Transcript of Claudia Rowe (on the foster care system)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Sheppard, and I'm joined by Lily Padman. Hi. Hello. Today, we have Claudia Ro. She is an award-winning journalist and author. Her previous book, which is super interesting, we actually learned a bit about her previous book, The Spider and the Fly, her intertwinement. Yeah. Yeah, with a killer.

That one, oof, oof, oof.

That is not why we invited her. She has written a book called Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care. As anyone who listens to this show knows, we talk about foster care a lot. This is a real bummer of a situation, and she shines a very bright light on many of its imperfections, and it's a sobering account of what's going on.

I don't normally do this on here. In fact, I don't know that I ever have, but I would love for people to share this episode.

Yeah.

I think this is a really important episode for people to listen to.

There needs to be a cultural reckoning around this situation that we're in, and you'll learn all the reasons why. So please enjoy Claudia Ro.

He's an ultra-expert. He's an ultra-expert.

Are you in from Washington?

Yes, I came in last night.

Okay, and where do you live in Washington? In Seattle.

In Seattle. Nice. Do you like it there?

I do love Seattle. I am New York native, born and raised and everything, but I've been in Seattle about 22 years.

What brought you there?

I needed to change my life. I needed to leave the East. Okay, great.

That's great.

Under penalty of law.

Despiration of...

Had to get away. Sure. We could talk about that. Sure.

Yeah. Oh, you're rolling. Yeah.

You're from New York originally?

Are we actually rolling?

Yeah, we always roll.

Does that scare you? That's fine.

Where in New York are you from?

Upper West Side.

What did mom and dad do?

Mom was a literature professor. Dad was a executive at NBC. Oh, no kidding.

Oh, wow. You You're not going to want to go into show business?

I'm a writer. I've always been.

Okay. Does that mean you're more like mom than dad?

I think I'm a blend, in truth, more like her. But he was NBC news promotion. He's news guy, politics guy. She's literature writer person.

Yeah, that's a marriage of both, what you've gone into, news and literature. This feels like a dreamy parents' situation. Both are smart, clearly industrious, accomplished. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so where did you go to school? Did you go to New York?

I went to Trinity High School.

And what about college?

Bennington College.

Where's that?

Bennington, Vermont. It is a teeny, teeny, teeny college that I think when I was there, a thousand million years ago, there were 600 total students, and that was a high at the time. Oh, really?

Wow.

Tiny.

Yeah. Why that school?

Bennington was, it probably still is, but certainly was create your own major, no grades. We didn't have grades.

Pass fail?

Pass fail. No SATs required, though I took them and gave them and they were fine. But it was a very unconventional, semi-experimental, very free form, make your own. It was an art school. Most people there were art people. I had gone to Trinity, very traditional, as you might guess.

No, I don't. Is that a private school that is of repute?

Yeah, it's in that New York City private school.

Did you have crazy classmates that went on to rule the world?

I had a classmate and best friend who did become pretty successful out here. I don't know about ruling the world, but she's a successful writer.

Okay, so she's in route to ruling the world. Are there others? No, like George Clooney or anything?

Not like that.

No. No Goldman Sachs presidents? Probably. That makes sense. You were in a very elite, and you're like, I wanted the opposite. I want no structure, no status.

That was my parents.

They pushed for that.

My mom. She knew. Trinity was fine, academically, at least. But I think she recognized I needed something different, and I was a more free form kid. Yeah.

Would I be right to assume that this is some pretty privileged kids that are having some pretty exceptional lives? Was it Life in the Fast Lane?

It was all the things you've heard about New York in the 1980s. Highly corrupt, highly messed up, over drugged, over sexed, over moneyed, over everything. Yes, it was all that.

Yeah, Wall Street.

Do you fit into that? No.

How much cocaine were you doing?

I did not get into that, which is why I went to a little teeny college in Vermont.

Did you get a journalism degree from there?

They did not have a journalism program.

They didn't have anything. It sounds like- She got degree. I know.

That's your major creative writing. Okay. I knew then that I had the idea that journalism might be for me, but I had to create it there because they didn't have it. I cared about social issues, but I just wanted to be a writer, and I think I recognized pretty quickly. I wanted to be a magazine journalist, long-form magazine writing, back when magazines were hot. Like a Vanity Fair. Esquire, Harpers, back in the heyday of magazine journalism. Then I I recognized that print journalism was going to teach me these skills, these disciplines, like structure, pacing, deadlines, turn shit in, that I didn't get at my flaky free form, be anything you want college. I knew that I needed some tools, and I think I recognized that newspapers would give that to me, and they did. They also became a crutch and a hard thing to break out of.

Well, you end up so busy there, right?

And there's an addictive You perform this trick, this thing, and then they go, Good.

Yeah. And it comes out, which is rewarding.

Very gratifying. And people respond. I love the reader response. And that became hard to break out of. Yes. When I I finally had a story that I really felt I needed to tell in a book, which was not this book, but the previous.

This is about a murder?

You got that.

Right. How do we get from this bonkers liberal art school in Vermont to Washington to sitting down and spending a lot of time with a murderer? Then ultimately, what lands you in a courtroom in Seattle witnessing the murder trial of a 16-year-old, now 18?

This is a long answer. Is that okay? Of course.

We love long answers. Okay.

This is going to be six hours. I don't know if you were born. The reason I ask is I love your writing.

Thank you.

I love your writing, not just because the wordsmithery. Your essential viewpoint is present to me, or at least what I think it is. And it's incredibly non-judgmental and not sacrum. It's like, I'm rooting for this person on some level, and this person is fucked up. And here's the whole thing. And I appreciate that so much because I feel like so many things land. Whether they're tearing When they're putting someone down or they're building them up, there seems to be little nuance and even-sidedness. And the way you write, I appreciate as being as close as you get to the truth, which is like, it's all things. So you have a perspective. That's why I asked, because I think it's rare.

Thank you. Look, I think all of the journalism that I do is powered by confusion, edging into fear. People who are scary, my way of confronting that is not to run from it, but to drive toward it, try to understand. How do they understand themselves? How do they understand what they're doing? How do they think this helps me? They become then demystified, brought down a little bit to, We're all humans. We all have a logic for what we do, even if it's not obvious to others.

And I'll argue we're more comfortable thinking these people that scare us are seven deviations away from us, but they're one. If that. That's what's more interesting. Right.

So I think that the world sees it like you do. Most people are like, these are these others. In doing the first book with this serial killer who killed at least eight women, he was referred to constantly as he was a monster. And to me, at the time, I was much younger than. That was really frustrating. Monster, that gives me nothing.

How does one become a monster? What do we do with a monster?

It's a made-up, fake thing.

It's a made-up thing. He's not magic. Yeah, exactly. He's not some mythic figure. He's a dude. Monster really bothered me, this idea, and I found it incredibly opaque, not illuminating in any way. In fact, almost determinedly not illuminating. That exasperated me. It's the late 1990s, and I am in upstate New York, Hudson Valley. I had worked at the local small town paper, the Poughkeepsie Journal. I had left that paper and was unsure what I was going to do with myself. I had very mixed feelings about journalism as a result of working at that paper. But I was, at this point, freelancing for the New York Times because there are a lot of people in the Hudson Valley who are New York Times readers and the New York Times recognize, Hey, we got somebody there, and she can babysit stories for us. And so my boyfriend at the time was still working at the Poughkeepsie Journal, and we lived together. He would come home and say, Hey, Claudia, there are these women missing, and nobody's writing about it. The paper won't write about it. The paper isn't covering it. Everyone's saying, Oh, these are streetwalkers. And if they're missing, they want to be missing.

They don't want to be found. That's what the police were saying. And this boyfriend of mine said, You're writing for the New York Times You got to tell them this is a thing, and no one's really taking it seriously here. My editor at the Times, What's going on up there this week?

What boring thing is happening?

Poughkeepsie was known for weird news, freaky news. Oh, really? Yeah. It was a lot of weird, like the Tawana Brawley story. You are too young. I'm older than that. Okay, you're still younger than me. Fifty.

I don't know. I'm fifty. You're younger than us. Oh, wow. You look incredible. Congratulations.

Okay, so the Tawana Brawley story was, you can look it up. Fact check it. Yeah, we will. A lot of weird crime in the area. So when the editor said, What's going on up there? I said, Well, I don't really know if this is a story, but there are these women, I don't know, at that point, maybe six or seven who were missing, and nobody had really done a serious look at this. And I said, Hey, I don't know if this is a thing, but it's something. He said, Get on that. Get on that right now. Start making phone calls. So I did. Started running down their families and their boyfriends and talking to them and the moms who were looking for these women. Was there a pattern? Yes. They were all women who were mostly slight white women, not unlike myself. They all were supporting drug habits, mostly crack, by walking Main Street in Poughkeepsie. Got it. They were streetwalkers supporting drug habits. This is why maybe nobody was much looking at them. Duches County, as you may or may not know, is beautiful, wealthy horse country. A lot of movie stars live there, except in the city of Poughkeepsie, which is not that nice.

A little grittier.

A lot. That's a euphemism. A lot grittier. That's a lovely euphemism. I'm talking to these women's families. A guy turns himself in a week later in no way because of what I'm doing. It's just this confluence of timing. In fact, that morning, I had an appointment to interview the chief of detectives. What are you doing about these His Women. I show up at his office, and he hands me a piece of paper with an address on it. Go. It's Dude's house, where they have now found the bodies of eight women who have been in the home.

I hate to say you're lucky, but you've already He had already done all the interviews with the family. Way ahead. This timing of this is insane. Yes.

I get in my car, drive. It's five minutes. There were these eight women's bodies in this little house about a block from Vassar College. They had decaying in there, some of them two years.

Oh, my God.

Was he living in there?

Yeah, with his mom and dad and teenage sister.

No.

Get the fuck out of it. No. So all this stuff comes out. So they're hoarders. The whole ecosystem. The whole ecosystem of the house, dead bodies just blend into the general. What?

Are they exposed or are they like, okay?

No. There are five in the attic, three in the basement. Anyway, so there I am, standing out there. I am still at this point a young reporter. I've been a reporter five years or something. Tv is amassing 48 hours. Everybody's showing up, and I'm just this little local reporter on the scene. I'm writing all this for the New York Times because I'm ahead of the story. I got, of course, obsessed. Who is this guy? How does this happen?

You became infatuated with finding out.

Not infatuated.

That's the wrong word.

That is the wrong word.

Okay, because that implies some attraction. I don't mean that.

I did get fixated on how does this happen? What makes this person?

This had to be answered.

I just could not stop. It's 1998 when he confesses, and I'm thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it. I finally wrote to him a year later. I didn't do anything. I just ruminated on it. Then that touches off this five-year correspondence. By this point, of course, he's arrested. He's imprisoned, blood guilty. He was initially at Duchess County Jail still when I first wrote to him. He eventually ended up at Attica. Some phone calls, some visits. I tried a lot of letters. Anyway, I'm trying to figure out what makes this person, right? Who is this monster, right? How do you get to be that person? What are the forces that contribute to this person? Of course, his family who would never talk to me. His mom, through a lawyer, said she would if I paid her. It's not what I do. It's not how I do it, and I don't have any money anyway. So they never talked to me. So it was back on me to understand the women, how they got to be in the position of knowing him. And then as I went on and on, it got to be, Well, why are you doing this, Claudia?

Why are you so fixated on this? What is it about you? So then it becomes a memoir. It's this true crime, what's him? And memoir, what's me? And That's the book. What's the name of it? The Spider and the Fly.

The Spider and the Fly.

Who's the Spider?

I just got chill.

Yeah, that sounds wonderful.

Is there a movie? It did get optioned. Okay, yeah, I was going to say.

But that expired. It didn't happen. Okay. It's a pretty complicated and complex... There's also some racial elements. He's African-American. All the victims are white women, except for one who was never actually found, and she's African-American. Whole different thing. I wrote that book, or I was attempting to write that book. It's '99 through 2003. I'm in this psychological tango with this guy.

Can I ask quickly, is it pleasurable?

Utterly horrifying and terrifying to me. He was mean. He was not charming serial killer like of the movies.

He was no Ted Bundy.

