Shane Smith

28:16So we sent Dennis Rodman to the Harlem Grove Congress to play. And then Kim Jong -un invited our whole crew back to his house. And the whole world exploded like every news paper was like, fuck, vice. Stunt journalists and they didn't expose it. I remember - Tell me about the experience. Well, we had just done this series, which by the way ended up tying Wardaine for the Emmy. Wow. And our first, you know, our first Boreian could use one of the Emmy would Boreen. And so, primetime, I mean, like real -life thing. Yeah, yeah. And so we were really proud of that first series. And then we just got shot on about this North Korean thing.

28:59And I'm like, the BBC shot on us a lot. And we're like, hold on. You tried to sneak in in like a student group. Like you're in - And you're in danger of the lives of a student. We figured out a way to get in and get access in a view that nobody else has gotten. And we just were getting sit on. And I remember being like torn apart. I remember lying in the bath and reading these reviews. And going, well, like we tried. You know, we tried. And we launched to a five, which is, I think it was second only to Game of Thrones. It was like a huge number for - Especially for a new show. And Plepler was like, that's what these, you know, all presses get for.

29:39Don't worry about these heads, all this. And - The HPA was supportive of the fact that you got good numbers. Super supportive. No, they were supportive of the show. We got good numbers because of all the press. I didn't realize that because I was like, when were you too conservative? So the bad press actually flew. Oh, yeah. The reason why we were successful was because of all that bad press. It was like, it was like a $20 million campaign for the show. So when that show launched, that's when everything changed because we started winning Emmys. And like to win an Emmy, Emmys are a racket. It's like if you win, you get a vote.

30:14And 60 minutes have to be getting Emmys for like 70 years. ABC News, CBS News. That's almost impossible, you know, to be near kid on the block away. So we started winning Emmys off the - We won Emmys, we won Peabody's and Polks and Pulitzer. So you're like, you had to be really good. But you were also doing real journalism. Yeah. You were breaking stories that nobody else broke. Yeah. And so that - And stories that people were actually interested in because they would watch them. Yeah. That was the glory days because we would come up with a story, go shoot it, have a ton of fun, come back, cut it with your crazy bad news bears.

30:52And it would go up and then you'd just be at the awards. Like it was like you could - whatever you would think it up and just - And I remember saying to everybody like, enjoy these times because this is how documentary filmmaking works. Like you go pitch something for three years and you make it for three years and it comes out nobody watches it. So that was just glory days. That was like, you know, I think we're seven years on HBO. That was just like, why did it change? Or what changed? Three things. Pepper laughter was outstaffed and he was sort of the visionary. We also, because the show was doing so well, like it went from like eight was the first buy in that year we did actually twelve.

31:33They bought four more than it went to like twenty two more episodes. Yeah, then it went to like fifty six. Then we went to a weekly show. And it was just too much. It was hard to keep up. Yeah. That level of good content with that much. Lots and lots and lots. And somebody was like looking at it at one point because we were doing so much. Yeah. We're spending more on ice. We are getting the throwing. Our game of throwing was doing twelve episodes and we were doing fucking hundred. But like it was a lot of money. And you know, most shows don't last over five years because that's going to get more expensive whatever the popular left.

32:07And we were having a hard time, you know, keeping up with the quote. Because if you're doing twelve to twenty episodes, you can just really concentrate on knocking them out of the park. But we went to showtime after and we kept winning Emmys and it was good. But it was just it was never like never had the same cache as those HBO. And that was at the pinnacle of HBO's like it was like that was like game of thrones and anyway. Like girls and I don't know there was like four big hits on the hand of the time. And there was that so they were killing it. And then after that like now HBO is in the max and you're like, I don't even know what max is.

32:50Like why would you change HBO to max? Anyway, so HBO changed the media industry changed. We changed and there you go. What were the other things going on at the same time? So it sounds like from a focus perspective, the HBO series would have been the most watched thing you were doing. Yes. Not by numbers because online like our own own became we were doing our peak like a billion three billion four video views a month. So that would be much bigger than HBO. HBO was status. It was like I see you had success in the old media model as well as the new media. I just understand you should you should be in media.

33:38So so we were killing it on TV. But I mean online was 10X that right. So that's that's where we were making our bread and butter. And then we expanded into we bought a TV network and then we started into agencies and bots too. Tell me about let's talk about each one of those the idea of doing the TV network. Well, look I'm a hustler. And I I called it years and years ago. I mean I made a big tiger speech. I've said it to anyone who will listen the whole time. I don't know what it was when we started, but it was like 55 cents of every dollar went to the big four now. It went 60 cents and 70 cents now.

34:21It's like 82 cents of every dollar goes to the big five. And so that's 15 cents left for everybody else in the world. So independent publishing was heading for a wall and everybody knew it. And we it's funny because five years ago everyone used to say you know Google and Facebook. Yeah, you know, two bad guys on like these guys are taking all the money and there was a count. And it's it just got worse and worse and worse and then everybody just went, oh well, what are you going to do? And so we knew that that was going to happen. We saw it happen. By the way, I think everybody saw it. You know, so we're like, okay, let's use the insane valuations to buy things that are going to be let's like a hedge fund model.

35:04So you say, okay, well, we'll take our valuation. We'll buy a distressed media set, which is a TV channel. And ironically we have the TV channel today. It's throwing off money because it's TV channel is throw off cash. So yeah, we did it as a plan to sort of offset and to you know, we built five different legs of the we had an agency diversified. Exactly. Because of the limitations on the growth on the growth in digital publishing. Yeah, because it was becoming more and more the mainstream was taking more and more of that space. Yes. Well, not yeah, not the mainstream because they're in the same not mainstream media like the old school guys who now are in the same.

35:46And both ironically that we were in anything that's advertising based the screw because all the sudden Google came along with YouTube and just in Facebook. Facebook runs like a lot of online video with what they don't run. Google does YouTube. And so between those two in my like. Facebook does feed it a lot of work with Facebook and they were just going through. And then one day Facebook just changed their algorithm. They just you know, Buzzfeed have. So to say we were reliant on them is is is is to understand it. Do you ever have that experience with YouTube with the. It's the algorithm. Yeah, we it was more of a Facebook thing.

36:31But you know, when we were partners with YouTube, it was definitely. It was definitely easier to sort of you know get the traffic. I mean, there was a long period of time when you were doing SEO optimization and you're buying traffic and everyone was about the traffic traffic. Oh, no traffic. Oh, no traffic. And then. All of a sudden when like TikTok came up or Instagram, then it just became about all screens all the time because you just couldn't. Your own. Oh, no, couldn't compete with TikTok. So then it just became being everywhere, which is great for numbers, but terrible for money.

37:12Looking at the media landscape today, how different is it than when you were able to do it? You were able to do 100%. We started when desktop publishing. Was just sophisticated and up where three idiots could make 16 page print. So it was like literally just just coming. And now, you know, everything's on phones, everything's on these massive massive platforms. The consumption is through the roof. I mean, if you see by the way I called this as well, like my McTiger speech, I'm like, look, there's going to be massive consolidation, which has to happen not only between the online companies, but between the mainstream companies because you have these big massive companies with ever shrinking audiences.

38:05And then, but you have one audience that's growing and just consuming stuff. What are they consuming? Well, going forward, I'll tell you what they're going to be consuming. They're going to be consuming AI because you can just print anything. It gets made. And then you print this. So it's going to be. Personally, I channels, which has your stories, your, you know, host, your issue that it's going to be everything becomes everything for everybody. So no one could have ever predicted that that's what the future of media is going to be because all of these big productions, all of the studios, you know, you're making going out in the field and digital video teams and, you know, people who have cameras and that's three years away from being obsolete.

38:55But I could have never predicted it. It's when now it seems crazy, but we used to get in shit for going from a magazine to online video. People are like, oh, it was like Dylan going electric. You sell out and fuck you. We were so angry. Gen X is so angry that we became millennial because we went to online video. And now we're going to a super studio format, which is what everyone is doing. Studio is the only way you make any money. Obviously, we get shit out and we're going to fucking fight. Is there any point in the vice story where you feel like I sold out? I wouldn't necessarily say sold out because we were always independent.

39:34We always sold pieces of it. I would say that, but from a content perspective, do you ever feel like you made, did you ever pandering your content away from what you actually liked? The problem with content and what people don't understand, it's the same thing with TV.

39:54People don't put content on that they like because they like it. They put content on the rates. And so vice, like so, to go back around 2017 at the peak of the HBO. Because all of our big clients Google and studios and everybody was out in LA, I moved to LA. And so I sort of stepped back from day to day and kept doing news. And vice, the other channels, not the news, started moving because we always say give the company over to the interns up to every five years. And vice started moving into this sort of weird, woke era or whatever. But it was young people writing for themselves to the audience.

40:51It was like our audience went from millennials to whatever that is, Gen Z. And they were writing for themselves to themselves. And by the way, traffic was through the group. But the old vice audience, excuse me, were like, what are we doing here? And also one of the mistakes was vice news was over here, which I was constantly, and it was still killing it, doing the words and stuff. But like people didn't differentiate between vice .com and vice news. And there was this vice. And so I think that was a fuck up. We should have had a lot more differentiation. And I mean, the go -well, go broke, tell you I'm well aware of.

