Hello, and welcome to Outspoken. Today. You're joined by journalists Amy Kate and Sophie torber Now. On today's show, we wanted to delve into the craziness that is the Netflix documentary Tiger King. It's been called the most watchable show of the year, and it somehow made this really strange time when we're all in lockdown a little bit more bearable. It follows the big players in the cat world and it is just the craziest thing I think I've ever
watched on TV. Yeah, when I flicked it on and we were introduced by the producer saying that he was originally going to film a doco about dangerous snakes in captivity, and then whilst he was filming the snakes, this guy rolled up with a big cat in his car and that kind of intrigued him to investigate further. I cannot believe that he managed to get all of that footage and that whole story. It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. The whole time, I'm thinking, how
did you get that? Well, A fair bit of the vision seemed to be obtained by secretly filming people, and also I suppose it was captured by a few of the people who were working for the FBI at the time, because we did see a few arguments that were captured, which I at the time I was like, how did they get this? But they were obviously using it as
evidence in building up the case against him. Oh, I mean, I still think the docco team was filming throughout that whole five year period and obviously built up an incredible trust between all of those three key players. Because I just found it so interesting that they were obviously had set up camp at Joe Exotic's zoo, and then they were still able to infiltrate Carol and also the doc
Like it was just crazy. Now from having worked it today tonight, I know all of the sort of trust building that goes into convincing somebody to go on camera, but it's so funny. I feel like people in America are completely different. Everyone just wants to be on TV, and especially someone like Joe Exotic. He seemed to get such a thrill out of the fame that was attached to not only his Instagram and Facebook following, but also he seemed to just want to be on TV at
any opportunity. I feel like they could have just approached him and said, hey, you want to be on this show, and he'd be like yeah, there was probably no trust building that had to go on there. Well, that's essentially what happened with the reality show that was being filmed. And then infamously all the tapes got burnt. Oh my god, how funny was that It was so obvious that he burnt his own office down. Oh and then the video
he filmed after I love. What I loved about the doco was how they would show the uncut footage and make them look like idiots, especially with the doc when he was I think it was in one of the first episodes and he was like, and how do you want me to say this? And then he says it, and it just made him look so stupid. About when they had all the little cubs on the cat. Does this look sexy? Should we have it like this? I'm sorry,
here's the most foul man. I can't believe that this storyline about the polygamy happening at his zoo comes out. But it's just not even the tip of the iceberg, Like, it's not even that shocking compared to what else happened in the doco. Talking about things that aren't even that shocking. What about the scene whether that poor woman's arm was ripped off, and in most documentaries that'd be such a pivotal part, she did not seem phase at all. She
almost seemed proud of the fact. That's what was really that was a sad element to the documentary, the fact that the people who worked at his zoo were just in such desperate situations that they would put up with any sort of shit. For those who haven't watched it, he would hire people off the streets or people who were homeless or just out of jail because he thought that he could control them and manipulate them to do anything he wanted and work under such shit conditions, which
really was what happened. It was a real case of manipulation. I mean, what made me feel so sick was seeing those poor people going through the leftover meats from Walmart, they expired meats and taking what's best and then feeding it to the animals. It was disgusting. Should we get into the three main players, though, so obviously the first
is Joe Exotic. The first episode painted him as quite a complex character because we did hear about how his father basically disowned him after he found out he was gay and made him shake his hand to confirm that he would not show up to his funeral when he died, which I felt it was very clever of the documentary producers because it made you feel a little bit sorry for him, and then his struggle with mental health and his attempted suicide, and also the fact that his brother
passed away and the zoo was in memory of him as well. Can I just say it reminded me a lot of a Chris Lily documentary. I could just imagine. The characters were so bizarre that I feel like they would be you know, they're not even real characters. I think you could put Yanna in there. Oh, definitely. One thing I found particularly interesting about Joe was the fact that as we touched on, he was so desperate to
be famous. And it's so ironic not to spoil the ending for people, but he has become so famous out of it, but is now in jail. Well, he's got two hundred thousand followers on Instagram and only one photo. And Kate, you were telling me the other day you looked and he had one hundred and twenty thousand followers that's really weird because I on just about an hour ago and he had heaps more photos than that, and he had I think of around one hundred and ninety thousand
follow ups. Well, it's actually been revealed that he hasn't been allowed to watch the documentary as he is in prison, but a number of the prison guards have been coming up to him and showing him memes on their phones, which I found quite funny. I would assume that he would absolutely be loving the fame at the moment from everything the TV producer was saying about him. He seemed to get such a kick out of sitting in his throne.
