All right. Look, let's say you bring in a family out for a meal, right, and then let's just say it's Italian and you have this large Italian style gathering. Everybody's got a bucket of pine a gallon of alfredo to pour on top of it. But that's not all. You also get a little bit of bread with that, because when you're at the Daily Show, your family and this podcast is the unlimited bread sticks that takes a satisfying family meal to the next level. Welcome to beyond the Scenes where today we're gonna be talking about Florida. Florida God's waiting room. It's home to theme parks, the Everglades, your people, and of course Florida man report before committing a sexual act on a tree, yelling he was a scolar, trying to start a fire with spaghetti sauce karate kicking those. Every week there's a new headline out of Florida wild shocking, unnecessarily sexual masturbating at a bus stop, told police he was Captain Kirk Kerk. But have we ever stopped to ask the question why something's happening to men in Florida? And it can't just be a coincidence. As a future Pulitzer winning journalist, it's my responsibility to uncover the truth, to reveal what lies beneath the swamp, to answer the question what makes a man Florida man? Florida, Florida Man, Florida Florida Man. That's right, we're talking America's favorite hero, Florida man, a k a. People going buck wild down there in America's penis showing up on the local news then going viral. Later on, we're gonna be joined by journalists and author Craig Pittman. But first I'd like to bring on two of the folks who brought this Florida Man peace to life. Daily Show producer Sebastian Denatal. How are you doing good, sir? I'm doing great, thank you, and extremely offended by that olive garden Italian slam at the beginning of this podcast, but otherwise I'm doing extremely Sorry to insult the food of your people. Penne, I don't know how you say it, but it's Penney. I'm from Alabama. We call it pay see. And then the other voice you here is my fellow Southerner who's about to come on right now and half my back Daily Show correspondent, but more important, Kentucky bluegrass runs through her blood. Daisy Lighting, how do you pronounce pina? I also pronounced that pena, but I also roy not to correct you or embarrass you, but it's Kentucky. So I'm going to start to part Pardon me. I am so prepared now for the people who don't have the Internet. And let me preface it by saying this. You know Sebastian as a field producer, like it's one thing to go out and cover the piece, but you have a way. I don't know how to this, like the most pec way, but you you like it's in your heart when you go out to like gather these pieces and this information. It's like, no, We've got to talk about it because they don't understand. We have field meetings where we pitch and talk about stuff, and Sebastian comes in with the level of emotion like, look these people in Florida. I'm telling you we gotta do something about him. So for the people who don't have the Internet, Sebastian, who is Florida man? And what was the segment all about? So I like to do field pieces that are a little bit more abstract and don't necessarily have like a good guy bad guy dynamic that a lot of our field pieces do so well. And I had this idea for this Florida Man theory piece for quite a while, and I was trying to pitch it correctly and trying to get the tone right. And then, as chance would have it, Trevor wanted to do this floor it a week for the show where he would do shows from Florida. And it was kind of the perfect confluence of my this piece that I wanted to do for a while, and a reason to do it, because normally we try to do pieces that are at least somewhat relevant to what's going on or uh, you know, a current event. And so since this was set we had a whole week of shows in Florida, I was like, well, this might be a good opportunity for this piece. And so the idea for the piece was I I'm like an internet junkie. I I'm a big time lurker. I'm on all the chat rooms and websites, and so there's tons of d M very inappropriate well, you know, and one of the memes that has been around for as long as I can remember is this Florida Man meme. Uh, there's like a Twitter account which is this spot that basically can aggregate Florida Man stories. Their subreddits dedicated to them, and they were just and they've been around forever. I worked on The Old Show with John and we were doing Florida Man act ones way way back when, so it was definitely not a new phenomenon. But I think at the time, you know, Trump had gotten elected and there was just kind of this resurgence of really really crazy stories, especially coming out of Florida, and I just wanted to do a piece that kind of explored not and this is in the piece, but not who is Florida Man? But why is Florida Man? Why do we hear about these stories so much? And that was kind of the impetus for uh starting the piece. It's this mysterious big Foot type thing because there isn't a Kentucky Man, a Kentucky Man man. The only thing I think comes close is Texas, where you just go Texas, but Texas just kind of covers everybody as a whole. Like this is very specific. It's like it's Florida and it's men. We're screwing up as a former Florida resident. What are the qualifications Daisy to be a Florida Man, Because you know, I lived in Florida for five years for college shoutout to Tallahassee. But I like, do you have to be super stupid or is it just inherently down that because you're in Florida you're automatically an idiot? Well, I think what we learned from our expert that we got to sit with, Craig, is that there's there's a lot more underneath it. There's a lot going on in Florida, and there's a quite a few reasons why we see those headlines so often. But I think it usually involves a gator um, something illegal usually beer, and something unnecessarily sexual. Usually every Florida Man story has all of those elements right accurate. But no, I think, like, um, my favorite pieces that that I get to do on the show are pieces where we think it's about one thing and then somewhere in the piece we discover it's about something else entirely. So we kind of go into this piece with our envisioning these you know, Florida Man memes and think that we're going into kind of poke fun at Florida men, and then quickly realized like, there's a lot more underneath it. There are a whole list of reasons for why we see these headlines in the news, but most importantly, towards the end, we we discover the Sunshine Act Um and we end up kind of landing in this place of you know, it's it's not just that these things are happening in Florida, but we are hearing about them a lot more in Florida because of the Sunshine Act. And really there's a little bit of Florida man everywhere, which I didn't know coming into it. So that's I mean, that was my favorite thing about that piece, Or is this nice arc discovery that people aren't really talking about. I want to go back, Sebastian to what you said a little bit earlier about you liking to live in an abstract, which is true. You did one of my favorite pieces on the show that I mean, of course, every piece that I'm in is my favorite, but one of the favorite pieces that I was not in um you RUnni Chang and you had running in the Uma Thurman kill Bill two Yellow what was it? The nun nun Chucks were illegal Firstly, yeah, yeah, yeah, we did like a kung Fu movie basically for a piece that's very tertiarily about kung Fu. Hey, is it a little weird that I'm playing this guy? He's like super white running. If a white guy doesn't, it's problematic. It's cultural appropriation. If you do it, it's fine, is it? Honestly? I don't know, Okay, whatever, let's fight. So with this piece, you went into it creatively with this true detective angle. Talk to me a little bit about that production style and when you're actually sitting down with these actually because you all want to talk to actual Florida men who have been the focus of news stories, while at the same time you're trying to have this conversation but also trying to frame it in a way that the viewers haven't seen before so that they can at least feel like they're getting something, you know, a little different. Totally. I I am a hack when it comes to originality or creativity, and I truly consider myself just like bound to parody as much as I can be, because uh, everything's been done all the time so much better than I can do it. And so rather than trying to reinvent or recreate something I lift from a lot of things, and so for this, we were going into it with a True Detective vibe. The first season had been out for a couple full years, and I loved the first season of True Detective. Originally I had pitched this. I don't know if you remember Roy, but this is with you and Desi. Roy was the Woody Harrelson type character and Desi was the Matthew mcconoch character and that, and I was so jazzed about it. And you know, in one of the pitch meetings, Trevor was like, that's great. I don't think we need Roy for this. DESI can do all of this. Not to mention, there's gonna be so much stuff here, you won't have time for both of them doing those games as well as the Florida Men. And he was absolutely right. And I'm glad that we just did did it with Desi because we wouldn't have had time for exploring your guys relationship and all that stuff. But to your point, I loved how True Detective was filmed, and I just I was a big fan of that first season especially, and so I wanted when I go into pieces, I like I have an idea for what I wanted to look like and feel like. And our DP on this, who's an amazing DPS my good friend Joel Adler at incredible cinematographer. He so I basically showed him shots from True Detective and things that I liked from that show, and he was able to basically recreate it almost to a t. Uh. And so when you're trying to replicate that, it's it's great if the audience knows what you're doing, like, oh, this is like a True Detective thing, that's great. Um, But it's equally as satisfying if they don't and they're like, this is really interesting and cool. But at no point do I