He was an asshole.

Can I- Oh, God.

You can use all the words.

He was really mean and really ugly and really abusive. And anyone who had an ounce of self-confidence or self-worth would have been like, Well, fuck this guy. But I didn't because I was addicted to understanding. I just had to get into his head. So I did somewhat whatever. You can see.

I'm going on a big limb, but I would imagine, too, the guy's got to be a master of leverage if he got other people in these situations. The man probably enjoys that I have something you want. Totes. And he knew. You were his entertainment while he was in prison.

This is Silence of the Lambs. Right.

You're not the first person to make that observation.

We just had Anthony Hopkins on. He was doing it. You did? I saw that.

So this guy is no Anthony Hopkins. He is a guy who impressed no one in his virtually all-white high school as anything. He's an enormous person. He was an enormous person physically, but a very shy, retiring person socially. I was attempting to do this book. It was completely taking over my life. The boyfriend who I mentioned, yeah, blowing that apart is not a good situation. Then it ends up that I'm alone in a little cabin in the Hudson Valley, and the only person I have steady contact with is that guy.

This is so fascinating.

Well, it was also not that healthy.

Yeah, it sounds slippery, very slippery.

Thus, I had to...

Abscond to the Pacific Northwest? Yeah. Leave. By the way, I love that story. You're like the trope in the cop movie where he's in too deep.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's just like you lose yourself in this story.

Because it has something to do with me. What is the thing, right? Yeah. Okay. I eventually figured that out. But during all this, I didn't know the West Coast at all. I'm in this weird hothouse environment with this person. I'm estranged from everybody. I start applying to some writers' residency programs. I didn't know the West, and I thought, Oh, maybe this is a way to see another part of the country. A couple of residency programs, they saw parts of this book in progress and said, Oh, yes, come and finish your crazy, insane book out here in Washington State. I went to one. This is in 2002 or '03. Then when I was at one in Washington State, another one in Washington State said, Why don't you come here? I was like, Oh, Washington likes me. Okay.

All right.

Love who loves you back.

Went back to New York, put all my stuff in storage, got in the car, don't know a soul in Washington. I'm driving out there, and I'm just going to sublet this place and finish this insane book. That is not what happened. Oh. That I'd be in Seattle three months finishing this insane book, and then I didn't have any other ideas. But in fact, this insane book was really too much for me at the time. I was still freelancing for the New York Times, and I sent my clips to the Seattle Post Intelligencer thinking, maybe I'll get some freelance work while I'm out here, while I'm wrestling with this monstrosity. Man, New script, not person. And the Seattle PI says, Why don't you just come and be a staff reporter here full-time? I said, Thank goodness, because I can't deal with this book, and I'm just going to do that. It was an interesting experience, and I'll just put it away, and that's unfinished business, and that's that. I'm a reporter at the PI for five and a half years, social issues, child welfare, juvenile justice. I'm doing my stuff that I care about. Then the paper folds.

Good night, goodbye, no more. We're all laid off. It was quite stressful. By then, I had gotten married, and I was nine months pregnant when the paper folded. Oh, boy. When the paper folded. Husband was also at the paper. Now we're double unemployed with a baby on the way and his daughter What are we going to do? I end up getting a job in philanthropy, writing for a foundation. He goes to school to complete his degree. During that period, I thought, that killer book that I never finished. I'm a better reporter now, more grounded in my life. I think I can make something out of that. I think that was a real thing that I didn't see through. I think it says something, and I'm going to finish it. I did finish it and sold the book, and that was that. That's the Spider and the Fly, and that came out in 2017.

Okay, I have a weird question. When you left New York for the West Coast and you put that away, did you miss him?

I did not miss him, but I never put it away. I had this home office, and I had piles and boxes of notes and letters and files and everything. I never put them away. They were just all around me in my office for years, just haunting me. I did not miss him, but I knew that I had abruptly absconded. I never said, I'm done with you and here's why. I just disappeared. I wondered often What was that like for him? It was a turning of the tables and seizing control.

Yeah, you left him. I can imagine not missing him, but for me personally, I could imagine missing the obsession in that when I'm in an obsession, it cancels out all other distractions. The one nice thing about being an addict is you have a single mission in the day. It's just like, stay high. You're not worried about all the other stuff. You get sober, you're like, Oh, fuck. There's all this other stuff I didn't have to think about because I was only thinking about this one thing.

It's part of what the drug is doing is masking all the other stuff that you don't really want to think about.

It's just giving you a single priority, which is in some weird way comforting.

I don't want to give away the end of the book, but there is a, I circle back as an older person, Hey, you. Hey, me. And that becomes the end of the book.

Oh, my God. I can't wait to read this.

Then, to get to your point about how am I in this courtroom with this girl. I'm very interested in what makes people do the things that they do. How do they understand their actions, especially extremely violent, hard to comprehend actions, especially actions that seem counter to one's own interest. What is this? I've done this book. I'm back in the newsroom. Now I'm at the Seattle Times because I'm in a different newsroom. I'm an education reporter. Kind of frustrated that the news thing is taking up all my head space. I can't get any ideas. I'm exasperated. I want to do another book, but news is blinding me. I can't think of anything except the day's deadline.

And it's nonstop.

And I can't get separate from it. I also am not able to do newswriting and bookwriting. I can't do them at the same time. It's two different rhythms, and it's not a quick toggle. The news thing is easy for me to get. To get into the long form book thing, it takes a while. So I left the newsroom. I'm never going to come up with anything if I'm still in the newsroom. I can't do it. So I get this other gig, Ghost Writing, business people's books. But during that period, I think there's this forensic psychologist I know who often testifies in juvenile homicide cases, generally for the defense. He was interesting to me. I He's intrigued by his work. I thought maybe I would want to write something about that. So he goes, Okay, I'm going to be testifying in this case of this teenage girl. He's actually going to testify for the prosecution and what he thinks a proper sentence should be. So this is unusual for him because he's usually for the defense. And this is a teenage girl whose case had come across my radar.

I was going to say you must have heard about it when it had happened two years prior.

I knew when it had happened, but I was a good, dutiful education reporter, and I was going to keep it straight. I wasn't doing much studying. I wasn't involved. I wasn't digging into her case in any way. I knew her name. I knew what had supposedly happened, and that's all I knew. So now I'm in court, and it's February 2019. She has just turned 19 at this point, and she has pled guilty, and so we're in the sentencing hearing.

She's pled guilty to shooting a man in his car. When she was 16 years old, he was 21 years old. Correct.

She shot him in the head in his car.

Took his phone in his wallet.

On a cold winter's night in Seattle. That's all I know. Go to court. The forensic psychologist never testifies. He's never called. But the sentencing hearing, very atypic, typically, is continued over three days. Not consecutive, but over the course of six weeks. They have another one and another one. And by the end of that period, she's in court. I see her crying.

Can I add one detail? I think it's relevant. The judge was previously a real estate attorney who specialized in real estate law. He's a new judge, and this is his very first murder trial. And it is a girl that was 16 that they purposely delayed her trial, so she'll be an adult. Yes. This is a lot on this dude's plan.

Yes. The prosecutor is a very talented, powerful prosecutor. She is really a seasoned veteran, even though she's not that old. She's just a very talented prosecutor and zealous, hard driving.

I was going to use the word rabid, but continue.

Some would.

I think she intimidated the judge who didn't want to mess up, didn't want to do anything wrong, didn't want to do anything questionable. And so this teenage girl got a 19-year sentence. By the way, that's the new book, Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care. I have to say the name of the book. By the end of this sentencing proceeding, I realized this isn't really a crime story. This is a foster care story because her reality of running from her foster care placement and being on the street and how it was that she was in this guy's car and the whole thing, her history, suddenly is in front of me and it meshes with all the stuff I've covered as a reporter Years prior, back at the old Seattle PI, I had written stories about what happens to older youth in foster care.

As they quote, age out. Correct.

I wrote a couple of stories. I didn't get that deep, but it was in my head. Some of the stats about the outcomes for kids when they age out had always shocked me. Oh, yeah. Even more shocking was that it seemed like nobody thought this was a thing. Nobody made a big deal of it. Yeah, there were some reports, and yeah, some reporters wrote some stories, but it wasn't some national issue.

Anna, can I read a couple of those stats? Sure, please. This is the Foster care to prison pipeline. 25% of all inmates were in foster care.

20 to 25% of state prison inmates are believed to be alumni.

This wasn't in your book, but I learned this in a previous episode, and I re-looked it up, but 50% of homeless people spent time in foster care.

In my book, I'm a little more conservative. That's probably true, but what we say or what I can document is that roughly 25 to 30% of youth and young adult homeless. So homeless people who are, say, in their mid-20s are alumni, which is a weird word.

Which if you drive around LA, the vast majority are below 30, I would say.

They are very likely to be former foster youth.

Yes. I wrote this down. This is a direct quote, so I know I'm going to get this one right. A study of nearly 1,000 foster youth in the Midwest found that half left the system with criminal records, and more than 30% were imprisoned for violent crime within a year of leaving state care. Their post-traumatic stress is nearly twice the rate of Iraq war veterans.

Wow. I mean, yeah, I'm not surprised.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert. If you dare. We are supported by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. That's smart. Not checking the pockets of your jeans before doing laundry? Classic oversight. That mystery clunking in the dryer, yeah, that was your lip balms final moments. And somehow, there's always one random receipt in there to dissolve into confetti. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate, North America Insurance Co and affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. We are supported by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses, Monica, only use 20% of their data?

That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out.

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Absolutely.

So there's all these numbers right out of the gates. Fuck. I mean, if ever there's a smoking gun to a problem, let's even say it was 10% of the prison population or five.

This is a system supposed to save kids, and these are the results.

Couldn't be worse.

So one reason the criminal record number is so high is that a lot of kids are in juvie. They're in juvenile detention while they're still in foster care. So that the record. There are many young people who age out, and then they're on the street, and then they're in the county jail, and then they're in state prison. So that's contributing to that high- And they also pick up records by running.

So many of them run from these houses, or they run from their family they were assigned to.

Right. So you run. So this was Maryanne, this first girl. You run, not necessarily because of abuse in your foster home. More often, or very often, foster kids are on the street. If you're running, It doesn't mean you're running. It means you're not where you're supposed to be. You're out of your assigned placement. Because they are often looking for their families, Maryanne was often looking for her mother who was on the street. Was a heroin addict. Or they are looking for other foster kids, other street kids, kids who get them, their tribe. They're looking for connection, right? Yes. They're not necessarily fleeing abuse. They are looking for something.

Craving connection.

You're on the street, you have no money, You are very likely to shoplift because you're hungry, and so you get picked up by the cops and you go to Juvie. There, you just got to be part of that massive statistic. That's how it happened. Or you don't get adopted by the time you're a teenager, you end up in a group home, and group homes are typically very violent. Kids fight one another, they assault staff. Cops are called. Someone goes to Juvie. You just became part of that statistic again. There are a couple of really basic ways that are driving number. Anyway, I'm in court. I see that this girl, Maryanne, is the embodiment of all this stuff that had been rumbling around in my head for years as a reporter, and there she is in front of me. I want to understand you. Help me get in your head.

How do we end up shooting somebody? There has to be a lot of reasons.

That was the start. Then the book goes way beyond Maryanne. Maryanne is one of six main characters in this book. They range in age. The youngest was not Maryanne. The youngest was 18 when she and I started talking, and the oldest was in his late 50s. The point being, this is not some recent trend or some sudden spike. This has been the case for a long time, for virtually, as long as we've had foster care. Over a century, this overlap with the criminal justice system or the criminal legal system, whatever is your preferred film of nature. This has been a thing all along and It seems like you've read the book, so you know that even in 1892, the first person legally executed in the brand new state of Wyoming, Foster Kidd, who shot two guys. Again, desperate, on the street, hungry.

But again, here's what I love about your book, It's like, it would be very easy for you to just become a champion of Mariam and just explain how nothing's her fault, and in some way, nothing is her fault. But I think you're just very honest about she was fucking hard to deal with. She's nine years She's old when she enters. She lives with her father. She got a bloody nose when they arrive. The dad beats her. They've called Child Protective Services up teen times. She's clearly in a bad, dangerous situation. She enters. She goes first with a friend of the dad's. She's there with her, and then she's a lot to deal with. She's very clingy, I guess, which is so heartbreaking.

