John McAfee was without a doubt one of the most controversial guests we've ever had on this show. We got to interview him six times prior to his death and we wish he was still around for a seventh go round. But in lieu of that, the next best thing would be to speak with someone who was with McAfee while he was on the run from the authorities. Alex, Cody Foster is that guy. You may recognize him from the blockbuster Netflix special Running with the devil the wild world
of john mcafee. Today he discusses his time with jon, the insane situations that he found himself in and how he's documented it all in a brand new book. This episode has many van Halen references in it, so you'll want to keep count of them. On our episode number 654. Of the Bad Crypto podcast.
Five for three.
How are all of the Whose band?
Are you ready to rock? Uh, yeah. Uh, maybe. Maybe not. I was. I was noticing you, and I noticed that. Oh, I. One, two. And. Oh, yeah, I noticed.
Well, if you're ready to rock, we can be the metal metaverse metalheads.
Oh, very nice. The metaverse metalheads. This one right here. I mean, seriously, it has about 5150 different Van Halen references.
And because Runnin with the Devil and we.
Spun Army is there was 1984 and in 1984 we never really mentioned that album.
If you haven't seen the Netflix documentary Running with the Devil in the Wild World of John McAfee, you got to go see it. It's an amazing watch. Then you're going to want to get his book, the memoir of The Man Who Hacked the World, which is all about John McAfee and basically being with him while the craziness was taking place. Lots of insight from the author on this particular show and a lot of fun to speak with him as well. He's a good guy. Humble dude.
Very cool. And then if you haven't seen the documentary yet, listen to this and then go listen, Go watch the documentary, Run with the Devil. He's actually on the show talking about some interesting things, you know, and mentioning some stuff that you maybe have never heard before, like while watching that documentary. They've talked about John McAfee, you know, maybe even offing his very violent father. Like what? I never heard that before. Like, there's some weird stuff going on.
And this this right here is this episode is one of those timeless ones.
Yeah. So see if you can count the Van Halen references. And let's get to our talk with Alex Cody Foster. Sir. Lord, have you seen the documentary on Netflix yet? Running with the Devil.
Hmm. You know, yes, I have. And I love Van Halen. So this is really exciting. We get to talk to the ghostwriter who was writing for for for day to Lee Roth. Is that correct? Something like that. Did I.
See this? No, no, no. It's. It's running with the devil. The wild world of John McAfee.
I do love that song. Maybe the very best intro song on a debut album ever.
It is fantastic. You hear it and immediately recognize there's Eddie pulling the raps like this is something totally new.
But on that one, just real quick, you know, one thing is that when they started out with the song With Blood, when it starts out, they literally took in car horn and then they honked it and then they slowed it down to make that song. They made that sound, which is funny, which is iconic sound. So but that has nothing to do with any of this except for the title.
There you go. Piece of Van Halen trivia today, and maybe our guests will bring some Van Halen trivia. I don't know. His name is Alex Cody Foster. He is the ghostwriter on the book that is just coming out today, which the documentary you may have seen on Netflix is based on Running with the Devil, The Wild World of John McAfee. Alex A.F., welcome to bed Crypto.
Thanks for having me. Yes.
Do you have any Van Halen?
Actually, I do. This is all kind of full circle for me here. I Almost Ghost wrote a book for a guy who was best friends with Eddie Van Halen.
Huh? Yeah, I.
I can't give his name, obviously, but I didn't take him on. He stole my email somewhere. It didn't happen. So I guess is a non-story.
Yeah, it's. It's such a great band. Such as? Aside from that, such an interesting dude, John McAfee, such an interesting character. Like when you go back and and I believe the documentary started somewhere with some of that footage from what 2012 is that that what starts kicking off and then you go on for a little while and then you're and then there's like a five year delay and then you're going back into the story back in 2019.
What a great time to come back in the So what was your initial thoughts when you're like, hey, John McAfee wants you to write a book with them? Like how did that go down?
And so, Travis, we're just going to jump right in like I think as well. We may as well jump.
I might as well just go ahead. JOHNSON Yeah, I.
Think I think we did try to insert as many Van Halen song titles.
Into this episode.
Of course, the conversation as possible. So, yeah, Alex, go ahead and talk about that.