41:30And a lot of times I'd see stuff and you'd be like, what the fuck? And then you go to give someone shit and they're like, okay, the one you liked, ten people saw. The one that this was supposed to, was a hundred million. That's just what the fucking young people want, your old man. And you're like, oh, well, it's a problem with digital media. And it changes with the audience. And the audience now, the young audience, that young digital -consuming audience, is that audience. And that's the content they want. And so it became problematic. And definitely, just to be speaking of selling out like Disney or any of those corporate partners, they didn't want that.

42:19We didn't want that. It was just sort of this, you know, we had, I don't know, 5 ,000 employees doing 7 ,000 pieces a day. And just all of this stuff would come out and just be like, what the fuck is this shit? Like what the fuck's that? So did we lose control of the bicycle yet? If you were to go back to the original model of the HBO show, and if you decide to do eight to 12 episodes a season now, and found the right distributor, whether it be the Netflix or Pulu or wherever it would be, do you think that it would have the same impact that it originally had? I don't think so. I think you have to be in the right place at the right time.

43:05I also think, for example, Netflix, like the big guys who could do it now, Google, Netflix, Apple, Amazon. How could Google do it now? Well, they won't do it now. But how could they? Well, because they have a large size in the world. So they can do anything. But if we're talking about a TV, like a TV show, now there's no such thing difference. Yeah, it's the same thing. Like Apple has TV shows. It's like they never get so on TV. It's sort of an Apple TV. But the big one is now. If you really want to do well, it's Amazon or Netflix, let's say. No is the answer. And I'll tell you why, because Netflix in particular, if you do a new show, then you do a story on Modi, and then Modi gets pissed off and then kicks Netflix out of India, they've just lost $22 billion business because you said I don't like Modi.

44:05So, excuse me, they're not going to do that. It's too dangerous for a big corporation to back this kind of content. Superdanger. And news on TV doesn't work and it hasn't worked in a while. It's aging up and it's just now there's fear mongering. So, Fox is just fear mongering. And MSNBC and all that is just comedy making fun of the fear mongering. And so, we believe that there's a huge middle, like the side of majority, of centrist sane people who are not being catered to. And, you know, so we're going to try to make news products for them. And you hit the nail on the head, which is, can it be like it was in the HBO glory days?

45:03The answer is no, because there's no HBO. And it was the beginning of all that shit. But there's an opportunity now. For example, what you're doing, like podcasting is this new frontier and it's exploding. And we said, like, if we wanted to do something around this election cycle, because it's going to be, we're already seeing. It's completely sheer bull goose lunacy. And it's only going to get worse. And so, we were like, let's take the biggest social media meme. So, it's like, you know, millions of people going, now, let's take them. And let's deconstruct them. Let's talk to people on either side.

45:43Let's do it like a scientist. Let's do it like a journalist. So, let's go investigate. One of the things I love doing was we went to Antarctica. No, sorry, we went to Greenland. And Greenland is melting. And Greenland is something like two meters or three meters of sea level rises. It's melting as well. So, we're like, hey, guys, like Greenland melts. And we got, this is not the peak of HBO. We got, indedated. Like, usually we get something like 10 million comments. We got like 28 million comments. And usually it was like 60 percent positive. It was like 90 percent negative. There was a bunch of bots and everyone was fucking going crazy about me, especially.

46:26So, I'm like, okay, let's follow the story. So, we went, we found the traffic. It was conservative thing tanks. And they're like, there's more ice ever. And Antarctica is shifting the poles with more sea ice. And Antarctica, Antarctica, Antarctica. And we went to a conservative conference of the pink tanks we interviewed everybody. Then they're like, it's Antarctica, you idiot. So, we went to Antarctica, met with all the scientists. Like, yeah, it's melting as fast as it can melt. Like, well, they're like, yeah, well, there's always flat earthers. We're like, flat earthers is 45 percent of the fucking American population.

47:02They're like, well, we're not salesmen. We're scientists. Like, what do you want us to do? I'm like, they're saying you work in the air. You, they're saying that there's never been more at the like, you know, there is like the rough. So, to go back to my long -winded story is, we want to do that with political memes. Like, for example, the $24 Big Mac took on everything in Biden's. It's $24, it's everywhere. And we looked at these traffic guys, these historically advice news. And they're like, yeah, it's all coming from China, CCP, Chinese Communist Party. Because somebody had posted somewhere $24 and it had gotten some traction.

47:40So, they just turned on the... there's no $24 Big Mac. In fact, McDonald's came out and said, yeah, it's $4 .95, we're going to the $4 .99 Big Mac. There's no $24 Big Mac. And so, that sort of was like, bang, like, all of these conspiracy theories, all of these people like on the right, on the left, you know, and I'm just like, let's call them. Let's just talk to them. Let's call the people who are fucking on either side of it. They get their point of view. And then also see where the traffic's coming from. Because a lot of time it's coming from Russia. Like Russia will tell you, open again, we're trying to fuck your election.

48:17We're trying to fuck your electophones. And as in China, as in the pre -Syrian army, as are Aronis, like so many people are trying to fuck with our shit. And so, you just have these young people going, and the reason why I got back in the game is so many of the people I was working with would just say something that's positive as if it's a given. But that's not even... we're not even discussing that. That's just part of the thing we got to the given. And you're like, that's not a given, dude. That's bullshit. Like, where are you even getting that? And I think that what's happened because of the first Trump election was he did an amazing job of, they would say, fake news.

48:58And he'd say, no, you're a fake news. He literally just did a kindergarten like, you're a fake news. And it was, oh, let's fake news. And this is now everything's fake news. Nobody believes anything. Anymore, this is a huge problem because another's no basis of truth. Because everyone's just like, that's bullshit. Well, and like, if you, Shesheh Lefam, if you look for the source, the sources are all these fucking nefarious, weird. And everybody is, by the way, just throwing so much fuel on fire. So we're like, let's try to find these 10, 20, 30 massive, massive issues that no one agrees upon. Try to talk to people on both sides, try to talk to experts and figure out where the traffic's going from.

49:44And wouldn't that be an exciting show? So we think that'll be a little bit more interesting than just the sort of shotgun approach of the HBO show, which was just like, that's figure out what's interesting in the world tonight. I'd be really curious to see that. I'd like to see that. Well, this is the first one we're doing it to.

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50:55Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon, and chocolate salt. Formulated with the perfect balance of sodium, potassium, and magnesium to keep you hydrated and energized throughout the day. These minerals help conduct the electricity that powers your nervous system so you can perform it your very best. Element Electrolites are sugar -free, keto -friendly, and great tasting. Minerals are the stuff of life. So visit drinklmnt .com slash tetra and stay salty with Element Electrolites. L -M -N -T With vice ever banned or censored? Yeah, yeah. We used to say we take the sex pistols brand of marketing.

51:57IE get banned and go number one. In Canada, America you have freedom of speech in Canada. They did censored the shit out of everything. So we had vice. It wasn't even an article. It was a skate ad. And the skate ad got banned at my alma mater. So Canada and I went to Carlton for going to McGowan. He went to Concordia. We were at Carlton, so we used to distribute in Carlton. And they banned us from Carlton. And then the Carlton newspaper ran the article and used the same image. And using the same methodology, they banned their own newspaper. Then the gay and lesbian newspaper wrote about it, used the same image.

52:45And they got banned. And that's censorship. And then of course all Canadian media called us to say what happened. And we're like, well that's censorship. Because obviously you should censor us because we're a film, pornography, terrible, horrible garbage. But then the next guy gets banned. And the next guy gets banned. And the next guy gets banned. That's what censorship is. Everybody wants a censor something. And so I love any kind of censor. I should be argument because I've been on it my whole life. But yeah, we get banned all the time. And you get banned and your kids love it. Like you're just, you're off to the rate.

53:19So we would ban, I don't know how many times. You're up, we come here, we get banned. Italy actually, you have to register with the local council. And local council has one clergyman. So can you imagine? Every month to a fucking clergyman to say, okay, let's see what we got here. And it's like, which dildos best for a donkey? And it would be like, was that ever real vice to me? I don't know. I mean, it sounds like a vice. There's a funny meme where the guy gets a dildo and he goes, country, and it hits like Tunisia, fucking, you know, animals, like donkey, the sexual divide vibrator. And it's like, it's an actual vice thing.

54:03It's like Tunisian donkeys are being felaceted by vibrators. Whatever. And you're like, okay, I can take a good show. But you're like, their vice articles became, and headlines became a bit fucking rich. And there used to be a thing called not vice or something that was just, you had, it was like online and you had to pick which was a fake, vice headline or what was a real vice headline. So it did become a bit rich, but anyway, yeah, we got banned all the time. Tell me the story with John McFee. That was a weird one.

54:40She was on the run in Belize. I don't know who he was on the run from, because we couldn't figure out if he had made it all up or if it was real. And I think it was 90 % made up in its head, but maybe a little bit real. So we sent a reporter down there to go follow him. And then he contacted you? Was that normally the case? Yeah. A lot of times. I mean, we would contact people. Everybody knows everybody. So like, I have my uncle knows this guy or are they close? And our peak, everyone's like, I got a story for you guys. So we sent somebody down and then they were following them. They decided to go on the run with them, whatever.

55:23And then I guess they took a picture of him. And then, but it had the metadata still linked to it so that they could find him. But I don't know if anyone was actually looking for him. But we got a shit for the metadata picture. From him or no, he didn't. I mean, he was, he was with us. And I don't know that they ever caught him. I don't know if he was ever. But if they weren't after him, why would we be the metadata binoculars? The whole thing about it was like the internet blew up for a day about it. And you're like, we were involved in it. It's still unclear as to whether or not he was actually being saved.

