Joe Rogan Experience: #2432 with Josh Dubin (Transcript)

That helps. Meaning it helps, yeah. Just saying it just to get it out of a fight.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. That’s not good. It’s not worth it.

The Perlmutter DNA Theft Case

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. I just finished this trial on a case that was super important to forensic science. It was actually the namesake of my center, the Perlmutters, the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo Law. So Ike and Lori Perlmutter’s DNA was stolen by a neighbor. And it’s a nutty story. You could read about it online.

JOE ROGAN: I did read about it online.

JOSH DUBIN: It’s crazy, f*ing crazy. And but I had an expert, a so-called expert on the stand. And there was an email where they, it was an unaccredited DNA lab and someone that worked for him gets the results of DNA testing, one round of the results, and she says, “the good news is we have a full profile. The bad news is it’s not associated with the Perlmutters.”

And I said to him, in words or substance, why would it ever be bad news for a scientist if one particular person was implicated in a crime or not? Aren’t they supposed to just give the facts?

And in a moment of candor, I think it’s one of the few times this has happened in all my years doing this. The guy said, “you know, I wouldn’t have used those words. And it had no place.” And it wasn’t an email that he wrote, it was an email that someone that worked for him wrote.

And I almost said, right in front of Jerry, good for you, man. That’s super rare. And I mean, the case is, I think it’s an important one for forensic science because their DNA was stolen at a deposition over some petty shit. It was about a tennis dispute in their community.

And they’re lured to this deposition and their neighbor takes their DNA without their consent.

JOE ROGAN: How did he do it?

JOSH DUBIN: He had a former crime scene analyst and some retired deputy chief of police from Toronto, because this guy’s from Canada, come down and the former crime scene analyst sits at the deposition. And they planned it all beforehand.

And they made sure that they did not handle paper that Ike Perlmutter would handle. And they made sure that no one touched this water bottle that Lori Perlmutter was going to handle. And they hand him this phony exhibit and they had it worked out before that they would only touch the bottom corner of it.

And they have a water bottle sitting in front of Lori Perlmutter. And they ask questions about this dispute over the tennis center. And when they leave, it was treated like a crime scene.

And it was like some vigilante justice type of shit where they send all this stuff to an unaccredited lab who then sends it to an accredited lab. And instead of waiting for the results to come in from this accredited lab, the unaccredited lab starts interpreting it, and they’re having pressure put on them by this man that ultimately accused Ike and Lori of being involved in this awful crime.

JOE ROGAN: What was the crime?

The Tennis Center Dispute

JOSH DUBIN: All right, so it doesn’t make sense without context. So here’s what happens. Ike Perlmutter is the former chairman of Marvel. He’s very reclusive by all accounts. He and Lori don’t have children, and they live a very quiet life in Palm Beach.

He was an avid tennis player. This is about 14 years ago. Avid tennis player. And he became very friendly with the woman that was the tennis pro. She was a single mother. She would set him up with tennis games, and he became friends with her.

So she sold real estate on the side. I mean, this is like a f*ing episode of Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm at the beginning. Then it goes off the rails and descends into the depths of hell. So bear with me.

Okay, so a man moves into or a man had been living at or moves into their neighborhood, and he becomes friends with this other couple who also sell real estate. The wife sells real estate. And apparently they approach the tennis pro, and they’re like, “we should team up on real estate.” And she’s like, “no, it’s just my side hustle. I’m going to do it alone.”

So this guy from Canada writes this memo. And in the memo, there’s all these accusations about this woman that she could go to federal prison and she’s committing, she could be, that there’s bid rigging going on because they never sent her tennis pro contract out for bid. It was just kind of like nutty stuff.

JOE ROGAN: Just because she wouldn’t go into business with her.

JOSH DUBIN: I mean, that’s our theory. That’s my opinion. And, yeah, that was our theory in the case. So Ike stands up for her. He’s a very loyal guy. Stands up for the people that he is friends with. And he thought she was getting bullied.

So she sued the guy for defamation, and Ike and another resident in this condo complex paid for her legal fees. So about a year later, mail starts to arrive in this community, and it is the most awful shit you have ever heard.

And it’s accusing the Canadian guy of being a child molester, of being a murderer. It’s horrific, twisted, sick shit. So it’s about a year after this tennis center dispute, and there’s misspelled Hebrew words and Jewish stars all over it.

So this guy thinks, naturally, that Ike and his wife are behind it. Like they have nothing better to do.

JOE ROGAN: All right?

The DNA Evidence Controversy

JOSH DUBIN: So because he’s so convinced that they did it, or that they were involved, and he initially suspected that other people might be involved, this guy’s going around and swabbing DNA off of, with a Q-tip, off of cars. He’s digging through trash in the condo community, and he’s on this mission to collect people’s DNA.

So he calls them to a deposition about the tennis center case, and that’s where this all went down. So once they collect their DNA, this unaccredited lab claims that DNA taken off of the hate mail matches Lori Perlmutter’s DNA from the water bottle at the deposition.

The problem was that this unaccredited lab didn’t wait for the report from the accredited lab. And that run of the DNA that this woman was relying on, the accredited lab discarded it because the man that actually did the test contaminated the machine, and he knew it, so he didn’t rely on it.

So years and years and years go by, and after they knew that Lori had nothing to do with this. In fact, in 2017, a man got arrested in Canada, and he got arrested because a package got intercepted at the border by Homeland Security. And it had samples of the hate mail, latex gloves in the package. And it was a former business associate of this Canadian guy. And their relationship went sour. And I thought the case was over.

In 2019, I believe the guy gets arrested again. And there’s a detailed affidavit, so it’s clear that this man is responsible for it. So in any event, in 2016, I believe it was 2016, there’s an article in the f*ing deal book in the New York Times saying that Lori Perlmutter DNA is on that hate mail. And then there’s another one in the Globe and Mail, which is a big Canadian paper.

The $50 Million Defamation Verdict

So it was a defamation case against this guy and against this lawyer for Chubb, because Chubb helped this Chubb lawyer. Federal insurance, also known as Chubb, helps him draw up the blueprints for collecting their DNA at the deposition.

So it was a super gratifying case. We won a $50 million verdict, and he was found liable for defamation, abuse of process, which is abuse of the legal process. And it’s taken Ike and Lori all of these years to have their name restored in court. And they’d kill me if I admitted it, and it would be a violation of their confidence and my professional obligation. But they’ve spent an untold fortune.

And the case is important for forensic science because DNA is supposed to be the holy grail. And you can’t have private citizens running around trying to collect people’s DNA without knowing what they’re doing. You could be leaning on someone and have good intentions to get results.

But if I told you, or if I said to Jamie, here’s my suspect, take a look at these fingerprints and tell me if they match him or her, or here’s my suspect, here’s their genetic profile, tell me if it matches. You don’t realize the, I mean, sometimes the error rate skyrockets by as much as 50% with fingerprints, over 80%.

And fingerprint analysts will agree and they will say, “Yeah, I know that that happens. And if someone tells me who the suspect is and only who the suspect is, and I’m comparing it, I think the error rate goes up. But not with me. Not with me.”

I mean, again, it’s that phenomenon where you just can’t think that you would be biased. So look, the case was super important because I think beyond restoring their name, and it’s the namesake of the center where we do this work, it also preserves the integrity of forensic science and especially DNA, which is really one of the few super reliable forms of forensic science.

But even that, when put in the wrong hands or if it’s exposed to subjectivity and people’s belief that they have the right person, it’s vulnerable. And science shouldn’t be vulnerable. It should be, it’s either A or B. It’s either yes or no. Especially with DNA.

JOE ROGAN: So can I ask you a question?

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: When you said that her, the evidence against her, the DNA evidence had to be thrown out because the machine was contaminated.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: How was it contaminated? And how did that implicate her DNA?

Understanding DNA Contamination

JOSH DUBIN: So what happens is when you’re, I don’t want to go too deep into DNA analysis, but it is actually interesting. When you’re conducting DNA testing, the manufacturer of the machine, I think it’s called the Powerplex Plus, they ask you to run what’s called a positive control and a negative control to make sure that the machine is correctly calibrated.

Because what it’s doing through electrophoresis, it’s shooting out what’s called an electropherogram on the other end so that you’re able to do what they refer to as calling alleles. So you’re calling a chromosome pairing at a specific genetic marker, and they called them, there’s various different loci or locations where you either have two alleles or one. You get one from your mom, one from your father, one from your mom, one from your dad.

And sometimes the one from your father might not show, but your mother’s will show, but there’ll be two alleles at most at a specific location. So they want to make sure that the machine is working properly. So the manufacturer has the lab analyst every time you do it, run a positive control, meaning that you’ll put a solution through the machine, and it should, on the other end, give you very specific results.

And he accidentally pipetted or took the solution from her DNA mixture instead of from the positive control mixture, and put that through the machine. So when he was running the tests, her DNA is already mixed in there. But he realized he made a mistake. So when he issued his report, he didn’t rely on that run.

Because when I say run, it’s another, you’ll run the DNA on different occasions and sometimes on different dates because you want to make sure that your genetic profile will never change. My genetic profile will never change. So when you are looking at somebody’s genetic profile, it should be consistent.

So when he saw that, “Wait a second, the first run of this doesn’t match the second and third or the fourth,” he realized he made a mistake. But without having the lab analyst that’s doing the interpretation weighing in on the results, and you’re antsy to get an answer, and you’re leaning on an unaccredited lab saying, “Interpret the results, interpret the results. Money’s no object.”

There’s an email that said that. Instead of waiting, she relies on this run of the DNA. And then what happened, happened. But at some point, this Canadian guy came to learn what actually happened and kept on going and kept on going and kept on going. And there was evidence that he wanted hundreds of millions of dollars from my clients.

I think what turned out to be a sh*y situation for him because no doubt getting hate mail like that has to be disturbing and upsetting to the family.

JOE ROGAN: Did it turn out that he had any sort of relationship with the Canadian man who was sending him the hate mail?

The Canadian Connection

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah, that was his former, one of his former business colleagues who he had a vicious falling out with, and he kept it from everyone. So I think that the inference, in my opinion, the inference is that at some point, and in fact, there’s an allegation in the hate mail which says, “You were involved in the murder of these two people.”

He accuses this man in Canada, months after the hate mail began to arrive, of spreading that rumor. So I believe that he knew it was him the whole time. And at some point, I believe he was trying to shake the Perlmutters down.

JOE ROGAN: So he wanted money from them, otherwise he was going to go public.

JOSH DUBIN: And he went public.

JOE ROGAN: How much did he request?

JOSH DUBIN: Look, there’s an article in the Globe and Mail saying that he wants $600 million. There was an article. He admitted on the stand that it was $100 million.

JOE ROGAN: So he was just trying to get paid his te.

JOSH DUBIN: Well, that’s my opinion. That was the jury’s opinion.

JOE ROGAN: What does he do?

JOSH DUBIN: He was some embattled, in my opinion, an embattled businessman in Canada. He had like an executive recruiting company. But there was all sorts of public information out there that he worked on the Toronto Harbor Commission and then been involved in what the press called cloak and dagger campaigns where he was wasting public funds.

He bragged about all the lawsuits he’s been involved in. So I think the jury saw through it. And look, again, sometimes you become really close with your clients, and that’s not always a great thing. I’m guilty of that a lot. But these are wonderful people, reclusive. They give most of their money away to charity and to watch these people get dragged through the mud for over a decade.

The Trial Strategy

And there was evidence in the case that, this is interesting because I initially fought this on the day, the first day of jury selection. They had been invited to go to Mar-a-Lago and sit at the president’s table for a Halloween party. It was just prospective jurors filling out questionnaires.

So the defense and it was really, I think the attorneys for Chubb or for the lawyer that worked for Chubb wanted to introduce evidence. They got photos of the party, and they wanted to introduce this evidence. And there was one day during the trial where they went to the White House because one of their close friends was appointed to be the ambassador for India. And they used that against them during the trial.

And I fought it tooth and nail, and then I finally said, “You know what? F* it. I’m going to let it come in.” I stopped fighting it, and I knew that the jurors on their questionnaire filled out who they publicly admired most and least. Two of them wrote they admired the president the most. One of them said they admire him the least.

So I really had to speak to that juror and say during my closing argument, what they’re doing here is they’re trying to say that Lori Perlmutter’s reputation doesn’t matter, that she can’t emote and suffer humiliation or public ridicule, and that you should disregard her because of who she’s friends with, who she votes for.

The fact that her husband came here and literally with $200 in his pocket and ascended. What’s the weird paradox about success? You get there and people are like, “Oh, these f*ing rich people.” But these are like, they represent the best in all of us.

Lori Perlmutter, with her free time, started work at the gift shop at NYU because she liked the feeling of selling flowers and little gifts to people that were going through terrible times. And she ends up becoming a board member at NYU, and they give $50 million to start the Perlmutter Cancer Center. I mean, who among us wouldn’t want to aspire to that?

And they were trying to say, “But she doesn’t matter.” At one point, she was asked the question, because with defamation, your reputation is on the line, right? And you have to argue reputational damage. And they said, “Well, isn’t your reputation bound up in your husband’s?”

And they said this to a jury of like, four or five women. And I thought, “What a dumb f*ing thing to say.” In my opinion, at least. It was like, and I was able to say to them during the closing, “They’re saying she doesn’t matter and that she’s not her own person, her reputation.”

So it’s like these little victories help restore my faith in the system. Because if billionaires can get awarded $50 million, which is what they got awarded, I think that that’s the jury saying her reputation mattered and not only did her reputation matter, but it mattered to the point where you can’t just tear somebody down when you know the facts.

JOE ROGAN: Which seems so insane that he would pursue that. I mean, the guy literally owns the Ike Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice. And you’re like, “Yeah, I’m going to test that. I’m going to test that justice, just bullsh my way.”

JOSH DUBIN: I mean, the irony of that is that the center was born out of their experience in this case.

JOE ROGAN: Really?

The Birth of the Perlmutter Center

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. The center was born out of… At one point, I was offered this role to start a new post-conviction center. Up until four years ago, five years ago, I did work at the Innocence Project. And when I was offered this position at the same law school at Cardozo Law where the Innocence Project was born, they said, “If you get that role, the Perlmutters, we’re going to fund it for the first 10 years because we realized that if you’re wrongfully accused in this country of a crime you didn’t commit, if you don’t have the resources to fight it like we did, that you’re really in trouble.”

And for them to have that kind of insight while going through this, you know, it’s remarkable. I’m indebted to them for life. I mean, they’ve become like surrogate family to me. But, yeah, the center was born out of their experience in this case, so…

JOE ROGAN: Good came out of it. Does the guy have the money to pay them?