Jump in some jump in. So John didn't actually want to hire me initially. I spoke with Jimmy Watson, his executive advisor at the time, because yeah, Jimmy and he, you know, I forget how we met, but we got linked up. I sent him an email and I told him that I was a ghostwriter and I was in the crypto industry and I've worked with some of the founders in crypto and I said I would love to write John story. In fact, I'd wanted to write a story ever since I was 18 and 19 years old,
living on the streets of Los Angeles. And I that was in 2012, and that's when John went on the run in Belize. And I saw that story when I was living on the streets. There was a wired article by Joshua Josh Davis, and I said, Fuck, I love to write that guy's book someday. This is before I was a writer. So fast forward, you know, I was 25 and I wrote to Jimmy and he said, You know, you sound like the perfect guy to do this. But every time I bring it up, the boss boss says,
Fuck that, Jimmy. I will never write another book. I will never speak to a writer because I hate them. And he said, If you keep bringing this shit up, I'm going to fire you. And Jimmy was like, Yeah, yeah. He said, Man, I don't know Alex. I don't know if he's being serious or what, but I don't think I can bring this up. But you know, I'm going to do it strategic strategically, all right? And I said, Fine,
that's great. A few months later, I got a call in the morning, 530 in the morning, I guess John had seen a video of when I was homeless on the streets of L.A. and he knew I'd seen some shit. And that's what attracted it to me. And so I got a call 530 in the morning, and I was profiled in the Netflix documentary. But what's not in that film is the deciding factor was he said, All right, son, do you drink? Does it? Yeah. I mean, water, coffee
is I don't like milk. I mean, we're the only animal that drinks milk from another species, so that's why.
I love to eat. Yeah.
Yeah, I like I like food too. And he's like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Do you drink booze, sir? Do you drink? But is it Sure? And he said, What do you drink? I was like, red wine, You know, I like montepulciano. I like scotch, I like bourbon. This is it. He shut me up and he said, All right, I'll see you. I'll see you Tuesday. That was like a day later that I was supposed to arrive. And John did this all the time with people. It was all or nothing.
You know, you either arrive in 24 hours, which meant that I had to pretty much get on a plane that night because of where he was located in the US or don't arrive at all. And so that's how it got kicked off.
So you like if I show up, then you really got me. I'm going to be here. I'm going to be your ghostwriter.
It felt that way. But actually what happened was I showed up and I was put under this sort of rigorous social experiment, which, if I failed, was going to can my ass immediately. So I didn't really have the job until I passed the test.
And what was this? When did you when did you join with them originally? Back in 2000, 12, or was it 2020 18?
So he had done his whole on the run thing. In 2012. He came back to America and then he pretty much went on the run for a couple of years. He lived in Oregon, he lived in Tennessee. He was in Tennessee when I met him.
So how long did it take for him to warm up to you? You know, for him to feel comfortable, like, okay, I can hang with this guy, I can party with this dude. I'm going to surround myself with some beautiful girls and with Alex Cody Foster song reference.
I think that was the second trip that I took with him when we actually went on the run, allegedly from the Sinaloa cartel. We're after him because he felt there. He bugged them and hacked them back in 2012. That's in the book. It's not really in the film, but he he saw that I wasn't afraid. You know, I had lost my mind back in 2012 when I was living on the streets. I got a back a couple of years later, and when I got back, I was
a totally different person and I became a writer. And ever since then, for some weird reason, I bet in a pathological sense, a therapist would have a field day with me. But I don't really feel fear. You know what I mean? I don't feel excitement either. Like everybody's hitting me up today, like, Oh my God, your first book, Under Your Name came out. You know, I've got a bunch of published books, not under my name, but the
first one with my name. And it just so happened to be about my life and about my time with John. But I don't feel excitement. I feel grateful. And I think that weird pathology that I have and the just the fact that I was always a black sheep, that I was sort of misunderstood and I lost my mind like he did he he said he lost it for a lot longer than I did it. When he realized that was the thing with me, we were in that four car motorcade speeding across America on the run. That's
when he really starts spilling his secrets. And that's when he didn't see me as an equal. But he saw me the first time.
I want to I want to talk about you know, you mentioned that you were homeless there for a while, living out on the summer streets. And I want to ask about that. Like, how did that sort of prepare you to become a ghost and like in your thinking, so you got your life together and you said that was a crazy time. Here I am. I'm going to start I'm going to start writing some books about other people and ghostwriting them. How did that even transcribe?
That's a great question, man. I mean, to be honest, I guess I've been ghostwriting pretty much my whole life is back in. Seventh grade that I started writing book reports for my brother, who was in high school. And I did that until he left high school. And he didn't graduate, but he just he just left. And I did that the whole time for him. And I read
all of his high school books. So by the time I got to high school, I'd already read all the material and I started doing it for college kids when I was in high school for money and for beer. And like we because I used to smoke weed back in the day. But am I allowed to talk about drugs?
You know, I used to smoke drugs and then I still do. So. I guess so. Cool. All right.
Are you allowed to talk about drugs? But the first time we interviewed John in 2017 for episode number 100 Bad code that I for slash 100 if anybody wants to listen to it. We were on video with him and he was wrapping his arm about to shoot up.
