September 20, 2024 • 55 mins
Payne and team are hard at work investigating a new case on Up and Vanished: In the Midnight Sun.
In the meantime, please enjoy this Re-Released episode with Jason Flom. He is a renowned music industry executive, entrepreneur, and advocate for criminal justice reform. As the CEO of Lava Records, he has been instrumental in the success of numerous artists, contributing to the rise of icons Katy Perry and Lorde. Beyond his achievements in the music business, Jason is a passionate philanthropist and criminal justice reform advocate. He serves as the founding board member of the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted individuals through DNA testing. Flom's commitment to justice reform extends to his podcast, "Wrongful Conviction," where he sheds light on the flaws in the criminal justice system and shares the stories of those who have faced wrongful convictions.
Subscribe to Tenderfoot+ for ad-free listening - https://tenderfoot.tv/plus/
Follow Talking to Death on Social:
IG: @talkingtodeath
TikTok: @talkingtodeathpodcast
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 (00:01):
Talking to Death is released weekly every Wednesday and brought
to you absolutely free. But if you want ad free
listening and exclusive bonuses, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus
dot com or on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Talking to Death is a production of tenderfoot TV and
iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome back to Talking to Death. It's Mike here. Where's
pain right? Well, right now, He's super busy with the
new season of Up and Finish and I'm working from
home today getting over this cold. So I might sound
a little off, but either way, we have a very
exciting interview today. Our guest is a former music executive
turned podcaster. He was CEO of Atlantic Virgin Records, Capital
(00:45):
Music Group and even had his own label. He signed
some huge artists like skid Row, Katy Perry Lord in
Matchbox twenty, just to name a few. Now he has
a whole network of shows and hosts an incredible Webby
Award winning podcast called Wrongful Conviction. His name is Jason Flahm,
and it was an absolute blast meeting him in New
York City. His whole story about how he got into
(01:07):
justice reform is actually just fascinating. I really don't have
anything else to say, so let's go ahead and play
the theme song.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Now that I know that you're an ex music mogul,
which I did not know. It's pretty, it's got a badass.
Let's be real, what time period did you work in
in the music industry. It's kind of an amazing journey
that I had.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
You know, I often say my story is really the
story of my life, is my journey from being to
I want to be Jimmy Hendrix, the chairman and CEO
of three of the biggest record companies in the world,
but more importantly, from being a drug addicted college dropout
to a pioneer in criminal justice reform. And you know,
I do a lot of public speaking, and that's how
I almost always start I speak for that because it's
kind of like, huh, you know, like wait, that was
(02:02):
a big thing. Yeah, But my my music business journey.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Sorry.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
When I was eighteen years old, I failed at being
a rock star and then decided, through you know, lucky
break and serendipity and a lot of other things, I
found out that I might be able to have an
opportunity to create helping other people become rock stars, I
feel too, and so many of us did. Here we
are and then live vicariously through them. So that was
(02:26):
my Uh, that was my plan from the time I
started at Atlantic Records as an eighteen year old kid
and they gave me a staple gun and some double sided
tape and a bunch of led Zeppelin posters and you know,
sent me out at the record stores to go put
these posters up. And I was like, this is the
greatest job ever.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I feel like this was the end the day where
there was big money in that space where those crazy
record deals, because they were there was bands and artists
doing millions of CD sales, right, I mean casually, dude,
it was yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
I mean, if you could fart and tune back, then
could more or less you know, have a I mean
it was we didn't know how good we had it, right,
but it was. It was an awesome time there was
you know, look, it was also a time when you know,
the level of creativity, especially in rock and roll, was
(03:20):
so extraordinary and uh and I grew up on rock
and roll, so I mean I loved, you know, the
iconic rock bands of the of the seventies was what
I grew up on.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And so top three, top three for me growing up.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Wow, if I only had to pick three, it would
be Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and I'm talking about early Aerosmith. So
people looking at the Going Way, aren't they like, no, no, no,
I'm talking about Get Your Wings, you know, Toys in
the Attic Rocks, the first album that was That was.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
The serious, serious stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
That's what's inspired you know, Guns and Roses to start
their band. Slash talks about that in the book. But
and if I had to pick a third, I mean,
the first one that comes to mind is Bob Dylan.
You know, I mean different but yeah, he You know,
I used to sit in school board and transcribe his
lyrics and just sit there and off, like what the fuck.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Inscribe them just but then hearing it and writing it
down just just like write out like poetry, Like there,
you know it's poetry.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
His lyrics are poetry. But then you know, I mean
or what yeah, well that was before Liner knows how
I used to listen to music back then. Lines were
really a thing back then, and there was no like okay,
now you can look up anything on rap genius.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Right, it's like so accessible. It doesn't really make sense.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
But no, I just memorize them and write them out.
But then, of course that was Queen, you know, and
that was also one of my north stars. So I
mean I gave you four instead of three.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Okay, I mean I'm glad you threw Queen in there, though.
That's the Yeah, three is impossible.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I feel like, dude, my dog's name is Freddy Mercury. Like,
let's get here, that's your actual dog's name. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's like the Freddy Murky both names.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Is Reddy Mercury.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, Okay, because he's because he's a rock star and
he's always looking for somebody to love, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So it's like it makes kind of perfect sense.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, I'm a dog lover, an animal lover, and you know,
other than working on justice stuff, you know, animal stuff
is my other sort of philanthropic you know, lean whatever
you want to call it or cause you know, there's
there's others, but those are my yeah, and so saving
the rhinos in particular. But but dogs are just everything
(05:25):
to me. And I can say that I love every
dog I've ever had, but I've never had.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
A connection with an animal like the one I have
with Freddie. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
And by the way, and this is you know, this
is this is a true story. It's gonna sound too
good to be true. But and you may have even
seen this because it went viral. But Freddie was on
the beach about three months ago with my girlfriend and
(05:55):
I was actually, it's gonna sound boogie. But I was
on the golf course and she texts me and she says,
there's only one of the person at the beach with
us today, and it's one of our guy who lives
in our neighborhood who we know with his dog. And
he was stumbling around like he was disoriented, and then
he collapsed and he's out cold, and she goes, I called,
you know, the ambulance were waiting for him now. And
(06:15):
I was like, oh my god, you know, you know,
please keep me posted.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Like what can I say? I'm not there, you know
what I mean, I'm not a doctor anyway, I don't
know what to do, right.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Freddy goes and sticks himself under this guy's legs. His
name's David, sticks him under David's legs, sticks some self on,
positions himself they're holding his legs in the air, and
just sits there like a sphinx with his little tennis
ball in front of him that he was playing with
before this happened, and waits for the ambulance. Ambulance drives
onto the beach. The e MS guys get out and
(06:45):
they said to her is he friendly? And she's like yeah,
and they go good, because he's doing exactly what we
need him to be doing, which is holding this guy's
legs in the air because he's in diabetic shock. And
you have to keep I didn't know this and she
didn't even know this, and she's got training as a nurse,
but you have to keep somebody's legs elevated apparently our
body part to keep the blood flow going when they
go into this diabetic shock.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
So how did your dog know that? We don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
He sat there, He sat there stone still the entire
time as they were, you know, resuscitating him. And you know,
I found out later that he was not you know,
he was not far away from going into a coma.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
So your dog saved this guy's life.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
With yeah, I mean with help obviously, but we don't
we have no We know that dogs can be trained
to detect COVID, to detect cancers and Teles. We know
the dogs have incredible abilities to help, but usually they
have to be trained to do so. In this case,
he just instinctually knew exactly what to do and he
just went and did it without anybody asking.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
He was off leash. By the way, what do you
make of that? Then? You know it makes you think
we don't deserve dogs. I can tell you that, right, Yeah,
I mean it's you know, what can you say? I mean,
it was incredible and I put it on my Instagram.
My Instagram by the way, is it's Jason flamm If
you want to follow me, is it s Jason Father?
(08:09):
There was another Jason Wlamber got there before me. He's
a school teacher in Tallahassee. You follow him to one.
But so, yeah, no dogs are you know? What was it?
The founder of Kinko's.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I've heard a quote attributed to him where he said,
my dog could do my job because he has the
only two qualities that matter. He's enthusiastic and loyal, and
I was always stuck with him.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
That's a true statement, But it's so much more than that.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I mean, they're just you know, and he's super friendly,
you know, and you know, it's like I I'm an
underdog person in sports. I always root for the underdog everything,
I root for the other dog life, right, that's it
that informs my work injustice?
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Why is that? I don't know. I mean I just
grew up that way as a kid. You thought that too. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I hate bullying, you know, I hate fucking bullying and
I hate injustice.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Were you ever bullied?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I was probably bullied, you know, less than a lot
of other kids. My brother was bullied very badly. Okay,
that definitely left a really it was a really tough
thing from my child that just remembering that and being powerless.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
To do anything about it. Is he an older brother
or because a year and a half older, but he's he's
a younger brother. Who Yeah, I was a younger brother
who went to different schools and even in camp, you know,
like it was just it was bad.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I mean, he looks very different. He's you know, he
had all sorts of problems he's related to, you know.
I think he was born very prematurely, and so he
had very poor coordination, physical issues and of course kids,
you know, they pick on kids people. Yeah, and so
and I really wasn't I didn't know where I was
(09:55):
coming from or who was doing it. I knew I
didn't know what to do about it, and U but
I hated it and I hate it whenever I see
it in any anywhere, whether it's animals, people, the justice system.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
You know, it's just it.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
And if I'm in a position, I think for all
of us, if we're in a position to do something
about it, you should do something about it.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
I found I found, you know, for me, I found
a way to make an impact. And it's been you know,
it's been my life's work for the last like thirty years.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So you wanted to be a rock star and then
you said that you became a college dropout, a drug
addicted college dropout. Okay, what happened? You said it like
I've aspired to it. I wanted to be a drug
a college drop me a rock star? Right, No, that
wasn't the rock star. Life just gets you to too
(10:48):
soon or what happened?
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Yeah, I was a rebellious kid. I had nothing really
to rebel against. I came from, you know, wonderful parents
and you know, but I.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Was maybe rebelling against that. Yeah, I don't know. I
mean that.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
You know, we're all when we're kids. I mean, look,
I think I smoked. You know, I smoked as much weed.
I was like a I mean it was like a
Jewish Rastafarian, Like it's ridiculous, you know what I mean,
not in a religious way.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
I just smoked all all your friends know that you
had the weed.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah, because I was selling you. And I mean I
had hair. I had so much hair that you couldn't
see my face. It covered my entire head. I don't
know how I smoked through it, but I did. And
the fact is in the summer I got really frizzy.
So the fact is I never really ran out of
weed because you know, I mean, I was selling it
(11:38):
so which was really dumb. But you know, I recognize
that if not for the color of my skin and
the zip code I grew up in, I absolutely would
have gone to jail.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
When did you first realize that? Yeah, I mean I
think I really it really hit me when when I
had my moment. Right.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
For many people who are listening, they've had a moment, right,
I'm sure you've had your moments that that informed you
just sort of turn your life on a dime and
feels like right. And for me, that moment came in
nineteen ninety three, so thirty years ago. As we're sitting here.
It was the most random thing. I happened to pick
(12:22):
up the New York Post, which I never read. No
one should read it.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
I still don't read it. Still read it. I mean,
it's like it's poison.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
But I picked up the New York Post this particularly
day because I guess I was meant to times was
sold out. I was getting in a taxi. You know,
we didn't have phones to mess around with back then.
