"Joe Exotic"

[00:00:00] The following podcast contains adult themes, gritty details from true crimes, and naughty language. Listener discretion is advised. Hello all you spooky nerds! Welcome to a very special episode of Your Favorite Podcast, Human Fckery.

[00:00:44] You may have noticed that we did not publish an April episode, but that is because we have been working on something very, very, very interesting to bring to you guys. An interview with none other than your favorite tiger trainer, the man, the myth, the legend, Joe Fcking Exotic.

[00:01:04] Can you give us a little update on where Joe is currently and what has happened since the fantastic phenomenon of the shows ended?

[00:01:16] Joe is in a medical detention center. He was transferred from Fort Worth Prison to North Carolina where he is receiving treatment for prostate and bladder cancer.

[00:01:27] He has been pushing for the last few years to get a retrial in his case because the hitman that testified that Joe hired him to kill Carol Baskin said that he actually perjured himself.

[00:01:40] Even though he had a retrial a few years ago, that was only for consolidating his murder charges and his sentence went from 22 years to 21 years. And unless something miraculous takes place, Joe is going to be sitting in jail for a very long time.

[00:01:55] Now I think it's important to answer the question for some of the people listening who are probably going, why are they talking to Joe Exotic? And I'm sure that there's a couple of you who are offended that we are platforming Joe Exotic.

[00:02:10] Human Fckery is a podcast about storytelling. It is also a podcast very much about how people contain multitudes and how stories have a lot of different angles. And how what you see or what you read often isn't the whole story.

[00:02:27] Most of our episodes are like, here's what the press said. Here's what the TV said. Here's what you might have read in a history book. Here's what actually happened.

[00:02:36] And so it's really important to go back in and look at stories, especially sensational ones with a more critical sometimes, sometimes a more gentle, but a scrutinizing the narrative.

[00:02:50] And as someone who used to write for big media conglomerates, I want people at home to know that no matter how much fun we all had with Tiger King, what we saw was an incomplete version of events.

[00:03:03] It was heavily edited. Producers were involved in crafting and sculpting the information that people gave behind the scenes. And most importantly, the story continues even after the show ends. And so the characters that you picture in your head like Joe have changed as people since then.

[00:03:24] Years have passed and checking in when we're telling stories about real people so that people don't get locked in time as just one thing is kind of an important part of being a decent human being.

[00:03:38] And so our show is about human fuckery, but it aspires to cultivate human decency. Part of human decency is going back in and relooking at things, talking to people, seeing if they've grown, seeing if there's room for growth.

[00:03:53] And I think we learned in this interview that Joe, like all people, is capable of change and growth. And that's an important thing to keep in mind. But we can talk about that more after we play the interview.

[00:04:08] Why don't we get into the interview and then talk more about that after? All right. This isn't, you will not be charged for this call. This call is from Joe. This call will be recorded and subject to monitoring at any time.

[00:04:28] To accept this call, press five to block this call in all future. You may begin speaking now. Edward Joe Exotic. How are you, sir? Good morning. Thank you for calling us. The name of your show fits my life perfect. I mean, we had to have you on.

[00:04:47] You know, it we're one of those podcasts that really loves to tell the fucked up stories that don't really get told enough in this country. And while your story has been told a considerable amount, we know that there's a lot of things that the public don't exactly understand.

[00:05:07] And more than anything, we're a storytelling show and you are a fantastic storyteller. And so while we don't have a tremendous amount of time with you today, we want to dive right in and ask you a few questions.

[00:05:20] Can you, Joe, tell us one of the more fucked up stories that you've heard or experienced since arriving in prison these past few years? Just so people have a better understanding of what you're encountering on a daily basis.

[00:05:35] OK, now you talk about the story in your stories out there. The stories in there. What's your life is like now? You know, you know, the first two and a half years of my life sucked.

[00:05:46] Actually, if I would have had the guts enough to kill myself, I would have done it. Wow. The first two and a half years in solitary confinement. Oh, my gosh. Only only because the government didn't want me talking. Sure.

[00:06:00] And that's why I keep saying I'm a political prisoner, because they arrested me. They held me with no bond. I mean, you could murder five people and get bombed. Right. They held me with no bond and they kept me in solitary confinement. So I had these public defenders.

[00:06:16] Right. I couldn't hire a lawyer. I couldn't work. I couldn't do anything to pay my to pay my lawyer, my own lawyers. So I had these public defenders. Then, you know, I went through the you know, you can see the pictures online.

[00:06:28] Then I went through the guards, you know, tied me naked in a chair and put me in the shower for so long that the skin came off my arms. Oh, my God. The first two and a half years of all of this sucked ass, you know? Yeah.

