August 8, 2025 • 43 mins
As Taser International rolls out increasingly powerful and sophisticated tasers, they also massively expand sales to law enforcement agencies across the United States. In step with this expansion, more and more people end up dying as a result of these "non-lethal" weapons. In the second part of this two-part interview with journalist and filmmaker Nick Berardini, the guys learn more about the past, present and future conspiracies surrounding the alleged 'safety' of tasers.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
This is the second part of a two part interview
with the creator of Absolute, the journalist, documentarian, filmmaker, author,
podcaster Nick Beredini. Way through the show in media rests,
so why don't we just pick up where we left off.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I know we've kind of hit this already, Nick, but
I want to drill down more into those pig tests.
One of the episodes is that you've made on your
show is called Defective Pigs, and this episode goes into
depth of what it was actually being done. And well,
you tell us the details, but I think they were
doing tests on pigs where an elongated taser event was occurring,
(01:36):
that they were testing, right, and what happened there?
Speaker 6 (01:40):
The thing that really almost takes the whole company down,
is this sort of accidental discovery. What happens is there's
a lot of controversy by the mid two thousands around
tasers because they are becoming incredibly popular with cops, and
as such, you start to see a lot of people
(02:01):
being killed. So now we're talking about The New York
Times is doing big investigations. You're talking about CBS News,
the Arizona Republic. Robert Anglan is a terrific, terrific reporter
from the Arizona Republic, a great, great guy who just
like kicked their ass, not on purpose, not trying to be,
you know, somebody who was adversarial, but doing kind of
(02:21):
what I was doing, which was taking these claims at
face value and checking them out and being like, I
don't think that adds up, bro, and then them fighting
him over the fact that right what they're saying is
in true. You have all of this scrutiny that didn't
exist in the early days. In fact, this weapon got
a lot of positive media attention in the beginning because
it was a great idea, the idea that you could
(02:42):
have an electric weapon that would prevent police shootings. Everybody
can get on board with them. But of course, as
people start dropping dead and there are stories popping up
about six year olds being tasered and grandma's being tasered,
and like, all these things start to make really controversial news,
the company realizes they're going to basically be in a
(03:04):
public opinion war, right, and they're a big target because
at the same time as these debts and injuries are
starting to happen, the stock had gone from like trading
at like three dollars a share to like being like
I said, I think they went from a shareholder value
you know, maybe of like eight eight point four million
(03:24):
I think when they went public in two thousand and one,
to like one point nine billion by April of two
thousand and four. This is like a unicorn unicorn, right,
this is pretty Facebook and all these terms we've become
familiar with, you know, with all these tech companies. Right,
this was after the dot com crash. You have a
tech company essentially a weapons manufacturer that's kind of a
(03:46):
tech company, right, just smoking the NaSTA, I mean, doing incredible,
incredible you know numbers in terms of its shareholder value.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
And Rick Smith is by the way, at this point
becoming almost like a messiotic figure for stockbrokers, you know.
And he's got he's got the uh you've established him
not just as a uh, not just as a guy
born into very good means with a lot of opportunities,
(04:16):
but now a guy who might be drinking his own
pool aider.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
To one thousand per right, Oh, this is everything he
ever dreamed of, was to be basically up like he
wanted to be, like Steve Jobs. I mean, that's really
what he wanted to be like. And so he's got
a cult of personality within law enforcement because the literal
corporate you know mission statement was protect truth, protect life.
So all these cops are you know, like hailing him
(04:39):
as this great, you know, hero of policing because he's
invented this weapon that can save lives by you know,
not having to shoot people or beat people with batons anymore. Right,
But then you also have this incredible retail investor rush
of glorification of him, where these day traders and these
average people are able to beat the big banks, you know,
(05:01):
on a stock that the big banks think is kind
of bolt and right, the day traders and the retail
investors and the mom and pops doing their own trading
are hailing because of the sales numbers or quarter are
just bananas at this time. But what happens, and getting
back to the pig tests, you know, is Rick now
has everything at stake because he in two thousand and four,
(05:23):
his family in two thousand and four makes one hundred
million dollars in stock sales alone. Right their whole fortunes
are being made, and the rocket ride up the Nastac
in that year. At the same time, people start dying
and the controversy starts to really swell about is this
weapon really what they said it was, And they start
having to do these other studies to basically try to
(05:48):
confirm and backup sort of what they had said. And
at the same time, other researchers are getting interested because
it's a big story. It's a controversial story. So the
guys like Andrew Dennis who I mentioned, are sitting in
a daser training as a cop and going like, I'm
gonna check that out myself. What they discover in in
early two thousand and five, I believe it was sometime
in early two thousand and five, they start doing this
(06:09):
study with the Cleveland Clinic, which is one of the
most reputable, you know, hospitals in the entire country, and
they these this electrophysiologist, physiologist named Patrick chose one of
the best electrophysiologists in the country. They hire him to
prove that cocaine or stimulant drugs don't make someone more
susceptible to heart trouble when they're tasered. And the study
(06:33):
that he does kind of proves that. But this pig
study is the first to use an ultrasound or an
echo cardiogram to measure a heart rhythm because previously they
were doing a lot of studies and if you use
an EKG on a pig, for example, during an animal study,
and you shoot it with a taser, right, the thekt's
gonna go ap because the electric current is interfering with
(06:55):
the reading. Then echo cardiogram is an image of the
horror right, and the election cardiogram. They discover this current
is overriding the pig's heartbeats in these early stages. Sometimes
they bounce back to normal when the shock ends. Sometimes
they speed up to rapid rates that can lead to
what's called ventricular fibrillation, which is essentially what is described
(07:18):
as a bag of squiggly worms. In your heart. No
real rhythm quickly leads to death. When you see people
shoveling snow. You hear about people shoveling snow and they
drop dead in the snow, they have a heart attack.
A lot of times that's ventricular fibrillation. It's a messed
up current, an uncontrollable current inside the heart rhythm.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Right.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
Well, this is a huge deal because they never tested
for what was called cardiac capture, that the current could
actually override somebody's heart. They were just testing to see
in the beginning, would the electric current send a dog
or a pig heart immediately into ventricular fibrillation, that squiggly
worm current. Well, because they never tested for capture, and
(07:59):
now they're finding capture, they're starting to cover their ass,
thinking like, how do we show that that actually isn't
what had happened in this test done by this incredibly
reputal electrophysiologists they'd hired to do the study. And that
leads to all of this internal testing that a lot
of it wasn't published, trying to sort of disprove what
(08:20):
Patrick Chu ended up proving, and that study is eventually
going to become the real impetus for these legal threats
because now lawyers can say they told you for years
this weapon could not affect the heart, and they have
known that it can by their own study that they
have paid for since two thousand and five, and they
(08:42):
have not warned cops anywhere. So those pig tests are
basically a way to try to disprove it, and all
they keep doing is just proving repeatedly what that original
one that they did sort of showed, which is a
shock in close enough to the heart, and especially in
a long gated one, especially one for longer than five seconds,
(09:03):
can override a person's heartbeat. And the longer that shock went,
the more likely it was to happen. Not that it's
likely to happen in the beginning, to be very clear,
It's not like a bunch of people died from tasers
because they got shot in the chest, but the risk
was obviously significant given that the weapons at that point
(09:24):
were being used something like a thousand times a day
by American cops.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, we also see at this point, we see a
great appetite on behalf of Taser International, who has not
yet changed their name to find I'll say it undiplomatically
to cherry pick other ideas or frankly pitches not real
(09:49):
science that will suit their narrative.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
There's a conversation we.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
Had back in twenty twenty one on a show called
Behind the Bastards about the concept of excit I did
delirium and we know big Taser loved this idea. Could
you tell us a little bit about excited delirium? Why
Taser International was so on board with championing this.
Speaker 6 (10:15):
You have heard of excited delirium because of Taser International.
This was a syndrome that was very, very you know,
obscure comes comes all the way back. They would tie
it all the way back to the eighteen hundreds in
a thing called Bell's mania, which was basically like a
psychosis in mental institutions. Going back to the eighteen hundreds.
