LIVE: Jason De León

Welcome welcome welcome to armchair expert. I'm Dak Shepherd. I'm joined by Monica Padman. Oh this edition of experts on expert is a Particularly fun one for me a live show it was a live show but with a friend actual friend from college Jason De Leon And I were in archaeology class together at UCLA some 20 years ago.

We had other classes together But yeah, he and I were best buddies in college and he has now grown up to be a very impressive anthropologist He researches theories of violence materiality Latin American migration photoethnography forensic science and archaeology of the contemporary He directs the undocumented migration project a long-term study of clandestine border crossings that uses a combination of ethnographic Archaeological visual and forensic approaches to understand this phenomena in a variety of geographic contexts He also won the MacArthur Fellowship, which is very esteemed Monica incredibly exclusive He also has a book right now called the land of open graves We appropriately recorded this live at UCLA in front of a bunch of students and it was quite a blast little reminder tomorrow tickets go on sale for the History con armchair expert live from Los Angeles at the Pasadena Convention Center tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. LA time tomorrow you can visit www rmshertpod.com for a ticket link, please enjoy my old drinking buddy Jason De Leon Jason please get comfortable Brought my hat in case it gets windy. I thought this sign says I helped you get sober. You just made my entire night six months Congratulations, that's awesome So Jason we have not seen each other on the way here I was like it'll be 20 years coming up that I graduated which is alarming and then so 19 for you Yeah, yeah, and I think the last time I saw you you were like I can't hang out with you anymore.

You're too much of an enabler I'm trying to like do shit with my life, and so we're not good together Well, you know I gave a lot of thought to our past and I was like the truth is I just didn't have your Constitution So you could somehow de Leon could drink until 5 a.m. And then he would show up where he had to be at 6 a.m Sweating booze barely coherent, but he had one of these smiles that'll get you out of prison and all the professors loved him They're like who sit over there. I mean jeez you smell what we love you, but you just have that Constitution don't you not anymore? Okay, it's going away.

Yeah, I wish it's going the way of the dodo it kind of fosters island principle. Are you blown away? I'm also gonna be citing a lot of you I'm through that I've both corrupted in my own memory and is definitely obsolete by now, so prepare to cringe a lot I have 10 you're not already anything anymore Literally the first question I want to ask you was are you 10 years because I want to know what stories I can bring up Okay, so we're good to go. Okay, buckle up.

You're from Long Beach, right? Yep, that's right LBC Wow you and snoop two most famous Worn G. Worn G sublime. Oh, yes sublime, but we raised just my mom.

Yeah. Yeah, when did dad leave? See it's gonna be like that. Yeah Well, my parents got divorced in 85 and then so I lived with dad for three kind of horrible years Uh-huh and then I ran away.

Okay, that seems to be the pattern for dad. So back in the 80s What ages do you live with them? Third or fifth grade. I started going to therapy basically.

Oh really the school psychologist was like You're here every day My dad wasn't really around. Okay, so I was like a latchee kid I spent a lot of time at home alone and then he worked nights And so I would be at home and myself until the morning kind of thing now How old are you when you got interested in punk rock cuz I think that's really what happened you and I were in a class together I was like this guy has a suspicious amount of tattoos for a student here now I think they're ubiquitous, but in 99 I think they were they were still you were out on a limb a little bit a little bit I think it was all about intensity like how far can we push it? I think people who were pushing things in a certain direction gravitate to where people who are you know, you know, yeah, You know, you know, enablers or or like fuck it Let's do it either a coniclass or fellow scumbags one of the two what age did you start getting interested in music in playing punk rock? You know, I started listening like pretty intense in the music probably around 9 or 10 Because I was home alone all the time and my parents had huge record collections And so I would just play a shit on a records and you know in the Chuck Berry creating some kind of stuff and then puberty hits and then it was like heavy metal and then heavy metal leading into like grunge and the grudge leading me to punk rock So probably seriously getting into music around 14 Okay, and now you recently posted a picture of yourself in high school and there's a lot of things going on in photos There's a lot of clues to work with to construct an idea of what you were like in high school first of all You have a mohawk, but you also braces.

Yeah So I said what what it makes a message here. It's like fuck societal norms, and I want my teeth to be straight as hell But that picture I'm also in a tuxedo in that picture you sure are because when I was in high school I went to this really diverse high school was in high school and well, sir and people were getting pissed at homecoming They were like every year at homecoming. It's a white homecoming king and queen even though we're like 60% people of color in the school Yeah, so they decided that you like my senior year that they were gonna have international ambassadors for every ethnic group Oh, wow And so they couldn't find someone who was Pacific Islander who had the GPA to do it and then someone heard that I was half Filipino and they were like Hey, will you come and be? You know, I'm sure I got a tuxedo like okay fine well again here we go with my memory Which is probably an air, but weren't all the Pacific Islanders they did paddle from the Philippines.

No I remember learning you're so embarrassed. Okay. Here's what I remember learning which is sure deeply flawed But the people that colonized that chain of islands Samoa Tonga all that they didn't sail there they rode there and that was a long-ass voyage So they did a basically an artificial natural selection where they picked all the biggest heaviest guys that could roll for a very long time and have some fat reserves And they deployed them and that's why some Owens are so big. That's what I learned That's just all the Moana story.

I think Oh my god, you're right. That's where I got that So anyways, I'm just saying you were you were on you were on Terra from with this claim of being Pacific Islander You're like your original Pacific Islander, but I grew up. It is so it's not true Malaysia We do agree they wrote to Tonga. No, okay, whatever monocle fact check this So they needed someone who could represent the Pacific but my problem was I grew up because I was a military brat I moved all over the world and I was always like the only brown student and people would be like Well, what are you and I was saying my dad's Mexican my mom Filipino my mom says I'm ex-apeno People would say like that's not a real fucking thing.

You're you're brown. You got a last name daily on your Mexican I was like it was kind of forced on me for a long time and so the time someone asked me in high school like oh, yeah You're also have Filipino and I was like well, yeah, but nobody seems to recognize that until right now I got a goddamn picture, you know I love my Filipino roots, but I feel like I spent when I grew up in South Texas too So I spent a lot of time around people who were like what the hell's of Philippines? Yeah, yeah They didn't know about them rowing anywhere. No like I did nobody does.

Yeah, nobody apparently nobody does But so you ended up being like a prom king or a squire or something like that. Yeah, that's pretty impressive So can I ask you having spent time in Texas and what was it a relief to land in Long Beach? Did you feel like oh, there's obviously there's a much bigger Latino contingent in Long Beach than say Michigan or other parts of the country, right? Was it at all like oh, okay growing up in Long Beach?

It really got me like I thought the world was that diverse You always had a Cambodian friend and a snow and friend it was a huge gay community when I was growing up So all that stuff I thought was just totally normal right wasn't until like I went on tour as a teenager like the deep south I mean like shit, it's actually the world doesn't look like Long Beach Yeah, but I think you know growing up there really kind of include me into diversity in a way that I wouldn't have gotten in a lot Especially in other parts of LA. Yeah, totally. Oh people think on the gardener where I live I mean I'm always like Or I'm like I don't mean, you know, there's like few people of color where I live in my neighborhood And so I always think like you know you see like African-Americans like he must be either a hip-hop artist or a athlete Oh sure when they see me I'm not sure what they think I'm the other gardener I see lots of around people in my neighborhood. They're gardening Yeah, or cleaning the pool and then I was wondering what people think it is an Yeah, I'm trying to think what I'm back in when I used to be unevolved in a stereotype or I'm trying to think what I would Back when?

Rodeo star? Yeah, Rodeo star? Jockey? My famous famous jockey?