[00:06:43] Then I came to Fort Worth and, you know, Fort Worth is more like a college campus. You know, there's no doors, there's no bars. It's dorms. Sure. Real nice track, beautiful, beautiful and sleeping.

[00:06:55] And then I came down with cancer and they shipped me to Butler, North Carolina to go through chemo and radiation for a year. And it sucked there because it was back in.

[00:07:05] It was back in being put behind the door fighting for cancer with no TV, no radio, no nothing, you know? Wow. And it just kills your mind what we do to people in America, prisons.

[00:07:20] Russia is you never saw Britney Griner or Paul Whelan or Trevor Reed in a jumpsuit or chained up like a monkey. They were always in their street clothes every time you saw them on TV. They only had handcuffs, you know, in front.

[00:07:36] This call is from a federal prison. President Biden needs to wake the hell up and keep some of his reform promises. I would agree with you there. Yeah. How are how is the cancer going? Are you in remission or are you still receiving treatment?

[00:07:51] I'm in remission for the prostate cancer and I'm waiting for a biopsy of my bladder because they're worried it's moved to my bladder. Wow. Well, thank God for the prostate thus far. And good luck. We'll be praying for you in terms of your story overall.

[00:08:08] I mean, it's an expansive one covering two seasons of a TV show at this point. But is there something that you personally feel like the public doesn't get about you or needs to understand better? Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hello, all you spooky nerds.

[00:08:30] And also normal people with, I don't know, social skills, an air fryer, whatever it is that makes normal people normal. We accept all kinds here and we also accept all kinds over on our Patreon. Nice segue.

[00:08:44] We get it. Everyone's broke. Everyone's got a Patreon and no one wants to fill out yet another online payment form. But if you're listening to this show, then you'll actually love our Patreon. It's got all the best parts of the podcast.

[00:09:00] Weird stories from history's colon, underscoring and silly sound effects, dark psychology. And less of the other leftover stuff. Us, specifically. Less of us. Yammering. Every month, subscribers get either one or two, you get to pick, slickly produced, guest free and banter free episodes of Secret Story Time.

[00:09:22] Our series covering wild stories and case studies ripped from the anals of human history. Subscribers also get long form written stories in case you're someone who still likes to read. Early and ad-free access to the usual monthly human fuckery competition show.

[00:09:37] And the ability to pick what we'll write about or do new episodes on next. You can literally send us a link being like, tell this story and we'll go, okay. It's the best way to make sure we can keep doing this show.

[00:09:50] And every subscription helps us keep Gary the Ghoul housed. It's hard to find a landlord who'll accept a demonic hell spawn with a torture fetish in this market. You can help us keep Gary housed and this show alive by heading over to www.patreon.com backslash human fuckery.

[00:10:08] Just pick a tier, enjoy the dozens of already released episodes of Secret Story Time, and wait till you see what we drop next month because yeah, it's some entertaining fuckery.

[00:10:19] Well, you know, first of all, when I started, everything that was done with me filming was filmed by my own TV crew. Right. Because I was filming for a reality show. Right. Okay. I did not film for Tiger King. Right.

[00:10:39] And Eric Good, the producer of Tiger King, paid everybody. Okay, for a documentary you're not supposed to pay anybody. Sure. It's supposed to be the truth, all right? And Eric Good paid everybody.

[00:10:56] We even have my attorney, John Phillips, has the evidence now with recorded phone calls that the producers of Netflix paid the witnesses in the witness room. Wow.

[00:11:08] At my trial to keep the agenda going so they could make this damn movie and get rich off of destroying my life. Wow. Okay, so I need people to understand that everything that everybody talked about me in that show was paid to talk shit about me.

[00:11:26] You know, everybody, I don't know, I haven't seen the show yet, guys, so I don't know, you know, why did they paint me to be this big meth head? Okay, first of all, I'm the only one 60 years old with my teeth still in my head. That is true.

[00:11:42] No one else on that show had teeth, okay? Right. If that tells you who was the meth head and who wasn't. Right, right. And you don't walk in a cage with 20 tigers every day on drugs, you just don't. Sure, absolutely.

[00:11:57] You smell them for your skin, you know, they know that you're off beat and I would have been killed a long time ago. Did I party? Yeah, I partied every once in a while, just like 75% of the world does. Yeah.

[00:12:11] But a meth head, I wasn't a meth head. Now I've got James and Jeff out there spreading lies because, you know, why did they first, you know, they helped set me up to take my zoo.