He would be loving life right now in prison. What a few people are worried about is that because of the popularity of the show, many people are calling for his twenty two year sentence to be reduced, and that he's even had Cardi b the rapper start a Go Funny page to raise money for his legal fees. Well, what do you guys think about that? Because not to ruin it, but I'm assuming people who've watched the series will be listening to this. He is in jail now
for tempting to have Carol killed. Carol baskin of course. Well, it's also the accounts of animal abuse, and I think those are the ones that were most shocking. Yeah, they were seventeen counts of animal abuse, and even watching it at home, I felt really confronted by the image of that.
How many animals were in that cage, it was really revolting. Well, there was that horrific scene where one of the tigers was giving birth and then you could see him just outside the cage and he reached his hand in and pulled one of the baby us it had a stick, oh sorry, his stick, but then pulled it under the fence. I was just horrified because shouldn't they be with their mother? How can he be taking them away at such a
young age. The thing that I couldn't understand was his lack of just a normal business model, the fact that he couldn't work out that he kept breeding these really expensive animals. He'd have to pay thirty grand a year to keep them fed. Yeah, well, there were rumors that he was euthanizing the cubs once they'd been cute and everyone had their photos, which was another charge against the dock. So interestingly, when Joe was charged with twenty two years
in prison. He then started working with his enemy Peter and started dishing the dirt on everyone else, and one of those people was the dock, who seemed to be out of it a little bit more. He was sort of not in the big fight between Joe and Carol. But his most disgusting charge was that he was euthanizing cubs and then cremating them, and that just made me feel so sad. So Doc is the founder of the Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, and he was
painted really as an ego maniac. He got all of his employees to refer to him as some sort of messiah or godlike figure. And what was revealed in the documentary was he had so many women working for him that he was in some sort of polygamist relationship with Then what I found the most interesting was ex worker they interviewed, who talked about the fact that she was eighteen or nineteen years old when she started working for him, and that she was forced to get breast implants as
part of her work conditions. That sounds totally normal, doesn't it. It was very cult like the fact that they kept them in stables with cockroaches, everywhere and then manipulated. I think manipulation seem to be a very much underlying theme in this whole documentary. What I could understand is they said that the people working for one hundred dollars a week, like, why wouldn't you just leave? And I suppose that shows how few options they had. Well, the crazy theme of
the whole docco was the power from the animals. So they were talking about how a lot of the players would get either interest from girls or guys just because they had that connection to the tigers, and everyone wanted to be photographed. Yeah, and there was this real element of fame seeking from the three of the main characters, even with the dog. It came out recently that he actually appeared on stage with Britney Spears in her very famous MTV performance where she had that yellow snake round
her neck. He was actually also is in a cage with one of his tigers and he was on stage, so you could go and watch it back on YouTube. Yeah, but he was also photographed with a lot of political figures as well, So it just shows that that manipulation and that power struggle throughout. But Carol Baskin's also been accused of having some form of connection to one of Britney Spears' performance. She was photographed sitting next to her in the crowd, and it's alleged that one of her
tigers was used on stage. Carol was so disturbing. They really painted her as a nutcase. You the first episode when she opened up her wardrobe with all that weird leopard print out her court sketch cracked me up. They just got her eyes so perfectly correct in it, because her eyes were so creepy. They looked like tiger's eyes. Is that what she was going for? Well, they're just so far apart. She just looked really scary. And the look that she gave the camera. I don't understand how
she agreed to talk about her husband. One thing that Carol tried to set herself apart from the others is that she claims to be an animal activist and used her park to house big cats that had been rescued from other places, which was really odd because then they obviously showed that home vision of her how she started out with her first cat. It just all seemed very hypocritical. Oh, it was so hypocritical. What was funny? Was it? Seemed
like the reverse. So she started out trying to sell the cats, and then she claimed she was trying to rescue them, whereas I think Joe started off trying to rescue them and then went into capitalizing on them. Yeah. Do you guys think that Joe's heart was in the right place at the start and maybe the fame changed