(10:36):
A forensic pathologist named Cyril Wett, who's a very controversial
figure in forensic pathology, started using the phrase excited delirium
or cocaine psychosis in the nineteen eighties to try to
explain people who were dying in Miami in bizarre circumstances
that was then later debunked that it wasn't related to
(10:58):
any sort of drug intoxication. I think, in fact, this
is I'm speculating a little bit this because I forget
it all now. But like, I think some of the
deaths of these women that they were targeting were basically
like they were using sort of like their sexuality against them,
and that they were actually killed by a serial killer
I believe was one of the findings. If you guys,
am I right about that? You guys might know that you.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Are on the stuff. Yeah, you are correct, Yeah, are correct. Nick.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
When I was talking with Robert, he was able to
confirm that on the on that show, it's it's kind
of bullsh though right excited.
Speaker 6 (11:32):
It's a bullsh syndrome that because people could not explain
some pathology that led some people with mental illness to die.
The pathology always required restraint. People weren't just dropping dead. Well,
what could happen is somebody who was really worked up,
whether that was because of drugs or some sort of
mental break, would be restrained, and the restraint itself was
(11:56):
typically a trigger for how someone might die because there
was no obvious forensic pathway to show it was a asphyxiation, right,
They just they didn't they couldn't.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Breathe or whatever.
Speaker 6 (12:08):
There was no obvious, clear cut point to the liver
and show the damage to deliver and say that's why
it happened. Excited delierum kind of became this thing that
was bandied about, like maybe there's some sort of right
like syndrome that's taking place in people who are not
within their own sound minded body. Taser took that in
(12:30):
and it started in the very first training version. I
believe I saw this, and I may be wrong. It
might have come in earlier, but I really remember it
starting to be pushed into trained versions around November of
two thousand and four. This is a super controversial period
because again the stock is skyrocketing, and this is when
they're also for the first time, really being pounded by
(12:51):
you know, big national media. The SEC is floating around
thinking about an investigation. Yearson attorney generals about to start
an investigation. So they are looking to show cops who
are seeing these headlines and thinking about, how's the taser
not killing these people? Why can we trust you when
you say that the taser cannot kill? They point to
(13:13):
excited delirium, which for American police is the perfect perfect
excuse because we have such a culture victim blaming in
American policing that it basically allows the cops to say,
it wasn't the taser. It wasn't my actions of the
tasering someone for a minute in fifteen seconds who was
high on methamphetamine that caused this person to die. It
(13:36):
was them being high on methamphetamine, dying of excited delirium
and just crashing out. And that they they put so
much energy into pushing excited delirium and all these conditions
that sort of get bucketed with excited delirium as the
reason for why people were dying in custody, and that
(14:00):
coflected blame, especially with the customer with American police, from
the weapon itself, because that's really who they were answering to.
The SEC investigation that happened into Taser International was whether
or not they lied about the safety of the Taser. Well,
to prove that they lied about the safety of the tasers,
you would need to do some medical research to dispute
(14:20):
their claims, which the SEC is a financial regulatory body.
The we're gonna do right. The Arizona Attorney General's Office
dropped their investigation because Taser agreed to essentially stop calling
tasers none wethough they would refer to them as less lethal,
and that was fine for the Arizona AG. The investigation
gets dropped, right, it's cops who matter. They are the
only ones who can basically kill this business if there
(14:42):
is some skepticism, and for a period there was. Two
thousand and five was a brutal year for Taser International
because they were under sec investigation and a lot of
departments canceled orders saying we can't do business with a
company who might get hammered by the Feds. We have
to pause this until this gets sorted out, and excited
de leering became a part of that push to show no, no, no, no,
(15:05):
it's not the Taser, it's all these other things and like,
you know, that guy was just a drug addict, piece
of who dropped dead, and like they're blaming the Taser
now because that's what these crybabies do. Mike Brave said
something one of the most despicable things I've ever read
in Princeton, quite frankly, where he said to mother Jones,
(15:26):
I think who has did a big investigation at the
time about excited tiary And he said, you know, do
we blame the druggies, the druggie or the druggies mom
who cries when someone dies. No, we blame the cop
and we blame the taser because that's what's there the
time of death. And it was so prevalent a part
of their rhetoric that these were people out to get you,
(15:49):
the officer in us, the company trying to provide you
with service, and you know what, like them, it's their
own fault. And that worked. That worked incredibly well. It
worked on Matt Masters. And that is what I feel
is so devastating is that if it had actually been
taken seriously and honestly right, there could have been a
(16:10):
sort of reforming of the way the weapon was treated
and policies were made. There could have been an honest
discussion about what the real risk was of the device,
without without pulling them off the street, without getting cups
to use them. But the difference is if police officers
then started to put in their minds there was a
small risk that someone could be killed or armed from
this weapon, they would no longer be tasering six year
(16:32):
olds and grandmothers and people who didn't want to sign
speeding tickets. And why if I am the Chicago PD,
find the NYPD, find these huge departments where they were
pushing to arm every officer with a taser. Why would
I give every officer a taser when they already have
a gun, they already have pepper spread, they already have
the baton, you know, whatever it may be. And if
they're only going to be able to allow to use
(16:52):
a taser when there's a real fight that's happening, why
would I spend millions of dollars for the department to
give everyone one? Just give them to you know, sergeants,
give them the supervisory and it's give then the swat whatever.
And that would kill the whole business model, because the
business model was this wasn't some niche weapon. The business
model was this was a panacea. This was a magical
(17:13):
bullet that could be used for anything.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Let's pause here, we'll have a word from our sponsors,
and then we'll dive deeper into the story of tasers,
and we've returned.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
It really sucks because, like I said at the top
of this, it seems like a great idea to have
this thing at the ready as a non lethal force
that can be deployed. But you know, it just it.
It isn't used in the way that it's ever I've seen.
I've never seen a video of a taser being deployed
(17:51):
by a police officer that is used in the way
that is used in the tests. And if you look
at those tests, every single one, including the one with
Hans Morrero, which was like the big one, there is
a mat laid on the ground so that a human
being when they fall down in the way a human
being falls down when they're tased, it doesn't cause damage
right when you fall down that way. But then in
(18:12):
almost every video you see of a police officer using
a taser, there is either asphalt or concrete or some
hard surface that's there. And people don't talk about the
traumatic brain injuries that occur when a taser is deployed
because a human being falls face down onto concrete or asphalt.
It just stinks because if it was used in those
(18:33):
little bursts, Like I'm not trying to say tasers are
safe in that way, but if it was used in
those little bursts to stop someone in the moment, it
seems like it would be a fairly safe weapon, fairly
safe weapon for most instances.
Speaker 5 (18:50):
But it's just it's just not and it seems like
it's just become a device for intimidation.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Also, yeah, yeah, also a huge profit center, but as
we alluded to, not the sole income stream for Taser
International at this point, and that's something we definitely have
to address. Like the thing that Matt is bringing up
here is mission critical, right. It's kind of like how
(19:21):
during prohibition, companies would sell grape juice concentrate and they
would have an awarding label on the package that said,
don't do the following things because this will turn that
grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. And everyone was like, oh, gotcha, buddy.
(19:41):
So we see again the conflict of Like, one thing
I love about absolute in general is the way that
you describe it as a story about unchecked power, and
it goes so much deeper than the mechanics or the
science of taser technology. I see it as a battle
(20:06):
between stories with lives on the line, right, narratives, truth
versus fiction, pr versus reality. And we see also and
this is a personal question, now I want to put
you too much on the spot here, Nick, but we
see also that big taser I'm.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Calling them, that can be a little bit.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
A little bit defensive when people find things that don't
match their stories. So can you tell us a little
about legal actions or reprisals that people feel they have encountered.
And on the personal note, dude, have you at any
point felt like someone was gunning for you as a
(20:48):
result of this, because you've been at this for more
than a decade and a half.