[00:12:23] Then Carol and the USDA and PETA turned on them and then they took Jeff's zoo away.

[00:12:29] Then they got Doc Antle, then they got Kim Stark, you know, and I told them years ago this was all coming, you know, Carol had this 20 year plan written down and nobody believed me. I was just a crackhead. Right.

[00:12:46] Now that they've all lost everything, they turn their cell phones over to my attorney and their hard drives because this is how crooked they are. They were videotaping and recording the federal agents the entire time. Wow.

[00:13:00] So now we have 416 phone recordings and videos of the actual FBI agents and the federal fish and wildlife agent Matt Bryant telling them how to lie to the grand jury and to the jury to convict me. Mm hmm.

[00:13:14] And the only reason that they even brought up the five tigers that I put to sleep and they admit this on the telephone, that they needed to parade those dead tigers heads around in front of the jury in order to choke on their heart strings and convict me.

[00:13:30] Right. That seems pretty obvious. Yeah. Why was all this done? This call is from a federal prison. It was done for nothing more than to pass the Big Cat Safety Act for Carol Baskin. Sure.

[00:13:43] Now, I mean, obviously your story's not over and you're still kind of in the throes of this whole thing, but nobody goes through what you've been through without being changed to some extent. How has this experience changed you?

[00:13:57] You know, I when when you see as many people die as I've seen dying here. Yeah. You know, and being close to walking out the door and then die before you even get out the door. You find peace with God. Have I forgave everybody? Absolutely.

[00:14:15] Because I want to go see Travis and Brian and my mom and dad, my brother. Yeah. Am I ever going to forget? Hell no. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:26] When and if I ever walk out of here, my lawyer swears up and down he's going to get me out in the next year if we could ever get this judge to answer on this motion.

[00:14:34] Because it's been a year now that we filed a motion for a new trial. Yeah. And he won't answer it. Okay. I'm going to walk out of here. I've been offered a world tour to do my concert. I'm going to do that. I'm engaged to an amazing man.

[00:14:49] You know, Seth Posey in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Got an adorable four-year-old little boy. A mother-in-law, a father-in-law, and brothers and sisters-in-law that absolutely love me. I've never had that in my life.

[00:15:03] So, you know, like I tell everybody else, I'm going to put a little bit of the crazy on the shelf. I'm going to go out of here a family man, you know?

[00:15:11] Am I still going to do a reality show or have my own talk show as Joe Exotic? Absolutely. I'm going to drown myself in being a family man. Okay. I understand. I mean, do you feel like if you were sitting in a room with Carole Baskin today

[00:15:30] that you could offer her forgiveness? Like legitimate face-to-face? I mean, what is it that you think you would say to her? You know, I would have to because she's batshit crazy. I can't help it though. The woman is insane. She believes her own shit. Really? Okay.

[00:15:49] You know, she came out famous dancing on the stars, you know, and she didn't realize they were using her as a joke. And then that wore out, that she came out as bisexual. You know, and that didn't get her enough traction.

[00:16:04] Then she came up in the public and she offered to help give me a pardon with Trump if I told on everybody, you know, well, that didn't work. So during my resent, I think she's back to a three page victim impact statement

[00:16:18] of how dangerous I am and I'm going to blow her up. Okay. So then she's back to hate me. Now she's calling the world that Don Lewis is alive. Okay. That got her in the news, but she didn't think that through very far

[00:16:32] because if he is alive, she's got to return all that money. Yeah. Yeah. Because she's the one who reported him missing and had him declared dead. Right. So I would enjoy paying her hand over six million dollars, but that'll never happen because he's dead. He's a tiger.

[00:16:50] Sure. Okay. And now she's trying to convince the world that she's going to sell Big Cat Rescue, which will never happen because she's addicted to money. Right. In all the controversy and the infighting between the two of you did.

[00:17:08] Did you ever think maybe I should just sit down and talk to her, try to work this out peacefully? I don't think it's possible. No. She's that crazy. Yeah. I mean, look at poor Howard. It looks like she hasn't slept with two eyes closed since they've been married.

[00:17:26] I am seriously. I would, I would love to set face to face with her. I would love to put us both on a lie detector test. And she asked me 10 questions of me after, you know, she could ask me 10 questions,

[00:17:43] but I don't think I don't think the woman would ever sit in a room and talk seriously because she's crazy. Right. Right. I understand. Kim, do you have any questions for Joe? Hey, Joe. I'm the other person on the call today.

[00:17:58] My big thing is really just wanting to know since your story's not over yet, you know, in a perfect world. How would you like to see this story end? You're the narrator. In a perfect world, you know, and I have the title of, you know, Tiger King Returns.