ever want people to think I came up with any of these artistic or esthetic choices. These are all other geniuses that I'm just trying to replicate. So that was the idea for Florida Man, because there was a lot of similarities between these Florida Man stories and True Detective, which is horrifying because that shows about of a psychotic serial killer. But yeah, that's kind of how I went going into it. And uh, yeah, I'm I'm all of the elements technically that made this really work. Were all of the things that were really out of my control. And as a testament to our team Joel Dasi acting obviously, our editor Nick Johnson was incredible and brought so much great ideas to make it work. Uh. And then not to mention, you know, our segment producer Matt got so many of those bookings. One of our camera people down there, Kelly was he had all these locations in mind. So it was a true team effort to really pull this off. And I think as a testament, you can tell how good or bad a pieces based on how many people are on board providing or contributing their art, And for this one, it was like a full team effort and I think it shows it's just it's my favorite people is that you know this. We're not the local news. It's not just a reporter and a cameraman and go like this is miniature, full short film production type ship going on here. DESI, when you were talking with these people, how much did it feel like to you? Because the question we always get his correspondent, are the people you're talking to in on it? Where? To me, it's never been that that style of conversation. It's just tell me your truth and we're gonna have a conversation about the way you see the world. But within that, did any of them realize what they were saying or do you feel like they felt like, well, maybe I shouldn't be talking to the Daily Show. I don't think so. I think all of them were extremely confident in their Florida man nous. I think they felt really good about who they are and what they had to say, and that makes it so much fun for us. Like I mean, for me, it was like the perfect cocktail of Sebastian being so specific about his vision of what this piece would look like, the style of it and the tempo of it, in the mood, and then casting all of these great, really genuine and authentic and very funny characters to just do their thing. All I had to do was step up and just listen and react to all of it and play straight person. It was like, I mean, you know, that's which for this was not an easy test to do. I mean Daisi's credit, I was throwing her into these situations with these a lot of the times actually crazy men, and there were it was not the amount of uh straight faced nous that des he had to perform for this is astounding compared to what these people were talking about off camera and on camera, So that was no easy. This is where Nick comes into play, because Nick could edit out all of my breaks and mental breakdowns in between each shot. But no, I got that alligator man. I'm sorry, but he was. He was just the greatest. He's been hit with charges after pictures in this video showing him handling an alligator which he posted, we're seeing by law enforcement. A real name Jordan Bedford, but I go by the alligator man. Okay, um alligator man. What's the common factor among all Florida men were all different? Well, I'm I'm different from the rest because I do the wrong thing in the right way, if that makes sense. No, no, so you're not for Florida, so you don't understand my language what I'm talking right now. But I do. I do the wild things. Anything you think of, I'll probably do it. Anything. I catch gators, anything. We're not anything, but basically anything. He was definitely my favorite to this day. Wonder what he's up to. I almost left my family, but he wouldn't have me. I thought that costa and I got kind of the short end of the stick when they were assigning Florida field pieces for Florida Week, because we have to cover the green algae. Yeah, I remember that. Well, there it is a dead fish. It's pretty gross. What was the smell like to you? It smells like dead fish. And we rode a boat into some of the algae plumes and like our eyes were watering, and she like, we planned to be there thirty minutes and like ten minutes and we were like, I think we got everything we need. Let's let's get out of here. How what was the worst part of your shoots? Because I noticed that a lot of yours were outdoors Costa and I at least had a couple of indoor situations. Yeah, it was hot. It was really hot. It was I can remember sweating just and I am not I know, I'm from the South. I am not a lady when it comes to heat and sweat. I was dripping into like sweating profusely. And for some reason, I chose to wear a black part wool suit in the in the ninety degree weather with that humidity, in the middle of an orange grove. Yeah, that was I mean, that's partially my fault because I wanted to look. I wanted to be this kind of like a detective detective and that Yeah, that day was so hot. And Craig will tell you, uh, the guy that's on the show later because we were interviewing him. We wanted to be at outdoors because we had an orange grove available to shoot in very Florida and Droll is really good at working with natural light. But man, that was so hot. I needed to, like between takes, like go into the car cooled down a little bit. We all were running into this tiny pickup truck just to get like a little taste of the a C and then run back into the field. At one point, we're in the middle of filming towards the end, and I looked down in my sweat stain on my chest just like grew to about this size. It was it was a problem. It was very hot. And then do you remember, Steve, you came up with this. We were we were clearly going for this true detective, very noir feel, and at some point were like, DESI should smoke JSI should smoke cigarettes during this piece, and I thought, yeah, that's that's a great idea, and I'm going to commit, like I'm really going to show them that I'm a smoker, and I really committed to it all the way through. I'm coughing, I can't breathe. At what point, said, did you decide that's let's DESI, let's put the props down and not do that anymore. Well, I I we got the one shot of you smoking I needed. But I was definitely like, there were a lot of suspect props. We had unpasteurized orange juice that we were gifted from an orange grove that I was like, DESI just start chugging this orange juice on camera and just fresh fresh. I have a field. So there were a lot of questionable props and probably dangerous things that not to mention, you know, uh putting DESI in like the mid of nowhere with this pirate man that had guns and knives on him. Wait, but he was also a landscaper. He was also a landscaper though, the pirate who was also a lands Yeah, oh, I missy, I am Captain Silky super tips cool and you're pirate. Well, I'm a pirate most of the day. When I'm not, I'm a landscaper. I I think the to your point, uh, Roy, I think the big draw of Florida men is that they a lot of them want and like notoriety, and two of our guys kind of were like all three of them were kind of like that, but um our first guy, Robbie was definitely more on like the I don't know how much of this I can talk about, but Jordan's the alligator man and Jamie the landscaper pirate were very like, they loved it and they want They talked to us forever and we had to be like, all right, that's good. So they were really willing and we didn't have to you know, co coax them or feed them, you know, any type of direction to go to, because they were just all in from the beginning absolutely well. After the break, we're gonna be talking with a man from Florida. That's there, you go, that's the appropriate way to separate the two. There's Florida man. But then we're gonna talk to a man from Florida who's a journalist and the author, and I feel like he knows Florida the way Miami knows cocaine. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back beyond the scenes. We are back. We're talking about Florida Man. We already have Dasi lighted and Sebastian Dina Tal in the chairs joining us now is a Florida Man, not the Florida Man. He's a man from Florida who doesn't do Florida man ship. You understand what I'm trying to say right now, journalists and author of the state You're in Florida Man, Florida Women and other Wildlife. He's an expert witness who was featured in the original segment that DESI did. Craig Pittman, welcome to beyond the scenes. Thanks for having me now when we talk Florida. And this is the thing that I learned when I was at Florida A and M for college up there in the Panhandle. The Florida that people think kind of happens south like Orlando and all points south. That's postcard Florida, that's TV Florida Panhandle was kind of a different field, like where where in Florida are you from? Are you from North Florida, South Florida, and split that ship up like the dakotas well. I'm from Pensacola, but I now live in St. Petersburg, so I've been on both sides of that line. And I think it's I think it's more of a coastal versus inland thing. You know, people people see the postcards. They think, you know, it's all beaches everywhere, and they don't realize, Oh wait, you know there's cattle ranches and uh you know, lumber mills and uh, you know, crazy people doing stuff at the at the liquor store that people trying to sneak until more stables in Ocalla, all of that area. Anna, you've been Highway ninety on me right there, Florida. I know all of that ship Baby Walton Beach destined Florida balla. So let me let me start with this. Daisy Sebastian kicked back and watch two Florida boys kicking for a second at it. Why are these New York elites always coming for a stop Because they envy us. They want to be us, They want to have that freedom. That's why they want to be able to act on any Florida cocaine and then judge Florida. Yeah, exactly, it's all. It's all. It's all hating. They're just hating because they're Indianist, man. That's all it is. But in all seriousness, what is it that makes Florida seem crazier than the rest of America? Like, is