Mariana (1:51)

They were like holiday gifts. One year. Okay, are you ready?

Jake (1:54)

Hi.

Mariana (1:55)

So this is a little different, this one. So Jacob Savora. It's different because it's the first on the podcast. You're a very good friend of mine. You're also not involved in any illegal.

Jake (2:05)

Business, as far as you know.

Mariana (2:06)

That I know of.

Jake (2:07)

As far as you know.

Mariana (2:08)

You do like to smoke your weed once in a while.

Jake (2:10)

Are we allowed to say this publicly? My mom knows. My mom knows that. Yeah.

Mariana (2:13)

Okay.

Jake (2:14)

We Live in California.

Mariana (2:17)

But I wanted to have you on because you're the correspondent on Ms. Now, formerly msnbc. You're an amazing journalist. I love your work, as you know. And you're an incredible book author as well.

Jake (2:30)

Thank you.

Mariana (2:31)

So very accomplished. And you have reported on subject matters that matter a lot to me, including America's immigration policies, which we will talk about today. And you just released a new book on the LA fires and your experience covering them firsthand, particularly as a person who grew up in LA and who saw the Palisades fire, the neighborhood you grew up in, burn in front of your eyes. So I want to talk about that too. So welcome on the Hidden thread.

Jake (2:54)

Thank you. Can I say before we start this, I mean, I know we're already started. It's the mutual admiration society and you're like my role model and. No, I'm serious. The best and most fearless and most badass journalists I know. And when we first met, I was a red carpet correspondent for the AMC channel. And I have never been more insecure than meeting you and Darren at Malo Mexican restaurant here.

Mariana (3:18)

That's right.

Jake (3:19)

That doesn't exist. My wife, Nicole, who probably was just my girlfriend at the time.

Mariana (3:21)

Yep.

Jake (3:23)

Rolling up in a pair of shorts and a shirt and a tie. I don't know what I was doing, but I was so intimidated because I watched you on Current and I watched. It was probably Ox Cotton Express at that time.

Mariana (3:35)

Yep, that's right.

Jake (3:37)

And I was in awe of you then and I remain in awe of you now. So I'm like pinching myself that I'm a guest on your podcast. And please, I will engage in some shady below the surface so that we can make this of the real deal.

Mariana (3:48)

We're going to talk about all of that, but this is why I wanted to have you on, because I knew you would say great things about me too. Okay, Jake, I know you very well, but I don't. There's a bunch of things that I don't know about you. And one of the things is I don't know much about, which is how I start with a lot of questions for people on the podcast. What was it like growing up in la? How was your childhood like?

Jake (4:08)

I was so blessed to obviously be a child of privilege, you know, me and my family and how that we grew up in a really comfortable environment in Pacific Palisades, affluent coastal enclave in LA that sadly burned down and I read about in Firestorm. But I was also really blessed to have two parents that were really engaged in like civic life in la, and particularly. My mom's from Minnesota, my dad's from Chicago. They're like Midwestern. Great values, amazing people. My mom's parents owned a deli, and my grandfather was a taxi driver for a time. My grandmother moved out here and was in the desert and was around all the time. Just like, total salt of the earth. Amazing people.

Mariana (4:45)

And big family, too, right? Lots of huge. Huge.

Jake (4:47)

My parents both had two siblings, and I have four siblings. I'm the eldest and the youngest is 10 years younger than me. Jacob, Miles, Molly, Hannah, Leah. My dad's from Chicago, and my dad's parents owned a linen store, a retail store, and they moved it to Beverly Hills. And my dad, you know, eventually in his civic life, became a leader here in la. And I got to go all around the city, all the time, because I had a parent who was like, in the arena. He wanted to be involved. And so I followed him everywhere. And he was like the parks. A parks commissioner and a harbor commissioner, and worked on the school system in LA and was working with big brothers for many years. And so I got to go to and experience and see places and people that I never would have otherwise known or met. And I think that's why I do what I do, because I watched him take us to places that were not home all the time. And it was so normal. And so that's what it was like growing up for me. Exposure to a lot of nice, fancy, privileged things, but also to have a parent who took us out of that comfort zone. Not in a way where it was like, hey, buddy, we're gonna do this to make a point of it. But, like, that's just what we did all the time.

Mariana (5:57)

Tell me about the shuttle experience with your dad. I remember you telling me that story.

Jake (6:01)

That's right. He was the. Gosh, when was it? 2013 or 2012 or something around then. He was part of the team that brought the space shuttle endeavor to la, and it's now at the California Science center, and it's gonna be positioned vertically there in a really cool exhibit. But yeah, he's such a dork like me. Like, he loves geeky stuff. And so when he had the opportun opportunity to be involved in bringing the space shuttle for kids to visit at the science center in perpetuity, like, he put himself in the middle of that thing, right? And it was so cool. I remember around the time I had you on HuffPost Live, when I was.

Mariana (6:30)

Doing HuffPost Live, that's right after the red carpet, right?

Jake (6:33)

Huffpost Live was post red carpet. Yes. Around the time I did. By the way, I will say, red carpet hosting is humbling and sometimes humiliating, but also. But it's also a great training for, like, bird dogging people for chasing people who don't want to talk to you. Because no celebrity. When Mariana Van Zeller walks by me on the red carpet, she's like. Doesn't want to listen to what I have to say. And I'm like, mariana, Mariana.

Mariana (6:54)

Who is your most memorable red carpet interviewer?

Jake (6:57)

The first person I ever interviewed on red carpet was Tandy Newton at the. At the Toronto Film Festival. And I was so fucking nervous. You've seen me sweat when I get nervous. Yep. Dripping. Dripping. Dripping in sweat. She made me take my jacket off, my shirt, my.

Mariana (7:10)

Wait, she said it.

Jake (7:11)

She realized you could find the video. My. My nipples are sweaty. Like, my whole body is dripping in sweat. And she's like, are you all right? I'm like, do I fucking look all right? Is what I'm thinking. No, I'm not all right, lady. Like, God damn it. But, yeah, anyway, it taught me how to chase people. So, like, when I chased Donald Trump Jr. On the floor of the Republican convention, or Richard Grinnell, the former acting Director of National Intelligence, when I chased him into a van after the 2020 election and said, where's your evidence of voter fraud? That is my red carpet host brain. That's really good translating to my journalist life. I never. Did you go to journalism? You did. You went to Columbia? I did.

Mariana (7:47)

I went to Columbia.

Jake (7:48)

I never went to journalism school. Ever. No.

Mariana (7:51)

In fact, you wanted to be an actor at one point in your life, right?

Jake (7:53)

That's how I went to NYU. I went to NYU to be an actor, and I. 911 was my seventh day of school. You were there, too?

Mariana (8:00)

Yeah. 911 was like, my fourth week of school. I was just a little older. I was in grad school, first year of college.

Jake (8:07)

You're very young. Just a little older. Yeah. I had just started college, and it was my seventh day of freshman year at nyu, and actually I read about it in the book that I had total ptsd. When I saw the scenes in the Palisades of people running through the streets carrying their suitcases and pushing people in wheelchairs, and the trees and shit are on fire and people are running behind them, it reminded me of what that day was like in New York. And so I switched out the acting program. I went to the politics department, and I. Why? Because I wasn't getting any. No, I was going to Say I wasn't getting any parts. I was getting parts.

Mariana (8:38)

Were you good?

Jake (8:40)

I mean, I'm a humble person, but yes, I think I was pretty good actor. I auditioned. I had auditioned to get into college.

Mariana (8:46)

Oh, you did? There's an audition to course.

Jake (8:48)

I think I auditioned using a monologue from Eugene o'. Neill. Long Day's Journey into Night. I don't remember it anymore, but I could go back and find it. We'll do that on the next pod.

Mariana (8:58)

And NYU is a really good school for acting, right?

Jake (9:00)

Yeah. I was lucky. My college counselor told me I was the luckiest bastard to ever get into college because my grades were not good because my senior year in high school, my dad was involved in the mayor's race in la, running for mayor. And he lost, but he came pretty close. And I just totally ignored my schoolwork and I. Because I loved it. I loved the practical real life experience of, like I said, going places and meeting people.

Mariana (9:19)

Oh, so you were sort of trailing or going with your dad to all the time?

Jake (9:22)

My senior year, yeah.

Mariana (9:23)

Was he concerned about your grades at all?

Jake (9:25)

Probably more concerned with me smoking weed while trailing him on the campaign trail. But no, my parents were cool about grades. They didn't really care.

Mariana (9:30)

How old were you when you started smoking weed?

Jake (9:32)

Uh, 16 or something. I remember one time I went back to school. I've never told these stories publicly. I went back to school super high and wearing sunglasses from a off campus journey and was stuffing my face with Reese's peanut butter cups. And one of my teachers comes up to me and he had a very deep voice and he goes, how are you doing, Jacob? And I was like, oh, he knows I'm never doing this again ever again. And never ever again. And it wasn't the last time I did it, but it was not. But it definitely put the fear of God into me about smoking pot.

Mariana (10:08)

I hope you tell me a lot more stories that you've never told before.

Jake (10:11)

I will. I promise. You're the only one I would tell them to because I feel like I'm just sitting in your house.

Mariana (10:15)

I know.

Jake (10:15)

And then when my bosses see this, it'll be my last day at Ms. Now it's been a great ride, everybody.

Mariana (10:20)

You can come and go host the podcast. We should have some alcohol with us, which would make it even more.

Jake (10:26)

I would like to have it, but.

Mariana (10:27)

Actually we drank a lot last night because it's a book launch. The party for your book launch show. We should probably not be drinking right now.

Jake (10:33)

And we gotta do a big Q&A tonight we do wait. So I went. I was an actor. I did this whole thing and I liked it. But then the primary, election day 911 was primary election day 9 11. 2001 was a Tuesday.

Mariana (10:43)

That's right. I remember it.

Jake (10:44)

And Mark Green was running for mayor in New York and everybody thought he was going to be the mayor. And they postponed the election and ultimately Mike Bloomberg won. And so I harassed them and I wanted to go work in City hall because I loved politics. And finally they invited me to be an intern in the scheduling department. So I would sit in the basement of City hall where Mayor Mamdani is now, and respond to people's no requests. Like, no. I would answer no to people who weren't. The mayor wasn't going to come to be like, I'm sorry the mayor can't come to your bar mitzvah, Mazel tov. But he told me to tell you what's up. You're like, oh, thank you so much. And there was stacks and stacks and stacks of no's. But it started my thing of like having to be personable with people. And then they said, oh, you're pretty good at this. You want to be an advanced guy, meaning the job that goes out ahead of a politician and briefs them when they show up. And that's how I really learned to be a reporter, I think, because I would have to go out and vacuum up all the information at different places. Christmas tree lighting in Woodside, Queens on Long Island, a firefighter's funeral. I'm down in the pit at 911 on the anniversary, on the first anniversary, all kinds of stuff. Lupus fundraiser. All these weird events that I would go to are coming back. And then I would tell Mike Bloomberg, the first thing he ever said to me is, nice to meet you, Jake. Don't fuck it up. Because it's a high stakes job. And it's like if you screw him up and give him the wrong info, then it's make or break for him. And diplomats and politicians and presidents and mayors, they all have these jobs. Advanced people.

Mariana (12:00)

Yeah.

Jake (12:00)

And for me, being a reporter is like being an advanced guy. But instead of telling the mayor, I'm telling the camera. I'm like, okay, I got here. This is what I learned and this is what you need to know. And it's all about for me, the commonality is like, it's like facts on the ground. As a guy we know, Mitch Koss, producer used to say all the time, like, it's just about figuring out what's Happening there and then giving that and turning around and finding a way to communicate that.

Mariana (12:25)

Yeah, but you have an exceptional talent for communicating those facts on the ground. You're so good, you come out. I told you when you started doing more of your live reporting and I watch a lot of your work, obviously. And seeing you, you just come. You're so natural at what you do. You're so authentic. And it's you. It's not a person on camera. It's the same person that's talking to me now. It's the same person that was at a party with me last night. And it's very authentic and you're very talented at it.