Oh, shit.
And on screen we're like watching going, Oh.
What in the world is this? It was it was more like, oh, because he literally was putting a tourniquet on his arm and he's like, squeezing it. He's getting it. It's like pumping it out. Get ready to. And I think he realizes like, well, I'm on video and then I don't he didn't actually do it, but he did hit the turning, you know and I don't know if that was just shock value. Right. Or we were going to see him dancing in the streets, though. It was going to be a wild show either way.
It was going to be a lot of it, to be honest with John, that he did that. That you said that was episode 100. Yeah. What year was this?
2017, I think, or early 18. So it was he did 100, 200, 200 in what was like 86.
Yeah. We thought he was going to be arrested or Epstein's.
Yeah. Yeah. So we're like, oh, we're not going to wait till 300. We're going to have a virtual blockchain week. And there was one other and we've had more recently, we've had Janis on the show.
If it was 2018, it's kind of funny. I was the one that got him on that show with you. Travis I could show up and I set it up via email. It's kind of small world.
But it is a small world, so we're really grateful. Here we are full circle like crazy right here.
So I'm going to pull that up right here. And you can see that bad code that I enforce. I saw 100 is March 20th, 2018. So we probably interviewed him just a few days before for this episode. And it was it was there's yeah, there's a picture. It was he.
Was totally unchained. There was like.
He was.
Doing what he was doing. He was going to do heroin, like in the interview to this day. And then Joe's like, and we got it. And I was like, No, dude, that's going to be the thing that you see. John now he's doing what I think we did edit it. I just because it was like, this is not big or whatever, but I was like, That was crazy.
That's pure John right there. But to answer your question, sorry, I don't I don't think I did to round it out. I, you know, after it was writing, you know, grammar school and then in high school and I, I hitchhiked across America, became homeless on the streets of L.A., ran out of money, came from a poor family, no one to bail me out. So I just lived on the streets and I decided I want to tell the story of all these people who lived on the streets. Or 51,340 homeless people. I read I.
Read it was 5150 5150 was what I thought was the number.
Who's your source.
Of everyone's song for him? Song lists.
That's never mind, that's that's reputable. We'll stick with that one.
You shit. So I wanted to I want to talk about his mental health. Right. Because like you can see here, he is doing copious amounts of drugs, doing a ridiculous amount of, you know, alcohol. And then all of his girls around is like, I ain't talking about LA, but let's get together and let's have a nice, crazy time. Like what? What was the craziest thing that you saw that you can talk about?
Shit, that's part of a top ten list. Really? Let me think. Can I just go through the list?
Go through the list?
We love that he's saying, You really got me with that question there, Trev.
That's what he did say. Change that. You change the the visual so he's in the middle and we can turn this one into a fancy little social. Oh, you do that So fancy. He's got a top ten.
Sandwich made here. Top ten. Well, I might not see yet.
You saw from John McAfee in the two plus three years that you were working with that.
Okay. One, probably when we are on the run from the Sinaloa cartel, I didn't believe him. He just had he interrogated a girl and made her cry in McDonald's parking lot.
What's her name? Jamie.
Actually, her name's Ryan. Her name was Lizzie Borden, which didn't know her situation. John had a field day with that. He was like, Oh, so you're the famous axe murderer, huh? Lizzie Borden? Is that your If that's even your real name? And she laughed.
Yeah, I'm the one.
It was. It was actually really sad, though. I mean, he made the poor girl cry because he he and the security guys were grilling her, thinking she was a spy.
Oh, here's the eruption. There you go, John. Going off on the ground, making her cry.
So there's that. Number two, allegedly, I spoke to the head of the Sinaloa cartel in central Mexico, own cartel.
What is the Sinaloa cartel? For those who don't know.
They're the most feared, most dangerous cartel drug cartel in the world. And you know the head of it. I don't know if he's still ahead. Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.
El Chapo?
Yeah. El Chapo doesn't.
Get him on this show sometime and chat with him about the crypto space and be like, hey, I'm Chapo. I got some Chapo stick.
Well, like I said in the film, if there's one thing I know, you don't fuck with the cartel. And that's why I played it pretty safe in this book without naming names. But yeah, that was a weird time talking to the head of the cartel in Central America. The guy was supposedly connected to El Chapo himself because I didn't believe John. So John got him on the phone. He said, Tell him your name. And he told me his name. And I looked him up. I had the
phone in front of me. And yeah, all these news articles, there's like a kingpin indictment against them and crazy shit.
Like El Chapo. He got El Chapo.
On the phone. No, the other guy.
There's another guy. Hold on. I'm going to text El Chapo real quick. What the.
Hell? He was in prison. I mean, he probably had access to a cell phone as you can burrow under the prison.
