Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, It's Sophia, Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to this week's work in progress.
Speaker 2: Friends.
Speaker 1: We have a friend of the Pod back on today
Speaker 1: and I could not be more elated. I first became
Speaker 1: aware of our guest, as did much of the world,
Speaker 1: when he played Ryan Atwood on the oc But his
Speaker 1: most unexpected second act began during the pandemic when Ben mackenzie,
Speaker 1: himself with an economics degree in Toe, became obsessed with
Speaker 1: figuring out what exactly cryptocurrency was and why some people
Speaker 1: were suddenly getting rich from it. And let me tell
Speaker 1: you what my Brooke Davis sees his Ryan Atwood and
Speaker 1: me as me sees Ben as the brilliant and incredible
Speaker 1: communicator that he is both on screen and off. Communication
Speaker 1: skills and search for answers led him to write his
Speaker 1: best selling book Easy Money, Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the
Speaker 1: Golden Age of Fraud, which we talked about on this
Speaker 1: show in twenty twenty four. At the time, he was
Speaker 1: beginning to work on a documentary about the subject, digging
Speaker 1: into the world of crypto and hype and celebrity fraud,
Speaker 1: politics and all the people making money from the chaos,
Speaker 1: and now two years later, the documentary is complete and
Speaker 1: it is nearly time to watch. The film is called
Speaker 1: Everyone Is Lying to You for money. And in the
Speaker 1: time since he began at the world of cryptocurrency has
Speaker 1: gotten even more complex. The industry has poured enormous amounts
Speaker 1: of money I'm talking hundreds of millions of dollars into Washington.
Speaker 1: The Trump family is showing their own cryptocurrency, and Congress
Speaker 1: is now fighting over how and whether or not to
Speaker 1: regulate it. Millions of people have been and continue to
Speaker 1: be believers in the hype, betting on a dream and
Speaker 1: what it could mean. So, knowing what he knows now
Speaker 1: about that hype and about the devastation often left in
Speaker 1: its weak I want to hear from Ben about his learnings,
Speaker 1: his warnings, his wisdom, and what from his point of
Speaker 1: knowledge today he would say to himself even just two
Speaker 1: years ago. Let's dive in with our work in progress. Pal,
Speaker 1: Ben McKenzie, welcome back to the pod, my friend. Instead
Speaker 1: of taking you back in my favorite way to know
Speaker 1: what your life was like when you were a kid,
Speaker 1: since you've answered that question for our OG listeners, let's
Speaker 1: go back to twenty twenty four, because that was your
Speaker 1: last time on the show. You were deep into making
Speaker 1: the doc, and we talked about your advocacy and your
Speaker 1: economics degree and kind of how you started to pull.
Speaker 2: Out the thread of all this.
Speaker 1: What do you feel like you know that Ben in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four did know yet? Would you give him
Speaker 1: any advice about this endeavor?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say I'm glad I didn't know in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four what I know now in the sense
Speaker 3: of how long it takes to make a movie, how
Speaker 3: tricky it is to get the movie made and then
Speaker 3: as an independent movie to get it released. It's quite challenging,
Speaker 3: and talk about that and why that is. But that
Speaker 3: being said, incredibly grateful for you know, for the fact
Speaker 3: that I have made it, and for all the people
Speaker 3: that I've met along the way, and.
Speaker 4: Lots of people that I wouldn't otherwise have met or
Speaker 4: worked with, because I've met some really incredibly I mean
Speaker 4: just incredibly talented artists who wor worked on this movie,
Speaker 4: but also just incredible people all over the world who
Speaker 4: have some.
Speaker 3: Connection to crypto currency in the sense of being skeptics
Speaker 3: or investigators or what have you. So yeah, I would
Speaker 3: My advice to twenty twenty four to me would be
Speaker 3: take a deep breath. It's going to be a long process.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's almost like when you when you do any sort
Speaker 1: of construction project and they're like double the timeline and
Speaker 1: double the money. I feel like it's really good advice
Speaker 1: for making movies.
Speaker 3: Also, Yes, that is a very good and the able
Speaker 3: saying about independent movies are never done. You just run
Speaker 3: out of money, and that's pretty much what happened. Just
Speaker 3: at some point have to stop because otherwise it's going
Speaker 3: to be prohibitively expensive. But yeah, yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 3: been quite a a journey. And then of course, I
Speaker 3: mean you don't have to get sidetracked by the politics,
Speaker 3: but they are kind of important. Here. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: we didn't Trump had an embraced crypto, and so it
Speaker 3: was in a different place than it is now. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I think the the the shift that so fast,
Speaker 3: you know, it's only been two years. He really embraced
Speaker 3: it in the summer of twenty twenty four, having called
Speaker 3: it a scam as recently as twenty twenty one, so
Speaker 3: he really has since his re election brought it back
Speaker 3: into the sort of forefront of this conversation. I mean,
Speaker 3: AI and crypto, but Crypto is certainly in the news
Speaker 3: a lot in ways I never could have predicted, you
Speaker 3: know back then.
Speaker 1: Well it strikes me, you know when you talk about
Speaker 1: the difference of a few years, particularly with him. There's
Speaker 1: nothing a scammer likes more than being able to get
Speaker 1: in on a scam. And when I first heard about
Speaker 1: the Trump meme coin and the Milaniu meme cooin, you
Speaker 1: were the first person I thought of, and I was
Speaker 1: just like, what the how is this legal? This is
Speaker 1: a this is an influenced scam, This is a money
Speaker 1: laundering scam. And cut to you know, last week, three
Speaker 1: hundred of his accounts were shut down for suspected.
Speaker 2: Money laundering by just one bank, And I'm like, is
Speaker 2: this our real life?
Speaker 1: So I know it took a long time for the
Speaker 1: movie to finish, but I think it's coming at such
Speaker 1: an important time for people to see it, because it's
Speaker 1: impossible to look at the landscape with any sense of
Speaker 1: awareness of current events and not think that this is nuts.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, you're absolutely right in a way that I
Speaker 3: never could have predicted. It is more timely than ever,
Speaker 3: and I did squeeze a little Trump reference and at
Speaker 3: the very very end of the movie, as you saw.
Speaker 3: But I think it's it's worth reflecting upon what his
Speaker 3: embrace and it really means, because, as you pointed it out,
Speaker 3: or as you ask the rhetorical question, isn't this illegal?
Speaker 3: It would be right in any normal circumstance to president
Speaker 3: of the United States. I mean, first of all, President
Speaker 3: the United States, profiting off of his office while in
Speaker 3: office is easy illegal, right. We have a thing called
Speaker 3: the Emolument's Clause that prohibits him from getting anything of
Speaker 3: value while in office, and of course his mandated salary.
Speaker 3: And usually these things are you know, pretty rigorously enforced, right,
Speaker 3: like if a foreign government gives you, you know, a
Speaker 3: gold bobble, you are supposed to like put it in,
Speaker 3: you know, in the office and not take it home
Speaker 3: or whatever. And here we have a president who really,
Speaker 3: mainly through cryptocurrency, has enriched himself and his family's in
Speaker 3: the tune of I think it's one point four billion
Speaker 3: dollars in just over a year in office, just based
Speaker 3: off his first year financial records. So it's a really
Speaker 3: staggering level of corruption. And it would be illegal. I
Speaker 3: would say it really is illegal. But the difference is
Speaker 3: when he controls the DOJ and his former personal lawyer
Speaker 3: has now been confirmed to be the Attorney General. There's
Speaker 3: just no you know, the system is broken.
