This Past Weekend - Chris Hansen | This Past Weekend #156

Episode Date: December 13, 2018

Theo Von has Chris Hansen 'take a seat' and talks to him about To Catch a Predator, his decades long journalism career, and his family. This episode brought to you by… Quip https://www.getquip.com/weekend 1st refill pack FREE with purchase of toothbrush using this link OMAX3 Visit OMAX.com/WEEKEND to receive a box of Omax3 Ultra-Pure, FOR FREE with your first purchase! Grey Block Pizza 1811 Pico Blvd. Santa Monica, CA http://bit.ly/GreyBlock Music “Shine” - Bishop Gunn http://bit.ly/Shine_BishopGunn Gunt Squad Aaron Jones Aaron Rasche Aaron Stein Adriana Hernandez Aidan Duffy Alaskan Rock Vodka Alex Hitchins Alex Person Alex Sideris Alexander Contreras Amanda Sherman Andrea Gagliani Andrew Valish Andy Mac Angelo Raygun Angie Angeles Anna Winther Anthony Schultz Arielle Nicole Ashley Konicki Audrey Harlan Ayako Akiyama Bad Boi Benny Baltimore Ben Beau Adams Yoga Ben Deignan Ben in thar.. Ben Limes Benjamin Streit Big Easy Brian Martinez Brian Szilagyi Bryan Reinholdt Bubba Hodge cal ector California Outlaw Campbell Hile Carla Huffman Casey Roberts Casey Rudesill Cassandra Miller Chad Saltzman Charley Dunham Christian from Bakersfield christian prado Christopher Becking Christopher Stath Clint Lytle Cody Cummings Cody Kenyon Cody Marsh Cory Alvarez Dan Draper Dan Ray Dave Engelman David Christopher david r prins David Smith David Wyrick deadpieface Deanna Smith Dirty Steve Domonic DoMoreKid Donald blackwell Doug Chee Dwehji Majd Dylan Clune Felicity Black Felix Theo Wren Fernando Takeshi Sato Gabriel Almeda Garrett Blankenship General Moose Ginger Levesque Grant Stonex Greg H Gunt Squad Gary Haley Brown J Garcia J.T. Hosack Jacob Ortega Jacob Rice James banks James Bown James Hunter Jameson Flood Jason Bragg Jason Haley Jeffrey Lusero Jenna Sunde Jeremy Johnson Jeremy West Jerry Zhang Jesse Witham Joaquin Rodriguez Joe Dunn Joey Desrosiers Joey Piemonte John Bowles John Kutch John Slade Johnathan Jensen Jon Ross Josh Cowger Justin L justin marcoux justin shuy Karen Sullivan Katy Doyle Kelly Elliott Ken Comstock Ken Melvin Kennedy Kenton call Kevin Best Kevin Fleury Kevtron Kiera Parr Kigabo Kirk Cahill Kishalin kristen rogers Kyle Baker Lacey Briesemeister Laura Williams Lauren Cribb Leighton Fields Linsey Logan Yakemchuk Lorell “Loretta” Ray Luke Danton Mark Glassy Matt Eckenrode Matt Holland Matt Kaman Matt Leftwich Matthew Azzam Matthew Price Matthew Sizemore Matthew Snow Max Bowden MEDICATED VETERAN Megan Andersen-Hall Megan Daily megan Wrynn Meghan LaCasse Michael E. Ganzermiller Michael polcaro Michael Senkpiel Micky Maddux Mike montague Mike Poe Mike Sarno Mike Vo Mitchell Watson Mona McCune Ned Arick Nick Butcher Niko Ferrandino Nikolas Koob Nyx Ballaine Alta Old McTronald Old Scroat Mccrackin Owen Lide Paddy jay Passenger Shaming Patrick Gries Paul Flores Paul Lococo Peter Craig Peter Shea Philip James Qie Jenkins Ranger Rick Rashelle Raymond Renee Nicol RinDee Roar Hanasand Robert Doucette Robert Mitchell Robyn Tatu Ryan Crafts Ryan Forrest Ryan Garcia Ryan Jordan Ryan Walsh Ryan Wolfe Sam Illgen Sarah Anderson Scott Scott Lucy Scott Swain Sean Scott Season Vaughan Shane Pacheco Shannon Schulte Shawn-Leigh henry Sonja Prazic Stacy Blessing Stahn Johnson Stepfan Jefferies Stephanie Claire Steve Corlew Steven Stoody Sungmin Choe Suzanne O'Reilly Taylor Beall thatdudewiththepaperbag The Asian Hamster Thee shitfaced chef TheGremlin Cafe Tim Bonventre Tim Greener Tim Ozcelik Timothy Eyerman todd vesterse Tom in Rural NC Tom Kostya Tom Reichardt Tommy From England Tommy Redditt Travis Simpson Travis Vowell Trevor Fatheree Troy Ty Oliver Tyler Harrington Tyler Shaver Victor Montano Victoria Adams William Morris William Reid Peters xTaCx Stretch Zech JohnsonSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1811 Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles on the way to the beach. There have been moments in my life where my mouth was empty. And then I realized there's a way I can change that. Grey Block Pizza. Get that hitter. Today's episode is a very unique guest. This man has ran across more of the dark arts than maybe anyone. He's come face to face with them.

He's sat them down. You know him from To Catch a Predator. You know him from his years of investigative journalism. He is something unique. Let's get to know him right now. Ladies and gentlemen, it is Mr. Chris Hansen. Shine that light on me I'll sit and tell you my story Shine Thank you for joining us today.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Yeah. And have you, do you get out to Hollywood a lot? I do because some of the production companies with which I work are based out here. So when I was doing the Crime Watch Daily show, for instance, that's Warner Brothers. They're right there in the Burbank area. Right. And so I get out here frequently.

Do you do – crime is so – people are obsessed with crime. They really are. I mean, you look at the show, for instance, Killer Instinct that is on Investigation Discovery, the ID network. And that network literally has either the first or second number of female viewers from that coveted demographic. Yeah. Not just of cable, but in all of broadcast. Right. And people watch.

Because females are, those are the ones most likely to be like shopping and spending money with advertising, right? Well, I think. Taking care of homes and stuff like that. I think that's part of it. We also get a very healthy, you know, male viewership on, you know, the various crime shows that I do. I think what draws people in is this attitude that I try to bring to every show where, you know, I take the viewer along on a journey of discovery. Where they get to see things they wouldn't normally see, hear things they wouldn't normally hear.

I get to go places that most people don't get to go. I get to talk to people most people don't get to talk to. And so that's fascinating for the average viewer. Yeah, it's kind of almost, I wonder if you seem to me like as, because I would consider myself a, I guess basically like this, I would consider myself probably a female viewer. I mean, I've watched so much of those types of programming. I mean, not really, but I mean, it's almost like, yeah, I guess I'm almost in that demographic.

But you're almost like a, you're like, I can't tell sometimes if I'm like, you seem like an Edgar Allan Poe of sorts, you know? Or like a concierge to like the dark arts or something a little bit. I mean, I know you're reporting and you're kind of the Sherpa, but- Well, that's valid. You look at some of the different investigations we've done over the years and I do occupy a unique space in television and journalism. And it's been crime. and i've been at it literally for some 36 years i started very young in the business i was six no

but uh but you know so so it's true you know i was at a um a uh news conference in in um la one time for kicking off a show and and and one of the print writers who covers broadcast for Gannett, who has covered me for many, many years, said, do you ever go to therapy or get counseling for all the dark stuff you do and see? I said, no, it's all kept down there nice and safe, where I like it. I'm good. Do you ever think that those types of things like that subconsciously, though, that interacting with such a dark, a Voldemort-y cauldron of the universe kind of, that that can impact you on a level that you're not able to? Yeah, I think so. I mean, you look at people sometimes like, what's that guy up to over there? What's he doing over there?

Or you think through scenarios where something bad happens and you have to react not just as a journalist in covering it, but you're in the middle of it. Right. And it's been interesting because my two sons are in the business now. So one is an assistant cameraman and a production assistant on my shows and many, many others. And the other is a reporter in Traverse City, Michigan. He just got a job in Oklahoma City. Oh, nice. So they've grown up in this.

Yeah. And you see it affect them a little bit. You know, we finished a season of Killer Instinct, and my oldest son looks up at me and goes, man, I am just murdered out. I got to go do some food shows for a little while. Yeah, I need to focus on a full on. Some flea market flip or something.

Yeah, yeah. Dude, I need some crew. I got to go. I got to go. Fast, Dad. I got to go see a flea market flip or something. Dude, I need some crew to relate fast, Dad. I got to go see Mr. Ramsey. When you go back to going back to talking about how women watch a lot of those types of shows, do you feel like there's something secretive in women or something that, like I've always had this weird idea that some women like want to be murdered in a weird way. And I know that's kind of a drastic statement, but like there's something about it.

What is that? Well, you know, that's a great question. And I think it's a lot of things. I think that, you know, women empathize with victims. I mean, men do too. Right. I get a lot of, you know, grizzled male cops who watch these shows all the time and Wall Street guys and business people and all watch them.

Shady comedians. Shady comedians. But I do think that for whatever reason, again, our key demographic on a lot of these shows skews female. Do you think killers seem like tall, dark, and handsome in a way to women? Like is there is there like on like a different level do you feel like there's some romantic thing because yeah for some reason in my head i'm like women secretly all want to have someone break into their home or something i don't buy that i think it's it's more of all right i'm gonna learn how this stuff happens so

i don't become a victim myself and that's kind of the way I look at these shows, these investigations, is if we can hear the voice of a victim or a victim's family, if we can get into the mind of a criminal, whether it's a killer or a predator or a sex trafficker or human trafficker or somebody dealing heroin in Dayton, Ohio, you can better understand how it all works and you can prevent other people from falling into that trap of becoming a victim themselves and that's a big part of what i do yeah do you feel like you know after um like to catch a predator and you know that um do you feel did you feel like a hero like at certain points during that show like did you feel how did you feel like as that show went on and you guys were

you know you guys were catching um i guess i don't know if they're pedophiles or perverts at that point or what the term is predator i think okay predators there you go is the right term i mean pedophile has a very distinct definition in psychiatric circles uh people use it all the time it was in in the New York Post today on the flight here. So people use that, but predator is the best way to put it. And when we first did those investigations, the first one was in Long Island. And I remember driving out there thinking, geez, what if nobody shows up? What if I've just wasted thousands and thousands of dollars of the network's money? And within seconds of that thought, my producer was on the cell phone

saying, where the heck are you? We've got two guys coming in 45 minutes. And all of a sudden, 17 guys show up in the course of three days, including a New York City firefighter and several others. And you can imagine that first investigation. I mean, we had security and we had precautions and we had the online decoys in the house and we had it all set up, but we didn't really know how this was going to go down. So I've got transcripts all over a dining room table in the next room and I walk out to confront the third guy who comes in and I'm just trying to keep my heart in my chest at this point.

So you are actually nervous when you walk out there? I was, especially on the first one. Now you always are on edge because you don't know what you don't know. Right. You don't know what is in his pocket. I mean, we take precautions. We know the background. We know if they've got a concealed weapons permit and many other things that we—

So you have as much intel as you can, but you don't— But, you know, I walk out there, and I confront this third guy in the first investigation. I said, it says right here you want to do this, that, and the other thing to a 13-year-old girl named Susan. No, that's not me. Excuse me. Go back, get the other. What about a 14-year-old named Beth? No, that's not me. Excuse me. Come back. A 12-year-old named Betty. Yeah, that's me. Okay, good. We can start. And it was just, it was that. Oh, wow. There was that much? There was just, obviously, we refined it as we went along. And the most recent investigation-

But literally, you were like saying, oh, sorry, wrong guy yeah i got the wrong recipe i need to go back and oh yeah and i got to get the one so you know we refined it over over time and you know we the most recent one we did we now call it hansen versus predator and we're getting ready to do another one uh very soon and um you know we have it down to a system but there's always that unexpected possibility you know again we have security the police are doing, but there's always that unexpected possibility. You know, again, we have security,

the police are doing a parallel investigation. So I feel very safe. The crew is very safe, but there are a lot of moving parts here. And we essentially set up a television production studio in another part of the house because, you know, most of what we get in terms of video is with hidden cameras. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm seeing that and I'm seeing the lights kind of hidden. Like I worked with howie mandel on some hidden camera shows so like even when i'm able to watch some of you guys's work it's like you know i'm even able to see some of the just the same parallels you know because a lot of the production kind of stuff is the same did you when these guys like did you feel like as a viewer sometimes when I would watch that show, sometimes I would feel like remorse. I would feel like anger. You know, I'd feel sorry sometimes for the person that was getting captured. Not that, like in one part of me, if you asked me any day of the week, like what do you think about, you know, people that molest children or something?

Yes. I would say, you know, they'd be damned yeah you know like but but in that moment and watching it sometimes i felt bad for them what is that well sometimes i'm the prosecutor the detective sometimes i'm the psychologist just trying to get in their heads and have them talk to me and sometimes i'm the the dad, you know, when it's a younger guy. Yeah. And I do sometimes feel empathy for some of these characters. And everybody wants, in our society, one size fits all.