56:05But, you know, he was a freaky, freaky guy. And, you know, the person who went down there, like was just, whoever was in the office, I guess, went down there and took a picture. Because he said, take a picture. And they didn't take off the metadata. Anyway, so I forget how it ended. But I think he got caught. They went through and then let him go. So it turned out to be much of you about nothing. But what was some of the other places that you flew into and got to experience something unusual, let's say? So, Lenny, the one I remember was there's another great story, which is this guy named General Abdul -Rizq.

56:50And he was like a teenager, or the kid, maybe before he was a teenager, in Candahar. And he, the Taliban are from Candahar. And when the Taliban came, he got kicked out. His parents were killed. So he's like this young kid went through the tunnels in the Pakistan. He's like sweeping the floors in a city shopping. Pakistan, like illiterate, fucked up. And then, because the teenager goes back through the tunnels and gets this teenage gang together, and they just start killing Taliban. But they look like fucking Adam and the ants. They have like these weird shreds of things, colored rope, like colored ribbons that they wear, a crazy color.

57:34They look awesome. And he was known as the Taliban Killer. He's a teenager. And he, when Americans invaded, they said, bring us anybody who's fighting the Taliban. So they bring him to the Taliban. They train him, they give him just like ludicrous amounts of money. And he becomes the government, police chief of Candahar, and then eventually governor of Candahar. And he, it's like curts. Like when he went into this region and all enemy activity died. So he goes to Candahar. Where the Taliban are from? Zero Taliban. I know. Kills, it's getting stuck in kills as well. You know, you can imagine he's not a good guy.

58:16Lots of killings, lots of torture and bad stuff in that guy. But he becomes, I think, maybe the biggest drug dealer in the world, like running the opium into Pakistan, is all this gold. Bullying his brother kills cars by the privateist's brother. Like super powerful guy. So I flew in to Candahar. And in these places, you can't be like, you can't be, you have to wear like, it's like... You have to dress as if you're from the plates. Yeah. And so I'm paying. So it's funny because I went into Northwest Frontier province with Sarouj, the Pakistani police, they could do anything. And I just come from shooting in Kashmir, which is another hotspot where they're having a war.

59:00And so I was wearing Kashmir a chapel. So a pink guy, I had a long beard and handed the beard, because that's what they do there. So I handed the beard and I was wearing Kashmir a chapel. And I remember they asked Sarouj, does your religious leader require any dietary restrictions? Because there's only one guy who's got a pink face wearing Kashmir a chapel and needs a bat hat. Because a lot of the top fighters on the top are come from Dagestan, which is in Russia, because the Dagestan is where sort of the Spetsnats run it. And so basically it's like super training ground for like, so if you're, you go into the forest, it's called.

59:39If you're Muslim, you fight the Spetsnats, it's the Russian Special Force, so you become super badass. So those guys then go out and train everybody off like the Taliban and Okaharam and everything. So they thought you were one of those guys. So anyways, we go interview him. And I don't speak Pashto, so I'm sitting there talking to him in English and then there's translation in the news. So anyway, I finished the interview, fly the Kabul, which is grim, but this is how bad it can do. But I flew to Kabul, I'm like, it's like Paris in the springtime. You're like, there's hotels in the food. Oh my god.

1:00:17And so I used knock, knock, knock, my door, and they bring me to the American Embassy. And it's treasury, DEA and CIA. And they're like, OK, we'll trade for you. We'll give you deep covers, meaning like we're not, you know, deep cover stories like we're not going to attribute them or whatever, but we'll give you the actual story. That's true. If you give us a ridzik, like give us a story of an ridzik, and I'm like, he's your guy. You fun him. He's like, he's your guy. And he's like, yeah, he's off the reservation. And I'm like, I don't, I just spoke to him in English and he spoke back to your passion.

1:00:55I don't have any insight into that general. I have no ridzik, like I don't know what you're talking about. But if he's that far off the reservation, then this is a worry because he's literally the Taliban killer. And then the guy goes, you know, which happened in Ken Hargoth. So that was freaky because you're sitting there going like, I'm this punk kid, you know, used to fucking bus, you know, for fucking quarters. All of a sudden you're talking to the CIA and DEA about fucking, you know, trading for deep cover stories about fucking that. You show up in these places with a story in mind. Are you ever surprised by what's actually happening there?

1:01:33Always. And are the people who are the bad guys necessarily the bad guys? And tell me about this. Tell me about our understanding of the world versus your firsthand experience of the world. Well, there's always a point of view. Like for example, the Taliban are such a bad guy. They're telling them, if they're American, they're freedom fighters. Because they're, we invaded their country. And they said, we're going to fight you until you leave. If you want to look at it objectively, they're very successful for freedom fighters. They beat America. By the way, before that they beat Russia, or that they beat England.

1:02:11They're fucking the empire killer, right? Why? Because they don't want their country to be invaded. And why is everybody invading their country? Well, geopolitically, it's very important because it's in between India, China, and Iraq, and Iran. And it's the sort of crossroads, more location than anything else. Yeah. I mean, and it's also very difficult to tame. And so if it's very difficult to tame, then shit can go down. Like, you know, training camps for extremists, etc. I mean, that's the whole thing is like, oh, 9 -11 happens when they say, okay, we're going to go there, which at least had a modicum of sense because they had training camps there.

1:02:59They're also like, we're also going to invade Iraq, which is like that's something nothing to do. We're just going to do that too. We're going to go in there. You know, it's ludicrous. But if you go to Afghanistan, I mean, are they good guys? I mean, you can believe in them or not believe in them, but they are fighting for the freedom of their country. And everyone forgets that. We dehumanize them, we tell these terrible stories about them, and everybody jumps on board. Like, that's what I'd say is surprising. Is that everybody, like all media, will just jump on board with a political narrative, and just nobody deviates from it.

1:03:34And I've got to give it to Al Jazeera. We do have cloning list news, which is our point of view, and our point of view is right. And if you go to the country, you say, yeah, like if you go to Iraq, we went in there and mismanaged it so badly that we created, we created ISIS, like America made ISIS, because we created this vacuum, and then ISIS came along. And you're like, well, that's not good. Like what we did in Afghanistan and what we did in Iraq were bad things. And how we get it back here, the propaganda is propaganda. That's one thing. Wars have propaganda on both sides, and one side always believes that my side is a propaganda.

1:04:28Are you spending time in Russia? Yeah, with something like that. A lot of times. They've had an interesting time where they were the shit, like they were number two, and then, you know, Yeltsin gets blamed for a lot of stuff, and basically Putin is trying to get them back to where they were before their, well, the way they see it is, we had a complete economic collapse, and everybody feasted on our corpse, you know. And I remember saying, like when I was in Russia, like Putin, like his communist, is he fascist? Like what is he, like no, no, you don't understand. He's a for Russia. And they were like, okay, got it.

1:05:08But like on the political spectrum, you know, because he was part of the KGB, but now, no, no, Shane, he's a paper, he's for Russia. So he wants to get Russia back to, you know, those old borders and those old territories and all that stuff. A, B, I talked to Lavrov, who's the foreign minister, and he'll say that, and they've been saying it to anyone who'll listen. If you put missiles on our border, like for example, in the Ukraine, it's like exactly the same as putting missiles in Cuba or Canada. And I'm actually, we're not going to let you, we're going to retaliate. They've said that the last 20 years, and then you would go do it, and you're like, what are you thinking about?

1:05:50Well, yeah, I'd provoke. Oh my God, what happened there? And so when you go, you know, there's two sides of every story, and poor Ukraine is, is it Vietnam? It's a proxy war that's being fought in its backyard, and that's, you know, unpleasant for everybody who's there. But there's, you know, there's two sides to every story. And like that's the one thing that's really messed up in America. Now as we don't have two sides to one story, we have one side that's hyper, impassioned, and angry, and won't even listen or talk to the other people. And you're like, you have two parties in America. But unless you have anything like, when I first came down to America, as I studied politics in economics, when I first came down to America, you know, Baba Clinton had done, you know, he had shrunk government and had the largest surplus of all time, and then bush increases the level of government, and had the biggest deficit of all time.

1:06:52So basically the Republicans and the Democrats switched their whole basis of their whole political mandate. No one in America said, boo, no one said shit. And that's when I realized a lot of this stuff, and now it's with Trump and Biden, which makes for fucking insane political theater, but a lot of this stuff in America, because America is not in democracy, it's the Republic. If you talk to the founding fathers, they're like, yes, it's made to do nothing to do it very slowly. But a lot of this stuff is a bread and puppet theater, like it's to give the sort of mass imagination that this is a massive democratic process, that there is agency that you actually have some sort of, you know, democratic country.

1:07:40And you're like, well, it's not set up to be a democracy, and you have two parties that means one is empowering the other ones in opposition, so they're always empowering. And so a lot of this stuff is bread and puppet theater, but now it's amplified to the point of just impassioned lunacy. And the thing that we have to watch out for is I was in Yugoslavia during the war there, and what happened was Tito kept everybody under his thumb, but he was afraid of the Soviet Union, so he put a machine gun in everybody's house. So when he died, everyone just started shooting each other, because they all had machine guns.