Speaker 1: Down, you know, yes, And something I want to say
Speaker 1: about that, you know, the Todd Blanche of it all.
Speaker 1: Whether people listening are as observant of the red flags
Speaker 1: about the fiscal crimes as you and I are, you know,
Speaker 1: you can go into a completely different arena and even
Speaker 1: consider the fact that Todd Blanche refused to meet with
Speaker 1: Epstein survivors but met with Glene Maxwell for nine hours
Speaker 1: and then transferred her to what is essentially a spa
Speaker 1: prison where she got to have a puppy and gets
Speaker 1: to go to yoga. And people in DC are talking
Speaker 1: about the fact that it is highly likely that he
Speaker 1: will pardon her now that he is in charge of
Speaker 1: the DOJ. And so whether we're talking about crimes against
Speaker 1: women and children or high financial crimes, you know, enriching himself,
Speaker 1: taking bribes untraceable money from you know, foreign leaders and
Speaker 1: business leaders, and you start to see the effects of
Speaker 1: those things, you know, suddenly all of our energy projects
Speaker 1: have been canceled. We've paid four billion dollars to stop
Speaker 1: them instead of to continue things that had already been
Speaker 1: improved and paid for to get us off of fossil fuels,
Speaker 1: which other countries, other peer nations have proven is absolutely possible.
Speaker 1: You know, you look at Germany and Solar for example.
Speaker 1: We don't know how these things are happening because there's
Speaker 1: no oversight. And something I really appreciate about what you're
Speaker 1: helping to educate people about is that at current this
Speaker 1: industry is setting up all the rules around it to
Speaker 1: essentially allow it to govern itself, and no oversight in
Speaker 1: any arena of our political life, which is our entire life,
Speaker 1: is dangerous.
Speaker 2: And I'm really.
Speaker 1: Appreciative that you are able to point out in ways
Speaker 1: that don't feel too heady, that are so factual and
Speaker 1: so obvious, the intersection of crypto political influence and conflicts
Speaker 1: of interest that are unique to the Trump regime certainly,
Speaker 1: and what it's doing to global power in general right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, thank you. I you know, you touched on
Speaker 3: a lot of things there, but one of the things
Speaker 3: that we've learned since twenty twenty four, speaking of EPSTEIN,
Speaker 3: is that surprise surprise. Jeffrey Epstein is a big fan
Speaker 3: of cryptocurrency and one was one of the original investors.
Speaker 3: He actually secretly funded a thing called bitcoin core development
Speaker 3: back in twenty fifteen. This came out in the Epstein files.
Speaker 3: There's so much that came out of the Epstein files
Speaker 3: that this obviously it's not, you know, anywhere near the
Speaker 3: top of the list of things that make the news,
Speaker 3: understandably because it really the focus really should be on
Speaker 3: the victims. But really to understand Epstein, part of what
Speaker 3: you do have to understand is his love of cryptocurrency
Speaker 3: and why that would be.
Speaker 2: It's untraceable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not untraceable, but it's difficult to trace.
Speaker 1: It's a great distinction, thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, but it is tricky and it's hard to
Speaker 3: explain the sense that what the technology behind cryptocurrencies that
Speaker 3: think called blockchain. It's a form of cryptography and it's
Speaker 3: just a ledger, a record of transactions, but the identity
Speaker 3: of the people transacting is obscured. It's a synonymous ledger,
Speaker 3: meaning you know, it just looks like a string of
Speaker 3: numbers and letters, and these different wallets they call them,
Speaker 3: are interacting sending a cryptocurrency back and forth from one
Speaker 3: place to the other. But unless you know who controls
Speaker 3: each of the wallets, you really don't know who's sending
Speaker 3: money where. And so for a guy like Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 3: whose primary businesses seem to have been money laundering and
Speaker 3: human sex trafficking, you know, a money that's hard to
Speaker 3: trace would be incredibly valuable. Yes, and so of course
Speaker 3: he was into crypto. And you know, the industry and
Speaker 3: advocates have to grapple with these issues. They can't just
Speaker 3: hand wave them away so deeply, deeply disingenuous to pretend
Speaker 3: as though, you know, because the arguments are always the same.
Speaker 3: It's like, well, there's a lot of Epstein used regular
Speaker 3: money too, and you're like, yeah, of course he did,
Speaker 3: because that's what actual people do as they use money.
Speaker 3: But you can't. This industry was so small when he
Speaker 3: was funding it in twenty fifteen. Jeffrey Epstein was into
Speaker 3: bitcoin before ninety nine percent of the bros who say
Speaker 3: they love it even knew it existed. Like it was
Speaker 3: a tiny, tiny thing and it was not doing that well.
Speaker 3: And he stepped in at this pivotal time and secretly
Speaker 3: funded it through he funded a thing called bitcoin Core Development,
Speaker 3: which is a group of programmers computer engineers who maintain
Speaker 3: its operating system. And he funded it secretly through the
Speaker 3: MIT Media Lab, which is a very controversial lab that's
Speaker 3: now been shut down. That was getting a lot of
Speaker 3: money from a lot of very powerful people, and he
Speaker 3: was doing it secretly because of course he was already
Speaker 3: a registered sex offender, and so in my tea didn't
Speaker 3: want to, you know, announce where they were getting the
Speaker 3: money from. But this is a These are really serious. Uh.
Speaker 3: These are incredibly troubling but unfortunately very logical sort of
Speaker 3: use cases for cryptocurrency. Right when I'm talking about crime,
Speaker 3: it can get kind of abstract. We're talking about foreign
Speaker 3: nations and unfathomable amounts of money. But getting it down
Speaker 3: to someone like Epstein, who really is sort of the
Speaker 3: epitome of evil, and tying in directly to him, him
Speaker 3: tying himself directly to cryptocurrency is something that I think,
Speaker 3: you know, it is unfortunately something we have to keep
Speaker 3: in mind when we talk about the risk, you know,
Speaker 3: the real danger here because as they, like you said,
Speaker 3: as they create rules for themselves, what are those rules
Speaker 3: to do? They benefit the insiders, right Trump and his
Speaker 3: family or the people that run the exchange crypto exchanges
Speaker 3: or issue the crypto coins. But they also benefit people
Speaker 3: that are really serious criminals, and criminals in a way
Speaker 3: that are physically, emotionally, psychologically damaging to people, not just
Speaker 3: financial crimes, which are bad enough, but you know, we're
Speaker 3: talking about the world's most notorious protophile being being really
Speaker 3: into crypto. So yeah, it's it's gotten the Little Dark.
Speaker 3: The movie is a lot of fun, though right from movies.
Speaker 1: The movie is very fun. I will say like, and
Speaker 1: I mentioned, you know before we started the conversation Brava
Speaker 1: to your editor like it the opening sequence. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is my cred movie. You know, you had me
Speaker 1: hyped before I even knew what was coming.
Speaker 2: And it's it really does. It comes out.
Speaker 1: Swinging and it makes you feel alive and it reminds you,
Speaker 1: you know, that that knowledge is a power, and also
Speaker 1: with it, we are very capable, and I think people
Speaker 1: need that in a time where a lot of of
Speaker 1: folks around the world kind of feel like giving up
Speaker 1: because how are they supposed to fight these machines? And
Speaker 1: you really do offer us a window in and a
Speaker 1: reminder that there are things we can do.
