ALONE AT 14, NO FAMILY, NO MONEY — WHAT HAPPENED NEXT CHANGED EVERYTHING

Welcome And The Name Debate

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Okay, so welcome to our podcast. This is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show. I'm really glad you came to my podcast, and I think you you bring such great energy. You have such great energy, man. You do.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

If you if you've had that your whole life, you have all this energy.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Yeah, yeah, I I I do.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

So we're having a debate how do you say your last name?

unknown 0:39

Aga.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Aga. Yeah. Like without the H. Just pretend it's A G A. A G A G A. It's A G H A, but it's yeah, it's August.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Well, you told me that you got to pick your last name.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I changed my name a few times. How come? Uh well when I came here, I was uh I came in a different name because I was illegal completely. I didn't have a passport or anything when I was 14. So I had a different name. Well, I didn't even have a name, really. I just made up. Oh, that is part of my real family name. And then I switched it. So when I came here, it used to be Ghani. Um Ghani was not my name either. It's just to sneak into the thing. They took somebody's passport. My dad dropped me off, and then they picked half of my grandfather's name. They circled Ghani. They said that's your last name. So okay. But I don't think that was real.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

That was just Oh, it's kind of like uh Godfather too when he went, came from the island of Colleon and they just circled Colleon, and that would give him a name. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Circled the name, it's not even my passport. So I got stuck with that for a while.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

So when you say you came here, what country did you come here from?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

Iraq. I'm from Iraq.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Okay. I'm gonna jump all around, but I know that you can follow me because you're about as ADHD as I am. Maybe. Oh, I'm worse. I'm like out of control.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

There's some we need some serious, like not one psychiatrist. I need like 20. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

You're not in any kind of medicine, are you? No.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

No, okay. It's horrible. Yeah. Don't ever go on medication for that. Right? Right? No. I think people who are on ADHD or your kids, and that's from medical, I think that slows them down, that decreases their creativity, creativity. So to me, when you have a C student as a kid and they he's jumping everywhere and causing problem, that is that's gotta that's gonna be the successful guy.

SPEAKER_02 2:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Do not don't muffle his energy and his uh or her uh, you know, what they want to do because they may not fit at that time, but when it's time to grow, they're the ones that are gonna be grinding it when they're 20s and 30s, and all everybody else is gonna be on the way down.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

I saw that I I met this guy, I've known him now for about 10 years, but he's a very successful guy. He's about he's a billionaire. He owns a bunch of hotels, he owns the rits, he owns whatever. And he told me, he goes, the A's and the B's work for the C's. Yes. A's C's.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

I think the A's work for the B's and C's.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

Yeah, the A's work for the B's, B's were whatever the however it was, but it was very powerful. I'll never forget it, even though I got it wrong.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

Nothing, I mean, a lot of A's will do really well, of course, but but it's rare, I think. I think the different ones, like the all the ones that people like all the nerd, the nerds and the geeks, when they're looking, that's the ones, you know, you wonder how good they'll do. It's the really the other ones that cause a lot of problems. They are the ones that because they think outside the box they can survive, they could do stuff. But with me, I've always been like this. I was always looking over my shoulder because I came alone. So and then uh later on my older brother came here. So it was kind of like everything I did. I I had to watch, you know, what I'm doing. And I was always when I was little, actually, I I uh I didn't speak, I was uh I stuttered pretty bad. So my parents made fun of me, my teachers, my faith I couldn't talk. So my parents thought I was stupid because I I stuttered. I didn't talk. I just but I did well in school. So then they put me in an art school. So I do a lot of art and calligraphy because of that. Yeah. Okay. So because I didn't I didn't speak until later I started still stuttered, but then I went to school uh more in art. I did a lot of art and sports because of that, because I didn't have to talk.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Well, here you are, a very successful doctor. Put that in parentheses. Now let me jump back.

Left At JFK With $600

SPEAKER_02 3:59

How how you get here at the age of 14? Explain that story. Well, it's you told me the story already, and blown away by the story.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Right. So the Iran and Iraq were fighting in the 80s. My um my dad was working for um uh Saddam Hussein, he was in the oil ministry, and then he said, Hey, um, I have a trip to New York. Do you want to go shopping for a couple days with me? It was June 3rd, 83. And I said, Sure, I'll go shopping, you know. And he said, just for a couple days, don't bring anything. I said, Okay. So it was a UN charter plane, it was uh switched to TWA at the time in Holland. And then right when he when we switched planes, he told me, Hey, I'm not bringing you back. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, I'm gonna drop you off in New York. And I remember like I didn't even I didn't know if I should cry. I know, I was like, What do you mean? He said, No, because your chances of living well in the United States are a lot higher than being in Iraq, even that we have money, we have everything. But I worry about what because in Iraq, once or any country in there, if you turn 16, you're pretty much stuck. Because if there's a war, you can't leave. But at 14, you can kind of sneak out, you know, in and out. So he said, I'm gonna leave you there. The problem is I can't give you money because they watch how much money they take out of the country for everybody. So he can't take money out. So he just snuck in $600, gave it to me, and he said, This is inside I had a guitar to my brother's, and he sh he taped it inside the wood of the guitar so you don't see it. It's only six hundred dollars. And he said, That's it. He said, You're there. But he gave me advice. He said, I mean, he said Wait, so you land in New York, you have the guitar at JFK, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:31

And does he just turn around and get on a plane?

SPEAKER_00 5:33

He said you have two hours before I call the police. He's gonna call the police, yeah, to say I lost my son because he's gonna go back to Iraq saying I lost him in New York.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Okay. So I guess you're at the airport and he tried to.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

And he said, I'm gonna give you like two hours. You better go somewhere. And he said, Um, here's he said, We can't. I couldn't either that the other problem is I couldn't contact him either. Right. Or my mom or my little brother. I couldn't his rule was don't contact us, we'll find you. You're safer here. He said, Stay in the Midwest. Okay, which I didn't know what the midwest but I didn't speak English back then, right? I didn't at all. I spoke few words, like cat, dog. So he showed me in the map, he said, stay in this area, it's called Midwest, go to a Catholic school. I'm not Christian, I'm Muslim, actually. But he said, Go to a Catholic school, stay in the Midwest, don't drink, don't smoke, don't do drugs. All the same spiel that parents give you. Uh-huh. And that's it. And that was the last time I saw him. And he got on a plane. He left. I don't know where he was. He called the police and I lost my son. Okay. And you took off.

SPEAKER_02 6:32

Where'd you go?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

I went downtown on the on the subway, and I hung around downtown. Actually, no, I was in downtown. He went back. I don't know where he went. Right. And then there, so what I did there, I I remember, you know, you anybody who looks like me or my dad, I would go approach them because I figured they spoke Arabic. So I would go say, hey, you know, try to. So it took me a few days to get used to that.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

Like your first night, you sleep in the street?

SPEAKER_00 6:53

Yes. Yeah. At the yeah, at the there is so they used to have these, uh, what are they called? Um like the the Shaurma and Kebab places that they do. Okay. You know, they they do the you you sell on the street. So you have to watch them overnight. Right. So I would these guys, a lot of them are Arabic, so they would let me watch them for like five dollars. So I would watch their cars and then lose their spot.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

So you have a guitar case?

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Oh, yeah, that went away. I threw it away. Oh, you threw it away. I just have the money in me. And then no clothes, nothing. Literally, very, very little. And then I stayed, I did that for a while. And then the thing is, every day I would go um to uh JFK, TWA, same air. I would take the subway back every day at 3 15 to see if my dad came back. But he never did. So one day I saw a guy um a few weeks later uh who looked like my dad. And I went up to him. He said, Oh, he said, I live in Columbus, Ohio. He said, Are you a runaway? I'm like, No, in Arabic. He's from Egypt. He said, You know, there's a school called St. Charles in Columbus. If you want, I'll drop you off there. But you have to buy your own ticket. So I bought a ticket. At the time, you just pay cash, there's no credit card. So I bought a ticket and I went with him. He literally drove up to the St. Charles uh old boys' school and he went knocked on the door. It was right after graduation, I think, uh, for their class. And he said, Hey, I found this guy. He said he has to go to a Catholic school. And the Monsignor said in English, he said, Hey, do you what grade should you be in? I said, I'm 11. And he said, Do you play soccer? I said, Yeah, that's all you know. He said, Oh, we won the championship, whatever. So I he said, if you can speak English in the next couple of months before school starts, you can stay here. I said, Okay.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Crazy? And they said yes, and you stayed there for how long?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Uh so I went inside. The the guy in the pinto, he had a pinto, I remember. The the Egyptian guy, he left. I have no idea his name or anything. Right. And then I went with the Monsignor, and that's why I love the Catholic community. They literally, without them, I wouldn't be here. My none of my family would be here. And um the reason why they brought up, you know, the in Iraq is the same way. Catholic schools are really uh strict, they are great education. So I went to Catholic schools in Iraq. Oh and so we have private Catholic schools there. That's where I went to school. And then so I've always gone from pre-K all the way up in a Catholic community, even that I'm not religious and I'm you know you're at this Catholic all-boys school, all day school, you stay there. Yeah, the Monsignor, I remember he led me, they live there, the Monsignor and a couple of the priests, and he put me in his little apartment or little house uh or condo, whatever he has in the school. And I remember he gave me, it was like a couch like this, and then it was a red couch. I remember that. I don't know why it was red, but it was red. And then he said, um, he gave me a little black and white TV, and he said, I want you to watch uh like Price is Right, Thries Company, uh every day. And he said, Gee, you've got to play these, you know, watch the don't stop watching the TV. And he gave me a Latin book. He said, You have to speak Latin. I'm like, I don't even speak English. He said, Well, too bad you gotta learn Latin too. So he said, So I had to get a dictionary, Latin to English, English, Arabic. So what he said, you gotta learn that before, otherwise I cannot put you in the 11th grade. So that's all I did. And then after a couple of weeks, he said, Let's go buy you a bicycle. So then I said, Okay. So we go out to buy a bike, and then he rented an apartment for me in a place called um Barclay Square, which is called Uzi Alley now. If you Google that, it says Uzi Alley, it's where it's not, it's the hood, it's not good in Columbus. And um, it is like a gang lane. It was like $80 for the whole month with utility. So you can tell how you know it was all like shack carpet.