[00:18:18] I'm going to make my own movie to return back to the world. In a perfect world, President Biden would step up and look at the evidence or have the attorney general look at the evidence and let me go home.

[00:18:31] Sure. Right. And that would be in a perfect world. And then I'm going to lobby against Congress for real prison and justice reform because the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice is the most corrupt two organizations we have in this country. I couldn't agree more.

[00:18:53] You have no idea from seeing it from the inside. Let me tell you what the taxpayers are paying and people are living. We live two people in a room, OK? It is required by the government to be 70 square feet. Yeah. You know how little that is?

[00:19:12] Yeah. Very small. Yeah. Very small. OK. Now, a chimpanzee in America has to have a thousand square feet. Wow. Wow. So we spend more lobbying money and donations to politicians to take better care of animals than we do of human beings.

[00:19:31] And you know, you can say all you want about people being in prison, but there's so many innocent people in prison, in federal prison especially, because federal prison convicts you on hearsay. They don't use evidence.

[00:19:45] So there's probably 30,000 black and brown people in here on ghost dope charges that has never been busted with drugs. It was just they were convicted on hearsay. Somebody's mad at them. The feds used them like they did, you know, Alan Glover and James Garrison against me.

[00:20:04] They didn't have anything on me other than I admitted that I put five tigers to sleep. Right. But there's so many people in here because the Constitution says that you're you have a right to a fair trial. In America, you don't have a right to a fair trial.

[00:20:23] The minute you ask for a trial, they reindict you with more charges to punish you for asking for a trial. Right. Because I started out with one charge and I asked for a trial and they superseded me with 20 more charges.

[00:20:36] She's and that's what they that's what they do to poor people to get them to plea out. You better take five or 10 years or we're going to get you for 30 or 40.

[00:20:45] And, you know, a black person that doesn't have any money that grows up, you know, on the south side of the track. Fucking 10 years is of their life. There's nothing compared to 40 because they know they're going to get 40 years. Right. Yeah.

[00:20:59] Joe, is there any advice you have for the people who are show how can they support not only you, but like especially this this goal you have to, you know, how do people better support prison reform? This thing's going to hang up on us in about 20 seconds.

[00:21:15] So first of all, first of all, I want to say thank you for giving me a voice. OK, second of all, people that are listening to this or will listen to this when the link comes out, get on Joe Exotic 2024 dot com.

[00:21:25] Stand up, be a voice, not just for me, for you and for your kids. And there he goes where we got cut off with Joe because you don't get much time to talk to people.

[00:21:35] 15 minutes. We kind of knew going into that that was probably going to be our cap. But God, so many questions. So many questions. So the folks I know who are like, oh, how come you didn't ask harder questions? Because we only had 15 minutes.

[00:21:49] Yeah, it takes a bit to work up to the real dick slap questions. Yeah. But I was really actually kind of moved by this conversation. Which part moved you? Look, without going off the rails into my opinions on things, I hate the American prison system.

[00:22:11] Sure. I hate everything about it. I hate the way it works. I hate the way we treat people.

[00:22:15] I hate the way we treat people. And Joe, whether you think he's a bullshitter or not, drawing attention to the fact that human fucking beings, some of whom have not yet had trials at all to determine whether they're guilty.

[00:22:30] And some of whom have no evidence that they have done anything are sitting in cells one thirtieth of the size that it is mandated that animals be kept in is fucking unhinged.

[00:22:41] And it shows something deeply immoral, highly unethical and heinous about the way we function as a culture that that's how we imprison people.

[00:22:51] And I don't care whether you love Joe or hate Joe. I think that you can hate the American prison system and everything that he just told us about it. No human being should be kept in a 70 foot cell or put in solitary fucking confinement.

[00:23:07] Like I know for a fact that right now, especially in part due to covid, that there are people sitting in joint holding cells with 10, 15, 20 other people without beds sleeping on the floor have not been convicted of a crime but cannot post bail who have been sitting in those jails for years.

[00:23:34] Yeah, I'm not convicted. Just charge sitting in jail for years. There's nothing just about that. And when you can buy your way out of that situation, that's an unjust system.

[00:23:48] Yeah. If if you're going to have that be the way you do things, then some rich guy shouldn't be able to post bail and be like, I'm going to sit this out at home. I'm good. I don't have to do this.

[00:24:00] If there's two sets of laws, one for the rich and one for the poor, you're talking about an unjust system. Do you think you could take a dump in front of 20 people?

[00:24:09] I think if I really had to, I wouldn't have a choice. I would not enjoy the experience. But would you talk to people? Would you not make eye contact? Would you just look down and I handle nothing to see here?