Speaker 3: And we're not alone, right, Yeah. I think that's one
Speaker 3: of the mean, neat, sort of really sick tricks of
Speaker 3: the modern world is that we're all on these devices
Speaker 3: all the time and we see all this really all
Speaker 3: horrible stuff through social media, all this divisiveness, and it
Speaker 3: can make you feel lonely and powerless, and we're not.
Speaker 3: You know, we are actually incredibly powerful, even if we're
Speaker 3: right now are going through a through a difficult time.
Speaker 3: So thank you. Yeah. I had the incredible editing staff,
Speaker 3: two principal editors, Drew Blackman and Jen Mackie, and they
Speaker 3: just did a phenomenal job of taking what was a
Speaker 3: lot of sort of like raw material. I didn't I
Speaker 3: didn't have a narrative threat. It was like I go
Speaker 3: to all Salvador, I tell five to the Senate, I
Speaker 3: interview these guys who are now in prison, these fraudsters.
Speaker 3: But we didn't really have a through line. And they
Speaker 3: were really phenomenal in terms of helping me conceptualize it
Speaker 3: and break it down. I love that and simplify, keep
Speaker 3: it simple, keep it simple, to keep it as lovely
Speaker 3: as possible.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's so important too. Because obviously each of
Speaker 1: these conversations, each of these visits are so important and
Speaker 1: it's related. But yes, how do you really distill the
Speaker 1: kind of invisible string through it all? And you guys
Speaker 1: did a beautiful job. We'll be back in just a
Speaker 1: minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors. I'm
Speaker 1: curious you know before you made the doc because obviously
Speaker 1: you know, with all of your work in the book
Speaker 1: and everything that came before this, you talk about how
Speaker 1: your spidy senses were kind of activated when this was
Speaker 1: brought up to you via a friend. You knew that
Speaker 1: there was something about crypto that didn't make sense. Knowing
Speaker 1: everything you know about it now and the structure of
Speaker 1: the industry and the structure of it around the globe,
Speaker 1: do you kind of have more insight as to why
Speaker 1: even before you really knew what it was, you knew
Speaker 1: it was not all above board.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it does kind of go back to the way
Speaker 3: we open the movie, which is money really is trust?
Speaker 3: It really is. It's a made up thing that takes
Speaker 3: different physical forms and now electronic forms. But you know,
Speaker 3: over the years, different different societies have used different physical
Speaker 3: objects in order to avoid having to use the barter system.
Speaker 3: And so when I give you a dollar bill and
Speaker 3: you accept it from me, it's not that you trust
Speaker 3: me per se, but you trust that you can use
Speaker 3: the dollar bill for whatever it is you you want
Speaker 3: to use it for. Crypto says, well, we can avoid
Speaker 3: all of that with that messy human trust, and we
Speaker 3: can just reduce it down to computer code and privately
Speaker 3: owned computer code or sort of a private form of money,
Speaker 3: a money issued by corporations and individuals rather than a
Speaker 3: money that comes from the government. And that's just very dangerous.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly dangerous because it is shifting the trust from
Speaker 3: the public sphere where it's all trust like all people is,
Speaker 3: you know, fragile, infallible, and you see currencies, you know,
Speaker 3: collapse all the time. But at least the trust is
Speaker 3: there in a public setting for all of society to share.
Speaker 3: And if you privatize it, you're going to have you're
Speaker 3: gonna have market manipulation, You're gonna have a lot of
Speaker 3: sort of frausters getting in there, because if they can
Speaker 3: control this system, then what's to stop them from manipulating
Speaker 3: it to their benefit? And even worse than that, there's
Speaker 3: just going to be a lot of crime that's that's
Speaker 3: facilitated via this private money. And that's just what you
Speaker 3: see with crypto. I mean, since we talked, a crypto
Speaker 3: company estimated that one hundred and fifty four billion dollars
Speaker 3: of criminal activity was facilitated the a cryptocurrency in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, a long one hundred and fifty four billion.
Speaker 3: So it's just a staggering amount of crime. And I
Speaker 3: guess that's what I kind of try to you know,
Speaker 3: we've had a big public series of public conversations over
Speaker 3: the last several decades about privatizing various public what they
Speaker 3: call an economics public goods, whether it's healthcare, which is
Speaker 3: now you know then largely privatized, or you know, the
Speaker 3: electrical grid or or whatever, and there are there's just
Speaker 3: a lot of danger with that. When you privatize those things,
Speaker 3: we're putting even more control over our daily in the
Speaker 3: hands of corporations and very wealthy individuals who really don't
Speaker 3: deserve our trust.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and we know, we know that they're not going
Speaker 1: to do the right thing unless they're forced to. We
Speaker 1: see that with deregulation. You know, corporations don't clean waste
Speaker 1: or inspect for bacteria, or parasites unless they're required to.
Speaker 1: And so this idea that we're supposed to trust them
Speaker 1: is so surreal to me.
Speaker 2: And watching this really made me.
Speaker 1: Think because of the way you open the movie, I
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil it, but when I tell you,
Speaker 1: I laughed out. I went, oh, my God, like I
Speaker 1: just burst out laughing. It's so smart. You've spent so
Speaker 1: many years watching smart people believe things that in hindsight
Speaker 1: feel impossible. It feels ridiculous that we ever believed in
Speaker 1: I'm curious about why you think through all your learning,
Speaker 1: human do have a tendency to trust the wrong people.
Speaker 1: And given what you've seen, how do you think we
Speaker 1: recalibrate our willingness or metrics by which we dole out
Speaker 1: our trust?
Speaker 3: And I think we've you know, ever since there's been money,
Speaker 3: people have been trying to lie for money to take
Speaker 3: it from you. Right as soon as there's something of
Speaker 3: value that can be extracted by lye and then some people,
Speaker 3: some small percentage of the population is going to take
Speaker 3: advantage of that. So I don't think that in that
Speaker 3: in a certain sense, I think, you know, crypto is
Speaker 3: just sort of the latest manifestation of something that is
Speaker 3: unfortunately just sort of a part of that, part of
Speaker 3: the fabric of reality, part of a certain you know,
Speaker 3: I think relatively low percentage of the public, but a
Speaker 3: percentage of the public that is willing to do things
Speaker 3: that are you know, really really hard full to others
Speaker 3: for their own benefit. I'd hesitate to know what to
Speaker 3: make of that, other than to say, you know, I
Speaker 3: think crypto is kind of symptomatic of what's happening on
Speaker 3: Capitol Hill right now. It's happening in our system where
Speaker 3: they're trying to codify all of these special rules for
Speaker 3: crypto so it can continue to thrive and criminals can
Speaker 3: continue to benefit, including the present of the United States,
Speaker 3: I hate to say it, and an insiders can win
Speaker 3: where most people are going to lose. That's why is
Speaker 3: that happening. If the majority of the public doesn't already
Speaker 3: trust crypto and only a tiny percentage of the American
Speaker 3: public is really into it, like three percent or something,
Speaker 3: it's because they spend so much money on politicians on
Speaker 3: political campaigns. They just they've spent hundreds of millions of
Speaker 3: dollars either intimidating politicians into you know, supporting if you
Speaker 3: take their money. Then you're supposed to vote for legislation
Speaker 3: that's favorable to the industry, and if you go against them,
Speaker 3: they're going to spend it against you. And I just
Speaker 3: think that is, you know, so illustrative of what of
Speaker 3: the problem you're facing, which is not unique to crypto right,
Speaker 3: the AI industry is doing the same thing. Now we
Speaker 3: have to we're have to change that. The Supreme Court
Speaker 3: decisions is united that allows unlimited, unlimited money from individuals
Speaker 3: and corporations effectively in our political process. It's just you
Speaker 3: can't have that. You can't have that and a functional
Speaker 3: democracy like they just they're just in conflict.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because essentially you turn a democracy into a mafia
Speaker 1: state if there's unlimited access from the top to money,
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a bully system. It's actually not
Speaker 1: democratic at all.
