← The Peter McCormack Show
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- [00:01]
Peter McCormack
Welcome to the what Bitcoin did podcast.
- [00:06]
Charlie Shrem
Hi there from San Francisco. How are you all? I imagine you're all feeling pretty great with bitcoin on a rampage this week. Apologies, I'm a bit croaky. We had the what Beer did party last night. I was up quite late singing Bon Jovi songs with Stefan Ovara. But yeah. Welcome to the what Bitcoin did podcast, which is brought to you by Kraken. The best place to buy, sell and trade digital currencies. I hello, I'm your host, Peter McCormack and today I've got an absolutely fascinating interview with Charlie Shrem. But before that, I've got a message from my show sponsors. So first up, Drop Bit. Without doubt the best mobile bitcoin wallet in the App Store. I've also been hanging with the guys in San Francisco for the last couple of days at the Bitcoin 2019 conference. They also sponsored my party last night. So look, a massive thanks to them for that. And yeah, have you downloaded it yet? Have you played with it? I know a bunch of you have because I've seen it on Twitter.
- [00:54]
Courtney Shrem
It's.
- [00:54]
Charlie Shrem
It's an amazing app. You definitely need to check it out. And they also just announced that you can now send bitcoin to Twitter handles and I'm running a little competition on Twitter for that at the moment. But it's just an amazing app. It's super easy to use, it's got amazing UX and it's basically like a Venmo for bitcoin. They've made it super easy to send and receive bitcoin so you definitely want to check it out. And it's available on iPhone and Android. Just head over to Drop Bit app, which is D R O P B I T app. Also acquainting. Highly relevant now again with the big bitcoin rampage this week. If you're making gains and you want to get your tax affairs in order, there's nothing better than acquainting. They're not only a tax calculation tool, they've got an amazing portfolio tracking solution as well. And you only pay at the point you want to download your tax report. They've updated the website, they've updated the tool, the ux. Amazing. It's so easy to connect your exchanges and your wallet providers and they also make sure you sell the right coins at the right time to reduce your tax burden. Acquainting is an absolute, absolute no brainer for anyone who wants to have their crypto tax affairs in order. Check it out@acquainting.com which is a C C O I n T I N g dot com. Anyway, onto the show. And this is now down as one of my favorite interviews I've recorded. I know I say that all the time. Just is, though. Charlie invited me out to Florida for a couple of days. I stayed with him at his house with him, his wife, and his crazy energetic dog. He took me out on his boat. They took me out to dinner. They took me out to meet all their friends and their family. I just got to spend a couple of days with him, learning about him and finding about him as a person. And it emphasized why I like doing these in person, why I like meeting people and getting to know them first, because it changed the interview. Charlie's wife, Courtney, sat with us through the interview, and I realized that the story wasn't just about him. It was about her as well. So there's part of the show where I introduce her and ask her a few questions because I wanted to find out about the impact of his imprisonment on her as well. And that got quite emotional. But, yeah, it was just really important to spend the time with him because without that, if this had just been a Skype interview, it would have been a very, very different interview. And Charlie's a proper O. Been around for ages. And we get into all kinds of things in this interview, and we actually ended up recording over two days. We were recording for so long, we actually had to split it. But what I thought was great was that even after spending 18 months in prison and now finally coming to the end of his three years on parole, Charlie seems to be in a genuinely good place. He isn't resentful of the situation that he found himself in and actually thinks the prison system has made him into a better person. We discuss a bunch of other things over those two days as well. From Charlie's early life and discovering bitcoin to starting bitinstant to the Winkelvoss twins, Roger Ver and how he's given away hundreds, maybe even thousands of bitcoin. And then, of course, we get very deep in what happened with his arrest, court case, and imprisonment, what it was like for him to walk into prison the first time, why he shouldn't eat a Snickers that was left on his pillow. Institutionalization, rehabilitation. Yeah, we get into a lot. It's a really long podcast, but it's really interesting. And, you know, I always want to hear what you think about it. So please do get in touch. Please do feel free to drop me an Email and hello@bitcoindid.com let me know what you think. Also, I'm about to just jump on a flight to la. I'm going down there to record another couple of interviews. Then I'm off to Boulder to record quite a special show with Jack Mallers, his family and Eric Voorhees. It's going to be a load of fun. And also just have the last two days at the Bitcoin 2019 conference where I emceed alongside Naomi Brockwell, met so many people, friends, foes, trolls and yeah, it's great to have all these bitcoiners in one place at the same time. And I've got to give a big shout to David Bailey and the team at Bitcoin magazine because they did an amazing job. Anyway, I've talked for far too long on this intro. Listen, if you're enjoying this, you want to support the show, head over to my website. It's what bitcoindid.com click on the support section. That'll tell you everything you can do. And yeah, if you want to get in touch, you know, you can email me. My email address is hello@whatbitcoindid.com.
- [04:39]
Peter McCormack
What was the kicker? Why did you decide to start doing a podcast?
- [04:42]
Courtney Shrem
I've always wanted to do one for a long time. Are you getting his squeaking and stuff?
- [04:48]
Peter McCormack
We probably are getting his squeaking, but we don't mind. It's a family show. So you, you wanted to do one for a while.
- [04:53]
Courtney Shrem
Want to do it for a while, but I want to make sure it was done professionally and I needed help making sure. Like from the concept of the, the show, the conceptual, you know, the concept of Untold Stories. I've wanted to do for a long time, but I didn't know how to take it and make sure I did it the right way. I didn't want to half ass the show. A lot of people have half assed podcasts. They've released one, they got like 10 episode, 10 downloads and then they've done it just like they've edited themselves and they've written show notes themselves. And people don't realize that a podcast is a full on production. You have sound engineers, you know, you have sound engineers, you have, I have a copywriter of editor, you have transcription, you have to come up the format for the show, the design of the show, you have to choose which ones are going to be released next week. Then there's the marketing, distribution, advertising, advertisement, sales. You do a lot of that yourself.
- [05:51]
Peter McCormack
I did everything to Begin with.
- [05:53]
Courtney Shrem
You did everything to begin with?
- [05:54]
Peter McCormack
No. So when I first. When I first started, you know, Bitcoin, 20K, I had a bit of money and blown my bitcoin, and I had an engineer, and that was it. And then as the price dropped and I ran out of money, I figured out how to do the engineer myself. And so up until about two months ago, it was about a year where I did everything. I wrote the show notes, I prepared the interview, I booked the interview, I did the interview, I engineered it, I published it, I did the marketing. But that was cool because I had control of everything.
- [06:22]
Courtney Shrem
You've learned and, you know, you can become your own podcast network and bring shows, you know, to life. Eventually have other people who want to do shows. You can do everything. Let them pay you to produce their shows. You can become a producer if you wanted to. Kind of like what Blockworks does with me. Yeah, I like working with Blockworks because they were able to really, like, take what was in my brain and put it down onto paper, which was very difficult, just creating the whole concept of the show and giving me a lot of direction. Because you see now, and my listeners of Untold Stories now see, like, all the good stuff. But along the road, I had some really stupid ideas that those guys have that is basically telling me, like, Charlie, that we're not doing that. And I would have done that.
- [07:09]
Peter McCormack
How many shows have you done now?
- [07:10]
Courtney Shrem
I've released, I think, eight or nine. Only. Only eight or nine episodes, and I'm getting about 2,000 downloads per episode now.
- [07:17]
Peter McCormack
What have you learned in doing it? You know, because you do your first show and you're like, crap, how do I do this?
- [07:23]
Courtney Shrem
You gotta use honey. Because your. Your voice goes, yeah, I call my wife and I complain. I'm like, I don't have a voice. Like, I have a little mixer in my studio, and I'm constantly putting myself on mute and just, like, clearing my throat because I talk all. You talk a lot. And so I've learned that. But what else have I learned? I've learned that people like talking, and I've learned that I like talking. And I've learned that because I don't really give a shit whether people like the idea of my show or not. I'm funding the show myself. And this is an idea that I've wanted to do, and I gauge success by, did I try? If I tried to do it and it failed, at least I can say, all right, I tried it, and that's what I want to do. I wanted to Try it. But I. You know what a definition of a professional is? Definition of a professional is someone who believes that if you're going to do something, you have to do it the best way possible. So that's what a professional is. So I'm not going to say I'm a professional anything. I play tennis. We play tennis a few days a week. We're not professional tennis players because we're not amazing at it yet, but we believe that doing it right is the best way. Like amateur hour at the parlor or whatever it is, you know?
- [08:43]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. I don't think people always understand how much work goes into something like this. Like, I do at least do 70 hours a week for both episodes in. When you consider everything, the prep, the engineering, the show notes, the pub. I mean, getting a show live is half a day of work, just getting it live, doing the marketing and also trying to construct it like a business that has the right level of income. So I can travel and do these interviews in person, because this right now is going to be an infinitely better interview than if I did it over Skype.
- [09:12]
Courtney Shrem
I agree. I've only done one episode in person, and I'm happy I did it not with a big, big guest, because I didn't. A little nervous. Like, when you're interviewing someone online, you can, like, look at your phone. You can look away. You can put yourself on mute, go take a piss. I'll keep talking and talking and talking. We're doing it in person. You got to sit here and you got to communicate and you got to look and you gotta. You're having a conversation. And it's a very different type of interview. I would almost say that there are some people that, if they were here in Sarasota with me, I would say, hey, let's go in opposite rooms. I don't want to interview in person. I want to. I want to do it over separate rooms because I feel like it's a different type of interview.
- [09:54]
Peter McCormack
Well, I tell you why I prefer to do in person. There's a couple of reasons.
- [09:57]
Courtney Shrem
You know the person well.
- [09:59]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. But you have the whole body kind of actions and what they're doing so you can get a feel for them. You've got the full peripheral vision, whereas in a Skype window, you don't have that.
- [10:08]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [10:08]
Peter McCormack
The second reason you could. You do get to know them. So, you know, we hung out last night. We've hung out today. I know you.
- [10:14]
Courtney Shrem
Today was such a crazy day.
- [10:15]
Charlie Shrem
Well, yeah.
- [10:15]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. But I know you now a lot more for the last 24 hours than I would if, say, I'd done the research online and prepared a list of questions. And also another thing I started doing, I do it rarely but one in every five shows. Now I do it without any questions prepared because I know the kind of guest it is and the kind of conversation I want to have.
- [10:37]
Courtney Shrem
So, like, same point. But don't you say, don't you think that because you got to know me, if you had done your research online about me, there's a Persona that's been created about me, good and bad, and that would have led your interview, you know, or the conversation. That would have been one type of interview. Now that you've gotten to know me, it's a different type of interview. I think it'll be a better interview, but it's a different type of interview. And I'm like you. I don't my research. So that's another thing people don't realize is that you have to do research.
- [11:07]
Peter McCormack
Of course.
- [11:07]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, you got to be a good talk. Not everyone can do a podcast. You have to be able to control and follow and lead a conversation and allow the person to talk about something that you want, like a theme of the show. So I don't do the research anymore like you, but what I do do is I want to know a little bit of background on the person and I try to answer myself what makes this person tick, what drives them? It's hard to find that on the Internet. Sometimes people have spoken about that already, but that's really it. And then topic wise, what I do is, is I plan my first question. My first question is like a totally left curveball question.
- [11:43]
Peter McCormack
Oh, interesting.
- [11:44]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, that's. So if you listen to my shows, untoldstories.com you'll notice the first question throws everyone off because they're not expecting it. So my first question could be anything from, so why'd you name your dog that? I was like, why are you asking me about why I named my dog that? You know, but it just kind of like throws it off and gets people a little more comfortable. Yeah, because you're talking about something like that. I don't know.
- [12:07]
Peter McCormack
No, but I get that. So I do something similar. But usually I try and find some kind of common ground.
- [12:12]
Courtney Shrem
Okay.
- [12:13]
Peter McCormack
So yesterday when I interviewed Brian Quintenz at the cftc, it turns out his son has the same name as my son. So, you know, I have that as like, as an introduction. And then from that, you know, I find out the history of his family. And you get that you kind of break the ice, you disarm the guest so you can get a better conversation. But also there are two types of interviews. There are, there is an interview, right. So Brian Quinten's at the cftc. That's an interview. It's not a conversation, that's an interview. You work at the cftc. You have a role within the industry that people have specific things they want to know about and they want to know how you operate.
- [12:48]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [12:48]
Peter McCormack
And then you have people who just have a really interesting past and you want to conversation.
- [12:52]
Courtney Shrem
Do interviews, though maybe I don't know if I could do like that type of interview if I were, if I were sitting with him and I'm excited to listen to your, to your episode. But if I was interviewing him, I don't know if, like I could interview him. I just want to kick back and get to know him. But then eventually ask him, like, yeah, I know, like I would ask question like, I know like the, the CFTC or whatever is like motto is this. But what do you really think? Yeah, something like that.
- [13:22]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. It depends. Like I say, it all depends on the guest and the service you. You're doing. Because I know people are going to want to listen to that show and they're going to want to know about the cftc, but also there's going to be people who are going to want to listen to this show and they just know you have a history and they're going to want to know the stories and hear it. And so that's why I want to talk prison stories. Well, we're going to get there, we're going to get deep. But as I keep saying to your lovely wife is here. Hello, Courtney. So I also have to say thank you for having me here. Your hospitality has been fantastic. Our pleasure, wonderful. Two days.
- [13:52]
Courtney Shrem
Today was a crazy day. I did not expect for that to happen.
- [13:55]
Peter McCormack
I. I hadn't planned for that to happen. Wading through the sea with a bag.
- [14:00]
Courtney Shrem
Of Bob now everyone wants to know what happened.
- [14:02]
Peter McCormack
We can't tell them.
- [14:03]
Courtney Shrem
We can't tell.
- [14:03]
Peter McCormack
They won't believe us.
- [14:04]
Courtney Shrem
Can't we give them a little inkling of what happened?
- [14:07]
Peter McCormack
Well, we might be on mtv.
- [14:08]
Courtney Shrem
True. Yeah. If you guys are watching. So we stumbled into the shoot of a MTV reality series called Siesta Key. And the way it happened was Peter's here in town visiting. But a reoccurring guest at the shrem home is Jeremy Gardner. You guys know him as Disruption entrepreneur. But with the Disruption Disrupt. Disrupt.
- [14:31]
Peter McCormack
I was like trying to Say Charles Hoskinson.
- [14:35]
Courtney Shrem
Charles Hodgkinson? Yeah, Charles Hodgkinson.
- [14:38]
Peter McCormack
Hodgkinson.
- [14:39]
Courtney Shrem
No, that's not Hodgkin's lymphoma. It's Hodgkinson, and that's what it is. Anyways, I love you, Charles, but. So Jeremy's in town, and when I say regular guy, that's what he does. He just shows up, like, every. You know, one weekend out of every two months. He'll just be here. And so he's like, yeah. So we went and decided to go on Satoshi on our boat. Satoshi. And we get to this mega mansion, and Peter said, that's someone's house. And what? It was huge. But we were boating up to it from the Gulf of Mexico from the beach, and we got as close as we could, but then we realized that, okay, how are we gonna get from Satoshi. The boat. Satoshi. Onto the beach so we can walk to this house where there's this mega party going on? And someone saw a banana boat being pulled by a jet ski that had a phone number printed on the side.
- [15:29]
Peter McCormack
So Charlie calls him.
- [15:31]
Courtney Shrem
So Jeremy calls him. And Jeremy hands the phone. He says, I don't want to talk on the phone to people. He's like. He's like, I don't want to talk on the phone. I don't. He doesn't like phone calls. So. So he hands me the phone. I said, hey, can you. Can you pick us up and take us to the party? So we all. So the banana boat came right up to the side of our boat, and we went into the. Into the banana boat, and we boated over in the banana boat over to the beach. And everyone's looking at us like, what are these crazy people doing? We went to this party that wasn't really a party. It was a. It was a reality TV shoot that looked like a party. And then when we wanted to leave, the banana boat guy had left. So Peter being the tallest one in.
- [16:11]
Peter McCormack
Our group, which is rare for me, by the way.
- [16:14]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, we basically had to wade and walk and swim back to the boat, which was, like, offshore. But we all had our bags and stuff with us. So Peter was holding all of our shit above his head. We were, like, crossing, like, the Rio Grande, you know, crossing in from Mexico with our stuff on our head, and everyone's looking at us like we're crazy. And we made it back home, and we showered, and here we are, all comfortable.
- [16:37]
Peter McCormack
So that was fun.
- [16:37]
Courtney Shrem
That was a fun day.
- [16:39]
Peter McCormack
Thank you for that. And thank you hospitality and inviting me here. So we got to go way back, man. Can we go back just before you discover bitcoin? How old are you? What are you doing? What's going on in your life? I want to go right back before it all started and then we cover the bad shit.
- [16:59]
Courtney Shrem
I found out About Bitcoin around 2010, 2011, in those months, I think it was like August 2010, like the end of 2010.
- [17:08]
Peter McCormack
So you were like, this was 20.