So I happened to see a story that I was
obviously meant to see, which was a story about the
kid named Stephen Lennon hid been sense to fifteen years
(12:49):
to life for a nonviolent first defense cocaine possession charge
in New York State. And for those of you who
think maybe I just misspoke, which would be a logical
thing to assume because it sounds so crazy, I was
actually telling this story to the guy I know yesterday
who was a coppack. Then he's like, no, no, that can't be.
I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that could be.
(13:10):
So it was a non violent first offense cocaine possession
charge in a maximum security prison in New York State.
They're serving fifteen years to life. Now, it wasn't a
small amount of coke, but they didn't catch him selling it.
They happened to find it under the seat of his car,
and he and his friend who was a passenger in
the car both got arrested in charge with the full
(13:31):
amount of the drugs. Yeah, and so in those days.
Fortunately one of the organizations I work with has helped
to lead the charge to reform these laws. But in
those days of the Rockefeller drug laws, any possession over
four ounces of coke was treated as an A one felony,
the same as murder. So and in fact, hee in
some ways you be better off with murder because you
can plead down to manslaughter and you can get you know,
(13:55):
you can usually get a plea on a drug charge too,
if you if you plead guilty, but if you go
to trial, you get whacked. So these kids got fifteen
years to life. And the reason I think that it
hit me so hard was because I had had my
own substance abuse issues at this point. This kid's name
was Stephen Lennon. He had been in for a little
(14:18):
over eight years. At this time, I had been sober
for almost eight years because I'd gone to rehab instead
of jail because you know, but I had had issues
with cocaine, and he was thirty two years old. I
was thirty two years old. So I was like, damn,
but I'm not religious at all, but there before the
(14:38):
grace of something goes, I right, some higher power, So
I was like, fuck, I got to try to do
something about this. Yeah, like, because this is horrible, Like
this is unreal, It's unreal.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
They probably felt very unfair, right, just like why am
I so lucky? Right? I mean, and he probably thought
about why that is, and of course is it just
because you're white? Unfair on every level? Right, like how
could this be non violent? First offense? You can't puture
(15:13):
yourself in there? And you go holy shit. On many
occasions I had gotten into a car with someone to
buy it who had lots of it in the car
because they were driving around selling it to different people
all day long. That could have been you as the passenger, right,
absolutely right, you're there unless the way the laws worked.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
And still unfortunately, work is a weird word to use,
because but you know, the way the laws were written.
When we put it that way, if you were in
the car and you said it wasn't yours, and everybody
else says it's not theirs. It belongs to all of
you in its full amount. So and this wasn't the
(15:53):
only case like this I ever worked on, but anyway,
so this was like, holy shit, that definitely could have
been me. So he had four point two ounces of coke,
which is really dumb, because four ounces was the cliff.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Right where they could charge you and then just off.
Although who knows that maybe it was three point nine
and they rounded it up and a little bit. Yeah,
I don't know. But anyway, so I decided to see
if I could do something about this, and I called
his mother. His mother, by the way, the reason the
article was even in the newspaper at all was because
(16:27):
his mother, Shirley.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Who was a homemaker from upstate New York, had been
trying to get clemency from Governor Mario Cuomo for her son,
the father of our former governor here, and had gotten
letters from the sentencing judge, the warden, and even Geraldine
Ferraro wrote a letter on his behalf. And Geraldine Farr,
of course, was a major figure. She was the first
woman ever to be nominated to be vice president for
(16:51):
a major political party of the United States, and her
own son, John had been arrested for coke but sentenced
to house arrest because you know how much he was
caught for what it was. But anyway, so she, to
her credit, empathized with this woman who had written her
a letter out of the blue and wrote a letter
to the governor, which you would think would carry some weight.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
She was from New York. She the vice presidential Yes,
this is an important person with you know.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
And it also is why it made the newspaper because
Cuomo turned it down. So him turning down this powerful woman,
you know, was was a story. And so that's why
I was in the newspaper. That's why I saw it.
So I called up Shirley, and I said, listen, you
probably think I'm some you know not.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
You called her up just randomly as a thirty two
year old like budding. I'm going to try to help her. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yeah, I didn't know anything about anything. I just saw
that her name was in the article. She was in Rome,
New York. How many Shirley Lennon's could be in Rome,
New York.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I called her up.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
I remember saying something on the lines of you know,
you probably think on some whack job from New York City,
but I just read this story and I can't. You know,
it's living rent free in my head. I I got
to do something about this. Can I send you some money.
I don't have a lot of money because I was
just a young record executive back then, but I'll send
you what I got. Maybe you can hire a new lawyer. Like,
you know, my eyes are wide, I don't know what
(18:11):
I'm doing. And she's like, well, it's very nice of you,
but you know, we've exhausted all of our appeals, and
you know, we were hoping for clemency, and now that
you know, she's going on just like and she was
telling me that there was a guy who was a
murderer who got into that same prison as her son
was sent to that prison where her son.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Was after it was convicted. He was already out and
her son had another seven years to go before he
was even out. Double for a role.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
I'm like, okay, something they were right. Something's rotten in
fucking Denmark and in New York too. So I said, look,
I'm gonna try to do something. So I got the
only lawyer I knew. The only criminal defense latter I
knew at the time was a guy named Bob Coleena.
He represented two of the artist I had signed, Stone
Temple Pilots.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
And entertainment attorney. Yeah yeah, like I said he was.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
He represented Stone Temple, Pilots and skid Row whenever they
would get arrested, and they were getting arrested a lot,
you know. So I was like, I had'm on speed dial, right, yeah,
So I was like, I called Bob. I said, you know,
see if we sit down, and I put him on
the phone with Shirley and he said, look, it's hopeless,
but I'd been looking for a pro bon o caase anyway,
I'll take the case pro bono. I said, great, And
(19:14):
six months later he had found some you know angle
He said it wouldn't work, but he was able to
get us a hearing. So off to Malone, New York
we go, which is up on the Canadian border, and
we're in this courtroom. I mean, now bear in mind,
this is still ninety three or maybe early ninety four.
I still had a freaking mullet and purple Doc Martin's
(19:37):
they bring this kid, Stephen in his hands, are shackled
to his waist and his legs are chained together. I'm like,
did this guy just go kill a bunch of people
that we don't know about?
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Right? Is this a serial killer? What was happening? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:50):
And you know he was sort of a you know,
it's sort of a skinny guy. You know, it sort
of not didn't look like an imposing figure anyway. The
arguments go back and forth. I literally have no idea
what the fuck I'm listening to. And the judge bangs
the gavel down boom and says the emotion is granted.
(20:10):
And I'm sitting there holding missus Lennon's hand. She's squeezing
it as you can imagine. Her husband's on the other side.
Stan is his name, And Bob comes sort of scurrying
over in his suit and tie, and.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Like, Bob, what happened? And he goes, we won? And
I was like we what? And he's like, we won
and I was like, holy shit, that's fucking great.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Right, So I was like this and that was my moment, right,
So they sent him home and I was like that
was fun, right, And fun is a trivial word, but
it was the most fun I could ever remember having hat.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
It was successful. It was a shot in the dark
and also a pretty badass tale of how you got there.
Probably safe to say that that started informing you from
that point forward a little bit in your life. That's
what that? What did that tell you?
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Like?
Speaker 1 (21:02):
What'd you learn from that? I guess, well, it was
beginner's luck, for sure.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
It's I wish it were that easy, but in this
case it was meant to be, obviously, and so it
just left me with this feeling of Wow, I have
some sort of superpower that I didn't know I have,
and I'm going to use it to the best of
my ability to help as many people as I can.
So that you know that feeling, it never gets old.
(21:26):
I mean, I know, I often say, Payne, I've had
a lot of number one records, I've been super lucky
in the music industry, and not one of them comes
close to the feeling of walking one person out of prison,
which I've had the privilege of doing now many times.
So so that experience changed the course of my life.
(21:46):
I realize how lucky I am on so many levels,
and how lucky are we right just to be sitting
here in New York City.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Right just to be born here. When you say that, though,
what are you thinking about when you say I'm so lucky?
What do you mean? I mean you listen to Neil
de grass Tyson talk about how your odds of even
being born or like one in four trillion or something.
I don't even know how you figure that out. How
microscopic we are in the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
I can't even win the power ball and that's only
like one in a you know, one hundred million or
something chances or two hundred million. But the idea of
being born is one thing. But then being born as
a human, you know, compared to being born as you know,
you could be a you know, it could be a a.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Lot of animals or that would suck to be that
would suck, right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
And then there's you know, and then there's the idea
of being born where we were born. If you were
born here in America, right to the people we were
born to, right, because you could be born in America
but be born in you.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Can't choose that. You can't choose where you were born.
Who you are.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
You're just you're born in North Korea. You're fucked, You're
just You might as well be not born, you're stuck
there forever forever. Yeah, yeah, and so and there's so
many places where you could be born, you know, into
just you know, I mean impossible situations, right, and by
the way, we have them in America too, Right, if
you were born in the Mississippi Delta, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
It's a lot different, you know.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I mean, I recognize that there are doors that opened
for me that you know, by virtual of the fact
that my father, you know, who was the first generation immigrant,
you know, was grew up borderline homeless, you know, like
a lot of immigrants, you know, built a better future
for us, and that's what everybody wants, right and so
(23:27):
for us kids. And he was able to, you know,
get me that faithful interview. I make no bones about it, right,
I mean he when I was a misfit eighteen year
old smoking pod all day, didn't want to go to college,
he knew somebody who knew somebody who got me an
interview at Warner Communications, and they gave me this one
year trainee position and stuck me at Atlantic Records with
(23:47):
just like I said, with the staple gun and some
double sided tape. And I was like, I fell in
love with the music business. But had that door not
been opened, who knows, you know. I mean like it's like,
did you.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Know at that time though, how I guess special that
was or did that come in sort of a nuanced
way in hindsight as you grew older.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
No, it came I think, you know, as you as
you grow up, you start to really appreciate that type
of you know, privilege if you want to call it
that or lock or is serendipity or whatever you want
to call it, it's you know, but it's important that
we don't take it for granted, and that we try
(24:28):
to you know, reach back and try to create opportunities
for other people who weren't as lucky, you know. So
and then of course part of that being unlucky business
is being born in a place where you're or in
a color of your skin or born in a skin
color I should say, where you're that much more likely
to be victimized by our you know, disastrous obsession with
(24:52):
mass incarceration and you know and locking up our own
citizens at a rate that no other country has ever
done in the history of the world and and I
hope will never ever do again. So you know, that's
all of that. Look, you have to get lucky in
life in a lot of ways, right, every everyone's in
an average of like three car accidents I've heard, you
know in their life. I got like two more, then
you got two more to go. I guess, yeah, yeah,
(25:14):
I think I've used up my quota. But you know,
so you know, there's there's just so much luck in
everything that we do.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
So how's that shift your viewpoint? Then? I mean, because
it's easy to it's easy to say we're so lucky, right,
but then okay, but how do you translate that into
your life? Like how do you actually look at the
bigger picture and what are you really telling yourself every day?
As you you know, it's just a moment to say
we're so lucky, but yees can still suck. So yeah,
(25:44):
how do you well use that to propel you?