that is that reputation justified? Or is it really that much crazy? Yeah? Oh heck yes, oh definitely. Listen. My basic principle is you find weird stuff happening anywhere you find humans, but more of it happens in Florida and attend is to be weirder. Um. And I think that's because we have certain elements here that you don't find anywhere else. We've we've undergone this wrenching demographic change where you went from the least populated southern state in nineteen forty to now being the third most populous state. And everybody's kind of crammed into this thirty mile wide swath along the coast and along the I for where the theme parks are. Uh, you know, we've got this, you get these weird elements to the state where we've got you know, this invasive python population eating everything in sight in the Everglades. We've got actually have people who are professional mermaids making a living as state employees in Florida, which you don't find in any other state. Um. Iguanas falling from trees when they were they show up in toilets, to um. I mean, the crazy stuff just happens here all the time, and people in Florida who've been here for a while, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's just you know, that's just Thursday. Man. You know, I can't remember section if it was you a Daisy earlier that was talking about the sunshine laws. But can you go into that a little bit more for us? Sure? So, uh, you know, I read Craig's book Oh Florida for this in preparation for this piece, because that was like my bible for a lot of this because it basically had thank you it had. It was like also the first nonfiction book I had read it like ten years, so I was really just absorbing all this new information. Did it still feel like fiction? Though? It did? What it did? Absolutely? I was like, there's no way. But Craig really broke down very nice and neatly all of these factors, like the ones that he just said, and the one that stuck with me the most was and Craig will also tell you it's certainly not the the the reason we kind of elevated it for the piece too, you know, and the piece basically because we needed an ending. But the Sunshine Act, this law that Craig could probably speak to a lot better than I, basically allows for a ton of this transparency in Florida when all these misdemeanors or uh sometimes felonies happen, where a lot of peep journalists especially can go and get these records of these incidences incidents very easily. And that's the the amount of Florida Man stories because you talk about, like we do this whole montage in the beginning and the end of all of these stories. We didn't have to, like, we didn't have to make up any of these stories because they were so each just googled Florida Man stories finding like literally like dozens to hundreds of headlines on camera anchors reading these stories, it was clear to me and us that like the Sunshine Act definitely plays a part in why these stories are so accessible and talked about. Because after doing the peace and after researching it more, I realized not a ton of other states, almost no other states have as expansive um trans parents the laws about these types of misdemeanors. So that was for me a nice button to kind of put the whole piece together, which is, you know, there's weirdos everywhere, like Craig was saying, but I think in Florida, all of these factors plus this idea of complete transparency just really tickled me as a really nice way to summarize why this kind of person is so rampant. Craig, I am about twenty years out of you know, last pain Rent in Tallahassee, but I remember distinctly in the corner stores. I don't remember what it was called, but it was like the crime paper and the Okay. So, like, I don't know of another state that just publishes mug shots for just random misdemeanors and solicitation of prostitute. You caught me with the crumb of myth. Like, does that pulling into it as well in normalizing that behavior your for locals? Uh? Somewhat. I mean, you know, obviously somebody figured out, hey, we can use the Sunshine Law and make money off of it by publishing these these little raddy pulp mag's full of the latest mug shots because people will buy it and go, oh yeah, it's Mr Johnson. I knew he was up to something you know. Um, but um, there's been a sort of an ethical debate about that too, where there were there were some newspapers that were making money off of running mug shot websites. And then there started to be a sort of a backlash to that of saying, you know, well, a lot of these folks they just got arrested, they haven't been convicted of anything, you know, and these mug shots are gonna be there for a while. Do you really want to highlight that? And so the people started pulling back on that. Let me just respond to Sebastian real quick though, that that, yeah, the sunshine law is a reason why a lot of this these stories wind up coming to light. But after Florida passed at sunshine laws, some other states passed similar laws. You don't see weird stories to the volume of Florida's coming out of those states. I mean, we would just we are you know, we produce more weirdness than we produce orange juice. Basically, the Florida is a weird place though, man Like, it's this weird intersection of retirees, tourists, um, a lot of image, a lot of immigrants, locals, and then you just have like regular agriculture people, Like, there's certain states like Nebraska's for for fucking farming. That's what we're here to do. That's one of those boring square states, you know that how can the heck can they be fun? So there isn't this convergence of different agendas, not to mention droves of it's where Nickeloni the fact that nickelonions Viacom property, which we love very very much. Please watch the Pawl Patrol movie on Paramount Plus. But like, I'm bewildered by so many different things all happening in that place at the same time. Like, is there a way to decrease these types of incidents? No? In fact, I think going to continue to increase as the population continues. This will despite our efforts to kill people off with COVID. That is um the you know, the our population just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And we have you know, we have like a hundred million tourists coming every year too, on top of the regular residents. So and again they're all kind of crammed into that same narrow area. So and people come here with these expectations too if they feel like Florida is a place to get to have a second chance to start over and you know, make some of the same mistakes they made before and maybe maybe make some new ones. So that contributes to it as well. To that point, to uh, Craig, I think our pirate silky silver tips, that was actually his story. He was like he was a transplant, even though he kept saying like he was. He kept talking about being like born and raised in Florida and then immediately says, well, I'm a transplant. But that was Chicago. But the other point that I thought was really cogent and part that I wanted to try to make a big centerpiece for this particular piece is the mental health issue. And we even get our first I mean our first Florida man willingly tells us like Daisy asked, what do you think it is? And he just says, right off the bat, unprompted mental health issues. Isn't there something that all Florida men share. There's something behind it mental health issues. Then in the piece we get you to elaborate on that, Craig, that Florida has one of the worst I think mental health We consistently rank forty nights among the States and spending on mental health, which I can only say, thank God for Texas. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that that's probably if you wanted a really quick, ten second Florida Man piece, that's probably It's that there's almost no mental health resources and a lot of these people need those resources. Yes they do. Yeah. So then to that point, DESI, when you were down here talking to these people in like I've often felt like, when you go and cover pieces of correspondent and then you go back and you become a consumer of media again. On the other side of that, it can sometimes change how you view people, Like do you think that the people that are in these Florida Man stories and that are highlighted every day in media are they victims of circumstance or are they mental health? Are they dealing with addiction issues? I'm no expert. Craig is certainly the expert, but it seems like there are all of those issues at play. I think the stories the men that we talked to down there were certainly wacky characters, without a doubt, But I think in the booking process we were also pretty conscious of finding subjects that did not have horribly dark stories in their in their past. So you know, we're we didn't want to be making Florida men who have mental health issues or addiction issues the butt of the joke. Instead, I think we tried to you, very specifically book people who had funny stories who kind of were just like a victim of their circumstances, and then also on top of that, start a little bit of a conversation of the problem in the way that the media was portraying some of these headlines in these stories. I think part of the joke was also on, you know, journalists being kind of the hero of their own stories and the way that they were covering all of this. Yeah, daisise whole like b plot with us. She wanted to win a bunch of like Pulitzers for this. Well, it's coming. It's coming. I haven't yet, but we have some time Part two. So Craig to that point, like some police departments post Florida man stories in the way, Hey look who we arrested. This guy was doing some wacky, wacky wacky ere We got them. Everybody laugh in the comments. Make sure you like and review our police Department podcast. Lake. Is there a change in the perception that's horrifying. I didn't realize that's the real thing. Oh yeah. Well, and the funny thing, they actually caught a guy because he came in and made comments on their Facebook posting about him and was haunting them, and so then they were able to track him down