1:08:17No problem if you don't have machine guns, the average, and now America has just been arming itself for the last decade, like super arming itself. And no one is listening to each other's point of view. Like Democrats, like kind of like the Soviet Union, America, like old Russian -Z babies, you know, American guys, like the democratic and Republican propaganda against each other is like dehumanizing and doing this war. And that's terrifying, because you're like, it's a fucking Republican party versus a democratic party. Like it used to be, and it should be, nothing like whoever you vote for, is whoever you vote for, and then you're done, and we get all of life and who cares.

1:08:59But it's like a declaration of fucking war. I get crazy now. So good for media and good for news and good for what I'm doing, but terrible for anyone else.

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1:10:32Tell me about the home you grew up in. It's funny I've been thinking about it because I just came from Greece. And I think Greece was like the first, like I was young and beautiful for the first time, and punk wasn't part of my persona, and it was gorgeous, and it was weird, and water. This is prepunk. No, this is sorry, this is post, post when I was born. I'm getting that, but I first discovered beauty, you know, in that sort of, 18, 19, 20. Before that sort of Ottawa, no money, punk, everything was very grim, like we celebrated the working class. I worked as a bartender from a very young age, so I had money, so I left home a young age.

1:11:22There was a lot, you know, punk rock palaces, like you could be in a band, and then you would pay the rent out of the band money and stuff. So grew up like playing in punk bands. You would be like in a, like, a moon with other gay guys. My parents, like I had a fine family life, like my dad was very strict and was like you have to learn how to build a house and build a car, and you have to get straight A's and you have to box, you have to do this stuff. Because his dad had like, was self -taught and ended up being a big war hero, and even though he left school, I don't know, a great aid or something.

1:11:57And so he was a real harsh task, and I said to my dad, he looked like his tough life is hard. Life is like a shit sandwich, the more bread you have, the less you have to eat, but the only guy that ever lose money on the insider trading. So he never really did a well, but he was like an academic smart guy, but just, you know, life never worked for him. So basically I left home very young, punk, using my dukes, hustler, then I moved to Greece, and I was like, this is on the menu. How did it work out for you to move to Greece? I was in the band, and we were just trulling around busking, and then I went to there, we were busking, and we were in Athens, and the guy said, you want to come out, and he gave us a house on the beach.

1:12:39We could eat at any restaurant, drink at any bar, and we had to play one night at the Hard Rock FAA, one hour a night. I never left, I like this, this is the greatest fucking thing, but it was the first time I was like coming out of this real working class pond, northern cold, trench coatie. I was like, world, all of a sudden, wearing like flip -flops and shorts and just being tan and beautiful and being like, oh my god, this is great. I was saying, like I used to say this, it's a rich one more year, and then I'm going back to Greece, man. One more year, and then I'm going back to Greece, it's my like, ontological paradigm.

1:13:13But yeah, my dad was a harsh taskmaster. My mom was overprotective, so her eyes give her brother and sister and sister. They got older, they got divorced, and then we were so out of control, these young punk kids, that my mom got remarried to sort of put some rational, we were going crazy. And because of that, I laughed like, what fuck you? And then left home, and you know, had a good relationship, but I still have a great relationship with him. But I was just like, oh, now a man, 14 or 15, and I'm like, okay, fuck it, I'm out. And then there was just, you know, like, there were much further grace of God go, I like, when you're 15, 16, 17, you're not making the best of the season.

1:14:03But I was obsessed with just, you know, getting out there in the world. All my friends and brother went to university, mostly in bands, or in universities at high school. So that was one good thing, is that I wanted to get out and go to university and like be with my buddy. So at least I didn't like drop out of school. That was good. Yeah, I just wanted to get out. I wanted to get out of Ottawa and like get out to the world. And so I spent a lot of my time before vice is traveling. And then when we did vice, I spent most of the half of my year on the road. I love, excuse me, going to see as much as I can.

1:14:42How do you think growing up in Canada impacted your outlook on the world? Canada is sort of weird because we're kind of sanctum audience. We're like, you know, we get more and more and eight and everybody else, we do this. We also gave reactors to India and Pakistan. So don't do anything bad with them. They both, you know, exploded the topic weapon. It's just kind of a sanctum audience place. It's quite it's a gray place to go up. It's like the definition of the Canadian characters were not American. And vice is beloved in Canada. And so we went to the States. We're like, yeah, we love America.

1:15:25America is great. You know, it's the only place you can come with no shoes. I came from Costa Rica and I had literally no shoes. Consumers don't want to do that flip flop. You can become a villain. It's the only country in the world. You can do that. It's amazing. And Canadians are like, oh, it's like, they wanted us to hate the States. I love the States. The thing is great. Now, this is this whole political field like politics. It's ugly. Like it's an ugly country and you have homeless people like living right next to the richest people. Like we could do a better job or like it definitely could be especially its richest country in the world.

1:15:58Like it could be managed better. And it should be managed better. But, but you know, so I think you get that from Canada. But you also get like, you know, we're we're better than you because we're not that way. But we're also really small and really rich. I think there's a lot of countries that are sanctimonious because they're tiny and rich. And if you're tiny and rich, you can get out a lot of the problems at the big country's house. Like India has 300 ,000 people who would be considered like middle class. They have a billion people that are poor that you have to pull up into that middle class.

1:16:39That's a huge job. I don't have any water. Right. These are massive, massive, and like so Canada. This is the massive country we've done in the money. Anyway, it's a great place to go. It gives you a perspective of being one step away and sort of being able to see stuff and say, like you can see, for example, the political spectrum in the States and go, you see a bit more for what it is rather than like I was born into it. It's like a sports team or something like it's going to be the fillies until I die. Yeah. Have a little more perspective because you're coming from the outside. Yeah. How would you describe your temperament?

1:17:23Oh, my lord. That's a good one.

1:17:28Much changed. I mean, I was very car charging. I was like, I speak French. Why don't you speak French? Why don't we all just know this kind of thing? I was very aggressive and probably a bit arrogant. But, you know, calm. She never did a good cap to make. Like when I was the blue, I'd boy -roam down the hill, catch the money. I was the smartest guy in every room. And then after a sort of a few belts to the head, you're like, you know what? We should maybe think a bit more and listen a little bit more and read a bit more. And, you know, I think now probably much happier. I mean, I'm pretty lucky.

1:18:24I've been happy with what's going on. But like comprehensively happy happier. I got much more sort of a contemplate thing. Like think about things more.

1:18:40You know, I think it was Carl Sagan who said like it's insane with all the billions of years. You know, that it took to get to this point. We live in this tiny little high blink of like the air works and the temperature works. But not only that, if you look within that envelope of human existence, we got to live in like the only era ever without major wars. Like we didn't get stabbed with fucking pitchwork. And food is delicious. Like food. It's not like this rotten fucking moldy bread. And all foods and like you can travel around the world. Like our era. And God knows if that's the other thing.

1:19:23I don't know if the HBO era that we could continue is going on. Like let's say the Gen X here. The Gen X here is pretty goddamn good. So I'm very thankful that my envelope happened if you probably the greatest envelope of human existence. So that's good. And now also like when Bill called me to this thing, I'm like people want me to get back in the game. And I was watching this thing about like ages of an American. That like if you're like you're 40 and you don't have a plan, you're bugged. And if you're 50 just like you know, and like for us, we still get to fucking do what we love to do. That's a fucking blessing.

1:20:07Like we're not like, oh, you're fucking old. You can't do anything. Like family like you know happiness or the cellular level. So I think I learned a lot. You know, it's funny. I studied philosophy and university. I think it's completely the ass backwards. Like we should study philosophy now because you read it. But when you're exceed you like, I don't fucking know. What do I need to write to get an aim? So now like I read a lot more and I also like appreciate pretty much everything. But being able to get back in the game and being able to do something with a little bit more understanding of the complexities of it and a little bit more understanding of look, there have to be some place where people can go where they believe in what you're saying.

1:20:58And that you know, I could retire and fucking live my serene existence, which by the way is great. But if you can still do something and be you know, use your skill set to do something in isn't shitty. Then that's just fucking great. So comprehensively happy but like grateful to still be in the mix and grateful that you know the arrogance and the like we were a self -fulfilling process. And I used to say if I don't believe it, well, I'm just going to believe it. Like you have to believe it. Perhaps that's why I was so hard charging to them like, we're just making this time. Now I don't have to do that anymore.

1:21:39So you're just sort of like, okay, let's look at this and let's try to do it right. Also, your hard charging achieved a tremendous amount. I mean, it's insane what you accomplished. And nobody believed it like everyone would say no. That's why we had to get like self -fulfilling process and you had to be like, we're going to do this, we're going to do this. Because nobody says yes. We're going to go from $15 ,000 to the you know, kind of largest private company America. Yeah, no. Yeah, we're going to be the biggest. The reason why Canadians got mad at us is like we're the biggest ever media outlet to come out attended.

1:22:17And we went, yeah, we're going to America. We love it. They were like, fuck you. You know, like so there was, you know, it was it was it was definitely we didn't know what we were doing. And then when we put the bad news bears together, we just struck this alchemy at one point. We were making the best content in the world. And there was a time when you're just like, we know I knew like you can't keep the team together. But it was just like just like the fucking great feeling. It was that was a really great feeling. And also to be vindicated when everybody says you can't do it, you can't do it, you can't do it.