SPEAKER_02 10:23

And he But you're now you're like 15.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

No, I'm still 14. Oh, you're still 14. Yeah, and then he gave me his pillow, uh, like a little blanket, his TV, and that books, a couple of books, and my bike.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Isn't that crazy that to know that's how it started and where you are now? I mean, I know when last time I saw you, you were driving a million-dollar Ferrari. Well, it was parked. It was parked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, now let's go back.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

But the book, yeah, so so yeah, of course. But that's not all me. It's really it's a testament to the people around me, right? The country, the how I grew up, the the that's why it's important for the kids, our kids to. I tell my, I have three kids, I tell them all the time that you won the lottery by being born here. Right. And that's what I mean, you're right. But how the story is not, it's not about how great, oh wow, rah-rah, I'm so great. No, it's about how you can position, you take your opportunities right, you can do the right thing with it, you work hard. It wasn't easy. This is took 50, you know, 45 to 40 years. So you go through struggles and you fail multiple times and you get picked on, and but but it makes you stronger because you're living in the hood, you're living in a uh with gangs, you're living with this. And I remember the three advice I had stay in the Midwest.

Catholic School And Midwest Lifeline

SPEAKER_00 11:31

I'm in the Midwest, I'm in a Catholic school. Don't drink, don't smoke, don't drug. Are you thinking I did?

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Are you still friends today with anybody from back then in your high school?

SPEAKER_00 11:40

Yes. You are? Oh, yeah, yeah. I called uh Mr. Cavelo, the the principal about three months ago, and I spoke with uh also John Kasich, John Kasich who helped me stay here, who ran for president. Oh wow. So John Kasich is how I ended up it's all it's my story so long, but I recently I uh like a year ago, I contacted them, and then uh of course some of the kids from from uh high school, they're all I'm um, you know, we talk to each other at once.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

So do you then end up going to university in Ohio?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

No, no, so yeah, so from there anyway, so I'll make it so I go there, I I get my little apartment, um, and I sit there, and then I remember uh you know, it was a struggle because I had no money. My $600 can only last so much. So I got a job at a place like Subway called Dexter's where I made buns um every night. So that's because you don't have to speak English. I get paid like $1.80. I still don't have a passport, by the way, or an ID or anything. So um my when somebody in school, uh Mr. Cavello and the Monsignor, Father Bennett, said to me, Can you uh there's a guy in your class uh named George, his uncle is uh John Casey, he's a congressman. Why don't we talk to him? Because you're a senior, you have to have something. No, but you're having the only guardian I had was my brother who was uh four years older than me, but he was in in college himself. He came after me. Okay, and he was in Michigan, then was came back to Ohio later. So I didn't have a real guardian or a parent. So he said, you have to have something. We can't just let you graduate. Where are you gonna go? So then he his thought was to call John Kasich. And I met with Doc with John Kasich, told him the story, and then he, I remember he a wonderful person, he's amazing, actually. And then he uh he told him I didn't know any difference talking about Republican, he's a Republican, he doesn't like you know, people sneaking in, I snuck in. But then he he said a story about how he suffered losing his parents. He said, I know what it's like to be without your parents. He flipped around, said, I'm gonna take care of you, I'll do what I can, got me an attorney that he paid for. The attorney said, Um, why don't we send a letter from the Vatican and from John Kasich to say you're a good student to the immigration at the INS. I thought, okay, so we did that. And I think like a week later, I got like a white Taurus outside my apartment saying, Here's your ticket back to Iraq, you have 72 hours. So that's how, and that's when things went crazy.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

So that was like ice pretty much coming for you? Back then it was called the INS.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Now it's ICE, yeah, INS. So they came and they said, Here's your thing. They knew, they said, We know you snuck in, we know everything about you, time for you to leave. But then I can't leave. They'll kill my dad, they'll kill me. So I said, No. So I went back to attorneys, like, oh my gosh, this is horrible. So he said, Well, the only way you can stay is if you get married, you have to get married. Uh, because you can't do a political asylum because you're kind of snuck in here. Right. So he said, You have to get married. Do you have a girlfriend? I'm like, no, I'm old boy school, I'm 15 years old. Right. So he said, Well, you have three days, you gotta get married before then, so I can get an extension. So I remember at the time it was Halloween time, and I went to a skating ring and I kept running over girls until I met somebody. I said, I have to marry you. She took me to her parents, she had a boyfriend. Her boyfriend had a he's the only one with the car, so I don't know why I'm involved with the boyfriend. His name is Fred, her name is Teresa. So we go to the to meet the parents, and then um I told them my story. They said, Oh, we've seen you around. And then they eventually said, Okay, well, um uh I had to call my older brother and he talked to the to the stepdad, and they agreed that I would marry Teresa. So then in Ohio, you can't get married at 15. Right. So we had to drive to Covington, Kentucky. Yeah, we didn't have a car, so we used Fred's car, the boyfriend. So it was me, Fred, Teresa, the mom, Carol.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

This is a movie, dude.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

And I think that the lawyer, for some reason, it was like a teacher's day next day. I said, I'm gonna go to Covington to get married. He's like, Yeah. He said, By the way, my son, who's like six, he has um, he has a teacher's thing and I have nobody to watch him. Will you take him with you on a field trip? Like, sure. So now we go in this old Thunderbird, including the son, the baby, who's the six-year-old. And then I remember the reason why I remember that story is I went to Big Boy and I lost him there. We we all lost him. We got in the car, we're like, where is he? So we lost the kid.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

At the big boy restaurant?

SPEAKER_00 15:44

At the big boy, he was playing with the yeah. So anyway, so we get him out at Big Boy, we found him, and then we go to Coving, Kentucky, and I get married to Teresa. And then the boyfriend's mad. Like, dude, it's fake. Anyway, we get married to Teresa, she's very pretty, I'm very excited. And I have a wife. We go back to Columbus, like, hey, I'm married. And then the uh, you know, we tell the lawyer, he's like, Okay, we're gonna extension, let's meet her. She comes with her boyfriend. He's like, Who's this guy? This is her boyfriend. He's like, Well, that's not gonna work. But he said, How old are you? She said, 21. He said, You can't marry him. She's like, Why not? It's like in Ohio, that's rape. Now you gotta you need to find somebody your age. So you had an extension. We go back to the parents, like, can I can I have your little sister? Her name's Robin. So then we Robin is Ronnie's real daughter. Uh huh. So he didn't want to give her up first. He wanted me to marry Teresa. Right. So my brother discussed some negotiations with him. It's like, hey, look, this guy's gonna be a doctor, I'm gonna be an engineer. Can you work something out? So he agreed to annul the marriage with Teresa. So we drive to Covington three months later, annul the marriage with Teresa and Mary Robin, who's my age, she was 16.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

And then so that's But your brother worked to deal out with the parents, like my brother's gonna be a doctor in school. We'll help you out later.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yeah, he did. I didn't know that at the time. Wow. But we did for both of them. Okay, they each got something.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

So that was 40 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

That was 86.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

86. So right now eventually, did you and your brother pay the guy?

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Oh, yeah. By nine by the late mid-90s, we paid them a lot. Yeah. Now they own uh they own uh huge business. They have dog kennel training and stuff in uh Ohio and West Virginia. They have like seven or eight of them. So now from that money. Is that crazy? That's amazing. They're really they're really this is a movie. This is a really cool movie. They're so wonderful. Without them, I mean I remember that's the first time I had a peanut butter sandwich. I remember it's the first time I went to a house that's on wheels. I'm like, this is so weird because it was a they lived in a camper, like not a camper. A trailer, a mobile home. Yeah, in Columbus, yeah. It was so weird. Like, what this is a house, and I see the tires, but we we don't go anywhere. So it was kind of strange. But what nice people to crazy? And it wasn't, I didn't know at the time. It was just like I remember that's what I learned about fake wrestling. I remember the dad I never understood because he couldn't say T's, his T's were K's, so a truck became a crook, he was a crook driver. The point is, it was so confusing to me because I didn't speak English and this guy didn't know how to speak, and it was chaos.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

But so all this happens at what point

INS Threat And A Desperate Marriage

SPEAKER_02 18:09

do you get into college? When do you meet your parents? Do you connect with your parents again?