and arrest him and he became a Florida manswering. Well, after the break, we're going to talk about where we can go going forward with this issue, or do we just need to soft Florida off or will global warming solve this problem for us beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. You know, we could just wake this ship out. You never know, just a matter of time. We're talking Florida man, Florida men's. A group of Florida men together is called a god damn. I don't know if you knew that or not. I'll notify websters. More than three Florida men together is called y'all. More than five is a god damn. Craig, I think it's called a jail technical Sebastian as a non Floridian, do you think it's fair that Florida is a punching bag or it's earned? Yeah, you know, I think it's fair that it is a punching but I mean, I'm from New Jersey, so I get the idea. Florida the North. No, no, no, it's very very different. But I I will say, I I guess punching. But it really depends on how you approach and view these stories. Obviously, if there's a mean spirited, um shot and Freuda element to people enjoying these a lot of the times horrific stories, I think that's very problematic and that's not what we wanted to do with this piece. We try to approach it with empathy but also a type of light heartedness because a lot of these stories are pretty lighthearted for the most part. There are some that are incredibly dark um and we didn't want to focus on those, and I think that you didn't. You didn't want to focus on the myth band biting faces off in mind. Yeah, yeah, we're still this comedy and eating someone's face under a bridge and the afternoon. Although to a point, I do think that Florida people and Craig could probably confirm or deny this. There is a sense of not pride, but there is a sense of yeah that is us, kind of like we are that insane and crazy and colorful and caricature e And I think that a lot of the times they lean into that. So it's kind of, uh, it's I think it's a celebration of that. I might be way off, Craig No, no, I think there's a there's a split. I have some friends who like me, or Florida natives, who every time they see some wacky story come out nationally, they're like, oh God, please don't let it be Florida. Please don't let it be Florida. And of course it's always it's always Florida. There's always some Florida element. Like the woman in New Jersey who was getting on the plane with the emotional support peacock. The peacock was from Florida. I mean, there's always some Florida aspect to it. But then there's others. And this is my point of view, which is, you know, let your Florida freak flag fly, and you know, be proud of the fact that we are the most interesting state. You are never bored here. You know, it's not like one of those square states where you you know, you turn on the news every day, it's the same thing day after day. Here, you know, you open the paper. You turn on the US You're like, Wow, a guy punched a swan today. Okay, we are the most interesting state. I think that should be our slogan, not Sunshine State because it rains here so much. It's just it's not funny, but the most interesting state. I think we can defend that one. How incendiary though, is it for outsiders to attack Florida and make fun of Florida and make Florida man jokes, which, to Sebastian's point and to your point, even makes people where that difference with a sense of pride to the point where they become contrarian. You know, when you look at what's happening right now in Florida with just anti vaccine and well first anti masking, then anti vaccine, how much of that is just people being defiant to the people that have been making well, you were going to make fun of us anyway, so I'm gonna do what I want to through you. Well, I think that's the tapping into this. You know, Florida has always had this really strong libertarian streak. Uh, you know, we don't want the government telling us what to do. We were we were an open range state long after any of the Western States. I mean until ninety nine, you don't have to fence your cattle here. Uh, you know, so um, you know, it's like so so you know, de Santis has really tapped into that and and tapped into that, which is ironic because he's the government telling people what to do, which is you can't tell people what to do um about masks. So uh, he's managed to do a nice little jew political jiu jitsu move on on the situation there. But some of it too is you know, there are people here who are just that wacky that they're like, yeah, I think I'm not gonna take the vaccine, but I am definitely gonna get me some d wermer medicine from the from the from the from the horse farm people. Uh. Do you think that everything that happens in Florida is it Florida problem or an American problem? Or is it just the Internet making things seem worse than what they are? Probably all of the above. I think the thing that I loved about the piece so much, and like Sebastian said, we definitely highlighted this probably more than you could factually say that this is the entire reason, but that the sunshine law really gave me a new perspective on what was happening in Florida and that it's it is talked about more because of that law. We just happened to see those headlines a lot more, and that these things are happening all over the country. So I think when there are huge issues all over America, you want to go like, oh, this is a Texas problem or this is a Florida problem. Uh and and yeah, there are certain challenges that exist there, but it's also really opening up a larger conversation of what's happening all over the country and if they aren't addressed there locally, they become bigger problems all over the country. Um So yeah, I mean, Craig is the expert on that. But well, we've we've got a writer here named Tim Dorsey, who I like a lot, and one of Tim's lines is Florida is the pace car for national dysfunction, which I think is a pretty accurate. That's incredible, Craig. Then we'll we'll we'll end with this, Well, We've got one more thing, but it's silly, but I want to do it. But first we'll end with a more serious question, less serious question. If we know that you cannot shame or embarrass people into better behavior, how do we create a sense of empathy for other people, including Floridians, especially in this internet age. How do you create a sense of empathy for someone because like even now with people dying who were like there are anti vactors who die and the first thing they do is pull up their tweet and go nanny Nanni, boo boo. Look what you said three weeks ago. That ain't empathy. How we create a sense of that as a way to hopefully, you know, bring the country together at least bring Florida closer to the country. Man, if I knew that, they'd give me the Nobel and the pulletzer. But but you know, you're you're absolutely right, we should feel empathy for these folks. I actually have a piece in my new book, The State You're In where I'd argue that instead of laughing at the people in these mug shots, we should just every time I'm looking at them and go there. But for the grace of God, go I you know, because one screw up, one mistake, and you could be the one, you know, in the Little the mug Shot magazine being sold at the corner store. All right, and so then last question, and this is for everyone. Does everyone know their Florida birthday? No? What is your Florida Man birthday? Well, first we have to explain, Craig, can you explain that to people? What the Florida this was. This was a thing that went around a couple of years ago where you plug in the terms Florida Man and your day of birth and do it in Google and it spits out whatever was the Florida Man story for that particular day, because of course there is a Florida Man story for three and sixty five days, including and maybe even leap Day as well. Uh Mine turned out to be a fairly tragic one, and uh I don't want to talk about. But that's the thing is, some of these stories are not funny. They're they're purely tragic. But of course some of the ones that turned up, you know, people were laughing about, you know, the burglar and silver Springs who broke in and thought that the ashes in the in the cremation earned more actually something you could snort, you know, things like that. I mean, you can I just uh, I just did my Florida Man birthday now, And I think this is a nice, not super dark one. But it's police arrest Florida man for drunken joy ride on motorized scooter at a Walmart. That that hits a lot of Yes, it does. Here's two from my birthday that I I guess, one's decent ones a little a little darker. Florida man beats a t M says it gave him too much cash. I remember that. I wish I had that problem. I think that's a really good example, sorry of the that there's almost no logic to any of these stories, because you're like, oh, he beat him up because he didn't the machine didn't give him enough money, but that he beat him up. It's just all of these stories defy any logic or sense. And I think that's what's so great about the the other one. The other one. Florida man throws cher at child in dispute over donut over donut. Yeah, I only read that because he didn't connects as long as he had bad aim. That's the important you guys. I just plugged my birthday in and it came up nothing found. So is that the saddest Florida man story of all time. Well, that will have something will happen then on that date and sometime the next weekend. Yeah, it's like a candy man. Say it three times. Florid man, Well, his book is the state You're in Florida Me and Florida women and other wild life. Craig Pittman, thank you so much for coming beyond the Scenes with myself, Daisy Linic and Sebastian den Tap enjoyed it. This is great. Man. Well we did it. And for more beyond the Scenes go to Daily Show dot com slash Beyond. You gotta get back down to Pensylcola. Man, it's some good barbecue. Then, hey, Beyond the Scenes listeners. If you haven't rated and reviewed us yet on Apple Podcast, I need you to stop right now and do that. Drop us a rating, let us know how you feel and write a review. Write a review too, because I read those to my child at the end of the night, because I keep I'm out of books. Gotta go buy the books.

