Ben McKenzie returns

0:00Speaker 1:Hi, everyone, It's Sophia, Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello, and welcome to this week's work in progress.

0:18Speaker 2:Friends.

0:19Speaker 1:We have a friend of the Pod back on today and I could not be more elated. I first became aware of our guest, as did much of the world, when he played Ryan Atwood on the oc But his most unexpected second act began during the pandemic when Ben mackenzie, himself with an economics degree in Toe, became obsessed with figuring out what exactly cryptocurrency was and why some people were suddenly getting rich from it. And let me tell you what my Brooke Davis sees his Ryan Atwood and me as me sees Ben as the brilliant and incredible communicator that he is both on screen and off. Communication skills and search for answers led him to write his best selling book Easy Money, Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, which we talked about on this show in twenty twenty four. At the time, he was beginning to work on a documentary about the subject, digging into the world of crypto and hype and celebrity fraud, politics and all the people making money from the chaos, and now two years later, the documentary is complete and it is nearly time to watch. The film is called Everyone Is Lying to You for money. And in the

1:31Speaker 1:time since he began at the world of cryptocurrency has gotten even more complex. The industry has poured enormous amounts of money I'm talking hundreds of millions of dollars into Washington. The Trump family is showing their own cryptocurrency, and Congress is now fighting over how and whether or not to regulate it. Millions of people have been and continue to be believers in the hype, betting on a dream and what it could mean. So, knowing what he knows now about that hype and about the devastation often left in its weak I want to hear from Ben about his learnings, his warnings, his wisdom, and what from his point of knowledge today he would say to himself even just two years ago. Let's dive in with our work in progress. Pal, Ben McKenzie, welcome back to the pod, my friend. Instead of taking you back in my favorite way to know what your life was like when you were a kid, since you've answered that question for our OG listeners, let's go back to twenty twenty four, because that was your last time on the show. You were deep into making the doc, and we talked about your advocacy and your

2:48Speaker 1:economics degree and kind of how you started to pull.

2:51Speaker 2:Out the thread of all this.

2:55Speaker 1:What do you feel like you know that Ben in twenty twenty four did know yet? Would you give him any advice about this endeavor?

3:05Speaker 3:Yeah, I would say I'm glad I didn't know in twenty twenty four what I know now in the sense of how long it takes to make a movie, how tricky it is to get the movie made and then as an independent movie to get it released. It's quite challenging, and talk about that and why that is. But that being said, incredibly grateful for you know, for the fact that I have made it, and for all the people that I've met along the way, and.

3:33Speaker 4:Lots of people that I wouldn't otherwise have met or worked with, because I've met some really incredibly I mean just incredibly talented artists who wor worked on this movie, but also just incredible people all over the world who have some.

3:50Speaker 3:Connection to crypto currency in the sense of being skeptics or investigators or what have you. So yeah, I would My advice to twenty twenty four to me would be take a deep breath. It's going to be a long process.

4:05Speaker 2:Yeah.

4:06Speaker 1:It's almost like when you when you do any sort of construction project and they're like double the timeline and double the money. I feel like it's really good advice for making movies.

4:17Speaker 3:Also, Yes, that is a very good and the able saying about independent movies are never done. You just run out of money, and that's pretty much what happened. Just at some point have to stop because otherwise it's going to be prohibitively expensive. But yeah, yeah, it's it's it's been quite a a journey. And then of course, I mean you don't have to get sidetracked by the politics, but they are kind of important. Here. In twenty twenty four, we didn't Trump had an embraced crypto, and so it was in a different place than it is now. Yeah, and I think the the the shift that so fast, you know, it's only been two years. He really embraced it in the summer of twenty twenty four, having called it a scam as recently as twenty twenty one, so he really has since his re election brought it back into the sort of forefront of this conversation. I mean, AI and crypto, but Crypto is certainly in the news a lot in ways I never could have predicted, you know back then.

5:26Speaker 1:Well it strikes me, you know when you talk about the difference of a few years, particularly with him. There's nothing a scammer likes more than being able to get in on a scam. And when I first heard about the Trump meme coin and the Milaniu meme cooin, you were the first person I thought of, and I was just like, what the how is this legal? This is a this is an influenced scam, This is a money laundering scam. And cut to you know, last week, three hundred of his accounts were shut down for suspected.

5:53Speaker 2:Money laundering by just one bank, And I'm like, is this our real life?

5:58Speaker 1:So I know it took a long time for the movie to finish, but I think it's coming at such an important time for people to see it, because it's impossible to look at the landscape with any sense of awareness of current events and not think that this is nuts.

6:18Speaker 3:Yeah. Now, you're absolutely right in a way that I never could have predicted. It is more timely than ever, and I did squeeze a little Trump reference and at the very very end of the movie, as you saw. But I think it's it's worth reflecting upon what his embrace and it really means, because, as you pointed it out, or as you ask the rhetorical question, isn't this illegal? It would be right in any normal circumstance to president of the United States. I mean, first of all, President the United States, profiting off of his office while in office is easy illegal, right. We have a thing called the Emolument's Clause that prohibits him from getting anything of value while in office, and of course his mandated salary.

7:02Speaker 3:And usually these things are you know, pretty rigorously enforced, right, like if a foreign government gives you, you know, a gold bobble, you are supposed to like put it in, you know, in the office and not take it home or whatever. And here we have a president who really, mainly through cryptocurrency, has enriched himself and his family's in the tune of I think it's one point four billion dollars in just over a year in office, just based off his first year financial records. So it's a really staggering level of corruption. And it would be illegal. I would say it really is illegal. But the difference is when he controls the DOJ and his former personal lawyer has now been confirmed to be the Attorney General. There's just no you know, the system is broken.