Speaker 2: How do you think that.
Speaker 1: Plays into you know, I know that it's on hold now,
Speaker 1: which is wonderful. But the Clarity Act, you know, much
Speaker 1: like the Save Act, these things get presented as a
Speaker 1: way to fix something, which they're not the same act
Speaker 1: as a voter suppression act. The Clarity Act was presented
Speaker 1: as a way to bring clarity legitimacy to crypto and
Speaker 1: clearly was quite flawed. You know, what's your take on that,
Speaker 1: Is that a bill that it gets written because the.
Speaker 2: Industry is spending so much money on politics.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely no. It's been you know, crafted in consultation
Speaker 3: with the industry, and there is a give and take.
Speaker 3: You know, they don't get absolutely everything that they want.
Speaker 3: But we know this, and we know this because I
Speaker 3: was just on Capitol Hill last month at a forum
Speaker 3: sort of a quasi hearing, trying to shed light on
Speaker 3: trying to fight back against clarity and shed light on
Speaker 3: the previous bill. The last bill that they passed from
Speaker 3: dealing with crypto is called the Genius Act. As you said,
Speaker 3: like all the anytime the legislation is named something, it's
Speaker 3: often the opposite of what it is, right, so it
Speaker 3: shouldn't shock you. But the Genius Act is really stupid. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And it allows corporations to issue their own money in
Speaker 3: the form of stable coins to certain kinds of cryptocurrency,
Speaker 3: so it's literal corporate money. And they've spent so much
Speaker 3: money to the cryptolobby on politics and political campaigns that
Speaker 3: you know, the Republican Party of course, voted for it overwhelmingly,
Speaker 3: but even some Democrats voted for it, quite a few
Speaker 3: And so recent reporting shed light on the fact that
Speaker 3: basically inside the lighthouse, you know, our Commerce Secretary Howard
Speaker 3: Lutnak has a deep, deep tie to the cryptocurrency industry.
Speaker 3: His firm, Canter Fitzgerald, manages the money for this massive
Speaker 3: crypto company called Tether, and they even own a part
Speaker 3: of the company, like they they got a multi billion
Speaker 3: dollar stake that they bought for only six hundred million,
Speaker 3: So quite a deal, and yeah, curious. And Lutnik of
Speaker 3: course also has ties to Epstein, right, like said that
Speaker 3: he did this big song and dance you know a
Speaker 3: year ago where he was like I met him once
Speaker 3: and I was disgusted, and I said, we'd.
Speaker 2: All those Why there's pictures of him on the island.
Speaker 3: And then he was on the island with his family
Speaker 3: by the way, with his sons. So the reporting came
Speaker 3: out that Lutnik and this other young guy named Bo Hines,
Speaker 3: former college football player, that was suddenly like in charge
Speaker 3: of White House crypto policy. We're pressuring Congress, pressuring the
Speaker 3: people writing a legislation to carve out rules that were
Speaker 3: beneficial to tether, which is this incredibly shady foreign company
Speaker 3: that has these tether coins they issues. Cryptocurrencies are really
Speaker 3: the primary tool of criminals in cryptocurrency, using cryptocurrency globally,
Speaker 3: you know, everything from terrorist organizations, you know, like Iran
Speaker 3: right now is getting paid in art. You know, if
Speaker 3: you if you want to get a ship through the
Speaker 3: Strait of Horomeus, you pay with the Ranians in cryptocurrency.
Speaker 2: Insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, so the Trump administration, you know, which is
Speaker 3: like supposedly fighting back against these bad guys, is at
Speaker 3: the same time profiting from the same bad guys. It's
Speaker 3: really it's really wild. So but but if you know
Speaker 3: that that's how that piece of legislation came about, and
Speaker 3: this was a very well researched report by Bloomberg the
Speaker 3: dozens of sources, then it should be no surprise that
Speaker 3: the same thing is happening with clarity. It's it's really bad,
Speaker 3: you know, it's really bad. The more time I spend
Speaker 3: around our political system, the more broken I feel that
Speaker 3: it is, and it really does is going to require,
Speaker 3: you know, pretty significant change. But I do think that
Speaker 3: change is possible. I'm not I'm not sort of like
Speaker 3: I do have some hope, you know, and you know
Speaker 3: in the future that we could change this because it
Speaker 3: is under our collective control. It is something we could
Speaker 3: change through legislation.
Speaker 1: I mean, I certainly hope so, and I also think
Speaker 1: it's it's a bit impossible to look at the landscape
Speaker 1: and not admit that something is afoot here. I mean,
Speaker 1: some of the people you interview in the stock including
Speaker 1: sam Maankment Prad are.
Speaker 2: Sitting in prison, Like people have gone to prison.
Speaker 1: For this stuff. So when you look back at those encounters,
Speaker 1: do you think they grasp how fully they were deceiving
Speaker 1: people or do you think that they are so far
Speaker 1: gone down the rabbit hole of having drank the kool
Speaker 1: aid that they think they just kind of got caught
Speaker 1: in the crosshairs of the wild West of crypto.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a question that I'm asked a lot. And
Speaker 3: I understand that people, you know, because we are not criminals,
Speaker 3: because the majority of us have ethics and morals, and
Speaker 3: we would feel terrible if we stole money from somebody.
Speaker 3: We we have a hard time kind of understanding that,
Speaker 3: Like we're both fascinated by these these figures that are
Speaker 3: the other that are outside of Bloyite society, and we
Speaker 3: really want to try to understand them on some level.
Speaker 3: I get into the psychology in the movie, but I
Speaker 3: really think it is what I learned from researching and
Speaker 3: from talking to people that study this, is that fraudsters,
Speaker 3: they often start out as legitimate businessman. They have a
Speaker 3: legitimate business. They Birdie made Off had a legitimate business.
Speaker 3: Actually was quite experienced and had quite a lot of
Speaker 3: really impressive credentials before he started his investment firm, and
Speaker 3: he just wasn't that good at the investing, and so
Speaker 3: they needed to cheat, you know, one year. And then
Speaker 3: once they started cheating, the lie just gets bigger and
Speaker 3: bigger and bigger. And that's actually what happened with Sam
Speaker 3: bag and Freed as well. We learned in his trial,
Speaker 3: which I attended some of. We learned that he had
Speaker 3: a trading firm and his crypto exchange, and he was
Speaker 3: losing money on the trading side, and so they need
Speaker 3: to quote unquote borrow the assets of customers on the
Speaker 3: exchange without the permission. So borrowing, borrowing without permission is stealing. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's called stealing, and and and and so the line
Speaker 3: like the difference between what these guys, and it is
Speaker 3: often meant what they think what well, who they start
Speaker 3: out as and who they become gets wider and wider
Speaker 3: and wider. But they have to rationalize their behavior. They
Speaker 3: have to they it's important for them. Most of them
Speaker 3: are not actually so sociopaths. They have to actually believe
Speaker 3: that no, no, no, no, I'm doing the right thing. Yes,
Speaker 3: I made a mistake, but you know I was going
Speaker 3: to fix it all. Sam Bateman free to this day.
