Speaker 4: you too much on the spot here, Nick, but we
Speaker 4: see also that big taser I'm.
Speaker 3: Calling them, that can be a little bit.
Speaker 4: A little bit defensive when people find things that don't
Speaker 4: match their stories. So can you tell us a little
Speaker 4: about legal actions or reprisals that people feel they have encountered.
Speaker 4: And on the personal note, dude, have you at any
Speaker 4: point felt like someone was gunning for you as a
Speaker 4: result of this, because you've been at this for more
Speaker 4: than a decade and a half.
Speaker 6: Personally, I've never felt a lot of threat or danger
Speaker 6: in any way from the usual. You know, they were
Speaker 6: very serious when my film came out about review bombing
Speaker 6: the documentary on Amazon and IMDb, at these iTunes and
Speaker 6: these things, attacking me personally in the press, doing that
Speaker 6: kind of stuff you expect, right, They sort of that backfires,
Speaker 6: right because that just draws more attention. What I'm dealing
Speaker 6: with now is a completely different company than I was
Speaker 6: dealing with ten years ago. And that's because they are
Speaker 6: a tech conglomerate. I mean, I've told people, and I
Speaker 6: firmly believe this to be true, that this is the
Speaker 6: most important and powerful company at least that's publicly traded,
Speaker 6: let's say that you don't actually know about. And the
Speaker 6: reason for that is because they have more from this
Speaker 6: niche taser manufacturer into the dominant provider of all law
Speaker 6: enforcement technology, and that's expanding into different public safety sectors
Speaker 6: like healthcare, public schools, even rights. That's how far this
Speaker 6: is getting. They were, you know, billion dollar ish company
Speaker 6: when I when I was doing my film ten years ago.
Speaker 6: They are a fifty billion dollar company now. And that
Speaker 6: is because of the camera systems, the drones, the artificial intelligence,
Speaker 6: all these other things that they used the taser's success for,
Speaker 6: and the relationships they had in policing already because of
Speaker 6: the taser. They took those relationships and leveraged them into
Speaker 6: all these other tech spaces. So to answer that question,
Speaker 6: they are now much much too big to make the
Speaker 6: mistake of picking on me personally in some way, because
Speaker 6: they would know that would just invite more eyeballs onto
Speaker 6: what they are actually up to. And Rick Smith himself,
Speaker 6: while still deeply involved in the company, right is not
Speaker 6: actually calling the shots in the same way he would
Speaker 6: have been ten years ago because this is a much
Speaker 6: more buttoned up place. That doesn't mean you don't see
Speaker 6: read Reuter's been doing an amazing job, you know, like
Speaker 6: writing stories about the culture at Axon and the kind
Speaker 6: of weird that they still do but this is a
Speaker 6: place that wants to be seen much more in the
Speaker 6: line of Apple than it would you know, ten years ago,
Speaker 6: when it was still just kind of a niche weapons manufacturer. Now,
Speaker 6: does that mean that they don't do some things that
Speaker 6: I would would still find intimidating. Sure, you know, they
Speaker 6: especially did them. I felt like we premiered a Tribeca
Speaker 6: Film Festival, you know, when my film came out. I
Speaker 6: was certain that I was being you know, watched and
Speaker 6: followed during that you know experience. As we got ready
Speaker 6: to launch our podcast, Rick Smith decided to launch his
Speaker 6: own podcast at his own show called Boldly Go Right
Speaker 6: to like tell the company's mythology. Matt Stroud, who helped
Speaker 6: me with this project, wrote a book that Taser was
Speaker 6: a big part of five six years ago. Then Rick
Speaker 6: Smith launched his wrote his own book called The End
Speaker 6: of Killing, sort of as a way to compete with that.
Speaker 6: He does some weird stuff like that, But mostly what's
Speaker 6: scary to me is that like they are so beyond
Speaker 6: dealing with you know, like me, that actually, like they're
Speaker 6: too buttoned up to do anything dumb. And that's actually
Speaker 6: what's scary is the stuff they they do now is
Speaker 6: like Minority Report. And Rick Smith wrote about how like
Speaker 6: Minority Report is actually a great idea, like let's kidnap,
Speaker 6: Let's kidnap three clairvoyant women and like put them in
Speaker 6: a bathtub and make them predict murders forever. And Rick
Speaker 6: like sees that movie and is like, that's some genius
Speaker 6: right there.
