May 30, 2023 • 43 mins
What the f**k is up with Florida? Host (and former Florida resident) Roy Wood Jr. is joined by Daily Show correspondent, Desi Lydic, Daily Show segment director, Sebastian DiNatale, and local author, Craig Pittman, to break down what makes the Sunshine State so special when it comes to the eccentric local newsmakers that have come to be known as “Florida Man.”
Watch the original segment: Who is “Florida Man”? Desi Lydic Investigates | The Daily Show
Originally aired: November 2, 2021
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 (00:07):
All right. Look, let's say you bring in a family
out for a meal, right, and then let's just say
it's Italian and you have this large Italian style gathering.
Everybody's got a bucket of penae, a gallon of alfredo
to pour on top of it. But that's not all.
You also get a little bit of bread with that,
because when you're at the Daily Show, your family and
(00:28):
this podcast is the unlimited breadsticks that takes a satisfying
family meal to the next level. Welcome to Beyond the
Scenes where today we're gonna be talking about Florida.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Florida God's waiting Room. It's home to theme parks, the Everglades,
your peapot, and of course Florida man belief.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Report before committing a sexual act on a tree, yelling
he was.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
As trying to start a fire with spaghetti sauce karate.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Every week headline out of Florida wild shock act unnecessarily.
Speaker 5 (01:04):
Sexual masturbating at a bus stop, told police he was
Captain Kirk Kirk.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
But have we ever stopped to ask the question why
something's happening to men in Florida? And it can't just
be a coincidence. As a future Pulitzer winning journalist. It's
my responsibility to uncover the truth, to reveal what lies
beneath the swamp, to answer the question what makes a
man Florida Man, Florida Man, Malda, Malorida man, Florida Man,
(01:31):
Florida Man.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
That's right, we're talking America's favorite hero, Florida Man, aka
people going buck wild down there in America's penis showing
up on the local news then going viral. Later on,
we're going to be joined by journalists and author Craig Pittman.
But first I'd like to bring on two of the
folks who brought this Florida Man piece to life. Daily
(01:55):
Show producer Sebastian Demattal, how are you doing good, sir?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I'm doing right, Thank you, Roy. And I'm extremely offended
by that Olive Garden Italian slam at the beginning of
this podcast, but otherwise doing.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Extremely sorry to insult fruit of your people. It's Penny.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I don't know how you say it, but it's Penne.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
I'm from Alabama. We call it Pene, okay see. And
then the other voice you hear is my fellow Southerner
who's about to come on right now, and have my
bag daily show corresponded. But more important, Kentucky bluegrass runs
through her blood. Daisy Lighting, how do you pronounce Penne?
Speaker 6 (02:32):
I also pronounce it penny, but I'm also roy not
to correct you or embarrass you, but it's Kentucky. So
I'm going to start to intrigue.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Pardon me. I am so prepared now for the people
who don't have the Internet. And let me preface it
by saying this. You know Sebastian as a field producer,
like it's one thing to go out and cover the piece,
but you have a way, I don't know how to
say this in the most pc way, but you like
(03:05):
it's in your heart when you go out to gather
these pieces in this information. It's like, no, We've got
to talk about it because they don't understand. We have
field meetings where we pitch and talk about stuff, and
Sebastian comes in with the level of emotion like, look
these people in Florida. I'm telling you we got to
do something about them. So for the people who don't
(03:26):
have the Internet, Sebastian, who is Florida man? And what
was the segment all about?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
So I like to do field pieces that are a
little bit more abstract and don't necessarily have like a
good guy bad guide dynamic that a lot of our
field pieces do so well. And I had this idea
for this Florida Man theory piece for quite a while,
and I was trying to pitch it correctly and trying
(03:53):
to get the tone right. And then, as chance would
have it, Trevor wanted to do this Florida week for
the show where he would do shows from Florida. And
it was kind of the perfect confluence of this piece
that I wanted to do for a while and a
(04:13):
reason to do it, because normally we try to do
pieces that are at least somewhat relevant to what's going
on or you know, current event. And so since this
was set we had a whole week of shows in Florida,
I was like, well, this might be a good opportunity
for this piece. And so the idea for the piece was,
I'm like an internet junkie. I'm a big time lurker.
(04:37):
I'm on all the chat rooms and websites.
Speaker 5 (04:39):
And so many dms. Said, there's tons of dms very inappropriate.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Well, you know, and one of the memes that has
been around for as long as I can remember, is
this Florida Man meme. There's like a Twitter account which
is like this bot that basically can aggregate Florida Man stories.
There's subreddits dedicated to them, and they were just and
they've been around forever. I worked on The Old Show
(05:07):
with John and we were doing Florida Man act ones
way way back when, so it was definitely not a
new phenomenon. But I think at the time, you know,
Trump had gotten elected and there was just kind of
this resurgence of really really crazy stories, especially coming out
of Florida, and I just wanted to do a piece
(05:31):
that kind of explored not and this is in the piece,
but not who is Florida Man? But why is Florida Man?
Why do we hear about these stories so much? And
that was kind of the impetus for starting the piece.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
It's this mysterious Bigfoot type thing because there isn't a
Kentucky Man. It's a Kentucky man Indiana man. And the
only thing I think comes close is Texas, where you
just go Texas, but Texas just kind of covers everybody
as a whole. Like this is very specific. It's like
(06:03):
it's Florida and its men who are screwing up. As
a former Florida resident, what are the qualifications, Daisy to
be a Florida Man, Because you know, I lived in
Florida for five years for college. Shout out to Tallahassee.
But I like, do you have to be super stupid
or is it just inherently down because you're in Florida,
(06:24):
you're automatically an idiot?
Speaker 6 (06:26):
Well, I think what we learned from our expert that
we got to sit with, Craig, is that there's there's
a lot more underneath it.
Speaker 5 (06:34):
There's a lot going on in Florida, and there's.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
A quite a few reasons why we see those headlines
so often.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
But I think it usually involves.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
A gator, something illegal, usually beer, and something unnecessarily sexual.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
Usually every Florida Man story has all of those elements.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
That's right accurate, Ye.
Speaker 6 (07:00):
But no, I think, like my favorite pieces that I
get to do on the show are pieces where we
think it's about one thing and then somewhere in the
piece we discover it's about something else entirely. So we
kind of go into this piece with our with envisioning
these you know, Florida Man memes and think that we're
(07:20):
going into kind of poke fun at Florida men, and
then quickly realize like, there's a lot more underneath it.
There are a whole list of reasons for why we
see these headlines in the news, but most importantly, towards
the end, we discover the Sunshine Act and we end
up kind of landing in this place of you know,
(07:40):
it's it's not just that these things are happening in Florida,
but we are hearing about them a lot more in
Florida because of the Sunshine Act. And really there's a
little bit of Florida man everywhere, which I didn't know
coming into it. So that's I mean, that was my
favorite thing about that piece. Or is this nice arc
and discovery that people aren't really talking about.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
I want to go back, Sebastian to what you said
a little bit earlier about you liking to live in
an abstract, which is true. You did one of my
favorite pieces on the show that I mean, of course,
every piece that I'm in is my favorite, but one
of the favorite pieces that I was not in you
Runnie Chang, and you had Runnie in the Uma Thurman
kill Bill Too Yellow. What was it the nunchucks were illegal.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Birstally, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did like a kung Fu
movie basically for a piece that's very tertiarily about kung fu.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Hey, is it a little weird that I'm playing this guy?
He's like super white running.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
If a white guy does it, it's problematic, it's cultural appropriation.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
If you do it, it's.
Speaker 7 (08:58):
Fun, is it?
Speaker 5 (09:01):
I honestly I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Okay, whatever, let's fight. So with this piece, you went
into it creatively, with this true detective angle. Talk to
me a little bit about that production style and when
you're actually sitting down with these actual because you all
went and talked to actual Florida men who have been
the focus of news stories while at the same time
you're trying to have this conversation but also trying to
(09:23):
frame it in a way that the viewers haven't seen
before so that they can at least feel like they're
getting something, you know, a little different. Totally.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I am a hack when it comes to originality or creativity,
and I truly consider myself just like bound to parody
as much as I can be because everything's been done
all the time so much better than I can do it.
And so rather than trying to reinvent or recreate something
(09:52):
I lift from a lot of things, and so for this,
we were going into it with a True Detective vibe.
The first season had been out for a couple of years,
and I loved the first season of True Detective. Originally
I had pitched this. I don't know if you remember Roy,
but this is with you and Desi. Roy was the
Woody Harrelson type character and Desi was the Matthew mcconnachay character,
(10:14):
and I was so jazzed about it. And you know,
in one of the pitch meetings, Trevor was like, that's great.
I don't think we need Roy for this. DESI can
do all of this. Not to mention, there's going to
be so much stuff here, you won't have time for
both of them doing those games as well as the
Florida Man. And he was absolutely right, And I'm glad
that we just did it with Desi because we wouldn't
(10:37):
have had time for exploring your guys' relationship and all
that stuff. But to your point, I loved how True
Detective was filmed, and I just I was a big
fan of that first season especially, and so I wanted
when I go into pieces, I like, I have an
idea for what I wanted to look like and feel like.