- [17:10]
Courtney Shrem
I couldn't even drink alcohol yet. Yeah, I was probably 20 years old.
- [17:13]
Peter McCormack
Bet you did though.
- [17:15]
Courtney Shrem
No comment. Smoked a lot of weed.
- [17:19]
Peter McCormack
All right.
- [17:19]
Courtney Shrem
I wasn't, I, I. A good night for me was like, I go out with friends, but then by like 10 or 11 o'clock, I would just want to go home in my basement and just smoke a bunch of weed and watch tv. Like I didn't. That was more of a better time for me because when I would do that, I would turn on my computer and I'd enter this Internet world. And those were my real friends. I was able to make Internet friends a lot better than making real friends like in real life. And that's why, like yourself, I. People that I'll meet on Internet, I just know that they're good people and I'll invite them to come here. And my wife still thinks I'm crazy for doing that. So you never even met this person, But I just do. And actually that the summer before I had met bitcoin, I had found out about bitcoin. I had these two friends that I was like best friends with online. We had this IRC network and hundreds of people on our IRC network and we had a little ad revenue going and we just were a bunch of kids, you know, it was like just one of these sites where you can learn how to like do like SQL injection and all these little hike hacky type stuff. And I was just a little hacker kid in the basement, you know, my parents Jewish house in Brooklyn, but.
- [18:31]
Peter McCormack
So you skipped the whole college thing?
- [18:33]
Courtney Shrem
No, no. So I'll. I went to college. So it's not yet though. I'm still high school at this point. Yeah, this was early. So then the summer between high school and college. That summer I went to Norway for a month and I had stayed at this guy's house that I'm still friends with today, but we had met online and my parents were like, you're crazy. You're going to spend a month at this guy's house in Norway. So you have no idea who he was. But I'm gonna tell you a funny story about that. The Untold Stories of Charlie. It was three of us. It was me, Cassie, who was. The guy, lives in Norway. And it was other friend. His name is Polynomial. I don't. Still don't know his real name. Polynomial was from Manchester in England.
- [19:17]
Peter McCormack
Right. Okay.
- [19:17]
Courtney Shrem
But I didn't know what he looked like, anything about him, like, physically, any pictures. But. But Polynomial was like my best friend. Like, we talked every day, knew my deepest, darkest secrets. Right? And so we had a plan. And the plan was we were gonna. I was gonna fly to the UK and then stop over in London and then fly from London to Norway.
- [19:40]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [19:41]
Courtney Shrem
And we hopped on the same plane together in London, but we didn't know who each other were. So we landed in this small airport in Norway. Everyone got off the plane except for me and this six and a half foot tall, black hair, black eyeliner, black makeup, black shirt, black shoes, spiky boots, black belt, like super goth.
- [20:06]
Peter McCormack
Right? Okay. And I'm like Marilyn Manson or something.
- [20:08]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. And I'm looking at this guy. I'm like, I'm terrified of this guy. And he walked over to me and he gave me a big hug, and he's like, it's so good to meet you in person. It's because my best friend, but I never even knew what he looked like, anything about him. And we end up spending a month together.
- [20:21]
Peter McCormack
Cool.
- [20:21]
Courtney Shrem
But those are the type of people that you meet on the Internet.
- [20:23]
Peter McCormack
Mm. Yeah. Okay.
- [20:25]
Courtney Shrem
And so I know I'm going off a lot of times.
- [20:26]
Peter McCormack
That's cool. That's fine.
- [20:27]
Courtney Shrem
But so what? So I had a startup that I had started in Brooklyn, and I did this to make. It was a side hustle just to make some extra money. And the startup was basically, I built a website and I went to all the warehouses and I go to, like, CVS and Duane Read and Walgreens, and I'd buy up all, like, the stuff that they couldn't sell, and I just resell them on the Internet, one deal a Day, Daily Checkout.com. i did that to make a little bit extra money, and it actually ended up doing very well. Then I ran that my first two years in college. And then around my. Towards the end of my second year of college is when I found out about bitcoin. And that's when I told my partner, who's my cousin Joey, I was like, we need to sell. We need to sell this company. I'm going into bitcoin. So what are you gonna do? I said, I don't know. I just.
- [21:20]
Peter McCormack
How did you discover Bitcoin, though? What was the. Did you hear about it?
- [21:23]
Courtney Shrem
Just online.
- [21:24]
Peter McCormack
Okay, but how did it click for you? Because it didn't click for me first time.
- [21:28]
Courtney Shrem
You know, most of my guests on Untold Stories, it's funny because they all say the same thing. They'd heard about it and it didn't click for them. And then like a few months later, they'd heard about it again and they were like, I got to check this thing out the first time.
- [21:40]
Peter McCormack
So I discovered it with the Silk Road. I told you about that.
- [21:42]
Courtney Shrem
Sure.
- [21:43]
Peter McCormack
And I was like, oh, cool. This is a way I can buy some stuff I can't normally buy. But it still didn't really click with me. And the price went up, the price went down. Then I forgot about it. It was only after my mum got sick. And then I wanted to buy her some cannabis oil for treatment.
- [21:57]
Courtney Shrem
Sure.
- [21:57]
Peter McCormack
And I could use it. And then it clicked. It was like, hold on. This. This solves a problem. This. This is a problem that we have, that I can't buy a treatment for my mother. And now I can do it. So the second time it just clicked, but it still didn't fully click.
- [22:10]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, I understand. I see what you mean. So the first time I remember I had heard about it was I was in IRC Network. And I'll tell you why it clicked. I was involved with this charity in Israel to raise money for victims of terror. Kids who need, like, prosthetic legs and kids who need, like, prosthetic arms and blind sailors and whatever. And I was helping them raise money in the United States. And this was like when PayPal was first getting big. So I had to set up a PayPal account for them. And they were going around the country using this PayPal account that I had set up for them to raise. To raise money. And they were raising a lot of money around America, you know, going on a whole tour, donations. And what had happened was PayPal shut down the. Froze the account. Because I said, they're not a real non profit because they're a non profit in Israel, but they didn't get their 501c3 in the US right.
- [22:59]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [22:59]
Courtney Shrem
So PayPal froze all their money. And they looked at me, they're like, what happened? I was like, I mean, I don't know. And that made me realize that a lot of times you think that that's your money, but it's not your money.
- [23:09]
Peter McCormack
Mm.
- [23:10]
Courtney Shrem
And when I found out about bitcoin Someone started talking to me about it and I started playing around, you know, and I just downloaded, you know, I downloaded bitcoin D and then Bitcoin QT at the time. So bitcoin, before the term bitcoin core came, there was two iterations of bitcoin. There was bitcoin qt and this was the downloadable software that you could download on your Mac or PC or Linux. And actually when you ran it, it was a node, it was your wallet and it mined. So as it was software was open, you're mining. So everyone was mining. Someone asked me, when did you start? Did you ever mine bitcoin? I was like, everyone mined bitcoin. It's just what you did.
- [23:50]
Peter McCormack
You weren't in a pool.
- [23:51]
Courtney Shrem
No, no, everyone mined bitcoin on their own because the software mined for you.
- [23:55]
Peter McCormack
So did you solve some blocks that you must have?
- [23:57]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, of course I did. Everyone did.
- [23:58]
Peter McCormack
So when it did, was it like, wow, fuck, I got.
- [24:00]
Courtney Shrem
No, it didn't. Because bitcoin had no value.
- [24:03]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [24:03]
Courtney Shrem
There was no tradability, really. There was like one website that was literally just like a Google spreadsheet that got one guy manually updated of bids and offers of people. This is pre Mount Gox. Well, yeah, was the bitcoin exchange. It was like 10,000 Bitcoin for $5. You know, it wasn't real. Gavin ran a faucet that was basically giving away. You put your address in the faucet and you get 100 bitcoin. Who cares? Like, bitcoin's a worth anything back then.
- [24:30]
Peter McCormack
And I used to hear about people used to buy on like ebay and someone would send them the money and then they would send them the bitcoin.
- [24:37]
Courtney Shrem
Sure.
- [24:37]
Peter McCormack
Could you imagine that happening now? You wouldn't get the bitcoin.
- [24:39]
Courtney Shrem
No, you never get it. Um, and so that's what. That's what it was like back then. And so when I downloaded the software, I generated address, an address, you know. And my friend Joe, he. Him and I were into tech together. So he was at his house in New Jersey, I was in New York. And I had told him, download the software, generate an address, and I'll send it to you. I'll send you some bitcoin. So he downloaded the software and I sent him 500 bitcoin.
- [25:05]
Peter McCormack
500.
- [25:06]
Courtney Shrem
It didn't go through. Like, he never got it until today. I don't know why he never got it. I think I know why. I think because he didn't sync, he didn't have his ports open. He didn't sync the chain, so it actually did send to him. And I remember years later, I was like, joe, you got to find that laptop. Like you got your private keys are on that laptop. He's like, I threw it away years ago.
- [25:24]
Peter McCormack
I was like, $5 million today.
- [25:26]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, I know. And so you got to find it. But that was so. So as I was starting to understand it, the way I clicked was I was. Had this software and he had it. And I was like, okay, it's like a downloadable version of PayPal, except these units called bitcoins aren't worth shit, so who cares? Why is this thing such a big deal? And then I had started reading more about it. I was talking to all my friends in the IRC network and we started chatting about Bitcoin. And so bitcoin was talked about on IRC and on the bitcoin forums, but IRC was bigger. Like everyone talked about. Like you could at one point. I remember in 2012, we got every. Every mining pool, every exchange and every major business in one IRC chat room.
- [26:09]
Peter McCormack
Wow.
- [26:09]
Courtney Shrem
Because there was a. There was in 2012, I think it was 2012, 2013, when we upgraded to Bitcoin version 9. It wasn't compatible with version 8 and it was a big hard fork and the chain actually split. Half the miners were mining on one chain and the other miners. And we able to get everyone in the room together and basically like have everyone drop one chain and continue mining on the other chain. That was a big deal. Yeah, I remember that. I was like out of Bar Mitzvah and had to go home because I was running Bit Instant and we were running the nodes of one chain. We had to like, stop me. Bitpay, Mount Gox, Trade Hill. I think that was it. There wasn't no one else.
- [26:48]
Peter McCormack
Like, pause how many bitcoins you reckon you've like.
- [26:51]
Courtney Shrem
But wait, before you. So you've asked me how. Why it clicked for me.
- [26:54]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [26:55]
Courtney Shrem
And because it's got no value. So what happened was, as I understood it, when I. You literally open up the database file on your computer and you're seeing in real time, this file is. The size of this file is. Is increasing. So imagine you have a file on your computer that's constantly increasing. You're like, why is it 100 megabytes and now it's 101 and then it's 102? The file size increasing. Because what's happening is in real time, your database is getting all the transactions of everyone else using it in real time. So I maintain a copy of the blockchain in real time of not just my transactions but everyone else's. And that clicked for me because now I realize, oh, so, so this, this ledger is actually completely decentralized. And I didn't even use the word decentralized because that wasn't like a lingo. But I said this ledger is now actually like main being maintained on everyone's computers in real time. So no one can freeze it, no one can reverse it, no one can counterfeit, no one could double spend. Like that's when it really clicked for me.
- [27:59]
Peter McCormack
Right. So okay, so at that point you're like, I get it now. It needs to have some kind of.
- [28:03]
Courtney Shrem
Now it needs to have come out of it. And that's when I started bitinstant.
- [28:06]
Peter McCormack
Okay, so just back in those early days, how many bitcoin do you reckon you've just given away or lost? Just fucking about.
- [28:12]
Courtney Shrem
How many given away or loss? Yeah, hundreds, if not thousands.
- [28:15]
Peter McCormack
Thousands of equities.
- [28:17]
Courtney Shrem
There's a YouTube video out there of a guy who made a theme song about bit instant. You can, anyone can YouTube it right now and find that it's about as good. Chow dong zhu, tongda, whatever. And in the comments of the video, you can see it till today. You can see it in the comments. I said, hey man, give me your bitcoin address. I want to send you some bitcoin. And I meant to send him 5 bitcoin because it was worth like a hundred dollars at the time. So I was giving him like 500 bucks and I accidentally sent him 50 bitcoin. And I was like, he's like, should I send it back? I was like, nah man, just keep it.
- [28:47]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, you know, and the people these days are just like, I just want to get one bitcoin. I just want to get the sassy.
- [28:54]
Courtney Shrem
Big number, you know, even one Bitcoin, it's not, think about, it'll only ever be 21 million Bitcoin.
- [28:59]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. But it's less really when you think if you're really honest because what the 4 million they reckon have been lost?
- [29:05]
Courtney Shrem
Maybe more than that. Yeah, it'll be a lot less than that. Maybe half.
- [29:07]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. So you say 17 million, but did you did, Was it you who tweeted out recently? You said, you're only going to need 5.
- [29:13]
Courtney Shrem
You only need 5.
- [29:14]
Peter McCormack
You only need 5.
- [29:15]
Courtney Shrem
You'll only need 5 in like 10 or 20 years from now. You know, life changing money. $5 million, one bitcoin, $1 million. $5 million is enough money to start to have that money work for you. And you could live off the interest, you know, because that's everyone. That's wealth. Wealth is not the amount of money you have. Wealth is when you have money that's working for you to make you more money. And you could sit back and do nothing for the rest of your life and you'll just have income coming in. That's wealth.
- [29:41]
Peter McCormack
So you've discovered bitcoin, you get in your head around it, and then you decide you want to create a business.
- [29:48]
Courtney Shrem
No, no, not yet. Knowing me, I always have side hustles. So my first foray into earning money with bitcoin was I would go on ebay and I would buy, like, airline vouchers, like JetBlue vouchers and American airline vouchers from people and then resell those vouchers for bitcoin at a profit. That was how I would earn bitcoin.
- [30:13]
Peter McCormack
Okay? And then.
- [30:17]
Courtney Shrem
And then I started selling a lot of my daily checkout products on online to earn bitcoin too. Like knives and stuff like that. I would sell knives and throwing knives and all this stuff. I would sell anything I could sell, really. I would sell for bitcoin on the forums. And then one day, I was just browsing the forums, it was about, like, May 2011, and I see a post by the. I see a post by this guy named Gareth Nelson, uk. He's like, hey, I have an idea to make buying bitcoin faster. Going back to what I said earlier, the thing had no value. So in the back of my mind, I was always saying, this thing needs to, you know, I need to get some. And I was. I was content with the community that we had, right? The community that we had was a great little community. It wasn't meant to grow into this whole thing. It was today. We just wanted to be a stable little community of people transacting with each other on these forums and using bitcoin to do it. That's all it was. If. If the economics of bitcoin and people buying and selling and holding it never went beyond this forum and these marketplaces, like these message boards, that's totally fine with me. Like, that's what it was. And that was never meant to be this whole thing. It was this social experiment at the end of the day, I think. And then. So Gareth had posted this thing and he's like, I have an idea to make buying bitcoin easier. And again, the idea to make buying bitcoin easier wasn't so I can get my grandma to buy bitcoin. It was so people on the forums can be able to have the way to buy and sell bitcoin faster so we can all transact with each other. And so Gareth had an idea, and the idea was Bitinstant. He called it something else. He had a very basic idea. And so what I did was, is I messaged him back and the post is public. I said, I like this idea. How much money do you need to start it? He's like, I need a thousand dollars. I said, all right, let's do it together. We'll own it. 50. 50. And that was the start of a beautiful relationship, business relationship together. And we started a business which very quickly later was the largest bitcoin company ever. We had, like, 30 people working for us. And I started it in my basement. I didn't intend for it to be like this whole business. It was like a side hustle.
- [32:29]
Peter McCormack
So this came before Mount Gox.
- [32:31]
Courtney Shrem
This was during the same time as Mount Gox. Mount Gox was very difficult to buy Bitcoin. You'd have to wire money to some Japanese guy's personal bank account. And it was just manual, and it was shady and weird. And then once you have the money on the exchange, you have to, like, buy bitcoin with it. You want to, like, just buy bitcoin? You don't have to, like, enter a bid order and ask on the exchange. It's complicated.
- [32:54]
Peter McCormack
Actually, prior to the Japanese account, it was wired to Jed's Chase account.
- [32:59]
Courtney Shrem
Yes. Yeah, I remember that.
- [33:00]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. So that's what. And then before he sold it to Mark. So how did Bitinstant do it differently?
- [33:05]
Courtney Shrem
What Bitinstant did was Bitinstant would maintain large accounts at Mt. Gox already. And we did it through various credit agreements with Mt. Gox, or we'd actually wire him a few hundred thousand dollars and leave it there. And then what we do is we'd have people in the US we'd have bank accounts here. And we had relationships with, like, Walgreens and CVS and Duane Read and Walmart, where you can walk into these locations, deposit money with them, and then our software would instantly move money from. From our account at the exchange to your account of the exchange.
- [33:38]
Peter McCormack
Right. Okay, so tell me the journey from it being you two with a thousand dollars to being 30 people.