Yeah, obviously.

She gets returned.

Not returned to her dad. Return to the state. To the foster. That person is a foster placement. That person says, State, take her. I cannot deal. That person was actually the second person. There's first a couple that Maryanne said she loved who had puppies at Christmas time or whatever. Old couple. Or whatever. Elderly couple. That's an emergency placement. It's never intended to be long term. But Maryanne, kid, doesn't know that. Kids don't know. But then they pretty quickly pick up because Maryanne has moved to this friend of the dad's.

Even the friend of the dad, when she finds out she's no longer living there, she gets picked up at school. The woman never says goodbye her or tells her, Hey, I can't handle this. It's just, I'm here. I'm going to take you to another stranger's place.

She gets picked up at school. Social worker goes, Hey, your stuff's in the car. Get in the car. This is really typical. The main thing about Maryanne is, the first thing I needed to find out is, is she some aberration, some extreme case or what? Or she standard. Not at all. I mean, not everyone is going to shoot someone in the head, but her path through foster care was totally standard. She's in half dozen placements. It's so there's this friend of the dad, can't deal. They take Maryanne to this other woman who she says was more geared toward teenagers, couldn't deal with a younger kid. That person shunts her over to a family where she lives for a year or so. Then the aim of foster care, the stated aim, is permanence, which means you get adopted or you're going to your original parents. Her parents' parental rights have been long before. The only avenue for her is adoption. From this family where she is being fostered, there's several potential suiteder families who are going to adopt Maryanne. For one reason or another, nothing works out. There are these things that nobody knows about. Adoption fares, where the kids are plunked down at a table with arts and crafts and prospective families walk by.

It's like puppies Check them out.

Again, this was the same in the 19th century. In that case, kids were on stage performing a little ditty or a little poem or a little song.

Annie.

Yeah, it's literally Annie. It's literally.

By this point, Maryanne is 12, which is like your last chance. If you're not adopted by that point, you're not a cute little kid anymore. Families typically don't want an older kid. Understandable reasons in that the child already has so much history history, so much trauma. So a lot of families go, no. This family said, yes. They said, she's ours. We'll take her. And the state, like all states, so there are financial incentives to get kids adopted. Federal government gives the state money for the kids who are adopted.

For every successful adoption.

So they want it to happen fast, and they do not want to reverse it. Two lunches in an overnight, and boom, she's with them.

They're her parents.

Yeah, it's a foster to adopt situation. So there's a brief few months, but it's foster to adopt, like lease to own.

But here's where you don't gloss over how impossible it is to raise Maryanne at this point.

Who has no idea, has never in her entire life been part of a conventional family, doesn't know about family dinner.

They want to eat dinner, and she wants to eat in a room.

Of course.

They want to watch movies together as a family.

She feels weird about it.

Do they get training?

So this is the thing. Very little state support. Yes, Yes, there is a social worker involved, but there's not intensive prep for adoptive families, particularly families adopting from foster care, particularly families adopting a kid who was demonstrably abused.

I also think this is a weird thing, and you point out in the very liberal state of Washington, you cannot force a kid over the age of 13 to have counseling. So it's like, what should be definitely a mandatory as part of all this is she should have had to go a few times a week.

So she did have a lot of counseling. She did? Okay. She hated all her therapists, she says. You can understand because you need to forge a connection with a therapist. Foster kids are moving around, and everyone comes in and out. Social workers change, and lawyers change, and foster parents change.

Why would they trust the therapist? They can't trust anything.

At some point, you accept this is reality. I'm not getting placed. I'm never going to be anywhere for longer. You have to throw in the towel. I think you have to give up hope pretty early into this.

As a It's a survival instinct.

I don't know how many times could you have your hopes that this is going to work out, and then you get jerkt out without any warnings. Eventually, you'd be like, I know how this works.

I mean, the kids need therapy, but the parents should have mandatory therapy, too.

Yes. And a social worker observed that because they pretty quickly, after about two years, even sooner than that, they're like, No, we got to sever this adoption. We got to break this apart. She scared them. Yeah. Right? Through her eyes, they overreacted to everything. They never really got her. They freaked out about everything. That's her line. They, I will say, never talked to me. I attempted many times to interview them, not interested.

They're probably a bit ashamed that it- I'm sure.

They didn't talk to the defense or the prosecution either. They basically hired a lawyer. Here are our files. We're done.

This is a point I want to enter into this incredibly complex situation, which is there are multiple factors happening here, too. There is the nurture, which is not ideal, which is why they ended up in Foster. But then there's a reality of she is the child of an addict and a physically abusive man. Also addict. Okay, yeah. So both addicts, one physically abusive. Those are also her genetics. Yes. This is the really unfortunate Part of the part is like, not only do they need the amount of help any kid would need, they actually probably need more because there's a pretty good clue about where they're coming from.

I bet a lot of people who decide to foster or adopt, they have this idea Probably that I can save this kid, or once they're in my care, they'll be better. Love will heal all. Yeah.

It is like that. It's all love.

It's a little bit of a savior complex.

I'm reading the book, and I'm just feeling fucking terrible. I'm going, Oh, my God. I got to somehow figure out how to help these little people. It can be very genuine. It's heartbreaking. Then you get in the rally of, Am I bringing someone into my two kids' lives that could have all these things? Should they take on that? It's complicated. It's super complicated. Even you're very well intention.

Absolutely. She's one of six main characters in the book. All of them illuminate some aspect of this connection with prison, like group homes running away, broken adoptions. She's not the only one in the book who had a broken adoption, and then aging out without support. Kids age out of the system at 18. You're 18. Thanks. You're a legal adult. Goodbye. Or 21. You have zero skills. Right. You have zero skills and no support system. And 50% of kids in foster care who grow up in foster care do not get a high school diploma. You are likely to be 18 years old with no high school diploma, no support. What do you think is going to happen? You can get extended foster care till 21 if you are working or in school. But a lot of kids, by the time there's a possibility of the state not running their life, they're like, Fuck this. I'm out. The The other thing is that when you grow up in foster care, normal teenage stuff, like having a job after school or going to friends' houses for a sleepover or having friends come to your house for a sleepover, is not happening.

There are other young people in the book who are growing up in group homes. You're in a group home at this appointed hour, you are here, the doors are locked, and no, there's no guests hanging out with you staying over. And no, you can't have a job after school. After school, you're back here.

Also these tiny things, like when they got her, one of the things that one of the concerned people called Maryanne Protective Service on is they looked through her window of her bedroom and she had no clothes in her closet. She had nothing hanging on the walls. She was just this little girl with nothing sitting in a box. Even these little things of how you build your identity, and that's a safety net. It's like, I have these items, and I'm into this band, and I have this poster, and I have these CDs. All those little building blocks of identity, you can't have them. The other thing that's super prevalent, and certainly happened with Mariana, is she loses her virginity at 13. Pretty soon thereafter, she's sex trafficked.

So her adoptive parents say, We cannot deal, and they hand her over to her older half-sister, but they are still technically her people. The older half-sister moves out of state. Then Maryanne is just on her own, on the street. Her adoptive parents don't want her. Her older sister is gone. It's just, boom. What do you I think is going to happen? She's doing whatever she can to survive. She is eventually picked up again by the state and handed over to the last foster parent. But at that point, yes, she is a chronic runner, not because she doesn't like that last foster parent. In fact, she loved that last foster parent, who is a pretty fascinating character. But by this point, it's just like a chronic fight or flight thing. Also a girl who she befriended at that last foster parents' home, another foster girl She's out on the street all the time. Mariana glomed on to her. They do all this stuff together out on the street. They do all this stuff, and then there she is in the car with the dude on a cold winter's night.

She's 16 and living with her boyfriend.

Sort of, yeah, and on the run, intermittently back at the foster parents home. But when you go, when you take off from your placement, the state goes, Okay, we need that bed for someone else. So if you want to come back, you who can't come back.

She's living with her boyfriend. She's 16. She's with this 21-year-old dude. Yes. He's got a Jaguar, he's got a handgun, he's got drugs, he's got money.

Though she barely knows the guy. She's with him one time, and they drive around. He seems nice and cool.

He lets her hold his gun. She posts a picture of herself on Facebook holding the gun and mugging for the camera, which becomes part of the trial as if this is some pattern of hers.

Then the next night, they're on the street driving around. What the plan, really? The defense argument is a robbery gone wrong. Maybe she and this other girl on the street who she was with, and they're both in the dude's car.

That's the prosecution's theory, no?

Well, the defense has a couple of stories, and that was part of the reason that this sentencing hearing kept getting continued because the judge said, Hey, get your story straight. What are you trying to say? At one point, she says it's a rape. Then there's this robbery gone wrong. I could say what I think it was. What do you think? What I think it was was a planned robbery. Basically, what happened is that her friend, also in the car, splits because dude, the victim, also had another person in the car, his younger brother. Younger brother and friend both leave, not in a good way. Younger brother is harassing the girls. So younger brother gets out, friend gets out, and then there's Maryanne alone with the guy. And maybe their plan to rob this guy is not really working out as she anticipates. He pulls over to his desserted clearing. He wants to have sex. She allows it to happen. But in her telling, while it was happening, he starts getting really abusive, calling her a hoe and other stuff. She doesn't want it to be happening anymore.

I was also thinking how sad the duplicity of men can be, which is like, he had been so nice to her and so generous, according to her. Then, yeah, post-coital, he's a fucking asshole. He got what he wanted.

Or in the middle of it. Or whatever.

Anyway- Once he's getting what he wants. Yes.

Whatever happened, eventually, it's over. There is a condom on the street.

A red condom?

Yes, a red condom. Oh, you read with great attention. Anyway, she shoots him in the head.

With his gun.

Did she shoot him in the head while they were fighting? Right. The prosecution says it doesn't It looks like that. The prosecution says it looks like she shot him when he's sleeping afterward, so it looks more cold-blooded, right? Not self-defense. She shoots him in the head, okay? He's dead, and she takes off. The cops don't find her for quite a while, like six weeks. Oh, wow.

She's also in the middle of nowhere, 16 years old. She just shot a guy. She gets out of the car, and she has to walk out of this weird rural pocket of Seattle that she doesn't really know. I mean, you just got a picture of a 16-year-old girl dealing with what just happened in that car. She got fucked by a dude she didn't want to, and then she shot him in the head. Abused. And now she's wandering the street.

Yeah. Oh, fuck. This is also someone who was abused by their father, too. So the trauma.

I have often wondered this. She is abused by her dad, and the sexual abuse question there is undetermined, suspected, unproven. But she herself told me she has had sex with dudes, and I don't think she wanted to. Prostitution, trafficking. I don't think she wanted to, but she was in this world and she was doing it. I have often wondered exactly what you're suggesting that in that moment, was it all the dudes? Exactly. Was it her dad? Was it everyone? I've wondered. I can try to put myself in the head of a 16-year-old girl. I also have been a 16-year-old girl, sometimes in a pretty desperate situation. I did not have her life in any way, but I did have some pretty dark times in those years, and I can imagine.

Life is valueless. Who gives a fuck?

When that's your life- If your life is this dystopian, it's like, life doesn't have a ton of value.

You're not experiencing the great side of people and having these lovely, wonderful, loving connections. It's not even the same value that I would have.

So interesting that you touched on that because one thing that I learned in doing all the reporting for this book, it was a six-year process. It was a significant amount of time. I The idea of envisioning the future, of goals, of I want to be this someday. This does not exist with many, many foster kids. There are some in the book, I should say, who have gone on to great things, but who told me it's because my foster mom said, Think of the future. Think of who you'll be. But this idea of envisioning a future, a goal, and how to get there step by step is really foreign.

No, it's minute to minute survival.

Claudia, I did this show where we drove around and delivered food. I interviewed all these random people, and one of them was a homeless dude I met under the Bridge. Happened to be from Michigan. As I learned from his story, he had been in foster care for his whole life in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in and out. And what I was so struck by was I would say, So how long do you think you're going to stay? And he's like, I don't know. Any time I asked him any question that was forward-facing or future, he was incapable of But to the point where I was like, is his frontal cortex just completely damaged? Like the area of your brain that would be able to model a potential future. Something happened to his. So to hear you say that that's so common is interesting because that's the thing that stuck with me. I'm like, I don't think this guy can make a plan whether he's staying or not staying in LA.

To pivot a little and say, look, this book has some pretty hard truths in it. However, there are paths for repair. This can be reversed. And I saw it happen with one guy in the book, Jay. I can tell you that story in a minute. And I saw it happen with Maryanne. Arthur Longworth, too.

Arthur is interesting, right? Arthur is so interesting. So early in, as you start developing this relationship with her and you're visiting her in prison, you need her to help you understand, but she's not entirely capable of that.

She's not at all capable.

Okay, great. I was trying to be nice. Someone brings Arthur to your attention, and here's a guy who's in prison. He murdered someone, and he's older, and he has become an essayist, and he's incredibly articulate about explaining the experience.

Art was initially going to be a source for me. Help me get it. But then the more I got to know and understand Art and his story, you're not just a source, you're a character in this book. Art is walking me through because he's recognizing this thing that is driving me crazy. How come all these kids in this savior system are not not at all being saved. What is happening here? I'm trying to figure it out by myself on the outside. But Art, from within maximum security prison, has recognized the same dynamic because huge numbers of all the other inmates around him are dudes he knew in foster care or their kids.

He even started a little group of other foster kids in the prison.

All these former foster youth in the prison who have serious, serious sentences. So Art is recognizing this same phenomenon from his personal experience and that of all the people around him at the same time, just independently, that I'm like, What is this? How does this work? I write to Art, Ghosts of the previous killer correspondence of the other book in my head. Like, Oh, no. What am I doing? What am I doing?

I'm finding myself back.

Yeah, believe me, I had those worries, but Art is not that guy at all. I really was worried. What is he? Is he a manipulator? Is he a sociopath? No, I don't think What was he in prison for? First-degree murder. Okay. He killed a young woman in an incredibly brutal crime. Not a quick shot to the head. He stabbed her to death in a car and let her bleed out. It was really, really cold. Wow. So, Art. Help me understand. You help me understand all of this. But Art has written this incredible essay, which is called How to Kill Someone. It won some awards. It's out there online. Anybody can read it. You come to realize it's not only why and how he killed his victim, but how he perceives that he was soul murdered by the system, how to turn someone into what he calls an animal. He says, I acted like an animal because the system raised me to be an animal. It is art who really articulates the cyclical nature that the book, Words of the State, is trying to get at. This system pumping out kids so ill-equipped for productive adulthood that homelessness or incarceration are the most likely outcomes.

We got into addiction numbers, but they have to be astronomical.

They're astronomical and poverty across the board. People will hear this podcast and be like, You're not being fair and broad brush and too dark of a picture. Okay, there might be better outcomes for some people when they are taken into the system much younger- Yes, babies. And with stable placements. There's all kinds of stuff in the book about attached management theory and connection and what that does to hormones and cortisol and how those things affect behavior. We'll just leave it there. But all the people who go, not fair picture of foster care, I say, But what about these numbers? You are not confronting the reality of these numbers. Maybe for younger little babies who are adopted out of foster care and they have one family, maybe it's better. But I know of cases where that is the case and weird behavioral stuff comes out when they're teenagers and one wonders. Anyway, Art becomes a character in the book because he's a fantastic writer. Why he was important and frankly useful to me is that because prison has a paralyzing effect in some ways on development, and I've seen this with other guys in prison, that because part of your life stops, you're still able to touch the mind of that person who was the killer, the whatever on the street.

But now you're many decades older. In his case, he's been there more than three decades by the time I reached out to him. But he still can touch this adolescent rage and what it is and how it powers his actions. But he can understand it and articulate it the way an older person can because he has taught himself to be a writer despite having only a seventh-grade education. So he can touch this experience, but he can articulate it with the tools of an older person. This is what I needed. This is what Maryanne could not do for me. Art is also just a very bright guy and a very, let's say, proactive. He He's deciding from prison, Okay, life sentence is what he got. We won't say what happened to Art because it's a spoiler. But he got a life sentence and he decides, despite that, I'm going to try to reach out to lawmakers, policymakers, all these people on the outside who need to understand the way foster care is an engine in his mind, powering the carceral system. It is pumping out future inmates. I think that there's really something to that. It was the same question I was wondering about.

That doesn't mean you need to leap into conspiracy theory that there's all some big cabal.

Oh, not at all.

I can see people going in that direction. No, no. It's like, no, without any intention this is happening. Correct. Yeah. In fact, probably the opposite intention this is happening. Yeah.

I think that most people involved with this system are entirely entirely well intentioned. I think that the system was created in the 19th century out of good intentions for what do we do for kids who have no family who can care for them. It is originally conceived as a saving system. It is a well-intended thing. The problem with foster care is in 1890, whatever, right. But now, in the last 20 years, we, American society, we have learned an enormous amount about brain development, particularly youth brain development. That is the problem, that foster care as a system, structurally, it is not aligned with what we now know about what all humans need to develop in a healthy way. That is the issue, that the structure of foster care, despite its stated aims of permanence, the experience is one of impermanence. You're moved around. These people change. If you're a lawyer, you're a foster parent, you're a social worker, you're a therapist, everyone's different.

You're CASA advocate.

Your mom was CASA advocate.

Oh, good job. How do you know that?

Reporter, dude. People change in your life. It's all about impermanence. The system is not aligned. It is structurally built around impermanence, which is not helpful to healthy brain development. No. That is the thing, like an inherent problem built into it. So people go, Claudia, what should happen here? I'm not a policymaker. I'm not an advocate. I'm just a writer. But I do have a thought or two.

Yeah.

Please tell me also in the book, there are many people saying, minimally, if you left every single kid in every single abusive situation that exists currently, the outcome will be better.

There are people saying that. There are people I'm still seeing the opposite.

I know when my mom was a Casa person, she said the priority is to get the kids with their family.

Regardless of what's up with the family sometimes.

And my mom saw all these. I mean, there couldn't be a harder situation. It's pretty difficult. You're talking about Even a kid in a house where they're going to get molested or beaten or maybe killed.

Fuck. So this is the thing. Most kids who come into foster care, it's not because of abuse, and it's not because of sexual abuse either. It's because of neglect, the majority reason on every kid's-Admission form. Right. So neglect can look a lot like poverty. Kids shows up at school in the same dirty clothes for two weeks or never has food at lunchtime, and a teacher is going to make a phone call or a kid is left at daycare, parents never show up. Somebody's going to make a phone call to CPS. What's up with this kid's family?

If you visit the house and there's three little kids and no parents around.

There's no food in the refrigerator. The lights aren't on. Maybe there is no house, right? Maybe they're homeless. You're not supposed to take kids from their parents because of homelessness, but happens all the time. You can understand why it would. So yes, too many kids have been taken into foster care because just because you're poor doesn't mean you don't love your kids. Maybe there are, not maybe, there surely are some parents who are on the margins do not have the means to support their kids. If we supported people more, families more, we wouldn't be taking their kids into foster care. If we help people keep the lights on, have housing stability.

Some basic stuff.

We wouldn't be compelled to take their kids into foster care. Okay, so yes, make the system smaller. Use the savings that you're not giving to foster parents now for family preservation services, more mental health, substance abuse treatment. There are kids who cannot be safe at home.

Really quick, I don't want to say the numbers because no one would know it off the top of their head, but there's 400,000 kids in foster right now.

Which is down from even a couple of years ago because everyone goes, Oh, foster care is such a damaging system. The priority is keep them with their families however you can. Say you did these things, but there certainly are kids who are being sexually abused or tortured at home and cannot be safe at home. You have a smaller system system that is just focused on those kids, these extreme cases. This is like a dreamy hypothetical. You've given more services to their biological families. So some kids are staying at home more safely. The system itself is smaller now, maybe It has 200, or 300,000 kids in it, or maybe 100,000. But the system is a housing system, right? It is essentially you got a bed, you'll be fed. It needs to be a healing system. It obviously needs to be conceived as a rehabilitative system because we know that every single kid in there has undergone really damaging trauma, even if it is merely the trauma of being removed or ripped away from their biological parents who they love and forgive, even for neglect, even if the kid should have never been taken into foster care, and if you just help their family, and they love their family, and maybe they'll be reunited.

But that kid is in foster care and has severe trauma from being removed and then moved around to all these people that they don't connect with because they can't connect because they're going to be moved. That's a housing system. That's a, We'll keep you housed until you're 18, and then thanks, goodbye. That is insane. It is not working. It needs to be a rehabilitative system and not psychotropic drug cocktails, which is what we do. Maryanne and most of the kids in the book have been drugged since they were little kids with this combination of antipsychotics and antidepressants and drugs to sleep and anti-anxiety. These drugs were never designed for use on children, and children are taking four or five.

A cocktail.

That's the healing. Okay, so no.

Then they go and they sell drugs and people are like, Oh, put them in jail. It's like, what? They've been...

Also, then you're 18 and you're cut off and you don't have your meds anymore, maybe. Exactly. You need it.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, If You Dare. Okay, here's what I've been saying for a very long time. I want you to evaluate this theory. When you look at these numbers, this is a fiscally responsible approach. If you added up what 25% of the prison population costs a year, if you added up what homelessness in LA costs in San Francisco, you're talking on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars at this point. We're spending $31 billion a year on foster care. The prison system is insane. If you could approach Congress and just go like, Hey, I'm here to save you 50 billion dollars, but here's how it works. If you are unlucky enough to be born into a house that you have to be removed from, you should be then lucky enough to go to hog boards. I think that our foster care should be a place you die to go to with the greatest services and the best health care professionals. It should be all hands on deck. Let's save this group of people and let's spend a luck and fortune doing it. That is going to save us money downriver. This is going to be like half the cost to take these incredibly unlucky kids and make them the luckiest kids immediately.

That's, to me, what the approach should be. Is that flawed or It's impossible.

It's not flawed. One thing that has really surprised me. In general, the response to this book has been like, yes, this is it. But there are some people who have not felt that way and who have written to me, including researchers who have built their whole career on researching foster care, who have said to me, it's not that many, but it's a couple, and it has stuck out to me, there are some kids you can't do anything for. This one researcher who is a very credible person, wrote to me and said, there's 18% of kids that are chronically, criminally involved, and it's too late for them. This is not the only person who said that to me. I am shocked. Maybe you feel that way. I'm offended by that attitude. I saw through the reporting in this book, that need not be true. Even with Maryanne, who got this chance. I don't want to give away the end because there's actually a narrative arc to this book. She got this chance after being sentenced and sent to adult prison when she was a teenager, adult women's prison, Washington State. There was a chance because there was a new law, and it allowed for people charged and convicted as adults when they were minors to be in a youth facility until they're in their mid 20s.

The thinking being brain development, youth facility more oriented toward therapy, education, a more therapeutic environment. Wouldn't this be better than putting teenager directly into snake pit prison?

Where she falls in love with an inmate immediately, 11 years older than her two doors down.

In prison. She gets this reprieve. After a year, In prison, she is in the first cohort to experience this new law, and she is sent to a youth facility, even though by this point, she's 20 years old. I visited her there a lot, and I saw a clear change. I don't want to say then what happened because that is a spoiler. But I will pivot to another person in the book who, his name is Jay, is a foster kid in New York City. He has been kicked out or dropped out of three high schools. He lands at his fourth high school. This is a kid lugging his stuff around New York City in a garbage bag. His clothes, his food, his birth certificate. He lands at his fourth high school. He's, I think, 17. Nobody thinks he's going to even get a high school diploma. It sure doesn't look like it. He connects with this 23-year-old youth advocate at this last chance high school. She's not some highly trained, credentialed therapist, anything like that. Her job is get the kids over the finish line. Get them to graduation. That's it.

Get them off our desk.

Whatever it takes. This kid, Jay, is very gang involved. One reason he doesn't go to school ever is because he's always afraid of getting jumped by a rival set. In fact, he has been jumped and nearly killed and landed in the hospital. He has also assaulted other people. He's heavily involved. He connects with this youth advocate. He's this huge dude Tadded, weeping in her office. She's 23 years old. She's like, Oh, my God. But they connect, and their connection is merely Jay coming by her office once or twice a week, and they look at Google Maps, and they decide a new route to school. You can go this way. You can go this way. That's it. It's not the deep, deep thing. They do that nine months. Jay gets his high school diploma. Right before this book was published, I watched him defend defend his dissertation and be awarded a PhD. This is a kid no one thought would graduate high school. He's now a professor on a tenure track.

He was already violent.

He had been. Yeah.

And he was able to course Yeah, you're saying it's a possibility.

It could happen. It can happen. Will it happen with every single kid?

Who are you going to do? Say no to everyone because it's not going to work for every single... I hate that.

Right. If it doesn't pencil out, don't bother. If it works for 10% of the kids, I'll take it.

It's like AA. Aa is only 32% successful. But relative to what? 0% is successful. So it's pretty fucking good.

Look, some people, if you have no compassion for this, okay. But for you, it's better. Do you want people out on the street committing crimes? It affects you.

Exactly. So Art really articulates this lack of empathy that he came out of the system with, that it forces kids to not not develop empathy. That's exactly what you're saying. Do you want that out there?

No.

Yeah, because I'll add, and this is, again, the thing I appreciate it is you're not trying to paint a Rosie picture of Maryanne. She had wreckage. She gets into jail first thing She does is clog her toilet and flood the place with piss and shit. She beats some girl up that was pregnant violently. I mean, she's a handful. It's not like this is easy.

Correct.

I think that's important also. It's scary, and people are scared. They don't know what to do. They're like, I'm going to lock them away. I I also understand. It's like, if you're looking at a 16 years old, you've done all this stuff. First time you meet her, she's in custody for the first time, and she's like, I'm going to shit on the floor. She's a handful.

But people can change.

I know. Yeah. And part of the reason she's a handful, if it was earlier on intervention, it wouldn't have gotten to this point. Yes. Necessarily.

Yes. Now look, I'm not a psychiatric professional. I guess that some people maybe have inborn psychopathy, right?

Yeah, of course.

But this is a minuscule percentage.

Yes, almost not what we're talking about.

What's your setup? What's your genetics? Okay. But I saw her change. Some things happened that maybe that change is in flux, but I saw her change. I definitely know that Jay changed. People can change.

Yeah.

Oh, man. So you tell the story of Arthur, Monique, Tina. You have a lot of characters in this book, and they have varying outcomes with their life. As you just said, he just defended his PhD dissertation. Incredible.

I watched it. He was crying when they said, yes, you're a doctor.

I was crying.

He was amazing.

How beautiful.

It was beautiful.

Well, okay. I'm cosigning on your... I mean, yes. If you can cut the thing down by half, just to begin with by these neglect things that are probably uncomfortable for us to witness, but far preferred to detachment and isolation. And then it needs an overhaul. The kids that do end up there. We got to reward them with a lottery ticket. It's just so unfair. They deserve them the complete opposite to rightsize the ship.

And the drug thing is pretty weird. Basically, we're managing them by drugging them.

It's one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

It's pretty creepy. But then being mad that they're drug addicts.

To make the case for them, you're working at this place. There's 20 kids. They're violent all the time. You're taking a kid to the hospital, and you're like, Okay, well, trips to the hospital or over-medicating. I don't think anyone's evil. You're in a bunch of terrible situations. You're picking between lesser of terrible options, and maybe the medication is the best of the lesser options.

That is what this book is saying. There's not some villain here. No. It is merely the structure of a system that is not aligned to what we know humans need to be healthy.

We had a systems expert on once, and he said the simplest oh, cammy, razor thing is like, whatever results you're seeing of the system, that is what the system produces. Exactly. Period. The results are the proof of what the system produces. So it's like, we're just at a point with these numbers. You can't pretend it does anything but what it does.

And just one more number. So you have this roughly 50, maybe 59% of kids who age out of foster care have serious criminal involvement by the time they are 26. That's out of that Midwest evaluation study. 59% versus, fewer than 5%, some people will say, 3% of kids who grow up in foster care will ever get a four-year college degree. Three. 59% versus 3%, these are the outcomes.

This is what the system produces. Oh, man. Back to the beginning.

This is not a secret.

People know these numbers, and everyone's like,.

I know. That worked up about it.

I guess I got worked up.

Yeah, but we have all these psychologists writing all these books on mental development. We know all this information. They're out there talking about it, and yet we're applying it where? Well, if you're rich. Yeah, exactly. If you're a rich person- You got You're a rich person.

You get all that help.

And spending $31 billion every year for these outcomes.

I don't know why it never occurred to me. It's like, well, we know addiction knows no boundaries. Just as many rich people are addicted as poor people Individual professionals are addicted as much as blue collar. Addiction is addiction. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse. All these things, they have no respect for a socioeconomic level. The notion that, yeah, there's no rich kids in foster care. Are you telling me that they're not in the same situations they are other than the neglect.

There's one other thing that I should mention about responses that are happening. So kinship care. People have only very recently, in the past few years, and I'm not talking the past 10 years. I'm talking the past three years or so. A recognition that, okay, there seems to be better outcomes if a kid is placed with someone they know, a relative or even fictive kin, which could be a family friend or teacher or a coach. Someone who knows the kid or knows their community is connected with them in some way. It's kinship care. It used to always be that grandma took in her grandkids, but those people never got the state money. They never got the money that goes to foster parents, to strangers. They were just bankrupting their retirement by caring for their kin. The change is that more and more states, including Washington State and nationally, it is happening that you can now become licensed as a kinship provider just for your relative. You don't have to jump through all the hoops and all the training that are required of conventional foster parent strangers. You can just be licensed for your relative and get the state support.

This is a change. Is it perfect? Probably not. Nothing is, but it is better. Certainly a significant reform. And incredibly, even until pretty recently, perhaps even to this moment, there are definitely people who go, Well, why would we give the kid to their grandmother? Their grandmother fucked up her own daughter who is the kid It's mother, and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, and the whole family is screwed up. This has been the prevailing attitude why we don't give kids, why we have traditionally not placed children with kin because this belief- They were the problem in the first place.

Perhaps they're thinking they're that much closer to the abuser we just took them for. They can now stop by their brother's house. Right.

So this is what I mean. Is it a perfect solution? Not necessarily. It is surely better than moving the kid amongst strangers for years.

Yes, we already talked about it, but this notion that we're going to wait for a perfect solution is not it. We got to be happy with some improvements, and we have to have an appetite for the downside we discover.

And for saying this work, this didn't work. I think we get so- We need It's an experiment. We did it, and now it's too late. It's like, you can change it. If we see it, that doesn't work.

Well, you have kids, and I have kids. And the minute you have kids, I feel like you're incredibly aware of the luck or not luck a kid gets. My mom always It's like, you get brought home from the hospital to a house, and that's it. You don't pick out the window. You make zero decisions. You get brought from home to that hospital, and you're in a situation. And I don't know why I'm going to say this, but maybe back to Art. Was any part of his explanation? When I I try to make peace with some of my totally amoral behavior, which I had a lot of it. The way I would justify this stuff was, Yeah, man, it's unjust. I didn't get my fair shake. All of empathy in interpersonal relationships, they're all built on reciprocity. So if no one is showing you kindness and generosity, well, guess what? You don't fucking show it back. You're like, no, I get it. I got to take mine. I felt very justified in that at times. This was unjust. So the system is fucked up. So why would I play by the rules of the system that I was a victim of?

You have no regard for it.

He would absolutely say yes.

Sure. If I was that kid, I'd be saying please and thank you and showing up on time. But I didn't get that hand. So fuck everyone.

He would say, I don't understand. I guess they got it, and so they know it, but I don't know how to be that way. I didn't ever learn it.

It's not as innate as we'd like to believe it is.

He always says empathy is learned. I wonder. I look at my own kids, and I felt like I saw empathy very, very, very early. Yes.

I do think any social animal has empathy. You have to to coexist in a organization.

And he did for his sister.

I think you can lose it.

I think it's practice. He did lose it.

Yes, because, again, the whole reason it has it is for group cohesion. And if there is no group cohesion in your life, there's nothing for you to protect.

Somehow he got it back.

Well, I think I think the group in the prison with the other foster kids- So they're no longer kids by this point. I think that's what happens in an AA meeting. You're looking around at all these people that you have a lot in common with, and you start going, Oh, this is so interesting. Why do we all have this in common? What's the overlap? There's a ton.

Absolutely.

Well, Claudia, I love the book. It's gritty. It's an unflinching look at the reality of all the things that were happening. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's great. I loved it. Really awesome. The book is Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster care. And I really, really hope a lot of people read it, and I really, really hope a lot of us start caring about this, myself included. I was talking to my wife about it while reading it, and we're both like, Yeah, fuck me. We got to somehow use her. I feel too like- So we got to do something. Yeah.

Thanks for reading.

Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. For coming on. It was great. Yes. Can't wait for you to come back with your next book.

I have some ideas. Okay, good.

All right. Thank you so much, Claudia. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Unfortunately, they made some mistakes. Oh my God. It's like I'm looking through binoculars. Why? I just got my new lenses that have my my Pore prescription up top. Transition, as they call them.

Oh, sure.

Yes. And then my nearsightedness down here. I've never had the top. I feel like I'm looking through binoculars. I can see every pore on your face.

Great. My favorite thing. So happy I'm happy to hear that.

I'm totally teasing. I cannot see your pores. That's just an example one would give if they could see perfectly.

Okay. I just want to apologize to everyone because we did an Armchair Anonymous story a while back where a woman drank a rat in a water bottle, which we've referred to a couple of times. But it's really fucked with some people, including me. As we know, I thought a rat got in my kettle, into the straw part of the kettle. I still am not positive that that didn't happen.

Even though physics would say it, Clona.

Anything's possible. My friend Sally She voice memoed me the other day, and she said- Sally from Argent. Sally, who owns the amazing suit company Argent. Very successful, very smart woman.

Smart woman, a successful woman. So- Get in line, folks.

That's right. Well, don't. She is married and has children. But get in line to buy her stuff. She gave me a voice memo and said, I make this dessert for my kids where I puree strawberries and lemons. It sounds amazing. She slices the strawberries. She puts the puree on and whips cream, puts that on there with some honey and vanilla or something. Then I know. She layers that up. She sometimes makes this for the kid, she says, and she makes a little bit for her. So she did this. She said she was eating it and she tasted something weird. There was a weird texture. So she pulled out this little piece, this little white tiny piece. And then there was more. And she's convinced that it was a rat. It was Miles. Now there's rats in all of our food.

Okay. Well, I have been laughing about it thus far. I know it stayed with you, really. It was really strong. It's a big one for you. I had made a water in the gym-Oh, boy. Last week, and then I put it in a little holder next to my machine. And then two days went by, and then I went and I had another sip of it. No. What? It tasted weird. I will admit, I was like, Oh, no. Is there a mouse in here? I I had it. I had the feeling. Of course, there was not a mouse in there. Are you sure? Yes. I was like, How could I even entertain this? It was up so high on a rack. There's no way a mouse could have gotten up there.

Of course they can.

And the top was closed, but it I said funky, and you'll be happy to know that it is in my subconscious as well, because now the minute I taste something funky in water, I now do think, Oh, there's a mouse inside.

There's a mouse in this house. I hate to tell you, a mouse went in there, swam around for a a while and then came out. Just took a nice bath. Closed the lid. He opened the lid. He's a conscientious mouse. Yeah, I mean, we are. As a group, mice are conscientious and hardworking and good at covering our tracks. I feel like that mouse opened that lid, went in there, did a swim. Took a bath, bathed. Yeah, well, yeah.

Clean mice. They're clean. They're cleaner than you think.

He heard you coming. I was like, Oh, my God, Dex is coming. Ran up and closed it and you drank it.

Now I have bubonic plague. Should we make water bottles with fake mice in them? Oh, wow. Like a mouse-mouse ice cube thing?

Oh, that's cute, actually.

Or just a toy one that floats in there.