JOSH DUBIN: I don’t know. I don’t know, but I’m going to find out about… You know, we have post-trial motions that the judge has to decide, and then, you know, once we get… Hopefully we get the judgment entered. Ike is not the guy to pick a fight with. He was standing up for his wife’s honor, really. And look, sometimes you pick a fight with the wrong person and you… What do they say? You f* around and find out.

JOE ROGAN: There’s a lot of people that f* around a lot until they find out. It sounds like this guy might have been one of those people.

JOSH DUBIN: I don’t know. I don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, perhaps. Perhaps allegedly. It just seems like there’s people that are involved in conflict their whole f*ing life, man, and they never get out of that pattern.

JOSH DUBIN: I don’t get it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, unhealthy people, they develop a pattern. They develop a pattern of thinking and behaving, you know?

JOSH DUBIN: Well, I don’t know if it’s the empath in me, but I try to see, like, what are you thinking? Why can’t you realize I’ve gone down the wrong path? Let me course correct and you just end up with theories. I mean, look, I can understand why a former detective might be concerned about liability. So they can’t just say, “Well, here’s what I was up to all this time.”

I guess I can understand that, but I can understand the thinking and not just saying I’ve gone down the wrong path. And some people start to believe their own lies. I think some people start to believe their own theories. Human psychology is like, it’s vast and abstract and so complicated.

JOE ROGAN: It varies, varies from individual to individual. What they can justify, what they can sort of rationalize in their head.

The Nelson Cruz Case: A Smoking Gun

JOSH DUBIN: Look, I told you at the beginning that there’s only been like a handful of cases where I was like, “That can’t be. There’s got to be something missing from that story that you’re not telling me.” But watch this.

Two officers in 1998 are on patrol in New York City, in Brooklyn, on Pitkin Avenue. Gunfire breaks out. And literally as they’re rolling down the street, the gunfire breaks out. One of the officers looks to his left and sees the muzzle flash of the gun that was used to kill this young man, Trevor Vieira. He exits the patrol car, draws on the man and says, “Drop the gun.”

The guy’s pointing the gun still that was used to shoot Trevor Vieira. And there’s a tense moment. And this officer has testified that there was a 14-year-old girl in the area or he otherwise would have just shot the guy. So he literally catches the murderer with the gun smoking in his hand. Why use that expression over the past two decades? “Oh, it’s the smoking gun.” This is the f*ing smoking gun.

He finally drops the gun. His name is Eduardo Rodriguez. He’s put in handcuffs. And you know, you get documents as you’re going through the discovery process during post-conviction, you get it from the prosecutor, from the police. And there’s a radio call by a detective that says, “Perps in custody.” Contemporaneous with the arrest.

They arrest two men, one guy standing next to him and the guy that Eduardo Rodriguez, that shot the gun. He’s placed under arrest, he’s brought to the precinct and he’s delivered into the arms of, of no other than one of the most corrupt, sadistic detectives to ever work homicide in Brooklyn. In my opinion. Louis Garcella.

No. Why should that name sound familiar to you or to others? Because Lewis Garcella is the guy that framed Derek Hamilton, who’s the deputy director of the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice at Cardozo. Louis Garcello and his partner, I think his name is Schimmel or Chimel. Kimmel. C-H-M-I-L.

These guys were so notorious for framing people for murders they didn’t commit that there have been 21 cases where people’s convictions were vacated, where they were the lead detectives. 21. Derek’s is one of them.

So Eduardo Rodriguez is delivered to the precinct, smoking gun in his hand. And a couple of hours later he’s brought to the home of Nelson Cruz, who was 17 years old at the time, 16 turning 17. And it’s the story of these cops that while he was in the precinct that he was yelling and screaming and tearing the place up. “I didn’t do it. Nelson Cruz did it. He shot him and ran and dropped the gun and I just picked it up.”

The officer that arrested him never saw Nelson Cruz. He didn’t see someone shoot and drop a gun. The story is literally ludicrous. Nelson Cruz is arrested and charged with murder.

So when I heard the story, I was like, “There’s no f*ing way that this is what happened. You’re leaving something out.” And I then read the trial transcript. There’s another guy that shows up at the precinct named Andre Bellinger. And Andre Bellinger says, “Yeah, I saw Nelson Cruz do it too.”

And he shows up at the precinct and he’s told what kind of gun was used. He’s told that Nelson Cruz is the suspect. And then he picks him out of a lineup after being told we’re going to put Nelson Cruz in a lineup. All three of those things are gross violations of investigatory practices. And this has been established for decades.

JOE ROGAN: So…

JOSH DUBIN: This guy ends up… Put on trial and they somehow claim that they don’t have… They can’t locate this guy that is saying that he witnessed the crime. They can’t locate him. He’s not around to be located. So this the person who had the gun in his hand that is shooting the gun, who they believe, who, who says Nelson Cruz did it. And Nelson Cruz’s trial, he’s nowhere to be found.

Wouldn’t you think that the prosecutors would put that man, Eduardo Rodriguez on the stand so he could explain how he picked up a gun? He could explain what did you see? You saw Nelson Cruz do this? And he ran and dropped the gun and he’s never put on the stand. It’s like a three-day trial. The only person put on the stand that claimed to have been a witness is this guy, Andre Bellinger.

So I mean, some people have like bad luck, shy luck, or cataclysmic, fing apocalyptically bad luck. And Nelson Cruz just happens to have, you know, won that sh lottery.

Nelson Cruz ends up before a judge about eight years ago and about six years ago, and it’s a post-conviction hearing. And this guy, Andre Bellinger, who claims that he watched Nelson Cruz do it, is outed as a liar. There are eyewitnesses that were with him that night who said he wasn’t at that murder scene. He was like blocks away with me. He was outed as a liar on so many different occasions. It becomes like it would become laughable if it wasn’t so serious.

After these post-conviction proceedings during which 20 some odd witnesses were called, the courtroom is packed on the day of the decision because the expectation amongst the press and in the legal community is Nelson Cruz is about to get exonerated. This judge had exonerated people that had been investigated by Louis Garcello. And she’s acting kind of weird and erratic and she rules against Nelson Cruz and contradicts herself on multiple occasions.

And this is in 2019, and we or 2020, and we later learn she never takes the bench again and she resigns because she has advanced stage Alzheimer’s disease. I have an affidavit that from an investigator that says her husband said that she had been suffering from these symptoms for years before there was a judicial complaint filed because she wasn’t showing up to court. There’s a ProPublica article about it, about this whole debacle.

And you know, it’s stories like this. And so the Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice is working on the case. And, you know, thankfully we’re before the Conviction Integrity Unit in Brooklyn, and it’s led by a really special guy. Eric Gonzalez is the district attorney in Brooklyn and he listens to these cases. He has a real Conviction Integrity Unit. So I’m hopeful that once we present the case to them that we’ll get him some relief.

But to think about, he was paroled in 2023, he’s a mess. He walks around nervous, he’s got terrible anxiety and paranoia, is a wonderful guy, and he’s so stone cold innocent. And you just wonder how and why this sh can happen to someone.

And you know, it’s like the perfect constellation of like, you got these crooked detectives who have already been found to have ruined a bunch of people’s lives. You have the smoking gun found in the hand of the murderer who mysteriously disappears. And if you’re wondering, so why, why do they believe this guy? How does he go to the precinct and he raises hell and says, “Nelson Cruz did, and I picked up the gun.” Even though there’s no evidence of that. What would be your guess?

JOE ROGAN: Well, he’s probably some sort of a witness in something else.

JOSH DUBIN: It was pretty well known back at the time that Louis Garcello, other detectives in Brooklyn Homicide and all the boroughs had informants. I mean, that’s my best guess. Why else would you just… And they’ve gone as far as to try to discredit their own and say, “Well, Piatti must not have seen him drop the gun and run.”

This guy has been consistent throughout. He hears the gunfire, looks, sees the muzzle flash. He literally witnesses the murder. So, you know, there was a joint FBI task force with the NYPD going at the time, so, yeah, they relied on informants.

JOE ROGAN: What’s the state of the guy who actually committed the murder?

JOSH DUBIN: Currently he’s out.

JOE ROGAN: Jesus.

JOSH DUBIN: He’s running around the streets, who knows where he is.

JOE ROGAN: So if your guy gets exonerated, does this guy get tried?

JOSH DUBIN: No, that very rarely happens.

JOE ROGAN: That fair. I mean, so that guy just committed murder and he’s free.

JOSH DUBIN: Oh, that’s happened. You know how many times that’s happened to anyone that’s done post-conviction work?

JOE ROGAN: So you… But you don’t even think that’s a possibility. You’re just dismissing it like, no, the murderer is going to go free.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah, because in order for me to expect that that would happen would be to defy logic as I know it in this world. Because think about what happens if a municipality admits we did something horrible and it was a mistake and we did the wrong thing. There’s going to be a civil rights lawsuit.

I mean, look to Brooklyn’s credit, with this DA, they have done that and done the right thing. But in terms of then going after the person that they think did it, you know, it’s 2000, almost 26, and this crime happened in 1998. It’s 30 years later to be able to reassemble the witnesses and some of whom are probably dead or hard to find.

But it’s very rare that once there’s an exoneration and you’re able to point to who the true killer is. Very rare that law enforcement will go after the person that defense counsel has established actually did it.

JOE ROGAN: That’s insane. Is it?

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Because if the defense counsel has ruled that this other guy is innocent and that the police officer did see the guy execute that person, how do you not try that person with murder?

The Reality of Wrongful Convictions

JOSH DUBIN: Now you’re stumbling into the “how could that be” of our legal justice system. It just doesn’t happen. I mean, Clementia Geary, who I’ve talked about before, who was exonerated from death row, you know, if there’s any doubt about this phenomenon of children killing their parents, I think that that was laid to rest a few days ago. It happens. It happens a lot more than was recently publicized.

You know, the real killer was the daughter of her mother and her grandmother. Clementi Aguirre gets charged, put on death row, and in the middle of his retrial, you know, she all but confessed on the stand. To me, they have her blood mixed with her mother’s blood at the crime scene and in a trail leading to the bathroom where the killer cleaned up.

She confessed on six or seven different occasions. Not under duress, not to law enforcement, to various people around town. She’s roaming the streets the day that Clementi got exonerated. You know, like I said, I think I might have quoted Jim Morrison. I was like, “There’s a killer on the road, and she’s in Kentucky, and you better go get her.” You know, and they were like, “Ah, objection.”

But yeah, it happens. I mean, it’s my belief that she’s stone cold guilty and they haven’t gone after her. And that happens a lot. I mean, look, the word exoneration is thrown around, but Derek’s case is rare. He was declared actually innocent. Sometimes the conviction gets vacated. Sometimes they decide not to retry the person and agree to time served.

But you’re pushing a massive boulder up a steep hill every time. Like, Nelson Cruz should not have to carry this weight around anymore. He’s had other lawyers that have done a great job representing him. You know, we’ve come in now.

JOE ROGAN: How much time did he wind up doing?

JOSH DUBIN: 26 years.

JOE ROGAN: Jesus.

JOSH DUBIN: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s horrifying. Jesus.

JOSH DUBIN: I mean, when you’ve done so much time that you’ve paroled out and are still trying to prove your innocence.

JOE ROGAN: Jesus.

Fighting Through the Pain

JOSH DUBIN: I hate to give you indigestion. I mean, but this is like, I’m past tears at this point. I’m more like, we just got to keep going and keep fighting. And when you get these little victories here and there, we’ve had a few releases recently that were super encouraging, where you’re able to get people a second chance, where you’re able to get it to the point where they could, even though they didn’t do it, plead guilty.

We just had a release. She was actually my co-counsel in the Clementia Geary case, Mari Palmer, and her client pled guilty, but we believe he’s innocent. He did it to get out. He had done 24 years and he’d had enough. But for her to get it to the place where he could even plead guilty after serving all that time, you know, innocent people plead guilty all the time.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, they do. Just to get a lighter sentence.

JOSH DUBIN: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a dirty business you’re in, buddy.

The Intersection of Justice and Immigration

JOSH DUBIN: Filthy, filthy. And it’s got all these tentacles because if you’re doing post-conviction work, it’s not just the wrongfully accused and convicted, it’s also, you know, we do clemency work, commutations and pardons. We start to wade into the human mess and you see that people have made mistakes and are worth a second chance. What they do with it is up to them.

But some of the stuff you can’t explain. Some of these prosecutions are political. Look, I’m dealing with a case right now that’s like at the intersection of wrongful conviction and “what the f* are we doing with our immigration policy in this country?” And I don’t even want to mention his name because I don’t want to, you know, or the state, because I don’t want to sacrifice the good work that we’re doing to get him a public hearing.

But I can say this much. This is a guy from Albania that came to this country in the early 70s and had to sit in a refugee camp in Italy for damn near a month under horrid conditions just to come here to try to live a life. He’s in his early 20s, he’s at a gas station. He has a hundred dollar bill for $5 of gas. He goes into the gas station. The guy takes the hundred dollar bill. He doesn’t have change. He says, “When you get $5, come back. I’m going to hold on to this hundred dollar bill.” And they get into an argument. He won’t give him back the dollar bill.

So he leaves and goes to get his brother and he tells his brother about it. They return to the gas station, they have a gun in the backseat of their car. His brother tells him, “You stay here, I’m going to go in and try to talk some sense into this guy. Get your money back, give him five bucks.”

My client’s sitting in the car and gunshots erupt. He goes in the back seat, gets the gun, goes around to the side, comes into the gas station. It comes into the, you remember back in the 80s where you would go in to pay and there would be like a little front desk area? And the gas station attendant is holding the gun and he looks to his left and his brother is bleeding out. The gas station attendant had shot his brother in the stomach.

Still holding the gun, shaking, he shoots him one time, dead. Shoots the gas station attendant dead. His brother miraculously survives and he’s put on trial for murder. And he goes to trial the first time. Remember, he’s in his early 20s and it’s a hung jury. Most of them are in favor of acquittal.

Goes to trial a second time and gets convicted. The judge must have seen that this was damn near as close to self-defense as it gets. He got sentenced to like four to seven years. He was out in just under four years. He had become an accomplished boxer in prison.

He’s lived the last 51 years of his life without so much as a traffic ticket. He goes to New York, joins the union as a super for buildings. He pays taxes, Social Security, pays into his pension, builds a life for himself, has five kids, eight grandchildren, and he’s living in upstate New York.

Leaves the country a couple of years ago to go to Albania to see family. Comes back and gets stopped at the border. Somehow is not detained at the border, but they start removal proceedings on him. Why? Because there is—

JOE ROGAN: Is he a citizen at this point?

