Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Excited Delirium: How Cops Invented A Disease
Aired: 2021-05-06
Duration: 01:17:47


=== Webster's Conflict of Interest (14:55) ===

[00:00:00]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:00:02]  Guaranteed human.
[00:00:04]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:00:13]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:00:15]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:00:17]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:00:19]  We always say that.
[00:00:21]  Trust your girlfriends.
[00:00:24]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:00:25]  Trust me, babe.
[00:00:26]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:00:36]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[00:00:43]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:00:47]  I doctored the test once.
[00:00:48]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:00:53]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:00:55]  Greg Wesley and Michael Mancini.
[00:00:58]  My mind was blown.
[00:00:59]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:01:01]  This is Love Trapped.
[00:01:02]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:01:04]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:01:08]  Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:16]  10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
[00:01:18]  How could this ever happen in City Hall?
[00:01:20]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:01:22]  A shocking public murder.
[00:01:24]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[00:01:30]  I screamed, get down, get down.
[00:01:32]  Those are shots.
[00:01:34]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[00:01:36]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
[00:01:40]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:01:44]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:01:50]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
[00:01:54]  This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:01:58]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
[00:02:05]  An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future.
[00:02:09]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[00:02:12]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[00:02:24]  What's justifying murder?
[00:02:26]  My corrupt doctors paid by a mega corporation in order to increase profits for dangerous electric murder guns used by violent people in order to enforce white supremacy.
[00:02:47]  Shit, I lost the thread of that introduction a little bit.
[00:02:50]  I mean, I think so.
[00:02:53]  Well, you're doing great.
[00:02:55]  Welcome to Behind the Bastards, the podcast that you know what podcast this is.
[00:03:01]  Nobody's dropping into episode two for the first time, not having listened to any of our other episodes.
[00:03:06]  You know who I am.
[00:03:07]  You know what we do, you motherfuckers.
[00:03:10]  She's Robert fucking Evans, motherfuckers.
[00:03:12]  This is behind the fucking bastards, motherfucker.
[00:03:14]  Are we not doing that?
[00:03:15]  Are we not?
[00:03:16]  That's a little much.
[00:03:17]  That's a little bit much, Sophie.
[00:03:18]  My about a little bit much.
[00:03:19]  Turn it down.
[00:03:20]  Come on.
[00:03:21]  This is behind the bastard.
[00:03:23]  There we go.
[00:03:24]  He's Robert Evans.
[00:03:26]  No?
[00:03:26]  I am Robert Evans.
[00:03:27]  This is Behind the Bastards.
[00:03:29]  And my guest for part two of our episode on Excited Delirium is Ben Bolin.
[00:03:34]  Ben, how are you doing today?
[00:03:36]  Ben, Ben, Ben.
[00:03:37]  Hey, thanks so much.
[00:03:38]  Thanks so much for having me back again, guys.
[00:03:41]  I know things got sort of dicey at the end for anybody who wasn't listening in to part one.
[00:03:47]  I think a lot of people might be tuning in just for part two.
[00:03:50]  Just pop up.
[00:03:52]  But yeah, yeah, just for part two.
[00:03:55]  They said, I don't want, don't, they read the description.
[00:03:58]  Nah, I want to go in media res, baby.
[00:04:01]  Yeah.
[00:04:02]  Tabula Rosa coming in, coming in hot.
[00:04:06]  Yeah, thanks for having me back.
[00:04:07]  I know things got difficult off air.
[00:04:09]  We had some creative differences.
[00:04:11]  Read Doritos, which is fine.
[00:04:13]  But I'm glad to be here.
[00:04:16]  Yeah, I'm glad to have you back.
[00:04:19]  I'm also glad to continue discussing whether or not to reintroduce Doritos plugs.
[00:04:24]  To be honest, when it comes to the old running jokes that I'd like to reintroduce, I'm really looking forward to getting in a studio again and just damaging company property with a machete and various thrown objects.
[00:04:36]  That's the thing I'm most excited for.
[00:04:38]  I've been practicing and I'm going to throw a bagel in your face.
[00:04:42]  Really.
[00:04:43]  Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things.
[00:04:44]  I've come to the conclusion that, you know, the pandemic, it gave us some necessary pause time, you know, because we'd been doing that a little bit too much.
[00:04:56]  People were like a little bit too much throwing stuff.
[00:04:59]  But now the pandemic, I think people are ready for it again.
[00:05:02]  And that kind of makes it all worthwhile, doesn't it?
[00:05:05]  Yeah, I'm going to beam you in the face with the fucking everything bagel.
[00:05:09]  It's going to be great.
[00:05:12]  Good stuff.
[00:05:13]  Before we get started, though, I do want to give you a shout out for the show and Robert, you personally, because I was listening to some of the old school behind the bastards and it hit me.
[00:05:28]  I was listening to this.
[00:05:29]  It was one of the machete moments, as I call them.
[00:05:33]  And I was thinking, damn, my machete is really old.
[00:05:36]  All right.
[00:05:36]  Well, what's your brand?
[00:05:37]  Oh, is it one where you don't know the brand?
[00:05:39]  It's just an old knife, old machete.
[00:05:41]  Yeah.
[00:05:41]  Yeah.
[00:05:42]  It's just an old big ass.
[00:05:43]  Is it one of those big stamped steel deals?
[00:05:45]  Like kind of one of those, like, I think a lot of them are made in El Salvador.
[00:05:48]  It's kind of a thin stamped piece of metal with an edge on it.
[00:05:51]  Yeah, actually, nailed it.
[00:05:53]  Yeah, those are great.
[00:05:54]  Those are, I mean, honestly, for most, I mean, well, it's just because if you actually go to the places in the world where like every single person, like right down to the old ladies is walking around with a machete, like Guatemala, like fucking, there's big parts of Guatemala where everyone you see is just going to have one on them because it's like a life tool.
[00:06:09]  I used to live there.
[00:06:10]  Yeah, you're right.
[00:06:11]  Oh, I didn't know that.
[00:06:12]  Yeah, I spent months there.
[00:06:14]  Where were you?
[00:06:15]  I was in Jela, Keital Tenango.
[00:06:17]  Oh, Shayla, Shayla.
[00:06:18]  Yeah, I wasn't cool enough for Atatlan.
[00:06:22]  For Azatlan.
[00:06:24]  But yeah, it's like, whenever you see people who, who use machetes all the damn time, it tends to be one of those stamped steel ones because like they work, they do the job.
[00:06:33]  They're fucking unkillable.
[00:06:35]  You can just run them on like one of those, you know, one of those foot-powered sharpening wheels and sharpen it up.
[00:06:43]  And they're not fancy.
[00:06:44]  So like, yeah, that uses up steel, but you don't care.
[00:06:46]  It's not like an artisanal knife.
[00:06:49]  They're great.
[00:06:49]  I love those.
[00:06:50]  I love those machetes.
[00:06:51]  For all that I enjoyed my artisanal machetes, if I'm just going to go out and fuck a knife up, I'm going to use one of those.
[00:06:59]  Right.
[00:07:00]  But speaking of fucking things up, Robert, this is part two of a very fucked up situation.
[00:07:07]  Yes, yes, it is.
[00:07:08]  And we're talking about, so when we last left this very fun story, we were talking, I had introduced a guy named Dr. Jeffrey Ho because we just talked about Charles Wetley and Deborah Mash, two doctors who receive a decent amount of money.
[00:07:25]  We don't know exactly how much from the Axon Corporation to explain why tasers didn't cause taser-related deaths.
[00:07:33]  And now we are going to talk about Dr. Jeffrey Ho, who is like the ultimate form of that kind of doctor.
[00:07:43]  This guy is such a shady motherfucker.
[00:07:45]  If there's a single biggest bastard of the episode, it's Dr. Jeffrey Ho.
[00:07:50]  So Ho worked for 10 years as an ER doctor in Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis.
[00:07:57]  The fact that we're talking about Minneapolis should key you in on some of where this is going.
[00:08:02]  Now, from an early stage in his medical career, Dr. Ho got involved in, shall we say, extracurricular work.
[00:08:09]  He was hired by a nearby fire department to direct medical services there, which is great.
[00:08:13]  He consulted for a private medical product company, which is probably okay.
[00:08:19]  He enlisted in the National Guard and he taught at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
[00:08:24]  And then he took a side gig working with the Minneapolis police SWAT team.
[00:08:29]  This dalliance with law enforcement was apparently so appealing to Dr. Ho that in 2003, he returned to school to get a two-year degree in law enforcement, which was a requirement to pass the police licensing board in Minnesota.
[00:08:42]  He became a part-time police officer near Minneapolis.
[00:08:46]  And so far, my feelings on policing aside, based on the standards of our society at its present moment, that's not the worst thing in the world, right?
[00:08:53]  Doctors can moonlight, like cops get to moonlight as security guards.
[00:08:56]  I guess why wouldn't a doctor be able to moonlight as a cop?
[00:09:00]  Like theoretically, if you're a doctor and a cop, when you horribly injure someone, maybe you can provide life-saving medical aid to them more apparently.
[00:09:09]  I don't know.
[00:09:11]  Oh, I'm picturing like the worst 80s movie right now.
[00:09:17]  Yeah.
[00:09:17]  Dr. Cop Doc.
[00:09:18]  Cop Doc.
[00:09:20]  Dr. Cop Doc.
[00:09:22]  It would be funny to just redo Dirty Harry, but every time he shoots someone, he then like puts on a tourniquet.
[00:09:34]  Once I kill him, I go right into doctor mode.
[00:09:39]  So yeah, that's a little, a little sketchy, but again, based on sort of the standards of our society so far, I guess I don't think he's violating anything.
[00:09:47]  I don't think there's any rule that says a doctor can't be a cop.
[00:09:49]  So whatever.
[00:09:51]  Seems a little odd to me.
[00:09:52]  Now, while Dr. Ho was starting his journey into law enforcement, Axon had a Nebraska doctor named Robert Stratbucker as their chief medical advisor.
[00:10:02]  In 2005, Dr. Stratbucker signed on as a consultant to help conduct a massive study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice to look at the safety of stun guns.
[00:10:11]  The study was being managed by a University of Wisconsin professor named John Webster, and it was supposed to be completely independent of Axon or any other stun gun manufacturer, right?
[00:10:21]  This is the DOJ wants to do a big study on whether or not stun guns are safe, which is a reasonable thing for the DOJ to do, right?
[00:10:28]  Like you're buying all these stun guns.
[00:10:29]  You probably know how often they kill people.
[00:10:32]  So Dr. Stratbucker gets named as one of the consultants on that study, even though he's in the employ of Axon, which is kind of shady.
[00:10:40]  And I'm going to quote from an NBC write-up now.
[00:10:43]  In March, both Webster and a Taser spokesman told the AP the company had no ties to their research.
[00:10:49]  In his grant proposal, Webster proposed Stratbucker receive $18,000 in salary and travel expenses for his advice.
[00:10:57]  Stratbucker's resume was included, but did not mention his work for Taser.
[00:11:01]  And Webster checked a box to deny any conflict of interest.
[00:11:05]  Now, Ben, I'm not a doctor, nor am I, well, I'm a kind of scientist.
[00:11:11]  You can see my...
[00:11:12]  I'm a reverend doctor.
[00:11:14]  I actually am a reverend doctor, so I am the perfect person.
[00:11:17]  And I've experimented with different kinds of dangerous drugs on my friends and family.
[00:11:21]  So, you know, I am a good person to say this.
[00:11:25]  I would argue that if you are conducting a DOJ study on whether or not Tasers are safe and you're paid by Taser, that is a conflict of interest.
[00:11:37]  Well, well, it's a perfect alignment of interest for the people who are selling out human beings for some extra cash.
[00:11:48]  That's jolly good for them.
[00:11:54]  It's not well written.
[00:11:55]  That's the part.
[00:11:56]  Like if you were writing this to be as insidious and evil as it is, you would come up with maybe better motivations.
[00:12:05]  And it's one of those things.
[00:12:06]  I don't know how much Stratbucker is getting paid by Axon.
[00:12:09]  It has to be more than 18 grand because like for a doctor, for someone in that kind of income bracket, and I'm in, I'm going to guess a similar income bracket to Stratbucker.
[00:12:18]  18 grand isn't chump change, right?
[00:12:20]  You'd miss it if it came out of your bank account, but it's not enough to sell your soul for, right?
[00:12:25]  He's got to be getting a lot of money from Axon on this because 18 grand is not enough to sell your soul out.
[00:12:31]  Um, if you're in that kind of income bracket, right?
[00:12:34]  Because he's not fucking starving on the street.
[00:12:36]  He's a very prominent doctor and professor.
[00:12:39]  Um, he's got money, like that.
[00:12:41]  There's got to be, and that's one of the like a lot of times when they talk about how much these different doctors are getting paid, it's like 10 or 20 grand.
[00:12:48]  And you know, like, no, there's more fucking cash coming to you than that.
[00:12:52]  Like, I know, I can't prove that.
[00:12:54]  I don't know because these are private payments, right?
[00:12:57]  He's not, it's not a government employee, but you have to be getting more money than that.
[00:13:01]  18 grand is not enough, you know?
[00:13:03]  Not for that.
[00:13:04]  It comes through different ways.
[00:13:06]  Yeah.
[00:13:06]  That's how it works.
[00:13:07]  It'll come through a different direction.
[00:13:10]  There are a lot of things that are easily lost, unfortunately, when it comes to those kind of payments.
[00:13:17]  And then also we have to consider as messy and depressing and shitty as it is to point out, there are people at that income level who are driven to a great degree by self-delusion and ideology.
[00:13:32]  You know what I mean?
[00:13:34]  So they're just down to clown.
[00:13:37]  They're down to fucking clown.
[00:13:38]  Yeah.
[00:13:41]  So in May of 2005, documents were uncovered that showed Stratbucker had received both cash and stock options from Axon.
[00:13:49]  And again, I don't have an exact number there, but you have to assume it's a lot, especially the stock options, which gives him a further vested interest in the company's success, right?
[00:13:57]  Because how much those options are worth are valued on how much Axon is worth, which has directly related to whether or not the Justice Department decides tasers are safe enough for cops to use, you know?
[00:14:07]  Now, the Justice Department very shadily claimed that they'd known about Stratbucker's affiliation with Axon the whole time, and they didn't consider it a big deal because obviously you need a taser expert on a study to determine whether or not tasers are deadlier than advertised.
[00:14:21]  Dr. Webster's response to the reveal of his relationship with Axon seems to have put the lie to this.
[00:14:26]  He told the AP, quote, in view of this potential conflict of interest, I can make the statement that I have not received advice or paid Stratbucker and I will not use him in the future.
[00:14:37]  So Webster pulled back, didn't pay Stratbucker the 18 grand, cut him from the study.
[00:14:43]  And this kind of like spoils Dr. Stratbucker, right?
[00:14:47]  Because now he can't be a part of these studies that they are going to continue to be done on the taser because journalists revealed the fact that he has a conflict of interest.

