June 18, 2025 • 47 mins
CEO Rick Smith started with a mission, but what if this mission was a lie? We go back to the beginning because now the blueprint of the past will impact everyone. Whatever Rick Smith learned back then is helping him build a bigger, bolder and broader future than anyone might imagine.
Absolute, Season 1: Taser Incorporated is a production of Lava for Good™ in association with Signal Co. No1.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Previously on Taser Incorporated.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I want to start by addressing a couple of questions
we've been receiving over email. The first one is our
chest hits with the Taser dangerous and the answer to
that is definitively no.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
The company was formed in order to do something favorable
for law enforcement. Right, We're going to give you a
device that won't kill people, and it ends up killing people.
So now what they do is they put the onus
on the officers.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
My understanding that any shot is acceptable, it's preferred to
try to aim for lower center mass.
Speaker 5 (00:43):
Show me where it says any shot is acceptable.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
In this bulletin, it says when possible and also says
preferred to indicate any area.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
So it doesn't say it's acceptable, doesn't it. It was
much easier to pen it all on Runnels and say
he shouldn't have shot the kid and held the trigger
down for twenty four seconds, which is all true.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Do you feel like they got away with it a
little bit? Oh? Yeah, by design?
Speaker 5 (01:14):
Yeah, he got what it really.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I went to talk with the Masters family late last year.
I wanted to understand how Matt's still a cop after
everything he's been through during Bryce's trial, he told me
that he was done, but it's been seven years and
he hasn't quit.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
My perspective changed definitely, Like and I tell people at
the time, you don't get a free pass anymore just
because you're a cop. Obviously, when I first got on
the department, I would consider it a good old boy club,
you know. I mean, cops took care of each other,
They took care of each other's families. And I really
(02:06):
stopped doing that after this happened to Bryce.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Now he works as a detective in the narcotics unit,
and he says he thinks a lot more than he
used to about the people he's investigating.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
I mean, I'm very careful to keep the case, you know,
going in the right direction, but I'm also scrutinizing the
reason for the stop, whether there was good reason, suspicion,
or probable cause.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Matt will drop a case if he thinks the arresting
officers did something wrong. Sometimes when he calls it out,
he gets shipped from his fellow cops. But Matt just
focuses on what's right.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
I mean, what happened when Bryce taught me to have empathy,
you know.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
This is the side of Matt that Stacey fell in
love with. They spend a lot lot of time together
during the summers. The whole family likes to float together
in the above ground pool Bryce bought for them in
the backyard. They call it the spa. The three of
them like to put movies on an outdoor projector set
up next to the pool and sip cocktails in the water.
Speaker 6 (03:16):
We watch a lot of movies.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
That's kind of our thing, swimming and movies. Bryce bought
a house a few miles away with some of the
money he got from the lawsuit against.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
Runnels, and I'd basically just pay mom and Dad's dead off,
got my house in my car, and then put the
rest in the bank.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
He spends a lot of time with us.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
He's always watching my snapchats and knowing what leftover dinners
he needs to show up for.
Speaker 7 (03:40):
And so we're lucky.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Heard from him tonight.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, I'm surprised that he hasn't interrupted us. As I left,
Matt handed me the brown Accordion folder stuffed with all
his taser research, these studies articles, years of obsession. Matt
doesn't stay up late reading taser studies anymore, but there
are certain details of what happened that he can't let
go of, like the fact that Rick Smith never acknowledged
(04:07):
what happened to his family.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
I would love the opportunity to sit across from Rick
Smith and you know, let him, let him have a
piece of my mind.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I'd like to sit across from Rick Smith too, but
he's declined to talk to me. What would you say
to him?
Speaker 5 (04:27):
My thing would be the question, why didn't you tell
the truth from the beginning? Why did you Why did
you continue to develop and make that weapon when you
knew that it had the possibility to kill somebody? My
biggest question is with me, why was it all about money?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
This is absolute Season one Taser incorporated a story about
unchecked power. I'm Nick Beredini. Episode six, Live, Long and Prosper.
(05:48):
It's been a full thirty years since Rick Smith first
launched the Airtaser thirty four thousand. That's the model he
built in a garage with the inventor Jack Cover. He
was twenty five years old. Back then, it was winter
and his weapon was about to go on sale in
the Sharper Image catalog. At the time, he planned to
sell the Airtaser to regular civilians to protect themselves. This
(06:10):
was going to be his moment, the first step in
his dream to make the bullet obsolete. But there are
some pieces of this history that I haven't told you
about yet. The plan for launch day was to shock
a famous local reporter during the news the part.
Speaker 7 (06:29):
Station don't miss Steve Filmer's task on air tasers. That
story and more on Bob News tonight, After Er.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And after Er, the taser segment begins. A woman in
jeans and a pink sweater points the air taser straight
ahead the reporter, Steve has khakis in a leather jacket.
He straps on one of those face shields that cops
attached to riot helmets. The camera cuts wide as he
gets ready to charge at the woman. Barbara's got the
air taser. I'll rush her from twenty yards. Steve drops
(07:09):
to the ground about five feet from Barbara. He flops
around like a fish out of water in the grass
as the electric current runs through his body.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
That was not pleasant.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Those nine seconds were devastating, but I'm okay. A phone
number flashes on screen. Rick says he was waiting in
a call center with his employees. Everyone was ready at
the phones. He expected a flood of orders to come
rushing in.
Speaker 8 (07:37):
Well.
Speaker 7 (07:37):
These air tasers are being made by a company here
in Scottsdale. The price is two hundred and fifty dollars.
Until now only police could carry this weapon, but starting
tomorrow you can carry it for self defense twelve months
to no reporter see filmer tells you what you need
to know before you buy one.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
The segment aired and the phones remained silent. Finally a
call Rick picked up. He wanted to be the one
to greet the first customer for his brand new taser,
but Rick says when he picked up, he heard his
mom's voice ask how's it going, Ricky. He says she
(08:14):
was the only call they got all night. It wasn't
just that the first taser was a bust. You might
remember that things were so bad. Rick wanted to quit
his company. But then, he says, he learned that the
bank was going to take everything from his father if
his company failed.
Speaker 8 (08:33):
Millions of dollars went into this, basically wiping.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Out my dad.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Imagine the pressure. Rick was a kid in his mid
twenties running a business. If his family went broke, it
would be Rick's fault. Rick says he only had one
million dollars to save the company. Five hundred thousand from
his dad and a matching five hundred thousand from their
only other investor. He had one play left. He used
(09:01):
that money to go all in to make a new,
more powerful taser, one that would work for cops, which
meant that had to be able to stop anyone, even
the ripped marine Hans Morrero. It was called the M
twenty six, and that's because it was powered by twenty
six watts of electricity, almost four times stronger than the
(09:24):
air taser. Nobody was fighting through this thing.
Speaker 8 (09:28):
The M twenty six was a big success for one reason.
That M twenty six worked.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So well that he was able to market it to
police departments all over the country, and it saved the
Smith family from financial ruin. But Rick wasn't actually the
first person to build a taser that worked, or the
first person to amp up the power. Before Rick and
Jack Kover first developed their taser in Cover's garage, Cover
(09:57):
had worked on his first model with another company called Tasertron.
Tasertron's technical advisor was a guy named Jim McNulty. Jim
told me that cops had asked for a taser that
was powerful enough to stop anyone.
Speaker 9 (10:12):
Officers want someone down on the ground, they considered them
not to be a threat once they're.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Down on the ground. So Jim told me, Jack Kover
and Tasertron tried to give cops what they wanted. They
wanted them to fall down, so they doubled the power.
Tasertron increased the power of its weapons from about five
watts to about ten. But when cops started to actually
(10:38):
use that taser out on the streets, that's when you
started having your first deaths. They were about eleven of them.
Coroners in southern California cited these tasers as a cause
or contributing factor in at least five deaths between nineteen
eighty six and nineteen eighty nine. Jim McNaulty said, as
(11:00):
that's why Taser Tron stopped selling them. But about a
decade after those reported deaths, Rick Smith made an even
more powerful taser, the M twenty six, And the M
twenty six wasn't just ten watts. It was twenty six
(11:21):
years later. After the M twenty six came out, Jim
McNulty sued Taser International to try and stop Rick from
irresponsibly dominating the market. Jim testified that Rick had given
cops what they wanted, more power. Rick was there when
Jim told the judge that kind of power can be lethal,
but Jim lost the case and Rick didn't change his design.
(11:48):
When Taser International first released the new M twenty six
taser in late nineteen ninety nine, Rick went all out
to assure cops in the public that the taser was safe.