Speaker 3: It's like, what's the oldie, what's the old sci fi meme?
Speaker 4: It's like someone walks into a boardroom and says, guys,
Speaker 4: remember that amazing novel Never Build the World ender, Well,
Speaker 4: he had read it, and we think we can do
Speaker 4: it right down here, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: That seems to be holding true for a lot of
Speaker 5: these tech giants lately, like with the giant AI facilities
Speaker 5: and the you know, supercomputers named after science fiction characters
Speaker 5: and like Hyperion and stuff like that. It seems like
Speaker 5: they didn't quite get the message of a lot of
Speaker 5: these dystopian uh, these dystopian novels jib.
Speaker 2: When we're making comparisons here to Apple and other tech companies,
Speaker 2: Let's just let's jump to Forbes really quick, just so
Speaker 2: we can understand how big Axon Enterprises is. If you
Speaker 2: look at the CEO compensation for a company like Apple.
Speaker 2: Tim Cook. We've heard Tim Cook's name, we know who
Speaker 2: that is. We've seen him on the on the TV
Speaker 2: all the time. He took home seventy five million dollars
Speaker 2: last year as his compensation package. Steven Schwarzman, the CEO
Speaker 2: of the Blackstone Group that we talk about a lot
Speaker 2: on this podcast, he took home eighty four million. Rick
Speaker 2: Smith last year topped Forbes list of CEO compensation, taking
Speaker 2: home one hundred and sixty five million dollars last year.
Speaker 2: Just he's at the top of the list. And we
Speaker 2: how often do you have a conversation with your friends
Speaker 2: about Axon Enterprise?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 6: And what what I guess Ben was initially asking, which
Speaker 6: I think was kind of the bigger point that I'm making,
Speaker 6: is twenty years ago they were so eager to they
Speaker 6: sued Gannett newspapers right like they they did what I
Speaker 6: would say is dumb pr stuff. They attacked reporters a lot.
Speaker 6: They accused Alex Berenson, who was writing for The New
Speaker 6: York Times at that point, of being in on a
Speaker 6: poker game, you know, with hedge fund managers, and that's
Speaker 6: why he was attacking them. In the press. I mean,
Speaker 6: they just did the kind of conspiratorial things that are
Speaker 6: actually not rooted in it, that like, actually not rooted
Speaker 6: it in some truth the power. Not that the media
Speaker 6: doesn't have deserve our critiques every now and then, of
Speaker 6: course we do. But the point being, like they were
Speaker 6: so eager to sit up and have those fights. They
Speaker 6: would sue, they would attack, they would do these things
Speaker 6: relentlessly because there was a cult of personality around what
Speaker 6: they were doing and the leadership. And now the language
Speaker 6: is terrifying because the language is these stages and these
Speaker 6: product launches and these things you're used to with the
Speaker 6: Apples of the World, where Rick will get on stage
Speaker 6: and tell you that we are going to live in
Speaker 6: a world without any crime anymore because of the technology
Speaker 6: that he is going to provide. And don't worry, we'll
Speaker 6: use our ethics panel to weigh in when we think
Speaker 6: we might be going too far. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 6: because the ethics panel doesn't think we should put taser
Speaker 6: drones in schools, we're going to fire basically, or I
Speaker 6: shouldn't say fire. Nine of that twelve board members technically resigned, right,
Speaker 6: but when the board disagrees, nine of the twelve board
Speaker 6: members resign, and they don't really have a public facing
Speaker 6: ethics board anymore. That's actually what's scary about this now
Speaker 6: is morphed into the kind of company that has resources
Speaker 6: and power that is so big and vast that they
Speaker 6: wouldn't even bother to mess with someone like me anymore,
Speaker 6: because all they could do is pick a fight with
Speaker 6: somebody who's just going to draw attention to them in
Speaker 6: a way that they don't need, they don't care about.
Speaker 2: NY could just pressure companies during some kind of acquisition phase.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Paramount.
Speaker 3: South Park, keep it in. Sorry, we've got a bug
Speaker 3: going around the office. Nick, wake up.
Speaker 2: That episode delayed by a week somehow, somehow.
Speaker 5: Okay, let's take a quick pause right here for a
Speaker 5: word from our sponsor, and then we'll jump right back
Speaker 5: into the troubling history and future of tasers.
Speaker 6: And we're back, folks.
Speaker 4: There is so so much more we want to get to, Nick.