Speaker 6 (20:53):
Personally, I've never felt a lot of threat or danger
in any way from the usual. You know, they were
very serious when my film came out about review bombing
the documentary on Amazon and IMDb, at these iTunes and
these things, attacking me personally in the press, doing that
(21:17):
kind of stuff you expect, right, They sort of that backfires,
right because that just draws more attention. What I'm dealing
with now is a completely different company than I was
dealing with ten years ago. And that's because they are
a tech conglomerate. I mean, I've told people, and I
firmly believe this to be true, that this is the
(21:39):
most important and powerful company at least that's publicly traded,
let's say that you don't actually know about. And the
reason for that is because they have more from this
niche taser manufacturer into the dominant provider of all law
enforcement technology, and that's expanding into different public safety sectors
(22:00):
like healthcare, public schools, even rights. That's how far this
is getting. They were, you know, billion dollar ish company
when I when I was doing my film ten years ago.
They are a fifty billion dollar company now. And that
is because of the camera systems, the drones, the artificial intelligence,
(22:22):
all these other things that they used the taser's success for,
and the relationships they had in policing already because of
the taser. They took those relationships and leveraged them into
all these other tech spaces. So to answer that question,
they are now much much too big to make the
mistake of picking on me personally in some way, because
(22:46):
they would know that would just invite more eyeballs onto
what they are actually up to. And Rick Smith himself,
while still deeply involved in the company, right is not
actually calling the shots in the same way he would
have been ten years ago because this is a much
more buttoned up place. That doesn't mean you don't see
(23:07):
read Reuter's been doing an amazing job, you know, like
writing stories about the culture at Axon and the kind
of weird that they still do but this is a
place that wants to be seen much more in the
line of Apple than it would you know, ten years ago,
when it was still just kind of a niche weapons manufacturer. Now,
does that mean that they don't do some things that
(23:29):
I would would still find intimidating. Sure, you know, they
especially did them. I felt like we premiered a Tribeca
Film Festival, you know, when my film came out. I
was certain that I was being you know, watched and
followed during that you know experience. As we got ready
to launch our podcast, Rick Smith decided to launch his
(23:50):
own podcast at his own show called Boldly Go Right
to like tell the company's mythology. Matt Stroud, who helped
me with this project, wrote a book that Taser was
a big part of five six years ago. Then Rick
Smith launched his wrote his own book called The End
of Killing, sort of as a way to compete with that.
He does some weird stuff like that, But mostly what's
(24:14):
scary to me is that like they are so beyond
dealing with you know, like me, that actually, like they're
too buttoned up to do anything dumb. And that's actually
what's scary is the stuff they they do now is
like Minority Report. And Rick Smith wrote about how like
Minority Report is actually a great idea, like let's kidnap,
(24:37):
Let's kidnap three clairvoyant women and like put them in
a bathtub and make them predict murders forever. And Rick
like sees that movie and is like, that's some genius
right there.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
It's like, what's the oldie, what's the old sci fi meme?
Speaker 4 (24:51):
It's like someone walks into a boardroom and says, guys,
remember that amazing novel Never Build the World ender, Well,
he had read it, and we think we can do
it right down here, right.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
That seems to be holding true for a lot of
these tech giants lately, like with the giant AI facilities
and the you know, supercomputers named after science fiction characters
and like Hyperion and stuff like that. It seems like
they didn't quite get the message of a lot of
these dystopian uh, these dystopian novels jib.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
When we're making comparisons here to Apple and other tech companies,
Let's just let's jump to Forbes really quick, just so
we can understand how big Axon Enterprises is. If you
look at the CEO compensation for a company like Apple.
Tim Cook. We've heard Tim Cook's name, we know who
that is. We've seen him on the on the TV
all the time. He took home seventy five million dollars
(25:47):
last year as his compensation package. Steven Schwarzman, the CEO
of the Blackstone Group that we talk about a lot
on this podcast, he took home eighty four million. Rick
Smith last year topped Forbes list of CEO compensation, taking
home one hundred and sixty five million dollars last year.
(26:07):
Just he's at the top of the list. And we
how often do you have a conversation with your friends
about Axon Enterprise?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Right?
Speaker 6 (26:15):
And what what I guess Ben was initially asking, which
I think was kind of the bigger point that I'm making,
is twenty years ago they were so eager to they
sued Gannett newspapers right like they they did what I
would say is dumb pr stuff. They attacked reporters a lot.
They accused Alex Berenson, who was writing for The New
York Times at that point, of being in on a
(26:37):
poker game, you know, with hedge fund managers, and that's
why he was attacking them. In the press. I mean,
they just did the kind of conspiratorial things that are
actually not rooted in it, that like, actually not rooted
it in some truth the power. Not that the media
doesn't have deserve our critiques every now and then, of
course we do. But the point being, like they were
(26:58):
so eager to sit up and have those fights. They
would sue, they would attack, they would do these things
relentlessly because there was a cult of personality around what
they were doing and the leadership. And now the language
is terrifying because the language is these stages and these
product launches and these things you're used to with the
(27:20):
Apples of the World, where Rick will get on stage
and tell you that we are going to live in
a world without any crime anymore because of the technology
that he is going to provide. And don't worry, we'll
use our ethics panel to weigh in when we think
we might be going too far. And oh, by the way,
because the ethics panel doesn't think we should put taser
(27:42):
drones in schools, we're going to fire basically, or I
shouldn't say fire. Nine of that twelve board members technically resigned, right,
but when the board disagrees, nine of the twelve board
members resign, and they don't really have a public facing
ethics board anymore. That's actually what's scary about this now
is morphed into the kind of company that has resources
(28:06):
and power that is so big and vast that they
wouldn't even bother to mess with someone like me anymore,
because all they could do is pick a fight with
somebody who's just going to draw attention to them in
a way that they don't need, they don't care about.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
NY could just pressure companies during some kind of acquisition phase.
I don't know, Paramount.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
South Park, keep it in. Sorry, we've got a bug
going around the office. Nick, wake up.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
That episode delayed by a week somehow, somehow.
Speaker 5 (28:40):
Okay, let's take a quick pause right here for a
word from our sponsor, and then we'll jump right back
into the troubling history and future of tasers.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
And we're back, folks.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
There is so so much more we want to get to, Nick.
You are being so generous with your time. We wanted
to point this out, folks. We recommend visiting the Lava
for Good website to check out episodes of Absolute because
I mean, of course available wherever you find your favorite shows.
I think we're legally required to say that. But if
(29:17):
you go to the Lava for Good website, when you
check in on each episode page, you can find in
depth supporting literature and documentation that backs up everything that
you are saying. And you're very you unlike maybe Axon's board,
you are very ethical in your exploration here. And we
(29:39):
just want to say we have such immense respect for
the moments where you were very clear and you're saying, Look,
I can't specifically like I cannot provably objectively say this thing.
I can show you these things are true, and that's
a nuance that's Missy in a lot of reporting. And
(30:01):
I hate that all four of us noded our heads
when we when we made that point. Uh, what do
you hope that people can get out of the show
once they tune into Absolutely, we watch, we hear it.
They will watch the documentary as well. We're walking away,
(30:22):
we're talking with someone the next day. What do we
know what has changed?
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Well?
Speaker 6 (30:29):
I think you know, the show is rooted in the
story of Matt Masters, who is a who is a
cop who had dedicated his whole life to policing in
this way of you know, I hate to use the
cliche of warrior cop, right, But I mean this was
a swat guy who kicked in a thousand doors and
did the real stuff, and someone who believed in the
(30:52):
job in a way that was admirable. I think I
think he did actually wants to do good in the
world when he started, and what you hear from him,
what you understand is it is a show about tasers,
but it's also show about policing and the system of policing.
(31:12):
The nature of how these guys are trained, what they
are asked to do, is so rooted in hero worship.
It's so rooted in US versus them mentality that it
actually made Matt doubt his own kid because he didn't
believe for a while that his own kid wouldn't have
(31:34):
done something to provoke an officer from tasering him. And
the tragedy of this is that this company that made
this taser used and leveraged that sort of mentality to
build a massive, massive business starting with the taser, and
when hit the fan, when it was clear they had
(31:58):
lied about the safety of the device for many years
to these officers, very surreptitiously threw those officers under the bus.