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Oh, not until 11 years later. 10 years later, yeah. How does that happen? So once then I applied to high state, I went to high state for uh I became a pharmacist. And uh from then I uh my plan is always to go to medical school, but I trust pharmacy because I like chemistry, I like uh designing drugs, I love that aspect of biology. I always have so I did I went to pharmacy school at high state, and then I realized I hate pharmacy because it's horrible, it's so boring. So I said, what am I gonna do now? Then they said there's something called nuclear pharmacy. I said, okay, what's nuclear pharmacy? Oh, it's very hard to get in. That's when the movie Top Gun came out. Right. They said they call them Top Gun Pharmacy Students because nobody can get in. I'm like, all right, let me apply. So I applied, I got into USC, I go to my nuclear pharmacy program, I did my master's nuclear pharmac, nuclear medicine, nuclear pharmacy, and I became a nuclear pharmaceutic, which I love. It's so interesting, such an amazing field. So I did that. Unfortunately, that's when Iraq, the Gulf War started. So that was a whole different issue now. So now I'm legal, I have a citizenship. Okay. I won't tell you how I anyway. Right. Because I had my because now I oh, I know both marriages. My marriages were fake. They were not, I didn't have to do anything with the girls. But uh, so I have a citizenship, but then I I became a nuclear pharmacist, and unfortunately, the Gulf War started.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Uh so a day after the Gulf War started on uh January 19th, started 17th, and I get arrested by uh the Secret Service because I'm a nuclear pharmacist and I'm from Iraq and I was illegal. And they thought it was nuclear weapons. I'm like, no, it's a nuclear, it's medicine, dude. So I end up, they come to my work and they I was in med school already, first year, but I was also a pharmacist working full time. So they arrested me for anyway. They said I was gonna harm the president at the time, Bush. I'm like, I don't know anything about him. You guys are making up stories. So they I go with the with Wonderful Secret Service for a while, hanging out with them because that's what they accused me of for like days, hours, weeks, weeks. So I had to leave med school. I'm no longer so I didn't have anybody here. So then I remember uh one of my girlfriends, like my last the girlfriend that I had, uh before my you know what anyway. So I knew she knew some people, so I called, like, hey, I need I need a lawyer. She said, Okay, she said, I know this guy, let me call my dad. They call, and uh basically this lawyer named um uh so I should I don't know if I should say his name, but anyway, so there's a lawyer that's from Cleveland. His name is Harold Wanell. Okay, he he they said he's gonna come and help you. I said, Okay, so I'm sitting in Columbus in the federal building, and this guy comes. I'm not kidding you, he looked like Einstein. He had like a it was freezing at that time, and he had like a weird shorts like to his knees with a bunch of ducks on it. He had like a golf shirt and his hair is like he's like three foot two. I'm like, this who's this guy? The I'm your attorney is like, which one is Ghani? My name was different. I'm like, I am Ghani. Look at them, they're all in suits. I'm the only one like this. So he said, Who called you names? I said, This guy, this guy. He said, Who hit you? I told him, I said, they beat the hell out of you. Two of them did. They would they would hit me when nobody's watching. Wow, they would put and I so he said, You go to them right now, tell them F this, F this. I'm like, this guy is so powerful. They're all like, Yes, sir, yes, sir. You apologize to him. Like, these guys are so afraid of this guy. I don't know who he is. So then he tells me, Don't worry, I'll take care of everything. He said, I'll be $15,000. I'm like, I don't have it. He's that just pay me whenever. And then that's it. I walked out. And then what happened when you looked him up? He was the FBI director in the 60s, this guy. I didn't know that. Oh, wow. No, I didn't know who he is, and everybody's so afraid of him. So then he's the one that actually got me out and said, leave this guy alone. The problem is, this is how crazy Secret Service is. They're there to protect the president. Fine. They're there for for uh, you know, so you don't do money laundering and all that. They are, they do their job, but I I worry about how many of people like me who got involved just because simply how. To be a nuclear pharmacist, simply I'm from Iraq. I didn't do anything wrong. Right. How many people get in this position where they're doing their job attacking somebody innocent? I'm just trying to make it here. I'm not doing anything wrong. Yes, I was illegal. How I got here, but I wasn't doing anything with nuclear weapons. So you know that you don't, I always wonder about how many more kids, how many more adults, how many more young people.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

People think they got sent back. Or yes. Well, what's the difference between a nuclear uh chemist or pharmacist and a normal pharmacist?

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Well, normal pharmacists, you go to Walgreens, to CBS, you just so nuclear pharmacists, they make uh nuclear medicine for cancer treatment for it's a monoclonal antibodies, like the PET scan that you hear about now. That's who makes these drugs. That's what I did. So you go to a nuclear reactor, you make the drugs, you mix it with different compounds, and then it attaches something. So if you have cancer of the liver, so you take a drug, you you get another molecule that goes specifically for the liver and now lights up the liver. So it shows you where the cancer is. So you worked on stuff like that? That's all I did. And then the thing, oh, even through med school. And then what's interesting about this is back then I used to always say, okay, if I'm diagnosing there's cancer, why can't I attach a chemo to it and send it to that area without doing instead of giving you chemo throughout your whole body, why don't I just attach it? Now, 2026, finally, people are doing call theronotics, where they're they're taking uh drugs, mixing it with chemo, radioactive drugs, and then as a PET scan, and they they will actually send it through a PET scan to go to where the cancer is. And that's the new way that's happening now. So this took it 26 years.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

But now, are you primarily stem cells?

SPEAKER_00 23:38

No, no, I do every I do cancer treatments, I do arthritis. I've been interventional radiologists. You're what? Interventional radiologist.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

That's that's the title now, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:46

So I, you know, obviously my stories go forever, but then um they don't end. My story, they just go. No, they're crazy. So so I'll go back to the story because it's important. So when when that happened, what what Secret Service did that was horrible is they send a letter to every medical school in the country saying, now some med schools I've never even applied to, saying, by the way, this person, Ayad Ghani, is no longer in suspicion of harming the president of the United States. Whoa. So if you're a dean of a med school, never heard of John Jay, right? Okay, John Jay Van Esse is never, I'm like, okay, well, I'm whenever I see John Jay, I'm not gonna let him in at all. Right. So they kind of purposely ruined my chance of going to med school at all.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Isn't that crazy?

SPEAKER_02 24:28

That is crazy.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

But is that why you changed your name?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

No, I kept my name. At that time, I changed it later on. But what I did is they didn't realize there's something called DOs. They didn't send that letter to DO schools, so which is the same thing. It's a medical school. Uh so they have the same, we take the same exams, but they didn't send that. So one of my teachers from uh Ohio State said to me, Hey, they're opening a school in Chicago. Why don't you apply to that school and go teach pharmaceucy nuclear pharmacy? They don't have they need nuclear pharmacists there. So I applied to a school in Chicago. That's why I went to school in med school in Chicago, the back way, kind of, without anybody knowing. And that's how I so I went to medical school there, then I did um uh my surgery internship at Rush, and then from there I went to I did some in the University of Chicago, and then I went to residency in radiology because I've liked nuclear pharmacy and I like radiology diagnostics. So I did that. Then I did fellowships in pediatric interventional radiology at Cincinnati Children's, then I went to University of California in San Diego, where I trained in adult interventional uh vascular interventional radiology. So I went jumped around all over the country, but that's so 17 years later, I'm an interventional radiologist. What a life, man. It's crazy, right? It's so wonderful.

Nuclear Pharmacy And Secret Service Shock

SPEAKER_00 25:43

But it is great because you get to help. Interventional radiology is a field that's not many people know about. Uh it's kind of like a mysterious field, even within the medical community in the hospital. You're basically the physician's physician. When you have an MRI, what do you do? You go to the radiologist, look at it. Your doctor goes to that radiologist, right? CET the same way. Interventional radiology is basically image-guided procedures. You do surgery without cutting the person. You use a wire, it's like a video game. You use a wire, a catheter, you go to where the problem is fixed from inside and get out. Um I did that for you know a long time, obviously, for 15, 12, 15 years in the hospital setting. And I always thought, why not open an outpatient interventional radiology center?

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Is that what you have now?

SPEAKER_00 26:26

And that's what I have now.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

That's do you have that one building?

SPEAKER_00 26:28

We have three locations, but that's the main one. Yeah, the one that you went to. That's beautiful. Yeah, thank you. That's that one has everything. We put we have imaging there, we have uh you see patients there, you have uh ORs, operating rooms, surgery center. Uh so you have everything in there. All along. Is it five floors? It's five floors. Three floors is gonna be three or four floors.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

And then you're putting a gym on the top floor?