JOSH DUBIN: No, he’s not.

JOE ROGAN: But he’s a green card—

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah, he’s a green card holder.

JOE ROGAN: He’s exactly who we would want in this country, a guy that comes here. And by the way, I want to mention the state, there are self-defense laws that did not exist then. Many states have stand your ground laws. I think under different circumstances, he doesn’t even—and if the laws had evolved, he doesn’t even get charged.

I mean, you see your brother shot. And the facts are not in dispute about this. I’ve researched it exhaustively. You know, isn’t that the type of person we want who has contributed to this society for 51 years and built a family?

JOE ROGAN: What happened with the brother and the attendant?

JOSH DUBIN: They got into an argument and he called the attendant, called him some slur against Albanians and they started to argue and he just shot him in the stomach. This isn’t even, it’s not in dispute at all what happened.

And there’s a law that if you committed a violent crime, you’re removable. But for 51 years, he was not removed from this country and he lived here as a green card holder and he paid taxes and he built a family and a life. And now—

JOE ROGAN: So this removal was all during the Biden administration?

JOSH DUBIN: No, unfortunately, it was during the Trump administration.

JOE ROGAN: But you said it was two years ago.

JOSH DUBIN: It was when he was first asked at the airport and they flagged him. I believe it was during the Biden administration, but no enforcement action was taken. It was during the current, and this isn’t an indictment of the president, this is just during the current administration that they started removal proceedings against him to try to have him removed from the country.

JOE ROGAN: So did they just go through all the old cases and find out anybody that had any sort of a violent offense?

A Family’s Fear

JOSH DUBIN: I believe that’s what happened. Nobody knows, but that’s what I believe happened. So again, I made the mistake, or maybe it’s a virtue. At this point I’m getting to know this family and I’ve met every sibling. There’s two boys and three girls, and they’re literally like some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met. I wish I didn’t like him as much as I did.

And I stay in close contact with one of the, I mean, I guess I can give first names, with one of the sons, Anthony, and his sister Joanna. And to see the love that they have for their father and the fear that they’re living under, that this man could get deported and sent to Montenegro.

JOE ROGAN: Why Montenegro?

JOSH DUBIN: Because that’s where you get sent if you’re Albanian, if you have Albanian citizenship.

JOE ROGAN: Why there, though?

JOSH DUBIN: I think that’s the protectorate of Albania at this point. So, and to watch them, they went to one removal proceeding, and the judge—I have the transcripts of the proceeding, and the judge is saying to the prosecutors at one point, he said, “What are you doing here?” He starts speaking Albanian to my client.

And look, I don’t know immigration law that well. I’m not an immigration lawyer, but I spoke to the immigration lawyer, and he’s like, “Look, I’m afraid that they’re going to take him.” I mean, ICE is waiting outside courthouses, and they’re going to take this guy. He’s in his 70s. Take him away from his family and his grandchildren.

So, again, you don’t just see these wrongful conviction cases. You see cases that are like, this man has built a life. And if you start to get beneath the surface and you see the pain and agony and fear that people are living, they’re living it day to day.

We were able to get a delay into February for his removal proceedings. So I’m now trying to get him pardoned, because if he gets pardoned, there’s no basis upon which to remove him. And, you know, we have a team at my center that’s working on it. And you want—these are the kind of people you want to fight for once you get to know them.

So there’s like, I don’t want to just tell nightmare after nightmare, but the reason why it’s important, I think, for people to hear this is it’s not just what you’re seeing on TV or what you’re hearing about. I mean, what basis do we have to remove a grandfather who’s lived here for 50 years and contributed to this society and paid his taxes and paid into Social Security and was part of a union?

And just like, I’m looking for a flaw. I really am. I’m looking for a reason for me not to like them. And I just get drawn in more and more. They’re just wonderful people. And these are the kinds of things that are worth fighting for.

ICE Raids and Deportation Concerns

JOE ROGAN: I think what’s going on with ICE is one of the things that’s going on with quotas for speeding tickets and things along those lines is that they have numbers that they want to achieve, and they’ve openly talked about this, that they want to remove a certain amount of people per week. And when they do that, I think everything’s on the table.

Then they start showing up at Home Depot. Instead of looking for gang bangers, looking for criminals and cartel members, they go to whatever’s easiest pickings so they can get numbers up.

Do you know Ed Calderon? Do you know who he is? He worked. He was a Mexican military guy who now is an American citizen. But he reports extensively on the cartels and just was telling me some horror stories about ICE raids.

And one of them was, they took this guy who’d been brought over here when he was a baby, but didn’t have American citizenship. His family, you know, came over here illegally, lived here for 20 years, can’t speak Spanish. They deport him, send him to Tijuana. Can’t speak Spanish, does not speak Spanish. He is essentially an American citizen. He just never lived anywhere else. He just doesn’t have the paperwork. He’s not a criminal.

They sent him over to Tijuana and now he has to live in Mexico. He doesn’t know what the f* to do. He’s on the streets, has no idea. He doesn’t have any money.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah, I don’t understand. I wish that there was. It’s sort of a black box, immigration in terms of what is, what the policy exactly is. And why do you want to continue this narrative that seems to be, again, more of a human rights issue than a political issue? Like what is the end game here?

JOE ROGAN: The end game is to get as many illegals out as they can because so many were brought in over the last four years.

JOSH DUBIN: Well, that’s a fair argument, I understand that, but do we want to be getting rid of 70 year old men? No, really. I mean, I got to tell you, I have an older brother and if someone had did something like that to him, I can’t tell you, I wouldn’t have done the same f*ing thing.

JOE ROGAN: Of course, almost anybody who has family would say that, go, and you see your brother shot and you know the whole circumstances surrounding it.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. So I just don’t. And it’s not these immigration judges I’ve come to learn don’t have much flexibility. You know, they’re hard and fast statutes about whether or not someone is considered removable.

And you know, my appeal is really to the prosecutor is like, why are you doing this? But then they’re following orders from someone above them that’s telling them, this is your case, you’re assigned to it, do the best job you can. So that kind of shit just rolls downhill, unfortunately.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

The Pardon Process and Mental Health

JOSH DUBIN: And you know, I try not to. I try not to wear this for my own mental health. I’m trying to keep the empath in me in check a little bit more because. But sometimes it’s difficult, like Nelson’s case, this case that I’m talking about.

And the only reason I’m not using names in that case is I don’t want to alienate. There’s great people in the state that this happened in, which wasn’t New York, that I think actually care and have shown that. Yeah, this doesn’t seem right. And we want to make sure that you get a public hearing.

I’m confident that we will before February. And I like my chances if we do, because I think that the story. He’s worth pardoning, he’s worth saving. But, you know, I don’t. I don’t understand. I mean, that’s what I. What I meant by this human mess. It’s like, I wish there was a more transparent process of how and why people get pardons, certainly on the state and on the federal level. I don’t get it.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I mean, the nuttiest thing is that the president can pardon people that you could just decide because you’re the president or the governor. You just decide this person. I like them.

JOSH DUBIN: It’s an amazing responsibility, and it’s kind of an awesome power to have, and how you go about exercising it becomes challenging. Right.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it gets real weird. Like, how about during the Biden administration when some of them. Biden clearly didn’t even sign the pardons. It was all auto pen. And he had the most pardons of any president ever. So you have political influence. You have people that would like to get someone pardoned and, you know, someone inside you think you can make this happen. Well, he’s pardoning 9,000 people. F* it. Let’s just throw that one in there.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think he’s. I don’t really know the auto pen issue that well. I don’t know if he saw those. Didn’t see them. I don’t know what it’s like organized chaos for every presidency. You know, Bill Clinton pardoned people at the end of his terms that are f*ing bananas when you look at them. Biden did it with his son. You know, the.

JOE ROGAN: Biden did it with his.

JOSH DUBIN: With family members that weren’t even accused of preemptive pardon. Yeah, I don’t even know that that was a thing before.

JOE ROGAN: It never was. He did it with Fauci. Preemptive back to 2014.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah, listen, I don’t. Some of the pardons that the current administration issues are, like, good for him.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

JOSH DUBIN: Others are like head scratchers, and you’re like, what the f*? Right? But, like, I, you know, what makes one person deserving and another not is a difficult thing to understand.

Like, I have. I’ve been to the White House. I’ve advocated for pardons. It’s a frustrating experience because you know that there are thousands of people doing the same thing, and you try your best to say, this is why this case means something. But where it goes from there is hard to understand.

I think I have tremendous respect for an admiration of the current pardon czar, Alice Johnson, because she’s been there before. You know, she was actually incarcerated and pardoned by the president, and she’s now in that role as the pardons are.

JOE ROGAN: Who is she pardoned by?

JOSH DUBIN: President Trump.

JOE ROGAN: Wow. During his first prayer.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Wow.

Alice Johnson and Drug Sentencing Reform

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. And she’s. What, was she wrongfully accused of some drug offense? And she did a ton of time, and she’s gone on to become this amazing, not just human being, but advocate for people to get second chances. And he designated her.

The pardons are now, I think, between her and getting to the president and making her case for pardons is difficult because there’s layers of influence in between. But, you know, I have cases before them right now that have very prominent people backing them, and, you know, you would hope that they end up, you know, on his desk and seeing. Getting some relief.

I have one client that I know, Mike Tyson, has backed him publicly, privately. He’s a childhood friend of his. His name is Spencer Bowens. And, you know, he’s one of many people that were sentenced under these crazy regimes of like, let’s weigh. Let’s weigh the drugs. So what’s heavier, crack or cocaine?

JOE ROGAN: Cocaine, Right.

JOSH DUBIN: What’s heavier, heroin or crack?

JOE ROGAN: Heroin.

JOSH DUBIN: All right. So they start to weigh. And what’s more destructive? Who f*ing knows? Crack was pretty damn destructive. And, you know, they. Spencer’s been in prison for more than three decades, and he would have been out if these nutty drug laws didn’t exist and if they applied retroactively since they have been abolished.

And he’s a guy that’s sitting in there and I speak to. And I start to lose hope. I don’t lose hope. I start to feel his hopelessness over the phone because he should have been granted relief in the courts, and he’s someone that just really, really deserves to be out. You know, And I have. There’s a bunch of cases like that where we’re trying so hard, and you have to. At the same time. At the same time, you express, you know, confidence in the people that are responsible for this stuff, but you also want to make sure that you’re not offending them by saying, look, I know you have a bunch of cases.

Emory Jones is another one. You know, I do a lot of work with Jay Z’s mom. And Jay Z, we have a. found he has a foundation, I have one, and we mentor college students together in the summer, pay for their last year of college. And Emory is a childhood friend of Jay Z’s, and that has his full support. Roc Nation, you know, Jay Z’s company, they’re behind him.

And he’s another one that was convicted and spent decades in prison for some drug crime. And he’s come out and checked every box. He’s a mentor. He’s a pillar of the community. He’s done so many amazing things, but he’s under the weight of this old conviction and he’s denied job opportunities.

And, you know, you just got to keep pushing and keep fighting, and hopefully your timing is right and you speak to the right person and you get good news one day. But the odds are. So. The odds are so I don’t want to say stacked against you, but, yeah, it’s who, you know, who has influence at that particular time, but the right person, the administration.

Corrupt Cops and Qualified Immunity

JOE ROGAN: What kind of punishments are there for people like the corrupt guy in Brooklyn that you were talking about? Whatever happened to him?

JOSH DUBIN: He’s roaming the streets. He’s roaming the streets. And look, that’s the most. You know, the cop, Louis Garcello, he denies any. I mean, in the face of these 21 cases that have been vacated, he denies any wrongdoing.

JOE ROGAN: So 21 different people.

JOSH DUBIN: 21.

JOE ROGAN: He incarcerated them.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. You know. You know, one of the things that I’m thinking might be a good idea, because we can all go on the Internet and look this shit up. Like, if you look up Lewis Garcello on the Internet, I bet you there’s a Wikipedia page that talks about his corruption and lists all the people. We could all go on the Internet.

One of the things that I think is being underused and I think should be part of people’s calculus, rather than reading a headline or listening to me or you or anyone is read the trial transcripts. Make your own judgment. I mean, I don’t. I don’t know what better way there is. If you want to say, well, what actually happened? What happened at this person’s trial that you’re. And why do they deserve a second chance?

Listen, there’s a dear friend of mine who runs an amazing organization called the Reform Alliance. Her name is Jessica Jackson, fantastic lawyer, and is in the bowels of the system fighting for change. And right now, there’s a bill that the president’s own pollster. Forget the guy’s name. Has found that 80% of MAGA voters support this act. It’s called the Safer Supervision Act.

And it’s actually a system that rewards people for when they get out, for doing the right thing. So that if you want to make sure that you’re, you know, when you get out, there are terms of your supervision. How many times you check in with your parole or probation officer, how often are you being subject to drug tests? Is there an end in sight?

This act actually is a merit system, and it’s heavily supported by Republicans, by Democrats, by everyone in between. And you would hope that something like that would get passed and get pushed through, because the Safer Supervision act is a way that we can reward people for doing the right thing and hold people accountable that aren’t doing the right thing when they get out.

But your question about what happens to the cops or the prosecutors that do this? They have immunity. One of the most frustrating things in the world is that most of the time, qualified immunity applies.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, I could see immunity for a mistake, perhaps. But if there’s a pattern, and it’s clearly corruption, and you have a person that is taking away people’s freedom, how is there not a crime committed? How are they not convicted or at least charged with crimes?

The Fight for Michael Giles and the Failure of Executive Clemency

JOSH DUBIN: Well, listen, for those listeners that want to get involved in the process and actually make a difference, you got to get involved. This isn’t just like activists speak. You can make a f*ing difference. The person that ends up in a position to actually exercise their executive authority, executive clemency, whether it’s a governor or a president, you should be a little more invested.

I mean, I had this situation. I gave this guy every benefit of the doubt, and I thought I made a breakthrough. And I mean, this is almost sadistic, I think. And I’m sure I’ll get a bunch of hate mail about this, and I could really give a shit.

I went through this process with Governor DeSantis in Florida, and I think he was actually f*ing with me, to be honest with you. And he listened to the case as a favor. And there’s a public hearing of the Clemency board, and this guy’s name is Michael Giles. And again, read the transcript. As a matter of fact, I brought passage to read here. This is another mind bender.

This guy’s in the Air Force. He is in Tampa. He ends up taking leave for the weekend and goes up from Tampa to FAMU in Tallahassee. Never been there before. He has a firearm that he’s licensed to carry. He actually went into a police station to get his carry license. Military guy, never been in trouble in his life.