Speaker 3: I think I even saw an interviewed in prison said,
Speaker 3: you know, some misunderstanding. You know, we we we weren't installent.
Speaker 3: We just didn't have the money at the time, which
Speaker 3: begs the question, doesn't understand what solvency means. No, But
Speaker 3: they become they become kind of the ultimate method. Actors,
Speaker 3: like fraudsters, have to believe their own hype in order
Speaker 3: to yeah, you know, continue on.
Speaker 1: And now a word from our sponsors. They hear you
Speaker 1: saying you don't think they're sociopaths, and the thinking is
Speaker 1: totally unstable. And then when you zoom out and I
Speaker 1: loved that you did this in the movie you go
Speaker 1: to El Salvador. You know, as a country they tried
Speaker 1: to make bitcoin a national currency. To go and see
Speaker 1: the sort of experiment up close, what do you think,
Speaker 1: What do you think that showed you? What did it
Speaker 1: show you about people's mindset that you know, reading about
Speaker 1: it on the Times or Bloomberg wouldn't have it shows much.
Speaker 3: Of it really was always marketing. It was always just
Speaker 3: a made up story. They were selling the story to
Speaker 3: the world that ol Salvador, this very poor country, that
Speaker 3: the economy of which is heavily reliant on remittances, on
Speaker 3: the money that the two to three million people of
Speaker 3: Salvador and descent that live in the United States went home
Speaker 3: to their friends and family. That's like a quarter of
Speaker 3: the economy. And part of the pitch from crypto as well.
Speaker 3: You know, if you could send money home with with
Speaker 3: this government run crypto program instead of using money Gram
Speaker 3: or Western Union, you would save the fees that those
Speaker 3: those companies charge and it would be a win win.
Speaker 3: The government would take a tiny, you know, fee for
Speaker 3: facilitating the service, but much smaller than the Western Union
Speaker 3: or money Gram. The people to win, the government would
Speaker 3: have win, and you would be able to spend your bitcoin,
Speaker 3: you know, on the ground there now Salvador and just
Speaker 3: none of it was true. You know, you go through
Speaker 3: the market that I went to, the biggest market in
Speaker 3: the country and the capital of San Salvador, trying to
Speaker 3: pay for things in bitcoin, and they just look at
Speaker 3: me like, you know, the stupidest gringo that's ever walked
Speaker 3: the face of the earth, which I am in the
Speaker 3: running for that, but I'm not, hopefully not off the top.
Speaker 3: And then and then, and then the remittances was belonging
Speaker 3: to like nobody used it, you know, the system crashed.
Speaker 3: People Salvadorans are make about about four hundred dollars a
Speaker 3: month is the average salary US dollars, and so they
Speaker 3: don't have money to play with, like if they spend
Speaker 3: the money home, even if if there's a fee, they
Speaker 3: need the money to get there because it's actually feeding
Speaker 3: their families. Yes, it's putting a roof over their heads.
Speaker 3: They can't mess around with crypto and like, oh, we
Speaker 3: just lost it, you know, the price crashed or the
Speaker 3: exchange shut down or whatever, which is a problem that
Speaker 3: plagues crypto, you know, all the time. So when I
Speaker 3: went down there, it just laid bare, how empty the
Speaker 3: promises were. The thing that I couldn't really go into
Speaker 3: the into the dock. But I have reported on a
Speaker 3: little bit is that there's another tie to the same company, Tether,
Speaker 3: which is the company that our commerce secretary, Howard Letnoc
Speaker 3: owns a piece of and manages the money for it.
Speaker 3: They are headquartered in El Salvador, and they're just this
Speaker 3: very sketchy company that's used Their currency is used by
Speaker 3: criminals all over the world, and it was interesting. In
Speaker 3: the process of making the movie, I always felt Al
Speaker 3: Salvador needed to be a part of the story because
Speaker 3: it was a way of making concrete a very abstract
Speaker 3: concept like crypto, that like, this is a place that
Speaker 3: it actually had an effect, and just not in the
Speaker 3: way you think it might make in a bad way,
Speaker 3: because they've displaced this whole community in order to build
Speaker 3: some airport to service some fictional bitcoin city that's never
Speaker 3: going to exist. And so I knew it needed to
Speaker 3: be in the movie. But I also thought, how are
Speaker 3: Americans ever going to care about this? Right? Like they don't.
Speaker 3: I couldn't have found Ol Salvador and map like, I'll
Speaker 3: admit it, Like I was, like it's in Central America,
Speaker 3: but I don't know, you know, exactly where it's the
Speaker 3: size of New Jersey. It's the tiny little country, you know.
Speaker 3: And then Trump, you know, gets re elected and all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, we're sending people to a prison there
Speaker 3: and people are suddenly aware of their president. Bukel, who's
Speaker 3: popularly elected but is a dictator, really changed the constitution
Speaker 3: so it could be re elected, and that is one
Speaker 3: of the more surreal things, right I you know, I
Speaker 3: never would have like, of course, I'm glad that it's
Speaker 3: that people are more aware of what's going on down
Speaker 3: there now, but not this way. I would never have
Speaker 3: wished this to be the way that they know about
Speaker 3: about our Salvador. But it's such a great illustration too
Speaker 3: of if Cryptos was to be democratizing and decentralizing in
Speaker 3: this future, this beautiful utopia, fighting back against these tyrannical governments,
Speaker 3: then why is the only country where it's ever been
Speaker 3: tried as real money a dictatorship itself? Yes, where they're
Speaker 3: actually Alsaba has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world,
Speaker 3: the highest percentage of its population that's in jail, and
Speaker 3: it's in this massive prison that we've sent the you know,
Speaker 3: of folks that are accused of being ilegal immigrants in
Speaker 3: our country too, without due process. So it's just the
Speaker 3: ironies are just so thick and deep. It's but it's
Speaker 3: such a beautiful contract. The people are just absolutely wonderful
Speaker 3: and I from that. Yeah, a number of them stayed
Speaker 3: in touch with. Unfortunately, a lot of the journalists that
Speaker 3: I was working with down there and we're helping the
Speaker 3: make the movie have had to flee the country because
Speaker 3: Bukele has threatened them with arrest. They were part of
Speaker 3: the opposition and they were reporting and all the criminal
Speaker 3: activity that Bukelli himself was sort of tied up in.
Speaker 2: Gee, what does that sound like?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, choker. So it's a little bit heartbreaking, but
Speaker 3: it's a beautiful country and just such a vivid illustration
Speaker 3: of all of the laws.
Speaker 1: Something I appreciate because I'm like, well, it's a big
Speaker 1: conversation and it's a serious one, so I'm going to shift.