=== Money Divorces Society From Consequences (06:59) ===

[00:14:55]  Now, for Axon, this meant that they needed to shop around for a new scientist to tweak research in order to make their products seem safe.
[00:15:03]  Tasers had gone viral among law enforcement agencies, and a ton of folks wound up dying or being horribly injured by cops who were using electrocution guns.
[00:15:11]  Axon's lawyers were now fielding dozens of lawsuits, and they needed a way to assure investors that they were going to get past this and salvage their image.
[00:15:20]  Now, thanks to Reuters, we have access to a packet for investors that Axon handed out where they proposed a solution to their bad PR and lawsuit problem.
[00:15:29]  This solution was to employ a group of, quote, world-class medical professionals to defend the brand.
[00:15:35]  Now, the doctors we've talked about were all brought on for that reason.
[00:15:39]  And I want to read you a chunk from this investor document because it really is one of the most sociopathic things I've ever come across.
[00:15:44]  So this is the Axon Corporation talking to investors.
[00:15:47]  Ooh.
[00:15:49]  As a result of various litigation inquiries and proposed legislation mentioned above, we had to incur significant general and administrative expenditures in 2005, an investment in protecting our brand equity and educating the various public interests in our technology.
[00:16:03]  In particular, we incurred substantial incremental legal lobbying, public relations, and related traveling costs, which ultimately had an adverse impact on our overall profitability in 2005.
[00:16:14]  However, we believe these investments were well worth the cost.
[00:16:17]  In many cases, what began as adverse circumstances for us yielded opportunities to educate high-level public leaders in the faith in the value of our products.
[00:16:27]  Those adverse circumstances were tasers killing people and them being like, well, but then we got to fight it in court, prove that it wasn't the taser.
[00:16:35]  So these adverse, it really was a boon to us that we killed these people.
[00:16:40]  It's like, it's off the hook.
[00:16:44]  Yeah.
[00:16:44]  Not cool or good, but totally expected, I guess.
[00:16:50]  I'm baffled at the lat, like, how much of that is an act and how much of that is, in your opinion, as you said, like a sociopathic lack of awareness or lack of caring about that very apparent lack of caring.
[00:17:08]  Like, do they know?
[00:17:10]  They have to because they're, they're the ones we'll talk about this later, but they are actively fighting to force medical professionals not to diagnose taser-related deaths as taser-related deaths.
[00:17:26]  Like that's a thing they go to do.
[00:17:27]  They hire these people to tweak research and stuff.
[00:17:30]  Now, I'm sure there's a lot of employees that lie to themselves about what they're doing, but we have some real problems.
[00:17:37]  I mean, the overall problem is just the fact that there's a certain amount of these people in any society, and that's why you should dissolve systems that systems that put power in people's hands wherever possible, because you can't get rid of these people.
[00:17:52]  They're always going to exist, but you can get rid of power.
[00:17:56]  And this is a perfect example.
[00:17:58]  Axon has a great deal of power and they use it to hide the fact that they sell electrocution machines.
[00:18:06]  Well said on all points.
[00:18:10]  I agree.
[00:18:10]  I wish it wasn't true, but that might be the most viable, if ambitious, solution to remove the power if you cannot, in a feasible way, remove the tendency.
[00:18:22]  Yeah, I don't think, and I don't think you can remove the tendency.
[00:18:25]  There will always be, I don't know, this is getting a little off topic, but one of my favorite books, Tribe by Sebastian Younger, does talk a bit.
[00:18:32]  And there's other books that talk about like some of these people who don't have, we would say, a conscience, right?
[00:18:38]  There's uses for these people historically.
[00:18:41]  You know, if you're part of a hunter-gatherer tribe and you have a real fucking bad winter and some hard decisions need to be made about who's going to be left behind, who's going to get a limited supply of food, a lot of people can't make those calls and sociopaths can.
[00:18:56]  But then you wind up in that is in a situation where you have a small number of people.
[00:19:04]  And while like you, you decision, like they, they are as affected by those decisions as everyone else because it's all part of a small group that's trying to survive in adverse conditions.
[00:19:16]  Where it becomes maladaptive on a societal level is when you have individuals like that who will never face the consequences of their decisions and who are not impacted by them.
[00:19:27]  And they're just hurting other people because our society allows them to be completely divorced from the consequences of their actions because they have money in a position of influence.
[00:19:39]  That's when it really becomes a problem.
[00:19:42]  These people who have tendencies that continue to persist in humanity for a reason, because they provide some benefits to society, become fundamentally toxic to society because they're completely divorced from the consequences of their actions.
[00:19:56]  You know, when a hunter-gatherer tribe, someone like that, if they go too far or get too much power, the rest of the tribe will just murder them.
[00:20:04]  Like that happens a lot in these societies with people like that doesn't happen here because they're the CEO of Axon, you know, and they have bodyguards and a whole system set up to protect them.
[00:20:16]  It's the same story with, you know, these pharma CEOs who've jacked up the price of insulin, right?
[00:20:21]  It's the same story with every American president, pretty much.
[00:20:27]  I mean, well said.
[00:20:28]  And then also, I don't think this is a diversion at all because you're bringing it back around.
[00:20:34]  The only point I would add is when we talk about the evolutionary necessity of some of those cognitive, like some of that cognitive hardware or design, what we have to realize is that, you know, I think this is what you're getting at, Robert.
[00:20:52]  The need, the need for that kind of person in society is somewhat archaic and vestigial.
[00:21:02]  Like there is potential to do something else.
[00:21:06]  Humans are just very bad at changing in general.
[00:21:09]  Yeah.
[00:21:12]  We sure are.
[00:21:14]  But you know what we're not bad at, Ben?
[00:21:17]  Ooh, ooh, what's that?
[00:21:19]  Producing products and services.
[00:21:22]  And doesn't that make it all worthwhile in the end?
[00:21:25]  The products, the services, you know, sure, we're killing the planet and a lot of the people on it and a lot of the life on it, you know, boiling the oceans, all that stuff.
[00:21:33]  But by God, we have products and we have services.
[00:21:37]  And where would we be without those products and services?
[00:21:40]  Watching a lot more sunsets, sleeping under the stars.
[00:21:44]  Anyway, here's some ads.
[00:21:52]  10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.