Okay. Number three right now.
Number three was being kidnapped in Barcelona. That's not in the movie. Against my will. We were kidnapped by these two, I think was the Eastern European mob or something. It was very sketchy situation. It's sort of a long story. But to sum it up, I was in this motorcade, bunch of guys with guns driving to an undisclosed location, supposedly a villa in Barcelona. But they took me an hour outside of Barcelona and I kept saying.
Put a bag over your head, burlap bag.
They did it. I expected them to, but they didn't.
They told me, Hey, guys, where's the.
Bag.
Going to bag me?
Where are.
The refreshments?
We're going to have a we're going to have a Sunday afternoon in the park. And all of a sudden we're getting we're getting arrested. We're getting accosted by the Eastern European mob. I mean, you don't want them after you. You don't want El Chapo after you. He's pissing off everybody. You don't want the government after you. John McAfee pissed off everyone.
He did it. He had a lot of friends, too, though. We can't forget that in a lot of friends.
He was very loved for his his honesty. Right. You know, being authentic, who he was. And in standing up for crypto and decentralization and against the the the systems. I mean, he was a rebel's rebel. I mean, the dude, the dude spit, blood and fire every time he talked. And it was just like he so that drew a lot of people to him.
And that's why I was drawn to him initially. But when I uncovered some of the darker elements of John's psyche and history, it just put me off. You know, there's certain things I'm a I'm an open minded guy. I've worked with, I've worked with. I don't know if I'm allowed to say actually, I'm allowed to say my my name is going to be on the cover. You know, I've worked with drug kingpins before. I currently am working with one. I've worked with liars, thieves, murderers. I've worked
with Ross Ulbricht, who created Silk Road. I've worked with really wonderful, good people, too. They're not all bad, but I like to reserve judgment. And that's one thing that has aided me as a ghostwriters. When I lost my mind, it kind of shattered my ego. And to be a great ghostwriter, you get to set your own bullshit aside. Egocentric ego. Leave it at the door so you can get in the shoes of this person and tell their story through their eyes. And I had to do that.
And I did that very effectively with charm. There are few lines you don't cross with me. What are those? Clothing?
We don't have lights.
One of them is. Do not.
Tell me. I'll wait.
Do not murder innocent people and don't rape people. And throughout my time with John, I had reason to believe that he had done both wrong.
So do you do you feel like he was responsible for the neighbor?
Yeah, for sure. In fact, it's towards the end of my book. I haven't actually talked about it publicly, but.
Oh, this is a this is a premiere right here, gang. First time.
I'll say. All I really am allowed to say at this point is that someone reached out to me after the Netflix film dropped. Actually, it was the very next morning the Netflix film dropped and there was a guy who's work with John in Belize and he said, Hey, I was there that night. I know exactly what happened. And I can tell you the full story. I've never told anybody why. And he said, Can I get a can I get you on the call? On a call? And I said, Yes. And I talked to him for
an hour and 45 minutes, recorded the conversation. And I discuss the details of that conversation towards the end of this book.
Okay. Well, clearly, we're going to tell everybody, go get the book. But I'm going to ask you for that one story. Right. Here is the teaser, because it's going to be the thing that everybody's going to be like. I got to read the rest of what he's got to say.
Mm hmm. And I guess it surprised you. I'm surprised that after Belize, when he was on the run, like he didn't end up going to Panama or something. You're the one.
You son of a bitch. You got it in. I was going to get that.
Y got to be a son of a bitch. Yeah, I'm the one.
I don't know. Stay frosty.
Travis. Okay. I'm sorry. So? So.
Yeah, go ahead. Talk, Alex.
You want to answer? So it's sort of a long story. I'm going to have to give you the short version.
Bridget for us.
Sure. Essentially, this guy was there. John admitted to him what had happened because, you know, John's dogs were poisoned. So this man went with John? No, sorry. John was with the girls and stuff. He used to spend on average, like 2 hours, one or 2 hours a night with each girl in their various rooms on the property. So what the guy said, you know.
Daddy.
He had a big time. And so at some point.
How much stamina for him to spend an hour with you that I'm going to come over here and that's ass.
I mean, that's.
What.
It seems. The woman that he was like, you know, I think I'm hot, the teacher. And he was.
Talking about like, I'm going to them get it because everybody wants to get a library for John McAfee for sure.
We had a librarian face to That was a funny story. So he he his dogs are poison. He was really pissed. Obviously. Wouldn't be and. Anyway, my guy, he said that he saw tracks in the sand and they led to Gregory Falls House. He followed the tracks in the sand from where all the dogs were poisoned and vomiting, blood and dying. And he followed them all the way to grandma's house. And he told John, Hey, look, I'm not saying he did it, but I found the tracks leading right to
his house, and it's around the same time. The prints are still fresh because the waves had receded, so the sand was wet. You could tell that the prints refreshed, which indicated that it was in the same time frame and therefore John was pissed. John thought it was great. He did it. And so anyway.