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Yeah, it's gonna be a yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:50

And now you're also turning into like a longevity thing as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

Right. We're also doing the longevity, health and wellness longevity. And I've always believed in that too, because that's one thing what I've noticed with the when you do a PET scan, you realize certain things where what lights up and even brain MRI, like certain people, musicians have different looking brains than non-musicians. So I I always thought, what keeps people healthy? That's why I started looking into the blue zones in the world. Why are people a hundred years old? Why I'm vegetarian, for example. I became vegetarian in 1990 because I realized when I was doing my Pharm D, uh I shouldn't be eating meat. None of this stuff makes sense. Like the we're so I switched, and my kids have never had meat. My uh wife became vegetarian since then. Uh yeah, so I haven't had people say you need meat.

SPEAKER_02 27:36

I don't think so. No, so where do you get your protein from? You get your protein from spinach from so that's the other thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

You don't need that much protein. I think people that want uh hound on the protein, they need 180, 200. I don't think you do. You don't need that much. It's not good for your liver to have that much protein anyway. After age 18, you don't need it. Now, I didn't say vegan. I like the idea of yogurt and and cheese and stuff. But but vegetarian, if you're vegetarian, you can do very well. There's enough protein in in yogurt, you can have a cup of yogurt that's had that gets absorbed a lot better than meat. Broccoli has protein, it's absorbed at almost 100%. Where you take a piece of meat, only 30% gets absorbed. What about eggs? Do you eat eggs or is that great? I don't eat the baby, the yellow part. I only eat the white part. Oh, you only eat the white part?

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Yeah. So, like, what did you have for breakfast today?

SPEAKER_00 28:22

I had just egg whites. Just egg whites. That's it. Yeah. Wow. One avocado. One avocado.

SPEAKER_02 28:27

So I'm gonna jump around, I'm gonna get into some stem cells because I still don't understand a lot of the stem cell stuff.

Interventional Radiology Without Incisions

SPEAKER_02 28:32

Because the stem cells you have and that I did with you were called Muse stem cells. Yes. And ever since I got them, I I did it backwards. I didn't research it before you and I did it.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

You just trusted me.

SPEAKER_02 28:44

Absolutely. I absolutely trusted you. That's absolutely what if you remember, it was kind of like it was it was like the ADHD of the city. Get up and go into it.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

Yeah. I'm going to sleep. Okay, wake up. Look what happened. So, what are mu stem cells? So, this is really important. Stem cells have always been huge interest to me when I was in uh in med school. I was doing research with a guy named Dr. Youretsky, who is uh on Alzheimer's and we're doing it like on mice, and uh it's it's sad because I don't like hurting the animals, but we did. Anyway, this is at Ohio State. There's like mice and monkeys and dogs. But the study was what does what happens with these younger animals and how much stem cells they have to grow everything? How what even on humans, you have a baby who is three months old, then you look him up in the three weeks and he's this much bigger. How does that baby get bigger? They have a huge amount of stem cells, billions, all which as we age, these stem cells go down, and then that's the aging process. Right. So the idea is how do we get stem cells back in there to keep us not just not age as quickly, but also age gracefully and healthy. Right. So I've always wanted to say, how do we get stem cells? The problem is you can never extract stem cells. So people have tried to take your own fat, they spin it down. Right. Well, what does that do? I don't know what that does other than charging somebody $10,000. Because if the stem cell is already there, what am I taking from me and give it back to me? Sending us PRP. Yes, it gives you a sense of uh you feel better right away because in the anti-inflammatory response, PRP, plasma-rich platelets where you take your own blood, you spin it, you get that, and you put it back into the joint that hurts you. Right. That helps, but that's temporary. So why not get stem cells? And you have many people, vascular plastics, they take your, and we used to do it. I'm like, but it doesn't make sense to me. So I thought, why not take stem cells from something you throw away after a C-section, placenta, the cord, take it from that, get the best stem cells. It hasn't crossed to the mom, didn't go to the baby. This is something you throw in the trash, not hurting the mom, not hurting the baby. Right. You test it for everything, for every single thing. Test it for you. Hep C, HIV, COVID, whatever you want. Then extract that stem cell, put it into somebody else. The problem with it, there they die. It can only last so long. Within that, there's something called MUSE, M-U-S-E, which is just multigenic, uh, multipoetic cells that are very harsh. They can live in any environment. The thing is, for years, nobody can extract more than one to five percent of them. And that's what even now, when you look it up, it says you can only get 5%. So when people go and they try stem cells in other countries, it's more available. It's still 5%. You're not getting more than that. No matter what they say, they're getting 5% of the placenta or no, 5% of your total number of cells.

SPEAKER_02 31:23

They're only giving you 5% of the muse.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

So if they wait, if they tell you you're getting 200 million stem cells, there's no way you're getting more than uh so 100, 10, you're getting probably 10 million of mute cells. Because they don't they don't live. They can't extract that much. You can't, so the number is off. Stem cell is not always a stem cell. Okay. Okay, I can give you a billion exosomes. That means nothing to me. It's a carrier. I can give you a lot of the other cells, mesenchymal cells, they do well, yeah, but not as good as the mu cells. Well, forever I've tried to research how do I get more. After COVID, I put all my effort, everything in a lab here locally to say how can I extract more stem cells? And I couldn't. You can only go to 30% more of the total stem cells, the muse. Why muse? Because they're the best. They live anywhere. I can put them in your back, in your knee, in your liver. People are doing it in China, Middle East, in Europe, in Germany, everywhere. And it works. The question is, how do I extract a lot of them? Then I thought, why do people go to uh Panama? Why do they go to Mexico? Well, it's available. Well, why can't I get them here? It's illegal. It's not illegal, actually. What it is, it's in the United States, you can only use one donor, one placenta, one cord to make stem cells. If I'm gonna give John Jay something, it comes from one. In Mexico, in Panama, they mix them. This is important to understand. Why do they mix them? Because there is no law over there. You can use five different placentas from five DC sections and they mix them up, and then now they have 200 million, and I gave John Jay 200 million. How many of them are gonna find its mate? And I give the example is like having a car. You have a fender bender, you need a new fender on your BMW, you go to a shop, they give you a Mercedes one. Yes, it's a fender, but it doesn't really fit that. It doesn't look like a BMW anymore. So why take the chance in having five or six placentas? They might be, they may tell you it's five percent muse or 10% muse. Okay, fine, great. But did they come from one? Ask anybody, ask them, where did this come from? I guarantee you they'll say no. They can't, we don't know where they came from, they came from multiple in a lab, we researched it. Yes, and that's and I did that in two different labs, and one in Mexico, one in Costa Rica. I didn't go to Panama, but they that's what they do. So here in that states, thankfully, there's a law. You can the FDA says you can only do them from one source. Now, my limitation was in my lab that I lease a lab is uh to use, I couldn't get more than 5%. But what happened in the past few years because of AI, now I don't have to have a person counting each cell, which one is muse, which one is not. AI does a lot of the work for us, which means suddenly I can get 95% muuse cells out of the same batch. And that's what I've been using. Um, and it's it's incredible. I mean, it really is. The results are incredible. Why are they also so important to me? They're non-carcinogenic. That's another thing that I want to bring up. Muse cells are non-carcinogenic, meaning people always say, Well, if I have cancer, you give me stem cells, is that gonna make my cancer worse? It shouldn't, because these cells don't know what cancer is, they'll only make normal cells stronger, better. But the mu cells are 100% non-carcinogenic. They don't even know what the heck cancer is.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

But when you say you get it from one placenta, are you getting it from one placenta from now on just one woman's placenta and you can feed billions and billions and billions off of it? No. Or are you getting a different placenta every time you're doing a treatment?

SPEAKER_00 34:46

One placenta can do, depending on the lab. So they can do, they they shave at 20,000 of a an inch. So one can probably do, depending how many we use, like three or four patients, and then you do another placenta. But they cannot mix, or there's five C-sections in it. They don't mix you, they don't mix them here.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

But my thought, like the the place that I went to in Cancun, the way it was explained to me is they get it from one placenta, but then they're able to like clone them.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

Yes, that's that's very smart.

SPEAKER_02 35:14

And that and that I heard is illegal here, right?

SPEAKER_00 35:17

I don't want to clone one, right? Okay, I don't, right, I think that's horrible. Now it's nothing's wrong. There's I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I don't know. They call it duplicating them, right? They do, which is cloning them. You're copying what it looks like and saying I'm gonna use it again. I don't do that. We only use it, it's done, you throw it away because it's cheaper. That's why you clone them. Uh they can't do it here because it doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

Do they work as well or they're less than?

SPEAKER_00 35:39

I don't know. Some people like them. I I don't think so. I think they're they are I think the risk is much higher than the benefit that you may get from but your mu stem cells then is pretty unique in this whole country, then.