All right. Look, let's say you bring in a family out for a meal, right, and then let's just say it's Italian and you have this large Italian style gathering. Everybody's got a bucket of pine a gallon of alfredo to pour on top of it. But that's not all. You also get a little bit of bread with that, because when you're at the Daily Show, your family and this podcast is the unlimited bread sticks that takes a satisfying family meal to the next level. Welcome to beyond the Scenes where today we're gonna be talking about Florida. Florida God's waiting room. It's home to theme parks, the Everglades, your people, and of course Florida man report before committing a sexual act on a tree, yelling he was a scolar, trying to start a fire with spaghetti sauce karate kicking those. Every week there's a new headline out of Florida wild shocking, unnecessarily sexual masturbating at a bus stop, told police he was Captain Kirk Kerk. But have we ever stopped to ask the question why something's happening to men in Florida? And it can't just be a coincidence. As a future Pulitzer winning journalist, it's my responsibility to uncover the truth, to reveal what lies beneath the swamp, to answer the question what makes a man Florida man? Florida, Florida Man, Florida Florida Man. That's right, we're talking America's favorite hero, Florida man, a k a. People going buck wild down there in America's penis showing up on the local news then going viral. Later on, we're gonna be joined by journalists and author Craig Pittman. But first I'd like to bring on two of the folks who brought this Florida Man peace to life. Daily Show producer Sebastian Denatal. How are you doing good, sir? I'm doing great, thank you, and extremely offended by that olive garden Italian slam at the beginning of this podcast, but otherwise I'm doing extremely Sorry to insult the food of your people. Penne, I don't know how you say it, but it's Penney. I'm from Alabama. We call it pay see. And then the other voice you here is my fellow Southerner who's about to come on right now and half my back Daily Show correspondent, but more important, Kentucky bluegrass runs through her blood. Daisy Lighting, how do you pronounce pina? I also pronounced that pena, but I also roy not to correct you or embarrass you, but it's Kentucky. So I'm going to start to part Pardon me. I am so prepared now for the people who don't have the Internet. And let me preface it by saying this. You know Sebastian as a field producer, like it's one thing to go out and cover the piece, but you have a way. I don't know how to this, like the most pec way, but you you like it's in your heart when you go out to like gather these pieces and this information. It's like, no, We've got to talk about it because they don't understand. We have field meetings where we pitch and talk about stuff, and Sebastian comes in with the level of emotion like, look these people in Florida. I'm telling you we gotta do something about him. So for the people who don't have the Internet, Sebastian, who is Florida man? And what was the segment all about? So I like to do field pieces that are a little bit more abstract and don't necessarily have like a good guy bad guy dynamic that a lot of our field pieces do so well. And I had this idea for this Florida Man theory piece for quite a while, and I was trying to pitch it correctly and trying to get the tone right. And then, as chance would have it, Trevor wanted to do this floor it a week for the show where he would do shows from Florida. And it was kind of the perfect confluence of my this piece that I wanted to do for a while, and a reason to do it, because normally we try to do pieces that are at least somewhat relevant to what's going on or uh, you know, a current event. And so since this was set we had a whole week of shows in Florida, I was like, well, this might be a good opportunity for this piece. And so the idea for the piece was I I'm like an internet junkie. I I'm a big time lurker. I'm on all the chat rooms and websites, and so there's tons of d M very inappropriate well, you know, and one of the memes that has been around for as long as I can remember is this Florida Man meme. Uh, there's like a Twitter account which is this spot that basically can aggregate Florida Man stories. Their subreddits dedicated to them, and they were just and they've been around forever. I worked on The Old Show with John and we were doing Florida Man act ones way way back when, so it was definitely not a new phenomenon. But I think at the time, you know, Trump had gotten elected and there was just kind of this resurgence of really really crazy stories, especially coming out of Florida, and I just wanted to do a piece that kind of explored not and this is in the piece, but not who is Florida Man? But why is Florida Man? Why do we hear about these stories so much? And that was kind of the impetus for uh starting the piece. It's this mysterious big Foot type thing because there isn't a Kentucky Man, a Kentucky Man man. The only thing I think comes close is Texas, where you just go Texas, but Texas just kind of covers everybody as a whole. Like this is very specific. It's like it's Florida and it's men. We're screwing up as a former Florida resident. What are the qualifications Daisy to be a Florida Man, Because you know, I lived in Florida for five years for college shoutout to Tallahassee. But I like, do you have to be super stupid or is it just inherently down that because you're in Florida you're automatically an idiot? Well, I think what we learned from our expert that we got to sit with, Craig, is that there's there's a lot more underneath it. There's a lot going on in Florida, and there's a quite a few reasons why we see those headlines so often. But I think it usually involves a gator um, something illegal usually beer, and something unnecessarily sexual. Usually every Florida Man story has all of those elements right accurate. But no, I think, like, um, my favorite pieces that that I get to do on the show are pieces where we think it's about one thing and then somewhere in the piece we discover it's about something else entirely. So we kind of go into this piece with our envisioning these you know, Florida Man memes and think that we're going into kind of poke fun at Florida men, and then quickly realized like, there's a lot more underneath it. There are a whole list of reasons for why we see these headlines in the news, but most importantly, towards the end, we we discover the Sunshine Act Um and we end up kind of landing in this place of you know, it's it's not just that these things are happening in Florida, but we are hearing about them a lot more in Florida because of the Sunshine Act. And really there's a little bit of Florida man everywhere, which I didn't know coming into it. So that's I mean, that was my favorite thing about that piece, Or is this nice arc discovery that people aren't really talking about. I want to go back, Sebastian to what you said a little bit earlier about you liking to live in an abstract, which is true. You did one of my favorite pieces on the show that I mean, of course, every piece that I'm in is my favorite, but one of the favorite pieces that I was not in um you RUnni Chang and you had running in the Uma Thurman kill Bill two Yellow what was it? The nun nun Chucks were illegal Firstly, yeah, yeah, yeah, we did like a kung Fu movie basically for a piece that's very tertiarily about kung Fu. Hey, is it a little weird that I'm playing this guy? He's like super white running. If a white guy doesn't, it's problematic. It's cultural appropriation. If you do it, it's fine, is it? Honestly? I don't know, Okay, whatever, let's fight. So with this piece, you went into it creatively with this true detective angle. Talk to me a little bit about that production style and when you're actually sitting down with these actually because you all want to talk to actual Florida men who have been the focus of news stories, while at the same time you're trying to have this conversation but also trying to frame it in a way that the viewers haven't seen before so that they can at least feel like they're getting something, you know, a little different. Totally. I I am a hack when it comes to originality or creativity, and I truly consider myself just like bound to parody as much as I can be, because uh, everything's been done all the time so much better than I can do it. And so rather than trying to reinvent or recreate something I lift from a lot of things, and so for this, we were going into it with a True Detective vibe. The first season had been out for a couple full years, and I loved the first season of True Detective. Originally I had pitched this. I don't know if you remember Roy, but this is with you and Desi. Roy was the Woody Harrelson type character and Desi was the Matthew mcconoch character and that, and I was so jazzed about it. And you know, in one of the pitch meetings, Trevor was like, that's great. I don't think we need Roy for this. DESI can do all of this. Not to mention, there's gonna be so much stuff here, you won't have time for both of them doing those games as well as the Florida Men. And he was absolutely right. And I'm glad that we just did did it with Desi because we wouldn't have had time for exploring your guys relationship and all that stuff. But to your point, I loved how True Detective was filmed, and I just I was a big fan of that first season especially, and so I wanted when I go into pieces, I like I have an idea for what I wanted to look like and feel like. And our DP on this, who's an amazing DPS my good friend Joel Adler at incredible cinematographer. He so I basically showed him shots from True Detective and things that I liked from that show, and he was able to basically recreate it almost to a t. Uh. And so when you're trying to replicate that, it's it's great if the audience knows what you're doing, like, oh, this is like a True Detective thing, that's