Speaker 4: You are being so generous with your time. We wanted
Speaker 4: to point this out, folks. We recommend visiting the Lava
Speaker 4: for Good website to check out episodes of Absolute because
Speaker 4: I mean, of course available wherever you find your favorite shows.
Speaker 4: I think we're legally required to say that. But if
Speaker 4: you go to the Lava for Good website, when you
Speaker 4: check in on each episode page, you can find in
Speaker 4: depth supporting literature and documentation that backs up everything that
Speaker 4: you are saying. And you're very you unlike maybe Axon's board,
Speaker 4: you are very ethical in your exploration here. And we
Speaker 4: just want to say we have such immense respect for
Speaker 4: the moments where you were very clear and you're saying, Look,
Speaker 4: I can't specifically like I cannot provably objectively say this thing.
Speaker 4: I can show you these things are true, and that's
Speaker 4: a nuance that's Missy in a lot of reporting. And
Speaker 4: I hate that all four of us noded our heads
Speaker 4: when we when we made that point. Uh, what do
Speaker 4: you hope that people can get out of the show
Speaker 4: once they tune into Absolutely, we watch, we hear it.
Speaker 4: They will watch the documentary as well. We're walking away,
Speaker 4: we're talking with someone the next day. What do we
Speaker 4: know what has changed?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 6: I think you know, the show is rooted in the
Speaker 6: story of Matt Masters, who is a who is a
Speaker 6: cop who had dedicated his whole life to policing in
Speaker 6: this way of you know, I hate to use the
Speaker 6: cliche of warrior cop, right, But I mean this was
Speaker 6: a swat guy who kicked in a thousand doors and
Speaker 6: did the real stuff, and someone who believed in the
Speaker 6: job in a way that was admirable. I think I
Speaker 6: think he did actually wants to do good in the
Speaker 6: world when he started, and what you hear from him,
Speaker 6: what you understand is it is a show about tasers,
Speaker 6: but it's also show about policing and the system of policing.
Speaker 6: The nature of how these guys are trained, what they
Speaker 6: are asked to do, is so rooted in hero worship.
Speaker 6: It's so rooted in US versus them mentality that it
Speaker 6: actually made Matt doubt his own kid because he didn't
Speaker 6: believe for a while that his own kid wouldn't have
Speaker 6: done something to provoke an officer from tasering him. And
Speaker 6: the tragedy of this is that this company that made
Speaker 6: this taser used and leveraged that sort of mentality to
Speaker 6: build a massive, massive business starting with the taser, and
Speaker 6: when hit the fan, when it was clear they had
Speaker 6: lied about the safety of the device for many years
Speaker 6: to these officers, very surreptitiously threw those officers under the bus.
Speaker 6: They made it so the liability for what happens when
Speaker 6: a taser does injure kill someone is squarely on the
Speaker 6: shoulders of the cops who were using them, and the
Speaker 6: cops who were using them are still operating under a
Speaker 6: message that the weapon is perfectly safe.
Speaker 5: It almost sounds like what happened with the Purdue Pharma
Speaker 5: and the you know, like oxycotton being non addictive and
Speaker 5: then sort of throwing the doctors under the bus and
Speaker 5: the pharmacy reps and things.
Speaker 6: One thousand percent. And what I say is like, I mean,
Speaker 6: you don't forget that they hired and used cops as
Speaker 6: trainers to teach this material that they wrote. So when
Speaker 6: the cops were sitting in training, they were not seeing
Speaker 6: a taser salesperson, They were seeing a police officer, someone
Speaker 6: who was a part of that brotherhood with them, right,
Speaker 6: And that betrayal of law enforcement speaks to the company
Speaker 6: willingness to protect itself, to choose itself right over over
Speaker 6: over a million police officers doing this public safety job,
Speaker 6: but also speaks to the complicity of American policing in
Speaker 6: the way that they are willing to basically receive any
Speaker 6: sort of messaging that that is in line with that
Speaker 6: broad thinking, which is that we are on the right
Speaker 6: side of the thin blue line. We are protecting the
Speaker 6: world from chaos, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, to
Speaker 6: the degree that they were betrayed and they sort of
Speaker 6: swallowed their own betrayal, and that the irony of that
Speaker 6: is that the moment Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson,
Speaker 6: Taser International took their body camera product, which was struggling
Speaker 6: to sell because cops didn't want to be filmed all day,
Speaker 6: and changed the messaging and pivoted the messaging to be
Speaker 6: about transparency, to be about accountability, to appeal to a
Speaker 6: public that was now asking for their police off officers
Speaker 6: to be held to some sort of proof right about
Speaker 6: what they were doing in their jobs. That shows you
Speaker 6: the ability of the company to find its way through
Speaker 6: the mass and figure out a way to profit off
Speaker 6: of anything. Now that same company right gives you the
Speaker 6: rhetoric like we're going to no longer live in a
Speaker 6: world of crime because cameras are going to be everywhere.