1:22:52And then you do it. Yeah. When did Tom Preston get involved? That's a great question. Tom, this is the basketball. I love him to be. I don't know if you know his story. I don't really. So he was a hippie. Hitchhike to round ended up in Afghanistan. I didn't know that. Yeah. He started a company in Afghanistan and Delhi clothing company. It's like hippie hippie threads. And had a whole life. And then the communist Russians came into Kabul, lost everything. I think it was like 38 or something like wow. Well, yeah. But how to life. Yeah. Was a millionaire lost everything.

1:23:46So he was like, I'm not sure if he was a millionaire. He was a millionaire. He was a millionaire. And he was a millionaire. He was a millionaire. He was a millionaire. He was a millionaire. And he was a millionaire. He was a millionaire. He was a millionaire. He was a millionaire. He gets ousted because of red stones. You want to not to sleep down on his. He used to be his lawyer. You know, gets in there. It's like gallimbo, whatever it's made. And then Tom started working with us. And he really wanted to us to be big to be basically fuck you to MTV. And so we traveled all over the world together.

1:24:35Like he would come to Afghanistan and he would come to Sudan. There was an older guy. He he he he fucking loved it. He loved being on the road. He loved going to these places. And when we were at the peak of our success, they did this thing where we were like three times the size of MTV and MTV. When we did the deal with Tom, I had a deal of cause where it's Tom last week to buy it back. And so we did. We bought it back for book value. It was $4 million of the time. And then it was worth whatever when they get the article is four billion. And they're like, oh, that four million turned into four billion.

1:25:10So Tom loved it. And we love Tom. And he's just he's one of the last entertainment gurus. Like these guys back in the day were larger than life. And now they're just lawyers with fucking least best. But he was he was a hell of a fucking still. He is now out of the character. Who was some of the suitors who wanted to buy vice over the years? Everybody. We had a deal done with time Warner for 49 % because I wanted to get a TV network. So we were going to get HLN. And we were done. And then the guy came and he said to go talk to Bob Eiger. And everyone was like, fucking, this is not we're going to deal with life.

1:25:59It's funny. I walked in and he said I want to talk to you about copyright infringement because in one of our pictures, there was like a huge deal. He was like, I don't know. He was like, I don't know. He was like, I don't know.

1:26:27He was like, I don't know. Then two minutes later we really started story of Disney at 2 .5. So we had 800 million of value and like per week. So we were talking about Disney. How great is the work? Work lock is a good time. I love the book. Does somebody have to do that? No. It's an automatic. That's awesome. Yeah. We were talking about Disney. You meet with Bob Eiger. It was like, you've been nine days. Oh, suitors. So suitors. So it's everyone from Rupert Murdoch. That's another person. Everyone Rupert Murdoch is that. And you're like, yeah, he got labor elected in the UK. Labor being communist here in America.

1:27:29He wanted access to power. Like that's what he does. And so like, he doesn't give a fuck if it's brightening now maybe because he's older. But back in the day, he would just get access to power anyway. So Rupert wanted to buy us a one point. J .P. Eukiss the time Warner. Another great guy. Tom Warner writes before that and then Bob Eiger. Yeah. So that's one thing is everyone's like, oh, Shane said no to Disney and other bankrupt. It's a great story. It's not true. Because I said, yes, it is me. Well, you said yes to time Warner first. So yes, I've never said no to money. So said yes to time Warner.

1:28:09Then Disney opened them. Yes. Then we were working to sell Disney the whole company. And there was a time when Disney was trying to buy Snapchat and or Spotify. And I know Daniel and it was good friends with Evan. So I was trying to get in there again in the week. And at some point Spotify and or Snapchat said, we're too big. Like we're not going to do it. So they said put a hold on the whole, you know, vice slash because we're going to be the content part of this platform thing. And then that's turned into Shane said no and then they went bankrupt. I never said no. I love, you know, I would love to be part of a bigger platform.

1:28:47And that's in fact what we were building the whole company to be. And then because we Disney did Disney for the bug, that's when we got into private equity. And private equity is like scorpion in the frog. They're like, yeah, we'll value it six and a half billion. Fuck, let's go. And but then they put in all the ratchets and the things and look private equity do what they do. They're going to end up owning your companies no matter what you do. So that was probably, you know, not great. Like we were built for a strategic like me like a real partner. Yeah.

1:30:22Is it j agree on this? Yeah, Shar what you mean by is it is to be believing is something nightmares .aram Tell me some expert advice you got along the way that turned out to be really wrong. All of it. Give me some examples. Private equity. I mean, we always had a rule for every page of content. We had to have a page of facts because it was a business. And if you don't, if you don't pay for it, it's going to die. And so I was always really into sales. I was always really into like driving revenue. And then the whole company, including me, got caught up in this weird valuation game of just building up the valuation rather than selling and taking the money in and making it.

1:31:48You were just taking in higher and higher evaluations. How much of your time was that taking versus focusing on the content? It's a great question. The advice I give to media kids and people who came into the business, let's say they concentrate on two things. Content and revenue. That's what a media company does. It makes great content. And I monetize it. Now, it sounds like simplistic advice. Everyone will try to take everything away. It will be HR. There will be lawsuits. There will be courtroom battles. There will be proxy votes. There will be rights offerings. There will be raising money.

1:32:25And all you know, people like it's lawyers and it's hundreds of millions of dollars and it's exciting. And the making content and like selling brands is difficult. So people get sucked up into it and I think that happens to all media companies and I think that's what's happened not only in new media but in legacy media because if you look at what's happening now, they have to consolidate and fire everybody because they're just, they're not driving revenue or interesting ways of having it because everybody's advertising based and as we talked about, the big five are taking all the fucking advertising.

1:33:06So they haven't innovative. They haven't got into sub -base. They haven't got into any of anything new. And so they're just sitting there. Nobody's concentrating on revenue. No one's concentrating on making great content except for Amazon and Netflix because they can because they have the money. I mean, Amazon pretty soon no one's going to be able to compete with Amazon because they just do content as an add -on because they're going to make anything. And because they're going to sell everything in the world and pretty soon the content's going to be like, oh, it's going to be hot clicks. I want those jeans.

1:33:39I want that by the way and you're just going to be able to click anything on Amazon and just be able to buy it. It's genius. Who's going to be able to compete with that? No one can compete with that. Can't compete now. So private equity, you always think that you can control the beast and you never can. What else has told me to me? I mean, most of the advice of the day to day kind of stuff is always bad. It's mostly kind of lawyers. And like for example, we were going to do the advice, right, every time the advice book like the B .O. and End All story, advice, the true story, the true story is phenomenal.

1:34:26We started writing it and the lawyers are like, yeah, this is like 50 different lawsuits. Like this is going to be insane and you're like, okay, well, fuck it. We won't do it. So we didn't do it. Just killing the truth. Yeah. And then now the narratives are being, we always used to say that. If you don't write your own narrative, then someone else is going to write it. It's not going to be your narrative or the truth. And so we didn't do it. And then now everybody's just writing the narrative, which is obviously like discontrol employees or this or that or whatever. It's not going to be, and nobody like who's inside and you actually knew about the growth and news.

1:35:06And so that became, that's not, we shouldn't listen to those lawyers. Tell me about your experience as currency trading.

1:35:19Well, it sounds a lot, I don't know, sexier or, anyway, I went to Eastern Europe. So when I was studying politics, how old are you at this time? Twenty one, twenty two. So I was studying Eastern European Soviet studies in college. And then the Soviet Union goes away. It was the hardest school we'd get in view for politics. And I'm like, OK, well, they went away. So I went to Eastern Europe. And they had, so I went to Prague, which is where everybody went. But it was already in and dated. So then I went to Budapest. And I taught English and I taught business English. And then I was teaching business English.

1:36:08And all these guys were like, you know, you as a foreigner can get a cocktail, like a foreign company, and you can buy currency.

1:36:18And it's much better rate than the black market, which is like, yeah. So I had this book and I was buying selling for and all of a sudden, like, I didn't have to do the school anymore. I made a lot of money at a car driver. I lived in the same building as you were on the prime minister. I tailor made suits. By the way, this is the pumpkin. It's really interesting. Yeah, it was super fun. Except for when the Romanians, Transomanians who were running real money laundering, but bad guys, start catch winds that you're like taking their visits. And it got very hot for a minute. And my brother said, I'm getting married.

1:36:52I'm like, you know what? I'm going to take a little break. But yeah, it was basically like all money trading. There's a difference between the arbitrage between the black market rate and the other rate. What saved my ass was that because I was doing it with companies, I was sort of out of the spotlight of the bad boys for long enough to make some things. But what I realized about that, so that's a good question. But the real thing I realized was I'd been poor for so long that that was my first taste of money, although it was not real because you couldn't leave Hungary with it. But what I would do, I would go like Venice, I would work and get my money and I would be rich and hungry, but the minute you left your poor.

1:37:42But I would go like Venice for the weekend and stay at the Dendiali and to report to him from auto. This was just like fucking rain is exploding. And then I'd go back. But you couldn't ever really leave Eastern Europe because the differentiation was so much. What was Budapest like? Oh my God. Beautiful place. Oh my God. Oh my God. It's gorgeous and it was not destroyed. Like it was no fast food, like there's no signs or no neon. It was just fucking beautiful. And speaking of like it had like Roman baths, there's no from the baths, had baths everywhere, like hot baths, well, but this one. That's why the water culture was invented, no?