7:52Speaker 1:Down, you know, yes, And something I want to say about that, you know, the Todd Blanche of it all. Whether people listening are as observant of the red flags about the fiscal crimes as you and I are, you know, you can go into a completely different arena and even consider the fact that Todd Blanche refused to meet with Epstein survivors but met with Glene Maxwell for nine hours and then transferred her to what is essentially a spa prison where she got to have a puppy and gets to go to yoga. And people in DC are talking about the fact that it is highly likely that he will pardon her now that he is in charge of the DOJ. And so whether we're talking about crimes against women and children or high financial crimes, you know, enriching himself, taking bribes untraceable money from you know, foreign leaders and business leaders, and you start to see the effects of those things, you know, suddenly all of our energy projects have been canceled. We've paid four billion dollars to stop them instead of to continue things that had already been improved and paid for to get us off of fossil fuels,

9:07Speaker 1:which other countries, other peer nations have proven is absolutely possible. You know, you look at Germany and Solar for example. We don't know how these things are happening because there's no oversight. And something I really appreciate about what you're helping to educate people about is that at current this industry is setting up all the rules around it to essentially allow it to govern itself, and no oversight in any arena of our political life, which is our entire life, is dangerous.

9:44Speaker 2:And I'm really.

9:46Speaker 1:Appreciative that you are able to point out in ways that don't feel too heady, that are so factual and so obvious, the intersection of crypto political influence and conflicts of interest that are unique to the Trump regime certainly, and what it's doing to global power in general right now.

10:10Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, thank you. I you know, you touched on a lot of things there, but one of the things that we've learned since twenty twenty four, speaking of EPSTEIN, is that surprise surprise. Jeffrey Epstein is a big fan of cryptocurrency and one was one of the original investors. He actually secretly funded a thing called bitcoin core development back in twenty fifteen. This came out in the Epstein files. There's so much that came out of the Epstein files that this obviously it's not, you know, anywhere near the top of the list of things that make the news, understandably because it really the focus really should be on the victims. But really to understand Epstein, part of what you do have to understand is his love of cryptocurrency and why that would be.

10:53Speaker 2:It's untraceable.

10:55Speaker 3:Yeah, it's not untraceable, but it's difficult to trace.

10:57Speaker 1:It's a great distinction, thank you.

10:59Speaker 3:Yeah, no, but it is tricky and it's hard to explain the sense that what the technology behind cryptocurrencies that think called blockchain. It's a form of cryptography and it's just a ledger, a record of transactions, but the identity of the people transacting is obscured. It's a synonymous ledger, meaning you know, it just looks like a string of numbers and letters, and these different wallets they call them, are interacting sending a cryptocurrency back and forth from one place to the other. But unless you know who controls each of the wallets, you really don't know who's sending money where. And so for a guy like Jeffrey Epstein, whose primary businesses seem to have been money laundering and human sex trafficking, you know, a money that's hard to trace would be incredibly valuable. Yes, and so of course he was into crypto. And you know, the industry and advocates have to grapple with these issues. They can't just hand wave them away so deeply, deeply disingenuous to pretend as though, you know, because the arguments are always the same.

12:08Speaker 3:It's like, well, there's a lot of Epstein used regular money too, and you're like, yeah, of course he did, because that's what actual people do as they use money. But you can't. This industry was so small when he was funding it in twenty fifteen. Jeffrey Epstein was into bitcoin before ninety nine percent of the bros who say they love it even knew it existed. Like it was a tiny, tiny thing and it was not doing that well. And he stepped in at this pivotal time and secretly funded it through he funded a thing called bitcoin Core Development, which is a group of programmers computer engineers who maintain its operating system. And he funded it secretly through the MIT Media Lab, which is a very controversial lab that's now been shut down. That was getting a lot of money from a lot of very powerful people, and he was doing it secretly because of course he was already a registered sex offender, and so in my tea didn't want to, you know, announce where they were getting the money from. But this is a These are really serious. Uh.

13:10Speaker 3:These are incredibly troubling but unfortunately very logical sort of use cases for cryptocurrency. Right when I'm talking about crime, it can get kind of abstract. We're talking about foreign nations and unfathomable amounts of money. But getting it down to someone like Epstein, who really is sort of the epitome of evil, and tying in directly to him, him tying himself directly to cryptocurrency is something that I think, you know, it is unfortunately something we have to keep in mind when we talk about the risk, you know, the real danger here because as they, like you said, as they create rules for themselves, what are those rules to do? They benefit the insiders, right Trump and his family or the people that run the exchange crypto exchanges or issue the crypto coins. But they also benefit people that are really serious criminals, and criminals in a way that are physically, emotionally, psychologically damaging to people, not just financial crimes, which are bad enough, but you know, we're talking about the world's most notorious protophile being being really into crypto. So yeah, it's it's gotten the Little Dark.

14:21Speaker 3:The movie is a lot of fun, though right from movies.

14:23Speaker 1:The movie is very fun. I will say like, and I mentioned, you know before we started the conversation Brava to your editor like it the opening sequence. I was like, this is my cred movie. You know, you had me hyped before I even knew what was coming.

14:42Speaker 2:And it's it really does. It comes out.