They made it so the liability for what happens when
a taser does injure kill someone is squarely on the
shoulders of the cops who were using them, and the
(32:19):
cops who were using them are still operating under a
message that the weapon is perfectly safe.
Speaker 5 (32:26):
It almost sounds like what happened with the Purdue Pharma
and the you know, like oxycotton being non addictive and
then sort of throwing the doctors under the bus and
the pharmacy reps and things.
Speaker 6 (32:36):
One thousand percent. And what I say is like, I mean,
you don't forget that they hired and used cops as
trainers to teach this material that they wrote. So when
the cops were sitting in training, they were not seeing
a taser salesperson, They were seeing a police officer, someone
who was a part of that brotherhood with them, right,
(32:56):
And that betrayal of law enforcement speaks to the company
willingness to protect itself, to choose itself right over over
over a million police officers doing this public safety job,
but also speaks to the complicity of American policing in
the way that they are willing to basically receive any
sort of messaging that that is in line with that
(33:20):
broad thinking, which is that we are on the right
side of the thin blue line. We are protecting the
world from chaos, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, to
the degree that they were betrayed and they sort of
swallowed their own betrayal, and that the irony of that
is that the moment Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson,
(33:41):
Taser International took their body camera product, which was struggling
to sell because cops didn't want to be filmed all day,
and changed the messaging and pivoted the messaging to be
about transparency, to be about accountability, to appeal to a
public that was now asking for their police off officers
to be held to some sort of proof right about
(34:04):
what they were doing in their jobs. That shows you
the ability of the company to find its way through
the mass and figure out a way to profit off
of anything. Now that same company right gives you the
rhetoric like we're going to no longer live in a
world of crime because cameras are going to be everywhere.
(34:25):
And I will say the scariest thing to me is
I don't believe in this, Like if you what did
you do to get tasered stuff. But it is true
that when a cop, when cops were attacking Matt Masters,
what he was personally trying to warn them because he
went on this journey of discovery and saw this stuff existed.
After the surgeon told them that the taser caused his
(34:47):
son's cardiac arrest, he did his own research and it
wasn't hard to realize, Oh, this is actually out here,
this is happening across the country. And when he tried
to talk to his fellow officers about the actual dangers
they weren't learning about in their taser training, he was
brushed aside, and his own son was basically said, why
didn't you just do what the cop told him to do?
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Right?
Speaker 6 (35:07):
I don't believe in that kind of thinking, right. I
don't believe Bryce's Masters deserved what he got because he
refused to get out of a car when the officer
told him to get out of a car. When Bryce
was asking why am I being placed under arrest. There's
a whole history you'll hear about in the show about
why why he was wary of doing that, why he's
wary of getting out of the car. But it is
true that he made a choice that he made a
(35:29):
choice not to comply. When you leave your apartment and
you go to the corner store to buy a sandwich,
it get a cop You are not making a conscious
choice to put your face on a company's database to
then be analyzed and used it predicted about whether or
not you are more likely to shoplift for that sandwich
in that coat. That is what is happening. It's not coming,
(35:52):
it is already in effect. These are these real time
crime centers where they are stationed. They are placing cams everywhere,
right everywhere, and they are going to axon surfers and
they are being fed through artificial intelligence to figure out
who is going to commit crimes and who is not.
(36:13):
They have been very very slow and very very cautious
about facial recognition in a public facing way. But do
we really believe that the.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
Moment the public opinion shifts just enough to say like,
oh maybe this technology isn't so bad, they won't be
ready to capitalize and go full force on facial recognition
technology on the dashcam videos that they now push because
they have dashcam software on the body cameras that they
have on the street light cameras that they have acquired
(36:42):
that they are trying to put everywhere.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Right, this is.
Speaker 6 (36:45):
All about surveillance now, and you don't opt into that surveillance.
There's no user agreement for you to sign. You decide
to leave your house. That's your choice to opt in
to being watched constantly while they profit from here.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
That's your consent.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
God, dang, it is horrifying.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
We've got to have you back on the show. I
was mesrized. It is true.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Yeah, well we say it. We say it so often.
You know, a lot of the things that are sometimes
dismissed as alarmism, especially in the world of tech and surveillance,
those things are already here there, They're happening, right.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
Companies do a lot of things poorly, and they do
a lot of things well. But one thing companies that
this size never do is improvise and play jazz. Right,
if something rolls out, there has been a plan in place.
Speaker 6 (37:39):
Right. And drones, I forgot drones, drones everywhere, And that's.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
What I was looking at Nick on their website. The
way they talk about with FUSUS they can integrate all
the cameras and the drones. And we talked about what
is it spot Shotter or shot Spotter.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Yeah, we got a nice letter from them.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
So Mike's cameras drones.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Great, guys, we got a nice just check it in
from uh, from from our good friends at spotshotter. What
what a what a world. We're not joking or at
least I'm not joking about, uh. The positive about having
you back on for a further exploration because Noel Matt,
I know there are a bunch of things that we
(38:21):
did not get to.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
We also want to shout out our producer Dylan who
we were talking about sci fi and not learning the lessons.
Dylan proposed the name We've built the Torment Nexus from the.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
From the World Fatus novel. Please don't build the Torment Nexus. Nick.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
Where can people not just learn more about your work
in general, but where can we reach out to you
and your team on the subject of tasers, on the
subject of expansion of technology and what this means for
the future.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
Where can people find you?
Speaker 6 (38:58):
Yes, I am still on the x Twitter you know machine,
so definitely follow me at Nick Beardini on Twitter or X.
I am also on Instagram at Nick Beredini, but the
Lava page I definitely encourage everybody to follow and get
in touch with us on the Lava page. That's Lava
Podcasts at Lava for Good on Instagram TikTok Right, Lava,
(39:24):
The reason I did this show with them is because
they did Bone Valley and Bone Valley to me is
one of the best podcasts ever made about the wrongful
conviction of a man named Leo Schofield in Florida. And
so Lava is really pushing hard for this idea of
(39:45):
black mirror, you know, taking effect, especially in this story,
and that's basically I think hopefully where we'll end up
going in season two is trying to explore, now, okay,
the success of the Taser. We tease this, you know
at the end of this current season, but the success
of the taser, what has that? What does that mean
(40:06):
for today? And definitely check Lava out because they're going
to be doing more shows in that same absolute feed
that we're in. That kind of wrestle with the marriage
between capitalism technology.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
What a phenomenal right, I mean, we obviously we came
in and we weren't all keeping the same notes for
this one, so I know there's a bunch of stuff
we weren't able to get to But I don't know, guys.
One thing I was thinking about, why is there not
more regulation regarding these devices, Like we can just pop
(40:44):
on Taser's website, or we can pop on Amazon, like
you were saying, Noel, and there's no age restriction, there's
no licensing, there's no like training course. You can just
buy one with a credit card.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:58):
The whole point of the pivotal moment was when gun
powder was removed from these and allowed them to be
classified in a different way to firearms, which I think
opens things up. I think you buy them just the
same way as you buy pepper spray. But Nick also
does some really great differentiation between the consumer models that
are available on say Amazon, and the kinds that law
enforcement uses.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
And with that, folks, thanks again to Nick. Thanks again
to you for tuning in. We've got a lot of
people in law enforcement in the crowd. We've got a
lot of veterans in the audience. We have a lot
of people who have one way or another interacted with
Tasers and perhaps unknowingly with this company Axon. We want
to hear your thoughts. You can find us on the internet,
(41:39):
you can give us a phone call, you can always
send us an email.
Speaker 5 (41:43):
That's right. Find us in the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group here is
where it gets crazy. On x FKA, Twitter and on
YouTube with video content glore for your perusing enjoyment on
Instagram and TikTok. However, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
If you want to give us a call, our number
is one eight three three STDWYTK. When you call in,
give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
If you'd like to send us an email.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Be well aware, yet unafraid.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
Sometimes the void writes back and Hey, if you are
interested in further exploration of some topics we discussed in
this two part interview segment, do check out Behind the
Bastards twenty twenty one series on the concept of excited delirium.
Warning it's not appropriate for all audiences anyway. We are
conspiracy iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a product
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio
app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
We're joined as always with our super producer Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
You are here.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.