Jake (12:51)

Thank you. If only people really knew what an asshole I was.

Mariana (12:56)

Wait, but I'm about to tell them today.

Jake (12:58)

Exactly. No, thanks.

Mariana (13:00)

So, yeah, go.

Jake (13:01)

Just one real quick thing, if anybody wants to look him up. My idol, the guy that I emulate is this guy Huell Hauser, who is like a legendary public television presence in Southern California. He died about 10 years ago, maybe a few years more, and had a. And a. Like a pub. It wasn't public access, but it was pbs. And he would go places and he would do like 30 minute show in 30 minutes and walk around with a stick microphone and. And literally just talked to anybody and everybody and treated everybody with respect. And no matter the circumstance, it could have been very serious. Like I write about in the book a firefighter training for female inmates, or talking to a dog that's eating an avocado or going to Pink's hot Dogs, or at the milk bottling factory or whatever. This dude was effervescent in his personality, but deep down he had like a reverence for other people and other humans. And when I would watch him, I would say, my God, dude, this guy is interacting with people in such an authentic, real way. I feel like I know who Hugh Hauser is. And so when I finally did get to know Hughser and realize it was the same guy off camera as it was on camera, I was like, okay, I think I can do this. And so I started just making my own videos.

Mariana (14:01)

That's great. So what is it that you try to emulate from him? Is it that respect that he gives people or that happiness that you see he has when he interviews? He's interviewing people, which I also see in you.

Jake (14:10)

Yeah, I think I overdid it on the happiness in the early days. I think I was like a little too excited. But that's because I was green. I was new to this business and I was entering all these worlds that I had never been in, and I was, like, legitimately very excited. And I think I still do that now. Like, I. I love my job. It's the best, best, best job.

Mariana (14:26)

Same here. Sometimes I have directors actually telling me when I'm interviewing, like, the bad guys, like, can you be a little less happy?

Jake (14:32)

So the cocaine.

Mariana (14:34)

Exactly.

Jake (14:35)

Do you love it? No, but I'm the same way. I'm the same way. Nicole, my wife, who you are obviously are very dear friends with, will tell me, like, you're a little smiley today. It was a little smiley in this report.

Mariana (14:46)

But that's so much better than those reporters out there that take themselves too serious.

Jake (14:51)

And I know sometimes when I fill in as an anchor, I can see myself with an anchor face, a serious face. I can feel my jaw clench up. And the people in the control room will be like, dude, just relax. Be yourself. Be the person who's yourself in the field. If I ever find a way to be on the anchor desk and do a show, I have to find a way, and I'm not sure I've cracked the case, to, like, capture what it feels like to be in the field when you're sitting at a desk. Honestly, this feels good. Like, can I steal the set? If I ever got a show and, like, do it, this is. It's gotta be different. TV news is so weird, and it's so easy to become like Ron Burgundy. Like, I'm reading the teleprompter.

Mariana (15:23)

I'm so important. The job I do is so important.

Jake (15:25)

Like, wearing a suit. Like, if you're listening, you're not seeing me, but, like, I would rather wear this. What? I'm wearing, like, a shirt, jacket, or whatever, sitting at the desk than a. Than a suit. I feel uncomfortable. I get sweaty and weird and, dude, you should see. Second reference to how sweaty I get.

Mariana (15:40)

Second Jake. You should see. You know, I never. I don't usually do live reports at all, and. Live.

Jake (15:46)

No. You did the eclipse.

Mariana (15:47)

I did the eclipse. But you remember how I was. I was literally yelling at the camera because I was so excited. I was so nervous. I was so excited, all of it. And I'm yelling. I was like, but why do you.

Jake (15:58)

Think that's, like, me last night when I was giving my toast? You go into the most insanely dangerous places and talk to the most gnarly people that could kill you in two seconds.

Mariana (16:09)

That doesn't make me nervous at all.

Jake (16:11)

Why?

Mariana (16:12)

Because I don't fear those people. And I always think I can rationalize with them and get out of sticky situations. And I've been in many sticky situations. But I think there's something I'm deathly afraid of. Pred or big animals, for example sharks and bears and whatnot, that I'm afraid because I'm not going to be able to rationalize that that's hilarious. And then I'm afraid. I don't like public speaking in if it's like a room, I love going to parties and talking to everybody, that I'm fine, no social anxiety whatsoever. But talking to a group of people looking at me, particularly on live television, that I have no experience, that's the opposite.

Jake (16:44)

It's so funny. I love that sometimes I tell my therapist it's like in a one on one setting at a bar, talking to somebody if I feel like I shouldn't be there. I am so nervous. But if I'm looking into a camera and talking to a camera, I feel like in my flow state, calm, no problem really.

Mariana (16:59)

I hope if I ever do this ever again, which I hope I won't, that I feel that way because I don't. But then again, you were saying how sometimes in public speaking you feel nervous. Right.

Jake (17:08)

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Mariana (17:29)

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Jake (17:39)

But you know what my flow state is, is to not plan when I'm on live television. I tell the producers we have a mutual friend, Sean Killebrew who was. Who you've worked with before. Yeah, we reported together on the night of Prop 50 election and he's new to Ms. Now and we were talking about sort of how I work in the field and he was asking me like do you want to go interview some people ahead of time so we can like throw to the tape?

Mariana (18:01)

Oh, definitely not.

Jake (18:02)

Yeah, but it's not and it's nothing against Sean. He just hadn't worked with me before and I said no. It's like actually my absolute no way. Never do that. Because the SPONTANEITY of not knowing what's going to happen if you're reporting live is the beauty of being on live television. What's the point of being live if you want to put something on tape?

Mariana (18:15)

100%. You know, it's a thing that I do as well in. Even in the interviews that I do the majority of every interview. One of the biggest mistakes you can, I think is prepare and write questions ahead of time. If it's going to be more of like a confrontational interview, yes, you sort of need to prepare and accountability, think.

Jake (18:34)

About where they're going to come from.

Mariana (18:36)

Of course. But in situations where it's more about the discovery, where I'm going into these drug dens or you are going around the neighborhood and asking people questions, preparing ahead of time takes out all the spontaneity and that's the beauty of it. And people can see that. People can see that. Then it's work for you. You're not there actually curious as a human being. You're there because you're paid to go there.

Jake (18:53)

We also share to somebody who gave us this lesson, Errol Morris. Because when you interviewed Errol on Current, and when I worked with Errol when he made the movie off based on my first book Separated, I sat in the little black box. It was like this where he sits and through the interron, through the teleprompter machine that he created, interviews people and the dude doesn't have a piece of paper. Doesn't, doesn't. I'm not saying he doesn't prepare. He's like the most well read person I know, smartest guy I know, plays the cello. I mean, it's like a true genius. True genius. But has no interest in having preparation and the task in a row because he just wants to see where the conversation goes.

Mariana (19:27)

I learned it from him too. I remember interviewing him when I was, I don't know, very early on. I was like, just started at Current TV and had a list of questions in front of me. And I asked him, I said, you're one of the best interviewers in the world. What's your number one advice for people like me that are just starting this business? And he said, well, don't do what you're doing right now, which is never have a list of questions in front of me.

Jake (19:46)

I would have thrown up, I'd been so nervous.

Mariana (19:49)

But it was great advice and I don't think I followed it immediately. But eventually I realized that he was absolutely right. And nowadays when I work with directors, they sometimes Come up to me and they ask me, like Sean, he asked me when we worked together for the first time, he said, do you want. You were going to interview this person? You have this victim, do you want questions ahead of time? I was like, absolutely not. It just throws you off your game completely.

Jake (20:08)

So it's the beauty of it, it's the spontaneity of it and it's, it's not knowing where things are going to. To lead.

Mariana (20:14)

To lead, yeah.

Jake (20:15)

Which is what happened in the. Which was what happened when I covered the fires, which happens when I cover anything. It's like you cannot, you have to expect unexpected. You can't. You have no idea what's going to happen. And if you try to plan it out too much, it's going to suck, actually. Yeah. And people will know and people can see. I think people are, have really good X ray vision and they can tell when you're sort of full of shit.

Mariana (20:33)

Yeah, absolutely.

Jake (20:34)

And there are lots of good people who do it differently and in different ways. It's just I know where I'm comfortable and where I'm. After doing this for 11 years at MS, I think that I, I think I get it. I know what I like to do now.

Mariana (20:44)

Yeah. Well, I'm gonna take it back to 9 11. That experience basically changed you in a way and made you want to get into politics, is that right? And then eventually into journalism.

Jake (20:54)

Exactly. And so hanging around in City Hall, I got to meet a lot of journalists, especially people actually who ended up being. There were a lot of the City hall beach journalists like Maggie Haberman from the New York Times, who ended up being huge, you know, Trump era correspond reporter reporters. Exactly. And so I got to know a lot of these people as like a very junior advanced person in City hall. Maybe not by name, and I don't even know that they would. Now we know each other. But back then, like, would you even remember me? I don't know. But I watched them up close and I thought, man, this is so fucking cool. And then I. One thing led to the next thing led to the next thing. I wanted to always be on MTV News. That was like the cool journalism job for me. And when I was MTV so big then it wasn't like as big as it was in the Fort Loader Serena Altruul heyday. But Gideon Diego and Suchin park and some of the other correspondents were there and I wanted to do that post 9 11. And I auditioned and I actually did in 2012 get to do a short little stint with them. And I interviewed Mitt Romney at a presidential campaign stop. It's funny, that's where I met Ashley Parker, who was then at the Washington Post and is now at the Atlantic, and Philip Rucker, who was also a colleague of hers at the Washington Post and is now at cnn. I just got to know these people from being like this. So I did this why Tuesday? Project and I was running around asking people, why do we vote on Tuesday? I wanted to change election Day to the weekend.

Mariana (22:13)

And that's because it would give people a lot more opportunities to vote, bring a lot more voters. And.

Jake (22:17)

And that's where the MTV people noticed me. That's how MSNBC noticed me, because I was going out and harassing politicians and they really loved it. And that's kind of just still what I do. Like when I'm not talking to everyday people, I like to chase politicians around to figure out if I can.

Mariana (22:32)

You know, it's so interesting that only recently by only I think, I mean we've talked about this before, but I somehow forgotten it. And only when I was reading your book did I realize it. I remember again that you were, you were in New York on 911 when I was there too. We were both in New York.

Jake (22:46)

It was the craziest day.

Mariana (22:47)

Yeah, I was reporting live, actually. It was my first live ever.

Jake (22:52)

Portuguese television.

Mariana (22:53)

Portuguese television, yeah. Rooftop of a building, midtown, surrounded by my heroes, all my journalist heroes. I was so nervous. I was sweating as well. I was shaking. I don't sweat actually, but I was shaking. I remember looking at my hands and shaking. And I was wearing this sort of nylon top which looked awful on camera. And I had way too much like blue eyeshadow. And now looking back at that footage, like, what were you thinking? But I was so nervous. But then for me, it was also a day that changed my life because walking down to the streets and starting to see the first people walking around with the first sort of signs, posters that they needed for their loved ones.

Jake (23:28)

Oh, man.

Mariana (23:29)

And I will never forget that day and that week. And that changed me too. And that's when I decided that I wanted to do sort of more investigative journalism and long form journalism.

Jake (23:38)

And you like, didn't you go to Afghanistan?

Mariana (23:40)

Right after that I went to Syria. I'm sorry. A year after I graduated from Columbia University, I went, I moved to Syria because I knew Iraq and the Middle east was going to be the center of action for news and I wanted to involve.

Jake (23:51)

You just were like, okay, let's go to Syria. I was like, Let me go to a red carpet after 9, 11 and see what happens on the red carpet. No, that's.