Goes up to Tallahassee and a massive fight breaks out in this club where they’re at, literally zero testimony that he has anything to do with this fight. The fight spills out into the parking lot, and it’s being instigated by one guy. And this guy that’s instigating the fight was thrown out of the club. And his own friends testified in the trial, “We were afraid he was going to hurt someone bad.”

My client, Michael Giles, ends up in a car with the people he came there with, waiting for the person that had the keys to the car to come out and emerge from this melee. And this fight is going on all around him. People testified they were petrified. And he takes his gun and puts it in his pocket. He’s standing there on the outskirts of this fight after he gets out of the car and goes to look for his friend that has the keys to the car. The car was left unlocked, but they couldn’t leave because there is no ignition key.

And he gets sucker punched. And the guy that punched him says, “Yeah, I looked for the first person I could.” Don’t take it from me. Here’s what he said at the trial. First of all, his friends are testifying. This is from the trial, right, that he was at. That this man was acting, quote, “crazy.” That they were afraid he was going to, quote, “attack someone.”

“He was excited and acting crazy and talking and cursing and upset and agitated. Were you concerned that he was going to attack someone?” Question. Answer, “Yes, I was.” “Or get in a fight?” Answer, “Yes, I was. That’s why I told him to leave.” And that’s why he was told to leave the club, because he was wanting to fight someone. “Isn’t that correct?”

Witnesses testify. Question: “You saw Courtney Thrower,” this is the guy that punched my client, “jump on the individual with the plaid shirt. Didn’t you?” The guy with the plaid shirt is my client. “Yes, I did. Your testimony is Courtney Thrower leapt and attacked Mr. Giles from the front. Yeah, I was. That was the thing. Courtney then leaps toward Mr. Giles and takes a swing at his face.”

And it goes on and on and on that he took a running start, left his feet and punched my client in the face. And look, there’s a melee going on. So he’s on the ground after getting punched and the person that punched him didn’t hold back.

He was asked at the trial, question: “Mr. Thrower, is it your testimony that you ran with your entire body to strike this person?” “Yes.” “So you at a full run or a sprint, use the weight of your body to impact this person in the head?” “Yes.” “Was it your intention to knock him out?” “Yes, it was.” “Is there any doubt in your intention?” Answer, “No.” Question: “Had this person actually done anything to you at any time whatsoever, physically, directly?” “No.” Question: “Was it your intent to hurt this individual?” Answer, “Yes. That’s normally what you do when you punch someone.”

So on those facts, as my client is laying on the ground and there’s a melee going on where people are getting punched and kicked, is he justified at that point to take his gun out and shoot in self defense? He shoots this guy in the leg and fragments of the bullet hit two other people. That’s the case. That’s it.

He is sentenced under Florida’s mandatory minimum to 25 years in prison. 25 years. He’s been in for 15 years. I have gone to visit him. He is the only client that I’ve ever represented that has never got a ticket in prison. What is a ticket? You didn’t listen to a corrections officer when they said, “Get against the f*ing wall.” You didn’t have, you know, you didn’t follow the rules. You didn’t do that. Not a ticket.

So various powerful people that know the governor finally got him to listen. Now, before I got involved in the case, the family was told that the governor was prepared to grant him clemency and traveled to Tallahassee the day that they thought he was going to get released. And we’re told on that day the governor changed his mind.

So I knew this all going in. I went and I appeared at a clemency hearing and I was as, what do they say? You’re, the word’s escaping me when you’re not subservient, but you’re, I’m trying to think, articulated the right way. I mean, I was not only respectful, but, you know, I understood the gravity of what I was asking for. This is a governor that has never granted clemency, commuted a sentence to someone that was currently incarcerated.

And you know, he went through a laundry list of things that he would like me to do. His parents live, Michael Giles, parents live, that’s the name of my client, Michael Giles. His parents live in Georgia. “Could you con the governor, could you get in touch with the state of Georgia?” I mean, this is all at a public hearing, it’s online, “and see if their governor has any problem with abiding by the terms of release.”

“You want me to contact the governor of…” “Okay, submit a supervised release plan that is exhaustive and runs all the way through the term that he would serve out his incarceration so that he should be on supervised release for another 10 years. Contact this one, contact that one.”

So I learned on good information that the governor was like, “He’ll never be able to get all that done.” I got it all done. I had people help me, went to the governor, spoke to the governor in Georgia, said, “Yeah, of course we’ll abide by it.” There’s something called the interstate compact. States have to abide by each other’s supervision requirements when someone goes from one state to another.

This had the support of John Ashcroft, Mike Mukasey, right wing Republicans that otherwise wouldn’t support this sort of thing. It was like I had a list of like 40 people, former U.S. attorneys. It got so much that the head of the Florida Commission of Offender Review, they gave him a positive recommendation to get out. Super rare. The attorney general was in support. Everyone was in support.

A week before I was told, “We’re going to grant him relief,” they actually had me speaking to the prison to transport him up to the clemency hearing. We were down to whether he would be able to change into a suit because at the public hearing, Governor DeSantis said, “I want to actually look at him eye to eye.”

And at the last second, for no f*ing articulated reason, he said, “You know what? I’ve changed my mind.”

That is brutal. It’s evil, in my opinion. And it’s precisely why sometimes the king has to show mercy. And it’s precisely why this guy is not very popular, I don’t think.

The Question of Race in Prosecution

And I ask this because it’s relevant. Does Michael Giles get prosecuted if he’s not a tall black man? I don’t think so. The prosecutor that prosecuted him, I’m not calling him anything. I’m giving you the facts. The prosecutor that prosecuted him went through a DOJ investigation because something was found in his office targeting Hispanic residents for harsher punishment.

A whistleblower took a photo of, was a memo hanging over a water cooler. It’s all over the place. It’s all online. You can read about it. And he had to enter into some agreement with the Department of Justice.

JOE ROGAN: How is it phrased?

JOSH DUBIN: How is what for you?

JOE ROGAN: How is this the determination to if…

JOSH DUBIN: Prior criminal history or Hispanic, and then it has an arrow. Oh, yeah, you can pull it up.

JOE ROGAN: His criminal history is the same as just being innocent.

JOSH DUBIN: Oh, yeah, this is, this is the South. I mean, it’s, it’s out there. His name is, his name is Jack Campbell.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, that is so crazy that they would not, but actually print. There is a prior criminal history is equal to being…

JOSH DUBIN: I don’t think it said equal, but it’s the same.

JOE ROGAN: Or Hispanic. There’s what we say.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah, there’s a, there’s a whistleblower that took a picture of it, and then he had to apologize for it. So should the thought enter my mind? I mean, I was putting my daughter to bed one night, and I just looked up his name, and I stumbled across this, and I was like, “Oh, okay.”

Because I spoke to him one time, and I asked if he would give a letter of support, and he said, “I won’t give a letter of support, but I stand by what I did.” I said, “Do you want to know what he’s done since he’s been in?” “No, I don’t care. Not going to support it. I just won’t.” Oh, there it is. That’s it.

JOE ROGAN: If no criminal history, diversion. If limited criminal history, withhold cost. If extensive criminal history and/or Hispanic, adjudicated guilty plus costs and/or extensive criminal history and/or Hispanic. And Hispanic is in capital letters.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. And so this, this whistleblower takes a picture of this, and it leads to a DOJ investigation where he agrees. He apologizes publicly, and he agrees to go into some training program and have the prosecutors that work for him in a training them for racial sensitivity.

So you think, you know, I deal with the facts, and I deal with what I see every day. So should it beg the question, is Michael Giles getting charged with this crime under the facts, as I just told you, with the testimony that I just read to you? And they said, “Well, he ran initially. And when the police initially spoke to him, he didn’t say he shot the gun.”

He’s a black man in America. Later that night, he admitted it. So what does it make a, and what does it make a difference anyway? The guy was attacked with a running start. Someone leaves their feet and punches them in the face. Isn’t 15 years enough? 15 years he’s had to go through? I mean, you read the letters from his kids who have now grown up without him. Your heart ends up in 50 million pieces.

And, you know, so a guy like, like Governor DeSantis, I think it’s like, there’s no humanity there. And, you know, the craziest part about it is that you never know who you’ll meet and why. This is all, to me, human rights issue.

Nikki Fried and the Fight for Marijuana Legalization

The only person that gave me a sympathetic ear when I would go to Florida, before I lived there, when I was still living in New York and talk about clemency cases was Nikki Fried. I think she was the Commissioner of Agriculture, and she ran against DeSantis in the last gubernatorial election.

And she’s like, the fascinating part about it is that this is like a woman that’s dedicated herself to public service, and she’s a major marijuana advocate. Legalizing marijuana has been her mission for so many years. She’s on the board of NORML. She’d be an awesome guest because she became super unpopular in Florida because of her stance on legalization of marijuana.

And, you know, she was attacked over it, about how weed is a gateway drug somehow in the minds of, you know, people that don’t get it, that it’s some pathway to heroin addiction and, you know, medicinal marijuana, you know, cannabis for healing. All of those things she’s been a major advocate for.

And she told me, “He’s, you’re being strung along.” After she was out of office. She’s now the head of the, I think she’s the head of the Democratic Party for Florida. Wonderful woman. She’s like, “You’re going to get strung along.” I said, “No, watch. Watch. I’m going to be the first one to get clemency from someone in prison.”

And he still can do it. Why won’t he? F* knows. And it’s, you know, I have to talk to Michael’s mom, and I have to talk to him, and it’s like, you know, you run out of words. And, yeah, it’s not, not just, is this a dirty business? Heartbreaking, you know.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s got to be particularly hard for you. You are a very sensitive guy, which is odd. You’re a very empathetic guy, which is odd for a lawyer. You know, usually lawyers eventually develop some sort of a shell. Just don’t let enough in. You get hurt too many times. Even if you start out empathetic, you eventually develop a…

JOSH DUBIN: Listen, I’m a crier, and I don’t hide that. And…

The Weight of Empathy in Legal Work

JOE ROGAN: That’s why you’re able to do the kind of work you do, because you still are sensitive to this and you still are empathetic, despite all the sh*t you’ve seen.

JOSH DUBIN: Well, I mean, look, I have to be. I don’t think you’re good. I used to think that it was something to shrink from. In other words, that because it becomes, it becomes a heavy cross to bear when you start wearing other people’s hurt and emotions.

And, you know, I found myself sometimes inferring that people feel a certain way when they don’t. And I have to make sure that I’m careful about that. I mean, my son Carter is like, he’s 13. He’s going to be 14 in April. And I sometimes feel like I have to be careful with the empathy because sometimes I’ll be reliving some traumatic event from my childhood, and I’ll think, oh, he must feel this way at this point in time, at 13.

And I’m imputing an emotion to him that isn’t there. And sometimes I’ll do that with a client or their family, and I’ve gotten better at it. But when you have to deliver hard news or bad news, because there’s so many, these exonerations, the commutations, the pardons, they’re like each one of them is its own miracle. Each one of them is, it’s so hard. So hard to get it done.

Trump Reschedules Marijuana to Schedule Three

JOE ROGAN: I got to pee. We’ll be right back. So today, right before we started this, Trump rescheduled marijuana, so it’s now Schedule three. So it’s in the same category as Tylenol, which is interesting. That’s a compromise, right? It should be legal and regulated. That’s what I think.

JOSH DUBIN: Isn’t there been a stain on Tylenol, though, under this administration?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, sure, it’s been. Acetaminophen is responsible for at least 500 deaths a year. I read a horrible case about a lady who had Covid, and she was struggling, you know, in pain, really hurting, kept taking Tylenol. Tylenol is with codeine.

JOSH DUBIN: That’s at schedule three.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, okay. Tylenol with codeine. Tylenol three. That’s Schedule three.

JOSH DUBIN: That’s different.

JOE ROGAN: Tylenol, different. Regular. So acetaminophen is.

JOSH DUBIN: How do you feel about it being rescheduled as a?

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s better, you know, certainly it’s better, I believe. If it’s rescheduled, what does that mean? It could be prescribed now, you know, and it can be prescribed state by state. Even in Texas, there’s some medical uses.

I feel like it should be like alcohol. I think you should be of a certain age to be able to use it. And I think it’s not for everybody. I think that’s important that it isn’t for everybody. There are people that have very particularly vulnerable psychological states, mental constitutions, whether they have a history of mental illness or whatever, especially like high dose marijuana.

Alex Berenson wrote about this in a book called, I think it’s called “Tell Your Children.” And he highlights the instances of people that have schizophrenic breaks from high doses of THC and whether or not they would have had those schizophrenic breaks anyway. You know, we don’t know. There’s a certain percentage of the population that’s just schizophrenic. What causes it? We don’t know, or we don’t know clearly why something can cause it.

But you should be aware of those things. You know, it’s not for everybody. I know a lot of people don’t like it, but I know a lot of people who do. A lot of people, it enhances their life. It makes times more enjoyable, makes sex more enjoyable and food more enjoyable and fun times with friends.

It’s like anything else. You can abuse everything, including exercise. You know, I know a lot of people are addicted to exercise and they overdo it. And people take CrossFit classes and they go too hard and they wind up getting rhabdomyolysis.

JOSH DUBIN: What is that? That’s some kind of thing with your kidneys or liver or something? Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You literally, your muscle tissue breaks down faster than your body can heal. Rhabdo’s dangerous. People die of that.

JOSH DUBIN: I remember reading about it when I did CrossFit 15 years ago, whatever it was. And I was like, I’m not going that hard.

JOE ROGAN: For psychos. The David Goggins is of the world, you know, I think he got rhabdo, went to the hospital, got out, and then completed his race.

JOSH DUBIN: He’s not human.

JOE ROGAN: He’s a psycho. He’s amazing.

JOSH DUBIN: I wonder how he runs and speaks at the same time.

JOE ROGAN: Well, he’s in insane shape. I mean, he does it every day. He runs 13 miles every f*ing day. And then on top of that, he does a series of very rigorous workouts. He does two or three workouts every day.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah, I mean, he’s a fascinating guy.

JOE ROGAN: He’s awesome, but he’s a great guy.

JOSH DUBIN: Stay hard.

Freedom, Addiction, and Personal Responsibility

JOE ROGAN: Great human being, though. He really is. He’s great to talk to, great to hang out with. I love him. But point is, like, you get addicted to video games, you can get addicted to gambling. The gambling thing is a big argument people use all the time. You know, because we, one of our sponsors is DraftKings Online Gambling.

I think you should be able to gamble. I don’t have a problem with it. Me personally, I don’t have a problem with gambling, but I know a lot of people that do. They shouldn’t f*ing gamble. You know, gambling is an evil addiction. You watch people get gripped by it. It’s kind of crazy.