[00:24:23] You know that I handle things by making a lot of jokes. So I would try and make it as entertaining for people as possible unless they were sleeping. And every time you went to the toilet, it'd be like a little performance.

[00:24:34] Yeah, absolutely. I would have an absolutely gorgeous tight five to take out on the road as a comedian after exiting. Inmates are waking each other up like, Kim's got to take a dump. Wake up! It's going to be hilarious.

[00:24:49] And I would say that I would probably try and hold my poop until people were asleep so that I could just kind of skip that entirely. But sometimes you just got to go. I understand. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.

[00:25:01] I recently learned that the bodybuilder Kai Green, when he was in a juvenile detention center, he was so afraid to go to the bathroom for fear of getting his ass kicked. He said that he held his feces for two weeks one time.

[00:25:15] That is a thing that people are capable of doing. As a gut expert, what would that do to your insides? It will absolutely long term lead to motility disorders and pelvic floor dysfunction. It can cause colonic and small intestinal dysbiosis.

[00:25:32] And also when your poop sits in your colon for weeks at a time, you reabsorb all of the toxins that your body's trying to poop out because that's an osmotic barrier, your colon.

[00:25:43] So it's not great for you. But I think we've talked enough about feces for this interview. So why don't we look? Maybe, maybe not. But we can move on.

[00:25:51] I was also really moved by Joe talking about wanting to put the crazy on the shelf and be a family man. Like I am a person from New Jersey.

[00:26:03] I'm a person from New Jersey who was raised in a culture that celebrates loud talking, bombastic talking, extreme turns of phrase, posturing, peacocking. And it's really easy when you don't have anybody around you modeling a different type of behavior to go as deep as you can into that.

[00:26:24] And while I do think that Joe went off the rails and made some really bad choices, I also have questions about how sincere any of that was and how much of it was just talking and getting caught in mania.

[00:26:40] You know what I mean? And there's this is not to say Joe didn't do anything wrong. Joe himself has said, I did some stuff wrong. I have regrets. Do you think he's remorseful, though?

[00:26:51] I mean, just even based off of that 15 minute phone call that we just had, do you feel like he's accountable for his actions? I personally do.

[00:27:02] I personally feel like anybody who's telling you I have been abused by prison guards and staring down the barrel of cancer in a horrific situation just want to be a family man. I think whether he thinks he's to blame or not is irrelevant.

[00:27:24] I think he absolutely feels remorseful for putting himself in this situation. Sure. We didn't get to get deep enough into understanding, you know, like, what do you think you did wrong and what are you accountable for? But I also personally think he's very much correct about Carole Baskin.

[00:27:41] I don't think that Carole Baskin is a person who has demonstrated an ability to do things for the right reasons. And I do think that she displays a lot of attention seeking behavior, which calls into question her motives for doing things.

[00:27:55] Fair enough. And I understand Joe having a compulsion to retaliate when he felt like he was being targeted by her big cat rescue. But don't you think he escalated? Absolutely. Quite a bit. Absolutely. In ways that have destroyed his life and harmed other people.

[00:28:14] But like I said, coming from a place where if again, if you don't have a single fucking adult around you demonstrating de-escalation, calm down, play the long game, don't do this.

[00:28:26] Like, what other choice do you have? It wasn't until years of therapy and getting out of that environment that I started to change.

[00:28:37] You knew me when I was a chronic escalator. And that's because nobody, I was taught if you don't escalate, if you don't match intensity with intensity, you're a pussy, you're a doormat, you're just letting people abuse you.

[00:28:50] And when you hear that your whole life, it's going to lead to some really unfortunate decisions. And just based off of the first documentary, season one, it didn't seem like Joe had a blocker in his life.

[00:29:04] Somebody who said, hey bro, maybe you should dial this back. Now that doesn't absolve him of his decision making. Nothing that I'm saying is absolution or an excuse.

[00:29:14] There was no moral guidepost. There was no true north or anything like that. At least in terms of the ostensible information that we were provided with.

[00:29:22] Also, I find it hard to believe that the only person in the Tiger King story who deserves to be in prison is fucking Joe Exotic. There are monstrous human beings, sexual predators, absolutely unhinged, violent con artists. Like, it was a nest of rats in that narrative.

[00:29:43] I mean, it's already been decided that Jeff Lowe took the zoo from Joe fraudulently. That's how he lost the zoo.

[00:29:50] Jeff Lowe is a monster. Look, the whole story for me, it's very compelling. It makes your blood rush when you watch it because it triggers a lot of feelings and adrenaline.