This is how we treat the problem. Yeah. And the reality is that, you know, not all these guys are the same character. They're the hardcore, you know, guys who would go after kids no matter what. Yeah, I saw some of those guys in their 50s and 60s. Right, they'd be at the playground with or without the internet. The middle section are guys who do this because they have the access to the internet, the 24-hour access, the anonymity, and just the ability to be on there and continually chase

their fantasy and all of a sudden they cross this line between fantasy and reality and they're knocking on our door and they're there and then you've got the younger guys who may be socially inept and i'm not defending them one bit but these are guys who you know made a mistake and they can probably get probation for a year right and computer monitoring and they'll get scared straight yeah i saw there were some guys yeah like in their 19 19 and 20 year old you know we usually don't even the decoys don't even engage somebody unless they're 21 unless there's a extenuating circumstance right so you guys so at a certain point the decoys started to really seek out like oh these guys are a lot more predatory than maybe some young some guy who's 18 years old might be just a little bit more on the perverted

fringe or something well we don't seek them out right we have a very strict protocol okay so the online decoys um will go into various social platforms and they'll create a profile that is unmistakably of an underage child. Right. Picture, age, everything there. And they don't contact anybody. They get contacted. I see. And then the alleged predator has to make the sexual suggestion first.

Otherwise, we don't engage. sexual suggestion first. Otherwise, we don't engage. We don't go out and say, okay, here's a 44-year-old man. Let's see what he's going to do if he's approached by a mature-looking 13-year-old girl. Yeah. That doesn't happen.

Then it's a gray area. What we do is pretty much black and white. Yeah. Was there ever a predator that came in that brought tears to your eyes that really hit you? Not because I was sorry for them, but I remember one, people always ask, what's the most memorable moment? I said, well, it's a 100-way tie for first because they're all memorable.

Right. There was a fellow in Fort Myers, Florida who showed up to meet a 13 or 14-year-old boy, clearly had solicited this boy for sex. Mm-hmm. And he shows up and he pulls up in an SUV and we're watching on the monitors and he goes around to the passenger side rear door and we think he's going to pull out pizza or DVDs or something.

Was it a red SUV? I feel like I remember that. It was bluish green. Sorry, yeah. Yeah. There were plenty to go around. So anyway, he gets his five-year-old son out of the car, out of the child seat, and they walk up the driveway, and I'm like, how am I going to handle this one?

But where does that hit you? Does that hit you at that moment? It hit me. It hits you just as a reporter, like how I'm going to, like a logistically? No, it was, it took the breath out of the room. Now, these guys. Yeah, that's sad. Who I work with. with i mean i've had them around the world we've been in africa and india and cambodia and all kinds of heavy duty investigations over the years and these guys

were silent some in tears and so he walks in with his boy when hearing you say that i mean just he's got a five-year-old kid with him and i don't think he was going to involve the kid in the sex act. He was going to put a Barney DVD on in the next room or some child show. And he walks in. I said, look, I'm Chris Hansen. You know why you're here. I know why you're here. I'm not going to subject your child to what I normally do.

And he left. And a female officer scooped him up and the child up and he was arrested. And all the while, his wife's at work on a Sunday in a retail store. And he's running around town doing this. Yeah, and a lot of that type of behavior, it seems like, you know, I'm like in recovery and stuff like that. So I'm in a lot of world where you see a lot of people who struggle with stuff and they try to get through their demons.

I've actually met friends. I have a friend now that's a flasher, which is crazy. It's crazy, but it's also he's a regular guy and he has this compulsivity. He's like, sometimes I'll go walk in my dog and halfway down the block i realize i don't have my dog you know right like so you like start to see some of the stuff that goes on in his head right um do you feel like a lot of these guys that that are predators did something happen to them like are you able to see any of that like or learn about any of that like lineage is there any lineage i think there's been some linkage there you know among some of the 300 plus guys who have surfaced in our investigations um it's hard to tell

because once you know they're off our radar they're either in prison or in counseling or doing whatever i think a lot of it is really just the opportunity and the ability of these guys to reach out to underage. I mean, remember when we first started doing these investigations, we merely used chat rooms on Yahoo and AOL. Right. And that was just a little box. That was just it. Just it. That was it. I mean, I remember one time when Yahoo lost all power because of a fire on the West Coast. And we were down. We were done. We couldn't put our decoys out there and we couldn't communicate with the alleged predator.

And we actually had to stop the investigation for a few days until it came back up. So that just shows you how the internet is integral in that. And look at today with Badoo and Kik and all these other social platforms. Twitch, all these things work. All of it. The children interacting on video games with people that they don't know. One of my producers was having a conversation with his teenage son. I want to say he was like 14, 15 at the time.

And he said, what's that on your cell phone? He goes, oh, well, it's this app where you can randomly talk to people who are just on the app. And he said, well, show me how it works. And he dials somebody up. And it's a 42-year-old woman who says, or someone who identifies themselves as a 42-year-old woman says, I'm just jumping in the shower. I'll call you when I get a towel around me. He's like, no, no, no, no. We're getting rid of that app right now.

But just without even trying. It's such gateway it was a random you know connection do you feel then like that there's some like sometimes the internet i mean even for myself like i've struggled in my life with like um relationships commitment um i think a lot of it is probably from or some of it some of the things have been from growing up issues. I had some of them though. I've struggled with watching pornography growing up and like using that as like an outlet to feel something good about myself sometimes in a, in a whatever wrong way that is. Right.

But, but I can see how that web can get tricky and you can get down that staircase and it's excess. It's like having, it's a devil. Yeah. It's addictive. It's like, it's a devil yeah it's addictive it's like it's like an opiate should there be laws or more restrictions against that well it's hard to make

laws because the whole notion of the internet is its ubiquitous nature and and you know all the the access is right there i mean i think there's a responsibility for parents to regulate children on the internet. I always say that, you know, the golden rule should be that if you don't know the person in real life, you shouldn't be chatting with them or giving personal information to them on the internet. Because the person who is a stranger on Tuesday can groom kids into being their best buddy by Friday. Yeah. It's very dangerous. You know, it's interesting. I used to do this thing called crank texting, right? Chris, where I would basically take, I took my phone number one day and I changed the last two digits of it. And I just sent out a random text to that number. And I said, hello. Right. So my so my last number my name my number ends in six

seven so I changed it to like seven four right and I just said hello and sent a message out and then somebody texted me back and like hey who's this and I was like oh it's Alan made up a name and that person's like oh Alan from so and so and I said yup and next thing you know they thought I was Alan so then for while, I started doing this thing where I was just crank texting like masses of numbers. I would send like a, hey, what's up, to like large groups of anonymous cell phone numbers that I didn't know.

And one time I found myself texting, it was some kid who's like after school or something, they thought they're in like a band or something at school, and they thought I was some friend of theirs who was in the band, right? And I realized, holy, this is crazy. I'm just here goofing around, trying to do prank calls but on text. And next thing you know, I'm communicating with a kid who thinks I'm immediately a peer of theirs.

They assume. Obviously, I do a lot of social media for the shows and for what I do for a living. You know, obviously I do a lot of social media for the shows and for what I do for a living. And, you know, the vast majority of the people on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, they may be listed as friends, but I actually don't know them. And it's shocking sometimes what people will expect from you, will say to you, and you really don't know sometimes, do I respond to that? I really don't know sometimes do I respond to that? If somebody identifies themselves as a live-in nanny in Washington State who suspects the mother's boyfriend has improper interest in the daughter she's babysitting, what do I do about that? It's a real quandary. Because that's a real thing that could come into your social media box. It happened last week.

I'm sure. And this is why I get these every day Oh I'm sure And so is it a prank? Is it real? What is my social responsibility To deal with it? You know normally

I alert the police Or I tell the person To alert the police And if they have a problem with that I'll facilitate it But if I give them advice And it goes sideways Right

Do you have some liability? Do I have some liability? Or you know How do I know But if I give them advice and it goes sideways. Right. Do you have some liability? Do I have some liability? Or how do I know that somebody's not trying to set a guy up? Right. You always assume the worst when somebody reports that sort of thing, but you never know. And you don't even know if that person is who they say they are. Yeah.

Yeah, somebody could screenshot that and say, Chris Hansen said my husband is a sexual predator or something. Absolutely. Yeah. And so you try to do the socially responsible thing, the journalistically responsible thing. But you have this gray area where, wait a minute, who am I actually talking to? Or, you know, someone will say, hey, can you talk for a minute? Well, I'm on an airplane coming out to L.A. No, I can't. You know, and I try to be pretty engaged in all this stuff and in answer um all the questions and to

be helpful but it's it's it's difficult to follow and again you really don't know who all these people are yeah and you're kind of a linchpin in a strange way because a lot of reporters and a lot of journalists and investigative journalists you know they the, it doesn't have, their thing doesn't, hasn't hit home. And with so many, you know, it hasn't, I don't know, you have, yeah, you're like the, you're like the person that people think of when they think of anything in that world, you know, like I thought of John Walsh and I thought of you, like, I mean, you know, like just in, in terms of like, you know, just like helping out children or dealing with issues with children, you know? Well, it's really hit home with people for a lot of different reasons.

You know, I only half jokingly tell the story of being parodied on South Park. Yeah. Some years ago. Yeah, I saw that last night actually. And my kids were both in high school at the time. And it was the only South Park that season they didn't see. For some reason, they went to bed early. And I didn't know it was going to be on.

So I get a call from one of my agents on the East Coast saying, South Park is doing you right now. It's pretty funny. And then about 20 minutes later, it's taking a dark turn. Because I was on the West Coast. So I didn't see it until three hours later. And it's fine. Look, they're brilliant guys.

And they're about satire. Yeah, they're brilliant. and they also use a lot of people to just get funny. It's fine. Look, yeah, it was dark. Would I have written it that way? No, but I'm not a comedian like you or, you know. Matt Groening or those guys, right? No, that's not South Park. Stone and Parker.

Stone and Parker do the art. Right, yeah. Yeah. And they're genius. They really are. Now, you can take issue with whether it's appropriate or whether you know uh you like it or not but in my son's eyes at you know 16 and 18 years old at the time or whatever you know that was i had made it right their book because chris hansen oh that's cool now oh yeah yeah and all the kids it's high school that i stayed with

oh man your old man was on South Park. Yeah. So that was the benchmark. But it hits home with a lot of people. And look, it's a very serious subject matter. Right. It's a very serious crime. At the end of the day, just like any other investigation, we're trying to educate, create a dialogue that didn't exist before and awareness that didn't exist before. Yeah.

And we've done that. We will continue to do it. And the big lesson, I think, is that enterprise journalism is still very important. Using techniques like hidden cameras and computer-aided reporting and things like that, know you're you really can make a difference but you got to get inside the cron right and it's sometimes difficult it's sometimes expensive it's sometimes dangerous and you have to get you know the network to buy off on it was there a lot of pushback when um was there a lot of pushback when you guys first pushed uh to catch a predator was there there wasn't pushback but there was um an issue where some of the people didn't

get how to promote it and i had a very blunt meeting with uh with higher ups in the in the chain of command and i put it this way i said there's a man knocking on your back door who wants to have sex with your 13-year-old daughter. Tonight we're going to show you how to keep that from happening. And suddenly it was on TV. Yeah. Was there a part where, so as it, because, I mean, it was like being on The Endeavor, you know? I mean, that show, it was like a space show.

I don't know, that's not the one that blew up, is it? I hope not. The Challenger. Okay, good, yeah. So it was like being on The Endeavor. I mean, that thing was a rocket, right? Right. Was there parts, though, where it started to become too much like, okay, Chris, we want you to talk to him more.

We want to watch this guy fry out there kind of stuff? Well, I think the goal has always been to get inside these guys' minds, whether it's this or whether it's somebody who's trafficking young women here in Los Angeles or in Atlanta. And look, anybody can jump out of the bushes and create 10 seconds of dramatic video. My goal is to get the guy to have a seat and to explain to me what brought him into the situation. And more often than not, they will sit and talk. Now they may run their line of BS and say, I was here to check on the girl. I was worried about her safety, or I was just going to be a mentor to this young boy. And I've heard all the excuses that you can possibly imagine, but I want to know. And oftentimes these guys will open up and say, you know, I just got caught on the internet.

And as I got older, the people I was talking to got younger. And I just had this fantasy. And, you know, it seemed like it was going to be okay. I mean, I've had guys in the latest investigation that aired, you know, last year. Is this True Crime Daily? Is this Crime Watch? This is a part of Crime Watch. So we did Hanson versus Predator.

Yeah, I was watching some of that. On Crime Watch Daily. part of crime watch so we did hansen versus predator yeah i was watching some on crime watch and you know we had a guy show up an insurance executive from boston drove all the way to fairfield connecticut brought pizza offered me pizza offered the crew pizza but he had in his car a quote-unquote marriage contract that he thought would make it legal yes for him to have sex with i saw him and he sat in eight ate pizza, and he had the contract. We had a guy show up who was an employee of one of the cable companies who was on the waiting list to become a police officer in Connecticut, who, when they searched his car, they found a loaded gun, duct tape, a camera, and a knife.