I’ve known quite a few people that have had gambling addictions, especially from my pool hall days. I was just always around hardcore gamblers and the boy, man, it might as well be heroin. It might as well be for those f*ing people. But I think you should be able to gamble. I know it devastates some people’s lives, but their choices devastate their lives. And there’s help and there’s, you know, you should learn how to manage your mind.

JOSH DUBIN: I think you have to learn restraint in anything.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. You can’t nanny state the whole f*ing world, you know, you can’t nerf every hard edge on the planet. Not how it works.

JOSH DUBIN: I love that. I’m going to steal that. Nerf it.

JOE ROGAN: You know, listen, I do things that you can get hurt doing and I think you should be allowed to do that. You know, I know people that have been very badly hurt doing martial arts, including competing. I did a lot of that. You should be able to do it. You should be able to ride bulls. I don’t want to ride a bull. You should be able to ride a bull.

I think one of the things about being a human being is as much freedom as you can give people the better and also inform them about the dangers of whatever choices they make. Give them an informed ability to make a decision for themselves. This is what it means to be a free human being.

And you’re going to make some dumb choices and you’re going to make some dumb decisions, and that’s okay. That’s how we all learn together collectively. And I think marijuana is far better for you than alcohol. It has legitimate medical uses, legitimate psychological uses. It relieves stress for a lot of people.

You can’t criminalize something for something you don’t agree with. That’s crazy. Also, the LD50 of it is off the f*ing charts. Literally, the only way to die from marijuana is it would take about a 50 pound package hitting you in the head from a CIA drug plane. That’s how you die.

JOSH DUBIN: What’s an LD50 lethal dose?

JOE ROGAN: At 50% of the population, it’s very high. So if you’re saying for people’s benefit, if you’re saying that marijuana should be illegal because it’s dangerous. Okay, dangerous how? When there’s so many things that, like, we talked about Tylenol, which I fully support, Tylenol being legal. You should be able to, if you’re in pain, you can go get some Tylenol.

Acetaminophen fing kills people, you know, like I said, responsible for about 500 deaths a year. And I was telling you about the Covid story. This poor lady, she was hurting because she had Covid. She kept taking Tylenol and didn’t understand that you just, you can’t, there’s an amount you can take, and you should never take more than that. And she had liver failure and she fing died, you know, of something that, you know, it’s horrible.

So, but I think you should be able to take Tylenol. Just don’t take enough to f*ing kill you. I think that’s, that should be the case with alcohol. Same thing I’m for legalization of alcohol. When you make things illegal, all you do is prop up illegal people to sell those things to people that want it. There is a demand. They will supply it.

You know, this is the situation that we live in in this country when it, in regards to heroin, in regards to cocaine, regards to so many different things. They’re being supplied, and they’re being supplied, and you’re propping up these illegal cartels and these motherfers are killing people. And they make it, it’s ruthless. It’s what happened during prohibition of alcohol in this country. What did it do? It propped up the fing, the Mafia. And that’s what they did. They sold alcohol. It propped up organized crime.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. I mean, we could learn something from countries in Europe that decriminalized not just marijuana, but other drugs. And if you look at the statistics on, you know, the rate of crime, the rate of the incidence of overdose, it plummets.

JOE ROGAN: Plummets. Portugal’s an excellent example. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, the problem is when you all of a sudden make things legal that didn’t used to be, that didn’t used to be legal, you’re going to have a bunch of people that abuse it. They’re going to, they’re going to say, oh, it’s legal now. Let’s go.

And a bunch of people going to do it, that don’t do it, you’ll have problems. But you, you know, you have, you’re taking the band aid off. You put a f*ing band aid on this country in the 1930s for something that doesn’t hurt people, which is what? Marijuana. Oh, they did that in 1930. And there it was. A vast conspiracy. By the way, the marijuana legalization thing, the illegalization of it is a vast conspiracy.

The 1930s Conspiracy Against Hemp

JOSH DUBIN: I don’t know much about this backstory.

JOE ROGAN: Okay, well, I’ll fill you in. William Randolph Hearst, who owned Hearst Publications, also owned paper mills. So Popular Science magazine on the front page, “Hemp, the new billion dollar crop.” And the reason why hemp was problematic before that was because hemp fibers, like a friend of mine used to grow marijuana, and he had a hemp stalk on his desk, and he’s like, pick that up.

And you pick it up and it’s hard like oak. It’s hard like this table. It was an oak table. It’s hard like that, but it’s light like Styrofoam. Feels like balsa wood. I was like, this is crazy. He goes, yeah, it’s like an alien plant. There’s nothing like it. Hemp fiber is incredibly durable, and it makes superior paper, it makes superior clothing, canvas, all the great paintings were all made on hemp. That’s what canvas was made out of.

JOSH DUBIN: Light, but very strong and durable.

JOE ROGAN: Very strong, very strong. The first draft of Declaration of Independence was written on hemp fiber, on hemp paper. So hemp was used to make paper, it was used to make cloth. It was used to make so many different things, but it was very difficult to do. Then Eli Whitney came out with the cotton gin.

Well, cotton replaced a lot of the things that we made with clothing, replaced a lot of that. It was an easier textile to process. Well, in the 1930s, they came up with a new invention called the decorticator. And the decorticator allowed them to effectively process hemp fiber much more easily. So then Popular Science has this magazine.

JOSH DUBIN: This is a machine.

JOE ROGAN: Yes, it’s a machine. It’s like this, it’s like a steel cylinder that has all these protrusions on it. And that would grind up the hemp fiber more easily because before it had to be done manually. And it’s very time consuming. But the process was an incredible and very superior product.

So William Randolph Hearst recognizes this as a threat to his industry because he owns paper mills, he owns forests that he’s using to make paper out of. Also you should say that to make paper out of a forest, you have to chop down all those trees. It will take 20, 30 years for them to grow back. With hemp, you get a new crop every year. The same amount of land, you’re processing four times as much paper. And you can do it every year, it’s way more effective.

So he starts demonizing this plant called marijuana, this new drug. Now, marijuana was not a name for cannabis. Marijuana was a name for a Mexican slang for wild tobacco. So he just tags this name and starts calling hemp, which is just the.

JOSH DUBIN: Leaves on the hemp plant.

JOE ROGAN: It’s just the flower.

JOSH DUBIN: The flower. The flower and the hemp plant.

The History of Cannabis Prohibition

JOE ROGAN: Yes, but it’s also, you can make and grow hemp that has no THC in it as well. I believe it’s, is it the female that contains THC and the male doesn’t? Anyway, point is, so he, they sponsor all the Reefer Madness films, you know, all those propaganda films of the 1930s.

They start printing these stories about blacks and Mexicans that are raping white women after they take this new illegal drug. So they pass laws on this drug, not even really understanding that they’re making the textile, they’re making the commodity hemp illegal or making it very difficult to regulate.

And so William Randolph Hearst gets together with Harry Anslinger and they do this. They also take all their police officers and all the people that they had used to process prohibition of alcohol and go after alcohol, you know, illegal alcohol sales, and now they turn it to cannabis. And that’s, we’ve been stuck in that same horseshit since the 1930s.

JOSH DUBIN: So self interest, plus profit incentive, add a dose of hysteria, and you have prehistoric lobbying that leads to the demonization of, I don’t f*ing get it. I mean, listen, it’s also nylon.

JOE ROGAN: Nylon was involved because, you know, they’re using nylon for ropes because hemp was always used for ropes. And now they have this new product. So there was a lot of people that were involved in making sure that hemp was very difficult to acquire so that their commodity could thrive.

And then how many people suffered because of that? How many people were jailed? How many people died? How many, you know, how many people were incarcerated? You’re dealing with literally 90 years at this point. 90 years of bullshit.

Addiction and Personal Experiences

JOSH DUBIN: I don’t, and I do believe that there are some drugs that are so addictive that you start to lose your sense of free will. I don’t think weed is one of them.

JOE ROGAN: It’s not to me. I wouldn’t say it’s not, it’s one of them. It’s not one of them to everybody. I don’t know. I don’t know. I hear horror stories about people that are addicted to weed and can’t get off of it. You know, I do sober October pretty much every year. I didn’t do it last year, but we tick off everything. We don’t do anything.

And we usually do, like, a little fitness challenge with it. I’ve never had a problem, stopped doing it. I got on these nicotine pouches. I like nicotine pouches during podcasts. Keeps my mind, like, popping. It’s like, it’s a cognitive enhancer. And I was like, man, maybe I’m addicted to nicotine. Went on vacation, didn’t bring any nicotine pouches. Had no problem.

JOSH DUBIN: You know, I’m happy. I smoked a lot of weed in high school. A lot of weed. It was different, though. For me, it was, at least it wasn’t as strong.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah.

JOSH DUBIN: And I’ve…

JOE ROGAN: I’ve got scientists involved now. Botanists know what the…

JOSH DUBIN: They’re scientists. I one time smoked weed with Lennox in Jamaica.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, no.

JOSH DUBIN: And…

JOE ROGAN: And that should be a song that’s like…

JOSH DUBIN: By the time, by the time that blunt was being passed around for people, when it came to me the second time, I was like, the room went sideways on me. I could not f*ing cope. The furniture seemed readjusted. And I’ve had other times where, for me, I got to a point where I could not function on it.

Yeah, the, and the last time where I was like, this is just not for me anymore. Maybe I smoked too much of it in high school. I mean, almost every day at 15. But then I was at a casino. I was at the Aria one time, and this must have been 15 years ago, and I was playing craps, and I had, I had taken, like, one or two tokes, and I convinced myself that the guy at the other end of the craps table was an undercover officer that was going to frame me for something f*ing.

The lady next to me was stealing my chips. This guy was going to have me f*ing hatcheted. And I ended up in the corner of the casino for literally two hours trying to collect myself. And so you went too deep. I went, man, I was…

JOE ROGAN: I was just too strong for someone who doesn’t use it. See these, there’s a lot of people, like my friend B. Real from Cypress Hill.

JOSH DUBIN: I can’t. Well, I can’t even watch the podcast because my blood pressure goes up when I watch how much weed these guys smoke. Him and Everlast.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Well, B. Real lives in the cloud. There’s a lot of those dudes that call it living in the cloud. Like, they’re just high all the time. Well, B. Real has his own weed business, and I did his show, the Hot Box, where you sit in a car. He has this dope, like, car that’s set up as a studio, so there’s like cameras inside the car, and you just get obliterated because they’re just constantly smoking in the car. I got out there, I just sit down for like two hours afterwards.

JOSH DUBIN: You were okay or not?

JOE ROGAN: I was okay, but I was just like, jeez, boys, you guys go f*ing hard.

JOSH DUBIN: But that’s the, but the, but the problem is for me with weed is that sometimes I’ve smoked it and been, I’m talking about as an adult.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

JOSH DUBIN: Post 30.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

JOSH DUBIN: Sometimes I’ve been like, well, that was really great. And other times I’ve been like, I don’t want to contemplate my existence tonight. I’ve done that enough. I’ve done that enough. And, and it’s all unanswerable questions. And I’m going to have a panic attack. Yeah, man.

One time I was on the platform at Penn Station and I started to like, you know, you get to that point when you’re thinking about dying and we could talk death dying, and we could say it and talk about it, but I got to that, that point where that fifth dimensional wall crumbled, and I was like, oh, my God, I’m not going to exist one day.

And I started to have a panic attack where I had to leave and go up onto 8th Avenue and get some fresh air. And I’m just like, at this stage, I can’t. I would have to be like, so what kind of weed is this? And how do you know? And I don’t want to interrogate someone that just wants to get me high.

Understanding Dosage and Effects

JOE ROGAN: But here’s the thing. If you don’t get high a lot, and this is my message for everyone out there. If you go months and months and months without ever taking it, one hit, a small one. Don’t get crazy. Don’t get crazy.

JOSH DUBIN: What if that one hit leads to nine hours of being high?

JOE ROGAN: It shouldn’t.

JOSH DUBIN: It should. For me, it has.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s like, how much are you smoking? Like, you must be taking a giant hit. And it also depends on, like, what kind of joint you have. Like, there’s, there’s crazy people. Like, in California, they’ll sell you a joint that’s like a $50 joint. And this joint has Keef in it. So it has all the resin, all the, you know, give a grinder.

At the bottom of the grinder, there’s a filter and you have all this sticky Keefe THC crystals. They take those THC crystals and they put it inside with the marijuana and then they wrap the outside of the joint and they roll it in the THC crystal. It’s like it’s on the outside of it and it’s just a pathway to paranoia. It’s just a rocket ship to your inner monologue screaming in your ear.

JOSH DUBIN: I can’t talk about it, it’s scaring me.

JOE ROGAN: But it doesn’t have to be like that.

JOSH DUBIN: Have you ever got paranoid smoking weed?

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah, it’s part of the fun. I don’t mind it. I like it because there’s always some sort of a revelation that I get on the other end of it if I’m paranoid. There’s always like a reason that there’s a thing that’s bothering me. Like what is that thing that f*ed with you during that time? And maybe there’s a thing in your head that you need to address. But generally, if I’m in a good place and I get high, I feel great.

JOSH DUBIN: I must have been in a great place at like 15, 16 years old because getting high back then and listening to Zeppelin and Pink Floyd and hearing the lyrics for the first time, being like, oh my God, someone else had that thought that I’m afraid to say, and they put it down in lyrics and I’m not alone.

JOE ROGAN: And you feel profound. You say profound things that aren’t really profound. There’s benefit to it. And I think that when you’re young also, you don’t have bills, you don’t have obligations, you just have to go to school. Your burden is so much lighter when you’re an adult and you have a family and you have business and you have things you have to do all the time and you have conflicts and all the stuff that’s in your life, it can f* with you.

But I think generally, like for a lot of people, not for everybody, but for a lot of people, those moments of paranoia, of just dropping the veil, it’s probably beneficial.

JOSH DUBIN: Oh, I think that, I think that in the long run it opened the third eye of my mind at a time when and fostered creativity and I think changed my perspective on the world. Smoking that much weed. I just got to a point where it was like, I can’t parent on it, right? For me, yeah.

You just have to know, you have to be mature enough and introspective enough and self aware enough to know yourself. For me, it just didn’t work anymore. Just like drinking at some point I was like, it’s not worth the f*ing pain, right? It just got too painful.

Personal Freedom and Misinformation

JOE ROGAN: Right, but that’s the decision that you should be able to make as a man or as a woman, as an adult. Make that decision for yourself. Decide what you want to take into your life or not, including all sorts of other things that are bad for you, like f*ing processed food and sugar. Do whatever you want to do as long as you know what you’re doing.

And so we should educate people on what these things are. And the problem is, with marijuana, there were so many years of lies, there were so many years of misinformation, and it was just constantly put out there as propaganda. And you know, “this is your brain on drugs.” Like, shut the f* up.