Speaker 3 (25:48):
I guess it's a good question, so perspective, right, And
you know on my podcast, you know, one of the
podcasts that the one that I host, but one of
the ones that we distribute on my through my company,
Lava for Good, is called Wrongful Conviction. I was the
first one I started in twenty sixteen. You know, we're
I don't know, fifty sixty million downloads and now whatever
(26:10):
it is, and you know, a few hundred episodes, And
each week I interview somebody.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Who is the opposite, who.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Was beyond unlucky, who got arrested, charged and convicted of
a crime they didn't commit. Sometimes I go to death
row to interview these people. I'm going back to death
row in Texas to visit one of them next month,
a guy named Rob Will who's innocent, but he's on
death row. And so that'll keep you in check, right, yeah,
(26:41):
I mean talk about putting gratitude in your attitude. So
every week is another story that is absolutely mind blowing
because you sit there and you go, how can Temagon Kenzu,
for instance, right be in prison in Michigan now almost
thirty seven years when everyone knows and knew back then
(27:01):
that he was almost five hundred miles away at the
time the murder was committed, and yet there he sits
thirty seven years.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
So what is the reason then? Because they like to
close these cases, right, they don't want to be wrong
our system of justice.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
My Amanda Knox is like my little sister. We actually
call each other.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
H I've actually hung up with her a couple of times.
She's great, amazing, She speaks so eloquently about this. She
talks about how we should have. What we have is
an adversarial system of justice, which means the prosecution wants
to win. Of course, the defense wants to win. That's
true in any system. But what we should have is
(27:42):
an inquisitorial system of justice, as many other countries do,
where you're what you're trying to do is get to
the truth. You're not trying to win.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
But as so many of our ele of our top
people in the justice system, DA's and judges are elected
and for them it it's good to have a lot
of convictions, right, you look to at least have the opting.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
You get replaced if you're the guy who is losing
all your cases as a DA. Right, and think about this,
to hire the profile the case right, small community, grizzly murder,
whatever it might be, it becomes the pissing contest. A
man is the perfect example of this.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Right, And then it becomes trial by media and among
other things, And it also becomes the thing where there's
pressure from the community, from your bosses, from your maybe
even from your own family to solve this case. And
if you do, there's good news. You're gonna be the newspaper, right,
You're gonna be heralded, you might get promoted, you might
(28:43):
have an opportunity to move up to a different position
that you'd like to have, run for a higher office, etc.
You have prosecutors that brag about having a perfect record
in murder cases, right, meaning a perfect record of getting
everyone convicted. But in this country where you have states
like Louisiana and Florida, where for every seven people in
(29:03):
each of those states that's been executed, three have been
found innocent on death row.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
That's a real stup. Huh. And that doesn't even include
the ones. That's too many, that's any is too many?
How about that? I mean, yeah, any is too many? Yes,
you're right. I mean if that was you, that would
be horrible.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
This is what I say to people who are in
favorite of death penalty. Yeah, they're not even to use
a baseball analogy, they're not even batting seven hundred. It
might not be six hundred. And these are death penalty cases, right,
the ones that should be most scrutinized.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
So they're not even good.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
They're not even good at it. They're not even getting
it right, like I said, nowhere close to seventy percent
of the time. And think about this.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
If you're on death row and the whole system is
stacked against you, once you're convicted, right, you're no longer
innocent until I'm doing that is a whole different thing.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Now you're guilty until proven innocent. Although I believe the
once you're arrested, that whole thing kicks in. But I
think those are just words for the most part of
our system. But so, yeah, I you're on death row,
how the hell are you going to prove that you're innocent?
Speaker 1 (30:02):
It's almost impossible.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
So if all those people, almost all of whom were
very poor, were able to find a way to prove
their innocent from inside death row, how many others were
there that weren't able to Who are mentally incapacitated, who
are who have given up hope, who are not in
a position or just don't can't find the evidence or
the evidence is you know, and you interview the guy
(30:25):
just to give you an idea of how fucked up
our system is. Unwrongful conviction. I interviewed a guy named
Anthony Ipanovich. I spoke about him when I was on
Joe Rogan and Anthony was convicted of a crime and
didn't commit in the state of Ohio. Since the death,
the state said the DNA evidence had been lost. This
(30:47):
was a there's a violent crime that had a lot
of DNA, right, I think it was. I think it
was a rape murder, And yeah it was. And thirty
two years later the DNA is found. It was stored
in the wrong place or whatever. It was right under
here the whole time, like.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Somebody somehow or other. The defense got ahold of it
and they got it tested and it proved what he
had been saying all LNG is that he was innocent.
So he was freed right after thirty two years gets worse.
So he's home for seventeen eighteen months. He's a grandfather
now right, sitting on the porch with his grandchildren. One
(31:29):
day he said, eight cop cars, well up or a
dozen whatever it was. Tons of cops jump out and
re arrest him. He's like, what are you doing. They
just couldn't let it go. They took him back to
death throw because somebody.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
In the halls of power of justice quote unquote, we
don't even call it a justice system. We would call
it a legal system because this little justice in it.
But somebody had discovered that there's a statute in Ohio
which we're working to overturn now that says that the
only person that can question DNA testing is the incarcerated
person themself. And because he didn't request it, because he
(32:05):
had been told it didn't exist, the fact that it
had been found and proved his innocent and proved his
innocence was not relevant, and they put him right back
on death row, which is where he is right now
as we're sitting here having this conversation.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Where is the logic in that there's none. They know
he didn't do it, but they put him back on
death row. So they really just went and found a
loophole because they wanted to be right. And now we
have to work to change the law in Ohio. That's
a systemic cultural problem with the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
Right, and let us not forget that the Supreme Court,
thanks to Justice Scalia, I think he was the one
who wrote the opinion or whatever it said that actual
innocence is not a reason to be freed.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
From death rout. That's proof right there.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, No, that doesn't They prefer finality over justice. So
and let us also reflect for a moment that in
almost every case, well in which yes, in almost every case,
because there are exceptions to this, and I can't explain that,
but in almost every case in which someone is wrongfully
(33:11):
convicted of a crime, a violent crime, the actual perpetrator
remains free.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
So now you're not only is this guy's life ruined,
but someone who likely kills people is potentially doing it again.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
I mean, there are certainly people who you know, do
these things once and then never again. But I think,
you know, it's a hard one to prove, but I
think it's extremely likely and logical that if someone does
something like this and gets away with it, they have
that proclivity, they probably will do it again. I mean,
(33:48):
especially if they get away with it when they're young,
when you're still you know, more likely to do these things.
We know that people age out of crime, which is
why it's so insane that we have this aging prison
population in America. It's hard not to think about. It
goes back to what we're talking about before about being lucky.
The juxtaposition, you know, like if it was a split.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Screen and.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
You know, I'm in my nice two bedroom apartment with
a view and a dog and an espresso machine. And
if I want to go for a walk afterwards, that's
what I'm gonna go do. If I want to go
to the gym whatever. Right, like most people, I enjoy
a level of freedom that is incredible. And then you know,
(34:33):
on the other side of the screen, you have this
guy who did nothing wrong in his life, who is
in a five by nine foot cell the size of
your bathroom at home, most likely, if you're having an
abnormal sized bathroom like most people, with nothing but like
steel and concrete, and it's hot and it smells terrible,
(34:54):
and it's noisy, and it's miserable and the food stinks,
and you're just trapped there with nothing but hardship, deprivation
and misery. And it's like, why do we do it
like this? Why, Like we don't need a death penalty,
and we certainly don't need to have two million people
in prison. It's like, you know, we lock well, we
lock black people up here at six times the rate
(35:16):
of white people. We also lock more black people up
per capita in America to this very day than South
Africa during apartheid, and Jesus you know, and inside those numbers.
You know, like many people know, we have four point
four percent of the world's population, but like twenty five
percent of the world's prison population, thirty three percent of
(35:37):
the world's female prison population. One out of every three
women in the prison cell right now as we're sitting here,
is in this country, the freest country in the world.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Those numbers don't add up. Yeah, and I hate to
just barrage you with statistics, but no, I mean those
things matter to kind of paint a clearer picture for
me in this moment right now, just the how wrong
they are. And then you know, I'll just give you
one more, right, I mean, look, the social scientists that
studied this, you know, from Ivy League schools or whatever,
(36:09):
estimate that between four and seven percent of people in
prison in America are innocent.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
I believe that's very low because I think they're not
taking certain things into account, like the guilty plea.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Problem, and.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Which is the fact that a lot of people plead
guilty when they're innocent because they're looking at too harsh
because the alternative the risk is total total it could
be looking at life in prison.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
And so.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
I think that you know, it's probably a lot closer
to ten percent at least. But even if you take
a mid case scenario of the most conservative estimates, which
is four to seven percent. If you take five and
a half percent and say, well, there's two million people
plus in prison in America right now, that's a lot
of people. That's one hundred, one hundred and ten thousand people, right,
(36:58):
And that's on the low estimate and doesn't even include
the fact that we have all these people in jail,
hundreds of thousand people in jail right now in America
who haven't been convicted of anything. They just can't the
two poor to post bail, so they're just stuck there.
And like, and jails are you know, most people think
jail sounds more benign than prison. Most jails are much
more dangerous than even the maximum security prisons that you
(37:19):
hear about, right, because it's pure chaos.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Just some podn town somewhere and some sheriff who's running
out how they want to And that sounds horrifying. Pote
On town.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
How about right across the river from here, Rikers Island,
right where, yeah, we're right there, y, yeah, where Since
our new mayor took office, twenty nine people inmates have
lost their lives there, and we don't really use the
word inmate anymore. Twenty nine incarcerated men have lost their lives,
mostly through murder well waiting trial at Rikers Island, just
(37:48):
since this new mayor took office. That's twenty nine. That's
twenty nine people who had lives and families and dreams,
and you know, and some of them are guilty. You know,
I'm not only everybody's innocent. Some of them are guilty,
but guilty of what. Some of them are guilty of
shoplifting or jumping a turnstile or you know, drinking a
(38:09):
beer in the park at night or something. You know,
like they got arrested for nuisance crimes, but they were
too poor to post bail, which is why I've been
deeply connected to the bail reform movement for many years
as well.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
I mean, it's clear to me that the work that
you're doing, which is also very admirable, is helping. But what,
in your opinion, is it going to actually literally take
in a grand scheme of things to make this problem
go away.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Awareness is probably the first thing, right, But even if
we all knew, well, then we have to once people know.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
That starts a ripple effect. Right.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
It's why I started the podcast, the Wrongful Conviction Podcast,
is to make potential jurors more thoughtful, right, more ware
of the problems that exist in our system, and less
likely to therefore just vote to convict because it seems
like that would be the reason why you would be there,
which is what.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Most people think.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
So and then if you extend that out, you know,
people ask people what can I do? Well, what you
can do is you can, of course, you can post
about it and talk about it and do what you
can on that level. You can also vote, and it
sounds like a cliche, but vote in local elections, right,
vote in DA races, voting prosecutor, I mean judge races,
(39:30):
things like that. Look at these candidates. Your vote means
so much in those races. I mean you should vote,
you know, presidential races too. But when there's a small
number of people voting, your vote is you know, super important. Yeah,
pull some weight. I mean some of these races have
come down to one vote. I mean, it's not hyperbole.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So if we can elect better people, and if we
can you know, throw out of office people, who are
you know, these conservative uote unquote tough on crime, which
is a nonsensical thing. They're not tough on crime, they're
tough on people. You know, the places that have the
highest crime rates are all the ones that have the
most conservative prosecutors. And in places where we've had prosecutors
(40:13):
come in who have taken alternative approaches, the crime goes down.