Mariana (23:58)

That's not true. You went to work for Bloomberg. What was Bloomberg like, by the way?

Jake (24:01)

Really cool. And a very tough boss, but a guy who, I think, delegated, no matter what you think of his policies, like, delegated to people that he trusted. And so they put a lot of faith in me. They gave me a car with lights and sirens. I was driving a car with lights and sirens around New York. It was called Baxter. That was the nickname of the car as a white Ford Explorer. And why did they trust me with a car with lights and sirens? I would drive on the shoulder in the snow, going to events, and it was amazing. I got to know and love New York City in a way because of the. This sounds cheesy, but, like, the power that they invested in me in that job as a young guy. And I remember the day I gave my badge back. When I left City hall, it felt like I lost my superpowers. You know, there were days I would ride the subway with the podium, like, bringing it back from an event, I think, at Grand Central Station. Like, that job exposed me to New York City in a way that taught me what it was like to have the skills needed to be a reporter.

Mariana (24:53)

I was on the phone with our friend, mutual friend, also, Christina, and she was asking me today, she's a big fan of yours, just like I am. And she was asking me, she was saying, like, why don't. Why isn't Jake running for some sort of office?

Jake (25:06)

Why isn't that weed?

Mariana (25:08)

Weed? Is that why? Because. Okay. Did you ever think at the time when you were working for Bloomberg, your first real job?

Jake (25:14)

So I like dressing up and wearing suits and, like, I was into, like, the cosplay part of the mayor's office stuff. Like, it felt like I was in the show Spin City or something. And I've always been that way. I liked the uniform when I was in T Ball, like, but I didn't really love playing the sport. I've always kind of, like, liked the idea of that kind of stu. Even when I would do the Today show. Like, the idea of dressing up and filling in on the Today show was so cool. But now that I'm back at Ms. Now and NBC and Ms. Now have split up, I realized, like, this is what I always wanted to do. It's not about something that projects, like a stature or whatever. I love the people, the understated parts of this. Yeah, like what? Just going places and spending time with people and not being on camera talking to people. I talked to the woman whose house was my house, my childhood house that burned down today, for the first time, the daughter of the woman, for 30 minutes. And it was a hard conversation because it's been hard for her to see me talking about the house that they lived in for 35 years.

Mariana (26:09)

Right. So this. Wait, so this was the house you grew up in? You moved out only when you were six years old. When you were six years old, all your siblings, except for one, were born in the house.

Jake (26:16)

Exactly.

Mariana (26:17)

A lot of sentimental value for you, for your parents in particular.

Jake (26:19)

It's just like my formative place. And so when I showed up during the fire coverage, I saw it burned down, and I did a report for the Nightly News on NBC.

Mariana (26:25)

And you called your mom?

Jake (26:26)

I called my mom. And it was really sad. And, like, I have so many formative memories from that house. But it's also really hard for the family that's lived there for 35 years, since we lived there, to see their house talked about as my house, I think.

Mariana (26:38)

Right.

Jake (26:39)

And I guess now I'm talking about it publicly, but we had a private conversation earlier. It's like, I love spending time. I think the common thing between me and you is I have learned from you and watching you talk to, quote, unquote, bad people all around the world that really what you're doing is using empathy to connect with them and understand where they're coming from and why they do what they do. And I don't have some superpower, but I do love when someone else will let you into their world and allow you to share their feelings. You know, and it's a form of therapy. It's like, I have enough therapists. I go to couples therapy and individual therapy, but my job is therapy because. Because we get to meet people who are either a judge for doing what they do or in their worst moments ever, at their lowest point, and they give us the privilege of sharing that with them, whether or not they're really, like, consciously deciding to do that.

Mariana (27:29)

Yeah.

Jake (27:29)

And that is a unique privilege that very few professions get to do. And I think that you can't do it. You can't show the respect that those people deserve without doing it. Trying to be empathetic. Yeah.

Mariana (27:42)

I could not agree more. It's the privilege of a lifetime. It's. I always say it's my favorite part of the job, 100%, is like, I would never have the opportunity to meet, you know, with the mother in Mexico that are digging to try and find their loved ones who've gone missing and they think they've been killed and they're somewhere underground or, you know, with a kid who's backpacking. Backpack full of cocaine through the mountains of Peru because he wants to save money to become a dentist one day.

Jake (28:06)

And Trump might want to, if he was on a boat in Venezuela, drop a bomb on that person, you know, and that's where looking at people as statistics or numbers on a bar graph or whatever. I always say this about the immigration policy under Democrats and Republicans is so such a fool's errand because. Yeah, yes. Dehumanizing is what it is. My colleague Nicole Wallace on Ms. Now is always talking about rehumanizing people. And I think the only way you can do that is by trying to put yourself in their shoes or empathize with them or.

Mariana (28:41)

Yeah, it's interesting because I do believe it's one of the most important jobs that journalists have is to be able to create connection between the viewers and the people that they're reporting about or.

Jake (28:51)

Interviewing or just the megaphone that we're holding up in front of them in order for them to share.

Mariana (28:56)

That's right.

Jake (28:57)

Whatever it is that they're going through, I think.

Mariana (28:59)

And being able to. Yeah, again, humanize the people and create connections with people that you think you have nothing in common. But through our storytelling and our interviews and our time spent with people, really showing. Yeah, there's. It's not a statistic. There's a person here. And if it's a cocaine, you know, guy carrying cocaine on his back or a fisherman in the. Whatever it is.

Jake (29:20)

Why do you think. Are you ever self conscious that, like, do you ever ask yourself the question, why am I the person to be able to do this? Or you just think, I know, I. This is my. What my calling is.

Mariana (29:28)

I was going to ask you the first. That question, too, is like, when did you decide. Yeah. What was. What was that calling like for you? But I'll answer first. I was 12 years old and when I decided I wanted to be a journalist and I was pretty sure this is what I wanted to do, in my case, it was because I used to watch anchors on Portuguese television.

Jake (29:45)

Me too. That was my same formative experience. Yeah.

Mariana (29:47)

But for me it was more about the knowledge they had because I didn't know they were reading from a teleprompter. So they, they just had. They were talking about everything that was happening around the world. And I just thought, these are the smartest human Beings on Earth. And you know how they say that, particularly for daughters, their biggest goal in life is to impress their dads. My dad has always been Eduardo, obviously. Eduardo, which, you know. Well, he lives with us. He's a very knowledgeable man, and he's always admired people who read books and read newspapers and who are. Who have a lot of knowledge about everything. My dad, to this day knows more about pop culture than I do. And he's always said, like, read everything if it's the back of a medicine package or. Or whatever it is. Cereal box. Exactly. That's the expression. I always fuck up every American expression.

Jake (30:29)

I'm here for you. I got your back. That is it.

Mariana (30:31)

He's always said that in Portuguese, whatever the version of that is in Portuguese. And so I always wanted to impress him. So when I realized, wait, there is a job where your whole time is spent gaining knowledge and also traveling around the world, I was like, sign me up. This is what I want to do.

Jake (30:47)

I actually made. I remember I made, like. I liked editing photos on the computer. I loved computers when I was younger, just like Noah, my son now. And I like, inserted myself into, like, a broadcast news thing. And I was. When you were a kid, manifesting, like, seeing myself doing that. Yeah, it was like local news. Channel 7 printed it out on glossy paper. I think my dad had a frame for a long time.

Mariana (31:08)

Oh, that is so cute.

Jake (31:09)

I don't know where it is.

Mariana (31:11)

I don't know where it is.

Jake (31:11)

I don't know. But, yeah, I saw myself doing that, too. I don't know why. Maybe that, too, was part of the cosplay thing. But then you grow into it. It's like in life, in relationships, you start somewhere and you grow together. I've grown in my job, I've grown in my life, I've grown in my marriage, grown in my friendships.

Mariana (31:25)

As a mother, as a father, as.

Jake (31:27)

A mother, all of it. You find your way together. And I think I knew what I wanted in all these departments. But as I've gotten older, what it means to be in relationship to those things has changed. And I've tried to understand them better and not be so judgmental of myself and what it's supposed to be.

Mariana (31:42)

Right. I'll be honest. I have a bit of a shopping addiction. I love clothes, I love fashion, I love shoes, I love scarves. Which, if you've seen me in the field, you know. And the truth is that before Rocket Money, I had no idea how much I was actually overspending on clothing. It turns out I needed help getting my finances under control badly. And don't even get me started with all the money I was spending on subscriptions that I didn't even know I was paying for. That's where Rocket Money comes in. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings instead of bleeding money on stuff that you don't really need. What I love is that it tracks everything automatically across all my accounts and shows me exactly where my money is going. I can set budgets, get personalized insights, and even get alerts for large transactions or upcoming bills. Having everything consolidated in one dashboard, checking, savings, retirement accounts has been a real game changer for me. I can see my whole financial picture at a glance. Instead of logging into five different accounts and apps. Do you have financial goals? Money you want to save? Trips you want to make? Let Rocket Money help you reach those goals faster. Join@RocketMoney.com Hidden Third that's RocketMoney.com Hidden Third RocketMoney.com Hidden Third Are you judgmental of yourself?

Jake (33:21)

Yeah.

Mariana (33:22)

How so?

Jake (33:24)

Sometimes I'm very self conscious about why am I the right person to tell a particular story?

Mariana (33:30)

Yeah, you are. You know one thing you. I remember you did a story about opiates a few years ago.

Jake (33:35)

I was so self conscious because of your award winning, amazing reporting.

Mariana (33:40)

And immediately you were texting me several times, me and Darren, you were texting us saying, apologize. Hey guys, I'm so sorry I'm doing this story. And we're like, dude, I was talking about.

Jake (33:49)

I even talked about during the air. I was like, I know you did. Thank God for the trailblazing journalism of Mariana Van Zeller and Darren Foster. Please check out the OxyContin Express. I'm on MSNBC. People are like, dude, slow down. Like what? But I've always been this way. In this book you'll read the names in the epilogue of Firestorm of so many journalists you do.

Mariana (34:04)

I know that you see it.

Jake (34:05)

Local journalists doing investigative work and local journalism on the ground. I credited all these Caitlin Dickerson and Lomi Creel and Julia Ainslie and Ginger Thompson from Pope Publica because I respect people that come before me. I'm just the guy who finds myself in these places at a moment in time after other people have been there and done things. And I don't want the credit in that way because I don't deserve the credit in that way. And so I feel whatever I bring to it I'm gonna bring to it. And you can like it or not like it or whatever.

Mariana (34:32)

That's very special about you. That's not something that most people have. I know this about you. And even yesterday when you were at the book launch party and you were crediting and your whole speech was about making sure that everybody in that room had a place, had a space in your room, that you thanked everybody in that room, the people that you know contributed to your book. You make everybody feel like they have a place in the sort of work that you're doing now. And that's really special.

Jake (34:57)

I think, that you credit everybody. I think it's important, and I really mean it. And as it relates to Firestorm, I really needed all those people to explore myself and our city and our planet in the aftermath of something that, like, how could I possibly comprehend what it's like to watch your hometown burn down while you're reporting live on national television? And the answer is, it's not possible. And the only way to explore that for me was to write this book and to tell my story. But tell the stories of so many other people, including the people you met last night. Eric Mendoza from Fire Station 69. Nick Schuler from Cal Fire. Holly Bender from NASA, who was there last night and I flew with on a plane as they were studying fire from the sky. Loida Wilson, who was there, who was the UPS employee, and her daughter Ashley lost her home on McNally Avenue. All of these people have given me the privilege of being able to tell some part of their story, and so they deserve the credit. The book is as much theirs as it is mine because these are their stories, too. That's what I do. That's what we signed up to do.

Mariana (35:54)

Yeah. I want to get to the fires and your coverage of it in a second, but I also wanted to. Yeah, you just mentioned something. I mean, yes, it's amazing that you credit so many people. I think we all suffer a little bit, or at least I do. And I think you do to some extent. Is the imposter syndrome.