14:45Speaker 1:Swinging and it makes you feel alive and it reminds you, you know, that that knowledge is a power, and also with it, we are very capable, and I think people need that in a time where a lot of of folks around the world kind of feel like giving up because how are they supposed to fight these machines? And you really do offer us a window in and a reminder that there are things we can do.

15:14Speaker 3:And we're not alone, right, Yeah. I think that's one of the mean, neat, sort of really sick tricks of the modern world is that we're all on these devices all the time and we see all this really all horrible stuff through social media, all this divisiveness, and it can make you feel lonely and powerless, and we're not. You know, we are actually incredibly powerful, even if we're right now are going through a through a difficult time. So thank you. Yeah. I had the incredible editing staff, two principal editors, Drew Blackman and Jen Mackie, and they just did a phenomenal job of taking what was a lot of sort of like raw material. I didn't I didn't have a narrative threat. It was like I go to all Salvador, I tell five to the Senate, I interview these guys who are now in prison, these fraudsters.

16:04Speaker 3:But we didn't really have a through line. And they were really phenomenal in terms of helping me conceptualize it and break it down. I love that and simplify, keep it simple, keep it simple, to keep it as lovely as possible.

16:20Speaker 1:Well, and that's so important too. Because obviously each of these conversations, each of these visits are so important and it's related. But yes, how do you really distill the kind of invisible string through it all? And you guys did a beautiful job. We'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors. I'm curious you know before you made the doc because obviously you know, with all of your work in the book and everything that came before this, you talk about how your spidy senses were kind of activated when this was brought up to you via a friend. You knew that there was something about crypto that didn't make sense. Knowing everything you know about it now and the structure of the industry and the structure of it around the globe, do you kind of have more insight as to why even before you really knew what it was, you knew it was not all above board.

17:25Speaker 3:Yeah, it does kind of go back to the way we open the movie, which is money really is trust? It really is. It's a made up thing that takes different physical forms and now electronic forms. But you know, over the years, different different societies have used different physical objects in order to avoid having to use the barter system. And so when I give you a dollar bill and you accept it from me, it's not that you trust me per se, but you trust that you can use the dollar bill for whatever it is you you want to use it for. Crypto says, well, we can avoid all of that with that messy human trust, and we can just reduce it down to computer code and privately owned computer code or sort of a private form of money, a money issued by corporations and individuals rather than a money that comes from the government. And that's just very dangerous.

18:23Speaker 3:It's incredibly dangerous because it is shifting the trust from the public sphere where it's all trust like all people is, you know, fragile, infallible, and you see currencies, you know, collapse all the time. But at least the trust is there in a public setting for all of society to share. And if you privatize it, you're going to have you're gonna have market manipulation, You're gonna have a lot of sort of frausters getting in there, because if they can control this system, then what's to stop them from manipulating it to their benefit? And even worse than that, there's just going to be a lot of crime that's that's facilitated via this private money. And that's just what you see with crypto. I mean, since we talked, a crypto company estimated that one hundred and fifty four billion dollars of criminal activity was facilitated the a cryptocurrency in twenty twenty five, a long one hundred and fifty four billion.

19:27Speaker 3:So it's just a staggering amount of crime. And I guess that's what I kind of try to you know, we've had a big public series of public conversations over the last several decades about privatizing various public what they call an economics public goods, whether it's healthcare, which is now you know then largely privatized, or you know, the electrical grid or or whatever, and there are there's just a lot of danger with that. When you privatize those things, we're putting even more control over our daily in the hands of corporations and very wealthy individuals who really don't deserve our trust.

20:05Speaker 1:Absolutely, and we know, we know that they're not going to do the right thing unless they're forced to. We see that with deregulation. You know, corporations don't clean waste or inspect for bacteria, or parasites unless they're required to. And so this idea that we're supposed to trust them is so surreal to me.

20:30Speaker 2:And watching this really made me.

20:33Speaker 1:Think because of the way you open the movie, I don't want to spoil it, but when I tell you, I laughed out. I went, oh, my God, like I just burst out laughing. It's so smart. You've spent so many years watching smart people believe things that in hindsight feel impossible. It feels ridiculous that we ever believed in I'm curious about why you think through all your learning, human do have a tendency to trust the wrong people. And given what you've seen, how do you think we recalibrate our willingness or metrics by which we dole out our trust?

21:14Speaker 3:And I think we've you know, ever since there's been money, people have been trying to lie for money to take it from you. Right as soon as there's something of value that can be extracted by lye and then some people, some small percentage of the population is going to take advantage of that. So I don't think that in that in a certain sense, I think, you know, crypto is just sort of the latest manifestation of something that is unfortunately just sort of a part of that, part of the fabric of reality, part of a certain you know, I think relatively low percentage of the public, but a percentage of the public that is willing to do things that are you know, really really hard full to others for their own benefit. I'd hesitate to know what to make of that, other than to say, you know, I think crypto is kind of symptomatic of what's happening on Capitol Hill right now. It's happening in our system where they're trying to codify all of these special rules for crypto so it can continue to thrive and criminals can continue to benefit, including the present of the United States, I hate to say it, and an insiders can win

22:32Speaker 3:where most people are going to lose. That's why is that happening. If the majority of the public doesn't already trust crypto and only a tiny percentage of the American public is really into it, like three percent or something, it's because they spend so much money on politicians on political campaigns. They just they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars either intimidating politicians into you know, supporting if you take their money. Then you're supposed to vote for legislation that's favorable to the industry, and if you go against them, they're going to spend it against you. And I just think that is, you know, so illustrative of what of the problem you're facing, which is not unique to crypto right, the AI industry is doing the same thing. Now we have to we're have to change that. The Supreme Court decisions is united that allows unlimited, unlimited money from individuals and corporations effectively in our political process. It's just you can't have that. You can't have that and a functional democracy like they just they're just in conflict.