You know, it's a very simple thing. Pain and I
talk about this all the time. And like I said,
I do a lot of public speaking. So if you
if you you know, if you're interested, you can contact me,
and I'm always interested in doing that. You can awesome
dm me at It's Jason flam Or even I'll put
(40:35):
my email address in here right now, it's Jason dot
Flom at Lava Records dot com. We know what causes crime,
and we know what prevents crime. It's not what you
think what causes crime.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Desperation. Desperation. Desperation causes crime.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Yeah, that makes sense, and it's a big word right
under that. When people say, what about mental health, I'd
say that's desperation.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Right. If you have severe enough mental health challenges and
no one's helping you with them, then it's not illogical
to think that you're going to act out in a
way that we as society go, Hey, that's a crime.
You mentioned going back to the root of the crime
and it being related to desperation and mental illness sometimes
(41:15):
and these factors. Were you getting at that maybe we
should solve that problem.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Yes, So what causes crime is desperation and what prevents
crime is hope. And so it's not hard when you
think of it in those terms to see what I mean,
Because when you have people who live in desperate poverty
without any opportunity, where they're being harassed by police, where
(41:43):
there's gunshots in their neighborhood from people who are you know,
on the other side of the law whatever, where they're
witnessing you know, traumatic they're having traumatic experiences, witnessing violence
day in and day out. I'm reading that book by
Coaches his last name, called Between the World and Me.
(42:07):
It's incredible how that it puts a fine point on this,
but so many things do. But so eventually, if you
don't see a way out of that, it's not illogical
that you will resort to it itself. For sure, you'll,
you know, you'll do what you need to do to
survive or to feel like you're giving yourself, like I said,
(42:30):
a way out. And look, many of the most prominent
members of our society who came from that type of background.
We're involved in selling drugs, or we're involved in, you know,
some other activities which you know, the entrepreneurial spirit is
what drives them to success in the corporate world or
(42:50):
in the music world or entertainment or whatever. And those
that same gene sort of drives you to do what
you have to do to make it when you're in
an in a situation where you know there doesn't seem
to be, you know, other than maybe sports or music
a way out. You know, where you're dealing with terrible
(43:13):
schools and terrible hardships, and you know your father's in prison,
as too many fathers are in this country. Goes back
to that problem, right, We know that that cycle, right,
the number one thing that determines whether a child will
end up in prisons, whether they've had a parent in prison.
So by locking up generations of black people for crimes
that white people get away with all the time, is
(43:37):
perpetuating that cycle. So if you create hope on the
other hand, by establishing social programs. There are simple things
you can do. By the way that this has been proven.
This is not just me that if you do nothing
else but fix the lights in the poorest neighborhood and
whatever city you live in, right, if you do nothing
but pick the garbage up off the streets. I don't
(43:58):
mean you, but the city right, or the town or anybody.
If you establish a green space or a community center,
or even put in a taco stand where people can
gather and meet and you know, and find commonality, find
common ground, crime goes down dramatically just on the basis
of those things. And it goes back to what I'm saying,
(44:19):
It reduces desperation, it creates hope, and crime goes down.
So we know that that's what works. What do we
see in city after city, including New York City right now,
money being pulled from libraries, being pulled from after school programs,
being pulled from sports.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
It sounds like you're just saying, give a shit, be
a better human. Yeah, I just got a T shirt
that says be a good fucking human. Yet, just like
we know that police don't make us safe, right they did,
we'd be the safest society and the history of the world.
We spend more money on police and in prisons than
any society ever in the aftery of the world. He's safe, right.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
The crime goes up and down globally. It doesn't go
up locally nationally close. It goes up and down, you know,
ebbs and flows for various reasons, and I'm not smart
enough to figure it out, and freakonomics, they had a
whole theory about that. But the fact is that's not
what makes us safe. I mean, I say it over
and over again. Police don't prevent crime, right, and they
rarely solve crime crimes.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
So you know, how do they make us safe? They don't.
We'll close some cases though, close some cases, but too
often they're wrong, you know, and it's a very small
percentage of cases that get closed anyway. So the thing is,
you know, we need to we need to do what's
been been tried and is being tried in cities around
(45:37):
this country, which is alternatives to policing right where you know,
we should not be.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
Tasking the police with doing things that they have no training.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, and then and that's most of what they do. Right.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
The number one and two reasons for interactions of police
and the public are homelessness and traffic in fractions.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
I mean, in all the doom and gloom of the
problems right on a on a human level, in the
grand scheme of things, do you think that there is
hope at all? Yeah? Yeah, Yeah, I think there's hope.
I'm a I mean, and I know that might just
be a mentality, like, but do you do you see
(46:26):
a path that we get better? Like this? You know?
Speaker 3 (46:32):
Now, it's funny because, like I said, many years ago,
New York he did a story about me and this
this journalist named John Seabrook. He said that I have
a look on my face of disappointed optimism.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
I thought, you do it. That's what he said, disappointed.
That's pretty spot on, right.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
So but no, I still do have hope. I mean,
I I often say I've seen too many miracles to
stop leading, to stop leaving.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yes, so yeah, And is that what reminds you when
you when you when you when it happens, right, it
takes somebody.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
When I was a kid, and I was idealistic, and
I was looking to change these things, you know, in
my young thirties, and this guy puts his arm around
me and says, kid, it takes thirty years to change anything,
and now here it is thirty years later. And you know,
I've worked on drug decriminalization, among other things, and you
can buy weed in Washington Square Park from an author
(47:20):
rized cellar instead of getting hitting ahead with the baton
by a cop and then dragged off to jail. Right,
So like it's there is progress. Our prison population is down,
you know, slightly. It needs to go down. I think
I think we can reduce our prison population by at
least eighty percent tomorrow and have no negative impact on
(47:43):
public safety impact. We have a positive impact on public
safety short and long term, but especially long term. So
I do have hope, and I think, you know, if
we can, if we can really look the young generation
of today, and you know, my kids are part of it.
(48:04):
My daughter teaches, been teaching in prisons for years and
years and she, by the way, I have to plug this.
Her new podcast is called Erase the Murder of Alma Sands,
and it's the story of the first murder trial in
American history, at which, by the way, that the guy
was guilty as fuck, but the defense team the murder victim.
(48:25):
It deals with misogyny and class and everything like that, right,
because the victim was not a prominent person, but the murderer,
who was her lover, was part of a very wealthy family,
and so his family hired for the defense Alexander Hamilton
and Aaron Burr. And so what you'll hear in this
podcast it's called Erase the Murder of Alma Sands.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
And what you'll hear is the actual trial because.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
My daughter Allison found the transcript amazing, and you'll find
out some things that you may not want to know
about Hamilton and Burr. We all know was like you know,
it was not a good gun.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
Turns out pieces.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
It turns out they were willing to do a lot
of bad things in order to exonerate their guilty client.
And this was the trial, as she says, it's the
most it's it's the most famous murder trial you never
heard of because it was the first one. And a
lot of the things that we talked about today, there's
still problems that our system came from that trial. And yours,
(49:26):
truly is Judge John Lansick. So I get to say
overruled and a lot which is really fun that you're
one line, Yeah, we need one more take I'm not
an actor your Yeah, no, I had to do a
multi do you do it under the direction of my daughter?
Speaker 1 (49:39):
It was pretty I need a gavel man. It's overruled, overruled. Yeah,
you gotta be it's like stern different. That's pretty good.
I have to say a bunch of times. If you
want to help and you give a ship, what would
you suggest a listener to do that would make a
difference at all. First of all, thank you for listening,
(50:03):
you know, and if you've listened this far, then you
probably have hopefully learned some stuff you didn't already know.
Stuck on the tarmac somewhere.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Get you connect it, or in the traffic jam, Sorry
about the traffic, you know, we actually uh yeah, with
us podcasters, we like traffic. So one of the first
things you can do is when you get that annoying
jury duty notice.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
In the mail, throw it away.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
Don't listen to pain serve serve on jury's. Yeah, if
you're listening to us now, then you're much more educated
than ninety percent of the other people that are out there.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
I see.
Speaker 3 (50:39):
And we need you to be on a jury and
be you know, awake and aware because the life you
save could save. You know, there's that great saying that
it's better that ten guilty men go free than that
one innocent should suffer. And I think everyone would agree
if that one innocent was somebody they loved, so and
everybody who's in that defender's chair as somebody that they
(51:00):
love and think about it too, like even somebody could
be technically guilty of a crime, but you might think
that crime shouldn't really be a crime, right, drug possession
or some other ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
Thing, and you don't have to convict them. You can.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
It's called civil disobedience. You can exercise you right and
just say, you know what, not guilty.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
You can just disagree. You just say not guilty, and
that's it. It only takes one first interesting point because
I don't know if that's you know, complete common knowledge.
I don't think so. Yeah, that's good to know.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
So so serve on the jury's encourage other people to
do so. Spread the word, you know, with with among
your friend group, whatever whatever form that takes.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
I think there are organizations you can look up. One
of the ones I think is one of the most
important ones is an organization called Civil Rights Core.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I'll tell you this.
Speaker 3 (51:57):
Another thing you can do today right now that's free,
is there's a newsletter called Alex A L e. C.
S Apostrophe s alex Coppaganda newsletter. Copaganda is what the
media engages in as the copaganda.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Yeah, you got it, you.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Got it, So subscribe to that blog. It's fantastic and
there's so much to be learned from that. And then
you know, check out check out more podcasts like if
You're if You've if We've gotten your attention, check it out,
you know, learn more. You know, you might find a
case even on on my original show rompla compaction that
(52:33):
that touches you in such a way that you want
to get involved. You can write to people, you can
you can go to the Douglas Project. Right there's a
thing called Douglas Project named after Frederick Douglass that is
an organization relatively new that was founded with the idea
that we can help to bring people inside of prisons
and break that, you know, break break down that invisible
wall between people and the outside people on the inside.
(52:54):
That you can write letters, you can volunteer, you can
establish you can create hope for somebody who's in a
hopeless place.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Well, I think that all the work you've done and
continue to do is inspiring and it's a pretty badass
and I think that, you know, I definitely got something
from it, and it kind of leaves me with the
lingering thought that we can all do something and big
(53:25):
or small, it still matters. Yeah. So, I but I
appreciate your time today, and uh, it's been fun and
I've I've learned more stats than I'll probably remember. I'll
have to go write them down. You may have to
listen to your own podcast, I might, you know, Yeah,
that would help to listen to yours first. We might
put me a while.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
Yeah, we can put crim notes in the flip notes
in there, crem notes, whatever the hell you call that.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
I do watch out your see your daughter's podcast. The
daughter's podcast is erased. Okay, I'm gonna do that one
first because I'm curious. Yeah, yeah, dude, it's good. It's
really good.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
It's getting a lot of attention, and it's going to
be a real rest's excitedly really exciting. So yeah, yeah, so, uh, listen,
I just want to thank everybody for taking the time
to listen. I know you got other things to do,
and uh, you know. Look, I'm a fan of this
guy here, Payne, So I like, I like being on
a show, and I think maybe we'll, uh, we'll figure
out some some other hills we can climb together. Yeah,
(54:18):
fucking around and find out. Yeah, let's fuck around and
find out done.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
Cheers.
Speaker 4 (54:26):
Talking to Death is a production of Tenorfoot TV and
iHeart podcast created and hosted by Payne Lindsay. For Tenderfoot TV,
executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. Co executive
producer is Mike Rooney. For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams. With original music by Makeup
(54:47):
and Vanity Set. Additional production by Mike Rooney, Dylan Harrington,
Sean Nurney, Dayton Cole, and Gustav Wilde for Coohedo. Production
support by Tracy Kaplan, Mara Davis, and Trevor Young. Mixing
and mastering by Cooper Skinner and Dayton Cole. Our cover
art was created by Rob Sheridan. Check out our website
(55:08):
talkingtodeathpodcast dot com.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
Thanks for listening to this episode of Talking to Death.