And our DP on this, who's an amazing DPIs my
(10:58):
good friend Joel Joel Jaul Sadler, an incredible cinematographer. So
I basically showed him shots from True Detective and things
that I liked from that show, and he was able
to basically recreate it almost to a tea. And so
when you're trying to replicate that, it's great if the
(11:20):
audience knows what you're doing, like, oh, this is like
a True Detective thing, that's great, but it's equally as
satisfying if they don't and they're like, this is really
interesting and cool. But at no point do I ever
want people to think I came up with any of
these artistic or aesthetic choices. These are all other geniuses
that I'm just trying to replicate. So that was the
(11:41):
idea for Florida Man, because there was a lot of
similarities between these Florida Man stories and True Detective, which
is horrifying because that shows about a psychotic serial killer.
But yeah, that's kind of how I went going into it,
And yeah, I'm all of the elements technically that made
(12:05):
this really work were all of the things that were
really out of my control. And as a testament to
our team Joel Desi acting obviously, our editor Nick Johnson
was incredible and brought so much great ideas to make
it work. And then not to mention, you know, our
segment producer Matt got so many of those bookings. One
(12:27):
of our camera people down there, Kelly was he had
all these locations in mind. So it was a true
team effort to really pull this off. And I think
is a testament you can tell how good or bad
a pieces based on how many people are on board
providing or contributing their art, and for this one, it
was like a full team effort and I think it
(12:47):
shows it's just yeah, it's my favorite.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
People forget is that you know this We're not the
local news. It's not just a reporter and a cameraman
and go like this is miniature, full short film production
type shit going on here. Desi, When you were talking
with these people, how much did it feel like to you?
Because the question we always get is correspondence, are the
(13:11):
people you're talking to and on it where? To me,
it's never been that that style of conversation. It's just
tell me your truth and we're going to have a
conversation about the way you see the world. But within that,
did any of them realize what they were saying or
do you feel like they felt like, well, maybe I
shouldn't be talking to the Daily Show.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
I don't think so.
Speaker 6 (13:34):
I think all of them were extremely confident in their
Florida maneness. I think they felt really good about who
they are and what they had to say, and that
makes it so much fun for us.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
Like I mean, for me, it was like the.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
Perfect cocktail of Sebastian being so specific about his vision
of what this piece should look like, the style of it,
and the tempo of it and the mood, and then
casting all of these great, really genuine and authentic and
very funny characters to just do their thing. All I
(14:13):
had to do was step up and just listen and
react to all of it and play straight person. It
was like, I mean, you know, that's the why, which
for this.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Was not an easy test to do. I mean, Jake
Desi's credit, I was throwing her into these situations with
these a lot of the times actually crazy men, and
there were it was not the amount of straight facedness
that DOESI had to perform for this is astounding compared
to what these people were talking about off camera and
(14:44):
on camera.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So that was no easy.
Speaker 6 (14:46):
This is where Nick comes into play, because Nick could
edit out all of my breaks and mental breakdowns in
between each shot. But no, I got that alligator man.
I'm sorry, but he was. He he was just the greatest.
Speaker 8 (15:02):
He's been hit with charges after pictures in this video
showing him handling an alligator, which he posted.
Speaker 7 (15:08):
We're seen by law enforcement A real name.
Speaker 8 (15:10):
Jordan Bedford, but I go by the alligator man.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Okay, alligator man.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
What's the common factor among all Florida men?
Speaker 7 (15:18):
We all different?
Speaker 8 (15:19):
Well, I'm different from the rest because I do the
wrong thing in the right way, if that makes sense. No, no,
see you're not from Florida, so you don't understand my
language what I'm talking right now. But I do the
wild things. Anything you think of, I'll probably do it.
Catch like I tell you, anything, I catch gators, anything, anything, well,
not anything, but basically anything.
Speaker 6 (15:42):
He was definitely my favorite. I to this day wonder
what he's up to. I almost left my family, but
he wouldn't have me.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I thought that Costa and I got kind of the
short end of the stick when they were assigning Florida
field pieces for Florida Week because we have to cover
the green algae.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 8 (16:03):
Oh there it is a dead fish.
Speaker 5 (16:04):
That's pretty gross.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Yeah, what's the smell like to you?
Speaker 3 (16:08):
It smells like dead fish.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And we rowed a boat into some of the algae
plumes and like our eyes were watering in shoes, like
we're planned to be there thirty minutes and like ten
minutes in and we were like, hmmm, I think we
got everything we need. Let's let's freaking get out of here.
How what was the worst part of your shoots, because
I noticed that a lot of yours were outdoors. Costa
(16:32):
and I at least had a couple of indoor situations.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
Yeah, it was hot. It was really hot.
Speaker 6 (16:38):
It was I can remember sweating just and I am
not I know, I'm from the South. I am not
a lady when it comes to heat and sweat. I
was dripping and sweating profusely, and for some reason, I
chose to wear a black part wool suit in the
in the ninety degree weather with that humidity, in the
(17:00):
middle of an orange grove.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, that was I mean, that's partially my fault because
I wanted to look I wanted you to.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Be this kind of yeah, look like a detective detective
and that Yeah, that day was so hot.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
And Craig will tell you the guy that's on the
show later because we were interviewing him. We wanted to
be at outdoors because we had an orange grove available
to shoot in very Florida and Droll's really good at
working with natural light. But man, that was so hot.
I needed to, like between takes, like go into the
car cool down a little bit.
Speaker 6 (17:34):
We all were running into this tiny pickup truck just
to get like a little taste of the ac and
then run back.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
Into the field. At one point, we're in the middle
of filming towards.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
The end, and I looked down in my sweat stain
on my chest just like grew to about this size.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
It was. It was a problem. It was very hot.
And then do you remember Seth you came up with this.
We were we were clearly going for.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
This true detective, very noir feel, and at some point
we were like, DOESSI should smoke Jess should smoke cigarettes
during this piece.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 6 (18:06):
Thought, yeah, that's that's a great idea, and I'm going
to commit, like I'm really going to show them that
I'm a smoker. And I really committed to it all
the way through. I'm coughing, I can't breathe. Yeah, at
what point, Sev, did you decide that's let's DESI, let's
put the props down and not do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Well, we got the one shot of you smoking I needed.
But yeah, I was definitely like there were a lot
of suspect props. We had unpasteurized orange juice that like
we were gifted from an orange grove that I was like,
DESI just start chugging this orange juice on camera and.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
It's just fresh out of a field, fresh out of
a field.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
So there were a lot of questionable props and probably
dangerous things that not to mention, you know, putting DESI
in like the middle of nowhere with this pirate man
that had guns and knives on him.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
Wait, but he was also a landscaper.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
He was also a landscaper though.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
A pirate who was also a landamer.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Yeah, oh, missy, I am Captain Silki suber Chips.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
Cool and you're pirate.
Speaker 7 (19:19):
Well, I'm a pirate most of the day. When I'm not,
I'm a landscaper.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
I think the to your point, Roy, I think the
big draw of Florida men is that they a lot
of them want and like notoriety, and two of our
guys kind of were like all three of them were
kind of like that, but our first guy, Robbie was
definitely more on like the I don't know how much
(19:44):
of this I can talk about, but Jordan the alligator
man and Jamie the landscaper pirate were very like. They
loved it and they want They talked to us forever
and we had to be like, all right, that's good.
So they were really willing and we didn't have to
you know, coax them or feed them, you know, any
type of direction to go to, because they were just
(20:05):
all in from the beginning absolutely Well.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
After the break, we're gonna be talking with a man
from Florida. That's there, you go, that's the appropriate way
to separate the two. There's Florida man. But then we're
gonna talk to a man from Florida who's a journalist
and Arthur and I feel like he knows Florida the
way Miami knows cocaine. This is beyond the scenes. We'll
be right back beyond the scenes. We are back. We're
(20:31):
talking about Florida Man. We already have Desi lighted and
Sebastian Dinah Towel in the chairs joining us now. Is
a Florida man, not the Florida man. He's a man
from Florida who doesn't do Florida man. Shit. You understand
what I'm trying to say right now, journalists and author
of the state You're in Florida Man, Florida Women and
(20:53):
other wildlife. He's an expert witness who was featured in
the original segment that Desi did. Pittman, welcome to beyond
the scenes.
Speaker 7 (21:02):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Now when we talk Florida. And this is the thing
that I learned when I was at Florida A and
M for college up there in the Panhandle. The Florida
that people think kind of happens south of like Orlando
and all points south. That's postcard Florida, that's TV Florida
Panhandle is kind of a different field. Like where in
(21:25):
Florida are you from? Are you from North Florida, South Florida.
They split that ship up like the Dakota's.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Well, I'm from Pensacola, but I now live in Saint Petersburg,
so I've been on both sides of that line, and
I think it's I think it's more of a coastal
versus inland thing. You know, people people see the postcards.
They think, you know, it's all beaches everywhere, and they
don't realize, Oh wait, you know there's cattle ranches and uh,
you know, lumber mills and uh, you know, crazy people
(21:52):
doing stuff at the at the liquor store.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
You got people sneak into horse stables in Okalla, all
of that own areana. You've been Highway ninety on me
right there, Florida, I know all of that shit. Baby
Walton Beach destin Florida, bamla. So let me let me
start with this dosy Sebastian kickback and watch two Florida
boys kicking for a second.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Why are these New York elites always coming for us?