great. Um, But it's equally as satisfying if they don't and they're like, this is really interesting and cool. But at no point do I ever want people to think I came up with any of these artistic or esthetic choices. These are all other geniuses that I'm just trying to replicate. So that was the idea for Florida Man, because there was a lot of similarities between these Florida Man stories and True Detective, which is horrifying because that shows about of a psychotic serial killer. But yeah, that's kind of how I went going into it. And uh, yeah, I'm I'm all of the elements technically that made this really work. Were all of the things that were really out of my control. And as a testament to our team Joel Dasi acting obviously, our editor Nick Johnson was incredible and brought so much great ideas to make it work. Uh. And then not to mention, you know, our segment producer Matt got so many of those bookings. One of our camera people down there, Kelly was he had all these locations in mind. So it was a true team effort to really pull this off. And I think as a testament, you can tell how good or bad a pieces based on how many people are on board providing or contributing their art, And for this one, it was like a full team effort and I think it shows it's just it's my favorite people is that you know this. We're not the local news. It's not just a reporter and a cameraman and go like this is miniature, full short film production type ship going on here. DESI, when you were talking with these people, how much did it feel like to you? Because the question we always get his correspondent, are the people you're talking to in on it? Where? To me, it's never been that that style of conversation. It's just tell me your truth and we're gonna have a conversation about the way you see the world. But within that, did any of them realize what they were saying or do you feel like they felt like, well, maybe I shouldn't be talking to the Daily Show. I don't think so. I think all of them were extremely confident in their Florida man nous. I think they felt really good about who they are and what they had to say, and that makes it so much fun for us. Like I mean, for me, it was like the perfect cocktail of Sebastian being so specific about his vision of what this piece would look like, the style of it and the tempo of it, in the mood, and then casting all of these great, really genuine and authentic and very funny characters to just do their thing. All I had to do was step up and just listen and react to all of it and play straight person. It was like, I mean, you know, that's which for this was not an easy test to do. I mean Daisi's credit, I was throwing her into these situations with these a lot of the times actually crazy men, and there were it was not the amount of uh straight faced nous that des he had to perform for this is astounding compared to what these people were talking about off camera and on camera, So that was no easy. This is where Nick comes into play, because Nick could edit out all of my breaks and mental breakdowns in between each shot. But no, I got that alligator man. I'm sorry, but he was. He was just the greatest. He's been hit with charges after pictures in this video showing him handling an alligator which he posted, we're seeing by law enforcement. A real name Jordan Bedford, but I go by the alligator man. Okay, um alligator man. What's the common factor among all Florida men were all different? Well, I'm I'm different from the rest because I do the wrong thing in the right way, if that makes sense. No, no, so you're not for Florida, so you don't understand my language what I'm talking right now. But I do. I do the wild things. Anything you think of, I'll probably do it. Anything. I catch gators, anything. We're not anything, but basically anything. He was definitely my favorite to this day. Wonder what he's up to. I almost left my family, but he wouldn't have me. I thought that costa and I got kind of the short end of the stick when they were assigning Florida field pieces for Florida Week, because we have to cover the green algae. Yeah, I remember that. Well, there it is a dead fish. It's pretty gross. What was the smell like to you? It smells like dead fish. And we rode a boat into some of the algae plumes and like our eyes were watering, and she like, we planned to be there thirty minutes and like ten minutes and we were like, I think we got everything we need. Let's let's get out of here. How what was the worst part of your shoots? Because I noticed that a lot of yours were outdoors Costa and I at least had a couple of indoor situations. Yeah, it was hot. It was really hot. It was I can remember sweating just and I am not I know, I'm from the South. I am not a lady when it comes to heat and sweat. I was dripping into like sweating profusely. And for some reason, I chose to wear a black part wool suit in the in the ninety degree weather with that humidity, in the middle of an orange grove. Yeah, that was I mean, that's partially my fault because I wanted to look. I wanted to be this kind of like a detective detective and that Yeah, that day was so hot. And Craig will tell you, uh, the guy that's on the show later because we were interviewing him. We wanted to be at outdoors because we had an orange grove available to shoot in very Florida and Droll is really good at working with natural light. But man, that was so hot. I needed to, like between takes, like go into the car cooled down a little bit. We all were running into this tiny pickup truck just to get like a little taste of the a C and then run back into the field. At one point, we're in the middle of filming towards the end, and I looked down in my sweat stain on my chest just like grew to about this size. It was it was a problem. It was very hot. And then do you remember, Steve, you came up with this. We were we were clearly going for this true detective, very noir feel, and at some point were like, DESI should smoke JSI should smoke cigarettes during this piece, and I thought, yeah, that's that's a great idea, and I'm going to commit, like I'm really going to show them that I'm a smoker, and I really committed to it all the way through. I'm coughing, I can't breathe. At what point, said, did you decide that's let's DESI, let's put the props down and not do that anymore. Well, I I we got the one shot of you smoking I needed. But I was definitely like, there were a lot of suspect props. We had unpasteurized orange juice that we were gifted from an orange grove that I was like, DESI just start chugging this orange juice on camera and just fresh fresh. I have a field. So there were a lot of questionable props and probably dangerous things that not to mention, you know, uh putting DESI in like the mid of nowhere with this pirate man that had guns and knives on him. Wait, but he was also a landscaper. He was also a landscaper though, the pirate who was also a lands Yeah, oh, I missy, I am Captain Silky super tips cool and you're pirate. Well, I'm a pirate most of the day. When I'm not, I'm a landscaper. I I think the to your point, uh, Roy, I think the big draw of Florida men is that they a lot of them want and like notoriety, and two of our guys kind of were like all three of them were kind of like that, but um our first guy, Robbie was definitely more on like the I don't know how much of this I can talk about, but Jordan's the alligator man and Jamie the landscaper pirate were very like, they loved it and they want They talked to us forever and we had to be like, all right, that's good. So they were really willing and we didn't have to you know, co coax them or feed them, you know, any type of direction to go to, because they were just all in from the beginning absolutely well. After the break, we're gonna be talking with a man from Florida. That's there, you go, that's the appropriate way to separate the two. There's Florida man. But then we're gonna talk to a man from Florida who's a journalist and the author, and I feel like he knows Florida the way Miami knows cocaine. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back beyond the scenes. We are back. We're talking about Florida Man. We already have Dasi lighted and Sebastian Dina Tal in the chairs joining us now is a Florida Man, not the Florida Man. He's a man from Florida who doesn't do Florida man ship. You understand what I'm trying to say right now, journalists and author of the state You're in Florida Man, Florida Women and other Wildlife. He's an expert witness who was featured in the original segment that DESI did. Craig Pittman, welcome to beyond the scenes. Thanks for having me now when we talk Florida. And this is the thing that I learned when I was at Florida A and M for college up there in the Panhandle. The Florida that people think kind of happens south like Orlando and all points south. That's postcard Florida, that's TV Florida Panhandle was kind of a different field, like where where in Florida are you from? Are you from North Florida, South Florida, and split that ship up like the dakotas well. I'm from Pensacola, but I now live in St. Petersburg, so I've been on both sides of that line. And I think it's I think it's more of a coastal versus inland thing. You know, people people see the postcards. They think, you know, it's all beaches everywhere, and they don't realize, Oh wait, you know there's cattle ranches and uh you know, lumber mills and uh, you know, crazy people doing stuff at the at the liquor store that people trying to sneak until more stables in Ocalla, all of that area. Anna, you've been Highway ninety on me right there, Florida. I know all of that ship Baby Walton Beach destined Florida balla. So let me let me start with this. Daisy Sebastian kicked back and watch two Florida boys kicking for a second at it. Why are these New York elites always coming for a stop Because they envy us. They want to be us, They want to have that freedom. That's why they want to be able to act on any Florida cocaine and then judge Florida. Yeah, exactly, it's all. It's all. It's all hating. They're just hating because