=== Outsider With A Secret (03:28) ===

[00:21:55]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:21:59]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach.
[00:22:04]  Murder at City Hall.
[00:22:05]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:22:07]  Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey.
[00:22:08]  What did it?
[00:22:10]  July 2003.
[00:22:11]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:22:16]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:22:19]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:22:28]  Everybody in the chambers ducks.
[00:22:30]  A shocking public murder.
[00:22:32]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:22:34]  Those are shots.
[00:22:34]  Those are shots.
[00:22:35]  Get down.
[00:22:36]  A charismatic politician.
[00:22:37]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:22:40]  I still have a weapon.
[00:22:42]  And I could shoot you.
[00:22:45]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:22:47]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:22:50]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:22:51]  That may have been about sex.
[00:22:53]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:23:06]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:23:10]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:23:14]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:23:16]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:23:20]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[00:23:24]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
[00:23:28]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:23:30]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:23:35]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:23:36]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:23:38]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:23:40]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:23:43]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:23:45]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:23:47]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:23:52]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:23:53]  Trust me, babe.
[00:23:54]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:24:04]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:24:10]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:24:14]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:24:20]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:24:30]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:24:35]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:24:38]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:24:41]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:24:43]  That's so funny.
[00:24:44]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:24:53]  Say you love me.
[00:24:55]  You know I.
[00:24:57]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:25:05]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
[00:25:10]  This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:25:17]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.