Jake (36:08)

Imposter syndrome, for sure.

Mariana (36:09)

Which is huge. And that's why I get so nervous when I'm doing certain things, not when I'm doing my report, reporting in the field or talking, because nobody does it like you do.

Jake (36:15)

And you have to think it's your.

Mariana (36:17)

Because I've been doing it for so long.

Jake (36:18)

I was just talking about this, sorry for the name drop with Dave Chang and the chef Dave Chang. And I was saying, my brother and I talk about this all the time, the flow state. What is your flow state? You get into a flow state. Kobe Bryant used to talk about this, where you see nothing else and you're locked in and it doesn't matter. My brother told it. Used to tell me a great story where this sounds so obnoxious when I'm just going to be totally transparent about it. He somehow got to sit courtside one time at a Laker game, and he got a seat right next to the bench. And my brother was a teenager probably, and Kobe was sitting down next to him and whatever. He was being nice to my brother. And so what's your name? And my brother said, miles. Kobe said, nice to meet you. Miles got up, goes into the game, is playing. I can't remember if it was a buzzer beater or the end of the game or some super, super high pressure part of the game. Kobe scores. I don't remember the Lakers win or they go ahead, but, like, the entire Staples center is on fire. People are going absolutely nuts. What does Kobe do? The whole crowd's on their feet screaming, high vibing, whatever. Kobe comes back, back, sits down on the bench. He looks over to the side of my brother and he goes, what'd you think about that, Miles? And my brother said, this was a guy who. And then went to. My brother, went and studied it. Gets in a flow state, and he sees nothing else and remembers nothing else but the things that he wants to and thrives on them. And it's like, I see you in that state when you're out in the field. Yeah. But there. But like, I don't know what Kobe's insecurities were. I'm sure he had them or yours are like, we all have them. And that's just the reality is, like, if you don't acknowledge that you have them them, you're doomed to have anxiety and panic and freak out. All things I struggle with, too. Because for the longest time I wanted to pretend like, it should be easy and it should come naturally. And the fact of the matter is, nothing is like that unless you're in your flow state.

Mariana (37:57)

Yeah.

Jake (37:58)

And it can be very narrow for people.

Mariana (37:59)

Yeah. And experience really helps. Obviously, you get better at it. Right. The first time I ever spoke on camera was with Darren. We were in Syria. We were doing the story about the foreign fighters that were crossing into Iraq to fight against the Americans. And they. We had sold a story to channel in the UK and they wanted somebody on camera. And I remember Darren, we had bought this little camcorder on the Border with Lebanon, tax free. And we were filling this. Freelance journalist. No freelance journalists. And we bought that camera with part of the money that I was making by selling carpets. I would ship Syrian carpets to my mom in Portugal. She would have these tea parties, sell the carpets, and then send me the money to survive in Syria. And then anyway, Darren came to visit. We were boyfriend, girlfriend at the time, bought the camera. We were doing this story and freelance journalist. And somebody needed to be on camera. And Darren was like, it's not gonna be me. And I had no intentions of being an on camera journalist, by the way.

Jake (38:49)

Let me just say Inside Secret America. Darren Foster was great on camera. Shut up.

Mariana (38:53)

You're not allowed to mention.

Jake (38:54)

Guys, everybody look up. Inside Secret America. It's streaming now. Mariana and Darren together. It was romantic. Everybody watched. Are you sure you want to do this?

Mariana (39:02)

Basically for our listeners and viewers, it is a series that I did for Nat Geo many years ago. And it's a little awkward.

Jake (39:09)

It was a classy. Okay, sorry. So you're in series.

Mariana (39:12)

They wanted to have me and Darren just to explain. They wanted to have me and Darren on camera as me doing my work as a journalist. Darren there also doing his work. But essentially they wanted the background of my relationship with Darren. It was like a behind the scenes and wife.

Jake (39:25)

It's like, imagine traffic, but then you coming home and talking to your husband.

Mariana (39:29)

That's exactly it. Which was so awkward. It didn't work out.

Jake (39:32)

We've all been there. Not your flow state. Not my flow state.

Mariana (39:36)

And not our idea either. But in Syria. Yeah. And I remember. So Darren picks up the camera and we were filming in a market and people realized that we were. That Darren's American. I wasn't American at the time. And they started yelling and chasing us. So then I had to go on camera and sort of explain what had just happened on camera. And I could not put two words together. I was so nervous.

Jake (39:55)

Wow.

Mariana (39:56)

I just didn't. It didn't come naturally. And I remember Darren saying, like, what is so difficult about saying we were just traced out of this market as like, I don't know. And then I realized it's because I was trying to be Christiane Manpour, which. She's my. She was my hero growing up. I mean, I watched her reports from Iraq and she was the reason I wanted to be a journalist. And it wasn't until that sort of broke that I realized that and, and. And thought, okay, I just. Be yourself, be yourself. Everybody else has already taken that.

Jake (40:22)

I.

Mariana (40:23)

That I started being more in the flow. But it takes time, and you understand.

Jake (40:27)

You have to realize what it is.

Mariana (40:28)

And I don't think it comes now. I mean, maybe it does to everybody, but it certainly didn't come to me either.

Jake (40:33)

Not to me either.

Mariana (40:33)

Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about your IMM Policy coverage, which was amazing. It was one of my favorite books, and I loved your reporting on it. And it was very emotional for me. A subject matter that I care deeply about. It was the first story I ever did for an American for Current TV was about the death train.

Jake (40:50)

Yeah.

Mariana (40:50)

That carries immigrants from Central America all the way up to the border with the United States. And I did it with Darren, and this was just before we got married.

Jake (41:00)

And tell people what it is. People are losing limbs or falling off the train.

Mariana (41:02)

Yeah. It's a cargo train where people who want to get to the United States, they want to cross Mexico faster and also more safely. So they would take these trains thinking it was safe. These cargo trains, they would jump onto the train and hang on for days and days and nights on end and fall asleep on the train. And a lot of them, because they were tired or they fell asleep, would fall off and lose their limbs.

Jake (41:22)

And it was like what the Darien Gap was in the last two or three years. Like, the most dangerous way to get to the United States, basically.

Mariana (41:29)

To get. Yeah. And it was amazing. And with our characters, I will never forget them. I was Maria, who was a woman who had, I think, two or three kids back in Honduras, and she was doing the journey with a group of friends. They had heard of all these rapes. So it was her and, like, three or four other female friends. And then it was a kid called Guillermo who had already lost an arm on the train and was. I'd met him. We'd met him at an amputee shelter, and he became a big part of our film. And then the two of them, we were there to follow Maria on the car on the train. We actually took the train for a little bit, and suddenly Maria, Guillermo shows up as well and is going to try again. And so the two of them became friends, and they did the journey together. So our film was a little bit about that. Maria made it to the United States, and Guillermo never did. He was apprehended at the time and flown back.

Jake (42:17)

Amazing. Do you keep in touch with these kind of folks?

Mariana (42:19)

We did with Guillermo for a long time. Not with Maria. She changed her phone. We never spoke to her again. But Guillermo actually reached out several times, and he was still trying to make it to the United States.

Jake (42:27)

That's. That's another like, privilege of it. It's. It's a tricky part of it all, but like to be able to be in touch with people that you've met along the way and over the years, I feel like that's so. To what you were doing on Traffic, like, these are your sources forever and ever and ever. And they re. It's like, that's what I'm saying. This is not a show. This is real life. These are real relationships that you have.

Mariana (42:43)

And more than sources, they become sort of your friends. I used to say when I started doing this work and I started realizing how much I loved it and talking to Darren, I would say it's a little strange, but I fall a little bit in love with everybody I interview. Right. Because you're really, you're there, you're engaged, you're in the flow, you're placing yourself in their shoes, you're trusting you. And they're intimate.

Jake (43:02)

That's what it is.

Mariana (43:03)

It's very intimate.

Jake (43:03)

It becomes very intimate in a way that's obviously non sexual intimacy, like non romantic intimacy, but like that is intimacy. To let someone into your life and to. And to be there in such a open way, I think creates lasting bonds.

Mariana (43:17)

Yeah, it does. It really does.

Jake (43:18)

I'm surprised, honestly. We'll talk about immigration, but like in the fire book too. I just always have these worries that like, somebody's going to come up to me after I've written the story and I've taken the transcript of all these hours of interviews I've done with them and they're going to be like, that was not what I wanted you to say. Yeah, like, that's not what my story was, you know, but it's like, no, I think if you, you treat it with respect and sensitivity, like you're going to get it right and you don't have to be nervous about this thing.

Mariana (43:37)

You know, people ask me a lot, whether I've always. I've ever been contacted by people who are on trafficked who didn't like the way that they were portrayed. But like you said, we always portray people with respect, you know, with accuracy, obviously raising awareness, accountability.

Jake (43:50)

I imagine people might sometimes regret doing it or something because we've had situations.

Mariana (43:55)

Where people ask us they don't want to be anymore after we film them. We don't use it.

Jake (43:58)

But like. Yeah, but if they say what they say, they're not. You know what I mean? It's like, unless they're coming on and they're total liars or have you ever had something like that happen where somebody comes on and they're like, just totally full of it?

Mariana (44:06)

Yeah, I think there are situations where people at least exaggerate their role or exaggerate the amount of drugs. And we're very open and transparent about it. On Traffic is where we talk about that. But, yeah, that happens sometimes, but not often. I'd say the majority of times it really is like you said, they trust you, and if you treat people with respect and trust, they will trust back you back. Generally, not always.

Jake (44:27)

I think that's right.

Mariana (44:28)

Okay, so tell me, you were telling me me about separated and how that all started. You're reporting on that. And from the beginning, like, what was that first day that you realized that.

Jake (44:36)

That I was always interested in immigra. When I came back from college, I showed up at the protests in 2005 or 2006 for comprehensive immigration reform. Like, a million people marched down our. My friend Kaylee, who, you know, we marched down Wilshire Boulevard, 2005 or 2006. I was born in 1983. Has anybody got a math here? Anyway, you do the math at home. We showed up journalists, not good at math. 27, something like that.

Mariana (44:59)

Yeah.

Jake (45:01)

And these were the people that I grew up around. This is a. I hate the expression majority minority city, but it's like there are more Latinos in LA and have been, you know, in some regard for most of my life here. And the idea that people were coming out in support of that community to me was exciting. And so I came in a march, and I wasn't a journalist yet. And the first time that I did any story at all about immigration was when I was working at Pivot, which was the television network of participants spent. And Mitch Kost, this producer that you and I both know that you worked at Current with, said to me, we should go down to Tijuana so you can see the reality of who the Trump, sorry, Obama is the deporter in chief. He's deporting more people than anybody ever. And so we went down to Tijuana and I met all these people that spoke perfect English, that they were from Long beach and from LA and had been deported and were stuck on the other side of the border, but basically were as American as anybody that I had ever met. And that was. I was like, whoa. I had never experienced that before. Again, sort of embarrassed to say, but I just didn't fully realize that. And so when I got to MSNBC in 2015, I recreated that story and I said, if you want to understand what Trump's deportations are going to look like, just go back and look at Obama's, because he did it, too. And then the executives at NBC and MSNBC were like, oh, we like that. Can you do more reality check, fact check type stuff on Trump's immigration policy? Because he was saying Mexicans are murderous and rapists and criminals when he was coming down the Gold Elevator escalator. And we. I started doing stories about Ms. 13 is actually from Koreatown. You know, it's not some foreign gang that's coming here, and they were born at the 711 down the street from where we are now. You know, drugs are not coming across the desert. They're coming through the legal ports of entry, like San Ysidro, world's largest border crossing, or at least in the hemisphere. So many students cross back and forth across the border every day. You could go to Juarez and El Paso and just watch kids in uniforms like that live in Mexico and come to the U.S. it's like people have famines on both sides of the border and they cross it every day. These are not. These are not criminals. These are not war zones. These are peaceful, some of the most peaceful cities in the United States. But I missed the family separation policy, so we were doing more of, like, a fact check. Here's the reality of what Trump's not really telling you. And in the middle of all that, this family separation policy sort of exploded onto the scene. And I again, admittedly had no idea that they were doing anything like this, but because I was doing a dateline and interviewing Kirsten Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security. Katie Waldman, who became Katie Miller, Stephen Miller, Miller's wife, who's actually a character in Firestorm, too, invited me to go into the detention centers to see the separations for myself.