Oh, that's hide-and-go-seek in Afghanistan, I feel like. Right. But yeah, no, that's, I mean, that's hide and go seek in in afghanistan i feel like right but um but yeah no that's that's um i mean that's scary what's he going to do with a 13 year old girl once she goes for a ride with him right to give quote unquote a driving lesson right yeah what if some what if yes say one behavior right right a sex act occurs then he still has he's wet like what is it then where does his mind go that he doesn't even know his mind is about to go to another place where then it escalates and what if she you know says hey

wait this is too much for me i'm only 13 yeah and he kills her yeah anything could happen did you did you it's interesting to me that like when it goes from online to real life like that's really a lot of what i feel like when i'm watching your – that's what I started to see. Like, oh, this is wild because this is something that – it's this fictional universe online. I mean, it's real, but it's not tangible. So your brain can go to kind of dark places, but not really be doing dark things. What happens, I think, sometimes, and you hit it right on the head, is that men will say things online that they wouldn't say face-to-face, not to a woman, certainly not to a 13-year-old or 12-year-old girl. Yeah, I'll even text things when I'm dating somebody that I wouldn't probably be afraid to say in person.

Well, you think about it later and say, well, that's not kosher. Right. But I think people get ahead of themselves texting or online. It feels safer. It feels. Right. You're one step removed and it feels safer. And suddenly this line gets blurred at some point between fantasy and reality.

And that's when these guys step over and as i said earlier come knocking on our door to fulfill this this fantasy that's building inside them did you ever feel so were you the executive were you the one calling your own shots as well as were you directing yourself there was a whole team when you were with tickets you know obviously we have a uh right there's a whole team producer and we have the crew and we have security and everything. But generally, I'm out there without a net. We did try one time having an earbud so I could communicate. And I honestly didn't like it because it was – I don't – when I'm out there, whether it's on those investigations or others, if I'm listening to somebody, I'm

not thinking about what I'm going to do next. It's like doing an interview like this and having a list of questions and going from this to that. The first thing I do when a producer hands me a list of questions is I put them under the chair. Right. Or you hold these, and when I finish, if there's anything else you want me to do other than what I've done.

Right. Because an interview, as you know, because you do them every week. I'm learning, yeah. Is getting inside somebody's mind. And it's more about listening than looking down at the legal pad for the next question. Well, especially these days, I think audiences want more authenticity. I think audiences feel like they've been so – and I feel like they have. It became such a pattern with television to create like you know such a

specificity you know fueled by advertising kind of thing you know like just a bad it just became water formulaic yes formulaic and this is this is why i think i think uh this investigation and others like it have um become so popular with people is because you don't know i don't know what's going to happen next i mean i always say a good interview is when i look back at the producer and i say anything else and he or she says no and i'm drained yeah you know whether it's with somebody who almost became a murder victim somebody who is a relative of a murder victim somebody who's a detective who investigated a murder or any of these other cases that we delve so deeply into. Did you ever follow up personally with any of those people?

Like, was there ever, is it always like a work? Does it always feel like a work kind of? Are you able, was there ever any where you're like, you know, I need to follow up with this person? I think it'd be interesting to go back and see what some of these guys are up to. And we're talking right now about doing that. Yeah. And I think some would do it.

I think somebody would say, you know, you put me on TV doing something bad. I never want to hear from you again. I hate you. You know, there are people posing as some of the predators caught in the stings, you know, on social media. On social media, online. Reaching out. And I have a hard time believing it's actually them. Right.

I think it's somebody's sick prank. But I think that would be worth doing because I think there are going to be guys who are angry and didn't change. I think there are going to be guys who are repeat offenders, and we know this. Yeah. And I think there are going to be guys who say, you know, I've had some therapy. I've figured this out. I had some time to think about it, and it's wrong,

and they're probably not going to reoffend. But when you get to the hardcore person, and you talk to the psychiatrists who interview them in the prison where they have no reason to not tell the truth, two things are common. One is if they've done it once, they've done it at least a handful of times. And two is there's a very strong correlation between the viewing of child pornography and the commission of solicitation of a child.

Wow. Almost always. Do you think we are able as humans, especially as men, to be able to withstand the fire that is coming off the internet and social media? Are we even built to be able to battle it? I think so. I mean, at the end of the day, you're just as responsible online as you are in person.

Right, but it's different. It is different, clearly, as we've discussed. But I still say that, you know, in this case, you know, right is right and wrong is wrong. Right. I mean, I don't care what people are doing if they're adults and it's consensual online. Right.

That's not my business i'm not the moral arbiter of society but you can clearly say that soliciting a child online yeah undeniably illegal yeah and in wrong on every level and you create a victim there at a very young age who's scarred for life do you undeniably do you feel though that that like the like i guess like there's i just feel sometimes like it's hard to battle against not against the child pornography type of stuff but even if you just start with pornography right like it's hard to like it's such a it's such an opiate in a way you know it's oh it's addictive there's question. It just feels like it's unfair sometimes. Like when I think about the young men now, you know, like I didn't have as much access.

Like when I was young, we had a guy that would draw a picture of a woman for us for the weekend. If I wanted to see like some genitalia or something, they had this guy, Nick, would draw pictures and you'd buy it from him for a couple dollars. You know, I'm of the age where, you know, we buried Playboy magazines in the woods. And I dug them up. And it was, you know, not even that racy by today's standards. It just makes you wonder, like, if kids see that or young people see that, then do other darker things seem less, you know, those aren't real to real to them you know like just just the effects of that and us not knowing i think there are studies that that will prove that's true that you know the repeated uh viewing of pornography and child pornography especially oh yeah it is addictive

and it it creates addictive you know, illegal, antisocial behavior. And the antisocialness has a lot to do with it, too. Right. And that feeds into the Internet. Right. So, I mean, who needs Playboy magazine anymore when you can go to Google and find out whatever you want? I have blockers on my phone and computer. Not for any child.

I've never had, you know, but just from pornography. Like, I don't want that influence anymore. Well, you know, you get a friend request on social media. Yeah, and it can have breasts in the picture. It's just like delete, delete, delete, delete. And you don't know what's up or whether it's real or somebody's creating something or somebody wants to create a linkage that doesn't exist. But you see it. Yeah.

a linkage that doesn't exist but you see it yeah how many women reach out to chris hansen because like there must be like a wild web of ladies out there that are intrigued by you know kind of this clint eastwood of pedophiles kind of you know it's pretty tame really to be honest i mean you know there are some texts like that or messages on social media like that. But generally, like, you know, 95% of them either, you know, whack jobs. Right. Who are saying something absolutely outrageous like, you know, you should burn in hell for what you do to these innocent men. You know, it's like, come on. It's not even worth responding to.

It's block, block, block and, you know, move on. And most of it's like we've got a situation in our neighborhood. What do I do? Or thank you for what you do. Or you should look into this. Or city council member in whatever city is up to no good. It's mostly story related. Right.

Or it's my mom putting out pictures of my nieces. It's mostly on brand kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. There's of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing really. Yeah. But do you feel like though that there's a, I mean, I feel like a, you know, especially with so many women watching that type of programming that they would see you as like a, you know,

you're kind of like a Hugh, like not that you're a Hugh Hefner, but they would envision you like that. Well, I mean, I think some people have fun with you know graphics of body or there was one the other day and and i sent it to my significant other with you know i was in like all built up muscles and chains and ranges like that yeah definitely i said that peloton bike's been working for me i feel pretty fit these days did you um you know a lot of people when they think about you know you guys's show there's a lot of to catch a predator and some of that work um and crime watch daily right is that

okay um that people talk about entrapment a lot you know that that word gets thrown around a lot um did you feel like that sometimes no and here here. First of all, you have to be in law enforcement to commit entrapment. And second of all, we don't create a situation where we go out and say, hey, here's the enticement. Here's the shiny red apple. Come get it. These people all come to us. Right. You know, we are passive.

We just exist online. And the potential predator has to make that first approach. And even in something like human trafficking, where we worked with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department or the Sheriff's Department, police departments down in Georgia, there's a very strict protocol. Because after we make TV out of it, those cases have to be prosecuted. Right. Because after we make TV out of it, those cases have to be prosecuted. Right. And so it's a very strict protocol. And people bring it up.

People say, I was entrapped. Or the other common misunderstanding is that if somebody asks if you're the police or Chris Hansen that you can't do anything about it, well, that's not true. It's just not. And the police sort of don't want to say that because you know it's fine it just makes their cases easier right yeah we're the police okay or are you the police no it's they're not committing a crime or committing entrapment by saying no they're not the police yeah you know it's but did you ever even on a personal note was there times you were like man like because it's definitely like these guys a lot of these pedophiles and you know and predators i mean they're sick right there's some really bad people in that mix of 300 so to take cocaine around somebody that like you know you they're addicted to cocaine they don't have any ability to control themselves you know doesn't it

because i struggle with wondering if it, you know, like even whether it's enticement or entrapment, like what, if it is sometimes, because I would feel bad sometimes watching. But if it's not us, then it's a real child. I mean, what would happen in all these cases, 300 plus cases over,

gosh, going on 14 years now. Yeah. And when you think of it, I mean, Predator is maybe 10, 15% of what I've done over my career, maybe 20. Right, right. You know, but it's just one of those franchises that's gotten all the attention.

What would happen if the guy walks in and there is a real 13-year-old? I'll give you an example. We were doing an investigation down in Riverside and it was just crazy. We had 51 guys in three days. And one of the guys who walked in clearly was

not a hundred percent intellectually. And he came in, the first thing he wanted to do was- Like mentally challenged you mean? Mentally challenged. And I could see that there was a scar, like a carve out on the side of his head where maybe he had an injury or something oh and and they meant like a gang or something no but it was it was yeah an injury okay yeah like

and and he you know was shown in the show but it wasn't a big part of that particular show i didn't really go hard with the interview. He left and was arrested and processed. And I thought, you know, there's a guy who's got some problems and I'm not going to make him, make him, you know, too much worse. He was wrong. He broke the law. He'll face that with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, the prosecutor's office. A month later, we're in Long Beach and lo and behold, the same guy surfaces in that investigation and in fact says, I can't make it on a Friday because I've got a court date from the other Riverside County case.

Shows up on a Saturday and in the course of him traveling to Long Beach, we find out that he did a year in jail for a violent assault. Well, suddenly he's going to make the movie. You know, this is a danger. Yeah. And while I feel sorry for whatever injury he suffered and how that may impact his behavior, it doesn't take anything away from the danger he posed.

Right. And so he becomes, you know, significant part of that particular investigation. And so you feel like over time, you've seen enough proof and evidence for you where you don't feel that you, you feel your responsibility tried and true. If we weren't there, a real child would be. You believe that?

I think in many of these cases, I believe that, yeah. Wow. Is it- Because, I mean, these profiles exist. Yeah, no. Yeah, of course. Right. We're not the only one out there.

You're not making them make profiles. Right. You're Yeah, no. Yeah, of course. Right. We're not the only one out there. You're not making them make profiles. Right. You're not, yeah. You guys are just putting something into that universe that is something they would be intrigued by. You're not making them drive to a place. And kids don't see the danger. I'll give you another example. We did some investigating, and I did this in a book called Catch a Predator some years back.

some investigating and I did this in a book called catch a predator some years back. And we found a case in Arkansas where a young woman, great student was in high school. The daughter of a police officer was on a Christian youth, uh, chat room talking to somebody who identified themselves as a teenager in san diego i think named david and was harmless until it wasn't right when david who ends up being you know well into his 40s shows up in a van kidnaps her from the home assaults her chains her to the back of

his van wow and kills her and so this whole panic, you know, starts looking for this poor missing young woman. And tragically, it ended up the way it did. But it was a real wake-up call to me. And that's why I wanted to, you know, make it its own chapter in the book, because it's an example of a kid who is doing everything right and got tricked. Right. It's an example of a kid who is doing everything right and got tricked. Right. And that's exactly what happened.

He was able to reverse engineer the information. The dad was working the night shift. And there's this haunting log of chat where she's talking to her boyfriend. And her friends were talking to this guy too. It wasn't like, I want to date you or what are you doing or when are you coming to San Diego? Yes, David in San Diego. this guy too it wasn't like i want to date you or what are you doing or when are you coming to san diego david and san diego little bit little bit at a time was able to get the information figure out where she lived and he had a storage um locker all set up for the crime a hotel room and and it was just it was so the risk of possibly you know of some exploitation you feel like that

no matter what that the that the reward and reward and that far outweighs it? Yeah, I think so. And it's also about, you know, being ethical about your storytelling. Right. I mean, from the methodology to how you portray someone. how you portray someone. And, and you know, when we do these investigations,

whether it's predator or anything else, I mean, we are absolutely transparent about the way we do things. And if you say, look, we do it this way, this is why we do it. This is why the police run a parallel investigation and are there.

I mean, you got to remember the first three investigations we did, the first two, the police were not involved until after the fact. And it was, number one, socially irresponsible to let them go. Now, the police did make

some cases after the fact. Right. To their credit. And it was also, from a television production standpoint, it wasn't really rewarding to the viewer. And that's not what drives

the decision. Why? Because the police weren't involved? Because the guy walked away. Because the guy walks away. You know, we have video of him walking down the street or getting in his pickup truck and going away. Yeah. And yet he's out ready to offend the next day.