This is the second part of a two part interview
with the creator of Absolute, the journalist, documentarian, filmmaker, author,
podcaster Nick Beredini. Way through the show in media rests,
so why don't we just pick up where we left off.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
Let's do it.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
I know we've kind of hit this already, Nick, but
I want to drill down more into those pig tests.
One of the episodes is that you've made on your
show is called Defective Pigs, and this episode goes into
depth of what it was actually being done. And well,
you tell us the details, but I think they were
doing tests on pigs where an elongated taser event was occurring,
(01:36):
that they were testing, right, and what happened there?
Speaker 6 (01:40):
The thing that really almost takes the whole company down,
is this sort of accidental discovery. What happens is there's
a lot of controversy by the mid two thousands around
tasers because they are becoming incredibly popular with cops, and
as such, you start to see a lot of people
(02:01):
being killed. So now we're talking about The New York
Times is doing big investigations. You're talking about CBS News,
the Arizona Republic. Robert Anglan is a terrific, terrific reporter
from the Arizona Republic, a great, great guy who just
like kicked their ass, not on purpose, not trying to be,
you know, somebody who was adversarial, but doing kind of
(02:21):
what I was doing, which was taking these claims at
face value and checking them out and being like, I
don't think that adds up, bro, and then them fighting
him over the fact that right what they're saying is
in true. You have all of this scrutiny that didn't
exist in the early days. In fact, this weapon got
a lot of positive media attention in the beginning because
it was a great idea, the idea that you could
(02:42):
have an electric weapon that would prevent police shootings. Everybody
can get on board with them. But of course, as
people start dropping dead and there are stories popping up
about six year olds being tasered and grandma's being tasered,
and like, all these things start to make really controversial news,
the company realizes they're going to basically be in a
(03:04):
public opinion war, right, and they're a big target because
at the same time as these debts and injuries are
starting to happen, the stock had gone from like trading
at like three dollars a share to like being like
I said, I think they went from a shareholder value
you know, maybe of like eight eight point four million
(03:24):
I think when they went public in two thousand and one,
to like one point nine billion by April of two
thousand and four. This is like a unicorn unicorn, right,
this is pretty Facebook and all these terms we've become
familiar with, you know, with all these tech companies. Right,
this was after the dot com crash. You have a
tech company essentially a weapons manufacturer that's kind of a
(03:46):
tech company, right, just smoking the NaSTA, I mean, doing incredible,
incredible you know numbers in terms of its shareholder value.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
And Rick Smith is by the way, at this point
becoming almost like a messiotic figure for stockbrokers, you know.
And he's got he's got the uh you've established him
not just as a uh, not just as a guy
born into very good means with a lot of opportunities,
(04:16):
but now a guy who might be drinking his own
pool aider.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
To one thousand per right, Oh, this is everything he
ever dreamed of, was to be basically up like he
wanted to be, like Steve Jobs. I mean, that's really
what he wanted to be like. And so he's got
a cult of personality within law enforcement because the literal
corporate you know mission statement was protect truth, protect life.
So all these cops are you know, like hailing him
(04:39):
as this great, you know, hero of policing because he's
invented this weapon that can save lives by you know,
not having to shoot people or beat people with batons anymore. Right,
But then you also have this incredible retail investor rush
of glorification of him, where these day traders and these
average people are able to beat the big banks, you know,
(05:01):
on a stock that the big banks think is kind
of bolt and right, the day traders and the retail
investors and the mom and pops doing their own trading
are hailing because of the sales numbers or quarter are
just bananas at this time. But what happens, and getting
back to the pig tests, you know, is Rick now
has everything at stake because he in two thousand and four,
(05:23):
his family in two thousand and four makes one hundred
million dollars in stock sales alone. Right their whole fortunes
are being made, and the rocket ride up the Nastac
in that year. At the same time, people start dying
and the controversy starts to really swell about is this
weapon really what they said it was, And they start
having to do these other studies to basically try to
(05:48):
confirm and backup sort of what they had said. And
at the same time, other researchers are getting interested because
it's a big story. It's a controversial story. So the
guys like Andrew Dennis who I mentioned, are sitting in
a daser training as a cop and going like, I'm
gonna check that out myself. What they discover in in
early two thousand and five, I believe it was sometime
in early two thousand and five, they start doing this
(06:09):
study with the Cleveland Clinic, which is one of the
most reputable, you know, hospitals in the entire country, and
they these this electrophysiologist, physiologist named Patrick chose one of
the best electrophysiologists in the country. They hire him to
prove that cocaine or stimulant drugs don't make someone more
susceptible to heart trouble when they're tasered. And the study
(06:33):
that he does kind of proves that. But this pig
study is the first to use an ultrasound or an
echo cardiogram to measure a heart rhythm because previously they
were doing a lot of studies and if you use
an EKG on a pig, for example, during an animal study,
and you shoot it with a taser, right, the thekt's
gonna go ap because the electric current is interfering with
(06:55):
the reading. Then echo cardiogram is an image of the
horror right, and the election cardiogram. They discover this current
is overriding the pig's heartbeats in these early stages. Sometimes
they bounce back to normal when the shock ends. Sometimes
they speed up to rapid rates that can lead to
what's called ventricular fibrillation, which is essentially what is described
(07:18):
as a bag of squiggly worms. In your heart. No
real rhythm quickly leads to death. When you see people
shoveling snow. You hear about people shoveling snow and they
drop dead in the snow, they have a heart attack.
A lot of times that's ventricular fibrillation. It's a messed
up current, an uncontrollable current inside the heart rhythm.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
Right.
Speaker 6 (07:37):
Well, this is a huge deal because they never tested
for what was called cardiac capture, that the current could
actually override somebody's heart. They were just testing to see
in the beginning, would the electric current send a dog
or a pig heart immediately into ventricular fibrillation, that squiggly
worm current. Well, because they never tested for capture, and
(07:59):
now they're finding capture, they're starting to cover their ass,
thinking like, how do we show that that actually isn't
what had happened in this test done by this incredibly
reputal electrophysiologists they'd hired to do the study. And that
leads to all of this internal testing that a lot
of it wasn't published, trying to sort of disprove what
(08:20):
Patrick Chu ended up proving, and that study is eventually
going to become the real impetus for these legal threats
because now lawyers can say they told you for years
this weapon could not affect the heart, and they have
known that it can by their own study that they
have paid for since two thousand and five, and they
(08:42):
have not warned cops anywhere. So those pig tests are
basically a way to try to disprove it, and all
they keep doing is just proving repeatedly what that original
one that they did sort of showed, which is a
shock in close enough to the heart, and especially in
a long gated one, especially one for longer than five seconds,
(09:03):
can override a person's heartbeat. And the longer that shock went,
the more likely it was to happen. Not that it's
likely to happen in the beginning, to be very clear,
It's not like a bunch of people died from tasers
because they got shot in the chest, but the risk
was obviously significant given that the weapons at that point
(09:24):
were being used something like a thousand times a day
by American cops.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, we also see at this point, we see a
great appetite on behalf of Taser International, who has not
yet changed their name to find I'll say it undiplomatically
to cherry pick other ideas or frankly pitches not real
(09:49):
science that will suit their narrative.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
There's a conversation we.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
Had back in twenty twenty one on a show called
Behind the Bastards about the concept of excit I did
delirium and we know big Taser loved this idea. Could
you tell us a little bit about excited delirium? Why
Taser International was so on board with championing this.
Speaker 6 (10:15):
You have heard of excited delirium because of Taser International.
This was a syndrome that was very, very you know,
obscure comes comes all the way back. They would tie
it all the way back to the eighteen hundreds in
a thing called Bell's mania, which was basically like a
psychosis in mental institutions. Going back to the eighteen hundreds.