23:38Speaker 1:Yeah, because essentially you turn a democracy into a mafia state if there's unlimited access from the top to money, it's it's a it's a bully system. It's actually not democratic at all.

23:50Speaker 2:How do you think that.

23:52Speaker 1:Plays into you know, I know that it's on hold now, which is wonderful. But the Clarity Act, you know, much like the Save Act, these things get presented as a way to fix something, which they're not the same act as a voter suppression act. The Clarity Act was presented as a way to bring clarity legitimacy to crypto and clearly was quite flawed. You know, what's your take on that, Is that a bill that it gets written because the.

24:22Speaker 2:Industry is spending so much money on politics.

24:24Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely no. It's been you know, crafted in consultation with the industry, and there is a give and take. You know, they don't get absolutely everything that they want. But we know this, and we know this because I was just on Capitol Hill last month at a forum sort of a quasi hearing, trying to shed light on trying to fight back against clarity and shed light on the previous bill. The last bill that they passed from dealing with crypto is called the Genius Act. As you said, like all the anytime the legislation is named something, it's often the opposite of what it is, right, so it shouldn't shock you. But the Genius Act is really stupid. Yeah, And it allows corporations to issue their own money in the form of stable coins to certain kinds of cryptocurrency, so it's literal corporate money. And they've spent so much money to the cryptolobby on politics and political campaigns that you know, the Republican Party of course, voted for it overwhelmingly, but even some Democrats voted for it, quite a few And so recent reporting shed light on the fact that basically inside the lighthouse, you know, our Commerce Secretary Howard

25:39Speaker 3:Lutnak has a deep, deep tie to the cryptocurrency industry. His firm, Canter Fitzgerald, manages the money for this massive crypto company called Tether, and they even own a part of the company, like they they got a multi billion dollar stake that they bought for only six hundred million, So quite a deal, and yeah, curious. And Lutnik of course also has ties to Epstein, right, like said that he did this big song and dance you know a year ago where he was like I met him once and I was disgusted, and I said, we'd.

26:13Speaker 2:All those Why there's pictures of him on the island.

26:15Speaker 3:And then he was on the island with his family by the way, with his sons. So the reporting came out that Lutnik and this other young guy named Bo Hines, former college football player, that was suddenly like in charge of White House crypto policy. We're pressuring Congress, pressuring the people writing a legislation to carve out rules that were beneficial to tether, which is this incredibly shady foreign company that has these tether coins they issues. Cryptocurrencies are really the primary tool of criminals in cryptocurrency, using cryptocurrency globally, you know, everything from terrorist organizations, you know, like Iran right now is getting paid in art. You know, if you if you want to get a ship through the Strait of Horomeus, you pay with the Ranians in cryptocurrency.

27:06Speaker 2:Insane.

27:07Speaker 3:Yeah. So, so the Trump administration, you know, which is like supposedly fighting back against these bad guys, is at the same time profiting from the same bad guys. It's really it's really wild. So but but if you know that that's how that piece of legislation came about, and this was a very well researched report by Bloomberg the dozens of sources, then it should be no surprise that the same thing is happening with clarity. It's it's really bad, you know, it's really bad. The more time I spend around our political system, the more broken I feel that it is, and it really does is going to require, you know, pretty significant change. But I do think that change is possible. I'm not I'm not sort of like I do have some hope, you know, and you know in the future that we could change this because it is under our collective control. It is something we could change through legislation.

27:57Speaker 1:I mean, I certainly hope so, and I also think it's it's a bit impossible to look at the landscape and not admit that something is afoot here. I mean, some of the people you interview in the stock including sam Maankment Prad are.

28:13Speaker 2:Sitting in prison, Like people have gone to prison.

28:17Speaker 1:For this stuff. So when you look back at those encounters, do you think they grasp how fully they were deceiving people or do you think that they are so far gone down the rabbit hole of having drank the kool aid that they think they just kind of got caught in the crosshairs of the wild West of crypto.

28:42Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a question that I'm asked a lot. And I understand that people, you know, because we are not criminals, because the majority of us have ethics and morals, and we would feel terrible if we stole money from somebody. We we have a hard time kind of understanding that, Like we're both fascinated by these these figures that are the other that are outside of Bloyite society, and we really want to try to understand them on some level. I get into the psychology in the movie, but I really think it is what I learned from researching and from talking to people that study this, is that fraudsters, they often start out as legitimate businessman. They have a legitimate business. They Birdie made Off had a legitimate business.

29:32Speaker 3:Actually was quite experienced and had quite a lot of really impressive credentials before he started his investment firm, and he just wasn't that good at the investing, and so they needed to cheat, you know, one year. And then once they started cheating, the lie just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And that's actually what happened with Sam bag and Freed as well. We learned in his trial, which I attended some of. We learned that he had a trading firm and his crypto exchange, and he was losing money on the trading side, and so they need to quote unquote borrow the assets of customers on the exchange without the permission. So borrowing, borrowing without permission is stealing. Yes, that's called stealing, and and and and so the line like the difference between what these guys, and it is often meant what they think what well, who they start out as and who they become gets wider and wider and wider. But they have to rationalize their behavior. They have to they it's important for them. Most of them are not actually so sociopaths. They have to actually believe that no, no, no, no, I'm doing the right thing. Yes,

30:44Speaker 3:I made a mistake, but you know I was going to fix it all. Sam Bateman free to this day. I think I even saw an interviewed in prison said, you know, some misunderstanding. You know, we we we weren't installent. We just didn't have the money at the time, which begs the question, doesn't understand what solvency means. No, But they become they become kind of the ultimate method. Actors, like fraudsters, have to believe their own hype in order to yeah, you know, continue on.

31:15Speaker 1:And now a word from our sponsors. They hear you saying you don't think they're sociopaths, and the thinking is totally unstable. And then when you zoom out and I loved that you did this in the movie you go to El Salvador. You know, as a country they tried to make bitcoin a national currency. To go and see the sort of experiment up close, what do you think, What do you think that showed you? What did it show you about people's mindset that you know, reading about it on the Times or Bloomberg wouldn't have it shows much.

32:00Speaker 3:Of it really was always marketing. It was always just a made up story. They were selling the story to the world that ol Salvador, this very poor country, that the economy of which is heavily reliant on remittances, on the money that the two to three million people of Salvador and descent that live in the United States went home to their friends and family. That's like a quarter of the economy. And part of the pitch from crypto as well. You know, if you could send money home with with this government run crypto program instead of using money Gram or Western Union, you would save the fees that those those companies charge and it would be a win win.

32:42Speaker 3:The government would take a tiny, you know, fee for facilitating the service, but much smaller than the Western Union or money Gram. The people to win, the government would have win, and you would be able to spend your bitcoin, you know, on the ground there now Salvador and just none of it was true. You know, you go through the market that I went to, the biggest market in the country and the capital of San Salvador, trying to pay for things in bitcoin, and they just look at me like, you know, the stupidest gringo that's ever walked the face of the earth, which I am in the running for that, but I'm not, hopefully not off the top.

33:13Speaker 3:And then and then, and then the remittances was belonging to like nobody used it, you know, the system crashed. People Salvadorans are make about about four hundred dollars a month is the average salary US dollars, and so they don't have money to play with, like if they spend the money home, even if if there's a fee, they need the money to get there because it's actually feeding their families. Yes, it's putting a roof over their heads. They can't mess around with crypto and like, oh, we just lost it, you know, the price crashed or the exchange shut down or whatever, which is a problem that plagues crypto, you know, all the time. So when I went down there, it just laid bare, how empty the promises were. The thing that I couldn't really go into the into the dock. But I have reported on a little bit is that there's another tie to the same company, Tether, which is the company that our commerce secretary, Howard Letnoc owns a piece of and manages the money for it.

34:12Speaker 3:They are headquartered in El Salvador, and they're just this very sketchy company that's used Their currency is used by criminals all over the world, and it was interesting. In the process of making the movie, I always felt Al Salvador needed to be a part of the story because it was a way of making concrete a very abstract concept like crypto, that like, this is a place that it actually had an effect, and just not in the way you think it might make in a bad way, because they've displaced this whole community in order to build some airport to service some fictional bitcoin city that's never going to exist. And so I knew it needed to be in the movie. But I also thought, how are Americans ever going to care about this? Right? Like they don't.

35:00Speaker 3:I couldn't have found Ol Salvador and map like, I'll admit it, Like I was, like it's in Central America, but I don't know, you know, exactly where it's the size of New Jersey. It's the tiny little country, you know. And then Trump, you know, gets re elected and all of a sudden, we're sending people to a prison there and people are suddenly aware of their president. Bukel, who's popularly elected but is a dictator, really changed the constitution so it could be re elected, and that is one of the more surreal things, right I you know, I never would have like, of course, I'm glad that it's that people are more aware of what's going on down there now, but not this way. I would never have wished this to be the way that they know about about our Salvador. But it's such a great illustration too of if Cryptos was to be democratizing and decentralizing in this future, this beautiful utopia, fighting back against these tyrannical governments, then why is the only country where it's ever been tried as real money a dictatorship itself? Yes, where they're actually Alsaba has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world,

36:12Speaker 3:the highest percentage of its population that's in jail, and it's in this massive prison that we've sent the you know, of folks that are accused of being ilegal immigrants in our country too, without due process. So it's just the ironies are just so thick and deep. It's but it's such a beautiful contract. The people are just absolutely wonderful and I from that. Yeah, a number of them stayed in touch with. Unfortunately, a lot of the journalists that I was working with down there and we're helping the make the movie have had to flee the country because Bukele has threatened them with arrest. They were part of the opposition and they were reporting and all the criminal activity that Bukelli himself was sort of tied up in.

36:49Speaker 2:Gee, what does that sound like?

36:51Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, choker. So it's a little bit heartbreaking, but it's a beautiful country and just such a vivid illustration of all of the laws.

37:00Speaker 1:Something I appreciate because I'm like, well, it's a big conversation and it's a serious one, so I'm going to shift. Your doc is very funny, you know, I said, I Like, I laughed out loud in the first three and a half minute.

37:14Speaker 3:If you've made it through the first forty five minutes of this conversation, don't worry. The doc is fun.

37:18Speaker 2:Don't worry.

37:19Speaker 1:Guys, it's funny, you know something that really I was like, oh, I see you, friend, you you really poke excellent fun at the top in your unshakeable o C stardom. Yes, I laughed when you were talking about you know, roles that you came into later and you're.

37:36Speaker 2:Like, you know, then it passed like be once Batman and it just stays. The thing stays. It's the thing people.