his motivation? What I think when you do look into his background and all of the traumas he had in life, I feel like perhaps he was in the forefront trying to do the right thing and did have a love for the animals initially. I actually think differently. I can see how Joe was a figure people would warm too, but I think he was using the cats like every other figure did in that movie, for his own selfish
gain and the fact. I mean there was a heartbreaking scene towards the end of the doco when the two chimpanzees in the cage were finally allowed to go to a sanctuary and they hugged for the first time in ten years, and I think that was very indicative of how the animals were treated. They were treated as commodities to enhance the status of each of those figures with Joe being a massive part of that. It was a very sad scene, but I had to laugh just the way he was explaining it. Do I feel bad that
they were in that cage? Yeah? I feel bad. Well, Moving back to Carolles, one of the biggest plots to come into the documentary was the whole murder disappearance of her husband don What did you guys make of it? She did it, no, no questions, even though Ja Simpson's come out and said he thinks she did it. I mean, the hypocritical He's trying to deflect the attention to someone else. I think what's most interesting is off the back of
this documentary, the cold case has been reopened. Yeah. Well I've read somewhere that police are receiving six phone calls a day with new information about the disappearance. I mean, I just can't get over Like, what was that police department doing? She handed them the will that said if I die or go missing? Like, what the hell he
writes that? Who just randomly writes that? And I think that's what made a lot of people, more so on Joe's side, because it was just the hypocrisy of the fact that she's saying she cares so much about these animals, but then she's got in her to allegedly kill her husband. What did everyone think about Joe's social media videos about Carol? Because I must say they were quite disgusting in terms of the violence by her to have a giggle, it
was hilarious. It was like watching a car crash. He just couldn't look away, you know, when you have a vendetta again somebody or something like a former workplace or something. Yeah, that was just the epitome of taking things too far. Do you know what's funny? Because they were both actually just so similar in the sense that they have a love for these cats, they're so obsessed with what they do. But the major point was I feel like they both
just wanted to win. Like they didn't care about how much money or how much time or effort or energy went into it. They just wanted to ultimately win. What I found quite strange is the fact that it's quite clear that Carol killed her husband, yet she's free, Whereas it seems like the sentence for Joe was quite over
the top, considering it was only kind of conspiracy to murder. Yeah, do you think if Carol is found guilty of murdering her husband that it sort of justifies Joe's stance on the whole topic and He's plot to kill her not that I don't know. Do you think that justifies it at all? I think that's probably how he was justifying it. But I think for him that was just a point that he could news against her. I think the hatred
was really about being the best cat part. I think the way that she responded to him legally as well by wanting to take all of his possessions and really destroy him, said a lot about her greed. Obviously, her ex husband's family was saying she was incredibly greedy and driven by money. It really did show that side of her through the way she treated Joe. Just on a side note, talking about her husband Don's other family. So she was older than Carol, as Sophie said, and then
cheated on his wife with the much younger Carol. Did you not think the daughters looked exactly the same age as the mother and they look like that one had a wig on or something. Well one looked older than the mum. Yeah, Runette one. I was shocked that. The minute said daughter, I was like wow. Also, though your point about greed. I think it comes back to that
thing of winning. She wanted to destroy Joe after making those accusations, and do you think in a way she wanted to shut him up as well, because he was very much pushing the narrative that she did kill her husband. Her reaction to whenever she was asked a question about it was so old, though, Did anyone else notice it? She'd always look up strange cackle afterwards. Well, She's hit out at Netflix and has said that the way she
was portrayed was not accurate. It does make me wonder because I know a lot of people get really nervous in front of the camera, But it was time after time after time she had a weird glint in her eye. She kept looking away when asked about the husband. She came across that she was lying. I can't believe she allowed them to ask so many questions about the husband. I would have thought if you agreed to do an interview, you would have said, I'm not talking about this, this,
and this. She wrote in a three thousand word blog after the Netflix documentary aired that she was told by producers that it would be a completely different documentary, so she's surprised. She was told that it was going to be similar to Blackfish, which is a documentary that exposed SeaWorld, So she thought it was going to focus on the exploitation of the big cubs through Joe and Doc Kat Sorry anyway, So I mean a lot of the other big characters have come out and said that as well.