(10:36):
A forensic pathologist named Cyril Wett, who's a very controversial
figure in forensic pathology, started using the phrase excited delirium
or cocaine psychosis in the nineteen eighties to try to
explain people who were dying in Miami in bizarre circumstances
that was then later debunked that it wasn't related to
(10:58):
any sort of drug intoxication. I think, in fact, this
is I'm speculating a little bit this because I forget
it all now. But like, I think some of the
deaths of these women that they were targeting were basically
like they were using sort of like their sexuality against them,
and that they were actually killed by a serial killer
I believe was one of the findings. If you guys,
am I right about that? You guys might know that you.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Are on the stuff. Yeah, you are correct, Yeah, are correct. Nick.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
When I was talking with Robert, he was able to
confirm that on the on that show, it's it's kind
of bullsh though right excited.
Speaker 6 (11:32):
It's a bullsh syndrome that because people could not explain
some pathology that led some people with mental illness to die.
The pathology always required restraint. People weren't just dropping dead. Well,
what could happen is somebody who was really worked up,
whether that was because of drugs or some sort of
mental break, would be restrained, and the restraint itself was
(11:56):
typically a trigger for how someone might die because there
was no obvious forensic pathway to show it was a asphyxiation, right,
They just they didn't they couldn't.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Breathe or whatever.
Speaker 6 (12:08):
There was no obvious, clear cut point to the liver
and show the damage to deliver and say that's why
it happened. Excited delierum kind of became this thing that
was bandied about, like maybe there's some sort of right
like syndrome that's taking place in people who are not
within their own sound minded body. Taser took that in
(12:30):
and it started in the very first training version. I
believe I saw this, and I may be wrong. It
might have come in earlier, but I really remember it
starting to be pushed into trained versions around November of
two thousand and four. This is a super controversial period
because again the stock is skyrocketing, and this is when
they're also for the first time, really being pounded by
(12:51):
you know, big national media. The SEC is floating around
thinking about an investigation. Yearson attorney generals about to start
an investigation. So they are looking to show cops who
are seeing these headlines and thinking about, how's the taser
not killing these people? Why can we trust you when
you say that the taser cannot kill? They point to
(13:13):
excited delirium, which for American police is the perfect perfect
excuse because we have such a culture victim blaming in
American policing that it basically allows the cops to say,
it wasn't the taser. It wasn't my actions of the
tasering someone for a minute in fifteen seconds who was
high on methamphetamine that caused this person to die. It
(13:36):
was them being high on methamphetamine, dying of excited delirium
and just crashing out. And that they they put so
much energy into pushing excited delirium and all these conditions
that sort of get bucketed with excited delirium as the
reason for why people were dying in custody, and that
(14:00):
coflected blame, especially with the customer with American police, from
the weapon itself, because that's really who they were answering to.
The SEC investigation that happened into Taser International was whether
or not they lied about the safety of the Taser. Well,
to prove that they lied about the safety of the tasers,
you would need to do some medical research to dispute
(14:20):
their claims, which the SEC is a financial regulatory body.
The we're gonna do right. The Arizona Attorney General's Office
dropped their investigation because Taser agreed to essentially stop calling
tasers none wethough they would refer to them as less lethal,
and that was fine for the Arizona AG. The investigation
gets dropped, right, it's cops who matter. They are the
only ones who can basically kill this business if there
(14:42):
is some skepticism, and for a period there was. Two
thousand and five was a brutal year for Taser International
because they were under sec investigation and a lot of
departments canceled orders saying we can't do business with a
company who might get hammered by the Feds. We have
to pause this until this gets sorted out, and excited
de leering became a part of that push to show no, no, no, no,
(15:05):
it's not the Taser, it's all these other things and like,
you know, that guy was just a drug addict, piece
of who dropped dead, and like they're blaming the Taser
now because that's what these crybabies do. Mike Brave said
something one of the most despicable things I've ever read
in Princeton, quite frankly, where he said to mother Jones,
(15:26):
I think who has did a big investigation at the
time about excited tiary And he said, you know, do
we blame the druggies, the druggie or the druggies mom
who cries when someone dies. No, we blame the cop
and we blame the taser because that's what's there the
time of death. And it was so prevalent a part
of their rhetoric that these were people out to get you,
(15:49):
the officer in us, the company trying to provide you
with service, and you know what, like them, it's their
own fault. And that worked. That worked incredibly well. It
worked on Matt Masters. And that is what I feel
is so devastating is that if it had actually been
taken seriously and honestly right, there could have been a
(16:10):
sort of reforming of the way the weapon was treated
and policies were made. There could have been an honest
discussion about what the real risk was of the device,
without without pulling them off the street, without getting cups
to use them. But the difference is if police officers
then started to put in their minds there was a
small risk that someone could be killed or armed from
this weapon, they would no longer be tasering six year
(16:32):
olds and grandmothers and people who didn't want to sign
speeding tickets. And why if I am the Chicago PD,
find the NYPD, find these huge departments where they were
pushing to arm every officer with a taser. Why would
I give every officer a taser when they already have
a gun, they already have pepper spread, they already have
the baton, you know, whatever it may be. And if
they're only going to be able to allow to use
(16:52):
a taser when there's a real fight that's happening, why
would I spend millions of dollars for the department to
give everyone one? Just give them to you know, sergeants,
give them the supervisory and it's give then the swat whatever.
And that would kill the whole business model, because the
business model was this wasn't some niche weapon. The business
model was this was a panacea. This was a magical
(17:13):
bullet that could be used for anything.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Let's pause here, we'll have a word from our sponsors,
and then we'll dive deeper into the story of tasers,
and we've returned.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
It really sucks because, like I said at the top
of this, it seems like a great idea to have
this thing at the ready as a non lethal force
that can be deployed. But you know, it just it.
It isn't used in the way that it's ever I've seen.
I've never seen a video of a taser being deployed
(17:51):
by a police officer that is used in the way
that is used in the tests. And if you look
at those tests, every single one, including the one with
Hans Morrero, which was like the big one, there is
a mat laid on the ground so that a human
being when they fall down in the way a human
being falls down when they're tased, it doesn't cause damage
right when you fall down that way. But then in
(18:12):
almost every video you see of a police officer using
a taser, there is either asphalt or concrete or some
hard surface that's there. And people don't talk about the
traumatic brain injuries that occur when a taser is deployed
because a human being falls face down onto concrete or asphalt.
It just stinks because if it was used in those
(18:33):
little bursts, Like I'm not trying to say tasers are
safe in that way, but if it was used in
those little bursts to stop someone in the moment, it
seems like it would be a fairly safe weapon, fairly
safe weapon for most instances.
Speaker 5 (18:50):
But it's just it's just not and it seems like
it's just become a device for intimidation.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Also, yeah, yeah, also a huge profit center, but as
we alluded to, not the sole income stream for Taser
International at this point, and that's something we definitely have
to address. Like the thing that Matt is bringing up
here is mission critical, right. It's kind of like how
(19:21):
during prohibition, companies would sell grape juice concentrate and they
would have an awarding label on the package that said,
don't do the following things because this will turn that
grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. And everyone was like, oh, gotcha, buddy.
(19:41):
So we see again the conflict of Like, one thing
I love about absolute in general is the way that
you describe it as a story about unchecked power, and
it goes so much deeper than the mechanics or the
science of taser technology. I see it as a battle
(20:06):
between stories with lives on the line, right, narratives, truth
versus fiction, pr versus reality. And we see also and
this is a personal question, now I want to put
you too much on the spot here, Nick, but we
see also that big taser I'm.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Calling them, that can be a little bit.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
A little bit defensive when people find things that don't
match their stories. So can you tell us a little
about legal actions or reprisals that people feel they have encountered.
And on the personal note, dude, have you at any
point felt like someone was gunning for you as a
(20:48):
result of this, because you've been at this for more
than a decade and a half.
Speaker 6 (20:53):
Personally, I've never felt a lot of threat or danger
in any way from the usual. You know, they were
very serious when my film came out about review bombing
the documentary on Amazon and IMDb, at these iTunes and
these things, attacking me personally in the press, doing that
(21:17):
kind of stuff you expect, right, They sort of that backfires,
right because that just draws more attention. What I'm dealing
with now is a completely different company than I was
dealing with ten years ago. And that's because they are
a tech conglomerate. I mean, I've told people, and I
firmly believe this to be true, that this is the
(21:39):
most important and powerful company at least that's publicly traded,
let's say that you don't actually know about. And the
reason for that is because they have more from this
niche taser manufacturer into the dominant provider of all law
enforcement technology, and that's expanding into different public safety sectors
(22:00):
like healthcare, public schools, even rights. That's how far this
is getting. They were, you know, billion dollar ish company
when I when I was doing my film ten years ago.