I mean, the social responsibility is what drove the decision to cooperate with the police. And we, you know, developed a protocol. So that's true. It wasn't like an element of, okay, we need to add an element at the end where it's like the guy gets gnapped. Like it actually came from a place you feel like a social responsibility. It did. And I'm not accusing you. I'm just curious.

No, no, no, no, no. I'm just telling you how it went down, which was, you know, we had done the two. We had done the one in Long Island, New York, and we had done the one in a suburb outside of D.C. And we were looking to do the next investigation. And I don't know whether they reached out to us or we reached out to them, but we got in contact with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. And a lot of lawyering and a lot of meetings went on and to do this in the appropriate fashion. And I think we've done it all along, both at NBC and at a crime watch daily and, and down the road and, and how we,

you know, distribute the next Hanson versus predator. Yeah. And what is Hanson doing now against predators? Like what's going on in the, in some of that world? We're developing, you know,

the next, the next, uh, investigation as we speak, we pretty much know where it's going to be. The team's all on board and we're, we're really just deciding, you know,

where it's going to go. And, uh, in fact, some of the meetings I have out here in LA revolve around that. Oh, great. That's awesome. I was thinking with the Me Too movement, right, and a lot of that, would you ever consider doing like a to catch a predator type of show in that world? Not saying that they're sexual, like pedophiles, but in the corporate space or anything like that?

It's in the works. There's a lot of that out there. There's a lot of talk about it, yeah. And there are people who would like to see me do it, and I've had meetings about it. And, you know, again, it's harder to do something like that. Right, there's a lot of legalities, I'm sure. There's a lot of legalities i'm sure a lot of legalities a lot of gray i mean what's wrong is wrong i mean if you're a boss you should not be

hitting on an employee or doing some of the stuff that uh those have been accused of out on this side of the country could you say that would be a softer it would be well i think you would need you would need to have people come to you and say, this is my horrific story. Okay. And then you would have to go backwards and say, okay, how do we capture this, you know, on hidden camera? How do we prove it?

How do we show viewers what happened? How do we take viewers inside the crime? Right. And then figure out a way to do a confrontation. We just can't go, you know, beating down doors in private offices around the country. But, you know, there are ways to do it. And, you know, if the right cases come along where, you know, we know this is what's happening, we know it's wrong, we know it's illegal and actionable, that, you you know we we take a look at doing it it's interesting man yeah because i grew up my mother was uh you know provided for me and my siblings

and so i remember there were times where i know she was you know trying to get involved with different business or move up in her ladder and i there were just times i even felt as a child that whatever you know maybe like she'd been taking advantage of her like i even as a kid i remember getting a specific feeling like that, like a man had mistreated her. Well, I think any woman of a certain age has a story about, you know, looking back on a situation saying, ooh, that was a little creepy. That was inappropriate.

And, you know, what was accepted in even newsrooms across the country in the 60s, 70s, 80s is just you know it's people look at it today and say well how did that even happen yeah now you now you couldn't say like you know get you you know get your bosom up ronda we gotta sell this weather you know as a young uh young reporter and anchor having a general manager walk in and berate my female co-anchor who also did the weather because a certain part of our anatomy was covering Montana and just in front of the newsroom and having her apologize. Today, she'd get a check for a million dollars.

Yeah, I mean, it was cruder than that. I'll spare your audience the exact language. But I look back on that stuff, and this is like 1981, 82. And he'd been fired for sure. language, but I look back on that stuff, and this is like 1981, 82. Yeah. And he'd been fired for sure. And here you have this woman who's just trying to do her job. Right. Who's a good reporter, and she's apologizing because part of her anatomy was covering the lousy weather map that we had in that market in 1982.

I mean, it's insane to think that that happened. Yeah. In front of the whole newsroom. That map might have had three Indianas on it. Who knows how cheap that map was. We don't know what it was yeah it was it was pretty cheap um no it is interesting and it but it's also we're in a time now where we're kind of prosecuting historically sometimes in a weird space in the world um so yeah it's interesting it's like things that i would say even 15 years ago or 20 years ago to someone, almost anyone, man or woman, some things.

It's like, man, when I watch even old stand-up, I'm like, man, I couldn't even say that right now. Yeah. It's changed for the better. I hope it doesn't continue. Over-correct. Yeah. I don't think it will. I don't think so either.

I think it's swinging back a little bit. I'm feeling it in the comedy world. Right. I'm feeling things start to like enough is enough. Like I do think some things have needed to be noticed. We do need to notice like, you know, what a lot of women have been through. Like even as you said, like we were talking in the beginning about like victims, like women are always kind of the victim, like have been the victim a lot of times. Absolutely.

And especially in the workplace i mean again whether it's your mother or you know your significant other your girlfriend or i mean everybody of a certain age has a story yeah that looking back they might have just laughed off or said ah ha ha you're hysterical and you know made sure they didn't get put one-on-one with that person again right but uh you know it's unfair yeah fundamentally yeah fundamentally it's unfair and i think we're getting that place in society now where it's like yeah it's like we're getting to a place where we're starting to be able to look back at what we've done it's almost like a comfortable level and a comfortability i think we're getting there. it a Quip toothbrush? Because I'm here right now to tell you about Quip. Quip is a better electric toothbrush created by dentists and designers. It's one of the first electric toothbrushes accepted

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did you have a good relationship with Hollywood? Have you always had a good relationship with Hollywood? Yeah, but it's pretty limited. My relationship with Hollywood is a cameo appearance on 30 Rock or Black-ish. Right, rightish or on Will Ferrell's Funny or Die. I enjoy that. It's fun stuff to do. It gets you out there.

But even with your own show, did things get weird at the end of Predator? Was there any issues with Hollywood? at the end of predator you know like was there any like issues with hollywood like were they well you'd you'd see it show up as the impetus for uh law and order or uh csi miami or you know you saw a different version of yourself being played in an entertainment world which is always interesting it almost jumped the shark a little bit still today i I mean, I remember getting a phone call. One of the guys who does my security also did security for Saturday Night Live. And Ronnie Knight, who's a former NYPD and had his own security company for years. And I still bring him out of retirement for- Oh, that's cool.

I just ask him, can you still shoot straight? That's all I want to know. track him. I just asked him, can you still shoot straight? That's all I want to know. So he calls me one day. He said, hey, Bill Hader is doing you tonight on SNL. So I got to the rehearsal and I was watching and they did a whole thing, the Chris Hansen show where they had different actors on SNL portray Hollywood celebs. And so they'd walk out and Hader, who was imitating me, would pop up from behind the And so they'd walk out and, and, and hater who was imitating me would pop up from behind the desk and they'd abandon the whole thing and

he'd say, what are you doing here? You know? And, uh, the, the, the guest would say, well, I, I just, I came here to be interviewed. You invited me on your show. He goes, what's in the bag? I said, I don't know. Your producer told me to walk out with it, you

know? And so they, obviously they pull out the, you know, the. Whatever's in there. Yeah. Condoms and whatever else. And then he said, you can go. Well, you didn't ask me any questions.

Oh, I'm done with you now. And he goes out and he gets arrested. So I'm sitting in the audience and they come out after dress rehearsal to take their bow. And I see Hader and Hader sees me because I'm in the front row of the second chair. And he's just like this. I said, it's fine. I get it. You're all good. As you started to become very famous, because that's happened over your career.

And fame is a different thing. Even in this year of my career, my career is exponentially increased. And to me, I'm grateful. And at the same time, it's a little alarming because I get scared of my own ego and like things that can happen if I get a wrong idea of myself, you know. Did any, did you start to notice some of that in your world? Yeah, just the recognition factor, you know, taking my kids to a baseball game or just, you know, in general being out in public, you know, especially here in LA, there's a lot of that. And, you know, New York, there's a lot of that and uh um you know new york yeah you get stopped on the street but it's cool but it's also for to me it's cool and it's also

scary how did you kind of interpret some of that i know you've had a long career like you know my best friend i wanted to be um journalist we wanted to be broadcast journalists when we were young and um and he started in like uh um in mississippi and he went to a market in uh you know some small markets and then he made your way up to yeah to anchor at wwl in new orleans oh yeah it was just neat because he did that process and i kind of did broadcast from a stage as a stand-up exactly but um but once you start to get popular and stuff people start to did you start to notice that and feel that? Like how did that kind of –

Definitely. There was always some recognition. Right. Especially the morning after a piece would air, people would stop and talk to you or ask about it or do whatever. And very much in law enforcement circles because so much of what I do is crime. Oh, that's interesting. Cops will stop you walking through the airport. And yeah, they just want to chat or take a picture or something like that.

But, you know, I was with my sons. I'm from Detroit originally, and I'm back there a lot. Sorry about your Lions, man. I know they've had a few tough. I know. Well, I was at, we were at the Thanksgiving game. Oh, really? Yeah. And beautiful, wonderful seats. Of course, you watch the Lions, you know, do very well against the Bears in the Thanksgiving game. Oh, really? Yeah. Beautiful, wonderful seats.

Of course, you watch the Lions do very well against the Bears in the first half and then go to hell in a handbag after that. Yeah, I'm a big Barry Sanders fan. That's a whole IMT. I'm a big Lions fan. He's from Wichita. A lot of people didn't know that about Barry Sanders from Wichita. You know, I wouldn't have been able to answer that question.

That's kind of interesting. But anyway, yeah, I'm a Saints fan, so we're doing good this year. But I've always, you know, B. anyway, yeah, I'm a Saints fan, so we're doing good this year. But I've always, you know, B.J. Armstrong, I see him at the gym. He used to play for the Chicago Bulls, and he's like a big Lions fan. You know where B.J. Armstrong went to high school? Mm-mm. Brother Rice High School.

Is that where you went? I'm pretty sure it was Brother Rice High School. I went to Brother Rice in Birmingham, Michigan, yeah, but I should double-check that. He's a super sweet, he's a super nice man. I have it in my mind that he went to Brother, years after. He went to Brother Rice. Yeah, Brother Rice in Birmingham, right? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I thought so. He was- In Michigan. Yeah, that's where I went to, yeah, that's where I went to high school. Now, he was probably five years younger than me. Yeah. But he was a standout and well-known.

Yeah, he's always, but anyway, he's a big Lions fan, and sometimes I'll get to like- Well, I wear all the Lions gear. Oh, that's a big lions fan. And sometimes I'll get to like, well, I wear all the lions. I mean, we're, you know, we're Paul and I were sitting right there and just, you know,

come on, let's do it. But I think, I think people in Michigan, Detroit appreciate it. They appreciate, you know, seeing me with my gang cutting down a Christmas tree,

right. You know, in the suburbs. I think they appreciate being at a tiger's game or a lion's game. And, you know, you, you. I very much have a presence there. In fact, one of the shows

I'm working on, one of the new shows, is a crime-based show that's going to be a lot of Detroit. I still feel very connected there. I'm there all the time. That's awesome, man. That's really cool to hear, man. If there's ever anything that I can do as a comedian to come and do a fundraiser or something, let me know. Oh, sure. Yeah, that's cool.

One thing I noticed, we grew up in like kind of like an impoverished area and we would get more um we would get a lot of those sex offender registry cards on our door a lot because a lot of poor neighborhoods can't keep they don't have hoas that can like you know even hypothetically scare off pedophiles and predators sometimes so i remember being you know in a lot of environments where you would have uh neighbors that you know were abused or um you know guys that were doing things that were illegal you know and it was a little it wasn't common but it was more part of the world in more of like an impoverished area because there aren't any hoas you know parents are working

there's only a single parent family. A lot of latchkey kids. Yeah. And it gets, I just remember it being kind of scary. So, yeah, man, if there's ever anything that I can do. No, I appreciate that. To help be a part of that, man, I would gladly come and help out. Well, I try to do stuff like that for not only groups that, you know, raise money for

awareness of issues with kids, but also, you know, the opiate addiction crisis. Yeah. And I try to do stuff for- It's big up in your area too. Yeah. It's big in a lot of America. It's big. It's, you know, I was looking at,

there were 70,000 overdoses, overdose deaths in America in 2017. And 28,400 of them were fentanyl involved. And it's more than car wrecks, more than gunshots, more than domestic violence. That's wild to think, isn't it? I mean, think about that. Yeah.

It has gotten so bad that for the first time, the life expectancy of an American has dropped by a tenth of a year. Do you think it's like as humans, do you think we're running out of a desire to engage in life or something? Do you think there's a bigger thing going on that we're not seeing besides the fact that the medicine itself is addictive? Well, I think it's out there more. I mean, you know, I graduated from Michigan State University in 1981. And when I started there, weed was decriminalized in East Lansing and in

Ann Arbor where University of Michigan is. And so it wasn't a big deal. The drinking age was 18. If you want to have a few beers, you had a few beers. And, you know, people had, you know, pot around the dorm rooms. And nobody, didn't seem like anybody was really abusing it. It wasn't this mystery. And then, you know, it sort of went away with the war on drugs and obviously cocaine and crack. And I watched that as a reporter in Detroit, what that did to Detroit and the drug dealers and, you know. That was front lines of that. Chambers Brothers and White Boy Rick and all that.