=== Dr. Ho Joins Big Taser Payroll (15:29) ===

[00:25:24]  From power to parenthood.
[00:25:26]  Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
[00:25:29]  This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
[00:25:31]  From addiction to acceleration.
[00:25:34]  The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
[00:25:38]  You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
[00:25:45]  And it's a multiplayer game.
[00:25:47]  What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
[00:25:53]  Find out on Mostly Human.
[00:25:55]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[00:25:58]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[00:26:09]  We're back and we're talking about Dr. Ho and his relationship to the Axon Corporation and how it started.
[00:26:15]  So we just talked about Robert Stratbucker who gets exposed in 2005.
[00:26:19]  And right around that time, the Axon Corporation reached out to a doctor at the Hennepin County Medical Center to ask if he wanted to be a consultant for them.
[00:26:27]  Now, this doctor, whoever he was, had too much on his plate already, but he said, hey, I know another doctor who's a workaholic bootlicker.
[00:26:34]  Here's his number.
[00:26:35]  And that is how Dr. Jeffrey Ho wound up on the payroll of Big Taser from a write-up in the Star Tribune, which is a Minneapolis paper that has done, I don't know generally anything about this paper.
[00:26:45]  They've done some incredible work on this specific issue.
[00:26:48]  Quote, in 2005, with funding from Axon Enterprise Incorporated and the Arizona-based taser, the Arizona-based taser manufacturer, Ho wrote an article for police magazine disputing claims from human rights groups that its stun guns were killing people.
[00:27:01]  It has never been scientifically proven that a taser has directly caused an in-custody death, Ho wrote.
[00:27:07]  He offered another explanation to these sudden deaths.
[00:27:10]  Excited delirium.
[00:27:16]  Now, and keep, keep, keep a pin in that.
[00:27:19]  It has never been scientifically proven that a taser has directly caused an in-custody death, which we've heard before, right?
[00:27:24]  You remember the other, we were talking about Wetley, I think it was, said like they don't, we've never, no evidence that these cause deaths.
[00:27:32]  Keep that in mind, because we'll be talking about that a little bit later.
[00:27:34]  We're still talking about Ho for right now.
[00:27:36]  And over the next decade, Dr. Ho joined doctors MASH and Wetley in researching and popularizing the term excited delirium.
[00:27:44]  When interviewed by the Star Tribune, Dr. Ho claimed that excited delirium is real, widespread, and deadly.
[00:27:50]  He claimed that his interest in researching it came from a pure-hearted desire to save lives and reduce the threat of this totally real deadly disease.
[00:27:58]  He did not initially acknowledge his financial relationship with Axon, but when Axon was reached for comment, they cited Dr. Ho and their other pet doctors in order to claim, quote, there is no longer a true debate among knowledgeable medical professionals on whether excited delirium syndrome is a valid diagnosis.
[00:28:16]  So there's not a debate anymore.
[00:28:19]  Thank you, Axon.
[00:28:20]  Oh, okay.
[00:28:21]  Now, as we've already cited a number of knowledgeable medical professionals who will argue that it is very much not a settled debate, we've cited a lot of those people, but considering the number of shill docks who keep making claims like this, I feel the need to keep quoting counter arguments.
[00:28:37]  Dr. Homer Vinters is the former chief physician of Rikers Island Jail in New York City.
[00:28:43]  He now works for a nonprofit that studies healthcare in the criminal justice system.
[00:28:48]  He does not believe that excited delirium is a valid diagnosis.
[00:28:51]  Quote, this is not a medical diagnosis.
[00:28:54]  I think there's still an open question as to the scientific legitimacy of excited delirium.
[00:29:00]  Now, there are emergency medical specialists who do not work for Axon and believe there is some validity to the excited delirium diagnosis.
[00:29:07]  They tend to argue that if you don't acknowledge this constellation of symptoms as real, how can you expect police officers to recognize when someone might be at risk of dying in custody because of it?
[00:29:18]  To which I might respond, the cop with Derek Chauvin that day in Minneapolis recognized excited delirium and George Floyd still died.
[00:29:27]  It sure seems like it doesn't help anyone stop deadly behavior.
[00:29:31]  It just justifies it.
[00:29:33]  Now, one of the people who went to bat for Dr. Ho in that article was Dr. James Miner, chief of medical, chief of emergency medicine at Hennepin County.
[00:29:42]  Dr. Miner authored a taser research article with Dr. Ho.
[00:29:46]  He does not seem to work for Axon.
[00:29:49]  I cannot find any evidence that he is directly paid by Axon, but he still benefits financially from Dr. Ho's relationship to the company.
[00:29:58]  Here's why.
[00:29:59]  Quote, Axon Enterprise retains Ho as its contract medical director, a job to which he dedicates 32 hours per month at HCMC.
[00:30:07]  In exchange, Axon pays the hospital about $140,000 per year.
[00:30:12]  Ho's annual salary at Hennepin Healthcare is currently $460,000.
[00:30:16]  Ho's position with Axon is not disclosed on HCMC's website.
[00:30:21]  So you see what's happening here.
[00:30:22]  As long as Dr. Ho is employed by Axon, Dr. Miner's Hospital has $140,000 less dollars they need to find in their budget every year because Axon pays that chunk of his salary.
[00:30:35]  In 2016, HCMC, the hospital they both work at, lost $49 million.
[00:30:41]  In 2017, they lost $29 million.
[00:30:45]  So they are in an every penny count sort of situation.
[00:30:49]  And Dr. Miner could be argued to benefit directly from Dr. Ho's financial relationship with Axon because that's less money he has to find in his fucking budget and clearly his budget is tight, right?
[00:31:00]  There absolutely is an ongoing financial interest that this guy has too, even if he's not receiving money from Axon.
[00:31:07]  Dr. Ho took Axon money for well over a decade, which means the hospital would have gotten something like $1.4 million from the company.
[00:31:15]  And he used his position during this time, his position of prominence within the hospital, to defend both the Axon Corporation and cops who killed people.
[00:31:24]  In 2007, Ho went to Las Vegas to defend a Nevada cop accused of killing a man by tasing him repeatedly, even after that man had been strapped to a gurney.
[00:31:33]  A coroner's jury determined that the taser had played a role in that man's death.
[00:31:37]  So a cop tases a restrained man to death and a coroner's jury says, yeah, the taser is part of why he died.
[00:31:45]  And Taser says, oh, we're not going to take that shit sitting down.
[00:31:48]  This gets back to what I was saying earlier, right?
[00:31:50]  Dr. Ho's able to claim, I can't think of a single case where a taser was found to have killed somebody.
[00:31:55]  It's because whenever a taser is found to kill somebody, Axon goes to fucking war, right?
[00:32:01]  That's why that is the case.
[00:32:04]  And they've got the money to throw at it too, right?
[00:32:07]  Yeah, of course they do.
[00:32:08]  Cops are buying a lot of tasers.
[00:32:11]  Now, Dr. Ho was not about to let that stand.
[00:32:16]  In 2005, he'd taken a course with the Las Vegas Police Department on excited delirium.
[00:32:21]  And in 2007, in court, he cited symptoms of excited delirium to explain how the man had died, totally independent of being repeatedly tased.
[00:32:30]  The judge ruled in favor of the police and Axon.
[00:32:33]  In 2008, Axon hired Ho as part of their lawsuit against a medical examiner in Ohio who cited tasers as a factor in three deaths.
[00:32:41]  Ho argued that the taser could not have killed any of those people, claiming that excited delirium had caused death in all three cases.
[00:32:48]  The judge ruled again in favor of Axon, and the medical examiner was forced to remove any reference to taser from the death records.
[00:32:56]  In one of these cases, this exonerated a police officer who was being charged with murder.
[00:33:02]  So that's good.
[00:33:05]  That's good shit.
[00:33:11]  Yeah, it's so fun.
[00:33:14]  We're having a good time.
[00:33:16]  So I imagine that someone is.
[00:33:22]  I don't know.
[00:33:23]  Like, it's weird.
[00:33:25]  It's time, I guess, for an irrelevant fun fact.
[00:33:29]  You know, for any fans of Scrooge McDuck, right, you might automatically imagine the people in Axon swimming in a vault of money.
[00:33:39]  But it's actually really difficult, especially if you want to get a dive with some air.
[00:33:44]  You're much more likely to hurt yourself.
[00:33:46]  And so at this point, Robert, it feels like, and I know we've got more to explore here, but it feels almost like that kind of ridiculous injury is the only consequence that these folks will face for these actions, right?
[00:34:03]  Because it appears like business is booming with tasers.
[00:34:07]  They're not getting in tasers.
[00:34:08]  Taser's doing great, right?
[00:34:09]  Yeah.
[00:34:10]  Yeah.
[00:34:11]  No, Taser is fucking nailing it these days.
[00:34:17]  Yeah, it's not great.
[00:34:19]  And we've been talking about how Taser goes after and like goes to war, basically.
[00:34:25]  Anytime a medical examiner is like, yeah, obviously a taser killed this guy, or at least a taser was a factor in his death, right?
[00:34:30]  Like it's also the fault of the cop tasing him as opposed to purely the taser.
[00:34:35]  Because in a lot of cases, as a general rule, these cops are not using tasers the way they're supposed to be used.
[00:34:40]  They're repeatedly tasing people at closer range and for longer periods of time than they're supposed to.
[00:34:45]  But Taser doesn't want to deal with any of that bad press, which means defending the cop entirely and removing the tasers even being involved in the death, rather than just being like, they're using our product improperly, you know?
[00:34:56]  Which is often the case.
[00:34:58]  Here's another completely sociopathic passage from that Axon investor document I quoted in the last episode.
[00:35:04]  Quote, continued aggressive litigation defense to protect our brand equity.
[00:35:09]  We have assembled a team of world-class medical experts at our disposal and hired additional internal legal resources during 2005 to provide an efficient means of defending us against numerous product liability lawsuits.
[00:35:20]  We have had a total of 12 cases dismissed or defense judgments in our favor.
[00:35:24]  We view a continued record of successful litigation defense as a key factor for our long-term growth.
[00:35:31]  So it's good for the bottom line.
[00:35:33]  We got to slander dead people and sue medical examiners who dare to say that being tased repeatedly is bad for you.
[00:35:44]  Where do those medical professionals get off with the audacity to do their jobs?
[00:35:50]  Yeah.
[00:35:51]  Yeah.
[00:35:51]  To dare, to dare to blame a device that electrocutes people for their heart stopping.
[00:35:58]  Yes.
[00:35:59]  Fucking shameful.
[00:36:01]  About $159 US dollars per share.
[00:36:04]  It's up 5.3% today.
[00:36:06]  Oh, wow.
[00:36:06]  Yeah.
[00:36:07]  So let's look at their five.
[00:36:08]  Wow.
[00:36:08]  Their five-year trend line in 2016, they were at like $30 a share.
[00:36:14]  And they're down from their peak, which was a little earlier this year, February, but they're at like, so that's, you know, five years they've like quadrupled in stock value.
[00:36:25]  So that's pretty good.
[00:36:27]  Holy smokes.
[00:36:28]  Yeah, let's take a look.
[00:36:30]  Oh, yeah.
[00:36:31]  So they were at like a low point in 2000.
[00:36:34]  So yeah, at around like 2004, 2005, they're like very like 960 a share.
[00:36:44]  And really they start to soar after 2016.
[00:36:48]  That's like almost all of their stock growth has happened after that point.
[00:36:54]  And they're only 28 years old as a company.
[00:36:57]  Yeah.
[00:36:58]  Yeah.
[00:36:59]  I don't know why I sometimes get that.
[00:37:01]  I'm probably not the only one, but I sometimes like if you read a lot about defense corporations and like the bigger players in the industry, it's it's always easy or tempting to assume like, oh, these dudes are old as shit.
[00:37:18]  And they go back to, you know, the world wars and so on.
[00:37:22]  But that's not the case.
[00:37:24]  28 years old, founded 1993.
[00:37:27]  And obviously we're talking about a new kind of thing with a taser.
[00:37:31]  Like the technology hasn't existed all that long.
[00:37:34]  But yeah, these guys are like they're new to law enforcement.
[00:37:39]  Even if you're someone who believes cops should exist and there's a benefit to having cops, there's a lot of evidence that we're capable of maintaining cops are capable.
[00:37:48]  Whatever you think they're doing that's positive can be done without a taser or at least with a maybe with a taser that's that accepts the deadliness of their product potentially and works to mitigate it rather than just suing anyone who claims it's deadly.
[00:38:03]  Like an ethical way, if you're going to, if there's any ethical way to do this, and I do think there's ethical reasons for less than lethal weapons, even though I don't believe in the police, I think that there's reasons to have stuff that's not a fucking gun that you could use against somebody that might stop them from carrying out a violent act.
[00:38:20]  An ethical company, were that to be a sort of thing that could exist, would be like, oh, God, they died in this case because the person applied the taser for too long.
[00:38:28]  Let's build in like a guidance thing so that it can't do so shocks.
[00:38:32]  Like, oh, maybe we have it too hot.
[00:38:33]  Like you, there are ways in which this could be more ethical than it currently is, but it seems like mostly what they do is just sue anybody who claims their product's dangerous, which is cool.
[00:38:45]  So cool.
[00:38:45]  And good.
[00:38:46]  Yeah.
[00:38:46]  So good.
[00:38:48]  During his time with Axon, Dr. Ho has provided expert consulting in more than 24 lawsuits in 14 states and one Canadian province.
[00:38:56]  In addition to the $140,000 per year Axon paid of his salary, Ho bills $400 an hour for his services to Axon and the different law enforcement agencies he defends.
[00:39:07]  He's been hired to give more than 100 presentations around the world on Taser's wonderful technology.
[00:39:12]  In 2006, he lectured to French police.
[00:39:14]  In 2011, he gave presentations on arrest-related deaths and the use of force in Serbia and Turkey.
[00:39:20]  In 2017, he traveled to London and Ireland to spread the gospel of TASE.
[00:39:25]  By 2019, Dr. Ho was an extremely valuable and prolific contributor to the spread of tasers worldwide.
[00:39:32]  That year was the first time his financial relationship with the company was revealed publicly when the Star Tribune published a bombshell investigation titled, Where Law and Medicine Collide.
[00:39:42]  Here's how that article opens up.
[00:39:45]  Depending on the day, Jeffrey Ho's work attire may include a doctor's white coat or a badge and a .40 caliber Glock with high-capacity magazines.
[00:39:53]  Ho transitions between head of paramedics at HCMC, where he oversees the response to tens of thousands of 911 calls every year, and a part-time sheriff's deputy in rural Minnesota.
[00:40:03]  He also draws on his expertise in healthcare and law enforcement for a third job.
[00:40:07]  He is a paid advocate for the Taser Stun Gun, one of the most popular police weapons in North America.
[00:40:12]  Ho's allegiances to medicine and policing collided last year when investigators from the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights discovered that police officers were urging paramedics to sedate emotionally disturbed people in the field with the powerful sedative ketamine.
[00:40:25]  Some patients were then enrolled without their consent in an HCMC study on ketamine, on which Ho was a lead researcher.
[00:40:32]  Now, this is getting us a little bit outside of tasers and excited delirium, but it's a fucked up story and we're going to talk about it.
[00:40:38]  So starting in 2014, researchers at HCMC led by Ho, started having paramedics responding to medical emergencies inject, quote, agitated people with either ketamine or a control group sedative to see which worked better.