They are a fifty billion dollar company now. And that
is because of the camera systems, the drones, the artificial intelligence,
(22:22):
all these other things that they used the taser's success for,
and the relationships they had in policing already because of
the taser. They took those relationships and leveraged them into
all these other tech spaces. So to answer that question,
they are now much much too big to make the
mistake of picking on me personally in some way, because
(22:46):
they would know that would just invite more eyeballs onto
what they are actually up to. And Rick Smith himself,
while still deeply involved in the company, right is not
actually calling the shots in the same way he would
have been ten years ago because this is a much
more buttoned up place. That doesn't mean you don't see
(23:07):
read Reuter's been doing an amazing job, you know, like
writing stories about the culture at Axon and the kind
of weird that they still do but this is a
place that wants to be seen much more in the
line of Apple than it would you know, ten years ago,
when it was still just kind of a niche weapons manufacturer. Now,
does that mean that they don't do some things that
(23:29):
I would would still find intimidating. Sure, you know, they
especially did them. I felt like we premiered a Tribeca
Film Festival, you know, when my film came out. I
was certain that I was being you know, watched and
followed during that you know experience. As we got ready
to launch our podcast, Rick Smith decided to launch his
(23:50):
own podcast at his own show called Boldly Go Right
to like tell the company's mythology. Matt Stroud, who helped
me with this project, wrote a book that Taser was
a big part of five six years ago. Then Rick
Smith launched his wrote his own book called The End
of Killing, sort of as a way to compete with that.
He does some weird stuff like that, But mostly what's
(24:14):
scary to me is that like they are so beyond
dealing with you know, like me, that actually, like they're
too buttoned up to do anything dumb. And that's actually
what's scary is the stuff they they do now is
like Minority Report. And Rick Smith wrote about how like
Minority Report is actually a great idea, like let's kidnap,
(24:37):
Let's kidnap three clairvoyant women and like put them in
a bathtub and make them predict murders forever. And Rick
like sees that movie and is like, that's some genius
right there.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
It's like, what's the oldie, what's the old sci fi meme?
Speaker 4 (24:51):
It's like someone walks into a boardroom and says, guys,
remember that amazing novel Never Build the World ender, Well,
he had read it, and we think we can do
it right down here, right.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:04):
That seems to be holding true for a lot of
these tech giants lately, like with the giant AI facilities
and the you know, supercomputers named after science fiction characters
and like Hyperion and stuff like that. It seems like
they didn't quite get the message of a lot of
these dystopian uh, these dystopian novels jib.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
When we're making comparisons here to Apple and other tech companies,
Let's just let's jump to Forbes really quick, just so
we can understand how big Axon Enterprises is. If you
look at the CEO compensation for a company like Apple.
Tim Cook. We've heard Tim Cook's name, we know who
that is. We've seen him on the on the TV
all the time. He took home seventy five million dollars
(25:47):
last year as his compensation package. Steven Schwarzman, the CEO
of the Blackstone Group that we talk about a lot
on this podcast, he took home eighty four million. Rick
Smith last year topped Forbes list of CEO compensation, taking
home one hundred and sixty five million dollars last year.
(26:07):
Just he's at the top of the list. And we
how often do you have a conversation with your friends
about Axon Enterprise?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Right?
Speaker 6 (26:15):
And what what I guess Ben was initially asking, which
I think was kind of the bigger point that I'm making,
is twenty years ago they were so eager to they
sued Gannett newspapers right like they they did what I
would say is dumb pr stuff. They attacked reporters a lot.
They accused Alex Berenson, who was writing for The New
York Times at that point, of being in on a
(26:37):
poker game, you know, with hedge fund managers, and that's
why he was attacking them. In the press. I mean,
they just did the kind of conspiratorial things that are
actually not rooted in it, that like, actually not rooted
it in some truth the power. Not that the media
doesn't have deserve our critiques every now and then, of
course we do. But the point being, like they were
(26:58):
so eager to sit up and have those fights. They
would sue, they would attack, they would do these things
relentlessly because there was a cult of personality around what
they were doing and the leadership. And now the language
is terrifying because the language is these stages and these
product launches and these things you're used to with the
(27:20):
Apples of the World, where Rick will get on stage
and tell you that we are going to live in
a world without any crime anymore because of the technology
that he is going to provide. And don't worry, we'll
use our ethics panel to weigh in when we think
we might be going too far. And oh, by the way,
because the ethics panel doesn't think we should put taser
(27:42):
drones in schools, we're going to fire basically, or I
shouldn't say fire. Nine of that twelve board members technically resigned, right,
but when the board disagrees, nine of the twelve board
members resign, and they don't really have a public facing
ethics board anymore. That's actually what's scary about this now
is morphed into the kind of company that has resources
(28:06):
and power that is so big and vast that they
wouldn't even bother to mess with someone like me anymore,
because all they could do is pick a fight with
somebody who's just going to draw attention to them in
a way that they don't need, they don't care about.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
NY could just pressure companies during some kind of acquisition phase.
I don't know, Paramount.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
South Park, keep it in. Sorry, we've got a bug
going around the office. Nick, wake up.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
That episode delayed by a week somehow, somehow.
Speaker 5 (28:40):
Okay, let's take a quick pause right here for a
word from our sponsor, and then we'll jump right back
into the troubling history and future of tasers.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
And we're back, folks.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
There is so so much more we want to get to, Nick.
You are being so generous with your time. We wanted
to point this out, folks. We recommend visiting the Lava
for Good website to check out episodes of Absolute because
I mean, of course available wherever you find your favorite shows.
I think we're legally required to say that. But if
(29:17):
you go to the Lava for Good website, when you
check in on each episode page, you can find in
depth supporting literature and documentation that backs up everything that
you are saying. And you're very you unlike maybe Axon's board,
you are very ethical in your exploration here. And we
(29:39):
just want to say we have such immense respect for
the moments where you were very clear and you're saying, Look,
I can't specifically like I cannot provably objectively say this thing.
I can show you these things are true, and that's
a nuance that's Missy in a lot of reporting. And
(30:01):
I hate that all four of us noded our heads
when we when we made that point. Uh, what do
you hope that people can get out of the show
once they tune into Absolutely, we watch, we hear it.
They will watch the documentary as well. We're walking away,
(30:22):
we're talking with someone the next day. What do we
know what has changed?
Speaker 3 (30:28):
Well?
Speaker 6 (30:29):
I think you know, the show is rooted in the
story of Matt Masters, who is a who is a
cop who had dedicated his whole life to policing in
this way of you know, I hate to use the
cliche of warrior cop, right, But I mean this was
a swat guy who kicked in a thousand doors and
did the real stuff, and someone who believed in the
(30:52):
job in a way that was admirable. I think I
think he did actually wants to do good in the
world when he started, and what you hear from him,
what you understand is it is a show about tasers,
but it's also show about policing and the system of policing.
(31:12):
The nature of how these guys are trained, what they
are asked to do, is so rooted in hero worship.
It's so rooted in US versus them mentality that it
actually made Matt doubt his own kid because he didn't
believe for a while that his own kid wouldn't have
(31:34):
done something to provoke an officer from tasering him. And
the tragedy of this is that this company that made
this taser used and leveraged that sort of mentality to
build a massive, massive business starting with the taser, and
when hit the fan, when it was clear they had
(31:58):
lied about the safety of the device for many years
to these officers, very surreptitiously threw those officers under the bus.
They made it so the liability for what happens when
a taser does injure kill someone is squarely on the
shoulders of the cops who were using them, and the
(32:19):
cops who were using them are still operating under a
message that the weapon is perfectly safe.
Speaker 5 (32:26):
It almost sounds like what happened with the Purdue Pharma
and the you know, like oxycotton being non addictive and
then sort of throwing the doctors under the bus and
the pharmacy reps and things.