Speaker 1: Your doc is very funny, you know, I said, I Like,
Speaker 1: I laughed out loud in the first three and a
Speaker 1: half minute.
Speaker 3: If you've made it through the first forty five minutes
Speaker 3: of this conversation, don't worry. The doc is fun.
Speaker 2: Don't worry.
Speaker 1: Guys, it's funny, you know something that really I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I see you, friend, you you really poke excellent fun
Speaker 1: at the top in your unshakeable o C stardom. Yes,
Speaker 1: I laughed when you were talking about you know, roles
Speaker 1: that you came into later and you're.
Speaker 2: Like, you know, then it passed like be once Batman
Speaker 2: and it just stays. The thing stays. It's the thing people.
Speaker 1: Want to talk about. And it made really really giggle.
Speaker 3: Finds true? Is that is that true for you as well?
Speaker 3: Do you do you like? I don't know if I'm
Speaker 3: not Yeah, maybe not, but I'm just curious. And those
Speaker 3: shows are.
Speaker 1: They're iconic and at first, I don't know if you
Speaker 1: felt this when I first, you know, wrapped it up,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, oh I just did that for nine years,
Speaker 1: Like I'm good. Now it's come back around and I
Speaker 1: realized how incredible it is to be part of a
Speaker 1: cult classic or a kind of iconic coming of age story.
Speaker 1: But it really it made me laugh watching all the
Speaker 1: cuts of all the questions people have because you go
Speaker 1: on a show to promote something and they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: but before we do this, can we talk about the
Speaker 1: OC and I'm like, oh, I know the feeling.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And even when I'm out promoting you know the
Speaker 3: book that I wrote right yea with Jacob Silverman journalist there,
Speaker 3: I'm still the OC guy. How did the see guy?
Speaker 3: I write this book? But I get that's the cultural
Speaker 3: touch point for everyone, to the degree that they that
Speaker 3: that I'm known, that's the thing that I'm most known for.
Speaker 3: And like you, I'm grateful for it. Now. That was
Speaker 3: a real gift for my editors because when we figured
Speaker 3: out the narrative thread to tile this stuff together, it
Speaker 3: was you know, obvious in retrospect, but like it needed
Speaker 3: to be my journey. How did I get here?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know, how do we tell how do we put me?
Speaker 3: Put what the audience might know about me, which is
Speaker 3: probably very little in context, and make it very sort
Speaker 3: of brief and funny and concise and and so yeah,
Speaker 3: poke fun at make fun of myself relentlessly.
Speaker 2: It was great. It was so great, and you.
Speaker 1: Know it it made the bringing up Matt Damon's role
Speaker 1: in this stuff it makes sense for me also in
Speaker 1: context because you see, you know, I don't know him personally,
Speaker 1: but I would imagine he was presented an opportunity and
Speaker 1: given the marketing pitch, and it probably sounded pretty great.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, you know, how you chose to personalize the film,
Speaker 1: you know, in that way, to use the example of
Speaker 1: that kind of endorsement.
Speaker 2: Have you guys talked like, what is that? What does
Speaker 2: that look like?
Speaker 3: I don't know him. I've never met him. I guess
Speaker 3: I've prospersed many once. Wait, a long long time ago.
Speaker 3: He seems like a lovely guy. Everyone says the nicest
Speaker 3: things about him, and he's obviously an incredible actor with
Speaker 3: an incredible body of work. But but yeah, no, I don't.
Speaker 3: It's it's interesting as I don't think of myself as
Speaker 3: like I've never been the greatest social networking guy, you know,
Speaker 3: cocktail parties and all that stuff. But I'm also okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: I feel like you and I are similar. We go
Speaker 3: to stuff and we know people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But then I also am like, it's weird. I'll
Speaker 2: hang on in the corner and I don't know what
Speaker 2: I'm doing here.
Speaker 3: I know, I know, but like, I don't know anybody
Speaker 3: personally that's sold crypto, like, and there were a lot
Speaker 3: of celebrities, so maybe it's just luck of the draw
Speaker 3: or whatever. But for whatever reason, it's a question that's
Speaker 3: asked often, and I understand why, Like, what's it like?
Speaker 3: You know, what are the weird conversations you've had of
Speaker 3: really not had any with anyone directly, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: sure through through a third party or something. You know,
Speaker 3: someone knows somebody is someone agent, an agent or a
Speaker 3: manager or whatever. Yeah, but but yeah, I don't, I
Speaker 3: don't know. I hope that I try to never make
Speaker 3: any of it really personal. It's not like it's like none,
Speaker 3: very few of the celebrities really knew what they were
Speaker 3: getting involved in. I think totally they took the money
Speaker 3: and then they should have done more due diligence in
Speaker 3: my opinion. But like, I understand how you get there.
Speaker 3: So I'm hopeful that there's no like hard feelings because
Speaker 3: I mean that Day is doing fine. You know, he's
Speaker 3: in that little movie the Odyssey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he's I think he's doing okay.
Speaker 1: And now a word from our sponsors that I really
Speaker 1: enjoy and I think you will too. I do think
Speaker 1: it's an interesting thing, you know, how much kind of
Speaker 1: requirement for investigation is placed on you when you're a
Speaker 1: public figure, because sometimes something's brought to you by someone
Speaker 1: you trust and they tell you it's vetted, and it's tricky.
Speaker 1: You know, I went through this a few months ago.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember a year and a half ago.
Speaker 1: I go to conferences all the time, as I imagine
Speaker 1: you do. And I was invited to a conference i'd
Speaker 1: never been to. I was told upfront, like, hey, you
Speaker 1: know it's it's a very bipartisan group. There will be
Speaker 1: like some pretty conservative people there. There will be like
Speaker 1: government finance, art actors, writers. You know, we think it'd
Speaker 1: be a great place for you to come and talk
Speaker 1: about this documentary you produced, our other subject on AI
Speaker 1: on the deep fake abuse of women and girls, and
Speaker 1: how you know they're ninety seven point eight percent of
Speaker 1: the victims of that technology. Clearly, the Trump administration does
Speaker 1: not want to legislate about it. You know, Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is suing to prevent the prevention of this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: And I was invited, you know, alongside my best friend,
Speaker 1: alongside a couple of actors and producers I know who
Speaker 1: are the most wonderful progressive people. One of my dearest friends,
Speaker 1: who's an incredible speaker and a transactivist, and a trans person, and.
Speaker 2: I thought like, yeah, I want to stand up in
Speaker 2: front of some of.
Speaker 1: The people who don't think we should legislate this stuff
Speaker 1: and explain, you know, the PTSD, the fact that being
Speaker 1: sexually assaulted digitally creates the same trauma in the brain
Speaker 1: as sexual assault. It's physical, you know, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: And went and did the thing, got into it. A
Speaker 1: gentleman who actually told me I didn't know and I
Speaker 1: quote what the fuck I was talking about was disinvited
Speaker 1: from the conference and is not allowed to come back
Speaker 1: because he was like so inappropriate. I got stood up for.
Speaker 1: I was like, cool, this is great, you know, and
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: It's a good thing.
Speaker 1: I think, to stretch yourself in rooms where not everyone.
Speaker 2: Agrees with you.
Speaker 1: I actually think that's how we create like proper change.