- [33:46]
Courtney Shrem
It just grew very quickly. I had the original thousand dollars, and then I borrowed money from my mom, like 10 grand. And then Roger Veer put in a hundred and something. Thousand dollars. And then Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss put in $1.5 million.
- [34:01]
Peter McCormack
How did you meet them?
- [34:04]
Courtney Shrem
I had another investor, David, who I knew from Brooklyn, and he was just kind of crazy, wacky guy, really nice guy, and he was in Ibiza on vacation with his wife, and he saw them, like, just out on the beach, and he offered them his beach chair and said, hey, have you heard about this bitcoin thing? And they're like, no. And he sold them on it, like literally on the beach. And then they were still very unconvinced, but they had heard about it, you know, through him and from their research. And so they called me up out of the blue and they're like, hey, we heard you're the bitcoin kid. Can you convince us it's the future? And I said, hell yeah, I can. Where do I start? And less than a month or two later, they were jumping in full, you know, head first or feet first or whatever the term is.
- [34:57]
Peter McCormack
And was that with them accumulating bitcoin.
- [35:00]
Courtney Shrem
Or where did they had first invested? They first made, you know, an inclination. They wanted to invest in venison and let it grow. And they also want to start accumulating bitcoin. Right. So that was their job. That's what they asked me to help them do, is start accumulating bitcoin for them.
- [35:16]
Peter McCormack
Okay. But they came and put 1/2 million dollars in the business.
- [35:19]
Courtney Shrem
In the business, yeah.
- [35:20]
Peter McCormack
And good relationship to begin with.
- [35:22]
Courtney Shrem
That was a pretty good relationship over the course of time. And, you know, I have some regrets by how the relationship went, but I was. I was a, you know, a young kid who walked around like a. Didn't stink. I was on top of the world. I was the king of the world. And these guys were basically trying to tell me, like, hey, like, the company's growing. You have no experience being a CEO. Why don't we get a professional CEO to run this company? And I was like, no. And in hindsight, I should have listened to them. And I wish I had, because now it's like every startup CEO's dream to be big enough where you have a real professional come in and take over the company. You get to become chairman and just kick back and relax.
- [36:01]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, I guess in hindsight, you, I mean, could have been instant. Been the Coinbase as such.
- [36:08]
Courtney Shrem
I'll tell you why. No, because Coinbase had learned from all of our mistakes. And literally he did. He invited me over to his house in California, Brian Armstrong, without ever telling me that he was starting Coinbase. And we sat for three hours. And I told him like everything about been instant. And then he's like, oh, now that. Thank you for telling me everything. I'm starting my own competitor.
- [36:30]
Peter McCormack
You okay.
- [36:31]
Courtney Shrem
That's literally how it went down. You know, else was in that room. Jared Kenna, Tony Gillippy from Bitpay, and Roger Veer was there.
- [36:39]
Peter McCormack
Roger Veer seems to be in all these meetings.
- [36:41]
Courtney Shrem
He's everywhere. We were. We were so close back then, but that was the whole bitcoin community. Like there wasn't many meetings. There was like 10 people. It was the whole space.
- [36:50]
Peter McCormack
So it was you. So small, Roger, Eric.
- [36:53]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, no, Eric wasn't even involved yet.
- [36:55]
Peter McCormack
Wasn't even involved.
- [36:56]
Courtney Shrem
No, no, Eric didn't get involved. To 2012 in the crypto space.
- [36:59]
Peter McCormack
Okay, so you take the 1.5 million. How's it going to begin with?
- [37:04]
Courtney Shrem
Company is just growing. It's growing, it's expanding, we're moving offices. It's going crazy. Okay. And everything was really good. And then, you know, the we. We built our software to. To operate a certain way and we built our company for a certain way. And then the government came out and said, you need these money. Transmitter licenses. And that's when we decided that we didn't have them. So we shut down the company. It was very difficult to do.
- [37:35]
Peter McCormack
Why didn't you apply for the.
- [37:36]
Courtney Shrem
It's expensive. It was tens of millions of dollars that I didn't have. And I got a little burnout. I was running bit instant for almost three years at this point. I was tired. I didn't really. I didn't really want to do it anymore. So we shut down. We gave back the investors their money. You know, we paid the Winklevoss back their debt and we shuttered. And I wasn't sad about it because I was like, there are a lot. And I could admit this, and I was able to admit it back then too. There are a lot other lot better companies that had launched that are doing what Bitinstant was doing, but better, nicer and easier. And I was like. But instant served its purpose. It was the first company. It had a goal, it had a mandate. And its mandate was over. Its mandate was, let's get bitcoin in the hands of as many people as possible, as cheap and as fast as possible to get this thing where it can stand on its own two feet. And by the time we shut down the company, that mandate was completed. And so I wasn't sad about shutting the company and I wanted to move on to other things.
- [38:43]
Peter McCormack
Cameron And Tyler have expressed opinions about how you run the company as well. Right?
- [38:49]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [38:49]
Peter McCormack
And they've not been the most positive about it.
- [38:52]
Courtney Shrem
Oh, they're 100, right?
- [38:53]
Peter McCormack
So they were fair.
- [38:54]
Courtney Shrem
Oh, yeah. I mean, everyone's gonna exaggerate. They're gonna exaggerate about me. I'm gonna exaggerate them. I didn't. I was this 22, 23 year old kid running a multi million dollar startup in the money, financial money transmission space. I literally was winging it. Every morning I'd wake up, I'd be winging this thing.
- [39:14]
Peter McCormack
Right. Okay.
- [39:15]
Courtney Shrem
No idea what I was doing, but I was terrified. But the adrenaline was amazing.
- [39:21]
Peter McCormack
Did you ever suffer from hacks with bitinstant?
- [39:23]
Courtney Shrem
We were very fortunate that we only had one hack and we were able to stop it and only lose about 10 grand. Okay, that's so. So, so I pray we kind of joke, me and my friends now. It's like we were the only bitcoin company that shut down where no one lost any money. Like all of our customers got paid out 100%. They're all good, you know, like no one. We didn't take anyone's money or anything.
- [39:46]
Peter McCormack
All right, so you closed down something.
- [39:48]
Courtney Shrem
To be very proud of because all these exchanges shut down and they take away everyone's money.
- [39:52]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, of course. Yeah. I closed down an advertising agency. God, what was that, four years ago? And we didn't lose any money. We took money out of the business and it was a nice thing rather than running into the ground.
- [40:02]
Courtney Shrem
And I like that.
- [40:03]
Peter McCormack
It's. Which is a bit crap. Okay, so bit instant closes. You still got the bitcoin bug. What happens next?
- [40:10]
Courtney Shrem
I was traveling around the world. I had founded the bitcoin foundation a few months earlier than that. And the foundation was getting really big, had a really nice budget. And the concept of the foundation, the idea of the bitcoin foundation was created actually by me and Gavin, and we're sitting in a cafe in Austria together in 2012 or 2011 maybe. And the idea of the foundation was basically I was like, Gavin, like, our community is growing, but we're still very fractured. And so what do you think of the idea of basically taking all the companies and all the individuals in the space and all the miners and allowing them to put a little bit of money every year towards a foundation that'll basically use that money to do advertising, to pay developers to run a conference and allow us not to be like a centralized power authority, but to just be this like, trade group. And he completely agreed with me, I said, gavin, we cannot be seen as representing the bitcoin community as a whole. I want to be seen as representing our members. And that's what it was started as. And the first board was great, and we ran an amazing. We ran two amazing conferences. We ran Bitcoin 2013 in San Jose, which was the first real bitcoin conference. And then we ran Bitcoin 2014 in Amsterdam, which was a huge conference. So we were. We were doing really great things. But then eventually, the foundation changed, and the people that were elected to the board were just thirsty with power and cared more about their travel budget that the foundation gave them than they did about the actual growing the concept. The foundation had changed, and I'm okay with that. But a few months later, I was arrested. And when I was arrested, I actually resigned from the foundation. I haven't spoken to him since.
- [41:57]
Peter McCormack
All right, well, we'll come to the arrest. The foundation has left a lot of kind of people bitter, right?
- [42:04]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, I'm bitter, too. It sucks. Founding something and then it completely changing. I wish it had just died, not still be there, because it's still there. It's like a slap in the face.
- [42:15]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. So let's talk about the arrest.
- [42:19]
Courtney Shrem
Sure.
- [42:20]
Peter McCormack
I've read about it before. I read parts of it. Should I say. Tell me what happened.
- [42:25]
Courtney Shrem
We were on our way home from a conference in Amsterdam, and we were planning on coming home. And as we were leaving the customs area, a bunch of federal agents came up to us and said, are you Charlie Shrum? And I said, yeah. He says, please come with us. And they took me into a back room, and I said, you're under. You're formally under arrest for money laundering and a bunch of other stuff. Do you want me to read you your rights? And I was like, I watch enough tv. He's like, we asked you a few questions. I was like, I watch Law and Order, you know, not stupid. And I was like. I was like, all right. And it was kind of crazy. I was, like, just completely in shock. They made Courtney get the luggage, and they put me in, like, a whole. All these black vans, and they have the handcuffs behind my back, and it hurt. And I. No idea where I was going or whether Courtney was okay or not, you know, and it was just a big craziness. And they took me. I remember that night. I spent the night in, like, six different holding cells in six different places. It's kind of worrying me all the time. I had no idea where I was like, I don't know. If I was in New Jersey or Connecticut or New York or California, I would. I would be ushered into to tinted black sedans and taken to the DEA headquarters. Then they take pictures. Then they put me to the ATF headquarters, then the irs, then the freaking nypd. I'm just being shuffled around like a clown and taking pictures and throwing me holding cells all night long.
- [44:00]
Peter McCormack
Did you know what it was about at that point?
- [44:02]
Courtney Shrem
I know I. I didn't know until the next day. Till my lawyer through the thick glass told me what was going. He's like, had you ever heard of BTC King? So then I spend that night. Finally, eventually I get. It was a Sunday night, I get to my solitary confinement cell in Metropolitan Correctional Center.
- [44:18]
Peter McCormack
But you must have something going through your head, what you think it's about.
- [44:20]
Courtney Shrem
No idea. No idea, no idea. I thought it was just that I was running bit instant, you know, and you need to have a license or whatever. And I was like, this will be sorted out very quickly. Like it's not a big deal. And I was in a holding cell with this crackhead who had beat up his other roommate because he peed all over the seat. And that's what he put me with. And the next day I spoke to my lawyer through the. Looking through the the glass, and he told me, had you heard of BTC King? And I was like, who? And he said, well, you emailed this guy and told him that you knew he was reselling the bitcoin that he bought for you, the Silk Road. And that's illegal because you knew he was selling. You were selling bitcoin to him and you knew that he was then using it on Silk Road. I was like, okay, how bad is it? It's just an email. Like, he's like, well, technically, legally, that's, you know, money laundering. And I was like, oh my gosh, I'm facing 30 years in prison for that.
- [45:24]
Peter McCormack
So have you got a lawyer with you at this point?
- [45:26]
Courtney Shrem
I had a civil lawyer, but I didn't have a criminal lawyer. So a civil lawyer helped me get bail. He. I basically got an angle bracelet. I was put under house arrest.
- [45:34]
Peter McCormack
Right, because you were providing him with bitcoin and he was using it to buy trade on the Silk Road. Therefore, you are.
- [45:40]
Courtney Shrem
No, he was buying bitcoin from me or from bitinstant and then reselling that Bitcoin reselling as advertisements. So Silk Road had a forum. So he had his own forum post saying, you need bitcoin for Silk Road, buy bitcoin from me.
- [45:56]
Peter McCormack
Oh, okay. Okay.
- [45:58]
Courtney Shrem
And then other people were buying bitcoin from him that were probably using it on slippery.
- [46:02]
Peter McCormack
That's like three steps away.
- [46:03]
Courtney Shrem
Listen, I don't make the laws.
- [46:04]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So what happens after that?
- [46:08]
Courtney Shrem
So I hired a lawyer and went on house arrest and then went through the whole process.
- [46:15]
Peter McCormack
But I guess were you. Were you contemplating going to prison or were you always kind of thinking. No, this.
- [46:21]
Courtney Shrem
I was kind of always thinking that I'd get probation.
- [46:23]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [46:24]
Courtney Shrem
I didn't think it was like this huge deal. So I pled down. I pled down to a. A lesser charge of. I pled guilty to aiding and abetting the operation of an unlicensed money transmitter business. And that carried a maximum five years. And yeah, it was like my first. First time offender. I'm just a kid. It was like a one time thing that happened a few months ago. Normally it would have been probation and you would have never even heard about it on the news. But because it was bitcoin, it gained a lot more attention.
- [46:55]
Peter McCormack
Do you think it was also part related to bitinstant? And why the bitcoin? Because, you know, at the time, bitcoin was new. People weren't really sure about it. Do you think this was some kind of like, fear of bitcoin, or do you think the case was specifically isolated?
- [47:09]
Courtney Shrem
He said it himself that he had to send it to me because they needed a deterrence. I mean, it's. It's clear. It's in my sentencing notes. In the memo. You can read it. He said that they needed to have a deterrence. They need to deter people from doing the same thing that I did. So essentially I was made an example of.
- [47:28]
Peter McCormack
Like Ross was.
- [47:29]
Courtney Shrem
Of course. I mean, Ross got the worst deal that you could possibly get. I mean, no matter what you say, he got what? Life in prison without parole. I mean, that's crazy.
- [47:39]
Peter McCormack
But they offered you. It was a plea bargain, right?
- [47:41]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, because.
- [47:43]
Peter McCormack
And if you hadn't taken that, you would have been at risk.
- [47:45]
Courtney Shrem
I went to trial. I would have probably lost a trial. No one wins a trial.
- [47:49]
Peter McCormack
And that's a much bigger sentence.
- [47:50]
Courtney Shrem
Yes, because the court likes it when you admit your mistake. So. And I knew I was. I knew I was wrong. You know what I mean? Like, I knew the email was there as clear as day. I knew what I did was illegal.
- [48:04]
Peter McCormack
But you didn't know it was illegal at the time.
- [48:05]
Courtney Shrem
You said at the time. But once I realized it, I was like, tell my lawyer. I was like, we're not going to win Here, let's just get the best deal we can get.
- [48:14]
Peter McCormack
Okay, so you get your sentence. What was it? Two years?
- [48:17]
Courtney Shrem
Two years.
- [48:18]
Peter McCormack
Okay, and, and how long is it between the sentencing and going to prison? Do you have a chance to go home or do they take you straight away?
- [48:24]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, so there's, there is a chance that they take you away at that minute. Yeah, but it's very small chance. Usually they let you self surrender in a few months. So I got, I got sentenced in December and I think I self surrendered in, in March.
- [48:37]
Peter McCormack
Okay, and how do you even prepare for going to prison?
- [48:40]
Courtney Shrem
I mean you ignore it until, okay, you just live your life.
- [48:44]
Peter McCormack
You just live your life. But it's coming up.
- [48:47]
Courtney Shrem
What you do is like you have to basically any bills that need to be paid automatically, you stop. Like I put my cell phone in my wife's name. We don't really have any other expenses and bills at a time. So she, we let, we gave up our apartment and my wife moved back in with her mother, Pennsylvania because it was only like an hour and a half drive to visit me in the prison. And so that was great that she was able to visit me so frequently. And you just close up your life, you put your life on hold and you just prepare to come back in two years or whatever it is.
- [49:21]
Peter McCormack
Okay, so you head to prison. How does it work? Are you allowed to take certain stuff with you? Would you just go in your clothes and they take your clothes and you go in.
- [49:28]
Courtney Shrem
So you have, so you, you, you have a day that you need to self surrender. It's a day. And they start accepting inmates around 8am Most people don't show up to the afternoon, but you want to get there as early as possible so you can get assigned a bunk. And there's a chance that if the jail is busy, the prison is busy and they're, they don't have room for you yet that you could end up spending like the first few nights in solitary. So you want to be the first one there so you can spend the whole day. So we left New York at around 5am and got to Pennsylvania at 8. We had breakfast. Last breakfast I had was Panera, but I couldn't eat, I had no appetite. And then I walked in, I said goodbye to my wife, I said goodbye to my mother in law was there and we said our goodbyes and I said, you know, I'll see you in a few weeks. At the first visit it's only going to be. I knew that. I knew the maximum I would have to serve would be around 18 months, a year and a half. So I was like, it's not gonna be that bad. It's. We're gonna be good, you know, like, it's gonna be so short. It's gonna go by so quickly. I like that we were in the state. We were only an hour and a half away from each other, instead of me being in, like, three states away, because I knew that we can, like, we can watch the sunset together, you know, like, we were right there. So that was really nice. It felt good that she was only an hour and a half away.
- [50:50]
Peter McCormack
Well, that's one of the fuck things about the prison system, which I found.
- [50:53]
Courtney Shrem
Send you.
- [50:54]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [50:54]
Courtney Shrem
No, you have no say. They could have sent me to California. I'm lucky I got sent to Pennsylvania.