I think we might It gets sued, choking-wise. I guess it could be huge.

Yeah, it can't fit out the hole. You'd be surprised what people will sue over.

What you can choke on? Oh, what you can sue on.

Yeah, I just heard a story about someone. I'm afraid to tell it. Oh, what? Well, just someone sat on the hot bar at a Whole Foods, and they burnt themselves, and then they sued Whole Foods. Now, they're the reason there's a sign. I said to my kids, I said, what's to say you pick up the tons and slam them into your eyeball? Well, we got to have fucking signs on the tons. Don't slam these into your eyeballs.

I don't like this story. Wait, they sat on the hot bar?

Yes, and got burned.

Why did they...

Also, that's just- It was a child-ish, old enough child that I...

I have to say something. That is so disgusting that someone's butt was on the hot bar.

I think they were clothed.

I don't care. They farted in their pants and put their pants on the hot bar.

Yeah, maybe hopefully, it should have sued them.

Exactly.

It might have been Gelson's. I'm not sure. So don't sue me if you're either of those stores. But apparently this happened.

It could have been Lazy Acres, too.

My kids were thrilled by this story, and I was like, This is not a good story. People shouldn't be suing companies for sitting on top of a hot bar.

Did the kids think like, Yeah, stick it to the man. I guess.

I don't know. They just probably cited someone they knew had a story that involved changing a policy at a grocery store.

Was it one of their friends who sat on the hot bar? It was.

Yeah, or one of their friends' sisters or something. I don't know.

Oh, my God. Please don't sit on the hot bar. Yeah. That's silly. I feel bad because I'd like a buffet. In theory, I used to like them a lot. We know you love a buffet. I love. It's getting... The older I get, the more I resist an open food situation.

Because you're afraid of- I'm just like, eeu.

Too many people breathing on it. Caught. I I just don't trust people anymore. Sure.

That's why these salad bars often, they have such a restrictive plexiglas plate over it so you can't cough on it, that it's nearly impossible to get your arms under the thing and operate. I'm like, I'd rather take on some illness and have the freedom to move and do my magic. You want that? Yeah, I want it wide open so I can operate.

Oh, no.

But you know me, I'm a risk taker. I'm an adrenaline junkie.

You also have germy stuff. You have weird stuff. Not very much. I guess you just don't like fish.

Yeah, I think you're confusing fish and germ. I guess. I work under the assumption you're going to get every single germ, and it's a waste of time to worry about it.

Okay, well, I disagree. I don't think have to get listeria. And you actually don't. You do not have to get listeria.

But listeria wouldn't be born from the people coughing on it. No. That's coming from the field. Yes.

So that's another thing.

I don't want listeria.

Right. But we're trusting that whoever put that huge vat of lettuce cleaned the lettuce.

Yes, but okay, this will be a very unpopular opinion, and people will be mad about it. But it's like, when we have friends that are like, they were going to come over and they're like, I don't think we should come over because so and so got sick. I'm like, well, great. We're either going to get it today or we're going to get it in four days. We live in LA. Our kids go to a school. I'm going to get everything. I know. So all I'm doing is picking what time I think is most convenient for me to get a cold.

Yes, I totally disagree with you. Yes. I often avoid many sicknesses by just not seeing the person that's sick.

I think some people's lives are controllable in that manner. But I think once you have kids that are in a public school, there's no control. It's like whatever is in the Gen pop you're going to get because they're going to be at school with other kids that have it. So maybe this is just me accepting the reality of my last 13 years, which is like, when you have kids, you're not going to be able to choose who you interact with. That's out the window. Sure. So when we have friends that are like, so-and-so sick, I'm like, yeah, well, if it's in her school, it's in my kid's school, or it certainly will be by Tuesday, and then they're going to bring it home to me. It's like, all we're talking about is timeline.

Yeah, but sometimes timeline makes a difference. If you have a huge fucking thing at work or you have something big, you're like, I don't want that for that. I want it on the weekend. If I have to get it, I got to get a different time. Yeah. Speaking of sicknesses, I was at the hospital visiting a friend. For a positive thing. For a positive thing. But that's my whole point. Hospitals are so... They're such a mind fuck because the best possible things are happening there and the worst possible things are happening.

Sure. Life is coming into the world and life is leaving the world.

And leaving simultaneously.

The circle of life is all in that city block.

In one building. Yeah. So, yeah, I was visiting a friend who had a baby, and I was pulling up, and I could feel myself. I was getting anxious as I was driving up to the hospital. And I was like, what is this feeling? And it was at night, and I was just tired. So I was like, oh, maybe I'm just tired. But then, Then I was like, no, I really, I don't want to be here. I don't like hospitals at all. It was a new realization. Maybe it's newer, the older I get, Where I know, oh, death is upon us. I did not like it there. I was happy to be there to support my friend. I was really happy I went. I wrote in my journal, that was the best part my day. I don't know if that was a lie to myself, but I was happy.

Do you find that you lie in your journal a lot? No.

Okay. Well, I don't know.

Sure.

No, I'm writing down the correct amount of water. I'm writing down the correct amount of alcohol. I'm doing it.

But are you writing down takeaways that you wish were your takeaways versus what they really were?

No. Yesterday, I wrote, Am I depressed or do I have an infection? That was in my notes section. Okay. No, I think I'm pretty honest in there. Okay. Anyway, so I was just very overcome with the idea that these nurses, and they're so happy. Some nurses came in and out.

They're truly a special breed.

They're the best we've got. They really are. We're so lucky to have them. It's so... Truly. The NICU nurses and stuff.

Because at least the doctors, you're like, Oh, the doctors are rich.

Exactly.

But the nurses aren't rich. And you're like, God bless.

The nurses are doing the dirty work.

I think 95% of everything.

Yeah, they're doing most of the work and all the dirty work.

Oh, yeah.

The thankless work. The thankless work, and they're so smiley.

And the patients are often quite cranky. They're in their worst mood. They're likely to be in their whole life.

I know. So I was so grateful.

They're amazing. I mean, truly, I'm not pandering to anyone. They're fucking mind-blowing.

One of the night nurses my friend was talking to and I was like, Why do you do the night shift? They work seven to seven. And she said, Well, then I get to be with my kids during the day. My friend was like, Well, when do you sleep then? She was like, Well, I nap with my kid. When I'm dead. Basically, I nap with my kid. I'm like, You get one hour of sleep a day? She He's so smiling and happy and kind. I mean, they are really special, and then they have to see so much death.

I wish my dad had been a little gentler on some of the nurse staff towards the end, but he got a couple of wild things in his mind that he thought had happened. After he got brain radiation and stuff, there were a couple of things where it's like, I showed up and he was at war with the entire nurse staff. Sure. What did he think happened? Well, they had come. He had this story about how they had come in in the middle of the night and assaulted him in all these ways. And as I was listening to the details, I'm like, I think they changed his diaper. I think that's what happened. But it's delirium. It was this crazy event that happened.

But they're used to that because a lot of patients with dementia, like my grandfather.

Well, after that, every time I came, I brought flowers for the nurses, and I would say to them, Thank you for your patience with my dad. I was afraid he was going to get kicked out. I'm like, he needs to be... Like, bud, if you get kicked out of here, what the fuck? Back to the hospital thing. This is a brag. I do think my superpower as a person, I just isolated this recently, because I was going to see a friend that's very ill, And Kristin was like, as I was leaving, she was like, in some way, Oh, this will be hard. Good luck. And I said, Oh, I'm going to have a blast. That's what I can do. I can have a blast anywhere. That's the thing I can decide is I'm going to have a blast here. I've been in the hospital quite a bit in my day visiting people. And for the most part, it's been a party. That's the one thing I can do is I can figure out how to have fun nearly anywhere. Or Lincoln and Kristen went to a funeral in Toledo leading up to it. They're, of course, somber.

They're also sad about the person. I said, Don't forget, a lot of times these funerals are so fucking fun because is you're seeing a bunch of your family members you haven't seen in a long time, or even in Lincoln's case, meeting some that she hasn't met. This funeral, yeah, halfway through, they bounced and went slelling with cousins she had never met. I was like, these things can turn into, but always be open to the fact that you can turn into a party.

Right.

I do not sell you on this.

I think that's right. I think you do do that. I think you can do that, and you do do That's what I'm doing. I'm doing that.

It's like my one skill. I can't fix anything that's going on with these friends and family members I've had that have gotten ill. I feel so powerless. There's nothing that can be done. But then I think, well, the only thing I can do is I can be a party when I'm there. I can try to be a reprieve from the heaviness of all this.

Sure. That's true. I mean, for the person that's sick, that's a huge gift.

Unless they're like, Hey, why are you so goddamn happy, man? I'm fucking dying. I guess it could go that way. It's not time for jokes, my friend.

It depends on who it is. Everyone's different. I think if you're sick, you want lightness, probably, mostly. So that's probably good to have you around. I think the flip of that coin, because all super powers have- A dark side. Flips, have a dark side. Yeah, yeah.

Double-edged sword.

In some ways, I think that there's a compartmentalization that you have to do to do that. You have to be like, That part's not here.

I just simply go to, If I were them and I was towards the end, the last thing I would want is to watch person after person come and cry in front of me and me to know I'm the source of all this sadness. That would be very hard for me with my disposition. I have always been trying to make everyone around me as happy as possible. If I was the source of all this sadness around me, that would just be a very miserable last period for me. It's like, Oh, my God, all these broken all these people's hearts. This is like one person. I assume right or wrong that they're in that situation They've mostly been dealing with people coming in and crying. And they may be even feeling inclined to have to comfort all these people. And so, yeah, I want it to be like, we have limited time to party.

Let's do it. No, I don't mean for For a person. I mean for me.

Well, what is true, probably, is that quite often I don't experience the thing that people were experiencing in the hospital room until months later. So I do think that is true. I'll get a wave of sadness, host everything.

Yeah.

Yeah. With Barton, it wasn't until I got on an airplane to fly to Detroit where I was like, Oh, my God, all that just happened. Because I wasn't alone allowing it to happen at the time. I don't know which one's better or worse, whether I feel it a month later or in the moment. I don't know.

I don't think there's better or worse for it's just individual. But I wonder if you expect more people to have that mentality. You're very, very quick to move on to the bright side, the happy side. Remember, funerals can be a party.

Can't spell funeral without fun, F-U-N.

Sure, that part. I think that is definitely a way that you cope, but I don't think it's however... I think a lot of people need to feel it.

Oh, Sure. Yeah. I don't think most people are like me in that way for sure. Now, this is borderline of sacrum story, but truly, it's one of the most exceptional things I've ever witnessed in my life, which is I was in Afghanistan with Tom Arnold. We were just starting this comedy show we were going to do. Then they started firing the Holitzer, which is this huge cannon. It's shaking the whole thing. We're on this tiny little base on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. They come in at some point. There's a lot of firing, firing, firing. Then they come in, they go, Okay, it's over. Go out to the flight line. They're bringing back two dead soldiers and four wounded soldiers. They take us to the flight line, and they teach us how to salute, and we're going to this whole thing, right? And now it's getting really intense. It's also that the air is incredible. It's all very memorable. It's very warm, but it's raining, and we're saluting, and it's emotional. And they're playing the bagpy. Yeah. And I'm like, Wow, this is fucking crazy real. How am I standing here? And then after we salute, they send us back to our little temporary where we're staying in these barracks.

And then about 20 minutes later, they come in, they go, Okay, guys, you are up. Go into the emergency We want you to talk with the guys that are wounded. And now I'm thinking, are we qualified to go do that? I mean, these guys are like 30 minutes out from being ambushed. So we go into this little tiny plywood hospital where they're doing some radical stuff on these guys really quick. And I see them put an X-ray up. They've just X-rayed this guy that they've just also wheeled over. And I can see he has strapping all over his chest, right? So this guy is quite fucked up. And without missing a beat, Tom Arnold stepped up. He's like, Hey, buddy, where are you from? And Tom started letting it rip. And he's telling stories about Rosanne and about all this getting stabbed in the chest in the kitchen. And this guy starts laughing so hard that the doctor has to come over and go, Okay, hold on, hold on. Back off a little bit.

That's nice.