JOSH DUBIN: Well, listen, I remember those commercials from being a kid. And I remember one in particular where there’s a father that finds weed bathing myself in his son’s room. And he said, “where did you learn to do this shit?” And he goes, “I learned from you, dad.”

And I remember thinking, man, my dad’s a motherf*er. He’s a bad guy. Because my dad was a big weed smoker and I would find it all the time. And I’m telling you, I think in my mind that commercial led me to thinking, dad, you’re amoral.

JOE ROGAN: And you know, they poisoned a lot of people with those commercials.

JOSH DUBIN: But, but you know, meanwhile your dad…

JOE ROGAN: Could be sitting there watching TV with a cocktail. You wouldn’t think a damn thing about it.

JOSH DUBIN: Nah, my dad on weed was like an alcoholic with, with a, with a whiskey bottle. Oh my God, that’s it. That’s it.

JOE ROGAN: Do this stuff.

JOSH DUBIN: You all right? “I learned it by watching you. Parents who use drugs have children who use drugs.” Jamie is a f*ing wizard.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. You know my favorite one though is the girls. The girl starts and the dog starts talking to her.

JOSH DUBIN: Wait, before we get to that, you know how a song or a smell can have you tumbling back in time?

JOE ROGAN: Oh yeah.

JOSH DUBIN: I’m like, I’m drunk on nostalgia right now. Like in the wrong. Oh my God, this is my favorite. “I wish he didn’t smoke weed. You’re not the same when you smoke. And I miss my friend. I’ll be outside.”

JOE ROGAN: How would you tell a friend like…

JOSH DUBIN: Who f*ing yo, that one is evil.

JOE ROGAN: Signed off on that commercial. First of all, I’ve never seen that is not on marijuana. Cause if you were on weed and your dog started talking, you’d be like, what the f*? You can talk.

JOSH DUBIN: The first thing I thought when that started to roll, I looked at Jamie all white eyed as what did put in my drink. The dog is talking. The only other time I saw that was Mr. Ed.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, right, well. Or what’s that movie, Zookeeper? All the animals talked. Well, come on. Ridiculous.

The Criminalization of Marijuana and Corporate Interests

JOSH DUBIN: You know, when you peel the layer back. I had never known that one slipped through the cracks on me. The criminalization of weed and the backstory.

JOE ROGAN: Backstory is really crazy.

JOSH DUBIN: It’s crazy. And I remember a science teacher in high school telling me, you don’t think that they can make a tire that doesn’t wear. And he told me the story about how all the big tire companies bought the patent for a tire that can’t wear. Right. It has the same composition as same give and composition as rubber when it came to handling. But it was a material that doesn’t wear.

And I just thought he was fing crazy. And now I believe that that’s probably true. It’s probably locked in a vault somewhere because what would happen to Goodyear and Firestone and the rest of those tires? You’re telling me we could put a man on the moon and hear conversations behind the walls of the Kremlin, but we can’t make a fing tire that doesn’t wear?

JOE ROGAN: Well, I think one of those is true, but the other one, the thing about tires is that a tire has to have a certain amount of softness to it in order for it to have traction. When you have softness and then you have a rigid surface like asphalt, you’re going to have some of that tire is going to rub off on that rigid surface because one is hard and one is soft. Just like when you take a file and you rub wood, you’re going to make sawdust.

JOSH DUBIN: You know, you would know about f*ing tires. Here I go giving an example of something that I think is so out there that there’s no way this guy’s going to. And you know about tire wise.

JOE ROGAN: I know a lot about tires because the softer the tire, the more traction you get on a racetrack. So with a really good tire, you know, you only have a certain amount of laps on a racetrack.

JOSH DUBIN: So the science teacher was bullshitting me, basically.

Planned Obsolescence and Light Bulbs

JOE ROGAN: The scientist teacher probably was right, directionally, that there are things like that where they would hide patents to certain things and hide certain compounds if they found out these compounds would compromise. Like if you had something that people had to buy all the time, like light bulbs. Here’s a better example. Light bulbs.

So there are light bulbs that have been in continuous use like on continuously for 50, 60 years and they don’t burn out because these are the original light bulbs. The original light bulbs. They made the filaments much more durable. Then they realized, like, why would we do this? Well, we could have these light bulbs just burn out and then you have to get a new light bulb and.

JOSH DUBIN: The filament would pop.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. So I have read about this.

JOE ROGAN: See if you can find those old light bulbs. I think there’s one that’s been on continually for an extraordinary amount of time.

JOSH DUBIN: Decades. 120 years.

JOE ROGAN: 120 years. Let’s see that light bulb. So if you look at a light bulb.

JOSH DUBIN: Light bulb, huh.

JOE ROGAN: And you see the filaments of that light bulb, you realize, oh, they could have just built light bulbs like this from the beginning. And instead of paying $5 for a light bulb or whatever a light bulb costs, maybe it would cost 10 bucks.

JOSH DUBIN: Got a firehouse in California. Interesting light.

JOE ROGAN: 1901, that light bulb.

JOSH DUBIN: Look at that. Look at that beautiful filament.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. See how thick those filaments are? So that’s a light bulb that’s built to last. These motherf*ers, they figured out, well, we’ll just make it real skinny and eventually it’ll wear out and pop.

JOSH DUBIN: That tire patent is sitting in a f*ing vault somewhere.

JOE ROGAN: It might be, but the problem is it doesn’t make sense because it has to be softer than the ground. And whenever you have something that’s softer than a very rough, hard surface, the softer thing is going to give. Something has to give. Like if you have metal and you drive around with metal wheels on the asphalt, you know what gives? The asphalt gives. You have scratches on the asphalt.

JOSH DUBIN: Let me ask you this. So going back to the weed, okay, because I got us on this diverse.

JOE ROGAN: I want to find out about the tires eventually.

JOSH DUBIN: Well, I got something for it, but.

JOE ROGAN: Okay, exactly.

JOSH DUBIN: We just did that. It’s not full on. Nava.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, this is different.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah, no, it does last way longer. There’s no air in this f*ing tire.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, this is an airless tire. But that’s that. This is something that people have said forever, like, why would you have to fill up tires? Can’t they come up with something where, you know, it just gives? And so Michelin has done this.

JOSH DUBIN: You’re telling me that there’s nothing out there about tires that don’t wear?

JOE ROGAN: I don’t think so. It doesn’t make sense.

Drug Criminalization and Moral Inequivalency

JOSH DUBIN: But watch this. I have a question. So weed is criminalized by some self interested industrialist. Right before that, ubiquitous use.

JOE ROGAN: For centuries, including in churches.

JOSH DUBIN: So cocaine, you can make the same argument for. You could. And then you have the Clinton administration comes along and dubs people. So in other words, what is the moral inequivalency between someone that is selling cocaine, a lot of it, and someone that’s selling a lot of weed? Now, I understand the common retort as well. Cocaine is a lot more addictive, destructive.

JOE ROGAN: There’s a physical pathway to addiction.

JOSH DUBIN: There’s a physical pathway to addiction.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s a different kind of addiction. I think there is an addictive quality to marijuana, but I have a feeling it’s same or similar to the addictive quality of a lot of other behavioral addictions.

JOSH DUBIN: But I guess my bigger question is, so with the advent of the “super criminal,” I think it was, who was it Hillary Clinton or Bill Clinton that came up with this term, or Biden? I know he’s a big supporter of that bill as a senator and without going down the rabbit hole of private prisons and the prison industrial complex.

What bothers me about these old drug convict that we were talking about earlier is it’s just a perspective shift that somehow has in the psyche of America writ large that you hear cocaine or crack equals someone that should be locked away and forgotten about. That was why I mentioned Spencer Bowen and, you know, other folks that I’ve mentioned, because I just feel like there’s no, what’s the right way to explain it? There’s no rhyme or reason to why we’re leaving old people that have not much left locked up, you know.

The Case of Larry Hoover

And, you know, I don’t, look, Larry Hoover is a good example. Larry Hoover was pardoned or a sentence was commuted by President Trump, and he was then put in. He was in the side of a f*ing mountain for decades. The man is 75 years old. He’s been in prison for over 50 years. He has renounced gang life. He has renounced any affiliation with it.

And then he was, his sentence is commuted and he’s put in state custody on some old tenuous homicide charge where the person that actually pulled the trigger is out. Has been out for like 30 years. So Larry Hoover is sitting there in Colorado because he was in the side of that supermax facility, the side of that mountain in Chicago.

And since Colorado or Chicago. No, in Colorado. He was in, well, he was then. I misspoke. He’s from Chicago. He was the leader of the Gangster Disciples. You’re familiar with Larry Hoover, right? Leader of the Gangster Disciples in Chicago.

He gets, he’s in prison and state prison. Then he goes into, while he’s in state prison, they have a CCE conspiracy against him, and he gets CC continuing Criminal enterprise. And I’m talking lawyer speak. And then he goes into federal custody and he’s put in the side of a mountain where he’s on lockdown 23 hours a day for decades.

The man’s 75 years old now. Since he’s been put in state custody, he’s had three heart attacks doing prison work. And what is the utility in keeping someone like that in? Because, you know, Governor Pritzker could just say, you know what? Enough’s enough.

There’s interesting stuff out there about what they call C criminals. So it was like before February of 1978, I believe it was 1998, where people would get indeterminate sentences in the state system in Illinois. You know, you’d hear these sentences of like 100 years, 200 years, where there’s no hope. And there were like thousands and thousands of them. There’s only 30 of them left. And he’s one of them. He’s got an indeterminate sentence.

Isn’t 50 years enough? So, like, that’s another one of those cases that bothers me because if we’re a society of reform, deterrence, rehabilitation, he’s it. And what better message is there to say, you know what, you’ve done enough. And now let’s see what positive you can do.

The proposed terms of his release are like at the strictest supervision. He just wants to live out his life with his family. He’s got a great lawyer backing him named Justin Moore. I helped, you know, advocate for his pardon to President Trump.

JOE ROGAN: He was pardoned.

JOSH DUBIN: His sentence was commuted by President Trump, his federal sentence.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

JOSH DUBIN: But he had some crazy 200 year sentence in state court. Right. Oh, look at this is it. So it was 1978. He’s one of just 35 people still incarcerated under Illinois’s pre-78 indeterminate sentencing system.

JOE ROGAN: So the case was from 78?

JOSH DUBIN: Oh, yeah. He’s been in prison for 50 some odd years. And you know, I just feel like at this point isn’t enough enough. And you know, he didn’t even do the killing. No. And the person that did it is out. The allegation was that he ordered it. And I don’t even believe that.

JOE ROGAN: And Andrew Howard, the guy who killed him, was paroled more than 30 years ago. Yeah.

JOSH DUBIN: It just doesn’t, I don’t understand. And what, what is, what’s going on, I think is that someone like Governor Pritzker is just, they don’t want the political cost of taking a chance like this. And you know, this is another one that keeps me up.

You know, some people would say, why care about that guy? Because I know his wife, I know his son. James Prince knows the family so well and has supported them on this journey for over a decade. There’s so much public support for this. The guy’s 75. So why are we wasting taxpayer money, and why are we keeping someone incarcerated? I mean, in the most.

JOE ROGAN: So I understand if they commuted his sentence, how he’s not, how he’s not out.

JOSH DUBIN: He was, his federal sentence was commuted. So as soon as he was released from federal custody, he was taken into state custody. And they didn’t even take him from Chicago, excuse me, from Colorado. His state sentences in Chicago, where he could be at least closer to his family. And Colorado state system said, we’ll keep him here. So he was transferred from federal to state custody.

So that’s one that just like, you know, there’s one heartbreak to the next. And I try and, look, I’m super, super, super careful. You can help people with second chances. You can’t help them with what they do with it. But I’m now at a point where I really want to think long and hard about what people do with their second chances.

And, you know, I just wouldn’t get behind someone that I didn’t think was. I just, it’s an indictment of society that we have these disparate sentences that are doled out, and a lot of it is driven by what is considered worse behavior.

The Inconsistency of Drug Laws

Is it worse behavior that you sold cocaine or marijuana? I guess the argument is that cocaine was more destructive, more addictive. You could die from it. Well, same thing with alcohol. Alcohol is legal. So I just don’t, I have a hard time grappling with what is considered a controlled substance.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

JOSH DUBIN: Because alcohol, if abused, if put in the wrong hands, it’s highly addictive, highly destructive to your body. If you abuse, it ruins people’s lives. I mean, how is it that alcohol is legal?

The Problem with Drug Legalization and Criminal History

JOE ROGAN: It is weird. It is weird. And the real problem is history. So we have a long history of all these drugs being illegal now. So you have a long history of people that are criminals selling these drugs. So it’s got this criminal history attached to it.

If you were to make cocaine legal in the United States, you’d essentially put the cartels out of business. Right. Because that’s probably their main business is probably either fentanyl and heroin or heroin pills, you know, oxy pills or cocaine. And you would have way less accidental overdose deaths because a lot of it is not people overdosing from actual cocaine. It’s getting fentanyl or whatever or whatever else. They’re f*ing mixing all sorts of different amphetamines.

We have a long history now, dating back to the 30s, of alcohol being legal. People are accustomed to it. It’s normal. You’re accustomed to growing up being able to have a couple of beers with your friends. Going to a party. When you’re a kid, there’s a keg party. People know how to handle it. It’s been around.

Cocaine has not. You get scared. What’s in it? How do I know where it came from? You know, you get a f*ing beer, you know it’s a beer. You know, you crack open a Bud Light, it’s a Bud Light. That’s what it is. Cocaine is unregulated.

JOSH DUBIN: It’s crazy if you think about it. If you’re someone doing cocaine these days and you’re trying to think like, am I going to die? Right. You dip a f*ing, what are the fentanyl strips that you can test it and see what’s in it, but if it was regulated and if people want to do it right, you know, let them go bang their head against the wall and do it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Now, the problem is people would be profiting off of that. And then so you’d have, instead of, you know, no one has a problem with Anheuser Busch selling beer.

JOSH DUBIN: Right.

JOE ROGAN: But meanwhile, there’s alcoholics, and it’s going to ruin their life. But if Anheuser Busch all of a sudden started selling cocaine, the social stigma that’s attached to it because of all the years of it being illegal would be a real problem.

We would have, like I said, it would be like ripping the band aid off. You’re going to have a lot of problems initially for quite a while, I would imagine. There’s going to be a lot of people that do cocaine that would never do it previously because it was illegal. But if they found out that there’s, you can go to the cocaine store and buy a certain amount of cocaine and go do it.