=== Police Direct Paramedics To Drug Patients (04:44) ===

[00:40:53]  As noted in the quote above, patients were not asked for consent and were only informed afterwards of what had been done to them and that they'd been enrolled in a study.
[00:41:02]  Now, medical ethics does allow for patients to be drugged without consent under certain circumstances, right?
[00:41:08]  Sometimes people are a danger to themselves and others, and that is considered to be the best way to deal with it, right?
[00:41:13]  If the situation is an emergency and the risks of the medication are considered minimal, this can be done, but that is not the case with ketamine being administered in Hennepin County.
[00:41:23]  From a write-up in Nature, quote, 39% of subjects who received ketamine developed respiratory problems that required the insertion of a breathing tube, compared to only 4% of those who received the sedative haloperidol.
[00:41:35]  The study also reported that ketamine sedated patients much more quickly than haloperidol did, but that respiratory side effects were most likely to develop in severely agitated patients who received ketamine.
[00:41:45]  So there's significant dangers to this.
[00:41:48]  After three years of drugging agitated people at random, the HCMC launched a second study of ketamine use in non-compliant patients.
[00:41:57]  420 people were enrolled in this study, although enroll is an odd term to use for people who are drugged against their will.
[00:42:04]  The way the study was supposed to work was that all agitated patients admitted to the hospital during the first six months of the year would be dosed with ketamine, while everyone who was agitated and admitted during the last six months of the year would receive haloperidol.
[00:42:18]  Or a different sedative.
[00:42:19]  The hospital had to study, had to shut the study down after just six months, though, because a Star Tribune investigation publicized a report from the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights.
[00:42:28]  This report alleged that, rather than the study being conducted just on patients admitted to the hospital, local cops had started advising paramedics to drug troublesome patients, including people the police had already physically restrained.
[00:42:42]  Now, the hospital denies that police.
[00:42:44]  Yeah, that's not good, is it?
[00:42:46]  That's fucking disturbing.
[00:42:50]  Yeah, cops are the people who should determine when someone gets fucking ketamine.
[00:42:55]  Right, because then inherently the police, who are not doctors, with this one notable exception of Dr. Ho, that puts them in a supervisory or administrative role in this study, does it not?
[00:43:10]  You could argue that.
[00:43:16]  But these guys aren't part of the study necessarily.
[00:43:18]  This is just happening in the field.
[00:43:20]  Like the hospital gets approved to do this on patients in the hospital.
[00:43:24]  And so this stuff becomes part of the toolkit paramedics are carrying around and cops find out about it and they just start having people drugged when they're having an issue with somebody.
[00:43:33]  Wow.
[00:43:34]  That is pretty rad.
[00:43:36]  That has never happened.
[00:43:37]  Yeah.
[00:43:38]  Well, for everybody in the audience today who's a big fan of recreational drugs and is somehow not familiar with ketamine is fun.
[00:43:46]  Yeah.
[00:43:47]  Yeah.
[00:43:47]  Well, is not fun.
[00:43:48]  In the right circumstances.
[00:43:51]  There we go.
[00:43:52]  Very important asterisk there.
[00:43:55]  If you are a fan of recreational drug use, you probably don't want law enforcement calling your dosage or you don't want to be hanging out with them.
[00:44:05]  And also, I would argue, you know, when you're saying in the right context there, Robert, you probably mean consensual ketamine, right?
[00:44:13]  Yes.
[00:44:13]  Yes.
[00:44:14]  Yeah.
[00:44:14]  Yeah.
[00:44:14]  Like the last time I did ketamine was in a hotel in Los Angeles with a bunch of friends.
[00:44:20]  Well, like a friend and their co-workers.
[00:44:23]  And we were all railing lines of ketamine off of the side of a machete and having lovely conversations.
[00:44:28]  And that was a wonderful night.
[00:44:31]  We called it machetamine.
[00:44:33]  But we all consented and none of us were being restrained by police at the time, which I think both of those facts were key to our enjoyment of the machetamine that night.
[00:44:42]  That's really funny.
[00:44:44]  It was.
[00:44:45]  It's a good way to do ketamine.
[00:44:48]  I highly recommend it theoretically.
[00:44:52]  You know, theoretically.
[00:44:54]  So hypothetically.
[00:44:56]  Hypothetically, that would be an enjoyable thing to do.
[00:44:59]  And I should note for legal purposes, HCMC denies that police ever directed paramedics in this way, but you can decide whether or not you believe them.
[00:45:10]  I think the Star Tribune's reporting makes me question that.
[00:45:14]  But you know what I don't question?
[00:45:15]  Dorita.
[00:45:17]  Nothing says Cool Ranch like a mustard gas cloud billowing across the fields of Flanders.
[00:45:23]  Anyway, here's some products.
[00:45:31]  10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
[00:45:34]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.

=== HCMC Denies Ordering Ketamine Use (04:09) ===

[00:45:38]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach.
[00:45:43]  Murder at City Hall.
[00:45:44]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:45:46]  Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:45:48]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:45:55]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:45:58]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:46:06]  Everybody in the chamber's docks.
[00:46:09]  A shocking public murder.
[00:46:11]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:46:12]  Those are shots.
[00:46:13]  Those are shots.
[00:46:14]  Get down.
[00:46:14]  A charismatic politician.
[00:46:16]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
[00:46:18]  I still have a weapon.
[00:46:21]  And I could shoot you.
[00:46:24]  And an householder with a secret.
[00:46:26]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:46:28]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:46:30]  That may have been about sex.
[00:46:32]  Listening to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:46:45]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:46:49]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:46:53]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:46:55]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:46:59]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:47:03]  I'm Anna Sinfield.
[00:47:04]  And in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:47:06]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:47:08]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:47:13]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:47:15]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:47:17]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:47:19]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:47:22]  They said, oh, hell no.
[00:47:24]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:47:26]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:47:30]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:47:32]  Trust me, babe.
[00:47:33]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:47:43]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:47:48]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:47:53]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:47:59]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy.
[00:48:07]  Really too many to name.
[00:48:08]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:48:13]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:48:17]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:48:20]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:48:21]  That's so funny.
[00:48:23]  Shariach stay with me each night, each morning.
[00:48:31]  Say you love me.
[00:48:34]  You know I.
[00:48:36]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:48:43]  I'm Lori Siegel, and on Mostly Human, I go beyond the headlines with the people building our future.
[00:48:49]  This week, an interview with one of the most influential figures in Silicon Valley, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[00:48:56]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to products we put out in the world.
[00:49:02]  From power to parenthood.
[00:49:04]  Kids, teenagers, I think they will need a lot of guardrails around AI.
[00:49:08]  This is such a powerful and such a new thing.
[00:49:10]  From addiction to acceleration.
[00:49:12]  The world we live in is a competitive world, and I don't think that's going to stop, even if you did a lot of redistribution.
[00:49:17]  You know, we have a deep desire to excel and be competitive and gain status and be useful to others.
[00:49:23]  And it's a multiplayer game.
[00:49:26]  What does the man who has extraordinary influence over our lives have to say about the weight of that responsibility?
[00:49:32]  Find out on Mostly Human.
[00:49:34]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[00:49:37]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