37:43Speaker 1:Want to talk about. And it made really really giggle.

37:47Speaker 3:Finds true? Is that is that true for you as well? Do you do you like? I don't know if I'm not Yeah, maybe not, but I'm just curious. And those shows are.

37:56Speaker 1:They're iconic and at first, I don't know if you felt this when I first, you know, wrapped it up, I'd be like, oh I just did that for nine years, Like I'm good. Now it's come back around and I realized how incredible it is to be part of a cult classic or a kind of iconic coming of age story. But it really it made me laugh watching all the cuts of all the questions people have because you go on a show to promote something and they're like, okay, but before we do this, can we talk about the OC and I'm like, oh, I know the feeling.

38:29Speaker 3:Yeah. And even when I'm out promoting you know the book that I wrote right yea with Jacob Silverman journalist there, I'm still the OC guy. How did the see guy? I write this book? But I get that's the cultural touch point for everyone, to the degree that they that that I'm known, that's the thing that I'm most known for. And like you, I'm grateful for it. Now. That was a real gift for my editors because when we figured out the narrative thread to tile this stuff together, it was you know, obvious in retrospect, but like it needed to be my journey. How did I get here?

39:04Speaker 1:Yeah?

39:05Speaker 3:You know, how do we tell how do we put me? Put what the audience might know about me, which is probably very little in context, and make it very sort of brief and funny and concise and and so yeah, poke fun at make fun of myself relentlessly.

39:24Speaker 2:It was great. It was so great, and you.

39:27Speaker 1:Know it it made the bringing up Matt Damon's role in this stuff it makes sense for me also in context because you see, you know, I don't know him personally, but I would imagine he was presented an opportunity and given the marketing pitch, and it probably sounded pretty great. I'm curious, you know, how you chose to personalize the film, you know, in that way, to use the example of that kind of endorsement.

40:06Speaker 2:Have you guys talked like, what is that? What does that look like?

40:10Speaker 3:I don't know him. I've never met him. I guess I've prospersed many once. Wait, a long long time ago. He seems like a lovely guy. Everyone says the nicest things about him, and he's obviously an incredible actor with an incredible body of work. But but yeah, no, I don't. It's it's interesting as I don't think of myself as like I've never been the greatest social networking guy, you know, cocktail parties and all that stuff. But I'm also okay, yeah, I feel like you and I are similar. We go to stuff and we know people.

40:43Speaker 2:Yeah, But then I also am like, it's weird. I'll hang on in the corner and I don't know what I'm doing here.

40:47Speaker 3:I know, I know, but like, I don't know anybody personally that's sold crypto, like, and there were a lot of celebrities, so maybe it's just luck of the draw or whatever. But for whatever reason, it's a question that's asked often, and I understand why, Like, what's it like? You know, what are the weird conversations you've had of really not had any with anyone directly, you know, I'm sure through through a third party or something. You know, someone knows somebody is someone agent, an agent or a manager or whatever. Yeah, but but yeah, I don't, I don't know. I hope that I try to never make any of it really personal. It's not like it's like none, very few of the celebrities really knew what they were getting involved in. I think totally they took the money and then they should have done more due diligence in my opinion. But like, I understand how you get there.

41:42Speaker 3:So I'm hopeful that there's no like hard feelings because I mean that Day is doing fine. You know, he's in that little movie the Odyssey.

41:50Speaker 2:Yeah, I think he's I think he's doing okay.

41:52Speaker 1:And now a word from our sponsors that I really enjoy and I think you will too. I do think it's an interesting thing, you know, how much kind of requirement for investigation is placed on you when you're a public figure, because sometimes something's brought to you by someone you trust and they tell you it's vetted, and it's tricky. You know, I went through this a few months ago. I don't even remember a year and a half ago. I go to conferences all the time, as I imagine you do. And I was invited to a conference i'd never been to. I was told upfront, like, hey, you know it's it's a very bipartisan group. There will be like some pretty conservative people there. There will be like government finance, art actors, writers. You know, we think it'd be a great place for you to come and talk about this documentary you produced, our other subject on AI on the deep fake abuse of women and girls, and how you know they're ninety seven point eight percent of the victims of that technology. Clearly, the Trump administration does not want to legislate about it. You know, Elon Musk is suing to prevent the prevention of this sort of stuff.

43:11Speaker 1:And I was invited, you know, alongside my best friend, alongside a couple of actors and producers I know who are the most wonderful progressive people. One of my dearest friends, who's an incredible speaker and a transactivist, and a trans person, and.

43:28Speaker 2:I thought like, yeah, I want to stand up in front of some of.

43:31Speaker 1:The people who don't think we should legislate this stuff and explain, you know, the PTSD, the fact that being sexually assaulted digitally creates the same trauma in the brain as sexual assault. It's physical, you know, et cetera, et cetera, And went and did the thing, got into it. A gentleman who actually told me I didn't know and I quote what the fuck I was talking about was disinvited from the conference and is not allowed to come back because he was like so inappropriate. I got stood up for.

43:56Speaker 1:I was like, cool, this is great, you know, and it is.

44:00Speaker 2:It's a good thing.

44:01Speaker 1:I think, to stretch yourself in rooms where not everyone.

44:05Speaker 2:Agrees with you.

44:06Speaker 1:I actually think that's how we create like proper change. And then I don't know, like over a year later, it comes out that this conference was started like eighteen years ago by Peter Tele And so then suddenly I was Peter Tele's best friend and I was like, wait what, And I texted a friend, I go, this is psychotic. They're saying that that thing.