This series is released weekly absolutely free, but if you
want ad free listening and exclusive bonuses. You can subscribe
to tenderfoot Plus on Apple Podcasts, or go to tenderfootplus
dot com
Talking to Death is released weekly every Wednesday and brought
to you absolutely free. But if you want ad free
listening and exclusive bonuses, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus
dot com or on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Talking to Death is a production of tenderfoot TV and
iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome back to Talking to Death. It's Mike here. Where's
pain right? Well, right now, He's super busy with the
new season of Up and Finish and I'm working from
home today getting over this cold. So I might sound
a little off, but either way, we have a very
exciting interview today. Our guest is a former music executive
turned podcaster. He was CEO of Atlantic Virgin Records, Capital
(00:45):
Music Group and even had his own label. He signed
some huge artists like skid Row, Katy Perry Lord in
Matchbox twenty, just to name a few. Now he has
a whole network of shows and hosts an incredible Webby
Award winning podcast called Wrongful Conviction. His name is Jason Flahm,
and it was an absolute blast meeting him in New
York City. His whole story about how he got into
(01:07):
justice reform is actually just fascinating. I really don't have
anything else to say, so let's go ahead and play
the theme song.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Now that I know that you're an ex music mogul,
which I did not know. It's pretty, it's got a badass.
Let's be real, what time period did you work in
in the music industry. It's kind of an amazing journey
that I had.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
You know, I often say my story is really the
story of my life, is my journey from being to
I want to be Jimmy Hendrix, the chairman and CEO
of three of the biggest record companies in the world,
but more importantly, from being a drug addicted college dropout
to a pioneer in criminal justice reform. And you know,
I do a lot of public speaking, and that's how
I almost always start I speak for that because it's
kind of like, huh, you know, like wait, that was
(02:02):
a big thing. Yeah, But my my music business journey.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Sorry.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
When I was eighteen years old, I failed at being
a rock star and then decided, through you know, lucky
break and serendipity and a lot of other things, I
found out that I might be able to have an
opportunity to create helping other people become rock stars, I
feel too, and so many of us did. Here we
are and then live vicariously through them. So that was
(02:26):
my Uh, that was my plan from the time I
started at Atlantic Records as an eighteen year old kid
and they gave me a staple gun and some double sided
tape and a bunch of led Zeppelin posters and you know,
sent me out at the record stores to go put
these posters up. And I was like, this is the
greatest job ever.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I feel like this was the end the day where
there was big money in that space where those crazy
record deals, because they were there was bands and artists
doing millions of CD sales, right, I mean casually, dude,
it was yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
I mean, if you could fart and tune back, then
could more or less you know, have a I mean
it was we didn't know how good we had it, right,
but it was. It was an awesome time there was
you know, look, it was also a time when you know,
the level of creativity, especially in rock and roll, was
(03:20):
so extraordinary and uh and I grew up on rock
and roll, so I mean I loved, you know, the
iconic rock bands of the of the seventies was what
I grew up on.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
And so top three, top three for me growing up.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Wow, if I only had to pick three, it would
be Zeppelin, Aerosmith, and I'm talking about early Aerosmith. So
people looking at the Going Way, aren't they like, no, no, no,
I'm talking about Get Your Wings, you know, Toys in
the Attic Rocks, the first album that was That was.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
The serious, serious stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
That's what's inspired you know, Guns and Roses to start
their band. Slash talks about that in the book. But
and if I had to pick a third, I mean,
the first one that comes to mind is Bob Dylan.
You know, I mean different but yeah, he You know,
I used to sit in school board and transcribe his
lyrics and just sit there and off, like what the fuck.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Inscribe them just but then hearing it and writing it
down just just like write out like poetry, Like there,
you know it's poetry.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
His lyrics are poetry. But then you know, I mean
or what yeah, well that was before Liner knows how
I used to listen to music back then. Lines were
really a thing back then, and there was no like okay,
now you can look up anything on rap genius.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Right, it's like so accessible. It doesn't really make sense.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
But no, I just memorize them and write them out.
But then, of course that was Queen, you know, and
that was also one of my north stars. So I
mean I gave you four instead of three.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Okay, I mean I'm glad you threw Queen in there, though.
That's the Yeah, three is impossible.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
I feel like, dude, my dog's name is Freddy Mercury. Like,
let's get here, that's your actual dog's name. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's like the Freddy Murky both names.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Is Reddy Mercury.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, Okay, because he's because he's a rock star and
he's always looking for somebody to love, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
So it's like it makes kind of perfect sense.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, I'm a dog lover, an animal lover, and you know,
other than working on justice stuff, you know, animal stuff
is my other sort of philanthropic you know, lean whatever
you want to call it or cause you know, there's
there's others, but those are my yeah, and so saving
the rhinos in particular. But but dogs are just everything
(05:25):
to me. And I can say that I love every
dog I've ever had, but I've never had.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
A connection with an animal like the one I have
with Freddie. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
And by the way, and this is you know, this
is this is a true story. It's gonna sound too
good to be true. But and you may have even
seen this because it went viral. But Freddie was on
the beach about three months ago with my girlfriend and
(05:55):
I was actually, it's gonna sound boogie. But I was
on the golf course and she texts me and she says,
there's only one of the person at the beach with
us today, and it's one of our guy who lives
in our neighborhood who we know with his dog. And
he was stumbling around like he was disoriented, and then
he collapsed and he's out cold, and she goes, I called,
you know, the ambulance were waiting for him now. And
(06:15):
I was like, oh my god, you know, you know,
please keep me posted.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Like what can I say? I'm not there, you know
what I mean, I'm not a doctor anyway, I don't
know what to do, right.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Freddy goes and sticks himself under this guy's legs. His
name's David, sticks him under David's legs, sticks some self on,
positions himself they're holding his legs in the air, and
just sits there like a sphinx with his little tennis
ball in front of him that he was playing with
before this happened, and waits for the ambulance. Ambulance drives
onto the beach. The e MS guys get out and
(06:45):
they said to her is he friendly? And she's like yeah,
and they go good, because he's doing exactly what we
need him to be doing, which is holding this guy's
legs in the air because he's in diabetic shock. And
you have to keep I didn't know this and she
didn't even know this, and she's got training as a nurse,
but you have to keep somebody's legs elevated apparently our
body part to keep the blood flow going when they
go into this diabetic shock.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
So how did your dog know that? We don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
He sat there, He sat there stone still the entire
time as they were, you know, resuscitating him. And you know,
I found out later that he was not you know,
he was not far away from going into a coma.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
So your dog saved this guy's life.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
With yeah, I mean with help obviously, but we don't
we have no We know that dogs can be trained
to detect COVID, to detect cancers and Teles. We know
the dogs have incredible abilities to help, but usually they
have to be trained to do so. In this case,
he just instinctually knew exactly what to do and he
just went and did it without anybody asking.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
He was off leash. By the way, what do you
make of that? Then? You know it makes you think
we don't deserve dogs. I can tell you that, right, Yeah,
I mean it's you know, what can you say? I mean,
it was incredible and I put it on my Instagram.
My Instagram by the way, is it's Jason flamm If
you want to follow me, is it s Jason Father?
(08:09):
There was another Jason Wlamber got there before me. He's
a school teacher in Tallahassee. You follow him to one.
But so, yeah, no dogs are you know? What was it?
The founder of Kinko's.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
I've heard a quote attributed to him where he said,
my dog could do my job because he has the
only two qualities that matter. He's enthusiastic and loyal, and
I was always stuck with him.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
That's a true statement, But it's so much more than that.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
I mean, they're just you know, and he's super friendly,
you know, and you know, it's like I I'm an
underdog person in sports. I always root for the underdog everything,
I root for the other dog life, right, that's it
that informs my work injustice?
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Why is that? I don't know. I mean I just
grew up that way as a kid. You thought that too. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I hate bullying, you know, I hate fucking bullying and
I hate injustice.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Were you ever bullied?
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I was probably bullied, you know, less than a lot
of other kids. My brother was bullied very badly. Okay,
that definitely left a really it was a really tough
thing from my child that just remembering that and being powerless.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
To do anything about it. Is he an older brother
or because a year and a half older, but he's he's
a younger brother. Who Yeah, I was a younger brother
who went to different schools and even in camp, you know,
like it was just it was bad.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
I mean, he looks very different. He's you know, he
had all sorts of problems he's related to, you know.
I think he was born very prematurely, and so he
had very poor coordination, physical issues and of course kids,
you know, they pick on kids people. Yeah, and so
and I really wasn't I didn't know where I was
(09:55):
coming from or who was doing it. I knew I
didn't know what to do about it, and U but
I hated it and I hate it whenever I see
it in any anywhere, whether it's animals, people, the justice system.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
You know, it's just it.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
And if I'm in a position, I think for all
of us, if we're in a position to do something
about it, you should do something about it.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Right.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
I found I found, you know, for me, I found
a way to make an impact. And it's been you know,
it's been my life's work for the last like thirty years.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So you wanted to be a rock star and then
you said that you became a college dropout, a drug
addicted college dropout. Okay, what happened? You said it like
I've aspired to it. I wanted to be a drug
a college drop me a rock star? Right, No, that
wasn't the rock star. Life just gets you to too
(10:48):
soon or what happened?
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Yeah, I was a rebellious kid. I had nothing really
to rebel against. I came from, you know, wonderful parents
and you know, but I.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
Was maybe rebelling against that. Yeah, I don't know. I
mean that.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
You know, we're all when we're kids. I mean, look,
I think I smoked. You know, I smoked as much weed.
I was like a I mean it was like a
Jewish Rastafarian, Like it's ridiculous, you know what I mean,
not in a religious way.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
I just smoked all all your friends know that you
had the weed.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah, because I was selling you. And I mean I
had hair. I had so much hair that you couldn't
see my face. It covered my entire head. I don't
know how I smoked through it, but I did. And
the fact is in the summer I got really frizzy.
So the fact is I never really ran out of
weed because you know, I mean, I was selling it
(11:38):
so which was really dumb. But you know, I recognize
that if not for the color of my skin and
the zip code I grew up in, I absolutely would
have gone to jail.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
When did you first realize that? Yeah, I mean I
think I really it really hit me when when I
had my moment. Right.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
For many people who are listening, they've had a moment, right,
I'm sure you've had your moments that that informed you
just sort of turn your life on a dime and
feels like right. And for me, that moment came in
nineteen ninety three, so thirty years ago. As we're sitting here.
It was the most random thing. I happened to pick
(12:22):
up the New York Post, which I never read. No
one should read it.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
I still don't read it. Still read it. I mean,
it's like it's poison.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
But I picked up the New York Post this particularly
day because I guess I was meant to times was
sold out. I was getting in a taxi. You know,
we didn't have phones to mess around with back then.
So I happened to see a story that I was
obviously meant to see, which was a story about the
kid named Stephen Lennon hid been sense to fifteen years
(12:49):
to life for a nonviolent first defense cocaine possession charge
in New York State. And for those of you who
think maybe I just misspoke, which would be a logical
thing to assume because it sounds so crazy, I was
actually telling this story to the guy I know yesterday
who was a coppack. Then he's like, no, no, that can't be.
I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that could be.
(13:10):
So it was a non violent first offense cocaine possession
charge in a maximum security prison in New York State.
They're serving fifteen years to life. Now, it wasn't a
small amount of coke, but they didn't catch him selling it.