Mariana (47:25)

Why do you think she invited you to go in? As many of you know, I've been covering black markets for over 20 years. It's safe to say I have a pretty high tolerance for risk. I'm not your typical cautious gal, but one thing I'm adamant about is life insurance. My husband, Darren and I both have it. I've had mine for a long, long time. And it's something I genuinely don't recommend. Regret. It's also way cheaper than most people think. And the younger you are, the cheaper it usually is. If you're new to life insurance, you're not alone. Thankfully, I found select quote. For over 40 years, Select Quote has helped more than 2 million Americans understand their options and get the coverage they need. As a broker, their mission is very to find you the right insurance policy at the best price. Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. Get the right life insurance for you for less and save more than 50%@SelectQuote.com Mariana save more than 50% on term life insurance@SelectQuote.com Mariana today to get started. That's SelectQuote.com Mariana why do you think she invited you to go in?

Jake (48:38)

Because they wanted the public and. And migrants considering coming to see cruelty, which is not their word. It's my word and Adam Serwer's word. The cruelty is the point of the policy, to scare people from coming. And as I said to Errol Morris, we were sort of tools for Donald Trump in that respect. But also I'm proud to have gone in there and been able to bear witness to it and then sort of tell the world what I saw. That was the first real experience as a quote, unquote journalist where my boss has said to me, just go out there and do what you feel. And you are being affected. We can tell you're being affected. And I want you to be honest about the way that you feel in there. We know you have. Noah was little, my son. And it was extremely, extremely difficult.

Mariana (49:13)

Yeah. Tell me about that day.

Jake (49:14)

So you land, I get to Brownsville, Texas, and it was all sticky and sweaty. And I get off the plane and I go to this former Walmart, 250,000 square feet in Brownsville called Casa Padre. And there was a shelter ostensibly, but really the kids were incarcerated. There was like 1100 kids in the shelter, 10 to 17 boys. Most of them were there because they had been separated from their parents. And you go inside and. And the bedrooms are overcrowded. They had a variance from the state. There were too many.

Mariana (49:41)

So there were kids sleeping on the floors.

Jake (49:43)

They were not in this facility, but in the next one I went to in this facility, they were just jammed tight in beds. They were watching a movie, Moana in the loading dock of the Walmart. They were getting their hair cut. They were going to classes. They were loud outside for like two hours a day. If I remember correctly, it was effectively an incarceration type setting for these kids who were only there not because they arrived unaccompanied, like so many were, but because they were rendered, taken away from their parents and made unaccompanied by the separation policy, as Chris Hayes, my colleague, always says. And from that moment, I walked outside and I told the story of what it felt like. And that was when I realized on that day, June 13, 2018, that being a journalist was not about being neutral or quote, unquote, objective. It was about being fair and honest and just reporting the facts on the ground. And that's what I did. And my boss has also said, you know, if you're feeling emotional about this, like, be careful. But we understand. And that's how the nation felt. And that's why I think that reporting stuck. And so then I went into the epicenter of the separations, the McAllen processing center, which is where I saw the kids in cages on the floor, sleeping on the concrete and the linoleum and the Mylar blankets, and supervised by security contractor in a watchtower. And it was clear to me then, in that moment, you know, that what was happening was gonna become part of one of the most shameful chapters in the history of the country. Country. But, like with Firestorm, I didn't understand the full picture and how we got there. And that's what writing separated did for me, that this was the logical, even though it was cruel extension of decades of bipartisan, deterrence based, punitive based immigration policy that was meant to harm people who came here for a better life. Democrats and Republicans. Clinton started the border wall. The new people would die trying to get around it. Bush created DHS after 911 and supersized the Border Patrol. And Operation Streamline deported all these people. Obama's the deporter in chief. Trump, like that, is able to separate all these families. Biden continues punitive policies despite saying he wants to have a departure.

Mariana (51:39)

Right.

Jake (51:39)

Fair, safe, orderly, humane. But really, I went to Haiti. He deported record number of people to Haiti knowing that only the last two.

Mariana (51:45)

Years of his time in office.

Jake (51:47)

Right.

Mariana (51:48)

Wasn't that the first two years he was much more lax and more was it throughout.

Jake (51:51)

A lot of people got in, but a lot of people didn't get in. And it was. The incongruity of it was pretty stark. Yes, they let a lot of people in in the beginning. Yes, the messaging was such that people felt like they could come in greater numbers, but they weren't letting everybody in. And at a certain point, after I went to Ukraine, they're letting in white Ukrainians, but not Latinos, not Asians that have been waiting there, not black people that have been coming from places like Haiti.

Mariana (52:16)

So people who have a real problem with our immigration and who sort of agree with Trump on his immigration policy, I guess would listen to you talk right now, would say, but should we let everybody in? I mean, why do we, why should we allow everybody to get in?

Jake (52:28)

I mean, I don't think anybody is saying that we shouldn't have borders. I don't feel like we shouldn't have borders. Everybody. I mean, I, I'm not like, abolished the borders. And, and honestly, I'm not a policymaker. I don't have all the solutions. But what I can tell you is whatever we're doing, it's not working. Is not working. And it's cruel and criminalizing people and hurting people. And the logical extension now is more extreme than ever. The. The Trump policies of today. Indiscriminate mass deportations modeled after DWIGHT D. Eisenhower's 1954 program that, that deported a million Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Now they're killing immigrants and citizens. Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota. This is what they had planned to do. Tom Holman said to me, people are gonna die during this mass deportation campaign.

Mariana (53:11)

Keep in mind, Tom Holman is the.

Jake (53:12)

Border czar for Donald Trump, who was also one of the masterminds of the original family separation policy. And what I think is that we gotta try something different. And it was actually Colbert that said to me, the last time I was on Colbert's show, the last person to do anything as a terms of a radical departure was Ronald Reagan, who granted amnesty to people who had been here for a certain period of time, had made certain contributions to society, and felt like they made Americ America a better place for their contributions. Here nobody's come anywhere close to that because everyone's so afraid of the politics of immigration. And they look at people as, as graphs and charts and data rather than as empathetic politicians who are looking at other human beings. Do I know what the solution is? No, I'm not sure I do know what the solution is. Yeah.

Mariana (53:54)

But you don't think that it should be open borders and we should just let everybody.

Jake (53:56)

Of course not, but it involved. I went, you know, I've been to Guatemala. I see how climate change has affected what's going on there. There are ways.

Mariana (54:02)

You don't want people to see how economic policies affect other countries as well and how they create immigration. Our deportations. Actually, we did our story about gangs, and part of the story was sort of this.

Jake (54:11)

We exported gang culture to Central America.

Mariana (54:13)

We did. And then we created violence there. And then that led to a lot of people wanting to flee that violence to protect their kids and their families. Come to the United States. They arrive a lot of times, they're put in some of the poorest neighborhoods. Of course they don't have a job. They're not given the opportunity that so many of us have.

Jake (54:27)

Ms. 13 and 18th street gang are LA street gangs that were exported to Central America. The then resulted in people coming, fleeing to come here. So what's the solution? I don't know what the solution is, but I do know there's a lot of problems. If you look at people coming as a problem that could be mitigated by policy. But in this administration, they're defunding usaid. That mitigates the impact of climate change in Central America. They're taking away food distribution programs where food insecurity is a major driver of people leaving. Around the world world, millions and millions and millions of people are on the move in any hemisphere, in any part of the world at any given time. Migration is a fact of life and part of planet Earth forever.

Mariana (55:06)

And in many ways, sort of turning your back on the rest of the world is just going to create a bigger problem because more pro. More people want to come have to for survival are wanting, going to want to come here.

Jake (55:16)

Bombing fishing boats with a dude with a bag of cocaine in it or maybe not. Is not. Is not going to solve migration. I just wish these politicians would. Would have a better understanding of the facts on the ground. I do totally empathize with people who feel like, man, I'm seeing a lot of people come into my community and is it a strain on the resources here for my municipality? Is it gonna affect the police department's response time or the ambulance response time or are there kids in school that weren't there last week or last month or last year? Like, those are all fair questions to ask. And how are our local governments gonna deal with these things, right?

Mariana (55:45)

Or are some of them bringing violence or is it a drug trafficking involved? Of course, all of that are just as. It.

Jake (55:50)

Just as if, just as if somebody moves into your neighborhood. As an American citizen who is involved in drugs trafficking or gangs or whatever, like. Yeah, but that's not who they. They're not going after the worst of the worst. They're going after dudes that are working at Home Depot in the parking lot, chasing them across the freeway. And in the case of one guy here on the 210, they die, you know.

Mariana (56:07)

Yeah, let's get to the raids in a second because I know you've reported on that too. Tell me, just go back to McAllen or what were the kids like? Were they. Were they crying? What was the state of the kids when you walked in.

Jake (56:18)

I haven't stopped to, like, really take myself there in a long time time. But it was, I think, eerily quiet. The rustling of the blankets is something I remember. Like those space blankets. I remember hearing bright lights. Was it very, very, very bright lights? Just a cold environment generally. But it was South Texas and in the summer, so it wasn't freezing. I wasn't there when they were ripping families apart. I was there after it had happened or with families who were still together, who were about to get separated. And it was the fear, I think, was more palpable than anything, which is why I think it felt so quiet in there. And I will never forget those feelings of just looking around and seeing people and their future is hanging the balance in the next couple hours, maybe in these sort of way stations before they're separated and the parent is sent to ICE and the kids sent to the Walmart. And then they never know if they're gonna get back together ever again.

Mariana (57:09)

Yeah. And these are kids, I mean, thousands of kids, and having no idea if they're gonna see their mom as young as infants.

Jake (57:14)

Natalie. Toddlers, breastfeeding babies were taken during that policy. And. And just to say what's going on now is not family separation at the border, but it is family separation in the interior.

Mariana (57:24)

Absolutely.

Jake (57:24)

Read Dr. William Lopez, who wrote a book also called Separated, about interior immigration enforcement, or a new book about raids in the heartland as well. These are all family separation policies. They're just happening by taking instead of kids away from parents at the border, parents away from kids in their, in the, in their communities now, all across the country. Way bigger, way more super sized. This is family separation on steroids, what they're doing right now.

Mariana (57:46)

Okay, so then let's go to the rates. We can go back because you were talking about it. We could go back to reporting on, on your reporting on family separation in a second. But you reported. Just because I remember this, which was such a good report story that you did on the mother and daughter who were deported to Guatemala. Right?

Jake (58:03)

Yeah. Nori Santay Ramos and her mother, Estela.

Mariana (58:06)

Yeah, tell me that story.

Jake (58:07)

These are the kind of people which.

Mariana (58:08)

I mentioned on the Joe Rogan I know.

Jake (58:09)

Thank you for doing that. Thank you for doing that. Which is the exact audience that should be hearing this. And by the way, he's. He's been very impressive, very public. Nori Santay Ramos was a. An honor student at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, track star, star student, and went to a routine immigration check in with her mother. And when they went to the routine immigration check in, they detained and deported both of them and took the mother Estella's medication. Nori says, in ICE custody, that she needed to. She had cirrhosis of the liver and had stopped drinking, but had a drinking problem because of the violence she had faced, which was the reason she fled in the first place, according to Nori. And when they got to Guatemala, she didn't have the medication. And within, I think two weeks of me going there to visit them, her.