1:38:28The bathing culture. Huge. Like it was massive complex of the Roman bath. Incredible food culture, incredible wine culture. How long did you get to live there? Two and a half years. Nice. And it was just fucking lovely. I've got to say that it was just opening up and they were very excited. We were very excited. And people speaking English. Now it was before it was more German, but I didn't communicate. You know, a little bit of Hungarian, a little bit English, a little bit of German. And now they speak English. I mean, Hungary is a beautiful country, but Budapest is like staggering. And yeah, living there and being like, you kind of felt like James Bond.

1:39:17You're like, like my car was a muskish guy, like the old Russian. Yeah. And you're trading running. Yeah, this is fucking cool. Now that's not going to go on very long. So when I came back and they said, you know, could come and sit with the advice together, that was probably saved my life. But the one thing about that is, you know, after you get a taste of that lifestyle, you're like, fuck, I want to go back to my dad, the one piece of advice he gave me was like, likes it's like a shit sandwich. More bread you have to let shit you have to eat. It's true. Like, like when you have a little bit of cash, it's fucking nice.

1:39:54And so that was the first thing that ever gave me a taste. Did you ever think about staying there? Yeah. This at the quality of life was so good. Yeah. I did. I mean, there's a few things. Like I came back from there and found myself going, hello Rick, how are you? Are you feeling fine? Because, you know, and so that's the thing. And like, I don't know, Scooby -Doo, it's like a dog, like it's a cartoon, like there's no cultural references. Like you're wearing weird clothes, like you become a hodgepodge person, like it's quality. And people are talking about music. Because I'd been growing up in music, except there's a whole new music wave going on.

1:40:43There was a whole new, like everyone dressed different, everyone talked different. And I'm like, oh, I'm fucking knocked. You felt like we were missing out on culture. Yeah. And like, just being able to talk was a big deal. And like food, comfort food and stuff. Yeah. So I mean, I thought about going back. But at that point, I was like loving, I mean, again, I moved back to Montreal, which again is one of my favorite places. And once it wasn't terrible. It was great. Montreal was great. But, yeah, the one place that stuck with me was Greece. I was always like, Greece to me was always my utopia.

1:41:27How we involved in green piece? So my first job out of college was Greenpeace Canada. And I started out as a fundraiser. And then I ran fundraising. And then I ended up with a couple of other people running Greenpeace Canada, which is part of Greenpeace. Then I went to Switzerland, which because the Greens got elected at that point. They had 32 % of the parliament. So I was very politically active. When I was here in Italy, I joined what did you come just to Italia? Let's do it, Maria. You know, work for Greenpeace was very environmentally active for a number of years. Then what to Eastern Europe?

1:42:10The program was called Education for Democracy, which basically goes to each people English, but at the same time, I talked about how democracy works and liberal democracy. So very politically active. And then that, I think, later on, that's why I sort of veered off from the fashion and the music and stuff into more political commentary. Of the pieces that you worked on, are there any that got wildly popular that you've never would have guessed would have been popular? And were there any that you thought would have been really popular if they had nobody cared? Tell me about that. You know, Napoleon said, conquest has made me a conquest, what's this saying?

1:42:58And basically North Korea made me think that what's the thing? North Korea was insane. Like North Korea was, I went from nothing to like hundreds and hundreds of millions of video views. I did not. When you look back on the experience for getting the content aspect, what's your good experience in your life? I mean, from your perspective going there and having the experiences you had. The experience is like being on acid for a week. It's not. It's, you're being watched the whole time. It's fucking weird. Like it's weirdest, weirdest place you've ever been? Times of billions. Really? Oh, I mean, it's fucking weird.

1:43:37And you've been in weird places. I highly recommend going because it's been... And anybody go? No. That's a problem. But it's basically a theme park for 1950s, Stalinist Russia, 1960s. That was China. Total cult of personality. Like every room, you know, two pictures, like everybody, state police, like just, it's like going to Disneyland of what the world used to be under Stalin and Mao. It's crazy. And also studying that stuff. So it's phenomenally interesting. Terrifying. Like state police run. And by the way, we're lucky that we live here and not there holding shit. Like there's stories of like going to concentration camps with people eating the kernels of corn out of a cow shit.

1:44:35Like it's bad. But it's the most interesting. Like for example, the first time I went, we went to the Erie -Rang games, you know, that is just like the largest stadium in the world. And they get the best in the brightest to practice for like a year to do this thing, the Erie -Rang game. And it's basically, I don't know, 150 ,000 people. And then, you know, they do pixels, like they're human pixels. They're like, yo, shout it out. And they do this thing where they do like highly choreographed things where it's the whole history of Korea, the communist history of Korea, by 150 ,000 people doing this fucking thing with pixels.

1:45:14And then like people flying through the air and the bottom and like, you know, just like the cheerleaders, wouldn't you say? Yeah, like it's like, it's like a floor show of like maybe 50 ,000 people doing choreographed, like, no, here's an island and now here's this and now here's Mount Erie -Rang. And then here comes, even with songs and here comes like which is like these 50 ,000 people here. And then in the background, there's literally like pixels like, I have to say it, but like, they do a thing where it's like TV, but made of humans doing choreographed pixels 100 ,000 of them. And so I'm sitting at the Dias where Kim, he'll song you to sit the first one.

1:45:56And there's maybe me and some generals and they're, and no one else, so it's 150 ,000 people doing this thing a year. Performing for you and the handful of people. Exactly. Like the generals and stuff. Wow. And you're like, what the fuck is going on? Wow. Like what is going on? So that was the craziest thing that ever happened. I saw it. I can show you the thing. I, because people would believe me. So I saw it myself with nobody there and then there's the fucking things. So that's, that was crazy. How did you get permission to go? That year there was, so we got refused. That year there were flood, which is why I was one of the only person that people there.

1:46:40They had, they hadn't done the area where I'm games for two years, but that year they had to do them because the Chinese something, delegation was coming. So they, they wanted to get a few practice, they could run them. And what I was told was they were going to refuse everybody before the Chinese come. But if you go to Shenyang, which is a industrial city in northern China, right on the Korean border, you can go to the Korean embassy and pay like entrance fee. And there's a whole thing that's crazy. We went to Shenyang and I'm like, we're not going to tell you if you can get in or not. We paid the entrance fee.

1:47:14They make you stay in North Korea and hotel there, which literally has concrete paths. You know, what the fuck? Really? Yeah, they come in at two in the morning. They take your passport. They take everything. They go, go, go, go. They put you in like this fucking city, like military bus. They take you to the military airport and you put you on an old two -plif, like an old aluminum fucking Russian plane and you fly into Pyongyang and you're like, holy fucking shit, we made it. Like we're in, we're in. And then from the second you get there, you're like, what is that? And you have any feeling that you wouldn't be able to get out?

1:47:49Was that ever a feeling? We got caught filming. So what we did, because it's fucking stupid, is we got these like point -issue cameras. We were not allowed to take the camera. Well, you can go to specific areas and take a picture. And then when they say yes, but what we were doing is we got these like, it was basically the first time when you could get a big memory card. And so we put a memory card and you could do like, it's shoot film like on your camera. So we would be like, I'm just taking a picture. And so we were doing that because you have a guide, a guard, and then a secret police. And we were the secret police guy who was watching us.

1:48:32We got probably a bit chukaki. And then he was like, say, give me that. And so I gave it to him and he goes, why do you have a, whatever, 250 meg photo card? That's because he's like, I guess 18, I don't remember the numbers, but it was like 10 times a little bit. And I was like, I don't know, I just like, I have no idea. I was in the airport. I bought it. And that's the only one. And they started, but that was our dodge. Like we knew, they knew, they knew that I knew, and I started going, oh shit, like, they know, you know, they know that we're fucking filming this fucking thing. So that was, that was scary because one guy on that trip had a, had a camera and he took, because they put you on a, in a hotel, which is like a, it's like hotel murder.

1:49:25It's like, it's like this concrete block that you go in and it's just a concrete room. Like you imagine the carpets been soaked in blood many times. And it's like, there's a thing there that, like, like, it's like a 50s radio, but it's just listening to you. Like you can hear it listening to you. And it's on an island, right? And you can't get off. You're not allowed to go do anything. And then you can't do anything unless there's guards there and all of a sudden you can't go, so you can't do it. Like it's all choreographed. And this guy tried to fucking get off the island and go shoot and he got caught.

1:49:56And they're like, yeah, you're going to jail for a long time. It's not my final. I checked him out. He didn't end up having to go to the concentration camp, which you don't want, but they're very fucking serious. Did you get to see how the regular people live at all? Yes. And it's fucking wild because, so the first, like, there's one, one that became most famous. I actually interact with people is like, we stop at a tee shop and I play pool with a tee girl who's been in the tee shop for like five years playing pool. They're really good at playing pool. But nobody comes in and gets some fucking tourists.

1:50:30So everyone's like, what happened to the tee girl? Because she's really cute and really sweet. So the tee girl, we got to get the tee girl. And then I went to the DMZ and you knew your DMZ shit, whatever. But on the way back, like you see villages and the village, it's so fucked up because they don't build like villages with like houses. They build villages which should just be like in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing. So it's like forest. And then there'll be like a 50 story Stalinist like apartment building. You know, like the massive Russian ones. Like huge fucking. That's the village.

1:51:05It's one building. Two buildings. It's one and then one big like a amphitheater for like political, whatever. And doctorate. And then that's it. It's like, what the fuck? But because they have no money, they sold all the windows. So like, there's all the windows. 50 stories up have been taken out. They've sold them. They've taken out the rebar, right? Because to sell it to the Chinese. So it looks like this pockmarked. It looks like it's been eaten by like woodpeckers or the concrete. And people live in it. But wait, so there's no, and there's no electricity now. So they have, and you see like on the 50th floor, like you'll see cooking fires.