- [50:59]
Peter McCormack
So I talked to Lynn Ulbricht about this, and she was saying they have a team, they call it the hotel team, and they can move you anywhere and you could have a wife and children, and they can move you three states away, and there's no possibility of your wife and children coming to regularly visit you. They just don't care.
- [51:13]
Courtney Shrem
They do it on purpose. And what happens is when you're less than a year left, you're allowed to request a transfer to another prison that's closer to your home. That's the best you. You can get, right? Other than that, most of the inmates I was with, I don't know, they came from Texas, all over.
- [51:29]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [51:30]
Courtney Shrem
I was lucky that I was able to get to Pennsylvania. And the way I was able to do that was they have these things called Prison Consultants and Roger Veer, actually, I couldn't afford it. Roger Veer helped me pay for it, so. And I will be always grateful to him for that. I called him up and I was like, roger, like, you're. You're the closest thing I have to a father. There's this prison consultant that I could hire, and he thinks he can help me navigate the Bureau of Prisons and get me. Instead of sent to, like, California or, you know, freaking Montana, to a prison close to home in Pennsylvania. He's like, how much is it? And I said this, and I was like, I can't afford all of it. Can you. Can you loan me some money and help me get there? And he's like, no problem. Just tell me where to send the money.
- [52:18]
Peter McCormack
Yes. One of the strange things about Roger, you know, I've. Obviously, I flew out to Turkey. Turkey. I flew up to Tokyo to interview him, spent some time with him, you know, talked about Ross when the Microphone switched off. And, like, I know he's done all these things that people don't like, and I know a bunch of bitcoiners are pissed off.
- [52:32]
Courtney Shrem
I'll give him the shirt off his back.
- [52:33]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. Like, I know there's. What I know he's done for Ross now what he's done for you, but there's other things I know he's done. Which I wouldn't talk about.
- [52:40]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [52:40]
Peter McCormack
But, like, he has done all these other good things, which I'm not saying even that it. For. It gives him forgiveness for the bad stuff. But I just.
- [52:48]
Courtney Shrem
It's nice.
- [52:49]
Peter McCormack
It's nice.
- [52:50]
Courtney Shrem
He's not intentionally bad.
- [52:51]
Peter McCormack
He's not, like, an evil.
- [52:52]
Courtney Shrem
No, he's not an evil person. He's not. He's really not a bad person. He's just. There are people that have been so. I've been very close with. With him. And so when I got out of jail, it was. I hadn't seen him in two years, so I didn't see this transition. It went from the Roger who he was to the Roger that he became. But I have friends that we've been as close, like Eric Lombroso. Eric Lombroso was very close to Roger, too.
- [53:17]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [53:17]
Courtney Shrem
And Eric would, like, call me up and say, like, Charlie, like, I really believe that, like, Roger has had, like. Like, CIA implants in his head. That's how much he's changed. Like, for Eric, who's rational, tell me that. That Roger must be, like, abducted by aliens, because he. He's not the same Roger as he was. He's a completely different person.
- [53:38]
Peter McCormack
Eric's also a great person for me. He's. He's become like a mentor in the background.
- [53:43]
Courtney Shrem
Sure.
- [53:43]
Peter McCormack
He. I don't know if I'll embarrass him talking.
- [53:45]
Courtney Shrem
I literally spoke to him, like, three days ago.
- [53:46]
Peter McCormack
Ah, well, so I've only met him once, but he spent a lot of time, like, he would just message me. He'll see, I'll put a tweet out or decision I'm making or something I'm doing. Or I'll have a question for him. Every time he answers, he's been a real support because there's a lot of pressure that comes in the bitcoin world if you're exposed, if you're doing something. Exposure to a bunch of people's opinions.
- [54:08]
Courtney Shrem
Sure.
- [54:09]
Peter McCormack
And he's been a real great sounding board for me. And that's really like, a mentor.
- [54:12]
Courtney Shrem
As busy as he is, it's really nice that he can do that. So he. I'll tell you a funny story, and these are type of stories that I tell on my podcast, untoldstories.com. but one day, so I was running BitInsent by myself, and Roger called me up, and he's like, you need help? And I was like, yeah, I need help with a lot of things. But he's like, no, you need help in this company. And I was like, all right, well, I don't really trust anyone. And he's like, I know this kid. He lives in New Hampshire. He's really smart. His name is Eric Voorhees. You need to hire him. And I was like, eric, I'm not paying some random guy who lives in New Hampshire a salary because you tell me I need to. He's like, charlie, I will pay his salary. I'm hiring him for you. If you don't take him, I'm gonna have him do some stuff for me. But he's a brilliant kid, and I want him to help you. I was like. I was like, all right, let's see if I like him. So Eric took the train down from New Hampshire to New York, and we instantly became best friends. And I was like, all right, Roger, I'm gonna hire him. And he literally became like my number two. He ran the company, everything. Operations, marketing. He was just the number two.
- [55:10]
Peter McCormack
He's another person who has, sadly, I guess. How would you say he. I really like Eric. Interview twice.
- [55:21]
Courtney Shrem
Like, demonized, you think? A little bit.
- [55:22]
Peter McCormack
A little bit, yeah.
- [55:23]
Courtney Shrem
And we've all been. I've been.
- [55:25]
Peter McCormack
Well, walk in a perfect bitcoin path very hard. And, you know, he's done some other things with Shapeshift. He's been involved in tokens and capitalism.
- [55:34]
Courtney Shrem
Capitalism means that you can do whatever you want as long as you're not stealing from other people.
- [55:38]
Peter McCormack
I think also some of the support he gave for S2X.
- [55:42]
Courtney Shrem
Yes, the Cyber2X didn't.
- [55:44]
Peter McCormack
Doesn't really worked out for him, but. But at the same time, he's a really great person. He's also another person. When I reach out to him, he always gets back to me, always gives me the time of day. Sometimes I kind of. I kind of hope these relationships get rebuilt at some point for some of these people.
- [55:58]
Courtney Shrem
They will down the road, I think.
- [55:59]
Peter McCormack
All right, so listen, look, you're going to prison. First day. Is it. Is it all kind of a bit surreal? Are you scared going in or you're.
- [56:06]
Courtney Shrem
Like, whatever, don't laugh. But there was some excitement. Not, like happy excitement, but you're doing this crazy thing in the background. You're like, this is just going to be a great story to tell one day. Yeah. And let me ask you a question. So imagine if you're being sentenced to prison. You're standing in the courtroom, and you just went through two years of. You just went through two years of house arrest and being in the criminal justice system. Prosecution craziness. And you're standing in a courtroom, and the judge just says, you're being sentenced to two years. How would you feel?
- [56:45]
Peter McCormack
I think I feel hollow. I think my insides would kind of drop out of me.
- [56:53]
Courtney Shrem
Ask me what I felt at that moment.
- [56:55]
Peter McCormack
What did you feel at that moment?
- [56:56]
Courtney Shrem
Relief.
- [56:58]
Peter McCormack
Because you had a time in the future where it was all over.
- [57:02]
Courtney Shrem
You hit the nail right on that.
- [57:04]
Peter McCormack
Okay, I get it. I get it.
- [57:05]
Courtney Shrem
All of us for two years, I'm going through this tunnel that has no ending. And now all of a sudden, I could look at my girlfriend, who's now my wife, and say, in two years, this is going to be all over, and we can live a life together.
- [57:16]
Peter McCormack
Because you didn't know how long the sentence was facing.
- [57:18]
Courtney Shrem
30 years.
- [57:18]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. Okay. Which is. Which is your life.
- [57:21]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. You're fucked.
- [57:22]
Peter McCormack
And so I still think Courtney would have waited for you.
- [57:25]
Courtney Shrem
I still think she would have waited for me.
- [57:26]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, I think so.
- [57:28]
Courtney Shrem
And so I now had this immense wave of relief that just went over me and Courtney will tell you. We. We all left and we went to this pizza store, and I was happy. I was jovial. Right. Like, I was in a. I was in a good mood because, one, I didn't have to surrender early. So I can put, you know, prevail and plan. But I was like, I'm only gonna be in prison a year, year and a half. It's not the end of the world. Like, we're already. Let's plan a vacation for two years from now, you know, like, that's how I was feeling. So when I went in that first day, I'm like, all right, day one, I can start counting this down. Let's get this over with.
- [58:03]
Peter McCormack
And, like, what's the process on that first day? What is that?
- [58:07]
Courtney Shrem
It's a clock.
- [58:08]
Peter McCormack
It's a clock.
- [58:09]
Courtney Shrem
Every hour it sings a song. And then during Christmas time, it does Christmas music.
- [58:14]
Peter McCormack
That's amazing. So hold on. You go. So you go in the first day. I guess there's a bunch of procedural stuff.
- [58:22]
Courtney Shrem
Walk the dog and do this podcast at the same time.
- [58:24]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, we don't have the. We can't really Carry this. So you have the procedural stuff on the first day.
- [58:29]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. So you get, you walk into prison, you say goodbye to your family, and there's this room called R D. It's called Receiving and Discharge. You walk into prison, you. You walk into this room and it's like a little administration building. And you say, hi, my name is Charlie Shrum, I'm here to self surrender. And they say, all right, you know, sit down and wait, and your family waits with you. And then a few minutes later they say, are you ready? And you give them your last goodbyes and they crying, blah, blah, blah. And you, you go in this room. And I know all this because I had read a lot of. Not reviews, but a letter of forums, of people describing like the first day, you know, of what it's like. And so they drive off and I'm in this room and the guard is there, and he was like a very nice guy. Like, he was not a nice guy, but he wasn't just like hard, mean guard. He was like this, laughing and joking around and he's like, all right, like, take all your clothes off, I gotta search you. And so you're in this, like, room, and you're just kind of standing around and there's a lot of paperwork that needs to be signed. And this, he told me, like, this room, you're only gonna meet me twice the day you come and the day you leave. And I remember that. And I look, I remember looking forward to that day that I could be in the discharge room, you know, and the day I was released is the second happiest day of my life. The first happiest day of my life was when we got married. The second happiest day of my life was I was released from prison. So you're in, you're in there the first day and you strip naked. They stick their hand up your ass, you know, to check for any cocaine up your. Your anus. And you, they give you like, all these clothes. You get all your, like, your clothes and your bag with your pillow and your. All your shit, and they give you a bunk assignment. And then they open the door and you're released into the general population. And you got to take your shit and you have this big sack of shit, you know, your pillow and your blankets and your stuff over your shoulder. And that basically means all the other inmates, like, stop what they're doing and they're all checking you out.
- [60:23]
Peter McCormack
That must be a really intimidating entry going in. You must be like, oh, fuck, what's this gonna be like, yeah, you walk.
- [60:31]
Courtney Shrem
In there and you have no idea what to expect.
- [60:35]
Peter McCormack
Are you thinking the worst?
- [60:38]
Courtney Shrem
The motto of prison is hope for the best, plan for the worst, thing for the plan for the worst, hope for the best. And so yes, you're planning for the worst. And I sat on a bench. There's a bench. Sat down on the bench with my guy, walked up to me and he said it was, are you a self surrender or are you a transfer? He. I sat on the bench and he said, are you a self surrender or you're a transfer? I said, I'm a self surrender. He's all right. Welcome, Lewis Burke. I said, thank you. He said, my name is, we'll call him Belkin for the sake of conversation. My name is Belkin and I'm gonna give you one piece of advice. And I said, what is that? He says, well, if someone leaves candy on your pillow at night, don't eat the candy. I was like, thank you for letting me know.
- [61:26]
Peter McCormack
That mean, is that like you want a boyfriend?
- [61:29]
Courtney Shrem
It means that you. Yeah. You've accepted becoming someone's.
- [61:32]
Peter McCormack
Oh.
- [61:33]
Courtney Shrem
So I was like, all right, thanks. So go about my day. And that night there's a Snickers bar on my pillow. And I'm thinking that it was just him like around with me, joking. So I eat the Snickers. The free Snickers. You're in prison.
- [61:45]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. Hungry.
- [61:46]
Courtney Shrem
Exactly. I wanted Snickers. Went through the worst day of my life. And so I ate the Snickers. And then like that night I was, I saw him and I was like, hey man, thanks for the Snickers. And he's like, it wasn't me. And I was like, oh. And that first night I. I was sleeping with my eyes open.
- [62:08]
Charlie Shrem
Next up, I talked to Charlie Moore about prison life and how he reflects on it. But before that, I've got a message from my amazing show sponsors. So BlockFi, the company that's creating the future of bitcoin financ financial services, met up with Zach Prince while I was out here in San Francisco. Loads of cool stuff happening for them. More announcements coming, but they have got two amazing products if you want to check them out. They've got their crypto interest accounts and their crypto backed loans and they're now offering support for the Gemini stablecoin across the entire platform. BlockFi interest accounts at launch will be eligible for 6.2% APY paid monthly with a minimum balance of 2,500g USD balances over 100,000. GUSD will earn a tiered rate of 1.5% APY. BlockFi also offers GUSD as a USD funding option and as collateral for institutional crypto borrowers. BlockFi's USD loan rate start as low as 4.5%. And when I get back and I've got the chance, I'm going to be testing this out myself. So blockfi. Love these guys, supported the show for a long time. If you are interested in checking them out, head over to blockfi.com which is b l o ckfi.com and last but definitely and never least is Kraken. I'll tell you something great about Kraken. As I travel around the world to do these interviews, every city I get to, somebody from Kraken comes out and introduces themselves, offers to buy me a beer, offers to organize a dinner. It's amazing the support I've got from the company. Not just with the podcast, but just being there as I go to different cities, making sure I'm okay. It's an amazing company, but that reflects on them. And if you want to understand the culture of the company, I did a really great interview with Jesse Powell. So definitely check out Kraken. They are the best exchange for buying and selling digital assets. They are the only place I use for buying and selling bitcoin now. And they are the only regulated spot and futures crypto exchange. I've got an interview coming up with Nick Pacoco, their chief security officer. It's planned, it's going to be happening in the next couple of weeks. We're going to be talking about all things security. But if you want to join me in supporting Kraken, the best crypto exchange in the world, head over to Kraken.com, which is K-R-A K-E-N dot com.
- [64:13]
Peter McCormack
What was that first night like?
- [64:15]
Courtney Shrem
It was a tough night.
- [64:16]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [64:17]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, it was. It's very loud in prison. In the units especially, you know, in the absence of a currency, their other things have value like a good bed or a good bunker, being in a good unit or a good range. So obviously you start at the bottom, you're in the worst one. So I was in the. The young, loud, obnoxious one. And I slept with. With head like earplugs, like the first few nights. And eventually I got used to the noise and I read, I would read a lot.
- [64:49]
Peter McCormack
Is it just people being wild at night?
- [64:50]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, wild and crazy and stupid. Just being stupid all night, it's like being dumb. And then after that I started like I got. I was able to Move to a different range. And I was a little bit quieter and moved to a whole different building, actually, which was awesome. And I really got a bunkie who was the imam of the Muslim community in prison. And so we had a very good relationship because we respected each other and we talked a lot and got to know. I got. I got an immense knowledge of Islam during that experience. He got. Hopefully he got an immense knowledge of Judaism too. And we always talk about our different religions and stuff. And him and I being coming friends because he was my first celly bunky, there were a lot of other inmates gave me a lot of respect like I immediately had because if he accepted me, he was the leader of this whole community. So because of that, I instantly was friends with the Muslim community. And it's not that like Muslim Brotherhood, like the fake. Like the fake. Like these are like devout Muslim community. Like, it's different. There's two Muslim communities in prison. There's that Farrakhan guy, you know Farrakhan?
- [66:02]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [66:03]
Courtney Shrem
He has this whole like, Muslim brotherhood like thing. And then you have Islam. It's two separate religions in a prison. They're two separate religions. Like they're designated two separate religions according to the prison administration because one's fanatical. One's fanatical, and the other ones are just awesome people. And they would invite me to like, their dinners and stuff, and they'd make me like gyros and stuff, you know. Yeah, it was really nice.
- [66:28]
Peter McCormack
I'm not sure whether a Jewish guy and a fanatical Muslim guy would have been a good match.
- [66:33]
Courtney Shrem
No, that wouldn't have been the Farrakhan's crazy. Yes, he's nuts. But no, we were good for it.
- [66:38]
Peter McCormack
We were.
- [66:39]
Courtney Shrem
We were. We were close for a while. Yeah. Every. Every Muslim I know is just. Just a great person. And I. Him and I lived together for a year, so we obviously became extremely close because you. You can learn the habits of these people and it. A good bunky is one that takes a shower at different times than you or needs to. You, you know, have the privacy of the cell at different times, you know, or you learn to not wake him up. If I get up early in the morning, I would become like a mountain. Like, I like to wake up at 5:30 and he like to wake up a little bit early later. But I knew how to wake up and being on the top bunk, not wake him up. I would pre prepare all my stuff the night before and I take it all with me and go like, change in the bathroom this way I'd not let him wake up. You know, it's respect.