Mariana (58:55)

Mother died because she didn't have her.

Jake (58:59)

Medication, no medication, woke up one day saying she was feeling sick. And by the time Noria was able to check on her, she was gone. These are the people that they're deporting. Just like Annie Lucia Lopez Balosa, that 19 year old who went to Babson College, who was trying to go down to San Antonio to visit her mom and dad for fricking Thanksgiving to surprise them. And instead agents picked her up at the airport and sent her to Honduras. Or how about Narciso Branco, the landscaper cutting the bushes in Santa Ana at an ihop? Three Marine Corps sons. The son Alejandro says to me, if I would have treated a detainee in Afghanistan when I was in the Marines the way that those dudes treated my dad, Dad, I would have been court martialed for a war crime. Or a woman on the street in Chicago, Marcel, I think her name was, who was walking down the street to buy ingredients for a stew to make dinner for her daughter. And yet these dudes roll up, masked, armed, kitted up, take her, deport her to Mexico. Her daughter Samantha's stuck in Chicago now without her mom. These are the people that they're going after.

Mariana (59:59)

When I mentioned the Estella Nori case on Joe Rogan's podcast, I mean, my whole conversation about immigration with him did not go well with a large audience. There were a lot of comments of people who hated what I had to say and who disagreed with me. And one of the things I remember, one comment was, for example, that I am so sorry for Estelle and Nori, but their case, their immigration requests had been denied. What were they still doing? This country. And plus, she was an alcoholic, as if that had anything. She died because she was an alcoholic, which is. Yeah, exactly, respond.

Jake (60:33)

It's all judgment, you know. And again, I don't fault people for having a worldview. Cause it came from somewhere and they were taught it by somebody. But do we want to treat each other as humans or do we want to treat each other as Political talking points or enemies? Perceived enemies. What did Nori and Estella ever do to those people? You know, I'll tell you, what they did to LA made it a better place. Made her classmates love her and they miss her dearly. And talking about people that we were in touch with, I heard from Nori the other day, you know, and she's still in Guatemala, desperate to come, come home.

Mariana (61:05)

You know, this is. I mean, she's been here since she was a senior.

Jake (61:08)

She'd been here since. For 11 or 12 years, since she was a little kid, you know, and all she wants to do is graduate and go to college and, and, and work in fashion and have a career and like, contribute to society.

Mariana (61:19)

Right. Also, this was not what people voted for. Right, when they voted for Trump.

Jake (61:23)

Well, I will say it is what they voted for. Trump advertised, as I reported from the floor of the conventions, as people held up mass deportation. Now signs. Thousands and thousands and thousands of signs that said mass deportation Now. This is what they were always planning, yet they led with the words worst of the worst, which was bullshit. And so people might have believed it's not what they voted for, but I believe it always is what they voted for. The people just didn't want to pay enough attention, which is what I say at the end of Separated, the film that Errol made. People wanted to know less once Biden was in office. They didn't want to pay attention. They wanted to pretend like everything was going to be okay, that that horrible family separation thing was done. We'd never have anything like that again. This is 10 times worse, 20 times worse.

Mariana (62:03)

Think so?

Jake (62:03)

Definitely, definitely, definitely. The amount of people that are being. I mean, by the way, nothing is worse to one family than the separations. I'm not trying to say.

Mariana (62:11)

No, no, no. Yeah. But in terms of numbers and in.

Jake (62:13)

Terms of impact, for sure, that was 5,500 families. How many families have been separated now? I don't know the answer, but I know that thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people have been taken. Stephen Miller has quotas of. What is it, 3,000 a day or. I can't remember. It's a day or a month. But like, like, we can look it up.

Mariana (62:32)

I think it was a day. Okay, actually, let's do it. Let's do that. I have Perplexity is the AI company we use that not gives us all the facts. They're also sponsors of the show. Matt, can you do the search for. For me real quick? Matt actually helps me with the search because Mariana's just Pretending I'm not AI savvy. No, I'm just kidding. This is very.

Jake (62:52)

She's just pretending to be on the computer. No, she's typing. She. She doesn't even use the QWERTY keyboard. She's on some Portuguese weird keyboard. I don't know what she's doing right now. I think she's playing among us.

Mariana (63:06)

Why among us?

Jake (63:07)

I don't know. I don't even know what that is. I just hear my kid talking about.

Mariana (63:11)

So, yeah, it's. In the mid-2025, Miller said on Fox News that the Trump administration's goal was for ICE to detain about 3,000 people.

Jake (63:18)

Per day, per day across country. Yeah, that makes sense.

Mariana (63:20)

A level that would exceed a million arrests in a year, which is, again.

Jake (63:23)

DWIGHT D. Eisenhower's 1954 program. You can ask Perplexity. You can ask perplexity. It has a name so racist. I won't say it now, but this is what they're basing everything they're doing after a program that deported a million Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and now they are aiming to deport as many. But also, people are dying, and it's not just immigrants, not that that makes it any better at all, but American citizens as well.

Mariana (63:47)

Yeah, it's horrendous. I mean, and it's people we know. You know, particularly even living in la, we are surrounded by.

Jake (63:52)

Yesterday, when we were together last night at that bar, people were coming up to me saying, do you know that ICE was in? And for people that are not familiar with this area, but like the areas around where we are right now, again today, the numbers now are as high as they've been, maybe even higher than during the summer at the height of the raids. It's not stopping, right?

Mariana (64:09)

It's not stopping. And actually, there's something really interesting that you said in your book Firestorm, which we will get there, but it's about the second responders, Right. Which is the people who are the people who are building, rebuilding LA after the fires. And it's the same people in many cases. Cases. Right.

Jake (64:22)

That were being the primary targets of the raids. Pablo Alvarado from the National Day Laborer Organizing Network was there last night, and he's a character in the book, and actually in the video that we all made together for the book trailer, and he has said to me, day laborers, the people that stand at the Home Depot parking lot or the big home improvement stores looking for an honest day's work, show up after every big natural. Natural disaster. Disaster. They went to the Northeast after Sandy, they went to New Orleans after Katrina, they went to Florida after Hurricane Andrew. And now they're here in LA after the costliest wildfire event in American history. And they are the target of a federal immigration policy that is slow, not only obviously cruel in the eyes of the people who are critical of it, but it's slowing the response from the fires that he says he's leading the way on helping Trump.

Mariana (65:10)

Right. It's impeding Americans from getting back in their homes. Exactly.

Jake (65:14)

Yeah.

Mariana (65:15)

Apart from it being incredibly dehumanizing and cruel.

Jake (65:17)

Yeah.

Mariana (65:18)

Perplexity also says that ICE's own report shows that in the fiscal year of 2024, it carried out about 271,484 removals, the highest number in nearly a decade.

Jake (65:28)

That was Biden, by the way. But what I'm saying is they've been doing it. It's not new. And Trump wants to supersize it. You know what I mean?

Mariana (65:36)

Right. Oh, wow. So Biden deported. Okay, so Biden deported more people.

Jake (65:39)

One of the higher, not sizable.

Mariana (65:42)

But that was actually. It was very much. You would know better than me. But it wasn't, because in many ways, he was getting really attacked for hammered.

Jake (65:51)

And they thought it was a big perceived political issue, that they needed to be more, and he wanted to win.

Mariana (65:55)

Reelection, and he thought this was the way that he had to.

Jake (65:57)

He put forward one of the most conservative immigration bills in a generation, the Democrats and Biden did. And they keep saying, oh, Trump torpedoed it, as if that was some like thing to be proud of, because they don't want to give Biden the w. The win. But Biden just went back to the same policies of the other administrations of. Of looking at people through the lens of deterrence and punishment and criminality rather than migration. There were. I mean, he reunited the separated families. They tried to do ways of having people apply to come to the United States from their home country. And so there were progressive thinkers within the administration, but the ones who were more conservative won out on immigration in the Biden administration.

Mariana (66:35)

Yeah. I mean, what's sad and what I've said before is that again and again, with every single administration, immigrants are used as political pawns.

Jake (66:43)

Every time.

Mariana (66:44)

Every single time. And, yeah, again, it's cruel, it's dehumanizing, it's horrible for people, particularly people like us that report on this issue, that have met so many of these people, that know that these are wonderful, wonderful people and who don't deserve this.

Jake (67:01)

No, they don't deserve it. What they deserve is love and empathy and respect, even people who you might like. What I used to say about family separation is, let's say somebody committed a quote, unquote, crime. I don't know what it is, outside of a violent crime or something that would endanger their children, who deserves to have their kid taken away from them if they were. Even if they were a drug dealer, you know, smoke pot or whatever? Like, who deserves cruelty?

Mariana (67:27)

I understand that it is important to deport people who are actual criminals, and I am all for that.

Jake (67:35)

Of course, if you're breaking the laws, if you're a violent criminal, if you are part of the, quote, unquote, worst of the. The worst. That's what the system is designed to do. That is what the system.

Mariana (67:43)

But this is not who they are deporting. And that's what's the important.

Jake (67:45)

Of course not. But by the way, just to be. I mean, we kind of tease about it, but, like, if you go through a lengthy prison sentence and you come out and you find a way to redeem yourself, I think that there's a lot of people who've done a lot of very, very bad things. I'm not saying they should stay in the country if they're undocumented necessarily, but I'm just saying I believe in forgiveness and redemption and. Yeah, so do I. I don't think it's, you know, I don't think there's any categorical answer to that question.

Mariana (68:10)

Right. And. And I said that the prison system doesn't really reform anyone. I say this, but I've also had incredible people on the podcast talk about how their lives change and how they.

Jake (68:19)

Of course, many, many.

Mariana (68:20)

They did the work themselves. They did the work themselves. The system isn't helping them in itself. So, okay, so you then decided you were witnessing all of this, this cruel separation policy, and you decided you wanted to write a book about it. What did that do? What was that process like for you as well?

Jake (68:38)

That one was much more of a reported process. I was very deep in documents, and as part of my reporting at NBC at the time, I had a partner in Julia Ainslie, where we were doing a lot of the reporting for the network. And I just tried to dive deeper on a lot of that stuff. And so then once I started to write the book, I did have sources come forward and give me documents about how the policy was considered and what was ultimately implemented. I spent a lot of time talking to people, people on background, officials who were involved in the policy. I think that they knew how awful it was and wanted to exonerate themselves largely. And there were people like Commander Jonathan White, who you could read about in the book and in the film and actually in Firestorm. Firestorm as well, because he crosses over into that story that wanted to stand up and resist and stop the policy.

Mariana (69:20)

And he's a hero.

Jake (69:21)

He is a hero. And I believe, I mean government, government officials generally, I'm not talking about government, quote unquote, high level officials, but, but government employees, people who dedicate their lives to the career, civil service are as important as any first responder on any front line. They are dedicating themselves, probably not for very much pay, for long, grueling hours in very, very intense circumstances to other people. And he's one of them. So I spent a lot of time talking to people, people in dhs, cbp, Border Patrol, ice, current, former, all that stuff. That's when I became sort of a source based reporter for the first time. I had never really done anything like. Like that. I mean, literally, notepad writing. I wish I would have recorded a lot of those interviews and transcribed them, which is what I did for Firestorm back then. I only did it by hand. It was so stupid. And I had my notebooks and they were filled with just handwritten notes. It was impossible. I can't read one fucking thing that I wrote down. No. And so it was a lot of that and it was a lot of back and forth and a lot of phone calls. Drove down to the border to look at where Juan and Jose, the father and son in the story, crossed the border. I wanted to see those things for myself. I went to Guatemala to learn about what it was like for people who came just like them from Guatemala and why they came. If not, put myself in their shoes. I owed it to the story to go understand better. I'm not a fluent Spanish speaker. Like I, you know, these are my own insecurities. But like, I wanted to do as much as I could, like an advanced man would, to soak up all the information I could possibly understand and regurgitate it in a book form to people. And I guess I did an okay job because Errol Morris read the book and called me and said, I want.