1:51:43Wow. So they're carting up 50 stories water. Then I have it. There's no one. So they go get water from the stream and like lumber. 50 stories up to their apartment where they cook and cook the fires. And you're like, what? And like you see, you know, like at night, if you're ever out at night, which would not allowed to be like people like with scissors. But you went out allowed to be or nobody's allowed to be. Well, no, Westerners. OK. Or allowed to go out. And so because Kim Jong Un came to our basketball game, all of a sudden they're like, oh, now we're going to show you this. And now we're going to do this.

1:52:18So we got like, because everyone has the same footage, because they give you the same tour. So all of a sudden we had all this new footage that everybody else had. And that's why we got all this shit. It's like, oh, it's vice -estant, journalist, vice -sister. But we had the footage of that. What do you want to say? So yeah, North Korea is not a place you want to live. Tell me the whole story of the basketball game. It's just a wild idea. So they have this mountain. That's the whole of North Korea as well. But they have this mountain. And it's like they have the hall of treasures, which is every treasure that's been given to other Kim Jong Il, Kim Ryosung, or Kim Jong Un.

1:52:54And so it literally would take you two weeks to go to the holding. Sorry. It's two miles down the mountain. So they haul it out of mountain. So you go down this mountain. And inside the mountain, they have the first train that's down in Kim Ryosung, like a train. Two miles down to the two mountain because they have to be fucking protected because of treasures. But they'll be like a barcoaster that feed out Castro side. It's so much shit. And so you go through like weird, weird, weird stuff, like an alligator from some guy from Nicaragua, whatever. So you go through, oh yeah, there's also a wax figure of Kim Ryosung and Kim Jong Il with like a fan blowing their hair.

1:53:41And everyone has to go there and like, because they're still like, you know, and bow to them. By the way, as a Korean, you have to go there at one time and you're like, see the treasures and like literally 10 feet away from their leader and the president for life, is this basketball, like Simon Michael Jordan. And I saw him like, that's so fucking weird. It was the first time a rapper smiles at the Korean War with America, Alan Albright, they love the bulls and senators. So yeah, we came up with the idea of why don't we just do fucking ping pong diplomacy with the China. We're going to do basketball.

1:54:20Well, I'll send you the doc. The doc's heartwarming because the heart of the loadshodders were the start. I mean, those guys are fucking amazing. And they played the North Korean national team. He showed up to the game, which was fucking insane because the people went ape shit because he's like God. They could say man's happy. Oh, they say you think they say man's, which means 10 ,000 years of the thing. And they're just like, it's crazy for like, I don't know, half an hour. Wow. And then which was really fucked up as they said to the crew. Yeah, come back, come back for it to my house. So the whole crew went back to his house for like 12 hours.

1:55:02Kim Jong -un. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so then because of that, we got access to everything. What was it? It comes like I wasn't allowed to go. Oh, for that trip, which I said, during that time I was banned. I've since been back because what happens is I do a documentary. And then they get mad at me. Right. They say, okay, now you can go back and then I do it again. So that one I set up, but they're like, yeah, you're not coming on this one. The doc is great. And like at the end, you see these little kids and their eyes laid out, but they're just, that's what I like to do. Because they're just regular people.

1:55:40Like we're like, no, it's green. It's a fucking North Korean. It's like a dark. It's like in bombs and lasers and shit. And like, you see, they're just kids. Like, they're just kids who like basketball. And they're just stoked like to see somebody. And like, it's, that's the greatest thing about that. It's that.

1:56:01You realize that it's all propaganda, like everything is propaganda. So anyway, that's the one that surprised me the most North Korea. The one that surprised me didn't hit as much as it should have is we took the first sitting president to a prison to talk about prison reform, got two sitting president of what country. Obama. You think Obama? No, no, presidents ever gone to a prison. He had to lie to the DOP. Really? Yeah, yeah, it was a big deal. Wow. And it was a huge end. How are we able to orchestrate it? Biden came out to vice in Williamsburg for like a day. It's snipers of the roof. Well, he came in to kind of basically vet us, you know, that we would do it.

1:56:47Went to a prison in Oklahoma to talk about 56 % at that time. 56 % of all prisoners, which is obviously about 25 % of all prisoners in the world. America, 56 % of them were nonviolent drug defense is most of the weed. And so we did a lot on weed and always have done a lot of weed and decriminalizing, etc. So we went to Oklahoma where something, I don't know, like 70 % of their population and maximum security were three time offended. Like the three streets, like you're out for weed for weed. Yeah. So we went there with Obama and won an Emmy, got two bills passed, bipartisan bills on, on reform, crime reform, prison reform, prison reform.

1:57:49And they just didn't hit like really. Really? They were right. It was very serious and it was very, but like it's Obama in the fucking prison, freeing prisons for weed. Like I thought that would hit. And it didn't. The one that hit actually because we did the prison reform one, he gave me an unlimited access, give me access to the last six months of his presidency. And we were, I was going to give him a blow job like we were just going to say, hey, it's like a good job. I don't know. All they wanted to talk about was the Tea Party and John Bainer and how fucking dysfunctional America was and how fucking city Republicans were.

1:58:27Like it was them. So I went, okay, now I'll go talk to John Bainer, who's a great guy, by the way. I want to go talk to John Bainer. Then I went to talk to the Tea Party guys. And then what, like John Bainer, which I didn't know, speaking of how things were, speaker, you know, famously him and Obama. John Bainer got ousted by the Tea Party because he even met with Obama. Like he was doing his job and he actually is very, he was like a political mechanic and he would get shit done and he was like a whip and he would fucking go do stuff and he'd go meet Obama whatever. Just for meeting with the guy, that was his fucking job.

1:59:02The Republicans ousted him and he was a conservative and like that he wasn't conservative. And so Obama was like, look, you know, our political institutions are under attack. And whether that's the democracy is the, and this Trump thing is going to be an issue and that is that. And he kind of called it, he kind of said like this is going to get a lot worse. And that hit, like that, that was, I think our biggest show on HBO. And, but the prison one, the prison one was an excellent episode. So that's what I thought would, for our audience, especially weed and prisons and a lot of other things like, all right, how's running something big, different than running something small?

1:59:50Running something small is all about how do I survive? Like how do we keep the lights on? And if something bad happens, like what does it they say, Americans don't have like 586 dollars, if there's a, if there's a, you know, some catastrophe, that's running a small business. It's like if something happens, we're fucked. I remember so many, we had stores. And remember so many times like the mag, like an ad wouldn't come in. And so we'd have to go like clear out the fucking, the, the chills from the stores to pay. Like it's robbing from Peter to pay Paul. And then when you're big, it's like, boardroom, you know, lawyers and one of the reasons why I went to LA and sort of got out of it is I'm good at training.

2:00:39Concentrate, I'm good at, at brand building and, and, and, and revenue. I'm bad at lawyers and, uh, boardroom politics and, and, uh, all the stuff that you have to when you become a, it's a different thing. It's a different thing. It's also terrible. Like I'm just, I just don't like it. And it's false and, you know, I was lying and, you know, that whole square thing in the front. You know, I look, like success as many parents and, and, uh, failures and orphan. And, uh, so when you're, when you're rolling down the hill, catch the money, everyone's your best friend. And then it's something goes wrong.

2:01:16Like that guy. I don't like it. So the fun stuff is building. The fun stuff is making. The fun stuff is, hey, let's go to the next. When it gets big, it becomes essentially a corporate job. It's a corporate job. And you have a lot of people that you have to appease. And quite frankly, you shouldn't appease them. You shouldn't do what you're going to do. Did you ever have, uh, advertiser is complaining about the content? You know, who's, that's a big question. You know, who's the blame for censorship and who's the blame for is advertiser on both sides because we would do something. And our audience would go up.

2:01:54But the advertiser, you're like, you know, we're, you know, we don't know about that. But by the way, nobody's safe. Like even the right, a lot of people go to the right because the left is so sketchy. If the advertiser just takes like a second out, you're gone. They don't care. So the right, at least the same buyer, even Tucker Carlson got ex -like the advertiser will just, they'll just, they're the modern day censor. And you know, they're the ones that you know, in fact, we did a thing. We actually want to, what's their motivation though? If they, it's the goal of a advertiser. If they wanted to be brown safety.

2:02:32So we did a campaign, which won the first glass line or diamond line or crystal line or whatever it was. And then can lions because we did a brand safety campaign where like homosexual, like gay, black, all of these were in the brand safety guidelines for all these brands, for the majority of brands. These are seen as negative terms that they didn't want their brand next to. And we're like, you know, your name next to black, you're going to be a big film. Like, where is this 1953? So we actually did a whole thing to re -edit this sort of brand safety dictionary because we were getting nailed on everything, you know, for brand safety.

2:03:20And yeah, they don't want their brands next to anything, you know, risque. And you're like, well, that's what it is. I mean, what it's called vice, exactly. But they are the modern day sensors. Like if they pull their money, they're advertising, then you're fine. What would you say are the biggest takeaways from the whole vice experience? Look, we lasted 30 years, which most people don't. It lasted a long time because I thought it was in the last. I mean, I wish it had ended differently. That's not over. But, you know, I wish my part of it ended differently. The takeaway was the greatest thing in the world for about 15 years.