Speaker 6: And I will say the scariest thing to me is
Speaker 6: I don't believe in this, Like if you what did
Speaker 6: you do to get tasered stuff. But it is true
Speaker 6: that when a cop, when cops were attacking Matt Masters,
Speaker 6: what he was personally trying to warn them because he
Speaker 6: went on this journey of discovery and saw this stuff existed.
Speaker 6: After the surgeon told them that the taser caused his
Speaker 6: son's cardiac arrest, he did his own research and it
Speaker 6: wasn't hard to realize, Oh, this is actually out here,
Speaker 6: this is happening across the country. And when he tried
Speaker 6: to talk to his fellow officers about the actual dangers
Speaker 6: they weren't learning about in their taser training, he was
Speaker 6: brushed aside, and his own son was basically said, why
Speaker 6: didn't you just do what the cop told him to do?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 6: I don't believe in that kind of thinking, right. I
Speaker 6: don't believe Bryce's Masters deserved what he got because he
Speaker 6: refused to get out of a car when the officer
Speaker 6: told him to get out of a car. When Bryce
Speaker 6: was asking why am I being placed under arrest. There's
Speaker 6: a whole history you'll hear about in the show about
Speaker 6: why why he was wary of doing that, why he's
Speaker 6: wary of getting out of the car. But it is
Speaker 6: true that he made a choice that he made a
Speaker 6: choice not to comply. When you leave your apartment and
Speaker 6: you go to the corner store to buy a sandwich,
Speaker 6: it get a cop You are not making a conscious
Speaker 6: choice to put your face on a company's database to
Speaker 6: then be analyzed and used it predicted about whether or
Speaker 6: not you are more likely to shoplift for that sandwich
Speaker 6: in that coat. That is what is happening. It's not coming,
Speaker 6: it is already in effect. These are these real time
Speaker 6: crime centers where they are stationed. They are placing cams everywhere,
Speaker 6: right everywhere, and they are going to axon surfers and
Speaker 6: they are being fed through artificial intelligence to figure out
Speaker 6: who is going to commit crimes and who is not.
Speaker 6: They have been very very slow and very very cautious
Speaker 6: about facial recognition in a public facing way. But do
Speaker 6: we really believe that the.
Speaker 7: Moment the public opinion shifts just enough to say like,
Speaker 7: oh maybe this technology isn't so bad, they won't be
Speaker 7: ready to capitalize and go full force on facial recognition
Speaker 7: technology on the dashcam videos that they now push because
Speaker 7: they have dashcam software on the body cameras that they
Speaker 7: have on the street light cameras that they have acquired
Speaker 7: that they are trying to put everywhere.
Speaker 3: Right, this is.
Speaker 6: All about surveillance now, and you don't opt into that surveillance.
Speaker 6: There's no user agreement for you to sign. You decide
Speaker 6: to leave your house. That's your choice to opt in
Speaker 6: to being watched constantly while they profit from here.
Speaker 3: That's your consent.
Speaker 2: God, dang, it is horrifying.
Speaker 3: We've got to have you back on the show. I
Speaker 3: was mesrized. It is true.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well we say it. We say it so often.
Speaker 4: You know, a lot of the things that are sometimes
Speaker 4: dismissed as alarmism, especially in the world of tech and surveillance,
Speaker 4: those things are already here there, They're happening, right.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 4: Companies do a lot of things poorly, and they do
Speaker 4: a lot of things well. But one thing companies that
Speaker 4: this size never do is improvise and play jazz. Right,
Speaker 4: if something rolls out, there has been a plan in place.
Speaker 6: Right. And drones, I forgot drones, drones everywhere, And that's.
Speaker 2: What I was looking at Nick on their website. The
Speaker 2: way they talk about with FUSUS they can integrate all
Speaker 2: the cameras and the drones. And we talked about what
Speaker 2: is it spot Shotter or shot Spotter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we got a nice letter from them.