- [67:24]
Peter McCormack
Okay?
- [67:24]
Courtney Shrem
It's respect. It's respect in prison is. Is the most valuable currency. Having the respect of others and respecting other people.
- [67:32]
Peter McCormack
How much freedom did you have to go in and out of your cell? Then?
- [67:35]
Courtney Shrem
You have. You have pretty much between morning and night, you can do whatever you want.
- [67:41]
Peter McCormack
Okay. Because it was a lower risk prison.
- [67:45]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [67:45]
Peter McCormack
Okay. It's not like in the films or.
- [67:47]
Courtney Shrem
No. You don't spend.
- [67:48]
Peter McCormack
Lock them down and.
- [67:50]
Courtney Shrem
No, only overnight.
- [67:51]
Peter McCormack
Okay. I always thought if I ever ended up in prison, even though I wouldn't do it, I'd be trying to almost as like a way to pass time, figure out how I would escape. That would be on my mind. I'd be thinking Shawshank Redemption.
- [68:06]
Courtney Shrem
In my prison, it was. Wouldn't be very hard because there are no fences or gates.
- [68:10]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [68:11]
Courtney Shrem
You're on 5,000 acres. You could literally walk off. I mean, there are guards and stuff, but it's not. You know, they don't. They're not sitting there watching with rifles because. But why would you want to leave? Anyone who's in my prison has less than 10 years. And if you leave and get caught, they will catch you, by the way, they've never not caught anyone like, in the history of America. They've always caught the person. But you can automatic time added to your sentence. So why would you do that?
- [68:40]
Peter McCormack
So there's two interactions you and I have had together on Twitter previous to arranging this. Yeah. Your first time, you told me that guy. When. Yeah. With Crypto Cobain, where I completely, completely missed.
- [68:55]
Courtney Shrem
I say that about everyone.
- [68:56]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [68:57]
Courtney Shrem
Courtney's like, the mailman's here. That guy.
- [68:59]
Peter McCormack
Well, we. So we actually had discussed and agreed to an interview.
- [69:01]
Courtney Shrem
Okay, cool.
- [69:02]
Peter McCormack
And why don't we do it? Well, we've done it now.
- [69:04]
Courtney Shrem
Oh, okay.
- [69:05]
Peter McCormack
But this was like, a year ago and something. I don't know, with Crypto Cobain. And he retweeted, and. And then you were like, oh, that guy. And you were both right. I actually got to know him a little bit better.
- [69:15]
Courtney Shrem
He's a nice guy.
- [69:15]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. We're friends now with Twitter. Friends. There was another time, though. We had an interaction, and the other time was where there was a discussion about something and somebody on Twitter. On Twitter.
- [69:26]
Courtney Shrem
Okay.
- [69:27]
Peter McCormack
Had. I don't know if it was me or somebody else, but they. It was a thread we were both in, and somebody said, I hope you end up in jail or something along those kind of lines. And then you came in, you Said you don't want to wish for that on anyone. You've got no fucking idea how bad.
- [69:42]
Courtney Shrem
Yes, I did say that.
- [69:42]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [69:43]
Courtney Shrem
And I hate when people throw that term around lightly because I would never wish prison on my worst enemy. It is. No matter how long you spend in there, whether it's six months or six years, it fundamentally changes you, who you are physically and mentally. And for me, thankfully, it was for the better. But it. I suffer from ptsd. I've been diagnosed. I see. I go to therapy. We both go to therapy once a week. We take breaks, but we do it physically. I saw a lot of doctors after my stomach got up. You're eating expired food for a year. It just. With you, It. You. Mentally, it changes who you are. You become institutionalized. You. You like it in there. People like it in there. I had a friend that was getting released, and he was in there with me for. He was there for 26 years, and he cried on my shoulder because he had no idea what to expect in the outside world. I was terrified for the guy. Imagine that. Imagine 26 years being in prison and getting out and having to compete in the Worlds.
- [70:41]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. Because you. You're in a system, right? In the prison.
- [70:44]
Courtney Shrem
You have free food, you have a good place to live, you have respect of your peers. You don't have to work. I mean, you work. You have a job in there, if fulfilling work, but you don't work for. You work for. For extra money. Food and all other stuff is given to you.
- [70:58]
Peter McCormack
But that's another kind of famous scene in the Shawshank Redemption. Yeah, he gets released and. And I. I have a lot of.
- [71:05]
Courtney Shrem
Friends that went back. They just got. They did something stupid.
- [71:07]
Peter McCormack
They went back because they wanted to.
- [71:09]
Courtney Shrem
Well, they wanted to. They said it. Know how to live a legal life.
- [71:12]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [71:13]
Courtney Shrem
When you go back out of jail and you're out and your old friend comes down the road, says, hey, man, good to see you. Hey, by the way, if you want to sell some coke on the side for a few extra thousand dollars a week, are you gonna. You know, and you just got out of jail, you're like, yeah, I need money. You know, you don't work as a dishwasher of $8 an hour. All you gotta do is sell a little bit of coke and good to go.
- [71:36]
Peter McCormack
So tell me about the things that change you in prison and why, what you say mentally and physically.
- [71:42]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. I mean, in prison, you learn to be able to sit by yourself and not be afraid to do that, because you have long there would be long stretches of hours where I would plan. I would say, you want to stay very busy. You want to stay as busy as possible, so you keep yourself busy. You do stuff. You. I'd have my nightly card game with a bunch of guys that I was friends with. I played cards with them every night, like spades. From after dinner from 6 to 9, and then from 9 to 10, I would sit with another group of friends and chat. And then at 10 o'clock I was in my bed and go to sleep. Every hour in prison, I would plan I would wake up in the morning at 5:30. I knew it would take me exactly from 5:30 to 5:45. I would brush my teeth and get dressed. 5:45 to 6:00, I would call Courtney because the phones would turn on at 6am So 6am from 6. Sorry, some 6 to 6:15. I'd be the first one. It's only three phones for hundreds of inmates. I'm the first one on the phone. I called Courtney. You only get 10 minutes a day of phone time, so you have to use 10 minutes total.
- [72:42]
Peter McCormack
So Courtney had to be up, so no.
- [72:44]
Courtney Shrem
So I would assist him. Yeah. I would call her up and she'd be sleeping. I would say, good morning, I love you. When you only use a minute, you time it. Only use a minute. And then we'd use more of our minutes for lunch and dinner time at Araba, just to say good morning, tell her I survived the night or do that. And then I went to breakfast and I'd also go to computers to check my emails. You had these like fake email system. And then everything was planned. But I would pre plan multiple hours to just sit by myself and think. You have a lot of time to do that and read. I read 137 books in prison.
- [73:18]
Peter McCormack
Holy.
- [73:19]
Courtney Shrem
Yes. That's two. I want one book every two or three days. I would have a book everywhere with me. I would literally carry a paperback in my pocket. No joke. Everywhere. Because you never know when you're gonna have downtime. You'd always. You'd be on. You'd be on a bus or you'd be sitting around, or you'd be in work. And my work. I worked at landscaping, but I had so much downtime. I just read, read, read, read and think and write.
- [73:43]
Peter McCormack
In terms of the jobs available, are these jobs where you're doing work outsourced for companies?
- [73:50]
Courtney Shrem
No. So there's a few different types of jobs that you can do. It depends on your security level. Obviously I was the lowest Security. So I had to do more jobs, but I had. First I worked in education, so I taught students to take their ged, to take their tests. I had a bunch of students of mine pass.
- [74:09]
Peter McCormack
That's cool.
- [74:10]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, I got boring very quickly.
- [74:12]
Peter McCormack
Right. Okay.
- [74:13]
Courtney Shrem
So I moved to landscaping. There was another prison about 20 minute drive away that needed lower security inmates to maintain the grounds. It was 5,000 acres. So me and like 10 or 12 other guys got on a little van every day, driven by another inmate, went to leave the prison. No money, no phones, nothing you couldn't stop. Thrived to the other prison. And we had like a. It was like a little gas station, which. Where's our office and our garage? And they trained me how to drive this like, street sweeper thing. And during the wintertime, the street sweeper was retrofitted with this plow. And I would plow snow, and I would plow snow, and I would drop salt. And that was my job. I just drive in the roads for hours, plow snow.
- [74:57]
Peter McCormack
Was that like a good escape?
- [74:59]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, it was great because I don't have to be around other inmates. The hardest, the. The best commodity is silence. And it's very difficult to get silence in prison.
- [75:06]
Peter McCormack
How much did you have to deal with?
- [75:08]
Courtney Shrem
All the time. Every day. Stress, annoying people, constant. Other inmates, administration. You just got to deal with. You learn to bite your tongue. So what I learned humility. You learn how to bite your tongue, you learn how to just take it. You think trolling is bad on Twitter? There's nothing in prison. Those people are professional trolls. They train me how to troll. And you don't want me to start trolling you because I will be vicious.
- [75:35]
Peter McCormack
What? Just personal attack.
- [75:37]
Courtney Shrem
Personal attacks.
- [75:38]
Peter McCormack
Mental. Mental breakdown.
- [75:39]
Courtney Shrem
Mental breakdowns. I saw people. I saw someone die. Okay, so someone run into a wall and die like crazy because they'd had to buy drugs.
- [75:50]
Peter McCormack
Okay, okay. Right.
- [75:52]
Courtney Shrem
He took a synthetic weed and. And it was laced with.
- [75:57]
Peter McCormack
But I'm guessing not everyone in prison was bad.
- [76:00]
Courtney Shrem
No, no, not everyone in prison was bad. It was a lot of good. I had a lot of friends, acquaintances. Friends. People that I was very close with. But the administration would. Would set you up to not be friends with these people. They would, like, force you guys to, like, hate on each other. They would add all this mental stuff going on.
- [76:22]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [76:23]
Courtney Shrem
It was crazy.
- [76:24]
Peter McCormack
Was there much violence?
- [76:25]
Courtney Shrem
Not really.
- [76:26]
Peter McCormack
Okay. I guess. Cuz again, lower risk prison. So it's just more just crazy people.
- [76:32]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. No one wanted to leave? No. Everyone liked it. I saw someone, so someone sitting like Three chairs away from me in the TV room, and a guy walked in with a sock with a lock in it, like a master lock. And.
- [76:43]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [76:43]
Courtney Shrem
Whacked him right in the head.
- [76:45]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [76:47]
Courtney Shrem
That was crazy.
- [76:48]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. That's not great to see, though.
- [76:50]
Courtney Shrem
No, I never got into any fights. I. I didn't have. No one disliked me. I had some guys in there who just didn't like me from first judgments, maybe because I symbolized something that they didn't like, other than that. But I just. You stay away from those people. Other than that, I didn't really have any issues with anyone.
- [77:06]
Peter McCormack
Okay, and what is it like in terms of the guards? Were they okay with you?
- [77:10]
Courtney Shrem
Some of them are okay. They're all, you know.
- [77:12]
Peter McCormack
But are there assholes who want to.
- [77:14]
Courtney Shrem
Oh, yeah, there's some assholes that would plant shit on people and fight, and you just want to stay off the radar, stay out of the way. You don't want them to know your names. You don't want them to know you are. You just do your time. Just stay away.
- [77:25]
Peter McCormack
And how. How prevalent were drugs in the prison?
- [77:29]
Courtney Shrem
With money, you can get anything you want.
- [77:32]
Peter McCormack
It always amazes me, though. Like, it just. I still amazes me that it's that easy to get drugs. Yeah.
- [77:38]
Courtney Shrem
Two ways guards would have smuggled it in for them. And the second way is they'd have runners. They have people that would literally. They coordinate with another person on the outside to fill up a bunch of. A duffel bag with a bunch of drugs and alcohol and stuff, and then they'd leave it off the side of the highway somewhere. And then inmate would literally escape, go get the stuff, and then come back.
- [77:59]
Peter McCormack
Because it's an open prison.
- [78:00]
Courtney Shrem
It's an open prison between, like, counts. Because they do count every. Every four hours. They do account. You have to stop where you are, and they come around and count, make sure everyone's. There.
- [78:09]
Peter McCormack
Were people doing that stuff where they make alcohol in the prison as well?
- [78:12]
Courtney Shrem
Not in my prison. Or not.
- [78:14]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [78:14]
Courtney Shrem
They make. We make other stuff. Make, like, food and stuff.
- [78:18]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [78:18]
Courtney Shrem
I make a lot of food in.
- [78:20]
Peter McCormack
Prison because the food is terrible.
- [78:21]
Courtney Shrem
It's terrible. I can make a cheesecake in a microwave. Make a lot of shit. Now I'm not giving my recipes. No, don't give our whole podcast of prison recipes.
- [78:30]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, you should do that.
- [78:31]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [78:33]
Peter McCormack
What were the treats in there? What was.
- [78:35]
Courtney Shrem
What do you mean, treats?
- [78:36]
Peter McCormack
Like, what were the good things like. Like, would Courtney visit and be elves to bring you a bag of.
- [78:42]
Courtney Shrem
No.
- [78:42]
Peter McCormack
Twinkies and shit?
- [78:43]
Courtney Shrem
No.
- [78:43]
Peter McCormack
No.
- [78:45]
Courtney Shrem
So in the visiting room, there were these vending machines that you had to put money in, and your visitor was allowed to bring money. And then what you do is you'd basically, you. I couldn't touch the money or the machine, but your visitor could. And they had these machines that sold microwavable, like, cheeseburgers. So that's our thing was when she'd visit, we'd get a cheeseburger from the microwave from the vending machine, and we put, like, Doritos in it and then eat it. And that would be, like, amazing. Best burger in my life. Yeah, those. Those jalapeno burgers were like, bomb.
- [79:15]
Peter McCormack
And you would get to have dinner together.
- [79:17]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, we had to dinner together, which is great.
- [79:21]
Peter McCormack
But the food itself was terrible because what no money goes into.
- [79:24]
Courtney Shrem
Some of them was good, some of it was bad. It was all expensive, expired, spoiled. But inmates ran the kitchen. So if you had a good chef, then you'd have good food.
- [79:33]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [79:34]
Courtney Shrem
And there was some good stuff. I ate some pretty good meals in there. But relative, like, I wouldn't eat it now. It'd be disgusting. But I was in there.
- [79:39]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [79:40]
Courtney Shrem
It's all I had.
- [79:41]
Peter McCormack
Okay. And so time moves on.
- [79:44]
Courtney Shrem
It moves very quickly. Yeah, it moves quickly. Okay.
- [79:48]
Peter McCormack
Months start passing it.
- [79:51]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. In. In jail, time moves very quick. Every day is the same. So your schedule never changes. Like, every day is the same. So you literally. You just count weekends. You look forward to the weekends when the visits are. And things are chill, you know, but time just moves fast. I played in sports leagues in there. I played. I was in a ultimate Frisbee league, so I played sports, played twice a week, worked out every day, lost a lot of weight, got jacked, ate very well. Yeah. Play a lot of cards. Yeah.
- [80:27]
Peter McCormack
And then you, I guess you get through the first year and you're like, oh, six months to go.
- [80:31]
Courtney Shrem
So I was lucky. I only served one year in there, and then the other six months I lived in a halfway house.
- [80:36]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [80:37]
Courtney Shrem
I only did one year in that prison.
- [80:39]
Peter McCormack
Did you know that was going to be the case?
- [80:40]
Courtney Shrem
No, not till towards, like, the end.
- [80:42]
Peter McCormack
Okay. So that was a bit of a bonus.
- [80:44]
Courtney Shrem
That was great. I participated in a program called the Residential Drug Abuse Program. It's like cognitive behavior therapy combined with aa, where it's. The goal is not to make you not an alcoholic or a drug addict. The goal is to make you free of your criminal personality. So this is mental stuff going on.
- [81:04]
Peter McCormack
Your criminal personality, literally.
- [81:05]
Courtney Shrem
It's like stuff you see in movies. It's like, literally experiment. So the government invented this experimental behavior therapy treatment where. No, it was. It was. And I. And the bonus by doing it is that you get. You get to, like, take six months off your sentence and stay in a halfway house instead of in.
- [81:22]
Peter McCormack
In the prison, which is obviously a lot better.
- [81:24]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. And so actually the halfway house sucked. But.
- [81:29]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [81:30]
Courtney Shrem
But yeah, so I participated in that program, and the program was terrible. Like, it's really bad. Rdap just.
- [81:35]
Peter McCormack
What? With your head?
- [81:36]
Courtney Shrem
With your head. With you. With your head. You have to live in these other. You have to live. Sorry. If you live in these specialized units that are for only other RDAP people. It was crazy.
- [81:46]
Peter McCormack
And you get to the end. Have you ever. If you talked about it this much before, am I asking more than anyone else?
- [81:51]
Courtney Shrem
No, you are. I think you are.
- [81:53]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. I find it. It's just.
- [81:54]
Courtney Shrem
It's fascinating.