Speaker 1: And then I don't know, like over a year later,
Speaker 1: it comes out that this conference was started like eighteen
Speaker 1: years ago by Peter Tele And so then suddenly I
Speaker 1: was Peter Tele's best friend and I was like, wait what,
Speaker 1: And I texted a friend, I go, this is psychotic.
Speaker 1: They're saying that that thing.
Speaker 2: We went to in San Diego, and they were.
Speaker 1: Like it's the same thing. And I was like, that
Speaker 1: can't be possible. And they said, well, he only went
Speaker 1: for the first two years and then never went back.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wait a second. So the last
Speaker 1: time he was there was like fifteen or sixteen years ago,
Speaker 1: and suddenly any of us being there to like do
Speaker 1: our work is bad what And you realize like, because
Speaker 1: of the people who asked me to go, I didn't
Speaker 1: even google it. I was just like, yeah, cool, I added
Speaker 1: to the list. We're doing fifteen conferences and we're lobbying
Speaker 1: on Capitol Hill for the Defiance Act to make this illegal.
Speaker 2: Let's go.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, I wonder if Matt David
Speaker 1: feels that way about Crypto now. I wonder if he's
Speaker 1: like I really put my foot in it.
Speaker 3: I think he. I think he yeah, I've heard, you know,
Speaker 3: from people that are close to him. Yeah, that he's
Speaker 3: that he's you know. I think it was embarrassing obviously
Speaker 3: to be because he really became kind of the epitome
Speaker 3: of it, right because it was so public and it
Speaker 3: was so everywhere.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's so hard.
Speaker 3: But that's also a good example, I would say on
Speaker 3: the other side of like, you know, stuff happens in life,
Speaker 3: and like you move on and you survive, you know,
Speaker 3: when you adapt. And I do think we live in
Speaker 3: a media age where like things are just vastly oversimplified
Speaker 3: and people get lumped into you know. I think I
Speaker 3: saw that jess of Gordon levin what's one of those conferences,
Speaker 3: and it's like, if you knew Joe, like, he's like
Speaker 3: the nicest, smartest, like most sincere person you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 3: So maybe he wasn't the right judgment call or whatever,
Speaker 3: but it certainly wasn't with any poor intent. And it's
Speaker 3: not like he is profiting off of going to a
Speaker 3: conference with Peter that Peter Tield sponsored or whatever. So yeah,
Speaker 3: we have to like one of the things I've tried
Speaker 3: to do here is to send grace to people whenever possible.
Speaker 3: You know, there are people who if they just continue
Speaker 3: to violate that trust and are jerks, you know, unrepentantly.
Speaker 1: I don't think, like.
Speaker 3: Howard Lunik, you don't have to like do them any favors.
Speaker 3: But for for people that for everybody else, you know,
Speaker 3: try to show some grace and provide them empathy and
Speaker 3: and and or just cut them some slack, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: because I think that's how we get out of this.
Speaker 3: That the thing with the Internet, because so much of crypto,
Speaker 3: crypto only exists online, right, there is no there there,
Speaker 3: there's no tangible anything. Really, you just realize how fake
Speaker 3: the social media algorithms are and how how skillful they've
Speaker 3: been at sort of making money off of our individual interests,
Speaker 3: whether those are positive or or or or negative, you know,
Speaker 3: whether we are angry about something or happy about something.
Speaker 3: It does tend to dwell at least on certain platforms
Speaker 3: like x on the anger and division, but it's not
Speaker 3: real life, you know. And and crypto is such a
Speaker 3: perfect illustration of that because so many of the people
Speaker 3: selling it to you online are not real people. You know,
Speaker 3: they're hiding behind pseudonyms in order to mask their identity
Speaker 3: because they don't want they don't want you to know
Speaker 3: who they are, and and often being paid to do it. Right,
Speaker 3: there's like whole blot farms, you know, troll farms out
Speaker 3: in Southeast Asia. They're people are paid, you know, fifty
Speaker 3: cents an hour to pretend to be some Westerner who
Speaker 3: loves whatever. Cryptocurrency.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's so scary.
Speaker 2: And now with like the AI stuff.
Speaker 1: You see it with this, you see it with health, health, wellness,
Speaker 1: wellness products, like these influencers that are hawking beat juice
Speaker 1: or whatever, and they're all AI pages and it's so surreal.
Speaker 1: I read the Times profile on that and was like, man,
Speaker 1: we are entering into a crazy, crazy time where we
Speaker 1: were going to have to look at imagery and wonder
Speaker 1: what's real. And it frightens me a bit. You know,
Speaker 1: how how we can have a relationship with truth or
Speaker 1: ethics if we don't know what's true and if and
Speaker 1: if farms which are unethical by nature are allowed to exist.
Speaker 1: I'm curious how this stuff has changed your relationships with
Speaker 1: those things, you know, I was obviously going to ask
Speaker 1: about your relationship with money, but also your relationship with
Speaker 1: digital spaces in general.
Speaker 3: I think it's just made me less less enthusiastic about
Speaker 3: you know, I still participate because in certain forums I
Speaker 3: was My account on X was hacked into after Elon
Speaker 3: took it over, because he took it over. But they're like, well,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, I got hacked and I could ever
Speaker 3: really recover it, so it's there. But I haven't tweeted
Speaker 3: in years, and I'm really grateful because from what I see,
Speaker 3: that platform in particular has just been overrun with all
Speaker 3: manner of really all accessible of really toxic masculinity, of
Speaker 3: which obviously Crypto is an example. So I'm really now
Speaker 3: on you know, on Instagram threads and blue Sky. I'm
Speaker 3: not like cool enough for TikTok or young enough for TikTok,
Speaker 3: but I but I have I do use social media
Speaker 3: as a as a way of getting the method message
Speaker 3: out to anyone's who's interested, because it is a very
Speaker 3: useful tool for that. And quite frankly, when you're serving
Speaker 3: an independent movie with male marketing budget, like the only
Speaker 3: marketing we can afford is word of mouth and social media. Right,
Speaker 3: That's that's it. We can't like buy We're not going
Speaker 3: to buy a TV commercial. So I do see that
Speaker 3: there are positive sides to social media. What I think
Speaker 3: is lacking right now is is meaningful regulation. You know,
Speaker 3: there's no reason why these come can't be regulated like
Speaker 3: any other public forum. They've resisted it so much, and
Speaker 3: they've used it quite cynically. They've used the Trump administration's
Speaker 3: quote unquote embrasive free speech right. These are the free
Speaker 3: speech people who are threatening Jimmy Kimmel with cancelation, who
Speaker 3: got Stephen Colbert canceled, who you know are are doing
Speaker 3: all sorts of things that are clearly in violation of
Speaker 3: the fundamental tenets of freedom of speech, but they're using
Speaker 3: it as a smoke screen in order to not be regulated,
Speaker 3: and they are regulated more stringently in Europe, you know,
Speaker 3: in Europe. You know, there's a great book that I've
Speaker 3: been reading called Liar's Kingdom by Andrew Weisman, who was
Speaker 3: on Robert Miller's team, was at the sd and y
Speaker 3: SO in the District of New York for a while,
Speaker 3: really great lawry public on MS NOW, and he wrote
Speaker 3: a book called Liar's Kingdom about how we have to change.