they're Indianist, man. That's all it is. But in all seriousness, what is it that makes Florida seem crazier than the rest of America? Like, is that is that reputation justified? Or is it really that much crazy? Yeah? Oh heck yes, oh definitely. Listen. My basic principle is you find weird stuff happening anywhere you find humans, but more of it happens in Florida and attend is to be weirder. Um. And I think that's because we have certain elements here that you don't find anywhere else. We've we've undergone this wrenching demographic change where you went from the least populated southern state in nineteen forty to now being the third most populous state. And everybody's kind of crammed into this thirty mile wide swath along the coast and along the I for where the theme parks are. Uh, you know, we've got this, you get these weird elements to the state where we've got you know, this invasive python population eating everything in sight in the Everglades. We've got actually have people who are professional mermaids making a living as state employees in Florida, which you don't find in any other state. Um. Iguanas falling from trees when they were they show up in toilets, to um. I mean, the crazy stuff just happens here all the time, and people in Florida who've been here for a while, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's just you know, that's just Thursday. Man. You know, I can't remember section if it was you a Daisy earlier that was talking about the sunshine laws. But can you go into that a little bit more for us? Sure? So, uh, you know, I read Craig's book Oh Florida for this in preparation for this piece, because that was like my bible for a lot of this because it basically had thank you it had. It was like also the first nonfiction book I had read it like ten years, so I was really just absorbing all this new information. Did it still feel like fiction? Though? It did? What it did? Absolutely? I was like, there's no way. But Craig really broke down very nice and neatly all of these factors, like the ones that he just said, and the one that stuck with me the most was and Craig will also tell you it's certainly not the the the reason we kind of elevated it for the piece too, you know, and the piece basically because we needed an ending. But the Sunshine Act, this law that Craig could probably speak to a lot better than I, basically allows for a ton of this transparency in Florida when all these misdemeanors or uh sometimes felonies happen, where a lot of peep journalists especially can go and get these records of these incidences incidents very easily. And that's the the amount of Florida Man stories because you talk about, like we do this whole montage in the beginning and the end of all of these stories. We didn't have to, like, we didn't have to make up any of these stories because they were so each just googled Florida Man stories finding like literally like dozens to hundreds of headlines on camera anchors reading these stories, it was clear to me and us that like the Sunshine Act definitely plays a part in why these stories are so accessible and talked about. Because after doing the peace and after researching it more, I realized not a ton of other states, almost no other states have as expansive um trans parents the laws about these types of misdemeanors. So that was for me a nice button to kind of put the whole piece together, which is, you know, there's weirdos everywhere, like Craig was saying, but I think in Florida, all of these factors plus this idea of complete transparency just really tickled me as a really nice way to summarize why this kind of person is so rampant. Craig, I am about twenty years out of you know, last pain Rent in Tallahassee, but I remember distinctly in the corner stores. I don't remember what it was called, but it was like the crime paper and the Okay. So, like, I don't know of another state that just publishes mug shots for just random misdemeanors and solicitation of prostitute. You caught me with the crumb of myth. Like, does that pulling into it as well in normalizing that behavior your for locals? Uh? Somewhat. I mean, you know, obviously somebody figured out, hey, we can use the Sunshine Law and make money off of it by publishing these these little raddy pulp mag's full of the latest mug shots because people will buy it and go, oh yeah, it's Mr Johnson. I knew he was up to something you know. Um, but um, there's been a sort of an ethical debate about that too, where there were there were some newspapers that were making money off of running mug shot websites. And then there started to be a sort of a backlash to that of saying, you know, well, a lot of these folks they just got arrested, they haven't been convicted of anything, you know, and these mug shots are gonna be there for a while. Do you really want to highlight that? And so the people started pulling back on that. Let me just respond to Sebastian real quick though, that that, yeah, the sunshine law is a reason why a lot of this these stories wind up coming to light. But after Florida passed at sunshine laws, some other states passed similar laws. You don't see weird stories to the volume of Florida's coming out of those states. I mean, we would just we are you know, we produce more weirdness than we produce orange juice. Basically, the Florida is a weird place though, man Like, it's this weird intersection of retirees, tourists, um, a lot of image, a lot of immigrants, locals, and then you just have like regular agriculture people, Like, there's certain states like Nebraska's for for fucking farming. That's what we're here to do. That's one of those boring square states, you know that how can the heck can they be fun? So there isn't this convergence of different agendas, not to mention droves of it's where Nickeloni the fact that nickelonions Viacom property, which we love very very much. Please watch the Pawl Patrol movie on Paramount Plus. But like, I'm bewildered by so many different things all happening in that place at the same time. Like, is there a way to decrease these types of incidents? No? In fact, I think going to continue to increase as the population continues. This will despite our efforts to kill people off with COVID. That is um the you know, the our population just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And we have you know, we have like a hundred million tourists coming every year too, on top of the regular residents. So and again they're all kind of crammed into that same narrow area. So and people come here with these expectations too if they feel like Florida is a place to get to have a second chance to start over and you know, make some of the same mistakes they made before and maybe maybe make some new ones. So that contributes to it as well. To that point, to uh, Craig, I think our pirate silky silver tips, that was actually his story. He was like he was a transplant, even though he kept saying like he was. He kept talking about being like born and raised in Florida and then immediately says, well, I'm a transplant. But that was Chicago. But the other point that I thought was really cogent and part that I wanted to try to make a big centerpiece for this particular piece is the mental health issue. And we even get our first I mean our first Florida man willingly tells us like Daisy asked, what do you think it is? And he just says, right off the bat, unprompted mental health issues. Isn't there something that all Florida men share. There's something behind it mental health issues. Then in the piece we get you to elaborate on that, Craig, that Florida has one of the worst I think mental health We consistently rank forty nights among the States and spending on mental health, which I can only say, thank God for Texas. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that that's probably if you wanted a really quick, ten second Florida Man piece, that's probably It's that there's almost no mental health resources and a lot of these people need those resources. Yes they do. Yeah. So then to that point, DESI, when you were down here talking to these people in like I've often felt like, when you go and cover pieces of correspondent and then you go back and you become a consumer of media again. On the other side of that, it can sometimes change how you view people, Like do you think that the people that are in these Florida Man stories and that are highlighted every day in media are they victims of circumstance or are they mental health? Are they dealing with addiction issues? I'm no expert. Craig is certainly the expert, but it seems like there are all of those issues at play. I think the stories the men that we talked to down there were certainly wacky characters, without a doubt, But I think in the booking process we were also pretty conscious of finding subjects that did not have horribly dark stories in their in their past. So you know, we're we didn't want to be making Florida men who have mental health issues or addiction issues the butt of the joke. Instead, I think we tried to you, very specifically book people who had funny stories who kind of were just like a victim of their circumstances, and then also on top of that, start a little bit of a conversation of the problem in the way that the media was portraying some of these headlines in these stories. I think part of the joke was also on, you know, journalists being kind of the hero of their own stories and the way that they were covering all of this. Yeah, daisise whole like b plot with us. She wanted to win a bunch of like Pulitzers for this. Well, it's coming. It's coming. I haven't yet, but we have some time Part two. So Craig to that point, like some police departments post Florida man stories in the way, Hey look who we arrested. This guy was doing some wacky, wacky wacky ere We got them. Everybody laugh in the comments. Make sure you like and review our police Department podcast. Lake. Is there a change in the perception that's horrifying. I didn't realize that's the real thing. Oh yeah. Well, and the funny thing, they actually caught a guy because he