44:25Speaker 2:We went to in San Diego, and they were.

44:27Speaker 1:Like it's the same thing. And I was like, that can't be possible. And they said, well, he only went for the first two years and then never went back. And I was like, wait a second. So the last time he was there was like fifteen or sixteen years ago, and suddenly any of us being there to like do our work is bad what And you realize like, because of the people who asked me to go, I didn't even google it. I was just like, yeah, cool, I added to the list. We're doing fifteen conferences and we're lobbying on Capitol Hill for the Defiance Act to make this illegal.

44:58Speaker 2:Let's go.

44:59Speaker 1:And I was like, oh, I wonder if Matt David feels that way about Crypto now. I wonder if he's like I really put my foot in it.

45:06Speaker 3:I think he. I think he yeah, I've heard, you know, from people that are close to him. Yeah, that he's that he's you know. I think it was embarrassing obviously to be because he really became kind of the epitome of it, right because it was so public and it was so everywhere.

45:22Speaker 2:Oh, it's so hard.

45:24Speaker 3:But that's also a good example, I would say on the other side of like, you know, stuff happens in life, and like you move on and you survive, you know, when you adapt. And I do think we live in a media age where like things are just vastly oversimplified and people get lumped into you know. I think I saw that jess of Gordon levin what's one of those conferences, and it's like, if you knew Joe, like, he's like the nicest, smartest, like most sincere person you could possibly imagine.

45:52Speaker 3:So maybe he wasn't the right judgment call or whatever, but it certainly wasn't with any poor intent. And it's not like he is profiting off of going to a conference with Peter that Peter Tield sponsored or whatever. So yeah, we have to like one of the things I've tried to do here is to send grace to people whenever possible. You know, there are people who if they just continue to violate that trust and are jerks, you know, unrepentantly.

46:21Speaker 1:I don't think, like.

46:23Speaker 3:Howard Lunik, you don't have to like do them any favors. But for for people that for everybody else, you know, try to show some grace and provide them empathy and and and or just cut them some slack, right, yeah, because I think that's how we get out of this. That the thing with the Internet, because so much of crypto, crypto only exists online, right, there is no there there, there's no tangible anything. Really, you just realize how fake the social media algorithms are and how how skillful they've been at sort of making money off of our individual interests, whether those are positive or or or or negative, you know, whether we are angry about something or happy about something.

47:09Speaker 3:It does tend to dwell at least on certain platforms like x on the anger and division, but it's not real life, you know. And and crypto is such a perfect illustration of that because so many of the people selling it to you online are not real people. You know, they're hiding behind pseudonyms in order to mask their identity because they don't want they don't want you to know who they are, and and often being paid to do it. Right, there's like whole blot farms, you know, troll farms out in Southeast Asia. They're people are paid, you know, fifty cents an hour to pretend to be some Westerner who loves whatever. Cryptocurrency.

47:45Speaker 1:Oh, it's so scary.

47:47Speaker 2:And now with like the AI stuff.

47:49Speaker 1:You see it with this, you see it with health, health, wellness, wellness products, like these influencers that are hawking beat juice or whatever, and they're all AI pages and it's so surreal. I read the Times profile on that and was like, man, we are entering into a crazy, crazy time where we were going to have to look at imagery and wonder what's real. And it frightens me a bit. You know, how how we can have a relationship with truth or ethics if we don't know what's true and if and if farms which are unethical by nature are allowed to exist.

48:27Speaker 1:I'm curious how this stuff has changed your relationships with those things, you know, I was obviously going to ask about your relationship with money, but also your relationship with digital spaces in general.

48:41Speaker 3:I think it's just made me less less enthusiastic about you know, I still participate because in certain forums I was My account on X was hacked into after Elon took it over, because he took it over. But they're like, well, for whatever reason, I got hacked and I could ever really recover it, so it's there. But I haven't tweeted in years, and I'm really grateful because from what I see, that platform in particular has just been overrun with all manner of really all accessible of really toxic masculinity, of which obviously Crypto is an example. So I'm really now on you know, on Instagram threads and blue Sky. I'm not like cool enough for TikTok or young enough for TikTok, but I but I have I do use social media as a as a way of getting the method message out to anyone's who's interested, because it is a very useful tool for that. And quite frankly, when you're serving an independent movie with male marketing budget, like the only marketing we can afford is word of mouth and social media. Right, That's that's it. We can't like buy We're not going to buy a TV commercial. So I do see that

49:50Speaker 3:there are positive sides to social media. What I think is lacking right now is is meaningful regulation. You know, there's no reason why these come can't be regulated like any other public forum. They've resisted it so much, and they've used it quite cynically. They've used the Trump administration's quote unquote embrasive free speech right. These are the free speech people who are threatening Jimmy Kimmel with cancelation, who got Stephen Colbert canceled, who you know are are doing all sorts of things that are clearly in violation of the fundamental tenets of freedom of speech, but they're using it as a smoke screen in order to not be regulated, and they are regulated more stringently in Europe, you know, in Europe. You know, there's a great book that I've been reading called Liar's Kingdom by Andrew Weisman, who was on Robert Miller's team, was at the sd and y SO in the District of New York for a while, really great lawry public on MS NOW, and he wrote a book called Liar's Kingdom about how we have to change.