They happened to find it under the seat of his car,
and he and his friend who was a passenger in
the car both got arrested in charge with the full
(13:31):
amount of the drugs. Yeah, and so in those days.
Fortunately one of the organizations I work with has helped
to lead the charge to reform these laws. But in
those days of the Rockefeller drug laws, any possession over
four ounces of coke was treated as an A one felony,
the same as murder. So and in fact, hee in
some ways you be better off with murder because you
can plead down to manslaughter and you can get you know,
(13:55):
you can usually get a plea on a drug charge too,
if you if you plead guilty, but if you go
to trial, you get whacked. So these kids got fifteen
years to life. And the reason I think that it
hit me so hard was because I had had my
own substance abuse issues at this point. This kid's name
was Stephen Lennon. He had been in for a little
(14:18):
over eight years. At this time, I had been sober
for almost eight years because I'd gone to rehab instead
of jail because you know, but I had had issues
with cocaine, and he was thirty two years old. I
was thirty two years old. So I was like, damn,
but I'm not religious at all, but there before the
(14:38):
grace of something goes, I right, some higher power, So
I was like, fuck, I got to try to do
something about this. Yeah, like, because this is horrible, Like
this is unreal, It's unreal.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
They probably felt very unfair, right, just like why am
I so lucky? Right? I mean, and he probably thought
about why that is, and of course is it just
because you're white? Unfair on every level? Right, like how
could this be non violent? First offense? You can't puture
(15:13):
yourself in there? And you go holy shit. On many
occasions I had gotten into a car with someone to
buy it who had lots of it in the car
because they were driving around selling it to different people
all day long. That could have been you as the passenger, right,
absolutely right, you're there unless the way the laws worked.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
And still unfortunately, work is a weird word to use,
because but you know, the way the laws were written.
When we put it that way, if you were in
the car and you said it wasn't yours, and everybody
else says it's not theirs. It belongs to all of
you in its full amount. So and this wasn't the
(15:53):
only case like this I ever worked on, but anyway,
so this was like, holy shit, that definitely could have
been me. So he had four point two ounces of coke,
which is really dumb, because four ounces was the cliff.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Right where they could charge you and then just off.
Although who knows that maybe it was three point nine
and they rounded it up and a little bit. Yeah,
I don't know. But anyway, so I decided to see
if I could do something about this, and I called
his mother. His mother, by the way, the reason the
article was even in the newspaper at all was because
(16:27):
his mother, Shirley.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Who was a homemaker from upstate New York, had been
trying to get clemency from Governor Mario Cuomo for her son,
the father of our former governor here, and had gotten
letters from the sentencing judge, the warden, and even Geraldine
Ferraro wrote a letter on his behalf. And Geraldine Farr,
of course, was a major figure. She was the first
woman ever to be nominated to be vice president for
(16:51):
a major political party of the United States, and her
own son, John had been arrested for coke but sentenced
to house arrest because you know how much he was
caught for what it was. But anyway, so she, to
her credit, empathized with this woman who had written her
a letter out of the blue and wrote a letter
to the governor, which you would think would carry some weight.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
She was from New York. She the vice presidential Yes,
this is an important person with you know.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
And it also is why it made the newspaper because
Cuomo turned it down. So him turning down this powerful woman,
you know, was was a story. And so that's why
I was in the newspaper. That's why I saw it.
So I called up Shirley, and I said, listen, you
probably think I'm some you know not.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
You called her up just randomly as a thirty two
year old like budding. I'm going to try to help her. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Yeah, I didn't know anything about anything. I just saw
that her name was in the article. She was in Rome,
New York. How many Shirley Lennon's could be in Rome,
New York.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
I called her up.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
I remember saying something on the lines of you know,
you probably think on some whack job from New York City,
but I just read this story and I can't. You know,
it's living rent free in my head. I I got
to do something about this. Can I send you some money.
I don't have a lot of money because I was
just a young record executive back then, but I'll send
you what I got. Maybe you can hire a new lawyer. Like,
you know, my eyes are wide, I don't know what
(18:11):
I'm doing. And she's like, well, it's very nice of you,
but you know, we've exhausted all of our appeals, and
you know, we were hoping for clemency, and now that
you know, she's going on just like and she was
telling me that there was a guy who was a
murderer who got into that same prison as her son
was sent to that prison where her son.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Was after it was convicted. He was already out and
her son had another seven years to go before he
was even out. Double for a role.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
I'm like, okay, something they were right. Something's rotten in
fucking Denmark and in New York too. So I said, look,
I'm gonna try to do something. So I got the
only lawyer I knew. The only criminal defense latter I
knew at the time was a guy named Bob Coleena.
He represented two of the artist I had signed, Stone
Temple Pilots.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
And entertainment attorney. Yeah yeah, like I said he was.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
He represented Stone Temple, Pilots and skid Row whenever they
would get arrested, and they were getting arrested a lot,
you know. So I was like, I had'm on speed dial, right, yeah,
So I was like, I called Bob. I said, you know,
see if we sit down, and I put him on
the phone with Shirley and he said, look, it's hopeless,
but I'd been looking for a pro bon o caase anyway,
I'll take the case pro bono. I said, great, And
(19:14):
six months later he had found some you know angle
He said it wouldn't work, but he was able to
get us a hearing. So off to Malone, New York
we go, which is up on the Canadian border, and
we're in this courtroom. I mean, now bear in mind,
this is still ninety three or maybe early ninety four.
I still had a freaking mullet and purple Doc Martin's
(19:37):
they bring this kid, Stephen in his hands, are shackled
to his waist and his legs are chained together. I'm like,
did this guy just go kill a bunch of people
that we don't know about?
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Right? Is this a serial killer? What was happening? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:50):
And you know he was sort of a you know,
it's sort of a skinny guy. You know, it sort
of not didn't look like an imposing figure anyway. The
arguments go back and forth. I literally have no idea
what the fuck I'm listening to. And the judge bangs
the gavel down boom and says the emotion is granted.
(20:10):
And I'm sitting there holding missus Lennon's hand. She's squeezing
it as you can imagine. Her husband's on the other side.
Stan is his name, And Bob comes sort of scurrying
over in his suit and tie, and.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Like, Bob, what happened? And he goes, we won? And
I was like we what? And he's like, we won
and I was like, holy shit, that's fucking great.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Right, So I was like this and that was my moment, right,
So they sent him home and I was like that
was fun, right, And fun is a trivial word, but
it was the most fun I could ever remember having hat.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
It was successful. It was a shot in the dark
and also a pretty badass tale of how you got there.
Probably safe to say that that started informing you from
that point forward a little bit in your life. That's
what that? What did that tell you?
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Like?
Speaker 1 (21:02):
What'd you learn from that? I guess, well, it was
beginner's luck, for sure.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
It's I wish it were that easy, but in this
case it was meant to be, obviously, and so it
just left me with this feeling of Wow, I have
some sort of superpower that I didn't know I have,
and I'm going to use it to the best of
my ability to help as many people as I can.
So that you know that feeling, it never gets old.
(21:26):
I mean, I know, I often say, Payne, I've had
a lot of number one records, I've been super lucky
in the music industry, and not one of them comes
close to the feeling of walking one person out of prison,
which I've had the privilege of doing now many times.
So so that experience changed the course of my life.
(21:46):
I realize how lucky I am on so many levels,
and how lucky are we right just to be sitting
here in New York City.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Right just to be born here. When you say that, though,
what are you thinking about when you say I'm so lucky?
What do you mean? I mean you listen to Neil
de grass Tyson talk about how your odds of even
being born or like one in four trillion or something.
I don't even know how you figure that out. How
microscopic we are in the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
I can't even win the power ball and that's only
like one in a you know, one hundred million or
something chances or two hundred million. But the idea of
being born is one thing. But then being born as
a human, you know, compared to being born as you know,
you could be a you know, it could be a a.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Lot of animals or that would suck to be that
would suck, right, yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
And then there's you know, and then there's the idea
of being born where we were born. If you were
born here in America, right to the people we were
born to, right, because you could be born in America
but be born in you.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Can't choose that. You can't choose where you were born.
Who you are.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
You're just you're born in North Korea. You're fucked, You're
just You might as well be not born, you're stuck
there forever forever. Yeah, yeah, and so and there's so
many places where you could be born, you know, into
just you know, I mean impossible situations, right, and by
the way, we have them in America too, Right, if
you were born in the Mississippi Delta, you know.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
It's a lot different, you know.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
I mean, I recognize that there are doors that opened
for me that you know, by virtual of the fact
that my father, you know, who was the first generation immigrant,
you know, was grew up borderline homeless, you know, like
a lot of immigrants, you know, built a better future
for us, and that's what everybody wants, right and so
(23:27):
for us kids. And he was able to, you know,
get me that faithful interview. I make no bones about it, right,
I mean he when I was a misfit eighteen year
old smoking pod all day, didn't want to go to college,
he knew somebody who knew somebody who got me an
interview at Warner Communications, and they gave me this one
year trainee position and stuck me at Atlantic Records with
(23:47):
just like I said, with the staple gun and some
double sided tape. And I was like, I fell in
love with the music business. But had that door not
been opened, who knows, you know. I mean like it's like,
did you.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Know at that time though, how I guess special that
was or did that come in sort of a nuanced
way in hindsight as you grew older.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
No, it came I think, you know, as you as
you grow up, you start to really appreciate that type
of you know, privilege if you want to call it
that or lock or is serendipity or whatever you want
to call it, it's you know, but it's important that
we don't take it for granted, and that we try
(24:28):
to you know, reach back and try to create opportunities
for other people who weren't as lucky, you know. So
and then of course part of that being unlucky business
is being born in a place where you're or in
a color of your skin or born in a skin
color I should say, where you're that much more likely
to be victimized by our you know, disastrous obsession with
(24:52):
mass incarceration and you know and locking up our own
citizens at a rate that no other country has ever
done in the history of the world and and I
hope will never ever do again. So you know, that's
all of that. Look, you have to get lucky in
life in a lot of ways, right, every everyone's in
an average of like three car accidents I've heard, you
know in their life. I got like two more, then
you got two more to go. I guess, yeah, yeah,
(25:14):
I think I've used up my quota. But you know,
so you know, there's there's just so much luck in
everything that we do.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
So how's that shift your viewpoint? Then? I mean, because
it's easy to it's easy to say we're so lucky, right,
but then okay, but how do you translate that into
your life? Like how do you actually look at the
bigger picture and what are you really telling yourself every day?
As you you know, it's just a moment to say
we're so lucky, but yees can still suck. So yeah,
(25:44):
how do you well use that to propel you?
Speaker 3 (25:48):
I guess it's a good question, so perspective, right, And
you know on my podcast, you know, one of the
podcasts that the one that I host, but one of
the ones that we distribute on my through my company,
Lava for Good, is called Wrongful Conviction. I was the
first one I started in twenty sixteen. You know, we're
I don't know, fifty sixty million downloads and now whatever
(26:10):
it is, and you know, a few hundred episodes, And
each week I interview somebody.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Who is the opposite, who.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
Was beyond unlucky, who got arrested, charged and convicted of
a crime they didn't commit. Sometimes I go to death
row to interview these people. I'm going back to death
row in Texas to visit one of them next month,
a guy named Rob Will who's innocent, but he's on
death row. And so that'll keep you in check, right, yeah,
(26:41):
I mean talk about putting gratitude in your attitude. So
every week is another story that is absolutely mind blowing
because you sit there and you go, how can Temagon Kenzu,
for instance, right be in prison in Michigan now almost
thirty seven years when everyone knows and knew back then
(27:01):
that he was almost five hundred miles away at the
time the murder was committed, and yet there he sits
thirty seven years.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
So what is the reason then? Because they like to
close these cases, right, they don't want to be wrong
our system of justice.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
My Amanda Knox is like my little sister. We actually
call each other.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
H I've actually hung up with her a couple of times.