He went vigilante on their ass right there. What was new around the. What was the deal about Greg False parrot. Is it because he had a parrot? Yeah. It's something that he. That dog that night of the dog. Kill the parrot or something? I don't remember.
I didn't really hear much about the parrot, except that one of the dogs freaked out and tried to get at it and upset Greg because, you know, that was his best friend right there on the shoulder. So he's like, What? All right, get out of here.
He was a true pirate. They're hanging out in Belize with his parents and stuff.
I guess so. I don't really know what happened there. That's a good question. But. So the end of that story is that John was always with the girls every night. Every night that the guy worked with, John was like about a month at this point. He was working with him. And the night of false murder, he wasn't there. John was completely unaccounted for, which was strange. And anyway, he got on the phone with a guy. You got on
the phone with the guy before John? I'm sorry. Before Greg was murdered that morning, he said, I don't fucking care where you are. You get on like Tropicana Air and you get your ass here right now. Right fucking now. And he hung up. And the next day, the next day, Eddie McCoy shows up and my guys introduced John as
a low. And anyway, he. Like I said that. The next morning after Gregory Falls murdered, he saw this commotion and John was playing in the pool with Samantha and laughing and just like throwing a beach ball or something, having a grand old time while all this crazy commotion was going on up next door. And my guy went over to him and he said, Hey, John, I think something happened to that guy, Greg, you know, And John kind of like lowered his head and he was like, Yeah,
and he was just supposed to scare him. He wasn't supposed to shoot him. And, you know, my guy went wide eyed. He's like, I'm going to go to my room now. So he went to his room. Eventually, he got arrested, along with some of the other members of the household. John went on the run, etc.. And I think his name is Cashin told my guy that not only had John ordered the hit, but he had also ordered the hit on an unnamed American expat in the south of Belize. So it was yet another guy who
John had killed. And then there's David Middleton. There is in my book profile that John admitted to me. There's a white lobster guy, white lobsters, cocaine that washes up on shore because that's how they do some of their drug runs. They they tie him to booze, kilos and kilos of cocaine. If they get dislodged, they wash up on shore and villagers or something take anything that they're dead.
And some white lobster guy thought John had stolen his cocaine, which is oxymoronic because John was a millionaire and had all the cocaine he could want. So John had to have him killed as well.
And then they got how many people do you think reached met their maker as a result of John magazine?
If if everything told to me is true and B five, and that is if John did, in fact kill his father, which was told to me, I'm not going to say that I proved that I didn't. But it was told to me in confidence. And so that would be five people to get around.
John And you're like, Somebody get me a doctor.
And so he.
Got me here on this one. I'm I'm a little I'm a little shooken up, you know. So I guess technically six because he offed himself.
Right? Allegedly.
Which is to.
A great question. You know, we had Janis on the show. I asked so many questions, actually, because Janis was hardly in the documentary. And I learned about, you know, this this other woman, Samantha Herrera, that you were hanging out with and that you're along with and like. So. All right, first question then is about the girls that come on
to share for those who are watching the video. This is the the article that I pulled up here on prime time recom netflix john mcafee doc filmmakers accused of questionable tactics because in the film samantha and you could see on the video for those you're watching which shows is one of his girlfriends. At the end of it, she says she got a call from Texas from saying that from John and saying that he was still alive. This was after he was allegedly. And but I guess
she said this was taken out of context. So first question is about that and then your opinion, because Janis says they've not seen the body yet, is there a chance that he's still alive and just in hiding?
So about that. I'm not really sure how you can take that quote out of context. When you ask someone explicitly, do you think he's still alive? And then she says explicitly, I received a call. Weeks after his death. I mean, the context is already there. The context came out of her own mouth. So I'm really not sure what the argument is there.
Well, what she said is here I got a call from Texas from someone saying it was John who said he was still alive.
Oh, I could see that.
I would have filmmakers that I didn't know if it was him or someone posing as him. I said that on the film, but it wasn't used.
So I got a call from someone in Texas, not a call from just.
Clint claiming they were John. And I'm thinking, you know what? You would know his voice. How would you not know?
And you wouldn't be in Texas. He wouldn't be in Texas?
No, no, of course not. Even he would not go back to America. The one place that he was worried about getting extradited to, he would be in the Far East somewhere looking like a king.
But the body.
Has not been turned over yet.
Well, I'll tell you.
Yeah. What's going on here?
I'll give you some more context there. And, you know, she had any doubts whatsoever? I don't think I would have brought it up myself. In the weeks after John died. I got a telegram notification, said John. Mark is join Telegram. I thought, What the fuck?
That was so.
Weird. Yeah, because I still had John's number and I wrote to the guy, woman, whomever, and I said, Hey, you know, you're using a dead guy's phone right now. Who are you? And he read the message. Didn't respond. I think it was a few hours later that the account was deleted. So I thought maybe that was Janice who had the the phone. Maybe it was the feds. Maybe it was John. I don't know. And I'll never know. And I'm okay with that.
So. So you don't know. You don't have feelings. Maybe he's dead, and maybe he's not.
I have feelings. Yeah, I believe he's dead, for sure. You do? Yeah. I mean, he died 2 hours after it was announced that he was going to be extradited to America, where he was facing serious charges. And given what he knew, at least what he told me, that he knew, he probably could have started singing like a bird and gotten a community sentence. And maybe certain people were afraid that he was going to do that. So they had to.
But allegedly there was a dead switch anyway, that all this information that, you know, his room has all of this and what's been released. So was that all bogus? He didn't have anything.
We talked about his Deadman's switch a few times. In fact, it's in the book, too. And he mentioned I asked him, you know, after he told me some crazy things, like he had built up a backdoor in his software to spy on everyone. I asked him, John, why don't you release this information? He said, Because if I do, I'm a dead man. But when I was.
On D.O.A., baby. Yeah, yeah.
He said, But when I do die, whether it's by accident or it's natural causes or it's not an accident, he said this information will be released out. He told me it was in the it was in law offices, like five different law offices all around the world with trusted lawyers who were going to bring that material forward. And he said it was with other people as well. And he didn't tell me who. But, you know, we
talked about it at one point. And he did mention, you know, I said to them, why are you afraid? You know, these people are going to kill you. And he said, Well, Alex, what if there's this tactical operation and everybody, you know, hits my dead men, switches my locations at once, they take them, they get the word out, they say, Yeah, 15 minutes. We got all of them. Let's take them out and then kill me. He said, I won't know what the fuck is going on. I
won't know it will be. You know what? Nobody's going to let me know if they get all of them. And once they take them all at once, then I'm a dead.
Wow. It's out. You got to watch out for that mean streak. I'll tell you what. You know, watching this thing and again, as George said, you got to watch this documentary. The book just came out today. And the documentary, what about about an hour and a half or so? Take a look at it. Watch it in the end of what's going on, because John McAfee was on a wild ride, folks. He was on a while.
Here's the book, by the way. The book is titled Different The Man Who Hacked the World A Ghostwriters Descent into Madness with John Malcolm's date, November 15th, 2022. I don't know who else has bought it, but I'm going to go ahead and support right now. You guys don't need to see my password to log in and stuff, but I'm going to go ahead and pick up a copy here and have it shipped to Puerto Rico, because it sounds like an amazing read.
Thanks, man. I appreciate that.
Maybe. Maybe I'm number one who.
But I think that you are an atomic punk. I'm saying that.
It's been on pre-sale for a couple of months, and I guess it's in the top 5% of sales or something that they've ever had. And just because.
The surprise me.
Doesn't surprise.
Me, I mean, it's that they've ever.
Had.
Yeah, that's yeah, it's in the history of the publisher. So I guess it's mostly.
To my brother.
I guess so. I don't know. We'll see if it sucks. Maybe it does. Who knows?
I don't know.
I mean, it sure doesn't.
Yeah, I'm sure it does. Anything else you'd like folks to know about John McAfee in this crazy journey you were on?
Shit. I don't know. That's a that's a big question.
We're like, big questions. The bad crypto podcast, because we're human beings, humans being. Isn't that the title?
Human human being is being. How many have we covered? We've got at least 20.
I don't know. Somebody out there is counting. Maybe.
And if you guys need like a ticker every time the reference that's made with like Eddie Van Halen's face popping up, you know, like rocking out, you should do that.
I can.
Stage swing it across and battle.
It. Well, yeah, I can answer that question with a hopefully half decent answer. So John is one of those rare people in the world who is unquantifiable. You can't ever solve the mystery of John. I spent 430 pages trying to do so, and I spent six months with him and have more time with him than any other writer. Representative Media and I still barely scratched the surface because he is so adding back. So I was was so brilliant. I was so disturbed. You know, he's he's probably going
to be an enduring mystery. And I think that's why people. You know, have flocked to the film and why people are buying the book because they love mysteries. And you got one here with John.
That is. That is for sure. So when we had Janis, you know, we've assumed that Janice's, his wife, did. Now, I don't know if legally at least you know by the state if that's true or not. But I did not realize that he had this other girlfriend. And like, what were the dynamics of that? Were they there at the same time, or was there a crossover where he was no longer with Samantha and he was with Janice?
So that was before my time. But I know the story, and this is 2012. John was with five or six younger girls at that period of time, and he went to Miami and he was at the News Cafe and he met James on top.
Of the world, Miami, four or five women at the same time.
He was having a ball, but he met Janice. And I don't know if you would call it love, but they had something that. I've never.
Seen before. I want to love all five at the same time. You know what? God bless you, John.
He saw her and he was like, Oh, pretty woman.
Mm hmm. Then, you know, you got to understand in this relates to the question earlier about Sam's. He had promised Sam the world. He promised her uncle he was going to marry her. He promised her he was going to marry her because she came from like a you know, from poverty. Right. She she wanted a life and a future with him. And then he met Janis and he threw it all away. He didn't ever go back to Sam.
And so that's what happened. And I think it's partly why she brought that up in the movie is she wanted to hold on to some last little piece of John that she had, even if it was fabricated. You know, and maybe it was like a slight a slight to Janis, you know, like he called me, not you, you know, like he he called me saying he want to run away with me. But, you know, in my opinion, John left a lot of people. He abandoned a lot of people.
He actually did hurt a lot of people. And she was one of them, you know.
Left a lot of people wanting him to finish what he started. And he just not doing that. Wow. I'll tell you what's a wild, wild, wild story. And now you got a book coming out today and you can learn a little bit more about that, I would say. Bottoms up, brother.
Yeah. If you haven't seen the documentary yet, go to Netflix and watch Running with the Devil. It's an amazing documentary. You can see Alex's website at Alex Foster Ghostwriter dot com. And then the book, The Man Who Hacked the World. See, there's the proof. You purchased a hardcover form out of this today. A ghost rider. Descent into Madness with John McAfee. And just a quick note here that as a ghostwriter for many years, you have a course ghostwriting university dot com.
If you want to find out how to get paid to write words and do stuff. Alex's got that here as well. So I recommend you guys go check it out. There is definitely big business and writing for other people. I should know because I've used ghostwriters multiple times for, for my words as well. You know, you can you can take your the concepts from the subject of the book and have somebody who's more disciplined and better at paragraphs and punctuation put it all together for you a weave,
a narrative. And at least on my books, I always go in and make sure, Yep, I would say it like that. Or no, that's I didn't. I wouldn't mean that. I would never say that. This is what I said. Make sure that it's accurate. But it saves a lot of time, especially if, you know, I can I can pound out an article in no time, sit me down on my laptop and you want a thousand words on whatever the topic is. I'm like, But tell me, I got to write 50,000 words and I just like, I
want to shoot myself. I just, you know.
That's what we were talking about it. Yeah, you were talking about recording your voice, interviewing with the person that's there, actually your words, how you transcribe your words. Here are my words. Put them together coherently and I'll go back. And that's the smart way to do it. I actually when I wrote my book, I used I used Google Docs and and spoke my book and then it translated it really easily. Then I went back in and edit.
I learned that from Alex Mendoza, an Internet marketer, many years ago. He called it writing at the speed of sound where you dictate your book and then transcribe it and then work through it. So Alex, what would you say to aspiring ghostwriters out there?
It's the best kept secret of the literary industry. You know, 80% of nonfiction books are written by people like me, and it's an amazing job. It doesn't really feel like a job. You know, you travel the world, you meet fascinating people. You make really good money. If you're great at what you do, make a quarter million a year, half a
million a year. You know, I just partnered with James Patterson's co-author, and we're going to start spearheading a new fiction series and try to emulate James Patterson's writing empire.
Yes, he's amazing. He's amazing. I read the John Lennon book that basically that went in that whole process of John Lennon. And then the parallel universe was Mark David Chapman. And it talked about how John Lennon has gone through the Beatles. And I was there and at the same time a million things. And then here's Mark David Chapman,
and then they collided on the street of noon. It was it was one of the best books that I've sort of read as a nonfiction, sort of a real story about a sad topic, because I was John Lennon would have been around these last 40 years also as Jimi Hendrix would have been around to everybody else. Condi. But those two are really shit.
I didn't even know about that book. I got to check it out.
That's called Let's Get It Right.
Everybody else can buy you What are you live on Main Street?
Traverse is everybody is going to die eventually. Joel I don't know if you know that, but eventually nobody makes it off of this rock like that. Hey, Alex Smith. And it's true. I want to say thank you. This interview was not great, but it was good enough.
Good? As long as I wasn't bad, I. So I figured it would be a good analogy.
I just want to say pound cake.
I will eat some.