came in and made comments on their Facebook posting about him and was haunting them, and so then they were able to track him down and arrest him and he became a Florida manswering. Well, after the break, we're going to talk about where we can go going forward with this issue, or do we just need to soft Florida off or will global warming solve this problem for us beyond the scenes. We'll be right back. You know, we could just wake this ship out. You never know, just a matter of time. We're talking Florida man, Florida men's. A group of Florida men together is called a god damn. I don't know if you knew that or not. I'll notify websters. More than three Florida men together is called y'all. More than five is a god damn. Craig, I think it's called a jail technical Sebastian as a non Floridian, do you think it's fair that Florida is a punching bag or it's earned? Yeah, you know, I think it's fair that it is a punching but I mean, I'm from New Jersey, so I get the idea. Florida the North. No, no, no, it's very very different. But I I will say, I I guess punching. But it really depends on how you approach and view these stories. Obviously, if there's a mean spirited, um shot and Freuda element to people enjoying these a lot of the times horrific stories, I think that's very problematic and that's not what we wanted to do with this piece. We try to approach it with empathy but also a type of light heartedness because a lot of these stories are pretty lighthearted for the most part. There are some that are incredibly dark um and we didn't want to focus on those, and I think that you didn't. You didn't want to focus on the myth band biting faces off in mind. Yeah, yeah, we're still this comedy and eating someone's face under a bridge and the afternoon. Although to a point, I do think that Florida people and Craig could probably confirm or deny this. There is a sense of not pride, but there is a sense of yeah that is us, kind of like we are that insane and crazy and colorful and caricature e And I think that a lot of the times they lean into that. So it's kind of, uh, it's I think it's a celebration of that. I might be way off, Craig No, no, I think there's a there's a split. I have some friends who like me, or Florida natives, who every time they see some wacky story come out nationally, they're like, oh God, please don't let it be Florida. Please don't let it be Florida. And of course it's always it's always Florida. There's always some Florida element. Like the woman in New Jersey who was getting on the plane with the emotional support peacock. The peacock was from Florida. I mean, there's always some Florida aspect to it. But then there's others. And this is my point of view, which is, you know, let your Florida freak flag fly, and you know, be proud of the fact that we are the most interesting state. You are never bored here. You know, it's not like one of those square states where you you know, you turn on the news every day, it's the same thing day after day. Here, you know, you open the paper. You turn on the US You're like, Wow, a guy punched a swan today. Okay, we are the most interesting state. I think that should be our slogan, not Sunshine State because it rains here so much. It's just it's not funny, but the most interesting state. I think we can defend that one. How incendiary though, is it for outsiders to attack Florida and make fun of Florida and make Florida man jokes, which, to Sebastian's point and to your point, even makes people where that difference with a sense of pride to the point where they become contrarian. You know, when you look at what's happening right now in Florida with just anti vaccine and well first anti masking, then anti vaccine, how much of that is just people being defiant to the people that have been making well, you were going to make fun of us anyway, so I'm gonna do what I want to through you. Well, I think that's the tapping into this. You know, Florida has always had this really strong libertarian streak. Uh, you know, we don't want the government telling us what to do. We were we were an open range state long after any of the Western States. I mean until ninety nine, you don't have to fence your cattle here. Uh, you know, so um, you know, it's like so so you know, de Santis has really tapped into that and and tapped into that, which is ironic because he's the government telling people what to do, which is you can't tell people what to do um about masks. So uh, he's managed to do a nice little jew political jiu jitsu move on on the situation there. But some of it too is you know, there are people here who are just that wacky that they're like, yeah, I think I'm not gonna take the vaccine, but I am definitely gonna get me some d wermer medicine from the from the from the from the horse farm people. Uh. Do you think that everything that happens in Florida is it Florida problem or an American problem? Or is it just the Internet making things seem worse than what they are? Probably all of the above. I think the thing that I loved about the piece so much, and like Sebastian said, we definitely highlighted this probably more than you could factually say that this is the entire reason, but that the sunshine law really gave me a new perspective on what was happening in Florida and that it's it is talked about more because of that law. We just happened to see those headlines a lot more, and that these things are happening all over the country. So I think when there are huge issues all over America, you want to go like, oh, this is a Texas problem or this is a Florida problem. Uh and and yeah, there are certain challenges that exist there, but it's also really opening up a larger conversation of what's happening all over the country and if they aren't addressed there locally, they become bigger problems all over the country. Um So yeah, I mean, Craig is the expert on that. But well, we've we've got a writer here named Tim Dorsey, who I like a lot, and one of Tim's lines is Florida is the pace car for national dysfunction, which I think is a pretty accurate. That's incredible, Craig. Then we'll we'll we'll end with this, Well, We've got one more thing, but it's silly, but I want to do it. But first we'll end with a more serious question, less serious question. If we know that you cannot shame or embarrass people into better behavior, how do we create a sense of empathy for other people, including Floridians, especially in this internet age. How do you create a sense of empathy for someone because like even now with people dying who were like there are anti vactors who die and the first thing they do is pull up their tweet and go nanny Nanni, boo boo. Look what you said three weeks ago. That ain't empathy. How we create a sense of that as a way to hopefully, you know, bring the country together at least bring Florida closer to the country. Man, if I knew that, they'd give me the Nobel and the pulletzer. But but you know, you're you're absolutely right, we should feel empathy for these folks. I actually have a piece in my new book, The State You're In where I'd argue that instead of laughing at the people in these mug shots, we should just every time I'm looking at them and go there. But for the grace of God, go I you know, because one screw up, one mistake, and you could be the one, you know, in the Little the mug Shot magazine being sold at the corner store. All right, and so then last question, and this is for everyone. Does everyone know their Florida birthday? No? What is your Florida Man birthday? Well, first we have to explain, Craig, can you explain that to people? What the Florida this was. This was a thing that went around a couple of years ago where you plug in the terms Florida Man and your day of birth and do it in Google and it spits out whatever was the Florida Man story for that particular day, because of course there is a Florida Man story for three and sixty five days, including and maybe even leap Day as well. Uh Mine turned out to be a fairly tragic one, and uh I don't want to talk about. But that's the thing is, some of these stories are not funny. They're they're purely tragic. But of course some of the ones that turned up, you know, people were laughing about, you know, the burglar and silver Springs who broke in and thought that the ashes in the in the cremation earned more actually something you could snort, you know, things like that. I mean, you can I just uh, I just did my Florida Man birthday now, And I think this is a nice, not super dark one. But it's police arrest Florida man for drunken joy ride on motorized scooter at a Walmart. That that hits a lot of Yes, it does. Here's two from my birthday that I I guess, one's decent ones a little a little darker. Florida man beats a t M says it gave him too much cash. I remember that. I wish I had that problem. I think that's a really good example, sorry of the that there's almost no logic to any of these stories, because you're like, oh, he beat him up because he didn't the machine didn't give him enough money, but that he beat him up. It's just all of these stories defy any logic or sense. And I think that's what's so great about the the other one. The other one. Florida man throws cher at child in dispute over donut over donut. Yeah, I only read that because he didn't connects as long as he had bad aim. That's the important you guys. I just plugged my birthday in and it came up nothing found. So is that the saddest Florida man story of all time. Well, that will have something will happen then on that date and sometime the next weekend. Yeah, it's like a candy man. Say it three times. Florid man, Well, his book is the state You're in Florida Me and Florida women and other wild life. Craig Pittman, thank you so much for coming beyond the Scenes with myself, Daisy Linic and Sebastian den Tap enjoyed it. This is great. Man. Well we did it. And for more beyond the Scenes go to Daily Show dot com slash Beyond. You gotta get back down to Pensylcola. Man, it's some good barbecue. Then, hey, Beyond the Scenes listeners. 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