SPEAKER_02 35:51

Yes, right? That's why all these people I met a woman, by the way, I gotta tell you. And I I this is important to the story, but she's a billionaire and she got mu stem cells from you. So someone goes, yeah, she just she's with the daughter again, she got she and she spent uh you know, whatever. She goes, got the best of the best. And they were from you.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Yeah, so I don't and we again we I believe in them because it helped

Longevity Mindset And Vegetarian Choices

SPEAKER_00 36:13

me a lot. It helped my um my dad uh was 94, he passed away a month and a half ago. And before that, in 23, he fell. And my brothers are, you know, I have a brother who's a physician at uh at Honor Health, and he when you talk to him after he fell, he doesn't, he just stares at you. We're in the ER. He's like, I we're like, what's wrong with him? Everybody told us send him to hospice, including the doctors that are seeing him at honor. Everybody, and I my partner's a neurologist, like, you know, we gotta do something with him. But culturally, I we don't do hospice. They that's what they we don't, we just don't. We don't put people in nursing home. So we so I brought up, like, let me do, let me put intrathecal stem cells, I mean in the spine, muse cells in my dad. He was not talking. He, nothing's wrong with his MRI. He had a big hematoma on his head, like a big bulge, but his brain was perfect. And he just stares at you. I'm like this guy, we had to take care of him, carry him to the bathroom. He didn't move at all. He just sat there, didn't respond, just looks at you. I did the muse cells, that was around Thanksgiving. By Christmas time, he's walking with his walker, he talks to us, writes again in Arabic and English, can speak another incredible. And when the scary part, he said, the problem is when the ER you guys are yelling at me, I can hear you, I just couldn't respond back. Wow. So think of how many patients go through that. They end up in a nursing home, they end up in a where they in an extended facility, care facility where they could have been treated. All I did to him, I gave him the mu cells.

SPEAKER_02 37:41

I gave him 100 million injection.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

I did in the in the lumbar in the intrathecal meaning in the spinal canal. So he did to me? No, yours was different. I did yours, I did yours a little more because at the time I didn't have that much for my dad. For that was 23. Now you got double that amount, and you got it systemically and in certain areas in your body too.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

Um, speaking of your dad, so take me to 11 years later after he drops you off, the first time you see your dad, where are you?

SPEAKER_00 38:06

So what happened was the Gulf War started. I'm this is so crazy. So I became friends with my Secret Service guys because they said uh after that guy Herodwinell saved me from them, they said we have to follow you around while you're in med school. I'm like, okay. So at the time, I mean, we my wife currently now, but then she was my girlfriend then, and then um she knew about it, so we couldn't travel anywhere. Everywhere I go, they would separate us. They would say, So if I go to San Diego, they would say, Oh, there was an airline called Northwest. I don't know if you guys remember Northwest. They would make me fly on that while she goes on Southwest. Like, they were just pulling me out of the lineup, like, hey, come here. You go with this one, you have a ticket for it. I'm like, okay, so this went on even through med school. They were always there with me. They became my buddies. Some of them I knew, like, oh, it's this guy. Same car, same Taurus, white Taurus, they come and they follow around. So when I when that happened, my my dad uh knew the Iraq. Uh now the Gulf War was starting. So my mom and dad, and my little brother had a way to, he retired since then and escaped, and they came here. So I saw them after the Gulf War.

SPEAKER_02 39:09

But what happened? Was it like you got a letter? We're coming in on April 12th. Nothing. Can you meet us at the airport?

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Nothing. I was in I was in California. Uh-huh. I got a message from my older brother that my parents are in town.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

Okay, so then where did you go meet them at Olive Garden? Like where do you?

SPEAKER_00 39:22

I met directly. I the moment you see your dad's face. It was crazy. My mom, my dad, and my little brother. I left him when he was six, and I saw him again when he's 16.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

And did you cry? Was there crying or was there just like hey?

SPEAKER_00 39:32

Everything. Oh no, we I mean our culture, we hug and make out no matter what, even if you don't know people. So no, there was no just hey, it was like hugging, kissing. Yeah. Right. Yeah, we do a lot of stuff. So you had to then. Oh, it's crazy. It's so emotionally, it was so it's not real because you haven't seen them. And they're and then there, like there's so many personal things that happened that I had no idea how as a teenager that you forget and nobody taught you. And now your dad and your mom want to teach you. Right. It's it's very you had to learn it from the Monsignors. I learned it on my own. No, I didn't really. I just learned you you realize how much as now that I have a teenage son and I have other kids, my other son and my daughter, you realize how what I meant. Like, think of what kind of parent that would send a 14-year-old to a different country. You don't know anybody there that doesn't speak English with no money, and say, I'm gonna trust that country more than him being in my family. Right. Would you do that to your son? No, I wouldn't do it to this town. Anywhere. No, no. That's that's the kind that's the beautiful thing about the United States. That's why this is such a great uh now. You have to have the right, you know, luck too with it. I lucked out. I lucked out by meeting the right people, like the the people, the two wives. I mean, that just that's crazy. That is crazy. That to help one of them has a boyfriend, and then he even jumped in to help me. Think of how wonderful these people. Why Midwest?

What MUSE Stem Cells Actually Are

SPEAKER_00 40:53

Midwest has a value. They have a you always talk about that, but we don't know what that means. And my dad knew that in Iraq, saying these people are different, they have the same cultural values that you have in the Middle East. Right? They are welcoming, they're caring, they love, they don't care. The Catholic school, you think I fit in with a didn't speak English, I had long hair, I had a beard, you can't have a you like a mustache and beard, you're not supposed to be in the Catholic school. Yes, and I was picked on, and they were all rich. St. Charles is a very wealthy school. It's like Brofi, it's like PCDS, Phoenix Country Day.

SPEAKER_02 41:24

And I still was able to be with that, I still was able to rise because I had a obviously a higher power was involved in getting you to where you are now, and now you're helping all these people with stem cells. Yeah, and that's why to me, every day is a gift, every day is a gift for us. You know, when I first met you, well, actually, not when I first met you, but when I first went and got to your clinic and everything, and I was like, this guy's out of control, like you're out of control, but in a good way, right? And I was like, I I have my own theories on people. And I went to your Instagram. Actually, that's not true. I put a picture of you and me up, and then your daughter messaged me. She goes, That's my dad. And I was like, I clicked on her profile and I started looking at her stuff. And man, it just warmed my heart to see how much you and her love each other and how you were at her graduation and all her pictures on her Instagram or her hugging your dad, her dad. And I was like, what a beautiful, loving family. Like to me, a father and a daughter, when that relationship is solid, that means she's solid, you're solid. Like, just as and I I don't have any background, just experience that, you know, and I saw I thought, man, this guy's a good guy.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

I think you know the the reason she's my oldest one, and then I have two boys, but um I learned even at a right in med school, I have a classmate and I watched how there were two girls and two two boys in each tank when you do a cadaver lab, and I noticed how treated us, how we treated women in medicine. I noticed that we acted as men, we're better than her. I'm better than Christina because she is a girl in med school, but I'm a guy, I should be better than her. And that to me bothered me all through pharmacy school, through medical school. So when I had a daughter, I had to make sure that she understands that she is she can go anytime on her own, learning everything that we've done and should be equal. You should be equal to a man, you should be equal to everything you do. If anything, you should be higher, then that's how I was raised. That the, you know, women are on top of the clouds. That's something that's how you have to treat them. So to me, it was important as a young father then with her that to raise her that way, to give it every opportunity, to make her strong, not weak, and not to be bullied, not to let somebody else tell her, because that's really, you know, you go through the past 20, 30 years, the Me Too movements and all this. Every few months you hear something. Right. And then why? Because they are not treated right. I don't care what we say. This country is great. No, it's not. We pay them less. Right. Look at the sports. Just take your basketball. We play kids play basketball. Look at the NBA, WMBA, look at the soccer, look at the difference. Why? Why do we have this discrepancy where the rest of the world don't? Including Muslim countries. Why is it that this country has never had a female president where you have at least 17 or 19 women leaders in Muslim countries? Why have we not able to pick one? Is it possible that they're all really bad leaders? Only men have been really good for the past 200 and something years? So to me, that's why my relationship with Aya, her name's Aya, and that's what medical She's a doctor too. Yeah, she is. She's a dermatology. She's gonna be dermatologist. She's a dermatologist. Is she in school right now? Or she's no, she's done. She's a second-year dermatology residence in Miami.

unknown 44:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

Yeah. But but the point is, that's what she saw, what I went through. It's not about, you know, do I spoil them? Yes, of course I do. We all do. But at the same time, I wanted to learn that this country gives you the opportunity only when you work hard, only when you treat people right. Treat people like you would your own family.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

But your your youngest son, he's the one that's like six, seven, right? He's human. He's six nine, yeah. He's six nine. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

Yeah, he's a he's the basketball guy.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Yeah. And then so you're you have another son. He's a middle son. The middle son is uh he's like six three, six, four. And it is what's his thing? Is he in school? Is he Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

He just finished. He graduated a few couple months ago from Claremont McKenna College. Great college for uh economics, and he's more in finance economics, not not health. My daughter's in medicine, he's more in business guy, he's a smart one. How long have you been married? Uh since '97. So 29 years, yeah. Wow, man. Yeah, so it's it's crazy, a long time. And she's just a regular white person like you. Because people always ask that, like, did you marry somebody Muslim? Like, no, I'm not religious. So she's Christian. Our family is very crazy. Like, my daughter is with uh a Jewish guy. Uh, my middle son was with a Chinese girl, the other one was with a Mormon. So we have very crazy house. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 45:47

Do you like, I mean, being a protective father? You like your her boyfriend?