=== High-Risk Experiment On Asthma Victims (08:25) ===

[00:49:48]  We're back.
[00:49:49]  And I was just telling my friends how, while 18 grand isn't enough to buy my integrity, just giving me a pile of weapons is.
[00:49:56]  Like, if the company that makes Bearcats wants to give me a Bearcat, I will stop complaining about the police bearcats.
[00:50:02]  I'm telling you all that right now.
[00:50:04]  My integrity is the price of a free bear cat that I could drive around town.
[00:50:09]  I'll do it.
[00:50:10]  I'm not even, I don't even feel bad about it.
[00:50:12]  Yeah.
[00:50:13]  You would use it for good, though.
[00:50:15]  No, I absolutely would not.
[00:50:23]  But it would be, it would be fun.
[00:50:25]  It would be fun.
[00:50:27]  There's a lot of things you can do with a bear cat that people would have trouble stopping you from doing.
[00:50:32]  So we should probably get back to the episode.
[00:50:35]  Yeah, now, the Star Tribune report on this Hennepin County Medical Center ketamine study also revealed that in several cases, these involuntary ketamine doses stopped patients' hearts.
[00:50:47]  Multiple people had to be resuscitated at the hospital, and some of these stories are fucking horrifying.
[00:50:52]  Here's the Star Tribune.
[00:50:54]  And remember, Dr. Ho is one of the lead researchers on this study.
[00:50:57]  Good guy.
[00:50:58]  Quote, body camera footage from one case showed a woman after being maced by police asking for an asthma pump, the draft report said.
[00:51:06]  Instead, a paramedic gave her an injection of ketamine.
[00:51:09]  If she was having an asthma attack, giving ketamine actually helps patients.
[00:51:12]  And we're doing a study for agitation anyway, so I had to give her ketamine, the unnamed paramedic told a police officer, according to the report.
[00:51:19]  After receiving ketamine, the woman's breathing stopped and medical staff resuscitated her, according to the report.
[00:51:25]  It is troubling that the dictate of the study mentioned by the paramedics appears to have played a significant role in the decision to administer ketamine, the report's authors wrote.
[00:51:33]  I can tell you, as someone who has had asthma and who has had to deal with other people's asthma, the thing you do is not just give them a bunch of fucking special K. Right.
[00:51:43]  You give them their inhaler, you know?
[00:51:45]  Yeah.
[00:51:47]  I'm not a paramedic, but that would be my go-to treatment for asthma.
[00:51:53]  Yeah.
[00:51:53]  Is asthma medication as opposed to a fuckload of ketamine that stops their heart.
[00:51:58]  I'm not a doctor.
[00:52:01]  Again, none of us, I think, are doctors, but we like everybody.
[00:52:08]  You are a reverend doctor.
[00:52:10]  Sorry.
[00:52:10]  Recognized by the state of New Jersey.
[00:52:12]  Yes.
[00:52:12]  I am not a paramedic.
[00:52:13]  No.
[00:52:15]  No.
[00:52:15]  Yeah.
[00:52:16]  But I feel like that's a reasonable assumption there, Robert, that you give someone asthma medication for asthma and not ketamine.
[00:52:24]  Yeah.
[00:52:24]  Not to be a backseat first responder.
[00:52:27]  Yeah.
[00:52:27]  You know, I know we're a hard job tambulance, but yeah, right.
[00:52:32]  But that seems like ketamine will be the go-to.
[00:52:37]  It's just a weird direction to take it.
[00:52:40]  Like if someone is going into a diabetic shock, right?
[00:52:44]  Then wouldn't your go-to be something like insulin?
[00:52:48]  But again, not a paramedic.
[00:52:50]  Not a paramedic, but yeah, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be ketamine.
[00:52:55]  It wouldn't be ketamine.
[00:52:57]  So Thomas Hosley, 18 years old, wound up enrolled in this study because he had a seizure.
[00:53:04]  His mom called 911 and cops and paramedics showed up.
[00:53:07]  His mother insists that he was not combative at all.
[00:53:10]  Quote, he was not arguing.
[00:53:11]  All he was doing was crying for me because they wouldn't let me be by him.
[00:53:15]  Despite this, the police restrained him and had paramedics shoot him up with special K. When his mother saw him next, he was unconscious and intubated.
[00:53:23]  In all these cases, the victims were informed they'd been enrolled in Dr. Ho's study afterwards by letter.
[00:53:29]  64 doctors, bioethicists, and academic researchers co-signed a complaint against the HCMC study.
[00:53:36]  Michael Karom, director of a health research group and co-signer of that complaint, explained, quote, this isn't even a close call.
[00:53:43]  This is clearly a prospective high-risk experiment.
[00:53:46]  This is really just a colossive failure of their program to protect human subjects.
[00:53:51]  Dr. Jeffrey Ho did not see it that way.
[00:53:54]  All available evidence suggests he thinks that the costs of this study, which are the dignity, bodily autonomy, and health of its participants, were minor compared to the prospective public health benefits.
[00:54:04]  He told the Star Tribune, I very much view my careers in emergency medicine, law enforcement, and research as parallel pathways to public safety.
[00:54:12]  It is my life's work to develop these areas of intersection for the benefit of public protection.
[00:54:17]  Question.
[00:54:19]  You got a question about that?
[00:54:20]  Do you think he believes that?
[00:54:22]  I think he has to.
[00:54:24]  I think he knows at some level, because he's not a dumb man, right?
[00:54:29]  You don't have a resume like this guy if you're a dumb, and you're not that successful at arguing in court if you're a dumb man.
[00:54:35]  He's not a dumb man.
[00:54:36]  But I also think people are very good at knowing on some level what they're doing is wrong and still doing it because fucking money talks, baby.
[00:54:46]  Yeah.
[00:54:46]  And intelligence also helps with rationalization.
[00:54:51]  Yeah.
[00:54:52]  Well, props to his mental parkour.
[00:54:54]  Yeah, props to his mental parkour.
[00:54:57]  Now, I'm watching For All Mankind right now, which is an alternate reality TV show about what if the Russians had made it to the moon first.
[00:55:03]  And it kind of follows the American space race if we lose the race to the moon and like what happens as a result of that.
[00:55:09]  One of the characters in it is Werner von Braun, who was a real guy.
[00:55:12]  He was probably the reason we actually did make it to the moon first.
[00:55:16]  He was a brilliant rocket scientist who also was a Nazi.
[00:55:20]  He was a member of the SS.
[00:55:22]  He would argue that it was forced upon him.
[00:55:24]  I don't think that's a valid.
[00:55:26]  And I think a lot of historical research suggests it's not.
[00:55:29]  But he did what he did and he utilized slave labor.
[00:55:33]  There were death camps that provided labor.
[00:55:36]  Thousands of laborers died building his rockets, which he wanted to use to explore space, but he was willing to turn into weapons because it furthered his rocket research.
[00:55:45]  And I think he would have justified it if he'd ever really been called to account for it by saying like, look, the importance of my research had value for all of mankind.
[00:55:55]  So even though people were suffering in the immediate term, it was worth it for the long-term benefits of what I was doing.
[00:56:02]  I don't think that justifies being a Nazi and utilizing slave labor.
[00:56:09]  It just doesn't.
[00:56:11]  But you can, if you're a smart person, you can always find a justification.
[00:56:14]  Like, I will find a way to justify my partnership with the company that makes bearcats so that I can get a free bearcat to drive around town in.
[00:56:23]  Can you imagine just getting up in the mountains doing donuts and whippets in a bearcat?
[00:56:27]  That would be so fucking rad.
[00:56:29]  Shooting out the window.
[00:56:30]  Oh, my God.
[00:56:32]  Yeah.
[00:56:32]  Yeah.
[00:56:33]  And look at the interior, really.
[00:56:35]  You get the covered cab option.
[00:56:37]  Oh, actually.
[00:56:37]  You could live there.
[00:56:39]  Though overlanding in a fucking bear cat sounds like a great time.
[00:56:43]  Oh, God.
[00:56:45]  Look, bearcat people, I have already admitted on air, I will sell my integrity for one free bearcat.
[00:56:51]  So let's make it happen.
[00:56:54]  It doesn't have to be a bearcat.
[00:56:55]  Any route clearance vehicle, really, I'll take.
[00:56:58]  Like defense manufacturers, one of those big up armored trucks they drive around Afghanistan and Iraq.
[00:57:02]  Just send it here and I'll change my tune.
[00:57:05]  You know, that's, it's, it's that easy, people.
[00:57:07]  I support you in this, you know, but like at this point, you know, I think you really went hard on the bearcat angle.
[00:57:15]  Like, I think maybe we can, maybe you can say that.
[00:57:18]  You can be like, hey, I'm a man of integrity.
[00:57:21]  I'll sell my soul for a root clearing vehicle, but it's got to be bearcat, right?
[00:57:28]  Maybe that's.
[00:57:28]  I'll sell my soul.
[00:57:29]  No, I'm, you know, I'm not particular.
[00:57:32]  I will sell my soul for any modern armored vehicle, as long as it's not like a BMP.
[00:57:39]  Fucking Russian trash.
[00:57:41]  Anyway.
[00:57:45]  Or a Humvee.
[00:57:46]  Fuck Humvees.
[00:57:46]  No, thank you.
[00:57:47]  I've been in a lot of them and they suck.
[00:57:50]  But like a big one.
[00:57:51]  It's got to be real fucking.
[00:57:53]  It's got to be like a real monster of an armored vehicle.
[00:57:57]  And then I'll sell out.
[00:57:59]  Absolutely.
[00:58:00]  Absolutely.
[00:58:01]  Lockheed Martin.
[00:58:02]  We could make a lot of money together.
[00:58:04]  Well, you could make a lot of money and I could go joyriding in an armored vehicle.
[00:58:08]  Win-win.
[00:58:09]  Well, not for all of the people who will die, but for me, a win-win.