- [81:55]
Peter McCormack
It is fascinating. It's fascinating to hear from both of you, though. Okay. But I'm getting at the end of it. So. So you're aware that you've got this opportunity, what is it, a month to go two months ago?
- [82:08]
Courtney Shrem
No, I did it. I did it on like a half a year in.
- [82:11]
Peter McCormack
Okay, so you got a six month countdown.
- [82:13]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. You did this whole program. The last. The last, like month and a half is the slowest freaking month because of that. It just. Time just stops. And every day seems like it's like the longest day ever because you're really on your way out. You have a month left. You're on your way out.
- [82:28]
Peter McCormack
And does it. Does it get progressively slow?
- [82:30]
Courtney Shrem
Yes. The last week is like the slowest week ever. And you're so close to getting out. There's a lot of prison bullshit and drama. Like, just bullshit and drama because you have. You're living with a hundred other. With hundreds of other criminals who have nothing better to do than to just fuck with you. Just fuck with you. Just be dramatic about stuff.
- [82:48]
Peter McCormack
So.
- [82:48]
Courtney Shrem
So something that here that would just be so simple and stupid would just explode in prison. It would just be like the most dramatic thing. Yeah. So gossipy. So as your time goes. Almost. Almost done. You just kind of stay out of the way because you don't want anything to risk. There are people that would, like, do things to risk you not getting out. Like plant shit on you and stuff. So I would just. I would just hide at the corner and just read and stay away from people.
- [83:14]
Peter McCormack
Right.
- [83:15]
Courtney Shrem
I just didn't want to, like, risk it.
- [83:18]
Peter McCormack
And then obviously you get to your day where you're released.
- [83:21]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. Woke up, had breakfast.
- [83:23]
Peter McCormack
Is there, like, a routine? Do people celebrate you leaving? Do they?
- [83:26]
Courtney Shrem
They do. They throw a party. They threw me a little party. It was nice. I had my group of guys that I was really friends with, and we had a nice, like, dinner and, like, a goodbye party. And it's sad because these are your best friends, and, you know, like, I'll see you on the outside. And I had some friends who got released a few months after than me, and they called me up and stuff like that, and it's. It's sad. It's. It's a very sad thing because you're leaving your family and you're getting out, but they're not. And it's not fun. Fair.
- [83:52]
Peter McCormack
Have you stayed in touch with any of them?
- [83:54]
Courtney Shrem
Some people. Some people, you can't really, because they just go back to bad things, you know?
- [83:59]
Peter McCormack
Right. Okay. And you don't want to ever go back?
- [84:03]
Courtney Shrem
No, never. And so it's sad, but that morning, you wake up and everyone's happy for you, and they throw you, like, a. You know, like a nice little party and stuff. And I remember going to so many parties for people who were, like, gonna leave, and it was nice to have my own. When I meet parties, like, everyone's having dinner together and potato chips and. And drinking soda, and that's, like, the party, you know? And so I. That morning, I. I walked. I had all my stuff packed, and I had. You know, I have a box. I have a box in the garage of all my stuff. And you basically, you go into the discharge room, see the guy again. You see the guy again. He prepares you. And I was. And Courtney was late. They were late.
- [84:45]
Peter McCormack
She told me.
- [84:46]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, I was like, I'm not getting out today, am I? And so it wasn't on purpose. It was traffic. And then all of a sudden, they said, like, you know, you're free to go. Go out the door, and you literally just, like.
- [85:02]
Peter McCormack
Is it like a moment?
- [85:04]
Courtney Shrem
Well, you walk out the door, and as soon as you walk out that door and you're in the parking lot, you realize that everything that just happened in there was just.
- [85:12]
Peter McCormack
Is there any kind of, like, weird feeling like it almost didn't happen? Or is it indelibly in your mind as an experience? Or is it this, like, surreal thing, like, I was in prison?
- [85:23]
Courtney Shrem
Like, oh, no, it. It happened. There's no doubt in my mind. I'll never forget that experience. It was just crazy.
- [85:31]
Peter McCormack
So you get out, you see Courtney.
- [85:33]
Courtney Shrem
Drive to the gas station, change out of my clothes, put jeans on and it was great.
- [85:38]
Peter McCormack
Get a Snickers.
- [85:39]
Courtney Shrem
Get a Snickers.
- [85:45]
Peter McCormack
Hello, Courtney.
- [85:48]
Naomi Brockwell
Hello, Peter.
- [85:49]
Peter McCormack
Thank you for inviting me in your home.
- [85:51]
Courtney Shrem
No problem.
- [85:52]
Peter McCormack
I've got a few questions for you as well, because obviously we've touched on the prison story, and I think it would be good to hear what it was like for you as an experience. So I've just got a few questions. The first one is around when Charlie first got arrested. He's taken away.
- [86:10]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [86:11]
Peter McCormack
What airport are you at?
- [86:12]
Naomi Brockwell
I was in York, Pennsylvania.
- [86:14]
Peter McCormack
Pennsylvania. At that airport.
- [86:16]
Naomi Brockwell
What's that?
- [86:17]
Peter McCormack
Is that the airport?
- [86:17]
Naomi Brockwell
No, jfk.
- [86:18]
Peter McCormack
Jfk. So they take him away and you're like, what the.
- [86:23]
Naomi Brockwell
Yeah, I was traumatized. I was crying hysterically. It was. I. I just couldn't even imagine what was, like, happening. I just couldn't. I was like. And then I was questioning Charlie. I was like, what the fuck did you do? Like, what happened? You know, like, is there something. Like, is there something you're not telling me? Like. But he. I mean, we were both caught so off guard that we had no idea what was going on.
- [86:48]
Peter McCormack
But they take him away. You don't speak to him until the next day, or did they give him a call?
- [86:53]
Naomi Brockwell
He got one phone call that he was able to call me.
- [86:55]
Peter McCormack
So he gets hold of you. Right.
- [86:58]
Naomi Brockwell
And I just couldn't sleep.
- [87:00]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, I bet. What an awful evening that must have been.
- [87:02]
Naomi Brockwell
That was horrible. It was horrible. Just the fact that, like, he was telling me he's okay, but he couldn't tell me anything else, and he couldn't tell me where he was. He couldn't. And that was, like, the scariest part, too, that I didn't know where he was physically. And so, yeah, it was a very, very horrible experience.
- [87:22]
Peter McCormack
And when did you then next see him? Did he call you and say, okay, they're releasing me. Can you come and get me? What happened?
- [87:28]
Naomi Brockwell
I got a hold of his. His company lawyer and was able to basically tell them what was going on and kind of just get him out in that aspect. I saw Charlie probably about. I want to say, like, it was a good three to four days before I could see him.
- [87:48]
Peter McCormack
Oh, right. Okay.
- [87:51]
Naomi Brockwell
Because we didn't know what was going on.
- [87:53]
Peter McCormack
So terrible few days. Absolutely not knowing what's going on, not knowing when he's coming back. You finally see him again.
- [87:58]
Naomi Brockwell
Yeah.
- [87:59]
Peter McCormack
And then I guess you have to then live that next two years during the. Essentially the lawsuit. What was that like for you?
- [88:10]
Naomi Brockwell
He was during the house arrest. So, okay, he got the house arrest. He paid bail. Somebody bailed him out, and then he was on house arrest. And then we got to move in together, but before that, he went back to his parents basement and he had to hide our relationship from his parents because I'm not an Orthodox Jew.
- [88:31]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [88:31]
Naomi Brockwell
So I wasn't accepted in that aspect. And so basically I was a secret for a very long time.
- [88:39]
Peter McCormack
Okay, but then he does end up moving in with you eventually. What are the rules of the house arrest? Did he have to send you down to the shop?
- [88:46]
Naomi Brockwell
We had to be in by 9:00 at night.
- [88:48]
Peter McCormack
But he would send you down to the 7:11 if he needed something?
- [88:52]
Naomi Brockwell
Oh, yeah. I mean, he was allowed to leave like we were. We had a certain amount of time during the day that we could be, you know, away, but we had to be back in the house at 9pm every night.
- [89:02]
Peter McCormack
Okay. All right. So you live through the experience of him going to court, potentially facing up to 30 years. How was that for you? I mean, obviously terrible, but, like, emotionally, mentally, how was that for you?
- [89:18]
Naomi Brockwell
I'll never forget when I was at the arraignment, it was my mom and my brother and his wife now on one side of the courtroom. And then it was his Orthodox community. It wasn't even just immediate family. It was like the whole community on the other side of the courtroom. And then there was reporters and so forth. And all I remember is like, Charlie's fate is being decided. And it was just really hard for me because. And more stressful than ever because not being, you know, accepted into that community. It was about me in that courtroom, and it should have been about him. And that's what frustrated me and made me more bitter about the whole situation. And we honestly didn't expect him to have any jail time. We thought it was just going to be more house arrest. And I mean, his lawyers were like, you know, you're just gonna do house arrest. You'll be fine. You'll be fine. And then it just. I didn't like, it was such a haze for me, like when that happened, because all that court talk, it's just one ear and out the other. It was kind of like I couldn't really legal speak what physically was happening.
- [90:33]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [90:34]
Naomi Brockwell
And then when I found out that he was going to jail, our whole life was turned upside down. It was horrible.
- [90:42]
Peter McCormack
Okay, so he gets sentenced. He has two or three months. It sounds like he ignored it, but I'm gonna go out on a whim here and say you didn't like he did.
- [90:54]
Naomi Brockwell
No, I will say his attitude Helped me get through it as well, because if he didn't keep it together, I wouldn't have kept it together. And so we. I think we really helped each other in that aspect of keeping it together. And, I mean, it's the only thing we could do.
- [91:12]
Peter McCormack
You know, it's funny, as I was talking earlier, you heard me talking about having the 24 hours before the interview is really helpful.
- [91:20]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [91:21]
Peter McCormack
But it's also helped with the interview. It's. I've. I've been observing you two from a distance. The bickering and real love between you. But the real loves, it's really amazing to see, actually. I really like the way. I don't know if you guys know how often you tell each other you love each other.
- [91:40]
Naomi Brockwell
People joke around about how much we tell each other, but, yeah, you tell.
- [91:44]
Peter McCormack
Each other all the time. It could be like, honey, I'm getting something from the fridge. Do you want anything? I love you. So, look, it's obviously made you stronger, which is amazing. But anyway, so he goes to. Obviously goes to prison. You have 18 months without him again, obviously. Shit. But talk me through what it was like living that from your side.
- [92:07]
Naomi Brockwell
Well, it was terrifying because, like, if there was a storm or something, he would be on lockdown, so I wouldn't hear from him. And we were able to email through the government, you know, email or whatever. And then there was only, like a certain amount of time that we could speak a day, you know, without going over his time or if we would go over our minutes. There was a time that we didn't talk for, like, 12 days, which was horrible. But it's one of those things. The unknown is what scared the hell out of me. Yeah, it's just, you know, he's in this horrible place and I have no control of finding out, you know, what's going on. And that was the hardest part for me.
- [92:51]
Peter McCormack
And were you worried for safety?
- [92:53]
Naomi Brockwell
Absolutely. Absolutely. Especially when you watch these TV shows.
- [92:58]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, they're awful.
- [92:59]
Naomi Brockwell
It's just horrible.
- [93:00]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, they're awful. Gangs and violence.
- [93:03]
Naomi Brockwell
And that's another thing. Like, when I would get those, you know, emails, I would be relieved. Like, I would be constantly stressed out. Like, even though he was physically in there, I felt like I was physically in there because I was living day to day through him, but not. You know what I mean?
- [93:19]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. So it was like, it was a sentence for both of you. Obviously, his sentence is different because he's in prison, but your life equally.
- [93:26]
Naomi Brockwell
My life was on hold, just like his life was on hold but just we were in different places.
- [93:31]
Peter McCormack
Talk me through the kind of progression of time. Like, was it really slow to begin with? Or did the first month go quick? Or was the ending quick, like. Or did the whole thing.
- [93:40]
Naomi Brockwell
In the very beginning, it was very, very, very slow. But like I said, with Charlie's attitude, it helped a lot. And I just commend him a million times because I just can't even imagine being in the position that he was in, how positive he was. And that just what makes me fall in love with him even more, because he just. Nothing keeps him down, you know, and he's so inspiring that way. And in the beginning, it was very, very, very difficult because of the unknown. Like I said, it was just very hard when I wouldn't talk to him or I wouldn't hear an email or so forth. And then towards the middle, he was like, tell me more about his experiences, how he would have, like, a special dinner, like, you know, with the inmates and so forth. And so, because he sounded so positive, it made me feel a little bit more relief, and it made me feel like he was okay.
- [94:42]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [94:43]
Naomi Brockwell
I don't know if that was a facade to make me feel better or if he actually physically, you know, felt that.
- [94:51]
Peter McCormack
And then the last month and week, and.
- [94:54]
Naomi Brockwell
And then we were both counting down the days.
- [94:56]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [94:56]
Naomi Brockwell
Yeah. It was very, very, very, very slow.
- [94:59]
Peter McCormack
And the day he was released.
- [95:00]
Naomi Brockwell
Amazing.
- [95:01]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [95:02]
Naomi Brockwell
I'll never forget, my mom and I went to go pick him up, and he was literally in the middle of the parking lot with his box in his hand, and it had all his belongings in it. And I just. I melted down. I was like, oh, my gosh, he looks so cute. But I. And I felt so bad because we were late because of traffic, and he was like, I was afraid.
- [95:23]
Peter McCormack
You were late. You were late for his release for prison.
- [95:26]
Naomi Brockwell
It was traffic.
- [95:27]
Peter McCormack
That's such a typical woman thing to do. Right. But anyways, you were doing your makeup.
- [95:31]
Naomi Brockwell
We literally went to the gas station. Station. And he was like, I just want to burn these clothes. So we went to the gas station. I brought him a change of clothes. He changed into his clothes and got rid of his, you know, uniform, and off we went.
- [95:50]
Peter McCormack
All right, so this is the first time I've had to record so much. We've split it into two sessions, so. Morning, Charlie. So where we left off yesterday was you'd come out of prison, you'd burnt your clothes, and then you were going to a halfway house, and that was worse than prison.
- [96:09]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [96:09]
Peter McCormack
So fill in the gaps. For me there.
- [96:10]
Courtney Shrem
Well, in prison, you're. You're in a prison that's categorized by various security levels. You have camps, you have lows, mediums, maximums, super maximums. And then like Guantanamo Bay, where in a halfway house, you're bunched in with everyone. State and federal prison, all people living in a halfway house together. So you're with murderers and bank robbers and rapists and child molesters and everyone sounds terrible. The food is better, though.
- [96:39]
Peter McCormack
The food is better. But how does the halfway house operate? Is it. Is it just. It is just a house where you have a bedroom each.
- [96:45]
Courtney Shrem
It's like a. Usually like an old state prison. So it's pretty much another prison or it's like, it's like a crack motel in a really bad neighborhood. And the way it works is that it's a secure location, so you can't leave. And so the first week you get there, you're on lockdown. You just can't leave the place. And then after that, if you can get a job, then they let you go out for work. And then as long as you're working and being on time and stuff like that, when you get your first. Your first paycheck, usually two weeks later, when you get your first paycheck, you give it to them and then you get some of it back. But you give them the paycheck, you get some of the money back. And then. So you're basically working for free because you're. They're taking most of your paycheck to.
- [97:30]
Peter McCormack
Pay for the halfway house, to pay for whatever.
- [97:32]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, yeah, I don't know what it's paying for. And then you get, you get some money back, and then they start giving you, like, you can go home for eight hours, you know, a week, you have to go home for eight hours. And if you do that and you're successful and you show back up to the halfway house on time, the next week they give you. You go home for 12 hours. And then if that works out, the week after that you can go home for 24 hours. If that works out, then you go home for 48 hours and come back. And then after that, usually about like halfway through. So then you could actually move home 100% and then just show up to the halfway house twice a week for like a check in and a drug test.
- [98:14]
Peter McCormack
So it's like, it's like they're weaning you off the prison system.
- [98:16]
Courtney Shrem
That's what they do. Yeah, but you really need to have, like a job set up and a family and people, like, support you to make. Keep you out of, like, the. The whole criminal lifestyle world.
- [98:28]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [98:29]
Courtney Shrem
Very difficult. The most people end up going back to prison.
- [98:33]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, I guess for you it's different because you didn't really come from a criminal background. Whereas some of these people may have career criminals or they may be.
- [98:42]
Courtney Shrem
I have, like, a support system on the outside to help me get back into it. So I was able to, like, get back in and have a job. I worked at a restaurant as a dishwasher, ran food to a food runner, and it was a great job. I loved it.
- [98:55]
Peter McCormack
What was it like in the halfway house itself?