[00:30:02] And you're like, your jaws hang open because it's so sensational. But like, these are real people. And there are real people in these people's lives. And some of these people are more of a threat to society than I think Joe Exotic is personally.

[00:30:17] What did you take away from our chat with Joe? I think Joe is very charismatic. I think he's a very interesting person. Oddly enough, you know, I think he's very well spoken. He's very articulate. He is very funny. Why oddly enough?

[00:30:31] Because I think part of the fascination, looking through glass fascination that a lot of America had with the whole Tiger King story is that he was kind of some crazy backwoods gay yokel who didn't have two chromosomes to rub together.

[00:30:51] And the truth of the matter is, it's not accurate. He's a very intelligent person who's been through a lot. And I don't know, like he's the type of person as like John Oliver said when he was running for president.

[00:31:05] He's the candidate that you actually want to sit down and have a beer with. Yeah. He's the guy that you actually want to sit and talk to for an extended period of time. Now, it's worth saying that in 2016 when he ran, he got 982 votes. Good for him.

[00:31:21] I mean, it's almost a thousand people voted for Joe Exotic. Look, given the options, I really fucking understand why. But this was before the documentary and he still managed to secure a thousand votes.

[00:31:34] I know, that's what I mean. Given the fucking options, I completely understand why. Based on name alone, I'd be like, yeah, this is my choice, honestly.

[00:31:42] I actually, I learned something throughout Joe's kind of re-upping his presidential bid. Like my first instinct was how can a convict run for president? That can't be right.

[00:31:56] And so, of course, I had to research it. There are no laws restricting convicted felons, people in prison from running for president. Yeah. He could be elected and pardon himself.

[00:32:08] I kind of love that. Our justice system is so unhinged and abusive that that loophole being there almost feels okay to me, given how many people are in prison who shouldn't be. But you're not allowed to vote if you're a convicted felon, but you can run for president.

[00:32:27] Yeah, we are a very, very sick nation. Like, very deeply unwell. A lot of contradictions. So let's get into, you know, the people contain multitudes thing.

[00:32:41] You are somebody who lives his life in opposition to most of the things that Joe Exotic displayed, whether it was his treatment of animals, his way of handling conflict, his way of escalating things.

[00:32:56] Why did you want to talk to Joe and why do you think it's important to remember that people contain multitudes and stay open about talking to people? I don't have an aversion to talking to people that I feel like I morally or principally am in opposition to.

[00:33:16] I really would like to understand where people, where Joe's coming from. After this conversation, do you feel like you're in opposition to Joe? I'm still in opposition to a lot of the choices that he made.

[00:33:30] I'm kind of on the fence as far as being a vegetarian and where I stand on zoos and stuff like that. There are some people in the vegan community who are like, no zoos, fuck zoos. Like, it's, you know, this is horrible, etc., etc.

[00:33:42] I can't entirely get on board with that. I think that's how a lot of us come to learn and understand more about animals, receive education about various species.

[00:33:53] It is very hard to care about things that it's very hard for people in general to care about things that they've never seen or never formed a connection with.

[00:33:59] You're completely detached from. And so it's, I think there needs to be some kind of up close and personal encounters with not just animals, but people that we're in opposition to. If we're ever to extend any sort of compassion, grace, forgiveness, move forward as a people.

[00:34:19] And so I do think it's important to talk to people who commit crimes. I do think it's important for us to have conversations with killers, murderers, whatever, you know.

[00:34:27] At the very least, we already know that through conversation and interviews with serial murderers, even if we didn't come to the point of like, oh, this person can change and be redeemed. We've come to understand more about their traits and their behaviors.

[00:34:43] We certainly wouldn't be able to identify psychopaths and sociopaths if we hadn't studied them. Having those encounters doesn't make you a bad person.

[00:34:50] It makes you just one of the few folks who are willing to kind of go to the edge of reason and madness and have these confrontations and bring back information. And I feel like that's in part what we try to do on this podcast.

[00:35:04] So even if you're not the type of person that would ever want to sit down and talk to Joe Exotic, I am one of those people who am willing. And it doesn't mean that I absolve him or sanitize any of his choices whatsoever.

[00:35:16] And I just, I also want to underscore for people that people can change. And I think most of us can, for sure. Yeah. And I think we're living in a pretty scary period of time where people slap a label on you and they just, that's it.

[00:35:31] That's your, you are incapable of growth. And also those shows happened years ago now. And they encapsulate a period of time that is very much over in these people's lives.