To accompany the release, he published a document he called
Medical Safety Information. This would be one of the first
documents to go in the company's research compendium. This was
(12:09):
essentially his proof. In this document, Rick Smith compared the
process of developing the more powerful taser to the research
a pharmaceutical company does to get FDA approval for a
new drug. He wrote, it was the same approach as
is used in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. But
(12:31):
Rick Smith didn't get anything like FDA approval for the
M twenty six taser. He hardly had to prove anything
to anyone. A new drug takes on average about ten
years to go from concept to FDA approval. There's peer
reviewed animal studies, clinical human research supervised by doctors in
control groups. FDA approval is extremely cautious. But a taser
(12:54):
is not regulated by the FDA. It's not considered a
medical device, even though it sends an electric current through
the human body. It's also not regulated by the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms because it doesn't use gunpowder
like the original tasers did. The very first taser was
technically a consumer product regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission,
(13:17):
but even they never did any sort of testing. No
independent regulatory agency ever did a study on the twenty six.
So at the start, everything Rick promised was based on
a few studies that Taser conducted by itself. The first
one was on a pig, the second one was on
five dogs, and finally there was Taser's version of a
(13:41):
human study, which was just those first nine hundred or
so tough guy cops who volunteered to get a quick
shock and didn't drop dead. That's nothing like how tasers
were really used in the real world. Cops taste some
people for over a minute. I felt like my own
heart stopped when I finally realized this was it FDA
(14:05):
level testing. There were no clinical trials and there were
no peer reviewed studies. When Attorney John Burton, who spent
years of his life battling Taser International in court saw
that Rick compared his testing to an FDA review. He
couldn't believe it either.
Speaker 10 (14:21):
There are just certain things I think you just don't
lie about. I mean to me, so when I say
they've done FDA level testing and the current is not
sufficient to affect cardiac rhythms, and they're selling this to
tens of thousands of people with these representations, I just
assume they're true, and I wouldn't think somebody would lie
(14:42):
about that.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
About ten years after Rick Smith built the M twenty six,
John was representing the family of Darryl Turner, the seventeen
year old who had died from a taser shot at
the grocery store where he worked, and he questioned Rick
about his decision to increase the taser's power.
Speaker 10 (15:05):
Okay, basically, you cranked out the power of the air
taser thirty four thousand, four times.
Speaker 8 (15:11):
We increase the energy and the power by roughly four times,
and the output charge by roughly three times.
Speaker 10 (15:18):
And then looking at this one pig.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
That you did this experiment, John spends at least an
hour asking Rick if he thinks the testing they did
was enough, it's.
Speaker 8 (15:26):
Exactly the same mechanism of product development that I learned
developing a project management system for a pharmaceutical company exploratory research,
computer modeling, animal safety studies.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Human In the video, Rick looks defeated. There are dark
circles around his sunken eyes, his normally coofft black hair
is falling down over his face. Burton continues pressing Rick,
and so.
Speaker 10 (15:56):
Why did you think that this new device that had
four times of power was going to be safe to
use on human beings?
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Because Rick explains to Burton for the umpteenth time that
everything he did was above board. He had the taser
tested on animals and compared the weapon's power to existing
research on electricity.
Speaker 8 (16:15):
Output of this device. It showed significant safety margins, so
all of the review of the literature in the candidate.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
At this point, Rick seems to snap to attention. He
stares straight into the camera that's recording his testimony and
launches into a kind of monologue.
Speaker 8 (16:31):
And as we sit here today, the result of this
work is we've developed a technology that, if you include
the Mputy six in the next twenty six, is deployed
by five hundred thousand police officers and over sixteen thousand agencies.
We've had over a million volunteers and over a million
field uses. We've prevented conservatively forty to fifty thousand lethal
(16:52):
force incidents from recurry.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
It's almost like Rick doesn't understand why he's under attack.
Speaker 8 (17:00):
I'm very proud. I think you would be hard pressed
to find any other scientific development in the field of
modern policing that went through a similarly rigorous approach and
has had the success rate where we have rede from
being usually.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
It's been years since this step position. I'm on the
company's website and there's a page that says, as of
twenty twenty five, the taser has saved more than three
hundred thousand people from death or serious bodily injury. It's
a staggering number. Maybe it's enough to convince you that
tasers are worth risking a Bryce Masters or a Darryl
(17:40):
Turner for the greater good until you see how the
math just doesn't add up. I need to get into
(18:14):
the stats for a second. Rick Smith claims tasers have
saved more than three hundred thousand lives from death or
serious bodily injury since cops began using his company's weapon
twenty five years ago. That means an average of roughly
fifteen thousand people every year that used to keep a
ticker on the website's homepage that counted down to the
(18:36):
next life saved one every twenty nine and a half minutes.
Sounds amazing, but dig just a little deeper and it
falls apart. The company calculates the three hundred thousand lives
saved using one study. That study looked at four hundred
and twenty six taser uses by Dallas cops between two
(18:59):
thousand and four. In two thousand and six, officers reported
that five point four percent of the time using the
taser prevented them from using lethal force. Rick took that
one study and he applied the results to an estimated
five and a half million total taser uses worldwide. If
you multiply five point four percent times five point five million,
(19:21):
you get about three hundred thousand people people supposedly spared
a cops bullet. Its creative math, there's no comprehensive evidence
that tasers reduced shootings at all. Six years after Dallas
PD got the taser, the department was still shooting about
the same amount of people as they did before they
(19:42):
got the taser. One University of Chicago study looked at
thirty six thousand use of force incidents by Chicago PD
cops and found tasers did not reduce shootings. Stanford researchers
reviewed around one hundred and fifty different taser studies and
found the same. The Washington Post host which was doing
arguably the best job of tracking fatal police shootings, showed
(20:04):
that over the last ten years, police shootings are actually
going up, even though more departments than ever have tasers.
By using numbers like three hundred thousand lives saved, they're
implying that the taser has reduced gun violence. This number
helps Rick Smith tell a powerful story, the kind of
(20:26):
story he's told since the beginning, to help him sell
tasers and make money. And they made a lot of money.
After Taser went public in two thousand and one, it
transformed from an eight million dollar company to a one
point nine billion dollar unicorn in less than three years,
(20:47):
and all that money got them media attention.
Speaker 6 (20:50):
The stock was skyrocketing.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
In two thousand and four, an investigative reporter named Robert
Anglin walked into Taser International's headquarters. He was one of
the first people I turned to is I was trying
to make sense of the company and what I'd gotten
myself into fifteen years ago. He went to Taser to
write a puff piece about this successful local company.
Speaker 6 (21:11):
It was this local company makes good and I'm not
a business reporter by any means. That wasn't why I
was asked to go. They wanted, the editor at the time,
wanted a profile of this company would tell us what
makes a tick. I didn't realize at the time that
that would be the first step in a two year
long investigation of the company.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
At the time, Taser International was the talk of Wall Street.
Traders were going crazy for the stock. Shares that sold
for less than four dollars in February two thousand and
three fetched one hundred and thirty five dollars a year later.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Throughout the day, the Smiths and Steve Tuttle kept insisting
that no corner, no medical examiner, had ever cited the
stunt gun in an autopsy report. And this was like
a drumbeat. It wasn't just a throw away, you know, factoid.
Every ten or fifteen minutes they were raising the issue.
No corner had ever sighted this gun. The gun can't kill,
(22:09):
the guns never killed, the gun won't kill. And you know,
it's it's kind of a case, at least in my
thinking of the Lady Duck protest too much. So towards
the tail end of the day, I asked them for
the autopsy reports, and I got a lot of blank
stares in return.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Englyn kept following up, and he remembers eventually they sent
him like five reports.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
So I took it upon myself at that point to
wait on doing the company profile and began looking into
these deaths and track everybody who died and then get
the autopsy reports from those jurisdictions.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Taser employees weren't telling him the full story.
Speaker 6 (22:51):
During my investigation, I found there were deaths that Taser
hadn't bothered put on their report. And then, of course,
once I started getting the autopsy reports that corners were
infect citing Tasers as causes of deaths, contributing factors to deaths,
are saying they couldn't rule it out.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
When he took his findings back to Taser, he couldn't
believe the response.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
When a medical examiner had blamed death on the gun,
they would say that medical examiner doesn't have the experience
or the or the qualified training to blame a death
on a gun.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Englen wrote articles questioning the company's claims. By the fall
of two thousand and four, the stock price was down
about fifty percent. That's when Taser International issued a press
release October eighteenth, two thousand and four, an independent study
by the Department of Defense found Tasers were safe.
Speaker 6 (23:43):
As a consequence of that release, They're stock skyrocketed.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Over the next month. The stock shot up over sixty percent.
Speaker 6 (23:51):
Executive members of Taser's staff sold stock, made it millions
upon millions of dollars in stock sales.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Rick and his family sold over one million shares. That
made them almost sixty million dollars combined.
Speaker 6 (24:06):
And later, when I obtained copies of the actual safety
study and began interviewing people surrounded with that safety study,
what became obvious and apparent was that there had not
been a safety study. It wasn't true. A, the study
wasn't independent. B. The government scientist involved in the study
didn't even look at stunt gun safety. They were looking
at whether it was applicable for use in the military.