She's great, amazing, She speaks so eloquently about this. She
talks about how we should have. What we have is
an adversarial system of justice, which means the prosecution wants
to win. Of course, the defense wants to win. That's
true in any system. But what we should have is
(27:42):
an inquisitorial system of justice, as many other countries do,
where you're what you're trying to do is get to
the truth. You're not trying to win.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
But as so many of our ele of our top
people in the justice system, DA's and judges are elected
and for them it it's good to have a lot
of convictions, right, you look to at least have the opting.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
You get replaced if you're the guy who is losing
all your cases as a DA. Right, and think about this,
to hire the profile the case right, small community, grizzly murder,
whatever it might be, it becomes the pissing contest. A
man is the perfect example of this.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Right, And then it becomes trial by media and among
other things, And it also becomes the thing where there's
pressure from the community, from your bosses, from your maybe
even from your own family to solve this case. And
if you do, there's good news. You're gonna be the newspaper, right,
You're gonna be heralded, you might get promoted, you might
(28:43):
have an opportunity to move up to a different position
that you'd like to have, run for a higher office, etc.
You have prosecutors that brag about having a perfect record
in murder cases, right, meaning a perfect record of getting
everyone convicted. But in this country where you have states
like Louisiana and Florida, where for every seven people in
(29:03):
each of those states that's been executed, three have been
found innocent on death row.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
That's a real stup. Huh. And that doesn't even include
the ones. That's too many, that's any is too many?
How about that? I mean, yeah, any is too many? Yes,
you're right. I mean if that was you, that would
be horrible.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
This is what I say to people who are in
favorite of death penalty. Yeah, they're not even to use
a baseball analogy, they're not even batting seven hundred. It
might not be six hundred. And these are death penalty cases, right,
the ones that should be most scrutinized.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
So they're not even good.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
They're not even good at it. They're not even getting
it right, like I said, nowhere close to seventy percent
of the time. And think about this.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
If you're on death row and the whole system is
stacked against you, once you're convicted, right, you're no longer
innocent until I'm doing that is a whole different thing.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Now you're guilty until proven innocent. Although I believe the
once you're arrested, that whole thing kicks in. But I
think those are just words for the most part of
our system. But so, yeah, I you're on death row,
how the hell are you going to prove that you're innocent?
Speaker 1 (30:02):
It's almost impossible.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
So if all those people, almost all of whom were
very poor, were able to find a way to prove
their innocent from inside death row, how many others were
there that weren't able to Who are mentally incapacitated, who
are who have given up hope, who are not in
a position or just don't can't find the evidence or
the evidence is you know, and you interview the guy
(30:25):
just to give you an idea of how fucked up
our system is. Unwrongful conviction. I interviewed a guy named
Anthony Ipanovich. I spoke about him when I was on
Joe Rogan and Anthony was convicted of a crime and
didn't commit in the state of Ohio. Since the death,
the state said the DNA evidence had been lost. This
(30:47):
was a there's a violent crime that had a lot
of DNA, right, I think it was. I think it
was a rape murder, And yeah it was. And thirty
two years later the DNA is found. It was stored
in the wrong place or whatever. It was right under
here the whole time, like.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Somebody somehow or other. The defense got ahold of it
and they got it tested and it proved what he
had been saying all LNG is that he was innocent.
So he was freed right after thirty two years gets worse.
So he's home for seventeen eighteen months. He's a grandfather
now right, sitting on the porch with his grandchildren. One
(31:29):
day he said, eight cop cars, well up or a
dozen whatever it was. Tons of cops jump out and
re arrest him. He's like, what are you doing. They
just couldn't let it go. They took him back to
death throw because somebody.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
In the halls of power of justice quote unquote, we
don't even call it a justice system. We would call
it a legal system because this little justice in it.
But somebody had discovered that there's a statute in Ohio
which we're working to overturn now that says that the
only person that can question DNA testing is the incarcerated
person themself. And because he didn't request it, because he
(32:05):
had been told it didn't exist, the fact that it
had been found and proved his innocent and proved his
innocence was not relevant, and they put him right back
on death row, which is where he is right now
as we're sitting here having this conversation.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Where is the logic in that there's none. They know
he didn't do it, but they put him back on
death row. So they really just went and found a
loophole because they wanted to be right. And now we
have to work to change the law in Ohio. That's
a systemic cultural problem with the whole thing.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
Right, and let us not forget that the Supreme Court,
thanks to Justice Scalia, I think he was the one
who wrote the opinion or whatever it said that actual
innocence is not a reason to be freed.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
From death rout. That's proof right there.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, No, that doesn't They prefer finality over justice. So
and let us also reflect for a moment that in
almost every case, well in which yes, in almost every case,
because there are exceptions to this, and I can't explain that,
but in almost every case in which someone is wrongfully
(33:11):
convicted of a crime, a violent crime, the actual perpetrator
remains free.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
So now you're not only is this guy's life ruined,
but someone who likely kills people is potentially doing it again.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
I mean, there are certainly people who you know, do
these things once and then never again. But I think,
you know, it's a hard one to prove, but I
think it's extremely likely and logical that if someone does
something like this and gets away with it, they have
that proclivity, they probably will do it again. I mean,
(33:48):
especially if they get away with it when they're young,
when you're still you know, more likely to do these things.
We know that people age out of crime, which is
why it's so insane that we have this aging prison
population in America. It's hard not to think about. It
goes back to what we're talking about before about being lucky.
The juxtaposition, you know, like if it was a split.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
Screen and.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
You know, I'm in my nice two bedroom apartment with
a view and a dog and an espresso machine. And
if I want to go for a walk afterwards, that's
what I'm gonna go do. If I want to go
to the gym whatever. Right, like most people, I enjoy
a level of freedom that is incredible. And then you know,
(34:33):
on the other side of the screen, you have this
guy who did nothing wrong in his life, who is
in a five by nine foot cell the size of
your bathroom at home, most likely, if you're having an
abnormal sized bathroom like most people, with nothing but like
steel and concrete, and it's hot and it smells terrible,
(34:54):
and it's noisy, and it's miserable and the food stinks,
and you're just trapped there with nothing but hardship, deprivation
and misery. And it's like, why do we do it
like this? Why, Like we don't need a death penalty,
and we certainly don't need to have two million people
in prison. It's like, you know, we lock well, we
lock black people up here at six times the rate
(35:16):
of white people. We also lock more black people up
per capita in America to this very day than South
Africa during apartheid, and Jesus you know, and inside those numbers.
You know, like many people know, we have four point
four percent of the world's population, but like twenty five
percent of the world's prison population, thirty three percent of
(35:37):
the world's female prison population. One out of every three
women in the prison cell right now as we're sitting here,
is in this country, the freest country in the world.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
Those numbers don't add up. Yeah, and I hate to
just barrage you with statistics, but no, I mean those
things matter to kind of paint a clearer picture for
me in this moment right now, just the how wrong
they are. And then you know, I'll just give you
one more, right, I mean, look, the social scientists that
studied this, you know, from Ivy League schools or whatever,
(36:09):
estimate that between four and seven percent of people in
prison in America are innocent.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
I believe that's very low because I think they're not
taking certain things into account, like the guilty plea.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Problem, and.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Which is the fact that a lot of people plead
guilty when they're innocent because they're looking at too harsh
because the alternative the risk is total total it could
be looking at life in prison.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
And so.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
I think that you know, it's probably a lot closer
to ten percent at least. But even if you take
a mid case scenario of the most conservative estimates, which
is four to seven percent. If you take five and
a half percent and say, well, there's two million people
plus in prison in America right now, that's a lot
of people. That's one hundred, one hundred and ten thousand people, right,
(36:58):
And that's on the low estimate and doesn't even include
the fact that we have all these people in jail,
hundreds of thousand people in jail right now in America
who haven't been convicted of anything. They just can't the
two poor to post bail, so they're just stuck there.
And like, and jails are you know, most people think
jail sounds more benign than prison. Most jails are much
more dangerous than even the maximum security prisons that you
(37:19):
hear about, right, because it's pure chaos.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Just some podn town somewhere and some sheriff who's running
out how they want to And that sounds horrifying. Pote
On town.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
How about right across the river from here, Rikers Island,
right where, yeah, we're right there, y, yeah, where Since
our new mayor took office, twenty nine people inmates have
lost their lives there, and we don't really use the
word inmate anymore. Twenty nine incarcerated men have lost their lives,
mostly through murder well waiting trial at Rikers Island, just
(37:48):
since this new mayor took office. That's twenty nine. That's
twenty nine people who had lives and families and dreams,
and you know, and some of them are guilty. You know,
I'm not only everybody's innocent. Some of them are guilty,
but guilty of what. Some of them are guilty of
shoplifting or jumping a turnstile or you know, drinking a
(38:09):
beer in the park at night or something. You know,
like they got arrested for nuisance crimes, but they were
too poor to post bail, which is why I've been
deeply connected to the bail reform movement for many years
as well.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
I mean, it's clear to me that the work that
you're doing, which is also very admirable, is helping. But what,
in your opinion, is it going to actually literally take
in a grand scheme of things to make this problem
go away.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Awareness is probably the first thing, right, But even if
we all knew, well, then we have to once people know.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
That starts a ripple effect. Right.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
It's why I started the podcast, the Wrongful Conviction Podcast,
is to make potential jurors more thoughtful, right, more ware
of the problems that exist in our system, and less
likely to therefore just vote to convict because it seems
like that would be the reason why you would be there,
which is what.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
Most people think.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
So and then if you extend that out, you know,
people ask people what can I do? Well, what you
can do is you can, of course, you can post
about it and talk about it and do what you
can on that level. You can also vote, and it
sounds like a cliche, but vote in local elections, right,
vote in DA races, voting prosecutor, I mean judge races,
(39:30):
things like that. Look at these candidates. Your vote means
so much in those races. I mean you should vote,
you know, presidential races too. But when there's a small
number of people voting, your vote is you know, super important. Yeah,
pull some weight. I mean some of these races have
come down to one vote. I mean, it's not hyperbole.
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So if we can elect better people, and if we
can you know, throw out of office people, who are
you know, these conservative uote unquote tough on crime, which
is a nonsensical thing. They're not tough on crime, they're
tough on people. You know, the places that have the
highest crime rates are all the ones that have the
most conservative prosecutors. And in places where we've had prosecutors
(40:13):
come in who have taken alternative approaches, the crime goes down.
You know, it's a very simple thing. Pain and I
talk about this all the time. And like I said,
I do a lot of public speaking. So if you
if you you know, if you're interested, you can contact me,
and I'm always interested in doing that. You can awesome
dm me at It's Jason flam Or even I'll put
(40:35):
my email address in here right now, it's Jason dot
Flom at Lava Records dot com. We know what causes crime,
and we know what prevents crime. It's not what you
think what causes crime.
Speaker 1 (40:45):
Desperation. Desperation. Desperation causes crime.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Yeah, that makes sense, and it's a big word right
under that. When people say, what about mental health, I'd
say that's desperation.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Right. If you have severe enough mental health challenges and
no one's helping you with them, then it's not illogical
to think that you're going to act out in a
way that we as society go, Hey, that's a crime.