Speaker 2: So Mike's cameras drones.
Speaker 4: Great, guys, we got a nice just check it in
Speaker 4: from uh, from from our good friends at spotshotter. What
Speaker 4: what a what a world. We're not joking or at
Speaker 4: least I'm not joking about, uh. The positive about having
Speaker 4: you back on for a further exploration because Noel Matt,
Speaker 4: I know there are a bunch of things that we
Speaker 4: did not get to.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: We also want to shout out our producer Dylan who
Speaker 4: we were talking about sci fi and not learning the lessons.
Speaker 4: Dylan proposed the name We've built the Torment Nexus from the.
Speaker 3: From the World Fatus novel. Please don't build the Torment Nexus. Nick.
Speaker 4: Where can people not just learn more about your work
Speaker 4: in general, but where can we reach out to you
Speaker 4: and your team on the subject of tasers, on the
Speaker 4: subject of expansion of technology and what this means for
Speaker 4: the future.
Speaker 3: Where can people find you?
Speaker 6: Yes, I am still on the x Twitter you know machine,
Speaker 6: so definitely follow me at Nick Beardini on Twitter or X.
Speaker 6: I am also on Instagram at Nick Beredini, but the
Speaker 6: Lava page I definitely encourage everybody to follow and get
Speaker 6: in touch with us on the Lava page. That's Lava
Speaker 6: Podcasts at Lava for Good on Instagram TikTok Right, Lava,
Speaker 6: The reason I did this show with them is because
Speaker 6: they did Bone Valley and Bone Valley to me is
Speaker 6: one of the best podcasts ever made about the wrongful
Speaker 6: conviction of a man named Leo Schofield in Florida. And
Speaker 6: so Lava is really pushing hard for this idea of
Speaker 6: black mirror, you know, taking effect, especially in this story,
Speaker 6: and that's basically I think hopefully where we'll end up
Speaker 6: going in season two is trying to explore, now, okay,
Speaker 6: the success of the Taser. We tease this, you know
Speaker 6: at the end of this current season, but the success
Speaker 6: of the taser, what has that? What does that mean
Speaker 6: for today? And definitely check Lava out because they're going
Speaker 6: to be doing more shows in that same absolute feed
Speaker 6: that we're in. That kind of wrestle with the marriage
Speaker 6: between capitalism technology.
Speaker 4: What a phenomenal right, I mean, we obviously we came
Speaker 4: in and we weren't all keeping the same notes for
Speaker 4: this one, so I know there's a bunch of stuff
Speaker 4: we weren't able to get to But I don't know, guys.
Speaker 4: One thing I was thinking about, why is there not
Speaker 4: more regulation regarding these devices, Like we can just pop
Speaker 4: on Taser's website, or we can pop on Amazon, like
Speaker 4: you were saying, Noel, and there's no age restriction, there's
Speaker 4: no licensing, there's no like training course. You can just
Speaker 4: buy one with a credit card.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The whole point of the pivotal moment was when gun
Speaker 5: powder was removed from these and allowed them to be
Speaker 5: classified in a different way to firearms, which I think
Speaker 5: opens things up. I think you buy them just the
Speaker 5: same way as you buy pepper spray. But Nick also
Speaker 5: does some really great differentiation between the consumer models that
Speaker 5: are available on say Amazon, and the kinds that law
Speaker 5: enforcement uses.
Speaker 4: And with that, folks, thanks again to Nick. Thanks again
Speaker 4: to you for tuning in. We've got a lot of
Speaker 4: people in law enforcement in the crowd. We've got a
Speaker 4: lot of veterans in the audience. We have a lot
Speaker 4: of people who have one way or another interacted with
Speaker 4: Tasers and perhaps unknowingly with this company Axon. We want
Speaker 4: to hear your thoughts. You can find us on the internet,
Speaker 4: you can give us a phone call, you can always
Speaker 4: send us an email.
Speaker 5: That's right. Find us in the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
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Speaker 3: Be well aware, yet unafraid.
Speaker 4: Sometimes the void writes back and Hey, if you are
Speaker 4: interested in further exploration of some topics we discussed in
Speaker 4: this two part interview segment, do check out Behind the
Speaker 4: Bastards twenty twenty one series on the concept of excited delirium.
Speaker 4: Warning it's not appropriate for all audiences anyway. We are
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