=== Experts Blame Deaths For Excited Delirium (15:18) ===

[00:58:14]  So the story about HCMCC's ketamine program broke it right around the same time as the story about Dr. Ho's cozy relationship with Axon.
[00:58:23]  There was an immediate outcry by the community and by some elected officials in Minneapolis.
[00:58:28]  HCMC's chief executive resigned over the ketamine study.
[00:58:32]  Dr. Ho's relationship with Axon was a thornier problem.
[00:58:36]  Publicly, the hospital stood by him, but the Star Tribune revealed a recording of a private meeting Dr. Ho had with a group of paramedics in which he admitted the hospital had asked him to resign.
[00:58:45]  He told them, why would I resign?
[00:58:48]  I didn't do anything wrong.
[00:58:50]  He blamed politics and an overzealous police oversight board for the fact that people were angry at him.
[00:58:56]  I'm sure I don't have to tell any of you that I think that Dr. Ho is a grifting scumbag and any ethical society would be stripped of his medical license and flung into the sun.
[00:59:04]  I could rant about him for a while, but it is time to move on because there is much more fuckery afoot.
[00:59:09]  But so far, we've discussed how excited delirium came about, how it's used to explain away police murder, how Taser hired experts like Dr. Ho to blame deaths caused by their product on excited delirium, and how they sue medical examiners who rightfully blame their products for deaths in custody.
[00:59:25]  But it gets shadier than that.
[00:59:27]  I want to quote now from a Reuters article, which opens with yet another story of a man being killed by a cop with a taser.
[00:59:32]  Quote, with a police officer close behind, Israel Hernandez-Locke ducked into an apartment building and dashed down the hall.
[00:59:40]  Busting through a rear exit, he scrambled over an iron fence, landing hard on a parked car and sprinted across the parking lot.
[00:59:46]  Within seconds, officer Jorge Mercado caught up with him, drew his taser and fired a single shot to the chest.
[00:59:52]  The recent high school grad, an aspiring art teacher, collapsed on the sidewalk in cardiac arrest.
[00:59:57]  The chase lasted six minutes.
[00:59:59]  It was 5.20 a.m. on August 6th, 2013.
[01:00:02]  At 6.18 a.m., he was pronounced dead.
[01:00:06]  And by the way, Israel Hernandez-Locke was being chased by a cop because he was spray painting shit.
[01:00:11]  He got murdered for graffiti.
[01:00:13]  Four hours later, the Miami Beach Police Department received an email from stun gun manufacturer Taser International.
[01:00:19]  So Israel dies 6.18 a.m. from a taser shot to the chest.
[01:00:24]  Four hours later, Taser emails the police department.
[01:00:28]  The message, marked confidential and not previously reported, provided guidance on how investigators should proceed, from collecting hair and nail samples to recording the teen's body temperature and documenting his behavior before he was stunned.
[01:00:40]  It included a sample press released and an evidence collection checklist.
[01:00:45]  In bold letters, marked timely and urgent, the dispatch advised Miami's medical examiner to send the teens brain tissue for testing to Deborah MASH, a University of Miami medical researcher.
[01:00:57]  It did not mention MASH had been paid by Taser to testify on its behalf in lawsuits.
[01:01:02]  Yeah, that's right.
[01:01:03]  That's fucking right.
[01:01:04]  If a cop kills you with a taser, they will send your fucking brain tissue to the Axon Corporation or at least one of its pet medical examiners.
[01:01:11]  Holy shit.
[01:01:12]  Yeah.
[01:01:13]  So that's, oh, okay.
[01:01:14]  So when we say guidance, first off, that timeline is four hours.
[01:01:22]  Profoundly disturbing.
[01:01:24]  Yeah.
[01:01:25]  And then secondly, when we say guidance, what are we that feels like guidance with air quotes around it?
[01:01:33]  Yeah.
[01:01:33]  Because it feels like it's written kind of like a mandate.
[01:01:35]  Like they write a press release for you and you just slot in the name of the officer and the dead kid, you know?
[01:01:41]  Oh, man.
[01:01:42]  It's fucking rad.
[01:01:44]  It's awesome as shit.
[01:01:46]  It's so good.
[01:01:47]  Everything I just read in that excerpt is part of the total package that Axon offers to law enforcement agencies.
[01:01:53]  If you tase some teen to death, you're not on your own.
[01:01:56]  Axon will send you a ready-made fill-in-the-brank blank press release and they'll help you come up with a way to blame the victim.
[01:02:02]  Lawyer Todd Falzone, who represented the Hernandez-Locke family in a liability suit, explains, from the minute they find out someone dies, they're doing everything they can behind the scenes to set up a legal defense.
[01:02:14]  So the case goes away.
[01:02:16]  Now, when questioned about the Hernandez-Locke case, the Miami-Dade County Associate Medical Examiner Mark Schuman told Reuters he was unaware that Dr. MASH was employed by Axon when he sent that teenager's brain tissue to her lab for tests.
[01:02:30]  When Reuters reached out to Axon, VP of Communications Steve Tuttle told them it was not the company's responsibility to inform Schuman that they were advising him to send brain tissue to one of their employees.
[01:02:41]  They didn't think Dr. MASH's relationship with the company was something police needed to know either.
[01:02:46]  Quote, why would I tell them something that's a legal matter?
[01:02:49]  I'm not a lawyer, he said.
[01:02:55]  Oh, fuck you, Steve.
[01:02:57]  You fucking piece of shit.
[01:02:59]  You absolute goblin.
[01:03:02]  Oh, my God.
[01:03:04]  You soulless monster.
[01:03:07]  Oh, it fucking.
[01:03:08]  Oh my gosh.
[01:03:10]  Yeah.
[01:03:11]  Tuttle went on to describe Dr. Mash as a, quote, respected, independent expert.
[01:03:16]  Reuters was able to show that she had received at least $24,000 from the corporation from 2005 to 2009.
[01:03:22]  That's just a four-year period.
[01:03:24]  We don't know the full amount that she has been paid by Axon over the years for her services.
[01:03:28]  We don't even know that that's the full amount from 2005 to 2009.
[01:03:31]  That's what they were able to verify.
[01:03:33]  We do know, thanks to Reuters, who did a great job.
[01:03:36]  It really has been like a fucking pit bull latched on to this specific story about like the tasers in Axon.
[01:03:46]  They've really done some incredible work on this.
[01:03:49]  And we know thanks to them that there have been at least 1,005 incidents in the United States where people have died after being stunned with tasers.
[01:03:58]  When questioned about Taser's weird policy of inserting themselves into active investigations over deaths in custody, Tuttle told Reuters that his company just wants to ensure investigators get, quote, the best available evidence in cases where people are killed or hurt by their weapons.
[01:04:12]  As he explained it, the scientific information Axon passes on to examiners is just, quote, things that an outside investigating agency needs to see.
[01:04:21]  Coincidentally, one of Axon's chief finding after all these years of sticking their nose into investigations is that the overwhelming majority of people who die after being tased are killed by underlying health conditions, drug use, or some other police force besides a taser.
[01:04:35]  From Reuters, quote, though the company has warned since 2009 that a shock to the chest can affect heart function, it says no one has died from taser-induced cardiac arrest.
[01:04:45]  It asserts its weapons have been a factor in just 24 deaths, always as a result of secondary injuries, such as hedge injuries from falls after someone was stunned.
[01:04:54]  In 2009, the American College of Emergency Physicians published a white paper on excited delirium, which is quoted regularly by the FBI and by guys like Dr. Jeffrey Ho and ladies like Dr. Deborah Mash when they need to blame deaths caused by tasers or other excessive force on the victim.
[01:05:10]  Incidentally, Drs. Ho and Mash were two of the authors of that white paper.
[01:05:15]  At least one of the other 19 members of the task force who wrote that white paper was also a paid taser consultant.
[01:05:21]  The paper described excited delirium as, quote, a real syndrome of uncertain etiology or cause.
[01:05:28]  The white paper didn't.
[01:05:30]  Yeah.
[01:05:31]  Now, that white paper did not note that three of its authors were paid employees of Axon.
[01:05:37]  This was justified by the fact that it came out in 2009 when disclosures were not required for task forces assembled by the American College of Emergency Physicians.
[01:05:46]  They started requiring that in 2011.
[01:05:48]  Ah, we just didn't require that at the time.
[01:05:50]  It's not a lapse of ethics or anything.
[01:05:52]  No reason to re-examine this.
[01:05:55]  Now, so far, everything I've gone over today is pretty fucked up and infuriating.
[01:06:01]  But guess what?
[01:06:02]  It gets worse because Axon also decided in the early aughts to try to preempt as many lawsuits against medical examiners as possible by just buying up medical examiners like Dr. Deborah Mash.
[01:06:14]  Here's Reuters, quote, Michael Graham, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners in 2005, was approached by Taser in 2007.
[01:06:22]  The chief medical examiner for St. Louis and professor of pathology at St. Louis University agreed to be a paid Taser consultant and still receives an annual stipend, he said.
[01:06:31]  Taser wanted to educate medical examiners about the physiological effects of its weapons and rebut criticism running contrary to the science, Graham said.
[01:06:40]  In 2014, the Medical Examiners Association hosted a big meeting on tasers and stun guns.
[01:06:45]  Graham presented at that meeting.
[01:06:47]  So did Mark Kroll, a University of Minnesota professor and a member of Taser's corporate board since 2003.
[01:06:54]  Kroll did disclose his tie to the company when he told medical examiners that tasers satisfy, quote, all relevant safety standards and advised them to this exclude the weapons as potential causes of death.
[01:07:06]  In 2008, Mark Kroll testified in a wrongful death suit and suggested that tasers were like therapy for people suffering from excited delirium.
[01:07:15]  Wow.
[01:07:16]  If you start exhibiting taser therapy because you're excited.
[01:07:22]  That's like, that's honestly like saying that is like saying dying is therapy for depression, except that depression is real.
[01:07:34]  Yes, yes.
[01:07:36]  Yes.
[01:07:37]  I'm going to read this quote from Mark Kroll because in an episode full of sociopathic shit, this might take the cake.
[01:07:44]  This is what he said in court.
[01:07:47]  If you start exhibiting excited delirium behavior and you are in the terminal throes of death and you are so bizarre you can't be controlled anyplace else, you will receive taser therapy.
[01:07:58]  They need to be brought under control so their lives can be saved.
[01:08:03]  Just a life-saving in it.
[01:08:05]  I mean, obviously, in my medical kit, I keep a taser right next to the tourniquet.
[01:08:08]  Sometimes you need to tourniquet.
[01:08:10]  Sometimes you got to tase people.
[01:08:12]  Well, that's just medicine.
[01:08:14]  Ketamine.
[01:08:14]  Yeah.
[01:08:16]  Ketamine at the end.
[01:08:17]  Look, if you've got ketamine in a taser, you're basically a hospital.
[01:08:22]  Yeah, you're a walking hospital.
[01:08:25]  You're the sole Dr. Cop at that point.
[01:08:28]  Yeah.
[01:08:30]  So Kroll is a bioelectricity scientist.
[01:08:33]  In 2016, he earned $267,000 from Taser and owned $1 million in company stock.
[01:08:40]  In an email to Reuters, he insisted that his affiliation with the company did not bias his research, explaining, due to this well-known relationship, I was motivated to be very careful to be extremely accurate and objective.
[01:08:55]  Oh, good.
[01:08:56]  Oh, good, good, good.
[01:08:59]  So, so in other news, it's like Fox calls new hen house design a step forward and better overall for the hens, right?
[01:09:10]  If we're using the tired kind of go-to.
[01:09:12]  Yeah, this open-air hen house, really, foxes are big fans.
[01:09:18]  The wider doors, really, when you think about it, are more friendly for everyone.
[01:09:23]  For everybody.
[01:09:24]  Everybody benefits.
[01:09:26]  And then the chickens get more fox therapy.
[01:09:28]  Right, right.
[01:09:29]  Fox therapy, which is, you know, according to Fox Therapeutics International, that's like a leader.
[01:09:36]  Very, very reputable.
[01:09:38]  Yeah.
[01:09:39]  Yes.
[01:09:40]  This is unconscionable, man.
[01:09:42]  This is pretty bad, right?
[01:09:45]  So let's end by talking about one more murder.
[01:09:48]  I think this one is valuable to discuss because it really brings together just every shady tactic and shady professional we've discussed in our episodes so far.
[01:09:57]  In 2004, David Glausinsky's mother called the police because her son, a schizophrenic suffering from substance abuse, was in the midst of a psychotic episode.
[01:10:06]  She told 911 he needed to be hospitalized.
[01:10:09]  When the cop showed up, he was standing in the street, screaming incoherently while holding a Bible and a book about the grateful dead.
[01:10:16]  Officers tried to restrain him.
[01:10:17]  Glausinski kicked and screamed.
[01:10:20]  The cops took him to the ground and one stunned him nine times by applying a taser directly to his flesh.
[01:10:26]  He was handcuffed.
[01:10:27]  His legs were zip-tied, and a 270-pound officer pressed him to the ground while another maced him.
[01:10:33]  David went into cardiac arrest and died on the spot.
[01:10:37]  His mom sued the cops and Axon, and you know what comes next.
[01:10:42]  From Reuters, quote, Taser persuaded a judge to exclude a medical examiner and pathologist with 25 years experience whose testimony was central to the family's case, arguing that it was unqualified, unsupported, and unreliable.
[01:10:56]  Backed by a half dozen experts, Taser asserted that there was no medical certainty its gun shocks caused acidosis.
[01:11:03]  The death was natural and attributable to excited delirium, Taser argued.
[01:11:07]  The company had help from Suffolk County Medical Examiner.
[01:11:11]  The post was held then by Charles Wetley, the man who had revived the excited delirium theory to explain Miami cocaine deaths decades earlier.
[01:11:19]  At Whetley's direction, the coroner on the case, his deputy, sent Glausinsky's brain samples to Deborah MASH at the University of Miami.
[01:11:27]  MASH found evidence of exhaustive mania, a form of excited delirium said to occur when drugs are not present.
[01:11:34]  In his autopsy report, the coroner echoed MASH's findings.
[01:11:37]  The Glausinsky family's lawyers called the concept of excited delirium a sham.
[01:11:42]  The defense prevailed.
[01:11:43]  In 2013, Judge William Wall dismissed Taser from the case, finding no admissible evidence.
[01:11:49]  The stun gun killed Glausinsky.
[01:11:51]  Fucking hell.
[01:11:53]  It's pretty good.
[01:11:54]  Good shit.
[01:11:56]  Just rad.
[01:11:58]  How much is Big Taser?
[01:11:59]  I feel like we can say Big Taser now, unironically.
[01:12:02]  How much is Big Taser paying the judge?
[01:12:05]  I don't know if they are.
[01:12:06]  You know, I assume they're paying a lot for the lawyers.
[01:12:09]  I assume, you know, there's a lot of shitty judges who are sympathetic to Taser.
[01:12:13]  And I don't know if they're paying the judge or if they just know how to make the argument to get shit dismissed.
[01:12:19]  I don't know.
[01:12:20]  I'm not going to do what is legally slandered to a judge without more evidence on that.
[01:12:26]  It's possible that the actual corruption here is just in all of these paid experts, right?
[01:12:31]  And the judge is looking at all of these experts who are paid by Taser and being like, well, if all these people are saying the Taser couldn't have done it, the Taser must not.
[01:12:40]  I don't know.
[01:12:40]  I'm not defending the judge either.
[01:12:42]  I just don't know enough about his specifics.
[01:12:46]  You're, I mean, you're right.
[01:12:47]  You're right.
[01:12:48]  That's fair because otherwise it gets a little too far into speculation.
[01:12:52]  But my friend, I think you've proven a solid case that this I know it's very stereotypical and on the nose for me to be the one who says this, but it's kind of a conspiracy, is it not?
[01:13:05]  It is we could call it a conspiracy.
[01:13:08]  Yeah.
[01:13:08]  Yeah.
[01:13:09]  Ben, Ben thinking something's a conspiracy.
[01:13:12]  What?
[01:13:12]  What?
[01:13:12]  What is this?
[01:13:13]  What is this strange thing?
[01:13:14]  A conspiracy.
[01:13:17]  Some way call.
[01:13:18]  That's all I'm saying.
[01:13:19]  The pieces are there.
[01:13:20]  I'm not saying it's a cake yet, but there's some flour.
[01:13:24]  There's some sugar.
[01:13:26]  There's a shit ton of people who could have been alive.
[01:13:29]  Yeah.
[01:13:29]  Most importantly, I think.
[01:13:30]  Yep.