(24:28):
Government scientists acknowledged they had never studied the safety of
the sun gun, so to suggest that the government affirmed
safety the stunt gun. Safety was false. As it turned out,
Taser was involved in every step of this study.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
It was a literature review, not a medical study, and
almost all of the literature the DoD reviewed came directly
from Taser International, and it was organized by Taser's own employees.
Speaker 6 (24:56):
Every level of this study involved some members of Hayser's staff.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
As Anglin uncovered the truth, the stock collapsed again.
Speaker 6 (25:06):
At one point, Rick Smith accused me of costing them
more than five hundred million dollars in shareholder value. I
was besieged with calls from people's shareholders, especially shareholders who
saw the value of the stun gun dropping off like
a stone. The Attorney General of Arizona began an investigation
while I was investigating the company. The SEC began an
(25:28):
investigation of Taser while I was investigating the company.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Well.
Speaker 6 (25:32):
In those two investigations, our documentation was cited as part
of the reason. So the stock really took a tremendous fall.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Taser International lawyers sued the Arizona Republic for libel, but
the case was dismissed.
Speaker 6 (25:46):
Obviously, the relationship between me and the company deteriorated. I
am not on their Christmas list to this day.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
I don't think I am either. And when Taser doesn't
like you, they don't just stop sending Christmas cards. They
go after anyone who challenges their claims. Journalists, critics, medical examiners,
and cops too. Even Oakland PD's Mike Lenicio became an enemy.
(26:14):
Mike eventually found a way around the non disclosure agreement
he signed to attend Taser International's tests. He started telling
other cops, especially his officers in Oakland, about the cardiac
risks he'd seen firsthand. He even started sharing information with
the lawyer suing Taser International, John Burton. Soon after Mike
(26:35):
took over Oakland's Taser program, he began independently testing tasers
to make sure they were within the electrical specs set
by the company. That's when he noticed something strange.
Speaker 9 (26:48):
Next thing, I know, I'm getting these anonymous written complaints.
And again it's a little unusual if they're from out
of state. You know, why would someone out of state
who has no contact with me as an Oakland police officer,
why would they care what we're doing in Oakland?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Right The implication of the complaint was that he was
using police resources to run an unregulated company and make
money behind the department's back. Each time Internal Affairs would investigate,
Mike would answer the same questions and provide the same evidence,
and he would be cleared.
Speaker 9 (27:22):
And so I think the third one I was still working.
The fourth one, I was retired. So I called my
attorney and he says, you're not. He says, you're retired.
I said, I know, just humor me, please, here's okay.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Mike explained he still wanted to go through the process
again to clear his record.
Speaker 9 (27:42):
So we go down there, we go through the whole
thing again. I don't know about a month later, I
guess I get another letter from my AA and a mail.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So this is the result of the investigation.
Speaker 9 (27:53):
And on this one, you know, it says I'm exonerated
from the charges. I scan over the header and the
box that says complainant, it says Steve Tuttle.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Steve Tuttle, the same Taser VP of Communications who told
Robert Anglin no coroner had ever cited the taser as
a cause of death. The same man I spoke with
when I went to Taser.
Speaker 9 (28:18):
They went to Great Links to ruin my reputation, you know,
to get me fired, to you know, get rid of me,
dispose of me.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Mike sometimes testified as an expert in lawsuits against Taser International,
and he told me he started bringing that piece of
paper with Steve Tuttle's name on it to every single
court appearance and deposition. That way, if Taser's lawyers tried
to discredit him, they would be in for a surprise.
One day, he says, he was answering questions from Taser's
(28:49):
lawyers in a deposition when they asked, have you ever
had any any I A complaints filed against you?
Speaker 9 (28:56):
If you ever had any discipline? I said, I A complained?
Speaker 8 (29:00):
And what like?
Speaker 11 (29:00):
What sense?
Speaker 1 (29:01):
He says, have you ever had any discipline.
Speaker 9 (29:02):
Filed against you? And this was my opportunity. I've been
carrying around this piece of paper for months, and I said,
would this include the ones that you guys filed against me?
Steve Title filed against me? Do I include those? No
further questions. He completely dropped that subject and moved on.
So I finally did get vindicated.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I guess you'd say, despite everything, Mike still thinks the
taser can be a good tool. For police.
Speaker 9 (29:37):
I have nothing against the product. I have nothing against it.
You know, it's a I think the product is a
useful product when deployed properly. But I also think that
a lot of the information that I had to discover
on my own should have been disclosed.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I think Rick Smith didn't disclose the taser's risks because
they weren't a part of the story he wanted to tell.
(30:23):
Rick Cherry picks and embellishes the parts of his story
that help him promote tasers. Even the story he's always
told about his introduction to gun violence isn't quite true.
It's the one about how he came up with the
idea for tasers after learning two kids from his high school,
Todd and Corey, had been shot and killed. Over the years,
(30:43):
he's repeatedly referred to Todd and Corey as his friends
and used their photos and presentations, like during speeches at
the company's annual conference.
Speaker 8 (30:52):
In December nineteen ninety Two of my high school friends
were shot and killed only a few miles from here
in what started as an altercation.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
And Corey weren't really his friends. He knew of them,
but didn't know them. In twenty twenty, three, Todd's father
told a reporter from Reuter's that Rick's company quote ran
a whole advertising campaign based on the murder of my son.
They profited off that, and they didn't ask for permission.
(31:27):
It's been over twenty five years since Rick Smith began
selling tasers, and he's still talking about the taser as
if it can solve all gun violence. He still maintains
it's safe, like when he talked about the taser safety
record on his podcast.
Speaker 8 (31:41):
Taser has a lower injury rate than playing collegiate volleyball.
You are more likely to get injured in volleyball practice
than being hit by the taser by police in the street.
And that's so incredulous. I have to stop saying it
because people paint me as being cavalier and insensitive.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
I think the comparison is insensitive. College volleyball isn't inherently violent,
and playing it is a decision you make for yourself.
The taser is a weapon, it's funded by taxpayers and
the hopes it will help protect them. I'm not saying
tasers haven't saved anyone. It's hard to verify Rick's story.
(32:20):
He told in the first episode about the thirteen year
old girl who was suicidal holding a knife. Cops taste
her instead of shooting her. I am sure that there
are true stories like that. I've seen video footage of
people who were tasered by cops instead of shot. But
it also seems to fit this pattern of Rick only
(32:41):
telling the parts of the stories he wants to sell.
I think Rick Smith wants this thirteen year old girl
to be part of his legacy. But if Rick wants
to take credit for saving her life, shouldn't he have
to take responsibility for what happened to someone like Bryce Masters.
I've never heard him acknowledged that taser has caused even
(33:03):
one cardiac arrest. Instead, it's the families of two cops,
Timothy Runnelds and Matt Masters, who have to live with
the consequences. By the time a Kansas City jury watched
(33:23):
a video of Bryce getting tasered and going into cardiac arrest,
Rick was focused on a new opportunity. The company had
a new name and a new prize product on the market,
the Axon body camera. Rick Smith says he actually got
the idea for body cameras from, of all people, his
legal adversaries, John Burton and Peter Williamson Rick told this
(33:46):
story on his new podcast. He said he thought of
body cameras after one of their lawsuits against Taser.
Speaker 8 (33:53):
This was to defend our customers and ourselves from all
the horrible allegations and like, look, let's just record what's happening.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
The idea was to protect cops.
Speaker 8 (34:05):
Look, I believe in the goodness of police. I work
with them every day. It's an honorable profession. So look,
yeah I'm biased. If I hear a story, I naturally
buy a stories. I bet some dirt bag is lying
about the police because the police were honorable.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Bodycams were not an overnight success. Police departments were hesitant
to buy them. Cops didn't like the idea of being
filmed at their job all day, but within a few
years cops wouldn't have much choice.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
Protests have broken out near Saint Louis, Missouri, over a
police shooting that killed an unarmed African American teenager, eighteen
year old Michael Brown.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Speaker 8 (34:48):
Rochesters of different ages and races demanding answers in the
shooting death of eighteen year old Michael Brown at the
hands of a policeman.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
A couple months after Michael Brown was killed, Rick one
on a morning talk show in Mesa, Arizona. He explained
why body cameras were good for the public, not just police, and.
Speaker 8 (35:07):
The idea is, you know, there's a big problem with
mistrust between police and their communities. For example, in Ferguson,
I think would be a very different story. We would
know what happened if there was a video of that incident,
and there was not, so we burning.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
The Obama administration poured millions of dollars into police agencies
so they could buy body cameras, and most police departments
bought them from the company they already had a relationship
with Taser International. Other companies had developed bodycams, but Taser
International used them to innovate how police footage was stored.
The Axon cameras didn't record data to tapes or discs.
(35:47):
They could connect to the company's cloud, So now the
company was offering a tech ecosystem to make storing the
footage easy. Rick said it was like going from a
walkman to an iPod. So the Axon body cameras weren't
just new hardware they represented a whole new direction for
the company, a network of software and hardware. To signal
(36:10):
the shift, Rick renamed Taser International Axon Enterprise. Just like
the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek, Axon Enterprise would explore
a new frontier. A couple months after the name change,
Rick gets on stage at the company's huge annual user
conference wearing a T shirt that says, write code, Save lives.
Speaker 8 (36:34):
For those who are wondering where the name Axon came from,
Axon is actually the technical name for the fibers that
extend from your nerve cells to connect them to each other.
So when we got into the camera business a few
years ago, we selected this name because we saw the
value of body cameras wasn't in the hardware of the
(36:55):
camera itself. It was if we could make that device connected,
did it become a sensor that we create a network
of really interesting information.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Rick walks across the stage and explains his vision for Axon,
a digital evidence storage platform, and they wouldn't stop there.
They were going to develop world class artificial intelligence that
would analyze all the footage the Axon cameras recorded.
Speaker 8 (37:22):
Now, when we first announced that we're doing artificial intelligence.
We had some pretty interesting reactions in the media. This
was one of them.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
The slide behind him shows the headline the new tech
that could turn police bodycams into nightmare surveillance.
Speaker 8 (37:36):
Tools, where they were talking about how we're going to
use facial recognition to go out and create the Orwellian state,
big brother observing us everywhere. There are some creepy things
that you could do with some of these technologies. Before
we touch anything like facial recognition or any other technology
where AI could be abused, we're creating an AI privacy
(37:57):
and Ethics Advisory Panel with experts from legal privacy experts,
civil rights experts.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
And Rick promises that he will convene an ethics boord
to help him weigh the risks of the new technology
he wants to explore.
Speaker 8 (38:11):
Right, I think we all agree we want to be
building technology for the society we all want to live in,
and we don't want this stuff to get misused because
number one, if he gets misused, this could blow up
and the technology gets taken away. Wan to avoid that,
so you're not going to see.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Us rushing on so on stage at that Axon conference
in twenty seventeen, Rick assured everyone he would rely on
his independent ethics boort to help him responsibly deploy any
new technology. Since then, he's repeatedly clashed with the board
over the company's plans. Axon came up with facial recognition
on body cameras, then paused it when the board objected.
(38:49):
The company wanted to sell police departments drones armed with tasers,
and the board objected again. Then you've all did.
Speaker 12 (38:57):
Texas America is real from the painful reality of another
mass shooting.
Speaker 10 (39:03):
This latest massacre at an elementary school in a small
Texas town.
Speaker 11 (39:07):
Here is the latest.
Speaker 10 (39:08):
At ten Texas officials report nineteen children and at least
two adults killed.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
School children gunned down by one man, murdering kids in
grades two, three, and four at school, this time in Uvalde, Texas,
a small city. Days later, Axon announced it was pursuing
a plan to sell drones armed with tasers to schools shooting.
Speaker 12 (39:31):
Axon says that it's working on a non lethal taser
drone that could be deployed in an emergency.
Speaker 8 (39:37):
Figure it like a smoke detector, a piece of safety
equipment with its on site that's hidden away.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Nobody needs to know.
Speaker 8 (39:42):
It's there, and if there's a person who shows up
to school with a gun, a teacher or any administrator
could hit a panic button.
Speaker 11 (39:51):
Smith says that would then allow for law enforcement to
get a live look at the room with the devices
built in camera and activate the drone with the goal
of incapacit sitating the suspect using the taser attached to it.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Rick paused the project after intense public backlash, but the
damage was done. Nine of the twelve Ethics board members
resigned in protest. In a statement explaining their resignation, the
resigning members wrote that after several years of work, the
company has fundamentally failed to embrace the values that we
have tried to instill, and that they'd lost faith in
(40:28):
Axon's ability to be a responsible partner. Today, Axon is
a forty five billion dollar force. Tasers are still a
part of that business, but Rick's concept of selling a
dropbox for cops a network of body cameras and software
to support them has morphed into an Amazon like everything
(40:50):
store for law enforcement. Plus, they're expanding their customer base,
selling their camera and software systems to civilian spaces like healthcare,
retail stores, and schools. The company is the market leader
and just about every piece of technology a cop might use.
They sell drones, drone counter surveillance. They've combined their cameras
(41:11):
with AI. Rick is building crime tracking centers to try
and stop crimes before they happen. His inspiration the Tom
Cruise movie Minority Report. In the movie, Tom Cruise is
a policeman who relies on three clairvoyant women who are
basically held captive in order to predict the crimes of
(41:32):
citizens before they happen. But when Cruz gets falsely accused
of a pre murder, he goes on the run until
he can successfully prove his innocence. In the end, everyone
realizes the whole idea of crime prediction was fucking insane,
so they shut the program down. But I guess for Rick,
the moral of the story was, wouldn't that be neat?
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Please welcome CEO and founder of Exxon Rick Smith.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
At the company's twenty twenty five annual conference, Rick Smith
came jogging out on stage to give the keynote address.
He had on a dark gray pollover with a small
gold triangle on his chest.
Speaker 8 (42:22):
Thank you everybody, and certainly we've taken a ton of
inspiration from science fiction. It's kind of fun to wear
my Captain Kirk inspired a lot of today, Because life
truly does imitate art. That's where we first imagine the
technologies that we will ultimately create.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
That triangle design on rick shirt is inspired by the
insignia for the star Trek, Starfleet Command, the explorers and
protectors of the galaxy.
Speaker 8 (42:51):
Now, each technology on its own is neither good nor evil.
It's an extraordinary tool, powerful and neutral. How we choose
to wield it will define the future that we build.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
So I'm watching this speech and thinking about Captain Kirk's
origin story again. Kirk's legend was born when he reprogrammed
that simulated test so that he could save both his
own starfleet and the civilians stranded on the other ship.
And Rick's legend was born when he reprogrammed the Taser
and quadrupled its power. He likes to say that doing
(43:26):
this saved his family, his company, and hundreds of thousands
of lives.
Speaker 8 (43:31):
So together, I mean, we can harness these tools to
create safer, more cohesive communities and build a society that
would make Captain kirkrowd.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Now to meet our goals, Kirk lives in a fictional
intergalactic utopia, and Rick Smith lives on Earth. He may
be trying to write his own story it is, but
his choices have real world consequences.
Speaker 8 (43:54):
Our task is clear to construct the right safeguards to
ensure this tech is used ethically, maximizing its power for
good while minimizing the risk of misuse. So we take
this responsibility very seriously. It is a privilege and our
greatest challenge to thoughtfully deploy technology in ways to protect
life and uplift humanity, ensuring that we always choose the
(44:18):
path of good.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
It's a good story, do you believe them?
Speaker 12 (44:31):
Shares of Axon Enterprise hitting an all time high today.
It's the fifth best s and P five hundred performer
this year.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Best Ridge company forming known as Taser International now is
a big police bodycam evidence management software business.
Speaker 6 (44:44):
Phenomenal growth rests term. This has been one of the
best performing sacks over the past decade. Probably announces that
RINGS will be integrating with Axon's community requests.
Speaker 8 (44:53):
It is now I think, the largest video repository.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
In the first time, a Colorado police department is using
artificial intelligence to police reports.
Speaker 6 (45:00):
Port CON's police say they are in a testing phase
with their bodycam provider and had your owns.
Speaker 12 (45:05):
As first responders Axon and nine for drones and public
safety to that powering the revenue growth that we are.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Seeing and make law enforcement's job easier.
Speaker 6 (45:13):
That would, like Crazy today up over fifty pm, provide
a new revenue source for accents.
Speaker 8 (45:18):
The AI services are selling five times faster than any
product in our history, and that's ten dollars not in height.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Absolute. Taser Incorporated is a production of Lava for Good
in association with Signal Company Number one. Be sure to
follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and threads at Lava
for Good. Follow me at Nick Beadini on in in Twitter.
Taser Incorporated is written and produced by me Nick Beredini.
Our executive producers are Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Worris.
(46:09):
Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer. Jackie Paul is our producer.
Hannah Biel is our writer and producer. Joe Plored is
our sound designer. Music composed and produced by Alexis Quadrado
at the Plaza Rojas Studio. Mariann mckune is our editor.
Fact Checking by Donya Suleman. Jeff Cliburn is our head
of marketing and Operations. Our Social Media director is ist
(46:31):
Marie guard Rama, our social Media manager is Sarah Gibbons,
and our art director is Andrew Nelson. Additional reporting by
Matt Straut.
Speaker 8 (47:04):
So, like you, Gottaut a little bit of a tent
to humor. Back around two thousand and five or six,
I was on the front page of every newspaper in
America saying that we were evil, we were killing people,
we had lied about the safety of our products. And
it was right that time I was building this house
and for the man Cave. Decided, well, if everybody's going
to say I'm running an evil empire, well then clearly
(47:28):
I need a volcano layer. So I took some inspiration
from the Great Doctor Evil and if you remember, you
know he had a volcano layer too.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
It was pretty cool, actually,
Previously on Taser Incorporated.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I want to start by addressing a couple of questions
we've been receiving over email. The first one is our
chest hits with the Taser dangerous and the answer to
that is definitively no.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
The company was formed in order to do something favorable
for law enforcement. Right, We're going to give you a
device that won't kill people, and it ends up killing people.
So now what they do is they put the onus
on the officers.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
My understanding that any shot is acceptable, it's preferred to
try to aim for lower center mass.
Speaker 5 (00:43):
Show me where it says any shot is acceptable.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
In this bulletin, it says when possible and also says
preferred to indicate any area.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
So it doesn't say it's acceptable, doesn't it. It was
much easier to pen it all on Runnels and say
he shouldn't have shot the kid and held the trigger
down for twenty four seconds, which is all true.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Do you feel like they got away with it a
little bit? Oh? Yeah, by design?
Speaker 5 (01:14):
Yeah, he got what it really.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
I went to talk with the Masters family late last year.
I wanted to understand how Matt's still a cop after
everything he's been through during Bryce's trial, he told me
that he was done, but it's been seven years and
he hasn't quit.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
My perspective changed definitely, Like and I tell people at
the time, you don't get a free pass anymore just
because you're a cop. Obviously, when I first got on
the department, I would consider it a good old boy club,
you know. I mean, cops took care of each other,
They took care of each other's families. And I really
(02:06):
stopped doing that after this happened to Bryce.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Now he works as a detective in the narcotics unit,
and he says he thinks a lot more than he
used to about the people he's investigating.
Speaker 5 (02:19):
I mean, I'm very careful to keep the case, you know,
going in the right direction, but I'm also scrutinizing the
reason for the stop, whether there was good reason, suspicion,
or probable cause.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Matt will drop a case if he thinks the arresting
officers did something wrong. Sometimes when he calls it out,
he gets shipped from his fellow cops. But Matt just
focuses on what's right.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
I mean, what happened when Bryce taught me to have empathy,
you know.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
This is the side of Matt that Stacey fell in
love with. They spend a lot lot of time together
during the summers. The whole family likes to float together
in the above ground pool Bryce bought for them in
the backyard. They call it the spa. The three of
them like to put movies on an outdoor projector set
up next to the pool and sip cocktails in the water.
Speaker 6 (03:16):
We watch a lot of movies.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
That's kind of our thing, swimming and movies. Bryce bought
a house a few miles away with some of the
money he got from the lawsuit against.
Speaker 5 (03:24):
Runnels, and I'd basically just pay mom and Dad's dead off,
got my house in my car, and then put the
rest in the bank.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
He spends a lot of time with us.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
He's always watching my snapchats and knowing what leftover dinners
he needs to show up for.
Speaker 7 (03:40):
And so we're lucky.
Speaker 5 (03:44):
Heard from him tonight.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah, I'm surprised that he hasn't interrupted us. As I left,
Matt handed me the brown Accordion folder stuffed with all
his taser research, these studies articles, years of obsession. Matt
doesn't stay up late reading taser studies anymore, but there
are certain details of what happened that he can't let
go of, like the fact that Rick Smith never acknowledged
(04:07):
what happened to his family.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
I would love the opportunity to sit across from Rick
Smith and you know, let him, let him have a
piece of my mind.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I'd like to sit across from Rick Smith too, but
he's declined to talk to me. What would you say
to him?
Speaker 5 (04:27):
My thing would be the question, why didn't you tell
the truth from the beginning? Why did you Why did
you continue to develop and make that weapon when you
knew that it had the possibility to kill somebody? My
biggest question is with me, why was it all about money?
Speaker 1 (04:50):
This is absolute Season one Taser incorporated a story about
unchecked power. I'm Nick Beredini. Episode six, Live, Long and Prosper.
(05:48):
It's been a full thirty years since Rick Smith first
launched the Airtaser thirty four thousand. That's the model he
built in a garage with the inventor Jack Cover. He
was twenty five years old. Back then, it was winter
and his weapon was about to go on sale in
the Sharper Image catalog. At the time, he planned to
sell the Airtaser to regular civilians to protect themselves. This
(06:10):
was going to be his moment, the first step in
his dream to make the bullet obsolete. But there are
some pieces of this history that I haven't told you
about yet. The plan for launch day was to shock
a famous local reporter during the news the part.
Speaker 7 (06:29):
Station don't miss Steve Filmer's task on air tasers. That
story and more on Bob News tonight, After Er.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
And after Er, the taser segment begins. A woman in
jeans and a pink sweater points the air taser straight
ahead the reporter, Steve has khakis in a leather jacket.
He straps on one of those face shields that cops
attached to riot helmets. The camera cuts wide as he
gets ready to charge at the woman. Barbara's got the
air taser. I'll rush her from twenty yards. Steve drops
(07:09):
to the ground about five feet from Barbara. He flops
around like a fish out of water in the grass
as the electric current runs through his body.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
That was not pleasant.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Those nine seconds were devastating, but I'm okay. A phone
number flashes on screen. Rick says he was waiting in
a call center with his employees. Everyone was ready at
the phones. He expected a flood of orders to come
rushing in.
Speaker 8 (07:37):
Well.
Speaker 7 (07:37):
These air tasers are being made by a company here
in Scottsdale. The price is two hundred and fifty dollars.
Until now only police could carry this weapon, but starting
tomorrow you can carry it for self defense twelve months
to no reporter see filmer tells you what you need
to know before you buy one.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
The segment aired and the phones remained silent. Finally a
call Rick picked up. He wanted to be the one
to greet the first customer for his brand new taser,
but Rick says when he picked up, he heard his
mom's voice ask how's it going, Ricky. He says she
(08:14):
was the only call they got all night. It wasn't
just that the first taser was a bust. You might
remember that things were so bad. Rick wanted to quit
his company. But then, he says, he learned that the
bank was going to take everything from his father if
his company failed.
Speaker 8 (08:33):
Millions of dollars went into this, basically wiping.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Out my dad.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Imagine the pressure. Rick was a kid in his mid
twenties running a business. If his family went broke, it
would be Rick's fault. Rick says he only had one
million dollars to save the company. Five hundred thousand from
his dad and a matching five hundred thousand from their
only other investor. He had one play left. He used
(09:01):
that money to go all in to make a new,
more powerful taser, one that would work for cops, which
meant that had to be able to stop anyone, even
the ripped marine Hans Morrero. It was called the M
twenty six, and that's because it was powered by twenty
six watts of electricity, almost four times stronger than the
(09:24):
air taser. Nobody was fighting through this thing.
Speaker 8 (09:28):
The M twenty six was a big success for one reason.
That M twenty six worked.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
So well that he was able to market it to
police departments all over the country, and it saved the
Smith family from financial ruin. But Rick wasn't actually the
first person to build a taser that worked, or the
first person to amp up the power. Before Rick and
Jack Kover first developed their taser in Cover's garage, Cover
(09:57):
had worked on his first model with another company called Tasertron.
Tasertron's technical advisor was a guy named Jim McNulty. Jim
told me that cops had asked for a taser that
was powerful enough to stop anyone.
Speaker 9 (10:12):
Officers want someone down on the ground, they considered them
not to be a threat once they're.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Down on the ground. So Jim told me, Jack Kover
and Tasertron tried to give cops what they wanted. They
wanted them to fall down, so they doubled the power.
Tasertron increased the power of its weapons from about five
watts to about ten. But when cops started to actually
(10:38):
use that taser out on the streets, that's when you
started having your first deaths. They were about eleven of them.
Coroners in southern California cited these tasers as a cause
or contributing factor in at least five deaths between nineteen
eighty six and nineteen eighty nine. Jim McNaulty said, as
(11:00):
that's why Taser Tron stopped selling them. But about a
decade after those reported deaths, Rick Smith made an even
more powerful taser, the M twenty six, And the M
twenty six wasn't just ten watts. It was twenty six
(11:21):
years later. After the M twenty six came out, Jim
McNulty sued Taser International to try and stop Rick from
irresponsibly dominating the market. Jim testified that Rick had given
cops what they wanted, more power. Rick was there when
Jim told the judge that kind of power can be lethal,
but Jim lost the case and Rick didn't change his design.
(11:48):
When Taser International first released the new M twenty six
taser in late nineteen ninety nine, Rick went all out
to assure cops in the public that the taser was safe.
To accompany the release, he published a document he called
Medical Safety Information. This would be one of the first
documents to go in the company's research compendium. This was
(12:09):
essentially his proof. In this document, Rick Smith compared the
process of developing the more powerful taser to the research
a pharmaceutical company does to get FDA approval for a
new drug. He wrote, it was the same approach as
is used in the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. But
(12:31):
Rick Smith didn't get anything like FDA approval for the
M twenty six taser. He hardly had to prove anything
to anyone. A new drug takes on average about ten
years to go from concept to FDA approval. There's peer
reviewed animal studies, clinical human research supervised by doctors in
control groups. FDA approval is extremely cautious. But a taser
(12:54):
is not regulated by the FDA. It's not considered a
medical device, even though it sends an electric current through
the human body. It's also not regulated by the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms because it doesn't use gunpowder
like the original tasers did. The very first taser was
technically a consumer product regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission,
(13:17):
but even they never did any sort of testing. No
independent regulatory agency ever did a study on the twenty six.
So at the start, everything Rick promised was based on
a few studies that Taser conducted by itself. The first
one was on a pig, the second one was on
five dogs, and finally there was Taser's version of a
(13:41):
human study, which was just those first nine hundred or
so tough guy cops who volunteered to get a quick
shock and didn't drop dead. That's nothing like how tasers
were really used in the real world. Cops taste some
people for over a minute. I felt like my own
heart stopped when I finally realized this was it FDA
(14:05):
level testing. There were no clinical trials and there were
no peer reviewed studies. When Attorney John Burton, who spent
years of his life battling Taser International in court saw
that Rick compared his testing to an FDA review. He
couldn't believe it either.
Speaker 10 (14:21):
There are just certain things I think you just don't
lie about. I mean to me, so when I say
they've done FDA level testing and the current is not
sufficient to affect cardiac rhythms, and they're selling this to
tens of thousands of people with these representations, I just
assume they're true, and I wouldn't think somebody would lie
(14:42):
about that.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
About ten years after Rick Smith built the M twenty six,
John was representing the family of Darryl Turner, the seventeen
year old who had died from a taser shot at
the grocery store where he worked, and he questioned Rick
about his decision to increase the taser's power.
Speaker 10 (15:05):
Okay, basically, you cranked out the power of the air
taser thirty four thousand, four times.
Speaker 8 (15:11):
We increase the energy and the power by roughly four times,
and the output charge by roughly three times.
Speaker 10 (15:18):
And then looking at this one pig.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
That you did this experiment, John spends at least an
hour asking Rick if he thinks the testing they did
was enough, it's.
Speaker 8 (15:26):
Exactly the same mechanism of product development that I learned
developing a project management system for a pharmaceutical company exploratory research,
computer modeling, animal safety studies.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Human In the video, Rick looks defeated. There are dark
circles around his sunken eyes, his normally coofft black hair
is falling down over his face. Burton continues pressing Rick,
and so.
Speaker 10 (15:56):
Why did you think that this new device that had
four times of power was going to be safe to
use on human beings?
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Because Rick explains to Burton for the umpteenth time that
everything he did was above board. He had the taser
tested on animals and compared the weapon's power to existing
research on electricity.
Speaker 8 (16:15):
Output of this device. It showed significant safety margins, so
all of the review of the literature in the candidate.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
At this point, Rick seems to snap to attention. He
stares straight into the camera that's recording his testimony and
launches into a kind of monologue.
Speaker 8 (16:31):
And as we sit here today, the result of this
work is we've developed a technology that, if you include
the Mputy six in the next twenty six, is deployed
by five hundred thousand police officers and over sixteen thousand agencies.
We've had over a million volunteers and over a million
field uses. We've prevented conservatively forty to fifty thousand lethal
(16:52):
force incidents from recurry.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
It's almost like Rick doesn't understand why he's under attack.
Speaker 8 (17:00):
I'm very proud. I think you would be hard pressed
to find any other scientific development in the field of
modern policing that went through a similarly rigorous approach and
has had the success rate where we have rede from
being usually.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
It's been years since this step position. I'm on the
company's website and there's a page that says, as of
twenty twenty five, the taser has saved more than three
hundred thousand people from death or serious bodily injury. It's
a staggering number. Maybe it's enough to convince you that
tasers are worth risking a Bryce Masters or a Darryl
(17:40):
Turner for the greater good until you see how the
math just doesn't add up. I need to get into
(18:14):
the stats for a second. Rick Smith claims tasers have
saved more than three hundred thousand lives from death or
serious bodily injury since cops began using his company's weapon
twenty five years ago. That means an average of roughly
fifteen thousand people every year that used to keep a
ticker on the website's homepage that counted down to the
(18:36):
next life saved one every twenty nine and a half minutes.
Sounds amazing, but dig just a little deeper and it
falls apart. The company calculates the three hundred thousand lives
saved using one study. That study looked at four hundred
and twenty six taser uses by Dallas cops between two
(18:59):
thousand and four. In two thousand and six, officers reported
that five point four percent of the time using the
taser prevented them from using lethal force. Rick took that
one study and he applied the results to an estimated
five and a half million total taser uses worldwide. If
you multiply five point four percent times five point five million,
(19:21):
you get about three hundred thousand people people supposedly spared
a cops bullet. Its creative math, there's no comprehensive evidence
that tasers reduced shootings at all. Six years after Dallas
PD got the taser, the department was still shooting about
the same amount of people as they did before they
(19:42):
got the taser. One University of Chicago study looked at
thirty six thousand use of force incidents by Chicago PD
cops and found tasers did not reduce shootings. Stanford researchers
reviewed around one hundred and fifty different taser studies and
found the same. The Washington Post host which was doing
arguably the best job of tracking fatal police shootings, showed
(20:04):
that over the last ten years, police shootings are actually
going up, even though more departments than ever have tasers.
By using numbers like three hundred thousand lives saved, they're
implying that the taser has reduced gun violence. This number
helps Rick Smith tell a powerful story, the kind of
(20:26):
story he's told since the beginning, to help him sell
tasers and make money. And they made a lot of money.
After Taser went public in two thousand and one, it
transformed from an eight million dollar company to a one
point nine billion dollar unicorn in less than three years,
(20:47):
and all that money got them media attention.
Speaker 6 (20:50):
The stock was skyrocketing.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
In two thousand and four, an investigative reporter named Robert
Anglin walked into Taser International's headquarters. He was one of
the first people I turned to is I was trying
to make sense of the company and what I'd gotten
myself into fifteen years ago. He went to Taser to
write a puff piece about this successful local company.
Speaker 6 (21:11):
It was this local company makes good and I'm not
a business reporter by any means. That wasn't why I
was asked to go. They wanted, the editor at the time,
wanted a profile of this company would tell us what
makes a tick. I didn't realize at the time that
that would be the first step in a two year
long investigation of the company.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
At the time, Taser International was the talk of Wall Street.
Traders were going crazy for the stock. Shares that sold
for less than four dollars in February two thousand and
three fetched one hundred and thirty five dollars a year later.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
Throughout the day, the Smiths and Steve Tuttle kept insisting
that no corner, no medical examiner, had ever cited the
stunt gun in an autopsy report. And this was like
a drumbeat. It wasn't just a throw away, you know, factoid.
Every ten or fifteen minutes they were raising the issue.
No corner had ever sighted this gun. The gun can't kill,
(22:09):
the guns never killed, the gun won't kill. And you know,
it's it's kind of a case, at least in my
thinking of the Lady Duck protest too much. So towards
the tail end of the day, I asked them for
the autopsy reports, and I got a lot of blank
stares in return.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Englyn kept following up, and he remembers eventually they sent
him like five reports.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
So I took it upon myself at that point to
wait on doing the company profile and began looking into
these deaths and track everybody who died and then get
the autopsy reports from those jurisdictions.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Taser employees weren't telling him the full story.
Speaker 6 (22:51):
During my investigation, I found there were deaths that Taser
hadn't bothered put on their report. And then, of course,
once I started getting the autopsy reports that corners were
infect citing Tasers as causes of deaths, contributing factors to deaths,
are saying they couldn't rule it out.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
When he took his findings back to Taser, he couldn't
believe the response.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
When a medical examiner had blamed death on the gun,
they would say that medical examiner doesn't have the experience
or the or the qualified training to blame a death
on a gun.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Englen wrote articles questioning the company's claims. By the fall
of two thousand and four, the stock price was down
about fifty percent. That's when Taser International issued a press
release October eighteenth, two thousand and four, an independent study
by the Department of Defense found Tasers were safe.
Speaker 6 (23:43):
As a consequence of that release, They're stock skyrocketed.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Over the next month. The stock shot up over sixty percent.
Speaker 6 (23:51):
Executive members of Taser's staff sold stock, made it millions
upon millions of dollars in stock sales.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Rick and his family sold over one million shares. That
made them almost sixty million dollars combined.
Speaker 6 (24:06):
And later, when I obtained copies of the actual safety
study and began interviewing people surrounded with that safety study,
what became obvious and apparent was that there had not
been a safety study. It wasn't true. A, the study
wasn't independent. B. The government scientist involved in the study
didn't even look at stunt gun safety. They were looking
at whether it was applicable for use in the military.
(24:28):
Government scientists acknowledged they had never studied the safety of
the sun gun, so to suggest that the government affirmed
safety the stunt gun. Safety was false. As it turned out,
Taser was involved in every step of this study.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
It was a literature review, not a medical study, and
almost all of the literature the DoD reviewed came directly
from Taser International, and it was organized by Taser's own employees.