But you also would be getting pure cocaine. So you would be getting this experience that people have used way back to the f*ing, you know, who knows what time. I mean, there’s Egyptian mummies that have tested positive for cocaine.

JOSH DUBIN: I mean, look, I don’t, yeah, I’m not advocating for it one way or another. It just seems like anything that I’ve looked into and read about in countries that have legalized or decriminalized it at least, and you could get it and not have to worry about it being adulterated in some way. It seems like the statistics are overwhelmingly pointing in one direction, 100%, but those.

JOE ROGAN: Are smaller countries, you know, and that don’t have the consumption problem that America has. We uniquely love to consume drugs and we are propping up the cartel by doing that. And that, you know, if you want to go to war with the cartel, if you want to really stop the flood of illegal drugs in this country, unfortunately, one of the only ways to really do that accurately is to both stop them from bringing in illegal drugs and then give people access to legal, air quotes, safer drugs.

JOSH DUBIN: Seems like a, it’s a problem. It’s a.

JOE ROGAN: Politically, it’s a suicide.

JOSH DUBIN: I was going to say, you got to swim uphill through or upstream through a river of s* in order to pull that one off.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. For a long time.

The Barbaric Nature of Long Prison Sentences for Drug Offenses

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. And I just, this has struck me more lately in dealing with these old drug cases where these people have spent decades and decades in prison. And you know, you hear them on the other end of the phone and he’s like, look, I was a kid, I was in my 20s. I’m 50, I’m 60 years old. Isn’t it enough?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

JOSH DUBIN: It’s getting to the point where it’s punitive, to the point of harmful and barbaric.

JOE ROGAN: And then they don’t want to let those people back out on the street. It’s more convenient for them to keep that person locked up forever.

The Ohio Four Case Update

JOSH DUBIN: You know, if you saw like, what’s behind it. You know, this is an interesting update on the Ohio Four case. And we don’t have to go back into the whole thing again because people could watch the last time. But you remember we had the former prosecutor JD Tomlinson on at one point with the case in.

JOE ROGAN: Ohio.

JOSH DUBIN: Yes. Where these guys did not need to assume the burden of being demonstrably innocent, but we were able to prove it. And you know, JD Tomlinson agreed to vacate their convictions. And then when he left office, you know, a few weeks later, the new, the incoming, their equivalent of the district attorney overturned it. Right.

Since coming on this show, JD Tomlinson has been under attack for a previous exoneration that he granted by this same sitting Lorain County prosecutor who just filed a 300 page brief saying that he committed fraud on the court and all kinds of nonsense over a crime that never happened. And this is why he was so reluctant to ever speak to me in the first place.

JOE ROGAN: Because he knew he’d be.

JOSH DUBIN: Targeted. He knew he’d be targeted. And they’re trying to undo an exoneration for this poor woman that’s already been exonerated. And I thought, you know, I would talk about it publicly and say I trust him. I made a presentation to this new prosecutor. I got myself, along with the Ohio innocence, prosecution, public defenders. I got a bar complaint filed against me by the original prosecutor for standing up to exonerate someone that was summarily dismissed in Ohio.

But, you know, and the question becomes like, what can you do? So Derek Hamilton and I are trying to, we go to the city council and raise awareness. Don’t you care that you have a prosecutor that is seemingly more interested in settling personal scores and vendettas than he is about letting innocent people go free?

And I have this guy, you know, John Edwards, who’s one of the Ohio Four. And I feel like when I see him calling from prison, I’m running out of things to say to him. Like, I’m so desperate for help. And, you know, if anyone is living in Lorraine, Ohio, or Elyria, I mean, you got to take your, take a look at your local elected officials. I mean, demand to know what happened in the Ohio Four case.

I mean, we have it online. You can read about it. You can read the trial transcripts. I just don’t get why people can’t let go and say, maybe I made a mistake, maybe I was wrong. I mean, these guys are so demonstrably innocent. Where you have the person that claims he witnessed the whole thing, you know, came, went to the FBI and said, I made the whole thing up. You know, it’s just.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a horrible.

JOSH DUBIN: Case. It’s horrible, and nobody wants to admit it.

JOE ROGAN: Nobody. The problem is, I think if they do admit it, someone’s going to start digging into their past and they’re going to find out these motherf*ers have been wrong a bunch of times.

The Importance of Persistence in Seeking Justice

JOSH DUBIN: Well, I’ll tell you what. One thing that’s different about me and why I hang around Derek so much is I want his superpowers to rub off on me. Because I realized that if you don’t get, stay aggressive, keep the pressure on, the truth will eventually, what did, what was the truth? “Crushed to earth shall rise again.” Was that like an MLK quote? I always think about that because at some point, at some point, the truth comes out. It’s a stubborn thing.

And whether it’s old files of an old case and who you used to hang out with. And if you have photos sitting in a vault, some, whatever it is, it’s going to come out. And it just seems like you’re doing so much more damage to hold on to these old beliefs rather than, and because one thing is for sure, I’m stubborn. And I’m growing more stubborn as I, as it, as time goes by to, you have to have the resolve and the wherewithal that every time you get a no and every time you get rejected, you’re like, all right, all right, I see you.

I’m going to get my beast on now and keep coming back, and I’m going to bring people with me and we’re going to make as much noise. One thing that people don’t like is to have the light on them. And, you know, we now have the ability to do that not only through this platform, but, you know, I was talking to someone before I came here today that works at the center, and I said, you can’t be afraid to speak to the press.

And I said, as long as, you know, you have some control, some control over what you’re saying. And then I, like, quickly stuffed the words back in my mouth and I said, forget about that. You got to be very careful speaking to the press because it gets edited and chopped up. You know, I just, I did an article with the New York Times about something recently. Man, I told that reporter, lose my f*ing phone number because you took one sentence of a throwaway quote and disregarded everything else. Of course, you know, and that’s why I’m really careful about it.

JOE ROGAN: That’s why nobody wants to talk to them. Everybody knows the game.

JOSH DUBIN: Now. Like, they’re. Look, it’s just.

JOE ROGAN: They have a long history doing that. What they care about is a juicy story. That’s all they care about.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah, it’s suffering sells and human tragedy sells. And I would really love to be able to tell, like, the triumphant stories that a prosecutor did the right thing on the front end. Right on the front end, rather than after 20, 30, 40, 50 years.

So all of these cases that we talk about, we’re going to do something a little bit different is I’m going to set up a repository where people can go in and look at the public records. No one’s really ever done that. This way you don’t have to rely on my word, a headline, a clip from a video where, you know, there were people that started to consume the Ohio Four case and are writing in and are saying, like, how are you letting this stand?

Eventually enough drips of water fills the bucket, and the bucket overflows, and at some point, something’s got to give, right? Yeah. I mean, if you believe in what? Good over.

JOE ROGAN: Evil?

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, something’s got to give.

Good Versus Evil in the Justice System

JOE ROGAN: I mean, if you really believe in good over evil. I mean, we all believe in good over evil, but sometimes it doesn’t work. And is it for lack of trying or is it just the world’s not fair? I think it’s both. Well, you know, and I think there’s, there’s a lot of people that have a lot of power that will keep good from winning because it would somehow or another derail their life or their career because they have done something evil.

JOSH DUBIN: But this is a sick, this is a sick trait that we possess as mammals, as humans. Whether you’re a safety patrol as a fourth or fifth grader or a bouncer outside of a club or a TSA agent, there’s something about that authority, something about that power that people get drunk on. They get it. It’s almost like it courses through their veins to the point where they’re like, well, I like this. I’m going to exert this.

And it’s, it’s like, I just, I understand it, but I don’t, I don’t understand how at some point your conscience doesn’t kick in and say, all right, devil on this shoulder, let’s do the right thing. Because I always feel, like, bound by some sort of social contract. Right. Did it ever feel good to harm someone? I don’t know. Never did for me as a.

JOE ROGAN: Kid?

JOSH DUBIN: No. I mean, I could look back at my childhood and be like, that was a s*ty thing you did. You know, I still feel guilty about things I did as an elementary school student. It’s like, because you’re a good person. No, no, I don’t think that. I really, I don’t think that that’s what it.

JOE ROGAN: Is. Well, that’s part of being a good person, is when you do make a mistake or do something bad, you.

EMDR Therapy and Healing Trauma

JOSH DUBIN: I don’t actually. I appreciate that, but I don’t actually think that’s what it is. I think that we all know when we’re saying something hurtful or harmful, at some point, you know it. Or you’re doing something harmful. And it’s just, I don’t understand, I guess, the disconnect between having that realization and just saying f* it, or actually taking like a pause.

Right. And I guess if I could solve that, I’d have the key to many of the world’s problems. But I guess I’m just dealing with these in the meantime.

JOE ROGAN: Well, you would have to completely rewire the way people think, and there’s ways to do that, and all those ways are illegal. That’s where psychedelics comes in. You know, it’s one of the things I had a conversation with my friend Jesse Michaels the other day, and one of the things I said is one of the things that’s really interesting about psychedelics is there is no criminal cartel that sells them even though they’re illegal.

JOSH DUBIN: That’s true.

JOE ROGAN: There’s no criminal mushroom industry where there’s a bunch of like, evil assassins selling kids mushrooms. It’s such a uniquely beautiful experience that it’s really only connected to like, kind people who sell it for the most part.

JOSH DUBIN: Well, let me ask you the same thing. Let me ask you something in reference to what you said earlier. Do you think you have to have a particular mental constitution to take psychedelics?

The Biological Vulnerabilities of Psychedelics

JOE ROGAN: I think you should, yeah. I don’t think it’s for people that are very vulnerable. I think there’s a lot of people that those regular reality is difficult enough to manage. You know, I’m saying this objectively, right, because it’s not me, but I don’t want to be arrogant and say, I can do it. You could do it, too. That’s ridiculous.

There’s a lot of people that shouldn’t be doing anything. They shouldn’t be drinking. They shouldn’t be. There’s people out there that shouldn’t do caffeine. People have very different biological vulnerabilities. There’s some people that I believe are biologically vulnerable to alcohol, alcoholism. Their whole family’s alcoholic. It might be a genetic trait. It seems to be like some. There’s something wrong with them and their ability.

And there’s also genes that, like, this was the issue with Native Americans when we introduced alcohol to them. They didn’t have a history of alcohol. They didn’t know how to handle it. They got wrecked. Like, there’s alcoholism to this day is an enormous problem in Native American tribes and reservations. It’s a major problem in Canada.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. You know, my first nation people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they were given reparations. And my experience with it up there is that they, you know, there’s a serious problem, especially in western Canada with it.

But I, the reason I ask about it with psychedelics is that I, at the probably the lowest point in my life, you know, I was with you. And I remember you recommending ketamine therapy or thinking that might be something I should look into.

Ketamine Therapy and Personal Healing

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. This is something that I’ve never done, but I do know quite a few people. My friend Neil, Neal Brennan, he went to a doctor to get ketamine therapy.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. So when I raised it with my therapist at the time, and she was like, the body of research on this is so overwhelming that I would be remiss if I told you, don’t try it. Something we should talk about and think about. And, you know, it helped me tremendously in a way, that very, very low dose.

But it’s like, you know, I mean, I thank you for even like, suggesting it, because it was something that I had always associated with like my roommate in college in the fetal position in his bed. And I was like, yo, what’s wrong with him? And someone said, he’s in a K hole. I was like, the f* is that? He’s in a K hole. Yeah. And it was always like, oh, man, I’m staying away from that. He looks like he looks like he could expire any moment. He was not a lighter shade of pale. He was like, translucent. And I was like, but then, you know, it’s, it’s.

JOE ROGAN: It’s under supervision. That’s under supervision. And then with the correct dose, and I think that would probably be the case with most psychedelics.

JOSH DUBIN: And it turned, it would turn the field of psychiatry on its head, and there would be such a lobby against it. And the drug companies that make all these great drugs that rewire your brain with hate that s*.

JOE ROGAN: Yep. Yeah, they would. Yeah, they would. And I think they’re wrong. Yeah. I mean, I think humans throughout history have been using it and, you know, to various degrees of success. I think for some people, it’s not good. It’s like a lot of other things. But it’s up to us to figure out what’s good for you and what’s not good for you. This is part of the freedom of being a person. You know, I mean, there’s a lot of things that you could easily protect people from that we allow people to do.

Ayahuasca and DMT Explained

JOSH DUBIN: Here’s the one that I saw a documentary about this, and I’m the one that I can’t make a decision on. What’s the one where you take it and you’re fing puking? You’re retching to the point where you’re like, puking out of your eyeballs? Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca. And people are like fing. And how can that be good?

JOE ROGAN: Well, the reason why you, well, here’s what ayahuasca is. First of all, ayahuasca is orally active dimethyltryptamine. Dimethyltryptamine is an endogenous drug that your body produces, your brain produces. It’s produced in the liver, in the lungs. It’s a natural component of the human body. Terence McKenna had a great line about it. He said, the thing about DMT is everyone’s holding meaning, like you’re, everyone has. If it’s illegal, it’s like making blood illegal.

JOSH DUBIN: So what does ayahuasca do chemically?

JOE ROGAN: So ayahuasca, so dimethyltryptamine, which is the active drug, the active compound, dimethyltryptamine, exists in thousands of different plants. It’s in a bunch of different grasses and plants. It’s not orally active because your body produces something called monoamine oxidase. Monoamine oxidase breaks down dimethyltryptamine in the gut so that if you consume things like these grasses or different plants that have high levels of dimethyltryptamine in it, your body breaks it down so it doesn’t become active.

What ayahuasca is, it’s one plant that contains dimethyltryptamine and another plant that contains harmine. Harmine, which is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. So you take the MAO inhibitor and then the dimethyltryptamine, they brew it all together, and then you have a slow release, orally active dimethyltryptamine.

JOSH DUBIN: That’s that motherf*er with the ore.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, he’s working with what he’s making, you know, and so there’s, that is what it is. So you take it orally, it takes a long time because it has to go through your digestive process. It gets in your bloodstream. You have this trip and, you know, when you’re puking and sting and all that stuff, it’s like your body is like, whatever the f this is is not good.

But the result of it, the end of it, is this extremely impactful experience that leads many people to quit alcohol. Many people quit cigarettes from it. They quit destructive behavior. They release trauma and learn to get over things that have happened in their life and move on. You have these experiences where you are in contact with what seems like entities and incredibly wise, loving entities that connect you to nature and to earth. I’m sure people have bad experiences. I’m sure it’s a very powerful psychedelic.

JOSH DUBIN: You s* yourself too?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, you could s* yourself. You could throw up. Yeah, I mean, it doesn’t happen with everybody, but it happens with a lot of people that do it. But that’s not the case with smoking dimethyltryptamine or with IV drugs, drip dimethyltryptamine. We had a guy on recently that they’re doing a clinic. Where was that? Island. They’re doing that. They got it legal in some place.