SPEAKER_00 45:51

Oh, I love everybody. I mean, I think as long as they're treating them right, you know, that yeah. I mean, I give everybody the benefit of the doubt. Everybody's great. I I try to love everybody,

One Placenta Rules And AI Extraction

SPEAKER_00 46:00

I really do.

SPEAKER_02 46:00

Hey, I would jump back to stem cells for a second, because I'm so fascinated with stem cells. I still don't know if I I I've done stem cells, I've interviewed doctors and scientists, and I still don't think I get it. So it's just muse, muse, so muse stem cells. There's muse stem cells, mesenchymal stem cells, exosomes, right? Very good. Yes. So pretty much.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

That that's I I like that division.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

So the muse is part of the best of the best of the best. That's the inside, that's the meat of the stem cell. That's what you want.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

The mesenchymal has muse in it. Yes, very small percent.

SPEAKER_02 46:30

Uh okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

Five percent. Uh uh.

SPEAKER_02 46:33

But the muse is what goes in and fixed muse doesn't know what it is.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

I think it lives longer. And then you'll see it's been uh one month since we did yours, right? Has it been a month? I don't know. Yeah, it's been about a month, yeah. Yeah, you'll see in two weeks, you'll see the difference. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_02 46:46

And so it's still doing its thing.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Yeah, you should feel good now, but you still feel better.

SPEAKER_02 46:49

Yeah, because you know what's funny is I told, I mean, I've promoted it to my my friend, who you I put you on the phone with because of his knee. My wife, she's got some shoulder problem.

SPEAKER_00 46:58

Oh, I'm getting her. She's coming. She's coming. You're gonna fix her up. I'm serious. I don't care what you guys do, and you can't, and that's the thing. I don't care if you go to another try it. Look at the difference. Like with her, we'll fix her shoulder, it'll be perfect. My son's coach, okay, and I'm sure he'll, I don't know if he lets me talk about it, but in in in Phoenix Country Day, for six years, he uh his coach, basketball coach, cannot uh show his kids how to even do a three throw because he said it hurts him so much. He had surgeries, this out of the blue, two and a half years ago. Jad, my son calls me, he's like, Hey, can you inject coach Shane? I'm like, sure. He's like, you know, doesn't have any money, whatever. You know, we don't want to. I said, Church, have him come. Came, and that's when I had the muse. I did it one injection. Ask him. His name's Shane Lewis. And shoulder, shoulder one time. And just and he's better. He's ask him. He's like, he's like, this is crazy. He's that I've gone so many surgeries. So he's like, not one person, he's doing great. She has, I think, a torn labrum. That's what he had. He had a torn labrum, and he had uh part of his royalty cuff. Two of them were torn, had surgery, didn't go well. The the anchor slipped, went back again like five, six years ago, didn't do well, then he didn't go back. Then his labrum tore again, so he didn't know. That's when I injected him. I used, I used at the time all mu cells on him. I only gave him like 30, no, I think I don't remember, 30 or 60 million. He's doing great. And this was three literally, this was uh when Jad was freshman, he's a senior, so that's when it was.

SPEAKER_02 48:27

You have labrum and rotator cuff?

SPEAKER_00 48:29

Yeah. Yeah, that's when she does. She has not had surgery yet. That's better. That's even better. Yes. If you can do that, we'll try it and see what happens. Is uh your son what grade is he in? Is he uh he's just he's a senior now.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

He's a senior. Does he have schools looking at him?

SPEAKER_00 48:42

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:43

I mean he's 6'9. Yeah, I mean a lot of schools.

SPEAKER_00 48:45

He's trying to decide.

SPEAKER_02 48:46

Yeah, is he trying to like does he have offers already?

SPEAKER_00 48:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:49

Oh, he does. Yeah, he does. So where's what where is he looking at?

SPEAKER_00 48:51

Uh he's looking at some Ivy League schools, uh, he's looking at uh Claremont, McKenna, Pomona, University of Chicago, uh Princeton, um Yale, some of the schools, and uh Seton Hall, some big schools, D1 schools. But he I think he's more he wants to go to medical school too. So uh he really wants to go to a strong academic school.

SPEAKER_02 49:14

So then he's gone in August next year, probably. And then it's just you and your wife. And then I'm gonna, yeah, we'll be crazy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

Because I love my work, and I think you know, this is I I truly love my work. This has been what we had three days. First of all, I didn't know today was a holiday. I just want to let you guys know. I found that out on I was so mad because on Thursday I looked at the schedule, like, hey, what happened to Friday? How come nobody's here on Monday? And they said, What do you mean? I said, Why is there nobody on the schedule? And they said, It's uh Labor Day. I'm like, no, Labor Day is nine, like nine-one, I thought. Labor Day is September 1st. Then I found out they moved it this year. No, we tend to what kind of crazy stuff is that?

SPEAKER_02 49:54

I was in San Diego this morning. Oh my gosh, I was in San Diego this morning and I got a text that we had a podcast at three, and I was like, it's Labor Day.

SPEAKER_00 50:03

I didn't even know Labor Day. Well, so I just found out it's Labor Day. But this whole time, the past four days, I spend it at work working, right? And I love it. No, so just to give you the idea that I I because uh some of there's a well-known uh football player, his wife. And uh, you should look up, I just posted it yesterday on my Instagram this morning at three in the morning. I had no idea that she was married to that guy. She sent a message with my name. I thought something's wrong because it says short video, I'm like, oh my god, it has my picture, I'm like, oh, what did I do wrong to this patient? And then she said, This person saved my life. And what it is, she I had no idea that's her husband. I saw him, but I didn't know, I didn't connect the two. And she came and had a uh a C-section about two weeks ago, and she was bleeding. The problem is they said the bleeding stopped, she went home, and she was feeling so sick and had to go to the R twice to get blood. Her hemoglobin was 7.5, which is pretty low.

SPEAKER_03 51:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:02

I brought her in at 4:30. I met with them. I said, You're staying, I'm gonna do a procedure on you right now to stop the bleeding. She's like, No, they said I'm not bleeding.

Recovery Stories And Intrathecal Treatment

SPEAKER_00 51:10

I said, Trust me, you're bleeding. By five o'clock, we did it. We were done by 520, her bleeding stopped.

SPEAKER_02 51:15

And she put a post- with stem cells?

SPEAKER_00 51:17

No, I did the embolization of a urine artery that was blowing.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

Oh, yeah, you were telling me it's the thing you could do to my prostate.

SPEAKER_00 51:23

So that's a really so this is really incredible. Um, jumping around, we do jump around a lot. I like this. I love this. I'm following you if you follow me. No, I do. This is crazy. Like you don't go by the schedule. Like, what's scheduled? You're one of the few people I can hang with that we can go like. No, this is crazy. So what happened? This is so cool. So years ago, remember the idea when I talk about cancer? Why can't we get why do I have to give somebody with cancer chemotherapy in the port where you go systemically and you make them bold like me, feeling sick, because we're treating cancer and they die in six months? Why can't I go to the mass in the liver and put my chemo? But then I want to block that medicine so it doesn't go everywhere, so it doesn't make you sick. Right. That has been done since 1990. It's called TACE T-A-C-E, trans arterial chemo embolization. So you go with a catheter, just like you do heart catheter, what we go in the groin or the arm, we go all the way to the mass in the liver. I put chemo because I'm a pharmacist, I make up a little more drugs. So I add six or seven drugs, but I mix them with little pellets, little balls, just like the boba that people drink with their 300 microns. Then I mix them and I impregnate them six or seven hours before we put in the patient and it goes to the mass. Now you got to put a tourniquet on the mass. That cancer loves blood, right? Right. Likes blood and sugar. Okay, fine. So now we're gonna put a tourniquet on the blood, it's gonna decrease that flow, it will kill the cancer, and the chema will stay there. That's what people have done. The problem is they only do it in the liver. You have anybody, M.D. Anderson, Mayo, or only in the liver. Well, I for 20 years, I've done it since 20, not 20, 16 years, 2011. I've been doing it everywhere else. I do it in the prostate, I do it in the breast, people with breast cancer. Right. Instead of just doing mastectomy, I go to an angiogram, I find the mass, I starve it from blood, then I bring it back the pay same patient a week later, I freeze the mass. I put them in minus 70 Celsius, it kills the mass. Anything frozen, that's it. That's called cryopology. But what are the little balls? Are they metal balls? Are they no, they're polyvinyl alcohol, they're just tiny, and they they stop the flow. So if you take a hose and put a bunch of marbles in it, water won't go through. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 53:26

So do you tell me so my prostate is a little enlarged?