Speaker 7 (22:20):
Don't because they envy us.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
They want to be us, they want to have that freedom.
That's why they want to.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
To Florida cocaine and then judge Florida.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Yeah, exactly, it's all. It's all it's all hating. They're
just hating because they're indianas man, That's all it is.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
But in all seriousness, what is it that makes Florida
seem crazier than the rest of America? Like? Is that?
Is that reputation justified? Or is it really that much crazy?
Speaker 7 (22:51):
Yeah? Oh heck yes, oh definitely. Listen.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
My basic principle is you find weird stuff happening anywhere
you find humans, but more of it happens in Florida,
and it tends to be weirder. And I think that's
because we have certain elements here that you don't find
anywhere else. We've undergone this wrenching demographic change where we
went from the least populated southern state in nineteen forty
to now being the third most populous state, and everybody's
(23:15):
kind of crammed into this thirty mile wide swath along
the coast and along the eye for where the theme
parks are. You know, we've got this, you get these
weird elements to the state where we've got you know,
this invasive python population eating everything insight in the Everglades.
We've got actually have people who are professional mermaids making
a living as state employees in Florida, which you don't
(23:36):
find in any other state.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
It is for those in Iguanas falling from trees.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
When yes, we are showing up in toilets, they show up
in toilets too. I mean, the crazy stuff just happens
here all the time, and people in Florida who've been
here for a while are like, oh, yeah, that's just
you know, that's just Thursday.
Speaker 7 (23:53):
Man.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
You know, I can't remember Sebastian if it was you
a daisy earlier that was talking about the sunshine laws.
But can you go into that a little bit more
for us? Sure?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
So, uh, you know, I read Craig's Book of Florida
for this in preparation for this piece, because that was
like my bible for a lot of this because it
basically had my son, thank you it had. It was
like also the first nonfiction book I had read it
like ten years, so I was really just absorbing all
(24:24):
this new information.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Did it still feel like fiction? Though? It did?
Speaker 8 (24:28):
Well?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
It did absolutely. I was like, there's no way. But
Craig really broke down very nice and neatly all of
these factors, like the ones that he just said and
the one that stuck with me, the most was and
Craig will also tell you it's certainly not the the
the reason we kind of elevated it for the piece
(24:49):
to you know, end the piece basically because we needed
an ending. But the Sunshine Act, this law that Craig
can probably speak to a lot better than I, basically
allow for a ton of this transparency in Florida when
all these misdemeanors or sometimes felonies happen, where a lot
of peep journalists especially can go and get these records
(25:12):
of these incidences incidents very easily. And that's the amount
of Florida Man's stories. Because you talk about, like we
do this whole montage in the beginning and the end
of all of these stories. We didn't have to like,
we didn't have to make up any of those stories
because there were so you just googled Florida Man stories
finding like literally like dozens to hundreds of headlines on
(25:36):
camera anchors reading these stories, it was clear to me
and us that like the Sunshine Act definitely plays a
part in why these stories are so accessible and talked about.
Because after doing the piece and after researching it more,
I realized not a ton of other states.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Almost no other.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
States have as expansive transparency laws about these types of misdemeanors.
So that was for me a nice button to kind
of put the whole piece together, which is, you know,
there's weirdos everywhere, like Craig was saying, but I think
in Florida, all of these factors plus this idea of
(26:17):
complete transparency just really tickled me as a really nice
way to summarize why this kind of person is so rampant.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Craig, I'm about twenty years out of you know, last
pain rent in Tallahassee, but I remember distinctly in the
corner stores. I don't remember what it was called, but
it was like the crime paper in.
Speaker 7 (26:42):
Oh yeah, the most lugshot paper.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, okay, So like, I don't know of another state
that just publishes mugshots for just random misdemeanors and solicitation
of prostitutes. You taught me with the crumb of myth, Like,
does that pulling into it as well in normalize in
that behavior for locals?
Speaker 7 (27:01):
Uh? Somewhat.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
I mean, you know, obviously somebody figured out, hey, we
can use the Sunshine Law and make money off of
it by publishing these these little ratty pulp mags full
of the latest mug shots because people.
Speaker 7 (27:13):
Will buy it and go, oh, yeah, it's mister Johnson.
I knew he was up to something, you know.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
But there's been a sort of an ethical debate about
that too, where there were some newspapers that were making
money off of running mugshot websites. And then there started
to be a sort of a backlash to that of saying,
you know, well, a lot of these folks they just
got arrested, they haven't been convicted of anything, you know,
and these mug shots are going to be there for
(27:38):
a while. Do you really want to highlight that? And
so people started pulling back on that. Let me just
respond to Sebastian real quick though, that that, yeah, the
Sunshine Law is a reason why a lot of this
these stories wind up coming to light. But after Florida
passed at sunshine Law, some other states passed similar laws.
You don't see weird stories to the volume of Florida's
(27:58):
coming out of those states. I mean, we we are
you know, we produce more weirdness than we produce orange juice.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Basically, Florida's a weird place, though, man, Like it's this
weird intersection of retirees, tourists, a lot of a lot
of immigrants, locals, and then you just have like regular
agriculture people. Like there's certain states like Nebraska's for fucking farming.
(28:26):
That's what we're here to do.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
That's one of those boring square states, you know that
how can they heck can they be fun?
Speaker 1 (28:32):
So there isn't this convergence of different agendas, not to
mention droves of It's where Nickeoloney, the fact that Nickeloney
is a Viacom property, which we love very very much.
Please watch the Paul Patrol movie on Paramount Plus. But like,
I'm bewildered by so many different things all happening in
(28:53):
that place at the same time. Like, is there a
way to decrease these types of incidents?
Speaker 4 (28:59):
No, In fact, I think they're going to continue to
increase as the population continues as well, despite our efforts
to kill people off with COVID. That is the you know,
the our population just keeps getting bigger and bigger, bigger,
and we have you know, we have like one hundred
million tourists coming every year too, on top of the
regular residents. So and again they're all kind of crammed
(29:20):
into that same narrow area. So and people come here
with these expectations too, if they feel like Florida is
a place to get have a second chance to start
over and you know, make some of the same mistakes
they made before and maybe maybe make some new ones.
So that contributes to it as well.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
To that point too, Craig, I think our pirate Silky
silver Tips, that was actually his story. He was like
he was a transplant, even though he kept saying.
Speaker 8 (29:46):
Like he was.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
He kept talking about being like born and raised in
Florida and then immediately says, well, I'm a transplant.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
But that was Chicago.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
But the other point that I thought was really co
and a part that I wanted to try to make
a big center piece for this particular piece, is the
mental health issue. And we even get our first I
mean our first Florida man willingly tells us like DESI asked,
what do you think it is? And he just says,
right off the bat, unprompted, mental health issues.
Speaker 5 (30:19):
Isn't there something that all Florida men share. There's something
behind it.
Speaker 7 (30:24):
Mental health issues.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Then in the piece we get you to elaborate on that, Craig,
that Florida has one of the worst I think mental health.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
We consistently rank forty ninth among the states and spinning
on mental health, which I can only say, thank God
for Texas.
Speaker 5 (30:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
So, yeah, I think that that's probably if you wanted
a really quick, ten second Florida Man piece, that's probably
it is that there's almost no mental health resources and
a lot of these people need those resources.
Speaker 7 (30:55):
Yes they do.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
So then to that point, DESI, when you were down
you're talking to these people, and like I've often felt
like when you go and cover pieces of correspondent and
then you go back and you become a consumer of
media again. On the other side of that, it can
sometimes change how you view people. Like do you think
that the people that are in these Florida Man stories
(31:16):
that are highlighted every day in media are they victims
of circumstance or are they mental health? Are they dealing
with addiction issues?
Speaker 5 (31:24):
I'm no expert.
Speaker 6 (31:24):
Craig is certainly the expert, but it seems like there
are all of those issues at play. I think the stories,
the men that we talk to down there, we're certainly
wacky characters without a doubt, But I think in the
booking process. We were also pretty conscious of finding subjects
that did not have horribly dark stories in their past, so,
(31:50):
you know, we didn't want to be making Florida men
who have mental health issues or addiction issues the butt
of the joke. Instead, I think we tried to very
specifically book people who had funny stories who kind of
were just like a victim of their circumstances, and then
also on top of that, start a little bit of
a conversation of the problem in the way that the
(32:14):
media was portraying some of these headlines in these stories.
I think part of the joke was also on, you know,
journalists being kind of the hero of their own stories
and the way that they were covering all of this.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Yeah, Daisy's whole like b plot was that she wanted
to win a bunch of like Pulitzers.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
For this because well, it's coming. It's coming. I have yet, Yeah,
but we have some time.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Part two, So Craig to that point, like some police
departments post Florida man stories on their way. Hey, look
who we arrested. This guy was doing some wacky wacky wacky.
Yeah we got them. Everybody laugh in the comments. Make
sure you like and review our police department podcast is
(32:59):
there as I didn't realize that's a real thing.