So you get into punk rock and here's why I bring up punk rock because I'm wondering why you majored in anthropology Like did you come here first of all? Did you come from high schools right here? Yeah, okay, so you have much better grades in high school than I did. Yeah, I got it never got I never got in here Although I think I graduated with higher honors than you so whatever it was all sorted out It's true.

I guess I just need to be challenged and yeah Did you come here knowing you were gonna major in answer? Yeah, I was a declared an intro major. Oh really and I lasted like five weeks and dropped out and went home and lived in my mom's garage Oh, you came and then left. Oh, yeah twice twice.

Yeah, I didn't realize they had like a sabbatical policy Oh my god, it's like Stanford. You can just skip out for a long time and then just pay some money And you know no I lasted five weeks I failed intro archaeology really yeah, well this is an encouraging story Yeah, all of you could have a MacArthur grant at some point. Why do you want to do? Answer because I want to be an archaeologist you did yeah, I'm based on Indiana Jones.

Oh, yeah Yeah, that has to be responsible for a significant percentage of archaeology My generation our generation people I mean that was our kind of first exposure to the discipline. Yeah, there's no Star Wars degree You can't like me Han Solo or something. So that's off the table. So you go next up Okay, being in a Jones I think what really drew me to it was as someone who was obsessed with the punk rock scene who was questioning like oh all this stuff We're inheriting like do we have to do this stuff?

Is this like does everyone do this all these rules and customs? I'm just kind of inheriting from my family in my town is that the only option and I think maybe having this intro class I was like oh no There's a bazillion ways to live on planet earth and that is so encouraging to me And I think it was kind of it stemmed out of my skepticism about our own culture in some way But now I find out we don't share that at all But we do but we do share that because I came in I want to be an archaeologist I wanted to be Indiana Jones and then I realized how fucking boring archaeology is oh I love it some of those are PhD archaeology, but it was not what I wanted to kind of do yeah But I really got excited about cultural anthropology as a student at UCLA because we were in that class with Connerley Casey the witchcraft one Either witchcraft or genocide or deviance and abnormality. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah that one I was like shit Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think we really bonded over that well I tell I say this all the time that the teacher had been possessed by a spirit at some point in Sub-Saharan Africa Which prior to me hearing that I'd be like, you know, there's no such thing I don't know what to tell ya, but here's this person I trusted truly I loved her and I believe that her experience was such that she got possessed by a spirit and then was a shaman relieved her of that Almond if I recall yeah, and I was like wow that's the power of culture because she entered that not necessarily believing it in herself And then all of a sudden it was real. Yeah, I find that very fascinating that was an amazing class So when I when we met in or maybe we didn't meet there But when we had that archaeology class so we went and dug up at stunt ranch and I had the fantasy that we were going to explore with like dynamite and pickaxes I thought for sure within a week or two we discovered the jade mask or a hidden city or something and we didn't find shit More than that you start to know something stinks when you get there in the hand you a paintbrush You're like how am I gonna do with a paintbrush?

I'm like well, you're gonna go down two centimeters and making sight two readings of everything and I was like this can't be archaeology It was a real big wake-up call for me. I was like this is off the table And then our obsession during that class was we had been taught that the chew mash used to use man-root Oh, yes to stupefied the fish in small streams Yeah, because it too is an hallucinogenic and delion's and I spent a good portion of our time searching for man-root at So I got a lot of stuff ranch and asking questions like so if one were to take this in a team What would be that Tom wake was like you guys are fucking you gonna kill yourself? What's the average dose for a chew mash like to see some shit, but not meet God. What is that?

You're like five nine. What's it those? Six two. Yeah, but boy I have so much fun up there We my obsession during that dig was we came across to a rattlesnake at one point remember that walking through the field some gals I was like ah once that happened I was like I better take this mountain lion, you know warning serious because we've already come across a rattlesnake And so a good chunk of my day was practicing my defense against a mountain lion was offered a bait and then trawled to the neck There's a boom grab it and then boom I Archaeology in that whole time.

It's just Mount Lions man-root Yeah, rattlesnakes and then often the class was on Friday. We were up there for I think like four hours now all day The whole day okay, then we go down to the saddle ranch bar down there in Calabasas Just unwind from a long day of digging Yeah, now we parted ways in 2000 I graduated with a little bit better of GPA than you managed to hand on but I will say to that you know one thing We also bonded over was you telling me you were like I didn't have I never had the college experience I transferred from community college I never had a college buddy. Yeah, and so you were really committed to like having a college buddy Extremely committed so I was there like I was there for you for that and it happened at the perfect time It was my last semester at UCLA and then I met you and Alex and we just I just we just had four years in the order Yeah, I made up for lost time. Oh, that was the highlight now.

We parted ways and then you again I wonder if in that moment I think if you'd ask any of our classmates who here will be employed at some point later down the road We're definitely numbers like 30 and 31 for the gas right very unlikely and over the years I guess I would follow you on like the rudimentary versions of social media what not and I go Oh, that's cool. He's going to graduate school and then of course you did you ended up going to Penn State and getting You went to Penn State and then got a PhD in our gals, you know, I remember being so excited for you and just thinking God he did it He really did it. Did you blow your own mind with having seen that all the way through especially if you had quit? Why did you quit the first time?

I wanted to be in a band. Yeah, I want to play music Yeah, and I didn't like my classes to I mean they weren't they weren't kind of inspiring at the time I think yeah, so I need to go on a vision quest to come back I just want to say I'm on the record as being a recovering addict I've been a few crack houses in my life I have never been to a place as dirty as Jason's the house that he lived in with his band in Westwood Yeah, I also want to mention that today I was reading about you I was like what was the name of his band and then even though I knew the name of the band back then I didn't put together the cleverness of it till just today the band was called youth in Asia Youth Oh, I love it! Yeah, that's great! Yeah, 20 years later, I got it.

I took it at face value. Is it spelled young people in Asia? Paddling East of Pakistan Everyone's included. Yeah, sure.

A few hundred million hutes in Asia. I like it Now I'm going to transition into some serious stuff because I actually although I'm quite aware of what you've done I'm not entirely aware of what you've done before even we even get into it when I knew we would talk about it I thought do you find it hard to have an apolitical conversation about what you study when you're talking about migration or immigration or immigration? I think as soon as Americans hear the word immigration they immediately connect to a party Unlike if you made some discovery of bird feathers from the Jurassic period on a dinosaur, you don't go like Ronald Reagan Well, that's some Obama data right there. You don't have any association with other data like that So I'm just wondering I'm curious how just even deciding to study this has been either mired in politics or even when you want to present your findings Trying to escape that lens or is it baked in and should it be seen as a political endeavor?

Well, I think in the beginning I thought about it as an apolitical endeavor. I was like, I'm an archaeologist I'm an anthropologist. I'm studying this thing from a scientific perspective and I'm doing it from an apolitical stance I'm doing it just to document and to better understand and I remember the first time I said it to a colleague of my friend of mine And she said to me why you're so full of shit that must you know that must make you feel better and sleep at night By thinking that this is kind of an apolitical endeavor, you know And I had to kind of get up to speed about all anthropology is political Right the decision that you make to study something that's a political decision Even if you decide to study something like, you know what we ate in the past, you know, five thousand years ago I think that's a political decision How so? Because you're choosing to either engage or not engage with certain topics So, you know people who study like subsistence in the past how that relates to something like inequality Right, so not everybody ate equal food in the past so even when it's not kind of up front I think it's still it's still all very much political the rabbit holes we go down I think tell a lot about our own politics Well, let's just start with the fact that you are half Mexican half Filipino Was that part of why you were even interested in that?