I didn't even count the number of Van Halen references. There's a lot. Maybe you guys can write us back or podcasts at gmail.com and let us know how many songs we reference. Feel free to list them all out.
Mm hmm. Yeah. Or tweet us. I think that that there's at least there's at least 25.
Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot. We pulled them.
Some of them you probably don't even. Even. They might not have said because we were pretty smooth on how we set them. Ours was obvious that we were dropping a reference, but that's just the way it is. Who? Who was better cast, as is.
David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar?
Oh, you know, I think both of them have their their pick one. You have to pick one. Well, it would always be David Lee Roth. Of course, Van Halen wasn't Van Halen until I mean, David Lee Roth was there. And like those first seven albums were amazing and they dropped or six albums or whatever it is they just dropped and boom, boom, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83. Almost every year they drop one, which is where they were never number one until 1984, or they was almost
number one in 1984. And they didn't quite because like Michael Jackson or something. But then then Van Hagar happens and then they get a bunch of number ones. I think that's just a result of all the hard work they put in. Now, I do think that Dave got his big ego in place and he was he was having a lot of fun making these videos and he says, You know what? I want to go do my own thing and be Hollywood, Dave, and do all these videos and.
And then he just had a really big ego. And I could see why they kicked him out because his head was huge. Even whenever they brought him back after they let Hagar go and he came back for a tour and he was This is my night is all about me, you know, and it's not. And they kicked him out again and they got Gary to run. And then finally they brought him back. After Dave, his ego was released. The best showman, one of the best, if
not the best showman in rock and roll. David Lee Roth. Now, I do think that Mick Jagger, amazing, probably the best, but holy shit, like Van Halen's as a live guy who.
Yeah, I think Sammy was a suitable replacement, but Van Hagar was not better than the original Van.
Halen, and maybe he sold more albums there during that time or had higher ratings. But overall, David Lee Roth is spectacular.
So as long as we were talking about John McAfee, we still have in the Bad Crypto Nifty Club some of these exclusive classic clips from our first interview with John McAfee. There's only seven or five of each of these, and you can own a classic clip, John, speaking on the threat of artificial intelligence. These are video clips, cell phone security, the magic of Bitcoin, million dollar Bitcoin. If you go to bed, crypto dot uncut dot FM, you need to own the the bad crypto membership in order
to have access to these apps. And I'm showing our show notes right there. That's a little behind the scenes. The one that you're looking for is this right here, the bad crypto nifty club for $2.21, which is .002 ethe pick that up and then you get access to our other nfts as well. And that'd be fun for you guys to have.
I'd say keep an eye on that space because there's going to be some new stuff that's going to be popping up in that. As bad crypto community grows into a collective as we're working with those guys and uncut, hopefully they're able to deliver on some of the things that they're talking about. If so, that space could get a lot cooler and we'll be able to do a lot more fun stuff over there. So we've also been.
Checking the inbox of our voicemail and have downloaded a bunch of voicemails which we're going to be playing in an upcoming episode. If you want to be in that fan show, then call us and leave us a voicemail. Take down this number of the bad crypto hotline. 7888590307088859 30. And if you didn't write it down there, hit the rewind thing on your Spotify or iTunes. It goes back 15 seconds and you can hear it again. Leave us a voicemail. Tell us what you like. Tell us what
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A group Whose band?
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To be so great. We are.
So good.
Grade over. You know, I.
Remember hearing those songs when they were new because I was listening to AM FM radio, when I remember when Van Halen first came.
Out and I was This.
Rocks, and then you would just look forward.
If anyone's got a new.
Album, you'd hear. And I got to tell you, when Jump came out, I was not impressed. I thought, Oh, they're going synth. Like everybody else in the eighties. And Jump is not Jump is fun, but it doesn't rock the way earlier stuff does.
Mm hmm. Oh, I think that was the some getting a little Hollywood. They started thinking about what can we do for our videos, what can we do to do to remain relevant and think about it? You know, that's they've been doing it for a while. They're like, you don't you're not guaranteed to have a super long career any time you're off. But they were launching what what I loved about it and there's a really good documentary on Amazon Prime about Van Halen. It talks about those
early years. So Van Halen got together in like 71 of 72, and they were just playing backyards and, you know, doing stuff on the Hollywood strip and stuff for a long time. And then actually Gene Simmons of KISS was going to sign them and they put together a record and demo, and he took it to New York and they did a live it wherever he took it. You didn't like Van Halen and so sorry, you know, they
didn't get signed, but then later they got signed. And their whole album, I mean, Hail on one is just spectacular. If you've never heard it before, put it on Spotify or on on your YouTube, put your headphones on and just listen to that album for the first time. It'll blow you away. It's such a great debut album.
Eddie Van Halen. Rest in peace. You are officially unchained.