And I was just sitting there. It was the Tom show. I wasn't involved at all. I was just watching like, this is insanely powerful. Yeah, absolutely. This thing Tom Arnold can do fearlessly without any... He just ran right in there, started letting it rip. The guy had already been given morphine, but that wasn't necessarily changing anything. But it was insane.

Yeah, that's amazing.

And I was on the verge of tears watching this power Tom Arnold had and what he did to this dude in this moment. And then we then went on to other bases and blah, blah, blah. And then when we got back to the main base, we ran into that dude. He had been sent there for more medical treatment, and he was well enough that we saw him. And yeah, the way he thanked Tom for that was like…

That's huge. It was incredible. Yeah, that's incredible. I think that's great if you can give someone that.

Yeah. Like, what he bought him in that moment is like, you can't. There's not even a drug you can give somebody for that.

Oh, yeah.

I showed Link in your favorite movie. I know you just heard that in a previous interview.

My second favorite movie. Yes. Well, top five. Ocean's Eleven.

Ocean's Eleven.

So good. What did she think?

She loved it. It's so clever.

It is.

It's so clever. What a screenplay. I love it so much.

It's so fun and smart. You are trying to be... The way it all comes together in the end.

Danny Oceans, very clever.

It was very clever.

It was fun for her, too, because I think she's only been seeing Brad Pitt at his current age. Yes. For her, not me, he's a very old man. That's wild. When you're 12, a 62-year-old man is quite old. Seeing him at whatever he was in that movie, I think it was 2001, he was probably, I don't know, 40 or something, but he looked probably 35.

Yeah, he looks in his mid-30s. Oh, he's so youthful-looking.

He is. And she was like, She was getting it. She's like, Oh, my God, he's so cute. I'm like, I don't know. I know what his fucking jawline.

That whole cast. Oh, my God. I know. Everyone. I heard they're doing another one with the original cast. I don't know if that's a rumor.

I hope they bring them all. But everyone is so good in it. Casey is so funny in that movie. Don Chetel. Chetel is incredible. Damon. They're all fucking phenomenal.

I know.

What a movie. And no women.

One woman. Julia Roberts. The biggest movie star of all time.

Yeah, and she has a few scenes. Yeah. But it's just funny because as this already came up in this interview, we just said, But yeah, as I watch all these movies with my daughters. It's almost impossible to not acknowledge that there was almost no women in any of these movies that were huge.

I know. Obviously, women know that. Women see it and understand. I do think it's reasonable, but it is so funny that it requires having women in your life, not even a wife, but specifically daughters, to be able to see the injustices for women.

But you just said we knew, but do you think that's true? Because Kristen will be the first... When you were watching Oceans 11, were you thinking there's no women or were you just enjoying the movie? No, I was enjoying- I think now you were cognizant of it, but we were in the water at that time. I don't even think you notice because it's all that existed.

Well, no, you know... No, you enjoy the movie, but you're aware that there's one female role in a movie that you'd want to have. Or there's two. There's the role and the best friend often, and that's it. So when you're an actor, even when you're just an acting class looking for scenes and stuff, you're very aware. Oh, this is limited, or there's two tropes only.

When you were 14 and watching that or Beverly Hills comp.

Yeah, but I didn't see that.

Yeah, it's just zero. Much of these movies, that were huge. Yes. I didn't notice.

Yeah.

Because that's just what a movie was.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Written by men, geared toward men. Yeah.

It's men writing stories that interest them, which are going to be adventurey conquer.

Yeah. But I also think men now that things have changed to an extent and are changing, men still enjoy those. It's just, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. No, I think we've all... Now you're like, Duh. Yeah, exactly. It's funny. I'm having that fun dissonance of having grown up without ever thinking of anything. This goes for a bunch of things.

Totally. Yeah, it's pretty weird.

You watch movies from the '80s with your kids, and it's just like, there might be a fat runner that goes on for 13 scenes over the course of the movie. There might be, I mean, my God, Revenge of the Nerds. It's like, they rape a girl. It's a huge hit movie. I know. You're like, Oh, but they're nerds. You feel bad for it. It's insane. I know. You watch it now, it's just like, wow, I just don't understand how that wasn't obvious to me back then. It is.

It is crazy how time moves and society moves and what's acceptable moves. I think that is when we get into, Oh, everyone's so woke, I think I think that's just a tension with the changing times. At some point, this is going to look crazy. Something's going to look crazy. People are going to watch it and be like, Oh, my God. They were saying that. They were doing that.

They- Yeah, that's inevitable. They have times evolved.

I think they'll always be a group that's like, What? We should be allowed to do that. We should. But it's like, We got to keep evolving.

Yeah.

It's interesting. Interesting.

Tiz.

Tiz. Okay. Oh, I also wrote, Do you think Asians have a resistance to water? Could they? How much water does- You know me, I like to...

I know Asians have a resistance to lactose.

Okay. It says there's no biological resistance or genetic inability for Asians. Oh, this is confusing. To swim or float in water. That's not what I'm asking.

Yeah. Nobody's allergic to water.

Not allergic, not allergic. Okay. But just maybe it doesn't... Okay, first of all, you know more than anyone. There's no such thing as nobody.

No, there are some noodies. There are some noodies. How can you say- There's no human that's allergic to oxygen.

Well, there probably is, and then they die.

Well, then they're not a human. They didn't even make it. They were a different species if they couldn't process oxygen. I mean, there are some things. Humans will die if they're left in a room that's 200 degrees. We have some limits that no one is excused from. So, yeah, we need water, all humans.

We need water, yes.

Yeah. And nobody's allergic to water.

Okay, But don't you think some bodies could process things differently and you might not know?

So, yes, people have different salinity counts, baseline salinity counts, like how well they process and or hold on to salt. And so, yes, there are people that have a higher salinity count who will dehydrate slower than people with a very low salinity count. So sure, there could be populations of people that have a predisposition to dehydration and some that are less likely to dehydrate based on that population's differing genetic salinity count.

So that's interesting because then certain populations have a high salinity count. They might not need as much water. That's true. And then they might be full off of water.

Well, no. I agree with you. All I don't agree with you is that anyone would not need water.

Okay. Well, not need at all. Just maybe need less. Just different levels.

Totally possible.

When I'm with with people, and they're drinking so much water. And then I'm trying to drink more water because of my planner.

Mostly white people love water.

Is that what you- It's not all white people.

It's not all Whites.

It's not all Whites.

I think it's socioeconomic to some I agree. I would love to see a graph of socioeconomics and water intake.

Why? That's interesting.

Because I think rich people have the bandwidth to be micromanaging their health in a way that people are just trying to survive would be. And so I think they have more of an obsession with water intake. Drinking water.

Oh, yeah, that's probably true. I just mean the way my body feels. I'm with people and their glass is gone and gone and gone. And then all I'll be like, I need to drink water to match. Then I'll start. Then I'm halfway through the cup and I'm full of water. It's not an exaggeration. It's not like I'm full.

Sure. Yeah. You're a maximum water capacity.

I don't want my cup in my body.

My cup in my body-My cup-eth is full.

Is full, and it will run-th over. It runeth over. It will runeth over, and it's uncomfortable for me because at night, I drink a ton of water because of my vitamins. I'm just drinking so much water, and I'm uncomfortable for at least 20 to 30 minutes.

Wow.

I could be a medical marvel.

The only thing I would offer as a counterpoint to all this is that I do think you should be peeing more often.

Yeah, but then since I've been drinking more water because of my planner, I've been peeing more.

Yeah, and you're going to be less likely to get a UTI.

Well, that's why I was doing it because I was like, I think I'm getting an infection, so I need to pee.

I think there's a baseline of what we would say is healthy amount of urination. How many pees do you think of it? When you check into a hospital, they do ask, When's the last time you pee? Peeing is a big marker of your health.

I pee at least once a day.

I pee three times that in just the night while I'm sleeping.

I know. Well, now you get it in your head, and then now I wake up at the night, I'm like, I got to pee, and then I don't, but I make myself. Okay, how many pees a day is normal? Okay, 6-8 times for adults.

Yeah, you're way under that.

Okay, but it says, But 4 to 10 times can be considered healthy.

Is it one in there at all?

No, I don't do one. I at least do two because I pee first thing in the morning, and I definitely pee at night. I normally pee at least once during the day.

Three times? Can you find three on that chart?

But I probably pee four times a day. Let's see, today, I just peed. Congrats.

But by the way, this is new. You I and I have worked together for almost eight years now, and seven and a half of those years, you did not pee at all during the day. Yeah.

Well.

True.

Maybe. I only peed once on set when I was on set that day, and I was there 13 hours.

Yeah. I'm going to Disneyland this weekend. And what will happen to me is I will make it the first couple hours of the day without having to go to the bathroom. And then it'll get progressively crazier. Well, I will I'll be peeing every hour. When we see a bathroom, I know I need to stop in there.

That's why you broke the seal. I never break the seal.

Yeah. You like it.

I think I like it, minus the occasional infection.

Sure, sure, sure. Now, when I'm driving, I can alter that a bit when I'm driving. See, I think that's what's interesting. But I also pee in cups while I drive, as you know.

Right. But not ever. You don't pee eight times in a cup.

When I'm I'm driving for 16 hours straight, which I do often. How many times? I will make it the first seven hours without peeing. See? But by that time I pee, I'm in trouble. I've been wanting to pee for a couple hours, but I've been ignoring it. Then again, like everything else, it starts. Then I'll pee three hours later, and then I'll have to pee an hour and a half later.

Right. You broke the seal. Yeah. Now my theory is peeing is mental. I feel like a mental game. We probably only need to pee three to four times.

Well, I think you just read the six times.

It says the normal number of times. That's average. That doesn't mean that's what we have to do. No. That's what people do. I think it's brain power. What is it? Mind over matter? Yeah, it's mind over matter.

Mind over bladder?

Yeah, it's mind over bladder. I think I just really good at it.

But a lot of physicians The conditions were worn about holding pee.

It can get- Yeah, I'm going to get in trouble for this because it's like- It's not great advice to drink less water and pee less. My mom's always, she's so worried about my pee because- She thinks about it all the time.

She does. I bet a few times a day, she thinks about your pee.

Yeah, because it's weird to think. It's, God, I feel bad for her. When we were in India when I was four, I had this horrible bladder infection.

Because you didn't want to use any of the bathrooms.

I don't know why. Yeah, probably. That's what you told me. Yeah, probably. I was scared. I was in a new place. I didn't want to leave my mom. Then I got this horrible- You looked like everyone.

You could get mixed up.

I stolen. First time, you didn't stand out. Kidnapping. Yeah. I already had a fear of that, as we know. Then they were like, Force making me drink coconut water from the coconut. Oh, cool. Nature's Hydrator. Sounds cool now. It wasn't cool then. I hated it.

I just think it's cool that nature was-Provided. Provided.

Yeah, me too. Also, it is cool. Now, I would love to drink.

Yeah, they say it's very hydrating, coconut water.

Well, that's what they were trying to force me. I was like, no. I was so stubborn. I was so stubborn. My poor mom is just trying to cure my infection. I feel bad. I'm not going to tell her.

You're not going to apologize? No. Okay.

I hope this gets back to her. Mom's had that tough.

I call my mom probably once every eight months. To apologize. And apologize for something that I'm now dealing with with my own kids. Yeah. Well, your mom-I mean, that spring break was the... That was the biggest wake-up call of my life.

It was like-Oh, when you took them on your own?

Yeah. And I was like, they were fighting the whole time. I was like, God, man, she had a third one in the mix that was fighting, and she couldn't afford the vacation we were on. I don't know how she handled the stress. That's a lot. And my brother and I fist fought. The fights were, they were scary, probably. Yeah. I mean, we'd be in the back seat like there's two lions in the back seat going at it, seatbelts off, wrestling around, and she's trying to read a map.

Oh, yeah, exactly. It doesn't have any gas in the car.

Running on fumes.

Running on fumes. Oh, yeah. That's hard.

God bless moms. Nurses and moms. This fact check was dedicated to nurses.

I like that. Brought to you by nurses and moms. Okay, let's do some facts.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

Claudia.