Like what was the spark that you were like that's if you recall remember if I was gonna pursue anthropology It was just gonna be to live with the hells angels you know that oh yeah I want to do an ethnography on the hells angels for obvious reasons Oh, yeah, so I'm wondering I guess your own background did that play into it or did something else spark your interest in? No, I think what really sparked it was working in Mexico on archaeological excavations Where I'm out in the middle of nowhere with you know working class of women and men who are getting paid to dig ditches alongside these archaeologists And I start hearing their stories about migration and about border crossings and the horrible things that had happened to them It was those stories that really kind of inspired me You know thinking like I've become very close with this individual He's just told me a horrible story about what has happened to him And I want to better understand that and so initially it was it was that interest in those folks But I mean I think my own background allows me certain access to particular types of people in particular types of stories Yeah, but it was the first time I think you know within academia being a brown person was always You know considered to be you know not an asset You know it's like something to an impediment to overcome sure I'm like happy just to be at the table kind of thing Yeah, but it wasn't when I realized like oh well my own background allows me a certain type of access Then it started to feel really empowering and then all of a sudden I wasn't having to explain away my background But really to say you know I want to write about immigration and about border crossings and I have a personal connection to these issues Which then I think facilitates the work. Yeah, but I didn't start out like oh, I'm like you know I was a super apolitical person Yeah as a student and I guess the reason I even bring up the apolitical thing is because unfortunately currently at least Soon as something is under the paradigm or left or right that means you immediately lose 50 percent of the ears And so that therein lies the trouble like I fear that you could have some breakthrough discovery And then just it would fall mute on half of the population because it is framed as a political thing But also recognize it's a cop out to say it's not a political thing. So we'll see both sides And I really I'm trying to get I mean I'm not trying to preach to the choir I haven't sort of interested in that so you know through all the different kinds of public outreach sorts of things that we're doing the exhibition work documentary film Trying to write more excessively trying to write stories that are they're about migrants They're about immigration, but they're really leading with the stories about individuals So people can pick it up and go well do I connect with this character?

Yeah, who happens to be a migrant happens to be an immigrant that's sort of my approach and there are some people who just you mentioned Immigration and then there's nothing you can do to connect with those folks right right the wall goes immediately up But you're typically and metaphorically yeah How was looking at this critical issue through the archaeological lens different from how it had been looked at through other disciplines or in the media? Most archaeology when you hear the word archaeology people think about 10,000 years ago 5,000 years ago And there've been very few projects that were looking at contemporary materials But as far as I'm concerned archaeologist means a study of the past through material remains But the past could be this morning last week doesn't have to be 5,000 years ago And so when I started thinking about the things that border crossers leave behind and how I can use archaeology to understand that That seems to me like a natural kind of part of the whole thing But people were like what the hell is this you know And either arguing that's not archaeology or oh shit Maybe this actually is an interesting way to kind of think about the relevance of archaeology to contemporary kinds of issues So what were the first steps like you start what you go down there and you start just walking the route that people walk in Finding things like what yeah, basically that's where it starts I make some phone calls. I'm trying to get on to Arizona You know looking at stuff on the internet and most of what I was finding on the internet were people who were talking about You know migrant trash in the desert. Look at these kind of filthy invaders kind of thing And so I started looking at these pictures of water bottles and they're conveniently environmentalists in that Oh, yeah, suddenly it's like Sierra Club But I was like oh shit there's all the stuff out there So I started making phone calls found someone who this guy named Bob Key who does a lot of humanitarian work in the desert And felt sorry for me, I'll take you on the desert and show you some stuff And I went out started walking around the desert and just seeing all this stuff and was like well, this is archaeology Can we just document let's get the map out Let's start bagging stuff and tagging it and collecting it and seeing what we can do from an archaeological lens Yeah, and so as you start compiling all this in mapping it Are you finding certain things that you realize like oh, this is more profound than a water bottle or this is a real glimpse into what the experience is like?

You see different kinds of things I think there's the personal stuff right the Bible the love letters the baby stuff that people that's always like really difficult And but oh yeah diaper bags that kind of stuff, you know baby shoes You know you'll see things like a pair of baby shoes with something written on it You know someone's saying goodbye to this kid who's getting ready to migrate kind of thing Those initially were like the most powerful kinds of things but then after a while, you know all the water bottles I mean those things really hit me because you know that you know someone was relying on this one gallon of water to survive And I have a deep appreciation for all the materials now I mean not just the stuff that really that hits you emotionally But I think everything the food wrappers the broken shoes all that kind of stuff Yeah And when you're out there are you running into like these guys who have armed themselves and are like on the border Are you running into them? Not so much when I was working on the archaeological stuff because that project really ran until about 2016-2017 The place where I was working there were not a lot of vigilantes out there part of it because the place that I was working Visualized I killed a nine-year-old girl and her dad like the year I started working on this project And so they had been kind of persona non-grabbing in this region But post 2016 I mean they're sort of back in the area where I work So when did it start? What year did you start going? So and as you are is any kind of pattern emerge?

Is there any kind of insight you gather by by looking at it that way and documenting all the stuff like does something become obvious to you that we're all missing? You start to see how things evolve over time like the types of technologies people are using So like initially people were using white water bottles and then they realize oh well the white reflects a lot of light It's easy to be spotted by the border patrol So then they start painting it with a with a marker covering it with a black trash bag And then some enterprising person in northern Mexico says let's make black water bottles to sell these migrants And so you can kind of see this stuff over over the course of just a couple of years Yeah, and these are patterns that I would ask migrants about they had no idea I would say oh the black water bottle when they show up and it's always had them Yeah, but they weren't here last year kind of thing So you would see kind of that you would see also larger patterns of like you can see the experience that people have Based on the archaeological record over space. So close to the border What are you throwing that? What are you leaving behind?

You know 25 miles north? What does this stuff look like right? So things are bloody earth things are broken people are exhausted They're losing they're losing their clothes because they can't carry anymore So you're able to see kind of certain patterns like that through the archaeological remains And would you ever go deep into Mexico? Like 50% of my time is spent with migrants interviewing them about their experiences You know giving them cameras having them photograph their experiences and route and sending the photos and that kind of stuff Oh, no kidding.

Yeah, so how much of that have you gathered just? Oh a lot really I would I mean that's primarily what I do is that you is working with living living people And give them the tools as much as I can. Oh really? Stay tuned for a more live show after this exciting commercial break How do you deal with I have to imagine inevitably you meet someone down there you give them this tool You're gonna somehow connect and get that thing.

I would compare it I guess to my mom working in foster care, which is like it has to be painful to not be you don't have the bandwidth or capacity probably to help all the People you've connected with like what is that part of the job like that's the hardest part I mean, I was asking the day like what is it that drives kind of this work? And I think for me, it's the connection that I make with people that I'm working with like this deep commitment And that's part of like maybe coming from a broken home Maybe not having a lot of family where I've looked towards anthropology as a way to create you know kinship And so I think I'm always trying to create kinship with the people that I work with and it's really difficult to love someone and be committed to them And then to be like, okay, have fun in the desert send me these photos kind of thing Yeah, that's a really brutal part of the process or if they then make it here Don't you feel kind of obligated to like help in some way once they're here? Oh, I mean, I'm connected to the all the books I really write about even after the first book And I'm still really connected to them and you know helping out and you know I've one of the guys I write about in the first book who I call memo I joke that he's on the MacArthur health plan because that's I mean that money is paying for a lot of his medical bills Uh-huh, um, and so yeah, I mean there's long come in and that book came up five years ago Yeah, I think one of the reasons the topic in general is so daunting is like these Bloom empathy Experiments where it's like you look at one kid and you're very willing to help a photo of one kid in need You had like a sister or a brother and it kind of goes down a little bit and then it gets into this predictable pattern Where it's like you had 50 kids and people like I don't know man. I'm out Like so what is the the scale of the people heading north?