Speaker 6 (24:56):
Every level of this study involved some members of Hayser's staff.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
As Anglin uncovered the truth, the stock collapsed again.
Speaker 6 (25:06):
At one point, Rick Smith accused me of costing them
more than five hundred million dollars in shareholder value. I
was besieged with calls from people's shareholders, especially shareholders who
saw the value of the stun gun dropping off like
a stone. The Attorney General of Arizona began an investigation
while I was investigating the company. The SEC began an
(25:28):
investigation of Taser while I was investigating the company.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Well.
Speaker 6 (25:32):
In those two investigations, our documentation was cited as part
of the reason. So the stock really took a tremendous fall.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Taser International lawyers sued the Arizona Republic for libel, but
the case was dismissed.
Speaker 6 (25:46):
Obviously, the relationship between me and the company deteriorated. I
am not on their Christmas list to this day.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
I don't think I am either. And when Taser doesn't
like you, they don't just stop sending Christmas cards. They
go after anyone who challenges their claims. Journalists, critics, medical examiners,
and cops too. Even Oakland PD's Mike Lenicio became an enemy.
(26:14):
Mike eventually found a way around the non disclosure agreement
he signed to attend Taser International's tests. He started telling
other cops, especially his officers in Oakland, about the cardiac
risks he'd seen firsthand. He even started sharing information with
the lawyer suing Taser International, John Burton. Soon after Mike
(26:35):
took over Oakland's Taser program, he began independently testing tasers
to make sure they were within the electrical specs set
by the company. That's when he noticed something strange.
Speaker 9 (26:48):
Next thing, I know, I'm getting these anonymous written complaints.
And again it's a little unusual if they're from out
of state. You know, why would someone out of state
who has no contact with me as an Oakland police officer,
why would they care what we're doing in Oakland?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Right The implication of the complaint was that he was
using police resources to run an unregulated company and make
money behind the department's back. Each time Internal Affairs would investigate,
Mike would answer the same questions and provide the same evidence,
and he would be cleared.
Speaker 9 (27:22):
And so I think the third one I was still working.
The fourth one, I was retired. So I called my
attorney and he says, you're not. He says, you're retired.
I said, I know, just humor me, please, here's okay.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Mike explained he still wanted to go through the process
again to clear his record.
Speaker 9 (27:42):
So we go down there, we go through the whole
thing again. I don't know about a month later, I
guess I get another letter from my AA and a mail.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
So this is the result of the investigation.
Speaker 9 (27:53):
And on this one, you know, it says I'm exonerated
from the charges. I scan over the header and the
box that says complainant, it says Steve Tuttle.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Steve Tuttle, the same Taser VP of Communications who told
Robert Anglin no coroner had ever cited the taser as
a cause of death. The same man I spoke with
when I went to Taser.
Speaker 9 (28:18):
They went to Great Links to ruin my reputation, you know,
to get me fired, to you know, get rid of me,
dispose of me.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Mike sometimes testified as an expert in lawsuits against Taser International,
and he told me he started bringing that piece of
paper with Steve Tuttle's name on it to every single
court appearance and deposition. That way, if Taser's lawyers tried
to discredit him, they would be in for a surprise.
One day, he says, he was answering questions from Taser's
(28:49):
lawyers in a deposition when they asked, have you ever
had any any I A complaints filed against you?
Speaker 9 (28:56):
If you ever had any discipline? I said, I A complained?
Speaker 8 (29:00):
And what like?
Speaker 11 (29:00):
What sense?
Speaker 1 (29:01):
He says, have you ever had any discipline.
Speaker 9 (29:02):
Filed against you? And this was my opportunity. I've been
carrying around this piece of paper for months, and I said,
would this include the ones that you guys filed against me?
Steve Title filed against me? Do I include those? No
further questions. He completely dropped that subject and moved on.
So I finally did get vindicated.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I guess you'd say, despite everything, Mike still thinks the
taser can be a good tool. For police.
Speaker 9 (29:37):
I have nothing against the product. I have nothing against it.
You know, it's a I think the product is a
useful product when deployed properly. But I also think that
a lot of the information that I had to discover
on my own should have been disclosed.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I think Rick Smith didn't disclose the taser's risks because
they weren't a part of the story he wanted to tell.
(30:23):
Rick Cherry picks and embellishes the parts of his story
that help him promote tasers. Even the story he's always
told about his introduction to gun violence isn't quite true.
It's the one about how he came up with the
idea for tasers after learning two kids from his high school,
Todd and Corey, had been shot and killed. Over the years,
(30:43):
he's repeatedly referred to Todd and Corey as his friends
and used their photos and presentations, like during speeches at
the company's annual conference.
Speaker 8 (30:52):
In December nineteen ninety Two of my high school friends
were shot and killed only a few miles from here
in what started as an altercation.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
And Corey weren't really his friends. He knew of them,
but didn't know them. In twenty twenty, three, Todd's father
told a reporter from Reuter's that Rick's company quote ran
a whole advertising campaign based on the murder of my son.
They profited off that, and they didn't ask for permission.
(31:27):
It's been over twenty five years since Rick Smith began
selling tasers, and he's still talking about the taser as
if it can solve all gun violence. He still maintains
it's safe, like when he talked about the taser safety
record on his podcast.
Speaker 8 (31:41):
Taser has a lower injury rate than playing collegiate volleyball.
You are more likely to get injured in volleyball practice
than being hit by the taser by police in the street.
And that's so incredulous. I have to stop saying it
because people paint me as being cavalier and insensitive.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
I think the comparison is insensitive. College volleyball isn't inherently violent,
and playing it is a decision you make for yourself.
The taser is a weapon, it's funded by taxpayers and
the hopes it will help protect them. I'm not saying
tasers haven't saved anyone. It's hard to verify Rick's story.
(32:20):
He told in the first episode about the thirteen year
old girl who was suicidal holding a knife. Cops taste
her instead of shooting her. I am sure that there
are true stories like that. I've seen video footage of
people who were tasered by cops instead of shot. But
it also seems to fit this pattern of Rick only
(32:41):
telling the parts of the stories he wants to sell.
I think Rick Smith wants this thirteen year old girl
to be part of his legacy. But if Rick wants
to take credit for saving her life, shouldn't he have
to take responsibility for what happened to someone like Bryce Masters.
I've never heard him acknowledged that taser has caused even
(33:03):
one cardiac arrest. Instead, it's the families of two cops,
Timothy Runnelds and Matt Masters, who have to live with
the consequences. By the time a Kansas City jury watched
(33:23):
a video of Bryce getting tasered and going into cardiac arrest,
Rick was focused on a new opportunity. The company had
a new name and a new prize product on the market,
the Axon body camera. Rick Smith says he actually got
the idea for body cameras from, of all people, his
legal adversaries, John Burton and Peter Williamson Rick told this
(33:46):
story on his new podcast. He said he thought of
body cameras after one of their lawsuits against Taser.
Speaker 8 (33:53):
This was to defend our customers and ourselves from all
the horrible allegations and like, look, let's just record what's happening.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
The idea was to protect cops.
Speaker 8 (34:05):
Look, I believe in the goodness of police. I work
with them every day. It's an honorable profession. So look,
yeah I'm biased. If I hear a story, I naturally
buy a stories. I bet some dirt bag is lying
about the police because the police were honorable.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Bodycams were not an overnight success. Police departments were hesitant
to buy them. Cops didn't like the idea of being
filmed at their job all day, but within a few
years cops wouldn't have much choice.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
Protests have broken out near Saint Louis, Missouri, over a
police shooting that killed an unarmed African American teenager, eighteen
year old Michael Brown.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Speaker 8 (34:48):
Rochesters of different ages and races demanding answers in the
shooting death of eighteen year old Michael Brown at the
hands of a policeman.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
A couple months after Michael Brown was killed, Rick one
on a morning talk show in Mesa, Arizona. He explained
why body cameras were good for the public, not just police, and.
Speaker 8 (35:07):
The idea is, you know, there's a big problem with
mistrust between police and their communities. For example, in Ferguson,
I think would be a very different story. We would
know what happened if there was a video of that incident,
and there was not, so we burning.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
The Obama administration poured millions of dollars into police agencies
so they could buy body cameras, and most police departments
bought them from the company they already had a relationship
with Taser International. Other companies had developed bodycams, but Taser
International used them to innovate how police footage was stored.
The Axon cameras didn't record data to tapes or discs.
(35:47):
They could connect to the company's cloud, So now the
company was offering a tech ecosystem to make storing the
footage easy. Rick said it was like going from a
walkman to an iPod. So the Axon body cameras weren't
just new hardware they represented a whole new direction for
the company, a network of software and hardware. To signal
(36:10):
the shift, Rick renamed Taser International Axon Enterprise. Just like
the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek, Axon Enterprise would explore
a new frontier. A couple months after the name change,
Rick gets on stage at the company's huge annual user
conference wearing a T shirt that says, write code, Save lives.
Speaker 8 (36:34):
For those who are wondering where the name Axon came from,
Axon is actually the technical name for the fibers that
extend from your nerve cells to connect them to each other.
So when we got into the camera business a few
years ago, we selected this name because we saw the
value of body cameras wasn't in the hardware of the
(36:55):
camera itself. It was if we could make that device connected,
did it become a sensor that we create a network
of really interesting information.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Rick walks across the stage and explains his vision for Axon,
a digital evidence storage platform, and they wouldn't stop there.
They were going to develop world class artificial intelligence that
would analyze all the footage the Axon cameras recorded.
Speaker 8 (37:22):
Now, when we first announced that we're doing artificial intelligence.
We had some pretty interesting reactions in the media. This
was one of them.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
The slide behind him shows the headline the new tech
that could turn police bodycams into nightmare surveillance.
Speaker 8 (37:36):
Tools, where they were talking about how we're going to
use facial recognition to go out and create the Orwellian state,
big brother observing us everywhere. There are some creepy things
that you could do with some of these technologies. Before
we touch anything like facial recognition or any other technology
where AI could be abused, we're creating an AI privacy
(37:57):
and Ethics Advisory Panel with experts from legal privacy experts,
civil rights experts.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
And Rick promises that he will convene an ethics boord
to help him weigh the risks of the new technology
he wants to explore.
Speaker 8 (38:11):
Right, I think we all agree we want to be
building technology for the society we all want to live in,
and we don't want this stuff to get misused because
number one, if he gets misused, this could blow up
and the technology gets taken away. Wan to avoid that,
so you're not going to see.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Us rushing on so on stage at that Axon conference
in twenty seventeen, Rick assured everyone he would rely on
his independent ethics boort to help him responsibly deploy any
new technology. Since then, he's repeatedly clashed with the board
over the company's plans. Axon came up with facial recognition
on body cameras, then paused it when the board objected.
(38:49):
The company wanted to sell police departments drones armed with tasers,
and the board objected again. Then you've all did.
Speaker 12 (38:57):
Texas America is real from the painful reality of another
mass shooting.
Speaker 10 (39:03):
This latest massacre at an elementary school in a small
Texas town.
Speaker 11 (39:07):
Here is the latest.
Speaker 10 (39:08):
At ten Texas officials report nineteen children and at least
two adults killed.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
School children gunned down by one man, murdering kids in
grades two, three, and four at school, this time in Uvalde, Texas,
a small city. Days later, Axon announced it was pursuing
a plan to sell drones armed with tasers to schools shooting.
Speaker 12 (39:31):
Axon says that it's working on a non lethal taser
drone that could be deployed in an emergency.
Speaker 8 (39:37):
Figure it like a smoke detector, a piece of safety
equipment with its on site that's hidden away.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Nobody needs to know.
Speaker 8 (39:42):
It's there, and if there's a person who shows up
to school with a gun, a teacher or any administrator
could hit a panic button.
Speaker 11 (39:51):
Smith says that would then allow for law enforcement to
get a live look at the room with the devices
built in camera and activate the drone with the goal
of incapacit sitating the suspect using the taser attached to it.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Rick paused the project after intense public backlash, but the
damage was done. Nine of the twelve Ethics board members
resigned in protest. In a statement explaining their resignation, the
resigning members wrote that after several years of work, the
company has fundamentally failed to embrace the values that we
have tried to instill, and that they'd lost faith in
(40:28):
Axon's ability to be a responsible partner. Today, Axon is
a forty five billion dollar force. Tasers are still a
part of that business, but Rick's concept of selling a
dropbox for cops a network of body cameras and software
to support them has morphed into an Amazon like everything
(40:50):
store for law enforcement. Plus, they're expanding their customer base,
selling their camera and software systems to civilian spaces like healthcare,
retail stores, and schools. The company is the market leader
and just about every piece of technology a cop might use.
They sell drones, drone counter surveillance. They've combined their cameras
(41:11):
with AI. Rick is building crime tracking centers to try
and stop crimes before they happen. His inspiration the Tom
Cruise movie Minority Report. In the movie, Tom Cruise is
a policeman who relies on three clairvoyant women who are
basically held captive in order to predict the crimes of
(41:32):
citizens before they happen. But when Cruz gets falsely accused
of a pre murder, he goes on the run until
he can successfully prove his innocence. In the end, everyone
realizes the whole idea of crime prediction was fucking insane,
so they shut the program down. But I guess for Rick,
the moral of the story was, wouldn't that be neat?
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Please welcome CEO and founder of Exxon Rick Smith.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
At the company's twenty twenty five annual conference, Rick Smith
came jogging out on stage to give the keynote address.
He had on a dark gray pollover with a small
gold triangle on his chest.
Speaker 8 (42:22):
Thank you everybody, and certainly we've taken a ton of
inspiration from science fiction. It's kind of fun to wear
my Captain Kirk inspired a lot of today, Because life
truly does imitate art. That's where we first imagine the
technologies that we will ultimately create.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
That triangle design on rick shirt is inspired by the
insignia for the star Trek, Starfleet Command, the explorers and
protectors of the galaxy.
Speaker 8 (42:51):
Now, each technology on its own is neither good nor evil.
It's an extraordinary tool, powerful and neutral. How we choose
to wield it will define the future that we build.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
So I'm watching this speech and thinking about Captain Kirk's
origin story again. Kirk's legend was born when he reprogrammed
that simulated test so that he could save both his
own starfleet and the civilians stranded on the other ship.
And Rick's legend was born when he reprogrammed the Taser
and quadrupled its power. He likes to say that doing
(43:26):
this saved his family, his company, and hundreds of thousands
of lives.
Speaker 8 (43:31):
So together, I mean, we can harness these tools to
create safer, more cohesive communities and build a society that
would make Captain kirkrowd.
Speaker 1 (43:39):
Now to meet our goals, Kirk lives in a fictional
intergalactic utopia, and Rick Smith lives on Earth. He may
be trying to write his own story it is, but
his choices have real world consequences.
Speaker 8 (43:54):
Our task is clear to construct the right safeguards to
ensure this tech is used ethically, maximizing its power for
good while minimizing the risk of misuse. So we take
this responsibility very seriously. It is a privilege and our
greatest challenge to thoughtfully deploy technology in ways to protect
life and uplift humanity, ensuring that we always choose the
(44:18):
path of good.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
It's a good story, do you believe them?
Speaker 12 (44:31):
Shares of Axon Enterprise hitting an all time high today.
It's the fifth best s and P five hundred performer
this year.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Best Ridge company forming known as Taser International now is
a big police bodycam evidence management software business.
Speaker 6 (44:44):
Phenomenal growth rests term. This has been one of the
best performing sacks over the past decade. Probably announces that
RINGS will be integrating with Axon's community requests.
Speaker 8 (44:53):
It is now I think, the largest video repository.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
In the first time, a Colorado police department is using
artificial intelligence to police reports.
Speaker 6 (45:00):
Port CON's police say they are in a testing phase
with their bodycam provider and had your owns.
Speaker 12 (45:05):
As first responders Axon and nine for drones and public
safety to that powering the revenue growth that we are.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
Seeing and make law enforcement's job easier.
Speaker 6 (45:13):
That would, like Crazy today up over fifty pm, provide
a new revenue source for accents.
Speaker 8 (45:18):
The AI services are selling five times faster than any
product in our history, and that's ten dollars not in height.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Absolute. Taser Incorporated is a production of Lava for Good
in association with Signal Company Number one. Be sure to
follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and threads at Lava
for Good. Follow me at Nick Beadini on in in Twitter.
Taser Incorporated is written and produced by me Nick Beredini.
Our executive producers are Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler, and Kevin Worris.
(46:09):
Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer. Jackie Paul is our producer.
Hannah Biel is our writer and producer. Joe Plored is
our sound designer. Music composed and produced by Alexis Quadrado
at the Plaza Rojas Studio. Mariann mckune is our editor.
Fact Checking by Donya Suleman. Jeff Cliburn is our head
of marketing and Operations. Our Social Media director is ist
(46:31):
Marie guard Rama, our social Media manager is Sarah Gibbons,
and our art director is Andrew Nelson. Additional reporting by
Matt Straut.
Speaker 8 (47:04):
So, like you, Gottaut a little bit of a tent
to humor. Back around two thousand and five or six,
I was on the front page of every newspaper in
America saying that we were evil, we were killing people,
we had lied about the safety of our products. And
it was right that time I was building this house
and for the man Cave. Decided, well, if everybody's going
to say I'm running an evil empire, well then clearly
(47:28):
I need a volcano layer. So I took some inspiration
from the Great Doctor Evil and if you remember, you
know he had a volcano layer too.
Speaker 1 (47:36):
It was pretty cool, actually,
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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!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.