- [98:58]
Courtney Shrem
If you're. If you're looking in and you. You're just going from your regular life and then having to stay in a halfway house, it would be, like, crazy because you have to condition yourselves. But I was coming from prison, so I was like, all right, turn on prison mode back on. So I'm conditioned to it. So you have to adapt your body, you know, adapting to prisons the same way. When you're in there, you're like, what the hell is going on here? Like, how can I. How am I going to keep busy? How am I going to pass my time? How am I going to deal with these people? But our bodies are very good at adapting. So within a few days, you've adapted to the prison lifestyle, and you learn how to laugh and to have fun and how to enjoy your life again in that lifestyle. Some people can't. Some people get severely depressed, but you just gotta adapt it to the lifestyle. The thing is, you're so appreciative because you're not in a prison somewhere in the middle of nowhere. You're in the middle of a city. You're closer to your family. You can go out for work and the food's better. And it doesn't feel like you're in a prison anymore. And there's no guards, there's no COs in the halfway house.
- [100:04]
Peter McCormack
But doesn't that put you at more risk than if you're surrounded by kind of the worst criminals?
- [100:10]
Courtney Shrem
Other criminals go back in the halfway house system doesn't work. They should put you on house arrest instead. Or put an ankle bracelet on you and have you monitored in your home. Or you're out and about, like, through house arrest. That's how they should be doing it. Halfway houses don't work.
- [100:25]
Peter McCormack
But do people fuck with you in the halfway house as well? They're giving you shit.
- [100:28]
Courtney Shrem
Oh, yeah. Worse.
- [100:29]
Peter McCormack
Worse.
- [100:30]
Courtney Shrem
Okay, halfway out, it's a lot easier to get away with stuff. In prison, you have to be right. You have to be lucky every day. They just have to be lucky. Once in the halfway house, it's very easy to get away with stuff like drugs and cigarettes. Alcohol are blinging right there. But if they catch you, then you're screwed. Go back to prison. So it's very difficult. And also in the halfway house, the people there, they have a lot more. A lot less respect. Because when you're in prison, everyone has to have respect for each other. So there's like, this common respect. Like, you don't play loud music. You don't. You're not left if you're loud at night, you know, you get your ass kicked. And the halfway house, you have, like, murderers with people like me. So it's. There's no respect. Everyone does the. They want.
- [101:17]
Peter McCormack
What did you do? Just keep yourself to yourself.
- [101:19]
Courtney Shrem
Keep to yourself. They put me in a. They put me in a. In a room with bunk beds with a bunch of other people. There was one guy who. His name was Bones.
- [101:30]
Peter McCormack
He already sounds scary.
- [101:32]
Courtney Shrem
Sounds a really nice guy. We were talking, and he was a little standoff. He would learn how to, like, communicate with these people. You got. You gotta, like. You show up and you just don't say anything for a while. You let a few days go by and they see that you're, like, pretty normal. You're not like a child molester. You're not obnoxious, and you're not me. You know, you're not stupid and you have respect for them. And then eventually you can start communicating. After a few days, we started communicating, and I'd say, like, I'm going to the vending machine. Do you want anything? Or I say, like, when are you gonna shower? So I'll leave the room so you can change, you know, like, you just start offering respect. Respect, but not. You can't be, like, a wuss about it. You can't, like, be like, you're giving in. You got to just show respect. And you say, hey. I'll say like this, for example. Say, hey, I'm planning on taking a shower at 6. When are you showering? I'll leave the room for you. So I'm implying that I wanted to leave the room for me. Yeah, there's like a. You have to, like, do that. You got to be. You gotta stand your ground in prison. You can't give in. And it's not like, in a. In a mean and aggressive way. It's just be assertive. If there's anything you have to, you learn in prison it's being assertive. You have to learn how to be assertive, stand your ground, don't give in and don't whatever. And so in the halfway house, so this guy, like, I'll talk to him. I said, what do you do? Well, you know, we're just laughing one day and I was like, what did you know, what did you do? He's like, I robbed banks. I was like, really? Like, is that a. Like I thought that's like in movies. Like I don't actually did that nowadays. Were you good at it? I ended up in prison, but he was nice enough, but that room was still like they were much of obnoxious kids. Like when I mean kids like I was like 27 at that point. You had 19, 20 year olds and these, you don't want kids at a worse because they're, they feel like they walk like their don't stink and they're whatever. But eventually, because I was working a very stable job and my shift was in the morning and I was giving the halfway house their money, they moved me into this other room which had like six bunk beds, but it was only like half full, so only three of the beds were taken, including me and this bed, this room was called the workers room. And it was only for like the best behaved people in the halfway house and best behaved ones, the ones who worked really long shifts and whatever. And we had our own bathroom in, in that room. That was a pretty big deal. And so I was able to sleep really well and be to myself.
- [104:02]
Peter McCormack
And I guess you gradually did your time here in the halfway house. Got more and more time with Courtney.
- [104:08]
Courtney Shrem
Yep.
- [104:09]
Peter McCormack
Got more and more time to establish yourself. And then you get to the point where you're released from that.
- [104:14]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [104:14]
Peter McCormack
And how long were you having to still check into the halfway house? It was a six month program process.
- [104:20]
Courtney Shrem
From start to finish.
- [104:21]
Peter McCormack
So when that ends, what, what happens after that?
- [104:23]
Courtney Shrem
Eventually your release day comes and you go to the halfway house for the final checkout and then you're free. And then you, you have a probation officer in usually like in the capital city of whatever state you're in, he'll call you up, he'll just say you're on probation. These are the conditions of your release. Congratulations, you made it. Don't do anything, don't do anything stupid. Don't be any criminal, maintain your job if you can, and I'll call you in for random drug tests. And if you want to travel outside the state, let me know, okay?
- [104:55]
Peter McCormack
That seems kind of reasonable.
- [104:57]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, for most people it's reasonable.
- [104:59]
Peter McCormack
How long is that for?
- [105:00]
Courtney Shrem
Everyone's different. I had three years.
- [105:04]
Peter McCormack
Wow. So three years probation. You have the random drugs, tests, you're allowed to drink?
- [105:10]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [105:11]
Peter McCormack
Any other conditions? Weird conditions.
- [105:15]
Courtney Shrem
You have to report any communication with a police officer to your probation officer. So if you get a. If you get, like, pulled over for a speeding ticket, you got to let them know.
- [105:23]
Peter McCormack
Okay. And the probation itself is. Was it you said you got two months left now?
- [105:28]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, I have two months left.
- [105:30]
Peter McCormack
And what happens, say if you say. If something was to happen, Say you were to say you got drunk and got in a fight and got arrested, does that mean you've broken your probation?
- [105:39]
Courtney Shrem
That's a good question. The probation officers have a lot of leeway.
- [105:42]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [105:43]
Courtney Shrem
When it comes to this stuff. I've been had a. I have a pristine record for the past three years almost. And so if I were to fuck up and. Not that I would, like, into a bar fight, like you said, and I would immediately let him know, and I'm sure there would be some repercussions, but I don't think I'd go back to prison now if I took drugs. I failed the drug test. They give you one warning if you take drugs again, then you'd have to serve out the remainder of your probation in prison.
- [106:11]
Peter McCormack
Right. So that could have been three years at the very start.
- [106:13]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [106:13]
Peter McCormack
For now, it'd be a couple of months.
- [106:15]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [106:15]
Peter McCormack
It was quite interesting when we went out for dinner last night and hearing you talk about a real fear of any getting into any situation.
- [106:25]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, Yeah. I exit from situations if people are being loud, if I'm being loud, if there's. If anyone's looking at me, I need to exit the situation I don't like. I have a problem with police in general. So if there's a police boat coming down the canal or a police car driving by or looking at me the wrong way, I just immediately break out in sweats. I have this big problem. My therapist told me that I need to humanize the police. So if I can, I'm supposed to walk over to them and just start talking to them, ask them how their day is doing.
- [106:55]
Peter McCormack
You did that yesterday.
- [106:56]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [106:57]
Peter McCormack
When we saw the guy who was on the floor arrested, there was another police officer. And you said. You said hello to the police officer?
- [107:02]
Courtney Shrem
No, there was a police officer the other night in this, like, just in the street by the. By the bar we were at.
- [107:09]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [107:09]
Courtney Shrem
And we walked by and I was like, good evening, Officer. And I waved and he waved back. I'm supposed to do that. It makes me feel better.
- [107:14]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [107:14]
Courtney Shrem
Because there was a time where I couldn't even drive by. Drive by a police station. I couldn't, you know, I. I couldn't even walk into an airport. I really bad ptsd.
- [107:23]
Peter McCormack
Right. Okay.
- [107:24]
Courtney Shrem
Because I was arrested at an airport.
- [107:27]
Peter McCormack
Right.
- [107:27]
Courtney Shrem
Even nowadays, going to an airport still sets off like I'm not settled and comfortable. I can't be comfortable and. Which sucks because I used to love airports.
- [107:36]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [107:36]
Courtney Shrem
The energy in an airport is great. Everyone is always having a good time.
- [107:39]
Peter McCormack
I still and say with weddings.
- [107:42]
Courtney Shrem
Well. Yeah, there you go. You have pts. The same.
- [107:45]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. I can't. I've been to one wedding, two weddings since my breakup, and one I left early and the other I kind of stayed, but I just. I can't. I don't like them.
- [107:55]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [107:55]
Peter McCormack
They make me feel crap. If they're on the telly, I have to turn them off.
- [107:59]
Courtney Shrem
Really?
- [107:59]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. Have a very, very similar thing. I tried a therapy thing. It didn't really work for me, though. What for you?
- [108:07]
Courtney Shrem
You have to be someone who's. Who wears their emotion on their sleeves. It's easier. I'm a very emotional person and so when I go to therapy, I just let it all out because my. My thing is I got all these problems inside if I. With a good therapist. At least not the ones you see on tv, but like a good one. At least when you're talking to them, they're bearing the brunt of your problems now, at least. So it's like you're. You're offloading it a little bit. It helps.
- [108:32]
Peter McCormack
So you've got two months left.
- [108:34]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [108:34]
Peter McCormack
Once that two months passes, is there anything else that happens after that or is that it?
- [108:40]
Courtney Shrem
I'm still a felon.
- [108:41]
Peter McCormack
Of course.
- [108:41]
Courtney Shrem
Life.
- [108:42]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [108:42]
Courtney Shrem
I can't vote. Well, I actually got my voting rights back.
- [108:45]
Peter McCormack
Hold on. You can't vote if you're a felon?
- [108:47]
Courtney Shrem
No. In Florida they just. They just passed a law last year giving felons the right to vote back.
- [108:53]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. I think in the UK you can't vote whilst you're in prison. I'd have to double check that. But I think while you're in prison.
- [108:59]
Courtney Shrem
But once you can't own a gun. I can't ever do. Never. I can never do jury duty.
- [109:06]
Peter McCormack
That's kind of a bonus.
- [109:08]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, that's a bonus.
- [109:09]
Peter McCormack
Thanks.
- [109:09]
Courtney Shrem
I get the letter of the mail and it's like automatic disqualification. I'm a convicted felon.
- [109:13]
Peter McCormack
Nobody wants nobody Ever wants jury duty.
- [109:16]
Courtney Shrem
Now, do you have jury duty in the uk?
- [109:17]
Peter McCormack
We do. We do. I've never. I've never had it.
- [109:20]
Courtney Shrem
But how does that work?
- [109:21]
Peter McCormack
It comes in the post, and you have to do it as a civic duty. Is it civil duty? I think it's called a civic duty. And you have to do it unless you've got a good reason not to. So, for example, say you have a work trip booked and it's all paid for. You defer it. Oh, so you can defer it.
- [109:37]
Courtney Shrem
You can defer it to here.
- [109:39]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, but I've. No, I've never had it. I know it will come.
- [109:42]
Courtney Shrem
If you don't show up, they issue, like, a warrant out for you. Arrest, like a bench warrant.
- [109:46]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. I mean, yeah.
- [109:48]
Courtney Shrem
Like, the police won't go after you, but if you get pulled over a speeding ticket and they pull up your name, then you're gonna get arrested to show up to the judge and basically tell them why you didn't go to jury duty. It's just a pain in the ass.
- [109:59]
Peter McCormack
All right, so once your probation's done, there's a few things you can't do, but it's not. They're not that big a deal, right?
- [110:04]
Courtney Shrem
No. You can pretty much live your life. You leave the country, you can do whatever you want.
- [110:08]
Peter McCormack
Okay. Is that an important date to you?
- [110:11]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [110:12]
Peter McCormack
But do you think it will change anything?
- [110:13]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [110:14]
Peter McCormack
What? It will change mentally, because right now.
- [110:17]
Courtney Shrem
I'm still under the jurisdiction of, like, my life is being held, my balls are in someone else's hand. So right now, like, my life is in the hands of someone else. So if someone else doesn't, you know, probation officer doesn't like me, and luckily I've had really good ones, or if the judge doesn't like me, then I can do something. They can screw up my life. But for you, you don't have rights when you're on probation.
- [110:42]
Peter McCormack
Right. Okay.
- [110:42]
Courtney Shrem
You don't have due process, but they can pull you in for anything.
- [110:46]
Peter McCormack
It sounds to me, though, with you, that the punishment has been a deterrent for committing crimes in the future.
- [110:52]
Courtney Shrem
Which is for me or for other people?
- [110:54]
Peter McCormack
For you?
- [110:55]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, for me, of course. But was it a deterrent for other people, is the question.
- [110:59]
Peter McCormack
Well, it's not because some people don't care about prison. Right. Some people accept.
- [111:02]
Courtney Shrem
No, the point is that. That you can make the case that people go to jail as a deterrent for other people to commit the same crimes. It's not for you. Like, prison is supposed to be a deterrence for other people to do the same crime.
- [111:23]
Peter McCormack
But it isn't. I spoke to Lynn Ulbrich a lot about the US Prison system, and she's now her works become more than just about Ross.
- [111:36]
Courtney Shrem
Sure.
- [111:36]
Peter McCormack
She's become a campaigner against the US Prison system because she says it's really a business and it's. There's no real incentive to rehabilitate people because it's a. It is a business.
- [111:49]
Courtney Shrem
There's no rehabilitation that goes on in prison. There's like no vocational training. Yeah, there's no. I mean, there's a little bit, but nothing on a real level.
- [111:58]
Peter McCormack
But she was saying to me, the problem. There's two problems I remember telling me about.
- [112:03]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, there's a big lobby group. It's an industry. You have the guards, you have, and it's easier. It's just someone does something, you send them to prison. Have a nice day.
- [112:11]
Peter McCormack
But also, you get very cheap labor from the prisons.
- [112:14]
Courtney Shrem
Oh, yeah. So you're asking me what jobs you could do yesterday. And basically every prison has something called Unicore. And when I worked as like in landscaping, you earn like 80 bucks a month, which is a decent salary, education only on like 40 bucks a month. And Unicor, you can earn 3, $400 a month. Now, it's a lot of money in prison because you can only spend a hundred dollars or something a week in the commissary anyways. So if you're a billionaire on the outside, doesn't matter how much money you have, you still can't spend it. Everyone's the same. So when you work in Unicore, you actually have the ability to earn more money and then spend it in prison, at the commissary, whatever you want. Unicor is called Prison Industries, and basically that is. Is every prison has one or two or three. And they're basically factories where the inmates work for $300 a month. So $100 a week or whatever it is, or less than that, $80 a week. And they do things. So all the furniture you see at any federal building is built by a prison inmate at a prison. The computer systems, basically, it's all the labor that's being done for the federal government is being done by inmates.
- [113:29]
Peter McCormack
Kind of slave labor.
- [113:30]
Courtney Shrem
I mean, you tell me you can't leave. You're in the prison, you're being incentivized by better money. But they're not. The conditions aren't bad. Like, it's safe. People like working in Unicor. Inmates like it. It's Hard to get a job there. Like, it's not hard to get a job there, but it's hard to get the coveted ones. I had friends that worked in a. They worked in an upholstery factory for Unicor, and they just upholstered chairs and stuff you can work in. Basically. Like, you have to take apart old prison blackberries. Take apart old blackberries the government used to use 10, 20 years ago.
- [114:08]
Peter McCormack
Right.
- [114:09]
Courtney Shrem
Stuff like that.
- [114:11]
Peter McCormack
So how do you reflect on it all?
- [114:12]
Courtney Shrem
It's talking about it.
- [114:14]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [114:15]
Courtney Shrem
But pretty much.
- [114:16]
Peter McCormack
Do you. Do you hold, like, anger towards the government?
- [114:21]
Courtney Shrem
No.
- [114:21]
Peter McCormack
No.
- [114:22]
Courtney Shrem
No.
- [114:22]
Peter McCormack
You just accept it.
- [114:23]
Courtney Shrem
Accept it and move on?
- [114:24]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [114:25]
Courtney Shrem
You don't. You don't like to. You can't minimize your crime and you can't minimize your time. Because if I were to minimize my crime and say, oh, I, you know, I didn't do it, I shouldn't have been guilty, you're basically minimizing and you're wasting the time that you did. I serve time, so don't come to me and say, I hate people do this. They come to me to say, you got a bad deal. You shouldn't have been in prison. You. Your crime was stupid. I like, you know, don't say that. My crime was my crime. I did it. I served my time, so I'm moving on.