Doc said that he wasn't told the real truth but in the doors. But in the defense of the documentary make because they said that they started this project five years ago. I don't think anyone could have predicted the outcome and the fallout that was going to happen. It just went in so many different directions. I mean that
might have been their initial intention. Yeah. From the perspective of actually putting that documentary together, Wow, they did a good job all of the different storylines and how they linked. If you if you look down at your phone for a second, you missed out on a huge part, but you blink and you missed it because they were so intricate. But how difficult would that have been to put together. I feel like they just did it so well. I wonder how they felt when all that vision burnt, When
Joe burnt it all. But that was a different documentary maker, wasn't it. Yeah, No, but it still could have helped with He was very odd, wasn't he? Oh? My gosh, who the hell was he? He was like a character out of the Simpsons. Yeah, he did look like a character out of the Simpsons, and one with the cowboy hat. Yeah, and his voice reminded I can't quite work out who he reminded me of. Very odd, wasn't it. Wasn't he like a typical He remind me of that typical old
journo with his cigarette and his out ahole. Because they accused him of burning down this year. I mean, as if he would one thing, why wouldn't you have that shit backed up somewhere? It was like there was almost too much content to actually back up now. Another huge part of the documentary which I found really interesting was Joe's polygamous relationship with his two husbands and the fact that he knew deep down that both of them weren't in fact gay. I really wanted them to ask did
they actually consummate both marriages? Well? I mean, I suppose. They showed a lot of photos of them making out. I mean, and also that's different too. But the fact that both of them were obviously supplied with many drugs which would make them sleep with him. Do you know what. It's kind of like the old Hollywood thing, isn't it People will just be with other people for fame or fortune. Isn't that the epitome of it? But he wasn't even
famous at the time. That's what I don't get. Yes, he's famous now, but it was the fame and the lure of the animals that it's got a lot of people. But it's also that desperation factor. I feel like both of those guys would have been in very desperate circumstances. But the thing that I couldn't get over is his ex husband. I believe it's John, the one with the missing teeth. Why the fuck was he never in a shirt?
Almost no shirt and gray tracks? Do you reckon? They were just the producers were like, he was like, maybe do I put a top on? Or They're like nah, nah, that's all good. It was What about when the guy was interviewed in the bath? Yeah, that was very strange. The one with that was a part of the murder plot with the tear drop. Yeah, I was watching it with Dale and He's like, is that kind of the bath? Yes, it just added such a seedy element that was fantastic.
There were so many of those, like grungy, kind of drab colors. It just worked so well. Oh the girl with a no arms sitting around in the dump chair. Well, what is crazy though, is John has now had a full set of veneers and his teeth looked incredible, and he was actually interviewed by the documentary makers with his full set of teeth, but they refused to put it in the final edit, so they were so they were dentures or he's had his full teeth redone. Oh well,
I saw the best meme about it. It said, because you know, there were like two that were a little bit closer and one that was further away. They said, examples of social distancing. Not okay, okay. I think the guy who ran the zoo, who seemed to be on Joe's side, that he then left his wife at the end, I think he had veneers as well. On the topic of John, what did everyone think of John's cover tattoo? Oh my god, you could still see it, I said, turned into reason like, gee, they've done a good job.
Not so for those who didn't see it. He had the tattoo right near his groin which said a prop property of Joe exotic and John of course ran away with the one of the women who worked at the zoo. Imagine her seeing that every time. Oh my god, she's
now pregnant. So they're having a kid together. Wow. Well the other husband was Travis, who tragically I think there's some speculation around whether he killed himself or it was an accident, but he shot himself in the head in the office at the park in front of Joe's political campaigner. That guy was weird. Really, I thought he was the most sae That's what I meant. What was he doing there? The whole thing was Travis. We really did take it
down a pretty dark path. I found that all pretty upsetting, especially the interviews with his mother, who clearly could see he was being used as some form of sex object. If she knew that, why the hell did she go to the wedding two weeks two months after? In her defense, she was probably grieving, and again it was probably the lure of his celebrity and the animals. I mean, the fact that he started he proposed to someone two months after the death of his husband, Travis was a poor
Did he find someone else? That's what I just couldn't get it because the take weren't that bad looking. I mean John, not to be rude. I'm sure with his new teeth he might be better, but it was insane. Doesn't it all just sound like an episode of Jerry Springer though, with all the husbands and all the cheating and everything. Now you just touched on Joe's political campaign. I mean, America have Donald Trump as a president right now? Is it that far off that if Joe got out of
prison that he might become the new president? After all his fame on netflick nets? You know what I don't understand is can it so anyone can just run for it? Do you have to? I say, if you fund it? That's inside. I love the fact that he got his face printed on condoms and said, just in case you get screwed. We're talking about favorite parts. Can we all
talk about our favorite part? My favorite part was when the other guy who took over the zoo, Jeff Low, he was involved in a legal discussion between Carol and her new husband and of course Joe, and the discussion got quite heated. And he butts in and says, why didn't you go f your see wife? I don't know why. That just made me laugh so much, just the disgustingness of it, but that they all were talking like that the whole time. Oh, they kept calling Carol Baskin a
bitch the whole time. It's like when they were talking about the murder plot and that, like all of us have said, we weren't that bitch dead like a hundred times. Yeah. I found it interesting how Joe stuck up for himself in court and said that that three thousand dollars was to help the guy with the tear in his face tattoo on his face, to help him move away. A pretty interesting defense because really, who would actually go and agree to kill someone for only five thousand dollars, particularly
because they outlined earlier that they weren't even friends. He came in through Jeff. Yes, it's all very strange. I do think it was the counts of animal abuse that got him the bigger sentence in the end. Well, Jeff Lowe, who came in to try and run the zoo with Joe. He actually did say that he feels like he was portrayed negatively Now for those who might not remember him, in the episode, he was the one who bought different tiger cubs into hotel rooms basically to get laid by women.