=== Ridiculous History Of Police Violence (04:14) ===

[01:13:32]  Yep.
[01:13:32]  Well, that's the episode.
[01:13:36]  Ben.
[01:13:36]  That's the episode.
[01:13:38]  Ben, you got some plugs that you'd like to plug at this exact moment in time.
[01:13:43]  Drop down in the P-zone, baby.
[01:13:46]  So, yes.
[01:13:48]  If you haven't listened, I'm going to do a weird reverse plug.
[01:13:51]  If you haven't listened to It Could Happen Here somehow, please check it out.
[01:13:57]  If you'd like to hear more about critical theory applied to allegations of corruption and conspiracy, check out stuff they don't want you to know.
[01:14:06]  And if you'd like to hear about ridiculous history, because there's a lot of it, then check us out at Ridiculous History.
[01:14:15]  That's it for me.
[01:14:16]  This is going to stay with me.
[01:14:17]  You know, I appreciate that.
[01:14:19]  I appreciate that we need a two-parter.
[01:14:21]  I think me too.
[01:14:25]  Bad and not cool.
[01:14:27]  Yeah.
[01:14:27]  Yep.
[01:14:28]  Anyway, that's going to do it for all of us here at Behind the Bastards for the week.
[01:14:32]  Until next week, I don't know.
[01:14:35]  Dr. Jeffrey Ho's home addresses.
[01:14:38]  No, Sophie's giving me the I might be committing a felony sign.
[01:14:43]  Okay.
[01:14:44]  Well, that's just a joke for legal purposes.
[01:14:50]  Also, I don't actually, I don't actually know his address.
[01:14:53]  So nor would nor would I suggest anything unfortunate.
[01:14:59]  Really in the episode episode's over.
[01:15:05]  Yeah, we have.
[01:15:05]  We have to end this now.
[01:15:08]  All right uh, have a good week or be very angry, or both.
[01:15:27]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:15:35]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:15:38]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:15:40]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:15:42]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[01:15:46]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[01:15:48]  Trust me, babe.
[01:15:49]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:15:58]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[01:16:06]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[01:16:09]  I doctored the test once.
[01:16:11]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[01:16:16]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[01:16:18]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Manchini.
[01:16:20]  My mind was blown.
[01:16:21]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[01:16:23]  This is Love Trapped.
[01:16:24]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[01:16:26]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[01:16:31]  Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:16:38]  10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
[01:16:41]  How could this ever happen in City Hall?
[01:16:43]  Somebody tell me that.
[01:16:44]  A shocking public murder.
[01:16:46]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[01:16:52]  They screamed, get down, get down.
[01:16:54]  Those are shots.
[01:16:56]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[01:16:59]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
[01:17:03]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:17:12]  I'm Laurie Siegel, and this is Mostly Human, a tech podcast through a human lens.
[01:17:17]  This week, an interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
[01:17:20]  I think society is going to decide that creators of AI products bear a tremendous amount of responsibility to the products we put out in the world.
[01:17:27]  An in-depth conversation with the man who's shaping our future.
[01:17:31]  My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI.
[01:17:34]  Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
[01:17:43]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:17:45]  Guaranteed human.