I say Claudia because we have a friend named Claudia, and it's more fun to say it that way. I feel like that's the German way to say it.

Claudia. Yeah. I say Claudia.

Yeah, I think Claudia would prefer you.

I agree because I think that's how you say it.

You probably say Ro, but I say Roe.

Oh, why?

I say Claudia Roe. Yeah. But it's really Claudia Roe. It is.

It is. First fact. I loved this episode.

Yeah, I've been repeating. For me, the most salient point that was made in the entire thing is that poverty looks a lot like neglect.

Exactly. Fuck. Exactly. Exactly. The real statistics about taking kids from their parents, even if their parents aren't what you think are fit. Because I could see myself having definitely thought that for a long time. Like, well, they just, but they aren't fit to take care of that kid.

They're hungry sometimes.

Exactly. Or they're not good parents or what? It doesn't matter.

The other option is worse.

The other option is worse. That really struck me. Now I've been very aware of when I hear about the system or also when I look around at all these unhoused people and I just think they're all from it.

I even observe something this morning, weirdly, that made me think of it as I was walking Delta into school, and then there was a kid dressed in their pajamas. They do have Benjamin days some days, right? Yeah. But no one else was in pajamas. Then this teacher was asking the student. Then I just had, again, this thought, I'm like, Fuck, man, maybe she didn't have someone that got her, helped her I don't know that that's the scenario. Maybe she thought it was Benjamin Day.

Maybe she just wanted to wear a pajama.

But the teacher was concerned. Then I was a little bit like, that's how this ball gets rolling. I know. It's well intentioned, but also So it's not necessarily... The outcome is not better.

It's very hard to- To accept. Yeah. Because I understand the impulse like, well, we got to get this kid a situation. They can't be living in a house where they don't have clothes and stuff, but they really can't be living in a house where they don't have parents or someone that loves them or knows them.

Right. You got to go like, oh, shit. They clearly haven't bathed in a long time, and they're in the same clothes six days in a row. That's troubling, but probably not as troubling as sending them to prison, which they'll have a 65% chance of happening.

Well, that's the other. Now, I'm so angry about when a kid is removed from their family, I'm like, you ruined it. Immediately, you ruined it. You started this cycle, and now that kid is traumatized and probably will do something that confirms that you think this system is bad. It's like, don't do that.

Then look, there's going to be some percentage that are getting sexually abused and physically abused. They can't be there. Of Then in that case, it's like, We need a great place for those kids to go. We have to.

Even the thing about what she, which is a fact, about kinship care, that has to be the first resort. I mean, you could build that hogwart.

I mean, I can't afford to build a hogwart, but I could probably, yes, help get a hogwart built.

I'll teach there. I'll teach- What classes are you going to teach? Dark Arts. Dark? Yeah. Then it'll probably be hard at first to get good teachers. So I can do multiple subjects. Okay. So I'll do dark arts, and then I will do transfiguration. Okay. That's exciting. Okay. I'm not interested in teaching herbology, so don't ask me to do that. I won't. Okay.

I'm going to teach mischief.

Yeah, sure. Sure.

There's a right dosage of mischief that everyone should have in their life.

I understand. Anywho. Okay, let's see. How many students in Beddington College where she went? She said it was so small. About a thousand total students, 700 to 800 undergraduates and a smaller graduate population. So very small. Trinity High School where she went, and she was alluding to the fact that it's fancy.

Okay.

Which wasn't for her. I looked at prestigious schools in New York City. But top contenders consistently mentioned for academic rigor, history, and elite college placement, Ivy League Plus, include Horace Mann School, Brearley School, which is girls, Trinity School, Dalton School, Collegiate School, Boys.

They sound fancy.

They really do.

Yeah, they deliver.

Spent School Girls in Chappin. I'm probably saying that wrong because I didn't go to any of these. School Girls.

That's the first test to admit you to the school.

How do you pronounce this? Anywho. So, tuition for Trinity School. Hit Seventy-thousand.

Seventy-thou. Hello. What grades does it go from? That's so much.

Do we know?

Is it just high school or is it- That's a good question. Sixth through 12. I want to do some fast math.

With figures around...

I think it was a six. I think it was a six. I think it was a six.

I see. Trinity School.

Do you remember in Christmas Story, the movie with Ralphie? K through 12. K through 12. So 13 times 70 would be $910,000 to get through there.

Maybe kindergarten stuff's cheaper.

I doubt it.

I don't know. What were you saying about Christmas?

Christmas Story. Ralphie's father, he's always fighting the furnace. Downstairs, he's, My dad string together, or he meld together a string of swear words, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is me in this door.

Oh, what's happening?

My front I think I already told you that I took it apart. I was gliding on a cloud for two days because I had packed this hole that I thought was going to... And it worked for two days. And then today, I noticed it wasn't working again.

Okay.

And I was like, You motherfucking back scratching, dirty two-bit rat soup beaten motherfucker. And I got the Dremel out today, and I cut pieces of the hardware out.

Oh, boy. Okay.

And it's working incredibly now. But my ongoing battle with this door is biblical.

Now, are you a little bit... I want to just prep you like David Fagenbaum, who we had on, and he cured his own disease. Oh, yeah. But he kept thinking he cured the disease and we were going to celebrate, and then the disease came back.

Yeah, that's right. Well, that's what stage I was at this morning. But I'm worried. But today I cured it. Are you sure? Yeah, because I removed the offensive piece that It was getting bound up, and I really studied for a long time. If that's out of there, is it not going to function? I did a lot of different little tests. I'm like, I think it will work just fine without that piece. Then I cut it out, and it fucking works great now. Okay.

I'm happy for you. That's good. That feels good. Oh, okay. She mentioned, she said the Tawana Brawley story and asked us if we knew about it, and we didn't. I looked it up. An African-American woman from New York gained notoriety in '87, which is just recently new to this world. At age 15, when it was alleged, she falsely accused four white men of kidnapping and raping her over a four-day period. At the end of November of that year, Brawley was found in a trash bag after having been missing for four days from her home in New York. This is God awful. She had racial slurs written on her body and was covered in feces.

Fuck, dude.

The feces came from a collie owned by a resident of the building where Brawley was found. Brawley accused four men of having raped her.

I do think I've seen a doc about this now. That trash bag part feels familiar. Oh, God. The savagery that humans are capable at times is really unimaginable.

Isn't it shocking?

Unimaginable, yeah. It's jarring.

It is jarring. When we had Elizabeth Smart on, it was interesting talking to her because I think this is for me to feel better about living in this world. I chalk everything up to just mental health issues. I'm just like, That person's sick. Yeah, right. I can live in a world where people are sick and do horrible things, but it's very strict. Yeah, it makes it hard for me to breathe thinking that that's not the case, that they just are doing it.

Normal people. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, you look at historically how many times mass amounts of people have participated in some pretty vile stuff, and you get into the power of your tribe.

I mean, I guess this whole episode spoke to a lot of this. The people she met in these prisons who've done horrible, horrible things, and they are products of their environment. Mm-hmm. Okay. Oh, what states have adopted kinship care? All US states have adopted kinship care to some degree, with many actively expanding programs, especially since the Family First Act encouraged prioritizing relatives for children in foster care with specific states like Michigan. We like that. Grass. That's Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Washington, implementing distinct licensing standards for kin caregivers to access federal funds. I'm not seeing California on there, which I don't like. Okay.

Get Newsom on the horn.

Exactly. Oh, I thought I had more.

That was it.

That was it. Claudia Rowe came with the flax.

Yeah, the whole thing is I get so frustrated when we treat symptoms and not diseases.

I know.

Diseases. We don't do anything upriver.

I know. It's maddening. We all know, but we know. So why?

Because they won't fund it, and they think it's fiscally responsible, but it's not. It's fiscally irresponsible. The homeless crisis Rehabs is so expensive. The prison system is so expensive. The state-run rehabs are so expensive. The theft and loss of property, all of it is like, it's so expensive. I know.

They think- It could not It costs more than Hogwarts. No.

I am going to charge a fair amount of money as a teacher there.

Oh, jeez, Monica.

No, you're not allowed to.

It's just a skill I had.

No, I don't think any of those teachers were getting paid at Hogwarts.

Yes, they were. They were in great robes.

They'll supply all kinds of great stuff because you're supposed to be living a very fun. You're eating great food. You've seen the meals at Hogwarts, floating turkeys.

Oh, I know. The bowls, they just fill up automatically. Oh, I can't wait. Okay, fine. I'll only charge 75%. I'm just kidding. I'll obviously do it for free.

Pro bono.

Yes, I'm doing that pro bono. Dark Arts. Oh, that could get It's a little dicey, though, if I'm doing it for free, because then I might get really dark and I'll lose track of myself. But you don't need money.

When you're a wizard, you don't need money.

I know. I don't really understand money because some are poorer than others, so I don't really get that.

I don't either. Just make money. Obviously, they got all these skills turn lead into gold.

But they have the bank. They have Gringot.

They have their own currency, right?

Yeah, Gringot. I want to live there so bad.

I wish that for you. I know. I want to tie a machine in you on Hogwarts.

I do.

I God, would I zip around in my time machine?

You think I'd be a good wizard? I want to know what you think.

That's like asking, do you like this dress? This is a question that can't be answered, right?

I want honesty.

I don't want to answer. Why don't you think I'd be a good lizard? I didn't say you wouldn't be a good lizard, but it's just ripe for- Listen, we know if you thought I'd be a good lizard, you'd say yes. I've never even thought about it. I know I'm asking you to think about it. But I immediately thought, if my answer was bad witch, then that's not going to work out.

Bad witch?

Whatever you're asking. If my answer were dark arts or whatever you're asking.

Oh, no. What did you just ask? Okay, you took it as, Would I be a good lizard or a bad wizard. That's right. Morally. Yes. But I was asking, do you think I would make a good wizard?

Oh, yes, great. Absolutely. But now- No, I don't even want to- Oh, no.

You think I'd be an evil one?

Oh, my God, no. What I immediately thought as I was evaluating, I was like, Well, this is already an errand I don't want to be on because if I conclude you'd be a naughty witch, I don't want to say that and then have you be upset. And so I immediately recused myself from the question.

I know, but we like to talk here about fun stuff and thought experiments.

Well, fun stuff is stuff where people's feelings don't get hurt.

I'm not going to get my feelings hurt. I just want to know why I'd be in bad lizard.

I don't think you would be a bad Wizard.

But you think I'd have some things that were bad?

I'm not thinking at all about your Wizard. Oh, can you? No, I'm not going to.

Okay, well, now you have hurt my feelings. You won't answer.

This is a no-win. Even in a not participating, it was a loss.

Well, yeah, you didn't. Yes, and it's okay if you think I'm naughty. I just wanted to know why.

I don't think anything about what Wizard you would be. I don't even understand what makes a good or bad lizard. Some of the characters are likable that were bad, right?

Well, they turn out. Some turn out to be good, but they weren't nice.

Okay.

But they did the right thing at the end.

But like, Slyther Then on the surface, I'm like, Oh, yeah. To say someone would be in Slytherin is an insult, but that's not true, right? To be Slytherin is fine.

Okay. Some people think that there's good and bad in all of the houses. Yeah.

It sounds consistent with what we know about humans.

Right. But there are traits and tropes. Look, there's a lot of people who are diagnosed Slytherin, and mostly, they all love that. They're taking so much pride. Like Charlie with love. Exactly. Erica, too. Yeah, great. She says she's a Slytherin. She's really proud of it. I don't I like that because I'm like, Guys, it's so eye-rolly to like being bad.

See, so this is my point is that I know how much it all means to you. So I don't want to tiptoe in and accidentally trigger something that I wouldn't even think would be a thing.

I'm telling you now it won't. I'm giving you permission to be your free self. I'm giving you permission. Do you think I'm a Hufflepuff? It's okay if you do.

What do you want to be?

No, we're not doing that.

You're a Grisendorff.

No, we're not doing that. Griswold.

Okay. I love you.

I love you. This is probably why I'm a muggle. It's like somebody didn't want to make the decision, so they just made her a muggle.

Even like muggle, I don't even… That means a lot to you.

Yeah, because it's a non-magic girl. Okay.