Mariana (70:50)

To make a film about it.

Jake (70:51)

Not even like that, actually, the story goes to correct myself. He tweeted about the book and I said I couldn't believe it.

Mariana (70:58)

Errol Morris, by the way, one of the best documentary filmmakers of our time.

Jake (71:01)

Award winning director of the Fog of War and made Thin Blue Line and just so many Amazing films. And I genuinely, genuinely, genuinely great human being. He tweeted. And I called Diane Wireman, the late, great Diane Wman, prolific film producer at Participant, who I knew, and said, errol tweeted, I know you guys made the film about Abu G, Standard operating procedure.

Mariana (71:23)

Such a good movie.

Jake (71:24)

And do you think he'd ever speak to me? I wanted to say thank you, you, Tim, for tweeting. And she said, probably not, but you can call his office. So I called his office. Turns out he called me right back and I said, I don't want to be presumptuous, but if I ever did make a film, would you be interested? I would never ask that. I said, do you have any advice? And he said, do you want to make a film with me? And I said, yes. And he goes, okay, go find the money. I said, oh, great. So I called NBC. NBC gave me half the money. The great Noah Oppenheim, who's now a film producer, made Zero Day and House of Dynamite. And the other half came from Participant and Diane. And that began a four year process of making that movie, which came out at the Venice Film festival before the 2024 election.

Mariana (72:09)

It's such a good movie and the book too. And the book was a New York Times bestseller and it was such a wonderful and needed necessary account of this time period. Right? It's such a first person account, witness account of what one day, I hope.

Jake (72:22)

Just like with Firestorm, that all the families separated will have the opportunity, like the Shoah foundation, for Holocaust survivors to tell their own stor story again. Maybe that's my own insecurity, but this is my draft. This is my version of the story. These are the people that I met in the way that I framed it. And if you, you can take it for what it is and hopefully it'll help people understand. Again, like what? Not what I said, but the Republican appointed judge who stopped the policy called one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country.

Mariana (72:49)

Yeah, it was fantastic. And tell me about. Sorry, I got distracted because I was obviously reading, which I shouldn't have done, which is exactly what I should say.

Jake (72:58)

Paging Errol Morris. Mariana is reading her note cards.

Mariana (73:00)

I am sorry because I know we have to get out of here because.

Jake (73:04)

We have something to go to.

Mariana (73:05)

So I was trying to figure out.

Jake (73:07)

How to get this. Ladies and gentlemen, to listeners of the hidden third podcast and video YouTube show is moderating the book Q and A tonight with me at Writer's block in Los Angeles.

Mariana (73:16)

And I'm actually Kind of nervous because it's a stage thing and I hate stage stuff, but let's go to the fires. So tell me about your experience in the fires. And it is actually your. Your book sort of starts with a scene which was New Year's Eve, or around New Year's Eve, where you were sitting around the fire in some not far from LA with friends. And what happened then?

Jake (73:36)

I said to a friend of mine, Sam Falls, he said, what do you want to do next year? And I had just had a conversation with my boss at the time at NBC News, who was like, you're going to become a coverage correspondent, which means you're just going to respond to whatever story is happening on any given day. That was never what I did, but they wanted me to do that, and I didn't really have a choice. I was like, okay. And I saved, Said to Sam, the last thing I want to do is put on that stupid yellow jacket and cover wildfires, because I thought it was so sensational and so ridiculous. And I had done it before. That's what correspondents do in the LA Bureau. And literally 10 days later, probably I'm sitting at my desk in the LA bureau and my brother texts on our group chat and says, huge Palisades fire. We're going to evacuate. He lived up in the mountains there.

Mariana (74:14)

That's the first you heard of it?

Jake (74:15)

Yes. From your brother on a group chat. And I looked up at the monitor on the screen screen. And I turn on the local news and I saw the streets that I grew up on on fire. And I got up and I went into the bureau chief's office. Polly, pal, great human. And I said, I gotta go. I grew up there. And so she worked it out so that I could go to the Palisades. And that started almost two weeks of reporting around the clock, watching my childhood neighborhood and the neighborhood that I spend so much time now in Altadena, where Noah had his ninth birthday at a restaurant called Side Pie Pizza Place that burned down. Watching all these things that are so familiar, but especially the Palisades, just, you know, carbonize, as I said, incinerate in front of my eyes and try to figure out, you know, I did the advanced man thing. I said what I was seeing, but I couldn't emotionally process it, which is what this book is. It was my attempt at understanding the number one, the costliest wildfire in American history that killed 31 people, maybe 400, if you look at excess mortality, over three times the size of Manhattan, 16,000 structures. But, like, how did it happen? Why did it happen happen? Will it happen again? Who's responsible? What's to blame? What the hell was this? How could it happen? The two entire neighborhoods in the most populous county in America were virtually entirely wiped off the map. And there, what I've realized is I thought in looking back, I was looking at my childhood burn up. And as I write, fire is a remarkable time machine, and it did take me back into my past. But really what I learned about was that this was the fire of the future that we will all be experiencing soon in some form, whether it's a fire or another form of natural disaster. The book reads like a sci fi thriller. But really what it is is a minute by minute account of being in the middle of a natural disaster that we're all going to experience some form of at some point.

Mariana (75:55)

Right. Our future, Right? Yeah. And what was that for you? Because we tell all these stories, but very rarely is a situation become as personal as this one did for you. What was that like? I remember you say you didn't emotionally process it, but I remember one shot of you on camera crying. Right. You have tears streaming down your eyes and I think next to your home, right?

Jake (76:15)

Yeah. And the home I grew up in.

Mariana (76:16)

Yeah.

Jake (76:17)

It's like, look, I didn't get caught in Niger, but I would imagine that when you were there, a lot of personal things flashed through your brain 100%. And for me to be in the Palisades, I wanted to be there to do my job, but I couldn't help but think of the personal. And mine was not life or death. I didn't know if I was not gonna get out of. Well, in some regard. I was worried at some point about that. But not like where you were facing a potential violent death or something like that at the hands of people with guns. But I was thinking about my family, my parents, the things that, you know, as I used to drive through that neighborhood days before, I drove through the neighborhood and went to the public park with my sister Hannah and her baby Izzy, who was just born days before, and Nicole and some of my other nephews. I was thinking, I was thinking about so many things and there was not enough space in my brain for it. It was impossible. It was really impossible to be there. And so what I just decided to do is I'm gonna focus on just doing my job right now, responding to as many calls as I can from my family and my friends and people I knew to go check on their houses.

Mariana (77:19)

Right? Yeah. That's what you were getting Calls. I remember you saying this. You were getting calls from, and it's in the book as well, but you're getting calls from all sorts of people asking you to go check on their houses. Because no, people, people couldn't get into this area. You were there because you were a journalist. But most people didn't know if their houses had burned out. I evacuated and they had no idea.

Jake (77:34)

I've never told this story either. But like some celebrities, and I'm not gonna say who they were, but like all kinds of people were calling me. Like people were calling me. If I remember anything from can you get property out of my house? To can you go by and drive and check? And I did it for my high school carpool mate. I did it for my brother. I did it for Katie Miller. Stephen Miller's wife called me and said, Stephen Miller's parents live in the Palisades. The ultimate irony, like after all this family separation reporting, she cut off contact with me and I went and checked.

Mariana (77:58)

She wasn't happy with the book, that.

Jake (77:59)

No, she hated it.

Mariana (78:01)

And she just said, hey, need you to go check on this house. And you didn't know at the time that it was Stephen Miller's parents house.

Jake (78:05)

Once, once I looked at my text after she called me, I realized that it was. And I did it because as I wrote to her on the text, it's Palisades above politics. And I gave her a red heart emoji. But the reason I include that story in this book and you can read about it is part of the fire of the future is misinformation and disinformation. You know, it was Jonathan White who we talked about went from protesting family separation from inside the government to becoming a senior career emergency management official official within hhs. And he went to every mass casualty fire declared by the federal government in the US over the last five years. He said, jacob, what you experienced was not a trip into your past, but the fire of the future. And that is because the global climate emergency changes in the way we live, like electric car batteries exploding and firefighters getting cancer as they're standing out there fighting the fires. Our infrastructure's falling apart and there was an empty reservoir and the steel towers in Altadena. These are part of the story of both of these different fires. And the misinformation and disinformation that's coming from local and Washington.

Mariana (78:59)

How does a misinformation and disinformation affect the fires?

Jake (79:02)

The irony of Katie Miller and Stephen Miller, you know, having their parents there and Me going to check on the house. While their very bosses, President Elect Trump at the time and Elon Musk, her future boss at Doge, tweeting conspiracy theories about the lack of water, where it was coming from, the fact that FEMA had no money, in their words, when Biden signed a disaster declaration giving 100% of the reimbursements to the law, local government for six months. Musk talking with firefighters about the water pressure and why it wasn't there. And again, pushing conspiracy theories.

Mariana (79:33)

And the conspiracy theory that was being pushed at the time, or the idea was that Trump kept insisting that there was all this water that could be.

Jake (79:39)

Flowing down, slow down from the Pacific Northwest from a mystical tap. And instead all he did was.

Mariana (79:43)

That doesn't even exist, right?

Jake (79:44)

No, of course not. He flooded fields with 2 1/2 billion gallons of water in the Central Valley. Did nothing to help the people of LA or the fires of la. What they were doing was pouring rhetorical fuel on the real flames of the LA fire and making it more confusing for people who were having a hard enough time getting accurate information from local officials. That's why people were using WatchDuty app and people died in West Altadena because they weren't getting emergency alerts. It was confusing on the ground. And to have this person, the President Elect and Elon Musk who literally went to the ground in LA and is spreading all this misinformation while Katie Miller and Stephen Miller's, Katie Miller's in laws, Stephen Miller's parents are some of the very victims of the fire. That just says all you need to know about America's new age of disaster. That's what's happening today. Look at Argentina, is in Argentina. Argentina right now, where the wildfires are, there's conspiracy theories about the Jews setting the wild fires or Israelis or something. It's like it's part of our everyday political life now and it's seeping into natural disasters and it's making our recovering from mitigating, preventing these types of disasters more difficult. Right.

Mariana (80:43)

It's insane. And the end of your book is all about this part. And it's. Yeah. And what were the four. I know Captain Jonathan White did that.

Jake (80:54)

Before climate change, infrastructure, the way we live and misinformation and disinformation. Those are the politics of blame, basically. And instead of blaming, you know, why can't we all agree that this is, that this is an age where, especially when it comes to wildfires, like in Los Angeles, we've moved into the wildland, urban Interface. We live in a place that is designed for disaster. As a famous documentary made in the 60s by the LA Fire Department said about LA, none of this is new. It's just with our climate changing and these events happening and LA being a tinderbox and fires happening from New Jersey to the Carolinas to Lahaina and people just jumping in the fucking ocean running for their lives. When you layer misinformation and disinformation on top of it, it makes nothing better.

Mariana (81:35)

So when was the moment for you emotionally covering that? I mean, yes, you didn't lose your own home, but you lost the neighborhood you grew up in. And in many ways it was sort of a safe haven for you, right? You'd go back with kids all the time you took.

Jake (81:49)

Did we ever go to the. You came to my parents house when they were still living in the Palisades.

Mariana (81:51)

Yeah, absolutely. And we went out to one of the restaurants that you mention in the book. And it was a place. Yeah, it was a great place. Place that safe haven. It was also a place with so many memories for you. What was the point that you. That you allowed that to sort of sit. That you sort of.