I mean, it's too many to count I mean, I'm talking hundreds of thousands of people yearly, especially not coming from from Central America So I'm working on a project right now for the last five years. I've been working with smugglers So what would I would call a coyote is that yeah? Yeah, and so people who are kind of on the edge fringe kind of characters not really sympathetic characters because they're doing all kinds of horrible stuff Yeah, they live really short lives because they're wrapped up in all kinds of violence And I've been really committed to those guys, you know, this other population that nobody cares about yet I've connected to these some of these folks and I think really deep ways and then now trying to write about them in a way that gets people to care about You know that human cost which is even more challenging It's easy to for most I mean I think you can make a sympathetic character sketch out of a migrant Yeah, but with people who are smuggling it's a lot harder And so part of what I'm trying to do really is to paint a human picture from that component of this but people have a hard enough time feeling bad for You know babies and so now making this look towards these you guys profiting in some manner from that Do you see having now done this for 16 years or whatever? Are there things that could be done because I guess from the outside and I'll probably put my foot in my mouth But you know it seems like there's a lot of sides to the equation It's like one you have countries that people want to leave so how do you fix that?

I guess I'm curious what should we be doing differently and what are some of the solutions? I think we need a really big beautiful wall. No, I'm just kidding And that'll probably be quoted out of context on that one Gilded and gold yeah with marble You know, I think I had a British journalist ask me once like, you know, and I won't do my terrible I think yours might be worse than mine I won't do a British accent. How dare you?

You know, she asked me once like, how would you fix this problem? What's comprehensive immigration reform look like and I said well you've got to stop meddling with Central American political systems The US interventions policies have totally screwed over Central America for decades You've also got a couple of examples of those I mean, we just we put people in power in Central America that are gonna kind of toe the line for the United States Yeah, and we consistently undermine kind of grassroots people kinds of political process Yeah, and so we've been doing that forever and we're really good at it But so the kind of consistent undermining of Mexico's economy I mean this idea that NAFTA was somehow a really bad deal for the United States NAFTA was a really great deal for certain capitalists in the United States and really screwed over Mexico in a lot of ways Before seeing people to have to migrate, you know, and of course we want them here because they're we'll pay them less money for work All those kinds of things that need to be fixed as part of immigration reform And but this journalist was like, well, don't you think those are like those countries problems? You know, and I think that a lot of Americans think that that that's also the case like that Mexico is corrupt it's having all these issues Central America is having all these issues And we think about it as oh well We've got to put this wall to kind of solve these problems even though we know that those problems are directly connected to the things that we do And it's just an unpopular perspective for a lot of folks I mean that was a Trump rally in Warren Michigan in 2015 people are chanting build a wall before he even comes out It's kind of like yelling free bird at a Skinner cancer. Yeah, it goes on for an hour, you know He's and he comes out and says we're gonna build this wall and it's gonna save your jobs And I'm like people are robots crossing the border, right?

You know, I want to see that But you know, and he said something like we're gonna stop Mexico from stealing your jobs And I'm like as if Mexico was this powerhouse. It just says, you know what? We need some more work for us So give us these plants and it's like no no no But people have to see those connections. I think to better understand what comprehensive immigration reform would actually look like Okay, so I'm now gonna I'm gonna be forced to take some of the positions I don't hold But I'm just gonna bring up some concerns So I think people are nervous that if it were just like yeah, everyone come that somehow we would be completely buried in A bazillion people that we don't have services to help in that is a fear you only get in people who are coming here to do jobs at Yeah, I always think we're in the best of the best.

You know, I don't have it in me I don't want to work that bad. Yeah, no, I'm the one you know on this country. I went and fucking walk home to Los vieles for a job So I mean it's nobody I think is saying open borders like everybody come right people talking about if you want labor We do then let's treat people with respect and allow them some dignity and be able to move freely You know monitor them pay them a fair wage because we're never gonna We're not gonna have people who are gonna want to work a lot of these jobs It's incredibly expensive for us to hire Americans to pluck check-in sort of you know render cows. Yeah, yeah, prop meat Propses.

I mean I think that we have to understand that well there does seem to be a willful Ignoring of how much of our economy is on the back of those labors, right? Mississippi takes some crazy stance at one point where they were trying to get rid of Alabama had hb 56 Alabama and that one they were they just totally backfired. Oh, yeah, yeah I love that so tell people about that because I think people don't recognize like anyone who's screaming this we're in California, which is the Fifth biggest economy in the world, you know, like it's on the backs of a lot of those people were clearly that's a huge part of the economy Oh for sure is thriving so what yeah, what happened in Alabama? You know they started policing of these farms and these fields and people were running away because they were afraid of being deported And then now you have all of these white farmers being like who's gonna pick all this fruit You know fruit riding on the vine to me farms just ceasing the function Yeah, and then certainly that okay, you know the law goes away and how do we bring these bring these folks back right?

They had to do a 180 right. Yeah, it's pretty embarrassing. Oh for sure. Yeah.

Hey, Mexico boy We did not think this through We're gonna hire high school kids to like work the fields. Yeah, right I mean I was the last generation of kids who worked in fields I did to have some corn in Indiana and at this was in 87 and The transition was happening like school buses would arrive and it'd be a bunch of us young white kids and the hillbillies really and then another bus of Migrant laborers and then as the years went on now. There's just yeah, there's no white kids on buses doing that job Yeah, I think they make videos on YouTube for occupation now I guess my argument I try to make is like wouldn't it be cheaper if it's a fiscal concern people have knowing the Cost of patrolling the border on the stuff would it be fiscally responsible to try to help in those situations? So people weren't feeling the need to leave under threat of violence.

You would think yeah, it seems cheaper and we keep cutting aid to The country is saying stop coming we're gonna cut off your aid and it's like well shit now You just to stabilize the country even more people are gonna be leaving in higher numbers Yeah, but you also keep in mind that the border industrial complex is a huge money maker And so these things are getting spent people are putting that in their pockets and so there are people who like to keep the system Kind of in place the way that it is. Yeah, a lot of people are profiting Oh, yeah, because the war on drugs has become unpopics and other war on immigrants detention centers border security That's a huge huge money maker for a lot of people. Yeah, have you been threatened at all? You know like the hate mail that little light hate mail.

Yeah, yeah, the creepy ones are when they write you a physical letter Oh, yeah, you know, you've you someone writes you a letter period. It's here. Yeah. Why are you trying to travel?

Now the undocumented migrant project do you have friends you want to give shouts out to that helped you? Yeah, well, my team is here Austin shipment who was our project manager and then Nicole Smith of Michigan Oh former student of my from University of Michigan and moved LA yeah work on the boat Yeah, and then gave get canter Angelino who was also Michigan student who moved back to LA to work on this project with me So the express goal is a long-term anthropological study of clandestine migration between Latin America and the United States that uses a combination of ethnographic Visual archeological and forensic approaches to understand this violent social process. So we touched on the archeological aspect What's the forensic aspect? You know trying to understand what happens to Migrants who die out in the Arizona desert people are dying in the middle of nowhere and we struggled to get a good count on those Could people not recovering the bodies when we began the project?

We didn't know really how long it took for a body to decompose And so we started running forensic experiments using pigs as proxies for human body So, you know we dress them up in clothes at migrants where we put them in different contexts and then monitor them with with trail cameras to see okay When do scavengers show up how quickly do bodies get ripped apart and that kind of stuff how fast is that? How in some instances under 36 hours from fully flesh to completely see ultinize and rip the part in no way? Oh, yeah a full pig full pick of 200 pound pig Wow 36 hours. Yeah, so does do people know how many people are dying in the desert?

We have a count from bodies that are recovered by hikers and humanitarian groups But I think it grossly underestimates the number of actual deaths So we're doing an exhibition right now a global exhibition called hostile terrain 94 that will launch in May 150 locations around the globe And it's focused on migrant death and the exhibition is a giant wall map of Arizona with about 3200 handwritten toe tags for deceased people So 3200 is the working number by the time we launched in May It'll probably run 3400 But that's just for Arizona and I would I think you could safely double that number for just Arizona alone Oh my god, and over 1200 of those bodies are unidentified. So just fragments of bone. Oh I don't know how you press. Yeah, this is so yeah, I'm worried about you I was really excited for you and all your accomplishments and I'm worried about you You know, I used to say the beer helped And it really doesn't like you want to but it's not working after a while Yeah, but I think for us It's a lot of talk therapy checking in with folks and much of this project At least that the forensic stuff came out of I encountered the body of a 31 year old mother of three from Ecuador in the Arizona desert in 2012 A woman named Maricela Zagui Puyas She only been dead like four or five days and it was just a devastating kind of encounter And then I ended up figuring out who she was through the help of medical examiner in Tucson and a center called the Colibri Center for human rights And then I trace her story back to Ecuador.

I meet her family her kids I go to New York and meet her family there And it's kind of her story that really kind of inspires me to kind of keep going and to think okay, you know This is rough work. It's emotionally difficult at the same time I'm incredibly privileged to do this I get paid to this for a living and I chose to do this And so I've got to find ways for it to be productive and but also to practice kind of self-care But I think about her a lot in terms of why this project needs to keep going and why I've got to be better at both Taking care of myself, but then also making sure that you know that the work is getting out there Yes, I have to imagine a you're in a hostile environment yourself It's not like you're going back to the four seasons hopping in the bathtub and watching some I don't know to it Or something You get in the bathtub and just you'll watch whatever's on sometimes it's the tour de France But you know you yourself are in an unforgiving situation and then you're just kind of left with that nightly And I think that that has to be crazy challenging. Yeah, you know during the course this project I mean another person like I read about is this woman might sell this 15 year old cousin who disappears in the desert And so I'm spending all this time with his family and working with parents of people who've lost a son and never recovered him This project was happening as the right time my wife gave birth to our first kid and so becoming a dad during all this all this really Change my whole perspective on this stuff and it both made me feel more aware about how I was feeling about this stuff But then also, you know incredibly inspiring to just kind of keep going I was gonna ask that yeah having had a child has to have like really because as much as you intellectually Understand of course people care about their children stuff until you have a child and then you imagine them separated from you Just immediately you're like I'm so scared for them. Yeah, they depend on me so much and to be separated I just can't imagine anything more horrific for them So it just you can know it intellectually But then you have the emotional component of being able to truly understand what kind of pain that would be I have to imagine it Yeah, change your whole experience.

I mean the most brutal thing I've ever you know this project You know the smuggling project that I'm writing a book about now Why one of the main people he was murdered by someone right in the middle of field work and that was so devastating and there's another That's happened that's been really challenging and painful but nothing compares to like interviewing a mom and a dad about their son Who has disappeared and the everyday struggles about if they're ever gonna know what happened to him I mean just I mean and when I give like talks about the book I mean I hate giving talk about the first book because that's kind of how it ends And I always kind of end the talk with this quote from from the dad talking about You know what life like is now in this perpetual state of grief and limbo, you know looking for his missing son And it just breaks my heart every single time and that's just like from an outside perspective Yeah, I cannot even begin to imagine what that daily distance is like and what now with the kids and cages How many my wife's very involved in this how many kids are separated? Thousands right it would appear at least that they had no intention of keeping track of anyone I mean they're just when you look at what level of attention was given to just keeping track of everyone It doesn't seem that there was any no and I mean part of it's just incompetence You know, I mean federal agency that just does not kind of thinking into the future It's doing stuff kind of willy nilly, but then you know you have to wonder too if part of the negligence It's just part of this brutality of this system that's in place Do you have any empathy for those people that are doing that job because I only Mentioned this because I was watching some special on it And they were following a border patrol officer and he was responding to a call that I think was on the like Rio Grande or something So he's driving down this dirt road and he's just passing people after you know person after person sometimes families and they're knocking on his window And they want water and you start realizing quickly like well this guy can't stop and pick everyone up Like he's responding to this call down here and he's gonna pass like six families on the way that he knows just the vehicle's not gonna hold This many people what a fucking terrible job like I can only imagine what mechanisms you have to enact for that not to kill you To pass six families on your way to pick up some other things So is it possible for you to have empathy for the people that are on that side of it? Sure I mean I've worked with the border patrol often on for many years and people don't really know that over 50% of agents are Latino And so you've got a lot of people who are sort of struggling with their own identity in the context of you know Policing people who look just like them and a lot of the agents that I've talked to have said things like I joined the border patrol after 9-11 Because I wanted to fight terrorism and now I end up on just chasing dirt farmers from Wauhaka across the desert That wasn't really what I signed up for and so I think there are a lot of people who had been sold that I mean around after 2001 the federal government starts conflating terrorism with immigration Yeah, putting those two things together and so you have a lot of agents who I think really bought into that and then you know Come to find out that you know we've never caught a terrorist coming across the southern border ever not one not one But you have these agents who are you know I think a lot of them are struggling with these kind of internal conflicts I mean there are some that that I've met who I thought were gonna kill me who were I mean You know gun in my face kind of stuff just aggressive I'm sort of people but I think there's a lot of other folks that come to know who are complicated have you been mistaken for someone Walking yeah, yeah, I've had that happen. I've had people think I was a smuggler get pulled over for various You look way more like a smuggler to me than a farmer.

Yeah. Yeah, if I just had a quickly thin slice and profile you I've deported gangbangers Yeah, this guy's the same of them as 13 for sure. Yeah, look at them Okay, now so you're kind of I wonder at some point do you foresee like the Archaeological component fading away as you take more of a like policy Advisement role or do they always like I'm wondering how from when you set out on this project till now how it is evolved and where you see it going? I don't do a lot of policy work because people don't like taking advice from anthropologists Why not because we make everything way too complicated Because you have a question like you know you ask me this immigration question I'm like I don't like give you like a forty two bullet point kind of response to this and policy makers are like well That doesn't yeah, I need a headline.

Yeah, so I avoid a lot of the policy stuff But as a project has evolved I mean it really is a lot more about public outreach I'm committed to training students to do research on this kind of stuff You know we're currently trying to start a center at UCLA that will basically work with first generation college students to do work Around these issues and put them out into the world to do you know various research projects But then also trying to translate all of that for different publics So the new project that's gonna go live globally is the goal to get more people both interested in then also like volunteering should people be helping people in the desert? Like what what so this project the hustle terrain we send them an exhibition kit That's 3200 tote eggs and all the information that needs to go on those tote eggs and then they have to mobilize You know a hundred five hundred people to make these exhibitions And so for me there's something that happens rather than going to an exhibition space and sing a wall of three thousand handwritten tote eggs What happens if we ask you to come and spend half an hour filling up the names of the dead and that information and then mounting on this wall We want people to connect with this issue in a kind of more personal way through that that experience Yeah And we hope that it's through that and then they will get a different kind of take on this whole thing and then decide what to do with that information But let's say someone's listening right now and they're like yeah I would like to be involved what are the things that someone could do to help this situation? You know I think just getting more educated just learning about seven there are organizations that you can support you can donate to that Are doing various kinds of things but they can vote you know they can start with local level kind of politics But then also finding ways to support immigrants in their community There's no community in the United States that doesn't have immigrants in it And so figuring out ways to support folks I think at that level is maybe what most people can actually do Yeah, I'm just now remembering I had a la geography class here at UCLA where they talked about that 50% of all Second-generation Mexicans were middle class and that they were very much like the best embodiment of the American dream If you look at the data like it's not at all in any way some kind of big drain that it's generally works Yeah, okay So you're talking about something that frustrated me ultimately with majoring in anthropology I'm so sorry, but I'm gonna say the thing that I found at the end of four years to be frustrating was you learn about all these people You're told this concept of cultural relativity and I definitely see the merits of cultural relativity Which is you really can't learn about anybody if you start with some judgment or your goal is to make a judgment or some moral Claim on what's happening that that clouds your ability to actually understand what forces are causing say infanticide in in a way It's like our most provocative thing we like to study in intro and through class But at the end of the whole thing I thought okay, here's this vast knowledge in now. What what what is the application of it?

Like I understood the purpose, but I have to say at some point I was like no Female circumcision now, but you know I understand now all the elements that are leading to this thing I think I look I put away my judgment long enough to understand why it's happening But I can pretty much conclude now it is misogyny at the end of the day I was frustrated with the application of anthropology is that still the case or did I misunderstand how it was applied? Well, I think for a long time You know there were we're making knowledge for the sake of making knowledge and then it just lives in the ivory tower kind of thing Yeah, and anthropology I think is making this shift now towards being more public and more engaged and basically if you look the world's on fire We're experts in a lot of different things with this immigration race gender And why are we not the people on CNN talking about these things? Why are we not you know the public voice for these kinds of causes and I think people now are starting to really appreciate that in a much Kind of deeper way Yeah, you know How do I take my work out of a journal article and put it into some other context so that people can actually learn something and be able to Appreciate what it is anthropologists do, but then also take that knowledge then and go out and try to get different Yeah, weaponize it in a good way in some way. Yeah, okay So now I'm gonna ask you a provocative question I think I'm I'm starting to realize I've overreacted on an issue that makes the rounds and it's about universities I think I I'm one of these people that probably overreacted like oh well universities have gone to ship and you can't even you know Have debate now it has to be one approved message and that's that am I inflating that you've now spent?

I don't know the last 10 years educating at three different colleges lecturing at udub and then u of m and then now here Has there been a change since we went to college or is it inflated? In terms of like censorship. Yeah, I've never really experienced it I mean the censorship thing, but I think I have experienced the the pushback about you know There's this liberal brown professor who's going on some tirade about politics I got a lot of university mission. I taught the 101 course there for many years Just 450 mostly non-majors who are taking it for general ed requirement to see boobs and some photos Yeah, and then they're like well and they show up and and then they're like well He's just showing videos of like the police shooting so you know like he's like this is not fun And me like this is what the world looks like and you know a lot of students in that class pushing back and being like This person's getting on his high horse about politics and I'm like human rights from you's not a partisan issue Like if there are injustices in the world I want you to understand that I think about it anthropologically And so I was getting pushback from students there about you know They just didn't like the flavor of the anthropology that I was pitching it wasn't Indiana Jones You know it was you know Trayvon Martin right and that was not sitting well with a lot of folks So what was your anthropological take on Trayvon Martin?

Well just getting people to think about the different kinds of experiences that certain people have about the world Yeah, and how you know I do this I show students like a video with black parents talking to their kids about the police You know and as part of like this is how culture is learned and shared and these are conversations that have to happen in a household About what the world looks like and students just being really uncomfortable with some of that stuff I came here. Yeah to see boobs, you know and other stuff and this is a real this is a real bummer. Yeah, maybe the extended next or something Yeah, I mean like I tell in the beginning like that's not what you're gonna get here right, but then they're like I'm stuck this is a G. You know, it's kind of an easy course I gotta show up listening to this like rambling.

Yeah, you know left-leaning professor kind of thing I'm like that shit man Was there any pressure from upstairs like did students complain and then you were pulled aside and said like hey light not a little bit No, okay, so I'm probably overacting everything's fine and discourse is still encouraged in academia and everything's good I think for the most part. Oh my god. That makes me go bubble up too. So yeah, yeah, you told me you're barely here, right?

Yeah, that's great Stay tuned for more live show after this exciting commercial break Okay, now I want to talk to you about something that we probably can all relate to which is we live in a very unique time period Where? Since I don't know 95 onward for 25 years the archaeological record exists in such detail where we're uploading every bit of information about ourselves Onto the internet it will live forever and I want to hear your thoughts on what a phenomena of that like there's no mystery anymore We're seeing a lot of people that are being tried for crimes that happened in 1990 per se and I think it's really interesting that it used to be like let's say that this technology existed in the 50s that this record had Been accumulating since the 50s we would very easily be able to go online and see some gentlemen probably for drinks in front of a Hospital smoking a cigarette put a newborn in the back of a car with no seat belts and then driving them home and you go This is alarming what we tend to do an anthropology is we try to look at like oh, what's the culture of that situation? What is the totality of that environment and that era in that time in space? But now we're in this interesting position where we can witness people real time doing things from different eras Yeah, we know what's culturally right and wrong now We're clear on that and we're observing people do things that is blatantly terrible today Yet it wasn't terrible then sure it's very complicated now.

I will say that I'm glad that the internet really wasn't around when we were in college Oh truthfully. Yeah, I mean we would be sure I wouldn't be sitting up here. That's right. That's right I always think about this way anything.

I'm saying now we're doing right now It's gonna look so stupid in 2050 years And so all I can do is try to do the best that I can at this moment and know that I will be judged by history later on I guess it depends on what you're doing There's something like I look back on go for the days and another stuff you're like that shit was problematic then and it's problematic now 100% but the bottom line is now it can be observed it just couldn't be observed and now it's like You know like someone finding a photo of somebody in 1988 the very famous case current that just happened recently There's like someone in blackface. Oh, let me be very clear. I'm against blackface You know you start going back far enough and you're like oh well that was on television at one point That was in popular movies at one point There's there's all this disturbing stuff that we have to kind of confront that like and I'm just not sure if any of us Know where we draw those lines when there's a there is an archaeological view of it Which is like oh I'm uncovering stuff and it's from a bygone error, but it's the person still alive. That's interesting Well, I think I judge those instances on how does that person react to it right now?

I know it wasn't you know the kind of like shaggy thing. I know it's not you know and they're like there's like Yeah, and I think I'm like boom bass like it wasn't me like oh I was right there though. Do you scooby for you if you needed it? You're in blackface Okay, it wasn't me Part of like you know are people owning that stuff or they are they you know getting really defensive about things that you shouldn't be defensive About you should just be like I'm a fucking idiot.

Yeah, sorry. Yeah, yeah Yeah, now as I started with the punk rock thing because I do believe that we were kind of drawn to that There's some kind of anti-establishment punk rock vibe to anthropology Which I fucking love it. Does it ever boggle you that like here you and I are sitting where the fucking establishment or four? I'm 45.

You're what 42? Yeah, 42. You're a professor at a world-renowned college. I'm on TV telling people what dishwashers to buy I hope you'll buy Samsung How weird is that yeah, you know completely I'm confronted by the fact if like God I want to be able to talk to who I was at 20 and I know damn well they would listen Yeah, and so it's just a very interesting place to find yourself when you're teaching kids Do you feel a chasm or do you feel very much like I like I still feel like I'm 20 delusionally so oh?