2:04:02And we, like really, this is the bad news, bears. We had people who didn't know how to shoot, who revolutionized shooting. We had people who'd never cut anything before, becoming the best editor. We never had any professional hosts. Like it was just, hey, you go fuck. Babyballs. We got him as a joke because he was 92 pounds soaked and went with Helotosis and Danva. And he became our fucking most like non, you know, fearless fucking man in the street. Like we didn't so much, so much of it we did as a joke. And people just resonated with it. And, you know, I think that that was when it was really fun.

2:04:39When it was, we were literally the bad news there. We were shitty at everything individually. But if we put them together, there's this weird alchemy and the symbiosis that happened that led to this unique way of shooting and cutting and telling stories. Not for a while was great. Then we got too big and also everyone caught up. Like people were starting to send me like ABC news and CBS news stuff that looked exactly like bodies. So you set a standard that got copied? Yeah, 100%. Like looking for you. Yeah, just and then people would just say, well, just do that. And I mean, you could work for Vice and get a job back to the day with the stillwork jobs and media.

2:05:25Like that because they wanted to just rip it off, you know, which is funny because a lot of times it was like the board. Like when you left the collective. Like, because it was, it was no secret sauce, you know, to buy it. It was like just like the editor would stay 24 hours to fucking cut the thing and call us the turret. The shooter would just fucking stay there to get the shot no matter what happened. You know, the, the, the, the host would be like, I'm not leaving until again, or asked the questions that nobody else would ask. And all of that together made to this weird sort of alchemy and, and you know, that's one thing I miss because I don't know that you'll ever work with a team.

2:06:05That you'll put together like that again because nobody in the right mind is going to put together a team that's never done it. Yeah, would you say the, what unified it all was the attitude? Would that be right? Yeah. Also, I think a lot of people couldn't get jobs and they were just like, well, this is my shot. Like, so I'm going to give it my all. And there's a lot of we, we used to come up with taglines that we thought were funny. And like, my favorite was rumored to be among the best. But like, that's really funny. Rumored to be a bug. But we, but we had one for a while, which is like less shiteir.

2:06:44I forget what it was. Less shiteir than everybody else. And that used to be our line. Like, just let's be less shiteir than everybody else because everything's so shit by and large. And then you're just like, let's try to be just not shiteir. And I think that was the real ethos that people would be like, come on. Pocket that shitty like the majority of stats that comes in is just not right. Yeah. And you're like, okay, let's try to make it good. If you were to make a list of the things that worked and a list of the things that didn't work. What would you make those lists really now? I don't mean content wise.

2:07:19I mean, in building the company. What worked and what didn't? Well, having people, I remember coming into our office on Norwich, which was a rabbit war enough. Like we put together like 40 offices because we had no money. We would get that office and then someone would leave and we get that. And it was like ton of those things and I remember going like, oh, fuck, I forgot my name. And I went there like midnight on a Sunday. And it was packed. Wow. It's rammed because people were like, this will they work? And they hung out. We had bars in the office and stuff. So people just drank and they were just stayed there.

2:07:56That's what worked. I mean, when it was, I'll tell you, when it was, when it's us against the world, right? That's when it worked. When we did well, we bought a whole city box. We put it put together. It was like to start a ship enterprise. It was fucking like amazing edit suites and everything was fucking like, you know, state of the art. And we had a farm where we grew our vegetables and fucking. And that's when it went bad because that's when it was like us against them, them meaning like us, like meaning the management of the company because when it was all the rabbit warrants and like you had to stand around for the bathroom, whatever, we were all together.

2:08:40We were all in a mission. And when there was a time when I lived off of gambling because I didn't have any money. So then when I got, you know, I made some money, I've gambled a lot and I made a lot of money. One time I made so much money that I took the board out for dinner and I spent a lot of money at dinner. Now what happened was there was a, there was an earnings call for MGM Bellagio and whatever they're like.

2:09:09Vegas is back. There was a big whale. He came and he spent four hundred thousand dollars at dinner. And somebody called the restaurant and figured out it was me. Now, what they failed to mention it was comp. I don't know if you know how comps work, but you can buy a cheese sandwich or you can buy a four hundred thousand dollar dinner. They don't give you the money. Like they give you a comp allowance. But if you leave the comp dies, it's like, okay, it's comp. It's free. Like because you spent a lot of money gambling or you made a lot of money gambling. Okay. So yes, they, they comped it. And so I, when I heard about it, I was kind of like, yeah, like I made a lot of money gambling.

2:09:48Like I'm a good gambler. And I got comp. But when the story came out that it was four hundred thousand dollars at dinner, that's when it became my service as them. They're like, shame, isn't one of us anymore. And that's when the union started and all that stuff. And it was off service as them. And I see. You're like, oh, like that was bad. And to this day, you can't explain to someone. It was comped. It was like, yeah, you know, you know, yes. But so that was bad. Very high up there on the bad list of what not to do. It was the feeling of you guys had made it and everybody else was still struggling.

2:10:32Yeah. And by the way, we tried to give away equity and we tried to do that. And we did. We gave away a lot of equity. And then I remember we had this thing. And we were like, would you rather have ten thousand dollars cash or equity? And they're like, ten thousand dollars cash. And we're like, okay. And I would give my own money because I wanted the equity. Yeah. But people just wanted money. And I mean, there were people who also had equity. You know, that it's not. If you're like in a Silicon Valley startup, they know about seed rounds and down rounds. And our kids never had anything. So like it was like, where's my money?

2:11:09And you're like, well, it's not public company. It doesn't exist. Did it ever become a public company? It never did. Was it close at any point? We were going to do a SPAC. But like we were a day late in the dollar short. Like SPACs were hot, I guess, in 22, 21, 22. And then we were going to SPAC in 23. You know, BuzzFeed did a SPAC and, you know, just died. And so I think they spacked at 12 and went up to 15 and out said, like, one, well. So, SPACs became like the devil. So we were going to do a SPAC. And then we just said, I mean, everyone was spacking as the last age effort. I mean, that's the other thing.

2:11:50It's not just us like BuzzFeed, who was number two behind us did the same thing. And at one point, they were like, I don't know, $38 million market cap. And you're like, everyone's looking to say, I always say like, it's like who left the report hole open in the Titanic? Well, he had a fucking iceberg. The iceberg is the big five of the portal. It's just fucking, that's the matter. But everyone's like looking for that person. That's the portal. But yeah, it's what I would say is it's depressing because it's means like the sort of end. Like that year, last or whatever question before, who's coming up?

2:12:28Who's the next fighter? That's the shame. There should be somebody who took Vice and ate our lunch. It's better than that's in cooler global than maybe fucking out. They're great. I don't think that there's going to be that not because I want to say, what I'm saying is because independent publishing is general, unless it's very niche and gone because it's just all the air is being sucked out of the room. That sucks. That sucks for everybody. And what Vice was a bell weather for New Media and independent media, well, we're also the bell weather for that's not having anymore. What's stuck? The best time of Vice was three, which is living in Oman Trial in a big loft, starting it from scratch, and having your peers go, that's good.

2:13:17That's a good thing. Like my dad was a prick and a tough guy and a harsh taskmaster. And I remember I was in Florida, ASR, and he called me up and he was like, how's it feel to not only have the best magazine in Canada, but the best magazine in the world? Wow. And that was great. Wow. Yeah. Where you shot the fly the call. You've never, never said that before. Even now I'm getting rich. Anyway, that's beautiful. So that time was good. The planet Brooklyn time was good. But the best time was going country to country and building from scratch in each country, learning a bit about that country, etc.

2:13:56It's flying, you'd spend six months having a relationship, eat the food, speak the language. It comes really fun, super fun. At the end, it was flying to a boardroom for 24 hours, sit with accountants and lawyers telling you about vice, telling you about protecting vice and telling you what we should be doing with vice. And then not having any fun, not having any just, and then flying out of it. And so when you realize I used to have the freedom because I controlled the business to go and build that's what I'm good at. And by the way, we were spectacular. What I was spectacular, unsuccessful hat, was flying in, hanging out with lawyers and fucking accountants saying, here's how you should do it.

2:14:50You just go, well, fuck you, it doesn't help anybody either. And then flying out on a plane just going, what the fuck did I do? Yeah, that was terrible. Is that the difference between what a founder does and what an operator does? 100%. That's the difference. You hit the nail in the head. The founder is like, this is my baby, let's build, let's create. And the operator goes, okay, publishing isn't making money. Do it with somebody help. Okay, studios killing it up with the studio TV fucking, let's do it. That's, that's what an operator does. And, you know, and they know how to manage those boardrooms.

2:15:28And you know how to manage those lawyers and accountants. Like at some point you have like 15 different outside consultants in these meetings, giving you all their whatever. I never knew who McKinsey was and then also I was surrounded by McKinsey thing. And you're like, this is just, yeah. So yeah, how bad were some of the ideas that you would hear? I mean, I would say 90 % of them were just awful, like super bad. I mean, it's, it's people who had seen something by vice and they liked it. And then they come in and say, you know what we should do? We should do this. And you're like, that's not it.

2:16:04That was like city 17 years ago. Yeah, we're not going to do it again. Like all the, mostly ideas. But lawyers, like they all want to be creative or they all want to do this one. And you're like, when are you fucking, everyone should have a mustache and wear yellow. And you're like, what are you talking about? And they would, you know what, too, like we're going to talk about being authentic. And you're like, do we have to say it's authentic? It's a lot.