- [114:58]
Peter McCormack
I didn't expect to hear you say that. Yeah, Yeah.
- [115:01]
Courtney Shrem
I don't like when people minimize the crime. I did what I did. I accept it. So you should accept it. I did my time. Don't minimize my time. It's insulting. It's disrespectful.
- [115:11]
Peter McCormack
I hear what you're saying, but without having heard you have said that, I don't feel like you did commit a crime when you did it.
- [115:19]
Courtney Shrem
That's. It's your opinion, and I respect that, you know, but the end of the day, like, I did time. So by you saying that, you're basically saying, like, you just wasted your all those years and you shouldn't have did that. Now I came out a better person out of that time.
- [115:35]
Peter McCormack
Okay.
- [115:36]
Courtney Shrem
I've read a lot of books, and I reflected a lot about who I am. And so I don't look at that time as a waste. I look at the time as, like, personal development time. That I'm happy I did because I needed that I needed to become a better person. The quality of my life is a lot better now. So by minimizing the crime, it's saying that that whole thing was a big waste.
- [116:01]
Peter McCormack
Would you undo it or you Kind of glad you've had.
- [116:06]
Courtney Shrem
You know, that's a. That's a question I struggle with all the time. If I could undo my prison time, would I. I don't know, because I don't like who I was before. I'm a completely different person now. And if there would be a way for me to become the person I am today by not going to prison, then, yeah, I would never do it again. But I don't think that's possible because.
- [116:32]
Peter McCormack
I was telling you and Courtney over brunch yesterday about my divorce.
- [116:36]
Courtney Shrem
Sure.
- [116:36]
Peter McCormack
It's very similar in that it was the most awful experience. I lost nearly two to three years of my life with depression and feeling shit. The whole thing was awful. My company collapsed. I mean, it was truly dreadful. But I wouldn't be sat here right now doing this interview if that hadn't happened.
- [116:54]
Courtney Shrem
There you go.
- [116:55]
Peter McCormack
It set off a chain of events, which meant.
- [116:57]
Courtney Shrem
So you don't. You regret or you don't want that to have happened?
- [117:01]
Peter McCormack
No.
- [117:01]
Courtney Shrem
But you don't regret and you like where you are now?
- [117:05]
Peter McCormack
Well, what you said then, I didn't like who I was. I didn't like my job in advertising. I was really overweight. I had a drug problem that got out of hand. Eventually got out of hand. I thought. I thought I enjoyed my job because the company was successful, but what I realized I was doing was nothing of benefit. My job now is to travel around the world. My job was, for the last two days, was to hang out with you, go out on your boat, interview with you, get to know you, spend time with you. I mean, what an amazing job.
- [117:36]
Courtney Shrem
That's the best job.
- [117:37]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. So I wish I hadn't gone through all that, but I don't want to lose this. And I would. And I'm in a much better place because of it. So I understand what you're saying.
- [117:47]
Courtney Shrem
There's a better way for you to get. To have gotten to this point. You are now. Yeah, you would do it, but at the same time, you like where you are. So I like. I like where I am now sometimes.
- [117:57]
Peter McCormack
Maybe then what we need is something bad to happen to change our lives. It's like a shock to the system for a chance to refresh and reflect. And yeah, it's really interesting here you say that that's what.
- [118:09]
Courtney Shrem
When parents don't let their kids make mistakes and go through things, that's a problem because you should let. Your. Your kids need. Kids need humility training, especially when you're going from, like, the 18 to 25 year old years. You need like a big dose of humility training to, like, ground you.
- [118:27]
Peter McCormack
Like all the kids at that party yesterday.
- [118:29]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. All the kids at that party, none of them have been through anything more traumatic than running out of weed in one day. Like, that's literally the most traumatic thing they've ever had to deal with.
- [118:38]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [118:38]
Courtney Shrem
What trauma do they deal with? Nothing.
- [118:41]
Peter McCormack
Not getting picked for the football team.
- [118:43]
Courtney Shrem
Not getting picked for the football team. Everything in their life has been handed to them.
- [118:46]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [118:46]
Courtney Shrem
And so, you know, if that's how you want to live your life, that's fine. But you need. People in life are going to tell you no. And how you handle that is a big testament to who you are. If you've never been told as a kid and something that you've actually wanted and you've never been told no, and how are you going to take it when you're older?
- [119:06]
Peter McCormack
I think that's a good point to talk a bit about bitcoin, because we've barely talked about it, so we won't go too far because I think we both hungry and I'm going to set off for San Francisco too. But it'd be good to know what you think about the bitcoin space now because it's obviously very different from 2010. You've. You've seen it all and you've observed part of it. Well, I guess, I guess when you're in prison, were you observing what's going on? Did you have like a year and a half block?
- [119:35]
Courtney Shrem
No, I got a. Basically, like, my wife would email me some stuff going on, but I didn't want to hear about it.
- [119:39]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [119:39]
Courtney Shrem
Bet some people wrote me letters and stuff like that, and I have those letters, but I didn't want to hear about what's going on in the crypto world. But, but now, now I've resigned. Like, people have asked me, do you want to start a new company? Do you want to be the CEO? Do you want to be, you know, a thought leader? I'm like, no. You know, there are better people that can do that now. I've, I've done my, my time in that respect. I've earned my spurs. I'm happy with the legacy that I've created for myself in the crypto world. I'm happy with where I am. And so if I can resign myself to enjoy my life, do a podcast and then see what else comes along.
- [120:16]
Peter McCormack
But what do you make of the space right now? Because it's very different. There's a lot going on sure.
- [120:22]
Courtney Shrem
You're just a lot more people at different types of people. You've good and bad, pretty and ugly. And it's just a different community. I think, I think generally we're still on the right track to achieve that. That whole payment system that's not controlled by, you know, any third party. I think we're, I think we're, we're on our way for that. I'm still. There's no term for it. I am ideologically a bitcoin maximalist. Ideologically. But in reality I'm a capitalist too. So I'll trade and buy and sell and, and advise like different companies and projects, as long as they're not outright scams. But I tell these companies straight up. I'm like, yeah, this is a great experiment. I always call them projects. I tell them any project I advise or I work with, I say it's a project. Because I said there's a, there's a high, very high likelihood that this is not going to work out as a social experiment long term. So you may exist as a company, you may be profitable, your token holders may make money, whatever. Whatever. But from a sound money perspective, it's only bitcoin. Everything else is a scam. Especially Ripple.
- [121:33]
Peter McCormack
Especially Ripple.
- [121:34]
Courtney Shrem
Ripple. These scam.
- [121:35]
Peter McCormack
I've just been reading this morning about zcash2.
- [121:39]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, zcash y cash. Why all these other little scams?
- [121:42]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, I kind of got there. It took me a long time and I've wrestled with that. Well, it's capitalism. You can't tell somebody not what.
- [121:49]
Courtney Shrem
No, you can be a capitalist, but also beat ideologically Bitcoin. That's fine.
- [121:54]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [121:54]
Courtney Shrem
That's the beautiful thing that people don't realize about capitalism. I hate when someone says, I'm an anarchist, I'm a capitalist, I'm a libertarian. You need to listen to me. You need to. To only do this. You shouldn't. Like you. You need to, you shouldn't, you should. All these are like criminal lifestyle terms, like should, should statements. You're, you're shooting all over yourself. I tell people that's the whole opposite of. You call yourself a voluntarist or capitalist. That means as long as you're not stealing from someone, I'm gonna do whatever the hell I want and you have no right to tell me I can't.
- [122:29]
Peter McCormack
Maybe, maybe these scams are stealing from people.
- [122:32]
Courtney Shrem
Probably are.
- [122:33]
Peter McCormack
Yeah.
- [122:33]
Courtney Shrem
A lot of them are.
- [122:35]
Peter McCormack
So what's gonna come up for you next?
- [122:37]
Courtney Shrem
I don't know. I want to travel the world.
- [122:43]
Peter McCormack
Where do you want to go.
- [122:44]
Courtney Shrem
I want to go everywhere.
- [122:45]
Peter McCormack
Is anyone. There must. There's always places on top of your list, though. Like, I've got. I know there's places I want to go.
- [122:51]
Courtney Shrem
We've been to Cory and I have been to like 40 countries already.
- [122:55]
Peter McCormack
So somebody sent me a goal once. They said you should always try and go to as many countries as your age and then stay above that number.
- [123:01]
Courtney Shrem
Okay. So I'm above that number right now. I've been to about 40, and I'm 30 now. I'm almost 30 now.
- [123:05]
Peter McCormack
That's good.
- [123:06]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. So I got a little bit of a head start. But that's a great. That's a great. I love that.
- [123:09]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. So I've done my count. I haven't done it for a while. I need to do it because I've been. I went to Norway this year, which was new.
- [123:15]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, that one.
- [123:16]
Peter McCormack
I need to add that in.
- [123:17]
Courtney Shrem
I think layovers count if you don't leave the airport. I don't count it.
- [123:21]
Peter McCormack
So I don't think it does because I never had Dubai and I did a layover there for Mauritius. So I. But I still experienced the country.
- [123:30]
Courtney Shrem
But if you still leave the airport for eight hours, then you technically have been to that country.
- [123:33]
Peter McCormack
Of course. But if you're in. But then if you're in the airport, kind of technically you get a small experience. I once when we were in, I was traveling around America, driving from Yuma to San Diego. Just crossed the border into Mexico. Just a. To add it to the list, which, by the way, was a terrible idea. We got stuck in a big traffic jam with all this.
- [123:52]
Courtney Shrem
Oh, yeah, the border control is crazy.
- [123:54]
Peter McCormack
And all these weirdos coming up and down by the car. It was horrible. But. But then I always wrestle. Do I include Mexico or not? But I. I'm below. I'm below. I'm actually at a no, because I don't think I experience it. For me, you got to go and experience the country. So, yeah, I think I'm in about 37, but I'm 40. And my problem is because I come.
- [124:11]
Courtney Shrem
To America, I want to go back to you. I want to be able to freely travel around Europe, like, so I want to be able to go and just not have a. A return home ticket. I want to be able to just.
- [124:21]
Peter McCormack
Have you been to Ireland?
- [124:23]
Courtney Shrem
No, never been to Ireland.
- [124:23]
Peter McCormack
You got to go to Ireland.
- [124:24]
Courtney Shrem
Why?
- [124:25]
Peter McCormack
Well, so part of my ancestry is Irish. My father lives there. I think they're the nicest people in the world, probably. Yeah, they're more The. The Thai people, I'd like to go.
- [124:35]
Courtney Shrem
But I. I want to go during good weather.
- [124:37]
Peter McCormack
But that, that's. It's island. You don't.
- [124:40]
Courtney Shrem
You can't come in the summertime.
- [124:41]
Peter McCormack
Yeah. But if you go, you've got to let me know and I'll go meet you over there. But I will take you to what you need to go to a place called Galway. The mistake everyone makes is they go to Dublin.
- [124:48]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [124:49]
Peter McCormack
And Dublin's like. It's kind of just like New York or London with Irish accents. But you go to Galway, you get a really experience. Island. Italy. Even to Italy.
- [124:56]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, yeah, we've been there.
- [124:57]
Peter McCormack
Great.
- [124:57]
Courtney Shrem
Five or six times.
- [124:58]
Peter McCormack
Love that Of Italy.
- [124:59]
Courtney Shrem
My favorite city in the world is Vienna.
- [125:01]
Peter McCormack
Interesting.
- [125:03]
Courtney Shrem
Because I've been there so many times, so I feel like I know it, you know, when you go to a city so many times that you feel like you. You can get your way around, you know the neighborhoods, you know the streets, you know the layout, you pretty much can figure it out, you know, I like that when you travel to a city so much, then you start to know your way around. Like, I studied abroad in Florence, Italy, so now whenever we travel back there, I know my way around the city.
- [125:23]
Peter McCormack
Right, okay.
- [125:23]
Courtney Shrem
And that's a big thing when you know your way around the city without having to look at like maps or whatever.
- [125:27]
Peter McCormack
I'm kind of like that with LA.
- [125:29]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, LA. We're getting there. It's still LA. So big and sprawling, though. It's so difficult. I'd like to go back to Vienna during the winter time because it's really beautiful with the snow and the Christmas, you know, Christmas city. My best friend lives there and my wife and I have made friends with all of his friends. So we have a nice group of people that we're friends with that are there, which is great.
- [125:50]
Peter McCormack
You've done much of Asia.
- [125:52]
Courtney Shrem
When I was younger, I did. I went to. I went to Thailand, I went to Macau. I've been to China, Hong Kong. I'd like to go to Japan.
- [126:00]
Peter McCormack
Japan's incredible.
- [126:01]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah. Hawaii, but that's part of America.
- [126:06]
Peter McCormack
I've got Vietnam and Cambodia possibly this summer.
- [126:10]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, I kind of do. I want to go to those places, but I. But at the same time, like, they're not the super top of my list right now. Okay. I'd like to go to off the beaten path places too. Like we've been to Morocco.
- [126:23]
Peter McCormack
Cool.
- [126:24]
Courtney Shrem
I like to go back. Went to South Africa, the. Zambia, Namibia. We were down there, that whole region. Zimbabwe, the Southern Tip of Africa is great. I highly recommend everyone do that. We did that. I don't know. I want to do Europe a little bit more. I'd like to do the Trans Savair and railroad travel. I want to go to Russia court. Where do you want to go? Why, that's in America, though. What I really want to do is I want to go to, like, the Virgin Islands and, like, rent a yacht and travel around.
- [126:58]
Peter McCormack
That would be cool.
- [126:59]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah.
- [126:59]
Peter McCormack
That's life goals.
- [127:01]
Courtney Shrem
Yeah, that's what I want to do, too.
- [127:03]
Peter McCormack
All right, man. Well, listen, look, thank you for the invite over. Thank you for having me in your house.
- [127:09]
Courtney Shrem
Thank you for coming. It was our pleasure.
- [127:10]
Peter McCormack
It was great. It was a. In some ways, it's probably my most enjoyable interview.
- [127:15]
Courtney Shrem
Thank you. Kind of say that to everyone.
- [127:17]
Peter McCormack
No, I don't. I do say I have a lot that I enjoy, but I think you. I think what happens is I see this as a craft, as a career and something I'm trying to forge and get better at and. And coming and spending a couple of days with a guest, you know, before an interview, I think it changes it. It changes the way I approach it and changes. It gives me new questions, it gives me new considerations, and it's. It makes me almost want to do the certain other people I'm going to want to interview and do it like this and go spend more time with them.
- [127:45]
Courtney Shrem
But it's a nice place here.
- [127:46]
Peter McCormack
It's cool. But thank you. Thank you to your beautiful wife as well, for having me in, your lovely but annoying dog, for jumping on me constantly and licking my feet, for taking me out, meeting your friends and just all your hospitality. It's been amazing. I do consider you a friend now.
- [128:01]
Courtney Shrem
Thank you. Let's go eat some breakfast.
- [128:04]
Peter McCormack
Yeah, let's go get some breakfast. Thanks, man. Take care.
- [128:10]
Charlie Shrem
Okay. What did you make of that? Pretty fascinating, right? So I'll try and keep this as short as possible because it's a long interview. I did a long intro, but I think this was also my longest interview yet. But it's a great story. There was so much to talk about. And you know what? There's a bunch of stuff we didn't get into. And I, without doubt, will record with Charlie again one day. Surprisingly, we ended up not talking about bitcoin too much because there was so much other stuff to talk about related to his sentence and imprisonment and what happened and how he felt. But it was really cool to see Charlie so relaxed, you know, after spending 18 months in prison and then three years on parole, and seeing how he reflects on it, it's really interesting, especially his response to people. He thinks he didn't deserve it. You know, he thinks that takes something away from him. He served his time and that's important to him. And a lot of this aligns with some of the things I discussed with Lynn Ulbricht about the US prison system and the impact on Ross and some of the weird ways the US prison system works. And also it's great to meet and talk to Courtney and hear her side of the story. It's only a short part of the interview and it was very emotional but it was really good to hear her. And I just want to say a massive thanks to them. Their hospitality was amazing. I stayed at their house. They really looked after me for a couple of days. Had so much fun. And yeah, I've probably become friends for life. So yeah, big thanks, Charlie, Courtney, crazy dog. Thank you so much. And yeah, I hope you enjoy the interview. If you do want to discuss it and reach out to me, my email address is hellohatbitcoin didt. Com. I'm not going to do all the stuff about how you can support the show. I do it every week. If you want to listen to that for some God knows reason, you can go check out an old show. But if you are interested, there's a section on my website. What bitcoindid.com Click on the sports section. That will tell you that. Yeah, my U.S. trip is onto the final couple of legs. Like I said, down to la, then I'm off to Boulder, Chicago, then Boston and home. So a few more interviews to do then back to England before planning my next, my next journey out here. Anyway, thank you to everyone who supports the show. Love you all. See you later.
- [130:04]
Courtney Shrem
Ra.