Speaker 3: America has a very strange system where you can lie
Speaker 3: about something that is materially false, like you can just
Speaker 3: say Trump can just say he won the election, even
Speaker 3: though that's been proved over and over again to be
Speaker 3: the twenty twenty action that's been proven to be untrue,
Speaker 3: and there's no punishment, there's no law that says you
Speaker 3: can't do that. And he makes a very strong case
Speaker 3: that we this is not true in other countries. Other
Speaker 3: countries have punishments for a line, you know, in a
Speaker 3: way that is really harmful to society, and we should,
Speaker 3: we should change the laws, and we could, we could,
Speaker 3: we could really clean up the public sphere. I think
Speaker 3: that there are some simple, practical things we can do. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: the public out right now we'll trumpet charge, but beyond.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll get there. Yeah. Well, now the film's done.
Speaker 1: What what's next in the space for you? Is there
Speaker 1: another battle you want to wage against corruption? Or do
Speaker 1: you need a break from the battles? And do you
Speaker 1: want to go do a rom com? What's the plan?
Speaker 3: I would love to do a rom com.
Speaker 1: I would love we do Oh my god, should we
Speaker 1: do a rom com?
Speaker 3: Yes? We should. Actually that would be really fun. I
Speaker 3: would totally do that, untally do a romcom with you.
Speaker 2: Done'd be fine. All right, I'm going to find this
Speaker 2: a movie.
Speaker 3: I love it. Yeah, I'm doing a little acting again.
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm a Netflix series that I assume will
Speaker 3: be on the next year and another part that I
Speaker 3: can't talk about yet but I'm excited about. And I'm
Speaker 3: just you know, I'm hoping people will watch this movie.
Speaker 3: We're putting it on. So we've had a hard time
Speaker 3: getting it out, like a streamer won't buy it. An
Speaker 3: American streamer just won't buy this movie that has a
Speaker 3: perfect score on Motten Tomatoes, that's getting lots of love
Speaker 3: from people that have seen it, And so that's weird.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's the politics or whatever, but
Speaker 3: so it seems to me. We're releasing it on this
Speaker 3: platform called Eventive, and we're creating a kind of an
Speaker 3: adventized thing, adventized event, adventized situation where you.
Speaker 2: Could watch it live.
Speaker 3: Starting on August twenty second, and I'll do a little
Speaker 3: intro for the movie. You can stream it and then
Speaker 3: there's going to be a Q and A with Marina
Speaker 3: and Me afterwards, whould be very funny, amazing, and then
Speaker 3: you'll have like two weeks to watch us. You don't
Speaker 3: have to watch it live. But we're trying to kind
Speaker 3: of change the game in terms of the indie distribution
Speaker 3: because it's it's really bad right now. Right now, you
Speaker 3: have the triple whammy of consolidation within the entertainment industry,
Speaker 3: which you and I have we witnessed o the last
Speaker 3: two decades or more, and the vertical integration of the
Speaker 3: industry meaning that the places like Netflix own their own studios,
Speaker 3: they make the stuff that they put on their platforms,
Speaker 3: so they don't have to buy from outside of their platforms,
Speaker 3: which is very difficult obviously for indie movies like the
Speaker 3: one I made in order to get get viewers. And
Speaker 3: then you combine that with a tyrannical president who's you know,
Speaker 3: obviously very much against free speech if it criticizes them,
Speaker 3: and then net result is this kind of like chilling
Speaker 3: effect on indie films which were already hard enough to make.
Speaker 3: And then when you do put it on a video
Speaker 3: on demand platform, you know, where people can just pay
Speaker 3: to rent it or to buy it. Those big companies,
Speaker 3: those big tech companies that control the market, they take
Speaker 3: like twenty to fifty percent of the money, as you know,
Speaker 3: just for the privilege of putting it on their website.
Speaker 3: And then you have to spend money advertising it on
Speaker 3: their website in order to get people to go. So
Speaker 3: it really becomes just a very the economics get really challenging,
Speaker 3: right yeah, And we're trying to provide a different way forward.
Speaker 3: So for people, if you've made it this far, you know,
Speaker 3: check it out. Everyone isling dot com click on the
Speaker 3: watch button and you can and sign up. But I
Speaker 3: hope people will check it out because it's a fun
Speaker 3: movie and hopefully it gives us experience of like, we're
Speaker 3: in this together. You know, you're not alone. There's going
Speaker 3: to be anyone anywhere in the world can watch it,
Speaker 3: so you know, hopefully it gives you a sense of like, Okay,
Speaker 3: there's a global community here that's actually interested in, you know,
Speaker 3: doing the right thing and being entertained at the same time.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, and I love I love the option to
Speaker 1: tune in and actually watch with each other and watch
Speaker 1: with you guys, and to your point, it's an event again,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the things where you know, all
Speaker 1: of the consolidation and all of this weird internet jumble
Speaker 1: up of society has made everything much more complex, and
Speaker 1: there's also ways we can solve for that complexity together.
Speaker 1: And so let's use it for good and make sure
Speaker 1: everybody gets to see this. We will put the link
Speaker 1: for our friends at home, everyone is lying dot com
Speaker 1: slash watch in the show notes. We'll put up a
Speaker 1: calendar reminder in our stories for the podcast as well.
Speaker 1: I'm curious before I let you go and get you
Speaker 1: back outside to the family. Two years ago, you said
Speaker 1: your work in progress was finding balance between work and home.
Speaker 1: I wonder how that's going and if you have the
Speaker 1: same or a new work in progress now.
Speaker 3: I have a similar work in progress. I think that's
Speaker 3: going to be my north star, you know, for the
Speaker 3: foreseeable future, early until our children are sort of old
Speaker 3: enough to where they go off on their own, and
Speaker 3: then that that dynamic will shift. But I'm kind of
Speaker 3: trying to take the skills that I've probably the most
Speaker 3: fun that I've had and most riching thing about doing
Speaker 3: these this weird little journey that I've been on with
Speaker 3: the book and the movies that I was trying things
Speaker 3: I haven't done before and meeting different people and having
Speaker 3: different conversations. And so now that I have written and directed,
Speaker 3: I want to take those skills back and I actually
Speaker 3: want to go back and create a television series for
Speaker 3: for for me to be in set in New York.
Speaker 3: And I'm working on an idea David Kelly, who's a
Speaker 3: fantastic producer. It's a legal show, so kind of a
Speaker 3: holistic approach, yeah, but I mean, we'll see if it's solid.
Speaker 3: But like the the idea that like that we are powerful,
Speaker 3: you know, like you've created this forum for for yourself
Speaker 3: and others to to connect, you know, to the point
Speaker 3: you were making earlier. As much as technology can be
Speaker 3: intimidating and the powerful interests that sort of manipulate the technology,
Speaker 3: the technology itself can be very freeing and should be
Speaker 3: empowering and hopefully will empower me and clearly has empowered you,
Speaker 3: So we should be empowered to make a romantic comedy.
Speaker 3: That's that's what I want to see for you next.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I can't wait.
Speaker 3: Let me a script.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, I think part of the downfall of
Speaker 1: society is that we lost the eighties and nineties rom coms. Yes,
Speaker 1: and like now everything is death and dying in zombies,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling you we got to go back. I'm like,
Speaker 1: bring back the year of Home Alone. And you've got mail, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm ready.
Speaker 3: Love that movie.
Speaker 1: Amazing. Well, thanks for coming on the show today, Pal,
Speaker 1: so great.
Speaker 3: Yeah,