Speaker 6 (32:36):
One thousand percent. And what I say is like, I mean,
you don't forget that they hired and used cops as
trainers to teach this material that they wrote. So when
the cops were sitting in training, they were not seeing
a taser salesperson, They were seeing a police officer, someone
who was a part of that brotherhood with them, right,
(32:56):
And that betrayal of law enforcement speaks to the company
willingness to protect itself, to choose itself right over over
over a million police officers doing this public safety job,
but also speaks to the complicity of American policing in
the way that they are willing to basically receive any
sort of messaging that that is in line with that
(33:20):
broad thinking, which is that we are on the right
side of the thin blue line. We are protecting the
world from chaos, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, to
the degree that they were betrayed and they sort of
swallowed their own betrayal, and that the irony of that
is that the moment Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson,
(33:41):
Taser International took their body camera product, which was struggling
to sell because cops didn't want to be filmed all day,
and changed the messaging and pivoted the messaging to be
about transparency, to be about accountability, to appeal to a
public that was now asking for their police off officers
to be held to some sort of proof right about
(34:04):
what they were doing in their jobs. That shows you
the ability of the company to find its way through
the mass and figure out a way to profit off
of anything. Now that same company right gives you the
rhetoric like we're going to no longer live in a
world of crime because cameras are going to be everywhere.
(34:25):
And I will say the scariest thing to me is
I don't believe in this, Like if you what did
you do to get tasered stuff. But it is true
that when a cop, when cops were attacking Matt Masters,
what he was personally trying to warn them because he
went on this journey of discovery and saw this stuff existed.
After the surgeon told them that the taser caused his
(34:47):
son's cardiac arrest, he did his own research and it
wasn't hard to realize, Oh, this is actually out here,
this is happening across the country. And when he tried
to talk to his fellow officers about the actual dangers
they weren't learning about in their taser training, he was
brushed aside, and his own son was basically said, why
didn't you just do what the cop told him to do?
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Right?
Speaker 6 (35:07):
I don't believe in that kind of thinking, right. I
don't believe Bryce's Masters deserved what he got because he
refused to get out of a car when the officer
told him to get out of a car. When Bryce
was asking why am I being placed under arrest. There's
a whole history you'll hear about in the show about
why why he was wary of doing that, why he's
wary of getting out of the car. But it is
true that he made a choice that he made a
(35:29):
choice not to comply. When you leave your apartment and
you go to the corner store to buy a sandwich,
it get a cop You are not making a conscious
choice to put your face on a company's database to
then be analyzed and used it predicted about whether or
not you are more likely to shoplift for that sandwich
in that coat. That is what is happening. It's not coming,
(35:52):
it is already in effect. These are these real time
crime centers where they are stationed. They are placing cams everywhere,
right everywhere, and they are going to axon surfers and
they are being fed through artificial intelligence to figure out
who is going to commit crimes and who is not.
(36:13):
They have been very very slow and very very cautious
about facial recognition in a public facing way. But do
we really believe that the.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
Moment the public opinion shifts just enough to say like,
oh maybe this technology isn't so bad, they won't be
ready to capitalize and go full force on facial recognition
technology on the dashcam videos that they now push because
they have dashcam software on the body cameras that they
have on the street light cameras that they have acquired
(36:42):
that they are trying to put everywhere.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Right, this is.
Speaker 6 (36:45):
All about surveillance now, and you don't opt into that surveillance.
There's no user agreement for you to sign. You decide
to leave your house. That's your choice to opt in
to being watched constantly while they profit from here.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
That's your consent.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
God, dang, it is horrifying.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
We've got to have you back on the show. I
was mesrized. It is true.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Yeah, well we say it. We say it so often.
You know, a lot of the things that are sometimes
dismissed as alarmism, especially in the world of tech and surveillance,
those things are already here there, They're happening, right.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
Companies do a lot of things poorly, and they do
a lot of things well. But one thing companies that
this size never do is improvise and play jazz. Right,
if something rolls out, there has been a plan in place.
Speaker 6 (37:39):
Right. And drones, I forgot drones, drones everywhere, And that's.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
What I was looking at Nick on their website. The
way they talk about with FUSUS they can integrate all
the cameras and the drones. And we talked about what
is it spot Shotter or shot Spotter.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Yeah, we got a nice letter from them.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
So Mike's cameras drones.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Great, guys, we got a nice just check it in
from uh, from from our good friends at spotshotter. What
what a what a world. We're not joking or at
least I'm not joking about, uh. The positive about having
you back on for a further exploration because Noel Matt,
I know there are a bunch of things that we
(38:21):
did not get to.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
We also want to shout out our producer Dylan who
we were talking about sci fi and not learning the lessons.
Dylan proposed the name We've built the Torment Nexus from the.
Speaker 3 (38:35):
From the World Fatus novel. Please don't build the Torment Nexus. Nick.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
Where can people not just learn more about your work
in general, but where can we reach out to you
and your team on the subject of tasers, on the
subject of expansion of technology and what this means for
the future.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
Where can people find you?
Speaker 6 (38:58):
Yes, I am still on the x Twitter you know machine,
so definitely follow me at Nick Beardini on Twitter or X.
I am also on Instagram at Nick Beredini, but the
Lava page I definitely encourage everybody to follow and get
in touch with us on the Lava page. That's Lava
Podcasts at Lava for Good on Instagram TikTok Right, Lava,
(39:24):
The reason I did this show with them is because
they did Bone Valley and Bone Valley to me is
one of the best podcasts ever made about the wrongful
conviction of a man named Leo Schofield in Florida. And
so Lava is really pushing hard for this idea of
(39:45):
black mirror, you know, taking effect, especially in this story,
and that's basically I think hopefully where we'll end up
going in season two is trying to explore, now, okay,
the success of the Taser. We tease this, you know
at the end of this current season, but the success
of the taser, what has that? What does that mean
(40:06):
for today? And definitely check Lava out because they're going
to be doing more shows in that same absolute feed
that we're in. That kind of wrestle with the marriage
between capitalism technology.
Speaker 4 (40:23):
What a phenomenal right, I mean, we obviously we came
in and we weren't all keeping the same notes for
this one, so I know there's a bunch of stuff
we weren't able to get to But I don't know, guys.
One thing I was thinking about, why is there not
more regulation regarding these devices, Like we can just pop
(40:44):
on Taser's website, or we can pop on Amazon, like
you were saying, Noel, and there's no age restriction, there's
no licensing, there's no like training course. You can just
buy one with a credit card.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (40:58):
The whole point of the pivotal moment was when gun
powder was removed from these and allowed them to be
classified in a different way to firearms, which I think
opens things up. I think you buy them just the
same way as you buy pepper spray. But Nick also
does some really great differentiation between the consumer models that
are available on say Amazon, and the kinds that law
enforcement uses.
Speaker 4 (41:19):
And with that, folks, thanks again to Nick. Thanks again
to you for tuning in. We've got a lot of
people in law enforcement in the crowd. We've got a
lot of veterans in the audience. We have a lot
of people who have one way or another interacted with
Tasers and perhaps unknowingly with this company Axon. We want
to hear your thoughts. You can find us on the internet,
(41:39):
you can give us a phone call, you can always
send us an email.
Speaker 5 (41:43):
That's right. Find us in the handle Conspiracy Stuff where
we exist on Facebook with our Facebook group here is
where it gets crazy. On x FKA, Twitter and on
YouTube with video content glore for your perusing enjoyment on
Instagram and TikTok. However, we are Conspiracy Stuff Show.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
If you want to give us a call, our number
is one eight three three STDWYTK. When you call in,
give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
If you'd like to send us an email.
Speaker 4 (42:11):
We are the entities that read each piece of correspondence
we receive.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Be well aware, yet unafraid.
Speaker 4 (42:17):
Sometimes the void writes back and Hey, if you are
interested in further exploration of some topics we discussed in
this two part interview segment, do check out Behind the
Bastards twenty twenty one series on the concept of excited delirium.
Warning it's not appropriate for all audiences anyway. We are
conspiracy iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a product
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio
app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!