You mentioned going back to the root of the crime
and it being related to desperation and mental illness sometimes
(41:15):
and these factors. Were you getting at that maybe we
should solve that problem.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
Yes, So what causes crime is desperation and what prevents
crime is hope. And so it's not hard when you
think of it in those terms to see what I mean,
Because when you have people who live in desperate poverty
without any opportunity, where they're being harassed by police, where
(41:43):
there's gunshots in their neighborhood from people who are you know,
on the other side of the law whatever, where they're
witnessing you know, traumatic they're having traumatic experiences, witnessing violence
day in and day out. I'm reading that book by
Coaches his last name, called Between the World and Me.
(42:07):
It's incredible how that it puts a fine point on this,
but so many things do. But so eventually, if you
don't see a way out of that, it's not illogical
that you will resort to it itself. For sure, you'll,
you know, you'll do what you need to do to
survive or to feel like you're giving yourself, like I said,
(42:30):
a way out. And look, many of the most prominent
members of our society who came from that type of background.
We're involved in selling drugs, or we're involved in, you know,
some other activities which you know, the entrepreneurial spirit is
what drives them to success in the corporate world or
(42:50):
in the music world or entertainment or whatever. And those
that same gene sort of drives you to do what
you have to do to make it when you're in
an in a situation where you know there doesn't seem
to be, you know, other than maybe sports or music
a way out. You know, where you're dealing with terrible
(43:13):
schools and terrible hardships, and you know your father's in prison,
as too many fathers are in this country. Goes back
to that problem, right, We know that that cycle, right,
the number one thing that determines whether a child will
end up in prisons, whether they've had a parent in prison.
So by locking up generations of black people for crimes
that white people get away with all the time, is
(43:37):
perpetuating that cycle. So if you create hope on the
other hand, by establishing social programs. There are simple things
you can do. By the way that this has been proven.
This is not just me that if you do nothing
else but fix the lights in the poorest neighborhood and
whatever city you live in, right, if you do nothing
but pick the garbage up off the streets. I don't
(43:58):
mean you, but the city right, or the town or anybody.
If you establish a green space or a community center,
or even put in a taco stand where people can
gather and meet and you know, and find commonality, find
common ground, crime goes down dramatically just on the basis
of those things. And it goes back to what I'm saying,
(44:19):
It reduces desperation, it creates hope, and crime goes down.
So we know that that's what works. What do we
see in city after city, including New York City right now,
money being pulled from libraries, being pulled from after school programs,
being pulled from sports.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
It sounds like you're just saying, give a shit, be
a better human. Yeah, I just got a T shirt
that says be a good fucking human. Yet, just like
we know that police don't make us safe, right they did,
we'd be the safest society and the history of the world.
We spend more money on police and in prisons than
any society ever in the aftery of the world. He's safe, right.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
The crime goes up and down globally. It doesn't go
up locally nationally close. It goes up and down, you know,
ebbs and flows for various reasons, and I'm not smart
enough to figure it out, and freakonomics, they had a
whole theory about that. But the fact is that's not
what makes us safe. I mean, I say it over
and over again. Police don't prevent crime, right, and they
rarely solve crime crimes.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
So you know, how do they make us safe? They don't.
We'll close some cases though, close some cases, but too
often they're wrong, you know, and it's a very small
percentage of cases that get closed anyway. So the thing is,
you know, we need to we need to do what's
been been tried and is being tried in cities around
(45:37):
this country, which is alternatives to policing right where you know,
we should not be.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
Tasking the police with doing things that they have no training.
Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, and then and that's most of what they do. Right.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
The number one and two reasons for interactions of police
and the public are homelessness and traffic in fractions.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
I mean, in all the doom and gloom of the
problems right on a on a human level, in the
grand scheme of things, do you think that there is
hope at all? Yeah? Yeah, Yeah, I think there's hope.
I'm a I mean, and I know that might just
be a mentality, like, but do you do you see
(46:26):
a path that we get better? Like this? You know?
Speaker 3 (46:32):
Now, it's funny because, like I said, many years ago,
New York he did a story about me and this
this journalist named John Seabrook. He said that I have
a look on my face of disappointed optimism.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
I thought, you do it. That's what he said, disappointed.
That's pretty spot on, right.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
So but no, I still do have hope. I mean,
I I often say I've seen too many miracles to
stop leading, to stop leaving.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
Yes, so yeah, And is that what reminds you when
you when you when you when it happens, right, it
takes somebody.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
When I was a kid, and I was idealistic, and
I was looking to change these things, you know, in
my young thirties, and this guy puts his arm around
me and says, kid, it takes thirty years to change anything,
and now here it is thirty years later. And you know,
I've worked on drug decriminalization, among other things, and you
can buy weed in Washington Square Park from an author
(47:20):
rized cellar instead of getting hitting ahead with the baton
by a cop and then dragged off to jail. Right,
So like it's there is progress. Our prison population is down,
you know, slightly. It needs to go down. I think
I think we can reduce our prison population by at
least eighty percent tomorrow and have no negative impact on
(47:43):
public safety impact. We have a positive impact on public
safety short and long term, but especially long term. So
I do have hope, and I think, you know, if
we can, if we can really look the young generation
of today, and you know, my kids are part of it.
(48:04):
My daughter teaches, been teaching in prisons for years and
years and she, by the way, I have to plug this.
Her new podcast is called Erase the Murder of Alma Sands,
and it's the story of the first murder trial in
American history, at which, by the way, that the guy
was guilty as fuck, but the defense team the murder victim.
(48:25):
It deals with misogyny and class and everything like that, right,
because the victim was not a prominent person, but the murderer,
who was her lover, was part of a very wealthy family,
and so his family hired for the defense Alexander Hamilton
and Aaron Burr. And so what you'll hear in this
podcast it's called Erase the Murder of Alma Sands.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
And what you'll hear is the actual trial because.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
My daughter Allison found the transcript amazing, and you'll find
out some things that you may not want to know
about Hamilton and Burr. We all know was like you know,
it was not a good gun.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
Turns out pieces.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
It turns out they were willing to do a lot
of bad things in order to exonerate their guilty client.
And this was the trial, as she says, it's the
most it's it's the most famous murder trial you never
heard of because it was the first one. And a
lot of the things that we talked about today, there's
still problems that our system came from that trial. And yours,
(49:26):
truly is Judge John Lansick. So I get to say
overruled and a lot which is really fun that you're
one line, Yeah, we need one more take I'm not
an actor your Yeah, no, I had to do a
multi do you do it under the direction of my daughter?
Speaker 1 (49:39):
It was pretty I need a gavel man. It's overruled, overruled. Yeah,
you gotta be it's like stern different. That's pretty good.
I have to say a bunch of times. If you
want to help and you give a ship, what would
you suggest a listener to do that would make a
difference at all. First of all, thank you for listening,
(50:03):
you know, and if you've listened this far, then you
probably have hopefully learned some stuff you didn't already know.
Stuck on the tarmac somewhere.
Speaker 3 (50:10):
Get you connect it, or in the traffic jam, Sorry
about the traffic, you know, we actually uh yeah, with
us podcasters, we like traffic. So one of the first
things you can do is when you get that annoying
jury duty notice.
Speaker 1 (50:27):
In the mail, throw it away.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
Don't listen to pain serve serve on jury's. Yeah, if
you're listening to us now, then you're much more educated
than ninety percent of the other people that are out there.
Speaker 1 (50:39):
I see.
Speaker 3 (50:39):
And we need you to be on a jury and
be you know, awake and aware because the life you
save could save. You know, there's that great saying that
it's better that ten guilty men go free than that
one innocent should suffer. And I think everyone would agree
if that one innocent was somebody they loved, so and
everybody who's in that defender's chair as somebody that they
(51:00):
love and think about it too, like even somebody could
be technically guilty of a crime, but you might think
that crime shouldn't really be a crime, right, drug possession
or some other ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (51:10):
Thing, and you don't have to convict them. You can.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
It's called civil disobedience. You can exercise you right and
just say, you know what, not guilty.
Speaker 1 (51:17):
You can just disagree. You just say not guilty, and
that's it. It only takes one first interesting point because
I don't know if that's you know, complete common knowledge.
I don't think so. Yeah, that's good to know.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
So so serve on the jury's encourage other people to
do so. Spread the word, you know, with with among
your friend group, whatever whatever form that takes.
Speaker 1 (51:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
I think there are organizations you can look up. One
of the ones I think is one of the most
important ones is an organization called Civil Rights Core.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I'll tell you this.
Speaker 3 (51:57):
Another thing you can do today right now that's free,
is there's a newsletter called Alex A L e. C.
S Apostrophe s alex Coppaganda newsletter. Copaganda is what the
media engages in as the copaganda.
Speaker 1 (52:12):
Yeah, you got it, you.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Got it, So subscribe to that blog. It's fantastic and
there's so much to be learned from that. And then
you know, check out check out more podcasts like if
You're if You've if We've gotten your attention, check it out,
you know, learn more. You know, you might find a
case even on on my original show rompla compaction that
(52:33):
that touches you in such a way that you want
to get involved. You can write to people, you can
you can go to the Douglas Project. Right there's a
thing called Douglas Project named after Frederick Douglass that is
an organization relatively new that was founded with the idea
that we can help to bring people inside of prisons
and break that, you know, break break down that invisible
wall between people and the outside people on the inside.
(52:54):
That you can write letters, you can volunteer, you can
establish you can create hope for somebody who's in a
hopeless place.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Well, I think that all the work you've done and
continue to do is inspiring and it's a pretty badass
and I think that, you know, I definitely got something
from it, and it kind of leaves me with the
lingering thought that we can all do something and big
(53:25):
or small, it still matters. Yeah. So, I but I
appreciate your time today, and uh, it's been fun and
I've I've learned more stats than I'll probably remember. I'll
have to go write them down. You may have to
listen to your own podcast, I might, you know, Yeah,
that would help to listen to yours first. We might
put me a while.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
Yeah, we can put crim notes in the flip notes
in there, crem notes, whatever the hell you call that.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
I do watch out your see your daughter's podcast. The
daughter's podcast is erased. Okay, I'm gonna do that one
first because I'm curious. Yeah, yeah, dude, it's good. It's
really good.
Speaker 3 (53:55):
It's getting a lot of attention, and it's going to
be a real rest's excitedly really exciting. So yeah, yeah, so, uh, listen,
I just want to thank everybody for taking the time
to listen. I know you got other things to do,
and uh, you know. Look, I'm a fan of this
guy here, Payne, So I like, I like being on
a show, and I think maybe we'll, uh, we'll figure
out some some other hills we can climb together. Yeah,
(54:18):
fucking around and find out. Yeah, let's fuck around and
find out done.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
Cheers.
Speaker 4 (54:26):
Talking to Death is a production of Tenorfoot TV and
iHeart podcast created and hosted by Payne Lindsay. For Tenderfoot TV,
executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. Co executive
producer is Mike Rooney. For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams. With original music by Makeup
(54:47):
and Vanity Set. Additional production by Mike Rooney, Dylan Harrington,
Sean Nurney, Dayton Cole, and Gustav Wilde for Coohedo. Production
support by Tracy Kaplan, Mara Davis, and Trevor Young. Mixing
and mastering by Cooper Skinner and Dayton Cole. Our cover
art was created by Rob Sheridan. Check out our website
(55:08):
talkingtodeathpodcast dot com.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
Thanks for listening to this episode of Talking to Death.
This series is released weekly absolutely free, but if you
want ad free listening and exclusive bonuses. You can subscribe
to tenderfoot Plus on Apple Podcasts, or go to tenderfootplus
dot com
Host
Payne Lindsey
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.