50:50Speaker 3:America has a very strange system where you can lie about something that is materially false, like you can just say Trump can just say he won the election, even though that's been proved over and over again to be the twenty twenty action that's been proven to be untrue, and there's no punishment, there's no law that says you can't do that. And he makes a very strong case that we this is not true in other countries. Other countries have punishments for a line, you know, in a way that is really harmful to society, and we should, we should change the laws, and we could, we could, we could really clean up the public sphere. I think that there are some simple, practical things we can do. Unfortunately, the public out right now we'll trumpet charge, but beyond.

51:34Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll get there. Yeah. Well, now the film's done. What what's next in the space for you? Is there another battle you want to wage against corruption? Or do you need a break from the battles? And do you want to go do a rom com? What's the plan?

51:49Speaker 3:I would love to do a rom com.

51:51Speaker 1:I would love we do Oh my god, should we do a rom com?

51:54Speaker 3:Yes? We should. Actually that would be really fun. I would totally do that, untally do a romcom with you.

51:58Speaker 2:Done'd be fine. All right, I'm going to find this a movie.

52:01Speaker 3:I love it. Yeah, I'm doing a little acting again. I'm just I'm a Netflix series that I assume will be on the next year and another part that I can't talk about yet but I'm excited about. And I'm just you know, I'm hoping people will watch this movie. We're putting it on. So we've had a hard time getting it out, like a streamer won't buy it. An American streamer just won't buy this movie that has a perfect score on Motten Tomatoes, that's getting lots of love from people that have seen it, And so that's weird.

52:33Speaker 3:I don't know if that's the politics or whatever, but so it seems to me. We're releasing it on this platform called Eventive, and we're creating a kind of an adventized thing, adventized event, adventized situation where you.

52:49Speaker 2:Could watch it live.

52:50Speaker 3:Starting on August twenty second, and I'll do a little intro for the movie. You can stream it and then there's going to be a Q and A with Marina and Me afterwards, whould be very funny, amazing, and then you'll have like two weeks to watch us. You don't have to watch it live. But we're trying to kind of change the game in terms of the indie distribution because it's it's really bad right now. Right now, you have the triple whammy of consolidation within the entertainment industry, which you and I have we witnessed o the last two decades or more, and the vertical integration of the industry meaning that the places like Netflix own their own studios, they make the stuff that they put on their platforms, so they don't have to buy from outside of their platforms, which is very difficult obviously for indie movies like the one I made in order to get get viewers. And then you combine that with a tyrannical president who's you know, obviously very much against free speech if it criticizes them, and then net result is this kind of like chilling effect on indie films which were already hard enough to make.

53:57Speaker 3:And then when you do put it on a video on demand platform, you know, where people can just pay to rent it or to buy it. Those big companies, those big tech companies that control the market, they take like twenty to fifty percent of the money, as you know, just for the privilege of putting it on their website. And then you have to spend money advertising it on their website in order to get people to go. So it really becomes just a very the economics get really challenging, right yeah, And we're trying to provide a different way forward.

54:23Speaker 3:So for people, if you've made it this far, you know, check it out. Everyone isling dot com click on the watch button and you can and sign up. But I hope people will check it out because it's a fun movie and hopefully it gives us experience of like, we're in this together. You know, you're not alone. There's going to be anyone anywhere in the world can watch it, so you know, hopefully it gives you a sense of like, Okay, there's a global community here that's actually interested in, you know, doing the right thing and being entertained at the same time.

54:50Speaker 1:Absolutely well, and I love I love the option to tune in and actually watch with each other and watch with you guys, and to your point, it's an event again, and it's one of the things where you know, all of the consolidation and all of this weird internet jumble up of society has made everything much more complex, and there's also ways we can solve for that complexity together. And so let's use it for good and make sure everybody gets to see this. We will put the link for our friends at home, everyone is lying dot com slash watch in the show notes. We'll put up a calendar reminder in our stories for the podcast as well.

55:33Speaker 1:I'm curious before I let you go and get you back outside to the family. Two years ago, you said your work in progress was finding balance between work and home. I wonder how that's going and if you have the same or a new work in progress now.

55:51Speaker 3:I have a similar work in progress. I think that's going to be my north star, you know, for the foreseeable future, early until our children are sort of old enough to where they go off on their own, and then that that dynamic will shift. But I'm kind of trying to take the skills that I've probably the most fun that I've had and most riching thing about doing these this weird little journey that I've been on with the book and the movies that I was trying things I haven't done before and meeting different people and having different conversations. And so now that I have written and directed, I want to take those skills back and I actually want to go back and create a television series for for for me to be in set in New York.

56:38Speaker 3:And I'm working on an idea David Kelly, who's a fantastic producer. It's a legal show, so kind of a holistic approach, yeah, but I mean, we'll see if it's solid. But like the the idea that like that we are powerful, you know, like you've created this forum for for yourself and others to to connect, you know, to the point you were making earlier. As much as technology can be intimidating and the powerful interests that sort of manipulate the technology, the technology itself can be very freeing and should be empowering and hopefully will empower me and clearly has empowered you, So we should be empowered to make a romantic comedy.

57:21Speaker 3:That's that's what I want to see for you next.

57:23Speaker 1:Oh my god, I can't wait.

57:24Speaker 3:Let me a script.

57:25Speaker 1:I'm telling you, I think part of the downfall of society is that we lost the eighties and nineties rom coms. Yes, and like now everything is death and dying in zombies, and I'm telling you we got to go back. I'm like, bring back the year of Home Alone. And you've got mail, Like, I'm ready.

57:44Speaker 3:Love that movie.

57:45Speaker 1:Amazing. Well, thanks for coming on the show today, Pal, so great.

57:49Speaker 3:Yeah,