I mean, I'd lived that, you know, in the 80s and 90s. That's cool. It was right in the thick of it. And I think with the advent of, you know, the opiates, I think so many young people follow that same road where, you know, somebody shows up freshman or sophomore year with a bottle of this stuff and you're all good with it for a long time. And you keep, you take one once a week or on a Friday night or Saturday night and suddenly it snaps back and it owns you and you can't get it. You can't get the prescription. You can get it on Craigslist for $60 for two pills, but you're trying to stay on the budget that your parents set for you and what you can earn.

Yeah. And suddenly you can't get it and you're desperate. And so heroin is way cheaper. These kids start snorting their heroin. Then they figure out if they inject it, they only have to do it once a day as opposed to three times a day. And then they're into that. It's almost necessity at a certain point that leads them down some of the- That's why they inject it, they only have to do it once a day as opposed to three times a day, and then they're into that. It's almost necessity at a certain point that leads them down some of the –

That's why they call it chasing the dragon. You're always chasing that first high. Is that synonymous a little bit, you think, with the pornography and how it can lead people down? Well, I think addiction is addiction, whether it's alcohol or drugs or pornography or any number of things. drugs or pornography or, you know, any number of things. But I think that this, this opiate crisis and, and, you know, like a year ago, we did this story in, uh, outside of Dayton, Ohio, right around Dayton in, in, in Montgomery County, Ohio, which per capita had the highest number of overdoses in the country.

And who's to think? They had Mexican cartel members living in Dayton, Ohio, because it's way safer to be there. And the sheriff's department and the task force was very aggressive. We rode with them. And literally, they were doing a buy bust. And while the confidential informant was waiting

for the dealer to buy the heroin so they could bust him, another dealer came by and threw her a pack and said, hey, try this. It's got my phone number on it. It's cheaper and better. Jesus. I mean, in a snowstorm. Yeah. In Dayton, Ohio. That's grassroots marketing.

That's what I'm saying. But I mean, no, it's, yeah. But that's it. That's what's happening. It's happening everywhere in the country. No, it's wild, man. I go to a lot of meetings and stuff like that in that recovery universe, and it's wild, man. Like, you know, I go to like a lot of meetings and stuff like that in that recovery universe. And it's sad, man.

I mean, it's – especially when you see young people, you know. And that's the saddest thing, I think. You know, even hearing some of your stories is like – because, you know, when – it's wild how sometimes I'm still a child in some ways. But in other ways, like, you know, at least now I can get a perception of things. I can see what's going on. I have a clearer view of the world a little bit. And, yeah, how susceptible you realize you were when you were a kid and almost how grateful you were that some things just didn't come along that locked you into something that you couldn't. You know what always strikes me is, you know, the random nature of this stuff.

the random nature of this stuff. In crime, this person made a left-hand turn and ended up being carjacked and killed. This person went the other way and is fine. This person was presented with a roommate who had drugs. This person didn't. It doesn't make them good or bad, but what if they had not been presented with that opportunity and never took the pill?

Yeah. It's vexing. And, you know, what's interesting is the level of prescriptions being written for opiates has gone down, yet the overdose is still rising. So it'll be interesting to see with all this education awareness treatment what happens when they tabulate 2018 to see if it's hopefully starts to come down when you do shows like to catch a predator are you do you feel like you are doing that for kids do you feel like you are doing that too is it entertainment um do you just in your own person do you feel like there's a...

Obviously, there's an entertainment value to it. Right. I mean, there's no question. Having said that, I feel that I'm doing it for parents and kids. Right, parents. I understand the ratings value, the popularity of it, and I understand why, and there are undeniably some humorous moments.

I mean, you think some guy put together the top five most humorous moments. Yeah, I went through all those this week. It was 10 million hits, 12 million hits, something like that. It's baffling. I mean, people just watch it over and over again. Yeah, it's crazy. And people know the characters.

Yeah. You know what I do? I do feel like it's deterred a lot of people probably from going down that road of getting caught in the internet and staying indoors and getting into these dark circles. I hope so. And again, it comes back to raising awareness and creating a dialogue. But it still stuns me. I mean, the last investigation we did, I identified myself. I'm Chris Hansen.

He said, no, you're not. I go, oh, yes, I am. Oh, no, you're not. I said, well, look, I get the first investigation I did was in 2004, but I don't look that much older. And I certainly sound the same. You know, I may have been off my diet for a minute and came to 5 or 10 pounds, but, I mean, it's Chris Hansen. Trust me. You ever thought of opening, like, a chair store, like, have a seat?

I thought about that. It was interesting. The second investigation we did, as I mentioned earlier, was outside of Washington, D.C., and it was at the home of a longtime acquaintance who was a retired FBI agent. And that was one of the investigations where a guy came in naked. And, you know, imagine that scene. That's the whipped cream guy too? Was it the same? That was the other naked guy.

That was in Florida. So the Washington, D.C. guy comes in and he comes in naked. And, you know, I had the towel on top of the refrigerator. I said, why don't you wrap that around your shoulder? But he sat on the stool. And so that stool became famous. Famous, yeah.

And I said, you may want to have that disinfected. So the fellow, Greg Schwartz, sent it to another friend of ours, Danny Dietz, in Detroit and said, this is a piece of, you know, Predator memorabilia. Predator history. He's got it sealed in plastic in a closet someplace. Oh, I bet a small museum people would go see. I bet a small, if they had a To Catch a Predator museum or the chris hansen museum i bet people would go to see different artifacts from that type of stuff i mean there's just such an infatuation with it there's such a curiosity

um i'm trying to think of a couple of other like uh do you think that after having seen a lot of these people that have these diseases of um being predators, and I don't know if it's, and I might use some of the terminology wrong, right? But do you think that it's a sickness that can be repaired sometimes? I think sometimes. Look, I think these guys break down into three different categories, and I'm not a psychiatrist, but based upon everything I've seen and done, and I've interviewed some of the top people in this field. based upon everything I've seen and done, and I've interviewed some of the top people in this field. And one of the problems in society is there are not enough men and women in this field.

It's not a glamorous segment of medical practice. Right. I mean, do you want to be the doctor who spent how many countless years studying to be a specialist and spend your time in prisons talking to child sex offenders. Right. People who are addicted to child-born. Is that what you want to do? Now, there are some very dedicated people who do some very important work, and many of them are connected to the U.S. Marshals who, you know, sort of on a federal level

are in charge of, you know, monitoring the sex offenders around the country. We'd love to have one of those people, and that'd be really interesting, I think. It is. You might be able to set us up with one of those. I'll hook you up. That'd be awesome. I know a really good guy who's based out of the Washington, D.C. area. Cool.

But they break down into three different categories. One is the heavy hitter who'd be doing this with or without the internet and can't be cured. The second one is, as we discussed earlier, the guy who can't be cured. The second one is, you know, as we discussed earlier, the guy who wouldn't be doing this without the internet, the 24 hour access, the addictive nature and, and the anonymity. Right.

And so these guys get out there, do it, doesn't make it any less wrong, but they get hooked into the whole online culture. And then there's the young guys, as we discussed, who are, you know, mopey and antisocial and they're just trying to make some sort of a connection. Right.

And if they're 19 or 20 and they're talking to a girl who's 13 or 14, well, in two years, theoretically it would be legal. Okay. And I think they think that way. And those are the guys who get wrapped on the knuckles and probably never do it again. But, you know, we had a case in the last investigation where, you know, a guy walked in and, and

he was 19, but he was a towering presence and he went in for the hug of this girl and it was, it was disturbing. Now the guy ended up breaking down in the interview and, you know, saying I'm a loser and I'm overweight and I want to be a cop, but I can't do that. And I, you know, I can't make friends. And, you know, as a'm a loser and I'm overweight and I want to be a cop, but I can't do that. And I, you know, I can't make friends. And, you know, as a parent. Yeah. How do you feel about that?

Yeah, I felt sorry for him. So that's when it turns into me saying, look, you know, as bad as this situation is, you know, go to your parents, get some help, straighten it around, you know, get it, get it, get going in the right direction. And is that genuine from you when you say that to those kids? Yeah, I don't want to see this 19 year old kid get jammed up but at the same time you know we've got them talking to two different decoys posing as you know 12 or 13 year old girl right and if they were real girls what's gonna happen right you know yeah no look man i love it

i love it because this is you know that's a question i've always had from watching sketch predator and some of those types of things. So it's good to hear, like, it's good to think of putting those things on the scale and think about what the, which one really, you know, can weigh heavier if it gets out of hand, you know. So to the young guys who are struggling, to a young guy who maybe, you know, spends a lot of time by himself online and he's looked at too much pornography and maybe he's got into some strange spaces. What kind of suggestions do you tell those guys like that if there are any listening? Because I think that pornography and that kind of stuff really can be an opiate.

And I think there are therapists who specialize in this too. And I think there are programs just for alcohol and drugs yeah for you know yeah there's sex addiction sex and love addiction and um you know you see this all the time with these poor women you talk about being victimized you know on these sweetheart swindles um and this is a story that that i've been wanting to do for a long time it is you know i'm not talking about a guy who's trying to meet women online who's, you know, saying he's got a PhD when he only has, you know, a master's. I'm talking about somebody who says they're an astronaut when they've got a

criminal history. Right, right. You know, I mean, there's a big difference there. But you see all the time. And we've done the, you know, the stories where these women are vulnerable. They're working two jobs to support their kids. And their only social outlet is online. And these guys know that.

And whether it's a Nigerian-style scam where they're looking for money or they're having them buy electronics and they're selling them. We've seen it all. We had a case one time where we were doing the Nigerian scams and we we set up a uh a drop site or we're looking for a drop site and we found one that was in um outside of rochester new york and we knock on the door and we posed as delivery guys it was ch delivery and the slogan was we absolutely positively guarantee you're going to get it you So we deliver a bunch of packages there. Long slogan. Yeah, long slogan, yeah. So we finally get the guy who's getting all the packages, and we want to get him into a controlled environment

where we can do a hidden camera interview. So I'm in a warehouse office and all these boxes, and I'm hoping he doesn't touch the boxes because they're all empty. And I'm not really undercover. I mean, I've got a sweatshirt, a Tiger's Ball cap on, and I'm sitting there, and I said, well, how did you meet this woman for whom you are, you know, taking delivery of all this stuff? And he said, well, I met her online, but he said, you got to be really careful

on those chat sites. I said, why is that? He goes, well, that Chris Hansen, you know, he's out there, he's going to catch you. And I'm sitting there and I said, I said, yeah, he's a pretty sharp guy, isn't he? And I want to say he's handsome too, but I thought that might have been pushed a little bit. But yeah, this is all on camera. Yeah, yeah. You know. Good posture as well, actually, the guy. And so we have him back at another time.

And this is not planned. This is just a. This is, it plays out. And again, I'm not, I didn't, you know, I've done stuff undercover where the makeup people put a beard on and they'll make me dirty and messy and all that. But this is, you know, basically with a fleece and a ball cap on. And he just laid it all out there and so we had him back again i said look you know i gotta tell you you know i am you know and jaw dropped and and i said we're we're gonna try and he was an innocent

victim yeah he was getting played right you know and he had this you know this woman was uh you know set pictures and real you know look, and of course it wasn't reality. It's fake. The scammers had gotten the picture from someplace. We traced it back to a Danish soft porn swimsuit site or something that they just clipped it. Yeah. Sometimes I used to do drugs, and I would be at night, and I would look at pornography and stuff on the internet. I did it like I would be by myself.

And that was my kind of thing. Like I wasn't out partying. I would, you know, do some cocaine and stuff by myself at home. Right. And my audience knows about this. And so and I would find myself, I would, you know, you start looking at escort sites and stuff like that. And then a lot of those pictures, they're not even real. Like it's all there's just such a scam.

There's so much of a of a scam online it's such a fake world just go to craigslist sometime yeah you know and they got rid of the site that advertised you know those yeah the casual encounters yeah you know but but it exists in other places within craigslist and you know i'm not casting aspersions on craigslist but the reality is that you know there are millions and millions and millions of people buying and selling things across the world at any given moment. And Craigslist has 40 or 50 people monitoring it. Now, they cooperate with law enforcement. They do their due diligence. But it's almost ungovernable.

Right. And so when we do a human trafficking investigation, oftentimes it is on a site like that. And it's – It can be pretty intense. Craig's list is – we purchased drugs. We found alleged hitmen. We've seen all kinds of stuff. That hitman thing is interesting.

Yeah. Yeah, I – Try sending me across from him in Bryant Park one afternoon. Really? I'm going to give you the price list to hurt or make somebody disappear. Really? Oh, yeah. It reminds me of Napoleonic Code.

I'm from Louisiana. And so there they have, like, if you lose an arm, you get, there's no lawsuit. Like, you get 40 grand. You know what I'm saying? There's no, it's like pirate law, you know? Like, you lose a thumb, that's 11,000. We're not going to court. Come pick up your check.