Jake (82:04)

The first contact I made with anybody who was actually from the Palisades was I texted my siblings and I said, can you send me Albino Fuentes number? Albino Fuentes was a server at a. I'm going to get emotional time with this Cafe Vita, which is a restaurant in the Palisades. And he was a server at a Mort's Deli, which was the deli in the Palisades before that. And this guy I've known for probably 35 years, since I was a little kid, but I didn't really know him, I just knew him. He was like a happy smiley face that made me feel warm and fuzzy when I would see him when I would go to the Palisades. And it occurred to me that like so much of the focus is on the residents in this coastal affluent enclave, but the workers are as important and make the Palisades neighborhood what it really is. And as much as the people who lay their head there at night. And so I called Alby and just.

Mariana (82:47)

Let me just say something, is that I don't think most people realize, and I certainly didn't before I read your book, which is this idea that their lives are perhaps even more. They have less financial means destroyed and they don't have the government help protecting.

Jake (83:00)

Them, certainly the undocumented population, that's for sure.

Mariana (83:03)

Right. And they lost their jobs in many ways, lost the communities that they spend the majority of their time in, even if it's not where they have their own home because they can't afford, has an enormous impact on all these people.

Jake (83:13)

So he came and he met me in the Palisades and we went to Cafe Vida together and we, like, hugged. And it was like the first human contact with someone who I was familiar with. I'm trying to remember if this was the fire started on Tuesday and Wednesday was the day I went to my house. I don't think I saw him maybe till Thursday, if I'm not mistaken. And it was like, oh, God, I needed that hug so bad. And it made me realize, like, okay, I need more of this. And that's when I started thinking about how can I dig my way mentally out of this? I wasn't even anywhere close. I didn't talk to Gavin Newsom until Saturday. And for Meet the Press and Altadeen, I continued to cover the fire for the better part of the two weeks. But after that, I started thinking to myself, especially once the ice raid started in the summer, too. But even before then, I started just, I need to understand fire and what happened and connect with people more. So I started on this journey. I called Peter Hubbard, who was my editor at HarperCollins for separated, and I said, what do you think? You know, this is another one of these events that, like, it was so big, much bigger than I could ever possibly comprehend in real time, like to dive deeper and explore it. And he said, it's a no brainer. Let's do it.

Mariana (84:16)

Yeah.

Jake (84:17)

And so I started working on it the weekend of the House Correspondents Dinner in April when I was in Washington, and I started just reaching out to people. And that's where I got to know if I could. I was rattle off some of the names. And this is why I say it's a book about people and connection and humanity and empathy as much as it is about the politics and the climate. Eric Mendoza, Station 69. Nick Schuler. Yeah, Cal Fire. All the people that I mentioned before, Herb and Loida, Kate Hennigan, Holly Bender from jpl, you know, tell me about.

Mariana (84:45)

The owners, the home owners, the ones on McNally Avenue.

Jake (84:49)

Yeah, that's Herb and Loida Wilson.

Mariana (84:50)

Yeah. What are they?

Jake (84:51)

I think she said last night, I always said they had worked at UPS for 30 years, but they worked there for 36 years.

Mariana (84:55)

36 years.

Jake (84:56)

That was the only time I actually cried in the writing of the whole book. We went to Bub and Grandma's the deli here. And they had been moving, and I think they've moved so far. I didn't even say it last night, 10 times since the fires, because they can't. They're having trouble maintaining one place. But they told me the story of how their daughter Ashley picked them up and how it made them so proud to be a parent and to have raised, you know, wonderful children. And I started fucking bawling at the fucking deli, eating a pickle and a sandwich. Like, it just made me realize how much of this is about human beings losing their sense of selves and finding it again. And I. I think it made me realize that I had gone through a similar thing. I needed it so badly. I needed the emotional intimacy that we're describing to rediscover myself and my community and my family, my immediate family. I'm more connected with my. As you know, with my. My wife and my kids and my own family today than I have been in a long time. And this book is definitely, definitely part of the reason, because I got to spend so much time looking inward and learning from other people who are looking inward also. It's the greatest gift I've ever been given, and it's why I think it's the most important assignment I've ever undertaken.

Mariana (86:05)

There's an amazing moment where Herb and Loida Wilson, you talk about in the book how Lloyda, basically, when she was finally allowed to come and see her burned house, she would spend. She would go there every single day, right? She was looking for her wedding ring and she never found. Never found them, but she found.

Jake (86:21)

She found a tile. I'm just going to read this from. I have the PDF of the book on my phone. They didn't find the wedding ring, but they did find a little tile that had sat in the kitchen of their home. It said, God doesn't send you through troubled waters to drown you, but to cleanse you. Lloyd had told me about her reaction upon finding it. God, thank you for talking to me, because I know you're here for us.

Mariana (86:46)

That is crazy that that's the only thing they found, though, that that's what survived.

Jake (86:50)

The stories of the stuff that came out of these houses, the things that. What was left, you know, it's all part of, like, the. The grieving process for everybody. And it's amazing how people find meaning in the different things that they found.

Mariana (87:04)

And how they continue to live their lives and they're optimistic and they believe. In this case. I remember you talking about them and how they still believe they're going to come back home. Other business owners that lost everything are still hopeful that they're going to open their businesses. And yet it's going to be a year.

Jake (87:17)

I know.

Mariana (87:17)

And nothing is back to normal yet for many of these people. And part of it is the dysfunction of the government.

Jake (87:24)

And people should know they're listening. No one is absolved in the telling of this story when it comes to local leaders, not Democrats, not Republicans, not Trump, not Musk, not Bask, not Newsom. None of them. Yeah, exactly. Not Newsom. Exactly. Bass was out of town in Ghana. There's all kinds of accountability related questions about this. Should firefighters have been pre deployed? What happened with the reservoir? What happened in Altadena? Newsom promised Marshall Plan 2.0. To me, where's the Marshall Plan 2.0 for the rebuilding? People can't afford to rebuild right now in la. It's the most unaffordable city and the most unaffordable state in the country. 40% of the lots are being sold to corporate investors right now. I think I read something that said like 61% of the people who are on the verge of like being homeless, who didn't. Who lost their houses.

Mariana (88:02)

Insane.

Jake (88:03)

I don't know. I got to double double check that.

Mariana (88:05)

The richest state, one of the richest states in the richest country in the.

Jake (88:07)

World be a problem for Gavin Newsom when he runs for president. All of that is a part of this story. I always say the fissures in our society are laid bare in big mass casualty events like this. And so you read about immigrants being the most vulnerable. You read about people not being able to afford their life in a city like Los Angeles. That is part of the fire of the future too, that it's happening in a place, in places where there's lots of structural inequalities under the surface. This is not a woke thing to say. If it happened in another place in America, it'd be unaffordable to rebuild as well. Life is hard in the United States of America. It's hard to afford most. You know, anytime you're in an Uber anywhere in the country, people have a second job or a third job and they're trying to get by. And so layer a fire like this on top of that, layer a natural disaster like this and they're only getting worse and they're only getting more frequent. As Newsom said, there's no fire season anymore. It's just around the year fires period.

Mariana (88:57)

There was another amazing quote that you had in your book From Chief Anthony Moroney of the LA County Fire Department. Yes, he's amazing where he went, right. He went in the Palisades and he was talking to people who had all sorts of questions for him.

Jake (89:09)

Yeah, it was like a town hall at a synagogue evacuated Palestine's residence.

Mariana (89:13)

And he apologized for not being able to save. He said, I'm so right. He apologized for not being able to save house.

Jake (89:18)

So much guilt, safe houses. Yeah.

Mariana (89:19)

Not being able to save a life and not being able to save a business. And he listed it. All right, the thing that he said is. Yeah, go, go ahead. Well, yeah, tell me what he said. But also, what does that, what, how did that make people feel there and how that make you feel? Because for me it was very emotional.

Jake (89:34)

I think those guys feel horrible. Last night, Eric Mendoza, who was there at the, at the book party, was just saying to my own brother who, whose in laws lost their house that he was living in, he lost all his stuff. They feel terrible, but they are heroes, man.

Mariana (89:45)

Like they're absolute fucking heroes.

Jake (89:47)

Just definitionally. Eric Mendoza, you will read about in the book, laid on his stomach, prone in the middle of the street because it was. The concrete was the coolest place he could find. As temperatures around him approached 100 degrees. Hubcaps and, you know, aluminum on automobiles was melting around him to open the hose, two and a half inch hose, the biggest hose they had, full bore to try to put the fires out on these houses, any structures that, that they could find. And what Maroni is talking about here is like, when they sign up for this, they don't want to lose one house, much less 16,000 structures.

Mariana (90:14)

These are guys that have sacrificed, they sacrificed their lives then. I mean, there's still medical issues that can arise after covering 5,000.

Jake (90:20)

I told you, Nick Schuller, he says I could get cancer. I might get cancer being in this fire. Eric Mendoza got home, couldn't breathe. His wife took him to urgent care, put him on corticosteroids, gave him oxygen. Nobody knows what the future is going to be for any of these people.

Mariana (90:33)

Real heroes. And yet his instinct is to go up there and apologize for something that is completely out of his hands, obviously, that he so bravely tried to save. And it just, it was a beautiful moment.

Jake (90:44)

I love the speech that he gave. And the end of the speech is one of my favorite parts because he puts it in context with the native people, the Tongva, who were the first inhabitants of the Palisades in LA and said that they weren't afraid of fire. They didn't try to fight it in terms of never have one. They lit their own fires in order to pay respect to the fire and to mitigate the potential damage for future ones. And we think we can control fire these days. And that is just another fool's errand that will result in more of this.

Mariana (91:10)

In the fire of the future. Yeah. Jake, that was amazing. I have one last thing that I wanted to ask you about, which is first, I wanted, if you could, to read out loud the last paragraph that you have on your book, which made me emotional, too, because I know you personally and I know your family. Was it Notes on sourcing or was. Acknowledgments.

Jake (91:29)

Acknowledgments.

Mariana (91:29)

Thank you. Most importantly. Importantly. Yeah, that last paragraph.

Jake (91:32)

I cried when I read the audiobook. I cried when I was reading this. Yeah, I haven't listened back to the audiobook. I hope they didn't use the version where I cried. And thank you. Most importantly, to my extraordinary family, for whom Los Angeles is as much a part of our DNA as our genetics. My mom and dad, my brother and three sisters, in laws, niece and nephews, and at the top of my list, my wife, Nicole, son Noah and daughter Lucia. I want you to know how much I appreciate the amount you all sacrificed during the fires and after to enable me to go on this journey. This book is dedicated to my fellow Angelenos, including, and especially you. I love you.

Mariana (92:06)

That was beautiful.

Jake (92:07)

You can't do this job without family, right?

Mariana (92:11)

And that was. That's my last question for you, is what do you think is the toll that our jobs have on our families? Because I, you know, obviously think about this a lot.

Jake (92:20)

I worry about feelings of abandonment and resentment from our kids. I also believe it exposes them to things that are going to be. Make them incredible, incredible human beings.

Mariana (92:31)

Just like your dad did to you.

Jake (92:33)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm grateful for the job. I'm grateful that I've gotten to learn from so many people, that I have friends like you, and that we have a big community. You know, that's what it's about, to surround ourselves with supportive people and to not do anything alone. You know, I think that's the lesson that we're teaching our kids also. Like, they may be alone at home or they may have somebody watching after them, or they may not be there on every trip. But the community that we've tried to build, I think is a model for learning the lessons of seeking out community in the wake of something like that.

Mariana (93:06)

Yeah. And I think your kids are also learning decency and how you respect other people and how you the bravery that you have and when you're reporting on these issues.

Jake (93:15)

And that I'm a sure tempered psycho and don't like loud noises in my house.

Mariana (93:20)

You're a great dad.

Jake (93:21)

I know it.

Mariana (93:21)

And I am grateful for you, Jake. So thank you so much. So much for your reporting, incredible reporting and all the issues that matter so much to me.

Jake (93:27)

Thank you.

Mariana (93:28)

And for being such a great friend.

Jake (93:29)

Sorry that I don't have a hidden underworld to talk about.

Mariana (93:34)

Thanks M. Thank you for coming out, Jake.