I'm totally delusional. Uh-huh like and I'm like I think that I'm in my 20s And of course I have my cultural references are all off. I mean I like yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, I'm just like and I went even further back with Scooby-Doo. Oh, yeah But you know I will say that the one thing I'm going to do is I'm teaching a class right now called the anthropology ballet Which I hope you'll come in a yeah, I love you and talk to these kids Yeah, you know I tell them like look I was a super fuck up weirdo and anthropology is this tribe that collects weirdos And yeah, I'm I think on some level I can connect with them in that sense and I tell them you know Look I used to drop out you know total screw up in all kinds of different ways So I think I'm really open about my past I hope is a way to connect with them even though there's a age gap Yeah, but they can maybe they can see themselves a little bit in me like the future That's what I want them to be able to see and then I definitely see myself in a lot of those students Yeah, now to me like when I went this will piss off a lot of students here currently, but when I went it was 3800 bucks for the year I didn't live on campus 3800 bucks isn't it just getting so unattainable for everyone?

But it does seem that the line is going like this right? It's just like what's the end and how does it get wrangled as an as an archaeologist who studies migration? Please tell me how to drop the price of college tuition I think you know some institutions are committed to financial aid to getting you know They recognize that the students that they want to get can't afford it And so they're trying to find ways to do that and then they're the students who will pay all this money that then can oftentimes You know feel some of the other programs. I have a solution.

What's your solution? I went to school in Georgia and there was a yes, I was waiting for some class It's good school not usually like this cool anyways go ahead. There's hope scholarship program there that is paid for by the state lottery So if you have a certain GPA or over you get free tuition, which is what I got even though your parents were loaded Even though even though yeah, so the states can start doing programs like that to make college cheaper for people Okay Well, I guess my last curiosity is if I didn't get as lucky as I got and got to do this thing I love comedy and chatting to people and all this wonderful stuff I really the only other lifestyle I totally fantasize about is yours like I think just never leaving the world back in Amia sounds heavenly. I was never happier than just coming here four days a week and having someone explain something to me Like I was five.

I loved it Is the job what you had thought it was gonna be is it better? Is it worse? Oh? It was worse.

Yeah, let me just fill in that pause only means one thing post tenure, you know a different kind of work You know so you become you know, you're just involved with a lot more service You know should have gotten a PhD in email What I spend a lot of my time doing but at the same time You know the flexibility I can study whatever the hell I want I can get money to go to some new place and think about some new idea Yeah, I love that and I love working with students, you know really mentoring students seeing them develop for me is a super fulfilling thing Yeah, I mean there's migration issues everywhere right all over the globe is there anything that you're doing here that is applicable to other areas? And is there any kind of synthesis between other problem areas and the work you're doing? Well the show has to rain 94, you know We're in 150 locations around the globe and we're doing a whole bunch of shows in the Mediterranean in Europe in Africa and working with refugees and migrants And those locations to build this wall map of Arizona deaths as a way to kind of stand in solidarity with migrants around the globe And so we're trying to find ways to branch out so that we're connecting with it with this issue Because I mean for me America we tend to think about immigration as like our problem kind of thing You know and it's like one of the global crisis and it's only getting worse And we need to see that all this stuff that's happening, you know climate change as a driving force in migration that's happening in Latin America in Africa How so like water sources are yeah, you know more extreme weather so typhoons hurricanes We're starting to see increases in these like climate catastrophes that then force people to have to out migrate and this is going on for decades already Hercane Mitch and Honduras devastates Honduras in the late 90s and people have to out migrates to the United States And it's only happening now on a higher level. Yeah Well look it's mind-blowing to me that you've become a really valued member of our society Truthfully, I'm sure on some level you think the same about me.

Yeah, do you want to tell them the motorcycle before we go to you? Want to regale them with our motorcycle experience go ahead the Lakers won the championship 2000 2000 we were celebrating Dangerously Dex life likes to drive fast all the time, but we decide let's do some motorcycling. Yeah down like Santa Monica Boulevard Like three o'clock in the morning sure I remember like going like 90 miles a hundred miles an hour We're probably obeying the post-speel but yeah, we were on a motorcycle I think I was whispering in here like can't listen go any faster Challenge accepted and so cops see this and we're like oh shit. There's a cop behind us.

Yes. Don't worry I know exactly where we are. I know long beach like a back of a hand like we're in a deliride Yeah Go left and they go right and make another left and so we're like down these alleys and it's cops chasing us And then I'm like oh this is our getaway right here There's a few limitations on this type of thing hopefully 20 years And we turn this corner where I think we're gonna like be free and clear and it's just a garage door and So we we slow down and crash throw the bike Right Scooby-Doo behind a bush like get behind the bush and so we go behind this bush We're hiding behind this giant bush and of course the bush is only like three feet tall so you can see Dax's head over the bush I'm hunched down. We both have these helmets on and this cop pulls up It puts the lights on and he's just like on this microphone like I can see you Behind the bushes.

I can like come out from behind the bushes And so we like kind of walk come out from behind the bushes and this cop is like you guys doing And Dax goes officer. I didn't really know how fast I was going. It was a total mistake I drive for a living some my license. It's really important You know and I'll never do it again and I just turn to this cop and I said look the Lakers haven't won a championship since They want tonight and we are celebrating and we got really carried away and I'm so sorry And the guy looks at us and is like you guys are fucking idiot Get on your busted bike and go home.

Wow and so we just walk over here Don't do what we did but do what Jason does Jason Delion I'm so impressed with what you've dedicated your life to and I think you're so helpful so You did it You see LA. Thank you guys so much. I said it when I did a commencement speech But I started crying while I was trying to say it so I'll attempt it again here There's nothing in my life I feel proud about than having on to this school. So thank you guys And now my favorite part of the show the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman Did you ever drink Joel Cola Joel Cola?

Yeah Joel Cola. Oh, Joel. Yeah, no too young. Yeah, that was before my time I feel like I was in junior high Joel hit the scene.

It was like all the caffeine and twice the sugar something had So crazy like declaration in the product and that was a cell Mm-hmm. I know things have changed people were like well I don't know that this whole energy drink thing seems to be the same thing like too much energy. That's true But nobody wants sugar now like you know, that's not great. That's true.

Maybe it was all the sugar and twice the caffeine Oh, they did they did a little dance with hey Google. What was Joel Cola's slogan all the sugar and twice the caffeine? Oh Wow, yeah, it's so nice when she's looking for yes, it is it feels great He's so cute today. Oh, she really is.

I just love that she's having an affair with that microphone. Yeah Fair they can be having a real. Oh, yeah, they're in a committed relationship. Yeah, they're committed They are although that same microphone plays patty cake with you all the time.

I'm not interested in that microphone. Mm-hmm. So it's all platonic Yeah, that's right. I would never encroach on her.

No. No, she's so defenseless. I'm like I packs. Yeah I would feel sad when you get you so defenseless.

Yeah poor girl girl. Hey Google are you defenseless? Huh? I can't tell yeah, sorry.

Oh, I like that she wasn't too proud Jason Dalian this one I was thinking about when I was reading about him He has an accent over one of the letters in his name in the Leon part like maybe over the ear though Oh, okay, and I was really how do people do how do you put an accent on things when you're texting or if you hold down the letter? Well on iPhones look I don't know how Samsung's work But if you hold down on the letter all of them pop up and you can oh yeah on any letter Uh-huh well on the letters that have them like an e Pp are there some letters that you can't put an accent on me like a double you maybe yeah, I've never seen a fucking accent on a w Yeah, there's nothing when I click w or m Look at eat look what pops up when I do eat a smorgasborga. Mmm. Okay.

Well, thank you. I learned something today. You're welcome Another memory lane for you. Absolutely fine.