[00:35:42] It doesn't mean that some of the people in them, one, shouldn't be held accountable for the crimes they committed, things that they did. But it also doesn't mean that people in them are just like, oh, let's just exterminate people.

[00:35:54] Like there's so many people who are like, let's just get in. And you're like, we're so close to Nazi territory when we start talking about like extremes, about like just, you know, imprisoning, sanctioning off and exterminating people who we disagree with, don't like. It's scary shit.

[00:36:12] As a professional, I want to tell everyone listening, absolute thinking is disordered thinking. Nothing is just 100% black and white. Never will be. When you're talking to somebody who's extremely rigid in their thought, usually talking to somebody who has been conditioned or traumatized into that.

[00:36:34] And it's not until you start working with people who have healed and are in the process of healing that you're like, oh, your brain and your way of framing things becomes exceptionally flexible when you start to heal. And you also start to be around more healed people.

[00:36:49] If you're surrounded by damaged people who are all traumatized, you guys are going to reinforce really bad behavior amongst each other. It's why it's important sometimes to get away from toxic families, get away from toxic relationships.

[00:37:00] Sure. That doesn't mean that you can't have convictions. I think it's important for people to have convictions, but those convictions should take the multitudes into consideration. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what did you learn in this conversation that made you understand the Joe Exotic story and saga differently?

[00:37:22] Nothing about the conversation really made me understand the story differently, but it did, I guess, reinforce from my perspective how much of Joe's environment, his upbringing, the people he was surrounded by at the time were a liability.

[00:37:42] I didn't extract from the conversation that there was a lot of radical acceptance about his decisions, his choices. We only had 15 minutes. We only had 15 minutes. I understand that. I want to be really clear, 15 minutes from prison is not representative of whether a person has, that's not fair.

[00:38:00] Sure. It's not fair, but it's not necessarily unfair because I only had 15 minutes too to really hear what it is that he had to say, things that he decided to share with us.

[00:38:10] I understand that he's campaigning for his release. I understand that he wants to get his voice out there and try to appeal to the masses as to why he shouldn't be locked up. And I grant him that. I get it.

[00:38:22] But people tend to be moved by remorse. You can kind of start to make space for, okay, this person accepts responsibility for the choices that he made, the things that he did.

[00:38:32] And that allows me to create more space for the ways that he might have been wronged. And I do think that he was wronged.

[00:38:37] Yes, absolutely. I think it's important to be transparent for the people who are still listening. If that, when Edward said, I think we should interview Joe Exotic. I was like, why?

[00:38:48] Like, I am immediately was one of the people who was like, why are we giving a platform to a person who has already had such a large platform and done so little for other people with that platform?

[00:39:03] And Edward talked me into it as far as, you know, this is a storytelling podcast. He's a wonderful storyteller and there is no denying like objectively he is a wonderful storyteller.

[00:39:16] He is a fascinating narrator. He has a gift with phrase like he is charismatic. Even if sensationalism is not your thing, like you kind of can't stop watching him.

[00:39:26] And so I was very resistant to the idea of even doing this interview. And after talking to him and hearing him, I don't actually care if Joe Exotic is pushing for an advocating for prison reform because he's finally one of the people on the inside experiencing how unjust it is.

[00:39:42] He is a massive platform, a very large following of people and great. Like so I was very moved by the fact that he actually used some of the time to push for prison reform. I do not care how we get there. I think that things need to be different.

[00:39:59] And so I felt touched by that. Listening to him talk about the thousands of poor and black and brown people who are in there, who don't have the resources that he had, who don't have the platform, just completely erased and forgotten human beings.

[00:40:15] I actually took that talking point to a friend of mine who's an incredible advocate for just better communities, Lily Lewis. She is a singer songwriter here in New Orleans who stumps for practicing radical decency.

[00:40:33] And I said, Hey, Lily, we interviewed Joe Exotic. I felt like kind of touched by some of the things he said, but he was talking about all of these black and brown people that need more rights and need more of a voice in the system. Do you feel like he was just leveraging that? Because we're like doing that. We're having conversations about that.

[00:40:52] And she said, considering how often we have leveraged black and brown people like me for literal centuries for the worst possible reasons, I'm fine being leveraged if it's to actually do something radically decent. And I thought that was a really good point.

[00:41:09] Like, because we have a like you've been talking about this very rigid way of like we are ethical and moral purists in our culture now in ways that are completely irrational. And it's like you have to be doing this for the completely right reason. And you have to be pure, even though I'm not pure and I'm doing something fucked up every single day of my life.