And so you could fly to this place and do an IV dimethyltryptamine experience without the s*ting, without the vomiting. And it’s even more intense than ayahuasca, unless you have like a really high dose of ayahuasca. But this, the pure smoking of DMT is much more powerful but very short experience. Your body brings it back to baseline very quickly because your body knows how to process it. Right. Your body doesn’t know how to process alcohol nearly as well as it knows how to process DMT, because DMT is natural in the body.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah, but you don’t s* yourself in. Well, that’s true, but you don’t.

JOE ROGAN: With the IV. With the IV, you don’t. You don’t. With smoking it. You don’t s yourself. Just when you drink the, that fing witches brewing. That witches brew in the forest, you know, bit by mosquitoes.

EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

JOSH DUBIN: You know what’s interesting? Hanging out with hippies, you could do that. All of these forms of psychedelics that lead to some sort of resolution or peace on the other side. You have to still, even if you do it in modern psychiatry, like I did, something called EMDR. Are you familiar with that?

JOE ROGAN: No.

JOSH DUBIN: I think it stands for eye movement desensitization. EMDR. Yeah. I don’t know what the R stands for, but it is something that, I mean, you have to go through a similar amount of suffering and it’s to deal with past traumas, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.

All right, so I went through this and it helps you. You could do it. There’s some, sometimes you’re doing it with your eyes, but you ever, you ever use Flonase?

JOE ROGAN: No. You know what it is?

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. All right. And it has like a green cover on it. You hold on to these two paddles the way I did it, and they’re hooked up to this little transistors, little box, and it’s like it buzzes your hand. You hold on to them and it’ll buzz your hands. No more than like the buzz of a cell phone in this rhythmic, this rhythmic pattern.

And before you do it, you really set up what the trauma is. So I went through months of trying to identify what were the things from my childhood that were haunting me. And once you do, you then relive those moments with this rhythmic buzzing. And you do it again and again and again.

And after each session, which could last anywhere between a minute to 10 minutes, or your eyes are shut and you’re getting this rhythmic pattern, and you open your eyes and you explain what just happened. But you start in that place, you’re 12 here. And I have to tell you, it was, it was one of the most painful, agonizing things I had ever done. And it was the most religious experience I had ever had.

Because you’re almost in a, you’re almost in a trance like state, and your mind is going. And you then explain what happened. And it’s almost like a, it’s almost like a guided daydream. And then when you explain it, you then go back again and start. And I, and when I was first doing it, I was like, this is just torture, just straight up torture. But then you start to see an improvement in your mood and an improvement dealing with that particular.

And I learned more about myself, my childhood, my behaviors than I, than I did doing any drug, any psychedelic, any, which I did in my youth. And it literally saved me.

JOE ROGAN: Interesting.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. And it, and it, and it sounds to me I just had this revelation as you’re talking about, like, you know, it’s almost like you have to purge the pain, you have to relive it almost in order to get rid of it. And you’re, the theory behind EMDR, as I understand it, is that you don’t have the same physiological response at recalling the trauma.

You know, you could think of something that happened to you 10 years ago, and you can still get the heart palpitation and the adrenaline rush and the, you know, the other, whatever is being released in your body, whatever hormones get activated, and it doesn’t happen anymore.

I mean, it’s, the way that it was introduced to me was that my therapist did it with combat veterans who could get triggered by a grain of sand on the beach because they were in Desert Storm and spiral. So I find it interesting because it seems like the same methodology is at play, but it’s just a different way of getting there than psychedelic.

JOE ROGAN: Well, there’s other ways that they do it without the psychedelic drug that induces psychedelic experience, like holotropic breathing.

JOSH DUBIN: What is.

Holotropic Breathwork and Altered States

JOE ROGAN: That? Put that into perplexity, Young Jamie. It’s a particular style of breathing that allows you to achieve an altered state. I don’t want to misspeak on exactly how to do it.

It’s an intense structured breathing technique designed to induce an altered non-ordinary state of consciousness for emotional healing and self-exploration. Typically involves prolonged deep rapid breathing while lying down accompanied by evocative music and guidance from a trained facilitator.

Developed in 1970 by psychiatrist Denisov Grof and his wife Christina. After LSD-assisted psychotherapy became restricted as a way to reach similar therapeutic states without…

JOSH DUBIN: Drugs.

JOE ROGAN: Wow. Yeah. So there’s a bunch of different styles of breathing that like James Nestor writes about some of these in his book “Breath.” Is it breath or breathe spelled…

JOSH DUBIN: The same way now doesn’t one have an E? One has an E. I don’t know what country you’re…

JOE ROGAN: From. I think breathe has an E. But the point is like there’s ways of inducing a psychedelic state without drugs. Obviously the best one is the sensory deprivation tank. That takes you to a very psychedelic place and it’s completely natural and…

JOSH DUBIN: Safe. Float…

JOE ROGAN: Tank. Yeah, float…

JOSH DUBIN: Tank. Yeah, done…

JOE ROGAN: That. Which is invented by John Lilly who also was a ketamine guy. He was really into…

JOSH DUBIN: Ketamine. Oh, I got, I got. You got me into that float tank. I was in there one time and I was like, I didn’t know if I was facing north or south. I didn’t know if I was submerged in the…

JOE ROGAN: Water. You’re flying through the…

JOSH DUBIN: Universe. There’s so much. The salt content keeps you so buoyant that you go into this trance-like state. I highly recommend…

JOE ROGAN: That.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. Have a question for you. Off topic. Who wins this fight Friday…

JOE ROGAN: Night? Oh God. Okay.

Jake Paul vs. Anthony Joshua Fight Preview

If you have money to bet on it, you’re betting on the Olympic gold medalist who’s a multiple time heavyweight world champion, who’s one of the greatest knockout artists in the history of the heavyweight division. That’s Anthony Joshua.

What’s fun is you don’t think Jake Paul can win. And so the underdog rooter in you is like, well let’s see, let’s order this. Let’s see. I mean the size difference is insane. Anthony Joshua’s 245 pounds was the weight limit that he had to reach. He had to drop down to 245 pounds. He’s probably a little heavier, but that’s normal for him. That’s fine. It’s not like he’s going to be dehydrated or anything.

He weighed 243 and Jake Paul weighed 216. So, I mean, that’s a big gap. It’s a big gap in weight, it’s a big gap in experience. I mean, you’re talking about a guy who fought Usyk twice and wasn’t stopped by Usyk, who’s one of the greatest heavyweights, if not the greatest of all time. One of the greatest boxers of all time.

You’re talking about a guy who beat Wladimir Klitschko again.

JOSH DUBIN: Fantastic. In a great…

JOE ROGAN: Fight. Great fight. You’re talking about a guy who just knocked out Francis Ngannou like it was nothing. I mean, he’s f*ing dangerous. Anthony Joshua is still in his prime. He’s still one of the best of the best.

And Jake Paul is a guy who’s been fighting guys like Ben Askren and Tyron Woodley, who was a great MMA fighter, but, you know, fought Nate Diaz and had a tough fight with Nate Diaz, and now he’s going to fight Anthony f*ing…

JOSH DUBIN: Joshua. Yeah. I mean, I got to say, the reason I…

JOE ROGAN: Asked. Kid’s got…

JOSH DUBIN: Balls. He’s got balls. You know, Shakur just went and sparred with him…

JOE ROGAN: Recently.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. And all these kids. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted two people that are fighting each other to lose more. So I don’t know which one I want to lose more.

Because Anthony Joshua, as great as he is, I don’t know, he beefed with Lennox. So I got to kind of like be with my guy. Of course. And then the other guy’s just like so smart in the way he’s playing this from a marketing standpoint, I…

JOE ROGAN: Think. Brilliant. Listen, he was supposed to fight Gervonta Davis, who’s 135 pounds, who’s tiny in…

JOSH DUBIN: Comparison. And then he flip flops…

JOE ROGAN: It. But he’s taking a lot of heat for almost fighting…

JOSH DUBIN: Gervonta.

JOE ROGAN: Right. But Gervonta had some legal troubles. He got out of that. And then his response to that is, okay, I’ll fight the biggest, baddest f*ing heavyweight alive. Or one of…

JOSH DUBIN: Them. Yeah. And it’s almost like a parallel universe because two guys that I manage in their professional career are both calling the fight. So Lennox and Andre are both there. And I was talking to them last night. Because they were at dinner together. I said, how are you taking this? Isn’t this f*ing nutty to…

JOE ROGAN: You? It’s definitely nutty, but that’s the Jake Paul Show. It’s a…

JOSH DUBIN: Sideshow. And all the young kids like Shakur, they think they want to be around him. They think he’s brilliant and they’re right in a way.

JOE ROGAN: Right? Oh yeah, no, he’s brilliant in his marketing for sure. Look, he’s made an extraordinary amount of money, right? So he’s doing great. And he’s young and he’s super dedicated to boxing. I mean, you watch him train. I’ve watched many highlight reels of his training. He’s very dedicated to boxing. He keeps getting better with every…

JOSH DUBIN: Fight. If you’re Anthony Joshua and you don’t knock that f*ing kid out, how do you show your face again in…

JOE ROGAN: The UK? And look, he might knock him out. I mean, and that would probably just show that Jake Paul is legitimate in his ability to take a very difficult fight, you know, that he’s willing to not just fight guys that he could beat, like Ben Askren, but fight guys that no experts picking him to beat Anthony…

JOSH DUBIN: Joshua. I mean, I think I’m going to go. I think I’m going to go. And this is the. Well, it’s in Florida. Yeah. It’s the first time that I’m like, I want to see this shit show. I want to see. I mean these are two. I mean Anthony Joshua for all, all bullshit aside for all his shit talk. When life’s a big moose of…

JOE ROGAN: A man, he’s fast as f*, he’s built like an Adonis. I mean you got to like if you’re betting, I mean, I don’t know what the odds are, but the odds have to be heavily in Anthony Joshua’s favor…

JOSH DUBIN: Are they?

JOE ROGAN: They have to be. He’s an Olympic gold medalist…

JOSH DUBIN: What are the odds?

JOE ROGAN: He’s a two time heavyweight world champion…

JOSH DUBIN: I mean, let’s both get hooked on gambling right…

JOE ROGAN: Now. Yeah, let’s put that in DraftKings. Find out what the odds are if you bet on to win. Let me guess, 10 to 1. 10 to 1 seems…

JOSH DUBIN: Reasonable. I’m going to guess it’s 17 to 1…

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that’s even more reasonable. I’m trying to be polite. Maybe it should be 30 to 1. Like what was Buster Douglas when he beat Mike Tyson? I think was 42 to…

JOSH DUBIN: 1. Jamie doesn’t gamble. I definitely don’t sound loud and text. He is a minus 1,000 favorite. You’re…

JOE ROGAN: Right.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. For Jake Paul, 10 to 1.

JOE ROGAN: Right?

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. Holy, that’s a great bet. You got to bet a thousand to win a…

JOE ROGAN: Hundred. Yeah, but you got to feel like you’re going to win. But if everything is…

JOSH DUBIN: Normal. Joshua’s chinny though…

JOE ROGAN: Man. Is he that chinny though? I mean he fought Ngannou there’s…

JOSH DUBIN: A minus 10,000 favorite on that card…

JOE ROGAN: Also. Who’s the minus 10,000?

JOSH DUBIN: You know, Marley versus it’s the very first fight, but. Oh, minus 10,000. Same number…

JOE ROGAN: Listen, my feeling is who knows what’s going to happen? It’s a fight. Fights are crazy. But if I had a guess, I mean, you got to lean towards the guy who’s a two time heavyweight…

JOSH DUBIN: Champion.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Anderson Silva versus Tyron will be interesting. Yeah.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. You got to kind of respect this Jake Paul kid. As much as it pains me to say it. He takes two guys that he beat and puts them on the card…

JOE ROGAN: Together. Listen, he also supported Ben Askren. Ben Askren needed multiple or double lung transplant and his insurance didn’t cover it. He footed part of the bill for…

JOSH DUBIN: That. I’ll tell you what’s going to be a great fight. Shakur against Teofimo…

JOE ROGAN: Lopez. That’s a very good…

Shakur Stevenson vs. Teofimo Lopez

JOSH DUBIN: Fight. Yeah, it was a very good fight. Jay Prince and I were, he, you know, here’s a kid that’ll fight anyone. Literally the only other, the only other fighter that we’ve managed over all these years that was like, I don’t care who it is, put him in front of me. I want the best. Was Andre Ward.

Everyone else is chess playing. Shakur is like, I want Gervonta Davis, Teofimo, get me the biggest name you can. And I just think that’s going to be an awesome…

JOE ROGAN: Fight. That’s a phenomenal…

JOSH DUBIN: Fight. That’s at the…

JOE ROGAN: Garden. When is…

JOSH DUBIN: That? January 31st. I would love for you to be there. That would be…

JOE ROGAN: Great. That’s an exciting fight. Yeah, I’m super excited about…

JOSH DUBIN: That. We were just up there for the press conference, me and Jay and. Yeah, it’s going to be a good…

JOE ROGAN: One. Yeah. Two guys in their prime. I love it. I have one more thing I…

Jelly Roll’s Pardon and Transformation

JOSH DUBIN: Wanted to throw in here. Jelly Roll received a full pardon…

JOE ROGAN: Today.

JOSH DUBIN: Wow. Governor of…

JOE ROGAN: Tennessee.

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Good. That’s…

JOSH DUBIN: Amazing. Yo, man, that, that moment on the show, what was it last week, man? I was a puddle. Yeah, that was so cool. He’s an amazing…

JOE ROGAN: Person. That dude’s lost 300…

JOSH DUBIN: Pounds. Let me see that. Let me see that picture of him…

JOE ROGAN: Again. Look at…

JOSH DUBIN: Him. Looks. He looks like a different…

JOE ROGAN: Bro. He has different hands, he’s got a different face, different body. And we worked out together, man. He’s. He ran 2.6 miles on the treadmill out there and then we got in the sauna together. He’s…

JOSH DUBIN: Great. He’s. That, that moment when he said, “Can I hug…”

JOE ROGAN: You.”

JOSH DUBIN: Yeah. That was…

JOE ROGAN: Beautiful. He’s a beautiful person. Really is. And you are, too…

JOSH DUBIN: Brother. Good for…

JOE ROGAN: Him. Thank you, Brian. Thank…

JOSH DUBIN: You. Thank…

JOE ROGAN: You. As always, thanks for being here. You’re awesome. Appreciate you.

JOSH DUBIN: Appreciate you too.

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