And he actually still runs the zoo, but somewhere else. Yeah, and he screwed over that guy, that one of the rednecks with the cute monkey that would eat piece of pizza with him. He's screwed over him in the process because he's just a con man. Through and through what was going on with that monkey, I've felt so sorry for it. I mean, who feeds a monkey pizza? Oh, and then they were getting all these cages and cages of like different exotic animals out was making me feel sick.
Another thing that made me feel really sick was how Flow pulled out his phone to show the camera crew the new hot nanny that he'd picked out while his wife was about to give birth in a week, and then said to the wife, once she'd given birth, she's hitting the gym. I mean, how disgusting was that jee he was plankingting. I don't know why he was putting out all the demands. Well, apparently he was rich, but it looks like he doesn't have any money at all,
and he's just a con man. For those who have finished this series like me and they're having withdrawal symptoms. He's actually on another documentary which was filmed back in Joe back in twenty and eleven. So it was as part of America's Most Dangerous Pets. So if you want to watch it, you can find it on Netflix UK and you need to search the term Beware of the Tiger. Well, one thing I've recently discovered about the documentary is the
connection to some celebrities. So you know the alligators that were killed in the fire apparently Howering inferno. Yeah, apparently they were Michael Jackson's alligators. So when Michael Jackson died in two thousand and nine, Joe Exotic claims that he went to the never Ranch to pick up the alligators and they're the ones who perished. Is it just meal? Does that seem like a lie? I don't know. That just seems like something that would draw people in or
here's the alligators from Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. Well, what disturbed me mostly about the documentary was the stats at the end about the number of tigers there are that are actually living in captivity compared to the ones that are out in the wild, and so there's actually more tigers living in people's homes in America than there are free in the wild. Yeah, so that figure was I think it was three thousand or four thousand are out living in the wild and then five to ten thousand
are living in captivity in America alone. Well, I know there's so many celebrities that have them. Obviously we touched on Michael Jackson, but I think Michael Jackson's zoo was a little bit more professional than Joe Exotics. Well, let's just hope if this documentary does one thing apart from entertainer US during this coronavirus outbreak, that maybe it will generate some change, especially if people around the world are
watching this. And I think that was the thing that when I finished watching last night, because I kept seeing how everyone is celebrating Joe exots, but then they're giving Carol a hard time, And I do think she deserves to be given a hard time. I do think she murdered her husband. But in the same regard, I think Joe deserves the same criticism. And I think it's quite ironic that he's landed himself in jail in a cage, which is how he treated all those poor animals for
so many years. But although we touched on with Carol that originally she was purchasing that the animals in quite hypocritical way. I think that people do evolve and change over time, so I think that she was genuinely interested in helping the animals. I think so, But I think it was also a lot about her ego. I mean, how she treated all the volunteers that came in and
she didn't even know who any of them were. I couldn't stand on her YouTube channel, which by the way, had over a million subscribers, the way she'd be like he crazy cats and kiddies or whatever it was. That just pissed me off. And riding on that bike, that was the funniest thing. I think that the fact that they kept showing her riding that bike, and then that was the bike path they chose to try and kill her. Oh well, I think that's probably all I've got time for.
I'm just upset that Tiger King is over, and I'm just hoping that Netflix brings the goods again with another great documentary like this. I think that everyone should help each other out and share in the comments under the post on Instagram about this episode some Netflix suggestions because I know I'm really lost well and if you did enjoy this episode, we'd love if you could share it on your Instagram story. And also please feel free to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts