Joe Rogan Experience #1910 - Mark Laita

Mark Laita explains how decades of slick advertising photography (including shooting Apple) burned him out and led him to document real, unretouched human lives, first in his book Created Equal and then on his YouTube channel Soft White Underbelly. He and Joe Rogan dig into the roots of addiction and homelessness on Skid Row, arguing that beneath homelessness lies drug addiction, beneath that lies mental illness, and beneath that lies childhood abuse, neglect and broken self-worth. Laita describes the toll the work takes on him, the rare cases of recovery, and the futility of money thrown at the problem without addressing childhood. They cover YouTube censorship and demonetization of his work, the infamous inbred Whitaker family video, and the case for teaching empathy, parenting and resilience in schools. Throughout, Laita frames the project as a 'crash course in empathy' rooted in his own mother's unconditional love.

• Of roughly 5,000 people Laita has interviewed, he knows of only about four who genuinely got clean and turned their lives around.
  00:17:45
• He gives away $2,000-$3,000 a day on Skid Row, paying interviewees, handlers, pimps and gangs so he can keep working safely.
  00:20:21
• Six of his ten most-viewed videos have been demonetized or deleted by YouTube; female-narrated sex-work stories get demonetized while male ones don't.
  01:39:43
• A source showed a spreadsheet of homeless-services officials earning six-figure salaries (around $250k) with no incentive to actually fix the problem.
  01:14:16
• University of Chicago researchers are testing CRISPR-modified skin grafts to treat drug addiction, which worked in mice with human trials planned.
  00:46:50
• The inbred Whitaker family video reached 33 million views; their parents were double first cousins whose fathers were also identical twins.
  02:18:43
• Laita's harsh father once taunted his straight-A sister, 'if you're so smart how come you can't get into Dental School,' which drove both siblings to succeed to prove him wrong.
  01:52:14

• 'Soft white underbelly' was Blue Oyster Cult's original band name; Laita adopted it as an analogy for society's vulnerable underside.
  00:00:36
• For Created Equal he traveled to all lower 48 states over about ten years photographing subcultures, and it became the template for the channel.
  00:03:14
• He started shooting video almost by accident when Canon's 5D added video capability to a still camera.
  00:05:17
• To photograph the Hell's Angels he flew to Oakland, had the door slammed in his face, then won them over by bringing breakfast.
  00:08:25
• The Cecil Hotel reportedly had so many people thrown off its roof that a corner chicken restaurant ran a jar to bet on which floor they fell from.
  00:24:31
• Mike Dowd's interview was filmed in a single take with Laita saying nothing until 'thank you' at the very end.
  01:02:22
• Parts of West Virginia where the Whitaker family lives survive on roughly $12,000 a year.
  02:07:46
• California spent about $7.2 billion across nearly 30 homelessness programs, yet the problem keeps growing every year.
  01:15:49