[00:41:33] Like we are all fucking up every single day in certain ways. And so I actually grew from that conversation, hearing Joe make that case that he did, then taking that conversation with another friend and saying, you know, like, how do you feel about this? Is it right or wrong to leverage people? And when she's like, if we're being leveraged for the right reasons to get something positive done, great.

[00:41:59] So I felt like I grew from the whole experience of talking to him. And I felt a lot of empathy for him during our conversation, which as someone who watched the Tiger King documentaries with me, you know, I did not previously feel like...

[00:42:16] It's fascinating because I feel like I'm being harder on him in this talk back on the interview, but I had empathy for him the whole way through. I know. Fascinatingly.

[00:42:28] But look, my trauma and my life and my experience with a certain type of man who treats women certain kinds of ways and talks like the way Joe in the...

[00:42:40] Even in the interview, and he was like, you know, Carol Baskin's batshit crazy. And I like, I bristle when men talk about women that way. Sure. That said, Carol demonstrates extremely unwell behavior. Sure.

[00:42:53] Behavior that is as bad sometimes as the behavior that she called out for Joe, like the hypocrisy of the whole thing. So I do think it was really interesting. You had empathy for Joe throughout the whole thing. I reacted negatively to him. He's had a tough fucking life.

[00:43:11] He's had a brutal fucking life. And the documentaries didn't do a great job of digging into the trauma that produced these outcomes. Sure.

[00:43:23] That's on me as a viewer who has been trained to ask questions and dig deeper that like, I just, I had a reaction to a person I saw on the screen. I decided I knew who they were. I decided I didn't like them. And then I just stopped from there.

[00:43:38] And then when I had an actual short conversation with them, I was like, this is a real human being who's had some really horrible stuff happen, still has horrible stuff happening and whose most of their life has been pain.

[00:43:52] And while I don't agree with a lot of the things that he's done or the way he's used his platform, I do think that being locked up for a while has changed some of his priorities in life and changed how he would use that platform.

[00:44:07] And look, could it be bullshit when he's like, I just want to get out and be a family man and put the crazy on the shelf? Is that somebody who is just selling something so they can get out? Possibly.

[00:44:18] But if he's telling the truth, I want people who just want to put the crazy on the shelf, have a family and keep to themselves and live a life to have that opportunity.

[00:44:29] I found some of my walls and my intolerance dissolving through a conversation. And that's something that you've advocated for for a long time. And it was a good lesson for me. Do you feel like America is a nation of second chances?

[00:44:50] No, but I think that we should be. I don't see America as a nation of first chances, let alone second chances. For a lot of folks, I'd say that's definitely true.

[00:45:01] But I would say that culturally, regardless of where you are, I would hope that we would all be working to being a populace of second chances. To quote Lily Lewis again, practice radical decency. And part of that is redemption arcs and paths to redemption.

[00:45:23] My last question for you is on the call, he mentioned that if he ever got out, he was offered a world tour for his show. If it passed through New Orleans, would you be there? I would go. You would go? Yeah. Even if it involved animals?

[00:45:40] That's okay. Did he say that that's what his world tour would be? No, he didn't specify. He didn't specify. If it involved animals, no. But if he was going to go around and-

[00:45:50] I would pay for a Mike Tyson kind of sit down, telling my life story show with Joe Exotic. That would be fascinating.

[00:45:58] Yeah, if he was doing a touring animal show, absolutely not. No, he'd shit. But if he was telling his life story and explaining how this whole thing changed the course of his life and what he learned from it, yeah, I would go and see that. All right.

[00:46:15] Final question for you. Do you think that the Joe Exotic story is a people contain multitudes example?

[00:46:21] Absolutely. Absolutely. He's a very complex person. And I understand why he made some of the decisions that he did, even if I don't approve of some of the decisions that he made.

[00:46:34] And I certainly wouldn't have handled the conflict with Carol in the ways that he did. But either way, like you said, he's a human being and he does indeed contain multitudes.

[00:46:46] Well, this was our very special human fuckery episode. We will be back to our regular format with stories and music and bells and whistles and an incredible author in our episode that's coming out at the end of the month.

[00:47:03] We would like to hear from you guys to give us your feedback on this interview with Joe. And if you would be interested in hearing a part two, if we have an overwhelming response, maybe we can get on the schedule and have some more follow up deeper questions with Joe.

[00:47:20] But that's all for us for this episode, this special edition. If you love the show, please, if you have not already follow us on Instagram and Twitter, Human Fuckery Podcast. And if you really want to support this show in its continued efforts, please consider becoming a patron.

[00:47:40] Go to www.patreon.com backslash human fuckery. We will see you guys again in a couple of weeks, but until then, stay safe, be kind and please keep it weird.