I love that you guys were fuck ups and now you're not that was my favorite takeaway as well Yeah, it's just like yeah, if there had been a poll in the middle of class They'd be like these two aren't gonna make it like even the graduation much less. Yeah, it's inspiring I can't put to find a point on how much he drank in college really? Oh, yeah, I think he drank more than I did Well, he said it I think he was like laughing but also seemed serious like I can't be around you No, no, no well I think there were moments where I was like I can't go with you guys to the bar like I can be friends But I can't although there's very little recreational activity with him when we were friends that didn't involve drinking So yeah, there probably was yeah, and I just thought it's weird as I said on stage It was weird to me that he had zero concern about it. Yeah, and then it improved to be an issue for him Yeah, well some people aren't addicts.

That's right Even though like if you just looked at his consumption you probably would have concluded that he was an addict I don't think he was well. This is come up in our lives with people around us I think I think there is a distinction between somebody who's an addict. Yeah, it has truly no control Yeah over somebody who is choosing to be out of control Mm-hmm. Yeah, and they might choose that a lot of days and so from the outside it looks the same But they still are in control of it, you know, yeah, yeah, and I don't think you are no no no no no One drink the playbook is out the window and I had to prove that to myself over a thousand times I know I'm smart enough to have a good enough fucking plan I'm gonna have two drinks and I'm gonna stand up and leave there Yeah, and just could not do that even someone who's not an addict that can be hard once you're in it right because you have a different brain working Yeah, this is something else happening.

I'm having fun. We're frontal lobe. It gets diminished Yeah ability to do it's away the future versus the presence is gets diminished. Yeah, can I tell you something?

Yeah, I don't know if you will, but when you had toe surgery, okay, and I was with you for a couple days during that time So I was the one who was in charge of administering your medicine. Yes giving you your painkiller. Yeah, and it was the first time I really Saw I mean no like at two o'clock on the dot. Yeah, you'd be like, okay It's time yep, and we'd be doing stuff.

We'd be like watching TV or yeah in the middle of a conversation You were occupied, but you were always thinking about it. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes It's like on the dot and I it scared me in many ways because guys share about it all the time in meetings Like you have surgery and you need paying pills and the consistent kind of takeaway is like It'd probably be easier without them in many ways because you are so preoccupied or I am so preoccupied with it Which is why I don't get the medicine and you are cursing at the medicine that there's no enjoyment of it because you're just like Oh, I can't have the amount I want which is all of them And so it's almost whatever whatever pain it's treating which it does coupled with this Anxiety about not being able to do it the way you want to so that's its own pain and it's almost probably neutral.

Yeah Do you think in your head gross? No, I thought I just thought wow, this is so real And I think I mean I already there were a few other instances in life that I had that thought about you and just about addiction in general And it's a moment like that that I know I'm not yeah Yeah, I don't have that I don't have this thing this preoccupation. Yes with substances and so Even though I like alcohol, but it doesn't control me. Yeah, you're not someplace and then we're gonna go somewhere else Your first thought isn't is there more alcohol there?

No, in my I wouldn't even leave a place that had alcohol unless I knew where we were going was gonna have this Same amount like I would never do it. Yeah, it's the first thing I would think about not like oh that'll be fun over there Or this or that it's just like will they have alcohol there? Yeah, it's I mean I guess that's a little bit hard I'm already drinking let's I was at a bar something out a couple drinks I was liking it and then I wanted to go we were going to like Ryan and Amy's I might be like should we get wine on the way? I would have some element of that mm-hmm again the line is so blurry as to when it transitions into a true Obsession yeah obsession and problem.

Yeah, the times I've had painkillers in sobriety There's no moment in that where I'm not thinking about painkillers even I'm talking you and I'm super distracted by something I'm way more conscious of like when the next one's coming anything else It just does it scary and I think that if other people are around addicts it's scary Like there's a very real fear that you carry and it's sort of back to that So we talked about earlier where you know last week or whatever the last episode we did about Drinking around addicts or smoking around acts or whatever I think part of it is why would you do that because already you're living with fear that that that person is going to wreck their life and Yours but theirs and you care about their life so much. Yeah, it's intense can be intense I'm trying to think of I've ever partied with someone that scared me like I've gone in riot ridden motorcycles with people and it scares me And I don't enjoy riding with them because I'm nervous they're gonna crash and die Yeah, and so I don't want to do it and it's scary But I'm trying to think of I've ever partied with anyone where I was like oh this person's gonna die I don't think I've had that feeling ever okay, so you said a whole thing about Pacific Islanders Oh, yeah, the people that got to Tonga and Samoa had rode from I said the Philippines because it was convenient But I think it was Malaysia is what I really learned right, but then they said in the moment that wasn't true So they shot that out someone did yeah, but I don't and I couldn't find it I was more happy that there was just a total look of puzzlement on Jason space who's a professor in anthropology So it wasn't like he said like no, that's wrong because it's this it always just relieved like oh I don't think he knows If it was something that everyone in anthropology knew he would definitely know you have to be in whatever class that was talking about migration You migrating populations he would definitely know about that well in South and Latin America He's in a lot. I mean he's been in all the classes Yeah, but he had no theory on how the Tongans got there Yeah, but I think having no theory is probably better than having a made-up theory made up I learned anything I just made that up. I think you're confused.

Yeah, I think you're confused Yeah, okay, no I thousand percent still believe what I learned all right well You can find it out you'd have to explain why they're inordinately larger than everyone else in another way alright Find out and come bring your old textbook and return okay doesn't make me think of we talked about the thought experiment was No, but well people were mad at me for Nixon because Nixon did not get impeached okay, right? He did right so he did resigning we resigned but I thought he resigned after he got impeached before he got convicted by the Senate correct, but really it was before okay. Well we cleared that up. Okay.

That's clear Okay, you said California's the fifth biggest economy in the world It's the sixth because mayor Garcetti said that LA in itself just LA was the sixth biggest California Yeah, California has a world's fifth largest army that was CBS news 2018 this one that pops up Which is on Wikipedia economy of California the economy of California is the largest in the United States But if California were a sovereign nation 2020 so that's new it would rank as the world's sixth largest economy ahead of the UK I'm behind India Okay, so that's here. Okay, so some conflicting information. So yeah big economy big economy really big. I'm proud of it.

Me too That's all that's it. Yeah, not very many facts with dear old Jason interesting considering it was an expert Yeah, I know that's the way it works with these experts, but I love what he's doing me too He was really cool. I mean I was aware of what he was doing. I was not aware of how dark it is The course it is trying to figure out what the identity of the step body and children and the whole thing Your parents were missing children and the whole endeavor is just suffering.

That's what he's studying He's studying the suffering of millions of people. Yeah, I know that's rough It is but I'm but somebody does it yeah, so always feel like visiting someone in the hospital the nurses I'm like oh my god the job. It's like there's so much poop and pee and blood Just people make a mess of those beds. Yeah, they have like this great attitude and they're fucking doing I'm always overwhelmed with like what a job I'm so grateful there are people that are up for that.

Do you think we could learn that mentality or you're born with it? Oh man I mean I would really need to be putting food on the table for my kids to work there in like a geriatric facility Yeah, I'm just dealing with other humans poop is I'm just so grateful some people are up for it. I agree. Good.

So people don't seem to care like Carly's a little that way my sister like Yeah, it's in social watching zip popping videos. Yeah people really like those but that's like they're getting a weird satisfaction Yeah, I don't think that's the same as like the poop and pew cleaning. Okay, P&P the three P Piddle poo poo and pew All right, well, I love you and I love Jason Dilly. I'm so happy that he's so successful in educating young minds What a great person to do that.

I love that. Yeah, all right. Love you. Bye