SPEAKER_00 53:30

Right. So let's go back this way. So since then, we thought uh I did the first one here, to my knowledge, in the city, was for knee for arthritis. And it was an orthopedic surgeon here, did a knee replacement on his partner, well-known surgeon here. And he called me up, said to me, Hey, do you do interventional radiological? You're IR. I'm like, Yes, I am. IR is interventional radiology. He said, I was at John C. Lincoln. He said, I have my partner. I did a knee replacement, and for some reason, of course, it went bad. So now it's been out for two weeks. He doesn't work, he's screaming in pain, his knee is as big as a basketball. I said, Bring him over. I did an angiogram. I found inflammation around where he put the prosthesia. So I put beads, these balls, the beads that I'm talking about, and that's it. A week goes by, he calls me up, he's like, What did you do to him? I'm like, why? His name is Delwin. And I said, I put these beads and I stopped the flow. He's like, This is great. Can you do it on my heavy patients instead of doing knee replacement? Since then, I've been doing that for arthritis called genicular artery embolization. It's just the name of the artery we've stopped. So I love that because you don't have to have knee replacement. It buys you 10 years if you have arthritis in the knees. Right. Everybody does it now. However, I started doing it in the shoulder and in the hips since COVID, 2019. So now I've done about 3,000 of the shoulder and hips uh procedures. Same idea. You have shoulder pain, even your wife. I would do the stem cells, but later I would do the angiogram and take the inflammation away. The pain goes away, stem cells will grow the labra and helpfully fix the tear. So I started doing that. At the same time, where I trained at UCSD, they're huge in doing something called uterine artery embolization, which is what I did to that lady that from last night. So I always thought if I can embolize a fibroid and stop the flow without having uterus out in a female, why can't I do do it to a prostate? They said, you can't. I said, why? Because there's no papers on it. I said, okay, what else? They said, it's too small. The prostate artery is very tiny, you can't get into it. I said, we can get into the brain in a millimeter aneurysm. You're telling me I can't, so I'm sure we can. But I couldn't do that in the hospital setting.

Embolization For Cancer And Arthritis Pain

SPEAKER_00 55:40

So when we opened our outpatient interventional center, I started doing something called prostate artery embolization. You invented it? I started doing it a while back, so I don't know if I invented it. So you go in and you put the bulbas. I put little tiny balls in the prostate. So if you are so your prostate, let's say it's measuring, yours was in this seven. I was gonna say 34. Does that make sense? No, it was more. It was more. Okay. So it was more. It's like it's like double the size of what it should be. Yours. Oh, geez. So after age 50, we uh in men, our prostate enlarges. Right. And what happens is you have to go to the bathroom uh two times a night, three times a night. So uh the Medicare and finally gave it a code that we can embolize the prostate to make you 30 years old again. Why? It will shrink it. So the benefit with that, I believe, is always you don't have to get up the bathroom. No surgery. You don't even touch the prostate. I'm going in the artery from inside, I'm blocking the flow to the bad vessels that grew over the past 55 years, 60 years. Not I'm not killing the prostate, I'm just decreasing the flow. If you have a plant that's going crazy, say, hey, you know what? You're out of control. I'm gonna give it water once a week, not once a day. Right. That's all. Right. I'm just decreasing the flow to it. With that, I found another benefit for it. Cancer likes blood. By one out of six men will get breast uh uh prostate cancer. So if I decrease the flow to the prostate, I believe that's always gonna decrease the risk of uh prostate cancer.

SPEAKER_02 57:04

So you put the bobas in the arteries and the little bulbs and they still the the blood still gets just a little bit gets through.

SPEAKER_00 57:09

Yeah, I only put it in the areas that's that looks abnormal.

SPEAKER_02 57:12

But does it block it completely or just some of it? Some of it. Some of it. So I don't I don't block everything. So then does the prostate actually shrink?

SPEAKER_00 57:20

Yes. Wow, how 50% over the next few months? Like in two, three months, you repeat MRI, it should shrink by half. Because it sucks paying twice in the IRS. Oh, that's not even it. So the benefit, listen to the benefit. So the I believe it decreases the risk of cancer. Now, another really great benefit, but I don't uh so if you have a cup of blood going to your pelvis every hour, what is that supplying? It's supplying your bladder, your penis, your prostate. Right. If after age 55, you're getting 70% out of that cup going to the prostate. If I change that ratio and I make it 20% going to prostate, where's the rest gonna go? Go into your jaw. So now I've had many patients say, oh my God, I don't have to take Cialis or Viagra because you did that procedure on me. Wow. But insurance will not pay for that. I'm doing it because you have to get up to the bathroom a lot for benign prostatic hypertroise. Which is a side effect. I think that's a great side effect that we get from it.

SPEAKER_02 58:14

Are you going in here? Where do you go in?

SPEAKER_00 58:15

No, I go in the femoral artery or the radial artery.

SPEAKER_02 58:18

You go up here?

SPEAKER_00 58:19

Well, some I don't like that. It's too far, but I do it in the groin. So you go from like right here to angiogram, yeah. Just go with a catheter.

SPEAKER_02 58:24

Is it like a half-hour procedure?

SPEAKER_00 58:25

It takes uh if you Google it, it says take a couple hours, but it takes like 30 minutes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:29

And what's it called?

SPEAKER_00 58:30

Prostate P-A-E. Prostate artery embolization.

SPEAKER_02 58:33

Maybe I'll research it this time.

SPEAKER_00 58:35

Look at the website. I have a video on it. It's on your website and the I am medical, yeah. It's really nice.

SPEAKER_02 58:39

Yeah, how do we

Prostate Artery Embolization Explained

SPEAKER_02 58:40

get a hold of you? How do people get a hold of you? I think you're freaking amazing. Thank you for saying and I'm waiting for the video of my procedure so I can post it. Yeah, where is my videos?

SPEAKER_00 58:47

Well, get. Yeah, what gets? Jeez. Yeah, where are what are videos? Yeah. Yeah, we did a whole video on like a month ago, and I was like, they're selling, they're making money on YouTube, and we've done nothing out of it.

SPEAKER_02 58:56

I go, I mean, right? I mean, at your clinic too, you got you got Simon Med, Simon Med down there, you got the Cascade guys, and then you guys. So that that's that's the whole program right there, right?

SPEAKER_00 59:06

And it's and really the Cascade's gonna be the longevity and health and wellness. We're all partners together in this. Simon. So it'll be a membership.

SPEAKER_02 59:14

People sign up at Cascade and they get to go work out, they get to do whatever. Right.

SPEAKER_00 59:17

So you get to go, so you say, I mean, you actually would be perfect. Let me tell you why. And I it's all about me, how great I am. But let me show you what we've done, what you do for for the city, for the community. I, you know, the times that I took Safe to Brofi, I listened to you. When I took my daughter, who is now 26, 27, I listened. It's incredible how your voice resonates around the city for all of us. And this is really important. But what's interesting about you is you don't, it's almost like you're your own guinea pig. Let me try it and tell you why this works. It's not a fake sell. And that's what I love about you, is what I, when you're saying something, if you're passionate, you like it. If I try to sell you this little piece of plastic, you know what, I don't like it. I'm not gonna say it on my radio. And I think I love that about you and and and your program. And it's interesting when when Sirius uh satellite radio came out, I still switch it back whenever I, but unfortunately, now I only drive like four miles from my work, so I don't can't hear you that long. But before, I remember so many times, that's all we grew up on that. And I think what you say really helps so many people who had no idea what stem cells are, they don't know what genicular artery embolization or what cancer treatments you can do outside. Not everybody wants to go and get the chemo and the surgery. And I think when you say stuff like that, whether it's health related or to a house or a lender or a bank, it's really incredible. And you can help so many people because that voice carries a lot more than you think because you're local. And I think people trust that because you are from here. You are living here, you are doing it. It's not like somebody from New York saying, you know, I'm uh, you know, that I'm this guy, I think this is great. They hear it from you and you look at your stuff, you do the same thing. You try every friggin' thing, whether it's in Cancun, whether it's here, you try everything. And the great thing about that is you are putting yourself out there saying, I'm trying it. I tried it on my kids, on my wife. This is what happened. And I think that's amazing because then people will believe in that. And I and and to with me, my cell phone is on my card. Every patient has my cell phone. Um, you can go to IYA Medical, which is IM Medical, it's just my daughter's name, and all my procedures are there. I don't hide anything. Everything is there. You can watch the procedure. Right. I have a video of all of them, and it tells you what we do. And to me, anybody can call me, can text me. I had a uh pelvic pain. Remember, I take care of uh pelvic pain for women. That's a huge problem. There are people with May Thurner syndrome, which is compression one of the veins. 40% of all females with two kids or more have that. And nobody talks about it. And that after COVID, there's something called spike protein with made the blood thicker. So now people have increased risk for DVTs, which is deep venous thrombus. If you don't take care of the May Turner syndrome, you have higher risk for getting clots. But I I believe there's so much out there that we could do in outpatient, image-guided uh interventional radiology. Uh we're the largest one here, and I do, we're, you know, there's only a couple of places here that does outpatient interventional radiology, and they're all wonderful. But what I'm doing unique and different is I have imaging there. We have your place is different. It's a whole different setup.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:26

Yeah. What about stuff like have you heard of that uh um total plasma exchange?

Medical Marketing Hype And Real Risk

SPEAKER_02 1:02:31

I've done all that stuff. You take all your blood out, they clean the spike proteins out, and they put your plasma back in, or I don't put albumin or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:38

Yeah, albumin. I I don't know. I don't believe in that. I really don't. I think there's more harm than good. I think no, not just that. No, really, I feel like there's more harm to that. Right. I really believe it's it's you're doing that. You're basically doing what people do. Um uh when you do uh you know the the cabbage, when you do uh heart surgery, you're taking you're you're living on a machine that's changing all that's what you're doing. You're putting a catheter like for dialysis and you're taking your blood out and spinning and saying that a good you're not what are you talking about? Do you're not gonna extract that? People are like, oh, I'm gonna extract the minerals. You're supposed to have minerals in your body. You've done it three times. I know, but people do it, and they may say, Oh my god, I removed, but think of that. It is there. We're going to have minerals. My God, we need them. But is if you live by a golf course, are you gonna be more uh from the pesticides? Are you gonna have higher risk of cancer or Parkinson's? I don't know. You might, but the point is you can't go after everything because we can't. Right. You gotta kill yourself trying because one of these things, I have so many patients have the plasmapharesis and my partner does it too. He he orders it, and it does help so many wonderful patients who are needing it for neurology things, but not, I think it's overdone. I think there's some healthy patients that shouldn't get it and they're getting it. And I feel like the risk just from getting the catheter and the clot, and I put these catheters in these people.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:54

Okay, you get a clot from the catheters?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

Yes, and now you're stuck with a clot in your arm, your chest. Well, was that really worth it? Was that so there is a risk with everything you do? Does the clot go away? Eventually, if you don't, yeah, you have to treat it right away.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:06

But oh, like a clot's a problem if you have a blood problem. Yeah, okay. So I would say, like right now, I've done it three times. I I don't have a clot in me. No, no, no. I would have known.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:14

No, you did it through IV, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, but I have people who will actually get a dialysis catheter stuck with them to do because somebody tells them you need 26 treatments. Oh. So they're running out for the next five half a uh, you know. I have our own thing. There's always people who try to sell for Lyme treatment, all these weird, which is fine, but you have to treat the patient like always say, Would you do this to your brother? And if you would, that's great.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:38

But if you wouldn't, then don't. So let's say someone's watching this or listening to this and they have a cancer diagnosis. Can they just go to you? Yes. Or do they have to be referred to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:47

No, they can come. We have primary care there. People just go to you. I will look at everything no matter where. We look at images. I have literally today, I received two CDs, one from Sri Lanka, okay, to review, which I've never met. I don't know how they found us. Another one's from Calgary. And I'm gonna review them tonight. We're gonna to see what it is, what they have. Anyone can. They can call me, they can text me, uh, I can review their images, and I sit with our team and we say, okay, is there something else we can do? And there's nothing wrong with the current treatment that people have, but some people always look outside the box, say, you know what, let me try something different.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:23

Or I was gonna say, when I came to your office, uh, because I went to Simon Med, got a full body scan, and then when I came into your office with a meeting and you had my scan on your jumbotron, and I was like, whoa, like that was really impressive. How you had my whole body up there and you went over everything with me.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:38

I do that with every single patient. Do you really? Because that was incredible. Our procedures may take twenty minutes, but me talking forever is an hour. And I think that's important.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:46

When you give me a tour, like I your staff, I could tell how much your staff loves you too, and you love your staff.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:52

Like it's impressive, that I love they're my family. They're so they're there, they they're there with me with when we're busy, when we're not busy, they're always there. And they're great people. And I think you know, I I'm here for whoever. I'm I just love my work. I love what we do. Um you love this country. I love this place. Are you kidding? Yeah, we all do.

Gratitude For America And Final Goodbye

SPEAKER_02 1:06:10

I think anybody back to Iraq, Iraq. Have you been there?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:13

No, I escaped there. I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:14

I'm afraid to go back. Yeah. Do you have you gone to other countries on vacation? Oh, yeah. I did since I. So do you won't go to the Middle East?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:20

No, I just haven't. Well, I'm afraid of flying now for some reason. So that's a whole problem. But I just don't like to fly far away. So where do you think? I go to California, I come back. Yeah, I don't like to fly that much anymore. But but really I'm so busy. But I I uh, you know, a lot of uh naturalized citizens or people who come here, not particularly me, but other people, other countries, they're the cream of their crop. They really are the best of the best. When they come from China, India, yeah, these people are they are fighting to be top 1%. So we need these uh inventors, scientists, uh, musicians. I mean, there's so many uh arch architects.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:54

Are you family legitimately an American citizen now? Do you take a look at the way when did you become an American citizen?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:00

In 96.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:02

I remember when my mother became an American citizen and my father. Yeah, it's a big deal.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:06

Yeah, they gave me like uh uh orange juice and a little tiny American flag and a piece of cake.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:11

Oh well, that says it all.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:14

That's what they do.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:15

Well, thanks for coming to my podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:17

Absolutely, I love this. Thank you so much for having me. I hope I covered a lot. Yeah, but my stories go forever. I'll tell you what before we finish. So I'll tell you how it ended up with the with the with the Secret Service and everything. My mom and my dad, when they came here, this is a good story. So, what happens? My mom, in Iraq, they make a lot of food and you have to eat. It's an insult if I say eat something, you say no, you have to eat it. It doesn't matter. So I remember my mom, we didn't tell my my mom who these people are that would follow me around. So I would come to the house in our apartment, and then the white tourist outside. My mom would make them breakfast and lunch and dinner for the Secret Service every day. She's like, Your friend Ron didn't eat today. And I was like, it's fine. Okay. So they became, they loved her. They would go, we went places and they were always there. So it's funny that how you, you know, because she she she always likes one day come inside, and I'm like, no, they won't. They'll just like to be in the car. And this went on for years. But the point is that this is yeah, this is a great place. And I love Phoenix, I love Arizona. This is the best place to be in.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:16

You know, I have a friend of mine, and this is really, I feel he's from Iraq. He might be from Iran. I think he's from Iraq. Yeah, they're next door to each other. He's he's he has the same vibe as you. He's so grateful to be in this country. Do you still speak? Is it Farsi or what do you speak? Arabic Arabic? Arabic, yeah. I wonder like if I called him right now. He's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:35

Yeah, you know what? Most of the naturalized people like that are more patriotic than a lot of the a lot of than the ones that are um born here. Just because they we believe in this. We believe this saved our lives. Like without this country, where would I be? Honestly, where would my kids be? My family, my friends. I would have nothing. And it was all based on this country.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:55

His name is David, David Kalaj. Do you know him? David Kalaj. I haven't talked to him. What does he do?

SPEAKER_03 1:09:00

He's a real estate agent to all the My Brother, happy Labor Day.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:04

He's Iranian. I can tell from his accent, he's Iranian. So he's Persian for sure. I am I'm doing my my podcast, my brother, with this wonderful doctor who's Sum Iraq. And I thought maybe you guys should hear. He's Iranian, I can tell. He says you're Iranian, he can tell. Is that true?

unknown 1:09:21

Yeah, we are basically cousins.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:23

Yes, he's Iranian. Just from when he says, when he says hi, how are you, David?

unknown 1:09:28

Good, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:29

So are you? We're good. So my my mom's he'll know. So I'm so Iran and Iraq, majority are Shia Muslim. That's what I am, too. Yeah, so we're Shia. So a lot of Iranians and Iraqis are very close. Very. Like my mom is basically, she's from Abadan. You know Abadan? Oh, Abadan, of course. Yeah, so I'm yeah, so that's why. And then so we're very close. The food's very similar. They speak Persian, we speak Arabic, we're both Muslim. But the point is that the same, you he said something, David. He said, you have the same personality, the same, you know, we talk with our hands, we scream, we're always like talking excited about everything. This guy.

unknown 1:10:07

You are one of the nice guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:17

I know, I can tell, I know.

unknown 1:10:26

He's like one of us. We just gonna have to paint them or can I get some something?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:32

He's one of us. Okay. Okay, Shakuli. I love you, Papa. I'll talk to you later. Okay. He's so well, guys.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:41

So if you notice, the minute they said hello, I knew he's from Iran. We have the same, we can tell right away. This guy's pretty like I don't know. I gotta meet you guys. Just as one word, like I know he's the Arabs speak differently.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:50

The same, it's in English, it's just the way they talk. We used to go to the Suns games, him and me, like in 2006, 2007, and he would go, he would lift up his pants and have 10 grand in his sock just in case. It was like that's like two.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:05

This is a happening. A lot of Middle Eastern will have cats, they look like drug dealers. Yeah, and I don't like I I don't go to Vegas anymore because every time I go, I suck at gambling and I'm horrible because actually I have addictive personality. So I buy crazy stuff, I'm shop colors and weird, I like red and blue. When you put me, I don't even make it to the room. I just gamble there, and I'm not good at it. If I was good, I would stay. I like I lose, I'm all in, usually in everything. I'm all in. Like you can't be all in, it's a roulette. But so and I remember I go with my family, almost all of them. If it's a girl, they have their money here, if it's a guy in their socks, they have their boots. And I was like, That's it. Yeah, that's how we and now I don't, yeah, they carry everything. It's all you always have like five to ten thousand dollars with you in case something happens, because we're used to running away from people. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:54

Hey, look, you need you need some you need a couple thousand? I'm like, no, no, no, don't. We're just gonna get a popcorn.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:01

We're okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:01

All right, man. Well, thanks for being on the podcast, brother.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:04

Thank you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:10

Okay, so welcome to our podcast. This is a little bit different today because this podcast is a spin-off of our radio show.