Speaker 7 (33:05):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Well, and the funny thing, they actually caught a guy
because he came in and made comments on their Facebook
posting about him and was haunting them, and so then
they'd ribble to track him down and arrest him. Wow,
and he became a Florida answering.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
All right, Well, after the break, we're going to talk
about where we can go going forward with this issue,
or do we just need to solve Florida off? Or
will global warming solve this problem for us? It's beyond
the scenes. We'll be right back. You know, we could
just wake this.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
Shit out, you never know, just a matter of time.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
We're talking Florida man, Florida men's. A group of Florida
men together is called a god damn. I don't know
if you need that or not.
Speaker 7 (33:49):
I'll notify websters.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
More than three Florida men together is called a y'all.
More than five is a god damn.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
Craig, I think it's called a shale technically.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Sebastian as a non Floridian, do you think it's fair
that Florida is a punching bag Orid's earned.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Yeah, you know, I think it's fair that it is
a punching I mean, I'm from New Jersey, so I
get the idea of Florida. No, no, no, it's very
very different. But I will say I I guess punching back.
It really depends on how you approach and view these stories. Obviously,
(34:31):
if there's a mean spirited, shodenfreude element to people enjoying
these a lot of the times horrific stories, I think
that's very problematic and that's not what we wanted to
do with this piece. We try to approach it with
empathy but also a type of light heartedness, because a
(34:52):
lot of these stories are pretty lighthearted for the most part.
There are some that are incredibly dark, and we didn't
want to have focus on those, and I think.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
That you did. You didn't want to focus on the
myth band biting faces off in mind. Yeah, yeah, we're
still try this comedy in eating someone's face under a
bridge on that Tuesday after.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Although to a point, I do think that Florida people
and Craig could probably confirm or deny this. There is
a sense of not pride, but there is a sense
of Yeah, that is us, kind of like we are
that insane and crazy and colorful and caricaturey, and I
think that a lot of the times they lean into that.
(35:36):
So it's kind of a it's I think it's a
celebration of that. I might be way off, Craig.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
No, No, I think there's a there's a split. I
have some friends who like me, or Florida natives, who
every time they see some wacky story come out nationally,
they're like, oh God, please don't let it be Florida,
Please don't let me be Florida. And of course it's
always it's always Florida. There's always some Florida element. Like
the woman in New Jersey who was getting on the
plane with the emotional support peacock. The ecock was from Florida.
I mean, there's always some Florida aspect to it. But
(36:03):
then there's others. And then this is my point of view,
which is, you know, let your Florida freak flag fly.
You know, be proud of the fact that we are
the most interesting state. You are never bored here, you know,
it's not like one of those square states where you know,
you turn on the news every day. It's the same
thing day after day here. You know, you open the paper,
you turn on the news, and you're like, wow, a
guy punched a swan today.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
Hmm.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Okay, we are the most interesting state. I think that
should be our slogan, not Sunshine State because it rains
here so much. It's just it's not funny, but the
most interesting state. I think we can defend that one.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
How incendiary though, is it for outsiders to attack Florida
and make fun of Florida and make Florida man jokes, which,
to Sebastian's point and to your point, even makes people
wear that difference with a sense of pride to the
point where they become contrarian. You know, when you look
at what's happening right now in Florida with just anti
vaccine and and well first anti masking, then anti vacs,
(37:01):
how much of that is just people being defiant to
the people that have been made Well, you were going
to make fun of us anyway, so I'm gonna do
what I want to screw you.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
Well, I think that's the tapping into this. You know,
Florida has always had this really strong libertarian streak. You know,
we don't want the government telling us what to do.
We were we were an open range state long after
any of the Western states. I mean, up until nineteen
forty nine. You didn't have to fence your cattle here,
you know. So you know, it's like so, so, you know,
(37:31):
DeSantis has really tapped into that and and tapped into that,
which is ironic because he's the government telling people what
to do, which is you can't tell people what to
do about masks. So he's managed to do a nice
little ju political jiu jitsu move on.
Speaker 7 (37:45):
On the situation there.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
But some of it too is you know, there are
people here who are just that wacky that they're like, yeah,
I think I'm not going to take the vaccine, but
I am definitely gonna get me some de warmer medicine
from the from the from the from the horse farm people.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Daisy, do you think that everything that happens in Florida
is it a Florida problem or an American problem or
is it just the Internet making things seem worse than
what they are?
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Probably all of the above.
Speaker 6 (38:13):
I think the thing that I loved about the piece
so much, and like Sebastian said, we definitely highlighted this
probably more than you could factually say that this is
the entire reason, but that the Sunshine Law really gave
me a new perspective on what was happening in Florida,
and that's it is talked about more because of that law.
(38:38):
We just happened to see those headlines a lot more,
and that these things are happening all over the country.
So I think when there are huge issues all over America,
you want to go like, oh, this is a Texas
problem or this is a Florida problem, And yeah, there
are certain challenges that exist there, but it's also really
opening up a larger conversation of what's happened beening all
(39:00):
over the country, and if they aren't addressed they're locally,
they become bigger problems all over the country. So yeah,
I mean, Craig is the expert on that.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
But well, we've got a writer here named Tim Dorsey
who I like a lot, and one of Tim's lines
is Florida is the pace car for national dysfunction, which
I think is a pretty accurate.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Incredible. That's incredible, Craig. Then we'll we'll we'll end with this. Well,
we've got one more thing, but it's silly, but I
want to do it. But first we'll end with the
more serious, ques less serious question. If we know that
you cannot shame or embarrass people into better behavior, how
do we create a sense of empathy for other people,
(39:41):
including Floridians, especially in this Internet age. How do you
create a sense of empathy for someone because like even
now with people dying who were like, there are anti
vaxxers who die and the first thing they do is
pull up their tweet and go, nanny, nanny, boo boo.
Look what you said three weeks ago. That ain't empathy.
How do we create a sense of that as a
(40:03):
way to hopefully, you know, bring the country together at
least bring Florida closer to the country.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
Man, if I knew that, they'd give me the Nobel
and the Pulitzer. But you know, you're absolutely right, we
should feel empathy for these folks. I actually have a
piece in my new book, The State You're In, where
I'd argue that instead of laughing at the people in
these mug shots, we should just every time I look
at them and go there, but for the grace of God,
go I you know, because once screw up one mistake
(40:31):
and you could be the one you know, in the
Little mug Shot magazine being sold at the corner store.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
All right, and so then last question, and this is
for everyone. Does everyone know their Florida birthday?
Speaker 4 (40:44):
No?
Speaker 1 (40:47):
What is your Florida Man birthday? First we have to explain, Craig,
can you explain that to people? What the Florida This.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
Was a thing that went around a couple of years
ago where you plug in the terms Florida Man and
your data birth and do it in Google and it
spits out whatever was the Florida Man story for that
particular day, because of course there is a Florida Man
story for three hundred and sixty five days, including and
maybe even leap Day as well.
Speaker 7 (41:10):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (41:10):
Mine turned out to be a fairly tragic one and
which I don't want to talk about. But that's the
thing is, some of these stories are not funny. They're
they're purely tragic. But of course some of the ones
that turned up, you know, people were laughing about aha,
you know the burglar and silver Springs who broke in
and thought that the ashes in the in the cremation
eurn when were actually something that could snort, you know,
things like that.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
I mean, you can I just I just did my
Florida man birthday now, and I think this is a nice,
not super dark one. But as police arrest Florida man
for drunken joy ride on motorized scooter at a Walmart,
that hits a lot of pot I think, yes it does.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Yeah, here's two from my birthday that I I guess.
One's decent ones a little a little darker. Florida man
beat atm says it gave him too much cash.
Speaker 7 (42:01):
I remember that. I wish I had that problem.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
I think that's a really good example. Sorry that there's
almost no logic to any of these stories, because you're like, oh,
he beat him up because he didn't the machine didn't
give him enough money, but that he beat him up.
It's just all of these stories defy any logic or sense,
and I think that's what's so great about them.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
The other one, the other one, Florida man throws Charriot
child in dispute over.
Speaker 5 (42:31):
Donut over donut.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yeah, I only read that because he didn't connect. He's
fine as.
Speaker 7 (42:38):
Long as as he had bad aim. That's the important thing,
you guys.
Speaker 5 (42:42):
I just plugged my birthday in and it came up.
Speaker 6 (42:44):
Nothing found, So is that the saddest Florida Man story
of all times.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Well, that will happen. Something will happen then on that
date and sometime the next week. Oh yeah, it's like
a candy Man.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Times.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
Florida Man.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Well, his book is the State You're in, Florida Man,
Florida Women and other Wildlife. Craig Pittman, thank you so
much for coming beyond the Scenes with myself, Daisy Lighter
and Sebastian Dentel.
Speaker 7 (43:10):
I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
This was great man. Well we did it, and for
more Beyond the Scenes go to Dailyshow dot com slash Beyond.
Got to get back down to Pensacola. Man, it was
some good barbecue. Then, Hey, Beyond the Scenes listeners, if
you haven't rated and reviewed us yet on Apple Podcasts,
(43:33):
I need you to stop right now and do that.
Drop us a rating, let us know how you feel
and write a review. Write a review too, because I
read those to my child at the end of the night.
Because I'm out of books. I gotta go buy them
new books.
All right. Look, let's say you bring in a family
out for a meal, right, and then let's just say
it's Italian and you have this large Italian style gathering.
Everybody's got a bucket of penae, a gallon of alfredo
to pour on top of it. But that's not all.
You also get a little bit of bread with that,
because when you're at the Daily Show, your family and
(00:28):
this podcast is the unlimited breadsticks that takes a satisfying
family meal to the next level. Welcome to Beyond the
Scenes where today we're gonna be talking about Florida.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Florida God's waiting Room. It's home to theme parks, the Everglades,
your peapot, and of course Florida man belief.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Report before committing a sexual act on a tree, yelling
he was.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
As trying to start a fire with spaghetti sauce karate.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Every week headline out of Florida wild shock act unnecessarily.
Speaker 5 (01:04):
Sexual masturbating at a bus stop, told police he was
Captain Kirk Kirk.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
But have we ever stopped to ask the question why
something's happening to men in Florida? And it can't just
be a coincidence. As a future Pulitzer winning journalist. It's
my responsibility to uncover the truth, to reveal what lies
beneath the swamp, to answer the question what makes a
man Florida Man, Florida Man, Malda, Malorida man, Florida Man,
(01:31):
Florida Man.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
That's right, we're talking America's favorite hero, Florida Man, aka
people going buck wild down there in America's penis showing
up on the local news then going viral. Later on,
we're going to be joined by journalists and author Craig Pittman.
But first I'd like to bring on two of the
folks who brought this Florida Man piece to life. Daily
(01:55):
Show producer Sebastian Demattal, how are you doing good, sir?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
I'm doing right, Thank you, Roy. And I'm extremely offended
by that Olive Garden Italian slam at the beginning of
this podcast, but otherwise doing.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Extremely sorry to insult fruit of your people. It's Penny.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I don't know how you say it, but it's Penne.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
I'm from Alabama. We call it Pene, okay see. And
then the other voice you hear is my fellow Southerner
who's about to come on right now, and have my
bag daily show corresponded. But more important, Kentucky bluegrass runs
through her blood. Daisy Lighting, how do you pronounce Penne?
Speaker 6 (02:32):
I also pronounce it penny, but I'm also roy not
to correct you or embarrass you, but it's Kentucky. So
I'm going to start to intrigue.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Pardon me. I am so prepared now for the people
who don't have the Internet. And let me preface it
by saying this. You know Sebastian as a field producer,
like it's one thing to go out and cover the piece,
but you have a way, I don't know how to
say this in the most pc way, but you like
(03:05):
it's in your heart when you go out to gather
these pieces in this information. It's like, no, We've got
to talk about it because they don't understand. We have
field meetings where we pitch and talk about stuff, and
Sebastian comes in with the level of emotion like, look
these people in Florida. I'm telling you we got to
do something about them. So for the people who don't
(03:26):
have the Internet, Sebastian, who is Florida man? And what
was the segment all about?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
So I like to do field pieces that are a
little bit more abstract and don't necessarily have like a
good guy bad guide dynamic that a lot of our
field pieces do so well. And I had this idea
for this Florida Man theory piece for quite a while,
and I was trying to pitch it correctly and trying
(03:53):
to get the tone right. And then, as chance would
have it, Trevor wanted to do this Florida week for
the show where he would do shows from Florida. And
it was kind of the perfect confluence of this piece
that I wanted to do for a while and a
(04:13):
reason to do it, because normally we try to do
pieces that are at least somewhat relevant to what's going
on or you know, current event. And so since this
was set we had a whole week of shows in Florida,
I was like, well, this might be a good opportunity
for this piece. And so the idea for the piece was,
I'm like an internet junkie. I'm a big time lurker.
(04:37):
I'm on all the chat rooms and websites.
Speaker 5 (04:39):
And so many dms. Said, there's tons of dms very inappropriate.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Well, you know, and one of the memes that has
been around for as long as I can remember, is
this Florida Man meme. There's like a Twitter account which
is like this bot that basically can aggregate Florida Man stories.
There's subreddits dedicated to them, and they were just and
they've been around forever. I worked on The Old Show
(05:07):
with John and we were doing Florida Man act ones
way way back when, so it was definitely not a
new phenomenon. But I think at the time, you know,
Trump had gotten elected and there was just kind of
this resurgence of really really crazy stories, especially coming out
of Florida, and I just wanted to do a piece
(05:31):
that kind of explored not and this is in the piece,
but not who is Florida Man? But why is Florida Man?
Why do we hear about these stories so much? And
that was kind of the impetus for starting the piece.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
It's this mysterious Bigfoot type thing because there isn't a
Kentucky Man. It's a Kentucky man Indiana man. And the
only thing I think comes close is Texas, where you
just go Texas, but Texas just kind of covers everybody
as a whole. Like this is very specific. It's like
(06:03):
it's Florida and its men who are screwing up. As
a former Florida resident, what are the qualifications, Daisy to
be a Florida Man, Because you know, I lived in
Florida for five years for college. Shout out to Tallahassee.
But I like, do you have to be super stupid
or is it just inherently down because you're in Florida,
(06:24):
you're automatically an idiot?
Speaker 6 (06:26):
Well, I think what we learned from our expert that
we got to sit with, Craig, is that there's there's
a lot more underneath it.
Speaker 5 (06:34):
There's a lot going on in Florida, and there's.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
A quite a few reasons why we see those headlines
so often.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
But I think it usually involves.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
A gator, something illegal, usually beer, and something unnecessarily sexual.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
Usually every Florida Man story has all of those elements.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
That's right accurate, Ye.
Speaker 6 (07:00):
But no, I think, like my favorite pieces that I
get to do on the show are pieces where we
think it's about one thing and then somewhere in the
piece we discover it's about something else entirely. So we
kind of go into this piece with our with envisioning
these you know, Florida Man memes and think that we're
(07:20):
going into kind of poke fun at Florida men, and
then quickly realize like, there's a lot more underneath it.
There are a whole list of reasons for why we
see these headlines in the news, but most importantly, towards
the end, we discover the Sunshine Act and we end
up kind of landing in this place of you know,
(07:40):
it's it's not just that these things are happening in Florida,
but we are hearing about them a lot more in
Florida because of the Sunshine Act. And really there's a
little bit of Florida man everywhere, which I didn't know
coming into it. So that's I mean, that was my
favorite thing about that piece. Or is this nice arc
and discovery that people aren't really talking about.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
I want to go back, Sebastian to what you said
a little bit earlier about you liking to live in
an abstract, which is true. You did one of my
favorite pieces on the show that I mean, of course,
every piece that I'm in is my favorite, but one
of the favorite pieces that I was not in you
Runnie Chang, and you had Runnie in the Uma Thurman
kill Bill Too Yellow. What was it the nunchucks were illegal.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Birstally, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did like a kung Fu
movie basically for a piece that's very tertiarily about kung fu.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Hey, is it a little weird that I'm playing this guy?
He's like super white running.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
If a white guy does it, it's problematic, it's cultural appropriation.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
If you do it, it's.
Speaker 7 (08:58):
Fun, is it?
Speaker 5 (09:01):
I honestly I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Okay, whatever, let's fight. So with this piece, you went
into it creatively, with this true detective angle. Talk to
me a little bit about that production style and when
you're actually sitting down with these actual because you all
went and talked to actual Florida men who have been
the focus of news stories while at the same time
you're trying to have this conversation but also trying to
(09:23):
frame it in a way that the viewers haven't seen
before so that they can at least feel like they're
getting something, you know, a little different. Totally.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
I am a hack when it comes to originality or creativity,
and I truly consider myself just like bound to parody
as much as I can be because everything's been done
all the time so much better than I can do it.
And so rather than trying to reinvent or recreate something
(09:52):
I lift from a lot of things, and so for this,
we were going into it with a True Detective vibe.
The first season had been out for a couple of years,
and I loved the first season of True Detective. Originally
I had pitched this. I don't know if you remember Roy,
but this is with you and Desi. Roy was the
Woody Harrelson type character and Desi was the Matthew mcconnachay character,
(10:14):
and I was so jazzed about it. And you know,
in one of the pitch meetings, Trevor was like, that's great.
I don't think we need Roy for this. DESI can
do all of this. Not to mention, there's going to
be so much stuff here, you won't have time for
both of them doing those games as well as the
Florida Man. And he was absolutely right, And I'm glad
that we just did it with Desi because we wouldn't
(10:37):
have had time for exploring your guys' relationship and all
that stuff. But to your point, I loved how True
Detective was filmed, and I just I was a big
fan of that first season especially, and so I wanted
when I go into pieces, I like, I have an
idea for what I wanted to look like and feel like.
And our DP on this, who's an amazing DPIs my
(10:58):
good friend Joel Joel Jaul Sadler, an incredible cinematographer. So
I basically showed him shots from True Detective and things
that I liked from that show, and he was able
to basically recreate it almost to a tea. And so
when you're trying to replicate that, it's great if the
(11:20):
audience knows what you're doing, like, oh, this is like
a True Detective thing, that's great, but it's equally as
satisfying if they don't and they're like, this is really
interesting and cool. But at no point do I ever
want people to think I came up with any of
these artistic or aesthetic choices. These are all other geniuses
that I'm just trying to replicate. So that was the
(11:41):
idea for Florida Man, because there was a lot of
similarities between these Florida Man stories and True Detective, which
is horrifying because that shows about a psychotic serial killer.
But yeah, that's kind of how I went going into it,
And yeah, I'm all of the elements technically that made
(12:05):
this really work were all of the things that were
really out of my control. And as a testament to
our team Joel Desi acting obviously, our editor Nick Johnson
was incredible and brought so much great ideas to make
it work. And then not to mention, you know, our
segment producer Matt got so many of those bookings. One
(12:27):
of our camera people down there, Kelly was he had
all these locations in mind. So it was a true
team effort to really pull this off. And I think
is a testament you can tell how good or bad
a pieces based on how many people are on board
providing or contributing their art, and for this one, it
was like a full team effort and I think it
(12:47):
shows it's just yeah, it's my favorite.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
People forget is that you know this We're not the
local news. It's not just a reporter and a cameraman
and go like this is miniature, full short film production
type shit going on here. Desi, When you were talking
with these people, how much did it feel like to you?
Because the question we always get is correspondence, are the
(13:11):
people you're talking to and on it where? To me,
it's never been that that style of conversation. It's just
tell me your truth and we're going to have a
conversation about the way you see the world. But within that,
did any of them realize what they were saying or
do you feel like they felt like, well, maybe I
shouldn't be talking to the Daily Show.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
I don't think so.
Speaker 6 (13:34):
I think all of them were extremely confident in their
Florida maneness. I think they felt really good about who
they are and what they had to say, and that
makes it so much fun for us.
Speaker 5 (13:50):
Like I mean, for me, it was like the.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
Perfect cocktail of Sebastian being so specific about his vision
of what this piece should look like, the style of it,
and the tempo of it and the mood, and then
casting all of these great, really genuine and authentic and
very funny characters to just do their thing. All I
(14:13):
had to do was step up and just listen and
react to all of it and play straight person. It
was like, I mean, you know, that's the why, which
for this.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Was not an easy test to do. I mean, Jake
Desi's credit, I was throwing her into these situations with
these a lot of the times actually crazy men, and
there were it was not the amount of straight facedness
that DOESI had to perform for this is astounding compared
to what these people were talking about off camera and
(14:44):
on camera.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
So that was no easy.
Speaker 6 (14:46):
This is where Nick comes into play, because Nick could
edit out all of my breaks and mental breakdowns in
between each shot. But no, I got that alligator man.
I'm sorry, but he was. He he was just the greatest.
Speaker 8 (15:02):
He's been hit with charges after pictures in this video
showing him handling an alligator, which he posted.
Speaker 7 (15:08):
We're seen by law enforcement A real name.
Speaker 8 (15:10):
Jordan Bedford, but I go by the alligator man.
Speaker 5 (15:13):
Okay, alligator man.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
What's the common factor among all Florida men?
Speaker 7 (15:18):
We all different?
Speaker 8 (15:19):
Well, I'm different from the rest because I do the
wrong thing in the right way, if that makes sense. No, no,
see you're not from Florida, so you don't understand my
language what I'm talking right now. But I do the
wild things. Anything you think of, I'll probably do it.
Catch like I tell you, anything, I catch gators, anything, anything, well,
not anything, but basically anything.
Speaker 6 (15:42):
He was definitely my favorite. I to this day wonder
what he's up to. I almost left my family, but
he wouldn't have me.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
I thought that Costa and I got kind of the
short end of the stick when they were assigning Florida
field pieces for Florida Week because we have to cover
the green algae.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 8 (16:03):
Oh there it is a dead fish.
Speaker 5 (16:04):
That's pretty gross.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Yeah, what's the smell like to you?
Speaker 3 (16:08):
It smells like dead fish.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And we rowed a boat into some of the algae
plumes and like our eyes were watering in shoes, like
we're planned to be there thirty minutes and like ten
minutes in and we were like, hmmm, I think we
got everything we need. Let's let's freaking get out of here.
How what was the worst part of your shoots, because
I noticed that a lot of yours were outdoors. Costa
(16:32):
and I at least had a couple of indoor situations.
Speaker 5 (16:35):
Yeah, it was hot. It was really hot.
Speaker 6 (16:38):
It was I can remember sweating just and I am
not I know, I'm from the South. I am not
a lady when it comes to heat and sweat. I
was dripping and sweating profusely, and for some reason, I
chose to wear a black part wool suit in the
in the ninety degree weather with that humidity, in the
(17:00):
middle of an orange grove.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, that was I mean, that's partially my fault because
I wanted to look I wanted you to.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Be this kind of yeah, look like a detective detective
and that Yeah, that day was so hot.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
And Craig will tell you the guy that's on the
show later because we were interviewing him. We wanted to
be at outdoors because we had an orange grove available
to shoot in very Florida and Droll's really good at
working with natural light. But man, that was so hot.
I needed to, like between takes, like go into the
car cool down a little bit.
Speaker 6 (17:34):
We all were running into this tiny pickup truck just
to get like a little taste of the ac and
then run back.
Speaker 5 (17:39):
Into the field. At one point, we're in the middle
of filming towards.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
The end, and I looked down in my sweat stain
on my chest just like grew to about this size.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
It was. It was a problem. It was very hot.
And then do you remember Seth you came up with this.
We were we were clearly going for.
Speaker 6 (17:56):
This true detective, very noir feel, and at some point
we were like, DOESSI should smoke Jess should smoke cigarettes
during this piece.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 6 (18:06):
Thought, yeah, that's that's a great idea, and I'm going
to commit, like I'm really going to show them that
I'm a smoker. And I really committed to it all
the way through. I'm coughing, I can't breathe. Yeah, at
what point, Sev, did you decide that's let's DESI, let's
put the props down and not do that anymore.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Well, we got the one shot of you smoking I needed.
But yeah, I was definitely like there were a lot
of suspect props. We had unpasteurized orange juice that like
we were gifted from an orange grove that I was like,
DESI just start chugging this orange juice on camera and.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
It's just fresh out of a field, fresh out of
a field.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
So there were a lot of questionable props and probably
dangerous things that not to mention, you know, putting DESI
in like the middle of nowhere with this pirate man
that had guns and knives on him.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
Wait, but he was also a landscaper.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
He was also a landscaper though.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
A pirate who was also a landamer.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
Yeah, oh, missy, I am Captain Silki suber Chips.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
Cool and you're pirate.
Speaker 7 (19:19):
Well, I'm a pirate most of the day. When I'm not,
I'm a landscaper.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
I think the to your point, Roy, I think the
big draw of Florida men is that they a lot
of them want and like notoriety, and two of our
guys kind of were like all three of them were
kind of like that, but our first guy, Robbie was
definitely more on like the I don't know how much
(19:44):
of this I can talk about, but Jordan the alligator
man and Jamie the landscaper pirate were very like. They
loved it and they want They talked to us forever
and we had to be like, all right, that's good.
So they were really willing and we didn't have to
you know, coax them or feed them, you know, any
type of direction to go to, because they were just
(20:05):
all in from the beginning absolutely Well.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
After the break, we're gonna be talking with a man
from Florida. That's there, you go, that's the appropriate way
to separate the two. There's Florida man. But then we're
gonna talk to a man from Florida who's a journalist
and Arthur and I feel like he knows Florida the
way Miami knows cocaine. This is beyond the scenes. We'll
be right back beyond the scenes. We are back. We're
(20:31):
talking about Florida Man. We already have Desi lighted and
Sebastian Dinah Towel in the chairs joining us now. Is
a Florida man, not the Florida man. He's a man
from Florida who doesn't do Florida man. Shit. You understand
what I'm trying to say right now, journalists and author
of the state You're in Florida Man, Florida Women and
(20:53):
other wildlife. He's an expert witness who was featured in
the original segment that Desi did. Pittman, welcome to beyond
the scenes.
Speaker 7 (21:02):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Now when we talk Florida. And this is the thing
that I learned when I was at Florida A and
M for college up there in the Panhandle. The Florida
that people think kind of happens south of like Orlando
and all points south. That's postcard Florida, that's TV Florida
Panhandle is kind of a different field. Like where in
(21:25):
Florida are you from? Are you from North Florida, South Florida.
They split that ship up like the Dakota's.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Well, I'm from Pensacola, but I now live in Saint Petersburg,
so I've been on both sides of that line, and
I think it's I think it's more of a coastal
versus inland thing. You know, people people see the postcards.
They think, you know, it's all beaches everywhere, and they
don't realize, Oh wait, you know there's cattle ranches and uh,
you know, lumber mills and uh, you know, crazy people
(21:52):
doing stuff at the at the liquor store.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
You got people sneak into horse stables in Okalla, all
of that own areana. You've been Highway ninety on me
right there, Florida, I know all of that shit. Baby
Walton Beach destin Florida, bamla. So let me let me
start with this dosy Sebastian kickback and watch two Florida
boys kicking for a second.
Speaker 5 (22:14):
You got it.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Why are these New York elites always coming for us?
Speaker 7 (22:20):
Don't because they envy us.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
They want to be us, they want to have that freedom.
That's why they want to.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
To Florida cocaine and then judge Florida.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Yeah, exactly, it's all. It's all it's all hating. They're
just hating because they're indianas man, That's all it is.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
But in all seriousness, what is it that makes Florida
seem crazier than the rest of America? Like? Is that?
Is that reputation justified? Or is it really that much crazy?
Speaker 7 (22:51):
Yeah? Oh heck yes, oh definitely. Listen.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
My basic principle is you find weird stuff happening anywhere
you find humans, but more of it happens in Florida,
and it tends to be weirder. And I think that's
because we have certain elements here that you don't find
anywhere else. We've undergone this wrenching demographic change where we
went from the least populated southern state in nineteen forty
to now being the third most populous state, and everybody's
(23:15):
kind of crammed into this thirty mile wide swath along
the coast and along the eye for where the theme
parks are. You know, we've got this, you get these
weird elements to the state where we've got you know,
this invasive python population eating everything insight in the Everglades.
We've got actually have people who are professional mermaids making
a living as state employees in Florida, which you don't
(23:36):
find in any other state.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
It is for those in Iguanas falling from trees.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
When yes, we are showing up in toilets, they show up
in toilets too. I mean, the crazy stuff just happens
here all the time, and people in Florida who've been
here for a while are like, oh, yeah, that's just
you know, that's just Thursday.
Speaker 7 (23:53):
Man.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
You know, I can't remember Sebastian if it was you
a daisy earlier that was talking about the sunshine laws.
But can you go into that a little bit more
for us? Sure?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
So, uh, you know, I read Craig's Book of Florida
for this in preparation for this piece, because that was
like my bible for a lot of this because it
basically had my son, thank you it had. It was
like also the first nonfiction book I had read it
like ten years, so I was really just absorbing all
(24:24):
this new information.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Did it still feel like fiction? Though? It did?
Speaker 8 (24:28):
Well?
Speaker 3 (24:28):
It did absolutely. I was like, there's no way. But
Craig really broke down very nice and neatly all of
these factors, like the ones that he just said and
the one that stuck with me, the most was and
Craig will also tell you it's certainly not the the
the reason we kind of elevated it for the piece
(24:49):
to you know, end the piece basically because we needed
an ending. But the Sunshine Act, this law that Craig
can probably speak to a lot better than I, basically
allow for a ton of this transparency in Florida when
all these misdemeanors or sometimes felonies happen, where a lot
of peep journalists especially can go and get these records
(25:12):
of these incidences incidents very easily. And that's the amount
of Florida Man's stories. Because you talk about, like we
do this whole montage in the beginning and the end
of all of these stories. We didn't have to like,
we didn't have to make up any of those stories
because there were so you just googled Florida Man stories
finding like literally like dozens to hundreds of headlines on
(25:36):
camera anchors reading these stories, it was clear to me
and us that like the Sunshine Act definitely plays a
part in why these stories are so accessible and talked about.
Because after doing the piece and after researching it more,
I realized not a ton of other states.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
Almost no other.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
States have as expansive transparency laws about these types of misdemeanors.
So that was for me a nice button to kind
of put the whole piece together, which is, you know,
there's weirdos everywhere, like Craig was saying, but I think
in Florida, all of these factors plus this idea of
(26:17):
complete transparency just really tickled me as a really nice
way to summarize why this kind of person is so rampant.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Craig, I'm about twenty years out of you know, last
pain rent in Tallahassee, but I remember distinctly in the
corner stores. I don't remember what it was called, but
it was like the crime paper in.
Speaker 7 (26:42):
Oh yeah, the most lugshot paper.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Yeah, okay, So like, I don't know of another state
that just publishes mugshots for just random misdemeanors and solicitation
of prostitutes. You taught me with the crumb of myth, Like,
does that pulling into it as well in normalize in
that behavior for locals?
Speaker 7 (27:01):
Uh? Somewhat.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
I mean, you know, obviously somebody figured out, hey, we
can use the Sunshine Law and make money off of
it by publishing these these little ratty pulp mags full
of the latest mug shots because people.
Speaker 7 (27:13):
Will buy it and go, oh, yeah, it's mister Johnson.
I knew he was up to something, you know.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
But there's been a sort of an ethical debate about
that too, where there were some newspapers that were making
money off of running mugshot websites. And then there started
to be a sort of a backlash to that of saying,
you know, well, a lot of these folks they just
got arrested, they haven't been convicted of anything, you know,
and these mug shots are going to be there for
(27:38):
a while. Do you really want to highlight that? And
so people started pulling back on that. Let me just
respond to Sebastian real quick though, that that, yeah, the
Sunshine Law is a reason why a lot of this
these stories wind up coming to light. But after Florida
passed at sunshine Law, some other states passed similar laws.
You don't see weird stories to the volume of Florida's
(27:58):
coming out of those states. I mean, we we are
you know, we produce more weirdness than we produce orange juice.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Basically, Florida's a weird place, though, man, Like it's this
weird intersection of retirees, tourists, a lot of a lot
of immigrants, locals, and then you just have like regular
agriculture people. Like there's certain states like Nebraska's for fucking farming.
(28:26):
That's what we're here to do.
Speaker 4 (28:28):
That's one of those boring square states, you know that
how can they heck can they be fun?
Speaker 1 (28:32):
So there isn't this convergence of different agendas, not to
mention droves of It's where Nickeoloney, the fact that Nickeloney
is a Viacom property, which we love very very much.
Please watch the Paul Patrol movie on Paramount Plus. But like,
I'm bewildered by so many different things all happening in
(28:53):
that place at the same time. Like, is there a
way to decrease these types of incidents?
Speaker 4 (28:59):
No, In fact, I think they're going to continue to
increase as the population continues as well, despite our efforts
to kill people off with COVID. That is the you know,
the our population just keeps getting bigger and bigger, bigger,
and we have you know, we have like one hundred
million tourists coming every year too, on top of the
regular residents. So and again they're all kind of crammed
(29:20):
into that same narrow area. So and people come here
with these expectations too, if they feel like Florida is
a place to get have a second chance to start
over and you know, make some of the same mistakes
they made before and maybe maybe make some new ones.
So that contributes to it as well.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
To that point too, Craig, I think our pirate Silky
silver Tips, that was actually his story. He was like
he was a transplant, even though he kept saying.
Speaker 8 (29:46):
Like he was.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
He kept talking about being like born and raised in
Florida and then immediately says, well, I'm a transplant.
Speaker 5 (29:53):
But that was Chicago.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
But the other point that I thought was really co
and a part that I wanted to try to make
a big center piece for this particular piece, is the
mental health issue. And we even get our first I
mean our first Florida man willingly tells us like DESI asked,
what do you think it is? And he just says,
right off the bat, unprompted, mental health issues.
Speaker 5 (30:19):
Isn't there something that all Florida men share. There's something
behind it.
Speaker 7 (30:24):
Mental health issues.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Then in the piece we get you to elaborate on that, Craig,
that Florida has one of the worst I think mental health.
Speaker 4 (30:35):
We consistently rank forty ninth among the states and spinning
on mental health, which I can only say, thank God
for Texas.
Speaker 5 (30:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
So, yeah, I think that that's probably if you wanted
a really quick, ten second Florida Man piece, that's probably
it is that there's almost no mental health resources and
a lot of these people need those resources.
Speaker 7 (30:55):
Yes they do.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
So then to that point, DESI, when you were down
you're talking to these people, and like I've often felt
like when you go and cover pieces of correspondent and
then you go back and you become a consumer of
media again. On the other side of that, it can
sometimes change how you view people. Like do you think
that the people that are in these Florida Man stories
(31:16):
that are highlighted every day in media are they victims
of circumstance or are they mental health? Are they dealing
with addiction issues?
Speaker 5 (31:24):
I'm no expert.
Speaker 6 (31:24):
Craig is certainly the expert, but it seems like there
are all of those issues at play. I think the stories,
the men that we talk to down there, we're certainly
wacky characters without a doubt, But I think in the
booking process. We were also pretty conscious of finding subjects
that did not have horribly dark stories in their past, so,
(31:50):
you know, we didn't want to be making Florida men
who have mental health issues or addiction issues the butt
of the joke. Instead, I think we tried to very
specifically book people who had funny stories who kind of
were just like a victim of their circumstances, and then
also on top of that, start a little bit of
a conversation of the problem in the way that the
(32:14):
media was portraying some of these headlines in these stories.
I think part of the joke was also on, you know,
journalists being kind of the hero of their own stories
and the way that they were covering all of this.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Yeah, Daisy's whole like b plot was that she wanted
to win a bunch of like Pulitzers.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
For this because well, it's coming. It's coming. I have yet, Yeah,
but we have some time.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Part two, So Craig to that point, like some police
departments post Florida man stories on their way. Hey, look
who we arrested. This guy was doing some wacky wacky wacky.
Yeah we got them. Everybody laugh in the comments. Make
sure you like and review our police department podcast is
(32:59):
there as I didn't realize that's a real thing.
Speaker 7 (33:05):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
Well, and the funny thing, they actually caught a guy
because he came in and made comments on their Facebook
posting about him and was haunting them, and so then
they'd ribble to track him down and arrest him. Wow,
and he became a Florida answering.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
All right, Well, after the break, we're going to talk
about where we can go going forward with this issue,
or do we just need to solve Florida off? Or
will global warming solve this problem for us? It's beyond
the scenes. We'll be right back. You know, we could
just wake this.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
Shit out, you never know, just a matter of time.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
We're talking Florida man, Florida men's. A group of Florida
men together is called a god damn. I don't know
if you need that or not.
Speaker 7 (33:49):
I'll notify websters.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
More than three Florida men together is called a y'all.
More than five is a god damn.
Speaker 7 (33:58):
Craig, I think it's called a shale technically.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Sebastian as a non Floridian, do you think it's fair
that Florida is a punching bag Orid's earned.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Yeah, you know, I think it's fair that it is
a punching I mean, I'm from New Jersey, so I
get the idea of Florida. No, no, no, it's very
very different. But I will say I I guess punching back.
It really depends on how you approach and view these stories. Obviously,
(34:31):
if there's a mean spirited, shodenfreude element to people enjoying
these a lot of the times horrific stories, I think
that's very problematic and that's not what we wanted to
do with this piece. We try to approach it with
empathy but also a type of light heartedness, because a
(34:52):
lot of these stories are pretty lighthearted for the most part.
There are some that are incredibly dark, and we didn't
want to have focus on those, and I think.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
That you did. You didn't want to focus on the
myth band biting faces off in mind. Yeah, yeah, we're
still try this comedy in eating someone's face under a
bridge on that Tuesday after.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Although to a point, I do think that Florida people
and Craig could probably confirm or deny this. There is
a sense of not pride, but there is a sense
of Yeah, that is us, kind of like we are
that insane and crazy and colorful and caricaturey, and I
think that a lot of the times they lean into that.
(35:36):
So it's kind of a it's I think it's a
celebration of that. I might be way off, Craig.
Speaker 4 (35:42):
No, No, I think there's a there's a split. I
have some friends who like me, or Florida natives, who
every time they see some wacky story come out nationally,
they're like, oh God, please don't let it be Florida,
Please don't let me be Florida. And of course it's
always it's always Florida. There's always some Florida element. Like
the woman in New Jersey who was getting on the
plane with the emotional support peacock. The ecock was from Florida.
I mean, there's always some Florida aspect to it. But
(36:03):
then there's others. And then this is my point of view,
which is, you know, let your Florida freak flag fly.
You know, be proud of the fact that we are
the most interesting state. You are never bored here, you know,
it's not like one of those square states where you know,
you turn on the news every day. It's the same
thing day after day here. You know, you open the paper,
you turn on the news, and you're like, wow, a
guy punched a swan today.
Speaker 7 (36:22):
Hmm.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Okay, we are the most interesting state. I think that
should be our slogan, not Sunshine State because it rains
here so much. It's just it's not funny, but the
most interesting state. I think we can defend that one.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
How incendiary though, is it for outsiders to attack Florida
and make fun of Florida and make Florida man jokes, which,
to Sebastian's point and to your point, even makes people
wear that difference with a sense of pride to the
point where they become contrarian. You know, when you look
at what's happening right now in Florida with just anti
vaccine and and well first anti masking, then anti vacs,
(37:01):
how much of that is just people being defiant to
the people that have been made Well, you were going
to make fun of us anyway, so I'm gonna do
what I want to screw you.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
Well, I think that's the tapping into this. You know,
Florida has always had this really strong libertarian streak. You know,
we don't want the government telling us what to do.
We were we were an open range state long after
any of the Western states. I mean, up until nineteen
forty nine. You didn't have to fence your cattle here,
you know. So you know, it's like so, so, you know,
(37:31):
DeSantis has really tapped into that and and tapped into that,
which is ironic because he's the government telling people what
to do, which is you can't tell people what to
do about masks. So he's managed to do a nice
little ju political jiu jitsu move on.
Speaker 7 (37:45):
On the situation there.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
But some of it too is you know, there are
people here who are just that wacky that they're like, yeah,
I think I'm not going to take the vaccine, but
I am definitely gonna get me some de warmer medicine
from the from the from the from the horse farm people.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Daisy, do you think that everything that happens in Florida
is it a Florida problem or an American problem or
is it just the Internet making things seem worse than
what they are?
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Probably all of the above.
Speaker 6 (38:13):
I think the thing that I loved about the piece
so much, and like Sebastian said, we definitely highlighted this
probably more than you could factually say that this is
the entire reason, but that the Sunshine Law really gave
me a new perspective on what was happening in Florida,
and that's it is talked about more because of that law.
(38:38):
We just happened to see those headlines a lot more,
and that these things are happening all over the country.
So I think when there are huge issues all over America,
you want to go like, oh, this is a Texas
problem or this is a Florida problem, And yeah, there
are certain challenges that exist there, but it's also really
opening up a larger conversation of what's happened beening all
(39:00):
over the country, and if they aren't addressed they're locally,
they become bigger problems all over the country. So yeah,
I mean, Craig is the expert on that.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
But well, we've got a writer here named Tim Dorsey
who I like a lot, and one of Tim's lines
is Florida is the pace car for national dysfunction, which
I think is a pretty accurate.
Speaker 1 (39:19):
Incredible. That's incredible, Craig. Then we'll we'll we'll end with this. Well,
we've got one more thing, but it's silly, but I
want to do it. But first we'll end with the
more serious, ques less serious question. If we know that
you cannot shame or embarrass people into better behavior, how
do we create a sense of empathy for other people,
(39:41):
including Floridians, especially in this Internet age. How do you
create a sense of empathy for someone because like even
now with people dying who were like, there are anti
vaxxers who die and the first thing they do is
pull up their tweet and go, nanny, nanny, boo boo.
Look what you said three weeks ago. That ain't empathy.
How do we create a sense of that as a
(40:03):
way to hopefully, you know, bring the country together at
least bring Florida closer to the country.
Speaker 4 (40:10):
Man, if I knew that, they'd give me the Nobel
and the Pulitzer. But you know, you're absolutely right, we
should feel empathy for these folks. I actually have a
piece in my new book, The State You're In, where
I'd argue that instead of laughing at the people in
these mug shots, we should just every time I look
at them and go there, but for the grace of God,
go I you know, because once screw up one mistake
(40:31):
and you could be the one you know, in the
Little mug Shot magazine being sold at the corner store.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
All right, and so then last question, and this is
for everyone. Does everyone know their Florida birthday?
Speaker 4 (40:44):
No?
Speaker 1 (40:47):
What is your Florida Man birthday? First we have to explain, Craig,
can you explain that to people? What the Florida This.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
Was a thing that went around a couple of years
ago where you plug in the terms Florida Man and
your data birth and do it in Google and it
spits out whatever was the Florida Man story for that
particular day, because of course there is a Florida Man
story for three hundred and sixty five days, including and
maybe even leap Day as well.
Speaker 7 (41:10):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (41:10):
Mine turned out to be a fairly tragic one and
which I don't want to talk about. But that's the
thing is, some of these stories are not funny. They're
they're purely tragic. But of course some of the ones
that turned up, you know, people were laughing about aha,
you know the burglar and silver Springs who broke in
and thought that the ashes in the in the cremation
eurn when were actually something that could snort, you know,
things like that.
Speaker 3 (41:31):
I mean, you can I just I just did my
Florida man birthday now, and I think this is a nice,
not super dark one. But as police arrest Florida man
for drunken joy ride on motorized scooter at a Walmart,
that hits a lot of pot I think, yes it does.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Yeah, here's two from my birthday that I I guess.
One's decent ones a little a little darker. Florida man
beat atm says it gave him too much cash.
Speaker 7 (42:01):
I remember that. I wish I had that problem.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
I think that's a really good example. Sorry that there's
almost no logic to any of these stories, because you're like, oh,
he beat him up because he didn't the machine didn't
give him enough money, but that he beat him up.
It's just all of these stories defy any logic or sense,
and I think that's what's so great about them.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
The other one, the other one, Florida man throws Charriot
child in dispute over.
Speaker 5 (42:31):
Donut over donut.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Yeah, I only read that because he didn't connect. He's
fine as.
Speaker 7 (42:38):
Long as as he had bad aim. That's the important thing,
you guys.
Speaker 5 (42:42):
I just plugged my birthday in and it came up.
Speaker 6 (42:44):
Nothing found, So is that the saddest Florida Man story
of all times.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Well, that will happen. Something will happen then on that
date and sometime the next week. Oh yeah, it's like
a candy Man.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
Times.
Speaker 5 (42:59):
Florida Man.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Well, his book is the State You're in, Florida Man,
Florida Women and other Wildlife. Craig Pittman, thank you so
much for coming beyond the Scenes with myself, Daisy Lighter
and Sebastian Dentel.
Speaker 7 (43:10):
I've enjoyed it.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
This was great man. Well we did it, and for
more Beyond the Scenes go to Dailyshow dot com slash Beyond.
Got to get back down to Pensacola. Man, it was
some good barbecue. Then, Hey, Beyond the Scenes listeners, if
you haven't rated and reviewed us yet on Apple Podcasts,
(43:33):
I need you to stop right now and do that.
Drop us a rating, let us know how you feel
and write a review. Write a review too, because I
read those to my child at the end of the night.
Because I'm out of books. I gotta go buy them
new books.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.