I'm trying to think of one other question that I had that was specifically. Nick, is there anything else that you think of? I was just wondering if there's any people that you're fans of that you found out were big fans of you in the show or like massive fans. Yeah, have you ended up in any wild? Like has somebody said, you know, Chris Hansen, I want you to be at this event. And then you're like next thing you know, you and Mike Tyson are playing squash together. You know, I've met, I want you to be at this event. And then you're like, next thing you know, you and Mike Tyson are playing, you know, squash together. You know, I've met some people over the years, you know, celebrities and such. One who I won't embarrass, but I was at the U.S. Open once and sitting in a nice, you know, box suite type setting.

And I'm a big tennis fan and try to play as much as possible. And an actor came up to me, and he had just gotten engaged. His fiance was there. He pulls me aside. He said, hey, I got to thank you. I said, why? Well, you know, the girl I dated before her, she used to get so turned on when we'd watch her show. I said, well, got to help her brother out, you know.

Oh, nice, man. Yeah, it's – was there – did you seeing the shows and being a part of To Catch a Predator and did it adjust the way that you raised your own children? You know – Or did it make you grateful for the way you'd raised your own children? So they watched it with me on the couch. And they grew up in an environment where FBI agents were over socially, judges, other reporters. I joke, my oldest son, his first assignment was he was 18 months old, and I had him in a backpack. And I was at a gun and knife show in Detroit on 8 Mile at the Armory. And I had a hidden camera hidden in the baby backpack. It's going to work today.

Oh, yeah, going to work today. Way more interesting. What did you guys do today? Oh, nothing. And they're all looking at a cute baby. And they've got the tri-blast illegal trigger additions to make it semi-automatic automatic. And then so he went along on that and got the

video and got back to the car. And we're driving back home. And this is in Detroit, as I said and and we're almost home and and the pager and cell phone goes off and and uh dr kvorkian had you know performed a metaside you know on those so we pull in there and you know the producers you know got them and then i'm doing the live shot for the six o'clock news on a saturday on another kvorkian incident but yeah But yeah, so they've always been around it. And so I never said you should go into it. Right.

But I wasn't going to prevent them from doing it. Yeah. And it's interesting because one is so behind the scenes. You said one just got his first news or anchor job somewhere? He's a reporter. He's been a reporter for the last two years up in Traverse City, Michigan. Oh, nice. And he just got a job in Oklahoma City, which is a nice jump. That's cool. Yeah. That's a reporter he's been a reporter for the last two years up in traverse city michigan oh nice station he just got a job in oklahoma city which is a nice jump that's cool yeah that's a bigger market yeah and um so i'm gonna drive out with him i think get him settled and get back to

work myself is it uh do you enjoy being a dad is it fun yeah i mean it's it's i mean i have a very cool situation because you know i've got you got the two oldest are 27 and 24, and then my significant other's kids, who I'm very close with, are going to be 19 and are 17. So I learned a lot, and it's sometimes easier. I never had someone who was a daughter before, so that's a whole different thing. But they're both great. Everybody gets along. It's a nice blended situation and, uh, you know, it's really pretty cool, but, but you do learn

some stuff. So when you get a shot at being helpful, or as I say, I'm just an unpaid advisor. So you can come to me for advice at the end of the day, talk to your mom. She's the one who's in charge here. Yeah. Do you, when you look forward to like the future of like, I guess almost a lot of the guys you called on to catch a predator were men. Yeah. Is there a reason? Is there a reason? Well, if you ask the people who really know the psychology of it,

they'll tell you that when it comes to female predators, you're more likely to see the teacher and the student. Right. Because the female predator doesn't get off on the anonymity, where the male predator sort of likes the anonymity, and it gives them a sense of excitement. It's like a hunting thing or something, maybe. Or just, I don't know what's going to happen. Right.

Yeah, man, it's fascinating. After meeting a lot of these people hunting thing or something maybe or just i don't know what's going to happen right yeah man it's fascinating after meeting a lot of these people face to face do you feel like there's just did it make you feel worse about humanity or better about humanity or did it have any effect on you like that well it's you know i was on john stewart show one time he said you know what do these guys have in common? And I said, what they have in common is they typically don't stand out in a crowd. They don't have, you know, the word predator emblazoned on their forehead in scarlet letters. It could be the guy, you know, standing next to you at the grocery store or the dry cleaner. And to which Stewart said, I'd find another dry cleaner if I were you. If that's what's going on there.

But they don't stand out of the crowd. Yeah. You know, it's guys who, you know, have darkness within them who are committing this crime. After doing stand-up for about 14 years or whatever I've been doing it, you know, I start to get a sense of the crowd when I'm there. I can tell in the first couple of, like, moments, like, where the laughter is coming from. If everybody's having a good time, if people aren't. I can get a vibe if somebody in the distance is like um starting to pay their check or if they're

them and their wife even aren't getting along at a certain point you really get some kind of keen senses do you start to have those senses when you're just out in the regular world about sexual predators and like people that might be deviant well that's tough to do i mean right it is tough to do but do you feel like at moments that there's any because i do and i can only build in you because you've had that much experience but honestly i can't decide whether it's just me being right you know overly suspicious of somebody who may look overly suspicious or you know whether i'm just you know reading it into something you know but but i do know what you're talking about in terms of the vibe because you know i give a lot

of speeches and and and do a lot of fundraisers and you know when you're engaged you know, but, but I do know what you're talking about in terms of the vibe, because, you know, I give a lot of speeches and, and, and, and do a lot of fundraisers and you know, when you're engaged, you know, when you're on a roll, you know, when you own them, you know, when you, you know, you lean into the bike and people are listening, you know, and, and, and it's, you know, you have to remember that when you're doing the broadcast, when you're doing an interview with somebody and, you know, take them on that journey of discovery and kind of just get in their heads and, you know, peel it away like an onion. Yeah. Yeah, man.

It's just, uh, have you ever been like at a dinner party and a man's come over to you and said, Hey Chris, I'm having a problem, like on a side or something like that, you know? Frequently I'll get people approach me and you know public settings and say or even you know on um the internet on social platforms to say i was victimized oh wow and thank you for the show and and probably makes them feel comfort in some way well it does and you end up hearing all about it whether it was a you know a priest thing or a, you know, teacher thing or, you know, stepfather thing. And, you know, it's, it's, you know, on one hand it's like, okay, you know, I'm glad we're

able to be helpful. And, and, you know, they're, they're just really reaching out to say, you know, it soothed the pain a little bit. Yeah. And I just can't imagine, yeah, you you know being victimized that way yeah or having a child who was victimized i mean it's the dark arts man i'd come unglued if it happened to a loved one i mean honestly i just i don't know that i could be the guy who just stood back and i mean it would just yeah i mean it's wrong that it happens to anyone but you know what i'm saying

suddenly it's you know yeah you're trying to you know how you would feel if that was in your world yeah yeah no it's striking i mean it's a huge thing i think it's why you know it's a dark it's such a darkness i think that's why you know like you're saying it's so fascinating to people you know it's just such a it's such a taboo kind of well and you know most people thankfully go through life without being the victim of a crime. Yeah. You know, and, and again, I, I get accused sometimes of, of, uh, creating fear amongst my loved ones about, you know, coming and going and parking lots and locking doors and, you know, the usual stuff. But, you know, I've seen some random stuff where people in safe areas get victimized just by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yeah. And it's not always a, you know, a, not always a diabolical serial killer like in the movies. I mean, it's just kids who take advantage and make a wrong decision, and suddenly they're criminals. Do you – do people – I'm sure you've had an instance where you just, like, went to sit in an area at an airport or something, and some dude saw you come and sit near him and lost freak, just got super scared. Oh, yeah.

People must think anywhere you go that you're about to bust somebody. I mean, you were standing in the lobby at Discovery on 3rd Avenue in New York City with my roller bag that's sitting right over there. Yeah. And you're like, wait, what? I remember one time I was looking, that was years ago, and it might even have been before Predator, but we had just done some hidden camera stuff.

And I was looking at an item, and the guy is showing it to me, and sweat starts pouring out of his forehead. Wow. I said, hey, man, you all right? You know, and it was just last minute Christmas shopping. Yeah. And he says, do you have a hidden camera on me right now? I said, no, no, no. I mean, I just, hey, man, you all right? And it was just last minute Christmas shopping. And he says, do you have a hidden camera on me right now?

I said, no, no, no. I mean, I just, you know, on 47th Street trying to figure something out at the last minute. I just need a lightsaber, brother. I said, calm, chill. I just need a massage chair, guy. I went to the pharmacy in the office building, and my doctor had prescribed a bunch of different antibiotics traveling overseas. My doctor had prescribed a bunch of different antibiotics to traveling overseas. So there's five different antibiotics,

and if you were to take them all together, you could get sick or die. But that's not the point of it. The point of it was to have it, and if I got sick, I could call the doctor and say, what should I do? And he could say, okay, take this one for that. And so the pharmacist looks at me,

and he said, I'm going to fill this, but are you trying to trick me into giving too many of the wrong things with counterindications? No, no, no. I carry this with me. It's approved by my doctor. And this is just what I do when I travel overseas. Have you ever gotten to meet John Walsh? Yeah, I know John Walsh. Do you really? Yeah. He and I, I did some work for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

and was honored to receive an award from them a few years back and got to know John through that. And John does some stuff with LexisNexis and LexisNexis was very helpful to us in a, we had sort of a, uh, cooperative effort on some investigative stories. So yeah, John's a great guy.

Is he a really neat man? He's a good guy. I was actually down in Florida just after that case occurred and I just could not imagine, you know, having gone through that and, you know, the strain on a relationship, the loss of a, you know, a young child. I mean, I, you know, there's a lot of things I could survive, but I give him and his wife as well, just such great credit for the way they've channeled this into something positive. Yeah. It's really, you know, when you say that, yeah, there was something about them that

made it so, like, you can see the, like what's going on on his face so well, like it made it so human, like it made it so like you can see the like what's going on on his face so well like it made it so human like it made it so and here's a young couple who you know had it all starting their late life down in in florida and suddenly adam's gone yeah and you know i i started in tampa i went from lansing to tamp after that occurred, but it wasn't too long after. And one of my cameramen was actually working in, uh, on the East coast of Florida when they found his, uh,

Adam's head floating in a canal and just, God, it was just, and I, he would tell the story and you could see just being the cameraman out there, it just affected him at such a level. He just never,

you know, it was seared into his, into his mind. Yeah. Yeah, man. I think, yeah, I think it just made that kind of stuff just so human to everyone, you know, and especially watching he and his wife,

you saw the relationship part, but then still have the foundation. They held it together. You know, I, you know, they're, as far as I know, I mean, I don't pretend to be, you know, right. In contact with him regularly but oh I thought there was a point maybe and I could be wrong

I thought there was a point during I remember seeing the movie or reading something where I thought that they they took out like they had to

separate from each other at a point because they were just losing their mind I think they all pulled it back together yeah both of them did

what a fascinating I mean what a sad story but what a fascinating story this is Nick from Maryland Chris Hansen

huge fan. Two questions or two-part question, whatever. These guys always seem to come up with crazy excuses as to why they're there, I guess not knowing that you already know. So what's the funniest or craziest or wildest one that you've ever heard? And then the second part would be what's the craziest thing that's happened that's never been on you know aired on tv well i'll take the second one first everything has aired right that was appropriate but there's no one scene that was crazy and wild that we didn't put on okay i mean we might have had to edit around rough language or rough video

or pictures that the predator may have sent. But everything that happened, the viewer saw. Yeah. In terms of the excuses, I mean, I've heard them all. I was just coming over to take care of the young woman to make sure she didn't do anything wrong until her mother got home. Yeah. Bad one.

I thought the house was for sale. I said, well, who told you the house was for sale? Well, my friend. I said, what's your friend's name? Roger. I said, what's Roger's phone number? And I pulled my cell phone. I said, let's call Roger right now and see how he found out this house was for sale.

And we had one down in Florida where the guy shows up and he's a real estate executive and he pulled it again. He said, well, I thought the house was for sale. And we had one down in Florida where the guy shows up and he's a real estate executive and he pulled it again. He said, well, I thought the house was for sale. I said, so you didn't just write down the number on the sign? And where is the sign? Well, there's no sign. Yeah.

He said, well, you know, then I saw the young woman and she was waving at me and I wanted to make sure she was okay. Well, you know, they're talking on the phone, they're texting back and forth. So he walks in and I'm reading him the transcripts. I said, you said this to someone who identified themselves as a 13, 14-year-old girl.

He said, no, I would never say that. My computer's in my office, which is upstairs in my home, and my wife and daughter were downstairs. I said, well, let me read further. Wow. I have to be very careful talking to you like this, because my wife and daughter are downstairs. I'm up in my office.

I said, hello. Was there, and what was it? Was that both parts of the question yeah yep okay was there um was there an is there an is there an arch nemesis out there that you've always wanted to catch that you haven't been able to like that big like a big fish you know not really you know a lot of these things develop as, as, uh, um, you know, crimes become not more popular, but, but, you know, more active and, you know, you sort of see a trend coming, whether it's the opiates or whether it's human trafficking and, you know, you pursue that. If you find along the way that there is a person who is the kingpin of this particular crime, yeah, of course you,

you want to pursue that. But do you have one that swims around in the back of your head where you're like, Oh, you know, there's some, there's a dark artist out there that I need to catch. You know,

there was a story, a case, a series of killings in suburban Detroit when I was in high school and college called the Oakland County child killer. And the victims were both male and female. And this one hits home because a family, called the Oakland County Child Killer. And the victims were both male and female. And this one hits home because a family that I became friendly with later in life as a reporter had lost a child in this string of killings. And it was just bizarre and random and good kids from good homes.

Nobody was at risk. And there are theories as to who the killer was, or perhaps there were two killers because there were male and female victims, but they never have charged the case. And it has always haunted me. You know, I'd love to be able to solve that. I'd like to get, be able to give the family closure on that. Yeah. And, and again, there, there, there've been some people identified over the years and

I've reported on it. Um, and, uh, but nothing ever the years, and I've reported on it. But nothing ever definitive. No charges were ever brought. That's sad, huh? Yeah. I mean, this goes back to the late 70s. Do you feel a little bit like you have a responsibility to bust people?

I mean, I use the term bust. I don't even know. But do you feel like you have a responsibility to catch these predators because you have such a profile in that space now like do you feel like like there's this ticking time clock like you know even just with your own life and livelihood i mean i know you're still pretty young but even but but it's like you know i have this platform you know and we in and and because that's a rare platform it's like you know you're right and whether it's you know the actual you know child predators right you know predators targeting children is a better way to put it, or something else. I mean, yeah, I feel like I have this currency

that I can use and a brand that I can use to go route these things out. And I have a great team of folks around me who want to work and do these things and do important work. And this is a funny business me who you know want to work and and and do these things and do important work and it's you know we this is a funny business as you know i mean i'll go there are periods of the year where i'm seven days a week and then you know you have two months off and then you're waiting for the next thing and so it's you know it can be a little herky-jerky but it it does weigh heavily on me that I'm that guy. And while I love my summertime in Michigan, I got stuff to do.

I got stuff to do. I like that. We're teeing it all up right now. Good. A lot of exciting stuff coming up, including more Predator. Yeah. Well, we'd love to be able to support in any way. And I genuinely meant that.

I've never offered to go and do a show. If there's some you guys are doing for fundraising to help with something like that. And that may be 10 years from now. Well, it's – But you never know. I've been fortunate throughout my career to meet people in entertainment and to meet people in the music world who have big hearts. Yeah. Kid rocks that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've heard a lot yeah and you know he'll pick up the newspaper in detroit and see somebody in distress and tell one of his you know write a check and i don't want any attention just send it over there yeah i mean he does this stuff all the time yeah nobody you know he doesn't seek attention for it yeah yeah i don't know man it just i mean it really hurts my heart when I think about, you know, just kids, something happening to kids and them not being able to, you know, just even realize that life can have joy in it because something like stunts them at such a point, you know. Yeah, it could be being a victim of a crime. the papers this morning about a kid in Britain of Middle Eastern descent who was, you know, harassed at school and bullied at school.

And they sort of, according to the story, you know, simulated waterboarding the kid in the playground. It's like, oh, God, I mean. Yeah. What makes kids so mean sometimes? I don't know. The whole bullying culture is something that needs to be dealt with, too. Yeah. There's a lot of that. There's a lot of space out there for you to there's a lot you know you're

kind of a shark and there's a lot of space for you to swim in you know do you have to be cognizant of your own behaviors too sometimes because you worry like that you're going to be under such a microscope though like i think about that sometimes like you know like shit if i start talking about something or being in a world am i going to somehow in a way that I don't even know bring that into my own life? Well, you know, the truth is I lead a pretty, you know, sedate life. Sedate's not the right word, but, you know, centered at least. But it's true. I mean, you know, if you are the guy who's using hidden cameras to catch people, you know, you should be aware of that when you're out in public and govern yourself appropriately.

You know, it's no longer an issue and when i was young enough to be running around it was you know mostly before the internet and cell phones much less cell phone video so yeah you know it doesn't take much to get dusted up if you're not paying attention all the time yeah i've watched the show you know i've seen it i've seen the show I've watched the show, you know, I've seen it. I've watched the show. I've seen the show, I've been in the show, you know. Anything else, Nick? Oh yeah,

here's another one. We'll do one more here, Chris, and then we'll wrap it up. Yo, Theo, it's Jake from Charleston,

South Carolina. It's weird hearing your voice on the phone. I love the podcast, keep pumping them out. My question for Chris Hansen is, which guy

that they caught was he most freaked out by? Was it the Indian guy who walked in naked or was it the guy that they caught twice? Anyway, gang gang man, get that hitter. Gang brah, thank you. Well, I think both. I mean, those two are right on the top of the list. I remember the fellow who came in naked, the second the first guy you referred to, literally I was in like a back den of this house

and here comes this guy naked and he's moving fast, faster than I was able to get around the... Oh, fast and naked sounds scary to me. Right, and this guy was talking about whipped cream and a cat and incorporating all this stuff with the young girl and so literally I go to open the door to confront him.

Yeah. And he's got his hand on the opposite doorknob. And so I open up and he sees me and he's, whoa, you know, and so, you know, this whole crazy Q and A develops after that. And, you know, again, with the towel and he walks out the door with the towel and tries to find his clothes at the back door. And then the other guy in Washington who came in naked, the next day there's all this commotion upstairs

with the online decoys. I said, what's going on? He said, remember the guy who walked in naked last night? I said, hard to forget. He said, well, he's online again trying to talk to another kid. And I said, set up a meeting at the, find a McDonald's set up a meeting.

So we show up, you know, we leave the house, which is a little edgy because what if you miss something there? That's rogue, yeah. Yeah. So we go and we watch them and the guys get video and walking into the McDonald's and we, you know, move in. And now I'm trying to think of what I'm going to say. Yeah.

You know, because I got one shot and he runs. It's, you know, it's over. I didn't want to chase him into traffic. And you had just seen this guy the day before? The day before, naked in the kitchen of this house. So this is a bad second date. I remember his name. John Cannelli was his name.

Special guy, 29. He wasn't 29, nor is he that special. So he's coming out of McDonald's and I'm there with two camera crews and two sound men with the booms. I said, John. Startled. Cruz and two sound men with the booms. I said, John. I said, you know, I've been in this business at the time, 20 some years, and I very seldom been at a loss for words. But I don't know what to ask you first. I just said it because it was the only thing that came to my mind. And he looked at me, he says, well, I'm getting help. I'm getting treatment. I said, John, I got news for

you. It's not working. You remember yesterday, right? Yeah. Last night? And now you're out here again? And he took off in his red pickup truck. And I don't know if they ever prosecuted him in that case or not. I know that they found him trying to do something with some other little kids in a park someplace. And I don't know what happened after that.

But yeah, those are two very bizarre cases overall what do you think these predators like to eat like they always seem to bring a snack well they bring snacks and obviously we have sometimes snacks there oh yeah i seen you got the little cupcake sometimes in that but what do they bring if they're bringing you know do they have a food of choice usually fast food you know we actually got a uh a letter from the lawyers one time from Mike's Hard Lemonade. Yeah. Because whatever period of time during two or three of the investigations, that was the hit drink of younger people. Oh, Rich People's Zima.

That was Rich People's Zima. Exactly. So we had this letter saying, please do not use our product in your investigations anymore. But no specific fast food company really kind of resonated? Was it overall that you saw like? It was just a little bit of this, a little bit of that, you know, and basically it's whatever the decoy asked for. Right.

In many cases. There was one guy who showed up, he was a plumber and he brought food for himself, but not for the 13 year old girl he was going to molest that night. It's like, really? Yeah, how are you going to molest somebody that doesn't have any energy in their body? Well, it's just— I mean, that's not a way to think about it, but it's also like, yeah. What about Chick-fil-A?

Did anybody ever bring that? Not that I can recall. Yeah, that's awesome. I like that, and I don't want to think about that when I eat it. Are there any things that you— Are there other stuff that you like to do like outside like do you have any games on your phone or anything what else does chris hansen like to do you know i don't really have any games in the phone or do the video game

thing i mean i did them you know when the kids were young obviously and they would routinely whether it was guitar hero or whatever beat me senseless at whatever game you know i think the last one i played was pong you know back when i was a kid but um you know i like tennis and skiing and yeah you know being out on the water and and uh reading you know it's it's uh um i've really gotten into this peloton bike though have you really yeah it's really and i'm not i promise that i'm not no it's okay you can talk about it one of our friends rods one one of the biggest podcasts also is right through this wall um they're not tippinging today, but Fighter and the Kid and one of their guys, he's Peloton every day almost. Yeah, I do it pretty much every day because we have an apartment in New York and then home in Michigan. So in Michigan, it just lends itself.

It's near a park, and you go for a run, and you do the hills and all that stuff. But in New York, while I enjoy running in New York, and I'm close to being on a walkway near the river, New York, while I enjoy running in New York and I'm close to, you know, being on a walkway near the river, it just, if I can get 45 minutes right off the bat and it's right in the bedroom and I have to trip over it, you know, going to make the coffee in the morning, I do it. Right. You know, and it's a great piece of equipment. It's interactive. You can take the live classes or the classes that are taped. And for me, it's just, it's a great way to ensure you know getting work out yeah no i love hearing that man it's funny i was just thinking about it the other day

um when i see my friends on them and stuff it's like oh it's interesting um who inspired do you have an do you have like inspiration at this point do you find like inspiration has changed in your life as you've gotten um you know further in your career you know uh you know one of the greatest compliments i've ever gotten was you know i ran into mike wallace one time years ago and he was still working for 60 minutes at the time and and he's so good with people you know and i said um hey mike chris hansen and i was at with daylight at the time and he looked at me and said oh chris and i was on like goofing off that day right in miami and he was working he was doing an interview with Lawrence Taylor, I think who had just written a book.

Wow. He's had a wild life. Yeah. You could catch him. And so, yeah. And, uh,

Wallace looks at me and says, Chris, what was it that I just saw that you did? Not having seen it, but he knew how to compliment a young, younger, uh, version of him.

And I said, Oh, it was the story on the Stinger missiles. The terrorists were trying to buy, you know, you know, before nine 11. He was,

Oh, it was so good. And I felt so, you know, later I sort of figured out a system of being able to say something nice, even though he didn't have it at the top of his head. But it meant so much to me that he would even think to do that. Yeah. And he had so many great classic stories over the years. Do you feel like, when you look back just on the work in sexual predator, do you feel person? Do you feel like a hero or no? No, it's, you know, look, I think it's important.

I think we've made a difference. You know, it built a platform for me to do some of the stories that weren't automatic fits in the format of a syndicated show. It's given me some leverage to do things that I think are important, that are highly rated, but they're expensive. Right. If you're going to go hang out and do stuff undercover, it's not the murder story where you interview the six characters and you put it together in a dramatic video. I mean, you've got to go get it.

Yeah. There's no guarantee. I mean, as much as you try to get it set up and you work, you know, side by side with law enforcement so you know something's going to happen that'll constitute interesting television, there's no guarantee. I mean, there's nothing worse than going out, talking your executive producers into doing something, spending the money, and then missing the guy at the last minute. I mean, we were going after a guy. It's a horrible case where this guy was raping his 11-year-old stepdaughter and did it for like four years. And we did the story and they had let him out on parole.

Yeah. Now they got these nonviolent drug offenders who have been in for 29 years. They want to get this guy out after far less time. Right. And so we're going to go chase him down. He's working at this plant. And I was ballsy to get in front of him. I'd driven around it.

We'd checked it out. And we're there. And I just jumped the gun too early. He saw and his buddy smuggled him out a back gate across. And I got to call Los Angeles and say, and say hey oh how'd it go was it really good was it dramatic well it was 20 000 on the drain today yeah yeah or something you know yeah yeah it's not a good conversation right do you feel yeah at a certain point does it get tricky though when like you know there's an executive there's a there's a financial push to like get

it right and it's like you have to like did you ever feel like at that point you're sacrificing integrity? No, nobody's ever asked me to sacrifice integrity ever. Oh, wow. And again, I started television in 1981 when I was still in college, making $4.80 an hour, 39 hours a week, and then went full-time when I graduated. Jesus. You know, 39 hours a week. And then went full time when I graduated. But honestly, and I know these questions come up with different syndicates that own different groups of television stations.

And, you know, are you pro this or pro that? Are you right wing, left wing? But I've never felt it ever. Yeah. In a lot of years. And yeah, I mean, are there realistic constraints in terms of budget? Absolutely. You know, do we necessarily go around the world that we once did?

You got to justify it. Right. And you got to make sure the audience is there. Yeah, it's different. Shows used to go around the world a lot more. And now everything, it's, I mean, budgets are smaller and bigger pieces of production and companies take bigger, you know, overall, there's back people behind smaller and bigger pieces of production companies take bigger pieces. Oh, you know, overall there's back people behind the scenes. And who's your audience?

Right. And do you spend a year going undercover and going to India to expose human drug trials of something that you know is dangerous but you caught them doing? I mean, it's good TV. It's important TV. You win an overseas press club award, maybe an Emmy. But where do you put your resources?

Right. And that's the, depending on the show, look, crime is big. Look alive crime is big. I've literally got four shows in the works. Wow. All crime. I love crime. It's important. It's what i've always done i mean i

just didn't start doing this you know four years ago because it was popular you know do you think it would be more exciting to die of natural causes or to honestly to get murdered be honest i just want a long life i really but at the end though i i think i'd want a long life okay but when you get to the end of that long life i think about about this. Yeah, so do I. But I want to die of natural causes, or is there something exciting about getting murdered? I don't want to get murdered. I can accept a horrible ski accident. I can accept a heart attack doing something that I truly was passionate about. But I don't need to have a cleanup crew come up after me.

I just think it would be that. I mean, I just watched the Equalizer 2 on the plane coming out here. I saw that I've seen more blood and guts today than on a normal five and a half hour flight. We talked, you mentioned sex trafficking. We had a sex worker in, right? And she was upset. And a lot of sex workers were upset when they shut down some of the sites where they were able to sell their services.

Because, you know, there's such a big sex trafficking, let's stop sex trafficking, but then at the same time it was preventing, you know, women who were had been sustaining their livelihood and supporting you know, families or whatever for a while. Do you think that one just outweighs the other and it doesn't matter?

I still think women are being exploited. Right. That's got to be a tough life. I'm not one to say, look, law or society should arbitrate what a woman does with her own body. That's not up to me. But in my experience, seeing this and doing stories and talking to recovered sex industry workers that's not a pretty life right i mean you sit there and you talk to a 17 or 18 year old who was coaxed into this life at 14 or 15 years old because she was having a bad day and somebody appealed to her

yeah her weaknesses and exploited that and a pimp made her feel loved and put her to work and took all the money you know oh yeah that's that it just talks about degrading showing up in a hotel room in cincinnati or yeah wherever and you know being forced into you know doing things that yeah yeah this one was she was in her 30s think, and so I guess her perception was different, but I guess how these people get into that situation and how that all starts, it's probably— I'd be willing to say and go on a limb here that the vast majority of women who find themselves in that situation are desperate, threatened, or victimized in some way that makes them vulnerable to going into it. I mean, it's like the notion of somebody working their way through law school, that's a rarity. Right, right, right.

Yeah, using that to get— These people get jammed up in bad situations on whatever level and resort to this sort of thing. Is sex trafficking as big of a problem? Like, you know, every now and then, like the far liberal go, you know, it's like they'll just make a postcard that says 700,000 women were abused yesterday. Yeah, the number is, I always caution,

I sit on boards and am an advisor to, you know, a number of groups, airline ambassadors being one of them, which is made up of airline employees. It started out donating their airline perks miles to bring kids in from third world countries who needed extraordinary medical care, and they'd fly them into the United States for that medical care. And then it sort of branched off into educating airline employees

to recognize human trafficking when it goes on so i speak to because of a lot of the stories i've done over the years i speak to these groups and and i'm on a panel that helps educated you know flight attendants but you know flight attendants will see stuff you know if you see a guy with with a you know young girl and for some reason it's not doesn't fit they don't look, yeah, like, yeah. I mean, it happens. You get a sense about that stuff. I mean, you look at, and again, I caution these groups

about coming up with numbers and extrapolating things. People say, you know, how many predators are online at any given time? And we one time in one of the stories used the number 50,000. And it could be 10 times that. But the problem is you don't know because of the ubiquitous nature.

And we got wrapped by some fact checkers and how do you know? And well, it came out of a speech by a state attorney general. And then it was picked up and confirmed by a FBI agent who worked that kind of crime. And so somebody traced it back. I think it was NPR to say, where did this number actually come from? And I did interviews. I was very honest about it. I said, look, this is the estimate that has been commonly used, and I used it too.

I'm guessing that worldwide, it's much higher than that. Right. Yeah, especially worldwide. But I always caution these groups, don't put a number on it, because we really don't know. What I can tell you is that when it comes to human trafficking, you can take any big event, whether it's a Super Bowl, World Series, a Republican convention, a Democratic convention, and I guarantee you a fight in Las Vegas.

A dog show too, probably even. Thousands of women will be flown into that area and trafficked. Right. That I can guarantee. Yeah. Yeah, and you know, I think i even see that i mean i don't know any of those people but i definitely see things where it's like oh that makes me it sets off a bell like i'll see things on instagram or social media it's like oh that's that seems

very odd that suddenly you know these people are there for some we did a sting with the la county sheriff's department a year or so ago and ago. And within 30 minutes drive of where we're sitting right now, in one afternoon, literally had six or eight cases. Yeah. You know, where... And who are these predators mostly that are doing that sort of thing? Is that more of an international type of thing? Well, it's both.

I mean, you have people who are, you know, importing, you know, uh women from you know eastern european bloc yeah countries asia um you see it within asia and then you see you know pims who are just running local just small game at the local mall yeah you know you recruit people and suddenly there's money where there was no money i remember remember we did a story in Las Vegas once. We were doing a lot of undercover stuff down there a few years back. And there was a young woman. She had been accepted into Air Force intelligence. She was good to go.

All she had to do was show up. She had passed all the tests and she was dating a guy who is, you know, kind of living on the fringes gangster wise. And he pulls up in this BMW and says, come on, let's go for a ride. She goes, where'd you get this? He goes, ah, it's a friend's. The car ended up being stolen. They put her in the women's lockup

and him in the men's lockup. And while she's in the lockup, there's a woman there who works for a pimp in Las Vegas who recruits her. And suddenly she goes from being an Air Force intelligence officer to being sold on the streets of Las Vegas by a notorious pimp. Right.

Wow. To think that they would have somebody in a prison, that that's where they would be recruiting people. It was the lockup. It was the county lockup, right? What a unique. I'm just saying, but think about if she didn't take the ride, she'd be in the Air Force. Yeah.

As opposed to being a recovering recovering uh sex trade worker yeah so those small things that yeah it's just like you say sometimes it's just so moment to moment how one thing could happen to somebody in one turn or one car ride or one this or one that so it really at that point then you have to just be aware you have to be cognizant of what's going on no matter what situations you're getting into well again it goes back to you know why we do all these stories if you can get into the mind of a criminal and hear the voice of a victim you can prevent other people from becoming victims and that's really the credo of the thing yeah and i feel it too from this conversation that the risk of of exploitation the risk it i i kind of feel like it does, it outweighs, you know, it just weighs heavier, you know, it weighs like, it's a worthwhile risk to take when you look

at the other side of the scale and see the possibilities of things that can be going on. You know, it's interesting, man. Do you try to stay off of certain places on the internet to try and keep your own head straight? Yeah, I mean, I don't go big on it internet to try and keep your own head straight? Yeah. I mean, I don't go big on it. You know, I use it for research, for stories.

I do, you know, engage in, you know, promotion of projects and stories. And, you know, I'll wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving. Right. But you're not dabbling in porn. Have you ever had any issues with that kind of stuff? No, no, no. It's powerful. I mean, it's a lot of young men. A lot of guys are struggling.

Unquestionably. And I think your age group was more exposed to it than my age group. Again, the only thing we ever saw was Playboy Magazine from 1973. Oh, those were good. It was a team compared to anything. Dude, sometimes somebody would get a perfume thing and would get stuck in a Playboy Magazine, right? A woman's perfume thing. So you had like, that was another universe. Cause then

you had the, you know, the bosoms and you had the scent, you know, you were just like living, oh man, it was like having a stepmother, you know, like a hot stepmother. Yeah. But I, I don't even know how those magazines stay in business anymore, except for the editorial part of it, because any young man who wants to see anything, it's, I remember years and years ago, a friend of mine was helping his daughter with a school project and went to the, I forget, was it, it was on the Wizard of Oz and he put into a search website, Dorothy,

and the stuff that came up. Wow. And this is 10, 12, 15 years ago. Yeah. And it was like, you know, cover the kid's eyes. Yeah. Just, you know. That kid's eyes yeah just you know that lion ain't very cowardly all of a sudden yeah it's a whole different uh um situation yeah that's wild man it's a wild world out there it's the dark arts you know and well what about the dark web

think about that oh i can't even think about that yeah i can't i don't even know how to get there yeah is there really a dark web oh yeah yeah it, yeah. It exists. And what is it? You get into the back of your computer or something? It's non-monitored, really, and it's kind of this secret world. You need access. It's like the blockchain or something, kind of, in a way. Yeah, exactly. That's a good way to put it.

And I don't pretend to be an expert. No. I've never been into it. It's something I'd like to explore. Wow. But it's a real thing. It's a real thing. There's no question'd like to explore. Wow. But it's a real thing. It's a real thing. There's no question.

I know that. Because I know people who are involved in investigating it. Dude, that makes me scared, man. Yeah. Because the internet's already dark enough as is, you know? It makes me really, really scared. Take care of yourselves. Yeah.

Happy holidays. What do you have planned for Christmas, Chris? I'll be back in Michigan once I get things wrapped up. As you know, in this business, I'm trying to do a month's worth of work in two weeks. Yeah. Because after the 15th, everything pretty much shuts down to the 1st. Have you ever been on Dr. Drew's podcast, Drew Penske? I have not.

I know a lot of people who have. I'd love to hear you guys talk. talk kind of run in concentric circles you know a lot of the uh dr lisa stroman who's a psychologist lawyer who's done some stuff for for our shows also does a lot of stuff with dr drew so i mean you know he's a smart guy with a good reputation i've done dr oz yeah yeah who's a sharp guy and that's a that's an interesting show to do Yeah I've never done that I've seen that guy At the gym once or twice But yeah

Dr. Drew's just fascinating Anyway I'll have to Reach out to him And see if He has some time When you're around If you guys can be In the same circle

I would just love To hear that conversation I think it would be Really cool He's a special guy He's a sharp guy And so are you man Chris Hansen

We appreciate your time Thanks for having me Thank you so much We look forward to Your future projects And we'll promote them However we can to help out. I appreciate that. And you got a quick gift for Chris?

Oh, yeah, that's right. But this is from our sponsor. This is a knife. Oh, that's great. Oh, thank you. Might be some guys after you holding grudges. Yeah, I appreciate that. Not today, but just overall, you know.

Yeah, well, you never know. Just be safe. And it's even hard to get into it. You almost need a knife to get into it. To get into it. Yeah, but it is a nice blade, man. Oh, thank you. And I keep one in my car just in case.

Yeah. Well, that's nice. How do you open this? Yeah, it's a good... It's just a flap on the front. Yeah, it's kind of tricky, man. Oh, there you go. Yeah.

So there you go. But yeah, that's a nice little piece. And I keep one in my car, though. Oh, that's nice. Just to be safe. Well, you know, you don't use one until you need it and something's messed up or you're trying to. Right, yeah. Thank you very much.

I'm not saying break it out. No, no, no. It's not a switchblade. I'm not saying lead with it. Years ago as a kid, a buddy of mine and I were down in Tijuana. I mean, we were 19 years old. And of course, we bought switchblades and stilettos. And I was digging through a drawer, I don't know, a couple years ago. And I found this thing, you know, switchblades and stilettos and I was digging through a drawer,

I don't know, a couple of years ago and I found this thing. It's a stiletto. It still works. And, and, uh, I keep it in the drawer in the apartment because it works as a screwdriver in there if they're a letter opener and, and, and, uh, my oldest saw it, he goes, you know, you

carry that on the street, that'll get you a year in the, I said, I don't take it out of the apartment, you know. All about your son is teaching you. He goes, you know, you can get a year for that. Not in the apartment, unscrewing a light fixture, for God's sake. I am to be pretty familiar

with the laws, by the way. Man. I taught you everything you know now. You're just serving it back to me in bad increments. Chris Hansen, thank you so much. Thank you. I've got to remember to check my bag with this so I don't get busted. Oh yeah, that's true. Yeah, we would love for you to get busted. That would be so great. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this piece of my life.

I can feel it in my bones. But it's going to take a little time for me to set that parking brake and let myself go. Shine that light on me. I'll see you next time. And I will find a song. I will sing it just for you. And I've been moving way too fast on the road. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Jonathan Kite, and welcome to Kite Club, a podcast where I'll be sharing thoughts on things like current events, stand-up stories, and seven ways to pleasure your partner. The answer may shock you. Sometimes I'll interview my friends. Sometimes I won't.

And as always, I'll be joined by the voices in my head. You have three new voice messages. A lot of people are talking about Kite Club. I've been talking about Kite Club for so long, longer than anybody else. So great. Hi, it's me. Here's the deal. Anyone who doesn't listen to Kite Club is a dodgy bloody wanker. Do you know what I mean? I'll take a quarter pounder with cheese and a McFlurry.

Sorry, sir, but our ice cream machine is broken. I think Tom Hanks just butt dialed me. Anyway, first rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about Kite Club. Second rule of Kite Club is tell everyone about Kite Club. Third rule, like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts or watch us on YouTube, yeah? And yes, don't worry, my Brad Pitt impression will get better.